Dio exploded to his feet, all his senses razor-sharp. He had been lying on the floor of a ruined streetcar. Where was Jotaro? What ruse had the insidious stripling pulled now? He could not recall how long he had been lying there, or how he had fallen. The last thing he remembered was [staring at Jotaro, his hand sweeps forward, destroying the body of a young tough in a cowl, who is also, somehow, himself...]
No one was moving. One second. It wasn't that they were frozen with terror, they lacked even the slightest trembling or breath. Three seconds. He had not called forth The World. Could Star Platinum stop time? No. No, he would not even consider that Jotaro could hold the stillness longer than he could. Six. It was inconcievable. But what, then? Ten. Where was Jotaro?
And when would time begin to flow again?

Shaking his head clear, Dio climbed out through a hole he didn't remember putting in the streetcar, and looked around the plaza. He had never had time to admire it before, but the fountain's patterns of stilled water were extraordinarily beautiful. {This reminds me of when I first met N'dul in… Where did I meet N'dul?} The gaps Dio was finding in his memory were beginning to trouble him. Had that idiot Polnareff and The Chariot done more damage than he had realized? {I'm just finding more questions, not answers, despite having all the time in The World to contemplate.} Thinking such thoughts, Dio began to search the area for Jotaro.

Once Dio left the plaza, he passed through the beam of a headlight in front of the long display window of a clothing store. Something wrong pulled him to a stop. Then he relaxed, knowing what it must be. No shadow, no reflection. If he wanted to see his reflection during the stillness, he needed to get within half a meter, or the surface would stay frozen, and not interact with whatever passed for light here in his domain. {Being this long without any sound or motion save or motion save myself is beginning to get to me.} It was tempting to merely return to his tower. Dio almost felt it calling to him. But he couldn't afford to waste the remainder of the darkness, if the stillness ended. With Vanilla Ice defeated, there was no one left to guard him while he slept away the daylight.
Taking the next turn, he found himself stalking past Joseph's body. {Is this unending stillness the work of Jostar blood in my veins?} The potential uses that he had dreamed for a stillness of hours flashed through his mind. {Is this my power now?} Pulse racing, Dio's voice rang out through the silence for "The World!"
What appeared before him was a ragged, pale blue shadow of what his stand had been. As the apparition dissipated, Dio could not restrain a howl as his own flesh sought to flow and evaporate as The World did. Minutes later, when Dio levered himself up off the pavement, he looked down at lithe arms, a well built but narrow chest, and garish clothes that hung loosely from a frame that was no longer bulky enough to stretch the fabric.
{Did I just judge my outfit garish?} He been wearing clothes like this for… When had he designed this look? Had it truly been him who designed it?
{Agh. If I'm thinking about clothes, this street search is too slow. By jumping over the rooftops, I can just look for the disturbance Jotaro will have made.} Soon, Dio found his prey. Jotaro was on the bridge. Horribly, the last Jostar was still as well. But worst {intolerable} Dio Brando floated above Jotaro, holding a tanker truck. Motionless. The being that had called itself Dio staggered back, toppling over the edge of the bridge. While it fell, it stared senseless down at the mirror-still water. As its feet crashed through the surface, it stared into the cloud of black where it had so recently thought to see the face of Dio.

Under the river, it screamed.

He could not drown. This fact was his first awareness, and it served well to lead him back to conscious thought. He could not drown. True, his lungs being filled with water was not entirely pleasant, but it did serve well to balance the pressure on his body. And the body did belong to him, and he was male. These facts were perfectly acceptable to him now, as he surveyed the destruction he had wreaked at the bottom of the river. {Just the hydrostatic shock of my motion is enough to make me pity anything that made its home here.} Then he saw 'It'. 'It' was a monstrosity, barely distinguishable from the currents of water around it. The closest thing he could think of was water, with a trace of blood, in a clear plastic bag, submerged. However, what he could make out of the 'bag' resembled a horrid cross between a crustacean and a cephalopod. {Perhaps pity is not in order.}
Leaving the river was very much called for. So was a name. He was aware of the danger implied by his calm, analytical state of mind. {The first step to pulling myself together has to be having an idea of 'me' to pull together around.} So what was he? He was Dio. He was not Dio Brando. So… he was Dio's Shadow. {Then until I learn other, I am Shadow Dio.}
It didn't help much.
He walked ashore anyway.

 Lacking any idea of how to rejoin the flow of time, Shadow Dio wandered through Cairo, meandering in the direction of his tower. He passed an alley where he had once fed on a stand user who failed him. He passed he building where he had enslaved one of his first servants in this city. The shop where he bought a pistol when he was just 14. His mother's tenement. {What?} The cul-de-sac, psychically reeking of blood and rape, that had given him access here from makai. {Makai? What memories are these? Or whose?}
The cul-de-sac was the best place to start. It was a beginning, an arrival. Moving to the place of his recollection, Dio closed his eyes, and let impressions flow to him. [Materializing in this realm of light that was suddenly so attractive, the young incubus looked around at the quiet street, and set off to find someone to play with. That way seemed best.]
Dazed by the completeness of the recall, Dio staggered into motion, following the path of the demon he remembered being. [Perhaps he could find some amusement here. There was a pack of males confronting him in this avenue, and the alpha was insulting his garb and the delicate crafting of his features. Should he fight, or perhaps… No. This one had gone far to long without bathing to even consider that.]
A bit farther down the street, the memories resumed. [What did those idiots think they were doing, running of like that? That prissy foreigner hadn't hurt him at all, even if he couldn't remember quite what happened. Cowards, the lot of them. He couldn't resist the urge to overturn a couple of vendor's carts as he went looking for his men.]

The trace had trailed off, although Dio could sense that it continued, not far away. He needed time, anyway. {And I do have it. Where am I now?} The streets here were still cramped, but higher-class than those fronting on the river. An art gallery caught his eye, a few doors down. {Why not?} There was a problem, however. Someone stood in the door. Instantly enraged, Shadow Dio stalked over to smash aside the impudent gnat, until her beauty sunk into his awareness. Wishing he could show a grin as devilish as he felt, Dio stroked her face, gave her a caress that would certainly leave her flustered, and set her on a cement ledge, with no one else in arms reach. Despite the masterworks inside, the gallery proved less interesting than his entrance had been.

He found the trail again a few alleys over. [She screams in panic as the sweaty palm closes over her face. Her aged knees buckle, and her bowels loosen at the touch of the blade to her throat. Then it was gone, and she fled without looking back. She was unhurt, even her skirts were clean! {It must have been the Virgin, touching the heart of the poor, unsaved ruffian!} Abandoning her plans for a day at the market, she scurried off to tell Father Miller at once.]
Emerging from the false-memory trance, Dio was staring up into one of the grandest cathedrals in Cairo. It was a good thing there was none to see the black cloud obscuring Dio's face had become a storm. It roiled, always on the verge of revealing glimpses of a face which itself was shifting. And even the not-seen impressions would give a mortal nightmares, for even a flash of the hidden visage would surely set the viewer's mind on the path of laws and truths which few indeed are learned or mad enough to accept.
Within the storm, Dio felt adrift on a sea of black rage, and that sea wanted to smash through him to consume the building in which he stood. It was nothing to do with the degraded and debased forms that were followed in this place. It was irrelevant that fear, guilt and greed filled the place of piety. Even the fact that the Bishop had sold several stand-using parishioners to Dio's hunger made no impact. All that filled his thoughts was the fact the HE had come here to give thanks! Almost without conscious intent, his hand smashed a tithe-box, sending bills and envelopes into the air - and sending a spray of coins at near bullet velocities, to freeze halfway enroute to the still-occupied confessionals. Although no one could see it, Shadow Dio smiled.

Amidst the wreckage of the cathedral, only two men were left standing. Feeling drunk on the power of the dregs of the black rage, Dio eyed the priest in the nave. Father Miller, the man's notes named him. He was evidently practicing for a sermon on 'Christ-like suffering.' It had always seemed to Dio that a person should have great experience with a subject before lecturing on it. And here was the perfect opportunity! Now, if only he had a knife. Like the ones he threw at Jotaro earlier. [The gleam on the blade, revealing the quality. The solid joining of the blade to the wooden handle. The feel of the balance…] …in his hand? Shadow Dio looked down at the blade that was, somehow, woven of himself. {Yes, this will do nicely.}

 After tracing several more days worth of mundane errands, Dio walked the path of the old woman whose face had once filled the void in him, as she took to alleys once more. Her luck was no better now that she was the supernatural creature. [The young tough's ankles are all of him in view, as the punk dropped the bat that had hit the back of his skull. He wasn't concussed so far as he could tell, but what had happened? He was about to lay into the bag of bones, and now he's on the pavement. {And those shoes look familiar.} Need to get up. {That… That can't be me!?} He flees.] Dio shook his head, tossing his mane of blonde locks. He knew the rest of the tale, without needing any more memory-fragments. The panicked now-young spirit had fled right into the path of Jotaro and Dio Brando.
Indeed, the alley opened onto the plaza where he had awakened. Finding an empty chair on a café patio, Dio sank down, both physically and mentally. {Am I just some wandering spirit, some survival of darker times?} And he still had no answers for the continuing stillness. {Wait. There was something more. In the first one's mind. A place. Makai?} Placing his head in his hands, he let his mind fade to formless gibberings.
Instants later, Dio snapped upright, his gaze sweeping the street. Nothing was moving. His footsteps still echoed weirdly. Then his mind noticed what, by its very prosiac nature, was so bizarre it had brought his body to alert. Somewhere, a phone was ringing.