"No! Impossible! One person can only have one Stand—what is this thing?!"
After the Void Genome's full-system upgrade, King Crimson—operating under Inori's will in ACT1: Everlasting Crown—lost access to Time Erasure. What it gained in exchange was the ability to extract another person's Stand, just as Inori once drew Voids from their hosts.
Everlasting Crown's hand had reached into Chunren's chest and pulled his Stand out. Soft & Wet's blue-green shape flickered with silver-white metallic light, then went still—because its master was no longer that waterlogged wretch of a delinquent. Now it belonged to Inori Yuzuriha, queen of two souls.
King Crimson immediately reversed Soft & Wet's own ability—reclaiming the bubble that had been holding Inori's blood captive. The moment it burst, the dizziness vanished. Chunren's eyes rolled back and he crumpled, out cold.
"Your information's a little out of date."
The injury gone, Inori exhaled with relief and cast Chunren one last glance of faint pity, then abandoned any thought of a follow-up blow.
Partly because he'd already been half-wrecked by her fists before the Stand was taken, and his condition was now touch-and-go. Partly because he was just a student—he'd pulled this whole stunt to settle a grudge with Josuke, and even using the mystery informant's method to blindside her, he'd taken only enough blood to force her hand rather than kill her outright.
The most important reason, though—Inori shifted her gaze to Soft & Wet, standing behind King Crimson. Everlasting Crown could steal other people's Stands, but the conditions were the same as extracting Voids: Red King had to first look the user in the eyes, then reach inside them to pull it out. Against high-speed, close-range Stands, those were brutal requirements. She'd have to take the user down completely before she could even try.
The second constraint: if Soft & Wet's original user died, the stolen Stand would vanish with him. To keep it, she had no choice but to call Josuke in to repair the damage.
Besides, the boy had already lost his Stand and become an ordinary person. He wasn't a threat anymore.
The fight settled, Inori let King Crimson revert to its base form. Whoever came next, her ability to predict the future and erase time was clearly no longer a secret—Chunren's reaction had already confirmed that. What ACT1's two abilities could do—the ability to steal Stands, and Yet to Come—was still unknown. Those were her real insurance, and not worth exposing unless she absolutely had to.
Especially Yet to Come, the ability to rewrite reality. That was her strongest ace. The one that would keep her from losing no matter what.
"A marble?"
When Red King returned to base form, the unsupported Soft & Wet shrank into a clear glass marble. Inori picked it up and turned it over in her palm—she could make out a small portrait of Soft & Wet's face suspended inside the transparent sphere. A stolen Stand could be stored this way, she discovered, and summoned back out again at any time.
She grinned, bounced it twice in her hand like a toy, and turned to go call Josuke—
And came face to face with a very cold pair of eyes.
The man was tall. White leather jacket, an aggressively stylish white cap decorated with a hook and a heart arranged to read "JO," and somehow the white panel of the brim seemed to have merged seamlessly with his black hair at the back.
"You... stole that person's Stand?"
He came forward with a heavy, deliberate stride, thick brows locked into a deep furrow, dark blue eyes holding something that made the air around him feel dangerous.
His name came to her without even thinking.
Jotaro Kujo.
Of all the ways to run into him. She'd walked Koichi to school today partly hoping to meet Josuke Higashikata and the invincible fish-market Jotaro—but this was not the kind of meeting she had in mind. The Josuke encounter had been one thing. Now she had Jotaro Kujo looking her way too?
Was she born cosmically opposed to the Joestar family? Or had fate just cast her as the villain of this arc? She'd barely sorted out the uncle situation and now the nephew wanted a rematch.
"I was only defending myself."
"Your Stand is very dangerous, girl." Jotaro tilted the brim of his cap, planting himself a few paces away, voice level and cold.
"And..." His gaze swept the wreckage around them before he spoke again. "All these people—was that you?"
"...One look and you'd know the answer. Why ask?"
Inori had spent enough time in battle to read the hostility radiating off him immediately.
"They tried to pick me up. I taught them some manners."
She raised the back of her hand to her cheek and tucked a strand of pink hair behind her ear—a constant habit when she left it down. It helped her think.
"That's still excessive. And—why did you take that person's Stand?"
Jotaro pressed closer, step by step.
Inori knew this was getting bad. Oh, you have the nerve to call me excessive? I could list your greatest hits right now if you'd like. But Jotaro wasn't a hypocrite, which meant he was saying this for one reason only: he didn't believe her.
"My name is Jotaro Kujo. I'm an ocean explorer."
He introduced himself without relaxing his tone.
"I'm in Morioh dealing with something... The number of Stand users in this town far exceeds anywhere else in the world. You wouldn't happen to have something to do with that?"
"Would you believe me if I said no?"
Inori closed her hand around the Soft & Wet marble.
Fair enough. After defeating DIO, Jotaro had spent years tracking the Arrow. And now here was someone who had just shattered the iron law of Stands—one person, one Stand—by pulling another person's Stand clean out of them. Of course he was on edge.
"I can believe you. But you'll need to hand over that marble and tell me everything about your Stand's stealing ability."
"No."
Inori shook her head, her long pink hair swaying.
Then she said something that made several nearby bystanders take a quiet step back.
"Do you go around showing your own family your asshole, Mr. Kujo? I didn't think so. Then don't expect me to bare everything to a stranger the moment we meet."
"..."
Even Jotaro, for all his composure, was briefly thrown—this was not the kind of language he'd expected from a girl who looked like that. He recovered quickly.
"What's your name?"
"Inori."
"...I'll remember it." He closed his eyes, nodded once, then opened them. "Tell me what you know, and I won't give you trouble. Otherwise... I'm afraid you'll have to come with me."
He couldn't afford to let a Stand user this dangerous move freely. But he genuinely wasn't trying to hurt her—as long as the Stand-related killings in this town had nothing to do with her.
"Are you going to hit me? A fragile girl like me..."
Inori drew her arms in close, eyes going wide, the picture of sudden fright. A tear even caught at the corner of one eye.
She had miscalculated one thing. The man in front of her was Jotaro Kujo—the Joestar family's war god, undefeated and unmovable.
"Good acting. But it's too theatrical for me, Miss Inori."
"...Is that so?"
The performance fell away. Inori wasn't exactly deflated—if anything, something ignited in her chest, quick and hungry as a brushfire. Jotaro. The wielder of the strongest Stand, Star Platinum. If she could beat him, it would mean she'd already surpassed the peak.
"Then let's settle it simply."
She raised one hand. Confidence settled over her features, clean and certain. She slipped the marble back into her pocket—then red light blazed through her, and King Crimson materialized at her side.
"Call out that unbeatable Stand of yours."