Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Kamen Rider belongs to Shotaro Ishinomori and Toei.
"Where… where am I?"
It was the first of Takeshi Hongo's questions when he awoke. He winced from a slight ringing, followed by a loud, slow, and constant beep, beep, beep of a computer. Then, he looked around a shadowy room through a light haze of red, a haze made by larger lenses covering his eyes. Echoed breathing told him he was wearing a helmet, but he failed to reach over and touch it.
Hongo's breathing quickened after he pulled on his arms and legs. A metal cuff rattled on each limb, keeping them strapped to the table which his back rested on. He pulled again and again, and both his attempts ended the same. On his last try, he heard voices outside the room, not inside.
"What is going on?" was Hongo's second question, and he focused on the voices for answers.
"... will need to monitor the energy output…"
"... mind is showing signs of resistance..."
"... worry when we come to it… left is the last of the modifications…"
He couldn't process what he heard over the three mechanical arms lowering from the ceiling. As they hovered over Hongo, he at last saw the faces of three men in lab coats watching inside an observation room and a glass window. Before he could wonder, one mechanical arm placed something on his waist, and another screwed it in.
The loud drill drowned Hongo's rasps, and his body convulsed as much as it could under his restraints. The pain ceased, giving Hongo the chance to rest briefly for what came next.
"... properly placed in. Proceeding with energy transfer."
For the briefest of seconds, Hongo saw the maniacal glee of the scientists. Then, a yellow light overtook him. A gust of wind flew over him, and energy coursed through his body with several volts.
With that energy, Hongo screamed in pain. Lots and lots of pain.
It kept Hongo so busy to notice his left arm had shook in its restraint until he broke free. Having swung the arm so hard, it trembled greatly like the rest of his limbs while he tried to sit up as best as he could. Doing so, he heard one voice speak behind the window again.
"... for security! Quickly!"
A door on the far wall opened, and more figures rushed in. In the light, their dark masked faces moved in and out of Hongo's reddened gaze. Their hands grabbed and tried to restrain him. While he struggled back, his assailants' alarmed voices, and the voices of his captors above, reached his ears.
"He's breaking loose!"
"Hold him down!"
"Quick! Bring that sedative before he breaks-!"
Hongo swung his right arm, the cuff on it going snap. Both his limbs threw the goons off and sent their bodies crashing through the window. Hongo stared at the glassy fragments that had fallen in his prison, and his human eyes widened under his fake ones at the gigantic hole he had made. In that hole, the three scientists stared back in horror. One ran away, shouting for security again. Hongo himself wasted no more time.
Ripping each leg free, he planted them on the table and glared up at the men in white. They were at least five feet up, so Hongo bent his knees to leap and grab the window's edge. He didn't expect to easily leap, soar through the newly-made hole, and crash into the far wall! Concrete and lined lead that stopped Hongo had been torn free too.
Hongo again looked at his body in amazement. He only had a glimpse of his new form-covered in gloves, boots, chest armor, leather suit, and a belt-before he caught the scientists again. He took one angry step towards them, his boot cracking the floor underneath.
Red light replaced the yellow one. Klaxons, once usually bearable, forced Hongo to cover his ears-or rather the sides of his helmet. The cowering scientists fled through a door, and Hongo barely heard one of the escaping scientists say, "Someone get security!"
The door slammed shut behind them. Left in the screeching noise, Hongo turned his attention to the computers lining the walls he had crashed into. He made the walk of a few feet, stretched out into miles it seemed as he made sure to not crack the floor again or damage the computers with a touch. "What did they do to me?" Hongo asked his third question through his pain.
A second later, the answer shook him to his core. The computer screen glared back with the form he now wore. "The 'modified' form. Meant for new espionage and sabotage of the governments of the-" the screen said, but Hongo stopped reading, having crushed the keyboard in his grip.
A weapon. They turned him into a weapon!
"This was not supposed to happen. This isn't what I wanted!" Hongo said.
His analytical mind wouldn't let him fall into despair. Holding back his strength, Hongo typed into the next computer. A new inner pain joined the one already searing his limbs. With the pain came power, and with his power, came a conviction. He had a chance to escape. He had a chance to make things right.
After gaining the necessary information to accomplish his goal, Hongo first punched all the computers into nothing.
"Ah, come on!" a young man complained from the downpour. "There has to be some shelter around here!"
Lighting flashed above, and the distant thunder rumbled as if to say "no." The groaning man revved up his motorbike's engines to speed up his search. After ten minutes, he couldn't find a place to keep safe and dry from the rain, and he guessed he would probably have the same result after ten more.
Such was the life of a tabloid journalist, or-as Hayato Ichimonji put it-"investigative photographer." Ichimonji's latest job took him miles away from the city and up the various mountain ranges nearby. There, he found nothing but a long road with trees and more trees on one side. The rain made it worse.
Ichimonji's bike skidded on the wet, and slightly shaking, road. "Woah!" he said. He stopped his bike in time before it hit the railing and fell off the mountainside. A quick whistle later, his reporter's mind kicked in. "What just happened? It felt too small to be a quake."
Another vibration came and went, then another and another. Each one shook the still bike, and the faintest shapes of birds fled the area. Ichimonji looked the other direction, into the forest to catch a whiff of something burning. Smoke?
Whatever it was, Ichimonji licked his lips. Maybe it wasn't related to his current assignment, but he wasn't one to turn away from a good story. "Better than being out here!" Ichimonji decided, and he rode into the forest for some answers and some cover.
After running out of another room he lit aflame, Hongo quickly deduced his current location to be a network of caves, possibly under some mountain. Every other room Hongo previously "visited" contained their own computers, and each computer had similar schematics to the ones he had first found. He had destroyed them all, creating fires lining with the ceiling of bedrock. By now, he had gotten used to the klaxons and followed them into the long corridor.
Red light flooded the doors lining either side, the first of which he tore off its hinges with both hands. His newfound strength was still a surprise to him and to a woman huddling inside the cramped cell. "S-stay back!" she shouted.
Hongo almost didn't recognize the woman in her disheveled state, and it took everything to not vomit. "Myoko-san?" he said. God, were they going to turn her into monsters like they did with him?
"Hongo-sensei?" Myoko said after a second. Tears begin to run down her unnaturally thin face. "P-please, tell me that's you!"
"It's me. Somewhat," Hongo said as he knelt before Myoko. He stopped himself from touching her, his gloved hand reminding him of his own strength. "Do you know what's going on?"
Myoko shook her head. "T-these men in black. They took Haru away. Put me in here," she whimpered. "Please, tell me Haru is safe. Tell me we can get out of here."
Hongo's voice stopped in his throat, long enough for his ears to pick up footsteps approaching the area. "We need to go!" He stood up and left the cell. He looked at Myoko, hesitantly stepping out of her cell. "Come on!"
"But Haru…"
The softness in Myoko's voice gave Hongo pause, but it took away his opportunity. On the other side of the corner, seven men in black outfits rushed around the corner with guns in hand. "Stay there!" Hongo shouted to Myoko before the guns fired.
The smoking pings rang and amazed everyone when the bullet shells bounced off Hongo's body. However, the men in black rushed him immediately. Hongo stood his ground, taking the first few blunt strikes of rifles and punches effortlessly. In the thrall of it all, a voice came through another door. "Myoko! Myoko, are you there?"
"Haru!"
"Wait!" Hongo called Myoko, who went for the cell across from them both.
Hongo grabbed one fist that hit his chest, dragging the man in front of more gunfire meant for him, and throwing the body into the others. Hongo then shielded himself with his arms from more bullets. However, Myoko screamed from the few ricocheting and striking the door near her. "Myoko!" came from behind the door.
Grimacing, Hongo rushed the men in black. He tossed the one who fired on him into the wall. He punched another into two more, sending all three across the corridor. The remaining two before running back the way they came. Seconds later, their bodies thudded on the floor.
Hongo's gaze whirled to the corridor's other end. Even Myoko fell silent at the misshapen figure standing over the dead men. He raised his masked face to reveal the eight legs sticking out of it as he spat a long string of webbing to trap Hongo's arms together.
One quick tug felled Hongo face-down. Another tug dragged him across the floor and right by the door Myoko hid by. Quickly getting on one knee, the skidding Hongo planted his foot and swerved his body and his assailant into the wall. The brief pause gave Hongo enough time to tear the door free and throw it with just his fingers.
After the door clanged on its target, another freed prisoner-a man-ran out with the cry of "Myoko! Myoko!"
"Haru!" exclaimed Myoko, hugging her boyfriend.
Tearing his arms free, Hongo interrupted the moment. "You should save that for later! We need to get out of here, now!"
Haru looked to Hongo. "Hongo-sensei? Is that-" he began but a growl cut him off.
Looking head, Hongo dove under the door now thrown back at him. He rolled back up to face the spider-esque human charging at him. Two rather inhuman claws swung, striking Hongo's armor. "Gah!" Hongo screamed, feeling the claws tear not through flesh but metalwork.
The same claws grabbed his throat and swung him against another cell door. Then, Hongo's scream flew with him as he was tossed down to where the dead bodies of two men were. He got on one knee, ready to fight again.
"N-no! Stop!" Hongo heard, then he froze at the sight of the spider creature grabbing Myoko's throat.
"Let her go!" Haru shouted, only to be grabbed and held along with Myoko in front.
Hongo stopped after getting to his feet. From the hall connected to the corridor, the same one the previous bunch of goons came from, dozens of men in black ran at him. Their bullets flew off Hongo's raised arms, their racket almost drowning Haru and Myoko's screams.
Thinking quickly, Hongo listened in carefully. He once studied how bats used to navigate through caves, which he was in one now. Applying the same idea, he let the bullets and screams bounce off one another until he heard them hit the ceiling. Right by the hatch.
The situation suppressed Hongo's joy. Too many goons closed in on him, and that spider creature was too powerful. And the fire he made was spreading. He couldn't fight them all and save Myoko and Haru. He had to get out. He had to escape!
"I'm sorry," Hongo said to the terrified Myoko and Haru.
Then, he leapt for the hatch and made his way for freedom.
Ichimonji groaned after he realized the forest gave little protection against the rain. He rode on in spite of it, his bike's treads kicking up mud. The quakes had stopped but the burning smeller grew stronger. "I'm on the right track!" Ichimonji said and grinned at the prospect of getting a good story for once.
His hopes stopped with his machine sinking into the mud. "Ah!" Ichimonji groaned after trying to pull his bike out a couple times. "I knew I should've gotten a better bike!"
Ditching his ride, Ichimonji marched with his camera in hand. He kept his helmet on to protect him from the rain, and he took great care to not sink into the soft mud either. He slid one foot after the other, first slowly then quickly once he got the hang of it. He didn't mind dirtying his pants as long as he got his story.
"Now, where is that fire?" Ichimonji wondered aloud after a brief sniff.
His answer erupted not too far away. Ichimonji whirled, finding a newfound trail of black smoke. Two shapes rose with it briefly before curving at the peak of its ascent and falling. Of the two, a gigantic hatch-like door landed by Ichimonji's feet in a loud and deafening clang.
Ichimonji fell on his rear end and gazed at the object that almost crushed him. A second shape landed a few more feet away, sending up mud in its crouch. From the way it breathed heavily, Ichimonji would have thought it was human.
He was wrong. Flashes of lighting revealed a dark figure in blue gloves and blue boots. The figure turned to show its muscular chestplate. Its helmet, made more bug-like by the pair of antennae, pierced the rain with two glowing red eyes.
When the lightning flashed again, Ichimonji saw the face of a monster and screamed.
AN: And that is chapter 1 of Kamen Rider: A Retelling. I had this idea for about a year or less. I can't say if I remember what exactly had me go off to start writing this, but I did and began wanting to tell my own remake of the original 1971 series.
Of course, Toei did reboot the original series with the film, Kamen Rider: The First. The movie, despite all the amazing stunts and suits, felt bogged down by the story that made it feel like a J-romance drama. So, you could say this is a retelling of that story if you want to. Hopefully, it tells a better story but I'll let you readers be the judge of that.
Until the next chapter (whenever that will be because I still have some more I want to write before updating), take care. Thanks.
Raika out.