Chapter Text
Yuusuke blinks. Blinks again. Stares at Tsukasa in front of him, turned away.
The last thing he remembers is jumping in front of that attack aimed at Tsukasa. It seems his gamble played off, since they’re both here. And yet…
“Tsukasa,” he says, pulling himself to sitting. “Why am I on the ground?”
“I defeated you,” Tsukasa says. “Be grateful because I gave you your mind back, but don’t think that means I won’t or can’t kill you, next we meet.”
A wind blows, and Yuusuke shivers as he forces himself to standing.
There’s something… wrong and horrifying in the way Tsukasa speaks; it just doesn’t sound like him.
An edge that shouldn’t be there. A threat unlike what they had faced in Tsukasa’s world because there he had been smirking, aloof. This is a shattered, unflinching kind of evil to witness, and Yuusuke finds himself terrified for what he’d see in Tsukasa’s eyes.
Fight him , a voice whispers. You want to fight him. He needs to die.
“What happened to you?” He asks. “Daiki? Natsumi? Did we finally defeat Dai-Shocker?”
Tsukasa finally turns to him. His face is perfectly blank.
“I am the destroyer of worlds,” he says. “I will never be anything more or less, and I will destroy all Riders.”
He locks eyes with Yuusuke for a long moment without blinking until Yuusuke finds himself looking away.
“I promised to fight with you,” Yuusuke says. “But I won’t let you hurt people.”
“I know.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because I can,” Tsukasa says, simply, and it’s said in a way where they both know that it’s not a boast but a fact. It sends another shiver through Yuusuke, which he ignores.
Kamen Ride: D-D-D-Decade
Final Attack Ride: D-D-D-Decade!
In seconds, Tsukasa stand before Yuusuke as Decade, shooting behind him, there’s the sound of an explosion and two screams.
“Stronger,” Tsukasa says. “And Chalice. I will destroy you all. I will destroy… everything.”
The most chilling part of all of this is how calmly Tsukasa says it. Every villain Yuusuke has faced with him had boasted . Tsukasa speaks instead with his usual casual acceptance of reality, even though that reality is cold blooded murder.
It’s horrifying. The most horrifying enemy he has ever faced, and it’s Tsukasa .
And so Yuusuke stares him down.
(He still finds himself the first to look away.)
“So be it,” he says, and he transforms in turn.
Yuusuke falls back, his transformation dropping, and he doesn’t bother to look up. Tsukasa doesn’t move to attack again either, however.
He wonders, does Tsukasa really want this? He hadn’t been going all out on him, and his helmet looked… wrong, Yuusuke can’t tell how. Maybe he’s being forced?
He looks up. He wants to believe in Tsukasa, he has when Tsukasa was blatantly doing selfish or horrible things, but those had been death screams behind him.
“You can stop, Tsukasa,” he says. “Right? You don’t have to destroy.”
Tsukasa is silent.
Yuusuke locks eyes with him, and this time it is Tsukasa who first looks away.
Tsukasa who runs away.
(It’s enough to know he is not being forced at all.)
The other Riders explain some, when they find him. That this is Decade’s fate, has always been Decade’s fate. He collapsed the worlds around an alternate Kuuga, Agito, Ryuki, Faiz, Blade, Hibiki, Kabuto, Den-O, and Kiva, as well as their allies, when he started to lose. Back when he had been leader of Dai-Shocker.
They’d found him amnesiac and tried to use him.
Yuusuke gets angry at that.
But… then he thinks about the way Tsukasa had looked at him.
For now, Decade is the bigger threat.
He keeps meaning to ask about Natsumi, Eijiro, Daiki, even Kivala! But he can’t make himself do it, because Tsukasa had made clear that he would kill Yuusuke, so of course he’d be willing to kill them, too.
Or maybe their deaths are why Tsukasa is like this now.
(He doesn’t fully let himself hope that they’re alive, but he does find himself imagining it, regardless. Natsumi and Eijiro are back at the photo studio. Daiki ran somewhere safe, maybe he’s even with them.)
He definitely doesn’t let himself search.
“Your alternate chose not to fight, you know,” says the alternate Faiz… Inui Takumi(?). “He used some power he was afraid of to beat back Decade, and then he left.”
“Is that why I’m still here?” Yuusuke asks. Inui shrugs.
“How could I know?” He asks. “Still, I gotta say, I couldn’t do it. If I was as close to Decade as you, and I had to fight him, I’d still see… him.”
And Yuusuke thinks about Tsukasa at home, at the photo studio, sharing a real smile with him.
And then he thinks about the blank expression on his face when he’d said he would destroy all Riders.
He shakes his head.
“I still love Tsukasa,” he says. “But the Tsukasa I knew would hate who he is now, so I’ll fight until either I stop him and save the worlds or he kills me.”
Inui huffs.
“Too many people die in our fights,” he says, and he’s looking down at his own hands. Yuusuke smiles, grimly.
“Someone has to protect people,” he says. “Even if I’m just fighting for the memory of a smile, now.”
Inui hmms, and says no more.
(Tsukasa kills him two days later.)
He keeps using the form. The one that comes from himself, Ultimate, that had made his alternate stop. Tsukasa avoids his attacks, doesn’t quite fight, and maybe there is something of Tsukasa left in him, but there are other people at stake, leftover monsters terrorizing civilians in this hybrid, ever-shifting world.
He misses Tsukasa, but Tsukasa is no longer a good person, and there are other smiles at stake.
A part of him misses it, but he has to keep going.
Skyrider, Super-1, and the alternate Kabuto, Tendou, don’t come back from their patrol.
Five Riders, less than twenty RioTroopers.
He wonders how, wonders when, Wonders if this will ever end.
He senses Tsukasa nearby.
Fight.
The time to end this, at least, will be soon.