Disclaimer: I don't own Kamen Rider at all. This is just a preview for a potential story about an OC Rider I had in mind for some time. I hope you like it.
"WELCOME TO LAS TORRES! THE CITY OF TOWERS!" read the lit-up sign as it passed by.
Las Torres? The traveler thought of the name as he sat atop the massive truck that took him to the very city. The closer he got, the more he realized how accurate the name had been.
The island city-whose several large man-made and misshapen towers-laid atop another city, sunken into the great ocean. Only the magnetic levitation, aka the maglev, rail connected it to a mainland growing smaller. "At last," the traveler sighed, his voice weary from days of travel. Las Torres shone in a mid-morning sun, partially blocked by scores of dark spots in the sky. At last, he could stop traveling. At last, he could find help.
"Do you really think so?"
The traveler glanced at the little girl standing beside him. Her presence was so ethereal and unnatural. Her dark hair and white dress went in the opposite direction of the wind, which blew the traveler's equally dark hair and dirty coat aside. Her pale face smiling, she asked again, "Well, tell me? Do you really think you will find them here?"
With a ton of iron will, the traveler forced any words down his throat. He learned early on if he stayed quiet, the girl would disappear. That was true when he blinked and stared at empty air. "Finally," he breathed to his lonesome self, hugging his coat close to keep it still. It wouldn't be long now.
Las Torres was less than a few minutes away. Or it would have been if the truck hadn't stopped at a large white metallic overhanging archway on the bridge. A checkpoint, the traveler assumed from the blocky robots waiting by the archway to inspect any incoming vehicles.
Not wanting to wait, the traveler disembarked. The minute the truck stopped at the first checkpoint, he leaped off its roof. "Freakin' hitchhikers!" the traveler had heard from the truck, but he didn't know what a "hitchhiker" was.
The traveler's worn-out shoes squeaked on the second checkpoint's identical archway before he jumped to the next one and the next. He almost soared over the misshapen lines of vehicles on the maglev track. So high up, he glanced down to notice the human heads sticking out of magnetic cars, trucks, taxis, and more to see a blur leap overhead for the stacked towers ahead. The robots below had called after him, but none gave chase, so he was safe.
Safe. The little girl's question tickled the back of the traveler's mind as he leaped off the last checkpoint. Would he be safe here? Would he find what he was looking for?
Falling, the traveler landed on a car. Its small frame rocked, yet it continued on an intersecting road of metal, not a railing. As the traveler situated himself on his ride, the road had dipped down, and the vehicle followed it, plateauing into a dark tunnel. Tiny dashes of white and red lights passed by until natural light rested at the tunnel's end.
Exiting the tunnel, the traveler used his sleeve as a shield against the sudden stuffy air. His eyes scoured the narrow road of the new area. The inhabitants may have been blurs, but the traveler analyzed their sluggish walks and could tell they looked just as misshapen as their homes - short, stout, pale and smushed together - on one side of the road. In spite of the traffic in such a compacted area, the traveler heard shouts from the driver inside their vehicle, so he jumped one moving car to a truck parked alongside the road.
His legs fell on its flat roof. A second after he removed his footing from the two dents, he looked up and widened his eyes. Now on the other side of the road, he stared at the wall protecting the district from the sea. However, gray bricks had been covered in white and red paint, with two green circles in the center.
It was like a face, one the traveler recognized. He had seen it in holo-pictures, in records, and in his dreams.
Kamen Riders… Yes, they would help him. They would keep him safe.
"Hello there!" the traveler heard. He looked down at an old man of seventy or so, standing by the truck. Said old man leaned on his cane and asked, "Are ye lost, young man?"
At first, the traveler said nothing. He rarely spoke to other people. He did point at the face in the wall. "This…" he croaked, "... do you know where I can find this?"
The old man frowned, his skin wrinkling with sadness. "'Fraid not, son. Best I can tell ye is to go to the Rider Museum. It's in the Ni-Go District."
The traveler mentally filed the information away, and he would've asked if not for someone running along the cracked sidewalk. "Gangway!" she shouted, heaving a massive box past the old man.
The old man jumped to the side, startled. "Uh, hey there! It's been a while," he said.
"Sorry, but I gotta ride!" The woman and her package jumped out of the traveler's gaze and into the truck. "I'll talk to you next time, okay?" she told the old man
"Wait! Ye got-!" the old man said, but the whirling truck and its driver cut him off.
"Take care!"
Before the traveler realized it, his rear end fell on the truck as its magnetic bottom hovered. Then, the truck drove off into Las Torres with him sitting on its roof.
Beep… beep… beep...
"Have you found him?"
Beep… beep… beep...
"Not yet, sir. I have been tracking his movements but can't pinpoint his exact location-"
Beep, beep, beep, beep!
"Wait a minute… Sir, I think I have him. Orders?"
"Do what you can… Locate him and send his coordinates to us. We'll handle the rest."
"Understood, sir. He won't escape us this time."
"Ugh…" the traveler groaned, wishing he could escape his predicament.
After leaving the rugged neighborhood on Las Torres' outskirts, his ride sped on a road that went up and up, bridging the old district to the rest of Las Torres. And on that bridge, honking horns rang in his ears, silver skyscrapers shone rays of sunlight into his eyes, and the stench of the sea and waste brushed up his nostrils from several hundred feet below. Despite hiding under his coat, it only narrowed his vision to the other bridges all around him - left, right, above, and below.
Las Torres less of a single island and more like several tinier ones. The bridges closed the huge gaps in between each 'island' with archway-like entrances/exits and holographic signs atop reading "ELECTRO DISTRICT," or "SKYRIDE DISTRICT," or so on (the place the traveler left had been the "ZET-CROSS DISTRICT"). The "AMAZON DISTRICT" lying ahead attracted the traveler with its sweet smell of pollen, leaves, and bark.
Lowering his coat, the traveler gazed at the new area. Unlike the Zet-Cross District's stuffiness, the Amazon District greeted him with a wider road and enormous space. Instead of compacted houses, green plains and long silver buildings stretched on either side. With the green vines and tall trees everywhere, the smell was stronger, and the traveler-
"Achoo!" he said into his sleeve, wondering what came out of his nose.
A sneeze, the automated part of his mind reported. A negative reaction to spores produced by flora.
The traveler ignored it. His ride had pulled up on the side, right by a sidewalk of flat dirt. The vehicle's ceased, and the woman departed it, passing several people. A loud "Sorry!" rang before she went across the cobblestone-like walkway in between the grass.
While the traveler watched from afar, his mind's automated half droned about his unknowing driver: Sex: female… Age range: early twenties… Hair: blonde and long... Height: five-point-six feet tall… Clothing: textile fabric made from recycled plastic...
Again, he ignored it in favor of his surroundings. Enthralled by the greenery, his eyes caught the tiny hints of colorful spheres on a few trees. His mind designating some as apples and others as oranges, a more naturalistic part wondered what they tasted like.
Grrrrrrrrr…
That wasn't from his mind. It was from his stomach, growling like a high-pitched hyena. Not the first time it made that noise nor the first time the traveler hugged his stomach for silence. Streams of water - the only sustenance the traveler could truly get - shot out nearby mechanisms in the grass and doused his head in a nice sprinkle of perspiration.
"Kyah! Could've toned down the setting a bit!" cried the truck's driver, also covered in water on her way back.
Keeping close to the roof, the traveler carefully glanced over. With another box in hand, the driver hadn't noticed him yet. Maybe he could escape-
Unfortunately, there was a slick tile along the walkway. One she slipped on-"Wah!"-and her box was thrown up into the air. "Ah, breakers!"
To the woman who sat on the ground below, the box fell quickly. It fell slowly to the traveler above, whose automated brain calculated the descent. In five-point-three seconds, it would hit the ground.
In point-five seconds, the traveler dove off the roof. In two-point-nine seconds, he caught the box in both his hands and rolled on the ground.
Rolling back onto his feet, the traveler gently held the box in his hands to not crush it and its contents. He eyed the curious 'R' on it, the same logo he found on the fallen woman's red shirt and cap. Filing it away, he held up the box and murmured, "I think this is yours."
The young woman shot to her feet and grabbed the box, her face full of relief. "Oh, thank you! The boss would've cut my paycheck if this was broken! Good thing you showed up when you did!"
The traveler said nothing on 'hitchhiking,' preferring to let the woman place the box in her ride. In his silence, he noted her curiosity in her gray eyes inspecting him. "... I haven't seen you around here," the young woman said. "Are you new to Las Torres?"
The traveler hesitated, unsure if he could trust this woman. "Yes... I just arrived."
The woman's smile lightened heavy air. "Well, welcome to the City of Towers! Where all strange things are stacked atop each other!" After giggling at her joke, she held out her hand. "I'm Lyra, by the way. What's your name?"
"I…" The traveler's eyes trailed from Lyra's hand to his own. "... I don't have one."
Lyra laughed, and her smile shone as bright as the sun. "C'mon! Everyone has a name!"
"... I don't think I do," he said, staring into Lyra's eyes.
Lyra blinked back. Her smile dimmed into a confused and tiny 'o' as she awkwardly lowered her hand "Uh, okay… So… you need help with anything? Like, a place to crash?"
"Crash? Do you need to destroy something?"
"Wha-no!" Lyra reeled back. "I mean a place to sleep! You know, a room or something?"
"I…" the traveler began. He stopped to ponder for an answer...
Grrrrrrrrrr…
… and he put a hand over his flat belly. "It has been doing that for a while," he told a scared and concerned Lyra.
"And 'a while' is how long?"
"A day, perhaps." The traveler closed his eyes and corrected himself. "No, two days-"
A great tug forced his eyes open. "W-what are you doing?! Where are you taking me?" he asked Lyra, her hand pulling on his skinny wrist.
"For some lunch!" Lyra shot a grin over her shoulder to the frightful traveler. "Don't worry, I'm buying! Now, come on!"
The spider gently descended from the sky. The webbing in between the outstretched eight legs kept him adrift on the winds as him passed over Las Torres' gigantic buildings and skyscrapers. Some of them were tall and painted in the gold of the famed and rich RX District. Others were silver and medium, like the ones below the spider.
To his deadly gaze and its scans of any unnatural machinery, the people didn't know what hung over their heads. They would soon know. It was why the spider had been deployed. Oh, the spider knew of his mission, and he would carry it out gladly. But that didn't mean he couldn't have some fun.
So, as his big shadow fell over civilians, the spider salivated at the carnage to follow...
The traveler opened his mouth, but he had no objections at this point. He bit into the two pieces of carbohydrates and the slab protein in between, sniffing their sweet and spicy aroma. The bite barely slid down his throat before he took another bite, the paper wrapping crinkling against his lips. "So, what do you think?" Lyra asked, one hand on the wheel and her other on her sandwich.
Sitting beside her, the traveler ate with one half of his mouth and spoke out of the other. "Very filling… This fried chicken sandwich is of high quality."
"I know! Tarik knows how to cook his food! See ya, Tarik!" Waving her uneaten sandwich at the man in the drive-by window, Lyra sped away from another boxy vehicle (the traveler's mind categorized it under "food truck"). "I usually pass by here on the way to my next stop. You'll love it every time you come. In fact, you're going to love it here! Las Torres has almost everything you'd want…"
The traveler drowned the rest away as he left the Amazon District. For once, he enjoyed the comfort of a shaded vehicle, a proper seat, and some delicious food. Plus, the view of the bridge and beyond it was amazing. Buildings of several hundred or so stories stood as their own island, adjacent to another filled with windmill-like structures.
For all of Las Torres' man-made beauty, it also reminded the traveler of his mission. "Can you take me to the Rider Museum?" he told Lyra, who ate in between her speech.
Lyra gulped down a piece of chicken. "Hmm? Oh sure. It's right next to my next stop." She spared a finger from the wheel to the entrance ahead saying "ICHI-GO DISTRICT." "So what are you looking for there? Do you want to look at some gadgets or…?"
"I am searching for a Kamen Rider."
"What-gak!" Lyra choked and coughed on her bite without crashing her truck. The traveler would have asked about her well-being, but she quickly said, "Sorry… wrong tube. But what do you mean you're looking for one?"
Before the traveler could speak, his expression froze and his eyes whirled around to the sound he picked up in his ears. He didn't hear Lyra asking what was wrong nor did he know how to answer until passing the entrance. Lyra, finding the answer, slammed the breaks. "Woah!"
The sudden stop threw her sandwich and the traveler's into the front window, but their splattered remnants couldn't hide the scene ahead of Lyra. "What the…?" she uttered.
The traveler's eyes stuck on the Ichi-Go District. He guessed it would have been an open street where people went to and fro. Now, they ran away, screaming from the eight long and rod-like legs stabbing into web-covered buildings and cars. "Holy-!" Lyra shouted after a couple vehicles fell prey to the creature's sharp legs.
Lifted up high by those very legs, a shadowy human-like torso hovered overhead as it looked back and forth. Atop the form, a human-sized head with eight shining eyes scoured the area. "Come out, Zero-Seven! We know you are here somewhere!" the creature shouted through its mandibles.
The traveler stiffened. He ignored how his mind had categorized the monster's features as "arachnid" or counted the number of innocents rushing by his window. They had found him. He didn't know how, but they did. And they were going to take him back to the dark room-
Click.
"What are you doing?" the traveler asked, stunned to see Lyra taking off her seatbelt.
"Out there, what does it look like?" Lyra shot back, oddly serious. "They're people out there! There's probably somebody who needs help!"
The traveler pointed to the creature. "But that is out there! You can't-!"
"Yes I can! Somebody has to do something!" Lyra shouted. She exited her truck, with the traveler watching her go.
Hearing her words ring in his ears, the traveler followed Lyra onto the chaotic road. A man and a woman bumped into his shoulder before he found her again. While everyone ran away from the monster, she sprinted between vehicles and headed towards it. The traveler, sticking close to Lyra's truck, would've questioned her sanity in any other situation.
However, the traveler had seen something. A spark shining in Lyra's eyes while she helped up a few tripped-over escapes. Her mouth moved while she made sure they were okay before sending them away to safety.
The same couldn't be said for Lyra as the arachnid's shadow fell over her. "Look out!" the traveler shouted, spotting one long leg coming down on her.
Lyra rolled out of the way, letting the leg puncture another car. Smoke gushed out of its dead engine and smothered the nearby vicinity. It didn't hide the monster, who dragged his leg out of the car and stabbed it into the street. "There you are!" it growled to the traveler while the other legs crawled over and on the street. "There's no escape for you!"
The traveler unknowingly stepped away Lyra's truck. Shouting had exposed himself to the thing pursuing him. What was he doing? He needed to stay hidden. He needed to…
A body leaped onto the monster's two back legs. The monster's gaze, and the traveler's, fell on Lyra holding it back with her punitive strength. "Go! Get out of here-yaaaah!" she shouted and screamed after the legs she held onto flicked her back.
Lyra slammed into a nearby car and fell to the ground. The traveler had no time to ask about her safety when the monster hovered by her. "Nuisance," it spat, raising its two back legs to strike a prone and groaning Lyra.
The shock rising in the traveler changed into an emotion he did not recognize. That emotion told him to run not from danger, but towards it. And he did, bounding over a car and crossing his arms over his chest.
The moment his fists touched his opposite shoulders, a golden mist spiraled clockwise out of his waist and covered everything that once blurred by. Through it, he saw the two sharp legs falling two inches closer to Lyra. He ran even faster, letting the mist particles pass and harden over him.
The traveler closed the gap between him and the unknowing monster in one second. In another, he slid under and in between the long eight legs, not caring about the armor or belt forming over his body. In another, he spun around to face the very legs about to pierce Lyra.
And he caught them in his bronze-coated gauntlets.
Covered in a round and equally bronze helmet, he met the monster's eight-orbed gaze with a pair of yellow bug-eyed lenses. The V-like antennae in between them caught the gasp from the sickening mandibles in front. They also caught the painful wail after he yanked on the legs' sharp ends in his hands, snapping them off.
The traveler lunged through the fog of smoke, his new suit of armor and his dark bodysuit gleaming against the sunlight. Armed with the monster's own limbs, he faced any strikes coming at his right or left. The six legs fell two at a time, and one scratched his bronze chest plate.
The traveler carried on. He swung right then left, then dodged, then right again. Serrated metal met serrated metal in a high-pitched rhythm of chinks, clinks, and clangs. The sounds were strange to him, yet a familiar feeling grazed against the back of his mind.
He pushed it back and let another of the monster's legs graze his chest. The necessary sacrifice gave him the chance to run directly under his foe. With a roar, he speared each broken ends into a right leg and a left leg. The two ends were jammed, and the traveler expected another wail of pain. He didn't expect two other legs to come at him.
The traveler stood against one leg piercing his left shoulder and the bronze armored guard covering it. The other leg-
SHINK!
"Hrgh!" the traveler cried from the other leg digging into his chest. It hadn't gone all the way through but it had pierced the emblem in the center - a pair of side-ways V, joined together at the tips to form an hourglass.
The legs stabbing at the traveler lifted him off his bronzen boots. Held up five feet off the ground, his insectoid visage stared into the arachnid monster's eight-eyed glare. He couldn't avoid it or tear himself away from its frothing mandibles. He tried to, his hands grabbing and striking at the leg in his chest. It creaked under the blows, but only temporarily.
The traveler croaked, feeling the monster claw hand pull at something. That something was the yellow and braided cloth dangling from his neck. "So this is it…" the spider growled. "How you were such a trouble, I will never know…"
Breathing through a constricted throat and glaring through his heart-pounding vision, the traveler gave the monster a reason. With all he had, he raised his armored boots to strike-
WHAM!
The force of his kick tore him away from the stunned monster and off its stabbing legs. Sparks flew from its chest, and the traveler fell back to the road. "Guh…" he rasped for air, one hand on his wounded chest and another grabbing a car for support - specifically, the one letting out smoke.
Despite the traveler's gaping hole and sudden heavy breathing, the monster looked worse for wear. Its own chest on fire, it staggered on six creaking legs - two of which had its joint stuck. "This... this isn't over!" the monster sputtered. Its remaining four legs frantically crawled away, stabbing any metal and brick on its way out.
The sound of chik-chik-chik-chik echoed in the monster's wake as it went up and over the nearest building. The traveler kept an eye on it, making sure the monster wouldn't return. When it was out of sight, he collapsed on his hands and knees.
The smoke waved over his form, and bits of wind tore the armor off in several chunks dissipating into nothingness. The traveler, looking human as ever, trembled on a road of only empty vehicles and no monsters whatsoever. He knew he would heal, given time. For now, he turned his head to the only other person who sat a couple feet away.
Alive and well, Lyra stared through the smoke. "You're a… you're a Kamen Rider…?" she asked with wide eyes.
The traveler blinked. Him? A Kamen Rider?
As he stared back at Lyra, with nothing to say, he failed to notice the tiny machine watching from high in the sky.
The image zoomed on two figures inside the smoke. Of the two, the female was hard to see. The male was easier to catch. The x-ray scan caught the hint of cybernetic implants within his body. The organization, the seemingly blend of flesh and machine, was too recognizable.
For that reason, the woman frowned at her viewing tablet. She knew she shouldn't have let that fool dictate how to execute the extraction. Now, they were out in the open.
The woman put her thoughts aside. Her concerns didn't matter, the mission did. One hand on her viewscreen of glass and holographic buttons, she put free hand to the comm piece in her ear. "This is Trigger reporting. Subject Zero-Seven has been found and is active. I repeat, Subject Zero-Seven has been found and is active."
AN: And that's the end of this preview. Now, this was an OC Rider story (that takes place in the future) whose notes I had been working on for some time, but I only got to writing up to this far. I'm a little unsure on how to proceed so I thought I'd post it here and see what you guys think. I am still hesitant on the story just because of how I started it, and I'm wondering how to write the story in a more condense fashion. Until then, I hope you liked it. Take care.
Raika out.