Disclaimer: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and all equally bizarre concepts and characters belong to Hirohiko Araki. Original characters and other concepts (as noted) are copyright of me. Any non-continuous information regarding character abilities and other concepts should be reported to me as they come up by the readers for correction. Thank you, enjoy!

In the modern age, the Joestar International Trading Enterprise has risen above all expectations and monopolizes the global trading market! The head of this marvelous estate is George Joestar who rules the business that his family built out of nothing so long ago with his young son, Jonathan, at his side. Never has such a wonderful humanitarian, such a man of the people, existed! The Joestar name is synonymous with success and wealth, but still tragedy has struck the family name.

As of his infancy, young Jonathan has been without a proper mother and George without a wife. However, in the name of his family and his business, he refused to remarry, despite the efforts of all the eligible suitors that presented themselves. Mergers and consensual corporate plans were presented as dowry, but still the corporate giant didn't budge. The devotion he had for his late wife was too great for him to overcome. Eventually, that devotion was to be his downfall. In the fall, during his wife's twelfth anniversary of death, George became deathly ill. The symptoms all pointed toward heart failure, and his doctors were utterly baffled.

"Hang in there" the man at George's bedside said. "You can pull through this, Mr. Joestar! We all believe in you!"

"Donald..." George softly muttered, "how is your son?"

"You mean young Ron?" Donald replied. "He is doing well, although the atmosphere of the city is making him a bit hostile at times."

"That is good" George weakly said. "He is the heir to the Speedwagon enterprise, after all."

"Don't talk about heirs so much, George" Donald said, beginning to sob. "Young Jonathan cannot run your company like you do. What will you do about him."

"That is up to him" George said. "If he wants to inherit the company, he can when he is of age. If he declines it, my business partners can you will be able to find a suitable replacement. It is...his choice now, and I trust him..."

"Don't talk like you're going to die right now, old friend" Donal pleaded. "You mustn't worry yourself anymore. I will look after Jonathan for now, but he'll come to you once you're better."

"Thank you for the vote of confidence, my friend" George said. "Now, I think I'd like to...rest..."

"Yes" Donald said, getting up to leave. "I'll let you rest...so you can get better..."

So Mr. Speedwagon left his friend on his hospital bed. The heir to the massive Speedwagon Foundation for the Advancement of Pharmaceutical Science, Robert Edward O Speedwagon, had no knowledge of his best friend's father's near demise, and Donald intended to keep it that way. The less worry there was in the world, the better it seemed. Meanwhile, said heirs Jonathan and Robert, were taking time away from the world to socialize at a benefit concert held by an employee under Robert's father.

"Nice concert, eh?" Robert asked his friend. Although they were high as royalty in the modern world, both boys dressed casually, wearing shirts that had the names of the performing bands on the front and back with regular jeans.

"It's great" Jonathan replied. He was a strikingly gentlemanly as his father and his father before him. A perfect image of what a young billionaire-to-be should be. His soft, waving hair blew in the breezing wind and his foot tapped to the alternative rock that blared out from the center stage. "This is a wonderful thing Mr. Miller is doing. We should thank him if we see him."

"Maybe he can get us backstage, eh?" Robert nudged. "How cool would that be? We'd be the luckiest damn kids at school!"

"Well, that would be neat" Johnathan said. A bored and utterly painful sigh came from behind. Johnathan turned to see who made it, but no one behind him looked unpleasant enough to give off such a sigh.

"I'm gonna go get a drink, 'kay?" Robert said. Without waiting for Johnathan to respond, he hopped away and moved through the crowd toward the refreshment stands. Johnathan watched the concert for a while longer, but then another bored sigh came from behind. The music quieted down as the voice of the person grew louder and more real. Johnathan looked behind him at last and was startled by the sudden sight. A mask of stone worn over a young man's face!

"How...boring..." the young man behind the mask said. He brushed a hand over his golden hair and started to remove his mask, revealing a face so handsome that the winds stopped out of respect and admiration. Johnathan felt like he was staring down some unknown entity...a demon, in that very instant, but the feeling lifted quickly as the boy spoke up again. "This world...it's so boring..."

To elaborate on this fated meeting, time must be turned backwards a bit! In a rural town at the edge of nowhere, far away from the lights of any city and any reality, lived a family. This family was one of great misfortune and despair, the Brando family. Father Dario abused and worked his wife, Elina, to death as he drank and beat his son, Dio. In this house, less than a month ago, Dio observed the passing moments of his father as his drank the last of his whiskey.

"Gyahahah!" Dario drunkenly laughed. "Boy, where do you think you're going!?"

"Anywhere" Dio sternly said. He picked up a case of essentials, some clothes, and other personal effects that he prepared in advance.

"Like you'll survive!" Dario guffawed. Dio scowled deep in the shadows, but did not face his moronic father out of pity. His ogre of a parent would surely storm across the room and try to beat him if he gave the wrong tone. Although Dio now carried a knife, he didn't want to spill the unnecessary blood of his useless father. "Look at me! When I left home, all I had was a smart-ass mouth and a bottle of shitty booze. You're no better! You're only younger than me when I left."

"I can't stay in this house anymore" Dio explained calmly. "This is the house where my mother, a great woman, died slaving for you, a living pile of shit. I don't wish to be in my mother's tomb for any longer."

"Wait now, boy" Dario said, his drunken character showing a sign of remorse. "I've apologized for that, you know I have, but listen to me a second. I'm still terribly ill. I can't get out of bed anymore. If you leave, who will take care of me?"

"Like I care" Dio carelessly said. "I never intended to take you life into my hands."

"Then where will you go!?" Dario now drunkenly shouted. "You don't have a family besides me! You don't even have any friends or acquaintances!"

"I don't need friends" Dio said, mainly to himself. "I'll go wherever I please from now on."

"You're twelve!" Dario pointed out. "You'll be the pick of the orchard for all the rapists and child abductors out there! You wanna get yourself carried off and stuffed in a trunk, who the hell cares then!? Do whatever you want!"

"I intend to" Dio said, walking out very righteously with just a soft closing of the door behind him. Dio stopped on his porch, gathered enough stern hostility in his mouth and spat on the door he left from. Effectively, this was the first desecration of his father's grave, as Dario would breath his last drunken heaving breath that night. Dio wandered for two weeks before coming upon the city wherein the Joestar name had become famous.

"Why not settle here?" Dio asked himself when he arrived. "This place has a strong resonance of success and defilement, much like myself. I like it already." So Dio, a young lad, chose the alley behind the local Mega-plex mall as his quarters. He stole from whomever he pleased and was never caught. He made many enemies and some devious allies in the manic homeless men and women who adopted him as a 'God sent Savior of the Slums'. He was revered among the poor and unfortunate the same way young Johnathan Joestar is looked up to by the world itself.

Neither boy knew it yet, but destiny had brought them together in that concert. The mystery behind the stone mask Dio wore is yet to be explained, but the curious young Johnathan had another more vexing question on his mind.

"How" the young gentle man started, "is this boring to you?"

"It just is" Dio said. "Once you've experienced how painful the real world is, fun and enjoyment become primal things and attach themselves to things that truly aren't fun."

"Like what?" JoJo asked.

"Like death" Dio said, "and fighting. Primal urges to kill or be killed become fun because that's the only rush one can get when one's life is in constant threat and dismal disrepair. Living on the streets had taught me that there is no real pleasure left in the world...none at all."

"Hey kid" some random concert goer said, "you need to lighten up. Come on, there's plenty to like about the world. It's a great place!" Dio glared over at the eavesdropper and waited for his mouth to open again. When it did, the tall young man lurched forward and grabbed the man's tongue with his almost clawed fingers.

"It's rude to listen in on other people's conversations" Dio said. The man shivered from the cold glare Dio was giving him and tried to mutter his way into an apology, but Dio would have none of it. "Perhaps rendering you deaf would eliminate this problem, yes?" The young gentleman that Johnathan was, he couldn't stand by and let an innocent man get tortured by some gutter rat like Dio. With a swift kick, Johnathan threw Dio off his balance. Then, with the snap of his fist into Dio's wrist, he made limp Dio's fingers and left him to waver as the blood flow to his hand slowed to a crawl.

What the hell was that!? Dio thought. Johnathan stared down the charismatic young man, who glared right back at him with an even more intense, killing gaze. What transpired between the two shaped their lives far into the future!

The heir to the Joestar empire, Johnathan, is now seventeen years old and is about to rejoice his early graduation from high school! A valedictorian and the class president, everyone in the business attended the ceremony. Now, as JoJo accepted his diploma, he moved to the podium with resonating grace to deliver his speech.

"Thank you, everyone" Johnathan began. "As you know, five years ago, my father died of heart disease. Many doctors were baffled by the causes and symptoms he contracted, but I know rightly that it was of a broken heart that he really died. In his memory and the memory of my unknown mother, I took it upon myself to exile myself from the Joestar fortune and business until I could complete the same courses my father took to handle such a corporation! This graduation is only the first for me. I shall continue my life devoting myself to my father's life so that I may continue the Joestar name with pride, not as an heir, but as an accomplished scholar!"

Thunderous applause. The vow he had taken many years ago was a pact to take the hard road and learn the appreciation for the world that his father had gathered so well. JoJo would graduate from the highest institute of business learning so he could rightly move into the company he owned and run it with no guilt. Until then, the major benefactors and share-holders of Joestar International would continue to hold the reins while young JoJo lived out his life. Now away from the stage and driving home, JoJo's joy was shining brightly through his neatly carved face.

"Nice speech, JoJo!" said Speedwagon, his childhood friend. Opting to take the same honorable path as his friend did, and to increase his own popularity with those he knew, REO also chose a hermitage of learning and was already accepted into an advanced bio-chemical research college despite not fully completing his high school like JoJo did.

"Thank you, Speedwagon" JoJo said. "I'm sure your father is proud of you as well."

"Yeah he is" Speedwagon replied. "What about your, eh, guardian guy. He must be pretty happy to get rid of you, eh?"

"Well..." JoJo said, trailing off into thought. "He actually said he'd move in with me when I go to college."

"What!?" Speedwagon exclaimed. "That's ridiculous. If I were you, I'd get of that freaky Martian before he cut me up for experiments!"

"He's not like that" JoJo defended, "he's just a bit eccentric."

"Speaking of eccentric" Speedwagon nudged, pointing to some girls on a corner. It was night, and here these ladies stood in flaunty skirts and flamboyant shirts. Johnathan, the gentleman he was, had no intention of stopping for prostitutes, but his friend did so he pulled up next to them.

"Hey there, handsome" the first girl said to Speedwagon. He grinned nicely and tried to show off his face as his best feature. The other girl saw JoJo and immediately went into a rushed panic.

"Hey!" she shouted across the car. "Are you Johnathan Joestar!?"

Damn you, JoJo! Speedwagon mentally roared. Even when you don't try, you get all the girls!

"I am" JoJo replied. The girl hurried through her handbag for a plain envelope addressed in scrawled, point letters to 'JoJo the Valiant'.

"This is for you" she said. "It's from the 'Lord of the Underworld', okay?" JoJo understood her code well enough and nodded, stuffing the letter in his pocket. He then sped off, ignoring the traffic light, and went home as fast as possible.

"Hey, slow the hell down, JoJo!" Speedwagon pleaded. "It's not like we're being chased!"

"Speedwagon" JoJo said, pulling in front of a modest little house, "you know who the 'Lord of the underworld' is, right?"

"Yeah sure I do" Speedwagon said. "That doesn't mean you gotta kill me!"

"Right" JoJo admitted. "I'm sorry. Anyway, I'll give you your car back now. Thanks for letting me use it."

"No problem" Speedwagon said. They exited, exchanged keys, and JoJo left for the house, cramped between the walls of two other houses in the compressed city block. REO watched his friend go with a sullen and serious look on his face, then drove off. JoJo stood in front of his porch for a while before pulling out the letter and looking at the back. The letters spelled out the true name of the 'Lord' that sought JoJo's audience for this letter.

"Dio..." JoJo growled. He entered the house and slammed the door behind him. So the tale starts with a jump and skip, forming devious ripples on the lake of destiny. This is the alternate life of Johnathan Joestar and his nemesis Dio Brando!