Kamen Rider Gr3en Sneak Preview #4: Guardians of the Pinto · 7:19pm Apr 1st, 2016
While I had hoped to have chapters 1-3 of the story ready today, I'm sadly unprepared, so here's a fourth preview instead. Kamen Rider Gr3en is one of two current top priorities alongside a Den-O Henshin One-Shot. These previews, by the way, are really more of preludes taking place before the story, as evidenced by the time stamps.
Preview #1: Round Zero
Preview #2: Struggle
Preview #3: The Warrior in Darkness
Preview #4: Guardians of the Pinto
Preview #5: Catch a Tiger
Preview #6: Be Careful What You Dream Of
Several thousand years ago…
She was Dazzleglow the unicorn, the warrior known as Kouma. Since the owl’s chain explosion, the Gurongi had only been getting tougher and tougher, and their explosions even bigger. She now absolutely had to lure or drive them away from populated areas before she even tried really fighting them; there was just no other option. Their “games” had also now gotten too sick to describe. If there was a silver lining, it was that more time had been passing between each new “contestant”. Were they finally beginning to run out? Too bad it was tough to see the silver lining from the heart of the thunderhead.
Dazzleglow skated on hoof-generated ice paths along a rocky shoreline, clad in blue armor shell plates over a black undersuit and wearing a pointed silver tiara, trying to outpace the latest Gurongi, a black grasshopper speed demon on some motorized monstrosity. It had been chasing down anypony ground-bound who wasn’t fast enough to escape. Luckily, it seemed sufficiently satisfied with an opponent who could keep up with it. Hooray her.
Yikes! Dazzleglow threw her front hooves up to catch herself on a slab of rock she hadn’t noticed right in front of her, kicking off to jump over it, a second before the black grasshopper, Go-Badaa-Ba, rammed the front tire of its vehicle into the rock face where she’d just been. He chuckled as she skated off with a head start, revving the engine and jumping the wheel up on top of the rock, speeding his motorcycle up it and after her again.
That was too close. She had to end this soon, but how? Her attention turned to the mechanical roar filling her ears…mechanical. That vehicle was metal, so it should be effective…Happyglow’s power. Despite her name, though, Happyglow wasn’t always “happy”, and that attribute carried over when calling on her power. There was a risk of that power turning on her, and the last time that had happened…the way she’d felt… Dazzleglow was the one running out here to fight these monsters all the time, but Happyglow had to be the strongest of them all, having to live with that side of her. Still, she had to take that risk.
Okay, now…, Dazzleglow thought, bringing to mind her desire for the tiara’s stone to hear. Badaa had almost caught up. She leaned back on her hooves to skid herself to a stop and shouted in her mind, Magnetism!
Her horn lit up pink, as did the tiara’s central stone and lower left tab with a pulsing hum, a wave of energy replacing her blue armor plates with newly arranged pink ones, a surge changing her mane and tail pink, and her eye covers flashing to pink.
She threw out her right hoof, and a magnetic stream shot backwards and brought the Gurongi’s metal steed to a sudden halt, sending a surprised Badaa flipping over the handlebars and flying past her. Then she felt it. Her arm began to twitch.
This wasn’t a good take, her mind told her, the bike beginning to shake in midair and bend in on itself, the power’s starting to slip out of control. A sharp pain resonated in her head. Dazzleglow used her last stable grip on the power to turn right and push the bike back around behind her, a surge of repulsion launching it out over the ocean, where it fell and crashed into the water.
Me! her thoughts cried, her horn lighting up purple, the tiara stone and her armor following suit with a flash. She stomped a free hoof on the ground to steady herself, giving a deep sigh. She heard a grumbled moan, looking over to see Badaa getting back to his feet as well.
“Gose n zidebaga,” he muttered. “Gose gu gonagagegi go giragu jo!” {My bike. I’ll return the favor!}
He jumped up, his feet slamming to the ground in front of her a second later. Before she could react, he had reached in and grabbed her by the neck, but she punched back, hitting him in the gut. He leapt back, aiming to take a safer distance, but Dazzleglow’s horn split open and she slammed the ground with her hoof. An invisible column of antigravity rose up under Badaa in midair, launching him several times higher than he’d intended towards a rocky cliff. Frustrated but not outsmarted, he twisted around and prepared to land on top of the cliff. His feet touched down. And kept going.
Dazzleglow looked to the top of the cliff, waiting for him to jump down again or at least look over. She instead heard a crash from inside the cave at the base of the cliff, catching a glimpse of Badaa hitting the ground. Huh? There hadn’t been a shaft leading all the way down, had there?
A buzzing filled her ears. A sense of some kind, an instinct. “It’s behind you.”
Dazzleglow gasped. What had that just been? She turned to look back at the ocean crashing against the rocks, and saw a bipedal figure standing on the stony shoreline. It was blue, with stingray fins on the sides of its head curving upward, and a short cape draped down its back. Like the Gurongi, it too wore a belt, but this one was more like a spiraling shrimp with a strip of leather trailing down instead of a monster face, and it had a silver wing-shaped pendant attached over its left shoulder. Dazzleglow took a defensive stance, not knowing what to expect. The new monster, Potamotrigon Cassis, slowly approached.
“Goseba ba gabadazegida ba?” {Was it you?} Dazzleglow heard behind her, turning to see Badaa pushing himself to his feet, brushing coral dust off of his shoulder. He raced forward out of the cave at her, but jumped up and over her, soaring over to the newcomer and delivering a powerful kick to its chest, knocking it back.
Not a second later, something burst from the water. A second stingray monster, this one sea green with head fins pointing down, Potamotrigon Cucullus, leapt down in front of Badaa and swiped at him with a dual-ended weapon resembling a sawtooth shark’s nose. Badaa casually leaned back, and the sword passed just short of him.
Cassis had gotten back to its feet and had taken out a set of dual sickle blades whose ends connected back to its cape. It jumped forward and the two monsters swung their weapons at Badaa from opposite sides in unison, Cucullus’s sawtooth sword hitting his lower left side and Cassis’s sickle stabbing his right shoulder.
The three stood in silence for several seconds as Dazzleglow simply looked on. The stingrays seemed to have expected something to have happened by now. Badaa looked left to Cucullus. He looked right to Cassis. Then he grabbed both weapons in his hands, pulling them out of and away from his body against the strength of the shocked stingray monsters.
Badaa jumped into the air, his grip on their weapons dragging Cassis and Cucullus with him, in a single bound springing over to the cliff face, and turning and slamming the two into it. He pushed off and let them slide down the cliff, himself landing a distance back.
Atop a nearby rocky cliff, a figure silently observed the scene. The figure was gray and pale blue, with a pair of long wing pendants attached over its shoulders, a whale-like gray head, pairs of blue fin-like leather drapes extending from its sleeves, and a staff with a fishtail-shaped end. A second figure, red and white feathered with a bronze birdlike facemask stepped out from behind the whale figure.
“Protect…,” said the whale figure.
The bird figure finished, “…the Pinto.”
With a buzzing sound, an orange and black insectoid figure leapt down from the cliff by the battle, a pair of white wings trailing from its back, landing next to the shoreline and turning to Badaa. Dazzleglow didn’t know who these new monsters were, but they seemed to be fighting the Gurongi. Maybe they could be a big help for her.
Badaa slowly turned from the stingray monsters to face the new arrival. “Gorage ba gugi bozegu ba?” {Are you next?}
The new monster, Apis Vespa, simply turned to Dazzleglow. It stepped forward.
Huh? thought Dazzleglow. Wait, w-weren’t you just…?
Slowly approaching, Vespa raised its right hand over a gold wing pendant attached over its left shoulder. It lowered its hand back down before lifting its left hand, tracing a ‘Z’ over its right with two fingers. A glowing disk appeared over its head, which it reached up into and drew down from a long rapier sword.
Okay, definitely not here to help me, Dazzleglow thought, starting to step back. Vespa stepped to the right, directing Dazzleglow’s backtrack towards a tall, flat rock. Unseen behind her, a honeycomb began emerging on the rock’s surface.
“Protect…,” repeated the figures atop the cliff, “the Pinto…”
