Sure, there was a full moon high in the sky, but it wasn't moonlight that vampires like Aunt Alice and Uncle Dio had to worry about. So, that was at least one good thing that he could see about the situation they were all going to be making their way into, even if he couldn't think of any others. When the three of them finally made it to the deserted city that Aunt Alice, Uncle Dio, and everyone else who had come with them had gone off to, Jotaro narrowed his eyes just that much farther as he, the Old Man, and Avdol all began making their way into the empty city.
Calling Star Platinum, Jotaro focused on the Stand's enhanced vision.
"There's some kind of fog bank covering part of the city," he said, wondering if there was someone else with that kind of power, or if Domenico Pucci really had come here to Cairo with whoever else it was that Aunt Alice had seemingly called to her side when she'd gone into battle.
More and more, it was starting to seem like this had been one of Aunt Alice's plans, and not just something she'd been caught up by when whoever it was that had attacked her had made their move; still, Aunt Alice had always said that it was better to have forces that the enemy didn't know about.
"Come on," he said, having made his decision as he called Star Platinum back again. "Let's get moving."
=SC=
Making his way into the fog-enshrouded part of the empty city, both since he was curious about what could have been causing it and because Jotaro had suggested that it might have been Domenico and his Stand causing this kind of thing, Joseph steadied his breathing and began to channel Hamon in earnest. Before he could take another step, however, the sound of something large exploding drew him up short.
"Holy shit!"
Following the sounds of metal shrapnel raining to the ground, Joseph stopped short as he saw the remains of what seemed to be some kind of car that looked like someone had strapped a bomb to the front of it. The sight of what seemed to be a young woman running from the sight of the exploded vehicle drew his attention then, and Joseph turned to head her off before she could get too far.
"Move it, handsome!" she shouted, just as the pair of them caught sight of each other.
"What's going on?" he asked, adjusting his hat before it could go flying off from the speed that the pair of them had both started moving at.
"There's no-! "
"Joseph Joestar, is that you?" asked a familiar voice, as a very familiar Stand appeared out of the fog next to him.
"Domenico!" he exclaimed, grinning as he recognized the form of Weather Report, now standing on his left as it strode calmly out of the thick fog. "Hey, I thought it was you. What're you doing out here?"
"That woman you're with is one of Enya's mercenary Stand users," Weather Report stopped walking, though it was clear that Domenico was ready to act at the slightest hint of hostility from what had turned out to be an enemy Stand user. "However, I have my doubts that she has any true desire to carry this battle to its ultimate conclusion."
"You're damned right," the woman snapped, glaring from him to Weather Report, and then turning her attention back to him; Joseph figured it made sense, since Weather Report – or any Stand, it seemed – didn't quite look human enough for most people to feel comfortable talking to. "I didn't sign up to try fighting against someone who could control the damned weather; I was just here to knock off some company manager or something. So," the woman said, seeming to deliberately turn her attention away from everything that had happened, grinning in what seemed to be an overblown, seductive fashion. "What's say you and I get out of here, handsome?"
"I'm married," he said, feeling like he almost had to laugh at the sheer absurdity of the situation that he was currently dealing with.
"Ms. Mariah, have you already given up on me?" Domenico asked, his tone clearly teasing, and the amused grin on his face becoming plainly visible as Weather Report lifted the fog that had enveloped their battlefield.
"You pelted me with hailstones the size of golf balls, tried to explode me with those lightning bolts of yours, and then had me wandering in this stupid fog of yours until lover boy came here to find me!" Mariah growled, pointing fiercely at Domenico as he made his way over to where the pair of them were standing; Joseph couldn't help but notice that he hadn't dismissed Weather Report yet. "I don't care how cute you are! If you take one step closer, you're going to be facing the full power of my Stand, you bastard!"
"I would not advise that you attempt anything of that sort," Domenico said, the amused grin on his face not having gotten even the slightest bit smaller. A cloud emerged around Weather Report's right hand, crackling with lightning as the Stand clenched its fist.
Mariah growled, and Joseph winced slightly.
"Hold up, hold up!" he said, hopping between the pair of them, just before the pair of them could leap back on the attack again. "It sounds like this is all a big misunderstanding! So, why don't we just, not start smashing each other's heads in and talk?"
"Hmm, I suppose," Domenico said. "Of course, there is always another option, Ms. Mariah."
"What're you getting at?" Mariah demanded, narrowing her eyes as Domenico continued facing her, staying carefully just outside of the limit that she had specified as being allegedly beyond the range where she would send her Stand after him.
"The woman that you were sent here to attack is always on the lookout for people with talent and dedication to join her organization," Domenico said, straightening himself up and folding his arms neatly behind his back, standing at ease in a way that couldn't help but remind Joseph of the way that Aunty Alice stood when she was speaking to someone she'd taken an interest in.
He couldn't help but think things were going to go better, from this point on.
=SC=
When he, Dio, had caught sight of that handsome stranger Muhammad Avdol and his thoroughly fascinating Stand – resembling a rather magnificent firebird, and going by the name of Magician's Red – it was all that he could do not to laugh in sheer, amused pleasure. Even though the pair of them had ended up being confronted by a rather annoying, unimportant little man by the name of Rubber Soul, having such a lovely combat-partner as the man standing beside him made things quite a bit more bearable.
"Mr. Brando, will you please stop making bedroom eyes at me and focus on the battle?"
He, Dio, chuckled at the resigned expression of annoyance that appeared on the Egyptian's lovely, dusky-skinned face. "I suppose I can indulge you for the moment, my dear Avdol."
"Are you two faggots actually planning to fight me now?" the fool man demanded, grinning in that same way he'd been doing ever since he'd met the pair of them in combat; it was rather adorable, how the imbecile didn't have even the slightest clue that he only remained breathing by the grace of Dio Brando.
And such grace could be taken back just as easily as it had been given.
He, Dio, exchanged a single nod with the handsome Egyptian who had been so kind to give him company while he dealt with the annoyance who dared to challenge his dominion. The pair of them nodded to one another and he, Dio, grinned all the wider.
"Magician's Red!"
"The World!"
"Don't' make me laugh! My Yellow Temperance-"
"Crossfire Hurricane Special!"
Laughing in sheer glee as the fool tried in vain to leap out of the way of the veritable hail of anhk-shaped bolts of blazing fire that rained down upon him he, Dio, focused upon the most unique of powers that his glorious Stand had granted to him.
"The World! Time: be still!"
For just a single, wonderful moment he, Dio, could see the very air rippling as the gears of time were stopped by the firm hands of his mighty Stand. Grinning all the wider, enough to show his fangs if there had been anyone at all who could have seen a single thing in his world of frozen time he, Dio, moved to confront the fool who had been so arrogant as to place himself in opposition to one of the Twin Vampire Lords of the Earth. Slamming his right fist into the fool's gut, just hard enough to launch him across the expanse of their battlefield when he, Dio, allowed inertia to have sway once more.
"And now, let time resume," he, Dio, said with a slightly smaller grin.
The stupid look of surprise on Rubber Soul's face as he slammed into the wall of the building on the far side of the empty courtyard that the three of them had been fighting in drew a deep, hearty laugh from him, Dio, as he watched it happen.
"Avdol, would you like to do the honors?" he, Dio, asked, knowing that fire was one of the best ways to dispose of trash that had outlived its usefulness.
The fact that such a thing was also a truly horrible way to die was not so much a consideration; well, not so much, anyway.
"Right," the handsome Egyptian said, nodding in a way that seemed both decisive and uncomfortable at once. "There is truly nothing redeemable about you, Rubber Soul; burn to a crisp!"
The stench of charring meat and hair, even over and above the quickly-silenced screams of the man on the ground before them, made it necessary for him to firmly bite back a grin as he, Dio, watched the imbecile's rightful sentence be carried out. There was truly something to be said for the proper disposal of such rubbish.
=SC=
When he'd met that weird scrawny guy with the stupid-looking big arms, Jotaro hadn't wasted any time in summoning Star Platinum; this new guy's Stand seemed to have some kind of an ability to possess machines. Or at least cars, since the first place that he'd seen it was in that stupid-looking car that the bastard had tried to hit him with when he'd arrived. Still, the look of shock on his stupid face when Star had launched him out of the car with a single punch had been pretty funny.
"Hey! That wasn't fair!"
"Fair?" he scoffed. "You think I give a shit about fair?"
This bastard knew what he'd done when he'd thrown in his lot with Enya and all of her mercenaries; when he'd tried to run him over with that Stand-possessed car of his; when he'd decided that whatever kind of money that Enya was offering – or however the hell else the old hag had managed to convince a bunch of mercenaries to go after their family, Aunt Alice in particular – was worth attacking someone he clearly didn't know, and therefore wouldn't have anything against.
Especially not this kind of idiot, who looked like he'd never done a normal day's work in his life.
"Star Platinum!"
His Stand acknowledged him with its usual sharp cry of "ora", leaping forward to launch a barrage of punches down on the scrawny little bastard as he tried to make another lunge for that Stand-possessed car of his. Moving forward once Star had finished its work, Jotaro kicked the man away from the car, and the sent Star after the thing. There was no point in leaving anything to chance, considering what kind of a Stand user he seemed to be dealing with.
Turning back to look at the scrawny guy as he lay twitching on the ground, Jotaro paused for a couple seconds to make sure that the man wasn't going to be getting up for awhile.
"Yare yare daze," he muttered, tugging down the brim of his cap as he turned to leave the site of his battle with the Stand user who'd had that stupid Stand-possessed car.
=SC=
The sound of panting drew Alice's attention again, and she nodded to Stardust as her Stand slipped back underground, with The Duke launching itself at the empty window of a nearby building in the form of a spring, before shifting to look like a wind chime as it hung from the top of the empty windowpane. Smirking slightly as she herself leaped up to the top of the empty buildings all around them, Alice paused to watch for the approach of the Stand user that had been stalking her nearly as persistently as that annoying, gross little midget that she'd previously dealt with.
It was more than obvious that the pair of them had both taken the same kind of interest in her, the purely kind of physical reaction that she'd seen from more than her fair share of people, and Alice had known just what that particular mercenary wanted from her. She also knew how unlikely it was that she'd be able to come to any kind of accord with this one, anymore than she'd been able to do such a thing with the midget that she'd dealt with some time earlier.
Narrowing her eyes as she heard the pounding footfalls of the woman she'd led into this area of the empty city that she and hers had led Enya's mercenary forces on a merry chase through, Alice smirked as she caught sight of The Duke flapping its tassel in anticipation. The motion itself was subdued enough to pass for the action of the light breeze that was blowing, at least if someone was as careless as the other woman moving along beneath her seemed to be, so Alice wasn't particularly worried about that.
"Damn it, where did that damned woman go now?" the stocky, heavy-set woman demanded of no one and everyone, as she stopped in the middle of the empty street, looking around with sharp, annoyed little darts of her gaze.
Leaping lightly back to the ground, once it was clear that the other Stand user was about to make her way out of the area, Alice didn't bother to suppress a smirk as she leaned against the near side of the building that The Duke had taken up a post on.
"You're really putting a lot of effort into this, Ms. Nena," she said, carefully positioning herself so that she was far enough away from The Duke that even an astute observer wouldn't be able to keep the both of them in sight at once.
"You-! How the hell did you manage to get away from me?!" the heavy-set woman demanded, a wild-eyed look of fury on her face as the pair of them faced one another.
Alice chuckled, folding her arms and narrowing her eyes, smirking. "Well, isn't that just the sixty-four dollar question."
"You-!" Nena snarled, an expression of tooth-grinding – quite literally so, since she was actually grinding her teeth as the pair of them stared one another down – rage appearing on her face. "You pretty girls are all the same: everything just given to you, while the rest of us have to struggle for even the slightest thing! Well, I'm going to take that pretty face of yours, right now!"
"Will you, now?" she drawled, smirking all the wider as Nena stared her down, watching as The Duke shifted shape into a sharp-ended spring.
"What the hell are you so smug about?!" Nena demanded, actually beginning to look a bit rabid.
"You're in just the right place, Nena dear," she said, just as Nena opened her mouth again and The Duke launched itself into the back of her head.
Stardust leaped back out of the ground, sweeping its right wrist over The Duke, and allowing the secondary Stand to wrap itself back around it, settling back into its default disguise of a thin, white bracelet. Turning away from the corpse, Alice began making her way back to the center of the empty city. She'd been hearing the sound of other Stand battles, on and off, while she had been positioning Nena for the end of this battle of theirs.
=SC=
Heart hammering in her chest, as she ran through the streets of the necropolis that that hateful woman had lured her and her allies to when she had given Enya that ultimatum and forced her into the streets of this dead city, Enya focused as hard as she could on the powers of Justice, drawing up more of the corpses that she had gathered to herself when she had passed through one of the graveyards on the way to this place. The horrible scream of the rocket that had been attached to the hammer that that horrid giant of a man that that hateful woman had brought to this battle – as distinct from the titan whose form she had only, thankfully, been able to catch the briefest of glimpses of when that hateful woman had brought her forces down upon them all – when Enya had sent those who had been touched by Justice into the streets of this empty city, caused her to shudder in her very footsteps as she listened to the sounds of those Justice's own being shattered utterly.
Shuddering as she saw the severed limbs and shattered bodies that had been left behind by the giant and his infernal rocket-powered hammer, Enya hurried to escape from the necropolis where she had found herself trapped when that hateful woman and her army of horrors had fallen upon here.
"Now, Enya dear, wherever are you thinking to go to?"
Enya felt almost as though her very blood had frozen in her veins, at the sound of Lord Dio's beautiful voice; she hadn't even heard his footsteps approaching!
"Lord Dio!" she exclaimed, turning around to see the almost amused smirk on her Lord's face as he approached her.
"Now, you didn't think you were actually going to escape from this place, did you Enya?" Lord Dio asked, smirk widening into a grin that showed his fangs; there were few enough times that she could remember seeing such things, but each and every time they had served to remind her that, for all of Lord Dio's power and beauty, he was still a predator in the end.
The sight of another man approaching, this one the young Italian that she had caught the briefest of glimpses of when that hateful woman and her forces had first appeared in this dead city alongside her, brought Enya up short, just as she was about to start running for her life. She'd no way of knowing just how she would ever be able to get, but finding herself at the mercy of this newcomer made her realize that such a thing had been a false hope in the first place. The sight of the hateful woman herself, as well as the young man in the long coat walking next to her, caused Enya to shudder in a mix of terror and hatred.
"Ah, so this is where you managed to scamper off to," the hateful woman said, folding her arms as she continued stalking forward.
=SC=
Narrowing her eyes as she caught sight of Enya herself, Alice turned to look for a moment at Jotaro as the pair of them continued on their way into the center of the empty cityscape. Her great grand-nephew looked like he was trying with not much success to hold himself back from Stand-blitzing Enya until she was little more than a pile of bloody giblets on the ground.
"Keep a lid on it for a bit, 'kay?" she asked, leaning over so that she could speak lowly enough that no one but Jotaro would be able to overhear her.
"Yeah," Jotaro muttered, tugging on the brim of his cap in that same, nervous gesture that she'd seen him do so often.
The sound of approaching footfalls, as the rest of her forces converged on the center of the empty city that she had met the mercenary forces that Enya had hired, brought a small smile to her face as she and Jotaro continued on their way forward, closing in on Enya like the proverbial slowly-tightening noose. The sounds – and even the feel, coming up through the ground under her feet – of Wham and Tarkus slaughtering their way through the Stand-possessed corpses that Enya had brought along with her to this battleground let Alice relax just that much more, even as she found herself wondering for a moment just where in the hell she'd gotten those corpses and been able to move them into place pretty much under the respective noses of her and her forces.
Still, that kind of thing wasn't important, so Alice put it out of her mind as she and Jotaro closed with Enya at last.
=SC=
Smirking as he, Dio, caught sight of his sweet sister and his Littlest Jojo, he chuckled as he called out his glorious Stand once again. There could truly be only one fate for such betrayal as Enya had so willingly committed, and he, Dio, was going to relish delivering it. Just as he'd beheld the gathering forces of his sweet sister – as well as both his Little Jojo and his Littlest Jojo – he, Dio, called out to his glorious Stand once more.
"The World: time be still!"
The sensation of his glorious Stand halting the gears of time once again brought a wide, pleased grin back to his face as he leaped into the air. There was something special that he, Dio, had prepared for such a moment. Something that would make quite the impact on the foolish woman who had dared to cross him in such a way as that young fool had dared to do.
=SC=
It seemed like he'd just blinked, when he and Aunt Alice had caught up to that old hag who was trying to attack her for whatever stupid reason that'd come into her head, when-
"What the hell?" he found himself almost forced to say. "Where the fuck did Uncle Dio get a steamroller?"
Aunt Alice laughed softly. "Well, you know how he likes to prepare for these things."
Turning to look over at his aunt as she seemed to study the sight of the steamroller – seriously, a fucking steamroller – that had been dropped down on her from out of what had looked like a clear sky, Jotaro wondered just what in the hell Uncle Dio had been thinking when he'd picked that thing up. And just where in the hell he'd been able to find the thing in the first place. Still, it wasn't like Uncle Dio was likely to tell him, so Jotaro tried not to think about that kind of thing.
The ten of them – some of the people from Aunt Alice's company, the Old Man and Avdol, and what seemed to be one of the old hag's mercenaries who'd actually had the sense to jump ship before Aunt Alice had been forced to deal with her personally – all met up in the center of the city.
"Well, I suppose that's one way of dealing with a troublesome Stand user," Aunt Alice said, sounding fairly amused; though nowhere near as much as Uncle Dio clearly was.
"Of course, sister dear," Uncle Dio said, grinning in that way of his that told anyone who saw him that he didn't have a single regret about whatever it was that he'd done. "You've never known me to do anything by half-measures, have you?"
"No, I suppose not," Aunt Alice said, giving Uncle Dio that same look she always gave him when he'd done something dumb.