"At last… I've been waiting for this."
Watching the earlier scene from within the shadowed space, Tokisaki Kurumi's lips curled into a dangerous smile.
That's right—Polpo was precisely the target she had chosen to obtain a Stand Arrow.
As a cadre of Passione in the original story and the examiner for new recruits, Polpo had long been acting under Diavolo's orders, using his Stand Black Sabbath to carry the Stand Arrow bestowed by Diavolo, creating large numbers of Stand users to serve the organization.
With prior knowledge in hand, Kurumi could defeat trash like this with ease. After all, aside from a handful of truly bug-level Stands, Zafkiel's abilities amounted to pure dimensionality reduction against ninety-nine percent of Stand users in the JOJO world.
Just the most basic ability of Zafkiel—City of Devouring Time, which forcibly steals time from all targets within its range—was already absurd when transplanted into the JOJO world. Add to that the flintlock pistols capable of firing near-infinite bullets so long as sufficient energy was supplied, and it became outright broken.
If nothing else, consider Grateful Dead, the powerful Stand from the original story that could rapidly age all targets within a certain area and nearly wiped out the Part Five protagonist team. Compared to City of Devouring Time, it was almost completely outclassed in every dimension.
And if, on top of that, one added the twelve different special bullets with distinct effects…
Kurumi didn't want to sound too disrespectful, but even if all the antagonists and protagonists of Part Five teamed up, as long as Giorno didn't forcibly "cheat" by evolving his Stand into a Requiem without the Beetle Arrow, Kurumi was confident the final victor would still be herself.
Therefore, setting raw power aside, Polpo was the most straightforward and simplest route to obtaining a Stand Arrow in the entirety of Part Five's storyline: snatch the Arrow, then kill him.
The only thing that required caution was that, in the original story, after Polpo's death, the Stand Arrow carried by Black Sabbath vanished along with the Stand itself. So until the Arrow was secured, Polpo could not be allowed to die.
To be safe, Kurumi simply summoned over a dozen clones to keep watch on him. Meanwhile, her true body quietly departed and tracked down the recruit who had left earlier.
Without approaching him directly, Kurumi—now in her Spirit form—condensed a bit of spiritual power and released it. It caused no destruction, merely stirring up a gust of wind along the street.
At that moment, the recruit was still grumbling about how Polpo had set the test site inside a prison without bribing the guards, forcing him to spend extra money just to get the lighter out. The next second, the wind swept past, and the flame on the lighter in his hand was instantly extinguished.
Panicking, the man hurriedly glanced around. Seeing no one nearby, he tried pressing the igniter again.
The flame reignited—but before joy could surface on his face, a pair of hands reached out from behind and seized his soul.
"You just relit it, didn't you?"
"I'll give you a choice. Two paths lie before you: live on as one of the chosen, or walk toward death."
At some point, a pitch-black Stand had emerged from the shadows, its mouth opening as a sharp arrow slowly extended outward.
Yet before that arrow could pierce the soul before it, a gunshot rang out abruptly.
Bang!
A black-and-red bullet struck the black Stand instantly. The Black Sabbath, which had been gripping the man's soul and preparing to pierce it with the Arrow, froze in place as if the pause button had been pressed.
"So disgusting."
Kurumi stepped out from the shadows, gazing at the Black Sabbath frozen in time by Seventh Bullet, and at the Stand Arrow protruding from its mouth. After a brief moment of thought, she raised her flintlock and shot the arrow's shaft clean through. Then she wrapped the arrowhead—already prepared—with cloth and stored it away.
The shaft of a Stand Arrow was nothing special; the truly important part was the arrowhead forged from an extraterrestrial meteorite. Taking just the arrowhead was more than sufficient.
As for the Black Sabbath frozen in place, Kurumi kicked it straight into the sunlight, watching calmly as it disintegrated into ash under the sun's rays.
At the same time, inside the prison—the examination site.
Polpo, who had been eating heartily, suddenly sensed that something was wrong.
A dark-red domain abruptly expanded throughout the prison, and a crushing sense of weakness swept over his entire body in an instant.
In Date A Live, it seemed that Spirits could largely ignore the effects of City of Devouring Time and forcibly fight within the domain. But for ordinary people, it was an incomparably terrifying killing field.
As long as one remained inside the domain, their time would be continuously stripped away. Those with great strength might be able to resist and keep fighting—but unfortunately, in the JOJO world, no matter how powerful a Stand's ability was, the Stand user's body was still only that of a normal human.
Thus, Polpo fell without suspense.
"Th-this… what is this… a Stand attack…?"
Collapsed on the floor, unable to even stand, Polpo struggled to lift his head and look ahead—only to see more than a dozen identical figures walking out from within the dark-red domain.
Under normal circumstances, Polpo would have praised the beauty of these girls. But seeing over a dozen identical young women appear at once was already bizarre enough—let alone under these conditions.
As he stared at the dangerous smiles on their faces and the firearms in their hands, terror flooded Polpo's eyes. But before he could speak, more than a dozen flintlock pistols fired simultaneously.
Countless bullets instantly riddled Polpo's body, turning it into a sieve. Even the prison wall behind him cracked and split with dense holes.
"The task the main body assigned is complete. Job done."
After killing Polpo, the many Kurumi clones exchanged glances, then vanished together into the dark-red domain.
As they disappeared, City of Devouring Time slowly dissipated as well. Half an hour later, the guards—who had been knocked unconscious beforehand—awoke, quickly realized the prison had been attacked, and discovered Polpo's corpse.
The next day.
In a remote Italian town, inside a cheap motel, Diavolo woke up and cautiously inspected the room. He packed up all personal belongings and erased every trace of himself—even the stray hairs left behind were not spared.
Only after confirming that no clues remained that could expose his identity did Diavolo open his computer and check on Passione's situation.
The organization's expansion was proceeding normally. Drug trades were operating as usual. No subordinates were attempting to investigate his identity.
Excellent. Today, he was still the emperor ruling the underworld.
Though he lived every day with extreme caution—no car, no house, staying only in the cheapest motels, avoiding crowded places unless necessary, and never making large purchases to avoid drawing attention—so much so that his quality of life was arguably worse than that of a low-level Passione grunt, Diavolo was perfectly satisfied with his current existence.
But just then, he saw a piece of unexpected news.
"Passione cadre Polpo… was killed in prison?"
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