Chapter Text
Ruriko pins Banestrike to a wall, her shield to his throat. He’s grinning and untransformed.
He’s always grinning.
(He always was.)
“Why won’t you fight me for real?” She asks. Banestrike laughs.
“Oh Ruri,” he says. “Why would I?”
She screams, throwing him back against the wall. He’s still grinning.
“Because you turned him into a monster ,” she says. “And you betrayed us. ”
“Did I?” Banestrike asks. “Then fight me properly, Kamen Rider Lady~”
At that, she throws him across the room. It’s easy to jump through the air and kick him, but he still doesn fight. He coughs, wet and bloody, her foot against his chest.
“I am fighting you properly,” she says. “You’re mocking me, and I’m going to kill you today.”
At long last, he transforms into the monster he is, waving a hand. Suddenly, she’s surrounded by Buzz, and dragged off of him. One Buzz helps Banestrike up, and the two seem to be talking. Ruriko screams again and tears apart half the swarm around her in one finisher.
“We weren’t supposed to meet today, Ruri,” Banestrike says. “Sorry for the trouble.”
He escapes, once more. Ruriko screams.
“He wouldn’t want you to tear yourself apart,” Bunta says.
“What he wanted went out the window when he tried a Driver that drove him crazy,” Ruriko replies. She fiddles at her Driver more, barely flinching when it electrocutes her. Not enough power, no matter what she does. Unless she can rip pieces off more powerful DeBugs…
“And what about me?”
“This whole thing is your fault,” Ruriko says. She goes over the diagnostics on her screen, groans, and tosses the Driver wholesale across the room. It keeps sparking on the metal floor.
“I know,” Bunta says. “And you could leave, go back to your life… I’m not a fighter.”
“I don’t really have another option, now,” Ruriko says. “Graduated and everything, you know that.”
“And you and Suguru’s dream?”
“Dead in the water,” Ruriko says. “Just like he might be. All I have left is ending the DeBugs… ending Banestrike.”
Bunta sighs.
“I don’t like it, Ruriko,” he says. “If you don’t beat him black and blue, the monsters do it to you.”
“I just don’t have enough power yet,” Ruriko says. “To rip it from them.”
“And what happens when you do?” Bunta asks. “Will you even survive to see it?”
“Then I’ll burn them all.”