Chapter two: short, mostly info/detail stuff, no real action, LOTS of foreshadowing. I can promise action in the next one, though.

I was gonna end up with a 5000-6000 word chapter if I left them as one, though, and you probably wouldn't have gotten an update for another week. Now you can drive yourself crazy wondering what's going to be important and what's not. ;D

Disclaimer: I own nothing dealing with Kamen Rider. My characters are mine.

Somehow, I make it home without being noticed. I don't question my luck, but I do make a mental note to keep an eye out for mentions of invisibility in Orou's diary. A power like that could come in handy. Right now, I have a more pressing matter—figuring out how to change back into Kimberly Pearce before Aunt Jen calls me down for dinner. I hear Uncle Daiki's car pull up—meaning it's nearly six-thirty. I have ten minutes at best.

I dig around in my backpack for my MP3 player and jam it into its port in my alarm clock radio. I turn my Nami Tamaki playlist up to full blast. Jpop and high volume together usually mean I'm in a bad mood—"Kimmie's brooding again; don't mess with her."

Satisfied that I've bought myself a little more time, I snatch the scroll diary from where I left it on my bed and start scanning for anything that looks even remotely promising. Lots of stuff on monsters in the last five entries or so—apparently the creeps Gotou-san (I know enough to know I should call anybody I don't know "san") and I offed this afternoon were called Komes (koh-MESS) and Meriss (MEE-riss)—but nothing about the armor. Frustrated, I wind the scroll all the way back to the first entry, and my jaw drops. This is NOT Orou's handwriting. Or his writing style—much more formal than Orou. This is the type of wording and level of verb forms a peasant would use for speaking to a member of the imperial court—if they were ever fortunate or unfortunate enough to end up in that situation.

I completely forget about both my rumbling stomach and my current predicament, absorbed in the story the writer is telling. As I read on, I find out that this writer is himself a member of the imperial court—one of the princes, no less. Why the heck is he using groveling speech? He's also the first of the "Masked Riders", a group formed to save the empire from the—well, you'd pronounce the name sort of like "chuh-SHU-ma". "Ch'sh"ma" is a rather nasty word, and I'm not even going to roughly translate it. There's not really an English equivalent anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.

I vaguely remember seeing something about a "kamen rider" running around in Japan a couple of decades ago on one of the websites I frequent. I'll have to ask Uncle Daiki if "kamen" has anything to do with masks.

Anyway, there are two other Riders in the group to start with, a couple of nobles, and two more are picked after they win a contest of skill held among merchants, knights, and other middle-class types (and their older kids) every year. Kinda like the Olympics, only cooler.

At the point when Chorro (turns out that's the prince's name) wrote this entry, the team had started becoming rather good friends, although he "supposes that should be expected when we are constantly saving each other's lives."

Chorro also wore green armor, but the picture in the entry looks rather different from mine. He said something about the armor being "malleable", too. I wonder…

The mirror on the back of my door confirms it: my armor has changed from when the green warrior (Orou?) gave it to me. It's more compact, with a longer forehead crest, smaller, pointed shoulderplates, and sections in the chestplate. Better mobility, I guess. Girls are supposedly more flexible that guys, so it makes sense if that's true. The armor still ends up making me look like a guy, though.

Not great for my self-esteem when I already have no bust.

Looking at my armor reminds me why I'd started going through the diary in the first place. I look at my clock: 7:43. Looks like Aunt Jen took my screams of "Get off my back!" a little too seriously. Oh well. Saves me from having to explain why I look like the Green Bug Ranger. I go back to the diary.

Chorro's next entry mentions some stuff about their early training, and he goes out of his way to talk about their instructor saying that "your primary weapon is your key to yourself."

What on earth does that mean? I look at the dagger on my belt and the crossbow on my back. And which one is my primary weapon, anyway? Do I get to pick?

I hold my dagger out and do my "henshin" routine again. Nada. Guess that's a one way street. I finger my belt buckle as I think, and notice a slit in the top. Said slit just happens to be as wide as my dagger's tip. I stick the dagger inside.

ZAP!

The shock doesn't do any real damage that I can tell, but it sure does hurt.

I put my dagger back in its scabbard and unlimber my crossbow. There's no energy bolt in it this time, so I assume it knows when I'm going to shoot or not. I try "henshin" with that, too, while secretly praying it doesn't work, as my mirror is telling me that what looks fairly cool with the dagger looks absolutely ridiculous with a crossbow. Much to my relief, nothing happens.

I finger the trigger, then—out of boredom and frustration—aim at the stupid sparrow that killed all of our resident kingfisher's babies the other day.

My mild disappointment at not seeing the sparrow go "POOM!" quickly changes to surprise as my crossbow sort of folds in on itself until it looks like nothing more than a large green-and-silver click pen. The green teardrop shapes painted on the cap glow ever so slightly, and my chestplate crest pulses once in response. I touch the green teardrop in the crest with the pen tip and—FLASH.

"Kimberly Pearce is in the HOOOOUUUSE!"

…Right in the middle of the pause between songs.

Thanks be that my cousins are currently "doing a group project at Li-chan's" (a.k.a. clubbing with fake I.D.s—I know because I stalked them all the way to the club once).