[reuploading till chapter 20]
After a quick round of packing, five figures gathered before the gates of the Kujo residence.
Members of the Speedwagon Foundation moved in and out with practiced efficiency around them, following Joseph's instructions to take over Holly's care. Medical equipment and personnel settled into position with the quiet competence of people who had done this before in worse circumstances.
"JoJo — before we depart," Avdol said, stepping forward.
From within his robe he produced a deck of Tarot cards, their edges slightly worn and curled with age. He held them with the ease of something he had carried for a long time.
"Allow me to name everyone's Stand using these cards."
"Naming them?" Jotaro turned his head, casting a sideways look at the deck in Avdol's hand.
"Exactly," Avdol said. "Each of us draws one card at random. I'll name your Stand based on the card you receive."
The group gathered around.
The cards moved through Avdol's fingers like water, producing a dry, whispering sound.
Jotaro drew first.
On his card, countless stars shimmered and drifted against an endless dark field.
"Star Platinum."
Joseph followed.
A lone hermit stood atop a mountain, a lantern raised in the dark at his side.
"Hermit Purple."
Kakyoin turned his card over next.
A hierophant sat upon a sacred throne, robed in green, one hand raised in benediction.
"Hierophant Green."
Finally, Shintaro reached out and drew.
On the face of the card stood a figure with one hand raised toward the heavens and the other pointing down toward the earth. Before him on a table lay the four symbols of creation, each one glowing with a faint and purposeful light — cup, sword, pentacle, and wand.
Avdol looked at the card. A brief flash of surprise crossed his eyes, replaced quickly by a broad, genuine smile.
"It seems," he said, folding his arms, "that you and I share an interesting connection after all."
He turned to Shintaro, his tone turning solemn.
"From this moment forward, your Stand shall be called: Black Magician."
He continued, as if reciting from something long memorized. "In the upright position, the Magician represents success, strength, ingenuity, and mastery — the power to turn potential into reality through skill and will. In the reversed position, it signifies deception, misuse of ability, and hollow ambition."
The resonance was unsettling in how perfectly it fit. Shintaro felt a quiet chill at the back of his neck. Perhaps even something as chaotic as his Stand had been written into a pattern long before he arrived.
"I don't like this name."
A small black head emerged from Shintaro's shoulder, antenna tilting with displeasure.
Shintaro gently patted it on the head. "It's good enough," he said quietly. "Your old name was too strange to say out loud anyway."
"Tch."
The Black Sperm crossed its stubby arms and turned its face away with all the theatrical dignity of a creature that has decided to be formally aggrieved. It was genuinely, visibly sulking.
But when it glanced back up and found Shintaro looking at it with an expression that was, undeniably, fond — the Black Sperm shivered.
"Main body, don't look at me like that. It's unsettling." A pause. "Fine. Black Magician it is. Have it your way."
And with that, it retreated back into his collar.
The naming complete, the five of them exchanged a look across the space of a breath.
Without a word spoken, they stepped back in perfect unison — left hands hanging at their sides, right hands crossing their chests, bodies angled toward the gate with an identical quiet resolve.
"Ready to move!!"
Joseph's voice rang out with a momentum entirely disproportionate to the occasion.
They strode forward and climbed into the Speedwagon Foundation's private vehicle, heading toward the airport.
The car glided smoothly through the streets. City lights outside the windows stretched into long, blurred ribbons.
Shintaro leaned back in the rear seat, fingertips tapping a slow, unconscious rhythm against his knee.
A strange, swelling emotion filled his chest without permission.
These people — who had existed on the other side of a screen for as long as he could remember — were sitting beside him right now. Not as images. Not as panels on a page. As people, with weight and warmth and the particular realness of being physically present in the same space.
Jotaro was directly to his left. Kakyoin was on his right, looking out the window with calm, thoughtful eyes. Avdol sat diagonally ahead with his hands on his knees, resting with his eyes closed. Joseph occupied the passenger seat, quietly confirming the route with the driver in a low voice.
The feeling reminded him of something from before this life — the specific, fragile comfort of a late bus heading home after a long year, tired and uncertain of what waited, but wrapped nonetheless in a warmth that didn't require explanation.
He turned his head slightly.
Jotaro's profile was sharp and distant. Kakyoin's expression was still and calm beneath his red bangs. Avdol's breathing was steady, measured, the kind that comes from a man who has learned to take rest wherever it's offered.
Shintaro realized, distantly, that his body was trembling.
"Is something wrong?"
Kakyoin's voice was gentle. Quiet. The kind of attentiveness that didn't make a production of itself.
Jotaro and Avdol both looked across at him at the same time.
Shintaro opened his mouth. He didn't have the words to explain this particular feeling — the absurdity of being grateful, the strange luck of being here at all. He looked at their faces and let it sit unspoken.
In the end, he simply smiled.
"Defeating DIO..." he said, keeping his voice soft, "that counts as saving the world, right?"
A pause.
"Thinking that I'm doing something like that... my body feels like it's resonating with itself. I can't control the excitement." He let out a quiet breath. "Even the anticipation."
Jotaro tugged his hat brim down.
"Don't let the excitement make you careless," he said flatly. "If you drag us down when it matters, I won't spare you the lecture."
After a few days together, Shintaro had learned to hear what Jotaro actually meant beneath the words he chose.
"I won't," he said, and meant it.
The car rounded a bend. The airport terminal emerged in the distance, its lights bright and ordinary against the night.
A small black head poked out from Shintaro's collar and looked left, then right, with the alert expression of a very small sentry.
"Main body," it muttered, in a voice only Shintaro could hear, "your heartbeat is extremely noisy."
Shintaro pressed his collar gently closed, a smile spreading from somewhere behind his eyes.
Of course it was.
He had stepped into a legend. This moment, which should only ever have existed through glass, was entirely and completely real.
The car eased into the departures lane and stopped.
They climbed out, moved through the terminal, cleared security, and boarded the aircraft.
As Shintaro settled into his seat, his gaze swept the cabin without appearing to.
According to what he remembered, DIO's first assassin — Gray Fly — should be somewhere on this flight. The old man who took pleasure in cutting out the tongues of living people.
But the cabin showed him only ordinary passengers: couples murmuring together, businessmen with their eyes closed, travelers adjusting seatbelts and tucking away luggage with the habitual motions of people who fly often.
No familiar face. No identifiable pressure. No trace of anything wrong.
"...Strange."
His frown was slight and private.
The thought followed immediately: he couldn't forcibly reshape the flow of events just because his presence had altered the timing. Without the battles ahead, without the crucible of each encounter, this team would arrive in Cairo underprepared. He knew how that story ended when preparation was incomplete.
But he also knew, with a clarity that was almost physical, that he could not simply watch innocent passengers be used as entertainment by something that was already on this plane.
He closed his eyes.
In the shared darkness of his mind, he spoke.
"Boys. I need your eyes. Watch every single passenger on this aircraft."
In the cabin, thirty thousand tiny black figures slipped soundlessly from his shadow into every available corner.
Seatbacks. Overhead compartments. The frames of the windows.
Every face was being watched.
Shintaro opened his eyes.
The cabin lights had dimmed to soft amber. The safety announcement drifted across the speakers, calm and rote. Outside the windows the sky had deepened into a seamless ink-blue, and the runway lights formed two long chains of brightness disappearing into the dark.
The engines built to a steady roar. The plane began to move.
He leaned back, catching his reflection in the window glass — and on the shoulder of his reflection, a Black Magician, small and watchful, turning its head with the quiet vigilance of something that intends to be useful.
The aircraft lifted from the runway.
Weightlessness tugged briefly at his insides.
The journey had truly begun.
_____________________
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