[reuploading till chapter 20]
Gray Fly was no fool.
A Stand built around assassination and engineered "accidents" didn't commit itself recklessly just because a few provocations had landed. From the moment it appeared in the cabin, it had been circling — patient, invisible, threading through the airflow like a thought that hasn't fully formed yet — waiting for the precise opening it needed.
"Where is the Stand User?!" Joseph's eyes swept the cabin in sharp, controlled arcs, his voice kept deliberately low but his frustration impossible to entirely contain. "Damn it — if only I had a camera, one shot of Spirit Photography and I'd pull that bastard out no matter where he's hiding!"
The tension in the cabin was taut enough to vibrate.
Then —
Click.
The rear restroom door opened.
The white-haired old man who had gone in earlier shuffled out, rubbing his eyes as if he'd dozed off standing at the sink. His steps were unsteady, his posture loose, his face carrying the expression of a man who has temporarily surrendered to fatigue.
He walked directly into the center of the invisible battlefield.
Black Sperm crouched in shadows. Gray Fly circled silently overhead. Hierophant Green lay stretched and waiting. Star Platinum's presence compressed the air around Jotaro like a held breath.
To an ordinary human being, the aircraft cabin was still just a quiet plane at night.
"Hmm...?" The old man frowned, catching the tense postures of the group. "What's with you folks? Why are you all standing like that?"
He took another step forward, moving directly into the narrow gap between Kakyoin and the gray shadow hovering above.
Avdol's eyes went wide.
"No — don't go over there!!"
Too late.
The gray elytra erupted into a piercing mechanical buzz.
Gray Fly didn't angle toward Kakyoin. It became a streak of distorted motion and drove directly toward the old man's face — toward his slightly parted mouth.
"Despicable!" Joseph's voice came out like a struck bell.
Kakyoin's fingers locked into position, Hierophant Green's arms snapping into alignment — but he couldn't fire. The old man's body crossed the trajectory completely. An Emerald Splash at this distance would tear through flesh without even slowing.
"Hahahaha!!" Gray Fly's laughter was layered and shrill, half voice and half vibrating wing. "I'll rip out this old geezer's tongue! Try and stop me! Even ten guns fired point-blank couldn't touch me — jie-jie-jie!"
"Boys — build a wall!!" Shintaro's order came out like a crack of static.
Black Sperm surged forward in a compressed wave, bodies stacking against each other as they fought to form a barrier between the old man and the closing gray shape.
But it wasn't fast enough.
The wall reached barely half a person's height before Gray Fly tore past the leading edge, closing the last meter to the old man's lips with the inevitability of a needle descending.
"Shit!!" Joseph's curse rang through the cabin.
Black Sperm still forming — Kakyoin still unable to fire — Star Platinum still half a step too far — everything arriving at the same compressed, terrible instant.
Then —
Shintaro and Kakyoin's eyes found each other across the space between their seats.
It lasted less than a heartbeat.
Both of them smiled. (Not for any reason involving Gray Fly's undergarments — simply because both of them, in the same fraction of a second, had arrived at the same answer.)
"Ahhh! Kakyoin! Shintaro! Are you two insane?!" Joseph's hands flew to his face, eyes almost departing his skull entirely. "How are you laughing right now?!"
Shintaro's voice cut cleanly through the chaos.
"Black Magician."
The gray shape froze.
Barely an inch from the old man's open mouth, Gray Fly let out a warped, disbelieving shriek.
"Nani?!"
Every Black Sperm that had been riding the old man since he first entered the restroom — sitting on his collar, his shoulders, the tips of his grey hair, placed there and left in patient silence since long before the Stand had made its move — acted simultaneously.
Tiny arms clamped down like steel around Gray Fly's wings, antennae, and every jointed limb, multiple Black Sperm locking each point with a grip that multiplied every time Gray Fly struggled.
"Got you, you filthy bug..."
"Hehehe... want to guess how we're going to play with you now?"
The layered, delighted laughter rippled through the air, and for the first time since the flight began —
Gray Fly panicked.
It could tear through one. It could manage two.
But more than a dozen pulling simultaneously, locking it in place no matter how violently it vibrated, was something its speed could not resolve.
"Die."
Kakyoin's voice was flat and absolute.
Hierophant Green struck.
Seven tentacles lunged from seven angles at once.
Pfft. Pfft-pfft.
They pierced Gray Fly's body cleanly, pinning it in the air like a specimen.
Then the tentacles snapped apart in opposing directions.
RIP —!!
Gray Fly didn't even have the time to form a sound. Its body shattered into fragmented grey-white points of light that scattered across the cabin and faded into nothing.
Silence fell.
Shintaro's gaze moved immediately to the old man.
He stood with one hand raised vaguely to his neck, blinking.
"...Why did it suddenly get cold?" he murmured, turning, and walked back to his seat as if the previous thirty seconds had not occurred.
Shintaro swept the cabin. Every passenger still asleep. No movement. No reaction. No one stirring or mumbling or shifting position in any way that suggested awareness.
As if the Stand User genuinely wasn't in this cabin at all.
But Shintaro knew better.
Gray Fly was not a long-range autonomous Stand. Its user had to be on this aircraft. The question was simply where.
Avdol spoke quietly, his voice carrying the particular gravity of someone who has had time to think about what they just saw.
"That thing... it tried to rip out a living person's tongue."
He pressed his fingertips together briefly, then opened them.
"There's no mistake. In the Tarot, The Tower represents destruction — the sudden shattering of a journey. That Stand is Gray Fly, the calamity-bearer." He paused. "It engineers mass-casualty events and disguises them as accidents. The air crash in England last year that killed over three hundred people — that was its work."
The temperature in the cabin seemed to drop.
"I'd heard of it," Avdol continued, "but I never expected it to become one of DIO's subordinates." He was quiet for a moment. "And given how precisely it acted just now — DIO has almost certainly given it detailed intelligence on each of our abilities."
The silence that followed was the particular kind that meant everyone had heard the implication.
If the enemy already knew their Stands — every battle from here forward would begin as a trap.
Jotaro pulled his hat brim lower, his eyes entirely in shadow. Kakyoin drew Hierophant Green back in, quietly, without ceremony. Joseph's knuckles cracked as his fists closed.
"...This is irritating," Jotaro said, from somewhere beneath his hat.
Joseph turned to Shintaro. "When exactly did your little guys crawl onto that old man? I was watching the whole time."
"They were there from the beginning," Kakyoin answered calmly, before Shintaro could speak.
He looked at Shintaro with an expression that held something like recognition.
At the moment their eyes had met across the cabin, both of them had already understood the same thing. The Black Sperm stationed on the old man had never left their position. They had simply been waiting.
"The Black Sperm were monitoring him as part of the standard sweep," Kakyoin said. "We didn't plan to use them this way. It simply aligned."
Joseph blinked. Then he laughed — the big, releasing kind that took the knot out of the air.
"Hah! I thought you two had both lost your minds!" He stepped forward and landed a generous palm on Shintaro's back. "Good lad — you really do remind me of myself at your age. One day I'll have to sit you down and tell you about my heroic exploits in full."
Shintaro swayed slightly from the impact and scratched his head. "Not at all — if you'd caught the positioning earlier, Mr. Joseph, you would have come up with something far more thorough."
From the back of the cabin, Jotaro's voice came, unhurried and flat.
"So. Are we done talking. Or are we finding that rat."
Joseph laughed again and turned toward the front of the aircraft.
"Hear that, Shintaro? Someone's getting impatient."
The hunt wasn't finished.
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