Work Text:
The first time Ace is reincarnated as a woman, it isn’t pretty. She doesn’t have the same freedom, her skills need to change. Even the rules change, in ways she hadn’t realized.
Sh doesn’t understand, which is worse because she’d already once had a wife she’d tried to befriend but—
But the woman wasn’t hers at heart.
The first time Ace is reincarnated as a woman, the rules change, and it scares her. Her body is smaller, the rules are stricter, and the carefully built masks and personas she’d already begun to build started cracking and failing.
But it didn’t feel fake. In fact, learning felt equally natural and unnatural to learning the rules of being a man.
And then she learned both rules changed over time and watched them, and his calm awareness was hidden behind charm and the masks he built.
Ace has lived so many lives, she has tried every set of rules with so very many cultures, every option between his legs.
Gender was just another game to win. And he learned to master winning.
Which is to say, he could call that first time as a woman the same experience as when he met the three of them.
Ukiyo Ace is a man out of practicality - the word of this era is transmasculine, he thinks. Some quirk of the wish had changed his papers and taken care of surgeries alongside his wish to not have to work. Ukiyo Ace is not such a thing for its own sake. He’s a man for his mother to see him, to know him, to find him. He was her son, and gender is a game, and so is the DGP, and to win is to stack the deck. Just like Ace Park was a woman to wipe away a bit of suspicion and Ace Garfield was as much of a trans woman as they could get away with in Shakespeare’s era.
(…A wasn’t anything, but he still hadn’t quite grasped the concept of gender when he first won a game, either.)
But then all his rules changed. The deck added uno cards to the houses. The chess pieces were playing checkers.
There was Neon, and Keiwa, and Michinaga.
Ace noticed quickly that Neon had a way with women. He looked over her streams, and at her viewers, so many women who clearly hadn’t figured out how much of love and gender is about winning, and then there was Keiwa’s sister, and Lopo.
It was a source of amusement, but he supposes he’s one of those women.
Sometimes.
And indeed she was the first to impress him. Her resolve, her kindness, her strength.
Keiwa and Michinaga were much the same.
And he was their Ace, so that’s who he is. That’s who he is.
And then one day, they wonder.
If they’ll always be their chose Riders’ Ace.
Surprisingly, Michinaga figured it out first.
“Why’re you dressed as a woman in the trailer for your stupid biopic?”
“Because I was one?” Ace offers. “What made you think I was just a man?”
Michinaga looks over him.
“Are you not?”
“Would it have changed anything?”
“Not really,” Michinaga replies. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Ukiyo Ace had to be a man,” Ace says. “So if mother was looking, she’d recognize me. So the Star of the Star of the Stars could be palatable.”
“…I didn’t expect you to care about things like that.”
“It didn’t work out like that,” Ace says. “And I don’t care. But masks are a part of winning, oh undead crusher of darkness.”
Michinaga rolls his eyes.
“Whatever,” he says. “So, like… do I call you anything different?”
“Not really.”
“Alright.”
Neon is the one he springs it on, actually. Popping up on her stream all the same but with the large chest and long hair and the gold hoop earrings she wore, the last time she had this face but went along with a woman’s body. The face showed up either way. It’s her favorite, and the one she now knows she was right in thinking looked like her mother.
Neon takes one look at her and grins.
“And this is my friend Ace!” She says. “Not sure why they’re here.”
Perfectly who people know her as, Ace wouldn’t know she was confused for just a second if she didn’t know her.
She makes a show of it, of course. Never answering all the way when people ask why she looks like the Star of the Star of the Stars.
After, Neon turns to her more seriously.
“So… what is this?” She asks.
“Oh, just wondering,” Ace says. “What you think of me.”
“You’re still too tall,” Neon says, and Ace grins, leaning down and kissing her beloved Neon. Neon kisses back and takes her hand. “Is this… is this just a trick?”
“I don’t know,” Ace admits. “Gender’s just been another game, another mask. I don’t mind being the man you fell in love with.”
Neon smiles softly, pulls her down to kiss her, just as soft.
“You’re always my Ace,” she says. “And I thought you knew I was pan.”
“Oh, I did,” Ace says. “I was just having fun.”
But just like they’ve won a few games and worn a hundred masks, they have lost enough in all forms.
Waking up panting and shaking, a life as a woman where they were tired, were obedient and used - it was after a life where they’d lived long and empty and guilty for—
They’ve loved before. Sometimes they wonder if Keiwa was the beautiful woman who dressed as a man that they fell in love and had two children who didn’t make it with, the leader of her community who needed connection to keep going. Sometimes they wonder if Michinaga matches two other bull faces who fought and for short moments remained by Ace’s many sides.
Sometime they grieve that first wife they fail.
…it was after a stubborn bull who cursed Ace as he died that Ace gave up for a life. Tired and broken and… losing. Not pretending. Called creepy but quiet. Didn’t train or fight back.
…Keiwa’s here. Sleepy and disheveled.
“Ace?” he asks. “‘S late.”
“I know,” Ace says. “I’m sorry.”
Keiwa hmms, sits up and cuddles against Ace’s side. Ace takes a shaky breath.
“You’ve chosen me through so much,” he says. “But I have one more secret. I’m not a man.”
“Mm, okay,” Keiwa says. “Heard about the stream. Still my Ace.”
“Already worked through the confusion?”
“...Yeah,” Keiwa says. “Doesn’ matter, though. Love you.”
Ace understands these rules, at least.
“We should go back to sleep.”
Keiwa nods.
Ace isn’t lost, anymore.