Under a Sky That Could Come Falling at Any Moment

The gang war on the Costa Smeralda beach has swung the Boss's way. With Risotto Nero bleeding out atop the cliffs, Bucciarati splits his people up: Abbacchio is set to work rewinding the past for a look at their enemy's face, while Bucciarati and Narancia climb to inspect the fallen assassin and Giorno and Mista stand watch over the turtle. Risotto makes one last gambit, using sprayed blood so Metallica can seize control of Aerosmith and fire on the Boss from behind. King Crimson blanks out a sliver of time, the shots miss their target, and the bullets tear into Risotto instead, ending him.

Drained of iron, the Boss can barely move as Bucciarati closes in, so he crawls off to devour small animals and restore himself. Reaching Risotto's corpse, Bucciarati spots a severed foot and reasons a second combatant is still nearby. He has Narancia crank up Aerosmith's radar, and among the countless heat sources they lock onto one that keeps drifting away. Following a smear of blood, the pair split a rock with Sticky Fingers and uncover a boy with his mouth stitched closed, pale from having his blood siphoned off.

Elsewhere, Abbacchio pauses his work with Moody Blues to knock a stuck ball out of a tree for some kids. As they thank him and leave, King Crimson punches clean through his chest. The Boss had been standing among the children the whole time. As Abbacchio slips away, he finds himself sharing a quiet meal with his old police partner, a man who died on duty, who tells him he has recovered the resolve he once lost. Realizing he is dead and that his team still needs him, Abbacchio uses his final strength through Moody Blues. Back on the beach, the grieving team almost leaves empty-handed until Giorno turns an odd stone in Abbacchio's hand into a ladybird, which leads them to a stele bearing a negative cast of the Boss's face and fingerprints. Even in death, Abbacchio completed his task.

King Crimson's time erasure lets Risotto's own trap kill him instead of the Boss, closing out the assassin's fight. The Boss, weakened by blood loss, feeds on wildlife to recover and is discovered to have drained a captive boy to survive. The Boss then murders Leone Abbacchio by hiding among a group of children, marking the second death of Team Bucciarati. Abbacchio's final act, a death mask pressed into stone by Moody Blues, delivers the Boss's face and fingerprints, giving the team their first solid lead on his identity.

The installment adapts Chapters 548 through 550 of Vento Aureo and belongs to the fourth season of the anime, airing April 27, 2019. Several scenes from the source material were reordered or interleaved, including the moment the Boss eats a frog and the sequence in which Narancia detects him on radar. In place of Abbacchio's body at the close, the adaptation adds a bed of flowers; director Hideya Takahashi identified them as Yellow Sultans, symbolizing the strong will to seek out the truth that Abbacchio's late partner spoke of.