"This taste! It's the taste of a lie! Yasuho Hirose!"
In truth, Inori Yuzuriha hadn't actually licked any sweat. If anything, she'd given Yasuho's face a quick wash. But this kind of bizarre, theatrical stunt—the kind no normal person would ever pull—was bound to put Yasuho under serious psychological pressure.
As if Inori really did possess the ability to detect lies by tasting someone's skin, Yasuho touched the spot where that small pink tongue had brushed her, eyes wide, staring at the girl's exquisite face with her heart in her throat.
—Maybe she's not as simple a person as she looks.
"Talk! What did you actually run into out there?"
"Nothing, really!" Yasuho mumbled.
"It's just… I think I scratched myself on a rock or something at Lovers' Cape. I really don't remember anything…"
"That's all? Really?"
"Yes! I just didn't want to tell you because I was scared you'd drag me off to do something weird again."
Yasuho looked ready to cry as she explained.
She had no real reason to lie. The way she'd been earlier—too terrified by the sight of King Crimson to even string a sentence together—hadn't been an act. Inori nodded, deciding not to press the detail further. Morioh did, after all, have a per-capita Stand-user density unmatched anywhere on the planet, and Yasuho was one of JoJo's rare, fully fleshed-out heroines. It wouldn't be strange at all if fate had simply restored the Stand she'd originally been meant to have.
—Wait. If she's a Stand user, then that disheveled, hair-veiled silhouette I saw in her shadow… that was her Stand?
"Yasuho, try to call your Stand out."
Inori softened her tone, coaching her with patience.
"I really don't know how, Inori." Yasuho sounded helpless. "Can't you just exorcise the thing for me? I—I don't want to be possessed by a ghost!"
Yasuho felt as though her ordinary daily life was slipping further and further away. Even Morioh—the town she loved so much—had become a strange place. The string of recent incidents, and now this surreal manifestation of spiritual power, had pushed her past her limit.
"It's not a ghost, Yasuho. A Stand is the embodiment of its user's mental energy. Every Stand has its own ability and its own appearance, and not everyone has the potential to develop one. Awakening a Stand is a good thing. Just remember—never reveal your ability to strangers."
"…Okay. I'll try."
Seeing the seriousness and the warmth in Inori's eyes, Yasuho's heart settled. Fine. If she says so, I'll give it my best shot. My Stand… probably won't look as ugly as Inori's, right? Clinging to that small hope, Yasuho closed her eyes and tried, the way protagonists in manga always did when first reaching for their powers.
Inori watched, tense with anticipation. And it was at that exact moment that her purse began to vibrate of its own accord again.
"More new intel? This thing, picking the worst possible time…"
She muttered, irritated, as she opened the bag—only for a hair-veiled silhouette to come bursting out of it. Inori hadn't been prepared for Paisley Park to react this way, and there was no time to activate Epitaph and see it coming, either.
In a flash of self-preservation, her instincts drove King Crimson's powerful arm out to seize the silhouette's throat directly. And in doing so, she got her first proper look at Paisley Park's true form.
"You—it's you?!"
A graceful figure draped in rose-pink, her skin patterned all over with what looked like a dizzying overlay of map lines. The most unbelievable detail of all—she had hair. Tied into the same six small braids that her user, Yasuho, wore.
"Ngh… Inori… what's happening… I can't breathe…"
Because Paisley Park was being throttled by King Crimson's brutal grip, Yasuho had clamped both hands over her own throat, face flushing crimson, on the verge of suffocating.
"Ah! Sorry, sorry!"
Inori hurriedly made King Crimson let go. She'd nearly taken out a friendly.
"Cough, cough, cough… what just happened?"
The pressure on her neck gone, Yasuho doubled over in relief, but the leftover ache made her cough a few more times before she could straighten up. Watching her struggle like that, Inori felt an unspoken stab of guilt. A girl this nice to me, and I almost… King Crimson, get out here and take your beating!
"It's nothing. Just a normal reaction the first time someone summons their Stand."
Inori smiled, perfectly composed.
"You scared me to death! I really thought I was going to die like that!" Yasuho exhaled in a long, weary sigh, then looked up at the feminine Stand now floating in front of her. "Same hairstyle as me? So this is my Stand?"
"Mm. Looks like it's an autonomous, far-distance autopilot type." Inori cupped her chin and analyzed. "Even before you were aware of it, it was already acting on its own. Earlier, it possessed my game console and fed me the intel I needed to take down that criminal."
"Eh? I had no idea…"
Yasuho understood about half of what Inori was saying, but the gist came through. Those weird performance-art moments Inori had pulled off earlier—including the way she'd taken down the criminal—had all been the work of Yasuho's Stand quietly assisting from the sidelines.
"This is a far-distance autopilot type. Its name is Paisley Park. An incredibly powerful intel-gathering Stand."
"Is it strong?"
Yasuho asked tentatively.
"Of course!"
But seeing how helpless Yasuho had looked while pinned by King Crimson's grip, Inori had to admit her offensive output was probably non-existent. That tracked with the rules of Stands, though—the high-attack, high-speed close-range types like King Crimson and Star Platinum tended to have short reach, while remote-control types tended to have weak attack power compared to the close-range crowd.
Not to mention, Paisley Park already had cheat-level intelligence-gathering capability.
It was basically like playing a game with the strategy guide open—being told the right answer before the event even happened.
"I don't really get all of it, but if it can help you, that's wonderful." Yasuho's mood lifted under Inori's praise. She stared at Paisley Park, beginning to actually understand and accept the concept of Stands as Inori had explained it. "You said it can gather information? Then on a test, can it just tell me the right answer?"
"…It probably can."
"Sounds great. Heh heh." For a high school girl like Yasuho, of course grades were the chief concern.
"Yasuho. Listen carefully. Do not, under any circumstances, let anyone you don't trust find out about your Stand. It's dangerous."
"Stand users are drawn to each other—it's an unwritten rule. Right now, terrible things are happening here in Morioh. There's someone using a tool to keep creating new Stand users. Your ability isn't suited for one-on-one combat, so if you ever run into an enemy, just listen to Paisley Park and run. Or tell me—that works too. Whatever you do, don't fight head-on!"
Inori stared into her eyes with an expression so serious it bordered on grim, hammering each word in.
"I get it, Inori. Don't worry—I won't go picking fights with anyone else's Stand."
Inori's expression was almost frighteningly intense, but every word of it had been for Yasuho's sake. A warmth bloomed in Yasuho's chest.
"And you'll protect me too, won't you, Inori?"
"Of course." Inori nodded as if it went without saying. "You're my best friend now!"
—And what about me? Do I not count as a person, Inori?
Another girl's deeply aggrieved muttering rose up inside her head.
—Quiet, Mana. Don't ruin the moment when someone's affection meter is going up.
"Inori, can I ask… your Stand's ability… is it making you beautiful?" Yasuho asked, the question entirely innocent.
"Huh?"
Inori went blank, completely unable to follow how Yasuho had arrived at that conclusion.
"I mean, look—my Stand has the same hairstyle as me, but yours… well, it's a little… distinctive-looking." Yasuho softened the wording as much as she could, refusing to put it bluntly. "So is it… giving you its looks?"
"It is not! My face is one hundred percent natural, nothing fake about it!"
—One hundred percent natural, hand-copied face.
Inori's head spun a little hearing that. This girl's imagination is wild. But on a certain level, it confirmed something: King Crimson, for all its raw power, really had sacrificed an awful lot of looks for that ability…
A Stand was, after all, the manifestation of its user's mental energy. She might be a girl now, but her soul had once belonged to a boy.
So if the original Inori had awakened a Stand, the natural result would have been a slender, feminine Stand—something like Spice Girl, or Paisley Park.