Song: Max Payne - Main Theme
Heinz was starting to wake up.
Groaning a bit from the pain, trying to get a sense of what he was seeing, as his vision was still blurry. Once his vision was clear...
"...!"
He... He just could not believe what he was seeing. For somewhere just nearby, there was a young man that he never thought to see.
Same black hair. Same face, if a bit stern. Same amber-brown eyes, if narrowing. Wearing a high school uniform, if a bit old, worn, and tattered, with a bandolier strapped to his chest.
That same young man raised a familiar Ridewatch. He twisted the dial and pressed the button.
ZI-O!
"...Impossible," Heinz muttered, as if still not believing it.
"Believe it," The young man spoke. His tone was sharp yet subtle; a chill would be felt on Heinz's spine.
Heinz would glance to his right and notice that he was handcuffed to a metal pipeline. The handcuffs in particular were futuristic and tight. Heinz tried to move his arm, but he couldn't, because of the handcuffs.
"Don't bother," The young man said, drawing Heinz's attention.
Heinz's feelings, his shock now immediately transitioning to pure hatred, glares at the young man... no, the one who would eventually be responsible for the death of all of his comrades. "Ohma Zi-O! Damn you!"
Standing before him was George Kurai (*1) himself, if a bit younger.
But...
"No," He left no room for argument, twisting his Ridewatch back and putting it in his pocket. "Not Ohma Zi-O, though, considering where you are in the timeline, I doubt you'd listen to reason, hence the reason I needed to knock you out."
"Wait!" Heinz immediately realizes. "You were the one who punched me!"
"I had to do it," The young man spoke grimly. "You would have ruined the entire operation of the Resistance if I didn't take any course of action."
"...Wha...Huh?!" Heinz sported a bewildered expression.
"Before you start to accuse me of anything, take a good look at this," The young man spoke with a tone of resolve amidst steel, grabbing something from his pocket that revealed an advanced phone-tablet hybrid (*2), which he used to show Heinz something important.
And Heinz would silently watch.
Much to his shock, it was video footage.
Of Jouji Minami, of the HUGtto! PreCure, of Grey Woz, and the younger version of their leader, Rintaro Okabe.
"Shut up, don't talk, and start listening up to the very end," The young man ordered, something that Heinz, in particular, could not resist, but was compelled against his own judgment, to obey.
And he listened. He listened as he began to hear about something called Operation Valkyrie Drive. Much to his shock, Heinz would find out how he and Tsukuyomi coming into this time was not a mere coincidence; that their leaders specifically intended for them to arrive, as it was always meant to happen.
...That meant that.
...No matter what he does, he's always destined to travel to the past and try to stop Ohma Zi-O's ascension by killing him off.
But as it turns out, by implication, he would not succeed in that goal, for some reason.
There was also the fact that Jouji Minami would transform into a different kind of Zi-O as a major bulk of the entire operation.
"You've... You've got to be kidding me!" Heinz did not know what to think of this. On the one hand, he felt... betrayed, because his own comrades died by Ohma Zi-O's hand, and now, he was being told that him going into the past, his own motivation for doing so, was essentially meant to happen anyway.
Does that mean that his comrades dying was part of that operation?!
"It's all true, all of it," The young man spoke with an unwavering conviction, as he stood tall. "And right now, he's already transformed into the Century King Black Sun, Kamen Rider Black Zi-O. The resistance has finally succeeded, not in simply changing the future, but redirecting its course."
"...I...I-"
"But," The young man clarified. "The details of how you and Tsukuyomi would come from the past are irrelevant."
"What?!" Heinz sported a look of outrage.
"Let me finish, you hotheaded idiot!" The young man spoke with steel, silencing Heinz. "Whether your comrades died or not, that detail is not set in stone, it's yours and Tsukuyomi's journey to the past that always happens, no matter what details changed. Your future and its details are not perfect and can be edited and modified. And the same logic applies to me as well. What you are looking at, is the George Kurai that you were supposed to hunt down, terminate, and kill to prevent Ohma Zi-O's rise to power! ME!"
He placed his hand to his chest, and drew near to Heinz as he looked at the latter in the eye. What Heinz saw disturbed even him, because underneath the gaze was not a young man, but rather, someone who had lost as much as Heinz at, if not more.
"The Divergence Point had finally erased my own mistakes. Everyone that I knew will be alive and well. The time loop where I become Ohma Zi-O... is now broken for good."
But his face grew crestfallen as he turned around. Heinz couldn't see the young man's face, but he could only hear a tone of sorrow underneath the steel resolve.
"...I can never go back home again. I made my choice... to help the Resistance to finally put an end to the madness of my own ascension. It's finally over... but there's still more to be done. My alternate self... can finish what I've started. Unlike me, his path is now his own to walk, independent of anything that may take him by surprise."
After a long period of silence, Heinz could not help but ask. "...Where...Where did you come from?"
The young man didn't respond for a while. He simply stated. "I came from a timeline you were supposed to have visited." He looks at Heinz, giving him a grim expression. "I am the George Kurai that you and Tsukuyomi were supposed to meet. And... my timeline is in a decaying, recursive loop."
The young man's smile was crestfallen as he continued to speak. "You know, you... you and Tsukuyomi were my best friends, in the timeline I knew."
Heinz was shocked by that statement.
"...Things went horribly wrong the first time," The young man continued. "At first, it was just you, Tsukuyomi, and Woz who were by my side. But... things went wrong. The world I knew, changed too much. All of Earth's heroes were gone the moment I became Zi-O. Only the Kamen Riders were left. Even then, one by one, they all disappeared, leaving just me... But that wasn't even the end of it. I'm sure you've heard of the Great Destruction."
Heinz definitely knew what the young man was talking about. The Great Destruction was a wide-ranging event that affected the multiverse, where reality and fiction - fiction and reality collided, and its physical and metaphysical rules were at war or were incompatible with each other, all enacted by a Creation known as the Military Uniform Princess.
"...Then, at some point, to keep that future from drawing near to the time when Ohma Zi-O's Era would begin, I keep going back in time. I keep resetting time, back to the very beginning, but every... every single time, it always ended badly. Some people that I knew and loved died, no matter what I do. No matter what details I try to change, it always ends in the Great Destruction. But I just couldn't learn my damn lesson. I tried to change it. One more loop. One more go. That's always what I had to say. Going back to the past. Again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again!"
The young man was now shouting at this point before controlling himself, gritting his teeth. "But I can't. I can't stop it. No matter what I do. I can't save Setsuna. I can't... I can't stop the Great Destruction from happening. Sure, I could change some details, such as keeping the existence of the Riders in tact. But I can never truly change the convergence that leads to the Great Destruction. It only happens, no matter what I do. I can't stop it, and neither can you, that's why..."
The young man gritted his teeth. "That was the ultimate reason why the Resistance planned for Operation Valkyrie Drive. Despite my power to turn time back, I cannot change the outcome of the Great Destruction. But my alternate self can."
"...Minami Jouji you mean?" Heinz muttered, as he slowly began to understand the implications, to his horror.
"...He, and one other person, are needed to become Zi-O. One isn't enough. My mistake was that I had to shoulder the burden all by myself. That was my mistake. It took me... several loops to realize... that I needed someone in my life... Someone who would also be Zi-O... but it was too late for me... I needed to change my own history by going far back. But somebody somehow beat me to that change. I believe you've heard of Shadow Moon."
Heinz definitely knew about the elusive Shadow Moon. He was a Dark Rider who had been in league with the cult, Gorgom, in the past, and was defeated by Kamen Rider Black, and Kamen Rider Black RX.
"...It seems other people had the same general idea as me and the resistance. We all want the same thing. To really change the future, we have no choice but to use the power of evil, against evil. That had always been the principle behind what it meant to be a Kamen Rider. Using the powers of evil... for good, to fight against that very evil. It's a risk, but a necessary risk, just to finally break the cycle."
The young man would glance, as if from far away.
"And as for me, I'm fine with how things have now turned out. It's more than enough for me to know that things will be alright now that a much better George Kurai than I ever was has taken over for me. But he now has everything that I used to have. Now, I have nothing. I can no longer go back to the timeline I came from. That timeline had been erased, permanently. Every bond that I shared with you and Tsukuyomi, and yes, even Woz, all of that...
The young man would look at Heinz with a grim expression.
"...Is gone."
Trivia For Chapter:
(*1) - The mysterious young man, who had knocked out Heinz, and who had talked with Kyon - Kamen Rider Next Decade, is in fact George Kurai, but from another timeline.
(*2) - The device that George was carrying is known as a PhoneDroid, a mobile phone-tablet hybrid, which originated in the World of Den-O. It was a popular brand by the late 2010s, specifically the years 2019 - 2020. They have been in circulation as far back as 2009 before their popularization by 2019.