The next day.
Midtown High's corridors still thrummed with the uneasy energy of students who'd survived the last chaos—whispers hung in the air like static.
Felicia Hardy moved through the crowd with practiced ease, books tucked under her arm, eyes forward. Dozens of gazes tracked her as she slipped into the last row and settled into the empty seat beside Joren.
She tilted her head, lips curving into a smile both sweet and disarming.
"Good morning, new deskmate."
Joren didn't look up. His fingers turned a page with quiet precision.
"The ghost lingers," he murmured—more to himself than to her.
No greeting. No acknowledgment. Just the soft scratch of pen on paper.
Felicia's smile flickered—just for a heartbeat—before snapping back into place like nothing happened.
The bell rang.
In history class, the teacher droned on about 18th-century European alliances, voice flat enough to lull half the room into stupor. This was Felicia's opening.
Her "harassment plan" began in silence.
She willed the pen on Joren's desk to slip—just a little nudge, nothing obvious. It rolled toward the edge, teetering…
Then stopped.
Not because it fell. Not because someone caught it.
It simply… halted. Mid-air. For less than a second.
Before Joren's hand reached out, plucked it from its precarious perch, and returned it to his notebook without a glance.
He wrote on, detached, as if the universe had tried to interrupt—and failed.
Felicia exhaled through her nose. One-woman show. Audience of zero.
Undeterred, she pivoted at break.
Within minutes, she'd charmed half the girls in the row—laughing, leaning in, effortlessly magnetic.
"Joren… has he always been this quiet?" she asked, feigning curiosity.
"He's a weirdo," one girl whispered.
"But honestly?" another added, eyes wide. "You're so brave to sit with him. You're, like… kind and gorgeous. Maybe you can actually get through to him."
Felicia beamed. Inside, she gritted her teeth. Get through to him? I can't even get him to blink.
---
Lunchtime.
BANG!
The classroom door slammed open.
Flash Thompson staggered in—hair wild, eyes bloodshot, suit rumpled like he'd slept in it. The arrogance that once defined him was gone, replaced by something raw and shattered.
All chatter died.
He didn't care. He marched straight down the aisle, boots thudding against linoleum, and stopped at the last row. His trembling finger jabbed toward Joren.
"What did you do to my family?!" His voice cracked, hoarse with grief and fury.
Gasps rippled through the room.
"My dad—he's dead! Car crash last night! And the company—wiped out! Everything—gone!" Thompson's knees buckled slightly, tears streaking his face. "Before he… before he died, he told me—he said he'd 'sent someone to deal with you'! And then—this! It's you! It's the people behind you—they destroyed us!"
Joren closed his book slowly.
Defeat the mad dog, and the master comes.
Defeat the master, and something worse takes notice.
He hated chain reactions.
"Joren Joestar!" Thompson howled, launching himself forward like a feral thing.
"Thompson, stop!" Peter Parker lunged from the side, planting himself between them. "Just—calm down!"
But it wasn't Peter who stopped Thompson.
It was Joren.
He stood.
Didn't speak. Didn't move aggressively.
Yet the air thickened—pressure coiled in the room like a sleeping serpent waking. Students shrank back instinctively. Even Peter tensed, though he didn't understand why.
Thompson froze mid-lunge. His breath hitched.
Then, as Joren stepped past him—calm, unhurried—the boy's legs gave out. He collapsed to his knees, letting out a choked, broken whimper.
No one touched him.
He just… broke.
---
Manhattan. Fisk Tower. Top Floor.
The office was a study in sterile power—white marble, floor-to-ceiling glass, silence so deep it hummed.
Wesley stood before the sofa, posture perfect, hands clasped.
"The Thompson matter is resolved, sir."
Across from him, Wilson Fisk—The Kingpin—sat motionless, rolling a diamond cufflink between thick fingers.
Wesley adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses. "Our source inside Midtown reports the boy—Joren Joestar—showed no reaction. Not when Thompson accused him. Not when the boy collapsed. He didn't even look at him."
Fisk's fingers stilled.
A slow, cruel curiosity crept into his eyes—buried beneath layers of fat and calculation.
A variable. Uncontrolled. Unreadable.
A monster wearing a high school uniform.
Fisk smiled. Not with warmth. With hunger.
"Check," he rumbled, voice echoing off the glass walls.
"I want to know everything about him."
A beat.
"Send someone to… visit him."
...
The school bell rang, signaling the end of the term.
Joren Joestar slung his backpack over his shoulder and walked out of the school gate.
He didn't take the usual route home.
At the crossroads, he turned sharply in the opposite direction.
His destination: Hell's Kitchen.
If trouble always finds you… he thought, why not go straight to its lair before it grows teeth?
He needed intelligence—real intel on the New York underworld.
...
Hell's Kitchen.
The name alone carried the stench of decay.
Unlike the leafy calm of Queens, where sunlight dappled through suburban trees, this place seemed smothered beneath layers of old grudges and fresh sin. Daylight barely pierced the alleyways; what little filtered through felt grudging, like charity from a miser.
Overflowing trash cans lined the curb, their contents spilling onto cracked pavement—rotting food, greasy wrappers, and something darker pooling in oily puddles that reeked of ammonia and despair.
In the shadows of a rusted fire escape, a few hollow-eyed figures huddled beneath threadbare blankets, watching passersby with the dull resignation of ghosts.
A shout erupted two blocks over—followed by the sharp crack of breaking glass. No one turned.
Order had long since abandoned this district.
Joren hated it.
But he knew the spider troubling his life wouldn't be found in daylight or comfort. To hunt it, he had to walk into its web.
He remembered Thompson's father—a man who waited too long, hoping the storm would pass. It hadn't.
His steps led him to a dimly lit bar beneath a flickering neon sign. Half the letters were missing, leaving only "JOSIE'S" glowing crookedly in the damp night air.
He pushed open the creaking wooden door.
Conversation died instantly.
A dozen pairs of eyes—hard, tattooed, leather-clad—locked onto him. Most patrons looked like they'd chew through steel if paid enough. And this kid? Just a high schooler in a worn hoodie.
"You lost, kid?" growled a thick-necked man with a spiderweb tattoo crawling up his neck.
Another man, tall and gaunt, barked a laugh. "Maybe he's looking for his mommy? She work here?"
Joren ignored them.
He walked straight to the bar. As he passed, the toughest-looking brawlers instinctively stepped back—not out of courtesy, but because something about this boy radiated wrongness. Like standing too close to live wires.
Behind the counter, an old man with salt-and-pepper stubble and a scar slicing through one eyebrow wiped a glass with deliberate slowness. His eyes, pale and clouded with age, lifted just enough to acknowledge the intruder.
Joren sat on a stool. "I'm looking for someone."
The bartender didn't stop polishing. "People vanish here every damn day. I ain't your missing persons bureau."
Joren reached into his pocket and dropped a thick wad of cash onto the sticky counter. "Who controls the assassin with a target tattooed on his forehead?"
The wiping stopped.
The bartender's knuckles whitened around the glass. "Kid… some doors don't open just 'cause you knock loud."
The tattooed man slammed a meaty fist on the bar. "Leave the cash. Walk out. And we'll pretend you never stained this place with your stink."
Joren didn't even look at him. There's always one who hasn't learned to read the room.
His right index finger dipped into a puddle of spilled beer.
Buzz—
An invisible ripple pulsed outward—from his fingertip through the bar, through the wood, through the very air.
The tattooed man screamed.
His body convulsed, muscles seizing as if gripped by a thousand volts. He stared at his own hands like they belonged to a stranger.
Before anyone could react, another thug lunged—fist cocked like a battering ram—aiming for the back of Joren's skull.
Snap.
His wrist twisted mid-swing, bent backward at an impossible angle. He crumpled with a choked howl.
No one saw what grabbed him. No one saw anything move—except Joren, who hadn't turned his head.
Silence fell like a guillotine.
Fear doesn't need a face to paralyze.
The bartender's hand trembled now, the glass nearly slipping from his grip.
Joren's voice was calm. "Now. Can you talk?"
The old man swallowed hard. "All the crews… the gangs… the syndicates… they all answer to one name."
"Name?"
"We… we don't know it." His voice dropped to a whisper. "No one does. It's like… saying it burns your tongue."
"Where's the source?"
"I swear—I don't know!"
Joren stood. Without another word, he turned and walked out.
The crowd parted like the Red Sea—not out of respect, but primal instinct.
...
Outside, the alley swallowed him whole.
So there's a king in the shadows, he mused. An emperor of rats who rules without a crown… and whose name is a curse.
This was bigger than he'd thought. Not just another thug with a knife—but a system. A network. A beast with too many eyes.
As he weighed his next move, movement flickered at both ends of the alley.
Seven figures in identical black suits stepped into view. Sunglasses glinted under streetlights, despite the hour.
No words. No threats. Just synchronized blocking of every exit.
These weren't street scum. These were professionals.
Joren adjusted the brim of his cap.
"Joren Joestar." The lead agent stepped forward, voice clipped and cold. "Come with us."
Joren's eyes swept over them—calculating, assessing.
Weaker than Bullseye. But trained. Coordinated. Seven to one.
"Where to?" he asked.
The man smirked. "You don't get to ask."
"What if I say no?"
The smirk vanished. "Then you don't get to say anything ever again."
Seven pistols slid from holsters in perfect unison. Muzzles leveled at his chest.
The leader tilted his head. "Still feeling chatty, high schooler?"