Chapter 5: A Boundless Ocean of Black Phantoms
Solido gasped for breath, his exhausted hand releasing the pistol and letting it fall to the sand. His body gave out, and he collapsed into a sitting position. The adrenaline that had suppressed the pain now faded, and agony flared to life across his face. He clutched his wounds, hissing in a sharp intake of breath.
But the pain was secondary. What he felt most was the exhilarating thrill of victory. He was like a dying old man who had successfully wrestled the last discounted steak from the hands of a young buck at the supermarket.
After a moment of recovery, once he was absolutely certain that Jonas was dead, Solido struggled back to his feet.
"You were just one step behind, Jonas!" he declared to the corpse.
A cold smirk twisted his lips. "And I'll let you in on a little secret... 'Solido' was just an alias. The name I prefer... is Diavolo."
Solido—or rather, Diavolo—was by nature a man whose caution bordered on paranoia. He would never, ever reveal his true identity unless he was absolutely certain his audience was a dead one.
With that, Diavolo picked up the pistol again and aimed it carefully at Jonas's body.
BANG! BANG!
Two more shots rang out, striking Jonas precisely in the head and the heart.
Diavolo stared down at the mangled corpse, his voice a low rumble. "If you can survive that... then I might actually start believing in God."
He glanced around, spotting the figures of several police officers in the distance, drawn by the sound of gunfire. Wasting no time, Diavolo pocketed the pistol. He bent down and retrieved the beetle arrowhead that had cut Jonas, along with the box containing the others. For good measure, he also took Jonas's wallet and camera.
Clutching his spoils, he fled into the desolate wastes, his figure gradually vanishing into the shimmering desert heat.
Emptiness. A profound, absolute nothingness.
Jonas felt as if he had arrived in a boundless, dark space. The dimension itself was paradoxical; one moment he felt curled up and compressed within the void, the next it expanded to an impossible, terrifying scale. A universe as vast as the Earth, and he was the sole inhabitant.
So, this is the afterlife?
There was a strange clarity to it, a feeling of seeing the true nature of the universe. But it was immediately followed by a wave of crushing regret. There were so many things he still wanted to do. How could he have died like this?
Memories of his past and present lives began to flash before him, a revolving lantern of his entire existence.
Faintly, he could hear Diavolo's voice echoing from a world away.
...one step behind... an alias... Diavolo...
Two more gunshots, and the voice was cut off completely.
Diavolo... the Speedwagon Foundation... an Arrow that awakens a 'Stand'... that vampire in Egypt, DIO...
As the memories coalesced, the truth hit Jonas with the force of a freight train. He hadn't been reborn into some ordinary parallel world. He was in the world of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
He'd never been a die-hard fan in his past life, but he'd seen clips and memes online. He knew the big, famous elements: the supernatural powers called Stands, the invincible Jotaro Kujo, the charismatic vampire Dio Brando...
But what good was that realization now? He was dead. Shot in the head. What kind of medical technology could possibly save someone from that?
Slowly, Jonas's thoughts began to fade. He stopped struggling, stopped thinking, and simply drifted alone in the world of nothingness.
An unknown amount of time passed. It could have been a minute; it could have been a hundred thousand years. Suddenly, Jonas felt a sharp, phantom pain jolt through his being.
Before his "eyes," the darkness began to change. Tiny black specks, like dust motes in a sunbeam that wasn't there, started to appear. First one, then another, then dozens, until they swirled into a dense, impenetrable curtain of black particles.
It was strange. How could he see black particles so clearly in an already pitch-black void?
He had no time to ponder the paradox. The black curtain shifted and churned, the particles coalescing until a humanoid shadow took shape before him. It was the same height as Jonas, but its face was a featureless void. Its entire body looked as if it were mummified, wrapped in countless strips of black bandages, with more of the strange black particles constantly seeping from the gaps.
Is this... the Grim Reaper? Jonas thought. Here to drag me to Hell?
The figure certainly matched the description from countless works of art and literature.
I haven't been a particularly bad person, Jonas reasoned. Even if I don't make it into Heaven, I shouldn't be destined for Hell, should I? Is this punishment for being an atheist?
He tried to speak, to argue his case, to avoid being damned for all eternity without so much as a trial. But when he tried to form the words, nothing came out. He realized, with a dawning sense of absurd horror, that he no longer had a mouth. Or vocal cords.
Jonas could only laugh bitterly at his predicament and gave up the struggle. He had already died once before being reincarnated. What was there to be afraid of now?
But just as he resigned himself to his fate, a vast cloud of black particles erupted from behind the first shadowy figure. In an instant, the particles formed another curtain, completely obscuring his vision. They swirled and reformed, giving birth to an endless stream of new black phantoms.
A veritable sea of them now stood before him, a crowded, jostling army that stretched beyond the horizon of his perception. They came in all shapes and sizes. Some looked like ordinary human silhouettes. Others had faces split open by massive, fanged maws. Some had the wings and talons of monstrous birds of prey. There were four-meter-tall giants, tiny imps the size of a hand, and spectral samurai gripping shadowy katanas...
The scene looked eerily like the gathering of all the Shadowkhan from Jackie Chan Adventures.
You have got to be kidding me, Jonas thought. What kind of monster was I that they need to send this many reapers to collect my soul?
As this doubt filled his mind, the phantom pain he'd felt earlier exploded into an unbearable, soul-shattering agony. The scenery before him began to blur and melt away like a chocolate castle in the sun.
He couldn't focus on the dissolving void. The pain was too immense, too absolute for rational thought. He felt as though his very soul was being sliced apart by a thousand blades. The torment was so extreme he couldn't stop himself from screaming.
"AAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH—!!!"
Jonas's eyes snapped open. The first thing he saw was a plain white cloth covering him completely.
He threw it off and found himself staring at a shabby, unfamiliar ceiling. A thick haze of the same black particles he saw in the void floated in the air around him.
He sat up bolt-upright and tore open his shirt. Looking down, he saw his fatal wounds—the bullet holes in his chest and heart—were swarming with the dense black particles. The flesh and blood of the wounds were reforming, knitting themselves back together into shapes resembling black bandages, the healing process visible to the naked eye.
He reached up to his head. The two bullet holes in his skull were gone, vanished as if they had never been there at all.
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Stand User: Jonas Jourdan
Stand Name: ?????
Destructive Power: ?
Speed: ?
Range: ?
Stamina: ?
Precision: ?
Developmental Potential: ?