"Forget the theorizing," Joseph said, waving a hand at the pulsating thing. "Jotaro — take care of the Flesh Bud."
"Understood."
Jotaro stepped forward and crouched. Star Platinum materialized behind him with the dense, heavy presence it always carried — filling the available space, compressing the air around it in that particular way that reminded everyone in the room exactly what kind of Stand it was.
The purple arm extended, fingers shaping into something precise. Tweezers made of iron and will.
"Ora."
The touch was surgical.
The moment Star Platinum made contact with the Flesh Bud, every one of its tentacles pulled free simultaneously — like a nest of startled snakes uncoiling all at once, withdrawing from deep inside Polnareff's skull and writhing violently in the open air, searching for a new host with the blind, desperate intensity of something that knows it's been expelled.
They found nobody.
Everyone was standing well back.
Joseph, watching the tentacles convulse and thrash in midair, underwent a visible and severe physical reaction.
"Yiiiii!" He jumped in place, features contorted, arms flailing in a way that bore no relationship to any dignified posture. "Aaahh, Jotaro, pull it out already! These things are absolutely disgusting!" He covered half his face with one hand, peering through his fingers with an expression of someone watching a car accident. "It's wriggling — I — I even want to crush it with my own hands! Pinch it apart piece by piece!!"
As he spoke, Joseph's body twisted and contorted in ways that politely defied conventional anatomy.
Shintaro, watching him from the side, felt the particular intellectual crisis of a person whose favorite fictional character is in the process of doing something extremely undignified in front of them.
He understood the impulse completely, for what it was worth. Those dancing blood-red tentacles triggered something primitive — disgust layered over an overwhelming, irrational urge to stomp on them, the same way a cockroach on a kitchen floor demanded immediate personal resolution.
"You're being extremely loud, Old Man." Jotaro's eye twitched.
"Aaahh! Hurry it up, Jotaro! Now!" Joseph had covered both eyes with his hands and was apparently navigating by hearing.
Shintaro reached out carefully and touched his arm.
"Mr. Joseph... please consider your image."
Joseph went completely still.
On the floor, Polnareff — wrapped from the neck down in his black cocoon, unable to do anything with this situation — was staring at Joseph with enormous blue eyes. His expression said, with great clarity and no ambiguity: What is happening. What is this man doing. What kind of group have I been captured by.
Two full seconds of silence.
"Cough. Cough-cough."
Joseph straightened as though operated by a switch, cleared his throat in several decisive bursts, and recomposed his expression into something that aspired toward authority.
"A — anyway! Jotaro! Make it quick!"
Shintaro turned away, privately marveling.
People really are like wine. The more time passes, the more complex and layered the behavior becomes.
He stopped himself. That wasn't the kind of thought he wanted to finish.
"Ora!!"
Star Platinum pulled.
The Flesh Bud came free with a sound that was final and wet, its roots dragging out in trailing strands, its body convulsing in the air. Star Platinum seized two tentacles, torqued them hard, and tore the pulsating core piece free from the mass.
It pitched the core into the air.
"Everyone step back! Leave this to me!!"
Joseph, unable to contain himself a moment longer, condensed Hamon in his palm and launched forward.
Swish.
The golden arc landed precisely. The core of flesh detonated into fine grey ash that scattered across the floor — born from DIO's cells, it was absolutely helpless against the energy of the sun.
Joseph exhaled deeply and dropped to one knee beside Polnareff. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and, with surprising gentleness, began wiping the remaining mushroom stew, vinegar residue, and chili powder from the Frenchman's swollen face. His movements were careful around the blistered patches.
He looked into Polnareff's eyes as the clarity slowly returned to them.
"Without the Flesh Bud," Joseph said, grinning broadly, "this fellow isn't so unpleasant after all~"
He straightened, struck a pose that could only be described as vintage Joseph Joestar, and delivered several syllables that carried the enthusiasm of a man who has been saving a joke for precisely this moment.
"Ta-da~ Hihi!"
Silence.
Complete silence.
Joseph's grin held its position for exactly three seconds before the structural integrity began to fail.
Jotaro glanced at Shintaro. Then at Kakyoin.
"Kakyoin."
"Yes?"
"Don't you find," Jotaro said, hands sliding back into his pockets, "that people who interrupt a tense moment with a completely pointless joke..."
The corner of his mouth, beneath the hat brim, moved in a way that was not quite a smile.
"...are exceptionally irritating?"
Kakyoin offered a faint, uncommitted smile and did not answer.
Shintaro noticed something he filed away for later consideration: whenever Jotaro wanted to complain about Joseph, he directed the complaint at Kakyoin or Avdol. Never at Shintaro directly.
Which suggested, in Jotaro's internal social taxonomy, Shintaro had already been categorized alongside the people being complained about.
He wasn't sure how to feel about that. He had, admittedly, been quite restrained since arriving in this world. He had suppressed dozens of memes. He had held back material that would have genuinely landed. And yet somehow he had still been filed under the "weird talk enthusiast" classification.
I was satisfied with that meal. I almost stood up and shouted 'Brothers — unleash your Martial Souls!' But I am, objectively, a normal person. This label is unfair.
"Oh no! Run!!"
Polnareff, the last of the Flesh Bud's fog clearing from his eyes, didn't wait for the Black Sperm to fully retract before shouting the warning.
"What?" Joseph blinked.
The words hadn't fully left Polnareff's mouth —
Every color in the restaurant drained away, as if an invisible hand had wiped the world clean. The staircase vanished. The windows and doors ceased to exist. In every direction, an endless expanse of featureless white pressed in, broken only by the overturned furniture and the scattered remnants of the meal.
"What is this?!" Avdol spun. The stairwell leading down to the first floor was simply gone. No trace. No seam.
"Dammit!!" Polnareff slammed a fist onto the pure white floor. His expression was tight with something between fury and helpless resignation. "We're trapped. I don't think we can get out of here."
"Explain yourself," Kakyoin said, his voice maintaining its careful calm as his eyes mapped the space.
Polnareff pushed himself upright against his knees.
"The Stand User targeting you isn't just me. There's another one — he's been downstairs the whole time." He paused. "You've already encountered his ability. He turns an enclosed space into something separate."
"The Pilot?!" Avdol's pupils sharpened. "But his Flesh Bud was removed —"
"He serves DIO willingly," Polnareff said flatly. "He tried to strengthen his Stand by accepting a Flesh Bud voluntarily. Evidently it didn't take." His lip curled. "Even without it, he's still DIO's creature."
"He serves without being controlled?" Joseph grabbed his hair with both hands. "That's simply insane!"
Shintaro frowned. "Then why didn't he activate this ability on the plane directly? If he had sealed the whole aircraft in a space like this..."
"He has you to thank for that."
The voice arrived from somewhere in the pure white — distorted, amused, coming from no single direction.
"Nurtured by the resentment and dread from my failed mission... and by the trauma of having my Flesh Bud torn out by force..."
The voice climbed sharply.
"My Stand ability... has evolved."
Avdol didn't waste another second. "Cross Fire Hurricane!"
Magician's Red's arms crossed — twin spirals of flame erupted forward and struck the nearest white wall.
They vanished on contact. No smoke. No scorch marks. As if the flames had never existed.
Kakyoin fired simultaneously. Emerald Splash. Dozens of crystals showering every visible surface.
They disappeared without leaving a scratch.
"Ora!!"
Star Platinum's fist hit the floor with a concussive force that should have split concrete. The sound absorbed into the white like sound into cotton.
Not a single dent.
The silence that followed was the specific kind that announces nobody has a solution yet.
Shintaro looked at the group. Then, quietly, he withdrew every Black Sperm back into his body.
Joseph blinked at him. "Shintaro — aren't you going to use them to find a way out?"
"Too crowded. Taking them back first."
"Are you stupid?!" Joseph's voice shot up. "This is not the moment to be thinking about that!"
[got my refund am quiet happy with it ]
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