Ch 11
“Cronus, what are you doing here?” it seemed like even when he looked like a walking pile of crap, the griffin went right to the point.
“Oh hey Feathers, thought I would just pop in before Ed and I left.” Me, not so much.
“Pop in-?” Before Feathers could say more, Ed put himself but him and me.
“Not that catching up with your friends isn’t great and all but we need to leave, like right now.” Ed grabbed my arm once more and began to pull me but just as Ed was about to reach the handle to the door, he was pulled back by Feathers who was holding onto my other arm and pulling with what looked to all his might.
“I’m not letting you get away (cough), until I get some answers.” As soon as Feathers said that, Ed punched the griffin right across the beak with his metal right arm. Like a light, Feathers was out cold.
“What the hell Ed? Why did you do that? He wasn’t going to rat us out.”
“He was getting in my way and he needed to be dealt with.” The way Ed spoke was not the way I had been hearing for the past hour. It was emotionless, like his arm had somehow spread all over his body and turning him into some kind of machine, and I didn’t like. While Ed was still focused on Feathers (most likely to make sure he wouldn’t get back up any time soon). I punched him in the back of the head with my re-enhanced strength, knocking him out cold as well. With That done, I knelt by the griffin to see if he was okay, what I found though, shocked me to my core.
Small orange streaks of of data clouds had begun to spring up all over his body. This was the second sign that his body had been infected by the Bugster Virus. ‘How though, none of the bugsters exists here or at least known that I know of. And I was with him almost all day yesterday. So how could he have gotten the disease.’ It was then that I remembered.
“Please, your just saying that. To prove how cool this is, just crush the coin in your hand.” Still hesitant, Feathers did so. Within the course of a second, his entire body became silver in color with a polished gleam before it faded away.
‘It must have been then. The energy items are made from the same coding as my kamen rider suit and the bugsters. So when he absorbed the data of the Iron-body without the Bugster anti-virus, he became infected by it. Without a level one gashat though, there’s no way I can cure him. Unless.’ Concentrating, the weapon I needed appeared.
Gashacon Key Slasher
The Key Slasher, as the name entails, is the first part of the rewriting of code since it allows the puncturing of the coding itself, like a syringe. I don’t have Emu’s anti-virus though, but if have Cronus’ then it should work well enough especially when I have the literal source of all Bugster data on my waste. Hopefully that line of logic would actually work. Removing my gashat, I inserted it into the dual gashat slot and waited for the usual critical finish to activate but nothing came from the weapon’s hidden speakers. Instead, it seemed as though Feathers’ virus progression had only worsened and was now beginning to grow into the base of the infection phase. Not sure what would happen, I did know that whatever Feathers turned into, it would be too large for the room to hold and just cause unneeded damage. Grabbing onto him, I teleported out of the room and the building itself and onto the mountain's top, at the base of all the buildings.
“What? No, I need to be at the base of the mountain not the top.” My cries fell on deaf ears though as feathers had completed his transformation and was now the base gorilla-like infection for Mighty Action X. Upon laying its single eye on me, I could already tell it was angry and it only proved I was right when one of its arms shrunk, only for the mass to travel to the other arm and cause it to grow in the process before the monster swung it at me. The damage he caused was large as an entire chunk of the rock ground, the size of his hand, had been gouged out of the earth. I had dodged the attack luckily by quickly jumping and was now falling through the air to reach the ground below. That proved to be futile though, as the gorilla of a beast was charging, giving me no time to respond and sending my flying through the air from his impact before stopping in the wall of one of the many pillars.
“Ow.” Slowly pulling myself from the wall like an anime character, I was left dazed and my vision was swimming from the impact. ‘How could he hit so hard? He should only be strong enough for a level 1 not a level 99 character from the games.’ MY thoughts stopped though as the gorilla had stopped staring at me and was staring at the sky instead. Looking up, I saw that the guards, as well as Aires had arrived to fight (not that it would help). One by one, griffins began to dive at the creature to try and skewer it with their spears but they were either swatted away like fly or their spears and swords couldn’t pierce through the data beast’s data composed hide. Seeing this, Aires became angry but upon noticing me his anger turned to fury before he dived towards me instead.
Not wanting to be skewered by an irate griffin, I was quick to dodge the strike and began to continue my doging as Aires had unsheathed his sword and began slashing at me. Still with the Key Slasher in hand, I blocked and redirected as many stikes as I could. Eventually I miss timed my block, much like I had miss timed my strike from the fight, and was now left with both my sword and gashat embedded in the ground few yards away from me and with a sword pointing at my throat. If he wasn’t so close, I would have tried to go for my bugvisor for a time stop but I was pretty sure if I even moved in a way that could be seen as threatening, he would stab me straight through the throat. Considering I had only ever seen characters from Kamen Rider shake off slashes, I was not keen to see a direct stab, especially into one of the weakest parts of a body.
“First you dishonor the traditions of my home, now you have unleashed a horrible monster upon it. Does your shame know no bounds.” The venom was almost visible when Aires spoke.
“I didn’t create this on purpose. I thought the energy items were safe to use for others.”
“Others?”
“What you think this guy came out of nothing? He’s my- or rather -was my lawyer. Trying to be nice I gave him a bag of those ‘magic items’ I couldn’t use and let him use one. I didn’t think that he would turn into this monster.” If possible, the captain looked even more angry.
“Then how do I stop it?”
“You can’t.”
“What?”
“I said you can’t stop it. No one can. He has to have the monster separated from his body by someone like me but weaker before the monster can be destroyed. If that doesn’t happen though, Feathers will disappear and that monster will take his place forever.”
“WELL HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU WEAKER THEN IF YOU”RE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DO IT?”
“Well I was planning on trying to use my ‘magic’ in a way i’ve never tested before but nothing has happened yet.” For a second, the sword stayed at my throat before finally it was pulled away though Aires didn’t seem happy about it.
“You will work on finding a way. My guards and I will keep the beast distracted until you can get rid of this monster.” Nodding, I watched as the captain flew to join his troops. Running to the Key Slasher, I pulled it from the rock and began to look it over. Nothing about it was wrong from the show, and when ever I pressed one of the buttons, the right sounds came from it but nothing else.
“It has to be me then, My gashat isn’t compatible for it to work. How is that possible though when I can summon it like all the other weapons.” A crash behind me took my attention away for a brief moment to see that a few troops had become grounded and the citizens of the city were out of their homes and beginning to panic though thankfully in the air and out of the way. Among the Griffins though were Twilight and Applejack as well as the rest of the ponies and and a single dragon from Ponyville. Noticing me as well, they raced towards me.
“What in the Tartrus is happening Cronus?”
“Monster, Feathers, trying to cure, need time.”
“Well if you need time then to get whatever you got in your hands to work, then we seven can help with that.”
“Yeah, what AJ said!” I looked at the one I believed was named Rainbow Dash, stunned. The ponies had been told that I was a bad person from royalty from the get go and only knew me for a couple of hours at best and know they were trusting me to save the day. What kind of logic is that. Apparently noticing my stares, even from under my helmet, Twilight Sparkle stepped forward.
“I am not one to question the princess’ judgment about something but from what I know and what I’ve been told, you are not a bad pony- I mean -person Cronus, just someone taken from their home and put in a bad situation. Because of this, we will all help you and clear your name so we can live in harmony and be friends.” At that, the large group raced into the fight doing whatever they could to help ranging from throwing rocks, to distracting it by tying its legs or blowing confetti out of some unknown cannon into its formless face.
Seeing all this, just from only a few hours of knowing me, that they would truly trust me to help as much as I could, I didn’t know what to think. It was idiotic, short sighted, and just plain sappy, but somehow her words stuck, as though she actually meant something by them, that she truly wanted to be my friend. Focusing again I noticed the the gashat slot was empty, something I hadn’t noticed before. Looking to the ground, I saw my gashat lying at my feet and made to pick it up but as soon as my hands touched it, the gashat exploded in light. When the light subsided, I noticed two things. My bugvisor Zwei and my gashat had transformed.
The first obvious change was that the Bugvisor now looked like a game diver only it was wider and flatter like it was permanently open, I now had three gashat slots on top of it and the A and B buttons were one on each side giving my driver a more controller like look and not a handheld game console. I no longer had the blaster or chainsaw but I felt as though that wouldn’t matter at the moment. The other change was my gashat was now a dual gashat. One side held the same tile as from the original but the other was all white in color with similar but with a different name.
“Kamen Rider Harmony?” A cry of pain from behind alerted me to the increased severity of the situation as the bugster was beginning to glow with power. Acting quickly, I twisted the dual turner.
Kamen Rider Harmony
In an instant my body flowed with an energy I had never felt before. It was like my body had suddenly filled itself with a light that was beginning to overtake a darkness I had never known was there. When my body stopped changing, I Found my body to look mostly the same only my green color scheme had been replaced with the color white, my shoulder pads no longer existed as well as my time stop ability no longer being able to work now because of that and I now wore small white shoulder pads that stuck out at small tips.
I felt powerful but weak at the same time, like this power that I had was strong, stronger than anything, but it would only work on those that were truly a threat. Not caring at the moment though, I pulled the dual gashat from its slot and inserted it into the Key Slasher before pressing gun. The weapon filled with white light, ready to be fired.
Kimewaza: Critical Purity Strike
The beam of looked as though it simply cut through the air, landing a direct hit on the monstrous gorilla and causing it to explode into particles of swirling data and Feathers was at the Center of the mass. The guards acted quickly to catch him but the fight was not truly over yet. As expected, the data gathered together to form a much smaller and condensed form. Salty Bugster: level 5. The Bugster I knew looked exactly as he did from the end of the series but I could feel the power he exuded telling me he was in his final level 5 state.
“How dare you ruin my chance to be born in this world. I will crush you and everyone here.” The words were a hollow promise though as I had run fast enough to almost look like I had teleported to get near him and pierced him through his abdomen with ease. With only a look of confusion (or at least as close to confused as you can get with an unmoving face), the Bugster exploded into data before being absorbed into the sword.
Game Clear
A holographic board of all the known games of Kamen Rider Ex-aid appeared around me before darkening on Mighty Action X. With the Game now cleared, a gashat formed out of thin air, The Mighty Action X game. Not caring at the moment, I stowed the gashat away and turned the dial on my dual gashat again.
Kamen RIder Chronicle
Within an instant, the light receded from within me and my armor returned to its original state. Feeling calm, even outside of the Harmony state I now had, I turned to face the army of griffin soldiers and saw that AIres was now beginning to land and with the King himself as well. Neither looked happy.