"Uh, what?"
"I used to think I was a prodigy of the sky-defying comprehension school, then I realized I belonged to the chat-group path."
"Now I find out I am a traits-system plus chat-group plus genius-path hybrid."
"That is a lot of stacked buffs."
Shiratori Riku felt that if this were a novel, he would definitely be the protagonist. If not him, then who?
That silly pink-haired niece?
"JoJo's world... the key things are the Stone Mask, the Aja Red Stone, JoJo proclaiming he is no longer human."
"The Pillar Men, Stands, the Arrow, Ripple, and the most useless Stand, Hermit Purple."
He weighed it over. With his strength, he would not say invincible in the JoJo world, but he would not be a faceless extra either.
If trouble came, he could throw hands.
"Accept the mission."
Riku spoke.
[Mission accepted. Generating detailed mission content.]
[World: JoJo 2]
[Objective: Banish Kars, who has become a being on the Jo level, from Earth.]
[Reward: One random trait.]
[Upon completion, you will return to this exact point in time.]
"That part is nice. When I get back, it will be the same moment. As if I never left."
"No need to worry about anyone noticing I am gone."
He nodded to himself.
[Initiating traversal... traversing... traversal complete.]
[Generating identity in the current world... complete.]
[You are a detective traveling the world to investigate the Stone Mask and the Pillar Men.]
[By chance, you met the current JoJo, Joseph Joestar, and Caesar Zeppeli. Together you witnessed the revival of the three Pillar Men beneath the moon.]
[After a fierce struggle, you survived, but the poison rings were planted inside Joseph.]
[To neutralize them, you must defeat the Pillar Men. To that end, you head to Venice to find Lisa Lisa and grow stronger under her training.]
...
"They even set me up with an identity. The system is thoughtful."
"Hm? Earlier the prompt said the mission was for the JoJo world, not a specific person, so it covers the whole world?"
Riku glanced up at the sky, thoughtful. The next second Joseph called to him.
"Riku, what are you staring at? Think there are angels up there?"
Joseph craned his neck at the empty sky and started ribbing him.
"You have poison rings inside you, yet you do not look nervous at all. You still have the mood to joke?"
Riku sized Joseph up. Next to Joseph's roughly one meter ninety, he looked a bit shorter.
"Oh my God. I just put that out of my mind and you had to bring it up. Now I feel awful all over."
"Is it flaring already? Am I going to die?"
Joseph made a show of agony for a long beat. No one bit, so he dropped it and returned to normal.
"So, what does the person we are looking for look like?"
He asked, curious. He only knew there was a formidable figure here, not how formidable.
"Over there. She is rowing this way."
Riku looked at the woman approaching by boat. From her he felt a dense vitality.
"This one..."
As the boat neared, Joseph saw the terrifying mask on her face and felt a strange chill.
The next instant Lisa Lisa laid the oar across the water, sprang, and balanced on the shaft. She stood upon the surface.
Look closely and ripples spread outward from beneath her toes.
"You..."
Joseph started to speak, but before he could finish, Lisa Lisa swatted him into the water with a single oar-blow.
"Damn it."
"Hitting me for no reason. I do not care if you are a woman. I am going to give you a beating."
He twisted through the air and, relying on instinctive Ripple, landed on the water, though his control was rough. Hands and feet sank partway under.
What followed was the classic scene of a mother schooling her son.
Meanwhile, Riku was studying the Ripple breathing.
"It looks like ordinary breath control, but something is different. Hm, like this?"
He extended his hand, adjusted his breathing by feel, and in a moment mastered the Ripple.
Golden arcs crackled between his palms.
"Hm?"
After disciplining Joseph, Lisa Lisa sensed something and turned to Riku.
Surprise flashed in her eyes. According to her intel, this youth was not supposed to know Ripple.
Yet the golden light sparking over his hands was unmistakably the Solar Ripple.
Had he learned it in such a short time just by watching?
"It is not quite the same as ordinary breath work. Breath control moves through the meridians, but this uses a special frequency to make the body vibrate."
"Then it gathers the scattered energy in the body. The energy is a bit special, but there is too little of it."
Riku realized that what Ripple collected was not acquired qi, but innate vitality, the energy of life.
Yet Ripple did not expend one's life-force to strike. It condensed the life energy that leaked every second through a special method.
It turned that otherwise wasted power into Ripple, then used it to attack.
"If I change the vibration instead of using this exact pattern..."
Holding the gathered energy steady, he tweaked the frequency.
"Water-Blue Ripple Overdrive."
The color of the Ripple in his hand shifted. Just as he had thought, mimic the sun's rhythm and it became golden. Mimic water's rhythm and it turned blue.
He did not yet know what the blue brought.
"To master Ripple variation so quickly... your name is Shiratori Riku, right? Have you studied Ripple before?"
Lisa Lisa stepped to his side, eyes wide at the water-blue glow in his hand, then asked.
"No. First time. This thing has a lot of room to develop."
Riku felt Ripple held great potential, perhaps even to combine with arts from Under One Person.
"First time..."
Lisa Lisa thought this youth might be a prodigy, an extraordinary prodigy.
"Come with me to the island to train. I will forge you into warriors who can stand on your own, using harsh methods if I must."
With that, she led the group toward the distant island.