"Daddy, will I get to see Inori-nee again after we leave Japan?"
"Yes."
There was no other answer Jotaro could give.
"I'll keep in touch with her." He slipped off his white coat and hung it by the door, then turned with a faint, dry smile. "Do you like her, Jolyne?"
"Yeah!"
Jolyne was on the couch, turning a turtle plush—a gift from Josuke—over in her hands. She answered without a second's hesitation, then added at once:
"Inori-nee is so cute—like looking at a Barbie doll! Jolyne likes Inori-nee!"
"..."
Jotaro absorbed this and said nothing. A thin, wry resignation was all he offered.
—First impressions already secured. That really is an ability of its own.
Still—something about her was off.
After the fact, Jotaro had asked the Speedwagon Foundation to run a full background check on Inori. The result: nothing. No trace. The search turned up almost no one at all sharing her name, and among the vanishingly few candidates, not a single one matched her age in any database anywhere.
He was beginning to suspect he'd misjudged her origins entirely. She might not be DIO's daughter after all.
The most telling detail: there had been a day when Inori went shopping in an off-shoulder dress. Jotaro hadn't spotted a star-shaped mark anywhere on her neck. It might sit lower on her body—but Jotaro was not about to ask a teenage girl to undress herself for inspection.
After picking them up from Lovers' Cape, Inori had said some strange things in the car on the way back. She wanted to spend some time in Italy—she had a brother there she wanted to see, someone whose Stand ability could bring that ghost back to life.
Fine. Where she went was her own business.
But then she'd said something that lodged.
She wanted Jotaro to call the friends who had fought with him to bring down DIO—the ones still out in the world tracking Stand Arrows—just to check in on them, because, she said, the original discoverer of the Arrow was probably somewhere in Europe.
—I almost let that slip past me. I nearly forgot entirely about Inori's amnesiac-girl premise.
—But she's right. I haven't contacted Polnareff in a long time. I wonder how far along his investigation into the Arrow is by now.
"Polnareff? It's me."
"Wow—!" The man on the other end sounded genuinely stunned. An incredulous, almost theatrical cry. "Jotaro? You actually remembered to call me? I was starting to think you'd written me off completely!"
"I could never forget you."
Jotaro answered with a slight frown, eyes drifting to the framed photo on the desk—the one he carried with him everywhere, wherever he went. The group shot from Egypt. Kakyoin, Avdol, Iggy, Polnareff, the old man, himself.
Those fifty days that had changed the course of his life. How could he forget?
"Heh heh heh. So what's going on? This wouldn't be about Mr. Joestar, would it—?"
Polnareff's tone shifted abruptly—quiet, suddenly serious.
They'd been out of contact for a stretch. Different territories, different missions, no need to check in daily. But Polnareff had known for years that Joseph was old and declining steadily, and the last time Jotaro had spoken with him Joseph had been hospitalized for several days.
Now here was Jotaro, calling without warning...
—Is it Mr. Joestar? Has he finally—
"The old man's fine."
—Only Polnareff would be dense enough to just come out and ask.
"This is something else."
Jotaro slid open the glass door and stepped out onto the balcony, collecting his thoughts before he continued.
"Something else? Good news or bad?" Polnareff chuckled, curious. "Which?"
"For you, it'll probably be good news."
Jotaro leaned on the balcony railing and looked out at Morioh in the evening light. His mind drifted, inevitably, to Polnareff's legendary catastrophic luck with women.
"I need you to look after someone. A girl."
"A—a girl?"
"Yes. A very pretty sixteen-year-old."
"S-sixteen... oh, oh! Now we're talking! Jotaro, you really are my best friend—I knew you couldn't let me down!"
Jotaro could picture it perfectly: the eyes going wide, the barely-contained drool.
"She may be DIO's daughter."
"Doesn't matter whose daughter she is, I'm Polnar—wait. What? DIO's daughter?!"
The howl from the other end was almost gratifying.
"That part isn't confirmed."
Jotaro couldn't stop a quiet smirk.
"...You're messing with me. Jotaro! Who is she, actually? Why are you suddenly sending her to me?"
"She says the person who originally discovered the Stand Arrow is probably hiding somewhere in Italy. She has a brother there—she wants to visit him while helping me track the Arrow at the same time."
"What's her name? Is she a Stand user?"
"Her name is Inori. Her Stand is a time-type ability—similar in nature to mine."
"Unbelievable... I literally just turned up a lead that a mafia organization called Passione in Italy may have the Arrow, and I was about to move on it. How could she possibly know that?"
Polnareff dropped the joking tone entirely.
"What? You've found it too?"
"I'm in Rome. Arrived yesterday. Haven't made any moves yet."
After the battle against DIO—after everything they'd lost in Egypt—Polnareff had shed most of the impulsiveness and naivety he'd once carried. On matters of real consequence, he would not let his guard down for a moment.
"Good. I'll have the Speedwagon Foundation arrange a private jet to bring her over. She has no passport or documentation—there's no way to get her through normal channels."
Saving a life came first. Jotaro wasn't one to fuss over paperwork—SPW could sort out the details.
"Have her come to Rome. I'll be here waiting."
A beat. Then Polnareff's grin crept back in.
"Hey, Jotaro... is she actually cute?"
"Jolyne said she looks like a Barbie doll."
Jotaro couldn't think of a better description than his daughter's, so he just used that.
"Leave it to me! I, Jean Pierre Polnareff, will protect this girl with everything I've got!"
"...I'd advise you to be careful around her."
Jotaro knew exactly what image Polnareff was building for himself—some soft, delicate thing that needed rescuing.
"Her Stand is strong. You'll do better to follow her lead than to call the shots yourself."
"Strong? How strong can one girl be?"
Polnareff figured it was just the Easterners' habit of polite overstatement. People always made things sound grander than they were. How genuinely dangerous could one teenager be?
"When I first got to know her," Jotaro said, "we fought."
A pause.
"I lost."