15:26
Through Moody Blues’ replay, Abbacchio, Bucciarati, and the others witnessed what happened to Lee Sin twenty minutes ago:
He was fighting, battling a grotesque, massive creature with a twisted form for the sake of “saving the world.”
“In Naples… there are such monsters?!”
“Is this also a Stand?”
Even the level-headed team leader, Bucciarati, couldn’t help but feel a chill at the sight of the meat chunk.
As the de facto guardian of Naples, he couldn’t help but worry about the city’s fate:
“This meat chunk seems utterly irrational. If left unchecked, it could wreak havoc in Naples.”
“So… what happened next? Did that bald man’s plan succeed?”
Despite his worries, these were events from twenty minutes ago. Bucciarati could do nothing but hope the hero who stepped up back then had succeeded.
Ironically, this hero was also the target of his current mission:
“Abbacchio.”
Bucciarati spoke with a complex tone, “Keep playing it. Let’s see what happened next.”
“Understood.”
Abbacchio nodded and commanded Moody Blues to continue reenacting Lee Sin’s actions twenty minutes ago, following his path.
So, Moody Blues, replicating Lee Sin’s movements precisely, continued forward, seemingly riding an invisible motorcycle in a bizarre, hovering posture, speeding toward the scene of destruction.
Then…
Moody Blues abruptly stopped.
It halted at the edge of the rubble-strewn battlefield as if it were a broken, water-damaged tape.
Everyone was engrossed in the replay when this sudden “pause” caught them off guard.
Bucciarati maintained his composure, but the impatient Fugo immediately shed his “cultured” facade, turning and shouting at Abbacchio:
“Hey, newbie!”
“Why did you stop at the crucial moment? Keep playing!”
“Yeah!”
Narancia echoed eagerly, “What happened next?!”
“Next…”
Abbacchio’s expression showed a hint of difficulty:
“There is no next.”
“No next?!”
In a fit of rage, Fugo stomped over to the 188cm-tall Abbacchio, stood on tiptoe to make up for his still-growing height, and grabbed Abbacchio by the collar:
“What do you mean, ‘no next’?!”
“Do you think this is a TV drama? Cutting off at the critical moment will get you killed!”
“I can’t help it.”
Abbacchio sighed helplessly.
He raised his hand, pointing to the rubble-strewn wasteland:
“The ‘location’ where the event happened has been utterly destroyed.”
“My Moody Blues reads the memory of a location, and both ‘time’ and ‘place’ are indispensable elements.”
“In this state…”
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 terrifying, leaving nothing in its wake.
It was like a massive mop, erasing all traces of Lee Sin as it relentlessly pursued him.
“What…”
“There’s nothing we can do?!”
Though he understood Abbacchio’s explanation, Fugo’s excessive anticipation left him frustrated:
“Newbie, your Stand is useless!”
“Calm down.”
Bucciarati stopped his teammate’s pointless outburst and calmly asked Abbacchio:
“So, what now?”
“Is there a way to continue tracking Lee Sin?”
“This…” Abbacchio thought for a moment and said, “This area is too thoroughly destroyed, and the ’20 minutes ago’ memory is completely cut off.”
“Moreover, given the meat chunk’s destructive power…”
“Any trace of others in its path should be wiped clean.”
“So, we can only look for clues nearby, hoping to find traces of Lee Sin’s actions after he escaped the meat chunk and left the battlefield — no matter what, he must have left the battlefield after the fight — if the battlefield’s ‘memory’ can’t be read, we’ll read the memory outside the battlefield.”
“If we can skip this damaged ‘memory,’ we might be able to fast-forward to a later time and place, continuing the trail.”
“Alright, in that case…”
Bucciarati sighed lightly:
“Fugo, Narancia, Abbacchio, let’s split up and search for clues around this wasteland.”
“He was here only twenty minutes ago, so the time difference isn’t too great. Someone nearby might have seen where he went.”
As always, he gave clear and decisive orders.
Fugo and the others nodded, spreading out in three different directions, searching the expansive battlefield’s vicinity for any traces of Lee Sin.
Bucciarati also took charge of one direction.
Once his teammates departed, a rare flicker of uncertainty appeared in his unwavering eyes:
“I hope we find something…”
“If that guy is still alive.”
For some reason, Bucciarati suddenly hoped the man he was supposed to kill was alive.
Two Minutes Later
Abbacchio, having separated from his teammates, continued his search in the direction he was assigned.
The search was not going well.
The local residents and tourists had long fled due to the chaos, making it difficult to find someone to ask for clues.
He only encountered one or two American soldiers rummaging through the ruins, but a brief conversation in accented English yielded only a few unhelpful and impolite replies.
However, Abbacchio had another method of searching by luck.
He could have Moody Blues follow alongside him, moving to different locations and using “fast forward” to browse the last twenty minutes of memory retained in the area.
So far, this method hadn’t produced any results.
Abbacchio had to continue replaying the past events wherever he went while searching for someone to ask.
Finally, on an empty street adjacent to the battlefield ruins, he saw someone he could question:
The guy sat gloomily on the curb, muttering to himself. His simple green shirt was dusty, and his slightly immature face was swollen, as if he’d been recently beaten.
“He looks so disheveled, clearly having experienced the chaos twenty minutes ago.”
“Asking this kid might yield something.”
Abbacchio, falling back on his old police instincts, quickly sensed the potential for clues from the disheveled young man.
At that moment, the young man in the green shirt also noticed him.
Perhaps because Abbacchio’s attire was too flashy for a gangster, the young man stared at him with a strange look of surprise.
“Hmm?”
Abbacchio felt something was off but suppressed his doubts and approached:
“Hello.”
“Did you see an Eastern bald man around here twenty minutes ago?”
“Uh…”
The young man looked away from Abbacchio’s questioning gaze, mumbling, “No, I didn’t.”
“Are you sure?”
Abbacchio asked, sensing the young man’s unease.
“I said no, didn’t I!”
The young man suddenly mustered some courage, raising his voice:
“It was so chaotic then, who had time to notice a bald guy?!”
“Alright…”
Abbacchio looked away in disappointment, preparing to leave.
However, his doubts only grew:
No, something’s fishy.
This kid instinctively avoided my eyes and blinked rapidly while speaking—classic signs of lying.
And…
Why did he look so surprised when he first saw me?
What was he staring at?
No…
Abbacchio recalled the young man’s gaze and his expression turned serious:
“He wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at Moody Blues!”
“This kid…”
He stopped in his tracks: “Is a Stand user!”
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