Finding out that Jotaro was interested in working for the Speedwagon Foundation, particularly since Rob himself hadn't ever truly been a fan of Dio's – a sentiment that she was coming to understand more and more as time wore on – was a rather interesting development. Still, after putting Jotaro in contact with the Speedwagon Foundation's Personnel Division, Alice turned back to her ongoing investigation into the shadow-faction within Passione. Just because she'd placed N'Doul in charge of the investigation as a whole, that didn't mean that she herself wasn't going to keep tabs on it.

If nothing else, she wanted to know just who Solido Nazo – the name could have easily been an alias, particularly given what Cioccolata had reported about his mental state and what the man seemed to ultimately want – truly was and why a man with his obvious mental issues would even attempt to make a power play like that in the first place.

Sure, there were only so many things that she herself could actually do, considering that she had a company to run, but keeping up with Cioccolata's reports and N'Doul's efforts would provide her at least a modicum of insight into what was going on in her Italian territories.

=SC=

After having been put in contact with the Speedwagon Foundation by Aunt Alice, Jotaro had made arrangements to meet with one of their agents for an interview. The woman's name turned out to be Bessie Smith, and she was one of the more tolerable people that Jotaro had ended up interacting with, so that was at least nice. Getting himself a position turned out to be fairly simple, too, especially since the Foundation turned out to be really interested in recruiting for the kind of freelance work that he'd honestly been hoping to land anyway.

After all, even if school was mostly just a pain in the ass, it wasn't like a full-time job was something he could manage at the same time.

=SC=

After he and Loreena-chan had managed to smooth things over with their respective parents, Noriaki had found himself torn. On the one hand, this was the kind of opportunity he'd never thought he'd have in his life, and on the other the way he'd actually gotten the opportunity… Noriaki shuddered again, as he shied away from the thought of what Jotaro's uncle had actually been doing to him and Loreena-chan while they'd been essentially trapped in the mansion that he kept for himself in Cairo.

"Are you really sure that you want to name him that?" Loreena-chan asked, turning to him with an expression of subdued curiosity on her face; he could tell that she was thinking just as much about what Jotaro's uncle Dio had done to them as he was trying not to, and he tried to smile for her. "I mean, you've told me how many times that people got your name confused when you were writing it down for people."

"I know," he sighed, trying as hard as he could to keep smiling for her. "I understand just how much trouble we're both going to have, but… Well, my parents really wanted to name me Tenmei, and I just… I really want to be able to give them that."

Loreena-chan smiled, laughing softly. "All right, I guess I can give you this one. I guess I'll just have to name the next one."

"Thank you, Loreena-chan," he said, smiling as widely as he could, considering everything that had happened.

Even after everything that had been done to her, Loreena-chan was still determined to keep smiling; Noriaki wished he could find that kind of strength. Still, now that he and Loreena-chan were going to be getting married, Noriaki thought that he might be able to start working on gaining the kind of strength that Loreena-chan already had. If there was one good thing – aside from Tenmei-chan, of course – that had come out of everything that Jotaro's uncle Dio had done to them, it was the way he and Loreena-chan were getting the chance to get closer to each other.

=SC=

When he'd gone back to school, with the promise that Bessie Smith or someone else who worked with the Speedwagon Foundation would contact him when they wanted to speak to him again, Jotaro found himself feeling even more disconnected from all of the shit going on around him. Without Loreena and her annoying boyfriend – who was going to end up being her husband once they came back to finish their schooling; if they even did that at all – around, Jotaro found himself having to deal with the more annoying parts of confronting large groups of people on his own.

Still, even the annoyance of having to deal with all of those chattering girls who hadn't moved on from their empty-headed crushing on him wasn't all that important in the grand scheme of things; it wasn't like he was going to stay around them forever, anyway.

The next time he finds himself forced to think about his bastard of an uncle is, of course, little Gio Brando's second birthday, when said bastard invited them all to come celebrate the occasion. Seeing Loreena and her husband as blushing newlyweds, even with Loreena as heavily and obviously pregnant as she was, made the whole thing a hell of a lot more bearable than it otherwise would have been, so at least he wasn't actively wanting to strangle his bastard uncle while he was there.

Not until the end of the celebration, when his bastard uncle started loudly speculating about just when Loreena's baby – the one that his bastard uncle had conned the both of them into having for whatever selfish reason; though to hear him say it he was doing them a favor – was going to be born, and Jotaro found himself basically honor-bound to throw a slice of cake at him.

"There's no call to be wasting perfectly good cake, my Littlest Jojo," his bastard uncle said, having caught the cake slice on a plate right before it would have hit his annoyingly smug face.

"The fuck're you talking about?" he demanded. "That's like ten kilos of sugar, at least," he grumbled, making an annoyed gesture at the cake.

That time, he'd seen his bastard uncle's Stand for about half a second, so he suspected there was some other kind of power that his bastard uncle was using when he'd make that kind of weird shit happen; the kind of weird shit he'd make happen did sometimes make it seem like he was cutting out chunks of time like some kind of film director and splicing them back together. Or maybe that was just how it looked from the outside, but it wasn't like this was the only chance he was going to get to find out about it. If there was one thing Jotaro knew about his bastard uncle, aside from the fact that he was a brat that never seemed to grow up, it was just how much of a show-off he was.

There was no chance that he wouldn't abuse whatever power his Stand had given him enough times for Jotaro to determine just what it actually was.

=SC=

When Dad hung up the phone, a month after he, Dad, and all of his aunts and uncles had celebrated his birthday, he looked really happy. Gio wondered about that, at least until Dad picked him up, smiling that wide, happy smile he always wore when something was going just the way he'd always wanted it to.

"My dear, sweet little Gio, our wait is over," Dad said, snuggling him tightly as he left for the place where they would be able to fly out to wherever it was that they were going to be going. "Your little brother is about to be born."

"Thanks, Da," he said, not knowing quite what else to say. "That's good."

Dad had said that his new baby brother Ten-May was going to be born in whales; Gio had asked him how anyone could live in whales, or in a whale, and Dad had laughed and laughed. Gio still wondered what was going to happen when they got to where all the whales were, and as he cuddled closer to Dad, he also wondered if they were going to have to get all wet to visit his new baby brother.

Gio didn't really like being wet, unless Dad was giving him a bath or he and Dad were swimming somewhere warm.

When Dad took him out to the hangar, where they were going to be able to fly out to where all the whales were, Gio waved to Vanilla as the big man who followed Dad around and did all of the stuff that Dad wanted him to helped Dad and him into the plane. Dad hummed happily as he buckled Gio into the tiny seat that he'd brought in, and Gio smiled up at him. Dad was always happier when Gio smiled, so Gio tried to smile as much as he could.

=SC=

When they'd all been invited to celebrate Tenmei Kakyoin's first birthday – the kid was pretty much Dio's, considering everything the bastard had done, but he wasn't about to say anything about that to Loreena or her husband, of course – Jotaro found himself having to deal with his bastard of an uncle again. Sure, he was staying as close as he could to Aunt Alice, so the both of them could tell his bastard uncle to piss off whenever he got too overbearing, but it was still a fucking pain in the ass.

Still, at least they had a half-decent cake, this time.

Sure, it was still a bit sweet for his taste, but at least no one expected him to eat any of it. Settling down beside Loreena, who was at the center of pretty much everyone, all of them gathered around to coo and baby-talk little Tenmei, Jotaro poked the little guy's left fist and was rewarded with his finger being grabbed firmly by the finger. Smirking slightly as he shook the brat's fist around, getting him to laugh as he squirmed in Loreena's arms.

"You're pretty good at this, Jotaro," Loreena's husband said, grinning as he settled down on the couch next to Loreena.

"Guess my little cousin Gio is good for something," he said, smirking.

=SC=

Making his way over to his dear friend as Dio leaned against the far wall of the small, comfortable home that Noriaki Kakyoin and his wife Loreena had settled down in, Enrico found that Dio was holding little Gio close to him, seeming as though he wished to both make his way over to stand with the small family that the children he'd become so close to were slowly beginning to form for themselves, and also to stay right where he was.

"Is something wrong, Dio?" he asked, making his way over to stand with his dear friend and the young boy who had brought him such happiness.

"I seem to have caused my Littlest Jojo rather a great deal of consternation," Dio said, laughing softly with a sort of self-deprecating air.

"What do you mean?" he asked, turning to his dear friend, worried at the possibility that he might have been concealing more deep emotional wounds that he was not speaking of.

Dio chuckled softly. "It's nothing so bad as all that; no one truly understands my motives, but I will continue to help them, all the same."

"So it would seem," he said, reaching out to wrap his right arm around what he could of Dio's broad shoulders.

It truly did seem that no one, aside from those who had taken the time to dig deeper into his motives, truly understood Dio Brando. Still, even if he was one of a select few who Dio had been so generous as to give his heart to, Enrico would always do everything in his power to be worthy of the trust that Dio Brando had gifted him with. And so, if Jotaro was indeed the one who was causing Dio so much distress as he seemed to be, Enrico was going to make every effort to see that the pair of them were able to reconcile.

=SC=

Once the party had broken up an all of them had gone their separate ways again, Jotaro found himself wondering just when he was going to find himself on the wrong end of one of Enrico Pucci's damned interventions. He should have expected it, after having spent so much time at Tenmei's party determinedly avoiding the bastard, that his uncle would go crying to the one man just as annoyingly determined to bring everyone he could into his bastard uncle's happy la-la land. But, with the party and everything that'd been going on, Jotaro had to admit that that kind of thing had been pushed right out of his mind.

In light of that, having to go back to school isn't so damned bad.

Having Loreena and her husband – though no one but them really knew about that, since they weren't about to start spreading things like that around – back with him helps, since Loreena's just as quick to chase off the annoying girls – who'd never seemed to get the fact that he was fucking uninterested through their empty little heads – as she'd ever been, and with a lot of the pressure off Jotaro found himself actually enjoying school for the first time in a long while. For the first time since Loreena had left, in fact.

Still, time isn't about to stand still for any of them, and it's becoming obvious that none of them quite have the same kinds of interests. Loreena's interest in painting and drawing was plain for anyone who'd known her for more than a few hours to see, and even though her husband shares an interest in art, he doesn't have nearly the same kind of passion that Loreena has for the subject. No, his interest is more in the sciences, though it seems to lean toward geology for the moment. As far as he goes, Jotaro finds his own interest leans a great deal more toward biology.

Marine biology in particular, which he hadn't quite been sure about pursuing, at least not until that study session that he, Loreena, and her husband had had at the library; talking to the librarian had actually helped.

=SC=

As they all started putting together their applications for the universities they were aiming to attend – all three of them with the not-so-secret hope of attending the same university as at least one of the others – Jotaro smirked slightly as he watched Star, Hierophant Green, and Crimson Ace gathering the materials the three of them were working with so that they could bring them over. Working together with the three of them – even though Loreena's husband was still a pain in the ass – was one of the few things he truly enjoyed about the scutwork they were all being forced to do.

After sending all of their respective applications off to the universities they were all thinking of going to, he went back home while Loreena and her husband made their own way back to the house that the pair of them had moved into together. Sure, Mom had offered to put them up at their house – which was still entirely too big for its own good – but the both of them had smiled and declined. Sure, they both came right back when the responses from their chosen universities began coming in, but Jotaro still found himself wondering where their little group was ultimately going to end up.

Whatever happened, though, Jotaro promised himself that he wasn't going to let the only two friends – outside of his family, at least – slip away from him.

=SC=

In the end, the three of them ended up going to an American university, which Jotaro had been almost enthusiastic about, at least up until he remembered that staying in America – even if the university they were going to be studying at was in Florida – would put him closer to his eccentric uncle. Noriaki couldn't help but find it funny, how determined Jotaro seemed to be to dislike his uncle. Really, for all that the man could be both overbearing and odd, Joseph Joestar was one of the kindest people Noriaki had met.

As the three of them settled into a new routine – with Joseph Joestar actually offering to put them up in one of the hotels he owned, but Jotaro naturally refusing – Noriaki found himself both relieved and a bit uneasy about the way he and Loreena-chan could openly wear their wedding rings without people saying strange things about them. Sure, some people seemed to think it was strange that they'd gotten married so young, but most of them didn't seem to be that interested in what he and Loreena-chan were doing.

That was comforting, at least.

When Jotaro ended up bringing a woman named Stephanie Nicks – who told them to call her Stevie just as soon as he and Loreena-chan were introduced to her – to the family nights that Friday had become for their little group, Noriaki found himself feeling more than a little amused by the thought that Jotaro was beginning to settle down a bit, himself. The sight of Jotaro with Stevie brought a smile to his face every time he saw them; still, the more he saw them together, the more he found himself reminded of Jotaro's aunt.

Stevie had the same kind of quiet reserve that Jotaro's aunt, Alice Brando, seemed to naturally have, and while Noriaki knew that he really shouldn't, he couldn't quite resist the urge to tease Jotaro about the fact that he seemed to be falling in love with someone so much like his aunt. Jotaro's surly glare became something of a permanent fixture on his face, when the pair of them were talking, though Stevie seemed amused. Loreena-chan eventually got him to stop, though.

Jotaro seemed even more fond of her after that, of course.

=SC=

The announcement that his Littlest Jojo was going to be having a little Jojo of his own – he, Dio, would have to think up something to call the little one, once he'd had a chance to meet them – brought a smile to his face as he bustled about. While he was fully aware that his Littlest Jojo was still rather displeased with him, considering how close the little one was to his adorable Noriaki and his sweet Loreena, there were other methods that he, Dio, could use to make contact with the growing family that his sweet children were forming for themselves.

It was a truly wonderful thing, knowing how well he, Dio, had managed to cultivate the Joestars once he had truly taken a hand in their development.

The sound of small, padding feet making their way over to where he, Dio, was standing brought an even larger smile to his face. Turning to gather his darling little Giogio up in his arms he, Dio, laughed softly as he nuzzled little Gio's soft, golden hair.

"You seem really happy again, Daddy," little Gio said, looking up at him with the kind of earnest gaze that reminded so much of his sweet sister; truly, the pair of them were such wonderful counterparts.

More than anything he, Dio, was pleased to be able to know the both of them.

"We're very lucky, my little Gio," he, Dio, said, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to the top of little Gio's head. "Our dear Jotaro is about to have a little one of his own."

Little Gio seemed to understand immediately just how wonderful it was that their Littlest Jojo had welcomed his own little Jojo into the world; how wonderful it was, that their sweet family was about to grow all the larger. Making his way out to the helipad, once he'd gathered up the gifts that he, Dio, had picked out to bring to his Littlest Jojo's party for his own little Jojo he, Dio, smiled softly as Vanilla met up with him. More than anything, he simply wished to see how his Littlest Jojo was settling into the new era of his life that he'd just begun.

To see what his Littlest Jojo's path would be, now that he had become a father.

Once the pair of them had arrived at his Little Jojo's house – he was the one hosting the party to welcome their newest, tiny Jojo into the world – he, Dio, laughed as he made his way into the building. The room was large, and as well-appointed as any of the rooms that he, Dio, had set up for the various events that had been hosted at his Desert Rose. The sight of nearly all of his sweet family, save for those who had found themselves called away by the responsibilities that the world pressed upon them, brought a wider smile to his face as he made his way inside.

Truly, his growing family was a happy one; all the more reason for him to find a way to remake the world, his sweet family deserved to have only the best.

=SC=

Making his way through the house, humming softly as he picked up one of Dad's vases, using the power of Gold Experience to reshape it into a frog, Gio made his way to the solarium. That was one of Tenmei-chan's favorite places to work, ever since Dad had first invited little Tenmei and his family to stay with them when Gio was just six years old. Now, at eight, Gio had gotten used to the way his Tenmei would make for the solarium whenever he and his family were invited to stay with him and Dad at the Desert Rose.

Looking for the table where Tenmei had settled down, Gio chuckled, cradling the little frog in his hands as he moved steadily closer. He knew, from all the times that he'd played these kinds of games, that he didn't have to sneak around the way he was doing, but it did make things more fun when he would tell himself that he'd managed to pull one over on little Tenmei. Even though anyone who actually looked could see the way Tenmei immersed himself in his art.

The way he loved every line of each picture he was drawing, and almost seemed to want to sink into every one of them even as he was creating it.

Setting his frog gently on top of little Tenmei's head, Gio laughed softly as he settled down in the chair next to him. It was always funny, watching little Tenmei when he was so deeply focused; Gio sometimes found himself wondering if this was how Aunt Alice got when she was working. Dad liked to talk about her, especially considering how far she lived and worked from the Desert Rose, and more than anything Gio wanted to meet her. He wanted to talk to her, for longer than the length of the parties that she always came to.

Reaching out to gently tug little Tenmei's tight ponytail, Gio smiled as little Tenmei turned to look at him.

"Hey," he said, picking up his frog and setting it down on the table.

"Oh, hi Gio," little Tenmei said, turning to him with a surprised expression.

"You didn't even see me when I came in, did you," he said, reaching out to stroke little Tenmei's soft hair.

He really liked looking at it, Tenmei's hair was like a perfect mix of his mom and dad; the color was something Dad described as strawberry blond, and both the softness little Tenmei's hair, as well as the way that it had both Miss Loreena's waviness and Mr. Noriaki's loose curls, brought a smile to his face whenever he got the chance to touch it. Getting the chance to see little Tenmei again always made him happy.

He could definitely understand why Dad was so happy, whenever he had the chance to see Cousin Jotaro, or any of the rest of their family.

~Stardust Crusaders: End~