>>6102283>>6102360>>6102687Your new Stand's impressions of the world are hard to gauge past a general curiosity; its identification in your head shifts from egg to seed to amoeba to something impossibly curled up and inside itself. Endless ridges and dimples ripple out from its shifting center. Had you no knowledge or foresight of its awakening, you would have thought something forbidden had torn its way into reality.
Again it extends a "feeler" out, this time to one of your fingers. It curls around your left pointer finger like a vine, then prods your fingertip. The haptic sensation is akin to liquid velcro biting down on you; then, it reflects from under your skin. With a jolt, miniature copies of your finger begin to grow recursively from its end, like a little carpet of coral.
"What..."
You once read on the Internet about how geckos' paws were the natural velcro of the animal kingdom - they have microscopic hair-like structures that increase grip. But geckos have that structure genetically. This is, quite obviously, unnatural. The wrongness is throwing off your nervous system. Even compared to other abnormalities caused by Stands, you have little in the ways of a fictional frame of reference. Partial duplication? Is this like Hermes Costello's Kiss? (Hermes isn't even born yet.) Is it like Nico Robin's limb power? (One Piece doesn't exist yet.) Is it like...
The Stand shudders. The extra fingers disappear.
"Try again." DIO folds his arms.
You, more proactively, reach out to your floating unnamed bulb-creature-spirit and let it wrap a pseudopod around your whole hand. You know what this reminds you of. This time, you recall a memory from your earlier days browsing the web...You never thought it would come back to haunt you so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR_8SDNQ0ksYour stream of thought is actualized. All three of you watch your hand split out into miniatures of itself at the fingertips, and then again, on and on until...
"I see your Stand has the ability to copy 'branching paths' out of objects. A power, should you fully realize its potential, representing 'infinite possibilities'..."
You survived. DIO and Enya look quite happy. You should be, too. Whatever your Stand is, it is cool as shit. The concept of infinity fills you with excitement that can never quite outpace dread. Maybe you're one of the infinite possibilities to take this world down a different path...but what out there could have been powerful enough to make it possible?
Questions for later. Your more immediate question:
(cont.)
