Chapter Text
Shouko wakes up with no memory, but a desire to save people. Her client’s people.
Tsukasa smiles just a little.
He knows they aren’t Shoutaro and Philip. They do not have to be his friends, but how strange to have met their World of Heroes selves first.
And her reaction - he’d left to investigate the town himself and come back to Marlowe trying to rip his throat out.
That was different. That was strange. That was another sign he was right—
So he went back to investigating.
(He thinks he heard someone wonder if he hadn’t left already.)
He found a monster, and a laughing man clearly in charge of it, and he is not so inexperienced as to struggle when figuring out what a monstrous not-Rider looks like.
He didn’t predict the side effects.
Sayo had dragged him away the day before.
“Don’t bother her right now,” she’d said. “They’re both missing their partners, don’t you get it?”
And he did. He really did.
“More than you,” Tsukasa replied.
Sayo had just… stared at him. He quickly remembered that he never pushed her, never was ruthless or cruel the way he doesn’t know how to stop being, even to Daiki who he loved alongside her back when he was Great Leader.
“…I guess not,” she’d said. “But I do know what it’s like to lose someone to Dai-Shocker. And you’ve been back and fourth all day that most of the time you don’t feel like yourself.”
Tsukasa hmmed.
“You’re right,” he’d said. “But I’m not sure…”
They’re not enough . But that’s how he always felt, and even broken heroes had a habit of proving him wrong. And the thought felt alien.
“You sound like you did back then,” Sayo said. Tsukasa froze.
No .
“Fine,” he’d said. “I suppose I was assigned the role of detective.”
He’s not stupid. He remembers a man with a white suit that made Hidari Shoutaro cry with relief.
Sayo is the one that questioned the scientist Tsukasa had just fought. She came back with information, and Tsukasa decided to trust it. She isn’t like him. She had her favorite worlds that she passed by often and on purpose. Tsukasa goes where the worlds demand him, solves a problem, then moves on. It shouldn’t be taking weeks and two trips and two stets of heroes, the way this one is. The way Natsumi’s is.
And it scares him.
Still, he follows the pair that seem to have finally talked to each other.
He helps them get the people out. Shouko talks to me girl and promises her mother is waiting, and very sorry. Now that is like his Shoutaro, isn’t it?
“How do you know?” The girl asks. Shouko smiles, softly. She doesn’t remember, Tsukasa can tell. He knows the face of not-memory.
“I just do,” she says. “At least go home to say goodbye.”
Marlowe smiles at her so softly.
They move in sync. No more regret or separation.
Tsukasa thinks he finally likes these two.
They trash the place. At Marlowe’s insistence they shoot it and crush it until the whole building goes up in flame, and then a man storms out.
“You!” He screams, eyes narrowing in on Tsukasa. “This world was going to be mine!”
Marlowe scoffs. A green hand going to W’s hip.
“Oh, please,” she says. “My family was going to drop you like hot garbage if you actually caught me.”
“Wrong!” He says. “I can keep going… Great Leader will forgive me, and so will Museum! All I need is my skills, not my research!”
“You need a lot more than that,” Tsukasa says. The man turns back to him. “No matter how clever, how skilled and determined is, nothing can overcome the bonds between people. And no stronger a bond is there than to entwine your souls together.”
W looks back at him. Tsukasa grins inside, and some seems to make it to his face.
“Oh, what do you know?” The man asks.
Tsukasa grins.
“Just a passing through Kamen Rider,” he says. “Remember that!”
For those wondering, the crazed man’s Gaia Memory is ‘Fusion’.”
It’s easy to beat.
Overlooking from afar, Marlowe and Shouko talk and agree to join the resistance Akiko has started. Tsukasa realizes he hasn’t taken a photo except a quick snap of Marlowe’s angry face.
“So your job is over?” Sayo asks. Tsukasa raises a book of cards. Shoutaro and Philip had only given him the AttackRide, but now he has the forms to match.
“It seems so,” he says. “Are you staying again?”
Sayo nods.
“I think so,” she says. “Akiko knows how it feels to run from her parents, and… I think I’m starting to understand. Having a partner. And being apart.”
Tsukasa raises an eyebrow.
“Queen?”
“…Maybe,” Sayo says. “But she has her own world to protect.”
Tsukasa smiles.
“You’ve grown up, Sayo,” he says. “I’m proud.”
“Thank you,” Sayo says. “But I do have… one request of you.”
“Of course,” Tsukasa says. Sayo hmms.
“Are you sure?” She asks. “This feels like something we can’t take back.”
“We have the same pull, Sayo,” Tsukasa says. Though he prays to god hers is weaker than his. Some days it feels like the Worlds want to swallow his spirit whole.
Sayo looks away.
“Maybe,” she says. “…I think we need to go back, to the wreckage. I… don’t like that man mentioning a new Great Leader .”
A dread like nothing else shakes Tsukasa’s bones.
He nods anyway.
The moment they get there, the hear a scream. A crack, and then a cacophony.
Silence.
Tsukasa runs towards the noise, a hand in front of Sayo when they reach it.
He freezes.
The body of that scientist lays mangled, and standing over it is a familiar leather jacket. Familiar hair.
Sayo gasps.
“Onii… Chan…”
The figure turns. It’s like looking in a mirror. Undeniable. Irrefutable.
Tsukasa thinks about his conversation with Hina, and he thinks about how Yuusuke cowered from him. Said he saw something impossible.
The mirror smiles softly at Sayo.
“Sorry you had to see this, Sayo,” he says with Tsukasa’s face. Tsukasa’s voice.
A worm? But no, Tsukasa can practically smell them, by now.
The mirror smirks, turns to Tsukasa.
“Enjoy your victory while it lasts, Decade,” he says.
As a Veil comes down on the mirror, a monster seems to replace Great Leader’s silhouette.
Neither he nor Sayo move for long moments that might be no time at all. She moves first.
“Onii-Chan,” Sayo says. “What was that?”
“…I don’t know,” Tsukasa says.
The dread in his stomach, his mind, and even what’s left of his soul grows all the heavier.
…He needs to go home.
“Then… was it you?” Sayo asks. “These past two days… was it you?”
“...I don’t know.”
(Like the coward he was when he was that mirror image, he leaves Sayo behind once more.)