From that moment on, they had spent four gruelling months hunting down the culprits, using medical records to learn of incurable diseases, and their search had finally led them straight to Holly Kira.
Panicked, Kira tried to strike back with Killer Queen, but it was already too late. Damo's stand, Vitamin C, coated the entire area, instantly softening Kira, Josefumi, and both of their stands.
In a last attempt, Kira tried using Sheer Heart Attack's miniature bombs, but they were stopped before they could reach Damo. Completely drained of their strength, Kira and Josefumi could only watch in horror as Damo walked over to them, adamant on having his questions answered.
Ominously, he took a crisp one-thousand-yen bill and folded it with terrifying precision.
Without a shred of hesitation, he sliced directly into Kira, cutting out his liver just to retrieve a mobile phone the man had hidden inside his own body. Damo then examined the bloody phone along with Josefumi's, searching for any digital footprint of the fruit plant, and found absolutely no trace of it on either device.
He flew into a blind, vicious rage. Screaming at the two of them, he mocked their pathetic, conceited attempts to cover their tracks before violently hurling their phones directly at Josefumi. Flicking his wrist with the thousand-yen bill still in hand, Damo then sliced his leg, making him scream out in pain, and forced himself to calm down.
Then Damo made a cold, calculated declaration.
He was going to kill one of them and spare the other. He offered a twisted ultimatum. Whichever of them betrayed the other and revealed exactly where those Locacaca branches had been grafted would walk away completely free. They would not be allowed to cultivate the fruit, obviously, but they would live. Damo almost mockingly framed this as a mercy, claiming that he felt a sense of personal responsibility for having let the secret of the fruit leak in the first place.
To press for answers, Damo shoved the sharp edge of the thousand-yen bill deep into Josefumi's skull. He whispered that since Josefumi was not biologically tied to Holly, he was the one Damo would actually prefer to spare, coaxing the boy by telling him that there was absolutely no reason to throw his life away here.
Stricken with agony and bursting into tears, Josefumi's mind flashed back to his childhood. Remembering the harrowing moment when his own mother had almost left him to die in the freezing ocean, he told himself bitterly that he had been abandoned his entire life. If the world had always abandoned him, why should he not abandon Kira right now to save his own skin?
But just as despair threatened to take over, Kira broke the silence.
He urgently ordered Josefumi to calm himself and get ready to flee, claiming that backup was already on the way. Turning a defiant gaze towards a completely stunned Damo and Yagiyama, Kira boldly vowed that he was going to track down every last one of them and see the Locacaca for himself. Incredulous, Damo scoffed, reminding Kira that they were nothing but a pathetic two-man team — only for Kira to mockingly belittle Damo for being too stupid to even work out where the branches were being stored.
Right on cue, Karera Sakunami came walking down the dock towards the boat, calling out for Josefumi.
Realising the threat, Yagiyama instantly used his stand, I Am a Rock, to pin Karera down to the ground. As she fell, everyone looked on in absolute shock, because Josefumi's missing mobile phone was still clutched tightly in her hand.
In that fleeting second, Kira looked at Josefumi and softly apologised for dragging him into this nightmare, telling him that none of it was his fault.
Before Damo could process what was happening, he spotted a deadly surprise. Sheer Heart Attack, meticulously hidden right inside Karera's hairline.
Before anyone could react, the automated bomb detonated, and a massive, blinding explosion ripped through the harbour, completely destroying the dock, Kira's boat, and the surrounding infrastructure. The sheer force of the blast flung Damo and Yagiyama through the air, leaving them dazed and disoriented as they scrambled to recover from the shock wave.
Seizing the moment, Josefumi managed to break free and drag Kira's seemingly lifeless body onto the mainland. Holding him close and weeping in desperate agony, Josefumi pulled his friend's body towards the secret location where they had originally grafted the Locacaca branches. In a heartbreaking, tearful confession to the unconscious Kira, Josefumi admitted that he had been weak, that he had actually been going to give in and reveal their secret to the rock humans.
Begging for forgiveness now, he desperately dragged him towards their plants, hoping to feed the fruit to him and bring him back from the brink of death.
Meanwhile, back at the smoke-filled marina, Damo's patience had entirely evaporated. Realising the state of things, he discarded his plan for interrogation and shifted to a ruthless kill-on-sight order. Analysing the tides and the flow of the water, he correctly deduced that the pair must have washed ashore somewhere along the coastline.
He immediately radioed in reinforcements, calling on Aisho and the Phex brothers to scour the area, lock down the train stations, and closely watch the local hospitals. He knew for a fact that he had dealt Kira a life-threatening wound with his previous attack, and assuming they would use the plant to heal those wounds, he thought they would head that way once they made landfall.
Close by, shielding herself from the sight of the two rock humans, Karera had somehow survived the explosion.
Farther up on the shoreline, Josefumi desperately tried to force-feed the Locacaca fruit to Kira, but there was no longer any pulse, no movement. Kira was entirely unresponsive. Refusing to let death take him, and still fiercely determined to save the man who had once saved him, Josefumi summoned the bubbles of Soft and Wet and used his own stand's power to force the miraculous fruit into Kira's body. Suddenly Kira's body jolted and shook, and Killer Queen, who had appeared beside him, began to fragment.
Back in the present day at the Higashikata house, Josuke tried to push open the front door without touching its melting surface directly. He used his bubbles as a makeshift shield, but they slipped away, and his bare hand made contact with the door. Watching it instantly turn to liquid, he turned to a confused Hato.
With dead serious urgency, he told her something was wrong and that he needed her permission. He needed her permission to kill the man sitting in her living room.