Agito Chapter

Part 6: Remember Me

Yukina stayed slightly ahead of Shouichi for the entire journey—they were being drawn to a bridge over the river. There was little traffic in this area this late, so the Lord, its two shrieking victims held out over the water, stood alone. There was a crunch as its fingers tightened, the two teens' bodies going limp.

Too late.

Yukina's eyes stretched to their widest, rage burning behind her face. She jammed her foot down into the accelerator, diving out of the car at the last second and letting it ram head-on into the Lord, carrying both off the bridge and into the water.

Shouichi pulled up beside her, helping her up as she felt at the side she'd landed on.

"Hey, are you okay?"

"I'm fine…"

"You sure? You look kinda—"

"I'm fine." They just about had time to transform before the Lord leapt back up to them, water dripping off its turtle-shell hide. Rows upon rows of tiny, needle-sharp teeth glinted in its mouth, permanently bared.

Twin golden blurs, the two Agito attacked, weaving in and out with instinctive harmony. The monster's swiping claws swung through empty air in their wake, their perfectly-synchronised fists crashing home and driving cracks into its hardened flesh.

A feint took it off-balance and Shouichi barged it to the floor, stepping back as Yukina leapt past him, streams of glowing power flowing down her leg, aiming herself at the Lord and somehow accelerating horizontally in mid-air, bursting it apart on impact and carrying on to skid to a halt across the ground behind where it had just been.

Shouichi put his hands on his hips, giving a satisfied nod. "We've got pretty good at thi—" He yelled in surprise and pain and staggered forward as something raked across his back. Another Lord stood behind him! He turned to face it, and a third jumped up to kick him back towards Yukina, who was wrestling with a fourth.

They were crawling up the bridge's support columns, coming out of the river in twos and threes. Five, six, ten—maybe twenty in all. The Agito shoved their assailants back, standing back to back in a rapidly-shrinking circle of monstrous soldiers.

Before Shouichi could even start to ask, any ideas, Yukina was already burning all over, armour bulking out and snuffing the flames to reveal the evolved form she'd used to defeat the Water El. With a ragged exhalation, she raised her head to the cluster of foes surrounding them, flexing her hands.

The first Lord to lunge in at her had its head crushed between her fingers in an instant. A second thrust its spear at them—Shouichi ducked, and Yukina caught the weapon's haft between her arm-blades, snapping it in two with a quick twist of her forearm. She turned and delivered a spinning punch to its abdomen, her fist channelling a lethal payload of flames into its body.

Things were made even more one-sided when she produced this form's two-bladed sword, carving through Lord after Lord with quick, brutal strokes. Shouichi stuck behind her, watching her back and dragging any that attacked him around in front of Yukina for her to dispose of. It was quick, dirty work to get through the lot of them, leaving the two of them side-by-side, panting.

"Nothing like that's happened before…" Shouichi said, tapping a finger against his mouthpiece. And especially with how it was so soon after the last one… "I guess that was a trap for us."

Indeed

The voice pulsed through their minds, bringing with it a stabbing pain.

But I underestimated you

Though they couldn't see the speaker, somehow they could tell the 'you' was directed at Yukina.

This new evolution of yours

It's troubling

I have sent my champion

Lumbering footsteps echoed over to them from the shadowed end of the bridge.

He aspires to join the ranks of the El

If he removes the two of you, I will grant his desire

The Lord came into view: Towering, armoured in black and gold, a rhinoceros-beetle horn rising off its forehead. It made a brief praying motion, asking its master forgiveness for the sinful, but necessary, act it was about to perform: Killing two of his children. Then is unslung a shield from its back and a mace from its belt, and charged.

If it's just one—! Shouichi ran to meet it, and was promptly felled in one strike, falling away with his head ringing from the mace's mighty blow.

When he had his wits back enough to sit up, the sounds of battle were ringing from behind him; Yukina and the Lord were clashing, her blades clashing against its shield with another deafening noise. Normally when an Agito fought, it was with calm near-silence, deep steady breathing. But she was grunting and growling like a wild beast.

In fact, she hadn't spoken a word in response to him since she'd assumed this form, he realised.

Despite the ease she'd taken out more than twenty Lords just a minute ago, any one of which would have been a match for Shouichi, this one alone was starting to push her back. Its defences were too well-timed, its blows ludicrously-strong, the mace's spiked head crunching against her armour again and again. She was driven further and further back, until she was inches from falling off the bridge entirely.

Quickly transitioning to his blue-hued, staff-armed form for the boost in speed, Shouichi rushed to her aid, but once again was smacked away with zero effort from the warrior Lord. In the moment it was distracted dealing with him, Yukina attacked, but it dodged, bringing its weapon heavily down on her shoulder, driving her to her knees with a pained gasp, her sword hitting the floor and skidding away.

It raised the mace for one more strike, taking maybe a moment longer than it needed given how beaten she looked—which was exactly what she wanted it to think. Not quite as worn out as she'd made it appear, she surged up and past it, swinging around so now the Lord was between her and the edge. Focusing intense waves of heat down her arms, she rammed two flaming fists into its back, launching it out over the water, where it plummeted into the river.

"Hghhhh…rrgh…" Her shoulders heaved, steam rising from her entire body, still growling.

"Yukina…" Shouichi approached, hesitantly reaching out. "Yukina…are you okay? You seem kinda weird…"

Suddenly she let out a roar, turning on him, flames lapping at his armoured carapace—then she was back in human form, embracing him, shivering.

"What was that?" he whispered, de-transforming himself. "That wasn't you…"

"I found that power in anger," she said quietly, almost monotone. "Anger is all it knows."

"Well. Uh. Okay. Let's get out of here, all right? That thing's gonna be coming after us."

"Right…right. I don't know if I could do that again." She supported him as they made their way back to his bike, righting it. "Where do we go for now?"

"Can't be the house I'm staying at. It'll catch us before we get there." Something seemed to strike him. "Get on, quick. I know somewhere. A friend of Professor Misugi—uh, the guy I live with."

Yukina mouthed the name silently. "I…know him. Or, knew him? I think I did. Damn, it was so much clearer earlier today. It's all fading again. Comes and goes."

Shouichi couldn't take his eyes off the road to study her expression. "Do you remember what you said? To Mana?"

"I…oh." Yukina gave a sudden gasp and held tight as it all came flooding in. "I'm sorry. You must have been hurting so much with me gone." Watching the faded paint on the road flash by, she repeated, "I'm sorry. Tetsuya."

They pulled up outside an unremarkable house, and he finally turned back to her, gawking. "My…my name's Shouichi."

"What?" She chuckled at the absurdity. "My boyfriend's name is Shouichi. I recognise my brother. I know your memory hasn't come back, so you're just gonna have to trust me." She patted both his shoulders, the siblings now facing each other at the end of the driveway. "Tetsuya."

"But I'm sure I'm…called…" Shouichi, or possibly Tetsuya, trailed off as he suddenly decided he was not, in fact, sure at all.

"We found you washed up on the beach…all you were carrying was this. A letter addressed to one 'Tsugami Shouichi'."

"Oh…I guess that must be me, heh. Right?"

"Nothing else to call you."

"Okay. Okay. Um." He removed his helmet, giving Yukina a rare totally-serious look. "What's my full name?"

"Sawaki Tetsuya."

He slapped a hand to his forehead. "There! Right there! I remember something." He almost tripped, supporting himself against the front garden fence. "There is another guy…the real Tsugami Shouichi. Yeah, he cared for you, and…uh…c'mon…right, so I woke up with a letter for him for some reason and started calling myself that. So he's going around using my name since I'm using his."

"How do you know?" she asked.

"I talked to him. Argh, that's what those kinda hazy days recently were! I remembered everything. Talked to him about you. Killed like four Lords without realising. Then it all went again."

She was going to keep asking questions, then a primal roar echoed in the distance, cut through with an insectoid clicking.

"C'mon, inside," Yukina urged, pulling her brother along; he didn't protest.

On a rooftop two blocks over from them, a poised metallic figure appeared in a swirl of golden feathers, raising its head to the night sky.

Finally got away, I think. He won't find me for a while. Better do what I can in this time period…

No use trying to snuff out the Riders-in-potential here. There are so many! This is a crux point in humanity's evolution. But only a handful will make use of their evolution to become hindrances. And I can't stop those, or my past self might not become me.

You've caused me a lot of trouble, Kamen Rider Agito, though you don't know it yet. But you're a problem for my past self to deal with.

However… In this time period, this area was also where two people resided who Odin's benefactors would be very happy to see out of the picture, no matter the method. And though already old, they had plenty of temporal potential energy left in them. If I just head back a few hours, they were isolated then. Perfect.

He held out his free hand, a flickering orb of white light pulsing into view for a moment, before he closed his fingers around it, concealing it again. It's almost complete…almost…!

Must be quick about it. Before he catches up.

He slotted the card into its slot, and—"Time Vent"—was gone.

Just to be clear, the beetle Lord in this chapter is the one from the TV special.