It was only thanks to the intel Inori had extracted from Born This Way's user that Paisley Park could calculate the target's position across such a wide search radius. Paisley Park wasn't some omniscient divine notebook, and it wasn't a magic conch shell, either. If the target was too far away, it simply couldn't produce a direct answer.
But its true strength lay in what it could do when faced with a distant target: trace the existing clues and chart a path to finding them. Right now, it had seized on a suspicious trail connected to Yoshikage Kira's vehicle and extrapolated his current location—the cemetery.
Kira seemed to have played a feint, a misdirection gambit—and that was very interesting, because Inori had only decided to hit his home base a few dozen minutes ago. He had no reason to anticipate it... but none of that mattered now. If Yoshikage Kira really had used a memory-preserving Bites the Dust to loop back to this point in time, then he already knew every Stand ability belonging to her, Jotaro, and the rest of the main cast.
Which meant one thing.
—Rohan Kishibe doesn't stand a chance.
The cemetery was far from her current location—practically the other end of Morioh's central district. Inori knew she was running out of time. Every second counted. But before she left, she retrieved the Stand "Born This Way." The unlucky man had no complaints—being alive at all was a kindness he hadn't earned.
"I'd suggest taking your mother and getting out of Morioh. Go somewhere else for a month or two before coming back."
Inori rolled the freshly claimed Stand Orb between her fingers, offering the advice in good faith.
"Yoshikage Kira won't let you go. Staying here is dangerous."
"I will. Thank you... sis."
The man clutched his bag of money and looked at her with genuine gratitude.
—What an angel! A genuinely kind-hearted girl! I tried to assassinate her, and she not only spared my life but didn't even take the money... Just one Stand? That's nothing—I never wanted the dangerous thing to begin with!
The money wasn't a small sum, but Inori had no time to waste here any longer. She gave her final instructions, then vaulted straight out the window into the yard. The man's house was bare—not a vehicle in sight. She was considering her options when a white convertible came cruising up the road from the direction of the beach and the intersection at the end of the block.
A couple was inside, clearly in the throes of vacation romance—the woman dressed to kill, the man sporting a Hawaiian shirt and a gold chain that screamed "rich kid on holiday."
—Unbelievable luck~
If they'd been ordinary commuters, she would've at least had to pay. But these two were obviously loaded, which made the whole thing much simpler.
Inori exhaled with relief, then let King Crimson propel her body forward in a burst of speed. She stepped directly into the car's path.
The man behind the wheel had been flirting shamelessly with his passenger—the off-season roads were empty enough to get away with it. He only noticed the figure standing in the middle of the road when he was practically on top of her and slammed the brakes. If not for their seatbelts, he and his girlfriend would have slammed face-first into the windshield.
"Hey! Are you blind?!"
The woman, still rattled from the sudden stop, screamed at Inori.
"Standing in the middle of the road? If you want to kill yourself, don't drag us into it!"
Inori looked up. She walked toward their car, brows curved in a slight arch, that exquisite face wearing a faint, shallow smile. There was nothing remotely apologetic in it—no guilt whatsoever.
"What a... what a cute girl..."
The man in the Hawaiian shirt froze the moment he saw Inori's face. A backwater little town like this had no business producing a girl on this level.
But Inori didn't answer. She simply returned a sly grin, and the man found his gaze drawn irresistibly to the girl's slightly reddened, inviting lips—completely forgetting that his girlfriend existed.
Then something invisible seized him by the shirt, snapped his seatbelt clean off, hauled him bodily out of the driver's seat, and flung him backward through the air. Before anyone could process what had happened, Inori pulled the door open, slid behind the wheel, and put her hands on the steering wheel.
"EYAAAAAAH!"
The woman in the passenger seat shrieked like she was being slaughtered. She was stupefied—why had her boyfriend just gone flying? Was this woman trying to steal their car? She knew it—these rural hellholes were full of delinquents!
"I'm in a hurry, so I'll be borrowing this for a while. You can pick it up at the cemetery after seven tonight."
The girl shifted into gear with practiced ease, not even bothering to look back as she tossed out the words.
—I'm calling the police! You'll be arrested!
But before the woman could even finish the thought, she was grabbed by the same invisible hand as her boyfriend—seatbelt torn away—and flung onto the asphalt beside the road.
All distractions eliminated, the girl floored the accelerator and vanished in a plume of dust, leaving that hapless couple standing in the breeze, their thoughts in total disarray.
...
...
A few minutes earlier. Morioh's main cemetery.
Heaven's Door's attempt to attack the bomb-car Stand had inadvertently triggered a detonation, and the damage fed back to its user. Rohan crumpled in the wake of the blast. His whole body felt like it had been thrown into a vat of boiling oil—burning, searing, his vision blurring until he could no longer see clearly. A curtain of red descended over his eyes.
—Am I... am I going to die?
—I never imagined... the killer has been watching that alley this entire time. Anyone who gets close to Reimi Sugimoto gets flagged immediately. A remote-controlled bomb Stand... I have to get this intel... to Inori.
Rohan's consciousness was fading, but sheer willpower kept his body crawling. His bag... it was right there. If he could just send a message—to anyone, it didn't matter who—as long as he got it out, the information had a chance of reaching her.
"Oh my, oh my. Looks like you can still move."
Rohan clawed at the dirt. The one arm that still functioned was pinned under someone's foot.
Through his tilted, blurring vision, he could just make out a leather shoe—the cheap kind he'd never deign to wear.
"Rohan Kishibe... what are you thinking right now, hm? 'Why is this happening to me all of a sudden? Am I really going to die? Will I never get to draw manga again?' Something like that?"
The voice was low, magnetic—and its owner sounded thoroughly pleased with himself.
Rohan struggled to raise his head, to burn the face into his memory, but his shattered body made even that simple effort agonizing.
"Sheer Heart Attack is the weapon I trust most. For dealing with a troublesome Stand like yours, it really is the perfect tool."
The man laughed, airy and self-satisfied. "As expected—compared to Inori, the rest of you small fry are so much easier to handle."
Rohan's fading eyes snapped wide.
—He... he already knows Inori's name? No... I can't let this happen. If things go on like this, she'll be assassinated too. That toy car—it's an automated device that detonates on contact! Move, damn it! I'm Rohan Kishibe! I can't... lose to some lowlife murderer...
"Heaven's... Door."
Rohan had one breath left. He extended a single hand from Heaven's Door—the man's leg was right there on his arm. One touch, and he'd have the bastard. But he'd badly underestimated just how well this killer knew him.
Yoshikage Kira also knew that Rohan Kishibe was not the kind of man to give up this easily. So the instant Heaven's Door reached out, another hand cut through the air—pink, wearing a black leather glove—and clamped down on Rohan's arm. And then, once more, Rohan heard that sound. That grim, mechanical click, like a death knell.
Every hair on his body stood on end. Cold terror erupted through him.
A silent explosion. Not even smoke this time—just a fleeting spark, and Rohan's entire arm was blown apart, scattering into chunks of flesh across the ground.
Agony ripped through his will one final time. He knew. His road ended here.
The only thing he couldn't understand was—why did this man have two Stands? Was that bomb-car Stand an accomplice's?