Wincing as he, Dio, turned to see the coldly unamused expression that his sweet sister was turning upon him even as his Littlest Jojo folded his arms and glared at him, he prepared himself once again to explain his motives to his sweet, protective family. Truly, their undying zeal could be such a trial, sometimes.

"I was simply acting to hurry the courtship of our dear young friends," he, Dio, said, repressing a shudder as his sister's cold, piercing gaze landed upon him again. "Anyone can see that the pair of them are simply meant for each other."

He'd said more than a few times that she was terrifying, often to his sweet sister's face, and yet he, Dio, had somehow always managed to forget what it was to face the terror his sister could summon up as a matter of course.

"Un-thrall them and then let them say that, Dio," his sweet sister said, narrowing her eyes and slanting a glance down at him from where she was still standing.

The only times when his sweet sister would refuse to sit down was when she was particularly displeased with him and he, Dio, shuddered slightly as he found himself pinned by that sharpened gaze once more. Gathering himself he, Dio, made his way over to speak to his dear children. His sweet Alice would find a way to make his life more than a bit unpleasant if he didn't comply with her wishes in this matter.

That power that the pair of them had cultivated, during the time that they had spent walking the world and arranging it as they liked – though he, Dio, still intended to make a new world from the base materials of the imperfect one that he and his dear family all lived in – would give her all the leverage she would need, should his sweet sister decide that she wished to punish him, Dio, for what she clearly saw as a transgression.

Making his way out of the room where his sweet sister, Little Lori, and his Littlest Jojo would be awaiting his presence alongside their adorable Noriaki he, Dio, sighed as he tracked down the boy that the rest of his dear family presently wished to see. Once he, Dio, had managed to find the boy, he led him back.

"You are capable of removing this compulsion of yours, yes?" his sweet sister asked, still standing calmly within the room; the sight of her cold expression as she focused upon him, Dio, made a shudder crawl up his spine.

"Compulsion?" his adorable Noriaki asked, turning a rather adorably confused expression upon him, Dio, where he stood.

=SC=

"The hell're you talking about, Aunt Alice?" he asked, turning to look at her from where he'd been glaring at his dumbass uncle.

"Vampires like Dio and I have the capability to enthrall someone, making them more inclined to follow directions we give them, or even just to go along with where we want them to go," Aunt Alice said, arms still folded as she glared down Uncle Dio.

"The hell did you fucking do?!" he demanded, more than a few pieces fitting together and Star leaping out of him almost before he'd thought about that kind of thing.

He was fully willing and ready to punch Uncle Dio in the face with Star's fists – both of them, considering what kind of bullshit he'd just been pulling – when Uncle Dio's annoying Stand leaped out and caught them both by the wrists.

"I, Dio, only intended to bring our sweet children closer together," Uncle Dio said, prompting Aunt Alice's Stardust to slap him on the back of the head, actually walking right through Uncle Dio's annoying Stand to do it.

It was always funny, whenever he saw Aunt Alice's Stand doing things like that.

Uncle Dio, of course, pouted when Aunt Alice disciplined him, but he was back to what passed for normal in a few seconds; he was still as annoying as ever, of course.

=SC=

After she and Jotaro had managed to knock some actual sense into Dio's empty head, and the pair of them had discussed just how they would be able to undo the enthrallment that her capricious twin had used on Loreena McKennitt and Noriaki Kakyoin, she found that the only real way to undo that kind of thing was to use Hamon. She figured it fit, since Hamon did seem to be the go to for anything and everything involving vampires and their associated abilities and offshoots.

Fortunately enough, Jotaro had insisted on coming with her, and so he was able to use his own Hamon to reverse what had been done to Loreena and Noriaki.

"So, that's what he was doing to us," Loreena grumbled, glaring at Dio even as she wrapped her hands around her protruding stomach.

More and more, Alice was beginning to suspect just what it was that her moronic twin had gotten up to while he'd had pretty much uncontested access to a pair of vulnerable teenagers that he'd decided he liked, specifically together. It fit with everything she'd already known Dio was capable of, of course, but the fact that he'd actually gone so far as to essentially force two of their friends – or anyone, really – to essentially rape each other, just because he wanted to give his kid a companion… It was infuriating on any number of levels, but she was at least going to keep trying to knock sense into Dio's empty, self-indulgent head.

"I don't see why the both of you are being so serious about this," Dio said, the usual pouty expression he wore when she tried to get him to actually think about something before he went off and did his usual stupid shit firmly on his face, and his arms firmly wrapped around Loreena's waist, stroking her stomach as he held her close. "I've told you just why it was that I did this."

"That isn't the point," she said, narrowing her eyes at Dio as he pouted up at her and Jotaro. "You're also making Loreena uncomfortable, so let go."

When Dio seemed about to start protesting, Stardust yanked him out through the back of Loreena's body, then teleported him to the other side of the room. Shaking her head, Alice made her way over to the bed where Loreena was sitting.

=SC=

Grabbing Uncle Dio as the bastard actually tried to defend himself after all the shit he'd pulled while the rest of their family hadn't been there to pull his head out of his ass before he managed to do something stupid, Jotaro belted him across the face and shoved him into a nearby chair.

"No," he snarled, Star emerging to help hold Uncle Dio down before he could start making a real pain in the ass of himself. "After everything you just did, you don't get to talk anymore."

It seemed like he only blinked once, and then Uncle Dio was standing next to the chair he'd been pressing him down into; still, even as Uncle Dio brushed off his clothes.

"Now now, my Littlest Jojo, there was no call for that," Uncle Dio said, pouting and brushing imaginary dust from his suit as he stood up. "The only thing I truly wished to do was to bring your dear friends closer to one another. Yes, my sweet little Gio will truly enjoy having a companion once their little one is born, but I-"

Stardust slapped a hand over Uncle Dio's mouth before he could spit out any more of his idiotic bullshit, and Jotaro turned to watch as Aunt Alice made her way over to where Uncle Dio was standing.

=SC=

Making his way over to Loreena-chan as Jotaro and his aunt argued with his uncle about what he'd done to him and Loreena-chan – he only remembered a little bit of it, for the most part he felt like he'd been in some kind of a haze; he hated the thought that Loreena-chan had been forced to go through just the same kind of thing he had – he wrapped his arms around her as the pair of them watched Ms. Brando dealing with her brother. Noriaki still didn't know quite how he felt – how he should feel – about what Mr. Brando had done to them.

Yes, the man kept saying that he cared about them – and Noriaki had always wanted a family – but the fact that he couldn't even remember most of what he and Loreena-chan had been doing while they'd been staying with Mr. Brando, and then with the way Loreena-chan was pregnant now…

He didn't quite know if he would be so willing to call Mr. Brando a liar as Jotaro seemed to be implying – as hard as he could without saying the actual words – but there was still the matter of what the man had actually done.

"Mr. Brando?" he called, instantly drawing the man's attention, and also causing him to pout in that way he'd always seemed to do when anything didn't go just the way he wanted it to.

"Noriaki, now you know I've told you to call me Dio," Mr. Brando said.

"He can call you whatever the fuck he wants after what you did, Uncle Bastard," Jotaro snapped, cutting Mr. Brando off before he could say anything else.

Noriaki knew that it would have been rude to smile after hearing Jotaro say something like that to his own uncle, but he found that he couldn't quite stop himself from feeling pleased, all the same. Nerving himself up, and taking Loreena-chan's hand when she offered it to him, Noriaki cuddled closer to her as he tried to work out just what he wanted to say to Mr. Brando. He knew that he'd never quite been the best at confronting people; certainly nothing like Jotaro, or even Ms. Brando when she was talking to her brother.

Still, he was going to at least try.

"Mr. Brando, I don't think you quite understand the position you've put us both in," Noriaki said, gathering his composure as well as he could manage with the man standing over him, a disapproving look plain on his face. "Loreena and I were just starting to date seriously, and now…" he shook his head. "I mean, I know you probably meant well," he said, ignoring the way that Jotaro scoffed and Ms. Brando narrowed her eyes, slanting an unimpressed gaze at her brother. "But, all of this is just too sudden."

Mr. Brando sighed almost explosively, throwing himself down in a nearby chair. "Truly, the pair of you have been moving so abominably slowly with your courtship I, Dio, honestly thought you would welcome some friendly intervention."

"That's not a decision you get to make, Dio," Ms. Brando said, her tone flat and coldly annoyed at the same time; Noriaki was glad to have more people on his side than just Jotaro and Loreena-chan, who while they were the closest friends that Noriaki had ever had, didn't seem to be able to make much of an impact on Mr. Brando with their words.

No matter how much Jotaro snarled at his uncle while he tried to keep him in line.

=SC=

Watching Loreena's bishonen boyfriend try to make his case about how much of an asshole Uncle Dio had been to them was actually kinda pathetic, really. He hemmed and hawed too fucking much, and even when he seemed to be actually trying to make a point, he'd always shoot himself in the goddamned foot by trying to dance around it. Then again, lots of people back in Japan seemed to do that same kind of shit; probably why they pissed him off so much.

"Look, if you want Uncle Dio to know just how completely shitty what he's been doing to you and Loreena is, you can't keep backtracking so goddamned much," he said, stalking over to swat the dumbass bishonen upside his curl-topped head. "Everyone here knows that you're probably gonna keep the baby, but that doesn't mean you just knuckle under for all of the other shit that Uncle Dio keeps trying to foist off on you."

"You're talking about the marriage," Loreena said, settling back on the bed and looking like she was trying as best she could to get her feet back under her while they were talking.

"We haven't even talked to our parents," Loreena's dumbass boyfriend said, fiddling with his hands even as he wrapped his arms around Loreena's waist.

"Yes, I should probably speak to Caesar," Uncle Dio said, smug smile coming back to his face as he stood up again.

Cocky bastard; more than anything, Jotaro wished he could punch sense into his uncle's empty head.

"What do you think Caesar has to do with any of this?" Aunt Alice asked, narrowing her eyes as she turned to face Uncle Dio again.

"Isn't he dear Loreena's father?"

=SC=

It was all she could do to keep from laughing, since under the circumstances something like that would have probably been really inappropriate, but Loreena couldn't quite help the feeling she had. Under the circumstances, she'd take whatever levity she could get.

"Whatever gave you that idea?!" she asked, laughing softly even as she sat up within the circle of Noriaki's arms. "I mean, Father works for one of your sister's Quality Assurance teams, he's not the leader of Treadstone!" she said, struggling to regain her composure, even as Mr. Brando curled up on the chair he'd thrown himself down on while they were all talking.

"Ah, I was wondering how an Italian man like him could have had a daughter so clearly Welsh," Mr. Brando said, grinning with clear amusement as they all talked to each other.

Mr. Brando didn't really seem to understand how wrong what he'd done to them actually was, no matter how much any of them tried to explain it to him. Up to this point, Loreena hadn't fully understood just how childish Mr. Brando was, but after seeing how he tried to argue his case – not even having any kind of point besides the fact that he'd wanted to make someone to be friends with his son, and he thought that she and Noriaki were taking things too slowly with regards to dating and all – Loreena found that all that she really wanted to do was get all of this over with.

Still, even after she and Noriaki left the mansion that Mr. Brando had had built for himself on the outskirts of Cairo, there would still be all of the problems that his actions had caused for them to deal with.

=SC=

After trying to verbally pound sense into Dio's empty head for what felt like – and probably was – entirely too long, Alice was almost pleased to head back to Italy and hunt down whatever shadow-faction had been trying to subvert Passione from the inside. Once she'd arrived back in her Naples branch of Brando International, with Straizo's reserved stoicism there to greet her as she retook control of from him once more.

"It seems that one of your agents, a man named Cioccolata, has made contact," her oldest aide reported, and while she suspected that anyone else would have displayed at least some curiosity about the matter, Straizo was just as stoic as she'd ever heard him; honestly, she wondered if the man had any modicum of curiosity about the world they all lived in.

"That's pleasing," she said, settling back down behind her desk so that she could make contact with the man himself.

Narrowing her eyes as she considered just how she was going to handle this latest batch of problems that were being presented to her, Alice found herself raising an eyebrow during the course of Cioccolata's report. Apparently, the shadow-faction that had been formed within Passione was being headed up by a man named Solido Nazo; a man who seemed to be obsessed with remaining far enough behind the scenes that he'd never actually met anyone who wasn't within his inner-circle.

One more person in a long line of them who seemed to need both a good psychiatrist and a swift kick in the ass.

Still, knowing the man's name and a modicum of his proclivities would at least help her in beginning to root him and whoever his cronies were out of Passione, bringing it back under Caesar's control for as long as he wanted to maintain his position. However, Caesar would need to step down eventually, since he didn't seem particularly interested in becoming a vampire like her and Dio.

Once she'd finished her work for the day, finished her work for the day, Alice went to meet with N'Doul; the head of Blackwater would really be the best one to set up her response to the incursion into Passione, though he would need to begin recruiting more Blackwatch agents within Italy as a whole.

=SC=

Finding himself alone again, his sweet children taken from him by his dear family who still didn't seem to understand what he, Dio, had intended for their future, he sighed as he settled back into his cozy chair. The sound of Vanilla making his way into the room where he had secluded himself brought a small smile to his face.

"Come inside, Vanilla," he, Dio, called as his loyal servant made his way into the room that he'd chosen for his reflection.

He, Dio, had almost gone into the solarium, there to look out upon the sunrise that he would be able to observe in complete safety. And yet, the very glass that shielded his undead flesh from the sunlight that would have otherwise destroyed his body down to the last cell was a product of his sweet sister's brilliant mind. It would be as though he was sitting in her very hands, even while she had taken the children that he loved so much from the shelter of the Desert Rose where he, Dio, had been caring for them.

Speaking to Vanilla helped, at least a little but he, Dio, could still feel the aching emptiness at his core in the absence of his sweet Loreena and his dear Noriaki.

Yes, the fact that the pair of them fully intended to keep the child that he, Dio, had helped them to realize that they truly wanted was something of a comfort, but under the circumstances he, Dio, could only truly find it rather a cold one. Wandering into the library that he, Dio, had had constructed and then filled with a great many subjects he, Dio, found his eyes settling almost reflexively upon the shelves that would have creaked under the weight of the tomes of astronomical, geological, and other scientific texts that his sweet sister had purchased for the library once he, Dio, had told her of the plans that he had been about to undertake.

Pulling his gaze away from the laden shelves, themselves constructed with materials and expertise that had been given over to him, Dio, by his sweet sister. He continued on his way through the length of his grand library, searching for the section that he, Dio, had constructed to house the religious texts that he had collected. His sweet sister had never truly believed in any such thing as was contained in the books that he had purchased for his collection, being more interested in the study of what she had often said could be considered as nothing more than interesting mythology.

He'd never quite understood the way that his sweet sister looked upon the world that the pair of them all but ruled, even at this early stage of both their lives, no matter how many times that he, Dio, made the attempt to see the way that she did.

Still, as he, Dio, settled himself down for some deep reading upon a subject that he was rather interested in he, Dio, still found himself wondering just what had been in the minds of his sweet sister and his Littlest Jojo when they had taken Little Lori and his dear Noriaki from him. It was a question that he doubted that he would ever truly obtain the answer to, particularly considering the way he, Dio, had attempted to ask after just what it was that they had intended when they took Little Lori and her dear Noriaki from his home.

Truly, there were some questions that simply could not be answered.

=SC=

Once he and Aunt Alice had managed to get Loreena and her annoying boyfriend – who was actually starting to seem less annoying after all the shit that had happened to him, but like hell was he going to let the bishonen know that he was starting to soften; sometimes it was just best to stick with the status quo, especially when something as shitty as what Uncle Bastard had done to them had gone on – back to Japan, there had still been the matter of explaining just what in the hell had happened to the both of them when Uncle Bastard had gotten his hands on them. Jotaro could only be glad that he hadn't been the one who ended up having to tell Loreena's and her boyfriend's parents about what had happened to them when they'd been trapped with Uncle Bastard and his stupid ideas about what he thought people wanted.

Or really, what he wanted from people, and then convinced some of them that they should want.

Still, knowing that two of the only people he could actually stand were going to be away from school for an indeterminate period of time while their families dealt with what Uncle Bastard had done to them was annoying enough that Jotaro found himself wishing that he could personally fly back to the Desert Rose and punch sense into Dio's empty head, but he'd already tried that when Aunt Alice had originally brought him out to Cairo in the first place. It hadn't worked then, and Jotaro doubted that something like that would work now. Not with how damned, determinedly oblivious his bastard uncle had already proven himself to be.

Even so, leaving things the way they were didn't sit right with him, either; there had to be some way to keep his idiot uncle from doing something that shitty again.

When he thought back on some of the stories that Aunt Alice had told him, and the Old Man had confirmed when he hadn't quite believed what he'd been hearing – back before he'd known just how much weird shit there was out about in the world – Jotaro found himself remembering that there'd been some other people working with Aunt Alice and the Old Man, back when all that shit with the Pillar Men had been going on.

According to what the Old Man had heard from Aunt Alice, the guy who'd founded the organization hadn't been impressed with Uncle Dio at all.

So, after having made up his mind to talk to Aunt Alice, since while the Old Man would obviously know what he was getting at, he'd waste more time than Jotaro was prepared to give if he asked him about getting in contact with the organization that had been working with his family while they'd been dealing with all the weird shit that'd come up before they'd settled down. So, making his way to the phone that Aunt Alice had bought for him a few birthdays ago, he settled down in the chair by his desk.

"Hey, Straizo," he greeted, once he'd managed to get through to Aunt Alice's office. "Can you put me through to Aunt Alice?"

Once he'd managed to finally get through to the only person in their weird family who'd ever really made any sense to him, Jotaro allowed himself to relax a bit.