"Yoshikage Kira sent you, didn't he? Talk! Where is he!"
Inori tightened her grip on the woman's throat, kicked her legs out from under her, and dropped her flat on her back before tilting her chin up to glare down at her.
"Ngh..."
The woman was dazed from the sudden assault. She seemed to have cracked the back of her skull on the way down—her lips trembled violently, but all she managed were a few meaningless whimpers.
"What? She's the enemy?!"
Josuke had gradually adapted to Inori's time abilities. At this point, even a far more dramatic shift in the scene wouldn't have fazed him.
So the moment he heard the Big Sis he trusted most declare that this middle-aged woman was a hostile attacker, he believed it without hesitation.
"She's the enemy—beat her down! Josuke-kun!"
Inori punctuated the order with a kick to the woman's stomach.
She was certain this woman was a Stand user. Yoshikage Kira would never have maintained friendly neighborly relations with anyone. And even setting that aside, if a normal person spotted suspicious intruders rummaging through someone else's property, the logical first move was to quietly call the police—not march over and announce yourself to the trespassers.
"Roger that, Big Sis! DORA! DORA!"
Josuke trusted her completely and enthusiastically stomped on the woman a few times for good measure.
Just as they were about to deliver a few more kicks and then heal her up for questioning, a boy who happened to be passing by stumbled onto the scene—delinquent teens assaulting a middle-aged housewife in broad daylight!
"Hey...! You... why are you hitting my mom! Stop it!"
At the sound of that voice, Inori and Josuke finally froze.
They turned to look. He was a boy of about thirteen, his face speckled with freckles. He wore a uniform similar to Josuke's, but from Budogaoka Middle School.
"Uh... you're saying she's your mother?"
"Get away from her!"
The freckled boy shoved Josuke aside and threw himself over the unconscious woman, sobbing. The panic in his face and the genuine tears streaming down his cheeks seemed to prove beyond all doubt that this woman really was just an ordinary person who'd been knocked out cold by a few hits.
"..."
Inori blinked, then looked away, mildly embarrassed.
—Did I get it wrong? Hurt an innocent bystander?
But still—it was too much of a coincidence. If she really was just a concerned neighbor, why come over and draw attention to herself instead of quietly calling the cops? Could she actually be some anomalous do-gooder who didn't follow common sense? Or had she let her guard down because Josuke was wearing a school uniform?
"It was you!"
The freckled boy whipped around in fury, swinging his hand and slapping Inori's arm. Tears streaked his face as he screamed at her.
"You're the one who hit my mom!"
"I'm sorry, kid—we got the wrong person. Don't worry, I'll heal her right away!" Josuke rushed forward with an apologetic smile, bowing his head and apologizing repeatedly as he summoned Crazy Diamond.
"Don't move! Josuke-kun!"
Inori's sharp cry stopped him in his tracks.
"It's a trap!"
—Epitaph's forecast—a few seconds from now, the woman and her child both stand up at the same time. The woman's hand is holding something strange... a chess piece? And something's wrong with me—something's falling out of my eyes!
The image made Inori's blood run cold. Another unknown Stand user. But regardless, the move now was to activate Time Erasure. No matter what kind of attack the enemy was planning, she could bypass the reality of it entirely.
"Hmph. I knew my judgment wouldn't be wrong."
Inori let out a breath of relief. Thank god she hadn't actually hurt an innocent person.
These two—the woman and her child—were both Stand users. Too bad for you. In the face of my King Crimson, whatever you're trying to do has already lost all meaning.
But how had they planned to attack? Epitaph showed her the result but couldn't reveal the process. Inori kept her eyes locked on the mother-son pair, waiting to see what they'd do next.
—?
"Wh... what?!"
(③)
Inside the erased-time space—where she should have been invincible, untouched by any influence from the real world—Inori was hit by a sudden wave of dizziness. The vertigo lasted barely half a second, but in that instant, something from her eye... exactly like what Epitaph had shown her... a foreign object slipped out.
—A chess piece. On the rounded top... King Crimson's face. It looked almost identical to the orbs she created when she used the Everlasting Crown to steal another user's Stand.
—No way. Can she steal Stands too? No—this is bad. Anything that leaves my body during erased time synchronizes with the world. I can't touch it!
Inori realized with horror that she couldn't cancel Time Erasure on her own. She could only wait the remaining seconds until it reached its limit, and time would engrave itself once more.
—King Crimson... what was that again? I can't remember at all. How to activate it—completely gone!
This wasn't Stand theft. It was memory theft.
They had stolen her memory of how to use King Crimson.
"Oh? What's this?"
The freckled boy picked up the chess piece from the ground, rubbing his little hands together with glee.
Behind him, the woman who'd been lying unconscious on the ground fought through the pain and pulled herself upright. The mask was off. This mother-and-son duo had been a pair of award-winning actors all along, and now the entire atmosphere around them had shifted. Josuke instantly understood—they hadn't hurt any innocents. These two bastards were the Stand users who'd come to attack them.
"Looks like a pretty incredible Stand memory, Mom."
"Let's keep this one. Should be quite interesting, don't you think?" The woman's face was bruised and swollen, and the way she talked was almost comical—but there was no question that the two of them held the upper hand now.
Inori had never taken a fall like this before. When had they even activated it? Damn... she'd never imagined a Stand this devious could exist. King Crimson was still inside her, but if she couldn't remember how to use it, it was as good as gone. Inori had lost the Stand ability she'd relied on more than anything.
"That's Big Sis's King Crimson!"
Josuke spotted the pattern on the chess piece and erupted.
"You two bastards! What did you do to her!"
"My Stand is called California King Bed. It's a garbage Stand with zero combat ability, but it can steal a specific memory from someone by making them feel guilt."
The freckled boy wiped his tears away. In that moment, his voice underwent a drastic transformation—the boyish pitch vanished, replaced by a gruff, far more mature tone than even Josuke's.
—Don't tell me he's actually a grown man, but some kind of condition makes him look like a kid?
"What incredible luck! Though really, she has only herself to blame. Who told her to go and use her Stand to predict what would happen next? Ahahaha!"
He laughed wildly, toying with the memory chess piece in his hand.
"You bastard... you think I'm not even worth looking at?!"
Josuke summoned Crazy Diamond at once. The fourth JoJo was furious, and he was going to make them pay for every second of their deception.
"DORARARARARARA!"