"What?"
Eisal froze. Then, despite himself, felt a chill crawl up his spine.
His eyes weren't built for darkness. He tried to make out a new shape materializing in the room — too noisy in there; he couldn't immediately tell whether it was something the cat had discarded.
The sun went down.
The figure had one arm extended, cradling the cat who had all but turned entirely to wood. In its other hand, it held two flat, disc-like objects—
No. Not discs.
Scales.
A balance.
In the darkness, it regarded Eisal with eyes lit from within by a golden glow. The gaze carried not a single trace of emotion.
A Stand. With a physical form — just like 『Civil War』.
Which meant this cat had never once shown her Stand's ability. Not once, through this entire fight.
『Famine · ACT 2』
Or rather —
"FAMINE!!"
"You—"
The wooden transformation vanished. All that remained binding the cat was the faintest wisp of membrane. At the very last moment, the spring water had finally been digested.
Eisal stepped back — and felt something snag his ankle.
Roots. Growing from his ankles, spreading irreversibly — already reaching for his kidneys.
"So this was your ability?!"
"It's fair," the cat said.
Yimi watched Eisal, and slowly, with effort, began to push herself off the floor through the membrane.
At least from where Yimi stood, she understood it as entirely, genuinely fair. The price for taking the Holy Corpse from her. The wicked deserved destruction. And that happened to be exactly what she wanted.
She only wanted this right now. It was a feeling she couldn't yet name in any other words — she would not allow this vile Stand to wear her mother's face.
Eisal had gotten what he wanted. Yimi had gotten what she wanted. Of course this was fair. Eisal accepted the Holy Corpse — and in doing so, agreed to the terms of the trade.
"You've got to be joking — you mongrel, trying to wear colors that were never yours—!" He could no longer stand. Even as he shouted the words, the roots reached his throat.
"What kind of trade is this?! I never agreed to any of this—!"
He refused to accept it. A certain victory, reversed in the very last instant—how?
In the darkness, the figure holding the scales made no response. But those golden eyes seemed to gain some new, unreadable depth.
"You—"
The roots sealed Eisal's throat entirely.
No — not yet. He wasn't finished. His life wasn't over—!
Right. 『Civil War』's second ability. Once someone killed him inside his Stand's range, he would resurrect — resurrect—
Eisal's entire form became a shape of human-shaped roots. Every object 『Civil War』 had summoned — and the membrane wrapped around Yimi — dissolved into nothing.
"Congratulations, Host! Achievement Unlocked: [A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine]. Reward: Portal Energy +20%."
Yimi shook out her fur. Without looking at the Stand her own spirit had manifested, she turned toward where the Holy Corpse had split free from Eisal — merging automatically with the 'torso' piece Eisal had been carrying — now nearly complete.
Or rather, she turned toward the window behind it.
For reasons she couldn't explain, even with every Holy Corpse gone from her body, she could still sense where the remaining pieces were. Like — there was one, just behind that window, hiding.
"You sensed it? I hadn't expected that in the end, the one to help me gather all the Holy Corpses would turn out not to be a human."
A golden-haired man — handsome, a little filled out — showed the side of his face through the window, looking in.
Funny Valentine. The President.
Since his first appearance a few days ago, he had slimmed down considerably — more than one full size. The reason was that, believing the Holy Corpse was in Johnny Joestar's hands, he had personally ridden out to deal with that cripple. Whatever exactly had happened between them, he had no particular desire to describe in detail.
"Well done. As a reward — I'll let you go out with a bit of dignity, here in front of me."
A humanoid Stand with an animal's face materialized behind him — long-eared, resembling at first glance a large blue rabbit.
Then it came through the window at terrifying speed.
"Ugh—"
Famine ACT 2 met it with a single punch and drove it back. But the Stand's real purpose wasn't physical combat. It used its speed to snatch a US flag and drape it over Yimi's head in one clean motion.
Ding!
"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap."
[FAMINE]
Destructive Power: B
Speed: A
Range: C
Stamina: A
Precision: D
Growth: ?
Ability: Enforces fair trades and costs — "fair" as the cat defines fairness.
As far as Yimi was concerned, nothing strange had happened at all. The only anomaly was that the flag draped over her head had ═══ vanished in an instant.
The house was still the house. But where Funny Valentine had been standing outside the window — gone. Eisal, who had become entirely roots — gone. The near-complete Holy Corpse that had been in the corner — gone.
The only remaining sign was the window D4C had broken to enter — now presenting itself to Yimi in perfect, undamaged condition.
"Gone."
She couldn't make sense of it. She could still feel the Holy Corpse — she was certain it existed somewhere close. But this was what truly baffled her: her instincts told her it was right in front of her, barely out of reach. Yet both her eyes and her nose agreed that this was nothing but an empty, dusty house, with no trace of any living thing having been here at all.
Even with every Holy Corpse stripped from her body, the golden light of her spiritual energy hadn't dimmed by a single degree — as if it had never been borrowed from outside, but had simply always been her own.
She flicked her tail and looked at her Stand, now with a fully manifested physical form.
Wrapped in coarse sackcloth that did nothing to conceal how skeletal it was. Holding a balance — the only thing on its entire body that could be called an ornament.
The sackcloth continued upward into a wide hood that consumed its face completely in shadow. Only one feature was visible at all: those clear, bright golden eyes, carrying no impurities, no distractions. The Stand crouched in a half-ready posture, watching the space ahead, waiting in perfect stillness for whatever Yimi commanded next.
Unlike the vivid colors and bizarre shapes of most Stands, this one looked at first glance like an ordinary person fleeing a famine. Only the shadow over its face — impenetrable, unchanged from any angle — hinted that something here was not ordinary at all.
It was not complete.
Yimi simply knew this, somehow.
A thought crossed her mind — and from nowhere, a jet-black horse materialized, cramming itself into the already small room.
Note: 『Famine ACT 2』: Effect is conjuring a horse from thin air. (Not actually.)
"Like throwing a baby holding a gold necklace into a trash can. That simple." Valentine rubbed his wrist. The spot throbbed with a deep, persistent ache, like being struck by a wooden mallet.
A Stand was the physical manifestation of a person's spirit — and when a Stand took damage, so did its user. For him, though, that particular limitation had never been much of a problem.
"Fascinating Stand, that one."
He meant the cat's. Though what truly intrigued him went beyond Yimi's Stand. No matter how many parallel worlds he had searched, he had never found a second cat that looked anything like a panda — which meant he couldn't use the repulsion between parallel versions of the same being to simply eliminate her.
Up to now, only his own Stand, D4C, and the Holy Corpse itself possessed that kind of singularity. Could it be that this cat was something like the Holy Corpse...?
Valentine recalled that Stand's scales — and the inexplicable behavior of a single cat, inexplicably driven to collect the Holy Corpse on her own. Something was beginning to take shape in his mind.
"A trial..."