"AAAH!"
The moment Polnareff came crashing down, Vanilla Ice let out a savage roar and lashed out with fists and kicks in one last brutal, desperate attempt to strike back. But there was one thing he never should have forgotten: Silver Chariot was no ordinary Stand. Even Jotaro had admitted it before - out of every Stand he had seen, that one was the fastest.
With tears flooding his eyes, Polnareff had no time left to wipe his face, no room left to surrender to grief. Every ounce of strength, every shred of fury, every fragment of will inherited from the friends who had already fallen was poured into a single blow. The blade shot forward without hesitation and pierced straight through his enemy's forehead.
"I curse you, Vanilla Ice!"
Polnareff's voice came out broken, thick with a sorrow so deep it felt like it was tearing his chest apart from the inside.
"You were right… my friendship really is pathetic. I wanted to save Iggy… but he was the one who saved me."
Silver Chariot twisted its sword again, shredding the man's skull without mercy. And yet even that did nothing to ease the weight crushing Polnareff's heart.
"I'm always like this… I only understand how much people matter after I've already lost them…"
He reached forward, trying to touch Iggy's small, lifeless body. He wanted to reach him. Wanted to call him back. Wanted, if only for a moment, to deny reality itself. But his body was already at its limit. Wounded, drained, shattered down to the soul, he simply could not take another step.
And then, at that impossible moment, Vanilla Ice moved again.
Even with his forehead impaled, even after being reduced to something grotesque and filthy, he was still there. He was no longer a man. Just a monster clinging to its own ruin, a vampire drowned in the lowest kind of corruption.
But this time, the one standing before him was no longer a wavering, cornered Polnareff.
This was a silver knight carrying the will of two fallen comrades.
This was a man who had lost too much to hesitate anymore.
At last seeing the creature for what it truly was, Polnareff commanded Silver Chariot in one clean, decisive motion. The blade slashed through the wall and tore it open from side to side. In the same instant, the golden light of dusk came pouring into the building.
The setting sun fell over Vanilla Ice like a sentence.
Terror twisted his face in the final second, and then his body began to disintegrate.
"Go show off in hell."
With his back turned to the enemy vanishing into ash beneath the red-gold light of sunset, Polnareff said it in the kind of cold voice that can only be born after absolute suffering.
Beyond the screen, countless viewers erupted into cheers.
But the scene still wasn't over.
Under the glow of evening, right where Iggy had fallen, a faint strand of golden smoke began to rise. Polnareff turned, dazed, and realized it was not alone. There were two of them. The twin streams of smoke drifted slowly upward beneath a sky dyed crimson, gradually taking shape until they revealed two familiar silhouettes.
Avdol.
And Iggy.
"Avdol… Iggy…"
Polnareff's eyes widened. He could barely believe what he was seeing.
For one brief moment, as if the heavens had granted them a final second before the last farewell, the two turned and looked back at him over their shoulders. Then they raised their fists in a silent gesture of encouragement.
No words were spoken.
None were needed.
Beneath a ray of light piercing through the clouds like a gate opening into the heavens, the two golden figures slowly dissolved away.
Polnareff remained kneeling there, staring at the empty space they had left behind, unable to come back to himself.
"Was that… just my imagination?"
It was the sharp, agonizing pain in his body that finally pulled him out of that daze. The grief was still there, burning just as fiercely, but there was no longer any room left for tears.
Not now.
Now, there was only one goal left.
DIO.
Yes. He would carry the souls of both his companions all the way to the end of that journey. He would bear their pain, their memory, their loss - and keep walking until he reached the final enemy.
But when he turned to climb to the next floor, his lips began to tremble. Then his whole face. Thick tears fell one by one onto the back of his hand.
And that was where the episode ended.
A lot of people were still trying to hold it together when Avdol and Iggy's spirits appeared. But when the image froze on that close-up of Polnareff shaking in silence, there was no defense left.
The comments exploded. Some joked that it was just dust in their eyes. Full-grown men openly admitted they were crying without a trace of shame. Others declared that the glory of the Stardust Crusaders would live forever. And above all else, there was a flood of outrage aimed straight at Alex. Because what kind of person made viewers grow that attached to a man and a dog… only to rip them away like that?
After the week's two episodes aired, a meme started spreading everywhere - comment sections, social media, group chats. In it, two girls were talking. One said she could never understand how men could watch Titanic without crying. The other asked what exactly they were thinking about. And right below it was a picture of a guy absolutely sobbing over Iggy's death. Somehow, it summed everything up perfectly: for a lot of men, more than romance, friendship was what struck the deepest.
The next day, on the set of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, the biggest star on site was not Alex.
It was Iggy.
The moment Alex arrived with the dog at his side, the entire set erupted. Mark and several of the other actors swarmed around him like they were reuniting with a brother who had come back from the dead. The actresses followed right behind, armed with treats, chicken strips, and dog snacks, all competing to see who could get Iggy to look at them first.
Alex watched the scene with a strange expression on his face. Even though he understood exactly why everyone was reacting like that, it was still hard not to feel… overthrown.
The center of attention had shifted away from the director and landed, without the slightest resistance, on a bulldog with a permanently offended face.
And the most absurd part was that Iggy was not even an especially friendly dog. Most of the time, he wore that arrogant look like he looked down on half the human race. That was exactly why Alex had picked him at first sight back when he was still in the United States. But in front of the actresses, the dog was suspiciously cooperative. Mostly because the snacks just kept coming. Violet Grant, at least, had the sense to bring proper dog treats instead of salty human food.
Watching Iggy getting pampered like that, Alex narrowed his eyes and suddenly had an idea.
Maybe it was time to make use of the dog's popularity and get him an endorsement deal.
If the animal earned a few million, he could buy his own dog food just fine.
As for the money left over… Alex would accept, with great suffering, the burden of managing it for him.
Then his assistant approached, phone in hand.
"Boss, a ton of people are roasting you online."
Alex spread his hands in resignation. He did not even need to look. He already knew exactly why.
A few days earlier, he had personally recommended Stardust Crusaders to the general public. A lot of people had checked it out to support him, to give it views, to trust his taste. After all, Alex had already become too dominant a figure in the industry for his recommendations to go unnoticed. But drawing in a wave of new viewers only to crush them with a tragedy like that right afterward was practically an act of provocation.
In a way, he had dug his own grave.
It was hard not to suspect there was some twisted pleasure in it.
"There's more," the assistant said, swiping through the screen. "A lot of people swore that if you make everyone suffer again next week, they're storming your comment section."
Alex fell silent for a few seconds.
Then he decided that, for the sake of his own peace, it would be better to disappear for a while.
After all, next week was Kakyoin's death.
Even while Alex played dead over the following days, new viewers kept flooding his comments and the official pages with outrage. But there was one funny detail: while the anger kept rising, Stardust Crusaders' viewership was climbing even faster.
They complained, cursed, threatened… and still hit play on the next episode anyway.
There were also plenty of people who were not yet that attached to Avdol and Iggy when they first watched those deaths. They felt the impact, of course, but they were not destroyed by it the way longtime JoJo fans were. The real problem came later. Once those people went back to binge the earlier episodes and truly got to know those characters, the pain changed. The more they understood who those two were, the harder it became to bear their loss.
Damn Alex.
Why bring those characters so vividly to life, make them feel so real… only to destroy them right in front of the audience?
That same morning, Rebeca Verne was getting ready to head out when her mother called after her.
"Wait a second."
She dropped what she was doing, grabbed her daughter by the arm, and looked at her with obvious concern.
"Tell me honestly. Did Alex promise you that role or not?"
Her worry was not without reason.
Rebeca was starting to look, in an alarmingly familiar way, like someone being pulled into a toxic emotional dynamic without realizing it. And, being brutally honest, the way Alex had been treating both mother and daughter really did carry a calculated edge.
He criticized. Dismissed. Cut her down without mercy. Made Rebeca doubt her own worth, her talent, even her image. Then, at the right moment, he would drop a crumb of recognition - something like maybe I'll consider you for the next movie. That alone was enough to reignite hope, cloud judgment, and pull her in deeper.
The pattern was ruthless.
But in Alex's case, it was even harsher than that. This was not some hollow game of psychological seduction. He genuinely looked down on Rebeca's box office pull. He truly thought her film presence was weak. And that made all the difference, because when an ordinary manipulator plays these games, he depends on tricks. Alex did not need tricks. His position at the top of the industry was real. One gesture, one sentence, one look of disapproval, and what little confidence someone had left could shatter completely.
"No," Rebeca replied, as if none of that sounded strange at all. "But he said he's willing to give me a chance. So I need to spend more time on set, observe, and learn."
Her mother felt her heart sink.
The longer she looked at her daughter, the more it felt like she was already being dragged into that logic without even noticing.
"Then I'm coming with you."
Rebeca puffed her cheeks slightly, almost childishly.
"Alex said that if I bring you, he won't let me onto the set."
Her mother's eyes widened instantly.
That was not even cold anymore.
That was a message with absolutely no effort made to soften it.
Another week passed, and two new episodes of Stardust Crusaders finally arrived.
The longtime fans, who had followed the story since Phantom Blood, and the newcomers who had spent the last several days bingeing dozens of episodes were equally tense. When they opened the platform to watch, many of them could barely keep their hands steady on the mouse.
After Avdol and Iggy's deaths, the fear was the same for everyone.
Who was Alex going to destroy next?
Then the episode title appeared:
DIO's World.
And the moment they read it, the air itself seemed to grow heavier.
The time had come.
The final battle.
As Polnareff began climbing the stairs toward the third floor, the audience finally came face to face with the true image of DIO in this adaptation. It was the same actor. The same Alex. Even so, many of his own fans would have struggled to recognize the performance without looking closely. Compared to Jotaro's hard features and heavy presence, DIO appeared almost like an entirely different being - golden hair, narrow crimson eyes, and a wicked magnetism running through every movement. Even the provocative way he thrust his hips forward, something that would have looked excessive anywhere else, felt bizarrely perfect here. Under the dark cinematography and suffocating atmosphere, he looked like a king risen from the abyss.
If there was anything DIO and Jotaro shared in that performance, it was only the feeling that their muscles were about to burst through the costume at any moment.
With a lazy, cruel smile, DIO spoke like a man toying with someone else's life.
"I'll give you one chance. Step back down two stairs, and I'll welcome you back as my ally. But if you're tired of living, then come up."
Alex delivered the line with frightening ease. There was no trace left of the petty delinquent from the first arc. This version of DIO had evolved into something far greater, far more seductive, far more terrifying - the kind of villain who fascinated precisely because he embraced evil with a conviction that almost felt sacred.
Polnareff did not waver in the face of the taunt. He lifted his leg and stepped forward.
Then came that sound.
A strange noise, brief, almost impossible to identify.
Before he could understand what had happened, DIO's voice came again, thick with mockery.
"So you say one thing and do another, Polnareff? Deep down, you really do want to become my companion."
Confused, Polnareff looked down.
And his blood ran cold.
He had not gone up.
He had stepped back down two stairs.
"What…? How is that possible? I stepped forward! I know I did!"
On impulse, he tried to charge upward again.
The same sound.
The same subtle distortion.
And before the audience's eyes, the image seemed to skip for a split second, as though time itself had stuttered. When the scene settled again, Polnareff was right back where he had started.
"T-That's DIO's Stand…? The World?!"
Even though he had already overcome the terror DIO once inspired in him, Polnareff still could not stop cold sweat from breaking across his skin. The ability was absurd. Invisible. Impossible to understand. And that was exactly what made it so terrifying.
Online, the discussion exploded instantly. Some people tried to guess whether it was spatial control, an illusion, manipulation of the stairs, or some kind of perception distortion. Others only wanted to talk about Alex's acting, stunned by how naturally he shifted between two completely opposite characters without a single crack showing. And there were also those who thought DIO was playing around too much, wasting the chance to kill Polnareff before he figured out what he was up against. Which only made the tension worse, because even if Silver Chariot was not a Stand full of tricks, Polnareff had already proven more than once that he was exactly the kind of fighter who found victory in the smallest details.
After witnessing the potential in that man, DIO still wanted to pull him to his side. And for those who had followed the story from the very beginning, that only reinforced something both unsettling and strangely magnetic:
DIO was becoming more and more charismatic.
More dangerous.
Harder and harder to look away from.
"Cut the crap, DIO! I've already died once! Even if I die again, I won't fall until I understand your Stand's power!"
Polnareff shouted, trying to crush his own fear beneath the force of his voice, and summoned Silver Chariot to charge.
DIO only smiled.
"Then die, Polnareff."
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