It has to work this time.
All the disparate components were in place, and Go was finally going to get it right. No more distractions in the way, no more side trips, no more accidentally reviving the wrong Roidmudes into the body that was supposed to belong to Chase.
"I have your soul," Go murmured, thumb running over the familiar contours of the Ride Crosser Shift Car, the one that had let Chase temporarily use Kano as a vessel to save Go's life. Again. How many times do I owe him my life?
"What did you say?" Rinna, closer to him than Kyu, looked up.
"Nothing," Go said. They had the data, courtesy of Hypnos and Go's subconscious. They had the right Shift Car. They had rebuilt Chase's body. There was no reason for anything to go wrong this time. He tried to rub the grainy feeling out of his eyes, but it wouldn't go.
"We could pick this up tomorrow," Kyu said, in an uncanny mirror of the incident a few months previously, the one in which they'd accidentally revived Heart instead of Chase.
Go shook his head. He had very little memory of the actual process that had ended up with three Roidmudes in the body intended for Chase, none of them the one he'd wanted, except for both Rinna and Kyu telling him to slow down, to back off, to get some sleep. He didn't have time to slow down; he owed it to Chase to give him back the life he'd lost because Go had failed.
"Everything is ready," Go said, fairly sure that he was correct. "We're ready. Aren't we ready?"
"Yeah, yeah," Kyu said, and Go peered over his shoulder. Lines of code wavered in his vision, and Go blinked to make them settle down into neat little rows. After months of work, he knew them as well as he knew anything else – the data that Hypnos had pulled out of Go's own subconscious, since he'd been the one to see Chase's core explode. "Look, I don't want to keep repeating myself," Kyu said, and Go knew what he was going to say before he said it. "But how sure are we that Banno corrupting Hypnos didn't lead to something going wrong with Chase?"
"We've been over this," Go said. "We've checked the data. None of it looks out of place."
Even if Krim had declined to participate in what he called an exercise in futility and disrespect to the dead, even if the other leading expert in the creation of Roidmudes was both a comic-level supervillain and also dead, Rinna and Kyu were both brilliant. Go glanced over his shoulder at the sealed pit, which Krim had insisted was the right place for the entire Drive project – belts, Shift Cars, Roidmude data and all – and couldn't stop a shiver.
"Are you okay?" Rinna asked.
"Fine," Go said shortly. They didn't have his drive, his determination to see this project through. In calmer moments, he could appreciate how much they'd given to help him in what they thought was a futile quest. At this point, however, he couldn't stop a vague feeling of resentment that they weren't as all-in as he was, that now that they were about to finally get Chase back, they kept trying to get Go to back off and sleep. As if sleep would help him.
"Are you sure you don't want to pick this up tomorrow?" Rinna said. Her gentle tone, clearly meant to be soothing, sounded like nails on a chalkboard. "Make one final check with a clear head?"
Go rubbed his eyes, clearing out the stickiness. "What time is it?" he asked, instead of answering.
"Just after three," Kyu answered. "AM," he added, as if Go didn't know whether it was day or night in his insane pursuit of an unattainable project. Go would have been more annoyed if he'd actually known whether it was three in the morning or three in the afternoon, which he'd somehow lost track of. The Drive Pit needed windows.
"I don't think windows are the issue," Rinna said, and Go realized he'd been speaking out loud.
"That's not the point," he said. "Let's make this happen." Rinna and Kyu exchanged glances and sighed; Go could see that this was his last chance. If they didn't succeed in getting Chase back now, he was going to be on his own with any further attempts.
"Here goes nothing," Kyu said.
The body was in place, hooked into Kyu's rig while Rinna monitored it from a second station. Cooling mist poured over it from above, maintaining its temperature precisely. Go fastened the rebuilt copy of Chase's Mach Driver around its waist, the motion bringing a powerful wave of déjà vu, and clicked the Shift Car into place. Last time, they'd used a copy of the Drive Driver; Go felt that was one of the places they might have gone wrong. He intended for it to go right this time. "Okay," he said, and turned the key.
For a moment nothing happened. Go hovered, watching the Roidmude's blank face closely, as energy finally sparked from the belt. It crawled over the torso, purple flickering fitfully in the artificial fog before flaring so brightly that Go had to look away. He didn't move, not even when the light arced close enough to nearly singe his jacket, not when he had to close his eyes against the radiant outpouring and even more brilliant flash.
The light pressing against his eyelids faded, and Go stumbled forward. His outstretched hands hit the metal frame Rinna had built to support Chase's new body, the metal still vibrating slightly and sending a faint buzzing discharge up through his palms. He opened his eyes, the dark blur resolving into a purple jacket. A purple jacket covered in glitter and chains. The breath caught in Go's throat and he almost couldn't make himself look up.
The last time he'd seen this jacket, it had been on Heart's body in a ridiculous comedy of errors. Go raised his eyes slowly, up to the scarf Chase always wore, and stopped. He couldn't take another disappointment like the last one.
"Go?" The voice was familiar, deep and inexplicably monotone despite the upward lilt at the end.
Go's eyes snapped up, the outlines of a very familiar face at first refusing to register before finally becoming clear. "Chase," he breathed, and grabbed the other man in a bone-crushing hug. The years he'd spent trying to put Chase back together had finally paid off, the debt he'd owed was repaid. "Chase," he said again.
"What are you doing?" Chase asked, not reacting in the slightest to being manhandled. Go hugged him harder, reveling in Chase doing exactly what he should have been doing.
"Go, maybe step back and let him breathe," Rinna said, disentangling Go and gently pulling him away.
"He's a Roidmude, he doesn't need to breathe," Go said. His face hurt, and he realized it was because he was smiling widely enough to nearly split his cheeks in two.
"I – I can't believe we did it." Kyu shoved his glasses back into place, moving hesitantly toward the revived Roidmude. "Chase, how do you feel?"
Chase cocked his head to the side in a gesture Go had once hated. He drank it in now, barely blinking. "I feel normal," he said, and seemed to notice the framework that had supported his body for the first time. "I remember dying," he added, and stepped down.
Go could see Kyu and Rinna exchanging glances out of the corner of his eye. "Everything should be fine, now," Rinna said. "There are some tests we should run, just to make sure."
"I can run them," Go said. "You guys go get some rest. We'll see you in the morning." A brief scuffle caught his attention and he looked over to see Rinna's hand firmly over Kyu's mouth. She snatched it away when she saw him looking, and smiled.
"You know which tests to run," she said, almost but not quite asking a question.
"I know," Go said. There was very little he didn't know, at this point, about Roidmude construction and programming. "Thank you," he remembered to say, because there was no way Chase would be standing in front of him, alive, without help from the other two people in the room.
"We'll see you in the morning," Kyu said, inexplicably sounding resigned, and Rinna pulled him out of the door.
Go returned his attention to Chase, only to find his friend watching the byplay with an air of curiosity. Not that anyone who didn't know Chase as well as Go had would have been able to read the expression on his stoic face, but Go could tell.
"You have a lot to tell me," Chase said. He pulled the belt off his waist, and nothing happened. He'd successfully passed the first test. Go took the belt out of his hand and put it down on the nearest flat surface.
"You died," he said, and then his throat closed off and he couldn't say anything else. Chase simply watched him for a long moment.
"I chose how I died," he said finally, breaking the silence, and Go drew in a ragged breath.
"It sucked," he said. "I didn't want you to die."
"But you don't like me," Chase said. "You told me I wasn't human."
Hearing his own words back stung; he'd been regretting them for months, for years, and hearing them again was no less than he deserved. "I was wrong," Go said.
"But I'm not human," Chase said, and Go looked at him, startled. A tiny smile was playing across Chase's lips. "Technically, you were correct."
"You – you – that's not funny," Go said, because if Chase was teasing him, then he truly had his friend back. Understand the finer points of human behavior Chase did not, but he had learned how to push emotional buttons by the end.
"What isn't funny?" Chase asked, and Go gave up.
"I need to run some tests on you," he said, but the tests were a formality. He could already tell.
"Then you'll tell me what you did?" Chase asked, and seemed satisfied at Go's nod. He submitted to the tests Go ran for the sake of running; his code checked out against what Go had put together with the information from the artificial intelligence Hypnos and his former mentor Professor Harley, and his physical reflexes matched his pre-death statistics. Throughout the process, Chase patiently followed instructions and volunteered no information unless asked.
The Drive Pit was cold when Go finished, the heating having long since cycled down for the night and the accumulated warmth of the day having dissipated. He pulled his jacket more tightly around himself and shut off the computer at Kyu's workstation. "I think that's it," he said. "You pass with flying colors."
"With flying colors," Chase repeated, with the air of someone memorizing something. "Go," he said, abruptly. "I have a memory I can't explain."
"What?" Go straightened, all traces of weariness fading. The tests Rinna and Kyu had developed should have been thorough enough to detect any inconsistencies, and Go had found none.
"A – a fight," Chase said. "With a ghost, and a new Kamen Rider I hadn't seen before."
Go relaxed. "You're just remembering something that happened a couple of years ago," he said. "There was time travel. History changed. And then it went back."
"Years?" Chase said, sounding almost sharp.
"It's been – you died almost two and a half years ago." Go scrubbed at his eyes, trying to get the excess moisture out of them. "It's January. January of 2018."
"January," Chase repeated. "I did not mean for you to use up your life."
"Use up my life?" Go retorted, stung. "I didn't ask you to die for me!"
"You are my friend." Chase regarded him steadily, and Go unaccountably blushed. He was beginning to remember why he'd found Chase so irritating, no matter how glad he was to have him back.
"Friends don't make friends watch them die," Go muttered, not that it got a reaction out of Chase. "Friends also say things like Thank you for resurrecting me."
"I was not aware this was such a common situation."
"Now you're just messing with me," Go said, and was rewarded with a tiny smile. "I knew it. Come on."
"Where?" Chase followed him to the door, glancing around the mess filling the Drive Pit.
"Home," Go said.
Home was an apartment that Go hadn't spent much time in; the lock had a tendency to stick, and the door rattled on its hinges when he finally managed to turn the key. It creaked, too, an eerie sound that he'd grown to hate and subsequently avoid. It had been easier to just sleep at the Drive Pit anyway, instead of wasting time by going back to an unwelcoming apartment.
Chase left his shoes neatly at the entrance, turning them around so that the toes faced the door in a perfect display of etiquette. After an almost imperceptible pause, he gathered up the shoes Go had left haphazardly in front of the door and placed them appropriately. Go blinked, not quite sure what to make of it. "Who taught you that?" he said.
Without the benefit of actual words, Chase's expression clearly conveyed that Go was the one who had failed Standard Human Etiquette. Go rolled his eyes. "You want some coffee?" he asked.
Not that Chase needed food, or drink; his internal power source would no doubt keep him functioning perfectly well long after Go and everyone he knew was dead, if he kept his systems appropriately maintained. Chase had started drinking water, though, when the rest of them had wandered into the cafeteria for lunch, and had picked up the occasional cup of coffee when the Special Investigation Unit had had pots of it lying around. Go wasn't sure if he did it to seem more human or because he got genuine enjoyment out of it.
When Chase had started mimicking human coffee consumption, Go had had no idea how he could swallow the liquid, or if it would have some sort of adverse effect on his non-human and artificial physiology. He knew now exactly how Chase's Roidmude body processed liquids he ingested, and that anything solid would cause problems with Chase's internal mechanisms.
"Is this the appropriate hour for coffee?" Chase asked.
Go looked at the watch on his wrist. "It's almost six," he said. "Seems like an okay time to me."
"Do you not plan on sleeping?"
It was way too difficult to tell if Chase was trying to push buttons or asking out of a sense of curiosity. Go filled the coffee maker with water and added grounds to the filter before answering. "Too late for sleep," he said. "It's already tomorrow."
The words had sounded more like they made sense in his head.
"Which reminds me," he said, and sent a text to his sister. I have something to show you, it read. She deserved to see Chase's return in person; she had been his friend before any of them had accepted Chase as anything but a dubious ally and a potential monster.
You're up early, came an almost immediate answer.
So are you, Go sent back.
No one tells you that having a baby means you will never sleep again. Go felt himself smile at that one; he was looking forward to seeing how well Chase's stoicism held up to the contradictory ball of purely adorable and loudly aggravating that was his sister's firstborn son.
So now's a good time? He poured the coffee into two mugs, handing one off to Chase.
Why, is something wrong?
Go could almost see her calling to figure out what emergency had him ready to race over to her apartment at six in the morning. Nothing's wrong, he texted back. Later's okay, too.
Right on cue, the phone began to buzz. Go sighed and answered it. "Good morning," he sang. "It's a beautiful day!"
"You're not up early, you just haven't been to sleep," Kiriko said, voice muffled slightly. Go deduced that her hands were full of small child and that she had tucked the phone against her shoulder.
"You caught me," he said. The coffee was just barely cool enough to drink, and it was delicious. It wasn't good coffee, but Go didn't particularly care. Delicious was relative and linked to caffeine content.
"Chase wouldn't want you making yourself sick," Kiriko said, demonstrating that despite the years they'd spent apart, she still knew him better than anyone else.
"He would have no idea," Go retorted. Chase gave him an inquiring look and Go waved him off. He had no idea whether or not Chase could hear Kiriko's side of the conversation and he didn't want to spoil the surprise.
"You're being pedantic," Kiriko said, and that wasn't a word that anyone applied to Shijima Go, ever. "Avoiding the issue," Kiriko continued.
"Whatever." The coffee had vanished somehow, and the pot wasn't big enough to make more than two cups at a time. Go rinsed out the pot and refilled it.
"Stop making coffee," Kiriko said, and Go wondered briefly if she had installed a camera in his kitchen somewhere.
"I'm not making coffee," he said, emptying out the first filter and putting a new one in. Chase perked up, looking at him with interest.
"If that is not making coffee," he said, "then what are you doing?"
A thud sounded from the speaker in Go's ear, and he paused just short of starting the fresh batch. "Kiriko?" He heard scraping noises, and then Kiriko's voice sounded, tight with an emotion he couldn't identify.
"Is that Kano in your apartment, Shijima Go?" she asked, and whatever Go had been expecting, that wasn't it.
"What? No." He frowned at the phone.
"I know you miss Chase, but Kano is his own person. It's – I know this has been hard on you, okay? But that's not healthy."
"Wait, what exactly do you think I'm doing with Kano?" Go stabbed the button to start the coffee maker for the second time in fifteen minutes, the force of it sending the little machine sliding backwards across the counter. Chase caught it before it went over the edge, his expression almost clearly curious.
"Go," his sister said, exasperation in her voice. "Don't make me spell it out."
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Go hung up the phone and glared at it. He'd wanted to surprise Kiriko with Chase, and he wasn't going to let her wild accusations stop him. Seriously, what does she think I'm doing with Kano.
Chase just watched, eyes hooded, as he sipped the coffee he hadn't finished. "Kiriko seems upset," he said. "Perhaps we should not bother her."
"That," Go said, pointing at him, "was not a Chase thing to say." The meaning of the sentence sunk in, and Go had the sudden thought that he'd missed something, that he hadn't got Chase back after all, and this was some facsimile that was pretending to be his friend with the aim of something entirely different. Go crossed the short distance to his maybe-friend, grabbing Chase by the jaw with both hands and tilting his face upwards. "You are Chase, right? Right?"
True to his nature, Chase made zero reaction to being manhandled. He simply put down his coffee cup, reached up, and removed Go's hands. "You're behaving erratically," he said, which wasn't a denial.
"I'm not erratic, you're erratic." Go tried to pull his hands free, but Chase's grip was like iron, and he gave up. He'd tested Chase, after all, he knew that he was who he was supposed to be, and it was probably normal for someone to act a little weird after being resurrected. Even if they weren't human to begin with. "We're going to see my sister. Come on."
Chase regarded him steadily and then let go. "Your coffee," he said, and Go had forgotten about the second pot.
"Leave it," he said. "It'll still be here when we get back."
Chase reached around him to turn off the machine. "Fire safety," he said, in response to Go's half-sputtered question, and Go rolled his eyes.
"It's not going to burn down the building," he said, and somehow Chase managed to look skeptical of his assertion without actually changing his expression. "Let's just go."
Traffic in the city was a nightmare, even at the early hour, and the sun was well overhead by the time Go stood in front of the Tomari family door, Chase carefully hidden behind him, and rang the bell. Shin's car was gone, although Go distinctly remembered Kiriko saying that her husband was home and asleep. He blinked, wondering for a moment if he'd actually talked to his sister or if he'd dreamed it while awake.
The door opened, Kiriko balancing a calm Eiji on one hip. "Go," she said. "What's going on?"
"I told you I have something to show you," Go said, fairly sure now that they'd had the conversation he thought they did. "Look!"
He stepped aside and gestured. Chase performed admirably, which in Go's terms meant he stood stiffly and without expression as Go waved his arms up and down. "Mrs. Tomari," Chase said.
"It's still Kiriko," Kiriko said absently, eyes wide. "Go, you – what did – how – Chase!"
"I'm coming in," Go said cheerfully, pulling the door open wider and squeezing past his sister. He left his shoes in the entrance and strode into the living room. Kiriko moved aside to let Chase follow, and Chase again rearranged Go's shoes. Go sighed.
"Please excuse my intrusion," Chase said, and Kiriko closed her mouth.
"He's back!" Go said. "Chase is back!"
"I can see – how did – that's – welcome back, Chase." Kiriko shifted her son on her hip, and finally smiled at Chase.
"Thank you," Chase said gravely, and neither of them was as happy as the situation called for.
Go gave up on both of them and wandered over to the couch. There was a giant stuffed dolphin taking up most of it, which Go thought had been there for months; he displaced it and sprawled over the comfortable cushions. On second thought, the dolphin was squishy and huggable, and he retrieved it from the floor. "Both of you should be more excited," he said, stifling an urge to yawn.
"Chase, would you like something to drink?" Kiriko said, apparently determined to cling to social ritual.
"No, thank you," Chase returned, and continued to stand awkwardly in front of the door. Go groaned. This was not proceeding the way he'd planned.
"Have you told Shinnosuke?" Kiriko asked.
"No," Go said. "Rinna might have. Or Kyu. They've been helping."
"I know they have," Kiriko said, and it sounded sharp. Go sat up, still holding the dolphin, and rested his chin on it.
"You're upset," he said.
"I can leave," Chase offered, and Kiriko laughed a little. Go couldn't see her face, but she moved stiffly as she crossed the room to put Eiji in the playpen and gave him something Go couldn't see clearly to hold on to. When she turned around, tears were spilling out of her eyes.
"Don't leave," she said. "I'm happy to see you again. Really happy."
"But you're crying," Chase said, and Go felt inexplicably guilty.
"They're happy tears." Kiriko reached out, hesitantly, and squeezed Chase's shoulder, and then hugged him tightly before letting go abruptly. "I'm sorry," she said.
Chase looked at Go. "Don't worry about it?" he said, as if he wasn't sure what the appropriate response was.
"When – when did you get back?"
"Maybe three?" Go answered, when Chase looked at him again. "I think it was around three. We would have come earlier, but I had to run tests, and they took forever."
"You do not knock on people's doors at three in the morning, Go," his sister said, her tone reminding him that she had been the one consistent authority figure for the majority of his life.
"Even for dead friends come back to life?" Go said flippantly, and then the enormity of what he'd done hit him. "Chase," he said, and the room blurred as the name caught in his throat and he couldn't stop crying.
