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.