Shintaro hadn't gone stupid.
He took one deliberate step forward and addressed the featureless white void directly, his voice carrying the quiet confidence of someone who has already mapped the problem.
"So what you're telling me," he said, "is that this space can only be released if someone strikes you from the outside. Correct?"
A pause.
Then the Pilot's voice came from all directions at once, soaked in mockery.
"Heh... exactly. The only exit is someone on the outside beating me senseless." He let the words spread through the white space, savoring the shape of them. "But tell me — can any of you get out right now?"
A wet, repulsive laugh followed.
"I don't think so."
"Oh? So it's that kind of Stand User," Joseph said, pointing at the air with the righteous energy of someone identifying a specific category of personal failure. "Too scared of DIO snapping your neck for failing your mission — so you crawl into a hole and bark from inside it like you've actually accomplished something!"
"You —!"
Whether Joseph had correctly identified a nerve, or whether the Pilot simply had poor emotional fortification, his composure shredded instantly.
"Shut up, Old Man! All you have left is your big mouth!" A breath — then something almost luxurious entered his tone. "I am not letting you out. Not ever. Stay in there, eat whatever pathetic scraps you have left, and then..."
He drew the pause out.
"Starve to death. Hahahahaha!!"
"*Ah!! SHIT!! You despicable coward!!" Joseph launched into a full revolution in place, both hands on his head.
"Old Man." Jotaro's voice was flat and immovable. "Don't let him pull you."
"JoJo is right," Kakyoin confirmed, already crouching, fingertips brushing the surface of the white floor in careful, testing motions. "His provocations are deliberate." He looked up at Polnareff. "What else do you know about his Stand's mechanics?"
Polnareff shook his head, jaw set. "Everything I've already told you. He approached me to form a temporary alliance. He..." The words slowed. Something shifted behind his eyes — grief compacted into anger compacted into something more tired than either. "He didn't share details. It seems from the beginning, he planned to lock all of us in here together."
While the group cast for solutions, Shintaro sighed.
It was a heavy sigh, slightly theatrical, with a particular quality of resigned defeat that he calibrated precisely.
He looked up at the white void.
"Sigh... I think we might genuinely be dead this time."
"HEY! Shintaro!!" Joseph grabbed him by both shoulders and shook with the urgency of a man who has identified the wrong person surrendering. "*Pull yourself together! You're going to give up to a bastard like this?!"
Polnareff looked at him with open confusion.
The man who had just dismantled Silver Chariot's offense piece by piece was not, by any observable evidence, the type to fold this quickly.
Jotaro and Kakyoin exchanged a look across the white space.
A thread of understanding passed between them.
Oh. I see it.
"Heh... so you're begging for mercy already?" The Pilot's voice came through uncertain — half triumph, half suspicion. "Too bad. Big Brother Pilot isn't opening this door no matter what. Get down on your knees if you want. It won't help."
"No, you've misunderstood," Shintaro said, shaking his head gently. "I'm not begging. I just have..." He let a small sigh escape. "...regrets."
"Regrets?" The voice paused.
"You serve DIO willingly," Shintaro continued, his tone careful and almost sympathetic. "No Flesh Bud required. Which means you know far more than Polnareff ever did — about DIO's plans, about what he's arranged for us along the way."
He let the implication sit in the white air.
"Am I wrong?"
"If you're fishing for information," the Pilot said, impatience sharpening his voice, "save the breath. I won't say a single word even as you're dying."
"No, no," Shintaro said again, and this time allowed a soft, rueful sound that was almost a laugh. "I wasn't planning to ask anything about DIO. I was just thinking..." He gestured vaguely at the white void surrounding them. "Our journey to Egypt has barely started. The road ahead must have been full of DIO's most spectacular arrangements. Stand Users we can't imagine. Plans put together over months."
His voice carried something that sounded genuinely close to pity.
"But none of that matters now. Because we exit here, early, at your hands. Everything DIO went through the trouble of deploying will have been wasted."
The white space held its silence.
Even Joseph stopped moving.
Several seconds passed before the Pilot spoke again, his voice different — still smug, but with a new quality in it, something that wanted.
"...What exactly are you suggesting?"
"If you simply trap us until we die," Shintaro said, leaning forward the slightest amount, "when you report back to DIO, all you can say is 'mission accomplished.' Clean. Efficient. Forgettable."
He tilted his head.
"But if you told us DIO's plans — showed us exactly how overwhelming the arrangements ahead were — made us fully understand the hopelessness of our position — and then reported how we reacted to that knowledge..."
A pause of exactly the right length.
"DIO would find that genuinely entertaining. Wouldn't he."
The temptation was audible in the silence that followed.
"...I didn't expect you to be so reasonable," the Pilot finally said.
"We're already completely sealed in here," Shintaro pressed, gently. "Even if we knew every detail of what's coming — what could we do? Use the information to rehearse our own deaths? Just to satisfy ourselves?"
"Hahahaha!! WELL SAID!!"
The last of the Pilot's caution collapsed like something that had been leaning too long and finally gave up.
"Since you're so eager to understand your own doom, I'll be generous! Even though I don't know the specific details... I can tell you this:"
His voice rose with evident pleasure.
"If you somehow escaped from Hong Kong — and you won't — what's waiting next is 'Dark Blue Moon,' wielder of the Moon Tarot card." A pause, and then something warmer crept in. "And my biological brother. Just like me, he has a powerful Stand — 'Thanksgiving.'"
Nobody in the sealed space moved.
"His ability is quite simple and elegant," the Pilot continued, his delight unmistakable. "First, he helps you. Gives you something — food, a small favor, a kindness. Once you feel genuine gratitude toward him from the bottom of your heart..."
He let the tension build.
"He activates the ability. An invisible elastic band forms around your neck." His voice softened into something almost affectionate. "And then — shua! It strangles the life out of you. How's that? A very thoughtful return gift, isn't it?"
Shintaro lowered his eyes.
Thanksgiving. Intelligence acquired.
He reviewed what he'd just learned with the private efficiency of someone taking inventory. The Stand was original — not from the source material — but even hearing its mechanic in the abstract, the assessment was difficult to escape.
It sounded, in a word, feeble.
"Sigh," Shintaro said. "What a shame. The honor of defeating us really should have gone to your brother."
He held a straight face. He was proud of how straight it was.
An invisible surge of narrative gravity seemed to pulse through the white space.
Gogogogogogogo —
Standing here were:
Jotaro Kujo — who refuses to pay for a meal if he believes the food was substandard.
Joseph Joestar — who in his youth systematically hunted the Pillar Men, ancient ultimate lifeforms, to extinction.
Jean Pierre Polnareff — who once attempted to flirt with the fifty-year-old Enya the Hag.
Noriaki Kakyoin — whose culinary craftsmanship had once produced weaponized porridge with the dedication of a master artisan.
Mohammed Avdol — who participated in a public physical altercation with Joseph Joestar on a city street that remains difficult to describe with dignity.
Shintaro Muse — who learned the Golden Spirit from sources unknown and skipped class on the very first day of school.
A Stand whose entire mechanic depended on generating authentic gratitude in its targets.
Against these six people specifically.
Shintaro pressed his lips together very firmly.
"Wait," the Pilot said slowly. "Why are you laughing?"
[got my refund am quiet happy with it ]
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