"Let's go, Doppio"
"Ye... yes, Boss"
Their new situation still felt strange and somewhat uncomfortable to both of them, but Doppio and Diavolo followed towards the revealed hallway, without saying a word about it.
"How could this happen? I should be the one in complete control of King Crimson!" Diavolo thought, visibly irritated by the separation of his stand and Doppio's.
"Are you okay, Boss?"
He looked at Doppio and the anger on his face turned to seriousness.
"Yes, Doppio. I'm fine."
Diavolo sighted in a mix of relief and disappointment.
"At least Doppio is still loyal to me. Not like we have another choice. I just wish that... his... Epitaph was stronger, but by the looks of it..."
They followed through the long marble hallway until they saw a staircase. It was large and beautifully decorated, made with the same beige marble of the rest of the hallway, with a luxurious yellow and blue carpet tightly covering the better part of each step.
But what had caught their eye was not the staircase, nor the details that would have made it so breathtaking to anyone in the normal world.
"Boss, there is someone there, on the stairs!"
Diavolo looked closely. There was, in fact, a person there, although he couldn't make out any details about their appearance from that distance. They started to go faster towards the mysterious figure. As they approached the end of the hallway, the person began to walk up the stairs.
The two men reached the base of the staircase, and looked up, now able to see more details about that staircase: wherever it was, they could only see a dark and unending hole all around it, as if it was a bridge. Multiple pillars stood across the sides of the stairs, and about in the middle of the way, stood that person, right beside a pillar. They wore a yellow straight jacket with free arms and a pair of blue pants with a red helix pattern on the sides. They had messy orange hair and didn't distinctly look male or female.
"Who are you?" Diavolo asked in an impatient tone.
The person in yellow looked at both of them for a moment, before disappearing behind the pillar. As Diavolo ran up the stairs and got to the pillar, they were not there.
"You can call me..."
He quickly turned back, towards the origin of the mysterious voice, and spotted them, right beside a door, on a staircase that wasn't there before.
"...Drie."
The voice was distinguishably female, and the person looked at Diavolo and Doppio with an expressionless stare. The person reached for the handle on the door right beside them and concluded their introduction
"I am your first trial."
As they disappeared inside the doorway, Doppio caught Diavolo's attention
"Boss... something strange is happening, these weren't here before!" he stated as he pointed to the multiple staircases that had suddenly filled the previously empty dark room.
"What is going on? It's like these stairs..."
Diavolo looked around the room, before completing his sentence, noticing the many staircases in many different angles, almost none seemed to follow the rules of gravity.
"...lead to nowhere. How bizarre, it's like one of those Escher paintings..."
They noticed the person in yellow in the top on a platform that seemed like the exit, on a high corner of the large room.
"You are incorrect, Diavolo, they do lead to somewhere. They just don't follow a more... conventional direction. This is my Three of a Perfect Pair, and your trial has now..."
As Drie was about to conclude the sentence, their facial expression seemed to completely change into one filled with fear and insecurity, and with a clearly male-sounding cowardly voice, they concluded:
"...officially begun..."
Doppio and Diavolo started to run up the stairs, examining the room filled with paths in strange angles and orientations. They were both confused by the sudden change to the person in yellow's personality.
"Doppio, use your Epitaph, what is going to happen now?"
"I don't know Boss... all I can see is us running along the stairs, but they seem to go in all directions!"
Diavolo was visibly annoyed by his answer. "Had Epitaph stayed with me as it should have, this wouldn't have happened!" He thought "Foolish Doppio, there has to be something!"
They continued their path through the impossible labyrinth until the strange logic it worked on eventually led to their separation. The whole place seemed to be changing every step they took, almost as to interrupt their every step.
"I have to reach Doppio before he does something stupid!" He thought, while visually tracking Doppio in a somewhat distant staircase, whose gravity was horizontally inverted in his point of view.
As he thought those words, however, he noticed someone walking up the stairs that led to the same platform Doppio was going towards. Someone other than him and Doppio, someone other than Drie, a fourth entity in the maze. The strange being looked like a light blue mannequin with yellow joints, and walked calmly up the stairs, which would eventually lead him to Doppio.
Desperate to stop that thing from running into Doppio, Diavolo shouted:
"DON'T GO ANY FURTHER, DOPPIO!"
Immediately, the thing's face turned towards Diavolo. At that moment, the maze stopped changing, and Drie spoke, back with the calm monotone female voice:
"You found him, Model Man, now... get him."
Model Man, the mannequin looking sub-stand of Three of a Perfect Pair, started to run down the same path it came from, and even though the maze's pattern made it's route unclear, Diavolo knew that it was running towards him. Upon realizing that, he started to run as well, desperate to either find Drie and the trial or run into that thing and render it useless with his King Crimson.
The latter seemed to be the most likely, however: as Diavolo ran through the endless stairs, even though they had stopped changing their patterns, they proved to be too confusing for Diavolo, who always seemed to be straying further and further from any kind of exit to the point that Model Man quickly caught up to the staircase he was on.
"Then I guess I'll have to take you down first."
The mannequin was unphased by his comments, speeding towards Diavolo, head-on. As it was about to encounter Diavolo, the thing started to violently and chaotically wail its arms.
"King Crimson!"
Time and space appeared to be broken, and fate coordinated the course of all other entities, as King Crimson's ability was activated.
"A weak stand like yours stands no chance against King Crimson."
He moved away from the mannequin's path, preparing himself to strike when the erased time was over.
"And when I'm done with you, it's only a matter of time until..."
As he said those words, the mannequin quickly started to jump around the staircase, hitting Diavolo on the arm with one of it's flailing hands.
"I have to admit this was unexpected, but while King Crimson is active, I am immune to anything. Your attack was weak, but would regardless be useless against me."
The time erasure was soon over, and as King Crimson prepared to strike...
BLACK
"Wha... WHAT?"
All Diavolo could see was black. His vision was gone, and he was unable to complete his attack. He fell to his knees, desperate, touching around to try to find where he was.
All this time, Doppio was watching from afar, following his Boss's actions. He immediately noticed his strange behavior once Diavolo fell to his knees.
"Boss, what's happening?!"
In that exact moment, he noticed 2 things: the maze had started to move again, changing more frequently and disorderly; and also, the mannequin sub-stand, Model Man, had changed its appearance. It had still the same color scheme, but now, for some reason, it now roughly resembled Diavolo...
...and it was covering its eyes with its left hand.
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Stand User: Drie Gekijk
Stand Name: 「Three of a Perfect Pair」
0 out of 6 trials completed
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