Chapter 403: City of Sin IV
[Many of the people on that list were so-called superheroes who had never committed any crimes. But judging sin by one's actions alone was, in your view, as dull and pointless as rat droppings in a toilet. You had only one belief—anyone who stood in your way to Heaven was a sinner.]
[What did surprise you, however, was the Stand the Joker eventually awakened. It was incredibly powerful, and to your astonishment, it shared the same name as Jonathan Crane's Stand—Killer Queen. Yet the ability itself was entirely different. His Killer Queen could turn anything he touched into a bomb, detonated with a press of his thumb. This made his crimes far more unpredictable and terrifying.]
[Now you had a close friend and a clear goal. All you still lacked was a Stand like Whitesnake, God Atum, or God Osiris—something capable of extracting souls. But since fate had brought you this far, you were certain that such a person would appear in time.]
[From December 1972 to April 1973, the Irish mob grew increasingly high-profile, striking out and annexing territories from other local Gotham factions—including that of Bruce Wayne's own family.]
[Your next objective became clear: lure Bruce Wayne into error, corrupt him, and bring him into the Heaven Plan. With Thomas Elliot's Stand, Survivor, this became entirely possible.]
[As Batman, Bruce Wayne was indeed a formidable foe. He upgraded his armor even further, sealing his entire body inside the Batsuit. He correctly deduced that your special ability was time-stopping and even anticipated your nature as a creature of darkness. He nearly succeeded in killing you by exploiting that weakness—using a man-made "sun" generated by Gotham's experimental thermonuclear reactor, all because he noticed you never appeared in daylight.]
[Fortunately, the ultraviolet radiation it produced wasn't enough to reach your fatal threshold—roughly equivalent to a temperature of 70°C. You suffered burns, but escaped with a single time stop. Still, the encounter made you wary. You couldn't shake the feeling that if you let him keep targeting you, someday he might actually succeed.]
[What followed was a prolonged war between you and Batman, with the Joker occasionally joining in. Victories and defeats came and went, but to someone like you—who had no real price to pay for losing—a single defeat meant nothing.]
[On September 17, 1973, after six long months of fighting, the opportunity you'd been waiting for finally came. By your design, the Irish mob pretended to weaken, luring rival families into launching a surprise attack. At the same time, Batman led the Bat-Family in an assault on your stronghold.]
[At that moment, Thomas Elliot—who had been quietly observing Batman all along—activated his Stand Survivor. The Stand filled the area with uncontrollable rage, driving everyone insane. Batman snapped almost instantly, massacring everyone present, including his own allies in the Bat-Family.]
[As he stood amid the corpses of his comrades, he could feel the darkness swallowing him whole. It was as though the shadow of his parents' deaths had never left him. You could see it clearly—he had reached the brink of corruption.]
[In your eyes, everyone—Batman included—lived to ease their inner anxiety. And Bruce Wayne's anxiety came from loneliness. It was then that you offered him a bargain: would he join you in remaking the world, to prevent tragedies that could no longer be undone?]
[If things went as you predicted, then once Batman lost everything he cared about, he would still be the same kind of hero—one who would sacrifice his own body and soul to fight for a ruined future.]
[You gave him three days to decide. But to your surprise, he came to you the very next day—not as Batman, but as Bruce Wayne. He was willing to do whatever it took to help you realize your plan. The Joker, on the other hand, was furious at this new Bruce Wayne and repeated, "You're not him," nineteen times in a row—like a broken record.]
[By the fourth day, though, even he had calmed down. Politely, he told you that since he had lost his perfect opponent, your Heaven Plan must succeed—otherwise, he would have to seriously consider destroying the world himself.]
[To your astonishment and deep awe toward fate, Bruce Wayne—like Father Pucci before him—awakened his own Stand. And it was Whitesnake, the very Stand capable of "taking the memory of the heart." Perhaps this Stand had manifested as a reflection of his deepest wish.]
[Whitesnake could strike opponents, liquefy their "hearts," and extract them as discs. Those whose "hearts" were taken lost their will and entered a deathlike state, but placing the disc back into their bodies would restore them. The disc, of course, was their soul.]
[With Whitesnake now in your possession, you could finally begin crafting the new fourteen phrases. In your plan, once you gathered the thirty-six sinners' souls, you would travel to the proper point of gravity—latitude 28°24′N, longitude 80°36′W—and wait for the next new moon.]
[After long contemplation, you recorded the fourteen new phrases in your notebook: "Stairway to Heaven," "Forbidden Fruit," "Street of Ruins," "Forbidden Fruit," "Jordan," "Crown of Thorns," "Forbidden Fruit," "Singularity," "Jodio," "Dragon," "Hydrangea," "Forbidden Fruit," "Singularity," and "Pope."]
[When the next new moon rose, you would destroy your Stand, The World. As it neared death, The World would absorb the thirty-six sinners' souls and evolve into a new being. Then, as your dearest friend recited the fourteen sacred phrases to this newborn entity, it would open the Gate of Heaven—allowing you to ascend at last.]
[Once the phrases were completed, you and Bruce Wayne revised the list of thirty-six names. It now included not only fearsome figures like the Flash and Green Arrow, but Bruce also added Superman himself.]
[Only after you became allies with Batman did you truly grasp his terrifying nature. He hadn't just prepared countermeasures for you—he'd developed contingency plans for every superhero. He explained that fighting Superman was actually simple: never engage directly. He had prepared a pair of kryptonite gauntlets for you. As long as you could stop time with The World and strike Superman up close, he would be one of the easier targets. He even stockpiled over forty kryptonite bullets as backup.]
[In March 1974, the true hunt began. The first thirty-six sinners included Mr. Freeze, Matrix, and Killer Croc. When The World unleashed its time-stop field, the three had no chance to resist and were swiftly captured. Their screaming souls were drawn out as Bruce Wayne summoned Whitesnake to extract their discs.]
[From April to June 1974, the hunt continued. More than ten additional supervillains had their souls extracted and turned into discs.]
[From July to December 1974, the Joker used Killer Queen to blow up both Gotham Police Headquarters and Arkham Asylum, ruthlessly slaughtering every super-criminal in the city—with Batman himself taking part. By then, the total number of collected discs had reached thirty-three. Only three names remained, all located in the neighboring Metropolis: the Flash, Superman, and Green Arrow.]
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