Within the circle, the student with the backpack stiffened, then slowly raised his head.
His mouth opened—but the voice that emerged wasn't his.
"You ruined everything I had."
"You threw my king—my only faith—into prison."
"You tore his empire apart… let those lowly hyenas devour his inheritance."
It wasn't just him.
The office worker beside him, the homeless man farther off, even the woman who looked like a housewife—all their lips moved in perfect sync.
Dozens of voices, different in timbre but identical in fury, fused into one: a woman's.
A chilling chorus.
"You are the real demon, Joren Joestar."
"Wherever you go, chaos follows. With your unseen hand, you shattered the balance Hell's Kitchen fought so hard to build."
Yare… yare
In the end, she was nothing but a rabid dog leashed to that fat pig.
Now her master's caged—and the dog's barking free.
"Are you done?"
"Yes. Now it's my turn."
Joren lifted his gaze, emerald eyes sweeping over the possessed throng before him—human puppets turned megaphones.
"You want revenge for your master? Fine. Nothing wrong with that."
"But you made one mistake." His voice dropped, cold and sharp. "You dragged innocents into this."
"Or do you think I won't touch you… just because you're hiding behind them?"
"Don't be ridiculous!"
"You don't even have the guts to face me yourself!"
"You—! You're asking for it!"
Her scream ripped from dozens of throats at once.
"Kill him! Tear him to pieces!!"
The suited office worker swung his briefcase like a club.
The ragged homeless man yanked a jagged shard of liquor bottle from his coat and lunged for Joren's gut.
The student whipped his backpack like a flail.
Housewives. Young couples. Street vendors.
Dozens of ordinary people—now fearless, fanatical soldiers.
One goal: kill the man standing alone in the wasteland.
Ugh…
Seriously. I really didn't want to do this.
Joren sighed.
"Ora!"
Star Platinum flicked a single tap at the hurtling briefcase.
Crack!
Leather exploded into fragments. The office worker flew backward—not thrown, but guided—and landed softly on the grass, unconscious before he hit the ground.
Two fingers caught the broken glass mid-stab. A light flick.
Clang!
The homeless man's wrist went numb. The shard spun away into the dark.
A precise chop to the neck—silence.
"Ora ora ora ora ora!"
Fists wove a net of golden motion around Joren's body.
The charging student crumpled, chest struck clean, collapsing without a cry.
The woman sneaking up from behind tripped over nothing—a whisper of a kick—and dropped like a sack.
Every strike from Star Platinum was surgical.
Controlled.
Merciful.
No broken bones.
No blood.
Just unconscious bodies, laid out like fallen dominoes.
Less than ten seconds.
The first wave lay still.
For a heartbeat, the wasteland held its breath.
But Joren's brow furrowed deeper.
This wasn't over.
Shh… shh…
Footsteps. More of them.
Then more.
A second wave surged in from the east.
A third from the west.
An endless tide of hollow-eyed civilians, marching toward him—mouths already opening, voices rising in unison.
Silently, with stiff, mechanical steps, the crowd reformed into a tighter, denser ring.
Their number had already surpassed one hundred.
And it was still growing.
Ripples of psychic energy radiated outward from Joren—three hundred meters… four hundred…
His perception range had hit its limit, yet he still couldn't find her.
Before entering this zone, every controlled civilian had shown stable, ordinary vital signs. Now, they moved like puppets strung on invisible wires, their eyes vacant, their breaths unnervingly synchronized.
Her control range defied logic. She wasn't even here.
It was as if some unseen player sat comfortably behind a screen—maybe sipping coffee—casually feeding innocent lives into a meat grinder, wave after wave, like disposable pawns in a real-time strategy game.
Yare… yare…
Joren's stomach twisted as he watched the dark mass shift, coiling like a serpent before the strike. A cold unease prickled his skin.
He couldn't kill them. Only incapacitate.
Running? Impossible. If he fled, hundreds of mind-controlled civilians would flood into the city like a contagion. The resulting chaos would dwarf this nightmare a hundredfold.
He was trapped.
Buzz—
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
Who the hell was calling now?
He glanced at the screen: Unknown Number.
"Joren, this is Jimmy Wu. Stay calm. We've established a cordon around your location."
Joren scanned the sea of hollow-eyed faces closing in. "A cordon?"
"Yes. S.H.I.E.L.D. has sealed off a two-kilometer radius. We've intercepted roughly two hundred civilians en route to you."
"But…?"
"But we still can't pinpoint the controller." Jimmy's voice tightened. "Her range exceeds all known parameters—and she doesn't need direct auditory contact. Our tech team's running EEG scans and psychic resonance sweeps, but it'll take time."
"How long?" Joren asked flatly.
"At least an hour."
A pause. Heavy. Apologetic.
An hour?
These people wouldn't give him sixty seconds of peace.
Just then, the phone rang again.
The caller ID made him blink: Matt Murdock.
"Joren." Matt's voice was urgent, strained. "I'm hearing something… wrong. Hundreds of heartbeats—all out of sync, arrhythmic. What's going on?"
"Someone's using telepathic control. Civilians are being weaponized against me. Any leads?"
Silence stretched for a few breaths.
"I think I know who it is," Matt finally said, his tone dropping low. "Besides the heartbeats… I heard other sounds. Whispers. Laughter. Familiar ones."
His voice shifted—laced with something Joren had never heard from him before: shame.
"Who?"
"Typhoid Mary."
Matt exhaled sharply. "Real name: Mary Walker. She has dissociative identity disorder."
Joren frowned. "Typhoid Mary? That codename sounds…"
"She used to be a mercenary," Matt cut in, the shame deepening. "Took shady contracts—assassinations, intel extraction, mind games. The kind that leave no trace."
"How do you know so much?"
Another silence. Then a slow, pained sigh.
"Because…" Matt's voice cracked, just slightly. "She's my ex-girlfriend."
What?
Joren nearly dropped the phone.
So the woman orchestrating this circus—this wave of possessed civilians, this urban siege—was Daredevil's ex?
And it was all because he'd helped put Kingpin behind bars?
Of course it is.
What else would it be? A supervillain love triangle wrapped in psychic warfare and urban decay.
"Mary Walker," Matt repeated, voice thick with regret. "We dated once. I thought she was just a nurse. Didn't know about her other selves… her real work… until it was too late."
Joren pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why target me? And where is she?"
"I don't know her exact position—but I can hear her heartbeat."
Matt paused. "West side of Hell's Kitchen. Probably in one of the abandoned high-rises. It's her usual haunt."
"You heading there?"
"I'm already moving."
There was resolve in his voice now—but also guilt. "This is on me. I should've dealt with her years ago. I never should've dragged you into this."
Joren didn't answer right away. His gaze swept over the crowd—ordinary people, stolen from their lives, turned into weapons through no fault of their own.
Finally, he said, "There's an old water tower on the north edge of Hell's Kitchen. Meet me there. We'll go after her together."
"Okay."
He ended the call.
The civilians shuffled closer, their movements eerily coordinated.
Daredevil's ex-girlfriend.
Mind controller.
Multiple personalities.
Every label attached to her was a tactical nightmare.
But worse than that? He'd have to confront her—with him. The ex. The man who knew her best… and failed her worst.
That awkward, tragic history was far more dangerous than any mob of brainwashed civilians.
Joren took a slow breath.
"Fine," he murmured, more to himself
than to the encroaching horde. "Let's end this farce."
Golden light erupted from beneath his feet, flooding the wasteland in radiant brilliance.
Behind him, Star Platinum materialized—fists clenched, eyes blazing.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA—!"
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