"Hey, Angelo."
"—!"
The robber visibly flinched at that simple greeting.
"You, you, how do you know my name..."
Not far away, hidden and controlling his Stand, Anjuro Katagiri himself was shaken. He'd only just gotten out of prison not long ago and didn't know much about the changes in this town. Even if he'd considered that some Stand users might come looking for him, there was no way he'd imagined it would be some frail-looking little girl.
Even in the original timeline, he hadn't survived past two episodes before turning into one of Morioh's famous landmarks: "Angelo Rock." So the mastermind behind the scenes naturally had no idea of his existence either.
From the way Angelo was too shocked to even speak, it was clear that he was different from Soft & Wet's user—he had no idea what his Stand's abilities actually were!
There were only two Bows capable of awakening Stands in ordinary people in Morioh: one was in Keicho Nijimura's hands, and the other was kept by Yoshihiro Kira, Yoshikage Kira's father. It was confirmed that in the original story, Angelo had been shot by Keicho's Arrow and thereby awakened his Stand... So what about Soft & Wet? It was either Keicho Nijimura or Yoshikage Kira... could the mastermind behind this morning's farce really have been "Yoshikage Kira"?
Forget it. Don't think about that for now. Let's grab Aqua Necklace first.
"Back off! Or I'll kill this woman right now!"
Angelo didn't know why this woman had the guts to walk right up to him, but she had to be a Stand user! Still—his Stand was completely without weakness, and besides, he had a hostage.
...
"Hmph." Inori stopped playing with her hair and tilted her head up with a faint smile. "Let me ask you something."
"If someone told you to pick up a bottle of toilet cleaner from the ground, what would you do?"
"I'd tell him to fuck off, obviously!"
Angelo didn't seem to grasp the gravity of the situation. He just went along with her line of questioning to buy himself time to think up a plan.
"Really?"
"Then you know what I'd do?"
"Who the hell cares!"
Angelo thought this chick was completely out of her mind, suddenly running up to him and saying this kind of crap. She isn't an idiot, is she?
"Little girl, back off! Don't provoke the robber!"
—Hmph.
Inori gave a soft laugh and shook her head. The next second, a menacing chill flashed in her eyes. An ominous red aura burst from her body as the towering Stand tore through the air, and at the same moment, time in this world vanished completely.
—King Crimson.
In an instant, the ditzy pink-haired girl moved like a phantom, teleporting in front of him. A straight punch smashed into the side of his face. Even though she'd pulled her strength, the blow landed with real force. Inori clearly saw two of his teeth fly out as he toppled backward.
—No good... she's going to pull out my Stand! Having eaten a solid punch, Angelo could no longer think clearly. If his actual body had taken that hit, he wouldn't have been able to endure it at all... Panicking, he had no choice but to command his Stand, Aqua Necklace, to escape from the robber's mouth... there was a storm drain right next to them. He could slip down there and get away safely!
"Gh?!"
But he never imagined what the girl would do next.
From behind her back, she whipped out an empty toilet cleaner bottle and savagely clamped it right over the robber's mouth—the very exit Aqua Necklace had chosen!
Aqua Necklace, having just left the body, didn't have time to register what was happening and dove straight into the container trap on its own. Immediately, Inori screwed the cap on as fast as she could and cranked it shut. The little liquid Stand now had nowhere to run.
"This is what I'd do—plug that guy's mouth with toilet cleaner!"
Inori was just trying to express her mood in the moment without really thinking about it. She hadn't considered that her words actually meant she was plugging Paisley Park's user's mouth...
Of course, she still didn't know who Paisley Park's user was. If she had, she would never have said something so provocative.
"You bitch! You actually knew my ability?! Aaaagh—let me out right now!"
The water-man-shaped Stand thrashed with everything it had inside the transparent toilet cleaner bottle, but with almost no offensive capability, it couldn't escape from a bottle full of chemical residue.
This was the guidance Paisley Park had given Inori. It was an intel-gathering type Stand, something like a navigation system. Though, truthfully, even without its help, Inori would have thought of this method anyway.
But even with his Stand captured, the scene was still total chaos. The cops hadn't snapped out of it yet—everything had happened so suddenly. The young female clerk who'd been taken hostage had collapsed to the ground. Fortunately, since the robber Aqua Necklace had been controlling was considerably taller than her, she hadn't been caught in the wind-pressure from the Red King's punch. She was only badly shaken.
"Little girl! You can't leave! Per regulations, you need to come with us and—"
Inori didn't have time to go back and forth with these cops, and she couldn't be bothered to explain. In the previous Guilty Crown world, none of these witnesses who'd just seen her fighting would have been left alive.
But times had changed. Killing wasn't in style anymore. So Inori hadn't gone chest-piercing on the spot—she'd controlled her strength and simply knocked him down before grabbing Aqua Necklace. Now came the main event... a single toilet cleaner bottle wasn't going to hold this guy for long. She had to find his actual body.
In the original story, Josuke got careless for a moment and let him escape the bottle, which ended up costing his grandfather's life.
Inori had decided she was absolutely going to kill this Anjuro Katagiri today. Either way, a pedophile serial killer like him didn't deserve to live.
One small regret, though: from now on, Morioh would be short one tourist attraction.
"Where, where'd she go?"
"Where did that little girl disappear to?"
By the time the cops came back to their senses, the pink-haired girl had vanished without a trace. But they didn't dwell on it for long—they immediately moved to subdue the man sprawled on the ground and comfort the traumatized clerk.
...
...
Ah, I'm really exhausted.
Today was her official first day in Morioh, and she'd already run into so many Stand users! Soft & Wet, Crazy Diamond, Star Platinum, Heaven's Door, and now Paisley Park and Aqua Necklace. All told, Inori had tangled with six different Stands in a single day—this was way too much to handle.
It was an unspoken rule of this world that Stand users were drawn to each other, but wasn't this a bit excessive? There was no way she'd believe no one was deliberately targeting her. Though, she couldn't rule out that it was just her abysmal luck either.
—When I get home, I'm sleeping this off. Tomorrow I'm staying in and not going anywhere!
I refuse to believe a Stand user can still find me if I just stay home. If worst comes to worst, I'll go lie low at Fishmonger Jotaro's hotel—the Morioh Grand.
But before she could rest, there was one thing she still had to do: kill Anjuro Katagiri.
"So what if you caught my Stand?! You should know I'm nearby! But you can't find me, bitch! Let me out right now, or when I get out of here, I'll make you feel the worst pain a woman can experience!"
Inori completely ignored his taunts.
Only on the surface, though—because of that line, Inori had decided she'd be putting a few extra bloody holes in him shortly.
Paisley Park, hiding inside her Game Boy, could probably help her find Angelo himself, but Inori—having seen the original anime—knew an even simpler method.
Inori grabbed the toilet cleaner bottle firmly, smiled wickedly, and shook it violently up and down. Immediately, in the nearby residential area's grove of trees, someone flew up into the air with a shriek, then came crashing down and got stuck in the branches, sending a small flock of panicked birds scattering into the sky.
Damage taken by a Stand fed back to its user. This Angelo guy was hiding nearby... so finding him was going to be easy.
"Hm? That's the direction we came from..."
Inori walked forward with a slight frown.
She suddenly remembered the very first option Paisley Park had given her: chase the car, or turn back... If she'd chosen to turn back at that moment, Paisley Park could have led her straight to Angelo himself.
—What a powerful intel Stand. It can even offer hints with no logical basis at all. In some ways, this is even stronger than that old man's Hermit Purple!
With this thing's help, tracking down anyone in hiding would be trivially easy.
—But whose Stand is it, exactly?