"Stop playing games! JoJo — now!"
"Copy that —!"
Even so, Caesar still launched his spread of ripple soap bubble blades to seal off every aerial escape route for Kars and Wamuu, while young Joseph simultaneously channeled ripple energy down through the wool thread array laid across the ground.
In that instant, the light blazing off the ripple energy nearly lit up everything around them.
"Lord Kars —!"
"Wamuu — old me has had his eye on you the whole time!"
Wamuu saw the situation turning against them and raised his arms to unleash the Sacred Sand Storm to break the formation apart — but old Joseph gave him no such opportunity. Hermit Purple lashed out in an instant, coiling tight around Wamuu's arms and locking them in place before he could call up the wind.
Lisa Lisa moved at the same moment — she hurled her specially made ripple-saturated scarf, further amplifying the ripple output flowing through the ground array.
This was a kill formation laid down by the four foremost ripple users in the world. Ripple energy of this magnitude was enough to put down any Pillar Man in an instant — and Kars was no exception.
"Pay the price for your arrogance, Kars — guh?"
Brilliant light exploded from the ripple. Just as young Joseph was certain that both Kars and Wamuu were finished — he felt one side of his body go ice cold.
Shear —!
The sound of flesh tearing. His own severed arm spun away through the air.
And it wasn't only young Joseph.
"JoJo?"
"Wait, how did I — ugh —!"
Caesar lurched in sudden shock. Before he could even process what was happening, he felt both his wrists go cold — and when he looked down, both his hands had simply vanished. Only clean, smooth cross-sections remained at the stumps.
Impossible.
He and JoJo had sealed every angle Kars had. There was no way Kars could have —
Caesar raised his head in disbelief — and found the formation empty. Kars was no longer inside it.
Only a phantom afterimage lingered where Kars had been, dissipating under the impact of the ripple energy. Kars's actual body was now standing between Caesar and young Joseph, a phantom flashing briefly at his back — watching them with something like pity.
A Stand — [Bone Light].
Just as Esidisi had [Blood Vaporization] and Wamuu had [Vile Wind], Kars had simultaneously awakened a Stand that vastly amplified the power of his own Mode.
Through this ability, Kars could even use his Mode to generate phantom copies of his own body — capable of deceiving enemies into striking at an illusion.
But there was a difference between Kars's Stand and those of Wamuu and Esidisi.
Look closely, and you could see that the Stand taking shape behind Kars was humanoid — glowing, its features indistinct, as though it were still in some kind of incomplete state.
"When did you get the idea that you had caught me in your trap?"
"Lord Kars!"
Forcing against the ripple energy conducting through Hermit Purple's vines, Wamuu tore himself free from old Joseph's hold — at the cost of half the flesh of his arms being wrenched open.
He looked at Kars with the reverence one reserves for a deity.
"I see you all clearly, JoJo. I will defeat you fairly, and your fates will end here... I'll start by taking the life of young JoJo — you who were always destined to stand in my way, again and again. Kill the young one, and the old one beside him gets erased as well. How conveniently tidy."
The single eye of the Saint reflected in his socket showed him the future — the one possibility in which all four ripple users died here. It would begin with this young Joseph, the one who had once been fated to "exile" him.
Kars fully expected them to panic. To fear.
But what happened next was bewildering —
"Please wait — !"
"?"
"Sob... I'm sorry, big brother, I'm so sorry, it wasn't intentional..."
"My sincerest apologies to everyone — I lost track of the situation for a moment. I just remembered that big brother said to keep everyone alive — let me treat you right away!"
The nun-dressed girl who had been standing behind the four ripple users — Meruru — came jogging into the middle of the battlefield.
She walked straight up to Kars without a shred of fear and called a halt to his actions, making Kars blink. As she murmured quietly, light radiated from her palms — and something impossible unfolded.
The blood and severed limbs on the ground began reversing. Caesar's hands, young Joseph's arm — they drifted back through the air from where they had fallen and, to everyone's stunned silence, reattached themselves to their owners.
But it was not this that gave Kars true pause.
What stopped him was the realization that the Saint's eye embedded in his socket could not see this nun girl's fate.
Like a virus from outside the world, wearing the disguise of an ordinary human cell — her very existence sent an alarm through Kars.
And in the next breath, Kars acted without hesitation.
His light blade raised — and he swung it toward the nun girl's neck without a flicker of mercy, that face that didn't even carry fear in its expression.
Must be eliminated. Must be eradicated.
The residual eye from the Saint's Corpse was sending his instincts into a frenzy. Even if it couldn't show him her fate, it was screaming at him that if he left this existence alone, something far worse would follow in its wake.
The nun girl stood right where she was. She kept casting her magic without moving a step — exactly as if someone had wanted her there.
The light blade closed the distance in a fraction of a second, poised to take the life of this oblivious human girl —
Until a hand burst out from inside the girl's body.
Concealed within her using the distinctly Pillar Man method of hiding that Kars knew all too well — it seized Kars's light blade bare-handed with unimaginable force and simply stopped it.
The hand applied pressure. Kars felt as though a thousand weights had settled over his whole body at once. Even with a Pillar Man's strength, he could not move.
And it was not over. Kars even saw it — lightning in the form of ripple energy, ready to conduct directly into him through the grip on his arm.
"I finally have you..."
"Kars."