Hot Pants

Hot Pants (ホット・パンツ) is a major character featured in Steel Ball Run.

An agent of the Vatican, Hot Pants' main goal is to gather the Saint Corpse Parts; competing in the Steel Ball Run race while posing as a man. She acts as a distant ally to Gyro, Johnny, Lucy and Diego, variously.

Appearance
Hot Pants is a woman of average to above-average height and slim to medium build. It is implied that she is fairly androgynous; intentionally passing for a man until she is discovered.

Personality
Hot Pants is a dedicated agent of the Vatican. She has a strong religious investment in the security of the Saint Corpse Parts.

A former nun, she later reveals that she harbors the sense of a powerful sin, having sacrificed her younger brother to escape from a bear.

Abilities
Hot Pants' Stand is Cream Starter; a handheld aerosol spray-like device, generating flesh as well as channeling her own; enabling her to distort and extend her body, and seal wounds.

History
When she was younger, she went to collect nuts in the woods with her brother. Attacked by a grizzly bear, they hid in a rock crevice. Injured and scared, Hot Pants pushed her brother out of the crevice - saving herself at the price of his life. The people in her hometown were very kind to her and her parents after the "tragic accident", but Hot Pants became unable to bear the burden of the truth surrounding her brother's death. She left her home and joined a convent in Italy, becoming a nun in the hopes of earning forgiveness from God and her brother.

Fourth Stage
Hot Pants first appears at the beginning of the race's Fourth Stage, having finished first in the Third Stage. Soon she encounters Johnny and Gyro, accusing them of having killed a cow she had been specially grazing on the course. She ends up attacking them using Cream Starter, preventing them from attacking by covering their hands and faces with her Stand's "flesh spray." Johnny convinces her that they weren't responsible for the cow's death, and she recalls the effect of her Stand. She refuses to apologize for blaming them as they had eaten meat from the carcass, then gallops away to hunt down the real culprit. However, they meet again sooner than expected as all three become trapped in the orchard surrounding Ringo Roadagain's cabin. They witness the confrontation between him and Gaucho and end up deciding they will have to kill Ringo in order to continue. While Johnny and Ringo talk, Hot Pants attacks the latter with Cream Starter, slicing off his hand. Unfortunately, he rewinds time and reverts the damage, sidestepping the attack when it happens a second time and shooting Hot Pants' hand. He and Johnny then engage in a gunfight, which Johnny seemingly loses, and Ringo incapacitates Hot Pants by shooting her as well. After Gyro defeats Ringo, he and Johnny use Cream Starter to fill their and Hot Pants' wounds. Johnny then inadvertently discovers that the unconscious Hot Pants is a woman when he checks her chest to see if she is still breathing.

After the Race
Hot Pants drops out of the race in its sixth stage to further pursue the Corpse Parts. She meets Lucy Steel, who wants to give the corpse parts to Gyro and Johnny after their altercation with Blackmore. She gives Lucy some meat spray from Cream Starter to change her appearance in order to infiltrate Valentine's compound. She tells Lucy how to bring the corpse parts together using one of the eyes of the corpse. After Lucy is found out and ends up killing Scarlet, Hot Pants enters the compound to help her and fights off Mike O. and his Stand Tubular Bells. After spraying him with Cream Starter, she causes Mike O. to accidentally kill himself by filling himself with air. Before escaping, she switches Lucy's face with Scarlet's to make it appear that Lucy was the one who died.

Later, she is seen by Gyro and Johnny speeding towards a church. When Gyro goes inside the church, she disguises herself as a nun (Gyro does not know that she is a woman at this point). Johnny comes into the church as well, and when Gyro leaves to find Hot Pants, Johnny reveals to Hot Pants that he knows her true gender. For the first time, she breaks down into tears as she tells Johnny that her Corpse Parts were taken by someone. At that moment, her deceased brother appears on her body due to Civil War. She says that the guilt has followed her even as she collected Corpse Parts, even when she became a nun in her hometown. She tells Johnny to run as the memory of her brother's death nearly consumes her. After Axl Ro is killed, she is absolved of her sins (at least physically) and is left by Gyro & Johnny.

Death
Hot Pants, after trying to suffocate Dio, teams up with him to take the corpse from the President. The two, after catching up to the train that Valentine is riding on, fight off the many Funny Valentine clones made from D4C. After Diego's death, she boards the train car that is holding Lucy Steel. She is marveled over the collection of the Corpse Parts on Lucy's body. However, Lucy's Stand, Ticket to Ride finally takes form and the President manipulates the Stand for himself. Hot Pants is the first to fall victim to the Stand's ability when D4C has multiple insects and a window frame absorbed under Hot Pants' skin, puncturing her heart and killing her almost instantly.

Race Stats
Hot Pants drops out in the sixth stage, with a total of 215 points and one extra hour of time.

Trivia

 * She speaks in a very masculine manner (more so than Gyro and Johnny) in Japanese, which helps in convincing others that she is a man.


 * Her name, "Hot Pants," is spelled ホット・パンツ in Japanese. The パンツ part is the Japanese pronunciation for "pants," but is also the Japanese word for "panties," causing a pun which mirrors her character.


 * Throughout the story, there are certain parallels to the relationships between Jonathan Joestar, Erina Pendleton, and Dio Brando in Phantom Blood. Shortly before falling prey to Axl RO and his Stand, Civil War, Johnny falls on top of Hot Pants in a suggestive manner. When Diego Brando almost suffocates due to Hot Pants's meat spray, he locks his mouth over hers' in order to keep his supply of air in check; the sound effect is similar to the one used when Dio steals Erina's kiss.


 * Contrary to several characters in the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series, such as Jolyne and Anasui, Hot Pants looks much frailer in her later appearances than in her initial appearance.


 * The reveal of her real gender is an homage to works like Shakespeare in Love or Rose of Versailles.