Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.
…
BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!
As the echoes of the last gunshot rang throughout the shooting gallery, Goro lifted his goggles and waited for the automated track to bring the paper targets closer to him so that he could see how he had done.
There were nine holes dead center, one a bit to the side. Were it an actual person, the shot would've been painful, but not immediately life-threatening.
Not good enough.
He lowered his goggles and queued up the next target as he reloaded his gun.
Feeling a tap on his shoulder, he turned to see Sergeant Kazuta frowning at him, gesturing to his ears. Goro removed his noise-canceling headphones and stood at attention. "Sir?"
"Goro, you've been at this for hours. Don't you think it's time to call it for the day?" Kazuta asked.
Goro shook his head. "No, sir. I need to be better."
Kazuta raised an eyebrow, plucking the bullet ridden target from its track as it passed by him and giving it a critical eye. "You got nine out of 10 shots dead center. I'd say you're a pretty good shot already."
Goro squared his jaw. "I need to be better."
Sighing, Kazuta gently put a hand on his shoulder. "Goro, this is just a shooting gallery. You don't need to make a perfect shot every time-"
"Sir, I must respectfully disagree," Goro interjected. "If I can't get it right when there are no stakes, how can I be trusted to make the shot when actual lives are on the line?"
Kazuta blinked, staring at Goro with an unreadable expression on his face.
"… Sir?"
Kazuta shook his head. "Sorry, I just… Your dad said the same thing to me once." He smiled fondly. "You're more and more like him every day."
Goro smiled at this.
Kazuta nodded at the fresh target lined up in front of Goro. "Come on, then. One more round."
This time, all 10 shots were dead center.
The takoyaki they got to celebrate was the best he'd ever had.
…
As Tick-Tock's gears started crunching against each other and the hands on its clock started to spin, Goro, acting on instinct, summoned his side-arm.
Buzz Blaster!
The instant his blue Hive tech gun was in his hands, he fired, sending a blue energy bullet streaking through the air at Tick-Tock's head…
Only for the projectile to pass harmlessly through thin air, for a second later, the cyborg undead tick had vanished.
It took him several moments to realize what just happened. "I missed?" He murmured in disbelief.
"You missed?!" His friends and at least half the Hive echoed incredulously.
But you never miss! An astonished Philia cried.
Apparently, he just did, a dumbfounded Apista pointed out, downing a mug of nectar.
Goro felt a deep sense of shame. His kids were watching! How was he ever going to live this humiliation down?
"Where did it-" Shin wondered aloud, when suddenly the Fungal Beast appeared behind him and drove its drill arm into his back, causing him to howl in pain.
"Shin!" Ariel gasped.
Goro quickly fired at the same time as Mibojin, who was closest, attempted to strike at the tick from behind…
Only for the monster to vanish again with another grinding of gears, and the ninja barely dodged what could've been a very nasty headshot, her blades coming within inches of digging into Shin's back. "What?!"
"I missed again?!" An astonished Goro cried.
"Okay, did we find ourselves in a weird parallel reality or something? Goro doesn't miss, let alone twice!" Ariel exclaimed.
"Are we dealing with a teleporter?" Mibojin wondered as she glanced around, waiting for the monster to reappear.
"Or maybe it can turn invisible-" Nushi started, only for Tick-Tock to reappear behind her and swing its buzz saw at her back. Thankfully, she saw the monster appearing just in time through the eyes of her teammates and evaded the blow, thrusting her sword forward…
Only for it to vanish again with another grinding of gears. "Dammit!"
Goro scanned the area with the enhanced sensors in his visor, but to no avail. "I'm not picking up any fungal signatures. It's not invisible."
"So it is a teleporter-" Mibojin started, instinctively whirling around and swiping a blade at Tick-Tock's head just as the monster appeared behind her…
Only for the monster to disappear again, immediately re-materializing behind Ariel and grabbed her by the neck with its claw, squeezing hard and lifting the shocked and gasping vulpine into the air.
"In many ways, you are the linchpin your entire resistance hinges upon," Parasitica sneered as everyone looked on in horror. "Your mastery of the mystic arts is something I have yet to be able to counter, and I have no doubt my fungus would've spread much more quickly by now were it not for your blasted seal and healing spells! With you out of the way, I will have no problem crushing-"
Goro took the shot.
This time, he didn't miss. (And thank goodness for that, if he'd missed a third time, he had no idea how he could possibly recover from the shame.)
Tick-Tock shrieked as its wrist exploded, the claw coming apart and dropping the half-choked Ariel to the ground. "As always, you talk too much!" Goro shouted, sighting along his gun at the Fungal Beast.
Parasitica growled. "… Really need to stop doing that," she grumbled as Tick-Tock disappeared again just before a livid Nushi could drive her sword through its head.
As everyone else quickly got on guard, Nushi turned and crouched down to help her lover up. "Are you okay?" She asked in concern.
"I'll… I'll be fine," Ariel rasped. "Not… The first time I've been strangled… It's usually a bit more erotic, though."
Nushi winced as Ariel coughed, sensing her pain. "I hate to rush you, but I think we need an anti-teleportation ward-"
Ariel shook her head as she cleared her throat. "Won't work. It's not a teleporter. It's using time travel."
Mibojin blinked. "Time travel?"
Shin snapped his fingers. "Oh, of course! Covered in gears, has a big clock in its chest, its name is Tick-Tock… Yeah, pretty obvious in hindsight."
"That would explain why I've been picking up energy readings similar to the ShinLiner's time drive, but much cruder," Caelifer realized.
"Would've been nice to have brought that up sooner," an annoyed Lepidoptera grunted.
"So the monster isn't teleporting," Mibojin slowly. "But…"
"Briefly stopping time, then moving into position to attack us where we're exposed, like-" Nushi started.
"Kamen Rider Durendal/Hit from Dragon Ball Super!" She and Ariel said at the same time. They exchanged baffled looks.
Shin chuckled. "It's interesting to see that even being madly in love with a telepathic link doesn't mean your minds are always in sync with each other."
Goro couldn't help feeling a little self-conscious at that. He and Kari certainly weren't in sync at the moment.
Picking up on his distress, Nushi immediately changed the subject. "Okay, since I'm pretty sure Ariel doesn't know any spells that deal with temporal manipulation-"
"I do not," the sorceress said cheerfully. "Time magic is seriously advanced and largely taboo. My uncle Tsubasa almost DIED the one time he tried a time spell, so my family considers it off limits."
"Then we're going to need to come up with some other way to counter this time-leaping," Nushi continued. "Shin, call the ShinLiner, I think that if I get access to its time drive I might be able to jury rig a stasis field which will nullify any attempts to manipulate temporal fields in the surrounding area-"
Goro had always found Nushi's mind to be a beautiful thing. She was brilliant, with a genius intellect rivaling some of the greatest minds in the galaxy, and he always found himself in awe whenever he witnessed it living up to its full potential, enthralled as it unfolded into full bloom and bending time, space, and reality itself to her slightest whim, incredibly complex stratagems weaving themselves into existence that always guaranteed them victory.
Too bad that, in this instance, it was completely unnecessary. "That's a great idea, Nushi, but with all due respect, I think I have a much simpler solution," Goro said, leaping to the top of a nearby building and leaning against the edge of the roof. "Caelifer, feed me all the data you've got on time energy so that Formic can give me a sensor to pick up on Tick-Tock's time warping. Everyone, look through my eyes and be ready to move the instant I spot something."
"Sending data now," Caelifer responded immediately, filling Goro's mind with complex formulas that, even with all this time connected to Nushi's mind and the vast hive mind of the Buzzing, he didn't really understand.
Fortunately, Formic seemed to. "Got it. Goro, you should be able to see the particles generated by time warps now."
Goro's HUD rebooted, a new overlay forming and causing him to see numerous faint clouds in a color not on any spectrum visible to humans gradually dissipating around his friends. This was the aftereffect of Tick-Tock's previous time warps, like the smoke from a fired gun, and when he spotted a more vibrant burst of particles that should herald the monster's reappearance.
Down on the street, the Bugrangers quickly got back to back. "Okay, we're ready," Nushi reported.
"The beast will not get past us this time," Mibojin promised.
"Brilliant idea, Goro! You know, it's strategies like this that prove you're definitely worthy of being second in command of the team!" Ariel gushed.
Goro chuckled. "Good to know all my years of military training are good for something."
A warning signal flashed into life on his visor as his new sensor picked up a fresh surge of temporal particles. "Everyone, ready! It's reappearing in three… Two… One…"
Abruptly, Tick-Tock materialized in front of Ariel, blaster charged up and thrust at her chest. Much to its surprise, it immediately received an energy bullet to the head courtesy of Goro, causing its blaster arm to jerk and fire the shot past Ariel's head instead. Before it could recover, the sorceress stepped forward and drove her wand into its mandibles. "Magi Magi Magika!"
The resulting explosion consumed Tick-Tock's head in a fiery conflagration, as well as blowing its face off, exposing a hideous mass of smoldering, burnt, fungus-encrusted gears taking up the entirety of its cranium.
Somehow, despite lacking a mouth to speak through, Parasitica was still able to splutter, "What… How did you…" Before warping away.
When Tick-Tock reappeared before Mibojin, swinging its buzz saw at the ninja's throat, Goro put a bullet in the back of her head as Mibojin bent backwards, the saw passing over her head, and brought her arm blades up in a double chop, catching the arm by the wrist. "How-"
Rather than responding, Mibojin applied pressure, her blades scissoring through the cyborg horror's wrist and severing its weaponized appendage. As Parasitica swore, Tick-Tock vanished again.
But not for long. This time, it reappeared inside a building, overlooking the street below, and prepared to hurl its wrecking ball at Shin…
Only for the window to shatter as an energy bullet and a grasshopper-themed axe smashed through it at the same time, and if Tick-Tock hadn't dodged to the side at the last minute the axe would have gone through its chest rather than cutting off its arm. "How are you people doing this?!"
"Wouldn't you like to know!" Ariel taunted.
"Yes, I would, which is why I asked!" Parasitica snarled as Tick-Tock warped away again.
It reappeared in front of Nushi, with the intention of driving its drill through her skull…
Only to get a sword driven through its chest instead. "Oh, come on!"
"If you think this hurts now, imagine how it will feel like when I do this to you for real," Nushi snarled, twisting the sword to bury it deeper.
Tick-Tock frantically tried to warp away, only to find that it couldn't, Nushi's sword had pierced the clock in its chest right between the two hands and was jamming up the internal mechanism. Frantic, it thrust its drill at her head again, only for Mibojin's Shuriken to fly through the air and sever it at the elbow.
"You aren't going anywhere!" Ariel declared, waving her wand. "Magi Magika!"
Magical vines burst out of the ground and wrapped themselves around Tick-Tock's legs, holding it in place.
Shin stuck his head out the window he and Goro had broken. "Got my ax back!" He shouted, waving his weapon. "I'll be down in a minute!"
Goro smirked as he scanned Tick-Tock, trying to determine where his next bullet should go to cause maximum damage. "I'm afraid that your time has run out, Parasitica."
Ariel groaned. "Ugh, dad joke."
"… Dammit," Parasitica swore, realizing she was seconds away from losing again. "I didn't want to do this, but you leave me no choice!"
Tick-Tock drew back its harpoon limb. Goro immediately squeezed the trigger…
But not before, much to everyone's surprise, Tick-Tock drove the harpoon into the clock face, shattering it.
There was a blinding flash of light and the discordant sound of ticks and tocks out of sync, and Goro flinched backwards as his visor went white, overloaded by a sudden surge of temporal particles. "Gah! Formic-"
"On it!"
Moments later, much to his relief, his visor cleared.
That relief vanished once he saw what had happened to his friends.
All four of them were still standing in the exact same positions they had been just a moment ago, absolutely still and motionless.
He couldn't sense anything from them. It wasn't like they had vanished from the Buzzing, their presence was there, but… There was no activity, like someone had pressed pause on their thought patterns. But that was impossible. Wasn't it?
"Formic, what am I looking at here?"
"My best guess? When Tick-Tock broke its clock, it created a massive burst of temporal energy which froze everyone in time," Formic speculated, numerous scientists specializing in quantum mechanics piping in to back up this assertion. "We are unaffected because we were out of range of the blast."
Goro frowned. "But where's Tick-Tock, then? I don't see it down there."
"Considering it was designed for temporal manipulation, it would probably be immune to an explosion like that," Formic theorized. "Which means it's most likely-"
"RIGHT BEHIND YOU!"
And that's when a harpoon drove itself into his back with such force it immediately canceled his transformation and nearly knocked him off the roof.
As he lay there, gasping for breath, Tick-Tock, the clock in its chest shattered to reveal a grotesque mass of moldy, broken gears, slammed a foot onto his back, exactly where the harpoon had struck, causing him to cry out in agony. "Thought you were clever, didn't you, hiding up here and providing your friends with overwatch?" Parasitica sneered.
"Seemed… Pretty smart… At the time…" Goro grunted through gritted teeth.
"Perhaps, but not clever enough!" Parasitica taunted. "You needn't worry about your friends, the time freeze should wear off momentarily… But not before I kill you!"
"Kill me? Why didn't you kill them when you had the chance? They're totally helpless right now!" Goro pointed out.
"I considered it," Parasitica admitted. "But I doubted the time freeze would have affected you, and didn't want to risk making the attempt only to be stopped by another one of your irritating sniper shots!"
She cackled as Tick-Tock drew back its harpoon, preparing to deliver the killing blow. "Too bad there's nobody left to provide you with similar protection-"
She was cut off by the sound of a powerful gunshot, followed by Tick-Tock's final arm getting blasted off at the shoulder. "WHAT?!" Parasitica shrieked as the grievously maimed Fungal Beast stumbled back, struggling to maintain its balance.
Goro gawked, equally astonished. "What?!"
"While he may no longer be under my command, Goro Aori is still a decorated member of the Japanese Self-Defense Force," a confident, all-too-familiar voice declared as an armored figure dropped down from a zip line, landing between Goro and Tick-Tock. "As such, I will not allow any harm to come to him so long as I am capable!"
Goro stared up at his savior in disbelief. He was wearing a suit of armor reminiscent of Kamen Rider G3-X, but black and gold in coloration, with a badge with the JSDF logo embedded in the left breast, FX-1 painted on the left shoulder armor, compound eyes, spikes growing from the sides of the legs and arms, and hexagonal power cells resembling Hive microprocessors only red in coloration set into the kneepads, shoulders, knuckles, and forehead. The suit also had five horns and a belt with a large X serving as the buckle. The armored figure was carrying a large high-tech shotgun with more of those red hexagonal power cells and a bayonet attachment, undoubtedly the weapon that had destroyed Tick-Tock's final arm.
"Who… Who the hell are you?!" Parasitica demanded, incredulous.
I would like to know the same thing, a shocked Apista commented.
Oh boy! Another new ranger, so soon? Philia asked eagerly.
The armored figure glanced over his shoulder at Goro. "Aori. You all right there?"
Goro just stared at him, flabbergasted. He knew that voice. "Captain Kazuta?!"