I'm Just a Cat! (P.S. My Stand is a Menace)

Chapter 177: Chapter 12: Scratch Another One Off the List

Cairo. A hotel near the airport.

"Aah!"

A woman’s shriek made every man in the hotel who’d been about to rest twitch involuntarily.

"What’s all the screaming about? Making a fuss over nothing." Joseph looked down at the employee who’d collapsed to the floor.

"C-cat... cat ears!" The staff member pointed at Yimi, sputtering in fluent English.

"Mm!"

Yimi, equally startled by the scream, grabbed Joseph’s coat.

"What’s the big deal? Don’t you people have a whole thing about respecting cats?" Joseph rubbed Yimi’s head. "There, there. Nothing to worry about."

After ten-odd hours on a plane, with DIO’s proximity ratcheting everyone’s anxiety up to the level of a mediocre student facing college entrance exams, they still weren’t machines. They needed proper rest to keep their edge.

Egypt’s climate was considerably hotter than Japan’s. Although nighttime temperatures dropped noticeably, daytime hovered around thirty degrees Celsius (~86°F)—enough to make them forget it was November.

In weather like this, everyone’s first priority upon reaching the hotel—aside from Polnareff, who made a beeline for the restroom—was a shower. Then the girl who didn’t look a day over ten suddenly turned shy.

There wasn’t much the men could do. Joseph spent a little money to call over a female staff member to help her out.

And then Yimi took off her hat and the woman started screaming... though you couldn’t blame her, really. After a week of living together, even Joseph had started to forget the girl’s distinctly non-human features.

Joseph waved her off. "That’ll be all. Go about your business."

He’d clearly caught a glint of what could only be called reverence directed at Yimi in the departing employee’s eyes.

"Joestar-san, did you forget we’re Stand users? We can have our Stands help scrub the spots we can’t reach."

Polnareff emerged from the restroom looking satisfied, summoning Silver Chariot to mime a back-scrubbing motion. "For people like us, there’s no such thing as a hard-to-wash spot."

"Ah..." Joseph—the only one present without a humanoid Stand—let out an awkward laugh.

Polnareff crouched down and made a claw gesture at Yimi. "Go wash up properly, okay? If you don’t get clean, the mummies will come out and eat you."

"Raawr!" He let out a goofy monster roar for emphasis.

"Mummies?" A word Yimi had never heard before.

"A very scary kind of monster. Hmm... there should be illustrated books about them sold around here. Once I’ve dealt with my enemy, I’ll buy you one."

Like Kakyoin, Polnareff had been under DIO’s Flesh Bud control, so DIO hadn’t exactly been chatty with him. Joseph’s earlier questioning had come up empty.

No matter how you looked at it, she was just an ordinary little girl with cat ears. And they were really going to bring a child like this into the final battle against DIO?

Kakyoin pulled Polnareff aside. "Don’t scare her. In plenty of stories, mummies are actually afraid of cats."

Polnareff rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Vampires and mummies—all terrifying things, really. Maybe DIO is actually weak to cats too? Kidding, kidding. Vampires are seriously scary, you know."

"I’m not scared of Vampires." Yimi raised a paw.

She’d fought one in the last world.

"Oh, that’s some fighting spirit! Well then, take that spirit and go wash up like a good girl. Hygiene is extra important for girls." Joseph nudged the back of Yimi’s head, steering her into the bathroom.

"Don’t wanna take a bath." Yimi pouted unhappily.

"Too bad. Turn left for hot water, right for cold. I’ve already lowered the showerhead for you... and here—this is a toy for the bath. Don’t put it in your mouth." Joseph placed a yellow rubber duck he’d picked up at the airport into Yimi’s hand.

"Mm..."

Almost the instant Yimi closed the bathroom door, the room door swung open again. Jotaro handed Joseph a package.

"Your stuff, old man."

Behind him came the sounds of growling and gnawing.

"Oh, thanks. No trouble getting it, I hope?" Joseph unwrapped the package, revealing a Japanese-made camera.

"Other brands would work, but Japanese ones just feel better to smash. Right then—let’s wait for Yimi-chan to finish her bath, take a group photo, and then put this thing to use."

"Joestar-san, I know it’s a bit late to bring this up here, but are you really going to let that child participate in something like this?" Polnareff asked seriously.

"Leaving her alone in Japan would be even more dangerous, wouldn’t it? Just like you and me—sent with orders to make her the primary target." Kakyoin patted his shoulder. "Besides..."

Besides, he genuinely hadn’t beaten her.

Polnareff had the excuse of being sucker-punched. But Kakyoin had simply lost, plain and simple.

Polnareff gently removed Kakyoin’s hand from his shoulder. "I’d rather not count a child among our combat strength."

Joseph nodded. "I feel more or less the same, which is why I had the Speedwagon Foundation bring this fellow along to help."

Hearing the growling and gnawing behind Jotaro, Avdol’s eye twitched. "Joestar-san, don’t tell me it’s—"

"That’s right. It’s him—Iggy!"

As if responding to Joseph’s introduction, the small Boston Terrier Jotaro had brought along spat out a flavorless wad of gum, barked a few times, and fixed its gaze squarely on Polnareff.

Because its hobby was gnawing on people’s hair, and the person with the most outrageous hairstyle here was Polnareff.

"Allow me to introduce him. A cat Avdol and I caught in Manhattan not too long ago. I know he looks like a dog, but he’s actually a cat..."

The moment those words left Joseph’s mouth, Iggy’s charge toward Polnareff screeched to a halt, and the dog redirected its hostile glare at Joseph.

"Hey, don’t eat that! He’s gnawing on my prosthetic—somebody stop him!"

"Yare yare."

It was loud outside.

Inside the bathroom, Yimi hadn’t undressed. She was staring at the water flowing steadily from the showerhead.

She hadn’t even turned it on. The water was seeping out on its own. Rather than draining through the floor grate, it pooled into a mass on the tiles—then suddenly formed a claw-shaped appendage and lunged at her.

"Mrow!"

Yimi met it head-on, redirecting the damage outward, then opened her little mouth and bit down on the watery hand, swallowing it whole.

Some distance away, a blind man leaning on a cane let a smirk curl his lips. "She voluntarily swallowed my Stand into her body? Shall I call it the pure, simple-minded foolishness of children?"

Since DIO-sama had ordered her taken alive, he tried to have his Stand—normally capable of piercing straight through a human body—force its way out through Yimi’s mouth and nose. But the portion of his Stand that had been swallowed had vanished like a stone dropped into the sea, never reconnecting with him.

"What?"

What on earth was that thing?