Chapter 149

Empress, Part 4 (その④), originally Battle Experience! (戦いの年季！) in the WSJ release, is the thirty-sixth chapter of Stardust Crusaders and the one hundred forty-ninth chapter of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure manga.

Summary
Joseph searches for the user of the Empress, but cannot find anyone. The Stand, still mockingly calling him its father, tells him he should let his child have some freedom and starts eating the rest of Joseph's arm. Now even bigger than before, the stand tries to reach Joseph's artery to finish him off. A fight between them ensues, with Joseph knocking out everything in his path, including incense dust. He runs past Polnareff and Nena again, but the woman fakes being in love with Polnareff to distract him once more.

Empress mocks Joseph for running in the opposite direction of his group, only for him to reveal he wanted to soak it in tar. To sever Joseph's artery, Empress stabs his neck with a nail it picked up in their fight and laughs at his thought that a stand could be suffocated. As it asks Joseph about his fighting experience, the Stand is too late to realize that the tar was supposed to solidify it, not suffocate it. Joseph reveals he used his Stand on the incense dust dropped earlier to visualize a map of Varanasi and where he could find tar. Alluding to Empress' earlier taunts, Joseph tells him that kids shouldn't rely on their parents forever and it needs to take care of itself now that it's grown up.

Joseph wraps Empress into a window with Hermit Purple and pushes it, completely destroying the Stand. Meanwhile, Polnareff prepares to kiss Nena. Suddenly, an ugly woman bursts out from within the young woman. Joseph arrives and tells Polnareff that Nena was the user of the Empress Stand that just attacked him. Nena's true form was that of the ugly woman; she used her Stand to assimilate people and take on their appearance, so she posed as a beautiful girl. Polnareff is left in shock as Nena collapses to the floor, dead.

Trivia

 * In the original Weekly Shonen Jump publication of this chapter, Empress states that if it pushes the nail further into Joseph's neck, his "brain-softening life" (脳軟化人生), would end. The Japanese phrase "nōnanka", which is used to describe, is omitted from the volume version, using simply "your life" (あんたの人生) instead.