So sorry this took so long. The website that I use to watch the episodes is far from perfect. Sometimes the tab will randomly close and re-open, and the image will freeze up while the audio keeps going – as I can't speak Japanese, this makes it hard to understand when I can't see the subtitles I need to see. Also, sometimes I do my writing on my laptop while relaxing and watching TV, so I tend to work on fics – or at least scenes – that don't rely on watching something else, so there's only so much I can do for this fic when doing that. After this, I'll be working on a new chapter of 'Two For The Price Of One' and then the final two chapters of 'The Cold Factor', but don't be surprised if I wind up posting more of 'Two For The Price Of One' before the next chapter of this comes out, for the reasons listed above.
As it stands, it has been hard to deliberately shift back and forth between writing for different fandoms. So this will be going on hiatus until 'The Cold Factor' and 'Two For The Price Of One' are both complete. As for the 'Unmade' series, I'm not sure if I'll be continuing it or not. 'Reawakening' will be completed, without a doubt, but I'm not certain about the rest of the series.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own 'Kamen Rider Drive' or any of its characters.
WORD COUNT: 4042
Tuesday, April 14th, 2015
After Kiriko's visit, he considered moving to a different cave, or out of the area entirely, but he stayed put, for reasons unknown even to him. It would have been smarter to get as far away from that city as quickly as possible.
He hoped that Kiriko would get the message and leave him the hell alone, and that she and the other man wouldn't tell anyone about his survival. But then again, since when did he ever get what he hoped for? The very next day, he found himself being approached by three Shift Cars. He knew their names, but whether it was from his battles with Drive, or just some trace of his lost memories, he wasn't sure.
Massive Monster, Dimension Cab, and Dream Vegas
"Did Kiriko send you after me again?" he groaned, standing up, "Tell her to leave me alone."
He started to walk away, but a new voice stopped him in his tracks. "Kiriko's not the only one who wants to thank you."
It was Drive, himself, with Kiriko right next to him and the Drive Driver wrapped around his waist. Certainly not who he was expecting.
"I can't lie… I was really happy to hear you survived."
How? Drive was the one who had tried to kill him, and with good reason. Once again, their completely illogical trust in him was both confusing and exasperating.
"Proto-Drive," the Drive Driver – Krim, he remembered calling it 'Krim' – entreated, "We're all hoping to see you return to action."
He shook his head. This was all too much. All three of them were begging him to come back, beyond all reason. He turned away from them and started to walk away.
"Wait!" Kiriko called after him, "Where are you going?!"
"I DON'T KNOW!" he yelled, slamming his fist into a tree. Pain lanced through his arm as sharp splinters punctured his skin, but he ignored it. "I wish I did…"
"Chase…" He heard Kiriko moved forward until she was standing right behind him. He actually jumped when he suddenly felt her hand touching his shoulder. He slowly turned his head to look at her. Her wide eyes showed no fear of him whatsoever.
Then, suddenly, a new voice echoed through the air.
"I too am glad you survived." Everyone looked over in shock as Heart walked up, stopping several feet away. "Now you find yourself at a crossroad, Chase?"
"Heart!" Drive gasped.
Seeing one of his old… captors? Bosses? Handlers? Whatever the hell Heart and Brain had been, seeing one of them standing there sent a shot of panic through him, and he stumbled back a few steps.
Heart raised his hand, showing off a very familiar object in his grasp. "Once this reactivated, I was able to track you down," he explained.
"That's Proto-Drive's Shift Car!" Krim exclaimed.
"My spoils from when we… recruited Chase," Heart gloated. The so-called 'recruit' couldn't remember much, but he got the distinct feeling that it had been a terrifying experience. "Come home, Chase. The Roiumudes will win this war. Especially now that he has begun to make his move."
For a moment, he was confused as to what Heart meant. But he remembered the recent development of the human-Roidmude fusion evolution, and the limited number of Roidmudes who could have come up with that. And since he was pretty damn sure that Heart wasn't referring to Brain or Medic, there was only one possibility…
Krim was clearly thinking the same thing. "Then 001 was the creator of the Hybrid Evolution?"
"001?" Drive questioned, "I thought that was Heart!"
"Heart is 002," Krim corrected him, "Brain is 003."
"He seems to prefer pulling the strings from the cover of shadow," Heart continued, "You may find that you share more of a connection with him than you suspect, Tomari Shinnosuke."
"My father…" Tomari gasped after a brief pause, "Did he…?" His face hardened, and he took two steps closer. "Tell me everything you know!"
Kiriko's phone rang, but none of the others besides her seemed to notice.
Heart laughed. "I'll have to decline. 001 is a mysterious Roidmude who prefers the veil of secrecy."
To his surprise, Drive actually looked over at him questioningly.
"Nobody knows much about him," he grudgingly confirmed, "Whatever it is you want to know, I don't think I could even help you."
Kiriko, who'd been on her phone, cut in then. "Tomari-san, 007 has reappeared. Kamen Rider is being ordered to mobilise."
But Drive ignored her, his angry gaze fixed on Heart. "If you won't talk, then I'll make you!"
He quickly transformed, and Heart gleefully shifted into his true evolved form. The two of them immediately began to clash in a furious battle. Well, the fury was mainly one-sided, on Drive's part. He kept attacking Heart in a rage, demanding answers about his father, while Heart just seemed to be having fun. Kiriko shouted at Drive to quit the fight, that he was needed elsewhere, and Krim could be heard shouting the same thing. But Drive ignored them both, and just kept pressing forward.
The battle eventually brought both combatants to the edge of a shallow, slow-moving river, which he'd used for water, sometimes. Kiriko followed behind them, visibly anxious, and he followed behind her.
Both Heart and Drive were throwing their attacks around, tearing up a lot of the surrounding area, and that was where things really went wrong.
One of Heart's energy attacks went flying at Drive, who dodged without looking behind him. The deadly attack kept flying, straight towards Kiriko.
He charged forward without thinking, activated his Brake Gunner and donned the Machin Chaser armour without thinking, and batted away the energy projectiles without thinking.
It hurt. Even as the glowing energy sphere flew away from him, he felt the pain radiating all the way up his arm. And he welcomed it.
What he did not welcome was the scream of pain that reached his ears. A scream that wasn't his. It took him a second to realise that when he'd deflected Heart's attacks away from Kiriko, he'd accidentally sent one hurtling at Drive, instead. The Kamen Rider had lost his transformation, and was lying on the ground, screaming as he clutched his bloody and burned right arm.
He had done that. He had caused that pain. This was his legacy, his curse. He should have run away the second he spotted them all.
Kiriko ran over to her friend, trying to lift him up into a sitting position and gasping when she made him cry out in pain again.
Heart had stopped fighting. Of course he would. Heart loved the thrill of the fight, and there was no thrill in killing someone lying helpless on the ground, especially when you weren't even the one who put them there. In fact, Heart practically ignored Drive and Kiriko. Instead, his eyes sought out his former subordinate. At first, he smirked, but that expression quickly vanished. "You should not be so ashamed, Chase. Drive is our enemy."
He could only cancel that hated transformation and shake his head. He wasn't safe to be around humans, but he would rather die than go back to the Roidmudes.
Heart's face morphed into one of disappointment and disgust. "I came to take you home, but I've changed my mind."
He finally found the courage to speak. "Good. There's no 'our' between you and me, Heart. No 'we'. Just leave me the hell alone."
He stood up shakily, casting one last look at Kiriko and Drive. "I'm sorry," he whispered, "Please stay away from me."
And whether they could hear it or not, he turned and staggered back into the woods.
He ran for a long time before he found a secluded spot to stop and assess his current condition. His hands had received some burns from deflecting Heart's attack, but they were slowly beginning to heal. There was only a little bit of blood, but it was already becoming uncomfortably sticky.
He heard running water nearby, probably a different section of the same river as before. He cautiously made his way there, and when he confirmed that no one else was there, he crept to the water's edge to rinse off his hands.
Only to jump back in shock when he caught sight of his reflection.
Staring back at him from the surface of the water was the Reaper, Machin Chaser. He looked down at himself in a panic. No, his armour was gone, and the hands before him were still covered in bloody, burned flesh. He looked in the water again, and the Reaper was still there.
With a yell, he brought his foot down into the water, then again, splashing the image away before stumbling away from the river. He sank to his knees a few feet away, shaking.
He almost killed Drive just then. The humans' best defense against the Roidmudes had been hurt because of him. He was dangerous. Too dangerous.
The sudden roar of an engine made him jump. He shot to his feet, and was about to bolt, until he realised that he knew the sound of that engine.
A huge mass of purple and silver shot out from between the trees and skidded to a stop several feet away from him.
He stared in shock at his old bike, Ride Chaser, as it parked by itself right in front of him. What was it doing here? He blinked when he realised that it had a bit of extra weight. A stuffed black duffel bag was strapped on top, and a smaller metal case was also fastened between it and the seat. Overwhelmed by confusion and curiosity, he stood on wobbly legs and staggered over to take a look.
His hands were shaking as he opened the case, a situation that did not improve once he saw what was inside. Why on Earth would they send this to him, after he got Drive hurt? How could they ever trust him with the power contained in this very familiar object?
It just didn't make sense. He'd made it clear again and again that it was too dangerous for him to be around humans, and that his actions against them should not be forgiven, yet these people continued to come up to him and tell him that they forgave him, that they wanted him to come back and continue to fight the Roidmudes with them.
Then he noticed that there was a small envelope on the underside of the case's lid. He quickly extracted it and the piece of paper folded inside. It was handwritten in a neat, feminine script.
Chase,
I am sorry I didn't listen to you before. If you don't want any more contact with us, I won't come looking for you anymore. This bag has some food, water, money, and a fresh change of clothes. It should be enough to last you about two weeks. Hopefully that will be enough time for you to get yourself set up somewhere.
Please don't blame yourself for Tomari-san's injuries. You were only trying to protect me in a dangerous situation, and I never got around to thanking you. And that situation was not your fault, either. Heart goaded Tomari-san into a fight, and Tomari-san gave in.
Please don't blame yourself for what the Roidmudes made you do. You had no real choice in the matter, and the fact that you are going out of your way to prevent it from happening again says more about you than anything you were forced to do. But you are free of their control now. You get to choose what you want to do. And I have faith that whatever you choose to do for your future, it will be something good.
We won't force you to come back with us. We will stop asking. But please know that, if you ever change your mind about staying away, you are always welcome with us.
Kiriko
His mouth went dry as he read the note. She had faith in him? In him? Even after he got her friend hurt? Of course, she did outline her reasoning in her letter.
Turning to the duffel bag, he decided to turn his focus on something he could better understand. As promised in the note, it contained clothing, a canteen, two lunch boxes, and a thick wad of bills on top. With the Ride Chaser, he could go anywhere on the mainland, and start a whole new life.
Or…
He thought about how much the Roidmudes had taken from him. His memories, whatever life he'd had before they'd captured him, his very humanity… And they hurt people on a daily basis. They deserved to be punished, not just for what they'd done to him, but what they did to everyone else.
It was too much of a risk to try and fight alongside Drive again, but he could still fight his own battles, and between the two of them – three, really, with Mach fighting at Drive's side – they could finish the Roidmudes off that much more quickly. Only one hundred and eight Roidmudes had been created, and Drive had already put a dent in their numbers. Permanently.
He had never been able to destroy Roidmude cores. Every Roidmude he'd destroyed had been so only temporarily, and then they would come back to get revenge on him and continue hurting people. But with this new Driver, built by Drive's people, he might be able to take them out for good.
After all the damage he caused under their control, he had a responsibility to make up for at least some of it.
He'd gotten pretty sensitive to Slowdowns, even when he wasn't in an area caught by one. So when he sensed one starting in the warehouse district as he was getting back into town, he made a sharp turn on his bike and headed in that direction. It didn't take him long to locate the epicentre and drive into the correct warehouse.
He heard Drive screaming Kiriko's name as he drove in, and spotted the danger immediately. The Roidmude from yesterday was standing in the middle of the empty space, holding one bladed arm straight up. And above him, apparently having fallen over the rail of a catwalk, was Kiriko. Whatever technology she used to protect her from the Slowdown must have failed in one way or another, because she was falling in slow-motion, along with some water from a broken pipe.
He didn't hit the brakes until he was almost about to plow into the Roidmude, and even then, he didn't brake hard enough to stop the bike. Instead, he jumped off and let the machine hit the Roidmude and knock him out of the way. The Slowdown effect ceased on impact, and he got underneath Kiriko just in time to catch her in his arms.
The memory hit him like a ton of bricks; he remembered holding her like this as the rain thundered down around him, tapping against the armour he was wearing at the time. The water raining down from the broken pipe overhead wasn't quite the same, but it was close enough. She had looked up at him in such gratitude, it had been a shock to realise that she felt safe with him – that she felt safe because of him. And he felt that shock all over again, because she was looking at him that way now, even after everything he did.
Clearly, Kiriko remembered it, too – most likely even better than he did. "This is just like that day in the rain," she murmured, "You came back."
He tried to give her a sort of smile, but found himself unable to. "I guess I just couldn't sit back and do nothing," he told her, "Are you okay… Kiriko?"
She smiled at his first use of her name. "Yes. Thank you."
He set her down, and removed the case from his fallen bike. "You don't have to thank me. I can start over because of you. Because of what you have given me." He opened the case, revealing the new Driver and the tiny purple Signal Bike.
As her friends exclaimed in surprise, Kiriko explained: "Rinna-san built the Signal Chaser from the armour sample you gave me. So that you could be a Kamen Rider again…"
His hands shook as he placed the Driver around his waist, and held up the Signal Bike. Technically, he could still walk away from this. Could retreat into hiding with the supplies he'd been provided and let the humans and the Roidmudes fight the war that had already taken so much from him (how much, he couldn't even know with the current absence of his memories).
But Kiriko was looking at him with such pride, so confident that whatever remained of her former hero was coming back into the fold, he couldn't do that. And, he supposed, there would always be a part of him that would balk at the idea of letting harm come to people when there was something he could do about it.
"Henshin."
Without stopping to think about it for another second, he slotted the Signal Bike into the Driver and slammed the device shut. The energy wrapping around his body was so familiar, it hurt, even if it filled him with a sense of exhilaration.
'Yes,' a part of him seemed to say, 'I missed this.'
When the transformation ended, he took a brief second to look down at himself. What he could see of his body was encased in silver armour with purple accents, more streamlined and nowhere near as bulky as his previous armour.
"Kamen Rider… Chaser," Kiriko declared solemnly.
It felt… good. This wasn't the armour he'd worn as Kamen Rider Proto-Drive, the human out facing the Roidmude army all but completely on his own. This wasn't the armour he'd oh so recently worn as Machin Chaser, the Reaper. This was something in between, made by humans from a piece of technology taken from the Roidmudes. Both the armour and the name had a piece of each world in their origins, which fit so well with the man who was no longer fully human, but not truly a Roidmude, either.
Any more thoughts he may have had on the matter were interrupted when the Roidmude burst out from the mess he'd made upon landing, yelling.
"Chase!" Drive shouted, "Do it!" His arm was bandaged, explaining why he hadn't intervened to save Kiriko – he couldn't.
So it fell to him.
He ducked the Roidemude's first swing, blocked the second, and hit him twice in the chest, shoving him back. They repeated that dance several times until they were out of the warehouse completely, and he'd knocked the Roidmude into some concrete structure outside. By then, however, the Roidmude had seemed to recover from the initial beating, and now was fighting a bit better. They more or less stayed in place, rather than the new Kamen Rider shoving the Roidmude back. In fact, he wound up having to duck and dodge a lot, as the Roidmude's blades nearly missed him and shattered more concrete objects.
At one point, he literally turned his back on the Roidmude on instinct, feeling the impact of the blow but no pain. Something extra on the back of his suit (he'd felt the weight there) was blocking the damage, and actually sent the Roidmude flying back and landing on his ass.
However, this Roidmude was not the type to roll over and give in without a fight. With an enraged roar, his entire body glowed red, and he started swinging his bladed arms, hurling energy blades his way. But even those didn't do enough damage.
"Chase!" he suddenly heard Kiriko call, "Your new weapon is inside the motorcycle!"
Rather than running and getting it, Kamen Rider Chaser reached out in the bike's direction – again, on pure instinct – and sure enough, a large, polearm-type weapon came flying out of the warehouse and landed right in his hand.
'SIGNAL AXE!'
It was mostly silver, with some purple accents, but it also included a pair of squares designed to look like a crosswalk signal.
Odd.
He took a few swings at the Roidmude, feeling out the balance of the weapon and how well he'd be able to wield it. It was pretty good; not too heavy to swing around, not so light that it wouldn't do much damage. After a few more strokes, it was time to get back to business; he dealt a deep blow to the Roidmude's abdomen, then another one to the chest. As the second wound opened up, he could actually see the dark blue-grey fabric similar to the jumpsuit the Roidmude's human partner had been wearing yesterday. Acting quickly, he reached in and yanked the man out of the Roidmude's body. The man landed face-down on the gravel beneath their feet.
Now that that was taken care of, he no longer had any reason to hold back. It was time to see what his new weapon could really do. He removed the Signal Chaser from his Driver and quickly found the appropriate slot on his Signal Axe and inserted it. He also found a red button on the handle, and pressed it.
"'HISSATSU!"
He raised his axe and prepared to strike-
"WAIT FOR IT!"
What? "What was that…?" He paused and looked at his weapon, seeing that the 'Don't Walk' light was lit up. What the hell? Was it charging up or something? Who came up with this stuff? Annoyed, he planted the Signal Axe in the ground and turned back to his opponent as it continued to repeat the irritating phrase.
The Roidmude – now back to its basic Bat-type form – tried charging him, but he still had his Brake Gunner on him, so he simply shot the bastard down.
"GO FOR IT!"
Finally. He picked up the Axe and raised it above his hear.
"FULL THROTTLE!"
A holographic image of a crosswalk pattern appeared between him and the Roidmude, and he slashed accordingly, once, then twice.
A huge explosion engulfed the Roidmude, and from it, a silver core – 007 – started to float away, only to explode in mid-air.
He did it.
Holy shit, he did it. He killed a Roidmude.
He looked back at the human who'd partnered with 007, who was still lying facedown on the gravel. Drive and Kiriko were both kneeling next to him, keeping him from getting back up. They were cops, and he wasn't. "Arrest him. I've done all I can do."
Kiriko looked like she wanted to talk with him, but the enormity of the events of the past several minutes – and the entire day, overall – were finally starting to catch up to him. There would be time to talk to her, later. Right now, he needed some space.
So he walked back to his bike without another word.
"He's just shy," he heard Drive telling Kiriko, "We'll see him again."
As he rode away, it was hard to describe how he felt. One more Roidmude was no longer in existence, and he had been the one to take it out. For once in his life, he'd contributed to permanently damaging the Roidmudes' crusade, instead of simply delaying it or actively aiding it.
And it felt good. He wasn't sure if he was relieved, or satisfied, or what, but whatever he was feeling, it was a good feeling.
Maybe he didn't have a place among human society anymore, but he had a purpose. He could do this, could protect them from the Roidmudes, even if he couldn't fully make up for his past sins. And it seemed that at least two of the humans, Drive and Kiriko, were willing to support him (three, if he counted the scientist who had made his new gear).
And that wasn't the only thing he was feeling good about. Before, he wasn't sure who or what he was, besides something that blurred the line between humans and Roidmudes. Now, he could finally say that he was no longer the Reaper. He was a Kamen Rider once more.
He was Kamen Rider Chaser.
Well, that's all for now. 'Reawakening' is officially on hiatus, but I promise I will come back to it, even if I can't tell you when, at this point.
