Jorge Joestar (Light Novel)

Chapter 14: Desolation Row

The journey from Mars complete, all we had left to do was calculate the trajectory and land in the water, and I'd figured since we were landing smack in the middle of The Ocean we'd be totally fine but Morioh was waiting for us and we slammed straight into the Arrow Cross House, so whoops, too bad, we're all dead. Or so I thought but when I woke up I was there, alive, and Narancia and Pucci were waking up too looking surprised they'd both survived and I could tell the stuff around us wasn't the space ship but Cars turned into a sphere. Like a small version of the Eyed Balloon. Cars made a tear in the round walls, and we stepped out and it was either dusk or dawn cause it was chilly and dimly lit and there were stars and the moon in the sky. About half the sky was bright and half was dark. I looked for the North star. I found Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper, and then the North Star. The bright half of the sky was West, so this must be evening. Under the starry sky was an unfamiliar countryside, hilly, but no mountains, like Morioh but not the same. Wheat fields, not rice paddies. The houses I could see in the distance weren't Japanese style but brick and stone, like old European landscapes. Then a gust of wind blew by and I caught of whiff of something sweet and turned around. Remnants of the spaceship were stuck to the outside of the Cars sphere, and Cars' flesh was melting, smoke rising off it, making a bubbling noise. And the smell wasn't that of animal flesh burning, but weirdly sweet, like fruit.

"Cars, you OK there?"

I asked, and Cars slowly returned to humanoid form, but had clearly taken quite a bit of damage. He wasn't steady on his feet.

"The extra mes covering the ship burned up just above the surface,"

he said, hoarsely.

"Seems we were one me short."

But he couldn't exactly have just waited one more loop and obtained another extra Cars. And in this thirty-seventh universe, I met an astronaut

named Funnier Valentine, Cars had said. So even as the universe looped itself there were things that happened every time and things that didn't.

"No, 36 should have been enough,"

Enrico Pucci unilaterally declared. Don't think the number 36 will just work everywhere forever, I thought, but Pucci was lost in thought and didn't even glance my way. Then I realized; Pucci was hung up on the idea of 36 souls. I could hear him muttering to himself.

"It wouldn't have worked without 36. 36 is 12 x 3. 12 and 3 are both holy numbers in Christianity."

The code in the Way to Heaven had clearly possessed Pucci.

Have the courage to cast aside your Stand, and as your Stand withers, it will gather 36 souls, and give birth to something new. It will befriend he who says the fourteen words. The place is 28.24 degrees North, 80.36 degrees West.

As far as the first phrase went, the only part of that that had happened was the number 36. Thirty-six Cars were assembled, but that wasn't because anyone had thrown away a Stand. The ultimate thing had simply survived the death of the universe 36 times. And nothing 'new' had been born. As far as the Fourteen Words, these did seem to be lining up.

"Spiral staircase"

"Rhinoceros beetle"

"Desolation Row"

"Fig tart"

"Rhinoceros beetle"

"Via Dolorosa"

"Rhinoceros beetle"

"Singularity"

"Giotto"

"Angel"

"Hydrangea"