Chapter Text

“Lean back a little more! Just- YES! Perfect!” Dio was holding a pose only a Jojo character could ever hope to do without dislocating their joints as Rohan feverishly scribbled away. As soon as he laid eyes on Dio, he just knew he was the perfect reference. Rohan told himself it wasn’t in a gay way, but it really was.
“Anyway, what is your plan for this?”
Rohan didn’t look up to respond. “What plan?”
“For tracking down the serial killer.”
“Oh yeah. That one. Yeah. Uh, not sure. I was going to go to town with Koichi later and meet up with Reimi to share what we’ve done so far. But I can’t leave now, you’re the perfect model damn it!” Rohan didn’t notice the pencil snap a little more, just adjusting to it subconsciously in his weird feverish manga state.
“We could go later. I like the Koichi child.”
“Sounds good. Let me call him.”

Rohan sprinted off at speeds inappropriate for just going to make a phone call and begged Koichi for another few hours to draw Dio before they went to their little spot.

“Uh, sure, I can just finish some homework in the meantime, yeah I can do that.” While this was a little awkward to do, Koichi could hear the state he was in, and if he didn’t at least check on Rohan then who knows what would happen. And he knew better than to interrupt the man.

The three of them had no clue what effect this had. Something so small and minor, and of no consequence, but meant a certain ghost in a flying photograph didn’t get tipped off on where his son was by listening in on a conversation.

And the other serial killer in Morioh was sat on the floor of a bathroom.

He’d gotten his pseudo-wife to not look in the cupboard, but that was a temporary solution.

Very, very, temporary.

The blow was placed so strategically that he could easily pass it off as an accidental fall. A tragic accident in a domestic home, such unexpected things happening to two poor parents, their only child stolen in the unfairness of life. So this wasn’t the main reason he was panicking.

Even if everyone believed him fully to be a poof grief-stricken father, he would have to act the part, and even if everyone believed the act he would still be in the centre of so much attention. If the face-changer was still alive, he could print this face onto some other man, leave him to hang in a forest, and the perfect evidence for a father driven to suicide in grief wouldn’t be questioned. But she was dead, by his own damn hand.

“Tea’s ready, darling!” Her voice put the emphasis on the last word, wilting as she enjoyed the flavour of the word.

Shit.

“Darling?”
“Coming! Just give me a minute!” Hopefully the doors closed between them would muffle and trace of something wrong in his voice. It was now or never, and he made a choice. Dragging the body to a place it would look like a fall, he tried to steady his breath and rehearsed his lines.

He throwed on as few clothes as possible to make it seem like he had spent that time getting into them in the other room, foregoing lower layers of clothing.

He smacked Killer Queen’s fist onto about where Hayato’s body implied he hit the chair, leaving behind a dent to make the scene pristine, and backed into the hall.

“What was that?”
“I think Hayato fell ov- HAYATO!” He put all the panic he felt into the name, to make it convincing and let off a small bit of steam.

Shinobu heard the panic, and she sprinted back up the stairs to see her husband seemingly hyperventilating, shaking.

“H-He’s-“

She looked into the bathroom, and felt her heart fell out of her chest and reality spinned. “Hayato!” She ran over and held him close, trying to feel for a pulse on his neck. “H-Hayato has- he has no pulse! HAYATO!”

The human mind would react strangely to moments like these, and Kira was going to use this as his means of escape. “This- This isn’t real! THIS ISN’T REAL!” He choked the words out of his panic, for a reason completely different to what he was pretending it was, and ran downstairs.

Shinobu’s mother instinct barely registered it right now, the priority lying cold in her hands. “I- I need to call an ambulance!” Adrenaline pumped her full of strength and she wasted no time in scooping him up to bring downstairs, to keep near while she called for help.

“119, what’s your emergen-“
“MY- MY SON! He fell, hit his head! He has no pulse! Please!”
The man on the other end swallowed and knew from her tone alone that this was going to be an anxious night for him.

“You took all of these?” Reimi was slightly impressed at how expansive Rohan’s creep-shot collection was.
“Yeah, he’s been at it a lot.” Koichi answered for him.

“Hey, isn’t this one a bit weird?”
“What?”
“I’m pretty sure the man this kid is filming is his own father.”
“Huh. Weird.” Rohan and Dio looked over to see the faces she was pointing at.

Dio’s murder-senses tingled slightly. “Hmm. We should find him.”
Koichi looked up at him. “What? Surely we should ask the kid instead.”

“I’m not great with kids.” This wasn’t a particular trait he had, and was a slight lie because he didn’t really know how well he would handle a child. But generally, kids are more easily frightened by huge serial killers like him, so this was more of a statement about the likelihood of a theoretical random child being willing to strike a conversation.

“Well, we should at least ask the child too. Come on, Koichi, let’s go find the child.”
“What? No. He’s coming with me.” Dio was playing with a fire that was bigger than he knew, but at least Koichi knew, so he faced Rohan apologetically.
“Sorry, but Jotaro would kill me if I told him that I left Dio to roam around the streets of Morioh unsupervised.”
“What? Koichi, he doesn’t need to find out!”
“Well, I don’t want to lie to him exactly... just think of this as payment for him letting you draw him.” From the call, he had found that to be the most fun he had in years.
“Well... He was a good reference. Fine, but only if I get to draw him again.”

Dio finished the discussion. “Deal.” And, like that, they separated to find their respective person. Even though they were in the same place logically at this time, home and probably going to bed in a few hours, they went the opposite ways to add to the dramatic tension.

The traffic had mostly died down, and the night was beginning to get darker. Kira wanted to wait for it to be the peak of darkness, to make sure no one would see him, but he had noticed a few cops already asking around to find him. While getting close enough to listen could tell him what they knew, he didn’t want to risk being spotted so easily. If he just stuck to the shadows and corners of alleys for long enough, then he could make a safer escape.

The two cops seemed to have finished with the two women, thanking them and turning into the alley.

The same one Kira was in.

Crap.

Maybe, if he just stood here, in the shadow, didn’t draw attention to himself-

“Mr Kawajiri?” He froze. “Mr Kawajiri, you-“ No, no, no, no, NO. Killer Queen shot out and detonated one of the two in an instant, leaving the other in disbelief for a second.

“What- What the-“
“I just wanted a quiet life, in Morioh. No where else. I’m infuriated, but I’ve accepted that I will simply have to leave. One day, maybe, I can come back once I won’t be recognised, but I detest that I’ve been forced to such extremes! All I wanted was my quiet life in Morioh, but now, thanks to those meddling kids, I’m having to leave it all!”

As anime characters do, he monologued for long enough that it would affect the plot in some way, the poor police officer too shocked to even move. He’d wanted to transfer back to Italy and talk to his long-forgotten friends there. A few names, including Abbachio by interesting coincidence. He’d never wanted to go back there as much as he did right now.

“Did you hear that?”
“Huh?”
“That was an explosion. I heard it.”
“Is that what it was? Is your vampire hearing-“ Koichi didn’t get to finish that before Dio picked him up and began running over, knowing something was amiss.

Alleys and backstreets dashed past, Koichi clinging on for dear life despite the fact that if anyone’s grip mattered here, it wasn’t his.

He felt like he was going to throw up, and barely registered the time it took for Dio to finally slow and put him down on the floor.

He looked down the dark, wide alley, not all that dark but enough to obscure facial features, or fully drown out the man’s ranting.

“I just need my hand fix! Is that so much to fucking ask?!” Their eyes widened at this statement. Then a pink furry manifested next to him.

The man was blown to kingdom come.

Koichi, lying on the floor, stuck his finger at it. “That’s- That’s-“ The memory of getting donutted flashed. “That’s Kira!”

Dio was silent.

“Dio, we need to- Dio?” Dio wasn’t there.  In his place, a large absence of him remained.

“Again? You fucking-“

~

The world around him was pitch black.

Wait, there was a noise. A familiar one?

There were words, from a familiar voice.

“Hayato!” That was his name, in his mother’s voice, filled with panic.

A bit of light entered his eyes and he put all his strength into saying all he needed to.

“Mom?”

Light began to flood in, and the feeling of being held kept him warm “Hayato sweetie!” She couldn’t even bear to say more, just holding him close as she could while tears went unnoticed on her cheeks. “Mom, what happened?” He remembered getting home yesterday, no, today, then grabbing a snack, but the rest faded.

The ER crew gave them a minute, but knew that right now they needed to get him back to the hospital to keep him stable. The blow was severe, and to make sure nothing got worse care would be needed pretty soon.

“We need to get him to the hospital. Mitsui, pull the ambulance up outside, it’ll be easier to move him in if it’s closer.”
“Got it.” She picked up some of the equipment they had dragged inside once they realised they weren’t about to get her to move any more or be separated from him.

She dropped it again. “The- the ambulance!”

“Yes, the ambulance.”
“No, that’s- not what I mean! It’s- It’s gone!”
“What the hell are you-“ Mitsui’s co-worker looked out the door, and his thoughts ran dry once he saw. “It’s- gone?”

CRASH

Koichi nearly shat himself at the sudden noise. That wasn’t the sound of Kira’s bomb. The dust started to clear before his heart slowed back down again.

Kira wasn’t there.

Where he was, there was now a fucking ambulance.

An absolutely trashed ambulance, front-end in the ground, crumpled sadly, with Dio on top.

As if this was an act he did daily, he hopped down and spoke. “It’s a good thing they made this big car so bright and visible, it really caught my eye. I wonder why they painted it like that. Anyway, I have some lasagnes to collect from Jotaro. Let’s go.”

Koichi thought if it was worth saying absolutely anything at this point.

“Sorry, miss? Where am I? I- think I must have blacked out, I could’ve sworn I was elsewhere a few seconds ago.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said-
“I know what you said, Kira! Did you really forget me? Typical! Guess I should’ve expected that anyway!”
“Sorry, what? Are you another stand user?”
“No, I’m the bearer of bad news! You’re here because you died! It must have been so instant you didn’t even realise it happened!” Her hand drifted through his body.

“What the fuck?! Who are you?”
“I’m evidence! Fifteen years ago, you didn’t have a stand that could dispose of the evidence! I was front-page news! Does this jog your memory?” Reimi turned and bared her back to him, showing the gash she earned in death.

“You’re trying to trick me, aren’t you? My father told me there was an alleyway of the dead, here in Morioh, and- HOLY SHIT-“ Arnold tore his fucking hand off, ironically, and he fell over backwards. “HANDS?” FUCKING HANDS? DEADLY QUEEN, EXPLODE THIS IRONIC MESS!” Killer Queen then fell into little bits, because it had just given up on it’s user and it’s weird dub name. “Where are they taking me?”

“I don’t know, but I doubt you’ll find your peace and tranquility.”

His screaming grew, then faded as they took him away.

“Our men haven’t found anything.”
“But what about the mysterious ambulance man?” The name ‘ambulance man’ was the nickname for the unidentifiable corpse found mangled under a missing ambulance. And the mystery part was pretty notable, not a single cop on the force had ever seen something like this – not even the detectives from the other end of the country that were called in for the case. Forensics confirmed it would have been needed to be dropped from a height far above any nearby buildings to do the damage it did. And the ambulance was last seen a mere few minutes ago far away from the site.

“The DNA didn’t match, completely different guy to Mr Kawajiri. We ran it through the records like ten times, the guy had quite a few drink-driving arrests so it’s not like we were missing anything.”

“That was the only logical step we even had, now we got a missing person and an unnamed mystery corpse? Jesus, I thought the Kawajiri kid’s bad amnesia was gonna be the main setback. Poor family, hope the kid doesn’t blame himself for not remembering anything.”
“At least the guy might still be out there somewhere, alive. I just wanna tell the man his kid’s okay, sounded like he had a full-on psychotic episode or some shit. I’ve seen parents do it before when that happens to their kid, it never gets easier to help.”

“Well, sad as it is, work still continues. Talking of, I got a funny case we got called in last night.”
“Yeah?”
“Shop said a huge man just walked in, grabbed every single ready-meal lasagne in the store, and then walked out. Completely ignored the people trying to talk to him. They say he seemed sober, too, no sloppy movements or anything. CCTV backs the whole thing up.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Nope. Three mysteries in one week.”
“At least lasagne-man was harmless enough.”
“Reminds me of the funny cat in the news comics.”
“Garfield?”
“Yeah, that funny cat would do anything for a lasagne, huh?”
“Like rob a convenience store?”
“Hah, yeah.”

Maybe if Garfield was a homicidal maniac, then they could have just hit the nail on the head.

“Bye Grunkle Dio!”
Between taking bites of lasagne, he looked out the car window and responded.
“Bye Josuke Joestar!” No one had successfully convinced Dio to call anyone with Joestar blood anything other than a Joestar, but at this point no one really cared.

It was time for him to go back to the custody of the foundation, and despite what anyone would have guessed, Dio enjoyed the time he had outside the walls and hoped that the Joestars would call on him again. It did get a little lonely, not that he’d admit to anyone.

They begun to drive away, Jotaro giving the smallest wave out of the other two cars occupants. Even Joseph in his senile-ness had given a more hearty wave. The house disappeared behind other houses and Dio stopped. “Jotaro, put some music on.” He was in the front seat and could have done this himself, but his fingers were still covered in bits of lasagne and he’d never bothered to learn how the car music magic worked.

Some random other song faded, and a song that’d been released recently started.

“Some BODY once told me-“ Much to Jotaro’s dismay, Dio (and Joseph) begun singing along too loud for the actual lyrics to be heard.

Kira felt something again, other than the cold hands of irony.

He was sat.

And moving, slowly but bumpily, on something hard.

“Hey, you. You’re finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Same as us, and that thief over there.”