"Miyu, are you feeling any better?"
"Yeah..."
Homura sat beside the sofa, watching as Miyu slowly blinked back to full consciousness. The younger girl responded with a slightly groggy, muddled voice.
"Do you feel like anything has changed? Within yourself?"
Homura pursued the question, handing her a glass of water as she did so.
If Miyu really had developed a [Stand] unique to this world, the nature of that power would be critical. It might be the very thing they needed to overturn their currently desperate situation.
"Hold on... it's like there's something..."
Miyu took the water, her eyes fixed on the rippling surface as she felt a faint, tenuous thread of connection to something new. Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
Though the sensation was still weak and undeveloped, it felt as though some "child" was beginning to draw upon her magical and spiritual reserves to grow.
This was likely the phenomenon known as a [Stand].
"I don't think I can use it yet. But in a little while, I should be able to get a glimpse of what it can do."
After finishing the water, Miyu felt the last of the fog lifted from her mind. For some reason, a sudden wave of peace washed over her.
It was a strange, familiar feeling.
"I see. Then you should stay here and get some more rest. I need to head out for a while."
"Be careful, Archer."
"Don't worry. As long as you're still drawing breath, I am practically immortal."
"Remember to take an umbrella. I think it's going to rain this morning."
"I will."
"Man... seriously? We get woken up at the crack of dawn and we still can't just go and kick that bastard Kira's teeth in?"
Walking to school with Koichi and Okuyasu, Josuke was in a foul mood, his voice thick with the irritability of someone who hadn't had nearly enough sleep.
"There isn't much we can do, is there?"
"Until we know what we're up against, charging in blindly is just a quick way to get ourselves killed," Koichi replied, looking at his friend with sympathy.
He understood the frustration. They finally had a solid lead on the serial killer, yet they were being forced to sit on their hands.
"I'm telling you, what's there to worry about? I'll just use [The Hand] to scrape his Servant out of existence and that'll be that!" Okuyasu remarked with a careless shrug.
His Stand, [The Hand], could erase anything from existence--even space itself.
In his mind, it didn't matter how strong a Servant was. If he managed to land a single swipe, no amount of defense would save them.
"Wait... Okuyasu actually has a point. I just thought of a great idea."
"Huh?"
"If we can track Kira's daily routine--where he goes for work and which route he takes--we can find a spot to take him out from a distance."
"With Caster and Assassin working together, we could pretty much do whatever we want, couldn't we?"
Josuke slapped his hands together as the excitement built in his voice.
"We stop time, then use Okuyasu's ability to pull Kira directly into hitting range. We finish him before the world even starts moving again."
"It... it actually might work," Koichi admitted after a brief moment of serious thought. He nodded to himself.
'Kira's Servant might have the ability to rewind time, but they might not have a counter for a pure time-stop.'
'Why was Rohan-sensei so sure of that?'
'Because if they could move in stopped time, Rohan would have died during his first investigation, long before he gathered any information on Kira.'
'Right. If they could stop us during a pause, they would have ended the threat before we even knew they existed.'
"But how are we supposed to find out his exact commute and schedule?"
"If we get caught snooping, he'll just go back into hiding."
"Yeah, that shouldn't be an issue. Caster, I'm counting on you. You've seen the photograph, right?"
'Do not use my name so casually.'
"Oh, right. Sorry. Caster."
Josuke scratched the back of his head, feeling a bit helpless.
While his Servant was cooperative in her own way, she was beyond "unsociable."
She seemed to despise being called by her name and would repeatedly correct him whenever he slipped up.
Furthermore, her talent for domestic tasks and organization was legendary, leaving Josuke to wonder where exactly she had worked before being summoned.
杜王町 certainly didn't have any maid services that were this elite.
"Anyway, let's just try to focus on getting to school for now. We're all practically late as it is."
Just as they were starting to feel better about their prospects, a figure they had never seen before suddenly blocked their path.
"Well, now this is a masterpiece. I didn't think a Master would be stupid enough to go for a stroll through the street so openly."
Josuke, Koichi, and Okuyasu stared at the lean, slightly sickly looking man standing before them. He looked like a delinquent who had seen too many long nights.
"It's a Servant!"
Josuke reacted instantly.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
Sakuya manifested beside him and lunged forward, throwing several knives in a single fluid motion.
Accelerate!
She applied her temporal acceleration to the projectiles. What should have taken several seconds to reach the target became an instantaneous blur, intended to pierce the man before he could even blink.
Or at least, that was the intention.
"!"
SPLURT!
To everyone's absolute horror, the knives didn't hit their mark. Instead, they appeared to strike an invisible wall and instantly reversed their direction, flying back with terrifying speed. One of the blades grazed Josuke's cheek, leaving a thin line of crimson blood.
"What?"
"This is how you fight?"
"It's almost pathetic how weak you are."
Accelerator tilted his head back and let out a vicious, mocking laugh.
Throwing knives?
While the speed of the attack had been impressive, it hadn't even come close to penetrating his [Reflection].
"What the hell happened? Why did the knives fly back at us?"
Okuyasu stared at the wound on Josuke's face, his finger trembling as he pointed at the white-haired stranger.
'What was that?'
'Why did Sakuya's own attack hurt Josuke?'
Koichi immediately summoned [Echoes], his mind racing to analyze the situation.
One second, the knives were flying toward the enemy. The next, they were whistling past Josuke's head. There hadn't been any visible movement from the man at all.
Drip...
In that same moment, the heavy clouds finally broke, and a cold rain began to pour down upon the city.
The few pedestrians on the street scrambled for cover, leaving the two groups standing in a tense standoff in the middle of the road.
"Look at that guy!"
Koichi was the first to notice the anomaly.
He pointed a shaking hand at the enemy and let out a shout of disbelief.
"What?!"
"How is that possible?!"
"?"
Josuke, Okuyasu, and Sakuya realized that while they were all being drenched by the downpour, Accelerator remained perfectly dry.
The rain was literally avoiding him, sliding off an invisible barrier inches from his skin.
"What is this guy?!"
"Why isn't the rain touching him?!"
Josuke shouted the question, his mind already spinning with theories about the enemy's power.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
Sakuya threw two more knives, her eyes narrowed as she observed the trajectory.
"A Caster, is it?"
"Fine. It doesn't really matter which class you've been stuffed into."
The maid clearly possessed some form of supernatural ability, but to Accelerator, it was a triviality.
As long as she was relying on physical projectiles, she would never be able to touch him.
SHING! SHING!
This time, Sakuya didn't use the temporal acceleration. Everyone could see the knives clearly.
The blades flew straight and true, but the moment they got within a few meters of Accelerator, they suddenly flipped around and shot back toward the thrower.
Sakuya caught the returning knives between her fingers, her brow furrowing into a deep crease.
The knives, much like the rain, were being denied entry to the space around the man.
What kind of power was this?
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]