Sky High

"It must be one of those 'rods'...! It's only been seen in video footage, and a live or dead specimen has never been found... It's because they melt immediately after they die... Is his ability to control these 'rods'?"

- Emporio Alnino

Sky High (スカイ・ハイ) is the Stand of Rikiel, featured in Stone Ocean. Attached to the wrist of Rikiel, it allows him to control a colony of "rods", cryptids that can fly and suck the body heat of people.

Appearance
Though never actually seen in the storyline, its Stand page suggests Sky High takes the form of a small beetle-like creature with four amphibian legs attached to its user's right wrist.

Sky High is green in the colored manga.

Abilities
Sky High functions as a tool which allows Rikiel to control the mysterious cryptids known as Rozzu. Despite their size, they are incredibly powerful and lethal, as Rikiel can create localized illnesses from afar with the evasive rods.

The power of Sky High is linked with Rikiel's shifting confidence, and while it is inoffensive and even harmful to its user at worst, a confident Rikiel can masterfully use Sky High to almost kill two Stand users of Jolyne and Ermes' caliber.

Rods
Also called sky fish, rods are obscured, transparent, parasitic insect-like creatures that in remote locations, thus their very existence could never be fully proven.

Physiology
According to Emporio's findings, rods do have genders, though experts would be able to discern the differences between the males and females. Male rods procreate with the females via an organ similar to a tentacle, like snails. The females lay their eggs in midair. They have a cavity, presumably their mouth, located in their center, where they absorb other organisms' nutrients. Rods normally have a total of eight wings, four on each side. They also have a nose located on one of their sides, and they are able to detect smell easily. Like cacti, the rods absorb water through the pores of their skin.

Emporio believes these creatures to be the ancestors of a species that dates back to probably the Jurassic period, known as Anomalocaris. The species was believed to have targeted other aquatic dinosaurs during their time.

Rods always float in the air and move at speeds untraceable to the naked eye, and have only been seen on cameras and video recordings. Whenever they're flying, their wings rotate similar to propellers, and the direction in which they are flying depends on which direction their wings are rotating. Moreover, they are especially nimble and can slip through the tiniest opening or evade Stone Free's punches. Through Sky High, Rikiel discovered the rods' main source of sustenance: body heat. By flying past other organisms, the rods can absorb the body heat as food and use it to fuel themselves. The rods can also find heat to absorb via heat-seeking organs located near their nose.

Rods usually live and travel in swarms. When they die, their body immediately decays, making any discovery of a rod corpse impossible.

Before he could control them, the rods were causing numerous diseases on Rikiel because of their heat-sucking.

Rod Manipulation
Sky High's only power is to control and direct the rods. However, the exact mechanism of that control is not disclosed and is theorized as a trust relationship.

Rikiel exploits the rod's habit of sucking heat to rapidly and locally decrease the temperature of a selected body part from afar. When concentrated in one spot, the rapid decrease in heat can cause body parts and internal organs to become prone to disease and failure. The closer Rikiel is, the more accurately he can direct the rods, but he has enough control and range to target the eyelids of a flying helicopter's occupants. Rikiel needs to concentrate to properly control the rods, and their effects can even backfire on him if he loses his cool. If he panics, Sky High unwillingly orders all nearby rods to stay still.

This ability to create diseases enables him to cripple his enemies in various ways but also enhance his own abilities.
 * Rikiel can force eyelids to shut, blinding enemies.
 * By stealing heat from the muscles, Rikiel can shut them down or even make them rot, which he uses with enough precision to effectively control a target's hand gestures or even speech.
 * He can twist ankles by making rods fly past them.
 * By targeting the hypothalamus near the upper jaw, Rikiel can slow down the visual perception of the targets, making them see things with a few seconds delay.
 * If the rods concentrate on the brain stem which controls all sensory and motor functions like heartbeat, the victim is guaranteed to die.
 * Rods can also be used to numb Rikiel's neck nerves to prevent himself from feeling shock or pain and continue to fight beyond his body's normal capabilities.

Gallery
Covers=

Trivia

 * The Stand is based on the concept of, little unidentified flying objects that were eventually discovered to be an optical illusion/collusion captured on camera during free fall, typically caused by traces of a flying insect's wingbeats.