Jorge Joestar

Chapter 15: Beyond

Lying half-dead on a back country road in Japan, the exactthing I needed to happen happened. When I woke up, the flesh from my back andass was back in place, and the fracture in my skull was healed up. I wassleeping in a large bed surrounded by white walls and almost no otherfurniture, and a freckled young man sitting next to the bed said, in Italian,

“Oh! You’re awake, Jorge Joestar.”

?

“How do you know my name?”

I asked, also in Italian, a fact that took me by surprise.How come I spoke Italian now?

“Ha ha ha! The Japanese man who lives here has quite auseful ability. He made it so everyone coming in and out of here can speakEnglish and Italian and Japanese. Including you!”

“…………? The hell does that mean…? Where isthis? Japan?”

“Japan. Morioh! My name is Vinegar Doppio. But I wasn’tthe one who saved you, that was my boss. Hang on,”

he said, and reached out for a book lying on the side table.There was a bizarre picture of a boy on the cover, and the book’s title wasPink Dark Boy: Part 8. Volume 112. It was just a bit too large to comfortablyhold in the palm of his hand, so Doppio curled it a bit, and held it to hisear. Then he pursed up his lips and began humming a weird little song,

“Tomememememem ♪ tomemememememem ♪”

and proceeded to ignore me entirely, staring at nothing inparticular and yet speaking to someone who wasn’t even there.

“Oh, hello! This is Doppio. Joestar’s awake! …yes, got it.”

Then he looked at me.

“Yo.”

“………..?”

“Think you can get up?”

I wasn’t sure, but I pushed the duvet back and lowered mylegs to the floor. I was still dressed for my wedding, oh god, but I didn’tthink mentioning that would be much use, and all I could manage was a groan aspain shot through me. My ass and back felt like they were going to rip apart,and my head felt like there was a wooden stake jammed through it.

“Seems to be in a lot of pain.”

He was calmly reporting the facts to some unseen individual,and it hurt enough I really wanted

to punch the little guy for it.

“If you keep moving you’ll get used to it. Come on.”

“No, I can’t!”

It hurt so much every part of my face was trying to go adifferent direction.

“Hey.”

“Hunh?”

“Who do you think you’re fucking with?”

he snarled, but my eyelids were twitching violently and Icouldn’t even get a good look at his face.

“What…?”

“I’m a fucking gangster, buddy. Pick your words andyour answers carefully, got it?”

Doppio pulled his shirt up and showed me the gun jammed inthe trousers, and I instantly felt far better. I mean, there was no reason tohold back now!

“Don’t think I won’t use this just cause you’re injured!”

he said, and tried to lower his shirt, but I grabbed hiswrist, snatched the gun with my other hand and smashed the grip up under hischin. Call yourself a gangster? You’re like what, fifteen? Sixteen? I’d beenshot down by the Germans twice, crashed landed and survived in a god damnhornet’s nest so get fucking real. Doppio curled up, clutching his jaw, and Iput the barrel of the gun to the back of his head.

“Tell me what’s going on here, wise guy.”

Doppio looked up and glared at me. Didn’t seem like he wastrying to hide any fear at all. He might be young, but he had some stones.

“Ahhh? Wait a minute, asshole…”

he said, and raised Pink Dark Boy back to his ear. I foundit hard to believe, but it seemed to be a phone. A book-shaped phone. Back inEngland, phones were the size of cuckoo clocks, and based on their planes andships Japan’s technology wasn’t much more advanced, so if this was Japan itwasn’t 1920. So my problem wasn’t just where I was…it was when. Suddenly thestake in my head went plu pon pin para para pon ♪ shrill and high and vvvvvvvvvvv vibrated shaking my very brain.

“Auuuughh!”

What the hell!? The stake thing had just been a

metaphor a moment ago but now I was sure there really was astake in my head playing music and vibrating!

“I said, don’t fuck with me! You thought I was just the guyon the end of the fucking phone, did ya? You going behind my back calling meDoppio the small talk loving phone phreak?”

Based on the crap the kid was saying he was the one sloshingmy brains. He’d done something to me. With a phone. I had to make him stop. Butthe vibrations in my head seriously had me about to pass out and I couldn’t getmy body to obey any commands from my brain so I couldn’t raise my arm, pointthe gun at Doppio, or pull the trigger. All I could do was feel my eyes roll backin my head, drool, and say

“Ackackackackackack!”

I was dying. I had a phone inside me somehow and it wasringing and vibrating. He was trying to kill me. I didn’t care how. I had to dowhat I could do. Point the barrel up. I couldn’t aim it so I brought the barrelto my own head, used my head and the floor to keep it as steady as I could, andput my last strength into pulling that trigger. I didn’t need to get a cleanshot through. Mechanical things would stop working if even a bit of them broke!Bang! The bullet gouged out a gouge in my skin and skull seven centimeters longand seven millimeters deep, and clipped about two millimeters off the part ofmy skull that had been turned into a phone. That was enough. The vibration andringing stopped. I never had feeling in my brain in the first place, but it wasstill a bit numb.

“Motherfucker…!”

Doppio yelped. I didn’t miss the flash of fear this time. Myhands weren’t shaking any more. I turned the gun towards Doppio’s face anddidn’t hesitate. Bam bam bam bam! But even though I was firing from less than ameter away, not one of the bullets hit; all wound up in the wall behind him.There was a man in a hat standing next to me, a gun in his hand.

“Knock it off,”

he said.

“He maybe a bit fucked in the head, but he’s a mafia mademan, and if something happens to him we’d have to pay it back. That’s how thesystem works.”

He’d done something to make shots I’d never have missed

with miss. Who the hell were these people? Making phonesinside my head…how the hell was any of this possible?

“Hey! Shoot him, Mista!”

Doppio yelled, and Mista turned his gun on Doppio.

“Shut the fuck up! I wanna shoot you myself! Get your shittogether, you’re the fucking worst when you’re like this!”

“The fuck!? You saying I’m a phone-o-holic ring ringhello hello it’s me, Doppio  !?”

♡

“What!? I don’t even know what the fuck you’re talkingabout! Fucking halfwit!”

Bang bang bang bang bang bang! Mista fired six shots rightat Doppio. Uh, so you can shoot him? I thought, but then I saw… Well, I sawsomething. And heard them, too. Tiny little people in crazy peacock clothesriding on the backs of the bullets yelling,

“Noooooo! Kya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha  ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ !”

in deep, hoarse ♡ voices. As I stared indisbelief, they each kicked their bullet aside just before it hit Doppio,deflecting them just enough that three shots went on either side of his face,brushing his cheeks and thud thud thud thud thud thud into the wall behind him.The bullet trails left marks on Doppio’s cheeks like cat whiskers. Doppio musthave seen what I saw because he froze in place, not moving a muscle, as Mistacackled wildly.

“Da ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Look at the itty bitty kittycat! You’re so adorbs, Doppio! Wah ha ha ha ha ha!”

The six tiny people hovering around Doppio’s face laughedtoo.

“OMG, Doppio, that looks soooo good on you!”

“I love it, you’ve gotta keep the scars!”

“Yeah, Mista, gunpowder! Imprint this shit now and it’llbe the rendezvous of chic and avant garde!”

“Oh! Cat ears!”

“Ugh, no way, Back Left, that’s pushing it.”

“You are just getting too carried away being in Japan.”

“You’re the last person we need weebing out, Back Left.”

“Woah  FrontCenter! You sure ♡♡♡ know how to bring it!

“

They were quite the rowdy bunch, ♡♡♡♡♡♡but what were they!? Were they alive!? But just as I hit peak confusion, ablonde boy strode into the room, followed by several others. He looked no olderthan Doppio,

with delicate yet not at all feminine features. Out of allthe men I’d met, he was the only one to equal Tsukumojuku in beauty. It waslike there was some blinding light pouring out of every cell in his body thatmade it hard to look directly at him.

“Jorge Joestar, I apologize for my men’s manners,”

he said. He was holding a cake of soap in his hand, and cameover to inspect my wound. I was 189 centimeters tall, and he only came up to mychest, but he held the soap and his free hand up to the gunshot wound, and whenhe pulled his hands back the soap was gone, and he was holding a baseball capinstead. The boy looked the hat over, then turned to the bullet-filled wall.

“Doppio, you turned this into a phone before you handed itto me?”

Shaking like a leaf, Doppio fell to his knees.

“I’m sorry, Giorno! I just couldn’t help myself!”

“…once it’s become a phone, that quality remains…”

he said, staring down at the hat. It just looked like a hatto me.

“Hello, Jorge Joestar,”

he said, looking up at me.

“My name is Giorno Giovanna.”

There was a power to him, but it wasn’t intimidating. Thatspecific gnarled edge common to those in the life was nowhere to be found. Hereminded me of a world-class swimmer standing on land. Like he’d focused on onesimple thing and made himself better at it than anyone else. But there was moreto him. This boy had turned thugs like Doppio and Mista into his men. And hehad some kind of mysterious ability, too. He’d healed the wound in my headagain.

“What sort of power is this?”

I asked.

“I couldn’t begin to explain,”

he said, meeting my gaze.

“But we call them Stands. And those with them, StandMasters.”

The Hamon masters call these Spirit Hamon, or Stands. Astrange name, but people with this power can see the power

standing next to them, like a ghost.

That was fifteen years ago. The night of the mothman, whenwe’d decided to leave La Palma. As we sat before my father’s head, Lisa Lisahad told us about them. Stands.

“This manga artist, Kishibe Rohan, has a Stand that allowsyou to see Stands,”

Giovanna explained.

“Just as he made it so we can all speak Italian. Puts us allon the same page.”

One of the men who’d come in with Giovanna was a thin manwith a sullen face. When my eyes met his he sniffed loudly.

“I just want you all to leave as soon as possible. That’sthe only reason I’m helping. You’ve got blood all over my bed! I’m high-strung,you know! And the clock in my study’s gone missing! There’s a thief among us!”

The Italians all grinned, and the lone Japanese man lookedeven less happy. I was starting to get an idea what was going on here. Some badguys were teasing the civilians.

“So? Now we’re on the same page, what? Why’d you want totalk to me?”

“I understand you spent time in the company of adetective,”

Giovanna said.

“I hear your time together left you with a new type of powercalled…a Beyond?”

“…….!?”

How did he know that?

“Oh, that was me, too,”

the Japanese man said, waving.

“In times like these, I’m glad a man like you came along.Seems like you handled that mess with the air force commander well. I feel likeyou’re the best man to solve this mystery.”

“Mystery…?”

“Nobody said? The man who died here is your old friend,Kato Tsukumojuku. I suppose you wouldn’t know, but the detective in charge ofthis case was your double, another Jorge Joestar. A detective from FukuiPrefecture. He seems to have switched places

with you and wound up in England, in 1920.”

Murder. I’m the victim. It’s all yours, buddy.

Tsukumojuku had mentioned this just a while ago. But I hadno clue what anyone was talking about. Tsukumojuku was dead? He’d only justbrought me here! And what did he mean, my double? Detective Jorge Joestar?Who’d switched places with me? While my head was still spinning Kishibe Rohanproceeded to explain the gist of The Case of the Three Murdered Detectives(including Tsukumojuku) and how their bodies had been arranged. He explainedhow this other

“Jorge Joestar”

had come here from Fukui, and about all the insane thingsthat had started happening in Morioh and to the world after he’d arrived here.This only served to deepen my confusion. What had once been an ordinary smalltown had suddenly split off from Japan, and was now an island floating in themiddle of the ocean, and based on another floating island, Nero Nero Island,Morioh most likely had legs and was swimming with them. Apparently. Ah ha ha haha ha. What the fuck.

“Jorge Joestar”

had gone to Mars with one of the gangsters, returned withsome American astronauts only to crash land in a ball of fire on Morioh, buthis ship had vanished when it hit the house I was in, the Arrow Cross House,and he’d wound up in the England I’d come from. And on top of that, my dear oldEngland had been overrun with zombies, and they were headed to London, certainit had been turned into

“Desolation Row”…a fact that made me want to get thehell back but apparently Giorno Giovanna intended to take control of thePassione Family now that their boss was dead, and wanted me to solve the murderof their boss, Diavolo, and until then had no intention of letting anyoneinvolved leave the Arrow Cross House.

“What’s critical is that we clarify exactly who it waskilled Diavolo when nobody knew who he was,”

Giovanna said.

“Diavolo was found with the body of a serial killer namedKira Yoshikage, so we’d also like to clarify their relationship. And we need tofigure out if the murder of Kato Tsukumojuku, which also took place here in theArrow Cross House, had anything to do with Diavolo’s case. In other words, whatI’m trying to do here is to understand the big picture view of these events,Joestar.”

I ignored Giovanna, and began by picking up the copy of PinkDark Boy from the floor. But I didn’t know how to use it. I had to ask Doppio.

“Call England with this.”

He took it and glanced at Giovanna, who said,

“Do it,”

so he did.

“…mm? Hunh?”

“Oh, come on, pull the other one,”

I said, annoyed.

“No, seriously. Weird, my phones could call outer space andEngland but…”

“…………”

“Nah, Joestar,”

Mista said, glaring at Doppio.

“I’ve never known him to lie about phones. He’d a bit weirdthat way.”

“Why, though? It was working a few minutes ago,”

Doppio said, tapping the phone and flipping it over, tryingto get it working again. He did seem legitimately confused by it, so maybeMista was right. A little square machine in Mista’s pocket rang and when heanswered Doppio swore.

“See!? It does work! Problem isn’t on this end, but overthere. Dunno if theirs broke or something else went wrong but…I doubt theirsbroke, Narancia’s phone is just a pebble. Not that easily broken. If theydropped it or lost it, it would still ring just fine. Either they somehow brokea rock or they’ve wound up in some weird ass place where even my phones are outof range.”

Since he said it should call anywhere I got him to tell mehow to work it and called the Joestar mansion, but couldn’t get

through. What was happening in England? Doppio took thelightbulb out of the lamp by the bed, turned it into a phone, and tried a fewmore things.

“Well, we can connect to our Rome offices. And San Diego.Tijuana’s still working. Guess it ain’t the drugs, eh heh heh. Yeah, Joestar,only place that’s fucked up is England. Although Morioh itself is pretty fuckedup, too. Like the whole town’s in a weird fucking mood.”

“Um,”

said a mild-mannered looking gangster, raising his hand.Nearby, another man – one with a bob – answered like a school teacher,

“Yes? Fugo?”

Fugo pointed at the window.

“That sky looked like the night sky, but I don’t believe itis. We can’t see the moon and stars, but there’s no sign of any clouds coveringthem, either. Instead, there’s something else…floating, or rather, swimming.”

The window of Kishibe Rohan’s bedroom was at the top of ahill overlooking the harbor and bay. There were boats in the water, makingquite a fuss. The boats had their lights aimed at the sky, illuminating a giantcreature swimming overhead. It was a whale, and a big one; over two thousandmeters long, swimming upsidedown, its back to us. A great white sperm whale.Although at the moment, it is floating upside-down in the Pacific.

“Well, there’s Moby Dick,”

Fugo said. The others let out yelps of surprise. The giantwhite whale floating upside-down like a spaceship was not the only one, either.All kinds of giant fish were swimming upside-down, or flitting about inschools. Some schools were swimming around the sides of Morioh, and if youpeered carefully you could see black shadows gliding over the top of the hill.

“So…I guess this means Morioh is floating upside-down inthe water, then?”

Mista said.

“And is Morioh shrinking? Like…this sounds dumb, but fromthe water pressure?”

He got a lot of shocked looks for that one, and a fewderisive laughs, but no one argued his point. The giant white sperm whalepassed over the fishermen, lit

by their searchlights. It turned slightly, getting a goodlook at the upside-down town, then either lost interest or ran out of breath,because it turned and dropped away beyond Morioh’s horizon; the surface wasbeneath us.

“Yikes, the fuck is that?”

said a pair of sturdily-built twins in school uniforms. Ifollowed their gaze, and saw a giant octopus stuck to the side of the barriersurrounding Morioh, climbing up (down) the side, its suckers covering half thesky to the south.

“Joestar, is this any time to be sky-gazing?”

Giovanna said. But I’d already started thinking. Not aboutthe murders, but about how to get back to England, how to see Lisa Lisa again,how to make sure she got that wedding. The zombies must have taken over after Igot sent here, so I’d already missed my wedding day. But…Lisa Lisa would befine. I knew she wouldn’t die. She wasn’t weak enough to get killed by anyzombies. That alone I was certain of, no room for doubt in my mind. Thank you,Lisa Lisa, I thought. I may be in this crazy place in a huge old mess, but atleast I can put my faith in your strength. I had to get back to her. But how? Ihad to use Beyond. In what way? What had I done before? I’d thought it through.But what had I thought, specifically? I’d been told, Believe in Beyond, and youwill overcome your fate. So I’d tried to believe. Believing in Beyondmeant…there was an author writing a story with me as the main character. Andin a story, you couldn’t have things that didn’t make sense or just showed upout of the blue. So I had to create the flow. What did ‘narrative flow’ meanhere? If I first had to pay heed to the situation I was in, then I’d have to doas the mafia said, and solve the murder of their boss. Shit. I’m notTsukumojuku! But before I yelled that, I had another thought. Maybe meetingTsukumojuku and spending all that time with him on our adventures meant I coulduse that as a foundation to solve this mystery here? Yeah, that’s exactly whatI had to do.

Fuck it.

“Giovanna, tell me everything,”

I said. Giovanna smiled like a flower blooming.

First, I’d do as I was asked. Diavolo and Kira Yoshikage’sbodies were lined up on the floor of the study.

“We were forced to grab them and haul ass out of the housetemporarily when the damn spaceship crashed, but when the ship vanished and thehouse rebuilt itself we brought them back in. The police are a shit show rightnow, and with a case like this, you’ve really gotta be a fucking Stand Masterto stand a chance of solving it,”

said a Stand belonging to one of the sturdily-built Japanesetwins, Nijimura Fukashigi. It was called NYPD Blue. Some Stands had minds oftheir own, I was told. Not just him; Kishibe Rohan’s girlfriend, Reimi, lookedtotally human, and was giggling and whispering in Kishibe’s ear as he mutteredsullenly about how unfair all of this was. Was this any time to flirt!? Anyway.Diavolo and Kira had had their throats slit from ear to ear. Loads of blood.When they told me Tsukumojuku’s throat had been slit, too, I got prettyagitated, but I forced myself to concentrate. I had to look at these one at atime. Kishibe used his Stand, Heaven’s Door, to turn the two bodies into books.The side of their faces split open, and their skin peeled back like pages,leaving a big hole where the eye had been. But every page was filled with theword ‘death’ in different languages. Apparently while people were still alivehe could read all sorts of information about them, their past, theirpersonality, even things they themselves had failed to notice or had long sinceforgotten. But at the moment of their death, all of this was overwritten withthe word ‘death’. I also took a look at the records made by Leone Abbacchio’sStand, Videodrome. Both Diavolo and Kira appeared in the study for an instant,let out a cry, had their throats slit, and died. Kishibe had him pauseVideodrome a moment before their deaths, and turned these recordings intobooks, but both volumes were almost

entirely blank, with only the most basic of personalinformation recorded within. Just their names and Stands. Everything abouttheir feelings or memories was totally gone.

“They knew they were about to die, and to a certain extentthey’d accepted it. See?”

Kishibe said, turning to a page that had already begun to beburied in the word ‘death’.

“Death begins while we are still alive.”

And these two were murdered, and their bodies abandoned,right where Kishibe and the police were moving in and out of here. How couldthat be? Were Japanese people way more self-absorbed than I’d ever imagined? Icouldn’t tell what passed for morality here in the future. Didn’t matter. Ijust had to get all the facts lined up. Kishibe made it so they were no longerbooks.

“Any images of the killer?”

I asked. Abbacchio shook his head.

“These are records of the victims lives only.”

“Were they brought here and killed at the same time, oris there a time lag between the two murders?”

“We can’t tell from the recordings,”

Abbacchio said.

“All we can tell is what happened to each one individually.But we can say that the estimated time of death for both of them is twelvehours ago, at eight AM this morning.”

What happened to them…?

“But there’s no records of what they were doing before theyappeared here?”

“Yes. Which is very strange. The only way I can explainit is to say that these two men did not exist until they were killed, or thatthey were brought here to be killed from some day other than July 24th.”

“You can’t check records from yesterday or any otherday?”

“Videodrome can only check the day of. From midnightuntil midnight.”

“And that only gives us one second? Or, I suppose, ifwe look at it from another angle, they could have died a second after midnight.And the estimated time of death is what’s wrong.”

“……….”

He had no answer to that. I had Abbacchio replay therecordings, and did my best to soak in every detail. Just like Tsukumojuku usedto do. If the facts were as stated, they’d been dead most of the day. Comparingthe 3D images Videodrome made with the actual bodies, and considering thishouse appeared to have some sort of temperature control that kept it cool, eventhough it was summer, the condition of the bodies seemed to support that. Ispent a bit of time looking from one to the other like I was trying to find thesix differences, but nothing stood out.

“Hmm, guess these god damn gangsters ain’t trying to pullone over on us with their Stands,”

said NYPD Blue. He’d come up beside me at some point.

“Eh? Yo, nitwit, the fuck you joining in for? Get back here!”

Njimura Fukashigi yelled, but NYPD Blue was having none ofit.

“Shut the fuck up! This is a murder investigation! No damnway I’m leaving it up to some amateur!”

He turned to me.

“Sorry, buddy. Please, go on.”

Go on with what? I didn’t have anything! But I went aheadand said,

“Right!”

and turned back to the bodies, and I guess because I’d beendistracted, I noticed something. Kira’s face was covered in sweat, and it wasdripping off his face onto his shirt, but it dried the instant it hit. The waysnow vanishes as soon as it hits the ground. ? What did this mean? Sweat fellfrom his cheeks to his chest, but never landed. Could sweat really evaporatethat quick? I started to reach out, then asked,

“Does touching these let us feel the bodies?”

Abbacchio nodded.

“But it is a recording, so even if your hands or clothes appearto get blood on them, it’s only temporary.”

“Oh, yeah?”

I said, and, not making a big deal about it, I just reachedout and touched Kira’s shirt. There was no undershirt or anything between withthe shirt and his skin, but it was dry as a bone. As sweaty as his face was,the rest of his body should be soaked, but the shirt wasn’t even damp. I wasn’tup on advances in the textile industry since my day, but sweat generally took abit of

time to dry. It didn’t just evaporate like it was dropped ona hot frying pan. If he’d been volcanic rock hot, I could see it, but fromtouching him I could tell he was a little warm, but well within the range ofnormal. This had to be a clue, I thought.

“What? There something wrong with Kira Yoshikage’s chest?”

Abbacchio asked. He was standing next to me, watching myface intently.

“…you found something? Don’t even think about keeping itsecret. Tell the truth now. I used to be a cop. I can tell if you’re lying.”

I wasn’t a good liar in the first place. But before I answered,the Stand behind me said,

“Woah there, punk. You used to be a police? Then you knowthe drill. Before you resort to brow beating, have a think for your damn self.”

And with that, NYPD Blue reached out and started pawingKira’s clothes himself.

“Hmm. I think you just might be on to something.”

“Tch,”

Abbaccho said, and stepped up next to NYPD Blue, putting hishands on the dead man’s chest. Kira was looping rapidly, letting out shoutafter shout as his throat split opened and snapped closed again and again. Imoved on to Diavolo, who was stuck in a very similar loop, and began watchinghim closely. Since I knew what I was looking for, I found it quick. A drop ofsweat from his cheek that fell on his shoulder and was gone. Same thing. Ireached out and touched the thin shirt that clung to Diavolo’s body, but it wasdry, too. He, too, was sweating all over, but…just to be sure, I peeled backhis shirt, and put my hand inside. Yep. Diavolo’s belly was drenched. But noneof it got to his shirt. How could that be?

“All three of you are acting like total freaks,”

Mista said, and he and Fugo cackled wildly, but I ignoredit. There was something here. How could something like this happen? This wasn’tsome insta-drying shirt. If it was, Abbacchio and NYPD Blue would have pointedit out. Precisely because this was impossible, the two of them were lookingbaffled, and investigating further, ignoring the hecklers. So if it wasn’t afast drying shirt, then…fast drying sweat? That seemed equally unlikely. Nomatter when I was, sweat was

sweat. Physics remained physics. Drying takes time.Hmm…but to what extent did physics apply here? Look at what lay just in frontof me. A tangible recording of a human’s death. A humanoid superpowerinvestigating a crime of its own free will. Everyone here was beyond myexperience. They could turn books into phones, replace skulls with soap, andmake six little drag queens ride bullets. The entire situation was fucked up. Atown upside-down in the ocean, surrounded by an invisible wall. The fishswimming past us weren’t gigantic; we’d been shrunk somehow. Could we judgeanything based on conventional physics? We couldn’t. It seemed there were stillrules in effect, but physics were only relevant to a limited extent. This wasthe work of a Stand; this sweat, this instant death, and the way he draggedthem into this room and killed them without them even trying to resist. Ifphysics didn’t apply, then perhaps things that should take time not taking timewas…wait…time? Kira Yoshikage’s Stand, Killer Queen, could turn time backan hour with Bites the Dust. Diavolo’s King Crimson could predict the future,and erase that time. Both Stand powers involved time. And both owners of thoseStands lay here dead, together. Speaking of time, Tsukumojuku had fallenthrough time from England in 1904 to Japan in 2012, and then time traveled twomore times before dying. And there was one more.

“Mister Kishibe,”

I said. The thin artist turned towards me.

“Didn’t you say something about a clock?”

“I did!”

he exclaimed, thrilled someone had actually heard him. Hestrode forward.

“There was a clock right here, in my study, on this verydesk! And it’s gone missing! It was the only way I had of telling time in thiswindowless room! It was hardly a valuable piece, so I’ll gladly buy whoevertook it one of their own, but I’d

like mine back, thank you!”

“What for?”

Mista said.

“Just buy a new one for yourself! Sensei ! ♡”

“I have affection for my own things!”

Kishibe snapped with such vigor that Mista actually backedoff.

“Uh, no need to shout,”

he said. Kishibe had a knack for making everything he saidsound oddly convincing.

“I mean, sure, I get you. I care about my stuff, too,”

Mista said.

“So give it back! I won’t let anyone leave until it’sreturned!”

I thought the gangsters were keeping Kishibe here, butapparently he’d just turned those tables on them. I could hear people laughingquietly, impressed with his bravado, but I put my mind to thinking. A missingclock? There must be a reason for that. If Kishibe was telling the truth, andit was a cheap clock, there was no benefit to stealing it. Unless whoever stoleit had a reason to think having a clock here would be bad news for them. Again,

“time”. That was the key word behind all of this. Theonly problem was how? Time for sweat to dry. Why did it dry in an instant?Ignore physics, and find the answer! Push through it! Sweat wouldn’t dryinstantly. It took time to dry. It only appeared to take no time. That amountof time was sped up to look like only a moment. It looked instantaneous, but itwas no such thing. And by the same principle, the second it took to kill thesetwo was not actually a second. A much longer period of time just looked like asecond. Time had been sped up. And he’d hidden the clock so we wouldn’t noticedthis had happened.

That was it, I thought. I was confident I had the answer.But thought they were clearly sped up, neither of them were

moving like they were in a movie being cranked too fast.Humans bodies are never completely still, so when sped up their movements arealways jerky, clearly unnatural to our eyes. But there was nothing unnaturalabout the way they were moving, or even the speed of the blood as it camegushing out of them. Only the sweat was strange. It formed on the cheeksslowly, like normal, then pooled and swelled and dangled and fell and driedunnaturally fast. Not just that. If this was all happening normally, I’d beable to put my hand beneath his chin, and catch the drop of sweat as it fell.But the speed of their sweat was so unnatural I couldn’t figure out the timingof that. What did that mean? The people were moving normally, but their sweatwas sped up…the instant it left their cheeks, it fell and dried really fast.Hmm. The instant it left their cheeks? So human skin was theborderline…border surface. And the flow of time was different within andwithout? Was it possible for time to flow differently inside your body thanoutside? It must be. Otherwise this situation wasn’t possible. Proof lay in theStands these two had. Killer Queen could make someone explode so hard they hadto relive the last hour over again, but only the person who exploded rememberedwhat had happened. Which meant time flowed differently for the bomb guy alone.King Crimson worked the same. Diavolo could predict the future and delete thatamount of time, so if events happened in the following flow: A→ B→C, and hedeleted B, then for everyone but Diavolo events would flow as A→ C, but forDiavolo things would be A→ His prediction of B→ deleting B→ C, extended by theact of using his Stand, but changing the flow of time for everyone else. Inother words, time could flow differently inside a person and out. Most of thetime, those times synced up, but if this type of Stand was used, they’d stoplining up. Diavolo created a smaller disconnect, but with Killer Queen, whoeverhe’d turned into a bomb would repeat that time more often the more they gotscared and tried to get help. The gap between their time and real time would

get bigger and bigger. And wasn’t our internal sense of timealways a little off? Even without the involvement of Stands? I couldn’t beginto believe that the time I’d spent being bullied on the Canary Islands, thetime I’d spent fighting in the war, and the time I’d spent gazing at LisaLisa’s hair streaming in the wind and gleaming in the sunlight could all havebeen flowing at the same speed. And the time I’d spent facing Antonio Torresinside William Cardinal in the Motorize Manor definitely didn’t flow at thesame speed as the time I’d spent deducing things next to a pair of corpsessurrounded by gangsters here. When we concentrate, the flow of time within usspeeds up. We can think an incredible number of things in mere minutes, secondseven, so compared to the external time, the time insides us passes in a flash.Like, wait, had it really only been a minute? So right this very moment as thewheels in my head spun furiously, I was building up a gap between my internaltime and the time outside of me. If time within a human being was differentfrom time outside of us, then if you were to control one of these times, whichwould it be? Killer Queen turned back time inside the bomb person only, andKing Crimson deleted a portion of time that only he had experienced from the timelineoutside of him. And here some unknown individual’s Stand had sped up theexternal time for Diavolo and Kira. This one second they spent yelping anddying might well be only a second for them, but externally a much longer periodof time was taking place, super compressed. I wasn’t yet sure how long thatwas. But at the least, I had solved the mystery of the sweat. And I suppose Ihad also explained how no one had witnessed their murders.

“Mister Kishibe, is it at all possible that this room couldhave been left empty for say, an hour, around eight this morning?”

“Hunh? No way,”

Kishibe said.

“That would have been the absolute busiest time. All thecops flooding in because we’d found Tsukumojuku’s body.”

“Okay.”

Yeah, it wasn’t just their murders nobody had seen; nobodyhad seen the bodies lying on the floor. So it seemed likely time had been spedup around them from midnight to the estimated time of death to the time theywere found. If he would compress eight hours to a second to kill them why notkeep it up and do another twelve, bringing us to eight PM, the present time? Ifeight hours took a second, and midnight to right now was twenty hours, thenthat was about 2.5 seconds. It was not out of the question for there to be 2.5seconds in which nobody was in this study. Assuming the same scale; obviouslythey could have sped things up even more after their deaths and made thosetwelve hours into one second or .1 seconds but for the moment I just needed afigure to theorize with, so let’s go with 2.5 seconds. They were both killed inthe first second, and in the next 1.5 seconds twelve hours worth ofdecomposition occurred. In only 1.5 seconds? Looking at the bodies, this hadclearly happened, but…was there any way to be sure?

“Mr. Kishibe, do you happen to have a body thermometer?”

Kishibe grinned at me.

“I do! Are you planning on doing an autopsy?”

I was a bit taken aback, but I guess it wasn’t out ofcharacter for this guy.

“Yeah. If you’ve got anything else that would help…”

“I do indeed!”

Kishibe said, far too happily.

“I’m drawing a horror mystery manga, you see. I was curiousto know just what coroners do! I’ve never tried them on a real dead human, butyou find dead birds and cats as you wander around town, and they were mostilluminating.”

“…………”

I wasn’t the only one who’d gone quiet, but Kishibe paid noheed at all, and began expounding the details of his experiments on deadanimals until his girlfriend put her hand over his mouth.

“Uh? Mmph…oh, the body thermometer, right. I’ll bring thewhole kit.”

“…thanks.”

I turned the duo glaring at the mystery of the dry clothesin Videodrome’s recordings.

“Abbacchio, NYPD, I’ll need

your help with this.”

“….?”

Mm? What?”

Abbacchio and NYPD Blue had clearly both been so preoccupiedthey’d missed what we’d just said.

“We’re going to perform a simple autopsy,”

I said.

“Mind taking the rectal temperature?”

“….? Whaaaaaat?”

“Now look here, buddy, I’m just a regular police, Iain’t up for no CSI shit.”

They both spoke at the same time, but when I said,

“You can’t let an amateur do it,”

they reluctantly agreed, and took the thermometer fromKishibe. He had two.

“You did sterilize them, right?”

Abbacchio said, suspiciously. Kishibe was indignant.

“Of course I did! How rude. Who knows what awful bacterialurk in the guts of wild birds and cats! I washed and disinfected them!”

“Wild…birds?”

“The last time I used them was on a wild boar. It musthave wandered down from the mountains and got hit by a car! But it was luckilyhit in just such a manner that the body was intact, and I took a photo everyhour, stuck that thermometer in its rectum, and kept detailed notes on thestate of the body. I even edit together a video! If you have fifteen minutes tospare you can see a boar be entirely consumed by maggots and reduced to nothingbut bone.”

Abbacchio was looking a little green. Kishibe hastilywrapped things up.

“At any rate, those are quite clean.”

So Abbacchio and NYPD Blue took their temperatures, andthey’d both gone down between ten and eleven degrees. Helpfully, Videodromealso allowed us to measure their initial temperature, from when both were stillalive. Neither Diavolo or Kira Yoshikage were at all overweight, so theirtemperature would drop one degree an hour, for the first ten hours, and then halfa degree for every hour after that, so it fit my theory exactly. Next weexamined the inside of their mouths and their eyes. Their mucous membranes werepartially dried. Corneal opacity was about half peak (usually reached between24 and 48 hours after

death.) Then the postmortem lividity. We lifted the bodiesand checked, and the coloring was pretty much at max. This hit peak aftertwelve hours, so was also consistent. The bodies were quite stiff, right at thepeak of rigor mortis – also reached ten to twelve hours after death. Good.

“That’s enough,”

I said. Both Abbacchio and NYPD Blue collapsed to the floor.

“Figure anything out?”

Abbacchio asked, but I ignored him. I dodged the thermometerthat came flying, and thought. Thought through the sound of the thermometershattering and Kishibe’s yelp of anger. Explanations should only occur afterall deductions were complete. Cops are always so impatient, no matter the timeor the place. The bodies definitely had approximately twelve hours worth ofdecomposition. I’d been proceeding with my theory unchanged while we did theautopsy, so those first eight hours must have felt like one second to Diavoloand Kira. But their corpses seemed to have experienced the twelve hours sincetheir deaths as twelve hours, not 2.5 seconds. So maybe this Stand’s timecompression somehow excluded living people?

No, humans weren’t the only ones who experienced the flow oftime. Animals felt it too. And zombies. OK, if this Stand could compress timewhile excluding those who could perceive time, then the differential betweenthe two flows of time left the sweat hanging off their cheeks as inside, or apart of their body, and the moment it disconnected from their jaws it becameexternal, and not part of their body. It looked like their clothes also countedas external, but could that be because Diavolo and Kira weren’t in anycondition to consider their clothes as part of their self-image? In otherwords, what counted as internal was based on what your mental image of‘yourself” extended to, and everything else counted as internal, and thusbecame affected

by the other flow of time.

So, I thought. Next. I had the killer’s profile. He was aStand Master with a Stand that could speed up time. He’d killed Diavolo andKira in that sped up time. Slit their throats. But was it really possible tocut a living person’s throat this deep, this easily? Neither one of them wasbound in any way. And they were Stand Masters, so even if they couldn’t movetheir Stands should have been free. Had the Stand Master been hiding somewhere,so they couldn’t fight back? That didn’t make sense. Diavolo had his Stand out,and King Crimson would know the attack was coming and make it so the attacknever happened. Kira, too; if he just used Killer Queen he could make anythingit touched explode or turn into a bomb, but somehow he couldn’t defend himself?They were up against a Stand that could speed up time. There was a rule thatthere could only be one Stand per person, which meant we could also say thatthe killer couldn’t do anything else. His Stand couldn’t hide him. The onlything you could do with sped up time was move really fast. But was it that hardto avoid an opponent who was just moving fast when you had bombs at yourdisposal? I wasn’t sure, so I did the math on it, and if eight hours werepassing in a single second, and the killer came running at Diavolo and Kira atten kilometers an hour, then relative to them he’d be going 288,000 kph.800,000 meters a second. 241 times the speed of sound. That seemed prettyfucking insane. How would you even think to put a bomb out? At any rate, theyclearly couldn’t use their Stands. Or didn’t. Why? Was their opponent too fastfor them to do anything? If he really was going 241 times the speed of soundthat made sense. But they both had glazed over eyes, and were just staring atnothing, not even trying to resist. They looked like they’d already given up.But

this was a mafia boss, who’d led a group of Stand Mastergangsters like Giovanna, and a serial killer who’s survived in a small townlike Morioh while being chased by multiple other Stand Masters. Would theysimultaneously give up on surviving this and just wait to die? No, no,absolutely not. Diavolo’s predictions used his own internal time so it wouldstill work, and however fast the killer was going he’d still predict the attackten seconds ahead of time and make it not happen. He would have done that. Anysoldier would. No soldier stood around with their gun holstered waiting to beshot. No matter how fucked you were if you still had your knife you’d use that,and if you were out of bullets you could use the pommel, and if your dander wasup you’d give it a shot bare handed, and if you were so gravely wounded youcouldn’t move you could still try and bite them. But they didn’t even try toresist, I thought, forcing myself to think this through. What if they were in asituation where they couldn’t use their Stands, or thought it wasn’t necessary?Couldn’t use them? They were uninjured until their throats split open, and ifthey themselves weren’t hurt, their Stands should have been just fine, too. Andvice versa. There was no way they couldn’t have used their Stands. So if theythought they didn’t need to? Hmm, yeah, that had to be it, it’s the only thingthat made sense, after all they were both sweating fiercely and yelping aloud,too surprised and confused to realize they were in danger. But what was it thatsurprised them? What confused them? Since the enemy Stand had sped up time, hadthe world in front of them turned into a swirling maelstrom? I looked aroundme. They’d died in this study, with nothing in it but a desk. There were nowindows in the walls, just doors. No windows in the ceiling, either. What wouldchange here even if an hour was compressed down to a second? Most likelynothing would change at all. There was nothing

here I could see that would provoke such surprise orconfusion. So what got to them? If there was nothing around them, then someoneother than themselves must have been here, and that couldn’t be the killer. Thekiller slit both their throats without them noticing. He would have beenhiding. So what did Diavolo and Kira see, and what thoughts ran through theirhead that rattled them like that? Each other. Two Stand Masters who couldcontrol time. A mafia boss and a serial killer. And Giovanna and Kishibe seemedto believe they were the source of whatever power made Nero Nero Island andMorioh start moving. They were together when they died. Why? Because they werefighting. I had it at last.

Kira Yoshikage’s Stand, Killer Queen, had a 3rd power calledBites the Dust that turned people into bombs that would go off if anyone triedto find him through that person, and when it went off it would send them backin time an hour to start over. For a serial killer who wanted only to live hislife without attracting attention, this was the ideal power. The bomb would gooff if they so much as said his name, and if anyone unwanted died in the blast,he could just defuse the bomb after winding back an hour, and undo the fateddeath. But the one flaw is that the person he’d primed retained their memoriesand time, but Kira himself had no way of grasping what was happening. Since hehad no idea who his bomb was killing, he had no way of knowing who was comingafter him, and unless he looked into it, he had no way of knowing just howclose they were getting. Of course, he could just keep his distance from theperson he’d turned into a bomb, and preserve his peaceful life that way, but

while it was active he couldn’t use any of Killer Queen’sother powers, so he was left rather defenseless. And even if he was forced todefuse Bites the Dust without knowing what was going on with it, he might leavepeople after him alive, inadvertently sparing them their explosive fate. He’dhave to make sure that didn’t happen. And the only way to do that was to getclose to the bomb, which also put him at risk of encountering those after him.The only way to compensate for this flaw was to avoid the fear and troublecaused by distance from the bomb, and become the bomb himself. Killer Queen’snormal abilities were enough to kill anyone who got in his way normally, but byusing Bites the Dust on himself, he could reset an hour of time when it wentoff, figure out a better way to kill whoever was after him, and correct anyerrors he’d made. He’d gain knowledge, experience, and foresight. Since he wasa serial killer trying to hide his true identity, he had to pick the time andplace to safely blow up his enemies, but Bites the Dust made that discretionunnecessary. No matter who was watching, he could just blow up whoever hewanted to. Then go back an hour, wait until the time that enemy blew up, atwhich point fate would kill them off for him, leaving no one around with anyidea why they suddenly blew up. That hour reset was very effective. So, with adetective dead and more detectives gathering in Morioh, Kira set Bites the Duston himself so he could be prepared for anything. At which point Diavoloappeared. What would happen then? Kira’s Bites the Dust would activate, tryingto kill Diavolo, but Diavolo’s King Crimson would sense that future, andprevent it from ever happening. But since the result of the explosion was thattime was fated to turn back an hour, Bites the Dust would still send him back.But in that case, Kira would have no memories of having blown Diavolo up, sohe’d trying to blow Diavolo up again, King Crimson would delete it again, butthe hour reset was still fated to happen – so every time Diavolo deleted hisown death, time would be reset an hour. Kira and Diavolo would be trapped in aninfinite

time loop.

The only one who could change fate in that hour was Kira,and the only way to escape the time loop was to defuse Bites the Dust, but whena serial killer and a mafia boss were facing off, was that something that wouldeven occur to him? Especially since Kira would know that time was resetting,know he must have blown someone up, but have no memory of doing so. That wouldmake him incredibly nervous. Kira had no way of knowing what King Crimson’spower was, so his best option would always appear to be attacking him withBites the Dust again. But no matter how hard he tried to get rid of Diavolo,Diavolo could make all his attacks not happen. And yet, the more desperate Kiragot, the more he’d depend on Bites the Dust somehow bringing a better result.The time loop they were trapped in would shift a bit here and there, butessentially continue.

I was pretty sure that was the basic gist of it, anyway.Like Tsukumojuku always said,

“When you’re right, you know it without verifying.”

For the first time, I knew what he meant. He wasn’t justreferring to confidence. Detectives (and me) didn’t just believe in themselves.They believed in everything. The world. And God. They were convinced that thestate of all things existed for themselves. That gave Beyond power, and Beyondgave them power. With Beyond on my side, I could move forward withouthesitation. To the next problem – why did this have to happen at the ArrowCross House? The flow of time was divided by human consciousness. Was itpossible for a Stand attack to penetrate that fuzzy barrier? No, and nor had they.If Diavolo and Kira had had their own perceptions of time sped up, that timewould vanish at the moment

of their deaths, the sped up effect would end, and theirbodies would be left lying on the study floor. But despite no such thinghappening, their bodies had begun to decompose, and Kishibe and the police hadgone in and out of the room without ever seeing the two bodies because time inthe Arrow Cross House room had been sped up. Arrow Cross House could do that.Strictly speaking, the former version of it, Cube House. A house was not aperson. A house had no consciousness. With any normal house, if the killer’sStand tried to speed up time it would be left manipulating the boundlessinfinity of space time. Manipulating time for the world itself. And not justEarth, but all of the universe, which I could not begin to imagine, but even ifthat was possible, once time sped up humans would notice that it wasn’tmatching up to their internal time, and panic. For a killer just trying to killtwo men in secret, mass hysteria was less than ideal. But the Arrow CrossHouse, the Cube House, was no ordinary house. It was a Stand. The area ofconsciousness of a Stand with a human name, Sugimoto Reimi. Its constructioncontained a space time of its own. A Tesseract. Arrow Cross House was built ontop of the Cube House. With that in mind, I asked Kishibe,

“Bring me all the clocks not in the study.”

Kishibe grinned at me.

“You’re starting to act like an oldtime detective! Noexplanations along the way, hunh?”

He and the other Japanese people started gathering clocks.How did modern detectives act? One clock from each of the four sunrooms, fourclocks in all. I inspected them. All clocks showed the same time, 8:13 PM.

“What the fuck, even the second hands are perfectly in sync!Hella creepy, Rohan!”

“You seriously need a shrink,”

the massive twins said, but Rohan was having none of it.

“I’m simply not as sloppy as you nitwits.”

I absently checked my own watch. 11:15 AM. I should be inthe middle of the wedding ceremony, putting a ring on Lisa Lisa.

Making my vows. Maybe defending myself after a service buddyjokingly objected to the wedding taking place. But I hadn’t lost that time. Itmight be in the past, but the past still existed, and I’d get back theresomehow….! I put my head back to deducing. The sped up effect occurred inthis study. Put another way, it didn’t happen in the additions that turn theplace into the Arrow Cross House. The border was defined by the Cube House.

“Reimi, mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“Sure,”

she said, and trotted over to me.

“Solving things is going swimmingly, is it? Swimmingly? Didit look like that? I was taken aback for a moment, then I realized time wasflowing differently inside me than it was for the rest of them.

“Reimi, I wanted to ask about this building…about the CubeHouse.”

“Yes, yes?”

From what she told me, the ‘facts’ that Cube House had beenin Nishi Akatsuki and that it had been moved to Morioh were both second-hand,and all she remembered was finding herself here in Morioh, as the Arrow CrossHouse, with next to no memories of anything that came before.

“Stands can grow. They unexpectedly evolve,”

Kishibe added. He’d been listening to us talk.

“It’s only natural you’re not the person you were then,Sugimoto.”

I suppose he meant that to be comforting, and she smiledback, but I spied a trace of sadness to it. The sadness of not being the personyou once were, or of not having memories of your past was not something a fullthrottle forward type like Kishibe couldn’t really understand.

“Muryotaisu’s Grand Blue have increased in number. That sortof thing happens all the time,”

Kishibe said.

“Has anyone else lost their memories when that happened?”

I asked.

“Eh? No, not the human Master. But the Stands themselveshave been known to change inside and out, so it stands to reason

they might wind up completely overwriting the old version.”

Reimi looked even more downcast. Time was flowing for her,too. I couldn’t help myself.

“Kishibe, have you ever felt the fear of forgetting whathappened to you? Ever felt like you’d lost time you knew you’d lived through?”

“Nothing frightening about it,”

Kishibe said, and it didn’t seem like he was bluffing.

“The vast majority of my life contains nothing of anyconsequence whatsoever. I’ve thrown all of myself into drawing manga, so that’sall there is!”

He hmphed arrogantly. Reimi just gaped at him. At this pointthe Japanese kids behind me, Hirose and the twins, put their two cents in.

“Jeez, Rohan, you’re being a real jerk here!”

“That ain’t Jorge’s point! Don’t you get that?”

“C’mon, use your imagination! Man, you’re useless whenyou aren’t in front of the drawing board.”

Something in that seemed to get through to him and heabruptly turned towards Reimi.

“Eh? Ah! Oh, no! I wasn’t thinking! Just because I’d be finedoesn’t mean you are! Sorry, how thoughtless of me!”

He clapped his hands together in front of him and bowed hishead low, and this was so desperate that Reimi almost burst out laughing.Ptbbbbbb.

“OK, that’s enough, Rohan! You really do live for manga,don’t you? I understand the point you’re making, too.”

“No, I’m really sorry. I sometimes forget todistinguish between myself and other people, and assume everyone else can dowhat I can do. Other manga artists criticize me for that all the time. I’mreally not trying to be a conceited ass! I just expect too much from people!That’s entirely my fault!”

“That’s the most arrogant thing you’ve said yet!”

“What the? You expect too much from people? Just howamazing do you think you are!?”

“Ah ha ha ha! You gotta be kidding! That’s the dumbestthing I’ve ever heard! Aha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

Hirose collapsed, laughing hysterically. I’d assumed Kishibewas joking, too, but he seemed genuinely pissed at us.

“What’s so funny!? Kouji! I’m trying to apologize seriously

here, and you mock me for it!?”

Eh? Seriously? Hirose’s laughter subsided, replaced with alook of glazed horror. Reimi laughed.

“You’re hopeless, Rohan!”

I didn’t have enough hours in the world to deal with this,so I got the conversation back on track.

“Reimi, I get that you’re a very unusual stand, butfundamentally every Stand has a ‘Master’ and they’re job is to ‘stand by’ thatMaster, right? I would definitely say a Stand forgetting their Master is kindof an exception, a pretty unique situation. Especially for Stands with minds oftheir own, forgetting their Master when they ‘grow’ or ‘evolve’ would be kindof a big problem.”

Reimi looked very serious suddenly, and the others wentquiet to listen.

“That’s why I don’t think you grew or evolved. I think itwas more like…something shocking happened to you.”

Shocking? I was aware of something rather like that. Trauma.Wounds. Harm sustained could give you power.

“Reimi, do you remember being injured, or suffering inany way?”

I asked. Her eyes really did look like a human’s. There wasa light in them, and that light went out at my question. It was like I wastumbling into a deep abyss within them. My words had struck a nerve.

“A wound,”

I said, the certainty of Beyond behind me.

“I…”

she said, and the light in her eyes flickered back on. Thewords she’d bottled up inside came flowing out.

“My back…it’s been hurting for a while.”

“? Your back?”

“Yeah. Oh…”

Reimi went beet red. She screwed her eyes shut, and grit herteeth.

“Hunh? Sugimoto…”

Kishibe said.

“What are you doing?”

“….ah! Ah. Ahh. Ahhhhhhhh!”

Her breathing heavy, Reimi’s

body suddenly jerked as if stabbed in the back. She hastilypulled the straps of her dress off her shoulders, and pulled her top down, baringher back. Sleazeball gangsters started making wolf-whistles and one even letout a particularly creepy

“Ohhhhh!”

and then an arrow showed up, right between her shoulderblades, and not just some symbol but an actual arrowhead inside her, raisingthe surface of her skin as it moved, and it looks so painful and uncanny thatwe all went deathly silent.

“Ahhhhhhhhhh! It’s burning up! It’s on fire, Rohan!”

Reimi screamed, and the skin on her back split open, and thearrowhead came sliding out onto the smooth surface, but no blood came with it.The arrowhead looked to be made of stone, and had elaborate carvings along thesurface of it. Free of her body, it dropped to the floor, and Reimi collapsedbeside it.

“Sugimoto! Are you…!? Kishibe yelled, rushing to her side.Breathing heavily, she said,

“I remember now, Rohan. About myself, and about my Master.”

She picked the arrowhead up off the floor.

“I was asked to keep this arrowhead, and make sure nobodyelse took it. I locked myself up inside the Cube House, but then I accidentally– or maybe not, I’m not sure, but I stabbed myself with it.”

She moved the tip of the arrow head near her arm, and astrange wind swept up around it as if the arrowhead itself was pulling her skintowards it. This was clearly no ordinary arrowhead; it had a mind of its own.She pulled the arrow away from her skin, took a moment to catch her breath, andturned to me.

“I remember now. It’s been such a long time, Jorge Joestar.”

She smiled at me, as if looking at an old photograph.

“……………? You know me?”

“Of course. I’ve been searching for you for a longtime. And protecting this arrowhead. I know why I came to Morioh, too. I waswaiting for you to get here. All this time.”

“……………? What do you mean?”

“I mean I love you.”

“…………!”

I wasn’t the only one blown away by that. Kishibe was leftspeechless, and the twins and Hirose all shrieked. Reimi turned to find Kishibegaping at her. She smiled at him.

“Well, not me. My Master loves him. Obviously. I, myself,have never even met Jorge.”

A high-pitched whine left Kishibe, like a leaky balloon, andthen he made a show of coughing.

“Well, that’s not my problem,”

he said. The twins and Hirose all relaxed and beganchattering at Kishibe, but I ignored them.

“So who is your Master?”

“There’s only one girl waiting for you who can makelocked rooms. Penelope de la Roza. Jorge, honestly. How could you not know thatalready? Boys are the worst.”

It was very like Penelope to treat a man about to turnthirtyone like a ‘boy’.

“So! Let’s get back to Penelope, Jorge,”

Reimi said, standing

up.

“Yo, wait, you think we’re just gonna let you leave?”

Mista snarled.

“Yeah, Jorge,”

Fugo said.

“You still haven’t figured out who killed Diavolo.”

“Why should he?”

Reimi said.

“Jorge has no obligation to do that whatsoever.”

“Obligation? We aren’t talking about no ‘obligation’here,”

Mista said. He was smiling, but his eyes were narrowing.

“We ain’t asking, either. We’re telling him to do it.However he has to.”

“Hmph,”

Reimi snorted.

“You can act like big shots all you like, but remember whereyou are. You’re inside me.”

Right. We were inside Reimi. Inside the realm of Reimi’sconsciousness, so if time sped up here, it wouldn’t affect anything

ouside.

“A moment ago I became my old self,”

Reimi said.

“This isn’t the old Arrow Cross. The arrow’s not in me anymore. This is the Cube House now. It has no doors or windows. If you don’t doas I say, you’re never getting out of here. And remember, when I say ‘never’, Imean that literally.”

“What!?”

Fugo and Mista ran to the doors and flung them open.

“Shit! The furniture’s still here, but no doors or windows!”

“Fuck! A polar bear! Tch, why the fuck is this thinghere!?”

“Wait, wait, wait…why is your face over there!”

“Mista? What are you doing back there?”

As the two henchmen encountered the tesseract for the firsttime, Giovanna rose to his feet.

“It looks to me like you’ve already figured everything out,”

he said.

“Joestar. Will you share your answer with us?”

I ran over my reasoning – if I could call it that – in mymind again. I knew what the killer’s Stand must be. I could sketch a fairlycomplete picture of how he’d done it. There weren’t any mitigatingcircumstances that countermanded it. But I didn’t have the killer’s name…whathad Tsukumojuku done in moments like this? He’d just left it up to the mood, orthe energy in the room. By acting the part, he’d get things going his way. Thatwas what all detectives did. They’d create the flow, create the mood. The sameway that Beyond did. Believe.

“I dunno the killer’s name,”

I said.

“But I know their Stand. It has the power to speed up time.They lured Kira Yoshikage and Diavolo here. Kira had primed Bites the Dust onhimself. The killer set them against each other, had them attack, and KingCrimson deleted the moment where Bites the Dust blew him up. With both stillalive, Bites the Dust turned back time an hour, and brought the same fatearound again. As time began to loop, the same events

happening again and again, the killer sped up time,compressing it until neither of them could move at all. Then he slit theirthroats.”

When I finished my speech, there was a long silence. Over bythe corpses and Videodromes, Abbacchio and NYPD Blue were gaping at me.

“I see…!”

Giovanna said, trying unsuccessfully but adorably to concealhis surprise.

“That’s all,”

I said.

“I don’t have anything else worked out yet. But it seemslike you might know something about a Stand that speeds up time, right?”

Giovanna had been so quietly calm all this time. Why hadthat description rattled him so? But he just shook his head.

“No idea, I’m afraid.”

“……….? So why were you so surprised…”

No, maybe this wasn’t surprise. There was a sadness in hiseyes.

“Why was this such a shock to you?”

As if that brought him back to himself, Giovanna’s usualmask slipped back over his features.

“It didn’t.”

There was clearly something here. Something not right.

“Is your boss lying?”

I said, turning to Bruno Buccellati. He’d been watchingeverything closely from behind Giovanna. Giovanna spun around, not expectingthis, and his eyes must have met Buccellati’s.

“………….!”

Buccellati didn’t answer immediately.

“…….? Mmm? …I can smell it, Giorno. A smell Ishouldn’t be smelling.”

“Buccellati, don’t.”

“I shouldn’t ever be smelling this in my own family, onmy own team. So why the hell am I?”

“You’re imagining it.”

“I’m WHAT!?”

Buccellati roared. Mista and Fugo came running back to thestudy.

“What’s up, Buccellati?”

“Shut the fuck up, Fugo!”

Buccellati snapped, seething with rage. His men fell silent.

“This stench just got even more distinct. Giorno! You justlied to me! I’m not imagining this shit! You know damn well I can smell a lie amile away! I’ve proven it countless times, Giorno! My nose for lies! Is! Never!Wrong! You’re keeping something from us!”

“………….!”

“I don’t even need to lick that cold sweat off yourbrow! You’re lying! Spit it out, Giorno! What the fuck are you hiding!?”

“I…”

Giorno said, then sighed.

“I was just a bit thrown by Joestar’s reasoning. I mean,this Stand speeds up time? How would you ever fight that?”

He wasn’t a Mafia leader for nothing. He’d recovered hiscalm, and the cold sweat was gone. Wait. The sweat that was on his shirt…wasalready gone?

“LIAR!”

Buccellati screamed. Then he grew deathly quiet.

“Giorno…tell me the truth. If you’re hiding something, Ihave to dig after it. It can’t be that important! I’m not saying we can’t havesecrets from each other. I respect your privacy. This line of work, that’s allwe have sometimes. But right here? When Passione’s top dog has just beenmurdered? There’s nothing worth hiding, Giorno! Say it, Giornooooo! Say it!”

he rose to a shriek at the end, and his Stand appearedbehind him. It looked like a girl, and held a needle and thread in its hands.

“Don’t, Buccellati!”

“If you don’t tell the truth I’ll stitch your mouthclosed! Do it, Stepmom!”

As the female Stand grabbed Giovanna’s lips together, stuckthe needle through them, pulled the thread after, and began sewing themtogether at fearsome speeds, Giovanna yelled,

“Buccellati, no! I’m not the one lying! I was lied to!”

“What?”

Buccellati said, and stopped sewing.

“I’m the one who was betrayed.”

“What do you mean!? Betrayed by who!?”

“………..”

Giovanna fell silent. Behind me, NYPD Blue suddenly said,

“Mm? The fuck is

this?”

I turned around and found NYPD Blue still examining thebodies. His hands were on Diavolo’s corpse’s face, but they weren’t justresting there. Diavolo’s face had opened up, and he was looking inside. KishibeRohan’s Stand, Heaven’s Door, which turned people into books filled with theirmemories and history. NYPD Blue and Abbacchio had a brief whisperedconversation about something, and then Abbacchio turned to me.

“What do you make of this?”

Diavolo’s face was in book form, the pages spread open. Thepages were all covered with the word ‘death’ in all kinds of languages, butAbbacchio was pointing at the very bottom corner of the page, some tiny, tinyletters in either corner. The right page read 121. The left read 123.

“Hunh?”

I said. This was weird.

“Right?”

Abbacchio said, and flipped to a different page. The rightread 237. The left read 239. It only had odd pages.

Were pages missing….? No. If that happened, two sequentialpages would be missing. This was something else. I picked another page andlooked at the front and back of it, and the front was 323 and the back was 325.This book only had odd numbers in it.

“What the…?”

I looked up, and Kishibe had come up behind us, and waspeering over our shoulders.

“Any idea what this means?”

I asked. Kishibe put his hand to his lips.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. I can only think of oneexplanation.”

NYPD Blue and Abbacchio said as one,

“Someone else had the even pages.”

Kishibe said much the same thing.

“I stopped looking when

I saw the word ‘death’ everywhere! How careless of me!Diavolo had a split personality!”

“C’mon, Giorno! Spit it out!”

Buccellati yelled.

“Who is it who betrayed you?”

“I don’t know…”

Giovanna said, his eyes hollow.

“God?”

“Don’t you even dream about fucking with me right now!”

Buccellati yelled. Stepmom sewed more of Giovanna’s mouthshut, and threw a few stitches through his cheek as well, completely wreckinghis even features.

“Tell me the damn truth, Giorno! You’re our fucking boss!What the fuck are you up to!?”

“I’m telling the truth! I’ve been betrayed by God!”

“Arghhhhh! Grit your fucking teeth, Giorno!”

Wham! Buccellati just straight up punched Giovanna in theface. Reimi squeaked, and hid behind Kishibe. The twins and Hirose werecompletely at a loss now, frozen in place. Blood sprayed from Giovanna’s mouth,and tears from his eyes. …he was crying? Blood and tears fell to the floor.The blood dried, and the tears vanished. In an instant.

Kishibe spoke up.

“I’ve looked inside almost everyone alive in here, soHeaven’s Door could make you all able to speak all three languages. Only twopeople I haven’t looked at! Giovanna, who could already speak Japanese andItalian! And the empty-eyed boy who showed up late, following Giovanna. VinegarDoppio! Where is he?”

NYPD Blue and Abbacchio looked around, but there was no signof Doppio.

“Hunh? He was just here!”

“Shit! Where is he?”

Kishibe yelled.

“Find him! Jacques! Enzo! Johana!”

Nijimura Muryotaisu yelled, unleashing his Stand,

which looked like three dolphins.

“Might be faster to call him,”

Abbacchio said, grabbing Pink Dark Boy off the floor. Amoment later, plu pon pin para para pon plu pon pin para para pon rang fromunder the floor.

“(Click) Hello Hi What’s up? Call me anytime! I’m shinysparkling Doppio and I love phones!”

His bright voice and then some dolphins squeaking and heyelped.

“Augh! What the fuck!?”

“Bring him back here, Grand Blue!”

Muryotaisu yelled and the hole in the center of the studyslammed open and a dolphin flew up out of it with Doppio on its back, and thedoor in the ceiling opened and the other two came back as well.

“Hey? What the fuck, I’m on the phone!”

Doppio snarled, holding his shoe to his ear, barely holdingonto the dolphin with his other hand.

“Ha! Trying to run!?”

Kishibe cried.

“You can’t escape from the Cube House! Heaven’s Door!”

I wasn’t super sure why he was shouting his Stand’s name,but he rapidly drew a transparent figure in the air and Doppio’s face exploded.The pages of his book flew open, his hand slipped off the dolphin’s fin and hefell to the floor, rolling several times.

“Everything you said was half-crazed and I’ve had my eye onyou! Let’s have a look!”

Kishibe strode over to him, and checked the pages ofDoppio’s book.

“Hunh?”

he said, flipping through several more pages.

“He’s got odd and even numbers! He’s normal! He’s just a bitnutty!”

Kishibe cried. All eyes shifted towards the only othercandidate. With all eyes on him, Giovanna stared off in to space, andwhispered,

“Are you abandoning me, God?”

Another tear rolled down his cheek, but the moment the tearleft him, it sped up, and evaporated before it hit the floor.

“Something stinks!”

NYPD Blue yelled.

“The bodies are rotting faster!”

Abbacchio yelled.

Time inside the Cube House had sped up again.

“Yes, he has. Can you blame Him for it? GiornoGiovanna.”

The speaker was a man standing in the door to the North,dressed in a form-fitting silver garment that looked like something out of anH. G. Wells novel. There was a cross on the front. Who…? The Japanese twinsand Hirose yelled,

“Enrico Pucci!”

So that was the name of the man who could speed up time.

“God is gravely disappointed in your weakness,”

Pucci said.

“Giorno Giovanna, you failed to bear the burden of yoursins, failed to get your own hands dirty, pushed all the bad things onto a poorother mind you made within you just so you could be a good boy. Then you triedto play the hero, and punish Diavolo for handling you dirty deeds. What ashameful tale. Thus God forsake you. You can feel it, right? He hates sadstories like that more than anything. He won’t have anything more to do withyou. That’s why He sent me to take care of you. You will never see His faceagain, but if you have any last words for him, say them now.”

Giovanna wiped his tears away with his arm.

“You saying that will not make me believe it, and I will notbe giving you a message to take back.”

Pucci said nothing, but crooked his head.

“………?”

Buccellati’s half-sewn threads dangling from portions of hisface, Giovanna smiled.

“You don’t get it. You aren’t here to finish me off. I’ll befinishing you. You’re the one God has forsaken. This was always the plan, poorpriest. If only you had never realized how you’ve been used, you might havebeen happy to the bitter end. But I am the son of a God who is both kind andcruel, and I must act accordingly. Father Pucci, my father never expectedanything

from you. He knew you would never be able to connect theloop. That was never possible for you, or for any version of you. He sent youon this path knowing that only too well – because you being on this path waspart of his plan. You are a half-formed man, driven by fruitless desire. Anarrow-minded man, unable to accept anything but your own ideals. A self-absorbedlow-life who has the gall to try to bask in God’s love. So vain you’ll doanything for a modest scrap of praise, and for a fleeting moment’s emotionyou’ll act as if you’ve risen to Heaven and activate your bizarre power. He hada use for that power. But that use has been and gone. If you were but a littlemore rational, he might have allowed you to remain by his side, useful or not.But in the end, you are a man of no experience, incapable of deeper thought,incapable of seeing the big picture, a fool dancing at the whims of yourbetters. Since he saw no value in keeping you around, he has tossed you asidelike yesterday’s trash. Are you prepared?”

There was an awful crackling sound all around us, and theCube House’s wallpaper and carpet faded, peeled, tore, rippled, rolled, anddisintegrated. Time was going faster and faster.

“Auuugh! The evidence!”

I turned at the scream, and saw NYPD Blue hurriedly carryingthe rapidly rotting bodies of Kira Yoshikage and Diavolo out through the eastdoor. In the north door, Enrico Pucci had gone beet red.

“Silence, boy…!”

Giovanna laughed aloud.

“See? You know I’m right. That’s why you’ve gone red. Butyou don’t even realize that throwing a childish tantrum to deny that fact justproves how shallow you really are.”

635

“I said, shut up!”

“You mean, ‘I’m so flustered I can’t come up with acome back so please stop talking, sir?’“

“……….!”

There was a snapping sound, and Kishibe’s work desk in thecenter of the room collapsed. I looked at the clocks sitting on the rottingdesk; those with needles had long since spun so fast the needles flew off, andthose projecting numbers onto glass were changing so fast it was impossible toread the time. I could barely even read the date, but I could just about seethe thousands place in the year changing. 5…..6……9…..13….Oh, wow, Ithought, they even included a fifth digit! The desk had turned to dust, andeven the sturdiest of the clocks at last stopped working, and turned to dust aswell.

“You’re going to die! But first I’m going to slaughter allyour men!”

Pucci yelled, and if he used this sped up time against usthere was no way we could stop him. This was well beyond mach speed. He wouldbe moving faster than the speed of light, which was supposed to be the fastestspeed possible. But even now Giovanna just smiled.

“Heh. Father Pucci, do you know what this insect is?”

he said, pointing to the air. There was a rhinoceros beetleflying there.

“…………..?”

Pucci frowned.

“This is the arrowhead I just took from Reimi,”

Giovanna said.

“I turned it into something living to prevent the flow oftime from damaging it. Given the size, a Japanese rhinoceros beetle was a goodfit. But you know, I’ve been thinking. Was there really only one arrowheadhidden in the Arrow Cross House?”

“………..?”

Pucci was still thinking. Giovanna didn’t wait for him.

“I mean, there’s more than one arrow outside.”

“Ah! Ahhhhh! Ahhhhhhh it burns! Rohan, it burns! It’sso hot I can’t bear it! Auuuuughh!”

Reimi screamed and grabbed onto Kishibe, her back thrashingviolently as another three rhinoceros beetles surfaced on the skin of her back,tearing their way out of her.

Giovanna laughed.

“Heh heh. The four rhinoceros beetles. You see your mistakenow? This is the real prophecy!”

Pucci broke his silence at last.

“Nooooooooo! It cannot be!”

he yelled, trying to scream his way back to solid ground.But Giovonna pressed the advantage.

“Useless useless useless useless useless uselessuseless!”

The rhinoceros beetle near Giovanna’s head turned back intoan arrow head, and began rusting quickly in the sped up time, but he was fastenough. There was a sound that shook the air and a yellow humanoid Standappeared behind Giovanna just as the arrowhead stabbed it.

“Heaven’s not waiting for you, Enrico Pucci! But you’re sucha coward you’d just speed up time in Hell to get through it! You’ll get thefate you deserve – I’ll trap you in the same loop you trapped Diavolo and KiraYoshikage in when you killed them!”

“Auuuughhh!”

Pucci’s scream turned into a shriek.

“I’ve had enough of your smart mouth! Children should beseen and not heard! Die!”

And he vanished. He wasn’t gone, of course. The speed of hisattack was just so great we couldn’t see him any more.

“Useless!”

Giovanna yelled, and his Stand, which looked a bit differentnow that it had fused with the arrowhead, swung its fist once through the air.

And the soft sound of everything inanimate in the roomcrumbling beyond dust into the component elements stopped. Only

silence remained. The sped up time had stopped. I lookedaround me. All decorations had vanished, leaving nothing but the plain walls ofthe Cube House. All the Japanese and Italian gangsters were fine, standingthere stunned. A thought struck me and I hastily checked my clothes, but theywere intact. Good. But that didn’t go for everyone; Mista’s clothes haddisintegrated and his fellow gang members started laughing as he smiledblissfully and bragged about how free he felt. I supposed it was up to your ownconsciousness where that boundary lay. I asked Giovanna,

“…….? Is it over?”

He nodded.

“Yep.”

“I don’t see Pucci anywhere…?”

“My Stand sent him to a world where he has nowhere togo and no way of getting there,”

Giovanna said. He was staring at his Stand, now reborn in anew visage, covered in arrows.

“That world makes all his desires and actions be in vain.This is my evolved Stand, Gold Experience Requiem. Enrico Pucci is no longereven able to want to come back here. No matter where he tries to go he won’t beable to get there. Even if he longs for death, he won’t be able to die. But ifhe tries to live no life worth calling such awaits him. It is not life, and notdeath; a place both connected to nothing and nowhere, where he’ll wander lostfor all of time.”

“Um,”

I said,

“Isn’t that a fate worse than death?”

Maybe a bit too much, really, but I let that go unsaid. Ireally didn’t know Enrico Pucci at all.

“If you feel sympathy for him, don’t bother,”

Giovanna said, as if he’d read my mind.

“This is the fate he deserved, and at the same time, ablessing. Since this is a punishment direct from God. It is quite simple tointerpret endless punishment as endless love. For a man as self-absorbed ashim, he’ll have done that already, and be rapturously happy.”

“………..”

Really…? Even as I doubted it I picked up on a

mismatch bodies and the number of souls, and turned to theartist Reimi was clutching.

“Kishibe.”

“?”

“Heaven’s Door.”

Thankfully he instantly grasped my meaning. He yelled,

“Heaven’s Door!”

and swish swish swish sketched a drawing in the air and bam!Giorno Giovanna’s face exploded into a book. We had to catch him by surprise toget past that Stand of his. Since we’d pulled it off, I stepped in to verify.Giorno Giovanna’s book had only one page, and the only place with anything toread was the back of the cover, his face. The page number was 2. And the textwas just ‘death’ in all sorts of languages. OK, so he was dead. As I pulledback his page, I found a hollow within, with his eyeballs floating in the air.Our eyes met. But those eyes were something he’d made with his Stand. Holdinghis cover open, I moved around his frozen body, and looked Giovanna in hishandsome, eyeless face.

“I see. You came here with Tsukumojuku, then? AntonioTorres.”

The cover of Giovanna’s book began to laugh.

“Heh heh heh heh! God damn, Jorge! You’re all acting like areal detective!”

It was Antonio, so he was speaking Spanish. I replied inkind.

“I just got used to you being a constant pain in my ass.”

My knees weren’t shaking any more. I’d been so scared ofAntonio, but now I’d conquered him. I should have done this from the start.Never let Lisa Lisa save me, but fought him myself. Pop, pop. I looked towardsthe sound, and two balled up manuscript pages followed across the floor.Giovanna’s eyes. There was a hiss as the air leaked out of the holes in hisface, as Antonio went back to being an empty skin. Gasps went up from aroundus. Giovanna was gone. Dead…? I wasn’t sure.

“Heh heh! Well? Now what? Jorge!”

Antonio Torres said.

On his forehead was a note written in Tsukumojuku’shandwriting.

“After the monster hunt on La Palma Island. AntonioTorres,

1900.”

Most likely, in all the commotion around the incident at theTorres home, he’d switched places with an ordinary skin, would up carried toschool, and after the Alejandro attack Tsukumojuku had written that note on it.In other words, this was the original, before he split, the very same AntonioTorres that had tormented me years ago.

“Mm? What’s up, balsa blanco? Yo! Don’t fucking space out onme!”

He could yell all he liked but there wasn’t much he could doin book form. OK, I thought. What to do with this Antonio Torres? But as Ithought, I found the answer to another question.

“Are you the one who killed Tsukumojuku?”

Light enough to get in and out of the Arrow Cross Housewithout crunching the gravel, but strong enough to move a human, albeit afifteen year old boy – only this paper-thin zombie fit both conditions.

“Heh heh heh! There it is! Good job! You got old as shit butway less dumb!”

Yeah, kinda of a lot happened. I didn’t have time to catchup with him, though.

“But you couldn’t have done it all alone,”

I said.

“I mean, they were arranged to look like Japanese folktales. And the only people you could ever lead was that pack of kids you usedto bully me with. Who’s the boss controlling you? What is it you’re trying toaccomplish?”

Who cares about you? I’m just doing what my boss tells meto! Although it’s all the more fun when you happen to be

involved! That’s what he’d said during our big fight. Whowas his boss?

“That would be me.”

I turned around, and the east door was open, and in it stooda man who should be dead. Diavolo.

“Auugh!”

“Shit!”

“What the fuck are you doing, Giornoo!?”

shouted Fugo, Mista, and Abbacchio, and each in turnattacked him, but all attacks came up empty. I could hardly believe this guyshared the same body as the fit but delicate Giorno Giovanna, but like R. L.Stevenson wrote in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, personalitycould change one’s appearance and physique. And behind this man’s broad backstood a Stand with a tiny face on it’s forehead. King Crimson. Of course thegangster’s attacks all missed. He was predicting the future, and deleting it.Giovanna, as Diavolo, pretty much walked straight from the east door over tome. This must not be a job he wanted to do. That’s why he’d reverted toDiavolo. But I wasn’t about to just take it!

“Arrggghhhh!”

I let go of Antonio Torres, and made a fist.

“Right then, Diavolo!”

I gave him my best punch. Of course I didn’t come anywherenear him but it didn’t even feel like he’d needed to delete time which made mevery sad. Vvm! I felt a horrible blow, and looked down to find King Crimson’sarm sticking through my chest. Quite a lot of blood was spilling down on thenow-carpetless floor of the Cube House. I was about to pass out.

“I avoided the heart, so you won’t die yet. You’ll need tocome with me, Jorge Joestar! For an audience with the Secret

Emperor!”

Fuck no, asshole! Is what I wanted to say, but all that cameout of my mouth was a horrible whistling sound. He threw my body over hisshoulder, hole and all, and began walking away.

“Don’t let him go!”

“Stop!”

“Look at me, asshole!”

“The fuck do you think you’re going?”

The Japanese contingent joined the gangsters, trying to getafter Diavolo, but King Crimson took care of them easily. A number got punchedpretty hard.

“Jorge! No, don’t take him!”

Reimi shouted through her tears, and my body suddenly feltweightless. Diavolo had jumped through the door in the floor of the study. KingCrimson punched through the door below that, and we went down. Grand Blue hadleft the next door open, so we went right through. We hit the study again andeveryone took a swing but King Crimson went nuts, and every blow was blocked ordodged and whhpp whhpp whhpp whhpp we were still falling and going faster andfaster until I couldn’t even tell what was happening.

“Jorge! Hang in there!”

Reimi yelled.

“I’ll come find you! Just don’t die!”

Uh, that last part seemed like a tall order.

But when my eyes opened I could heard the sound of waterlapping. The sea at night, dead bodies all around me. I was on the deck of aship at sea, near the open lid of a black, wet box. Diavolo was standing at thebase of it, looking inside. And smiling.

“Heh heh heh..just as my dreams said. Wake up! Aren’t youtired after your hundred year nap?”

I’d never actually seen the box Diavolo was yelling at, butI recognized it. I’d imagined it, feared it, and it was as ominous as my mindhad predicted. No wonder people had thought it was a coffin.

The man who rose slowly out of the box was thin, just skinand bone, but he wore a crown of thorns on his head. There was a hole in thehand he placed on the box’s edge. He stood up, stepped out of the box onto thedeck. There were holes in his bare feet, too. Stigmata. It was like JesusChrist had come back to life at last. But this man was not the son of theChristian God. This vampire was my father’s enemy, my mother’s enemy, mygrandfather’s enemy, and the enemy of every living thing. It was Dio Brando.

For a while, Dio stood on the deck, gazing at the moonlitsea. His cheeks were sunken and his skin a wreck but his profile was possessedof an unearthly beauty.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

Diavolo said.

“We can’t be here all that long. Let’s go, vampire motherfucker.”

Without moving his gaze, Dio said,

“I went one hundred years without a single dream.”

“Hunh?”

“I’m tired, Diavolo.”

“I don’t care. Just get a move on, you doddering oldman.”

“And I’m hungry. Since long before I slept.”

“Hunh? So…?”

“So first, I eat. You may not look it, but you are myson. Your blood will agree with me,”

Dio reached his scrawny hand out towards Diavolo.

“! What the fuck, asshole?”

Diavolo said, and King Crimson popped out, but Dio’s fingerswere already in Diavolo’s neck.

“Ah!”

“Your Stand can’t see what happens while time isstopped.”

There was a gulping sound from his fingers; he was clearlydrinking Diavolo’s blood through them. Behind Dio stood a Stand, humanoid, withwhat looked like air tanks on its back. What the? I thought. This was the Standthat had tormented

my mother. It could stop time? How the hell could anyonefight that? I was still dying here, so perhaps it didn’t matter. There wasn’tanything I could do. Dio let Diavolo fall to the floor, kneeling by his side..

“And when it comes to my blood, I can make prophecies of myown.”

The crown of thorns on his head began moving on its own. ?Was that a Stand, too? But Buccellati had said there was a rule, only one Standper person….then I saw it. As life returned to Dio’s body, I saw a starshaped birthmark on his left shoulder. The mark of the Joestars. A mark anadopted son like Dio Brando should never have. He’d stolen that from my father.Stolen everything from the head down. And either the crown of thorns or the airtank guy was my father’s Stand.

“Heh heh…I thought so. Your blood agrees with me.”

Dio grinned. As color came back to him, he grew younger.Bathed in moonlight, he was almost glowing.

“But it’s not enough. You were originally such a tinyman…so weak. Don’t die!”

he roared, yanking his fingers out, and kicking Diavolo inthe head.

“Nng!”

“You still have work to do! Keep your wits about you.Or would you rather I made you into a filthy zombie?”

At this, Diavolo reached out a trembling arm, as desiccatedas Dio’s had been before, and touched Dio’s feet.

“Take me there. And don’t try anything funny. Bad childrenget punished by Daddy.”

He turned to me.

“That goes for you, too. You even think of moving Daddy willmake you fetch a switch. Ha ha ha ha! Come on, you fool!”

And with that Dio stomped on Diavolo’s head again, and therewas a sound of bone cracking, and a groan, and Diavolo and Dio vanished. They’dtraveled through time. Just as Diavolo and I had left the Cube House and cometo this ship. 646 The Cube House’s tesseract construction worked precisely

because it was a house, allowing for an infinite tunnelthrough the center. Anyone who fell through – by what logic I did not know –would wind up able to time travel, like Tsukumojuku had. Tsukumojuku had comehere from Nishi Akatsuki to work as a detective, and figured out that CubeHouse was built to have a time travel device within. He’d led me places twice,and then been murdered by Antonio Torres, who’d been traveling with him. SaidAntonio Torres had come to Nishi Akatsuki on his boss’s orders. Which had beenrelayed to him by the Japanese-Italian gangster, Giorno Giovanna; but the mainorders had all come from this true boss. If he ordered every appearance ofeleven-year-old Antonio Torres, then he’d been on La Palma in 1900, Wastewoodin 1904, and all over England, France and Germany in the war that started in1914. The only boss that could do that was a vampire that could time travel.Dio Brando. This was all that vampire’s doing. He had not been sleeping quietlyat the bottom of that ocean. He’d woken up, immediately broken through thespace time barrier to attack us, and my family had now been tormented for morethan thirty years by this dastardly adopted son. Even then, he was acting muchtoo quickly, I thought. Like everything had been prepared, his actionsscheduled, and he’d just been waiting for the right timing to start. Or…hadhe? That crown of thorns Stand. And when it comes to my blood, I can makeprophecies of my own. Was that line just explaining the Stand’s powerliterally? In that case, he may have predicted a lot about me. Maybe he’d knowneverything. I could only hope that wasn’t true, but if he knew my entire life’sstory, perhaps even up to the moment of my death, right here. That wouldexplain why he’d been unimpressed by our arrival; it was all part of his plan,and he was simply annoyed by anything that slowed him down. You may not lookit, but you are my son. Your blood will agree with me.

What did that mean? Was it possible he had a child born andraised in Italy? Giovanna? Who’s life and fate he knew as well as my own? Howmuch of the future did Dio know? I went one hundred years without a singledream. Had he spent the entire time peering into the future with his crown of thornsStand? At the bottom of the sea? For a hundred years? I passed out. And Idreamed.

Of Lisa Lisa.

“…wake up,”

Dio said, stomping on my face. I opened my eyes to find itwas almost dawn. The sky was beginning to lighten. Diavolo was lying on thedeck next to me, painfully thin, on the brink of death. And one other; a halfnaked man with long hair and horns on his forehead. This man’s eyes were openbut he did not appear to be alive. But from the color and pallor of his skin hedidn’t look dead, either. He had bite marks on his throat. Was he a zombie? Buthe was an unusually gorgeous man, and I found it hard to believe he could be azombie. Plus those horns. I’d never seen a vampire or a zombie with horns. Whowas he? What was he? 648

“…we have no time. We must hurry. Before I’m no longer avampire…”

Dio was acting very odd. His step was unsteady, he wascovered in sweat, and his gaze unfocused. Like he was sick. And he held a largeEastern sword in his trembling hands. Dio caught me looking, and as exhaustedas he looked, he still managed a grin.

“Heh…this is a Japanese katana, Jorge. Beautiful, isn’tit? Supple and strong, the sharpest blade in the world. See?”

And with that he held the sword aloft, the blade turnedtowards him, and with a sharp breath schunk! He brought it down upon his ownhead. The sword split Dio all the way to his chest in one blow.

“Nnnnnnnnnn~~~~! As they said…! No…resistance! Oneswing, and it cuts this far! Heh

heh heh!”

The two halves of his face was still grinning down at me.

“This…is something your father, Jonathan, taught me. Mylife…is so strong I can be cut in half and not die. Heh heh heh. Observe!Your father’s sword only cut me to my guts, but…unhhhhhhh!”

With a mighty grunt, Dio pushed the Japanese sword stillfurther, straight down through his crotch until he’d cut his entire body inhalf.

“See? I live! Even cut in two!”

I was pretty flabbergasted, but I wasn’t really sure if itwas showing on my face. Dio didn’t seem to care if I reacted one way or theother. That was fine, I thought. You’re a damn fool, Dio. I dunno what the shityou’re up to but while you’re showing off, the sun is rising behind you!

“And…farewell, Jorge Joestar. A man with no Hamon, noStand, and nothing else to write home about.”

Dio raised the bloody sword, and I could do nothing to stophim. He was right. I couldn’t use Hamon. I didn’t have a Stand. But I did haveBeyond! As I remembered that fact, I realized Diavolo had turned back intoGiorno Giovanna, and had his Stand out. Gold Experience Requiem. The Stand thatturned everything to nothing. Go for it!

“Like I said…I know what my blood…will do.”

Dio’s Stand was out; cut in half but still moving, its handaround Gold Experience Requiem’s throat.

“I don’t care…if I kill you, Giorno. Do you want…to dieright now?”

Lying on the deck, red marks on his throat like he was beingstrangled by an invisible hand, Giovanna said,

“I don’t mind. But I do have one favor to ask.”

“……..? What…?”

“Make me the one who gets your soul. Make me your…DioBrando’s double.”

“No. It won’t work with you. The train robber’s sondoesn’t have the star mark.”

Train robber? What?

“But I have it!”

Giovanna said.

“I am your true son, father.”

“What…?”

Dio pointed his sword at Giovanna, and cut his clothes atthe left shoulder, checking. He did indeed have the star mark.

“Are you…?”

“I canceled my own death, survived in a place betweenlife and death until I arrived here. I followed you here, to this far offuniverse, and waited. So I could be useful to you, father. So I could becomeyou.”

As Giovanna spoke, the crown of thorns appeared on Dio’sbrow again. He was looking at the future.

“Hmm…I didn’t pay much attention to you after you tookDiavolo down. But it seems that is your fate.”

“It is the power of my will, father,”

Giovanna said, tearing up. Without hesitation, Dio thrustthe sword into his heart.

“Ngh!”

As Giovanna died, Dio said,

“No time for idle chatter.”

Giovanna reached his arm out towards Dio…then it fell tothe deck. In Dio’s Stand’s hands, Gold Experience Requiem faded, and vanished.Something hot and furious rose up inside me, and I longed to fly into a violentrage, but I couldn’t move so much as a finger. I wanted to scream, but couldn’tmake a nose, wanted to howl but all I could manage was some pathetic snivels.Dio looked annoyed.

“That’s no way to cry!”

he said.

“Are you not Jonathan’s son? Your father…cried rather alot, but never in quite that pathetic a manner.”

I couldn’t keep my emotions in check. I kept crying, unableto stop the tears.

“You heard him. This is what he wanted,”

Dio said, tossing his sword aside. Then he plunged his handdeep into his own left

chest. Zumm!

“Mmmmmm! Heh…heh heh heh…”

he laughed.

“I have come to know the shape of life, to understand it. Ican remove it!”

He pulled his arm out of his chest, carrying with it atranslucent half-Dio. He was holding half his own soul in his hand.

“Heh heh heh heh heh! Thus I divide my own life!”

The way he spoke, as if convincing himself, was how I behavedwhen trying to use Beyond. Forcing myself to believe, because in belief liespower. And in that instant the sun showed itself above the horizon, and we werebathed in the sunlight I’d been waiting for. With a whoosh, Dio’s body burned,and I thanked Beyond. Yes! The sun rose in time! But then Dio yelled,

“Arghhhh! This is bad! The sunlight doesn’t hurt that much!”

It doesn’t?

“I must hurry! Rrraghhh!”

he yelled, and took the left half of his soul soundlesslyfrom the left half of his body, and shoved it into Giovanna’s dead body.Abruptly, Giovanna’s flesh bulked up, his very bones growing, his limbsstretching, his features growing sharper, until he was another Dio. Dio’spersonality inhabiting Giovanna’s flesh had physically transformed it. Just as Diavolohad changed him.

“Unhhh…shit…was I in time…?”

Dio said, and staggered sideways till the two halves of hisbody were pressed together. The instant the two halves lined up, the cutvanished, and the two halves were one whole again. In the sunlight, his entirebody was on fire, but the fury with which that fire burned was waning. This manhad conquered the sun. Smoke rising off him, Dio picked up the sword from thedeck, and sliced Giovanna’s far too tight clothes off the other Dio. The otherDio fell to the floor, half-naked. The original Dio looked down at him, thecrown of thorns appearing again.

“Hmm, looks

like I made it in time.”

Dio picked up ‘Dio’, threw him in the open coffin, andclosed the lid. Then he sat down on the lid, and let out a long sigh. As hedid, his body stopped smoking, and all trace of any burns vanished. He’d beenbreathing heavily, but now that, too, returned to normal. He let out one morelong sigh, and looked up with a grin on his face.

“I feel amazing! Ha ha ha! Such power! This is the world ofthe Ultimate Thing!? It’s astounding! Ha ha ha ha ha!”

Ultimate…Thing?

Dio stood up and walked over to the man with the horns,lying on the desk beside me. He bent down beside him, and with a pleasantsmile, bit him. He began drinking the man, chewing as he went, the speed withwhich he ate growing until he was straight up devouring the man.

“Wa ha ha ha ha! I can eat him! I can eat the ultimate beingand make his flesh my own! Blood! I just have to make the blood agree with me! Haha ha! Blood is everything! Becoming a vampire was the best decision I evermade! He’s delicious! Cars is the best meal I’ve ever had! Ha ha ha ha! Hahh haha ha ha ! I’ve never felt better! WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”

He let out a shrill scream. He’d eaten Cars’ face and brainand chest and belly and a third of his limbs and it was so disgusting I passedout again. Maybe I was better off dead.

But I woke up to him kicking my face again. Dio had bloodall over his face.

“Wake up!”

he said.

“I could just leave you here and let the vampire ‘me’ snackon you when he wakes, but you’re a Joestar, for better or for worse, andthere’s no telling what you’ll do that I failed to predict. So I can’t let youdie here. Take me where

I’m going while the Cube House effect is still on you.”

I didn’t have the energy to do anything, go ahead and tossme aside, don’t worry.

“I’ll hide and sleep for two years until the fake me thatshares my mind and soul is killed. But come for me then so I can collect theStand again. Then go to the Canary Islands, to England, and in the same place,on the back of Morioh, to 2012’s England thirty-six times through the birth anddeath of the universe. Your wife is waiting for you there.”

Lisa Lisa.

Even now that made me want to try a little harder. I managedto push myself up on my elbow, just high enough to see that there was somethingJapanese written on the deck in blood. A dying message left by Giorno Giovanna.Dio couldn’t read it, but I knew hiragana well enough.

ゆうき

“Courage”, of course. He was telling me to bebrave. Giorno Giovanna had sacrificed himself to save me. Shit! Shit! Shit!Because I didn’t have enough courage, he’d had to die! I couldn’t justmanufacture narrative flow. If I wanted this Beyond to work for all of us, notjust myself, I needed courage. I had to start being more proactive.