Read the full story at SERIAL PRIZES
Tournament Armoured Hero
“Plague Mass”
by Jacob Milnestein
Mark Mitsukai stepped off his bike, his boots stirring the dust around him as the engine of the powerful machine at his side purred gently.
A frown formed upon his face, confusion wrote large upon his features.
With slow, precise movements, he pulled the zip of his leather jacket down, sliding a gloved hand inside and drawing out his old Rider PDA. Lovingly, he unclipped the stylus and prodded the machine into life, studying the coordinates and maps he had downloaded prior to his departure from Demiville Town.
Whilst many others had abandoned their Rider PDAs, preferring to use the specially emulated app for pad or tab, Mitsukai had remained with his old device.
There was a history between him and the PDA and for all its limitations, he valued that history.
Still frowning, he lifted his head and looked out at the desert before him.
This was the right place, he was sure of it—and yet Taryse and Amelia seemed strangely absent.
“Come on, Taryse,” he whispered to the wind, “it’s me, Mark. Where the hell are you?”
Before him lay the ruined wreckage of a motorcycle he didn’t recognise. He felt his heart quicken as he moved towards it, hoping to G-d that it wasn’t Taryse’s bike. As he came closer, the details of the machine were revealed and still it remained alien to him.
It was a mass-produced model, something USMDF used maybe, although he wasn’t certain. He lifted his head… and it was then that he saw the body sprawled out in the dirt.
He stepped hesitantly forward, spying a second corpse by the roadside a further distance down, the spark of a receding fire still smouldering by its side.
The first body was unfamiliar, a young man, the owner of the abandoned motorcycle, he assumed. The second body was Phoenix!
“Oh G-d, no,” he whispered hurrying over to the fallen body of his friend and crouching down low by his side.
Hastily, he tore his gloves off, dropping the PDA in the sand as he searched for a pulse. The body was cold to touch despite the trembling fire.
“Chad,” he whispered, shaking his head. “Chad, what happened?”
A whisper at the back of his head began to voice doubt. Chad was lying here in the dirt, he could see that with his own eyes and yet…
“Chazz,” he said, understanding dawning.
He rose slowly from the body, stunned by the likeness to Chad and yet suddenly very much aware of the differences between the two men. He had not known the other man’s twin very well; even so it felt somewhat heartless to leave him lying in the desert for the eagles and coyote to pick upon.
Slowly, he bent down again, reaching out for the fallen body.
Pain erupted through his body, a heavy weight falling upon his back as a boot smashed down upon the screen of the discarded Rider PDA, shattering the glass and plastic with its heel.
He fell forward, collapsing into the dirt and sprawling almost over the fallen body.
“You murdering son of a bitch,” a voice snarled from above him. “You ought to be relieved I don’t kill you where you stand.”
Swiftly, his back aching, he rolled over to see a middle-aged woman in a tattered dress adorned by pearls, her feet clad in cowboy boots, skipping forward and back as she lifted her fists up in a fighting stance.
Behind her, the headlights of a car flooded the road, and he wondered how he had managed to miss the sound of the approaching vehicle.
“Taryse?” he gasped, lifting his arms to cover his head. “Taryse, I came to save you!”
The tip of her cowboy boots caught him in the side, and he winced in pain.
“My name’s not Taryse, you murdering bastard.” She kicked out again. “Jesus, what is wrong with you people? I just want out of all this shit!”
The kicks subsided and carefully, Mark Mitsukai lowered his arms.
Towering over him, illuminated by the dual headlights of the battered old car, he saw a handsome woman with dirty hair, her cheeks stained by tears.
Her breath was ragged, a tremble of panic and anger forcing her chest up and bringing it back down in an uncertain rhythm.
“Who are you?” he whispered, his voice dry.
The car door opened slowly revealing someone he couldn’t quite see, someone shorter than him, a child maybe.
“Mom,” called out the kid. “Come on, mom, we saw this guy pull up. He’s not responsible for this. He’s not some murderer coming back to the scene or something.”
Mitsukai nodded eagerly and the woman in the cowboy boots kicked out, catching him with vicious intent in the side again.
“Get back in the car, Lina,” she snarled. “This asshole is as bad as the rest of them.”
“I’m not,” he replied weakly. “I promise I’m not. I was sent here to collect a friend but when I got here…”
Their eyes met, and again he noticed the tears that marked her face.
“I promise,” he said again.
Slowly, Sheila Torrance stepped back from him, sand and gravel beneath the heel of her boots, the scattered remnants of the PDA’s screen joining them fragment by fragment.
It had taken all her strength to turn her back on Tex Arkana, to refuse his offer to become embroiled in all the weirdness that had once threatened her life. Yet now here she was, on the lonely road away from that run down hotel where they had wasted so much time; striking out at last and faltering at the first sign of a mystery, the first sign of a problem rising up out of the mire before them.
She had tried so hard to shield herself from this, to hide away her daughter, to wrap her arms around the child and keep the darkness at bay.
Now here they were again, two dead bodies on the highway and a stranger once again making his excuses.
“Tell me who you are,” she said softly, “and what’s going on here.”
Mark Mitsukai pulled himself hesitantly up from the ground, pausing to cast a mournful glance at the ruined PDA on the ground.
With sadness in his eyes, he turned once again towards his accuser and at last began his explanation.
UKMDF, ostensibly codified as an organisation invested in the study of extra-terrestrial life, was in reality, nothing of the sort. Having gained an air of authority in 1946, UKMDF was in fact built upon the foundations of a much older and far more arcane society of astronomers and alchemists.
Inspired by the discovery of a tenth planet within the solar system, the nucleus of what would become UKMDF was initially comprised of Cambridge scholars, each of them with a vested interest in the notion of life outside of the confines of Earth’s green realm.
Whilst the tenth planet itself, dubbed ‘Planet X’ by the crass tabloids of the time, turned out to be an evolutionary dead end—a fact made all but definite by a particularly cruel and very public hoax in 1943—the significance of its presence was enough to bring into alignment the most curious gathering of intellectuals and seers of the time.
Taking their name from the former estate of the famed Elizabethan mage, John Dee, the Mortlake Collective was established not only with the intention of watching the heavens, but also with predicting it.
Watching the endless expanse of the desert roll below, Koji could not help but think that despite UKMDF’s heritage and its later association with the broader American agency, the age of all these great mysteries was finally over.
Behind him, the imposing form of Sky Raider sat solemnly in his black armour, his face hidden by the heavy helm he now wore.
Koji sighed audibly, shifting the twin sticks of the control yoke and turning the angle at which Kabuto Kaiser glided through the air, slowly lifting the machine’s nose up so as to avoid a continued downward descent.
“I’m not getting any readings, no dimensional distortions or anything weird at least,” the younger man called over his shoulder.
“The desert is where it began,” Sky grunted from behind his mask. “The desert is the key to finding Joji’s killer, I know it.”
Koji sighed again.
“All the same, I’m just not getting the kind of readings that would indicate any kind of shift, at least not of the kind you’re talking of.”
Almost immediately, the lights within the machine’s cockpit flickered and died, the stereovision screens bathed in static as Kabuto Kaiser faltered in mid-flight.
“What’s happening?” Sky roared as the light returned, a dull red colour now suffusing the cramped confines in which they sat, a thousand alarms igniting upon the control board before Koji.
Above them, the clouds peeled back as if the sky was but a layer of skin revealing the infinite field of stars. The sun rose and fell, the moon splintered and then reformed as all the world seemed to shatter around them.
“What is this?” Sky turned his head, reaching up and pulling the heavy helmet from his head. The face beneath was red, panic on his brow.
Upon Koji’s wrist, the glass of his watch suddenly shattered, the hands of the clock bending in towards the face, breaking the mechanism beyond repair.
Below them, the sand turned black like ash.
“The sands of time,” Koji murmured, his voice sounding alien in his ears. “Someone is changing… the sands of time…”
The screens flickered again, and for a moment, he caught sight of a terrible city rising up before him; gleaming silver spires and towering statues of gold forged in the likeness of unspeakable monstrosities.
The speakers sparked to life, garbled sound spewing forth, until finally the chorus of a baying crowd filled the cockpit, ringing true from the machine’s strained sensors.
‘Praise be to the masters of cruel and unusual death. Praise be to the sycophants of illness and torture, the worshippers that drink from the weeping sores of the unfettered breast of naked death.
‘Praise be to hideousness, to animosity, to infant death, to animal cruelty, to the rape and massacre of nations.
‘Praise be to vindictive sadism, to exhibitionism, exploitation and slavery.
‘Praise be… to DESTRONGER!’
There was a crack like thunder, the world falling down around them as the static filled the screen once more.
When vision returned, the city was gone, and they were again in the desert, as, high above, the movements of giants blocked out the stars.
Koji felt his breath arrested; his lips turning blue as he struggled for air.
Beyond the sky, beyond the confines of space, the giants peered in from outside of everything, huge beings with squawking beaks and glistening black eyes.
“Karura-grande!” Sky Raider whispered in horror.
Koji shook his head in denial.
The feathers of the bird heads that rested atop those broad giant shoulders were not those of crows or ravens. For every head crowned in black, there was a crest of white.
“M-Magpies!” he gasped at last. “S-Storytellers!”
The first of the giants turned toward them, beak wide, its gaze piercing. From its side, a naked arm rose up, its fingers reaching out.
Koji screamed, turning his face away, his voice filled with panic and torment.
All at once, the image faded, Kabuto Kaiser drifting on through the solemn skies without cause.
The scream in his throat died, and at once, the young boy collapsed unconscious before the controls.
Hao stood silent for a moment.
“Alicia?” he asked at last.
The young boy nodded, his lower lip trembling, Jessie’s coat wrapped over his shoulders, all but covering his modesty.
Slowly, Hao Wong reached out his hand and almost instantly Alicia reached back to meet him. The boy’s skin was soft, untested by life.
“Destronger are harvesting souls,” he said softly, his voice possessing the same cadence, the same flow as that girl he had met so long ago. “They have a library of cloned bodies… they’re harvesting souls from the sands of time, ensnaring spirits as they try to reach further and further ahead.”
A look of pain crossed the youth’s face.
“I was lucky… there were others…” his lip trembled once more, “others who couldn’t adjust…”
“Bastards,” whispered Kanemura, turning his gaze to the rising clouds of dust.
“This is their final ambition,” announced Dreamcaster from behind his mask. “When all worlds have been converted into fuel, when everything that awaits us in the future has been dragged back into the past, when all worlds are one and every soul is bound in bondage to their masters of cruel and unusual death.
“Only then will Destronger stop.”
Instantly, Alicia’s eyes darted over to Dreamcaster, a sad smile upon his lips.
“Hello, you,” the boy said.
The armoured hero did not respond.
Hao looked hesitantly from the boy to the hero.
“Do you know each other?”
Without answering, Dreamcaster took several steps forward into the desert, turning his back upon the gathering of former friends.
Alicia’s smile faded.
“Not anymore,” he said softly, his young voice breaking.
Hao chose not to question the nature of their relationship. It was clear that Dreamcaster did not wish to speak about it and that discussing the matter with Alicia would only cause further distress.
Changing tact, he turned to look at Jessie, meeting the other man’s faltering gaze.
“You’ve both seen Destronger,” he said softly.
Jessie nodded, a visible tremble running through his body.
“I need to know what you saw,” Hao continued, feeling the weight of the revolver heavy against his thigh. “I need to know how to defeat them.”
Jessie’s eyes widened.
“You can’t! Didn’t you see that thing?” he shouted, panic and fear colouring his expression.
“I shot that thing, Jessie,” Hao reminded the younger man, gently tapping the gun. “Before we got here, we went to see Keitarou. Trust me, we’re not going into this unarmed.”
Jessie shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter what kind of weapons you have it’s still impossible!” He reached out and seized Hao’s shirt by the lapels, staring up at him with wide eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like in there, Hao! You don’t know what they are like!”
Tears streamed down his dirt-stained cheeks, his face rigid with fear.
Gently, Hao patted the hands holding onto his shirt.
“If they’re as bad as all that, Jessie, then you know I have to try. I didn’t accept this belt just so I can sit around resting on my laurels. I have to try and change things for the better… even if that means fighting impossible odds.”
Angrily, Jessie pushed him away, turning his head and looking back at the distant cave from which he had emerged.
“Ani probably felt the same,” he sniffed, “and look what happened to him.”
There was silence for a moment.
“Jessie…” Hao began.
A sad laugh escaped the younger man’s mouth.
“I know, Hao,” he whispered. “I know you have to try… that’s why I always admired you.”
Slowly, he lifted his head again, smiling despite the tears.
“I’ll come with you,” he said quietly.
Almost instantly, Hao began to shake his head.
“You need to look after yourself, Jessie. Going back in there is going to be too much for you. And what about Alicia? Who’s going to look after her?”
Alicia straightened up, defiance suddenly upon his soft features.
“I can look after myself!” he protested.
“How exactly are you going to do that?” Hao demanded, his voice now tinged with anger.
The young boy met his gaze and did not flinch.
“By becoming Jessie’s armour,” he announced firmly, “that’s how!”
Sheila Torrance offered the man sitting beside her in the passenger seat of her car a distrustful frown.
“I’ve never heard of this USMDF,” she said sharply.
Mitsukai winced slightly.
“You’re kind of not supposed to have,” he replied. “We’re specialists in fighting monsters but we’re not public about it.”
She turned and looked out of the windshield of the stationary car, the motorcycles piled up on the side of the road acting as makeshift tombstones for the bodies they had buried.
“Where were you when the monsters took over my life then?” she said softly.
Her companion frowned.
“I’m sorry?”
“Mom was raised by crazy people,” Lina said leaning forward from the backseat, “Crazy wizard types.”
“Wizards and drunkards,” Sheila said quietly.
Again, Mitsukai winced.
“I’m sorry. USMDF wasn’t set up to deal with alcoholics. We deal more with the inhuman type of monster.”
“Because they’re easier to fight,” Sheila added sourly.
He winced a third time.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
She sighed loudly, pushing her hair back from her forehead and turning her head to face him. Behind them, apparently bored of the conversation, Lina sunk back down into the back seat.
“It’s not your problem,” Sheila said. “Sorry for being a bitch. But seeing as how I just ditched one crazy person trying to save the world, I want you to tell me why I should bother with you. What makes you so special?”
“I-I’m not asking for any help,” Mitsukai stammered.
She shrugged.
“Not yet, maybe,” she answered coolly.
There was an awkward silence between them.
“This woman you’ve been sent out here to look for, why is she so important?” Sheila continued.
“We think she might be in danger,” he said quickly, and then added, “and because she’s a friend.”
Sheila surveyed the wreckage before her.
“Well, it looks as if you failed in your mission. She was in danger and you weren’t around to do anything about it.” She studied the ruined motorcycles before them. “Maybe it’s lucky you weren’t here; doesn’t seem like these guys stood much of a chance.”
She sighed once more.
“I need to get going.”
Mitsukai nodded in agreement.
“This is the point where you ask for my help,” she turned towards him once more.
Carefully, Mark Mitsukai offered her a cautious smile.
“I wouldn’t say no,” he replied meekly.
“I don’t want to save the world but I will help you find your friend. First though, I’ve got to take Lina here to meet her father.”
“Sorry, what?” the young girl threw herself forward again.
“You heard me,” Sheila said sadly. “If Tex is spooked then we’re going to need some muscle on our side. Your dad may not be much of a father, Lina, but he can definitely take a beating.”
“Ho-ly shit,” Lina exclaimed.
“Thank you for your help,” Mitsukai said carefully. “I really appreciate it.”
He stepped out of the car gently.
“I’ll follow behind on my bike if you don’t mind.”
Sheila shrugged.
“No one’s forcing you to ride in the limo,” she paused and looked up at him, “Mark.”
A pang of feeling stirred in his belly as she spoke his name, and all at once, Mitsukai felt guilty, the sudden recollection of Reina waiting for him at home causing a minor emotional conflict of interest.
“R-Right,” he answered, not really knowing what to say.
Without responding, Sheila reached over and pulled the passenger door shut, turning the key in the ignition and starting the battered old car.
Swiftly, Mitsukai made for his motorcycle.
The screech of failing engines filled the skies, abruptly silencing their conversation.
Instantly, Dreamcaster reached for his belt, tearing forth one of the small cartridges and sliding it into the back of his light-gun.
“Dreamcaster Accessories,” he shouted above the noise of the dark craft that passed above them, “DreamEye!”
As before, a pale blue swirl formed upon the clouds above, a funnel of light emerging at the centre, revealing a foreign world in a morass of colours beyond.
From within the vortex, a small robot with spindly limbs descended towards them, transforming as it fell into a small white camera decorated with a blue grip and red on black spiral upon a yellow lens.
The camera landed in his hands, and instantly he lifted it to his visor, snapping pictures of the falling craft as it ploughed down into the sand and dirt beyond the sunken cave and the fallen monster.
“What the hell was that?” Kanemura cried out in surprise.
Slowly, Dreamcaster lowered the camera, depressing the yellow button at its top and projecting a series of holographic images into the air before his colleagues.
“I’m not familiar with the design, yet it appeared to be a scout vehicle of some kind.”
Kanemura glanced towards Jessie.
“Destronger?” he questioned sharply.
Hao shook his head, bending down and studying the images before him.
“That’s not Destronger,” he commented thoughtfully, “but USMDF have machines like that. What are they called again? Kaiser Machines? Senshi Machines? Something like that maybe.”
“Should we go and investigate?” Alicia asked.
Hao continued to look thoughtfully at the images.
“Yeah,” he said softly, “but there’s no way we can do that without getting ourselves on Destronger’s radar.”
He straightened up, looking directly at Jessie and Alicia.
“We’re going to have to split up.”
Again, Jessie’s expression soured.
“You’re trying to get rid of us!” he protested.
Hao shrugged.
“I’m also trying to keep you alive. Take the Machine Whirlwinder. I’ll ride with Jyunichi, we’ll split up as soon as we approach that dead whatever-the-hell-that-is.”
Jessie opened his mouth to protest and found himself suddenly face to face with Kanemura.
“Don’t argue this time,” the other man whispered sharply. “You should be thankful that you have friends looking out for you.”
Without another word, he turned and walked towards his bike.
Koji awoke with the bitter taste of bile in his throat, the spark of static coming slowly through the stereovision screens of the downed Kabuto Kaiser.
Pain filled his head, his eyes filled to the brim with bitter tears, his heart pounding as he tried to comprehend what had happened.
He remembered the visions, the terrible, haunting images that had been thrown up before him, and then, all at once, he remembered the darkness.
“W-What…?” he began, the word rising up amidst the bile, sticking in his throat.
Above him, the shell of the craft opened, unfolding slowly with the hiss of regretful hydraulics.
“I landed your craft,” Sky Raider announced, rising from his seat. “Considering the only other option was to die, I decided it best if I intervened.”
Koji turned to look at him and noted the helm once more cove
ring the other man’s features. Hesitantly, he followed Raider’s example, rising shakily to his feet and looking around, struggling to get his bearings.
“What did you see?” the older man asked dispassionately.
Koji shivered despite the heat.
“The end of the world,” he muttered.
Raider nodded.
“Just checking we were on the same page.” Turning his head, he looked about at the endless desert. “Do you think you’ll be able to get your machine to fly again?”
Koji smiled in reply.
“If I can’t then we’re both in a lot of trouble.”
The other man said nothing as he leapt down from his seat and hit the warm sand below.
“Those visions…” he began.
Instantly, the younger man tensed up.
“Destronger,” Koji said softly, his fists tightening.
Raider turned to look at him, staring out from behind the obsidian mask.
“Joji spoke of Destronger, they made him who he was. He said they were extinct now.”
The young man’s lips twitched in an almost-sneer as he looked down, brushing dust and creases out of his UKMDF uniform.
“They’re not extinct,” he answered, “sadly, they’re very much in existence.”
Raider’s eyes narrowed.
“Why didn’t your people tell me of this?”
Koji’s face suddenly flushed with anger.
“Because you’re hell-bent on finding this MONARCH guy,” he replied fiercely. “You’re so concerned with settling this one score that you haven’t stopped to think about how this guy who killed your friend could be connected to something much bigger.”
“Tell me then,” Raider retorted. “Explain this big picture to me now.”
“You’re being a child,” Koji answered, carefully clambering down over the side of the craft. “You told me I didn’t understand the context of your quest because I hadn’t been in that big old tournament where the Architect tried to take over Skydome City, right?”
Raider nodded again.
“You would have been too young,” he replied curtly.
“There were people younger than me in that tournament, and you know it,” Koji snapped in return, running his fingers over the soft metal of the machine.
Kabuto Kaiser’s side peeled back, flowing like liquid to reveal the compressed imagination engine buried within its side.
He turned his back upon the armoured knight, his hands reaching into the space of the solemn machinery.
“Have you ever stopped to wonder what a man who can write himself into other dimensions might be called?”
“No,” Raider snarled.
Koji glanced over his shoulder.
“Well for a start, you’re calling him MONARCH,” he answered firmly, “but UKMDF calls them Storytellers.”
“That was the name you mentioned…” the older man began.
Turning his head away, Koji stared into the intricate workings of the machine before him.
“But they weren’t like any kind of Storytellers we know; those apparitions would be Destronger Storytellers. I don’t think the man who killed your friend was a member of Destronger… but I do think he was a Storyteller.”
“And how does UKMDF know so much about Storytellers?” Raider demanded.
“Well for a start they built this engine,” Koji smiled. “Who else would be crazy enough to build an engine that runs on pure imagination?”
The bottle stood empty on the old table, disposable cups lined up around it, solemn and defeated like mourners at a funeral.
Chance looked from the older man to his estranged younger brother—two men related despite the disparity of their origins. A soft smile formed, and quickly he suppressed it, chusing to hide his admiration of how quickly the two men had adjusted to one another despite being born on different Earths.
This was what it must be like to be reunited with relatives you assumed dead in some bitter war, he reflected, reaching for his carton of cigarettes.
Silently, he hoped that he never had to meet any of his own relatives again.
“This won’t be easy, gentlemen,” he said, lighting the cigarette and dropping the red and white box back into the inner pocket of his jacket.
Triton glanced at the man who, under different circumstances, would have shared the same past as him.
“I don’t think either of us is expecting it to be,” he said calmly.
Christopher Triton-James nodded as he wrapped the belt around his waist that Chance had handed to his older brother.
“I’m ready for a fight,” the boy said with a confident smirk.
“The fight comes later,” Chance advised him, “first we’ve got to get our foot in the door.”
“You thinking that might be a problem?”
Chance shrugged.
“I’m thinking that it might be difficult,” he reached into another pocket, drawing out a dog eared tarot card depicting a naked woman clasping batons in each hand. At each corner, a different animal head peered in upon the scene whilst above trailed the words, ‘The World (XXI)’.
Calmly he placed the card face down on the table. Almost immediately, the magpie hopped over to it, placing one clawed foot over Chance’s hand as it covered the card. She squawked, spreading her wings and lifting her head. Beneath her, a trail of blood was visible where her talons met flesh.
“Is this what Cale Corporation did for you? Is this how you moved sideways?” Triton questioned.
Chance closed his eyes.
“No, Cale Corporation used technology to move here with Anna as the spiritual catalyst. Each time they move, they literally move the whole building they reside in. What I’m doing, though I still need Anna as a medium with the realm beyond, is a lot more primitive.”
“And dangerous?” Triton asked.
Chance smiled but did not open his eyes.
“I got your brother here and he’s doing all right.”
Triton cast a dubious look at his younger sibling, opening his lips to offer some retort.
The atmosphere in the room changed, a sudden tension seizing his muscles, clouding his mind.
“Way of Blessing #13,” Chance said softly, “Jacob’s Ladder.”
“Will it take long to fix?” Sky Raider sighed, his voice rich with agitation.
Koji shrugged, his hands deep within the machine’s innards.
“It depends on how imaginative we are, I guess,” he said, smiling at the pun.
Raider did not offer a reply, his eyes instead falling at last upon a small cave jutting up from the endless desert.
“There’s a cave over there,” he remarked thoughtfully.
Koji stopped, looking up from his meddling with the engine.
“There shouldn’t be,” he frowned. “Before the sensors crashed and we started getting all of those sickening messages, they showed this desert as flat all the way to the foot of the Riphean Mountains by Shantontown.”
Raider grunted in response.
“I’ll go investigate,” he offered.
He stopped abruptly, his eyes narrowing behind the iron plate that covered his face. On the horizon, a cloud of dust began to emerge, drifting slowly towards them from far in the distance.
“Looks like we might have company soon,” he muttered.
“I thought you were a big deal, Raider,” a voice suddenly called from behind them. “I thought you were one of the legends of the tournament, one of Jack Ryker’s armoured heroes, and yet here I find you skulking in the desert dressed up like a servant.”
Sky Raider felt a sudden thrill of anger warm him, a snarl on his hidden lips as he turned from the scene of the approaching dust cloud.
Standing atop a boul
der amidst the broken rocks that had fallen far from the mountains stood a young man with short, brown hair, his hazel eyes glaring out from beneath heavy eyebrows, his broad frame dressed in a black vest and loose trowsers, a sash of bright silk in blues and reds about his waist.
He was a child, Raider thought, and yet he was older than he himself had been when he first entered Ryker’s tournament. Certainly, he was old enough to know better.
Raider reached down for his belt without waiting for the young man to introduce himself, the U-Phone now incorporated as part of his armour.
“Change! Beetle Red!” he snarled.
The belt’s hidden hypodermic needle once more flooded his system with 2-Xvitamin, the antique armour falling away as he emerged from within, clad again in the red suit he had worn as a member of the Royal Family.
“I’ve searched a long time for—” the boy began.
Ignoring the young man’s words, Raider reached for the handgun bound to his hip and pulled it free, firing once and putting a bullet through the boy’s shin.
The child screamed out, falling from atop the boulder as blood sprayed out, and bone shattered, darkening the sand beneath him.
“Who are you?” Raider demanded, aiming the gun at the boy’s other leg.
Standing beside the downed craft, Koji felt his heart hammer, his eyes widening in horror as his companion marched towards the fallen would-be challenger.
With amazing effort, the young man pulled free a card, struggling to move his hand down towards the henshin brace bound to his left leg.
“C-Change Swift Arion,” he gasped in pain.
Raider lifted the gun and fired once more, putting a bullet through the boy’s left shoulder and throwing him upon his back, the deck of cards scattering from the open slot in his belt and falling amidst the sand.
“No more tricks,” Raider snarled. “Who are you?”
“Raider!” Koji shouted anxiously, trying to put himself before his colleague. “Raider, you can’t do this!”
His strength enhanced by the 2-Xvitamin, Sky Raider easily pushed the other man away, his shadow falling over his crippled foe as he bent down and placed the barrel of the gun to his forehead.
“I don’t have time to play games. Give me your name and tell me why you’ve been looking for me.”
The boy was sweating, his teeth chattering in his mouth, hazel eyes now clouded with pain.
“M-My name is Sky,” the boy laughed, blood staining his teeth as he tossed his head in pain, “S-Sky Gedou.”
“Why were you following me?” Raider snarled.
Again, the boy tossed his head.
“T-To find out how strong you were,” he whispered in a tremulous voice.
Raider nodded with understanding.
“Was it worth dying for, Sky Gedou?”
“Raider!” Koji shouted. “Don’t do this! This boy is not your enemy!”
“All human life is my enemy,” he snarled in reply, his finger twitching upon the trigger.
The gun rang out loudly in the desert, the barrel smoking as the bullet hit the dirt above Gedou’s head.
Slowly, Sky Raider rose up, the Red Beetle armour unfolding as he paused to retrieve pieces of his MONARCH disguise.
“Fix your machine and take this child to a hospital. From here on, I will walk alone.”
Without another word, he strode off towards the distant cave.
Skydome City rose up above them like some fabled and fantastical world from a children’s tale; a gleaming city of the new, cast in silver and steel and spotted with domed arenas and shopping malls, spires and towers.
They passed the large, obnoxious sign welcoming them to the city, following the traffic in from the freeway as Spike effortlessly navigated the lanes of the conflicting roads upon his silent bike, Taryse and Amelia clinging to his back.
Purring solemnly, the modified Honda XR250 Motard guided them across the famed Firmament Bridge, the bay of the city and the endless water far below.
Spike slowed the bike and Taryse felt Amelia shift awkwardly between them.
Fortunately, for both her sanity and her posterior, they had not travelled the full 2017 miles by bike alone. After Taryse’s arm had been bandaged up and set against a splint, they had taken a flight from Cedar City Municipal Airport on a plane owned by a company named Sunlight Arbours upon the production of a cash-card in the name of ‘S. Raider’.
“How come you have one of Sky’s cards?” she had asked at the time.
Spike had smiled and told her that Sunlight Arbours was the company Raider’s father had founded. In order to completely disentangle himself from the events following his father’s death, the young heir had signed over all assets of the company to the Densha de Police.
“Densha de Police?” she asked, sounding slightly out of it.
He had smiled again and told her she’d find out soon.
Was she that far out of the loop now, she asked herself. Was she really that far gone that she didn’t know who her friends were now associated with?
She shook her head in quiet denial.
That wasn’t the life she had chusen. She had turned her back on all that; she had made a decision to be a mother and she was good at it. All the violence and excitement of the tournament was supposed to be behind her, it had been behind her… until Chad had died.
Tears stung her eyes once more.
The motorcycle passed beneath the shadow of the Supreme State Tower, the vast arena where one of the main matches of the tournament had taken place lying but a short distance away, next to the famed Skydome City Plaza.
It had been so long since she had been here, the Golden Thorn incident now but a half-remembered series of images, pictures and sensations that she could no longer quite believe had happened to her.
She turned her head, looking back at the State Tower over her shoulder.
To imagine that the tower had once been wrapped in those beautiful yet alien vines, to imagine that the whole world had all but fallen into a deep, cursed sleep as the Architect had brought to near fruition a plan to enshrine himself as a ruler beyond question on a slumbering continent.
She shuddered, turning away once more.
As a teenager, she had read a handful of Wyndham books, dated science fiction with plots about falling meteorites bringing down alien plant life and other such fanciful disasters. She had never been able to shake the fact that the Architect’s idea of seizing control of the planet’s populace seemed somewhat like the plot of one of those old books.
Again, it was hard for her to believe.
The Honda slowed, and after another series of turns, Campbell pulled the bike up outside a large building with glass revolving doors installed in front and a bored security guard glimpsed within.
The soft purr of the engine was interrupted with a splutter as he put his foot down on the pavement and then it fell silent for good.
“This is it,” he said, pulling free of his navy blue helmet and turning to look at her.
Amelia squirmed between them.
“What are we doing here?” she asked.
“There’s someone who wants to meet you,” Spike replied, kicking the stand out and slowly dismounting the bike.
At once Amelia threw her arms out towards him and squealed with glee as he reached down and lifted her up.
Taryse did not begrudge him this. She was too tired to fight any more old friends.
“Spike,” she said softly, “are you working with Randall Kalish?”
He reached for his packet of cigarettes, looked down at Amelia and then thought better of it.
“Exactly the opposite,” he said with a smile. “I’m working against Randall Kalish.”
“Who are you working for then?” she asked with a sigh. ?
??Who are the Densha de Police?”
Spike gestured with a thumb over his shoulder.
“Why don’t you take a look for yourself?”
She lifted her head slowly, her sad eyes gazing at the revolving glass doors.
There, beyond the security desk and the entrance turnstiles, standing before a vast number of open lifts was a familiar figure.
Her lips parted as she whispered his name, and all at once, Taryse Heather Leiter felt hope flood back into the world.
“Sorry to, ah, disturb you, sir,” Joe Hammel said, his forehead stained with drying sweat, “A-Also, good afternoon. I hope you’re feeling well.”
The man in the simple, black unadorned USMDF uniform stood with his back to Hammel, his face reflected in the window before him like a ghostly image haunting the distant vistas of Ichimonji Heights and Joji Forest below.
Hongo Island, a partially artificial landmass, nature bolstered with the same infrastructure used in the construction of Hong Kong International Airport, rested in the central Pacific Ocean, north of the Republic of Kiribati.
Initially comprised of both Baker Island and Howland Island, both islands had been levelled, and areas of the seabed had been reclaimed in order to fashion Hongo Island and the academy for armoured heroes it had once housed.
Now it was empty, save for the gathered USMDF staff maintaining is facilities, the sweltering heat weighing down upon any who ventured outside of the air conditioned dorms and halls where once the students had resided.
How any of them had ever had the energy to don armour and actually fight in such heat was beyond Hammel’s comprehension.
“What do you want Hammel?” the man whose eyes he could see staring back at him from the reflection asked quietly.
Joe Hammel swallowed hard.
“I thought you should know, sir that, ah—that we’ve lost contact with Agent Mitsukai.”
He swallowed again.
In the reflection, the other man arched an eyebrow.
“You’ve lost Mark?” he asked.
Hammel nodded quickly.
“He was due to report in two hours ago but we haven’t heard anything from him.”
Slowly, Hammel’s commanding officer turned to glare at him.
“So basically, Hammel,” he said, emotion rising in his voice, “what you’re telling me is that not only have you lost Mark, but you’ve lost Taryse and Amelia as well.”
Hammel’s mouth moved, his jowls swaying as sweat began to pour afresh down his face.
“Who do you have in the area?” the other man snapped before Hammel could reply.
The large man swallowed hard, nervously shaking his head.
“Ah, the UKMDF fortress Lundunaborg is a short distance—”
“I don’t give a shit about UKMDF!” the younger man suddenly exploded. “I want to know who of our people is close by, who have we got in the field who can reach Mitsukai and Taryse?”
Hammel flinched as if being physically threatened.
“We… we don’t… sir,” he said in a very small voice.
Slowly, his commanding officer seemed to regain his calm, turning his back again and staring out at the island below.
“Dispatch the Hiram units,” he said coldly, “bring Mitsukai, Taryse and Amelia back here alive.”
There was a moment of silence as he watched a flock of birds flee its roost in the branches below.
“Kill everyone else,” he added at last.
Hammel offered an awkward salute and snapped to attention.
“Yes, Captain Leiter, right away,” he said loudly.
The younger man regarded him with cold eyes in the reflection.
“And on your way out, tell Muro that I want to speak with him.”
“Yes, Captain Leiter,” Hammel again said.
Before any further orders could be issued, Hammel hurried away at the behest of his superior, leaving the young man alone again with his reflection and the vast expanse of the reclaimed world below.