Considering all the strange things he'd experienced since putting his Gamer Driver on for the first time, the dream wasn't that weird.

A web of red and purple strings was tied around his fingers in an incomprehensible mess. He tried pulling on one, hoping it would be the one that would make them all unravel and free his fingers. Instead his thumb painfully turned red. The clock in the upper right corner of his vision ticked menacingly as it hit the red the area that marked his last few seconds to win.

It was no use, and he already knew it. A last desperate pull and all he managed to do was torture another of his fingers. The arrow hit the top of the clock and an accusatory buzzer went off. The hand of the clock morphed into an actual hand that pointed in his direction as mocking laughter seemed to come from every direction.

He had lost the game.

The heart monitor hooked up to Kensei Hidenaga went into a loud, very worrying beep. Its line jumped all over the screen. Kensei himself arched his back and gave a strangled howl of pain, even though his eyes stayed tightly shut. By the time nurse Asuna Karino ran in to see what was going on, Kensei collapsed back onto his bed and his heart activity had returned to normal.

But his face glistened with sweat, and Asuna could easily tell something terrible had just happened to the patient.

"Kensei-kun…hold on. Your friends are coming with the thing that can help," she whispered.

Hoping desperately it was true.

The lights of the emergency vehicles were among the few lights as darkness settled over the city. Cranes with scoops were lowered into the pit and came up full of broken concrete. Kiiko cringed as she saw them, afraid with every that the game that could save Kensei was inside, totally crushed.

"You're sure this thing you're looking for…it's really small?" one of the construction workers asked the teens yet again.

"It's exactly this size!" an exasperated Yoshoku snapped. He held up his Bang Bang Sunset Gashat. "Did you guys see anything like it? It was black with stars on the case!"

The construction worker shook his head. "Kid, we see dirt. We see rocks. This is the first time anybody asked us to go on a treasure hunt when we were hauling away wreckage."

But he was interrupted when a powerful arm gave him a shove between the shoulders. Another construction worker, wearing a shining smile on his face, walked up in front of the teens instead. He was a muscular guy easily, holding a jackhammer held on his shoulder as if it were nothing. From underneath his hardhat hung long hair that had been bleached white on the ends.

"Don't worry," he said, and winked at Kiiko. Her cheeks turned pink that was still glowing bright even in the growing darkness.

Behind them, Yoshoku and Rei heard Parado make a "humph" noise and fold his arms, looking away as hard as he could.

The muscular man went on, "We'll find your game and your friend will be just fine. That's Takamichi's promise!"

Without another word he jogged up to the pile of debris that was growing on the sealed-off street and started digging with the jackhammer he'd carried on his shoulder. Kiiko clenched her fingers together, desperately hoping the crew could find Mighty Fest Infinity underneath that horrible mess.

First thing Kensei was aware of next was he was standing on something. Something long, moving very fast.

Then it was cold, and something heavy solidified around his body. It was his thick samurai armor that he got from using his Sensou Chambara game. The thing he was standing on was a rocket ship, and stars were whipping by him through the blackness of outer space.

"Hey, little brother! Think you can keep up with me this time?"

Kensei—or Utsura?—looked over to where he heard the voice coming from and saw another Kamen Rider on another rocket ship. His armor was a dark green and he had on gauntlets with oversized fists.

It was Kamen Rider Bruiser, the one his brother Yuuma had become in the alternate world he visited once.

He'd been happy there, with the chance to see his brother again…

"You're the one who can't keep up with me!" Kensei challenged. "I've got the speed of youth on my side!"

"Yeah? But I've got the edge of experience!" his brother roared with laughter, leaned back on his rocket like a surfboard and shoot through a snaking series of shining rings. 100, 200, 300, 500, 1000, 5000…he was racking up points and leaving Kensei in the space dust.

But Kensei would show he wasn't just talking big about the whole speed of youth thing! He looked down at his feet to see the control pedals for the rocket, even though he somehow knew how it worked already. His foot went down on the one that gave him a sudden blast of speed.

Within seconds he was zipping past the stars, through the shining rings that his brother had been. In the corner of his eye he could see his score climbing higher until it passed Yuuma's.

And then Kensei passed Yuuma himself, streaking by and laughing.

"You're not getting away from me that easy, Kensei!" Yuuma yelled after him, but he was laughing too.

Laughing like they didn't have a care in the world.

The slow, steady beats from Kensei's heart monitor stopped altogether.

Asuna looked over at his readout in horror, watching the blip travel halfway across the screen without moving, then suddenly jerking up to the top, registering a beat. She wiped a sheet of sweat off her forehead with relief.

"Kensei-san…what's going on in there?" she asked quietly, a part of her mind hoping he might actually hear her and give an answer. First he seemed ready to burst, then silent as the grave.

Another beat on the monitor, and by the time there was a third Asuna had recovered enough from her shock to sit down in a chair in the corner. "I hope your friends make it back soon…our friends make it back soon," she corrected herself. "I hope they have that cure they were looking for. It looks like you need help soon, Kensei-san..."

A small mountain of rubble had been piled up next to the pit in the middle of the street. Takamichi had climbed to the top and was driving his jackhammer into the largest stone on the top. Other, less massive construction workers were also digging into the rock with jackhammers.

Yoshoku sighed and clenched his fists in frustration. It seemed to be taking forever for the cracks in the rocks to grow, hopefully exposing the new game that might save Kensei's life.

Might, if the Man in Black could be trusted. Something Yoshoku wasn't sure he could, knowing about the things he'd done in the past.

And might, if Mighty Fest Infinity hadn't been crushed by all the debris the workers were digging through now. Could a Rider Gashat even be destroyed? Would something such a talented developer created be destroyed so easily?

He prayed the answer was no.

"Yo-chan, what are you thinking about?" Rei whispered from where she stood by his side.

Emu and Hiiro exchanged a glanced, then took a step away from the teenagers. "We'd probably better be getting back, hadn't we, Doctor Hojo?" Hiiro suggested.

"Doctor Hojo?" Emu replied with a questioning look. Still, he nodded, looking hopefully at Yoshoku and Rei. He and Hiiro walked away from the crowd, but Parado stayed standing next to Kiiko.

"Are you okay?" he asked quietly.

Kiiko nodded.

"…do you want to be alone?" he asked after a minute of hesitation.

"No," Kiiko replied. Quietly but firmly. Parado just nodded and stayed next to her, looking quite the sight in his gaudy outfit with the smoldering look on his face as he wondered just how upset Kiiko might really be.

At the same time, Yoshoku found words for the entire group. "I'm thinking about how I wish I could just blow those rocks up. But what if I break the game? What if I ruin the only chance we have to save Hidenaga? And do we even know we can trust that guy? I mean…I don't have to say why that's really suspicious, do I?"

"Hey…," Doku started to say. He held up Taddle Dynasty. "He made this too, remember? Besides, the Corrupture's dangerous to him too. Hourakou attacked him when he tried to give us the game, right? That practically guarantees that new game he's what he said it was!"

"Maybe, Dasao," was all Yoshoku could seem able to say. His eyes were focused on the rock pile as the one Takamichi was standing on cracked loud enough to be heard over all the nose they were making digging.

Parado saw it first. He shoved a member of the construction crew to the ground in his hurry and dashed over to the rock pile. The Bugster warrior shoved his hand into a pile of gravel and pulled it back out again. His hand went straight up to let the teens see what he was holding.

It was Mighty Fest Infinity, completely undamaged. There wasn't even a single speck of dirt on it.

"Hey! Watch it!" yelled the indignant construction worker Parado had knocked down.

He didn't watch it. Parado bumped the protesting worker between the shoulders with his knee and knocked the poor man onto his stomach, while Takamichi smiled and waved goodbye. The other Riders weren't waiting for Paradox to get back over to them: they had turned and were running down the street to get back to Seito University Hospital as fast as they could.

Lagging behind was Kiiko. When Parado got next to her he held out the game for her to take. Without a word Kiiko wrapped her hand around Parado's instead. He gave her a puzzled look, but when she started running after the others, so did he.

Darkness engulfed Kensei. Then a cone of light clicked on loudly in front of him, before a whole row of them switched on, illuminating a hallway barely.

He walked down it, feeling disoriented. Hadn't he been doing something else just a second ago? Racing his brother? That sounded like it. He and Yuuma used to do that sometimes. Race each other.

For a little while he tried to remember what they'd been racing, or where they'd been racing, but it wouldn't come. It felt like something was buzzing around inside his head, making it almost impossible to think.

It sure wasn't helped when he heard an explosion and was blown off his feet by the force. Even in the darkness he could see that the walls were cracked and dust had fallen from the ceiling, forming a little layer all over the floor.

*BOOM*

Another explosion. That helped focus Kensei's thoughts. Instincts he'd picked up fighting as a Kamen Rider took over, forcing his feet underneath and sending him running down the hall. It felt like the explosions were coming from behind him, but the second had come from a lot closer than the first.

Vaguely he remembered having armor. Strength. Awesome power. But how he'd wielded it…that seemed to be one of the things Kensei was having trouble remembering. Instead he did the only thing that made sense, and that was to keep running down the hall. After a few seconds of running he came to a turn to the left. Kensei ran that way, then shortly found the hall turning right. A few more turns and the hall widened out into a massive room. He ran between ivory statues of alien creatures he couldn't even imagine naming perched on pedestals in rows across the room. Paintings hung on the walls depicting scenes on other worlds….maybe other times. There was no telling, as if even noticing details in the area was getting too hard for Kensei's mind.

All at once there was another explosion, and this time he actually saw the fireball. Statues fell over and shattered from the blast. Paintings were torn to shreds.

And the two strange creatures standing by the vault door at the end of the room didn't seem to care.

One of them Kensei recognized right as Wighty, the white-skinned clone of the famous platform game mascot Mighty. Casually tossing a cartoon bomb with a burning fuse up and down in his hand before smacking it with a flyswatter in the other at the vault door. The other had a smooth white dome for a head, with a pair of eyestalks sticking up from it, above a black leather jacket covered in metal studs and shining metal chains.

That one was Salty Junior, the son of Mighty's iconic enemy Count Salty. And the one usually considered the real threat of the Salty family.

Wordlessly, Salty Junior pulled a cartoon bomb of his out of his jacket and lobbed it at the same huge metal door Wighty had just attacked. Kensei ducked and stuck his fingers in his ears just before the bomb went off and more art objects fell over and were blown to pieces by the explosion.

They didn't even care about all the wealth they were destroying in trying to whatever wealth was inside the vault.

It was insane. It made no sense at all.

Like it was the plot of a cartoony video game where nobody was supposed to pay attention to the story, and just have fun with the weird situations.

Kensei reflected on what a weird thought that was to have just before something fell on top of him and everything went dark.

At the same time, his heart and brain activity became so violent the screen was almost completely colored in by the violently jumping blip.

Letting out a scream of surprise and terror, Asuna ran to Kensei's side, but this time she didn't run there alone. Emu Hojo was next to her, getting ready to sedate Kensei when both of them noticed they weren't the only ones there.

Standing in the doorway were Kiiko and Parado, their hands still wrapped protectively together around the cartridge of Mighty Fest Infinity.

"Glad you could…make it?" Asuna said, her sentence turning into a question as she spotted Kiiko and Parado holding hands. Behind them were Doku, Rei and Yoshoku, looking on with quiet anxiety on their faces.

"Put his Driver on him," Kiiko instructed.

"Anything you say, Mishiranu-san," Emu replied and got the belt out from inside his doctor's smock. Sensou Chambara was already sticking out of its slots.

"You were carrying that around the whole time?" Asuna asked in mild shock.

Emu nodded. "I wanted to be able to give it back to him when he woke up."

"You're always so sentimental, Emu," Parado said with a slow shake of his head. As soon as Emu fastened the Gamer Driver to Kensei's waist, Kiiko touched Kensei's arm and a surge of power made the Mighty Hand glove appear. She bent over and sure enough, there was a small slot behind the button panel she'd never seen before. Just big enough for the circuit board on top of Mighty Fest Infinity.

Parado slid the game into the opening Kiiko had found. It locked into place, and despite a literal lifetime of battle, Parado jumped back in surprise when the game's voice roared out with an intensity that seemed five times as loud as normal in a tight hospital suite.

"Mighty Fest INFINITY! In a super jet he comes, from a billion miles away! From a distant planet land! His name is Almighty! The best games are played with friends! You belong. Mighty Fest…INFINITY!"

The painful whine from Kensei's monitor slowed to a steady blip again. But all of a sudden, arcs of power raced up his arm and into his body. Kensei gritted his teeth, and thrashed back and forth in his bed from the agony.

"I thought it was supposed to save his life! You said we should trust that guy!" Yoshoku yelled angrily at Doku. Rei held him by the shoulders, but Doku stood his ground anyway.

"He got killed by zombies before he could tell us how it worked, didn't he?!" Doku retorted. "Maybe it needs time to work! Kensei was hurt really bad!"

"Emu," Asuna said quietly to her old friend while the teens argue. "What do we do?"

He clapped an arm around her shoulders. "We believe in them."

Bombs.

That was the last thing he could remember.

Bombs going off as two maniacs tried to break into a bank vault.

Even if it meant destroying the entire building they were still inside.

But there were no bombs. He was sitting in his family's kitchen. Yuuma was across the table from him, smirking.

"You having trouble stay awake already, Kensei-chan?" his brother chuckled. "Mishiranu-san's gonna give you hell for that. She's still on that 'trainer' kick of hers, remember?" Yuuma shoved a steaming cup of coffee showing Mighty running with his hammer held up on the side.

"Since when do I drink coffee?" Kensei asked blearily.

"Since now, if you want to survive another day hanging out with Mishiranu-san," Yuuma said, raising a mug of his own. Wighty was on the side of this one, hefting a bomb in his hand.

Kensei felt like he should've remembered something about Wighty. Something about bombs. He couldn't pin down the thought. That probably meant his brother was right, and he should drink the coffee.

So he did.

Immediately Kensei felt better. Wide awake. He tried to remember what he'd been thinking about that had to do with Wighty and bombs, but it still wouldn't come. That didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was the fresh cup of coffee Yuuma was already putting down in front of him. He needed it. More of that amazing stuff that was making him so awake. So alert.

He sucked the whole cup down. There was no heat, no bitterness. Just another amazing rush of energy. Kensei had never felt so alive.

Maybe he had. He still couldn't remember. The only thing that might change that was more coffee.

Yuuma put down another cup, already holding one of his own, which he emptied in one gulp. Kensei might not have been in such a hurry to have his own cup if he could've seen how red his own face was getting.

But he couldn't. So he sucked down even more coffee.

Yuuma was smirking at him still, but Kensei could barely see it. Flashes of light were going in front of his eyes. Like a fireworks show inside his skull. "What's the matter, little brother? Can't handle what grownups drink?" Yuuma laughed.

Kensei couldn't manage an answer. The last thing he saw before blacking out again was the number 990,000 spinning in front of his eyes between the fireworks.

The second orderly came sailing out of the room and slapped into the wall face-first.

The first was still slumped against the wall inside, unconscious.

And Kensei was still thrashing around in his bed, screaming in pain. The energy coming from the game plugged into his glove had spread all over his bodies, and his eyes were now wide open. The same unearthly light was coming out of them now, and when he opened his mouth to scream again, it was shining up from there too.

"Nice one, Dasao!" a disgusted Yoshoku screamed. "He was dying before, now that friend of yours is going to finish the job!"

"That isn't true!" Doku protested. "He's helped me before, and…He said 'it can focus and collect the power of numerous different people all enjoying the same experience'! That means it's multiplayer! We're supposed to all connect with Kensei!"

"That…actually perfect sense," Emu added. "Come on, all of you." He reached out and grabbed one of Kensei's thrashing arms. Asuna grabbed it too, then Doku was the first to seize Kensei's other arm. Kiiko and Parado joined in across the bed from each other, meeting each other's eyes for a second before Parado looked down.

Rei stepped up and grabbed onto Kensei's upper arm, then looked back over her shoulder at Yoshoku. "Yo-chan," she said. "Please. Your friend's dying. Isn't that worth a little faith in the man who said we could save him?"

Without another word Yoshoku grabbed Kensei's arm too. Immediately he felt an urge to pull away, but hung on, tightening his grip until his knuckles turned white. A weird draining sensation was focused on his hand. It wasn't until they'd all been holding onto Kensei for a minute that he stopped flailing around and screaming. The energy that'd been torturing him split off, a strand of it connecting to every hand touching Kensei.

Crazy images flashed through Kensei's mind.

He and Yuuma were jumping back and forth on the arms of a giant clock.

An old stone well was standing in front of him, and Kensei flicked a gold coin into it, watching his offering bounce off bricks on the sides on the way down.

Crossing a walkway made of giant slices of cake.

Hurrying to stack a longer, more elaborate row of dominos than Yuuma was.

Building a bigger, more elaborate sand castle than Yuuma was.

And suddenly that was where it stopped.

Doku was there, building a sand castle too.

Yoshoku and Rei were working together building one. One second they hadn't been there, and suddenly they were there as if they always had been.

Then Emu and Poppy Pipopapo were building one too. Until Emu's foot caught on his other shoelace and he fell down, smashing it. Parado was standing off to the side shaking his head.

And Kiiko was next to Kensei all of a sudden, putting elaborate additions on his castle in the blink of an eye. Whenever she finished one, she found something new to add. She was so hyper, always finding another detail she wasn't satisfied with.

She'd been like that back when they'd first met, and she'd declared she was Kensei's trainer, he remembered with a chuckle. Always trying to push him to improve himself in some goofy way. Back when they were only fighting occasional monsters they could handle pretty easily, and the Riders he had to deal with were only teenage jerks giddy with their first taste of independence.

Things had been so simple back then.

Suddenly his friends weren't there anymore. Suddenly there wasn't there anymore. Kensei wasn't seeing a beach, but the top of a gleaming golden Skyscraper. Mighty was standing there, alongside a blue creature like himself with a pink bow on their head; his love interest, Flighty.

And there was Wighty, juggling bombs. Count Salty and Salty Junior. A green one that was three times as big as the others, who could only be Dyna-Mighty.

Buzzing around were tiny round creatures with big eyes like the rest, but in a rainbow of other colors. Those were the Slightlys, the little guys who usually explained things in the tutorials for Mighty games.

Above them the blue sky turned dark, and one by one colorful stars lit up. The biggest and brightest star got bigger and brighter until Kensei realized it was getting closer.

It wasn't a star, it was another round creature with big sneakers, gloves and eyes, just like Mighty himself. He was bigger than any of the other characters, even bigger than Dyna-Mighty. His body was black, but covered in colorful stars that drifted across him.

Suddenly he lifted one gloved hand to the sky, and started talking to the other characters in that strange chattering noise they made in these games.

And Kensei understood.

In the hospital room, everyone holding onto Kensei felt a sudden surge of power through their touch and let go of him at the same time. There was a flash and all of them had to look away, and when it cleared Kensei stood on the bed. Or rather, Kamen Rider Utsura.

Like none of them had ever seen him before.

He was only a dark silhouette standing on the bed, nothing distinct about him except the familiar large red eyes in his mask. The rest of him was totally black, with colorful stars flickering across his body and a long muffler that hung off his shoulders. They couldn't make out his Driver around his waist or even the Mighty Hand his new game had plugged into. Kiiko was the only one who noticed the curved quills on his forehead, like a character from a Mighty game.

"…Hidenaga?" Yoshoku said uncertainly. "Is that you?"

"Yeah. Why's everybody staring at me like that?" he asked, a strange reverberation to his voice.

Yoshoku pointed at a mirror in the wall, and Utsura jumped down and slowly walked over to see his new form up close. "I look like…space? What did you guys do to me?"

"We used a new game, called Mighty Fest Infinity," Kiiko explained. "It connected all of us to you, and then you transformed."

"How do you feel, Kensei-san?" Emu asked, just sharply enough that he had the attention of the room. "Your readings were all over the place until you woke up like this…do you remember anything from when you were unconscious?"

"Yeah, I remember lots of things. Like running on cakes, and surfing on rocket ships, and Wighty and Salty Junior throwing bombs at a bank vault. They seemed like…minigames. And then at the end, there was this part like, a space-Mighty met all the other characters from the Mighty games, he said his name was Almighty, and he came to make friends with them playing games."

Puzzled looks were exchanged, but Emu and Doku exchanged a knowing smile instead. "That kind of makes sense," Emu said. "From the name of that Gashat, I think that's exactly what it's supposed to be: a collection of minigames a bunch of friends are supposed to get together to play. Maybe all the things you were dreaming about were transferred into the new Gashat, and that's what transformed you."

"You think so?" Utsura asked back.

"It's as good a guess as any."

"So you guys don't know," Utsura replied.

Doku shook his head. "No, we don't. The guy who made that's one of a kind. But this proves he was a genius…"

"I guess so," Yoshoku begrudgingly admitted.

Utsura looked across the room in silence for another minute before he pulled the Gashats out of his glove and belt. There was a flash, much gentler this time, and he was back to being Kensei Hidenaga again. "I guess he must've been. I feel like I've just been born."

Asuna grabbed him by the arm and forced him up onto the bed. "You're still having the full battery of tests before you're released," she said with a stern look.

"Onee, be gentle with him," Kiiko said. "He just almost died."

Emu smiled and stepped around the other side to start Kensei's examination. He didn't miss a collective sigh of relief from Yoshoku and Doku. The young doctor couldn't blame them. The day had probably been the single most demanding experience any of them had ever had as Kamen Riders.

His patient was alive, and from the look of things, more powerful than ever thanks to his friends' bravery.

It looked like Emu was right to believe in them.

seE yOu next gaME