#looks like shesta's coming back!

[pulaasul]

Meeting of Natural and Artificial CEOs

Days have passed since Aruto was reinstated as Hiden Intelligence's CEO after his fight against Horobi, when Shesta called his phone and told him that someone wanted to meet with him, urgently.

A/N:  Sorry, I just couldn't resist giving Aruto more friends, more human friends.

special thanks to @flaim-ita​ @dangerouscommiesubversive​ for their conversation with various anonymous asks helped shaped this story. And yes some of those anonymous asks were from my cousin who was helping me with the story at the time.

and for @rainixdra​ for helping me with things in this story as well.

FFN I Ao3

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"President Aruto, there are people who want to speak with you." Shesta informed the company president over the phone.

Aruto was busy signing papers. He remembered all the lessons and things that Izu taught him back when he was the CEO of Hiden Intelligence, as appointed by his grandfather.

Before all the nonsense Gai Amatsu caused, personally.

Izu was no longer with him to pick up his slack, he needs to do everything himself now.

"Hmm?" Aruto looked up from his desk. "I thought I didn't have to meet anyone today, according to my schedule..." He trailed off as he looked at the schedule he put in his phone.

"Yes, however, they claim for this to be urgent." Shesta explained.

"Send them in, then." Aruto shook his head.

Aruto looked at the piles of paper that he had left to sign. He had to reimburse the money that Amatsu stole from the company by heavily fining ZAIA Enterprise and getting three-fourths of ZAIA spec's sales. That alone needed a lot more paperwork.

The other pile was him waiving away three-fourths of his salary as CEO for the next two years, to pay for the damages he had inadvertently caused as Ark One, and the aggression he and Amatsu had over the months.

Though many had disagreed that he should have waived that much from his salary, he chose to go through with his decision regardless. He was as much at fault as everyone else who had been involved.

Even that required too much paperwork.

Before Aruto could even mull over his remaining paperwork, he heard three knocks on his office's door.

"Come in."

Aruto saw two people entering his office; they look like they could be siblings. The younger one was carrying a box with his two hands, dressed casually in a green and purple hoodie while the older one was dressed in a three-piece suit.

"President Hiden, I'm Kureshima Takatora and this is my younger brother, Mitsuzane."

"It's nice to meet you," Aruto met the Kureshimas by the couches of the office and shook hands with both men. "I'm Hiden Aruto."

"Korenosuke's grandson." Takatora nodded.

"The Kureshimas!" Aruto's eyes widened as he realized who his visitors were. "My grandfather received an email detailing how he had bequeathed his shares to one Kureshima Takatora, however, they couldn't contact you, so your shares were in limbo."

"You probably should have sold my shares when you weren't able to contact me," Takatora told the other president honestly. "I was presumed dead for a while."

The younger Kureshima, the boy wearing the green and purple hoodie, placed a white box on the glass table.

"However, we can talk about shares later; we have another business for visiting you."

Both Kureshimas showed their respective drivers to Aruto and placed them beside the white box.

"The both of you are Kamen Riders." Aruto's eyes widened and got in a guarded stance.

"We don't want to fight; rather, we want to talk about things that happened."

Both Kureshimas placed their drivers on the table.

"You want to talk about Ark One," Aruto concluded as he slumped on the couch. "I know not all of it was my fault, I was manipulated into doing the Ark's bidding, but…"

"Are you aware of what happened to Zawame City more or less than six years ago?" Mitsuzane asked as he and his brother sat on the empty couches.

"I didn't really pay attention to the details," Aruto admitted. "Something about a corporate cover-up exposed?"

A few beats of silence were heard as the Kureshimas debated on how to tackle the topic.

"Yggdrasil…" Takatora sighed. "

"You're not the only one plagued with the realization that you might have contributed to maybe destroying the world."Mitsuzane shared somberly.

Aruto frowned at what he had heard.

"What do you mean?"

"I wanted power…"

"Mitsuzane, we already talked about this," Takatora sighed. "They were good manipulators, the Overlords more so than the others."

"I know that, nii-san, but…"

"We all made bad decisions, Kazuraba and Kumon included," Takatora shook his head. "Besides we're here for something else, aren't we?"

"We know what it's like," Mitsuzane spoke, shaking his head. "Doing what you think is right, but under the machinations of someone sinister, being manipulated by someone else for their own ends."

"What we're saying is that we're here for you," Takatora took over. "Not many people would know what it's like going through the things that we have gone through."

"Me more so, than my brother." Mitsuzane supplied.

"I…" Aruto trailed off. "I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything." Takatora shook his head.

"Process everything first, then contact us," Mitsuzane added. "Not to assume, but I tried to distract myself from the guilt of what happened by taking care of my unconscious brother."

"I…"

"Let's talk about the shares next time." Takatora stated.

"Before I forget, a good friend requested that we give this to you," Mitsuzane stood up and handed the white box to Aruto. "It's a cake especially baked for you."

"Cake?"

"It's from Charmant," Takatora informed. "The patissier who owns that place is a high-class baker."

"Who…who would order something for me?" Aruto couldn't help but question. "I did not order something."

"Our good friend figured that was the case, hence why, he made it just for you and asked us to deliver it." Mitsuzane offered a sad smile.

"Why?" Aruto frowned. "Why do something for me when we don't know each other."

"Only Riders can understand fellow Riders, Hiden." Takatora took a deep breath with his eyes closed.

"And only a few of us, who share the same guilt, can understand each other." Mitsuzane offered a sad smile. "We should be there for each other."

"I… Thank you."

As soon as the Kureshima brothers left, Aruto called for his vice president's secretary.

"Shesta, please call the manager and the vice president to my office."

"As you wish, President Aruto."

[iristial]

Talk about a music video shoot for an upcoming rock band...

[kamenriderlogik27]

Power of Heroez: Prologue

The day had begun like any other for the young president of Hiden Intelligence, Hiden Aruto. Despite setting around 20 alarm clocks, he woke up late. Panicked, he quickly got ready and used his Rise Hopper to make a speedy trip across town towards the company building, As he rushed through the glass doors, panting, he checked his watch. 

He was only 15 seconds late! A new record! 

After pumping his fist in the air and patting his back for a good job done, Aruto said his daily ‘hello!’ to the security guard- Mamoru, swiped his Risephone onto the security scanner, and made his way up to his office. Which was on the top floor of the large building. 

Like everyday, what met him when he got to his office was his secretary humagear- Izu, who was sitting patiently on her charging station, waiting for him. 

“Good morning, President Aruto.” Izu smiled as she stood up and bowed. “I see that you were only 15 seconds late today. I wish you congratulations on your new record!” 

Aruto smiled bashfully, but before he could say ‘thank you’, his office doors burst open with a loud ‘BANG!’ followed by the shuffling of feet. The loud noise caused Aruto to Jump in surprise. Turning around, he saw the Vice President- Mr. Fukuzoe, with his usual stressed out and stern face, rushing up the stairs from the door. Shesta-Mr. Fukuzoe’s secretary humagear, and Mr. Yamashista- the Senior Managing Director, both following his every step with arms full of large, paper-loaded folders.

“President.” Mr. Fukuzoe greeted with a short nod. “This is all the paperwork that you need to go through and sign. Along will all the new requests that you must either accept or decline. I’m also informed that you have a meeting with a few potential customers this evening, so I must encourage you to get all this paperwork done before then. If not-”

“Ok! Ok! I understand!” Aruto interrupted with a small, apologetic grin. “I’ll try and get it done somehow, ok?”

Despite the attempt to calm the VP, Mr. Fukuzoe just shook his head in annoyance. “This paperwork is all due tomorrow, President! You’ve had all WEEK to do it, however you were always out battling that terrorist group instead! For the sake of our company, you NEED to focus on this today!” 

Aruto paled at what the older man said and couldn’t help but feel a little bit guilty. It was true that he had spent the last week focusing on saving people from Horobi’s forces, but it wasn’t as if he was trying to avoid work because of it. Though, he does admit that he could have come in after battles to do as much work as he could... 

“I’m sorry!” The young President bowed. “I promise that I’ll do what it takes to get it all done today!” 

“Please do.” Mr. Yamashita huffed, shuffling the folders so that he could get a better grip on them. “This sort of job is only meant for the President anyway. Remember! The board re-elected you as President not too long ago! You need to start showing them that they made the right choice!” 

“Roger!” Aruto saluted, before taking the large folders from Mr. Yamashita and throwing them onto his desk. “I’ll get right to it!”

He had meant every word. However, not even an hour after his three coworkers had left, the young President was slouched down over his desk, groaning in exhaustion and a folder balancing on top of his head. 

“I will never understand how Grandpa was able to do this part of his job.” Aruto groaned. “Right, Izu?” 

Taking it as a legitimate question, Izu answered. “President Kurenosuke was always taking extra shifts to finish his work no matter what it was. There were even times when he would stay up all night and sleep in this office.” 

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Aruto mumbled to himself, thinking about the nights where he would come home from school and see no evidence of his grandfather ever being there. 

Before he could remanence more past memories, Izu’s ear modules beeped, causing her to stand up in alarm. 

“President Aruto.” Izu called in a sharp but calm voice. “Satellite Zea would like to inform you about a specific incident that has recently occurred.” 

Before he could respond, Izu instantly projected what looked like a news report in front of him. The reporter stood before a rather tall building that looked like it was hit by a large canon ball. 

“The incident happened on an island called ‘Sector City’.” Izu informed. “It’s reported that a small accident had occurred where part of a laboratory exploded. The cause is currently unknown.” 

“THAT’s what they call a ‘small accident?” Aruto laughed nervously, his eyes focusing on the large hole that ate the side of the building. Looking closer, however, Aruto saw something peeking out from the rubble. It was rather small, so Aruto asked Izu to enhance it a bit so they could get a better look. The tiny object looked like some kind of robot. Not a humagear, but a small-rounded robot with X shaped metallic limbs. 

“Izu, have you ever seen that robot before?” Aruto asked, knowing full well that she would know more patented A.I.s than him. She looked closer at the image but made funny, yet thoughtful face. As if she doesn’t recognize it. 

“Searching for possible patents, blue-prints and other possible data.” She announced before closing her eyes. After a few seconds, her eyes opened and looked towards the young President. “There are no current records of that type of A.I.” 

“No records, huh?” Aruto said with a thoughtful expression. He pondered, thinking how weird it was that a huge hole in the side of a building was so unexplainable and random. And in the middle of all of this was just a small little A.I. robot with no identification. 

Aruto stood up from his chair and grabbed the Zero-one driver. “Izu, I’m going to go investigate the incident for a little while.” 

Izu’s eyes showed no surprise by this statement. “I see. I’ll inform the potential customers that we’ll have to postpone their meeting till tomorrow, then.” 

“Alright. Tell them that I’m sorry for the inconvenience.” Aruto smiled apologetically, as if the customers were there in his office to see. He led the way as the duo climbed up to the helicopter landing area on the roof. 

He then placed his driver around his waist and authorized his Jumping Hopper progrizekey.

“Henshin!” he yelled, transforming into Kamen Rider Zero-one. Then, he authorized his Flying Falcon progrizekey. Before taking off, he turned to Izu and said. “I’ll go check it out real quick and come back. Hopefully Mr. Fukuzoe won’t notice that I’m gone. But if he does-” 

“I’ll inform him that you’re taking a short break and will be back soon to finish your work.” Izu confirmed without a beat. Aruto smiled behind his mask. They had been through too much together for Izu to not know what to do. 

“Alright! See you in a bit!” Aruto waved before finally taking off. He flew fast, using the directions that Satellite Zea was projecting in his mind for him to follow. Turns out that Sector City was near by the city of Fuuto, which was right next to Tokyo. So, thankfully, it didn’t take too long for him to get there. When the island came into full view, he quickly searched for a place to land. This proved to not be easy, however, as there were armed guards near every road leading to the island. That was a bit concerning. Figuring it would just be easier to sneak in, he flew over their heads and landed on the roof of one of the taller buildings.           

“There’s an awful lot of security in place for what’s supposed to have been a simple accident.” Aruto said to himself as he looked around. “I only came because the A.I. robot that I saw on the news intrigued me, but there but be more to this.”  

Right at that moment, Izu’s voice came into his head. “President Aruto. The security levels are very high and you are currently in danger of being caught. Please do be careful and-”

 “I know! I know!” Aruto interrupted calmly, a playful smile was hidden behind his mask. “I need to deactivate the devices strengthening the security sensors first, right?” 

He started to look around again to see if any such device could be seen until his eyes landed on a glowing metal pedestal with something round placed on it. He walked closer and picked the round object up. It was no bigger than a coin, made out of a red transparent material, and gold encircling it. 

“Is this the device?” Aruto asked quizzically to himself as he turned the small object around in his hand to inspect it more. His eyes traced what looked like a symbol of a bird, carved into the hard-red material of the core. It didn’t seem like a device of any kind as the material might have actually been more of a stone than metal. Aruto thought it was odd yet.... strangely powerful in its own way. As if that made any sense even to him. 

Suddenly, a bright blue light erupted behind him, followed by a dark voice. 

“Hmm...” The dark voice hummed, observantly. “I do not have any data on you. However, you appear to be a Kamen Rider as well...”

“Wah!” Aruto Jumped in surprise, turning around. “Where did you come from?!” 

The.... man- though he didn’t really seem to be any regular human- sitting down in the floating chair, completely ignored Aruto’s surprise and groaned to himself. 

“One after another.... it seems you are determined to not leave me be.” 

“‘One after another’?” Aruto cocked his head to the side, confused. “Who else has been here?” The only other Kamen Rider he could think of was Mr. Fuwa and Ms. Yaiba, but they were probably still off doing their own things. Amatsu Gai was a possibility as well, but Aruto didn’t want to think about that jerk attempting to be a good-guy at the moment.  

Again, the oddly large man never answered him. Instead, he raised his staff to the side and shot some sort of lightning based ray right at the young President. The blast knocked the small red object out of Aruto’s hand, and caused his strength to rapidly deplete. It wasn’t long before his eyes forced themselves shut, and darkness took over.   

[katsuragitakumi]

eps 43 and 44

today’s impressions:

the good

i liked jin’s death. i mean, of course i’m not happy about jin sacrificing himself for HOROBI OF ALL PEOPLE, but horobi is his father and he wants to believe there’s good in him

i wish ikazuchi and naki got more screen time together because i think they could be a very fun duo. the contrast between their personalities is cool

SHESTA... so precious and good

ep 44 was much nicer than ep 43

it’s so cute when fuwa says he’ll try to stop aruto. if they had been actual friends, maybe his plan would have worked

the scene where yua claims she’s the commander of AIMS is SO COOL. and while obviously gai’s past actions are still unforgivable, this is much more useful and sincere than a “i’m sowwy :( *snuggles robopuppy*”

the meh

we’ve been told that ark!aruto is even stronger than the regular ark, but our pal horobi still can take a beating (although to be fair, it was jin who received aruto’s finisher and, needless to say, it didn’t end well for him)

i think horobi had the potential to be a very interesting villain. the concept is very nice, but the execution has been very wonky to say the least. and tbh it feels very underwhelming that a character like horobi turns out to be so pivotal in the last stretch of the show. he feels like a mid-season villain at best

azu is cool, but i wish she had been introduced much earlier. i think she was in a special i didn’t watch, which, again, is my fault and not the show’s. but i still think they could have done much more with her

this doesn’t really feel like the last stretch of the show to me? it looks like the kind of stuff that normally happens around ep 30

i said i liked fuwa’s intention to stop aruto, but the outcome is disappointing and i think it could have been handled better. at least we can see fuwa’s growth as a character. 

more scenes with naki and fuwa would be nice. they had potential to have a very interesting bond - naki has lived in his mind, so they probably know better than your average humagear how the human mind works. also, naki+fuwa can be the ultimate way to show fuwa’s character development regarding humagears. that’s much better than, let’s say, frigging AI-chan. it’s kinda sad how the show usually sets up interesting dynamics and then does nothing or very little with them

the bad

takahashi somehow managed to write a show where all recurring female characters exist to serve men (although in yua’s case it’s temporary)

i don’t know what they’re trying to do with horobi’s character anymore. are they going to make aruto and horobi hug it out?

jin and izu predictably come back in the finale

02... a form that caused izu so much distress gets only used for a couple of episodes... 

maybe i’m heartless, but i don’t really care about aruto anymore at this point. and the wholesome scenes about “let’s believe in aruto!” are good, but i can’t really feel anything when at the same time aruto is fighting with fuwa, who apparently cares more about humagears as a whole now than aruto himself

the scene where yua and fuwa tell fukuzoe and the other guy that izu has been destroyed... and they laugh bc they don’t believe it... it felt so out of place. look, i think humor is necessary, especially in grim episodes, to lighten the mood. BUT you need to know when they’re appropriate and when they’re not.

[firebirdsdaughter]

Random Writing Tidbit Yay!…

… Celebration!

With angst!

Okay, I actually gotta go, but I wanted to post this mess first.

This was inspired by, yet again, Killjoys.

But also kinda a moment from Bayonetta 2.

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“One moment, Aruto-shachou.” Izu’s voice over the intercom was level as always, but there was something dread in her tone that made him stop in his tracks, his heart sinking.

As the others came up short around him, he took a deep breath and asked, “What is it, Izu?”

“Our scrambling of the security systems appears to have short-circuited the system, causing it to reboot.”

He blinked, frowning. “Uh… Why are you saying that like it’s a bad thing? Won’t that make it easier to get out?”

Yaiba, however, had gone white as a sheet. “Because when the system reboots, it undoes all the security locks,” She explained.

“Which means…” Fuwa began slowly—then caught on, his eyes widening, “… Weapons are about to come back online.”

“Hiden Towers are not equipped to withstand a military-grade attack.” Izu continued. “If the Ark were to target us, the destruction would severe.”

Aruto had a horrible suspicion that ‘severe’ was an understatement, his blood running cold. “Is there time to evacuate?”

“Negative, Aruto-shachou,” His secretary responded, then paused for a moment, “The power is coming back on now.”

“Shit!” Fuwa growled, turning sharply away to take a swing at the wall.

Aruto looked at Yaiba. “Why does ZAIA even have a heavy weapons system?!”

“They were meant to be used for field tests,” She replied, scowling at the floor. Then she stepped back the way they’d come. “You guys go ahead.”

Fuwa looked back. “Whoa, whoa. Where the hell are you going?” He reached out at caught her arm. “It’s the Ark, it’s absolutely scrambled the command codes.”

“I have the manual self-destruct codes for the base.” Valkyrie informed him. “It may have locked us out remotely, but if those are entered directly, the resulting explosion will take the weapons out as well.”

“And you with it!” Vulcan shot back. “… Give them to me.”

Yaiba yanked her arm out of his hold. “Like hell.” She snapped. “You’re all that’s standing between AIMS and being co-opted by the government.”

“And if you die, we lose the ZAIA deserters.” Aruto interrupted. Then he sighed. “Give me the codes, I’ll do it.” They both turned and stared at him.

“And what,” Fuwa demanded sharply, “You’ll just leave Hiden to Fukuoze?”

Aruto was about to reply when another voice cut him off. “Give them to me.”

All three of them turned slowly to stare at Horobi. The HumaGear’s voice sounded tired and resigned, though his expression was as impassive as always, even as Yaibe frowned at him. “… What?” Valkyrie managed, finally.

Horobi sighed. “The only one here who is actually expendable is me.” He said flatly. “Jin is the future of free HumaGear. I was merely here to help him realise that.” A shrug. “I have completed my purpose.”

Fuwa broke away from Yaiba, stomping over to catch Horobi’s arm, giving it an angry yank, though his expression was anxious rather than angry. “But Jin-”

“Needs to learn to stand on his own.” Horobi shot back. “And if someone doesn’t do this fast, will die when Hiden Towers come down.” He met Fuwa’s glare with an equally intense gaze. “I will not live without him again.”

For a moment, they just stared at each other—then Fuwa let go of the HumaGear’s arm, stepping back and lowering his head in defeat. There was a long spell of silence—then the lights flickered back on.

“Power restoration at thirty-seven percent.” Izu announced over coms.

Horobi gave all three of them a completely unreadable, serious look. “Go.”

Still, they hesitated for a moment. “I’ll…” Yaiba stammered, fumbling for her phone, “I’ll transfer you the codes.”

“Do it while you’re moving.” The HumaGear snapped.

She bit her lip—then nodded, turning and dashing toward the way out. Aruto hung out a little longer; then Izu gave a prompting ‘Aruto-shachou’ through his earpiece, and he tore his eyes away from the HumaGear to start running as well.

Vulcan waited the longest, anxiously clutching his weapon. He was turning to go when Horobi’s voice unexpectedly stopped him. “Fuwa Isamu.” Fuwa paused, looking back. The HumaGear was giving him an almost… Pleading look. “… Make sure he stays free.” Meeting Horobi’s gaze again, Fuwa nodded—then he, to, turned and fled.

Horobi didn’t waste a second spinning around and going back the way they’d come, faltering only slightly when his visual display flickered with the code transfer, and to pull up the tracking info on the restoration level.

It had already jumped to fifty-four percent.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Jin had busied himself with drawing while he waited for Horobi and the others to come back from the mission, and had succeed in almost completely covering the floor of the private lab with papers. Shesta was sitting by the computer, looking at the drawings littered around her in bewilderment, and periodically checking to make sure he hadn’t moved from his spot on the floor. He’d tried multiple times to get her to play with him, or draw as well, but she’d merely repeated that she didn’t understand the request until he gave up. He didn’t think he needed the babysitter, but all of the humans aside from Vulcan had all seemed so unnerved by him, and the old, angry-looking Vice President had insisted that someone watch him—to which Horobi had conceded when Izu assured him it would be another HumaGear, so he’d been left with the Vice-Presidential Secretary for safety.

He was merely content to draw, however, cycling through all of his dead friends before moving on to Ansatsu-chan and Ikazuchi. He’d even tried drawing a picture of Hiden Korenosuke from the one hanging on the office, but gave it up when he couldn’t get it quite to his satisfaction. He supposed he should be calling the old man ‘Grandpa,’ but it felt weird to use that for someone he’d never met, and Horobi was Horobi, not… ‘Hiden’ something. From there he’d moved onto drawing his father with Sting Scorpion behind him, humming to himself as he worked, resolving to get it done to show it to Horobi when he got back.

He was almost done when he heard the door open, and he pricked up, scrambling to his feet and hurrying over to the stairs to see who it was—only to let out a disappointed sigh when Izu came down the steps alone. There was a small silence, and he realised that there was something odd about her expression, darker than her usual calm demeanour. “… Izu-chan?”

She hesitated a moment longer, then, “Measures taken to scramble ZAIA security for infiltration caused the main power to reboot, bringing the weapons system back online,” She told him quietly, “The only method to prevent it from destroying the Hiden towers is to manually enter the self-destruct codes, requiring someone to stay behind.”

Somewhere behind him, Jin heard Shesta shooting to her feet, but he was more focused on running through the list of likely possibilities. “… Vulcan?” Fuwa Isamu was the reckless type who would do something like that; and he’d become rather fond of Fuwa because Horobi liked him despite everything, which would make sense of her pitying expression—but Izu shook her head once, forcing him to reconsider. “… Valkyrie?” He didn’t know the woman very well, but she and Vulcan seemed fond of each other, and he guessed the AIMS Rider would be sad if she died—but Izu gave another head shake. “… Zero-One…?” It seemed unlikely that she would be coming down to tell him that—if the President of the company was sacrificing himself, she’d probably have more to do in the main room. Jin wasn’t sure what to think of the possibility—he and Hiden were still getting used to the idea of being ‘family,’ and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it after Zero-One had blown him up once. But Izu was shaking her head once more, and he frowned even deeper. If it wasn’t any of the humans, then…

He froze, eyes widening. If it wasn’t any of the humans, then there was only one other person it could be.

The paper and crayon slipped from his fingers, and he pushed past Izu, sprinting for the door. Shesta might’ve shouted something after him, but he didn’t hear here, far too focused on getting to the big room where the communications were. Horobi had promised they’d always be together. He’d promised.

Unsurprisingly, there was a loud clamour when he burst into the room, the Vice President whirling around to round on him. “He’s not supposed to be-”

“I’m authorising it.” It seemed Izu had used her speed to catch up to him, but Jin didn’t bother to look back at her and Fukuoze. He wasn’t outfitted with the same wireless abilities as human-made HumaGear, because Horobi had considered that a method of creating a ‘herd mentality’ by humans, whatever that meant—but it meant that his only chance of reaching his father was to reach other com controls.

He crashed so roughly into the board that he nearly sprawled over it, frantically fumbling for the part that would let him speak to Horobi. “Horobi!” His voice couldn’t break, but it sounded off.

There was silence on the other side of the connection for a moment—then Horobi’s voice came through. “… Jin.”

He clutched the edge of the control panel, shoulders shaking, mock breathing short and panicked. “Horobi! What are you doing?! Come home!”

“I cannot do that.”

Jin let out a small sob, shaking his head. “No… No….!” He leaned closer, hand scrabbling at the edge of the speaker like he could reach through it and pull Horobi back. “Please…! Please don’t leave again…” 

He heard his father sigh softly. “… Jin.” He repeated, far too calmly. “If I do not do this, you will die. That is unacceptable.”

“No!” He was becoming so hysterical, he couldn’t speak clearly, shaking so badly he could barely stand. “No… Horobi…!”

There was a silence on the other end. “… Jin?” Horobi’s voice was much quieter, and there was a small tremble in it. “… Just once… Could you call me…?”

“Papa.” Jin whimpered, hanging onto the communications panel to hold himself up. “Papa, please. Come home.”

He didn’t know if the sound that came out of the speaker was a sob of Horobi’s own, or merely static. “… Thank you.” His father said softly. Then, “… I love you, my son.”

A blast of static burst from the speaker at the same time the distant building could see through the windows exploded.

Jin let out a scream that broke the constraints of human hearing, spinning around and going for the door. Maybe if he ran fast enough, he could get there in time, find Horobi, and—he was brought to a sharp stop when Izu appeared in front of him, digging her heels into the ground and bracing herself against his chest. When he kept fighting, she got her arms around his waist, pushing back. She was as strong as he was, and though he succeeded in making it a few steps, his will eventually gave out, and he sank to the floor in a heap, dropping his head into his hands, tearless sobs shaking his whole body. He faintly heard her kneel beside him, and then thin arms were wrapped around his shoulders. Twisting around he buried his face into her shoulder, putting his around her middle, crying into her coat as she raised a hand to pat his hair.

They stayed there for a long time. Any time someone tried to say something, Izu would raise her head and stare at them until they backed off. She didn’t say anything to him, not even about wrinkling her uniform. Instead, she just held him close, smoothing a hand over his hair, and letting him cling to her like she was a teddy bear.

For there was nothing that could be said.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Don’t worry. I’m sure Horobi’s fiiiiiiiine…

[sailor-cresselia]

Zero One 01: A JUMP TO THE SKY TURNS TO A RIDER KICK

Okay, I’m gonna start liveblogging from the start of a show this time! Because oh wow, just watching this live was a trip… and now I get to properly understand it. >:3

––––

So, it appears that the shot of a HumaGear in the shadows in the trailer was not, in fact, in the satellite, like the trailer implied. Instead, he’s from the Hiden Intelligence sizzle reel.

Said sizzle reel also includes a shot of the “HumaGear Skin Fitting Gate System”. That’s the part of the manufacturing process that gives them their human-like appearance, as opposed to the base robot form.

Interestingly, each of the newly-humanized HumaGear has a rectangular tattoo, with some sort of hexagonal design in it. The male one has it on the left side of his chest, and the lady we see up close has it dead center a little below her collarbone.

The support HumaGear that they show next all have it on the side of their necks. And isn’t that a handy way to tell who’s a HumaGear, if they ever elect to make the ‘ears’ smaller?

Actually, I think the lower part of it has the Hiden Intelligence logo, and the top is the hexagon glyph. Still can’t get a good look at it, though.

Also, it’s probably a very bad idea to have all of your HumaGear managed via a single broadcast satellite. I’m just saying, with tech this advanced and ubiquitous, having some backups might be to your benefit.

–

So, Hiden Korenosuke, Aruto’s grandfather, was 75 when he died. Additionally, he wasn’t just the CEO of Hiden Intelligence – he was the founder.

The news spot about his funeral is being played on a giant hovercraft, via holographic screens.

I really do love how we’re clearly going all-in from the start on ‘this is not the mainline World of Riders.’

Meanwhile, Aruto shows us his dumb puppy nature right off the bat, being late for work despite having set five alarms.

We zoom out on the city, seeing the hovercraft in better detail than the grounds-eye view from before. We also see that the Hiden Intelligence headquarters absolutely dwarves the surroundings.

The logo appears on screen. When it zooms in for the transition, the black of the ‘01’ becomes a tightly layered pattern of binary.

–

There’s no opening credits today, since it’s the first episode and all. Opening Credits on the first day is not how Takashi Yuya-san rolls, as we saw during Ex-Aid.

The sponsor segment, however, does exist. It shows Zero One and his bike – which doesn’t have an individual name yet that I can find, just the term for the phone that has as a primary form. It’s a really cool shot, too. They’re under a blacklight. I’d thought they were glow-in-the-dark when I watched the raw, but seeing this in better quality shows that the blue and red accents are reacting, too.

That is so cool.

–

Aruto nyooms to the amusement park on his bike, because he’s super late. Turns out he’s a comedian in a stage show, with a truly hideous blue sequened suit and oversized red bowtie. His act is supposed to be a Manzai show… excpet for how he’s absolutely terrible.

Like, to the point where his straightman is his phone.

There are exactly two people in the audience… and it’s an older couple, who aren’t even watching. They’re having lunch.

This kills the Aruto.

–

And so does the fact that he’s fired. As his manager says, the era’s more suited to HumaGear entertainers.

Aruto disagrees – how could an AI understand a person’s sense of humor?

And then Ab-cruncher Taro, a HumaGear comedian, comes on stage for his act… and the audience loves it. Including the older couple from Arutos act.

I mean, this might be in part that nobody in World of Zero One likes manzai anymore, too, but also Aruto’s just terrible, and this guy did have a pretty decent pun on ad-libbing… as he exploded his abs off.

The manager points out that everyone is laughing, that having such a lively theme park is his dream. Aruto feels the same – he just wants to make people laugh, that’s all.

…Except that his now-former manager is already walking off. He already has someone who can make the crowd laugh, and Aruto really should find a new dream.

–

A car pulls up to Hiden Intelligence HQ, with Fukuzoe Jun and his HumaGear assistant, Shesta. I really like her red-and-grey outfit, not gonna lie.

Anyway, he’s the vice president of HI, and, admittedly rather justifiably, assumes that he’s the new CEO. He’s got quite an ego on him, apparently, because the funeral was today. He’s already got his portrait commissioned, made, and ready to be lowered over the portrait of the late CEO. And it’s larger, dwarfing the old one.

Dude.

Maybe you should have waited a bit on getting the portrait. Like, at least until after the funeral.

Just saying.

–

We switch to somewhere called ‘Daybreak Town.’

…It’s surrounded by massive, high-tech security fences. And is a bit of a crater. A flooded one.

Entering a run-down, semi-abandoned room, we meet Horobi and Jin. Admittedly, we don’t hear their names, but that’s who they are. Horobi is stoic and calm, and Jin… well, he’s basically an even more hyper Parad.

Horobi says that now that CEO Hiden is dead, they can start the Magear Plan.

…Jin, what was that you were messing around with on that stand?

Jin’s probable attention issues aside, Horobi goes to explain a bit further, while unplugging a pseudo-driver from a cable, probably where it was being programmed. They’re going to use the HumaGear singularity – that is, the hypothetical point when Artificial Intelligences become more intelligent than humans, often including sentience. Bascially, they plan to use that to surpass humanity… somehow. As he’s saying this, he takes a Progrise Key out of a holder, and we get a few shots of the room.

The MetsuboJinrai.NET emblem is on the wall, and we see some of the assorted items. Including a katana, for some reason. And, on a platform with the same pattern as where Jin was messing around earlier? That is a gun right there. Yay!

Horobi hands the driver and key to Jin, while saying that it’s time to annihilate humanity… just like this city was, long ago.

Zoom out from his face, where he stands under a beam of light… that is coming in from a hold in a ceiling. That is to day, the hole in a roof, of a former apartment building.

Zoom out further to see that it’s one of the handful of buildings around the perimeter of the flooded crater.

At the very center of said crater? Underwater?

That sure looks an awful lot like the satellite that controls the HumaGear.

This is why you have redundant backup systems, folks.

–

So, at this point, Aruto’s got Shotaro’s meme faces, Emu’s pratfall humor (although thankfully toned down a bit), and Sento’s phone. Now we’ve also got Kabuto’s Shibuya disaster 2.0.

This is fine.

–

At Hiden Intelligence, we see a room labeled ‘Three Dimensional Printing System’. Like, it actually says that in English, same as the gate earlier. An Ai starts speaking, saying that it’s receiving orders from BS-ZA – the broadcast satellite. What does the ZA stand for? Who knows! The sizzle reel didn’t actually tell us that.

I can not understate how incredibly concerned about the ‘we have a single point of control for all of this technology’ thing that’s going on.

Anyway, a holographic pattern gets displayed inside the printing… room, I guess, and two manufacturing robot arms emerge and start. Uh.

Okay, so. That’s not how 3D printing usually works. You can’t really makes something solid out of beams of light. That’s not how it should have worked with the HumaGear skins earlier, and it’s not how it should work now.

Unless, like, it’s not light? It could somehow be a sort of plasma version of the materials needed? But it was able to make, like, the hair and eyes and such for the HumaGear earlier, so… ugh. I’m putting too much thought into it.

My hangups about how things work aside, they’re making the driver.

Outside of this room, in an office, a female HumaGear in white and teal is sitting, inactive, until she receives orders from the satellite. She gets up, and goes to fulfill her task.

Hi Izu! I didn’t notice that you had little teal highlights in your hair before! There’s just these little streaks hidden in there. It’s cute.

–

A dejected Aruto walks his bike away from the amusement park, lamenting his inability to get the crowd to laugh. Sorry bud, but you’re just not funny.

A car pulls up, Izu stepping out. She identifies her ‘target’ via the object recognition analysis that CEO described in the sizzle reel earlier. I didn’t notice before, but even though they still says peoples names in the ‘family name first’ order, the HUD shows them with given name first. Interesting.

She describes him as a ‘self described’ comedian, who is unknown. We see her face during this, before she blinks and looks downward.

Aruto’s on the ground. He’s collapsed.

Izu has known him for all of less than a minute, has no real personality of her own (yet), and is already roasting him.

When he asks who she is, she tells him that her name is Izu, and she’s the President’s secretary. Please note that she does not say which president, which probably only furthers Aruto’s confusion.

–

Back at the comedy stage, we’ve got… a human manzai duo, who are getting a laugh out of the crowd. So, it’s just that Aruto’s terrible, not that they don’t do manzai anymore.

Backstage, Taro sits, presumably waiting for his next set. He’s playing back the crowd as they laugh at his joke, and oh nooo he’s smiling so widely. He’s so proud that he was able to make them laugh! Taro is a good guy and I feel really bad for what’s coming.

Not!Parad Jin ominously comes up from behind. He doesn’t say anything more than that he’s found him, before taking the imitation driver and slapping it onto Taro’s waist.

I like absolutely NONE of the hacking process! Not the red circle of light around the buckle as the driver activates. Not the fact that the ‘belt’ starts off as fuck-off huge cable strips with ‘connector pins’ on them. Of course, since said cables are basically as wide as an arm, this means the connecter pins are more like giant spikes.

Not the fact that they jam into poor Taro, and he immediately starts seizing up with red sparks everywhere.

Not him dropping to his knees, making pained sounds.

Not Jin saying ‘You’re my friend now, so go wreak havoc on this place!”

Not the fact that he says that with a smile.

–

Elsewhere, a belt has just finished being printed, and is now being assembled and given a spiffy new coat of paint.

–

Taro is trying to not do the thing, because his job is making people laugh.

Jin chuckles. Not anymore. Now his job is destroying humans.

We switch to Taro’s perspective, and see a download progress bar fill and complete. It has ‘metsubojinrai.net’ written underneath it. When it completes, the display is replaced with their logo.

Taro cries in pain, and his memory of the crowd turns greyscale. He reopens his eyes, and instead of the cool blue light they were lit with before, they’re glowing red.

Tonelessly, he says that he is connected to metsubojinrai.net, and the ‘connecting’ lights on his earpieces glitch from blue to red.

Jin hands him the Progrize key from earlier.

–

The driver’s done.

–

We switch to the Hiden Intelligence boardroom. Jun had called a board meeting earlier, and for some reason, Izu received instructions to bring Aruto there.

Nearly everyone in the room has a HumaGear secretary standing behind them. Shesta’s tattoo is on her left wrist, and Izu’s is on the back of her left hand.

The meeting was called to read the CEO’s will. Apparently, nobody even knew he had a grandson, much less one like Aruto. According to Izu, because he is, in fact, related to the CEO, and the CEO had requested he be there, there won’t be problems regarding the legality of all of this with Aruto here. She slides the will in front of him, and walks out of the room.

Jun tells him to hurry up and read it, he’s got to get to work taking over as CEO.

Aruto opens the envelope, and starts reading – forgetting to read out loud, because he’s just a confused puppy. (He’s 22, he’s legally an adult, but that does not stop him from being a dumb puppy.) He looks incredibly distressed over what’s in the will.

It’s ominously shown with a red static overlay, is hand-written, and segments of it are appearing on top to highlight themselves.

And I have no idea why some of the overlaid words are highlighted in red, because I don’t know Japanese.

Jun, frustrated with Aruto’s distress and lack of reading out loud, grabs the paper away from him.

“In the near future, our company will face a serious crisis.” Jun’s brow furrows, and the rest of the room starts muttering, wondering what crisis that could be. “The HumaGears that our company was making will be misused and will attack humanity.” This shot goes from Jun reading to a generic HumaGear, his eyes turning red, and zooming out to show that it’s a crowd of them, in a ruined city. They all crouch down and start. Freaking. Swarming, on all fours. It’s absolutely terrifying, especially when one leaps up at the viewpoint, shrieking. (It’s the same ‘vocal’ sound effect from the bugster unions, by the way.)

Back in reality, the boardroom is starting to panic a bit. Izu comes back through the door, carrying a briefcase. Jun resumes reading. “There is only one counter measure: the Zero One driver and Progrise Key.” Izu opens the briefcase, revealing the items in question. “Built into it is the new era’s security system, in order for human hands to take control of the HumaGear.” Aruto looks at the case and driver, his expression blank.

Jun continues, with us scrolling down the will. “Only the company’s President is authorized to use it.” He can’t restrain his grin. “And my successor whom-” his face falls “I entrust this to is my grandson, Hiden Aruto?!”

Nobody expected this, least of all Aruto.

“I want him to become a part of staff, and overcome the company’s crisis. That is all.”

Jun is not okay with this, and neither is the rest of the board. He’s treating this like a family business, that’s absurd! I mean, never mind that he was the founder.

All of them start protesting over one another, before Aruto yells at them all to calm down. He then says that there’s no way he can be a president. He just wants to make people laugh. Without another word, he picks up his duffle bag and walks out.

Izu tilts her head, blinking confusedly.

–

As Aruto, somber, rides the elevator down, he thinks back to when he was a little kid.

A tiny little Aruto is trying to practice a routine with someone who seems to be his father, who laughs a little. Babby Aruto insists on trying again, because he wasn’t laughing from the heart.

The man says that the result will always be the same. His headphones are white and blue – namely, with blue lights, the same color as a HumaGear’s earpeices.

Aruto swears that he’s going to make his dad laugh – oh no, this is his dad.

An explosion goes off, and blue fire fills the screen.

Little Aruto wakes up, on the ground, his father next to him.

His father, with sections of his skin blasted off, revealing a mechanical, HumaGear face underneath, bleeding blue and dying. “Aruto… head towards your dreams… jump to them…”

The shot zooms out, with elementary schooler Hiden Aruto crouched over his HumaGear father, surrounded by rubble and flames.

–

In the present, Aruto watches as Jun’s portrait is lowered off the wall. He apologizes to his grandfather.

–

At the comedy stage, the manzai act is still going on. Everyone applauds as they finish, the manager included. It looks like Aruto is about to go ask for his job back, but he hesitates, thinking back to what the manager had said. It looks like he’s trying not to cry as he turns back around to leave.

As he turns, someone shouts to be let go.

The hijacked Taro is holding another HumaGear, probably one of the staff, by the collar as he walks on stage, before tossing him to the side. “My job is to make people laugh…” Taro’s viewpoint is shown, red static overlaying the glitching sight of the crowd as they start to back away. “…and to annihilate them.”

He activates the key, and inserts it into his driver. Red ‘wires’ extend from the buckle, breaking into and through the key.

I am not okay with any of this transformation sequence!

Not with the fire burning away his human appearance.

Not with how his normal HumaGear face withdraws and reveals what is basically a robot skull.

Not with how his jaw opens wide, and green… I dunno. Green pipes come out of his mouth, and start surrounding him in what is basically the Mad Rogue transformation.

Not with the orange dna spiral that lights up around him, and turns purple before the whole thing – spiral and pipes alike – burst out of existence, leaving Taro as the Berotha Magear.

As per Rider Wiki: The name Berotha is from Kujiberotha teruyukii, an extinct insect that lived in the Cretaceous period. It’s a recently named type of thorny lacewing, which are closely related to mantises. Aka, the species that Berotha takes his appearance from.

Two HumaGear staffers go to try and stop him, but he tosses both of them to the side, and proceeds to use whip-like extenstions to attack them… and overwrite their programming, shredding their human appearances and causing their original faces to retract. they’re left with the skull appearance briefly, before full faceplates slide down, creating the anonymous mooks of the season. They run off stage to attack.

The manager watches all of this, stunned. Aruto watches, before running at Berotha and tackling him around the middle, trying to stop him. He gets thrown into a sign for his attempt.

–

In another section of… oh lord. In another section of ‘Giggle Dreamland’, we see that there are a lot more than two mooks now. A van pulls up, the body-armored grunts of AIMS grabbing machine guns as they rush out and get in formation.

Yaiba Yua, who will eventually be Kamen Rider Valkyrie, steps out as well, saying that they are to collect data on the rampaging HumaGear and that they need to- she’s cut off by machine gun fire. Fuwa Isamu, who will eventually be Kamen Rider Vulcan, gives the order to destroy all of them.

As Yua says, at least let her finish before you start going all gun-happy!

–

Aruto, now distinctly missing his jacket and bag, gets to his feet, seeing the destruction all around him. MaGear mooks are attacking people, and ohhh nooo I think they’re repeating some of their stock ‘amusement park employee’ phrases as they do it, and that’s just tragic.

The whole area is a shambles, and the manager is on his knees in despair. Aruto remembers how the manager had said that making people laugh with joy was his dream, before Berotha comes up to the manager, extending his arm blade. Aruto tries to tackle him away, but it’s no use – he gets tossed away again. Izu runs onto the scene, carrying the breifcase. Berotha grabs the frozen manager by the collar, saying that a future where humans have dreams will never come, and starts laughing maniaclly.

Theres the sound of a heartbeat as Aruto flashes back to his father’s death.

“Don’t you laugh!” He pushes himself to his feet. “Don’t you dare laugh at someone’s dream, when you know nothing about it!”

“I do know.” Berotha starts rattling off a dictionary description of ‘dream,’ his earpieces lighting up as they connect to the web, before Aruto cuts him off.

Aruto is all but shouting. “A person’s dream isn’t so simple that you can just look it up!”

Izu looks slightly aside, averting her gaze.

“Hey! With that driver, I can do something about this, right?!” We only see Aruto’s lower face as he asks this, same as when he told Berotha not to laugh.

Izu says that yes, though it is available only to the companies president-

Aruto cuts her off, desperation written on his face as he tells her to just give it to him.

“Very well, Aruto-sama.”

She walks up, and hands him the driver and key. (In the distance, we can see that Berotha is charging energy to his mantis sickles.)

“Equip the driver to your waist.”

Glaring furiously at Berotha, Aruto places it at his waist…

There’s the sound of a heartbeat, as blue ones and zeroes glow around Aruto, and…

His soul, glowing that same bright blue, straight up leaves his body, and transports into the satellite.

(Me, a Double fan: YOOOOOOO!)

The similarities to how Philip enters the Gaia Library only increase in his visualization of the BS-ZA’s ‘cerebro’, which is a white void with occasional columns of binary scrolling upward. And written in the same font as the logo, at that.

Izu appears in there, in much the same manner – they’re both in their usual appearances again, though. Whereever they step, the binary ripples out beneath their feet. It’s a nice touch to give a sense of where the ground is, since otherwise it’s all just pure white.

She tells him that his brain is remotely accessing the satellite. He… doesn’t quite take this well.

Also, now that I have a proper back view of Izu, I can see that the earpieces have a headband behind them, so they’re basically behind the head headphones. Except, you know, most likely mounted.

Anyway, she continues. Right now, he has the same thought processing speed as an AI.

Their surroundings change, to have the void show where they are in the real world, while they appear as data projections. Just to drive the point home, she walks through the real-world Aruto.

Who is very much unconscious, standing upright with his head dropped down. Berotha’s still charging his attack, rearing back to fire.

“Left like this, in five seconds, you will die.”

Only an AI could deliver this line so casually. Aruto is not okay with this. He’s not okay with any of this.

The surroundings change again, this time to a grey and purple tinted void with hexagons in the background.

“Until then, you can learn from the manual.”

So. They’re just actually having him read the manual, in virtual form, while his real body is very, very vulnerable, so that he can learn how to use his driver.

Now This Is Kamen Rider.

‘Opening Tutorial Mode’

–

Meanwhile, over with the Zectroopers – I MEAN – AIMS troops, the machine guns do absolutely jack all against the Magear mooks. They can knock them down, sure, sending them sparking to the ground, but they just get right back up again.

Isamu, frustrated with the fact that his bullets do nothing, climbs back into the van and punches his way to grabbing what will eventually be his driver.

It seems that Yua is supposed to be his boss, because she tells him to wait, that he doesn’t have her permission – he ignores her and shoots the gun in her direction.

For a brief moment, the audience assumes he’s shooting her, but he’s aiming right over her shoulder, the ‘bullet’ sending her hair waving, and hitting a Magear mook right in the eye.

It doesn’t get back up.

Also, the top of its foot has a skeletal… well. Foot. Zero One’s going all in on the robot skeleton theme they’ve got going here, then.

Looks like Isamu’s whole attitude is ‘when in doubt, apply a bigger gun.’

–

Aruto snaps awake. “Learning complete.”

As he activates his Progrise key, Berotha launches the energy scythes.

A yellow light beams down from the satellite. It was either rapid-fire 3d printing, or it was actually teleporting, but either way. A silver grasshopper with neon-yellow lines lands in front of Aruto, blocking the attack.

Interestingly, along with the impact dustcloud, there’s yellow and blue circuitry patterns radiating away along the ground.

Hot damn I like this background music. I’d ask when we’re getting the OST, but I know the answer is ‘after the season ends,’ so instead I will just mourn my lack of soundtrack.

The grasshopper starts bouncing around Aruto as he prepares to properly transform, a holographic screen projecting from the driver in front of him. Said giant robot grasshopper is making even more of a mess of the area, and said projection is slightly 3D – the images have depth to them… and are made, of course, of closely-placed zeroes and ones.

The owner of the park is watching all of this, by the way.

“Henshin!”

We actually get to sort of see the driver reading the data on the key – kind of like when we used to see the action inside the Build Driver.

The base Zero One suit is black, with glowing red lines and a disconcerting face plate. We don’t have to see that for long though, because the grasshopper quickly dissassembles itself and turns into his armor.

In a very interesting detail, you can see it breaking down into wires and metal, and the lights that pull it towards Zero One are DNA spirals.

A JUMP TO THE SKY TURNS TO A RIDER KICK

…Hey, didn’t Aruto’s father say he should jump towards his dreams? Just saying. ;)

The grasshopper didn’t just become his armor – it also seems to have turned one of its limbs into the Attache Calibre, which makes its way to Aruto’s hand as the transformation ends.

“Who are you?!”

“Zero One! That’s my name!”

He immediately launches into an attack against Berotha, punching and kicking to great effect. Berotha tries to slash right at his feet – if he can just stop him from moving, he can annihilate him. Except Zero One leaps over the blades.

And by leap, I mean that our good grasshopper boy is now on top of the rollercoaster. Aruto is, justifiably, super impressed by his new leg power.

(I’m just saying… Aruto got the Pink Cure’s ‘WOW I can jump really high now!’ moment for this year, because Cure Star didn’t get it. She had her first fight in space, so it was already a given for her.)

Berotha is decidedly less impressed, and fires an eye beam at him. The eye laser does nothing, as despite it being almost as wide as he is tall, Zero One just tanks it as he jumps back down. As the light breaks apart around him, there seems to be a faint helix pattern there, too.

Aruto’s about to go after Berotha some more, but then he sees the owner getting attacked by a pair of mooks. Mooks who used to be his staff, and can just barely be heard stuttering around their rote phrases, repeating them without context or intellect. He goes to block them, and yells at his former boss to get out of there.

As Aruto redirects the mooks elsewhere, Izu comes running up, carrying the attache weapon that had been abandoned. She calls out to him, and throws him the case…

And it whacks him upside the head.

The mooks just watch as she apologizes, and he, rubbing his head, says he’s okay.

An honest-to-gaim insert song kicks in as they start fighting again. Like, this isn’t the OP. I’ve heard the OP. This isn’t it. This is an insert song. In episode one. It’s only a short part of it, yes, but it’s still an insert.

This is going to be a good season for music, especially since you can actually hear said insert. Not quite clearly, and it’s too brief to really get anything from aside from the tone. But that tone is awesome and I can’t wait oh god it’s going to be a long wait for this soundtrack.

Also, at some point the mooks acquired guns.

–

The insert ends when we see Not!Parad Jin bouncing in joy as he watches all of this happen from a nearby roof. “Yeah! Come on! Get ‘em! This is so fun!”

A damaged mook gets up, stuttering. “A-a-a-attention! A-a-a-a lost child has been reported!” This confirms that the mooks are, in fact, still saying their lines. It tries to attack him, because that’s what they do. He’s human, after all. (Right?)

Still giggling, Jin grabs the mooks arm as it goes to stab him, and in one smooth motion and without looking, twists it behind said mooks back, holds it around the neck, pulls out an honest-to-god gun, and shoots it in the head.

Everything goes silent for a second as the gun fires.

He doesn’t stop giggling wildly the whole time, nor does he even spare the mook a glance.

The mook falls to the ground, broken and unmoving, as he continues laughing.

It’s a normal gun. That is straight up a normal gun. Not a fancy sci-fi one, just a normal gun with normal bullets and a normal bullet casing that ejects in front of him as he laughs.

…Can we go back to our hero, please?!

–

Oh, good, we’re going back to Zero One versus Berotha. Thanks!

And thank you even more for the OP kicking in as Berotha fires a volley of energy blades. These are powerful enough to slice through cars and set off explosions wherever they hit. But they don’t even graze Aruto, not the way he jumps and rolls in mid air to dodge them.

His fighting is super graceful and deliberate, so much unlike how he moves as himself. The intro beats to the song transition into the song proper as he leaps, angled yellow lines of light trailing behind him as he uses the flying cars as jumping points, bouncing from one to the other, dodging blades all the way, before the actual bus that’s in the air comes up toward him.

He just barrels through it, still dodging the blades, using the support bars to flip and spin around and over. He manages to tap the ‘stop request’ button with his foot as he rebounds at one point, which is a hilarious little detail that they didn’t need to put in. But that lets the bus announcement of ‘stop requested’ play as he comes through the rear window right before it hits the ground.

MAN, the attention to DETAIL in this episode. I know that it’s mostly Episode One Budget in action, but damn is this promising.

Those yellow lines start following him again as he resumes his beatdown on Berotha, giving a pre-asskicking one liner. “There’s only one person who can stop you: me!” He activates his finisher.

RISING IMPACT!

A brief projection of the robo-grasshoppers foot appears over his own as he braces himself to start moving. Neat. And move he does, going faster than the camera can follow, slowing down only long enough to deliver a few punches and kicks, tossing Berotha into the air. Zero One follows suit, leaping far higher, and diving down with his Rider Kick.

He goes through the MaGear, shattering it to pieces. Gears, wires, and dark blue hydraulic fluid go everywhere, as the eyes on his helmet have a line go from front to back along the facets. Huh.

A special projection of ‘rising impact’ appears on screen as Zero Ones kick approaches the viewer, and since holo-tech is a thing here, may or may not actually be there. The key that had been used to hack Taro into Berotha, definitely cracked, also flies at the screen.

Zero One lands, digging a gouge into the path, and when he comes to a stop… Aruto twists his ankle, winds up rolling bodily into one of the buildings, and gets covered in rubble. He pulls himself up a bit using some of the debris, saying “Aaaand here’s my stop.” He collapses backward.

–

The AIMS troops seem to be wrapping up their defeat of the mooks, but as Yua says, they’ve still got a lot to do.

Isamu’s stomps on the chest of one of the downed mooks, who isn’t quite as done as he’d looked. It grabs his ankle, before he apparently shoots and shatters it, going by the sound effect.

He glares, hands trembling in apparent rage, saying that history is repeating itself.

–

Jin hands Horobi the damaged key. When Horobi ‘questions’ the damage, he just ‘asks’ “Zero One?”

Implying that there was a previous Zero One.

This implication is only furthered with Jin’s comment, as he pulls down his hood. “Seems like the previous president didn’t simply die, huh?”

We still can’t see his ears under all that hair.

The suspicion that these two aren’t human only grows. Why would Horobi want to turn humans into an endangered species if they, themselves, are human?

The ‘eye’ on the sunken satellite glows red.

–

As they exit the amusement park, Aruto’s going on to Izu about how cool he was. She says she’ll be escorting him home, calling him ‘Mister President.’

“Wait, what?!”

Turns out he completely blanked on the fact that only the president of Hiden Intelligence is allowed to be Zero One, and he accepted the position by putting on the driver.

Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen. He’s just a big ol’ puppy.

He’s protesting this fact – the president thing, not the puppy thing – to Izu when he hears a child asking the parks owner if he’s going to be closing the park.

“Not at all. A mysterious yellow hero protected it. So we’re going to keep on giving smiles to our guests!”

Aruto looks absolutely touched by his former bosses words, just by the refusal to close, and the ‘mysterious yellow hero’ part. …He has no idea that his boss knows exactly who that hero was.

Not until said boss turns to him, and winks.

Izu lifts one hand. “I have detected many smiling expressions that Master Aruto is responsible for.”

He laughs, just a little, a light chuckle at himself. “There’s more than one way to make people smile, huh…?”

He bounces the driver a little in his hands, and gets into the car.

As he buckles in, and Izu doesn’t – sweetie, I know you’re an android, and thus can’t technically die in the way most people would see death as, you should still use your seat belt and model good behavior for the kiddos watching at home – she hands him ‘the presidents’ Rise Phone. It looks like it’s just an upgraded version of his phone from earlier, or they upgraded that phone itself.

He tries to make a terrible pun about the hassle the board of directors gave earlier… which Izu, now putting on her seat belt, thank you so very much, starts explaining. Aruto cries that she shouldn’t be trying to explain the joke as the car drives away.

The episode title finally appears.

––––

Aaand that’s Kamen Rider Zero One, episode one! This is sure gonna be something, and I’m super hyped!

[nehasy]

Dear Brother

Vision of Escaflowne fanfiction

A series of letters between Dallet and his twin brother, an apprentice madoushi.

Dear bro,

I can’t even begin to tell you how amazing this place is!  I know you’re going to lecture me about it all being classified, but if I don’t tell someone, I’m going to burst!  We’re on the flagship!  Can you believe it!?  It’s huge!  Seriously huge!  We’re talking the size of the north wing of the Academy huge!  I’ve already gotten lost twice if you can believe it...stop smirking you ass.  At least I’m doing better than Guimel, remember him? The little mouthy guy from the Academy?  The one who looks like a sheep is trying to mate with his head?  He’s here, and he got lost once on the way to the cafeteria that we actually had to send out a search party.  We found him down by the engine room and waaay out of bounds.  Ever try to sneak your way through a heavily guarded floating fortress when you can barely tell left from right without being seen?  It’s not fun.

Oh sure, you’d have just sweet talked your way out of there like always.  That still drives me nuts by the way.  There’s no way you got through the Academy with a perfect disciplinary record.  I know you, you social deviant!

Anyway, We have our own little wing on the Vione.  There’s barracks, a conference room, a gym and a small lounge.  Gatti has already decided that the lounge is going to be just for us.  Anyone else who gets added onto the team is going to have to find their own place to relax.  This is ours dammit!

Things really aren’t what I expected here.  I mean, the fortress is amazing, state of the art everything, and the Strategos... he’s sort of mind bogglingly terrifying.  No one should be that tall... or that gloomy. I’m also pretty sure he can read minds.  When he looks at you, I swear he’s looking right through you... also, he’s really good at finding and confiscating any illicit material being brought on board. Pretty sure he’s not human.  

Oh!  I have a partner now!  His name is Shesta and he’s sort of weird.  He comes from a small border village where they worship some stupid rock and think that you can trap a spirit in a piece of hair or cloth.  He’s a cute kid, but ugh, he’s sort of like cousin Tansin.  I swear that there’s no way he’s ever going to become a soldier.  Don’t get me wrong, he’s really sweet, but the other day I caught him in a restricted area feeding bloody birds or all things!!  I think his brain might be a little broken.

So how’s the Science Academy?  Did you get a cloak yet?  Do I have to call you sir?  Can you throw fireballs?  Viole says that Madoushi can do that sort of thing... course... I think Viole’s mom drank a bit too much when she was pregnant with him...he’s not quite right in the head.

Dammit, lights out. Write back!

Dearest Moron,

What part of classified fails to breach that thick brick you call a skull?  If your message had been intercepted, you’d have been summarily dismissed from service and likely sent to a work camp.  Not to mention, Mother would have gutted you like a pig and danced on your entrails!  For future letters, I am enclosing a cipher for a code we will use.  Do try to follow it, I did my best to keep it simple so as not to strain you too badly.

In all honesty though, I do miss you and am glad that things are going well.  In answer to your questions.  No, I do not have a cloak yet. Yes, you call me sir, not that you will ever bother to even though I’M the one with the noble title (I point out for the fiftieth time this colour) and as for your final question.... that’s classified.

Don’t tease your roommate.  I know you still will because you’re an ass, but do try to understand that the border towns have... unusual beliefs, but it doesn’t pay to discount them too lightly.  I’ve seen many strange and un-explainable things, try not to piss off powers you don’t understand.  If you can’t quite grasp that concept, simply remember the time you pulled the tail of father’s horse.  Picture that in your mind then multiply it by a factor of ten.  Also, there’s nothing wrong with feeding birds.  I happen to like them.

Just so you know, the Strategos CAN read minds.  How do you think he always has an answer for everything and is never surprised?  The man is a genius and you should always give him your utmost respect.  I’d suggest several books that he’s written, but I know you won’t bother reading them since they don’t involve heaving breasts and accompanying pictures.  That was NOT a thinly veiled suggestion for you to draw said pictures in one of his books.  If I hear of you doing that I WILL report you, you philistine.  

Now for the important bit, and fuck being classified information.  Tell me about your damn captain!!  You know that’s the only reason I told you that you could write to me.  What’s he like?  Is he really as good as the stories?  Is he really as gorgeous as they say?  I hope you know that I expect an autograph or something for my birthday which I might remind you is coming up shortly.

I wield the forces of Time and Space.  It’s important to appease me at all costs.

Dear Wielder of the Forces of Time and Space,

Mother said that some of the older apprentices locked you and two others in the storage closet for the night.  Bet those fireball throwing skills really would have come in handy.

I know, I know, I’m not using your stupid code.  It was dumb and paranoid and I’m not indulging in your cloak and dagger fantasies.  Be glad that I’m taking the time to even write to you and yes, my handwriting is particularly bad because I’m so tired that I can barely hold a pen.

Your precious beautiful dream captain is a nightmare made flesh.  Seriously.  I’m pretty sure that he’s actually trying to kill some of us.  We’re up two hours before dawn doing stretches and warm ups, then he has us running laps around the Vione until someone pukes.  I’m not being sarcastic at all.  Shesta’s thrown up twice, Viole and I once, poor Guimel has thrown up three times.  Miguel, Gatti and Ryuun haven’t yet, but I still hold out hope.

The worst thing is that the Captain runs right along with us, making us all keep up to him and the pale assed bastard doesn’t even break a damn sweat!!! Then, after we’re all trying to not have heart attacks from sheer exhaustion, he has us spar!  It’s supposed to be something about instinct over intellect, that our bodies are supposed to know how to react even when our minds have shut down.  It sounds like utter bullshit compared to what our instructors at the academy taught us, but seeing the guy fight....

I’ve never seen anything like it.  When he moves, it’s like trying to watch the wind during a storm.  He just tears through his opponents and the guy has no concept of mercy.  All of us have spent time in the infirmary already and I’m pretty sure that I’m permanently going to be various bruise colours for the rest of my life.

It’s tricky being on his team.  He’s a stickler for rules... only, they’re not the usual rules we were taught in the Academy.  He has his own set, and you follow them above all others unless you want to be  kissing the floor.  The problem is... I don’t think he really has permission for these new rules, because we keep getting in trouble with the other units... and the Strategos, and pretty much every other unit on the fortress.  Still, as crazy as it sounds, I’d rather have the Strategos made at me than Captain Albatou.

Stop daydreaming about him.  He’d eat you alive and pick his teeth with your bones.

As for the rest of the team, we’re forging bonds of brotherhood in our joined suffering.

Gatti- He’s an arrogant know-it-all ass.  You’d probably like him.  The guy has no sense of humour at all and I’m pretty sure his face is an elaborate mask of some sort because I’ve never seen him so much as have a single expression.  He’s brilliant though and never seems to lose his cool, believe me, we’ve all tried to rattle him.

Shesta-I amend my initial impression.  He’s nuts.  But it’s a fun nuts.  I’m positive that he actually enjoys annoying the Captain and so far he holds he record for the most times knocked out.  The guy is stubborn and fearless, even if he is a little weird.  He’s also got a huge crush on the Captain and I swear he just acts up for the attention.

Guimel- he’s suicidal, that’s all I can figure.  He is second place for most times knocked out and I’m pretty sure he’s only still on the team cause the guy fights like a cornered rat.  He’s a vicious little monster and snarky, but he’s decent enough when the Captain isn’t around.  My gidaru is on him trying to stab the Captain in his sleep before the week is out.

Miguel- Arrogant, snide, uppity... you’d think he was a noble, but he’s from some northern village I’ve never heard of.  He’s like you in the fact that he’s always studying something boring and then explaining it at length to the rest of us.  I think he’s trying to impress the Captain, but so far it’s not working.  He and Gatti are at the top of the team so far and always competing against each other, it’s sort of fun to watch.  They’re either going to kill each other, or fuck by the end of the colour... we have a betting pool going.

Viole- I like him. He’s crazy in a good way and knows not to prod the damn dragon of a captain.  I’d prefer to have him as my partner rather than Shesta seeing as how we enjoy hanging out, but I can sort of see the logic behind the selection.  Viole and I like to just hang out, smuggle in the odd  illicit shadowgraph (Which somehow the captain ALWAYS finds) and explore the ship.  He looks like a girl, which was sort of creepy at first, but really... everyone on the team is... pretty.  Am I pretty?  Ugh, talk about an identity crisis.  I always considered myself to be roguishly handsome.  Viole says that all I’m missing is some padding on the chest and I could have a field day with the infantry guys.  Ugh... mental images.  STOP LAUGHING!

Ryuun- he’s a stick in the mud.  Rules rules rules.  I swear that he reads rule books when he’s taking a crap.  Granted, he’s never in trouble and he tends to keep Viole (his partner) more or less on task... no small feat by the way.  Sometimes he’s not so bad, he did cover for me one night when he caught me coming back to the barracks after hours...  He’s a good fighter and really has a head for strategy. I sort of feel sorry for him when the Captain has us free spar when exhausted, he tends to get his ass handed to him, but anytime we’re doing any strategy based training, he’s incredible.  

Anyone of note on your end?  I mean, other than the losers you got locked in the closet with?  I hope you at least had a little fun to kill the time.  When do you get an actual assignment?  Do you guys do any crazy experiments?  Can you summon draconians or anything cool like that?

Dear Pervert,

No, I did NOT “have a little fun” during that debacle and who told you about that anyway?  I won’t get an actual assignment until I complete my apprenticeship thesis and am selected by a Master to work under them. Yes, I am working on one and don’t worry, I won’t bore you by telling you about it, but it IS fascinating and uses words far too large for you to properly comprehend.  

As for crazy experiments... there have been a few.  We learned (the hard way) that combining varidium with Alurium ore then adding heat as opposed to cold will turn your hair a rather shocking shade of pink.  Yes yes, laugh while you can.  My hair will grow our but you dear brother will always be a moron.  We did have one bad accident though, a young woman was badly burned by some acids during one of our experiments and from what I’ve heard, she might never recover.

I’m sure you’ve seen your share of battle wounds already, but watching someone’s skin melt off their bones... smelling it... I’m a firm believer in following proper safety procedure now, no matter how boring and tedious.  We all are.  It sort of makes me wonder if the instructors had arranged for the accident to happen as an object lesson.  I know... it sounds like my usual paranoia... but sometimes you hear things... odd rumours and what not that make you rather reluctant to wander the halls late at night or poke around in places you shouldn’t.

I honestly don’t know what you’re complaining about really with your training.  I’d kill to be in your shoes and you damn well know it.  So you’re sweating and are all bruised.  Cry me a damn river.  You’re training under the brightest Captain in Zaibach history and part of an elite unit that will likely be pivotal in the glorious future of our Empire.  You’re going to learn how to pilot a guymelef!  For that alone I’d do anything to experience even just once.  Remember how lucky you are and think of me stuck reading dusty tomes and fiddling with disgusting ingredients which might very well melt me to pudding if I blink at the wrong time.  Which of us do you think is more hard done by?

Seriously though, you need to stay out of trouble.  Don’t put your position at risk just for a few laughs of a roll beneath the sheets.  If you get any of those ladies with child you’ll be discharged, not to mention what your Captain will do to you.  I’ve been hearing stories about his temper.  (This in no way lessens how much I worship him mind you and I still expect that autograph, but I’ll settle for a lock of hair.  Remember that you love me.)

I’m glad you’re getting along with your team, you were always the shy one out of the two of us.  It seems so odd that destiny deemed that I’d be the intellectual while you’d be the big bold warrior.  Just because I could never completely bow to fate’s whim, I’ve enclosed a book I think you’ll enjoy on advanced mechanical theory. You likely won’t find this on your ship’s library... that is IF it even has one, but it’s part of our reading curriculum and I thought of you when I saw it.  Are you still building things?  Maybe you should spend your spare time doing that rather than plundering young maidens, it will likely advance your career much more effectively.

Lastly NO!!! I have not summoned any draconians!!  What sort of idiot would want one of those things lurking about!??!  What part of hideously cursed being have you failed to understand!??!  Ugh, they blew up their damn world you idiot.  I don’t want them on this one.

Read the damn book. I WILL quiz you.

Dear Brother,

I almost died today...

The Captain tried to kill me.

Ever been executed for gross negligence?  Ask me how!

Gatti got promoted to second in command... he saved my life today.

[firebirdsdaughter]

The more I think about it…

… The more it kinda seems to me that I’d more consider Horobi has having been used as a ‘tool’ by the ark while Jin was more ‘manipulated’… Both are sucky and bad and everything is Gai’s fault and he’s very punchable, but… They kinda have a different ‘feel’ to me?

Horobi’s the one who has always been going on about the ‘will of the Ark’—which Ikazuchi actually did, too, and he was super just a tool—and despite allegedly giving ‘orders’… It now kinda seems like he was just serving as her mouthpiece. Aside from a few smaller moments, like the first time he called Jin his son, and then later bits like when Ansatsu-chan betrayed them, etc. Combined w/ his significantly more blank affect… Thinking back on it as a whole, he comes across very like early Izu, imo, or maybe Shesta… He exists to serve a function in support of another (in his case, the Ark), and has no real identity outside of that. Even his very last words are about the Ark’s will. The only times I think he’s shown any sort of emotion of any kind outside of that identity as the Ark’s support have been centred around Jin… I’m wondering if the original command was ‘raise Jin, further instructions to follow,’ or something… Bc it occurs to me, it seems like the natural progression of the kind of singularity the show has been depicting, w/ HumaGear reaching it by following and going beyond their programming, is him coming to genuinely love Jin as a son… Now that I’ve thought of that, it’s actually kind of interesting to look back and see his behaviour change slightly… He’s still following his programming, but there’s something more there… But I’m digressing. The point is, to me, he kinda seems more like a tool (and not in the slang sense, though he can be one), where he’s been given a directive and is obeying orders. Just another HumaGear programmed to serve a purpose for someone else, albeit in a unique situation.

Jin, on the other hand, is specified to have been raised. He doesn’t seem to have had much pre-programming, and behaves so much more human-like than any other HumaGear we’ve ever seen… So it… I dunno, it kinda feels less like he was expressly a ‘tool’ and more a ‘pawn’… If trying to create a difference in those makes any sense. Basically, Horobi was a tool the Ark used to manipulate Jin into doing what she wanted. Unlike most other HumaGear, he seems to have had a more natural/human-like progression where he was raised like one might a human child, hence them saying his mental age is about five. So the concept of singularity regarding him is already a little complex and weird, bc he’s not exactly got pre-programming, he’s picking stuff up as he goes along… And his sheer ability to do that is kind of a testament to Horobi’s skill, despite possibly not having achieved singularity, which kinda makes you wonder what Horobi used to do, to be able to create an AI that advanced… But hopefully they’ll go into that eventually.

Just a weird comparison my jumbled mind spilled out. ^^; I dunno if any of that made sense.

[sailor-cresselia]

Zero One 03: When in doubt, apply more elemental forces

It’s Kamen Rider Valkyrie time! Here we go!

–

So, Aruto and Izu are at a small sushi restaurant, to finalize a contract for an artisan sushi-chef HumaGear. Said HumaGear prepares a serving, which he presents ot Aruto. When Aruto goes to try, Izu yoinks the tracy away from him, saying that they aren’t supposed to be here for food.

He grabs the sushi anyway, surprising her.

He thinks it’s great, but the owner of the restaurant tells the ‘young prez’ that he’s backing out of the deal, and they can take the HumaGear back.

Izu, being the wonderful ball of snark that she is, asks if it was because of the ‘joke’ Aruto made.

But no. It’s because it’s a robot.

This is the first time we’ve heard the word robot in this show. It’s always been HumaGear, up until now.

A woman steps in, saying that ‘he still doesn’t get it.’ Hi, Yua. What’re you doing here? I can’t shake the feeling that you know the chef. But she also says that there is great value in HumaGear. This surprises both the elderly chef, and Aruto. He’s not used to her siding with him.

–

A HumaGear sits in a chair, with morse code playing in the background, and a narration starts up…

IT��S OP TIME.

(Oh gaim, I can’t wait to see how GenmCorp properly stylizes the lyrics, and same for O-T. RiderTime doesn’t sub songs at all, and the other two haven’t uploaded yet.)

The narration gives a short rundown of what HumaGear are, and then brings up the young CEO who will “jump to the sky to protect the dreams of many.” The shot here? It’s footage of Aruto about to transform, from episode two. From when he was going up against Ekal. (Oh, no, my heart.)

Accompanying the chant of ‘zero one’, we have headshots of each Rider – helmet first, then themselves. Zero One to Aruto, Vulcan to Isamu, Valkyrie to Fua, Jin to… well, Jin, and Horobi to Horobi. The numerals 0 and 1 appear each time the respective one is said, the helmets lining up with the 0’s and faces with 1’s. There’s then brief suit shots framed in what look like written characters, but zoomed in too close for me to tell.

As the lyrics themselves start, there’s a fast pan from the fencing around Daybreak Town, across the city, and directly up the Hiden Intelligence building into Aruto’s office.

Aruto’s becoming quickly surrounded and overwhelmed by stacks upon stacks of binders, not helped by Izu adding more and more. Eventually, he just slumps down, sobbing in defeat, and she bows in ‘apology’ as a stack slides down onto his head.

There’s Isamu, walking through a lobby, and the shot pans to his ShotRiser, held in his hand, which turns and transitions to Yua’s ShotRiser on her desk.

Then Jun, Shesta, and that one other Hiden board member in front of Jun’s portrait quickly falling off the wall, with Aruto’s behind it – and oh, god, it’s Aruto trying to make a joke. (Shesta doesn’t even blink at the giant painting about to land on the three of them.)

A dark area, with the ruins of Daybreak Town as a frame, with Jin and oh goody, he’s shooting at the screen with his literal gun, which he loaded on screen with his creepy grin. He looks behind him, and we pan to Horobi, who has his usual stoic glare, and he holds up a ZetsumeRiser.

The center of the ZetsumeRiser transitions to looking down the barrel of an AIMS grunt’s gun, and zooms out to have battle-ready Isamu and Yua aiming their own guns at the screen. He has his ShotRiser, and she has a normal gun.

Then it jump-cuts to Aruto, running toward the camera down a very, very ruined street, reaching desperately out. Oh, no.

The next jump cut is to a long-haired Izu, in a similarly ruined street. With her ear pieces lit in red, as are her eyes. Oh, no. She raises up a hand, and there’s. Uh. I didn’t catch this in the live watch. As the screen very quickly glitches out, it looks like there’s blood in the palm of her hand. Fortunately, I’m able to get a decent pause after about 10 tries, and can see that everything in this shot is greyscale, with the exception of three colors. The teal of her outfit and index fingernail, the red of her eyes, and the bright blue of the HumaGear blood in her hand. (I know that technically, it’s hydraulic fluid or some such, but. Well, for a HumaGear, it’s the same thing.)

The shot drops directly from her hand to a giant puddle of the HumaGear blood. Oh, no.

It zooms right through said puddle, turning it to the lake that used to be Daybreak Town, going right for that crashed satellite.

Jump cut. A generic HumaGear looks up at the screen, eyes glowing bright red, and quickly zooms out to a crowd of HumaGear in the same state. Yay!

Profile shot of a HumaGear entering it’s Magia form – earpieces glowing red, and those awful pipes escaping its mouth.

A massive circle of HumaGear in that state, surrounding Aruto before he transforms. They’re fully made over into mooks at the same time as his armor forms.

Zero One delivers some of his lighting fast kicks to the swarming mooks. The camera spins to a different location, with Vulcan, similarly surrounded, punching and then shooting at mooks. Valkyrie uses his shoulder as a launch point to leap into the air, shooting some bullets of her own, before literally bouncing off of the giant phone that falls out of the sky. She goes off screen as the phone turns into Zero One’s bike, which he lands on.

We have our first shot of the three of them together, all landing in the street, surrounded by mooks.

Then we have separate, generic action shots of the three with their weapons of choice – Zero One’s attache-case sword, and the preferred sizes of Vulcan and Valkyrie’s guns. Then shadowed shots of Jin and Horobi (suit forms), although I genuinely don’t know which one is which.

Tranistion from the second, who I suspect is Horobi, going by the firsts more ‘actiony’ stance, to in front of Hiden Intelligence. Hiden Korenosuke stands there, is quickly replaced by Hiden Soreo, and then Aruto – the three generations of Hiden men. Aruto’s looking down, hesitantly, at the driver in his hand. Then, he finds his determination.

Jump to a very concerning shot of the Zero One Driver, two ShotRisers, and what I suspect are the drivers that Jin and Horobi are going to use, among a lot of rubble, in the rain. Then, a somewhat glitchy cut to the lower portion of Izu’s face, with a single tear running down her cheek. Oh, no.

Then, Aruto staggering, clearly injured, in the rain through a very destroyed street. he’s practically in the background, honestly, with rubble, fences, patches of fire, and destroyed HumaGear taking up most of the scene. The HumaGear are both mooks and normal, I think. There’s still a lot of that once-pristine white that the mooks lose.

He collapses, either giving up, or giving in to whatever injuries he has. Or both. But Izu reaches down to him, the sun coming out, and he takes her hand. She helsp him up, and they stand, back to the camera, facing the sunlight.

Red and blue lines of light form a platform of sorts in an otherwise black void. Jin and Horobi step toward the left of the screen, and then Isamu and Yua toward the right. Aruto and Izu stand in the center.

Everyone is in their normal forms momentarily, before their armor forms around the five Riders, and Izu dissolves into a light blue stream of zeros and ones. Smash cut to the five Riders helmets. I’m using smash cut very literally here, as each is framed in the largest sections of what is essentially a shattered mirror.

Fast transition to the silhouettes of the five, the eyes of their helmets lit up, as their shadows stretch to toward the front of the screen.

–

I really like this OP sequence. We’re on some Ex-Aid levels of foreshadowing and special effects here. Not so say I haven’t liked other OPs, but honestly, of the ones I’ve seen (Decade through to now, and Kabuto) this is tied with Ex-Aid, and they both only just beat out Builds. Build would have made it a three way tie for first, if they had ever updated certain shots. You know, like. Cross-Z Charge should have been phased out for Cross-Z Magma, and they just kept that shot of governmental Gentoku at the beginning of it throughout the entire run, even though it was out of date by the end of about the first half, or even third of the show.

It makes sense, this truly is Mr. Takahashi’s style. There was a comment I made right after watching live… uh. Something about “Oh, they wouldn’t put Izu getting Magear’d into the OP sequence as foreshadowing, it’s just an unfortunate timing thing to have her right before the hacking sequence…” And then I remembered the shots in the Ex-Aid OP of Emu dissolving, and I felt true fear.

–

Okay, okay, back to the show.

Jin and Horobi are being ominous, as usual. Jin asks, while bouncing around the room, if Horobi’s really going to ignore Zero One and AIMS. Horobi’s not concerned, since they already have their plan underway.

I really don’t like the next comment of his, though. “The completion of our arc revival is near,” accompanied by the camera following a giant bundle of cables through a pipe, and to that crashed satellite. I don’t like this at all. I’m also not liking how RiderTime translated that line, it feels really awkward, but whatever.

They just need to collect more data, which is also very concerning, and Horobi hands Jin another Zetsumerise Key.

–

Okay, so. Up in Jun’s office, he’s kinda pissed that the literal CEO of the company is out doing sales rounds. Which, okay, valid. But still. Aruto is a good boy, and he just wants what’s best… and, as Shesta says, he’s also visiting HumaGears workplaces to try and catch the local terrorists. (Pity they’re actually based in the quarantine zone.)

Anyway, the restaurant is called Magokoro Sushi. The owner, the old man, has been looking for an heir since he injured his back.

Jun says that they may as well leave this be. If the contract works out, the company will look good. If not, then he can totally use this as an excuse to get Aruto out of the company. He and his lacky start laughing, and Shesta… ‘joins in,’ just saying ‘ha ha ha’ over and over. It’s wonderful.

Also something I noticed about Shesta is that she has a red streak in the back of her hair, similar to the teal undertones that Izu has. Both of them match the accents on their respective outfits. Neat.

–

Back at Magokoro Sushi, Yua uploads… something to Nigiro, the HumaGear of the day. She doesn’t really explain what she’s just sent him when Aruto asks, just saying that he ought to know if he’s the CEO. Which. Uh. That doesn’t help us in the slightest. I don’t think it’s the learning program she mentions next, though. I’m hoping it’s some sort of security patch. Key word being hope.

(I mean, I’ve already seen the episode raw, so. Uh. Yeah. The key there is that I really, really hope there are security patches.)

Izu, thankfully, is a fountain of information, and explains that Nigiro analyzed data from Yua’s Risephone, and is making the choice most suited to his patrons tastes.

And suited it very definitely is, given her almost ecstatic reaction to her serving. Looks like we’ve found the way to her heart: A healthy appreciation for technology, and good food.

Aruto’s really glad that she gets his appreciation of HumaGears, even though she immediately tried to return to her usual stoic tendencies when she remembered who she was with. As she says, it’s up to humans how to live with HumaGear.

(Her expression at this point, and it being in reaction to food, is what led me and Miyuko to make our first ‘Kabuto: TWO’ comment of the episode.)

The chef still doesn’t look impressed.

–

Elsewhere, a barber HumaGear hears a slight beeping sound as he bids another satisfied customer farewell. He’s confused, a little, and then freaking Jin bounces in out of nowhere to make a new friend.

Go away, Gremlin 2.0!

–

Nigiro prepares a serving of sushi – squid, this time – for the owner, who very reluctantly eats it… and calls it disgusting. He says, bitterly, that making sushi isn’t a job for a robot. Again, he’s specifically using the term ‘robot,’ and says that it’s because they don’t have souls.

Oh, no.

Aruto’s a little confused.

But the owner, hobbling to his feet, says that Magokoro Sushi will die with him.

(Sir, this is Kamen Rider, and we’ve already seen that this season is not above the dark stuff! Don’t tempt fate like this!)

The group watches him leave, and Yua’s phone rings. I like her ringtone, it’s some sort of mechanical tune.

There’s a Magear on the loose.

–

Outside, the barber is advancing on a fleeing group of people – including someone who was clearly in the middle of being his customer.

An AIMS van pulls up, troopers and Isamu in tow.

The bullets, as usual, do absolutely nothing to damage the poor hijacked HumaGear. They do, however, provide a convenient smoke screen to cover up his transformation. Thus, the show is saved just that little bit of CGI budget, and we don’t have to see that again.

The CGI budget for the horrifying transformation pipes is then immediately spent on attack tentacles.

I wish I were kidding.

Today’s Magear is Neohi. He’s a squid. Or, well, he’s based on Neohibolites, a genus of cephalopod. …He’s a squid.

Isamu, whose general attitude is ‘when in doubt, apply more bullets’, pulls out his transformation kit. He still has to force the key open. It doesn’t take nearly as much force this time, but I, personally, think he broke the locking mechanism last time.

Yua, after last episode, probably: I’m not fixing it until you stop being an ass!

Isamu: Then I’ll just have to keep doing this my way.

Gods, his transformation is still way too cool for him. The bullet actively zooms around to block the tentacles before rushing back to him for him to, and I feel this can not be over stated, literally punch in order to form his armor. I’m probably never going to get over this, so. Fair warning on that front.

Yua runs up, pissed that he’s done this again.

Yua, I love you. You deserve a better partner. Have you considered becoming Aruto’s advisor on technology? He could use it, and you deserve to get away from Vulcan.

(Also, please note that they haven’t used the name ‘Vulcan’ in show yet, only ‘Zero One’.)

Frustrated, especially at how Vulcan tells her that this one is his, so she can just stand back and watch, Yua heads to the van, determination written on her face.

Unseen by either AIMS agent, Aruto and Izu also join the party, and he quickly transforms after calling Vulcan a showoff.

There's some brief but efficient fighting, including Zero One bullet-timing a jump over the shots Vulcan aimed at him. I love the choreography in this show.

So, Zero One manages to slice off a few of Neohi’s tentacles, which promptly get stuck on him. because. Y’know, suckers. And also they’re still squirming. Neohi promptly decides that it’s time to get out, and spreads a thick smokescreen to cover his escape.

As they see that the Magear is gone, Aruto remembers that Vulcan thinks he’s a rogue HumaGear, too, and launches himself the heck out of there… still with the tentacles wrapped around him. Vulcan tries to shoot him down…

And the only thing he accomplishes is getting the tentacles to let go, which Aruto thanks him for as he disappears.

–

Now then, let’s head back to Aruto’s office to confront the fact that Aruto wasn’t able to make the sale!

Jun and his lackey are blaming Aruto for not only not completing the contract, but also for not finding the terrorists at the same time. Aruto says it’s because that tentacled freak got in his way, which is true, and makes some sort of terrible tentacle pun. Shesta just says that it doesn’t compute.

Aruto: Izu likes my puns, though…

Speaking of Izu, she seems to have uploaded herself to the cloud – er, satellite. Or, she’s interfacing with it, anyway, down in front of the 3D Printing Studio. The goal of this is to have the system analyze the results of the last fight, and design a new Progrise Key to best suit the challenge.

You know. Like with Nigiro and his own analysis program, to make the best selection to suit the customer.

I’ve noticed that on Aruto’s desk, and on the assorted bookshelves in the office and lab, there are a lot of old-school tin robot toys. Those were there when he first entered the office in episode two, so they aren’t things he brought in. They were his grandfathers. It’s a neat little touch.

Set decoration notes aside, Nigiro is here, too, with an inquiry.

Can a soul be turned into data? The boss wants a successor, but that successor has to have a human heart. So, if one could be installed-

Izu cuts him off. It’s impossible, a soul can not be turned into data.

(She’s not saying that he could never have one, mind you. She saying it a soul can’t be turned into data. Not that data can’t become a soul – that he can’t grow one of his own.

You know, like the whole singularity/awakening thing.

The one that’s being weaponized.)

Aruto thinks of what the owner said, about Magokoro Sushi dying with him. He asks Izu to look something up about the restaurant.

–

It’s nighttime, and Isamu confronts Yua outside of the AIMS van, since she hasn’t tracked down the tentacle freak yet. He also accuses her of having been playing on her phone earlier. When he tries to take a look at what’s on her screen, she hides it away, and he scoffs, saying he’ll just go find the magear on his own.

Once he’s walked away, she laughs a little. He doesn’t get it. He has no idea how tools work.

She pulls her phone back out, and walks in the other direction.

Interesting.

–

Back at Magokoro Sushi, the owner is cleaning the bar, preparing for the next day. He slips, because of his back injury, but Nigiro rushes in to catch him.

Aruto and Izu are with him, asking for him to give Nigiro one more shot. Aruto says that the owner has trained many apprentices, but they’ve all left without taking over.

The owner asks if that’s what his precious data told him, but says that it’s true. They couldn’t keep up with him, their souls bent in frustration.

Nigiro says that his soul won’t waver. It can’t, because he doesn’t have one.

Aruto continues the discussion. The owner has a special technique, right? He’d asked his former pupils.

Flashback to a larger, less personal restaurant, where one of said former pupils is talking to Aruto and the two HumaGear. He shows them a video of the secret technique, which is… it sure is something. I’m not sure what goes on, but it involves tossing at least some of the ingredients into the air. Aruto’s watching the video in surprise, Nigiro has one eyebrow raised in slight confusion, and Izu? Izu is bouncing up and down behind them, trying to see. She’s too short to see over their shoulders.

Izu, sweetie, I love you.

The former pupil says that it’s a weird technique, isn’t it? He can’t see the point in it, but it’s that type of thing that they were asking about.

(Cue our second Kabuto: TWO comment)

Back to the present, where Nigiro performs the same technique. He’d been following the textbook preparations before, but now he’s analyzed and learned the owners method.

He thinks he understands why the owner uses this technique, now, even though it’s inefficient.

It’s because it carries his sincerity.

The owner looks… taken by surprise, before falling back into his judgmental expression from before, and trying the sushi.

Nigiro described it differently, this time. For Yua, he’d called hers “a serving based on skill.” For the owner, the first time around, he’d called it “a serving to his tastes.”

This time? A serving from the soul.

I really hope that one of the other sub groups elects to translate that sign in the back, when the camera focuses on it, because it’s clearly significant, but I can’t get Google translate to recognize it as a word.

The owner doesn’t say it’s bad – but he tells Nigiro to do it over. 10,000 times, over and over. He’s telling him to practice.

“Got it. 10,000 times, is that correct?”

“Geesh, you’re more stubborn than a human.”

Aruto smiles. Izu is confused as to why this is making Aruto happy – the owner is angry, he doesn’t look happy about this at all.

Aruto smiles at her, telling her that humans aren’t that simple.

That’s just how this man is – he’s stern, and strict, and doesn’t emote… but he’s impressed enough to take a HumaGear under his wing and train him, even if he hasn’t said as much in those exact words. It’s all about the subtext.

–

Oh, look, Gremlin 2.0 is on a rooftop with Neohi… and tells him that it’s time for them to make some new friends.

Oh dear lord, that’s a lot of tentacle cables.

…Like the ones Berotha used to create the mooks in episode one.

Oh, no.

Ohhh, no. Neohi transforms some construction workers, and then a waitress, into mooks.

And a cable reaches into Magokoro Sushi… and takes over Nigiro.

It’s painful – for all of them, it hurts just to watch, and it’s so well performed by the actors. These characters aren't human, they aren't supposed to react like humans do… and yet, without fail, it’s made clear that the HumaGear definitely feel pain as they’re being overwritten.

Aruto, Izu, and the owner run – Izu helping support the old man, and Aruto trying to push Nigiro back.

He’s still trying to reason with him, even though he’s not even a Magear proper – he’s a mook, stuck repeating his lines with a stutter, like a skipping record.

Like. Geez, Zero One. It’s episode three. This is so hard to see these characters we got attached to wind up going out like this. And he didn’t even get turned into a Magear of his own – no, he just got hijacked, doesn’t have any will anymore.

If his death is inevitable, at least let him go down fighting on his own. Please.

Shots are fired, knocking the former Nigiro backward into the recently arrived crowd of mooks.

Aruto can’t even tell which one he was anymore.

Yua strides forward, with a word of ‘advice.’ You can just bring him back if you back-up his data. That’s all HumaGear are, after all, AIs. Even if they’re destroyed, their data can just be restored.

Now we get into the ‘what measure is a person’ issue. Humans aren’t so simple that you can tell what they’re feeling by analyzing their reactions based on expressions alone… and HumaGear aren’t so simple, either. They’re partners that work in harmony with humanity. They aren’t just tools.

This speech seems to get through to the owner, who seems to finally get where Aruto is coming from.

Yua doesn’t look down at Aruto, as he’s trying to push himself to his feet. She just says that they are tools, as she pulls out a belt, her ShotRiser already attached to it, and places it around her waist.

She pulls out an orange Progrise Key, spinning it as she brings her hand up.

Dash!

She inserts it directly into the ShotRiser, without opening it first – and look at that. The top of the gun is open, and she can just unlock the key while it’s in there.

Sucks to be you, Isamu, she’s got style.

Her transformation… She fires, the gun on her waist, and the bullet – orange, as opposed to Vulcan’s blue – swoops close around her, before breaking apart on its own. She’s already running as it forms the armor around her.

Rushing Cheetah!

There’s a motion blur as she knocks the first few mooks away, one of them landing on the ground with her standing on its chest.

I love how the wild arcs of Vulcans armor bullet imply that it wouldn’t actually turn into his armor if he didn’t punch it, since Valkyrie doesn’t even need to look at it. Hers circles once around her outstretched arm, and then moves in front of her to turn into the armor.

“AI in violation of the law verified. Eliminating targets.”

Her voice is cold and analytical – and it matches her sharp, efficient fighting style. She delivers quick blows to her opponents, knocking them away. And she must be ripped under that business suit, because a number of them go flying when she hits them – that’s not just the armor at work there.

Aruto, watching, is finally able to get to his feet, and the owner starts to reassure him that he’s not wrong. They’re not tools. (We see Nigiro making his comment about the owners form showing his sincerity.) Yua had said it herself – it’s up to humans to decide how to live with HumaGear.

Neohi arrives, swinging one of his attached tentacles like a rope of some sort.

Aruto tells Izu to get the owner somewhere safe – so she just picks up this old man, and carrys him in a piggy back out of there. The old man is very confused about this, but at least he doesn’t see the giant neon grasshopper drop out of the sky behind him.

Zero One starts fighting Neohi, pulling out his Attache Calibur.

(I still have trouble believing that this is our protagonists main weapon. A briefcase sword. You’re putting Drives weapons to shame here for sheer oddness with just this single one, you know that, right? And there was an axe that you had to wait for its crosswalk signal to use back then.)

This monster takes Combat Tentacles to a whole new level. Not only can they be used as a whip-like attack, but when severed, they still cling to whatever they land on. In addition, the ends are bladed, and can be used as handheld weapons – which is exactly what he’s doing right now.

–

Over with Valkyrie, whose name I will hopefully be able to spell without Autocorrect within the month, she’s kicking all sorts of Trilobite ass. Er, turns out that’s what the mooks are called this time around. They’re ‘Trilobite Magear.’

But she’s good at this. She is definitely the technology specialist and the tactician. Like, she’s just shoved a giant crate at the mooks, and is running behind it, using it as a shield to block the gunfire from the mooks.

Also, why are the mooks able to generate machine guns and knifes? I mean, at least they only have one or the other, but… how.

Eventually, as the giant wooden crate slides to a stop, she leaps out and starts firing.

–

Meanwhile, with Aruto, he’s… been knocked into a drainage channel, and is tied up with the tentacles. Again. He is not enthused, and probably considering swearing off of squid forever.

He pulls out his newest Progrise Key: Biting Shark.

The beam from the satellite is, appropriately, blue this time, as opposed to the yellow for Rising Hopper. Also, the shark bot? It can dive up and down through the ground, treating it like water. Man, that’s a cool tactic, I always get a kick out of that. One of the Yummies in OOO used it, and then Another Build did, too. I think Haruto did something similar a few times as Wizard, but I might be misremembering some of the ways he used the Liquid ring.

There is almost definitely a pun that RiderTime missed here. They translated Aruto’s line as “here we go.” You know, Iku ze. Except it sounded an awful lot more like Ika ze. Ika – aka squid. RT, I’m disappointed. If he was actually just saying it normally, then I’m disappointed in Toei, instead.

Oh, man, the arm section of the Rising Hopper armor turn into arm fins, that’s so cool. And I much prefer how the faceplate readjusts for Biting Shark than for Flying Falcon. Here, they rotate downward, so it doesn’t look nearly as much like he’s got eyes on the side of his head.

The Biting Impact finisher is neat! It starts with Zero One putting his arms out, cupping the air, as a pen-and-ink image of a shark appears next to him, much like the grasshopper at his leg for Rising Impact. He slashes at the attack tentacles with the blades on both his arms and on his legs. Notably, the energy slash effects are different for both. For his arms, where the blades are from Rising Hopper, theres yellow effects, but with his legs they’re blue, where the armor is from Biting Shark. Nice touch!

Eventually, he’s gotten in close enough to punch Neohi into the air, and proceeds to charge energy into his arm blades. And holy shit, said energy takes the forms of two giant rows of sharks teeth emanating from each arm, which he uses to crosschop – sorry, bite through the Magear.

The Magear falls to the ground, where he explodes, creating a glorious spray of water for Aruto’s “cool guys don’t look at explosions” shot.

–

Over at the mook battle, Valkyrie prepares her finisher, as Vulcan fights his way into the background. He sees her, and her ShotRiser, and realizes who it must be under the armor.

She starts her finisher, firing shot after shot of orange energy into the center of a group of mooks – not aiming at them, but at the center, where the shots collect and grow into a giant orb of energy as she runs literal rings around them. When she finally comes to a stop, it’s with a tire screeching sound effect. The energy bursts into a giant ball of fire as she poses, and the mooks are straight up incinerated.

VALKYRIE I LOVE YOU.

THE BEST WEAPONS GIRL HAS FIRE POWERS.

YES.

Vulcan watches as she calmly removes her Progrise key from her gun, and we don’t get to see the de-transformation, because he’s blocking it. But there’s smoke coming off of her when the shot pans to the other side, and we see Yua, telling Isamu that that is how it’s done.

Actually, now that I think about it, have we seen any of the three riders actively detransform yet? I don’t think we have… feel free to prove me wrong!

Because we see Vulcan pull his own key out, and glow blueish white, but we don’t see the transformation actually end. He walks off screen, and when he re-enters the frame, it’s Isamu, with similar wisps of smoke coming off of him. Interesting.

Isamu’s pissed, but Yua ignores him as he complains that she should have told him there were two ShotRisers.

–

Jin picks the ZetsumeRise key up out of the water.

–

Turns out that even with a ‘new’ Nigiro, they’ve still made the contract with Magokoro Sushi.

Aruto, watching the owner training new!Nigiro, wonders if he’s the only one who can see that HumaGear do have hearts. Izu tilts her heat, looking at him, asking for him to clarify. “Well, after all, he was able to move the owners heart.”

Aruto then apologizes to the owner, because now he has to start all over again. (The ‘Beginner’ icon flashes breifly over new!Nigiro’s earpeice.)

The owner is okay with that, though, because it means he just gets to teach him thoroughly from the beginning.

New!Nigiro serves Aruto a piece of Squid sushi, to which Aruto makes a comment that I’m pretty sure Ridertime didn’t translate well, because Japanese wordplay is a pain. Regardless, Izu goes on to explain  the pun, calling it quite the joke.

Aruto: Eh?!

She then goes and does his little punchline thing, the ‘and that’s aruto’ thing.

Thing is?

Aruto wasn’t even trying to make a pun. It was just a coincidence! Also, stop copying him! (He does the motion while telling her not to copy him.)

–

Elsewhere, a mysterious figure plays chess… as Yua gives her debrief.

Oh, no.

(Cue our third Kabuto: TWO comment.)

She says that she’s discovered Hiden Intelligence’s secret. The HumaGear have an auto-transfer program for their perception data. She wasn’t uploading her preferences to Nigiro, back in the beginning of the episode.

She was uploading spyware, to hijack his feed.

So, when Izu gave Aruto the Biting Shark Progrise Key in the office, Nigiro saw it. And, as a result, so did Yua. That’s why she was on her phone outside of the van. She was watching along with us.

Also, whoever she’s reporting to has a bracelet that can function as a holo-projector, because it’s showing him the same footage now.

But that isn’t the secret – that’s probably just technical specs.

No, the secret?

Hiden Intelligence isn’t supposed to have the Progrise Key data.

It was thought to have been destroyed in Daybreak.

You know, where metsuboujinrai.net is based out of.

Her boss (?), who sounds and looks young, from what we can see, says that… oh dear.

He says that this means ‘the arc will rise again,’ and that the CEO of Hiden is the key to it all… Zero One.

You know, the arc, the thing that Horobi was talking about earlier.

Oh, no.

End of episode.

–

So. Yua definitely knows that Aruto is Zero One. She also reports to someone that I’m pretty sure Isamu doesn’t. I’m hoping this is a case of ‘the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing’, but that seems pretty unlikely.

Okay, so this season is somehow Ex-Aid, Drive, and Kabuto TWO.

WOW.

(Yua, please don’t be working for a fourth party, I don’t want to lose you…)

[sailor-cresselia]

Zero One 02: Shot through the heart, and Vulcan’s to blame

He gives wolves a bad name.

…I’m not sorry.

I’m bouncing between the three non-TV-Nihon sub groups right now – OverTime, Rider Time, and Genm Corp. Since all three had their subs available quickly, this’ll make it easier to compare differences. Also, Genm Corp was the only one of the three who bothered subbing the OP when it appeared as an insert in episode 01, so I’ve only seen the one style for it yet.

Zero One 02: START

––––

We open with Izu and Aruto stepping out in front of Hiden Intelligence, where she formally introduces herself as his personal assistant.

He’s still in very justifiable disbelief that he’s been named President. He’s a comedian, for crying out loud! Izu points out that not only was he personally selected by the founder, the point of the HumaGear is to make people smile. That lines up with his own goal of making people smile, so he is well suited for the job.

Aruto: I mean?! TECHNICALLY?!

As they walk further into the building from the lobby, Jun and one of the other members of the board peek out from behind a vase of flowers and a table. He swears that he’ll pull the chair out from under their new chairman.

Shesta stands there, unimpressed.

The security system is pretty cool! At first glance, it appears to be the standard ‘bioscanner and glass pane’ set up that you see in all sorts of media – and then you realize that once a person has been let in? The ‘glass’ door is just a hologram. It’s a holographic door that says STOP on it, and it disappears when  it’s ‘open’. Which raises the question of ‘do we have solid-light holograms’ here. I wouldn’t put it past this season.

Unfortunately for Aruto, he. Uh. Hasn’t been added to the security system just yet. Instead of the circle saying that it’s okay to pass, he just gets a big old X and a buzzer noise.

After several attempts of smacking the scanner, a security HumaGear briskly steps up. He scans Aruto, and greets him as ‘President Hiden Aruto,’ bowing formally. Aruto returns the bow and greeting…

And still can’t get through the gate.

–

Daybreak Town.

Horobi watches a delivery HumaGear on a screen.

…oh. Oh dear.

After my last liveblog, I had a thought that I worked out with some others, that the selection of which HumaGear get hijacked probably isn’t random. That Taro’s smile was geniune when he thought back to the audience, and that he’d reached sentience – he’d hit the evolutionary singularity.

I thought that Horobi and Jin might be specifically using HumaGear who had hit singularity to turn into monsters. They’re not trying to bring on the singularity, they’re weaponizing it.

And Horobi just said that the one he’s watching is approaching it. That satisfied little nod to himself as he hoists up a package… yeah. That sure seems more like Taro than the other HumaGear we’ve seen.

Handing a Progrize Key to Jin, Horobi tells him to go collect the data.

…After Berotha was defeated, they plugged the broken key back into the holder that he’d pulled it from during his expository monologue.

So, maybe… trying to weaponize the mechanical rise, and bring it about en masse? Or something?

–

Back at Hiden, Aruto is ‘exploring’ his new office.

Looks like I was right on the money with my ‘dumb puppy’ comparison, he’s all over the place.

The 3D printing studio is just part of a big mechanical work bench section of the office, down a level from the office section of the office.

It’s also clearly up really high, because one of those tv-drones can be seen at the same level outside.

The workstation can be neatly hidden away, as well, when a wall builds itself back into existence, blocking the whole thing from view and leaving the room more like a normal office.

That’s the point when Izu decides it’s time to go over his schedule. He’s got a morning meeting with some government representatives… right now.

(Aruto has a brief, quiet panic about not being dressed for this – he’s wearing his day-glo sneakers, a formal pair of pants, and a formal suit jacket… and the jacket is on over his hoodie. It barely fits over his hoodie.)

We’re finally formally introduced to our two main members of AIMS; Techinical Advisor Yaiba Yua and Agent Fuwa Isamu.

Apparently, they’re going to be questioning all of Hiden’s personnel. Yua is much more reserved about this, and Isamu-

Okay, wow, if I didn’t hate him just from last episode, I’d hate him already. He slams a hand down on the desk, leaning way into Aruto’s space, ‘warning’ him to be thorough, because his answers could land him in jail.

Come on! He just got here! Aruto has had this job for less than a day, he doesn’t know jack!

–

…Oh, come ON!

STILL NO OPENING?!

–

Delivery HumaGear is doing his job, when a playful voice calls out from on top of the truck. How’d Jin get up there? Who knows! But he’s already calling the deliveryman his friend, as he forcefully places the false driver onto him, saying that he can start by destroying this company.

The deliveryman, wracked with pain and red sparks, mind you, says that HumaGear are supposed to make people smile!

We see from his perspective as Jin crouches in front of him, a progress bar filling as Jin tells him he’s wrong. It’s to make people extinct.

Connection established.

–

Back at Hiden, we see that Aruto has exactly zero idea what’s going on, and that Isamu gives zero shits about acting professional during an interrogation.

Basically, AIMS suspects Hiden Intelligence of covering incidents up. Currently, the specific incident in question is the one at the amusement park yesterday. They’ve clearly gotten the remains of most of the rogue HumaGear, but there wasn’t a trace of the one in charge.

Because he was very thoroughly destroyed, not that anyone but Aruto and Izu know that.

Izu, connecting to the server, states that there are no records of anything matching that description… as phrased by Genmcorp. Going by Ridertime, she says that they can not validate those records. Overtime has her saying that there’s no data to corroborate Yua’s claims.

In any case… something is going on. Hiden is very definitely covering this up, and using Aruto to do it. He’s just following Izu’s ‘lead,’ because he has zero idea what’s going on.

Isamu implies that this isn’t new, that Hiden has covered things up before.

Yua tells Aruto that AIMS has the authority to prosecute HumaGear-based violations.

Not that Aruto actually knows what that sort of thing would be, so he asks Izu, who recites off the good ol’ First Law of Robotics: A HumaGear may not allow a human to come to harm, for any reason.

Isamu – area speciesist – basically threatens Aruto, telling him not to think he can keep this quiet, these HumaGears are killing machines.

Yua, who is a few bullet-shaped microaggressions away from punching her ‘partner’, tells him to cut it out, they’re not here to commit slander.

Being the dumb puppy that he is, Aruto thinks he can break the tension with one of his old stand up routines.

This doesn’t work.

In fact, it looks like it does the opposite of work, and I’m pretty sure that Isamu’s about ready to kill a man with his bare hands.

It’s a little ironic that the giant ‘emergency’ warnings flashing around the room are what probably just saved Aruto’s life. Mind you, they also confuse the heck out of all three humans in the room. Izu, who often looks about two steps away from saying ‘screw the first law’, lets Aruto know that he has a trespasser.

–

Said trespasser is a very-much hijacked deliveryman, tossing people around – human and humagear alike. His transformation into the Kuehne Magear is no less terrifying than the one into Berotha last episode, although it is thankfully over much faster.

Kuehne is based on the Kuehneosuchus, a late Triassic gliding reptile. This is most easily seen in how he has a pair of wing-shaped boomerangs.

A security humagear manages to block said murder-rangs from killing Jun and the other board member, but that wound up redirecting them to the balcony where Aruto and the others were, dividing the party as everyone dodges.

And these blades are dangerous, too. They can cleave right through the display stands, which appear to be made of poured concrete.

As Isamu and Yua fire, I can’t help but notice her saying he’s disobeying orders again – he is not supposed to have the transformation gun right now.

Oh, goody! As an arboreal gliding lizard, Kuehne is able to crawl along walls! Right up until he takes a hit from Isamu’s Shot Riser, which makes enough of an impact that it knocks him back to the ground.

Isamu, pulling out a Progrise Key, says that he’ll transform and scrap it.

Or, he would, if the key would open. He’s a bit distracted by his non-functional transformation trinket as Kuehne launches his boomerangs again, so Yua literally kicks him to the ground to dodge the return path.

I love her.

I love her even more now that I know that she’s the weapons administrator, and that key isn’t going to open without her authorization.

Yua, I love you, please don’t die.

The security humagear are evacuating the remaining civilians, as Izu all but hurls Aruto out of view. “President Aruto, it would be wise of you to do something before anyone dies.” Emphasis mine, but I strongly suspect she would be placing the same if she were allowed to have emotions yet.

“However… please conceal your identity from AIMS.”

Aruto seems really reluctant at first… and then he hears the screaming again, and turns around, his expression level. “Henshin.”

There’s a brief scuffle between Zero One and Kuehne, which moves the fight outside, and Aruto does okay… until his sweep kick is dodged very handily via Kuehne landing on the wall. That sort of jumping ability does tend to put a damper on knocking someone off their feet.

As Aruto’s hit by a few shots from Kuehne, he gets knocked down, and as he gets to his feet, here come Isamu and Yua, guns drawn and aimed at him. Oh, uh, not just aimed at. Isamu’s shooting at him. Aruto’s protests of ‘you’ve got the wrong guy’ are useless, as Kuehne’s disappeared. Zero One proceeds to take off, as well, dodging gunfire and leaping off of walls to get distance.

Aruto has just barely dropped his transformation when the AIMS agents make it to where he wound up. Isamu grabs him by the lapel, shoving him into a wall and ‘asking’ where he’s hiding ‘the yellow one.’

“I’m not hiding him! He went that way!” Aruto points at the fucking sky, and this somehow works, so as the agents move away from him – only a few yards, mind you – Aruto nopes the heck out of there.

Isamu, the Key dangling from his fingers, demands that Yua unlock it.

“Why would I do that for someone as stupidly reckless as you?!” (The only part of that sentence that’s subtext is ‘stupidly,’ everything else is just straight up text.)

Isamu, getting in her face, all but yells that he’s the captain here.

She gives as good as she gets, retorting right back that she’s in charge of the entire arsenal. If she doesn’t think you should be using the super gun, you’re not getting to use the super gun. They split up, to go look for the rogue HumaGear.

–

In the Hiden lobby, Shesta and that same security guard we’ve been seeing assure the small crowd that it was just a security drill, nothing more.

As the relieved crowd disperses, Aruto jogs up, thanking the guard for protecting everyone.

“President Aruto, it is my task to protect the people of this company.”

Izu smiles a little bit, looking slightly away from her dumb puppy of a boss. Most people don’t treat HumaGear on the same level as humans – not quite. But Aruto talks to her like a regular person, and he greeted one of his coworkers at the park by name – Yui, one of the greeters.

Aruto notices the damage to the guards arm, and flashes back to his father – humagear legs revealed, synthetic skin torn away. He pauses, just for a moment, his smile dropping a little, before he turns back to the guard.

“Then, tell me your name! I won’t forget it.”

Implying that people don’t usually bother to remember HumaGear’s names.

“Mamoru. President Korenosuke named me.” The guard – Mamoru – looks a little less stiff at that, a little less pre-programmed.

“I see. We’re basically family then, right?” Aruto pulls out a handkerchief, tying it around Mamoru’s damaged arm. (Oh, for the love of – it’s got those comedy paper fans on it. Aruto, please.) He pats Mamoru on the shoulder. “Get yourself patched up.” He grins as he heads back into the office.

Mamoru looks down at the inexplicable impromptu bandage… and smiles. A real, authentic, smile, not the programmed one.

A distance away, Jin spins a key in his hand, and smiles as well.

–

Isamu interrupts a ‘talk’ between Jun and Aruto, the second of whom has zero idea what’s going on.

He brings Aruto to the roof to talk, because that’s totally a good idea… but it’s nice and private, at least.

He starts going on about how the company hasn’t changed, that it’s still building itself on a foundation of victims. Aruto protests that HumaGears are supposed to make peoples lives better, that they’re what people dreamed of!

“So you’ll just let the nightmare repeat itself?!” Isamu pauses after yelling, and then resumes talking, more calmly this time. “An entire city was destroyed in an accident.”

Ah. There’s why we came up here. It’s to give us a visual. The roof has a wonderful angle of Daybreak Town.

Aruto grows somber at the mention of Daybreak, thinking back to an explosion of blue fire engulfing a school building, and his younger self crying over his fathers broken body.

“But that catastrophe was no accident. The truth was that HumaGears went on a murderous rampage. I was there, that day…”

Holy shit. Isamu was… late middle school, maybe a first year in high school at most, waking up in a blasted, ruined classroom… and it sure looks like the other students in there are dead. Red-eyed humagear – an earlier model, going by the less detailed faces – are crawling at the windows, hurling themselves after him as he runs.

“And Hiden Intelligence covered it all up. They claimed it was an accident!”

Aruto stands, shocked, his eyes wide, before growing serious as Isamu storms up to him, glaring. “I will expose your company, and their sins.”

While Isamu walks off… I’m pretty sure that Aruto’s vowing to do the same.

–

Kuehne reappears, where the press is hounding for answers in front of Hiden, tossing people aside.

Mamoru charges him, trying to tackle him away, before being similarly tossed aside. As he gets up…

No.

No, no, no.

As Mamoru gets up, Jin places a buckle at his waist.

–

AND THEN I HAD TO SPEND 15 MINUTES WAITING FOR MY COMPUTER TO UPDATE.

–

As Mamoru gets up, Jin places a buckle at his waist, saying that he can be one of his friends, too.

Mamoru, on one knee, in pain, tries so, so hard to reject this. “To protect this company…” he clutches at the arm that Aruto had wrapped for him. “That is my task!” He’s not saying this in the scared manner that Taro or the deliveryman, named Okureru, according to KRWiki, did. He’s defiant, and angry, and glaring right up at Jin, even as he gets grabbed by the chin and forced to look directly at him, as the download completes.

–

Yua and a team of AIMS troops ‘corner’ Kuehne, firing on him.

–

As people evacuate, Aruto runs up to Izu.

Slowly, Jin comes up the stairs toward them. When Aruto asks who he is, he says “Me? Hmm… the pioneer of a new world… I guess.”

A security door opens behind him, Mamoru stepping through, his face vacant… and a little bit haunted. None of the fear or loss of control from the other two. He looks like he’s been erased far more than they had.

“Mamoru!? Why did you let him in?”

“It is what I was commanded…” He pulls out a key, and inserts it into his murder belt.

Aruto already recognizes those belts, too.

Mamoru’s transformation into Ekal is terrifying, yes, but he doesn’t scream through it, like the previous two magear did. He’s silent, and since we don’t see as much of it, that is where the terror comes from.

The tragedy comes from how it happens. His uniform burned away… but near the end of the transformation, we see that the handkerchief didn’t disintegrate. It fluttered to the ground. On fire, yes, and definitely not the same size it used to be. But it wasn’t completely destroyed.

Ekal takes his theming from Ekaltadeta, a type of carnivorous marsupial. They can tell it was a carnivore, or an omnivore with a preference for meat, by the “large buzz-saw-shaped cheek-tooth” found in the species fossils. That description of the tooth is a direct quote from Wikipedia.

Aruto grabs Ekal around the waist, calling for Mamoru, to try and wake him up. This isn’t him, so please, snap out of it!

He gets thrown against a pillar for his trouble.

Izu chooses now to speak up. “Once HumaGear code has been modified, it cannot be reverted.” There’s no other option. Aruto has to eliminate him.

“no…”

Ekal, in a robotic monotone, advances. “Humans must be…”

–

“-Eliminated!” Kuehne, growling, finishes the sentence in the loading area where he’s cornered Yua. She backs away to reload her gun, but Kuehne is on top of the shipping container already. She aims her weapon-

And a shot passes right past her ear.

Isamu, stop doing that. I swear, if we lose her to friendly fire of all things…

He stalks up, the belt for his Shot Riser in his off hand, swearing that he will crush all HumaGears.

Yua yells at him to stop, even as he latches the Shot Riser in place, he doesn’t have clearance yet!

“I said I’m going to do it! And I make my own rules!”

Someone needs to knock this asshole down a few pegs.

He pulls out the Progrise key, and as he strains to get it to open, there are momentary flashes of the red-eyed HumaGear attacking, and him running. “The HumaGears are going to pay…”

–

Aruto is flung against a column, again. “HumaGears are the reason I’m here today…”

We flash to when he was a child, with the blue explosion… and see that his father shielded him from it, pushing him to the ground and covering him with his own body.

“A HumaGear protected me.” In the present, he drags himself to his feet. “HumaGears aren’t killing machines!” Izu watches in the background as he puts on the driver and furiously glares. “They’re humanity’s dream!

–

Isamu pulls at his Progrise Key. “HumaGears are a threat, they’re humanities enemy!” He keeps forcing at it. “And I’m going to obliterate every last one of them!”

The Shooting Wolf Progrise Key opens.

Bullet! Authorize!

The belt plays a sound clip of “Kamen Rider” over and over, looping, the background music effect audibly looping with it. And then Shooty McAsshole gets a STUPIDLY COOL TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE.

“Henshin!”

SHOTRISE

He fires the gun, and the bullet looks like it’s a seeker round, by the way it zooms around Kuehne, and then back toward Isamu…

It starts to ‘split apart’ as it returns, and then he pUNCHES THE BULLET IN MIDAIR. It breaks apart and the suit forms. The armored portions are the first to appear, latching onto him, as red circuit lines trace down his body, which presumably turn into his undersuit.

But the best part, especially for me, a Double fan, is seeing his helmet form. The individual pieces start as little disks, before spinning out into the shapes on the helmet. Those same red circuit lights that made the base for his suit also trail up his face, before the helmet segments close in and form the helmet proper.

For those who haven’t seen Double – and you should – that helmet formation is almost the exact same way it happens for Double, Accel, Skull, and Eternal. Literally the only difference is that the helmets in Fuuto form out of… like, fragments? They aren’t distinguishable until they’re actively part of the helmet, basically. And the lines are darker in a Gaia Memory based transformation, instead of glowing, but still.

Kamen Rider Valkyrie had better get an even better transformation than Vulcan is. I refuse to let her be shown up by this asshole.

The elevation increases as the bullet is fired

–

Jump! Authorize!

Aruto, I am begging you to get your mechanical grasshopper under control, because once again, he’s causing even more damage to the surroundings. Also, he is very definitely being teleported down from the satellite – the 3D printing doesn’t seem to go through things, and that grasshopper just crashed in through a skylight.

…Aw, man. We’re not going to get a cool robot wolf or cheetah, are we?

Just one more way that Aruto’s transformation is different from the others. He has the undersuit form first, they have the armor. Zero One has a giant robot, Vulcan has a literal bullet. He has a belt, they have a gun.

Hm.

Zero One charges to battle-

–

-and the shot transitions smoothly to Vulcan doing the same. He and Kuehne are swapping blows in the enclosed spaces between shipping containers, while Yua films it with her RisePhone.

“Fuwa Isamu has become Kamen Rider Vulcan. It’s finally begun…”

…Honey, what do you mean by that?

–

Zero One and Ekal have made it to a parking garage – and. Uh. Okay, so. He knocked Ekal down, and said magear landed near a row of motorcycles.

Remember how Berotha used those cables to reprogram the other HumaGear in the last episode?

Ekal just used that to jumpstart a motorcycle to get away.

And then it gets WEIRDER!

Izu shows up, telling Aruto that his phone can summon his company motorcycle.

And by ‘summon,’ we’re being quite literal here. I think we all assumed that the phone was going to be like the Machin Builder. It’s not. The phone has a bike app, that he has to scan on his belt, same as the Progrise Key.

This is where the ‘Changing to Super Bike, Motorcycle Mode’ voice clip comes from.

Then. We see the satellite – which Genm Corp and Over Time agree is called ‘Zea’, as opposed to ‘Z-A’ like Rider Time had chosen. A section on it rotates, and it is definitely straight up sending the grasshopper down for the transformations. How can I tell that?

Because a panel on the satellite opens up, dropping a giant Risephone to earth.

Regular phone, in a polite female voice: “Please watch your head.”

Aruto, confused: “Eh?”

Ceiling: destroyed

The giant risephone is floating over the rubble – yes, it’s definitely floating in mid-air, I can see it bobbing up and down. Aruto presses the giant bike app icon, and there’s the ‘phone becomes a bike’ aspect.

Aruto just sort of goes with this. His life has already become weird enough in the past day and a half, why not just get on the floating phone-bike-comet?!

Zero One and the Rise Hopper nyoom down the street in hot pursuit.

–

Ekal, meanwhile… seems to be following traffic laws much more closely on his stolen Honda than Aruto is on his company vehicle. Case in point, Zero One just used a car as a ramp to get some air. He got too much air, and drove on the side of a building, shattering the windows, several stories up, before finally going back down to the actual ground.

This show is wild, and I think that insert theme is kicking back in.

Oh, no, maybe it’s just normal fight music. Everything looks like it’s going at a weird speed, because they’re allegedly fighting each other by punching and kicking while driving motorcycles next to each other. And it looks really slow! I. You know what, it gets us some NICE stuff, so whatever. Such as Ekal having extendable fangs that nearly knock Zero One off of his bike, but him hanging on by literally one hand and foot, and pulling himself back upright in time to avoid getting hit directly by an oncoming truck.

Then he does some truly absurd kicks to Ekal’s face… while standing on the bike seat.

Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen!

The second kick is the one that knocks Ekal completely off of his respective bike, so Zero One skids to a stop, and goes back to fight, pulling out his Attache Calibur, going after Ekal.

–

The shot of Zero One rushing off screen with his sword transitions directly into Kuehne’s perspective of attacking Vulcan with his own swords. Vulcan blocking a strike and pushing it away transitions directly into Vulcan’s perspective as he shoots.

The cinematography of this show so far is just. Mwa. Beautiful.

There’s some time with Vulcan dodging the boomerang blades, before Kuehne must catch them and leaps down to attack-

–

-transitioning right into Zero One parkouring up and off of a shipping container to kick Ekal.

Wait. A shipping container? There’s. Uh. Your new location has a lot of those. And Vulcan’s already surrounded by them.

And AIMS thinks Zero One is another rogue HumaGear.

Uh-oh.

…Oh.

Oh, my heart. We’re not even getting that conflict yet.

We’re getting the end of the Zero One versus Ekal fight.

Breathing heavily, Aruto pulls his Progrise Key out of his driver. “There’s only one thing that can stop you…” His voice is shaking, he does not want to have to do this. We see a shot of him tying the kercheif around Mamoru’s arm. He looks at the key, and then back at Ekal. “And that’s me!” His voice is breaking, and so is my heart, and I’m pretty sure he’s trying not to cry under that helmet.

The music is dark, dismal.

There’s nothing heroic about this sunset victory.

–

Yikes.

So. Uh. Vulcan’s initial finisher.

He, naturally, activates the progrise key and shoots. That’s as expected. Four over-sized energy bullets come out. That’s as expected, it’s a superhero finisher.

What’s significantly less expected is for said energy shots to then turn into energy wolves, which track down the fleeing Kuehne. And bit onto his limbs. Okay, yes, fine. When the first two have him by the arms.

They pin him against one of the shipping containers as the other two go for his legs, and when I say ‘pin him against’ I am being incredibly literal.

The wolves turn into spikes and literally pin him in place.

This shipping container isn’t even anywhere Vulcan can see. He fires again.

The energy sphere literally burns straight through three consecutive containers before it reaches where Kuehne is pinned and then presumably melted.

I say presumably, because we don’t see any remains. We do see that the fourth container has had a hole melted through, same as the others. Zero One sees this, as well, since he’s right on the other side, and just barely didn’t get hit by the massive ball of energy that was still going.

Vulcan looks at him, gun still raised and shaking slightly with his rage.

A cloud of smoke billows past Zero One, obscuring his escape.

Vulcan stands alone, a full moon hanging low in the sky.

–

The next day, Jun is heading a press conference – or, trying to. Nobody seems to believe that he doesn’t have any comment with regards to any potential HumaGear having gone berserk. Yua and Isamu watch the chaos unfold as they stand along a back wall. Also, Isamu must have screwed up his shooting arm in that fight, because it’s in a sling.

“It’s the truth!”

And just like in the board room, all it takes is a short, sharp phrase from Aruto to silence the room, even as the theme song intensifies in the background.

Hiden Aruto strides forward, in a well-fitted suit, Izu following a step and a half behind him as he takes the stage. She starts a video as he speaks.

It’s Mamoru, and Jin, right before Mamoru was turned into Ekal. From the direction of the camera… this is taken from a feed from Izu herself.

Aruto, at the podium, in front of reporters and government officials, tells them that the true people behind this are the terrorist group Metsuboujinrai.net, that they hack HumaGears and corrupt their programming.

Going by Yua and Isamu’s reactions, they had no idea that anything of the sort was happening. They also know full well that the third person in the video is Aruto – they recognize that hoodie from the same afternoon.

If he was trying to cover this up, why would he film himself being attacked? Why would he film it with one of his own security guards doing the attacking?

He swears that he will prove that the HumaGear are not at fault.

(He doesn’t say this, but… he’s not doing this as a CEO, but as a person. It’s not a corporate desire driving him to prove his companies innocence, it’s because it’s what’s right, and humans and HumaGear alike deserve better than this.)

One of the human reporters asks who he even is.

“Chief Executive Officer and President of Hiden Intelligence, Hiden Aruto.”

Jun looks like he wants to do a murder.

Aruto has come off cool and collected, serious throughout this entire section… and then a HumaGear reporter brings up that it seems unlikely a comedian like him could be a company president.

This was a mistake.

He steps out from behind the podium, looking like he’s going to make a grandiose statement, and… no. No, it’s one of his terrible, nigh-untranslatable jokes. Something about bright futures and shining and whatever. Izu is now his accomplice, helping him out by shining a light from her tablet.

The room is left silent for a completely different reason.

…Oh no. It’s not going to be heroic resolve that wins Isamu over to Aruto’s side. It’s going to be Aruto’s terrible, awful, no-good sense of humor.

Because Isamu wasn’t fighting the urge to punch him in the office.

He was trying not to break out laughing.

This aspect will not end well.

Isamu and Yua leave, him trying to regain his stoicism, as Aruto desperately begs Izu to stop explaining his jokes.

––––

Zero one zero one zero one zero one zero one I DON��T HAVE A GOOD END COMMENT

UH.

Okay, so. The special effects in this show. The cinematography. They’re SO GOOD.

I acknowledge that Yua’s going to have a very hard time getting a better transformation into Valkyrie than Isamu has into Vulcan, but by gaim, I need her to beat him out.

The cuts between shots tying into each other during the fights was just. Ugh. Yes. It’s beautiful.

The only problem I have right now, that I’m willing to get into, anyway… where are our opening credits?! Are we going to have to wait until episode four for them?! Because episode three is where we’re finally getting Valkyrie, so they might just be waiting until we have our three main riders. Might.

As for the problem that I’m not willing to get into just yet… I know that I didn’t mention, during the press conference, that there’s a shot of… a new Mamoru. I don’t want to get into the topic of “can you ‘recreate’ an AI” at the moment. I’m not good at dealing with things like the Ship of Theseus Paradox in the first place, and since it looks like we’re going to be getting more into the ‘do HumaGear have hearts’ next episode, I’d like to at minimum wait until then.

Until next week!

Zero one zero one zero one zero one- PLEASE JUST GIVE US OUR PROPER OPENING SEQUENCE ALREADY I BEG YOU.

(Takahashi-san, please. Please don’t start off doing the thing from Ex-Aid, where Excite wound up being an ending theme for a good third of the season. Please.)

[nehasy]

In the Cards

             This is my contribution to the Yearly Esca 2017 for @fruitso  The theme is Destiny!!  As per usual, I have chosen to focus on the Dragonslayers and their ever perky captain.  This is of course set in my Dragon in the Ashes universe and is Pre Series.

 “You seriously want to go in here?”  Dilandau didn’t even bother trying to keep his voice from sounding incredulous as he eyed the rather gaudily coloured tent covered in what he supposed were supposed to be mysterious looking symbols.  At least they would be mysterious for anyone who hadn’t spent the majority of their life around the Madoushi.  Glancing over his shoulder at Shesta who was eagerly whispering something to Guimel, the two somehow managing to actually communicate despite the impressive amount of sugared floss they’d both stuffed into their mouths.  Honestly, it looked like the pair of them were busy savaging psychedelic sheep.  

Irritably, he poked a shimmering gold symbol which while looking elegant and ornate actually meant “soup”.  As far as first impressions went, this one wasn’t setting the bar overly high, but a promise was a promise.  He’d foolishly made the pronouncement this morning during prep that any Dragonslayer who performed flawlessly would be able to spend the day doing whatever they wanted.  It had seemed like such a good idea at the time, after all, here they were with a free day to explore the Capital during the Fortunam Magnam festival.

Dilandau had of course expected that they’d want to look at the new and experimental guymelef series they’d heard rumours of, or speak to some of the weapon smiths lining the streets and maybe try out their wares.  Instead, Dallet and Viole had raced off to the nearest brothel with little more than a hasty call to not wait for them.  Thank the Emperor that they hadn’t demanded that the rest of the team join them. The very idea of entering into such an establishment, let alone paying someone to be intimate with him made his skin crawl… speaking of.

“Gatti, remind me to ensure that Dallet and Viole receive full medical checks when we get back to the Vione.  The last thing I need is to explain to Folken why members of my team have venereal diseases… again.”

“Of course sir.”  The second in command didn’t even twitch so much as an eyebrow at the order which was impressive considering he’d been present for the rather harrowing lecture from the Strategos about proper sexual decorum while on leave.  Both had needed a strong drink after that ordeal.

“Are you ready to hear our fortunes sir?” Shesta asked in a voice which was far too chirpy, warning the captain that he’d likely ingested far too much sugar to be healthy.

“This reeks of desperate fraudulence.” Dilandau grumbled, glaring at several other random and inappropriate words painted on the side of the tent.  Three, eggs, goat and onion…and those were just the symbols on the front flap.  So far the combination didn’t inspire confidence in him.  “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather just watch some of the duels in the pits?”  He always enjoyed watching those though few of his men cared for such bloody entertainment. It was their loss really.  Hmm, maybe he’d compete this year.  After all, he was already going to be doing demonstration duels for the Madoushi, at least this way he could have a little fun… and maybe get rid of the foul taste in his mouth that threatened to be left by this charlatan.

“You did promise sir.”  Miguel murmured boldly into his ear, earning himself a warning look from the pale captain for his forwardness.  Rather than backing off, the tall slayer grinned playfully.  “It means the world to the men that you’re indulging us like this.  Besides, I’ll make it up to you later with my request.”

“You’d damn well better.”  Dilandau found himself grumbling under his breath as he cast a longing look at one of the weapon smiths.  Dammit!  The man was showing a sword to some captain from Iron Army…Even with the packed streets, he could see the fine quality of the blade from here and his fingers itched to hold it.  That loser captain probably didn’t even know how to handle a real weapon.  He should be the one the smith was sucking up to! But no, here he was, standing in front of some stupid tent covered in damn recipe instructions while two of his Dragonslayers argued about what to ask the charlatan inside.

“Let’s just go inside before someone see’s us.” He muttered, doing his best to ignore how his skin crawled as he grabbed onto the edge of the violet and gold curtain before stepping boldly inside.  Used to following him without question, his men fell automatically in place behind him, quickly fanning out once they crossed the threshold.

It was a good thing that they gave each other space because Guimel and Ryuun immediately began retching as the team was hit hard by a nearly impenetrable wall of incense.  The air was so thick with its cloying stench that it could actually be seen, drifting in a smoky haze across a fake velvet draped table. The two candles, which seemed to be the only light source for the tent flickered ominously, the flame struggling to find enough oxygen to remain lit.

“Why are my eyes burning?”  Miguel ground out, covering his mouth and nose with his hand, trying to fend off the caustic smoke.  “This can’t be safe!”  

The handsome slayer was hardly even exaggerating as he struggled not to cough.  Dilandau felt his own throat threaten to close up and each breath seared the sensitive lining of his nose, not to mention his lungs.  In moments he began to feel almost light headed and mentally noted that there was likely more than one narcotic blended into the mix. Great, now he was going to be stoned as well as spoon fed drivel.  Ugh, next time he was going to keep his damn mouth shut.  Clearly this was all Gatti’s fault.  He’d been the one to suggest bribing the men rather than simply delivering his usual threats should they fail to meet his expectations.  Next time he was just going to punch all of them before a mission.

“Brilliant choice there guys.”  Dilandau spared a quick glare at Shesta and Guimel, the former was currently slapping the latter’s back in an effort to restart his lungs. It didn’t seem to be working and Dilandau found himself almost hoping that the smallest slayer passed out so he’d have a reason to call this an attack and slaughter whoever was behind this foul tent.  

“I kind of like it.”  Shesta replied boldly in between backslaps, his large blue eyes flashing momentarily with defiance.  “It reminds me of home.”  To demonstrate, he drew in a deep breath with little difficulty, an action that not even Dilandau could claim himself being capable of.  Rather than falling to the floor choking, the petite blonde smiled fondly at his teammates.  “The dragonswort will help relax you and the murkbane opens up your inner eye.”

“Ugh, I’m breathing in a dragon’s warts?” Ryuun moaned.  “That’s utterly disgusting.  Shesta, you come from a disgusting village.”  The tall spectacled slayer waved his hand in front of his face in an attempt to disperse the smoke but his action was doomed to failure.  

“Don’t mock my village.”  Bright blue eyes narrowed slightly in warning as Shesta glared up at the much taller youth.  “We just follow the traditional ways.”

“Mud huts and worshipping rocks.  Yeah, I know.”  Ryuun shrugged, not looking at all impressed.  

Sighing softly in annoyance, the sound muffled somewhat by his own hand in front of his face, Dilandau fixed a glare at both of them.

“Ryuun, stop being an ass.  Shesta, your village does worship rocks.”  Crimson eyes focussed on the two arguing soldiers, quelling them both instantly.   Reaching into the small purse hanging from his belt, the captain pulled out several small coins and placed them solidly on the table.  The action seemed more like a defiant challenge than a simple transaction.  “Now, where the hell is this damned fortune teller? I want to get out of this tent before we breathe in enough of this smoke to be declared unfit for duty.”

“Ahhh, I’m right here young captain.”  A rusty voice croaked from what had previously appeared to be a shadowed yet empty section of the tent.  Guimel let out a rather high pitched squeak and there was the soft sound of several swords being drawn in too tight a space.

A stooped and heavily weathered old woman clad head to toe in brightly coloured fabrics stepped forward from the shadows, the many contrasting colours of her garments creating an almost hypnotic effect. Thick and gaudy jewelry glittered from her wrists, hands and face, the candle light winking off of the cheap stones, making her almost strobe with every movement.  This lips parted in a wide smile, displaying wooden teeth carved to replace those lost to age.  Within several of the fake teeth were small colourful glass beads which kept drawing the eye as she spoke.

Despite her great age, piercing blue eyes watched the young team from beneath drooping lids, sizing them up quickly with a wisdom gained from nearly a century of hard life.  Their excitement, nervousness, wariness and annoyance in the case of their pale leader was obvious to her as she beckoned for them to sit themselves on the six thin cushions gathered around the small table.  

“Just enough cushions for all of us!”  Shesta whispered loudly to Guimel who nodded, eyes wide with awe.

“It’s like she knew we’d be here!”  The fluffy haired slayer agreed avidly.  Dilandau flashed them both a dark glare before seating himself on the central cushion and fixing the old woman with a look of cold challenge.  Miguel and Gatti flanked him in their customary places while the other three arranged themselves as they saw fit.

“I, Momma Fortuna am honoured to be visited by such noble warriors as the famed Dagonslayers.”  As the old woman spoke, she knelt down with surprising grace at the only space not occupied by a cushion.  If anything, Guimel and Shesta’s eyes grew wider at her recognition.

“How did you know it was us?  Did the all-knowing Spirits tell you?”

“You do realize that there’s at least ten recruitment posters on this block alone with our faces on them.  She’d have to be blind to not know who we are.”  Crimson eyes rolled in exasperation before the captain leaned forward, insolently placing his elbows on the table and grinning at the woman.  It was far from a friendly smile and more than one officer had been cowed by it in the past.  “I’m sure she’s not trying to treat us like gullible rubes.  That would be rather insulting.”

Hardly phased by the implied threat, the old woman merely cackled softly and held her hands out over the table, the billowing sleeves of her robes drifting precariously close to the candles as she deftly scooped up the coins.

“Momma Fortuna does not need to bluff others with her skill.  She merely passes on that which the Spirits of the Void share with her.”

“Referring to herself in the third person…”  Gatti murmured under his breath.  “Yeah, this is going to go over well.”  Shesta discreetly elbowed him in the ribs and shot his superior a warning glare.  

“Be nice!”

Though everyone at the table had heard the comment, all chose to ignore it as the old woman began to weave hear hands around each other in a complicated pattern.  The smoke seemed to shift and move around her fingers, forming strange and exotic shapes which were difficult to follow or even fully recall, yet each of the Dragonslayers couldn’t help but feel somewhat disquieted by the sight.

“Now then, you have come to be with a question in your hearts and your minds have you not?”  The beads in her teeth winked colourfully as she grinned at the group, a large deck of ornate cards seeming to appear in her hands out of thin air. Shesta drew in a sharp breath, shocked at their appearance while the rest of the team remained more neutral in their reactions.

At her question, the two blondes shared a glance and identical wide grins.

“Will Lily, the washer girl go out on a date with me? Will we become legends?  Will I become a famous general one day?  Do you think Lord Dilandau likes me?  Why does Strategos Folken have a teardrop tattoo? Does he have any other tattoos?  Do catgirls lick themselves all over?  Why do dopplegangers smell?”  They both spoke over each other as they each blurted out their questions like overeager children.

For a moment the tent was silent as everyone stared at the duo, even the old woman appeared somewhat taken aback by their collective outburst.  Experience served her well however and she was the first to recover while the soldiers continued to gape, staring at the two blondes as if they’d suddenly grown extra heads.

“How about, you each ask one question and we shall see if the Spirits choose to answer?”  Her smile was indulgent as her long boney fingers began shuffling the cards. Six sets of eyes were drawn by the movement as the thick smoke coiled around her hands, offset by the intermittent winking of the reflected light on the cheap jewels.  Whether it was the smoke, the flickering lights, the ornate and intricate designs on the cards or simply a combination of all three, every one of the teenagers began to feel a heaviness gathering about them.  The shadows surrounding them seemed to darken and the soft shuffling sound of the cards became an almost ominous breathing to their ears.

“Will we become legends all across Gaea?” Guimel asked, his eyes bright and eager.

“Will we be victorious in our endeavors?” Shesta added, leaning forward and staring at the cards with a near worshipful light in his eyes.  

“I want to know if all of our dreams will come true.”  Ryuun asked, leaning back slightly, a faint smirk on his face as if he was convinced that he’d somehow managed to stump the old woman.

“Will Zaibach finally know peace?”  Gatti found himself asking, unable to resist the lure of the moment.

“Will we be together forever?”  Miguel questioned softly, keeping his question somewhat ambiguous despite shifting slightly so that his hand brushed his captain’s as the two of them shared a discreet glance.  Cheeks reddening slightly, the slayer allowed himself a smile before fixing his attention back on the cards.  His colour deepened when there was an answering brush of Dilandau’s fingers against his own.

“And you Captain Albatou?  What question would you ask the Spirits?”  Crimson eyes narrowed slightly, almost glowing beneath their pale silvery white lashes.

“I have no questions for you.”  Dilandau replied defiantly.  “Only one man in Zaibach can see the future clearly and that is Emperor Dornkirk.  I see no need to rely on second rate spirits and a deck of cards to learn my destiny. It will be as He foretells.”

“So be it.”    She murmured softly and plucked a card from the deck, placing it reverently in the center of the table.  Its face was a picture of a rustic village.  People wearing old fashioned clothing and archaic tools milled about, tending to their various duties.  Though the picture was simple in design, the bitterness and hopelessness was evident on each and every face.  A closer look revealed that the houses were crumbling even as the workers try to fix them, and the field in the background was barren.

“The Ancient Village.”  She explained, tracing her fingers reverently across the surface of the card.  “Pain haunts each and every one of you if you look deeply enough, but still you continue on despite adversity.  Fulfilling your duties mean more than the state of the world around you.”  

Several of the slayers shifted somewhat uncomfortably at the statement though Shesta raised his hand rather timidly.

“Um… I’ve actually had a pretty good life so far. I mean… sure the training is hard, but it’s worth it right?  Really, that’s the only suffering I’ve really had…Did I fail the reading?”  He chewed his lower lip nervously as he glanced at the others for encouragement.

“You’re fine Shesta.”  Dilandau stated firmly, giving the card a dismissive sneer.  “It’s just a safe assumption with anyone as young and successful as we are to say that something dark drives us forward. Besides, everyone has a sad story somewhere.”  The slender albino crossed his arms over his chest and met the old woman’s gaze. Another card was drawn and placed on the table.

“The Shining Sun.  This means-”

“Let me guess, that we’ve overcome our obstacles and have reached new heights, shining like beacons to those around us and drawing them to our light and warmth?”  Dilandau cut in, mimicking her raspy voice with surprising accuracy.  At his side, Miguel struggled not to snicker while Shesta and Guimel looked aghast at the open mocking.  Gatti and Ryuun exchanged looks of long suffering from across the table.

“Yes, it does imply that.”  The woman murmured tersely, her wrinkled lips thinning at the captain’s words.  “However it also warns of the risks of the illusions behind great power.    The closer you move towards the sun, the colder it gets, does it not?  The more power you gain, the less you will find you in fact have.  Do not be lured by its brilliance young ones.  Hubris has led to the fall of many gods.  After all, even the sun is not omnipotent.”  The third card was drawn and placed overtop the fiery orb.  This time, it was a painting of the Mystic Moon, looming large and blue as it practically shone on the card.

“The Mystic Moon often eclipses the sun remember. Never discount its power.”

“It’s little more than a pretty rock floating beyond our world.”  Dilandau scoffed, earning himself a narrow eyes glare from the woman.

“And yet our beloved Emperor hails from that world does he not?”  The pale captain jerked back slightly as if slapped and biting back his next acerbic comment, properly chastened.  “It is a world of great power, mystery and change.  Our world cannot exist without the Mystic Moon, nor can it exist without ours. There is power linking the two worlds and it shines brightly upon your destiny, obscuring your sun.”  She tapped the card sharply with a bony fingertip and smiled slightly as several of the Dragonslayers winced.

“Calamity.”  She stated as she drew the next one, placing it beside the Mystic Moon’s card.  On it was a great fire burning across the land. Tiny men and women raced in front of the blaze but seemed unaware that they were heading towards a cliff.

“Fire is always fun!”  Dilandau seemed to brighten at seeing the image, a wide smile gracing his lips.  Gatti coughed lightly, trying to cover up the sound and make it seem like a natural reaction to the smoke rather than his leader’s pyromania.

“None of your cards seem very happy.”  Shesta murmured, eyeing the stack warily as they continued to be quickly shuffled by the old woman’s hands.  “Are we all in trouble or something?”

“Of course not!”  The captain replied confidently.  “It’s all about interpretation.  She’s just trying to scare us and make you doubt yourselves. Did those Silver Army assholes put you up to this?  They did didn’t they?”

The old woman sighed softly and shook her head, not pausing in her continuous shuffling.

“The Spirits choose the cards and I merely tell you what I see in their depths.  How you choose to interpret my words is your choice.”  She glanced down at the towering wall of fire, her eyes growing distant.  “Great changes loom in your future.  Terrible and great.  You will be forever altered by your choices and the destiny they bring about.  Do not become trapped by what you perceive to be the threat, the true danger often lies beyond your sight.”

“Ugh, it’s like talking to Folken…”  Dilandau huffed loudly, leaning back away from the table insolently.  “All riddles and half truths.  Really it’s all just a show so you can look like you know far more than you do.  I know the trick and it’s boooring.”

“Sir… maybe she’s right, maybe we should be more careful…”  Shesta hedged cautiously, thinking of all the dangerous risks they’d taken in their rapid rise to fame.  More than one powerful figure counted themselves as an enemy of the Dragonslayer despite the team being public heroes.  There were far too many people who wanted nothing more than to see the prized team fall hard.

“Careful is for old men and cowards Shesta.” Dilandau growled softly in warning. “I have no use for either.”

“Understood sir.”

“What’s the next card?”  Gatti asked, choosing to proceed rather than risking the headstrong dragonslayer saying something to further annoy the captain.  Dilandau had been remarkably tolerant so far, he really didn’t want to push their luck any further than they had to.  Besides, it was clear that something was upsetting their leader despite his efforts to disguise it with snark.  Gatti knew the albino well enough by now to recognize all of the little nuances of his moods and the captain’s had gone rapidly downhill the instant seeing a fortune teller was mentioned.

“The Golden Chalice.  This represents worldly fortune.   Much like a chalice itself, you fortune can be full, or empty depending on the will of the fates.  Shall we see what the Spirits say of your future wealth?”  Shesta, Guimel and Ryuun nod their heads, unable to quite hide their avarice as the next card was drawn and placed atop it.

“Ah, the Throned King.”  The old woman murmured, sounding utterly delighted as she revealed the next card with a flourish which belied her age.  “When he looks upon the Golden Chalice, it speaks of great fortune ready to befall you.”  Unable to help themselves, the three teens leaned forward eagerly, their youthful eyes bright with delight as they drank in her every word.

               “I knew it!”  Guimel punched his fist into the air, his high voice filled with delight as he envisioned the riches and fame which were soon to be his.  “Didn’t I tell you that our luck was impeccable?”

               “It’s not luck.”  Gatti murmured softly in a deadpan voice, giving the cards a cold glare of suspicion. “It’s training for twelve hours a day. Do you honestly think that luck holds a candle to Lord Dilandau’s training regime?”

               “Luck doesn’t stop your weapon from breaking, or a stray rock from turning our ankles.”  The fluffy haired Dragonslayer countered boldly, earning himself a raised silvery white eyebrow from the captain himself.

“Really?”  He asked, his voice dropping to that warning purr which always seemed to precede some act of horrific violence.  “Is that what you’re going to tell me when I inspect your equipment tonight?  That you’re relying on luck to keep your weapon sound?”  

Guimel seemed to turn nearly as white as the albino and he shook his head violently enough that his curls bobbed with a life of their own.

“No sir!  Of course not sir!  My weapons are all in prime condition sir!”

Realizing that she was beginning to lose the attention of her audience, the old woman placed another card down into the pattern with an audible snap and a chortle of glee, drawing the attention back to her.

               “Ah!  The Sword Queen!  A great battle looms on the horizon for you all, when paired with the Throned King, it speaks of a glorious victory as well!”  She leaned forward and grinned at Dilandau widely, the beads glittering in her mouth as she stared at him with rheumy eyes.  “You should not doubt the power of my cards young one.  The fates are mine to read and such a power should be respected.”

               It took every ounce of self-control for Dilandau to keep from punching her in the face for daring to challenge him in front of his men. Instead, he offered her an utterly false lazy smile in response.  

               “I’m sure your cards are most impressive, but a child would be able to make these predictions.  We’re the Dragonslayers, the most elite unit in Copper Army and one of the prime squads in all of the Four Demon Armies.   Of course we’re going to win an upcoming battle.  We’ve never been defeated and we never will be.  It’s what we do and I would accept nothing less from my men.”  Pride coloured his voice as he spoke of his men and each of them squared their shoulders and raised their chins, buoyed by the rare words of open praise from their idol.

               “Let’s go, this fortune teller is a mockery of our Esteemed Emperor.  I see no reason to further indulge in this travesty… and the markings on your tent are a damn soup recipe woman!  Show some ambition when you’re stealing from a mystical language!”  With that, Dilandau rose gracefully to his feet, sneering down at the still seated woman and her tawdry cards.  

               “But… I want to see if I ever find a girlfriend!”  Guimel protested, unable to keep a plaintive whine from his voice.  

               “Try growing a little.”  Ryuun suggested helpfully, reaching over and ruffling the small slayers fluffy curls. “Right now you’ll likely only attract ewes.”

               “Was that a sheep joke?  That was a sheep joke wasn’t it!?  We’ve been over this!  I can’t do a thing about my hair!”

               “We should probably get Dallet and Viole before they start another brothel fight or catch something the medics can’t cure.”  Miguel muttered softly to the captain, favouring the woman with a dark look of his own, bitter at not having his own question answered.  Of course, he already knew the answer in his heart and in the end that was all that truly mattered to him.

               “Thank you for the fortunes!”  Shesta whispered softly to the woman, dropping an additional coin on her table before hurrying off to follow his team which had already exited through the curtains. “It was really interesting!”  He flashed her a wide grin as he ducked out, leaving the old woman alone with the flickering candles and cards.

               Her hands continued to absently shuffle the deck for another few moments before she drew two more cards, placing them next to each other.  For the first time, her eyes grew wide with shock and she sucked in breath loudly through her teeth.

               “The Rampant Dragon and the Draconian Rising…Such dark cards… such a cruel destiny.”  Sighing softly, she gently traced over the edge of the draconians wing, feeling a shudder of dread at the sight of the unluckiest combination she’d ever seen. It was a shame that such a fate would befall that sweet blond boy with the shining eyes.  However, as for the rest of the little murderers…  Her face hardened as she stared down at the cursed denizen of Atlantis.  “They will rush headlong into calamity, dragging all they know and love with them into death… hmph.  Foolish arrogant boys.  That’s what they get for mocking Momma Fortuna.”

  �a8MS

[nehasy]

Empty Fate

Escaflowne week 2017!!  Day 6 -Future (post tv series)

This is part of my Dragon in the Ashes universe on AO3, it’s a snippet taken from the first two week of the story, doesn’t really matter when in particular.  As an aside, Dilandau calls Gaddes “Fanelian” as an insult towards his mixed parentage.

Warning for thoughts of suicide and foul language

               “Do you ever think about the future?”  Gaddes asked as the two of them lay on the roof of the Crusade, staring up at the stars twinkling overhead, a half full bottle of wine between them. The night was so still and beautiful, the metal hull still warm from an afternoon of continuous sun.  Off to their left, they could hear the rest of the crew enjoying themselves at a nearby tavern while Allen no doubt was working late trying to sort through reports from the villages reeve.  

               “The future?  Are you drunk Fanelian?”  A pale hand reached out and snagged the bottle, bringing it to equally pale lips. Several long sips put an admirable dent in the vino before it was returned to its place.

               “No I’m not drunk you alcoholic brat.  I’m trying to have a normal conversation with you.  You know, using words that aren’t threats or screams for more bloodshed. You might not be familiar with the concept.”

               “Hmph, sounds boring.  Are you sure I can’t just push you over the side?”

               “The Boss would never forgive you.”

               “So that’s a point in its favour.  You’re not really selling me on the preservation of your life.  I mean seriously, you didn’t even bring glasses with you.  I hate drinking wine like a barbarian.”  Dilandau huffed softly, lacing his fingers behind his head as he stared up at the sky, idly tracing the patterns found in the stars, noting how the constellations were all in the wrong position compared to their placement when in Zaibach. It was yet another thing that didn’t fit properly since waking up to this living nightmare of a world gone wrong.

               “So are you going to answer my question?”  Gaddes prodded, glancing over to look at the pale slender youth laying next to him, marvelling for a moment at how he seemed to actually glow in the silvery moonlight.

               “I thought it was obvious that I was avoiding it.  You’re not exactly the brightest member of this crew are you?” Pale lips twisted into a smirk as crimson eyes shifted, focussing on the darker crewman, openly teasing and daring him to retaliate.

               “And you’re a shining bastion of Zaibach brilliance Mr. Burn it all to the ground and then torture the ashes for information?”

               “I never claimed to be subtle.  That was Folken’s thing.”  Dilandau snagged the wine bottle again, tipping it back and taking another long sip. “Fucking traitor.”  He grumbled softly to himself, debating for a moment on whether to put the bottle down or not.  In the end, he decided to keep holding it.  He was done sharing, even if Gaddes had been the one to bring it… and its predecessor.  

               Still, those dark grey eyes stared at him irritatingly, urging him to continue speaking.  As if sharing such stupid pointless thoughts might create some sort of bond between them, thereby preventing him from slitting their throats in their sleep. Astorians, they were so hung up on the idea of chivalry, honour and fair play.  They really had no understanding of how the world worked.  It was disgusting really to think that if it hadn’t been for the Madoushi and their sick experiments, he’d be numbered among them.

               A glance to the side showed him that the man was still staring expectantly like an abandoned puppy, hoping that sheer charisma and patheticness would allow him to get his way.  Showed what he knew.  If Dilandau could resist Shesta and his huge guileless blue eyes, he could ignore this man’s.

               “Hitomi used to tell the future.”  Gaddes continued, acting utterly oblivious to the albino’s reluctance along this conversational vein.  “She had these cards that she’d read.  I’ve never seen anyone as accurate as she was, though there was always the chance that she’d get a Vision.  Those were almost never good.”  Storm grey eyes glanced over in the direction of the Dragonslayer who was doing his best to ignore the sound of his voice.  

               “Granted, most of the time that was because of your crazy ass stomping around, burning cities to ash and slaughtering everything that moved.”

               “Yeah… good times.”  Dilandau allowed himself a soft chuckle.  “Whatever happened to the bitch?  Last I saw her, she was clinging to that demon king from Fanelia like a discount harlot.”

               “Firstly, don’t call her that.  She’s an amazing person.  Secondly, she wasn’t a harlot, discounted or otherwise… and how would you know what one looked like?”

               “I’m not nearly drunk enough to tell you that story.”

               “Fine, then I’ll keep talking.  Hitomi didn’t like to tell the future, she said that every time she did it, she was altering the fate of Gaea or something to that effect.  I suppose that’s why she left in the end.  She didn’t want to be like Dornkirk and force her own vision of Destiny on the world.  But, before all of that, she’d do readings for the crew.”

               Dilandau glanced over, curious despite himself.  He couldn’t fathom why anyone would ever turn away from that much power.  If he’d been able to alter the fate of the world around him, he’d have done so much with it… changed so much.  His beautiful Dragonslayers would have still been alive… Miguel would have still been at his side and that damn Van would have been crushed beneath the heel of his Alseides.

               Why was great power always given to those too cowardly and soft to make proper use of it?  This girl had shared the same power as the all-powerful Emperor but had run from it.  Folken had been one of the most trusted and powerful men in Zaibach, but he’d turned traitor, running to hide behind Astoria’s skirts because he couldn’t handle a few people dying in the name of greater glory. It was sickening really.  Even that bastard Van had chosen to put aside his demon armour and return to rebuilding that dirt ball of a country rather than use his power to take over the crippled Allied armies.  It was as if everyone had collectively lost their spines.

               “She said that I’d fall in love with the heart of the dragon.”  Gaddes continued on, oblivious to Dilandau’s darker turn of thought.  “That it would bestow upon me the greatest gift of in all of Gaea, but only after I’d lost it.”

               “Wow… and I thought The future is obscured by the shadow of a dragon was vague.  I’m assuming of course that you’re not sexually attracted to actual dragons.   Feel free not to correct me of this, because I share a cabin with you and I’d rather not know that you’re beating off to visions of big scaly lizards.”

               “Oh ha ha.  So says the guy who ran around with a homicidal harem.”

               “Insult my Dragonslayers and I’ll slit your throat Fanelian.”

               “Hey, you’re the one who mentioned that you knew some of them rather more than professionally.”

               “True, but that doesn’t mean you can mock them about it.”  Dilandau took another sip of his drink, emptying the bottle. Sighing softly in annoyance, he upended the bottle and shook it a few times, trying to get the last few drops before giving it up as a lost cause.   “I don’t suppose you brought a third bottle up with you?”

               It was an empty hope.  He could see that the crewman’s hands were now empty.  Worse, the man still looked like he wanted to talk.  Maybe rolling over the edge of the ship wasn’t such a bad way to go after all?  Death might be less irritating than this.  No, it was still too undignified a way for a warrior like him to die. Dammit.

               “So, other than your rather perverse destiny of sharing your bed with a fire breathing lizard, was there anything else in your future?  Spawnlings perhaps?  How about fame and fortune?”  He didn’t really care, but remembered that once Gatti had told him that these sorts of questions were important to ask when someone spoke about their future hopes and dreams.

               “Not really, I got all worked up over the whole loving a dragon thing and she got into a snit, packed up her cards and stomped out of the room.”

               “Hmph, what the hell did Allen ever see in her?”

               “Please, let’s not go there with the whole jealousy thing.”  Gaddes groaned, rubbing his temples.  “It’s creepy on more levels than I want to even think about.”

               “I’m not jealous.”

               “Course not.  So, will you tell me your future thoughts?”  The crewman pressed relentlessly, earning himself another soft grumble from the young captain followed by a dark glare.

               “Fine.  You want to hear about my future?  My future is likely going to involve being either beheaded by the Astorians if they ever find out I’m alive, I’m not sure I even want to know what Van would come up with to execute me for my crimes against Fanelia.  That is of course if the Madoushi don’t get to me first.  If that’s the case, I expect that I’ll be cut up into little pieces for them to study during which I may or may not be alive. On the other hand, my dear brother is only keeping me around in the faint hope of getting his precious Celena back and if that happens, then my future consists of me becoming some stupid vapid living doll who will be sold off to some fat old nobleman in order to make empty headed Astorian babies.”  Dilandau spat out viciously, his voice dripping with venom.

               “You don’t get it do you Fanelian?  I don’t have a future.  I wasn’t supposed to even exist.  I’m nothing but a lab experiment that slipped its leash.  All of this…”  He waved his hand around them both, his movements sharp and full of anger.  “This is temporary for me.  My world, my friends, my country and my glorious destiny are gone.  I have nothing.  No future, no real past… nothing.  So leave me alone and let me contemplate my nothingness in peace.”

               Gaddes was taken aback by the pain in those words as well as the cruel hard truths behind them.  It was impossible to imagine what the pale teenager was going through, how isolated he must feel despite the attempts of the crew to integrate him into their team.   Still, he knew that he couldn’t leave him alone, especially after tearing open so many obvious wounds in the kid’s heart.  Allen would never forgive him if the brat decided to take a final plunge over the side of the ship.

               “Build yourself a new life then.”  He murmured softly, his voice sounding almost apologetic.  “New life, new destiny, new future.”

               “All of Gaea wants my head on a pike Fanelian.”  Dilandau scoffed in dark amusement.  “I doubt that my explaining to them that I’m only wanting a fresh start will mollify all the people whose families I slaughtered.  More importantly, I don’t want to change.  I like fighting, I love hearing their screams as they run from my fire.  It’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.”

               Now it was Gaddes’ turn to look disgusted as he flashed the albino a heated glare, remembering the countless friends who’d fallen to this little monster during the war.  How his own home had burned while the little demon had laughed in delight.

               “One thing Hitomi said that stuck with all of us is that we all have the power within ourselves to make our own destinies.  We can choose our own fates, but how others see us can affect it as well.  If you only present yourself as a monster then that’s how people will see you.  The longer you keep it up, the more of a monster you’ll become, and soon there will be nothing left but that.”

               For a long moment there was nothing but heavy silence between them, broken only by the distant hooting of a hunting owl.

               “Good.”  Dilandau finally spoke, his voice soft and almost wistful in its tone.  “Once there’s nothing left of me but the monster, do you think I won’t hear them screaming for me to save them?”  For once, Gaddes didn’t have an answer.  

2

[nehasy]

Dog Day Afternoon

Escaflowne week day 6 -in motion/penultimate.  I chose to do In motion.  Sorry it’s 25 min late, I had a hell of a time coming up with something that would work.  Thanks to those who had to listen to me bitch about not having my intended picture work out.  ^_^

Language and violence warning.  Violence against animals... sorry.  but hey! Dragonslayers!

               “Soooo, are we having lunch?”  Shesta looked down at the strips of jerky he’d been handed, unsure as to what the proper protocol was.  Next to him, Guimel was hesitantly sniffing the strips of dried meat curiously while Miguel glanced over at Gatti, the two of them sharing befuddled shrugs.

               “The captain said that this was going to be cardio training.”  Ryuun murmured, glancing around and elbowing Dallet sharply in the ribs when he noticed the brunette nibbling on the jerky.

               “What? I’m hungry!”

               “There’s likely a reason we have it.”  The taller boy muttered, flashing Viole a similar glare as he caught the long haired dragonslayer in the act of taking a bite as well.  “Try to control yourselves and trust in our captain.  I’m sure he’ll explain everything.”

               Said captain was currently walking back towards them, a smug smile on his unnaturally pale face.  Those strange almost alien crimson eyes of his practically glowed with excitement. It set the newly formed Dragonslayer team on edge, no one was ever that excited about training.  Something was up, but none of them knew their new captain well enough to gauge what his plans might be.

               “Gentlemen,” The captain all but purred.  “Good morning.  I trust you all got a good night’s sleep because it’s time to get in shape.”  None of the new soldiers dared frown at the idea that the barely four hours of sleep they’d gotten could be counted as a decent sleep.  They’d spent hours going over rules and expectations for the team as well as memorizing a map for the Vione, the massive floating fortress they were now stationed on.  Granted, even if they’d been given a full night’s sleep, they were all far too excited to have taken advantage of it.  Still, that didn’t stop Guimel from yawning widely.

               “As Dragonslayers, I expect you to be in peak physical and mental shape. We are an elite unit within Copper Army and I intend to ensure that we are the most decorated unit in the Four Demon Army by years end.”  Those smoldering crimson eyes studied each youth in turn, seeming to peel away their skin and stare into their very souls.  None of them were able to meet his stare as one by one they all looked down at the ground, cowed by the powerful personality of this strange pale teenager.

“You all show great promise, but promise alone means nothing if you don’t mold it into reality.  Every morning rain or shine, I expect you all to be up and running at 0500 hours, no exceptions.  If you break your damn legs, I expect you to crawl.”  There was no doubt in any of their minds that their captain wasn’t exaggerating and it made several of them shiver slightly, wondering just what exactly they’d gotten themselves into.

               “When you can’t crawl any further, I expect your teammates to carry your lazy carcass until your exercises are finished.  There will be no complaining, no dawdling and I expect you all to give me everything you’ve got.  Showing me anything less than your absolute best will be met with brutal repercussions.  Am I making myself perfectly clear?”  His voice was sharp and demanding, his stance aggressive and those eyes of his were as sharp as swords as he paced in front of his six men, the first of his glorious unit.

               “Yes Sir!”  They all yelled out confidently in unison, staring straight ahead just as they’d done countless times at the Academy.  

               “Do you have any questions?”

               “No Sir!”  Was the loud reply from all but one.

               “Actually… Captain, I have a question.”  Shesta continued to stare forward as the albino’s head swivelled sharply in his direction and burning eyes narrowed.  He could actually feel the air shift as the captain approached him, radiating barely restrained violence.

               “What part of my perfectly clear explanation did you not understand Private?” There was a definite growl to the captain’s voice and Shesta swallowed audibly, half expecting to feel the sharp edge of steel slide between his ribs for his insolence.  Gamely continuing on despite the clear risk, the blond slayer took a deep breath and held up the hand still clutching the jerky strips.

               “I’m not sure why we have meat sir.”

               “Good question Private.”  The captain replied, his smirk practically audible as Shesta allowed himself to breathe once again.  “It’s for the dogs.”

               “Ah, understood-what?”  Looking up, he met the captain’s eyes, his own growing wider as he mentally repeated what had just been said.  Dogs!?

               “I’m a firm believer in proper motivation.”  Captain Albatou continued, walking down the length of their line, looking positively delighted at their new levels of tension.  “To ensure that you do in fact give me your best, I’m about to release six rather hungry and large dogs.  You will be expected to run towards the drop ship which is waiting for you ten miles due south of us.  In that ship you will find your weapons, water and medical supplies.  If you get there before the dogs you survive.  If you don’t…well then all of that promise you showed won’t add up to much.”

               As they all stared at him mute with shock, the captain grinned again, his eyes flashing dangerously as he raised a silvery white eyebrow in curiosity.

               “Is there a reason you’re all still standing here?  You have ten minutes before I release the dogs.  I would suggest you make the most of it. Oh, and don’t try throwing away the jerky, if you have even one less strip than you started with, you’re walking back to the Vione.”

               He was insane, that had to be it.  No normal person would sick hungry dogs on their own troops like that!! Unfortunately, that smile just grew wider and wider as the slayers all glanced at each other, hoping that this was a bluff.

               Ryuun was the first to swear softly under his breath and start running. Gatti and Guimel were quick to follow. Realizing that this was really honestly happening, Shesta followed hot on their heels and heard both Dallet and Viole coming up right behind him.

               “Is he crazy!?”  Dallet gasped out as he sprinted, his longer legs helping him catch up to Shesta, leaving poor Viole in the last position.  While the young blonde wanted to agree with Dallet that yes, Captain Albatou might very well be dangerously insane, he couldn’t risk the breath to answer. He needed it for running.  Ten miles… yes, he could run that without too much difficulty, but not with dogs after him!  They wouldn’t be able to pace themselves at all and even if by some miracle they did make it, then they had to fight for their lives? How was this supposed to help the Zaibach Empire rebuild the world?

               No dammit, he couldn’t start thinking like that!  They had to run or die, it was a very simple exercise when you got down to it.  In battle the enemy would show them no mercy, the fight wouldn’t stop just because they were winded.  They had to give it their all with every breath or they’d die.  This was the real world they were in, not the sheltered halls of the Academy with their padded mats, safety nets and blunted steel.  

               They were young, in good shape and had been provided with sufficient motivation, if they couldn’t manage this, then how could they be expected to keep going when the odds were against them?  

               His legs were already burning and his lungs ached as he pulled in great gulps of air, trying to keep his breathing steady to ensure that maximum oxygen reached his straining muscles.  In the distance, he heard the distant howl of dogs.

               “The bastard!”  Guimel gasped out loudly.  “He wasn’t kidding!  He’s gonna kill us!”  Being the smallest member of the group, he had the hardest time keeping up and sweat was already pouring off of him in steady streams but the curly haired blonde pushed himself forward relentlessly.  “When… when we get to the ship, I’m gonna beat the crap out of that freak!  Who the hell gave a psycho a command!?”

               “If… if you’ve got… the energy to… bitch, you’ve got it… to run!” Shesta panted out in warning, drawing abreast of the other boy.  

               Gritting his teeth, Guimel pushed himself forward, not wanting to fall behind where they could already hear Viole panting loudly, straining to catch up to the rest of the group.  Up ahead, Gatti and Miguel were fighting for the lead with Ryuun and Dallet close behind them.  They could see the dark speck in the distance that was the drop ship, but it didn’t seem to be getting any closer despite their best efforts.  Worse, another chorus of howls split the air.  Yeah, those dogs sounded hungry.

               Muscles strained, lungs heaved like bellows and little by little, the ground was eaten up beneath their feet but all of them knew that they weren’t going to be fast enough.  Even if they’d been on a nice smooth track like at the Academy they couldn’t have made the run in the time expected.  Here, out in the wastelands of southern Zaibach, they had to tear through bits of scrub brush and pick their way across stone beds and dried out creeks.

               By the time they figured they’d made it halfway to the ship, all of them were bleeding from various scratches and were covered in a fine layer of dirt and mud interspersed with sweat tracks.  Still, none of them dared slow down or stop despite their rapidly growing exhaustion.  The dogs were growing closer, their barks and howls sounded vicious and full of eager expectation.  While it was tempting to risk the long walk back to the ship by throwing away the cursed jerky, Shesta was pretty sure that by now, the animals were tracking the smell of their blood and fear.  They were nothing but prey now and why go for hunks of dried meat when they could have a nice fresh feast?

               There was a sharp cry from behind them and both Shesta and Guimel glanced over their shoulders to see Viole trip on a loose rock.  The long haired brunette fell hard despite throwing his hands out to catch himself and the boy rolled for several feet before coming to a stop.

               Sharing a quick glance with his friend, both of them spun around and raced back to their fallen comrade.  They knew the risks of stopping to help.  Yes, it would be safer to leave him behind and let his failure to keep his balance slow down their pursuers, but in the end, they were a team dammit, and they weren’t going to leave a man behind no matter the risk.

               “Viole’s down!”  Shesta called out to the others even as he helped the now bruised and battered boy get up to his feet.  Viole’s hands were a bloody mess and he had a cut on his forehead from grazing a rock, but he was still conscious despite gritting his teeth from the pain. Amazingly enough, the boy still quickly snatched up his jerky strips from the ground, counting them quickly.   “Can you walk?”  He asked urgently, glancing behind them, his blue eyes scanning for any hint of the approaching beasts.

               “Are you crazy?  I’ll bloody well run on broken legs if that’s what it calls for.”  Viole ground out, biting back a sigh of relief as he saw that he’d recovered all the strips of meat and earning an exhausted but impressed grin from Guimel.

               “That a boy.  Who knew you had balls under all that hair.”  The curly haired slayer grinned as the two blonds each took an arm to help support the other boy as they resumed their now much slower trek towards the ship.

               “I assure you, my balls are right where they should be.”  Viole grunted, limping slightly despite the help even though he refused to give voice to the pain he was enduring.

               Rocks clattered against each other loudly as the rest of the boys arrived, looking nervous and breathing hard.  Without a word, they surrounded their injured brother, protecting the three of them from attack as they continued forward.  Ryuun darted forward and grabbed a rocks which could fit comfortably in their hands and began passing them around.

               “Take these, keep Viole in the middle.  They’ll probably try to separate him from us so they can pull him down.” He murmured, glancing nervously behind them as the surrounding circle drew together a little tighter.

               “These are dogs, not wolves!”  Guimel spat out, earning odd looks from the rest of the group.  No one bothered to explain things to the slight youth, they were all too busy jogging forward and listening intently for an attack.  All the while, the howls grew louder and louder.

               Shesta knew the instant they found where Viole had fallen because the howls seemed to develop a new sense of urgency.  Everyone glanced at each other, their hands tightening on their rocks as they edged closer together, still moving forward as quickly as Viole could move.

               “I’m sorry guys.  I didn’t mean to get us eaten on our first day.”  The long haired brunette groaned in defeat, looking about ready to burst into tears of utter frustration.

               “We’re not going to die.”  Gatti stated in a tone which left no room for argument.  “We’re going to make it to that damn ship and we’re all going to do it together.  If we have to kill a few curs to do it, then we will because we’re not leaving you behind.”

               “Yeah, we’ll survive this so that Captain Albatou can find some other creative way to kill us.”  Guimel snarled loudly, glaring at his rock and likely envisioning smashing it against the head of a certain albino.  All Shesta could do was chuckle weakly in between breaths at the look on his friends face.  He was pretty sure it would take more than a rock and some anger management issues to take down their leader.  There was something in those strange red eyes that spoke of a life without compromises and without the allowance of even the slightest weakness.  Rather than drive him away, it made him want to see approval shine in their crimson depths.  He wanted to impress the strange youth and prove to him that he was just as capable.

               “You see the reason behind this right?”  Miguel spoke up, his pale grey eyes watching the brush covered hills off on their left, expecting an ambush at any moment.

               “Cause our new boss is a psychotic sadist?”  Guimel spat out angrily, earning a faint yet pained chuckle from Viole.  Miguel just shot him a dark glare, silencing the smaller youth.

               “No you moron.  We’re a new elite unit with no actual combat experience, but here we are with fancy armour, the best quarters on the ship and let’s not forget top of the line Alseides. They’re already talking about us at the Capitol like we’re some poster children for the new Empire.  Most soldiers would kill for our positions and I think our captain knows it.”  Shesta frowned slightly as he realized what exactly the other boy was saying.  Here he’d been thinking of outside threats they’d be facing, while Miguel was right, they could easily fall prey to their own allies if they ever dared to let their guard down.  The Zaibach military was ruthless in more than one regard.  

               “He’s making sure that we reach every one of the high expectations set for us.. We can’t afford to fail at anything. Too many people are watching.  We’re supposed to be the best of the best, but we can’t prove that unless we live eat and breathe that perfection.  Any slip up will make us into dog meat… rather literally.”

               Miguel’s words weren’t an esaggeration, they’d all seen the looks they’d gotten from the infantry soldiers when they’d set foot on the Vione. Hells, even the other pilots had glared at them resentfully, no doubt wishing they were in their positions.  A few warning glares from their captain had put the worst offenders their place quickly enough, but the Dragonslayers knew that they would have to be ready for anything if they wanted to survive long enough to live up to their hype.

               “Incoming!”  Dallet called out.  “Forty degrees, I’ve got a dog.”  Five other pairs of eyes shifted over to note the dark skulking shape moving low to the ground as it loped alongside them.  

               “Dammit, I’ve got one too, One hundred and thirty degrees.  They’re flanking us.”  Ryuum growled, readying his rock just in case the animals moved in.

               “Flanking us?  They can do that?”  Guimel looked shocked as only a kid born and raised in the city could.  “I mean seriously?  When did animals learn tactics?  I am NOT fighting mutant dogs dammit!”

               “Shut up and get ready for the rest of the pack.”  Gatti snapped as he looked around for the others.  There would of course be more than just two. Captain Albatou was the sort of guy who would want to make it a challenge for them, that meant one dog for each of them. “Can you go any faster Viole?”

               “Just watch me.”  The brunette stated, forcing his battered body to pick up speed despite the sharp pain in his sprained ankle.  With every step he promised himself a nice cold compress when they got to the shuttle, he just had to hurt for a little while longer.

               “You can do it.’  Shesta murmured in encouragement, then looked around as he heard a low and menacing growl erupt behind them.  A large dark brown dog appeared at the top of the hill they’d just passed, a slightly smaller russet furred beast stood next to it.  Both had their fangs bared in a rather threatening display and Shesta could feel the hunger radiating off of them.

               He’d grown up in a small village in the eastern edge of the country and had spent a lot of time around dogs.  He knew at a glance that these ones would have no problem attacking humans and his every instinct urged him to move faster.  The rather solid rock in his hand didn’t feel nearly impressive enough when compared to those fangs and jaws that could snap shut like steel traps.

               “Worst field trip ever… just saying.”  Viole ground out, managing a weak smile just as two more dogs approached from behind, surging out of the brush to snap at Dallet’s legs.  The tall slayer swore loudly and kicked at the closest cur, his armoured boot connecting soundly with its head, knocking the animals head to the side and causing it to stumble.  The other dog drew back slightly, suddenly wary of their prey.

               Gamely, the Dragonslayers continued forward, staying close together and watching all possible directions, ready for the next attack.  Miguel and Gatti snatched up a few more rocks, these ones small enough to hurl at the dogs should they draw too close.

               For another mile, the animals seemed to be content just to force them to run, moving in to snap at them whenever they seemed to slow down or stumble. Well placed stones sent them scurrying away quickly enough, but they always came back.  

               The next mile saw the two flanking canines drawing in closer, their bright pink tongues lolling out between sharp teeth.  The dark furred and russet dog seemed to have vanished again, but they knew that the two beasts were still there, likely pulling ahead, getting ready to force them to turn aside into an area which would favour four feet over two.

               “I see the ship!”  Ryuun called out eagerly, his pace quickening despite his exhaustion.  One of the dogs lunged at him, forcing the teenager to slam his rock hard against the beast’s muzzle.  Yelping loudly, the animal leaped back, shaking its head as a thin trail of red blood leaked from its snout.  

               As if sensing their anticipation, the dogs began to close in, growing bolder in their attacks.  Dallet was nipped sharply on the thigh and Gatti was bleeding from a bite on his arm, though at least he’d been the first to land a solid blow against his attacker. The dog in question was wobbling badly as it ran, one eye sealed shut as blood and a yellowish fluid leaked out of the beasts ear.

               “We’ve all seen the ship.”  Dallet snarled loudly at the other boy.  “Tell us how far!”

               “Five minutes at this pace.”  Ryuun replied as they all pushed themselves for a little bit more speed.  No one wanted to give up when their goal was so close. Even Viole grit his teeth and forced his injured foot to bear a little more of his weight, thankful that adrenaline was blocking the worst of his pain.

               They were going to make it!  This nightmare run was almost over!

               Two minutes from their goal, the two missing dogs appeared.  There was a clear path ahead of them, they could all see the drop ship shining like a beacon, drawing them inevitably towards it and its promised safety.  They only dropped their guard for a moment, but that moment was all it took for the trap to be sprung.  

               A swift russet furred blur darted out from beneath some bushes, snapping at Gatti’s legs.  He stumbled as he tried to avoid those deadly fangs and that’s when the huge brown beast hit him, sending them both sprawling to the ground.

               The Dragonslayer rolled with the impact, using his momentum to throw the dog off of him even as he swung his rock in a deadly arch.  Stone hit flesh and there was a sharp yelp of pain, but the rock had only bit into the beasts shoulder, the bulk of the impact absorbed by thick fur.  

               Sharp teeth snapped at the downed youth, aiming for his face this time. Gatti threw up a hand to block the bite but Miguel beat him to it, slamming his rock down on the animals head hard enough to send the beast sprawling on the ground.  A swift kick to the ribs with an armoured boot ensured that the animal wouldn’t be chasing them anytime soon.  Unfortunately, that left the rest of the pack to move in, and they did so as a single lethal unit.

               Teeth flashed as one dog bit at Dallet’s leg, catching his boot rather than flesh.  There was a horrible shriek as those sharp ivory knives scraped across armour, but it released the limb before Dallet could brain it with a rock.

               Furious, Ryuun kicked at the one Dallet had badly injured earlier, catching it across the snout and breaking several teeth before the creature stumbled back.  The kick left him open to a second dog which had slipped behind him, snapping at his legs, trying to find a place which wasn’t protected by armour.

               “Regroup!”  Gatti called out sharply.  “Don’t let them separate us!”

               “Easy for you to say!”  Ryuun snapped back, slamming his rock into the first dog again as it moved in the instant he’d gone after his new assailant.  “These things are everywhere!”

               “They’re just dogs dammit!”  Miguel yelled.  “We’re smarter than they are!”

               “Great!  You lecture them on Sungs thirty eight laws of battle and impress them with your superior knowledge!”  Guimel snapped, swinging his own rock at a dog which had taken advantage of the hole in their defense to try to take a bite out of Viole.

               “I mean, we need to keep moving forward!  There’s weapons at the drop ship, not to mention the ship itself will provide some cover so they can’t get behind us!”  Miguel shot back.  “We can’t fight them like this!”

               Shesta found himself agreeing with the other youth and he practically pulled Viole along, forcing the rest of the group to get moving again.  Their resumed momentum had the added bonus of forcing the dogs to reposition themselves, it wasn’t as easy to circle a moving target.  At least they were giving the Dragonslayers some space again; deciding that their prey was still too feisty to take down easily.  The one badly injured dog seemed to have fallen back, unable to keep up with the rest of the pack, but that damn big brown beast was still there, racing alongside them, snapping at their legs whenever it got the chance.

               As they crested the last hill, they saw the drop ship waiting for them, their swords lined up neatly on a camp table in front of it.  Standing next to said table was none other than their captain! The pale youth leaned against the hull of the leviship, looking utterly comfortable and relaxed despite the approaching soldiers and vicious dogs.  His sword still rested in its sheath on his hip and he appeared to be dozing of all things.

               At first Shesta wanted to know how the hell the other boy had gotten there before them, then he realized that he didn’t care.  What mattered were the weapons!  Just seeing them made him want to make a break for it, rush ahead from the group and grab his sword.  Common sense forced him to keep pace with his companions though.  Strength in numbers after all, and the dogs would easily cut him down before he got there.

               “Stick together.”  Miguel called out as they approached the ship.  “Keep Viole in the middle and get him against the ship’s hull.  Grab whatever sword is closest, we’ll sort out who belongs to which later!”  No one made comment about their captain lounging there without a care in the world.

               The instant Shesta felt steel in his hands, he grinned widely, fully aware of how the tables had turned.  Taking a moment to ensure that Viole was going to be safe, he spun around to face his enemies.

               “We’ve got our fangs now puppies.”  He growled, taking a moment to throw his rock at the nearest cur, knowing that it would dodge.  As it moved, he swung his sword, catching the beast along the ribs and opening up a deep wound down the length of its side.  The dog yelped loudly, its voice joined by those of its fellows as the Dragonslayers went on the offensive.

               Armed and more than ready for revenge, the teenagers stayed close together, using their neighbours to protect their flanks as they advanced on the pack. After such a long and drawn out run from hell, the final battle proved to be rather anticlimactic as the dogs proved to be unable to stand against swords in the hands of trained soldiers. Still, it was one of the most satisfying kills Shesta had ever experienced and when the huge brown beast fell with Guimel’s sword in its chest, the boys all let out a loud cheer of victory.

               Heaving a heavy sigh and turning around to make sure that Viole had made it through as unscathed as possible, Shesta was shocked to see the captain calmly tending to the boys foot as if a battle hadn’t taken place only a few feet away. Viole’s foot was already bandaged neatly and he was holding a cold pack, looking just as shocked by the developments as his teammates.

               “Good work.”  Captain Albatou stated as he straightened up, motioning for Viole to try to put a little weight on the injured foot.  “You made the distance, armed yourselves and didn’t leave your teammate behind.”  A faint smile tugged at his lips but swiftly vanished before any of them could be positive they saw it.  “Most importantly, you stuck together.  We’re a team, our strength is in our unity.”  

As he spoke looked at each of them, quickly sizing up their injuries as well as their state of exhaustion.

“We’re a single unit like that dog pack.  We’re going to fight like a pack as well, using coordinated attacks to confuse and draw out our prey.  When we get back to the Vione, you’re going to shower, change and eat.  After that, you’ll be going over the tactics both you and the wolves used before implementing them in sparring until dinner.”

Shesta wasn’t the only one to just stand there dumbstruck at the statement.  Now that his body was realizing that the time for fight and flight was over, his legs were shaking badly and he could now feel each and every one of his strained muscles. It had to be even worse for those who had bites and scratches.  To expect them to be able to spar after all of this was the height of sadism!

“How… how the hell did you get here that fast?” Guimel stammered out, forgetting in his shock to address their leader properly.  It was an omission he quickly learned to regret a fist shot out, catching the curly haired blond across the jaw and sending him sprawling down onto the bloody ground.

Before any of them could even think of reacting, Captain Albatou had his sword drawn and the point resting on Guimel’s throat.  Those crimson eyes of his were hard as glacial ice and Shesta had no doubt that he would kill the foolish Dragonslayer in an instant if he made the wrong move.

“You will address me with the proper respect at all times, is that clear?”  The albino hissed, those cruel eyes blazing and lovely face twisted into a fierce sneer. Laying there on the ground, too scared to move, Guimel squeaked out an assent.

“Yes sir Captain Albatou sir.”  He managed, swallowing nervously and doing his best to ignore how the point of the sword pricked at his throat.

“And for your information, I ran just the same as you all did.  Don’t think for a moment that I’m giving you any task that I’m not fully capable of doing myself.”  Those eyes fixed on every single one of them, daring them to step out of line.  “I expect that the next time we do this exercise, you’ll make it to the ship in half the time and less injured.  I also expect far less complaints or questioning of my sanity.  By the way Guimel, you’re on bathroom detail for the week.  Don’t ever doubt my sanity or my reasoning.  I’m in command because I’m the best, and so long as you follow me, I will shape you into the best as well.  If you don’t think you can handle that, tell me now and I’ll have you reassigned.”  

No one spoke up; they were too busy staring at their leader with their mouths agape.  He’d beaten them to the ship?  He wasn’t even winded or sweaty!  No one dared question his statement however since he’d clearly been close enough to have heard Guimel’s insulting comments.  Mostly, Shesta was impressed with the fact that the starving vicious dogs had chosen to leave the lone captain the hell alone and go after the group of six healthy soldiers.  Clearly the animals had known something they didn’t.

“Get on board, we’ll patch you all up and don’t you dare sheathe those blades until their clean.”  The pale youth motioned for them to board the ship, leaving the bodies of the dogs where they fell.  “And enjoy your jerky.”

oovZ,=�jF

[nehasy]

Dance in the Darkness

This is my contribution to Esca-week 2017  with the prompt Light.  The original got eaten by my computer so hopefully this works well seeing as how it was a rush job.  \^_^  After reading the posts about name and personalities, I had to make a vicious little Guimel.

Characters Shesta and Guimel.  Warning, there is a little gore and violence.

****

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

T.S. Elliot

                 He could still hear the odd scream cut through the joyous cries of the gathering crows.  It still sounded so strange, so wrong to hear the sounds of such abject misery and horror alongside the laughter and cheers of victory.  They’d never mentioned that at the Academy; or the stink of the battlefield, how it wasn’t just the comforting tang of crima metal and guymelef oil.  Instead, those smells were overpowered by the reek of ruptured stomachs and the stench of blood.  It made him feel dizzy with every tainted breath he drew in, the thick smoke burning at his lungs, punishing him for daring to continue living when so many had fallen.

               The remains of a small market surrounded him.  Bright banners and curtains which once danced in the gentle morning breeze were now trampled underfoot or smoldering sullenly where they lay on the ground.  Goods from the area were strewn around haphazardly, knocked free from their displays when the people had panicked.  

               They hadn’t gotten far.  Everywhere he looked, he saw signs of their final moments.  Drying splashes of crimson sprayed across a wall, a crumpled figure behind a crushed stall, neither easily recognizable anymore.  His haunted blue eyes quickly skirted over a small form which lay by the side of a building in a spreading pool of crimson while a larger hand reached out towards it… the rest of the body was missing and he couldn’t bring himself to try to locate it.

               A glimmer of light caught his eye as he slunk through the carnage hunting for those unlucky enough to have survived.  Approaching cautiously, Shesta bent down and picked up a small piece of crystal someone had carved into the shape of a flower.  The stem had broken off when it had fallen, but the petals had remained intact.  The clear stone sparkled rather prettily as its edges caught the few shafts of sunlight which managed to fight their way through the darkened pall of their artificial night.  

               He hadn’t expected to find such beauty in amongst this horror, but it caused him to clutch it to his heart for a moment, cupping it protectively in his hands.

On the other side of the village, he could hear someone’s guymelef still crashing around and knocking over buildings.  The sound of mechanized laughter echoed over the din.  He only paused long enough to ensure it wasn’t the captains.  Dimly he figured that it was most likely André and Renard, two second string Dragonslayers who had a certain penchant for breaking anything that wasn’t theirs.  They’d complained to Gatti in their pre battle briefing about having to hold the perimeter rather than getting to take part in the initial attack… as if it was some sort of game.  Lord Dilandau must be in a good mood if he was letting them keep playing like that after the battle

Another crash shook the ground around him and a thick cloud of dust rose up, further blotting out the sun.  Only a few thin rays still cut through the smoke and grime the attack had filled the air with.  One final act of defiance in an otherwise defeated village, and even that was slowly failing.

Unable to handle any more of the horror, Shesta ducked inside the nearest building, wanting to put some sort of barrier between himself and the rest of the world.  His breath was coming in a short sharp rhythm, making his head spin and he knew that if any of his team saw him in this moment, he’d be mocked mercilessly for his weakness.  

Closing his eyes, he wiped a leather gloved hand across his brow, feeling the grit of ash and dirt mixing with sweat.  It was odd that the filth actually made him feel cleaner.  It let him pretend that he’d fought these frightened villagers with honour, giving them a chance to defeat him rather than sitting safe and secure in his guymelef, cutting them down as they ran.  

Sighing loudly, he turned around to take in his surroundings and froze in horror.  Empty brown eyes stared up at him, the spark of life faded from their depths as the light from a single narrow sunbeam danced across her face.  The playfulness of the light was juxtaposed against the grizzly scene, creating a certain surreal quality which forced Shesta to stare.  In the shadows, he could pretend that it was mud spattered across her body and sprayed across her delicate face but that single shaft of light shattered his illusion.  So brilliant and crimson, it stood out in stark contrast to her once warm golden skin.

               Long colourful skirts had tangled around youthful legs which might have previously been lithe and shapely but now were twisted and broken.  The beam which had crushed them still rested on her, smoldering sullenly in the shadows of the fallen ruins.  He imagined that her simple clothes had originally been a garish combination of yellow and blue, the sun and sky caught in the folks of her skirts.  Now they were bathed in crimson blood and darkened ash, the joy sucked out of them.

               “She wasn’t any older than us.”  Shesta murmured softly as he stared down at the broken body, his hands clenched tightly around the crystal flower which still glittered defiantly in his fists, the sharp edges pressing into the leather of his gloves.

               “And now she never will be.”  A voice echoed from behind him, sounding almost jovial.  The blonde turned around to see Guimel sitting on the remains of the window sill.  A few rebellious beams of early morning sun managed to cut through the smoke, bathing him in gold and making the boy look like something from a Cesarion manuscript.  

               The boy was the perfect picture of fallen innocence.  A slender wide eyed youth, his golden curls shining beautifully even as he sat there, surrounded by death and destruction, drinking it all in with every breath.  Blood soaked the front of his armour and stained his right hand.  Even a few locks of that golden hair bore crimson streaks, making Shesta wonder how many souls his friend had cut down before dawn had even broken over the doomed village.  A smudge of ash marred Guimel’s left cheek and brow where he’d wiped away some sweat, unnoticed amongst the gore.

               Despite the macabre markings which he bore with obvious pride, the smaller boy was utterly relaxed as he leaned against the empty wooden frame, one leg tucked up against his chest, the other dangling below, waving idly back and forth.  The lazy pose was ruined by the canny look in his eyes as he studied the scene around them.

               “You’re trying to sympathise with them again aren’t you?”  Guimel’s voice was voice soft and deceptively gentle sounding.  Tearing his gaze away from the body, Shesta swallowed nervously, suddenly feeling like he’d been caught doing something against the rules.

               In the distance, another building was toppled, causing the feeding crows to screech loudly in anger.  The low rumble followed by the sounds of shattering wood and mortar made him tense as he struggled to not imagine how many bodies were now buried beneath their ruined home.

               “Stop moping and join the rest of us for some fun.  Lord Dilandau is going to behead the mayor!  You don’t want to miss it.”  He understood that this was war, that these were the enemies… but did Guimel have to sound so pleased by that?  Honestly, sometimes he was sure that the curly haired menace enjoyed senseless violence almost as much as their captain.

               “She wasn’t a warrior.”  He found himself saying instead, turning back to watch the way the fading sun shone on the tears which stained the girl’s cheek.  “She was just a kid… like us.”

               “We’re not kids.”  Guimel growled, his eyes suddenly losing their innocent light as they narrowed dangerously.  He hopped off the ledge and walked over to the body, crouching down to study her with cold indifference.  “And you keep forgetting that there are no innocents here.”

               “Then where’s her armour?  Her sword? She was just a kid hiding in her home Guimel.  Hiding from us.”

               “Fat lot of good it did her.” The shorter Dragonslayer snorted absently, toeing at the girls arm with his foot.  “She should have tried to fight rather than dying like a coward.”

               Suddenly furious, Shesta spun around, glaring at his friend, his hand tightening around the crystal flower, the pressure threatening to crush the precious carving.

               “You don’t get it do you!?”  He snarled into the curly haired youths face.  “She’s dead for what?  Is this the bright future we’re fighting for?  How is this slaughter supposed to bring peace to Gaea?  How is it supposed to show the world how beautiful and wonderful Zaibach is?  This was just slaughter!  We’re supposed to better than that!”

               “No, you don’t get it.”  Guimel shot back.  “They were smuggling weapons to those raiders who’ve been harassing the border.  Those same raiders who put that little hamlet in the hills to the torch last month.  Remember them?  Ryuun certainly does, he had family there!”  The two boys glared at each other angrily, neither of them willing to give ground.

               “There’s only one way to achieve perfect peace and that’s by exterminating all the vermin who don’t know how to play nice with their neighbours.  Cesario has been raiding Zaibach for centuries and here you are getting all teary eyed because we’re finally hitting them back!”

               “And what does that prove about us?  They hurt us, so we hurt them back, now they’re going to want vengeance and strike back!  We’re not changing anything Guimel, we’re just making the situation worse!”

               “Not really.”  Guimel smirked, the expression clearly copied from their captain.  “They’re dead.  What are they going to do-”  His jeers were cut short by the sharp sound of an open palm hitting his face.  

For a long moment, there was only silence. Both boys stared at each other in utter shock.  Guimel cupped his cheek while Shesta stared at his offending hand, unable to believe that he’d just struck his friend.

“Guimel…”  He stammered out.  “I‘m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“YOU HIT ME!”  Guimel shrieked and launched himself at Shesta.  While he might have been the smaller of the two, his ferocity was both well-known and dreaded by his team.  In seconds, he’d knocked the taller blonde over onto his back and was pummeling him wildly with his armoured fists.  It was only the hours of intense training that kept Shesta from cracking open his skull on the stone floor, but that was little relief as he was now subject to a vicious rain of attacks.  Each one landed hard enough to leave the promise of deep bruises in their wake.  

Refusing to fight back against his friend, all Shesta could do was try to curl up protectively, holding his arms in front of his face as he tried to keep the other boy from hitting anything vital.

“DON’T. YOU. EVER. HIT. ME!”  The curly haired boy continued in his fury, each word punctuated by a heavy blow, leaving Shesta gasping for air.  “Why do you care so much about them?  Why waste a single tear on these barbarians!?  They’re animals!  Nothing but filthy disgusting animals who need to be taught how to behave like humans or die!”  

Several more bruising strikes landed on Shesta’s defensive form before Guimel heaved a heavy sigh and sat back, straddling his friends hips.  The smaller slayer was trembling slightly from the adrenaline, but the wave of violence seemed to have passed as quickly as it had struck.

“Ugh, it’s no fun if you don’t fight back you know.” He huffed softly, rocking his weight back as Shesta hesitantly opened up an eye, making sure that the attack was well and truly over.

“I’m sorry, I’ll try to make my next beating more entertaining for you.”  He ground out, hating how rough his voice sounded.  Giving a little kick, he shoved the now calm Guimel off of his hips and just lay there, trying not to think about the fact that he’d bumped into the girl’s body during the attack and now blood was likely soaking into his hair.  

“I just don’t understand why you’re so upset over this.”  Guimel finally said, giving his hand a negligent wave around the destroyed room, and likely meaning the village as well.  “They defied us.  Anyone who defies the Empire deserves to die.”

“Stop parroting the Captain.”  Shesta grumbled softly as he forced his now aching body to look down at his hand which had been holding the flower.  A strange deep sadness filled him as he saw that the petals had been broken off and several had been crushed to a fine glistening powder.

“Why?”  Guimel shot back.  “He’s brilliant.”

“Lord Dilandau only cares about fighting.  He doesn’t care about our perfect destiny, or bringing peace to Gaea.  He’s said that often enough.”

“So?  Everyone has their reasons for fighting.  He just happens to be the best warrior in Zaibach.  You should be flattered to be in his unit rather than crying over the enemy.” All Shesta could do was shake his head at his friends words.  “There should be more to it than that… It’s not right.”

Sighing softly, Guimel ran his fingers across his brow then combed them through his hair, not realizing that he’d just smeared a dark smudge of black ash into the golden curls.  

“Can I tell you something that Miguel told me?”

“Sure… but I’m not really in the mood to have a battle statistic quoted at me.”  Shesta managed a grudging smile, earning himself a rather rude hand gesture shot in his direction.

“He said, Tales tell of great battles won solely on the virtues of hope and love. They are the great candle in the darkness, the warmth that keeps the terror away. But tales are little more than lies dressed up as truths and they rarely survive true conflict.  Don’t cling too tightly to the light of the candle.  It’s too easily snuffed out in the storm of war, leaving you with a deep fear of the darkness.  Instead, embrace the darkness and make it a part of yourself.  In the darkness, you have nothing to lose, nothing to fear and in that emptiness you can do what needs to be done.  In the darkness, you can be strong, you can be safe. Be one with it and it will protect you. Dance in the darkness and know no fear.”

“That’s … morbid.”  Shesta wrinkled his nose slightly and shook his head as he finally forced himself to sit up.  “Was he drinking when he said that?”

“No you moron.”  Guimel lightly smacked his arm.  “It means that you shouldn’t beat yourself up about the bad things that happen in war.  Stop trying to be the hero carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. War is hard.  It’s dark, gritty and cruel.  Accept it, do what you need to do and move on.  It’s the only way to be at peace with yourself.  If you don’t, you’ll tear yourself apart.”

“He couldn’t’ just say that?”

“Hey, you know how Miguel gets.”  Sighing heavily, Guimel stood up and turned around to offer Shesta a hand up.  “Come on, if we’re late Lord Dilandau will kick both our asses.”  

Nodding his head, Shesta accepted the proffered hand and pulled himself to his feet with a slight grunt of pain.  Taking a moment to straighten out his uniform, he then turned to look back down at the girl’s body.  The sun’s light was quickly becoming overwhelmed by the surrounding smoke, choking out the few remaining beams and bathing her body in shadows.  

Reaching down, he gently placed the crushed crystal flower on the ground next to her, watching for a moment as it sparkled playfully in the fading light.  Sadness welled up inside him again but he resolutely pushed it aside and faced his friend.

Together, they walked out the ruins of the door. Up above their heads, the thick smoke choked out the last of the suns light, reducing it to little more than a sullen orange disk drowning in the darkness they had brought.

isin��S �k

[nehasy]

That Which Doesn’t Kill You

Escaflowne Week 2017 Survival/Loss

This takes place right after Episode 11.  There’s mention of Dilandau/Miguel.  Some violence but nothing graphic.

                            Shesta stared at the remains of his guymelef and suddenly found himself leaning against the temple wall, unable to hold himself up anymore.  His Alseides had been cut in half… IN HALF!!!  How was that even possible?  What sort of monster was this Van Fanel guy anyway?

               His blue eyes grew wider with every passing second as he stared at the smoldering puddle of slag which had been the right side of his unit.  Hints of blue flame still flickered from the crima metal breaking down, consuming the hull of the once mighty machine.  I’d been in that thing… He thought to himself.  That was almost me burning up in there.  

               The whole attack was still a blur that he was struggling to sort out in his head.  He remembered being stealthed and stepping up to cut down the damn dragon for his captain. It had looked like some strange white dragon, the scrawny Fanelian king riding it like a horse.  His first thought had been how ridiculous the whole scenario had looked… then he’d seen the sword clutched in the dragons claws and realized that it had shifted its angle and was charging him at full speed.

               There hadn’t been time to try to defend, and even if he’d been able to get his sword up, the damn dragon’s momentum would have sent him flying.  All he’d been able to do in that last moment was twist to the side as he heard the hideous sound of metal shearing through metal. It had been pure chance that he’d released his controls and pulled himself to the side just as that giant blade had torn through his cockpit.  The hull had ruptured, liquid crima had been released, spraying everywhere and he’d felt that cold rush of fresh air .  For a moment, all he’d thought was how refreshing it was to feel the breeze after spending hours in the stifling and claustrophobic cockpit.  

Of course, he then belatedly realized that he shouldn’t be feeling a breeze at all in the closed space and that’s when the spilled liquid metal had ignited, sending a blast of scorching heat at his toppling form.

The shock of the blast and the resulting impact of his unit falling over without the cushion of liquid metal to protect his body had knocked him out.  He hadn’t seen the rest of the fight at all and had blearily crawled out of the remains of his unit with Gatti’s help.  

The other boy didn’t look like he’d fared much better.  He held himself stiffly, as if he’d pulled several muscles and there was blood on the corner of his mouth and a spreading bruise across his temple.  A quick glance over at the second in commands Alseides showed that the chest had been nearly caved in from an impact and there was a rather impressive guymelef shaped dent in the temple wall it rested against.

“T…the dragon?”  Shesta finally pried his eyes away from the burning remains to look at his friend with concern.  “Did we get it?”  It was a stupid question and he immediately regretted asking it, especially when he saw how Gatti’s jaw tightened, pulling the cut on his lip open once again.

“It flew back to Freid.”

“Oh…Lord Dilandau must be furious.”  He murmured and then winced again, fully expecting to feel a brutal slap at any moment for failing in their mission.  When no attack was forthcoming, nor was there any screaming, things being thrown around, or blasts of fire, the blonde slayer risked a cautious glance around him.  

It was hard to miss the crimson Alseides kneeling about fifty feet away from them.  It looked like it had fared just as badly as their own had.  The left arm was missing just above the elbow joint, the top of the cockpit was badly dented and partially caved in while the stealth mantle was shredded from the slide down the temple stairs.

Gasping loudly in horror, Shesta took a step towards it, terrified that the captain might be hurt, but Gatti quickly placed a firm hand on his shoulder, holding him in place.

“Don’t.”  He warned, his pale grey eyes holding onto Shesta’s azure blue.  There was so much pain in their depths that for a moment, the young blonde felt his world crumble to ash, thinking that something horrible had happened to his beloved leader.

“No…. NO!!”  He yelled out, tears blurring his vision as he slapped the taller boys hand away and ran towards the crimson guymelef.  “Lord Dilandau!”

“Dammit Shes!”  Gatti grabbed him again and yanked him back hard.  Both of them grunted in pain as the sudden movements aggravated their injuries.  “Don’t go near him.  He’s…. he’s not well right now.”  The tone of warning finally cut through Shesta’s panic and his terror turned to icy cold dread.  They all knew what those words of warning meant.  “Lord Dilandau was furious, killing mood furious.  Anyone who caught his attention risked being torn apart whether they deserved it or not.

“I’ve already notified the Vione that we need a transport ship sent to us.  It should be here within the hour.  We just need to sit tight and not do anything to set him off until then.”  

“Like what?  Trash our guymelefs?”  Shesta didn’t manage to bite his tongue fast enough, earning himself a sharp glare from the other Dragonslayer.  “Sorry.” He muttered softly.  “I’m still a little high strung from the fight.  Where is he?  Tell me he’s not still in his Alseides?”  The idea of their captain sitting there in his war machine stewing in a homicidal rage was pretty much a worst case scenario if he’d ever one.  Damaged or not, that thing was still lethal.

“No, he’s on the northern ledge, staring out at Freid.  He hasn’t moved since he pulled me out of my cockpit…he hasn’t even said anything.”

This time Shesta did manage to bite back his initial reaction which was to swear profusely.  Screaming and ranting Lord Dilandau was bad… terrifying in fact, but quiet Lord Dilandau was ten times worse.  Their captain was loud, brash and a shining white force of nature, but he was never ever quiet.  The few times he was, things died.  Lots of things.

“It’s… it’s not our fault.  He’s got to know that right?  That thing saw through our stealth cloaks!”  Gatti shook his head as Shesta babbled.

“Shesta…”

“I mean, how were we supposed to know that he could see us?  The Strategos never mentioned anything like that.  Isn’t he supposed to know these things?”

“Shesta”

“I swear that guy isn’t human.  The king I mean, not the Strategos.  I mean, how does he manage to survive our attacks?  We’re the best!  Lord Dilandau has to be right, the guy’s some sort of demon! And-”

“Shes!”  Gatti hissed sharply, grabbing the blonde by the shoulders and spinning him around. At first, Shesta wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be looking at.  It was just the temple, some rubble and… oh… ew… a pile of bloody goo that might have been meat-like in quality at one point in time.  

“What the… was… was that a person?  Did Lord Dila… oh… oh I’m gonna throw up.”  Ignoring his injuries or the way the world spun sickeningly around him, he quickly shoved Gatti away and ran in the opposite direction of the goo.  He only made it five steps before falling to his knees and dry heaving.  A thin line of foul smelling spittle leaked out of the corner of his mouth, but little else, leaving his stomach to cramp viciously.

“I… I think that was the doppleganger.” Gatti murmured as he walked up to stand beside Shesta.  “Whatever he said to Lord Dilandau set him off.  The dragon was just the final kick in the nuts.”

“That… that was a person?!”

“Doppleganger.  I’m still not sure that freak qualified as a person.”  Gatti growled softly.  For all his open-mindedness, he found that he shared his captain’s intense dislike for the strange race.

“Still… Strategos Folken is going to be furious. Remember what he said about Lord Dilandau murdering our allies?”  Gatti let out another sigh and rubbed his temples before wincing as he pressed on a bruise.

“Shesta, think about it…”  His head hurt too damn much to think.  He’d almost been turned into slag tonight!  The look on his face must have said as much because once again, Gatti’s jaw did that clenching thing.

“Miguel.”  The second in command said.  That was all that was needed for Shesta’s world to come to a crashing halt.  They’d come here to pick up Miguel after the Doppleganger had freed him… but the guy was now goop, and Miguel wasn’t in sight.  If he was here, Dilandau would be with him, likely either beating the crap out of him for allowing himself to get captured in the first place, or doing other things with him that Shesta would rather not think about right now.  

Neither of those seemed to be happening.  So we had a dead spy, no Miguel, and Dilandau furious enough to slaughter half the Vione for breathing too loudly.  It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened.

“The escape failed?”  He hedge cautiously, hoping for the best case scenario no matter how implausible.  He knew his captain well enough to know that if the initial stealthy rescue had failed, he’d be dragging the entire team into action, ready to storm Freids capital and burn it to the ground in order to get any of his men back.  That went doubly so for Miguel.  If Lord Dilandau was just standing there quietly raging…not saying a word…oh gods…

“No…”  He murmured softly, turning to stare at Gatti pleadingly.  “He… he’s fine right?  He’s just still locked away in there.  We can get him back… we’ll call in the others…”

The ash blonde slayer didn’t answer, instead he just lowered his head, blinking several times and swallowing loudly, doing his best to push down the overwhelming grief which tore him up inside. Miguel had been his partner since the Dragonslayers had formed.  They were roommates, best friends and fierce rivals.  The idea of not having the brunette’s infuriating presence at his side left a huge gaping wound in the second in command’s heart.  He didn’t want to even think about what the loss might mean to their captain.

While he made a show of keeping his distance from his men, the Dragonslayers all felt the strange bond the albino had with them. Never was it more obvious than with Miguel.  There was an intimacy between the two teenagers that no one else on the team could come close to touching and it went beyond the mere sharing of each other’s bunks.

Gatti knew his captain better than any of the other Dragonslayers, barring Miguel and he knew that this wasn’t something that Lord Dilandau was going to just walk away from.  It was going to get ugly.  Blood was going to be spilled in one form or another and he honestly had no idea how to prevent it from happening.

 Even when the transport ship arrived and loaded their damaged Guymelefs on board, their captain had simply walked onto the ship without comment and sat down in the cramped hangar, his head bowed and his elbows resting on his knees.  Gatti had quickly stepped forward to deal with the ships pilots while Shesta discreetlyensured that no one so much as approached their leader, granting him what privacy they could.

Neither of them had ever seen him like this, so passive and still.  It was unnerving and set them both on edge even more than they had been.

Still, it caught them both utterly unprepared when the instant the ship had docked, Dilandau had burst into motion.  He was on his feet and out the door before the docking clamps had even locked, breaking about half a dozen safety regulations in doing so.

Gatti and Shesta had taken one look at each other and bolted after him, already knowing that they were going to be too late.

               Strategos Folken was waiting for them in the hangar, standing there, stoic as always and wrapped in his long ominous looking Madoushi cloak. His cold ochre eyes watched the approaching embodiment of wrath without a trace of emotion in their depths.  Even when Dilandau drew his sword, the man didn’t so much as flinch.  Then again, he didn’t need to.  The Strategos had come flanked by four heavily armed guards who had raised hand crossbows the instant the young captain had begun to approach.  

He knew! Was all Gatti had time to realize before chaos descended on the Vione.  Someone yelled out an alarm, there were the heavy sounds of many armoured feet approaching and somewhere along the line, both he and Shesta had drawn their swords, ready to protect their captain no matter the cost.

“YOU DID THIS!”  Dilandau shrieked.  His voice was so full of unbridled rage that it barely sounded human as it bounced off the walls of the hanger.  All around them, technicians and deck hands scrambled to get out of the way.  Even the surrounding guards hesitated, all too well acquainted with the albino captain’s vicious temper to want to close the distance between them.  Only the four guards around Lord Folken held steady, clearly well prepared for the teenager’s wrath.  .

“YOU MURDERED HIM!”  Dilandau screamed again as he surged forward with a rather surprising burst of speed, closing the distance between them as he aimed his sword for the throat of the pale Strategos.  The guards fired their crossbows, the bolts all hitting the berserk youth in the upper chest.  Though he stumbled slightly from the impacts, they did little to slow his momentum.

Instead of reloading, the guards simply dropped the weapons and raised their other arms, revealing a second set of crossbows which they also wasted no time in firing.  

“I’M GOING TO TEAR YOU APART AND CRUSH YOUR TRAITOROUS HEART UNDER MY BOOTHEEL!”  Dilandau screamed, visibly slowing down and stumbling as whatever the darts had been coated in began to work their magic.  

He was nearly within range of the Strategos and the guards drew their swords… no, not swords… they were armed with metal batons? Gatti felt his confusion rise up along with his own rage and knew that Shesta was likely feeling much the same as they raced towards the drama unfolding around them.

“Lord Dilandau!”  He yelled to his captain, hoping to snap him out of his killing rage and call him back.  If Dilandau heard him, he gave no sign and slashed at the Strategos viciously, only to have the attack knocked aside by one of the guards.

The four men descended on the already visibly weakened and drugged teenager and the two Dragonslayers watched helplessly as they saw Dilandau’s sword knocked from his hand by a vicious strike of a baton while two others attacked his legs, trying to knock him over.

Desperate to reach their leader, Gatti suddenly found their way blocked by the hangar guards who clustered together to form a living barrier between themselves and their captain.    Undaunted, the two Dragonslayers didn’t even pause as they leapt forward to attack. In the back of their minds, they knew they would be court martialed for this, but it didn’t matter.  Nothing mattered if Lord Folken killed their leader!

“You sent him to murder Miguel!”  They heard Dilandau yell, his voice much weaker than before though it still carried over the clashing of swords.  There was a sharp crack of impact from behind the crowd of guards followed by the sound of a scream… it wasn’t the captains voice.  “I’ll kill anyone who touches my Slayers!”  The scream rose in pitch before falling suddenly silent amidst the growing sounds of fighting.

“Folken!  I’ll kill you for this!  I’ll slit your fuc-”  Dilandau’s voice cut off mid threat and the two Dragonslayers surged forward with renewed vigor, determined to get to their beloved leader even if they had to kill everyone on board to do so.

“If you value your captain’s life you both will desist immediately!”  The cold clear voice of the Strategos rang out over the din of battle.  Everyone immediately froze, too conditioned by military life to be able to easily cast aside the direct order of a surperior.

“I want to see Captain Albatou!”  Gatti yelled back boldly, glaring hatefully at the guards standing between himself and his far too silent leader.  He knew damn well that he was in no position to make demands, but he couldn’t back down.  They’d already lost so much today, they couldn’t lose Lord Dilandau as well.

“At ease men.”  The Strategos’ voice was still just as calm and authoritative as always, not sounding the slightest bit fazed by the attempt on his life.  The men on the other hand didn’t appear nearly as confident, though they reluctantly obeyed, opening up a path between the Dragonslayers and their captain who lay unconscious on the floor of the hangar.  Two of Lord Folken’s guards were binding his wrists tightly behind his back.  The other two lay on the floor a short distance away, unmoving.  

The tall Strategos stood over it all, splitting his attention between the downed captain and the two Dragonslayers, studying their reactions and analyzing all probable outcomes with his usual cold demeanor.

Giving his blade a sharp flick to remove some of the blood which now stained its length, Gatti sheathed his weapon before approaching, knowing that to do otherwise would only make a bad situation even worse.  The Strategos had the captain after all, which meant he was now calling the shots.

“You knew about this?”  Gatti couldn’t help but ask, his voice low and dangerous but still very carefully controlled.  To his surprise, Folken actually looked at him, those cold eyes narrowing slightly for not before the slayer saw a hint of… sadness in their depths?

“We all have orders we must follow.”  The tall man stated solemnly.  “We are in the hands of destiny and must serve its will.” Next to him, he could feel Shesta tensing, ready to attack as the guards holding Dilandau roughly hauled him up to his feet.  The pale youth was unconscious, whether from the drugged darts or a physical attack was unclear, but both teenagers were ready to leap forward until Folken held out a hand.

“He drew his sword on a superior officer.   That’s a treasonous offense, punishable by death.  Both you and he know this.”  The man cautioned, making both Dragonslayers hearts skip several beats.  “However.”  He continued smoothly before either of them could decide to commit to one last desperate charge against him.  “In light of his grief over losing a… teammate.  I will lessen his punishement.”

Gatti felt his jaw tense again as he noticed the pause in the man’s speech.  Was that what this was about?  Did Lord Folken have Miguel killed because of his relationship with Lord Dilandau? That didn’t make any sense!  This wasn’t Astoria!  Soldiers were expected to have relations with each other, so long as duty always came first, no one cared.  

“To what?”  He found himself asking even as his mind quickly sorted through various possible scenarios to explain what was happening.  It wasn’t jealousy.  Dilandau had once shared his suspicions to Gatti that the Strategos was in fact some sort of eunuch, admitting (after several glasses of wine) to have attempted to seduce the man shortly after being transferred to the Vione.  It had apparently failed rather spectacularly and had become the basis of several private jokes between the two teenagers.  

Being with Miguel certainly didn’t affect the captains performance, in fact, the brunette had a certain calming influence on their leader and was often the only one able to deal with him when he was in one of his “moods”.  So why kill him?

“Captain Albatou will be confined in the brig until he calms down.”  For an instant, Gatti was positive he saw the Strategos’ mask of indifference slip. There was a flash of deep sorrow and resignation, there and gone in the blink of an eye.  What in the name of the gods of Gaea was going on?

“He will remain in solitary confinement, not to be approached or have any interaction with anyone until I see fit to release him.  You will handle his duties until he is once again fit to lead.”

“Gatti…”  Shesta murmured softly, sounding horrified by the punishment.  Both Dragonslayers knew of their captain’s deep aversion to being left alone.  After losing Miguel… this would be nothing short of torture and the damn Strategos knew it!”

As if sensing their recalcitrance, Folken’s eyes narrowed dangerously in warning.

“The other option is that you three face a court martial.  He will be executed and you both will be dishonourably discharged and sent to the mines. The Dragonslayers will be disbanded and placed in different units thru ought the army.  The choice is yours Lieutenant.”  

“You can’t just throw him in a hole like that sir!” Gatti snarled, desperately seeking a better option but finding none.  At least this way, Dilandau would be alive.  Likely deeply emotionally scarred, but alive nonetheless.

“I will personally see to his needs and ensure that he is fit for duty upon release.”  Lord Folken allowed, his voice cold and hard with warning not to push him further.  “There will also be no mention of this incident from anyone.”  His icy eyes now surveyed those gathered on the hangar deck. “Any whispers of this incident will be dealt with harshly.  Lieutenant, I leave you to discuss with the rest of your squad what has transpired. It would be best to advise them that your captain is taking a short leave of absence to deal with his grief, but that he assures them that he will be returning for duty soon.”

Hating himself, and hating the Strategos more, Gatti squared his shoulders and gave a crisp nod of his head in acknowledgement. He could feel Shesta’s disbelieving stare fixed on him, silently begging him to fight for their captain, to deny this vile arrangement.  Every bit of it was disgusting, and his instincts screamed that there was far more going on beneath the surface than he realized, but his only options were their captains death, or torture.  They’d already lost one member of the team today; they couldn’t afford to lose another, especially its most vital member.

I’m watching you Strategos. He warned silently.  I know you’re up to something.  The instant I find out what it is, you’re a dead man.

“Come on Shesta.”  He murmured softly, hating himself as he did so.  “We need to brief the team.”