In a Silent Way

In a Silent Way is the Stand of Sandman and appears in Steel Ball Run. The humanoid figure is covered in nods to Indigenous American art, wearing a feathered war bonnet and a face patterned after the mosaic mask of Tezcatlipoca. Small, evenly placed studs dot its arms and torso, and two columns of roses sit on its chest.

Araki drew the design from Native American wall paintings, adding the chest roses deliberately to create a clashing note. Tinted pages color the Stand in yellow and brown.

The Stand never fights head-on, instead planting sound-based traps or steering remote constructs, and it once reshaped and moved the sand around a hidden emerald. Its weakness is close quarters, which proves fatal against a point-blank shot from Johnny Joestar. Its base trick is storing sounds inside objects or even living people: by acting on something with a defining motion, such as stabbing it, Sandman locks the matching sound inside. When another person touches that object, the stored sound bursts out as its corresponding hazard, so a cutting sound sealed in a ladder slices apart whoever grips it, letting him rig ambushes while hiding.

For directed attacks he can mold an affected object into an independent creature carrying its sound effect, or into three-dimensional sound-effect shapes resembling kana. These constructs move around and, given the right form, fly at a target to strike, and unlike stored sounds they choose what they touch. He can drive a hazard straight through obstacles at a chosen victim, bounce it off surfaces, or layer several sounds for constructive interference, with the medium altering strength: a fire sound loses power passing through mud, while water carries sound best. Swinging his knife lets him materialize its whoosh into a shield that deflects projectiles, and paired with Diego Brando's Scary Monsters, the constructs become target-tracking dinosaurs charged with destructive sound.

Sandman is the sole user, relying on stored-sound traps and flying sound constructs to attack enemies from a safe distance across the race.