Chapter 151: Raising Flags Left and Right
"These people move exactly like the politicians back home — everything at a crawl. You're invading another world, three days have passed, and not a single large force has shown up to do anything."
Tatsumaki rested her cheek on one pale hand, radiating boredom.
If the numbers weren't so thin here, she'd have gone off to do something else entirely.
But the Qin's Moon world, for all its distinctive qualities, was not equipped to stand against a modern mechanized force. And the JoJo fan world had Stand users on top of that. Someone on the other side could decide to escalate to weapons of mass destruction without much warning — which meant Tatsumaki needed to stay close. Bouncing a nuclear warhead into orbit before it could detonate was exactly the kind of thing that required her to be on-site.
"Gurararara, you've complained about this at least fifteen times today. Come have a drink with this old man instead."
Whitebeard sat cross-legged on the grass, one massive hand cradling a bowl full of strong white liquor. Given his proportions, the bowl was approximately the size of a wash basin. A very large wash basin.
Tatsumaki wrinkled her nose at the smell and looked away. "Pass."
She'd tried a small amount earlier and nearly brought it back up. The liquor had come via Group chat gift — Whitebeard's own contribution — since the Qin dynasty era didn't exactly have the distillation technology for fifty-proof spirits.
"Based on the timeline, they should be moving soon," Ryū said, his voice cutting through the ambient quiet. "And this time they're not sending a column — it's going to be dispersed small units, approaching from multiple directions. Some of them may already be in the forest."
Tatsumaki's expression lifted slightly. She ran a finger through her green bangs to push them clear of her eyes.
"Would it be a problem if I circled the nearby forest? Just a quick sweep."
Ryū nodded. "Don't go too far. Stay sharp."
"..."
She flexed her hands once, let her psychokinesis lift her off the ground, and drifted toward the treeline.
Kizaru watched her go. "She'll be alright alone?"
Whitebeard laughed. "Don't underestimate Little Tornado. Her ability is genuinely formidable — she could flatten this entire small nation without straining herself. Her hand-to-hand is the weak point, but on psychokinesis alone she'd qualify as a Marine Admiral without question."
Kizaru blinked, hands in his pockets, and processed that.
He and Tatsumaki hadn't overlapped much. She'd been active before he joined the Group, and he hadn't seen her in the field. So he'd had no real baseline.
But if Whitebeard said it —
That green-haired girl was not someone to take lightly.
And if her physical technique caught up to her psychokinesis eventually...
She'd be beating me.
He was in his fifties. The prospect of being outclassed by a twenty-eight-year-old was not something his ego found comfortable. Something that might have been competitive spirit flickered in his chest.
Then a pleasant breeze moved through the grass.
Kizaru sat quietly and let the moment pass.
Saltwater fish was a good life. Comfortable. Low-stress.
Whether Fleet Admiral Sengoku would scream at him — or possibly strike him — upon his eventual return was a problem for future Kizaru. Present Kizaru was doing nothing more strenuous than sitting in a meadow.
Thousands of kilometers away, in a secure facility —
A technician stared at a screen full of static, hammering keys, sweating through his collar, and accomplishing nothing.
"Still no signal," he finally said. "Something is interfering — it's like a localized magnetic anomaly around that mountain range. Satellite imaging has gone completely dark. And all equipment within range — the Stand users' communication devices — has gone silent."
The suited man standing behind him had deep furrows in his brow. "You're supposedly the top technical specialist in the country. This is beyond you?"
"Yes."
The suited man exhaled. He stared at the static.
"How did this appear overnight? Yesterday there was no interference at all." He paused. "And most of the Stand users from various nations are already inside that range."
He knew the Stand users' capabilities well. But these were the same people who had, in a matter of seconds, eliminated a thousand-strong armed force without any of them firing a shot.
If the Stand users walked into a trap —
Stand users were vanishingly rare. The entire JoJo franchise, across all its entries, barely cleared a hundred of them. Losing multiple A-rated individuals would be a significant strategic loss, and two of those were theirs.
Then again —
He shook his head.
"If they died easily, they wouldn't be Stand users. Every Stand user is a one-in-a-million individual." He steadied himself. "And some Stand abilities are specifically suited to survival. This should be manageable."
Having placed several more flags in a neat row, the suited man appeared noticeably calmer
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