She hummed softly in thought. "Well, it does sound like this is something he'd be best suited to looking into. Do you know of anyone he would be able to make contact with, in regards to your organization?"

"I'll speak to them again, Boss," Caesar said, looking a great deal more content than he had when she'd first arrived in her Venice Tower.

"Thank you, Caesar," she said, smiling and nodding sharply in return. "I'll get in contact with TIM, then."

Caesar bowed neatly in return, and the pair of them separated to go about their various tasks. She, of course, would have a simpler time of setting up the untraceable phone line that she used to operate as The Illusive Man during those times when she needed someone with only a tenuous connection to Alice Brando; a connection known only to those in the upper-echelons of either Treadstone or Blackwater. When Stardust climbed back out of her body, Alice smirked slightly.

There was only one other being on Earth who would know that Alice Brando and Jack Harper were one and the same.

=SC=

Making his way back into the room where he and Jotaro were staying, Enrico found himself reflecting again on the sadness that he had seen so clearly, even behind the smile that his old friend had offered him. It was a difficult thing, supporting Dio through those times when he would find himself bereft of his sister's presence. Enrico had at least some idea of the pain that Dio went through during those times, with Domenico and Perla away from him for so long in Italy, but he would have been the first to confess that even he did not love with nearly the depth or the fierceness that Dio felt for those he had given his heart to.

Still, he was also fully aware that Alice had her responsibilities to the world that they all lived in, and was not the kind to idly set such things aside.

And so, once again it fell to him, supporting Dio through such a trying time as this one. Enrico could only be grateful that nothing else of the world outside the walls of the sanctuary that Dio was establishing for himself in Cairo had intruded upon the peace that Dio would need to regain his footing and thus reestablish himself. Most of those who held a place in his old friend's heart were at least still present: his sweet Holly, mercurial Joseph, and even Jotaro, loathe as the child might have been to admit to the depths of his feelings at his age.

Teenagers could be adorably foolish in such matters, Enrico reflected with a smile.

"Is his latest project going well?" he asked, as he and Vanilla Ice crossed paths in the hall leading to the guest rooms that had been – and always would be – reserved for family and the close, personal friends of such.

"Indeed," the man – as much Dio's right-hand as Straizo was Alice's – said, a pleased expression on his face for all that he did not smile. "Lord Dio is most pleased with the progress that he has been witnessing thus far."

"I'm glad to know that," he said, smiling as the pair of them parted for their respective rooms, feeling all the more pleased that his old friend would have yet one more thing to comfort himself with, and thus ease the heartache that had been caused when demands from the world outside their walls had pulled his dear sister away from him once more.

Enrico knew that he was far from the only one that wished for an end to such things, but the world remained what it was, and even he had no inkling of a Stand that might be able to change it.

=SC=

"That looks like Shiva."

Boingo started, looking back over his left shoulder at the man who'd just showed up; Joseph Joestar, the father of the kind woman that he and his big brother had met when they'd first come to this place, seeking whatever it was that Fate had brought them there for. Joseph laughs in that way that he does when he's done something that a lot of people would probably call rude, waving his large hands as though he was trying to shoo something small away from his face.

"Sorry about that, but you always look so serious when you're reading that comic of yours," Joseph – Well, Mr. Joestar – said, smiling cheerfully as he made his way over to plop down on the couch next to him. "That's just like the pose I saw that Shiva statue in," Mr. Joestar said, pointing to the four-armed goddess that had appeared at the back of his manga almost as soon as he'd gotten it, slowly becoming clearer as time passed. "And… that almost looks like a black hole, in its left hand."

Looking back down at the goddess that had slowly shown more and more of herself over the months and years that Boingo had possessed Thoth, he found that there was something in the upper-left hand of the goddess. He didn't know quite what a black hole was, but Mr. Joestar sounded like he knew a lot more than either Boingo or his big brother, so the round, purple and black thing with all of the teeth probably was meant to be a black hole. He wondered why the goddess would be holding a black hole in one of her hands, and just what Shiva had to do with anything.

He didn't know if Mr. Joestar would think he was rude for asking, though, and big brother was the one that talked to people; Boingo didn't really know what to do.

=SC=

Settling down next to Loreena as she painted Mr. Brando's garden – a lot of new additions had been put in; bushes full of tiny, sweet-smelling flowers, and some kinds of trees that he didn't quite know what to call – Noriaki wrapped his left arm around her waist and leaned back into the plush cushions of the bench the pair of them were sitting on together. Closing his eyes for a long moment, Noriaki found himself almost drifting away on all of the scents that were wafting in the air from all the plants that had been moved in lately.

He'd learned what this place was meant to be, at least until he'd sent Hierophant Green to talk to Mr. Brando. Apparently, this place was meant to be a garden that the people who would come to the spa that was steadily being built – the Desert Rose – could walk around, or sit in, to enjoy while they were on vacation. Mr. Brando had also said, since he and Loreena were the first ones to be able to see it – even if it wasn't truly finished at this point – the both of them could feel free to make suggestions about what other things to add. Or even to change.

Yes, Mr. Brando did have final say in everything, but he'd made it clear that their suggestions would have a great deal of weight, as well.

=SC=

As he had watched Dio steadily working to regain himself, after the unceremonious departure of his beloved sister on some task that her career or those within their company demanded of her, Enrico had found himself all the more pleased to be given the chance to help such a caring man as Dio Brando. It was the same kind of loving care that Dio had offered him when the pair of them had first met, after all. When he had first laid his eyes upon the man he would come to care about so deeply, Enrico had thought him simply a lost tourist, having lost track of his tour group as he'd lounged in a pew near the back of the church where Enrico had been staying during the fateful time when he'd encountered him.

Not that he had truly known how deeply entwined their fates were to be, when he'd made his way over to the lounging man in the pew. Dio had taken out an ornate pocket watch, shaking it beside his right ear, and then laughingly suggesting that he'd merely forgotten to wind it when Enrico had expressed concern about his separation from the tour guide who had clearly been long-since departed by that point in time. Dio, however, had simply linked their arms together and appropriated Enrico himself as the new tour guide that he would be making use of.

He hadn't known quite what to make of such a brash, cheerful man when the pair of them had met for the first time, but Enrico often found himself looking back with a definite sense of fondness upon that meeting.

When Dio had noticed that he'd had some difficulty walking, he'd not only taken it upon himself to carry Enrico to a place where the pair of them could settle down together, he'd then taken a look at his twisted foot. And then, through means that Enrico still did not quite understand, Dio had been able to heal the damage he had been forced to live with up to that point.

Enrico would always be grateful to the man for his consideration on that day of all days.

When the pair of them had parted for the day, Enrico had found himself wondering just when he would have the chance to meet the man who had introduced himself as Dio Brando. He had also found himself troubled by a revelation that one of his parishioners had confessed to him; the knowledge that she had taken the man that would eventually regain his birth name of Domenico Pucci, taken him from the hospital bassinet where he had been sleeping, switching him out with her own sickly, dying child. The man he would know as his brother had, for the first few decades of his life, adopted the name Wes Blumarine.

He'd also fallen in love with their sister, Perla, a situation that had rather demanded correction; after all, Domenico's love had not been of the chaste, playful kind that Dio shared with his own beloved sister.

The firm that he'd hired had had connections to Alice Brando, a sure sign that fate – the force of gravity that acted to draw all souls together – was already acting to draw them to one another. Perla had also been working for her, which was simply one more thing that contributed to his understanding of just how much of their fate was to be bound up with that of the Brando family. When Alice's firm had finished their investigations into Domenico's and Perla's respective pasts, revealing their relationship to each other and thus reuniting the Pucci family once more, Dio had been the one to bring him to meet his then newly-revealed siblings.

Domenico had been both pleased, and rather amusingly awkward, considering his intentions toward Perla at that time; the ring that he'd purchased, to present her as an engagement gift, had instead been repurposed as a birthday present.

"Thinking deep thoughts?"

Turning at the sound of a familiar voice, a smile already emerging on his face, Enrico saw the familiar form of his brother. Domenico's long, white hair was currently tied back in an elegant braid, with soft feathers and beads that seemed to be made of moonstone decorating the fringes that framed his face.

"Just reflecting a bit," he said, smiling all the wider for his dear brother. "Fate has been good to us."

Domenico laughed, soft and supremely amused. "You and your fate. One could almost be forgiven for thinking that that was your greatest interest, rather than that collection of dime-store romance novels everyone knows you keep under any bed you spent more than a month in."

Enrico scoffed, though the smile he was wearing remained firmly on his face. "Come now; I hardly bought all of them from a dime-store."

"No, some of them were bought for you," Domenico retorted, grinning unrepentantly at him as the pair of them stood, overlooking the steadily growing form of Dio's garden; the same garden where he'd caught the occasional glimpse of Noriaki Kakyoin and his beloved Loreena McKennitt, as the pair of them made themselves comfortable in such a place as the Desert Rose, incomplete as it currently was.

"Yes, I suppose I have been rather simple to shop for," he said, feeling the reflective atmosphere of their current place of residence stealing over him once again.

"Speaking of gifts, you have to know that Dio's going to go all-out for the birthday of that child he's been preparing for for so long," Domenico said, and Enrico couldn't help but to shudder, even as Domenico laughed at the thought of such a thing.

"Yes, I have found myself becoming rather well-acquainted with his penchant for grandiose gestures," he responded.

"Whatever could be the matter, brother?" Domenico asked, and Enrico knew that – should he chance to look over at his brother once more – he would only see the same kind of unrepentant grin on his face as had taken residence on Dio's so many times. "I thought you were quite fond of the man."

"I love Dio as I love God," he said, turning at last to face the expected grin on Domenico's face. "Yet there is only so much dedicated absurdity that I find myself capable of dealing with."

Unspoken, and yet clear for all of that, was the recollection of the first birthday party that Dio had thrown for the three of them when they had all been reunited for the first time in the wake of Alice Brando's intervention. The event that stuck out most clearly in his mind was – much as he might have tried to forget it in the intervening years – Dio himself, bursting from the top of the large cake that had been delivered to the three of them at the table where they sat. Enrico could still recall the feel of Dio's lips on his own.

The kiss itself had tasted of the buttercream frosting that had flecked his old friend's mouth.

Domenico's supremely amused laugh brought him firmly back to the present, and Enrico cast a firmly unamused expression at him in return.

"You know, I think that might have been the only time I've actually seen someone only capable of speaking in fragmented consonants," Domenico said, still grinning at him in that way that he'd become so accustomed to being wary of from Dio himself.

It was at times like this, when Enrico would find himself entirely sympathetic to Jotaro's desire to avoid the notice of his grandfather, particularly when he and Dio had been placed in such close proximity to one another; such a thing was, all too often, a recipe for madness and quite a bit of annoyance to all and sundry.

=SC=

When Star had heard someone making their way into Pucci's room, Jotaro had sent his Stand to listen at the door of the closet he'd been making himself more and more comfortable in as time went on. Through his Stand's ears, Jotaro had found that the light footsteps didn't sound at all like those of the Old Man when he would stalk him with intent to annoy, and so the sight of the closet door opening didn't cause him to outright cringe the way it would have if he'd been expecting the Old Man to show up.

"Pucci," he said, as the man made his way into the closet where he'd taken to hiding out from the Old Man, and even Mom when she got too enthusiastic for his tastes. "What's going on?" he asked, noticing the bag full of those cheesy romance books that Pucci liked to read hanging neatly from his right shoulder.

"I think, Jotaro, that I might very well be joining you in this place in a short time," Pucci said, the kind of expression on his face that Jotaro could clearly recall feeling on his own when the Old Man was being particularly annoying.

"Fuck; the kid, right?" he muttered, recalling just what kind of things they were going to be dealing with in just a few months; Uncle Dio was going to be on cloud fucking nine once that kid of his had joined them all, and he got even more determinedly weird when he was happy.

"Language, Jotaro," Pucci said, in that way he did when he knew that someone was probably ignoring him, but he couldn't help saying something; probably came with being a priest, or something. "But, yes."

"Thought so," he said, moving the beanbag chair that Star had helped him to bring to this place out of the way so that Pucci could make a place for himself, too.

It was going to be a hell of a thing, once that Gio kid had been born; not that their family hadn't welcomed new members before, but dealing with Uncle Dio while he was still on his "new Dad" high… Yeah, he got why Pucci didn't want to be alone while they all had to deal with that. Sometimes, it felt like he, Aunt Alice, and Pucci were the only normal people in their whole family.

Even though Pucci's obsession with Uncle Dio was still pretty weird.

=SC=

When the news of a new addition to the Brando family had come through, Caesar had found that the grin on his face wouldn't leave, no matter if he was training new recruits for Treadstone, or even meeting with his counterpart in Blackwater. Making his way back up to the top of the Venice Tower, where the Boss had posted herself while she made contact with the Tim and the people who worked with him, he found himself humming the soft tune that the Boss would hum while she was engaged in a particularly difficult task.

"Boss! You've gotten the news, too, haven't you?" he exclaimed, making his way into her personal office.

"I have," she said, chuckling softly as she turned that sun-bright smile of gentle amusement on him. "Dio's been calling anyone whose phone number he can find in his address book, chatting their ears off about the new kid he's going to be bringing into the family. Believe me, I know."

He laughed soft, conceding the point. "Yes, I suppose you would have been the first he told about something like that."

"I'm the first he tells about a lot of things," the Boss said, her usual wry amusement coming through in force once again. "Whether I want to know or not is another story, sometimes."

The pair of them shared another laugh, both of them having to come to know Dio Brando well enough to understand just how much his desire to share everything of himself with his sister informed his every thought and action.

"Do you think he might want to have you take a hand in raising the little one?" he asked, not quite sure how the Boss would react to that kind of a suggestion but wanting to know, all the same.

"I certainly hope not," the Boss said, giving a clearly exaggerated little shudder. "Get them old enough to have a personality, and I can deal well enough, but in regards to that," she looked him directly in the eyes, a sardonic smirk on her face. "I've always been more in favor of kittens, as opposed to human infants. At the very least, they're cuter."

Laughing, knowing that the Boss had probably been asked just that kind of question more than her fair share of times – people always did seem to think that women were best suited to looking after children, for some reason or other – for her to be that unimpressed by the question, Caesar turned his attention to the other matter that he'd been interested in.

"How have your effort to contact Tim been going?" he asked, feeling again the shudder of unease up his spine as he considered what could be happening to the people he'd known – even the children that he hadn't had the chance to meet yet – while he stayed safe under the Boss' careful watch.

Not knowing was the worst part of the situation he found himself facing.

"He's expressed in interest in making contact with them, though he's a recluse for the most part," the Boss said, a considerate look on her face as she turned to look at him again. "He wanted me to ask if your people would be amenable to conducting business over the phone."

"I don't know," he said, considering the ranks of Passione that Tim would be dealing with. "Give me some time to make contact with them, and I'll get back to you."

"Very well, then," the Boss said, nodding sharply in that way of hers.

=SC=

It was almost April and he, Dio, found himself all the more eager for the date that had been specified for the birth of his sweet little Gio. Still, there was at least one other matter of import for him to enjoy himself with while he, Dio, awaited that moment. Humming softly to himself as he wrapped the amusing presents that he, Dio, had purchased for those of his dear family who had come to his Desert Rose to enjoy the amenities that were slowly, steadily being brought in as the date of his grand opening drew ever closer.

There was also a choice selection of gifts sent along by his sweet Alice, even though she herself would not be able to be present for their latest celebration of April Fools Day.

Once he'd gotten the last of his and his sweet sister's presents wrapped he, Dio, made his way to the family room that he'd had built in the private area of his Desert Rose when he'd been planning it out. Humming as he set out the presents that he'd wrapped, displaying them neatly and cheerfully for the dawn of the first day of April, and the April Fools celebration that they were all to have on that happy day. Once he, Dio, had finished with that happy task, he made his way back to his own room to wait for the morning.

Such a thing would be particularly enjoyable, considering that Enrico and his sweet brother had come to the Desert Rose to stay for a time.

=SC=

The first day of April was kind of something that he'd been dreading, considering that both Uncle Dio and the Old Man were here at the Desert Rose; he could at least be happy that the old Old Man – that was to say, Jonathan Joestar – had pushed for April Fools to be celebrated with something other than the barrage of pranks that Uncle Dio had played on him on the previous April 1st of every year before that. It was at least better than it could have been, Jotaro knew, but it was still annoying at the end of things.

Still, as he made his way down to the Desert Rose's family room, Jotaro found himself reflecting that it was at least better than it could have been.

Making his way over to one of the large, plush chairs that had been set around the perimeter of the round room, Jotaro sank into the thing and watched as Uncle Dio passed out the presents that he'd clearly wrapped and put out for them all. Taking his own present with a bit of trepidation, Jotaro relaxed as he saw the label. Aunt Alice had been the one to give him this one; that meant that it wasn't going to be something as stupid as what Uncle Dio would have gotten for him.

Once the last of the presents had been passed around, Jotaro was the first to open his, considering that he'd been the one that Uncle Dio had singled out. Peeling back the wrapping, looking down into the box with a slowly-growing smirk, Jotaro looked up as the Old Man called over to him.

"It's perfect," he said, in response to the question of just what it was: the image of Sam the Eagle had been printed on the neatly-folded shirt, along with the phrase "You are all weirdoes.".