The desert was, a vast majority of the time, rather quiet. Peaceful, even. The sun was sweltering, but silent as the shimmering horizon only gave way to more and more sand and rock.

This was not the majority of the time, however, seeing as a great warped rift in the fabric of reality had just appeared and shot out a speeding truck far too close to the crusaders’ evening camp.

“Oh my God!” Joseph shrieked, rolling to the side as the truck came to a screeching stop in the sand only about ten inches away from where he had been originally sitting.

Star Platinum appeared with a crackle and Jotaro squared up alongside his Stand, with Silver Chariot and Polnareff joining him only a moment later. Kakyoin, who had been tending the fire with his back turned towards the truck, shot straight up as if electrocuted and scrambled to summon Hierophant Green.

The driver of the truck, a very youthful-looking boy wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, was white as a sheet and gripping the steering wheel as if it would run away if not for his efforts.

“What the hell?” Polnareff swore, studying the truck. It wasn’t a model he’d seen before, but he recognized the Toyota logo. It was a shiny black color, probably, underneath the horrid dusting of yellow-green pollen that covered the chassis. In addition, the sides of the truck, near the bottom, were scraped to hell but largely undamaged. The entire ensemble was rather underwhelming if it weren’t for the fact that said truck had just, as mentioned previously, shot out of a rift in the fabric of reality.

With a shuddering noise, the truck’s engine stopped, and the driver’s side door opened rather apprehensively as the driver slid out of his seat and touched down onto the sand. Closing the door quickly and locking it with a quick press of the key fob, tucking the keys into his shorts pocket, the boy rushed to the front of the truck.

“Are you okay?” His voice was wavering and high as he looked over Joseph, who was flat on his ass in the sand, trying in vain to gather his bearings. “Did I hit you?”

“I’m not hurt,” Joseph grumbled, staring down the boy with a calculating intensity. “What happened?”

“I, I don’t know,” the boy stammered out, running his free hand through his chin-length blond hair. “Do you need a hand?” He held out a hand, concerned.

Joseph grunted. “I’m fine,” he snapped, standing with a slight stumble. “Not that old yet.”

“Where am I?” The boy asked, absolutely and utterly bewildered as he surveyed the never ending ocean of sand around them.

“Saudi Arabia.” Jotaro’s deep bass rumbled from the driver’s right side as he walked over, slowly, with Star Platinum at his side.

The boy’s eyes bugged out as he took in Jotaro’s impressive six-foot-five frame, flicking to take in the even more muscular Stand beside him. “Oh shit. That’s Star Platinum,” he said faintly.

“You can see it?” Jotaro’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know the name of my Stand?”

All of the crusaders were instantly alert.

The driver of the truck backed up quickly and held up his hands. “This is going to sound very suspicious, but I do, in fact, know all of you. But not for the reason you think! I swear,” his voice was desperate, “I don’t work for Dio. I know his secrets, though. But not because he recruited me. Wait, since I can see your Stands, does that mean I have one now?”

“You’re going to have to explain yourself really quickly,” Joseph warned, Hermit Purple cracking around his arms.

“How?” The boy sounded hunted. “What can I possibly say to make you trust me? I can prove I don’t have a fleshbud, but there’s no way you’ll believe the truth. It’s ridiculous by even your standards.”

Polnareff barked out a strained laugh. “We’ve seen some truly bizarre things. Just try us.”

“Okay, fine. None of this is real. You’re all in an anime.”

The crusaders were silent. Then Joseph burst out into loud, unkind laughter. “What, we’re in a TV show? Is this guy for real?” Here he turned to the rest of his companions and continued laughing, before trailing off when he realized the boy was completely serious.

“You’re serious,” Jotaro’s voice was low, but curious instead of mocking. “Maybe this is the work of an enemy Stand, Jiji,” he called over his shoulder to Joseph.

Kakyoin’s eyes flickered from side to side. “You don’t actually believe him, do you?”

“I mean it. In my universe, you’re all the main characters in a manga and anime series. I know what’s going to happen, I know your pasts, I know Dio’s Stand power, all that. But now that I’m here, I don’t know how that changes things. I might be able to save you guys,” The boy became almost desperate at the end, voice straining.

“Save us?” Kakyoin seemed even more on edge now.

The boy became solemn. “A lot of you die defeating Dio. But you do defeat him.”

“We win, but at a cost, it seems…” Joseph muttered. “If, that is, you’re speaking the truth about where you’re from.”

“Who are you? We don’t even know your name,” Polnareff pointed out.

The boy held out his hand to Jotaro. “Good point. I’m Brian,” he offered. “I’m nineteen, and I go to college in Texas.”

“You’re nineteen?!” Polnareff squawked. “Mon Dieu, you look like a middle schooler!”

“Thanks for that,” Brian muttered.

Joseph coughed. “You do look very young, and it doesn’t help that you’re rather short,” he agreed. “You don’t have to lie about your age to us, you know.”

The teenager’s eye twitched. “I am nineteen. And five foot six is not short, you’re all just freaks.”

“Oi!”

“I said what I said.” Brian folded his arms. “You want the truth? Why I look so young? I’m the world’s funniest transsexual faggot from the future.”

Kakyoin let out a honk of laughter before covering his mouth, mortified. “Sorry,” he mumbled, “I wasn’t expecting that.”

Brian grinned. “To be fair, I do like to be a little dramatic. But I am a transsexual. And I do like men, I’ll be real.”

“At your age?” Joseph seemed skeptical. He had stepped back a little. “You do know it’s okay to just call yourself a tomboy…?”

“No, I am very much a man, I figured that much out already,” Brian waved his hand as he spoke. “I live in a much more hospitable era for queer people. Although, the way things are heading in the United States, it’s not looking like that for much longer. Sad but true,” he sighed.

Polnareff nodded solemnly. “I understand, mon cher, being bisexual myself in this political climate is… difficult.”

The old man whipped his head around to face Polnareff. “You’re bisexual?!” Joseph was incredulous.

“You couldn’t tell?”

“No?!”

Jotaro heaved a surprisingly dramatic sigh and grumbled. “This isn’t important, Jiji,” he pointed out. “Why can Brian see our Stands… if he isn’t also a Stand user?”

Joseph, capricious though he was, digested the implication quickly and turned to face the newcomer with a serious demeanor. “That’s true…”

“If being isekai’d into this universe means that I have to help you fight a century-old evil sexy grandpa vampire with the help of my very own Stand power, it’s almost worth it,” Brian mused. “Almost, I say. Would like to find out what my supposed Stand does first though.”

Without warning, Star Platinum reared back and wound up for a punch, aimed directly at Brian’s forehead with a hearty ora.

“What the hell!” Brian screamed, a shimmering gold-and-silver checkered hand materializing out of thin air to swat the punch to the side with great effort. “Dude!”

Jotaro shrugged. “It got you to summon your Stand,” was all he said, pointing at the materialized hand, still visible like an overlaid hologram over Brian’s own right arm.

“Woah,” Brian uttered faintly. “How do I get to see the rest of it?”

Kakyoin piped up. “Try pulling it from you like flexing a muscle,” he offered. “It’s hard to find out exactly what will summon your Stand for the first time, but once you find the mental trigger, it becomes second nature.”

Focusing harder, the air around Brian warped and hummed with energy as it slowly solidified into a slim figure at the young man’s side. The figure was checkered in shining gold and silver tiles like a disco ball, its head almost like that of a praying mantis with bulging compound eye-like structures on the sides.

As it unfolded to its full height, about five feet ten inches, other details became clear. Its arms were studded with golden buttons like those on the neck of a saxophone, and its outer thighs were tattooed with treble clefs, with musical staves running the length of its legs ending at its golden, boot-like feet.

“This is baller,” Brian laughed, in awe. “Its head looks like my CD player.”

Polnareff oohed at the Stand. “What will you name it?”

The new Stand user appraised the shining figure. “I think I’ll call him Dancing Queen,” Brian decided.

“What, like the ABBA song?” Joseph seemed a little disappointed.

“It looks like a disco ball!” Brian justified. “Plus, it’s covered in musical… thingies. Like the treble clefs and the saxophone keys.”

Jotaro grunted. “It doesn’t look particularly strong,” he said bluntly, Star Platinum next to him poking Dancing Queen’s arm curiously.

Dancing Queen swatted at Star Platinum’s hand without any real malice, a short dissonant chord echoing from the eye-like speaker structures on the side of its head.

“Well, it’s not like I need my Stand to launch people into the damn stratosphere like yours can. I have an idea about what it can probably do, but I want to test that out in a bit.” Brian turned around to face his truck again, hand running through his hair. “What am I going to do…”

“We’re stopping for the night here anyways. We’ll also need that truck of yours to get to the Red Sea,” Joseph added.

Jotaro turned to face his grandfather. “Jiji, you’re letting this guy stay with us?”

Joseph shrugged lightly. “Call it a hunch. I don’t think Brian is an assassin. I mean, just look at him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Brian whined. “Is it because I’m a short king? You hate to see a girlboss winning,” he concluded with a sigh.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Joseph was baffled.

“Never mind.”

The old man continued. “So far, Brian hasn’t attacked us, and he claims to have valuable information that we desperately need. At the very least, we hear him out. Plus it’s one against four if he tries anything funny.”

Hands up in the air again, Brian’s eyes widened as he spoke. “I promise, I’m on your side. Use Hermit Purple to check if you want. Read my mind.”

Joseph’s brow furrowed. “Really?”

“Yeah, search my memories. I can prove I’m from the future and that you’re in an anime at the same time.”

Harrumphing, the older man shook his head. “We don’t have anything that I can use as a conduit. We simply have to trust you at your word… or not at all.”

Kakyoin cleared his throat. “Why don’t we get the fire going more, and he can tell us everything over dinner?”

“Good idea. I’m hungry,” Polnareff declared. “Hand me the frying pan!”

---

The campfire crackled softly, the desert night calm. Stars shone above unfettered by neither clouds nor manmade light pollution.

“You know, I’ve never seen the Milky Way with my own eyes before,” Brian mumbled, eyes fixed on the sky in awe.

“Really?” Polnareff asked. “Back home in the French countryside, on a clear night, I could stargaze for hours. Not as clear as it is out here in the desert, but still. I could name the constellations across the zodiac.”

Brian’s face twitched into a slight but knowing grin. “It’s funny you mention the zodiac,” he started.

Polnareff scoffed. “Don’t tell me you actually believe in astrology.” The eyeroll was implied in his words so heavily that it was a wonder they didn’t hit the ground with the weight of their disdain.

“I don’t. But there’s this comic… never mind, actually, it would take too long to explain. Just know that if someone from my time knows a lot about the zodiac, it means one of two things.” Brian held up two fingers and counted off. “Either they’re a crunchy granola wellness and mysticism white girl who likes crystals, or they’re a chronically online gay person who argues with strangers about a webcomic they didn’t even finish reading.”

The Frenchman huffed out a laugh. “You are so candid, I at least believe that you are American.”

Brian nodded sagely. “Born and raised, bestie.”

“Bestie?” Kakyoin turned the word over in his mouth. “Bestie…”

“Short for best friend,” Brian clarified.

“I see.”

Polnareff snorted. “And yet the way you speak makes you sound ridiculous, mon cher. There’s no hope for the future, it seems.”

Brian gave Polnareff a Look. “You’re literally French,” he pointed out.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Polnareff demanded.

The teenage time-traveler raised both hands in surrender. “Okay, fine, it was a joke. I have this bit I do where I pretend to hate the French for no reason. I do the same thing for the British, too.”

Joseph, who had been listening absently while scrubbing out the pans with sand behind the fire, lifted his head. “Oh, come on! Why the British?”

“I forgot you were raised in England,” Brian muttered. “Look, this isn’t some American superiority thing, because America sucks in so many ways, I just think that if Europeans can trash on Americans then I get to make fun of the fact that the British eat beans on toast like the Germans are still flying overhead. Like, come on, dude, you invaded half the world for spices and now you don’t even use them.”

At this, Polnareff let out a short bark of a laugh. “That is true. British food is a travesty.”

Joseph grumbled. “I liked beans on toast as a kid.”

“Explains a lot,” Jotaro added.

“Makes you think, makes you think,” Brian tutted, agreeing with Jotaro’s assessment.

The old man groaned. “You kids,” he sighed. “Giving me gray hairs every day at this point.”

Jotaro ignored his grandfather and turned to face Brian across the fire. “You said earlier that we’re all in an anime. How?”

Brian exhaled loudly, sitting up. “In my universe, because I’m assuming this whole deal is me getting dropped into your universe and not a wild hallucination, it’s the year 2024. There’s no magic, there’s no Hamon, there’s no such thing as Stands. The Speedwagon Foundation isn’t real. There’s no Pillar Men. All of that, all of this, is the product of one manga author’s imagination. It’s a series called Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and it follows the Joestar bloodline from Jonathan all the way to- okay, I don’t know if I can spoil it actually,” Brian stopped himself.

“I mean, you’re already here,” Joseph pointed out. “It’s not like we’re just going to forget about all this, especially if you’re here to stay.”

“Good fucking lord, I hope not,” Brian swore fervently. “Can you imagine? No, I’ll find a way back. I hope. Please, God, let there be a way back,” he held his hands up in prayer.

Jotaro cleared his throat. “Back to the issue at hand?” He redirected, annoyed.

“Right. Okay. So the series follows the Joestar bloodline all the way from Jonathan Joestar to Jotaro’s daughter, Jolyne Cujoh.” Brian coughed. “And then the universe ends, and a new one starts, and there’s a whole different Joestar bloodline. But I haven’t read that far yet.”

Kakyoin whipped his head around to face Brian. “Jotaro has a daughter?”

“Not yet, dumbass!”

Jotaro laughed.

Brian pointed at Kakyoin accusingly. “And why is that more shocking than learning that the universe will end in your guys’ lifetimes?”

The redhead shrugged. “To be honest, it’s been a long time coming, the way I see it.”

“Fair enough.” Brian nodded. “You’re gonna be really mad when I tell you that of everyone here, you’re the only one who dies fighting Dio.”

Kakyoin paled. “What?”

Brian made a grimace. “Okay, maybe not the ‘gotcha’ that I thought that would be, my bad. But hey, I’m here now, maybe I can change that!”

Jotaro leaned forward intently. “You said you knew the secret of Dio’s stand. What is it?”

The young time-traveler inhaled. “His stand is The World. It can stop time itself.”

That settled over the group like the zip-up of a body bag.

“How the hell are we supposed to fight against a man who can stop time?” Joseph burst out angrily. “I mean, even Kars didn’t have that power!”

“Jotaro can do it too,” Brian added.

The silence around the campfire was stunned, and brief.

“No, I fucking can’t,” Jotaro started.

“Well, not right now, you can’t,” Brian conceded. “But when you fight Dio, Kakyoin figures it out moments before he dies, and he manages to get the message across to you, and then you try to see if you can do it, too, because The World and Star Platinum are the same kind of Stand.” Brian took a breath. “And lucky for the entire world, you realize you can.”

Kakyoin, somehow even paler, lifted a trembling hand to his face. “I knew I was just deluding myself, coming with you all,” he mumbled. “I know, deep down, that I am fated to die. I hoped it wasn’t true. But I think I always knew I was dead the moment I met Dio in Egypt. The only difference is that I just kept breathing.”

Brian settled a hand on Kakyoin’s shoulder. “You’re not gonna die this time. I’ve fundamentally changed the timeline now. We have time to plan, and none of Dio’s informants know about me. I’m the wild card you guys need.”

“You don’t even know what your Stand does!” Joseph’s voice was incredulous. “For all we know, it could be some dinky piece of shit!”

“I suspect I know what it does. But to test it out, I’ll need some equipment and a sparring partner.” Brian glanced around, seeing if there were any takers.

Jotaro grunted. “I’ll fight you.”

“Awesome, but can we do it, like, tomorrow morning? I’m actually kind of tired.” Brian yawned discreetly.

“Sure.”