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Chapter Text

Capitolo Primo: Giovinezza (1)

When I blinked myself out of the coat of shadows that had welcomed my mind during this slumber, I wouldn’t have thought to find myself dealing with quite the absurd predicament.

‘Bizarre’ would fit too, especially if some considered the circumstances that saw my sudden insertion within the strangest of times and worlds.

My eyes had to squint and blink for some time, growing more and more accustomed with the dim light giving a bare display of my current setting, my previously-slumbering mind forced quickly out of its usual recovery and right on the panic-inducing predicament I was being part of.

This wasn’t my room, now was I sitting by my bed.

The rumbling, the noises of horses, the voice of a man directing the animals right through the muddy path before him and…

I was in a moving carriage directed Gods know where.

It was a very old model, something I instantly picked up by the lack of proper comfy pillows as my buttock was starting to grow sore at merely relaxing upon that sturdy piece of cloth.

There were Victorian decorations placed all over its inner wall, those were possibly there to try and give its interior some ‘elegance’, failing short as the stinging scent of the nature all around the vehicle, which managed to enter thanks to the small openings offered by the windows near the little door to the outside, diluted if not shattered the illusion of a pleasant trip into the unknown.

Once I got a complete look of the setting, I found myself exploring something that shouldn’t have changed with this curious awakening and… yet it had.

I was shorter, tinier and… younger.

I glanced down, ignoring for just a moment the prim and proper dress that was known to many rich children back in the nineteenth century, my pair of eyes widening in slight confusion and nervousness as I saw how small my hands were compared to the previous day.

Blinking at the hint that my body had somehow changed overnight, I was quickly rummaging at the little brown baggage set near to my seat, my main task trying to find a specific object that, possibly, was there to assist me in validate my new concerns.

I found a little circular mirror, it was pretty small and quite ruined as its screen was filled with some dust and some mold, causing me to frown as… why would I be carrying something moldy in such an expensive vehicle.

The answer to that silent query was presented when I finally glimpsed at the reflective texture of the tiny thing and… my mind suddenly brought an end to this mystery.

ゴ
ゴ
ゴ
ゴ

A pair of orange orbs showed the same amount as my inner surprise, my sight scanning frantically and almost furiously at the mostly unfamiliar face as this couldn’t be reality.

This had to be a dream, a pesky and perverted derivation of my delirious state of mind during a feverish night.

There couldn’t be alternatives but… I brought my hand to my chin, the youthful figure on the other side of the mirror following my action and proceeding to copy my brief chin-scratching as I mourned the lack of my goatee.

My face lacked any facial hair excluding my hair, something that even more confirmed that I was looking at my reflection.

This young blond boy, this confused and so terrible individual…

Why was I looking at Dio Brando?

An ever-present threat within the Jojo series, the man that tried to become invincible before succumbing to a religious euphoria that drove him to seek the Heavens.

A megalomaniac, but a resourceful and dangerous one with the intriguing mind that his narcissistic sanity had attached too.

A monstrous individual, someone that came so close to achieve true victory even while rotting in hell thanks to the aide of his closest friend.

And I was stuck in his youngest form known. I- I was Dio Brando!

Everything came crashing down onto my poor soul, from the crime already committed by the murder of Dario Brando to the main objective the young ‘Invader’ had planned to go through by trying to ‘steal’ the Joestar’s riches.

I was stuck in the mortal coils of the greatest antagonist in this universe, devoid of any of its true power and unleashed potentiality.

There was no vampire-related abilities, nor I had a Stand capable like ｢ The World ｣ to fight off any menace that persisted to end my very existence.

Time was essential for those that sought true dominance over the planet, in fact it was the prime element that reigned over everything and everyone.

And I, a mere human with mere knowledge, was granted the chance of achieving the final reward of a glorious plan and much more if I was careful to take the proper decisions and actions to assure it all.

I could do so much given proper peace and no distractions.

I could create a better world to control and lead, to bring world-peace and prosperity without facing any threatening opposition… if I was careful enough to not warrant any of my future ‘fateful enemies’ to come and hunt me.

It was all about carefulness and planning out the proper path to follow so that I could achieve the maximum reward with the minimum effort.

It was a golden opportunity, truly a divine intervention that granted me the chance of bring forth a new era to this world!

Just as I concluded those musings, I felt the carriage slowing down its pace and then… it came to a pause.

My thoughts were smoothly drowned as I let my own state of masterful composure, born from experience and practice, to take over the expressions of my new face as I prepared for quite the encounter.

I didn’t need to create issues with the one waiting just outside the vehicle, I didn’t certainly need to spark the Dio-Joestars rivalry that would see me failing horribly and painfully.

I was too attached to life to consider falling onto the overly-childish attitude displayed by the younger Dio and his self-destructive anger toward rich people.

But I couldn’t certainly behave too ‘kindly’ with the fellow, I needed to keep myself polite and ‘friendly’ before the gullible young man that was Jonathan Joestar.

So I slowly stood up from my seat, ignoring my aching legs as I took hold of my baggage with both of my hands, and I moved to leave the limited place.

The door opened calmly, part of my giddy self almost demanding to try and pull off the same dramatic stunt the blond achieved in Canon… but I wasn’t in the general mood to fail epicly thanks to my uncoordinated sense of mind-body.

While my body had changed, my mind had remained untouched and… still prone to commit quite the awkward physical reactions when given the unique opportunities.

Descending from the small height between the carriage’s room and the floor, I closed the door behind me and… I turned to see the approaching young man, blinking in minor surprise at how similar he was to the animated version.

The only difference I could perceive was that his hair was much more darker than outright dark-blue, which was convenient considering that this period of time had yet to experience the full bizarre style that Araki is known for.

“You are Dio Brando, right?” The young Joestar inquired in quite the blunt manner, slightly nervous but still showing some emotion over the need of portraying etiquette.

One of the flaws that the boy was known for early on in his life, something that got him chided by his father numerous times… and for good reasons.

Newspapers and textbooks about the Victorian Age displayed the strictness in which some wealthy family were living, far from the easy-going pace that many of the modern nobles were known for.

And in a society where etiquette, money and social stature mattered over emotions and facts? People needed to adapt to conveniently survive any bad reaction to certain ‘wrong’ attitudes.

So, while I showed a polite and regal smile at the brash Jojo, I felt some pity at how unfortunate life was going to be with me now around him.

Not because I was going to create any chaotic circumstance to make him suffer, but rather I was sure George Joestar, his father would be blissfully dense enough to start some ‘nonexistent competition’ to try and push his son to achieve much more than mere laziness.

“And you must be Jonathan Joestar,” I carefully replied, knowing full well how the discussion would escalate and, if I played my cards well, I could also get some starting point to influence the naive youth.

“Everyone calls me JoJo. Nice to meet you too.” He seemed to gain confidence at the lack of negative connotations from my voice, but I was more interested over his nickname.

I could understand Joseph and the other members of the Joestar family as it wouldn’t be difficult to see the context that drove family and friends to adopt such a nickname… but Jonathan?

Why would someone call someone ‘Jojo’ in Victorian Britain? It wasn’t like his father had gone to India or Asia- Actually that might be the case as the mask had to have come from Asia, Africa or some other place away from Europe.

Just as I concluded that line of thoughts, I felt something warm and wet reach for my fingers and I almost jumped in surprise when I saw a certain barking Great Dane trying to gain my attention and my reaction.

Tail waggling excitedly at my arrival, I could help but have a smile appear on my face as I carefully tried to caress its fur.

The pet seemed to notice the attempt, leaning on and letting my fingers cautiously scratch the top of its head, more than happy to accept the kind return.

I had my fair share of experience with animals, both dogs and cats, so while Dio might have found the animal to be a pest, I was actually seeing this puppy to be nothing more than an adorable and playful thing to have around.

A soft bark accentuated the appreciation for the gesture and I noticed a brief chuckle coming by the side.

“See? He doesn’t bite?”

But he used to bite you a lot, JoJo, in fact you were also keen to retaliate with rocks until he saved you from drowning in a river.

I didn’t tell him that, my attention returned to the dog as Danny tried to stand on its hinder legs to try and give my face a lick or two, to which much to his dismay I was forced to back away from as I couldn’t certainly exaggerate with the planned meeting with the true owner of this mansion.

Speaking of the devil, George Joestar decided to appear in that very moment, instead of the worried expression of dealing with some childish rivalry he was showing a mirthful smile at the interaction I was having with the family’s pet.

“I see that you have made the acquaintance with JoJo and Danny, Dio,” The man commented happily, nodding at his son before giving me his full attention. “Please, do come inside.”

I nodded back, following Jonathan inside while ignoring the giddy dog as he was taken by one of the servants outside to keep him busy.

The entrance room of such a massive mansion proved to be powerful compared to the original scene as I was given the chance of looking around discretely over the various statues and artefacts that were there displayed for everyone to see.

I merely glanced at the Stone Mask, a chill going down my spine at the mere power hidden behind such a seemingly-innocuous object, but I still kept my attention onto the conversation.

I wasn’t going to slight anyone anytime soon… that is until I have a ‘reason’ and a backup plan to avoid dealing with any dangerous effects against me.

“I welcome you to my home, Dio,” George continued, now in front of the rest of the servants working in this house, three butlers and three maids. “You will considered as part of our family.”

The noble turned to look at the curious workers and nodded.

“Everyone, I owe my life to this young man’s father. Treat him as you would JoJo.”

“Yes, my lord,” The leading butler, possibly the head of the group, replied before bowing with the rest of the servants.

“Dio, this is now going to be your home. Understand that I will treat you as you were my own son,” He concluded with a careful smile, trying to not appear nervous himself over the curious development in their lives.

Still, I decided to bow at him. “I’m flattered and thankful of your hospitality, Lord Joestar.”

“You and Jojo are both young men and I wish for you both to enjoy each other’s presence from now on,” The older Joestar patted his son’s shoulder. “But from what I’ve seen, I can already tell you two are going to be good friends.”

Friends without much deception. I don’t want to get Hamon’d anytime soon after all.

“This way, Dio. I’ll show you your room.”

I nodded again at his words, this time giving attention to pick up my baggage instead of drawing Jonathan’s attention back on me and, as I walked up the stairs, I heard the young man speak.

“I’ll show you the nearby river, Dio. It’s a nice place where to rest and read in peace.”

If you ignore the constant presence of bullies and the chances of drowning there if its too agitated.

I gave him a polite nod. “I will wait for that then,” I replied with a small smile before returning to follow George to where I was supposed to live for years… until the opportunity to truly strike would appear for me to grasp onto.

Yes, a better plan for higher chances of success against my possible enemies.

Once the old Joestar concluded his brief tour of the living quarters, I was granted some time to unload my baggage in the proper places prepared to hold my personal bearings.

I was quick with this task, but instead of rushing to intervene in the lunch scene that was soon to happen, I decided to sit for a moment on my new bed, feeling tired and somewhat in need of some silence to think about my next few steps.

I wasn’t certainly going to try and aim for the Joestar’s inheritance, knowing well enough that the gold of the family wasn’t enough to deal with the animosity any attempt of usurping the title of heir would create with JoJo.

The young man was naive, not stupid. He might sound flawed, but he still had some inner strengths that were better kept away from being used on me.

But while I didn’t sought the acquisition of that money, I was still interested in two things that George could entrust to me given the proper amount of time and influence that I could gain in those few years.

I needed that mask.

I wasn’t planning to use it, still wary of losing my logical sense of thought and humanity by accepting a vampiric body, but I still wanted to keep it around for me to study and possibly gain some minor ability from it without fully turning in a blood-sucker.

I needed to have a mean to make a trip to the United States.

If I was quick enough and used my limited knowledge of untapped sources of oil, I could have easily made millions out of little investment, maybe even become a proper replacement for Speedwagon considering I wanted to have little about the current criminal in Ogre Street.

It was all out of respect, of course, as I didn’t want to even maim someone as intriguing as the fellow blond, but I couldn’t just ignore the opportunity of creating something of a more active Speedwagon Foundation.

Huffing for just a moment, I stood up from my bed with my polite posture restored and my mind preparing for the little lunch event that was going to become another important step to influence JoJo in ‘not kill me when the time come’.

What time and when? Now, that is a secret that I wouldn’t wish to give out so easily to anyone…

Unless you are willing to give up ｢ The World ｣ for me~.

But while our ambiguous protagonist proceeded smoothly in what looked to be an easy beginning in a world ripe for his conquering, Fate had long decided to introduce a new contender to bring balance to the table.

Who is the true antagonist of this story?

Chapter Text

Capitolo Primo: Giovinezza (2)

JoJo was much worse that I had expected him to be.

Of course I was referring in terms of manner as, despite considering himself a young gentleman, his early instance of informality when I first met him was… just the tip of a massive and troublesome iceberg.

Albeit trying his best as usual, the issue behind his current state of misery wasn’t actually connected to an active intervention of mine against him… but his own father trying his best to create some competition between me and his son.

While he sounded to mean well and I was fairly sure he was trying to be a proper father, his model of ‘proper’ was antiquate to what it should have been as it was flawed by the ideals imposed by the Victorian Age.

Productivity born from discipline, refined by stern words and actions so that it could led to the ‘modern Englishman’.

It was something that had become clear the moment the two of us were trying our first session together for home-schooling.

There was no elementary school, or not a private one considering the wealth the Joestar family was known to have and… that was both a good thing and a terrible one.

Both for me and JoJo.

Textbooks were easy to understand and to complete in little time because of my advanced education and my excellent knowledge of ‘future details of the subjects’.

I was quick, too much quick as I noticed while completing the first set of exercises and… I almost caught up with Jojo.

Simple Math problems, I was expecting some easy tasks from this but to actually shrug off three to four pages in less than an hour was… overkill.

I was glad that George didn’t think much of it, I was still behind to the topics Jonathan was currently dealing with and, knowing how the competition would rise from that instance, I decided to forcefully hinder my own pace for the sake of avoiding some unpleasant use of the whip the older Joestar had brought for the occasion.

Corporal punishment wasn’t certainly somesight I wished to be granted as of now, knowing full well that the least I was turned into the ‘cause’ of JoJo’s suffering, the less I would have to deal with a suspicious and non-trusting young man in the near future.

Instead of denigrating the dark-haired boy, I decided to act on the opposite spectrum and actually give him tips over some of the problems that were keeping him stuck.

It was all done subtly, either when his father excused himself for some urgent meeting, some paperwork that required his attention or mere bathroom breaks.

At first he was skeptical of my advice, rightfully so as I was still ‘far behind’ his current level of education, but the reckoning of my intervention would happen mere moments after.

The moment he tried to apply those few instructions on paper and then patiently decided to wait for George’s correction, Jonathan quickly realized from the man’s praise over some of the simplified answers to the exercises assigned were more than a proof of my genuine capacity in doing this kind of homework.

An inquiry ensued after two days of constant helping, about why I was giving him just suggestions and not complete solutions to the exercise.

I snorted calmly at that blunt questioning, my mind so quick to remind me that I was still dealing with a naive young man that was still as pampered and spoiled as any rich boys in Great Britain.

“You are meant to learn from those exercises,” I replied with a polite tone. “While I can give you some help, the rest is up to you. Do you wish to grow into a properly-educated man or just rely on everyone without growing out of your current state of mind?”

I could have spared him some mercy over the complicated terms used, but I was gladly confirmed by the following days that he had indeed understood the message I wanted to send through.

Innocent as he was, JoJo was still smart enough to catch up with any important details about his life and, by mentioning ‘a properly-educated man’, his mind took it as a rightful step to become a ‘true gentleman’.

Something that offered me just an insight over his ideal future, his wishes for his adulthood, and I couldn’t help but mirthfully consider how he would certainly become one all because of me.

In fact, his interest in keeping an attentive look over any suggestions of mine grew immensely by the time my second lunch here at the Joestar Mansion unfolded, my eyes constantly darting from the boy to his father… before repeating this loop in a more subtle and careful manner.

The first experience was dreadful to look at for multiple reasons.

When I said that JoJo didn’t have manners, I wasn’t trying to exaggerate or sound overly-pompous. I was trying to curtly summarize the little habit he had during eating, his attempt to rush the food without any care of the world…

Which subsequently got his father to chide him multiple times because of the new circumstances.

Albeit I was considered a ‘member of the Joestar Family’, my presence here on the first few days was seen more as a guest than that.

I was a fresh spectator which knew about the intricate rules about being mindful by the table, to not act like a complete slob and keep a semi-formal and polite attitude around those times.

Jonathan seemingly missed the memo, or at least he looked like that from the surprised look born from those lectures coming from George.

After that very instance, I decided to give him a simple support in the form of curt instructions.

“JoJo,” I muttered while we were retreating by our rooms, the young man that had been looking fairly distressed by the event but was still willing to look up at me. “Next time, I wish for you to follow these little directions. If you do this… your father will not chide you.”

The dinner that came to conclude that first day at the mansion proved to be less annoying as the only irritating bits were the mere bantering between father and son.

For being someone that was trying his best to promote friendship and some ‘equality’, the older Joestar sure knew how to make some poor boy feel even poorer by lightly musing over the ‘sad thoughts’ he had over the men living in the Rookeries.

Little slums that were a thing in London, nasty places where sanity didn’t exist and… where young boys were forced to accept back-breaking jobs to support their own families, the fiscal weight being far beyond what a miser wage could sustain alone.

What was really infuriating about this was the blatant connection between this topic and me, the way he was so subtly trying to hide the fact that I was here to give him a reason to say around the other nobles about his ‘genuine’ support for the needy.

And even though I was aware that the reason that got him to accept me in his ‘humble home’ was actually a legitimate sense of justice for Dio’s father saving him and his son, that didn’t exactly mean he was also restrained from flaunting such development to the elite.

I didn’t blame him, the era I was currently living on promoting the ‘survival of the fittest’ and every detail or opportunity had to be exploited to the maximum effort.

But to actually not mind it? That was a completely different thought.

I could see why Dio disliked George, why he would be quite inclined to kill him the quickest time possible and why his anger was so intense against JoJo.

By seeing how the father behaved around with people with his half-snobbish behavior, the blond couldn’t help but seek retribution by targeting aggressively his son and thus, by proxy, attacking George right where his wealth and clout couldn’t cover.

His faulty capacity to deal with his own family.

By having him admonish his own son, the old Joestar would find a constant enemy at one, someone that nothing couldn’t stop but his own thoughts.

Himself and his grave duties as a British nobleman in 19th century draining out much-needed time to groom his heir in a fine and proper gentleman.

But with me now replacing Dio, I was granted the chance of trying a completely different approach, something that wasn’t born out of spite and actually would serve well in my future plans.

With Jonathan starting to latch onto me for help, for him slowly realize that I had answers to questions he didn’t know to have, I was trying my best to not only create a possible powerful ally to have here in London, but also someone that wouldn’t definitively hunt me if I decided to try the Stone Mask.

If he doesn’t suffer a tragic event, like the murder of his father, his chances of developing Hamon would be nigh-impossible.

Yes, the Hamon, or the Ripple, was still a frightening concept that gave me some issues over the contingencies I could adopt against it.

I knew the weaknesses, I also had an inkling of his true extent… but I was unsure what to do about it.

Training would be interesting, but I was presented with a simple dilemma that could have seriously tampered with any attempt.

While young Dio did have the ‘tragic event’ in the form of his mother’s death that ended up ‘refining his willpower’ into becoming the greatest possible, I wasn’t someone with such predisposition.

Would I still have a chance of practicing the mystical art?

It was something I couldn’t certainly try without harming myself, the skill requiring a proper mental and physical preparation to keep up a certain degree of breathing which was best known to be acquired through meditation.

Yet I decided to go with an unorthodox but seemingly better method, especially with the opportunity granted me by JoJo himself.

When he first referenced the small section of river near the mansion, I had thought of it as an excellent place where to read any important tome alone and in relative peace, but then I ended up thinking of an interesting idea over the river itself.

By the third day of my stay at the mansion, I finally decided to take his offer to visit the local river and… play around.

As a young Dio Brando, my body was incredibly slim, if not frail compared to the healthy appearance of Jonathan’s, something that was best highlighted when we decided to go for a swim.

The swimwear was actually pretty awkward, the little half-sleeved suit proving to be incredibly uncomfortable to use around and it offered little defense against the cold but peaceful stream of this small river.

JoJo was elated when I offered him some swimming lessons, something else to do instead of waddling around with Danny and maybe learn something important that could help him in any accident.

The ‘drowning’ episode seemingly urging him to try and master swimming to the fullest, thus making my offer the most enticing possible for this desire of his.

The first day was… interesting.

Since he knew how to stay afloat and knew the basis behind the Front Crawl, I decided to give him some minor clues how to perfect his current capacity with the freestyle before giving him the first instructions to try Backstroke.

It was a mirthful experience that was augmented by the presence of the Great Dane, Danny joining those sessions without being too much of a pest.

The playful pup keeping himself from interrupting the boy as he went through some important tasks, but would jump in action to try and get some attention from the two of us when we were done with our respective training.

Of course these sessions were supposed to happen under my supervision and there was no budging from that very position.

I had to pester the Joestar intensively over this very detail as I certainly didn’t want to be responsible for killing the heir of a wealthy nobleman because I was too reckless over the safety for this simple swimming lessons.

The river itself, even though calm most of the time, has already been known to have turned dangerous during rainy days and I didn’t want for Jonathan to stupidly walk into his early grave.

Funny to consider that I, Dio, would have to keep a careful watch over the dark-haired boy to avoid his premature death.

Kind of ironic.

Still, despite the little progress accomplished with JoJo, I was more than relieved when my own body responded well to three days of swimming in that cold river.

I was still shivering, but I could start to grow more accustomed to the size of my limbs and my weaker stamina, this last bit slowly increasing each sessions as I focused more and more about it.

My lungs were starting to improve under the careful strain, but my journey to even start to aspire for some Hamon ability was sure a far one considering the high requirements imposed by such a helpful skill.

It was also curious that, while I would always make sure that we were alone during those moments, I could distinctly feel like if someone was spying on us.

I couldn’t perceive any malicious intent and… yet the intense staring was starting to get me on edge at how repetitive this occurrence was.

By the second session I had also given a thorough look of the surroundings of the area we were using for the swimming training, but the mysterious figure either disappeared much before or didn’t even exist to begin with.

Confusing, suspicious and incredibly annoying as I didn’t want to deal with any of the little bullies lingering around that were stealing from those few individuals wandering by the nearby bridge.

Still, I finally managed to get some much-needed rest by the fifth day as we weren’t allowed to leave the warm walls of the mansion.

When morning struck there was a loud and foggy rain persevering over these lands and George, albeit interested in this new hobby taken by both his son and me, was rightfully concerned over the possibility of seeing one of us, or both, fall ill if we even decided to spend wandering under this rainy day.

So we were both forced to spend the day indoors, with JoJo deciding to spend most of the day after lunch continuing to train with Math problems and Literature constructs from Shakespeare on his own, and thus leaving me to do whatever I wanted for the rest of the day… until dinner.

This little window of opportunity was important for my current thoughts as I finally decided to consider what I could do to improve my current fighting capacity.

I needed to have a proper mean to defend myself, especially if one of my first objectives once we were allowed to leave for London was to explore Ogre Street and see what Wang Chan was selling in his shop other than rare poisons.

For some reason, I felt like the content of that emporium, ignoring the cursed and dangerous trinkets lying there for unfortunate clients to buy, still had some interesting objects that I could use in my little rise to the greatest pedestal.

Lying on my new bed, my sore back enjoying the pleasant sensation offered by the comfy mattress and pillows, I started to think endlessly over what I was really trying to accomplish here with my mission.

Conquering the world? That was a must considering the opportunities granted by the circumstance… but why was I truly trying to attain something this high?

Why not stop to a lower step-

No, I couldn’t even think of besmirching the essential chances of dominating the politics, the minds of this reckless world.

Was it a dormant desire of this body? Was I influenced by the fact I was now Dio Brando?

No, it was more. It had to be more.

Beyond my JoJo’s knowledge, I was also aware of the world as a whole, about the World Wars, about the horrible war crimes committed by corrupt or insane dictators and politicians; the dreadful deaths caused by the greedy desires of fools deigned with some unfair clout over some major landmasses.

Was I dreaming about world-peace?

Can I stomach the costs of such horrible burden, to become the monster for some and the God for others?

The question itself proved to be without answers- no, it was the very query which I had the answer but for some reason not even in my thoughts I could grant.

I felt numb as I quietly stared at the ceiling of this room of mine, but not tired enough to contemplate any possible rest as things were right now.

I was restless and… bored.

I needed to do something instead of losing my minds in those thoughts, to aspire to something a little more important and unquestionable.

I needed something simple but… essential.

Standing up from the mattress, my back already aching a little at being moved out of the pleasant texture of the pure white sheets, my orange-eyed stare was soon fixed on the lone pen put there on my little wooden desk.

I blinked, thinking about the chances of writing something or maybe even draw something out of my currently-dull mind

To what sense and to what purpose?

I felt clueless over any possible activities and then… I had the little pen on my fingers.

It was clean, no ink loaded in it as I slowly twisted and turned the tiny object around… and around.

For some reason the mindless act was mesmerizing, something that caught my attention in that endless spinning and-

I blinked, something curious finally clicking in my mind and I stopped the pen just for a moment, my eyes widening as I started to swiftly elaborate what I could try to accomplish with this little suggestion born from curiosity and intrigue.

Would it work? This trick was, after all, conceived by Araki as a replacement to Hamon, a reference to it and… what if?

I hummed quietly, my eyes scanning over the surface of the elaborate pen and… I had my fingers over a spherical detail on its design.

Detaching it proved to be fairly easy and I was granted a little specimen to try and use for this little experiment of mine, something that could easily fail but… technically I had no reason to not give it a try.

But before I give it a first try, I decided to give myself a little advantage by trying to get the representation of what I was trying to achieve down on paper.

Drawing something that required that much precision with just a piece of paper and old ink pen, without rulers or other precision tools, took me almost an hour of constant failing to ultimately obtain and… this wasn’t even the real first step.

With a calm breath, I slowly began spinning the sphere on my palm and… nothing was happening during the first two hours of constant trying.

I wasn’t actively pursuing anything out of it, the Spin being something that was far more confusing and complicated to obtain during the first few times.

It wasn’t Hamon, it wasn’t born out of something truly mystical, but by the rules of science applied in a bizarre method of capacity.

The Spin was the creation of energy through rotation to a degree close to the Golden Rectangle, the culmination being the Golden Spin.

The complex nature of mastering such ability was… actually worth of facing against as the results it would yield would immensely improve my chances of success.

The Golden Spin not only granted the ability of using the infinite energy gained from the perfect rotation, but it also materialized the user’s stands, if not evolving it if there was one already within the user.

So, despite the multiple failures registered until dinner, this little activity became an interesting one to try out during the next two days, the rain lasting for that much and… it finally happened.

By the seventh day spent here at the Joestar Mansion, I, Dio, managed to finally gain my own mean to defend myself against any foe that wished for my demise.

The little steel sphere I had recovered from the pen was spinning and… emitting some little light.

Like a barrier, it was coating the proximity of it, portraying the might held within such a simple activity while the object kept with its rotation.

I slowly moved out of the chair, the Spin energy maintaining its hovering state over my open palms as I made my way by the window and I carefully pried open the little piece of glass.

The rain had softened its banging just now, only a few drops of water continuing with its natural fall but the sight was clear as I glanced at the three growing just outside my room.

The steel ball seemed unfazed by my maneuvering and it properly slipped away from my palms and onto my right index and middle fingers as I took aim at one of the numerous tree branches onto said tree.

There was no one around to see this scene and I carefully glanced at the target with accuracy and-

Before I could finish with the preparations, I felt the sphere blast away from my fingertips, causing a little cut on my index finger, flying straight towards the tree.

I had taken too much time admiring the complex nature of such phenomenon to actually consider the need of stabilizing its form with more spinning, but my surprise turned in dreadful shock when I noticed where it was directed towards.

It wasn’t the branch I was aiming for, no, it was the little section of the three from which the branches were coming from.

The powerful attack slammed onto the upper area of the trunk, wooden splinters exploding from the impact as a brief smokeless explosion tore onto two of the branches’ connection, forcing them to come down to the cold and muddy ground below.

My jaws dropped at the sight, my mind going blank for just a moment as I realized that… the steel ball had been a small one.

It’s diameter was more or less 2mm and… that was the damage I had achieved with such a tiny sphere?!

I closed the window, my stunned expression persisting even after I had calmly returned to lie onto my bed and… I blinked twice.

What I just saw was… powerful- no, overpowered considering the current degree of danger I was now facing.

There were no Zombies, no Vampires and no Stands just yet, I was facing mere humans.

I… I think I made a positive mistake, a mistake for… the best.

Was it even possible? To make a good mistake?

My lips twitched, a mirthful noise groaning in my throat and I quickly had my hand pressing on my lips.

It was a fruitless effort, my lips parting as a muffled chuckle started to turn in a full-blown laugh.

I- I managed to do something that immense and… so little.

I, Dio, was now capable of defending myself!

This realization kept me amused for some few more minutes and then my mind decided to ruin my fun by reminding me of two distinct issues:

1) I could have exploded if I hadn’t the ball by my fingertips, the sphere would have propelled upwards and… into my face if I hadn’t moved quickly;

2) My aim had been completely off my a large margin, the section damage way too far from where I was trying to hit.

Even with these rightful thoughts that were pointing out the flaws of my first ‘successful’ attempt, I had also to consider that I was way behind Johnny when he achieved the Spin for the first time.

He had spent just a day to get it going and… mastering it was going to take much more than just a handful of days.

I didn’t have a Stand that worked with this specific kind of powers, nor I expected to be able to achieve such a degree of compatibility with the Spin.

But despite that, a certain content smile managed to almost appear even during dinner, my concentration over my current expressions faltering for a moment at the mere mentioning in my brain over what had just happened.

JoJo noticed the smile, I could see some surprise in his face, while his father merely nodded at himself, smiling as he went through his own share of the food.

A week has passed since Dio has arrived to the Joestar Mansion, his role now of a guide than an invader, of a guardian than a mockingbird.

But tomorrow is a new day and George Joestar has planned to visit London for that very morning, unaware that his son and Dio will have to face quite the interesting encounters…

With good people and terrible enemies.

-To be continued…

Chapter Text

Capitolo Primo: Giovinezza (3)

When George announced that today we were all going for a brief trip in central London, I felt incredibly nervous and confused over the sudden decision.

While I could understand the need of someone of his standing having to visit regularly the capital for whatever tasks would require his own presence, I was quite perplexed by the necessity of having both me and JoJo to join him in this endeavor.

I could see why Jonathan needed to go as he was his heir, but I was a completely unimportant element for any instances requiring the Joestar Family out of their home as I didn’t truly matter in the big chessboard of nobility.

But maybe I was looking at this predicament from a far too cynical and logical scheme, ignoring that JoJo’s father was also a parent with a hint of friendliness to everyone that was little and innocent, just like ‘I was’. Even if I was close to achieve fourteen years old.

Albeit awkward, I wouldn’t deny this kind of reasoning as it was the closest to give me a proper insight upon this situation I was forced to deal with.

Donning my ‘good clothes’ and a little hat that the man had decided to gift me earlier that day, we were all quick to enter the carriage set to reach London, Jonathan and I picking one of the sides while his father was seated in front of us.

Once again my nose was greeted with the pungent scent of mud, musk and the humidity created by the last few days of rain, giving me a sense of annoyance over the state of transports for this time period.

Cars technically existed, but these were mostly prototypes and, while I would lose myself over whom was the true inventor of the modern vehicle, I was certainly sure that it would take at best another decade or two to see a functioning car around in England.

So there wasn’t any hope to avoid the unpleasant sensations of these necessary trips, finding this development to be as saddening as interesting.

My mind was quick to consider ‘doing something about it’, but then again I didn’t have the ‘means’ to just convince people I just ‘stumbled over those theories’.

Yes, theories. The construction of a proper car needed some basis over the engine, the chassis, the handling and other minor elements that would take me too long to describe, each needing various formulas to make intellectuals understand where I was going with it.

And while I was unquestionably Dio, I wasn’t a glorified Wikipedia with a solution to everything and I was also lacked of the proper charisma to ‘hypnotize’ my public without getting some unneeded questions from them.

This little pondering added with the greater conversation I entertained in my mind, trying to give the least interactions with both JoJo and George as to not show how much irked I was of my current predicament.

It was the Spin that got me from not going insane in this very unique situation, my mind granting me the silence of thought to start and consider what I could do with this new ability.

Not much with what I currently knew about the world around me, maybe the trip could offer the opportunity to have me wandering in one of the various libraries in the city and see if I could recover some books about humans’ and animals’ anatomy, at least a base version to get me started over the full potential of the Spin.

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the original purpose of the skill was to maim people, the first users being war-knights from medieval ages, but it would be a massive misunderstanding to limit its real prowess to just aggressive attacking.

Gregorio Zeppeli had been the prime example of medic capable of using medicine in conjunction with the Spin as a mean to guarantee a peaceful demise for the death row prisoners that needed to be executed.

A brutal usage of the energy, but that didn’t certainly denied the possibility of using it actually to heal people.

It was a crude consideration with the lack of proper study from my part; a mere theory born from curiosity and ingenuity from the first approach at the unique skill, but given time and some effort over it, I was sure going to get around the means to use the energy created by the Spin for such important topics.

Yet the Spin wasn’t my only priority. Hamon was still something I needed to somehow gain control of, the capacity offered by the ‘original’ ability would grant me the opportunity to not only heal myself and others, but also boost my overall physical capacities.

That is ignoring the already beneficial increase of my lifespan if I continued to train rigorously with the Ripple.

Still, without proper instructions, the only thing I could achieve right now is a control over my breath, over my lungs, and I would require a teacher to give me the proper means to achieve the rest of the requirements to unlock the real deal.

But how was I supposed to find a teacher here in England? Tompetty and his apprentices were still in India as of now and… they would only come here if a report of the Stone Mask was ever to reach them.

An incredible dilemma that was sadly and abruptly interrupted in that very moment while I was lost in my thoughts.

“Dio,” George spoke with a curious tone, his blue eyes were displaying little intrigue over my lack of reaction to the discussion he had been enjoying with his son, even JoJo looking interested at me. “Is there something that worries you?”

That was a pretty direct question coming from him, incredibly blunt and enough to garner a surprised look by orange eyes.

“I was just thinking about London,” I said, shuffling nervously as I tried my best to shift my ‘nervousness’ over to the first time in the city. I couldn’t certainly deny my uneasiness, thus I merely ‘turned it’ in some ‘childish excitement’. “I’ve never visited the central districts.”

“Truly? Your father never-”

“J-Jojo!” The older Joestar chided with a light stutter, seemingly stunned by his son’s blunt attempt to inquire over the matter. “You know better than bringing up this kind of subjects!”

There was a brief moment of silence, a wide-eyed Jonathan looking mortified and embarrassed by this restrained outburst, then he stared at his feet and blinked with a saddened look in his eyes.

“It’s alright,” I stated with a calm but not completely unfazed tone. “I think I can stomach hearing about my father. I shouldn’t be tied down to the past and stop because of a… mentioning.”

I couldn’t certainly look disinterested by the memory of Dario Brando, despite the ‘deserved’ demise of the man, everyone still knew that it had been an illness that took the ‘good fellow’ out of his misery.

I nodded, gaining a surprised but worried look from George, the man ultimately sighing before I continued.

“The reason why I never visited was because I spent most of the time nearby home while father was out working,” I decided to answer with a slightly more normal tone, still hinting at some uneasiness at discussing about this with my careful voice. “At first it was to help mother, then when she… passed away, I had to take on the various chores while father wasn’t there.”

“If I remember correctly, there was a time when… your father wasn’t capable of working before he passed away,” George threaded carefully with this specific query. “I hope the good man had saved some money to help you while he was stuck in bed.”

I actually blinked at that, not because I was trying to imagine the ugly mug of that bastard as he lied on his deathbed, but because I thought about a very curious question about it.

If Dario had been spending most of the money in booze, how did Dio secure enough coin to buy some poison from Wang Chan when-

I blinked again, actually forcing myself to appear relaxed as I leaned back on the stiff pillow of the carriage. “Father had some money saved up. It was enough to keep up even after his passing.”

There was in fact some money within the baggage that I had when I woke up a week ago, just enough to keep me fed for three days of small eating, but it was still considerable considering the heavy-spending in alcohol imposed by the now-deceased Dario Brando.

But still not enough to mention the buying of some poison from the Asian shop-keeper.

I had a theory and, while the two Joestars accepted the end of such conversation in an awkward tone, I deemed it fit to contemplate in that very moment about this very peculiarity.

The poison hadn’t been bought by coin or favors, no… it had been sympathy.

I had forgotten until now that Wang Chan didn’t follow Dio out of awe or for the boy’s charisma, but rather the similarity to a ‘horrible man’ he had met back in China.

Someone that lived a harsh life, but managed up until 183 years of existence.

A malicious individual, I certainly needed to find where the fool kept his little lair, where he was keeping his more important objects and hopefully kill him before he could poise a problem for my plans.

I wasn’t certainly letting someone as slimy as the man avoid some proper ‘justice’, or better- some proper ‘retribution’ for his own evil nature.

Pondering over this subject also brought up some interesting concepts I had ignored up until now, the most important being the fact I should technically be able to enter Ogre Street.

Albeit it’s been a week since I’ve moved in with the Joestars, however Dio managed to be considered worth of no issues in that distraught piece of the capital, I should still be able to have a ‘safe’ access to it.

I just needed time and some more trust from George before trying to give it a lone exploration.

After spending so much time alone with my own thoughts, I was granted some relief in the form of the carriage coming to a halt and… we were here.

The old Joestar was the first one to leave, leading both me and JoJo out to see the less-advanced version of…

I blinked as I took a moment to admire the familiar building visible from the distance, realizing that we were in Westminster, precisely on the road of Whitehall.

Having studied intensively the English Parliament back home, I was familiar with the general area of Central London, but to be this close to the place where the main branch of the government was set, I couldn’t help but partially muse over the politicians currently sitting there.

It was 1881, so it had to be… the second Gladstone cabinet’s era.

Very interesting, this was the first time I pondered over the politics of where I was since I came here.

Why is it important? Well, let’s just say that what ensued from leaving the carriage could be considered as connection to the national government as George’s destination was the Colonial Office.

It was odd as a place to for him to visit as I was fairly sure that the Joestar family didn’t have any major ranks attached to politics, only with trade, but then I connected this to the fact that the British Empire’s trade was regulated by that specific branch of the government and… I wasn’t allowed to visit its insides.

Jojo’s father was keen to point out that the place was meant for ‘children’ and that his duty required him and only him, thus bringing anyone else would bring no little issue over the formal request he had planned to get through with.

Something about South Africa, the various colonies with base at Cape Town still far from being a sole entity in the rising years of the British’s colonial empire.

But that didn’t matter much for me right now, especially since I was deprived of the chance of seeing some of the historical figures working in this major building and… it wasn’t only about the Colonial Office.

This headquarters was also the site where India Office, the Home Office and the Foreign Office have been all instated, so that made the place even more an endearing place to visit and look around in.

Sadly, this opportunity was killed before it could have been requested to the man, thus leaving both me and JoJo to stay by the carriage while he went to deal with this arduous bureaucratic mess for his next work.

We were allowed to stay outside of the vehicle, but we were bluntly ordered to not wander away from the proximity of the carriage itself.

A little annoying, but considering the state of London right now, I wasn’t going to mind to wait for a better opportunity to buy some books.

Considering the fact he had brought JoJo for the occasion even though he wasn’t meant to be there with him, that didn’t exactly mean George hadn’t planned to do something else for the both of us.

Not only to make it worth for Jonathan, but to also see what kind of objects I could seriously take into consideration as ‘gifts’.

But while I was keen to keep myself from breaking the simple but terribly-limiting rules, my dark-haired and naive peer was completely irritated by the waiting time that was meant to pass for his father to return.

Even though he was a nobleman, George wasn’t someone with a connection with politics and it was correct to say that he wouldn’t be returning any moment before two to three hours from that instance.

Which then sparked even more boredom-induced annoyance from the young Joestar, causing me to start to regret having directly refused to join this slow torture.

I was fine with the waiting, that was something I had already said more than enough, but Glorious Heavens I was starting to regret the whining coming from Jonathan.

It was an unpleasant puppy-like whining that persisted even when the boy decided to retreat back inside the carriage, deciding to try and rest considering the long time needed to see his father return, and leaving me alone outside to… do nothing in particular.

Actually part of me had wanted to enter inside the carriage too, maybe defusing JoJo’s irritating comments by presenting him with some simple game like Rock, Paper and Scissors, maybe something else and… I stopped when I heard a loud noise coming from my proximity.

It was a loud thud, something muffled by a door, this one left half-open and… I glanced momentarily up to the banner above the entrance.

‘Oriental Mysteries and Tomes’

I blinked confusedly at the words, confused by the fact something like this… shop existed in this important part of the city.

Since when the government allowed this kind of situations to exist, especially with how harsh some of the rules currently were with non-British people?

I finally looked inside and… I froze when I saw quite the big knife resting onto the wooden counter of the shop, the owner of such blade engaging in a furious spiel directed at the calm shop-keeper looking at him.

The owner of this establishment had a tanned skin, a few wrinkles on his face and… he looked incredibly familiar with his exotic clothes.

In fact, it looked like someone… I knew about from the series.

Still, despite the curious development, I didn’t certainly try to step inside the building that was the current scene of a robbery.

Keeping myself close to the carriage as I looked at the unfolding of the situation from afar, while also thinking about trying to find any police officer nearby.

Sadly, this very thought was dashed when I looked around and there were just too many people by the Whitehall headquarters for the guards standing there to notice the situation that was happening just nearby.

The nervousness of the robber seemed to turn into anger, the partially-visible face of the younger man sporting some furious red as he started to raise his voice with the shop-owner, the Indian man seemingly unfazed by this outburst and… proceeded to display quite the unexpected conclusion to this sight.

The foreigner lifted his hand over the knife’s hilt with shocking speed, touching it with the his index fingertip and… I could see the tip glowing.

It was faint, but the effect was so surreal that it was a clear explanation of the subsequent blade being flung so suddenly away from the counter and away from sight, deeper in the shop.

Leaving the robber defenseless to deal with the stronger-looking man in front of him, the British man paling at the scene as his anger was replaced by shock and fear.

No more words were muttered, the criminal turned tail and rushed outside from the shop, barely noticing my presence outside as he ran the fastest his legs could allow him too and… leaving me to face quite the odd aftermath.

Once the robber had left my proximity and my sight, I slowly returned to stare at the shop-keeper and… the owner was looking back at me with a calm expression.

I felt a shivers, maybe two, going down my spine as I returned the glance with a surprised and perplexed look, feeling almost compelled to take steps inside the shop, mesmerized by the very possible solution to my current main issues.

The energy he used, the yellow-like glow, it had to be it. It had to be Hamon.

I gulped nervously, despite my best efforts to keep calm while entering inside the building, my own mind had little means to defend against the piercing look displayed by the Indian man, my orange eyes fixed on his own orbs and… I stopped by the counter.

“Do you wish to buy something?” The deep voice coming from the owner asked, getting me out from that hypnotic step and back to reality.

I didn’t reply at his question at first, frowning at him with a suspicious look.

“What did you use to… move that knife?” I asked carefully, trying my best to keep my queries curt and cautious enough to-

“My fingers.”

The reply partially stunned me on the spot, my eyes widening as I felt tricked by the stone-looking expression on his face.

“That… glow was only your fingers?”

“Yes,” He commented quietly. “Do you have any other questions?”

He was testing me. There was no way in Unholy Hell that this wasn’t just a test to gauge my interest with the way he was ‘joking around the matter’, maybe to evaluate what kind of moral code I was abiding before reacting.

But what was the solution of such general exam? What kind of answers was he seeking from me?

I blinked, looking up again from my thoughts and back to him. “What if I have an ability similar to yours?”

It was mostly a lie, but I didn’t need to make it look like I had Hamon, only that I had my own ‘special’ skill to display.

Curiosity glinted from his eyes, but he didn’t reply at this, letting some moments of quiet passing before I decided that words were no longer needed.

Slowly I pulled a small steel sphere I had recovered earlier that day from another pen in my room, a mean to use the Spin in case of self-defense or… to display such an ability to this man.

At this point, there was no doubt about it, my certainty to display this little secret born out from more than a mere suspicion, I was in fact looking at someone that closely resembled Tonpetty, the Tibetan Monk that was teaching Zeppeli, Straizo and Dire.

Another Hamon-user monk? Considering the decades-old close contacts the British Empire had with Tibet, I wouldn’t be surprised if one or more monks had decided to leave their country to search more disciples.

Without wasting too much time over my thoughts, I finally started to spin the little sphere and, after just a minute or two, the energy was indeed forming around the little steel object, this time my attention mostly directed at the phenomenon to not cause any unnecessary explosive reaction at this demonstration.

Much to my delight, I managed to subdue the spinning quickly enough to avoid any dangerous escalations, ready to see his surprise at such situation and-

I blinked at the hand the Indian man was holding up, the open palm was tense as yellow electricity seemed to be coursing around his fingertips, a certain mysterious golden aura coating the entire hand.

“It’s not the Ripple,” He mused loudly enough for me to hear, his thoughts dripping out as he noticed my staring. “What’s the name of that technique, young man?”

His voice displayed some intrigue, enough to get me stunned by the unexpected voice before I finally delivered a quick answer.

“I-It’s called the Spin,” I replied half-surprised. “I-I learned about this from a tome my father brought from his f-family in Italy.”

A half-lie, something mixed between the lie of the Spin being a Brando’s family secret but also honest when saying it was from Italy.

If the man had been convinced or not, he didn’t give any sign of it as he was already going forward with his inquiry.

“And you wish to learn about my own technique, the Ripple,” He mentioned with an interested look on his face. “Even though you have this ‘Spin’?”

I blinked, I could see the ambush he was lying here for me, yet I was already prepared to deal with this.

“I-It’s ineffective, it requires a sphere and the time and precision needed to finalize even the basic use is-”

“The Ripple is dangerous if the user isn’t capable of keeping up with the training regiment for the rest of his life,” The foreigner quickly interjected. “You ask from me to give trust, yet I can see resemblances of multiple masks, each with familiar yet different names.”

I tensed up at this final comment, terrified by the possibility that, somehow, the Ripple was capable of reading thoughts away from the man’s physical reach.

It was nigh-impossible to believe such a feat, yet… I was also aware that Caesar did use the Hamon to manipulate a living being to attack Joseph, so maybe it wasn’t truly far-fetched as an idea.

Then… was he aware of my circumstances? Not yet, or at least not at the fullest from the lack of shock considering my unique predicament.

But what was I supposed to do from this point? If he knew even a sliver of what I was made of, what I planned to do , then what hope did I have to actually leave that discussion with a satisfactory result?

…

No.

I sighed, my eyes and face steeling altogether before the intrigued man and I prepared myself for what I had to do.

“I wish to conquer the Heavens, to become one with divinity,” I proclaimed with a serious voice, my soul rocking in chorus with my determination. “For I believe myself the harbinger of true peace and justice in this world.”

There was silence, the shop-keeper looked uncaring at my words.

“I don’t care at this point if you will accept my genuine offer of friendship or not,” I continued without hesitation. “But if you wish to waste my time by playing the fool, then do so without me in your proximity.”

ゴ
ゴ
ゴ
ゴ

More silence, yet this time the man leaned on the counter and… smiled.

“This… was an honest reply,” He judged with a nod, seemingly pleased by the development while he ignored my irritated expression now deepening even more. “Despite the immense task you are trying to burden yourself with, I fail to see any malicious intent, nor I see… any outstanding good in you.”

What was he talking about?

I was half-tempted to speak out once again about this maddening cryptic tone, yet he beat me by speaking once again.

“You wish to bring novelty, to bring prosperity but it’s not out of good from your heart, nor greed or any important driving force that got many great men and women to go through their obstacles,” He commented with a growing sense of elation. “You- You have a certain light within you, something that is not at the service of good nor you are succumbing to evil.”

He paused again, this time his eyes narrowing intensively at me.

“What are you, Dio Brando?”

ゴ
ゴ
ゴ
ゴ

I should have tensed, I should have submitted at the pressure, far greater than anything I’ve ever felt… but my body didn’t bent nor broke before it.

I felt standing strong, I felt my heart drumming right onto my ears as I continued to return the stare with the same intensity.

Was this the determination that made the Joestar family so strong against the adversities, was this what is driving me right now?

For I, Dio, was finding an excellent fire within this to spark my unwavering strength and willpower!

“I am the one that will bring true change to this world,” I affirmed with undeniable might in my words, giving emphasis to each syllables and enforcing my will onto my voice. “I am Dio.”

The silent staring returned for some more moments, the man staring mirthfully at me as his lips twitched upwards while increasing the wide of his current smile.

“You… you are indeed Dio, young man,” He admitted without hesitation, almost relieved by this. Before he could continued, his left hand wandered down below his side of the counter and… then brought up a large book.

It was old, there were strings of leather keeping it shut close and… I couldn’t help but stare at the curious inner warmth born from merely staring at this tome.

It was a nice kind of warmth, it was one that promised me hopes of success and… self-realization.

“You will do as my new apprentice, Dio Brando,” The shop-keeper announced with a calm tone. “Your mission of peace and justice… shall make my efforts spent teaching you worth if not more.”

I approached the book, the man now offering it with a certain urgency and I took it quickly in my palms.

It was heavy, quite the burden for my young arms but I was still well-capable of holding it close to my chest.

“There will be numerous obstacles, as many as possible to make the final reward as just as possible for you and I will watch over your growth from now on,” He stated resolutely. “Continue down this road, young man, I wish to see you succeed in this great road to a brighter world.”

I felt… endeared by the positive words, making me nod back at the man as I found myself smiling at this.

“I- I will do this, I will achieve the ultimate success!”

A final smile appeared on his face, the man already gesturing me to leave the shop as I turned around and reached back to the entrance.

I stopped for a moment, my head turning to look at him one last time.

“What is your name, teacher?” I asked quietly, feeling a little drained from this bizarre encounter. “How should I refer you as?”

The smile slightly faded and he sighed. “My name, young man, is… Muddiburi.”

I nodded as the door closed behind me, my head spinning right back to the carriage as I slowly made my way inside and… entered it, glad to find a sleeping Jonathan as my first sight inside.

With a soft hum building up, I slowly placed the tome behind the little back-pillow that I had to use for the way of return from this trip, hopefully going to happen quite quickly once JoJo was done with buying his own stuff.

Staring at the sleeping JoJo, I couldn’t help but let myself rest for a while, knowing that it would take some more time to see George return to the c arriage.

And for some reason, my dreams were ruled by a dominant factor. It was a sphere spinning so quickly and brightly, but… it was immaterial and it was… heavenly to look at.

But while Dio was convinced that this day had been turned memorable by this encounter, Fate had long set the first few obstacles before his journey, some familiar… others not.

Sometimes your worst enemy is the one stuck at your same class.

-To be continued…

Chapter Text

Capitolo Primo: Giovinezza (4)

I was already starting to get tired after spending these hours to rest in that uncomfortable seat.

Waking up just in time to notice George boarding the carriage, I blinked swiftly as I gave a nod to the man while he took his previous seat in the vehicle.

The nobleman gave a little smile as I carefully moved to shake Jojo off from his own sleep.

The young man was snoring fairly loudly, but seemed to react accordingly as I grasped his arm and carefully pulled at it as he almost jumped in surprise, blue eyes going wide open as he realized what was going on.

“F-Father, I-” He bowed his head, a little embarrassed at being caught in such a manner. “I’m sorry.”

George merely smiled and nodded.

“There is nothing wrong in catching some rest considering the long time you both had to wait,” He said with a calm tone.

The boy adjusted himself on his little seat, nodding thankful about those words as the carriage began to move, horses neighing as they started to pull the vehicle out of the important street and back inside the maze of streets that was Central London.

I blinked away from Jonathan and back to George as I felt particularly curious about his trip at the Colonial Office, my mind drawing multiple possible trade routes that the man could have drawn from that visit.

“Lord Joestar, I hope your efforts resulted in a success,” I began to say with a polite tone, knowing well-enough to not blurt anything that could ruin the current respectful image I was trying to built for myself to the man’s eyes.

The noble blinked in what looked to be a sign of being caught off-guard by my words, possibly surprised by the partial interest I was showing over the particularly-’boring’ subject.

“Quite so, Dio. In fact, I can say that it concluded in the best positive outcome,” He mentioned with a hum. “Albeit not every trade points have been recognized as legitimately under the family’s control, we got some of the main sections by Rangoon, just like I had hoped to get.”

Burma? An interesting choice.

The colony within the British Raj had the main purpose as a ‘gate’ between China and India, trade was almost as strong as it was in Calcutta, Bombay and Ceylon.

I nodded. “I’m happy to hear this, then.”

I had hoped for the discussion to die there as I just wanted to give some words before quietly resuming my glancing by the little window near where I was sitting.

Sadly, I had almost forgotten that George wouldn’t certainly waste this opportunity to take a shot at his own son, especially since, as far as I was aware of, Jojo had never displayed any interest in the trading business captained by his father.

“Are you perhaps interested in learning some more about the group I’ve created, Dio?” The man proposed with a hint of genuine eagerness about the possibility. “Given some time and effort, I can see you working as one of the higher officers for the organization.”

Can you truly see me ending up like that?

Accepting such a limiting job because of mercy rather than true merit just felt like he had given me an unplanned punch right onto my stomach.

I was unsure how much ‘naive’ the man truly was about the ‘dignity’ of having a job, mostly because I knew that this very idea wasn’t much known in these years.

The concept of workers having some ‘pride’ over their labors was still far from entering the English mindset and the only ones in Europe that were just aware of it were the Germans after Karl Marx started to preach about it with the Communist Manifesto.

So I merely blinked. “It’s… a flattering offer, Lord Joestar,” I started with a smooth but soft voice. “But if it isn’t too much asking, I would like to have some time to think about it as I don’t feel much comfortable to think about this important decision so… suddenly.”

Once again I decided to rely on the fact I was a ‘simple child’ before the man’s eyes, knowing full well that hesitation and doubts were something entrenched in young mindsets and thus leaving me to weaponize my appearance for such reasonable point.

He nodded kindly, showing some understanding behind my logic.

“It’s not something you need to decide now, and I don’t think you will have to for at least a couple more of years,” The noble assured with a fatherly tone, then glancing at the curious look on Jonathan’s face. “Just like I’ve said to JoJo back when I first brought him to see the Colonial Office.”

The young man nodded in response as to confirm this and I found myself relaxing at this lax pressure over the matter itself.

I didn’t certainly need to be pushed to take a job as restricting as that one, especially if it wasn’t one where I had a large control over things.

I was destined for greatness, but that kind of work, albeit filled with unquestionable benefits for those living in this era, was still too ‘small’ for what I had planned to do with my future.

My future lied out of England, out of the zenith years of the British Empire and elsewhere.

Europe was filled with possibilities, but so was Asia and the Americas. Only time will tell which of the continents would best fit with what I was trying to achieve out of this world.

After just twenty minutes of traveling through London, I was partly surprised as I noticed that the carriage had started to slow down before coming to a full stop.

George looked quite calm about it and Jonathan didn’t hold back his surprise at this unexpected pause, but before he could ask about this situation, it was his father that spoke.

“Since your last trip here in London was two months ago, I think it’s proper for me to leave you do something to spend some time here and enjoy the city,” The noble started to explain to his son, leading out of the carriage and in the street, right in front of…

A park?

“This is why I will let you enjoy some time here with the other boys while I conclude some minor commissions,” He concluded with a small smile, getting happy at seeing the joy growing within Jonathan’s face. “And don’t forget to show Dio around.”

“Thanks father!” The young man replied giddily with a quick nod before literally yanking me away from the street and through the gates of the park, ignoring the signs of discomfort I was showing at being man-handled without any warning.

Still, I managed to restrain myself from berating the eager display of excitement and decided to see where this was going as I couldn’t exactly remember how this was supposed to go.

Was this a new event?

No.

The answer appeared as suddenly as the realization of this familiar scene did, my orange eyes swiftly spotting the familiar river and the small section of the park that was currently occupied by numerous teens of various classes.

They were all looking at at certain triangle-like area where a boxing match was slowly escalating, the two fighters punching each other without any hesitation, nor restrain in what looked to be quite the intense brawl unfolding before some jubilant spectators.

Truly a tragic display that brutal sports, still rudimentary and lacking any of the rules that made them at least ‘non-deadly’ in modern times, seemed to bring everyone together to enjoy some blood flying out of mouths and some teeth-falling.

While the original Dio would have been eager of making use of this event to antagonize JoJo even further than normal, I had no reason to take part in such a blatant display of aggressiveness, at least not until a proper reason that I could capitalize it with.

Thus, while the young Joestar decided to eagerly prepare to bash some heads, something I was fairly sure was going to happen fairly-frequently considering his already above-average frame, I decided to slowly slip out of that section of the park once the young man had entered the fray to enjoy a walk around to think about my next few steps.

This place was meant to be a safe haven for children of all ages and social statuses, so I was pretty much certain that there was no reason to worry for any unpleasant escalation from this moment I was spending alone and at peace.

I delved in a small part of the woods just away from the muddy path that interconnected the various areas to the main entrance, my interest piqued when I slowly came to realize how I could exploit this silence and lack of eyewitnesses to start practicing some more the Spin.

I took a little wood branch that had fallen off from some tree and started to carefully draw the golden rectangle which I was trying to use to obtain the Golden Spin.

I wasn’t arrogant enough to consider achieving such a glorious power in so little time, nor I was so foolish to neglect the opportunity presented in the chance of training some more.

Hamon would have been also a good idea too, but considering how little I had given attention to the newly-acquired book about the Ripple and how I was uneasy from entering a meditative state outdoors and in ‘uncharted territory’.

I merely accepted the idea of keeping Hamon-training outdoors until I had some grasp over basic breathing control.

I started my training session by controlling the spinning of the steel ball I still had with me, my efforts of improving my control over the spin first with both hands and then with a single one proved to be a tiring and long process.

One that was still coming along pretty excellently considering how handling the sphere with only a palm seemed to come to me fairly easier than I had initially expected it to be.

Soon I was moving to some bigger pebbles, instantly taking notice of some issues with the uneven texture of the little stones and why the spherical perfection was a must for the proper usage of the spin.

The first thing I realized from my early attempts was how the previously-circular manipulation of energy seemed to grow unstable as soon as it was started, forcing me to be incredibly mindful of not letting myself distracted while handling the unnatural spinning.

After just ten minutes of trying, I decided to concede myself away from testing this dangerous task as I moved on another detail of the Spin I had yet to verify.

While the ‘main’ purpose of the Spin is to explode, maim or cut anything in its origin’s path, the energy created by it could be easily manipulated to create certain effects on the target of the object if the User is aware of the target’s biology and nature.

In layman’s terms, since I knew well enough about the composition of trees and their ‘natural adjectives’, I decided to try and see what I could do by using the Spin with some variation to the energy-manipulation.

The first thing I decided to test was trying to make some flowers blossom by its trunk, the absurd phenomenon possible thanks to the Spin and not by natural means, thus I decided to think about this very detail before throwing the steel ball and…

It impacted with a calm thud on the body of the tree, creating none of the partly-expected explosion and…

…

Nothing else happened once the sphere fell on the ground.

I approached the specimen, my hand carefully caressing the area where the steel ball had hit and I tried to find at least just an uneven spot in the trunk and…

I blinked, I looked closer at a curious sensation developing from the tree as I glanced by this part, meticulously trying to find the cause of this odd development.

I tensed up, a small smile forming as my orange eyes caught the cause of this strange sensation, a snort leaving my lips as I indeed succeeded in my first attempt.

Why couldn’t I just see it from afar and had to come closer to notice it? It was a little immature flower.

Incredibly tiny, so much that I had to get so close to the trunk to see it.

A success, but one that also confirmed one of my growing concerns over a flaw of my current ability of using the Spin.

I was too detached from the nature of the Spin itself, the ‘full potential’, because of my worry of the sphere exploding in my hands.

My second attempt was a little more ‘brazen’ considering that I focused to spin the ball of steel some more before throwing it against the tree and… this time something more happened.

A blossomed daisy popping resolutely and suddenly from the bark of the tree, this time my smile widening at the better result.

I continued with my experiments for twenty minutes, maybe thirty, before deciding that it was time to return back to where JoJo was before getting in trouble about my unexpected disappearance.

Just as I returned back on the tracks, I found myself stopping at a strange loud voice giving a pained yell, the noise forcing me to snap my attention away from my steps back to where Jonathan was and… a little deeper in the park.

My guard mustered up and my left arm already grasping the steel ball softly lying within my jacket’s pocket, I slowly walked to see what was happening and whom had throw that cry for help.

A robber? It was broad daylight, what were they expecting to do by attacking someone in a well-guarded park.

Still, it was fairly deep and away from the listening ears of any officer garrisoning the entrance of the place and maybe this wasn’t… a robbery at all.

My suspicions were weak, but then I spotted a glaring clue of what I was going to face if I proceeded down that path to see who was being attacked.

There was an uneven line of blood trailing on the floor, away from the tracks and deep in the foliage.

I was forced me to turn and approach carefully as I felt I was getting closer to the criminal deed happening nearby.

I could have gotten out to find some of the guards and send them there, I could have avoided putting myself on the front of a surely-dangerous ordeal but… the blood was enough to drive me to intervene considering how deadly this predicament looked to be.

I wandered through the bushes with the intention of doing whatever I could to stop any aggressor, I was so certain of my bravery about the matter and… then I found myself paling at the scene I was introduced to.

The woman was alive, she was leaning on some tree while she continued to try begging her attacker to stop with his murderous intentions.

She had long black hair that reached down below her shoulders but just above her lower back, those were left untied and free. Her clothes were actually quite ‘freer’ than the conservative standard.

She was donning a frilly white dress, its skirt reaching just below her knees while her upper body was mostly covered… leaving only a particularly noticeable opening that gave a proper sight over her cleavage.

A prostitute.

“P-Please- No! I-I don’t want to die!”

But the dark-haired man seemed to mind little about the cries of mercy, his posture showing relaxation and eagerness to commit to the final act.

“Shhh-” He had his free index pressing by his lips as to emphasize his order, causing the scantly-dressed woman to whimper at his calm posture in such a dreadful display. “Can’t have to deal with some unneeded distractions now. I just want to… get to know you better.”

I gulped nervously at the sense of peace that was within the lulling voice of this killer, I felt panic rising from within my chest as I realized whom I was looking at.

He was younger, much younger than the murderer Dio met in Canon, but the monstrous knife he was holding in his right hand was so unique to not recognize it.

This… this was Jack the Ripper.

Too early. My incredulous mind was screeching at the early entry of this dangerous assassin, his murdering spree had to begin in a few years from now and…

What if he had began earlier?

Jack the Ripper became known only when he went on with killing numerous women in a short span of time, but what if he had ‘experimented’ before going for the ‘grander deed’?

A grimace was on on my face but I didn’t hesitate any longer since learning of this development.

Pulling the steel sphere out of my pocket, I was already creating the Spin with it and, the moment I finally got it charged and ready, prepared to launch an explosive greeting at the young murderer.

Much to my instant horror, my aim proved to be incredibly unbalanced considering my now-visible trembling going through my arms and, while I had planned to hit him squarely on his back… but the flying projectile exploded by his right tight.

The sudden attack caught him off-guard, enough to force him to drop his knife to the floor and turn around to glance at me, his aggressor.

He looked more surprised, a sense of wonder hiding in those annoyed eyes as he silently studied me from afar.

The woman’s eyes were still wide-open as she continued to press her hands onto her wounded upper-leg, her attention too directed at me.

“H-How peculiar,” He stated with a fascinated tone, taking a slow step towards me while I continued to look at his younger appearance. “A child… with some pretty tricks.”

His hair and beard were shorter, his overall frame much reduced compared to his older, more experienced self. This was the making of a legendary killer… one that was slowly approaching me.

The ball of steel was far too hidden in the foliage for me to recover and trying to move to get some pebbles would spring him to rush me.

This is bad, my aim shouldn’t have failed me this terrible and… now I was going to pay for my little moment of weakness.

He was moving slowly, as if trying to impose some control over this unexpected development, trying to enforce his dominance over my ‘apparently weaker’ frame.

Despite his wound, now bleeding profusely even with a hand pressing on the injury, Jack looked quite calm and collected, so sure and certain of victory even before this painful hindrance.

I had to think quickly, I had to elaborate something that could work against the approaching killer before-

…Approaching.

My memory was quick to bring up the scene I needed, I had to just rehearse it in a proper manner to fit this eventuality without sounding too cocky nor too afraid.

While I was unsure if this act would have worked on a normal person, I was keen to notice the little tension enveloping the pained form of the Ripper, the man was trying his best from not making anyone notice… but I did.

I assumed the posture, a little lessened as to reduce the oddity it had on a normal spectator.

“Oh? You are approaching me?” I asked with a certain sense of factual determination, holding myself from over-emphasizing with some of the words. “Instead of running away, you’re coming right to me?”

He paused, his eyes widening just a fraction as if not expecting this sudden bout of bravado.

“What are you talking about, child?” He asked with a curious tone, almost in childish wonder.

I smirked. “Even though the guards have been alerted, even though you are bleeding profusely and despite the fact I could easily maim you more, you decide to approach me instead of surviving this quite difficult ordeal?”

There was a pause, his silence confirming that the little act had got him to ponder over the matter.

I was slightly unnerved by the quiet, but considering how difficult to enforce such a psychological assault, I steeled my resolve over the matter as he sighed.

“What if I’m fast enough to finish her and kill you?” He took a step closer, trying to cause a squirm out of me. “What if you are bluffing about the police-”

“Then we will see if fate is truly that merciful to you, Jack,” I interjected with a smirk, enjoying the little panic at the mentioning of his name. “But I don’t think the Heavens will be kind to you once you fail. For I think you have forfeited any chance of salvation the moment you succumbed to your own demons.”

I took a step closer .

“Please, do try and shatter my theory; rush to me and show me your brilliant speed!” I exclaimed louder, forcing him to tense up in visible fear at the certainty held within my tone.

He stood still, so did I with my own amused expression and relaxed posture.

“Interesting,” He muttered with some awe in his tone. “You… You are odd-”

He swiftly moved out of the foliage to the side, running away with his impressive speed while concluding his comment.

“Odder than me~!”

I stared in surprise at the retreated figure, caught off-guard by this last comment as I felt shaken to the core by this correlation.

…

N-no, I shouldn’t be wasting too much time musing over some rabid fool’s half-thought, my orange eyes returning to the now calming down young woman while she continued to try and keep a hold of her wounded leg.

I slowly approached her, causing her to tense a little at me but she seemed less threatened by my presence, especially since I had been the one that got her assaulter to leave her before he could hurt her more.

Once I was close enough, I crouched in front of her and gave a closer look to her injury.

The cut was enough to cause her to lose this much blood, but not enough to sound threatening… if I considered the basis of modern medicine.

I didn’t have any water with me to clean the wound, nor I had any first aid kit to use to bandage it up right where we were.

Instead of keeping still and just look at the bloody thing, I went to pull my light-green handkerchief from my pocket and started to carefully clean it a little.

I didn’t have any medical alcohol to properly clean it, the risk of infections were high considering how long it would take to get hold of a proper doctor. And that was ignoring the lack of free medical care in this age.

Gritting my teeth, my brain felt burning as I felt that I had to adopt a simpler approach to the matter. I recovered the steel ball before returning to the suffering young woman and spoke.

“Can you walk with your other leg?”

She seemed surprised at my question, possibly because the bravado was now gone and there was just serious concern over the blatant wound.

If I had grown in this period of time, I would have probably called a guard and let him sort out this situation, but knowing of the possible outcomes from this untreated wound, I couldn’t help but decide to give her some aid.

She gave a nervous nod, slowly understanding that we had to move out of here and she cautiously accepted my hands in hers as I pulled her up.

I was quite slim, I have stressed this fairly enough, and thus the effort was… quite straining on my own body, the adrenaline giving me plenty of energy to keep up with the activity.

Once I had her standing and one of her arms on my shoulders, I started to carefully walk the two of us out of that deep section of the park and back to the muddy path where I came from.

From there, I began making the way right to the nearby area of the park that was close to the Thames.

I needed to try something drastic, even though I felt fairly winded by what had happened today, I needed to strive for a miraculous attempt.

I started to storm my brain with thoughts how Gyro Zeppeli did manage to use the spin with water, having just a theory of what I was actually going to do to help the woman in distress.

Once we were near the river, I had her sit by the ground while telling her to wait as I went to take some waters to clean the wound, a swift nod confirming that she wasn’t too distracted from the matter and giving me the time to rush near the body of water and prepare to try and accomplish a divine intervention.

Placing the used handkerchief to the side, I knelt before near the putrid water, perfectly aware that this wasn’t going to do anything to clean injuries, possibly the contrary from what I knew from History lessons.

But my plan wasn’t to use the water itself, but something I had to ‘create’ out of it.

Rolling up my sleeves, I dived my hands onto the cold liquid and carefully started the correct rotation to enact the Spin on some particles of water.

The process was painstakingly slow as the water was muddy enough to hinder my capacity to see if I could already pull the hoped bubble of transparent liquid or not.

Ultimately I started to lift my hands out of the river and I had in fact managed to get a rather unstable water-filled bubble in my palm, the spin still in motion as to keep it from collapsing.

And now onto the very grand scheme I had in mind.

Since the Spin can alter the composition of an object/being’s self if the User is aware of their composition, then the User should also be capable of altering the epicenter of the Spin with proper concentration.

This first step was mostly done, the sufficient result offering me the opportunity to pass on to the second step, the one that could be considered the ‘real miracle’.

I breathed calmly, my mind trying its best to impose two major rules upon the bubble of water.

The first rule was that the bubble itself had to be modified as to be only water, my brain repeating fiercely the ‘H2O’ composition forcing the spinning energy to adapt as the muddy bubble slowly turned transparent and lacking of any other impurities.

I felt my breathing getting a little labored, my concentration faltering as the spin energy was getting even more unstable the more I let it continue.

D-Dammit!

The second step was mostly done, I just needed to make the last change before concluding this draining experience.

The highest zenith of absurdity, the one thing that made the Spin unique compared to Hamon itself.

I took a large breath intake and… began changing the pure water into a variant with its composition.

C ₂ H ₅ OH.

The bubble tensed, close to burst open, but holding just enough for the final alteration to happen and for me to move the floating bubble just above the handkerchief.

I could smell the result already, my nose scrunching at the familiar odor of Ethanol.

Once the process was over I let the spinning die down, moving away from the bubble just in time to see it fall swiftly on the piece of cloth while also staining the ground nearby.

Quickly pulling up the little wet thing, I was glad to see that none of the dirt had managed to attach itself to it, leaving a mostly stainless handkerchief imbued with medical alcohol.

I slowly made my way back to where the woman was sitting, she looked surprised to see me returning after so long but her attention was suddenly taken by the pungent smell coming from the handkerchief.

Before she could ask anything I was already close to her wounded leg. “This might sting a little,” I warned before cautiously pressing the cloth onto her injury.

Her open mouth let out a yelp while she whimpered at the sudden bout of pain coming from the contact, but she surprisingly managed to not scream at this.

I was done moments later as I gave her a calming nod. “The wound is now properly cleaned.”

There was a pause at first, then she nodded again. “I… Thank you?”

I blinked at her meek reaction, but returned the nod nonetheless.

“You are welcome.” I commented back, giving her a curious look. “By the way what is your name?”

I mean, courtesy is still a thing…

I think even for prostitutes.

She looked a little surprised about the matter but blurted out something.

“H-Hannah.”

Before I could say anything more about this, I felt some people approaching the area where we were, forcing me to look around and see…

George Joestar, Jojo and two police officer making their way towards us.

Oh right, I did forget that I didn’t tell anyone about where I had gone.

JoJo looked surprised, while his father looked confused but particularly suspicious of the young woman in front of me.

I have a feeling that I, Dio, might have created some immense mess.

And while our young protagonist deal with the situation at hand by assuring the innocence of young Hannah while also explaining what had happened after entering the park, a certain shadow with malicious looked at the scene with a certain wonder.

For his interest has been peaked by the curious blond and his peculiar ability. His thirst renewed, his target now set in his mind.

-To be continued…

Chapter Text

Capitolo Primo: Giovinezza (5)

A full day had passed since that interesting day that saw me facing one of the greatest assassins in modern history.

Jack the Ripper was a figure that was shrouded in mystery, negativity and outright uncertainty as his deeds were so brutal, so swift and… so difficult to decipher.

He was never caught, even the full deployment of Scotland Yard got little results from the investigations born from the assassinations of the various prostitutes he would eventually hunt down even in this timeline.

Araki had described him pretty much how many other authors would depict such a confusing murderer, an aimless killer that didn’t seem to have a real reason to go for his murder spree.

He was a pitiful tool of malicious machinations.

The result of some abuse that broke the human mind he had been bestowed since his natural birth that was quick to be seduced by the alluring chances of becoming more by surrendering his flawed humanity to a Dio recovering from his first battle as a vampire against Jonathan.

I wasn’t certainly planning to recruit someone like him, knowing enough about his unpleasant specialization to be aware of the possible drawbacks of gaining his trust.

He was too much of a chaotic presence, not enough subdued to become a pawn for me to manipulate to his complete exploitation.

Especially now that he was younger and surely more emotional with this new passion of his, the modus operandi I was documented about from the various documentaries I had seen detailing the fine clues left around by his deeds failing to represent the younger version I had encountered.

He was dangerous, even more now that he was so brash and possibly less-inclined to take a calm approach over the oddity I was to him.

“Odder than me~!”

His words kept me awake that very night, a few hours after that meeting, and his fascinated eyes would present themselves as the sole physical manifestation of the uneasy words I had so unfortunately burned in my brain.

I wasn’t worried of making another encounter anytime soon, at least that would be the case until I kept close to the Joestar Manor.

He knew of my face but even though he managed to snatch some more information over my whereabouts and my full name, trying to fell me while I was still enjoying the social protection of George Joestar would have seen him getting his own demise just after my kill.

Assassinating prostitutes was a thing, killing the ward of a noble family?

Any attempt at my life would see his own getting hunted down by both Scotland Yard AND the Royal Army considering the heinous ground he would be standing by committing such a noticeable crime.

I was also careful to twist the tale of what happened at the park before JoJo’s father and the police officers taking notes for their reports, making sure to add in that he had ‘mentioned’ his name while preparing to murder the young woman I was just helping ‘with some water’.

Hannah behaved shyly when the officers started to question her too, but surprisingly enough she ended up confirming the version I had decided to use to describe the ordeal.

It had been a very abridged story which lacked any of the details that were best to be left out from anyone but just myself… and the other witnesses of the predicament itself.

I was surprised when the brunette had refused to give out any of the bizarre abilities I had used before her eyes, seemingly adamant in getting herself out of this situation the quickest possible while also… giving some brief praises about my intervention.

I was slightly initially stomped by her sweet tone as she continued with her use of some positive adjectives to tell how ‘kind and gentle’ I had been while making sure that she was well-cared by with the injury she had now cleaned, yet I was slowly realized why she seemed this much giddy about giving such a depiction of the narration.

I was fairly sure that it was actually something related to the chivalrous idea of a ‘knight in shining armor coming to save any maiden in distress’ that JoJo was so keen to naively consider the true embodiment of being a gentleman, but her concept was twisted and adapted in a more romantic and desperate manner because of her current state of life.

She was a young prostitute of London that lived in the late years of the Victorian Age, her chances of having a family, of having her own romantic pursues away from the painful life she is forced to deal as of now.

It was a pitiful display of what Great Britain once was and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her current lifestyle.

But ‘feeling sorry’ wasn’t enough to get me to try and face what was meant to be a losing fight against the sturdy concepts of this society.

Offering her help after this? It would be superfluous if not dangerous for my current standing.

George was chivalrous but he wouldn’t accept even thinking of hiring the young woman as a maid, the scandal that would explode by such endeavor an easy threat to the Joestars’ reputation as good nobles.

It would end up badly for me if I decided to press on the subject, thus I merely let things resolve in the dreadfulness of neutrality, only to wonder if I could have actually done something more for the now safe lady.

I didn’t have the position, the role, to command such a merciful attempt and I didn’t even try to put any effort in that senseless battle.

Instead, my mind drifted back to Jack as the carriage started to make his way back home that very day, with Hannah having gone on her own way back to wherever she had been living, maybe to recover and skip any unpleasant session after this ordeal.

It didn’t matter to me in that very instance, my brain bringing up the main issue of that encounter I had with Jack… or rather the lucky development that saw me victorious.

Citing Dio’s own quotes from the future had been a hazardous gamble that could have easily failed if the enemy himself could have spotted the nervousness hiding behind my face.

The Spin had failed me as, in a moment of need, I had been overtaken by the horrible hold of fear and despair, ruining my practical chances of winning any eventual fights from that very point.

Once we were back to the manor, I found myself graced with some unexpected mercy in the form of a brief speech George had decided to give me right as we vaulted the main gates.

“Dio, tomorrow I think you will be better skipping the usual tutoring lessons,” The nobleman said with a careful tone. “From my understanding, it would be best for you to get some proper rest after that close encounter with such a dreadful mongrel.”

I blinked, surprise painted in my orange-colored eyes. “I- It’s not an issue for me to-”

“I insist,” The old Joestar interjected firmly. “That was an ordeal someone of your age shouldn’t have been neither a witness, nor an active part of.”

In the end I merely accepted the orders, finding them to be just what I wanted to have with what I had planned to do in the next few days.

Jonathan was irritated at first, huffing at the fact that I was allowed to skip the homework, but stopping himself from actually protesting the legitimate offer as he was aware that what had happened had gone well-beyond the chances of normality.

It put him in a surprisingly weird mood as, once we were permitted to return our rooms, he asked if he could come inside to talk about some topics about the day.

During the narration I had provided to the police officers, the young Joestar had been fairly quiet and merely glancing between me and Hannah while the young woman was waiting for her turn for the questioning.

His interrogation proceeded in a mix of pestering and childish curiosity taking over the topics brought up with the questions he would blurt out carefully and patiently.

“B-But why would you want to skip some simple boxing?”

“Other than the fact that I’m fairly slim and easy to pick up?” I asked sarcastically, but sadly the undertone failed to register in the young man’s mind, causing me to sigh. “I guess I just didn’t find myself interested in trying to punch people around for no major purpose.”

“It’s not just ‘punching people’,” He huffed with an annoyed voice. “It’s about proving that you can actually fight to defend those that you care about, family.”

Something I don’t have. I don’t have neither friends nor a family to believe myself into.

I didn’t have any precious people… except the elevated figure of ambition raised from the unfortunate passing of a kind mother treated unfairly by this hideous era.

Dario Brando might have been the direct cause of the death of Dio’s mother, but it was a large number of things that caused the poor woman to ultimately find her demise in such a saddening manner.

It was only me now, even as a mere self-insert that didn’t know anything about the truest essence of Dio’s plight.

I was alone in this unknown loneliness.

“I suppose that some might see it as a mean to exert determination in those you love, but I find it just to be a mere punching session,” I replied with a flat tone, unwilling to expose the mind of someone still so young to the depravity that was my cynical perspective of the world as a whole. “Still, I think I will still pass trying it.”

He shrugged. “You are free to be interested or not to activities,” JoJo admitted quietly. “But are you sure you don’t wish to at least train in case… that situation happen again?”

Hmm? Was that concern I was feeling coming from his throat? Was that worry dripping from his words while he contemplated the repetition of such an absurd circumstance.

I don’t think Jack will bother hanging around the park now that the police had reason to patrol the place even during the day, but the boy’s advice wasn’t one that lacked any true foundation.

If I hadn’t managed to find a mean to gain Hamon training, my Plan B would have surely been training up my body enough to gain full confidence and control of a stronger self of me.

But since I had the Ripple now to study and expand from, I decided to pass for now about developing my muscles.

Maybe it will be integrated with my current training regime as I knew that stronger lungs could benefit me in the long-run if I planned to make continuous use of Hamon in any future fights.

It was a strong possibility, thus I merely ignored the offer of training from the possibly less- experienced young man and found myself dealing with another topic, this time the subject itself getting a light blush out of me while the boy asked it so innocently and blissfully unaware.

“A-Also, can you tell me more about that lady, Ms. Hannah?” He inquired with a little stutter, confused himself over some of the things he had seen with the young woman. “Dad said that I shouldn’t be asking but… why was she wearing something so revealing?”

I almost snorted at the query, feeling some amusement rising from such a pure and non-corrupted perception of thing.

I could say so much about the matter, possibly getting Jonathan overly-teased over what sex was and why it was connected to the young woman, but I merely settled to something far tamer and easy to explain without having to deal with a furious George over the ‘corruption’ of his first-born.

“Hannah’s work entail something about intimacy and… quite the sinful kind of stuff,” I carefully began to explain, gaining his rapt attention. “Nothing truly horrible- but it’s considered by society as something fairly deplorable to commit with her own body. Said work requires her to wear revealing clothes-”

“But what kind of job would need women dressed like that? Is it something like a maid or-”

“No,” I interjected flatly before the mountain of questions could fall on me. He was curious over an incredibly delicate topic and I couldn’t certainly let him get any wrong idea by suggesting anything easy to misunderstand over the predicament. “Her work can be considered quite the detestable one for a woman, the practice committed with it being fairly unpleasant and sometime unfair.”

“But if it’s that bad, then why couldn’t Dad just offer her work as a servant-”

“Because your father would lose face by doing such thing,” I interrupted again while forcing a calm voice out, feeling fairly irritating by the constant interventions. “Her work would sully the reputation of the family if she was ever hired to work as a maid, your standing with other children would crumble dramatically.”

“Why?” He finally asked once I was done with this answer. “Why would father just ignore a woman in need? Why would he-”

“JoJo, do you know how many other women are working the same job as Hannah?” I asked curtly, eyeing him with a serious glint, causing him to shuffle a little nervously at my stare.

“There are numerous women doing this kind of stuff, humiliating tasks for the sake of surviving in a city that is praised to be the beacon of prosperity and modernity,” I continued as I accepted the silence as a ‘no’. “The world is filled with good and nice things, but also some unpleasant truths that you best not learn about.”

He blinked, confused about the allusion I had thrown at him without any connection to the subject.

“B-But you are as young as I am, why wouldn’t I be wanting to know about-”

“You are given a choice here, JoJo,” I jumped in with a tight tone. “You are allowed to decide to keep your childhood happy for a few more years or be cursed already with a glimpse of what adults are forced to look at every day.”

I glanced away from him, feeling oddly unnerved by this line of thought.

“I wasn’t given one, I was never offered the chance of having a pleasant life before being taken in as a ward of the Joestar Family,” I concluded with a sigh. “So when you ask me why I know more things about you, you should first think about how can I, a mere poor orphan, have learned about what is going on in the world so early in my life.”

There was silence, I accepted it without pursuing any other topics and… JoJo decided to conclude the interrogation there, walking by the half-open door and stopping a step before leaving the room.

“I’m sorry for… being this-”

“I know you mean well,” I interjected blankly. “But I would like to be left alone for today. I just… need some time to think.”

He merely nodded, the saddened expression that highlighted his perspective over the matter, about the fact that he had been responsible for this sour conclusion, gave me quite the unpleasant sensation to the core.

It was annoying, irritating even and… I realized almost too quickly what it was all about.

The anger, the bubbling fury that stemmed from such behavior…

Was this what Dio thought every single time Jonathan would try to emphasize with him?

The sense of being ‘understood’ by someone that barely left his family manor, perfectly unaware of the troubled life many others were suffering through each day of their lives.

I closed my eyes just for a moment as the door closed, letting my breathing reign as the sole sound of the room and… I blinked awake and away from that inner turmoil.

Accepting this backtracking? Now that things were picking up a dreadful pace?

Despite my irritation at the discussion that had just finished so bitterly, I managed to focus my attention right onto the tome I had managed to smuggle inside my room.

The book that Muddiburi had given to me, a mean to begin my official training as a Hamon User.

I lied on my bed, eyelids half-dropped as I read silently and carefully all the words and the descriptions given by such an enlightening text.

It was so well-detailed, a practical diary that explained in quite the accurate way how Hamon originates within the lungs, how the energy was born from a mix of emotions, willpower and pure physical submission to the user’s mind.

It was an intriguing read for sure, one that I proceeded to continue even later that night after dinner.

The event itself was fairly forgettable as silence had domineered while I enjoyed some delicious steak, my attention being barely taken by the way Jonathan had managed to avoid making any major conversation during this time, his eyes fixed on his plate as he slowly and regally ate his share of food.

It was an odd sight for sure, quite the curious development that confirmed the possibility that my words did leave some doubts within the ‘dreamy boy’ and his idea of proper life.

Something that would surely give me issues in the distant future, but for that moment I merely enjoyed the food given to me before resuming my entertaining study of the Ripple, my mind already preparing for the following day.

Hamon was at reach, the concept of the proper breathing degree now well-ingrained in my mind and…

Maybe it was high time for I, Dio, to go for a solo swim in that lovely, but unfairly cold river.

----------d-d-d-d-----------d-d-d-d-----------d-d-d-d-----------d-d-d-d-----------d-d-d-d----------

With both father and son busying themselves with the usual hours of tutoring by the grand study room in the second floor, I was perfectly free from proceeding with my plans for the day.

Leaving the mansion by its main doors, I started to make my way right towards the section of the river nearby that JoJo had shown me a few days earlier, my giddiness almost bubbling up onto my expression as I found no obstacle to such commitment.

I knew that Danny was sleeping at these hours of the day, providing me with just enough time to wander right where I needed to be to begin the training session I had planned to do here… in this body of water.

I had brought my full-body swimsuit, quickly switching to it after I had given the usual thorough look around the general area as to see if I could catch anyone preparing to spy on me.

The unpleasant thought of someone peeping on me, maybe for some malicious intents other than merely spying, was more than enough to drill this habit right onto my day ever since I started to consider the chances of having an intruder in the swimming sessions I had with JoJo.

After making sure the coast was clear, I decided to hide my normal clothes by some bushes, away from any visitors’ sight and reach.

Bullies were still a thing around the distinct region and I was fairly unwilling to be subjected to some mockery of annoyance.

I needed some time alone to achieve such an important and essential training session, enough to gain some control over the most important bit of Hamon.

While the Spin was easy to achieve and use in its base form, the Ripple was much more versatile in close-fighting and offered to its users the chance of expand their vitality and lifespan if practiced continuously and religiously.

It was an ability that was best compared to the manipulation of energy close to the one coming from the sun, the prime enemy of supernatural monsters like vampires, zombies and Pillar Men.

Given proper creativity, time and effort, such a power can also grant its user the opportunity to conceive skills that could easily defy the normal limits of mere humans.

And this is why, instead of whining around once again at how horribly cold the water was, I let myself float up in that quiet river, keeping my body close to the land in fear of getting dragged along the flow.

It was a strange experience, far different from the usual relaxing floating I used to do while I was younger.

There was purpose in that peace, there was a reason in that simple activity.

My breathing was soft, quiet and somehow well-timed despite my lack of major attention to it, my mind channeling a sense of sound deprivation, the lack of sight and… the true nature of peace.

The deafening silent persisted for a couple of quiet minutes, my mind drowning in that sweet moment of nothingness.

Soon, I found myself growing attuned with my body, my mind connecting in a way deeper than before to it as I started to get prepared for the next step.

“Kooooohhh.”

It was a simple noise, yet the meaning behind it was more than just a single release.

I was slowly releasing the breath I had gained from the previous intake of air, I was letting out my emotional drive and… I was fueling my willpower in this word.

I thought of my ambitions, of my dreams, of those that I had left behind, of those that Dio had lost, of those that were going to be lost without my intervention and…

My mind burned at the thought of a young woman, crouching in front of me as to meet my eyes with her kind orbs. She was donning such a kind smile, such a tired smile and… an amount of love that defied anything I was aware of.

“My child, my little conqueror,” She said with a happiness in her tone. “Please… become something great. Someone that will never fear the darkness, that will never be bent by death itself.”

She paused, her eyes shining as some tears had began forming at the edge of those.

“Go forth and… conquer the world if you can.”

My mind broke free from that memory, my eyes already crying as I felt my entire core burning so fiercely and rightfully.

It was like I was coaxed in fire, but instead of pain, I was met with a clarity of self, of mind and body.

It wasn’t a visible effect at first, I felt this very warmth warmth coming right from my chest as it fluidly spread all thorough my limbs and…

The water started to cackle, to bubble, as something similar to electric sparks rose from my skin and coating the rest of my body.

Soon some fishes started to happily jump out of the water before diving back to it, like some dolphins and… I could feel their energy synching with mine.

I blinked, my orange eyes going wide open as I realized that this reaction wasn’t meant to be the correct one.

It was too strong- even Zeppeli had affirmed that Jonathan’s own potential was considered a rarity for sure and… it had been just a tree branch blossoming small flowers all over it.

This… this couldn’t just be it.

That means that Dio had the potential to surpass Jonathan if he had studied Hamon instead of becoming a vampire, he would have achieved victory in Phantom Blood instead off reject his humanity!

My breathing grew irregular, disrupting the ripple’s effect that I was creating unconsciously.

The water grew calm to how it was before I started this attempt, yet my body continued to feel pleasantly warmth.

It felt like I had unlocked something deep within me, as if I had tapped into the most secret but fiercest part of me.

I struggled a little to move away from the river, my body oddly drained but not even winded by the experience and it was just as I reached the shore that I heard something unexpected.

The noise of a twig or a branch cracking under pressure and something like-

“N-No!”

My sight turned swiftly to track down the origin of the distinctly feminine voice, my orange eyes noticing right on time as a certain blonde-haired girl falling down from a broken tree branch and right into some bushes.

Oh. That is-

That would explain a lot, I guess.

It wasn’t anyone malicious that had actively spied upon the swimming sessions, but someone that had decided to keep herself away from dealing with two boys at once.

Erina Pendleton was still a shy girl with a sweet personality and a far more reserved attitude compared to Jonathan.

Since JoJo had helped her face some bullies by episode 1 of the series, I suppose she had been trying to find the proper moment to approach him and apologize for the quick retreat she had gone with instead of thanking him for his help.

My presence, which brought up the amount of males up to twice as she was initially planned, the blonde had to have waited for the right time where I wasn’t around to ‘stop her from thanking the Joestar’.

I carefully approached where the girl had fallen but my pace increased as I heard her groan and yelp in minor pain while she was holding her left leg close.

Face scrunched in suffering and her eyes half-closed at the sharp sensation coming from her lower limb, Erina seemed to just tense as I finally got close enough to her to crouch down and see what was wrong with her.

The fall had to have left some damage, I was certain of it considering the height she had fallen from, but I still decided to ease her worries with some assurances.

“I’m not angry,” I said with a calm voice. “Did you get hurt?”

She didn’t answer at first, either embarrassed at the fact she had been caught doing something as indecent as peeping on me or that a young man was talking to her.

“I understand you are confused and scared, but I wish to help you and I can’t do anything if you keep quiet.”

My voice seemed to bring her to relax a little, her cyan eyes still wide open but seemingly regaining some focus on the predicament she was currently facing.

“T-The leg,” She spoke curtly and nervously. “I-It hurts.”

I nodded, carefully reaching for the limb she had been grasping at until now. “What’s your name?”

My question surprised her but, differently from Hannah, she didn’t seem eager to answer that question.

It would make things complicated if I have to address her differently than what her name was, especially since I was aware of it when technically I shouldn’t be.

I sighed and nodded tiredly. “My name is Dio.”

There was a pause, a quiet and slightly-annoying one at that, but finally the girl spoke again.

“E-Erina. Erina Pendleton.”

“Erina is a nice name,” I commented curtly as I slowly started to lift her skirt a little, just enough to see the extent of the injury and I felt relief entering my chest as I noticed that it was just some little cuts over exposed skin. Shallow cuts that were surely created by something thorny right where she had fallen by. “Can you tell me what is your favorite color?”

Erina blinked, once again surprised by the sudden query, but this time her answer didn’t need any push and, while she was distracted with this, I started to use a little piece of her skirt that had been cut up by the fall to clean her little wound.

“I- I think it’s… blue?”

“Is that a question or an answer, Erina?” I politely pressed on, her eyes narrowing at the pressure.

“I-It’s blue,” The girl replied with more sureness, drawing a little smile out of me.

“That’s good to know,” I hummed positively, my orange eyes still staring at the issue instead of taking serious part to the simple conversation I had began as a distraction. “Mine’s Burgundy.”

The blonde blinked. “T-That’s not a color.”

“It’s a dark shade of red. It is also known as a Bordeaux,” I replied back. “It represented royalty and other kind of noble houses in France.”

Her eyes showed some understanding behind the explanation, but then she hummed.

“But we are in England.”

“Indeed, we are and...” I nodded pulling my hands away from her now-clean leg, I decided to leave the wet cloth onto there, latching it carefully and praying it wouldn’t fall as she retreated back home. “Your injury has been cleaned properly.”

Surprise surged in her face. “W-What?”

Her attention snapped right at her leg and she moved her skirt to reveal the now bloodless spot.

“Oh- You- You tricked me?”

“Only to avoid to give you some more pain,” I admitted with a sigh. “When people focus on a wound, they tend to get more sensible when someone is tending to it.”

“But- You- I-” She paused just for a moment, then the blonde huffed. “You are a mean man.”

“I suppose not all the boys can be ‘gentlemen’ like Jonathan,” I shot back, getting an embarrassed blush resurfacing on her face.

“T-That’s not why-”

“You want to apologize to him for running away from him instead of thanking him when he helped you with the bullies,” I interjected with a small smile. “He told me that he had been trying to find you since that day. He thought he scared you by being too much direct-”

“He- He didn’t,” Erina blurted nervously, pausing just a moment to realize what she had just said and… then the girl continued. “So he thinks that… he did something bad to me?”

“It’s possible, but I guess I can tell him that this isn’t the case and-”

“N-No, I- I have to tell him myself,” She pressed on before I could finish my sentence, her lovely cyan orbs steeling up in determination. “He was kind to me and… I should be the one to personally apologize.”

I blinked at that odd instance of stubborn crushing. I knew how things were supposed to go from there, but I was certainly unsure how to pick around without ruining the pairing.

And ruining the JoJoxErina ship was bad. Like really bad, something not even the worst of villains would try to break apart.

I ultimately gave her a nod. “I suppose that is a legitimate request… and I might have a solution to help you out.”

She tensed up a little, but seemed still interested on the matter as her eyes lit up at the chance of having an opportunity to speak with her ‘savior’.

I started to explain to her my little plan, getting some uneasy comments over the general line of execution but… I knew exactly how to have her visit the manor without JoJo suspecting anything strange about it.

It was genial, it was optimal and… it lessened the chances of Jonathan becoming an enemy in the near future.

With him focusing in developing a bond with Erina much earlier, given some time and effort, he wouldn’t have a reason to interest himself on the Stone Mask, he wouldn’t try to study Archeology and try to settle for something a little more quick to allow him some income to stay here and… he wouldn’t have a reason to pester me around with unneeded questions.

With the young girl making her slow return back home alone but with resolution over the chances of meeting the young Joestar, I proceeded to make my own return to the mansion after changing my clothes, my mind burning actively in the effort of combining two successes in a single sentence.

I, Dio, managed to unlock my rightful potential… and now I shall make sure to unite two future loverbirds early on in the series. For those two were… a match Made in Heaven!

-To be continued…

Chapter Text

Omake 1: Where the Spin goes Bizarre

Original Idea from: Legendar-NOT (Space Battles)

It was late at night, just an hour after dinner, and I was enjoying some rest by lying over my bed.

I was feeling particularly tired after a day spent training the Hamon by the local river, my entire body feeling sore and in need of some sleep after this long day.

A yawn left my lips, but my mind was far from tired enough to contemplate some early slumber, my brain still active after such the lack of interesting things to do.

Humming quietly, I glanced by my bedside and noticed with a certain interest the steel balls I’ve started to accumulate in the last few days, the need of having those perfectly-shaped spheres for the usage of the Spin giving me a certain addiction.

It wasn’t anything bad to my body, my health or even something that was dangerous in general.

I took one in my fingers and, without thinking too much about it, started to apply some spinning to it.

The familiar energy started to flow, the curious hue coming from it lulling me in a state of peace and relax.

I yawned again, my eyes moving away from the spinning ball and up to the ceiling as I started to slowly lose myself in my thoughts.

I started to think about earlier that morning, right by the beginning of breakfast.

We were all enjoying our own peace and quiet, once or twice the patriarch of the Joestar family giving some words about his current state of things, maybe while also putting pressure on his son about my achievements and urging some more efforts from him, to which Jonathan couldn’t help but just nod at.

I was carefully drinking some tea, thinking about how I should have trained for the planned Hamon session, when I glanced right at George and… noticed the curious shape of his mustache.

I had realized since the first day that the man was used to drop some milk in his tea, maybe as a mean to wake up quicker instead of having more than one cup considering how sweet and warm the milk was.

This morning, much to my immense surprise and hidden amusement, after just taking a long sip from his cup, the nobleman had been blissfully unaware that the milk that had remained on top of the liquid had somehow managed to reach his mustache, tainting it with white and… making is fluffy at the same time.

JoJo realized what was going on with his father moments later but, differently than how I reacted to it, he didn’t spare himself from chuckling at the scene much to the confused look coming from the older Joestar.

George looked immensely confused about it all and remained so until one of the older butlers decided to point out the issue in question while also providing him some mirror to look at himself.

The man blinked twice before snorting himself and shaking his head in minor mirthfulness.

“I just look like Santa.”

“T-That’s what I was thinking about, father,” Jonathan added with an entertained tone before being forced to lift his hands to his mouth to keep himself from laughing at the scene, much to his father’s growing embarrassment.

In that very moment, the old man turned his attention to me and blinked.

“What do you think of this, Dio?”

The query was partly-expected and I was ready to say that he did indeed look like Santa but just as I opened my lips to say this… I found my brain giving me another picture of someone that now seemed fairly similar in terms of beards.

Nigerundayo!

N-No, I refuse to accept that there can be this stark resemblance between George and Joseph.

Double no!

“I-It looks like Santa- I’m sorry if-”

“No, no, it’s alright.”

The scene ended before it could turn awkward, the day ensued in a smooth and uneventful manner, concluding with me lying on my bed and thinking about beards.

I had some before being inserted here. Something left untouched as it was fairly short and I didn’t have any reason to style it in any specific versions.

I could also remember scratching at the bit below my chin as a relaxing action while thinking deeply about something and… I guess I was starting to miss it after just some time without those.

I sighed tiredly, leaning deeper in my pillow while trying to move my hands away-

While forgetting that I had the Spin still ongoing during my brief trail of thoughts.

The accumulated energy didn’t dissipate by the moment I removed my hands away from it, the sudden development causing the pent-up stress to imbue into the sphere before exploding in numerous shards that seemed to shatter the window nearby.

I almost gave out a frightened whimper at the sudden loud noise and the destruction of the window, my hands rushing to my face to see if any of the metal splinters had reached there, maybe cutting somewhere without me noticing.

Instead of feeling any cut, I felt my lower face rather… fluffy compared to how I had left it just mere hours ago.

I glanced down, my orange eyes noticing in dread the noticeable amount of blond hair appearing right near my mouth-

Oh NO!

Before I could have thought more about it, I felt footsteps rapidly approaching the door of the room and then… this happened.

“Dio! What’s wrong? I’ve heard a loud noise and-” Jonathan stopped, his entire posture tensing up in shock at the sight he was presented with.

I don’t know if it was the golden beard, or maybe because I looked fairly shell-shocked myself, but the boy blinked and… looked happy.

“Y-You are Santa!”

NO, I’M NOT!

“Jonathan,” I said with my most stern of voices, catching the young man from continuing with this madness as I was already regretting having taken this stupid addiction. “You will now return to your room, get yourself a good rest and this has never happened.”

Not dangerous my new beard!

“B-But what about-”

“If you don’t want to have coal for next Christmas, you better be behaving well, young man-”

The door slammed shut at that as the boy rushed out in a fearful state, a muffled I’m Sorry still reaching my ears while I prepared some more Spin energy to fix this madness.

I, Dio, reject the aspect of a beard for the Greater Good!

Chapter Text

Capitolo Primo: Giovinezza (6)

It was early in the morning, Jonathan was still sleeping and George had just recently started to go through his daily stack of paperwork from his society, leaving the gentleman stuck in his study room until at least breakfast.

Two hours. It was always that much.

It was the first time I found myself waking up at this stage of the way and, despite my careful attempts to have a healthy sleep schedule, I had been so unprepared for the little nightmare I was provided with the night before.

Dinner had been quite delicious and carefully studied as usual before being consumed, thus denying the chances of any external influence to cause this bad dream.

Yet it was easy to know that there was nothing natural within that curious circumstance, especially with what I faced in that sequence.

I was sitting on a well-decorated blue chair, another chair standing right the opposite to mine and a dark-yellow table between the two seats.

We were all floating in unknown darkness that seemed to best represent the true face of nothingness.

I was feeling… numb, unwilling to display any emotion to the figure sitting right in that second chair.

His face was shrouded in shadows, yet I could see his golden locks combed in a spiky style.

He was donning just a pair of yellow pants with green hearts placed by his kneecaps and some pointy shoes going up.

He was humming quietly, his lack of activity urging me to study appearance, his shirtless self as his ripped body just looked far too unnatural to be his own.

There was a white scar by his neck, right to show where Jonathan’s body has been connected to Dio’s head.

I held myself from flinching, it was far too clear who I was looking at.

“Why?”

My lips parted to dispatch the query, unsure of the chances of getting a reply of this grim figure, of one of the greatest fears I had over my plans.

“Incorrect,” DIO replied with a soothing voice. “Truly a wrong question. Far too predictable.”

There was silence, and his smile widened at the confusion finally breaching through my composure, gloating in his quiet amusement over my restrained squirming.

“What do you want?” I asked once again, this time adding more sternness to my words.

He blinked. “What an unruly fool. Do you seriously think that because you were blessed with the ownership of my youthful body, you could just childishly play the part of the rightful beholder of the Heavens?”

My orange eyes narrowed over the glimmering golden orbs finally reducing the effects of the shadows.

“Yes,” I stated firmly, mustering every inch of my inner bravery to stand up to this mockery of a dream.

There was no chance that this was a real situation.

If it had been DIO Over Heaven, then yes I would have been genuinely feared the worst considering his immense hold over dimensional-hopping, but I knew for a fact that this wasn’t the case.

This… whatever it was, it wasn’t something that was happening for real.

“Yet your left foot is twitching,” The vampire pointed out dully, his smile dropping to a little scowl. “Your toes are wriggling in what could easily be seen as fear.”

I didn’t back down from this, having noticed myself just a moment ago about the situation and… I was prepared to reply in kind.

“I guess that I still need to train my body to better resist the dreadful air you have around yourself,” I managed to state with some difficulty. “In fact, I think my soul is far from quivering at your irritating presence.”

He blinked. “ Ho ho? You think that you can hide your emotions from me?” DIO mused with some fascination. “I’m easily perceiving your fear through that shallow thing you call courage.”

“Heh-” I smiled madly at his comment, causing him to give a curious look right at my reaction. “Then you truly have steeped so low in recognizing the magnitude of emotions, about what truly courage is.”

“And you have taken the annoying habit of mocking your betters, you pathetic mongrel,” He said, his hold over the right armchair causing the bit to crack and shatter at his strength. “Maybe you should-”

“Did losing your soul to the Mask truly affect your capacity to think?” I interjected with a morbid tone of voice.

He blinked, dropping his irritated look to show some surprise at my bravado.

“You think you can afford to make these remarks? Do you think you can challenge me, DIO, with your rebellious effort?” The vampire pressed on, trying to gain my fear with his intense stare. “The Stone Mask was an instrument to accelerate the means to attain victory over my foes-”

“But it failed to give you the same perspective as a mere human,” I pointed out snidely. “You were literally going blind with every decision after donning that hideous tool from the Pillar Men, failing to grasp the stupidity you would then commit on multiple occasions.”

“There’s no such thing as-”

“First you decided to fight Jonathan when you could have gotten him kill in other fashion instead of personally,” I continued with a bored gaze directed at his growing scowl. “Then you decided to play around with Jotaro.”

“JoJo was my foe! As if I would have deprived myself of the delicious sight of seeing him fall before my brutality-”

“Yet I recall he had you beat thrice before dying.”

DIO snarled at the interjection but he seemed to hold himself well enough to try again.

“Hamon had been a cheap trick that proved to be complicated without proper preparation.”

“Which you would have countered if you had considered it way beyond a simple ‘trick’,” I chided lightly, staring for a moment at my hands while remembering the power flowing in my veins as I first awakened the Ripple. “You could have beaten him by being serious, yet you had to become emotional over killing the last obstacle to world domination-”

“SHUT UP!” The vampire shouted while slamming his closed fist on the table, creating some cracks onto it but giving me just some minor nervousness as… he was still not attacking me.

My theory that this was all a fake moment in my mind giving me more strength with my initiative in roast the hell out of this faux blond.

“But I suppose your fight with Jotaro has to have some serious reason to see you lose to a mere seventeen years old with a weaker Stand than ｢The World｣,” I mused with a giddy smile on my face, enjoying way too much seeing the now-red face of the effeminate vampire… I sure was not going to turn into. “It certainly has nothing to do with the fact you literally played around with him until he surprisingly ‘won’ because of the ‘Same-Stand’ bullshit that got him to learn ｢The World｣’s ability. Heck, even someone as ‘mere mortal’ like Pucci managed to kill a more experienced Jotaro!”

“ He shouldn’t have developed a connection with me! He should have perished like he did against Pucci and yet-”

“ You still decided to be a fucking moron about it all, Mr. Gasper Vladi, by delaying your ultimate victory until you were defeated-”

SLAM

“ -!!”

My commentary was interrupted abruptly when I saw a certain yellow-colored humanoid appear right in front of the table, its cold eyes fixed onto my face as ｢The World｣ stared down at me.

DIO looked incredibly livid after the verbal beating he had sustained, possibly far more incensed than any brutal beating either Jonathan or Jotaro could have given him in his past life.

“I’ve given you plenty of space to bring around this mockery of a speech,” The fellow blond quietly and furiously commented. “An insane spiel, one that only someone that has failed to grasp the reality of his possible demise.”

I tensed as I saw the Stand close its right hand in a fist, cocking it a little and… prompting me to search right by my little blue jacket.

I grasped the steel ball, the sensation giving me a certain degree of relief over the chances offered at this range.

…

“But you are correct with this statement.”

I blinked at the sudden disappearance of ｢The World｣ and my attention subsequently returned to DIO- No, wait!

The smug smirk that was now present on my interlocutor’s face was associated with a shorter and slimmer figure, he was wearing the same clothes as mine and my orange eyes were matched with his own pair.

“DIO failed to reach the Heavens, only Pucci formally attaining that state of omnipotence for so little time, and now you are stuck in dealing with the newer odds for your very attempt,” My doppelganger mirthfully summarized. “Facing new odds, new problems and… the pity of keeping our morality intact.”

I frowned at the last bit. “Becoming a vampire wouldn’t-”

“We could become the Ultimate Being, if we try well enough we-”

“Would die because of sunlight and Hamon Users.” I concluded with an angry whisper.

There was a pause and he sighed. “I think you are merely afraid of the costs-”

“Considering how self-destructive that road is with DIO’s example, I think there are other means to achieve control over the Heavens.”

“Then why aren’t you trying to search more about her lullaby?” The clone inquired with the same infuriating smile on his face.

…

“What are you-”

“The ritual,” He interrupted again. “Giotto, Fig Tart, Ghost Town…-”

“I wonder what is the secret key.”

My hand rushed to my mouth, eyes widening as I parroted his last sentence without even thinking about it.

A chuckle rising from the other Dio sending me in a bout of shivers.

“We both would want to know that,” The doppelganger stood out of his chair and crouched beside me. “No, you only want to know that.”

A blink, I was alone and unseated while I fell towards the abyss below me.

My sight failing me for several moments, my panic surging exponentially at the closure of this dream before my eyes were…

Blinking back to the real world, finding myself drawn back to my bedroom with my body sweating profusely at that horrible nightmare.

What did I face there? It had to be something from within.

A lingering spirit of the former owner? Some hallucination over the circumstances that took me there?

No, it would have happened much earlier and… not this suddenly.

I was confused- no, I was floored over the predicament itself, feeling fairly defenseless over the possible recurring visions I might be experiencing.

A message? It had to be a sign, but what was that and why it was important now?

It was connected to the lullaby somehow, something about that very period of time awakening a ‘need’ to pursuit the non-negligible queries shrouding the Lullaby’s mystery.

Why did Dio’s mother use these incomprehensible words to compose a soothing song for her child?

Some words were even beyond her time or even beyond her illiterate knowledge, so how did she even attain the capacity to muster them so eagerly and so certain of its meaning as proper part of a lullaby?

I had to make some serious research over the matter and that is why, despite the little nagging craving for some more sleep, I decided to pursue an early trip to the library of the Joestar Mansion.

Knowing about George’s passion to recover artifacts and tomes detailing supernatural beings and circumstances from the various corners of the known world, I decided to lose myself in the search of any book that could have even so remotely been connected to the fourteen words.

I browsed for any references for the Bow and Arrow first and foremost, contemplating any quick correlation between the two topics as Stands were important for the ritual and I found nothing about it.

I found some fragments contemplating the existence of the objects somewhere in Egypt, which I was already aware of and thus making the little news barely important in that precise moment, but soon I ended up reading a particularly thick-volume detailing a mythological tale I had been unaware about.

This was already odd.

While I couldn’t say that I knew the entire world’s mythologies, I made a major focus of studies over the religions developing in the Mediterranean cultures and the story itself was something that I’ve never heard during my studies.

Still, I decided to religiously give attention to all details of the various pages and I quickly noticed that the tome was all written in Latin, thus rendering the lecture of the text fairly slow.

It was possibly the copy of the original masterwork, created by one of the priests assigned to the translation and corrections of ancient tomes from the former Roman Empire during the medieval ages.

I spent the two hours of peace I had in translating the first two pages and a half from the book, getting just a glimpse at the introduction allowed by the mysterious author.

The ‘Mystery of the Sagittarius’ revolved around a major prophecy proclaimed by the ‘beholder of the mystical weapons’, tools used to bring forth the ‘mythical nature of men’s souls’ and that were of interest for many important characters before the birth of Christ.

The introduction was just a summary of the tale, lacking anything about the full content of the prophecy itself or about the ‘happening of some grand war among men of various countries’.

Just as I closed the book, ready to make my way to the dining room, I turned my attention to my right and… I was bestowed with a close-up of a smiling Jonathan.

The sight was enough to get me to jump off my chair and fall on the floor. “Gah, why did you-!!”

I stopped carefully trying to push my concentration over standing up before giving the greatest of glares at JoJo… only to see the teen having taken several steps back while also giving me a sheepish smile at the development.

“I wanted to tell you that breakfast is ready and father got us a chocolate cake to share-”

He tensed up as I took a step towards him, my face dignifying some anger at the sudden jumpscare and…

He turned around and ran away.

“I didn’t mean to scare you, Dio!!” JoJo yelled while giving himself a futile advantage for the ensuing chase.

It seems like I would have to continue to traduce this tome on a latter date, maybe after I was done making Jonathan’s existence a hell of teases and funny verbal probing once I was done with the plans I had for today about Erina.

----------d-d-d-d-------------d-d-d-d-----------d-d-d-d-------------

“What? Why can’t we go for the next lesson?”

I sighed as I tried to drown away the whines coming from Jonathan.

We were once again by the little river section that we had been using for some time now as a place to practice some swimming, and this time I had in mind some peculiar escalations that not even JoJo could have thought about.

I was waiting to commence the proper lesson, yet it wasn’t going to be a new one as the young Joestar had expected as I was waiting for someone else before starting.

“Can you at least tell me why aren’t we even doing anything right now?” He whined again, causing me to suppress once more the need to reprimand him harshly.

While George’s antiquate attitude in punishing his son for misbehaving might be wrong, Jonathan sure wasn’t making a good case for himself with how much of an infuriating moron he could be when he wanted to.

I was seriously tempted to remind him that the whip was still a tool I knew the location about, just to make him back down with his annoying attempts of distract me, but then I saw her finally approaching from the distance.

The blonde was donning the same swimsuit that she had back during the little montage of scenes she spent together with Jojo in the anime, the little purple-white one that had a little skirt-like frilly detail by her stomach.

She was holding a little basket with some clothes in them and I waved at her in the distance, causing the girl to blush a little while trying to wave back in quite the shy manner.

Once she was close enough, I greeted her properly. “Good afternoon, Erina.”

“G-Good afternoon, Dio and...” She bowed a little in Jonathan’s direction, the boy looking quite surprised by the planned intrusion and was silent as she nodded right at him.

But that silence? I couldn’t afford the moron to lose chances now so early.

“JoJo, can you please stop staring at Erina and greet her back?” I huffed as I concluded the little pressure, noticing the blonde now blushing a little more at the comment while the young Joestar nodded and made a few steps toward the two of us.

“I’m sorry for not greeting you early on,” He said while giving a sheepish look at the still-embarrassed. “I was just not expecting-”

“I-It’s alright,” She jumped in quickly, shaking her head at his apologetic tone. “I- Dio told me that it would have been alright for me-”

I sighed as I was seeing quite a plane crash before my eyes and now I was sure where Joseph got his gig in crashing airplanes.

“I met Erina yesterday while I had gone for that early swim I talked you about,” I intervened, getting a quick nod from Jonathan. “By the way, how is your leg?”

Her mouth formed a thin line about being interrupted so suddenly but she gave a little smile at the concern I was showing about that subject.

“It’s fine,” She said with a stabler tone. “I told Papa that one of the workers helped me with cleaning the little wound and he himself applied some ointment to get it properly fixed by the morning.”

Jojo blinked. “You were wounded?” He asked with what I could describe as the prelude of some gentleman-ish attitude.

“I-I tripped while trying to climb a tree,” The girl blurted nervously, glancing at me in surprise as she wasn’t supposed to tell him but I merely nodded her.

“She was trying to get some acorns from one of the tree’s branches,” I continued for her, drawing the boy’s attention back at me. “But she slipped and fell on some thorny bush, getting some shallow injury on her leg that is now fixed.

I looked down at the spot and it was indeed mostly invisible to my eyes, only some little lines on her skin remaining as a sign of the wound.

“B-But weren’t you afraid of slipping and hurting yourself while climbing the tree?” Jonathan pressed on with a hint of awe, almost endeared by this whole situation and-

Oh right, I almost forgot that Joestars do love strong women in their lives.

“A little,” Erina admitted shyly. “But Papa told me that fear of the maybe shouldn’t stop me from still giving a try to things.”

“That sounds like a good life advice,” I commented positively. “There are some hefty obstacles created just by fear along our lives and we need to be just brave in those occasions to find happiness.”

The two teens nodded at my words and I smiled.

“A-Also, I wanted to apologize for running away last time and… I have your handkerchief here.”

She took the small piece of cloth from the folded dress she had in her basket, handing it to the boy as he gave her a thankful smile at the little gesture.

The two smiled at each other, with Jojo clueless about the inner turmoil within Erina and the blonde appearing a little elated about concluding this little tense situation that had been going for some days now.

Without wasting further time, I decided to interrupt this little moment they were sharing together to begin the second step of my simple plan.

“And now we shall move to the reason why there will be no new reason today, JoJo.”

The Joestar nodded again, this time showing some confusion as I indicated at the girl.

“Erina here has asked me if it could be possible for me to teach her how to swim,” I explained with a careful tone. “But since I feel like you have yet to master the basic lessons after so long, I think it would be nice if you were the one teaching her just the first two lessons.”

His blue eyes widened in surprise and the girl’s entire face was flaring a lovely red at the little situation I had created for them to experience on their own.

“Y-You mean that I’ve to help her with-”

“You need to help her about the basics of swimming, and I expect a gentleman-like attitude from you, Jojo,” I interjected with a serious voice. “I don’t think it would be fair for a fair maiden like Erina to be subjected to any behavior I think you know could be considered childish.”

The little lecture managed to get the boy to straighten up his posture and nod diligently as he carefully helped the blonde in the water and… looked at me with an odd look.

“What about you, Dio?” He asked confused. “Aren’t you going to enter the water?”

I shook my head. “I think I will leave you two alone for a while so that you get accustomed with each other’s company,” I replied with a serious nod, hiding the little smug smirk at the fact I was helping the two grow closer to each other by leaving them alone for a while. “I will be back in about two minutes from now and I hope I don’t find you making anything that could get me to chide you, Jojo.”

I had yet to seriously condemn the young Joestar, only a few times did I have to point out some of his flaws but I had never gotten as far as to resemble the tone his father would use while punishing him.

He seemed to recognize the silent message I was sending him and Erina merely nodded, sporting the ghost of a smirk at the little chance she got to spend alone with the young man.

I proceeded to walk deeper in the foliage, realizing just a little after leaving their eyesight that I was starting to get cold at the fact… I was wearing just my swimsuit.

Once I was enough away from the lovebirds-in-progress, I decided to try my hand in creating a little fire without getting this little forest burned in the process.

Placing some pebbles in a circle and some fallen branches inside the little shape, I tried to ignite the resulting structure with two unused branches and, after about twenty minutes of trials, it started to work properly.

The limited flame was well-contained by the pebbles and I was offered some warmth by the new heat source, giving me the chance to take a seat by the ground and enjoy some peace in my loneliness.

I meditated, my objective being reaching the core of my energy, the Ripple burning from within my soul and waiting to be used properly.

I felt the energy accumulate all over my arms, my breathing becoming almost non-existing as the weird noise accustomed to the ability turned suave and easy to ignore as I stared with limited attention at the crackles of electricity passing through my limbs.

The strange sensation those were creating, bringing vitality to my sleepy body and nullifying the effects of the little sleep I had yesterday, while also warming my entire body a little more than what the flame could have given me.

Just as I started to get better in manipulating the various electric particles between my fingertips, I was tempted to try and attempt to manipulate fire with the Hamon.

It was possible, only difficult to master without particular attention.

I knew that it was tempting fate now by ‘skipping grades’ to get some interesting ability going with the Ripple, but since I was nearby a river I felt like I could give it a try.

I hovered three fingers of my left hand over the fire, starting to approach it closer as I prepared for some early failure which could result in some minor but treatable burns.

Before I could give it a true attempt, I noticed the flame bending a little down as if it was receiving some wind from above directed downward…

But there was no wind!!

I acted on instinct, pushing some hamon in my legs and jumping to the side as I felt a little pressure from above trying to descend onto me.

As I dodged the intruder, I noticed the short figure plunging down near the fire and… starting to get some flames spreading over his exotic dress.

I tensed up, forcing myself to stand and adopt some guarded posture as I continued to stare at the unexpected attacker recovering from the fire on his clothes.

“Hehehehe...” The figure chuckled dementedly, adjusting his claws properly before taking a stare at me, part of his dress still smoking a little from the close encounter with a fiery and stupid death.

A befitting death for someone like Wang Chan.

The short Chinese man grinned eye to eye at me and nodded. “Dio! Look at you, you… were quick!”

I frowned as the figure, trying to appear friendly after trying to cleave me in half with the crazy claws of his.

“S-Spare me the pleasantries, Wang Chan,” I snarled at him, trying to hide the fact I just stutter. “Why did you come here to attack me?”

The shopkeeper hummed quietly, staring up and faking a pondering face before nodding. “Oh yes, I think you are not Dio.”

...What?!

“What madness are you talking-”

“Oh, there is no need to lie,” The Chinese man muttered with a smug tone. “I realize that it must be surprising to know that your identify has been revealed. In fact, I was surprised myself when I noticed that your aura was different.”

I took a step back. “You are raving, you pathetic-”

“Not only can’t I perceive the degree of delightful evil little Dio was so keen to sport from the bottom of his heart,” Wang Chan interrupted, ignoring the insult I was throwing at him. “But you also have a level of resolution in your actions that makes you even more disgusting.”

What was he talking about?

While in the show he did have the means to measure the evilness or the goodness of people, he shouldn’t have been able to discern this truth out of such a flimsy ‘test’.

“Evil matters little if there isn’t chaos to temperate it in the bloody shows that I aspire to see,” The man stated while giving a quick stroke of his mustaches. “You are too ‘stiff’, too stuck in those petty moral rules that-”

He stopped and suddenly jumped in action with his claws poised to lunge towards me.

“Makes me feel sick inside!”

I didn’t have any steel balls on me and Hamon couldn’t be used to harm humans, putting me in quite the difficult circumstance since he was approaching very quickly.

With little time to think, I tried to find any technique that I could use to at least deflect the attack or dodge in time and… I blinked.

How could I be this much forgetful about that.

It was a risky maneuver, but one that could be pulled with accurate attention and focus, something that I got from training with the Spin.

I cocked my left arm, closing my fist and throwing a punch towards the man’s undefended face, still far away for his claws to come and hinder my attempt.

As my arm stretched fully, I forced it to rotate a little and-

Crack.

-got it dislocated.

A smile appeared on Wang Chan’s face, the shopkeeper thinking I had failed whatever defensive move I had planned to use but… failing to notice that I was already pumping the Ripple into my damaged arm.

Crac-

Crac-

Crac-

CRACK!

MUDA!

Surprise was painted on the attacker’s expression mere moments before my fist slammed on his exposed head, my arm having lengthened its reach by making use of Zeppeli’s own Zoom Punch.

The sudden impact was enough to get the malicious bastard to get sent away from pursuing another attack, slamming his back on the ground with wide eyes staring up at the sky and a bloody nose.

Meanwhile, my arm retracted back to its original position, the Hamon quickly healing the self-inflicted damage and leaving just some minor pain after concluding its action.

My orange eyes were upon the unmoving Wang Chang, having felt quite the loud crack from the impact and slightly hoping that the counter had broken his neck.

I tried to take a step closer to see if this was the case but, just as I tried to lift my right foot, I felt it restrained to the ground.

I glanced down and my eyes widened in shock at the strange shadow-like substance locking my feet stuck.

“Hehehehehehehehe!!” The shopkeeper started to laugh maniacally, jumping and standing up while fixing his nose. “Truly a brilliant and unexpected attempt. Sadly, you are not the only one capable of making use of ‘special spells’.”

I tried to shake my feet away from the substance, but I couldn’t get it moving as the Chinese man started to approach once more, this time calmly.

“Still, fair play, your little resistance will make it more pleasurable for me to murder you before slaughtering the boy and girl nearby.”

I tensed up, vigor urging me to crack through this limitation.

But before I could try to make use of my own Ripple, I felt a golden shockwave rush the floor where I was standing and shattering the little shadow-like mud around my feet.

I felt someone looming over me and I glanced behind to see a certain Tibetan man staring down at Wang Chan.

Muddiburi glared fiercely at the now uneasy-looking bastard, the shorter man taking a step back and chuckling nervously. “W-Would you look at that, you have a very strong friend too!”

He giggled and nodded. “I guess my attempt is a fluke… well, at least I gave it an effort.”

He turned around and waved at the two of us. “Bye bye, Dio and tall man. Next time I will slaughter you, boy~.”

A blink and… he was gone.

“W-What?” I blurted in shock at the sudden disappearance, my composure finally breaking now that the threat was gone.

“He is a dangerous fool,” Muddiburi muttered with a disdained tone, then he glanced down at me with a softened stare, one of his big hands reaching the top of my hand. “That was an interesting application of the Ripple.”

I blinked and gave a quick nod, a little relieved that he wasn’t suspicious over it. “I-I had it developed yesterday while I was practicing.”

“But it isn’t enough to keep up with this powerful opponent,” He replied with some uncertainty. “He used foul magic and it’s imperative to see him killed the next time you find yourself dealing with him.”

I nodded but he squeezed at my head a little to stop.

“This means that you will have to train more seriously and with me,” The Tibetan shopkeeper ordered with a sterner voice. “Your current abilities, albeit fascinating for a novice, are not enough to allow you a fight against such a foe.”

“But how-”

“Here,” He bluntly interrupted. “At this specific time of the day, I will find myself there. It shouldn’t be difficult to find an excuse to leave the young Mr. Joestar with young Ms. Pendleton.”

My mouth now closed at hearing the comment, I had a confused frown as I stared up at him once again.

“Are you… reading my mind?”

He blinked, looking to be particularly serious in that moment and-

“No.”

I felt some relief at the discovery but just as he removed his hand from my hand and started to retreat, Muddiburi hummed. “But maybe yes.”

He jumped, rushing away from the foliage and back on the road directed away from the mansion and back to London, leaving me to stare at his retreating form with my jaws close to drop at the floor.

I, Dio, might have been trolled by a Tibetan Hamon User with a penchant for mind-reading after all.

-To be continued…

Chapter Text

There was an uneven line of blood trailing on the floor, away from the tracks and deep in the foliage.

I was forced me to turn and approach carefully as I felt I was getting closer to the criminal deed happening nearby.

I could have gotten out to find some of the guards and send them there, I could have avoided putting myself on the front of a surely-dangerous ordeal but… the blood was enough to drive me to intervene considering how deadly this predicament looked to be.

I wandered through the bushes with the intention of doing whatever I could to stop any aggressor, I was so certain of my bravery about the matter and… then I found myself paling at the scene I was introduced to.

The woman was alive, she was leaning on some tree while she continued to try begging her attacker to stop with his murderous intentions.

She had long black hair that reached down below her shoulders but just above her lower back, those were left untied and free. Her clothes were actually quite ‘freer’ than the conservative standard.

She was donning a frilly white dress, its skirt reaching just below her knees while her upper body was mostly covered… leaving only a particularly noticeable opening that gave a proper sight over her cleavage.

A prostitute.

“P-Please- No! I-I don’t want to die!”

But the silver haired young girl seemed to mind little about the cries of mercy, her posture showing relaxation and eagerness to commit to the final act.

I felt my mind blanking out just for a moment, her appearance suddenly clicking on my head.

Cloaked in a ragged, dark mantle, only her head was visible as she prepared to proceed with the final blow and… she stopped.

The child tensed a little without any particular reason and soon she started to turn her body around to glance right at…

ゴ
ゴ
ゴ
ゴ

Me.

Emerald eyes were wide open as she continued to silently stare right at my frame, her knives slowly easing over the previous murderous attempt as her attention was taken elsewhere.

She blinked, pondering over what she should be doing with the intruder to the scene, and I merely stared back as I didn’t have the means to produce the Spin in time for any attacks.

The girl took a step towards me, then another and I felt petrified at the predator-like attention I was receiving from her.

She crouched, preparing to lunge against me and I took a step back.

I had to do something before I get cleaved in half- ANYTHING!

There were some ideas in my brain, but most of those were things that I knew only thanks to the series she came from-

How did Assassin of Red get in the JoJoverse!?

Where was the insane dark-haired man with just a scary, odd knife and why the wraith was here to begin with?!

I gulped nervously and I finally spoke.

“Stop.” Her body was still tense despite my call. “I-I said stop… Jack.”

It was there, in that very moment, that the girl actually tensed up even more and disrupted her preparation to rush me up.

Her eyes were now sporting some recognition, some surprise over the absurdity of my knowledge over her real name.

She stood up, knives at ease once again. “Who are you?”

I found myself impressed by the sudden mood swing and glad that I wasn’t subjected to that tensions she was creating with her mere expressions.

Still, I didn’t let myself falter in that important predicament and nodded.

“M-My name is Dio, Jack,” I stated while pressing my left hand on my chest. “A-And I know what you are.”

Jackie looked confused, tilting her head at the cryptic words I decided to use. I knew well enough that I was talking to a child, a very smart one that could easily gut me at the wrong step taken, but still a child that I can talk out of trying to kill me.

“You hear voices, don’t you?” I continued, deciding to cut the chase to avoid any other hesitation. “Laments of those victims of the horrible nature of the rookeries.”

She took a step towards me.

“We are Jack and… we are angry.”

But the girl didn’t seem angry at me, her head slightly turning to furiously glare at the still trembling young woman.

“They hurt us, they don’t love us-” Her tone started to take a higher pitch. “They hate us and-”

“You wouldn’t be better than them.”

Jackie stopped, tension rising up again within her posture as she returned her attention right back at me.

“Why?”

Oh Lord, the commonest query a little kid could give to an older individual.

“Because it wouldn’t satisfy your anger,” I replied with a stronger voice. “It wouldn’t fill the void.”

An uneasy frown appeared on her face and her green orbs seemed to lose some of their ominous glow.

“W-Why?”

I stared away for a moment and… I imagined the irony of the situation.

I, Dio, was trying to restrain a furious wraith made by numerous children’s souls from murdering one of their possible parents… while I had so eagerly organized the homicide of Dario Brando to avenge my own mother’s passing.

“Because the glee of the murder wouldn’t give you the joy of peace,” I answered quietly. “It wouldn’t bring back the happiness of having a real life.”

The young Assassin took another step, then another and soon… she was standing right in front of me with her knife hanging low at the edges of her fingers.

“You are hurt too?”

I flinched, it was enough to get her to silently lean her head onto my chest, her chin pressing onto the cloth and her eyes still directed up at my face.

A blink, then two and… I felt drawn to try something from this closeness.

She tensed a little as my right hand carefully lifted up to her hair and started to caress her locks softly.

A soft pleased hum started to form in her throat as she slowly succumbed to the kind gesture, completely melting into my chest.

Two thuds dignified the fall of her knives as her hand were carefully wrapping around my waist while her head nuzzled close to it.

For a brief moment, I forgot who I was… for I, Dio, was reminded that there was a hint of connection with this unfortunate spirit.

“Jack,” I called her in a half-whisper. “I think we should be going now… before you catch a cold.”

Servants weren’t capable of getting sick with proper Masters, but this Jack wasn’t a Servant, just a Wraith that still was quick to get a cold without some proper warmth.

She gave a slow nod and I carefully lifted her up.

It was in this very instance that I remembered how skinny this child war as I could feel her rib through the little cloak she had.

With the girl’s head resting upon my shoulder, my orange eyes turned to the now calming down young woman while she continued to try and keep a hold of her wounded leg.

I slowly approached her, causing her to tense a little at me but she seemed less threatened by my presence and the sudden docile nature of her assailant, yet still unsure about what I wanted to do with her.

…

“Can you walk with your other leg?”

Chapter Text

Capitolo Primo: Giovinezza (7)

While I had thought well that training with Hamon would have taken more than a couple of days, I was completely surprised when I was forced to stay put and train for two full weeks.

Muddiburi was a mix of strict and lenient with his early approach seeing me take some careful steps to see where my current limits were.

No major development for me during the first week as the seven days became a mix of gauging my potential and fleshing out some of the little confusion I still had over Hamon.

The Tibetan monk was well-versed in the art, giving a lengthier depiction of how a user was supposed to keep a constant degree of ‘healing breathing’ going within their lungs.

It was a difficult situation that took me four days to properly get down with and… the results were already endearing.

While Hamon was something I knew best for its offensive purpose, the non-combat abilities that it bestowed to the users of such a mystical technique defied many of the rules I had set to limit its potential.

The first doubt that was shattered during these two weeks was about the power to heal those that weren’t capable of normally practice the Ripple.

I was aware that there was a method to force someone to unconsciously produce enough Hamon to heal quickly from any wounds, but that was extremely limited by the chances of success since it wasn’t a sure win for the user.

And Muddiburi was more than happy to display another healing technique that I soon learned how to use.

During physical training to attain a proper understanding of my body, I had unfortunately sprained my ankle while trying to jump through the obstacles that the shopkeeper had sent thorough the small clearing where we would be usually exercising.

What followed next left me not only baffled, but somewhat surprised that none of the other Hamon users had ever used this efficient technique.

By carefully applying pressure at the damaged part, what seemed to be a normal massage started to slowly siphon the energy of the Ripple in my tendons and muscle with the purpose of carefully fix the injury my leg had suffered.

It took the monk about a full minute of silence and patience to get the technique to truly mend the damage I had suffered, but I was ultimately restored to good shape and urged to resume the training session.

I was barely ‘taught’ about the Overdrives and how to properly attain those with Hamon, but this early knowledge of the powerful attacks was more than enough to give me the presumption that I was finally ready to explore Ogre Street.

Announcing to Muddiburi that I would be trying to search for any clues about Wang Chan’s whereabouts, the Tibet monk had given me some cautious words about my eagerness of trying out my abilities.

“You might have improved slightly from when we first started the training, but you are far from being able to face alone a Dark-Magic user as that foul man,” He had sternly pointed out. “You might be capable of fending off against many supernatural creatures, but I ask of you to not pursue anything more than just clues-seeking.”

I was swift to accept the restriction, being perfectly aware that I was going to venture quite close where the lair of the deviant was and I was certainly not going to face him in his own turf.

No, the main reason that got me interested in visiting that dangerous quarter of London wasn’t Wang Chan. But the growing issues reported by the local newspapers.

A spree of murders had started to happen around London, all of them seemingly unconnected and done by different murderers.

Yet the curious element that made those jump to my attention was the pattern adopted by the ‘killers’.

The victims had all ‘Not Odd’ carved in their chests, and some of their legs were either cut off or mangled in a gruesome mean.

The message was clear, and I found myself groaning inwardly when I noticed the numerous newspaper that George would bring to the table detailing the kills.

Young people, young men… they were all blond-haired.

Of course I would get a murderous killer with an obsession with me.

It was irritating- no, infuriating that someone like Jack the Ripper was still wandering and committing his crimes so early on in his lives.

But while I had been unwilling to pursue a direct involvement in putting down that mad dog, now I had the capacity to give it a shot and maybe mortally wound the man before he could try to make more dead people in the near future.

The morning after explaining what I had planned to do to Muddiburi, I was quick to dress up and reach for the dining room for breakfast.

Before leaving my room, I glanced briefly at the desk containing the notes of my recent developments with the ancient tome, finding myself fascinated by the curious content held within the pages.

There were some interesting descriptions of what sounded to be Stand users that existed centuries ago, most of those having perished in numbers in direct confrontations for different reasons.

Some labeled them as the product of evil rituals, forcing entire communities to attack the men and women having these abilities, while some were just assassinated by fellow greedy Stand users.

Reaching up to translate more than half the book, I was also provided with some clues over what the lullaby could truly be referencing about.

Despite the senseless fighting drawing some tumultuous times back when Stands were a thing in the past, there was a changing element presented by some mysterious being influencing history itself by outright purging the Stand Users still alive at the precise moment he arrived.

Someone so powerful and with a Stand so immensely strong that he made people disappear out of thin air.

It didn’t take much for me to understand that the one responsible for such an absurd action was the very owner of a Stand I had failed to see as truly independent.

The author was surprisingly highly-descriptive of the odd ‘spirit’, calling it a mix of a horse and a man, where the world broke to make way to a newer path .

[Made in Heaven].

It was shocking enough when I first translated the very paragraph that explained its appearance and I was forced to take a moment to ponder over this little development.

The complex ritual that DIO and Pucci used certainly defied some logical purpose, even more than what a normal JoJo’s plot twist was meant to do.

Every adventure had its most bizarre element to drive out the concept of odd and strangeness within the story, yet never I had been more confused by the sudden illogical plan elaborated by DIO from… literally nothing.

Even the official Diary published by Araki failed to explain how did the man gain such a fantastically insane idea from just a lullaby.

It was just… so out-of-character. Dio was still logical, he still had to abide to some natural rules that forced him to take a more careful approach before his opponents.

Pure madness couldn’t be taken as the sole reasoning behind this mysterious plot, and I was sure that there was something that had to do with the lullaby.

Something that I would only learn once I was done with the translation of the book.

T here was a brief allusion to the words of the ritual by the last translation I had got through, but the full reason behind those were still away from my understanding.

Another good reason to find whoever had given this book to Dio’s mother with a proper translation.

Returning back to the present, my mind was quick to notice that I had finally reached for the dining room, and that Jonathan and George were already consuming the content of their plates.

With a quiet but polite greeting, I joined them as I started to carefully eat the simple food offered while sparing just some brief glances towards the youngest Joestar.

JoJo… was less unruly that he had been in the last two weeks.

The result of my manipulations was starting to slowly get him to best behave around George and other people.

The one I had to thank for having given me the chance of finally improve some of the spoiled mannerism displayed by Jonathan was Erina.

The blonde had been clueless that her crush was ill-mannered back in a familiar situation, something that had gotten the young JoJo to actually focus on trying to keep up with the etiquette.

With a legitimate purpose and my advice pushing him in the right direction, I was sure smiling at the fact that the young man was starting to slowly gain more consciousness over his actions.

No more he was driven by pure curiosity and naivety, instead those two emotions were carefully subsided for the seeking of maintaining the proper image of a gentleman.

His homework started to appear less riddled with mistakes and the whip he long detested seemed to disappear after starting with this strong approach.

George was positively surprised by this sudden growth, almost growing suspicious as much as proud when he concluded that his son had finally steered to a proper course.

And just like any normal single parent with some suspicions behind their children’s moment of unexpected maturity, the man decided to interrogate the only individual that would know about the matter on a closer degree.

I was more than happy to give him what he wanted to hear, but I was also keen to not sound far too much lax over my knowledge of the subject.

He was fascinated by the fact that his son had actually met someone that he felt more than just friendship about, but his early happiness was partly superseded by his worry over Erina’s status in society.

While the Canon itself had never delved too much about the girl’s backstory, it was explained that Erina’s father was sent to work in India with his daughter some time after the early bits of Part 1.

I felt it strange for a ‘simple doctor’ to be sent to work in the conglomerate of countries in Asia, so my good understanding of the situation itself made me consider the chances of the man being a wealthy medic.

George felt at ease when I mentioned that the girl wasn’t a peasant or a lowborn, something that partly ruffled me since I was still miffed by society’s current standards, and that I was certain that her father was possibly rich.

The old Joestar was careful to probe more about the matter with his contacts, and I was relieved when he confirmed my loose claims.

James Pendleton was an influential doctor that had graded excellently in Cambridge and had pursued a stellar career in the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.

The pedigree was undeniably good, and more than enough to see Jonathan continue to meet with Erina.

Of course, I withheld ‘how’ they had met up with each other and I keep myself from telling anything about the talks I had shared with the concerned father back to the two young people, but I was quick to tease if the circumstances back at the swim lessons allowed me to.

And there were plenty of chances to mirthfully poke at the two lovebirds-in-the-making.

With a calm sigh, I took the last bite from the food available on my plate and I decided to calmly address the situation with George about my plans for today.

“Lord Joestar,” I said with a faux-nervous, but mostly-calm tone, drawing the attention of the man almost instantly. “I wish to make a request about today, if it’s possible.”

The old Joestar frowned in surprise at my voice, but he gave a nod. “Sure, Dio. What do you need to ask?”

I sighed. “Before leaving my home to be housed by you, Lord Joestar, I had tried to find an object that is dear to me and… I would like to request permission to try and find it in a place I’m sure that it could be located,” I explained calmly, trying my best to not point out too early on what I was really searching for. “It wasn’t in my family’s house just a day before I left it and… I think it was stolen without my knowledge.”

The careful wording managed to get the reaction I was trying to get out of the man, George frowning in curiosity at my words.

“What kind of object would see you this much distressed, Dio? Is it something I can buy back for you or-”

“My mother’s wedding dress, sir.”

My interjection was swift, curt and somewhat impertinent because of the timing, but the shock at my answer was more than enough to get the man to forget about my ‘lack of manners’.

A grim look appeared on his face, possibly connecting Dio’s mother to his wife and… seeing how dreadful it would be for a child to lose the last regalia of one of his parents.

“I-I see,” He briefly stuttered, sobering up from his mournful state pretty quickly to not give too much away about his own sadness. “And you think that it was stolen? Do you wish for me to ask the police to search for it or-”

“If it isn’t too much to ask about, Lord Joestar,” I interrupted once more, this time making sure to appear as polite as possible. “I wish to personally see in a possible location where it could be, a shop that is known to sell robbed goods.”

Which would be Wang Chan’s shop, and I wasn’t going to even come close to despite how much curious I was about browsing its contents.

I, Dio, preferred to live smartly instead of dying because of stupid fascination. I needed some more time of training but… maybe in a few more weeks, I could try something about it.

“It would be dangerous for someone as young as you are,” George pointed out with some concern. “I’m sure that the area where you lived-”

“Was incredibly harsh against ‘intruders’,” I muttered nervously. “I understand the worry, Lord Joestar, but I’ve wandered the place for most of my life and… I know how to avoid any trouble there.”

I wasn’t even sure if Dio had been conceived in Ogre Street, but considering that he had visited it enough to not be considered an ‘easy target’, I can only guess that I could exert some influence over part of its inhabitants.

Or at least, avoid getting suddenly stabbed and mugged during the walk.

There was some uneasiness over George’s mind whatever he should have allowed me to go or not, his face displaying this turmoil for everyone to see and… I felt relieved when the nobleman decided to sigh in defeat.

“I will see to… have a carriage prepared, then,” The man grumbled quietly. “But I hope you understand that I want you to return back to the mansion in two-hours time after you have left.”

A little curfew, quite limiting to be honest, but something I was happy to comply about.

Jonathan merely stared at the conversation in pure silence, unsure if it would be correct of him to intercede within the discussion because of the topic.

If there was something that JoJo was quite deterred from speaking about was his mother.

It had been a revelation that got me surprised and confused, but the childish explanation that he offered at my pressure was more than enough to get me to not ask for too much about it.

He was awed by the image his father had built over the woman, mesmerized even. But JoJo was also saddened the more he heard about her as he never had the chance of meeting her on his own accords.

He had only his only parent’s recounting of her personality, of her stories, of her appearance and about the love she had for him.

It was enough to make me back away from asking, to get me to think about Dio’s mother and what she would think of this situation.

I wasn’t her son, but I was inhabiting Dio’s body and that would probably get her angry if she had been alive. Confused, enraged and sad.

Terribly sad for losing her child like this, even though the horrible deeds he would have committed.

As if I hadn’t planned to do my own bad deeds…

Once breakfast was over, I reached once more for my room to pick up my jacket with all the equipment I had planned to take on with me.

I had ten steel balls on me, the Spin having been trained as religiously as Hamon was during those last two weeks and, while I felt still far from achieving the Gold Spin, I felt more accustomed to the nature of the bizarre ability.

Deciding to not waste more time thinking about the past and the future, I channeled my thoughts to the present as I waited patiently outside of the mansion for the carriage to move close to the entrance.

Bidding some last words to George and Jonathan, I proceeded to board the carriage, giving the place where I wanted to be left.

It wasn’t Ogre Street that I planned to be dropped by, but the street just beside it.

I didn’t need some panicking rider to blurt out my plans so suddenly and I needed to be dealing this at once instead of wasting too much time soothing people’s worries.

After all, I had a murderer to catch.

Ogre Street was as horrible as the anime had displayed it to be.

The worst Rookery, a cursed place in London that has been considered the most dreadful street of the city for the last century.

The titles weren’t overstating the cold chills going down my spine when I first looked at it as I turned the corner to enter it.

I had seen some ugly places in my former life, areas with known-criminals living around and having their own fiefs within the district, but this one was surprisingly much different than I had initially thought it to be.

Expecting to be received with the same ‘warm welcome’ that Jonathan had received back in Part 1, I was surprised to be actually ignored by a large majority of the people wandering that cold street.

Orphans, beggars, and prostitutes were occupying just small sections of the street to offer their own services.

Thieves, assassins, and even the black market was there in its true glory.

The beggars here weren’t even trying to ask for pennies from the people there, already-knowing that only a few individuals could afford to support them.

Truly a sorry state for a district of one of the greatest capitals in Europe.

I didn’t waste too much time lingering in the main street, unwilling to get noticed by some unpleasant groups lurking around for some quick hit-and-run.

My eyes narrowed at the open door that led inside what looked to be a pub, my instincts tensing up as I decided to enter inside and find some refuge from the cold weather persisting in this part of London.

The moment I stepped inside the building, the chilling cold was replaced with some pleasant warmth.

It was an odd switch of temperature, to be so sudden and so… well-calibrated.

I didn’t stay by the entrance as I kept walking, my anonymous state mattering more than genuine awe over the unexpected swing from cold to hot.

I reached for the counter since all the tables were mostly occupied and I needed to have some private chat with someone that had to know plenty of rumors born from this part of the city.

Ignoring the immediate creaking of the wood, I leaned on the counter while waiting for the host to finish discussing something with some clients, the burly-looking man frowning at my sight but he seemed quick to conclude the conversation he had been engaged me so that he could interact with me.

“It’s been a while since we saw you around, Dio,” The bartender grumbled quietly while starting to clean some empty mugs. “Almost a month I would say.”

“There has been circumstances that saw me leaving my former home,” I mused carefully, unsure of the nature of the relationship Dio held with this mysterious individual. “My father passed away peacefully.”

He snorted. “The old fart croaked his last breath? What a tragic day for the income he was creating for me.”

Ah. Dario was a frequent client of this place, possibly making Dio come here to buy him the booze once he was forced to bed.

“Truly,” I replied tightly. “But I’m here to find some solutions to a few of my questions.”

“Do you have the means to find these ‘solutions’?”

I dropped five pounds on the counter, the man scooping the coins quickly and away from everyone’s sight.

“I see that you are prepared indeed,” He said while giving a nod. “So please, do ask.”

I hummed quietly at the bribed compliance, but I continued.

“Three questions,” I muttered quietly. “The first one is… did my father leave a wedding dress a few months ago?”

The bartender blinked. “That pretty thing? If I remember correctly, it was your mother’s right?”

I tensed a little at the comment, but I nodded slowly at him.

“I still have it, never had a reason to truly trash such a gorgeous dress and…” He sighed, giving me a serious look. “Your mother did help me a couple of years ago. She offered me some food and some blankets to use when I was robbed of my bed and most of my reserves.”

I eased up in relief at that comment and I sighed. “Can I have it back? I can spend money for-”

“Oh no, it’s yours alright,” The host admitted quickly. “I ain’t keeping that thing around and, to be fair, I hated your father for making his wife’s life a horrible one.”

With my eyes widening, I waited just a couple of seconds to see the man return to the counter with a small brown box with him.

As he offered it to me, I decided to steal a quick glance from its content and… it was a wedding dress alright.

All white, filled with frilly details and… it was hers.

Closing the box, I nodded back at him. “Thank you.”

“Nah. Nothing to thank about, just dealing with this little debt and,” He paused a moment and sighed. “What else do you need to know?”

“Do you know Wang Chan, the shop owner in-”

“The creepy freak?” The man huffed with a shake of his head. “He is a nasty bugger, quite the annoying prick to be fair and… what do you need to know about him?”

“Has he moved away from his shop?”

“Not that I know, at least not in the last few days,” The bartender replied with a nod. “He had gotten madder as a bat in the last few weeks, saying stuff like ‘annoying imperso-something’ and stuff like that.”

...Dammit, why couldn’t that bastard keep quiet?!

It means that killing him was going to be more of a priority than hunt down Jack, but then again who knows how many would take the crazy man’s word for truth.

“Last question, what is it, brat?”

I sighed at the comment but I nodded at his pressure.

“There has been some murders happening in London in the last month,” I started to explain with a more serious voice. “All blond young men, the writings on their chest and-”

“Oh, you are searching for him too, aren’t you?” The host inquired with some curiosity, making me frown in confusion.

“What?”

“You ain’t the first guy to ask about ‘Jack’, and I would even dare to say that the very individual is a client right now.”

...What?!

Before I could push for more answers, I felt someone rest their hand over my left shoulder.

“I admit I wasn’t expecting someone to ask about this guy, young man,” A strangely-familiar voice piped in from behind me. “Yet, the thing I can’t just make sense about is… your strange smell.”

I tensed up, nervousness rising from my chest as I slowly turned around and I was greeted with quite the familiar face.

It was the ‘Gentlemen protector’, the JJBA’s best Waifu and only holder of the ‘Best Best Friend’ award in the series.

A younger Robert E. O. Speedwagon was looking at me with a fascinated look while two other individuals were staring at the scene from a few meters away from us.

I could recognize… the Kenpo Master and Tattoo, both being thugs working for Speedwagon and…

Why where these three here and now of all times and places?!

“My… smell?” I blurted out without thinking about it and I found myself chiding out my decision to speak so suddenly.

The fellow blonde blinked, adjusting his bowler hat and he nodded.

“After having been around for some time here in this entertaining part of town, I have acquired quite the capacity to smell people’s morality,” Speedwagon explained with a polite tone. “Kind of an important ability since people here can get pretty feisty when someone isn’t looking properly- but I think the issue is about your odd morality. You are good, but bad and… also good.”

I blinked at that last, confused particle and I frowned.

“Maybe I’m just into the gray-side of things?”

“Oh? So you aren’t a goody two-shoes?” He asked back with some surprise.

“Not much, no,” I admitted calmly. “What about you?”

The man frowned again. “What?”

“Is your smell ‘good’ or is it a strange mix itself?”

There was a pause at my pressure, but he managed to get an amused snort out of his mouth.

“What if I have a ‘bad’ smell?”

I felt my lips twitching at that opportunity for a joke, but I bit down the need of pressing on.

“You haven’t attacked me yet,” I pointed out calmly.

“That’s because you don’t seem much,” The man retorted calmly. “Plus, the boss wouldn’t like if I picked on brats. Am I right, boys?”

The other two thugs nodded together at this comment and I felt perplexed by this answer.

A boss? Wasn’t Speedwagon supposed to be top dog of his own group already? Was there a detail that I was missing.

“Yeah, she wouldn’t want to see some kid getting his ass handled by a proper thief,” He concluded with a tired sigh. “So how about we skip the pleasantries now and we focus on why you are trying to find Jack?”

I blinked and nodded. “I’ve reason to believe that he is actively hunting me down. I wish to end him before he becomes a problem.”

…

“Really? I mean, I understand he’s searching for people that are young and blond-haired, but I’m quite sure he is searching for someone else,” He replied with a confused tone. “I mean, I’ve heard he is searching for someone older, with stronger posture and quite the authoritative air to himself.”

“What?”

“That wouldn’t explain why he’s targeting kids tho,” The Kenpo Master muttered quietly. “Still, the boss was fairly sure that the target is older and she is quite serious about it.”

...She?

Just as my brain continued to fail to grasp the full extent of this ludicrous conversation, the entire chatty nature of the pub seemed to cease down to silence the moment someone else entered the establishment and… I was forced to stare at quite the development.

Wearing what looked to be an expensive dark-blue dress that was accentuating her figure a little better while also covering a little more her chest and stretching down below her kneecaps.

Her blue eyes sported some confidence, which in the last encounter I’ve seen her wasn’t there and… she froze when she noticed me.

She was surprised and for good reasons, maybe even more than how shocked I was in finding her here of all places.

Then, the young woman’s lips turned in a small but determined smile as she literally rushed towards me, arms wide open as she went to scoop me for a quick hug.

“Lord Dio!”

Oh no. God, Heavens, please don’t make this a thing.

“H-Hannah?!”

The dark-haired beauty giggled, squeezing my face close to her abundant bosom and I was subjected to the unpleasant and quite drowning sensation of being deprived of any means to draw some air.

“To think you would be visiting here, Lord Dio,” She exclaimed quickly. “I wasn’t even prepared. To think that I would have been granted such a miracle.”

...Okay, what is going on here? Why is everyone in this bar clearly threatened by this courtesan and… why was she wearing such an expensive dress?

“M-Madam, I think you are suffocating him,” Speedwagon pointed out with a light stutter, making the woman tense up a little as she noticed that it was indeed the case.

A quick gasp and I was soon freed from that horrible hold. “I-I’m so sorry, Lord Dio. I was just overjoyed and- and-!”

“H-Hannah, you can calm down,” I swiftly interjected, trying my best to not appear that much air-deprived. “I’m not angry and- what is going on?”

Her panicked expression to reveal quite the pretty look on her face. “Oh, so much has happened since I’ve last seen you, Lord Dio.”

I nodded, gesturing her to continue.

“You see, when you saved me from that horrible man, I thought well about your merciful intervention, and about your good heart to protect me from Jack,” She almost spit poison at that name, but then she continued. “And I decided that I should indeed strive to become the best possible, learning from your teachings as much as I could and… I ditched the brothel.”

...That is kind of good but immensely bad considering she was referring to ‘teachings’. And there was only one thing that I could have ‘taught’ her without thinking too much about it.

“Hannah,” I tried to keep calm while replying to her. “Please, tell me that you didn’t-”

“That’s why, instead of pursuing that disgusting career, I decided to preserve my purity while trying to do more, much more by using your gift,” She paused a moment to reach out something from one of the pockets in her dress, causing everyone to tense up and duck behind some covers.

Orange eyes stared fixedly at the small sphere-like object.

It looked like a well-shaped pebble, but then I noticed something happening.

It started to rotate, it was spinning and… I noticed the familiar pattern.

Color drained from my face in full recognition and proof that I had indeed made something incredibly odd and worrying out from a mere saving.

Hannah here, a simple ex-courtesan, was happily displaying how well-versed she was with the Spin and… I gulped nervously.

“T-That’s good, but what made you think that-”

“Noblemen are usually frowning down on the plight of us poor people,” The young woman interjected with her explanation. “Yet when I thought I was going to die, ignored by the grand majority of this city, I was granted the peace of my mind when you broke me away from that silly mindset. The world is now brighter that there is someone like you around, Lord Dio.”

The way she sounded so over-zealous over my title and role within her rescue effort, I was being reminded of a certain crazy servant of DIO.

At least this one isn’t a crazy-looking man with a scarier Stand.

I gave her a slow nod. “I-I see. It’s good to know that… you are thriving now.”

“Those are flattering words, Lord Dio,” The girl almost vibrated as I concluded this comment, her smile widening in quite the cute and scary manner.

Is that even possible? No, I shouldn’t be even asking at this point.

“It was nice to see you here, Hannah,” I said with a calm tone, ready to get out and just ask about Jack on another day, but just as I said those words, she tensed up and took hold of my hands, putting them together with hers.

“Lord Dio, please. I wish to show you my headquarters and… I will also show you how useful Speedy and his comrades are.”

I didn’t need to glance back to the trio to know that they had to look so embarrassed by how they were cowering for someone that sounded incredibly-nice but also absurdly-dangerous to have around as a leader.

Instead I was trying to find a way out of that pleading, only getting more horrible scenarios that could develop from refusing her ‘kind offer’.

How should I’ve seen this one coming?

I gave her a patient sigh, or something close to that, and I nodded. “I will accept your humble offer, Hannah.”

She giggled and nodded. “Then let us go. I don’t wish to inopportune Lord Dio for too long.”

Oh that is nice and- W-WAIT, HOLD A MOMENT!!

Panic surged as I was suddenly yanked out of the pub, my free hand managing to take hold of the brown box containing my- Dio’s mother’s dress as I was forced to deal with the quite highly-paced rush through Ogre Street.

And while I could hear Speedwagon and his two friends following behind, I couldn’t help but think how horrible this situation was going to end like.

I, Dio, wasn’t certainly in the mood to deal with a case of the Yukako-kind.

-To be continued...

Chapter Text

Omake 3: My Bizarre Stalker...1?

Original Idea from: Dyliokhan (SB)

Waking up with this dreadful headache sure was starting to put me in a bad mood this early in the morning.

There was silence and yet the sickness was still there to put me in a state of major distraction, enough to make me slow down in my efforts of getting up.

As my stretched arms slowly sunk back to the mattress, I felt something oddly soft standing beside me and covered by the sheets.

The open palm of my left hand was pressing on it, but not squeezing it as I was aware that until I was sure about what was going on, it was best to not trifle with fate itself.

I could recognize the texture of skin beyond the feeble fabric, enough to put me in quite the alarmed state.

Panic rushed right into my mind as I considered the circumstance, my brain picking the various possibilities that might have happened to me.

I had eaten normally like usual yesterday by dinnertime and the Hamon training with Muddiburi hadn’t left me overly-drained as the first times.

I had been drugged and… someone was sleeping beside me.

A woman, if the clue of this discovery was actually what I think it was, and that dreadfully brought me some scenarios that weren’t even close to good.

There were servants in the mansion, young women that were stuck in the social ladder and that were possibly endeared by the possibility of engaging in some romantic relationships with young lords with high chances of having a more than comfortable life.

I gulped nervously, my lips twitching in grand displeasure as I seriously hoped that I hadn’t been taken advantage about as that would have been… a horrible development for me, Dio, to actually consider.

But it couldn’t be possible, it just couldn’t!

In Canon, Dio and Jonathan never had to face this kind of issue, nor I expected George to not keep a mindful watch over any leeches trying to worm their way in his family’s home.

Yet, while these trail of thoughts were meant to reassure me that nothing fool was afoot, the more I dismissed these theories, the more I felt like I was starting to be left with no actual clue about what was going on here.

Just as I planned to make a quick rush towards the door, hoping to alert the owner of the mansion about this situation, I felt the warm body beside me stir a little.

A soft hum, one born from some happy sleeping, was the prelude for a the stranger to finally move out of the covers and reveal her identity.

A dark-haired head slowly pushed out of the warmth of the fabric, bright blue eyes starting to calmly open and stare right into my face.

There was a smile, her lips twitching in quiet amusement as she greeted with a small sigh.

“Good morning, brother.”

WHAT?!

No, there was no way that- she has the same length of hair as JoJo and- but he- she- Oh God!

The one I was staring at was what many could consider the genderbent version of someone I knew about, someone that wasn’t meant to be in my bed right now and… not as a girl at least.

I sweated cold, as the dread that had until now waited for the omen to unfold was already grasping over my panic and squeezing me for a reaction.

I, Dio, was starting to feel a little bit confused but immensely horrified by this discovery.

“Oh?” She hummed in minor surprise, her eyes landing right at my still hand as it was cupping not-so conspicuously part of her chest.

I forgot to move the hand. Now this is going to end poorly for me, with me either getting killed, exiled or maybe tortured by the Joestar Patriarch.

She blinked, her smile still there now increasing its intensity.

“Oh… my~.”

Did she just ‘Ara Ara’ in English?

N-No, I can’t just let this happen! I need to move before something else can happen in there.

“I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s alright,” JoJo mumbled giddily. “I trust you, big brother. I know you didn’t mean to sully my innocent flesh.”

The emphasis was more than enough to put me on the edge, urging me to release my hold over her and retract my hand away from doing more harm.

What is going on? Some attack from one of my enemies? Was this the result of Wang Chan’s dark magic?

My mind was incredibly riddled by the frightened state I was, but the young woman beside me merely yawned cutely and snuggled closer.

“J-Jojo, you shouldn’t be-”

“Hmm, but it’s alright for siblings to share the bed,” She interjected with a huff, glancing up with a pouty look. “Plus, I proved you wrong about what you were saying about you liking more sleeping alone.”

...What?

“I mean, I had to dose your cup yesterday with something Papa is using with his sleeping problems and-”

“J-Jojo.”

The girl blinked, but she accepted the interruption with a stride. “Yes, brother?”

“Was this something perhaps called… Barbiturate, or Chloral hydrate?”

There weren’t many sleeping drugs/hypnotics that were available in this era and the ones that were there… I was sure couldn’t be used to induce sleep.

Both were deadly, with the latter having been rejected as a proper medical to use in any circumstance.

I was seriously hoping that it was the former since it didn’t have the same rate of deadliness as the latter.

“I… I think it was some herbs dad brought from some store in India,” She replied with a hint of uncertainty. “The shopkeeper said that it was fine to make use of those to reduce sleep problems, but that it had to be taken with some moderation. This is why I decided to use very little to merely have you sleep better… with me.”

So I was subjected to some mysterious drug that got me to sleep deeply enough for the girl to enter my room and get inside my bed.

I was starting to slowly calm down at the fact that I was still clothed in my sleepwear and that everything was there on me… but then I realized something I should have noticed way before this.

“Jojo… why are you wearing nothing?”

A little blush spread on her cheeks, as she still smiled giddily at the newest discovery I made.

“There was so much warmth and… I decided to merely remove some of my clothes so I could stay close to you… big brother.”

For as much as she was trying to make it sound like a normal thing, I was fairly sure, especially for this century’s standard, that what she was doing could be considered incredibly scandalous to deal with and…

I almost forgot that JoJo wasn’t much of a rule-follower of the 19th century’s etiquette.

Shit.

“JoJo, there is a limit to the affection a brother and a sister can have,” I tried to bring some sense to this insanity. “While you are correct that some siblings, at least until they are younger at the age of 10, can share the bed, it’s improper for a boy and a girl of our age to consider such an endeavor.”

There was a pause, her face now sporting a blank look and her eyes almost glowing with a strong hint of… something close to… anger?

Yet she didn’t speak, nor she tried to do anything in this pause, merely staring me intensively right at my face and… finally she smiled.

“I-I see,” JoJo admitted with a calm sigh. “I understand what you are trying to say.”

...Why she was still smiling so mischievously when- UH?!

I tensed up as she suddenly wrapped her arms around my neck and brought my face closer to hers.

“Then I guess… we will have to be much more than siblings~.”

I flushed red, my brain blanking out for a moment as the closeness was just too much to me at this point.

My hamon crackled, coating my body in new energy as I felt my tiredness I had been experiencing until now draining to nothing and soon I was left with a more attentive mind-

And then I woke up back in my room, alone and without any major noises rupturing the quiet of the place.

I blinked as I noticed the little sweat on my face, the blush on my face and… the lack of a certain gender-bent woman trying to do some stuff that are best keep unsaid.

Moments passed, I stared up at the ceiling in an effort to calm down and…

I sighed.

“I guess I should be more careful with Hamon Training… maybe something did happen there,” I whispered to myself as I started to prepare myself for what was going to be a long day… like usual.

Hopefully, I wasn’t going to face this kind of nightmares again…

I, Dio, wasn’t going to deal with that kind of developments. Especially not with a female version of Jonathan.

Chapter Text

Capitolo Primo: Giovinezza (8)

The moment I was led inside the abandoned warehouse that had been turned in the hideout for Hannah’s gang, I felt a brief shiver of self-disappointment over what I was looking at.

I suppose I should have expected to see this happening. Somehow.

I couldn’t certainly magic some clairvoyance from utter nothingness. With my current abilities being far from accomplishing such a deed, I still had to rely on logical ramifications born from simple but deep events.

Hannah was one of the various inhabitants of the British Isles, but like the majority she was incredibly bent by the nature of the present state of society. The United Kingdom didn’t offer means for low-borns to truly rise up from the dust, leaving many broken and left succumbing to the horrible truth of the stagnating situation of the world.

People that were so desperate for a chance out of this deplorable hellhole they had been thrown into not because of their actions, but because of their unlucky upbringing.

Dio’s charisma proved to be as divine as I remembered it to be, but the peak of this unique trait was reached when he first mastered the beastly nature of vampires, when he become a cruel and cynical being that could easily strip humans of their hopes, turning them in puppets ready to be manipulated by him.

It was natural for him. No empathy for individuals, only some inner lust to see blood being spilled by people, may those be his foes or his allies.

Before he took the mask? There had been some subconscious manipulation from his part to worm himself into his minions’ hearts, then he would offer them guidance, trust, and utmost pride in a glorious future.

In this period, these three things were something that many poor people didn’t have, thus turning easy to mold under his perspective of humanity.

But there was something of a flaw in his ingenious charisma, and that was the inability of manipulating multiple people at once to the maximum effort.

Chaos helped him well in having none rebel against him, only a few eventually seeing his true self and bailing from his plans… but this was all after meeting with the Joestar family one way or another.

Part 3 showed this issue masterfully. While he recovered, while he prepared to make his glorious victory to be his ultimate one… he also failed to notice that one couldn’t just brush away someone as dastardly strong as his fateful opponent.

Fate was a strong element in the story, where the Joestars became its champions against the group of villains trying to conquer the world or just let it burn even more as it was now.

But the true problem about my current predicament wasn’t truly Dio’s charisma. It was the fact that I had pretty much stumbled in the creation of something much more meaningful than just a young man’s ambitious plan to become rich.

The British Empire was starting to reach its Zenith, completing the final expansion of the Colonial holdings.

The death of Queen Victoria was going to make the social issues within the grandiose Great Power crash down on everyone, shaking the political boat more than many contemporary politicians could have foreseen.

From poor people being left without guarantees to succeed in life only to be thrown into factories or into the trenches, to the nobility starting to see that their usual petty plays around the traditional parties wasn’t going to work any longer with the growing chorus of reform.

Communism never truly entrenched in the country until much later in the twentieth century, but there was already something that was going to pave the road for some unpleasant circumstances to deal as a single individual. Or even a big organization.

The Labour Party was still far from becoming worrisome for them all hiding in their mansions, but the moment the Great War was going to come in and sweep generations off entire nations, things were going to take an ugly turn.

I could see already the lines of the deformed webs already contorting and, despite Dio’s interest in making the world is to rule by improving it from the dust, he failed to notice that there was just too much to do on his own.

The world was far too big and corrupt to be ruled so instantly. The takeover has to be subtle and decisive instead of some bloody war to unify everything up.

Control has to be coaxed into the people’s minds, it has to be rendered a must and a need for them to accept in their normal lives as an alternative to the current time’s squalor.

Make them feel easy in their cage, so that the captor can go ahead and mold the bright lights of a properly-made future.

The mere sight of the well-cared warehouse, with the numerous boxes filled with food and resources currently littering all over the inner section of the building, was enough to give me a glimpse of what a single action, may it be out of kindness or for something else, was capable of achieving so suddenly and without much notice.

After leaving the box with the dress to the closest place I could reach, I proceeded to carefully comply to the former prostitute’s request.

Hannah was still smiling eye-to-eye as she started to give me a tour around the place, the rest of the group having taken seat by some of the tables prepared in the crates-free area of the warehouse, to stare and try to understand how I was their ‘inspiration’.

Legitimate as a concern, appearances can be quite the mirror that fools people about one’s limits and potential. A true deed of power was necessary, but not one done so quickly and without a deep reasoning behind.

I could grow flowers on the wood of some of these boxes, but that display of ‘magic’ was only going to get them disappointed over my own means to create changes.

I needed something bigger. Something that was a must to accomplish, like an important mission of sort.

Something that would have to wait for now as I continued with the tour, quite unwilling to show any major displeasing actions before the young woman.

Hannah was capable of using the Spin, not truly something worrying if I had her set a couple of meters away from me… but she was attached to be like glue.

The moment she decided to snap, either for me being too uncaring or for some misunderstanding during our interaction, I was going to find a way to dodge or manipulate some Spin’s attack.

And that wasn’t something I could easily accomplish in a state of stress. Not yet at least.

“I hope that there have been no major attacks against the police,” I muttered quietly mid-discussion, gaining quickly the dark-haired woman’s attention.

“Not truly, no,” The former courtesan admitted calmly, her smile faltering a little at the serious topic. “But we have managed to steer them off with some appeasing bribes.”

I nodded at the action, knowing that it was best to avoid having to deal with some officers snooping around for criminal deeds.

“That’s good to know, Hannah,” I calmly commented, the girl almost squealing to the praise. “I hope you will continue this once an opportunity for us to act about it will happen.”

“Kind words from you, Lord Dio,” The young woman replied kindly at my words. “But, if it’s not too much to ask about, I would like to know if you have… any plans that we could go through with together.”

If she had been a puppy, I bet she would have waggled her tail madly at the possibility of standing close to me for that much long.

“Albeit I can’t offer any grandiose plans just yet considering the surprising revelation of this circumstance,” I started to answer her implicit query, noticing almost suddenly her deflating at my early words. “I can offer some minor guidance for the time being. Just enough to give you all something to do while I make some proper plans that can offer you some real action without dangers.”

Her blue eyes shone brightly at this. “You mean like giving us some tests to prove our worth?”

...Not truly what I was referring to. But I still gave a solid nod at that, the girl smiling in response as she paced quietly back towards the trio of man that was still looking at us talking.

But it was just as she eagerly made her way back to the rest of the gang that something odd caught my attention.

It was a mere instant, a blink within time that didn’t match up with the previous seconds as I saw a darker shadow obscuring the frame of the young woman and I felt tension as I recognized that something was descending quickly towards her.

It was a box. Someone had moved it towards her, ready to have the wood-made crate collide with Hannah’s skull.

The Spin wouldn’t have been quick enough, the gravity dragging the object quickly down showing no limitation in its fall and… I moved quickly, Hamon pumping rapidly in my legs.

“Hannah!”

My voice ripped through the silence and mute scene, the woman reacting instantly as she swiftly turned around to see what was going on with me, but then her eyes noticed the approaching brown-colored box falling upon her.

Her jaws gawked at the incoming pain, but…

I moved her just in time.

After pushing her away and making her trip on her butt, I moved backward to avoid the crate myself, the timing just perfect to avoid any unwanted splinters to reach out for my unarmored body.

I felt adrenaline rushing and giving me a new degree of awareness of the situation, being far too sure that the predicament hadn’t been a coincidence and… I felt someone moving behind me.

With the Ripple still coating my body in new energy, my reaction time was in its best shape as I mindfully started to dodge around two- no, three knives being used to get a solid hit on my chest.

Sweat rolling from my forehead, I managed to counter this assault with a quick kick at my attacker’s ribs.

Crack!

It was a pleasant noise to hear considering that the one maimed was this figure, the aggressor backing away instantly at the sudden counterattack, with one of his hands now reaching by his aching chest.

My aggressor groaned and snarled, a mix of wounded person and furious animal as he tried to bring some balance to his footing.

I had my eyes narrowed on the man’s face, almost snarling back his name at the ridiculous ambush he had set up for me.

“To think that you would be the one to find me, Jack.”

My words pierced like thousands of dagger right back at the murderer, the young man displaying a mirthful grin at my words.

“It’s you, Dio~!” He chuckled in a moment of lucid craziness, then his stare focused back on me, his hold over his monstrous knife tightening as he took a step towards me. “It’s you. It’s YOU! He was RIGHT!”

I grimaced at the loud outburst, the psychopath clearly unable to restrain the amusement at having found me. Rather ‘unflattering’ considering the kind of bastard I was supposed to kill now.

“Oh? Was it Wang Chan that told you?” I took a step forward myself, causing him to blink in a mix of childish wonder and awe. “I suppose that you got a little bird to tell you.”

“A strange bird,” He muttered with a hint of surprise. “Why, we know the same birds too then~!”

He jumped, his smile widening at the fact that I hadn’t moved yet as I carefully waited for him to get close enough for me to retaliate.

One of the things that truly made Jack a horrible killer was that his main flaw was the very strength that got him so famous both in the original timeline and this one.

His preys were weak, too prone to get scared of sudden attacks, making his job of stabbing them to death easier to accomplish.

He had never fought against someone lacking fear, someone that knew how to defend themselves.

I waited just at the last moment as I saw the knife ready to plunge on my neck, my head moving swiftly away from its trajectory as I proceeded to land a punch to the injured part of his chest.

The moment my fist landed on the skin, I could feel the entire body tense up in pain as the Ripper tripped to the side, rolling away as he tried but failed to stand up from the previous blow.

“Weren’t you going to kill me, Jack?” I inquired dryly as I started to walk towards him. “Knives ready, you were there, prepared to gut me… but now, you will be the one to perish by my hands!”

I lunged over him, ready to conclude this madman’s career here and now, but just as I leaped forward-

Clang.

I felt something metallic wrap around my right leg. Surprise turned in panic as I felt yanked away from Jack and into the wall, my face making the acquaintance of the barrier first thing first.

I groaned, my entire body burning at the sudden attack and… I heard a familiar chuckling.

“To think that this ‘strange bird’ did right by following around the curious child,” Wang Chan mirthfully commented while standing a few meters away from where I was.

He had his claws already unfolded, yet the other end of the chain was on his right hand.

“A pity that it wasn’t a true fight to understand what went wrong,” The Chinese man commented darkly as he started to approach me. “A pity that your demise is so sudden and meaningless.”

Before he could take any other steps, the malicious shopkeeper was forced to back away to dodge a…. Spinning ball.

The sphere of energy rushed for a little longer before slamming and exploding a couple of seconds later.

We both glanced right at the origin of the attack and… I was stunned by the sight I was presented with.

I had gone through the hour trying to keep Hannah from snapping in such a furious state, yet now she was sporting quite the incensed expression in her petite face.

“Y-You! How dare you attack Lord Dio!!” The outburst was met with a giggle by the dark magician.

It was in that moment that I tried to get out of that lock that kept me chained up, but-

“As if you can ever come close to even injure me, little brat,” Wang Chan commented, whistling happily as he yanked at my chain a little, disrupting my efforts to get out of my restrictions. “And as if I would let you faker get out of my hold, filthy scum.”

I groaned at the circumstance, knowing that I couldn’t act accordingly until I was out of that chains.

Yet, as I felt my hopes of winning this battle started to dwindle a little at the unpleasant developments, I saw some sparks erupting from the bastard’s claws.

Something was distracting him, the subsequent snarl giving me more hints that something was happening that I couldn’t see properly from my current disposition.

I saw something little, something that was spinning and… was creating sparkles out of its continuous impact.

“But I shall make sure that you are banished in the deepest part of hell, you cur,” A certain blond-haired man stood beside his boss. “For I, Robert E.O. Speedwagon, shan’t allow you to harm this gentleman!”

...I feel a little bit better now that I had this quote repeated towards me.

With the magician distracted, I moved my hands back to the chain, thinking how to get out of there without alerting the man of my activity.

I blinked, the solution easy to come up with as I reached for one of the steel balls in my pocket and I worked to accomplish two manipulations for the chain.

The first one was the main issue, opening up the chains binding my right leg up and the process was particularly quick to accomplish.

It was the second and final one that proved to be much more complicated than I remember it being, as the idea was generally easy to understand.

I had to meld the metal to latch onto Wang Chan’s palm, to bond to it as if glued to it.

This took me sometime, the distraction almost close to end as the hat was finally pushed away from the annoyed shopkeeper…

But it was already too late!

The magician realized suddenly that there was something wrong with the chain, but the very moment he stared back at me, his realization struck as I let out the first spark of Hamon through the metal.

With no means to break away from the chain now connected to his skin, my understanding of his nature was validated when the Ripple actually damaged the ‘simple human’.

I had long suspected that there was something wrong about the man, something inhuman. And now I was proven correct when the Energy of Light burned into the bastard.

Yet, much to my dissatisfaction, the effect weren’t as deadly as I had wished them to be.

The Hamon’s electric-like path was interrupted as I quickly noticed Wang Chan getting out somehow from his new binding. My eyes moved quickly, spotting a little bit of flesh still attached to the chain… and the bloody spot on the man’s palm as he dropped his metallic claws.

“Y-You- YouyouyouyouyouyouyouyouYOUYOUYOUYOUYOU!!”

He trembled furiously, pain exuding from his shivering body and his crazed wide eyes glared at me with utmost hatred.

“YOU WILL DIE. I WILL KILL YOU!”

But not now, it seems.

Just as he concluded this proclamation, the man suddenly jumped right up to the roof section and into the large window above the entrance, rushing into the glass as he made his quick escape away from that horrible situation for him.

There was silence, my body slowly healing thanks to Hamon after making a close encounter with a concrete wall. I glanced around, unsure that things were truly fine as I went to look to see if I could see Jack around and…

He wasn’t there anymore. Wang Chan’s sudden attack had screwed my chances of killing Jack now before he could really turn in a serious problem and… I was pissed.

“L-Lord Dio, is everything alright?”

I could recognize Hannah’s worried tone, but the moment I tried to reply that I was fine, I ended up scooped up in what I could confuse easily as the greatest of traps.

My face was pushed on her chest again, her arms tightly pulling deep in that bosom as I tried to keep afloat.

“I’m so sorry for endangering you, Lord Dio- If only I had been more careful with the situation Jack wouldn’t have been able to-”

“I-It’s alright,” I managed to interject with a muffled voice, managing to pull my lips away from that situation I was facing. “N-No need to worry. I’m alright, Hannah.”

It took her a couple of quiet moments to finally ease up her tight hold, giving me some means to breath without having to force my body through the odd predicament.

“Still, are you alright?” I inquired back before turning to the rest of the gang. “Same for you, Speedwagon and-”

But before I could finish with my honest attempt to sound emphatic with what had just happened, there the girl squealed and giggled.

“Lord Dio, to receive so much attention and considerations~!”

Another giggle and I bit down a groan at that reaction.

Despite the fact that Hannah was proving to be stable and incredibly capable with her ability with the Spin, I still have to keep an eye on her volatile personality.

Once I had made sure to leave the group with the simple tasks of expanding with new members and avoid causing any major issues with the authorities, I proceeded to make my way quickly back to where the carriage was waiting to me and… I just made it barely for the curfew.

I sighed nervously while holding the box with the dress within it close to my chest, my eyes distracted as my mind wandered at the implication of this absurd encounter.

While I could see Jack coming to track me down so suddenly, I hadn’t expected Wang Chan to be as brutal as the serial killer.

It was worrying, incredibly so, but I didn’t plan to back away from the purpose of killing them both as quickly as fate allowed.

I had to just find a mean to deal with them individually… then things would go favorably for me.

But for now, it was time for me, Dio, to make my way back home and rest from this unexpected encounter.

-----------d-d-d-d--------------d-d-d-d-----------------d-d-d-d-------------

“I hope that your trip was successful, Dio.”

Once I was back to the Joestar’s Mansion, I had swiftly made my way to George’s office to report with what had happened with my solo endeavor.

The man had been busy with some paperwork when I knocked at his door, but he was quick to receive me with a note of curiosity and kindness as I entered while bringing the box with him.

Nodding at his curt comment, I presented him with the content of the box, his eyes slightly widening in a mix of genuine happiness and surprise at my victorious trip.

“I found it right where I thought it to be,” I replied calmly, setting the box right by one of the unused chairs as I focused my full attention to the man. “But I’m actually troubled by some of the words I’ve heard from the one that had it.”

Curiosity stirred at my last sentence, causing the man to pause in his work to give some proper focus at my words. “Is that so? Can you elaborate?”

I sighed, prepared to make some careful maneuvering to have the image of Dario Brando stained now that he was dead. Nothing truly wrong, I was actually bringing up part of the horrible truth behind the man’s passing.

“The man that had it, was the bartender of a pub close to where I lived,” I mentioned with a sigh. “And the man was quick to confirm the identity of the… one responsible for the dress to happen in his ownership.”

Interest swelled even more at my enticing comments, and soon I revealed ‘what I knew’.

I took a heavy sigh, this one filled with faux uncertainty and distress. “It was… It was my father, Dario Brando.”

I could see shock replace the intrigue in the Joestar’s face, the skin paling at the realization and I suddenly stared down at the carpet while I carefully picked what was left of the money that George had given me to buy back the dress and… settled the coins right onto his desk, backing two steps away from it.

“Mr. Joestar… I wish to apologize if this seems like a horrible discovery- I knew that father had some drinking problem but… I never thought it to be so bad and-”

“Dio, stop-”

I closed my eyes, ready to continue with the little act I had planned to go through while on my way back to the carriage.

“I-I’m not a thief.” Yet I am. A shameless one if push comes to shove.

“A-And I don’t wish to hurt Jonathan.” If he becomes an obstacle, he shall be removed swiftly and without hesitation.

“Dio,” This time the Joestar’s voice felt closer and stronger, and I felt my body tense up as I failed to notice the man had moved out of his chair and now was close enough for a hug.

Which he went for. His arms pulled calmly close, trying to make the embrace as warm, but also as half-formal, as possible.

“You are not your father, Dio,” George started to say. “While you might be related to him, you are your own person.”

“...” I was silent, ready to bask a little in the comforting words of the fatherly figure as I thought how smoothly this was turning out to be.

By dirtying Dario’s name, I was also making myself appear as an innocent young man that just ended up scattered by the unpleasant nature of my former home’s life.

I was made a good guy, one that could be trusted, one that lacked ‘enough’ backbone to try and do anything even so remotely bad.

I had my eternal alibi with this man, and now I was granted the immunity I needed to step up my games with what I achieved from that visit.

“Dario Brando… I thought of him to be a blunt, rude simpleton, but still someone that cared for his family,” The Joestar continued calmly. “I suppose my thought was a mistaken one… yet I think that my idea of you isn’t wrong. Actually, I think I considered you far less than you actually are.”

...What?

“When I first took you in, I expected you to be as blunt and brash as your father,” The nobleman started to explain. “I thought you to be in need of guidance, yet you proved me wrong by becoming a guide for Jojo. By becoming his proper older brother.”

I was surprised by this detail as… did George actually mention this in the Canon? Was this is first assumption of Dio’s character?

Perhaps, deep down, he always thought that there was something wrong about the blond but- what if he missed entirely the fact that this wasn’t a simple case of ‘misunderstood child’?

I could see why he would be so protective of Dio, why he would even be so vehement with Jonathan in certain circumstances that saw his son being the one to initiate any brash assault against the fellow young man.

It was all fitting well in that puzzle that was George Joestar I, but it still wasn’t enough to redeem him from some of the stern approaches he had adopted against his son.

Albeit a good man, he still failed to notice the danger until a dagger was plunged in him.

Jonathan had tried his best, from being a child to being an adult, the results still being the same despite the tenacity and the proof given to the older Joestar.

I was flattered by the nobleman’s words right now, but none forgave him from the mistakes he would have committed if I had been the real Dio.

“W-What if I’m like a mockingbird, sir?”

George blinked. “You are aware of the typology of bird?”

“I’ve- I’ve read it in the library,” I replied quickly, holding down a false sad hum. “I’ve read that- that the youngest are meant to ruin other families, pushing eggs and other birds off the nest-”

“Stop, Dio.”

I flinched a little and the embrace eased as he finally let go, the man looking as sad as irked by bringing up such a depressive topic.

“You are not a mockingbird, you will never be one. Of that, I am sure of,” The nobleman confirmed determinedly. “I know that you are laborious, incredibly determined to prove your worth, but you also have a genuine light in your eyes when you help Jonathan. You care for him, and you strive to make him succeed as highly as you usually do.”

There was a pause, one that saw me sponging up all the words that I’ve listened to.

“Some servants have… reported me that you have helped him early on with his homework when you first arrived,” He mentioned quietly, making me tense up again in a real moment of sheer panic.

I had completely forgotten that there was still a couple of butlers hanging around the study room while the older Joestar was out for some work reasons.

To think that they would have reported of my little sneaky efforts…

I have completely underestimated the capacity of some of them to actually show some initiative with some instances.

“I-I was only trying to-”

“Help him around so that he wouldn’t face the whip,” He interrupted me curtly, drawing a surprised look on my face as he sighed and continued. “I’ve seen you staring at it for some time now and… I think you understand why I might have to ask you if your father… puts his hands on you.”

More silence, I felt uneasy about talking about abuse when I wasn’t the victim about.

This body? Probably. I was certain that Dario had some chances to land some hits once Dio’s mother was dead but… I didn’t have much of a proof other than one final punch showed by the first episode.

So, instead of making this a big lie and risk inflating things beyond my capacity to contain it all, I decided to keep telling some of the truth.

“I wasn’t… much. There was just an instance of a slap a year ago...” I paused, drawing a tired sigh before continuing. “But- But I think my mother… she didn’t like being near to father.”

This time it was the man’s turn to tense up at my allusion.

Despite having kept some calm over the instance, the mere idea that my mother herself had taken the brunt of such violence was enough to finally tap at the Joestar’s rare anger.

An uneasy sigh left his lips before he gave a brief ruffle to my hair. “Dio, perhaps it’s best for you to reach your room and make yourself presentable for lunch.”

There was so much left unsaid in that simple sentence. So much I could pick up with a mere thought or two about it, but I decided to not indulge too much the current patience of the man as I swiftly paced out of the room with the box in my hands.

A small smile on my face as I felt that I had indeed been successful with my efforts even with this situation.

Not only was George going to investigate himself about Dario and discover the massive bastard the man had been, but I was also going to pass like a misunderstood child that would never try to create any unnecessary troubles for anyone in this mansion.

A double win that saw me actually standing close to achieve the greatest position achievable in my current role in this family, just enough to prepare me to make big plans here in London before thinking about my next big step in this world.

Once Wang Chan and Jack the Ripper were crushed, the bits of resistance formed by criminals within the capital will be easy to dismantle or even ‘reform’ to become pawns of my ultimate vision.

As I reached my room and jumped face-first on my bed, ready to finally get some brief rest from what had happened an hour or so earlier today, I found myself freezing at a sudden eep coming from…

My desk.

My sight snapped right to the origin of the noise, my orange eyes matching up with cerulean ones.

Erina blinked back, still sitting calmly on my chair while beside her there was a nervous-looking Jonathan that was failing to bring up his stare to look up at my face.

The book with the translation was open, and it didn’t take me too long to realize what was going on.

I, Dio, forgot that curious teenagers will always be curious teenagers… and I seriously need to lock the door to my room when I’m not around the mansion.

-To be continued...

Chapter Text

Omake 4: Early Victory for the Heavens(?)

Original Idea from: HappyFox (SB)

There are many things that still confuses me when I think about JoJo’s logic, but this one was seriously making me look like a mumbling moron.

It all started while I was training with Muddiburi, the Tibetan monk having left for a moment to recover some fallen branches to explain how I could turn anything in a weapon with Hamon if I needed to fight against dark creatures and being.

Alone in that section of the forest, I started to boringly muse randomly over what I could try to experiment with Hamon now that I was without supervision.

Boredom was a terrible driving force for making steps toward new techniques, and I was certainly not going to stay idle for the time being.

I picked one of the branches that the tall man had left nearby and I tried to play around with it with some of the energy from the Ripple.

Bright-red roses grew in its surface, blossoming prettily on it as I glanced at them with quiet curiosity and constant pondering over what I should try to do next.

I picked another branch, this time looking at it thoroughly before contemplating what to try out now.

What if I tried to replicate the Arrow with the Spin?

I blinked, the thought coming in my mind like a blurt, a silly brain fart that shouldn’t even be thought about for how flimsy and silly it was as an idea.

While I was perfectly aware what the Arrow did and what form it had, I wasn’t aware of the complete functionality it had over the process to create Stands.

People can get killed by it if those lacked the willpower to sustain a Stand, and that was incredibly bad considering that it was rare in this period for people capable of surviving the tricky operation of giving out the embodiment of their fighting souls.

Yet the curiosity to try out and see if I can create something that at least looked as cool at the real thing was more than enough to get me to try and replicate its appearance with this tree’s branch.

The steel ball was already spinning at an acceptable pace, the energy ready to be set to be used for this little experiment.

The plan was as simple as usual, the modification of the prime object starting quite slowly but steadily as the body of the arrow attained its slim nature while the tip started to grow into the design I was accustomed with.

The golden design expanded beautifully and soon… it was done.

I blinked in surprise at how gorgeous the little thing looked to be. I had gone by thought, inspiring myself with some of the details I wasn’t sure about and it just looked so perfect.

I glanced all over the tip, endeared by the precise curves, the refined design of the meteor-born material and how strangely it felt to hold.

I blinked again, this time surprise turning in confusion as I tightly kept the object from falling off from my hold, and my orange eyes widened when my hand started to twitch at the stubborn resistance it was meeting against the newly-created Arrow.

I pushed more strength into it, putting more effort in keeping it from falling- no, moving out of my grasp.

The weight suddenly shifted away from going to the ground and right… t-towards me?

My free hand reached out to grasp into my tense hold, to increase my attempts to keep the object at bay.

At first I was confused over the sudden phenomenon, but slowly enough a cold realization had started to settle in my mind that I might have gone a little more than just make a perfectly harmless replica of the dangerous Stand-making tool.

I tried my best to keep it from moving out of my hold but the more I struggled against it, the more my hands started to sweat at the pressure they were put against and… it slipped out.

It was a sudden action, so sudden that I felt the sharp pain erupting in my chest at the Arrow plunging deeply in my chest only mere moments after it happened.

My eyes went wide in fright and hurt, a yelp burned down as I felt my lungs aching atrociously at the horrible and intense sensation paralyzing them.

“N-No-” I fell on on my knees, my legs wobbling at the unexpected mortal injury already draining of my energy. “I-I can’t just-”

I needed to move quickly, before my brain truly went in shock for what had just happened.

I was already bleeding a lot, the wound having grazed some important organs and leaving me with little space to maneuver around.

The first thing I did was to use the Spin to neutralize the Arrow’s energy from continuing to delve deeper in my chest, the steel ball pressing on the body of the projectile and denting into the wood in the process.

I felt another sharp round of pain explode in my chest and I felt my heartbeat growing more erratic the more I continued to shatter the tool.

Desperation is a terrible driving force considering that it makes people do some crazy things that most of the time can result in utter fails… and deaths.

I didn’t plan to die here, not now that I was just starting with my ambitions.

I crouched even more as I pushed more strength to the spin, intensifying its activity despite my knowledge that it could explode without some proper stability and attention given to the process.

But in that moment of distress, what truly mattered was survived.

My body tensed, my Hamon quivered in a moment of instinctual scare as it flooded through my body and tried to heal the damage that I was suffering…

But just as I started to lose consciousness over the futility of removing the stubborn Arrow out of my chest, something odd happened.

First a loud word, then a sharp pain of something sturdy slamming through my back.

MUDA!

Tears formed, I felt a new wave of pain, but instead of finding death out of that sudden shocking blow, I actually felt instantly better.

The Arrow shattered against the unknown attack, and the hole it had created was closed up while the inner damage was fixed instantly.

I blinked, my tears still staining my cheeks as I slowly turned around in a moment of adrenaline-driven panic and… I saw it floating above me and staring down with a calm look.

The humanoid looked bulky, his muscles easy to see on his figure were as massive as those I knew from ｢ The World ｣ and ｢ Star Platinum ｣ .

I was awed, I was confused, and I felt… complete.

The sense of shock intensified as it tilted its head in what I could feel to be curiosity, mystification over the sudden emergence of the Stand before me.

But before I could have given more thoughts about it, I noticed footsteps approaching my proximity.

“I’m back,” Muddiburri announced as he dropped several dozens of branches by the nearby ground, his stare turning back at me and… he froze as he looked up to notice the figure behind me.

“Dio-”

“It’s not an issue,” I blurted, my brain failing to shape up any composure after what I had to deal with. “It’s not dangerous.”

He blinked, his eyes narrowing back at me. “What is that? ”

I gulped nervously at the serious tone in his voice, feeling some pressure erupting from him and… I nodded.

“T-That’s my- my Stand,” I muttered nervously. “A-And it’s-”

“How did you unlock it?” He ignored my explanation, taking a few steps towards me. “Your knowledge is-” He stopped talking himself, his frown softening and he looked down at the bloodstain still present to the ground. “What happened?”

“C-Can’t you just read it on my mind?” I shot back, stuttering a little as I was almost there to regain my bearings.

“Not anymore.”

These two words tensed me up immensely. I glanced back at the Stand behind me, the white-colored being staring back at me with a frown and I gulped again.

“I-I think that is going to be a long explanation-”

“We have plenty of time left,” The Tibetan Monk interjected curtly. “I suppose we will skip this training session for this.”

His words didn’t put me at ease and… I nodded.

How was I supposed to tell him that I, Dio, have somehow unlocked the absurd and not-canon ｢ The World Over Heaven ｣ ?!

Chapter Text

Capitolo Primo: Giovinezza (9)

Of all things that could have put me in a very complicated situation, it had to be my inability to find means to hide away the journal containing certain sensible information I would’ve preferred to keep hidden away from the rest of the world.

I should’ve suspected that Jonathan’s curiosity, mixed and intensified by the presence of Erina’s own thirst of knowledge, would have ended up with them studying more about me through the things that were within my room.

It was wrong, their faces were already showing that they knew about that, yet the childish curiosity that led them there had already done me no little trouble.

There was no way that someone as young and uncultured as the two lovebirds-in-the-making would have understood clearly that what was there in that paper was beyond the mere fantasy, beyond the mere fairy tale.

Instead of lashing out brutally as the original Dio would have at the sight of someone intruding in his possessions, thus increasing the suspect about his goodwill towards the Joestar’s family, I decided to take a more moderate approach.

“Jojo, Erina,” I started to say with a stern and unflinching tone, gaining even more tension from the two. “I hope you’ve some apology to offer me for intruding in my room without my permission.”

There was some silence, both shared some looks as if trying to decide how to properly solve this situation without risking getting in an even worse predicament.

“It’s- it was my fault, Dio,” Erina replied nervously, mustering up plenty of courage to spurn the boy beside her to look surprised and mortified. “I did ask Jonathan about you, since he said that you were taken in by his family and-”

“The fault is all mine, Dio,” The young Joestar interjected with a stronger voice, his face showing some embarrassed red at the prospect of having a lady take all the blame on herself.

It wasn’t just… a gentleman’s behavior.

The mentality of the young man was just… easy to predict. Far too easy. It was just lazy work.

“I suppose I shall be the impartial judge in this matter and say the fault of this odd development is shared equally,” I continued with a tired sigh leaving my lips. “In fact, I guess you both will face the same punishment over the matter.”

“It was-”

“Jojo, I’ve already said this was the case and I will punish you both,” I interjected coldly, my arms wrapping by my chest as I stared hardly at him, his face twitching in a mix of surprise and embarrassment. I looked at Erina with a softer look, the blonde blinking nervously back.

“Would it be a problem if you were to share this burden with Jojo?” I inquired quietly, surprising her with the lack of harshness. “Would it make him ungentlemanly if I was the one that imposed him to not press the subject any further?”

There was a moment of silence that was used by the girl to ponder properly over the matter and… she shook her head.

I smiled. “Thank you, Erina,” I replied with a nod. “And now, you two retake the seats by the desk. I will take the bed.”

They complied slowly while I reached for the soft mattress, taking a seat there while staring at the two.

“Now, I want to know ‘why’ you two have decided to barge into my room to try and find anything there,” I started this grueling session of interrogation, albeit my mind wasn’t in there to properly survive a long one considering how draining the day had already been. “And no, I don’t want to know ‘who’ did this, I want to know ‘why’.”

Jojo coughed nervously. “We just wanted to know how your room looked like. We were talking about the fact that you seems so polite and respectful-”

“And we just wanted to see if that was the same with your room,” Erina continued for the young man, a shy smile on her face. “Your room is well-cared and neat, Dio.”

I nodded at the compliment. “As any room should be.”

This comment drew a flinch off from Jonathan, as I was well-aware that he was always late in fixing his room properly. Always at the last minute, when his father planned to pass around and check it.

“Still, why would you put so much effort in doing this?” The young man tried to divert the embarrassment away with this question. “I know that father does this to his room because it’s proper as he is a lord… but why would you do-”

“Jojo,” The blonde gave a light slap at the boy’s arm, prompting him to stop. “Cleaning your own room has nothing to do with social standing.”

I nodded again, the ghost of a smile emerging at the sight of the girl showing a little bit of backbone around her love interest.

“Erina is correct with this statement, Jonathan. Cleaning your own room has to do over a degree of maturity… that is actually easy to achieve.”

My words sparked confusion within Jojo, as the young Joestar seemed to contemplate over those for a couple of seconds.

“But… why?”

“If you had the chance of deciding to do homework in the morning or by night, which one would you pick?” I inquired back with a sigh.

“Well… I guess in the morning. So I wouldn’t have any reason to actually worrying about those.”

“And if you had the chance of choosing between fixing your room in the morning or by night, which one would you pick?” I asked again, this time a small smile resurfacing on my face.

He blinked, his eyes widening at the realization. “In the… morning.”

“Exactly,” I said while nodding at his response. “Both examples are burden in our lives, and so those should be regarded more as duties than superfluous details.”

“So I should fix my room-”

“Because you would make your own life easier,” Erina interjected with a huff. “Jojo, you shouldn’t be reluctant about this.”

“It’s just that...”

“You find it a boring task to do,” I guessed for him, drawing a nod from him. “Something that just feels an unimportant necessity to go through.”

“It’s still something that you should do,” The blonde added with a pretty smile. “After all, I know you are a proper gentleman, so it will not be difficult for you.”

Jonathan burned an amusing red, almost trying to look away and hide the shade his face had gained at the encouraging words. “I-I will try to do that, yes.”

I nodded at that. “That’s good to know, but still, there are a couple of questions I would like to ask you both.”

Both nodded calmly, having noticed that I wasn’t sounding menacing anymore.

“Okay. Did you open the journal is there on the desk?” I finally asked, hoping for the answer to be one of the acceptable ones.

“It looked important,” Erina commented with a curious tone. “There were so many notes about various versions of the same translated piece.”

Jonathan nodded at her words. “I’ve heard from father that there are some important men working for him which roles are to translate from other languages back to British proper. Yet, I didn’t think that this was so much-”

“Complicated,” I concluded for him, my orange eyes half-closed as I realized that they did read a fair bit for having found the small annotations over the different variants I had for a couple of sentences.

“Still, it seems to me as a good work,” The girl complimented again. “I’ve seen father having trouble translating from Indian, but he also mentioned that it’s even worse to try with Latin in certain instances.”

“It all depends on the antiquity of the piece. Both languages are complicated,” I replied kindly. “But Latin is somewhat easier to understand because most of the European languages derive from Roman Latin.”

“Yet you did make a lot of confusing words out of it,” Jojo admitted with a hint of curiosity. “There were some terms that just were off about-”

“It’s just a fairy tale, Jonathan,” Erina chided softly, drawing the young man to a calm ease. “Of course some terms need to sounds ‘off’.”

Another nod, and with that revelation I was granted some more relief over the matter.

They were blissfully unaware of the fact that everything there was the truth, but I suppose the logic of Stand Users was just beyond the mentality of this age.

People barely believed in ‘magic’, and not many liked to stray afar from the rules of natural science as it was just recorded as the undeniable law that ruled the world.

Yet the universe worked differently from what humanity was trying to make it seems, beyond the sense of rationality and common sense.

The world was just a bizarre place fitted with pathological liars, and I, Dio, was the only one that could see the truth as it was.

The poor fools they were to believe in a simple denomination for nature.

“Actually, there is something that I wanted to ask you about, Dio,” Erina resumed the topic once more, drawing my attention out of that inner monologue. “In one of the pages I’ve read with Jojo… there was a strange mention of someone ruling over the Stars… and the mentioned sign for that was a mark right by his back.”

Jonathan frowned at this. “You mean like my-”

“Your birthmark,” I hummed quietly, having forgotten that I had translated that bit.

The Joestars… they had existed way before the noblemen that ruled her near London.

There was a family member that appeared multiple times within the story, hailing what looked to be a copy of what sounded to be Jotaro’s ｢Star Platinum｣. The resemblance was striking, but differently from the future counterpart, the Star-based Stand did have quite the powerful ability of moving through space.

Similar to ｢ The Hand ｣ but instead of deleting matter through its ability to move so quickly, the Stand would actively move through the fabric of space without being noticed by ｢ Made in Heaven ｣.

It was a surreal ability that reminded me that ｢ Star Platinum ｣ never developed its own ability despite the pressure exerted on Jotaro in various circumstances.

And no, I wasn’t going to consider ‘Star Finger’ its main capacity to fighting, that would be just limiting of such a formidable Stand.

Perhaps there was indeed something that made ｢The World｣ and ｢Star Platinum｣ equal in terms of abilities, but where DIO’s ｢The World｣ was capable of moving through time itself… ｢Star Platinum｣ moved through the space within the stopped time.

This is why Time-Stop never became a complete ability for the Stand, as it just ‘stole’ DIO’s ability to use the Time-Stop.

It wasn’t anything about ‘similar Stands’. It was all about two Stands meant to match against one another and… DIO couldn’t just return the favor by gaining that degree of power with his lack of proper understanding about this reality.

Jotaro’s win wasn’t one of understanding, but rather one born from DIO’s own misunderstanding of the situation that he was going through during the fight.

And just like what would have happened in Egypt by 1987, so a clash between titans occurred between the Joestar ancestor and the first holder of ｢ Made in Heaven ｣ .

The brawl was brutal, even more than any Stand-limited battles I had the chance of studying about… and the result was actually stark clear from the very beginning.

Despite the early disadvantage, ｢ Made in Heaven ｣ was far stronger and flexible compared to its opponent. A swift defeat for the Joestar ancestor saw also the conclusion of the mentioning about ｢ Made in Heaven ｣ altogether.

It was something that eluded me, as of why the First User would just cease with its Stand-killing spree, why its abilities would never been used after that singular event and… I knew that the rest of the pages had the key about this massive question.

The conversation didn’t continue from there as I saw them leaving out of my room with the good promise that they would never return there without my permission.

I had killed any interest or curiosity by providing them plenty of understanding over the ‘secrecy’ within my room, demolishing the need of inquiring for more as that case was now solved within their minds.

By the time I was done with dealing with them, I started to plan out where to hide the journal after this unwanted discovery, feeling rather unwilling to provide this kind of material to George too.

The man was a resourceful individual with more than enough experience to draw his own conclusion over this source.

And sometimes myth weren’t just fairy tales, this rule being one of the commonest for those that knew about the importance of seeking out treasures and advantages from the past.

This debacle persisted even a particularly calm dinner, with Jojo seeming fairly tense at the chances of me giving out what had happened earlier on, but the boy calmed down when I didn’t say anything about the matter.

I didn’t saw a reason to become a jerk, and so I just accepted the subject as a closed one myself.

Finally, just as I was about to go to sleep, I found the best place where to hide the notebook, having forgotten that Dio himself had some tricks to hide objects within his own possessions.

The large baggage that had been settled by the feet of the bed was now empty and providing enough space to house both the book and the journal, and hiding those by the secret compartment within the bag offered me absolute relief about the subject.

Nobody in the mansion, not even the servants, were keen to approach the bag, seemingly giving a willing front to preserve my current state of privacy within the house.

I was glad of this little safe spot, even elated at the chance of not having to deal with any future surprise about JoJo coming to snoop around the room with what happened early on.

With a clearer mind, a tired body, and a ton of sensible subjects that still needed to be dealt with, I went to sleep with the sole thought that the next couple of days were going to be quite the busy ones for me to go through on my own.

And in the end, I, Dio, was correct about this very notion.

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Three days passed calmly after that, with my schedule taking a radical change compared to the previous days as I had to take into account the fact that I now had… a literal gang under my control.

While I let a full day pass so that I could clear my mind even more and plan out a proper strategy over several new subjects while also informing Muddiburi of this new development (something that got a mixed response from the man), I still decided to visit once more with the excuse that I wanted to see a nearby library for some new books.

George was surprised by the request, but much more lenient over the fact I hadn’t showed any reason to doubt about me.

The very discussion we had shared back when I had returned to the mansion once I had recovered my mother’s wedding dress seemed to stick around and build up a good impression of me and… I used it to properly discuss the current predicament with Hannah.

The young woman was ecstatic that I had returned ‘so soon’ to their headquarter, but her demeanor had turned docile when I asked for more information over the current state of things.

A day offered little chances for some proper recruitment efforts, but two young boys were quickly taken in by Speedwagon, the blond mentioning how good the two were as thieves.

I was surprised by the praise, yet the two individuals in question were both ten and eleven.

Fairly young, terribly so considering the inhuman system we were all forced to abide for now, but their minds were as peculiar as I had thought those to be at the man’s praise.

I needed just a couple of seconds spent chatting in a friendly manner with the two to spot some genuine intelligence that just was surprising for someone their ages.

In the end, I provided them with a completely unexpected job, getting some annoyed huffs from both before I had the chance of explaining why the idea was actually a sound one.

It wasn’t much of a surprising element to spot on many children working around to support their families, and so, instead of continuing such a dangerous activity that wouldn’t always provide them with a good gain, I offered them the humble role of couriers meant to deliver the resources that I considered my own investments for the future.

The work itself looked stupid and ‘unneeded’, yet I was the one that could see the advantage of bolstering the current recruitment, by pushing for the acquisition of properly-trained men and women that would be then driven to their correct vocations.

It would still take time to gain progress out of this annoying operation, but by showing kindness to many poor family men lingering in London by just providing concrete solutions for the primary needs of their wives and children, I knew I would have ended up getting their unquestionable interest and loyalty.

I had well thought about trying to expand via illegal means, but I was unsure about the pros of such an activity since it would only end up creating more issues with the police the bigger the activity would end up getting.

So that’s why I had plans to focus mostly on making proper, legal jobs for good people to be hired to work for.

It wouldn’t be an organization born with inner bribery and recommendations like the ones that currently existed, but one of merits and experience that would be seen as the best choice by the people.

It was going to sound ‘absurd’ to the societal standards of the current time, but there wouldn’t be no denial that such avant-garde would only lift up everything towards a quick-paced progress for everyone.

And those that weren’t ready for it or that refused the change? Either submission or death by their own traditional mistakes.

By starting with moderate mercy directed at those in need of food and shelter, I was aspiring to gain the trust of those that had long lost hopes from having a future thanks to common means that offered a good income.

The decline was already there for me to take over, and the royal court was just packed with morons that wouldn’t give a dime about it all.

I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t even care if the entire nation looked to be mere moments to come crashing down upon their silly heads.

Debtor’s prisons and child labor were hideous practices, the signs of a corruption within modern civilization.

Those needed to disappear as quickly as possible and with the plans I had laid down for the foundation of my group, I knew that it was going to be a matter of a couple of years for this to happen.

It would take time and effort, attention in large quantity for the administration and the guarantees to the workers, but most of it all… well-made investments.

Money tended to be what truly drive the people to take on the challenges of the workplace in these modern and trying times.

To break their backs over their humiliating jobs, to send their own children to either become thugs or easy casualties in harsh lives spent in factories, or even mothers to sell their own babes for the sake of offering them a better future instead with the ugly household they were born into.

And yet I was also quite aware of the state of the economy to know that money could be easily be forgotten by the commoners for the sake of immediate food and resources.

The greatest example was one of the first main events of the French Revolution, when the peasantry was given no chances of buying bread because of a drought killing much of the grain needed to sustain their survival.

Money wasn’t truly an issue back then, but food was.

And I had plenty of food to give, I had plenty of wool to provide for women to create warm clothes to their children, and I even had paper and ink to write.

Give the common man money when due, and he will respect you for the rest of your life. Give the common man food and other important resources, and he will respect you for the rest of his life.

That’s what I was planning to accomplish from so little.

I wanted to gain an acceptable workforce that would accept food and other stuff as first wages and thus making it possible for the new organization to gain as much money to start the activity properly.

But not just by remaining with only the single warehouse that was currently under my control.

Perhaps there were even more unused warehouses that could be silently taken away from their original owners and rendered ours via legal means.

The legal system was still far from implement some protections for those declining societies and with the state of the government hindering any chances of reforming that, I just needed to act accordingly to the situation to truly achieve a series of good victories for my plans with the loopholes waiting to be exploited by me.

And it all started from ingratiating the needy.

I needed the mass to rise up but not against the system itself, but to work carefully to subvert it via normal means.

Revolution? Too bloody, too expensive and… easy to be misinterpreted by certain individuals on latter years.

Violence was going to be essential in some circumstances around the growth of the company, both Hannah and Speedwagon were aware of this detail and were accepting of it, but I was happy to learn they were cultured about the nature of… diplomacy beyond mindless violence.

Aggressive diplomacy, to be correct.

The art of entering the lair of various monsters at once, to find the biggest, worst one in there, and to see it publicly humiliated before its allies.

To teach a lesson, to bring an order within the disorder and anarchy of the underworld.

In this case, London’s most notable gang was the Forty Elephants, an all-female crime syndicate that was the lengthiest and most resilient of the old gangs that ended up surviving until the closure of the first half of the twentieth century.

They weren’t the most violent, but their influence in the capital was as notable as dangerous to deal with without some proper precautions from my part to secure my own bases.

Eliminating them would maybe be considered the worst mistake possible to make,

Removing the leading gang would just create an unpleasant power vacuum that our group wasn’t ready to face just yet, and it would cripple my means to even do anything else in life.

It would be a bloody civil war if any of that happened, and I didn’t wish for this to be the case as I needed that kind of blood to be delivered into the workforce than to die in battles.

And this is why, instead of pursuing a violent approach with this group, I was keen to try and gain the loyalty of the leader of the group with my own words.

It was a gamble, but one I was well-aware that it was possible to commit to with proper attention.

I was uncertain of their leader’s identity, and I knew that Alice Diamond had yet to be even conceived to be around and leading her girls through the streets, thus making waddling in that direction… quite the dangerous tip-toeing for my little organization.

Searching for a mean to have a nice chat with their leadership was going to take a while, but with the current pace of things I was happy with how the situation was unfolding.

Speedwagon proved to be as resourceful as I remembered him being from the Canon, his time spent in Ogre Street having made him the best broker that I could trust into.

He had numerous contacts, but to verify if any had even just a connection with the gang would take some non-negligible amount of time spent in that endeavor.

Something that I authorized him to do as the fastest I dealt with the gang, the safer my efforts within London will end up becoming for the next decades.

With that second day spent dealing with this predicament, I decided to set up a letter-exchange with Hannah, and I had the young woman sign her letters as Annie.

The reason behind that name was connected to the fact that I had mentioned to George that I had met a young girl during my errand of finding my mother’s dress that was capable of writing letters and had inquired about doing so towards me.

Some more questions had ensued as to why the letter-exchange was important, ending up with me admitting that I just pitied the child a little about it.

Making their priority so little, I forced the interest that the nobleman might have had over the papers to nothingness, rendering the exchange a safe activity for me to go through without some more snooping.

Yet things at home soon proved to be far from idyllic as I had initially thought them to be as I soon realized that Lord Joestar had some plans for me that I hadn’t considered up until the moment I was ‘slammed’ with those.

While I had thought that schools weren’t something just yet for children to go to as… there was no real basic education in the Great Britain, I had technically forgotten that there was something similar to it that just would work with my instance.

Apprenticeship with important professors of major subjects wasn’t a novelty for rich people during these people before actually having their children sent to some universities, but I had expected for George to just limit me to pursuit session back at the mansion and do this only with Jonathan instead of forcing me to deal with some old-style professor.

In fact, before being actually ‘accepted’ by whom was supposedly going to become my newest tutor, I had to pass a normal test of sharing some words with the man in question.

I had to be incredibly polite and respectful, but also show all of my knowledge over the subject that the professor was best accustomed to.

Professor Archibald Sill was a firm believer of the British Legal System, a strong supporter of the Conservative Party, and a proud student of the Economic school based from John Stuart Mill’s works.

He looked a little pompous, but not overly arrogant to warrant my utmost wrath with what would become one of the best example of why I wasn’t to be trifled in certain occasions with sudden developments.

Especially if those developments were antiquate before the state of my mind and integrity.

After about five hours of conversation, with some proper pauses and some tea being delivered by the servants in the mansion, I ended up escorting a rather confused man to the door.

His beliefs over the Legal System were shattered by mentioning the chaotic state of the current territorial division, which didn’t present a unitary system but several Acts that in the end would only favor the English Region.

The support for the Conservative Party wavered at the truthful mention that the party itself survived only thanks to the support from the unionist and the presence of two strong candidates that, once gone, would spell the end of the Tories’ dominance.

Killing his passion for Mill’s economic thought was the easiest, especially since the man’s idea, which had been revolutionary back during the early bits of the 1800, where now tragically obsolete and deadly to the current state of the economy.

In the end, I wasn’t the one being hauled with some unknown element, but the professor to be sent packing back home.

George thought I had failed, but even Sill had to admit that the situation was-

“I-I can’t teach him anything. He knows plenty already a-and I think I need to retire myself for some self-study.”

I hadn’t planned to kill the man’s career, nor I had wanted to drive him to doubt his own line of thoughts… but I have to admit that I felt quite vengeful when I felt forced to deal with this unwanted circumstances.

I didn’t need anyone to teach me anything, for I was Dio and I knew enough to make the world mine already.

…

Or that was the early thought I had up until the Joestar Mansion received another visit from an illustrious character.

It wasn’t an elderly figure, nor a legitimate professor meant to be able to taught anyone just yet, but the man himself was nothing to scoff at because of his pedigree.

Having acquired legal education at the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution for a degree of the University of London, the bespectacled man with short dark-hair and thick black-beard had arrived to the home without much notice.

George still opened to him, having been presented with a recommendation letter from Sill himself about this event.

I was tense when I first saw him, the mere sight offering me a sense of familiarity with this figure, as if I had already seen him before from somewhere important.

Despite the fact the young intellectual in his twenties had yet to conclude his studies at the King’s College London, he was still praised by the failing candidate to tutorship as someone that would work well with me.

I was confused at the lack of mentioning from any tutorship, but soon I was driven to have a lengthy conversation with this curious fellow.

Time passed slowly, but soon I felt drained of exchanging strong words for three hours of intense chatting about macroeconomics and legal advancements.

We both looked tired from that verbal spar, yet I couldn’t help but have to admit that I hadn’t gained a victory out of that discussion.

None of his convictions had been dented too much, but neither he came close to graze at my own beliefs.

And so a stalemate had breed the weirdest of draws I could’ve ever been forced to accept.

But while the man was leaving, biding a curt goodbye to both me and the owner of the house, I decided to inquire more about his identity as it was still eluding me after that lengthy of a conversation.

“Lord Joestar,” I muttered quietly, my throat still aching a little at the stressful predicament. “Who… who did I just speak to?”

There was some silence at first, then the man sighed. “Professor Sill had suggested this young man because he was quite the rebellious fellow in his class. He tried to see what would happen when two stubborn eggs crashed into each other.”

A very bizarre omelette, considering that I felt my mind ready to collapse any moment now.

“But his name?” George hummed quietly, pondering a little about it. “I think the name brought up is something like… Webb something.”

I blinked, then again… and once more as I slowly realized what had just happened.

“Oh right, his name is Sydney. So Sydney Webb,” The nobleman nodded once, ignoring the shocked expression as I continued to stare at the retreating form of one of the greatest figures of the Labour Party’s golden age.

…

I gave a nod myself, but this time, instead of pursuing some more conversation with the Joestar, I merely decided to walk back to my room as the situation had indeed changed for the oddest.

At least this is just a singular meeting. Hopefully.

And with that thought, I, Dio, decided it was about time to find my bed and get myself some proper sleep after the mess I had to go through in the last few days.

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AN

I hadn’t expected to have to write more than 10k+ words for two different stories. I’m deadly tired, tomorrow there will be some Economy exam at Uni (It’s more of a test to see if they got the written part of the exams right by PC or not) and then I will have to write some more.

I wish to apologize if this chapter contains more mistakes than usual (especially the second part of it), but I’ve been feeling a little distracted. So if anyone catches any grammar issues and brings them up, eternal kudos to them.

Hurrah! *Collapses to the floor*

P.S. I’ve been developing plans for a little spinoff that will become a thing… about by the time I will be done with ‘Giovinezza’. It will all become clear about why there will be a need for a spinoff once I’m done with this first ‘Capitolo’, and the only thing that I can say is that it will revolve with a semi-obscure Xovers that I found matching with this period of the Jojoverse. Little early, early warning: It might have some horror-based elements.

Chapter Text

Omake 5: Maria the Ripper (2)

Original Idea from: KingAllen (FFN)

Managing to convince George to actually accept ‘Maria’ in her home ended up being quite the frustrating and complicated predicament to go through.

The man was skeptical, and for good reasons as there was just a sense of maliciousness that Jack was unconsciously releasing with her simple stare.

The mix of unnatural silver-hair and ominous green eyes was enough to put everyone in a state of unease, even JoJo failing to hold within his mind the fact that he was scared by the little girl.

Still, despite the dread originating by the mere stare at the ‘orphan’, the lack of aggressiveness and outright maliciousness from Jack was enough to fuel my argument that she was just a misunderstood child that was abandoned without logical purpose.

In the end, after spending some grueling words over the matter, I got George to see my point as leaving the discovered orphan there without proper guidance might end up creating a new tragedy.

A tragedy he would be indirect responsible for refusing to take her in his humble abode as an extra mouth to feed wouldn’t be too much of a drain on his finances.

Jonathan would eventually pipe in by inquiring more about the child, and Jack would offer some curt responses as I had asked her to.

With her cloak hiding both her scandalous clothes and blades, the only thing that could seriously put a wrench in my plans was the possibility of the girl actually blurting out anything that might incriminate her and spark any sort of suspect from the two Joestar.

I was playing a dangerous game by keeping Jack close to me, to let her live despite the horrible nature of her existence.

The little Wraith seemed to be blissfully unaware of my dreadful thoughts as she kept her arms wrapped around my waist, or at least she was trying her best to keep latched onto me with how short her arms were.

With her eyes half-closed in a dazed state, she enjoyed the mixed warmth coming from my proximity and from the inside of the carriage leading us back to the Joestar Mansion.

Mary was going to be a Ward to George Joestar I, but her prime guardian was supposedly going to be me.

It was a test, albeit an irritating one by the way it was presented to me as. I was meant to keep a close watch over her, to see to her basic needs fulfilled, and to make sure she was properly educated the best way possible.

And it just sounded as if I had been given the responsibility of cleaning up after a mutt than taking care of a sentient human being.

It was a subject worth of some anger, but I decided to rein in my furious state by distractedly relax in this hug that lasted up until we were back ‘home’.

From there, before returning to my room, I had to take a couple of detours to prepare Jack for her new life there.

Starting from a quick bath to make sure that all the grime and dirt that had been present on her skin was removed, to get some proper clothes for her to wear for the time being.

The girl was a little reluctant to let go of her skimpy clothes, but she was easy to convince when I mentioned that those weren’t going to be thrown away, only that those were to be put aside for the time being because they were uncomfortable for her to wear.

She accepted with some hesitation, yet her eyes glowed happily when I presented her with a petite white dress with a little red ribbon.

It was similar to the one she was given by her Master back in Apocrypha, the design having just the minor difference that it wasn’t sleeveless, keeping it to a simple half-sleeved point that was meant to hide the tattoo-like insignia that was in her right arm.

Happily trying it out, the girl let out an unrestrained and joyous giggle, the raw state of genuine happiness surprising me in a moment of stunned silence.

She gave a twirl, looking as the skirt lifted a little at the rotation, causing another round of giggles to leave her lips.

“This is so nice, we like it!” Jack stated with a grand note of amusement, her vibrant green eyes returning to me. “Thank you, brother!”

I was caught in a frown at that last word, surprised that I hadn’t been labeled as either ‘Mommy’ or ‘Daddy’, taking under consideration the fact that I wasn’t aware that Jack could stray away from those two terms when addressing people.

It was so surprising, yet so endearing, and I gifted her with a headpat that would then offer me more of her giggles.

Dinner was somewhat a quiet affair, with both the Joestars preferring to keep silence as they watched as I tried to moderate the girl’s interest over the food in her plate.

Her stomach was rumbling with desire, and there was no denying in seeing that this was her first time eating something so delicious and that wasn’t as dangerous as the things she would find by the streets.

Her manners were lacking since she had never needed to have some class within her craving for food, thus I had to be there to constantly chide her about the way some of the food was supposed to be eaten.

Teaching her about cutlery in that first predicament gave off some mixed results, with her mind quickly accepting knives as important tools to properly divide large object in tiny bits for her to enjoy individually, but outright failing to understand the true need of using the fork to pick up the cut parts.

The disastrous event didn’t lack some chuckles coming from both George and Jonathan, both finding the scene of my panicked self to be worth of some amused thoughts.

But for me? I found it to be quite the straining experience to go by.

Jack was stubborn, almost as much as I was, and thus headbutting over this matter caused no little friction early on.

By the time we were done with the food, I found out that the servants had prepared a new room for Jack to make hers to use.

The mansion had plenty of unused rooms for people to take, and Jack had hers just around the corner by the corridor where mine was.

The mere news caused the girl to tense up a little as she realized that she would have to sleep alone and without supervision, but instead of saying anything about this, she decided to let her little irritation still present from the conclusion of dinner keep her quiet.

I decided to not press her on the matter, deciding to just wait and see where things would evolve from there.

Once Jojo and I had gone to our respective rooms, I wasted an hour reading some more the book about Hamon that I had yet to read from.

The subject was interesting, but the lack of practical exercise rendered it just a feeble understanding of the subject, which my grasp over it wasn’t even good enough to allow to have some proper usage of the techniques that were listed on it.

Soon after, I was resting softly and without any major distractions creating me any sort of nightmares.

It was a blissful sleep that was contended among numerous pleasant dreams, something that was rare considering the lack of positive novelties that would give me reason to make actual dreams and not think about Part 3.

Yet this little slumber proved to be temporary if not… partial.

I felt my bed’s cover shuffling quietly as a small, but warm object snuggled its way right onto my chest, and then started to snore quietly there.

It was a cute snoring, so soft and yet still present enough for me to open my eyes and stare down.

Jack was donning her new sleepwear, a particularly conservative dark-blue nightgown, with her head resting right over my chest, eyes closed in a state of what looked to be calm happiness.

And to think that she had tried to appear annoyed at me.

I almost snorted at the idea.

I, Dio, was sure going to make sure that this little girl was protected as if she was part of my real family, and groomed to become a proper ally to my mission of absolute justice.

But for now, the only thing I had in my mind was… how did Jack came to be?

She was a Wraith, there was no doubt about this classification as she did address herself as a plurality with a feminine majority.

A union of various unborn children’s souls that was now lying there and away from its original purpose.

Speaking of which, it was odd that she didn’t refuse to stray away from her original task, knowing that her existence was tied to this saddening purpose.

...And that is why I, Dio, was confused as to why she had yet to show any sign of disappearing, almost declining the nature of what a Wraith was.

I needed to do more checking over the existence of Clocktower, to verify if somehow there was much more about the Nasuverse than just Jack.

But just as Dio lost more time trying to ponder over the true nature and purpose of the child now there in his proximity, Jack’s mind was lost in the unconscious but determined thought of one thing.

Always stay close to brother. Never leave his side.

Chapter Text

Capitolo Primo: Giovinezza (10)

The forest near the Joestar’s manor… to think that I would’ve ended up spending so much time there.

The limpid river was quite a calming element to what was the turbulent activity that would see me train for so long.

Muddiburi hadn’t stopped with just some techniques. He had encouraged me to experiment under his attentive eyes, to expand my arsenal through sharpening my senses, my muscle and my specialization in Hamon.

Heck, even the Spin had to be improved with what had happened when I had faced Wang Chan.

The man was more dangerous than I had expected him to be. True to the older Hamon User, the villain wasn’t shying away from employing the most dangerous elements of his connection with dark magic.

I reacted poorly, almost risking to get killed with the rest of my newest minions.

And that was unacceptable.

Once I was finally granted some time away from the theoretical bits regarding my education, I finally regained some free time to spend with Jojo up until a new professor decided to try and study my case.

The situation itself wasn’t troublesome, not even in the least, as I knew that my first encounter with Professor Sill had left a particular bitter taste to a large majority of teachers that had known the ‘defeated man’.

I expected to be spared by any other annoying instances for a couple of months, enough to allow for some other intellectuals to muster up their bravery at the challenge that I had presented to them by merely being.

The real troublesome bit was how sluggish my capacity to develop new skills was compared to earlier on.

The Spin was simple, but fairly limited to a single technique that expanded on various effects, and I was still far from achieving the Golden Spin.

Hamon was simple… until I had to make some blind decisions over the development regarding it.

I managed to try out my hands, literally, with the Scarlet Overdrive.

The blazing results making up for the worrying requirements behind the creation of this powerful Overdrive, but I wasn’t certainly going to try and make use of it all the time, especially with how limiting the conditions of the ability were.

And this is why I decided to try out two abilities that were greatly ignored by many users.

The first one was the Afterimage. By training my legs to sustain the high-paced style connected to the Ripple, I knew that I could achieve something close to an illusion to confuse my own enemies.

This was going to be crucial as it would easily boost my capacity to evade any dangerous attack thrown at my general direction.

Then there was the Sticking Ripple, which would grant me a higher extent of movement compared to normal.

Every surface, may it be solid or liquid, could be walked by with the use of the Hamon. I started slowly and with something particularly complicated.

The river was continuously flowing, thus it wasn’t offering me a stable ‘floor’ where to walk into, but after the first few times I made some progress.

Quick-paced stepping over the surface seemed to help in stabilizing the footing as my own feet were swiftly injecting the water with my own Ripple in an effort to keep afloat.

Muddiburi was surprised by this very last ability and inquired how I had developed this very technique since the last time we’ve met.

I decided to provide a faux answer, muttering how I had noticed that by applying the Ripple by my fingers and pressing those by a wall or a liquid, those would… stick.

There was of course some skeptical response to this, but in the end this very topic ended up being ignored for the sake of more sparring.

While I was allowed to experiment as calmly as I wanted, I knew that some battle experience was going to help me the most and so I continued regularly sparring with the powerful warrior.

His size should’ve already proven that he was a difficult opponent, but the fact that Hamon was his main specialty meant that I had to pay extra attention to the fights.

But it was during one of those matches that I finally managed to get one of my long-term objectives as I finally had another mean to attack my enemies with ranged attacks.

While the Spin was still the most powerful thing in that department, my little thinking had brought up a very convenient element that I got through with.

Water splashed by my fingers, and the friction generated… bubbles.

Hamon was the sole cause of this unexpected element as I slowly but surely got hold of Caesar Zeppeli’s own ability, the Bubble Launcher.

When one thinks of normal bubbles, they would see just some innocuous floating spheres that weren’t meant to be used as a weapon.

The thing is that those born from Hamon weren’t normal. In fact, those were fairly dangerous because of how flexible they were.

Muddiburi made that discovery early on when I had started to track him down with the use of the bubbles.

Imprecise but powerful, I had to make all ‘bullets’ count before being forced to drop the barraging for the sake of not draining myself too much about it.

It was a development, a good one, but still away from achieving the true might available with the two variants of the Bubble Cutters.

I was far from refining the Bubble-making art to this degree, but I was sure of gaining mastery of this in due time.

With the training regarding Hamon and the Spin continuing smoothly, I was also capable of offering even more opportunities for JoJo and Erina to bond deeper.

The two were fairly close, but still in a state of mutual friendzone. None of the two was ready to make the proper step towards a serious commitment, either out of shyness or because they didn’t want to rush too quickly in a relationship.

I could understand the latter logic, but I couldn’t accept the former.

And this is why, despite their meek reluctance to try and go ahead with something a little more serious, I managed to make some ‘deal’ happen between George and Erina’s father.

James Pendleton was more than honored to accept a visit for lunch, intrigued to understand what kind of situation was the one between his daughter and the young man that had took her heart with his mannerism and looks.

The doctor was mildly-impressed by Jonathan, almost praising the young Joestar with his courteous attitude and his genuine caring nature.

The compliments easily turned Jojo in a flustering mess, the same happening with Erina as her lone parent decided to tease a little about the future for these two.

The conversation was pleasant, and I tried my best to offer just the minimum input to not steal the focus from these two, even though I had wanted to share some medical discussions with the man.

There was no doubt in my heart that both George and James had understood the predicament quite clearly, and they both were seen sharing some words away from the two possible lovebirds.

With the satisfaction lingering for the rest of the day, I was sure that I had just scored a new ally for the conception of this sweet couple.

Time would be needed, but there was plenty of that to foster such a curious situation.

Still, the pleasant lunch became a cornerstone for the fact that I actively started to ‘push’ both towards each other.

They were clumsy, they were hesitant, and I granted them some mercy in the form of letting them interact without me influencing their words.

It had to be natural, the love had to be genuine. Or I would set them up for a disastrous marriage and… that wasn’t convenient for anyone.

But I would still keep some form of ‘watch’ over them. I wouldn’t creepily stare at them like someone that shipped two individuals madly… but I would keep nearby in case there was a scene worth of truly helping about.

I was interested in their love, not obsessed to see it accomplished.

And while I was happy with how things were setting up with the Joestar family, the mystery behind the Prophecy was still keeping me uneasily attached to continue with the translation of the tome.

The book was mostly done with, and I was sure that the solution was just around the corner.

The identity of ｢Made in Heaven｣‘s user, their motivations, their personality… and why they threw away absolute victory mere steps from conquering it.

The alluring case had me spend plenty of my free time about it, those few situations that I wasn’t either writing letters to both Speedwagon and Hannah or training with Muddiburi.

The new details concerning the lack of Stand Users got me confused as to why those were even mentioned.

Unnamed heroes going through normal heroic deeds that lacked any correlation with the powers mentioned early on within the book, it should’ve been as important as the earlier predicaments.

Or so I thought when I started to notice some strange patterns within some of the heroes.

At first it was a mere suspect, then my attention was raptly given to study once more the new parts as I discovered something that was actually changing my perception of Stands and Hamon.

While Stand Users ceased to be a common thing in the past, there was something of ‘fragments’ surviving within the few descendants of those superior beings.

It was the energy many could attain by grasping at the potential of their souls, the energy that better described human morality in its pure form.

Hamon wasn’t something that had been discovered by spiritual practitioners. It was something that was born from an unique event that I had forgotten about.

The battle between ｢Made in Heaven｣ and ｢Star Platinum｣ ended with the losing Stand ‘sacrificing’ what was left of its spiritual form to offer a ‘newer hope’ to humanity as whole.

And that power was the Ripple, the capacity for common humans to draw upon their own soul to aid themselves against the great menaces lurking Earth back in that time period.

It was a detail that offered so many explanations, and yet brought up some curious questions over the ability of ｢Star Platinum｣ to actually bring Hamon to the entire planet.

Absurd, almost ridiculous, but it would explain why both Stands and the Ripple were connected to the fighting soul of their users, or of why the Ripple itself was best achievable by those that had seen tragedy.

From tragedy, you find strength to prosper and bring hope.

And that’s what the dying Stand User that had last fought ｢Made in Heaven｣ had wanted.

Hope to defeat the prime threat against mankind, to cease the problem created by such a powerful force against balance.

It was an intriguing discovery that I was certainly going to investigate more about, especially with the possibility of Hamon being capable of bringing even more potential out of Stands themselves.

I could imagine the boost that the Time-Stop would receive, and I remembered how much it had increased in its ‘capacity’ the very moment that DIO had drunk Joseph’s blood.

I pondered over the infinite eventualities, and the chances of actually unlocking more of ｢The World｣ compared to what DIO was able to achieve because of his vampiric nature hindering with his growth.

I thought that I would’ve been granted a simple and uneventful week after what had happened back at the warehouse with Wang Chan, that both Jack and the foolish Chinese man would’ve ignored to entertain me with any sudden attacks…

But while I was happy that none of the two had decided to return to the spotlight in these last few days, my concerns were quick to rise up at some reports coming from both Hannah and Speedwagon.

Something ‘odd’ was happening in the outskirts of London, something that was leaving Scotland Yard baffled and horrified at the crime scenes they had found there.

The reports had been a little more detailed than I expected those to be, granting me a major outlook of the situation I was supposed to deal with.

With this new issue starting to materialize as a threat I had to personally take care of, I managed to get hold of George to explain that I had some important business to take care in London.

“I suppose this is about your little friend?” He inquired with a small hint of mirthfulness. “I guess that she had been missing your presence there.”

I blinked at that, almost forgetting that the man was aware that there was someone in London that would send me letters quite frequently and… that he thought it was a young girl that I had made a positive impression on.

“Yes,” I dryly replied. “She’s been asked for some advice over some unpleasant problems. I think bullies.”

“She didn’t say this?” The old Joestar inquired. “I suppose it had to be a tough environment.”

I nodded. “Perhaps… this is why I would prefer to be there to discuss this to her personally.”

“It’s important to offer the younger generations some contributions. They are going to represent us older men in the new eras,” He commented with a pseudo-poetic tone.

Yet I’m not that old. I’m barely… 14? Maybe 15 now that my birthday was coming soon.

Yet I was more than happy to take that blessing, ignoring the fact that I was then teased over the fact I was ‘doting’ over this young girl.

Which was technically bad to even think about, especially considering how Hannah was already obsessed with me despite the lack of direct interactions we had in the last few days.

I was there near to where she was, but I wasn’t certainly wasting too much time in speaking about simple topics with the overly-enthusiastic young woman.

Even considering trying some friendly-based situations with her would certainly see me dealing with far more interest from her than I really needed to deal with right now.

Especially when there was a furry problem causing so much of a mess by the edges of the capital and I had to capture or kill as soon as I could.

But seriously, how did Wang Chan manage to turn some moron into a werewolf?!

----------d-d-d-d------------d-d-d-d----------d-d-d-d----------d-d-d-d-------------

Once I had reached the warehouse, I was met with quite the large group of people wandering around inside the building and browsing through the resources available to them.

Women, men, and children. The vast majority was merely looking with just a handful picking stuff and certifying their picking by the counter near the main entrance.

New workers, possible loyal members of my organization… I was careful enough to not entrust the guarding of the entrance to someone that had just joined the group.

Speedwagon had set his own men to allow the transactions to proceed smoothly and without any problems that could put the entire operation in jeopardy.

The situation was stable there, and so I didn’t waste too much time looking around as I reached to where my ‘office’ was.

The little room that had been prepared to accommodate my own private office had just three chairs (one of which was mine) and a simple desk.

I had yet to gain some libraries to fill with books I had taken from the Joestar Mansion, and I was wary of trying to steal too many tomes from the family’s reserve.

Despite the spartan nature of the place, I was quite satisfied with the quality of both chairs and desk, as I could see those being made in high quality wood and being still in good shape despite the lack of use in the last couple of years.

Speedwagon was sitting calmly by one of the two other chairs, giving me a quick nod as I entered inside the room… while Hannah stood up and gave a quick curtsie.

“Lord Dio, it’s good to see you healthy and in good shape,” The young woman greeted politely and eccentrically, making me nod swiftly at her words.

“I see that you’re well too, Hannah. I’m glad,” I returned, almost making her grin madly with my ‘praise’ as I went for my chair.

I paused for a moment, growing accustomed once more to the dim light illuminating the room.

Then I spoke up. “I’ve heard about your messages. The one connected to the monster haunting the outskirts of the city.”

“We’ve been able to discover that it’s a wolf-like creature,” The blond started to explain with more details. “The agents from Scotland Yard assigned to the case had reported some claw-marks and pattern similar to a canine creature, but bigger than the common wolf.”

“It sounds like a scary beast,” Hannah commented quietly. “But I’m sure that whatever it is, it will be properly put down by Lord Dio’s will.”

I really wanted to dig the whole ‘worship’ ordeal I was subjected while having the woman around but… seriously, how do I get her to tune down a little bit these instances?

“I think I’m aware of the monster lurking by the forest, but I will have to ask you both to keep quiet about it as it would be for the best to not cause any panic to the rest of the company,” I pointed out calmly, drawing some surprised look from both individuals, but then they quickly nodded at my warning.

“Good,” I muttered before offering my thought over the subject. “I’ve reason to believe the creature is a werewolf.”

Speedwagon’s eyes widened at the curt reply, while the former courtesan frowned in confusion at it.

“A were...wolf? What is that, Lord Dio?”

I glanced at the blond and nodded at him, granting at the man to answer in my stead.

“A werewolf is a creature that is mostly human, except during the times when the full moon is up in the sky. The human would transform in something close to a wolf, but stronger and scarier.”

“That sounds… odd,” Hannah commented with some confusion. “I mean, I don’t wish to offend Lord Dio’s deductive capacity… but...”

“Speak up, Hannah,” I allowed with a sigh. “I will not punish you for bringing up anything that is important to this situation.”

She gave a silent nod. “There hasn’t been any full moon in the last few days, Lord Dio.”

I returned the nod. “Which would seemingly debunk my theory… but I’ve reason to believe this werewolf isn’t as normal as it might seem,” I replied with a careful voice. “I think we might be dealing with some meddling from Wang Chan.”

Speedwagon frowned at the unpleasant reminder. “The strange man that attacked us? I know that he is a magician but-”

“You’re surely thinking that he did something to the moon… but I think the magic is directed at the werewolf itself,” I interjected quickly. “While he’s powerful, he doesn’t have a grasp of magic that allows him to do such a feat. The issue is the werewolf and… it will have to be put down.”

“That sounds… harsh,” Hannah hummed quietly.

“Dio isn’t incorrect to see it as a threat. While it has yet to slay any innocents, the damage it’s leaving around is-”

I held my hand up at this new development, stopping Speedwagon mid-sentence as I thought well about this very notion.

The werewolf hadn’t attacked anyone? That was just preposterous considering the predator-like nature of wolves. Albeit there were some wild ones that would avoid attacking humans, werewolves had the means to actually attack a settlement and retreat unscathed.

Victims were expected after two days of attacks. So why there wasn’t any?

That very concerned thought got me thinking for a while, and thus I deemed the situation to be far more complex that we were all thinking it to be.

What if the werewolf itself was just being forced by the magic itself? Up until now there had been no reports of attacks of this kind.

The frequency might be helping with the spreading of this news, but I knew that there was also a limit to this very notion.

So what was exactly going on by the outskirts? What was Wang Chan trying to gain from doing this?

...And was Wang Chan the culprit behind this?

Maybe there were other dark magicians I was just ignoring because they were mentioned.

Araki barely delved in magic as an element, but perhaps I should be wary of any surprises set along the way.

I really needed to consult Muddiburi about this, but the timing imposed by the situation just wasn’t allowing me to even ponder over gaining some advice from the man.

I had to make some tough decisions that needed to be implemented quickly enough to avoid any eventual victims.

While the lack of any casualties was odd, I wasn’t going to test my luck and see how far it would take for a dead or two to finally happen.

Thus I glanced at Speedwagon. “I think we have some untouched cutlery and other expensive objects that are made with silver in the warehouse. Please take a couple of those and bring them to the… Devell Brothers? Those two that said to have a small foundry-”

“I remember, yes and… what I’m supposed to get from that?”

“Lances,” I replied with a hint of self-disappointment. “I would’ve asked for bullets, but we need something ready for tonight and weapons aren’t something that we can recover this quickly.”

The blond nodded slowly and moved out of the office, while I turned to look at Hannah and-

“We are setting up an ambush tonight?!” She almost squeaked at that, making me flinch and groan.

“Speedwagon and I will set up a perimeter where the werewolf usually attacks,” I corrected quietly, making quick note of the tension rising on the young woman’s body at being excluded from the main action.

But I had a treat for her that she wouldn’t just refuse.

“While you will have the important role of keeping an eye for anything strange happening in the warehouse while we’re away,” I continued with a nod. “There’s a possibility that we might get attacked while we’re away. While I’m still uncertain that Wang Chan is responsible for this, I need someone to stay there and keep a mindful watch.”

She blinked. “But why me?”

“You’ve the Spin, Hannah,” I reminded her. “And I know you’ve been training dutifully with it since I’ve provided you with the basis of the Golden Rectangle.”

The girl nodded but then sighed with some reluctance. “But Lord Dio, I know I shouldn’t be whining but… I feel like I’m doing so little progress with the drawing. Are you sure that’s the only hint to reach the Golden Spin?”

I sighed, thinking back at the time I had decided to actually offer the young woman some help in developing her talent.

She had some easier time learning of the Spin, even using it around with a certain grasp over the complexity of timing and using the ability with moderation and caution.

“If I had any other clues to help with it, I would’ve offered it,” I admitted with a sigh. “In fact, I think we can train together sometimes, if you want.”

Her eyes widened at the proposal and her lips twitched in anticipation at such an offer. “L-Lord Dio, I- I’m not worthy of-”

“Hannah,” I interrupted flatly. “I think we really need to talk about this situation. I think there are some things I wish to address for the sake of honesty and… for the sake of trust between us.”

She looked confused. “W-What?”

“I’m glad that you really care for me this much, I really do,” I explained with a hum. “But I think you should drop the formalities… and the worship.”

The young woman was stomped by this. “B-But Lord Dio- You saved me from… from the worst, you’ve shown me the light and-”

“I don’t fancy myself a Deity, Hannah,” I interrupted again. “While I aim to do something unquestionably beyond the divinity, I think that it should be clear that I too have duties for those that believes in me. You and Speedwagon, both of you’ve already proven to be loyal to my cause.”

She didn’t reply, her surprise forcing her to silence as I continued with my speech.

“I will not diminish the importance you’ve given to our meeting, nor I will say that I’m annoyed by how things have been up until now,” I said with a serious tone, my orange eyes still staring at the shocked girl. “But I’ve to say that I didn’t help you because I wanted to have a servant, a minion. I saved you because you were someone in need of assistance, you needed help.”

“B-But I thought that-”

“I saved you because you’ve a worth, Hannah,” I interjected with some determination, her eyes widening even more at that. “And from what I’ve been listening from your words, it seems like you don’t believe this. I ask you to dispel any foolish thoughts that could be dishonestly saying that you are lesser than me.”

…

“I will ask you this because I know how much important it’s for you compared to Speedwagon,” I prepared to deliver my final query, the very evidence that will seal the deal with this important element to my operations. “Hannah… will you be my friend?”

I waited, quietly gauging her silence as I waited for an answer and…

One of her hands trailed up to her face, her palm trying to hide some tears already falling off her cheeks and I felt tensing up for any unneeded situation that could be happening from that very sight.

She sobbed, her other hand reaching for her lips, but failing to contain the crying noises as I continued to stare at the scene with careful silence.

“L-Lord Dio… I- Why are you- Why are you so kind!” She bawled, her sobbing increasing and my surprise intensifying at the route this conversation was taking right before my eyes.

I hadn’t expected this level of… shock from the young woman.

I had suspected that she had been deeming herself worthless because of society standards. Not because she was a woman, but because of the situation that saw her living in a brothel.

She was seen as a simple tool for pleasure, nothing more.

Perhaps I should’ve addressed this very issue early on but… I sighed, standing up from my chair and walking right in front of the girl.

Hannah paused for a moment, noticing me as I slowly opened my arms to her.

She sniffled, her mind trying to fight back a little the urge to comply to my implicit request… but she was soon rushing for the hug, grasping tightly while she cried even harder than before.

I was surprised by her strength at first, forgetting just like usual how mighty her embraces were, but I didn’t lament the closeness as I started to pat her back softly.

“L-Lord Dio-”

“Dio, Hannah,” I interrupted, whispering to her quietly. “I don’t think I need to explain that friends don’t use formal titles.”

She sobbed at that remark, her hold tightening even more much to my immense sighing.

I waited for some time, letting her get everything out. The sorrow, the pain… all that has been bottled up until now.

Then I noticed that five minutes had passed… just like that.

“Since I’ve some more time before I return back home, how about I start giving you some lessons about reading?” I inquired softly, drawing her attention quite suddenly. “I think it would be proper to finally offer you the chance of writing and reading, wouldn’t want you to stay so clueless for so long.”

She snorted quietly. “I-It would be nice.”

“I’m glad then,” I caressed her upper back. “And Hannah?”

… “Yes?”

I sighed. “That hand should go a little above where it is now.”

Her face heated up a little, but I felt the palm moving away from my lower back. “Good.”

Once we were done with that embrace, I would actually spend some time to rigorously start her with some lessons about writing and reading.

There was determination from her part, and I wasn’t going to offer anything meek out of my knowledge of the English grammar.

Much to my genuine relief she was old enough to be able to grasp the first few lessons easily and we smoothly dealt with some simple rules about writing. Reading was easier, especially with how many complicated words she had heard and how easily she was able to associate those with the tags I had presented to her.

But much to our mutual sadness, I was on a very stingy curfew and I found myself offering to her some homework to do before I started making my way back to the carriage directed back home.

She was waving, a bright smile on her face but even Speedwagon noticed that there was a change on her expression.

It wasn’t too forceful, it was a genuine sense of happiness that was there for everyone to see on her beautiful features.

And while I, Dio, prepared to face quite an unexpected battle with a presumed werewolf, I couldn’t help but wonder how much this new development will change my relation with the young woman.

-----------d-d-dd------------d-d-d-d-----------

AN

Dio, mah boy, we need to talk about seriously avoiding to make any passionate discussions with pretty ladies while trying to avoid any misunderstandings. Because you know… there is no way that she is going to let you go now.

P.S. I’ve seen some people melting down on the FFN page of Crawl like a Worm, and I’ve to say that I’m quite disappointed by the fact that some have just ignored the last line in that chapter about the situation going on there.

Why is this important in the context of Absolute Divinity? Well, Dio (a future version of our protagonist) has been ‘ordered’ to warn the protagonist of that story to be warned since things will be happening… in a mega xover new story that will happen in several months from now. He is staying there the second half of the latest chapter and the first half of the next one… before going back home.

Be warned that I literally wrote (or will write) these parts so that no spoilers for what I’ve planned for this story are mentioned. Dio’s Stand is barely mentioned in fact.

Will this happen in this story too? Only at the very end. And I mean at the very epilogue so… yes, this mega xover story will not happen for a very long time.

Chapter Text

Omake 6: Till you breathe again (1?)

I coughed a little, droplets of blood falling off the edge of my lips as I scrambled around my desk to try and find some of the journals I had found about the Mask.

The situation was bad. No, it was horrible.

With my breathing growing erratic the more I tried to scavenge any worthwhile paper to aid me in this shocking development, I could feel the individual I had tied up in my bed finally struggling against the restraint I had applied to him.

Some chains, some mere ribbons forcing the young man to keep still in the bed while I swiftly tried to see how I was supposed to fix something like this.

You can’t.

I gulped nervously while trying to find any notes, any memories, that would’ve been able to help me in this dreadful predicament.

I should’ve acted before this had happened. I should’ve made that blasted mask disappear when I had the first chance.

And yet I hadn’t, my foolish past self having ignored the troublesome danger until it was too late.

I should’ve expected for something unusual to happen, but I had been shocked by the magnitude of the calamity I was facing alone.

I glared at the stone mask, now active and still dripping some of the leftover blood that had remained by its claws.

Jonathan’s blood.

With my heartbeat growing frantic, I spared a quick glance behind to check on my current time limit.

Jojo was struggling like a madman. The restrains were barely enough to keep him stuck and I was glad that ‘newborn’ vampires just hadn’t the same strength as Dio and Straizo.

My orange eyes peered at the disheartening sight that was the corruption of the canonic hero of this series, the fall of one of the greatest gentlemen in this universe.

But while I blamed myself for this problem, I couldn’t help but groan at the fact that every single plan I had developed out from my current circumstances were now happily thrown in the nearest trashbin.

Jojo becoming a vampire. It was an atrocious element that threatened everything I had been creating up until now, and there was no one to blame but myself and George.

WHY WOULD HE KEEP THAT BLASTED THING ON SIGHT!

I was getting angrier, my hands were shaking as I tried to elaborate a new plan of action.

Hyperventilating, my heart was drumming so loudly by my ears as I continued through that seemingly futile research.

It shouldn’t have happened. I should’ve been this much clumsy.

I, Dio- no, a fool , had failed to avoid the worst case scenario. I didn’t deserve the heavens, especially when I couldn’t even make sure that someone as crucial as Jonathan was out of my way for world domination.

I had messed up to a degree that just shattered any hopes of success.

And nothing in my arsenal could help with what I was dealing with.

Hamon? Killing Jonathan was my final plan if nothing else could be used to deal with this situation.

The Spin? I didn’t have a clear understanding of vampiric biology, nor I knew how to exactly create blood out of water without making some experiments early on.

The struggle was unfair, but cathartic. I had missed a single contingency, and now I was going to have a hard-time trying to avoid a complete fallout.

My thoughts died down when I felt some quiet whining, and my attention snapped back by the bedside of the riotting vampire.

Danny. I had forgotten that the dog had followed us up to my room before I had the chance of closing the door.

The puppy had been with Jojo when the disaster had struck, he had been there to see his young master stumbling by the wall with mask on it, making the sharp-edged artifact cut the youth’s arm just a little.

Pain was Jonathan’s own flaw in that situation, the one that sealed his fate as the mask snapped right in action and took hold of his head.

The process had happened before I had the chance of intervening, as my attention was gained by the frightened dog with some of its loud barking.

I had been the closest, I had noticed what was going on, but instead of waiting some servants to rush and see what had happened to the young Joestar, I had moved quickly to bring the barely-conscious Jonathan to my room.

Tied down and rendered unable to pose a threat even more than he was right now, the vampire’s continuous struggle was pushing me to actually skip many of the more time-consuming tests I could’ve tried out and-

I could already hear footsteps.

The door was closed shut. I had also placed both of the chairs and some of the furniture to block entrance to anyone that had wanted to check inside my room.

Words being muttered by the hall just outside, my ears twitched as I glared again at the Mask before I finally gave my utmost attention to Jojo.

He was staring at me with a feral expression. His humanity forfeited, and none of the common anger was there to give me hopes of a different transformation than what I knew about.

I flinched, I tensed up and I took a couple of steps towards him.

The sight of an approaching prey was enough to intensify his furious actions, and I prepared to counter any assault if he ended up breaking from his bonds.

I stared at him with a mix of morbid curiosity, dread, and infinite regret over how everything had gone wrong so suddenly and unexpectedly.

I was above him, his intense glance sending chills down my spine as I pondered over the only solution remaining in this instance.

Glancing just for a moment at my right hand I had it hover over his forehead, the young man staring rabidly at it as it tried to bite it through the restraint around his lower head.

My heartbeat intensified even more, almost making me wonder if I was actually experiencing a heart attack with how intense the pain in my chest was.

I blinked as I noticed my sight panning up while I felt pushed towards the conclusive steps of what was going to be a horrible part of my new life.

I had to do it, and yet the tears weren’t stopping to flow down.

Stop, I- I couldn’t stop.

If I let him survive now-

Thud!

My sight snapped to the door, I saw the chairs groaning together with the rest of the furniture I had disposed at the door.

A familiar voice was on the other side and I felt my panic rising more and more.

George? He was already there?

I didn’t expect him to arrive so soon. I had even less time than I expected!

I needed to be quick- I had to do it.

I pressed my palm by his forehead, my hand covering his brutal yellow eyes as I prepared to fry his head.

Hamon was the only way out of this madness. I had to cut the string, I had to kill Fate’s former champion.

I had to break away from Dio’s own limits.

…

But can I truly do this?

“D-Dio?”

I tensed up, the chains stopping with the rattling as the struggling vampire seemed to suddenly cease with its rabid activity.

I blinked. “J-Jojo?”

“I’m… I feeling odd. Bad odd,” The young man muttered with an uneasy tone. “I’m hungry, Dio. I’m hungry.”

I braced for any attack… but nothing came and I continued to stare at him.

“J-Jojo. Are you… are you fighting the impulse?”

He gulped nervously. “I’m… trying. It’s strong. I’m tired.”

“How much can you hold?”

THUD!

“B-Barely.”

…

“A-Are you… are you helping me?”

The question put a squeeze at my chest, and I felt my eyes widening at the trust.

“I’m… I’m trying my best, Jojo.”

I could only see his lips. There was a serene smile on there.

“I’m glad then… brother.”

…

I… I cannot do this. I, Dio, couldn’t kill Jonathan Joestar.

I’m a pathetic failure. This- This should come easy to me, and while I had no remorse in killing monsters-

Brother.

I just couldn’t bring myself to end my young sibling.

I removed my palm from his forehead silently moving to the desk to take hold of the mask.

Another glare, this one even briefer than the last one. Then I stared at Jonathan and...

I made my decision.

When George Joestar finally managed to breach into Dio’s room, to try and understand what had happened by the entrance of his mansion and why his servants had found fresh blood staining the floor, the poor man would only find an empty place with a strong gust of cold wind coming from… the now broken window.

I, Dio, continued to move as quickly as possible through the muddy road with a sleeping vampire wearing a big coat over his body on my back and a troublesome mask busying my hands. My destination? I needed to reach the warehouse. I needed to make newer plans.

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AN

This omake is born after reading the full fan-manga called ‘Till We Eternally Rest’. Truly a tragic take over the ‘What if Jonathan was the one to become a vampire?’ spin.

If this is continued it would be 5 chapters, each spread out to make reference to the arcs planned for this story.

Chapter Text

Capitolo Primo: Giovinezza (11)

The pale half-moon was up in the sky, shining brightly as the group concluded the last tasks of the ambush.

The area picked was one set right by the entrance of town, just enough to make it ‘logical’ for some fruit stands to be around. The food had been prepared with utmost caution, enough to not be taken as a hint for any suspicious activity aloof.

Whatever the creature was a werewolf or not, I still decided to take precautions to avoid any unexpected development as I knew that the monster had to still be strong and fast enough to avoid the previous capture attempts prepared by the local police force.

The only thing that I wasn’t truly certain about was succeeding at the first try. The beast could easily decide that tonight wasn’t just going to be a good day to visit, its limited mind certainly sensing trouble at striking so frequently with this much vehemence.

But while I really wanted to close my eyes even for just a moment, I knew that I couldn’t just afford this kind of luxury. I had to stay awake, to offer my utmost best to avoid the failure of this delicate mission.

One of the keys of success in many situations was patient, and stupidly whine about the lack of action in the first two hours of watch wouldn’t just do well for the morale of the rest of the group. Everyone was waiting patiently, silently. They knew that the creature was going to come soon, and they needed to be prepared to act as one to avoid any casualties in the process.

The long spears that were bladed with silver had been carefully hidden to avoid any reflection from those from alerting the monster in case it decided to come. Speedwagon had taken a seat beside mine, keeping a clear eyesight over his trusted companions which had been put to command the various sections of the little army.

I could see some tension in the fellow blond’s expression. His eyes showing some nervousness at the mere thought of the kind of monstrosity that was supposed to strike anytime now. The man had seen some crazy stuff happening in the capital, with Ogre Street being main location for most of the worst cases within the nation. But this was the first time he was supposed to face someone this… threatening.

A single bite from a werewolf would’ve been enough to turn a mere human in another monster. Thus death wasn’t truly the ugliest scenario available for those taking part in this skirmish.

Midnight had struck sometime ago now, and none of the usual daylight inhabitants had lingered as long as normally, presumably frightened by the prospect of any encounters with the creature that had reportedly attacked the area various times.

There was silence. But the unnerving quietness was doing the opposite than attract peacefulness to the hears and minds of those standing by their hideouts. I was tapping my fingers by my arm, orange eyes staring without distractions at what was supposedly to become a dangerous battlefield.

I stared hardly, and very tensely as I noticed something move quietly through the ‘empty’ square. The figure was short, with a tiny frame, but I could see the face and hair.

A little girl, her light-brown hair ran down a little below her shoulders. Her petite face was displaying some uneasiness, and from the rags she was using as clothes, it was a certainty within my mind that I was looking at some silly orphan that had taken notice of the free food and was making a break for the little stand filled with the fruits.

She looked to be not much older than seven.

“Dio-” Speedwagon had noticed the child too, glancing me with a panicked look, but I was already standing up from my chair.

“I will take care of this,” I assured calmly, making my way down the little roof which we had been using as I slowly wandered downstairs and toward where the girl was happily trying to get as many apples as she could get.

I stopped behind her, a sigh pending by my lips as I prepared to interact with her.

“It’s quite late, isn’t it?”

The sudden query interrupted the little orphan in her activity, the girl freezing up and almost dropping the apples. I waited for a couple of moment, enough for the child to recover from my unexpected presence.

Slowly turning around, her brown eyes stared up at my own orbs, a surprised glint held within her chocolate pools. More silence, I knew that talking now that she was this nervous would’ve only made her panic.

While on a normal instance that would’ve been alright, I had slowly come to understand that this wasn’t a mere orphan. Despite the fact her clothes were made by rags at best, her hair and skin looked hardly influenced by the grime and dust within the dirty streets of the rookeries.

Something about her was… off.

“The moon is up, people are sleeping,” I finally muttered once I was sure her tension had lessened to an acceptable level. “And the fruits of this stand are for free.”

She blinked, surprise swelling within her mind and face as she seemed slightly relieved by the confirmation. Yet, instead of merely nodding this off, she decided to frown.

“But why?”

Her quiet voice gained a curious look from me as I quietly reached around the stand and settled by the lone chair behind the table.

“My stand. My world,” I replied with a hint of amusement. “I suppose that… I just want to offer help more than sell simple things.”

Another blink, this time her surprise fully turned in curiosity. Curiosity which I would need to keep up this necessary conversation.

“But… isn’t that silly?”

I cracked a small smile. “I suppose it can be seen like that. But I’m just someone that wishes to… bring happiness to people.”

Awe appeared on her features, endearing the girl even more to take part in that unexpected discussion.

“That sounds like a nice thing,” She blurted out happily, her smile blossoming within her face.

“I’m glad to hear that,” I replied with a nod, then I blinked, faking a forgetful expression as I prepared to finally introduce myself. “Before I forget it… my name is Dio, Dio Brando.”

She nodded. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Brando.”

I almost flinched at the use of the last name. Perhaps I should really switch it instead of keeping it, especially with how distasteful it felt to even think about it. The name Brando was… just a synonym of horrible things happening all at once.

“Please, do call me Dio,” I returned with the same politeness, drawing a surprised look from the child. “I’m not that old. And I would prefer to be called by my first name.”

Another nod, then her eyes lit up at the fact that she had yet to introduce herself.

Looking quietly shyly, she huffed. “I’m- I’m Sarah.”

I offered a bigger smile. “Nice to meet you, Sarah.”

She giggled, her entire nervousness fading as she was left with even more curiosity at the ‘endearing figure’ I was presenting myself like.

“You know, it’s pretty late,” I muttered again. “And… I know it might sound a little bit strange to ask, but is there any reason why you’re still up, pretty girl?”

Her cheeks reddened a little at the compliment, and the embarrassed girl smiled even more at that, seemingly ignoring the ‘big question’ I had given her.

“I’m… I was just a little bit hungry,” She confessed without hesitation, making me frown at her genuine tone. “It’s been a while since I’ve tried apples.”

“Then do give it a bite,” I replied kindly, the girl quickly complying and taking a tiny bite out of the delicious-looking fruit. She munched on it a little, her smile growing happier as she enjoyed the food.

“It’s so good~.”

I almost chuckled at her cute reaction, but restrained myself as I needed to offer the least of noises as of now. I was dealing with a theory. A theory that could easily prove wrong and bring an innocent in the crossfire if my suspicions ends up failing to match up with the truth.

I needed to be careful, but I was making some good progress with this effort.

“I suppose it has to be tough. To be living in the streets,” I commented quietly, drawing a nod from the girl.

“It’s… not nice- but I got someone that cares for me a lot,” The child replied slowly, still enjoying her apple.

I blinked. “It’s good to never be alone, right?” I inquired back.

Another nod, this one with more eagerness. “My big brother is always there for me? He is my hero!”

I sighed at that response, feeling some perplexity rise up at the mention of this older sibling.

“Truly? I bet he has to be strong.”

“He’s super-strong!” Sarah agreed and reinforced. “He is fast, he’s nice and...”

She stopped, her sight dropping to the wooden table and with it her happy mood.

I gave her a concerned look. “Is something wrong with your big brother?”

The girl looked up, a surprisingly-serious tone on her face. An unexpected change from her previous giddy self.

“He’s… he has been feeling sick,” She admitted with some uneasiness. “He is… not at home when it’s nighttime and, and I think he got meaner too.”

…

Oh no.

I blinked, trying to hide the little realization from flashing through my face as I slowly came to understand the identity of the possible monster attacking this area at night. I felt ready to press for a little more, to inquire about any distinctive details of this sibling but-

My body tensed up as I felt something jump right above me through the roof of the building behind me. A lessened growl, it was just enough to get me moving as I pushed Hamon through my legs and quickened my pace.

Sliding through the table, I didn’t waste time nor words in lifting Sarah in my hold, dodging just in time the descending assault of the dark-furred fiend snarling at the table.

The girl eeped in surprise, her entire body shivering both at the suddenness of my action and the appearance of such a scary creature.

“Don’t worry, Sarah,” I guaranteed with a serious voice. “For I, Dio, shall protect you.”

Just as I pronounced these words, the four-legged creature sported its canine teeth before reeling a little bit to let out a challenging howl.

Now, that was the signal that was needed to trigger the arrival of support. In mere moments, numerous men flocked through the streets, all armed with their lances and prepared to rush to my aid.

Despite the quick presence of my little army, my worries about the werewolf were far from waning as the beast approached me. While it looked incredibly unnerved by so many people rushing towards us, the creature was staring at me intensely… and the reason for this attention was the child in my arms.

Gritting my teeth, I backed away to quickly dodge a sudden rush from the monster. Red eyes keeping track of my actions as the swift creature kept up with my pace… which was troublesome considering that I was supposed to fight it with my arms busied by Sarah.

I backed away one last time, deciding to finally focus my entire attention on the main threat. Once we had gained plenty of distance from the werewolf, I carefully dropped Sarah off my hold, the girl staring at me.

“I need you to run away from here, Sarah. Get to a safer place.”

I was curt with my order, enough to make her take a few steps away already as I turned my sight back on the approaching beast. It lunged forward, trying to pounce at me with its maws open and ready to take a bite at me.

But just as it seemed so close to reach out for my shoulder- I vanished in thin air.

Surprise painted its ugly mug, but soon that very surprise turned into fear as something bright rushed towards him.

The impact was decisive and I roared as I pushed him away with my standard Overdrive. The attack was one of the basic ones, which meant that it was quick to muster up and use in a stressful situation like this one. I recoiled my fist, reducing the hamon pumping into the punch as I stared at the recovering fiend.

It whined, a mix of pain and anger as it slowly got up and rushed at me. I could see a slight difference in it’s dark fur- the color having grown lighter than before. Now it looked like a dark shade of brown.

My hamon was fighting back the effects of the spell that had cursed him like this. I needed to act before my own men got too close and killed the possible innocent under that transformation.

The armed men were approaching fairly quickly, Speedwagon having left our little hideout to order around the formations to slowly encroach on our position. A little window of opportunity to avoid a tragedy.

It stood up, staring at me with incredible hatred, then it rushed with the same speed as before. My reaction time was at peak despite my sleep-deprivation, with the Ripple itself soothing the effects of my tiredness down to nothing.

I stood my ground firmly, cocking both of my fists for something quick and hasty. I could feel the Hamon surging in preparation for something that was surely going to bring the creature down and save the poor guy.

It lunged again, its maws trying to slowly open to prepare for another attempt at biting me up. I didn’t flinch, nor falter as I delivered another overdrive… this one being far stronger than the one before.

A barrage of punches, I felt close to achieve the same galore only a Close-Range Stand would achieve as I pummeled the wolf into stillness.

“Sunlight Yellow Overdrive!”

Its skin was tough, but I could see the hamon crackling against the curse, destroying it piece by piece.

The moment turned in a couple of seconds, then in two full minutes.

I stopped out of tiredness, staring at the creature slowly morphing back to a more humanoid form, the original owner of that body. A boy around my age, he was naked as no clothes had survived the previous transformation. He had a slightly tanned skin, and his hair reached down by his lower back.

He looked quite… wild with that ‘haircut’, yet my musing wasn’t just going to be allowed to continue as little Sarah decided to intervene now. With the young man now barely conscious, she rushed for a high-speed bear-hug, trying to talk with her brother while also pleading at the approaching men to stop.

She was afraid, enough to make me ease up my guard and gesture at my workers to stop. Some looked surprised, but Speedwagon’s loud voice seemed to draw them to comply as I slowly approached the two siblings.

I expected the barely-conscious guy to be incapable of going through a discussion, and I was so certain that the fight had been concluded like this, without much of a dangerous threat poised from the werewolf.

My training had made me so… over-prepared. Not only that, but I had so many contingencies planned for any sudden surprises that I could feel the need of be calm before such a singular scene.

Yet, while I made a few steps towards them, I noticed something strange with the older sibling, as his red eyes were open and staring intensely at his sister. It didn’t look neither a loving glance nor a worried one.

It was intense, it was raw… it was hunger.

I panicked, running as I saw his hand suddenly lifting up and showing… that it was still a dark-furred claw. The curse hadn’t been defeated completely.

It was a swift action. I saw the claws fall towards the unsuspecting child, with the brunette clinging protectively with her brother as I tried and failed to warn her of the danger.

I felt my… my existence questioned. I had just gloated, and I felt successful so easily and without any confirmation. I should’ve been careful- No, I can’t just surrender like this.

Up until now I had been able to achieve the impossible. I had learned the basics of the Spin, I was learning how to make use of Hamon, and I had started to make progress in the elimination of the threats that were Jack the Ripper and Wang Chan.

I was so close to achieve a complete victory, a bloodless one. I was so close and… I had to intervene quickly.

The spin wouldn’t taken too much time, and even the Zoom Punch was out of question with how long the distance was right now, just a little less than two meters. I wasn’t risking any chances of hitting Sarah with how faulty my aim with the Bubble Launcher was and… I was out of practical options about long-ranged means to stop the killing from happening.

Something. Something had to happen.

It had to happen. I wanted it to happen. I demanded it! I REFUSED TO ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN!

I will not tolerate a world that doesn’t bend to wishes! I will conquer it, turn it and make it mine!

In that furious mindset, I could feel something of a burden… snapping out from my back. I felt lighter, as something semi-transparent soared towards the inbound claw and… smacked it away, almost breaking the dark-haired boy’s arm.

It was surprising and I noticed that even the pseudo-werewolf had noticed something off about it.

His red eyes widened in shock, just a moment before his consciousness slipped away and he crumbled towards his sister. The hit had defeated the last ditch effort of the curse.

I stopped, shock filling my stare as my mind was frozen and forced to repeat in a loop what I had heard while the punch had made contact.

‘Wryyy~!’

There was no doubt about it. Yet my mind just failed to accept the evident scene just happening in front of me.

I, Dio, had somehow tapped into my own Stand.

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My hasty return to the Joestar Manor ended the interesting night that saw so many new variables enter the large game of hearts and minds that I was a player to.

Speedwagon had voiced his reluctance in bringing both Sarah and her brother back to the main headquarters, but he had complied as I had offered him some guarantees over the boy. He knew that the little brunette was harmless, and that the only real issue was the chance of the young man turning in a furred machine of doom right on their ‘home’.

With this little situation wrapped up in the safest way possible, and with the other men being sworn up to not mention anything about the situation that had happened that very night, I found myself dealing with the fact that I had pull a successful all-nighter and… I wasn’t feeling any of that.

I knew that the Hamon was known to heal and help with any soreness, but to see it act to heal my state of sleep-deprivation? Now I had a reason to consider avoiding coffee altogether. The fact that it was also the main tool that allowed me to make my way back to the house without risking the chance of getting caught.

To be fair, I had planned hours earlier the whole ‘Spider-man’ skit to get back in my room by the wall and through the still-open window, but this was the first time I climbed up a solid surface that wasn’t a simple tree.

Truly a fun experience, one that was mostly ruined by some thoughts over the impending death below me if I failed to keep up the proper Hamon input with my hands and feet. Once I was back inside the building, I proceeded to close the window and lie down on the bed.

I had so much to ponder about. So much to think over… why did I get an infuriating ‘teaser’ for my Stand?!

I was slightly irked by the fact that I, Dio, had managed to pull just a fraction of my Stand out and I can’t yet bring it up again. It had been the rush of the moment, the adrenaline and the willpower mustered in that specific deadly situation.

It had been so… majestic, but also so teasing. It had been like receiving a caress and then being slapped without an apparent reason.

Yet the bad part didn’t come any closer to the kind of confusion I had over the ‘bizarre bit’ of that development. I was still failing to make theories over why my Stand hadn’t gone with ‘Muda’, but with ‘Wryyy’.

It didn’t make any sense. I knew within myself that ｢The World｣ was still going to be mine. There was no reason to doubt it as I felt it. And yet the battlecry didn’t match with the one that the bulky humanoid would usually make during the use of its infamous punch barrage.

W-Was it because I preferred Wryyying to Mudaing? Is there something wrong with me? Maybe I should step up my Dio game?

The torturous trail of thoughts persisted for two whole hours… enough to get me to stand up to the bed and go to enjoy some proper breakfast.

I was still having some trouble digesting the fact that I had skipped my usual few hours of rest and I wasn’t feeling any of that, but with my mind still driven crazy by the fact that I had a glimpse over my future Stand… I really wasn’t paying attention to the miraculous effects of the Ripple.

At least, not right now.

I greeted a couple of servants along the way as I reached for the dining room.

George was distracted by some newspaper, while Jonathan smiled and greeted me with a nod, which I returned without hesitation.

I took my usual seat, humming quietly as I scanned carefully what had been prepared for breakfast. Waffles would surely do well with my depressed state of mind.

Just as I started to munch at my first prey, my attention slowly turned at the newspaper that had distracted the older Joestar from greeting me. A couple of the titles there gaining my interest almost instantly.

‘A breath of air? The monster misses his date’

Seems like the media had noticed that the yesterday had been a ‘quiet night’. While I had some doubts about everyone working under me keeping that a secret, it would seem that Speedwagon’s persuasion and capacity to bribe the more reluctant members had worked wonders.

I almost nodded at this development, feeling glad that there wasn’t any unexpected backlash coming from that fight’s aftermath. Yet my eyes didn’t fail to notice the umpteenth title dedicated to the newest victim of ‘Jack the Ripper’.

Once again the unfortunate guy that had stepped right into Jack’s path had been given a blond-like color to his hair and… there were some different engraved words on his torso.

Shine Brighter.

Truly an unnerving sight. I could feel my blood boil at this obsession the man had over me. I should intensify my efforts to try and hunt down the bastard now that he had left anonymity again to resume with his spree.

Maybe that would be the perfect next step now that I had most of the stability in my turf assured, with only a couple of minor issues left to deal with.

Returning my attention to my share of the breakfast, I finally saw George folding down the paper and take notice of my presence. He seemed genuinely surprised when he saw me already seated and eating.

“Oh Dio, I hadn’t- I forgot to greet you-”

“It’s alright, Lord Joestar,” I interrupted politely, showing a small understanding smile. “I suppose there has been quite the situation with the recent events.”

The lone father nodded, easing at my reassuring words. “These last few days had been quite difficult to handle. But I think I got mostly everything under control.”

He leaned a little on his chair, turning his sight to his waiting waffle. Soon, he took a moment to enjoy one of the three pieces on his plate.

“Dad,” Jonathan muttered with some giddiness, almost instantly gaining my interest as the man sighed and smiled at his son’s enthusiasm.

“I almost forgot this too,” The man mused with a tired sigh. “But JoJo just received a letter confirming his apprenticeship with a well-known teacher for History. He has expressed some wishes to become an archaeologist and I’m sure that knowledge will come handy in administering the family business.”

I nodded, smiling proudly at the happy-looking young man before returning my attention back to George, as I realized that he wasn’t done yet.

“And since my son has been finally accepted by a teacher, I decided that it was best to try a different approach with you,” The nobleman continued with a serious tone. “Which is… I want you to pick the professor you think would best benefit you.”

…

He was joking- there was no way that he was actually offering me, a fourteen years old teen, the chance of picking his ‘favorite teacher’ out of the roster of people available in this era.

There were plenty of people that I wanted to know, but the list of those that I actually wished to become an apprentice to was incredibly shorter than the previous one.

G ood people, bad people, influential people… crazy people. There were so many of those and just a couple actually worth of considering for as proper mentors for me to ask about.

It was seriously going to be one of the toughest choices possible considering it had to do with my main cover. Any teacher that was distant from London was surely going to urge me to either come and visit out of the region, or even adopt some unpleasant times to give lessons for the sake of keeping up with other responsibilities.

I frowned at this little leeway I was offered. “Can I have some time to… ponder over this decision? I’m currently unprepared to afford a name.”

“You may take some weeks to decide. But I wish to remind you that you will need to continue with your education,” George replied kindly, just a hint of stern joining his complex. “Both you and Jonathan have displayed a prowess with your studies that I don’t wish to see wasted. Jojo has already settled with this specific teacher, and now it’s your turn to do the same.”

I nodded. “I shall consider this situation with the utmost importance and seriousness, Lord Joestar.”

He seemed pleased with the answer and soon breakfast resumed with a pleasant silence which I was quick to paint with my thoughts.

This new situation was kind of annoying. While I was glad to have been offered the chance of actually choosing the one that I will ask to become my mentor, I sure hadn’t made any plans about pursuing a serious education-related career with the kind of plans and schedules I had in mind for the distant future.

I had my mind set in a precise path of success, one that had a general line that I wasn’t going to stray from for any silly reasons. It was going to be a tough road, but one with good rewards and a promise of world-wide dominance.

With breakfast coming to an end, I expected for the rest of the day to be a ‘simple one’ to my usual weekly schedule. I had some plans, but nothing too big considering the recent issue that I had been forced to deal with.

Now I had two more possible recruits to confirm. People that would require attention, charisma, and, most of it all, actions to prove my good intentions.

It wasn’t going to be an easy task, but I certainly wasn’t going to stray away from it now that I had the capacity to make some huge steps around. That and… maybe I could use the ‘teacher card’ to start thinking about the chances of going as far as starting to influence London’s politics with some careful manipulation.

I wanted to grin, to cackle, to Wryyy- but then I was reminded of something that I had been ignoring for days now and that required some of my attention to be finished.

The translation was mostly over, I was close to understand the true origins of the protagonist and the ‘antagonist’ of the Prophecy of the Sagittarius. I would know about his identity and… confirm some strong suspicions that I had been harboring since I stopped translating at the last ten pages.

I wondered if it would end up being ‘him’, or if this was just a silly theory of mine that lacked any logical basis.

But then this is Jojo, and things were meant to be logically bizarre from time to time.

So, while I, Dio, hummed quietly as I made my way back to my own room, I failed to notice that a certain Stone Mask was no longer fixed by the wall were George had left it.

---------d-d-d-d-----------d-d-d-d------------d-d-d-d------------

AN

...Not much to say.

Actually, there is something! I did start a story about Worm (Web Serial) called ‘Metempsychosis’. Expects lot of crazy stuff for Taylor.

...

... Wryyy?

Chapter Text

Omake 7: Life is a silly thing

Original Idea from: Guest 4 from Giovinezza (8)

~From Hannah’s Perspective~

The silence of one will always be taken as a tacit consent.

I can remember hearing these strange words from one of the women that tried to dote on me as I was slowly coaxed into accepting the unfairness of the situation. It was kind of saddening how my presence back to that squalid place wasn’t something that could be correlated from a person in particular, but to a variety of issues converging to the breaking point.

The fact that I was ‘adopted’ by Madame Lovely stemmed from numerous events within my early life. Some being carefully greeted with a smile, while some were met with scorn and scowls.

Life can be cruel, but to some it was the worst possible.

The smell of the brothel was unforgettable. I could remember my nostrils flaring in disgust the first time I entered that simple building.

I was hopeful at first when I first saw it in the distance. I thought that it was one of those mansions that were used by noblemen and noblewomen as their own homes.

From the horror of poverty, to the brilliance of the elite. It was idyllic back then, my mind failing to contain the joy rising from within my features as I followed the old woman that was Madame Lovely.

A nice lady, I could remember her like one of those ‘grandmothers’ that were mentioned by many of the children I had met in the last few years as source of wisdom, of refined kindness.

Madame Lovely resembled all of that, she had this sweet tone and simple manners that were just endearing to anyone that didn’t know much about her true self.

It was the perfect lure for silly girls that were so desperate for warmth, for food, for shelter.

The beautiful dream born with a sight, and then alive for a couple of steps, shattered right as I realized what was truly happening within the place.

It had stung, painfully so, but never enough to match the stinging sensation of a strong slap from the ‘kind lady’.

The Madame was kind to those who complied, but quickly proved to be stern and unforgiving when the first note of her protests reached her mind.

The ground was cold, but not as cold as the ‘sleeping section’ of the brothel was.

Nights spent trying to understand why God was being so unforgiving had been with only silence.

Did that mean that God agreed to me? Or perhaps the Lord Almighty cared little about the weak, and absently bestowed immunity to those that committed the heinous deed?

The shock had waned just a week after being taken in, and much of this time was spent ‘learning’ more about the ‘grand work’ I was now supposed to be part of.

It was all in the name of pleasure, all in the name of satisfaction. But both far from the subjective sense of these words, and more related to those that brought coin to the establishment.

I wasn’t smart there, and maybe I’m still far from properly understand the nature of that dark aspect within society, but I was perfectly aware that there was a heinous distaste in being forced into that role.

Visions of women ‘happily’ offering themselves to old man, people that were rich, that still wanted more and beyond the limits of a wedlock.

The horror of daily sessions that ended up with my mind trying and failing to grasp the fact that it would’ve eventually been my turn for that kind of disgusting actions.

Sure, thieving my way for survival had destroyed any semblance of normal morality within my soul, yet my inner purity had persisted through the despicable deeds I had to go through for the sake of staying alive in these trying times.

Hannah. That was the only certainty that had driven me through the worst of instances I was subjected to.

I hadn’t expected for some stable life. I had wanted to be cuddled away from the pain.

But it would’ve been just alright to have another certainty other than just a name.

A guarantee that my tomorrow wasn’t going to end up with my unfortunate passing.

Everything was possible, and being ‘taken’ in a brothel was perhaps the least problematic for a fair amount of reasons.

But my meager pride had simply refused to accept the unwanted cards. A refusal that was rekindled for numerous days.

With weeks turning into months, worry became a stable guest within my mind.

It was during an effort to be granted some relief away from that horrible situation, knowing that it was now a matter of days before the true commitment of my stay in the brothel was finally imposed upon me.

I needed to breathe, away from the disgusting scent of deplorable men.

The nearby park had sounded like a perfect idea. Then I had realized that the current state of my clothes wouldn’t just do to avoid any attention from people.

While I was glad that she had been given something else to the tattered robes I had been using for several years now, the skimpy nature of my new style hardly matched with the normalcy I was just seeking.

Thus I rushed away from the entrance, away from any clear sights and deep in that peaceful place domineered by nature.

A stubborn attempt to resist to the gritty reality of London, where nature thrived against the advance of the city’s society.

Wandering around in utter and complete silence, I finally took a moment to rest away from the main routes.

Loneliness was quick to receive me through my implicit yearning. I was distracted, so blissfully immersed in that bountiful peace that just was as endless as it was kind.

And in that unawareness… I was touched by Death.

Maybe it was wrong to consider someone as foul as Jack as something connected to the Ultimate Demise, and yet the sight of a lanky figure with a horrid knife standing in the shadows was enough to give me shivers.

The shadows dreadfully and masterfully hid his face, making it seem to my eyes that I wasn’t staring at a lone individual.

It was the world deeming her finished. I wasn’t needed to live any longer.

There had been no chance to avoid it. The situation had happened so suddenly and so furiously that I almost failed to notice the blood drawn by the swift murderer.

No hope painted me a way out from that case. I was frozen, I was done, and despite my best efforts to not show any emotions… I couldn’t help but show some absurd gratefulness.

Death sounded like mercy. It sounded so natural and so undeniable.

It was there, and I knew that the alternative would’ve been to try and survive a horrible life.

Bad life or swift death?

So many thoughts, most of those transcending within the malicious reasoning of the life here in the capital.

…

Then He had arrived.

At first I thought him to be one mere child that had gotten lost. Someone that was going to follow my same road to the afterlife.

Instead I was proven wrong… but with a pleasant surprise too.

The young man had blond hair, his eyes were a vibrant orange that was all directed to the malicious killer.

There had been some minor fear, but it was a speck of dust compared to the scene that ensured.

Lord Dio spoke with incredibly bravery and cold logic. There was no attempt in my mind to deny it, especially when ‘Death’ was stripped of its clothes and names.

Jack lost his anonymity, and he was finally exposed out of the shadows that had shrouded his identity.

The inevitable had sounded so different, and so fake.

The exchange that had then ensued further proved that Dio was beyond the simple.

Mere words drove the criminal away from the scene, the threatening and absolute tone of the blond’s voice tearing apart the resolve of the mad man to continue with his attempted kill.

And with Jack being sent away, I was left alone to Him.

Lord Dio was serious, mature, wise and… kind.

The kindness that sounded so close to what I had felt while around Madame Lovely, and yet this beautiful emotion was then associated with a genuine act of help.

Her wounds were fixed through the use of something beyond human.

Magic, I had thought back then in an awed stare. The power to bend and mold the world at the will of some.

It was absurd, yet it happened.

Dio had used this immense ability to heal me, giving me importance through that simple act of altruism.

There was no reward behind that deed, but only for him to be glad with her good health and safety away from danger.

With my heart quivering at the warm note of the odd encounter, the world seemed to become so easy after that situation.

There was bad, but there was also good.

I had seen the worst and now, in the lowest point of my life, I was granted the luxury of being cared for.

The warmth survived as I was brought back to the brothel, yet my dreamy self was snapped back to reality when Madame Lovely decided that it was ‘time for me to shine’.

I merely blinked as I found myself thrown into one of the ‘service room’ and left to wait for my first client.

Archibald Curzon was an old gentleman with an unpleasant neutral stare permanently fixed on his face.

A former captain during the English campaign in Crimea, he had retired when things were getting unhappy with his already-unruly behavior.

Curt and rude, he merely muttered a word as he started to unfasten his belt.

“ Strip.”

A simple order, devoid of emotion or interest to whom he was talking to.

…

I could feel my anger rising at the sight. It was the breaking point and… I had to do something strong to make myself stand up before the unfairness.

My mind skimmed over the various thoughts that could’ve helped my in that moment and-

I remembered Lord Dio’s power. When he first injured Jack, and when he used it to heal me.

Could I do it?