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Aruto doesn’t cry when he grieves. Since childhood, all that he had to give where full-bodied screams.
Rage and grief and repression wrapped in a bundle. Held back by a smile, by the jokes everyone tells him aren’t funny. Puns are too simple. Too easy.
People mock him because he is Rick but doesn’t look it. Because he’s a comedian who isn’t funny. A CEO who lost the company to a madman. A Kamen Rider, a superhero , who cannot save humans or Humagear.
He tries to do the right thing. He messes up. He moves on.
He moves on when he is a child, memories blocked for months between Daybreak’s fall and being discharged from a hospital. He doesn’t know what happened, not clearly. Not until years later when he finds himself in broken time, fixing it with a would-be king. Fighting and killing his father, this time.
(He almost wishes he let himself forget after, sometimes.)
He moves on when he watches Humagear be killed, and make no mistake, he knew those identical replacements were not the same people. Humagears may not be human, but, long before he learned of “Singularity”, he knew Humagear had feelings. Had souls. Had their own desires, even.
Like Izu.
Because here he is. He is on the dirty floor of a warehouse, clutching a broken ribbon. He is not crying, but the sounds which come from him are worse.
He moves on when he loses Hiden. He founds his own. He designs it not to own Humagear but simply to let them live. Jin understood that.
Izu… became his partner, truly, at that point.
He made her run a simulation. A simulation of his death. She cried. A Humagear grew tears because she loved him. He loves her, too.
But this is not a simulation. This is real.
“Aruto-Sama.”
…She has long hair. But she looks so much like Izu.
Something most people don’t expect is that Aruto does think logically. He thinks in precise measures. The issue is he trusts.
He knows the Humagear with long hair and red eyes is not Izu. He knows she is using him.
He knows she is the Ark, in some fashion, and he watches her closely. Considers the Driver she hands him. If he chooses this, it will be on his own terms. Vengeance for his own sake. Knowing what it will cost.
Hiden’s heir killing a Humagear protestor.
They will not know that Horobi killed the one Aruto loved more than anything. It must be quick as it is private, and he suspects that is not what this not-Izu wants.
“Tell me,” he says. “When I transform, will the Driver control me?”
“Ark-One does not work like Metal Cluster,” the not-Izu says. “If that’s what you’re afraid of. Nor will it kill you.”
He doesn’t care about that part at all.
“Fine then,” Aruto says. “A life for a life.”
Let him be selfish. Let him rage. Let him cry.
Hiden Aruto moves on. He takes his new belt.
(He is not a hero anymore, and was he ever? He doesn’t know. Corporate play has turned so public in these fights. Nothing feels real anymore.)
“Henshin,” he murmurs.
The not-Izu smiles.
Hiden Aruto… does not move on.
(Here is the thing about grief. About anger. About malice. It is not something one can control with one’s and zeroes.
Aruto will not let Azu control him, but himself? Oh, he will control himself. He will control his rage, and his loneliness, and he will turn it into power. And he will not kill the one he hates.
And that is why Jin steps in the way.
That is why it all goes right.
Aruto does not cry when he grieves. He screams.
…And then he moves on .)