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It was a lovely summer day in Morioh. The weather was great for walking about, and everyone was none the wiser that there was a serial killer impersonating someone in their town.
It was getting to be evening, and Jotaro had taken the invisible baby to the police department. They’d gotten the mother’s name using Rohan’s Stand, and the Speedwagon Foundation had helped dig up the baby’s hospital records; the visit was another attempt to see if the police could find the mother.
“I wonder if she was one of Kira’s victims,” Joseph wondered aloud as he walked along the private beach of the Morioh Grand hotel. He turned towards the space beside him, which would seem empty to normal people. “What do you think, my friend?”
But unlike the average person, Stand users would’ve been able to see the bloodstained ghost walking beside the old man, even if the sight was horrific to behold. It had indeed given Joseph a scare when he first got his Stand, but the passage of time had lessened the shock and instead amplified his guilt.
“I think you should just let your grandson handle all of this,” Caesar bluntly replied, arms crossed as he walked slowly. “You shouldn’t have made this trip. Your body’s already fragile. Need I remind you of your recent surgery?”
“Yes, yes, I’ve got it,” Joseph lightly chuckled. “But you know, I can’t go home at this point. Suzi’s mad, I want to get along with my son, and the baby only really calms down around me.”
Caesar rolled his eyes and muttered something about him being deserving of Suzi’s ire. He looked at Joseph and said louder, “Then go visit your daughter. Haven’t you placed yourself in enough danger? Seriously…” He noticed Joseph’s footsteps starting to slow and whirled around. “And go find a bench already!”
“Jeez, still so bossy…” Joseph muttered, letting himself be grabbed by the shoulder and led to the nearest bench.
He sat down with a small grunt and tried to ignore the spirit worriedly tittering over him, waving him off. Caesar frowned in disapproval, but stopped his fussing and sat beside him instead. For a minute, they quietly watched the waves rise and fall against the shore.
“Say, you heard that Josuke and Rohan apparently defeated another one of Kira’s Stand users the other day?” Joseph asked. “Well, Kira’s father’s Stand users. I’m not even sure if they’re working together-“
“That was yesterday, Jojo. And I was right beside you,” Caesar interrupted. “You can try pulling that senile act all you want. It won’t work on me.”
Joseph laughed to himself. Caesar had been beside him for too long, and he was just as displeased with him as everyone else. But even so, he still stuck around and looked out for Joseph, even if his own injuries seemed like they hurt more than Joseph’s aching bones did.
“That’s not my point here,” he sighed, staring out at the ocean. “Even against all the new Stands being made, against all the hardships being dealt, this town’s youth are standing up bravely against them. They have a golden spirit in them, the same that we saw in Egypt ten years ago.” He looked down at his lap. “The same that we once had, sixty years ago.”
“Don’t kid yourself. You had your affair years before you helped save the world again. You even chose to support your son once you learned of him. And I’m still here, aren’t I? We never lost it.”
Joseph closed his eyes and nodded. He could trust Caesar to remind him of the truth whenever his mind began to warp its stories. Even if his senility was an act, it was a fact that age had begun to wear down his mind. Conversely, ghosts couldn’t change or mentally grow. Caesar was still the troubled youth hiding anger behind charm, just as he had been in life.
Letting him meet Reimi and Arnold was an interesting experience. The pair had kept their horrid wounds as well, but died from a sudden attack rather than a drawn-out demise on the battlefield. At least the girl had confirmed that Shigechi had passed to the afterlife, so he wouldn’t have to bear his wounds in death.
“At least,” Joseph murmured, “Josuke won’t have to fight against the Stone Mask. He won’t have to be a soldier, not like us and Jotaro.”
“No, he’s not safe from that fate. You saw that picture of Enya, didn’t you?” Caesar reminded him. “Yes, the Stone Masks are nearly all destroyed. But DIO brought his own consequences, and Kira’s father was probably his agent, just like Okuyasu’s father.”
“You’re right, you’re right. It seems like the battle against DIO will never end. It started before I was born, and it probably won’t end in my lifetime,” Joseph sighed. “Fighting against him is just the fate of the Joestars. It runs in our blood.” He looked up at Caesar. “At least the Zeppelis won’t have to endure it anymore.”
“Because I was the last of my bloodline? Yeah, we won’t. We’ll never endure anything anymore.”
“Ah…right.”
Caesar bit the inside of his cheek. Maybe he was a bit too harsh on Joseph; he wasn’t the same man who could come up with bullshit ideas and pull them off anymore, even if his heroism in saving the invisible baby proved he had some wits left. How many years did he have left in him? Ten years? Maybe less? It shouldn’t be surprising that things really did slip his mind.
“At least your family was only burdened with the fight,” he replied. “The Joestars weren’t burdened with the responsibility to destroy the Stone Mask, unlike the Zeppelis. You weren’t the ones who unearthed the damn thing from the Aztec temple and lost track of it.”
Joseph’s eyes narrowed. “Caesar, hold on-“
“It was our fault that DIO has haunted your bloodline for generations. So, it was our responsibility to-”
“Shut up. He made his own choices.” Joseph coughed into his hand for a moment, then looked back up. “Uncle Speedwagon said that man was born evil. Now, I’m not one to judge the circumstances of someone’s birth, but I’m pretty inclined to believe that.”
Caesar ignored his protest. “My grandfather spent his life chasing the Stone Mask, trying to prevent it from causing more victims. And I inherited that burden, to make up for…everything I’ve done. All we ever did was try to atone, I think.”
“No, you… You were proud of your family, of your Ripple. Your family took care of mine. I still remember that much,” Joseph argued. From mentoring them to dying for them, Joseph could never forget what the Zeppeli family did for the Joestars. It haunted his dreams through the years, and flashed at the back of his mind when he was put into a leadership position for the Joestar group.
“Yes, I was proud of what I inherited, and I wanted to atone. Both of these are true,” Caesar went on. “The masks would have been found anyway, and my family took up an important battle to destroy them. It was our fate, nothing that could be blamed on any one person.”
“Besides Kars.”
That got a smile out of Caesar. “Besides Kars,” he agreed.
“I think I might have said something about you guys unearthing the Stone Mask when you were alive. Pretty sure you yelled at me for it,” Joseph chuckled. “That’s what I didn’t understand back then. I fought to protect the living, you fought to avenge the dead. I get it now, I promise.”
“I know, Jojo. You’ve done a good job,” Caesar reassured.
Joseph shook his head. “I wanted to protect my grandmother and uncle, and then my daughter. But you and Loggins died, and then Avdol, Iggy, and Kakyoin…” He let out a sigh. “How ironic that I wanted to protect the living. Everyone seems to die around me.”
“And those who chose to fight made their own decisions,” Caesar echoed his words right back to him. “You did protect your family. Both times, at that. I couldn’t even avenge mine.”
Joseph could hear the bitterness in the spirit’s tone, clear as day. Even if he died with his pride as a human being and as a Zeppeli, he still failed at the one thing he had made his raison d’être. Joseph had watched him bristle about it too many times to count. He was lucky that Caesar’s virtue kept him from being a vengeful ghost.
“But you did redeem yourself. You told me that you were able to follow your family’s tradition,” Joseph replied, hating that the self-sacrifice of the Zeppelis was considered any sort of ‘tradition’. But another thought came to mind. “Though, you didn’t go into that fight thinking about sacrifice. Didn’t you say that you only decided to get that antidote after you’d lost?”
“That I did. I wasn’t afraid of dying, I was afraid of dying a meaningless death without leaving anything behind.” Caesar clapped Joseph on the shoulder roughly, getting a small wheeze from the old man. “You’re a lucky one, Joestar, beating the odds to survive this long. I shouldn’t have expected anything less.”
“Joestars are supposed to die early, Zeppelis are meant to sacrifice themselves for another person. I guess both of us messed up pretty badly, eh?”
“Let’s hope your descendants won’t succeed where we failed.”
Joseph turned back to look at the unending ocean. Even if he probably wouldn’t see it, he still had some hope that their generational curse would end. Time was as unyielding and as never-ending as the sea, and he’s already played his part in history. Just as Caesar did, the time had come to entrust the safety of the future to someone else, to let someone else take up the torch and fight.
“Hey, Caesar,” Joseph quietly asked, “why are you still here?”
Caesar looked at him curiously.
“Your family must be waiting for you, up in Heaven. You don’t need to stick around to watch over an old man like me. Doesn’t it hurt, watching everything change without you?”
Caesar shook his head. “You ask me this every year for the past ten years,” he sadly remarked. “And I keep telling you, I just can’t leave you alone. You’re bound to get into some kind of mess without supervision, after all.”
“Hey, don’t treat me like a kid! I’m older than you now!” Joseph protested, bursting into laughter. “You can just say that you love me. Jeez, ghosts really can’t change. You haven’t grown a bit more honest since back then.”
“Shut up. You’re still a brat, no matter how old you get.”
That only made Joseph laugh harder until he sent himself into a coughing fit. Caesar rubbed his back until he managed to pull himself together. Without thinking, Hermit Purple shot out of Joseph’s wrist and wrapped itself around Caesar’s free hand, keeping it trapped in its embrace. Caesar gave it a sideways glance, but otherwise didn’t say anything.
“You should head inside,” he said instead. “You’re going to catch a chill.”
Joseph shook his head. “I want to stay out here for a little longer.”
Caesar said nothing, but gave him a small nod. No matter what he chose, Caesar would always stay by his side.