"What's wrong, Jotaro?"
Jotaro pressed a hand to his head. "My memories of that diary are gone."
Only the contents were missing—everything else remained intact. So he could tell exactly what he'd lost. But it probably wasn't anything useful about DIO, and it clearly wasn't anything good. Otherwise he wouldn't have burned it on the spot.
Dealing with enemies on one front and a chaos gremlin on his own side. Was this how it was going to be?
Jotaro fished out the thing Yimi had slipped into his pocket. A Game Console with a bizarre, deliberately stylized shape—the kind designed to appeal to children. Attached to it was what appeared to be a Game Cartridge, its label featuring a green monster.
For some reason, looking at it made his heart stir.
"Because you just mentioned 'Heaven.' This child has absolutely zero immunity to that word."
Joseph didn't scold Yimi. Instead, he roughly grabbed Nukesaku by the hair and shoved him against the coffin, a faint shimmer of Hamon condensing in his palm as a threat.
"Hey—was DIO sleeping in this thing?"
"I—I don't know! But DIO-sama did spend a lot of time—you tricked me, you bastard!" Nukesaku suddenly lunged, seizing Yimi as a hostage. His razor-sharp nails pressed against the little girl's throat.
"There's no way I'd betray DIO-sama just to save my own skin! Back off before I do something drastic to this brat!"
No—if these people could truly kill DIO, he'd sell the man out without a second thought. But the terror DIO had carved into his soul ran far too deep. He simply couldn't believe anyone in the world could defeat that man.
That fear even conjured an illusion—as if DIO were watching his performance right now, just as he'd once cast his shadow over the crystal ball to observe the Joestars.
This kid was DIO-sama's primary target, right? The one nobody had managed to capture, and now she was right here in his grasp. One flick of his fingers and this pathetic little brat would be done for.
Now who dared call him an idiot!
"Meow?"
"Yare yare." Jotaro touched the brim of his hat. "I was trying not to let a kid see blood. Or rather, the blood of something that passes for human."
"What the hell are you talking about—don't you care if this brat dies?!" Nukesaku screamed in disbelief.
He couldn't understand it. The aura was entirely different from that man's, yet he caught a whiff of DIO in Jotaro.
Jotaro lowered his hand from his hat and dismissed his Stand. "Looks like I won't need to lift a finger."
"Oh my God!" Joseph cradled his face in both hands, watching as the withered Stand behind Yimi drove its fingers through Nukesaku's neck.
Following that initial strike, the Vampire DIO had created let out a few muffled groans as every drop of moisture was drained from his body, reducing him to a desiccated husk.
Yimi tossed him aside without a care. Robbed of all moisture, the Vampire shattered into pieces on impact with the floor.
"Shit... even if he was the enemy, a little girl doing that without batting an eye is terrifying. Personally, I'm not too fond of it either. When we get back, I'm hiring you a morality tutor."
"Quit rambling, old man. We're one step away from DIO." Jotaro pointed at the coffin DIO had lain in.
Joseph shot him a look. "Jotaro, that kind of composure isn't going to make you a very good father someday."
The seventeen-year-old's face settled into its trademark expression of annoyed indifference. He reached over and patted Yimi's head. "We're switching targets now."
Between Joseph's explanation and the general chaos, Jotaro didn't dwell too hard on the earlier incident. Nor did he discard the Game Console in his pocket, thanks to that inexplicable flutter in his chest.
"Mm." Yimi counted off on her fingers, turning over the 14 Phrases that had appeared in her newly acquired memory.
Jotaro had only skimmed the diary once, but from the moment Yimi made the exchange, she'd been able to focus on that memory in full. The convoluted steps and incomprehensible terms like "north latitude" and "west longitude" baffled her, though.
Still, if she could find the person who'd written those words, she'd surely learn the specifics.
Yimi shifted back to cat form, sniffed at the scent inside the coffin, and leapt straight out the window, racing along the eaves.
"She's actually taking a route only a real cat would use?" Joseph stared in disbelief, then extended Hermit Purple to scale the walls with Jotaro like Spider-Man, keeping pace from above.
She looked so adorable on the outside, yet everything she did had a feral edge. It made one wonder just how long she'd been a stray before anyone adopted her.
As they passed a streetlight, Joseph abruptly hurled his grandson away from him.
"Old man, what the—?"
"Jotaro... a shadow. I may be getting on in years, but my eyes don't lie. Just now, a shadow suddenly stretched all the way to my feet! It's a Stand attack!"
"You said it stretched. From where?" Jotaro pointed at his grandfather's face, startled. "Old man, your face..."
"Hm? What about my face?" Joseph touched his cheeks in confusion and discovered that the beard he'd deliberately cultivated had vanished.
And his voice—the change was so drastic that even he could hear it.
An ugly man with pigtails, disguised as a drunk, watched in horror. "Damn it, I was aiming for the cat up ahead. How the hell did this old geezer get hit instead?"
Sethan—the Stand of the Egyptian god Set. Its manifestation worked by overlapping its own shadow with the target's shadow. The activation conditions were harsh, but the effect was formidable: once triggered, it could regress the target's age proportional to how long the shadows remained merged.
By all rights, he should have avoided operating at night. The requirement for shadow-to-shadow contact and the Stand's lackluster combat power already imposed severe limits. With the midnight streets virtually deserted, there was nothing to use for concealment.
Taking advantage of their distraction, Alessi scrambled on all fours into a nearby alley.
Best to pretend nothing happened. The old man seemed to have figured out his Stand's activation conditions. If Jotaro got within arm's reach, it was over.
"As I suspected—it was supposed to be in Kakyoin's head."
Atop a distant building, DIO crushed the necrotic Flesh Bud that Diavolo had shed into a ball, perplexed.
The pink-haired man who'd managed to wound him once wasn't part of the Joestar group. It seemed they'd used some method to transplant Kakyoin's Flesh Bud onto this outsider.
Judging by his language, the pink-haired man was Italian.
DIO stood at the rooftop's edge, chin resting on his hand, gazing down at Polnareff—level with Kakyoin below—being toyed with by Hanged Man.
"Was it the same for Polnareff?"
Then the question became: whose head had Polnareff's original Flesh Bud been implanted onto?
Someone implanted with a mind-altering Flesh Bud who hadn't received a direct order would, by instinct, gravitate toward DIO. It was instinct, yes, but it didn't interfere with normal human behavior like buying a ticket and boarding a plane.