"Son! Run!!"
The shout erupted from inside the room without warning. Yoshikage Kira's expression flickered — and in the next instant, he released his grip on the door and bolted.
Jotaro's gaze snapped toward him. Star Platinum surged forward, ready to seize the fleeing man — but then a small car decorated with a death's-head skull motif came barreling straight toward them, launched directly at Jotaro.
Killer Queen's bomb.
Star Platinum threw up its fists, hammering the car at blinding speed — and felt, to its surprise, that the thing was unexpectedly solid.
Meanwhile, inside the room, a silhouette was darting through a chaos of scattered photographs at incredible speed — making a beeline straight for a camera sitting in the corner...
At that moment, Yoshihiro Kira's heart was in absolute freefall.
As Yoshikage Kira's father, Yoshihiro had never — not once in his life — imagined a day like this could come.
Where had these three men even come from? Did they have some kind of grudge against his son?!
He nearly spiraled into blind panic. But in the fraction of a second it took to assess the situation, Yoshihiro did what his gut told him to do without hesitation.
He opened his mouth and screamed at the top of his lungs, telling his son to run — buying time by keeping these three men occupied himself.
There was still a chance. His Stand ability — against people who knew nothing about it, it would be devastatingly effective. All he had to do was get a photograph of all three of them with the camera, and after that, they'd be completely helpless. His son would have everything he needed to escape —
— "ZA WARUDO!"
Every last one of those plans evaporated with those two words.
Gears locked. Click. Click.
In an instant, the world drained to a wash of grey and white. Jonathan stepped forward briskly, crossing into the room. The World reached out behind him — and within the frozen stillness of stopped time, it plucked the camera from the table, along with the photograph containing Yoshihiro Kira.
"Timing worked out perfectly."
Jonathan gave a small, satisfied nod.
Atom Heart Father. The intelligence briefing had covered this one, naturally.
An ability that triggers all manner of catastrophe the moment a photograph is taken... Truly a formidable Stand user.
Jonathan's expression grew grave as the thought settled.
No. This ability is far too dangerous to leave unchecked.
If left to run free, there was no telling how much havoc it could cause. It had to be neutralized right now.
He already had full intelligence on exactly how to deal with this particular Stand user, after all.
And so, camera in hand, Jonathan turned it toward the photograph of Yoshihiro Kira — and quietly pressed the shutter.
No sound.
Time resumed.
An instant later, a burst of explosive fire detonated outward — and Jonathan watched as the camera in his hand spat out a single photograph: a vivid, perfectly captured portrait of Yoshihiro Kira's face, frozen in a look of pure shock and bewildered confusion. Joseph didn't even spare it a glance. He tossed both the photo and the camera aside — and The World's fists clenched, then ground both items into dust.
Yoshihiro Kira: dealt with.
The whole sequence had been executed with the effortless, unbroken flow of water — not even half a second wasted. They'd handled Yoshihiro as casually as if they were chatting over hotpot.
As the last of the flames from the explosion faded, the room was left in complete disarray. Jotaro walked out through the smoke — but there was no sign of Yoshikage Kira anywhere.
It seemed the father's final act of sacrifice had bought at least a little something. Yoshikage Kira had... managed to slip away?
"Joseph."
Jonathan scanned the room, then called out.
Joseph pulled out a camera from his backpack with the pained expression of a man with a toothache, and Hermit Purple's vines coiled around it.
Psychokinesis fired. The new camera shuddered — and dutifully produced a crisp, vivid photograph: a blond man in full, undignified flight, his direction of escape rendered in lifelike detail.
"Jotaro, come with me. Joseph, recover the Arrow from the room."
Jonathan said it simply and cleanly, and the three massive figures left the scene, moving at speed in the direction Yoshikage Kira had fled.
---
On the other side of things, Anthony was watching the livestream and eating popcorn — reeling in his fishing line with one hand while his other hand hovered over the keyboard, absolutely bursting to type out a string of '666's.
[Lord of the White Holy Throne: 666, they didn't even bother playing coy — just waltzed in with full dossier in hand and completely stripped the man bare. Every card on the table.]
[Sinseoki Era Warrior of Frieren: Um... is this what a Stand battle is supposed to look like? It feels very... streamlined.]
[Lord of the White Holy Throne: Normally, not even close. A proper Stand battle usually goes: first encounter, figure out how to gather intel, safely disengage, analyze what you learned, devise a counter-strategy, draw up a plan of attack — and all the while praying the other guy doesn't have some hidden ace up his sleeve waiting to blindside you...]
[Sinseoki Era Warrior of Frieren: So what exactly happened here?]
[AAA City Female Ghost: For that, you'd have to ask the person who dumped every last piece of intel straight into Mr. Jonathan's hands.]
[Lord of the White Holy Throne: Guilty as charged. I'm the one who doxxed them.]
[Strictest Father of the Demon King: That power like a ripple of qi... it gives off a feeling like sunlight.]
[Strictest Father of the Demon King: It's somewhat similar to Breathing techniques. I wonder if it could be used to assist in slaying demons. I'd like to look into it when I have the time.]
After a cheerful round of back-and-forth with the group in the livestream comments, Anthony turned back to the screen.
And discovered that in just that brief stretch of distraction, Jonathan and Jotaro had already caught up to Yoshikage Kira again — trailing him at a distance as he ducked into a narrow alley. Kira pressed his back against the wall, chest heaving, gasping for air as his fingers scraped against the brick.
"I need to set up a bomb... I need to make this place safe. If they corner me here and I can't run, it's all over..."
He muttered it under his breath, unable to stop himself from glancing back over his shoulder — and then his pupils contracted violently.
Standing at the mouth of the alley, clear as day: Jotaro and Jonathan.
For a single instant, even his breathing stopped.
"Stay back! Don't come near me!"
He set his jaw. Killer Queen materialized at his back — and he moved to detonate the bomb immediately.
But—
"ZA WARUDO!"
The gears locked with their familiar click, and the world bled back to black and white — and this time, something made Anthony's eye twitch.
Jotaro was moving. Actually moving, inside the time stop. Only barely — just a slight shift — but it was real.
Jonathan had almost instantly repositioned Jotaro directly in front of Yoshikage Kira, and then — while time was still frozen — Jotaro opened his eyes.
Holy sh—, that's incredible. The military training DIO never gave you, huh? And here Jonathan's just patching it all in from scratch?
The implications cascaded through Anthony's head immediately. If this kept up, wouldn't it eventually turn into... Jonathan stopping time, and then Jotaro immediately chaining his own time stop right on top of it?
Picturing the two of them stacking time stops back-to-back and just endlessly extending the frozen window — Anthony felt the image was so beautifully, catastrophically broken that he almost couldn't bear to look directly at it.
Sigh. Well — condolences in advance to whoever ends up fighting these three later. Looking at you, Dio and Pucci.
At the very least, Anthony genuinely could not picture a single villain capable of surviving an encounter with this particular cursed team composition.
Then — just as Anthony snapped his attention back to the screen — two Stand fists, carrying enough force to shake the earth, came crashing down in unison directly onto Yoshikage Kira.
Time resumed.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA!"
The sound thundered through the livestream. The footage that followed was — frankly — brutal. Anthony watched for one second, then quietly looked away and refocused on fishing. He kept his eyes on the water for a good long while, until at last Jonathan's message appeared in the group chat.
[Founder of the Golden Spirit: Phew — first Arrow retrieval: complete.]
[Founder of the Golden Spirit: Yoshikage Kira has been dealt with.]
____
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