That was a motorcycle engine — she knew the sound well from all the times she'd used one in the Guilty Crown world. She whipped around, activating Epitaph at the same instant!
A jet-black motorcycle and a rider clad head-to-foot in black leather. The dark visor of the helmet reflected back Inori's startled face. This was the sidewalk! How could he ride onto it? Wasn't he worried about a ticket?
But then Epitaph showed her what was about to happen. The rider had no intention of slowing down — he was heading straight for her face. The acceleration was insane, faster than even the souped-up engines she'd modified back in the day!
What Epitaph showed her was Inori dodging sideways with no margin to spare, only to be knocked flat by the force of his charge.
—Damn it, an enemy! This is a Stand attack!
Inori clenched her teeth and triggered Time Erasure. The rider tore past where she'd been standing without registering anything — even though that speed was well within King Crimson's range, even though she could have forced him down with a punch. The trouble was that what Epitaph showed her was an absolutely fixed future.
To be safe, Inori had used Time Erasure to rewrite the result.
What she hadn't expected was that she'd opened it too early.
"What—?!"
The instant Time Erasure released, the rider executed an uncanny dead stop, spun in place, and locked back onto her! Worse was still coming. A bone-deep cold poured over her. Where moments before there'd only been air, white frost crystallized everywhere she looked. Even her own breath was now visible as fog.
—S-so cold. Tch—
Inori was constitutionally bad with cold. A Stand that produced cold was almost the worst possible matchup... Damn it, was this Ghiaccio's White Album? Wasn't he supposed to be in Italy dealing with the boss? Why was he in Morioh?
She didn't have time to figure out who this man was, because he was charging her again.
Inori prepared to trigger Time Erasure a second time — but as she instinctively shifted her stance, her foot slipped. She lost balance and slammed down hard onto the cold pavement.
"Ice?"
Her tailbone throbbed. She pressed her palm to the ground to push herself up and felt the sting of cold against her skin... Every patch of pavement the motorcycle had rolled over was now coated in a thick layer of ice.
Slipping on the frozen ground — that was the future Epitaph had shown her.
VROOM—!
The howl of the engine snapped her back. In the brief moment she'd been distracted, the rider had wheeled around for another pass. The face beneath that helmet wouldn't carry a flicker of feeling — he was going to grind the fallen girl into pulp.
"King Crimson!"
Inori summoned King Crimson on instinct, but didn't activate Time Erasure.
Erasing time meant she wouldn't get to punch this bastard. Cold was the one thing Inori hated and was most sensitive to, never mind being humiliated like this by slipping... it hurt — her tailbone was going to split! Slamming down on ice hurt a hell of a lot more than slamming down on regular pavement!
"Ora!"
Inori was furious. King Crimson roared out in answer, an iron hammer of a fist crashing into the rider's helmet before the bike could reach her. The momentum knocked the motorcycle off balance — it flipped sideways, plowing through the safety barrier and crashing into the green strip beside the road.
The rider's helmet caved inward from King Crimson's strike. The follow-through sent his body flying backward to slam into a telephone pole and bounce back to the ground.
"Who the hell are you, bastard?"
Inori rubbed her aching backside, anger curving into a sharp smile, but she still picked her way carefully around the frozen patches as she approached the rider. After she finished speaking, though, the rider got back up... Inori paused, puzzled. He'd just taken a full-power punch from King Crimson and there wasn't a drop of blood?
So he wasn't... human?
Sure enough. The rider rose, and where the helmet's shattered visor had been, there was no human face — only a neckless purple monstrosity. A Stand! Both this thing and the motorcycle were Stands?
Inori understood now. Another Stand that shouldn't exist in this world — straight out of JoJolion... and from the look of it, almost certainly an automatic remote type.
"I really don't have time for this. Just die here."
Inori skirted around the ice and finally entered King Crimson's range.
"Ora ora ora ora ora!"
King Crimson's fists hammered out in machine-gun bursts, too fast to track — the air filled with flashing red-and-white afterimages. After eating that many punches the Stand was sent flying again, but this time it didn't land. It vanished mid-air, dissolving like a ghost.
"You've got to be kidding. After all those punches it's still not dead?"
The fact that none of those hits had finished the Stand made Inori's scalp prickle.
Glancing back, she saw the motorcycle that had crashed into the grass had vanished too. The white mist and the ice on the ground were gone. The temperature was back to normal.
—So it really is the automatic remote type? Damage to the Stand doesn't carry back to the user?
If so, it must have already locked her as its target. There was no one operating it from behind the scenes. Stands like this were a pain, but their behavior was usually simple and easy to read. As long as she found the user, she could put it down without trouble. But before she could do that — she still hadn't worked out what triggered the rider. A specific action? A specific phrase?
The rider had retreated for now, but Inori didn't dare relax. She picked up the map that had fallen into the grass beside her and held it back in her hand. Because it had already been unfolded when she dropped it, she didn't notice this key detail.
—Whoever this enemy is, he can't stop her from reaching the Kira house!
"Eh? What — what's this?"
She was about to verify her route when she saw something appear on the map for no reason at all — a red line, like the navigation arrow on a smartphone of the future!
While she was still gaping at it, a rose-colored silhouette took shape on the map's surface — Yasuho's Paisley Park.
"When did you get tucked in there?"
Paisley Park didn't answer. The fingers of its translucent hand simply tapped the red line it had drawn, then gestured at the direction it pointed to in real life.
Inori looked. The destination was an old samurai-era manor — late Edo at the latest, more likely early Showa.
"You want me to go there?"
Paisley Park nodded and slipped back into the map.
...So this thing wasn't limited to transmitting information through electronics. A paper map worked too.
She didn't understand why it wanted her to go to that house, but after the Angelo incident, Inori had figured out how to handle Paisley Park — don't think about it, just do as it said.
She crossed the lawn unceremoniously and made her way to the house at a brisk pace. The surroundings were eerily quiet, broken only by the hoarse call of a crow or two passing overhead.
The outer gate was unlocked. Inori eased it open and stepped through on cat feet.
What she absolutely didn't expect to see, the moment she entered the wide-open courtyard, was the motorcycle rider himself. It had caught up with her!
The Stand was tearing out of the courtyard's koi pond in some bizarre posture, dragging another blizzard along behind it, bearing down on her in a fury!