Chapter 152: This Is a Stand Attack!!
"Why isn't this working? It's like it just died — we've been in this mountain range for fifteen minutes and I'm only now realizing all our communication equipment is dead. Can we still pull back in time?"
In a three-man unit, the man carrying the miniature satellite camera had just discovered his feed had cut out. When he went to contact base, he found the communications gear wasn't responding either.
Not just his. His teammates' too.
As if something had cleanly severed the signal.
Nobody knew why. Nobody had an explanation.
The camera operator scanned the surrounding trees with a furrowed brow. The forest was somewhat sparse — reasonable sightlines, at least. Autumn had stripped most of the branches bare.
Which was exactly the problem. They'd come in covertly, hoping for cover. This landscape offered almost none.
A voice from behind him: "Captain — look over there!"
He turned in the direction his teammate was pointing.
His expression froze.
A girl?
In this kind of deep mountain wilderness — how is there a girl this small? Ten, maybe thirteen years old at most. And her hair is green.
At the edge of his sightline, a small figure was walking toward them. Arms crossed. Unhurried. Too far to make out features clearly.
All three Stand users felt it simultaneously — an invisible weight pressing down, settling over their chests without warning or explanation.
A sense of danger.
They couldn't trace where it was coming from. Surely not from that girl. She looked eleven, twelve at most.
A girl that age, posing a threat to three Stand users?
That was absurd. Embarrassing to even consider.
And yet.
"Hey," the captain called out. "Kid. This place is dangerous. Wild animals, venomous snakes everywhere — you'll get yourself killed. Go home before you get lost out here."
He needed her to stop advancing.
Because the closer she got, the heavier that feeling became.
Something was wrong.
Something was very wrong.
A non-humanoid presence slipped out of the captain's body — strange-looking, vaguely alien in silhouette, almost incomprehensible in form. His Stand. The power he was most proud of.
Power A. Speed B. Durability B. Developmental Potential B. Range C.
A Stand with even one A-rated stat was considered formidable. He'd earned his position on this operation.
The Stand reached into the captain's pocket and produced a single bullet. It held the bullet the way a child holds a marble before flicking it — aimed directly at Tatsumaki, ten meters away.
The order from above had been clear: no restrictions on engagement in this area. No legal consequences.
If she took one more step —
The girl stopped.
Ten meters. She stopped on her own.
And now he could finally see her face.
She was genuinely beautiful. Young — probably under fifteen at the absolute outside, flat as a board — but the face was striking.
What unsettled all three of them was the expression on it.
She wasn't looking at them like people.
She was looking at them like something far beneath her that hadn't earned a second thought. Like things she could end if she happened to decide to.
"Captain," the darker-skinned member murmured, barely audible. "Something's off about her. No witnesses out here. We should take her out before she makes noise or calls for help. The enemy supposedly wiped a thousand troops in one hit."
The captain's jaw tightened. He looked at the green-haired girl.
No exposure. That's the priority.
He gave a small nod.
The Stand behind him curled its finger — and released.
Bang. Whoosh.
The bullet tore forward at speed, punching clean through a wrist-thick sapling in its path, and streaked toward Tatsumaki's skull.
That bullet, at that velocity, hitting a head —
It stopped.
One meter from her face. Completely motionless. Suspended in the air as if gripped by an invisible fist, unable to move an inch further.
Tatsumaki looked at it.
She reached out and plucked it from the air with two fingers.
She examined it briefly, pale green eyes flickering with something dismissive, then turned her gaze back to the three men.
"That's it?" A flat pause. "You're even weaker than I expected. Is that what your Stand's strength looks like? Feels about the same as an ordinary sniper rifle. Less, actually. Weaker than an ant's bite."
She dropped the bullet. It hit the dirt.
Her expression didn't change.
If that expression had been on a villain's face, the villain would have been dead within twenty minutes of appearing on screen. On a girl — especially one with a face scoring well above average — it landed completely differently. Tsundere. Gap moe. Oh no she's actually—
She wasn't paying attention to the dropped bullet. Bullets didn't interest her.
She looked at the three men with something approaching curiosity.
"Other than Josuke and the one Emperor Ying Zheng's people caught," she said, "this is my first time running into Stand users in the wild. Interesting." A brief pause. "If my world had people with Stand abilities, the weaker ones would qualify as B-class heroes at minimum. Strong Stands could manage A-class. A genuinely broken Stand might crack the lower end of S-class."
The captain's pupils contracted sharply.
She can see my Stand.
She knows what Stand users are.
She's not a bystander. She came here for us.
He didn't understand the ranking terminology — B-class, A-class, S-class — but his instincts told him it wasn't random. Some kind of code?
His thoughts were still racing when something hit him.
Not physically. Not visibly.
Like someone had dropped a steamroller onto the top of his head.
His knees buckled. He went down — both knees slamming into the soft earth, driving two small craters into the soil. His legs, his lower back, every load-bearing part of him exploded with pain.
Survival instinct fired before thought could. His Stand's arms came up and braced against the invisible force pressing down from above, barely holding his torso upright.
Through the pain and disbelief, his voice came out strangled:
"This is — this is a Stand attack!!"
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