Episode 10: Pain in Primary Colors

Sunday, Nov 23: Late Afternoon.

"PFOOOOOOOAAAHH! That's the good stuff!"

"That's the cheapest shit I have for personal use after work," Hiroyo muttered, completely drowned out by Yumeria's loud whoop.

The cosplayer either hadn't heard or more likely just didn't care as she slammed a can of beer against the counter at Secret Base.

Next to her, Kosukegawa and Motoko had both changed back into their normal clothes and been served a hearty ramen bowl.

"Professor," Kosukegawa asked, "is she… always like this?"

"That's Owner, not Professor," Hiroyo corrected him. "This is just a cafe, after all. As for your question," she added while glancing at a beaming Yumeria, "…I think it depends on what you mean by this."

Motoko, fidgeting in her seat, just quietly bowed her head. "Um, thank you for the food, Ms. Owner…"

"Think nothing of it! Yumeria's paying, after all…"

"About that… Ms. Yumeria–"

"We'll talk after the other two get here," the wig-wearing woman said with a wave and a dramatic toss of her purple hair. "For now, just sit back and enjoy being surrounded by hotties while you eat, alright?"

Kosukegawa hadn't noticed that he had Yumeria to his left, Motoko to his right, and Hiroyo across the counter from him, but his face turned a brilliant red the instant that he did. "U-um… y-yes ma'am, sorry ma'am…"

Motoko flushed a little bit too, as much from her distressed situation being put on the shelf as from a small twinge of annoyance at Yumeria's remark. I've heard of cosplaying and roleplaying, but don't think I like her doing it like this…

Still, the food smelled delicious. And it was on someone else's yen, too. So the girl adjusted her glasses, swallowed her misgivings, and dug in while it was still nice and hot. "…it's good!"

She says that, Kosukegawa thought, but she still looks too worried or stressed to be happy. I guess if I want to try and give her a reason to smile, I have a lot more work cut out for me.

While the teens were eating, however, Yumeria dug into a bag of first-aid and cosmetic supplies. "I'm no hotshot billionaire CEO genius investor… but when you consider my employee discount, Madicce ends up a better value than HMW's stuff. Now some of this stuff may sting when I first apply it, but it's going to help your bruises and stuff heal up faster – not to mention the topical painkillers in it. As for helping you look a bit more presentable, I've got some make-up that'll make it look less bad than it is. What you show or tell your parents when you get home is up to you, though."

And so it was that Nobuo Akagi and Mitsuki Aoyagi entered Secret Base to find a Misato cosplayer delicately putting foundation on a young boy that looked remarkably like a Shinji.

"…please tell me this isn't the shotacon it looks like," Nobuo asked for lack of a better opener.

"What?! Of course not," Yumeria snapped, aghast. "I'm a faithfully married woman!"

Mitsuki miraculously choked on absolutely nothing, before laughing it off. "Yeah, right."

"Hey, it's not a bit! I just keep my ring safe at home so I don't lose it, and avoid having photos on me so I don't stop and daydream about my husband too much at work!"

Nobuo nodded in agreement, arms crossed. "Of course, of course! As a married man myself, I completely understand what it's like to suffer through these kinds of self-protective measures."

"Nyaaaa," Yumeria growled, agitated enough that the lines between characters in her head were starting to break down. "Your delusional fixation on Aoi-tan doesn't count-kupo! I don't mean a husbando, I'm actually married to an actual real man, who's hot and suave and good at martial arts! He just works overseas at a job that… doesn't let him… use social media…"

Mitsuki snickered at the indignation on Yumeria's face as the latter realized she kept making herself sound more and more unbelievable, only to slump against the counter with a pitiful whine. "But I'm being seriously serious for real this time!" she flailed. "I'm not making him up!"

Turning to Kosukegawa and Motoko in desperation she asked, "You kids believe me, right?!"

Kosukegawa looked at Motoko, saw her fill her mouth with another bite of ramen in panic, and quickly followed suit.

"Uuggghhh…!"

"Really," the moody student snarked, "if you want to make a dumb joke like that, then it should be more plausible. Everybody knows that high schoolers can't get married."

"I'm no high school student, I'm 23! I have an office job, I pay taxes and everything!"

Nobuo, Mitsuki, and Hiroyo all stopped and did double takes. "Wait, you're an adult and you still act like such an otaku loser?! You're almost as embarrassing as the old man!"

The old man in question nodded in surprise, only to blink when he realized he'd been called out. "Hey!"

Swallowing, Kosukegawa nodded. "She did have an employee card for a discount at the pharmacy she took me to a bit ago…"

"Setting your otaku delusions aside," Mitsuki asked while completely ignoring Yumeria's cry that she wasn't being delusional, "what're Gettou and her sister's boyfriend doing here? I thought you said something about us having another enemy."

If the word enemy shot through Motoko's mind like a bullet, then Mitsuki's carelessness with it was like a second round immediately following the first.

But if those were bullets, then the word boyfriend was more along the lines of an air strike. "H-h-he's not my boyfriend!" Motoko stammered out, before throwing her hands over her mouth at the realization that the erroneous word sister had stealthily come in before it.

Kosukegawa, a split-second quicker on the uptake, replied at the same time, "I'm not dating anyone!" before realizing with a blink that he recognized Mitsuki. "…hang on, don't you live in the apartment next to Motoko's?"

Mitsuki crossed her arms, staring at the pair with narrowed eyes. "Yeah, her and her three weirdo sisters that keep showing up and taking turns to house-sit at weird times. I saw you talking to the ditzy one yesterday."

Yumeria sighed and stood up, before taking off her purple wig to reveal short black-brown hair underneath. "I'll get to these kids' involvement in a sec. And for your other question, well… it's not necessarily another enemy, but it's someone we definitely need to be extremely careful about. There's a lot to go into, and honestly I'm not entirely sure where to start…"

"You insisted that I close down the store," Hiroyo pointed out with a nod. "So I hope this is going somewhere important."

Kosukegawa produced a gold coin from his pocket. "How about this–?"

Almost immediately, Yumeria was blocking Kosukegawa from street view and had pinned his arm to the counter, concealing the coin under their hands. "Don't be so careless with that horrid thing! Treat it like it's a Stand – no, more like a Behelit!"

"What?! You mean like from Berserk?!"

Nobuo stepped in to put a steady hand on the boy's shoulder, dampening his panic. Turning to Yumeria, he asked, "You're being pretty extreme, you know? It's no secret that too much money can do dangerous things to people, but–"

"No, you don't get it. These… things," Yumeria hissed as she let go of Kosukegawa, "you can't think of them as having standard monetary value. They're more like power tokens – like special in-game currency only used by the super cheat shop."

Seeing that the assembled teenagers and nerds around her mostly appeared to understand at least one half or the other of her explanation thus far, she let out a breath. "Except that the super cheat shop in question is an international murderer's guild. And a major CEO being able to pass these tokens out like business cards – WITH business cards! – is the same as admitting she's a killer herself. If not with her own hands, then by paying someone to do it. And she's warped enough to not see a problem with giving such dangerous things to innocent high school students, despite knowing that they can attract the scum of humanity like sharks to blood in the water–!"

Chewing her lip, Yumeria forced herself to stop and bring her volume back down. "…and if she doesn't already know who both of you kids are, where you live, and about your families, then she's going to by the end of the day."

Staring at Motoko, she added, "And she knows you're secretly a superhuman. What most people call a Monster."

Mitsuki's disbelieving grin at what she'd seen as the older woman's delusional hysteria promptly died and was reborn as a flat stare. "…"

"Really," Hiroyo sighed, "all this talk of murderous conspiracies and ruinous gold coins? That's a bit much, even for me–"

"…no, I think it's real," Kosukegawa whispered. "It was all the way back in middle school, so I'd completely forgotten about it up until just now – but I've seen one of these coins before. It was when I went to give my friend Kannami one of my Kamen Rider action figures so he wouldn't forget me while he was studying abroad in America; I swear he had a coin just like this on the shelf in his room."

Yumeria stared at the boy like he'd grown a second head. "You knew someone with one of these in middle school."

"I didn't really think much of it at the time; he got annoyed with me when I went to look at it, but he was kind of a jerk about everything, so it… y'know, didn't register as important?"

"So everything Yumeria said about the coins might or might not be real," Nobuo mused, pacing to the center of the cafe. "What does that mean for Hyuga Medical Works? They do a lot of decent work for the world, by Big Pharma standards, but if their big brain in charge is some kind of serial hitman-hirer, does that mean we should consider them our opponent?"

Scratching his chin, he mused, "I'm not sure there's even a precedent for a Super Sentai team facing multiple unrelated main villain organizations at once… that feels more like a Power Rangers thing."

"I don't know and can't prove that HMW are secretly evil or anything like that," Yumeria allowed. "But the point is that these coins prove that the Hyuga sisters are extremely dangerous and shady. The best case situation from here is probably if their world and ours never happen to cross paths again, but I wouldn't bet on that being the case. As it stands, I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that there's no such thing as too careful when it comes to those people."

As the cafe filled with murmurs of agreement, Mitsuki stomped up to Motoko, looming over her like a storm cloud. "Whatever, that's not my business. Is it true you're a Monster? Like the ones in Nerima?"

Before Motoko could even answer, Mitsuki had already pulled her MMZ out. "If it is, then fight me! Right now, in the alley out back!"

The bespectacled girl quivered and quailed on her stool, desperately looking for an escape route and not finding much of one. "No, I'm not…! I can't…! You don't understand what you're asking for!"

"The hell I don't!"

"Those other girls you've seen at her apartment aren't her sisters," Kosukegawa explained, physically inserting himself between the two and shooting Yumeria and Nobuo a look of gratitude when they started pulling Mitsuki back. "They're split personalities, with their own minds and feelings! They're not bad people, but they're terrifyingly strong! Motoko just doesn't want you to get hurt–"

"I don't care! Now that I finally have my own power, I won't be able to move on until I see how it compares with that freak Akane Tendo! I have to know I'm not just some worthless joke to be thrown away like trash!"

The Secret Base regulars stilled at Mitsuki's tear-streaked outburst, having been made aware of her humiliating defeat from the newspaper clipping but not of the extent to which it affected her.

"That freak middle schooler," Mitsuki sobbed in rage. "It's not fair that she was allowed to compete with regular people who never stood a snowball's chance in hell against her! And then when I came back to school covered in bandages, nobody believed me when I said she was just that strong! Everyone… everyone just…!"

"They sacrificed you to protect their own pride," Nobuo said. "That's messed up."

She must have been bullied pretty bad, Kosukegawa realized. Makes me wonder what kind of harassment Kobe's gone through too…

After quickly sending his other friend a text to check up on him, the young man began to sit up in hopes of trying to comfort his new acquaintance – only for an expressionless Motoko to firmly push him back down to his stool, her eyes hidden behind her bangs.

"Twice in the same day ain't exactly a regular thing."

And then the hairs on the back of Kosukegawa's neck stood up as he recognized the chance in pitch and inflection, to the point that even her voice sounded like a completely different person.

But then, as the girl's glasses were folded up and set on the counter, he wondered if maybe that was a more accurate phrase than he'd initially realized.

Undoing the ties that enabled Motoko's preferred pigtails, Hibiki shook her hair loose and slouched against the counter with a devil-may-care smirk. "But I don't mind beating this out of your system if you need it."

As the girls stared each other down, Hiroyo tried to clear her throat and get their attention. "There's a lot you still don't know– you really shouldn't– aaaand they've completely ignored me to step outside," she groaned into her palm. "Okay, fine. I'd planned on doing this later, but I'll go ahead and get some props to help explain everything in the aftermath."

"Huh? Explain what, Owner?"

Hiroyo waved off Kosukegawa's question as she rolled up her sleeves and went into the back storage room, while Yumeria and Nobuo followed Mitsuki and Hibiki outside.

The walk was only a minute or two, and the alleyway behind Secret Base was pretty well deserted, as well as comparatively isolated from the main streets.

"So you got some kinda power, huh?" Hibiki asked, popping her neck. "Gotta admit, it'll be kinda neat to fight someone interesting for once. Though I don't know what good that figurine you keep clutching is gonna do you…"

"Just wait and see!" Mitsuki challenged. "JUU MOUSOU!"

ZU-KYUUN!

There was a flash of blinding light as Mitsuki transformed…

…and then Akiba Blue felt a hot stinging wind through her suit as the raging desert sun beat down on her.

"…wait, desert? Well, I guess if I went to a mountain last time," she mused, "then maybe this isn't too out of the question – is that a pyramid over there? Bah, whatever! Quit hiding and come fight me, Gettou!"

Looking around her, Blue found in a hurry that Gettou wasn't hiding at all. Rather, the other girl was just walking on by with a chillingly blank look on her face.

Huh? She looks… off, somehow… well, whatever. If the heat bothers her that much, then I'll take a quick win and send us both back home!

"Think you can ignore me, huh?! Well," Blue demanded as she stormed up a sand dune and began skidding down the other side towards her opponent, "let's see what the odds are you can ignore THIS!"

Coming into range, Akiba Blue threw out a probing left hook. In response, Gettou let out a whisper too soft to be heard over the hot wind blowing –


Hibiki stared in confusion as Mitsuki threw punches and kicks at the empty air in front of her, in between ducking and weaving as if in response to attacks she hadn't made yet.

"Uhh… are you seriously for real right now? Trying to fake me out with shadowboxing or something? Because I'm not really impressed."

Mitsuki didn't respond to the light verbal jab, as the spectators looked on in utter dumbfoundedness.

"I thought she seemed pretty serious and fired-up inside," Kosukegawa thought. "But was she really just wanting to play-fight?"

"Wait, is that really all this was? Some great big excuse to act tough and try lookin' cool? Sheesh, I wouldn't let myself get so worked up if that's how it was. I guess you've got a cuter side than you like to admit, huh stranger?"

Mitsuki again failed to respond in her trance-like shadowboxing state, even as a bemused Hibiki stepped in close to wave a hand in front of her face. "Damn, you're into this… well as much as it sounds kinda fun to play along, I don't really know how to hold back too well. Sorry in advance–"

Hibiki poked Mitsuki on the arm hard enough to send her stumbling back several meters, at the same time that Akiba Blue screamed in agony from the Gettou in the desert slamming her into the sands by a visibly broken leg.

The MMZ let out a shrill warning alarm as Gettou raised her foot over the brutalized Sentai, before a flash of light enveloped them both…

…and Mitsuki woke up covered in concrete dust that had been kicked up from Hibiki poking her. "Wh-wh-what the hell?! What just happened?! What was that?!"

"You woke up from your delusion," Hiroyo explained through her cafe's back door, heedless of the way her words hit like a slap in the face. "The delusion that we call Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger… or rather, I pulled you out of it as a last resort. Don't tell me you really thought an unlicensed independent scientist like me could get away with inventing powered combat suits and giving it to a group of randos on a whim? In this country?"

The near-identical looks on Nobuo's, Mitsuki's, and Yumeria's faces all proved that the idea of questioning the given premise hadn't once occurred to any of them.

"What do you mean, it's all a delusion?!"

"Exactly what I said," Hiroyo calmly replied, writing and circling the phrase Juu Mousou on a whiteboard she'd pulled out from storage. "Honestly, I'm a little surprised that the activation call, Deep Delusion, didn't lead you to suspect anything. Transforming into the Akibarangers, fighting this… Blatantly Evil Guerilla Marketing Firm B and their monsters? All that stuff only happens in a big shared daydream that the MMZs synchronize and pull you into."

Turning to an old CRT she'd hooked up, Hiroyo then displayed public-access CCTV footage she'd gotten of the trio's activities the night before. On it, Nobuo, Mitsuki, and Yumeria in her catgirl cosplay could be seen holding up the Moe-Moe Zukyuunes, shouting the transformation call… and then proceeding to obliviously shadowbox in the street, before police showed up and dragged a furious electrician from the arcade cafe. "While there did happen to be a crime taking place, there's no real evidence that you had anything to do with stopping it and bringing the suspect to justice."

"I was… so happy," Nobuo whispered, unable to lift his gaze from the floor. "Even through the pain of battle, it was my fondest boyhood wish come to life… but none of it was ever even real? There wasn't an enemy, we didn't become a Sentai team?"

We… we were never really heroes after all?

"Nope, not even once! It was all just imagination. You see, the trait that makes you three perfect Akibarangers is that your kneejerk response to overwhelming adversity is to retreat into delusional power fantasies, rather than to just accept there's nothing to be done and move on with life like a well-functioning normal person would. The MMZs tap into and unite these delusions, which is why–"

"JUST SHUT UP!"

Everyone else, and especially Mitsuki, flinched away from Nobuo's uncharacteristic anguished yell.

Even though he's a weird gross old man, he's always been totally upbeat and supportive before – even when Shibuya was beating us to a pulp without breaking a sweat. But seeing him lash out now, like his whole world tore itself apart and betrayed him…

Felt entirely too much like looking in a mirror, in the worst way.

"It was all fake?!" he demanded. "Just a big stupid daydream we let ourselves get sucked into?! Then nothing up til now ever mattered!"

There was a moment of shocked silence as everyone stared at Nobuo, each unsure of how to answer the overflowing grief and despair on his face, or if they even could… until eventually he took a shambling step towards the door.

And then he ran out and away before anyone could collect themselves enough to try and stop him.

This is the worst day of my life, he thought.

After a moment, Hiroyo turned to her remaining Akibarangers. "So, just to be sure – are you two going to be sticking around, or…?"

Mitsuki growled, but nodded. "I already use image training when I fight anyway, so I'm sure I can get something out of how realistic – whatever we're doing is."

Next to her, Yumeria agreed. "I mean, it's a fun hobby, right? I don't see a reason not to."

"Hey! Hey hey hey hey!" Hibiki called out, plopping down at the counter with an unceremonious thump as she produced a wallet from her purse. "This is still a cafe that serves food and stuff, right? Motoko gets too self-conscious about eating in front of other people; we're still hungry, and I can pay for my own meal this time! Kosukegawa, you want anything?"

"Is… is this really okay?" he asked, uncertainly.

Hibiki blinked at the unexpected question. "Huh? Sure it is, we get an allowance from two of our dads; it's more than plenty enough to cover even a superhuman's appetite, nevermind a cute guy on the side–"

"Huh?! No, wait, that's not what I mean!"

Waving his arm at the exit door, Kosukegawa looked from Hiroyo, to Yumeria, to Mitsuki, to Hibiki as the corners of his eyes grew wet. "I still don't really understand what's going on here, but that guy was really torn up by what you were saying about delusions and stuff! Aren't you his friends, or at least his comrades?! Isn't it messed up to just let him run off in anguish like that without even trying to check up on him or make sure he'll be okay?!"

Mitsuki squirmed a little, but didn't show any signs of actually moving. "We only fought together once, and he's a creepy old loser otaku anyway. I don't really wanna hang around him any more than I can help it."

Yumeria looked a little guiltier… but not by too much. "Yeah, it's not like we're friends or anything. Besides, otaku or not, Akagi's a grown man. He took care of himself long enough to get this far in life, so I'm sure he'll be okay until this blows over."

Hiroyo just shrugged. "I don't have him under a contract, so it's not like I can make him come back or have much justifiable cause to send someone after him. Admittedly, it'll be trouble if he doesn't return the MMZ, but for now his emotional imbalance isn't my responsibility–"

Kosukegawa slapped the counter and stood up, hot and angry tears streaming down his face. "All three of you suck so much right now! Thanks for the offer, Hibiki, but this isn't a great time – I've gotta go after him!"

Hibiki, for her part, just let out a huff and waved Kosukegawa off as he ran out the door after Nobuo. "Not sure why you gotta do anythin' of the sort, but go do yer business I guess. …if we're not here when you get back," she yelled a half-second later, "it's because we went on home! Ask Motoko for our phone number at school sometime!"

Turning back to Hiroyo across the counter, the martial artist pulled out some money. "So, about those extra helpings–"

"Coming right up," the older woman said with a smile.

"…not following your boyfriend's example?" Mitsuki asked, mostly for the sake of keeping her thoughts on anything other than her earlier farce of a 'fight'.

"Psh, why bother? If he was gonna pick a fight or something fun like that," Hibiki mused, "then that'd be one thing. But I'm starving and his concern for some crying old geezer doesn't have anything to do with Motoko or anyone else in our head, so it's whatever."

Besides, it's not like it'll actually be hard to catch up and check on him when I get done.

Outside, Kosukegawa grit his teeth and looked around, barely catching a glimpse of the old guy's red delivery jacket before he ducked around a corner. "Hey, wait up mister!"

First I find out one of my classmates might be fighting with thoughts about getting rid of himself, then a cute girl I like turns out to have multiple personalities, and now there's people talking about billionaire murder conspiracies and imaginary monsters… I don't know when life went from 0 to 100, or how I'm supposed to handle all this crazy stuff – but I don't want to just turn my head like a coward and walk away again! If Kamen Rider taught me anything, it's that sometimes doing the right thing means taking responsibility for someone else's suffering!