The blazing sun still hung over the American continent.
But in the minutes that followed the "divine proclamation" that had rung out across the entire nation, not a single human being dared make a sound.
None dared raise their voice, for fear of startling the heavens.
That vast, crushing divine pressure was like an invisible hand pressed flat against the throat of an entire age.
In Washington, the usually bustling Capitol Hill fell into unprecedented chaos.
Politicians abandoned whatever they were doing and scrambled to the windows.
From there, they couldn't see the floating mountain range hovering over Arizona — but they could clearly feel a force that made their very souls tremble, spiralling over the entire United States.
And in New York, in San Diego, at every Steel Ball Run race staging point…
Horses collapsed mid-whinny. Spectators fell to their knees across the board.
The ordinarily noisy, money-drunk streets looked, in that moment, remarkably like a grand cathedral in the middle of a collective act of penance.
San Diego. SBR race committee temporary camp.
Steven Steel sat slumped behind his mahogany desk, buried under maps and contracts.
The egg-bald, middle-aged man's hand trembled as he removed his glasses, exposing bloodshot eyes.
His hands were shaking so badly he couldn't even manage to light his cigar.
"What in the world is…"
He looked up at the cloudless sky — at that enormous mountain suspended over the distant horizon like a floating island — and his voice came out as a hoarse rasp:
"A god? Is there truly something beyond reason in this world?"
As the organiser of this trans-American horse race, Steven had staked everything — his entire fortune and his life — on this one day.
He'd even secured the backing of the President of the United States, and had been beginning to imagine the fame and fortune that would follow the race's conclusion.
But now, the Lord had descended.
He said the people of this land had broken faith and acted in treachery. He declared that those who chased after fame and profit carried original sin.
This made the already-shaky believer hesitate — did holding a race this thoroughly contaminated by self-interest and moral filth itself fall within the Lord's definition of a sinner?
"The race must be stopped…"
Steven muttered, his heart full of unease, clutching the small crucifix he'd bought from a roadside vendor less than half an hour ago:
"If it doesn't stop, it won't just be a catastrophe for the competitors — it'll be for the whole of America…"
He kept crossing himself, praying for the Lord's forgiveness for the greed he hadn't known he was committing.
But at that very moment, another voice cut through the silence of prayer:
"No. The race proceeds as planned."
A composed, deep voice — carrying an authority that left no room for argument — came from the direction of the barely-open door.
Steven looked up sharply.
The door had been pushed open at some point, and there stood a man before whom Steven invariably felt a cold contraction of his courage.
Funny Valentine.
The sitting President of the United States of America walked into the room with an unhurried ease. His signature golden curls caught the light, his pink dress suit without a single speck of dust.
He stepped into the room just as calmly as ever, his expression utterly unmoved — as if the miracle that had shaken the entire country was, to him, nothing more than a clumsy conjuring trick.
"Mr President — have you lost your mind?"
Steven's trembling hand pointed toward the window, at the enormous mountain suspended in the distant sky:
"Can you not see that mountain in the sky?! Can you not hear that voice?! That is God! The Lord Almighty Himself has descended, Mr President!"
"God?"
Valentine walked to the desk and picked up a hard candy sitting there — the kind Steven kept out to manage stress — and said with casual ease:
"It seems the Indian tricks have frightened you out of your wits, Mr Steel."
"That is not a god."
The President turned, his blue eyes gleaming with something bordering on fanatical rationality:
"That is nothing more than a Stand user of somewhat extraordinary power."
"A Stand user?"
Steven stared at him blankly, having never heard the term before.
"That's right."
Valentine extended a hand. Under Steven's astonished gaze, his silhouette blurred for a fraction of a second. The space where Steven should have been sitting in his chair seemed, somehow, to have been folded at one corner.
And in the next instant, Valentine appeared to ooze out from between the bookshelves — yet stood completely unharmed on the spot.
To Steven's ordinary eyes, the President had just performed an instantaneous spatial teleportation.
"W… what was that?"
"That is the true nature of so-called miracles."
Valentine looked out at the floating mountain range with cold composure:
"That mountain flies because, like myself, some Stand user with unusual abilities is manipulating it."
"The voice that reached every American? Nothing more than some kind of mental-influence Stand ability."
"And what people are calling 'God' is simply someone borrowing this transcendent power to fraudulently claim divinity — attempting to steal dominion over this land and obstruct the greatness of America's rise."
The President clapped a hand on Steven's shoulder, firmly, like a gavel delivering a final verdict:
"The race continues."
"I will dispatch my people to deal with this so-called 'false god.' You only need to remember — the glory of America does not stop for any upstart pretender."
Steven watched the President's retreating back, dumbfounded.
He was still half-convinced — because unlike the spatial leap the President had just shown, that force had covered far, far too vast an area. But he knew he had no right to refuse.
The moment Valentine stepped outside the camp, his expression collapsed.
He walked quickly to his private armoured carriage and pulled himself inside.
Bang!
One fist drove hard into the leather seat cushion. The breathing that had been so controlled a moment ago came short and rough now.
"Damn it all… How does yet another thing like this keep appearing?!"
Valentine ground his teeth.
Only he knew how badly the situation had deteriorated.
The Saint's Corpse fragments were scattered across the land. This Steel Ball Run race, which he had backed Steven Steel to organise, was supposed to be the single most critical step toward gathering the Corpse Parts and igniting the nation's ascent.
And the result?
First, a man calling himself "Heaven-Attained DIO" had arrived from another world and demanded his allegiance by sheer force.
That creature — arrogant, unreasonable, even daring to treat the entire United States as his own private garden — had forced Valentine into a fragile, face-saving collaboration.
And now, yet another entity calling itself "God" had appeared.
What was worse: this "God" had opened its declaration with a direct reference to the Saint's Corpse.
Which meant this new party's objective perfectly coincided with his own.
"For the sake of this country… do I have to really work alongside monsters like these?"
Valentine felt the suppressed fire of his patriotism, and nothing but irritation.
He had discovered, to his great frustration, that while he held the title of President, when faced with these dimension-crossing, logic-defying entities, his cards were pitifully few.
Looking across the entire nation, he couldn't find a single partner he could truly trust to help him repel these unwanted outsiders.
…What a nauseating crowd of greedy invaders, intent on stealing America's happiness.
Valentine leaned back against the seat, a cold glint flickering through his eyes.
Whoever you are — if you stand in the way of this nation's future, even if you are God himself, I will use D4C to erase you from existence.
"Don't go entertaining strange ideas, Valentine."
A voice — entirely unruffled, with even a faint quality of holy compassion — broke through the silence of the carriage, from somewhere in the corner.
Valentine's whole body went rigid. His palm went to the pistol grip at his waist on pure reflex.
But he held himself in check.
From the shadows of the carriage, a man in a specially tailored priest's cassock, hair neatly bound, dark-skinned, stepped slowly into view.
Enrico Pucci.
"When did you get in, Father Pucci?"
Valentine withdrew his hand, his tone ice-cold.
"Just now — when your restless soul began to stir."
Pucci sat down across from Valentine, counting prime numbers under his breath, his manner serene:
"Remember — Lord DIO's will is the only truth guiding this world toward 'Heaven.'"
"Your United States is nothing more than a small relay station on the road to Heaven."
Valentine let out a cold laugh, privately thinking that the world had truly taken a strange turn — a man of that complexion now had a seat at the table.
"So then — what does the Lord intend to do about the 'God' out there?"
"That's no ordinary Stand user, I'll grant you that. I can't even work out what their Stand ability is — making a mountain this enormous float, and yet simultaneously broadcasting a voice to all of America… those two abilities have no obvious causal link, I don't even know where to begin deducing what kind of Stand this is."
Valentine did not finish the thought. A Stand power this strong was genuinely beyond him, and the two abilities simply bore no obvious connection to one another.
"That imposter — the one who has usurped the Lord's name and stolen the authority of God?"
Father Pucci rose from his seat and pulled back the carriage curtain.
He looked at that faint shadow of the floating mountain that was gradually merging with the red soil of the horizon, his gaze thoughtful.
He thought of the Stand he'd once possessed — "New Moon."C-Moon. It had reversed the gravity of vast areas, aiding him on the path to Heaven — its ability bore certain similarities to this floating mountain.
But that voice that had reached everyone's ears at once…
Pucci began counting three-digit prime numbers in his mind, methodically, to calm himself.
He had thought that, with Lord DIO having dealt with that troublesome Jotaro Kujo, no one remained who could stop him. Then the unexpected had piled on top of unexpected:
First, the fully assembled Corpse Parts had inexplicably rejected Lord DIO's absorption and taken flight, scattering back into the world. Then a massive space-time reset had followed — as if Made in Heaven had already been activated.
Though in the end, the Parts had merely gone somewhere. Without the Joestar bloodline to obstruct him, retrieving them again was simply a matter of collecting them a second time.
And yet now this new complication had arisen. Was this the resistance fate was placing in their path?
"The fool who fancies himself a judge of mankind — not knowing that fate has long since marked out their end."
"This 'false god' who does nothing but manufacture chaos — Lord DIO will dispatch his subordinates to drag them down from the sky and make them an offering on the path to transcending Heaven…"
Pucci looked at Valentine and continued, unhurried:
"Proceed with your Steel Ball Run on schedule. The Corpse fragments must be recovered — otherwise, do not blame Lord DIO for removing what he left inside your chest first."
With that, Pucci's figure sank back into shadow — and beside him, a white-and-black shape flickered past.
[Oh, my long-unseen master — you appear far more unsettled than you let on.]
Whitesnake's murmur drifted back.
Pucci wiped a thread of sweat from his forehead.
That sweat — the product of forcing himself not to collapse to his knees under a pressure greater than Lord DIO's, through pure force of will.
"101. 103. 107… It will be fine. Even if the path ahead has its perils — how would a snake ever lose to a frog?"
But before Pucci could finish reassuring himself, his peripheral vision caught a change in the scene — and his eyes snapped wide.
"The sacred mountain — look, the sacred mountain—!"
People on the streets began shouting, their voices a mixture of shock and terror:
"It looks like it's moving — it's heading toward us, toward San Diego!"
To be continued…
Guys, the fic will be on a temporary hiatus as the fic on ceweimao is also on hiatus. The fic will return once author resumes the story!
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