[JOJO] Corinne's Wonderful Journey

"Long time no see, Corinne."

Dio's figure appeared at the end of the stairs where the sun didn't shine.

His tall and tight body was wrapped under a close-fitting gown, with his hands folded on his chest, looking down from above, his blond hair and red pupils shone brightly in the shadows.

When his eyes swept across Kelin, he had a high and arrogant smile like looking down on ants.

Kelin's existence was not taken seriously by him.

Although he greeted Colleen with a calm voice just now, there was even a hint of familiarity in his tone.

But in Dio's eyes, she is just dispensable, something not worth caring about.

Colleen clenched her fists, her nails digging into her flesh.

"Thanks to you, I came back alive, Dio." She took a dark breath and said, "You have been reluctant to do it yourself, but now you show up, it means that your subordinates have been cleaned up by us, right? "

The smoke from the burning in the side hall gradually spread to where they were, Dio glanced in that direction, and did not make any statement when he looked back.

"Collini," Dio said, using the soft tone that Corinne used when she was still under his control, "Although you have an innocence that cannot be discarded, you are smarter than others. subordinate."

"Thank you for the compliment. I do have many advantages, but none of them have anything to do with you." Kelin replied.

"You have no real blood relationship with the Joestar family. Why don't you take this opportunity to leave them and serve me thoroughly? When you served me, didn't you feel more at ease and joy than you do now?" Dio continues to be persuasive.

After hearing what he said, Kelin was stunned.

It solved a question she had been wondering since she was sober: Did Dio even know about her relationship with the Joestar family?

The answer is yes.

Maybe Dio checked Colleen's luggage and saw a photo of her with her mother and Joseph's family.Perhaps he had sent someone to find out about her.But these speculations are irrelevant.

The point is, Dio knew about her relationship with Joseph, but he deliberately sent her to assassinate Joseph.Maybe he still enjoys it.

"...Dio, you knew about my relationship with the Joestar family when you planted the granulation for me, but you still spared my life. I guess you took a fancy to me because you could use me from You got a lot of convenience and information from the SPW consortium. Then you deliberately sent me to assassinate Joseph to satisfy your own bad taste, right?"

Corinne asked, but she didn't really need Dio's answer.

Dio didn't answer either, he just smiled contemptuously.

The tension from meeting Dio for the first time was gradually overshadowed by anger.

"You asked me if I want to continue to be your subordinate? Forget it, I just remembered that I'm allergic to vampires." Colleen said, "This kind of filthy thing is only suitable to be thrown into the stinky ditch under the sun."

"Really, then you go to die."

Dio's stand-in "The World" quietly emerged behind him.

It is a solid looking golden humanoid stand-in, with sharp edges and corners, and the skin on the surface glows like a metal machine.

Kelin also called out her substitute, and she knew very well that she was at an absolute disadvantage from the very beginning.

Because of the experience of being controlled by the granulation, Dio knew her ability clearly, but she knew almost nothing about Dio's ability.

Even if her ripples are a powerful tool against vampires, she must be near Dio.

She is not a rookie with no combat experience, but Dio's ability is too difficult to guess, she has to be extremely vigilant and treat it with caution.

Should we first find a way to deal with Dio to obtain information, or retreat temporarily and wait for Joseph and the others to meet up?

However, if she can spy on Dio's ability here, Joseph's chances of winning will also increase.

When Ke Lin was thinking about these thoughts, she heard Dio chuckle suddenly.

"Ripple. I see, you are still a Ripple messenger."

Kelin was stunned for a moment, and then her spine felt chills, and cold sweat oozed from her forehead.

She did inject ripples into the scarf for defense, but it was impossible to tell from Dio's distance and angle.

Unless...he had been by her side before she knew it.

"100 years ago, it was something that would have given me a headache. But."

Dio stood at the top of the steps from the beginning to the end, with his hands folded in front of his chest, his tone was leisurely, and he didn't make any other movements.

However, a brass candlestick suddenly appeared in front of Kelin, with sharp needles aiming at the half of her exposed neck.

"It's vulnerable to my 'world'."

There was no warning, no prelude, she didn't even have time to blink.

It was too late to block with a double or sideways, the moment she saw it, the brass lancet pierced her skin, pierced her muscles, and shattered her throat.

As the stinging pain hit, it was gradually becoming difficult to breathe, and blood foam kept choking up from the split trachea.

Colleen opened her mouth, trying to draw air into her lungs.She used the stand-in to pull the candlestick out of the wound, and used the stand-in's hands to firmly hold the ruptured trachea, trying to adjust the breathing rhythm and heal the wound with ripples.

However, the severe pain and suffocation made her weak all over, so she could only kneel and sit on the ground.

It is gradually difficult for oxygen to reach the brain, and everything in the field of vision begins to become illusory and blurred.

For a moment, she didn't even know if she was still maintaining a double.

Her mind was chaotic yet clear, and she had never felt so close to death.

She thought of her mother.She hasn't been back to the United States to see her for a long time, and she originally planned to return to New York as soon as possible after the things here are over.

She thought of Joseph.She caused him a lot of trouble during the time she was controlled by Granules, but he wasn't angry at all.As long as she thought that she almost killed Joseph with her own hands, she was so angry that she wanted to tear the culprit of all this to pieces.

From the moment she woke up, she set the goal of getting Joseph and the others home safe and sound.When she said that she wanted to make herself into a ripple bomb, although it sounded a bit exaggerated, it was not entirely a joke.

but.

But what is she doing?

When Dio was right in front of her eyes, she couldn't do anything.

why?What did he do?

When did Dio get the candlestick, and when did he sell it?

Why?She didn't see Dio's action, but he took it from elsewhere and threw the candlestick.

It is definitely not a super high speed. If you act like that, it will cause the airflow to swirl no matter what, and it will also leave afterimages.

It was as if he had a period of time known only to him, and his actions during that time were known only to him.

It was as if he had time she couldn't see, time outside of the time she could perceive.

Kelin couldn't hold on any longer, her body tilted, and she fell to the ground sideways.

Gradually slackening her consciousness, she vaguely heard footsteps approaching her unhurriedly.

Is it Dio?He came to give her the final blow?

In that case, how could she leave the thoughts she just thought to Joseph and the others while she was barely awake?

Kelin reached into her pocket with trembling hands, and groped for the pocket watch she was carrying with her fingertips.

His fingertips touched something else at the same time.

That thing was sharp and hard, the stone arrowhead she got from Granny Enya.At the beginning, she felt that the arrow was not simple, so she kept it on her body, and planned to take it to the research institute under the SPW consortium for research.

She was stabbed in the palm by it and gained the ability to stand in.The arrow pierced her palm at the time, but then...

The sound of approaching footsteps got closer again, and Colin grabbed the two things with her last strength, held them tightly in her hand, and used the arrow to draw marks on the pocket watch case.

The approaching footsteps stopped and turned.

Someone was calling her name in the distance, as far away as a whole world away.

Whether it was Joseph or Kakyoin, she could no longer tell.

The only thing she could guess was that it wasn't Jotaro's voice.

He is a person who clearly cares about people in his heart, but he is unwilling to express it in an obvious way.

Speaking of which, although she knew the name Jotaro a long time ago, Kelin didn't have a deep impression of him, and she never had any communication with him.It wasn't until the beginning of this journey that Kelin really knew Jotaro Kujo.

She had a bad impression of him at first.Because when he saw her, he always had a cold face, was fierce to her, and always thought she was noisy and troublesome.

However, thinking about it, Jotaro's impression of her was not much better.After all, her behavior at that time was enough to make him say "I don't want to hear her voice again".

She didn't know when it started, but she gradually noticed his coldness on the outside and hotness on the inside, and found the gentleness and care hidden under his cold appearance.The more she found out, the more she couldn't take her eyes off him.

When she finally realized, it was the thought of him that made her heart full of tenderness.

Kelin raised the corners of her mouth slightly, revealing a smile that didn't look like a smile.

Unfortunately... whoever called her, she probably couldn't answer them anymore.

She can no longer let that person know what she is thinking now.

*******

Joseph, Jotaro and Kakyoin were walking in a dark underground passage.

They had just dealt with the "God of Atum" Terrence Darby and left from his illusion room.

As soon as the three of them entered the gate, they were trapped and dragged into the basement, where they got separated from Colleen, Polnareff, and Abdel, and they didn't even have time to see the structure of the big house.

Pass through a passage about 20 meters long. There are no windows on both sides of the passage, and it is only illuminated by a few yellowed electric lights.

At the end is an empty hall with some sundries on the corners, which looks like the center of this underground floor, surrounded by many doors leading to other places.

Joseph signaled Jotaro and the others to stop.

There are strange traces in the hall, and there are some semi-cylindrical pits on the ground and pillars that seem to be dug out by something.

"This is..." Joseph pondered, "Is it the stand-in messenger we met on the street?"

"Indeed, the marks on the floor are very similar to the marks left on Darby's body at that time."

Kakyoin squatted down, touched the round cut with his hand, his eyes stretched forward, and then he was startled.

"Mr. Joestar, Jotaro, look there." Kakyoin got up, walked forward quickly, and stopped in front of a pool of blood.

"Kakyoin, be careful, the enemy may still be here." Joseph reminded him, while keeping up with Jotaro.

The blood on the ground was still wet, with a small amount in the form of sprayed dots, but what was more obvious was a large puddle of blood with complete shape, more like someone fell down from an injury and flowed out.Judging from the amount of bleeding, the situation of the injured may not be optimistic.

"...And this." Kakyoin picked up a piece of dark blue cloth stained with blood from beside the bloodstain, his face turned pale, "This is...the clothes Abdel is wearing today."

"Could it be... no, it's impossible." Joseph shook his head, he looked around, but there were no other people within sight, "We have to find them quickly."

"There." Jotaro, who had not made a sound, just observed silently, said, pointing to the upward stairs at the other end of the hall, where the traces of destruction stretched all the way, "They went up."

"That's right!" Joseph suddenly remembered the portable walkie-talkie that Kelin had given him this morning, hurriedly turned it out from his trouser pocket, and tuned out Kelin's channel.

The walkie-talkie sizzled for a while, and they connected in their eagerness to see through.When the other party picked it up, Joseph immediately asked loudly, "Colin! Where are you now?"

It took two or three seconds for the other party to answer him: "Mr. Joestar? Is that Mr. Joestar? I'm Polnareff."

"Polnareff? Where are the others? With you?"

The signal came and went, as if Polnareff was far away from them: "We took down a tricky foe, but Abdel was badly wounded, and Izzy was also wounded. I'm...sorry, Mr. Joestar , I have left that big house now. But! After I send Abdel and the others to the SPW consortium, I will go back immediately!"

"You don't need to apologize, Polnareff, you did the right thing." Joseph said, but he immediately realized that a certain name hadn't been mentioned, "Where's Corinne?"

"She said she was going to meet you, but you haven't met her yet?" Polnareff's voice tightened.

"..."

Joseph squeezed the walkie-talkie tightly, his heart beating violently for some reason.

But he still said: "Polnareff, Abdel and the others will entrust you, and leave this to us."

After finishing speaking, Joseph turned off the walkie-talkie, and he looked back at Jotaro and Kakyoin, suppressing the uneasiness in his heart.

"Let's go."

When Joseph and his party climbed to the first floor, they immediately smelled the pungent smell of thick smoke.

Smoke visible to the naked eye floated in the hall. The source was a burning side hall, and the fire was accompanied by black-gray smoke overflowing from the door.However, because the main building material of the big house is marble, the fire did not spread.

That was probably the trace left by Abdel and the others from their battle.

There was a soft "boom", and at the other end of the hall, at a certain position blocked by a spiral staircase, there was the sound of something falling to the ground.It was particularly abrupt in the empty hall where there was only the sound of crackling and burning.

Joseph and Jotaro looked at each other for a moment, Jotaro nodded.The three of them walked cautiously in that direction.

The open door of the big house cast a whole area of ​​sunlight, and when they stepped into this area of ​​sunlight, the scene on the other side of the stairs was also in their eyes.

Kelin faced them, and fell down at the bottom of the stairs.

Her double, Skittles, knelt beside her, outstretched hands, palms sunk in her neck, as if clutching the contents.

However, when they looked over, they found several obvious cracks on her body double, and soon countless tiny cracks extended from the cracks.In the end, like a glass statue that was cracked due to thermal expansion and cold contraction, it suddenly turned into powder in the air, and suddenly disappeared.

"Colin!"

Joseph immediately called her name loudly, but Colleen did not respond to Joseph's voice.

Jotaro stared at the position where Kelin fell, his fists were too hard and his veins burst out without realizing it.

"Miss Colleen...?"

Kakyoin was also a little dazed.He may have had the courage to face Dio, but he was not ready to face the death of his companion.

Until Kakyoin glimpsed another figure out of the corner of his eye.His whole body was shocked, and he came back to his senses.

"Someone's on the stairs!"

"—Dio!"

Jotaro finally looked back, he clenched his teeth with the force of gnashing his teeth, and growled the name.

He took a big step in that direction, but was stopped by Joseph.

"Wait, Jotaro!"

Joseph grabbed Jotaro's shoulders, shook his head with red eyes, and glanced at the wall next to him.

Jotaro stopped and followed Joseph's gaze towards the wall.

He gritted his teeth fiercely, the Platinum Star emerged, and moved to the wall in an instant, "Ola-Ola--" he swung his fists continuously at the speed of light, hitting all the parts of the wall except the supporting pillars. broken.

The sunlight moved forward synchronously with Jotaro's forward steps, reflected the flying gravel dust, and landed on the marble floor of the big house in the shape of a beam of light, paving a safe path for them.

Dio on the stairs snorted and disappeared the next moment.

It's just that they don't care about chasing Dio at this moment.

Jotaro came to Kelin's side first.

What started out as a trot turned into a run.

When he arrived, Colin fell sideways on the ground, her eyes closed tightly, and her dark brown curly hair fell down to cover half of her pale face.

The floor in front of her was spattered with blood, and a blood-stained brass candlestick tumbled nearby.Although there were not many bloodstains sprinkled on the ground, they were shocking enough.

The only wound on her body seemed to be on her neck. The black top and red scarf covered up a lot of blood for her, and she didn't look hideous.But her chest obviously has no visible ups and downs.

"...Damn it! I shouldn't have agreed to let her follow me!"

Joseph arrived later, his voice mixed with uncontrollable sobs.

Jotaro stood in front of them without saying a word, kneeling beside Kelin.He reached out to the scarf around Corinne's neck.

Before he touched it, his hand stopped in mid-air, and after curling and stretching his fingers several times, he was ready, pinched the blood-soaked scarf with his fingers, and tore it apart.

But he didn't see the expected bloody wound.

Jotaro was taken aback, and then carefully took off her scarf.He wiped the blood from Colleen's neck with his hand, but couldn't find the wound, but touched something buried under the skin.

Then he gently laid Kelin's body flat, bent down, and listened to her heartbeat.

Very faint, but there it is.

"She's not dead, old man." Jotaro turned his head and said to the tearful Joseph, emphasizing the most important sentence, "She's still alive."

"..." Joseph stared at him.

"For some reason, she has no wounds." Jotaro said with a relieved expression that he didn't realize, "There is something in her neck."

He traced the outline of that thing with his fingertips, triangular, hard and not too thick, like——

"……arrow?"

Joseph took a deep breath, and he finally relaxed his shoulders.

"She also has something in her hand." Joseph squatted down, and took out a round object from Colleen's right hand, "... She probably wanted to leave some kind of message for us."

He put that thing in front of Jotaro and Kakyoin.

It was a metal pocket watch that had been deliberately carved with multiple scratches.