That night, after returning to the hotel, Alex was dragged off by Mark and the rest of the cast to a private room where everyone gathered to watch the new episode of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders.
The little girl who played Yachiru climbed right back into his lap as if it were the most natural thing in the world, pressing the back of her head against his chest and demanding affection without the slightest hesitation. Emily and the other beauty from the cast did not seem especially moved by the sight. In their eyes, she was just a little kid who had not even reached double digits yet. At that age, what could she possibly do other than act like a child?
The one who truly felt bothered was the other younger girl in the room.
She ground her teeth in silence, unable to hide the irritation creeping across her face. For a long ti, she had believed her greatest advantage was her age. Once she grew up, she thought, won like Emily would already be fading. But then Violet Grant appeared, and with almost no effort at all, stole away the very thing she had always considered her greatest trump card.
At that mont, everyone's attention was pulled back to the screen.
Against the dark monitor, the words "Original Work by Alex" slowly appeared. At the sa ti, enormous gears began turning within the gloom, dragging with them a heavy, almost oppressive atmosphere.
"A legend sleeping beneath the sea stirs the burning desert into waves…"
The deep, weighty voice of the song filled the room. A pendulum appeared, swaying from side to side. On the first swing, Jonathan, the protagonist of Phantom Blood, erged. On the second, the young Dio appeared, played by Alex himself.
That was when everyone understood.
It was a brand-new opening.
Then ca the third swing. The fourth. The fifth…
Young Joseph, played by Mark. Old Joseph. Dio returning from the depths of the sea in Jonathan's body. And finally Jotaro, bearing the fate of the entire Joestar bloodline on his shoulders. One after another, they appeared within the opening sequence, while the music steadily rose, shrugging off its earlier pressure until it burst into sothing truly electrifying.
"The place we must reach is an unknown destiny… the mont of the final battle has finally arrived."
The song ignited the mood completely. On the screen, the five protagonists advanced into a dark and mysterious mansion. The cara swept across each of them in turn, passing over Polnareff, Iggy, Avdol, Kakyoin, and Joseph, before finally stopping on Jotaro.
And then the lyrics struck like a declaration of war:
"The one who will bring it all to an end… is Star Platinum!"
The instant that line was sung, Star Platinum erupted behind Jotaro with overwhelming force, and the blood of every man in that room began to boil.
"On the final blank page, carve your mark with iron fists! The world's mory… the mory of blood - "
As the song reached that line, a shadow appeared behind Jotaro. The man whose face practically seed stamped with the word invincible turned sharply, and Star Platinum unleashed a savage barrage of punches, shattering the screen itself. The words of the song exploded with the impact, swallowing the image in violent, blazing visual effects.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA - !!!"
The room exploded.
The actors lost their minds on the spot, utterly infected by that ridiculous, glorious wave of adolescent hype. Watching that pack of idiots lose control around him, Alex could not resist any longer. He straightened slightly and decided to show them what the authentic version was really supposed to sound like.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA!!!"
The mont they heard the official battle cry coming from Jotaro himself, Mark and the others beca even more frenzied. It was like throwing gasoline onto an open fla. All of them shouted along at the top of their lungs, loud enough to make it feel as though they might rip the ceiling straight off the room.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA - ORA!!!!"
And clearly, that madness was not limited to their private room.
Over on the streaming platform, the page had already been swallowed by an endless flood of blue comnts repeating the word "ORA." In so places, the entire page had crashed straight into a 404 error. That alone said everything about the state of the JoJo fans gathered in front of their computers and phones that night.
Emily, Rebeca Verne, and the other won present looked at the scene with hollow, almost traumatized expressions.
It was unbelievably childish.
Even Alex's self-proclaid number one fangirl, the youngest girl in the room, wore a slightly strange expression. This was the first ti she had ever seen him like this - so unrestrained, so absurdly excited, so… unhinged. Until now, the image she held of him had always been that of a domineering CEO, cold and untouchable.
Even so, he still looked handso.
In her mind, the problem was not Alex. The problem was those idiotic friends surrounding him. Maybe she should start thinking of so way to keep him away from that terrible influence in the future.
This was how teenage crushes worked - hopelessly, shalessly biased.
But those cries of "ORA ORA ORA" were not only coming from inside that hotel room.
On the other side of countless screens, fans everywhere were shouting along with the episode, hamring away at their keyboards and filling the player with bullet comnts until almost no space was left on the image at all.
And then the page crashed.
For a few seconds, there was only stunned silence. People stared at their monitors with their mouths open, unable to believe they had actually taken down the site over an opening sequence. Then ca the sighs, the curses, the frantic pounding of F5. Quite a few people considered turning the comnts off to prevent another collapse, but in the end, most gave up on that idea.
Watching one of Alex's productions without comnts simply did not feel the sa.
Especially not JoJo. No one could ever predict the kind of absurd or bizarrely brilliant nonsense the crowd online would co up with in the middle of an episode. In the end, only a small handful of viewers chose to disable them. Fortunately, once the opening ended, the flood of comnts dropped sharply. They still covered nearly half the screen, but at least they no longer interfered with the actual viewing experience.
Even so, praise for the new opening kept pouring in without pause.
It was insane. Explosive. Pure adrenaline in audiovisual form.
So viewers claid the hype was so overwhelming they nearly punched themselves. Others were already calling it the greatest TV opening of all ti. A few swore the sequence was packed with hidden details, noting that in several shots, Polnareff seed to be standing at the very front of the group, as though that ant sothing. There were even people insisting they had spotted a dog for a brief instant and were not sure whether they had imagined it.
They had not.
As soon as the episode began, the story maintained the sa fast, direct pacing that had already beco a trademark of Alex's productions. With the help of the SPW Foundation, a helicopter slowly descended. Two n stepped out and announced that they had brought a new Stand user to join the main group.
Everyone assud the new mber would be one of them.
It was not.
The newest mber of the team was a dog.
The surprise hit hard, and many viewers imdiately connected it to the figure they had glimpsed in the opening.
Inside the hotel room, everyone's gaze also shifted toward the black-and-white dog resting in Alex's arms.
It was him. The real Iggy.
"So dogs can be Stand users too?" one of the actors laughed, reaching out to pet him.
Iggy answered with a rough growl, baring his teeth without the slightest respect. The actor yanked his hand back at once.
"Iggy's extrely wary of strangers," Alex warned.
"Damn mutt," the actor muttered, rubbing at his bruised pride and suddenly missing the gentle dogs from other sets.
In the episode itself, however, Iggy wasted no ti proving that his unpleasant personality matched that permanently annoyed face of his perfectly. From the very beginning, it was obvious he did not get along with the group. Least of all with Polnareff.
The friction between the two was so natural that the audience burst into laughter almost imdiately.
By this point, Henry's old image - the one that once carried the weight of a more heroic role - had already been completely hijacked by Polnareff. After playing that character, it was as if he had been shoved irreversibly onto the path of cody, exaggeration, and chronic bad luck.
After a great deal of effort, coffee, and chewing gum, the group finally managed to calm Iggy down enough to take the classic photo.
The image that, in ti, would co to be immortalized as: "Glory Will Always Belong to the Stardust Crusaders."
But that lightheartedness did not last long.
The first great threat of the Egypt arc soon arrived with terrifying force: N'Doul, wielder of Geb.
As the first true enemy of that stage of the journey, he imdiately brought suffocating pressure with him. His Stand, able to freely alter its liquid form and attack in unpredictable ways, placed the protagonists in genuine danger almost from the very start. The battle built in tension with every passing second, and only when Iggy truly entered the fight with The Fool did they finally manage to close the distance.
Then ca the decisive mont.
Jotaro appeared behind N'Doul, establishing that cold, brutal one-on-one standoff. In front of their screens, viewers stopped breathing. Everyone's heart seed to leap into their throats.
In the next instant, Star Platinum and Geb appeared at the sa ti and launched themselves at one another at supersonic speed.
At that point, information no longer mattered. Strategy no longer mattered. Tricks no longer mattered.
Only direct confrontation remained.
"ORA!"
With Star Platinum's trademark battle cry, the fist exploded forward and slamd into N'Doul's chest. The dry crack of breaking bones rang out with brutal force, and the enemy was hurled to the ground.
At the sa ti, Geb struck Jotaro's cap.
And for the first ti, his hair was actually visible.
The comnts on the screen instantly lost their minds again.
A huge number of viewers freaked out, saying that after so many episodes, they were finally seeing what his hairstyle looked like. Others were genuinely shocked to discover that his hair and his cap were not, in fact, a single fused entity. There were even people complaining that everyone's focus was completely wrong.
Back in the hotel room, the n watching together could not help but laugh.
That fight should have been an intense masterpiece, perfectly blending strategy and raw violence into sothing exhilarating. But in the end, the entire atmosphere got hijacked by Jotaro's hat.
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