"Why isn't this working? It's like it just died — we've been in this mountain range for fifteen minutes and I'm only now realizing all our communication equipnt is dead. Can we still pull back in ti?"
In a three-man unit, the man carrying the miniature satellite cara had just discovered his feed had cut out. When he went to contact base, he found the communications gear wasn't responding either.
Not just his. His teammates' too.
As if sothing had cleanly severed the signal.
Nobody knew why. Nobody had an explanation.
The cara operator scanned the surrounding trees with a furrowed brow. The forest was sowhat sparse — reasonable sightlines, at least. Autumn had stripped most of the branches bare.
Which was exactly the problem. They'd co in covertly, hoping for cover. This landscape offered almost none.
A voice from behind him: "Captain — look over there!"
He turned in the direction his teammate was pointing.
His expression froze.
A girl?
In this kind of deep mountain wilderness — how is there a girl this small? Ten, maybe thirteen years old at most. And her hair is green.
At the edge of his sightline, a small figure was walking toward them. Arms crossed. Unhurried. Too far to make out features clearly.
All three Stand users felt it simultaneously — an invisible weight pressing down, settling over their chests without warning or explanation.
A sense of danger.
They couldn't trace where it was coming from. Surely not from that girl. She looked eleven, twelve at most.
A girl that age, posing a threat to three Stand users?
That was absurd. Embarrassing to even consider.
And yet.
"Hey," the captain called out. "Kid. This place is dangerous. Wild animals, venomous snakes everywhere — you'll get yourself killed. Go ho before you get lost out here."
He needed her to stop advancing.
Because the closer she got, the heavier that feeling beca.
Sothing was wrong.
Sothing was very wrong.
A non-humanoid presence slipped out of the captain's body — strange-looking, vaguely alien in silhouette, almost incomprehensible in form. His Stand. The power he was most proud of.
Power A. Speed B. Durability B. Developntal Potential B. Range C.
A Stand with even one A-rated stat was considered formidable. He'd earned his position on this operation.
The Stand reached into the captain's pocket and produced a single bullet. It held the bullet the way a child holds a marble before flicking it — aid directly at Tatsumaki, ten ters away.
The order from above had been clear: no restrictions on engagent in this area. No legal consequences.
If she took one more step —
The girl stopped.
Ten ters. She stopped on her own.
And now he could finally see her face.
She was genuinely beautiful. Young — probably under fifteen at the absolute outside, flat as a board — but the face was striking.
What unsettled all three of them was the expression on it.
She wasn't looking at them like people.
She was looking at them like sothing far beneath her that hadn't earned a second thought. Like things she could end if she happened to decide to.
"Captain," the darker-skinned mber murmured, barely audible. "Sothing's off about her. No witnesses out here. We should take her out before she makes noise or calls for help. The enemy supposedly wiped a thousand troops in one hit."
The captain's jaw tightened. He looked at the green-haired girl.
No exposure. That's the priority.
He gave a small nod.
The Stand behind him curled its finger — and released.
Bang. Whoosh.
The bullet tore forward at speed, punching clean through a wrist-thick sapling in its path, and streaked toward Tatsumaki's skull.
That bullet, at that velocity, hitting a head —
It stopped.
One ter from her face. Completely motionless. Suspended in the air as if gripped by an invisible fist, unable to move an inch further.
Tatsumaki looked at it.
She reached out and plucked it from the air with two fingers.
She examined it briefly, pale green eyes flickering with sothing dismissive, then turned her gaze back to the three n.
"That's it?" A flat pause. "You're even weaker than I expected. Is that what your Stand's strength looks like? Feels about the sa as an ordinary sniper rifle. Less, actually. Weaker than an ant's bite."
She dropped the bullet. It hit the dirt.
Her expression didn't change.
If that expression had been on a villain's face, the villain would have been dead within twenty minutes of appearing on screen. On a girl — especially one with a face scoring well above average — it landed completely differently. Tsundere. Gap moe. Oh no she's actually—
She wasn't paying attention to the dropped bullet. Bullets didn't interest her.
She looked at the three n with sothing approaching curiosity.
"Other than Josuke and the one Emperor Ying Zheng's people caught," she said, "this is my first ti running into Stand users in the wild. Interesting." A brief pause. "If my world had people with Stand abilities, the weaker ones would qualify as B-class heroes at minimum. Strong Stands could manage A-class. A genuinely broken Stand might crack the lower end of S-class."
The captain's pupils contracted sharply.
She can see my Stand.
She knows what Stand users are.
She's not a bystander. She ca here for us.
He didn't understand the ranking terminology — B-class, A-class, S-class — but his instincts told him it wasn't random. So kind of code?
His thoughts were still racing when sothing hit him.
Not physically. Not visibly.
Like soone had dropped a steamroller onto the top of his head.
His knees buckled. He went down — both knees slamming into the soft earth, driving two small craters into the soil. His legs, his lower back, every load-bearing part of him exploded with pain.
Survival instinct fired before thought could. His Stand's arms ca up and braced against the invisible force pressing down from above, barely holding his torso upright.
Through the pain and disbelief, his voice ca out strangled:
"This is — this is a Stand attack!!"
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