There was no blood.
Polnareff's expression locked into something that wasn't quite disbelief and wasn't quite recognition — a frozen moment of recalculation.
Because Shintaro's forehead hadn't been pierced.
At the critical instant, a mass of black had erupted from beneath the skin itself — not from shadow or collar but from the surface of his brow — actively meeting the incoming point. A cluster of palm-sized Black Sperm clung to the tip of Silver Chariot's rapier with both hands, and the one at the very base had used its own body as the terminal stop.
The rapier had gone through it cleanly.
But that fraction of a second was enough.
"Who are you looking down on, you broom-headed bastard?!"
The injured Black Sperm let out a shrill scream — and then, with the specific drama of a creature that has decided to make a point, split directly down the center into two identical Black Sperm. Both immediately began climbing the blade alongside the others.
"Black Magician!"
Shintaro leapt backward, opening distance as he shouted.
Crash —
It was less like a release and more like a breach. Black liquid seemed to pour from everywhere simultaneously — collar, cuffs, the hem of his trousers — and resolved almost immediately into the densely-packed forms of over ten thousand Black Sperm, flooding the restaurant floor in an unstoppable dark tide.
The remainder Shintaro kept sealed in his mental space. A reserve. An insurance policy.
"Is... is this his Stand's full capability?" Kakyoin's pupils contracted visibly. He remembered the infirmary clearly — and this was not the same number. Not remotely close. "How are there so many more than before?"
"Then I'll just shred them all!" Polnareff's response was instantaneous and unimpressed. "Silver Chariot!"
Swish — swish — swish — swish — swish!
Silver Chariot became a living afterimage, flinging the Black Sperm that had climbed its blade off like insects shaken from a branch. Then it detonated into a storm of sword light that swept across the floor in a continuous, indiscriminate curtain.
Puchi. Puchi. Puchi.
The Black Sperm were sliced apart like soft tofu. Clean. Effortless.
"Hahahaha! Weak! They can't take even a single hit!" Polnareff laughed with the full-throated satisfaction of someone whose first impression has been confirmed.
The laughter caught in his throat half a second later.
Because the shredded Black Sperm didn't disappear.
They moved.
Split bodies wriggled. Divided. Multiplied. Each fragment became a complete individual, scrambling back to its feet with the cheerful resilience of something that has decided death is mostly a suggestion.
"It hurts so much—"
"I want to cut him too! Let me at him!"
The sliced Black Sperm didn't simply recover — their numbers increased, filling in the gaps Silver Chariot had carved.
"What — they can't be killed?!" Polnareff's momentum faltered. This had not been in any intelligence DIO had provided him. Not a word about division. Not a hint about regeneration.
"Your sword is fast," Shintaro said, standing behind a table with his arms folded, voice carrying across the restaurant floor with cool composure. "But can it outpace cell division?"
The Black Sperm on the floor surged together in a sudden coordinated lurch, compressing and stacking upward into a massive black hand composed of thousands of individual bodies, reaching for Silver Chariot's sword arm from below.
"Shred it!"
Silver Chariot swung furiously — severed limbs scattered, bodies burst apart, the combat was immediate and brutal. But the numbers were simply staggering. There were too many.
"Hm...?" Polnareff felt it before he saw it. "Why is the sword getting heavy?"
He looked.
Silver Chariot's joints, its elbows, its knees, the hilt of the rapier itself — all were already crawling with small black figures, packed so densely they looked like something growing from the metal. Clinging to every articulated surface with the tenacious grip of creatures that have decided this is their Stand now.
"Hold him!"
"Don't let him move!"
"I want to crawl inside the armor and look around!"
"Get off me—" Polnareff snarled, trying to force Silver Chariot to shake free. Useless. More poured on with every attempt. The Stand vanished beneath a rising black tide, slammed to the floor, and buried.
Polnareff himself went next — Black Sperm surging over him in layers, wrapping him into a dense cocoon from the neck down. Only his silver-haired head remained visible, face turning progressively redder as the compression tightened.
Shintaro walked over, stopped, and crouched down to meet Polnareff's eye level without rushing.
"Now," he said evenly. "Can we talk properly?"
A long breath from the cocoon.
Then Polnareff closed his eyes — and laughed.
"Heh... you really are frustratingly cautious."
BANG!!!
A violent, metallic concussion tore through the air. The armor encasing Silver Chariot exploded outward, blasting every attached Black Sperm away in a single detonating burst. Plates shattered, shards scattered, and Silver Chariot's form contracted sharply — sleeker, stripped down, fine lines of steam rising from its now-exposed body.
Unarmored. Freed.
In the same breath it regained mobility, the rapier became a silver storm — spinning and slicing with absolute precision, shearing away every Black Sperm clinging to Polnareff without grazing him once. He tore free of the remaining cocoon, rolled his shoulders, and flashed a wide, unhinged grin.
"It seems your cell division has limits after all," he said. "As for my Silver Chariot — it can trade its defense for speed. Right now, I'm so fast you won't even see an afterimage."
He raised one finger toward the recovering black tide.
"Five minutes. That's all I need to erase every last one."
Shintaro smiled faintly.
"You can try."
The Black Sperm surged again.
And Polnareff hadn't been bluffing.
Unarmored Silver Chariot operated in a different dimension of speed entirely. The Black Sperm that touched the sword curtain were reduced to black mist before regeneration could even begin — obliterated rather than divided, the strikes too fast and too total for the cell-splitting mechanism to answer.
"Four minutes and thirty seconds left!" Polnareff shouted over the blade-wind, silver hair whipping in its wake.
It was unsettlingly reminiscent, Shintaro thought, of Atomic Samurai working through Black Sperm in a certain other story. Except here, Shintaro's current reserves were only thirty thousand — and that ceiling was real.
Silver Chariot pressed forward without mercy. Then — suddenly — it reversed its sword and drove the blade straight down into the floor with full force.
BOOM!
The impact detonated the ground, stone and air exploding outward, tearing a direct corridor through the Black Sperm mass by sheer displacement. Silver Chariot shot along that path with the rapier pointed at Shintaro's throat.
No hesitation. No deviation.
Shintaro's pupils shrank — but his hands were already moving.
Golden Hamon blazed across his arms as he seized the edge of the nearest heavy solid wood table and threw the entire thing — bowls, plates, soup, and all — directly at Silver Chariot.
A cold flash.
The table was shredded in the air, reduced to splinters and porcelain shards that exploded in every direction.
Silver Chariot burst through the debris — faster than before — still closing.
But Shintaro was holding two thick table legs — snapped free from the tabletop in the same instant he'd thrown it, both fists curled around them with Hamon already threaded through the wood.
He flung them forward.
Silver Chariot didn't even bother to parry. It tilted its body with contemptuous precision, letting both table legs pass within millimeters of the armor.
Child's play.
And then —
Dozens of Black Sperm sprang from the grain of the flying wood at the apex of the throw, using the table legs' momentum as a launch vector to arc directly toward Polnareff himself.
Every single one of them had puffed-out cheeks, filled with something.
Oh no.
Polnareff's instincts screamed. But Silver Chariot had already committed forward — the rapier touched cloth —
And stopped.
From the shadow of Shintaro's collar, a prepared mass of Black Sperm erupted into a dense, compact wall of living black flesh that caught the blade point and held it.
Puchi!!!!
The sword buried deep — but not a single inch further.
Shintaro leaned out slightly from behind the living barricade, his expression mild and almost apologetic.
"Sorry," he said quietly. "But it looks like I win."
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