Chapter 186: Chapter 21: Destiny
As Jotaro pulled himself up, DIO seized the opening to put distance between them. That punch would’ve left any normal person paralyzed from the waist down, but as a Vampire, limited movement was still manageable.
"Jotaro!" The young Joseph snatched up the rope he’d used to help his grandson scale the clock tower, ready to provide backup.
"Now, now—ignoring people isn’t a very nice habit, you know."
D’Arby, who’d nearly had a heart attack thinking DIO was about to lose, let out a breath of relief and shifted to block Joseph’s path, a stack of chips in hand.
"I know the situation’s urgent, but how about a little wager? Could even work out in your favor. After all, in my hands I’ve got—"
As a gambler, he possessed a fine talent for cheating and an even finer one for reading people. A gambler never took a bet he hadn’t prepared for; he’d go so far as to bribe everyone in the vicinity in advance, from eighty-year-old geezers down to three-year-old toddlers.
For instance, he’d even spent an entire day crafting fake soul chips modeled after each of them, working from the portraits DIO had sketched. As long as they were separated, they’d have no chance to verify whether his claims were true—
"Out of my way! The second I hear the word ’gamble’ I know you’re cooking up some scheme to bait me. I don’t have time for you!" Joseph’s Hamon-laced fist connected squarely with D’Arby’s face.
D’Arby did not get back up.
But it was in that precise moment that DIO finally recovered enough to activate his Stand ability.
"The World!"
DIO stopped time. Wary of the speed and power Jotaro had just demonstrated, he didn’t dare close in for melee—instead, he produced a generous handful of throwing knives.
"You gave me quite the scare, I’ll admit. But this is where it ends. Before my invincible ’World,’ all schemes are futile. How many knives can you dodge in one or two seconds, I wonder? Muda muda!"
DIO hurled dozens of knives at Jotaro—knives he’d apparently been keeping God-knows-where. Each blade sailed through the air for a moment before freezing in place just inches from Jotaro’s body.
"Muda muda muda—MUDA!"
Just as DIO predicted, Jotaro could only deflect a handful during his two-second window of movement.
"Grk—!"
"Jotaro!"
Jotaro plummeted backward off the tower, using Star Platinum’s fists to punch into the wall and brake his fall in stages before crashing to the ground.
The knives hadn’t done serious damage. He’d stuffed a Marine Encyclopedia into his chest pocket before heading out—just in case. On top of that, the belt in his coat pocket had blocked one knife of its own accord, seemingly without any damage to show for it.
The old man’s Hamon—even in his younger body—wasn’t going to cut it against an enemy who could stop time. DIO would come for him first as the bigger threat.
He should’ve used up every last knife. A losing play, but the smartest move right now was to play dead and wait for DIO to show an opening.
Jotaro’s hand drifted to his pocket almost involuntarily. Ever since he’d discovered he could move inside DIO’s frozen time, some dim resonance had been pulsing from the Game Console—or rather, from the Game Cartridge—as though it were calling out to him.
Like some force was pulling him to use it.
Should he try this thing of unknown origin?
Just as he’d expected, DIO ignored Joseph entirely, flying down from the tower to eye Jotaro with suspicion.
"Falling from that height and you didn’t turn into paste? Is it a Joestar-bloodline thing, having bodies that tough? Or are you playing some trick?"
"Forget it." He yanked a nearby road sign out of the ground. "I’ll just use this to chop off Jotaro’s head!"
Jotaro: "?"
That gesture and those words felt disturbingly familiar.
A split second of emotional slack—and the unexpected happened.
The reason he’d holed up in prison in the first place wasn’t just teenage rebellion. He’d mistaken his own Stand for an Evil Spirit.
Not without cause, either. He’d awakened his Stand in the middle of a brawl with a gang of delinquents, and maybe it was the violent state of mind at the time that birthed a Stand with such absurd raw specs. For a while he couldn’t properly control Star Platinum—it was the kind of thing where he’d barely form an intention and the Stand was already carrying it out.
Like right now.
"So he didn’t die after all?"
In DIO’s eyes, Jotaro’s Star Platinum suddenly materialized of its own accord.
It seized the Game Console from his pocket and slammed it against his waist on pure instinct.
GACCHAN
DONG—
That sound came from the clock tower overhead. Perhaps one of DIO’s knives had struck the mechanism somewhere, because at four in the morning it malfunctioned, sending a resonant chime echoing across the entire district.
KAMEN RIDER CHRONICLE
"What the hell is that?" DIO hung back, on guard.
Jotaro was forced to his feet. The cartridge, already activated, floated on its own and slotted into the console.
BUGGLE UP
A teal card ejected from the console and hovered above Jotaro’s head.
Rider of Heaven, Chronicle Engraved; This Moment Is the Ultimate Time
The card descended from the crown of his head to his feet. Teal armor with a trailing hem plated itself across Jotaro’s body, and behind him a golden clock phantom flared into existence—there and gone in an instant.
The armor was supposed to require a viral infection to wield. The easy-mode version had simply stripped that prerequisite away.
"Yare yare. Looks like the tables are turning. I’ll be passing judgment on you right here—DIO!"
Acting on instinct, Jotaro pressed a switch on the belt.
PAUSE
"Nani?!" DIO’s peripheral vision caught the trees shifting in the wind.
Time had been stopped—but not by him.
This bastard had the same ability to freeze time that he did!
DIO couldn’t begin to piece together how, but one thing he knew for certain:
"The instant you dare come near me, I will use my ’World’ to end you, Jotaro!"
"Polnareff, calm down!" Kakyoin, closest to Polnareff, clutched his own head. Polnareff had clamped the power down almost immediately, but even so, Kakyoin had caught the full brunt of it at close range.
"Kakyoin—right now I’m calmer than I’ve ever been. I don’t fully understand it either, but if I really lost my cool, this power would probably start with this city block and keep spreading across all of Cairo—maybe even further."
Polnareff stared at his Stand. The aura radiating from the jet-black knight sent a chill through even its own master. Its essence was the shadow of every living person in the world.
Having shed the sword that had failed to protect anyone, his Stand was no longer a blank slate. And the change was irreversible—the Arrow had fused completely into it.
This wasn’t a fair trade. No price paid with the life of someone you wanted to protect could ever be called worth it. But it was enough. Enough to deliver a devastating blow to that godforsaken monster.
"Now tell me where that bastard is, Kakyoin!"
"Even if you say that, I can’t sense anything..."
The words nearly snapped Polnareff’s last thread of rationality. "You piece of shit! Get out here—don’t make me come after you!"
Meanwhile, in another direction entirely.
On her own and on four paws, Yimi’s running speed was significantly faster than driving.
"Help me... someone, please..."
"Mrow?"
She was also much more likely to catch sounds she might miss from inside a car.
Yimi padded toward the voice and found a frail woman collapsed on the ground, one arm dangling and slick with blood.
A woman wandering outside at four in the morning was suspicious by any measure, but Yimi obviously lacked that kind of common sense. She crept closer, cautious.
"Oh, a little kitty. Did God send you to comfort me in my final moments?" The woman reached toward Yimi with her injured arm, the gesture perfectly natural.
Blood from her arm dripped toward Yimi’s back.
Tarot card—Empress. That was her Stand. An ability with a rather troublesome attack method: dripping blood onto a target’s skin to parasitize them with a tiny homunculus that grew progressively harder to remove.
But the blood was deflected away, twisted off-course as misfortune.
"What—?!"
"Mrow?" Yimi tilted her head, confused by the outburst.
And at that exact moment—as if arranged by destiny itself—Diavolo, huddled in an alley still half-dazed, felt a tumor swell on his back.
Of course, the destiny in question wasn’t the tumor. It was the shout that reached him from outside just before the attack: "You piece of shit! Get out here—don’t make me come after you!"
That monster’s pursuers?
Diavolo’s heart sank. He knew that to become the Emperor of Evil, eliminating the creature that had seen his true face was a non-negotiable step.
He activated Time Erasure and charged at the nearest target—Kakyoin. But at the critical moment, his Stand betrayed him for the first time in his life, its hand clamping around his own throat the instant the erasure ended.
"Grgh—"
Silver Chariot—or rather, Silver Chariot Requiem’s ability: anyone who attempted to interfere with its objective suffered a psychic backlash.
And Polnareff’s objectives at this moment were exactly two: avenge the innocent girl, and protect Kakyoin from all enemies.
The unforeseen development sent Diavolo into a panic. "What kind of ability is this?!"
"Is it you? No—that’s not the same face. But you just tried to go after Kakyoin, didn’t you?" Polnareff jabbed a hostile finger at Diavolo.
Silver Chariot lunged at Diavolo. And with a target finally found, the fury Polnareff had been suppressing erupted in a single devastating wave.
Finishing move
CRITICAL CREWS-AID
Following his instincts, Jotaro’s feet settled onto a clock-face pattern that materialized beneath him. He pivoted on one leg, the other swinging up in an arc that connected with DIO’s body—and as his leg swept through, the second hand on the pattern below chased it in perfect synchronization across DIO.
"Don’t you dare, Jotaro!" Even within frozen time, DIO could still move for roughly seven seconds. He seized the window to adjust his position, dodging the vital areas, and counterattacked.
It dealt no real damage—but Jotaro, fumbling through his first use, had jumped straight to the finishing move and in his clumsy exploration accidentally released the Time Stop himself.
The kick blew apart most of DIO’s torso and sent him tumbling. He struggled, trembling, to rise. "Impossible... I, DIO... I, DIO..."
"Looks like it’s over." Jotaro rolled his wrists as he closed in.
And that was when Diavolo’s Time Erasure rippled outward. In Jotaro’s eyes, DIO simply vanished—blinked out of existence in an instant. The erasure meant Jotaro had no idea what had saved DIO or in which direction he’d fled.
"DIO?"
He wasn’t the only one baffled. The man who’d actually carried DIO to safety was equally lost.
Pucci peeked out at Jotaro in the distance. "I’d barely formed the thought of rescuing him and it was already over. How is that possible?"
"Pucci... it’s you. That puts me at ease..." DIO, his body blown half apart, could barely speak.
And trailing right on the heels of Diavolo’s Time Erasure came an accidental leak of Requiem’s first-movement ability.
Soul Swap.
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