Kamen Rider Chaldea
Chapter 06 : Stumbling
Author's Note : About 9 months, apparently that's the answer for last chapter's question. This story started when KR Saber was still airing, and now we're already with KR Geats taking the mantle, that should clue you about my update speed.
Heya, I'm finally back from the long slumber! I hope anyone was still waiting for this story to update. I'm truly sorry for not updating for so long, my time was either spent for college, or for updating my other stories, barely leaving me with any time for this one. Hopefully, I could update more often. (This isn't a promise tho!)
Disclaimer : I (obviously) don't own the Kamen Rider series, the Fate series, and My Hero Academia. They belong to their respective owners.
"With my Command Spell, I order you...!" = Normal talking.
'I wonder what's for dinner?' = Inner thoughts.
["Senpai!"] = Talking through an earpiece/radio.
The zero pointer tilted its head. ["I don't really get what you're doing right now, but you're referencing one of those Riders, right Senpai?"]
Ritsuka abruptly ended the pose right then and there. A slight blush on his face. "N-Never mind that! Let's just get this over with!"
["Hehe, how cute. Fine, just for you, I'll play along."] To Ritsuka's surprise, the zero pointer somehow lets out a deafening roar, forcing Ritsuka to cover his ears. Not long after that, smaller robots started converging towards their location. ["There, before facing a last boss-type Kouhai like me, you gotta go through a horde of small fries first, Senpai!"]
"Oh, joy... Just what I needed right now..."
["No need to thank me! You wanted points for your exam, right? Now's your chance! Have fuuuun~"] BB smugly pointed out.
In that one moment of her carelessness, Ritsuka once again fired a few Gandr shots towards the zero-pointer's eyes. Managing to destroy one more. Realizing her mistake, BB quickly covered the eyes with the arms once again.
"Gotcha! 2 more to go...!"
["Hey! When did you get so underhanded, Senpai?!"]
"Like I said, I don't have time to play around with you, BB!"
["Ugh, fine then! Get him!"] On her command, the smaller robots started their assault.
Picking up the broken makeshift shield, Ritsuka stood his ground and sighed. "Just another day in the office..."
In another part of Area C, the frog girl that Gudako previously encountered were just about done with another one-pointer. "20 points, so far so good, kero."
She was just about to hop to another area, before a sudden tremor stopped her in her track. "K-kero? What was that?"
As the frog girl stopped to wonder about the tremor, a nearby one-pointer sneaked behind her, its arms ready to throw a punch.
Before it could do anything, a metal plate was swung on its head, easily defeating it. Gudako stood there, admiring her handiwork. "Hey, you should be more careful next time."
"K-Kero, thank you..." The frog girl offered her gratitude.
Gudako simply nodded. "Sorry, I'd love to stay and chat, but there's no time for an introduction. So I'll be going now." With that being said, she immediately left the girl alone.
BB watched her Senpai fights for his life, contend with simply letting the mindless drones do all the work for her. She made sure to cover the remaining eyes of the zero-pointer with the arms, just in case her Senpai tried anything funny again.
For Ritsuka, the one-pointers weren't that hard to deal with, he managed to destroy a dozen or so with the tools he currently possessed. Everytime the make-shift shield that he was using got too beat up, he simply picked another one up from the remains of the fallen one-pointers. Essentially giving him an abundant supply of tools to use.
After finishing off another one-pointer, he warily looked around him, trying to locate any threat. Seeing none, he tiredly wiped a drop of sweat on his forehead.
["Bravo, Senpai! Bravo! You managed to survive wave 1!"]
"Wave... 1?" He trailed off, suspecting that his ordeal isn't over yet.
["Heh, wave 2, you're up!"]
Three medium-sized four-legged robots with a curved tail appeared on her command, the number 2 could be seen on the armor plating on the front legs, signifying the points earned after defeating it. Overall, the silhouette of the robot made it resembles a scorpion, minus the extra pair of legs and the pincers.
["The time for warmup is over, let's see you handle these!"]
"Damn, I hope they're not as tough as they looks!"
The trio of two-pointers immediately swarmed Ritsuka, trying to attack him with their tails. Fortunately, the boy could still dodge them, albeit with bigger difficulties compared to the one-pointers from earlier, thanks to their faster movement and reaction speed.
As he dodged the attacks, Ritsuka gathered the information he could find inside his head. 'They're larger and faster, but their attacks are still as predictable as ever. I guess UA still wanted their potential students to have a chance at this.'
Indeed, everytime the two-pointers prepped an attack, they will briefly stop, arched their tails slightly, and then thrusts it as fast as possible, an easily telegraphed attack for Ritsuka, who was used to the harsh training from Scathach, the Ruler of Dún Scáith, who will mercilessly threw unpredictable lightning-fast attacks at him.
"If you couldn't dodge an attack of this level, then the chance of your survival will decrease. As the latest disciple of mine, I can't have you be felled with such feeble strikes!"
Those were the reasoning used by his teacher. It's harsh, but the results speak for themselves. His honed reflexes had saved him countless times during the Rayshifts, and today wouldn't be any different.
Ritsuka used the makeshift-shield to bash one of the two-pointers in the head, cracking the small red orb on it. He assumed that those orbs are the 'eyes' for these drones, acting as a camera for them to display any visual information.
True enough, without its main camera active, the two-pointer acted frantically, its attack becoming more frenzied and faster. It cannot ascertain Ritsuka's true location with the broken eye-camera, causing it to attack the fuzzy blur displayed on its visual recklessly.
Seeing this, a small idea popped into Ritsuka's head. He carefully baited the two-pointer with the broken eye-camera to attack him. It obliged and kept trying to hit Ritsuka with its tail, cracking the ground whenever it missed.
Ritsuka sprinted near another two-pointer, he also quickly bashed it in the head, and then he did the same for the third one. Just like what happened to the first one, the other two went into a frenzied state after partially losing their visual confirmation.
'Oh? What are you planning this time, Senpai?' BB wondered from inside the motionless zero-pointer.
"Gotta make this count!" He ran into a more open location of the streets. Letting the three surrounds him in a somewhat triangular formation. After letting out their pre-programmed attack pattern, the trio thrusted their tails at him. Ritsuka grinned at this. "Now!"
At the last seconds, he rolled out of the way, the tails narrowly missed hitting him. A very loud clang could be heard as the tails hit each other. They deflected one another, causing them to change their course, now heading towards the main body of the two-pointers.
*CRASH*
Another loud sound resounded. The main body of each of the two-pointers were badly damaged, bending them in an unnatural way because of the fast strikes. A brief electrical discharges could be seen, before they exploded in a spectacular fashion.
"Hah... Hah... I hope that counts as me defeating them." Ritsuka muttered, having a slight difficulty in gasping air.
["Heh, as expected. Those junks were no match for you."]
"What's next, BB? The three-pointers? Send 'em right in then!" Ritsuka told her, still panting.
["Oh? Thought you could use me to save time instead of finding those junks by yourself, huh Senpai? Well too bad!"] The Zero-pointer suddenly launched a punch towards Ritsuka with a speed not matching its giant size.
"Oh Crap!" Ritsuka wasn't prepared for the sudden attack, he was expecting BB to went with the simple pattern of increasingly difficult robots. Skipping suddenly to the zero-pointer wasn't exactly something that he's prepared for.
He gritted his teeth, and tried to force his body to move the broken shield to guard his front. A combination of exhaustion and the injury from protecting the three students from earlier prevented him from dodging in time, opting to defend instead, though he expected that he wouldn't leave unscathed from this.
Suddenly a figure jumped between them, holding a shield in hand.
"Eh?"
["Huh?"]
*KLANG*
Like before, the loud sound of clashing metal echoed around the area, violently sending the figure crashing down inside a building.
["...This feels familiar, don't you think so, Senpai?"]
"BB! You...!" He was about to reprimand her for injuring a bystander, before he shook his head and ran to the ruined building, leaving the broken shield behind. He had better things to do right now, like making sure the victim is okay.
Just like what Ritsuka did before, a figure stepped out from the ruined building, revealing a tattered and bruised orange haired girl wearing a sweatshirt of the same color. "H-Hey, A-Are you okay?" She asked between her ragged breaths, supporting herself with the broken make-shift shield.
Unlike Ritsuka however, the girl is clearly on her last legs, her endurance isn't on the same level as the last Master of Chaldea. It seems she's ready to topple over any second now.
["...Fine, go and be a hero. It's my fault anyway."]
Ritsuka was about to do that anyway, he went over to the girl, supporting her with his shoulders. "That was too reckless! You don't need to do that for a stranger!"
"I-I can't just sit around and watch. It wouldn't feel right..." She weakly replied.
'Mou, I want you to pay attention to me too...' BB said inside her head with a pout. Since she got nothing better to do, she checked over the timer for the exam. Her eyes almost bulged out of her eye-socket when she saw the timer. 'T-Twenty seconds!?' Her brain worked in overdrive, trying to come up with a solution. 'Wait, that's it!'
The zero-pointer suddenly whirred to life. It threw another punch, this time aimed at the girl. BB intended for her Senpai to profit from this one attack, it's certainly wasn't because she's a little jealous or anything. No siree.
"Crap! Watch out!" Fujimaru had no other choice but to shove the girl away, he quickly grabbed a random rubble with a decent enough size to be used as another make-shift shield. While he did that, he gathered energy on the tip of his fingers to prepare for a counter attack.
*BLAM*
Being less durable than the material used to make the robots, the rubble couldn't withstand the impact of the punch, it crumbled instantly. The impact was devastating enough to throw Ritsuka far enough from his previous location, his body skidded on the floor before finally coming to a stop.
["Heh... Well done... I expect nothing less from my Senpai!"] As the dust cleared from the area, the state of the zero-pointer is finally revealed, all of the red orbs on its face are now gone. As Ritsuka briefly made contact with the zero-pointer earlier, he managed to shoot the remaining orbs at point blank range.
While BB likes to mess around with her Senpai, she is a woman of her words. She made a promise to self-destruct the robot if he could destroy all of the red orbs on the face, and he managed to do exactly that. This robot doesn't actually have a self-destruct function, but that wouldn't be a problem for the AI.
She overloaded the robot's system from within. Causing small sparks and electrical discharge to be emitted from it. The sparks gradually turned into explosions, slowly consuming the mechanical behemoth in its flames.
BB simply transferred herself back to Ritsuka's phone, leaving the control back to the zero-pointer's AI. Having regained control, The zero-pointer tried to slowly reach the fallen Ritsuka with its arms as the explosions intensified around it. A futile effort, as the frame couldn't support the weight of the machine anymore, toppling the machine over, before finally deactivating for good.
Just in time, an announcement was suddenly made, declaring the end of the entrance exam. Students all over the exam area sighed in relief, the reason differs from person to person. Some are just happy to survive the harsh exam, while others are happy that they managed to score decent enough for the exam.
A certain orange-haired girl doesn't feel the same though.
"O-Oi!" She yelled, worried about the boy who had just saved her. She wobbled all over the place, trying to regain her footing. Her body ached here and there, yet she forced it to move to check on the boy.
He was still sprawled on the floor, not moving at all. His pitiful state really worried her, feeling guilt for causing this to happen. She crouched near the boy and weakly shook his body. "H-Hey! Answer me...! Please be okay, please be okay!" She repeated the words several times, hoping for a miracle in what she thought was a hopeless situation... Until the boy suddenly jolted himself back up, standing up immediately.
"I-I'M FINE, head nurse! Don't do anything drastic!" He shouted, covering his face with one hand and raising another hand in front of himself in a protesting manner.
"W-What... the hell?" The girl couldn't believe her eyes. The boy stood up so quickly that she's having a hard time believing that this is the same boy who were just laying on the floor like a corpse a few moment ago.
"H-Huh? The head nurse... is gone?" He muttered as he looked around himself. A mix of relief and confusion in his tone. He saw the wrecked zero-pointer and rubbed his eyes briefly. "Did… Did I do it..?"
"You sure did..." A feminine voice replied. "Even if you didn't, the exam is over anyway..."
Ritsuka turned around to face the voice. As his sight landed on the orange-haired girl, his eyes softened and he smiled. "Hey, are you okay?"
"I'm okay, but just forget about me! What about you?" She asked back. She'd rather hear about the boy's condition right now. She defended against the robot's attack with a metal make-shift shield, and it still hurts like hell. She couldn't even imagine what the boy must've felt right now, he barely protected himself with just some random rubble after all.
He lets out a sigh of relief after hearing that reply, before coming up with a reply of his own. "I'm fin... ghh!" As the adrenaline left his body, his temporary pain resistance also left with it. His weakened body fell down on the floor once again.
"Ah! H-Hey!" Like before, she checked on the fallen boy once again, making sure that he's still breathing. "Damn, what's with this guy?" She muttered. She's pretty sure that he's just sleeping right now, judging by the peaceful expression on his face, although she could easily tell that he is completely spent.
"At least he's okay... now I can finally... re ...st" She abruptly collapsed near the boy, her exhaustion also finally catching up to her.
From inside Ritsuka's phone, BB was analyzing the girl near her Senpai. "This girl... she's..." The AI muttered, looking at the data in front of her. It displayed the name of the orange-haired girl, revealing her name to be 'Ritsuko Marufuji'.
From a nearby building, a figure jumped down from it, landing gracefully with the help of some kind of durable cloth. He removed the visor covering his eyes, revealing himself to be Shota Aizawa.
He was sent here under the orders of the principal. He intended to intervene if the lives of the participants were endangered by the rampaging zero-pointers. But it looks like his intervention was unnecessary.
Aizawa managed to saw the whole thing from atop a nearby building. How the black-haired boy kept making sure that attention of the zero-pointers were focused entirely on him, even at the expense of his own safety.
He looked at the two students on the floor with an analytical look. "Two idiots... Who wouldn't think twice to sacrifice themselves to save others... A noble, yet foolish mindset." He muttered.
The man then wrapped the two students with his cloth-like tool, it aided him in easily lifting the two. "Yet... Perhaps that kind of fool-hardy mindset is what the Hero society needed... Heh, I look forward to see whether you two truly have the potential or not." He lets out a small grin as he uttered the words.
With that said, the Erasure Hero carried the two sleeping students to the infirmary, where they would be treated by Recovery Girl.
In the monitor room, the teachers of UA were examining the result of the exams.
"And that concludes our practical exam for this year's entrance exam. Good work, everyone!" The mouse-like principal of UA, Nezu announced. The other examiners clapped and cheered at the announcement. After a while, they started chatting among themselves.
"Argh, I didn't get to watch it that much, all because of that darn rampaging zero-pointer!" The Excavation Hero, Power Loader grumbled, slumping tiredly on his chair. He was busy repairing the unresponsive cameras on area C, he suspects that they went offline because of that zero-pointer messing around.
"I'm sure you could just watch the recordings later, Maijima-san." The rock-like Cementoss remarked. "Good work on fixing the cameras, by the way."
Power Loader nodded. "Thanks, but I'd rather watch it live, y'know?"
"There, there. We'll tell you about the highlights instead, give you something to look forward to." The infamous R-rated Hero, Midnight chimed in, brushing her hair aside as she spoke.
"Sounds good, anyone worth noting?" Power Loader asked.
"Well, there's these two boys on Area B, they're the current top rankers for the exams. One fought like a raging beast, quickly scrapping any robots he found with his explosion Quirk." Midnight recounted, talking about a certain blondy. "And there's this other boy, who could easily wreck the robots with a flick of his fingers."
A certain number-one Hero perked up at the mention of that certain boy.
"Ah, the green-haired boy... Although powerful, he prioritized helping his fellow students, I'd say he got the making of a true Hero." Cementoss added in.
"Darn, I missed quite the spectacle." Power Loader grumbled once more.
"Indeed. Unfortunately, it seems his control of the Quirk might need some fine tuning." The long-range specialist, Snipe joined the conversation.
"How so?"
"Got one of his arm busted, trying to save a girl." Snipe summarized. "But the attack managed to destroy a zero-pointer in one blow, so perhaps it's not entirely wasted."
"And here I thought those things were too much for the kids..." Power Loader mused.
One zero-pointer were deployed for each area, they were supposed to be a literal gigantic obstacle for the students, something used to show that they aren't ready to face every obstacle on the real world yet. Destroying one is quite the noteworthy feat.
"Oh? Another one got destroyed?"
As they were conversing, the door of the room suddenly opened, revealing Aizawa there, still with his sleepy expression as always. The other wondered what he meant by those words.
"Ah, Aizawa. Welcome back." The principal greeted the scruffy man before anyone could ask about what he meant. "How was your task to personally monitor Area C?"
"My intervention proves unnecessary. They could handle it by themselves." He sat down on an empty chair as he spoke the words.
"They?" The principal furrowed his eyebrow.
"That black-haired boy that got chased around by the giant. He somehow caused the robot to explode, but not without some serious injury. I just got back from delivering him to the infirmary."
"Interesting... Would you mind shedding some light about the situation on Area C?" Nezu asked, a curious glint on his eyes.
With this, the entrance exam for this story is officially over! It felt really long somehow, might be because it took forever for me to update.
I felt really bad because I couldn't squeeze in more Rider stuff for this chapter, but I can't really find a way to do that without sounding too forced, so I guess I'll be saving it for future chapters for now.
I'll see you next time.
