The poor road roller, caught between the savage collision of two Stands at the absolute peak of power, didn't take long to become nothing more than a twisted heap of ruined metal. In the end, it seemed DIO, favored by position and by the machine's monstrous weight, had the upper hand. Using the full mass of it, he pinned Jotaro down without mercy, and with one final, violent crash, the road roller gave out completely, burying him beneath the wreckage.
"Heh… hehehe… AHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
Standing atop the smoking scrap, DIO threw back his head and burst into wild, feverish laughter, the kind that bordered on madness.
"Immortal… eternal… even fate itself bends before me!!!"
Jotaro was dead.
There was no one left in the world who could stop him now.
And yet, the moment Alex delivered the English line in that warped, hypnotic, bizarre accent of his - the one that had somehow become a signature by now - countless viewers, who had been watching with their hearts in their throats, nearly choked laughing and almost spat all over their phones again.
How was it that, at a moment like this, he still managed to force that cursed pronunciation into the scene?
It had happened before. Back when Kakyoin died, when everyone had been in pieces, he had opened his mouth and turned "The World" into "Za Warudo" with such absurd charisma that the tragedy had briefly become a meme. It was almost criminal. And it only made fans more curious. In other productions, Alex had used his real voice perfectly normally. But in JOJO, every time English showed up, it felt like some ancient spirit took over his mouth.
Even so, the tension snapped back in an instant.
"Now all that's left is to drink Jotaro's blood. Assuming there's any blood left in him!"
DIO shouted with absolute arrogance, savoring his victory.
Then, suddenly, something changed.
What…?
His body… wouldn't move.
The unease passed through the screen and reached the audience too. Countless viewers frowned at once, seized by a sharp, instinctive sense that something was wrong.
What just happened?
"DIO. Eleven seconds have already passed. Looks like your time to move ends here."
The voice came from behind him.
Jotaro was there.
Unharmed.
Standing at DIO's back as if he had ripped himself out of death itself, his eyes half-lidded, his face wrapped in that cold calm that only made the moment more terrifying.
"I stopped time after the ninth second. About time."
JOJO fans froze right along with the scene.
Which meant…
This stopped world was under Jotaro's control now?
In less than a second, countless people remembered the line he had spoken before the final battle.
"It's the same type of Stand as Star Platinum."
The same type?
That went far beyond similar. It wasn't merely close. It was the exact same ability.
"Now I'm going to finish you. I won't even need a full second."
"Jo… Jotaro!"
DIO ground his teeth as he spat out the name, but the cruel truth was already laid bare for everyone to see.
Their positions had completely reversed.
Unlike DIO, who had used time stop until now like a man drunk on his own superiority, Jotaro was direct, precise, merciless. Before the limit of his own stopped time ran out, he drove a brutal kick into the back of DIO's knee.
Then, with the same cold finality DIO himself had used so many times before, Jotaro returned the words to him like a sentence:
"Time will start moving again."
The instant the flow of time resumed, DIO was launched off the top of the road roller. His body flipped through the air in a humiliating arc before crashing hard onto the ground.
That was the moment countless men staring at their screens literally widened their eyes.
That was just too absurdly cool.
Punching someone in a frozen world, only for the impact to explode the moment time started moving again… it was the kind of thing that bypassed all rational thought and hit some primitive part of the male soul dead center.
In the end, everyone realized at once, men had never loved luxury cars or unattainable beauties half as much as they loved things like Stands, legendary blades, and impossible powers.
Jotaro walked forward then, one step at a time, until he stood over DIO. He looked down at him as though he were already passing judgment on a corpse.
"If I kill you now, that'd be too merciful. And that pisses me off."
His voice came out low, heavy, without the slightest hurry.
"How long will it take for those legs of yours to heal? Three seconds? Four? The moment you recover, I'll beat you to death with Star Platinum."
DIO trembled with rage. His eyes filled with blood. Inside, the humiliation burned hotter than any wound.
This brat… this damned brat was looking down on him.
And even so, DIO clung to what he had always believed. Jotaro was still human. And to DIO, being human meant thinking small. It meant being tainted by ridiculous notions like bruised pride, emotional dissatisfaction, personal justice. Worthless things. Fragile things. Things he considered lower than filth at the bottom of a toilet.
He did not think that way.
He never had.
His path had always been only one thing.
Victory.
Domination.
Everything else…
In the next instant, the fury he had been holding inside erupted like a volcano.
"Doesn't matter at all!!!"
Blood burst from his wounds and sprayed across Jotaro's eyes.
"Well? How do you like that? Die!"
The World came down with a vicious, cleaving kick.
Even with his vision obscured, Jotaro answered with a punch.
"ORA!!!"
The moment Star Platinum's fist collided with The World's leg, a crack appeared first in Star Platinum's hand.
DIO smiled.
For one brief second, he truly believed he could still win.
And then the music changed.
That invincible, unmistakable theme kicked in as though fate itself had chosen a side.
The crack that began at The World's knee spread.
First through the legs.
Then through the torso.
Then through the entire body.
DIO's eyes went wide.
"What?!"
The damage taken by the Stand slammed straight back into its user. Pain tore through DIO like divine judgment, dragging from him a scream so raw it sounded like his very soul was splitting apart.
"No… impossible… I… I, DIO… I…"
He never finished.
With a brutal explosion, half of his body - along with his head - was blasted into shredded flesh. Only a miserable fragment remained on the ground, a pitiful remnant of what had once seemed like an unstoppable calamity.
The reactions came instantly.
"The World literally cracked apart."
"Told you - mages don't go to the front line and trade blows with warriors."
"Cause of death: didn't yell MUDA loud enough."
"Cause of death: drank Joseph's blood and still dared to mess with heavy machinery."
"That logic is so stupid it looped back around to genius."
"He's finally dead. After losing four teammates, they finally won this war."
"Congrats to Polnareff for dodging death."
"My God, you people said that and I only just remembered Polnareff was still alive."
Amid the chaos, the Speedwagon Foundation arrived to clean up what was left. Ambulances. Medical teams. Quick orders. The exhausted weight of a battle that had cost far too much.
At Jotaro's request, the doctors attempted to transfer blood recovered from DIO's body into Joseph.
When the scene reached that point, the audience erupted. So many people had already accepted that, out of the Stardust Crusaders, only Jotaro and Polnareff would remain standing. But now there was a chance. A tiny one. An unlikely one. An almost absurd one.
And still, it was real.
Then, halfway through the transfusion, Joseph opened his eyes.
A sinister, dark purple energy rose over his skin. He glanced at DIO's corpse beside him, then slowly twisted his mouth into a grin.
"You're an idiot, Jotaro."
His voice came out grotesque.
"Thanks to you… I'm alive again!"
At that instant, countless viewers hurled profanity at their screens. Half the audience nearly fell out of their chairs. Jotaro's expression changed immediately too, and he summoned Star Platinum with the very clear intention of punching first and sorting things out later.
"Wait, wait, wait! Jotaro! I'm kidding! Kidding! Sorry!"
The moment Joseph saw a fist bigger than his own head aimed directly at his soul, he dropped every last bit of swagger and surrendered with astonishing speed.
A second later, he started rattling off facts about himself like a machine gun, desperately trying to prove he was really Joseph.
And that was enough.
The fans, who had been cursing just a moment ago, broke into laughter and relief at the same time.
Damn old man. Of course you had to be the trickiest one of them all.
That was when countless viewers finally leaped to their feet, threw their arms up, and shouted at their screens. The past few weeks of JOJO's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders had been an unrelenting barrage of grief, tension, and emotional gut-wrenching. Watching Joseph come back felt, for many, even more exhilarating than seeing DIO explode.
When morning finally came, the sun rose slowly over the horizon of Cairo.
On the outskirts of the city, under the silent watch of Jotaro and Joseph, the remains of DIO began to turn to ash beneath the dawn light. That cursed body, which had crossed generations, spread death, and dragged suffering across an entire century, finally dissolved into the wind.
"So… this is the end," Joseph said quietly.
Jotaro kept staring ahead.
"But there are things we can never get back."
Joseph nodded.
"Yeah. And they were far too precious. What we lost was worth more than anything on this earth. But it was because of them… that we survived."
Slowly, Jotaro lifted his face toward the sky now washed clean by sunlight, as if the light had finally broken through the darkness that had followed them the whole way.
And there, between memory and daylight, the faces of those left behind appeared.
Kakyoin.
Iggy.
Avdol.
Jotaro looked at them in silence before speaking, with a softness so rare it hurt.
"It's over."
When the smiles of the three of them appeared in the sky - calm, bright, as though they had finally found peace - fans could not hold themselves together anymore. Noses stung. Throats tightened. Eyes, already battered by too many emotional blows, finally overflowed.
"The highest respect to the three noblest Stardust Crusaders."
"Glory will always belong to the Stardust Crusaders."
"What kind of ending could ever be worthy of all the suffering along the way?"
"I think a road roller got in my eye."
That war, born from a grudge that had lasted a hundred years, had finally come to an end.
In the aftermath, even though Joseph urged him to stay, Polnareff chose to return to his homeland. At the moment of farewell, he pulled both of them into a fierce embrace, as if he knew that some bonds, no matter how unforgettable, could never be shared in quite the same way again.
"Well, this is it, old man! Try to stay alive for a good long while! And you too, you stingy grandson! Don't forget me!"
His eyes shone with tears despite the smile on his face.
Joseph answered with that same warm, open energy he always carried.
"See you, kid. And as long as you don't mind this old man, I won't forget you either."
Jotaro, for his part, let out a real smile - the kind that came rarely, and because of that meant everything.
"With a personality like yours, forgetting you would be impossible. Take care."
It was a farewell between men.
And for that very reason, it needed nothing more.
On the flight back, Jotaro stared at the photograph from their journey through Egypt. For a long moment, he only looked at it. Then a sincere smile appeared on his face.
The main story had finally come to an end.
The ending song began to play as the credits slowly rose across the screen.
Alex as Jotaro Kujo.
Alex as DIO.
Boris Andersen as Noriaki Kakyoin.
And one by one, the rest of the cast followed, carried upward by that song that seemed unwilling to let anyone leave just yet.
JOJO's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders - End.
Even after the final words appeared, countless viewers remained motionless before their screens, unable to bring themselves to close the page.
In the end, it was only a fictional story.
And yet, for some reason, no one could feel that it was only that.
It felt as though they too had traveled that road. As though they too had left home, crossed continents, faced impossible horrors, lost comrades, crushed the unthinkable, and made it all the way to Cairo to witness the end of a curse.
And now, after saving the world, all that remained was parting.
Then an official comment appeared first on the screen.
"Journey complete."
Yes.
Thinking about it now, that really was the first work written, directed, and starred in by Alex that had reached a true ending.
And when those words appeared, the fans - still caught between the ache of goodbye and the sweetness of closure - reached for their keyboards almost on instinct.
One by one.
All together.
And typed the exact same words.
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