Chewing his lower lip, as the nice old man he'd been talking to made an offer that Hayato had honestly been waiting to hear since That Man had come into his and Mom's lives, Hayato found that it wasn't quite as simple as he'd thought it would be. The old man had said that they didn't know what That Man's Stand could actually do, but it sounded like the both of them were worried that it might be something dangerous.

"If you guys would feel safer knowing what Kira's Stand can do, I think Kakyoin-san and I could manage to keep ourselves out of trouble for awhile longer," Hayato said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

The truth was that he didn't know just what else Kira might be planning, what he really wanted, and so he couldn't make any real kind of promise to Kakyoin-san's family. As much as he might have wanted to.

"Are you certain you would feel safe staying in a house with that man?" Kakyoin-san's grandpa's friend asked, a kind look on his face.

Hayato drew himself up, feeling more determined than he ever had before coming to meet with Kakyoin-san's family; since being away from Kira. "Kakyoin-san and I have managed to keep ourselves out of trouble long enough to get to you, so I think we'll be okay for at least a little longer."

"All right, kid, if you're sure," the old man said, crouching down to pat him on the head.

"Yeah, Kakyoin-san and I can handle things for now," he said, nodding as he felt a new kind of resolve settling on him; there were pictures he could find of the body that Kira was using – the one he'd stolen from Hayato's actual father; the one that Mom had originally lived with, if not really loved – and since Kakyoin-san could already draw so well, he wouldn't even need to risk taking them out.

He would have to risk Kira seeing them out of place.

Feeling Kakyoin-san's Stand lightly touching his right shoulder, and he got out the paper he'd carried with him for just this kind of thing. What is it, Kakyoin-san?

You should probably stop off at a nearby store and buy something. It would make a better explanation than just having left the house for no reason, Kakyoin-san wrote, and Hayato laughed softly.

I could probably buy some candy for the both of us, he wrote, feeling at least some of the weight he'd been carrying for so long coming down off of his shoulders; it was good to know that he had at least someone to help him if he needed it, even if he did still worry about Kakyoin-san's family.

Kira sounded more dangerous than even he'd suspected; he hadn't even known what Stands were, before he'd met Kakyoin-san and the rest of his family. And now, with their offer to protect him and Mom if he needed them, Hayato felt a lot better, even when he left the store and made his way back to the house that he and Mom were sharing with Kira. And Kakyoin-san, but the both of them were on the same side, now.

They had been for awhile, even when Hayato hadn't known quite who he was dealing with.

=DiU=

When they'd finally gotten Otoishi to go the fuck away already, Jotaro heaved a massive sigh once he found himself alone in the room that Tomoko Higashikata was lending him for however long it was going to take for the rest of their family to find that bastard kidnapper and finally kick his ass. A knock on his door drew Jotaro's attention, just as he'd been starting to take off his coat and relax a bit. So, he got off out of his chair and headed over.

"What is it, Old Man?" he asked, opening the door on the unreadable face of his habitually-boisterous maternal grandfather.

That look, in itself, told Jotaro that there was something going on.

"This is something that the whole family needs to hear," the Old Man said, the expression on his face smoothing out and becoming serious again. "Avdol's getting everyone on his side of the house up for the meeting, and I said I'd get the people on my side up."

"All right," he said, following the Old Man as their family began gathering in the Higashikata living room.

Josuke, his mother, and her old man were already making their way into the living room with the rest of them. Jotaro didn't know if any of them really knew what was going on any better than he did, but given the way the rest of the family had all gathered together, Jotaro knew that he was about to find out.

"We managed to track down Kira again," the Old Man reported, holding up a hand as the room all around him erupted into the kind of annoying chatter that had always made Jotaro want to punch someone. "Only, it sounds like he's not alone. Avdol and I met up with the kid from the Kawajiri family. It looks like that bastard Kira managed to hide himself with their family."

"That would explain why none of us have managed to find him, even after all the time we spent searching," Kakyoin said, sighing as he slumped deeper into the chair he'd sat down on when they'd all gathered together.

"It also seems as though he was the one to kill Aya Tsuji, as well," Avdol said, shuffling the Tarot cards he always seemed to be carrying around with him.

"All right, so how do we do this?" Jotaro asked, narrowing his eyes as Star leaped out of his body, fists clenched, just as Jotaro clenched his own.

=DiU=

When he'd made it back home, back to where Mom and That Man were waiting for them, Hayato sighed as he made his way back into the house. Biting the inside of his cheeks to hold back a smile as he felt Kakyoin-san's Stand gently squeezing his right shoulder, Hayato kept heading for his room. Knowing that there were at least some people out there working to help him, Mom, and Kakyoin-san made him feel at least a bit better.

Still, the three of them were still trapped in the house with That Man, so he couldn't relax all the way, but when he made it back inside his room and closed the door, Hayato couldn't quite manage to keep himself from laughing. He made sure to be as quiet as he could, sure, but he could only hope that That Man wouldn't come into his room anytime soon.

Hayato, I'm going to need your help for this.

What do you mean? he wrote back.

No one knows about the new face Kira has, I don't think, Kakyoin-san wrote back. It would really be best if they knew what they were looking for.

Right, he wrote back, looking back at the door, making sure that no one was about to come through.

Mom would be bad, but That Man would be worse.

When a pair of pens and a stack of papers all started moving on their own, Hayato made his way over to the door, blocking it as well as he could, considering everything he had in his room. Do you have any pictures of your Dad? I mean, can you get to them?

I'll get them for you, he wrote back, making his way back over to his desk, so he could get the photo collection he'd been working on.

=DiU=

Making his way back home, Kira smiled softly as he considered just what he and his cute little Yoshiko-chan were going to do together. He'd managed to find another shop that sold things for little girls like her, so he'd gotten her a cute ribbon for her soft hair, and managed to find another girlfriend to replace the one who had been starting to smell. The woman's son had even been less of an annoyance than usual, so Kira knew that introducing him to Yoshiko-chan had been the right course of action.

He was more than pleased to return to the quiet life he'd spent so much time building for himself, now that all of his problems had been taken care of.

=DiU=

Watching as Kakyoin-san continued drawing, Hayato found himself worried about the possibility about either Mom or That Man walking into the room where Kakyoin-san was working. The flying pens and papers would have startled Mom if she saw them, and the fact that Kakyoin-san had to use his Stand to write and draw meant that That Man would have spotted Kakyoin-san's Stand right away. So, Hayato was keeping an eye on the door as well as he could, making sure that he'd be in position to warn Kakyoin-san as soon as someone started to try opening it.

He was a bit too far away to see what Kakyoin-san was drawing, but with Mom and especially That Man in the same house, Hayato was honestly more concerned with keeping anyone who might try to hurt Kakyoin-san from seeing what he was doing. So he kept standing by the door, almost wishing that he could have blocked the door with something. But then, there would be more of a risk of Mom trying to barge in.

Not to mention That Man breaking down the door, so it was probably best that he was left to stand at the door, watching over Kakyoin-san as well as he could.

=DiU=

The Old Man had gotten his dowsing setup out again, now that they knew there was another kid in the hands of that murdering bastard, and had Hermit Purple wrapped around the string to make the search go faster. Narrowing his eyes as he watched the Old Man's dowsing swing over the map he'd spread out on the kitchen table, Jotaro felt Star almost involuntarily emerging from his back. The pair of them glared down at the map, as the Old Man's dowsing pendant swung over it, the look of concentration on the Old Man's face deepening steadily as he tried to pin down just where those kids of theirs had ended up.

"It looks like the pair of them have split up," the Old Man said, after a long moment of searching out their kids on the map he'd laid out on the table in the middle of their group.

"I wonder why that happened," Kakyoin muttered, narrowing his eyes.

Before anyone else could say anything, however, Kishibe barged into the room.

"Look at this!" the annoying artist yelled, slapping a large manila folder down on the same table where the Old Man had spread out his map. "Tenmei-kun's skills have developed so well!" he continued, pulling out a small sheaf of papers from the envelope.

Jotaro was just about to shout at the idiot manga artist to piss off, when the name he'd said registered in his mind. "You've been in contact with him?"

"Not directly," Kishibe said, off-handedly enough that Jotaro felt his and Star's fists clenching. "Someone he seems to be friends with delivered them to me."

"Yare yare daze," Jotaro muttered, adjusting his hat as he looked down at the pictures now resting on the table by the Old Man and his map.

It really did look like Kakyoin's kid had improved his figure drawing, but it was what he'd actually drawn that held Jotaro's attention: that bastard kidnapper was reflected in a mirror, and the reflection was drawn as being cast by someone else. Jotaro had seen enough manga to know just what it meant to see that bastard serial killer reflected in the windows and mirrors that a man he was sure that none of the people sitting around the table knew the face of.

"So, Tenmei has discovered the new face that Yoshikage Kira is attempting to hide himself behind," Avdol said, eyes narrowing as he studied the drawings that Kishibe had laid out on the table, alongside the Old Man's map.

"All right, we've got a solid lead," Jotaro said, narrowing his eyes as he turned his attention back to the Old Man and his map. "Did you manage to find where that bastard's been hiding himself?"

"Right here," the Old Man said, grinning fiercely as the pendulum he'd been swinging in a grid pattern over the map started to spin in tight circles around a certain point.

"I'll have Bad Company surround the house," Nijimura said, rising smoothly to his feet.

Just as Jotaro was about to demand to know just how in the hell Nijimura thought he was going to get there without being spotted by that bastard serial killer, Stardust put a hand on Nijimura's shoulder, and the pair of them vanished in the teleportation that had always made Jotaro think of a single frame being cut out of reality itself. It was always eerie to watch, but in a way it had always reminded him of Aunt Alice. And not just because Stardust was one of her Stands, either.

=DiU=

When he and Stardust landed in the bushes, far enough away from the house that the serial killer and kidnapper they were hunting, Keicho narrowed his eyes as he began sending out groups of Bad Company to surround and observe the house where the serial killer had been taking shelter. Glancing over at Stardust for a moment, he saw that the Stand seemed to be readying itself to fight, as well. Keicho wondered for a moment just what kind of capabilities that such a clearly long-ranged Stand could even possess.

Still, he doubted that such a sensible person as Alice Brando would have been willing to leave her Stand close enough to be spotted by the Stand using serial killer they were pursuing if it wasn't capable of handling itself.

Settling in close to where Stardust was crouched, Keicho raised an eyebrow as he noticed that Stardust was phasing itself through the tangled branches of the bush it was crouching in. Yes, that was one way to avoid the annoyance of constantly being poked by sharp branches, but Keicho hadn't expected Alice Brando to be using the esoteric abilities of her long-ranging Stand on something so mundane. Then again, given everything he'd learned about her during the course of his time working beside her Stand and the people she was closest to, it seemed that Alice Brando was a supremely practical woman.

=DiU=

Making his way down into the kitchen, Yoshikage smiled. He'd just checked in with Yoshiko-chan; he'd given her her medicine and made sure that she would sleep comfortably for the rest of the day, and now he was ready to start his own day.

"Good morning, dear!" the woman said, looking as pleased to see him as usual. "Hayato-chan decided to walk to school today, so we pretty much have the whole house to ourselves this morning."

Yoshikage was just about to pick up the pot of coffee that he'd been smelling since he'd come into the room, when something blew open the window closest to his head. Turning at the sound of rotors – of all things – Yoshikage found himself confronted by a small group of miniature helicopters. This had to be the work of someone, but he'd seen the green-figure that accompanied Yoshiko-chan, and the miniature army Yoshikage now found himself faced with was about as different from that as something could possibly be.

The fact that the woman seemed just as blind to these strange soldiers as she had been to Killer Queen – those few times when Yoshikage had called it out just to see if she would react to it the same way that Yoshiko-chan had; her eyes had always passed over Killer Queen all unknowing, so unlike the way that even Yoshiko-chan's clouded eyes would try to follow Killer Queen when he would show it to her – was troublesome. Thoughts of how he would softly touch Yoshiko-chan's lips with Killer Queen's right hand, in just the same way as he would when he needed to rid himself of something troublesome, crept up on him even as the tiny soldiers surrounded the pair of them.

Yoshiko-chan was as far from troublesome as it was possible to be, but there were times when Yoshikage would find himself toying with turning her into a bomb. Yoshiko-chan, after all, had the same kind of spirit following in her footsteps as Yoshikage himself. She could understand him in a way that no one else ever truly could, and that made Yoshikage all the more eager to show all of himself to Yoshiko-chan.

Still, Yoshikage knew that if he ever did go through with turning Yoshiko-chan into a bomb, he would only end up losing what made her so special to him in the first place.

The feel of tiny, needlelike impacts in his right foot forced Yoshikage's attention back to the house, back to the invasion that still seemed to be in progress, and Yoshikage glared down at the tiny soldiers that had arranged themselves all around him and the woman whose house he had taken shelter in. It was infuriating, finding himself deprived of the quiet life he had worked so hard to reestablish for himself – deprived a second time – and as Yoshikage called out Killer Queen once again, he vowed that this would be the last time.

This time would be the last that he was forced to run from his peaceful life by whatever interlopers had been chasing him.

=DiU=

With Keicho making the first approach beside Aunt Alice's long-range Stand, Stardust, Jotaro and the rest of what he could reasonably call their forces were free to pile into Jotaro's car to make their own approach.

"I hope they're not having too much trouble dealing with that bastard," Josuke muttered, and Jotaro glanced at the rear-view mirror for a moment to see his young uncle – bizarre as that thought still was – clenching both fists in his lap.

"They'll be all right," he said, catching the kid's eyes in the mirror. "The both of them can hold their own in a fight, and we're not that far away from that bastard's new house."

"Yeah, I guess," Josuke said, though he still seemed uncomfortable with how things were currently going.

Maybe it was just because he'd never met Aunt Alice, or maybe Josuke was the kind of chronic fretter that Uncle Dio liked to pretend he wasn't, but for the moment Jotaro couldn't let those kinds of thoughts distract him. The Old Man and Avdol were going to be making their own approach from the opposite side from the past that he and Josuke were approaching from, since the Old Man's Stand was the best suited to save Kakyoin's kidnapped kid.

Kakyoin himself was naturally in the lead car with them, but Jotaro could see that his old friend's mind was wherever that kid of his had ended up; Jotaro could tell that he'd have sent his Stand out to be with Tenmei, but the both of them still understood that he'd probably want to have Hierophant Green close. If only so that he'd be able to get his own licks in on that bastard kidnapper before they put him down for good.

Smirking slightly as he caught sight of Bad Company laying absolute siege to that bastard kidnapper's house, Jotaro glanced back for a moment as he, Josuke, and the silent, looming form of a pissed off Kakyoin erupted from the car.

=DiU=

"Emerald Splash!" the war cry all but tore itself from his throat, as Noriaki finally found himself standing before the absolute, unforgivable bastard who had stolen Tenmei from him. Even the presence of Keicho Nijimura's colony Stand Bad Company wasn't nearly as important as the face he'd memorized from Tenmei-chan's artwork. The face of the man that was standing before him even now.

The man whose gaze he was going to hold, until Mr. Joestar had managed to rescue Tenmei from wherever he was being held; until Mr. Joestar and Tenmei-chan had returned to the sunlight, where the both of them belonged.

Pausing for a moment, as Bad Company evacuated what seemed to be Hayato-chan's mother from the house, pulling back to the car that Mr. Joestar and Avdol had used to come to this place, Noriaki turned his attention back to the kidnapper. Back to the man who had caused so much anguish not only to him, but to all of the innocent people of Morioh he'd been tormenting with his poisonous presence. As the bastard tried to break and run, Noriaki moved to intercept him, but Stardust was just that much faster.

For a moment, Noriaki found himself wondering what Stardust – an extremely long-ranged Stand, which seemed to have at least some kind of capacity to act for itself – would do, what it could do, to stop the man who had spent so much of his life murdering people. The sight of Stardust shoving its hands into the kidnapper's thighs, then pulling them out as he went sprawling to the ground. For a moment, Noriaki wondered if Stardust had tripped him, then he noticed the oblong pair of… things Stardust was holding.

He barely had time to wonder what they might have been, before his attention was forced back to the kidnapper when Josuke fell upon him with Crazy Diamond. The way that the kidnapper's thighsdidn't so much bend as outright twist in response to the younger boy's attack-rush suggested that Stardust had actually managed to remove the kidnapper's bones from his legs when it had made the attack that Kakyoin had only just been able to notice before his attention had been carried away by the tide of battle.

"Hey, bastard!" Josuke shouted, drawing the attention of the kidnapper, just as he'd called out that strange, catlike Stand of his.

Before the kidnapper could send his Stand after them, however, Whitesnake extracted that same Stand, then turned and kicked him in the gut in passing.

Waving his thanks to Father Pucci's oddly independent Stand – honestly, the only thing that seemed to truly distinguish Whitesnake from Stardust was the fact that Whitesnake didn't have any issues with speaking, though Stardust seemed perfectly able to make itself understood without words – Noriaki turned his attention back to the kidnapper – the serial killer – all of them were fighting at the moment. He blinked once, and Jotaro appeared next to him, eyes narrowed and attention focused on the bastard who'd been haunting Morioh for entirely too long.

Attacking along with Jotaro, Noriaki noticed that Josuke seemed to be doing something with the driveway they were standing on. Still, since Josuke didn't seem to be getting in their way, Noriaki was perfectly pleased to leave the younger Stand user to whatever it was that he was doing.

"Emerald Splash!" he shouted again, battering the kidnapper's body in the same way he'd battered down the man's door, even as Jotaro fell upon the bastard with another attack-rush.

Pausing for a moment, Noriaki watched in surprise as Crazy Diamond dragged the kidnapper back to the shattered concrete slabs that had been piled up on the driveway, either by Josuke's own efforts or all of theirs as a whole. Noriaki wasn't quite sure, considering everything that had happened.

Finding himself smiling almost involuntarily, as Josuke forcibly reassembled the shattered concrete of the driveway with the kidnapper firmly inside them, Noriaki grinned fiercely at the bastard as their eyes met for the last time. The last time that kidnapping, murdering bastard would meet anyone's eyes, Noriaki allowed himself to breathe for what felt like the first time in entirely too long.

"Good thinking, Josuke-chan," he said, making his way over to wrap his right arm around the younger Stand user's shoulders.

"Thanks," Josuke said, sighing softly as the pair of them watched Crazy Diamond at work. "This bastard doesn't deserve to rot in jail, and he sure as hell doesn't deserve the chance to ever be pardoned."

"True," Noriaki said, squeezing Josuke's shoulders for a long moment. "That's true."