Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cairo, Egypt.  1976.

In Egypt, the art of drawing power from the sun and from the air wasn’t called Hamon, as the men from the Speedwagon Foundation called it.  It was a power that had existed for centuries in Egypt.  Mohammed Abdul’s Grandfather (bless his departed soul) had called it ‘the Gift of Ra’, following local legends that claimed the power was bestowed by Ra Himself, to his followers.  (Although Mohammed Abdul’s family practiced Islam, as they had for centuries, there was a part of their spirits, an ancient part, that still and would forever revere the older gods of their homeland.)

But when Mohammed Abdul’s father spoke with the Speedwagon Foundation, nowadays, the Gift of Ra that he practiced, his father before him practiced, and his father, and his, and so on, it became Hamon.  Now, it was always Hamon.  Hideous, desecrating Hamon.

Something about this surrender made a young Mohammed Abdul’s blood boil (and, admittedly, the teenaged hormones couldn’t have helped).

“Father,” young Mohammed confronted the old man, just a little after the men from the Speedwagon Foundation left, a little before dusk, in the small porch of their family’s apartment in Cairo.  “How could you spit on our forefathers’ legacies by using their awful name for the ‘Gift of Ra’?”

In his younger days, perhaps his father would have matched his son’s volume and fervor.  His father, a massive mass of a man, who was Mohammed Abdul’s spitting image in the yellowing photos from his grandmother’s albums.  His father, undoubtedly, the most powerful of the Practitioners of the Gift of Ra in Cairo, by the generous praise and respect of the other Practitioners in Cairo.

The older man leaned forward, pressing his weight into his elbows, against their porch’s black metal grating.  The shadows of an ending day were gathering in the nooks and crannies that multiplied across his brown face.  These days, the older Abdul was looking more and more like Mohammed’s paternal grandfather, his father’s father, at the end of his days.  Graying, cooler.  In his daily prayers, in those days, Mohammed Abdul wished to avoid such a fate himself.

The older Abdul said nothing for a second. (It was quite a tactic that, when looking back on these days, Mohammed Abdul had to admire.)  In that second, the Practitioner simply stared, allowing the passionate moment to pass and his son’s inner fire time to simmer, until, with nothing to feed it, it dwindled a little more.

“My Son, it’s practiced around the world and called many things,” his Father finally replied.  “In Italy, I believe that they call it ‘Increspatura’.  In Japan, ‘Sendo’.  It was never a gift only given to us—”

Mohammed had to scoff.  A useless thing to do, but, really, the only thing he could, at this moment.

“The Speedwagon Foundation sends new agents to see me, every time they send someone to speak to me, and that is the name that they recognize it by.  That is the name that will not make them stare at me, like I’m a crazy old man, and ask what on earth I’m talking about.  That is the name that doesn’t require me to repeat our local legend and invite condescending stares or cute, curt replies,” the older Abdul continued, without missing a beat.  “I see that stare of yours, Mohammed, but I can promise you that they are not the enemy.  The founder of their organization owed his life to users of Hamo—“

Mohammed glared, as he had been, coughing again.

“Hamon,” his father continued, an eyebrow quirking automatically.  “They are dedicated to preserving Ha—“

Another cough from the son.

“You stop that,” his Father admonished, but there was no fire to his words.  Perhaps, there was still an air to the dignity he held himself and some strength from Ra.  Did his son recognize it?  (When looking back, Mohammed liked to think something of his father’s attitude reached him.)   If it hadn’t been that command that had transfixed young Mohammed, what followed had to’ve done it.  

“When I haven’t a son who can practice this Gift, when less and less are born, who can practice this, this is what I have to do to insure that our Forefathers’ Art doesn’t die with me.”  His voice never hitched in volume.  His hand never rose to slap his son in the face, for his disrespect.  (Such things were never in his father’s nature.)  But neither of those would have struck young Mohammed Abdul as hard as those words had.

(When Mohammed Abdul used to look back on this exchange, he liked to imagine there weren’t tears in his eyes, burning his hot face.  None on his father’s face either.  No tears, they simply stood and regarded each other as men, with a strong, quiet, dignified sort of respect.)

(“I am sorry, Mohammed,” Mohammed Abdul used to imagine his father never apologized, between undignified sobs, as that massive mass of a man, hardy like a statue carved from stone, held his angry, angry boy so, so gently.  “I am so sorry.”)

(When Mohammed Abdul used to think of this moment, he liked to forget that burning, consuming feeling in his teenaged self’s gut, that desire to disappear in his father’s arms.  He liked to ignore the imagined glares of his departed Grandfather and his other ancestors, at this shameful moment.)

(Mohammed Abdul wished that he told his father that it was a difficult thing to swallow, this news, but that he would grow to understand it.  One day, those teenaged hormones would calm themselves and he would grow and see the world and learn and come to understand that his father’s betrayal was anything but.  Understand, even if, to this day, he didn’t fully agree.)

(And he desperately wished that he thanked his father for his tenderness and for accepting that his son hadn’t inherited their family’s gift, after Mohammed Abdul had journeyed and seen young men and women, younger than him and younger than he had been, in that moment, in his father’s arms, who had been abandoned and abused for much less.)

Instead, they stood there, undignified, sobbing, until the beastly night swallowed them and Mohammed Abdul’s paternal grandmother beckoned them back inside for supper.

(When Mohammed Abdul looked back on those days, a part of him wished that he did as his father did, simply wiping away those tears, putting aside those feelings, and, after his father asked if his son was ready to join the family for supper, he sometimes wished he had followed his father inside.)

Young Mohammed Abdul, instead, stayed outside a little bit longer.  

But he wasn’t alone, not even after his father shut the porch door.

It was there.

It was always there.

That thing.

Mohammed had read a great deal about monsters and demons in his youth, to pass time and give him a thrilling chill before sleeping.  How well this chimera would have fit with those childhood stories’ illustrations.  With the face of a deformed old rooster that dominated his mother’s mother’s coop for too long, that had attacked him when he was much younger and when such a memory could only burn itself into him, such a head perched on the massive neck of an enviable bodybuilder.

Only Mohammed saw such a thing since he was four years old, towering and intimidating even in those old days, and, after pointing out the thing at age six, for the umpteenth time, and earning his parents’ annoyance and harsh denial, he had long given up on pointing it out.

Mohammed Abdul had long ago convinced himself it could be no different than his younger cousins’ imagined ifrits, who granted wishes of pretty stones or sticks for the price of playing with them half an hour or so outside.  His cousins had grown out of seeing such things at eight years old.

Not Mohammed, who now stood, glaring through tear streaked eyes at this blood-red shadow of his, standing akimbo, both sets of eyes burning and neither man saying anything aloud.

But they didn’t need such things to speak.

A dialogue passed between them, as it always had, without opening one’s lips (or, in the case of the creature, their beak).

Leave, Mohammed commanded his Creature, pointing aggressively into the city, now dark and odd, oblong shapes dotted with little lights, almost indiscernible from the starry night sky.

The Creature stared.  His gaze was familiar, too familiar to Mohammed.  Although the head belonged to a rooster, his eyes looked anything but animal, and yet not entirely human.  They were lidded, stern, mostly yellow with green in the irises.

The green reminded him very much of his paternal Grandfather’s eyes, calm yet powerful, commanding but kind.

Mohammed hated to see them, these days.

The Creature crossed its arms.

LEAVE, Mohammed repeated himself, pointing more aggressively, still speaking without his lips to this beast.  It would never leave, simply hide away, he knew, and such an inconsiderate beast had the gall to make himself more visible after incidents like this—like when a younger Mohammed had worked himself into tears, at age four, eyes red with frustration, while trying and failing again and again to learn his Grandfather’s first lesson, to use the Gift.

The Creature said nothing, but Mohammed could…for lack of a better word, feel its thoughts.

It never thought of harming Mohammed or his family (something Mohammed wasn’t certain if he ought to feel grateful for).

Always, at times like these, whenever the Gift was brought up, the Creature offered wordless condolences.

And Mohammed always hated it for this.

At four, he felt useless for being unable to use the gift, in spite of adults reassuring him that he wasn’t.  Useless and frightened, he still felt, while being stalked by this thing and lacking his forefathers’ gift, their magic, to defend himself from this specter.

At six, he felt useless and frightened and crazy, for being unable to use this gift, which, he claimed, appeared purple when his father and the other Practitioners used it (purple and thorny) and nobody believed him.  Useless and frightened and crazy and upset for seeing this thing, and after hearing the repeated denials by his aunts, his uncles, his grandparents, his cousins, any adults, every peer, and his own parents whenever he’d tattle on his stalker.

At sixteen, at this very moment, he’d had enough.

“LEAVE,” he repeated, finally aloud, throwing his sixteen-year old weight, a dream of a wisp compared to his mass of a father, and concentrating all of it, the entirety of himself, into a punch, now being thrown at this inconsiderate invader.

The Thing caught his fist.  It barely moved from its position to do it, and it did it.  It held Mohammed’s shaking fist in his massive, clawed hand, with a surprising amount of tenderness for so large a creature.  And it stared with the patient greens of Grandfather’s eyes.

Mohammed shook his fist and his arm, to free them from this beast, wrestling them out so futilely, until the creature relented and let him go at the wrong moment, as Mohammed was pulling his arm to the ground and, without the Creature’s support, his face quickly found the hard rock floor.

Mohammed cried out in pain, in frustration.

There was a knock at the porch door—a knock, and a little old lady’s voice, asking if he was alright, if her grandson had tripped in the dark.

Mohammed said nothing more aloud, not even as the Chimera bent forward and offered a hand, like he was only a child that had tripped while chasing after butterflies.

Mohammed spat in that clawed hand—and the spittle phased through, as it often had, but, at least, it encouraged the Animal-Man to withdraw his hand.

What good are you, he asked the Beast, as he fumbled to get on his knees, find his footing, and stand.

The Creature did not respond.  Not aloud.  But Mohammed felt his response, the one he always gave after receiving this question from Mohammed.

I can perform magic.

But not the magic of my Grandfather’s or my father’s, Mohammed interjected, feeling the familiar wet warmth in the corners of his eyes, asking less out of genuine curiosity and more out of habit, these days.

No.  A different kind.  I don’t need the sun and I don’t need to breathe, as your forefathers needed to, to use it; I only need your permission.

Such a strange creature.

Intrusive and kind, frightening but calming, powerful yet relying on a mere child like Mohammed, to demonstrate what he could be capable of.

How Mohammed Abdul despised this creature.

I still grant you no permission, Mohammed coldly replied.

The porch door opened, with a gasp from the old woman.  “Son,” his father, who had accompanied his grandmother, whispered.  “Please don’t move—over there—!”  His father pointed, upsettingly, opposite of Mohammed’s Creature, in a dark corner of their stony porch’s frame, some distance above the teenager.

There it was, rustling, a small leathery creature that the young Abdul only recognized from his books.

The Egyptian Fruit Bat.

Not at all frightening in his books, with its wide eyes and feline face, seeing the shadows of the beast in person, with two, too large eyes glittering in the dark, had an entirely different effect.

“Mody,” his grandmother whispered, holding a hand out, “Stay put, that vermin could be carrying diseases.”

“I’ll send it away with the Gift,” his Father promised, taking a step forward, out of their home.

But a step from that massive mass of a man was enough to rile up their small invader.

Leathery wings emerged from the shadows, unfolding, blooming like a hideous flower, and, with small flaps, the little beast flew toward Mohammed’s father.

As great a Practitioner his father was, Mohammed knew he could not react quickly enough.  The Gift required contact of some sort with something physical, and his father held nothing to concentrate his energy, his being into.

Almost automatically, Mohammed’s eyes turned, not to his father, who he loved more than almost anything, and not to his grandmother, who he loved a little more than his father in those days and who had cared for him as his mother would have.

Mohammed turned to his Red Demon, this self-proclaimed Blood-Red Magician.  Their eyes met, dark stars facing sparkling green gems.  And, for the first time in his life, Mohammed Abdul granted his Creature the permission he’d been asking for years.

Just…please don’t hit my father.  Or my grandmother.  Or the apartment.  Not even on accident—

The fearsome Rooster-Head bobbed, nodding, agreeing to those terms and, with that, bright flames tore out of his sudden Ally’s hands, soaring up beautifully, stunning Mohammed, whose fists burned, as he cried out, feeling as though he placed his open palms on a stovetop, and his father and grandmother, also stunned and looking on.

The invading creature crisped up with a piercing scream, reduced to dark ashes and dust in mid-air.  (Mohammed pitied the creature, especially on reflection, who was only acting out of impulse to defend, no different than him.)

As promised, the scarlet flames stopped at the bat and quelled themselves once the target had been hit.

The Abduls said nothing, seconds after the Magician summoned his flames, bright as a sun, and those seconds grew into minutes.

Until, finally, Mohammed Abdul’s Father proclaimed, in a whisper, “That was not Hamon.  That was not ‘Increspatura’ or ‘Sendo’.  But I—I don’t know if that…that could be a different Gift from Ra…”

(Looking back on this, Mohammed wished he thanked his father for embracing him, instead of screaming at his son in fear and throwing him out, after this frightening thing had happened.  He wished he thanked his Grandmother for inspecting his hands and healing new burns with her Gift, healing them well enough that, in later life, when he used his Magician’s abilities, he could hardly feel the burning sensation as he had in his first use.  He wished he could have thanked his family for allowing him space, as he sat in his room, alone, for some days after this happened, spending minutes and hours looking into his Grandfather’s eyes (or, at least, the parts that reminded him of his Grandfather), implanted into that Old Rooster’s head, and then how his family would break the silence dominating his room to have their meals with him.  He wished he could have thanked them for calling on the Speedwagon Foundation, to report what had happened, and for welcoming Joseph Joestar into their home, to reassure young Mohammed, with early international research from the Foundation, and, for the first time in his young life, where the other adults in his family had tried and failed, to convince Mohammed Abdul that he had never been useless or crazy.)

(Mohammed Abdul was simply the first Stand User that Mohammed Abdul had known of, and he would not be the last.)

(And Mohammed Abdul wished that he thanked his father for apologizing to him, after Joseph had left at the end of that first visit, all of those years ago, with heaving sobs, for neglecting his son’s talents and making his only son feel so useless and crazy and alone, although Mohammed knew his gentle father had never and would never intend to do such a cruel thing.)

London, England.  1987.

Anyone that knew Jean Pierre Polnareff knew him to be a man who never hid his emotions.  Especially not these days, and not at this moment, as he sat, in a stuffy, cobwebbed office at the Speedwagon Foundation HQ, pouring over this typed up report, with small, marginal notes handwritten in red that reduced the huge Frenchman into a loud, embarrassing, blubbering mess.  In one shaking hand, there was this anecdotal report, a personal one of Mohammed Abdul’s, and, in another shaking hand, there was a pen, writing notes on a separate piece of paper, feebly attempting to translate the notes in red from regrettably less than fifty days worth of the Masri-Arabic that Jean Pierre had picked up from his beloved friend and from their journeying.

There were certain things Polnareff had been instructed about this report, that some things could not leave the room.

The Frenchman almost pitied anyone that would fight him to keep these red, handwritten regrets in this office, not when there was a massive mass of an old widower in Cairo, who, in his youth, was the spitting image of Jean Pierre’s dearest friend, one of the world’s greatest Hamon users, or, as they called themselves in Cairo, Ḥarṭummīm or Practitioners of the the Gift of Ra, who was probably still taking care of an elderly mother in their humble apartment and whose only son died before sharing a celebratory dinner with his friends, before reaching thirty, or breathing any parenthetical word from this report to his beloved father.

To his surprise and, admittedly, his relief and some odd disappointment that couldn’t be ignored, after he’d shown what he’d written to the suits at the Foundation, before leaving that office, nobody challenged the Frenchman or his Chariot to keep these words hidden.

Chapter Text

Cairo, Egypt.  1976.

The earliest Stand User, recorded by the Speedwagon Foundation, at the time a sixteen year old Mohammed Abdul read this early file, was found entirely by accident.  They would later find Stand Users who lived and died before this first User, but she would forever remain, immortalized in this file, as the first Stand User one of their own had encountered.

星野 梨佐 (or Risa “Risa Risa” Hoshino) was her name.  She was Japanese American and about twelve years old, when she was first interviewed over a week, somewhere in [REDACTED], California, back in the summer of 1955, by an Elizabeth “Lisa Lisa” Joestar (there presented a reason, Mohammed Abdul correctly inferred, why a Joseph Joestar had been entrusted by the Foundation with transporting this file).

Her family had some ties to the Speedwagon Foundation before the War, and their research into Japanese Sendo.  It was only through this friendly association that her parents agreed to let this interview take place.

Here are parts of the file that the young Mohammed Abdul found himself reading and rereading, over and over, again (helping his mother’s mother out with her tourist-ridden fortune telling shop, as he had been since he was…practically an infant had made this English transcript quite a breezy read, even if, at times, he had to circle words and ask his mother’s mother or Joseph Joestar, when he visited, what the occasional word meant for certain):

LL: Good morning, Risa.

RH: Good morning, Lisa-Lisa.

[Both laugh.]

LL: You’ve been telling me about your Sendo, but, yesterday, after we ran out of tape, we just couldn’t stop talking and you were calling your Sendo something very interesting.

RH: Well, Lisa…I call my センド many names.  I call her my スタンド—my Stand—because she’s always stood by me.

LL: Your Sendo looks like a woman, right?

RH: A beautiful woman, Ms. Lisa-Lisa!  I wish you could see her—she looks a little like you, dark haired and pretty like a Hollywood star, but she looks a little more like me too!  She has my eyes and she looks like she could be one of my aunts.

LL: What else do you call her?

RH: I knew, after I met her, I knew that her name had to be Mona Lisa Smile.

LL: And how were you so certain that had to be her name?

RH: Because she told me.

LL: Did she tell you, out loud?

RH: [laughter] Oh no, we didn’t need to talk out loud.  I just—I looked at her and I felt it.  I’ve always felt her presence.  Even before she looked like a woman—

LL: You told me a little bit of how she looked, before she looked like a woman—and it was so interesting…

RH: She looked like a cat.  I’ve always loved cats.  A beautiful black cat with golden eyes.  But as much as I begged for one, my parents would never let me have one.  So I—I think Mona Lisa Smile appeared, to grant my wish.  Only I could ever see Mona Lisa Smile.  I used to think she had to be an imaginary friend, and that I’d grow out of seeing her.  But I consider her my closest friend, who I see to this day.  She can’t change back, unfortunately.  Whenever I want to see Mona Lisa Smile the cat, I have to look through my parents’ old photo albums.

LL: Have you ever met anyone else who can see Mona Lisa Smile in those photos?

RH: [sighing] Not yet, but I’m not losing hope!  Are you sure you can’t see her [laughter]?

LL: No, I’m sorry, Sweetie…

RH: [tongue clicking, a sarcastic ‘tsk tsk’] Because you have such a great name, I guess I’m going to have to accept your apology.  [Laughter]  Don’t worry, I’m used to that by now.  And I like to think people like me—people who can see Mona Lisa Smile—they’ll be attracted to each other.  I’ll meet that person who can see her in person and in my photos one day, just you wait!

He was going to do that.  Mohammed Abdul, later that night, was going to look through old photo albums and he would find odd little smudges behind his photographed self that, after asking his father and grandmother, he would realize that only he could see.  After a second take, a third, and a fourth, he recognized those smudges for what they were.

Flames.

Flames that only he could see.

His Scarlet Magician used to resemble a flame, and had always been with him, even in his baby photos.

LL: Why do you think the transformation took place, Risa?

RH: Well—why does any transformation take place?  Why do any of us change?  We grow to take on new challenges, or we grow after failing to meet a challenge.

[A pause.]

RH: I think it was a little after my grandmother passed away.  She was the Sendo Master of the family, and the only one who never made me feel crazy or cursed—not right away, at least.  The rest of my family has grown to accept that Mona Lisa Smile is with us and that…she’ll…she’ll never leave me…

LL: Oh honey, can I give you a hug?  Would that be alright, Mr. and Mrs. Hoshino—I just—thank you.

[A pause, and, then, a rustle of fabric.]

LL: We can stop for today.  I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry like that, Risa.

RH: It’s—it’s fine, Lisa-Lisa.  [Laughter.] I want to continue.  You’re just so fun to talk to.

LL:  Psh, I’m old and dull, you’re the fun one!

RH:  Lisa-Lisa, you don’t look a day over thirty, I’d love to grow old like you!  I’ve always felt old at heart!  And I love old ladies!  Let me hang out with a super old lady like you, over a gaggle of girls my age any day!

[Both laugh.]

Mohammed Abdul studied his Magician’s eyes carefully that night, in his old photos and in person. 

The pictures never captured them clearly enough.

Were they always green, like his father’s father?

Or had they turned green only recently?

Not even the Magician knew.

RH: When I was growing up in the internment camps—I was—I was born there, you know—there were a couple of things that kept me going.  My father was a doctor in Japan, a very well loved and respected doctor.  When he came over here, to care for his mother…he could only work at the hospital as a janitor.  He met my mother here and he was always so…it was so embarrassing for him, what he did for a living, and I’m always grateful to him and the sacrifice he made so that my family and I could live as we do now, even though—it really isn’t always easy for us either. 

[A pause.]

LL: Please take your time, Sweetie.  We can talk about this later…or we could break this up into smaller sessions…

RH: Thank you, Lisa-Lisa.  I just…I want to get this off of my chest, and now feels right.

[A pause.]

RH:  My father loved art books and always bought them, used, from libraries looking to get rid of their old books.  They practically gave him a dozen books for a nickel apiece.  He used to tell me that I was named for the Mona Lisa, one of the most beautiful women ever captured on canvas.  I would hear him, every night, describe every painting he loved from memory, because he couldn’t bring his books with him, and I loved to hear him talk about the Mona Lisa the most, because we shared our names.  He lost those books after we left the camp, but he’d tell me he was at least glad to have me, his Mona Lisa.

[A pause.]

RH: In that same time, my Grandmother would teach me センド—but we needed to keep it hidden, we didn’t want to be reported and we didn’t want to get caught or give anyone…any reason to suspect us even more.  It was the one thing that kept the センド Masters in those camps from trying to escape—the fear that we could be caught and worse could happen to us, people like us, or…innocent, powerless people who looked like us.  I—I was never good at it.  The most I could do is get a light to flicker—but it wasn’t really me who did that.

[A pause.]

RH: My Mona Lisa Smile, that is what she could do.  She could tap into the electricity and light up a room.  She can still do it…and…I haven’t really tested if she could do more.  But when I did it at the camp, thankfully, everyone assumed it was just a faulty lightbulb.

[A pause.]

RH:  I think she got her name from the Mona Lisa, like me, because of my father, and she lit up a room, because of my grandmother.  I don’t want to think her training, my grandmother’s, was useless at all…I want to think it prepared me and my Mona Lisa Smile.  Even if it’s different…I don’t really know if it is センド, if she’s センド, my Mona Lisa Smile…because I don’t have to watch my breathing to get her to help me…but I like her and what she’s helped me do, all the same.

LL:…can you show us, Risa?  Demonstrate what your Mona Lisa Smile can do?

[A pause]

[A sound of static]

That particular interview ended there, but, thankfully, there was more from Lisa-Lisa and Risa from the folder Joseph Joestar provided—more transcripts, photos, mission reports from the past decade or more.

At twelve, she looked sweet-faced, smiling widely next to  Miss Lisa-Lisa, as did her Mona Lisa Smile.

Miss Risa grew up and, through luck or temerity (or maybe both?), spent her twenties as a jet-setting international model, a trailblazer in her field, always poised and polished with her knowing, elfin smile and her cool poses.  Her Mona Lisa Smile always stood by her, beautiful and clad in the simplest, chicest black dress, wearing the same smile and pose as her User.

They practically looked like sisters, Risa and her Mona Lisa Smile.

But, the thrilling part was that it was a cover—for every exotic locale she visited and had a photo session or a fashion show (in London, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, to name a few), there was a corresponding interview conducted with herself and with Lisa-Lisa, with a person they believed could have had a gift like Risa’s.

Risa took the initiative on every one of these interviews, asking, paraphrasing the title and the opening line from her minor hit in Japan from an ill-fated pop career (which had the lyrics, in their entirety, written in this file), “Can you see my Mona Lisa Smile?”

The answer, to Mohammed Abdul’s dismay (and, he imagined, to Lisa Lisa and Risa Risa), was always, ‘no’.

Their leads often turned out to be Practitioners of the Gift (or…whatever it was they called it, locally), who never learned, until that day, of what they were (and the Speedwagon Foundation, after this first contact, always offered adequate psychological support and guidebooks, instructing them on how to use their abilities).

Once, in Zurich, Switzerland, there was a real ghost involved—ah, but, there was so much more in the file Mohammed wanted to read before revisiting something like that more than once!

The last part of this file was a report concerning a promising lead, in Mexico City, that they only happened upon through luck.  There was allegedly an Abuela (referenced only as an Abuela, out of respect for her family’s wishes) who could cook without use of a stove or a flame.  She would often hold the pot in her own hands, and that was how she demonstrated her miracle to her relatives.  That was, until, one day, when she stood some ways away from an old frying pan, her grandchildren reported their Abuela screamed about a demon, pointing to the pan, as it grew hot and singed the countertop it had been placed on.

They had to wait their turn after the Vatican, and, once those men were finished and found nothing, they were allowed by the family to meet the Abuela later that week.

The Abuela passed away before the Agents from the Speedwagon Foundation could meet her.

From interviews with her family, it seemed that this incident—with the pan—wasn’t the first that she’d reportedly seen demons.  The Abuela had night terrors, she would wake up and see a dark, dark creature at the foot of her bed.

They never threatened to do her harm, but they frightened her all the same.

When Risa had a look at the Abuela’s photos, after continual begging and pleading with the family, she found the Abuela’s demon, always an extra shadow hovering behind her, one missed by Lisa Lisa.

And it looked nothing like the Abuela.

Risa Risa spent a week, holed up in her hotel room, after seeing those pictures.

Lisa Lisa did not leave the hotel, not without Risa Risa by her side.

In her notes, Risa Risa seemed uncertain if she wanted to meet this fellow Stand User or not, but, at least, before she hit thirty, she had her proof that there were people with powers like hers before her.

Out of mercy, the photo of this Abuela’s Stand was not included in this file.

The first piece of this file was a letter, handwritten, and then hand-rewritten again, and again, and again, in multiple languages, but it was the part that Mohammed Abdul liked reading and revisiting the least, in that first week with this file.

(In spite of this, Mohammed Abdul reread this letter often, it became the part he revisited most, and, when especially troubled, his mind would envision its contents.)

Hello, My Fellow Stand User,

If you are reading this file, for whatever reason, we’ll probably never meet in person.

This also means that the Speedwagon Foundation hasn’t yet found another person like me to meet you, in person.

This was my last wish, that a copy of my case-file be passed on to people like us, if they cannot send anyone like us, who needs to use a Stand, to, well, Stand Proud.

Please don’t begrudge the Foundation for failing to locate someone else like us—you and I, we are totally unique, brilliant, like stars in the sky.  It’s hard to catch a falling star in your hand, let alone happen to watch it descend from the sky.

I never found someone who could see my Mona Lisa Smile, but I can rest peacefully knowing you, whoever you are, my Beautiful Star, can see her.  I’ve dreamt of you for so long that knowing you are, and you exist, is enough for me.

I wish I could have been there for you, to guide you and tell you everything you’d need to know.  Because, even though me and my Mona Lisa Smile made it look good in photos and on the runway, you and I know life for us is never easy.

There is only so much that I can write, so I want to tell you everything I wished I could have heard, when I first saw my Mona Lisa Smile instead.

If you’re having trouble with your Stand, ask the Foundation for the guidebooks on Hamon.  [She used different names in the different languages that she wrote this letter, it was only ‘Hamon’ in English but, to Mohammed Abdul’s delight, in a general Arabic translation, it was ‘the Gift of Ra’].

They’re almost two sides of the same coin, Hamon and Stands.  Stands may not have the same weaknesses as Hamon, but they have their own set of weaknesses all the same.  Hamon is a more physical energy, with a body of research behind it.  Stands are newer, and you and I are probably the experts in their field of study.  I could never find a direct link, but…I feel it’s there, all the same.

I am filled with more hope than ever before, and I want to give that to you—because I understand how devastating it must be to be reading this, to know that you just missed meeting someone like you, and I am truly sorry I couldn’t be there for you.

When I was younger, I didn’t have a TV and I barely could afford to visit the cinema houses.  But, when I modeled, I sometimes got comparisons to an Anna May Wong.  She was an actress before my time, unfortunately not a Stand User, and I’ve only ever managed to see one of her films much later in life, but knowing she was there, she was like me, meant so much to me.

And then, when I finally moved my family into a nicer house and got a television, when I would return to California, one of my favorite shows to watch with them was “Star Trek”.  It was a nerdy little show that filled me with so much hope—I’m sorry to say that it wasn’t because the show had Stand Users like us, but there was Mr. Sulu, who looked like he could have been one of my cousins, and I think there’s probably someone on that ship to the stars that probably looks like you too.

In spite of Dr. King’s and President Kennedy’s deaths, I want to think we’re closer, not farther, to that Star Trek future, where people of different races and creeds can live together and work together for a better future, and we’re growing closer every day.

I don’t intend to totally equate the fight for racial equality with what Stand Users have faced—and we may have faced our share of racial discrimination in our lifetime, but, when I see those struggles, I can’t help but find more similarities than differences.

I want to think there will be a time when there will be a lot like us, all gathered together all over the world, loving, living, and working together, when our Stands won’t be dismissed as a mental illness.  I want to think, in those times, it will be terribly commonplace for everyone to have one.

I’m sorry that I can’t be there to join your journey into the stars, but, as selfish as it sounds, I still want to be your Anna May Wong or your Mr. Sulu.

You may not know this yet, but there have been people throughout history who have been rooting for you, making the way easier for you.  Perhaps it’s your parents, or your own Anna May Wong or Mr. Sulu.

When it’s hard for you to even use your Stand to Stand Proud, I want you to remember those people who paved the way for you, even those that you can’t recognize or those whose names you’ll never learn, and I want you to use me.

I’ve been rooting for you my whole life and, even though I can’t be there for you, I’d still love to help you stand.  I want to be your guiding star, and for this case file to help you figure yourself out.

Because, maybe one day, you’ll need to be someone else’s guiding star.  It won’t be easy, you and I know that all too well, but I believe you can do it—you just have to believe in yourself like I do!

Yours Eternally,

With Lots of Smiles and Laughter,

Risa Risa Hoshino

————-

Hollywood, US.  1955.

“Oh my god, Uncle Speedwagon’s Foundation got a mini-you,” a shirtless Joseph Joestar nearly grumbled (because it was hard to really grumble near a private pool the size of a small pond in California), after hearing his mother yack her head off, for practically an hour, about this Hoshino girl the Speedwagon Foundation had her interview.

“She’s polite and sweet and cute in a girlish way and I’ve only just met her, but I already know she’s nothing like me,” Lisa Lisa, the Hamon Master laughed aloud, enthusiastically climbing up the high dive ladder and while perfectly tilting her head back like a Norma Desmond.  (Body of Venus, Face of an Angel, Attitude of a Femme Fatale, with only a few wrinkles here and there, even at her age.  Really, almost made Joseph reconsider neglecting his Hamon.)   “We just share the same name, and I love her all the same!”

There was a lot Joseph Joestar wanted to interject, then, but those manners Grandma Erina instilled in him, to watch your tongue when you were someone’s guest, even if they were your mother who abandoned you for longer than you’d known them, stopped him.  “You’re not just going to talk to her and then leave her high and dry, after getting to the bottom of why her Hamon’s looking weird, right?”

His mother reached the top of that dive, examining the end with a glimmer in her eyes.  “Joseph, darling, what do you take me for?  I taught you everything you know about Hamon!  What makes you think I wouldn’t want to do the same for her, even if hers looks different than ours?”

There was a moment of anticipation, where the English woman simply stood, waiting (perhaps building up excitement).

And then, the moment passed.

So much like a gazelle, Elizabeth Joestar ran to the end, pressing her weight, and, then dipped up and down once and dove into the water, sparkling when the first hair on her head touched the surface, and granting the Hamon master a perfect entrance into its blue, beautiful depths with barely a splash.

An enthusiastic Suzi Q whooped in her sun chair, won over by this cheating (but Joseph loved his wife all the same).

“Dad, wasn’t that fucking amazing!”  A thirteen year old, sundressed Holly cried out, having inherited her mother’s sweet nature and his mouth (making her Italian mother gasp, that old Catholic sensibility having never left her, not even after more than a decade of being married to him).

“Don’t worry, I’m going to have a talk with Holly, honey,” Joseph promised.  More a word of caution about when she used vocabulary like that and a congratulations for finally using the word correctly.

How strange, that this Risa Hoshino was only a year younger than his Holly.

What would he have thought, if his Holly, his baby, would have seen…whatever it was this baby Lisa Lisa was seeing, while practicing her Hamon…

What a thought.

Joseph Joestar shrugged it off.  Holly was a strong kid, his kid.  She could probably handle it.  If not…well, her father was going to stick around.

“Dad, I want to meet Risa Hoshino because Japanese people are hip,” Holly practically screamed, punching the air, all too excited from her Grandmother’s old-ass party trick.  “I’ve never met a Hamon User around my age, and hers being different than Grandma’s just sounds like something I have to see!”

Well, this was a new thing to hear from the daughter.  “What makes you think the Japanese are hip?”

“Because I read at the library they have samurais…and ninjas…and shinesengumis…and geishas…” Holly rambled, Joseph only catching half of what spilled out of his daughter’s mouth, while she was excitedly swiping the air with an invisible sword.  Too precious.

“They have all those, but they’re people too,” Joseph put in, loudly and, hopefully, helpfully.  “She might not want to meet her minder’s granddaughter.  And maybe that would breach something of the Speedwagon Foundation’s policies.”  But they were Joestars.  They could probably find some way around it, if Lisa Lisa asked and her new protege wanted to make the meeting happen, it would happen.

Lisa Lisa’s head resurfaced, as perfectly as she’d entered.

“Grandma,” jumping up and down, Holly called out (something Joseph still, after all of these years, wasn’t used to seeing anyone call his mother who, he guessed, would have slugged anyone else that called her such a thing).  “Can I meet her—can I meet Risa Risa Hoshino?”

“I did tell her I had a granddaughter,” Grandma admitted with a guilty sort of smile.  “But she lost someone recently, Holly Baby.  And she’s still hurting.  It could be a while before I should ask.”

“But you’ll ask,” Holly demanded, so sweet faced and looking so much like her mother, while acting so much like her father.

“Eventually, yes,” Grandma conceded, too cool.

“YES,” Holly practically screamed at the top of her lungs, punching the air with a triumphant fist, punctuating each comma and exclamation point following this first punch in the air with another.  “I want us to be friends, best friends, because I’ve never met anyone else whose Grandma performs Hamon!  Grandma, this is the best day of my life!”

“Perhaps…you haven’t had an authentic pasta dish in Italy yet, have you,” Grandma’s inner Italian snob cooed, bobbing up and down, gracefully, in the water, almost looking like a siren.  “My first time probably catapulted that day to the top of my list and it hasn’t left that spot since.”

“This is probably ten times better, Grandma,” Holly objected, cutely pouting, already defending a friendship that had yet to be initiated (what a good girl).  “I’ve never met a Japanese person and I’ve never met a Hamon user around my age, let alone another girl (you don’t count because you’re a woman, not a girl, Grandma), and I’ve never met anyone whose grandma also knew Hamon like you.  That’s worth like—”  Young Holly paused, to calculate the worth of a new best friend, above Italian food, on her fingers.  “A million.”

A pause.  Then, “Jojo, Honey, you really have to help your daughter brush up on her maths.  Ten times one experience of trying authentic Italian pasta is still ten, not a million.”

“Hey, the way you talked up Italian pasta, it may as well be worth a million divided by ten,” Joseph rebuked.  Sure, he recognized Italian pasta was molto bene, but he hated math and he loved Holly, so what other reason did he need to defend his child?

“How much is a million divided by ten,” his Mother inquired, smiling her devilish, hellish teacherly smile, the kind he knew she had to’ve had all those years ago when she threw him into that greasy hole of hers.

Shit.

“A hundred thousand,” Suzi Q enthusiastically called out.

“Yes, saved,” Joseph cheered, leaping out of his chair and throwing himself, launching himself into the arms of his adorable, intelligent, adorable, sweet, adorable, Italian wife, fully prepared to cover her still sweet skin with kisses.

Holly joined the cheers.  “Yay, Mom!”

Joseph readied to meet his wife with arms out-stretched and lips at the ready, to kiss every bit of skin that wasn’t covered by her fashionably cherry red cutout swimsuit, as the Italians wore these days (and always reminded Joseph to look up to the heavens and sing the high praises of…whichever deity it was that he believed in).

Alas, so blinded was this Jojo by love, Italian style, that he’d missed the moment his wife’s chair was emptied, and he landed, face first, not into wonderful flesh, but stylish white wood.

With a crash, the two-hundred-or-so-pound former Englishman about wrecked the latest of Lisa Lisa’s poolside decor.

“I’m sorry, Honey,” his wife apologized with a hand proffered to him, sheepish, standing a little to the side of the remains of her chair and her husband.  “But I covered myself in sunscreen.  And, knowing you, after kissing my arms, my neck, my cheeks, and…wherever else your lips would take you, I know you’d eventually want to meet my lips and…I really didn’t want to taste my sunscreen…”

Understandable, Joseph Joestar had to admit, and even he had to throw a thumbs up, for that.

“I’m sorry about your chair, Lisa Lisa,” Suzi added, in a tone that would have confirmed to strangers that, yes, Suzi was once in Lisa Lisa’s employ.  “We’ll pay for it.”

“I think my son has paid enough,” Elizabeth Joestar claimed, between peaks of her haughty, Italian and English laughter.

After she was done, mocking her own son (the bitch!), she stopped, relishing the moment, and then claimed, “I know a lot of Hollywood types through my husband.  I bet that I could set Risa Risa up, help her land some great paying jobs.  I could watch over her and make sure she lives well, en vino veritas .  And she could take care of her family.”

“Why did we need to know that,” Joseph Joestar had to ask, wincing, after finding a couple of splinters broke through his skin.  (Oh, but sweet, sweet, Suzi was already kissing his scars.  Kissing him, and asking their baby to fetch Daddy some tweezers…shit, this was going to hurt, but, damned if he wasn’t going to enjoy the pleasure that came before more pain…)

“Because,” Lisa Lisa began, as if she already had something prepared before Joseph even thought to ask.  “Because if I’m going to be involved in her life, and she’ll eventually meet the people in mine, she’s going to need a lot of cash to pay for a lot of replacement furniture.”  Smartass.

—-

Hollywood, US.  1965.

Holly hadn’t gotten to meet Risa Risa, the Japanese-American Stand-User, as Risa Risa called herself these days, but she had found herself a Japanese jazz musician and very nearly eloped with him to his home country—very nearly, because the sweet-talking woman had called up her parents, while they were visiting Lisa Lisa, before tying the knot, to ask their permission and pitch their case.

They practically ransomed a grandkid, those scamps, for a blessing.  If their kid was a boy, they were getting a Jotaro, in honor of the Jo’s in her family and the -t/Taros in his, and, if the kid was a girl, a Serena Q, in honor of Erina and her Mother (his daughter really knew how to butter up her parents, the canny little terror) and for his mother, Tsuki.  And they were going to wait four to five years before having that kid, to give Holly time to settle in this foreign land and develop a social life outside of her beau while her beau would secure a nice home for their family.  If she grew bored of him or he couldn’t hold up his end of the bargain, before those four to five years ended, Holly would come back to them, or, if she liked Japan enough, she was going to make her own way there.

Suzi Q gave an enthusiastic and loud thumbs up, in addition to an Italian mother’s reminder to eat well and keep going to church on Sunday.

Joseph didn’t even know if he liked this Sadao, because you had to meet a guy to do that, but he trusted that his baby wasn’t a dummy and he wasn’t a hypocrite who wouldn’t tell other kids not to do what he did, years ago.

And she was going to call them weekly.

With this agreement in place, the family ended this call on very good terms.  (Probably the world record holder, among calls between daughters and their parents and the subject of eloping.)  Joseph was just going to miss having her around.

“But we didn’t even have to pay for a wedding for them,” the level-headed Suzi chirped, so very eloquently.  “ And aren’t you excited to meet little Serena Q in 5 years?”

Serena Q!  Joseph had to sigh at the thought of her.  She was going to be wonderful.  Being a father to a daughter had been everything Rodgers and Hammerstein promised in that song of theirs in “Carousel” (minus the abuse and death in that old musical, thankfully), and being a grandfather was going to be even better.  He was going to spoil the hell out of his granddaughter, without ever having to worry about dolling out some punishment for bad manners, like a father had to.  Him and Suzi were going to visit every holiday that they couldn’t convince the Kujos, as they would be called, to come to them.  Little Erina, as he wanted to call her, when Suzi wasn’t looking, was going to get every dress and doll and other pretty things she begged her wealthy grandfather to get her.

Joseph wasn’t going to let his Holly hear it, but, if he had a choice, he would have chosen a Serena Q over a Jotaro, or ten, or twenty, any day.

This was going to be a hell of an investment!

Hours passed after this oddly delightful conversation.

Still no Lisa Lisa showed up at her own, chic little home.

It was getting too late, and, out of mutual love for Lisa Lisa and for each other, the Joestars promised to take shifts staying up, to wait for Lisa Lisa.  Out of kindness, Joseph Joestar promised to take the first shift, from 12 to 1 AM.  He promised he was going to wake Suzi at 1–promised, mind, but nothing was going to stop him from forgetting, so that his Italian Sweetie could get her full forty winks.

Joseph Joestar waited in his mother’s personal library, annoyed, after searching for an hour, that she hadn’t gotten a single comic book in that huge library, not even for her own son, until finally settling for a super advanced copy of a book that shouldn’t have existed—a conversation between two of the world’s current greatest directors, Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut (sometimes having a stepfather could get pretty good).

And then, at a pretty good, tense bit where Alf talked money troubles with one of his early films and trying to hide them from the film’s star, the phone rang.

Maybe, if he asked nicely enough, he could ask his mother to give him this book.  To, maybe, make up for the decades of birthdays she missed.

Joseph answered, already knowing who had to be on the other line, and ready to feed her his case for her book, when he found himself greeted with a loud, hideous noise.

Oh God, was that…was that how his mother sounded, sobbing?

He hadn’t heard it in fucking years, but—

Joseph Joestar really didn’t like to remember when he’d last heard his mother cry like this, he just recognized it and hated recognizing it all the same.

“Mama,” he replied, with a softer tone.  “Mama, what’s wrong?”

“I’m so sorry for everything I ever did to you, Jojo,” was what he heard, between ugly sobs.  “I’m so sorry for leaving you and for Caes—”

“Mama, you stop that,” Joseph Joestar commanded, his tone growing stony.  “What happened to—he was an adult and it was his choice, to do what he did.  You remember what that head-shrink told you.  You can’t do that to yourself, you can’t hold yourself responsible for what people did, years ago.  Now, get a hold of yourself and act more like yourself.  And tell me what’s going on…”

Some more sobs, and gulps followed, but, with time, the other line picked up again.

“Jojo, Risa had to get her stomach pumped.  I didn’t realize it, but—when I took her to Industry Parties, I just didn’t watch over her like I should’ve.  I missed the signs.  I didn’t talk to her enough, I didn’t check in on her enough, and I didn’t learn enough of what she’s been up to…she’s become an alcoholic, Jojo.  Her father trusted me to watch over her, while bringing her here, and I…I never deserved that trust…”

“Mom,” Joseph sighed.  God, how was it like for other sons, who just had to worry about their mothers’ too large collections of cat figurines?  Their phone calls were probably less interesting, sure, but… “You know what you have to do.  You have to bring her to rehab, Mom.”

“You know she hates feeling confined,” Elizabeth Joestar scolded.  (And, although Joseph Joestar still hadn’t met Risa Risa, he almost hated to admit he knew that.) “And you know when she feels stressed and trapped—her Mona Lisa Smile messes with the lights and…and the building’s mainframe…there’s only so much the Foundation can cover up…”

Dammit.  “Does the Foundation have their own ‘Alcoholics’ Anonymous’?”  (Was that rude of him to ask?  If it came off that way, he didn’t mean for it to.  He just genuinely didn’t know, anymore, what his Uncle’s Foundation was up to.)

“I really don’t know…I want to…she was crying to me, earlier this week…about how nobody could see her Mona Lisa Smile.  I promised her, she’d find that person who could see her one day…and…I don’t know if I should’ve made that promise, Jojo.  I promised her that her father and I loved her all the same, that we were here for her…but it wasn’t enough…it was never enough…poor baby…”  

Did it hurt Jojo to hear his mother talking this way, when he never heard a word like this from her, growing up?

Fuck, no.  

Because he wasn’t a fucking petty, pathetic dick.

“Jojo, I want to go with her, take her around the world with the Foundation, to investigate these potential Stand cases they’ve been throwing at us for years,” his Mother put in, finally sounding firmer.  “I always said she was too young, but she’s been begging me to go, since I accidentally let a case slip to her when she was around seventeen.  Really, she’s the only person qualified to investigate these cases and I can’t let her do it alone.  My Hamon and I will watch over her.  It’s going to be Risa and Lisa-Lisa all the way.”

“What are you doing, asking for my permission?”

“Of course not.”

“Do…do you need money?”

“Ha, no way, baby,” she finally laughed, her arrogant, finally wonderful laugh.  “I just…I didn’t want to leave you abruptly again.”

Shit, Mom.  “Shit, Mom.”

A pause.

Shit.  “Just, go Mom.  You’d better’ve been planning to leave even if I cried back at you, like a two year old.  You both need this.”

“Of course I was, Baby,” the Hamon Master promised.  “This is goodbye for a while again, then, I guess, Jojo.  I’m going to talk to her Father.  And, as soon as Risa can get discharged, we’re heading to our first case.”

“Nothing’s stopping you from calling me, time to time, on your journeys,” Joseph felt like he had to remind.

“…of course not,” Lisa Lisa replied.  “I guess, I forgot to ask, how are things with you, Jojo?”

“In four or five years, you’re going to be a Great-Grandmother.  Not like a good one, like the technical term.”

A gasp from the other end.  “Have you met Holly’s—are they—”

“I only know how his voice sounds over the phone.  And it sounds like a Japanese Jazz Musician, like he said he was.  But I trust that my daughter didn’t pick a loser of a husband to spend the rest of her life with.  And I’m pretty happy Suzi and I didn’t have to bleed ourselves for a ceremony.”  He hoped he sounded confident (because he was, dammit).

“Good for her,” Lisa Lisa laughed.  “I don’t know if I’m supposed to be questioning your parenting skills now, Joseph, but I like your modern parenting style so much better than Straizo’s—”

Joseph grinned, looking perhaps more boyish than ever.  “Who do you think I learned the hands-off approach from, Mom?  I only took away the best from the best!  And I always hoped I’d be better at doing it than that old vampire bat!”

They laughed together, Mother and Son.  Screw those sons and their mothers with rooms filled with cat figurines.  This, Jojo liked, far more.

“I really needed this talk, Jojo,” his Mother sighed, so contented.  “I really love you, Baby.  You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I figured,” Joseph Joestar beamed, bright as a star, he guessed, if anyone could have seen him.  “If you could drop by, maybe bring Risa Risa with you to Japan—Holly’s there, and she’s looking for Japanese friends.”

“Poor Holly.”  A pause.  “ I never did fulfill that promise I made to her, did I?”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet,” he could practically imagine his Mother’s smile—not a snide or cruel or haughty one, for once something sweet, he liked to think, appeared on her face.

“I think Risa Risa would love to meet her too.”

—-

Hollywood, US.  1975.

Risa Risa’s beloved father, Dr. Hoshino, passed away from heart failure, just a week into February.  She spent the day crying, according to Lisa Lisa, wondering aloud and repeatedly whose Mona Lisa she was going to be now.

Risa Risa snuck away and relapsed the week after, turning up at the same hospital that saw her, nearly a decade ago, for what was ruled to be a fatal drunk driving accident.

Before she passed, a little after the last case she investigated with Lisa Lisa, Stand-User Risa Risa had written up a will and a wish for what would be done with her case file after she passed.

Her mentor, Lisa Lisa, had her screenwriter husband help her write out the master copy of the letter that came with her file, polishing up what Risa Risa wanted to write, and, then, the Foundation helped her translate her message across dozens of languages.

They were pretty corny, those letters that Joseph Joestar’s stepfather helped write.  But they weren’t for him.

Joseph Joestar and Suzi Q spent the month with Lisa Lisa and her now silvery hair.  Holly wished she could have joined them, even though she never got to meet Risa Risa like they had, but it would have been too hard for little Jotaro.

Lisa Lisa would sometimes stare into space and say nothing.

To bring her back, Suzi Q would whip out the cutest pictures of little Jojo (as Joseph Joestar’s daughter called her Jotaro).

Some nights, they’d call up, long distance, and huddle closely together, just to hear his five year old voice on the other end.

They’d ask the simplest things from him, to listen to how his young mind worked.

Lisa Lisa, the boy’s great grandmother, would ask, “What did you do today, Jojo?”

“そと…I went…out…side,” he’d tell her, in slower English.  His voice was so soft then, so nice to listen to.

“What did you see, Jojo?”

“Trees.  And…”  Little Jojo’s mother prompted something.  “Bu‘er’fies…”  Too fucking cute.  “And…a dog.”

“Your grandfather, Big Jojo, loved dogs, you know, when he was your age,” Lisa Lisa claimed, guessed, probably, admittedly correctly, in spite of never having known him then.

“Everyone loves dogs,” Big Jojo guffawed.  “Except for weirdos.  You’d better watch out for them…”

“I will,” Little Jojo promised.

“And, if I’m not there, can you sock them for me?”  Joseph felt his wife slap his shoulder—but he also heard her laughter, so it evened out.

“…お母さん！‘Sock’何ですか？”

“He’s asking what it means to sock,” Lisa Lisa translated, eyes glistening a little.  Suzi Q held her old boss’s hand and squeezed it.

Holly said something back, a little too far for the adults to hear.

“Yeah.  I’ll…I’ll sock…them…”  What a treasure.

Sometimes, in that month, staying with Lisa Lisa was easy.  She was confident and jokey and her old self.

Other times, often late at night, Joseph found her sitting in her personal library, staring at her light fixtures.

“What do you think happens to a Stand after their User passes away,” Lisa Lisa asked one night.  

Hell if Joseph knew or if he’d ever find out.

“I’d guess it would go with their user.  Wherever they go.”

Another night, his Mother forced him to make a promise.

“When the person who can see her Mona Lisa Smile is found, will you bring her file to them?”  Her voice sounded terribly frail then.  More than Joseph was ever comfortable with hearing.

“Of course, Mom,” Joseph Joestar scoffed.  “It’s going to be me.  It was always going to be me.  It has to be me.”

“Good,” Lisa Lisa sighed.  “I could never look at them, but…you’re going to look out for them, right?”

“Of course I am,” he promised, because his mother, who rarely asked anything from him, finally asked.  “Whoever they are, they’ve got Joseph Joestar on their side.”

“And you’re going to brush up on your Hamon, right,” Lisa Lisa asked.  “Hamon Users will need to guide Stand Users, until they can stand on their own.  That’s how it has to be…”

“Of course, Mom.”

“And you’re never going to tell them what happened…you’re only going to say that she had an accident, you’re never going to tell them about the drinking, right?”  His Mother, eyes watering, much less asked than begged.  “You barely knew Risa Risa, but she never deserved that.  I’d rather she became a Trekkie angelic star than…”

“In spite of my love of screaming out curse words, I know how to keep a secret or two,” Joseph promised his Mother.

“How horrible it would be, to feel so alone, and then, when you find out there was someone like you, to hear…how that person…if…if Jotaro had to hear something so horrible like that…”

“I could only imagine, Mom,” Joseph had to admit, reaching over and pulling his mother into an embrace.

—-

Cairo, Egypt.  1976.

As far as a teenaged Mohammed Abdul knew, Risa Risa Hoshino just died last year in an accident.  As it had to be.

Mohammed Abdul was also convinced that Joseph Joestar had to be like Sean Connery’s James Bond.  Because he was British and he worked for an international agency, like the Speedwagon Foundation.

“I’m better than Connery or Bond combined,” Joseph Joestar claimed.  “Because they might have the sexier accent, but I know what you call ‘the Gift of Ra’.”  Joseph apologized for the past agents that the Foundation sent, who forgot to read up on their intel and didn’t treat that name with the respect it deserved—not apologized on the agents’ behalves, mind, he just called them what they were, lazy shitheads.  And, to a sixteen year old Mohammed Abdul, this made Joseph Joestar worth at least sixty Bonds played by sixty Sean Conneries (if not more).

And Joseph Joestar knew it, from the way Mohammed Abdul looked at him with reverence and called him ‘Mr. Joestar’.

“Mr. Abdul, you know the Foundation and I—we’re going to have your back,” Joseph Joestar promised.

“And the Magician and I will protect yours, Mr. Joestar, when you’ll need us to,” the teenager promised back.

—

London, England.  1987.

Over the phone, Joseph Joestar refused to join Jean Pierre Polnareff at the Speedwagon Foundation International HQ, to even so much as look at Abdul’s massive file, his life’s work that built extensively off of what was started by Mr. Joestar’s own mother, Elizabeth “Lisa Lisa” Joestar, and her protege, the first Stand User to work with the Foundation, Risa “Risa Risa” Hoshino and her Mona Lisa Smile.

Mon Dieu, Polnareff knew everyone mourned in their own ways, but, even though he couldn’t agree with this, he’d grown to care too much about the old man to fight him over this, even though, in red notes from his dearest friend, Mohammed Abdul claimed that this file saved him and his life and that it could save others.  Out of them, Jean Pierre had just assumed Mr. Joestar would have had the most motivation to join him.  This was his own mother’s work and he had known Mohammed Abdul the longest, out of their group.

But then again, when you hit a certain age, Polnareff liked to think, you were allowed to be a little selfish like that.

Chapter Text

London, England.  1987.

“I don’t want to see that file, Polnareff,” Mr. Joseph Joestar refused, over the phone, too firmly for Polnareff’s comfort and only felt colder and colder the more often Polnareff replayed the call in his head.  “But please don’t charge ahead to see the older Abdul, alone, to give him the news—I’ve known the old…Magician for years.  I owe it to him to personally apologize for failing to bring his son home, this time, and for getting him involved with this; I’m probably going to need your help to assure him that his son didn’t die in vain, but I don’t want you going by yourself and subjecting yourself to doing this kind of thing alone.”

Was this a hidden English-American-Secret-Agent code for ‘you’re just too dumb, you Frenchman, to do something that requires great skill and tact like this, all by yourself, like an adult’?  It was only at the latest hours, a little before the wing’s night janitor clocked in at the English HQ of the Speedwagon Foundation, Jean Pierre thought stupidly, childishly vain things like this.

(The janitor, by the by, to anyone that cares to know, but Polnareff (who already knows), was named Davy Jones (not one of the many famous Davy Joneses (Jones’?) Polnareff could keep up with, the nautical figure of legend or either of the pop singers bearing his name, unfortunately, just a weird coincidence), but, to the Frenchman’s pop music junkie’s brain’s delight, Mr. Jones the Janitor was a former Royal Navy man, so that, when Janitor Jones told the beefy Frenchman, ‘it was gettin’ late, time for ‘im to be takin’ a Bo’ (a weird colloquial way of asking Polnareff to get some sleep back at his hotel room), Jean Pierre used to invite the janitor for a pint.)

(“You stop that, M’ssieur Polnareff,” Davy would cut in, so annoyed by what was coming after (but he knew these were just words that did nothing and the Speedwagon Foundation’s guest would just continue with his usual, nightly exit speech).)

(Polnareff would whip out his imagined piano and invisible harmonica and, doing his best Billy Joel impression, serenade the night janitor with some random lyric from the “Piano Man” (9 times out of 10, it was a portion mentioning Davy from the Navy, delivered with an eyebrow-less brow waggle).  The bit lasted for varying times.  A couple nights, he sang the whole song, and earned a very, very dry slow clap.)

(This is was what Polnareff did, until, one night, a frustrated Davy Jones exclaimed, “I actually really liked the last occupant of this office.  ‘E didn’t usually do shit like that, not unless ‘e got me a box of chocolates after.”)

(So, after that, every morning, Polnareff was sure to pick up a pretty nice-sized box at the drugstore between his hotel room and Speedwagon HQ, so that he could continue closing out his day with his usual night-time rendition of the bar-standard hit and M’ssieur could leave the building with one less guilty pang in his gut.)

Anywho, stupid thoughts like that Polnareff swept away like he did the dust and cobwebs in the places that were too high and/or too out of sight for Mr. Jones to reach on a nightly schedule that required him to tend to the entire wing on his salary (to SWF’s credit, at least at triple the English minimum wage at the time and with overtime).  The sooner Polnareff’s got rid of any of them, the better.

Even if this wouldn’t have been the first time he had to prepare himself to deliver such news to the older Abdul.

It just would have been the real one, this time.

Sometimes, when he really needed a break from hours of reviewing this old file and he didn’t feel like taking a walk, or after he’d finished tidying up whatever part of the office that, admittedly, didn’t really need further tidying, Jean Pierre would open up letters from the massive pile left in the middle of a really very nice coffee table for the office’s former occupant to review.  (Was it a federal offense in England, to open someone else’s letter?  If it was, why would Polnareff care?  He was French, and his very presence in England was probably a federal offense.)

The Foundation promised every envelope there wasn’t junk—but, every time Polnareff found something or another about vacationing somewhere exotic, he was sure to send it to the main office, signed “With love from Polnareff” on Mr. Abdul’s office’s letter-headed stationery (the stationary was now Jean Pierre’s, it wasn’t like Mohammed Abdul was going to be able to use it ever again, and, Jean Pierre liked to think, his dearest friend would have been amused by this).

The other letters often concerned potential Stand cases to investigate (those went in ‘for later’ piles, that he planned to call back about that day and, more often than not, wound up putting it off until days later…this ‘getting used to an office job’ was going to take some time for a swashbuckler at heart, like Jean Pierre, alright?).

Maybe it was in the second week at that office, Polnareff pulled out an envelope from that pile with neat, Japanese handwriting that made him jump from his chair and filled his eyes with tears.

Merde!

And he mentally rescheduled the rest of his…however-many-hours-in-this-work-day-he-had around this newest task, quickly sorting through the mail—opening nothing, but holding onto everything else that had that same handwriting and introducing everything that didn’t to Mssr. Gravity and his illicit lover, who he spoilt and gave everything to, Mme. Floor.

No, Jean Pierre didn’t pick up any knowledge of reading Japanese over the summer.  (He’d asked the High School students in their party, maybe once, out of curiosity, but stopped the lesson early after finding out there were three, three!, writing systems to keep track of.)  But he had a feeling about the contents of these letters before even opening them.

There was a leg in their journey where Mohammed Abdul had to fake his death.  It probably made for an exciting or frustrating anecdote to anyone hearing about it on the outside, but it definitely would have hindered Mohammed Abdul’s life’s work of gathering intelligence about Stands—like the ones their party encountered in his absence.  It didn’t surprise Jean Pierre that someone as intelligent and as devoted to Stands as Mohammed Abdul would have handed off this observation work to the only other member of the group who probably shared that same level of personally motivated enthusiasm for the subject and was too nice a boy to turn such a favor down.  

Too nice a boy.

Too nice a boy, too gone far too soon.

After gathering up the four envelopes from that massive pile of nearly fifty or eighty, Jean Pierre simply cradled them in his arms and cried like an infant.

“That’s…that’s the wrong…that’s the wrong line…”  Polnareff thought loudly, trying to recenter himself, in the way that the only other person who could have understood what he was doing…well, that person was gone.  He was gone, zut!   He was gone!  But Jean Pierre Polnareff tried again, and again, until he got it right and could summon the words aloud.

“When you’re about to get…when you’re about to get your revenge, you don’t…you don’t sit there and cry like a baby!  Here’s what you say…my…my name is Jean Pierre Polnareff,” the Frenchman cried out, adjusting what his good friend said to him just a little earlier that year, probably to the confusion of Abdul’s office’s neighbors (but, little did he know, they’d grown quite used to the Frenchman’s emotional outbursts by now).  “S-so that my good …my good friend…Kakyoin…who helped me avenge my dear little sister…and my good friend Abdul’s faked death…which…which he hid from me for…what I’m certain had to be good reasons even if…if, from, time to time, I’m still hurt by that decision…so that his…his and my beloved friend Abdul’s life’s work does not go in vain,” he threw his head out of his chest, rubbed away tears and a runny nose with his elbows, and, with more conviction, “I will learn the three different writing systems that the Japanese force themselves to use!  Or I will call up someone at the head office to send someone who can help me with this translation work!  Or both!  I will ask the office to send someone to help me with the translation work and teach me to read in Japanese!”

Or—or—oh, what a dummy he was, he could call the Kujos—

No, merde!   What was he going to do if Jotaro answered!

Polnareff had worked something out with Mr. Joestar and Jotaro—the three of them had agreed Jotaro wasn’t going to get involved with this, let alone even read a single letter from a page in this file, until he hit twenty!

Twenty!

And—he needed to finish whatever semester of school he was on (in?), or he would be expelled!  If Jotaro knew something like this of Kakyoin’s wound up in this office—Jean Pierre just knew nothing would stop Jotaro from breaking the pact, heading to England, and openly inviting expulsion, which would get Mr. Joestar even madder at Polnareff, who worried they already weren’t currently on the best of terms these days, perhaps this would push them past a more personal level than just annoyance, and…

And, after what Mrs. Holly Kujo had gone through, after everything they went through for her, Jean Pierre couldn’t ask the poor madam for her help!

Alright, so, he was either going to learn Japanese or he was going to call someone from the head office to get a translator or both!

Just as Jean Pierre raced to Abdul’s phone and picked up the receiver, he heard a cough at the door.

“M’ssieur doesn’t think I’m going to pick up all of those envelopes, that ‘e threw down like some animal in a cage,” Mr. Jones chimed in, impatient, leaning against the office’s door frame, broom in hand, and expression less than amused.

Merde!   “Is it really already—?”

“Is that time of night, again, I’m afraid,” Mr. Davy from the Navy sighed.  “So pick up your shit, offer your pint, ‘ave your song and dance, gimme my chocolates, take your leave, and let me work.  I don’t mean to sound cold, seein’ as it looks like you’ve really been ‘avin’ it, but I’ve clocked in and you really ought to be takin’ a Bo’.”

Well, Polnareff really didn’t want to disappoint his audience…

Chapter Text

There were times where Joseph Joestar wished a vampire bat had bitten his father-in-law—although probably not for the reasons most stepsons had wished something like that on their stepdads…

No, maybe phrasing such a wish like that really was in poor taste, given his family’s history.

There were times where Joseph Joestar, perhaps more accurately, wished his stepfather found some way to achieve immortality in his lifetime, like Joseph Joestar’s  world’s most beautiful cockroach of an Italian-English snobbish mother.  (Wait, was that phrasing still bad?  It sounded like, to any stranger that never really knew how things were between Joseph Joestar and his mother, Elizabeth “Lisa Lisa” Joestar, he really hated Lisa Lisa, when he never had it in him to do such a thing.  If his mother heard this line, Lisa Lisa, he knew, probably would have laughed her conceited laugh, tilting her head back like an old-film-style fatale that they don’t make anymore, in that arrogant way that only someone that lived a considerable amount of time in England and Italy could have.  And Joseph really missed hearing that sadistic laugh of hers!)  

No, he often wondered why his mother never taught her husband and his step-father Hamon, even though he talked about it with his mother and already knew the answer.

“I like keeping it my secret, so that he just mistakes my looking great at sixty as a consequence of really great genes,” she insisted (and Joseph sometimes wasn’t sure if she was joking or not after hearing her say something like that, but he knew better than to ask).  “And he doesn’t have the acumen for it—when you’ve practiced and taught Hamon for as long as I have, you can just have at most a conversation or two with someone, to realize if they have the capacity to learn it or not.  And as much as I love Rohan, I recognized that, after our first conversation, he really doesn’t have that.”  There we go, that was the answer she should have led with (but, then again, it wasn’t in his silver-haired mother’s serious-unserious nature).

Rohan was just the stepfather’s pen name that the proud Mr. Elizabeth Joestar took up later in his career.  The nerd’s real name was Arthur Schmidt and he was obsessed with this suitably nerdy book called “Lord of the Rings.”  (Yes, even some things were too nerdy for Joseph Joestar.)

But his Mother was always so proud when she talked about her screenwriter husband, and, out of genuine love and respect for the projects he took on, even though, professionally, she kept her own last name (and it was a good thing, because Lisa Lisa Schmidt sounded way too eccentric), the screenwriter stepfather was always called by his professional name, Rohan.

“I know you were an adult when you and Rohan met, Jojo, and you were long past needing another father after I married him, which I accepted, but there were a lot of things I wish you knew about him in his lifetime,” Lisa Lisa had sighed numerous times, after her Hollywood husband had passed.

“Like what?”  Joseph Joestar didn’t mean to sound mean when he asked that, if he did.  (And, thankfully, by that point, his own mother had learned not to mistake his directness for hostility.)

“Like how he had a pair of younger twin sisters that just drove him up the wall, when he was younger,” Lisa Lisa continued with a genuine smile on her face.  “And how one of them went to Germany and the other moved to Japan.  The one in Japan loved Rohan more than the one in Germany, and she talked about him and his love of the “Lord of the Rings” a little too much, while vacationing, to an Onsen Owner over in Japan…”

“This is sounding kind of convoluted, Mom,” Joseph cut in, earning a pinch to the right cheek by his sadistic mother.

“I keep telling you to practice your Hamon daily, Joseph, and the wrinkles in your face are tattling to me that you haven’t—”  His sadistic bitch of a mother!  (Joseph Joestar obviously meant that in the nicest way possible.)

“Alright,” Joseph acquiesced, probably sounding a little odd from, now, both elegant, manicured hands using too gorgeous looking tapered fingers to pull his face in two different directions.  “The hell’s your point? Get to the point!”

“The Onsen Owner has great taste.  She has a Gucci bag that she adores and she really appreciated having Rohan’s sister for company so much that she read the book Rohan loved, the same one his sister talked up, and bought her daughter a copy of “Lord of the Rings”, and I heard, through him, while he was alive, that this Onsen owner’s daughter was going to have a kid that she was either naming Eowyn or Rohan.  And I’m not giving you three guesses on what the daughter of that Japanese Onsen owner named her son,” She pinched his cheeks a little tighter, which he hoped and, thankfully, had guessed correctly was warning him of her impending point of conversation.  “My point is that, even without Hamon, through being kind to this sister and being loved by her, through this sister who was kind to an Onsen owner, my Rohan is going to live a little past his expiry date, Joseph.  He may have spent a little too much time writing scripts that went nowhere, but his kindness and his love of “Lord of the Rings” is guaranteeing him at least one Japanese kid from a Kishibe family that he’s never met, who’s going to have his name.  And maybe that kid will or won’t know how he got his name, but he’ll carry it anyway, until or unless he changes his name.”

Rohan Kishibe.  

Fucking weird name.  

Joseph Joestar wouldn’t have blamed the kid for changing his name.

Practically sounded eccentric enough to be a serial killer’s name.

But this was one of the many conversations that played, numerous times, in that mental cinema of Joseph Joestar’s internal theatre.

He wished his stepfather, Rohan, had found a less metaphorical way of achieving immortality (there, that’s the phrasing Joseph had been looking for!), because it would have kept Lisa Lisa in Hollywood, instead of giving her reason to discard her Hollywood home to her son and daughter-in-law and jetsetting around the world at…however old she was now.  (What?  He still hated math!)

“This California sun has been nice, but staying put really made my hair go white,” Lisa Lisa playfully insisted, with elegant hands on her still in-shape hips.  “This has probably been the longest that I’ve stayed put in one place, and, Honey, you have to understand I’m not the type who likes doing that sort of thing.”

“Course I do,” Joseph replied, already knowing her next line but knowing better than to bring it up.

“This is going to be goodbye for a while again, Jojo,” she told him, wiping tears from her eyes, at least, and then covering them up with some overpriced, but gorgeous, sunglasses.  “I’m obviously going to call and write, but I don’t think I’m going to spend as much time in one location as I have in California anymore.”

No.  His Hamon Master Mom really wasn’t the type to languish in a place, even in old age.  He knew this well enough to have laughed off the suggestion of putting her up in a retirement home.  Joseph knew it and so did probably everyone else that knew Elizabeth “Lisa Lisa” Joestar.

After Rohan’s death, he’d get random calls and postcards from that mother of his, sure, but there were times when Joseph Joestar looked back on those Hollywood, California days and missed when he could just ring up her fixed address and talk to his own mother.

Because Lisa Lisa was probably the only person that Joseph Joestar knew, who could have possibly advised him on how to handle the deaths of Noriaki Kakyoin and Mohammed Abdul, after the incident in Cairo, Egypt, in 1987.

“I’ve inducted someone I’ve known for years into the twenty-seven club,” Joseph Joestar wanted to tell her, badly, hoping its flippant wording would have stopped him from breaking down in front of his own Mom and would stop him from talking too long about the loss of Mohammed Abdul.  “And I watched…I watched a seventeen year old…a kid around my own own grandson’s age…someone my antisocial grandson actually seemed to really get along with…I had to see this brilliant kid sacrifice his life for me.  So I could continue to live…I could live the…damned, undeserved one I’m stuck with…I…Mom, I need to know…the ones you lost…Caesar…got to live until twenty…and Risa Risa got to see her thirties…you’re obviously better at this than I am…but…”  No.

No.

No, there’s no way he would have said that last bit aloud to his mother.  It probably would have upset her too much.  He probably would have to cut that out, if he ever managed to talk to her about this, whenever Lisa Lisa felt like ringing him up.

“How the hell did you do it,” Joseph wanted to ask her, his confident and devastatingly beautiful cockroach of a mother, hopefully without transforming from a fully grown-ass adult with a teenaged grandson into a snotty-nosed, sobbing brat in front of her.  “How the hell did you move on?  How am I supposed to move on from this?”

—

Washington D.C., US.  1987.

A lot of the conversations Joseph Joestar had been having lately had been long-distance and over the phone.

Most of them weren’t any fucking fun.

He hated having to drop off Jotaro with Holly and Suzi back in Japan and needing to leave by the end of the week, without being able to really tell them what he had to do—just that he had to head to the Domestic H.Q. of his Uncle Speedwagon’s foundation to do some follow-up work, after they’d just saved the world from a time-stopping vampire with a god-complex.

He despised telling Jotaro to take care of himself for a bit, until his Grandad could return to Japan to join them again—so that his grandson wouldn’t have to deal with…whatever he had to deal with, alone.

He loathed telling someone he trusted at the International SPW Foundation H.Q. in London to pick a few things up from Mohammed Abdul’s office and keep them for a while (until Joseph Joestar could pick them up in person), before Polnareff got sick of staying in France and had a chance to drop by the office in England.

He couldn’t stand to tell Polnareff that he never wanted to see that file of Mohammed Abdul’s again.

He seethed while talking to some board members from the International SPW H.Q., who complained to him about the Frenchman’s loud sobbing and singing and inappropriate usage of office resources.

He almost had a panic-attack over a call from some board members at the Domestic H.Q., concerning budget cuts to funds they’d be sending  the International H.Q., that actually had the gall to consider cutting down on funding for the Stand research division (after the damned world was nearly ended by Stand Users).  (“Fuck you,” was almost the only response he had for them, because what else could you tell them?  But Grandma had raised him well enough to be a little more strategic than that, so he found a way to convince them, in a more polite way than a simple “fuck you”, that was the stupidest thing they could have considered.)

He almost had a heart-attack after getting a call from that trusted contact at the International H.Q., concerning rumors that there was talk of cleaning out Mohammed Abdul’s office for someone else, especially after Joseph Joestar and Mohammed Abdul had worked together for over a decade (contrary to their grift that they’d only known each other for three years, a joke and a tactic they played on enemies and friends alike so that they were always underestimated) and how the pair of them fought for practically everything in that office (everything, down to the red carpet in the corner of the office, facing his window, to the coffee table and the desk and the phone).

He couldn’t help but scream over the phone at board members from Domestic and the International H.Q. that, so help him, if they were considering emptying out Mohammed Abdul’s office while he wasn’t looking and he was preoccupied with something else, Joseph Joestar was going to see them personally and make his mother happy by practicing his Hamon and breaking every bone in their bodies.  (That about saved Abdul’s office.  But the funding—about an hour or two after making the calls, Joseph Joestar had enough sense come back to him to worry about the funding going to that office.  And then he thought, hell with it, if worse came to worse, “Operation: Stand Proud” was going to run exclusively on Joestar money.)

But none of these compared to the worst phone calls he had to make in his office at Washington D.C. and Joseph Joestar only had himself to blame for those calls.

Mind, Jojo had his reasons for making those calls he needed to.

He could recall, decades ago, hearing from Lisa Lisa how his own Uncle Speedwagon spared her the unenviable task of seeing the Zeppelis and apologizing to them for the fate of their oldest son.  Uncle Speedwagon, who had known the Zeppelis for years, had things thrown at him and learned all kinds of Italian cuss words that he’d never even dreamed existed.  The Zeppelis banned him, his Foundation, and anyone linked to either from speaking to their family again, unless they found a way to repay their clan for the loss of their oldest son.  (Needless to say, no, old Uncle Speedwagon couldn’t find one in his lifetime.)

He had watched his antisocial grandson smile, for once, talking to a kid around his age, after having finally found a peer that said things about as awkwardly as him and actually seemed endeared by the terse, Clint-Eastwood-thing he’d had going for years.

(“Kakyoin, have you figured out why my Star Platinum wears a loin cloth?”  The Kujos’ kid was a hard read, even to his own Grandfather, and a question like this to anyone else probably would have raised eyebrows.  The pair were, of course, having these sorts of conversations in the Japanese that they so wrongly assumed they were the only ones fluent in, of their odd little Cairo-bound band.)

(But the other boy actually seemed a little amused by this question, not totally put off like any normal person would have.  “You said you liked Sumo, Jojo.  They wear those sometimes.”)

(“So why isn’t he built like a sumo-wrestler?”)

(“Because you probably wanted him to move more quickly and you don’t like to play by the rules.”)

(“So why’s he got to say ora while punching things?”)

(“It isn’t obvious to you?  Jojo, you like showing off.”)

(Jotaro Kujo’s expression flickered, for once. Was it embarrassment on his face?  Or maybe surprise?  Not even his own Grandfather could read it exactly.  “Huh.  Guess I do.”)

(Or:)

(“Kakyoin, did you figure out why your guy looks like how he looks?”  A very teenaged pause. Then: “Like with the underwear?”)

(“Jojo, I’ve loved comic books since I was a kid and they used to be influenced by contemporary strongmen costumes of the late thirties.  People in comics nowadays just dress like that.  And my favorite color is shiny green, so he’s shiny green.  The white, I think, is because I love cream soda, and cream soda has vanilla ice cream, in addition to melon-flavored soda.”  The young man just sounded so sure of himself, as he exposited this, but he didn’t seem tired at all of giving this explanation; the freshly-turned-seventeen-year-old just seemed like he could have kept going, unprompted.)

(“There’s no red on him.  Cream Soda’s got a cherry on top.  I thought you liked those.”)

(“There’s no red because I’m the cherry on top, Jojo,” the smaller redhead claimed with an unusual amount of confidence.)

(How do teenagers usually react to hearing something like that said?  Probably with something snide.  Or overly mean.)

(The younger Jojo just nodded.  “Makes sense.”)

Joseph Joestar was going to miss the hell out of overhearing those bizarre conversations the boys used to have.

With a good deal of guilt, Joseph Joestar could also remember a conversation he had with Mohammed Abdul, in the early leg of their journey, on their way to a hotel room they were sharing.  (Which hotel did this happen in?  He didn’t really know which).

“Mr. Joestar,” began a smiling Magician in Masri-Arabic.  “I’ve never met another life-long stand user before.  His eyes just light up, asking me so many things about Stands—”

“And you enjoy answering every single one of those questions he has,” the older Jojo replied, pretty much anticipating what his friend was going to say and stopping him before he said it.  “He’s a kid, still in high school.  Let him finish his school work before offering some sort of a position working with your office or with your study of Stands.”

“I know he’d really enjoy it,” Mohammed somewhat guiltily put in.  “He seems so lively during stand battles—you know that he really enjoys analyzing how Stands work.  I’d like to be a guiding star to him—“

“Don’t use that cheesy line,” Joseph Joestar shot back, although with a kind of dumb chuckle.  You can’t hear something corny like that and respond with anything less than that.  “I know he’d probably leap at the chance to join your work.”

“Even though I know it isn’t fair to do that to him, when he’s still figuring things out for himself,” the perpetually morally upright Mohammed Abdul admitted.

“Yeah,” the older Jojo agreed.

“After this journey, I’ll at least give him my number.  To answer any questions he still has,” Mohammed Abdul planned.  “If he asks to join my work, I’ll turn him down and tell him to ask a question like that again, after sorting out how he still feels about it after twenty—after his Coming of Age Day, when he’s reached the age of maturity in Japan and participated in the 成人式 (seijin-shiki) in the suit or 袴 (hakama).”

“You polyglot show-off,” Joseph Joestar playfully replied.  “If you just wanted to switch this language to another language, we could.  I’ve had to talk with Holly in Japanese for years, to help her practice.”  And anything that Holly said, went.

“I’ve just,” Mohammed Abdul paused, stopping where he stood.  And Mr. Joestar stood by his friend, as he looked for whatever it was he wanted to say next in the air in front of them and on the ground. “I’ve wondered how to repay her.  For years.  For writing the file that saved my life and gave me purpose.”  Joseph didn’t need to hear who Mohammed Abdul was talking about, to know who ‘she’ had to be.  To paraphrase what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle claimed of Irene Adler, or probably lift the spirit (it had been a while since Joseph read ‘A Study in Scarlet’), there was only ever going to be one woman Mohammed Abdul would refer to when saying ‘she’ and ‘her’ like this.  “I think she really would have loved it if someone from her family’s homeland joined in this work.”  Always the considerate person.

Joseph didn’t need to remember what happened that last night in Cairo, Egypt, on that journey.  There was no way he’d ever be allowed to forget.  It just—he was there, and then…he just wasn’t.

Having been a parent himself, Joseph Joestar knew he had to be the one to make the call to Akira and Sakura Kakyoin, to apologize to them over what happened to their boy, and ask how they wanted his body to be prepared for burial.  

His cleaned remains were currently in a freezer in the basement of the Washington D.C. HQ, usually used for cadavers with the medical students studying with the SPW.  Mr. Joestar pulled his weight to make sure it was more heavily guarded (but not too much to draw attention).  Joseph Joestar moved from his more permanent office to be closer to this freezer—if anyone asked, he’d say he grew sick of seeing the sun after Egypt and felt like hiding out in the basement for a while.  If anything else was going to happen to the young man, Joseph Joestar was prepared to do what he had to to repay the debt that he owed Noriaki Kakyoin.

He waited, the first day at that office in Washington D.C., until it was an appropriate time to receive a call in Japan, and then he made the call.

He got their answering machine and left a message.  It was a short and simple message.  “This is Joseph Joestar with the Speedwagon Foundation.  I regret to inform you that…this is a matter that needs to be discussed in conversation.  Please call me back at—”  And he provided his office’s number.

So Mr. Joseph Joestar took a breath, planned to wait in the office until they called back (even if he had to sleep in that office), and went about the other things he needed done that day.

Nobody called back that entire day.

So Mr. Joseph Joestar assumed he just hadn’t done his due-diligence, so he requested intel on Akira and Sakura Kakyoin and worked in that office, still calling the Kakyoins on a daily basis, until, about a half of a week later, he’d gotten some files.

They were quite a pair, Akira and Sakura.

Akira Kakyoin was a sharp faced man who had studied to become a Catholic priest, the favorite son of the influential Kakyoins, who were absolutely old money and rumored to have part ownership of the area bearing their last name, in Sendai, the capital city of the Miyagi Prefecture in Japan.  Akira was a martial artist and a master of Atemi, a particularly brutal subset of strikes, and an absolutely ruthless businessman.  They’d said that, in spite of leaving the priesthood and marrying his wife, at the time a nun, causing quite the scandal, he’d still gotten the lion’s share of his deceased parents’ inheritance and, then, within a year, bought out his siblings’ shares of whatever ventures their family had and totally cut communications with them.

Sakura Kakyoin (née Hisakawa) was a curly haired woman with a serious expression; she came from a family of artisans in various fields (textiles, painting, jewelry, etc.).  She’d lost her mother at an early age and, then, a very sickly father who was going blind and died the night before he was set to ship out, after being drafted in the Second World War.  She spent the remainder of her childhood living with other relatives, until listening to a calling to become a nun—a calling that, obviously, changed after she and Akira crossed paths.

They went on frequent trips as a family, until, one night, on a vacation in Egypt, their only son disappeared.

The last trip after that was to a quieter part of Japan, far from their home base, where it was rumored that their son had miraculously reappeared, weeks after his disappearance in Egypt, and, to their shock and disgust, they found he had been very recently enrolled in a school that they hadn’t known existed until that day.

Akira had threatened legal action against this school, but relented and withdrew his case.

The pair had received a call weeks ago, from the Speedwagon Foundation.  (Who authorized this call?  Who knew?  There was no signature on the call receipt.)  The transcript indicated that their son was getting treatment on his eyes and, perhaps filled with that infamous Catholic guilt, their son apologized to them for running away and reassured them he was alright, begging them not to worry.  (Mr. Joestar spent a little longer just blankly staring at this transcript. Until he made himself continue to read the file.)

The Foundation and the hospital working with them did not indicate that they received a call back.

The pair were currently embroiled in the process of a very messy divorce.

Near the end of the week, Mr. Joestar was prepared to declare them a lost cause and headed back to his hotel room; he spent the night, pondering what sort of executive decision he’d have to motion for this case.

This was until, the next morning, he found that his answering machine had a message.

In very quiet Japanese, he listened to a shy, Japanese woman state that she had a feeling what the call was about, whatever it was that Mr. Joestar with the Foundation wanted to tell her.  And she said that, if they had the corpse, if it was possible, not to dissect it and to prepare it to be presentable for a funeral and then a burial in a familial plot of land.  She made a request that he have his uniform on.

So, Mr. Joestar signed off on that.

It took about a day to transfer the body to a funeral parlor (sworn to secrecy, of course), and make it presentable.  Mr. Joestar transferred, again, to this parlor.

Although it wasn’t anything Mr. Joestar wanted to do, he looked at their work.

To say that it looked like it was just sleeping was bullshit and Joseph Joestar knew it.  A young man like Kakyoin, who always took such care of his uniform, wouldn’t have slept in it.  He had a separate set of pajamas that he changed into.   But, knowing the young man’s preference, Joseph Joestar had the young man changed into a clean uniform, his hair coiffed as he preferred it, and his hands, folded, over his chest—less for aesthetic purposes but more to hide the slight recess in his lower abdomen, compared to the rest of his upper torso.

No, Kakyoin didn’t look like he was asleep.

He looked like he was in the middle of some sort of prayer, eyes shut for a moment, about to flutter open the next second.

Mr. Joestar needed some time outside of the preparation room, to recompose himself, dry some tears, and then head back in to clasp the young man’s hands and apologize to him, promise him that he was going home to his family.

So Mr. Joestar called again, letting them know that they had gotten their son ready and to request a date to deliver their son back to his family.

And he waited the entire day again.

Only to receive no call back.

Annoyed with how familiar this pattern was becoming, Joseph Joestar tried to recall with how his Grandmother would have admonished him and, then, kept trying to call back Sakura Kakyoin.

No response for the next couple of days.

So.  He decided ‘screw discretion’ and simply left the message that they prepared their son and, if they didn’t call him back tomorrow, to schedule a date to make the return, Joseph Joestar was going to assume that they didn’t want to prop their son up and display him for people that hated him, subjecting him to another humiliation that they called a funeral, before they buried him in a place that he’d run half of the world away from (namely their family), and he said in no uncertain terms, “fuck you, you never deserved him.”

Mr. Joestar wasn’t planning on receiving any more messages from the Kakyoins, if they decided that they suddenly grew a shit to give, and, back in his very nearby hotel room, he contemplated burying the young man in the Joestar plot.

Until, he returned again to the funeral parlor, and was greeted with another red light on that machine in his makeshift office.

So he listened.

There was that meek Japanese woman apologizing again.  But, to her credit, she began in a way that got him to listen to the rest of her piece.

“I know that we didn’t deserve him,” she began, with some heavy sighs and sniffles.  (Fuck her if this was some act.)  “I’m sorry for all of the trouble—you might not believe me, but I’m sorry.  I just—I didn’t think you’d go through that for him…I’m going to let you keep the body, if you just bring him back here so that I can see him again,” a sigh, God, she just sounded tired.  “Before you spirit him away forever, I ask that you lay his head somewhere that he’d rather be than with his family.  Please come to Japan to—”  She provided an address that, upon verification, Mr. Joestar found was in the area of Kakyoin, the same name that they’d addressed the young man for fifty days before the end of their journey.  “Please call when you land here.”

And the message ended.

After nearly fifty days of pitfalls and shitfalls, this smelled a lot like a trap of some sort.

To what end?

Well, he was going to have to take Kakyoin with him for one last adventure, to find out.

But before he could get started on this leg of the journey, there was another call Mr. Joestar needed to make.

He checked the time, did some (argh) mental math to figure if it was a good time to call, picked up his receiver, dialed, and then waited to be received.

There it was.

“Hey, Davy.  How’s Polnareff doing?”

Chapter Text

As tempting as it is, to dive into the rumored locker of a Davy “from the Navy” Jones, who works as the night janitor at the International H.Q. of the Speedwagon Foundation (officially abbreviated as ‘SPW’ by everyone but Polnareff, who believes it looks too much like ‘spew’ and insists on abbreviating it as ‘SWF’ instead, probably to the annoyance of the board members at both HQs), and to explore the depths of his relationship with Mr. Joseph Joestar, as the one person at the International H.Q. that he can trust and, pardon the pun, stand, it is not currently relevant to the story of Midori-San, whom this chapter is named for.  So that locker will be unlocked and examined a little later, when it serves the narrative.

You may be wondering what relevance a Midori-San would have to Noriaki Kakyoin and his Hierophant Green, and while it will be a mystery that will be solved within this chapter, our story, to help us understand Hierophant Green, does not begin with Midori-San.

It instead begins in:

Cairo, Egypt.  1987.

Before the fifty day summer journey that would end with their son’s death, the Kakyoins vacationed in Egypt, three months before.  It was near the end of their trip that the three of them picked up food from local vendors and took it back with them, to their hotel room.  (Why, the often analytical sixteen year old Kakyoin wondered, were they eating in their hotel room and not a restaurant?  He did not know, but this observation set him a little on edge as they sat and ate in silence.  He didn’t ask his parents why they were doing this because, he’d correctly guessed, by the end of their dinner, the hideous reason would make itself apparent.)

They ate in his parents’ room, at the small table by the window.  As they often sat, his father and mother were positioned opposite him, sitting side-by-side.

“Tenmei,” his quiet mother, Sakura, began, with the name she had given him and the same name that his Father addressed him with as well (always Father, even when mother spoke of him, no pet names or other terms of endearments, as one will be able to observe shortly), “Father and I have been speaking.”

“What have you been talking about,” the sixteen year old asked, although he knew it was a useless thing to do because they would explain such things to him soon.

“Your mother and I are considering a divorce,” his Father told him, after swallowing a mouthful of hummus, very directly and mercilessly, as his nature often dictated.  “But we are granting you a part in our decision.”

Noriaki Kakyoin looked away from the vegetables, falafel, and other local delicacies that they’d brought back to their hotel, and into his parents’ faces; he searched their expressions for any signs of sympathy or empathy, any tears, any sign that he could immediately recognize that would confirm the existence of a heart in their chests or their humanity.  But there was none.  There was only a pair, sitting opposite their own son, looking colder than the food laid out before them, and, like this food, grew colder by the second.

“You stop crying now, Tenmei,” his Father cautioned, drawing attention to something that the young Noriaki Kakyoin himself had missed, and, with embarrassment, he found his hands rising to his eyes and drying some errant tears that he hadn’t known were there until now.  “We are allowing you the kindness of picking which parent you would prefer to live with.”

A strange sort of kindness he was being offered now, by his parents, but, by this point, in his sixteen years of existence, he had grown a little used to this cruelty that they mistook for kindness, even if, from time to time, like now, it overwhelmed him.

“How long do I have to make the decision,” the young Kakyoin son asked, willing the tears to stop coming, after they were dried, but finding it very difficult to do, to his assumed disappointment of his parents.  “And I assume Father is the one staying in Kakyoin, but where will mother be going?”

“I am the one who will be staying in Kakyoin, Tenmei,” his mother quietly revealed.  “Although I will no longer be a Kakyoin in name.  Father will be moving to America.”  Why his parents made such an illogical decision, their son could never understand, but his parents often did things like this.  Perhaps to throw off their son, he sometimes found himself assuming.  “If you remain with me, you will become a Hisakawa, as I will.”

Did he even like the sound of that name?  Tenmei Hisakawa, as he imagined he would need to be called in his mother’s household?  But this sort of a thought was a vanity, compared to the rest of what this decision would entail.  “What about my earlier question?  How long do I have to make this decision?”  Unable to stop those tears from exiting his eyes, he dug through his pockets and pulled out a handkerchief, opting, instead, to keep some small dignity by hiding his face if he could.

“Don’t hide your face, Tenmei,” Father ordered, denying his only son even this small part of dignity that he wanted to keep for himself (but the obedient son still did what he was told).  “We will give you this last night of our trip and, then, the plane ride back to Japan, and the drive back to our home.  I will begin to pack when we arrive and you are able to do the same.  If you do not finish packing before I do, I will assume that you would prefer to become a Hisakawa and I will leave without you.”

Mere seconds before, the young Kakyoin had only begun thinking of what it would be to carry the name Tenmei Hisakawa, and, mere seconds later, now, he was finding himself thrown into a cruel sort of game, an entrant in a race against time, to be with either Father or mother.  He looked to them, despising how his face crumpled like a piece of paper, as he, again, searched for some hidden sign of love in their expressions, something that would have informed him, yes, there was some kindness to this trick they were playing on their own son.  After failing to find some again, he asked himself, why he still looked and why he’d bothered searching, after so many years of interactions like this.  “Will you at least say goodbye to me, after you finished packing?”

“Depending on your decision, this may act as our goodbye,” claimed Akira Kakyoin, who had cut ties with his siblings after his parents’ deaths and buying out their shares in their family’s numerous ventures.  By this point, it hadn’t surprised the boy often called Noriaki that his Father’s goodbye did not include any form of apology or indication that he cared or worried about his son’s well-being.

“And if I leave you, Mother,” the young son asked, turning to the woman who had given him life.  Sakura, was what she was called.  Sakura, like the reddish pink blossoms that adorned the trees in springtime, the same color that he’d wanted to dye his curly hair for too long if he’d been allowed (and, to his parents’ joint displeasure, he had snuck away and done just the last semester, after getting his ears pierced as well).  “If I leave you, Mother, would you like me to say goodbye to you?”

This woman who sat opposite him was named Sakura, he’d assumed, by her parents who loved her at some point, before they had perished in her childhood.  Sakura, who, at some point, when he was much, much younger, called her son ‘Cherry’, because he was the fruit of her womb, until she grew embarrassed by this piece of affection that she had given to her own son, and resorted, instead, to calling him Tenmei.  Her young son looked to her, searching for some sign of warmth or pink or springtime in the look that she had given him.

She simply looked at him.  Or, perhaps, through him.  Maybe even behind him, as if searching for something else.  As though he, her own son, were invisible.  Yes, the darting of her eyes seemed to indicate it—a quick bolt to the right and, then, back to him.

“You are not obligated to,” his mother replied, denying this sign of affection he’d wanted her to have, perhaps not for the person that she was now, but for the distant memories of the earlier years when she’d held him close and called him her Cherry.  “You are free to do as you will, Tenmei.”

This was an odd sort of freedom that he was being provided.  An odd sort of freedom, a twisted sort of kindness, and a miserable family dinner.  Yes, all was normal with the Kakyoin household, even with the change of venue, the sixteen year old bitterly noted in his head.  But at least this was better than being stuck at Kakyoin.  At least when they were abroad, he was freer to enjoy the company of other people—vendors with wares to sell, wanting something from him, certainly, but offering more smiles than he was used to seeing, in their Kakyoin household.  At least abroad, he could learn other things, like dining customs or local customs, instead of cruel lessons like this, thrown his way, cruelties that his parents mistook for kindness.

Still the dutiful son, he bowed his head a little, raised it, and said, with tears not yet leaving his face, “I am no longer hungry and I want to take my leave.  To begin making my decision.  I thank you all the same and wish you both good night.”

“Yes,” his Father said, permitting his son to leave in his way, without returning any thanks or a wish for a pleasant night.

And his mother said nothing as he left his parents’ room, to go to his, adjoining theirs and separated by another door.

And after he left, with a quiet and courteous shut of the door connecting the two rooms, his parents finished up their dinner in silence, not entirely aware of why their son had begun to cry at this kindness that they had given him.  They had assumed it would have been crueler to split up without any announcement, to spirit him to America with Father or hold him hostage in Kakyoin with his mother without his say.

It would be pointless not to confirm, to those who may have already guessed, that, as soon as Noriaki Kakyoin shut that door, he quietly packed up his things, opened up his window, looked up and then down, guesstimated the distance between his floor and the ground, summoned the Stand that would later be called Hierophant Green, unwound his Stand, drew a long Stand-strand close to him, slid down several stories, landed quietly, and ran in the other direction with his Stand following closely behind him.  We will follow the Kakyoins’ child a little later in this tale, after we have finished looking into his parents.

If you, the reader, also fail to see kindness in their act, because it would be easy to dismiss this pair as simply black-hearted, evil-for-the-sake-of-evil villains, given what you, the reader, and Joseph Joestar came to learn at this point, let us, instead, turn our attention elsewhere.

Let us look through Sakura Kakyoin’s roving eyes, that were now looking away from their food and her husband, now a little more freely because her observant son had retired to his room for the night.  She was, in fact, looking past her son.  Not for anyone that she could see, but for someone that she had known had to be there.

Sakura Kakyoin, née Hisakawa, was searching for Midori-San, the demon that had devoured her father and, perhaps, her mother, and, who she feared, would murder her son as well.

But to understand her relationship to the one called Midori-San, who you, the reader, and, later in life, the son of the Kakyoins may recognize as the Stand, Hierophant Green, we must look where Sakura Kakyoin, soon to become Sakura Hisakawa again, did not think she was looking but, instead, look to where her eyes were always turned.

We must look into her past.

Kyoto City, Japan.  1943.

Before Midori-San was recognized as the demon he was, he was called 緑の光 (Midori no Hikari).  Her father was always a fan of the American novel, “The Great Gatsby”, a fact that became less popular and less shared as the War went on.  The novel ended famously with a Nick Carraway thinking back on such a light—a green one, for those who haven’t read the novel, at the end of a pier, beckoning all who see it.  Although his English was actually quite good, through the tutelage of some cousins in California that used to visit more frequently and that he used to see more often, he hadn’t quite understood what that light meant during the first two or ten reads he had of the novel.

And then, after his Sakura was born, and his wife had perished, he had more of an idea of what it had to mean.

That light was whatever you wanted it to be.

Her thin father was named Tenten Hisakawa (which he often wrote as 1010) and, in those days before the draft expanded and after his wife’s untimely death at his only daughter’s birth, he always made an effort to unite their small household of three—of himself, his beloved Sakura, and Midori no Hikari (whom he often referred to as Midori-San, and he invited his daughter to do the same).  He had no plans to take on a new wife, because, according to him, his daughter and his wife were the only women he’d ever love.  He used to have friends that dropped by (none of them women), but, as the war went on, less and less visited. Until, eventually, only Midori-San and his daughter became his only company.

They had relatives drop by and check in on them, but they hardly seemed friendly; they often insisted on taking Sakura with them, especially after the accident at the factory that nearly cost him his eyes, but it was in the infamous, stereotypical Kyoto-style that isn’t uniform across Kyoto, but, unfortunately, this case was rather stereotypical.

“Your daughter is looking well-fed,” they would say (actually meaning, ‘how could you let your daughter get so skinny?’).

“Your house is looking so nice,” they complimented (actually meaning, ‘how do you live with yourself in this shit-hole?’).

“Your paintings are looking very nice today.  They should make you quite a good amount when you take them to market to sell them today,” they…alright, you should get the picture.

How did 1010 engage with these sorts of conversations?  Sakura would watch intently, as he would thank them, ask them about their children and houses, tell him how proud he was of his paintings and how happy he was that they would be selling well—but without the usual Kyoto-flair.  What he said was what he meant.

At least, that was what the tone would convey.

“I don’t want to play their games, Sakura, so I just don’t play,” her father explained his strategy, drawing up a triangle in the air.  “I say one thing,” one end of the triangle, “I mean another,” a line was drawn, “but I don’t mean what I say,” the line became a V, “and I don’t give them any points in their head games by refusing to yell at them, scream at them, or give them any sort of satisfaction,” and the V became his triangle.

This sort of 作画 (sakuga) made little Sakura’s head spin, but her Father, with his eyes watering a little and the developing cataracts transforming his eyes from a nice, sure black to a sort of odd purple, looked so proud of himself when he explained himself.  So Sakura stood by him.

It was a little lonely, their world of three of her, her father, and Midori-San (who she couldn’t see), but they were going to make due.  Well, while she couldn’t see Midori-San, she knew what the gentleman looked like.  Her father had painted his only other friend for her a couple of times.

He looked a little like a samurai from older days, or, rather your fantasy of a samurai, but if you’d dunked your head under water without closing your eyes and then re-emerged to look at the samurai from your dreams.  Or, perhaps, if you were standing on the edge of a pier, looking into the depths of an ocean and you happened to catch the shadow of a lighthouse flashing a green light behind you, with the green light coloring the blueish water too, and that shadow happened to look a little like that samurai from your imagination, that was Midori-san.  His armor was often green or blue and it was very shiny.  

“Although the original book has a green light,” Her father had explained.  “緑 (midori), the word I gave to him and that we have for green, is green or blue.”  (He was wrong, of course. His brain did something of mixing up 青 (ao) with Midori, but he was embarrassed to correct this mistake to his daughter and had grown too fond of calling his friend ‘Midori-San’ to change it.) And that was as much explanation he would provide on Midori-San’s green and blue armor.  Some days his armor would appear more blue and, others, more green.

He had his katana, his backup sword, and a rope dart—a long rope with a metal dart, as the name suggests.  Sakura Hisakawa wasn’t entirely sure how Midori-San looked under the armor, but she liked to think he was handsome (her father’s only answer was that he was very bright).  

He did his best, Midori-San, to protect them.  On nights when they really didn’t want guests, the doorknob to their house would simply break off (miraculously with the locking mechanism in place).  Or, if they needed food, sometimes, their window would happen to be open around supper time and there would be a nice fish to cook.  If little Sakura needed something from the highest shelf, and her father was unable to reach it too, Midori-San would knock it over for them, sometimes holding it above their heads within their grasp, giving it the appearance of floating, so that they could easily take it.

Any time they were sure Midori-San had provided for them, they thanked him.

Every morning in their house began with wishing each other good morning.

“Good morning, Father,” Sakura would start.

“Good morning, Sakura.”  Her father would go next and, then, turning to Midori-San, he would continue, holding out a glove.  “Good morning, Midori-San.”

And Midori-San would find some way to respond.  Usually by grabbing the glove of 1010’s and laying it on Sakura’s head—she could feel the pressure of a head-pat—or, if she reached out a hand, that glove would shake hers back.

She could never see any body attached to the glove and, when she would hold the glove in her hand, it felt quite thin.

“Why is Midori-San’s hand so thin?”  Sakura would ask.

“Because he is made out of strings,” was his odd explanation.

“When you’ve drawn him, why didn’t you just make scribbles?”  Sakura had to ask.

“Although his true form is a long string, he re-forms himself into the shape of a person,” her father insisted.

Sakura blinked at this odd explanation.  “Father, are you teasing me?”

“Have you ever tried to befriend the thread that you like to use to mend our shirts,” Hisakawa-San asked her, as if that was going to make this make more sense.

“No.”

“Then he makes himself look like a person so that he can be our friend,” her father rationalized, as if, now, this mysterious state of Midori-San was somehow made clearer.

Even if her father said odd things like that, Sakura really loved him, because, she knew, unlike some of her other relatives, when he asked her if she felt like having some rice porridge tonight, it wasn’t an indirect request to get out of their house and get out of sight; he really did want to know if she was hungry and if she wanted to be fed.

Their nights in this odd household ended, as they began, with the three of them wishing each other goodnight in a similar way.  This was the rhythm that their lives lived, until the government put a stop to it.

Sakura was devastated when her father received the draft notice.  He was thin, his eyes were going, and he said such weird things.  What use would there be, putting him in a battlefield?

“I have a body,” he theorized to his daughter, after hearing this question.  “I have a body.  They want to give me a cherry and they want to throw my body at someone.”  Young Sakura had no clue what this meant, none of it and, as kind as the old Mr. Hisakawa was, he couldn’t make any of this sound like it could make sense (his long-ranged Stand had helped him gather intel, whether he realized he subconsciously wanted it or not, that gave him insight into things like this).  But he was her father.  Her mother was gone and her father would have to leave her.  Her father was going blind, so he was probably going to need to take Midori-San with him and that would leave her the single point on the triangle left in Kyoto.

“Midori-San could make sure you come home,” young Sakura noted, no, begged, the night that her father began packing up her things to bring with her, when he dropped her off at the home of his nearest relatives, before he would have to leave her.  “Midori-San can protect you,” she tried to suggest, in a way that her father could understand, in his odd sort of way.

“I don’t want to use Midori-San for that,” her father fervently objected, shutting up her little suitcase and grabbing her hand to take her out of their house and the odd little triangle-life that they’d lived and she would grow to miss.  “Midori-San can only protect one of us and I want him to protect you.”

He said some very strange things, her father, 1010, and Sakura didn’t understand much of what he was saying, but it was difficult to when you were four years old and the father you loved sometimes spoke in a way you couldn’t understand and couldn’t understand you in the way you wanted him to.

But this she knew well enough.

She and Midori-San would become a line, now without their third point.  And there was nothing she could do to stop it because Midori-San preferred to listen to her father instead of her.

“When you need Midori-San to do something for you,” Mr. Hisakawa advised, in his odd sort of way, “You have to tell him out loud.  I could tell him what I wanted without needing to say it aloud, but it’s different with you.  You’re my daughter and he’ll respect that, but he is a fickle, fickle man and he may not always want to do what you ask.”  

With that they left their home, Sakura was left with relatives who asked you if you wanted rice porridge but meant that they didn’t want to see you anymore, and, when she last heard about her father, from her relatives, they had said the crazy old coot died of exhaustion and worry in his own bed before he could be shipped out.

They said he was weak.

They said he didn’t love his country (but he did, Sakura knew, he often said he did, he just didn’t like where it was going and he didn’t want to go with it).

He was old and his eyes were going bad and he was useless anyway.

Sakura Hisakawa was crushed to hear all of this, about the odd father that she loved dearly and knew, even though she didn’t always understand what he said, when he said he loved her, he actually meant it.

Sakura Hisakawa waited until the rest of the upside-down, odd house she was thrown into fell asleep, before she ran to the closet, grabbed a glove, and held it out in front of her.  Waiting until the glove rose from her hand and waved at her.

“Midori-San,” she hissed, keeping her volume low enough to insure that the rest of the house wouldn’t find her talking to a floating glove that she would have to explain away.  “You did not protect my father, even though you always said you would.”

The glove fell and she turned, quickly, after hearing a pencil scritch and scratch, following the sound until she found a piece of paper with something written on it.

“I’m sorry.”

Midori-San’s handwriting was a little childish looking.  His handwriting wasn’t as nice as her father’s.

“I don’t forgive you, Midori-San,” she coldly whispered.  “You are a demon disguised as a friend, who lied to my father.  You killed my father.  And my mother too, by refusing to save her when I was born.  When you were supposed to do everything that my father wanted, without even being asked out loud.  And I never want to see you again.”  

Midori-San had not murdered her father or mother, in spite of what Mohammed Abdul’s later studies on Stands that have killed their Users could have implied.  Midori-San only did what his User had asked him and he was told to follow what his daughter asked.  His daughter did not want him a part of her life, so he would have to obey, although he would do what he could to protect the family, as his User had wanted him to.

And, with that, she did not see another glove rise or hear a pencil scritch and scratch on its own while living in Kyoto.

So it was, until:

Kakyoin, Japan.  1978.

Sakura Kakyoin’s hands trembled as she looked at a doodle of her young son’s, Tenmei, whom she’d taken to calling her Cherry (because he was the fruit of her womb).

There, in this drawing of her son’s, that he had presented to her with a wide grin on his sweet face, was a green gentleman.

“He’s the color of a shiny melon,” her son cheerfully claimed, so proud of what he had drawn.  Her son, who had been named for a father that she still held in high regard, but did not talk about at all.

She stood by her son, hands trembling, saying nothing.

Let us withdraw from the vision of an odd but idyllic childhood, turned nightmarish by time and forces beyond a four year old and her old man’s control (even if the old man was a Stand User, before there was more research into what such a thing meant); instead, return to:

Cairo, Egypt.  1987.

The same night that the Kakyoins showed their son a bit of kindness, they finished their quiet dinner and, then, opened the door into their son’s room, only to find an opened window and an empty bed.

Akira only looked forward, at the window, while his wife’s eyes looked around the room, searching for something that she wasn’t supposed to see, but knew had to be there all the same—or perhaps was there and, now, wasn’t.

Chapter Text

A Quieter Part of Japan (far from Kakyoin), 1974.

When Jotaro Kujo was a child, and his Nonna Suzi Q asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, Little Jojo Qtaro knew what he wanted to say.  (The Qtaro became a later addition, when, after his Nonna became a little upset at the loss or delay of her Serena Q, after her Serena Q turned out to be a Jotaro, but not too upset because a Nonna always loves their grandchildren, her daughter, the boy’s mother, suggested adding this last part to his name and the thing stuck in their household.)

He wanted to be a wolf.  And, not just a wolf, a really, really cool one.

It was just a little difficult to tell his Nonna over the phone when her Japanese wasn’t very good, her husband, his grandfather whose Japanese was better, wasn’t there because he was on some sort of business trip (really, work for his Uncle Speedwagon’s Foundation, but little Mr. Qtaro didn’t know that), and his Mother was a little distracted, finishing up some finishing touches on a pretty perfect homecoming for her darling hubby, her Jojo’s Papa, who would finally be coming home from a tour.

“A…wo—ruuu—-fffff…”  Little Jojo really struggled.  It was tricky, that ‘L-F’ combination, especially hard for a little boy who normally spoke a language that often had one sound out syllables and separate consonants with vowels (unless it was a ‘u’ in certain cases, which would make it disappear, and, in the case of being between an ‘L’ and ‘F’, it was not such a case).

“Oh, sweetie,” his Nonna pitied him.  To her, everything he tried to do was cute.  He was her Qtaro, without her asking if he even wanted to be (but, at that age, he didn’t mind it all that much).  But, when it came to something like this, when he really, really wanted her to know what he wanted to do with himself, because it was really important, and it was about where he saw himself in the future, it just felt very frustrating.

“A—WOO-rFffFFff,” he tried again, hoping she would understand a little more, face a little red with frustration and eyes watering a little with the effort he was putting into this one word, praying that, eventually, she’d understand.

It was after placing the last candle in a sweet little ‘Welcome Home, Jazz Man’ cake, that his mother, Seiko, as his father sometimes called her (but not always), finally looked over at him and, with a gasp and hands over her face, she finally walked over to the phone and helped her poor kid out.

“A wolf, Mama,” his mom, often called Seiko, chirped, patting Jojo Qtaro’s head and combing his curly and straight black hair with her fingers.  “He wants to be a wolf when he grows up!”

They laughed, those jerks.  He was as serious as a four year old was going to be, and he’d really wanted to let Nonna know he was going to be a really, really cool wolf.  Now, he feared, he was only going to be a cute wolf.

“Mom,” he sighed to his Mother, in his mother tongue.  “I want to be a cool wolf.”

“Oh,” his mother said, with a smile and a laugh, when she heard what this four year old said, even though he meant it.

Not a cute one, he thought.  Please don’t make it sound cute.  He just didn’t say this out loud because he was afraid that she would spout something like ‘but you’ll always be my cute wolf’, that would have made the ends of his ears turn pink and his face become hot (but he wouldn’t have entirely minded it, because he still really liked his mother).

His mother just wouldn’t make him sound like a cool wolf.

Who was it in this household who made him sound like a cool wolf?

The man who was coming home that night, the one whose voice was dripping with the hot jazz that he brought with him all over the country, with his band, and who talked like a pretty awesome Dr. Seuss book that didn’t always rhyme but still had a sort of rhythm, his papa and his Daddio, Sadao Kujo, the son of a Taro (Taro Kujo) and the Moon (Tsuki Kujo).

“Hey, ho, Jo-jo,” his father greeted him at the door, with a hand on his hip and another hand pointed right at his kid, dark eyes and curly hair shining (the hair was shining from some hair product and his eyes from genuine excitement).  Everything his Daddio said sounded like music and it all sounded so cool, even though, sometimes, it also sounded kind of cheesy.

When Jotaro Kujo told his father he really, really wanted to be a really, really cool wolf, when they were sitting together, by their kotatsu, on the ground, with their butts on the ground and their legs spread like V’s, his father grinned ear to ear with a crescent of dazzling white across his face, this son of the Moon and of another Taro.  “You’ll make a cool one, my Lone Wolf Cub.  You wanna know what your Daddio wanted to be, when he was your age?”

“What?”  His son really wanted to know.

“A slice of cheese pizza,” he said, crescent on his face growing and his eyes practically closed from the enthusiasm on his face.  Ok, this was one of those times where he was a little less cool (but only a little).  “You want to know why, Jo-Ta-Ro?”

“Why,” his four year old son asked, normally kind of wider hazel-blue-green-brown eyes narrowing at what he sensed was a setup to an incredibly cheesy punchline.

“Because everyone loves to see a slice of cheese pizza,” his father punched that line, placing his larger hand on his son’s head and petting that really, really cool cub of his.  “Can you feel me?”  The phrase was a thing his Daddio had been trying out, and had been saying more and more recently, to test if it sounded as cool as he’d hoped it did.  (It probably sounded better on stage, like a lot of things this former aspiring slice of cheese pizza said.)

“Yeah, I can feel you, Daddio,” his cool little cub said with a smile escaping from his mouth at this dumb thing.

And he stopped ruffling his lone wolf’s fur, that Jazz Man, and his ears perked up, when he heard his wife singing something a little close by (a song that little Jojo didn’t really know the lyrics of, and couldn’t have recognized it as Tim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle,” but the boy thought it sounded nice all the same).  “Gotta skedaddle, my li’l Canine.  Your Mama’s callin’, and I gotta go ballin’.”  And, with a jump, he stood, but, before he left, he asked his son, with another point of his finger.  “You mind if I make a set around that, my little Wolf, my son, my Lone Wolf Cub?”

“Right on, Daddio,” this little, really, really cool wolf said, with his eyes shining too, because he knew, on stage, his Daddio was going to make it sound even cooler than he did, right now, that slice of ‘Za, while sitting on the floor near their kotatsu.

The son got a thumbs up, as his father skipped into the nearby kitchen, and joined in whatever it was just his mother was singing before and, now, they were both singing together in perfect unison, like they’d begun the song together and he hadn’t just popped in to join her a couple of seconds ago.

And, when the little Jojo and his mother attended SAAAA-DAAAOOOO’SSS next show (as he announced himself, the second syllable was howled a little, in this show, in front of his audience), his Daddio made it sound really cool.

“This,” he said, with a sax in his hand, “Is for my little Lone Wolf, Jo-Jo!  You go-go, Jo-jo!”  Incredibly cheesy, but, on stage, and well lit, and surrounded by other guys, one playing a hot piano, a neat guitar, and a snazzy drum to keep the beat, it sounded really really cool.  Everyone around them, watching the jazz show also seemed to think it was cool, and his mother, Seiko, who was cheering the loudest out of everyone at this show, finally looked like she didn’t think it sounded cute, but it sounded really, really cool.

Little Jojo Qtaro, Jotaro Kujo, the lone wolf cub, his ambitions solidified, acknowledged, and said a thousand times cooler than the four year old could express himself at this age could by his father, on stage, ripping through a melody on a sax and his band played on.

Dang, even without Hamon, Daddio was the most powerful man in the world on that stage, with all eyes in existence on him, and, with his Dad announcing his wolfdom, it felt more real than ever.

A Quieter Part of Japan (far from Kakyoin), 1975.

“You wanna be a cowboy-wolf now, my Lone Wolf Cub,” his father smiled his wide Son-of-the-Moon smile, eyes lined now with a dark pencil and a little more product in his hair, legs spread out, clothes a bit darker, a year after his son had confessed he wanted to become just a wolf (but a really, really cool one) when he was older, and Sadao validated his son’s desires and dreams for his future by composing a cool jazz set and dedicating it to his Lone Wolf Cub.

Little Jotaro had just seen his Old Man, Old Jojo, a week or so ago(go), and Old Jojo snuck in a film and two others that his grandson really shouldn’t have seen at his age, about a man that looked like he was annoyed with everyone but he was a cowboy (his Grandfather said the cowboy’s name was Clint Eastwood, and also he had no name) with a firearm nobody really is allowed to carry around in Japan, outside of rumors of yakuza, and he walked with such a cool swagger that Little Jotaro the Wolf knew that he wanted that for himself too.

“I wanna go prowl the Wild, Wild West or Wherever, the last uncharted territory, Daddio,” his little Lone Wolf rationalized, his eyes shining, even though he knew he wouldn’t have to defend his dreams to his father.

“Sounds so cool, Lone Wolf,” his father said with a clap, grin wider than ever, this son of the Moon, to his son with the star-shaped birthmark on the back of his neck.  “You mind if I make a set about that?”

And the answer was obvious.

At the next show, little Jojo and his Mom attended, his Daddio made those dreams come true and sound very cool in a Morricone-flavored jazz set about his wolf-son, traveling the west, and he made it sound so cool and everyone else around them, that cheered and clapped, made it all sound so cool.  The young Jojo could feel it, especially after his Father called out for it (asking if he could feel him), with the sun beating down on his brow and the sand under his wolf paws.

A Quieter Part of Japan (far from Kakyoin), 1978.

Little Jojo came home with a black eye and said he’d tripped and fallen, but Sadao was the one who, in one of his increasingly rarer incidents of being home, had answered a phone call from his teachers, and, loving his Jolly-Holly-Baby that he’d Woo’d away a little over a decade ago in Holly-Holly-Wood, with her pretty melodramatic and intimidating beefer of an English-American Dad (who, Sadao feared a little on the inside, might resent him for not visiting as much as he should, even though he was a musician, Baby, and he really was trying the best that he could) and her quite Catholic Mother (his Jojo’s Italian Nonna ), that she would get upset about knowing the truth of why their Lone Wolf really had a black eye.

So, when the love of his wife was outside, hanging up laundry to dry, Sadao and his son sat, like they often did, with butts on the ground and legs spread in V’s by their kotatsu close to the ground, he had a talk with his kid.

“Jo-jo, my Little Lone Wolf Cub, you do the Joestar thing and run away if those bullies try to pick on you again,” Sadao advised, to a more serious-looking kid.  “And don’t listen to them when they say you can’t be a cowboy-wolf-astronaut,” as was his kid’s latest dream, after, one night, he’d looked up into the stars and realized space was the place, the final frontier, and it was very uncharted and there had to be enough room for a cowboy-wolf-astronaut to stretch his legs.  “You could still be a cowboy and you could still be a wolf, you know, you might just need to watch who you tell those things to.  But astronaut is the kind of career lots of boys your age pursue, can you feel me?”  It was like an amen, that ‘can you feel me’ that had become something of his on-stage and off-stage catchphrase that sounded kind of corny on-stage and off-stage.

“It wasn’t just that,” Jojo the Lone Wolf put in.  “They said I looked funny and talked funny too before some of them ganged up on me.”  And he never heard that before he started going to school.  “I have a Nonna and an American English Old Man, and nobody else really does.”  Things he hadn’t learned and kind of didn’t realize he assumed, wrongly, unfortunately, until he headed to school and tried to talk about with the other kids, among other topics, but nobody really talked back to him.

“You’re shorter than them, now, Jojo,” Sadao said, “So you don’t strike high, you’ve got to give them the low-blow, Jo-jo,” his Dad looked at his son, searching to see if Sadao’s patented corny rhyme worked this time, but, to his disappointment, when he saw hazel-blue-brown-green eyes starting to well back up at him, Sadao was going to try something else.  “When your Jazz Man Daddio, Sadao, was your age, “ he began with a point to his chest, “he had a stutter and kids that treated him like they’re treating you.  So he saw a couple of guys and gals who knew a thing or two about speech impediments, they figured out that he liked wordplay and rhymes, and, from there, he realized that he loved music and he loved jazz, and now he’s playing at shows where people actually want to see him blow on a sax with some really cool bros he met a little later in his life,” he’d hoped adding that would ease his lonely looking son’s heartache that he could see through those pretty big hazel eyes.  “You’re gonna have some Jo-Bros, but, for now, you might just need to go with the flow, Bro, Jo-Jo, can you feel me?”  He extended a hand, waiting for his son to slap it back, and acknowledge that this weird and probably corny speech, to about anyone else that heard it, was heard loud and clear.

Jotaro just looked at the hand, tears in his eyes not yet disappearing from his face.  “Aren’t you going to tell me I wasn’t supposed to fight them or something?”

“Hell, no, Jojo,” Sadao cursed (and his Holly-Jolly and Mother-in-Law and Mother and Father even would have probably gasped and admonished him, but, even though Joseph Joestar gave off the impression like he didn’t like Sadao sometimes, a common thing with sons and their fathers-in-law he was given to understand, he thought the American English Old Man would have thrown up a thumbs up here).   “I wanna throw the beat-down while you throw them the beat-down, can you feel me?”  He held his hand out again, for his son to slap back.  “Those Jo-Foes can’t do that to you, Jojo, punish you for things you can’t control—especially because you shouldn’t be punished for that—and, for that, I say, my Lone Wolf Cub, your Daddio says if you can’t run, you should give ‘em some punishment back, can you feel me?  Just try not to get caught and upset your Mom.”

This was a really corny sort of talk, but, young Jojo, sniffled just a little longer, before wiping his eyes and his nose with a shirt sleeve, and, after raising up his hand and holding it up for a couple of seconds, he brought it down with the full force that an eight year old could on his Daddio’s outstretched hand.

“Jo-Jo a Go-Go,” so spoke his father, before wrapping his arms around his cool astronaut who was going to have to secretly be a cowboy and a wolf now, even though Sadao and him agreed it sounded cool because it was really cool.  “Your father is Jazz, and his son is a Rocker, so Rock their socks off.”

“I’ll sock their socks off,” Jojo added, remembering a linguistical thing he’d learned (when? he’d kind of forgotten but it stuck).

“Hell, yeah, Jo-Ta-Ro,” his father said, squeezing his son a bit tighter.  “I can make a set about that, unless you’d mind.  I could just hide your name this time.  About my super cool astronaut-cowboy-lone-wolf-son who’s gonna get himself some Jo-Bros and fight him some Jo-Foes, can you feel me?”

And the young boy, with eyes shining, said, “Hell, yeah, Daddio.”

And the next set his father made was about a super cool, super cool astronaut-cowboy-lone-wolf (he didn’t name names this time, just in case, like Jojo wanted) and had to hide that he was a cowboy and a wolf under his Neil-Armstrong space suit (but it didn’t make him any less cool).  And that wolf was going to get some super cool bros and take down some foes that were bigger than him, because even though he was the only astronaut-cowboy-lone-wolf-cub he knew, now, he was the coolest and he’d find bros that maybe weren’t also astronaut-cowboy-lone-wolf-sons, but they were going to be cool too, even if he was going to meet them a little later than he’d wanted to, and, after he’d removed his helmet and revealed, under that astronaut helmet, that he was a cowboy wolf, they’d think it was like the coolest thing ever.  And this time, the jazz man added some more friends of his with electric guitars to the fray, because, he said, in addition to being a jazz show, this was going to be a Little Rock too because this crazy-ass wolf was a little Rocker.

SAAAA-DAAAAOOOOOOO (as his Daddio, the son of a Taro and a Moon, howled his own name on stage) wasn’t a Hamon Master and he’d never become a Stand User, but, on stage, he was pretty powerful and on and off stage he could be pretty cool.  And, as the young Jojo sat next to a kind of confused but still excited mother, looking up at his powerful father on the stage, and listened to the really neat set his father made for him, this beat down for his beat downs, he thought to himself that he kind of wanted to be a rockstar too, but, he also knew, deep down, that he had a terrible singing voice and he wasn’t great at holding his breath (bad for Hamon and sax playing, he imagined) and he moved a little more with his core and elbows (not really his fingers, like a guitar or piano commanded) so he quickly dismissed that dream, but, at least, he had a pretty cool jazzy Japanese father that was bilingual and wanted to help him with all of the intersections that he was straddling and could sort of do the rockstar thing for his own son in his jazz man kind of way.

A Quieter Part of Japan (far from Kakyoin), 1984.

Jojo was getting pretty good grades and doing pretty well in track; he was pushing himself in sports and in the books, and, he hoped, it was getting him closer to becoming that space-suited astronaut that hid he was a wolf and a cowboy (although, older, he knew he was going to need to stay human but, subconsciously, this remained the goal) or at least settle for being the astronaut that felt like he was a wolf and a cowboy inside, even though he hadn’t yet found those Jo Bros to help him fight off his Jo Foes (but, like his Daddio had suggested, he either ran from these jerks, or, if he couldn’t run, he gave them low blows and he wasn’t getting caught and he wasn’t upsetting his mother, whose cooking was awesome).

Even though his Daddio was away a little more often than he liked, he’d have those memories of those beats his Daddio would throw down when Jojo needed his own beats to throw down, because he was a Rocker, the son of a Jazz Musician.

And even though his wife, Seiko, and Jojo’s Mom was kind of making SAAAAAA-DAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOO sound kind of lame with the story of how they first met (but she was still cool and her cooking was awesome).

“It was love at first sight, honey,” his Mom cooed, singing a little bit to herself, probably fantasizing about when that touring jazzman could come back to them and the songs she sang to herself in the household would become duets with this awesome musical man again.  “I was a nurse in Hollywood, living with my grandma, and I saw a show.  He was visiting his relatives and he’d brought his music with him and I was in the crowd and— and we just locked eyes.  His eyes teared up when he saw me, he said, because he recognized that I thought he was as cool as he always hoped he’d be,” her eyes really shone with this secret of her husband’s exposed.  “His sax almost missed a beat, but he played on with the band.  I waited until the end of the show, to go backstage, and, when he got out of the dressing room and saw me, we just—“  This part sounded kind of dumb to a fourteen year old.  Dumb and maybe a little bit cool and kind of weird.  “We pointed at each other and said ‘YES!’  ‘YES!’  ‘YES!’ And then he asked me out, and, by the third date, we realized we were everything the other wanted and more and formed a plan to elope to Japan and we did it, Jojo!  We did it!”  It sounded kind of dumb, but his Mom’s eyes really sparkled, like this was the greatest triumph ever (and, looking at their pretty nice house in a quiet part of Japan, maybe it was), and Jojo knew that she really missed their Jazz Man when he was out (like he did too), even though he had his father’s first album about the Wolf-Cowboy that hid who he was under an Astronaut’s Suit (retitled something else, by the recording studio, but at least his Daddio convinced those suits to take the name from his son’s new favorite film, that he’d sneaked out to watch and never told his Mom about, “Never Cry Wolf”, so that the message was still loud and clear, like Jotaro’s favorite color, that this was something that was still for Jotaro Kujo), he’d still listen and nod and reply at the points that she wanted so that he understood that he could feel her, he also missed his former aspiring cheese pizza father.

Maybe he just wasn’t buying into the ‘love at first sight’ scam, because the closest he’d seen, at age fourteen, were a bunch of dumb, loud girls that wouldn’t shut up now but did shut up when he was a lot shorter and weirder.  These chicks gave him chocolates on Valentine’s, expecting he’d give them chocolates back on White Day and—ok, well, at this point, he did, because his Mom would ask about his Valentine’s and, being a pretty good kid at that point, even though, inside, he was still a cowboy and a wolf (he just didn’t show it to a lot of people), his mother would scream about how lovely it was that they home-made chocolate for him (even though he’d chuck them when she wasn’t looking, because hell, no, he’d eat them) and she’d home-make chocolate for him to sneak back to them.  (Jotaro hoped, that by putting it on or in their desks or their usual shoe lockers by the entrance, without seeing their faces, that that would turn them off of him, but it actually had the reverse effect because, now, not only was he a kid that was kind of starting to get handsome, he was now a tsundere that yelled at them to ‘shut up’ when they’d scream their admirations to them, but would secretly return the affections they’d stuffed those Valentines chocolates with, even though they couldn’t realize that that wasn’t what he’d intended.)

That love at first sight thing just sounded like bullshit.

A Quieter Part of Japan (as close as it would ever be to Kakyoin), 1987.

That Lone Wolf Cub found out he was haunted by a ghost.  His often gone Old Man dropped by and brought this friend of his, who was nice enough to ask his Old Man permission to hospitalize the Old Man’s own grandson, Jotaro, if that was what was needed to bring him out of the cell Jotaro put himself in, to protect everyone from this…thing he didn’t recognize. 

The friend his Old Man brought with him explained to Jotaro that this ghost that could catch bullets and gave him what he wanted like beer and Shonen Jump was called a Stand.

They said some other pretty weird thing, something about the star-shaped scars on his, his grandfather’s, his mother’s, and this weird vampire-guy’s neck-back(?) (but it wasn’t the weird vampire-guy’s, the head was only his, the body was his great grandfather’s apparently), and this was…this was a bit much for a seventeen year old kid to take in.

So he left them and, while walking down some stone steps and getting bothered by some really obnoxious, loud bitches, his leg did something weird, he nearly tripped…one thing led to another and he was accosted by a kind of weird kid his age, with blood red hair, earrings that kind of looked like cherries, a green school uniform from a different school than Jotaro’s, and a scarf, holding out a handkerchief.  The kid said he’d just transferred to Jotaro’s school and—

And this kid was pretty weird.

But like kind of a cool weird.

Like he wasn’t loud like those chicks and he had an aura like…like Lee Van Cleef.

(Jotaro wasn’t really sure how else to put it.)

(If this guy was more Colonel Mortimer or Angel-Eyes, he couldn’t tell—and, to be honest, when he watched “The Man with No Name” trilogy when he was a little too young to be watching it, it took him around the third or fourth watch to realize that the good Colonel Mortimer from the second installment of the trilogy was a completely different character from the incredibly evil Angel-Eyes of the third, because they were both portrayed by Lee Van Cleef for whatever reason—so this was probably no different.)

This kid was angular in parts and round in others, kind of weirdly, quietly intense and carried himself with this aura that was a lot like Lee Van Cleef (it had to be the cheekbones or the way he looked at Jotaro).

And then he went to school, opened up the kid’s handkerchief that he’d gotten and found a weirdly polite death threat in it, and, one thing led to another, this kid tried to kill him on behalf of that Vampire-Guy his Old Man was talking about, next-thing-came-next, the school nurse’s room they’d fought in was a mess but, by Jotaro’s guesstimate, nobody was probably going to die and it was about time for him to skip that school day, with this KO’d, high-waisted transfer student slung over his shoulder and he’d headed back to the Kujos’ home.  (Just minutes before, this Lee Van Cleef kid was saying something about how the winner took it all, including who was right or not, and Jotaro just said and did what felt right, and their ghosts-that-they-carried-with-them or their Stands or whatever beat the shit out of each other and Jotaro’s beat the other kid’s and, somehow, the other kid got covered in blood by the end, blood matching his hair.)

(There was this thing that happened in the fight that, looking back, would cause him some embarrassment.  There was this bullshit rule in Japan that a first kiss was supposed to mean something about who they were and who they’d wind up being with and some took that crap so seriously that they were careful about who they shared their drinks with, because that was supposed to count as a first kiss or whatever.  Jotaro’s first kiss was with a nurse, who this weirdo kid, he’d later learn was named Kakyoin, possessed, and he’d only kissed the nurse so that Jotaro’s big purple ghost guy could pull this Kakyoin’s green dude out of the nurse and end Kakyoin’s possession of her and…he would later ask Kakyoin if this thing with their Stands counted as a first kiss.  Or, if he didn’t know, if this was something they ought to ask the guy who was probably the world’s foremost expert on Stands, who was his Old Man’s friend, Mohammed Abdul, the same guy that asked his Old Man for his permission to possibly hospitalize Jotaro to get him out of the cell that this half Japanese and quarter Italian and quarter English that later became American seventeen year old high school student put himself in.)

(And Kakyoin, who’d heard some really ridiculous questions from him earlier that day and answered without batting much of his long eyelashes, before they shared this hotel room, because they were both high school students, got pink as a cherry blossom, when he’d asked Jojo if he’d never really kissed anyone before that.)

(Yeah, was the flatly delivered answer.  Jotaro had fucking nobody to kiss, outside of family, and, even then, he was at the age where he was kind of swearing off of that.)

(And Kakyoin said something like asking Mohammed Abdul something like that was like asking Stephen Hawking if he’d thought mice could make time machines, which sounded really fucking weird, but, for whatever reason, Jotaro kind of understood what it meant—that that sort of question was too eccentric and too small-scale compared to the scale of things that Mohammed Abdul probably saw.)

(And then Jotaro had to ask if Kakyoin’d had his first kiss before they’d had their first Stand battle and Kakyoin got as red as a cherry, practically matching his hair, and didn’t say anything for a while, until he asked Jotaro why Jojo cared to ask something like that.)

(And Jotaro didn’t really know; he kind of just did things and he didn’t know why.)

(Like how he ripped this Vampire’s flesh bud with his Purple Guy, his…Stand(?) out of this transfer student’s forehead weeks before, that same day of their first Stand Battle, even though that fucking disgusting bud was sinking its tendrils into Jotaro “Never Cry Wolf” Kujo’s skin and wanting to take the other teenager over, and his Old Man or Mohammed Abdul said something about how this bud was controlling the kid, like Hitler controlled men and women with charisma.)

(When asked why he did that, by the kid he’d saved, when, just a couple of minutes ago, they were beating the shit out of each other and even though the flesh bud was looking to get control of Sadao’s Lone Wolf Cub too while he was saving this redhead, Jojo just tersely said something to the effect of, ‘I don’t know,’ because he didn’t know.  Jotaro Kujo was just seventeen and he just did things that felt right at the time and, sometimes, it worked out.)

(And the other kid started tearing up.)

(And Jotaro thought to himself, well, shit.)

(And then his Mom got sick, when her Stand was out to kill her because this Vampire corrupted her somehow, and, that bastard didn’t know it yet, but this Vampire was dead for fucking with his Mom and Jotaro was already planning on letting that fucker know himself, Jotaro’d get to know the kid and find out he was weird and sometimes a little bit less cool than Lee Van Cleef and sometimes not.)

(And they’d add a Frenchman and an annoying kid tagalong—until that annoying kid got the boot, thank fucking Jesus Christ, sorry Nonna Suzi Q but this bitch was really fucking annoying—and then they’d lose Mohammed Abdul and regain him and then also get a dog and all of them had Stands.)

(And—well, Jotaro Kujo found the Lee Van Cleef to his Clint Eastwood, who was mostly his friend.)

(And then the fifty day journey ended.)

(And even with half of them were gone, they left all smiles at the time, just glad that they survived, and went home.)

(The Frenchman went back to France.)

(Him and his Grandad went back to Japan, unless there was another layover he forgot about before going back to Japan.)

(And then his Grandad had to leave him in Japan, to go to America for a while.)

(And Jotaro was alone, in that quiet part of Japan, in that Kujo household, with just his Mom and his Nonna .)

(And…well…he wasn’t totally alone, because he’d find himself, late at night, unable to sleep, staring into the ceiling, and…and replaying dumb conversations in his head.)

(And then he was just expected to go back to school.)

(He beat this Vampire and his Stand called ‘The World’, that Kakyoin died to help them figure out and Jotaro nearly lost his Old Man too, to save the world, and Jotaro improvised, said this thing, this Stand of the Vampire’s, was like his—looking back, he didn’t really know why he’d said that, it just felt right, and, well, it worked—and now, along with his backpack, he carried the weight of ‘The World’ on his shoulders.  And they’d also lost Iggy, the dog, and Abdul, their world’s Stephen Hawking of Stands who was a pretty nice guy for a hothead.)

(And it kind of fucking sucked.)

A Quieter Part of Japan (far again from Kakyoin), 1987.

Even though his Nonna had managed to talk to the school, in better Japanese than she’d had when he was four, that there was a family emergency and Jotaro needed to go on a fifty day thing and miss some school, they still got word that Jotaro wasn’t allowed to miss much more school, given the rest of his pretty spotty record, and he could get expelled.

He’d just defeated the World, inherited the World, and now carried its fucking weight on his shoulders.

Atlas at fucking seventeen.

And he didn’t even have his Old Man, the Frenchman, Mohammed Abdul, Iggy, or even the Lee Van Cleef to his Clint Eastwood to help him carry it.

And it was really fucking heavy.

He didn’t even have his cheese pizza Jazz Man dad around, due to a contract issue that tied him to a recording studio (and had prevented him from seeing his beloved wife in her fifty-day time of need, to his horror that, like any artist did, he was transforming into an album that was going to secretly be about missing his Holly Holly wife but was going to be retitled something else), to give him his cheesy talk or play him some music that was going to express how Jotaro Kujo felt a lot better than Jotaro Kujo was capable of explaining it himself, even at seventeen.

It was going to be fall.

The leaves were going to turn blood red.

And he was going to need to keep carrying this weight.

And Jotaro Kujo said, fuck it.

On his way to school, he used his Stand, “Star Platinum: the World”, to run away—stopping time, running through the time he’d stopped, like Dio the Vampire had used the power earlier before Jotaro had stolen it, and repeating this.  People that weren’t Stand Users only saw flashes of a teenager in black, who looked a bit older than his age, who would appear, disappear, and reappear a little distance ahead, like a ghost, and people would dismiss this sighting as a trick of the light or lack of sleep or a hallucination.

Nothing of the sort.

Jotaro Kujo had the ability to stop time at seventeen.

At seventeen, instead of going to school, he was going to the woods and going to make this Stand go back in time, because, at seventeen, he had enough control over time to stop it, dammit, why couldn’t he Stephen Hawkings it to reverse time?

He didn’t know why, it just felt right.

And sometimes that worked out for him.

So Jotaro Kujo, this Lone Wolf Cub, was going to do this so he could go back and save those friends of theirs that had to die at the end of their fifty day journey.

Maybe so he’d have a couple of other shoulders to help him carry this fucking weight.

Or maybe at least so he’d be able to keep the Lee Van Cleef to his Clint Eastwood, Iggy, and Mohammed Abdul.

So he wouldn’t have to keep moving forward in time, without them around.

Because it fucking sucked.

And he was seventeen, having to carry the weight of the World.

Can you feel me?

Chapter Text

London, England.  1987.

Let us now venture into the locker of the night-janitor, known professionally as Mr. David B. Jones (no, as the night-janitor had to insist repeatedly to a Mssr. Polnareff, the ‘B’ does not stand for ‘Bowie’ but, often, it either stood for ‘Bugger off’ or ‘Bob’s-Me-Uncle’, depending on the janitor’s mood when he heard the question for the second or twentieth time that week) or, as he was known more colloquially, at first just by Polnareff, but, to the night-janitor’s displeasure, an increasingly larger audience of other janitors, other deskjobbers, and, yes, used a couple of times by board members in conversation with him and used by a grinning Joseph Joestar himself over the phone, Davy from the Navy.

The locker isn’t a metaphorical one and it isn’t located at the bottom of the ocean, but it may as well be, in the lowest basement of the International Speedwagon Foundation H.Q. in London, England.

Among many of the secrets hidden in this locker, at this point of the tale, there are a few too many chocolate boxes (that, yes, in spite of Mr. from the Navy’s increasing irritation with the Frenchman, were slowly seeing progress).  There are also the items that Mr. Joestar, grinning, asked Mr. Davy Hereby Dubbed by Sir Polnareff of France ‘of the Navy’ to take out of Mohammed Abdul’s office.  (Joseph Joestar even whipped out an old, very rusty English accent to deliver the request, which earned very dry applause from Mr. Janitor and a very authentic, British ‘fuck you’.)  Currently, neither of these items, nor quite a few other secrets stored in this locker, are quite relevant to this narrative, concerning the Stand known as Hierophant Green and his late Stand User’s friend, Mssr. Jean Pierre Polnareff.

From the locker of Davy Jones, here are the most relevant contents: a pair of lists, that, lacking the knowledge Davy has, appear to be mere lists of songs and other people with the last name Jones.

Other relevant items from this same locker, which should begin to give us the insight we need to learn what the night-janitor knows, is an old resume and a couple of well-taken-care-of handwritten notes.

The old resume was brought with him around a decade ago, when he had first applied for the position of night-janitor.  The resume produced a couple of questions—for one, he could have worked as a licensed clinical therapist, and a pretty decent one, at that, with his doctorate and some dabbling into psychoanalysis.  And yet, here he was, applying for a job at the Speedwagon foundation, now sporting a resume indicating a brief stint with the Royal Navy and a note that he’d been dishonourably (with a ‘u’) discharged, which, in turn, produced what was now a month-long gap in his employment history.

The first question he had to answer was, in his job interview was, “why become a janitor, instead of practicing as a licensed clinical therapist?”

“When you’ve seen your share with the Royal Navy, scrubbing things doesn’t seem so bad,” Mr. David ‘Not Bowie’ Jones insisted, in a fairly normal working class British accent and surprisingly not a terrible cockney—which, yes, he had adopted primarily, during his shifts, to get people to leave him alone while he was working (but, unfortunately for him, he hadn’t counted on encountering a person like Polnareff, who would be too charmed by such a terrible accent, even if he couldn’t tell it wasn’t the real thing).  “And I’ve been finding difficulty finding something like that available, with the dishonourable discharge.”

The next question: “Why enter the Royal Navy with a doctorate and a license to practice clinical therapy?”

“I knew some Joneses who were in the Navy,” Mr. Jones sighed.  “Some quite nice, others less.  I wanted to help some Joneses and, well, non-Joneses in the Navy, if I could.”

The penultimate question: “And the dishonourable discharge?”

The answer was a little more slowly delivered, but was given, as the other answers were, without breaking eye contact and by a bald, broad-shouldered man with thick eyebrows, who looked a little older than he really was (fifty, guessed Polnareff one night, to the exasperation of the night-janitor, when he was in his thirties, he growled back to the Frenchman), standing perfectly straight, instead of sitting, with arms behind his back.  “I don’t know if the other licensed clinical therapists in the Royal Navy were receiving the orders that I was, but…I signed up to help young men and women out…not to become a recruitment ad,” a small sigh, and, then, “I was told to get them ship-shape, even if I didn’t think they were fit to see combat, and keep them ship-shape…and then, one day I got a call that one of my cases…buggered off,” he looked back at the interviewer, hoping this was enough of an answer (and a nod indicated it was so), “So I made appointments with the cases that I thought were the least qualified to stick around.  And I told them to bugger off as well and turn tail to their mothers that loved them.”

The last question: “Do you regret it?”

“I still keep in contact with those cases…seeing that they’re still…ship-shape…after leaving the Royal Navy, and they’re doing quite alright for themselves,” Mr. Jones put in, shifting his weight on his feet and puffing his chest out a little bit.  “So, in spite of the month-long gap in my employment history, I’m quite proud of the dishonourable discharge.”

The interviewer was a Mr. Joseph Joestar, who hired Mr. Jones on the spot, with a very vigorous handshake and, later, after the hire was made official, a remark that he knew he liked the new night-janitor immediately, even before the interview began, he just didn’t know why…and then, he shared something of a scheme that he’d planned.  Mr. Jones would be paid triple the amount plus overtime for his night-time shift, and, if they would find others with his similar credentials, they wanted to hire more like him.

Why?  To paraphrase Joseph Joestar, “to talk down stressed employees working later than they’re getting paid to and tell any of them still in the building, by the time the night-shift starts, to bugger off.”

Unfortunately, this was a pipe-dream.  Davy “Not Bowie” Jones, formerly from the Royal Navy, was the only licensed clinical therapist to apply for such a position, in spite of the fairly good pay (all things considered), and he remained the only one working the night-shift as a janitor for the International Speedwagon Foundation H.Q. in London, England,

The other objects of note, to inform us of the significance of Dr. Jones’ lists, that is to say, the well taken care of handwritten notes, were on stationary tagged “From the Office of Mohammed Abdul” and written by the office’s former owner.  They were the only ones he’d received in his entire career as the night-janitor, thanking him for keeping his and other offices clean.  Sometimes, he’d find them positioned in odd spots, with rubber rats or fake spiders (which always caused him to jump), but, in addition to finding these notes, he’d also find a small box of chocolates.  So it about evened out.  The rubber rats and fake spiders were thrown out, the chocolates were eaten and their boxes were also chucked in good time, but the notes were kept.

One such note that touched him, not only because it came with a rather large box of chocolates and no rubber rats or fake spiders. It concerned the state of Mr. Mohammed Abdul’s red carpet by the window.

This was his prayer carpet, which he used for his daily prayers, as a man of the Islamic faith.  And, as the only man of that faith, to hold an office in this building, sometimes, when Mr. Abdul wasn’t looking or, worse, when he was, entrants into his office would wipe their muddy feet on the carpet or spit on it.  (Of course, these unwanted guests often found the door shut, on the way out, and the doorknob…hotter than usual…and…with a burn in their palm.  No, Joseph Joestar never talked to Abdul about the way he treated his guests, in spite of so many board members insisting, especially not after learning how those shitheads earned this…)

But Mohammed Abdul would often clean the carpet himself, groaning, until, one late night, he decided he’d save the task of removing mud from it for the morning, after some shut eye.

When he’d returned to finish the task that next morning, to his delight, he found the carpet very clean.  After asking around, Mohammed Abdul wrote the first of the many letters that he would provide Mr. Jones, throughout his career in that office, and would continue to do so, until that fateful trip in Cairo, Egypt, in 1987.

When Joseph Joestar requested that Davy keep an eye on the late Mohammed Abdul’s office and to make sure that its current occupant, Missr. Polnareff, were tended to, the dishonourably discharged night-janitor kept to his duty.

Even though the office’s current tenant was very annoying.

“No, I’m no’ related to Caroline Jones,” Davy Jones found himself, again, answering the same variant of the same question that he had, when Polnareff had found a new game to torment the janitor with, in exchange for a song and a box of chocolates.

“What about Terry Jones?”  The Frenchman queried with a wide grin, as he sat at the desk of Mohammed Abdul and, for the twentieth time, hand-wrote a request to the main office for a translator to help him read and learn the three writing systems that the Japanese forced themselves to use.  (Needless to say, the requests were written on the stationary printed for the office.) Very close to the current note that he was writing were the other nineteen twins and the four notes with the neat Japanese writing.  The twenty notes would be taped to the windows of the main office, as their twenty siblings had been earlier that week, and as their ancestors had, and so on.  This was Polnareff’s tactic, until his request was respected (even though, as Mr. Dr. Jones the night-janitor, say it with me, from the Navy, later found, Mssr. Polnareff wasn’t even officially employed by the Foundation, he was more or less doing unpaid work).  “You, Mssr. Not Bowie do have quite zee OUT-reh-shi-OUS OCC-SAHN-TT! ”  It took a second for the Englishman to process the Frenchman’s latest mockery, only to realize, to his dread:

“No I’m not related to ‘im.  And no Monty Python,” Davy Jones demanded, of a grinning Polnareff.  Because there was absolutely nothing worse, in his book, than assholes that had nothing better to do than quote Monty Python.  “Just finish up your work, sing your song, gimme my chocolates, and get out.”

At least he had managed Mssr. Polnareff to open up his catalogue of songs, beyond the Billy Joel single.  Dr. Jones dealt with a couple of obnoxious covers of “In the Navy” (by The Village People) (delivered with winks, everytime he mentioned people making a ‘Stand’), various Beatles hits, a couple of Bowie songs (“D.J.” was a frequent favorite of his to play for, well, the D.J. in front of him), nothing from the other Davy Jones (per the angry request of Mr. Jones, who had spat, cleaned up the spittle, and referred to this Jones as the inferior Dave), and even some Edith Piaf.

Tonight, Mr. Davy Jones was going to be regaled with a rendition of Michel Polnareff’s “Love Me, Please Love Me Do.”

“Don’t you want to know if I’m related to Michel Polnareff,” Jean Pierre flirtily tempted, already preparing the invisible piano on that desk, that was formerly occupied by Mohammed Abdul, and who, Polnareff hoped, wouldn’t have minded these nightly concerts in his office.

“It’s a no, right,” Mr. Jones groaned, at this point, unsure if he was supposed to add an extra ‘r’ or something with the cockney he was supposed to be putting on.

“I am not related to Michel Polnareff the singer,” Polnareff confirmed, with a wide, boyish grin, already starting to put down the fingering for the opening notes.  “But I hope he would like me if he ever knew of me!  In fact, I hope he would… Love Me— “  This fucker.

This fucker.

He wasn’t a bad singer, at all, Polnareff.  Just fucking annoying.  And, after a couple of nights, Mr. Dr. dishonourably discharged from the Navy had observed that Polnareff was actually watching how the fingers were placed.

After every performance, Mr. Polnareff would take a bow, pass his nightly audience his box of chocolates, and take a bo’.  Mr. Jones would start cleaning the office with the carpet (still making sure it was in good shape, in spite of it seeing little daily prayer these days, something that even Mr. Jones found himself blinking away tears over), attend to the rest of the office, and carry on his work.

He would, then, return to his locker, add to his list of Joneses and songs, and, then do a quick psychoanalysis with a couple of mouthfuls of chocolate.  (The chocolate he was considering asking Polnareff cut down on, perhaps swapping out the boxes with cheaper bars, after learning from other janitors that Polnareff was not being paid, as he wasn’t under the official employment of the SPW just yet.  But the Frenchman was too annoying.  This was the tax, as far as Jones was concerned.)

The frequent requests for relations to various Joneses indicated he had family on his mind (which got a ‘no shit’ from Mr. Joestar) and that he wanted to get closer to Jones, perhaps see him as a surrogate family member of some sort (‘so get closer,’ was the response from Joestar, that bastard).  There were a variety of Joneses that Davy had to deny being related to, in various fields of entertainment.  There was the legendary cartoonist Chuck Jones, Caroline Jones of “Addams Family” fame, Mr. Terry Jones of Pythonesque infamy, a Ken, Elvin, Jimmy, Linda, Philly Joe, Thad, Etta, Brian, Spike, Mickey, Sharon, and a Daniel.  Mostly singers or songsters of some sort.  (Meant he had music on his mind, no shit, and, to the Englishman’s fear…indicated that Polnareff was probably, subconsciously requesting Mr. Jones the night-janitor join in with the singing.  Fuck that.  Jones was keeping that observation to himself, unless he’d have to hear Joestar laugh his ass off and ask why Jones wouldn’t just make the baby Frenchman happy and make the nightly exit music into a duet.)

The lists of songs often indicated wanting to be loved, regret, wanting to confess something or tell something to someone…Mr. Jones figured the Frenchman was needy, but also had a love confession stuck on his mind.  And, in the office of Mohammed Abdul, it really wasn’t difficult to guess who this desired confession was for.

Even if Polnareff was a bastard, an annoyance, and a buggerall, after making that last assessment, Jones had to pity him.

The best Jones figured he could do was give Polnareff an audience to deliver this confession to, even if it couldn’t go to the right person.

So was the rhythm of things, until, a couple of nights later, just as the night-janitor was about to enter the office formerly occupied by Mohammed Abdul, he found himself cut off at the entrance by a young, skinny, tanned, twenty nine year old Puerto Rican man with dark hair, slicked back.

“Buggerall,” Dr. Davyman Navyman instinctively groaned.

“Sorry, Navy-Davy,” the Puerto Rican apologized, admittedly, very sincerely, with a grin that took up half of his face, with a fake salute.  “I’ve seen Mr. Polnareff’s requests around the office and got a chuckle from ‘em, so…well, I’m here to help Pops out after hours!”

“Oh my god,” Davy groaned, already anticipating nightmarish nights of shooing away two grinning idiots in his future.  “You’re—you’re going to be the Japanese translator…”

“And his teacher,” delivered the younger man in younger man’s clothes (specifically a flashy red jacket). With a point to the chest and a ridiculous, almost naselated laugh.  “I’m a new guy like him, and I figure us new guys ought to stick together!  Name’s Rafael O!  With a name like that, I wouldn’t mind playing this guy’s guardian angel.”

Oh fuck.

Fuck.

 This office was becoming a magnet for people with obnoxious voices.

Mr. Jones just stood by the door, saying nothing, barely perceiving what was going on in the office (there was a lot of excited screaming, some platonic cheek-kissing, some words of thanks, and so on); he was just hoping the chocolates today were especially damn good.  (And maybe he’d consider asking the other to pay the tax too…)

The translation work went by surprisingly quickly.

Not because either were especially skilled translators (Mr. O was, surprisingly, as a fan of the tokusatsu genre, but not Polnareff, who somewhat knew the speech enough to make very basic verbal puns but couldn’t read a single character of any of the three writing systems).

They simply found that when they opened one of the letters, they found lines and some smaller, completed characters.  But it didn’t make sense, according to Mr. O.

Blinking at each other, they opened the other three and found the same.

According to the dates, they appeared to be sent at the same time.

It was after some odd blinking at the notes separately that Polnareff, with a point of his finger to the ceiling, shared a realization.  “It’s a puzzle!”

And so the pair of them stood by the desk of Abdul’s and rearranged the letters, until they formed a rather large set of characters, followed by smaller ones.

The larger set of characters in the dead-center of the set of letters read “shine” (but it wasn’t read as the English word, meaning to sparkle at all), as indicated by a smaller set of what was not known as kanji, like the larger characters were.  The smaller set were hiragana, indicating how the kanji could be read.

“It’s more, SHEE-neh,” the skinny translator indicated, standing next to Polnareff akimbo, as Polnareff pointed to the larger set of characters in the dead center of the set of letters.  “The Japanese language is very contextual.  The way that this is conjugated can mean, for example, ‘death, ね(ne)?’  As if to say, ‘death, eh?’  But we should really translate the smaller sets of characters, so that we can grasp the entire picture,” Mr. O the translator insisted with a point to the smaller characters.

The smaller set of kanji in the bottom rightmost corner also had their own hiragana, indicating how they were to be read.  One line could be read ‘Kakyoin’, to Polnareff’s delight.  And, then, the lowest line took a little more time to translate.

ディオ様（さま）に代（だい）わって. “…it’s very complicated, Pops.  You see, this line is a very good example of a line that uses all three of the writing systems in Japan.  The more angular letters are what you call ‘katakana’, and they’re usually used for sound effects in manga or for foreign names or words,” the young translator exposited, as Polnareff nodded, fully devoting himself to memorizing this and taking this down on a separate piece of Abdul’s stationary.  “The ‘sama’ kanji after the katakana I recognize, means ‘someone of a high position.’  And the ‘ni dai nette’ at the end, after the kanji for ‘sama’ usually means something to the effect of ‘on behalf of’.  So, this could be a message from your good friend, being sent on behalf of someone else.”

The pair pieced together the translation, on a separate piece of Mohammed Abdul’s stationary, and came up with a translation of:

“Death, eh.

—Kakyoin

On behalf of Deio of a higher office.”

Polnareff blinked a couple of times.  This didn’t sound at all like his good friend.  It didn’t even sound like it made any sense.

And then, Mr. O snapped his fingers.  “I forgot, Pops.”  He pointed again to the sharper characters, the katakana, circling the smaller イ.  “When you have a smaller katakana vowel letter-thingummy like that, it tends to overwrite the vowel of the character sound before it.”

So they fixed their work.

“Death, eh.

—Kakyoin

On behalf of Dio of a higher office.”

Polnareff took one look and then, after a second of processing what was in front of them, clasped both cheeks to his face.  “ Mon Dieu!  It’s a death threat!  From when poor Kakyoin was under Dio’s employ!”

“No, it’s…ah…a death…order…” the translator corrected, while rubbing his chin.  “I forgot in cases where you’re conjugating verbs that end with a ‘nu’ sound, in the imperative form, the ‘u’ becomes an ‘e’…”

And, so:

“Die!

—Kakyoin

On behalf of Dio of a higher office”

The pair looked at their handiwork, and then each other, and then their handiwork.

“You recognize the date these are from, Pops?”  Was all the translator had to ask, gulping, only recognizing the name ‘Dio’ from rumors around the office and, even then, figuring he didn’t sound like a nice guy.

Polnareff shook his head.  (Of course, if Joseph Joestar or Jotaro had been there, they would have immediately recognized that these letters shared the same date as a little before the start of their journey, back in Japan.)

It was around this point that the night-janitor had finally been listening in, and he wasn’t exactly thrilled at what he’d heard.  “Oh my god—you idiots!  Have you been touching that with your bare hands??  Haven’t you heard of poisons that can be mailed and transmitted through touch—!”

Both Polnareff and his translator jumped back, squealing.

“You bastards head to the labs next door—there are stations for scientists to clean their eyes and showers, in the event of a chemical spill hitting the body!  And then ingest the standard issue SPW antitoxin that’s in the first aid kit on the wall,” Davy the ex-Navyman ordered, while stretching some rubber gloves over his hands.  “I’m going to bag these bastards and send them to the labs for chemical analysis!”

Mr. O didn’t need to be told twice, already dashing for the door.  But Mssr. Polnareff had something else to say, before heading out.  “But I don’t want to spew—“

“Fuck off,” Davy screamed, as he put on a protective mask, and then, a little muffled, “And that’s an order, Monsieur!”

Polnareff nodded and dashed off, to join his translator/teacher, but couldn’t help but put in, with a smile, “Your accent was slipping, Davy.”

“Bullshit,” Davy cursed internally, while pulling out bags to hold the four letters.

“Bullshit,” Davy continued to curse, while wiping up the desk.

“Bullshit,” Davy still hadn’t finished cursing, not even when he went to the labs’ showers to check on the pair, only to find a towel clad Mr. O standing over and rubbing the back of a sobbing and spewing nude Polnareff, who wasn’t wearing a towel and leaned over the toilet near a shower (the shower, thankfully, didn’t have anything extra for Davy to clean up).

“He took the antitoxin and said it’s not the poison,” Mr. Guardian Angel tried to put in, so helpfully.

“Bullshit,” Davy repeated, screaming, angrily, heading to the shower, grabbing a towel, and covering up the Frenchman, and, then, heading out to grab a glass of water, before demanding the translator take a bo’ (which he did).

It took some minutes and sobbing out of him, before the Frenchman finally accepted the glass offered to him and spoke in complete sentences again.  “I—I must apologize…for causing so much worry…it wasn’t…it wasn’t the poison…I just…it was a memory…”

Davy stood, that thirty-something that looked about fifty, with his back a little too straight and his brows very knitted, with his hands behind his back, as he’d interviewed for the Foundation years ago.  But there was something—very much out of the usual observations in the way Polnareff was conducting himself right now.

And it was looking a little too familiar for Mr. Jones’ comfort.

With a hand to Polnareff’s shoulder, he asked the Frenchman if he needed anything else.  With a point, Polnareff requested his clothes, which the former therapist fetched and brought to this patient of his.  Jones repeated his question, which was received with a shake of the head.

“You listen to me, Polnareff,” the Janitor began, doing his best to turn off that more angry part of him and not at all caring about the accent getting turned on or not.  “You take the day off or even the week.  I’m going to give you my number and you call me if…if you need…anything…whatever that memory is, take care of that first before heading back to the office.  That’s an order.”

After processing the request, Polnareff slowly nodded his head, before putting in, “I’ll have to get you a lot of boxes of chocolates, to make up for the nights that I won’t be coming into the office.  And I’ll…I’ll be sure to perform whatever song you request…as many as you’d like…I’m…I’m very sorry for never asking who you’d like to hear…”

“Don’t worry about it,” the doctor practically reprimanded, grasping that shoulder of Polnareff’s tighter, before offering a hand to help the massive Frenchman out.  “I could do with a break from your concerts.  And I’ve got more than enough chocolates in my locker.  Do you know what you get, after having so many chocolates?  You only get fat.”

The Frenchman smiled, accepting this rare joke with a small chuckle, and clasping his own hands together, not yet getting off the ground or putting his clothes on.  “There is a locker of Davy Jones…”  Like a kid learning Santa was real.

Davy “Not Bowie and not related to a lot of Joneses” just stared, curious at this, but he didn’t rush the Frenchman to put his clothes back on, sing his small song (a very short rendition of “We’ll Meet Again”), hand over a modest sized box of chocolates, grab Davy’s number (no guesses on whose stationary the number was written), and head back to his hotel room, with a small salute and a smile.

And, with Polnareff off of the premises, Mr. Jones carried on with his usual duties, maintained the carpet in Mohammed Abdul’s office, and, then, returned to his locker to update his casefile on Jean Pierre Polnareff.

With a mouthful of chocolate, Jones reviewed the day’s note and then made a realization.

Perhaps he should have asked about the memory.

Whatever it was that Polnareff had remarked about at the end of the day.

He made a small note to ask, if Polnareff should call to talk (but not if they saw each other in person, unless Polnareff began that conversation).

The memory that haunted Polnareff, which Mr. Jones would eventually talk about with the Frenchman, concerned his very good friend Kakyoin, and who it was that Kakyoin shared his first kiss with.

Chapter Text

When a young man like Kakyoin passes, he takes with him the dreams that his loved ones had for him and leaves behind only mysteries that others will have to solve.

When he is finally buried, there is a box in the Washington H.Q. of the Speedwagon Foundation, in Joseph Joestar’s more permanent office, containing the young man’s few possessions, which will be dispensed, per a piece of paper found in the former student’s pocket at the time of his passing.  (Perhaps sensing what was to come, he had made some plans.) The young man had very few possessions, but they were still distributed accordingly.

Per the piece of paper, his body would be offered to his parents.

His extra uniforms, pajamas, socks, and shoes would be burned (there was no need to have his parents suffer further by forcing these into their hands and they were really only tailor-made to fit him and his frame).

His gold pins would have gone to Mohammed Abdul (but they were going with his person instead).

Iggy was a dog, so there wasn’t much that the young man felt obligated to give him, but he had written that his pocket change would be going to their canine companion (to add to his fund for coffee-flavored gum).  (This change was also staying in his pocket.)

His sunglasses and a copy of Sherlock Holmes’ mysteries would go to Jotaro Kujo—the sunglasses were shattered in his pocket, the night of his final confrontation, and were ruled by Old Joseph to be too bittersweet a final gift for his grandson, but, respecting the young man’s wishes, Old Joseph would eventually offer those to Jotaro Kujo, in addition to the book.  (Only Jotaro Kujo knows where those sunglasses have gone, in addition to the book.)  This copy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s text would have a couple of handwritten notes in the margins, written in very neat Japanese, and which Jotaro Kujo would see the first night that he had the book in his possession and, after looking through the book from cover to cover, to look for these notes until there wasn’t a single one left.  It would understandably take him many years to revisit this book, if he had at all.

Joseph would be allowed a white scarf, which he would keep in that box in his office and, even after eventually moving out of that office, it would never leave that box (but he did take the box with him).

To Polnareff, the Kakyoins’ son left a very curious mystery.  To anyone that knew the pair, who could sometimes fight and make foreign language puns and handshakes, they would still be unable to understand why such a thing would have been left to Polnareff.  If one asked Polnareff, he would not immediately know, either, why this was left to him—but, a little later in life, he liked to think he had a better idea.

To Polnareff, his good friend, Kakyoin, was going to leave a copy of a mystery novel, originally translated from Italian, that he would sometimes read on the train, entitled, “Golden Wind”.  Throughout the book, there were also neat notes in the margins, handwritten in the young man’s native Japanese language, which, eventually, after having the book in his possession, his Guardian Angel translator would help him decipher.

The first note, handwritten on the title page inside of the novel, under the byline “An English Translation of ‘Vento Aureo ’…” was the phrase :

『時間（じかん）は　黄金長方形（おおごんちょうほうけい）です。』

When translated, they would find that the phrase could be read at least two ways, like many things in the Japanese language.  (Usually one needed context, to better fully grasp the meaning of a phrase, but Polnareff and his translator/teacher would not have this and, instead, would have to divine their own.)

Either “Time (or hours) is a golden rectangle”.

Or “Time (or hours) is a golden ratio”.

An incredibly curious phrase that Polnareff liked to think he understood a little later in life, while on a trip to Italy—but the narrative is racing a little too quickly into the future.  Let us instead investigate the answers to a couple of questions, that would more immediately accompany this mystery, left behind by a young Kakyoin to his good friend, Jean Pierre Polnareff, as that is most relevant to solving the mystery that was the Stand, Hierophant Green, and the Stand’s User, Kakyoin.

Perhaps more could be understood by a line written a little lower on this same title page, a similar line that was also written in Jotaro Kujo’s book (but in a less formal tone of Japanese).  The line read:

『スタンドが　大好き（だいすき）です。スタンドは　秘伝（ひでん）です。』

The first part of the line was very easily translated.  It read “I really-like/love Stands,” hardly a mystery to anyone that knew the young man.

The second part of the line was a little more curious, given the kanji 秘伝（ひでん), read aloud as ‘hee-den’, and the three ways it could be read.  (Again, Japanese is a very contextual language, and, having lost their context, the men who read this phrase had to read into it in their own ways.)

The second part of the phrase could read “Stands are a secret”.

The second part could have also read “Stands are a secret formula” (a more curious phrase, than the first, but, depending on who you may ask, Stand User or not, it may be an apt phrase).

The final reading, one ruled to be the most appropriate by both Kujo and Polnareff, although separately, given the context of the book they were written in: “Stands are a mystery.”

Like a mystery novel, when trying to understand a Stand, whether observing or analyzing a stand in combat or in conversation, one must gather up the pieces that they are presented (and, admittedly, one never plays with a full set to the puzzle, they can only settle for the pieces that are presented to them and hope that it’s enough), and they must put these pieces together, to solve whatever riddle they will need to answer.

London, England.  1987.

So it is that some pieces of Hierophant Green and his Stand User lay with his very good friend, Polnareff, whether the Frenchman was fully aware of it or not, and so it was that, while standing in his upsettingly empty flat and preparing some oatmeal for himself, that Dr. Jones, the night-Janitor at the Speedwagon Foundation International H.Q, was inadvertently shown at least one of these pieces.

Dr. Jones received the first call (of what would become more, throughout the day and that week, which was just after he had given Polnareff his number).

Dr. Jones began by revealing his doctorate and license, to have some transparency (but not yet revealing that Joseph Joestar had asked him to watch over Polnareff, if only because it could lead to the revelation of documents the night-janitor had been asked to remove from Mohammed Abdul’s office before Polnareff’s arrival).

“If your middle name started with an ‘R’ instead of a ‘B’, then you could have been Doctor Dee-Ahr,” Polnareff giggled on the other line.  “Doctor Doctor.”

Jones wasn’t going to dignify that odd note with much of a response.  “Too bad, my Mother preferred the middle name ‘Bugger-Off’, in honor of my uncle, Uncle Bugger-Off.”  Even without the fake accent put on, the dry humor hadn’t quite left.  “Now, if you just rang me up to crank-call me, I’m afraid I’ll need to end this call.”

That got the first question out of Monsieur.

“Is it true that…in Ancient Rome…documents and pacts were…sealed with a kiss,” Dr. Jones repeated, a little confused, while writing the phrase down and waiting for confirmation from the Frenchman that this was, in fact, what he’d said.

“Yes, is it true,” Polnareff repeated himself, with an odd sort of urgency.

This was something more important, obviously, than knowing which of the Joneses that the night-Janitor wasn’t related to, the therapist noted, by the different tone on the other end of the line.  But why was it different?  He needed to know.

“Polnareff, where did you hear something like that,” Dr. Jones asked, in the calmest tone he could muster—nothing hostile, he wanted to encourage an answer, not threaten it out.

“I—I think it could have been from my good friend, Kakyoin, but,” the Frenchman paused.  It would have perhaps been more ideal to conduct this conversation in person (and, perhaps, Jones ruled, he would ask the Frenchman if they could have conversations like this in the near future, but, for now, he sensed that this was going to be how they needed to start things off).  “I think…I don’t know if I dreamed it or if I remembered it.  It is hard to know…”. (This was followed by a very long pause and an exasperated sigh.)

“M’sieur, one moment, I have to lower the flame on my oatmeal,” the oddly older looking thirty-something year old requested, and, only after receiving a small, ‘go ahead,’ did Jones briefly place his receiver on a countertop, lower the flame, and quickly review what he knew of Polnareff.

Polnareff was a bother in person, yes, but, according to Joseph Joestar, he was also quite honourable (with a proper u) and had been through many things.  According to a psychic photograph that Joestar had gotten through his Stand, Hermit Purple, (Stands were something of a curiosity at the office, these days, and these psychic photographs made very rare circulation, but, when they were passed around, they were both believed and disbelieved at once), Polnareff was in the same room when Mohammed Abdul’s body had been totally eviscerated and witnessed it.  (Joseph only knew this while searching for the younger Abdul’s body, and, after talking to Polnareff, receiving cries and an insistence that there was nothing physical left; when Joseph dispensed this information to Davy, it wasn’t hidden in a joke or delivered in a usual flippant way.)  With information concerning his friends, Polnareff was very serious, Davy had come to learn and carefully reminded himself, while turning the knob on his stove and setting his pot’s flame to a simmer, after anticipating what could be a longer conversation ahead.

He returned to the phone and, after having done a quick review of what he had mentally noted for Polnareff, Jones returned to the phone and continued this conversation.  “There isn’t much of a difference between a memory half-remembered, and a dream, Polnareff—”

“But one of them happened,” Polnareff interjected, admittedly a little less combative than he would have, in a normal state, but there was still a sharpness to this claim.

“Yes,” Jones cautioned, carefully planning a way to deliver his next remark so that it wouldn’t be mistaken for a parry.  “But functionally, they serve the same purpose.  They both…Polnareff, I don’t mind hearing about this, if it’s a dream or something you only half-remembered.  They’re still important to you, and you don’t have to tell me which it is if it makes you uncomfortable, unable to talk about them, and doubt their importance to you…I find that dreams are often things half-remembered, turned in a different way.”  He wasn't going to go into the entire history of dream analysis, the only bit of Dr. “Everyone has my Mommy-Issues” Freud that Dr. Jones really gave a shit about, but he’d hoped he’d phrased this in a way that hadn’t scared the Frenchman.  “Whatever you want me to confirm, factually, I can do that; but, to do that, I will need to end this call and ask around.  I can help you assess what’s real and what isn’t later.”

“I feel a little like a schoolboy that’s run into his overly strict schoolmaster at a supermarket,” the Frenchman teased with a laugh at the other end, with what Mr. Jones imagined was a very boyish grin.  A pause, and then, “I think Mohammed Abdul…I used to talk with him about dreams too…he’d said…he’d said,” Polnareff paused quite a few times, before he would stammer and need to start again, “ Merde , I don’t remember what exactly what he said.  Something about how in Egyptian culture or Islam, I forget which, that our…our souls leave our bodies and we experience a short death, when we sleep and dream…it sounded very interesting…I wish I could remember where he’d gotten that from…but dreams either come from some god—only the good ones.  The bad ones from a devil, typical of religion, non? ”  He laughed a little bit, but then continued.  “And the boring, useless ones come from us.  But dreams, I remember, at least, are important to Egyptians, he told me.  So I used to tell him about my dreams.”

With that, as Dr. Jones took a shorthand form of this rambling down (which he later rewrote into a longer note), this conversation became something a little more significant to the pair of them; he made sure to end this conversation with a smaller one about getting some breakfast for himself—he let the Frenchman ramble a little more about the drugstore, between his hotel and the Speedwagon Foundation H.Q., and how there was a cute little English looking bakery near it and…well, Jones directed him to have one of the pastries, so that he could later describe to Jones if it was any good (compared to a proper Parisian one, prepared with a fresh, country-side butter, it was quaint, the Frenchman later criticized, but, at least, it seemed better than the typical English cuisine).

They talked of dreams Polnareff had that week and past dreams he’d had too, written in a diary.  Sometimes there were only lines, sometimes there were fuller anecdotes.  And there were a few repetitions—some exact and some with small or large deviations.

Dr. Jones had kept clean notes during this conversation until it ended, and then others that, slowly, occurred throughout the day, and, then, eventually, the rest of the week.

On that first day, they spoke as long as Polnareff felt like talking, only to be interrupted by meal times, bathroom breaks, nap times, proper sleep time, demands that Polnareff take a walk out of his apartment, requests that Polnareff share what he’d seen (Jones had ruled someone like Polnareff lacked the imagination and guile to make up surroundings and incidents of running other folks, if he wanted to stay in and lie about going out, and the Frenchman seemed just self-absorbed enough to want any excuse to talk at length about anything he’d seen), other chats to keep up rapport, and Jones leaving for his night-shift.

There wasn’t a schedule on the first day, and then, after, they set times to talk—and Jones would keep up with the demands he’d made to Polnareff on the first day (walks, meal times, etc.).  Sometimes, Jones would head to the library and confirm facts Polnareff wanted confirmed.  (Jones planned on making Polnareff confirm these sorts of things later on, just not for this first week—they needed to build up a sort of trust, and this felt like a simple way of having it done.  Plus, as a foreigner, Jones doubted Polnareff would have access to a library just yet.)

The fact about Ancient Romans and kissing was, in fact, true, among other functions kissing served.  Illiterate folk, in these times, who could not sign a document, kissed an X drawn on it instead.  (It was also supposed to be commonplace, a normal greeting between equal upper class twits, friends, clients and patrons, and masters and students…but, in different times, it became a taboo between teachers and students because of how it could be misconstrued…)  There is a remnant of that practice, to this day. The X, on modern documents, where one signs, is the descendent of this Roman kiss.  It was also a reference to Christ, in that Christ’s Greek name began with a X.  (Jones couldn’t read Polnareff’s reaction, he had wished he could have delivered the fact in person, but they weren’t there yet.  Jones simply heard a sigh and a remark that he was glad his friend, Kakyoin, hadn’t lied to him about that.)

Between mouthfuls of chocolates, Jones rearranged these notes, written on several sheets of paper and index cards, after each talk, to review, to see if he could make sense of them, and made plans to verify the facts that the Frenchman wanted to confirm during his next library trips.

One odd set of phrases, written on a note card, shared a little near the end of the first day, before Jones’ night-shift, which inspired a lot of…well it certainly put the rest of it into a different context, Jones found himself staring at a little more often than the others.

“I do not know how well I know my good friend, Kakyoin.  It is hard to tell how well you can really know somebody, when you were both sporting Dio’s Fleshbuds [pieces of the Vampire, Jones was given to understand, that allowed him control and influence over those that…wore them.  Or maybe had given to them?  Or accepted?  It was a little unclear, at times] .  At least, sometimes, I think I wore the bud…I don’t remember sometimes.  I think, when I ask Jotaro and Mr. Joestar, they say that I did.  I think they do.  But Kakyoin and I didn’t talk about it—our time under Dio, when we saw each other on the fifty day journey in Egypt; we were practically strangers, until we became friends.”

He also found his eyes reviewing his one other note, a little more often than his others, delivered a little earlier on that first day, around lunch (and he was sure to demand Polnareff grab a sandwich from the drug store, make the wrapping make a sound against the phone, eat it, and describe the flavor, before contributing with the conversation):

“He could be quite mean to me…once he was quite mean to me, I mean.  But I did not blame him for it…Abdul looked like he’d been shot in the head and I was the one to blame, because he had taken the bullet for me…Kakyoin, who is…was usually such a polite boy smacked me very hard in the face and…I think he called this a …a reconciliation [Jones later highlighted this term, after later conversations they would have about the young man that passed] …and then, we avenged this death of Abdul’s by hunting down one of Abdul’s killers—who, admittedly, I had other reasons to hunt…perhaps I’ll share that reason later.  But, later in our journey, I found out…he was still alive.  Abdul, I mean.  And…and the other people in our party had hidden this from me, even Kakyoin, who had helped me avenge Abdul, had said he was the one who suggested doing it…I sometimes wonder if he did this to protect the secret, as he said, or if he learned after helping me…murder one of Abdul’s killers…hid it because I can be a blabber mouth…or if it was to punish me… [these last two words, “punish me,” were highlighted as well] .”

(By this point, Jones was aware Polnareff had gotten Kakyoin’s help to murder his sister’s killer, having accidentally walked in on Polnareff’s soliloquy in the Office of Mohammed Abdul once, but this fact was important enough to the Frenchman to hide it.  So, hidden it would remain, as far as Jones would let on, until Polnareff felt like sharing it.)

A very odd sort of mystery, this young Kakyoin was presenting himself to be, Jones noted.  A very strange mystery.

A very nice young man who would hit his own friend, over the faked death of another ally that he may or may not have learned about until after doing what he would, and then possibly helped murder a man to hide the secret.

Admittedly, Polnareff had another reason to hunt this man down, but, still.

This possibly didn’t appear to be normal behavior from a seventeen year old at all.

 Then again, they were under very unusual circumstances.

(How much did Davy know about what went on in Cairo, at this point, before talking a little more deeply about it with the Frenchman (the teenager was too right in determining Polnareff a blabbermouth)?  Jones only knew what he did from Joseph.  That their party journeyed to save Joseph’s daughter, with a phenomenon studied by Mohammed Abdul, known as a Stand—that only others with Stands could see—and fought a vampire named Dio, who also possessed a Stand.  Not much on the specifics, and especially not on what Polnareff had to confess during this week.)

(Professionally, what did Jones think of Stands?)

(Jones, mind, wasn’t a Stand User and didn’t practice any form of Hamon.)

(Once, Joseph Joestar had demonstrated the trick of the camera to him, gleefully producing a picture of the inside of Jones’ locker—which got a smack from the janitor.  And, at another time, he had seen Mohammed Abdul produce a flame in midair and describe how his…Magician’s Red was producing this.)

(Professionally, the doctor didn’t know what to think.)

(Personally, it scared him a little.)

(And, by his conversations with others at the London H.Q., he knew he wasn’t the only one who felt this way.)

(Even after what happened in Cairo was somewhat more known—not the part about the Stands, mind, that didn’t leave any of the H.Q.s.  Just that there were people fighting, being lifted into the air.  No footage or photos of course, the H.Q.s wouldn’t have allowed that.  Just hearsay. Rumors, at best, got out and around, after the Foundation cleaned up the mess in Cairo, in cooperation with the local government and local Magicians, skilled in Hamon, or, as it was called locally, the Gift.  These rumors would die eventually.)

(Hamon, at least, made sense, more than Stands, when Jones heard about it.  It was basically another form of energy some could hone in their bodies.)

(But what he’d heard about Stands…)

(But the night-janitor liked Joseph Joestar enough, even though, it seemed, Joestar was growing less and less popular at the London International H.Q. and the domestic offices.)

(And Jones was actually very fond of Mohammed Abdul.)

(And, as annoying as he could find Polnareff, the Englishman would come to agree with Mr. Joestar’s assessment that the Frenchman seemed quite honourable with a proper ‘u’.)

(Professionally, he was willing to keep mum on what Polnareff shared with him.)

(Yes, even in conversation with Joseph Joestar.)

Jones sighed while reviewing this note on his emptied kitchen table, as the other notes were, with arms crossed, standing a little too straight, already having mentally prepared to assemble a separate file on the teenager a little after writing down this incident with the fake death of Mohammed Abdul.

And that he did.

What Jones assembled on the Japanese teenager, sixteen turned seventeen that year, was quite a formidable file, even after a week.  Some of this case came from memories, while other bits came from dreams.  (Both, Jones ruled, were significant enough to add to this file.)

In memory, the young man named Kakyoin had a name that could be read two ways, a common thing with names formed with Japanese Kanji.  At school, he went by Noriaki and, at home, Polnareff had heard from Jotaro (the other Japanese teen on this journey, around Kakyoin’s age), Tenmei.  Joseph Joestar imposed a Boarding School rule that they go by last names, unless anyone opposed—to keep spirits up.  Only Jotaro objected, asking to be called Jotaro by the group instead of Kujo, his family’s name, but Kakyoin, like the others, chose to go by his family name.

The young man often received compliments on his looks from passers-by and, even outside of school, wore a green school uniform and acted very much like an honors student—always asking questions, keeping his posture, and minding his p’s and q’s.  (The green indicated studiousness, Polnareff remarked, after asking once about the uniform.)  The outfit was fitted specifically to the student and the only time he would change out of this outfit was at night, to wear pajamas, so that he didn’t sleep in his uniform.

One of few signs of anything a little out of line for this  honors student was his red dyed hair—accentuating some naturally reddish brown hair, a very rare occurrence even outside of Japan (Polnareff had asked once, out of curiosity, what the natural color was and gotten this answer)—the hair was naturally curly, with a widow’s peak, but he styled it into something formal in the front, a bit longer behind, and with a very curly side-piece.

Other signs were flashy pieces of jewelry.  Gold pins and drop-earrings with some sort of piece invoking a cherry at the end—often he’d preferred the silver chains with red-pink crystalline things at the ends, but he also had a more subdued gold pair that he wore more rarely.  Sometimes Jean Pierre and the young man would swap earrings to wear that day or he’d simply let the younger man wear his.  (There wasn’t anything flirtatious intended by the exchange, Polnareff confirmed, very adamantly.  It was often because they were bored or wanted to see if anybody else would notice or remark on it.)

The young man known as Kakyoin grew especially fond of a pair of sunglasses, after both of his eyelids were scarred, in a battle.

He rarely talked about his parents, his family, or where he came from.

The young man often talked with Jotaro Kujo (understandable, given that they were about the same age and the only members of their party native to Japan), but the young man was respectful and seemed to like the others in the group (except, mind, Polnareff, in that odd episode and occasionally in other, smaller infractions).

His tone was often confident and, if asked, he liked to dole out advice.

The young man practiced martial arts and specialized in Atemi, a brutal and unusual subset of strikes for someone said to be polite.  (Jones had read, in the library, that Atemi focused on blows or strikes to pressure points and that they had been developed for samurai to use, when they had lost their weapons, against opponents who were armored and armed.  Some strikes could kill.  When Polnareff received this information, he gasped and remarked how cool it sounded.)

In dreams, this young man became a dark parody of himself.

Polnareff had a recurring dream of when he was also working for this Dio.

This Dio had a name rarely said around the office, but, if it was, the vampire rarely gave a good impression.  (The most Jones had heard was when the Foundation sent a couple of agents to exchange supplies and the reinforcement of a dog that carried a Stand—highly eccentric, but Joseph Joestar’s name had the weight to it to sign off on such a request.  The dog was one that Mohammed Abdul encountered while studying Stands.  The dog often walked in and out of the building, for a while, and nobody else had really known it was a Stand User before the request.  They were simply not immune to that weakness for dogs that decent humans possessed, and often fed the creature scraps.  The dog walked like he owned the place, and he may as well have.)

(The agents who made the delivery and lost their lives were quite nice men and their deaths in Egypt were still being mourned, with their pictures still up by the main entrance.)

(Their Foundation’s Founder, in fact, had an alleged history with this Dio, but, even to those who had seen the corpse in Egypt, which was allegedly disposed by direct exposure to sunlight and, so, couldn’t leave much of an impression, and everyone else that didn’t believe the hearsay much, he felt more like a legend or an imagined boogeyman.)

(What did Jones think of Dio?)

(This vampire sounded like a right bastard and, after speaking more with Polnareff, that impression was confirmed and multiplied.)

In this recurring dream, Polnareff and Kakyoin were in a dark, foggy room, sitting.  They were rarely alone.  There was often a tall, blond, muscular man, with pale, glowing skin; this man was sometimes accompanied by an old woman, watching them as they spoke.

The old woman he’d met, in their journeying, and she was awful.  Apparently she’d made Polnareff lick a toilet.

The man, Polnareff knew, had to be Dio.

Kakyoin was often sitting near Polnareff, facing him head-on, with Dio and, sometimes, this old woman behind him.

Often, there was also a tall, thin, shiny green figure standing closer than Dio, to the right of the young man.

His Stand, according to Polnareff.

In his dream, sometimes both the young man and the Stand were called Hierophant Green by Dio and the old woman.  Sometimes, they called the young man Kakyoin (but never used either of his names, his classmates’ or family’s name for him).  Sometimes they called him their “Noble Pope”.

Polnareff was often called Polnareff and, sometimes, Silver Chariot.  Sometimes they called him a knight.

They employed tarot motifs, both Dio and the Joestar team, to name their Stands.  (Why?  Not even Polnareff really knew.)  Polnareff had been named for the Tarot card “Chariot”, and the young man for what was known as the “Hierophant”.

A Hierophant was an archaic name, Jones found in his research at the library, originating from Ancient Greece, for a high priest.  It was known as the Hierophant in the Rider-Waite tarot deck, but also known as the Pope in the Italian Tarot de Marseilles—Italian in origin, but popular in France.  A righteous card, associated with wisdom and guidance.

(An upsettingly apt card to represent the young man.  Frighteningly apt, given what Jones had already written about the young man at this point.)

 The young man in Polnareff’s dreams often talked about their boss, Dio, and how devoted he was to their friendship.

How, like a priest, this Kakyoin was there to provide Polnareff with spiritual direction, so that the Frenchman, too, would accept this friendship.

Thinking back on this, almost subconsciously, in all capital letters, Jones wrote, on the same notecard he’d written about the Hierophant from the library, “CULT”  Before the janitor stared and recalled Polnareff wasn’t sure if this was from something that happened in reality or not.  So, Jones added a question mark to the end of his laconic assessment ( “CULT?”).

The young man in Polnareff’s dreams often still smiled and spoke confidently, even, often, in these dreams, at age sixteen.  Sometimes Kakyoin would use his Stand to elevate their chairs (in Polnareff’s odder nightmares, all that he could see of the young man’s Stand were bright, green strings, shining like jewels).  His hair was pink, while confident, instead of red, and it was styled a little differently.  A white scarf was also added to his usual school uniform.

(Certainly, if this was just a dream and not a memory, the implications were fascinating.)

(If even parts of this were memories…well…)

Polnareff would have several dreams about conversations they’d have in this setting.

One confession, delivered in these dreams, from a younger version of his dear friend, that especially concerned Polnareff, was of the kiss and the flesh bud.

“After I had accepted Lord Dio’s flesh bud, I had given him my first kiss,” the young Kakyoin of his dreams claimed, with his hands wrapped around opposite shoulders, head thrown up, eyes shut, and smile wide, according to Polnareff.  “It is the first and the last kiss I will have, because I should want nothing more than to devote myself wholly to become his friend!   A kiss, a covenant, as the ancient Romans performed, to sign documents, between myself and Dio, and to the Heaven that he promises!  And I would  lay down my life so that Dio may obtain his Heaven, as my destiny has been foretold by the Tarot!”   (The Frenchman recalled waking in tears after dreaming this, if only because Kakyoin looked too young to be saying such things.  Polnareff didn’t know what it all meant, but it frightened him all the same.)

“DIO = HARD ON FOR ITALY?” , Jones wrote in the margin of the loose paper with this quote of the young Kakyoin’s.  (Having your own Pope plus doing things the Roman way seemed evidence enough to indicate this.)  “AND DIO’S A FUCKING PEDOPHILE EPHEBOPHILE GROOMER?”  Because who the fuck else did this sort of thing to a sixteen year old?  Who would brainwash a sixteen year old into giving up their life to serve them, as their underaged Pope, like they were a fucking god?  (Then again, this could have been a dream, and not a memory.  If this was only a dream, this certainly could have its implications.  Perhaps Polnareff felt his late friend was seduced into his death at the hands of this Dio?  Perhaps.)  But there wasn’t much else understood from this odd tongue the young man was speaking.

Just out of curiosity, during his next trip to the library, Jones had gotten a hold of an Italian dictionary.

“DIO = GOD IN ITALIAN, WHAT A FUCKER?”  Read his latest notecard from that trip.  (Polnareff accepted these observations, and laughed a little at the first and last.  It wasn’t actually that funny, Dr. Jones had to admit, but, after the second observation, he didn’t blame Polnareff for needing…any reason to laugh.)

Polnareff’s understanding of the bud came from young Kakyoin (or, at least, the one from his dreams).

“Partake of Dio’s flesh, accept him, and become his body,” the young, noble Pope pitched to Polnareff, eyes shining and smile so sweet.  “You will not be transformed, but transfigured and transubstantiated!  You will become yourself, but more so!  Your will will become his and you will no longer be alone!”   (Polnareff broke down into wretched sobs after relaying this definition from his friend, although he definitely didn’t understand what it meant, even though he was very certain of the words his friend had said.)

This time, Jones borrowed a dictionary of Catholic terms (the night-janitor, himself, was something of an agnostic, while Polnareff, although from a rather Christian country, had a bit of a question mark in regards to his own faith).

“I only profess belief in a god that I can curse, these days,” Polnareff claimed, with, what Jones imagined, was a small nod.  “ Mon Dieu.”

So it was that David later shared the definitions of ‘transfigured’ and ‘transubstantiated’ over the phone.

‘Transfigure’, a verb, a sort of transformation but with more religious implication.  Alluded to when that Jesus-bloke entered a mountain, talked with the spirits of Moses and Elijah, and came out of it the Son of God.

‘Transubstantiation’, a different sort of transformation with a different religious implication, specifically when the bread became the Eucharist (or the bread representing the Body of Christ, and his sacrifice, eaten during communion).

(This dreamed Dio’s god-complex…)

(There was just one thing about this that made Jones a little nervous on reflection…)

(But the Doctor would learn this nerve-wracking piece just a little later.)

Now, during this week, it was surprisingly difficult to get Polnareff to talk about himself or his family, Jones found.  The younger man could talk, certainly, about himself, but not really—well, dive much past the last week or so.  

Polnareff would often summarize his family’s existence with a ‘they’re gone,’ and try to leave it at that, deflecting with a joke of some sort.

“They went to the store to pick up some milk,” Polnareff claimed once.  “And they didn’t come back.”

To have Polnareff talk about himself in this first week, Dr. Jones found, he needed to have him talk about the other Kakyoin in his dreams.

The other Kakyoin was much more subdued.  Much less divine salesman.

This other Kakyoin often had red hair and was just a little older than the pink-haired version.

This Kakyoin smiled less and often didn’t look directly at Polnareff when he spoke, rather softly.  “I used to draw my Stand, Hierophant Green, for my mother.  When I started going to school.  She never seemed happy to see him in my drawings, so I stopped drawing him for her.  But I…confronted her about it once…and she just said he wasn’t real.  That I was lying and making things up and should stop telling other people about him.  I’d tried to ask her about it again, once or twice, but she just repeated herself and, then, she’d close up.  And that was as much explanation as I got…he was the only friend I had, growing up, because…I grew afraid of what everyone else would have thought of him.  Or of what else they’d say.  I felt crazy and useless.”  He sat a little less straight, with hands folded in his lap.  “And I felt so alone, having to keep this part of me to myself.  Like nobody could ever love me or anyone like me—not completely.  Not even my own mother.”

“My Mère never would have done such a thing,” Polnareff cried for this vision of his late friend. “Because she was also a Stand User!”

David kept quiet on the other line.

Polnareff’s mother was named Michelle and, after talking about his friend, it took him very little provocation to keep talking about her.

“Like the song,” Polnareff began.  “The one about…the Beatles one…she was a baby in 1941, when the war broke out…her Stand first activated when…she was snuck out of her family’s home, en route to be given to her foster parents….an elderly, childless couple in France.  The people who snuck her out called her the “ Achtung baby”…the danger baby…because she would disappear when gunshots or loud noises could be heard…they could only find her by listening for her cries…even when she was a small child…she was so shy because she was afraid of disappearing in front of other children, so she always stayed inside…even as an adult…she was always nervous and she…she never stopped disappearing when her nerves really got to her…she never knew if she was the only one of her family to have those powers…but when my younger sister and I were born, and when my Stand appeared, she’d still hold our hands tightly and tell us there was nothing to be afraid of…that my Stand would protect us…”

In these dreams with this other Kakyoin, Polnareff would embrace this Kakyoin and tell him about this family (and it was through relaying what he’d tell this other Kakyoin that David learned more about Polnareff).  This Kakyoin would say nothing in return.

“When my father married my mother, she was a practicing Calvinist, as my sister and I were raised…something she always felt so guilty about…but she had to do…even when she was older and wanted to do more to honor her late family, she felt…a bit unworthy to convert to their religion…my mother…she still…she still very much resembled her beloved late family,” Polnareff told this other Kakyoin, rambling, almost like reassuring a baby.  “He was a delivery boy and knew my mother, growing up, as her only friend, because her elderly parents worked at the post office…he knew about her condition, but still worried about her and stuck around, to talk to her, after her nerves made her disappear.  My father was not a Stand User, but, even after his family threw him out for marrying her, because she looked so much like her family…he took her last name, the one her family had, that she adopted once again after her adoptive parents passed…after she’d apologized profusely to her adoptive parents on their deathbeds and, with tears, they apologized back to her for making her feel like she had to wait to ask them such a thing when they had become sickly…my mother and father moved to the countryside, because they were so in love.  He said he’d always known he was going to marry her, even as a kid.  And they—they filled our house with love.   Even though he could not see my Stand and it was different from my mother’s, he still loved me.  He was such a lovely father.  When my mother’s nerves acted up, and she disappeared, he would tell us calmly that we needed to find mother and hold her hand, until she became visible again.  Making it into a sort of game, so that my sister and I could understand and so that we weren’t afraid—for her or about my ami.  Love for us exists, even if they cannot see your Stand, you just have to find the right person…”. This other Kakyoin still remained silent, after hearing this.

(It was hereafter that, after reviewing his earlier notes, Jones grew nervous.)

(Polnareff, after this piece, had revealed he was raised a Calvinist.)

(And Calvinists didn’t believe in transubstantiation.)

(Even if he had learned this phrase later in life, it felt unlikely that it could have appeared like it had, from this dreamed Kakyoin, from his subconscious.)

(The phrase couldn’t have come from M’ssieur.)

(Jones would wait to share this particular observation with Polnareff, until he was a little more certain…)

“I grew up with Stands all of my life, even though we did not call them Stands,” Polnareff later confessed to Davy.  “I just thought of mine as my ami, my friend.  And they were also my Mother’s nerves—a frightening part, but still a part of her.  It was through talking to Mohammed Abdul, about Stands, later in life, that I came to learn that my mother also possessed a Stand, a different kind…a…a phenomena-based Stand, I believe, was the classification, but it was like my ami.  I was relieved to have that confirmation, even if it was in my twenties…and I wished the first Stand User my friend Kakyoin had to meet was someone like Abdul!  I hated seeing that boy taken advantage of like that, because he’d never known another Stand User until Dio!  Even in my dreams, I hated it and I still hate it!”

That day, when Davy returned to his locker in H.Q., he found himself reviewing that list of songs and his list of Joneses.

While it seemed incredibly certain that Polnareff didn’t have romantic feelings for Kakyoin (whom he loved, it seemed, like a surrogate family member), perhaps there was something else related to this song list?

How much more did this dreamed Kakyoin know, compared to the real one, Davy Jones had to wonder.

If these were not memories that Monsieur Polnareff was relaying, were these buried regrets of things he had wished he had told the young man while this Kakyoin was alive?

And the list of Joneses…

It was only when speaking of this other dreamed Kakyoin, this quieter boy, who still sat opposite of Polnareff, that Polnareff gave a more detailed view of his religious beliefs.

“I told Kakyoin after my parents and my younger sister passed on, I wandered the world alone for some time,” Polnareff confessed.  “I eventually found out because my Mother was Jewish, I should have been one too.  I was just so embarrassed…I found out too late in life.  It felt unfair to my relatives that I never knew on her side, to not practice Judaisim.  But I had practiced a form of Calvinism for so long…and I didn’t really enjoy Calvinism to be honest…so I told him that I practiced neither.  And I practice neither.  I have learned some things about her family’s religion.  Here and there.  Throughout the years.  Just…not enough…I at least know that saving one life is worth a hundred.  That is worth something, isn’t it?  I at least believe that…that was something that I really admired about Mohammed Abdul…that he believed in something and really believed in it…”. The line went a bit silent after this, save for some heavier breathing.

“Do you want me to hear what Kakyoin told you after you told him this,” Jones had to ask, incredibly curious, and wanting very much to help Polnareff tell the last bits that he wanted to.  “We could end here for now, otherwise…”

After some gasping: “With tears in his eyes, Kakyoin told me that he didn’t know what he believed in either,” Polnareff relayed.  “He did not know if he believed in his parents’ Catholicism, if he believed in the Buddhism or Shinto he’d heard about in school, if he believed in the multiverses he’d read for fun from Stephen Hawkings’ essays or comics…the only thing he said he believed in was his Stand and…and Dio.”

“Was Dio there with you?”

“Of course he was…and there were tears in his eyes as he smiled, like the tears in the boy’s…and he made a point of looking right at me, while standing behind the boy…it’s so hard to tell in these dreams, who I’m talking to…if it’s Kakyoin or only Dio talking through him…but when he said things like that…when I’d hear Kakyoin…I wanted to think it was him…”  This particular chat ended soon after, closing with both agreeing that Polnareff ought to plan to go to the zoo a little later that week and that he would tell Mr. Jones if the experience was less disappointing than the English bakery.

And then, there were the dreams when they’d fight each other, at Dio’s command, in front of his Mansion, at night.  Sometimes in these dreams, he had a bud.  Others, he did not.

In either case, he never struck his friend.

His friend only attacked him and, after defeating him, relayed to him that Dio was disappointed in the both of them.  That the buds made them and their Stands weaker, to Dio’s increased disappointment, but that was why they had to work harder to further train their Stands.  That was why Polnareff had to fight back.  The buds were necessary for their training too, which was why they remained.

“Why was that?” Dr. Jones had to ask.

“Because we would…bloom…in time…and we would no longer need the buds…the buds were only…like training wheels for a bike, until we could grow to give him our friendship more freely…”

Often in the dreams where the pair of them were wearing buds, it was only them, out of Dio’s entire organization.  They were often the only life-long Stand Users they knew working for Dio—or, at least, the only ones they’d talk to and the only ones who would talk back to them.

“DEFINITELY A CULT,” noted Davy.  “ABUSIVE, MANIPULATIVE, AND ISOLATIVE TACTICS AHOY.”

This was about the point Davy stopped adding question marks to his observations.

The dreams seemed a little too detailed and consistent to just be from Polnareff’s imagination exclusively—that didn’t discount some of these bits from being fabrications, mind, but…well, it just appeared, to Jones, that some, maybe even a notable bulk of this had to be real at some point.  (What bits actually happened?  He hadn’t a clue.)

Jones was going to wait until he could see Polnareff in person, in private, to share this evaluation.  It just seemed to him that this sort of thing needed to be told in person.

There were the dreams where Dio, so angered by Polnareff’s lack of progress, threw the two of them together into a battle royale, against revenants he’d made for the purpose of training them.  While the young Kakyoin was formidable, even he would be overwhelmed by the number of opponents.  

And so Polnareff would have no choice but become the young man’s knight and protect him.

And the Frenchman would do that, even after battles against these revenants ended with the young Pope attacking Polnareff with his green stand.

“It sounds like a trap,” Jones noted, carefully reviewing his shorthand notes.  “But you had to’ve known that.”

“…what makes you think that?”

“You’re not stupid, Polnareff,” Jones shared, very flatly, believing it to be quite obvious.  “You charge into things headfirst, perhaps prematurely at times, but you’re not actually stupid.”

That earned a pause and a modest merci .  “I knew, but I’d still have to save him…because nobody else would…and he was just too young…”

It was revealed, later in the week, that the Kakyoin from Polnareff’s dreams had his hair dyed, from pink to red, a little after the young man’s seventeenth birthday.  Kakyoin had been gifted with the hair dye and gold earrings, by Dio.

“I just became seventeen,” this Kakyoin confided to Polnareff.  “And I feel like I should be happy.  When I was younger…I…this probably sounds silly, but, where I’m from…a first kiss is supposed to mean something.  It’s supposed to be a right of passage.  Like—this is the sort of person you’ll be with, for the rest of your life.  And I always hoped…before I graduated from high school, I always hoped I’d meet someone who could see my Stand—my Hierophant Green.  And I knew I’d trust them with my first kiss, if they were a woman or a man.  It didn’t matter who they were.  As long as they could see my Stand, I knew I could trust them…and I always dreamed I’d be surrounded by other people like me, who have Stands.  And I have that, now.”   But there were tears in the young man’s eyes, as he said this to Polnareff.

And Polnareff, ever the bleeding heart, even after catching a glimpse of the smiling, teary-eyed Dio, just behind the boy, couldn’t help but throw his arms around young Kakyoin, and sob with him.

“I’ve heard what they say about me, here,” the young man whispered to Polnareff, choking between cries.  “They tease me…They don’t like how I talk and they mock how I eat food…I’ve heard them say I’m…exotic-looking…I’m seventeen and I’ve realized that…I’m alone even among other people like me…I think, other than Dio and his closest enclave, you are the only other person that has ever been nice to me…”  And, after hearing this, Polnareff would hold his dearest friend even tighter.

There were very rare cases when the pair were able to talk, without Dio visible—but, Polnareff shuddered, he’d said he could still feel the vampire’s presence, just a little out of sight.

In these dreams, although he was watching himself, dreading his master’s presence just out of his sight, the version of himself that he’d watch in his dreams was just so…so unaware.  So naive.  While the more omniscient him knew better.

This naive him would tell this seventeen year old about the world that he’d seen, before joining Dio’s agents.  About the parts of Alaska that remained bright, for too long.  Or the Cathedrals made out of bone, in Spain.  Wonders man-made and natural, terrifying but awe-inspiring, all the same.  Polnareff even bragged, a little, of the men and women he’d met and he’d romanced around the world—none of them Stand Users, all of them quite lovely though.

And he could have sworn he’d seen Kakyoin’s eyes shine, as he heard of these stories, remarking often that he did really enjoy travelling.

Both agreed that they had grown to miss it, terribly.

It was only after a particular confession from Kakyoin, that the pair had chanced an escape, their only attempt to do such a thing.

“…Polnareff,” the Young Pope began, with some hesitance.  “Although I had told Lord Dio that I would return immediately after…he had denied my request to allow me to call my parents on the month of my birthday…although I know…in my heart, what he had told me is true…that they are…they are useless, irrelevant to who I am now…this is still my first birthday away from them…I haven’t spoke to them at all, while I have been with Lord Dio…after he had tak—after…after I had given him my first kiss…”  The young man gasped a little, blinking away tears.  “I wear my school uniform, Polnareff—it must sound so foolish…I was on vacation with them, in Cairo, before I met Dio…when we’d leave, wherever we’d travel, I’d sneak a couple of uniforms in my bag when I’d pack…because…this will sound so…childish…my mother had taken them in for me, after I’d asked her to…so that they would fit me better…and I was so touched that she would do that…when I felt unloved by her…I liked to keep them on my person…to remind me…even if she could act unkind…she, at some point, listened to me and what I wanted…and now that I’m seventeen…I can’t even talk to her, not even one more time…I am about to…Dio says my transubstantiation is almost complete…that I mustn’t allow myself to..that my convictions should be firmer, because I should want for nothing more…while Fate has chosen me for this…I still wonder, like an ingrate…why was I chosen…”

“I hadn’t gotten him a gift myself,” Polnareff confessed, as his motivation for trying to steal the young man away from Dio, after that speech.  “I saw no harm in convincing the young man we go to the nearest pay phone, and then back…I wish…I wish I had tried more often, to take him out of that place…I wish I’d wanted to take him further from there…”

Their attempt was an utter failure.  Polnareff stole away to a back entrance, with the now seventeen year old Pope at his right side, watching out for their rear, only for the Frenchman to turn to his right and find no one there.

And, in a blink, he’d found the surroundings changed too.

Polnareff’s single attempt to escape with Kakyoin ended with them back in that room, where Kakyoin would provide Spiritual Guidance to the Frenchman.

He would be back in his chair, and, there, in front of him, would sit Dio, smiling, holding his Hierophant by his waist, and the teenager stood, trembling, to the left of this imposing blond figure.

Polnareff simply knew, by the end of this dream, that, if he’d try to get up, he would find himself sitting on that chair again—he didn’t bother, he didn’t even try once, he just knew, as you did in these horrible sorts of dreams.

And this dream always ended with Kakyoin in tears, on his knees, burying his face in his hands, begging to be forgiven by Dio, for the weakness in his character.

It had taken until the end of the week, for Polnareff to share the memory of what had to be their goodbye in this terrible employment they were trapped in.

They sat again, in this dream, in that room with the chairs, as Dio stood behind them.

“Polnareff, Fate has provided…the Tarot has foretold….I have a chance to redeem myself,” The seventeen year old shared, with a private sort of smile, sitting with his back a little too straight.  “It has been discovered that the oldest of the Joestar clan, the one with the blood closest to Dio’s chosen vessel, whose blood will bind Dio to his body…he is in my native country.  And, as fate would have it…this member of the Joestars brought with him Mohammed Abdul and he is seeing a grandson about my age.  I have been enrolled in the Joestar scion’s school…and I have been tasked with killing my classmate…”  His eyes shone, just a little too brightly.  “After I have successfully murdered the youngest of the Joestar clan, I will need to murder his mother, steal the blood from the eldest Joestar and murder him, and then murder Mohammed Abdul…and, if I am successful, I will have redeemed myself and…I would have my bud removed by Dio…because my transubstantiation would be complete…”   In this dream, he appeared confident, yes, but Polnareff would note how, when he looked at the young man’s pale hands, he would see them clasped together, trembling.

“I offered to join him,” Polnareff put in, too guiltily.  “It was denied, even though I knew…it was practically…they were sabotaging the boy…to do something so impossible on his own…even with his skilled mastery of his Stand…he would either die in combat with any of…the people who became our friends…or, if they tried to remove the bud themselves, there was a strong chance they would kill him, while trying to save him…”

“Why did they have him tell you about this mission,” Jones asked, dreading the answer and already regretting enough to quickly add, “I’m sorry, that was out of turn.  If you don’t want to say this now—”

“I appreciate your concern, but—I’d like to get this out,” the Frenchman cut in.  “I’d like to get this out quickly, because I am going to the zoo right after this, and I’d like to stop by Abdul’s office at the start of your night-shift tonight.  To tell you if English zoos are worth anything…and,” a pause, and then a small laugh, “although these…dreams or whatever-these-are that frighten me…I look back at them and think of how much I really grew to appreciate Kakyoin and our friends all the more, during Cairo, and how much…how fond I think he grew of me and everyone else too…”

It was after some breathing that Polnareff shared this last bit:

“Polnareff, if I should fail, I will need you to avenge me,” this Kakyoin commanded him, and, in this horrid dream, Polnareff felt compelled to follow.  “If they kill me, you will need to complete my mission in my stead.  If you complete it, Dio’s flesh will be removed from you, because your transubstantiation would be completed.  And, if, by some peculiarity of chance, they manage to remove Dio’s flesh from my person and I am not killed, you should kill me, because I would not want to betray our master.  Because Dio would do the same, he would murder me where I stood, if I were turned away from him, upon seeing me.  This—this period we spend with Dio—will all be no different than a dream, without this flesh of our Master’s on our person.  We may carry some things from this period, but not everything, if we survive the removal of Dio’s flesh.  I probably will not recognize you as an ally, if my bud were removed and I survived, and I will probably kill you, if I see you after this and my transubstantiation were interrupted.  And, if your bud is removed and, by some peculiarity of chance, you survive, you may not remember me either.”

—

As promised, Polnareff had dropped by the office of Mohammed Abdul that night, with a couple of smaller cakes in hand.  (Polnareff had called his teacher to join them that night, and Mr. O would be joining them a little later too, an explanation for the multiple smaller cakes.)

Mysteriously, all week, Mohammed Abdul’s office’s keys were lost and none of the janitors could find their keys either to open it (it took quite a bit of convincing and bribery to have that done, but the night-janitor kept his word of protecting this office).  It was not until Jones began his night-shift that day, that the office’s key miraculously turned up and, the day after, similar ones were returned to the other janitors.

“I saw a lion at the zoo,” the Frenchman remarked with a wide smile on his face.  “He was a bit small, but I expected that much of English lions…and, I must apologize, but the cakes here are the best I could make due with—because I can’t yet return to France to purchase quality ones…I’ll still let you pick one, to make up for their inferior texture…”

“Bugger off,” Mr. Dr. David “Uncle Buggeroff’s Nephew” Jones the night-janitor said, with a bit of a smirk, as he stood a little too straight and pointed to a German Chocolate cake the size of two fists.  It was after a mouthful or two of the first slice that Jones asked if the Frenchman wanted to continue these sessions in person, to continue talking about what they had on the phone, and it was after a second piece was sliced up for each they set up an appointment.

Mentally, Jones planned, it was going to be in this first session that he would reveal how much he’d concluded, of Polnareff’s dreams, could be supported with external evidence, indicating that they couldn’t have been produced by his subconscious alone.  (The bits that couldn’t be supported by evidence?  Well, be they from a god, devil, or Polnareff himself, the former therapist was determined to help the Frenchman find some significance out of it.)

And it was after Jones had his first mouthful of this second slice that Polnareff grinned a little wider and practically made Janitor Jones choke on it, with his next question:

“So, how’s Mr. Joestar been?”

We will pick up on this thread again a little later, as we have learned what we have needed to, for now, from this pair, of Hierophant Green and his User.

Now you, the reader, may have several questions after this odd chapter.  

Instead of dwelling on those questions, let us focus and look again to the note that Polnareff will read, on the title page of the novel that he will receive from his departed friend, Kakyoin.

『時間（じかん）は　黄金長方形（おおごんちょうほうけい）です。』

When translated, they would find that the phrase could be read at least two ways, like many things in the Japanese language.  (Usually one needed context, to better fully grasp the meaning of a phrase, but Polnareff and his translator/teacher would not have this and, instead, would have to divine their own.)

Either “Time (or hours) is a golden rectangle”.

Or “Time (or hours) is a golden ratio”.

Perhaps it foretold how time would soon be spun in motion, by one teenager named Jotaro Kujo and his Stand, Star-Platinum: The World, and his spin would ripple across multiple universes.  How the timeline will be shifted and, perhaps, make sense of some of the oddities and repetitions in this and further chapters.

The year is now 1987.  Soon, it will be 1989.

Was this what Kakyoin had intended to warn of, when he had written this phrase in Polnareff’s novel?

Who is to say?

『スタンドが　大好き（だいすき）です。スタンドは　秘伝（ひでん）です。』

Chapter Text

If Jotaro Kujo had been allowed to look at the report of Mohammed Abdul’s, if someone had at least talked to him about the contents, or if the SPW’s first “Guidebook on Stands”, published a little after 1989, was published a little sooner, perhaps the teenager would have known that Mohammed Abdul recommended against Stand Users experimenting with their Stands alone, to assess their properties.

(Admittedly, this idea would be regarded as somewhat antiquated, when Stands became more wide-spread, but not even the Egyptian Fortune-Teller could have foreseen how commonplace Stand-usage would become.)

To paraphrase the guidebook, assessing the properties of one’s Stand, on one’s own, is very much like lifting weights without a spotter.

The User could injure themselves, incur some physical cost that Stand-usage may impose, that they would not have caught themselves, if another were not with them, at their side, to notice how this Stand was affecting their partner, or inadvertently cause a disaster with wide-reaching consequences, like, say, pushing their entire world two years into the future.

But how would the seventeen year old Jotaro Kujo accomplish a feat like this?

Let’s look in, while considering this something of a learning experience:

A Quieter Part of Japan (too far from Kakyoin), 1987 (not yet 1989).

Jotaro Kujo was alone, a little deeper in the forest in his school route and a little farther than his route (no fucking way he was running into any of his classmates while doing this).

The student had removed one black notebook from his bag and his water bottle, tossed the rest to the ground, and reviewed the only relevant thing he’d learned in his eleven or so years of schooling (at least, that he felt was relevant for now) in the middle of this notebook.

Here is the lesson, summarized and translated from (surprisingly neat) Japanese:

“The Scientific Method:

Step 1: Observe and Question

Step 2: Research

Step 3: Hypothesis

Step 4: Experiment (Control and Variant)

Step 5: Analyze results of experiments

Step 6: Conclude”

With a pen from his pocket, Jotaro Kujo amended this lesson a little, to make it more relevant to his purposes:

“The Scientific Jotaro Kujo Method:

Step 1: Observe and Question

Step 2: Research

Step 3: Hypothesis

Step 4: Experiment (Control and Variant)

Step 5: Analyze results of experiments

Step 6: Conclude

Step Whatever: Don’t Stop until Time Travel Achieved”

Lofty goals, yes, but the aspiring astronaut still had a cowboy-wolf in his suit, and he didn’t like to play by the rules.  The teenager sensed he had gained some mastery over time—the ability to stop it for a few seconds.  If he could just push it…

It was after tearing out this sheet of loose-leaf, and turning to a clean page in his notebook, that the Kujo Experiment more formally began.

“Control: Stand (Star-Platinum) has gained ability(?) of other Stand (the World) and it can now stop time for a couple of seconds by thought?”

The student stared at this control, still not feeling it was quite right, so he added a little more to it:

“It could have already had that power too though.”

That night in Cairo was a fucking blur, when Jotaro thought back on it.  How much he’d believed it, how much he actually thought he’d built up to this conclusion, when he’d told Dio something to the effect of, “our stands are the same, you Motherfucker,” he had no clue.

But he didn’t have the Stephen Hawking of Stands, probably his best friend, the dog, the Frenchman, or even the old man around to help him make sense of this shit.

The Lone Wolf was on his own, again, as far as he was concerned.

They’d taken back the World from Dio, and, now, the delinquent was looking to take a little more.

Under the Control, the young student began jotting down some hypotheses, based on observations he’d made on their fifty day journey.  (What?  In spite of how he dresses and acts, Jotaro Kujo was actually a fucking great student.  At this point in his life, he was still an aspiring astronaut, dammit.)

“1. Stop time and walk backwards.”

“2. Stop time and run backwards.”

“3. Stop time and spin counterclockwise in place.”  This one Kujo stared at, curious.  The hell was he thinking, writing that?  No sooner after he put it down did he cross it out.

Jotaro Kujo continued writing these ideas down, until he’d run out of ideas, at that time, and so he began his experiment.

First, the control: without much thought, Jotaro Kujo could feel his great, grinning ghost, Star-Platinum, exit his body.  Dressed, Kujo was informed, like a sumo wrestler, with dark, angular, manga hair.  His ghost was looking a little different after Cairo (he had a different color scheme), but Star-Platinum still felt a lot like his.

He took one quick swig from the water bottle (he was going to have to conserve it, throughout this test period), and then, looked to his spirit.

The muscular specter stared back at the student, with arms crossed, as Jotaro imposed his will with a point and an invocation of his Stand’s new name:

“Star-Platinum: the World!”

With that invocation, Jotaro could feel…something, in the middle of his chest.  A compression, maybe.  And then…something else…for lack of a better word, expand out of him and his Stand.

As Jotaro looked around, he’d noted birds in mid-flight, in a forest that went dead silent.

A couple of seconds, and, then, everything returned to life.

After taking down some notes of his control (“chest compression, time stop for five-ish seconds before it starts to really hurt like shit”), the young Kujo continued by testing out his other hypotheses.  Yeah, the term was “chest compression”, right?  He heard his nurse Mom throw that around, sometimes, when talking to the Old Man and Nonna .  

The teen waited until that pain went away, to begin testing the variants.

On their journeying, Jotaro Kujo had spoken with one other person about experimenting with Stands like this, and, right now, as he was experimenting with his Stand, he thought back on it:

In a Hotel Room (incredibly close to Kakyoin), 1987 (not yet 1989).

“Jojo,” the pajama-clad honors student addressed his peer, and, well, was about the only person outside of family Jotaro didn’t mind so much hearing calling him that (made him smile a bit hearing it, actually…), “the reason that I…I don’t use those abilities from our first Stand battle…the…mind control…or…you think…I remotely attacked you while you were on those stone steps…is that I don’t fully remember how I used them, while under the influence of the bud.”  The redhead often buttoned his pajama top a little low, and now was no exception.  Jotaro had asked once about it and learned this was due to comfort.  When the redhead was in bed, he’d felt it was a time to feel comfortable and it just felt more comfortable.  “I don’t like thinking about that time, when I had Dio’s bud implanted in my forehead,” the young man sighed, and, then, admitted, “Even if those powers would be useful in our Stand Battles against our enemies.”

Both were lying in their own beds, Jotaro on his side, looking to his recently transferred classmate, while his classmate lay on his back, turning his head to his peer, with hands folded on his chest (very neatly).  The beddings themselves hadn’t been shifted just yet and they remained perfectly made.

At the foot of Kakyoin’s bed sat Hierophant Green, leaning against the bed on his back, and his posture mirroring his User just a little.

Star-Platinum remained in Jotaro.

“What if we just fucked around until you could get it up,” Jotaro maybe a little carelessly suggested.  

Ok, not at all ‘maybe a little carelessly’.  

He hadn’t really thought about that wording, until he’d looked at how red Kakyoin’s face had become, and, realized, with a hot face of his own what the fuck he just said.  So, he repeated himself, but, hopefully, it would come out more like it did in his head.  (This being social-shit…) “We could…I don’t know…Stand-Battle and, maybe while fighting, how to do it could come back to you.”

The honors student shot back a look, eyebrows furrowed, firm.  If Jotaro looked down a little (which he did), he’d see those pale hands of his classmate’s tremble a little. “Jotaro, when I hear about those powers from you…the ones that I used on you, they,” an odd stammer, from someone usually so confident.  “They scare me…they scare me, alright?  Using that kind of thing on another person—just sounds really wrong.  And like it would really mess with my head.”

Shit.

Shit.

“Well, I’m really sorry for bringing it up,” Kujo had hoped this apology didn’t come off as callous (because, this time, he really didn’t intend that).  “Really.  I am.”

The brows on his roommate's face unforrowed a little and the features softened.  Within some seconds, there was a small sort of smile that grew on that kind of angular and curved face.  “Apology accepted.”

At times, this about felt like the easiest relationship Jotaro Kujo ever had.

A Quieter Part of Japan (still too far from Kakyoin), 1987 (not yet 1989).

Really lame crap like that played on repeat, these days, in the teen’s head.

Fucking sucked.

And it was after testing a couple of different hypotheses (involving doing some motion while stopping time), at around nine am (Jotaro guesstimated), his chest was really starting to fucking hurt.  He made a fist out of his right hand and smacked the middle of his torso (maybe the sternum?), while crossing out his failed hypotheses and considering other options.

Did using Star-Platinum used to hurt like this, he wondered?

He could punch easily, grab comics, breathe in a shit-ton of air.  Maybe the teenager had ghost sensations, thinking back on these uses—a small burning in his knuckles, a warmth in his lungs, things like that.

But this chest compression was feeling new.

“Fucking heartless vampire probably didn’t have to worry about shit like this with this Stand,” Jotaro muttered, while beating his chest and adding to this list of hypotheses to test out.  On second thought, he was thinking he ought to do something else while on break.  Just sit and think of something else, before going at this again.

Yeah, like how, when astronauts trained, to enter heavier pressures, he thought he’d read they’d enter in increments to prevent themselves from hurting themselves.

(Or was that submarine techs?)

Shitty as it was, to look back on those fifty days that brought him here, that was all the observation that this teenager had to draw from, to figure out how to make his Stand work as he wanted it to.

In a desert campsite (incredibly close to Kakyoin), 1987 (not yet 1989).

The teenagers were squatting, close to the ground, tasked with cleaning up the site where a covert campfire had been, when Jotaro had popped the question:

“Why ‘Emerald Splash’?”

The red-head turned away from the wood he’d been gathering and looked back at Jotaro, a flash in his eyes.  And, damn, Jotaro couldn’t help but smile a bit.  This guy just really fucking loved talking Stands and, even if Mohammed Abdul was the leading expert, Jotaro really liked talking to this other kid about this shit.

“Why the Ora-Rush,” was Kakyoin’s question, delivered with a sly sort of smirk.

“Fuck you, I asked first,” Jotaro snorted a little, like a dumb dork, lightly punching his classmate’s shoulder (and he didn’t budge).

“ Quid pro quo , Jojo,” the redhead named his terms, with a quick, light shove back (harder than the punch, though, and hinting at a surprisingly hidden strength for a kid his size), and then, as quickly, resting his chin in one hand, looking terribly proud of himself, probably for the shove and for working some Latin into this conversation.  “It’s my payment.  For telling you what you want.”

“Fine, just don’t laugh” Jotaro agreed, with some put-on bitterness, but he looked back with a stupid sort of grin, so his classmate knew it was just some air and he wouldn’t misinterpret it (thank God, looked like he didn’t, the other kid just nodded and blinked, faux-sympathetical expression painting his features).  “Fuck you,” the youngest Joestar laughed a little, a pause, and then, “I think the flurry of punches comes from Kenshiro in ‘Fist of the North-Star’.  Oras are probably, like you said, because I show off.”  A sudden shove back (harder than the redhead’s, just enough to jostle him a little, but not enough to knock him off his feet).

The other boy looked shocked for a moment, getting so abruptly jostled, but, once he’d gotten back his footing, a smile replaced the shock on his face, followed by a very dorky sounding laugh that sounded kinda…for lack of a better term, dolphinish? (and that Jojo knew by now the other kid was a little more than embarrassed by, and, after seeing the kid grow very pink, upon realizing he’d let it out, Jotaro returned it with a very flat sounding ‘HA’).  “Oh, Jojo,” the younger man sighed, and then clicked his tongue.  “You’re already dead.”  This was also a kid that read the right comics—not just the American stuff the Old Man read.  He knew who the fuck Kenshiro was and knew how to paraphrase the guy.

And Jotaro remembered really wanting to point and let out a loud abrupt, ‘YES,’ before he remembered where that stupid shit came from and stopped himself just in time, letting out another flat “Ha,” instead.  “So what about the ‘Emerald Splash’?  Seems really random—gems and water.  I don’t usually associate emeralds with water.  How did you?”

A thoughtful hum from the young man—acting for a minute like he hadn’t already thought about this until now (but Jotaro knew better)—and then, “I think because he’s shiny and green, I just thought emeralds made sense.  And I think I really liked going to the beach when I grew up.  I liked standing by the coast, as the tides rose and receded, and that feeling of almost being swept up—but not yet—it felt dangerous and exciting.  And—I guess I always thought of Hierophant Green as a water spirit.  A fluid, but secretly powerful kind of soul…I think I just threw them together and I liked how it sounded.”  The young man sounded a little hypnotized for a second, as he slowly said, “Emerald Splash…it sounds…it rolls off the tongue, right?”  And, out of that kid’s mouth, it kind of did.

And Jotaro remembered staring a little longer, transfixed like his peer.

And completely vulnerable to the abrupt leg-sweep executed by probably his best friend—

This fucker.

A Quieter Part of Japan (far again from Kakyoin), 1987 (not yet 1989).

A feeling.  Jotaro figured he had to draw from some powerful feeling, to get the time travel working.

Chimes played in the distance.

Jojo quieted down, to count them.

It was ten, now.

He’d tested out…like twenty hypotheses and spent too much time thinking of crap, for the past couple of hours; after his vision was going a little blurry, he made himself take a break until his chest felt normal again to continue this.

His water was about half-way—emptied or filled, depending on your view.

When was his Mom and Nonna getting the call that he skipped again?

Jotaro was already getting considered for academic probation before the fifty day trip and, even though some of that trip fell on Summer Vacation, he still wound up missing around…twenty days, at least, of more school.  The fifty day family emergency just finally gave the school an excuse to tell his Mother and Nonna more about Jojo’s situation (those opportunistic fucks).  To graduate on time, the teen was probably going to need to give up vacation time, and go to cram school for a while.  He already didn’t have much of a social life, and this would pretty much fuck it up.

Not that he had any other friends to be social around any way.

How many skips did he have left, before he was getting expelled?

His school wanted to seem tough.  They said a full week, unexcused.

Jojo had maybe three days.

Three days to figure out this shit.

And, if he figured it out, who knew—maybe he’d keep those three days.

He winced a bit, remembering how happy his Mother just looked to see him that morning—how he woke up earlier, to stop her before she made a lunch for him, because he was going to do that for himself and she was supposed to be resting after the fifty days she went through.

Sorry, Daddio, for putting her through this.

The teenager figured around he probably had until around noon—he didn’t know when exactly the administration would call, in a situation like this (it was usually at nine, after the first period, but his case could have been an exception), and it was going to take them a while to even think to look at his school route, instead of the usual hang-out spots for kids his age, and trot off the beaten path to find him.  Nobody had the time, until lunch, probably.

Nonna was watching over his Mom, but she’d probably have to be the one to try to find Jojo—and, if not her,  maybe she’d send…dunno, a Speedwagon guy to find him?  And those fucks barely knew him.  Even if the Old Man seemed…maybe not exactly friendly, but on some amiable terms.  They did carry his uncle-or-whatever’s name, so it could have just been some form of bias.

Jotaro had been sitting on the ground, hand on his chest, as these thoughts had been coming.

He thought to do a quick physical update.

Breathing felt normal again.  Same with the pulse.

Ok, so Jojo had to draw from some powerful memory.

He opened to a clean page in his notebook and thought back on something—something that…well, would make him want to turn back the clock—

In a car at night (incredibly close to Kakyoin), 1987 (not yet 1989).

It was night and everyone else was snoring (too fucking loudly) and asleep.

This was during Abdul’s faked death, so it was just the Old Man and Polnareff with them.

It was Kakyoin’s turn at the wheel (Jojo didn’t have his license yet) and the teens were talking in Japanese.

“I’ve noticed how your Grandfather gets quiet when we talk like this,” Kakyoin noted, tone not loud enough to wake the other two.  “Why didn’t you tell me he spoke Japanese too?”

“I didn’t know it was supposed to be a secret,” Jotaro admitted, matching this kid’s tone.  “His Japanese was always a little better than my Nonna’s , when I had the chance to talk to him.  I just spoke it because I prefer it and I thought you did too.”

The young man gulped and sighed.  Jotaro could see, from that mirror, how nervous he was looking.  “Do you know if Mohammed Abdul speaks it as well?”

“I think I just met him on the same day you did,” Jotaro put in.  “Why do you care if they hear what we say?”

A pause.  No answer.

“If they were going to judge us for the stupid crap we said, or throw us out, they would have done it,” Jotaro rationalized, hoping this would reassure this other kid.  “I don’t know about Abdul—he seems nice enough—but I’d—you know I’d beat up my Old Man if he tried anything like that,” that got an inappropriate exhalation, almost sounding like a small laugh, from his friend.  “I just don’t think the Old Man’s the type to do that, though.  I don’t know him as well as I probably should, but I don’t think he’d do that.  And probably neither would Abdul if he’s friends with the Old Man.”

The other kid had to keep his eyes on the road, so he wasn’t really looking back at Jotaro, but, through the mirror, Jotaro could see the other guy’s eyes crinkle a little, like you’re supposed to when you smile properly.

He couldn’t help but feel a little bad for this other kid.  What sort of life did he have to lead, to be afraid of something like this?  So it felt, well, kind of nice making him smile.

“You and me,” Jotaro remembered proposing.  “Let’s keep talking like this and acting like we don’t know they’re both listening in—when we’re all together again.  Let’s say some really stupid shit and see how they take it, and see if they keep acting like they can’t really understand us.”

“Sounds fun,” he’d remembered hearing the other kid agree.

A Quieter Part of Japan (still pretty fucking removed from Kakyoin), 1987 (not yet 1989).

Jotaro guesstimated about half an hour went by, with him thinking on this memory and repeating his past hypotheses; he made himself stop, when his chest was feeling a little too heavy and his head a little too light.

This memory wasn’t strong enough.

That ghost of his floated just above him, in his line of vision, with arms crossed.  The guy was pretty smiley before.  Now he was looking a lot less-so.

He took a swig from his water bottle—only to realize the thing was empty.

Star-Platinum stared, reaching out a hand.

Jotaro really saw no other choice, but to lend his water bottle to the ghost and wait for his return; while his Stand was gone, the youngest Joestar planned on making good use of his time, trying to think of a stronger memory, that could activate the power.

Somewhere in the middle of a fifty-day trip (incredibly close to Kakyoin), 1987 (not yet 1989).

Jotaro remembered getting an apology from Kakyoin about the younger student’s getting a little weird (ok, weirder than usual), after hearing the answer about the Stand-Kiss they may or may not have had, in their first encounter.  It was maybe a night or so after Jojo asked the question, delivered first thing in the morning of a different or the same hotel that the offending question was asked (either way, it was still pretty dark, not exactly time to get up).

“It was a weird question,” Jotaro remembered rebuffing the apology.  “So your reaction was the normal one.”

A pause.

Then:

“I think I did have my first kiss before that anyway, Jojo,” this sounded like another  apology, the way the other kid said it.  “But I….I really didn’t…think I liked it…if that makes you feel any better.”

Shit.  What the hell were you supposed to say to this?

“It doesn’t make me feel better, Kakyoin,” Jotaro told the kid.  “It doesn’t make me feel better hearing you say you were miserable about something, to make me feel better.”

They were quiet for a bit.

“Thanks for saying that, Jojo.”

And then, quiet again.

The fuck were you supposed to say?

Having nothing else, Jojo found himself reaching where the Joestars tended to—drawing from that long-ass family history of theirs.  “You know, I think my Old Man’s Grandma had her first kiss stolen by this shit-head,” he began recounting the tale he’d been told by his Mom (it was probably around the time she thought he was supposed to be getting his first kiss, man, how disappointed was she that he hadn’t?), “I don’t know how many greats I should be throwing in front of her name, in relation to me.  It’s probably too many.  But she’s related to me somehow.  And she was with the guy who was my…I dunno, my ancestor?  He’s the guy me and my Old Man are named after, I think.  And this shithead adopted brother of the earlier Jojo kissed her—not because he liked her, but…because he was a fucking shithead,” no need to mention this was Dio, the same Vampire they were hunting.  Because shit was convoluted enough as it was.

“What’d she do about it,” Jotaro heard his classmate ask.

“The Old Man told my Mom she was pretty sad about it for a while, but she was pretty strong too,” the Joestar’s kid claimed, a bit of pride in his tone (for his badass sounding, however-many-greats doctor Grandma he had, while recalling the other stories he’d heard about her, who gave his Old Man permission and rooting him on to beat up guys for mocking Grandpa Joseph’s friends of color, in a time that sort of thing wasn’t as commonplace).  “She used to say that kiss didn’t count.  It’s only the ones you really want to count that ought to count.”

“Yeah?”  Jotaro couldn’t see his classmate’s expression, but he could have sworn the tone sounded a little brighter.

“So when she finally kissed the first Jojo, that was the one that really counted,” Jotaro Kujo recalled.  “That got to be her first kiss.”  Jotaro didn’t really give a shit about first kisses, like his classmates, to be honest.  It sounded kind of dumb to care that much about something like that.

But, well, Kakyoin sounded like it mattered to him.

So he was going to act like it mattered to him too.

A little later, lights went on in their room.

He looked over, finding Hierophant Green’s string on the light switch, and his friend sitting up on the bed next to him, arms crossed, and looking a little nervous.

“What,” Jotaro Kujo asked, getting out of his bed and sitting up by himself.

“I guess,” Kakyoin began, for once not looking confident.  He finally looked to Jotaro and…well, fuck, Jotaro had to look back.  “I don’t want to be forward, but…I don’t…know if I really want to count the Stand-Kiss either…”

That kind of hurt.  

Jotaro Kujo, Mr. “Never Cry Wolf”, didn’t know why, but it kind of did.  But he still said, “S’fine.”

But the young man kept looking back at him, and Jotaro was finding it hard not to do the same.  

“But…we could,” Kakyoin stammered, getting a little pink.  “Could we…try it…without the Stands…?”

Fuck.  Jotaro forgot if he played the answer cool, if he said ‘s’cool’, or whatever.  His face got hot, that’s as much as he remembered.  And he said something.

Next thing he knew, he was kissing the guy who was his probably best friend, in his seventeen years of existing on this planet.

Felt super awkward, to be honest, trying to fit their faces where they were supposed to be.  And there weren’t tongues, thank fucking God, just a pair of stupid teenagers turning their heads and guessing where their lips had to go.

They had their first go, and then after figuring where they were supposed to fit, a second, probably, more successful one.

A Quieter Part of Japan (too fucking removed from Kakyoin), 1987 (not yet 1989).

Jotaro Kujo was lying on the ground, in the grass, when he heard the chimes, conscious enough to at least count them.

Eleven.

How the fuck wasn’t that memory enough?

How the fuck wasn’t it enough?

What the fuck was it going to take, to get this Stand to do what he wanted?

His heart was practically beating to get out through his throat.

He really wanted to throw up (but he’d swallowed down anything like that, because then he’d have to break for an early lunch and wait to digest before continuing with this and he’d already wasted enough time).

The teenager found his mind retreating a little, into a reverie of the second installment of “The Man with No Name” Trilogy.  There was this villain, he remembered recalling to a confused-looking Kakyoin, around a month or so ago (after he’d told his peer what he’d figured, that Kakyoin was like the Lee Van Cleef to his Clint, and Kakyoin wanted to know what that meant, so that got him a couple of days’ worth of summaries of two out of three of the movies that occupied second slot in his favorite movies of all time list, yeah all of them probably shared the same slot just behind “Never Cry Wolf”).  The villain of the second film was named “El Indio” and he carried this pocket-watch with him, that he swiped from the sister of Lee Van Cleef’s character, Colonel Mortimer, before El Indio assaulted and killed her.  Whenever El Indio killed someone, in that film, he whipped out the watch and it played a tune on the chimes in the watch.  He’d let the melody play a while, before killing his latest victim.

Fuck man.  Those chimes ringing the hours now, where Jojo was in Japan.  In his tired-ass mind, he thought to himself, they’re practically El Indio’s chimes.

And each chime was killing Kakyoin again.

Like the chimes on that watch tower in Cairo, that played on.

In that Tower that his fucking best friend blew a hole into, with his last Emerald Splash, according to the Old Man.

To warn them about Dio’s power.

To stop time.

The same fucking one Jotaro got saddled with.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fucking vampire.

There were all sorts of things this power could have done, and it didn’t take Jotaro long to think of them, and he was what—a thousand years younger than this shitty Vampire?  And he had this power for even less?

Surgery.  Getting peace of mind.  Sneaking into places.  Getting away from shitheads.

And fucking Dio used it to kill a fucking teenager.

Jotaro Kujo found his face getting hot and his eyes a little—

Fuck.

Never cry, Wolf.

Never cry.

He’d already practically wasted the morning on this.

He wasn’t going to waste it any more.

There had to be a way to use this shitty power to undo the wrong it did.

There had to be.

Jotaro Kujo’s head raced, all over, as it had been—much less focused than it had this morning.

But his attention was turned to something that—that, well, stank of importance…

In that trip to that graveyard-hotel-thing-run-by-that-shitty-old-lady  (incredibly close to Kakyoin), 1987 (not yet 1989).

Jotaro had asked Kakyoin about ‘Tenmei,’ and, in exchange, he had to tell him about ‘Qtaro’.  They shared a hotel room again, as they often did, and this was delivered in their beds.

“Name I had to sport to placate my Nonna ,” was Jojo’s explanation.  “She’s Suzi Q, so I became Jojo Qtaro.”

Kakyoin let a chuckle escape (even after he’d promised he wouldn’t).

“Fuck you, Kakyoin.”  Jotaro shot back, accompanying his battle cry with a pillow toss.

The smaller student deflected the shot—with what was probably a surprising amount of dexterity for people that didn’t know him (but, really, not to Jotaro, by this point, the guy, he knew, specialized in Atemi, dammit).  “I’m Noriaki at school and Tenmei at home—with the kanji reading for my name.  So I guess the Tenmei’s no different than your Qtaro.”

“So you prefer your name being read as Noriaki,” Jojo put in, pretty curious and genuinely uncertain.

And the other kid just stared a second.  The easy confidence that he had, gone, in this rarer instance.

Both said nothing for a bit.

Until the younger man began his confession, in like the nerdiest way possible, “Did you ever read Ursula K. Le Guin’s stories?”

Jotaro shook his head, as he often did when Kakyoin did that thing of talking about things he liked but Jotaro didn’t know shit on, and, like the youngest Joestar usually did in times like this, he prepared to listen to his classmate explain.

“Well,” Kakyoin began, not really noticing his posture wasn’t as straight as it usually was.  “I’ve only really heard about it from librarians, but…from what I heard, in that story…and in stories like it…they believe people have multiple names.  People are, I think, given names and then, later in life, they…they find their real names.  The ones that unlock their real power.  And—I think I’m still looking for that name, Jojo.  I don’t think it’s Tenmei, or Noriaki, or…even Kakyoin.  But I’m still trying to find that name, you know.”

Even though it sounded super nerdy and weird, at the same time, it made total sense to the former Mr. Jojo Qtaro.

Like a lot of the shit the young man, sometimes called Tenmei, sometimes called Noriaki, and often called Kakyoin said.

A Quieter Part of Japan (too fucking removed in time from Kakyoin), 1987 (not yet 1989).

Chimes had rung twelve.

Jojo could have sworn he was hearing people call him—but it was kind of hard to tell, with the massive headache he had, making it throb—and his chest really fucking hurt.  His vision was so blurred, he could barely see anything outside of that Stand of his.

But he knew, now, he’d figured it, from this last little dumb memory he’d focused on.

Shit wasn’t working because he was using the fucking Vampire’s name for it all along.

And that fucking Dio Vampire fucking sucked.

Jotaro had carried that real name with him, he figured, like he’d secretly known that secret that his Star-Platinum was no different than the World too, and, again, like he did before, failing Kakyoin, Abdul, and Iggy, he’d fucking figured it out too late.

“S-sorr-sorry,” Jojo found himself slurring, struggling a bit to get up (but he was going to find his footing, dammit, he was going to dig up from those reserves of his).

He’d known all along, he had to, of the name he had for this fucking weight he had to carry.

Fucking Atlas at fucking seventeen, with the weight of this Vampire’s world on his shoulders.

He knew it.

He knew.

And—and he was going to make up for it, now—make up for taking too long to act on this knowledge that he had hidden.

Jotaro Kujo turned to his Stand, and, drawing from that memory, he called it by a name to activate the power he wanted; the teenager cried out, “CARRY THAT WEIGHT!”

And, like the other times, felt something explode out of him—

But, this time…

This time, it felt kind of different.

—

A Quieter Part of Japan, 1989.

That morning, seventeen-year old Jotaro Kujo hopped out of bed—not really remembering much beyond dinner the night before with his Mother and the Nonna and the dude from the Foundation; he stopped his mother from making breakfast for him, because she was still recovering and he could do it himself anyway.

His Nonna was up too, this time, reminding him he had three days left—three days that he couldn’t skip (because he’d gotten sloppy and caught on two days), or he could be getting expelled.  And Jotaro had a future, dammit.  He was better than getting expelled, just because he didn’t want to go to school for a total of five days.  And he was going to need to make up for a lot of it anyway.  Probably attend a lot of Saturday classes and do some school over breaks too—he wanted to ask…well, someone, if the school he’d have to make up would set his two days to zeroes or negatives, giving more days to skip, but he knew well enough it probably wouldn’t (just would’ve asked to get…some rise out of them).

Jotaro Kujo had no fucking idea why, but he found himself asking his Nonna about the year.

And he had no fucking idea why he started fucking sobbing like a fucking stupid baby when he heard it.

Chapter Text

Up in the Air (En Route to Kakyoin), 1989.

This was probably something, he, Joseph Joestar figured, should have thought of, before he agreed to bring along some strangers’ seventeen-year-old son on a crusade to save his Holly from some very (for lack of a better word) bizarre family business.

“I’m sorry I got your boy inadvertently murdered by a vampire with time-stopping powers,” the old man rehearsed aloud, in his best and most respectful Japanese, already ‘blech’-ing as soon as he’d said ‘powers’, and feeling around a year or two older than he had before he’d begun this flight.  How was he supposed to even begin this the right way?  (Was there even a right way of doing this?)  (Well, at least he didn’t mention that he was sort of related to the Vampire in this or any of his rehearsed apologies.  Or that he’d had a blood transfusion from him either.)

Joseph Joestar was pretty well-bundled up, rubbing gloved hands together, sitting nice and far from the cockpit, in a(n?) SPW affiliated aircraft, seated on a folding chair that was set-up in a freezer-cargo area, with only the young man’s closed coffin and a small bag for company, contemplating how he was going to deliver the news to the Kakyoins.

The right way to begin this would have been to turn the young man down, when the young Kakyoin had volunteered to join Abdul and the Joestars on their quest to save Holly.  Maybe had some Speedwagon Foundation agents sent over, along with the doctors for Holly, and get them to help the young man often called Kakyoin get some therapy; find his parents; and/or, at least, if his parents were about as social as they were, in regards to taking calls to receive their son’s body, locate a place for the Kakyoins’ son to stay until things were sorted out.

(But they were understaffed and short on time, with few Stand Users at their beck and call, and they really needed Kakyoin’s know-how, in the end, to defeat Dio.  As much as Joseph found himself despising the assessment, it didn’t make it any less true.  They needed Kakyoin on that journey of theirs and he hated how much they needed the poor lad.)

You could start by apologizing to his Mother for telling her that she didn’t deserve her own child and offer to have her pick where he should be buried, instead of running away and kidnapping him again , Joseph could imagine his long-gone grandmother intone, in that deep and rich voice that he found himself missing in days like these, delivering the hardest, yet, truest pieces of advice that he needed to hear.  And don’t you forget that spiel you delivered, ending with that… expletive too.  Because I didn’t and I know you didn’t either…oh, Joseph, he could practically hear that nurse-turned-doctor-turned-teacher sigh (and, damn, did he wish someone still sighed like that around him), before she delivered THAT line.

Ah yes, THAT line.  The one that Grandma Erina only delivered when she was utterly disappointed in her grandson (like she definitely would have been right now!), that he maybe heard…a couple of times in his lifetime.  (If memory served him correctly…maybe when he was placed on academic probation at his old boarding school and, then…probably when he was ultimately expelled for truancy…look, the place really sucked, alright?  Best thing about it was skipping it with your friends, that you mostly knew and called by their last names instead of their first ones!) 

The line of hers, the famous one: Do you know why I called you ‘Jojo’ growing up?

And she’d enter full teacher-mode, expounding on his Proud Lineage, about what an upstanding gentleman her husband was (and Jonathan Joestar was never an ex-husband, he was still her husband, even after his untimely death).  How the original Jojo dealt with an awful adoptive brother that turned like a vampire in law school (typical, although, Joseph later found, it was literal, so it was maybe a little less typical), how said brother killed his dog and his father, stole Erina’s kiss (that didn’t count for shit), and how Mr. Jonathan “Jojo” Joestar died saving his pregnant wife and a totally awesome baby Lisa Lisa.  (No mention of said awful literal vampire brother being the cause of his death, in these lectures growing up, or of Hamon, but Granny Erina had her reasons for hiding those, dammit, and Joseph grew to understand them.)

He’d ask, pretty damn callously (even he had to admit), if it meant he was expected to sacrifice his life to save his wife and kid and future daughter-in-law, and this got a proper box to the ear (nothing too hard, just enough to get something through that thick skull of his).

I don’t expect you to do that, and you know it, Jojo; I just expected better of you.

Augh.  Granny.  Granny…

There was no way his Mother would have ever condoned how he’d handled talking to Sakura either.

While helping out his Foundation with this…shit that he’d gotten them into (admittedly), Joseph couldn’t help but turn his thoughts to Old Uncle Speedwagon—probably the only person who wouldn’t have just given him a lecture about this, who…maybe had useful advice for something like this?

Old Robert E.O. Speedwagon!  Technically, he was more like a family friend or, generation-wise, a Grand-Uncle, since he knocked-about in the same generation as Erina’s—but, even in his older age, he still felt a generation younger.  Joseph was willing to deck anyone that dared make fun of that codger’s name back in the day (and his honorary nephew still was)!  A self-made man, in the classical…Dickensian(?) sense (no starting out in a garage owned by his millionaire parents or whatever), who, Joseph later learned, denied his sort-of-niece Lisa Lisa and sort-of-nephew George permission to give their first born (him) the middle name “Robert”.  (“William,” R.E.O. argued in favor for, or “Dire”…Joseph had to admit, sometimes, he wished he was named Joseph Dire Joestar).  The codger he still held in high regard for many reasons, including this and for practically writing it into his Foundation’s charter that they had to help out the Joestar family with whatever they needed, no questions asked.

When his Old Uncle turned up at the Zeppelis, to tell them about what happened to their oldest son, Joseph desperately wanted to ask, and when the Italian family fought him…

Did Uncle Speedwagon put his dukes up and fight back?

While warming himself up, the oldest living Joestar opened up that pack and pulled out some of its contents.

Not his thermos of coffee—he was watching how much he was ingesting, because he had to mind his time away from the coffin.

Not a book.

But another scarf (wrapped around the face area, save the eyes) and a Polaroid camera.

It was practically a year since he’d gotten Hermit Purple, and he was still trying to figure it out.  Joseph started thinking, along with Mohammed Abdul, after the television experimentation of their past, he could…maybe use it on this camera without wrecking it?  (He had a couple of spares in the bag, just in case.)  It was kind of hard to test this theory on their trip, considering that using his ability raised a red flag to the vampire they were hunting.  Would have been great, Joseph bitterly thought, having Abdul around to help spot him while he tested their theory out, if he wasn’t busy living it up in the twenty-seven club.

Wait…twenty-seven club?

Joseph Joestar, he found himself scolding himself, you really do need to work on your math!

Abdul was practically just a year shy of thirty, not twenty-seven when…

No, no, he…he had to stay focused, dammit!

So anyway, Joseph hadn’t really had much time or need after to use or test this sort of thing on his own!

After a little over fifty days of shit (including the time before the fifty day trip, spending the best holidays, including his Thanksgiving AND Christmas AND New Years AND probably birthdays he’d forgotten AND getting to hang out with Suzi at Mayor Bill “Smokey” Brown’s charity concert and finally getting a chance to congratulate his old friend in person…shit, Joseph forgot to call Smokey and tell him about Abdul…he was really going to be disappointed Fire and Smoke couldn’t get together again, like old times…NO, Joseph was doing it again…maybe he was getting old, if it was getting this hard for him to focus)—

After a little over fifty days of shit (not including the years before that him and Mohammed Abdul spent looking into this AND THAT’S ALL THAT’S GOING TO BE SAID ABOUT THAT FOR NOW), Joseph Joestar was completely not in love with the idea of heading into a battle without adequate intel again.

With Kakyoin’s proficiency with his Stand, Joseph and Abdul had privately discussed (in Masri-Arabic, so that they really had nobody else listening in on their conversation at their hotel room near the end of their journey) if it seemed at all possible that someone among the Kakyoins could have had their own Stand or, at least, practiced a form of Hamon.  (Really, they had no clue about his family situation.)

Hamon, when passed down and taught by family members, seemed more powerful or adept at earlier ages than those without.

Same could be with Stands—at least, that was the theory.

And it made some damn sense!  If you had someone who was proficient with their Stand, mentoring you, you could become as advanced with using it at so young an age, as a practical prodigy like Kakyoin!

Perhaps this could have been the reason he ran from home and into getting brainwashed with Dio’s organization (again, Kakyoin really didn’t talk about his family enough to non-Jotaro-blabbermouths, as far as he knew, for Joseph to know otherwise)—yes, Joseph Joestar was growing more and more convinced that young Kakyoin and his Stand User relative didn’t see eye-to-eye…maybe had different philosophies on Stands(?)…and that could have explained everything.

After talking with the incredibly meek Sakura on the phone, Joseph Joestar was absolutely convinced the Stand didn’t come from her.  Or the form of Hamon.  (Sorry, Sakura. Nothing personal.  Joseph was just used to seeing a…a woman that gave off a very different impression than the one Sakura imposed, with either a Stand or practicing some kind of Hamon.)

No, Joseph Joestar was convinced that the Stand User had to be the Atemi practitioner, the ruthless businessman who was rumored to own the same area of Sendai that bore his family name, the father of the young Kakyoin that Joseph had spent fifty days journeying with—Akira Kakyoin!

After so many failed rehearsals of attempting to deliver the news to Sakura (and, in his head, it was Sakura that was showing up to receive her son’s body at their rendezvous…but he sure as hell wasn’t discounting that she wouldn’t be alone, after fifty days of what he put up with!), Joseph Joestar found himself really wanting some sort of proof to confirm or deny this theory!

Joseph Joestar pressed the camera to his head, to focus where he needed to.  While the possible Stand of Akira Kakyoin’s didn’t show up in the one or two pictures he’d received, Joseph knew it was very possible for a proficient Stand User to hide their Stand when it was needed.  Perhaps, knowing that his tabloid photos and company photo would be seeing circulation, and, possibly knowing the danger other Stand Users posed, he could have known to keep his hidden as much as possible.

Yeah, it really felt like, if Kakyoin’s father also possessed a Stand, he’d have developed the proficiency and the sense his son would and would keep his Stand hidden in photos like those.

Now, although Joseph Joestar was aware of the risks testing one’s own Stand on their own could pose, he found, sitting there, that he really had no time or other choice than go at this alone.  (With a Stand like “Hermit Purple”, though, he was kind of hoping its more…its low-stakes kind of…whatever the classification, he felt like there seemed like less of a chance that it could really hurt him…)

Rather sarcastically, the oldest living Joestar found himself asking Mohammed Abdul, wherever he was, and the Kakyoins’ son in the box in front of him to watch him—and, weird as it sounded, there was a small part of him that kind of…felt a little relieved?  (Probably because, out of everyone he knew, they were the world’s foremost Stand Experts.)

With that, Joseph Joestar concentrated, out popped those purple vines from his hands, took in some breaths, and then called out “Hermit Purple!”

And then…rather anticlimactically, just pushed down the button on his Polaroid camera.

Out went a photo.

And, after some minutes of shaking the white piece of paper…film…thing that popped out, Joseph had his first image.

A tall, thin, angular, dark-haired and dark-eyed man, who in some ways, bore a very strong resemblance to a dear friend of Joseph’s grandson (or, perhaps, one could have said it was the other way around), dressed in what looked like a pretty nice suit, demonstrating what looked to be a strike of some sort (Atemi, probably) and a much, much younger Kakyoin, with reddish brown hair and…shit, was that a black eye?  (Poor Kakyoin!)  No, but Akira wasn’t striking at Kakyoin…(at least not in this photo) and the younger Kakyoin was copying the pose…and a little ways behind him, it looked like a smaller Hierophant Green was too.

And…okay, little Kakyoin and little Hierophant Green doing Atemi together looked pretty stinking cute.  (How old was Kakyoin in the photo?  Seven or eight?)

(Ok, if Akira was the enemy, little Hierophant Green probably wouldn’t be doing the same pose as his User’s attacker and, you know, would have just gone for Akira.)

And they were in a small, wooden, mirrored room.  (The room was looking a little too small and empty to be a public dojo…damn, did the Kakyoins have a private dojo?)

Ah, Joseph was getting off track again!  

His eyes turned to Akira…

But there wasn’t a Stand by Akira.

Mohammed Abdul had once told Joseph Joestar that he was better than sixty Sean Connerys(ies?) playing sixty Bonds and, dammit, and Joseph was going to employ all of those Seans to Sherlock this shit.

Ok: little Kakyoin was hit by some shithead (probably at school), so him and his Stand were learning Atemi to better take care of themselves.  Just because Akira didn’t have a Stand in the photo, it didn’t discount the Kakyoin patriarch keeping his Stand inside at the time of this photo (maybe he could see Hierophant practicing too) and it didn’t discount him knowing some form of Hamon.

(Either way: Akira teaching young Kakyoin Atemi after the boy got a black eye felt like pretty good parenting to Joseph, so AK or KA got a point for that.)

Joseph gently placed the photo on top of the young man’s coffin and, then, repeated that “Hermit Purple” process.

In the photo, Akira Kakyoin and Sakura were looking much younger and signing a document.  They had…awww…just had a baby Kakyoin!  (The dark-red-brown-haired Sakura was holding him in her arms looking…she actually looked kind of sad…)  Thankfully, the photo was a good angle, allowing him to read some of the paper (and get a good look at little Kakyoin’s cute face).  (Fresh baby Kakyoin’s eyes were closed and, from the angle, it was hard to tell if there was a baby Hierophant Green nearby too…)

But, yes, anyway…

Joesph could read some kanji (the machine with the kanji printing capability at the D.C. H.Q. was down, when his intel was getting printed).

Some sort of a document.  (All getting very neatly filled out.)

About the son’s name, a little after his birth in 1970.

No.

Wait.

Argh, mental-math.

1971!

花京院 典明 (Kakyoin’s name.  Noriaki, Joseph could have sworn he’d heard, was the young man’s first name…or last name, because they got swapped in Japanese.  Personal name?  Whatever you called it…but Polnareff had also blabbed to Joseph that Jotaro had said his family preferred the reading ‘Tenmei’.  So it was probably written and intended to be read as Tenmei.)

The parents’:

花京院 桜 (Simple, Sakura Kakyoin, her name used the same kanji as the flower.)

花京院 明 (Oh.  Oh!  Joseph had forgotten the kanji for Akira, same as the famous film director he quietly noted, was also in Kakyoin’s…Tenmei.)

So, in a way, Kakyoin was his father’s junior.  It was just a little difficult to read if you didn’t have access to the kanji.  (Where did the first kanji come from though?  Maybe a grandfather, Joseph guessed, or…they could have just liked how it looked…)

Obviously, no sign of Stand or some form of Hamon, as weirdly interesting as it felt, reading in on their private document.

On the coffin, next to the other photo it went.

And…there was something about seeing these two photos side-by-side, next to each other, that just…

It made Joseph really question what right he thought he ever had to take their son’s body, after getting him killed, and then burying him far from their family.

As difficult as it was, communicating with the Kakyoins, in regards to giving them their son back, Joseph had known their son, what…fifty days about?

They’d known him for much longer.

There weren’t enough apologies he could offer them, and there wasn’t enough time for him to say everything they were owed…

So it was that Joseph continued practicing this, going a little further each time—he got a picture of the married couple (they were the only ones at their wedding, save for another, older priest), another one of a younger Akira in his black cassock, a couple with him wearing a green or red…robe…thing…Catholic priests wear…for mass…probably…some with him and Sakura (still a curly-redhead, so it was probably natural) talking in a confessional (they had a lot of those actually…), and…Joseph stopped when he finally found an interesting one.

And Joseph took care to focus in on this event and take it from multiple angles, so that he had…five shots all around.  (He did wind up busting up the camera, focusing in on the second photo, like he knew he would, so Joseph did wind up pulling out a spare and trying again.  The second one exploded in his hands, so a third one was brought out, and, thankfully, with this third round, he’d had more success.)

It didn’t outright confirm the Stand or form of Hamon but…well, it didn’t discount it either.

There was a picture of a very young, quite thin Akira Kakyoin (looked like his…late teens…and, Joseph found himself wincing a little at how familiar the face looked, even at this distance…at this age…it was almost the same face as his son’s, just with some very small differences).  Akira was standing, with hands balled up into fists, looking down at a very large hole in the wall.  It was…admittedly kind of hard to read the expression in this first picture.

From a different angle, there were several younger boys and girls, looking a little but not at all similar (his many siblings that he cut off, later in life, a total of seven and, with Akira, they were a hefty brood of eight).  Some of them…shit…Joseph noticed some were bandaged, some were in arm and leg casts, some were on crutches…

From a different angle, one could get a better glimpse at the massive hole—in it, there was a large, muscular man in a…a robe (a pretty flashy looking one)…and boxing gloves.  The robe had kanji…with the Kakyoins’ name on it.  And katakana too (キラ, read as Kira).  Kira Kakyoin.  Ki—ah, it was a pun!  Kira, like Killer!  Killer Kakyoin!  It was a fighting nickname of some sort!  The man…Killer Kakyoin…had…it appeared…been pushed or punched or struck into the wall.  (His face was looking a little bloodied, from that distance, like a boxer’s would, but it was looking kind of fresh.)

The last two photos were close-ups of the pair, of Akira and Killer.

Killer had some of the same features that would appear on Akira’s, his siblings’, and…Joseph was presuming his grandson’s face.  He was also just bald and covered up his small upper lip with a handlebar mustache.  There were tears streaming down, but…he definitely didn’t look sad.  There was actually a pretty wide grin on his face.  (From the looks of the other photo, and how he was positioned in that wall, it definitely looked like he could have gotten some sort of spinal damage.  So, really, no reason to be smiling.)

The last photo was a very curious one and it pained Joseph to see, because it allowed him to find more and more resemblance to the young man he and the Joestar clan owed their lives to.  It was a very sharp, very young face, with a very familiar looking nose, cheek bones, and eye-shape (but the mouth was different), all framed by dark hair.  (No black eyes, but there was some blood.) And his face was smiling back.

Joseph set the photo down, on the coffin, like the rest.  Simply staring.

He was missing more pieces to this, and he knew it, to fully understand what the hell any of this could mean…and he wasn’t discounting that him using his Stand could have also affected what was printed…but…still…

No pictures of Stands or Hamon, just several portraits of the Kakyoin patriarch, at different points of his life.

Even after they’d landed on a private airfield, transferred to a freezer car, gave the Kakyoins a call that they landed (as usual, Joseph got their answering machine, but, at least, they had the proper excuse that it was practically three in the morning), and embarked on a trip of several hours, and Joseph had to put those photos away (no need to freak out the perfectly nice Speedwagon agents from the local Japanese branch or the Kakyoins), he was still thinking back on that last photo and whatever it could mean.

It was around five when Joseph reached the address (an apartment building in a fairly metropolitan area, very tall and…window…window-y…all tinted blueish by the early hours of the day) and he buzzed up the apartment number he was given by Sakura (the highest apartment number on the building, 99).

The voice he heard back wasn’t Sakura’s this time.

“You must be Mr. Joestar,” the dark, smoky, obviously not Sakura’s meek voice ventured to guess, in Japanese.  (Admittedly, he did sound a little tired…or was he just annoyed?  Well, it didn’t help that the line sounded very Bond villain.  Especially with the delivery.  Incredibly Bond villain.)  “From the,” sigh (definitely annoyed), “Speedwagon Foundation.”  Ok, sorry, guy was dealing with a loss, but screw this guy…nobody talked about Joseph’s Uncle’s Foundation like that!

“Yes,” was all Joseph found that he could answer back, holding back that sense of heat building up in his core (admittedly, it could have been the heavy jacket and scarves and gloves too…shit, Joseph had forgotten he’d had them on still).  

(Shoot, how was he supposed to do THIS part???  Was he just supposed to say, “I’ve got your son downstairs,” like a pizza delivery man?  Oh, oh shit…what if…would these fuckers asked him to lug the coffin up to them…well, he…he did owe it to them, but still…)

Thankfully, Akira Kakyoin beat him to the punch.  “Come up.  I’ll buzz you in.  We’ll talk for fifteen minutes.  No longer.  And then we’ll see our Son.”  So Sakura was with him.  Just not talking to him this time.  (And, really, who could blame her?)

“We shouldn’t keep him waiting any longer,” Joseph said aloud before he could stop himself, and, as soon as that shit came out of his mouth, he covered it up to stop more stupid shit from coming.

A pause.  “Yes.”

Another pause from the other end.  Then: “You’ll tell me more about this…Stand-business my Son got himself into.”

Joseph stopped where he stood, frozen, even after hearing the buzz through the intercom, indicating he was allowed in.

“Mr. Joestar,” the voice through the intercom summoned him, beckoning him to the highest apartment in this building, accompanied by a couple more buzzes in succession.

“So you don’t have a Stand,” Joseph couldn’t help but ask.

“I just learned about Stands a day or so ago,” the former Father Akira Kakyoin confessed.  “We can talk about it when you arrive to number 99.”

“And you…don’t practice Hamon,” Joseph also put in, before realizing, “Sorry, sendo, I think is the local name…”

A sigh.  “Mr. Joestar, I have no idea what you’re asking.  Just…come up.  As you said, we shouldn’t leave Tenmei waiting much longer…”

Fucking Catholics and the fucking guilt they cause people, Joseph couldn’t help but curse but he stopped himself from going further, knowing, shit, this time it really was deserved.

So it was that Joseph Joestar entered that apartment building in Kakyoin, bag only in hand, and headed up to number 99, thinking only of that odd smile in that last photo he’d seen and of the…smile’s…owner (whatever the terminology was).

Akira Kakyoin, who Joseph Joestar was going to meet very soon.

Chapter Text

Kakyoin, Japan. 1989.

Joseph Joestar would have lied if he’d said he wasn’t skipping a little giddily, bubbly about correctly guessing the existence of the Kakyoins’ private dojo (which looked even better in person than it did through Hermit-Purple-Hamon photos); admittedly, he was wishing he could have gotten this confirmation under better circumstances, and it was making it just a little more difficult to concentrate on those questions that he’d decided he’d wanted to focus on, in that elevator ride up to number 99.

The three of them were standing in the middle of the mirrored, red-brown, wooden room. On the walls were scrolls that had been in the family for generations, some even bearing kanji that was introduced as the older family name. (The current kanji, 花京院, read ‘Ka-Kyo-In’, had the characters for flower, capital city, and institution, respectively. The older family name 花房, read ‘Hana-Fusa’ or ‘Hana-Busa’, which had the characters for flower and room. Growing from a room to a capital city institution was quite a feat.) Joseph stood opposite the pair, by the exit (to employ the classic Joestar technique, if it was needed). The pair opposite him were standing together. They were practically a perfect triangle. (Hell if he knew which triangle, math sucked!)

The Kakyoins had a tasteful amount of wrinkles, both looking a bit more youthful than fifty. (Shit, around Holly’s age.) Sakura’s red-brown curls and Akira’s dark hair silvered at the roots, but, dammit, were they making it look pretty good. The angular Akira had accosted Joseph at their apartment door with a pretty nice suit jacket (dark, padded a little at the shoulders, and fitted around the waist), that he was carefully removing and laying on the ground, while the curved, slim Sakura stood by his side. Neither of them looked especially happy to see Joseph (and, really, Joseph couldn’t blame them).

It had been Akira’s idea that he spend their fifteen minutes in this private dojo with Jojo.

Focus, Jojo, thought the oldest living direct Joestar descendant (sorry Lisa Lisa, you married in), while removing his heavy coats, gloves, and scarves and tossing them on the ground. You have to (1) apologize about their son and the way you spoke to Sakura (while remaining firm that their ignoring their son, even and especially after his passing, was absolutely unacceptable), (2) learn how Akira Kakyoin learned about Stands while remaining cautious about the intel gained through Hermit Purple (keeping in mind that the pictures could have been fabricated by an overactive imagination or colored by biases), and (3) try not to get killed by Akira who (without a Stand or some kind of Hamon, he claimed) possibly managed to damage his own father’s(?) spine at around age seventeen.

Joseph couldn’t help but also wonder, This is going to hurt like a Caesar Zeppeli death, isn’t it, Uncle Speedwagon? Except, instead of a bunch of angry Italians, this honorary nephew was getting a practitioner of Atemi…who, wait…was the older family name Hanafusa/Hanabusa like the…

“Mr. Kakyoin, the older family name you shared, Hanabusa, that’s on the walls,” Joseph began his question in the most polite Japanese he could muster, while rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. (And, well, it did feel a bit weird calling the father by the same name that their party had called the son for around fifty days.) “It wouldn’t happen to be the same Hanabusa as the samurai from the Sengoku era…” A bit of trivia from Holly’s youth that just hadn’t left Joseph’s head, for whatever reason. (And, well, it was probably finally going to be useful.)

“The very same, according to family legends,” Akira claimed, as his wife took his glasses (a nice frame) in one hand (her other hand held a stopwatch), and the former Father began rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt to his elbows as well. “Hanabusa Masayuki, who served the Ukita clan as a retainer.” Sonuvabitch.

Oh yeah, this was really going to hurt like a Caesar Zeppeli death.

Hell.

It was already hurting like one.

Joseph absolutely would have been lying if he’d said that it hadn’t hurt like that and hadn’t stopped hurting like that since that night in Cairo.

Venice, Italy. 1939.

Suzi and him got married, with only a priest and a fisherman in attendance.

Clothes weren’t too hard or expensive to pick. Suzi just got her nicest dress and Joseph attended in practically a full body cast.

And most of his time in their two-week honeymoon was spent in recovery. (At least he was in relative comfort, tended by his sweetie and of the mistaken belief that she had sent a telegram to his loved ones.)

He probably spent the first couple of days waking up, in the middle of the night, calling for Caesar.

And it was in those nights, when Suzi would come in and reassure him, that he was more certain that this impulsive, eighteen year old decision of his was the right one.

“Honey, I miss him too,” Suzi would promise, between lovely kisses on his cheeks (if his neck weren’t totally wrapped up, he would have kissed her back). “He was a very nice young man. A little too serious for me, but very nice.”

How many other young women would have spent practically half of their honeymoon talking about another man? Probably just Suzi.  That, Joseph Joestar was convinced, was what made her the best.

He used to tell her all about him, this distant and lovely young blond, who sacrificed his life to give Jojo a ring (long story there, but he really needed that fucking ring), and how even the loss of Caesar’s tessellated bandana brought Jojo to tears.

“He offered me a ring too,” Suzi pretty abruptly reassured him once, causing her husband to spit up the aranciata she was sharing with him (and she quickly wiped him up, the gem). “He dated a lot of women, but I think you and me are the only people he offered a ring to.”

The story itself was quite sweet, even if it didn’t start as sweet.

Suzi was a young woman from a large family (like quite a few Italians are). She was the second oldest girl and quite the flirt. Her first boyfriend was fun, but, unlike Joseph, he wanted to have another kind of fun before they’d married.

“We were just kissing, and then he started taking off his pants,” Suzi recalled, a weird sort of bemused smile growing on her face. “And I just laughed at him. I don’t know why! It wasn’t especially funny and I’d told him, going in, that I wasn’t that kind of girl! But I laughed at him, until he stopped and left the room.”

“Suzi, Honey, that doesn’t sound like a nice thing to do!”

“Well it wasn’t nice of him to do that either, Jojo,” Suzi rationalized with a wag of her ring finger, and, really, Joseph couldn’t argue against it, especially when looking at that ring he’d stuck there just earlier that week. (Was that how it was going to be, now? Anytime they’d argue, she’d just wag that finger, reminding him of that ring he’d given her, and he’d be hypnotized to listen to her?) “Let me continue, honey, I hadn’t even gotten to Caesar!”

So, worst-Ex-ever spread a rumor that Suzi was the one who made the inappropriate request, while he was the one that turned her down, and, soon enough, she no longer found herself part of a large Italian family. (Joseph offered the first wedding gift of heading back to her hometown and slugging the guy, but the gift was declined with an easy laugh and an appreciative grazie .)

“I ran to another town and another job, until the rumors would inevitably catch up, and I rinsed and repeated,” Suzi described. “Even after I changed my name to Suzi Q. I repeated this until I wound up serving pasta in Venice, to your Hamon Master and Caesar—Lisa Lisa was lovely, like always, and Caesar was incredibly polite.”

“Yuck, he wasn’t romancing her, was he?” Joseph knew how their relationship wound up, sure, but, well, he knew shit on how it started. (And, well, if he’d been told earlier, it was kind of easy to forget things in a body cast.)

“Of course not! He was treating her like a proper Italian son treats his own mother,” Suzi recalled with a finger pointed to a dimple on her face. “He pulled her chair out for her and everything. It was really pretty sweet. And he was very polite to me too! He didn’t come on with a come on or anything! He actually tried to make nice conversation, while asking what I recommended! And then,” his wife (what an awesome thing it really felt like calling her!) raised up her arms in a shrug. “The rumors caught up. There were some boys from my hometown in the restaurant that night and they were making a fuss about me—but the rumors had gotten worse, by the time they caught up to me in Venice! And the restaurant owner believed them, not me. Lisa Lisa got up and approached me—and, to be honest, I had no clue what she was going to do, I kind of thought she was going to slap me in the face, but, instead, she just looked right at me and offered me a job working for her, instead of this trash-heap we were in (her words, not mine), and, well, I agreed on the spot! She even asked how much I was making before I was fired from the restaurant, and, after scoffing at my old paycheck, offered me five times the pay right there, right after refusing to pay for her meal!”

“The restaurant owner was a little upset—there was this gorgeous woman who had insulted his restaurant and refused to pay for a very nice dinner, so the boys from my hometown offered their help in exchange for a free meal. Caesar made pretty quick work of them, even though he really didn’t have to, and the three of us walked out of there unscathed! And then, that night,” His wife (YES!) just held her face in her cheeks and blushed (she really looked sweet like that, about any husband would have been happy seeing their wife looking like that, even if the next sentence she shared probably would have upset them a little), “He told me that he didn’t believe the rumors (which was very sweet of him to say) and he offered to marry me so that it would restore my honor, shut down the talk, and I could return to my hometown and to my family!”

Yeah, as much as the arrogant jerk could get under his skin, Joseph couldn’t help but think to himself that that sounded a lot like something he’d do, that righteous prick (damn, he really missed him). Suzi cautiously wiped up tears he hadn’t noticed on his cheeks, and kissed the parts she’d wipe up. “Suzi, Honey, what’d you tell him?”

“I told him to take me on a few dates before he made that offer again,” Suzi cutely replied, quite close to his face, her orange-scented breath on his face. “I didn’t feel an instant connection to him, like I did with you.” Hearing that, he really wanted to kiss her back, dammit!

“I really wanna kiss you,” her eighteen-year-old husband (turning nineteen in September) said with a pout, and, with a smile, she granted his wish. (This marriage thing was pretty awesome!)

So it was, according to her, after a couple of dates that Caesar and her realized they just weren’t right for each other. The only thing they had in common was that they wanted a big family. (And she still did, YES! YES! YES!) After that, they remained cordial exes and just watched out for each other.

The newlyweds wound up talking more about Caesar throughout the week, especially on those nights that Joseph called out for him; eventually, the two brought up what-if’s.

The most exciting one had to be, well, if Caesar survived and the pair of them both proposed to him.

“Jojo,” Suzi began extrapolating this scenario, with that sweet, sweet way she said his name. “We’re from good Catholic families, so I’d imagine, if he introduced us to his family, I’d have to be the one he’d introduce as the official wife. And you’d,” said with a point to his nose, “You’d have to be the other man. You wouldn’t mind, would you, Sweetie?”

“Depends on where I’d be lying in our bed,” Joseph replied with an embarrassingly large grin on his face. He had two hands, dammit, (well, it became two again, after the loss of his first and, later in that same week, after a secret delivery of a mechanical hand from Stronheim, which made the hand either the best or worst wedding gift…okay, probably best), two hands for two people, and damn was the eighteen-year-old happy he’d impulsively proposed to a young woman who just understood him.

“We’d probably have to switch, just to be fair,” Suzi bartered with her mouth making a cutely demure ‘U’. (And, dammit, he had to agree with an, ‘of course.’) “It felt weird with just me and Caesar, but, with you added, Jojo, I think we could have made it work.”

With this imagined marriage, they’d get the large families they’d wanted, they’d probably annoy the hell out of Lisa Lisa (who, they figured, deep down, would have been pretty pleased, actually), and Suzi offered to act as a buffer when they’d inevitably fight.

Looking back, this was a pretty weirdass coping mechanism, but, damn, did it work.

Kakyoin, Japan. 1989.

“Mr. Joestar, what the hell are you doing?”

Joseph woke out of that fifty year old reverie, looking back at the couple that bore the same name as the place he was stuck in and the young man he’d gotten killed. “Sorry about that, Mr. Kakyoin. My mind just went somewhere else.”

“Did you want to extend this to thirty minutes,” the former Father Akira K offered, assuming a stance, as his wife stepped back and made this triangle into something more obtuse. And then, as if he was reexplaining something to a baby, “I’m hurting, and you’re hurting. You know some things that I want to, and same with you. Fifteen more minutes for us, on top of the previously agreed fifteen, to find catharsis .” A pause. “You do know what catharsis is, don’t you, Mr. Joestar?” Joseph could have sworn this man’s son asked the practically same thing (or something that sounded a lot like it) a month ago.

Oh God, this really was Kakyoin’s father.

“Right now it’s us punching each other to feel less guilty, right? Let’s keep this bout at fifteen minutes,” Joseph declined, as politely as he could, while balling his hands into fists, and assuming his own, unstudied stance—realizing, maybe, a little too late how he’d mimicked the boxers he watched on television. “We shouldn’t make your son wait longer than he needs to.”

The response was cold. “Alright.”

As Joseph assumed a different stance (definitely too late to put on a Bruce Lee ), he couldn’t help but stare at the pair he was facing up against. An angular man and a curved, round woman. Somewhere in between, their son just looked…right between them.

Really, Jojo was wishing they could have all met under very different circumstances.

“And don’t hold back, Mr. Joestar,” was the command, from the former-priest-turned-business-type Mr. Kakyoin, delivered with a point of his finger.

“I won’t,” Jojo lied, offering a thumbs-up and switching up his footing, to keep himself awake (hellish jetlag he was dealing with, on top of, um, a shit-ton of guilt and, probably, a good amount of sleep deprivation about now, but he was determined to insure no Hamon-use on this Kakyoin).

“Father,” his wife piped in, throwing up the stopwatch in her hand, asking her question with the least amount of words possible.

Both men quickly approached each other, nodding, until meeting in the middle, assuming their stances, and touching the back of the other man’s wrist (palms facing out).

With a pair of nods exchanged between Mr.’s Joestar and Kakyoin, the former Catholic priest called out, “Start Time!”

“Yes, Father,” his wife called back, with a nod.

Before Jojo could even think to swing, Mr. Kakyoin struck first, with a very quick shift out of his stance and a roundhouse kick delivered, landing right in Mr. Joestar’s wrist, separating the hand clean from his arm.

“HOLY SHIT,” Jojo cried out, stepping back before a second kick could find him, quickly turning his head to find where that old Wedding Gift of Stronheim’s went (into a wall, just like Killer Kakyoin had been thrown or punched or whatever by Akira years ago); just as quickly, Jojo turned back, guarding his head with two arms and one balled up fist close to his head.

Shit, he left himself vulnerable—!

With a quick head turn back and arms closer to his head, Jojo found—himself greeted by the sight of a very confused Akira Kakyoin.

Quoth Akira, “Your hand—“

“War-wound,” Jojo lied, while attempting that nonchalant-swatting-air hand motion, only to realize he trying it out with a nonexistent left; so he just stopped. “The hand just feels so authentic, at times, I forget it’s fake.” It hurt like a bitch sometimes, but, other times, this explanation felt true enough.

And they just stood there for a bit.

Stood there…

Ah, with a snap of the fingers on the right right hand, “How’d you hear about Stands?”

With that, Akira reassumed his stance and the pair were engaged, again, meeting in the middle, and doing the…the-spinning-in-a-circle-while-locking-your-eyes-on-your-enemy-thing again…

“A tall blond man in Cairo first introduced the concept to me, nearly five months ago,” Akira confided, in the most cautious tone, as, Joseph had noted, sounded no different than he’d sounded in his file, when dealing with tabloid reporters. (Dammit, Jojo didn’t sign up to become a tabloid nightcrawler! He just wanted to reunite a son with his parents!) “I’d only gotten the explanation on Stands a day or so earlier; I’ve come to understand that my son had one.”

Jojo searched his expression (kind of a tricky thing to do, while the face in front of you pretty much hates your guts and it’s connected to a left hand that curled itself into a fist that’s heading to your face, which you just barely manage to intercept with your armless left). Either this guy was a really great liar that just happened to deliver a lie, consistent with what Joseph knew, or he had met—

“You catch the blond guy’s name?” Mr. Joestar asked, just barely catching a leg, with a kick for him (aimed right in the chest, dammit) with his one good right hand.

“No,” was the response, delivered with a left hook in the cheek, and, of course, Joseph missed it.

This guy—really wasn’t a clean fighter, was he?

The larger English-American definitely made certain to land forward, left elbow forward and not letting go of the leg in his right, landing with all of his weight, twisting himself and that leg he held; as he fell, Joseph could have sworn he’d heard some Japanese he’d never heard before—but, judging by the tone, it probably was the rare cuss word Joseph Joestar didn’t know.

Yes, this was really feeling like a Caesar Zeppeli death. Someone just had to throw something at him, to make this experience feel complete.

As Joseph held that moving leg and kept twisting, his back became host to several strategic kicks and punches, all looking for a weak point. Grunting, “Why don’t you ask me what the blond guy’s name is?”

“He didn’t seem like someone who’d work for an organization with a name like the Speedwagon Foundation ,” Akira delivered through gritted teeth, and, dammit, the way he talked about Joseph’s Uncle’s foundation, no different than how he’d delivered what had to be a cuss word—!

Joseph just had to bite that leg, right in the calf!

This earned Joseph a couple of punches, delivered to the back of his head! “But, now that you mention it, Mr. Joestar—why do you recognize this term that he used??!”

“I don’t know!” And to be fair, Joseph didn’t completely (he maybe had a guess…), but this head-damage was enough to get Joseph to stand up and, while still holding onto that leg, imitated that exciting move Joseph thought he’d seen on television once—wrestling, it looked like, spinning the man by one leg, as another stomped furiously on his arm. “You may not believe me, but I really hated that guy; I rescued your son from this blond man…actually my grandson did! I helped!”

Mr. Joestar let go, propelling Akira in an unknown direction and (hopefully) giving him some minutes to recover from the assault on his head, back, and arm. “I didn’t like the blond guy…hated him…you-your son…your son, after we saved him…the blond guy targeted my daughter and your son volunteered to help us…kick his ass…” There was something Jojo was forgetting, and, as he held that throbbing cranium in his hands, he was hoping it’d come back to him.

Oh, right.

“Akira Kakyoin, I told your wife some unforgivable things over the phone, and I’m sorry about that,” Joseph confessed to the former Catholic priest, turning back to his opponent, “And—and I,” fuck, why was this so hard to get out? “Your son…I’m so sorr—“

Joseph’s apology was interrupted with a palm strike (didn’t catch which hand) connecting to his right cheek that he’d missed (his vision got blurry, dammit, with that apology coming out); Mr. Joestar staggered back, avoiding whatever other strike he’d miss, coming his way. Oh wait. The other thing he missed: “Wh-who tol’you ‘bout Stands?”

With a point to his wife, Akira Kakyoin very wordlessly replied.

Sakura.

“Shit, issshe a Ssstanduser,” Joseph slurred, eyes darting to his other hand and, then, back to his opponent, raising his arms to his head.

“Her side of the family gave my son a ghost,” Akira verified, not at all looking back at Sakura behind him, who was…slipping, sliding forward and sitting on the ground. “She guessed, from context clues, from what we last heard the day our son was taken from us in Cairo,” and, Joseph just noticed it, as Akira wiped his eyes. There was something to this Heart of Stone, dammit. “He just turned seventeen. I barely remember how we spent his birthday…he was my only child, and he was gone,” in spite of trying to wipe away those tears and, from the furrowing of those brows, Joseph guessed he was willing those tears stop, they just kept going. Perhaps to make up for this weakness, Akira’s open palms were raised, again, close to his face. “We alienated him. That trip was one last, pathetic attempt to save our family, and, before we originally planned to leave Cairo, we just realized it wasn’t working between us. So, around his birthday, we cancelled the rest of the trip and gave him the choice of which parent he’d wanted to live with after the split. Our split wasn’t his fault…I don’t know if I didn’t make it clear enough to him. And, it took time, but I now find it completely understandable that he chose to leave us with an empty hotel room. The last time I saw him, before I—I was knocked out by an unseen enemy while we looked for him, in Cairo…just barely finding him…he went with that blond man that approached him…that…that offered my young son friendship…and…the last thing I heard was…before I blacked out, was mention of something called a Stand,” Akira sensed he was on the verge of sounding incoherent, so, after a pause and clearing his throat, “Something the blond man said he’d had, and my son had too—“

And Akira charged at Joseph.

Joseph had a phrase that he’d employed, years ago when he’d been drafted into the War (yes, that one).

Save your Hamon for Hitler.

It was a mantra he’d developed, when he’d been thrown into the European theatre, decades ago, so that he wouldn’t attack a Stronheim, a Caesar, a Mark, or, well, any other young man, who, under any other circumstance, wouldn’t have been his enemy.

A reminder of who really deserved it and the sorry bastard that really was getting it, if he had the misfortune of running into Hamon Master Lisa Lisa’s son and student.

In very, very stressful situations, when he was finding himself tempted to use his Hamon on another person, that mantra found him.

Joseph instead launched himself to his left side, closer to his hand.

“Sakura and I married late in life, we could only have one son,” Akira called, no, taunted Joseph—striking him somewhere priests loved to strike, Joseph Joestar was a bit inclined to believe, because Mr. Kakyoin’s latest kicks and punches just missed his target. “Tabloids claimed that our relationship was inappropriate, but I’d never—we hadn’t done anything like that, until after we married! We mostly just talked in a confessional. My own siblings didn’t even approve! After I married her, and we learned that she was pregnant with Tenmei, they mailed us Christmas Cakes stuffed with cherry jam in January! From my favorite bakery—Christmas—do you understand that insult, Joseph? She nearly miscarried from the stress!”

There, in some minutes, Joseph had his other hand back! “What’s wrong with Christmas cakes?” Just as quickly, Joseph found a weight on his back and arms wrapped around his throat.

“Christmas cakes, in Japan,” the former priest began lecturing, between growls, accepting punches aimed to his arms and pressing his weight into Jojo’s back. “In Japan, there’s a—a sentiment that Christmas cakes are only good around Christmas, December 25th—and we were in our thirties when we married! They called my wife a Christmas Cake—they were telling us that she was a Christmas Cake, older than twenty-five, filled with cherry—filled with my son, because she is named after the cherry blossom—and she was past her prime!”

Joseph stopped focusing on those arms, instead, focusing on the ground, pushing up—planning on taking this guy with him, for a ride. And, throwing his back into the wall, Joseph slammed his opponent into the red-brown-wood, until he could feel that hold over his throat weaken. “Siblings suck! I’m so glad my mother ran off before I had to worry about that!”

Soon enough, he felt his opponent let go.

Spinning quickly, Joseph sized up Akira Kakyoin (hoping he hadn’t accidentally killed him).

Oh good, he was just looking up, glaring. “I—my father—my father was a boxer—“

Ah, there was that confirmed.

“My fa…my father’used’t’,” Akira heaved, spitting on the hand Joseph had offered to his enemy, rolling to his side and readying himself to stand on his own. “My father…used to fight my siblings and I—I became the favorite because I was the only one who—“

“Your next line is that ‘you were the only one who fought back,’” Jojo guessed, dreading doing so (but he needed to find some way of discombobulating his foe, dammit), while taking this chance to retreat a little and ready himself for whatever was coming at him after this. “Was the Atemi passed down through the generations?”

“No,” Akira, now standing, clarified—annoyed, it appeared, that his monologue had been interrupted. “In spite of what our alleged relationship to the Sengoku-era Samurai retainer could imply, I had to learn the Atemi on my own, with my own allowance. And, when he tried to—to bully one of my siblings, they’d cry out for me, and I’d fight him back. Every bone my father broke, I’d read, would grow back, more powerful than ever—and, by the end of my teens, quite a lot of my body had to grow back,” again, he assumed a stance, and, slowly, approached Joseph, initiating that odd sort of dance they’d begun this fifteen minutes with (and, well, Joseph was going to oblige). “I stopped after I crippled my own father. And my siblings, those ingrates, weren’t willing to fight back for us…I hated how much I…I loved fighting…and how much I loved crippling that bastard…it’s why I became a priest…to shut that down…and I hated that—that they didn’t care about the sacrifice I’d made for them…”

“Siblings suck,” Joseph repeated, a little slowly, in case it was missed the first round, meeting his opponent at the middle and, again, opening his opened palm and touching his wrist against his enemy’s. And, well, feeling quite close, he shared some extra sympathy. “Me and the wife could only have one kid. She hated it, and I’d hated it because she did, because she’d really wanted a big family—even though we got hitched when we were young…I don’t really remember the exact phrasing from her gynecologist…whichever doctor it was, that told us, but we could only have one kid. The only comfort we found was that our child was a girl, because I really liked being a father to a girl.”

“Yeah, I wish I could have been a father to a girl too,” the former priest confessed…something of a…fuck, was that a smile, growing on his face? A smile, accompanying odd tears. “If our Tenmei was a girl, he would have had his mother’s name. Yours—if she was male?”

“Caesar,” Joseph answered, simply, something that, at that point, only one person other than Joseph knew. (For the curious: it was just Suzi. There was no way they could tell Lisa Lisa or Holly. If either of them asked, Holly was almost a Joseph too.) “My Holly would have been Caesar Joseph Joestar. And we probably would have called her CJ or Jojo.” Because, well, that nickname tended to follow the men in their odd family. “Instead, I think, we had Hollywood on our mind, when she was born. So we had a Holly instead.”

There was something Joseph was forgetting…ah, wait…

“How long did you know your wife’s side brought a Stand into your family?” There. That had to be it. It felt important to Joseph to ask. (If it wasn’t, well, now it was.)

“I learned a little after I sued…what I imagine was your Grandson’s school,” Akira confirmed. “We held off on our divorce, to find our son, but…knowing that she hid that…that she said something like that to our son, gaslit him when he’d tried to tell her about it, telling him he was making things up…that she didn’t trust me enough, to tell me, that she didn’t think I wanted to fight for her or our son,” oh, there were those tears again, getting stronger, “I—I realized I’d thought about it in the wrong way, these past couple of days, after she told me…after she told me about the awful voice messages you’d left her…I realized she was afraid, and she did what she thought she could, to save our son…and I’m sorry she had to go through that by herself…I really wanted to help them, I really wanted to save them…and I really wanted to punch your face, for what you told her…”

Said in a way only a former Father could.

Well, shit, Joseph was finding it harder and harder to fight this guy. “How many minutes do we have left, Saku—sorry, Mrs. Kakyoin?” Japanese was quite the contextual language, and he was hoping the head turn to the wife in addition to the 花京院さん (pronounced ‘Kakyoin-San’) made it clear enough.

“Three,” was her response (having gotten the message), and…oh, fuck, was that more sobbing?

Dammit.

Dammit.

Dammit, dammit, dammit!

Now Joseph was finding his own vision getting blurry again! “I’m…I’m really grateful your son…to have met your son….and that he…he said he wanted to save my only daughter…I really wish…I thought I was going to bring him back…I’m so sorry I brought him along, I really thought I was going to bring him back with us…I really owe him my life…it’s not fair, dammit, it’s not fair…I really wanted to save him too…I really wanted to save him too—”

Joseph had seen kids around Kakyoin’s age die around him; he really hated thinking of that time, when the two things keeping him going were thoughts of his family and that old mantra of his, Save your Hamon for Hitler .

He’d really grown to hate that math that the government was keeping him fighting in Europe with—a point system, he’d heard, to keep things fair. 1 point for each month of service, 1 point for each month overseas, 5 points for combat awards (including Purple Hearts, so lots of guys were looking for ways of getting shot), and 12 points for a dependent (Holly hadn’t been born, yet, so he was stuck there for a while).

Joseph Joestar had never seen combat in the Pacific Theatre, but, dammit, he got fed plenty of that propaganda when he came back. If it weren’t for Suzi and Lisa Lisa calling him out on his shit, his mean-spirited jokes about despising the Japanese would have probably been more sincere (and, admittedly, less centered around the Japanese son-in-law stealing their only daughter away). Dammit, Joseph really had been regretting those jokes, especially after the grandson was born and more so after his grandson's friend died to save him, even though everyone was just putting up with it! And, looking at this other guy, the English-American was hating himself even more for those times when he did deliver that tasteless joke and that horrible part of him that meant it sometimes.

Well, as of today, Joseph Joestar was going to kill that part of him that ever meant it. And make more of an effort to never say something like that again.

The three of them spent those three minutes saying nothing further.

When that stopwatch went off, the three of them looked to each other.

“Any other questions?” Joseph put in, as Akira Kakyoin separated from Mr. Joestar, to help his wife up and off of the ground.

“No,” was the simple response. “You?”

“No,” Joseph wrapped up this confession.

—

The final meeting between the Kakyoins and their son was quiet (as far as Joseph could hear outside of the refrigerated car). He’d offered them their child’s body, before they paid their final respects, but, again, they’d repeated what Sakura had told him over the phone.

The Kakyoins knew that they didn’t deserve their son; they’d driven him away, and, when presented with the choice of living with one parent or the other, he’d made his decision.

Their Tenmei had chosen neither of them.

It was Joseph Joestar and his odd, reckless company that he’d picked.

The parents had agreed that the least they could do was respect his wishes, after his passing, and, as promised over the phone, allowed Joseph Joestar to pick where to lay their son to rest.

It was just after giving their final respects, that the pair delivered their sort of apology and explanation for the constant phone delays—an apology, they insisted, didn’t need to be accepted, but Joseph accepted anyway.

They were in the middle of a very messy divorce about the Stand business, unable to even come together when their son had called them, one last time from a hospital in Egypt, and they were unable to come together most of the times when Joseph had called them.

After Sakura had accepted the body, she’d finally managed to convince Akira to help her plan their son’s funeral, but it was Akira who had asked Sakura, perhaps a little too coldly, who would attend?

(Not her family from Kyoto or his siblings.)

They had, at least, listened to that final voicemail together, and, while waiting for their son’s homecoming, pieced together the meaning behind that odd word (“Stand”) that they’d heard from that blond, the last time they saw their son in Cairo.

The Kakyoins were only an odd, lonely line, the two of them, and, after this experience, they’d planned to remain a line.

The pair shook hands with Mr. Joestar, and, then, feeling some sense of obligation, Joseph gave them the address to the Joestar plot, where he was planning to bury their kid, in a spot that was going to be marked by a tasteful cherry tree.

“He was…maybe eight or nine when he told me,” Sakura reminisced, with an odd sort of laugh, drying a tear in her eye, arm in arm with her husband, “he told me that he’d learned in school that the cherries from the cherry blossom trees that we see are, they’re bitter and inedible…so I stopped calling him my Cherry after that, because he wasn’t that…he was really such a sweet boy…” Who was she explaining this to? Joseph really didn’t know, but it certainly didn’t feel like it was for him to know; he accepted this odd, delayed sort of apology all the same, agreeing to replace the cherry tree with something more edible (which Sakura heartily accepted with nods of her curly head).

Jojo gave the date, when he’d planned to have their son buried, but the pair declined to show up.

They’d already had their goodbyes.

With that, the Kakyoins and Joseph Joestar, with the Speedwagon Foundation’s freezer car, parted ways.

And the Kakyoins were separated from their son once again.

Chapter Text

Liverpool, England.  1989.

Figures that it rained as soon as Joseph touched down (really wouldn’t have felt like England without it, to be honest).  At least the long flight gave him time enough to lick his wounds with Hamon and recover for the really difficult part of this journey with Kakyoin.

Mr. Joestar had contacted a funeral parlor close to the old Joestar plot of land, and made arrangements ahead of time to keep the young man until his burial.  (Thank goodness, after so many flights, he wasn’t molding or anything yet.)

Silly as it felt, at the funeral parlor, after he’d checked the body, he found himself clasping the young man’s folded hands again and talking to him.  “Sorry for putting you through all of that.  I’ll never get sick of planes, but I think nearly everyone else can only put up with so many flights in such a small span of time.  That’s going to be our last flight.  Promise.”

No response.

No sudden flutter of those scarred eyelids, while in the middle of whatever he was praying.

Mr. Joestar had originally planned to stay at Erina’s home that he’d grown up in, at the outskirts of London, but, well, he really didn’t want any last minute interference stopping Kakyoin from reaching his destination.  (You could never really be too cautious.)  After getting the permission of the folks running the parlor, he slept there instead.

They asked what he was to the young man, in that typical intrusive-but-trying-not-to-be-intrusive English way.

I put him in that box , he thought to himself, but he didn’t say that out loud.  Really would have given the wrong impression there.

“He was a friend of my grandson’s,” was the closest, most tangible relationship to Kakyoin that Joseph felt privileged enough to divulge.  But, even that didn’t feel like enough.  So, after a pause, he added, “I think he loved my grandson.  And I think my grandson loved him back.”

Joesph Joestar really wished he could have said something more, but that was about the closest relationship he’d had to the young man in the box.

“Oh,” was the response, said in about as English a way as the first question was.

Joseph didn’t have confirmation and didn’t know for certain…well, what exactly the two of them were to each other; he was, at least, aware that, in Japan, those sorts of things are really kept on the down-low.  Married couples, for instance, didn’t even kiss in front of their own kids (he knew from drunkenly goading Sadao a couple of times into giving Holly a peck with Jotaro in the room, at dinner…sorry Sadao).  There was probably more of this caution, for the pair of them, because, well, of the era they were born into.

When asked about what sort of person Jotaro was attracted to, the grandson gave a very typical answer (to paraphrase it): Japanese girls, ‘slong as they weren’t obnoxious.

No clue who was Kakyoin’s type.

Oh wait—he did say if he got married, he’d want someone like Holly…that…shoot, what was it again?  (His Holly was a cutie, dammit, and hearing people found her cute didn’t bother Old Jojo!  A lot of guys ought to find her attractive!)  Something, something…relaxed near her?  Something something something…something…protect her and make her smile?

Dammit, dammit, dammit!

Well, Kakyoin fulfilled two out of three of Jotaro’s criteria.  (And was it not the poet Meatloaf who did doth quoth, ‘two out of three ain’t bad’?)

As far as Joseph knew, Jotaro could have…well, Kakyoin seemed relaxed around Jotaro and made Jotaro smile (and he seemed to enjoy it).  And, as allies on their fifty day journey, he did protect Jotaro.  And, whether Jotaro wanted to acknowledge it or not, he was his mother’s son.  So, he was as close to an unmarried Holly as Kakyoin could romance.

And the way they looked at each other and talked—sometimes like there practically wasn’t anyone else around.

He figured there was a pretty good chance they had a thing for each other.

Joseph waited until the right times to make calls back to Japan and to another part of England; he called Japan first, and talked to everyone in the Kujo house.

Holly was recovering well.

Suzi was bubbly as ever (very determined to make sure her grandson didn’t skip those three days and get expelled, like a good Nonna , although, one day, he’d cried when she told him the year and, well…she had to call him in sick that day, but she was helping him through the days after).

Roses confirmed everyone’s statuses (like a good Speedwagon-operative-under-deep-cover-as-his-family’s-servant).

Jotaro sounded tired.

Incredibly tired.

Who could blame him?

Joseph felt it was right to give him the invite to the burial—if his grandson said ‘no’, he had the option to tell anyone else in the household if he’d wanted or he didn’t have to and he wouldn’t be made to go.  This really was going to be his decision.  There was even an extra week that could be added, from the time of this call, to delay the burial, to give him more time.

The response: “Grandad…’sit weird if I don’t want to see someone I knew…’round my age…in a box?”  His English was good, really good, at this age.

The hesitance, Joseph knew, came from some other place.

“It’s completely normal, Jotaro,” comforting, dammit, he wanted to sound reassuring and he tried so hard to sound reassuring, “You can come see him when you’re ready.  He’s getting buried with Great Grandad George, your Great Great Grandmom Erina, and the other relatives—don’t worry, I got his parents’ permission,” Joseph assured, confidently, to confirm to his grandson that, no, he wasn’t related to a graverobber.  “His spot’s getting marked by a cherry tree that has edible fruit—that was his Mom’s request.  No headstone marker…because, well…if the coppers showed up…I don’t know how I’d even begin to explain the situation…”

There was a sound at the other end—and Joseph couldn’t tell if it was a short, snort of a laugh or—you know…

He asked, because he had to, “Jotaro, you ok?”

“I don’t know,” was the response.

Dammit, he really wanted to be there—wait, what was he doing just thinking this?  “Jojo, I really want to be there for you, but…there’s a couple more things I need to wrap up.  And then I’m going to be there, okay?  I just have to do this, save Mohammed Abdul’s office and work because…that’s all,” fuck, Joseph was choking up.  Choking, dammit!  He was supposed to be the older one, dammit!  He was supposed to be the one his grandson could lean on!  “I have to save his office and then I’m going with Polnareff to deliver the news to his father…I don’t know if we should have told his father while we were down there…but…we didn’t even have a—there wasn’t even a…“  Fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck!

“Grandad, ‘s’ok.”  Shit bricks fuck!  “Go bury ‘im and save what you got left of Abdul.”

“Yeah,” Joseph agreed—maybe a little…a little annoyed someone else took the line out of his mouth…but, dammit, there was a part of him that was relieved, because if anyone had to do it, it was his own grandson.

“When I’m older,” Jotaro said.  “You take me to see him.  Around when I see Abdul’s office, when I’m twenty.  Like we said with Polnareff.  They’re both in the same area anyway, right?”

“Yeah, close enough,” Joseph agreed again, not really finding any better way of putting it than his own grandkid did.  Even if he didn’t keep his composure like he should have, at least he could end this properly: “I love you, alright, Jojo?”

A pause.  “I love you too, Jojo.”

“Take care, ok,” Joseph Joestar begged his grandson.  “Don’t do anything dumb while I’m away?  And—help out Mom and Grandma.  Only so much Roses can do by himself.”

“Yeah,” was the response.  Old Jojo hadn’t told his grandson about Roses being from the Foundation, but, he figured, the kid was very bright and probably already had it figured.

The call just lingered a little while, until Jotaro disconnected it with a terse, “また。”  (Which was pronounced like “mah-tah” and meant something like ‘later’.)

Joseph Joestar wasn’t going to tell Jotaro that one of the reasons he was burying Kakyoin with the Joestars was for him, just yet.  (A sort of, um, grandparent giving permission.  Even if Jotaro might not have cared to ask for his permission…he liked to think Jotaro cared a little…but, even if Joseph was an evil fuck and gave some indication that didn’t want something like that that made his grandson happy, Old Jojo had a feeling Jotaro would have just done whatever the seventeen-year-old-turning-eighteen wanted anyway.)

And, to be honest…Joseph really had no idea how or when he’d share this.

Even if Jotaro had this figured, this was the sort of thing the Grandfather figured he’d have to tell his Grandson, like, in more direct words.

The next call went to another part of England—the hotel room Joseph had offered to put Polnareff up at, under the pseudonym Eiffel, but Polnareff offered to pay for himself instead (and that he did).

Where’d he get the money?

Well, apparently, while they were on that island, where they reunited with Abdul, there was some buried treasure or something, the Frenchman professed, with hands on his hips, that he’d been keeping to himself.  That canny sonuvabitch.  (Joseph had to admire that enough to keep the secret to himself, after he’d heard it from Polnareff.)

It just sounded like Polnareff that he’d find buried treasure somewhere, he really had a knack for finding things like that.

Much like Polnareff figured that Mr. Joestar had kept tabs on the Frenchman and Abdul’s office via the night-janitor (Mr. Dr. D.B., not D.R., Jones, aka “Davy from the Navy”), who was also tasked with maintaining Mohammed Abdul’s office and the other Hamon-focused labs and offices in that same wing.

“Polnareff,” Joseph began, trying to figure…what exactly Silver Chariot’s Stand User knew, without directly asking it or making it sound too combative.  “I’m sorry about the subterfuge,” not a lie, but, hopefully, it was going to distract enough from the files he’d asked Davy to hide from Polnareff before Polnareff stopped by his friend’s office.  “How—“

“How did I solve it,” the beefier twenty-something asked (no, it wasn’t what Joseph was going to ask, but he waited to hear what was coming next).  Jean Pierre was probably preparing what Joseph anticipated was a proper David Suchet Poirot impression (that would have simply required him to play up his French accent, so it was the natural way to go).  (Joseph hadn’t had a chance to tune in just yet, he just heard good things about the new show and he’d really wanted to watch it, dammit.)  “Eet wahz actually quite seem-puhl.”  Oh wow, he was really making that accent sound awful.  Was David Suchet’s accent really that bad?

Joseph had to ask: “Is David Suchet’s accent really that bad?”

”Who—I’m trying to sound like Poirot!”  Jean Pierre put in, accent off (thank God), sounding somewhat hurt.  “And, yes, it is awful to me…but I really like the rest of the show…at least the couple of times I caught it on TV—Mr. Joestar I thought you were upset with me, but, even after…being so annoying to Mr. Dr. Jones the Janitor, he still stuck around.  I even serenaded him, and he stuck around…and that’s when I realized he had to have a reason to stick around!  There were only two people that cared about me, at that point, and the other person that cared about me was a high schooler in Japan, so it really wasn’t difficult to piece together.”  Ok, Polnareff knew about the janitor’s clinical psych doctorate.

Pretty sound logic he’d used to figure this.  It sounded almost too easy, when Polnareff explained how he had this figured.

The knowledge of the doctorate was not much of a loss there, that had to mean he was talking to Davy on like a professional basis.  (Good, yes, if anyone needed therapy—!)

But Joseph needed to know: did the fake Mr. Eiffel know about the hidden files?

“I meant how are you feeling about this,” Joseph replied, both sincerely wanting to know, and, well, maybe derail things a little—so that this Jojo didn’t accidentally divulge on the files.

Le sighe on the other end.  (Is that the French word for it?  Or just a false cognate he made up?  Whatever.)  “You often hide things from me, Mr. Joestar.  It makes…I care about you, but your secret-keeping is making it very difficult to trust you.”  Wow, nicely phrased.  Davy really was a damn good Clinical Therapist, even though he’d been out of an official clinical environment for…Joseph wasn’t going to guess for how long.  “This is like the Island, again.  Where you hid Mohammed Abdul’s death from me.  Except there aren’t any enemies to hide this information from…I thought you were upset at me and, knowing you were looking out for me…I was a little relieved, that you weren’t upset with me, but also a…why did you have to hide this?”  Damn.  All very fine points.

All very fine points.

Alright.  Fine, “If you were upset and knew I’d asked Davy to mind you, I didn’t want you acting like you weren’t upset when you were.”  There.  That was it.  Really, that was it.  “He’s pretty uniquely qualified to keep an eye on you, and make sure you…you’d stay safe.  But I’m sorry that I’d hurt you.”

Nothing on the other end for spell.  Then: “Apology accepted.  And about hiding Mohammed Abdul’s first death until we arrived on the Island—?”

Yeah, this was a long-time coming.  “I’m sorry about that too.”

“Apology accepted again.”

With that out of the way, Joseph extended an invitation to Kakyoin’s funeral, same offer made to Jotaro—a week extra, the parlor had promised they could accommodate, to delay the final burial.

Polnareff agreed to show up, no need to delay the burial.  Sooner was better.  And Joseph had to agree.

So, the time was agreed upon (the very next day) and the address to the Joestar plot was shared.

With that, their call was done, and Joseph was like 70% certain that the current occupant of Mohammed Abdul’s office didn’t know about the files in Jones’ locker.

Right after talking to Polnareff, Joseph rang up Davy, to get that 70% up to 100%.  “I talked to Polnareff.”

“I’m talking to him too,” was the response.  “I can’t share everything that he’s told me—“

“Yeah, I figured,” Joseph figured.  Polnareff really needed this and Joseph was going to let him have his privacy.  “I apologized about hiding that I’d asked you to mind him.  And I apologized about hiding Mohammed Abdul’s death, when he asked me to.  Sounds like his progress is going well.”

“I can’t take all the credit, he’s really putting in the work,” the night-janitor complimented.  Huh.  Sounded like he was growing fond of the Frenchman.

“Sounds like you’re growing fond of Polnareff,” Joseph couldn’t help but tease, knowing how things had gone…was it days ago?  Hard to even say, his internal clock really felt weird lately…

“I really just don’t want to see him get hurt.”  A pause.  Then: “What’s in the file, you had me hide from him?”  There it was, the golden answer, 100% confirmed.

Dammit, but that tone really didn’t…didn’t sound like that 100% would stay 100% without an answer to this question.

Alright, this was Davy, formerly of the Navy.  And he’d been talking to Polnareff.

He deserved to know.  “It’s about the flesh-buds.”  And, really, it was.  No lies, trickery, or anything.

The other end was silent.

Joseph had to continue, to keep that 100% where it was.  “Given Polnareff’s history, there’s really no reason for him to be reading about that.”

Jones had to agree.  “Yes.  I’ll make sure of it.”  Good.

With that out of the way, Mr. Jones got an invite to come to Liverpool too.  He accepted, if only to be there for his current patient and the daft asshole he was talking to.  (Joesph actually really, really liked this guy.  They didn’t make too many like him anymore.)

The third call Joseph made was to the D.C. office, to have someone come to him with the box he’d forgotten and bring it to the London H.Q.  (He really was feeling a fool that he’d forgotten it, but, well, it had been quite the…quite the however long this had been, trying to get Kakyoin buried).

The fourth call he’d made was to rent a cement mixer, to make sure that coffin of the poor boy’s really was staying put where it was getting placed.  Kakyoin was going to Rest In Peace, dammit, and nobody was taking his body.

With these confirmed, Joseph Joestar finally slept, just a little outside of the storage room in the funeral parlor.

—

That night, he’d dreamt of that final Emerald Splash.

—

When he woke up a little earlier than his alarm, Joseph Joestar found himself…thinking back on this weird thing Polnareff was telling him about Mohammed Abdul (wherever he was) and Iggy (safely buried back in Egypt, by the Nile).

Something something, golden gust, like smoke, rising from Iggy’s remains, joining Abdul, in the sky.

Their…souls?

Joseph hadn’t seen anything like that for Kakyoin, in the area where he’d passed.

Maybe Joseph got KO’d a little before he could have seen that.

Or maybe Joseph just didn’t deserve to see something like that.

Was he seeing something like that today?

God…he really hoped not.

That would have meant he really kept poor Kakyoin waiting with all of this bullshit.

Anyway, the rain finally stopped and the three of them met where the Joestar Manor used to be.

Jonathan never rebuilt his family’s home, after burning it to the ground to try to stop his adoptive stepbrother (didn’t take), and Granny Erina didn’t have the heart to do anything to it either.

So it became a sort of place where the Joestars went.

The remains of the old mansion, well, remained. 

Everyone else was buried around the old house.

There were headstones for Jonathan and his father, but no remains.

There was going to be a place for Jonathan, Joseph had schemed, when he was a little more optimistic and a little dumber, if he’d managed to recover anything in Cairo from what that vampire had stolen.

No such luck.

So, young Kakyoin, often called Noriaki and called Tenmei by his parents, was getting the spot that would have gone to Jonathan.

Grass was looking dewy.  Green and a little shiny.

The diggers had begun work very early in the morning and the cement mixer had arrived on time.

Joseph had some time to himself before the others showed up, so he made some rounds.

George I got a nod, and some silence, along with his wife (who was, admittedly, buried somewhere else—but she got it all the same, because those were proper manners, dammit).

Jonathan got an apology.

George II got a salute, like he always got.

And Granny Erina—well, Joseph had to ask her permission (and he made certain nobody was near enough to hear it).

“Granny, I’m sorry I couldn’t come back with anything from the love of your life,” Jojo began, back straight and proper, arms behind his back, like his Granny had home-schooled him to do years ago.  And he’d even rehearsed this so he didn’t sound too improper.  “I brought a very nice boy.  I was—I was really sure he was going to be a part of the family,” Keep that stiff upper lip, dammit, “—I was really looking forward to seeing him at our get-togethers; I’m pretty sure he was in love with Jotaro, your great great grandson.  Jotaro, I think I told you, was almost named Serena Q and, if he’d been a girl, I would have called him Little Erina.  So, in a way, I think I did bring home a Jonathan.”  He paused.

Why?

What was he waiting for, a response?

A lightning strike, if she didn’t accept?

Well, if she did strike him down, Joseph deserved it, really.

“He helped us defeat Dio, for once and for all,” added the oldest living direct Joestar, the one with the blood, allegedly, closest to Jonathan’s, hoping this would seal the deal.  “I think that alone should warrant him a spot here; I think Grandad and even the whole family owes him a little for that.  So, because Grandad can’t repay the young man himself, I’m settling that debt.  You’re welcome, Granny. Please take care of him like you took care of me.”

He didn’t get like a—a magical bluebird or a rainbow or whatever, that signified he’d been heard, but Joseph had more of a—

Like a feeling.

And that was about good enough.

There was a priest that showed up and the two followed after.

Everyone wore suits, said their pieces, paid their respects, and the Kakyoins’ son was finally getting buried.

Polnareff needed some time to himself, before he could form any coherent sentences.

And, well—

Everyone needed that.

Kakyoin was finally being laid to rest and that cement mixer insured he’d stay there.

And, for a good hour or so after, everyone just wandered the land.

Joseph was planning to stick around in England, until his promise to Sakura was fulfilled too, plotting where the tree was going; wherever he was, he kept his eye on the young man’s final descent, and on the diggers and cement mixer’s operator (the priest left earlier), to make sure nobody was going to try anything funny, and didn’t leave with the other two until the diggers and the cement mixer were paid for and off the land.

After that, they’d collected themselves, found each other and, with nods, made their way out.

It was while heading out, Joseph turned to the pair and made a pact—a blood oath, if you would: “If it weren’t for Dio and the study of Stands remaining unknown even to other Stand Users, we wouldn’t have needed to bury that lad.”

The pair were in agreement with Joseph’s assessment, with a d’accord and a proper English ‘agreed’.

“We’re not just saving the study of Stands, Mohammed Abdul’s life’s work, and Mohammed Abdul’s office for Mohammed Abdul,” Joseph continued, with a hand balled up into a fist and close to his face.  “We’re also saving ‘Operation: Stand Proud’ so that we won’t have to bury another Kakyoin.”

That got some sniffles (and Joseph would have been lying if he said he hadn’t contributed there either).

His final line, before the three of them, side by side, left the threshold of his family’s former estate: “So let’s save that office.”

Chapter Text

A Quieter Part of Japan, 1989.

Jotaro could have sworn it was twenty days or less that he’d owed the school—not twenty-seven or…was it twenty-nine now, with the day he took off after he’d returned from the fifty day journey and the day he freaked out about the year?

That was a weird day.

On that off-off day, the Kujos’ kid found himself asking some really dumb questions he normally didn’t care to ask.

“Jojo, a chest compression is when you apply pressure to someone’s chest, to help with blood flow for CPR,” his nurse Mom replied to the first of…quite a few questions he didn’t know why he was asking about, but, well, here was the answer.  “When you feel a tightness in your chest, around the heart, I think that’s just heartache.”

Ah.

Heartache.

Wait.

That didn’t sound even remotely medical.

“It can be medical in different ways,” his Mother informed him.  “One way’s called ‘Broken Heart Syndrome’—or stress cardiomyopathy.  Or Takotsubo cardiomyopathy!  It mimics a heart attack—like you feel the chest pain and shortness of breath—and it’s caused by physical or emotional stress.”

Huh.

Ok.

“‘Sit possible to die from this shit,” he couldn’t help but add to the couple of dumb questions he’d already brought up.

“Of course not, silly,” his Mom reassured, looking the perfect image of the saintly Madonna speaking to her bambino .  Before shifting into the perfect image of, like, a concerned Mom to a proper shonen protag—with comically big eyes that were watering a little, hands thrown over her son’s face and then all over his neck, eyebrows knitted with worry, and mouth very wide.  “You’re not feeling that, are you, Jojo??  Chest pain, shortness of breath—weakness in the left ventricle, irregular heart beats, low blood pressure—?”

Jotaro’s expression didn’t let up, while his mother searched him for the symptoms she was rattling off.  And he didn’t stop her by calling her a bitch or anything.

She was still recovering.

And he didn’t feel much like calling her a bitch these days.

In Japan, currently, she and Grandma (as Nonna was making him call her, to brush up on his English for school) were probably the only women around that he didn’t find obnoxious these days.

After she found what she was looking for (or, wait, it’s the opposite, right?), the woman threw her arms around her child and appeared the perfect Lady Madonna once again.  “Jotaro, baby, please don’t worry me like that!”

“Alright,” was his attempt to make that promise to Madge.  And, well.  He was kind of obligated to do that now.

That day-off-after-the-freak-out (January 23), when he wasn’t helping out in the kitchen or whatever, Jotaro Kujo found himself opening up his backpack, checking the amount of water in his bottle, and pulling out his black science notebook—looking for…well, pages he knew weren’t there.  No idea what exactly he was looking for, where he was.  It was just his notes on the scientific method, taken around…the beginning of the first semester (Spring) of his third year, right?

It was shit they’d already talked about last year, and the year before.  The usual high school shit of assuming every teenaged student has, like, one brain cell they pass around as a class and zero retention, year-to-year.

The hell was the point?  They couldn’t even flunk anyone.

No idea why he was doing this shit.  Jotaro Kujo had like a month to make up, he was going to have to go to school after hours and go home with like double the homework and go on Saturdays for a while, even though they were letting him walk at the graduation ceremony.  And college entrance exams, not counting what he already took, from…like this time into like February, so that meant juku (entrance exam cram school) and taking the shitty things too.

Yeah, his social life was going to be pretty dead.

Well.  It already was.

His probably best friend was dead (only friend his age, really, so, by default, that made him best).  And Jojo was doing his best, these days, not to measure his location from the distance to Kakyoin.

He just couldn’t stop those stupid-ass memories from intruding on his daily life, though.

Who-Knows?, Somewhere-on-their-fifty-day-journey.  1988-9.

“So you’re cursed, Jojo?”  The…assumedly(?) no longer pajama or anything clad younger guy called out to his…wait, were they really schoolmates if Kakyoin technically just went one day and didn’t even finish the school day?  Well, whatever Jotaro was to the redhead, Kakyoin was still trying to make conversation from behind the closed door and walls of the hotel bathroom—even if it was the morning and he was getting ready, he was still going to have some sort of conversation, dammit.

“The Old Man said he punched the shit out of the Joestar Curse,” Jotaro answered back, hitching up his volume when he heard that hair dryer going off.  “Open the door so I don’t have to scream, if you’ve got your gakuran on!”

“I have a towel!”  That was it.  That was the response.  So he wasn’t pajama-clad or gakuran -clad.  Confirmed.  “I’m still soaking—so I’m drying off before I put on the undershirt and the gakuran !  Because I don’t want to feel damp for the rest of the day!”  And Kakyoin probably wasn’t wasting time just waiting for his skin to dry, so while drying off the skin, he was doing…the thing with the hair.  Well, Jotaro knew his school’s transfer student wore a collared, buttoned thing under the uniform.  And now Jojo had a hint there wasn’t like a t-shirt under that.  (Understandable.  It was hot out here.  Only so many layers they could wear.)  The redhead was really trying hard not to waste time while keeping up with his hygiene.  And Jojo kind of had to appreciate that.  Showed Kakyoin really meant what he’d said, about wanting to help them.

Jotaro showered the night before.  (Made things easier for them, pre-planning who took up the bathroom for showering when.)  He was just going to have to wait if he felt like brushing his teeth that morning (which he maybe felt like doing).

“What about that curse you were telling me about last night?”  He actually sounded pretty excited, dammit.  Jotaro really wanted to see his face, while he was asking about this.  “I’m sorry, I’ve never met anyone with a curse—and I practically blacked out last night—but I really want to know!  What sort of curse was it,” hair dryer finally died down.  Followed by the ‘sssss’ of hair spray and (assumedly) some sort of gel to keep the parts that the naturally curly redhead wanted to keep straight as a Japanese PM.  His volume was lower again, but still listenable(?) from behind the door and walls.  “Is it like a wolf man curse?”

“No, that would have been cool,” Jotaro replied, loud enough to pass through the door and walls (but no longer competing with a hair dryer, dammit), just getting his clothes on.  “I think it was more the typical Victorian-Edwardian-Whatever English ‘you die young, abruptly, and ugly’ curse.”

Nothing on the other end.  And then, a pretty disappointed “Oh.”

So Jotaro added: “Could be a ghost curse too, with our Stands—Mom’s sick from hers, so that could lend credence there.  So the Old Man maybe hasn’t completely punched the shit out of that family curse like he claimed yet!”

Wasn’t much longer before the other man popped out of the bathroom, gakuran on, neatly folded pajamas in arm, and hair about styled but still getting combed in the straight Japanese PM bits. No earrings yet though (maybe him and Polnareff were switching today).  Thank God he was efficient.  (Kakyoin probably had to perfect this process every school morning.  Yeah, that seemed like the sensible explanation.  Jotaro was good with the uniform and covering bedhead with a hat, like he usually did and he was doing now.)  “That’s a logical fallacy.  If the Joestar curse were just our Stands, then others—Abdul, Polnareff, and I, for instance, would have the curse too.  Even though we aren’t a part of the Joestar family.”  Smug, dammit, he was looking pretty smug, with his eyes shut, while saying this.  Totally honors student.

“Well, I dunno,” Jotaro replied, kind of annoyed by the smug…but well, not finding it hard on the eyes either.  “Maybe we cursed you before we met you.  And like my Old Man adopted the rest of you.”

That got him looking less smug.  That comb stopped moving.  His eyes opened and those long lashes…did a thing, whatever lashes do.  Didn’t get him to say anything, though.  His mouth wasn’t doing that smirking thing, it was just a line, now.

So Jotaro continued with this dumb-ass extrapolation.  “Maybe we were always destined or whatever, the Old Man and I, to meet the three of you,” whatever possessed Jotaro Kujo to say the next bit, even he couldn’t say.  It was probably tiredness, or the stress of his Mom being super sick.  Or a huge-ass amount of repression, combined from being Japanese, having an Italian Catholic Nonna , and being surrounded by…well, a bunch of guys going by boarding school rules and trying too hard to look cool around them.  Or maybe he just really wanted to make the other guy laugh.  “Maybe my Old Man and I bent you over and fucked you all over before you were even born.”

The other kid just stared.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

But, but the line on the other guy’s face shifted, a little…and…became an odd sort of curve—oh thank God, an angular looking smile!  And a very…a very reserved sort of laugh followed.

Yeah, Jotaro liked seeing and hearing that.  (He was kind of hoping for the other laugh, the one he was embarrassed by, but this one was pretty satisfying to hear, all the same.)

“I’d be glad if you bent me over and…fucked me,” Kakyoin replied (pretty much the first time Jotaro could have sworn he’d heard the guy curse like this on their trip, which was cool, glad he didn’t freak him out with this kind of language like you’d expect from a typical honors student).  Shit.  Even sounded kinda…weirdly sweet, how this kid said it?  “I’d be glad because I happen to like my Stand.”  With that cue, Hierophant appeared on the bed.  Sitting poised and pretty, waving like Princess Di.  “Although I’d have to ask you how you were certain it wasn’t the other way around—?”  Damn and the guy was dishing it back.  Yes!  Thank God, he wasn’t making this more awkward…

“Like you fucked me over,” Jotaro had to clarify, pseudo-serious expression he was hoping was on his face.  (Was the other guy gonna get this?  Well, he got that the ‘fucking’ was like metaphorical.  And a dumbass joke.)  “Or Abdul or Polnareff fucked me and my Old Man?”  Oh, ok, he was probably pushing his luck, making this weirder…

“Yeah,” Kakyoin confirmed, thank God!, with that odd smile, making it a little bigger.  (Yes!  He got the message.)  “Or we ganged up on you two.”  Ah? Good!  Good, good, good!

Alright, he was going to finish this, dammit!  Jotaro Kujo was going to finish this before it got past a tolerable point!

“Cause my Old Man wouldn’t bottom for any of you guys,” was Jotaro’s response, with a point of his finger to his opponent.

And, well, shortly after, they broke down into some dumb laughter, neither able to keep up this bit any longer.

Damn.  Jotaro was really missing having a guy he could talk stupid shit like this around.

And even though they said dumb shit like that, when absolutely nobody else was around, often in Japanese, that was about as far as they got with whatever they had going.

The most skin he ever saw from Kakyoin was when they shared the same hotel room and the guy buttoned his pajama top low, like he usually did, and wasn’t wearing socks or shoes.  It was otherwise mostly talk with them.

Ok, minus the kissing.  (And even with that, they never even ventured into anything involving tongues.)

(They at least managed to kiss more than once.  More than twice even—it kind of became a game, after the first one.  Forgot how it started, exactly, it kind of started and kept up.  Try not to get caught, kissing, was the only rule.  Whoever did it, in the most crowded area, got the highest point for the day.   Stands didn’t count, obviously.)

(And neither of them ever got caught.)

(But they pretty much had to put a stop to doing this publicly when they reached India and…wherever else Kakyoin insisted they could get arrested, Jotaro didn’t remember which places they were, but he…he vaguely recalled there was more than one; he just retained India because Kakyoin brought up the irony that it was probably possibly where the first kisses were given.)

(Jotaro asked him about that, once, about what this game was about to the redhead, and got some line(s) about how kissing meant different things in other cultures, like, for instance, in Rome, people used to kiss to sign documents or whatever.  Friends kissed friends’ eyes, and Romans just had a ton of excuses to lay those lips on someone, that the slightly younger guy was rattling off.  Damn, Kakyoin just happened to be pretty versed on Roman kisses…)

(“Yeah, I’m like a quarter Italian,” Jotaro insisted, after patiently waiting for the spiel to end, with a point to the center of his chest.  “But it doesn’t mean any of that to me.  And you and me are Japanese,” and, well…he knew he didn’t have to explain to the redhead that in Japan, kissing was pretty much kept to the bedroom, classified under and along with the other bedroom-type stuff.  Kakyoin would know that shit, like he knew a lot of other random shit.  With a point to his partner, Jotaro pretty much confronted him: “But I don’t know if either of us believe that shit.  So what’s it to you?”)

(And, even in spite of being there with him, seeing that elfin smuggish mug and that shrug, getting the context, being fluent in the same fucking language, Jotaro couldn’t help but still get confused by the answer he got.)

(“楽しい　だ、ね？”)

(Pronounced like ‘Ta-no-shee Dah Neh’, and could have meant something equivalent to ‘it’s fun/enjoyable/pleasant/delightful, eh?’ among like…a lot of other things.)

(He still thought about that, dammit, and…he didn’t know how he felt or how it looked like he felt then, even after Kakyoin just elaborated further with a peck on his partner’s cheek and left his schoolmate-and-sometimes-roommate in there, with just that, to stew on it on his own.)

(To this day, Jotaro Kujo had no idea how he felt about it.  If it made him angry or sad or relieved?)

(Legitimately, if anyone else did this, Jotaro Kujo probably wouldn’t have tolerated it.)

(Probably.)

(But they kept talking after that and even managed to sneak in a couple more rounds of ‘kiss-and-don’t-tell’—until Kakyoin got hospitalized for two weeks near the end, but, even then, nearer to the end, they hung around each other.  If they stopped talking over that, that would have sucked.)

(And, after some point, Jotaro had to ask himself—the hell was the difference between being friends or whatever, to two guys that never had neither?)

A Quieter Part of Japan, 1989.

After a pretty uneventful day-off, Jotaro Kujo was sent back to the classroom and found himself ambushed on the route to his high school by the three most obnoxious women in Japan.

“Jo-jooooo,” belted out obnoxious school girl A-ko, holding out a small, pink box, emblazoned with hearts.  “We were sooo worried about you yesterday…so we talked and got together and decided to make you your Valentines’ chocolates early!  You’re welcoooommmee!”

And the other two (B-ko and C-ko) joined in formation, armed and deadly with similar boxes.

“Fuck off and shut up,” Jotaro confronted these chicks, earning gasps.

Yeah, in spirit this was like the same talk these chicks got every year (plus an extra swear), but it was the last year of high school, dammit, and he had other shit he had to deal with; he’d really had enough of this.

And Jotaro Kujo wasn’t going to leave it off there, this time, even though these bitches were tearing up.  “I never wanted your shitty Valentine chocolate and I never gave you permission to call me ‘Jojo’!  My mother was dying—dying, you pieces of shit!  Among other things I’ve had to put up with!  And now I’ve got to just go back to school like nothing happened and catch up on everything I missed—the hell makes you think, in your self-absorbed brains, that this bullshit’s gonna cheer me up?”

Yeah, this really got obnoxious girls A-C sobbing and running away from him.

Good.

Fuckers didn’t know the meaning of ‘no’.

And he didn’t feel remotely bad about doing this either.

It did the job.

They left him the hell alone for the rest of the day, finally.

And he sure as hell didn’t tell his Mother, Grandmother, or the Speedwagon guy about this either.

Not at dinner, not before he brushed his teeth, and not before he went to sleep.

???, ????.  …1989?

When Jotaro had been sleeping, lately, he’d been getting some really shitty dreams.

He was in his school uniform, and reading a notebook.

Didn’t know where he was.

But that notebook wasn’t his black science notebook.

And it had like the shittiest poetry he ever read.

らせん階段

カブト虫

廃墟の街

イチジクのタルト

カブト虫

ドロローサへの道

カブト虫

特異点

ジョット

天使エンジェル

紫陽花

カブト虫

特異点

秘密の皇帝

Fuck this shit, man.

A Quieter Part of Japan, 1989.

Jotaro kept at this grind—study at school, study at home, rinse and repeat (with breaks for food, bathroom, and weirdass dreams or intrusive thoughts)—and he only occasionally used his Stand when the shit got too intolerable.

And the weirdest things set him off, really.

For instance, one day at P.E., he was just stretching.

And he noticed a chick staring (chick wasn’t A-C).

But for like a second—the eyes reminded him.

Jotaro had to draw out his Stand, to stop and breathe for like five seconds (before it really hurt…yeah, he was getting good at stopping before it really hurt).

For a second, there was something to the way she looked at him that reminded him too much of Kakyoin, the way that guy used to look back at him.

Like he completely admired Jotaro.

People looked at Jotaro before, told him he was kind of handsome, and he never really cared much about if.

But there was just something about the way Kakyoin did it, even after they talked and ran out of cool stuff to say around each other—really got to talking about the uncool bits.

Jojo was informed with a grin, once, he was like Fort Knox for weird shit.  Kakyoin had said, he felt totally like whatever he told Jotaro wouldn’t be getting out.  Utter confidence.  Felt really fantastic, hearing that.  People usually wanted him to talk more.  Kakyoin seemed like the first person thrilled they got the opposite out of him.  And, man, did the shit Kakyoin said and did around Mr. Lone Wolf Son get weird.

Like the thing with the cherries.  Yeah, Jotaro thought it was really weird, but he let it pass all the same.  And Kakyoin thanked him, later, sharing how relieved he was that Jotaro didn’t make fun of him or anything, just treating it with the normal cavalier attitude, like it was something people just did normally.

And well, shit, made him feel even more weirdly fantastic.

Jotaro spent those five seconds out of time, counting the seconds, minding his breathing, until his chest started hurting and he could let time move and and just let this moment pass.

Moments like this were actually the less painful ones.

The times that really sucked, though, were when he was remembering shit.

And, it stopped.

Like he was passing through a hallway once and just had to stop things, because he’d realized he’d forgotten when Kakyoin said his birthday was.

Shit , he said, in the seconds that didn’t exist.  Ok, guy said he was a Leo.  That’s like a range…late July to early August.  Leos were willful and stubborn.   And Jotaro mostly retained this because Kakyoin had found Jotaro was an Aquarius, since he’d said, back at the end of December, his birthday was like a month away.  Leos and Aquariuses are like opposite poles on a magnet, but they can bring out good qualities in each other.  An Aquarius can teach a Leo to be patient and a Leo can get an Aquarius to get out of their own head…

By the time the seconds were up, and everyone went back to moving, Jotaro just stood there a little longer before he moved to his next class.

In spite of failing to recall Kakyoin’s birthday.

???, ????.  …1989?

The notebook claimed:

What you need is my Stand "The World".

Fucking lying book.

A Quieter Part of Japan, 1989.

It’s not that Jotaro didn’t think of Iggy and Mohammed Abdul.

Every time Jotaro saw a fucking dog, he had to activate the Stand.  Pet the dog, make sure they were okay.  He’d always loved dogs, dammit, and if it just so happened he’d seen one about to get hit by a car or a shitty person—

Well, he socked them.

And then he’d run about as far as he could with the dog in his arms.

By the end of the month, when he got the call from the Old Man about Kakyoin’s funeral (a little late, but Jotaro figured the Old Man was probably using Hamon to keep the body presentable), and the Old Man was tangenting about some shitheads actually thinking of getting rid of Mohammed Abdul’s work and his office—

Well, Jotaro really wanted to head to England.

Not to see Kakyoin in a box—fuck that noise.

To use his Stand to take on the asshats who even dared to do that to Abdul!

But he recognized all the same, this wasn’t his fight now.

He was seventeen, dammit.  Turning eighteen.

Beating these guys up with his Stand probably would have just made things worse.

???, ????.  …1989?

What you can find beyond the powers of my Stand is where you need to go in order to find Heaven. What you need is a trustworthy friend. He must be someone capable of controlling his own desires. He must be someone who is not interested in political power, fame, wealth, or sexual desire, and who chooses the will of God before the law of humans.

Did he really read this?

No, really, did he really read this shit?

When?

When, dammit, when?

A Quieter Part of Japan, 1989.

It was probably because he refused to see Kakyoin in a box that, after attending exam school  and makeup school on Saturday, Jojo spent that dirty day in February, some days after the call, heading to the bookstore and walking out with a thick-ass copy of Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes”.

The bookstore guys seemed really confused when Kujo requested something about multiverses from Hawking and figured he was mistaken.

Maybe Jotaro was.

But, as he began reading this shit, it really confused him.  Like the majority of it hurt his eyes, just to skim it.  Stuff about time travel.  And humanity’s relationship to time.

And the thing Jotaro almost understood had to do with an arrow of time, always moving forward, in three ways.  So broken cups can’t become complete.  So humans can’t remember the future and things have to move forward.  So the Universe probably can’t contract and unfuck itself, just grow bigger and more chaotic.

Yeah, that shit made sense.

When he got back late, his Mom and Grandma surprised him with an early birthday gift (early, he guessed, because he was looking a little blue and not going out much because of all the fucking school).

He got a portable cassette player.  Cake was coming on his actual birthday.

Next morning, Jotaro snuck off to get a tape from the store; then, he went to the convenience store and picked up a melon soda, some vanilla ice cream, and some maraschino cherries for a proper cream soda.

His birthday was coming up next week, dammit.  Eighteen.  He’d be an adult, by a lot of Western cultures’ standards. For whatever reason…everyone outside of his peer group felt like they got older, dammit, since he finished up that fifty-day journey. And he was getting older too—it just…it sucked, knowing…knowing Kakyoin was just going to stay seventeen, alright? It sucked.

Who-Knows? Not Jotaro Kujo, Somewhere-on-their-fifty-day-journey.  1988-9.

It was probably his favorite string of conversations they’d had—and he didn’t remember what they were doing or where they were when they took place.

But, in his head, Jotaro blended them all together.

The first bit of this string had to be when Jotaro told the redhead he was the Lee Van Cleef to Kujo’s Clint Eastwood and, quite sincerely, Kakyoin had asked what that meant.  So, on their trip, when they could, Jotaro gave summaries of his two favorite films, of the “Man with No Name” trilogy.  And the slightly younger kid listened, eager, like it was a school lesson—asking questions at the right points, remarking when he found something neat (something, sometimes, that even escaped Jotaro’s attention).

Like for instance that the “Man with No Name” was a lot like Jotaro.

“Explain,” Jotaro commanded, although he knew, pretty well, that he didn’t need to.

“Well, they’re Italian, you said.  And they take place in America.  And—well, my parents are quite fond of the works of Akira Kurosawa.  I’ve seen quite a few of Kurosawa’s films and—” the younger man paused.  This was probably one of the few times he’d mentioned his family.

“C’mon, I’m Fort Knox,” Jotaro reminded the kid.  “I’m not telling anyone about this after.”

And that was enough to encourage him to continue with his lecture (hands folded, Jotaro liked to imagine).  “I’ve only managed to watch one Western and it was a remake of one of Kurosawa’s films—“Seven Samurai” was Kurosawa’s original film, and the remake was called, I think, “Magnificent Seven.”  I think I might have heard something…about the first film in that trilogy with Clint Eastwood being a remake of Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo”.  About a Samurai or a Ronin, I think, like many of Kurosawa’s films, instead of a cowboy.  Taking on…it’s been years since I watched it…maybe a…warlords vying for control over a small town.”

“Yeah, that’s the plot of the first film,” Jotaro confirmed, pretty weirded out that Kakyoin had gotten it, without Jotaro confirming the plot beforehand.  “Except with a cowboy.”

“I didn’t get a chance to watch it,” Kakyoin confessed.  “The American-Italian remake, I mean.  I’ve seen the original Japanese film.  Probably a little before I should have…but, my point is, the trilogy is like you.  It’s Japanese, American, and Italian.”

In like his seventeen years of existing, this sort of shit never occurred to Jotaro Kujo and his Old Man sure as hell didn’t point it out to him.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” was the kid’s response.  Always had a nose for figuring this kind of shit, Kakyoin.  Helping him find these bits of himself that were there, that Jotaro didn’t know was there.  And a smile grew on the younger teen’s face—just as Jotaro realized there was a pretty stupid looking one on his own.  “I’m really flattered you think of me like that, though, Jojo—as a…badass bounty hunter.”

“Out of the guys Clint worked with, I probably liked Lee Van Cleef with him best,” Jotaro confessed.  “I kind of wish he’d joined Clint and Tuco in the last film of that trilogy, even though he was also the villain of that flick.”

He forgot if it was in that same conversation, or a little later—but, to be honest, it was just the words that were coming to him, the next bit on the string.

“Which do you think I’m more like, Jojo?  The good Colonel Mortimer or the villainous La Sentenza ?”  A question from Kakyoin.  La Sentenza was the original Italian name for Angel Eyes, Van Cleef’s character from the third flick in that trilogy.  And, well, Jojo liked how it sounded coming from Kakyoin—even if he wanted to ask the redhead why he seemed to prefer using it over the other name.

“Depends,” was Jotaro’s answer.  “Sometimes I think you’re more Mortimer and others I think you’re more of the other guy.  And I think I’m fond of ’em both.”

He could have sworn he’d caught something in the younger man’s eyes when he’d said that—a glint in the eye or something.

“Which would you prefer to be, Kakyoin?”

A pause, then: “It depends.  If I want to work with Clint to solve a mystery and get my guy, I’ll be the Colonel.  If I have to be brutal, I’ll be La Sentenza , then.”

It was probably some conversations after this that Jotaro had told Kakyoin some shit his Daddio’d promised him years ago, at a jazz show of his.  (Admittedly, he’d lied to Kakyoin about his Daddio not being his favorite musician—Jotaro had said he preferred another jazz guy with a pretty similar but still respectable and unique sound, because shit just sounded too cheesy that he loved his Daddio’s music too much.)

“I’m pleased to be your Jo-Bro,” the redhead had replied, somewhat serious and somewhat joking, with quite a wide grin on his face, accepting this cheese-pizza-philosophy that the Jazzman had passed on to him.  “And I love helping you face your Jo-Foes, Jojo.”

Jotaro never told the other guys—the Frenchman, the dog, Abdul, or even the Old Man—about this shit.  It was just Kakyoin that got to know.  Sometimes, Jotaro kind of regretted not sharing this and, others, he didn’t.

And they had a bunch of these kinds of talks, trying to use each other to fill in cracks in their lives, like they were already supposed to be there.

The Jo-Bro had said he respected Jojo too much to think of him as the Watson to his Sherlock (even though Jotaro objected, because Watson was cool, dammit, he was an ex-military doctor, Sherlock’s best friend, went with him to all of the mysteries, and even wrote them down); but the younger man didn’t object after Jotaro suggested the alternative of Columbo, after Jotaro explained who the hell that guy was.

Jotaro kind of liked it when the honors student said he was like the Atreyu to the redhead’s Bastian.  (No, he hadn’t read “The Neverending Story” or watched the flick—he was like five years younger, like twelve, and he was acting like he was too cool for it…although, after listening to Kakyoin describe the story, he was kind of regretting turning his nose up at it.)  Meant Kakyoin thought of the delinquent as like the guy who wouldn’t give up on him, no matter how shitty he got after getting a hold of a ridiculous amount of power, and was even going to finish up all of the loose ends the younger kid would leave behind.

He definitely confused Kakyoin when he’d told the younger guy he was probably the Nick to Jojo’s Gatsby.

“You never read the “Great Gatsby”,” Jotaro had to ask, to confirm if this was, like, real.  “Or saw the film?”

“No,” Kakyoin confessed, feeling embarrassed, but not totally knowing why.

So, Jotaro had to explain that shit too.  

(Only reason he knew about the American Classic was because of his Nonna , who, on the request of his Great Grandma, Lisa Lisa, read a screenplay her Rohan was working on for the book.  It was a really early treatment.  And Nonna hadn’t read the book, but the screenplay was…well, it was exactly the sort of screenplay Great Stepgrandad made, especially with the studio-hounds breathing down his neck and commanding he punch it up.  Guy was in tears, apparently, by the time it was done and chucked, because aliens weren’t a thing anymore.)  

(It was just really fucking weird.  Ended with like a green light show, created by aliens, to lure humans into their alien trap.)

(Jotaro just assumed this screenplay was pretty loyal to the book, like his Nonna did.)

(But there was this friendship at the center of the story, between Nick and the Great Gatsby, who was called the Great Gatsby, because he was humanity’s one hope against the aliens.  And Nick was like his best friend.)

(In the end, after he’d been abandoned by humanity, Nick stopped by Gatsby’s estate, checked on him, and told him something to the effect of ‘you’re better than the lot of them’, while Gatsby was lounging in his pool. And then Gatsby went on to live like forever.)

(Kakyoin just kind of stared after getting the explanation, stating he felt like that wasn’t what the book was about…but, eventually, he accepted that was what Jojo thought of him, flattered all the same.)

The kid from Kakyoin said the kid from the quiet part of Japan was like the Samwise to his Frodo, and, even though Kakyoin explained it was something related to “The Lord of the Rings”, which sounded waaaaayyyyyy too nerdy for even Jotaro, he listened anyway to like a pretty condensed version.  And, yeah, this Samwise guy pretty much sounded like the best.  The guy who’d carry his friend to finish off their mission, of destroying some shitty gold jewelry.

And it was a little after this that Kujo realized he’d never asked the younger guy why he preferred La Sentenza to Angel Eyes.

“Jotaro, Angel Eyes is an ABBA song,” Kakyoin insisted.  “I don’t want to be an ABBA song.”

So, because Jojo had to ask, “Well, if you were a song, what would you be?”

That got a thoughtful hum—not to fill up time or look coy, this time, the kid actually, from what Jotaro could recall, looked like he was considering this seriously.

“Could I go with an entire album,” the honors student had to ask.

And, well, Jotaro didn’t see why not.

The answer was the Police’s “Synchronicity.”

A Quieter Part of Japan, 1989.

Jotaro finished up that soda concoction quickly and spent a considerable amount of time in the park, listening to “Synchronicity”.  Well, he hadn’t even really gotten to either of the title songs of the cassette.  The player from Nonna wasn’t the first that he’d gotten, like, ever.  It was just that it’d been a while since he had one and he went and did a dumb, starting the cassette on the B-side.

And he played the first song on the B-side.

The Police’s “Every Breath You Take”.

And, well, whenever the first song ended on the B-Side, he kept hitting stop, rewind, and playing it again, cumbersome as it was.

Jotaro Kujo’s English was damn good, by this point.  He was pretty much bilingual.  The song, he knew, sounded kind of like it warranted a restarting order and it really wasn’t like his usual thing.  But, damn, did he find himself listening to it over and over.

And, as he listened to it, he couldn’t help but think of the questions that they asked each other (that went pretty much unanswered) and the things he’d wanted to ask but, well, just forgot to.

Do you think we’d be friends without our Stands, Jojo?

Who cares, was what he’d responded.  It was maybe callous, but Jotaro meant it, dammit.  Who cared?  They met through their Stands, and that was what they were stuck with.

Kakyoin, why do you use 私 (pronounced ‘watashi’) and 僕 (pronounced ‘boku’) instead of 俺 (pronounced ‘ore’)?

This was something Jotaro had meant to ask for a while, but never got the chance to.  ‘Ore’ was what really manly guys used.  ‘Watashi’ and ‘Boku’ were for young dudes trying to sound polite and girls.

And, well, if Kakyoin had said it was something to the effect of ‘he considered himself pretty young, in the company of the rest of their older group,’ Jotaro would have thought it made sense.

If he’d said something to the effect of, ‘I just consider myself a little more feminine’…well, Jotaro wasn’t going to judge or anything.  That would have maybe made him the first, like, Japanese girl that wasn’t already related to him by blood that Jojo didn’t find obnoxious.

Is being an Astronaut really much different than being a Marine Biologist, Jojo?

They’d asked each other, once, what they’d wanted to be.  Kakyoin had considered being a priest when he was younger, and, well, now he wanted to maybe paint or do what it was Mohammed Abdul did.  Even if what Abdul did was what he was already what he was kind of doing now, on their journey.

Mohammed Abdul, according to Kakyoin, got to study Stands outside of a combat setting too, which was what he wanted to do.  (Like there was a pod of dolphins, for instance, with a Stand that allowed them to steal fish from fishermen…and Mohammed Abdul got to see the Stand in action and name it in his report—‘So Long and Thanks for all the Fish’.)  The redhead just wanted to travel around and study Stands, writing up reports on them.  Shit just seemed fun to him.

Jotaro had said astronaut, but the kid, for once, tried to dissuade him.

The recruiting pool was large and unwieldy.  Jotaro Kujo would be competing against…like thousands, to get to go to space.  And, even then, if he managed to get in, tabloids would probably find out he was a Joestar and they’d try to make him into a pun, to sign their paychecks, for as long as they could.

Kid managed to make it sound really suck-y.

Being a pun sounded horrible.

Which was when Kakyoin had posed the alternate career path.

Like 71% of the earth was covered in the wet stuff and humanity had only explored a fraction of it—so like, the ocean was the space of the earth (sounded like…really bizarre, but it made sense too, in the weird way his best friend always did).  Safer to travel on and there was probably a smaller pool vying for the position.  And, as long as he didn’t study, like, starfish, he probably wouldn’t become a pun.

And Jotaro didn’t hate the beach and he’d probably be lying, if he said he loved it, but, well, he’d imagine growing to loving it; but he still objected, because, you know, he’d spent, like, years wanting this.

But the younger guy posed this rhetorical question anyway.

Where are you going after this journey’s done, Kakyoin?

It was something he was dying to ask, knowing, well, more than everyone else about sometimes-Tenmei’s family situation.

There was no way in hell Kakyoin was going back to himself—that is, to say, to that part of Sendai his family hailed from.

Was he going to the quiet part of Japan Jotaro hailed from, and attending Jotaro’s school?

Or was he going to beg Jojo’s Old Man to take him to New York?  (The Old Man seemed super keen on taking the guy home; and, like, even though Kakyoin didn’t have a license, the Old Man let him drive as soon as he heard the guy was an ace at driving video games.)

Or would Kakyoin relocate to France, with Polnareff?

Or stay in Cairo, with Mohammed Abdul, until Mohammed Abdul continued globe-trotting?

(Iggy was a dog and was probably going with Polnareff or Abdul, so he would have been disqualified from the pool automatically.)

Everyone in their group really liked the kid and it seemed like everyone would have been willing to put up with him, if asked.

A permanent wanderer like the redhead, Jotaro figured, would have been content switching off where he was.  Yeah, that felt about right.

What kind of clothes do you wear other than the uniform, Jojo?

It was kind of lame and Jotaro only told this kid.  He kind of stuck to the dark gakuran because, well…it kind of looked cool.  Longass jacket.  If he could, he’d probably stick to jackets like this.  Maybe change things up and wear, like, white.  Shit looked clean.

And, he got something he wasn’t expecting—a confession from the kid that he kind of liked how his green gakuran looked on him too.  The fitted look, Kakyoin said, he thought looked neat and cool.

And, well, Jotaro had to agree, the younger kid did look great in them.

This wasn’t really an answer to the question he was asked though.  It sounded a little too dorky, to be honest.

You wanna elope or whatever, after I hit eighteen, Kakyoin?

He never got to ask this.  And, to be honest, he hadn’t thought much about what he was going to say after.

Jotaro just didn’t want that thing they had going ending.

It was kind of hard to guess how the redhead would have replied.

Probably, to be fair, they’d have to wait until the younger guy became eighteen too.

And like, finish High School.

And, maybe, like, for them both to have jobs.

If he was asked where they would head, Jotaro wanted to just point West, and he was kind of hoping that would have been enough of an answer.  (Maybe it was?)

Jotaro didn’t notice when he drifted off to sleep.

???, ????.  …1989?

Go there and wait for the New Moon...

That's when Heaven will come.

—DIO

Yeah, there wasn’t much reason to keep this shitty poetry of the fucking vampire’s around, Jotaro ruled, closing that notebook after reading that line, pulling out his lighter, and burning that shit for good.

And, after this, he stopped having dreams of that Vampire’s bullshit poetry or whatever the hell it was.

Even if the memory lingered a little…

A Quieter Part of Japan, 1989.

On his birthday, they went to the beach.

That was when Jotaro told his Mother and Grandmother and the Speedwagon dude that he didn’t really want to be an astronaut anymore.

And that was when his Nonna caught on that there was something really, really wrong with her grandkid.

Chapter Text

The Red Sea Island.  1988.

Only one secret from Kakyoin was allowed to leave Fort Knox (that is to say, Jotaro Kujo), and it was discussed on a very nice seaside beach (a little before they would be relieved of the other large secret they’d been keeping from Polnareff for some time now).  Mr. Joestar had caught up with Abdul, in his fake father’s house, until the World’s Leading Expert on Stands had to leave, when it was much later in the evening and Jean Pierre had not yet rejoined them—ever the showman, Mohammed Abdul had been planning a grand reveal in everyone’s presence, a little before that Yellow Submarine Mr. Joestar had had him purchase was due to arrive, but the Egyptian had very rightly assumed that the return of Silver Chariot’s Stand User had been delayed by an enemy.  Nobody else in the party had joined Abdul, to rescue Polnareff, knowing very well that he was the most qualified and experienced to handle the issue by himself.

That, and Mohammed had begun to feel somewhat guilty about keeping the secret of his living from the Frenchman and felt a bit personally responsible for…whatever it was the Frenchman had fallen into this time.

All of them, to various degrees, were somewhat guilty.

The one who was the least guilty out of them was the seventeen year-old often called Kakyoin (and he wasn’t entirely certain why, even though he was also the one who felt the most responsible, having made the suggestion to the Joestars and Abdul, just a day or so after helping the Frenchman avenge his little sister by helping kill her murderer, upon finding out Abdul’s status and Mr. Joestar’s developing scheme to turn this recovery of their ally into a golden, or, rather, Yellow Opportunity).  The incident with the Baby Stand didn’t help.  And it probably also didn’t help that, ever since the hotel in Karachi, Polnareff had been plying Fort Knox (aka Jotaro Kujo) for the answer behind Kakyoin’s Tenmei.

“Did you tell him the secret to Qtaro,” the young Kakyoin inquired, while removing his gakuran (a rarity, outside of a hotel room…it had just been a while since they’d seen one, even with the option of using Abdul’s Cover’s home to freshen up, which Jotaro’s Jo-Bro hadn’t taken due to a lack of the necessary hair products he’d needed to maintain the look he was quite fond of maintaining).  Even with his hair quite crusty from many layers of gel and spray (a desperate ploy to stretch out the last of his supplies, until they could have a chance to replenish), Jotaro Kujo was looking at him as he often did.

By this point (practically a month into their fifty day journey), Jotaro’s former would-be-assassin liked to think he’d gotten quite good at discerning Jotaro Kujo’s quiet stares (the redhead had, after all, managed to figure out how to make the often stoical seventeen year old smile and laugh a few times).  The trick was not to get lost focusing on the eyes.  Glance at the eyes, to tell where they were pointing (the point of his peer’s nose often confirmed where the eyes were absorbed).  To gauge the mood, one needed to look to the eyebrows and the mouth.  The eyebrows were currently a little furrowed, indicating Jotaro was thinking of something, while the mouth was very closed (almost very consciously tight lipped).

Jotaro Kujo was incredibly embarrassed by Qtaro (as the younger of the pair knew too well), but he’d probably managed to keep that from the Frenchman; the youngest of the Joestars (as far as the Joestar clan knew, at this point) was probably embarrassed that he’d almost let slip the secret to the Kakyoins’ son’s Tenmei.  (It was sweet of Jojo, really, Kakyoin couldn’t help but think, that his friend was embarrassed on his friend’s behalf.  The kid from Kakyoin just needed to confirm if this was the case, and the answer to this question was going to tell him what he needed.)

“I told him I just replaced the ‘Jo-’ with a ‘Q’,” Jotaro confessed, while removing his gakuran and revealing a very sweaty t-shirt and some very decently toned arms for someone their age; then, he did the thing he didn’t need to, but sometimes-Tenmei found his best friend often did, even without being asked—the right thing.  “I almost told him what was with Tenmei.  Sorry ‘bout that.”  Mr. Joestar’s grandson punctuated that apology, for the secret he’d almost kept and let slip, with a drop of that gakuran to the ground (a light sort of thud for an exclamation point, but it made a point nonetheless).

The young Kakyoin often despised people who kept secrets, who had ulterior motives (maybe the one exception to this rule was his best friend’s grandfather, who, the young Japanese teenager had assessed, always had their best interests at heart), so he couldn’t help but be won over by someone like Jotaro—whose favorite color was clear, because you could see right through it.  Aside from the business they’d kept from Polnareff and when required against enemy Stand Users, Jotaro Kujo kept no secrets of his own, although he was fantastic at keeping others’.  The practitioner of Atemi was starting to feel a little bad (not as much as he thought he ought to for Polnareff though, and Kakyoin didn’t really know why), as he rolled up the sleeves to his button-down (also dreadfully sweaty), and starting to bend his knees and lean his weight a little on his right leg, readying a stance of the famous Bruce Lee’s (which was said to be forbidden).

Mr. Joestar was napping a bit in the house of Abdul’s, which gave the boys some time to experiment.

Was Lee Jun-Fan, professionally known as the martial artist and actor and philosopher Bruce Lee, a better fighter in his street-days or after studying Wing Chun under Ip Man?  (At least, this was a question that had only occurred to the high schoolers on this fifty day journey and they were determined to find out, in their own rather scientific way.)

Jotaro Kujo followed suit, assuming a forbidden Bruce Lee Stance of his own, facing his best friend with open palms.  (His self-taught fighting prowess was going to serve as the control for his own experiment and his own hypothesis—he was of the belief that Bruce Lee could have been a better fighter before studying under another martial artist, not confined by the rules and formality one could take up, after studying formally.  Kakyoin represented the control for his own experiment and his own hypothesis, which was diametrically opposed to Jotaro’s. No Stands allowed, obviously.)

“You don’t need to apologize for nearly doing something,” insisted Kakyoin, who had carried the kanji for his Father’s name, in addition to the Atemi he’d been taught by that same Father from a very early age, facing open palms with open palms.  “I think I was prepared for everyone to learn about Tenmei, the moment I put his name to paper.  You can tell him, next time he asks, that my parents used to call me Tenmei.  Just don’t tell him that I allowed him to know.”  A possible indirect apology, perhaps, a gift of a secret that appeared stolen to make up for the secret that Kakyoin didn’t feel as guilty as he’d felt he ought to’ve, for insisting they keep from the Frenchman, concerning Mohammed Abdul.

“Kay,” was Jotaro’s last response before their experiment formally began (that is to say, after they nodded, counted down from three, and Jotaro attempted a first punch, aimed for the middle of the younger man’s chest—a fair shot, quickly dodged by the younger and smaller of the pair).

Kakyoin recognized that Jotaro was probably the best friend that he’d ever had, in his seventeen years of living, something that made him feel just a little bit guilty about landing a palm strike into his friend’s jaw and about shattering it (ending their experiment barely five seconds in and requiring them to dash back to Abdul’s house, wake up Mr. Joestar, and, well, let him in on what they’d been doing).  (For those that are curious: upon hearing about their Bruce Lee experiment, Mr. Joestar didn’t scold the teens; instead he moaned that he would have liked to see the experiment in action, before using his Hamon to heal his grandson and, after checking the time and realizing their sub was due to show up soon, hurried the boys off to the rendez-vous point.)

These fifty days were probably the happiest in his life, more than adequately making up for the worse three months or so building up to them (the worst of his life, bar-none) and catapulting 1988 to the top of his list of his favorite years.

The year that came closest to 1988 was five years ago, in 1983–when he was twelve.  There were five or so things that made this year stand out:

1. That was the year his family went to England and his Stand (not yet dubbed Hierophant Green) had surprised him with the theft of a cassette tape of the Police’s “Synchronicity” (regrettably the band’s final album but immediately the young Kakyoin’s favorite, which he successfully hid away from his parents while living under their household).  
2. In this same year, the racing video game “F-Mega” was released to Japanese arcades, to probably compete with Namco’s incredibly successful “Pole Position” from the year before (but the twelve year old Stand User preferred F-Mega much more).  It took him maybe a week or so of repeated play to reach #1 on the leaderboard at his favorite arcade’s F-Mega cabinet.
3. Masakazu Tamura appeared in the TV jidaigeki (period drama often staring Samurai) “Mumyouken Hashiru” as the character Hayato Arakida (and, although the Kakyoins’ son had seen older jidaigeki with the Kyoto-native actor, the young preteen had finally been won over by this appearance and developed what he would later recognize as his first crush on a man, after realizing what he felt was no different, really, than what he’d felt when he first saw Audrey Hepburn in “Roman Holiday”).
4. He’d finally knocked Toshiro Tanaka out of the top ten in his year’s rankings at middle school, at the end of the second semester (Tanaka-San had gotten so annoying after the first Spring Semester, kissing up to the teachers and flaunting his status to the redheaded #11 in his same class, that Kakyoin had made Tanaka into his personal rival).  Come the first day of the last semester, in the gym locker rooms, Tanaka tried to take a swing at the former #11, which Kakyoin dodged too easily.  So, when their P.E. teacher insisted the middle school play baseball in January, the redhead volunteered to pitch for his team (which was facing Tanaka’s), threw competently until Daisuke Kawachi (the also pretty obnoxious captain of their year’s baseball team) headed to the base and (after performing a quick mental triangulation, based on where his Stand spied Tanaka was positioned outfield) aimed a little high, and landed a baseball from Kawachi’s bat into Tanaka’s eye. (Both Tanaka and Kawachi broke down into tears within minutes of impact.) Kakyoin’s rival spent a day recovering, having only lost fluid, but it satisfied the kid from Kakyoin, nonetheless, and bought his privacy back from his enemy.
5. After listening to “Synchronicity” thirty or fifty times, after translating a majority of the lyrics, the boy had gone to the library and, although aiming only to walk out with a copy of Carl G. Jung’s “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle”, to supplement his enjoyment of the Police’s album with the same name, upon hearing the twelve year old inquire after such reading material, the librarians (who were probably the closest that the Stand User had to friends at that point, other than his Stand) attempted to dissuade him, given his past reading (he was somewhat infamous among them for reading the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy in grade school).  Ursula K. Le Guin, they’d recommended.  As tempting as they’d made her work sound, with her philosophy on names, the preteen remained firm and repeated his request.  And, so, surrendering to this pre-teenaged stubbornness, after asking and learning why he was so keen on reading Jung’s work, the librarians had also recommended Arthur Koestler’s red and green covered (very pretty) “The Roots of Coincidence”, after hearing from someone who heard that Sting (formerly the lead singer of the Police) had enjoyed the text and considered it an inspiration for the same album that the middle schooler wanted to supplement.  So, he left the library with two books (and a mental note to one day read Ursula K. Le Guin, when it wasn’t suggested to him) and, even after the month-long borrowing period ended, he wound up “losing” the books and paying their fines to have them replaced.  (Really, Koestler’s text connecting time and the paranormal to modern physics was the first that he’d read of its sort, and, felt, gave him more insight into his Stand than the science text books and the fantasy stories of people from other worlds he’d been seeking these same answers from (which he didn’t lose interest in, heartily enjoying the Japanese release of “The Neverending Story” enough to seek out the books and mourn the film’s omission of the text’s meaningful second half), and he found himself pushed deeper into the metaphorical rabbit hole he’d flirted with falling into since a rather precocious kindergarten teacher had first introduced her class to “String Theory” but refused to elaborate past a brief, glib sentence in their early study of the planets and the universe when asked about it, instead insisting the young Kakyoin focus on how big and blue the earth was.  This text of Koestler’s, when paired with Jung’s text, opened up doors.)  The idea of synchronicity was originally Jung’s (who called it ‘synchronizität’), and it concerned happenings that appeared to be related, although they didn’t appear consequences of the same incident.  Jung liked to think it was healthy for humans to find coincidences of this ilk and that it had its own value, in that it allowed insight into the unconscious mind.  Although the twelve year old was aware that he didn’t fully understand the texts after reading them for the full month (and even after he’d reached seventeen years of age and read the texts numerous times, including one last time, before heading to a Summer trip with his family in Egypt, he’d still held this belief), he was at least, now, more solidly aware that this mystery he’d carried with him, his Stand, which he did not call a Stand at this point, was a manifestation of semi-physical and psychological dimension.

In spite of these five things, this year paled in comparison to 1988 for three reasons:

1. Hitting top ten in his middle school, in retrospect realized circa 1988, did nothing to prepare him for the Real World—namely being stalked and groomed by a Vampire and his cult, degrading the value of this and quite a bit of his academic accomplishments.
2. He was very fond of his friends in that fifty day Egypt journey and greatly respected them (yes, even Polnareff, who could really get on his nerves sometimes, but really meant well and always apologized very sincerely).
3. The start of his misery that kicked off his three month or so captivity (at least as he’d calculated it, most of the period was a blur to him, admittedly), before he met his friends, could have been traced back to an incident that reared its ugly head in 1983.

In 1983, Kakyoin had realized his mother had at least one affair, if not a number of them (and, to his quiet horror, his father was aware and was going to stay in this miserable sham of a marriage).  The discovery wasn’t difficult for a frequent mystery-reader like the Kakyoins’ son.  His mother would leave #99 after dinner, when she was of the mistaken belief that her son was asleep and not, say, using his Stand to monitor their apartment’s doors and windows, in the event that an intruder had learned about his Stand and planned to break into their rather large apartment and attack him and his family (in spite of not meeting anyone who had been capable of seeing his Stand, at this point of his life, there was this part of him that both feared and grew excited at the anticipation of what he saw had to be an eventuality).  His Father, he’d seen through his Stand, would stay up late, too, practicing forms in the Hanabusa (the dojo named for his family’s older name) until he grew tired and would wait by the door until three A.M., or so, when his mother would return.  His mother wore quite a bit of makeup when she went out and came back.  His father would ask her about the clubs she’d visited, and she’d ask if he was disturbed that she’d kissed another man on the light-up floor.  He never was.  They repeated this ritual a couple of times.

The twelve year old wasn’t of the belief that his parents had agreed to some sort of open-marriage, given their staunch Catholicism that they’d chosen to pursue (his mother was born believing some form of Shintoism and his father was born a Buddhist of some sort, before both switched teams, after their own crises of faiths).  Given the tones of their early morning conversations, their son had rightly assumed that they had given up on attempts to save their marriage and were seeing other people.  They were just going to keep up this charade for as long as they could, for the sake of their son (as Kakyoin had caught them admit a couple of times aloud).  It took him maybe a full month of observation through his Stand to assess that the impending split wasn’t his fault. They seemed to indicate, in multiple ways (indirectly via multiple conversations, body language, etc.), that it was due to incompatible personalities (which he disagreed with—they were very flawed people, his parents, and flawed in ways that even he knew he wasn’t fully aware of, but they were broken and lonely in just the right ways that their cracks and imperfections could have about aligned…although he also had to admit that he was a little biased, when forming this conclusion).

So it wasn’t entirely a surprise when, in 1988, their Tenmei, who had just become seventeen, received the news from his parents that they were ending their marriage.  (He had been spending about five years, waiting for the shoe to drop, and he was almost hoping they would have waited until he’d left them for University, so that he wouldn’t have to deal with this custody business.)  In spite of the nasty circumstances they’d abruptly imposed on him, to pick which parent he’d be going with, the Kakyoins’ child couldn’t find it in him to fully despise his parents, who, in spite of themselves, tried to make things work for five years, for his sake.

Aswan, Egypt.  1989.

So it was, perhaps filled with a sense of mortality by his near two-week hospitalization (or, perhaps, due to that dreaded feeling that Dio would target him upon seeing him, which he tried to dismiss as some paranoia and internally insist that his friends were as likely as him to be targeted by the vampire and he needed to keep his wits on him to protect his friends), Kakyoin, sometimes called Tenmei and sometimes called Noriaki, began writing out a will that he placed in his pocket, stole some paperwork from the Speedwagon Foundation that would have allowed him to break a hush-hush imposition they’d dealt with the hospital for a phone call, and forged a signature from a Speedwagon agent whose name he’d caught in conversation among the other Speedwagon Foundation agents (the name was of one of the pair that had passed away in that same Stand Battle that injured his eyes) and a date that placed the permit on the day he’d been injured (giving the Agents personal motivation to break protocol, finish what appeared to be their fallen coworker’s last act as a Speedwagon Foundation agent, and even hide the identity of their fallen coworker in spite of transcribing Hierophant Green’s Stand User’s phone call).  The last phone call went to his parents and he wasn’t terribly surprised he hadn’t gotten back a response.  (He’d only wished he’d gotten…something.)

Kakyoin had very few items on his person, as a high school student.

Iggy would have his pocket change, to purchase coffee gum (there wasn’t anything else, he’d thought, the dog would have wanted from him).

Mohammed Abdul would be allowed to add the student’s gold pins to his gold jewelry.

Mr. Joestar would have his scarf, to keep him warm in his colder, older years.

Polnareff was going to have his English translation of the Italian mystery novel written by an R.M. Granita, known in English by the title “Golden Wind” but sounded much better in its original Italian as “Vento Aureo”.  This book had been with his school things, apparently, when he had been forcibly transferred to Jotaro’s High School.  In its margins, he’d already found notes written in his own handwriting, which he never recalled writing.  Whenever he’d had the chance, he’d make himself read and reread the text—perhaps to gain some understanding out of this—but couldn’t divine anything from the text or what he’d written; he wasn’t entirely certain why he was giving this book to Polnareff (especially when his earrings would have made more sense, given their game of switching pairs of earrings, but, well, the redhead wanted them on his ears if he were laid to rest in a coffin), but…well, Polnareff could figure this out.  Jean Pierre wasn’t a dummy, after all.

His best friend would have a pair of sunglasses that the Speedwagon agents had promised to purchase for the redhead (and had also promised would arrive before he would rejoin his friends, whenever that would be) and the Japanese translation of Sherlock Holmes’ many cases that he’d bought at the airport, at the start of this journey.  For the sake of his friend, he’d been writing notes in the margins—to ease the potential loss as much as he could.

Among the notes he wrote, in this book of Holmes, for Jotaro Kujo was a direct confession of love that he’d wished he’d shared, in person and much earlier.  (There was no reason for him to distract his friend with such a confession and possibly endanger them all, by throwing Kujo’s focus off in this eleventh hour, when they were very close to defeating Dio.  Jojo wasn’t a dummy either, but Kakyoin was determined to help his friend as much as he could, as his proclaimed Jo-Bro.)

There was also an admission that, if he could, he would give his Stand to Jotaro Kujo, but, he figured, his parents could use the Stand a little more after his passing; if the seventeen year old Leo, who was Noriaki to his classmates and Tenmei to his parents, could have given the Stand to both the peer that he was in love with and to his parents, he would have, and he was going to try to do so, as he continued to confess to Jotaro in the backmost, empty page of this defaced copy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s mystery stories.

This was a very personal gift, he noted to Jojo, in neat handwriting, repeating something that he’d heard from Mohammed Abdul once or twice, because this Stand was a vision of his soul.  If they couldn’t be together after this journey, at least, spiritually, he would stand by his friend.

The sheet of paper, dispensing his things, did not mention bequeathing his Stand to anyone, instead, ending quite tersely, with a request to offer his parents his body and to burn anything extra, to spare them any more misery than what this loss could already give them.

There was a part of Kakyoin that wanted to believe he’d chosen neither of his parents, when presented the cruel choice of picking between them during their divorce, as a cruel act of kindness that would have kept them together; another part of him believed it was just their bitterness and spite that he’d inherited from them, the very same qualities which led them to mistake cruelties like this for kindness, that had acted up, in revenge, for making him make their own decision for them.

Cairo, Egypt.  1989.

So it was that, when it came time to rejoin his friends, Hierophant Green’s Stand User was presented with the sunglasses promised to him, left his books and scarf with the Agents and asked them to hold them, reunited with his eager friends on January 16, received a clandestine kiss from Jotaro Kujo (who was quite convinced that he’d won the point in their game for kissing him immediately after their other friends had looked away), kissed Jojo back just in front of Dio’s Mansion when nobody was looking (a move that, as communicated through a quick glance between the pair of them, won the redhead that last point in their game), one thing led to another (he played his favorite video game and became a doll at some point), and Abdul and Iggy perished.

That evening or so, as he’d feared, while protecting Mr. Joestar and making a bold ploy to test out the properties of Dio’s World (the last of the tarot’s Major Arcana that hadn’t been claimed by the Stand Users of their party or their enemies), Dio had murdered him at 5:15 PM (about midnight in Japan).

At least, he offered his parents one final apology and spent his last moments figuring out the secret behind Dio’s Stand (the ability to freeze time).  Before dissolving, his Stand and only friend before this journey, Hierophant Green, sent out a final Emerald Splash, damaging the face of a nearby clock tower. And the former priest of Dio’s prayed that Mr. Joestar understood what he’d tried to tell him.

Kakyoin, Japan.  1989.

The parents of Tenmei Kakyoin saw their son and gave him their goodbyes, before allowing Mr. Joestar to take him away; the pair remained silent, after this final meeting, as they walked back into their apartment building, stood side-by-side in the elevator, and re-entered #99.

It was Akira Kakyoin who’d begun reaching for the first aid kit, kept on top of their fridge (although he’d had a sneaking suspicion Mr. Joestar lied about not holding back in their cathartic fight, he was still hurting just a little), until his wife screamed.

The first aid kit appeared to have jumped out from its spot and lowered itself, neatly pressing itself into the former Father Kakyoin’s palm.

And it was Sakura Kakyoin who immediately recognized this ghost as the Stand that was her father’s and her son’s.

They heard the scritch-scratch of a pen and paper, writing out an apology, for failing to protect their son, but promising to protect them, as their son had wished.

When presented with this last gift and apology, who were they to turn it away?

And so it was back to a different form of that odd triangle life Sakura, née Hisakawa, had grown up with (and, this time, explained to Akira, whom she no longer called Father but, instead, called Akira and あなた, which was pronounced ‘ah-na-ta’ and can mean many things, but, here, in this context, meant something to the effect of ‘darling’, and Akira called her あなた as well).  They began each morning as she had, in her childhood, greeting each other and, then, the Stand.  Their days ended in the same way as well.  Whenever the Stand had done something for them, they were sure to thank him.

The Kakyoins did not divorce or leave Kakyoin, but never had any other children.

They were an oddly lonely sort of triangle, the pair of them and their son’s Stand, but they made due and weren’t separated.

Until:

Kakyoin, Japan.  2011.

The pair were in their seventies, when they heard the scratch-scratch of a pen to paper and received an apology from the Stand that was their son’s.

The Stand, once named Midori-San, who was sometimes blue and sometimes green, announced that he needed to leave and he was very sorry about it.

As the pair had done with their own son, years ago, when they gave him their final goodbyes in the Speedwagon Foundation’s freezer car and, then, when they’d finally journeyed to Liverpool, England and saw him underneath the edible cherry tree on the Joestars’ land (only once), they gave their goodbye and added a thanks.

And, so, the Stand left the pair, to attend to a new task…

Chapter Text

Somewhere in Florida.  2011.

Jolyne Kujo, Jotaro Kujo’s only daughter, was being transferred to Green Dolphin Street Prison, for a murder that she didn’t commit; per her absentee father’s wishes, before the transference, Jolyne received an amulet from her mother (among other things) and, after touching what she was informed was a stone inside of the amulet, punctured her finger and screamed in pain as the punctures multiplied and blood left her right pointer finger in…what appeared to be a red string…

Chapter Text

London, England. 1989.

In Chinese and Japanese culture, there is a legend of a pretty kinky sounding guy on the moon, who, probably having nothing better to do, ties people up with a red string (said man goes for the ankles in Chinese culture, whereas, in Japanese culture, the same man seemed to prefer tying a man’s thumb to a woman’s pinky or both parties’ pinkies). The people tied together become soulmates, destined to meet and fall madly in love.

It sounded kind of like bullshit to Joseph Joestar, even though he had a wifey that he had impulsively proposed to at eighteen, having probably spoken to her for less than ten minutes (or even five, if one didn’t count the time she spent while possessed) before the proposal; nevertheless, at sixty-eight years of age (turning sixty-nine this year, although sometimes it felt a couple years younger), he was still pretty mad about her. They just had to work a little harder than usual, at times, to keep things going.

Which was why his heart about broke, when he received news that his sweetie had been blowing up the phone in Erina’s old home (currently being nicely maintained by a local Speedwagon guy, as always, per old REO’s final will to his Foundation). (And it didn’t help that the Domestic HQ was slow to approve the paperwork to get Kakyoin’s box over to Joseph—the box of things Joseph wanted dispensed after the lad was buried, per Kakyoin’s last will. At least the box still showed up in its spot under the floorboards with a daily Hermit Purple snapshot…he was just kicking himself for forgetting the box in the first place and wondering if he needed to head back and grab it himself…)

The only thing Joseph had planned today was keeping Polnareff entertained, while showing him around Liverpool and Erina’s place.

Immediately after they’d held Kakyoin’s funeral, the three of them (Mr. Joestar, the false Mr. Eiffel, and Mr. Something Something Navy) got to work on saving Mohammed Abdul’s office. Joseph and Polnareff focused on reviewing the report, something Joseph didn’t delight in doing but he knew he had to, while Davy gathered intel from the other janitors concerning the Foundation’s perspective on Stands from multiple departments, to better inform Joseph and Jean Pierre’s search. And, then, they all had quiet weekends in. They repeated this, come the next work week, but with the added bit of talking about the latest episode of “Poirot” (which Polnareff missed the intro of, as usual). It didn’t feel right to show him Erina’s home on a weekday, especially after Jean Pierre had been begging to go back to Liverpool after Kakyoin’s funeral, to sight-see it while he was still technically a tourist (he was, now, working with the Foundation to get a working Visa, getting the right employment papers signed, and get working with the SPW/SWF/S-Whatever-Whatever in a more official capacity) and he wanted to tour with a proper, born Lever-Puller (Liverpudlian, for those that didn’t get the reference, sorry non-Beatles fans…for your lack of taste, that is…). It just felt better to get the visits done on the same day. The day-trip felt especially appropriate for that Saturday, because it was the same day that the Kujo household planned to celebrate Little Jojo’s birthday, so the day-trippers could both call him in and ask him how he was doing.

Erina’s grandson had arrived at the front door of the old girl’s home, arm in arm with Polnareff, both in high spirits and singing Beatles songs. They’d spent the morning at the site where the infamous Strawberry Field house stood (perhaps Lennon cursed it by dubbing it ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, since the original home had been demolished in the 70’s and now the Salvation Army was using the land for other things) and around Penny Lane (yes, like the song by Macca). The high point of the Lennon-McCartney morning had to be when the poor (but secretly rich, mind) French bastard tried to order a four of fish and finger pies from the local pub (but, after getting laughed at by the decent-looking pub waiter and learning what the hell a finger pie really was, Polnareff took the joke with good humor and ordered double).

They needed this, dammit, after Polnareff put his therapy on pause, after what sounded like a pretty rough session, and the week and a half they’d spent in Mohammed Abdul’s office, reviewing files, all as prep for a scheduled presentation for the wigs at Big Poppa, aka the H.Q. of H.Q.s of Uncle Speedwagon’s Foundation, the first of the Speedwagon Foundation HQs, located in Texas.

The plan there was to show up at Big Poppa’s on Jonathan Joestar’s birthday—April fourth. Joseph Joestar picked the date to give them a couple of months or so to prep and remind the fellas at Big Poppa who they had to thank for their jobs, and, hopefully, this extra tactical advantage would save Abdul’s office and work for good. Jonathan’s birthday was a little before American tax season, and Joseph knew it was also about when a Foundation like Uncle Speedwagon’s would begin sorting out their budgeting. If they showed up too late, Mohammed Abdul’s office would have been doomed. Too early, and there was no guarantee that whatever pretty speech they’d have cooked up would have stuck.

Their team of three had voted to save this office before seeing Mohammed Abdul’s father, to hopefully give him the news that, in spite of his only son dying, he was leaving something behind. Yes, it was later in the year, optimistically a full three months after Mohammed’s passing—and, even though they weren’t unanimous in their vote to wait to give the Older Abdul the news about his son later (in fact, even the pair that voted in favor of saving the office before returning to Cairo, Joseph and Polnareff for the curious, still felt a little guilty about the choice), everyone was at least in agreement that showing up totally empty handed and with news that his son’s life work was at risk of being ended wouldn’t have been the greatest either. It would have been foolhardy to insist they weren’t being a little selfish with this choice. But Joseph just recognized, after sending an inquiry to Big Poppa, about what was going to happen to Mohammed Abdul’s work, and after getting the response that Mohammed Abdul left it to them (him, Jean Pierre Polnareff, and Jotaro), like he knew Polnareff had to, after Mr. Joestar had called him in his address in France and the twenty-something immediately left for England the next day, that this work on Stands was Mohammed Abdul and, after learning its tenuous status with the SPW, neither of them could allow Mohammed Abdul to die again.

But, back to Suzi: between Japan and London, there was about an eight hour difference (with Japan being the one ahead). If Suzi had been blowing up the phone while he’d been out in the morning…augh, mental math. Joseph had already been timing his return to Erina’s, to call up the Kujo household in Japan at a fairly reasonable hour for Jotaro’s birthday celebration today (an outing to the beach, a dinner, and a cake). Polnareff was going to surprise the teenager by joining in the call and adding to the birthday well-wishes (the pair, the Japanese teen and the French twenty-something, hadn’t spoken since the airport at the end of their journey and a call concerning when Jotaro would visit Mohammed Abdul’s office—not out of anger or bitterness, just, well, because of everything else that had been happening).

Upon receiving the update from the Speedwagon Agent at the Estate (currently it was the agent who operated under the moniker “Guns”, the identical twin to the agent currently in the Kujo household in Japan), the younger twenty-something opted to wait on giving his well-wishes, to give Mr. Joestar privacy to deal with these family issues on the phone in the drawing room (yes, it was one of those old sorts of homes that had a drawing room instead of a normal-ass living room); if he was needed, the Frenchie was going to the kitchen to make himself some proper tea in the kitchen, grab some snack-cakes, and follow that up with sitting in Erina’s proper English garden, with the tea he’d made for himself and the snack cakes he’d gotten (to partake in what he assumed was the most authentic English tea time experience). Guns, who knew the house, of course, was going to show Polnareff to said kitchen and garden.

According to Guns’ update (delivered before showing Polnareff to the kitchen), according to the previously mentioned wife, Jotaro wasn’t doing well—he’d said he didn’t want to be an astronaut anymore.

The stress of so much school, after…everything he went through seemed too much (and even Suzi thought the extra month of school seemed pointless and needlessly cruel—due to the extremely unusual circumstances of his absence, the administration had presented the options of either having him repeat his senior year, which was an automatic ‘no’ for Jotaro, obviously, or basically making him attempt twice the school days in a single day, making him attend the regular daytime classes he had to spend eightish hours playing catch-up with and following this daylong confusion with the lessons he would’ve needed to understand the current day’s lessons). The wifey had theorized this sort of cruelty was just a show to save face after their lawsuit at the end of last year and she was seriously considering convincing Jotaro to take a gap year after this. No more taking tests to get into University next school year in April. (Perhaps even consider schooling abroad.)

Holly sounded uncertain of what to do about this entire ordeal and very guiltily admitted to her mother that she had hidden a call that she’d received from the school about a week ago, about an incident involving three girls from the now-eighteen-year-old’s class (an Akane Abe, a Botan Bando, and a Chiaki Chiba).

The three had planned to surprise Jotaro with early Valentine’s chocolates, to cheer him up, after he’d taken an off day (per the Wife, Jotaro broke down after hearing the year, the day before the chocolates, hence the day-off). Didn’t turn out well. It was a little before the school day began, when the girls entered the teacher’s lounge and shared everything with their homeroom teacher, absolutely distraught. They insisted Jotaro did nothing wrong (even though he’d told them to “fuck off”), but they were incredibly worried about him. Something about this earful he’d delivered, compared to his past reprimands, just seemed so different.

It was mean.

Jotaro wasn’t known to be nice—nobody in their class would make a claim like that—but he wasn’t mean like that.

This really wasn’t the first call Holly had about Jotaro not getting along with the girls and she had simply (perhaps erroneously) dismissed it as teenage hormones, like any past calls involving girls in his class.

On his day off, Jotaro was also asking Holly about chest pains (particularly around the heart).

So, Joseph’s still adorable daughter wanted to know if Jotaro had his heart broken on their journey to save her.

None of this news felt great to hear, but what really broke Joseph’s heart was to hear all of this from a very impassioned, tearful Guns (the man was usually so straight-faced and serious, Joseph used to call him gun-shy as a dumb joke).

“Mrs. Joestar doesn’t know what to do…she sounds so lost,” a distraught Guns sobbed, beating his chest. “She said that she felt like she’s fighting this alone…that she knows you didn’t mean to do this, but Holly is still doing P.T. after her illness, and Sadao is still on a work-vacation imposed by the recording studio…she needs reinforcements and she can’t do this by herself anymore! She blames herself for missing the signs and not realizing how distraught her grandson really is, nearly a month after his return, near his eighteenth birthday!”

It was while picking up the phone that Mr. Joestar recalled something Kakyoin had once told him, something that made him swallow hard remembering because it was just shared a couple of months ago. The redhead was of the belief that Jotaro was pretty much an open book (and he was probably the first person to tell Joseph a thing like that about his own grandson, at this age).

“Oh, it’s really very simple, talking to him,” the young Kakyoin had insisted, when it was just the two of them (they were shopping for supplies for the rest, at the time, at the local market). “He doesn’t always volunteer information, but, if you just ask him the right questions, you can have your answers.”

Poor Suzi and their Holly probably hadn’t cracked the right questions to ask and Jotaro was probably making this harder on them. As Joseph dialed up the Kujo household, he made a couple of guesses about what was asked, that he wanted verified as soon as possible.

His wife and daughter probably asked Jotaro if he’d gotten his heart broken by a girl recently. That would have gotten them a ‘no’ (maybe paired with a look of disgust—which probably would have discouraged them).

Maybe they could have been adventurous and asked him if it was because of a boy. (Jotaro and Kakyoin, whatever they had going, wasn’t official. Not really. Well, they hadn’t announced it to the group, even though everyone had their suspicions—Polnareff giggled after he stumbled on the realization and, when asked about it by the teenagers, he’d insisted he was just thinking of a very dirty French joke he’d heard, aka a normal French joke; while Abdul took it with a pleasant ‘oh’ and a calm smile; and Iggy…well, Iggy only met them once or twice and he couldn’t even talk, but Joseph had this feeling dogs just knew this sort of thing. The high school students just looked so happy to talk to each other.)

(Jotaro could have taken his mother’s and his Nonna’s question the wrong way, almost like his grandmother and mother could have been blaming Kakyoin for his present misery, even though it wasn’t their intention, but, nonetheless, he wouldn’t want to do a thing like that. Knowing his grandson, Big Jojo figured that Little Jojo probably blamed himself for still feeling this shitty, weeks after Kakyoin’s passing. Poor Jotaro.)

The fifty day trip was probably the closest that Joseph ever felt to his own grandson. Mr. Qtaro had a speech delay until he was almost four or five and, then, even after he finally figured out how to talk, it was still pretty hard to get him talking (in Japanese and in English). His parents were better equipped at this sort of thing, until Sadao got a contract deal and Holly…to be honest, Joseph still didn’t know what happened with his adorable Holly. It just felt like a light switch—one moment, Holly was relaying how Jotaro was getting seconds and thirds of some hotpot she’d improvised and how, between every spoonful, he was telling her it was pretty much the best thing he’d ever put in his mouth, and, the next, he was calling her a bitch. Big Jojo got tied up with a lot of work, so he just couldn’t visit as much as he’d wanted—but, when he did, they mostly watched films (because it at least gave them…something, instead of awkward silences, and, at least, Jotaro seemed to like the films his Grandfather would bring over).

To be honest, after their trip, Joseph had no clue what they were looking like after this.

Would they remain closer, having bonded over some truly bizarre shit?

Or were they just, you know, supposed to go back to the way things were?

It was around twelve-thirtyish in England, so it was about…eightish in Japan.

Jotaro was the one who answered.

“Hey,” Joseph greeted, while nixing the plans he’d had to confirm what Suzi and Holly had already tried to ask the grandson.

The response back: “Hey.” In English this time.

“Happy Birthday, Eighteen Year Old,” Joseph put in, carefully assessing where to go from the answer he’d be getting…

The response: “Yeah.” Fuck. Not much to work with there.

Alright, how about this: “Polnareff is here. I just took him around Liverpool. Now, I think he’s sitting in Erina’s garden. Having Tea Time.”

“Alright.” Jotaro…come on…

“You wanna talk to Polnareff?” Ok, this was probably unconventional but…a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question was hopefully going to force…something out of him.

“Not really.” Dammit. “I got Nonna worried about nothing.” Shit, forcing his grandad’s hand instead!

“It’s not nothing,” Joseph played along, trying to sound, like, not an enemy. “You’ve been wanting to be an astronaut since—“

Oh.

Oh shit.

“Since,” Jotaro asked, in his usualish way. Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit!

“Since you were a kid,” Joseph put in, rather conservatively. (What did the judges have to say? Was it a good landing?)

“Guesso,” Jotaro admitted. (Yes!)

A pause.

Shit.

Was that it?

“Your Grandma said you were considering marine biology instead. So…why the marine biology,” Joseph had to ask. “I guess—your Mom told me you liked reading about…ships…” How old was this information? How old was Jotaro, when Holly had shared this with her father? Joseph found himself thinking back to the last time he’d seen a ship with the grandson. (The sub and the SPW boat with the fake SPW operative and…the Orangutan’s Stand? Did Jotaro seem especially interested there?) “Kinda coming out of nowhere, there, Jojo…”

“Why not,” was his response. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

“You love the beach, or something,” Joseph put in, cautiously.

“Sure.”

God fucking dammit…this really wasn’t working! This really wasn’t working! He could give Jotaro a fucking paragraph, read him fucking “War and Peace” unabridged, and all he’d be getting back would be these one word responses! “You tell your Grandma and your Mom that I’m coming down there—”

“You can’t; you have to save Mohammed Abdul’s office—”

Joseph pressed his temples with his fingers, squeezing them so that he could really feel the prints in his tips. “—we’ve got time and I’ve got help. I need to see you—”

“You don’t,” Jotaro insisted. “Marine Biology’s got a smaller candidate pool and it’s safer to travel the ocean than space. It makes more sense.”

Nope. Nope, nope, nope—too late for that, Jotaro. “What do you want me to pick up for you from England—maybe some Jaffa Cakes?”

“…th’fuck are those?”

“Biscu—cookies. Cookies with orange jam. Covered in chocolate,” Joseph explained, pretty genuinely shocked he’d never gotten some for his Grandson before. “They’re great.”

“I don’t like sweets.”

“Well, I’m picking up a box for your Mom and Grandma and I’ll look in the other direction if you decide to take some too,” the Grandfather was going to remain firm, here, dammit. Firm.

“Don’t do this,” wasn’t delivered like an admission of defeat or anything. Sounded…shit, more like a command! What the fuck, grandson?

“What, are we going to fight when I get there, with my box of Jaffa Cakes,” Joseph put in, playfully, facetiously—hoping, well, that they weren’t going to…. “Maybe I’ll toss in a tin or two of spotted dick, while I’m at it.”

A groan was all Joseph got back.

Ok, so much for threatening him with British cuisine (that Joseph could swear wasn’t as terrible as it sounded…the British just hated giving food appetizing names).

“Last chance to request something,” Joseph offered, half seriously and half not. “Or all you’re getting is cakes and dick.”

“I don’t want you showing up here,” Jotaro replied.

“Too bad. Happy birthday, Grandson,” Joseph wished.

And—it was dial-tone on the other end.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Joseph put the phone back in its place and already made his plans…tell Polnareff and Davy he had a family emergency, head back to his office in DC, and then go to Japan…wait, no, he had to pick up some Jaffa Cakes and Spotted Dick (Holly loved Jaffa Cakes and the tins of Spotted Dick made her and Suzi laugh). Ok, Cake and Dicks, Polnareff and Davy, D and C, then Japan.

No—no, fuck…Polnareff probably wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be back in the office, alone…he put his therapy on pause, dammit…Joseph found himself placing his head between his open palms and rubbing his cheeks.

Dammit, he was too old for this.

He was too old for this…

“You should go to Jotaro,” a voice from the corner of the room insisted.

Joseph turned, finding Polnareff, tea cup in one hand and tea pot in the other and…shit, was that Erina’s good china? Well, to be fair, no one was using it anymore…and…was that a small smile on his face? No. No, no, no, Polnareff…no…

“I can’t make you look in that office, alone,” Joseph insisted. “I’ve seen most of those files already and I’ve been feeling like I’ve been walking out of that office with lead shoes, at the end of the day…I can only imagine how it is with you…”

“I like it,” Mr. Eiffel insisted, while holding the cup to his lips, with a pinky out and wiggling, announcing its, um, being there. “I’ve heard about this work for some time now, and I like…I like reading Mohammed Abdul’s writing,” a break for a sip, and, then, “The work will be here when you can return, but Jotaro only turns eighteen once. And I don’t think Mohammed Abdul would have wanted you around the office on Jotaro’s birthday…”

Fuck. Joseph just slid those hands over his face and said nothing. Fuck.

He wasn’t crying or anything, under those hands just…he was just exhausted. His head felt heavy and he needed something else lifting that weight—that hard head of his. And he knew, probably better than Polnareff could have, how right he was.

Cairo, Egypt. 1976.

It was a little after the sixteen year old Mohammed Abdul had the file of Risa Hoshino’s for a full two weeks and read through it maybe…fifteen or twenty times, that the difficult question came in.

“Of course the Foundation still gets calls in to investigate potential Stand cases,” a fifty-something Joseph Joestar replied, over dinner with young Mohammed Abdul and his grandmother (his father was out, meeting with the other Magicians of Cairo). (Dinner was a nice fattah with lamb in clay pots—Joseph didn’t always remember dinners he’d had, but this tasted fucking great with the fluffy rice and generous garlic.). “There’s always these cases that don’t fit neatly with the psychic division or the paranormal division. They just haven’t had anyone that could look into them yet.” Since Risa passed, went unsaid, but, he knew, had to be understood.

“How do I apply for the position,” Young Mohammed Abdul asked—this was maybe his third or fourth time asking a variant of the question this day…maybe twenty total, this week alone?

How was he supposed to tell a bright-eyed sixteen year old that the office had pretty much been defunded, since Risa’s passing? Lisa Lisa hated signing off on that, but—well, it wasn’t done out of hatred for Risa. Whenever Risa dropped by Big Poppa or the D.C. office, she always had a bag of edible goodies from whatever country she’d just visited. Her work was always neat and turned in on time. The board members were actually very excited when they’d have to meet with her, because she’d always take their notes with a smile and ask them about their families (and she always took the time to remember their kids’ names and ages).

They had her picture up at Big Poppa’s front entrance for a full year, after her passing.

As much as about everyone loved her, they…well, as Lisa Lisa had once told Joseph:

“When you find the person who can see her Mona Lisa Smile, you make sure they don’t wind up like her.”

Mohammed Abdul seemed very charming and intelligent, even at that age—although, according to him, a year ago, at fifteen, he was pretty much considered an adult. (His father’s mother and father confirmed these claims.) The young man could speak at least five languages fluently and pretty much operated his mother’s mother’s fortune-telling shop on his own, as he had been since he was ten. (Joseph knew all of this because Mohammed Abdul had offered this information, repeatedly, while vying for Risa’s old position.)

But as put-together as Mohammed Abdul presented himself, Joseph really didn’t want to…well, he just didn’t want to be responsible for a Risa.

So, when asked for like the twenty-first time that week, how to apply for Risa’s old job, Joseph shot back with the response that became something of his favorite to send back. “When you’re eighteen and you can sign paperwork with one of the offices, they might consider your application.” It was a cruel answer, probably. Would have crushed any normal sixteen year old to hear.

But not Mohammed Abdul.

The brown face always stared back, eyebrows furrowing, after getting this answer.

There wasn’t an angry expression on his face.

But a thoughtful one.

Black eyes, Joseph could have sworn that burned like…an eclipse, maybe, whatever it is with the moon blocking the sun, where you aren’t supposed to be looking right into it, but Joseph was looking right into them, with his baby-blues.

The answer, at least, looked like it pleased his father’s mother, as she tossed over three more servings of that awesome fried bread into his clay serving pot, grinning a little too wide for her face. (Even though her Mody was technically an adult, she liked having him around.)

Joseph left Risa’s file with the Abduls (there were copies back in the office) and his number, to call back if they found themselves in an emergency or whatever—he was going to be the one to kick the SPW’s asses into gear, dammit, if they thought of pulling anything like sending over agents that weren’t doing their due diligence and reading about the regional varieties of Hamon, the Gift, Sendo, and all of the other names it had.

Washington D.C., US. 1976.

No sooner after leaving did Joseph find a daily call at his office in D.C.—even though he had the office, he didn’t really have much reason to visit it often, until now. The call from Cairo always came at around nine AM his time (around…three PM in Cairo, he guesstimated). A good time, to get a call.

Some people probably would have found this kid obnoxious.

Not Joseph.

Young Mody found out that Joseph was a Libra, so, in his daily calls, after listening to a brand new pitch the Egyptian had for investigating Stands, even going so far as to offer to do it on his own dime once (which Joseph had to turn down immediately, insisting the young teen never ever offer to do something for free again), Joseph got a new horoscope of some sort. Sometimes it was about his awesome love life. Sometimes there was a warning about work. A couple of times, like anything involving a Joestar tended to, family got involved. (Admittedly, Joseph was kind of curious about this shit and it was kind of cool having someone to talk about this with, for freeish.)

“Libra is an air sign,” Mohammed Abdul had told him, a little around when this calling business began. “Which means you’re formless, highly adaptable, and ruled by the amorous Venus.” Yeah, none of those things were wrong. “You also seek balance and try to maintain peace with the people around you—but, if you aren’t careful, you could resent everyone if you just keep putting up with doing things that they don’t ask you to, for the good of the group.” Well, shit.

Shit.

This was really helpful to know, wasn’t it?

(By this point, he still had his Mom down in Hollywood, but that was about it, as far as guidance he could be getting—and, after Risa’s passing, his Mom wasn’t picking up as much as she used to.)

Alright, this kid was too good. Definitely felt like someone who’d been running a fortune-telling operation for nearly half of his life. “What about you?”

“I’m a fire sign, so I don’t deal with that bullshit,” the sixteen year old insisted with an easy laugh. “I’m about the opposite of you…which can be good and bad.”

“Yeah, how so, Mr. Abdul?” Even though this kid was like…forty years younger than him, Joesph Joestar was keeping this professional.

“On the one hand, working with you, Mr. Joestar, I could remind you to do some things for yourself,” really buttering him over, dammit, this guy was really good. “If you worked with me, you could teach me to compromise.”

Yeah. After hearing things like this, Joseph Joestar kind of did want to work with him. This young Stand User was already pretty tactful, seemed resourceful, knowledgeable, resilient…shit, was Joseph already drafting out a letter of recommendation?

“You ever do a tarot reading over the phone?” Joseph had asked once, out of curiosity. “Those are Egyptian, right?”

A click of the tongue on the other end. “Sorry, Mr. Joestar. That’s just some European, Crowley-claptrap you bought into. While they say Tarot came from the Book of Thoth, the source text is a myth; there is no such real, readable text that goes by that title, to my knowledge, which is actually pretty extensive. I happen to love old books and hearing about them.”

Fair. And, yet, Joseph still wanted to know, “But…you could do a reading?”

“I mean…I could, probably…but isn’t half the fun of a tarot deck in seeing the cards in person?” Yeah, Mody had a point there.

Washington D.C., US. 1977.

“What are you doing, planning on staying in the office, when it’s your grandson’s sixth birthday,” Mr. Abdul scolded. (And it was Mr. Abdul, when he got like this.) (They’d been at this for about…shit, mental math for a homeschooled adult that never even bothered with college…alright, it was around December when the Abduls contacted the Foundation and Joseph got the call…so they’d been at this for…a little more than two months! Shit!)

“Jojo Qtaro’s getting a birthday next year,” Jojo No-last-name-other-than-Joestar insisted, tone sounding a little…like a six year old, he had to admit. “And he’s in Japan and…”

“—Japan’s awesome,” Mohammed Abdul interrupted—oh no, was he getting a Holly-level factoid about the land of the rising sun? “I’d love to visit Japan, so you can’t use that as an excuse to avoid familiar commitments!” Oh. No, he was just getting lectured by a sixteen year old instead.

“Come on, I love him,” Joseph insisted, maybe not in a loving tone—probably more like the tone someone uses after they get caught putting the milk back in the fridge after spying that it was past its expiration date. (‘C’mon, they always print the dates earlier than they actually expire.’ ‘C’mon, I love my grandson…’)

“You know he’s an Aquarius—a more introverted air sign, but an air sign like you. It’ll be tricky getting him out of his head,” the soon-to-be-seventeen-year-old put in with a knowing air himself (and, by this point…well, Joseph knew enough about air signs to actually know this).

“Shit, isn’t a fire sign supposed to be better for doing that,” Joseph objected, mentally reviewing the fire signs he’d been told of over the past couple of months they’d been talking. “Aries like you, Leo, Sagittarius…”

“Good job, Mr. Joestar. Fire Signs and Air Signs can get along famously,” Mohammed Abdul agreed, sounding pretty pleased that this lesson of his stuck. (Fuck, this kid actually was a pretty good teacher!) “Air feeds flames and flames help pull air signs out of their asses…but do you have any living relatives that are fire signs?” Ah—

“…I don’t know,” Joseph had to admit. “My mother…we usually just celebrate her birthday in December, but we don’t actually know her birthday…”

“When do you celebrate her birthday?”

“All of December,” Joseph put in. Lisa Lisa laid claim to all of December, to hold her birthday over everyone—yes, even on Christmas, it went double on Christmas.

“So, because celebrations start on December first, she’s a Sagittarius. A fire sign,” Abdul explained. “But is she going to Jotaro’s birthday, if you aren’t?”

His Mother. Ah, his Mother and her fickle, fickle nature… “Might as well flip a coin on it. It’d provide as good a guess as I can, and I’m her son.” He found himself shrugging. Why the fuck was he shrugging if Mr. Abdul couldn’t see it, dammit?

“Flames and Air Signs, Mr. Joestar,” the sixteen year old rationalized (sounding, maybe, like he did see the shrug?). “Fire-starters can be incredibly independent and they need an air sign to keep them compromising—and it’s not fair to lay that on the only other air sign in your family, especially when he’s almost a tenth of your age. So it’s better for you to be there, than not to be.”

“Fine,” Joseph surrendered to this teenager. (Mohammed really was going to be a helluva negotiator at eighteen, when he was roaming the SPW offices, wasn’t he? And, dammit, Joseph was actually really looking forward to seeing that. There was just the problem of getting money back into Operation: Stand Proud…but Joseph was working on that…speaking of which…they hadn’t talked about the position investigating Stands yet…)

“Hey, Mr. Joestar, when Jotaro gets his Stand, I’d like to be one of the first Stand Users to meet him,” there it was. The daily pitch for Risa Hoshino’s old position. Why did people go for his Grandson, when they really wanted to get to him? Little Jojo was really fucking cute even if he didn’t turn out to be the little Serena Q they were hoping for, but he could be a pretty tough little fucker. The other day, little Jojo tripped and skidded his knee, but he didn’t cry once while Holly carried him back inside, cleaned the blood, and wrapped it up. His grandkid was even a little big for his age. It was a little hard to believe he was just six…

But, well, this was Mody Abdul. They’d been talking for three months or so, now. There wasn’t a hidden threat in what he just said—there was even a small laugh, to his offer, which was actually quite sincere.

“My Mom, I think, said something like that once too,” Big Jojo put in, with a hand to his chin, recalling…maybe a year ago, almost two, when him and his mother talked, the month after Risa passed away. “About being afraid of Jotaro getting a Stand—” Shit, phrasing. “I mean…not of Jotaro getting a Stand and…” Fuck, he wasn’t supposed to let Mohammed Abdul know about what, he just remembered, with his chin falling out of his hand—about how Risa died in a drunk driving accident…

“Nothing to be afraid of,” the quite pleasant young man promised on the other end of the phone, very insistently. “Me and Magician’s Red, we’ll help him out.”

What a nice young man.

Wait.

Magician’s Red?

“That’s a new name,” Joseph couldn’t help but note. “I thought you were just calling him the Scarlet Magician or the Blood-Red Magician—“

“I figured I’m a magician too,” Mohammed Abdul pretty proudly claimed on the other end. “I’m a magician that calls on another magician, which is pretty cool. He’s my magician. And I can’t really call on him with ‘Magician’s Blood-Red Magician’ or, ah, ‘Magician’s Magician’s Red’. Sounds too corny…so I’m omitting his title and just calling him Red. I’m pretty sure, after really talking to him, that’s his name. And he doesn’t mind me just calling him Red.”

First name basis with his Stand. Huh. Sounded…kind of nice, actually.

“Just don’t—don’t get too…too fixated on other people seeing Red,” Joseph had to caution. “It’ll come or it won’t, alright?”

“Red has his ways of grabbing people’s attention, Mr. Joestar,” Mr. Abdul claimed, on the other end. “But I don’t want to do this to find other people who can see him. I want to do this—because I don’t want her work to go in vain. I want to feel like…I felt like everything made sense, after I read Risa’s file, and I want to continue her work. I want everything that she went through to feel like it meant something and it will continue to mean something. And I want to give the next person who gets the file more to read—if it’s your Grandson or someone else.”

A pause, because, fuck, how did you respond to that?

“Mr. Joestar, have we really not talked about that during the two or three months I’ve been love-bombing you for her old job?” Young Mody sounded about as surprised as the English-American on the other end was.

“I don’t think we did,” Jojo had to admit. “Sounds like a really fucking selfless reason you’ve got, for wanting to do this.”

Awkward pause.

And, “You are going to your grandson’s birthday, though, Mr. Joestar. As the fire sign you’ve been talking to, I’ve got to make sure you keep your head out of your ass—“

“Yeah,” Joseph replied. “I’ll go and bring my mother along…”

This was a conversation that, by Joseph Joestar’s book, actually went really stinking well.

Well enough that, a little later that week, Joseph Joestar just had to share some rumors that had hit the D.C. office. “There’s talk at Big Poppa of a new H.Q. being built in London.”

“…yeah?” Mr. Abdul wasn’t the one that called this time—and, admittedly, it wasn’t at a great hour (6 PMish in D.C., midnight in Cairo.)

“They got the land where Ogre Street once stood…it was kind of a dream of Speedwagon’s, apparently, getting an H.Q. set up there and doing some sort of program in the area—“

A yawn (it was late, so Jojo excused it away.) “How come?”

“It’s where he grew up,” Jojo recalled, some childhood stories from his long-gone Uncle playing in his head. “It wasn’t a nice place for him, growing up, and the neighborhood hasn’t picked up any manners yet, from what I’ve heard, but the Foundation—well, I think it would’ve really meant a lot to the Foundation’s Founder. He didn’t want to just land an H.Q. carelessly, over there, he wanted to help out with an outreach program…”

That woke up Mr. Abdul. “I’m sorry for yawning, Mr. Joestar…it really sounds like a decent thing to do, to give back to your community. But—I don’t mean to sound rude, but what did you need to call me for, so late at night?”

“Getting set up in a smaller branch office, like the one in Cairo, you’ll get maybe a smaller allowance for what you want to do. Getting an office in one of the more established H.Q.’s—like the D.C. office or Big Poppa—will be tricky for you.” Joseph could pull strings where he could, but there were some things that even he couldn’t handle—and eking out a space for a young man like Abdul, even though he really deserved it, among departments and offices that had been there for decades, now, was a task that would have made knocking an ultimate being into space look like fucking child’s play. “And you’re not always guaranteed funding, even after you get your four walls in one of these headquarters. This new H.Q. in London is the first in decades that they’ve built—you might not get another opportunity like this, to establish yourself in a new office in a completely new H.Q., which should be getting a good amount of funds to establish itself—”

“You mean it—!” Oh yeah, the young man really was awake, now.

“After reviewing my Mom’s file, I think I found the ‘in’ she used for Risa, to get their ventures funded—she convinced ‘em it was to find a link between Hamon and Stands. We could probably use that—I’ll get the office in my name, with the Hamon division, and you’ll use it…you’ll probably have to beef up your resume a little, because there’s really only so much I can do, on my end, to get you hired—and there’s really nobody else I want to see investigating Stand Cases…”

The response was almost immediate. “What do Red and I have to do?”

“I think an internship with a mayor in Georgia should look pretty good, in addition to you running your own business and having a Stand,” Joseph conjectured. The politicking in another country would fill in the gap of experience that could be an obstacle, preventing him from being hired. It would demonstrate how adaptable and worldly Mr. Abdul could be (and Joseph felt like it was there, it was, it just needed to be proven and quantifiable with something like this). “The mayor’s a friend of mine and he’s got a Hamon User bodyguard protecting him—the bodyguard…Messina’s Tibetan and…I can’t remember how to pronounce the variety there, and I apologize for that, but I think you’d get along with him. And I think the Mayor’d actually be pretty excited to take on a smartass intern—and he doesn’t do unpaid internships, because he actually respects the people he works with. And even though he doesn’t have a Stand or anything, the mayor’s a really great guy. I like him. And I think you could learn a lot from him.”

“Mr. Joestar, would I really be qualified for that…”

“Frankly, you’re over-qualified,” Jojo assessed, already mentally drafting the letter of recommendation he was giving to his old friend, Bill Brown. “The Mayor’s seen some things in his time. You can tell him about your Stand, and he’d probably believe you and Red…and, if you’re investigating Stand cases, I’m probably going to have to get you ready for that too, while you’re interning.” Hopefully, he was going to be less of a hardass than his Mom was with him (her son was really going to carefully review how she trained Risa, and tailor it to help out Mohammed as best as he could, so they wouldn’t have another Risa). “We’ll need you ready by the time you’re eighteen—because that’s about when the interviewing for the new H.Q. should begin, if the rumors I’ve heard sound about right. I might talk my way into conducting interviews for the new HQ, but we really have to meet somewhere in the middle with this if you’re going to have a long career. I can’t just give you an office and expect everyone to take you seriously. I won’t be there to help you along at every step—and if you change your mind and you want out, you let me know right away.”

“You can count on me and Red, Mr. Joestar!” Joseph could practically imagine those smoldering black eclipses he’d seen, months ago, practically staring disappointed blackholes into him, gleaming now.

Mohammed Abdul really was a good young man, the kind who gave a shit about the work of a young woman who died before her time and cared enough about an old guy to make him see his grandson on his sixth birthday.

And Joseph Joestar really wanted him to succeed; as corny as it sounded, if he had a son, he would have been pretty fucking happy if that lad could have been even half as bright, stubborn, and brilliant as this Magician.

Morioh-Cho, Japan. 1989.

A five year old boy got fussed over by his mother (again!), before he could dash out the doorway, head outside, and play. (Then again, after his near fifty day illness, what felt like an eternity to him and was probably worse for her, she probably had right to do this. But he was turning six this year, which meant he was getting a little big for this…right?)

The very pretty Tomoko Higashikata mussed her son’s dark, dark hair between her tapered, elegant fingertips. (No, not the hair! He hadn’t settled on what he wanted to do with it just yet, but it felt personal, fussing and mussing him there!) “You’re looking more and more like your father everyday, Josuke.” Oh no, she said that like it was supposed to be a compliment!

Oh, the five year old really hoped his mother was wrong; he really hoped she was wrong…

Chapter Text

What was Joseph Joestar hiding?

Probably too many things, Dr. D.B. Jones dismissed the question too long ago—no, actually, not too, too long ago.  

When Jones was hired by Mr. Joestar around 1978, he’d come to accept that Mr. Joestar was incredibly eccentric and a little annoyingly extroverted (it was probably something in the water in the States that changed a native Englishman like that), but he liked the Yank well enough.  It was a couple of hours in, on the job at the night shift, that this assessment changed somewhat.  

Jones had been hired as the janitor for the wing focused on Hamon studies, containing in it the office that was labeled “Joseph Joestar” on the H.Q.’s official map, but, on the door to the office itself, had the sign “Muhammed Avdol” (a very odd name that most definitely wasn’t Joseph Joestar’s).  It was after talking things over with the other janitors, between the shift change, that Jones learned a little more about why this was—apparently there was an older program Mr. Joestar was reviving, that his mother had begun years ago, and it would be run by an eighteen year old, black, Muslim Egyptian named Mohammed Abdul (the “Muhammed Avdol” was a typo on the part of the people who’d made the sign).  After hearing this information, Jones mentally updated Mr. Joestar’s casefile, adding the notes “a bit of a sneak”, “probably respects his mother”, and “places his trust in a variety of people”; the night-janitor liked this Joestar just a little bit more, after this update (because who didn’t like anyone who trusted a variety of people these days?), and was almost willing to leave it at that.

In the beginning, Mr. Abdul’s office was very sparsely decorated and furnished.  The walls were painted a light, ripe mango color.  There was just a red-brown desk, an old leather chair (orange colored), the red carpet by the window, an old typewriter (black), a small radio, pens and red ink, and a handful of books—some books on learning the Japanese language (both writing and speaking) and the SPW guidebooks on Hamon, ESP, and Spectral studies.  The office was always neat (and David Jones appreciated how Mr. Abdul always made his job easier), save for an incident about a month in, where there was mud on a red carpet by the window.  The Dr. Janitor had no idea what the significance of that carpet was or the mud, although it felt incredibly unusual that someone who had usually kept his office so clean missed this mud, but he cleaned it up all the same.

The night after this was when David received his first (rather large) box of chocolates and the first of many letters in a showy red ink, thanking him.  In addition to explaining the significance of the carpet (one Mr. Abdul revealed he used for daily prayers, as was required by his religion), he’d also gotten some very sincere thanks he’d given on the advice of a mayor from Georgia (who had instructed him to always mind your P’s and Q’s around janitors, because they were humans too and they’d always be there to clean up your messes).  This was the first thank you he’d gotten from this job and, throughout his career, Mohammed Abdul would remain the only one to give him such thank yous.  The night-janitor was a little too stunned to grin (but not too much to start opening up the huge, heart shaped box of sweets while reading this note).  It was very sweet (the notes and the chocolate), but the letter about ended with a sentence that gave him some pause.

“Seeing that Mr. Joestar hired us both, I think we can be friends.”

Oh.  Ohh—and it was then that Jones understood why he’d been brought into this fold a little more, as a janitor with a doctorate in clinical psychology, formerly with the Royal Navy.  It wasn’t really just to tell anyone working in the Hamon-focused wing to go home, if they were working well into his night shift, as he’d been informed after being hired (just a little after his interview).  Jones was being maneuvered into minding after the young man running Mr. Joestar’s office (who was on a different trust-level than Jones, to have known Mr. Joestar hired them both).

So it was that Dr. Jones updated that mental file on Joseph Joestar once again, crossing out the note “a bit of a sneak” and upgrading it to “withholds information”.  The note “trusts a variety of people” also had a question mark added to the end of it (“trusts a variety of people?”), because what else could you say about a person who withheld information from others and maneuvered them into doing simple tasks that they would have probably agreed to, if they were asked?

But Jones still decided he liked Mr. Joestar enough.  

When the American was away from his office at the International Office, and Mr. Abdul was in and they managed to chat (before Jones would shoo the young man away, to get a proper night’s sleep, as he was hired to do) or Jones received Mr. Abdul’s rubber spider, rat, or whatever he felt like hiding away where the Janitor would find it, along with a gracious letter and a box of chocolates, when Mr. Mohammed Abdul wasn’t investigating a Stand case somewhere farther, the Egyptian always spoke highly of Mr. Joestar.  

According to the young Mr. Abdul, Joseph Joestar was better than sixty Sean Conneries playing sixty James Bondses; Joseph saved the Universe at eighteen, was devoted to his family, and, even if he could be a textbook Libra at times, Mohammed Abdul was always grateful that it was Mr. Joestar who had delivered Risa Hoshino’s file to him, after he’d used his Stand, Magician’s Red, for the first time.  (The Stand business, in these days, greatly confused the night-janitor, but he nodded and tried to understand, when Mr. Abdul tried to tell him about his work, all the same.  Mr. Abdul had tried to demonstrate “Magician’s Red” once to the Janitor, by summoning a short spray of fire in the air, but, well, never again after spooking his probably only non-Joseph ally at the London H.Q.)  When Mr. Joestar was in the London H.Q., the air was quite fun—and Jones heard quite a bit from the other janitors of the messes they’d had to clean, after Mr. Joestar was in.  Joseph Joestar often brought booze to the office.  Productivity would go down (marked by many late nights at the Hamon-focused labs and offices, with workers trying to catch up on work they’d delayed working on during the day).  Mohammed Abdul’s office would also have something new in it—often an older book on something esoteric (like a book about Aleister Crowley) or new furniture (i.e. the coffee table, new chairs).

As the years went on, Joseph Joestar spent more and more time in the London office, often with Mohammed Abdul (and, an increasing amount of times as these years went by, Jones shooed them away at the start of his night shift, as he was hired to do).  They told about everyone that they’d only met three years prior to whatever year it was—an odd jape they’d laugh about, after hours, but it seemed harmless enough.  

So the mental file on Joseph Joestar remained untouched for the period.

It was about nine years later, in 1987, that the file was updated once again.  This time, Mohammed Abdul’s office was covered with Polaroids and the rubbish bins filled with…what appeared to be destroyed cameras?  Lots of pictures of the deserts, lots of sand.  Some ocean.  Jones had no idea what this could have meant (as far as the janitor knew, this was just a very destructive demonstration of a vacation Mr. Joestar had gone on with the wife), so he just emptied the bins and neatly piled up the Polaroids on the coffee table.  The note “he can be a very messy, inconsiderate chappie” was added.

A few days later, another note was added to this mental file, when, one very late night, Jones entered the office (by this point, correctly labeled as the office of “Mohammed Abdul”), and found a sleeping or incredibly drowsy Abdul (either way, very much out of commission) by the desk and typewriter and a very bleary eyed Joseph Joestar squatting on the ground by the coffee table, with a camera in his hands.

“Ah, Jones—!”  Joseph’s voice boomed across the room (somehow not waking up a now…late-twenty-something Mohammed Abdul?).  “I’ve—I’ve got a Stand now…I’ve got—I’ve apparently always had…purple thorny vines, but now I can see—come see…I think it’s…it’s phenomena-based, according to Mr. Abdul…at least, as far as we’ve figured…it’s…it’s—come see, come see what it can do…”

Dr. Jones stood by a rather nice, tan, leather chair, across from Mr. Joestar, facing the table.  Even while pushing his sixties, Mr. Joestar had the formidable figure; he was around fifteen stones and well over six feet.  There was a rather nice-looking camera in his hands, that was getting lifted well above his head—and, given the messes from the other nights that David had to clean, in this office, the doctor-janitor could already feel his posture slacken, preparing for the horrible crash that camera would produce when crushed by this very fit American…only for the American to stop, yawn, and point a little to Jones’ right side.

“I—I forgot to introduce you…to your right, that’s…that’s Red.  Magician’s Red…”

Jones looked over to his right and saw nothing; it maybe took him…a couple of minutes or so to remember where he’d heard of Magician’s Red before.  “…Mr. Abdul’s Stand…is to my right—“ and, a second later, to realize and jump at the implication of this.  “Before, it was only Mr. Abdul that saw the Stand, but now you can see the Stand—!”

“Yeah, and he’s got his arms crossed… I think he’s calling me a right fool for forgetting…the bastard…you can’t see him…but…maybe there was a part of me that hoped you could see him too…”  Joseph was really out of sorts.  Sure, his volume was still a couple levels higher than it needed to be, but—he didn’t often say this sort of thing aloud (what he hoped for).  Well, this was understandable, given that developing a Stand would throw anyone out of it.  “Go on, Jones, don’t be a dick—give him a wave!”

The night-janitor turned to his right, blinked, and, well, gave a small wave.

“Good, he nodded, now—now watch!”  As commanded, the night-janitor turned to Joseph, just in time to hear him yell and slam the rather nice camera into the rather nice coffee table.  The poor machine surrendered a ghost of a white piece of paper (a photo) before being crushed near-immediately.  So much like a school-boy, the man-who’d-hired-him-nearly-a-decade-ago giggled, very triumphantly, while pushing away the debris of his victim (on the ground, instead of cleaning it up, that bastard), and pulling the small white square close to him; he looked, a bit glassy-eyed for a second, and then, hooting, before standing upright and, with heavy strides, making it to Jones’ side.  

“‘beg pardon,” Mr. Joestar apologized to Magician’s Red (Jones imagined), before cutting in front of the Stand, to hand Jones the photo.  Then, with a booming laugh, “Care to explain what that is doing in your locker, Jones?”

The Janitor snatched the photo, glanced, looked to Mr. Joestar, looked back at the photo, and repeated himself before smacking his sort-of-boss in the face (and the bastard just guffawed, rather wickedly, at this terrible prank).

“How did you get this, Mr. Joestar?!”

“I told you, I did it with my Stand,” the Yank claimed, grinning a little too widely and standing too proudly.  “Don’t worry—I’ll keep what you keep in your locker secret, I’ll keep your secret like I…I keep everyone’s—don’t worry…don’t worry…you just…you tell me how you got that in there…and you know I’m not talking about those boxes of chocolates—”

Oh, Jones knew what Joseph was talking about and, seeing as this was sort of his boss, saw no choice but to explain himself—but, for now, in the narrative concerning the Stand, Hermit Purple, what this item-that-interested-Mr.-Joestar-was is not currently relevant and will be revealed a little later.

What needs be known now is that, after this incident, Jones had mentally updated Mr. Joestar’s file to add a question, the very same one that was asked at the beginning of this chapter, “ what was Joseph hiding,” and, as quickly as he’d asked it to himself, he’d also dismissed it, deciding (quite rightly) that Joseph Joestar was probably hiding too many things for too many people (especially for himself), more things than Jones would have cared to trouble himself with.

And it was with a frown, that Jones found himself asking it once again, a little around two years later.

London, England.  1989.

The files that Joseph Joestar had asked Jones to take out of Mohammed Abdul’s office were labeled “Carlo Pedersoli” and “Mario Girotti”; they were perfectly sealed in rather sizable, yellowy Manila envelopes (the kind you lick shut, which was the case here) and had no physical indicator that they contained information about the dreaded Flesh Buds of Dio’s, unless one knew a good amount about Italian Spaghetti Westerns (Carlo and Mario were partners in the genre, filming together as Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill, respectively).  When Mr. Joestar arrived at the London H.Q., he didn’t collect or destroy the files, as it had seemed he’d wanted to do over phone conversation.

“Davy, I don’t want to use those files to convince the bigwigs at Big Poppa, but,” Joseph explained his decision, with heavy hand gestures (and, Jones noted, without a smile or a joke).  “But—we might not have any choice.  Keep those as a last resort.  Just…Polnareff can never see them, you understand…if we can’t pull together a convincing presentation…maybe I’ll find a way to make him miss the flight to Texas and I’ll present by myself…”

“Of course,” Dr. Jones agreed with a grimace on his face.  This was the day after the lad’s funeral, the same young Kakyoin that had such a flesh bud implanted into his forehead, like Monsieur Polnareff, as Jean Pierre himself had tearfully confessed.  Jones knew well enough, by now, that Polnareff absolutely couldn’t handle reading about the flesh bud at this time—especially after Jones got a call at around 4 AM that morning (about a nightmare Polnareff had about his friend, Kakyoin) and when they were having their first in-person therapy session the next day.

—

This time, Joseph Joestar brought less booze to the offices, and less people were staying up late.

But, when talking with the other janitors, Jones still heard some stories.

“They played very loud music and sang along all day—records, I think, of showtunes and old rock; they played the entire soundtrack of “The Sound of Music”, two or three times, and belted out “I am Sixteen Going on Seventeen” at the top of their lungs.  Sounded like they were competing over who could sing it louder.”

Well, it probably was preferable to the sounds of just Polnareff sobbing and singing.

—

Jean Pierre Polnareff’s first in-person session didn’t go so well.

They began friendly enough, in Mohammed Abdul’s office after hours, with Polnareff asking if England still had supper clubs, as was seen in that week’s new episode of Poirot (“Four and Twenty Blackbirds”). (The answer was ‘yes, but they’re mostly for the elderly’.)  Polnareff was sitting in front of the coffee table, in a tanned, leather chair, while Jones stood (as he usually did).

The week prior to this, Polnareff had spent nearly every day talking about dreams he’d been having (recently and written in a journal), of what could have been his time under Dio’s employ with his friend, the recently buried Kakyoin.  Although Jones had carefully reviewed his notes from their phone calls often and rearranged them in what appeared to be the most sensible chronology…well, the chronology seemed to make a lot more sense over the phone, the week before.

It appeared that they were under Dio’s employ until…around Kakyoin’s birthday, when they ended their employment with a failed escape?

Well, according to a chat with Joseph Joestar, Jones had confirmed that Kakyoin was a Leo, born sometime in late July and August (Joestar seemed more certain it was in August, but he wasn’t entirely certain); although Joseph did confirm that the young Japanese teen had been sent to kill Jotaro…(and that was about the extent that Jones spoke about these sessions with Mr. Joestar, pretty much just asking Joseph to confirm some other vital dates in their journey).

Their journey in Egypt began in late November, and Kakyoin’s murder attempt happened in this same time.

Late July to August to Late November was quite a gap of time.  (Perhaps it was months in prep, for the assassination attempt?  Oh but…from the way Polnareff made Kakyoin sound, in this recurring nightmare, it seemed that there wasn’t much prep time…and, if there was more prep time, why on earth would Dio, with his vast resources, settle for sending a teenager to try to kill a family and Mohammed Abdul?  The Italian fetishist, cult leader, God-wannabe seemed many things, but he didn’t seem that daft!)

Dr. Jones sought to disclose this information in the most discreet fashion to Polnareff, during their first session; he began by promising Polnareff that he believed quite a bit of this dream happened, but, also suggested, in his gentlest tone, that, perhaps…there was something…off with the timeline?

Jean Pierre did not take that well at all (he was probably not in the best of moods, after Kakyoin’s funeral and starting work on reviewing Mohammed Abdul’s files); the Frenchman received this suggestion like an accusation, bursting into tears, yelling, insisting that he knew—that he’d known what he’d dreamt, that this was what he dreamt, as little sense as it made…and how he refused to hear someone else doubt what he knew to be the truth!

So it was Jones that suggested they put things on a pause, for now.  Polnareff would be the one to determine when they were ready to continue this again (it was a reconciliatory gesture on Jones’ part, but one that wasn’t fully accepted by Polnareff).

“I know so little about you, Doctor,” Polnareff realized aloud, still very emotional, while wiping his eyes and nose with a handkerchief.  “For all I know, you could just drug me and diagnose me as a wicked narcissist…”

Oh, so many things wrong with that assessment…not the bit about knowing little, that was fair, even Davy had to admit it was fair.  But about everything else sounded off.

“I’m a clinical therapist—it’s a common misconception about my field that I prescribe drugs.  It’s only if you’re looking like a case that really needs them, but then I’d need to send you to a psychiatrist to get you a prescription.  We’d only talk, talk therapy, you and I,” Davy corrected the first of the misconceptions Polnareff  had espoused.  “Second, there’s nothing wrong with being narcissistic or having narcissistic tendencies—having those don’t make you wicked.  Everyone needs some selfish tendencies, to look out for their own self-interests…but you are right that you know little about me.  I guess, what would you want to know?”  They were going to have to rebuild a rapport, if they were ever going to restart these sessions.  There was a good amount that Jones was willing to reveal, to help Polnareff.  Monsieur seemed a good fellow and a good friend of someone Jones missed sorely (Mohammed Abdul).

“Just—just last week you and Mr. Joestar were keeping a secret from me, that you were looking out for me, as a favor to him,” Polnareff continued, pouting, wiping his nose, but not exactly offering an answer.  (Understandable.  The twenty-something probably wasn’t expecting this sort of answer.  It was probably a lot to take in.)  “If he’s…if he’s keeping something else from me…if he’s making you keep something else…I want to know…”

Oh.

Oh shit.

Oh shit shit shit.

No, no, thankfully, Jones had a serious enough default expression that he’d managed to keep this shock inside; he just had to quickly think of any other alternative…distract from this bit…

“Mr. Joestar keeps too many secrets,” Dr. Jones sighed (burying his face in his hand, to hopefully keep his bluff hidden).  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he…if he had…I don’t know, pictures of an illegitimate child or two hidden in this office…”  As far as the night-janitor knew, Joseph didn’t keep such a thing in this office.  It was just what he thought was a very far-out suggestion for someone that was incredibly devoted to his wife and daughter.

It almost disturbed him to listen to Polnareff hum a little.

As if sincerely processing such a suggestion!

Alright, the Englishman had to ask: “Wait a minute, is he the type to—”

“No, no,” Polnareff scolded, throwing the handkerchief in the doctor’s direction.  “Don’t change the topic—”  Shit!  “I need—I…I change my mind.”

Oh thank God.

“If I’m going to tell you more about myself, about my…about my family,” Polnareff began, tone sounding not quite like he knew where he’d wanted this to go,  “…I want to know…I want to know…I want to know about your family, then.  I want to keep up with the Joneses.”

“I’m divorced and I’ve been divorced for a decade,” Jones put in, tone unwavering.  “My Father’s been dead a little longer than that, I don’t have siblings, and I’m not speaking to my Mum.  What else would you want to know?”

Jean Pierre said nothing to that, leaning forward and steepling a little.  (This was perhaps information that came by too easily, so it probably felt unearned.)  “Why don’t you talk to your mother?”

“We had a spat over my schooling because she didn’t think clinical psych or humanistic psych had a future—but look at me now” Dr. Jones replied, raising his hands.  “I’m a janitor talking to a huge Frenchman.”

The huge Frenchman simply stared at Jones.  Saying nothing.

Then, the flat-topped beefcake continued, with a, “I suppose we’ll just put this on a pause…do you have a song request, before I head out for my hotel room?”

Oh, this business again.  Polnareff hadn’t bothered on Monday, Tuesday was the lad’s funeral, Wednesday they were getting to work, so, at least , he’d waited until Thursday to ask.  It was a little considerate.

Jones had thought about this for sometime, what he wouldn’t have minded the Frenchman sing if he had the choice, and he shared what he’d settled on.  “Anything by Samantha Jones.”

The Frenchman stared.

“My God—have you never heard of Samantha Jones?”

The response: “Are you related to this Samantha Jones?”

“No, not this Samantha Jones—”  And Dr. Jones stopped, realizing what he’d said just a little too late (around when JP smiled a little too wickedly).  “Shit.”

“Oooh, Samantha Jones…is she a lover,” Polnareff teased, hands folded and legs swinging, while preparing his invisible piano.  (To play what, if he didn’t know anything by Samantha Jones?  Who knew—unless that was just a ruse to get his therapist to admit at least one Jones he was related to…clever dick, if it was…)

“No,” Dr. Jones snapped, firm, internally summoning a fleet of sailors from his old metaphorical locker to cuss in his head, on his behalf.  “Please don’t ask about Samantha Jones…”

“Is she your mother that you are not on speaking terms with?”  Polnareff taunted, wiggling invisible eyebrows in a terribly menacing way.

“I asked you not to ask about her,” the Englishman repeated, volume a little higher (but not yet Joseph Joestar level).

“Is she—”

“YOU STOP THAT,” the old Royal Navyman in the clinical therapist called out, silencing his patient quickly enough.  

The pair said nothing, staring at each other.

“I’m really very sorry,” Polnareff apologized, breaking the silence, while putting away that damned invisible piano of his.  “I didn’t mean to—I did really…I really did enjoy talking with you last week, but it seems like…we really do need to put this on pause…”  The younger of the pair headed back to Mohammed Abdul’s desk, pulled out a rather nice looking box of chocolates, and passed it over to the hot-faced Jones.  “I’m…I’m going to take a bo…good night, Dr. Jones.”

And Polnareff left that night, without singing a song.

Jones frowned throughout the night and didn’t touch that latest box, but he still followed up with business as usual (cleaning the carpet in Mohammed Abduls’ office, cleaning up the rest of the wing), up until it came time for him to return to his locker; the night-janitor found himself staring at Mario and Carlo’s envelopes (aka the files on Dio’s flesh buds), wondering if…if that ‘aka’ provided by Mr. Joestar was the truth.

For all the Doctor knew, there could have been pictures of Joseph Joestar’s illegitimate children in these envelopes.  Or illicit material.  Or—

No, Joseph Joestar had said these were about the flesh buds, without couching it in a joke, as he usually would, indicating that he was taking these seriously and that these had to be about the bud.

Right?

Jones simply touched the envelopes (which were hidden behind several boxes of chocolates), not removing them from his locker or anything, as if touch alone would have confirmed if Joseph Joestar was lying or not.

If Jones was going to repair his rapport with Polnareff, either these files of Bud’s and his buddy’s were going to have to be revealed to Polnareff, or…Polnareff would need to know about who Samantha Jones was…

Jones wrapped up his night as he had been these days (talking with the other janitors, when the shift was done), before heading home.

The Friday night-shift was quiet, albeit a little awkward when the clinical psych Janitor saw the Frenchman, but Janitor Jones still updated his and Mr. Joestar’s inventory of intel with what the janitors had told him.

(Everyone was spooked pretty shitless by Stands, ever since Cairo.  Every night, Jones pretty much found a new way of describing which department felt this way and why, but that was the most basic summary of what they’d talk about with his updates.)

The three had their quiet weekends in and returned to work, on Monday.

Polnareff was in lighter spirits, having too much fun imitating David Suchet with a cold at the start of David’s night shifts (in honor of that Sunday’s latest episode of “Poirot”, “The Third Floor Flat”), with elongated vowels and a nasally tone, but he didn’t ask to unpause their therapy sessions just yet.  It was otherwise a pretty normal week, ending with Mr. Joestar asking the janitor if he wanted to join him and the Frenchman on a day-trip in Liverpool (which he declined).

It wasn’t until Sunday that something a little unexpected happened—in the middle of that week’s new episode of “Poirot” (“Triangle at Rhodes”), that Mr. Joestar called Jones’ flat, informing his fellow Englishman that he was headed back to the States and, then, Japan, to see his grandson.  This time, he’d asked Jones to mind Polnareff and let Polnareff know that he was being minded.

It was a slight improvement than before, indicating Mr. Joestar probably respected Polnareff a little more (to respect his wishes like this).  

Just not yet enough to share the files about the flesh buds (which was too understandable).

After confirming that their therapy was still on pause, Mr. Joestar sighed, apologized, and pretty much begged the night-janitor to do what he had to to get these sessions unpaused.  With Polnareff on his own, in the office, he really seemed like he would need the therapy…and, dammit, Jones had to agree.

So, come Monday’s night shift, the Englishman shared that Mr. Joestar had asked him to mind Polnareff and the office, and Polnareff had to agree that it did sound like an improvement on Mr. Joestar’s part.

It was a little after they talked about yesterday’s Poirot (“Triangle at Rhodes”) and Polnareff complained about how he had thought the character of the English Hastings felt even less useful than Watson in some adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, but missed him sorely during yesterday’s episode when he’d realized how much chemistry Hastings had with the mustachioed detective, the musculated twenty something realized Jones had something under his arm.

“What is that,” Jean Pierre asked, pointing.

Well…Davy had put this off for long enough…he drew the item out.

They were not Manila folders.

But a black, leather bound book with silver lettering.

“Samantha Jones,” was the title of the tome.

Polnareff clapped his hands, squealing, as Davy opened the book up.

But the excitement stopped at that first picture in the album.

In fact, Polnareff looked a little like he had food poisoning.

“What’s with that face,” Jones interrogated, shaking the album in front of his paused patient, to punctuate his point.  “It’s the most recent picture of my Samantha, just taken the New Year’s before the last—my baby Annie that I hadn’t seen in person since she was two and her barrister Mum left me, taking her along!  These pictures from her Mum are all I have of my baby.  Then my Annie went missing last year and…her Mum blames me…’cause she was always talking about seeing the world like me, and finding her old Dad…she’s twelve, turning thirteen this year, and she snuck away from her Mum.  The most we heard from her, end of last year, was through postcards she’d send to the both of us, out of the blue, but she never stays too long after sending the postcard and heading off to her new destination…to…God knows where…”

Polnareff was really looking nauseous, breathing a little more heavily through his nostrils, his hands slowly rising to cover up his mouth.

What a weird reaction!  His Annie was really cute, nothing to throw up at, thank you, with her wide nostrils, her textured hair, her eyebrows that resembled little fuzzy caterpillars, her nut-brown skin tone, her tomboyish charm—she was especially adorable in this particular picture, surrounded by her older Ghanainian and Iranian relatives, all smiles save for her, frowning so deeply and crossing her arms in her light blue dress.  (Dianne Martha “D.M.” Wynne, the barrister ex, had written on the back of this particular photo, in her nice cursive, “She looks so much like you in this pic, Dave.”  And Jones couldn’t help but agree.)

And that’s when Jones caught on, closing the album and pointing at the Frenchman.  “Oh my god, you’ve seen my daughter!”

Chapter Text

London, England.  1978.

The Dolphins weren’t the first potential Stand case Mohammed Abdul had investigated, although they were his first successful case and, thereby, the first successful Stand investigation with the Speedwagon Foundation.  (Mind, although the SPW had worked with at least two known Stand Users at this point, a Risa Hoshino and her successor, Mohammed Abdul, the pair technically weren’t cases investigated by the SPW’s Stand Office.  They were, instead, technically the ones who held the office.)

The Stand Program (aka “Operation: Stand Proud”) was technically a subdivision of Hamon Studies, with the Supernatural Research Department of the Speedwagon Foundation (the very division that the SPW’s Founder, Robert E. O. Speedwagon, had tasked with aiding the Joestar Family, in his final will, before passing in 1952).  The Supernatural Research Department (SRD) focused on matters that wouldn’t be defined as wholly natural by the average scientist (that is to say, within the more typical, classically recognized sciences like Geology or Marine Biology).  Within the Supernatural Department, there were the studies that were ruled more normal and recognized in the larger scientific community but were sparse and few-in-between (including Hamon) and the more paranormal studies (including the ESP branch, the Spectral division, etc.), the latter of which operated more as record keepers and whose studies were not yet formally recognized by the larger scientific community (although some would make cases against their division’s paranormal classification and, often, when doing so, these days, would point to the Stand Program, asking how their studies were any different than the study of Stands).  (To be honest, there were days when such a question was asked by Mohammed Abdul himself, now the world’s leading expert on Stands at age eighteen.  Mohammed had only asked the question aloud to one person, over the phone, and the question was hand-waved away by the Program’s mentor, Joseph Joestar, who received the question with a snort and returned it with an insistence that the difference could be measured in 0’s in a department’s budget.  Mr. Joestar paired this insistence with careful instruction not to share this question to anyone else, lest word would travel and Operation: Stand Proud would find itself a little more strapped for cash in the next year.  And, so, thereafter, Mohammed Abdul would only repeat this question to himself, in his head.)

His first case with the SPW involved rats, who were exploding refrigerator doors in the Hotel Zone of Cancún.  (Just rats that mastered Hamon, or, as it was known in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries, Onda.  The rats were just tricky to catch...well, for people that didn’t have a Magician like Red at their disposal.  After catching them, they went to the Hamon labs at the International H.Q.)

His second case looked a little more promising, with a young woman in Mingəçevir, Azerbaijan, who had the purported ability of accurately predicting events that would take place in the next 10 minutes.  (She turned out to be a very good read of character and a great guesser, without Hamon and or the ability to see Magician’s Red, but she was quite a lovely person to chat with.  The ESP division was doubtful of Mohammed Abdul’s assessment and spent a good couple of weeks testing her, only to reach the same conclusion.  The Spectral division followed the same suit, but had enough sense to stop their investigation after a week.)

The three other cases in his first year were also mostly uninteresting and had similar results.  (Save for the possible exception of a schnauzer in Germany, with the ability to bend forks with his doggy mind, that the Stand User could have sworn stared directly at his Stand, although the schnauzer possessed no Stand of his own at his side, at least as far as Mohammed Abdul could find.  Squabbling with the ESP division over this specimen of canis led into a fight, one thing led to another, nearly half of a small hamlet went up in flames, resulting in a considerable amount of collateral damage that the SPW begrudgingly covered.  Neither the Stand User nor the Pyrokinetic accepted responsibility of the situation, unless the other involved accepted partial responsibility—which both wound up doing.  The schnauzer ran off in the commotion, anyway, and neither could recover the beast.  Mr. Joestar spent a couple of days thereafter, having quite the row with the ESP division over this over the phone and, even after the arguments would end up quite as inconclusive as the attempts to recover the pup that started this, Mr. Joestar carried a grudge against the division, as the boys in ESP also had for the Stand program.)

Aside from these five trips, most of Mohammed Abdul’s time was spent in the office, mostly taking calls and reviewing reports of potential Stand cases, before assessing if they were worth the investigation or not (nearly 95% of the cases were not).  When he wasn’t assessing potential investigative cases, he was either writing his own case or translating Risa’s file by himself, with the five languages he was quite fluent with (there wasn’t enough money in the program’s budget to hire a translator for the entire file, and, to be frank, Mohammed felt the most personally obligated to do this work himself anyway).  One of these five languages was not yet Japanese, which would have been handy for reading parts of the file (namely observations Risa had of her Stand, from a personal journal that she added to the file, in the very early parts of her becoming a User, and other personal observations from her later cases that she’d put off translating into English).  Mohammed Abdul was determined to make Japanese his sixth language, but, while learning the language, would ask a rather reluctant Mr. Joestar’s help with translation work that Mr. Abdul mostly took on himself (again, out of a sense of obligation).

Japanese is quite the contextual language, and the kanji can be read aloud in many ways and also possess a number of interpretations.  The kanji Ms. Hoshino had used for Stand, for instance, when she wasn’t using the katakana スタンド, was 幽波紋, read ‘yuu-ha-mon’ and possessed many possible interpretations with it.  The Egyptian found himself very fascinated by the selection of 波紋, which could be read as ‘ha-mon’, the latter two of the three kanji used for Stands—curiously in lieu of 仙道, the latter read as ‘sen-do’.  Mohammed guessed these kanji were chosen as a sort of symbolic gesture, to emphasize the connection between her Stand and Hamon, as was the purpose of the program, and to recognize the Hamon Master Elizabeth Joestar’s contributions to this endeavor, as Risa’s mentor and, at times, protector—although, at times, he also wondered if she, like him, had also doubted her Stand was much different from Hamon application.  The first of the two kanji, 波, could mean “ripple”, an obvious nod to the Italian name for the Gift, while the second kanji, 紋, could refer to a family’s crest, a coat of arms, a pattern, or a figure.  (Any reading for the second of the two kanji had their own interesting interpretations and implications—the Stand as a family’s symbol, made of the Gift, for instance, was an intriguing thought.)  

The usage of 幽, the first kanji used for Stands, which read ‘yu’, confused him for some time.  While one of the many kanji used for ghost was 幽霊 (read as ‘yuu-rei’), the Egyptian often wondered why 幽 was chosen in place of 霊, the latter of which, by itself, meant “soul”, “spirit”, or “divine spirit” (by this point, for lack of a better explanation, when Mohammed Abdul regarded his Magician’s Red, he regarded the Stand as a sort of Spirit, in that his Scarlet Chimera was a being who wasn’t bound to physical dimensions, and the eighteen-year-old was of the belief that the choice of the kanji for “spirit” would have made more sense than the one chosen—then again, Japanese was his intended sixth language and probably one of her first, and he accepted that there was a nuance that he was missing after his first day or so of confusion over this kanji).  幽 by itself, with its many readings, could have meant “dim” or “secluded” or, possibly, “see through”.  It was after some days, the Egyptian had found out that one of the Japanese names for the afterlife 霊の世界 (read ‘rei-no-sekai’ or the Land of Ghosts) was the Dim Land, which, while interesting, didn’t quite satisfy the curiosity he had about the choice of this kanji.

Perhaps it was a pun of some sort, he’d wonder?  By forming the kanji for ghost but replacing the character for spirit with those she had selected for Hamon?  A ghost made out of Hamon, in place of…whatever it was a spirit was made out of?  (He’d made a note to ask the Spectal division, when he had the chance, and, hopefully, he’d get an answer if they didn’t resent the Stand Program.  Or, maybe, the answer would be covered in one of the SPW’s standard guidebooks if he couldn’t get it from them…)

The young Egyptian would spend quite a bit of time, thinking of the selection of this kanji, in its parts and when put together, and the various interpretations carried with these meanings; it was while simply thinking of this kanji selection that Mohammed Abdul found himself thinking, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if Risa was around to ask her about this?’  (This wasn’t the first time he’d had this thought, and it wouldn’t be the last.)

Mr. Joseph Joestar was an excellent mentor and Mohammed couldn’t imagine being at the SPW without him.  When the teenager finally had his office in the International H.Q., Mr. Joestar insisted with a wink to call him up and often in D.C. as usual (also giving a home number for emergencies) and, if Mohammed needed someone to scream his head off at someone else, to call in Old Jojo to do it instead—so that the teen could save face and because the Foundation couldn’t fire the Founder’s honorary nephew.  The English-American even made a point of visiting “Muhammed Avdol’s” office (the sign was still getting fixed) at least once a month this first year and accompanied him to all five of the investigations he’d made, in person, in 1978.

Old Jojo just wasn’t Risa.

Elizabeth Joestar wanted nothing to do with the revived program—although Mohammed Abdul had written up a very cordial ‘thank you’ letter to her for her part.

The technicians in the neighboring Hamon labs were friendly enough (alright, they didn’t welcome him to the neighborhood with fresh pies but they were not outright hostile, which was better than the ESP and spectral boys); they just didn’t understand his work.

Bill “Smoky” Brown was now wrapping up his final term as a Mayor in Georgia (with talks of the council considering revising the law so that their mayor could take a third term, but he was wondering if such a thing would set a good precedent for anyone that would take up his office after him); he was always willing to talk at reasonable hours, there were just less and less reasonable hours these days.

Red was always going to be around, Red just about knew as much as his User did and didn’t make for a great conversationalist.

Mody was determined to return to Egypt every other month at most, to really focus on his work.  (He did, however, make time to call his Father and Grandmothers often.)

When Mr. Joestar wasn’t around the London H.Q., and Mohammed Abdul had to work in Avdol’s office, a little after the incident with the carpet near the end of January, he’d often work late just to talk to the wing’s Night-Janitor.

“The BBC has been playing a new radio show about a…I think it’s an earthling in space, I’ve missed a few episodes…but it’s pretty entertaining, I caught it by accident,” the teenager shared, in March, one late night, squeezing in a conversation before Jones had to shoo him away to get a proper night’s sleep.  “The show I think is being narrated by a…a…Peter or a…Simon Jones, I forget which…and it stars…the Jones that isn’t…whichever Jones is the narrator…”

“I haven’t caught it,” Dr. Jones put in, charitably.  “If that’s what you’re asking…”

“Oh no, I was going to ask you if you were related to either of them.”

Jones said nothing, just staring at this teenager, who only smiled back.

This question wasn’t being asked with a hint of mockery, as the office’s later occupant somewhat did.  It was only out of genuine curiosity.

“I’m not related to a Peter or Simon Jones with the BBC radio…at least as far as I know,” the Janitor replied, quite simply.  “But I could catch the show.”

The current occupant of “Muhammed Avdol’s” office beamed more widely, adding, “New episodes are on BBC Radio 4 at 10:30 pm.  On Wednesdays.”

“Alright, I’ll catch it this week,” Jones promised, standing quite tall.  “Now, go home and get some rest.”

Jones lived up to his promise and it was after a couple of conversations, shared the night after these shows, that Mohammed Abdul really thought of the janitor as a sort of friend to the Study of Stands.

And it was before Mohammed Abdul had made this assessment that David made a similar one himself, about a month ago, in February, when Mohammed Abdul had bothered to ask him about his family.

—

The Hamon Wing’s night-janitor had other janitors to talk to, and, other than Mohammed Abdul and some stragglers in the Wing, that was about it.

The highlight of his month, as it was last month, was when D.M., the ex, would send a picture of their Anne and a letter with an update.  They could call, sure, but this was about it for him seeing their baby.  And D.M. promised to keep doing this every month, since their split two months ago (and, to her credit, she did).

Their Samantha was called Anne like her Mother was growing up, and she looked so sweet in this latest picture with her ruffled dress, like she was about to cry.  Her Ghanaian grandmother and both sets of great grandparents (the Ghananian and Iranian sets) were all having their turns spoiling the girl—which was great for D.M., because the barrister was spoiled for choice on a free babysitter for their daughter.  

Davy Jones wouldn’t bring a picture with him, to the office, to let it hang in his rather famous locker or show off to anyone.  Instead, they’d remain in an album he had in his flat, both purchased before their Samantha was born.  (He couldn’t really stand the thought, of possibly losing the album or even of holding the picture in his hands a little too long and getting his prints on them, so he didn’t when he didn’t need to.) 

Mohammed Abdul and the janitors were the only ones who knew about Anne and D.M., even if he never showed them pictures.

“D.M. had been warning me for months that I was unhappy, being with the RN, when they felt like flirting for the first time with mental health care, as far as  know, and I didn’t believe the ex while I was under their employ,” Jones had explained his situation once to Mohammed Abdul, without a tear or anything in his eyes (this was just the truth, after all).  “She said I was taking work home, I was emotionally unavailable on the phone and in person, when she needed me, while we were together, and it wasn’t something she wanted to put up with, unless I was willing to fix it—it was too much with the addition of a baby and a blossoming legal career.  I wasn’t able to change and I think she made the right choice, really.  To her credit, she didn’t take the chance to say ‘I told you so’ when I did wind up leaving the Navy, when I told her, but she gave me an earful about how I could have asked to transfer out and help veterans.  She thought it was a waste of a perfectly good education from King’s College, what I did, using it to burn bridges.”

The Egyptian teenager probably was the only one to ask why, of the people the Janitor had shared this with, beyond a monthly payment of money to help care for the baby, he wasn’t going to be a more active part of his daughter’s life.  (And after an obnoxious amount of time, where the teenager repeatedly vied for answers, insisting when he was ten he was counseling grown couples and adults at his Mother’s Mother’s fortune telling shop, until Jones finally gave a response.)

“D.M. grew up through a divorce herself,” was the explanation.  “She hated seeing her father, when he’d bother to visit, and hearing about his new family, even though she and her Ghananian mother were still on very good terms with his Persian parents; growing up, she preferred to tell her schoolmates that her father died at sea, instead of remarried and with a new set of kids.”  His expression remained quite solid, when he’d said, “If I’m not willing to commit to being a regular part of my daughter’s life, D.M. said, visiting them and her relatives often in Cardiff, and being present when I visit, she said she’d rather tell our Samantha the same thing she’d tell her classmates about her father, instead of letting me gawk at our baby when I felt like it, like our Samantha was an exotic animal at the zoo.  And I’m really thinking of letting her, because I really don’t think I could commit to it.”

Mohammed Abdul was probably also the only person to try to talk Jones out of doing this.

London, England.  1979.

A little more than a year later, after a call with a very excited Joseph Joestar, David Jones the Night Janitor was the second person that Mohammed Abdul had told about the tip he’d heard on the Bottle-Nosed Dolphins, who were operating off of the Miracle Strip in Florida, and the potential name he was considering giving the Stand (he was currently reading the recently published “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, based on the radio play they’d both listened to, so, to him, the name to give the Stand felt terribly obvious—Risa usually gave her cases terribly fun names, often after pop songs she liked, even though she never saw a Stand, and Mohammed Abdul had been keeping to the convention of giving his cases fun names as well).

According to the tip, these pods of dolphins would gather around fishermen’s ships, surface, and simply stare.  And, it would be while staring, the fishermen’s nets would tear open, releasing a day’s worth of work.  These were good, strong nets that had no business of tearing.  (So, this attack from the pods could either be a telekinetic application or—well, there was only one way to find out if Stands were involved…)

The Egyptian spent the couple of days after receiving the tip researching tursiops truncatus , careful not to let slip he would be heading out of the office (lest the ESP division would catch wind and they’d have a repeat of the schnauzer incident), only describing to Jones, very late at night, why there were so many books about dolphins and Florida strewn about in the office.

“I’m very sorry about this, Mr. Jones,” the Stand User apologized, looking not at all unlike a University student having an all-night cram session (at least per Jones’ recollection), with heavy bags under his eyes and several cups of coffee around.  “Mr. Joestar’s getting approval for our investigation and, as soon as we get it, Magician’s Red and I’ll have to head to Florida.  Probably on a non-stop flight.  Please don’t let this out…”

“Of course not,” Jones assured, already holding the first of at least  ten opened books on the coffee table that he planned to close, depending on how the next question would be received.  “I assume you’ve taken notes, bookmarked, and and highlighted what you need to and I can start my shift—”

“Yes,” Mohammed Abdul permitted, throwing his arms opened, as if to welcome the janitor to this mess and heading to his desk to begin strategizing his part to help with this mess he’d made.  “By all means!”

And Jones got to work, becoming a book-shutting machine, closing the first, setting it down, picking up the next, and repeating, until he’d have a neat stack of books in front of him—before heading to the next pile to put to order and so on.

“I’ve had this theory about Stands, Mr. Dr. Jones,” the teenager began rambling, looking about the room and carefully assessing how he could help clean up this chaos he very nearly left in his office for Jones alone to clean.  “Risa and I, because our families were learned in forms of Hamon—Sendo for her and the Gift of Ra with mine—and we were both trained…or rather, an attempt was made to train us…I think our Stands developed around our training and legends about our Hamons—Sendo, for instance, focuses more heavily on the transference of life energy and her Mona Lisa Smile worked very well with electricity, while the Gift of Ra emphasizes the importance of the sun, and my Magician’s Red has more fire-based techniques.  It’s like a very personal…immune response, I think, Stands.  That operate on a—a non-physical level, but, when they react, it’s in a more physical way.”  After a glance at the embarrassing amount of coffee cups about the room, that was made into the Egyptian teen’s target to clean.  “Her Stand and mine, after all, did gain more humanoid forms after incredible stressful circumstances—hers after her close grandmother died and mine, from my frustration with being unable to master my Family’s techniques…if I could find another specimen to confirm this, just one other Stand-User…does any of this make any sense to you, Doctor?”

Not wholly, more bits of it.  But the young man seemed so excited that Jones had to lie—and Mohammed caught it, with the hesitation shared before the night-janitor gave his, “Of course it does.”

The young man seemed terribly pleased to hear this, smiling while gathering together coffee cups.  “Before I leave for Florida, I’ll be sure to leave you some things in the office so you won’t miss me,” Mohammed Abdul assured while dumping the contents of the first cup into a nearby potted plant he’d named Little Richard (a pretty good name for a plant, the teenager had thought).

“Just make sure the rubber rats don’t have fake fur,” the ex-Navyman stipulated, adding to the neat stack of books he was gathering on that coffee table.  “If I don’t find the rat in time, it could get dusty or, worse, if it gets wet—it’ll smell like the real thing.”

“I’ll take that into consideration if you make an effort to see Samantha this weekend,” Mohammed blackmailed, dumping two cups of coffee at once, into Richard’s pot.  “It’s that time of the month, right?  And you remember how upset D.M. was, when you didn’t visit last time?  I know you can be bullheaded, as a Taurus, but it took you two weeks of phone calls to get her to invite you this month!  She might not even ask you back next month if you let it slip this time.  She is a Scorpio, after all…”

(Jones had asked once, fairly early into this astrology-based advice giving last year, if the teen actually believed in any of this talk.  The soon-to-be-nineteen-year-old’s response?  He believed in whatever got people through their day, and sleeping at night—and this did it sometimes, for people.)

“I’ll see her, then,” the Englishman acquiesced, while straightening his now finished pile of books.

“Good, give D.M. and her family my regards.”

—

Both Mohammed Abdul and the American returned to the office, nearly two weeks later, beaming and, at least in Old Jojo’s part, braggadocious and a little obnoxious.

The Janitor didn’t mention Samantha while Mr. Joestar was at the office (because there was no way he was competing with Mr. “I’ve-a-perfect-marriage-with-my-soul-mate-who-I-fell-in-love-with-at-eighteen-after-talking-to-her-for-a-minute-and-did-I-mention-the-adoring-daughter-in-Japan-and-the-grandson-named-for-me” Joestar and telling him would pretty much be an invitation to compete).

Out of consideration for Jones’ feelings, Mohammed Abdul had followed suit.

That first night back in the office, this young man would sit by his typewriter, still transferring his two weeks of  notes into a more formal report, tears in his eyes, and he’d stop to claim aloud, so sincerely, that he didn’t feel worthy of making the discovery—of witnessing the dolphins stare at his Magician’s Red and try to attack Red with their Stands, summoning pillars of water, rising from the sea, in an attempt to drown his Stand—really a very novel experience, to be seen and, then, almost immediately attacked, he’d remark, in…a Stand Battle, Mohammed Abdul wanted to call it.  (He was also developing a new classification for these delphinidae, as their Stand didn’t manifest with another entity like his or Risa’s…he knew it wasn’t ESP when they saw the Stand because none of the other boys in the ESP division saw Red; Mohammed was considering calling the classification for their Stand ‘phenomena-based’, a shorthand for, ‘this Stand looks different than mine or Risa’s, the only other Stands I’ve gotten to study’.)

“What are you talking ab—of course you deserve this, Mr. Abdul,” the American mentor practically screamed, laughing, punctuating his compliment with an oddly accusatory point of both sausage-sized pointer fingers from both hands.  “You—you revived this program!  You, did, you!  You deserve all the credit!  And through your own will and stubbornness you roped me into this too!  This is all your fault, Mohammed Abdul!”

“I—I did,” the soon-to-be-nineteen-year-old had to admit, while wiping his eyes with one hand, and setting his other hand back to the keys on his typewriter.  “I just—after I’m done typing the official report, I’m translating this into Japanese immediately after…could you check my work, after I translate this into Japanese, Mr. Joestar?”

“Of course I will!”  The response was overly enthusiastic and booming, like one grew to expect from Mr. Joestar, but the energy sounded far greater than normal.

Jones just hung around the door for a couple of minutes this night, waved, and then left the pair to their work this night—not bothering to shoo them away at the start of his shift, because tonight felt different.

And there was no way he was going to dampen the night by telling the teen he’d really pissed off D.M. and skipped out on this month’s visit.

Cardiff, Wales.  1981.

Anne was starting Primary School, and it was a very good thing she was; she was growing too bored and restless with her grandmother and her great-grandparents and staying in their houses, being shuttled between them like a tennis ball.  

A couple of times, after bedtime, her grandmother and both sets of great-grandparents found her bed very empty and panicked, before finding the girl in the yard, just playing as though it were daytime.

To occupy her time, young Samantha was working on imitating accents she heard on television—so that she could say she was from anywhere but Cardiff.  Her Midwestern American accent had sounded quite good, actually—with the r’s that were there, just not overstaying their welcomes and getting overly pronounced, and the a’s sometimes became e’s.

Annie’s mother didn’t tell her daughter that her father died at sea.

But, when asked why he wasn’t around, her mother didn’t give much of a satisfying answer.

“He’s got a job and too much baggage keeping him in London,” her mother had insisted.

“What sort of baggage?”  Anne asked.

“The kind that keeps someone in London,” her barrister mother insisted.

“Is that the same sort of job he’s got?”

“Yes,” mother insisted.

Well, Mother wasn’t too fun when she got like this and, at five, Annie knew better than to try to get a better answer from her.

So she was going to get a better answer another way.

At school, the next week, when asked about her father, little Samantha told everyone he was a super secret agent who travelled the world and was too busy keeping it all from exploding to stick around Cardiff.

Oh, this got D.M. to call up her ex for the first time in years.

—

“Do you like me, Dad,” was the first question that the five year old Samantha had for her father and that she asked him aloud, from a list she’d held in her hands of questions she’d wanted to ask him (written very neatly with her favorite color of crayon, purple, she was proud to say).

“Of course I do,” the voice on the other end of the phone promised—and it was a charming, calming sort of voice.  Mother had said they were around the same age, her mother and father, her father was just older by a couple of years.

Mother had said she was a million, when asked her age, so that made her father…a million and two.  

Her mother didn’t look nearly as old as her Nana (who said she was two million, like her husband would have been if he was around in her life), but Annie’s father sounded less like her mother (sharp and sure, was how Annie thought of her mother’s voice) and more like one of her great-grandfathers (who were around the ages of her great-grandmothers, which was three million years of age apiece according to the barrister mother).  Her father’s voice was a careworn voice, wrinkled and warm and familiar like one of her great-grandfather’s leather boots or an old sweater.  (Maybe the voice itself was younger, but the slow cadence made it sound older.)  And the accent didn’t sound like any of the accents she’d heard on TV.  It lacked the musicality of a Welshman, the posh tones of an upper class type, the over-enunciated vowels found oop North, or the fun rhythm of a Scotsman.  But Annie decided she liked it all the same, even if it sounded about two million years older than it really was.

“Why don’t you visit,” Annie asked, crossing out that first question with her purple crayon, feeling satisfied to have gotten what she thought was the biggest question out of the way.  “Is it because you don’t get along with Mum—because it’s ok if you don’t, sometimes I don’t either.”

“Well…because I’m busy,” was what the voice on the other end said.

Oh, Annie knew it—she knew there had to be a good reason for him to be away from her, even though he’d said he loved her!  “What are you busy with—like what do you do for a living?”

There was a pause at the other end, before Annie got a, “I work for an international organization.  Cleaning their messes, but don’t get too excited…it’s as a janitor.  I don’t get around much, otherwise.”

Well, little Samantha accepted the news with a nod, satisfied that she was pretty much half-right about what it was that was keeping her father away—sure he wasn’t traveling, but he was still doing something pretty important.  (Wynne and Jones' daughter didn’t look down on janitors.  Both sets of great-grandparents, her grandmother, and her mother had always told her to clean her messes and mind her manners around janitors, because they were doing pretty important stuff.  Her father just sounded a little hesitant, talking about his profession, so Annie was going to keep that to herself, when she bragged about her Dad.)  “You probably hear some pretty exciting things at work, if it’s with an international organization.”

There was a small ‘ha’ from the other end.  (Was that how he laughed, her Dad?  Oh thank goodness, it was dignified.  Her father—he was dignified, even with the accent she couldn’t place exactly!)  “I probably can’t tell you about it, Anne.”

Oh—just the answer she was hoping to hear!  “So it’s an important international organization you work for!”  Definitely worth him being away like this!

“I…I mean…they do important work…”

This was pretty much the confirmation Annie, age five, had craved all of her life, to hear.  “Can we talk again next week?”

—

D.M. had insisted Jones tell Anne more about himself, real things in these calls (which Annie has maneuvered into becoming weekly, the little schemer), or the school wouldn’t let her hear the end of how Annie was telling her classmates about her brilliant father that was kept away by very important work he couldn’t tell her about, with the international organization he was employed with.

There was no way Davy was telling Samantha about “Operation: Stand Proud” and what went on in the other Hamon labs and offices he cleaned up.

So he told her a little of his days in the Navy—swimming, talking to young men, a bit on deployment.

The weekend after, he got a call from D.M. about how Annie wouldn’t let her, her mother, and the great-grandparents stop to think, asking incessantly, until she was allowed swimming lessons.

So, come the next phone conversation (on Sunday afternoon), Davy was sure to dissuade his daughter from answering the call of the Joneses and becoming a Navy woman.

“Could I really just travel the sea without joining the Royal Navy,” Annie asked, voice sounding so terribly cute on the other end.  (Thank God he’d managed to nip this in the bud—she really sounded so clueless without this confirmation.)

“It would be better if you did,” Jones clarified.  “Travel for yourself and your own enjoyment.”

—

Annie was skipping around and singing songs after this call—which she accepted as practically a blessing from her father who did such important work!

When her Iranian great-grandparents took her to the library, an atlas and a book for every continent was borrowed on their card.  (They told her that her running as she did into the entrance, pushing the rude boys blocking her way into the library, was just un-ladylike.  When she was older, she couldn’t run like that anymore—oh, that really sounded no fun!)

The five year old stayed up past her bedtime, that night, under her sheets and with a flashlight in hand, pouring over these books, especially the ones with small words she struggled to read but had such lovely pictures, and began planning out the most ideal routes she would take to see these countries.

She was just going to need to start planning how…

London, England.  1989.

Out of their Cairo-bound group, Polnareff probably rightly assumed that he was the one who minded Anne the least.  The young girl kind of reminded him of Tatum O’Neal’s character, Amanda, in the film, “Bad News Bears”—a young girl that was a bit wiser than her years, but with a…well some sort of chip on her shoulder, motivating her to act out (Jean Pierre just didn’t know what that chip was on Anne’s, he’d just incorrectly guessed she was an orphan like him, unlike Tatum O’Neal’s character who was obviously acting more mature than she needed to because of the lack of a father figure in her life).  (They just couldn’t have her around them, on their journey to Egypt, because they weren’t with Walter Matthau, forming a quaint little baseball team; they were fighting a vampire’s cult.)

Looking through this photo album, bearing her birth name, and listening to a sitting Janitor Jones-no-longer-with-the-Navy’s stories that accompanied the contents (her losing a tooth for the first time, her riding a bike, her turning ten)…the Frenchman was obviously in tears by the middle of this presentation, which pretty much confirmed that Anne was so definitely Tatum O’Neal’s character, complete with the absent father figure!  “You visited her, right?  You didn’t just call your poor daughter…when she was a little older, you visited her and her lovely mother in Cardiff?”  The twenty-something was really ugly crying—snot running down his nose and tears all over, try as he could to wipe it all away with handkerchiefs, really such a mess…(he’d become so overwhelmed by emotion that he’d forgotten he’d already gotten the answer to this question, just earlier this night).

Anne’s father’s answer was quite direct and delivered with the flattest expression on the Janitor’s face: “No.”

Chapter Text

Liverpool, England.  1989.

On the same Saturday that the Kujo household had learned of Jotaro’s new maritime-focused plans, after obtaining tickets through the Foundation and his own connections back to DC (departing at 5 AM!) and to the airport closest to that quiet part of Japan to see his family, after buying tins of spotted dick and Jaffa cakes, and Joseph Joestar was thoroughly convinced that David Jones was going to do what he would to keep an eye on Mohammed Abdul’s office and its current occupant, the oldest living direct Joestar descendent headed back to the old Joestar land and had a look at the small Stella cherry sapling that was planted a little into last week, a good distance but still close enough to Kakyoin’s and his Grandmother’s graves.  While the land had a caretaker, Joseph had hired a gardener to watch over this particular plant just last weekend.  It was going to take a decade to see the semi-sweet, heart-shaped fruit, but it would be worth it and it would fulfill the promise made to Sakura.  In the spring, the plant would produce gorgeous white blossoms—a proper marker, Joseph thought, for the remarkable young man who probably would have joined their clan.

 The American-Englishman had already seen the sapling, as it was being planted last week, so, really, there was no reason to see it again.  The old Joestar plot was even a little out of the way, some distance from Erina’s home that he was staying in, so, really, it could have been seen as an extra, unnecessary inconvenience for him to be here (especially with the flight so early tomorrow morning).

And yet, here he was—visiting relatives and minding this sapling, on his own time.

At least twice, he’d counted, he should have been buried here.  The first time, nearly fifty years ago, at his own funeral he’d attended, Erina had wanted him buried away from this plot and the Joestars—she probably had her reasons, Joseph figured, and there wasn’t any need to think much on it when it didn’t stick anyway.  The second, most recent time was at the end of their journey in Cairo, almost a full month ago, after his final encounter with the living Dio and his own grandson apparently had advised to save him with a transfusion from the vampire—well, technically the Vampire’s head fused with the body of his own grandfather, Jonathan, bound together at last by his (Joseph’s) blood. (Whose blood was it that really saved him?  The vampire’s, his grandfather’s, his own?  Who could say?  It would have been technically right to say it was Joestar blood, so Joseph felt like leaving it at that.)

Joseph didn’t really remember if he’d seen something near-death nearly fifty years ago or if he’d seen anything this latest time.  No clouds and winged chorus rooting him on as he ascended—that much he was certain of—or some fiery pit.  No memory of a bright light at the end of some tunnel.

Nothing.

What the hell was someone supposed to believe after going through what he had, anyway?  It was a little difficult to believe in a guy in the sky after knocking out someone who called themselves the ultimate being at eighteen and helping kill a vampire who called himself god.  He was technically raised Anglican, he was married by a Catholic priest, and he had a Catholic wife and a daughter that held a cocktail of beliefs (a bit of Catholicism mixed with her husband’s Buddhist-Shinto thing…wait was it blasphemous to call it a ‘thing’?), both lovely ladies promising him they were praying double for him—so it wasn’t like he didn’t acknowledge or reap the benefits of religion.

He just—maybe believed there was some higher power and, standing there with his relatives, looking at this sapling, he found himself wishing that, after this life, there was something else.  

Another life, maybe?  (A less shitty new life, maybe, for people that deserved it.)  A place where, after life stopped, it just didn’t?  Maybe a nice place for decent people like Caesar, the young Kakyoin, Mohammed Abdul, and even Iggy and a…a shitter for someone like Dio?

That was about it, for what Joseph Joestar believed in—other than what he could see in front of him.

And that was about it, for the thoughts running through his head the hour or two he hung around the area, before heading back to Erina’s for a quick sleep, and, then, flying to DC.

It was on that flight to DC that a half-tired Joseph Joestar found himself sparing a thought for Mohammed Abdul and Jotaro’s sixth birthday.

Cairo, Egypt.  1977.

Mohammed Abdul had never been on a plane before, and, now, by the end of the month, after talking to Mr. Joestar for some months and Mr. Joestar had spoken with his friend in Georgia, young Mody was going to fly, for the first time, before becoming seventeen, to do a six month internship and hopefully eventually work with the SPW, studying Stands.

The pitch to his father was simple.

“If our positions were reversed—if Stands were less obscure and it was the Gift of Ra that was less certain, you’d make this trip,” young Mody insisted at the breakfast table, the morning after he’d spoken with Mr. Joestar at midnight about the London H.Q. that had been undergoing a covert construction for about a decade now.  “With or without your permission, I will be leaving by the end of this month, Father.”

And that was about all he needed to say, for his powerful and soft-spoken Father to give a blessing and a curious piece of advice.  “Do what you will and what you’ll need to—just choose your battles carefully, Mody, and stick to the beliefs that are necessary.”

Mohammed Abdul spent the day, working at his mother’s mother’s fortune telling shop in Souk Khan Khalil, which was practically his own with the amount of work he contributed to running it, thinking of this advice while seeing clients, only to break away to focus on the chickens that lived in a coop on the shop’s roof because chickens commanded full attention.  (The only other person to enter this shop, other than him, to learn he would be leaving at the end of this month was his mother’s mother.  Their clients wouldn’t receive this same news until the last week of the month—it was better for business.)

Technically, like the majority of Muslims in Egypt, his family was Sunni Muslim, more specifically from the Hanafi school.  They held to the five pillars of belief, fasted on the appropriate dates, believed in Allah and angels, feared a fiery jahannam where sinners spent the afterlife in a different layer and serving out an eternal sentence fitting their sin, and practiced their five daily prayers.  When he was born, the first thing whispered into his right ear was the adhan , the call to prayer, and his other ear received the takbeer, the notice that Allah is the greatest, from his father.  In those respects, young, soon-to-be-seventeen Mody knew that his family was a good, proper Muslim family.

In other ways, he knew other Muslims may not consider them as such.

For starters, his mother’s line was filled with fortune tellers, people who doled out familial advice and read coffee grounds and stars and cards, a trade actively discouraged by Islam.  It was either trickery or sihr , dark magic that required a partnership with a potentially evil jinn , a being of smokeless fire created by Allah that was born as humankind is, in a state of fitra , a pure state predisposed to worship Allah , but it was better to assume malevolence lest risk trusting an evil jinn.   (No jinn were involved with his mother’s mother’s shop, as far as he knew.  To his mother’s side of the family, as it had been for centuries, it was just a living.  Mohammed Abdul liked to think the advice he proffered was genuine, even if he had to sell the advice he’d provide fellow Egyptians and tourists with a palm reading or some small show, sometimes pairing it with something related to western astrology, to really make the sale.)

His father’s line of Magicians or Practitioners of the Gift could have been judged far worse.  They were, for instance, indulging in a sort of polytheism by accepting a gift legendarily provided by the ancient Ra.  (The legend was treated as such—a legend.  While they believed it, to a degree, their belief was…well, it felt like it was a different level of belief, at least, to Mohammed.)    Any form of magic, be it beneficial to others or not, was thoroughly forbidden by some interpretations of Islam, that held the belief that there was no such thing as good magic, again, because it could involve a pact with a jinn.   (His father, his father’s father, and about all of the Magicians in Cairo that Mohammed Abdul knew of held the belief that their magic was not sihr, because it involved no active agreement with a jinn and it was done with Allah and other people in mind, to heal and protect justly, not with intent to harm first and foremost, therefore it wasn’t sinful by the tenets of Islam.)

What was it that Mohammed Abdul believed?  Like he believed most people did, he held to a careful mix of what he’d accepted from religion and some personally held superstitions, accumulated from the Islam he was raised to believe, the ancient Egyptian myths he’d also heard growing up, and things from what he’d read, films he’d watched, and other people he’d spoken to.

Like, for instance, while he was named Mohammed, like his father and his father before him (and so on), as many Muslim men were (to the point where a good number abbreviated the common name as simply an ‘M.’), he had a middle name that he kept to himself and his immediate family, for no other reason than hearing a legend about Ra, when he was very young and very impressionable, and, in this story, recalling how the ancient god lost control of his throne after a goddess learned his true name.    It made no sense, really, to hold to this belief, but, here he was, still clutching that middle name of his close to his chest.

He cussed and sometimes drank coffee, the former of which was quite frowned upon while the latter was controversial (as caffeine could be addicting and his religion frowned on addictive substances, but it wasn’t banned for certain, as far as he knew).  But he was a teenager and he was going to curse, at times.

And he was going to need to navigate these gray areas on his own, especially far from his family.

Young Mody spent the day, thinking of his father’s advice and the beliefs he held, wondering which he’d pack and which he’d have to leave behind.

His Stand, now called, Magician’s Red, remained by him, this day, keeping his arms crossed, brows furrowed—perhaps also thinking on this matter with his User.

New York, US.  1977.

Joseph Joestar spent the morning of this same day talking a little longer than he’d wanted to with his Mother, down in Hollywood.

“Joseph, baby, what the fuck do you think you’re doing,” was her steely opening line after letting the phone ring once and picking up.

“Helluva greeting, Mom,” was what he had for her.

When Joseph Joestar heard the, “No, I’m being serious—what do you think you’re doing?” on the other line, immediately following his bit, he knew he was getting it.  (He wasn’t even going to attempt to play dumb, hitting her back with a ‘what do you mean what am I doing…’ when he pretty much knew there was only one thing she’d be asking about.  No way he’d get away with employing the famous Joestar technique here.)

“Mom, the Stand User—Mr. Abdul, he wanted to talk for two or three months, about what Risa did and I asked around for some files and information to help him,” Joseph answered simply.  “I stuck around D.C. longer than I needed to, only taking weekends and holidays off to be with Suzi, to make sure he got the advice and support he needed.  I was probably one of the first people he had to talk to, about his Stand.”

“Risa’s only been dead for a year—it’ll be a full year, soon, since she was taken away from us,” his mother admonished him, properly pissed and hissing out her s’s.  “When the SPW got the call from Cairo and you were requested to deliver the file, what did I do, Joseph?  What did I do?”  Fuck this Socratic teaching method or whatever…

“You called me up the night before to make me promise he didn’t wind up like Risa,” the son recalled, voice flat.  “But what the hell did you think was going to happen after he saw the file, Mom?  Did you think he was just going to read through it once and get back to living a normal life?  Jesus Christ, I just wanted to invite you and Rohan to join me and Suzi on a flight to Jojo Qtaro’s birthday—”

“No, you listen, Joseph Joestar, this is different than sticking your neck out to help Smokey get some money through the Foundation for his college education,” his mother snarled on the other end…shit he hadn’t heard her like this…well actually, even when she was a bit of a bitch, when he was eighteen, before he knew who she was to him, she’d managed to keep her cool when she was pissed.  Old Jojo found himself a little relieved that this was just a phone call, because it sounded a lot like his mother would have taken a swing at him (and, knowing her and how fit she stayed at…he still had no clue how old she was, exactly, but he knew well enough that she was probably fit enough to leave a mark).  “I defunded Operation: Stand Proud for a reason, for this reason!”

“You told me to guide him and stand by him,” Joseph fired back, not having this when he near sixty and his Mom was like a million for all he knew.  “The alternative is that he goes and does this on his own, without anyone or any resources at the Foundation helping him, and I’d rather he had someone helping him!”

“How old is he, Joseph, how old is he,” his mother said, in that tone that told him she knew, she fucking knew, she just needed to hear him say it back to make her point.

“He’s an adult, he’s considered an adult,” was the best he could come up with, knowing, too well, what she thought of the real real answer, delaying playing her game.

“I heard he was sixteen—sixteen, Joseph, sixteen!”

“He’s going to be seventeen, he’ll be interning for six months, to build up a resume, and then he’ll interview and he should be eighteen by the time I get him an office at the London H.Q.,” Joseph rattled off the rough plan he’d had for the young Mohammed Abdul, as if this plan made it any better.  “You want him traveling now, looking for Stands, on his own at sixteen?  Mom, he wants this—I was thirteen when I had to save Uncle Speedwagon and I was eighteen when I watched people die and saved the world!”

“He’s just ten years older than Jotaro,” going for the stinking cute grandson, like most people trying to get an angle on Joseph did (it just stung a little more, coming from his Mom).  “I heard he was African and Muslim—are you really going to throw him into Georgia, in the South, and then London?”  Shit, he didn’t mention Georgia to her.  Mom’s resource at the Foundation, whoever they were, were quite good.  Quite good.

“He’s not completely helpless, Mom, his Stand, Magician’s Red produces fire—Smokey and Messina will guide him in Georgia and I’ll be there too, when I can—”  Shit, there was London…London was a distant sort of thing that wasn’t happening until the end of the year—but, when it would come, he’d wonder what the fuck happened to the time leading up to it, where that time went.  “I’ll figure London out; I’ll get in with the people conducting interviews and I’ll hire people to look after him when I can’t—!”

“Joseph, you’re almost sixty, you have no business doing this!”  Ouch, Mom, ouch.

“You were fifty when we met,” was the best retort he could come up with.  “And you’re like a…a billion and still keeping up with shit at the SPW.  I’ll probably be doing that too, when I’m as old as you—”

“You don’t practice your Hamon—!”  He’d really wanted to ask her how she could tell, over the phone, but now really didn’t sound like the time.  (It could have just been a good guess.  There was no way she could’ve known for certain without seeing him.)

(Right?)

“Mom, I’ve got a feeling I inherited your cockroach gene,” Joseph put in, really not knowing what else to tell her.  “Regular Hamon practice or no, I have a feeling I’m going to be on this earth for a long fucking time and I’m going to use what I can to help Mohammed Abdul—when did you learn I was doing this, Mom?  I bet you learned about it the first month I got the call, so why didn’t you call?  Why did you wait until I called you?”

“I waited to see if you’d have the balls to tell me about this instead of running away!”

Yeah, up to here, the call had remained as civil as it was going to get—after this, the Joestars pretty much went all out.

Both parties played pretty fucking dirty.

What should have been a ten-fifteen minute call took about the entire morning, only getting stopped by Suzi calling him and her Rohan calling her for lunch.

And he didn’t get a straight answer if she and Rohan were going to need tickets to Japan, but he was going to get them anyway in case she changed her mind.  (What?  In spite of arguing over the phone over life choices, she was still his Mom.  And, even if he didn’t feel like flying over to Japan, this was still for Holly’s kid, aka his grandson named for him.  They were family.)

Cairo, Egypt.  1977.

Mohammed Abdul spent the rest of the week more or less as he had, working, eating, sleeping, looking at his Stand, and reviewing Risa’s file; he wasn’t yet in the mood to sanctify these visits around his regular haunts with a ‘could be my last visit here before I have to go away for a while at the end of the month’.

When he looked at his Stand, however, his brain would review all the things he’d known his Stand wasn’t.

His Magician’s Red wasn’t an ifrit —Mohammed didn’t feel a thirst for vengeance of a wrongful murder and take it out on the living, as a more violent, active ifrit would have.  And the Stand wasn’t confined around any particular place he could have died.

His Stand wasn’t an Angel either—even though he was made of fire, as some Angels were, he had no wings (in spite of the rooster’s head and some feather-like growths).

He wasn’t a jinn , even though he’d promised to do magic with Mohammed Abdul, this magician didn’t crave rotten flesh or bones or any sort of food.

Perhaps Red could be understood through the lense of more ancient Egyptian tradition—the conception of a soul, for instance, was a little more complex than that of the Western ghosty you’d see in the films and read in books (but Mohammed Abdul, for lack of a better word, also thought his Stand was like this Spirit in some ways too).  The ancient god, Atum, made the world out of chaos with his magic, and everything on earth was filled with this magic.  With humans, Atum’s magic existed in their soul, which was composed of many parts—a physical body for this world, a spiritual body to be assumed in the afterlife, a heart filled with emotions, a living essence, a unique personality, a shadow of death, a life force for the afterlife, a name, and living thought (to be revived by the marriage between the personality and the living essence).  This spirit, this Scarlet Magician wasn’t exactly his soul (although Mohammed Abdul felt ownership of him—or at least that there was something very personal, very much his with this Stand).  Red was a more complicated spirit, like his soul, composed of many parts.  The rooster-head spoke, he had something of a personality, he had a name.  

When Mohammed Abdul looked at Red, he thought that he may as well have been looking at his own soul, with all of the parts that only he’d recognize—the green eyes of his grandfather’s, the deformed rooster’s head he knew too well as a child, the bold red coloring of anger and blood and life, the muscular figure that he really aspired to have himself, and the command over purifying and awesome flame that shone as bright as the sun in midday.

Even if he’d told Mr. Joestar that he didn’t want Risa’s job to find someone who could see Red (and he didn’t), there was just a part of him that pitied anyone who’d be missing out on such a fantastic sight.

At last, at sixteen, turning seventeen, he was proud of having a spirit like Red, standing by his side, as the Old Rooster-Head always had been.

A Quiet Part of Japan, 1977.

Lisa Lisa and her Rohan wound up at the Kujo household on a separate flight than Joseph and Suzi.  (Mr. and Mrs. Elizabeth Joestar arrived a day earlier, probably just to spite her son, who’d arrived with her daughter-in-law at the end of the week.)

It took a cold glance between the pair, mother and son, and a nod to communicate that this roomy, traditional-style Japanese house was going to be Switzerland.

(Although, the last time the pair were in Switzerland, they did it while tussling with an Aztec god, didn’t they?)

But anyway, no SPW talk.

Nothing about Stands.

They’d just spend their time, avoiding each other, mother and son.  (Not Rohan or Suzi, though—in spite of being married to opposing sides, in this conflict, the pair of them remained as social as they ever were, with Suzi talking to everyone and Rohan…of all the weird friendships Joseph was expecting in his family, he hadn’t expected the thin, mild-mannered, glassessed dork to get along with the also quite thinny but surprisingly tall Sadao, who was here for once.)

Holly was thrilled to see everyone from America, in spite of the atmosphere they’d brought with them.  

The Birthday Boy mostly stuck to ‘kaa-san’s side (as he called his mother), mostly not saying much as usual, unless prompted; he was starting school soon, Holly cheerfully reminded everyone, and by next year, he’d probably have friends invited to this party.

The most Jotaro asked Joseph about, unprompted, was if his grandfather had brought that overpriced video player, the TV, and those overpriced tapes with that cowboy they’d watched like a year ago—the tapes that really upset his Mom, but he liked.

Not this time, Joseph apologized with a shrug.  But Nonna Suzi got him a book about airplanes, like on what Holl—er, Mommy had been telling them.  Apparently, Jotaro loved to look at books with machinery.  Boats and planes.

“Oh,” was all little dark-haired, hazelly-eyed Jotaro had to say back, expression not revealing if he was pleased or bored or…whatever he was, about this.  (Maybe Grandad just wasn’t reading little Jojo the right way.  Maybe he wasn’t in the right kind of headspace to be reading him like he should…)

Dammit, if the Kujos lived closer—if him and Suzi could have visited little Jojo more, would these conversations be as awkward as they were?  Would they still be strangers?

Would Little Jojo actually need his grandfather around?

Would they be this way if Jotaro was a Serena Q?  

Then again, if little Serena Q was even half like old Erina and Lisa Lisa, or, depending on their moods, Suzi and Holly, Joseph figured he probably was better off with a difficult Jotaro.

Happy birthday, Grandson.

The night closed out, as far as old Jojo could remember, with him getting very drunk and starting a chant that a couple of other folks (not his Mom) joined in, to get Sadao to kiss Holly while little Jotaro was sitting in his mother’s lap; he forgot if he was successful with getting his way here.

The next morning, he’d woken up, in a guest bed next to his wife, feeling like shit.  (After a quick glance at the clock, the American beefer realized he was up too fucking early—3 AM, dammit!  What time was it in New York—alright, this was a simple enough calculation he’d done enough times for Holly.  Thirteen hours difference between New York and this part of Japan…it’s twelve hours plus one, simple enough.  So it was just 4 PM in the Americas.)

His feet were restless, so he headed to the kitchen to find something to do, only to find Holly and little Jotaro up.  The kid was lifting a chair by himself, to a cupboard that was a little too high, while his Mother was encouraging him.  The daughter looked up and just smiled.

“Dad, he didn’t want my help picking up a snack from the cupboard,” was her sweet explanation.

Little Jojo was actually kind of tall for a six year old, with pretty broad shoulders for a kid his age and a decent height.  (Maybe Joseph’s idea of what a six year old looked like was actually just too young, compared to the real thing.  Maybe little Jojo was normal looking for a six year old and big Jojo had just imagined someone else.)  Still, one could only imagine how imposing he’d be at seven.  He’d probably have a fantastic punch.

After setting that chair down, Mr. Qtaro looked over at his handiwork, and then to his Mother and Grandfather.  “You wanna snack too, じじ?”  じじ was said like ‘ji-ji’ and meant something like old man.  But, still, the kid used English and Japanese.  That was pretty good.

Almost automatically, Old Jojo’s sweet Holly’s hands rose to her face, covering her mouth like an over-posing Norma Rockwell model, the perfect image of a woman her age, mouth agape and gasping.  “Jojo, baby, you don’t call your grandfather that !  You call him お爺さん!”  Pronounced ‘Oh-jii-san’ and it was the nicer way of saying grandad.

Holly.

Sweet, sweet Holly.

“C’mon, Holl, Jojo-jiji has a ring to it, doesn’t it?”  was Old Jojo’s response, with a wink to the boy and a large hand on his daughter’s shoulder, and that Norman Rockwell model of a daughter of his shifted, settling into something more comfortable, with hands folded and to her chest but still quite picturesque.  “What kinda snacks you have for this old man—I don’t have dentures yet, so I can still chew like a normal person.”

Little Jojo just stared, in spite of pretty much getting permission to disrespect his Grandad.

And it took a sec for Joseph to realize what the pause here had to mean, and, when he did, he smiled a little wide and pointed to his teeth, as if this could be explanation enough.  

But Holly knew better here.  “Dentures are fake teeth, Jojo.  They fall out when you get older, or people don’t take great care of them, so they get fake teeth.”

Little Jojo accepted this explanation with a couple of blinks.  “I wan’ned na get Hot Garlic Shrimp Chips for ‘かあさん.”  For his Mom.  

Sweet.  

This independent six year old could be sweet.

“Sounds great, I want some too,” Old Jojo told the kid named for him.

And with a nod, the six year old climbed up on the chair, and did exactly what he’d set his mind to, triumphantly holding out the bag of chips for his Mom and Old Guy.

“Oh Jojo, you did it,” his mother squealed, clapping a little before grabbing the bag from his hands.  “Thank you for doing this for Mommy!”

Little Jotaro didn’t so much as say a ‘you’re welcome’ in English or Japanese (どういたしまして), he just nodded and got off of that chair as quietly as he’d climbed it, already lifting it and heading back to the room he’d gotten it from to return it.

Was this still appropriate at this age for his mother to be talking to Little Jojo like this?

Hell if Joseph knew.

Holly didn’t follow her son, instead popping that bag of chips open and rustling the spicy-smelling bag in front of her father, offering the contents.  (Joseph hadn’t had these kinds of chips before, he just didn’t want to make the six year old work harder than he needed to, to look for something Joseph recognized in their pantry.  And well, they were smelling pretty tasty.  So, Joseph got a handful and accepted his daughter’s offer.)

There was something about the kid that reminded his grandfather of someone…wow, he was getting old, starting to think like old REO and Erina used to talk about him.  (‘Oh Jojo, your father/grandfather used to walk like that, used to talk like that, loved dogs like you do…’  He hated hearing that, growing up, like nothing he did was anything he did for himself.  As if his father and grandfather about owned and predetermined every part of him, down to his mitochondria.  So Old Jojo wasn’t going to say this shit in earshot of the grandson.)

But who was it that Little Jojo reminded him of, right now, with his overly cool head, his stubbornness, and independent ways?

Shit.

“He’s like Lisa Lisa, isn’t he,” Old Jojo practically moaned, stuffing his mouth with the spicy stuff to stop anything else stupid from coming out.

“Just a little like Grandma,” his daughter had to agree, but her tone was a lot kinder, while taking her first nibbles of the snack after her father (what a sweetheart).  “Thank you for coming and getting Grandma to join, even though…”

“Anytime, Sweetie,” he told his kid while munching and dispensing a spicy, fishy, closed-mouth kiss to her cheek, not even attempting to explain what it was going on between Grandma and him (no reason to get her involved with this Stand business, not when she wasn’t going to ask because she wouldn’t want to take sides, the angel).

She accepted the kiss with a giggle and then, “You like the chips, Daddy?”  

He nodded and smiled, close-mouthed again so he could still chew.  The shrimp chips were a little sweet, like a lot of Japanese snacks, and didn’t really taste like shrimp, but they were good.

“Dad, I’m really going to miss having him around,” his only daughter sighed between more enthusiastic crunches, having won over her dear old father with this stuff.

“Hey, he’s not moving into that school, he’ll still live in the same household as you,” Joseph tried reassuring his daughter, with his spicy, fishy, garlic breath.  

“I know, but he’s so old now,” his fully grown baby claimed, breath smelling like his, and Joseph just had to crack up.

Little Jojo was big, sure, but old?  Not too much yet.

“Just wait ‘til he hits puberty, Holl,” Joseph promised, or threatened, emphasizing his point with a strategically loud munch.  “You’ll be looking back and missing this.”

And his daughter accepted this with a loud ‘mmmmm’, interrupting this odd onomatopoeia with happy eating sounds.

Yeah, in spite of the in-fighting with his Mom, the costly tickets, and the jet-lag, attending Jotaro’s sixth birthday felt worth it, if only just for this.

Cairo, Egypt.  1977.

For old time’s sake, Mohammed Abdul dropped by one of his father’s classes, with his Father’s permission (it would have been rude to drop by without warning), on the rooftop of their apartment building, for young Practitioners of the Gift.

This year’s class was the smallest it had ever been, with three kids, two girls and one boy (angelic Nevaeh aged 4, stubborn Khaldan aged 7, and bright Tabana aged 11).

Although Cairo was a pretty huge city, with millions living in it, young Mohammed knew these kids pretty well.  Their fathers and mothers were like uncles and aunts to him.  The first wedding he’d gone to, in fact, was that of little Nevaeh’s parents, when he was around eleven or twelve.  They were practically his little cousins and they were pretty excited to see him at class.

“Mody,” little Nevaeh cried out, successfully derailing their breathing exercises, as she broke the line and ran to him, with the other two doing the same.  “Your father told us you are able to conjure an invisible fire!”

With arms crossed and a knowing sort of smile, Mohammed Abdul was quite pleased to click his tongue and insist, “I’m actually able to summon a guy who can do it for me.”

“Amazing,” Khaldan practically screamed, throwing his arms up.  (Young Khal really made you feel like you were seven feet tall, with the enthusiasm he’d demonstrate for anything you’d present to him.)

“Mr. Abdul, do you mind if your son shows us,” the oldest of the class, Miss Tabby, asked, the only one of the three to ask the older Mohammed for permission to stray from today’s lesson plan.  (She could be mischievous herself, young Tabby, she was just on her best behavior, having to mind her little brother, Khal, and set a good example for him too.)

“Point your flames to the stars, Mody” was his father’s permittance and request, rolled into one—not at all directed like a command, with the firm but kind tone, but more of a suggestion.  The Older Mohammed Abdul was always so kind and eloquent, though now it really felt more like he was in a teacher’s mood, with the somewhat dramatic point he’d used, demonstrating so automatically into the sky as a teacher would.

What a patient man, was his father.

Really an excellent teacher.

The young Mohammed Abdul had once professed to Mr. Joestar that when the grandson had a Stand, he’d wanted to be one of the first Stand Users to see the kid.  His demeanor, at this point, he’d felt was a little too aggressive to teach Mr. Jojo Qtaro how to use his Stand, but, one day, he’d wanted to guide this kid and, when this happened, he’d wanted to become even a fraction as patient and helpful as the kind father he was named for, the greatest of the Magicians in Cairo, the old Mohammed Abdul.

“Watch,” commanded the young Mohammed Abdul, as if the kids weren’t already wholly focused on their older cousin, as he pointed well above their heads, tapping into that fortune-telling, showman mode.  “And don’t move.”

The children stood still, breathing heavily, hungrily, with their dinner plate sized eyes and gaping mouths.

And out went the command.  “Magician’s Red!”

Very obediently, his Stand to his right held out both arms and then fired where Mohammed’s finger pointed, a very safe distance from the children’s heads in a fantastic light show.  In this brief outburst, night became day.  A stream of sunshine ripped through the air, outshining the moon for just that moment, and a warmth radiated over a small part of that roof.

A pity that only Mohammed could see the flames in their glory, but his cousins could feel the heat of Red’s power just above their heads.

When the column was quelled, his audience of three cousins clapped and jumped, showering him with all of the compliments.

It was Tabby that asked him if he could draw what this stranger her older sort-of cousin had summoned, so older Mody had to tell her Red was a little hard to draw, but he gave her a description all the same.

A Quiet Part of Japan, 1977.

Lisa Lisa and her husband left the day after little Jojo’s sixth birthday, all smiles for Suzi and the Kujos (even a hug for Holly and her kid) and just a stare for her son; they were going to visit Rohan’s sister, who had just moved to Osaka, and gave Rohan’s sister’s number to the Kujos, in case they wanted to meet up with her too.

Holly was willing to put up with her father and Mother for the week, blissful to have them around.

Sadao was enjoying his brief break from touring or recording, contemplating if he was happy enough with the success him and his band were enjoying or if they ought to sign up with the new agent that had accosted his gang at their last gig in Nara.

Little Jotaro Kujo bounced between his parents, taking a few days to turn off that wariness until he finally sat a little closer to Grandma and Grandpa at their dinner table and spoke a little more.

It was one night that Joseph had gotten up at around 6 AM (still not used to the jet-lag, even later into the week), and, after spying the number for Rohan’s sister, contemplated sneaking away and calling his mother up, apologizing to her for being a selfish ass that didn’t think about how this Stand business would affect her.

Had he really not considered it, or was he just playing dumb here?  Oh he knew, he just grew too confident in Mr. Abdul not to help him and probably just didn’t know how to break it to his Mom, putting it off and out of his active mind, hiding it in his subconscious, until he’d have to deal with this shit eventually.  It just sucked that this had to come to head, this spat between them, a little around Risa’s death.

Mohammed Abdul had asked Joseph once or twice  if he’d ever met Risa.

Really, he felt like he’d known the Stand User more than he should have, having only met her a small handful of times in his Mother’s house, hearing more about her from his mother than her own mouth.

Joseph’s answer to Mohammed Abdul was that it happened a couple of times and she seemed nice, leaving it at that.

Truthfully, Risa was lively and incredibly pretty, standing quite tall and self-assured.  When he had met her, she had a gift of food for him (fried chicken from a nearby joint, incredibly thoughtful), actually hugged him and called him Jojo, confessing it felt a lot like she was meeting her big brother for the first time, with how often Lisa Lisa talked about him.  (He didn’t tell her she couldn’t call him Jojo, because, well, he wasn’t that type of guy and Risa seemed so fucking nice.)

What a weird family they looked like, not even counting his grands that dealt with a vampire, he couldn’t help but think.  With Rohan just a little over a decade older than Joseph (the one stipulation old Jojo had for his Mother, after she started dating, a little after modeling agencies in New York had spied her at an Italian restaurant and begged for her to sign, followed pretty frighteningly closely by Hollywood studios that wanted to make her one of their players), his ancient Mother, Risa who was around the same age as said Mother’s granddaughter, the older husband that was buried after dealing with a sort of zombie, the fully grown son that didn’t meet his own Mom until he was eighteen, the sweetheart daughter-in-law, and the Kujos.  They made the Addams practically look like the Waltons.

Did old Jojo feel the same about Risa—that she was like a little sister?  By this point, there was that propaganda shit that he was still sorting through, about the Japanese,  but he’d had enough to decency to hate what Risa and her family had to go through in America and he liked her enough.  She was cheerful and sweet and not really much like his Mother or him, even with the similarish name, but—well, wait, there was the way his Mother talked about Risa.

Poor Risa hadn’t found the person who could see her Stand this, brilliant Risa corned a malevolent ghost in Switzerland by using her Mona Lisa Smile to excite the electrons in the air around the ghost, darling Risa who got a lot closer after her own Mother divorced Dr. Hoshino…

Yeah, she kind of felt like his little sister.  

Losing her hurt him too— not as much as it hurt his Mother, obviously, but not having her around, not hearing about her, never getting the call from his Mother that she and Risa finally found that other Stand User, all of that really stunk.

And these days, it sucked not getting to hear about how a thirty-something Risa met Mohammed Abdul with open arms, tearful at last at having waited her life to find him and, finally, doing it.  (And Mohammed probably would have felt the same way—Joseph knew, by this point, he probably would.)  The Japanese-American probably would have hired young Mody immediately to work on the Stand Program and welcomed him into the SPW with a pretty large gift basket.  His Mother never would have let him hear the end from them, talking endlessly about Risa and her new protege, and their Stands. 

Mohammed Abdul would have been introduced to Joseph as Risa’s co-worker, maybe a month or so after he’d first hear about them—Mr. Abdul would have been as much of a capable partner to her as her Mona Lisa Smile.

God, this would have been pretty weird.

But at the same time, there was just this feeling, this heaviness in his chest telling him this was the way things were supposed to be.

Joseph Joestar wasn’t supposed to be the one helping Mohammed Abdul.

And yet, this was how things wound up.

And this was the lastish thing Joseph was thinking about, about two hours or so later, when Holly found him just standing by the phone, having not moved.

Yeah, shit like this was exactly why he didn’t spend too long thinking about things.

It was Holly who successfully guessed it was Grandma keeping her Old Dad there and Holly who’d suggested he just call Elizabeth Joestar right when he got back to America, just to rip the bandaid off before this festered anymore and got harder and harder to talk.

And, dammit, he was just going to do it.

Cairo, Egypt.  1977.

In the last week or so of February, the older Mohammed Abdul held a going away party for his son on the roof of their apartment building.

All of the Magicians were there, as were their families, and the fortune tellers, from his Mother’s side and related only to the young Mody as business allies or rivals.

His cousins were all in tears, greeting him and bidding farewell.

He made bank, with the amount of money he’d gotten from practically everyone he knew, and probably looked like he was worth as much as he’d gotten with the gold amulets from his business partner and grandmother, his mother’s mother—a good-luck chain of golden disks with lucky symbols, that could be worn as incredibly eccentric earrings or a necklace, depending on his mood.

Red demonstrated his power at least ten times, creating columns of fire and blasting them into the stars, to excited relatives that, just years ago, doubted his existence.

It was really a fantastic night, really what felt like a proper send-off.

New York, US.  1977.

After some coaching from Suzi, who’d knew a thing or two about how to handle this kind of thing with the boss, Joseph pumped himself up, dialed, and waited for the old lady to pick up.

Maybe when Joseph was twelve, he was under the impression that, somehow, someday, as an adult, he’d have things figured.  Maybe a guidebook would be sent to him, or he would have accumulated enough life experiences to just know how to handle things in pretty much the right way, like Granny Erina and Old Speedwagon.

No such guidebook ever came, but his old Mother did somehow, when he was technically an adult.

When Jojo was younger, did he have fantasies of a sweet English mother who’d coddle him and tell him he was a magnificent little shit just for tying his shoes and belching the alphabet?

Not that he remembered.  His Mom was just like his Dad, a well-spoken of blank space with a set of attributes Granny and Uncle Speedwagon felt like sharing.  They were both noble and strong, and about everything a person ought to be.

Having actually met the old girl at eighteen and found out she was related to him a little after, Joseph still thought of her as REO and Erina had promised—noble and strong—but, by now she was less of a blank space.  Joseph knew as noble and strong as she could be, Elizabeth Joestar could be a little underhanded, strategic, somewhat passive-aggressive when she wasn’t outright aggressive, and she had her moments of weakness.  She could be kind of funny and, even after mellowing out with the granddaughter and the great grandson, she could still be a bitch to her own son when she felt like it.  They met pretty much as adults and didn’t bother trying to make up for the years they’d lost with extra coddling or hugs or whatever.

It was Rohan who answered and then, a little nervously, called his wife over to the phone.

“Mom, I’m sorry about what I said last time we talked and I made a mistake not telling you about this, but I didn’t want you involved this time—even at sixteen, Mohammed Abdul has a good head on his shoulders, better than mine.  He’s a decent guy and practically a force to be reckoned with.  I want to support him, to see him through this.  Not just for me, but for Risa too.  You don’t have to lift a finger this time around, for this Stand User, because, even if I told you about this around when I was planning to land him in the SPW, I was going to stand by him, with or without your blessing.”  Alright, this didn’t sound like much of an apology—it led with an apology and then it became more a…a declaration, really.  Time to see how the old girl took it.

There was some breathing on the other end.

Hard to read the mood there.

And then, after some silence, “Are you sure you’re really doing this for him and not for yourself?”

Oh wow, a line Joseph hadn’t predicted.  He was expecting more scolding, more anger, something more along the lines of ‘how dare you talk about Risa like that.’  And, well, after some thought, he had to admit, “Maybe I am kind of lending a hand for myself too, but everyone kind of does that, don’t they?  They do it for themselves and for others…just don’t think of this, like it’s a ‘fuck you’ to you.  It’s more…I think this guy’s really smart and stubborn and I like him.  He reads people well, he’s incredibly confident, he knows how to talk and work people over.  I think he’s got a great future ahead of him, and I’d really like to work with him to see what he’ll do.”

There wasn’t anything on the other end, for a while, or a spell.  Joseph didn’t cut through the silence, waiting for Elizabeth to respond.

And then, he got a, “He sounds like you, Honey.  Like you, when I met you.”

“He’s better than me, Mom,” and Jojo sounded really sure of this when he’d said it (because he did mean it).  “I really believe in him.”

Well, this got him a short ‘ha’ (hard to read the mood again, but…it didn’t sound too bad), then, “Well, with or without my blessing, get this done.  And remind him you think this highly of him—regularly, when you work with him.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” was the response.  (What?  She was a Ma’am this time.  Some variant of Mom just sounded kind of weird here.)

Cairo, Egypt.  1977.

Mohammed Abdul spent the last week packing, writing a report of his own and Red’s to add to Risa’s (it was a little folkloric, the narrative he had, but it was a charming read, he thought), and then composing a thank you for Elizabeth Joestar.

On the last day, before Joseph Joestar was due to arrive at Cairo, Mohammed finally made the last visit he’d been planning to make, to deliver this news of his journeying to the last three who needed to know, in his life.

His mother and grandfathers were buried some ways away from his apartment building, buried with their bodies perpendicular to Mecca.

The visits were brief, but felt meaningful all the same.

—

Joseph Joestar arrived, with smiles and handshakes for the Mohammeds and young Mody’s grandmothers.

They had a final breakfast before leaving for the flight and subsequent train to Georgia.

His grandmothers held him a little too tight, but it was his father that held his son for the longest.

And then, the pair left.

—

It was a little before the plane lifted off that Mr. Abdul repeated what he had over the phone, quite a few times to Mr. Joestar, that he had never been on a plane before, that this was the first flight he was taking.

Mr. Joestar guffawed, embarrassingly loudly, and told him there wasn’t a need to be nervous.  The Egyptian was in for a treat, because there was really no better feeling than flying.

And it was after this that Mohammed Abdul had thanked him, on behalf of himself and Red.

Up in the Air (En Route to DC), 1989.

A little before falling asleep, Joseph Joestar regretted waiting to tell old Abdul about his son and found himself wondering whatever happened to Red after Mohammed Abdul’s soul had left this earth.

Chapter Text

A Quiet Part of Japan.  1989.

Every morning, since Jotaro had returned to Japan, Holly Kujo (née Joestar) had breakfast with him.  He used to scold her for getting up so early, but, after the first full week, gave up on trying to talk her out of it.  So, the two cut a deal—she’d get up, avoid walking long distances without her cane, and relax while he made his school lunch and, whatever was left over from what he’d made and couldn’t pack and from last night’s dinner, they’d have for breakfast.  He wouldn’t talk much, as usual, and, instead, let her talk about whatever she wanted to.

Suzi Q often joined them—but not this morning.

Jotaro had gotten upset with Nonna and Nonna was a little upset with him for getting upset, too.

“Jotaro, honey, Nonna was only worried about you,” Holly reassured her son from her usual spot (a chair by the stove, while Jotaro would be preparing his bento—this time mixing some egg and diced carrots in a bowl).

“She didn’t have to call up the Old Man and Daddio and make them worried too,” her son groused, pouring the egg mixture at just the right time to add a sizzling exclamation point.  No one would really know it, from looking at her mostly stoical son, but he could really be dramatic and he could really be funny.  That carefully timed sound-effect—proof of a subtle sort of showmanship.

“Your Grandfather’s been spending too much time with Uncle Speedwagon’s Foundation,” Holly put in cheerfully, earning a small, confused look over his shoulder.  “I’ve really wanted to see him again.”

She smiled, waiting for her son to respond.

“You don’t have to call the Speedwagon Foundation that,” was all he had to say, before turning away and getting back to his lunch.

But she did; she did need to call it that.

New York, US.  1946.

One of Holly’s earliest memories is of her, sitting on the ground of her family’s small, New York apartment, in one of the first buildings that her Daddy had bought and rented nearly every other apartment out of.  In this memory, she was always surrounded by three generations of family (her mother, her father, her grandmother, her great-grandmother, and their dearest friends), all gathered around her and waiting for her to say the magic words to one of the oldest family members in attendance.  She can’t remember if it’s a holiday, her birthday, or someone else’s birthday, but it hardly mattered—at four years old, in a pretty little purple dress, she was always the center of attention.

“Uncle Speedwagon,” she’d greet her wrinkled godfather, who, in her memory, was standing in front of her, hunched a little bit forward.  And the room would erupt into thunderous applause.

Great-Granny Erina, she’d once been told, was younger than Uncle Speedwagon.  Why Great-Granny had to stay Great-Granny, while Uncle Speedwagon was called Uncle Speedwagon by her Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, Uncle Smokey, Uncle Messina, and even Great-Granny sometimes was unclear, and it wasn’t made any clearer by the explanation she’d rather vividly remembered getting.

“Holly, baby, he’s everyone’s Uncle,” was Grandma Lisa Lisa’s coolly delivered rationale, delivered while they were playing doctor with her dollies (her grandma taking the opportunity to mime proper Middle Eastern varieties of Hamon healing hand positions on Raggedy Anne to an eager little granddaughter).  “If he’s around when you’ve got kids, they’re calling him Uncle too.”

“But what makes him everyone’s uncle if he isn’t related to everyone,” Holly whined, eyes darting between her own small hands and her Grandma’s, doing her best to imitate her Grandma’s beautiful, tapered fingers to the best of her abilities.

“An uncle doesn’t have to be related to be an uncle,” Grandma shot back, with little hesitation.  “An uncle just needs to take care of the family.  Uncle Speedwagon stood by your Great-Granny Erina’s side for decades, he was around to help take care of your Grandpa and I, and your father was practically raised by him, along with Great Granny, too.  He’ll take care of you and I wouldn’t be surprised if he made plans to keep taking care of Joestars yet to come.”  To the little Holly’s terror, Grandma’s beautiful eyes glanced over at the youngest Joestar’s work.  The Hamon master was incapable of hiding the sneer on her face, even around her own grandchild, at this improper technique.

Taking pity on her granddaughter, while clicking her tongue, Lisa Lisa gently redirected the small blonde’s chubby little fingers, moving them until Holly could have sworn that she could see little sparks, making the child squeal with delight.

“You’re a natural, just like your father, me, and your Great Grandfather,” Grandma cooed, tapping tapered fingertips against Holly’s own, before pressing a small kiss on the girlie’s forehead.  “Another thing, along with Uncle Speedwagon, that the Joestars share, from generation to generation.”

A Quiet Part of Japan.  1989.

Jotaro Kujo never got to call Uncle Speedwagon ‘Uncle’ and, when he was three, Lisa Lisa diagnosed, after a ten minute walk with the toddler, that he lacked the acumen to practice any form of Hamon.

But he had something else—something strange—and, since he’d returned to Japan, from journeying with his grandfather for nearly fifty days, he’d often asked Holly if she’d had one too.

“I haven’t seen anyone like your big, strong, purple ghost hovering over me,” Holly reassured him that morning, like she had when he’d asked, every other day or so.

“And nothing funny happened,” her son would ask, without really asking, in his unique sort of Jotaro-Kujo-way, this time while completing the first layer of his carrot-rolled-omelet.

“No, Sir, Jojo, no things appeared randomly around me, time moved like it normally did, and I went about my day like normally,” Holly replied cheerfully, while flashing a peace-sign and holding that hand gesture until her son would turn around and just—stared, for a moment.

Before the fifty day trip, he probably would have cursed at her or called her a stupid bitch for calling him by that old name and holding a cute pose like this.  

Instead he said nothing.

Holly didn’t know if she preferred that, to be honest.

New York, US.  1950.

Daddy usually sounded a lot like he was in a movie.  Jojo, as everyone called him, was always loud, always very energetic.

Sometimes he was in a musical, singing loudly (and a bit badly) to records in their apartment.  

Sometimes he was in a suspenseful sort of film, when Mommy would be making something in the kitchen and Holly would be having her breakfast and he would be there, behind Mommy, with a finger to his lips (asking little Holly to keep quiet), as he would sneak closer and closer, before wrapping his arms around Mama and, on some days, make her laugh, or, on others, make her elbow him because she’d think he was an intruder (in which case she’d apologize immediately and Holly’s thick browed Papa wouldn’t try this again for another week).  

A lot of times he was in a comedy, where he didn’t tell the funniest jokes, but his delivery made up for it.  

Maybe a couple of times he’d be like a guy in a feel-good film, who’d lower the rent for tenants he knew were no longer able to handle it due to circumstances or even delay their due dates.

Once, maybe, Holly had seen him act like he was in a legal drama, alongside Mommy, when Holly got in trouble for the first time for bringing in Nutella sandwiches and getting in trouble because they were pretty much chocolate.  (Oh, Holly’s tall Papa was so upset, pointing and yelling at the principal, how this was discrimination to his adorable daughter, and how dare they do this!  All to the careful staccatos and syncopated score of what probably sounded like Mommy scolding her principal too, but was really Holly’s Mama speaking in Italian, talking about what they were having for dinner.  All of this obviously got young Holly an apology from the principal and permission to keep bringing Nutella sandwiches.)

And then he acted a little like…someone from a sci-fi or horror film when he’d remove his hand (the metal one) and hide it in the fridge or in a pot of something Mommy was cooking, making her scream and slap her husband in the face, while he’d viciously laugh at this latest prank.

He really looked like a leading man, with his tall height and his broad build, and Mommy really was the perfect compliment, as his leading lady.  

And Holly really did believe them when they said Daddy had saved Mommy, from a bad guy that possessed her, then saved the world, then fought in the War.

It made things all the more jarring when they were visiting Great-Grandma and the usually animated leading man fell silent—and not in a funny way like Chaplin or Keaton.

Great-Granny Erina, in her great-granddaughter’s earliest memories, didn’t move around a lot, but she could be quite sweet.  (Papa said she was stern, but fair, raising him when he was growing up.)  In her youth, she was deeply in love with Great-Grandpa Jonathan, who Papa was named for, and was a nurse for a while in India, before returning to England to tend to Great-Grandpa’s wounds.  Great-Grandma had saved her Grandma Lisa Lisa as a baby, from a maritime disaster caused by an awful vampire of a brother-in-law that took Jonathan from her.

Holly was always told she looked like Great Granny Erina did in her youth, with her bright blonde hair and big eyes, and it made it all the more fitting that she had Great Granny Erina’s name as her own middle name (instead of Suzi or Quattro Formaggi, her Mama’s first and chosen last name…but Holly was really, really close to having Quattro Formaggi or, at least, Q as her middle initial).

The eight year old spent a good amount of that time by Great Grandma’s bedside, until it was very late at night and, after a brief conversation with Papa and a goodnight kiss to Great Granny, Mama took her back to their apartment.

The morning after, Mommy got very tearful when she received the call that Great Grandma Erina had passed.

Daddy was so serious, when he took all of them to England and had Great Grandma buried in Great-Grandpa’s old childhood home.  He tried smiling, while taking his daughter and wife along, to meet the other relatives buried there and explain the history of the house, but his tone still didn’t sound like it used to.  And his eyes welled up with tears he’d sometimes remember to wipe and, sometimes, he’d forget to, just letting them flow down his cheeks.

And, even after they got back from England, for a while, Daddy remained a little like this—mostly, he would try to put on a smile and get back into leading-man-mode around Holly, but, sometimes, when Holly was in bed or out of the room he was in, when he’d probably think she was out of earshot (but she wasn’t), Holly would hear him cry.

It really upset little Holly to see him like this.  She just had to ask Mama what she could do, when he was out one night, to help him.

“Just let him hide that,” was what Mommy recommended.  “He just wants to put a show on for you, so let him do it.  What you can do to help is stay the happy, cheerful Holly that you are.”

And that was what Holly did.  She’d smile and joke along with him, make sure she hugged him a little harder than usual, and, with time, she would hear him cry less and less.

A Quiet Part of Japan.  1989.

Their breakfast was a little too quiet.

The pair sat on the ground, by the table, next to each other.

Neither removed their eyes from the other, even with barely a word exchanged between them.

A little after they finished up the remains of the omelet, Holly reached over and simply rested her hand on her son’s forearm.

And he didn’t try to move her.

Chapter Text

There are a number of questions Mohammed Abdul and his Stand, Red, sought to answer in his lifetime, not at all less challenging than the problem posed by Holly’s Stand and User-murdering Stands like hers.

Like, for instance, what is a Stand made of?  (As of his passing, this question remains unanswered.)

Why are some able to become Users, and why aren’t others?  (As of his passing, this question also remains unanswered.)

Why can Stand Users see Hamon (often as a plant-like growth that usually appears purple), while Hamon practitioners can’t?  (With the exception of Mr. Joestar, when his Stand activated—but, like the other two questions, this question also otherwise remains unanswered.)

Over the course of his career, which lasted a little longer than a decade, he had received thousands of calls, letters, and faxes of potential cases; he had journeyed to all seven continents and visited a little around a hundred countries, to look into especially promising cases personally; and, of the third or so of potential cases he’d investigated, about half of the cases turned out to be a misidentification of a local variety of Hamon.  About two-thirds of the other half were sorted into a gray area (which, in spite of a number of numerous follow-up trips and investigations, could not be neatly categorized as a definite Stand case), while only a rare third Mohammed Abdul more confidently identified as a Stand.  For the sake of posterity and transparency, everything sent in the direction of his office, down to surprisingly detailed phone records which included transcripts, had a file.

The bulk of files, related to the study of Stands, are located in the International Headquarters of the Speedwagon Foundation, in London, England.

A smaller portion of these files can be found in Joseph Joestar’s office in:

Washington D.C., US.  1989.

Joseph had returned to said office, after a near twenty hour nonstop flight, touching down the Tuesday morning after Jotaro Kujo upset his Nonna and Joseph’s wife, Suzi (née Quattro Formaggi) Joestar.  It hadn’t been left in the most orderly condition the last time he’d occupied the office in the middle of January (before temporarily relocating at least twice to accommodate the final arrangements of a sometime-called Noriaki Kakyoin) or the time before that, near the end of November (after receiving a troubling phone call from his daughter).  To his relief, all of the papers and pictures remained in the exact same state of disarray he’d left them in (when compared to a couple of photos he’d kept in his pocket of the mess of an office he’d left back in November and maintained in January), which confirmed the following two things to him:

1. Nobody made an attempt to clean or even touch his shit without his permission, therefore:
2. Nobody looked through his office

While it annoyed Old Jojo that nobody at the Domestic Speedwagon Foundation HQ even entertained the notion of fulfilling his request for a call back, for further instructions on the transferral of Kakyoin’s belongings to the London Building, by this point, it hadn’t totally surprised him.

Joseph had more than a feeling that his Uncle Speedwagon’s Foundation had it out for old REO’s honorary nephew.

In addition to Jones’ unencouraging intel from the London offices, Joseph Joestar seen the faces around the halls in both HQ’s and overheard a water cooler conversation or two that he shouldn’t have.

And why wouldn’t they?  The SPW was supposed to be a scientific research foundation, not a military group, and this latest bit of Joestar family business involved them giving around fifty day’s worth of pro-bono hospice care, forced their hand in flying out some of the world’s leading surgeons to Egypt, and recruited them into a costly war, across multiple countries, resulting in the loss of a number of their own employees.  He’d lost a submarine (that was partly expensed by the Foundation and by Joestar money), a helicopter (that was the Foundation’s property), and a couple of planes (one of which was a commercial vessel and the other was rented and expensed after the crash) and maybe a couple of boats.

Team Joestar’s fifty day journey into Egypt probably landed the SPW right in the red and they had every reason to distrust him.  If it weren’t for the Foundation’s charter written by old Speedwagon himself, they probably would have cut ties with him and his family.

But it wasn’t like the feeling hadn’t grown more than a little mutual.

Joseph pushed the papers off his desk (nothing actually important there, these only served as window dressing), moved the old oaken thing to the corner by himself, and removed the floor tiles underneath, to reveal the cavity situated just below, between the floors—a cranny he’d made himself, a little into last summer, on a hunch.  In this hiding spot is a portable lockbox, something he’d purchased himself with his own funds.  (Had Joseph received a call back, he would have pretty much gone through a hiring process for an associate himself, to insure their trustworthiness before having them deliver the box, and revealed this hiding place, but, even after the vetting, he wouldn’t have given them the combination.)

After removing the box from its spot, Joseph entered the combination (05-13-18) and gave the contents a once-over, sighing in relief that the High Schooler’s belongings and a sealed, letter-sized envelope from Mohammed Abdul’s report remained therein.

Washington D.C., US.  1988.

It was in the summer when they’d begun putting together the file in that lockbox, a little after Joseph Joestar had punched a hole through the floor of his office, beneath the tiles under his desk.

Joseph Joestar could never forget that phone conversation he’d received, that, as far as he was concerned, pretty much forced his hand, or, rather, fist into the floor of his office.

“Mr. Joestar, you need to remain calm,” a too familiar voice on the other end of the line reassured him, like it always did.

But Joseph was never the type to remain cool, especially for something like this.  “How am I supposed to remain calm—that bastard—you’re sure it was him—he found you and your Grandmother’s fortune telling shop!  If your Grandmother was the one there, instead of you—your family could’ve been—!”

“They weren’t.  My father, my grandmothers, the other Magicians, and their immediate relatives are safe.  Me too.  Please watch what you say.”  As glad as he was to hear that voice on the other end, its soothing quality was starting to get on Joseph’s damn nerves. 

“But how did he—that information shouldn’t have left the SPW offices!”

“I don’t know, Mr. Joestar, what did I just ask you to do!”  The first time he’d raised his voice that night.  And Joseph didn’t blame him, because his fifty-something-old-ass just acted a fool. 

The two said nothing, for about a minute, before the older man on the call said what he needed to.  “Dammit, I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright, Mr. Joestar.  Just—you remember where we said to meet, if something came up.  Give your family a call— and we’ll continue our conversation there.”  And Mohammed Abdul hung up.

The first things Joseph Joestar threw into an envelope, and, then, into that cavity, on a hunch, were the photos he’d taken months ago, when his Stand first awakened, of ocean water and sand.

Destin, US.  1973.

The pair had rented a small commercial vessel from a local fisherman, a Mr. Tom T. Hall, for twice its value, paid Mr. Hall twice that to take them out into the waters, day and night, for a couple of weeks, to observe the pod of dolphins that had been reported to Mohammed Abdul’s office.

It was very late at night, on the second day, that the three of them got to telling scary stories.

That was when Joseph Joestar told Mohammed Abdul about the Joestar curse and the sonuvabitch that murdered his Granny’s husband.

It was a little later in that same week, Mohammed Abdu, quite content and high off of his first Stand Battle, suggested they return after the trip had ended, to forget their worries at the office.

Destin, US.  1988.

Destin, Florida, also known as “The World’s Luckiest Fishing Village”, was a fairly popular vacation destination, with coasts a part of the former Miracle Strip, which, in 1983, was renamed the Emerald Coast by a junior high school student, in a contest, for the cool cash prize of fifty dollars.

Joseph wound up bribing the young woman at the front desk of the D_____ Inn ten times that kid’s prize money, after she shot the nastiest look while checking in Mr. Joestar and a disguised Abdul (wearing a pretty good jheri curl wig, some shades, and sporting a different gait—pretty good for something he picked up on the fly), to keep her from reporting them for whatever the hell illegal thing she wrongly assumed they were there to do.

Mr. Joestar had paid for the sudden plane ticket, the Inn’s reservations, and the bribe from his own pocket, in cash, and nothing was under his name.  He’d arrived with a prettty clean-shaven face (he could grow the beard the way Suzi liked it back pretty easily with Hamon) and dressed like some dumb tourist, not using his name and keeping his voice down.

Contrary to what some may believe, a tourist trap like Destin is actually a pretty ideal hiding spot, if one knows how to work a place like it.  Places like Destin get lousy with potential witnesses to murder attempts.  You can hide in the crowds in the daylight, when you can’t find an ally.

They didn’t check into separate rooms, in the event that either of them were tailed and could have been ambushed when left alone.

The pair of them didn’t talk, mostly sitting in that room in fucking silence, until they’d checked the windows and used Joseph’s ability on a couple of cameras to scout the area and insure that they weren’t being monitored.  (But, even after making this confirmation, Abdul kept his disguise on and the pair lay on their stomachs, a safe distance from the widows.)

“Mr. Joestar, the SPW could be compromised,” Mohammed finally noted aloud, voicing the fear that Joseph had harbored since he’d gotten the call in D.C.  “I don’t know how deeply it could run—if it’s just one mole, or a number of them, but someone’s giving him ears into the organization.  He knows about me, he probably knows that I know you, and he knows about Stands.”

“But— he had a grudge against my family, not yours—it’s not fair that you got caught in the crossfire,” Joseph rationalized, balling his hands into fists.  “How did that…vampire look?  Did that cad’s head look shriveled up, from having nobody to feed off, at the bottom of the ocean?  Did someone have to carry him, like an undignified infant?”

Mohammed shook his head, tone serious and face placid.  If Joseph’s eyes stayed there, looking at Mohammed’s eyes and face, he could have bought into the idea that this Stand User somehow found some hidden reserve, to draw out strength, and remain calm even after his family and home city were threatened.  But the trembling in his hands, even after Abdul attempted to cover it up by folding them together, gave him away.  “He had a full body and he looked incredibly fit; he dressed well, not in anything I’d recognized from the Victorian era, when he should have drowned.  Which means that he has people with a good deal of financial resources, feeding and minding him.”

“Shit,” Joseph cursed.  How this happened, he hadn’t a clue, but it sounded just like the overly charismatic prick to get his way, even without his body.  He had that way about him.  His voice alone, Speedwagon had told him, was enough to compel freshly resurrected zombies and entire villages under his thumb.

“They’re probably playing a long-con for your family if they targeted me before you,” Mohammed Abdul continued, “They’re probably banking on you being ignorant of their hold and reach in the SPW, so you’re going to be better off acting like you don’t suspect a thing.  Just don’t rely on the Speedwagon Foundation more than you’ll need to and watch what you say around them.”  He paused, before asking, “And your family is fine?”

“My mother didn’t leave a number from the last locale she called me at but she can take care of herself.  Suzi’s bubbly as ever.  I didn’t tell her about this—I’m just going to tell her I went on a sudden work trip.  Holly and her family are doing alright too,” Joseph updated the younger man.  “Jotaro’s just getting in the usual trouble.”

“Nothing too serious, I hope,” the Egyptian replied, easing his chin into his palm and leaning into an elbow, looking actually pretty comfortable for someone on the run.

“Holly found a pack of cigarettes on him,” Joseph groused, not at all attempting to hide his disappointment.  “My daughter thinks it’s just a part of his teenage phase and he’ll grow out of it, so she’s only planning on giving him short lectures about how it’s bad for his health, but she isn’t punishing him or making him quit.”

“You were pretty hands-off with Holly, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that she’s hands-off with Jotaro.  And it’s probably the best way to deal with somebody allergic to authority like him,” Mohammed Abdul assessed aloud, tone very even.  “Give him the information and let him make his own choice, but don’t make the choice for him.”

Joseph said nothing for a bit, prompting a, “What is it, Mr. Joestar,” from Mr. Abdul.

“The more I get updates about him, the more I’m reminded of my Mom.”

“Elizabeth Joestar is a great person, even if you haven’t had the most ideal relationship with her,” Mohammed put in a little too easily, a little too used to repeating like a litany.  “Nobody has a perfect relationship anyway.  Everyone has something they need to work on, but, as long as they’re communicating, they should be fine.  Holly was always pretty good at working with your Mom, so she’s probably pretty good at dealing with Jotaro in her own way.”

Joseph just cursed, burying his face into the carpet.  “He only turned seventeen last February; he doesn’t know any Hamon and my Mom said he doesn’t have the capability to do it.  Holly agrees with her and said he never showed any signs of being able to do it, growing up, and he’s—he’s just a punk kid who’s only known street-fighting.  He’s probably not prepared, if Dio tries something.  And what if—”

Mohammed Abdul rested a hand on his mentor’s shoulder.

“Fuck, you’re the one suffering—that bastard is in your hometown.  Was in your hometown, we don’t know where he could be now.  Don’t you comfort me,” Joseph challenged, emerging from his hiding spot and pulling his shoulder away.  “I imagine your family had to run.  You could stay out of this, while you’ve got a head on your shoulders, and hide with them.”

“You’re allowed to admit you’re suffering too,” Mohammed retorted, shimmying a little closer and regaining his hold.  “You’ve had my back for years, and I owe your family a lot.  And it’s not just you and your family that Dio attacked.  He forced my family to leave their home and put my neighborhood in danger.  He targeted me, he made it personal for me too.  I’m going to do what I can to help.  We’re going to use your Stand to find Dio and assess the situation, and we’ll figure out how things will look—maybe for the next year—”

By the end of that week, the pair of them used Hermit Purple to add at least ten photos to that Manila folder in Joseph’s safe box (the photos they couldn’t use, they had burned).  Dio himself hadn’t made an appearance yet, but they had, at least, figured, through neat Polaroids of planes and trains, that there was a chance he was out of Cairo.  (Where he was headed?  Whenever Joseph tried to focus his Stand on a potential destination, a photo of an entirely different locale was produced from whatever camera he’d sacrifice.  Once, there was a photo of a small cliff side, surrounded by lush grass and flanked by a river.  Another time, a dingy little chest in a dark, dank room.  One of the last photos produced appeared to be of snow-capped mountains.  Joseph’s abilities could only reveal so much information that would need to be verified.  So, the pair divided up the work between them, of who would confirm if Dio remained in Cairo, of assessing his reach into the SPW, and what these other photos could possibly mean.)

For old time’s sake, they rented a boat and spent some time offshore, visiting the old pod of Dolphin Stand Users.

Common Bottlenose dolphins actually have a pretty long life expectancy of at least forty years.  For all they knew, they could have first encountered some of these Users nearly fifteen years ago.

It felt like a toss-up if they recognized Mohammed, but Red they seemed fond of attacking like they used to.

The older man, whipping out purple vines in their direction, on the other hand, seemed to surprise them.

London, England.  1989.

Jean Pierre Polnareff found the Manila folder labeled “Hermit Purple”, hidden in the space under the top-left drawer of Mohammed Abdul’s desk.