I'm baaaack!

I still have one more exam to go, but it's more than a week from today, so I still have time to post before I have to really buckle down and study.

All the remaining chapters have been written, and will be posted every other day, giving me time to have this all finished well before my exam. Two other fics, called 'Futsukayoi' and '10 Rules for Living with Hawkeye', will be posted AFTER the exam (but unless you're a fan of Jyuken Sentai Gekiranger or Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, you probably don't care). As for my other Kamen Rider stories-in-development...

'Yūisei no Mōsō' is still only about halfway done, I never came up with a solid plotline, so I'm mostly making it up as I go.

For the 'Knightverse' series, 'Bishop' and 'The Bachelor Party' are finished, but I'm having a bit of a block on 'King', and I intend to release those three together. Plus, I still have to iron out the details of my timeline, so most of the dates used in 'King' would be inaccurate until I get that figured out.

I've got a plan somewhat set up for the 'Unmade' series. No titles yet, but there will be 9 stories in all, including the 3 that are already posted. The other six will be AU versions of: 1) Episodes 22-30, 2) Episodes 31-40, 3) 'Surprise Future', 4) 'Drive Saga: Kamen Rider Chaser', 5) Episodes 41-48, and 6) 'Chō Movie War Genesis'. As #3 isn't out on DVD yet, I still haven't seen it, and obviously #4 and #6 haven't been released at all. (I'm still psyched to see that Ryū will be appearing in 'Chaser'!)

The last non-'Repair' fic for this series, 'World of All Riders', is called 'Stranger Things Have Happened', and Ryūsei and Gentarō will be making appearances in the final scene, which is in-progress.

Lastly: 'Repair'. I've had to make a few tweaks due to the events of 'Gaim Gaiden: Knuckle', but 'The Last Night' is ready and awaiting the completion of 'Picking Up the Pieces'.

Well, enough of that. Enjoy the newest chapter of 'The Star-Crazy Cult'!

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Criminal Minds or Kamen Rider Fourze. Or any other Kamen Rider series. The gangs mentioned in this fic are my creations, as are all their members and those connected to them.

PS: If anyone is concerned about timeline, the beginning of this fic takes place during/just after the Judge Roidmude arc (Episodes 18+19) of Drive, which I've placed on February 17th-18th, but before Episode 20 (the one with Kyu's Roidmude friend), which is on March 1st-2nd.

WORD COUNT: 2625

Wednesday, February 18th, 2015

Ryūsei rolled his eyes as Morgan recounted the story of the fight – again – this time to Garcia, who was listening attentively. He'd forgotten what it was like to work with people who were new to the whole 'Kamen Riders and monsters' thing. Inga, at least, had already known about the weirdness before they'd even met, so by the time they'd started working together, she'd long since gotten used to him transforming and beating up monsters.

So instead, Ryūsei chose to watch Cirino Acqua's interrogation. All four suspects arrested the previous day (Acqua, Rosalinda Cavallo, Arnaldo Aita, and Jacopo Lamberti) were in separate interrogation rooms. The three Switchers were already to be charged with possession of illegal weaponry and resisting arrest, while Lamberti was being held and questioned as a possible accomplice. The three men bore the tattoos of the Third Street Jackknives, though Cavallo did not.

Agent Jareau was running this one. She had a file open with crime scene photos of the Brady Powers murder. The 38-year-old man, a member of the Jackknives' rival the Seaimpíní, had been found in his run-down apartment, evidently having drowned. The fact that there was no running water, and hadn't been for a week, and that he was in the middle of the living room floor as opposed to the kitchen or bathroom, made the likelihood of his death being an accident near impossible. Even if he'd somehow drowned by accident, someone would have to have removed whatever water he'd drowned in. Even more mysteriously, analysis of the water in Powers's lungs had revealed it to be seawater. The local police had their lab techs running samples of the leftover water from the Cetus Zodiarts's attack against it right now.

Acqua, for the most part, was remarkably unconcerned. He probably didn't think they could charge him, that they had no admissible evidence. It was, admittedly, a concern. They'd had a hell of a time getting an arrest warrant based on Philip's findings; Ryūsei had been forced to call some Interpol colleagues to pull some strings. While they had plenty of excuses to arrest Acqua for attacking them, they'd needed that warrant just to enter his apartment before all that went down. Combined with the fact that they might not be able to convince a jury to convict him for killing a man by morphing into a monster…

Ryūsei put those worries aside for now. For him, while convicting these people was still very much important, his primary focus was getting those Switches off the street in order to keep more people from getting hurt. He hadn't been able to destroy the three they'd seized as of yet, the FBI taking them as evidence, but at least they were out of play for the time being. But that was only three Switches from a single gang. He knew the Seaimpíní had Auriga, and possibly others. His job here was nowhere near finished.

"Where were you the night Brady Powers was killed?" JJ asked coolly, unimpressed with his attitude.

Acqua smirked, paying more attention to her chest than anything else. "At home, watching Saturday Night Live."

"At eleven in the morning on a Monday?"

He shrugged. "I have a DVR. What, is that a federal crime now?"

"No, but murder is."

"Murder?" Acqua didn't look the slightest bit fazed, his overconfidence showing through. "I heard the guy drowned."

"He did," she allowed, "In seawater, in an apartment miles away from any saltwater body. Tell me, Ciro, don't you think that's the slightest bit odd?"

Acqua shifted a bit, but kept the smirk on his face. "You've got nothin' on me."

"Oh, actually, we do have something on you." JJ pulled a picture out of the file and slid it over to him. "Now, is it just me, or does that look a lot like you did yesterday when you attacked a Boston police officer, an Interpol investigator, and multiple FBI agents using a high-tech, illegally trafficked weapon?" She saw his confidence waver when she reminded him of the crime that they could most definitely nail him for. "Interpol had those Switches classified as weapons illegal to own a few years back, did you know that? Disguising yourself with it was clever, I'll admit, but not clever enough. We're analyzing trace left at your scene of arrest and comparing it to trace at the murder scene; we will prove that you used the Cetus Switch to kill Brady Powers."

She saw him tense up when she mentioned that Interpol not only knew about the Switches, but had outlawed them. His fists clenched briefly, his eyes widening slightly, and his breathing rate increased just a bit. Like Sakuta had said, the man had been overconfident; he hadn't thought that there would be any law written down that could apply to using a Zodiarts Switch. Of course, she was in the FBI and even she hadn't heard of such a law until yesterday. Still, he should have realised that murder was murder, no matter what weapon was used.

Rossi's interrogation of Jacopo Lamberti was going differently. As the only one who hadn't been in possession of a Zodiarts Switch, and the only one who hadn't really resisted arrest, he was the least likely to have any useful information, but Rossi had been in the criminal-catching game more than too long to just ignore the possibility that he might know something.

"Interesting company you keep," he commented idly, "Did you know that when your friends tried to resist arrest, they turned into a sea monster, a centaur, and a giant eagle?"

Lamberti gave a nervous laugh. "I- I don't know what you're talking about. Are you on drugs, or something?"

"Nope, but I understand why someone would think that. Two days ago, I wouldn't have believed in that stuff, either. Life's funny like that, isn't it?" He leaned forward. "What I actually find odd is that you didn't have one on you. Why is that? Does your boss think that you couldn't handle that kind of power? I mean…" He made a show of flipping through the papers in front of him. "Miss Cavallo isn't even a proper member of the Jackknives, yet she somehow got her hands on one of those Switches. How did she manage to one-up you?"

Lamberti pursed his lips together, his fists clenching as he briefly glared at the table. So he was, possibly, upset at not getting a Switch of his own. "I'm more important than that bitch," he muttered bitterly, "She just gets what she wants 'cause she's still got Arnaldo wrapped around her little finger."

Hotch walked into the interrogation room containing Arnaldo Aita. Unlike the other two men, he was silent, neither overconfident nor nervous. His arms were crossed, his mouth clamped shut, and his eyes focused on his reflection in the one-way mirror.

Hotch sat down and met the gangbanger's gaze impassively. The two of them engaged in what one could call a staring contest, until Aita rolled his eyes. "Just ask me your damn questions."

There was no offer of an answer in his tone, but Hotch leaned forward and began. "Nine days ago, Daley and Erin Whalen were found dead in their car under an overpass. The vehicle itself appeared to have been dropped from a height of at least seventy-five feet. Now, one would assume that they'd gone over the edge, except that the overpass in question isn't that high, and the damage to the guardrails above doesn't match up with the car's location and isn't consistent with a vehicle of that size driving through it. It was a very elaborate cover-up, staged to look like a simple accident."

Aita didn't respond, but there was definitely some disappointment when the inconsistencies of the cover-up were revealed.

"Earlier today, you used a Zodiarts Switch that gave you enough strength to have possibly lifted that car into the air, and the flight capabilities to reach the altitude from which it was dropped. What do you have to say about that?"

Aita scoffed. "Maybe someone else used it before I found it."

"You just found it?" Hotch raised his eyebrows, knowing from Agent Sakuta's briefing and later comments that the Switches didn't work that way. Once one bonded to a user, no one else could use it. "When?"

"Can't remember." Aita shrugged, giving Hotch a challenging look. "I know I can't deny what I did right in front of you and your people, but you've got nothin' on me for what happened to the… what were their names again?"

In the fourth interrogation room, Kate was taking a different approach with Rosalinda Cavallo. Photographs of the Daley murder were spread out all over the table, and Cavallo was determinedly avoiding looking at them. She looked mildly green around the gills at the images of the dead bodies.

"Rosalinda, I know you were there when your boyfriend killed the Whalens," Kate told her gently, "The scorch marks on the guardrail match the ones left in the alley when you shot at Officer Xylander. You're lucky he's going to pull through, or we'd already be charging you with his murder. Now, I can help you with this case if you just tell me what happened."

Cavallo glared up at her. "Aita and I aren't dating, and I wasn't there."

Kate pulled two other files. "Maybe you're dating now, maybe you're not, but I know you two have a history. We did a background check when we brought you in, and came across this."

She placed two photocopied documents onto the table, covering the close-up shot of Erin Whalen's bloodied face. Cavallo's breath hitched and her eyes grew watery. One was a birth certificate dated a little over a year earlier, for one Zoe Fiametta Cavallo. The parents were listed as Rosalinda Cavallo and Arnaldo Aita. The second document was a death certificate, dating back to only two months after the first and listing cause of death as SIDS – Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

"I can't imagine what it must be like to lose a child, Rosalinda."

"You bitch," Cavallo snapped tearfully, pushing the papers away from herself, "What does my daughter have to do with this?"

Kate showed her the picture of Erin again. "You loved your little girl with all your heart, didn't you? You still do. I'm sure Erin Whalen loved the baby she was going to have." At Cavallo's shocked look, she continued. "That's right, Erin was ten weeks pregnant. She and her husband were on their way home from the doctor's office when they were killed." She waited a few seconds to let that sink in. "Rosalinda, I'm sure you want to protect Arnaldo, but I want you to think about Erin. She wasn't in the Seaimpíní gang like her husband. She was going to be a mother. Arnaldo could have easily waited until Daley was alone, but instead he killed her along with him. Are you sure you want to stand by someone who would do that, father of your child or not?"

"Rosalinda Cavallo gave a full confession regarding the Whalen murder," Kate reported when the agents gathered to discuss their findings, "According to her, Aita's the one who actually picked the car up and let it drop, but she helped set the trap and stage the scene afterward."

"Glad you got something," JJ commented, "Because Acqua refused to cop to the Powers murder. We'll probably be able to charge him if the water analysis pans out."

"And it does," Garcia chimed in as she arrived, "Forensics just called, Cetus's seawater from the alley matches the seawater found in Brady Powers's lungs, and can I just say how icky it is that he apparently killed a guy by super-spitting into his mouth?"

"That's not exactly a pleasant image, no," Reid agreed, "I think we can nail Aita for the Whalens; even ignoring Cavallo's testimony, the gouges in the car's rear bumper are consistent with the pictures of Aquila's talons we got from the Young family's camera." He was referring to the nanny-cam that had been in an apartment near the site of yesterday's arrest. A quick canvas of the residents in the area had revealed that the family in question had witnessed the battle from inside, and that one particular camera had had an excellent view of Aquila through the window when he'd taken flight. "It's probably the best we'll get, short of having him transform again to compare the talons directly."

"Yeah, no thanks," Morgan commented, "What about Aita himself?"

Hotch shook his head. "He denied everything."

"I may have gotten somewhere with Lamberti," Rossi announced, "I've been looking at Boston PD's existing files on the Jackknives; all three of the men are relatively low-ranked in the gang, but Lamberti is a bit higher than the other two. Yet the way he talked about how Aita managed to wrangle a Switch for his girlfriend, you'd think he was the one in charge."

"There's something else," Sakuta commented, a deep frown on his face as he looked at another file, "There's another victim here; he also died from falling from a height, and the bruises on his leg are also consistent with Aquila's talons."

"Which one?" Hotch questioned, having seen the case files already but unable to place which one Sakuta was referring to.

"Elmo Fortunato, the first victim."

"That doesn't make sense," Morgan objected, "Fortunato was a fellow Jackknife, the boss De Luca's lieutenant. Why would Aita kill him?"

Jacopo Lamberti made fast tracks away from the FBI building. They hadn't been able to hold him on anything, and had released him late at night. He had to get to his apartment and pack before De Luca figured out what had happened. Everything was ruined, dammit. The plan had been completely shot by one Interpol agent with some seriously wacked-out gear. Even if the others got out, he couldn't trust them to protect him. He had to get out of town.

In his haste, he cut through an alley to get to his place, but he suddenly found the exit blocked. "Hello, Lamberti." Lamberti stopped dead in his tracks, hoping to god it wasn't one of De Luca's men.

It wasn't, though. Once the figure stepped into the light, he recognised the man as Carbrey Powers, a lieutenant in the Seaimpíní gang, and the older brother of the late Brady Powers. "W-What do you want, Powers?" he stuttered.

Powers sauntered forward, pulling something out of his pocket. Lamberti paled and started to run when he recognised it.

"I want you." Powers hit the little red button on his Zodiarts Switch, turning into the Auriga Zodiarts. He shot forward on the wheels attached to his feet, and swung a whip at Lamberti, catching the fleeing gangbanger by the ankle and tripping him. "The Seaimpíní will have their revenge, and I'll have mine."

The police would be called in the next morning to find Jacopo Lamberti's furiously beaten body lying crumpled in the alley, his neck broken.

Well, now I just feel mean, leaving you guys with more questions. Maybe I should give you a little preview of next chapter to tie you over for the next two days...

It was just after sunset when they got another lead, but it came at a price. A pair of police officers, along with animal control, responded to a 911 call about a 'wild animal attack'. When they arrived on the scene, one cop was savagely mauled by the escaping creature, and was now in critical condition. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene, and identified as Nicomede Orlando, another member of the Jackknives.

Based on the fact that this Zodiarts was described as having fur and claws, Ryūsei was able to narrow the constellation down to possibly six, ten if one counted the Zodiarts that he and the Kamen Rider Club had already faced. It didn't quite narrow the list down enough, but it was better than nothing.

Til then, Spectre out! (I mean me, not Makoto)