Tachibana motorsport turned out to be little more than an abandoned garage deep within the abandoned warehouse district. Briggs spotted it from five blocks away. The Tachibana logo on the front sign was the only fresh paint within miles. She pulled her black SUV into the parking lot, the driver's side facing away from the building, and climbed out with her gun drawn and the body of the car in front of her. The interior was dark, and there was no sign of any movement through the broken windows.

"All clear," Briggs said, thumping on the rear window. Nikki opened the door just wide enough for one eye to peek out.

"Are you sure I can't stay out here?" she said, her voice a barely audible squeal. "This glass is bulletproof, right?"

"How long do you think that will hold off one of those things?" Briggs asked.

"…I am choosing not to answer that," said Nikki.

"Look, as long as there are these monsters running about, I can't afford to leave you alone," said Briggs. "I've got enough anti-armor rounds to hold one of those things off. You're a lot safer when we're together."

Nikki made a noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a groan as she slipped out of the car.

"Never split the party," she said, falling in behind the taller agent, trying to make herself as short as possible. "The minute you start shooting, I am making a Nikki-shaped hole in the nearest wall."

"I'll be right behind you," said Briggs, smirking.

"Hell no, I am staying behind you!" Nikki snapped back.

The door was unlocked, and opened at the slightest touch. The interior was as ill-kept and ravaged by time as the exterior, lit only by stray beams of sunlight that broke through the dusty windows. Briggs and Nikki had to pick their way through a veritable maze of metal shelving units, oil-soaked cardboard boxes and piles of rusted, dis-used machine parts. It reminded Briggs of an abandoned storage unit she had once found a corpse in. Gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, they crept through the shelves like they were picking their way through a labyrinth.

As they made their way further in, a new motif emerged in the clutter. Racks upon racks of weapons lined the shelves, as did boxes of ammunition. One shelf had three rows of matte black M1911s, another was floor-to-ceiling shotguns, ranging from sawn-off double-barreled hand cannons to pistol-grip SPAS-12s. Around the next corner was a rack of stripped-down, short-barreled M4s, each one heavily customized but completely identical, and resting on a shelf all to itself was an M79 grenade launcher given the kind of reverence normally reserved for the bones of a saint.

"We need guns… lots of guns," Nikki whispered, eyeing the rows upon rows of military hardware surrounding them. "I don't know about you, but I'm feeling safer already."

"All stripped down for close-quarters use," said Briggs, pausing to examine what looked to be a set of bulky knuckledusters made to fire 20-gauge shotgun shells. "More armor-piercing ammo than I've ever seen. I don't know if I should get an autograph or the ATF."

"You are surprisingly calm about this," said Nikki. "Stop it."

"I've just got a familiar feeling about all this…" Briggs muttered. She turned the next corner, gun held in front of her, as the labyrinth of guns and shelves ended and she entered into an open space. This room was free of clutter or disorder, all of it organized with military precision. At the far side of the room was a wall-sized dry erase board covered in writing and photographs, but it was too dark to see anything other than vague shapes. One entire wall of the room was made of row upon row of TV monitors, their screens on but showing nothing, casting a deathly gray light across the bare floor. In the exact center of this room, facing a steel garage door, was a motorcycle; a bulky, low-slung cruiser with an upsized engine and a matte black fairing; a bike that looked like a crouching panther ready to spring forth to the kill.

At the back of the room, standing before a steel table, was a man dressed head-to-toe in black leather armor. His back was turned, and Briggs only caught a glimpse of what might lie underneath that costume as he lowered a black helmet down onto his head. He turned around, and Briggs saw the white skull painted across the visor, shining in the cold, grey, CRT light.

"Badass!" Nikki whispered. Briggs rolled her eyes and slipped her flashlight into her jacket pocket, gripping her pistol with both hands.

"Agent Briggs," said the Skull Rider, stepping forward. "You found the breadcrumbs. Smart and foolish."

"Do not come any closer," said Briggs. Her voice wasn't loud, but there was iron in it. "I knew you weren't right the moment I met you. Professor, now, she had me fooled. What is she, your monster girlfriend?"

"Monster?" said the Skull Rider, stepping around the bike. "A truth, but a cruel one. You can't fight the evils of this world without feeling it creeping beneath your skin. The wounds we can't see will leave the deepest scars, agent."

"Who the hell is this guy?" Nikki whispered.

"Another sidekick?" said Skull Rider, tilting his head. "You do seem to attract them."

"I said not another step!" Briggs shouted. The Skull Rider obliged, stopping in his place and holding up his hands. Briggs didn't need to see his face, she could read the sarcasm in his body language. "What the hell do you want with us?"

"We're on the same side, Agent Briggs," said the Skull Rider. "I knew you'd never accept my kind of help if it was offered openly. All you'd have to do is not ask questions, not go barging in where you weren't needed. Everything I've done has been to help you, and I ask for nothing but your trust."

"You can't trust a stranger in a mask," said Briggs, sweat beading on her forehead. "You could be one of those monsters under there and I wouldn't know until I felt the knife in my gut."

"If I were one of them-"

"I'd already be dead?" said Briggs. "Maybe, or maybe it's just not convenient for you to kill me now. What about next week, can you pencil me in for death on Tuesday at three?"

"Don't you think you're being a little paranoid?" asked the Skull Rider.

"…he's not wrong, Agent B," said Nikki. Briggs glared over her shoulder at her and she retreated, letting out a tiny squeak.

"Agent, please," said the Skull Rider, his voice softer, his hands out in a gesture of sincerity. "Trust is not so hard a thing to give, is it?"

"Trust…" Briggs sighed. "My name is Helen Jamillah Briggs, special agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Seattle Field Office. I was born in 1969 Angel Grove, I was a cop for 6 years, in bureau for three, top of my class at Quantico. I haven't spoken with my family in two years, I can't keep so much as a plant alive for more than a week, and I think I'm going blind in my good eye. …I like to knit, and I will taser you if you tell anyone."

"…I'm familiar with your background, Agent Briggs," said the Skull Rider, tilting his head. "I'm not sure what you're trying to prove."

"I'm trying to prove that I am who I say I am," she said, putting a hand to her chest. "You know my name. You know my skills, you know what I'm about, and you know what I stand for. I don't know a single thing about you, and you ask me to take you on nothing but your word? You may as well be lying to my face every second you wear that goddamn mask."

"There are… things I am not otherwise at liberty to say," the Rider said. "I have my orders, just as you."

"Who gives you your orders, then?" said Briggs. "Can you even tell me that?"

"…in for a penny… to hell with it," said the Skull Rider. "You deserve to know."

Black-gloved hands gripped the helmet and began to lift it off his head. There was a blinding flash of darkness that chased away the light, and then the armored rider was… smaller. Slender. Petite. The rider pulled the skull-marked helmet away, and ran a delicate hand through her blonde hair.

"I work for the same man as you, Agent Briggs," said Jeanne-Michelle de Bouchard, without a trace of an accent. "Assistant Director Ken'ichiro Taki."

"…what," said Briggs, lowering her gun in shock.

"What the hell are you people talking about?" cried Nikki, her eyes as wide as golf balls and her hands buried in burying her dark hair. "Who the hell is Ken'ichiro Taki? What the hell did I just see?"

"Oh, little girl," said de Bouchard, fishing a small remote out of her breast pocket. "You have only just begun to see."

She pressed a button. A screen amongst the wall of monitors lit up, showing a man astride a motorcycle. The footage was old, it looked at least thirty years, but it had been lovingly preserved. The bike sped down a dirt path faster and faster until it hit a steep ramp, launching it into the air like it was fired from a cannon. The man jumped off in mid-air, leaping with such force that he could turn it into a somersault. He shouted a word that Briggs didn't understand.

"HENSHIN!"

There was a flash or multi-colored light from silver device he wore on his belt. When he landed, he was transformed. He wore some kind of black, skin-tight bodysuit, with green armor on his chest and racing stripes down the side. A red scarf flapped in the breeze, trailing behind him like a wisp of flame. And he wore a mask, a silver-green mask, with eyes that were round and bulbous and shone bright red. Eyes like an insect.

She knew right then that she was looking at another Rider.

"There is so much more to show you," de Bouchard said, as a second screen lit up, and then a third, and then a fourth, and Riders of all possible description filled the wall of monitors. "These are the Kamen Riders."