He didn't really need to be there.
Rei and her childhood friend Dai Gakusha were on the far side of the hospital room. Far enough away Yoshoku couldn't hear what they were talking about even though he was leaning against the wall and looking in.
She was smiling and stroked Dai's cheek while they talked, and he smiled back then laughed at something Rei said to him. Something Yoshoku couldn't hear.
He ground the toe of his shoe into the title of the floor. Rei hadn't looked up from Dai's face for the past hour and a half…no, six minutes, Yoshoku realized when he saw the digits on his watch out of the corner of his eye.
When had this happened to him? He was Yoshoku Kasuga, one of the richest and definitely the most popular boy at his school. Before he got too busy with Rider stuff, there were girls following him everywhere he went. Yoshoku still remembered when he'd had to trick one girl into letting go of him so he'd be free to get inside a Game Area and join a fight against the Corrupture.
Granted, he reminded himself, his reason for wanting to fight was the stupidest reason he could think of now: wanting a chance to feel powerful. A chance to do something his older, also popular brother couldn't.
Gods, how long had they been doing this?
And how stupid had he been back when he first got his gun?
Had all those bimbos following Yoshoku around ever mattered for anything? Had he ever mattered to them, or had they only seen the school pretty boy and decided that was good enough?
Rei had been different. She'd met Yoshoku, and hadn't been interested in his good looks or his family's money at all. The only thing she'd been interested in when he met her was revenge. Revenge on Machina Vision for kidnapping her best friend and forcing him to make their Rider equipment.
But they'd fought together, and gradually that had changed. Rei had, Yoshoku let himself hope, seen that the boy her father was trying to arrange her marriage with was someone who might be a healthy match. When they fought, they fought together. Yoshoku had let himself think that being around Rei was probably part of why he'd stopped being such a shallow asshole.
Was all that going to end, now that Rei's old friend was free again, and recovering well from his kidnapping?
Could Yoshoku do anything else besides let it happen, if that was what Rei decided?
The thoughts died when he saw Rei reach out to pat Dai's cheek, stand up and sling her purse over her shoulder. She walked to the doorway and blew a kiss over her shoulder to the smiling Dai.
And then Rei walked up to where Yoshoku was standing and stopped.
"Thanks for waiting."
"No problem," Yoshoku said. "How's he doing?"
Rei shrugged. "Better. But it'll take a long time to get over being kidnapped."
Yoshoku nodded. "How're you doing?"
"Better," she answered. "Hey, my dad was going to this kabuki theater tonight with some business friends of his, but they cancelled. He said I can have his seat, and have some friends over to see the play, if I want."
"Mmmm. I haven't been to kabuki in a long time," Yoshoku said.
"So you don't want to?"
Yoshoku shook his head. "A play would be kind of nice. After all this tournament and monster crap we've been dealing with."
"Great. I'll pick you up at six." Rei leaned in, brushed her lips against Yoshoku's, and started down the hall toward the elevators.
From his hotel bed, Dai gave him a thumbs up.
Down in the CR Ward underneath the building, Emu reverently held the golden case of his long-lost Hyper Muteki game.
"You're serious that they just dug it up by accident when they started rebuilding at the GENM site?" Hiiro Kagami asked, still not quite convinced.
"Sometimes the world's an amazing place, isn't it, Hiiro-san?" Emu asked with a smile.
Poppy leaned over the table as she looked up at Emu's recovered game. Her chin was perched thoughtfully on top of her palms. "I guess it makes a kind of sense," she said, mostly to herself. "The Corrupture hid the ultimate Gashat underneath GENM because that was so obvious, nobody would ever think to try and find it in the place it came from before."
Emu set Hyper Muteki down on the meeting table in between him and the living mascot appraising the Gashat on the other side. "Maybe it's a good sign. Maybe it means the enemy's getting weaker. If that's true, we can think about being able to save all the people they captured soon! Isn't that great?"
Hiiro's face was completely deadpan. "You never stop, do you, Doctor Hojo?"
"Stop what?"
"You never stop always having that horrible optimism of yours," Hiiro clarified. "No matter what. You're even worse when you actually have a good reason to feel optimistic."
Emu beamed. "I'll take that as a compliment, Hiiro-san."
"See? You're doing it again," Hiiro said, emotionless as always.
Poppy snickered and looked away when Hiiro turned to look at her.
Hiiro turned away from both of them and headed for the elevator. "I'm very pleased you have Hyper Muteki back. I need to be going, though."
Curiously, Emu tilted his head. "Where are you going, Hiiro-san?"
"I have a dinner engagement, if you must know."
"With Doctor Oharu?" asked a grinning Poppy.
Hiiro walked down the hall out of the ward without answering her. Poppy giggled. Emu smiled.
Both of them looked up as a soft whoosh came from the lower level. Emu leaned over the railing and saw Kiiko Mishiranu walking out of the recovery room, where they kept patients something from Game Syndrome. And where she and Kensei had gone into a while before without saying anything to the rest of them.
"Ah, Kiiko-san!" Emu smiled and waved down to her. "Everything going alright?"
Kiiko nodded in answer, but slowly. "I hope so."
His smile faded when he heard that. "You hope so? What've you been doing in the recovery room?"
Kiiko shrugged. "Kensei asked me not to say. He's my best friend. I owe that to him, don't you think, Doctor Hojo?"
"I…guess you do," Emu replied, although the look on his face seemed to betray him wanting to know anyway, as Kiiko looked away quickly. She hurried up the stairs, deliberately making sure not to look at Emu or Poppy as she hurried to the elevator.
"What do you think that was about?" Poppy asked, watching her "little sister" go until Kiiko disappeared into the elevator.
With a little shrug, Emu said, "They'll tell us when they're ready. I think I'm going to go and check on Kensei-san, though. Make sure he's still healthy after, ah…getting hurt before."
Poppy nodded, which seemed unusual for her not to have something to say. Emu hoped that whatever was bothering Kiiko wasn't contagious, but went down the stairs to the recovery room. Its airtight door whooshed open for him. Inside, Kensei was sitting up on the bed, looking at his phone, but he held a green Rider Gashat in his other hand.
"Afternoon, Kensei-san!" Emu called, flashing his friendliest smile. Kensei looked up and nodded in Emu's direction, putting his phone away while the doctor walked over. "I probably don't have to ask," Emu started, "but are you feeling better lately? No problems with your strength?"
Kensei shook his head and smiled back, but it was nothing compared to Emu's. "Nope! I feel great! In fact I feel kind of invincible, with how I took on Hourakou Byougen all by myself!"
"Well, you don't have to fight him all by yourself," Emu tried to remind his patient. "No need to strain yourself after all you've been through."
"Really? I thought I was okay."
"We thought so too," Emu agreed. "According to every test we know, you're in just about perfect health. But sometimes there are things about being a Kamen Rider we still don't really understand, and I wouldn't feel right risking your health after everything you've had to endure."
Kensei nodded again. "I know you're worried about me, doctor—"
"Emu, remember? We're all friends here."
"Right. Emu. But like I was saying, I feel great! And besides, you've got Hyper Muteki back again! What do we have to worry about now?" Kensei said, a slightly vacant look coming over his eyes.
The doctor put a hand on his shoulder, then slowly turned Kensei around to look him right in the face. Emu looked deep into Kensei's eyes for a second, then got a little flashlight out of a pocket of his doctor's smock. "Kensei-san, could you try to follow the light with your eyes?" Kensei did, his pupils drifting up, then over to the left, and back to the right. Emu turned the flashlight off and put it away again.
Emu said quietly, "Kensei-san, you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but what did you and Kiiko-san do together before she left? You seem to be having a little trouble focusing right now."
"We talked," Kensei answered, and scratched his head. "I think we talked about my brother. About something my brother and me did, a long time ago."
"What did you and your brother do?" Emu prompted him.
"I don't really remember," Kensei said, frowning. His eyes drifted down to the green Gashat he'd had in his hand the whole time, and his face lit up a little. He then held it up for Emu to look at. "This. I remember it was about this. I think we played this game together."
Gently, almost cautiously, Emu took the game. Its label said "Mighty vs. Dyna-Mighty", showing GENM's familiar mascot chasing his larger green doppelganger with his hammer. Emu had played the game plenty of times, even mastered it.
He'd never known it'd been made into a Gashat for a Kamen Rider to use. Even more surprising, it looked brand new; its case was even still shiny.
What had Kiiko and Kensei really been talking about, and what did this game have to do with it?
Parado scanned up and down the halls of the hospital, then stared out into its lobby as if looking for someone specific. People stared but avoided the scowling young man clad in his mishmash of retro colors. A few minutes passed and they didn't seem to show up. Never one to hide his displeasure, Parado hissed loudly and strode out the front door, probably to see if he could find them on his own.
Once the doors closed by themselves and he'd disappeared into the crowd of people walking past the hospital, Kiiko stepped out of the doorway where she'd been hiding.
A sigh escaped her lips. Right now, she needed to be alone. Definitely not with a babysitter as intense as Parado around, no matter how protective of her it seemed like he was getting.
Kensei was actually getting eager for his next fight with Hourakou Byougen. The biggest, strongest, smartest, most evil of an entire race of monsters and villains. Once, Kiiko had to admit, there was a time Kiiko would've encouraged him in that. He was, she knew, the hero of the game. The hero of the game was supposed to fight the big villain and win. That was what heroes did.
But since then, he'd been poisoned, beaten up, blown, been made to look like inferior competition to Machina Vision's Riders, had GENM destroyed on his watch, almost decided not to come back from another world where he got to fight alongside his brother…
What it all came down to was Kiiko had had the painful truth of her best friend's humanity shoved into her face. Heroes didn't always win out in the end. They could get hurt, they could die, they could lose just like any other person. Learning that had been the biggest lesson of Kiiko's brief life.
And it had shattered what she thought she knew about the Kamen Riders' war against the Corrupture. Now, she wasn't sure what would happen. Let alone if her best friend would survive a real fight against his ultimate enemy.
Kensei had won his last battle with Hourakou. There was no denying that. But Kiiko had learned some things about the real world in her time with Kensei, and one of them was what that when bad people got desperate, they usually got even more dangerous.
The thought of Hourakou Byougen getting desperate terrified her now.
She went over to a bank of elevators, waited until an empty one came along, then used a key to send it up to the roof of the hospital. It seemed to be where the Kamen `Riders always went when they needed to some heavy thinking with only silence for company.
The sky was a wonderfully calming shade of blue, uninterrupted by clouds or planes. Within a few moments, Kiiko was already feeling a little more relaxed. Just looking up at it reminded her the world was an amazing place, and she wanted to see more. After the Corrupture were gone and she had some freedom.
Kiiko was so caught up in the view, she didn't notice she'd been followed up the roof.
So she was caught totally by surprise when they stepped out of the shadows and made their move.
"Hi."
"Aaaaah!...Dasao, why are you sneaking up on people like that?" Kiiko demanded.
"I'm not sneaking up on people. I'm seeing somebody who looks like they've got a load on their mind, and seeing if maybe I can help," Doku replied. "That's the kind of thing heroes are supposed to do, you know."
A sigh was Kiiko's first response. "You sound just like Kensei-san."
Doku walked a little closer, not having learned Kiiko's boundaries the way Kensei had. "It's probably unavoidable we'd sound kind of like," he said with a shrug. "But what's wrong, Mishiranu? I mean, Hidenaga beat the Corrupture boss pretty much all by himself last time. And we got Ex-Aid's ultimate game back. This should be over soon."
She looked over, straight into his eyes. "Does that bother you?" Kiiko asked.
His reply was a surprisingly calm shrug. "Not after everything we've had to do to get this far, you know? Being a superhero was cool when I first got my game and everything," Doku said distantly, and held up the golden case of Taddle Dynasty. "But I have to actually die to get new powers with this game. Those powers are awesome, but…dying's scary, Mishiranu. When the big worm swallowed me, I was worried it wouldn't work that time. Like I was gonna die inside a monster's stomach."
Doku shuddered, and Kiiko nodded. He added. "What kind of person would I have to be to enjoy something like that?!"
"I get your point," Kiiko said with a slow nod.
"So what's on your mind?" Doku persisted. "Something along those lines, I'm guessing?"
Kiiko nodded again. "Something along those lines. Kensei's really confident about fighting the Corrupture leader again, but I'm worried. Even with his new powers." She was silent for a few minutes, and Doku let her wait until she was ready to say what he was expecting. "I'm afraid Kensei-san's going to die."
Something fell onto her shoulder, and Kiiko jumped a little before she turned and saw it was just Doku's hand. A gesture of support for someone who was scared. "You two aren't doing this by yourselves, anymore. We've got an army now," he said, a sarcastic smirk of pride on his face. Kiiko nodded again, smiling a little to have someone else remind her of that.
Quickly the look on Doku's face changed to one of tension. A nasty buzzing from above their heads told Kiiko something was coming before she even had a chance to look, and when she did, she almost fell down in fear and surprise.
A swarm of insects was bearing down on them. Huge enough the sky she'd been admiring a few minutes ago was almost totally covered, and even from that height she could see their bodies were a shiny purple.
That could only mean they were Corrupture.
But Corrupture making a direct attack on the hospital?
Since when had they been willing to just attack the Kamen Riders so blatantly, coming straight to where their headquarters were?
Or…was it the Kamen Riders they were after?
"Henshin!" the only Kamen Rider who was there already yelled and slammed Taddle Dynasty into its ports on his wand.
"Enveloping Incineration!"A tornado of fire spun from the jewel atop Kamen Rider Rune's staff the same second his wizard's robes solidified over his undersuit. It left a gaping hole in the insect swarm but it was only a matter of seconds before more of them swarmed together and closed the hole as if Rune's attack did nothing at all. Kiiko turned and ran for the door back downstairs, only to see it already covered with the shiny black bugs.
Up close they looked like some kind of beetle, but Kiiko couldn't have started guessing which ones. But when a mass of them near the middle of the doors looked around and fixed her with countless jewel-like eyes, she didn't have to guess why they'd attacked Seitou University Hospital.
"Me…they're here for me!"
"Good guess, Kiiko-chan!" the beetles buzzed, Hourakou Byougen's all-too-familiar voice just barely recognizable through it.
"Flame Dart!" Kiiko heard the sound of Rune's staff casting another spell and out of instinct she threw to the ground. A fireball sizzled as it went by where her head had been and exploded against the elevator doors, scattering the beetles that'd been crawling all over it. More of the horrible bugs flew down and covered it all over again in the blink of an eye.
Rune waved fiercely at himself, which Kiiko quickly figured out was for her to get over to him. He'd have an easier time protecting her if he didn't have to keep eye out for both the Corrupture bugs and their target, she told herself. She ran over to him, but as she did Kiiko got a Mini Gashat in each hand. She hit their triggers and tiny versions of Mighty and the Brave Knights from Taddle Quest appeared.
The two sprites ran for the edges of the roof, to run down to the CR Ward and get help like Kiiko wanted. "All we have to do is hold out for a little while, Dasao-san!" Kiiko yelled.
But Kiiko was wrong. Immediately purple beetles swooped down and grabbed Mighty as he scaled the safety fence at the end of the roof and lifted him into the air. A blast of shattering pixels was the only thing to mark the Chibi Gamer's destruction. A flash of identical falling pixels from the other side of the roof told Kiiko and Rune the other Chibi Gamer had met the same fate.
"Guess we're on our own," Rune muttered. He got to his feet and banged his staff on the floor next to them.
"Lava Dome!" The floor started bubbling in a ring around them and Kiiko almost panicked and jumped over it. She wished she had when a wall of red-hot lava erupted from it and then surged forward right at the two of them. Then before Kiiko could scream at Rune for killing them, it hardened. Into a dome of lava.
"That should give us some breathing room," Rune sighed. It turned into a laugh as he heard a beetle bounce off the side. More and more Corrupture bugs threw themselves against Rune's protective rock shell.
And then a bunch of them flew into the side of the shell in the same spot.
The rock cracked.
Rune stopped laughing.
Another hard thump, and another spiderweb of cracks formed near the top of the dome. Then they were coming from all over, bits of rock falling from all around them.
"Get ready, I'm going to—" Rune started to say. He didn't get a chance to say more. The top of his dome exploded down around them. Rune raised his staff to launch a spell at whatever was coming at them but it moved faster than he was expecting. One of the purple Corrupture beetles, this one the size of a train car, stuck its head through the hole in the dome and seized Kamen Rider Rune with its mandibles then hauled him out.
"Devil's Crush!" Rune's staff announced before he rammed the head into the beetle's head. A powerful blast of flame erupted, but not powerful enough. It left a blackened hole in the middle of the insect's shiny purple armor, which only made the bug squeal in what sounded a little like annoyance.
It was nothing compared to the awful crunch that Rune's back made when the beetle clamped down with its mandibles. His body went limp, and the beetle threw him aside.
Kiiko screamed, only to feel another giant beetle seize her around the waist with its razor-sharp mandibles.
Kiiko stared into the giant beetle's shimmering purple eyes.
To her horror, they shifted into a pair Kiiko all too well. They were the human eyes, with their glittering purple irises of Hourakou Byougen, lodged in the face of a hideous monster. "Here I am! Don't worry, I know you missed me," he giggled at here through the horrible buzz of his insectile voice box.
"Don't flatter yourself," Kiiko snarled.
"You're absolutely right," Hourakou buzzed. "Why should I flatter myself when soon everyone in the world will do it for me?!" The shell on his back flicked opened and transparent wings fluttered underneath. "And it'll all be thanks to you, Kiiko-chan!"
To her absolute shock, Hourakou released his mandibles and let Kiiko fall to the roof.
Before he lunged forward and swallowed her whole.
She didn't get a chance to flinch, or retreat back in fear. Even make a sound before she disappeared down Hourakou's throat.
Kamen Rider Rune floated black up on his feet, his robes a rich green, but already the beetles were disappearing over the nearby rooftops, surrounded by their smaller buzzing kind.
Skies over the city started to darken behind the Corrupture swarm as they flew past, then filled with dark, rumbling clouds.
While they flew, the beetles' bodies bubbled and distorted. Their hard shells turned into sheets of purple slime.
Suddenly the beetles melded together into a huge, drill-shaped blob formed from virus matter. It twisted as it fell, plunging right into the middle of a six-way intersection.
Cars went flying as it smashed into the asphalt. Buildings around the intersection cracked, some crumbled. People screamed and fled for their lives while a fountain of purple gushed out of the crater and began to solidify. Glowing eyes formed in the middle of grotesque mess.
And inside of it, Kiiko Mishiranu could see the scene of devastation outside, sinking lower as the eyes outside lifted higher while the Corrupture slime mass grew.
"…what's going on?" she croaked, her throat dry.
"We're evolving, Kiiko-chan," Hourakou's voice said, horrific faces forming out of the sludge in the cocoon in which she found herself. "Together," he then added with exaggerated fondness. "Evolving into the ultimate strain."
Kiiko kicked and elbowed at the sides of the small pod around herself. Hourakou's faces appeared out of the sides, laughing at her and disappearing back again when she attacked them.
But the laughter never faded, no matter how many of the villain's faces there were.
"No-one seems to know exactly what you are, Kiiko Mishiranu," he said, seeming to totally ignore her angry flailing. "Not even a higher being like myself…but I know one thing about you: that you are the missing piece in the final evolution of the Corrupture virus into an unbeatable form.
"Your name is accurate indeed, Kiiko-chan. You will be the key to the creation of the true ultimate life form. Together, you and I will usher in an age of darkness, and in a thousand years, a hero might rise up to defeat us."
See You Next Game