Inori had seen Yasuho's move coming.
She knew Paisley Park was coordinating with her—sealing off Bites the Dust was their only option right now. She couldn't do it alone. As countless prior loops had proven, King Crimson could never move faster than Kira could press the switch, no matter how quick it was. To beat him, someone had to anticipate the exact moment he'd reach for the switch and set up in advance.
So Inori had kept the conversation going with Kira—even revealing Yet to Come—all to hold his attention. She'd staked everything on Yasuho. And Yasuho hadn't let her down, buying that one critical instant.
History had a funny way of rhyming.
(③)
In the original storyline, Koichi Hirose was the one who stalled Kira at the moment Bites the Dust was about to fire, buying Jotaro the opening he needed. In this world, the person who bought time for Inori was Koichi's gender-swapped parallel-world counterpart—Yasuho Hirose.
Call it convergence. Call it fate refusing to bend.
Yoshikage Kira was destined to fall to a Hirose and someone of the Joestar bloodline. Inori wasn't a Joestar, but her presence in this world was no less than theirs.
The instant Kira dealt with Paisley Park, King Crimson closed the distance. Its knife-hand strike sheared through the hand that would have pressed the switch. Then Inori didn't hesitate. She activated Time Erasure.
"King Crimson!"
—King Crimson—erase all time in this world except mine!
Kira froze in place, seemingly unaware his right hand was already gone. Inori looked into his terror-stricken eyes and shifted King Crimson into the Everlasting Crown. Before carrying out the execution, she needed to eliminate every remaining variable.
The pink-skinned, cat-headed humanoid Stand—Yoshikage Kira's Killer Queen—was wrenched out of its user's body by King Crimson.
With that done, Kira was truly finished. Whatever passive self-destruct failsafes he'd rigged became meaningless—he was no longer a Stand user.
She sealed Killer Queen into a Stand Orb without hesitation, then released Time Erasure.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA!"
A torrent of fists rained down on Yoshikage Kira's body.
(③)
From Kira's perspective, the moment Inori severed his hand she'd launched straight into the barrage. He didn't yet know his Stand was gone—and had no spare brainpower to think about anything else.
"GHAAAH!!"
The dozens of heavy blows delivered in a single instant left the man with fractures across nearly every bone in his body. He screamed like a slaughtered pig, launched skyward by the impact, and crashed back down before tumbling along the slope toward the road below.
The battle cries had been loud, but Inori had held back. She couldn't let Kira die—not yet. He needed to survive at least another ten minutes or so, long enough for her to clean up every trace Great Days had left on this world.
"Inori-chan... did we win?"
Yasuho rose to her feet, wiped the dirt from her face, and asked between ragged breaths.
"Yes."
Inori nodded and studied the orb in her palm—the one containing Killer Queen.
"Yoshikage Kira is finished."
"No... Inori-chan, he has to still be alive!" Yasuho flinched as if struck by a terrible memory. "I'm still here! His Fourth Bomb hasn't been lifted! He's alive, Inori-chan!"
"He's alive for now. But not for much longer."
Inori looked up at Yasuho and smiled gently. The orb in her hand flared with light, and Killer Queen materialized beside her—Kira's Stand, now under her control.
"Because he's no longer a Stand user."
Seeing Killer Queen subdued put Yasuho at ease, though doubt still lingered. She didn't understand how Inori could be so confident. The enemy could rewind time itself. What if this was all part of his plan? Was it really safe to leave him alive?
"In all those previous loops, I probably never managed to stop him from pressing the switch in time."
"Neither Jotaro-san nor I could pull it off—because we didn't know what his ability was. Even if we deduced mid-battle that the time reversals were triggered by self-detonation, it was nearly impossible to block him at the last second."
"But this time was different."
Inori tilted her head toward the night sky, letting the moonlight pour its silver glow across her face until she seemed to turn translucent, luminous as jade.
Then she looked at Yasuho and smiled.
"This time, I had Paisley Park beside me."
"Thank you, truly. Yasuho."
"I-I did it to save myself too!"
Yasuho's cheeks flushed. Being thanked so solemnly was embarrassing. And right now, there was something almost dangerously captivating about Inori—a kind of fatal charm radiating from every fiber of her being. Yasuho couldn't help but marvel at how extraordinary this girl was: every admirable quality she could think of in a woman, concentrated into one person. If she'd been a boy, she'd probably have fallen hopelessly in love.
—Wait, no, no!
A very serious thought suddenly occurred to her.
Inori was an artificial human from the future. That exquisite figure, that breathtaking face—all of it had been engineered by someone. And her personality was probably loaded like a program on a chip, too. What kind of purpose had scientists had in mind when they created a girl like this?
...She wasn't made to be sold, was she? A custom-made maid or something? Built specifically for... servicing people?
Yasuho's imagination was derailing fast.
"Yasuho, the reason I'm telling you all this is because I don't want any regrets."
Inori hadn't noticed the girl spacing out. If she could read minds and discovered Yasuho had been mentally casting her as a custom-order android maid, she'd have found a way to torment her until she felt better.
"I know you want to go back to your own world. So I need to say everything I want to say now. Thank you, truly, Yasuho."
"Will I... actually be able to go back?" Yasuho felt a sudden helplessness. She knew she should be happy—she'd see Josuke again soon—but a quiet ache lingered, impossible to brush away.
"I'll deactivate Killer Queen's Fourth Bomb. Once I do, you'll vanish from this world. No one here will remember you—it'll be as though you never existed. Every trace your presence left behind will be automatically erased by fate."
Tonight, two souls would depart this world. One was the guilty soul of Yoshikage Kira. The other was Yasuho Hirose, a guest who had always been meant to leave.
"Will you tell me, Inori-chan? How did you know about me—know that I don't belong to this world?"
"I don't just know that." Inori's smile was serene. "I also know you're going back to see a boy named Josuke Higashikata. You two have something incredibly important to do—and someone very important to save."
"..."
Yasuho was speechless.
"Are you... a god, Inori-chan?"
It was the only explanation she could think of. Looking back, Inori had known about Stand users' abilities without any prior clues—Angelo's Aqua Necklace, for instance—and had tracked down Yoshikage Kira despite having no leads. Now she even knew everything about Yasuho's own world.
That was terrifying.
"I'm not a god. I'm just..."
—What am I, exactly?
Inori opened her mouth, then couldn't finish.
Human? Artificial human? A tool designed to let the Apocalypse Virus destroy the world? King Crimson's Stand user?
"Who are you really, Inori-chan?"
Yasuho pressed, too curious to hold back.
"I'll tell you the next time we meet."
Inori blinked slowly and offered another quiet smile.
"Next time? But I'm... about to leave."
Yasuho's face fell.
She wanted to go back—someone important was waiting, and something critical needed to be done. But this world wasn't a fiction. The warm, complete family, and a friend as singular as Inori... if she left now, they might never see each other again.