Gentaro:
The Fourze Driver was covered in dust. Kisaragi Gentaro pulled it out of the drawer where it had been not quite thoughtlessly stashed; he'd put it there so that he'd be able to take it with him when he left home, but over the past few months it had been neglected.

"Sorry I haven't been paying much attention to you," he murmured to it, wiping the surface clean with his fingers. Between one thing and another it had been neglected; he'd graduated, and then suddenly he hadn't known what to do with himself, even with a full course load as a college freshman. Keeping the Driver around in case of extraterrestrial incursions had been important at first, and then nothing had shown up, and he wasn't sure how it had already been nearly six months since it had been used.

"I wasn't even the one that put you on," he said to it, sitting on the raised step next to the door. "I lent you to my older self. Allegedly." The dust was stubborn, and he dug into one pocket for a handkerchief to get into some of the crevices. He was willing to accept that his five-years-older self had gotten booted into the past and needed to borrow the Driver; he was even willing to accept that another Kamen Rider had returned it after his future self had gone back to – well, the future. "Still, that's no excuse."

Something appeared to be stuck under one of the switches. Gentaro frowned; he didn't think he was the type of person to damage an item and then return it damaged without saying something, even if he was returning it to himself. He tugged at the offending material, which turned out to be a folded piece of paper, and not something broken after all.

"A note?"

His future self had had a message to pass on that he hadn't given to the new Kamen Rider. Come to think of it, the new Kamen Rider had been awfully cagey about everything, all but going out of his way to be mysterious. See you in five years, indeed. Gentaro unfolded the note.

Yo, past me –

I didn't have time, what with all the, uh, well, I'm not going to – look, there was stuff that happened. But anyway, I called OOO for backup and he came and helped, but I didn't get a chance to see him later. Do me a favor and say thanks? I know, I know, Riders help each other out, but I kinda feel bad that I didn't get to tell him in person.

Anyway, everything is awesome and you're going to be awesome. Stuff might seem kind of up in the air after you graduate, but I promise you're going to come out of it on the other side doing just fine. Good luck!

Gentaro, I mean, present me, I mean future me to you, oh you know what I mean

Not that Gentaro had ever really doubted he would find a purpose in life beyond being a Kamen Rider, but it was nice that his future self had faith in him. Of course, his future self was speaking from experience. Gentaro narrowed his eyes at the note and wondered if his future self remembered reading it as a college freshman, or remembered lending out the Fourze Driver to himself at all. Then he shook his head and decided that thinking about time loops was enough to drive someone crazy.

"Eiji, huh," he said, looking at the first part of the note. Eiji had shown up to help the last time there had been weird things going on, come to think of it. Wherever he was, if someone called him, he came. "I really should say thank you."

A phone call was easy enough to make. Gentaro dug his out of pocket, searching his address book. The first number he called was disconnected, but a recording informed him that the account had been associated with a separate number. Gentaro rolled his eyes and programmed the new number into his phone. That was the second time Eiji had changed his number and failed to tell anyone. The second number was disconnected with no forwarding number at all. Gentaro frowned at his phone.

"Okay, fine," he said. "I know how to use a search engine."

Except that Gentaro wasn't getting any hits on Eiji's name, and he didn't know where he lived.

"Wasn't there a Hina?" He had vague memories of a girl who'd spent some time around Eiji during the whole mess that had involved ridiculous numbers of superheroes and faked deaths right after he'd become Fourze, but he didn't know her last name, or the writing for her first name, and that was no help at all.

Most people would have given up after a disconnected phone call, no mutual acquaintances, and a fruitless internet search, but Gentaro was not most people. He'd also remembered that they did in fact have a mutual acquaintance who stood a shot of actually being in the phone book. Gentaro found one disconnected phone number with no forwarding information and a recently-updated website with further contact information.

Unfortunately, the second phone call went unanswered, and Gentaro left a rather awkward message before realizing that when he'd picked up the Fourze Driver to begin with, he'd been on his way to a class that he'd now nearly missed entirely. He stuffed the Driver and his phone into his bag and ran out the door.

Shotaro:
"Phone tag is my least favorite game," Hidari Shotaro said to his land line. It was just that he ended up playing it far too often; the agency got enough work that he didn't spend a lot of time actually in the office, and Philip never answered the phone. Akiko didn't spend much time in the office, either, not after getting married. Shotaro made it a point of pride to always get back to people who tried to reach him while he was out, which made it no less a pain in the ass, and once again considered and rejected hiring someone to man the desk. The agency was his and Philip's, and Akiko's, and Terui's, and it didn't feel right to bring in someone else.

"You're getting stuck in the past," Philip said, wandering into the room. He left the door ajar behind him, moving almost aimlessly. He was between interests, and felt almost bored in the back of Shotaro's head. "Hiring someone to stay here while you're out doesn't mean you're going to dishonor anything."

"Sometimes I miss being alone in my own head," Shotaro said, because Philip had hit the mark dead center, and he'd been trying not to think about it.

"No, you don't," Philip told him. He wasn't wrong.

"I wouldn't have to do this if you just answered the phone," Shotaro said, but they both knew that having Philip available to crunch data took precedence, and Philip just rolled his eyes in response.

"Just hire someone," he said.

"You hire someone." Shotaro reached for the retro answering machine. It didn't use actual cassette tapes, but it looked like it might have.

"Really?" Philip said, and his obvious delight at having more company around the office was enough for Shotaro to at least pretend to ignore his reservations.

"Yeah, yeah," he said. Philip vanished through the door, feet clattering down the stairs. "Hey, I get to interview whoever you pick, too!"

There was muffled agreement from downstairs. Shotaro rolled his eyes this time, and went back to the answering machine. He still had messages to listen to today, regardless of how Philip's attempt at the hiring process went.

There wasn't much on the machine; two of the messages were brief thank-you notes requiring no response and one was a telemarketer attempting to sell him a cruise, but the last message made Shotaro sit up straight. He'd been contacted by a junior member of the Kamen Rider clique, so to speak, who had left his given name but not his Rider identity. Still, Shotaro thought he remembered that Kisaragi Gentaro was Kamen Rider Fourze.

"Oh?" he murmured at the name. They'd met briefly during an incident involving Foundation X and sentient cosmic energy; Gentaro thought Shotaro might have contact information for Hino Eiji, the Rider who'd introduced the two of them.

I needed to thank him for some help a few months back, the message ran. But his phone's out of service and I don't know where he lives or how else to get in touch.

Because the universe was laughing at Shotaro, Gentaro did not answer the phone when he called. Shotaro rolled his eyes again, left a brief message with Gentaro that he would let Eiji know Gentaro was trying to contact him, and twirled a pen around his fingers. Gentaro had thoughtfully included two separate numbers he'd used to try to contact Eiji, one of which Shotaro recognized as no longer valid. He checked his phone for Eiji's current number, which matched the one Gentaro said he'd tried.

"Primary data," Shotaro said, and tried the number himself. It was disconnected. "Of course it is." Because Eiji was really not good at keeping in touch with people, although given how much time he spent traveling he should have been an expert. "Maybe that cute little Hina knows where you are."

Mentally reminding himself not to call her cute little Hina to her face – Eiji was contagious, dammit – Shotaro checked the time and dialed. Early evening was a reasonable time to call, he thought. Sure enough, Hina picked up almost on the first ring.

"Mr. Hidari!" She sounded surprised and pleased to hear from him. "How are you?" She paused far too briefly for him to begin answering the question before blurting out, "Oh, no, has something happened to Eiji?"

"What?" Shotaro said, the words so far from what he expected that it took them a second to register.

"It's just been so long," Hina said, and that was a fair point. It had been well over a year since they'd met, and that had been less of a meeting and more of a bizarre confluence of villains and heroes attempting to destroy reality. At least, that was how Shotaro chose to see it.

"It has," he agreed. "I'm well. How are you?"

Hina paused for a moment. "Oh, you know," she said. "Classes are interesting. I'm up for an internship abroad over the summer. That sort of thing." She paused again. "So what does Eiji need?"

"Why do you –" Shotaro stopped himself. "I'm actually looking for Eiji."

"He's not with you?" He could almost hear Hina blinking.

"It's kind of a long story. I'm trying to pass on a message from someone else, but his number has been disconnected." For the third time in ten minutes, Shotaro verified Eiji's most recent number. "Yes, that one. You haven't heard from him?"

"It's been…" Hina's voice trailed off. "He was in Japan in March, but we didn't see each other. I haven't really talked to him since then. Maybe a text?" He could hear her fumbling a little with her phone. "There's a reply to a text I sent him in April, on the fourteenth, but that's it. Oh, no, it's been over a month."

"Is there someone else who might have a more recent number?" Shotaro prompted.

"My brother would have told me," Hina said. "Maybe Mr. Goto?" She sounded audibly distressed.

After promising to let Hina know when he got in touch with Eiji, and successfully calling her Miss Izumi despite the insistent tug of cute little Hina in his head, Shotaro hung up. "Hino, you are causing trouble," he said to the phone.

From Goto – first name Shintaro, yet another member of the Taro Brigade, as Gentaro had at some point dubbed himself and Shotaro – came exactly the same information regarding Eiji that Shotaro had gotten from Hina; there was a text from mid-April and a distinct lack of face to face contact with Eiji when he'd allegedly been in Japan a little over two months before. Shotaro hadn't actually met Goto in person, but he thought he'd seen him at least once or twice and that he was another Rider, none of which was particularly relevant.

What was relevant was that Goto was currently part of the Tokyo Police Department, partnered with one Izumi Shingo, the brother of Izumi Hina, and therefore might have access to a little more information.

"I've been meaning to call," Goto said slowly. "But somehow I just – I keep thinking maybe tomorrow. Is this the disconnected number?"

Shotaro knew the number by heart now. It was therefore with some surprise that he heard Goto reel off an entirely different number. "No, wait," he said, scrambling for a piece of paper. "That's a new one."

"Yeah, I got a notice that he lost his old phone," Goto said. "Sometimes he changes the number entirely."

"This is kind of a weird request," Shotaro said, after confirming the number. "Would you mind staying on the line while I call it? It's just that I've been playing phone tag with way too many people trying to get hold of Hino, and I don't want to have to call you back if he doesn't answer this one either."

Goto laughed. "Sure," he said. "Gives me an excuse not to do paperwork."

Balancing the land line between his ear and his shoulder, Shotaro set his cell phone to speakerphone, added the new number to his address book, and tried calling Eiji again. This time, the call went straight to voice mail, before an automated voice informed Shotaro that the mail box had not yet been set up. He resisted the urge to bang his forehead against the desk. Usually I get paid for doing this much work to find someone, he thought, although to be fair he hadn't spent a great deal of time so far. "Did you hear that?" he said instead to Goto.

"That's odd," Goto said. "You know what, let me text Akira real quick and see if he's heard from Hino."

"Akira?" Shotaro said.

"Ah, Date Akira," Goto clarified, sounding vaguely embarrassed for some reason. "I don't know if you met him? He's the other one that used the Birth Driver."

"I don't think I did," Shotaro said. "But I do vaguely remember there being two of you."

"Yeah, he has the prototype, or he had it, mostly in case I needed backup," Goto said somewhat absently.

"Do, uh, do you need me to call you back?" Shotaro said; apparently Goto was sending the text right at that moment, but there was no guarantee that he was going to get any sort of answer.

"Oh, no," Goto said. "We were chatting before you called. He's in Africa right now with the Red Cross, so there's a bit of a time difference. Though he might have had to go back to work."

"I see," Shotaro said, not sure how else to respond. It was nice, he thought, to see that some people knew how to keep in touch with each other.

"No, he hasn't heard from Hino either," Goto said, and Shotaro got the impression that he was frowning. "Hang on, he's sending me another message. Uh, he got a text sometime in April, but he hasn't actually seen him since February."

"Of this year?" Shotaro asked, now starting to sketch a little timeline in the margins of his notepad.

"Uh, no," Goto said. "Last year. He was in Italy for a conference and saw Hino passing by on the street, but by the time he got out there, Hino was gone. Didn't answer his phone then, either."

"Great," Shotaro said. His attempts to perform the simple task of passing on a message were beginning to strongly resemble the first stages of a missing-person investigation. "Thanks for your help anyway, Mr. Goto."

"Hang on," Goto said. "Let me give you Erika's number."

"Erika?" Shotaro repeated.

"Uh, Satonaka Erika." Goto didn't sound the least bit flustered that he kept giving Shotaro the familiar given names of people and making him ask for clarification. "She works for the Kougami Foundation."

That, at least, Shotaro had heard of. "Didn't it –"

"Develop the Birth Driver, yeah," Goto said. "And some other, uh. Things. I don't know how familiar you are with the OOO driver. Or other, uh. Things. You know."

Shotaro knew less than he would like about whatever it was that OOO had spent his fighting, but he wasn't about to start asking questions now. "Thank you, Mr. Goto."

"No, thank you," Goto said, and repeated Hina's request to let him know when he got in touch with Eiji. "Oh, and Akira says thank you, too, but I'll tell him, you don't have to."

"One more thing," Shotaro said. "Would Miss Izumi's brother have any information?"

"Izumi?" Goto said, for once not referring to someone by their given name. "I don't think so. He's my partner, I'm sure he would have told me if something had changed."

"Of course," Shotaro said, not bringing up the fact that either Goto hadn't told Izumi about Eiji's new phone number or Izumi hadn't told his little sister. He looked at the clock after hanging up; it was far too late to be harassing anyone else about a case that wasn't technically a case, and he really wanted to take a shower and spend some time relaxing in the bath. He picked up the phone again anyway, mentally making a bet with himself that Satonaka Erika was going to tell him exactly the same story about a mid-April text and no contact for over a month.

Shotaro lost the bet with himself; Satonaka Erika did not pick up the phone. He was sent to voice mail, apparently a work-related inbox for the personal assistant to Kougami Kousei. It occurred to him that every other person he'd contacted had given out personal phone numbers just as the system beeped for him to leave a message.

Name, message, and contact information – both his personal cell and the office phone – left for an apparently sane personal assistant who was not at work at obscene hours, Shotaro left his cell phone on the desk and went in search of Philip and a shower, not necessarily in that order.

Not that Shotaro had forgotten, precisely, about his Not A Missing Person Case by the following morning, but it wasn't at the forefront of his mind. He spent several hours tying up loose ends for his current case, sending the last of the information to the client and feeling in general relieved that most of his cases were mundane affairs that involved use of his mind and creative problem solving skills rather than beating monsters to a pulp from inside a suit of super-powered armor. The bike was still pretty cool, though; he rubbed at a spot as he parked it in front of the office.

"Philip," he said, "we don't have anything lined up at the moment, right?" It might be nice to spend an hour outside in the lovely May weather washing the bike by hand. It had been a while since he'd had time for that.

"Er," Philip said, as Shotaro walked in the door. A strikingly attractive woman with long, straight hair and a very short skirt was standing impatiently in front of the desk. Perfectly manufactured fingernails clicked against the decorative stripe down the arm of her jacket, as she stood with her arms folded.

"Mr. Hidari," she said. "I'm Satonaka Erika. You have a meeting."

"I have a what?" Shotaro jerked his gaze from where it had inexplicably gotten stuck on the woman's stunning legs to her face, which was set in a very unimpressed expression. For a moment, he couldn't place the name, and then, "I got your number from a Goto Shintaro."

"He's distressingly indiscreet," Satonaka said, which could have been interpreted in a few ways, none of them flattering. "However, my employer has taken an interest in your investigation."

"It's not exactly an investigation," Shotaro hedged. Satonaka raised an eyebrow at him. It spoke more eloquently than any number of people Shotaro had actually heard speak. "I'm just looking for Hino Eiji," he said, capitulating.

"Yes," Satonaka replied.

Shotaro threw up his hands. "Philip, I have a meeting. Would you please make the final arrangements for the Tanaka case? I'll forward you the rest of what I sent him."

"The what? Oh. Oh, right." It wasn't really that Philip was airheaded, Shotaro reminded himself; Philip was very intelligent, and capable, and competent, and had once managed to make a utility payment to a company in Ukraine instead of the actual company that had sent them the bill. He'd gotten better.

"Miss Satonaka," Shotaro said, giving her his best professional smile. Her expression did not alter by a single hair. "I would be delighted to confirm the details of the meeting with your employer."

"Sir," Satonaka said, and reached into her oversized bag. The tablet she pulled out was also oversized, screen polished to a high gloss, and she held it in front of her chest like a shield. The moment it stopped moving, the screen blinked on to reveal the face of a middle-aged man who looked vaguely familiar.

"Hidari Shotaro!" the man roared.

Shotaro staggered back slightly. "Mr. Kougami, I presume," he managed.

"Exactly as I would expect from a detective," Kougami said. "I understand you're on a mission to find one of my employees."

"I wouldn't say mission-" Shotaro started. "Did you say employee? Do you know where Hino is?"

"Tell me everything," Kougami said in barely accented English.

"Everything," Shotaro said, just to make sure he'd gotten the meaning correct. Hino, you are going to owe me a massive favor when I finally figure out where you are, he thought.

Kougami didn't just want to know what Shotaro had learned; he wanted the story broken down into its composite parts and people, and the impressions Shotaro had garnered from talking to all of them.

"And do you have any conclusions?" he asked, when Shotaro had finished speaking. By this point, Shotaro was sitting on his desk. Satonaka, for her part, appeared to be standing comfortably enough to keep up the pose she hadn't changed by so much as a whisker since holding up the tablet. Shotaro suppressed the urge to ask if she were perhaps a particularly life-like robot.

"Before I draw conclusions, I'd like to know what you or your company know about the whereabouts of Hino Eiji," Shotaro said cautiously. "I was unaware that he was working for you. That didn't come up."

"Ah," Kougami said, waving one hand in a dismissive gesture. "It's not entirely in an official capacity."

Shotaro wanted to know nothing about potentially illegal hiring practices and declined to inquire further as to the exact nature of Eiji's employment with the Kougami Foundation. "As his employer," he said instead, "do you know where he is?"

"You're not asking the right questions," Kougami said. "One more time, Mr. Hidari. What conclusions can you draw from what you already know?"

Shotaro bit back a sigh. He was beginning to recall an impression that painted the head of the Kougami Foundation as eccentric – brilliant in a number of ways, but also definitely not quite fitting into the mold of what one expected in a successful businessman, much less one in control of a company as diversified as the Kougami Foundation.

"Something odd happened in the middle of April," Philip said, drifting up to Shotaro's side. "It's as though someone wanted to make very sure that date was fixed firmly in Hino's narrative."

Kougami nodded. "You're not looking past the surface!" he proclaimed, loudly enough to shake the windows but somehow not actually shouting.

"The visit to Japan in March," Shotaro said. "Did anyone know he was coming home?"

"There we are," Kougami said, so softly that Shotaro almost didn't hear him. "Mr. Hidari!"

The change in volume was so abrupt that Shotaro flinched backwards. "Yes?"

"I would like to hire you," Kougami declared. "To find Hino Eiji."