Loreena could have sworn that she'd only closed her eyes for the briefest of moments, but when she opened them, she found herself staring up at drifting puffs of cotton-candy clouds as they passed by over her head. Blinking as she sat up, she realized that the strangeness of her current situation hadn't remotely ended with the clouds that she really shouldn't have been seeing, considering the fact that the car that she, Noriaki, and the Kujo family had been traveling in hadn't been a convertible.

Climbing out of the giant teacup where she'd found herself when she arrived in this strange-but-familiar place – really, the empty amusement park she was currently making her way through reminded her so much of the carnivals that she and her family had gone to when she was younger. Looking around, Loreena found herself growing more than a little uneasy about the fact that there didn't seem to be a single other person around besides her in this strange place. Looking up…

She found herself staring at Jotaro.

"Oi, you finished with your nap yet, Loreena?" he asked.

"Yeah, yeah I am," she said, feeling for a long moment as though there was something she'd forgotten, but then putting that kind of thing aside.

She'd probably remember it if it turned out to be something important, anyway.

"Well, let's all get going, then!" Mrs. Kujo exclaimed happily, all but jumping up and clapping her hands with the sheer exuberance that Loreena could see in every line of her body.

It was really kind of funny, how Jotaro and his mother were such complete, polar opposites; if anything, Jotaro seemed to have more in common with his aunt than anyone in his immediate family, and given everything she'd learned during the time she'd spent with them, Alice and Dio had been adopted into the family instead of born there. Yes, Loreena was perfectly aware of the fact that there was far more to family than simply blood, but she'd thus far never had such a concrete demonstration of the truism.

She still found it both cute and kind of funny, though she was sure Jotaro wouldn't have appreciated the sentiment.

As the four of them made their way to the spot that Mrs. Kujo had evidently reserved for them – which was still a pretty novel thought, given that Loreena had never heard of anyone having to reserve space in a park of all places – she couldn't help but notice that there were more than a few people who seemed to be giving them a particularly wide berth.

"What's going on now?" she asked, once she was sure that no one else but their group was close enough to overhear.

"Just some fucked-up superstition," Jotaro said, looking about as unimpressed as she'd ever seen him.

"Oh, right," Noriaki said, chuckling softly. "There are four of us."

That's supposed to be an explanation? Loreena mused, determining that she would get at least some information out of Noriaki when the four of them all managed to find the place that Mrs. Kujo had reserved for them. Soon enough, however, Loreena saw that Mrs. Kujo had already taken care of all of the setup, too. There was a thick, cozy-looking blanket all spread out on the ground where they were going to be sitting while they watched the cherry blossoms as they fell.

She and Noriaki settled down together, but before Loreena could take out the sketchpad that she'd brought with her for the occasion – the newest of the three she'd bought for herself since she'd been living in Japan – she found herself feeling unaccountably tired. Closing her eyes briefly… she found herself looking down on what seemed to be an empty amusement park from the vantagepoint of a Ferris-wheel gondola.

"Wha-"

"Loreena-chan, you ended up here, too?"

"Noriaki?" Crossing to the other side of the gondola where she'd somehow ended up in, Loreena sat down next to him. "Do you have any idea how we ended up here?"

"I'm sorry, Loreena-chan, but I'm not even sure where here is," Noriaki said, looking about as confused as she felt, right at the moment.

The Ferris wheel gondola that the pair of them had somehow ended up seated inside lurched into motion then, and both she and Noriaki braced themselves in their respective seats. Loreena could only be thankful that this kind of thing had started before she'd made up her mind to go over and sit with Noriaki so that the pair of them could take a bit more comfort from each other's company while they were stuck in whatever kind of strange place this was. Once their gondola had made it down to what passed for the ground in this strange, unearthly place, she noticed that there was someone running up to them.

Someone familiar…

"Telence!" she called, as she and Noriaki climbed down from the gondola.

"Loreena! Noriaki!" the man himself called back, sounding a bit out of breath, but really only like he'd been running; probably to find them, given the look on his face as the three of them all met up again in… whatever this strange place was.

"You ended up here, too?" Noriaki asked, before Loreena could articulate the same kind of question; really, she was still wondering where here even was.

"Yeah," Telence said, looking around in that same way that she and Noriaki had both done, once they'd realized that they were somewhere entirely different than where they'd been to start with. "I guess this Stand doesn't have much of a distance limitation."

"I guess this kind of thing really is too strange not to be caused by a Stand," she said, chuckling softly. "Still, what do you mean by that?"

"Well, I expect the pair of you have gone back to Japan by now," Telence said, smiling in a knowing sort of way at her and Noriaki. "But, whatever kind of Stand this is, it managed to catch me all the way in Cairo."

"This could be a problem," Noriaki said, a worried look on his face, even as he looked back up to the sky; the clouds there looked strange, making the thought that this whole place was the creation of someone or other's Stand all the more plausible.

"Right; there's no way of knowing just how far the effect can reach, if it managed to get hold of you," she said, sobering as she looked around at the place where the three of them had found themselves.

It was a strangely innocuous sort of place: an empty amusement park that seemed to be done in pastels and candy-colors, with even the sky itself sharing in that same sort of theme. Just as she'd had that particular thought, though, something indefinable seemed to change about the Stand-created world all around them. Loreena wasn't sure she could have described it to anyone who asked, but before she could think too much about that kind of thing, something dropped out of the sky with the clear intent to land on their heads.

However, when she saw the massive scythe that the newcomer – it had to be a Stand, considering what it looked like, but Loreena would have been the first to admit that she didn't know just how a Stand could manifest inside a world that seemed to be created by a Stand – was about to bring down, Loreena realized that landing on them was probably the last thing she'd have to worry about.

"Look out!" Telence shouted, throwing himself toward her and Noriaki where they were standing, just as some kind of- some kind of a massive, glowing net sprang into being just in front of where they were all standing.

However, before she could do anything more than wonder about just what it was that they were all seeing… Loreena found herself staring up at the kindly face of Mrs. Kujo as she smiled down at her. Jotaro's voice was the first thing she actually heard, however.

"Yare, yare daze, if the both of you were just going to sleep through the whole thing, we could've just stayed home."

"No, no, I wanted to show Loreena-chan the festival, too," Noriaki said, as Loreena levered herself back up.

She couldn't help but wonder just why in the world she and Noriaki had both ended up falling asleep in the Kujo family car on their way to this place, since as far as she knew the both of them had been able to get a good sleep the previous night. And, while she didn't actually know what Noriaki had had for breakfast, he hadn't been acting like someone who had still been in need of a good meal. It was all fairly strange, but before she could think more deeply on the strange things that seemed to be happening to her and Noriaki on this strange day, Loreena winced as she felt some kind of sharp thing slapping against the left side of her neck.

Reaching up, she found to her surprise that one of her earrings seemed to be thrashing around on its own. Removing the hook from her earlobe, Loreena looked down as the earring in her hand gave one last, weak thrash, and then settled back down again.

"This is the first time I've seen you take your earrings off, Loreena-chan," Noriaki said, having clearly come to sit beside her while she'd been making her examination, to see if she could find out just what had been going on with one of the few pieces of jewelry she wore on a day-to-day basis. "In fact, I think it's the first time I've seen them up close at all."

Moving slightly, so Noriaki could lean in closely the way he clearly wanted to, she smiled slightly as he picked up the dangly thing by the hook.

=SC=

The first thing that he noticed about Loreena-chan's earrings was how complicated they were; he'd first thought they would be like the cherries he wore in his own ears, but that was about the farthest thing from what he was seeing now. The least complicated part was the hoop at the top, but that had been strung with an intricate web made of silver wires. Caught up in the center of the web was a small chip of light blue stone, in fact it looked like just the same kind of stone that had been threaded through the top of the sculpted metal feather that had been strung through a small loop at the bottom of the larger hoop.

There was the same kind of loop at the top of the hoop, which held the hook that the earring hung from.

"I wasn't expecting them to be so complicated," he said without thinking, pausing for a long moment as he realized just what he'd said. "I mean, they're very pretty, but I have to admit I was expecting something simpler."

Loreena-chan laughed softly, but she didn't sound like she was trying to make fun of him, or anything. "I know; really, I saw them at the boutique, and they looked so pretty I just had to pick them up."

"I think they look wonderful, Loreena-chan," Mrs. Kujo said, smiling kindly at the both of them.

"Yare, yare, can we stop talking about earrings, already?" Jotaro, resident killjoy, said with his usual level of distain for pretty much anything and everything. "There's still the festival, after we're done with all this."

"Right," Loreena-chan said, laughing softly again; Jotaro always did sound kind of funny when he was trying to pretend not to like anything. "We'll keep that in mind."

=SC=

Looking down at Mannish Boy – that was the way the user of Death 13 had introduced himself, once the pair of them had been able to establish a reliable sort of communication with one another – Telence saw that the mercenary Stand user had stopped squirming. He'd also woken up, so that was probably the reason that he'd been able to escape the strange net that'd sprung up in front of his Stand when the pair of them had made their move on Noriaki Kakyoin and his cute little girlfriend.

The pair of them would make wonderful dolls, and since the three of them had all become such good friends while they'd been staying in Cairo together, Telence would make sure to treat them better than all of those other trophy dolls who he'd won when their former selves had been foolish enough to bet their souls in a wager against him.

Still, since he didn't know just what in the hell had gone wrong during all of this, and there was too much of a chance of the both of them being caught out by Noriaki and his other friends if they stayed too close to the festival grounds where so many people were already starting to make their way to. Pulling up the hood of his cloak, careful to keep out of sight of anyone who might chance to look their way, Telence made his way steadily back to the small Blackwatch outpost he'd managed to make himself at home in.

Someone else might've been surprised, how easy it was to move between countries, but being Blackwatch opened quite a few doors that that someone wouldn't have even known about.

=SC=

Once they'd all finished showing Loreena around the festival – which was a lot less annoying that it could have been, but more annoying than he'd wanted it to be, once some of the girls who trailed after him caught up with their group – Jotaro was more than happy to head back to the car and get the hell out of there. Loreena and her annoying bishonen boyfriend had managed to make it at least that far before the pair of them had fallen asleep again, but considering that the pair of them had already had a nap on their way to the festival, Jotaro didn't quite know why either of them would have wanted another one.

Narrowing his eyes as he saw one of Loreena's earrings thrashing around, jerking back and forth like someone was playing with it or something, Jotaro reached out to grab the thing and steady it; it was just what Loreena had done, but he couldn't help but notice just how much the thing seemed to actually be fighting him. Hell, if he hadn't been able to see that there were no other Stands in the back of the car where the three of them were sitting, Jotaro would've sworn that this was the work of someone's Stand.

Still, he knew that Stands couldn't really move around without someone to order them, and that anyone who had a Stand could see another Stand when it made its move, so what he was seeing couldn't be another Stand. That still left the question of just what in the hell he was seeing, of course; what he was feeling as he held onto the earring that Loreena was wearing. It was thrashing like there was something caught in it, which was all the fucking weirder since he could see that the thing didn't look any different than it had when she'd taken it off the last time.

He didn't think there was any such thing as invisible Stands, but he'd have been the first to admit that he didn't know much more about Stands other than the fact that they existed and almost all of his family had them; that meant that he should probably talk to the Old Man's friend from Egypt if he wanted any real answers.

Once they'd all made it back to the oversized, sprawling mansion that Mom still insisted on calling a house, Jotaro woke up Loreena and her annoying bishonen boyfriend. For a handful of seconds, just before she blinked and her gaze cleared, Jotaro managed to catch a glimpse of… Something he could have sworn was the same, calculating sort of curiosity that he'd seen on Aunt Alice's face when she had a difficult problem in her sights, and all she needed was that one piece of information that would let her begin pinning it down. Still, after those first few moments of waking, Loreena seemed to have forgotten whatever it was that she'd been thinking about.

If anything, that just made him all the more determined to talk to the Old Man's friend – the one with the Tarot cards; the one whose name seemed determined to stay irritatingly just out of his reach the more times he tried to recall it – from Egypt.

So, once Loreena had gotten settled in again and her annoying bishonen boyfriend had left for the day, Jotaro made his way back to his room, heading for the phone that he hadn't had much cause to use until now. Plugging the thing back in, since just because he hadn't seen much use for the thing when Uncle Dio had bought it for him didn't mean there weren't other people who'd been more than happy to bother him with it, Jotaro pulled his desk chair over and settled down in it. Sighing as he dialed the familiar number that would connect him to the Desert Rose.

He knew that at least one of the people there was more than likely to remember the Old Man's friend and his Tarot cards; at the very least, they'd be able to tell him the man's name.

"Oi, Pucci, does someone there know what that guy's name, you know the one with the Tarot cards? The one the Old Man invited?" he said, once he'd gotten through to the man who seemed to have either made a point of answering all of the incoming calls to the Desert Rose, or else told whoever had gotten themselves stuck with the job – most likely that pantsless weirdo Vanilla Ice – to get him whenever they heard that Jotaro was the one calling.

Either way, it meant that he was going to be dealing with Pucci again; not something he minded, since Pucci was one of the more normal people who hung out with Uncle Dio, but it did give this whole thing a weird kind of feel of normality.

When he'd managed to get Pucci to make contact with the Old Man's friend – turned out his name was Muhammad Avdol, something Jotaro made a point of writing down, both since he wasn't all that good with foreign names, and he didn't want to embarrass himself by having to ask the man himself for his name when they inevitably met again – Jotaro let himself settle more comfortably back into his chair. Avdol was bound to know if what he'd just been forced to deal with was because of someone's Stand or something like that.

=SC=

Leaning against Noriaki's chest as she looked at the earring she was holding, the one that Jotaro had told her had been flipping around in that same, strange way that she'd felt when she and Noriaki had fallen asleep the last time, Loreena couldn't help but wonder just what in the world was happening.

"Do you think this might be the work of someone else's Stand?" Noriaki asked, gesturing down at the earring in her hands, and also giving voice to the same question that'd been on her mind ever since Jotaro had told her what had been going on.

"I think that's what Jotaro's trying to find out," she said, just as the young man in question made his way back out into the sitting room where she and Noriaki had settled themselves down to wait.

"Avdol's going to be coming by soon," he announced, settling down opposite the pair of them where they'd settled down.

"Your grandfather's friend from Egypt?" she asked, remembering the man who'd helped them to choose names for their Stands with the help of the deck of Tarot cards she'd seemed so fond of.

"Yeah, that one," Jotaro said, giving her a sidelong glance before turning his attention to the pair of them once again. "Anyway, He'll probably be able to tell us more about just what the hell's been going on; whether all the weird shit happening is from someone's Stand or not."

"Thanks, Jotaro," she said, turning to smile at him; first he'd been kind enough to offer her a place to stay so that she wouldn't have to leave Noriaki behind when her father left for wherever it was that his work for Alice Brando and her company had taken him, and now he was making contact with a man he only knew though his determinedly eccentric grandfather.

"Whatever."

"No, I really mean it," she said, leaning forward but forcing herself not to touch Jotaro where he sat; Noriaki had been fairly adamant, in his gentle way, that Japanese people didn't do casual touching. "You really didn't have to go to all this trouble for us, so it's very kind of you to do so."

"It's fine," Jotaro said, looking like he might've been smiling, himself, even though the expression on his face hadn't seemed to change all that much. "Don't make such a big deal of it."

That was one of the things she'd found most interesting about living with Jotaro and his mother: Mrs. Kujo seemed to have inherited all the expressiveness in the family, and since she hadn't had much of a chance to see Mr. Kujo – he seemed to be just as elusive as her own father, and seemingly for the same kind of reason – she didn't know how much Jotaro took after the man. Or if he did at all, really.

It was an interesting conundrum, but until she managed to actually meet the man in question, it was entirely academic.

=SC=

After making arrangements for his friend Paula to mind his shop while he was away, Muhammad Avdol made his way back to the Kujo household in Japan. He hadn't been expecting to be called back on such short notice, but when he'd been given the time to sit and ponder the situation he had found himself confronted by, Avdol had found that it did in fact make sense. It was fate itself that drew Stand users together, the steady currents of destiny that bound the lives of those who had been touched so deeply by the otherworldly forces that manifested a Stand in the first place. It stood to reason, then, that a home that contained four Stand users, and a fifth that had become close enough to be considered a true part of the household himself would attract others of that selfsame ilk.

Now, it only remained to determine if this new presence that had imposed itself in their lives would prove to be to their benefit or their detriment; Stand users varied almost more than humanity as a whole, it seemed.

Once his plane had landed back in the airport – Dio Brando, even as troublesome as that man seemed determined to prove himself, had offered him the use of his private plane in order to make the journey faster, and likely also so help him avoid what the blond clearly thought as the hassle of making his way through the crowds that could always be found in such a place, though he'd refused in an effort not to find himself indebted to such a determinedly odd and eccentric man – Avdol made his way through the crowds and out to the car that Mr. Joestar had promised would be awaiting him when he made it out of such a place. Sure enough, both the vehicle and the driver were indeed waiting for him, with what Avdol could nearly swear was the exact same sign that he'd seen the first time he'd met his old friend and the driver who had worked for him for so long.

It even made sense that such would be the case, since there was little point in making an entirely new sign when the original would suffice.