"The Arrow… is it?"
Jonathan murmured quietly. Anthony, drifting forward, gave a slow nod.
"That's right. If I'm remembering correctly, there should be an Arrow hanging on the wall inside DIO's manor."
"We need to retrieve it. The Points from an Arrow like that are almost certainly enough to cover what your resurrection requires."
"And if DIO discovers us…?"
"That's a problem for after the resurrection."
Anthony answered calmly, a distinctly unscrupulous smile already spreading across his face.
Honestly — he had never been so grateful for his current state as a soul.
After the test run of their last traversal, Anthony had confirmed it completely: DIO could not see him or Jonathan's souls. Not even a flicker of awareness.
The moment that fact had clicked into place, the correct application of his situation had become immediately, blindingly obvious.
This is literally the perfect setup for breaking and entering.
You can steal something and the owner won't even process it's gone. No locks to pick. No cameras to dodge. Silent as a ghost — because you ARE a ghost. This is the ultimate burglar's blessing, the holy grail of five-finger discounts, the dream skill for residential larceny of all kinds.
Even the Wanderer from next door would be green with envy.
By the time DIO figured out the Arrow had vanished, if Anthony hadn't put at least eight hundred meters between himself and Jonathan and the manor, he'd have to chalk it up to his legs being slow — occupational hazard of being a disembodied soul.
"We're here."
Anthony stopped abruptly, his voice carrying a note of barely-contained excitement. He looked at the firmly locked gates before him, reached out — and, purely on instinct, pushed his hand forward.
He passed straight through.
The thin sliver of flesh he had been directing forward with soul energy — along with the Ampoule he had carried with him from the very beginning — were pressed flat under the guidance of that same soul energy, and slipped through the hairline cracks of the gate into the castle beyond.
Jonathan followed close behind Anthony, re-entering the castle. He glanced instinctively around the interior, then turned toward Anthony.
"DIO is most likely still in his chambers."
"Good. That suits us perfectly. Though — we'll need to go to him directly."
Anthony nodded, then added offhandedly as they moved — drifting up along the castle's interior staircase, all the way to the uppermost floor, to DIO's private chambers.
The entire journey was frictionless. As souls, they passed through every barrier without incident, without delay.
And yet — midway through — Jonathan's brow furrowed slightly.
"…I can feel it. My bloodline is drawing closer to this area."
Jonathan said it quietly, after a long pause. Anthony glanced back at him, faintly surprised.
Bloodline? Right — the Joestars apparently come with a built-in family radar.
The only ones who'd be showing up at this particular moment… would be Jotaro and Joseph, wouldn't it?
So they really have made it this close.
Anthony felt a dull twinge of anxiety at that.
"We can't afford to drag this out anymore. No more delays."
Having weighed the situation, Anthony turned back around immediately and said it plainly. Jonathan nodded, accelerating his drift to keep pace as Anthony pushed forward into DIO's chambers.
The moment they entered, Anthony was already scanning the room — and then stopped cold.
"What the hell — why is he awake?"
He stared at DIO, who had sat upright inside his coffin, and felt his eyes go slightly wide.
DIO had his lower half back. It was… slightly mismatched with the rest of him. Clearly, in all probability, the Stitching Enthusiast had done their work — someone's lower half had been sourced and reattached, origin unknown.
But the fact that this guy is awake makes everything significantly more complicated…
Anthony pressed a hand to his head, already feeling the headache forming. He raised his eyes — and there it was, mounted on the wall directly behind DIO: the Arrow. That unmistakable silhouette. One look was all he needed to confirm it: that was the ten-thousand Points he had pre-ordered — ahem, the Arrow he intended to acquire.
The problem was that DIO was awake. And he was staring directly at it.
Even if DIO couldn't see Anthony, there was no way Anthony could walk up and pocket the Arrow right under his nose. The moment it started moving, DIO would stop time, snatch it back, and the entire plan would collapse.
"Tch. This is a problem…"
"Should we just… try it and see?"
Jonathan offered after a brief silence. Anthony thought it over for a moment — then answered without hesitation:
"No. We're switching to Plan B."
"…?"
A question mark appeared on Jonathan's face.
We have a Plan B? Since when? Why didn't I know about this?
And then he saw it — the broad, brilliant smile spreading across Anthony's face.
In the same instant, under the influence of [Soul Attachment], the Ampoule — which Anthony had been directing in a thin flow along the floor — merged with the sliver of flesh he had kept at his side all this time.
The nature of the Ampoule was this: it restored any object to the best possible state as defined by that object's own subconscious ideal.
When an excess of Ampoule acted on something — living or dead — it would push the object all the way back to its "origin." Reduction to nothing. Erasure.
But a small quantity produced the opposite effect. Rather than erasure, a small dose would cause a dead substance to proliferate — endlessly, in the direction of its theoretical best possible form…
…until the Ampoule's efficacy was entirely spent.
In Night City, this technology had been used to increase meat yields.
And what Anthony intended to do with it now was something along exactly the same lines.
Jonathan's mind had barely caught up when Anthony's voice cut through, decisive and absolute:
"Change of plans. We begin the resurrection immediately."
"Right here. Right now."
"…?"
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