Joe's Note: One of my biggest debates during the rewrite of this story was whether or not to reveal Zeronos's identity overtly early in the story. In the original version, you could piece it together by Chapter 9 or 10 - I can't remember which - with the outright reveal coming when she appeared in battle with Willow in the original Chapter 12. In this version, I decided to reveal her identity a little earlier, namely so that I could do a chapter unique to the rewrite that stars the two Riders sitting down for some exposition for the sake of non-Kamen Rider - or specifically, non-Kamen Rider Den-O - fans. I'm not entirely sure which chapter that will be, but it'll come along in the next few so keep an eye out.
Dedications & Thanks: To Howard, Nicholas, Alonsis2, Cyle, Marika, Tibor, Adrien, Arkantos59, bloodylord, Charles, Crygon20, DireSquirrel, Edward, enygma, Fablesrogue, George, Gerald, Glenn, Joseph, Kentucky Fried Dragon, Koby, MJ, Morgan, mpotato, PbookR, Roofcrawler, Wil, William, Ziryo, Beeknees, Darrell, David, erlking, Haematite, HaunzGruber, TheTenthAncestor, UncreativeName01, Zordmon, Abby, Lookshy, Roman, Warren, and Wesley for sponsoring me on Patre0n, and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.

"Mind if I defeat you?" Willow's head tipped to the side and she grinned. "Can't hear you!"

Zeronos sighed and leaned against the saber form of the ZeroGasher as she watched the teen girl engage in an odd dance as she closed the distance between herself and the monsters. "Well, at least some things never change. Ryutaros is still an overgrown child, and Den-O is still a loser."

There was a soft sigh from beside her and Zeronos turned to regard her companion. "Just out of curiosity, are you going to get involved at all or just watch?"

"Just watch, probably." Zeronos fingered her belt for a moment. "As long as I don't have to actually use the ZeroGasher, I can recycle the Zeronos Card for another transformation. Speaking of watching, though… what exactly am I looking at here? Clearly they're not Imagin. Are these all Halloween costumes run amok like me? And who's that leading them? Willow seems to recognize them. Actual Willow, not Ryutaros."

Her future self was silent for a moment before letting out a soft sigh. "This is all information that Willow was going to share with you this weekend, so I'm not disrupting things too much by telling you now. Magic is real; that's how you turned into Zeronos for the night. Vampires, demons, werewolves, it's all real. Some of those are people who have been transformed into their costumes by magic, and some of them are genuine demons. They're being led by a particularly notorious vampire named Spike who has already made a name for himself by killing two Slayers."

Zeronos turned her attention back to Willow again as she tried to process that information. Magic being real… made sense. After all, she'd started the night wearing a toy Zeronos Belt stocked with a bunch of handmade Zeronos Cards - and the one authentic card that'd come with it, obviously - and now she was actually able to transform into Kamen Rider Zeronos. Vampires, demons, and the like… a little harder to accept but it certainly explained why Willow was facing off with an army of ugly creatures who were most certainly not Imagin. Spike… sounded like a name for a gay porn star but considering what her parents had named her, she couldn't really judge.

Twirling around as she danced closer, Willow held her hand up and snapped her fingers twice. There was a dull thump as a massive black boom box dropped out of nowhere to the pavement behind the brunette and began playing. Willow shifted a little to one side and the smaller demons in the group followed, before reversing and guiding them the other direction. Turning to put her back to the demons, she raised her arms and began to dance forward, the affected monsters following her while their larger counterparts looked on in disbelief.

Zeronos wasn't doing much better, jaw dropped as her foot tapped along to the beat. "Thriller?" Okay, she had to admit that watching half the crowd of demons dance along to the Michael Jackson classic was hilarious, but… seriously, what the fuck?

A third figure joined them at that point, a tall plastic cup grasped in his metal fingers. "Mistress, I brought you the coffee you asked for. Vente java chip frappuccino with raspberry, hold the whip cream, extra chocolate sauce." Frowning, Deneb handed over the coffee cup. "It seems a bit expensive for a cup of coffee, though…"

"Shut up, Deneb." Staring down at her drink, Zeronos found herself in a bit of a quandary. She had a cup with a straw. She was wearing a helmet. This wasn't going to work out at all. "Deneb. I need to power down for a bit. Stand guard."

The black-clad Imagin nodded before taking up a position in front of Zeronos and kneeling. "Roger."

Pulling the green and black card out of her belt, Zeronos slipped it back into the holding pouch before unfastening the belt. There was a whoosh as her armor disappeared and Harmony Kendall leaned down to take a sip of her frappuccino before letting out a delighted sigh. "Ahh. Much better."

There was a sigh from beside her and the mysterious older version of herself with absolutely terrible fashion sense tucked a silver pocket watch back into her ulster. "Do what you want, Young One. My task here is done." Harmony watched as the figure wandered down the street before slipping between two houses. God, she was going to be so boring and sullen as an adult. What the hell had happened to her?

"Yanagi-chan says I can't hurt the little demons because they're just kids. But she says I can hurt you." Making a flinging motion, Willow sent all of the child-sized demons and a number of the adult ones running off into the night. Then she snapped her fingers again, the boom box switched songs, Willow danced towards the remaining demons again in what Harmony was horrified to recognize as a very credible imitation of MC Hammer's technique. "This is the part where I destroy you, kay?"

Spike growled and took a step towards her, cracking his knuckles in preparation for the coming fight as the remaining crowd of demons clamored eagerly for a fight. "Give it your best shot, kiddo. Demon or not, weren't you cowering in a classroom while the Slayer tried to save your sorry arse?" Closing the distance between them, he threw a punch at Willow's head.

Willow smoothly ducked under the attack and thrust her palm out, slamming it into the blonde's chest and sending him flying back into his cohorts. "Can't touch this!"

Reaching down, she tapped her belt and the center lit up with a bright purple light. "Gun Form."

"Henshin!" The Rider Pass came down past the belt and Willow erupted in purple light as she transformed into her most powerful solo form. While Harmony's own armor had matched the show, she had perhaps irrationally expected something less androgynous from Den-O. It wasn't like Willow had a Cordelia-grade chest or anything that the armor would have to accommodate, but for some reason she'd expected that the armor would be something… different. After all, while they were both awkward losers, Willow was a very different person from Ryotaro. It could have been a lot worse, though, she reasoned. Willow had less experience corralling her partner Imagin. She could have ended up with a Gun Form that just screamed 'Ryutaros run amok'. Harmony shuddered, tucking one blonde lock back behind her ear as it escaped before sipping her frappuccino. Nobody looked good in that much purple.

Unless you were Prince.

Another sip. Mmmm, chocolate.

"My… my… my… my… music hits me so hard, makes me say 'Oh my Lord!'." Den-O slid cleanly between two of the demons, ducking back and forth as they did their best to hit a target that just wouldn't stop moving. And boy was it odd to hear a male voice coming out of a figure that Harmony logically knew was Willow in armor. That was going to make pronouns interesting, wasn't it? Ryotaro was a male possessed by male Imagin. He was clearly a he at all times. But with Willow being possessed by male Imagin, that distinction wasn't as clear. She'd been thinking of Willow possessed by Ryutaros as a she because it still looked like Willow. Was she like, misgendering Ryutaros by doing that? Oooh, the whole thing made her head hurt. Harmony decided that she'd just keep sticking with 'she' for the foreseeable future and if she ever slipped and addressed one of the Imagin that way, they'd just have to deal with it. It was their fault for possessing a girl in the first place. "Thank you for blessing me with a mind to rhyme and two hyped feet!" Okay, watching two demons punch each other out while trying to hit Den-O was funny, even she had to admit that. "Feels good when you know you're down, a super dope homeboy from the Oaktown." An interesting strategy on Den-O's part, Harmony realized. The monsters were largely huge and hulking in comparison to her, while Willow was slim and flexible. One after another, the monsters fell either to friendly fire or from Den-O's flying fists and feet. "And I'm known as such, and this is a beat, uh, you can't touch!"

One scale-covered blue demon broke away from the group and Deneb made himself useful by twisting the thing's head until its neck snapped, but most of the group fell to Den-O's attacks. Soon, it was just the bleached blonde leader of the demon army and Den-O. "Bunch of right pitiful losers. Don't know why I kept them around this long." Spike cracked his knuckles again and then slid his duster off, tossing it onto the hood of a nearby car. "Right then. Bring it on."

"Kay!" Den-O quickly pulled out the four pieces of the DenGasher and fit them together in a vaguely gun-shaped arrangement. A trigger appeared and shots rang out, peppering the car next to her opponent with bullets. The blonde dove away just in time for the entire car to erupt in a massive fireball. "Like that?"

The vampire looked from Den-O to the burning car and back with a horrified gaze. "Bloody hell. I liked that coat, you bitch! Bastard! What even are you, anyway?" Spike leaned back as another shot tore through what would have been center mass had he not moved. "Hey! Stop shooting at me! I'm yelling at you right now! Besides, it's not like you can actually kill me by shooting me. Even if you do hit me, it'll just make me angry."

Shifting his aim, Den-O unloaded three more shots into the pavement at the blonde's feet, forcing Spike to dance backwards to avoid having his legs blown off. "You're boring. I'm going to end this now, kay?" Pulling out the Rider Pass again, Den-O cocked her head to the side as she dipped the pass over the Terminal Buckle.

Bright purple light erupted from the belt as tendrils of energy began to crawl over the orbs mounted above Den-O's shoulders. "Full Charge."

While her opponent clearly wasn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier for getting into a fight with Den-O in the first place, even Spike seemed to know that when his opponent's futuristic gun started glowing and announced it was fully charged, it was time to get the hell out of there. Scrambling to his feet, he gave Den-O one last glare as he ran off down the street.

The Rider Pass jumped back into Den-O's right hand as two fingers of the left unwrapped from the grip of the gun to tap her belt. A burst of swirling blue light emerged as she tapped a button and then ran the Rider Pass over her belt. "Rod Form."

Harmony raised one perfectly manicured eyebrow as Den-O's armor burst into pieces and whirled around in a tornado of energy before reassembling in the silver and blue formation of Den-O's least commonly used form. Not only was it odd to see her counterpart powering down - not that the one remaining vampire would require something as powerful as Gun Form to defeat, mind you - it marked the first time that she remembered seeing Ryutaros willing to play nice and switch when asked. Maybe Willow wasn't quite as pathetic a Den-O as Ryotaro Nogami.

Rearranging the pieces of the DenGasher into Rod Mode to match her new form, Den-O took off in hot pursuit of Spike. Harmony was torn: she wanted to see what happened… but that meant actually having to run after them. Ugh. Physical exertion. That was the worst. She debated momentarily whether she wanted to transform again and summon the ZeroHorn - or see if she could possibly summon ZeroHorn without being transformed because she was pretty sure that at least one episode had featured Ryotaro on DenBird - but using a motorcycle to chase two people who were on foot seemed like overkill. Sighing, she handed her frappuccino to Deneb and absorbed him back into her body to protect it. There. No spilling now.

She didn't actually have to chase too far after the pair. Den-O whipped his weapon forward as he ran, the spear tip separating and racing forward on the end of a line to tangle around Spike's feet. Harmony blinked; she'd never seen that before. Explained why it was called Rod Mode and not Staff Mode or Spear Mode, though. The vampire hit the pavement face first, moaning and clutching at his nose. "You bwoke my nose!"

"Sometimes you go fishing for tuna and catch a killer whale, little vampire." Den-O stood over her fallen foe for a moment before twirling her staff around her body several times, building up a glowing trail of blue energy before ramming the tip down into Spike's chest. The vampire let out a scream as blue energy erupted from his mouth and eyes, and then he exploded into dust. "Goodbye."

There was a flash of light as Den-O powered down and Harmony found herself face to face with Willow. The two were silent for a moment before the corners of Willow's mouth quirked up. "So does this mean you're the zero now?"

Snorting, Harmony held her hand out imperiously, causing Deneb to emerge from her body once more and deposit her frappuccino back in her grasp. "As if. Things are going to get really interesting if this magic spell business doesn't go back to normal."

Willow let out a low, almost masculine chuckle at that and Harmony took a step back as the brunette's eyes flashed white of all things. And wait, when had Willow managed to dye her hair? She'd been red at school that day, hadn't she? Focus. White eyes. Oh shit. Sieg? "You have no idea."