"I'm going with you."

The first time Chase had seen Go, after, he nearly hadn't reached him in time. Chase had felt a queasy lurch, the knowledge settling into him that something was wrong prickling under his skin, and he had raced to find Go. Even then, the sense of wrongness had persisted through the aftermath of the first engagement with a new enemy, itself unsettling in more ways than one. Chase hadn't given much thought to human mortality, not before Deputy Commissioner Honganji had apparently died, and the process of preparing an ally's remains had been nothing short of disquieting.

"Why?" he'd asked Go.

Go had shrugged uncomfortably; he'd stuck by Chase, not touching him but standing far closer than what Chase had been given to understand was polite, and Chase had watched him start to speak on multiple occasions. "It's a way to respect someone's life," he'd said, finally.

"But –" Chase had tried to argue that perception ended with life. He hadn't gotten very far.

"It's more for the living left behind," the priest had said, ghosting up behind them. "It helps us gain closure, and say goodbye." He'd given them both a half smile, and then returned to the ceremony.

"What if there's nothing left?" Chase had asked, voice low, and Go's face had contorted briefly, as though he were suppressing something with every bit of strength he had.

Whether or not Chase would have gotten a reply wasn't a question that would be answered; the ceremony had expanded to include the rest of them, Deputy Commissioner Honganji had risen from the dead in a manner fitting for a man brought to the house of someone who was no longer among the living and yet refused to lie down and die, and Chase had tried to protect Go from the rank abnormality in the only way he knew how. Go had held him back, hadn't wanted him to go near someone who might or might not have been alive, and it had devolved into absurdity.

Sometimes, Chase had thought, absurdity was the only way any of his human friends coped with the process of having emotion at all. He had still been jealous, even at the very end. Even when the rift in time had been more or less repaired, and he'd felt himself begin to dissolve. Even in the face of the naked pain on Go's face, Chase had wanted to feel beyond the stirrings of longing and regret.

"This is goodbye," he'd said, trying to give Go the closure that his friend wouldn't get. He wouldn't leave anything behind, wouldn't leave any tangible proof of his existence. There would be nothing left, nothing to help his friend let him go. He'd known it hadn't helped even as the world dissolved around him.

Underneath the tingling crawl of poisonous yellow electricity arcing under his skin, Chase stirred. Relief warred with apprehension, edged with the memory of fire crawling along the edge of his senses, disrupting his Core, disrupting him, everything crashing crashing

the rest is silence

safe

as long as he stayed submerged

The chains of idle stillness, painful to touch but better than the possibility of before, keeping it from leaching out past his thoughts and tongue and eyes into his hands and leading him down paths better left untread. If he was here, he was safe. Everyone else was safe. Safe, in the quiet, and the nothing, where he couldn't hurt –

memory

The pale gray of false dawn crawling across the sky pinged on Chase's senses, pulling him abruptly out of his recharge cycle. He hadn't thought it was enough physical stimulus to wake him, particularly when he was turned away from the east corner of the south-facing balcony and the curtains were mostly closed. Chase frowned, stretching his limbs out and testing their response. Perhaps something else had woken him, although he couldn't hear anything. Go was presumably asleep in the bedroom, and Chase was struck with a momentary urge to look in on him. He started to stand, and found himself unable to move.

Did you really think I was gone?

The voice echoing against his ears was familiar, horribly familiar, and Chase would have closed his eyes in despair if he could have done so much as blink. The still air of Go's living room drifted past his eyeballs, a gentle touch that would become painful over time. "No," he said, and found he could speak.

Poor delusional little Roidmude. The voice was silky soft, coaxing and cajoling in a way that Chase hadn't heard it sound for years. I was part of Hypnos. I'm part of you, too.

Hypnos – Chase had heard the name, during the tests Go had run on his core programming, heard the story of how Krim's creation had rifled through Go's subconscious to pull Chase's data out of the memory of his death. Go had touched – but refused to elaborate – on the end of that episode, in which Banno had been hiding in Hypnos' programming and Go had nearly died. "You're not part of me," Chase tried to say, but the words fell apart in his mouth.

Denial doesn't suit you, my little reaper.

Ashes filled Chase's mouth. Whatever Banno was planning would spell pain and chaos and destruction, and Chase would have no part in it. He opened his mouth to spit defiance, and Banno froze him in his tracks.

No, I don't think so.

Chase could only watch as Banno steered his body out of Go's apartment, barely able to spare a fleeting thought of gratitude that Banno left his son sleeping soundly and unawares in the bedroom. Banno knew Go was there, knew and would use the knowledge against Chase. Go was a hostage to Banno's goodwill.

Don't be ridiculous, Banno scoffed. I have plans for him. And for you.

Chase lifted Go's Mach Driver out of the Ride Macher, taking it with him to a location covered in rust and cobwebs and yet still somehow accessible and left in peace.

I made many plans, Banno informed him, and Chase felt him split the Mach Driver open. He railed against the motions of his body, with no success, without even the tiniest hint that he'd had any effect at all. Chase resolved to end Banno's control of him in any way possible, up to and including his own destruction, if it meant keeping Go safe. Banno just laughed.

"Why?" Chase ground out, the control over his throat slackening just enough. He thought he knew what Banno had done to the Mach Driver; without the safeguards that had been added after its initial development, the Driver would push its wearer past his limits. The enhancement of speed and strength would be astounding, but the cost was cumulative and ultimately irreversible damage. "You can't."

Because he's my son? Banno asked, almost idly. Exactly. He paused. This is his penance for his betrayal. The rest of you have another reckoning.

Banno had retreated, once Chase had returned the Mach Driver to the Ride Macher, tugging on the threads of memory until Chase was almost convinced it had been a dream. Roidmudes don't dream, he thought, but when he tried to speak, his tongue tangled up in itself and he could say nothing.

The memories receded, washing into the dark. Banno had wanted out, howling against the inside of his skull, battering itself against what parts of himself Chase had managed to protect until he was overwhelmed. No resources, no recourse, spent, he could only huddle and watch as it picked over his memories and used his hands to complete his tasks, smiling with his mouth as it told Go that he'd gotten a different job this time. Sometimes it was even the truth, Banno allowing him just enough of a leash to taste life, receding into his subconscious and taking his knowledge of his passenger with it.

Go plunged off the side of the roller coaster, vanishing abruptly into nothing, and Chase surged forward. Not like this, he nearly shouted, but Go was clinging to the framework in what was an incalculably small sliver of realized probability. Chase shouted his friend's name, feeling the dizzying sensation of being alone in his own head and almost failing to notice it entirely in relief at seeing Go still alive.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Go said. "Just give me a minute."

Chase pulled Go up out of the abyss, the now-familiar tightening at the back of his mind just barely there. "Don't die," he said, entirely serious.

Something about Banno had shifted, when Chase had been caught up in pure fear that Go was gone, and he was at a minute fraction more of a remove than before. It was barely an edge of difference, but it was just enough for Chase to exert a tiny bit of control. Banno reached through his mind, though, and Chase's awareness of the passenger in his head dimmed again.

Chase dove under the surface, trying to tease out the edges of its nature, follow the thread back to its source, but it slipped away before he could start, and he wondered what he had been trying to do in the first place. How could he have free will and still be compelled to act, to move silently and swiftly to complete the tasks that might someday garner his freedom. Chase would have thrown himself into hellfire to make it stop, but it looped around his tongue until he spoke in riddles or not at all.

"Do you think it's possible that parts of multiple destroyed Cores were fused together to make a functioning Core?"

Go had to know. He clearly understood the process by which Chase had built the three proto-Roidmudes, in minutes and hours stolen from other endeavors, scavenging the city and its stores of refuse for the bits and pieces necessary to cobble together functioning life forms. Chase couldn't make himself say the word yes, couldn't tell Go that he was right. Not without giving himself away, and Banno still had too tight a rein on his tongue.

Go wasn't satisfied with Chase's vague answer, pressing for more specifics, and Chase couldn't tell him the truth. The moment passed, with Go understanding what Chase had done but not that it was Chase who had done it. Chase felt a wave of something unpleasant – annoyance, the occupant in his mind supplied absently – and the memory of his passenger drained away yet again.

"Your sister is very efficient," Chase heard himself say, and he'd forgotten something important. He didn't know what. He felt the vague flutterings of static at the edges of his mind, a sign that there was an error in his core programming, but he couldn't mention it and the static faded. Go was looking at him expectantly, and Chase cast around for what he'd been trying to say. Kiriko had told him to tell Go about the gathering, he thought. That must be it.

Something was still missing.

It wasn't enough. His personal freedom weighed against what he railed against his own hands performing was no choice at all, but he couldn't make the trade. He was trapped under his own skin, in his own lack of awareness until memory flooded back along with motion not his own, only to wax and wane when it was done with him.

There is no way out echoed across his mind as he stared down at Go curled against his chest, the second transformation already having measurable effects. The Kamen Riders had destroyed two of the Roidmudes he'd made, taking advantage of flaws Chase had built into them. Connections missed, pieces aligned ever so slightly off-kilter, a dozen tiny errors adding up to creations that weren't entirely up to par. The third Roidmude, though, would have Banno's entire will bent upon it.

This wasn't part of the plan, Banno snarled in the back of Chase's mind, but Chase fought back. He wouldn't leave Go alone, not until he knew the Driver hadn't damaged him irreparably already. The third Roidmude would wait, no matter how much Banno railed. Chase had this much control, holding onto it by the thinnest of margins until he couldn't lose himself in the distraction of creating a future he didn't know if he would even reach and the only thought he had left was I want to keep you safe. It battered against the rock of the third Roidmude, breaking and reforming in waves until Go shifted under Chase's hand and murmured his name.

It was with him, wrapping itself around his limbs more tightly than before, echoing under his skin with a voice that wasn't a voice reflecting that which should long have been gone, it in and of itself a distorted reflection of what it had once been, mirrored and mirrored again, with each iteration more misshapen than the last. It moved him with brutal efficiency nonetheless, rapid, quick, making the first and the second and teaching each one to ape his motions and continue to create an army of distractions while he built the death of his friends and teammates.

There were no gaps, no cracks, nothing he could leverage into a weakness, until it was nearly finished; an error in sensory calibration that would slow the Roidmude down just enough for the upgraded Mach to keep up with it. And when it killed Mach, it would pour itself out of Chase into the vessel he had created for it and he- he would be finished.

One last well of strength in the face of inevitable defeat, reserves Chase hadn't known he had, trying to keep the memory of the parasite infesting his Core and his mind in sharp relief instead of letting it sink into obscurity. All or nothing, Chase thought, and tried to ignore Banno's mocking laughter. It pulled him to move and speak and sometimes not say anything at all, tangling around his tongue when he tried to speak, and no one understood what he couldn't tell them.

Go was a warm weight against his side, breathing deep and even, and Chase surreptitiously redistributed his weight to settle Go more comfortably. Kiriko noticed anyway, rolling her eyes and smiling. Chase smoothed the hair out of Go's eyes, and Kiriko's face softened at the gesture. Chase almost didn't want the film to end, but all too soon the end credits were rolling and the lights were on and Go was sitting up, looking vaguely embarrassed.

Banno roiled against the back of Chase's tongue, pressing down into the leaden sensation in what passed for Chase's stomach until he thought something had to give. Words spilled out, not the words he'd been trying to say. "Your engagement in certain extracurricular activities has been draining your stamina," Chase said, deliberately looking at exactly where the Driver would have rested against Go's hips in a victorious moment of hard-won willpower and desperate hope for Go to understand.

Afterward, Chase wasn't sure how he'd managed to miss the mark so badly. Instead of alerting his friend – boyfriend-partner-lover – to the very real danger he was in, Chase had disclosed their physical relationship. Go hadn't precisely tried to keep it a secret, but the way he'd avoided mentioning it to anyone else hadn't gone unnoticed. Chase swallowed down the leaden taste of failure.

Listening to Shinnosuke verbally dance around the topic of Go's emotional wellbeing was a distraction, but Chase couldn't decide whether or not it was a welcome one. Shinnosuke's long and confusing speech ended abruptly with "And don't you forget it" as Go wrapped him in a hug for reasons unknown. Chase wasn't in the least surprised that neither Kiriko nor Shinnosuke had anticipated what Go had thought would be a revelation, nor did he find their reactions unexpected, but despite the damage Chase knew the Driver had done to Go, the other man looked lighter on his feet at the unalloyed acceptance from his family. Chase couldn't help the small curl of relief, nor the thought that he'd failed entirely.

Trying to tell Go what the Driver was doing changed in his mouth, the words coming out as something else entirely, and Chase gave up. Go must have noticed something, for he asked the one question Chase hadn't anticipated.

"Do you want this to keep going? Us?"

The words swept around him from behind, taking him unawares, and Chase stilled. He didn't trust himself to move or speak for a small eternity, but Go's breath only hitched twice before Chase could turn around and speak with utter and total honesty for the first time since waking in the Drive Pit. "I want you to be with me for as long as you can," he said, willing Go to see the implications of his words. You're dying, he couldn't say. The Driver is going to leach out your life in bits and pieces, and you'll welcome it, because you can't see it coming.

Once again, Chase flew wide of the mark, and he fled before his Core shook itself apart. Even running away, there was only one path he could take, and he knew Go was right behind him.

"Don't speak," he said, pulling Go inside as soon as Go turned the knob.

"I'm not going anywhere," Go said, and Chase buried the scream he couldn't utter. The words echoed, nearly drowning out the submerged framework Banno had grown deep in his mind, and Chase held onto them like a lifeline.

Tension, building around his Core, both driven and anchored by the promise Go was going to break, whether he wanted to or not – I'm not going anywhere – until Chase had almost nothing left to give, his final reserves already exhausted. He had nearly broken it, though, broken it along with him.

Now! Strike now!

Shackles, chains, freedom to move in any direction but not the one he really wanted – but his obscene creation burst into cleansing flame and Chase knew there was one thing he could keep safe. Keep safe from everything. Nothing. Nothing would.

I'm not going anywhere.

But he was already gone.

I'm not going anywhere.

Shijima Go is a liar, Chase knew suddenly, and the world around him splintered.

Killhimkillhimkillhimbloodonthepavementkillhimdoitnow-

Fade. Static. Protect. Protect. Threat. Threat assessment. Warning. His hand twitched to the side almost imperceptibly and Chase frowned. Protect. Keep safe. Safe. Safe. Closer, warm and pliant – why isn't he moving – still and safe no one would touch him safe safe protect warn safe I can't I can't something is wrong no valid input protect this voice is the sound of betrayal what are you doing don't not him not Shinnosu-shinno-shin—neutralize – familiar is poison is wrong is no protect safe keep safe make it stop make it stop

make it stop

Fire crawled along the edge of his senses, pain bringing cessation of thought, disrupting burning bringing everything crashing crashing fading into gray static

stay in the silence

safe as long as he stayed submerged keeping it in the depths with him where it couldn't control couldn't leach into thoughts tongue eyes hands safe in the nothing

stay down, proto-zero

Static washed over him.