"Hm?"
"What's wrong, JoJo? Even if keeping watch is important, you should get some rest. You're our main fighting force." Even knowing DIO was near the helicopter crash site, the lead was too vague to act on—they could hardly go tracking him down in the middle of the night.
Jotaro hadn't actually been keeping watch. He'd simply slept enough on the plane. The time difference made it impossible to maintain a normal schedule in Egypt, which was arguably a good thing—a Vampire like DIO certainly wouldn't act during the day.
But finding a place or a person at night was several times harder than during the day.
"Kakyoin, did you do something?" Jotaro asked a seemingly random question.
"Do what? I'd love to pull sentry duty too, but Hierophant Green can't operate when I'm unconscious..."
"That's not what I mean." Jotaro looked at the little cat, fast asleep.
She seemed to like hugging something when she slept. She'd commandeered Jotaro's pillow as a body pillow, and since he wasn't tired anyway, he'd surrendered it and settled into a chair with a marine encyclopedia.
But the girl's sleeping posture was far from graceful—she'd kicked half the blanket onto the floor.
Right at the moment Jotaro had formed the thought, the blanket had returned to its proper position, neatly covering her.
The wrinkles were in different places than before. It wasn't some kind of restoration ability.
"Enemy!"
"What?" Kakyoin looked baffled, completely lost as to what had happened.
"No, wait."
Jotaro looked down at the marine encyclopedia in his hand. The page he'd been reading had somehow flipped forward by one.
Even with Egypt's warmer climate, it was still winter. They'd been careful to close the doors and windows—there was no breeze.
"What the hell happened, Jotaro? Hm?"
Now Kakyoin noticed it too. Yimi, who'd been sleeping soundly on the bed just a moment ago, was suddenly lying on the floor, still clutching the pillow, even showing signs of rolling under the bed.
"Hiding under here?" Kakyoin used Hierophant Green to flip the bed, expecting an enemy lurking beneath.
"Empty?" Kakyoin went on high alert. "Careful, JoJo. It might be the kind of Stand that hides in shadows."
"No, Kakyoin—you weren't standing there a moment ago. It's a skip. Our actions... no, time was skipped forward by roughly ten seconds!"
"What?"
Jotaro knew because he'd only recently turned to that page. He read at a measured pace, and the text density on these pages meant at least ten seconds to finish one.
"Mm?" Yimi rubbed her eyes and woke up—roused by Jotaro's voice. She raised a tiny fist and weakly bonked him on the arm.
"The enemy didn't attack our room. Could they be after the next room?"
Even with the option of better accommodations, they'd stuck with modest lodging—triple rooms to stay clustered. Although Yimi was closer to Joseph, they'd decided not to put her in the same room as Joseph, whose Stand had almost no combat ability, for her own protection.
Hearing Kakyoin's words, Jotaro dispensed with knocking and had Star Platinum punch the lock clean off.
"What's going on, Jotaro?" Joseph woke up, rubbing his eyes in confusion.
"Where's Polnareff?" Jotaro scanned the room. The corner bed belonging to Polnareff held nothing but a pile of tossed-off blankets.
"Probably in the bathroom," Avdol answered. "I vaguely heard him get up and head that way. I think he muttered something about a 'damn cat.'"
"I smell very nice." The now-awake Yimi puffed up indignantly.
Her opinion of Polnareff—who'd been cheering her up all day—dropped instantly.
"Didn't that guy just use the bathroom right after we got off the plane?"
"Hey, the restroom's open." Jotaro pointed at the single bathroom in the room. "And there's a stench."
He pushed the door wide. The toilet was an unspeakable disaster zone—chewing gum wrappers floating on top had clogged the whole thing.
Jotaro glanced down. Iggy appeared to be making something resembling a grin.
Obviously the dog had done his business in the toilet without flushing, then clogged it on purpose. Anyone with even moderately high standards wouldn't want to pee on top of that.
"Where's the nearest public restroom?"
"I think there's a supermarket across the street. A hundred-odd meters or so."
...
"You okay, buddy? Why are you sleeping out here?" Polnareff gently nudged the man leaning against the alley wall.
No way the supermarket would be open at this hour. Nobody was on the streets at night anyway, and he just needed to take a leak. He figured an alleyway would do—only to find someone propped motionless against the wall.
But when Polnareff pushed him, the man toppled over stiffly, rigidly. His cane clattered to the ground beside him.
"He's dead?!"
Polnareff was stunned.
There wasn't a single visible wound. Had the man died of sudden natural causes?
N'Doul—the super-long-range Stand user whose abilities should have measured in kilometers, whose Stand taking damage shouldn't necessarily affect his body—had collapsed without explanation.
Polnareff summoned his Stand, scanning the surroundings. "I'm no expert on local customs, but I don't think Egypt's humidity is anywhere near enough to produce this much fog."
The moment that observation left his lips, the impossible happened. The corpse on the ground suddenly leapt up and wrapped itself around him.
"A m-mummy?!"
The story he'd used to scare a kid earlier had come back to bite him.
A sly cackle drifted from the alley entrance. "Polnareff, you traitorous wretch. You dare betray DIO-sama? With that garbage Stand of yours, and you somehow managed to kill N'Doul."
"You're... who exactly?"
Too far away to make out details, Polnareff could only keep Silver Chariot on guard and stab at N'Doul's head—but how could he kill someone already dead?
The figure who'd revealed herself was nothing more than a shrunken old hag, small enough that age seemed to have compacted her frame.
As if deliberately, she held out her deformed hand for him to see.
"You're—! Don't tell me you're—!"
A flash of distortion crossed the old woman's expression. "DIO-sama told me everything. You piece of trash, you've been investigating my beloved son."
"Your son—you're that scumbag's mother?!"
Silver Chariot erupted with power far beyond its normal output, driven by pure fury, dismembering the corpse clinging to Polnareff and hurling the pieces away.
"A Stand is a crystallization of spiritual energy. Enhanced briefly through rage? But..." Enya tapped her cane unhurriedly against the ground.
What followed was far more horrifying. A dense crowd of bodies—some people, some corpses, some freshly exhumed from graves—split into two groups and sealed off both ends of the alley.
"Look carefully, Polnareff. There are innocent living people among them. Can you strike them down the way you did N'Doul? A wretch like you deserves to die in the most degrading way possible! DIO-sama, I'll soon—"
"Hhhh—"
A heavy breath. It couldn't have actually drowned out her voice, but within her fog-formed, intangible Stand, she clearly detected a third party's approach.
"Who's there? A lost bystander?"
"You just said the name 'DIO,' old hag." A familiar-sounding voice had materialized behind her. A crimson hand closed roughly around her throat.
"Gkh—"
Enya tried to turn her head but only managed a glimpse of a Stand more fearsome than anything she'd seen in her life.
"Now that I get a good look, you seem familiar. That thing—what kind of monster is it? Tell me. Now."
Familiar? He recognized her too?
Then Enya remembered. About a year ago, an Italian young man had sold her several meticulously crafted arrows. Those were the vital tools she'd used to create Stand users for DIO-sama.
That voice—it was him!
"You've got your sights on DIO-sama too? As if I'd ever tell you, you—" Enya directed her Stand to attack the figure behind her.
Crack—
Enya's neck was snapped in an instant. The corpses penning Polnareff in collapsed immediately after.
"Wait... huh?"
By the time he came to his senses, he found himself standing beside Enya's body—but saw no trace of the person who'd been there moments ago.
"That bastard."
Polnareff crouched down, expression torn, and turned over Enya's deformed hand.
He didn't know the full picture, but this old woman was definitely that monster's mother. Even though she was dead, a blood relative should allow Joestar-san to use Spirit Photography on her to reveal that bastard's face, the same way he'd photographed DIO.
"Sherry... wait for me. Your brother will avenge you soon!"
He lifted Enya's body. As her arm hung limp, something arrow-shaped slipped from her sleeve and clattered to the ground.
It was an arrow, its tip carved in the shape of an insect.