He was right.
Inori's King Crimson was a meticulous Stand. Any object she'd been touching before Time Erasure activated—barring vague concepts like "the air" or "the ground"—could be forcibly dragged into the erased-time space alongside her. She'd used exactly this principle before: standing on a car during Time Erasure so everyone aboard became immune to a hail of gunfire.
And Yoshikage Kira did, in fact, know her just as well as he claimed.
This was a truth that could not be rewritten by Time Erasure. An inevitability.
"But you seem to not know about one more ability I have."
She appeared cornered, yet her gaze on Kira was perfectly calm as she unhurriedly called forth her Stand.
"Impossible!" Kira blurted, shaking his head furiously. "I've fought you dozens of times! I know every ability you have—even that power to steal other people's Stands! You can't possibly have any cards left, Inori! Just accept your death!"
"Ha."
"Looks like you don't know me as well as you thought. Or maybe through all those death loops, all you ever did was run." Inori tilted her head, eyes cold. "Admit it, Yoshikage Kira. You were never any good at fighting."
"I... I won't lose to anyone!" Kira's pupils trembled. He knew Inori wasn't the type to bluff. Stalling for time was pointless—and yet she truly shouldn't have had any remaining abilities worth revealing. Even if she did, Kira refused to believe she could escape the Fourth Bomb's hold.
But where was this inexplicable pressure coming from? Did she really have a hidden power?
—No. I can't panic now. A chance to kill her comes once in a lifetime—miss this, and it's back to living in fear every single day. Never again. I'm going to beat you right here and now, Inori!
"Activate! Great Days!"
Kira roared and pressed the invisible switch in his hand.
...
...
Nothing happened.
The girl still stood. Behind her the silver moon hung high in the night sky, gilding her pink hair in a thin membrane of light. A cold sea breeze swept in from behind, lifting the strands that spilled over her shoulders. Inori's expression was serene—but at some point the Stand behind her had shifted into a different form entirely.
Scarlet light danced across the Stand's body like living flame.
Kira recognized this form. It was the special configuration that only appeared when Inori absorbed someone else's Stand.
"What... what happened?"
"You should be dead by now! Inori—you... what did you do?"
He screamed in impotent fury. This was wrong—she should have been blown to atoms by now!
Kira was angry, but what overwhelmed him even more was fear. On every world line, he was destined to lose to this woman. No matter what he did, no matter how meticulously he planned his traps, none of it mattered.
"This... is the Everlasting Crown~"
The girl's expression was steely.
"Your plan did succeed. Your Killer Queen entered my eyes, and erasing time wouldn't help—the bomb would follow me into the erased-time space. But if you're allowed to have four different bomb abilities, then surely I'm allowed a fourth Stand ability too?"
"A fourth... but that's impossible!"
Fury and despair threatened to spill from Kira's bloodshot, bulging eyes. He shook his head violently, rejecting everything Inori was saying. Panic and resentment had drowned his reason. He couldn't accept it. He refused to believe he'd lost.
"No ability could possibly change the fact that you were going to be blown up! And you didn't even do anything! You just—you just stood there!"
"Would you like to know what I did?"
Inori walked toward him, a smile forming that said everything and nothing at once.
"I made the future... arrive early."
"Wha—?" Cold sweat erupted across Kira's face. "What are you talking about?"
"What stands before you now is the me from one minute in the future."
"And that one minute where I was about to be blown apart? It has been completely erased from this world. Whatever you did to me during that interval no longer matters—because the me carrying your bomb, the me who died in the explosion, has already been 'replaced' by the me from one minute later!"
"This is the true power of my King Crimson ACT1: Everlasting Crown... Yet to Come!"
Erasing future time and swapping it with the present...!
(③)
In the world of Guilty Crown, Carol—the fairy of the future—and Scrooge, the first false king, had left their wills within Void Genome No. 003, granting Inori a power: a divine consciousness capable of overcoming biological extinction through evolution—a key that would carry human civilization into tomorrow.
(③)
The last time—when Eve's will had been on the verge of devouring her soul and seizing her body—Inori had activated Yet to Come, pulling her far-future self into the present and borrowing the power of Nameless Monster to destroy Eve.
Now, with Kira's Great Days planting a bomb on her, she used Yet to Come again. This time the window was far shorter—just one minute ahead, after the explosion had already ended. She swapped her current self with the bomb-free future version, then "returned" the borrowed time a few seconds later.
Inori herself didn't fully understand the ability, but it seemed that as long as the damage wasn't instantly fatal, the future remained unchanged. Even if she would die within that one minute, using Yet to Come to extract the moment after that minute meant she simply "skipped" the fatal window.
What Epitaph showed and what Yet to Come produced were wildly inconsistent—perhaps the future it drew from was a parallel world entirely?
Even after Yet to Come deactivated and the borrowed future was "returned," Inori wouldn't revert to her pre-ability state. What had already happened could not be undone. Even fatal injuries could be rendered moot: by summoning the uninjured future self to take the current self's place, she'd be fully restored the instant the switch occurred. After defeating the enemy and releasing the ability, the time that had flowed for her future self would simply merge back into the present seamlessly.
In short—Inori had played her final trump card, Yet to Come, and defeated Yoshikage Kira's Great Days.
"No... that's impossible!"
"My Killer Queen is an invincible Stand! The bomb was already planted on you... now—I'll press it! I'll press the switch! I'll activate Bites the Dust again! I'll rewind time twenty-four hours, and then there's nothing you can do! Inori!"
If Kira had just kept hiding, it might have taken a very long time to find him.
But precisely because Hayato and Yasuho's efforts had shown him a chance to defeat Inori, he'd summoned the courage to crawl out of his shell. What he hadn't anticipated was that Inori possessed an ability that could nullify any outcome—making the future overwrite the present.
"Is that so?"
King Crimson reverted to its original form as Inori's voice rang out, proud and razor-sharp.
"Then let's see who's faster."
"Whether you press that switch first—or my fist shatters your hand."
She moved.
Kira raised his hand toward the self-destruct mechanism.
"King Crimson!"
"Killer Queen!"