"Ugh..."
Koichi swallowed hard as he stared at the desolate, abandoned streets of Morioh. The eerie silence was beginning to settle over him like a suffocating shroud.
"It's usually packed around here... now it's like everyone just up and vanished. Like they're extinct or somethin'."
Even Okuyasu, despite his usually straightforward and slow-moving intellect, couldn't ignore the preternatural tension in the air.
"Don't say things like that, Okuyasu-kun! You're making me even more nervous!"
Koichi's voice trembled with a flicker of genuine fear. To see a bustling town transformed into a ghost town in a single night was a jarring, alien experience.
"Is it just me, or are there really fewer people out today?"
"Yeah... even some of the bus routes seem to have been canceled."
"It's definitely weird."
Even the few pedestrians they did encounter were visibly on edge, their eyes darting around as if they expected the shadows to leap out at them.
"Unbelievable..."
"Something significant has occurred while we were away. I'm certain of it."
Rohan rested a hand on his chin, his analytical mind already sifting through the variables of the morning.
"Assassin, have you detected anything out of the ordinary?"
"Hmm... if I were to be precise, there is a residual trace of magical energy within many of the surrounding residences. It's faint, but there's no doubt that a Servant is responsible."
"Furthermore, there was a momentary disruption in the flow of time earlier this morning... a brief [Time Stop]."
Amber remained invisible, her voice a calm, focused whisper in the artist's ear.
"A brief [Time Stop]?"
"Inside the houses?"
"Could it be...!"
The realization hit Rohan with the force of a physical blow. Without a word of explanation to the startled Koichi and Okuyasu, he dashed toward the nearest residence and kicked the front door open with a violent thud.
K-CHAK!
"Rohan-sensei?!"
"Hey! We shouldn't just be breaking into people's houses!"
Okuyasu and Koichi watched in disbelief as the mangaka stormed inside. But when they followed him, their protests died in their throats.
Rohan was kneeling on the floor, his face a mask of cold, concentrated fury.
Before him, the floorboards were stained with a drying, crimson puddle, and scattered fragments of visceral tissue were visible on the rug.
"Ah... ahh!! What is this?!"
Koichi didn't need a description. The scene was a brutal, wordless testimony to a horrific event.
"Is that... is that human meat?"
"What's goin' on?"
Okuyasu moved to stand beside Rohan, his voice thick with a mix of confusion and building horror.
"The bodies are missing."
"The magical residue Assassin mentioned is radiating from these exact traces."
"We need to check the other houses!"
"I'm willing to bet this isn't the only casualty in the district!"
"Right!"
"Got it!"
Under Rohan's urgent instruction, the three of them began a frantic, systematic search of the neighboring residences.
"What are you doing in here?!"
"Pardon the intrusion!!"
"Ugh... this one too. It's disgusting."
While they found a few residents who were physically unharmed but in a state of deep, unnatural slumber, the majority of the houses were hollow shells. The inhabitants had simply been erased.
"I'd love to believe they all just decided to go to work early or run some errands..."
Rohan's voice was a low, dangerous rumble as he looked at another set of bloodstains on a kitchen floor.
"This is going too far!"
"Why would anyone do this to normal people?!"
"This is even worse than what Yoshikage Kira was doing!"
Koichi was vibrating with indignation. He could understand a war between Masters and Servants, but to systematically target the civilian population was an atrocity beyond his comprehension.
"DIO."
'!'
'?'
At the mention of the name, Koichi and Okuyasu both froze.
"There is no one else in this war who would operate with such a complete lack of morality."
"As a Servant who has lost his Master, he is likely suffering from a severe deficiency of magical energy. This is his method of sustained manifestation."
THUD!
Rohan slammed a fist into a nearby doorframe. While he didn't radiate the same incandescent rage as Jotaro, he finally understood the man's personal vendetta against the vampire.
DIO was a monster who, when left unchecked, would treat the entire world as his personal larder.
"And to think... Jotaro-san and I had already ended him once!"
Rohan's mind flashed back to the future that had been erased.
Whoever had triggered that temporal recoil had commited an unforgivable sin. By resetting the board, they had allowed a dead man to return to life and escape the consequences of his defeat.
The person responsible for the reset was indirectly responsible for every drop of blood spilled in Morioh this morning.
"In the houses we've checked so far... there are over forty individuals missing."
"And that's just a fraction of the town's population."
"I can't fathom the scale of his movement last night. To do all this without alerting the authorities... it's a nightmare."
The level of coordination required for such a mass abduction in the span of a single night left Rohan in a state of profound anxiety.
"Rohan-sensei! I have to check on my family!"
"Wait!"
"We shouldn't split up right now!"
"Heh, I'll go with him. I can watch his back."
"You two...!"
Seeing that Koichi had lost his usual composure, Rohan decided not to argue. He understood the boy's desperation. After all, everyone he cared about was currently in the crosshairs of a vampire.
'We'll check on Koichi's family, and then find Jotaro-san and the others.'
'The [Time Stop] Assassin detected earlier... that must have been Jotaro.'
'He must have found something.'
With that thought as his baseline, Rohan followed the two boys as they raced toward their home.
***
"What did you say...?!"
"The Morioh Grand Hotel is... gone?!!"
Josuke was sprinting down the road, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
He had just received a call from a contact within the Speedwagon Foundation. They had reported a violent engagement at the hotel in the early hours of the morning, followed by a catastrophic structural failure.
"Sakuya!"
His voice was a sharp, uncompromising command. The easygoing, high-school attitude had vanished, replaced by a cold, desperate focus.
'...'
Understanding his intent, Sakuya immediately saturated his presence with her temporal acceleration.
In a single heartbeat, he vanished from the street and reappeared before the skeletal remains of the hotel.
"Have the police not arrived yet?"
"They said there was an explosion?"
"Look at the way the building is sheared... that wasn't an explosion..."
"Huff... huff..."
Josuke ignored the bewildered crowd gathered at the perimeter and dashed into the rubble.
'Please be safe!!'
The faces of Joseph and Jotaro flashed in his mind as he scrambled over the broken masonry.
CRASH!!
He shoved a massive slab of concrete aside and reached the familiar floor where their suite had been located.
The rooms had been systematically leveled, the interior walls reduced to fine dust. The scale of the destruction spoke of a conflict that defied mortal measurement.
"Hey!!"
"Old man!"
"Jotaro-san!!"
He shouted until his throat was raw, his eyes scanning every inch of the ruin.
"Say something!!"
"Please..."
For the first time in his life, Josuke felt a wave of pure, unfiltered terror.
'Master... over there...'
At Sakuya's direction, Josuke turned toward a specific patch of debris.
Within a hollow beneath several collapsed beams, he found a familiar figure.
It was Joseph Joestar.
The old man was unconscious, his body battered and bruised from the building's collapse.
"Dammit!!"
"Why did this happen?!"
Josuke's voice was a ragged howl of grief and frustration.
Jotaro had given him the Dragon Ball for safekeeping yesterday. Since neither of them was an active holder of the orbs, there was no reason for them to be targeted like this.
'Master... look...'
"No... Jotaro-san wouldn't... he's..."
"!"
Sakuya's voice was thick with hesitation, but she pointed toward a further pile of wreckage.
Josuke's breath hitched as he stared at the figure pinned beneath the remains of a supporting pillar.
The body was motionless.
There was a horrific, clean vertical incision that had split the man's skull and continued down to the base of his neck.
The familiar coat... the iconic cap...
There was no room for denial.
The man who had fallen in the ruins of the hotel, the warrior who had once been considered invincible...
Was Jotaro Kujo.
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]