Steve woke up face-down in a hole. It wasn't the worst hole he had awoken in within the past few months. His body was wrapped in the white armor, what he had called his larval form, and it was only thanks to that that he was still alive, but he felt pain, a strange pain. He had no bones to shatter, his organs were dispersed through his body, his muscles pulled upon his limbs from within like the strings of a puppet. His exoskeleton was strong, and had let him survive an impact that would have reduced a human being to a balloon filled with raw sausage. But inside the armor, he was still a creature of flesh, and flesh, however strong, could be beaten and battered with enough raw force.

Steve was suffering from a concussion on every internal organ at once. He pressed his face back into the dirt and prayed for death to come swiftly. He would not be so lucky.

"Steve!" somebody shouted. There were heavy footfalls swiftly drawing closer, and Steve groaned. There were hands on his back but the same voice spoke up. "No, don't move him, he might have a broken spine!" said Johnny C.

"He doesn't have a spine, Johnny," said Jimenez.

"…okay, right," said Johnny. "I'm used to treating humans. Help me get him up."

The two others pulled him from the dirt, bright light streaming into his bulbous red eyes. He was in the grass, resting on an embankment by a sickly brown river. If he had landed just a few yards away, he would have landed in the water and sank like a stone. Exo's silver mouthparts opened, spewing forth a stream of acid that left a pool of sickly green liquid eating away at the dirt. His friends helped him to a sitting position, his tremendous red eyes fixed upon them even as his head lolled from side to side, like a drunkard staring at a pair of inquisitive police officers.

"We saw you fall, Steve, what happened?" asked Jimenez, as Johnny brushed dirt away from the rider's crest. "Did you get them?"

"Got… got the one…" said Steve, his voice dragging in the dirt as it left his mouth. "Invis'ble. Other… didn't see…"

"Steve, are you alright?" said Johnny, moving around to look him in the eyes. "Don't try to talk, just stay with me."

"Need the Rider…" said Steve, trying to push himself to his feet on arms that would not cooperate. "Have to get the Rider…"

"You are the Rider, Steve, remember?" said Johnny, taking a small penlight from his pocket. "Okay, just look right into this," he said, and shone it on one of Steve's solid, red, unblinking eyes. "…and… right… okay."

"Are you sure you're a doctor?" said Jimenez.

"My instincts are failing me here, okay?" said Johnny. "Steve, look, you have the armor on, you're in battle mode… you're the Masked Rider!"

"…Steve…" said the Rider, his head lolling forward. "'m Steve…"

"He's lost it, we need to get him out of here," said Jimenez, trying to lift Steve to his feet, but Johnny held out a hand.

"Hang on a second…" he said, and put a hand on Steve's other shoulder. "Are we talking to Steve now?"

"Yuuuuuuuh…"

"But we're not talking to the Rider?"

"Nuuuuuuuh…" Steve said, his head raising just enough to look Johnny in the eye. "Red… Blue… Green… Purple… Riders. White… Steve."

"Oh… crap…" said Johnny. "J, we need to get him out of here, he's going through some kind of breakdown."

"Only the beginning of his troubles, I would say," said a strange voice. A young woman was standing in the grass, a woman who had not been standing there a second ago. She was barefoot, and wore a loose, white sundress, flapping gently in the afternoon breeze, and a red, wide-brimmed sun hat, covered in white polka dots. A smile was on her face, but malice was in her eyes. "Hello, boys. It seems you've discovered my little surprise."

Jimenez immediately drew his gun and fired, putting three bullets into the woman's torso, staining her dress with blood and viscera. She never lost her smile, and the bloody holes began to close within seconds.

"Good try, but you'll need to do better than that," she said. "Out of those special bullets, are we?"

Jimenez grunted, but kept his gun trained on the strange woman anyway.

"What the hell did you do?" asked Johnny.

"You expect me to simply tell you?" asked the woman. "Well, the master has faith in you, so I may as well give you a hint. There's a poison inside of him. As long as he stays in one form, it's only killing him slowly, but every time he changes, my little potion will be tearing him apart from the inside. From what I've seen, he's changed five times just in the last hour alone. After the next one… well…" her form shimmered, and her body transformed into the inhuman form of Amantina, her fungal crown looking bright red in the open sunlight. "I doubt there's going to be much left of our hero."

"So… so I have to fight you… like this," said Steve, getting shakily to his feet. The others tried to hold him down, but even in this state he could push them aside like he was throwing off his bedsheets. His voice was shaking more than his knees.

"You can certainly try," said Amantina.

"Steve, no…" Johnny said, his voice low. "If we run we can get to the van, I can take you to-"

There was a flash of white and Johnny was on the ground, with the monster's foot pressing down on his throat. Steve's knees buckled and Jimenez drew his gun on Amantina, but he never got a chance to fire. Her fist was a blur of motion and Jimenez' gun was spiraling off into the river, the agent's hand dangling uselessly from his shattered wrist.

"Hirba was mine," she said, all sense of mockery stripped away from the cold steel of her voice. Steve rose to his knees, looking up from his place in the dirt. "I will not be denied this."

Steve let out a wordless cry of rage, leaping to a frenzied pounce in a single burst of motion, his fist slamming hard into her jaw as his body crashed with hers. The two of them sprawled in the grass until Amantina kicked him off, rolling away from Steve and flipping onto her feet.

"Good… fight with the last of your strength!" the monster said, as Steve struggled to his knee. "I want to see the light fade from your eyes!"

"You… you…" Steve gasped, pushing himself up. A fire was growing in the sole of his foot. "…you shut your mouth!"

"Are you reduced to playground insults already?" sneered the monster.

"I said shut your damn mouth!" said Steve, and broke into a run.

Amantina dropped to a fighting pose, but Steve didn't meet her. He leapt into the air, his body twisting in mid-air, bringing his foot down in a devastating flying kick square in the center of her chest. Steve dropped to the ground and the monster fell backwards, the imprint of his kick burning in her flesh. Moment by moment it grew brighter, spreading across her body…

…and then it faded. A few seconds passed and it was like it had never been there.

"You… you're pathetic!" the monster laughed. "A case of the flu and suddenly you can't even kill a woman!"

"Damn you!" Steve shouted, his voice screeching like nails on slate. "I told you to shut your mouth!"

He jumped again, and the monster didn't even have time to move. His flaming kick drove straight into her chest, slamming her to the ground like a sledgehammer dropped from orbit. Steve dropped back into a crouch, panting, and gasping, watching the burning seals trace over his foe's prone body…

"Aaaah… ahh ha ha ha haaa…" the laugh was little more than a staccato wheeze, but there was triumph in it, as the fire faded and died out. "Is that… the best… you've got…?"

The wheezing voice trailed off into laughter as Steve's brilliant red eyes stared down at her, his white-armored chest rising and falling.

"What do you think… boy?" she said, her limbs twitching uselessly. "Do you have… one more?"

"…please… please, no more," Steve panted. "You're done… just… let it be done, please."

She laughed again, sad and hollow.

"I'm too broken to fight, but not too broken to die," she said, raising her head to look at him. "Give me an hour… I'll be walking again. …more than can be said for you, I think," she paused, taking in a long, rattling breath. "No… this can only end in one way. This can only end in fire."

"…why?" Steve asked, his gaze sliding away from her black, hollow eyes. "Why are you even… do you want to die?"

"Want?" the monster shook her head. "I want for nothing in the care of the master. And he has faith in you."

Something broke inside Steve, and he could stand to hear no more. He brought his foot down upon her and smote her to the ground. There was fire in his attack, and rage, and despair, but it was almost a perfunctory gesture, the gears of some great machine completing their final turning. Amantina's face bore no expression, but Steve could swear he felt her smiling as the flames ripped apart her body from the inside, enveloping both fighters in a vast conflagration.

At the end, the monster was naught but a blackened shadow on the grass, and the armor of the rider was ash, blowing away in the wind. Only Steven Tooms remained, dropping bonelessly to the ground.