Welcome to my first story as Mistfire.
Critiques are appreciated, and I like having my ego stroked, so feel free to review. ;)
Disclaimer: I do not own Kamen Rider or any of the stuffs associated with it. Original characters (in this case, all of them) are mine.
Fair warning: This starts out a little slow and rather dark.
One of the monsters has me by the ankle, waving me around like one of those streamer things the dance team back home uses sometimes. The other is taking fireball potshots at me and both are laughing like raving lunatics. As one of the fireballs hits its mark and cracks my left eyepiece, I find myself wondering just how my life wound up with this much suck in it.
See, up until a few months ago, I was a perfectly normal kid—a freshman in high school with a substitute teacher mom and an advertising executive dad that still love each other so much it's funny to watch them, a surly, airsoft gun toting thirteen year old little brother who would never admit that he watches Barbie movies, a cat that plays fetch and a dog that licks his paws and isn't having any of it. I was vice president of the French club, goofed off with the various sports teams when I wasn't taking pictures of them for the local newspaper, got labeled a "band nerd" when I came back gushing about band camp, and played double second in the steel pan band. I loved every minute of it.
My friends and I greeted summer with a whoop, and June went by in a lazy rainbow of beach balls and sailboats and swimming pools. Just as I was getting bored enough to start on my summer reading project, I noticed that Dad was acting weird. He went to bed early, took lots of naps, talked less. Mom must have noticed, too, because by the end of that week, she'd coerced him into going to talk to the family doctor.
The end of July saw the end of life as I'd known it.
Batteries of tests were done, specialists were consulted, words like "hypothyroidism" and "clinical depression" were tossed around, and Dad was diagnosed with both. Then he lost his job, because he'd apparently not felt the need to tell his boss that his drop in performance might be a medical thing.
Dad kept shutting down, despite all of the meds. Dr. Sung, our family doctor, voiced suspicions of a "silent stroke", where the stroke doesn't leave any physical signs in the brain. Dad's neuropsychologist ended up diagnosing him with "psychosomatic dementia," which is basically the same thing as saying, "He scared himself so badly his brain shut down to try to protect him."
How that's supposed to protect him, I don't know.
By mid-August, Mom had made arrangements for Robbie and me to go and live with relatives. I guess she thought it would be easier for us to live life and move on if we didn't have to deal with it every day. Robbie packed up and left the next week so he could get to Aunt Benji and Uncle Tom's in time to leave with them for Cairo and the start of their year-long world tour. I got shipped off to Japan to live with Aunt Jen and Uncle Daiki.
Don't get me wrong, I love them both. They're the absolute best. I'd always wanted to go live in Japan for a while, too, and I've discovered that enough people here speak a reasonable amount of English that it's fairly easy to get around even though I don't know much Japanese beyond "konnichiwa", "sumimasen", "arigatou", and other some other random words that American otaku just kind of pick up. That's not the problem. Neither is the fact that I came into the school at the beginning of the second trimester. Most people I've talked to like me. There are a couple of jerks, but it's a fact of life that jerks are everywhere. The English teacher has somehow decided that I'm the best thing since they discovered chocolate was good for you. No, the problem is that my cousins are all brats, and insist upon making my life a living nightmare.
How they ended up that way with parents as great as Aunt Jen and Uncle Daiki (whom I happen to know don't balk at spanking a girl, or taking away any number of privileges), I will never know. What I do know is that they're insanely good actors, and have no problem blaming me for stuff they've done. Shoplifting, ripped designer coats, even graffiti once. It's only mid-September, for crying out loud.
So much for my dreams of sisterhood.
They're also indirectly to blame for my current situation, though much of that is due to my own stupidity. They are they ones that took me to that stupid cave to "see the old writing and talk to Professor Moroboshi" about one of his latest projects "to apologize for being mean. We were just testing you, you know." Professor Kenta Moroboshi is one of my heroes (me being an archaeology freak), and I really, really wanted that apology to be real. So—without bothering to wonder how they even knew him—I said yes.
And wound up wandering the cave for hours without water and a lousy pen flashlight on my keychain as my only source of illumination after the three of them ditched me faster than a stalker ex boyfriend.
"You're a real smart one, aren't you, Kimmie Pearce?"
I finally found a chamber with light coming from it around ten p.m. (thank you, Mother, for getting me a glow-in-the-dark watch for my birthday, even though I hated it then), although I was curious as to why it looked like said light was coming from a giant oil lamp.
It looked like that because, essentially, that's what it was. A massive pillar stood in the center of the room, three metal bowls attached to it just above the middle by wrought metal rings. I stood staring at the carvings above them for a few seconds before the stench hit me. "Augh!" I yanked my shirt over my nose, although that didn't help much, and looked around for the source of the smell.
Then I wished I hadn't.
Bodies. Torn-open, half-eaten bodies, twelve or fifteen, I didn't bother to count. They had to have been dead for a couple of days for them to smell that bad. I fought the urge to puke.
Then one of them moved.
It vainly tried to shove off the body on top of it with its less-mangled arm. My altruistic second nature took over from my shocked consciousness, and I hurdled over a couple of bodies to drag the dead guy off of the live one. I got a good look at the guy, and just sort of stared with my mouth slightly open.
Even on death's door (anyone in that bad of shape for a couple of days was probably as good as dead), he was a sight to behold. He looked like a sort of cross between a humanoid bug warrior and a Power Ranger, with iridescent green armor edged in dark burnished bronze-gold over a pitch black undersuit shot through with silver. Helmet with bright green eyes and gold sort of crest, intricate chestplate, shoulderplates, gauntlets, knee-high armored boots, epic belt set with an upside-down green teardrop gem on the gold buckle and light yellow triangle crystals on green wing-shaped protrusions—good night, somebody spent a long time on this guy's gear.
He made a feeble gesture with his "good" left arm, like he was trying to get something. A dagger with a hilt that looked like his belt buckle and chestplate crest was laying a bit further away than arm's length, looking somewhat worse for wear. I leaned over him to get it and put it in his hand, figuring the poor guy should have whatever comfort he could draw from it. I stayed braced over him for a moment, trying to figure out if it would be weird if I hugged him. I always get this urge to hug sad people, and the resigned sorrow emanating from the dying green warrior was almost tangible.
I felt a slight sting in my right wrist, and looked down in mild shock as I realized he'd cut me with the dagger. The small amount of blood that escaped the wound slipped down the dagger through engraved designs and was…was, well—"absorbed" is the only word I can come up with for what the dagger's gemstones did to my blood. The green warrior weakly pushed the dagger at my hand, and I took it more out of reflex than anything else. He wheezed out a sentence in a language that tickled the back of my mind without actually being recognized. A number of seemingly random objects around the room shifted a bit and glowed with a faint, warm white light. The dagger in my hand vibrated, then jerked itself into a position where it pointed to the belt, both of them in possession of a greener glow than the other objects.
As I was trying to figure out just what in the world was happening, the green warrior lifted his head a bit, gave me a slow little gesture kind of like a salute, and was gone.
I heard voices in the corridor outside and felt like I was going to be sick again. The belt now around my waist vibrated like a hyper cellphone, almost urging me to move. I stood up, not even registering surprise as the white-glowing objects rose with me and followed as I walked towards a tunnel entrance in the back.
I followed the tunnel to the main cave, which was mercifully empty except for my little duffel bag and the messenger bag with my school books in it. I calmly unzipped the duffel bag and watched unemotionally as the various artifacts neatly arranged themselves inside it, cushioned by my gym clothes.
For the next week, I had recurring nightmares from the green warrior's point of view—his home, his friends, his team left in a state similar to the archaeologists by an entity that remained frustratingly unfocused in the visions. I didn't tell anyone about them. My aunt and uncle were already convinced that I was unbalanced thanks to my three cousins' shenanigans. They had me seeing a specialist over that stuff, for the love of pity.
Whoever ran the dig site operations now that Professor Moroboshi was dead (he was the one I pulled off the green warrior, I realized) fed the media some nonsense story about lions that had gotten loose from the local zoo. At least that's what Uncle Daiki said. Some poor sap at the zoo took the flak for the fake incident and ended up getting fired for protesting that no such incident had ever happened and that all of their lions were safe in their habitat, thank you very much.
That got me out of my stupor. Great. Either somebody was in league with whatever killed them all or the government was keeping secrets that could get us all killed again. Fabulous.
Sad and more than a little hacked off, I walked back into my room and dragged out the box that I'd put the stuff from my duffel bag in (as well as the dagger and belt) and shoved in the back of my closest over a week ago. I opened the flaps and pulled out an object at random. Some sort of scroll that could lock. I was shocked to find that I could read the symbols on the outside. "Private—Do not read. Orou's Journal." That was the gist of it, anyway. I giggled. What sort of goofball tells someone not to read something and then announces that it's their journal? It's like daring someone to read it.
Of course I opened it.
The contents of the last entry (that's where I opened it) led me to put the belt back on under my clothes. It was pretty vague—something about darkness returning to fly on ragged wings and armies of red eyes and frozen howling winds—but it was very clear on the point that the belt's wearer would be able to fight whatever came his/her way. I wasn't sure what use I'd be against darkness on ragged wings, but I was the only one who knew jack diddly about what had really happened. That, and if my hunch was correct, I'd somehow been bound to that belt. Chances were that no one else could use it. Not that I knew how.
That changed the very next afternoon. About half an hour after flute club ended (around five, since we typically have an extra hour of flute club on Wednesday—so five-thirtyish), a pair of eight, maybe nine foot tall monsters with grey-brown skin and more red eyes than were natural for anything on planet Earth randomly showed up and started demolishing the shopping district. My belt and dagger (invisible and untouchable for anyone but me, it seemed) started vibrating and flickering the moment I laid eyes on one.
For lack of anything better to do, I ran into a deserted alleyway, and, feeling both stupid and extremely giddy at the same time, placed my feet shoulder-width apart, gripped my dagger in my right hand and held it straight out in front of me, point down—"Hen-"—turned it sideways to almost prick the palm of my splayed left hand—"SHIN!"
Nothing happened.
Just as I started to wonder if "henshin" didn't work for non-Japanese superheroes, or if I really had flipped my lid, my toes started tingling and all the little hairs on my body stood up on end. FLARE—bodysuit—FLARE—chestplate—FLARE—shoulderplates—gauntlets, gloves, boots—dramatic pause—HELMET.
Okay. That was cool.
I climbed up the nearest fire escape and hopped the roofs of a couple of buildings, heading in the direction of the smoke. Both nasties had their backs to me, playing "Let's see who can shoot the most cops!" and just generally making a huge mess. Before my better judgment could kick in, I leapt off the roof with a half-recognized battle cry and cut a huge gash down the back of one of the monsters.
It went downhill from there, and brought me to the point I'm at now—a giant monster squeak toy. My dagger currently resides under the foot of the monster using me for target practice, and I am out of options.
A shot rings out, and the monster holding me whirls indignantly on the lone cop that dared challenge it and reaches for him.
Oh, no. You are NOT going to hurt him.
I take advantage of hanging over the monster's back, gathering every bit of strength and grit I've got left. I fold my hands together with my fingers interlocked, draw myself as far back as I'll go, and slam them into the monster's tailbone. A mini explosion and screeches of pain follow, and the cop takes another shot, aiming this time for the monster's largest eye. That guy is an insanely good shot.
I slam my joined hands down on top of its head, prompting it to drop me a fraction of a second before its pal shoots another fireball at me. I drop to the ground, do a tuck-and-roll and come to a stop under the other monster. I karate chop its ankle, aware this time that the blast seems to be coming from a yellow gem on my right gauntlet that I hadn't noticed before. Huh.
More screeching and stumbling, and my dagger is where I can get it again. Then the blasted thing goes and falls on it. Muttering an epithet in the language I seem to know far too well, I grab an abandoned revolver from the ground. My gauntlet gem flares, and I'm holding a crossbow with a resonating energy bolt at the ready. My playmate is back on its feet, so it's a good thing that cop just loaded another clip. He'll have to keep the other one busy a little longer. I take a page out of his book and shoot for the eyes.
The monster's head explodes, and its body disintegrates.
The other grey-brown eyesore has picked up a black-and-white and turns towards me. I look at the cop. The cop looks at me. We both lift, aim, fire at nearly the same moment.
I decide right then that explosions are quite possibly the most satisfying sound in the world.
We stand there grinning like lunatics for a bit as the monster disintegrates around the bashed-up police car that had crashed to the ground after we'd shot it. Then the cop turns to me and makes a couple of awkward gestures, like he's looking for something to say.
Instead of waiting to deal with the even more awkward situation of trying to figure out what he's saying, I bow and say, "Sagitta."
"…Nani?"
I laugh, more at myself than him. Why I've decided to call myself the Latin word for "arrow" is beyond me, aside from the obvious association with the crossbow.
Gesturing to myself, I say it again. "Sagitta. Sa. Jee. Tuh."
The lightbulb goes on, and he bows slightly and says his own name. "Gotou. Gotou Hideyoshi."
Three cop cars come screaming around the corner, distracting him. I take the opportunity to grab my dagger and high-tail it out of there before he starts asking questions.
When I reach the alleyway with my schoolbags in it, it dawns on me that I have absolutely no idea how to turn back.
Yeah. I love Kamen Rider, and like nearly every story I've read in this section. So, I decided to try my hand at writing my own Kamen Rider story. I think I like it, though I plan on more humor in the future. What say you?