Tinir didn't move.
Dark Blue Moon's every real strength lived underwater. Here, on open deck under a salt-wind sky, he was operating at a fundamental disadvantage. Against someone like Polnareff, the gap bordered on humiliation.
He assessed the situation in a single breath: six opponents, Salo wounded but standing, explosives already planted throughout the ship. Jumping alone into the sea would abandon his partner and risk no one following — unless he detonated the charges the instant he cleared the railing.
One second of calculation.
Conclusion: Wait.
He crossed his arms and held his position, fixing the group with cold patience.
Salo moved forward slowly, one hand still pressed to his neck.
Jotaro glanced at the Old Sailor convulsing on the deck — jaw stretched past any natural limit, black tendrils writhing out of his mouth like invasive roots — and kept the anger out of his expression. Survival first. He rejoined the others.
Shintaro studied Red Fear. He nudged Joseph quietly and directed his eyes toward the megaphone head.
Joseph understood without a word.
Hermit Purple shot forward — violet vines snapping through the air toward the speaker.
Salo reacted instantly. Red Fear's rusted sickles flashed downward and severed the vines mid-flight. The Hamon charge running through them discharged into Salo on contact, and for a fraction of a second his muscles locked under the jolt.
Avdol seized it.
"Cross Fire Hurricane!"
The fireball roared toward Salo. With Joseph's interference holding him for that fractional window, the hit should have been guaranteed.
The flames closed in —
— and began to crumble.
Color drained. Heat collapsed. The fire corroded mid-flight, flaking apart into fragments of rust that clattered onto the deck in a dry, metallic scatter.
Shintaro's eyes narrowed.
Avdol went still for a beat, expression tightening with the particular frustration of watching a certain outcome become impossible.
The answer was already on Salo's neck. Rust had crawled across the wound in crude, dense stitching — sealing torn flesh the way a man plugs a hole with whatever material is at hand. When he took his hand away, the skin had transformed into hardened corrosion, pressing the injury shut from outside and within.
He had used his own ability to cauterize himself.
Ruthless and entirely unsentimental about it.
Shintaro's thoughts moved fast. The ability targets inanimate objects. There's a ceiling. Overuse feeds back into him — if he could convert living tissue directly, Joseph and I would already be dead on the floor of that cabin. That meant the advantage, such as it was, sat with them.
Dark Blue Moon was crippled on land. Red Fear was the real threat. Six against one in any honest accounting.
Tinir had also gone completely silent since Salo arrived on deck. Which suggested Red Fear's corrosion spread in an area — it couldn't isolate a single target without catching everyone nearby.
The others had reached the same conclusion.
Jotaro stepped forward. Star Platinum materialized and drove a heavy punch at Salo's chest. Red Fear raised both sickles to meet it.
Clang. Clang.
The shockwave moved through the deck planking.
Tinir tried to intervene — and Hierophant Green's Emerald Splash cut across his path in a streak of emerald projectiles. He was forced back. Dark Blue Moon deflected several shards, only to have Avdol's flames drive him farther from the center of the fight.
Salo stood isolated.
Three against one was closer to accurate.
Hermit Purple lashed forward again. This time, both Joseph and Shintaro poured Hamon into the vines simultaneously — doubling the voltage running through them.
Salo saw it coming. He chose to keep his focus on Star Platinum rather than redirect.
The vines closed to within inches —
— and rust consumed them.
The purple flesh blackened, flaked, and failed. The vines collapsed into brittle iron fragments that clattered across the deck before they reached him.
But the activation cost him exactly what it always did.
Star Platinum's fist connected.
Salo was launched backward into the guardrail with enough force to drive the air from his lungs.
Jotaro moved to press forward — and stopped.
The Old Sailor had gone silent.
A shadow was spreading across the planks beside him.
Eyes rolled back. Mouth stretched past the limits of what a face was designed to do. Where a tongue had been, a grotesque trunk forced its way outward — bark slick with dark blood, growing with the untroubled determination of something that has no concept of where it doesn't belong. Dark red mud seeped outward from around the Old Sailor's body, swallowing his form as though the deck were reclaiming him.
Within moments, only a twisted, blood-streaked tree remained where he had been.
Shintaro felt cold move through him that had nothing to do with the sea air.
Before Jotaro could process the sight, pitch-black tendrils erupted from the tree's core and shot toward him. Star Platinum's hand blurred — slicing through most in a clean arc — and the remainder were pulverized under a rapid follow-up. Jotaro did not test the tree directly. A full-strength strike might shatter it, and whatever remained of the Old Sailor inside.
Across the deck, Tinir had barely avoided another Emerald Splash before Silver Chariot was already upon him.
Steel flashed. Tinir blocked — once — twice — already losing ground. Silver Chariot's rapier pierced his side shallowly, then scored his shoulder. Blood sprayed. He attempted to reach for contact, to let Dark Blue Moon's barnacles do their work — the blade's precision denied him every opening.
He tried again. The rapier grazed him so close that he lost a patch of skin along his forearm instead of his entire arm by a margin of centimeters.
This was ten years of disciplined swordsmanship. Dark Blue Moon had no ocean here to dominate. It was being systematically dismantled by a Stand that had mastered its element so completely that the absence of water wasn't a disadvantage — it was simply irrelevant.
Polnareff's position secured, Avdol and Kakyoin shifted their support back to Jotaro.
Star Platinum closed on Salo.
First punch: Salo rolled left. The railing behind where he'd been standing exploded outward and fell into the sea. Second punch followed immediately. Red Fear raised its sickles. The collision rattled the mast.
But Red Fear's strength was simply inferior.
Its growth potential was zero. Star Platinum only grew stronger.
The third punch drove through the guard and slammed into Salo's torso, forcing him back another full step as rust flaked from his skin under the impact.
Behind them, the monstrous tree lashed again — and Hierophant Green's Emerald Splash shredded the tendrils before they could reach Jotaro's back.
The battlefield had divided cleanly:
Silver Chariot carving Dark Blue Moon apart, controlled and merciless.
Star Platinum overwhelming Red Fear through the simple, absolute arithmetic of greater force.
Tinir's breathing was ragged. His wounds were multiplying. Every second away from water cost him more.
Salo's rust sealed fractures, but each use ate into him.
And beneath the deck — the explosives still waited.
The match had entered its final phase.
[well, my day was quite shitty a family member got hospitalized and my new fic doesn't have any new reader or any feedback is it too expensive I don't know will post it on webnovel next week please support]
[am writing a marvel gacha novel on my patreon please support]
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