"We're going to have to find a name for your Stand, Tenmei-chan," he said, smiling down at his eldest son as the pair of them continued on their way to Jotaro's company car.
"I was kind of thinking about calling it Echoing Green, Dad," Tenmei said, smiling up at him as the pair of them settled down in the back of the car together.
"Oh?" he asked, chuckling softly as Tenmei-chan leaned in close to him, at least as much as his seatbelt would allow. "You really want to follow that closely in my footsteps, Tenmei?"
"Yeah, I really would," Tenmei said, smiling up at him as the pair of them held each other.
"All right, Tenmei-chan," he said, leaning over to kiss the top of Tenmei's head, before turning his attention to Jotaro. "Where are we headed next?"
"According to the reports, there's another Stand user around here, one that seems to either work in a restaurant or own one," Jotaro said, as he guided the three of them through the streets of Morioh, making his way to the quaint little restaurant that Jotaro seemed to have been talking about.
It did seem like the kind of place that could be owned and run by a single person – or two, depending on what kind of Stand this new person had – and Noriaki found himself wondering just what kind of person would be in charge of this kind of place.
=DiU=
Humming as she made her way through the park that Cousin Josuke had taken her to, once she'd managed to wear him down enough that he agreed to take her there with that friend of his, Jolyne caught sight of a guitar sitting on a bench.
"Cool," she said, hurrying over to pick up the guitar.
Humming as she strummed the thing, Jolyne heard the rustling of someone making their way back toward the bench.
"Oi, tyke," the man with really cool purple hair said, making his way over to the bench where she'd found the guitar she was playing. "What're you up to?"
"Is this your guitar, mister?" she asked, looking up at him; he didn't just have really cool, purple hair, he had a cool, flashy jacket, too.
"Yeah, that's mine," he said, plopping down on the bench beside her. "You thinking about becoming a musician, tyke?"
"Maybe," she said, letting the guy take back his guitar, listening as he strummed it. "Grandpa plays jazz, but Dad works with dolphins and stuff."
"Oh? Who's your Grandpa, tyke?" the purple-haired man asked, turning back to her with an interested expression, even as he kept strumming.
"Sadao Kujo. And my Dad's name is Jotaro," she said, folding her arms as she listened to him strumming.
Though, when he suddenly stopped, Jolyne turned to frown at him. "Hold on, did you say Sadao Kujo?!"
"Yeah, that's Grandpa's name," she said, tilting her head curiously; there was a weird sort of smile on his face, before he reached down to strum his guitar really, really fast.
"Oh, yeah! Sadao Kujo plays Jazz with the soul of Rock!"
Jolyne laughed, as the purple-haired guy went all crazy with the strumming, throwing his head back and cheering; Dad was going to hate him.
=DiU=
"You take really good care of your hands, Tenmei-chan," Tonio Trussardi – the Stand user who apparently owned and operated the restaurant they'd come to investigate – said, as the chef looked down at his son's hands.
Noriaki couldn't help but wonder what he was doing, but the way Trussardi-san examined his and then Jotaro's hands in turn, and then offered to fix them food, even though they'd just come to this place to meet up with him and find out just what kind of changes his Stand had made in his life. Trussardi-san didn't quite seem to know what Stands were, however, considering how he'd been acting around them. Jotaro suggested that the three of them – a concept that Noriaki was still kind of struggling to get used to: his first son, little Tenmei-chan, being an actual Stand user – show Trussardi-san their Stands, and then begin explaining their situation from there.
Noriaki couldn't find any reason to object, so he agreed.
Once Trussardi-san had made his way back into the main room of the restaurant, Noriaki called out Hierophant Green, Tenmei called out Echoing Green, and Jotaro called out Star Platinum. Trussardi-san's clear surprise indicated that he truly wasn't aware of the existence of Stands or their true nature, so it took him a bit of time to establish the groundwork, though Jotaro knew just as much about the subject as he did. Jotaro had never really been good with people, though, so that was why the pair of them had been assigned together.
Unofficially, in any case.
Once he'd explained just what was going on, Trussardi-san was able to introduce the three of them to his own Stand – which he chose to name Pearl Jam; a Stand that looked like a small swarm of flying tomatoes, of all things, which Tenmei seemed to think was kind of funny – and the four of them all settled down at the table together. Given how Trussardi-san acted, it seemed as though he'd just wanted to help people with the food he made. It also seemed that his Stand possessed at least some kind of healing properties.
It seemed that he and Josuke-chan had some kind of fundamental, essential quality in common, in spite of the clear differences he'd come to know of their respective personalities.
When the three of them left Trussardi-san and his restaurant, Noriaki wasn't entirely certain if he was comfortable with the methods that Trussardi-san's Stand used to repair. Seeing Tenmei's body being broken down like that… It was only the fact that the process had been completely painless, if not a little shocking, that had kept Noriaki from setting Hierophant Green on Trussardi-san,
=DiU=
Kakyoin still seemed tense, but given what'd been happening to Tenmei-chan, Jotaro could more than understand what the man was feeling. Hell, he'd have been pissed if he'd had to watch while Jolyne had been broken down and rebuilt by some bastard's Stand, even if it didn't seem to hurt, and even if they all had seemed to come out better after it. He was going to make a point of checking up on Jolyne, both since she would have probably gotten bored just hanging around Josuke's house with Ichigo-chan, and because he'd found himself getting more than a little antsy, seeing what'd happened to Tenmei-chan.
Once they all made it back to Josuke's family home, Jotaro found Ichigo-chan there to meet them at the door.
"Jolyne invited a rock star over for dinner," Ichigo-chan said, as soon as Jotaro had finished opening the door and was about to take his first steps past the threshold.
"The hell?" was all he got the chance to say, before the sound of someone playing an electric guitar caught his attention.
Making his way into the living room, following the sounds of someone playing what sounded like practice scales, Jotaro found not only Jolyne but also the presumed rock star that she'd invited over for dinner.
"Hi, Dad!" Jolyne called, grinning widely at him from behind what seemed to be an adult-sized pair of sunglasses. "Akira-san says he's a big fan of Granpa Sadao's music, so I told him you could get him some autographs or something."
"Yare, yare daze," he said, rolling his eyes as the rock star fanboy – something he'd never expected to encounter, and something he could have happily gone the rest of his life without encountering – turning to look at him with that same kind of annoying, starry-eyed expression that he'd seen on the most vapid of his coworkers. Or even those annoying bitches back in high school, though he'd been trying as hard as he could not to think about that.
The sound of Kakyoin all but cackling under his breath prompted Jotaro to call out Star so that he could glare at Tenmei-chan's annoying father while at the same time as he himself glared at the pain in the ass rock star fanboy he was dealing with out of his own eyes.
=DiU=
Even with the full force of Star Platinum's glare on him, Noriaki found that he couldn't quite manage to stop himself from laughing at the sheer frustration in every line of Jotaro's face and body; even the way Star Platinum made an "I'm watching you" gesture served to communicate the annoyance that Noriaki couldn't help but find hilarious. Still, the fact that Jolyne seemed to have met up with another of the Stand users that Nijimura-san had created – Akira Otoishi, who was apparently an aspiring musician, for all that his Stand allowed him to either control or channel electrical currents – was kind of unsettling. Jolyne wasn't even a Stand user, and she'd been drawn to Otoishi-san, or he had been drawn to her.
It was almost the same thing that had happened to Tenmei, with the obvious exception that Jolyne hadn't come out of the situation a Stand user, herself. It wasn't a comforting thought, that even the families of Stand users seemed to possess the same kind of fate-drawn magnetism that drew Stand users together. Pucci would have probably been able to tell him more about that kind of thing, but Noriaki had never been particularly close to the man.
Really, he couldn't have said that anyone but Dio was close to Pucci at all.
As Jotaro's meeting with Otoishi-san wound down, with his cantankerous old friend reluctantly promising to send Otoishi-san some of his father's memorabilia, Noriaki chuckled under his breath. Even if their kids were going to end up attracting various Stand users, it didn't seem like there was anyone in town who would actually hurt them. In fact, given the way all the people they'd met in Morioh seemed to have been just ordinary citizens with ordinary desires, Noriaki supposed that this was really the best way for them to learn about that kind of thing.
He wouldn't have wanted to find out anything that potentially dangerous while they were being forced to deal with Stand users who actually wanted to hurt them; that kind of thing would have been too easy, considering how close they all were to their family.
Once Jotaro had managed to get Otoishi-san to leave them alone, notably without attacking or threatening him with his Stand, Noriaki allowed himself to relax. Sure, there seemed to be some remaining Stand users that he and Jotaro hadn't encountered yet – Jotaro had gone to speak with Nijimura-san about that, and Noriaki was waiting to hear back from him – but Morioh in general seemed to be one of the more pleasant places he'd ever been. Especially considering it was summer at the moment.
Looking up for a long moment, Noriaki caught sight of Brando-chan's secondary Stand, The Duke, folding its wings and diving.
Turning to follow the path that The Duke had taken, Noriaki found himself confronted by what seemed to be the flailing form of an invisible baby, of all things. The Duke landed next to what seemed to be the baby's head, shifting back into a housecat and leaning over the baby.
"Looks like we found another Stand user," Brando-chan said, as The Duke reached out its right, front paw to gently tap the invisible baby they were standing over.
"Seems that way," Noriaki said, feeling strangely detached from the whole situation; Nijimura-san hadn't mentioned anything like this, and even beyond that he hadn't seemed to be the kind of man who would shoot a baby to study the effects of the Stand Arrow.
Once the pair of them had managed to get the baby settled – since while its Stand didn't seem to be outright killing it, it was more than obvious that the baby was really too young to gain any kind of control over the Stand they seemed to have been born with – with The Duke shifting into a kangaroo so that it would be able to carry the invisible baby in its pouch. It was more than a little familiar, considering the way that Noriaki himself had grown up, and he found himself wanting to do everything he could for the baby that he and Brando-chan had just found.
He didn't want them – whoever they were – to suffer the same kind of empty, lonely life that Noriaki himself had had, before he'd met Loreena-chan, and then Jotaro and his family.
Still, there would be more than enough things to do while they were here in Morioh, searching for the other Stand users that lived in the town. When they made it back to Josuke-chan's house again, after passing through the bustling crowds that seemed to be a fixture of even small, sleepy town like this, Noriaki allowed himself to relax, at least a bit. However, it seemed as though Jotaro had been waiting for them.
=DiU=
"Where were you two?" he asked, narrowing his eyes as he watched The Duke hop off toward the bathroom in the form of a kangaroo.
"We found a baby," Kakyoin said, looking over the way that The Duke had gone for a long moment – Jotaro had the feeling he knew why Aunt Alice's secondary Stand had taken that particular shape, considering what he'd just learned from Kakyoin – before returning his attention to Jotaro. "It seems like the Stand they have makes them invisible, and they're too young to control it."
"Hmm," he said, nodding as The Duke made its way back into the room with them.
"It looks like that baby we found is a girl," Aunt Alice said, speaking through The Duke's mouth as usual. "She's going to need clothes and food soon, if you want to keep her healthy," she continued, turning to speak to Kakyoin for a moment, before turning back to him. "What was it you wanted to talk about, Jotaro?"
"Nijimura told us about another of the Stand users he created with that damned Arrow," he growled, narrowing his eyes as he found himself recalling just what kind of an idiot Nijimura had been; he kept talking about how much of a moron his little brother was, and how much he'd needed to find a babysitter for him, but that sounded more and more like bullshit the more he was forced to interact with Nijimura. "He tested the Arrow on a rat," he continued, not quite able to keep himself from snarling, he was so irritated. "So Josuke and I were going to deal with it. I'd like to have your help, though," he continued, turning to The Duke.
"That does sound like a good idea," Aunt Alice said, The Duke making its way over to them in the form of a cat, before leaping into his pocket, shifting into a snake as it did so.
"Well, I guess a snake would be the best thing for hunting a rat," Josuke said, looking about as awkward as the kid ever had.
He'd get used to things in his own time, but it was kind of annoying to deal with. Still, if nothing else, dealing with so many Stand users would be a good way of getting Josuke used to this kind of thing. Still, a rat… Dealing with that mutt that'd attached itself to Aunt Alice was annoying enough, and Jotaro had never been forced to fight the mutt.
Dealing with this rat, on the other hand, could easily be a different story.
Once he, Josuke, and The Duke had made their way out to the location that some of his fellow agents had described to him when he'd told them what he was looking for, Jotaro reached into his pocket once he was out the door, stroking The Duke's snake-form for luck. He got the feeling they were going to need it.
"So, a damn rat with a Stand, huh," Josuke said, folding his arms as the pair of them made their way out of the car.
They'd need to leave it behind, since they didn't know what kind of abilities the rat's Stand had, and there was always the possibility that this rat would be able to use the car – either against them directly, or else through some other means that Jotaro couldn't think of at the moment – with whatever kind of abilities its Stand granted to it.
=DiU=
The sound of Tomoko-chan coming back home drew his attention, and Noriaki smiled gently as she made her way over to the chair where he was sitting with the invisible baby in his lap.
"So, it's an invisible baby, this time, huh?" Tomoko-chan said, a wry sort of smile on her face as she watched what he was doing.
"Yes, this time it was an invisible baby," Noriaki said, chuckling softly as he looked up at Tomoko-chan for a long moment, before returning his attention to the baby resting in his arms. "Jotaro and Josuke-chan are looking for another Stand user, though," he said, wondering for a moment if he should tell her just what kind of Stand user her son was helping to hunt for.
Still, that kind of thing would take a lot of time to explain, and for the moment the baby he was taking care of needed his full attention; just like any baby, really.
Tomoko-chan left to get back to her work soon enough, and Noriaki turned his own attention back to the invisible baby in his arms. There would be a lot more he'd need to do, even if he wasn't going to have the chance to adopt the baby that he and Brando-chan had found, but there would be time for that kind of thing later. For the moment, in deference to everything that had already happened between the time that he and Jotaro had come to this place, Noriaki was going to take what time he could to rest.
There was no way of knowing just how much, or how little, time he was going to have to rest and recover from everything that seemed to be determined to happen to them.
=DiU=
Lightly tossing The Duke into the grass of the field they'd tracked the rat that Nijimura had been stupid enough to give a Stand to while he was testing out the Arrow he'd somehow managed to get his hands on – really, that was the next thing he was going to have to kick his ass and demand some answers over – Jotaro watched for a long moment as the long, sinuous, white snake vanished into the grass.
"That doesn't make sense," Josuke muttered, looking out into the field where they were both standing. "I mean, I've never heard of a rat with a Stand, before," he continued, at a prompting look from Jotaro.
"There's a Stand using dog who hangs out around Aunt Alice, and Uncle Dio has that falcon of his," he said, continuing to scan the field with his binoculars, looking for anything that might tell him where that Stand using rat might be hiding; he also wondered if there were any more animals that'd been granted Stands while Nijimura had been fucking around with the Bow and Arrow.
He already had the cage prepared – a specialty device, prepared by a joint effort on the parts of both the Speedwagon Foundation, and Brando International; the former assembling the device with the aid of materials supplied by the latter – resting in his off-hand for when The Duke would come back after fetching the rat with the Stand. Narrowing his eyes, even as he adjusted the binoculars he'd been using, Jotaro watched as The Duke reared back, launching itself into the air by way of shifting into a compressed spring, and then crashing back down as an anvil.
When The Duke shifted again, this time into what looked like some kind of extinct, man-sized Terror Bird, Jotaro watched with some satisfaction as The Duke brought the Stand using rat back over to where the pair of them were standing. Quickly fetching the transport cage from the back seat of the car, Jotaro opened the top and allowed The Duke to deposit the Stand using rat into the cage he'd carried with them, sealing the top so it wouldn't be able to get out.
At least, not without access to the same kind of dual-powered Stand as Stardust.
Strapping the cage into the back seat, Jotaro found himself surprised when The Duke blocked his path back into the car.
"While I was tracking the rat, I caught sight of what looked like an empty farmhouse, on the other side of this field," Aunt Alice reported, once he'd stepped back far enough that she probably felt like he was listening to her properly.
Taking out the binoculars he'd been using to study the terrain for any signs of the Stand using rat that the both of them were hunting.
"Yeah, I see it," he reported, narrowing his eyes as he caught sight of the open door leading into the farmhouse. "You think there might be people in there?"
"It's possible," Aunt Alice said, looking out toward the farmhouse for a long moment. "Still, if they did end up encountering the rat we just captured, they're going to need the kind of treatment that the Speedwagon Foundation would be best-suited to provide for them."
=DiU=
As Jotaro and his aunt – he was still having a bit of trouble wrapping his head around the thought that their family was closely associated with Alice freaking Brando, head of Brando International and hence one of the richest people on the planet – discussed what they were going to do next, Josuke found himself wondering just why in the hell he'd volunteered to come in the first place. Finding himself at these kinds of loose-ends wasn't what he'd been expecting when Jotaro had first asked him if he wanted to come out to help with his hunt for the rat with the Stand.
Sure, it wasn't like he'd actually wanted to go out hunting rats or anything, but just sitting in the car was starting to get to him.
So, when The Duke shifted into a horse, Josuke jumped right up onto the Stand's back, just before it could turn and make a run for the farmhouse they'd all been watching. After he'd assured both Jotaro and Alice that he was perfectly fine, that he wanted to help, he gripped The Duke's mane as it galloped up to the farmhouse. There was an eerie sense of emptiness hanging over the place, something that Josuke only became fully aware of when he and The Duke had arrived.
"Those people aren't going to be dead, are they?" he couldn't help but ask, once the pair of them had arrived.
"That really might be the best thing for them," Alice said, as The Duke nudged the door farther open with its head, shifting into what looked like a really big cat.
Shuddering, remembering the kind of things Crazy Diamond could do when he was really pissed at someone, Josuke tried not to freak out. The sight of another rat, darting out from under the kitchen table, startled a yelp out of him as he fell backwards. The Duke darted under the table, grabbing the rat out from under the table with its mouth and dragging it out. The sight of Jotaro and Stardust, both appearing together, allowed him to relax after all of the weird stuff that'd just gone on in front of him.
He was just glad that he wasn't going to have to be dealing with anything too gross.