Chapter Text
Somewhere, there is a windy city, where the winds of adventure and destiny blow through the streets.
Through her streets are committed many supernatural crimes by those who wield Gaia Memories, monsters called Dopants whose bodies have been warped by their use. The police can scarcely prove these cases, but there are hundreds whose pleas for justice go ignored by all.
Except for two detectives in a small office in a small corner, out of the way.
It is said that if you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the services of a certain detective duo in that windy city.
- episode one: two detectives in one -
One year ago…
“Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it!”
Hikaru Gero was, all in all, not having a good night. To say even that would be an understatement.
This was supposed to be a simple task. He and his Sensei were supposed to break in to some secret site – he had no clue if it was some government black site, a criminal site belonging to one of the Five Clans, or something far more insidious. It was a simple task.
Break in, rescue the person named Mei Kinosaki, and get the hell out.
The name didn’t mean anything to either of them. All they knew is that he was the one they were looking for; he’d gone missing off the streets a while back, working as a marriage swindler, and that some nefarious organization was using him for some purpose. They found them, too; they’d almost gotten clear out of dodge.
If Gero hadn’t messed up, none of this would have happened.
Sensei was unmoving on the floor just beyond the small wall they’d managed to hide behind, three gunshots through his back, long flowing silver hair splayed across the floor concealing his bloodied face. A horde of guards was running towards them, shots ringing out behind them, taking bits of tile and concrete off of them, with a helicopter hailing bullets on them and missing them by mere millimeters, and Hikaru and Mei were about five seconds from being ventilated.
“…Gero Hikaru.”
A soft voice emerged from behind Gero, and he turned to see Mei, an enigmatic expression on their face. He produced a briefcase – the same briefcase Sensei had had on them before he slipped it across to Gero, seconds after he’d been shot, before unlocking it.
He fixed Gero with a glance, and it almost immediately entranced him. Mei had a slight smile on his face as he took two devices out of the briefcase. Both resembled USB devices, one in cream white with an M emblazoned on its side, the other a purple-black color with a T on its side. Mei held onto the one with the M, before extending out the one with the T on its side.
Gero knew what these were from working with Sensei; Gaia Memories, the same things that people used to commit supernatural crimes. But these weren’t the same type; no, these looked better, more advanced, less skeletal in nature.
The former hitman’s eyes slid down to the thing he had in his other hand; the Double Driver, Sensei had called it, a red metal buckle with two windowed slots that looked like they could take Gaia Memories. Normally, such devices were stuck directly into surgically installed connectors by their users, but Sensei was able to use Memories like those Mei was holding on to.
“….do you have the courage to choose me as your one and only partner, Gero Hikaru?” Mei asked softly, but with a steely undertone to their voice.
‘Can I really take up Sensei’s…’ Gero wondered, unable to finish the thought as it brought tears to his eyes. How could he think that way, when his body hadn’t even cooled yet?
Gero’s eyes lingered briefly on the outstretched Gaia Memory, the word Toxin visible in small letters on it. His eyes flitted back to Mei.
The world seemed to have gone silent around them.
Gero felt as if this was not the first time Kinosaki had ever asked him this question, nor was it the first time he asked Kinosaki the same.
He grasped the Toxin Memory firmly, and Mei’s smile took on a less ominous tone as something in his expression changed; to recognition, to happiness, he wasn’t sure. Something about it was familiar, lurking at the back of his mind, but he wasn’t sure what.
“…to the end, Kinosaki Mei,” he replied with confidence he didn’t know he had – had Kinosaki given him this confidence somehow?, he thought -, before taking the Memory from his hand.
That night was when it all began.
…..
The present day…
The wind blew through the streets of Fuuto City once again, wind vanes whirring and wind wheels rotating around, flashing different colors.
It was an ordinary day at the Gero Detective Agency.
Less than ordinary, even, because they hadn’t had a job in three weeks.
Even if you knew where to look, you wouldn’t even know it was there, a small unassuming door with the number 129 on it in gold. Word of mouth spread, however; these were the people you went to if you didn’t have any other choice. The outfit was a small office, with a single bedroom upstairs with a single bed accessible through a side door, and the front door a plain wooden affair, a small bell hanging over the top to signify visitors.
The office was divided into two portions; a small antechamber with a velvet red couch and a coffee table, and the office proper. The right side of the office had a bookshelf with all sorts of books on it; books on marriage traditions, books on how to drive boats and drones, manuals on how to sew clothing, all skills that Kinosaki had figured he’d brush up upon. The desk before it was laden with cutesy mascots and a small image of Kinosaki and Gero together at a park.
Opposite it, the left side had a board with various images clipped or pinned onto it, string tying them together – cases that Gero and Kinosaki had linked together, all cases they’d solved together, 77 of them.
A singular photo stood at the middle, an image of a young man with short hair and a camera around his neck; Okuto, Kinosaki’s younger brother. After they’d begun their partnership, Gero had promised Kinosaki that they’d find him, but that case, unlike many of the cases they’d taken since the beginning of their partnership, had gone nowhere.
Underneath the evidence board, there was a small drawer upon which a small stack of books on poisons and toxins was placed. Gero’s desk was far more spartan than Kinosaki’s; the only luxury he’d permitted himself was a small stack of nerunerune candy packs, and a small picture of his sister Akari, framed in silver – she was somewhere safe, somewhere where nobody could find her, Gero reassured himself.
A typewriter, alongside a sheaf of finished reports, was mounted dead center of Gero’s desk. And mounted next to it was Kinosaki’s behind, as Kinosaki sat on his desk, reading a giant book.
“Next time, if you want to eat so much at that sushi place, maybe you should bring in a new case so we can get paid,” Gero complained, checking their bare coffers. Kinosaki grinned.
“Well, it’s a lot of work doing all these searches,” he replied cheekily. “And that much work needs a lot of fuel, so I need a lot of food.”
“And the one before that where you didn’t even have to do any searches?”
“A treat for myself!”
Gero exhaled deeply through his nose.
“You sure have expensive tastes,” he remarked drily. “But without a job, we’re not going to be able to make rent.”
“Relax. I’m almost done setting up our Undeed page. It’s where people take jobs like these nowadays,” Kinosaki reassured him, waving his phone at him to show him the fruits of his labor. “Soon, everyone’s going to be giving us five stars! …but-“
Before Kinosaki could finish his thought, the bell rang, and a young woman – about their age, give or take, Gero surmised – walked in, a short mop of purple-blue hair framing lilac eyes, a blue jacket around a lilac sweater, and a set of black shoes and pants. The high quality – and the nice pair of earrings, gold tassels and a set of orbs on chains - told them this was a rich client; the plain handbag told them this was a client who didn’t care to flaunt it.
Kinosaki stood up, shutting the book he’d been reading. “Hi, can we help you?”
“Is this the Gero Detective Agency?” the young woman asked. Gero nodded in the affirmative.
“Yes,” he responded, adjusting his glasses. “And you are?”
“My name is Arimura Marin,” she said. “And I need your help hunting down the assassins my mother sent to kill my boyfriend and bring me home.”
At that, Kinosaki lifted an eyebrow, looking back at Gero. “You were saying about a new case?”
….
“….so your mother keeps trying to kill your boyfriends?” Gero inquired. This time, he and Kinosaki were sitting side by side behind his desk as Marin sat in front of them.
“She says that if they’re not supermen who can fend off her assassination attempts, they’re not worth dating and they shouldn’t be alive anyway,” Marin explained.
A dreamy expression appeared across the young woman’s face as she whipped out a picture of a handsome man with white and black hair, clad in a white jacket and black vest over a blue shirt.
“But Piichi…he’s different. He can absolutely defend himself, he cares so much about me and he works so hard for us both…I can’t imagine life without him anymore.”
Kinosaki smiled softly at that. “You sound happy with him.”
“We want to open a café together, but we can’t do that while my mother’s still out hunting him down. Even after that building collapsed on her, we still can’t shake her…”
Kinosaki looked mildly perturbed by that. “….a building collapsed on her?”
“Of course,” Marin said matter-of-factly. “It was the only way Piichi and I could get away from her.”
The former swindler looked over at Gero, who gave him a shrug, before nodding back at Marin. “Please, Miss Arimura, continue.”
“Anyway, Piichi and I moved here a few months ago, and Piichi’s been looking into trying to buy a place for a café! Actually, next door is where we want to build one, but well…”
At this point, Marin took out her phone, showing Gero a picture. It was a selfie of Marin and Piichi together eating crepes; however, the young woman zoomed in onto the right hand corner of the image, where a man in white clothing could be seen in the corner.
“This man has been following us for the last few weeks,” Marin explained. “Piichi’s been trying to find him, and he even got close to him before he bolted. He said he had this weird device with him. He’s been trying to find him again, but he’s also got this job at one of the local bakeries – they have a big order so he’s been busy. Crap, I wish I remembered where he works....”
Kinosaki sighed. “That would’ve been too convenient."
“I was also sent this.” She produced a small letter, handwritten with a few simple words. You will come home, it read.
“I got that yesterday. I didn’t think I could go to the cops with just this, and Piichi said he’d look, but I figure I’d give him a little more help,” Marin continued. “So I looked you up from a few cases. And also the police files on you.”
“Police files?!” Gero sputtered.
“I’m good with computers. But please, I need you to do this for me. I can pay, don’t worry, but…look, Piichi’s strong, and he can handle himself, but I don’t want my boyfriend to suffer any more than he has to. He already works so hard…”
This was the moment Kinosaki chose to interject. “Weird device? What did it look like?”
“It kinda…looked like a USB stick but with weird things that looked like ribs on it. And I think a letter…D? B? Piichi couldn’t get a good look at it. If he was here, I’m sure he could tell you.”
At that, Kinosaki and Gero immediately shared a look.
“You think it’s a Dopant case?” Gero whispered, concerned.
“We’ll need more evidence to find out,” Kinosaki replied worriedly. “But I’ll look into any recent incidents.”
Marin looked between the two of them confusedly. “What’s a Dopant?”
Gero shook his head. “Please, don’t worry about it, Miss Arimura. We’ll take on your case.”
Her face lit up. “Will you? Thank you so much! I think the sooner we can put my mother behind me, the faster Piichi and I can get to starting our new lives together.”
“If you wouldn’t mind, please stay here for the time being. You’ll be safer here than outside. Kinosaki and I will investigate. Just….one question, though, Miss Arimura.”
“Yes?”
“….can you pay the fee for today upfront?”
File #1: Toxin Memory
The Gaia Memory pertaining to poisons, toxins and other harmful substances. The Poison Clan once sought this for their own power to avoid being rendered useless in the modern world with better medical knowledge. It is currently in the possession of private detective Hikaru Gero, with whom it possesses a high compatibility.
“There’s been a string of unexplained deaths recently,” Kinosaki said, looking on his phone and swiping through news articles. “People found dead and cooked alive from the inside. They said there were drone parts found near the crime scenes, too.”
Gero nodded, taking in the information. “Definitely a Dopant.”
The two of them were walking down a busy road, with Gero looking at the picture Marin had shown them (and sent to them after payment had been rendered), where she and Piichi had been a few weeks prior. While this wasn’t likely to be where they would find their stalker, maybe he’d left a few clues, or maybe someone had seen him there.
“If it’s a Dopant, Miss Arimura and her boyfriend might be strong, but there’s no way they can deal with that,” Gero noted worriedly. “I’d like to find them as soon as possible.”
He paused.
“Kinosaki, I’d like your opinion on something.”
He raised an eyebrow quizzically at his partner. “Fire away, Gero.”
“Would you want to be in that kind of relationship? The kind Miss Arimura is in with Piichi, I mean? She seems really proud of him, and they seem really in love.”
Kinosaki tapped his chin thoughtfully. “I hadn’t really thought about it myself. Why?”
Gero looked down pensively. “….I just…”
“Hmm?”
Gero tried not to think too deeply about how cute Kinosaki looked peering up like that at him, hands behind his back in a coy, girlish manner, and instead concentrated on finishing the sentence.
“…it’d be nice to find someone to settle down with, having someone to ask how my day was and do all the small things couples do!” he sputtered.
Kinosaki giggled at that. “I didn’t take the hardboiled detective Hikaru Gero as that much of a softie!” he teased him, poking him gently. “Are you just coming up with this?”
“No, I’ve been thinking about it a while,” he admitted. “It’s just…well, with my life before this, it’s never really been a concern, but…I guess I want a happy and normal life like everybody else.”
Kinosaki looked into the distance thoughtfully.
“I guess if I wanted a life like that, I’d want it to be with someone like my first love,” he said after a pause, trying not to look at Gero.
Gero wanted to ask who that first love was, but seeing Kinosaki avoid his gaze, he decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
“…I guess you’re more romantic than you look too,” Gero lightly teased him, an awkward smile on his face.
“Do you really want to know just how romantic?” Kinosaki said teasingly, but Gero picked up on a hint of something else in that voice (yearning? deeper interest? mischief?).
Before they could finish that discussion, however, they stopped dead.
In front of them, a swathe of police cars and news vans, including some from channel 15.9, were gathered in front of a bakery. A body in a sheet was being wheeled out into an ambulance, and Gero could faintly pick up on the smell of burnt flesh with his keen senses.
He looked over at Kinosaki. “This might be another one.”
“I hope that isn’t Mister Katsuta,” Kinosaki muttered worriedly. “He’s always nice to me, lets me have an extra crepe or two when I pass by.
The pair rushed towards the gathered cars, where a familiar police officer stood, speaking his subordinates. The second Gero and Kinosaki approached the scene, however, their attention was drawn to them and he practically sprinted at them, his eyes focused squarely on Kinosaki.
“If it isn’t my darling Kinosaki!” Detective Beppu cried happily. “How can we help you, my darling wife?”
“We’re not married,” Kinosaki replied flatly. It was almost instinct at this point. “It’s good to see you anyway, Detective.”
Gero nodded in acknowledgement. “Everything alright, Officer?”
At this, Beppu’s eyebrows furrowed in concern. “You two arrived in time. It’s….another one of those supernatural cases. Mister Katsuta is safe inside; he was the one who called us in, but….”
He produced a phone, with a picture of a humanoid clad in red armor, their face hidden by a helmet, spikes across their hands, shoulders and knees, striding into the bakery.
“One of the customers took a picture of this one,” he explained. “He came in, grabbed one of the workers, apparently started glowing until the person he picked up started smoking and just…”
Beppu exhaled.
“It’s the fourth case this week, but it’s the first good look we’ve gotten at the suspect,” he admitted with a sigh. “So far, we’ve gotten no leads.”
Kinosaki spoke. “And all the victims were fried from the inside out?“
“They were fried from the inside out, yes,” Beppu explained, before shuddering. “Horrible way to go. They were all bakers or working at bakeries, all men in their mid-20s, all white-and-black hair.”
At that, Gero nodded at Kinosaki. “That’s definitely our guy. He’s trying to work his way down every bakery to find Piichi.”
Beppu flashed a wide grin. “Aha, so you two are on the case? Excellent.”
Reaching into his pocket, he produced an envelope, handing it to Gero. “I trust you know what to do with this?”
The former hitman, nodded. “Thanks, Detective. We’ll let you know if we find anything out.”
Beppu clapped him firmly on the back. “Thanks a bunch! And Kinosaki, my dear, please stay safe! I wouldn’t know what to do without you if you were to get harmed by this awful man…”
With that, Beppu waltzed back towards the crime scene, a visible spring in his step at the mere sight of Kinosaki.
“…does he realize we’re not married?” Kinosaki uttered, when he was sure Beppu was out of earshot.
“I don’t think he realizes he’s a cop sometimes,” Gero drily remarked.
….
A few blocks away, Gero determined there were no prying eyes. Turning the envelope in his hands, he opened it and pulled out the photos within.
“…all burned from the inside, all with drone parts nearby…” the detective muttered, confirming their hypothesis. “….wait.”
He stopped mid-stride, as Kinosaki craned his head to see what Gero had spotted. Gero tapped one particular photo.
While the crime scene itself was nothing special, an outdoor café surrounded with police tape and the body itself hidden by tarp, Gero motioned to a part on the side, where a man with messy red hair, resembling a flame, could be seen walking away from the camera, clad in traditional dress.
“Shit. I know this one.” Gero uttered. Kinosaki peered at him, concerned.
“From…before?”
“From before,” he repeated, nodding. “Kurokawa Haibu of the Fire Clan. His brother was supposed to be future head, but his father didn’t approve of him trying to modernize it.”
“Fire Clan? One of the Big Five?”
“No,” Gero replied, shaking his head. “The Fire Clan stopped being important a long time ago. They’ve been small fry for ages, but I didn’t know they were resorting to becoming Dopants…”
“What’s a Dopant?”
The sound of Marin’s voice suddenly filtered into through Gero’s phone, almost making them jump. Shortly, the video chat app on his phone turned on, as Marin appeared on it, waving at him with a smile.
“M-Miss Arimura?!” Gero exclaimed, shocked. “What the-how did you get my number?“
“I told you, I’m good with computers,” Marin explained, the sounds of typing clear over the phone. “Are you going to tell me what a Dopant is now?”
“Miss Arimura, I-“
Gero paused. Something was wrong.
“Kinosaki!” he yelled, pushing Kinosaki to the ground and dropping his phone. Marin’s concerned yelps could be heard over it.
“Mister Gero? Mister Kinosaki? What’s going on there?!”
Kinosaki stared upwards at where Gero had pushed him away from, a nearby car.
The fireball that had soared over their heads faded away, and they could smell the stink of melted leather and plastic as the back corner of the car melted away, molten by sheer heat. Gero fixed eyes with the Dopant that was assailing them, the same humanoid in red armor that had been in the photo Beppu had shown him.
“Gero Hikaru,” the Dopant growled, his hands shimmering with heat. “I knew I’d find you here.”
“Kurokawa!” Mei exclaimed. “How did he know-“
“Shit, I should’ve done this on my own,” Gero cursed himself, taking care to ensure that Kinosaki was under him. “Sorry for putting you in this position, partner.”
“What are we going to do? Can we fight him?”
“No, it’s too risky while you’re in the field. We need to get out of here, and fast!”
Luckily, Gero hadn’t forsaken every trick he knew.
Rolling a set of smoky gray orbs into his right hands, he threw them directly at the Dopant. They clattered uselessly against him.
“Is this seriously it? The most the great Gero Hikaru can manage?” Haibu taunted them. “It seems even the Poison Clan’s greatest is kindling for my fir-“
The smoke bombs exploded at his feet, the loud bang disorientating him for a second. The Dopant roared with contempt, stepping back as the smoke filled the air; his eyes were protected, but the smoke was thick and dense.
“Do you think you can put out fire with smoke?!” Haibu yelled with contempt. “Are you-”
As the smoke cleared, Kinosaki, Gero, and any sign either of the two were there were gone. The Dopant hissed.
“…coward,” he cursed, before looking up towards the sky. “But you won’t be hiding from me forever, Gero.”
A kludge of machine parts hovered in the sky, kept aloft by an unknown force; certainly, it wasn’t the too-small rotors. Its red camera lens sparkled in the afternoon sun.
File #2: Marriage Memory
The Gaia Memory that contains all the memories of marriages and relationships. When used, it draws strength from the wielder's relationships, allowing the wielder to become stronger the deeper the relationships they have are. It is currently in the possession of Mei Kinosaki, former marriage swindler and current assistant at the Gero Detective Agency.
It was to a shocked Marin that Kinosaki and Gero returned, Gero hoisting Kinosaki in a bridal carry, before letting him down to allow them to enter the Agency. The young woman had set up her laptop on Kinosaki’s desk, what looked like a GPS program open on her laptop.
“Are you two okay?!” she exclaimed as she ran to them, looking them over to see if they were injured. “I saw everything! What was that thing?”
“Firstly, Miss Arimura, before you tap my phone, please ask me,” Gero spoke, catching his breath. “Secondly….I guess we can’t hide it from you, huh?”
“Hide what? Those Dopant things?” Marin replied. Kinosaki nodded, grabbing a seat and the book he had been reading earlier.
“The device Piichi mentioned, we call those Gaia Memories,” the former swindler explained matter-of-factly. “If you have them, you can transform into a creature called a Dopant. They have superpowers based on what the Memory is of. If you have the Gaia Memory of say, hamsters, you can control them, transform into a hamster or communicate with them.
And if you have the Gaia Memory of…would you say that was Heat, Gero?”
“No mistaking it. That had to be Heat,” Gero concurred.”
“Thank you. If you have that Memory, you have the power of fire and heat,” Kinosaki continued. “Gero, do you think we have enough to pull off a search?”
At that, Marin hurried back to her laptop. “Well, actually, I can-“
“Please, Miss Arimura, don’t worry about it,” Gero reassured her, before turning back to Kinosaki. “I think we do. We need to figure out where Kurokawa will be next. Try the keywords “Bakery” and…”
He looked back over at Marin. “You mentioned it was a big order?”
“Yes, he didn’t mention what of.”
“…’Marriage’. Try ‘Marriage’, Kinosaki. ‘Heat’, ‘Bakery’ and ‘Marriage’.”
“I’d rather you did,” Kinosaki cheekily remarked, earning him a groan from Gero, before closing his eyes as he gestured at the large book he was normally found with.
There was dead silence in the room for a few minutes.
Marin looked over at Gero. “Is…is this normal?”
“Relax,” Gero said reassuringly. “He’s got this ability to search for things. It’s just…not particularly flashy if you’re not him. He says it looks like a huge library.”
“A library? In his head? Can’t you just use the Internet?”
“Well-“
Kinosaki’s eyes snapped open, and he shut the book.
“All of the bakeries attacked by the Heat Dopant were in the same general district, and all of them were working on multi-tier wedding cakes,” Kinosaki said. “There is only one bakery left that wasn’t attacked by the Heat Dopant yet, Ma Fille.”
“That was it! Ma Fille! Yeah, that’s where he works!” Marin concurred, before staring at Kinosaki in shock. “Wait, how did you-?”
“That’s the family-run one a few blocks away, right? Crap, he’ll be there soon!” Gero exclaimed, standing up. “Kinosaki, let’s go!”
“Right behind you, my one and only partner,” Kinosaki reassured him with a smile, as Gero sprinted out of the office, the sounds of a motorcycle revving up and disappearing down the road.
Marin looked between the door and Kinosaki. “Are…aren’t you going?”
“We’re a two-in-one detective, Miss Arimura,” he stated calmly. “You’ll understand soon.”
“…right,” the young woman uttered skeptically. She sat back down, not quite sure what to make of just how odd this day had been so far.
….
Ma Fille was a quiet, local bakery, a small one sandwiched between an arcade and an office building. A small wooden artifice with a cozy interior, the place had always been run by the same family as long as they’d been there. Gero knew the family; they had a daughter who was into the violin, in and out of hospital.
‘That explains Piichi needing to be there; they need someone to run the place while they’re gone,’ Gero concluded as he stopped his motorcycle a few meters away.
By the time Gero arrived in front of Ma Fille, Haibu was already there, staring through the front window of the quaint bakery as people walked between him and the detective, not sensing anything amiss.
“You know, Gero, I’d have thought you seeing my new power would have made you leave town,” he said sneeringly. “The Fire Clan will have their day again. You should have stayed in whatever hole you crawled into, and now you’ll be kindling for our ascension.”
“Using a Gaia Memory for that? You’re risking way more than just your reputation here, Kurokawa,” Gero warned him, showing his hands to show that he had no ill intent – at least, immediate ill intent. “Throw it away and just come in. Besides, you’re better than just running some plain assassination like this. This is just a shortcut back to the top and we-”
“We’re assassins, Gero! There is a code, there is a way things are done and you violated it, so I have no more words for you!” Haibe spat. “Just because you can leave doesn’t make you any better than us! Haisei should’ve known better; our ways were what they were for a reason."
He pointed a shaking finger at Gero, rage clear in his features. "The spider should not lecture the dragon on how to make its fortune!”
From the depths of his robes, Haibu pulled out a red, skeletal-looking Gaia Memory.
‘Heat!’, it announced as he pressed the button, before a painful-looking gap opened up on the back of his hand.
“Now, face the rekindled heat of the dragon, and with this, the Fire Clan will once again be feared!” Jamming the Heat Memory into himself, Haibe’s form was shrouded in flames as the form of the Heat Dopant molded itself onto him, the residual heat being hot enough to catch some of Gero's clothes and surrounding plants on fire.
Gero took a step back, quickly flapping his jacket to put out the parts that had caught on fire. The people around them fled the area, sounds of screaming growing more distant and leaving only Gero and the Dopant behind.
“Tch…there’s the reason the Fire Clan couldn’t survive,” Gero uttered, before fixing the Heat Dopant with a glare. “I won’t let you come after Miss Arimura or Piichi."
He paused, drawing the Double Driver from his jacket.
“No. We won’t let you.”
“We?” the Dopant answered, confused.
Sliding the Driver onto his waist, a grey belt manifested around Gero’s midsection, locking it onto his body.
Drawing the purple-black Gaia Memory he'd taken from Kinosaki that fateful night, the Heat Dopant paused as Gero pressed it, a loud Toxin! sounded out.
“A Gaia Memory?” the Dopant called out, pointing out the device Gero had drawn. “You’re just as dishonorable as expected of a Poison Clan member after all, daring to lecture me on how to use them!”
“A shortcut and an equalizer are two different things,” Gero calmly replied. “Kinosaki, I’m counting on you.”
….
Marin stared in confusion as the Double Driver manifested around Kinosaki’s body back at the Gero Detective Agency.
Kinosaki closed his eyes, setting his phone down at his desk. “Ah. Sorry, Miss Arimura. It seems I won’t be able to keep you company for too much longer. Don’t worry, Gero, I’m with you.”
“Huh? What do you mean by that? Why are you talking to Gero?” she asked, still puzzled. Kinosaki drew a cream-white Gaia Memory from his pocket, a stylized M emblazoned on its side.
“Please catch me before I hit the floor,” Kinosaki requested gently, before pressing the button on the Memory. “It usually hurts if I hit the floor too hard when this happens.”
Marriage!, the device called out, as the former swindler lowered the Memory into the right slot of the belt.
“Gero, you’re going to owe me the really expensive sushi after this one,” Kinosaki remarked, trying not to salivate at the idea of making Gero spend more money on him. The Memory faded into white light, before Kinosaki’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he began to fall over like a puppet with its strings cut.
“Eh?! What’s going on? Kinosaki?!” Marin yelled as she rushed over to make sure Kinosaki’s head didn’t hit the floor and just about catching him, his pink-tipped blonde hair splayed out across her fingers. “Hey! Wake up!”
….
Gero didn’t wait for Kinosaki’s Memory to manifest into the right side of his Driver before jamming the Toxin memory into the left slot, evading a few blasts from the Heat Dopant hurling fireballs at him, scorching trees and nearby walls.
Marriage! Toxin! the Driver announced enthusiastically, before Gero wrenched the Driver’s slots apart, resembling the letter W.
“Henshin!” he yelled, managing to right himself to face the Dopant just in time.
Around his body, armor began to form, cream-white armor on the right side and dark purple on the left. A black scarf resembling Kinosaki’s favorite manifested from the right, as the last part of Gero’s body not covered by armor, his head, was obscured by a helmet divided the same way as the rest, large red compound eyes and a set of antennae over them.
The Heat Dopant stopped to observe him, like a predator trying to assess its new situation, while the two-in-one combatant stood up, assuming a fighting pose.
“Now,” Kamen Rider Double spoke, both Gero and Kinosaki’s voices in unison coming out of their body, pointing at the Dopant. “Count up your crimes!”
“Such a cool-sounding catchphrase,” Kinosaki noted teasingly, the right eye of their shared form lighting up to indicate his speaking. “Did you just come up with that one?”
“I think we needed a hard-boiled catchphrase,” Gero protested. “You didn’t like the last one I came up with.”
“This one’s cool, but I think it needs something else,” Kinosaki replied, conceding the point. “Now, shall we? Miss Arimura is counting on us.”
Kamen Rider Double turned to face their opponent, producing a pair of syringes into their left hand out of thin air.
“As long as you’re with me, Kinosaki, Miss Arimura won’t have to worry about counting on us,” Gero answered, before charging at the Dopant.
File #3: Kamen Rider Double - MarriageToxin Form
Punching Power: 2.5 tons
Kicking Power: 6 tons
Jump Height: 60 meters
Running Speed: 20m/s
The primary form of Kamen Rider Double, combining the relationship-based abilities of Mei Kinosaki’s Marriage Memory and the toxin-based abilities of Hikaru Gero’s Toxin Memory. Well-balanced, this form uses Toxin’s poisons to boost Double’s attributes temporarily, using Marriage’s powers to moderate the damage Toxin would otherwise do to Gero’s body and allowing them to deal with opponents beyond MarriageToxin’s nominal strength level.
- to be continued -