Replay Interrupted

3:26 PM.

Through Moody Blues' replay, Abbacchio, Bucciarati, and the others saw what had happened to Li Qing twenty minutes earlier:

He had been fighting. To "save the world," he had fought a huge, bloated, grotesquely twisted monster.

"There's a monster like that in Naples?!"

"Is that a Stand too?"

Even Bucciarati, the exceptionally composed team leader, could not help but feel a chill at the Meat Chunk's presence.

And as Naples' de facto protector, he could not suppress his concern for the city's fate:

"That Meat Chunk looks completely mindless. If we leave it alone, it could cause massive destruction across Naples."

"So... what happened to it afterward? Did that bald guy's plan succeed?"

No matter how worried they were, it had all happened twenty minutes ago.

Bucciarati could do nothing but place his hopes on the hero who had stepped forward to fight the Meat Chunk twenty minutes earlier.

Ironically, that hero was also the target they had been assigned to hunt down:

"Abbacchio."

Bucciarati spoke in a complicated tone. "Keep playing. Let's see what happened next."

"Understood."

Abbacchio nodded and had Moody Blues transform back into Li Qing as he had been twenty minutes ago, ordering it to continue following Li Qing's path.

And so, Moody Blues perfectly reenacted Li Qing's movements from that time:

It rode a nonexistent motorcycle, racing forward in a strange posture as it hovered in midair.

It twisted the "throttle," accelerating faster and faster as it led Bucciarati and the others swiftly toward the devastated battlefield.

Then...

Moody Blues' movements abruptly stopped.

It came to a dead halt outside the ruins, where nothing but broken bricks and rubble remained, like an old cassette tape ruined by water.

Everyone had been engrossed in the replay, and the sudden "pause" caught them completely off guard.

The steady Bucciarati was fine, but the hot-tempered Fugo immediately tore off his "cultured man" facade. Turning to Abbacchio, he roared impatiently:

"Hey, newbie!"

"Why are you stopping at the crucial moment? Keep playing!"

"Yeah!"

Narancia chimed in eagerly. "What happened after that?!"

"After that..."

Abbacchio's expression grew faintly awkward.

"There is no after that."

"There isn't?!"

Fugo, now in a foul mood, stomped up to Abbacchio, who stood a full 188 centimeters tall. He first rose slightly onto his toes to make up for his not-yet-fully-developed height, then grabbed Abbacchio by the collar without hesitation:

"What do you mean, there isn't?!"

"Do you think you're filming a TV drama?! Pulling this kind of stunt at the climax will get you killed!!"

"Can't be helped."

Abbacchio sighed helplessly.

He raised a hand and pointed at the ruins, which the Meat Chunk had ravaged until only shattered stone and debris remained:

"The 'location' where the incident happened has been completely destroyed."

"My Moody Blues reads the memories of the place where an event occurred. Both 'time' and 'location' are indispensable."

"With things as they are now..."

Abbacchio removed Fugo's hand.

"No matter how angry you get, Moody Blues can't continue the replay."

The Meat Chunk's destructive power was simply too terrifying. Wherever it went, not even a blade of grass remained.

Like an enormous mop, it relentlessly pursued Li Qing while wiping away every trace he left behind.

"What?"

"So there's no way around it?!"

Though he understood what Abbacchio meant, Fugo had been looking forward too much to what came next and was still so furious he wanted to stamp his feet.

"Newbie, your Stand is seriously useless!"

"Stop throwing a tantrum."

Bucciarati promptly stopped his companion's pointless anger, then calmly asked Abbacchio:

"So what do we do next?"

"Is there any way to keep tracking Li Qing?"

"This..." Abbacchio thought for a moment. "This area was too thoroughly destroyed. The memories from 'twenty minutes ago' have been completely cut off."

"And judging by the destructive power that Meat Chunk displayed..."

"As long as it passed through an area, every trace of anyone else having been there should have been wiped away."

"So we can only search nearby for more clues. We need to find traces Li Qing left after escaping the Meat Chunk and moving outside the battlefield—no matter what, he had to leave that battlefield after the fight ended. If we can't read the battlefield's 'memories,' then we'll read the memories outside it."

"If we can skip over this damaged 'memory' and fast-forward directly to some later time and place, we can reconnect this broken trail."

"All right, then..."

Bucciarati let out a soft sigh.

"Fugo, Narancia, Abbacchio. The four of us will split up and gather clues around these ruins."

"He appeared here only twenty minutes ago. The time gap isn't too large, so there might still be witnesses nearby who saw where he went."

As always, he gave his orders cleanly and decisively.

Fugo and the others nodded, then silently split off in three different directions, searching the vast battlefield ruins for signs that Li Qing had been there.

Bucciarati took one direction himself.

But after his three companions left, a ripple quietly stirred in his usually unwavering eyes.

"I hope we find him."

"If that guy isn't dead."

For some reason, Bucciarati suddenly hoped that the man he was meant to kill was still alive.

Two minutes later.

Abbacchio separated from his teammates and searched outward along the direction assigned to him.

The search did not go well.

The local residents and tourists had long since fled because of the chaos. Finding even a single passerby to ask for information was difficult.

Along the way, he saw only one or two American soldiers picking through the ruins. He went up to them and asked a few questions in accented English, only to receive a few useless and very rude replies.

However, Abbacchio had another way to search that relied on luck.

He could have Moody Blues follow beside him, changing locations as he moved while using a "fast-forward" method to browse the memories this land had retained from the last twenty minutes.

That method had not yielded results either.

So Abbacchio could only keep Moody Blues replaying the past at every place he passed while continuing forward in search of someone he could question.

Finally, on an empty street right next to the battlefield ruins, he spotted a passerby he could ask:

The guy sat gloomily on the curb, muttering to himself. Dust stained his plain green shirt, and his somewhat youthful face was slightly red and swollen, as though he had just been beaten.

"He looks this miserable, so he clearly went through the disturbance from twenty minutes ago."

"Maybe I can get something out of this kid."

Abbacchio, once a police officer, recovered his professional instincts and quickly caught the scent of a lead from the disheveled young man.

At that moment, the young man in the green shirt noticed him as well.

Perhaps because Abbacchio's clothes had become overly fashionable after he joined the mafia, the young man stared at him with an extremely surprised expression.

"Hm?"

Abbacchio sensed that something was off, but he suppressed his doubts and walked over.

"Hello."

"Did you see a bald East Asian man around here twenty minutes ago?"

"Uh..."

The young man lowered his head to avoid Abbacchio's questioning gaze and stammered, "No. I didn't see anyone."

"You really didn't?"

Abbacchio pressed him, somewhat concerned.

"I said I didn't!"

The young man suddenly gathered his courage and raised his voice.

"It was that chaotic back then. I barely had time to run for my life—who would have time to look at some bald guy?!"

"All right."

Abbacchio withdrew his gaze in disappointment and prepared to turn away.

Yet the doubt in his heart only deepened.

Something was wrong.

That kid instinctively avoided my eyes just now, and his eyelids fluttered rapidly when he spoke. Those are instinctive signs of lying.

And...

Why had he looked so surprised when he first saw me?

Why had he stared at me like that?

No.

Abbacchio carefully recalled the direction of the young man's gaze, and his expression immediately turned grave.

"He wasn't looking at me at all. He was looking at Moody Blues!"

"This kid..."

He stopped walking away. "He's a Stand User!"