Disclaimer: I own nothing about Black Bullet or Kamen Rider.
Gastrea – a mysterious virus that suddenly appeared before mankind. This virus enters the human body through bodily fluids causing infection. It alters the victim's DNA and form. Because of its contagiousness, it immediately spread throughout the entire world. After its breakout, Gastrea quickly took mankind's spot at the top of the food chain.
Third Shot – Do the Evolution
Every time Satomi Rentaro saw those doors which seemed more suitable as the final gate to a supervillain's lair, he got reminded of a particular tidbit in some pop culture list about becoming an Evil Overlord. Something along the lines of…
Before spending available funds on giant gargoyles, gothic arches, or other cosmetically intimidating pieces of architecture, I will see if there are any valid military expenditures that could use the extra budget.
In this case, instead of military expenditures, the extra funding could have gone to additional equipment that could be necessary for Gastrea research. Heck, even Masao could have probably used the extra money to build another new weapon for the IXA system.
'I think this looks pretty bad for a hospital…' He shoved those thoughts aside and made his way past those evil looking doors to enter the darkened laboratory, filled with books, Gastrea samples and other materials scattered around. "Sensei? Where are you?"
"Over here." Rentaro could make her silhouette out behind an operating table's curtain. As soon as he reached for it, it opened by itself and got a close encounter with the face of a corpse, causing him to back off reflexively.
"Whoa!"
"Haha! You're still weak against creepy things like this." The young female doctor's head poked up from behind the corpse. She had messy, purple hair that covered the whole of her forehead, as well as a prominent bang entirely covering her right eye and parts of her cheekbones. Arching around her eyes are a pair of thin eyebrows and, underneath, two slightly thick eyelashes which encompass her oval eyes and light irises. "Boo!"
"Don't scare me like that, Sensei!" Seriously, how did Masao put up with Sumire Muroto on a regular basis?
"Welcome to the Abyss. Let me introduce you to my new boyfriend, Charlie."
Rentaro stared at the male corpse. "I thought you had a girlfriend named Susan?"
"She's no longer here and now it's just him." Sumire placed the corpse back down on the operating table. "Corpses are great. They don't babble. Only they can understand my feelings."
"Yeah, yeah…"
The doctor simply moved towards a lab station and cleared some equipment away before taking a seat on the table, keeping an eye on a medium sized beaker containing purple liquid over a burner. "The Stage 1 Gastrea you defeated earlier was brought into the lab not too long ago. Can't you kill them more cleanly? You also left bullets all over the place. Not only are a perverted, lazy coward but you can't shoot worth a damn. Why haven't you killed yourself yet?"
"Hey, you can't blame me for that last one! The inspector used my gun while I used my belt!" corrected Rentaro.
"Eeeh, is that so?"
The young man cleared his throat in an attempt to calm his nerves down. "Well, in any case, I don't think I'm that much of a lost cause. Otherwise, Masao wouldn't have trusted me with the belt."
"If you don't shape up, Kisara will never look at you," replied Sumire, stirring the strange purple liquid.
Rentaro looked startled for a moment. "Where did that come from?!"
"If you like her, you should just make her yours by force. You have that belt now, right? Surely, that power would be more than enough to subdue her." The doctor reached for a pair of tongs and some additional trays.
"Kisara-san is a master of the Tendo Martial Arts of iaido. She would kill me in an instant. Honestly, if her kidney was fully functioning, I bet she would be the one using this belt and not me."
"When you lived in the Tendo household, Kisara was the one who protected you from her older brothers, right?" Sumire poured the purple mixture into one tray, letting it cool down and form a solid substance.
"Yeah. I think I've gotten strong enough to protect Kisara-san. The belt is proof of that."
"But you're still as worthless as ever?" Rentaro's nose then picked up an odd scent which came from the plate being offered to him by the doctor. He took it while she brought her own plate of 'food' to her computer. "Let's get down to business. You're not here to ask about the autopsy, right?"
"Sensei, there are no reports of eliminating or even spotting the Gastrea that was the source of the infection. At this rate, there will be more victims."
"Quiz time: do you know the unique characteristic of a jumping spider?"
Rentaro paused for a moment before his mind came up with the answer. "That would be the body colour, right? And it's known to jump when hunting its prey."
"Full marks," said Sumire as she bit into her own makeshift meal and swallowed the mouthful before going into her lecture. "By nature, even if an insect grew to the size of a human, it would no longer be able to use its jumping ability. It also wouldn't have the strength to support its own large body or breathe properly. But the Gastrea virus turns all of that around. When an organism turns into a Gastrea, the strength of its skin as well as its physical functions are elevated to compensate for size. So the bigger it is, the harder the skin and the stronger its muscles will become. And not only does the virus clone itself, it also factors in the host's DNA and adjusts the shape accordingly."
"I see."
"The erosion speed of the Gastrea virus is highly irregular. And once it's taken over more than 50% of the body, the host can no longer maintain a human form and becomes a Gastrea through constitution decay. Through this evolutionary process, new abilities are sometimes born. The source you have yet to find may have acquired a new power as well."
Rentaro thought about it for a moment while the doctor continued eating. "Like optimal camouflage?"
"If it really had that type of power, the Tokyo area could be destroyed by a pandemic as early as tomorrow."
"It'll be fine. That won't happen if Enju and I have anything to say about it."
Sumire placed down her plate. "Enju-chan, huh?"
"… What is it?"
"Sometimes the Cursed Children scare me. They appeared around the same time as the Gastrea ten years ago, almost as if they were born to fight them. Those girls with red eyes who are immune to the Gastrea virus, born from the wombs of mothers who contract it from an aerial infection… they truly are a special existence. But enough of that. I gave you enough lessons for today."
"In that case, I'll start with what you told me and see if I can find any clues that could confirm the existence of a camouflage ability." Rentaro placed his own plate down and prepared to leave.
"You haven't touched your plate," noted the doctor.
"Well-"
He was interrupted when the lab doors opened again to allow a third occupant to enter and drop by the area where he and the doctor were talking earlier. "How's it going, you two?"
"Hello there, Masao-kun. I was just lecturing Rentaro here about the importance of finishing his food. But since you're here, you can take his portion." Sumire even pointed out to the sitting plate which still had the steaming contents present and producing odd purple bubbles.
"…"
"Or if you want, you can come back to my place and I'll cook dinner. We only got bean sprouts though," offered Rentaro.
"I'm in for that but let's at least get some proper ingredients," replied Masao immediately. "I'll pay."
"Thanks!" With that, the two young males prepared to leave the laboratory.
"But what about this plate? It's just going to go to waste," pouted Sumire behind them.
That particular dilemma was evidently resolved by a certain Kivat-bat the Fourth swooping in and devouring every last bit of the 'food' before falling to the ground with his grey eyes looking rather… dizzy. "The whole world is spinning! Yahoo~!"
"Good thing I didn't eat that then. Who knows what's actually in it," grumbled Masao as he picked up his companion.
"Hey, I've been eating it for years and I turned out perfectly normal!" exclaimed the scientist.
On cue, both young men gave her the exact same sarcastic response. "Right…"
The shopping trip had been uneventful. A few additional ingredients were picked up, namely vegetables, a few cuts of meat and some pre-packaged noodles so that Rentaro could do a stir fry when they both returned to his apartment.
"It's hard to believe that there's an ongoing war against monsters when you travel through the Tokyo Area," murmured Masao while his motorcycle was stopped at a red light.
Rentaro merely shifted his posture in the sidecar while holding on to the grocery bags. "You fought some monsters in your own world too, right? Fanpires?"
"Fangires," corrected the other young man. "And now you believe me when I said I came from a different 2030?"
"Well, the fact that you built a suit of armour based off a circuit board that would have never been produced in this world may have had something to do with convincing me," came the snarky reply. "But honestly, I guess it was a crazy stroke of luck that you were carrying it with you."
"Indeed." Masao could remember that incident well. Before he had to make that emergency trip to the past and stop the Neo-Fangire, he had been studying the foundation of the old IXA Version X system as part of his engineering apprenticeship program at the Wonderful Blue Sky Organization. In his haste, he had stuffed the small circuit board into his pocket and that ended up allowing him to develop an IXA system equivalent to the Version X for this timeline.
The rest of the trip was silent until they finally reached Rentaro's apartment building. Once the motorcycle was parked in the parking lot, the young male resumed the discussion. "So how much longer will I need to field test the system for?"
"I probably would think another few weeks. Two months tops." The younger Kurenai looked a little puzzled. "Why do you ask?"
Rentaro hopped out of the sidecar. "I don't know if I'm the right person to be getting you the optimal results. After all, my IP rank with Enju is only at 120,000. You can probably find higher ranked Promoters around easily."
"That may be true but to me, rank means nothing. Using that power responsibly to do the right thing is what's important and in my view, you score high enough on that front." An odd grin came to Masao's face. "And of course, you have Kivat's vote of confidence too which really influenced my decision."
"So basically a little orange cartoonish bat is what got me the job as Ixa. Gee, I feel so special." The two shared a laugh while making their way to the apartment door. As soon as he opened it, he noticed a familiar pair of shoes already at the front indicating that his ward was already home. "Enju, we have a guest over for dinner so make sure you're-"
He was cut off by a door opening before Aihara Enju came into view, with a towel clad around her body and another towel being used to dry her long hair. "Ah, welcome back Rentaro! I passed on that man's last message to his family so don't worry about that!"
"… decent."
"So this is a typical evening in your household?" asked Masao in a flat tone.
"That's right! After a hard day's work, me and Rentaro confirm our love for one another-"
"No, we don't!" shouted the Promoter, interrupting Enju's delusion. "Now go get changed!"
"Okay~!" While the smaller girl left to go to her room, a thoughtful 'Hm' came from Rentaro's guest which got the boy curious.
"What is it?"
"Well, I guess her aggressive flirtations make sense. Enju's a model Rabbit, right?"
All Rentaro could do at that point was sigh before he headed to the kitchen to prepare dinner.
The meal had gone fairly quietly. Masao had been expecting that Kivat would have awoken by the aroma and dived into the food but apparently, Sumire's cooking was strong enough to keep him out for a bit longer. He did at least box a small portion for his partner to enjoy later though before he left the apartment building to head back to his assigned dorm on campus.
While it was unusual for a faculty member to live in a student dorm, having that proximity close to the laboratory and the workshop where he developed the IXA system was necessary since his work could help change the direction of the Gastrea conflict.
Budget wise, he had a generous steady source of funds. Tendo Kikunojyo, the right hand of the Tokyo Area ruler herself, saw to that once he had a better grasp on what Masao could bring to the table thanks to the youth displaying a prototype of the Ixa Calibur and demonstrating how damaging it could be. And this meeting likely wouldn't have happened if he had not met Satomi Rentaro since the boy was the adopted son of the older politician. So in a sense, he owed Rentaro a lot as well.
After he parked his motorcycle at the multi storey residential building, he headed towards the elevator to go up to the thirteenth floor where his dorm was located. It wasn't anything too fancy and was about the size of a standard bachelor's apartment in Japan. Just enough space for one person to live comfortably in.
As soon as Masao locked the door behind him, he went to pour himself a glass of water in his kitchen before turning on a light switch to illuminate his living room, not even batting an eye at the unwelcome visitor. "Normally, I'm somewhat receptive to people visiting me but when you just make yourself at home like this, I really can't get in the hospitality mood. You get what I'm saying?"
There was one occupant on the living room couch: a pale, lean man, with slicked-back, grey hair; reaching to the back of his neck, and moderate sized ears. His entire face is covered by a white mask, only leaving portions of his jawline exposed. The mask itself is a simple design with a mischievous smirk running from its cheekbones down to slightly above the jawline and arching back up to his opposite cheekbone. Granting him visibility are two crescent-shaped spots flowing downwards, forming a wicked portrayal along with the mouth piece.
The man's upper body is completely covered by a connected jacket with three buttons on either side. The jacket's collars are flipped, giving view to a plant-like design on the inside and several diagonal lines on the higher areas. The jacket's end spots a split cape elongating to his feet. Underneath the jacket was a white shirt with many buttons and a small collar, as well as a small bow-tie around his neck. His lower regions are covered by a pair of pants spotting multiple lines jutting downwards. Circling around his thighs are two straps which likely meant he was carrying weapons. A pair of white gloves covered his hands and a magician's hat rested on top of his head.
"Ah, my apologies." From the way he said it though, it was clear he was not being sincere about it.
Masao quickly downed the water, not taking his eye off the other man for a moment since he seemed to be no ordinary intruder. "What is it you want?"
"Just some information on a subject that has caught my interest. Namely…" The yellow eyes that could be seen through the eyeholes of the mask blazed with an intense curiosity. "Intercept x Attacker… or what you call Project IXA."
TO BE CONTINUED…
Well, there you have it. More to come when I feel like it. As for other Riders beyond New Kiva and Ixa, I'm still thinking about it.