Disclaimer: Kamen Rider belongs to Toei and Ishinomori Productions, and Kamen Rider Dragon Knights is a product of Adness Entertainment and the Wang Brothers.

"... Happy birthday, dear Kit. Happy birthday to you~…"

The light on a birthday candle was snuffed out. A middle-aged man in a window appeared, calling out from his prison.

"You must go home son… come home…"

The man in the window was gone, and another man, dressed in black, stepped out with glaring cold eyes.

"You have something that belongs to me. The Advent Card… I want it back."

The real world faded away. An array of mirrors flew by, and a strange dark case lit up. The world reappeared, but the signs, the words, were backwards.

Then, the red dragon returned. Its angry roar followed in its wake as it continued to fly forwards.

"You must merge with dragon… before it destroys us both."

That voice. It was the man in black, but... he was different, covered in strange dark and silver armor.

Suddenly, the dragon returned, and everything turned red. Then, as the whole world, the normal one, came back, so did the man in black returned who simply said five words:

"... You're a Kamen Rider, now..."

Kit Taylor woke up with a startled gasp and a frightful expression. He blinked away the weariness from his eyes and slowly rose his head from the table. Looking around, he saw the familiar confines of his small, yet cozy, apartment.

"It was just a dream," Kit muttered to himself.

Rubbing his eyes, he looked down to see a black case on the table. It was no larger than a smartphone and had the golden dragon emblem shone a little in the center. Seeing it, Kit almost sighed. "Right, not a dream." Though he said it, he could still hardly believe all that had happened to him.

It all started a week ago, with a wish on Kit's eighteenth birthday. His dad had gone missing, leaving him in a foster home for a few years. All he wanted was to see his dad, and he did. But afterwards, that simple wish changed everything. That vision of his dad telling him to come home, another world behind the mirrors, the flying red dragon, the man in black…

Kit stared at the case in front of him. The Advent Card, as it was called. When he first found it on his apartment floor, it was blank and only had two cards, "SEAL" and "CONTRACT." A simple thing, but it was this simple thing that had sucked him into a place filled with monsters and no people. It was because he was now a… a… what was he was again?

"You're a Kamen Rider now..." the man in black had said, and it was as clear as the first time Kit had heard those words.

"Kamen Rider," Kit repeated, remembering what he had been told. The knights of the world beyond the mirrors, aptly named the Mirror World, who kept it safe and sound.

That was a long time ago, and things had changed. The Advent Cards, the source of the Riders' powers, like the one Kit possessed, were taken and scattered all over Earth. Cards, with same powers as his, could be used by evil men, or someone poor kid who had fallen into the middle of all of this, like Kit. The thought had Kit ran his hands through his dark, spiked up hair…

RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!

… and he stopped midway. That sound was undeniably familiar, and it could only mean one thing: another monster came through the mirrors. When there was a monster, someone was most likely in danger.
"Guess studying will have to wait," Kit said to himself before he collected his Advent Card and went out…

Kit's motorcycle roared as he sped down the street. He let the mysterious ringing guide him, and it grew louder upon approaching his destination. He turned into a small street alley, the source of where he had heard the sound.

However, the minute Kit parked, the incessant ringing was gone.

Confused, Kit took off his helmet. He glanced around, looking for whatever caused it to stop. He eventually found it, or rather heard it, to the young man's discomfort.

"About time you got here," an all too familiar gruff voice, and Kit turned to face the owner.

It was him. The man in black. He leaned on his own motorbike, that cold and hard expression carved on his face. Kit met that look with confusion and "Where's the monster?"

"I took care of it," the man in black replied as he uncrossed his arms.

"And how long were you waiting there?" Kit was afraid to ask.

"A few minutes. Took you a while."

"Well, I'm still new at this," he smirked, but it was a small one against the cold stare.

The man in black did not give a snarky comeback. "Did you study the cards like I told you?"

Kit hesitated a bit and scratched the back of his head. "I… sorta did… before I fell asleep." The man in black glared, and Kit quickly exclaimed, "Listen, I know you want me to fight and all that, but you can't expect me to learn that quickly! I can't just fight by looking at cards!"

There was silence for several seconds, and Kit was already unnerved by the man in black's cold gaze. It was like those eyes were staring into his soul. "No, you can't," the man said.

"What?" Kit blinked. Did he heard that right?

"You're right. You can't learn how to fight by looking at cards," the man in black explained as he reached into his pocket. "That's why we're going to test them."

Now, Kit wished he kept his mouth shut, but nothing could be done about it. He watched the man in black take out his own Advent Card and held it out to a nearby window. "Kamen Rider…" the man in black announced, crossing his free hand over the one holding his Advent Card, "... Wing Knight!"

Gray blocks of metal spread across the man in black's waist until they formed a belt with a square buckle, with an empty slot. The man in black split his arms apart and circled them around his body. "... Initiate!" he called out, clenching his right hand into a fist as he swung it down to the left side of his face.

Then, the man in black slid his Advent Card into his buckle, and that's when the magic happened. Blue energy surged from the buckle and expanded into a larger version of the bat symbol on the Advent Card. As soon as the symbol engulfed the man in black, it retreated back into the buckled. Standing in the man in black's place was his alter ego, Kamen Rider Wing Knight, armed to the teeth with a gleaming silver chestplate over a dark blue bodysuit, black gauntlets and boots, and shoulder armor pointed up. The look was completed with a black helmet that had a fanged mouth plate, and a silver and grilled visor, whose ends were upwards, adding to the bat motif.

Kit stood there astonished. While it was not the first he had seen the Kamen Rider armor, he certainly had not seen the transformation sequence, at least from the outside and other than himself.

"Are you coming?" Wing Knight asked. Kit had not time to answer as the Kamen Rider drew his sword from its holster before he entered the mirror.

With a sigh, Kit took out his Advent Card and held it up to the same mirror. "Kamen Rider, Dragon Knight!" he announced, mimicking the man in black's stance.

A belt identical to that of the man in black's formed around Kit's waist. Once it was completed, Kit's right hand went to his hip while his left, grasping the case, slowly moved over his head. "... Initiate!" Kit called out, thrusting his right hand across his chest and pulling his left hand back to his adjacent hip.

Sliding the Advent Deck into the empty buckle, it glowed with red energy. When that energy expanded, it coalesced into a giant version of the dragon emblem that quickly swallowed Kit's body and formed the armor of Kamen Rider Dragon Knight. Mounted over the red bodysuit were a silver chestplate and silver and red gauntlets and boots. His look, a dragon motif, was shown by the red armguard shaped like a dragon's head, as well as the Rider's gray helmet that had a silver, grilled visor over a pair of round, red eyes.

Looking at the mirror, Dragon Knight's shoulders, and the silver armor on them, slumped before he finally took his first steps toward the cursed thing. Not a second later, he was gone, vanished into the world behind the mirrors...

AN: This is a story based on the original pilot for the Wang Brothers' Kamen Rider Dragon Knight. I thought it would be nice to at least to see how the original pilot was flesh out more, with henshin sequences, character interactions, etc. (which led into writing this little excerpt), but we'll have to wait and see if that will actually be made into a full on story. Hopefully, someone else can accomplish that.

Raika out.