A Piece of the Sky
The Time Mazine bowed, bent beneath the force of weight of the landing, its broken limbs tearing up the grass and concrete beneath it. His hands trembled, knuckles white around the control yoke, the control board before him bleating out a series of warnings that he failed to understand or comprehend.
What was the last thing he remembered, what was the last thing he recalled? Lifting his hand to his head, it came away stained with blood. He swallowed hard. It was fine, he would be okay, it wasn't as if he had never seen blood before, right? It wasn't if he had never seen his own blood before.
Recollection flashed through his mind, the camp in the desert, the dirt and the blood. No, that was long ago now, or rather, it had yet to happen. What was the last thing he remembered, he thought once again.
With painful remembrance, gingerly prodding the wound on his forehead once more, he recalled a name suddenly: Amamiya Rin, a year younger than him, full of anger and frustration, her school shoes scuffing the red brick wall, her uniform stinking of cigarettes.
That was right, he thought, leaning against the control yoke, pulling himself up on uncertain legs, noticing the tiny marks of blood that stained his white shirt. When had that been, sometime in the last few decades, he was sure. He could remember there hadn't been any other Riders there, at least that had been what Rin had told them, only the distant memory of what had happened in the past.
Angrily, he shook his head, trembling hands leaning against the central control board of the machine, fingers moving over the delicate touchscreen. 1994, he read the flashing date before him; he was still in 1994.
"Computer," he said, his voice little more than a cough, his lips dry. "Computer, identify anomalies in local time stream."
There was a moment, a low groan from the computer as it growled into wakefulness, the limbs of its machine body bent out of shape, the light above his head flickering incessantly.
"No anomalies detected," the machine blurted back tonelessly, that same voice used for secretary model HumaGears, the humanoid blueprints for the massive Time Mazines.
He nodded.
"Computer," he tried again, "list encounters with anomalous technology."
Again, the computer groaned; again, the HumaGear voice resounded through the cockpit.
"Two results found: identified destruction of alien craft in Earth atmosphere six months from present date, and also, presence of unique armour analogous to previously identified corrupted RideWatches."
The RideWatch, he realised, that was right, the Timejacker, Spade had possessed a blank RideWatch. But there were no Kamen Riders in this time period, Rin had told them that Riders were simply a myth.
"Can you identify the origin of the craft that crashed?"
"Negative," the computer replied.
"Too bad," he said.
Now he just had to find the others, find out what had happened, how Spade had managed to create a unique Another Rider from nothing.
"Computer, identify location of Geiz."
"Hikarigamori High School, 2-chome—"
"Computer, identify location of…"
His voice faltered. He had almost said Sougo, but that wasn't right. Sougo was a boy's name.
"Computer, identify location of Tokiwa Sumire."
"Hikarigamori High School, 2-chome—"
"Got it," he said, cutting the voice off again, his fingers dialling the access code on the board before him, the chest of the great machine opening once more.
Warm summer air rushed in, and he caught his breath. Moving past the control yoke, he carefully stepped down the side of the giant robot, landing on the grass of the school playing field, a number of students staring up at the vast machine and its former pilot in utter bewilderment.
They had been trying to use the Time Mazine to go forward in time, to advance back into the world from which he had escaped and thus find a method of nullifying the RideWatch that Spade had brought with him. Yet something had changed, something had derailed the Time Mazine from its path.
The alien craft, he realised. Moving through the flow of time, the robot had collided with the falling alien craft six months in the future, and, somehow, time had been altered, transformed.
Hesitantly, he reached up to the ear, initiating the telepathic link with the machine as he began to sprint forward across the playing field, rushing back towards the school where even now Sumire and Geiz would be engaged with Spade and the new Another Rider he had made of the Remodelled Martial Arts Group Z's most prominent performer.
"Computer, can you identify the origin point of the alien craft?" he asked again.
'Negative,' came the reply in his ear.
"Computer, what was it that destroyed the craft?"
There was a moment in which the machine did not respond, a number of students swearing at him as he barged past, yanking the vast double doors of the school open and sprinting down the corridor.
'Sensors indicate a large build-up of J power was responsible for the craft losing integrity and crashing.'
"What's J power?" he demanded with a frown.
'A natural resource known to temporarily engorge living things, allowing them to momentarily grow to mammoth proportions.'
"That's insane," he murmured.
Turning the corner, he skidded to a stop, finding Geiz sprawled out face down upon the floor, as in the distance, Sumire and King clashed, the blades of their swords clattering against one another. Instinctively, he dropped down, gently easing Geiz onto her back, the long braid of her dark hair loosened by the violence of her confrontation.
Feebly, she opened her eyes.
"T-Tsukuyomi," she murmured.
He nodded.
Hastily, she tried to push away, struggling to sit up.
"Something went wrong?" she asked.
"It didn't work," Tsukuyomi answered, "the Time Mazine hit something when I tied to return to our time, and now everything in this year is out of sequence."
Geiz nodded, her expression fierce as she pulled herself up, pulling free her RideWatch from the pocket of her tracksuit trowsers, summoning again the belt to her waist.
"Tsukuyomi, stand back," she commanded, slamming the watch down into the belt, igniting the mechanism within with a flash of sound and noise.
He watched as her armour took shape, gold and red burnt together in a fusion of colour.
"Henshin!" she shouted, pulling her ax from her belt, and charging forward towards Sumire and King.
How had this started, Tsukuyomi asked himself; how had they ended up here? He tensed his fists. If only he had his own armour, if he only he could lend the two of them his own strength. Around his fists, particles of light seemed to blossom into existence, sparks of illumination, the suggestion of a greater power at work.
'Warning,' the voice of the computer called in his ear, 'sensors reading a large amount of J power in your area.'
He ignored it, his knuckles white, his face contorted in an expression of frustration.
How had this happened, he asked once more.
Amamiya Rin was an unhappy looking girl, she thought, watching the other girl with apprehension.
"Kamen Rider?" she asked.
Sougo nodded, smiling warmly, the weight of a familiar RideWatch in his hand.
"Yeah, you know, like," he paused, tapping a finger against his lips, "Kuuga, right?"
Rin frowned, and then turned to her cigarette, inhaling deeply, as Geiz stood next to her and grumbled his displeasure.
"Never heard of him. Kamen Rider? That stuff's just a kid's story."
"Sougo," Tsukuyomi said with exasperation, "no one knows about Kuuga yet."
"Idiot," Geiz murmured under his breath.
Tokiwa Sougo looked thoughtful for a moment, and then smiled.
"Oh, that's right." He stopped, looked around, as if hoping that the familiar, unchanging scenery of the school might inspire him. "So who's the Kamen Rider in this time period?"
25 years in the past and Hikarigamori High School had not changed at all, Tsukuyomi thought, marginally pleased that regardless of the horrors of her own childhood, she had not been forced to attend school in a world such as was presented before them now.
"Don't be stupid," Amamiya said, "there's no such thing as Kamen Rider."
"You'd be surprised," Tsukuyomi murmured.
She supposed she could not blame Sougo for bringing up Kuuga; this whole affair had begun because of Kuuga. Unbeknownst to any of them, over the past few days, the Kuuga RideWatch had slowly began to lose its lustre, until, long past the point when something might have been done about it, the watch had faded until the imprint of Kuuga's powers was only barely recognisable.
"The only people who care about stuff like that are those idiots in the Remodelled Martial Arts Group Z."
A sudden smile alit Sougo's face.
"Ah, could it be that Ms Amamiya has someone she likes in this group?"
Her face flushed suddenly red.
"Don't be an idiot," she said sharply turning away. "Besides, it's not like that between me and Kengiro."
Gently, Tsukuyomi reached out and placed a hand on the other girl's elbow.
"Rin, who's Kengiro?" she asked.
Rin sighed with frustration.
"He's just someone I know. We grew up together, okay?" She took another drag on his cigarette. "But now he's in with those idiots in Group Z, and they've got him running around doing all this humiliating stuff."
She shook her head sadly.
"The worst of it all is they never used to be that bad, at least not until that Spade guy showed up."
"Spade," Geiz growled in recognition.
Rin blinked in surprise.
"Oh, you know him?"
Geiz directed his reply at Sougo and Tsukuyomi.
"A Timejacker," he said, and then looked directly at Tsukuyomi, "You never met him, I believe. He was supposed to have been killed during the battle on the Southern Front. He was Woz's apprentice."
"Apprentice?" Sougo asked with mild surprise.
Geiz nodded, bristling with displeasure at the topic of conversation.
"Listen, I don't know who you guys are talking about, but if you're finished here?"
She gestured with her cigarette.
"Right, right," Sougo smiled. "Actually, Ms Amamiya, I was wondering if you could introduce us to your friend, Kengiro?"
Light coalesced around his fist, the shimmer of pale green illumination, and abruptly, a RideWatch manifested itself, hanging in the air before him for the briefest moment. Reaching out, he snatched it up before it could fall, looking down at the unfamiliar green and silver portrait depicted within.
Ahead of him, he could hear Sumire as she initiated her own transformation, the shift of the standard armour she wore into something familiar, something reminiscent of previous Riders and former foes that they had defeated.
'Armour time!' bellowed the belt. 'Royal Edenoi! Masked!'
"Tsukuyomi!" a voice called from behind him, and he turned instinctively to see Rin with her arm around Kengiro, carrying the wounded boy out of a classroom.
So, he thought, in this world, he had always been like this, had always been a boy, and Rin's recollection had simply changed accordingly.
"Get Kengiro out of here," he instructed, turning back to see Sumire's transformation, black plates sliding into place across the surface of her suit, a black veneer decorated with stripes of yellow and red, the lens of his helm turning blood red. "We'll handle the rest."
In his hand, the strange RideWatch felt suddenly and impossibly heavy.
"Group Z?" he asked.
As before, Sougo nodded, smiling warmly, the weight of a familiar RideWatch in his hand.
"There's not much I can really tell you," he said, looking faintly apprehensive. "Besides, King doesn't like us talking about the group to outsiders."
At her side, Geiz muttered beneath his breath, rolling his eyes, and gently, she reached out to restrain him, her hand about his arm.
Kadomatsu Kengiro was a shy looking boy, she thought, average looking, maybe a little short, hair cut in an unfashionable bowl shape, a characteristic that made him look like a character in one of those comic books that Shogo's uncle read.
"I'm sure your friend won't mind just this one time, will he?" Sougo said, still smiling.
Everyone's best friend, Tokiwa Sougo, Tsukuyomi reflected. It was hard to imagine that Sougo was the reason they had originally stolen the Time Mazines, originally crossed the great sands of time and found themselves in 2018. And now, several months later, those machines had become a vital part of their arsenal, providing the means and method for tracing the origins of corrupted RideWatches employed by those from their own native time who wished to benefit from silencing Sougo.
"They spend all their time dressing up as Kamen Riders and putting on shows for kids. Isn't that right, Kengiro?" Rin said disparagingly, her uniform still smelling strongly of smoke.
The boy squirmed.
"It's not exactly like that," he muttered.
"Seems like you're definitely the right person to see when it comes to Kamen Riders though," Sougo said, tossing the RideWatch up in the air and catching it. "That's why we were hoping you could help us with this."
Kengiro smiled apologetically.
"I'm really sorry, but I only really know about acting. I don't really think Kamen Riders are real."
Geiz opened his mouth to argue the point, and firmly, Tsukuyomi stamped on his foot, immediately silencing him.
"Is that so?" she said with a raised eyebrow.
"See, I told you that stuff was for kids," Rin said sourly.
"Kengiro," a voice called sharply from behind them, cutting through their conversation.
Tsukuyomi turned to see another boy, his uniform immaculate, his hair a warm auburn colour, a single diamond stud in his right ear, no doubt highly controversial in the opinions of the school staff.
"Kengiro," he said again, not looking at the boy, but staring directly at Sougo, "group meeting. Now."
Without another word, he turned and walked away.
"Is that—?" Sougo began.
"King," Rin said. "Pompous ass. Just because he's the head of Group Z, he thinks he's better than the rest of us."
Gingerly, Kengiro bowed and murmured apologies, shuffling from them in pursuit of the older boy.
"Hey, you can't tell me you're going to do what that guy says after he spoke to you like that?" Geiz shouted, suddenly incensed, more on Kengiro's behalf than out of respect for his own feelings.
Kengiro turned and smiled weakly.
"Sorry," he murmured, bowing again, "being in Group Z will make my résumé look really good for college."
He bowed one last time, and then, without another word, shuffled off after the other boy.
"Ecto Ray!" Sumire said, drawing the gun from her belt and swiftly taking aim at the armoured form of King, a volley of shots spattering against the green and silver of his breastplate.
Ever since they had arrived in 1994, everyone around them had been adamant that Kamen Riders were a thing of the past, a story told to entertain children—and yet despite all that, it had been King's Remodelled Martial Arts Group Z that had been keeping their story alive, putting on stage shows and performances for kids, telling those old stories of faintly remembered heroes. This was why, despite everything, she could not bring herself to believe that King was evil, just misled, like so many of those deceived by Timejackers like Spade.
Deftly, she dived out of the way of King's blade, the shimmering silver barely missing her shoulder as it passed.
"King!" she called to them behind her mask. "King, this isn't what you really want. Spade lied to you!"
Swallowed up by that monstrous armour, King merely howled in anger, lifting the blade up with both hands and bringing it down once more. Effortlessly, Sumire blocked the blow with the Ecto Ray, the screech of metal against metal.
"Listen to me, King, you've been manipulated. Kamen Riders are heroes. This isn't what you want."
"Zi-o! Move!" Geiz shouted, sprinting forward.
Swiftly, Sumire jumped back as Geiz charged forward, smashing through King's sword with her ax, and delivering a gut punch that sent the possessed boy stumbling backwards, screeching in anger.
It had been obvious that something more was going when they first met Kengiro, Sumire thought, and she wasn't sure if King was just the kind of person who could not conceive of being challenged, or if he simply did not care, but it had been easy enough to follow him down to the gym where Group Z were scheduled to have their meeting, and it had been likewise easy enough to intervene when Spade had finally revealed himself, forcing the RideWatch onto King and transforming him into a mockery of the heroes he had once so praised.
From there, the fight had exploded out into the corridor, the other members of Group Z either wounded or fleeing, and Tsukuyomi had attempted to go forward in time to 2068 to stop Spade before he could leave with the blank Ridewatch, only that hadn't worked out.
She frowned, suddenly feeling that her recollection of events up until that point had been mysteriously changed. Yet whatever hesitance she felt about her memory, her thoughts were soon distracted by King as the Another Rider redoubled his effort, a roar escaping his lips as he rushed forward to meet them.
Sumire braced herself, and yet still she was thrown back, hitting the ground hard alongside Geiz, the impossible spirit aura of the boy in the Another Rider armour crashing in waves over them.
It was then that she became aware of a different aura, another powerful aura that caused even the maddened form of King to reconsider his position.
Slowly, Sumire turned to see Tsukuyomi surrounded by dim points of green light like shards of broken glass hanging suspended in the air around him. Her eyes widened as she realised there was another unfamiliar RideWatch in his hand, something foreign, something utterly unknown.
Looking straight ahead at King, Tsukuyomi lowered the RideWatch, a belt of emerald green with a burning red rhinestone buckle appearing about his waist.
"Henshin" he said softly, his face set with determination.
About them, light suddenly flooded the school corridor.
"Rider!" he cried, his wings buzzing as he tore through the air in panic. "Rider!"
For hundreds of years, he had slumbered in the embrace of the Earth Spirits, waiting for the time when the J power would be needed once more, when he would be called on to guide the J power warrior in his quest to protect the beauty and majesty of the Earth.
"Rider!" he cried out again as he approached, his fragile body passing over a tremendous distance in a short time.
Ahead, the light of J power burnt brilliantly.
"Rejoice!" a voice announced.
Tsukuyomi flinched, looking suddenly over his shoulder.
"Woz, when did you get here?" he asked.
A heavy leather bound tome open in one hand, Woz arched an eyebrow, deftly reaching up to brush a strand of blonde hair from her eye.
"I am in all places that Her Majesty should chuse to travel," the older woman remarked simply.
There had been another Woz previously, a thin, shrewd looking man in white who had heralded the arrival of a different monarch from an alternate epoch. White Woz, they had dubbed him, for the colour of his garb, as a means of attempting to differentiate, which had then led to briefly assigning a similar prefix to the Woz from their own timeline—Pink Woz, Sumire had smiled with delight, a reference to the frills and crinoline and hues of pink in the older woman's wardrobe—and then they had just given up.
"Rejoice!" Woz called out again, bringing Tsukuyomi back to the present. "The one to protect the Earth's shores, the one to protect the Earth's forests! Kamen Rider J, chosen of the Earth Spirits!"
Tsukuyomi looked down at his gauntlets, the dark green armour now wrapped about his body.
"Kamen Rider J?" he murmured in confusion.
"Rider! Rider!" screeched a sudden, high-pitched voice.
Much to Woz's disgust, a large grasshopper landed in the middle of the older woman's book, antenna twitching in Tsukuyomi's direction. Before Woz could slam the book shut and crush the creature's feeble body, it abruptly cried out:
"Rider! It is you!"
Tsukuyomi struggled to find words to address the creature.
With a roar, King threw himself forward once again, his aura burning red with impossible fury.
"Rider! Use your elbow strike!" the squat grasshopper belated suddenly.
"You don't have to tell me twice!" Tsukuyomi said, swiftly side-stepping King and raising his right arm. "J-elbow!"
His arm connected with the back of King's neck sending him staggering forwards past Woz and the ugly grasshopper.
"Quickly, J-punch!" the creature cried.
"What are you?" Tsukuyomi asked, glaring at the creature.
"No time, Rider!"
King turned, and swiftly Tsukuyomi slammed his fist hard into the boy's solar plexus, the breastplate fracturing as he doubled over.
"Sumire! Geiz!" he shouted over his shoulder, and from behind him, he heard the sudden whir of both Sumire and Geiz's Ziku-Drivers.
'Time Burst!' cried the first mechanism.
'Time Break!' echoed the second.
"Rider Kick!" both Riders called out, sailing over Tsukuyomi's head and smashing into King.
There was a sudden shower of light and King's armour exploded, the RideWatch falling to the ground, burnt black as coal, as the boy dropped to his knees, exhausted and weak.
'Warning, unauthorised access,' came the sudden voice of the computer in Tsukuyomi's ear.
He looked up, and, through the broken glass of the window, he saw the distant shape of the Time Mazine on the school playing field, its chest hatch slamming shut and sealing the cockpit.
Swiftly, he took a step forward, and then stopped as King's hand suddenly reached out and took hold of him.
"I was wrong," the boy murmured, and Tsukuyomi was uncertain if the boy was talking to him directly, or if he was just speaking so as to be heard. "I was wrong. I should never have stopped believing in heroes."
One hand moved over the console, the other seizing hold of the right control stick, as swiftly he overrode the security settings of the Time Mazine. After all, he thought, you fly one Time Mazine, you fly them all, and in 2068, Spade had flown a good many such machines.
Behind him, No Rider twitched and shivered, and he glanced sourly back at the creature, its bat-like ears, its permanently open maw dripping with salvia.
"Can't you be quieter back there?" he snapped.
The creature whimpered in response, cowering in the darkness.
No Rider had been his first attempt to use a corrupted RideWatch, his first serious effort when it came to reshaping the idea of exactly what a Kamen Rider could be, of stretching the potential of such a mythos. As such, the creature had been an abject failure, a ridiculous mooncalf, a calvaluna.
Around him, the cockpit trembled, the machine rising up and breaking free of the confines of the three-dimensional universe, launching forward into time, skipping ahead years in pursuit of a further goal.
Spade's hand was tight against the yoke as he watched the stereovision screen light up with trauma of the passing years.
Next time, he promised himself, he would not go so easy on Zi-o or his lackeys.
"Where will you go now?" Rin asked, eyeing, with no small unease, the large grasshopper resting on Tsukuyomi's shoulder.
"The future," Sumire said with a smile, "at least, your future. We still have Geiz's Time Mazine after all, and we need to find out where Spade has gone and what's happened to the Kuuga RideWatch."
"It'll be crowded," Geiz muttered, deliberately looking into the distance, refusing to make eye contact with any of them.
Gently, Tsukuyomi reached out and took King's hands, bringing the boy blushingly close to him and placing the blackened new RideWatch into his hands.
"I figure you guys will need this," he said with a smile, "it seems the '90s need a Kamen Rider just as much as we do in our time."
The boy blushed, and quickly looked away.
"Thank you," he murmured, and then squirmed as the grasshopper leapt from Tsukuyomi's shoulder to his, almost as if the creature sensed the transition of power.
"Thank you for all you did for us," Kengiro said softly. "We promise to keep the memory of Kamen Rider alive in your absence."
Sumire shrugged carelessly, digging her hands into the pockets of her culottes.
"I'm sure you will," she said, and then turned to Geiz with a nod, and said, "Let's go find where you left your Time Mazine."
Tsukuyomi nodded and made to turn, stepping back as his two friends made their way across the asphalt of the school playground. Hesitantly, King stepped forward, the grasshopper on his shoulder, the RideWatch clutched in his hand.
"I never told you my name," he said, "my real name."
Tsukuyomi raised an eyebrow, walking backwards a step or two.
"Kouji," he said and bowed, "Kouji Segawa. It's nice to meet you."
The other boy smiled earnestly.
"Figures," he said. "I guess the timeline really has changed then. For the better, I hope."
"I do too," King said, lifting his head again.
Tsukuyomi offered him a smile, and a salute, and then turned and followed after his friends.