The sky had turned dark and grey and stayed that way for the last four days, raining and thundering occasionally but never breaking to show sunlight. Now it was raining again, and there seemed to be a charge in the air that was irritating the poisoned wound hidden under five and a half feet of athletic tape on Kensei Hidenaga's arm.
He scratched at it distractedly, knowing he wasn't actually doing any good and hoping to just ignore it long enough to slip away from class and do the one thing that might give him some relief.
"You should just do it now," whispered the girl sitting next to his desk.
"No, Kiiko," he hissed. "Last thing I need is to do something weird and have even more eyes on me."
"But if you ignore it, it might get worse…what if they have to take away your arm?"
He grunted and scratched at the tape covering his arm. As if he needed this on top of everything else going on. He was distracted from where his fingers were for the second he needed to tap a button hidden under the bandages.
A rush of strength shot through his body which shook even as he realized what he'd done and tried to sit still in his seat. Kiiko covered her mouth, and the teacher's eyes seemed to zero in on him.
"Hidenaga, glad to see you volunteer," the teacher said, adjusting his glasses. "Can you tell us the English word for meaningless claims?"
"YES!" Kensei exclaimed, clutching his arm. Everyone in the classroom stared at him, the closest ones besides Kiiko leaning away from him in mild alarm. "I mean, yes, sensei…it's…" He looked down at his desk helplessly even when he knew he hadn't been taking notes for the entire class thanks to the poisonous itch on his arm. His mind was spinning from all the power he'd just sparked into his body without being in a fight to help direct it.
He glanced over at Kiiko who quickly wiggled her hand across the front of her desk, where it was hidden behind the boy sitting in front of her. Kensei's brow knitted together in confusion and so Kiiko did it again, and that time Kensei recognized what she was doing: she was making the shape of one of those American letters, H.
She traced more. Y, P, E, R.
"Hyper!" Kensei exclaimed, still quivering. One student snorted and shook her head at him. Kiiko traced another letter, B.
"Hyper bowl," Kensei said as he pronounced the syllables of the word in the unfamiliar language literally.
A few of his classmates laughed in amusement. One boy smiled supportively, who didn't do so well in English class either. The teacher raised his eyebrow, but replied, "Not bad, Hidenaga. It's 'hyperbole,' though. Try listening a little closer from now on." He looked down at the textbook in his hand again.
Kensei sat down again and whispered to Kiiko, "Thanks."
"I'm your trainer," was all she whispered back.
After classes let out, Kensei went down to the room the Kendo Club used to use. Used to use because the only member who ever came anymore was Kensei himself.
On the way he saw a mob of girls squealing and cooing over a handsome, almost effeminate boy. He looked back and his eyes met with Kensei's for a few seconds, then he looked away and walked out the gates while hardly paying attention to his admirers.
Once the door to the training room was closed, Kensei locked it and cracked the can of sports drink he'd brought with him. He took a deep swallow and sighed.
Everything had seemed to be going relatively well. The other Kamen Riders had started seeming open to the idea of joining forces, and he'd gotten a new power-up even if he was still getting used to it.
Then they'd had the shock of their lives. It turned out that the monsters they'd been fighting, the Corrupture, were really the people who'd died playing Kamen Rider Chronicle so long ago. And the monsters who'd given the three Kamen Riders their hardest fight ever had turned out to be someone each of them loved and respected.
"You all right?" Kiiko asked as she seemed to appear out of thin air next to him. Kensei jumped back a few feet.
"How'd you get in here? I locked the door."
"Yeah, but you didn't mean to keep me out too, so I let myself in," she said casually.
"How? I have the only keys anymore. Everyone else gave me theirs."
"It's an easy door," she shrugged.
"So a hard door would've kept you out?" Kensei asked, shaking his head a little.
Kiiko shrugged again. "Uh-huh," she said, then brushed it off with a wave of her hand. "You saw Yoshoku before he left? Did he say anything?"
The itch started up again under his glove, and Kensei hissed in frustration as he ripped off the bandages he'd hidden his arm under all day. A press of a button and another surge of strength raced through his body. "I can't keep this up forever, Kiiko. We've got to solve this mystery soon…and it'd be a lot easier if we had help."
"Well, good luck," Kiiko replied. "At least Yoshoku's still coming to school. I haven't heard anything from Doku at all. I'm a little worried about what he's up to."
Kensei looked at her a little incredulously. "Just a little?"
She smiled and nodded. "Because I know you'll keep me safe."
Slowly Kiiko sat down next to Kensei on the floor and didn't say anything while he finished his drink. "By the way," Kiiko spoke up. "GENM called. They wanted me to ask you to go down there and talk to the CEO today if you were okay with it."
He looked over at her, knitting his brow. "Why didn't they ask me themselves?"
"They thought you might still be upset from the fight the other night, about your brother and everything…did you tell your parents about that yet?"
"No," Kensei admitted, shaking his head. "I don't know if that would make things better or worse. I mean, my dad thinks we need to move on, finding out I'm a Kamen Rider and my brother's still alive would be a lot to take in. My mom would go nuts; she'd never let me sleep again until I found out a way to break open that portal in the sky and get Yuuma back out. Like the Corrupture would just let us."
"You know," Kiiko suggested with a light smile, "It might make them get back together, too."
"Maybe," Kensei answered, looking away. "They're probably waiting for us, right?"
A secretary with a weird kind of plain, artificial prettiness greeted Kiiko and Kensei as soon as they got inside the GENM Corp. lobby. After confirming their identities she said nothing and had her back to them the whole time they rode the elevator up to the top floor. She held out her hand to indicate for them to step out, then as soon as they did she slid back inside and the elevator closed up behind her. The two teens exchanged an uncertain look, then went ahead.
The doors to the CEO's office were wide open, and behind the desk sat maybe the most unremarkable man Kensei had ever seen. His shiny round head was almost totally bald except for a thin widow's peak down the middle and stubbly hair on the sides. The sight of him just seemed to slide off Kensei's eyes, and instead the teen was drawn to look at the colorful video game posters decorating the windows behind him. Even the one in the middle showing a bald monk surrounded by zombies, "Monk of Temple."
The name plaque on the front of his desk said "Tsukuru Koboshi".
"They're here," he said with a nondescript smile into his computer screen, then looked up at Kiiko and Kensei. "Hello. Glad to see you're doing better, Hidenga-san."
"I've had a few days to let it sink in," Kensei said with a shrug, and glanced over at Kiiko. She didn't seem to notice.
"Well, I hope your memories of what happened are still clear," Koboshi said. "We're hoping you can confirm if you saw someone specific while you were looking through that 'portal' your report mentioned." He held out a handful of 10 x 12 photos that Kensei picked up.
On the front of the first one was a young, almost boyish man wearing a doctor's white coat and a bright green shirt. It showed a picture of two men in denim overalls, one with a shovel and one with a pickaxe, digging their way into a cave where a giant worm and a brown demon seemed unhappy to greet them. Across the top was the title: Dig Champs.
"Kiiko, isn't this the name of an old video game? Dig Champs?" he asked.
"Yeah, it is. It wasn't very good," she replied.
"It's not about the game on his shirt," Koboshi interrupted them, looking a little exasperated. "Do you remember seeing him inside the portal?"
"Actually, yeah, I do," Kensei replied. "He was way in the back but he had a bunch of glowing shapes around him that looked just like Rider Gashats."
Koboshi smiled a little and nodded, Kensei guessed that it was the answer he'd been hoping to hear. "What about the next one?"
Giving the CEO a curious look, Kensei flicked to the picture underneath. It showed another man in a white doctor's smock. His hair was lighter and his expression deadly serious. There was a strength in his eyes that made Kensei forget for just a second it was only a photo. "Yeah, this guy was there too. He had a Gashat near him."
"Excellent," Koboshi said, smiling even wider. "The next one?"
Obligingly Kensei flicked to the next photo. It was another young man but with a white streak in his hair. He didn't wear a doctor's smock like the other two, but he had on a yellow scarf, or something, on over a plain black shirt. He was looking off to the side a little with a sour expression like he wasn't taking the photo shoot seriously. "I remember him," Kiiko spoke up. "He had some Gashats near him too."
"I don't remember seeing him," Kensei replied.
"I'd never forget a face that scary," Kiiko shivered.
Without waiting for Koboshi to prompt him, Kensei flicked to the next photo, showing a cocky, almost bored-looking man in a red Hawaiian shirt covered with white sailboats. "I remember him, I think. In the back near those other guys," Kiiko said.
With a shrug he flicked to another, of another young man wearing a black jacket over a bright blue shirt, a cocky smirk on his face. Kensei looked over at Kiiko, but she shook her head. The last two were of the exact same woman. She was pretty, he guessed, with medium brown hair and wearing a pink nurse's smock with a name badge that said "Karino". In the other one her outfit was way more garish, with a short pink wig and a weird little yellow and green hat titlted at an angle on the side of her head. She had on a yellow dress and white sleeves, and it took Kensei a second to realize she was cosplaying as Poppy Pipopapo from that one rhythm game. Maybe it was unfair of him to judge, but she seemed a little old for something like that
"No, I don't remember seeing either of these ladies," Kensei answered.
"Definitely not," Kiiko agreed.
Koboshi nodded slowly. Maybe he'd been expecting those people to go unnoticed. They handed back the photos but he exchanged it with one other one. It was of a slightly older man than the others, his hair well-coifed and wearing a black shiny blazer, grey shirt and purple necktie. There was what Kensei would've thought was a mischievous light in his eyes.
"Is there any chance you saw him too while you were looking through the portal?" Koboshi asked, his expression slightly grim, his hands folded together tightly on his desk.
"No, I don't think so," Kensei answered. "There were so many people, though."
"I didn't see that man," Kiiko added.
Koboshi sighed. "I don't know if it would be more worrying if you did or didn't see him."
"Who are these people?" Kensei asked. "They must be important if you brought us here in person to find out if we recognized any of them. Wait…these are the old Kamen Riders, aren't they?"
Koboshi nodded grimly. "Yes, they and their assistants who've gone missing. The last man-"
"…is Kuroto Dan, the old head of this company, right?" Kensei finished for him. "Yeah. He was an evil Rider for a while, then he helped them beat the Bugsters but only because he was working on his own plan behind their backs or something, wasn't he?"
Koboshi nodded.
"But what do you need to worry about him for? He died, didn't he?" Kiiko asked in reply.
The CEO sighed and clenched his hands together tighter on his desk. "The Ministry of Health is very worried that a new generation of monsters means he might not be, and that he might in fact be behind it somehow. But…at least this means we know where the previous Kamen Riders are, and that their equipment is getting back to them as you find it."
"It's true, then?!" a sharp female voice interrupted them. Koboshi gaped and recoiled from one of the computer monitors on his desk.
"Who's that?" asked Kiiko.
Koboshi's mouth flapped open and shut a few times before he managed to find his voice. "It's…it's one of our major shareholders," he stuttered. He turned the flatscreen around so it faced the two teens.
The screen showed a long-haired woman whose dark eyes stared out from it so intently Kensei felt sure she was about to burn a hole in his chest. A dialogue tag down in the corner gave her name as Nico Saiba.
"You know where Taiga Hanaya is?" she practically screeched at them, making Kiiko and Kensei took a step back in surprise. "Is he alive?! When are you getting him back?" she demanded.
"We think he's alive," Kensei managed to reply after he recovered a second later. "We don't totally understand what's happening, so I don't really have a timeframe—"
"They need a way to find the Gashats before they activate," she cut him off. "Tsukuru, get your people to find a way to do that."
"But Saiba-san," he sputtered, "we're so close to a breakthrough on more powerful new Gashats for the Riders…"
Kensei looked over at Kiiko, who shrugged, a neutral look on her face. Koboshi looked over at them, opening his mouth slightly, silently pleading for help. Putting a hand to his mouth, Kensei cleared his throat. "Ah…Saiba-san, right?" The lady on the screen gave him a sharp look that seemed to push him back a step with an unseen force, but didn't say anything. "We were warned by people with inside information that much worse Corrupture will be coming soon. We'll be needing more powerful weapons to protect people."
"Which one are you?" she asked, a little pointedly.
"Utsura, Saiba-san," Kensei replied.
Next she looked past him at Kiiko. "And who are you? The sidekick?"
Kiiko bristled, clenching her teeth and her fists at the same time. "I'm the trainer, thank you very much!"
The face in the monitor glared at Kensei again. "Who told you about worse monsters?"
"My brother. He'd become one of them."
"And you still trust him?"
"Honestly?" Kensei asked. "I have a feeling he'd make a better Kamen Rider than I would, but he died fighting in Kamen Rider Chronicle."
A long, uncomfortable moment passed in silence. "That's what Emu would've said, I bet," she finally sighed.
"I hope I get to meet him and find out," Kensei replied. "For now I'd kind of like to hear why nobody told us if they're so close to a whole new bunch of upgrades."
"Thank you both for coming in!" Koboshi said hurriedly, turning the monitor back around and waving his hand toward the door. Shaking his head, Kensei humored him, shutting the doors behind them as they left.
"She was annoying," Kiiko said as soon as the door clicked shut. Kensei snorted as he looked over at her. "What?" Kiiko asked, totally nonplussed.
He snorted again at her question. "Nothing. Let's get out of here." Giving him a weird look that landed between Kensei's shoulders, Kiiko shrugged and followed.
As they got outside the building, neither of them realized they were being watched.
After he shut the door behind him and took of his shoes, Soichiro Hidenaga heard the rice cooker lightly percolating. But over it he heard a familiar series of sounds coming from the second floor of the house. "Kensei-kun? I hope you've gotten your schoolwork done!"
"We're doing important training, Hidenaga-sama!" a girl's voice called down the stairs.
"Oh. You've invited your friend over…again."
On the floor above him, Kensei and Kiiko each shook a pair of short batons as smiling dolphins danced back and forth on the waves on his TV. Another 10,000 points jumped out as the dolphins crossed and did a loop-the-loop before diving back underwater. On Kiiko's side a huge red X covered the screen and 10 points was added to her score. A pirate ship carrying a crew of bandana-wearing skeletons sailed onto her side of the screen and stuck their tongues out at her.
"You're getting really good!" Kiiko smiled supportively at him, missing even more signals and the skeletons jumping onto each other's shoulders to form a pyramid and all making faces at her at the same time.
"Thanks, Kiiko," Kensei said, not wanting to comment on his "trainer's" own skill at the game. "We should probably stop soon, though. My dad's gonna want to see me in a little bit, since I'm only back here for a while."
"We can't just stop your training in the middle!"
"My dad's not going to think this is 'training'…"
Kiiko looked over at her friend in disbelief, and as she missed even more signals stormclouds covered the sky on her side of the screen. Giant rippling waves tossed the pirate ship up and the skeletons on it were spun in the air every time the boat bounced up off the water. "Did you even tell him you're a Kamen Rider yet?" she asked.
He shut off the GameDeck and sighed. "It's about time I did, isn't it?"
As they came down Soichiro was setting out two places, then saw Kiiko coming down too and his expression hardened a little "Is…your friend joining us again tonight, Kensei-kun?"
"If that's okay, tou-san."
"I'm glad you've made such a good new friend, but I hope you're not spending all your time playing games. You'll have to start thinking about universities before too long, you know," Soichiro reminded his son.
"He has a really important reason," Kiiko replied for him.
Kensei tried to hold up his hand to quiet her, but his father frowned. "He has an even more important reason to do well in school."
But Kensei should've known that Kiiko was too much of a "trainer" to back down when her prize pupil was being maligned. "He's saving the world!" she blurted out.
"By playing a video game when he's supposed to be studying?" Soichiro demanded. "Young lady, friendship is one thing, but Kensei has his future to think of."
"Tou-san," Kensei interrupted as gently as he could, but he didn't manage to hide a hard edge in his voice.
His father looked up, eyes wide at the interruption. "What is it, Kensei?"
"…she's telling the truth. It is to save the world." Not giving his father a chance to doubt him, Kensei held up his arm and pulled back his sleeve, showing the Mighty Hand. "This is a weapon they gave me to make me stronger against those new monsters you must've heard about."
Again before Soichiro could speak, Kensei got out his Gamer Driver. "Yuuma sent this to me."
"Yuuma's dead," Soichiro said quickly.
"No, he isn't," Kiiko replied. "Not really."
That remark made a furious Soichiro whip around to face her, so Kensei quickly jumped in. "He's not. We saw him, he told us what happened to everyone else who died playing the game. They're alive, but they're trapped. We're going to find a way to get them out. Get Yuuma out too."
For a horrible minute, there was no noise at all but the gentle clatter of the rice cooker. Soichiro was clenching his teeth in rage so hard Kensei was sure he saw a spark fly out.
Finally he couldn't hold it in anymore. "GIVE ME THAT RIGHT THIS MINUTE!" he howled and grabbed for the Gamer Driver, but Kensei dodged backward out of his father's reach. Soichiro turned on Kiiko instead then. "YOU! YOU'VE BEEN ENCOURAGING ALL THIS, HAVEN'T YOU?! YOU AND HIS MOTHER, I'LL BET!"
"Because someone has to save us from Corrupture, and he's the best choice! Have you even seen the other ones?" Kiiko said defensively.
"GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE! DON'T EVER COME BACK! MY FAMILY'S GIVEN ENOUGH ALREADY!" he roared and stabbed his finger in the direction of the front door.
In spite of everything she'd easily been willing to face before, Kiiko pushed past him and ran for the door. Kensei put away his Gamer Driver and with a last look back at his father, ran after her. As the door hung open behind them, Soichiro's hung his head as his anger had a chance to fade.
It turned out Kensei already knew where to look for his friend. He went to the park where she'd gone after running away from him at the hospital before, but she was walking the path along the edge instead of cowering on a bench this time. As soon as she saw him coming she stopped and cut across the grass to get to him.
"You okay?" he asked quietly, and she nodded with a soft smile. "Good…guess I didn't know just how much leaving this behind meant to my dad."
"He thought your brother died for a long time, right?" Kiiko said and put her hand on his shoulder.
"Yeah."
"Well, he doesn't know how awesome you are yet. He just needs to see you beat up some monsters, then he'll apologize."
Kensei looked at her, brows, knitted, then laughed.
"What? That's how it always works," Kiiko defended herself.
"Sure, okay," Kensei laughed lightly.
"What? It does!" Kiiko protested. Then her eyes seemed to glaze and she stumbled, catching herself on Kensei's shoulder.
He tapped her cheek with his palm and her eyes cleared. "What's wrong, Kiiko?" he asked, trying to hide his worry.
It took her a minute to answer. "I can feel Corrupture near. They're strong. Stronger than I've ever felt before."
Kensei starred hard at her. "Stronger than Yuuma?"
She nodded gravely at him. "There's something different about its power, it feels kind of like…you."
He took out his Gamer Driver again and locked it around his waist. "Well, let's go see he feels about me."
A purple mist, made of flickering blocky shapes, was blowing away as they appeared, a gang of people in mismatched costumes. Chefs. Feudal foot soldiers. Leather-clad motorcycle punks with metal studs all over their clothes. Each of them with a purple head shaped like a virus.
One of the bikers smashed the windshield of a car with the heavy chain in his hand. A pair of foot soldiers grabbed the side of another car and tipped it over, rolling it through the window in the front of a building.
People ran as the Corrupture Cells, the various enemy characters, spread out across the street, swinging their weapons as their giant virus heads bobbed back and forth grotesquely.
Through the people running for their lives came a pair of teenagers running the opposite way. The En En Chambara Gashat was already in Kensei's hand, but he stopped as he saw what the menace was. "Just those guys?" he asked.
Kiiko shook her head. "Not them, they're small. Something else was here, it was definitely a Corrupture!" she said, almost pleading.
"I believe you, Kiiko, really," Kensei said, and her posture relaxed. "But let's start with the obvious problem."
"Kenjutsu Level 2," the game made its announcement as Kensei hit the trigger and put it into its slot. His familiar yellow suit crawled into existence over his body and the pieces of his armor came spinning through the air, his helmet being the last thing to lock into place.
In a flash Utsura's two wakizashi were in his hands, then he ran into the crowd of Corrupture enemies. A chef swung a frying pan at his head but Utsura rammed his fore head against it, his heavy helmet knocking it out of the Corrupture's hands.
Foot soldiers jabbed at him with their spears butt Utsura swung his swords in an arc that hit them with a sound like small sonic boom, knocking the spears into the air. He went into a spinning kick and knocked the two Cells flat on their backs. A biker swung his chain and it wrapped around Utsura's neck. The Rider replied by dropping his sword and yanking hard on the chain, pulling the surprised biker Cell face-first into a punch that knocked him over the roof of a car.
As Utsura made quick work of the Corrupture Cells, all his attention was on the ones in front of him, and he didn't see one dressed as a police officer aiming a gun at Utsura's head. His finger squeezed the trigger.
And the police Cell was the one who went down, crackling pixels spilling from the wound in his chest. For a minute everything seemed to stop, then Utsura and his opponents looked the other way from the defeated police Cell. Standing on the fire escape of a building was Kamen Rider Sling, his Pamaka still smoking.
"Everyone all right?" he called down.
"Did you ask if I'm okay?" Utsura asked back, not quite sure he could believe it.
Sling shook his head and sighed. "Of course you can't take care of yourself without me babysitting you," he said, then looked up and shot down a pair of foot soldier Cells running to help the police one he'd already shot. Aiming his gun high he jumped down and ran over. "Looks like it's happening already," he muttered.
"Kiiko says there should be something else around, something a lot stronger," Utsura replied, looking over the fallen bodies of the defeated Corrupture. He turned and looked over at Sling. "You haven't said a word to us for days, what made you show up?"
"I found out I'd been trying to shoot my mom this whole time," Sling replied, looking the other way. "Don't try and tell me it didn't take you any time at all to get your head around that, Hidenaga."
"Okay, that makes a lot of sense," Utsura admitted, running a hand over the back of his helmet. "Maybe it was a little quicker for me since I had someone to help catch me," he looked over his shoulder at Kiiko, who canted her head curiously.
Seeing no other enemies, Sling holstered his gun. "Have you two heard anything from Dasao? He's in your class, right?"
"No," Utsura replied. "He hasn't been to school at all since the other night at the castle. I guess he's still dealing with finding out who we were fighting."
Sling turned and looked over at him. "The way you say that…"
"The way I say what?" Utsura asked. He grimaced as his arm started to itch again and he pressed a button on his Mighty Hand, releasing a soothing rush of strength.
"He's 'still dealing with it.' Like you already think he'll figure it out and come back and help fight," Sling said with a little laugh.
Utsura shrugged. "He was always the most driven of, us all, remember?" he started to say, but stopped Sling laughed at his remark.
"Yes, yes he was," the cowboy Rider agreed.
Under his own mask, Utsura smiled a little. "I don't see him just giving up and never coming back, you know?" he went on.
"I might think about staying away too, if I were you," a voice they'd never heard interrupted. The two Riders turned to where the voice had come from and there stood a young man in a black jacket and blue jeans.
The first thing Utsura thought was that he looked like an evil Yoshoku, then caught himself thinking that and wondered how long he'd thought of Yoshoku that way. The boy was handsome enough, but he had a cold, superior kind of smile on his face and his short dark hair was so heavily slicked and shining it almost looked more like a plastic helmet with tiny grooves all over it.
"And why should we do that?" Sling retorted.
"Because you're paying so much attention to me you're about to get jumped and you don't even know it," he leered.
The next thing they heard was the clink of a chain. Sling and Utsura spun around just as it wrapped around the blade of Utsura's sword, the biker Cell trying to yank his weapon out of his hand. Utsura yanked back, pulling the Cell close to him and knocking the monster off the ground with a punch.
The police Cell that Sling had shot down before was jerkily rising up off the ground as if being yanked up again by invisible strings on its arms and shoulders. The wound Sling's bullet had left was dripping pixels still but closed shut again as they watched.
The biker Cell was pulled back up onto his feet by some weird invisible force too, just like the rest of the ones that had looked defeated a minute before. As the now-uninjured Cells closed in for another attack, Sling fired his gun in an arc at them and Utsura slashed both swords, pushing them back a few steps. Then Cells started in at them again, swinging chains and brandishing spears.
"You'll never beat them with pathetic attacks like those!" the boy laughed.
The Gashacon Tana, still glowing with the power of his Mighty Hand, went right through the biker Corrupture. He looked down at the blade as Utsura pulled it back out, then fell back on the ground, bursting into a cloud of pixels. Sling gunned down two foot soldiers, but a second later they just rose back up and stabbed at him with their spears again.
"Let me show you how it's done, little kids," the boy said, then pulled something out from inside his jacket. Utsura froze, expecting to be shot in the back, but then the boy put whatever he was holding on over his eyes, and held up something else.
"Swashbuckling Level 30!"
"Level 30?" Sling said, shocked.
The boy just smirked and plugged his Gashat into the side of his visor. "High Seas Scourge! Plunder the riches! Plunder the wenches! Rule the Oceans!" it roared in a voice like their own equipment. There was a flash of light, but just before he had to look away Utsura was sure he saw a log on the boy's visor: a gold M with a silver V imposed on the middle.
Then he'd been changed into something much more menacing than a teenager with too much hair gel. He was wearing dark blue and red Kame Rider armor just like theirs, with the same huge eyes set in his mask and a giant gleaming cutlass in one hand.
"Call me, Corsair," he said. "And call yourselves obsolete!"
See You next game…