//------------------------------//
// Chapter 5: Double Vision 
// Story: Kamen Rider EqG 
// by BioniclesaurKing4t2 
//------------------------------//


Double Vision  noiƨiV ɘlduoᗡ


The Next Day, Thursday

In an empty hallway of Canterlot High, the small window on a classroom door warped, and a figure jumped out of it.  They stood up, glancing up and down the hall, before looking down at an object in their hand.
“Hah,” said Rainbow Dash, tapping her Advent Deck with her finger, “never be late to class again.”
The window warped again, and she turned to see the image of Cavalier fade into view.
“You kept it a secret, right?” he asked.
“Totally,” Rainbow said, leaning back and crossing her arms.  “Didn’t breath a word of it.  They never suspected a thing.”  She smiled proudly.
Cavalier stared at her silently.
Rainbow briefly glanced off to the side.
Cavalier continued to stare.
Rainbow’s smile faded into a look of feigned innocence.
“How long?” he asked.
Rainbow dropped her smile and her arms with an exhaling sigh.  “Five minutes,” she admitted.
“After you met up with them.”
Rainbow opened her mouth to respond, but she stopped.  She raised a curled finger to her chin in thought for a second.  “Is there such a thing as ‘negative time’?” she asked.
Cavalier nodded while turning to the side.  “Good thing that was part of the plan.”
Rainbow looked up.  “Wait, what?  You mean you didn’t even…?  Then why did you—”  Cavalier’s image faded away.  “Hey, wait!”
Rainbow Dash cut herself off and quickly glanced around to make sure no one had seen that.  One of the nerd kids with purple skin and a yellow shirt had walked in from other end of hall and was standing there.  He stared at her.
“What’re you lookin’ at?” she snapped.
The student beat a hasty retreat.


“While we were away,” said the ORE newswoman, “our camera crew managed to catch up with the witness from the latest Armored Hero event.  Though it happened late yesterday afternoon, it wasn’t reported until this morning.  We now go live to the scene.”
“Why did I wait?” said Crafty Crate in a cutaway to a handheld news camera.  “If you gotta know, I was waiting to see if the drycleaner could get that web glue off of my shirt.  The answer was no, by the way, and whoever did this owes me a new shirt.  Yeah, no, but that’s the thing, it wasn’t that Armored Hero you’ve been parading.  No, cops showed me a sketch of the guy, and I’ll tell you what I told them, it’s not the same person, there’s two of ’em now and this one was a girl.  It’s probably just some obsessed fan cosplayer, or it’s become a new LARPing trend.  Hmm?  How do I know what that is?  Ehm… no comment.”
“Due to a minor situation,” the woman continued back in the newsroom, “our normal weather reporter, Misty Breeze, is temporarily unavailable.  Now for her substitute, Paula Haze, here with the weekend forecast.”
“Start preparing for a wet weekend,” said Paula as the feed switched to the weather screen, “as a giant storm will be brewing over Canterlot City in the coming days.  There’s gonna be lightning, thunder, and dangerously high winds…”


“So, he had you pegged from the get-go, eh?” commented Applejack as Rainbow Dash crossed her arms.  It was lunchtime, and five of them were continuing their discussion from last night about Rainbow’s sudden induction into the Kamen Rider Hall of Fame after their initial surprise had worn off, though now with the added incident from just this morning.  Meanwhile, Pinkie Pie was sitting at the end of the group rapidly tapping on her phone screen.
“And here I thought I ‘exuded a sense of trustfulness’,” Rainbow said with feigned grace.  “Didn’t Twilight say I was supposed to be Loyalty?”
“The Equestrian you is, at least,” Sunset added, looking over the Talon Deck.  “But you’re right, how does it knows which card to have on top?”  Rainbow sighed.  They’d lost her.  “It’d have to be some sort of psychological field reader,” Sunset continued muttering, tapping the gryphon symbol, “but I don’t know how it would work without magic…”
“Why would he tell me to keep a secret he didn’t want me to keep?” Rainbow asked aloud to herself.
“Here’s an idea,” offered Applejack.  “What if he wanted you to tell us, so he told you not to to make sure that you would?  Reverse psychology an’ all.”
“Come now, darling,” Rarity said, “that would be needlessly complicated.”
“But how could he just assume that I wouldn’t keep the secret from you guys?” Rainbow said with a tinge of frustration.  “I mean, sure, I was never going to, but why would he think that?  I just can’t leave that alone.  I had this feeling that kept me following the story of the Armored Hero in the first place, and that same feeling is telling me to keep pressing this detail.”
“Have you ever considered just askin’ him?” Applejack suggested.
“If you ever met him,” Rainbow replied, “you’d be able to tell that he’s treating me with a ‘need to know’ approach.  I tried asking him things before, all he gave me was stuff about how to be a Kamen Rider, what to do to summon a weapon, practical things only.  He’d never tell me why or something like that.”
“Well whatever it was,” said Rarity, “he knew what you were going to do.  Do you think that could have been because…he knows you?  Directly?”
Rainbow paused, then looked up as if something had clicked.  “Now that you mention it,” she said, leaning in closer, “I’ve always kinda had this idea—”
Rainbow suddenly hushed up.  She watched over her shoulder out of the corner of her eye as Flash Sentry walked past the table.  Applejack raised an eyebrow.
“You seriously think that it’s him?” she asked in a hush.  “Not that I can’t maybe see that as possible, but isn’t it more likely that Cavalier is one of the any number of people in the city, maybe…that we don’t know?  It’s not like every event in the universe is gonna revolve around us.”
“What are you talking about?” Rainbow said.  “Of course it’s gonna end up being someone we know.  The universe may not revolve around us, but the weirdness of this school certainly does, and this Kamen Rider business is close enough to follow the same rule.”
Applejack sighed.  “And you’re sure you aren’t just sayin’ that because Flash is the only guy you know well enough to have enough of a reason to actually suspect?”
Rainbow raised a finger to object, but paused.  “I am not denying that,” she said.
“Yes!” Pinkie randomly blurted out.  “My cupcakes have achieved sentience!”  The others, even Sunset, immediately turned to look her direction, as did a few other students at the next table over.  She glanced up at them.  “What?  It’s Cupcake Clicker, the most addicting game ever.”  She looked back down at her phone and started tapping again.  “Just half a quadrillion more cupcakes and I can get another Baking Dungeon, and then three more achievements will unlock caramel icing, and that’s loads of bonus points with all of my candle upgrade—this game is consuming my li-hi-hiiiife.”
Ignoring that obvious cry for help, the others slowly turned back to their own discussion.
“Remember Flash back in Sugar Cube Corner,” Rainbow said, “the day the news first showed the Armored Hero on video?”
“Nope,” said AJ casually.
“Well I do,” Rainbow continued, “and…I don’t know, just something about it.  The way he said that, his general vibe.  And then I’m just saying, but that was a pretty odd phone call he was having yesterday.  ‘But I’m telling you’,” she mimicked, “ ‘she’d be perfect for it,’ and then only hours later, I get drafted into being a Kamen Rider?  Su-spiii-cious.”
“There are plenty of reasonable explanations behind him sayin’ that,” replied Applejack.
“Name one,” Rainbow dared.
“Maybe he’s got a sister he’s tryin’ to help get a job interview,” Applejack offered.
“Or if not a sister,” said Rarity, “then maybe a cousin.”
“And if not a job,” Pinkie said without looking up from her phone, “then maybe a role in a stage play.”
“O…kay,” Rainbow said, counting on her fingers, “name a fifth one, then.”
Directly across from Sunset, Fluttershy had been half-listening, her attention focused instead on Aquileo’s Attack Vent card, which she was holding and looking over.
“Um, about this Aquileo,” she spoke up, prompting the others to turn.  “Did he seem friendly at all?  I might like to meet a majestic-looking creature like this, not that I’d be able to see him.”
Sunset glanced up at Fluttershy, but her eyes were drawn instead to the water bottle sitting on the table between them, and the ripples running across its side.  The faint image of an eared eagle head looked out, tilting back and forth as it stared at Fluttershy, inching closer.
“Um,” Sunset said, “you might want to be careful about holding that card near reflective surfaces.”
“Hmm?”  Fluttershy looked over.  “What do you mean, what’s happening?”
Sunset pointed at the water bottle.  “You mean you can’t—”
“Wait,” interrupted Rainbow Dash.  “Sunset, you can see it too?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Sunset answered, “but I don’t know…”  She paused, remembering what she was holding.  “Hang on a second.”  She slowly set the Advent Deck down on the table took her hand away from it.  The image and rippling faded from view.  She glanced back at Rainbow.  “Is it still happening?”
Rainbow Dash nodded; by now even Pinkie had looked over.  Sunset lowered her hand back down onto the Deck.  She didn’t need to tell the others for them to know she could see it again.
The six stared silently between each other for a second, collectively echoing an understood “Whoa”.
Sunset looked back at the Deck.  “I have gotta know how this isn’t magic,” she whispered.
Applejack turned to Rainbow.  “What exactly did you say ‘Kamen Rider’ meant, again?”
“I…don’t actually know,” Rainbow Dash answered.
Fluttershy looked back at water bottle, still holding the card.  She smiled and waved into the reflection.  Unseen by her, Aquileo tilted his head again and nodded, flicking his ears.


* * *


Location: Evil

The figure stood in the darkness, again swiping through multiple views from around the city on his holographic screen, intently focusing on each image before passing to the next.
“It has to be here somewhere,” he mumbled.  “What did it look like, again?”  He flipped to the next view, again not finding something.  He was about to swipe left again, but stopped.  “I’m going to need a closer set of eyes.”
He held his arm out to the right and snapped his fingers, and a Gelnewt stepped forth from the reflection of a large round mirror beside him.


* * *


Shortly after school, and Rainbow Dash was at soccer practice, standing at the end of the line for a practice activity run with hoops and cones and all that good stuff.  She always volunteered to go last because, as she often proved true, she had “the performance to end the show”.  She’d had to miss last Thursday’s practice because she and Fluttershy had been held up with the news station and police department surrounding their first run-in with the Mirror Monsters, but she was determined to make up for lost time this week.
Naturally, the obvious dilemma came to mind.  Why did she break up the Rainbooms if she was still going to continue with the soccer team?  Wasn’t that just ruining her friends’ fun while still keeping some for herself?  She invoked a technicality.  Part of why she’d disbanded the band…no pun intended—was because they’d reached the point of no longer using band practice time for the band.  But this was different, because she actually used soccer practice time for soccer.  Even if she spent half the time waiting around.  Soooooo boring.
“So,” she said to the boy standing in line in front of her, faded red skin with pale blue hair, “is archery too easy for you or are you just an overachiever?”
“Huh?” he asked.  Then he looked down at the bow-and-arrow pin on his uniform.  “Oh.  Ha, very funny.  No, actually I’m just trying to stay well-trained.  Soccer practice is a good way to keep in shape for what I—”
“Sonic Arrow!” Coach Spitfire called from field.  The boy pointed with his thumb and silently nodded to the field before running out for his go at the practice course.  Now it was only Rainbow left in line.  She clapped and rubbed her hands together in preparation.  Just a few more—
The whistling ringing rose up in her ears, and in her mind, she could almost sense a roadmap to its source.  It wasn’t far.  She quickly glanced around the immediate area, seeing a tall mirror propped against one of the stands off to her left.  A Gelnewt wandered slowly through the reflection, looking around.
‘Because she actually used soccer practice time for soccer.’  She had literally just thought those words a minute ago.  Why, world?  Why?
That aside, the fact that one of these monsters was so close to the school was something that couldn’t be left alone.  It didn’t matter if it was here after her or not, she had to deal with it right now.  She reached and slid her Advent Deck halfway out of her uniform pocket—
“Rainbow Dash!” called Coach Spitfire.  Rainbow looked back to the field in surprise.  Oh, wasn’t this just the classic hero’s dilemma?  Which life would get priority, hero or civilian?  Should the audience like their star character for their choices just yet?  Would this be a telling sign of the ever-predictable character arc to come?  No, not her, she would not fall victim to such an overused trope.  If only both choices’ paths weren’t already their own separate tropes.  What option did that even leave her with to be original?  “Rainbow Dash?” repeated Spitfire.
Rainbow looked back down at her Deck and silently moaned.  There was no winning, was there?  Then she noticed a stray soccer ball sitting on the ground in front of her.  She glanced over to the mirror with the Gelnewt, then back to the ball.  Giving the Deck a bit of a squeeze, she casually stepped forward, then swiftly kicked the ball with the inside of her right foot, lines of light blue electricity jumping from her foot to the ball as it flew off to the left, warped through the mirror, and flew and hit the Gelnewt in the face.  The monster promptly flipped over backwards and landed on the ground, feet in the air.  It struggled back and forth, but like its friends earlier, the large X-weapon on its back had trapped it on the ground.
Rainbow Dash smirked as she slipped her Deck back into her pocket and ran out onto the field.


Less than a minute later, Kamen Rider Talon leapt out of the other side of the mirror armed with a pair of eagle-talon gauntlets, running out into the Mirror World’s CHS soccer field.  Rainbow Dash slowed and spun around, scanning from corner to corner.  The Gelnewt was nowhere to be seen.


* * *


After about an hour of standing around in the Mirror Plane in her Talon armor, Rainbow heard the motor of an approaching Advent Cycle.  As it neared her it slowed, easing to a stop in front of her.  The cover lifted up and back, and Cavalier looked up at her.
“Didn’t realize I had an appointment,” he commented.
“You didn’t happen to catch a red minion around the school recently, did you?” she asked as the seat raised and he stepped out.
“Why, did you lose one?” he asked in return.
“I thought I stunned him,” she said, following as he walked past her, “but he disappeared before I could get back to dealing with him.”
“Texting while fighting?”
Rainbow stopped and crossed her arms.  “I was doing other things before this, y’know.  They didn’t just go away yesterday.”
Cavalier paused a moment to look back at her before walking on and through the mirror wall in front of them.  Rainbow blinked and slowly tiptoed reaching forward.  Swaying a bit, she stepped her feet a bit farther apart to steady herself as she glanced back at the Cycles for a reference point.  A reflective silver wall in a reflective silver environment where you could barely tell there was a floor at all really messed with the depth perception.  Like a hall of mirrors, it was easy to enter, but forget one turn you made and we’ll see you again in a few days.
Another step and her hand disappeared into a ripple in midair.  She looked around the edges for some visual indication of the wall.  Okay, so there was an outline… of sorts.  She almost had this down.  She stepped forward through the wall and past the brief shrill whoosh—and into the Rider’s base.  There was a bit more ambient light than last time, but only to see a few dark boxy silhouettes along the walls and another table or two.
“Something else?” Cavalier asked over his shoulder, noticing her.
Okay, this was her chance.  She was gonna have to channel all of her sly detective wit and skill to maneuver through the discussion carefully enough so as to extract the information she was looking for without him catching on to her goal.
“What’s your secret identity?” Rainbow Dash asked.  She felt her subconscious slap her on the forehead with a sandal.  Real smooth there, Dash, he’ll never suspect what you’re after.  Half-boiled for sure.
“Wow,” Cavalier said flatly after a pause, “really?”
“Uhg, fair enough,” she sighed.  “Well, instead, how about some more details on the Mirror World?  What sort of a place is it?  Why does it exist?  Because to me it seems like it’s just there to be empty.  Convenient for battles, but…”
“Isn’t that enough?” he asked.
“Come on, we’re dying to know something.”
Cavalier paused.  Then he turned back to her and said with a hint of amusement, “I’ve gotta have something that keeps you coming back for more.”
Rainbow had run out of exasperated reactions, so she gave a silent mash-up of all of them.  “Alright then,” she said, “just so I can say this conversation accomplished something, here’s a question that came up recently.  What does ‘Kamen’ mean?”
“What, have you forgotten what’s ordinary already?”
“Nah, I dropped ‘common’ from my dictionary ages ago,” she replied.  “I mean as in Kamen Rider.  What’s the ‘Kamen’ part mean?”
Cavalier reached up and tapped his helmet.  “Masked.”
“Oh,” she said.  She paused before looking back up.  “Wait, that’s it?”


* * *


The Next Day, Friday

“And now,” said the ORE newswoman, “Misty Breeze is back for an update on the weather forecast for this weekend.”
“Another reason why I should be the only one who does the weather around here,” said an annoyed Misty as the feed switched to her.  “Forget everything that second-fiddle Paula Haze said yesterday.  Not a single thing she told you about is going to happen!  I have no idea what crazy other world she got any of it from…”


So she was no good at sneaky interrogations, that much was obvious.  However, Rainbow Dash thought, maybe she could still sleuth up some truth by…wow that description sounded better before she’d put it into words.  Maybe she could still find what she was after by using more “indirect” methods.
It was the brief gap before the last class of the day, and some of the students who’d skillfully juggled their free period were already leaving.  Rainbow was doing her best to blend into the miniscule crowd, following a mild distance behind Flash Sentry.  He was still her only guess as to who was under the masked Rider’s mask.  She’d been keeping an eye on him all day, and though nothing had stood out yet, she was sure that he had to be acting a little off from usual; admittedly, perhaps just from the feeling of being watched, it’s always a hazard of observing.  But there had to be something definitive somewhere.  She just had to wait until there was another monster alarm.  If she could gauge his reaction, or maybe even see him transf—
“Who are we stalking?” asked a sudden, decidedly pink-sounding voice.  Dash jumped.
“Sssshhhhh!” she hissed, turning to find Pinkie Pie standing beside her, still tapping on her phone.  “And I’m not stalking,” Rainbow added in a loud whisper, “I’m tailing him.”
Pinkie stopped tapping and thought a second.  “That doesn’t sound better.”
“Uhhg,” Rainbow moaned with a facepalm.  She turned back towards Flash.
“You’re reeeeeally convinced he’s the guy, huh?”
“Until I have proof for or against it,” Rainbow said, looking back to Pinkie again, “that’s my running theory.”
Pinkie looked down the hallway.  “Um, your running theory is running away,” she said, pointing at Flash turning around the corner at the end.  “Walking away, but stil—”  Without a word, Dash took off after him, leaving Pinkie standing alone.  After a second, she turned and walked away, going back to tapping on her phone.  “Ooh, Cupcake Storm!” she said as she started rapidly tapping all over the screen.
Rainbow slid around the next corner but found Flash standing there as if waiting for her, arms crossed; she quickly skidded to a stop in the middle of the hall, whistling innocently.
“Something I can help you with?” Flash asked.
“Huh?” Dash said, trying to sound surprised.  “Oh, hey…funny meeting you here.”
Flash gave an unconvinced stare.  “Yeah, something’s up.  Is there another sort of magical whatsits attacking the school again?”
“Whaaaat?  Noooo…,” she said in the least convincing way humanly possible.  “Why?  Do you know of…one?”
Suddenly Rainbow’s ears were filled with an unmistakable whistling ringing, the mental roadmap to its source now coming in crystal clear.  She looked in its direction, forgetting to check if Flash did too.  Oh heck with that plan, stopping the monster was more important.  “Okay, now that’s close,” she whispered to herself.  “Wait, that’s not just close, it’s…,” she added, mentally looking closer before she stopped in shock, “…here.”
She took off down the hall all of thirty feet, turning around one last corner.  A lone Gelnewt was slowly creeping through the locker rows down the thankfully empty hallway.  How much to bet it was the same one as before?
“What’s it doing?” muttered Rainbow Dash.
“What’s what doing?” asked Flash.  Rainbow turned to see that he’d followed her.
“Um, well…,” Rainbow started.  Cavalier clearly hadn’t expected her to keep things a secret from her friends, but what about random other people?  It seemed that Flash couldn’t see the monster…but was that just a ruse?  What if Flash really was Cavalier and this was just a test?  Oh, that would be so like the seemingly random old guy who later turned out to be the martial arts master you’d been looking for all along.
Her attention was drawn back to the Gelnewt as she noticed its attention had been drawn to them, Rainbow realizing that it had realized she’d realized it was there.  She stepped forward, holding her arm out in front of Flash.  “Your comment about the news way back then may have been a biiiit spot on,” she said back to him.
The Gelnewt took a step towards them, but Rainbow ran forward to meet it.
“Comment?” muttered Flash.
Rainbow jumped and kicked at the Gelnewt, but it grabbed her foot and pushed her flying back.  She made a controlled tumble over backwards and landed in a crouch, reaching back to her pocket.  She threw her left arm out forward, her Advent Deck sending light blue electricity from the silver claw symbols at the corners down her arm and to her waist.  The electricity wrapped around and a silver belt materialized around from the back as she stood up, a large buckle with a square gap generating at the front.  She threw her arm down to the side, pointing at the Gelnewt with her right hand.  “Kamen Rider!”  {Break out!}
She pushed the Deck into the gap in the buckle, the top and bottom edges clamping down onto it.  It slid backwards into the void inside, a light blue light shining from behind it, and began repeatedly flipping over backwards with a whir, only the gold Gryphon symbol visible within the blur.  A light blue energy sphere shot out from the belt, its equator splitting into a pair of rings that rotated past an ‘X’ and to a vertical, continuing while they now printed a suit of armor onto her.  Reaching the equator again, the energy shell expanded and faded, leaving Rainbow Dash standing there as Kamen Rider Talon, bright cyan armor over a dark teal undersuit.  The Gelnewt snarled in surprise, taking a step back.
“Okay,” said Flash from behind her, “well this is a new one for you.”
So she was bad at secret identities, too, Rainbow though, big whoop.  One Gelnewt would be no trouble, she’d have this done before anyone else wandered by.  Ah shoot, if only the rest of the girls were here to see this—she hadn’t had a safe chance yet to actually show them her new armor.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the Gelnewt charging her, but she kicked out and hit it in the chest to knock it stumbling back.  She stepped forward to do a multi-hit punching move, but the first punch felt like she’d hit a rubber ball and sent the Gelnewt stumbling back again.  She went forward and punched a second time, the hit seemingly bouncing it away again.  Getting annoyed and still looking for a combo, she tried again, the third hit sending it farther up the hall still.
“No offense, but it just looks like you’re following a really bad training video,” Flash said from the sidelines, walking up closer along the left locker row.
Frustrated, Rainbow ran up at it again, but the Gelnewt reached over its head and pulled out its giant shuriken weapon, thrusting it forward and catching her between two of the X-prongs.  She grabbed the weapon, but the Gelnewt swung it back and forth, pulling it free from her grip and then hitting her with the prongs in a spit of sparks and a metal clang.  It swung at her again, and though a giant weapon like that should be easy to see coming and dodge, in a skinny hallway there’s really nowhere to dodge to, so as she tried leaning back, the sheer reach of the shuriken knocked her crashing back into the lockers.  Steadying herself, she hit one with the bottom of her fist.
“Shouldn’t this guy be easy to beat since he’s alone?” she muttered in frustration.  “Dumb law of inverse ninjas.”
Rainbow looked up and saw as the Gelnewt stabbed one of the shuriken’s points into a locker, poking right through the metal door like paper, and then shoved off on the other prongs like a pirate ship’s wheel, sending the shuriken spinning down the row of lockers, tearing locker doors clean off down the line right towards her.
She quickly dove to the middle of the floor, but then looked back up and saw it spin past her and keep heading for Flash.  He took a step back, but otherwise only stood there with a startled look.
If he’s actually not Cavalier, flashed through Rainbow’s mind, then he won’t know what’s coming at him!  “Hey,” she called, jumping back up, “watch out!”
Suddenly, a small object whizzed past Rainbow Dash’s head from behind.  A spinning glint of gold flew and hit the shuriken, in a flash knocking it off course and across the hall, where it bounced off the lockers on the opposite wall, then back across and off the first wall again before clattering to the ground, still spinning but skidding to a stop.  The small gold object flew back past Rainbow again, and she turned to see the Gelnewt ducking out of its way, the object continuing before it was caught in a black suit-covered hand of a figure standing further up the hall.  The object was a golden horseshoe, and the hand belonged to Kamen Rider Cavalier.
Cavalier looked down the hall at Rainbow and Flash.  “New friend?”
Rainbow Dash looked at Cavalier, then back at Flash Sentry, then back to Cavalier again.  Dang, she thought she’d had it.
“Hey,” said Flash, “isn’t that…?”
“Um,” Rainbow replied tentatively, “maybe?”
“Heh, why am I not surprised,” Flash said.
Caught between two Riders, the Gelnewt looked down.  It saw a cracked but largely intact sheet mirror from inside someone’s locker door lying on the ground near its feet.  Cavalier saw this too.
“Curse it—,” he muttered as he threw the horseshoe at the Gelnewt again, but the monster had already leapt forward and was sucked into the sheet mirror’s reflection, the spinning horseshoe flying past empty air before slowing and flying back to him as if on a spring.
Rainbow ran over to the mirror.  “How did he fit through this?” she asked.
“The size of the reflection doesn’t matter, just that it’s there,” said Cavalier.
“If you say so,” Rainbow said, focusing on the doorway of the reflection and seeing its surface ripple.  She took a hop forward and was sucked inside and through.
Cavalier looked over at Flash one more time, which Flash returned with a silent stare, before stepping towards the mirror and warping through it.
Principal Celestia came around the corner with a look of concern, finding only the gutted locker row and Flash standing there.  “I heard a commotion,” she said, “what happened this time?”
“It…,” Flash said calmly, slowly shaking his head, “all happened so quickly…”


Outside the Mirror World’s Canterlot High School, one of the windows along the “arm” of the building reaching out from the right of the front door warped, the Gelnewt leaping out.  It started running away, but stopped.  It turned back to see the window still rippling, then ran forward at it again.
Rainbow had been able to tell immediately upon jumping in that the Gelnewt wasn’t just going straight through to the other side of the same mirror, but she was surprised to find herself not in the normal Mirror Plane, but some sort of slipstream, almost like a tunnel slide at a water park, which could only be redirecting her down the same path the monster had taken.  She was launched out through the reflection on the other side—right into the path of the charging Gelnewt.
The Gelnewt rammed into her before she could react, knocking her back as she heard something else come through behind her, then slammed into it.  She and Cavalier fell to the ground as the Gelnewt gave a grunt and turned to race away again.
Rainbow Dash sprang back to her feet.  Oh, this guy was getting it now.  She slid open her slotter and pulled out a card.  A dark teal border around the image of a tornado emulating from a set of talons, Attack 1000: Blust Vent.
“Let’s see what this one does,” she said, setting it in the open tray, rolling her eyes at the accompanying sound effect.  She slid the talon cover forward over the card.
Blast Vent
Wind began swirling around her right forearm, almost like a cast over it.  The effect being obvious, she drew back like a pitcher and then threw her arm forward at the escaping Gelnewt, a swirling stream of wind shooting over her open hand.  The Gelnewt glanced over its shoulder to see the horizontal tornado catch up to it, pushing it away faster and lifting it into their air.  It turned back forward just in time to watch as it was rammed into the raised front legs of CHS’s stone horse statue, spinning it over backward as it fell to the ground, landing on its back.  Light beams shone from it as it dissipated into a cloud of black smoke.
Rainbow dropped her arm with a sigh.  Then something occurred to her.  Wait…
She reached to her Advent Deck and pulled out the Blust Vent card again, already back and the next in line.  Yep, as she’d thought, the card said “Blust Vent”, with a ‘u’.  Well, ‘bluster’ did have a wind-relevant definition, but why did the slotter announce “Blast Vent” with an ‘a’?  She shook her head and slid the card away again, glancing at the base of the statue.  Then she did a double take.
She walked over to the statue, staring at it.  Cavalier followed up behind her.  He glanced over her shoulder.
“Didn’t think he hit it that hard,” Cavalier commented.
“Yeah, that…,” Rainbow replied, “don’t think that was me.”
The back face of the statue’s base was covered in an intertwined spider web pattern of cracks.
“Well, it probably happened a while ago,” he said after a second.  “Why, is something wrong?”
“Uh…,” she hesitated, “not really, no.”
After standing around for another second, Cavalier turned and walked back towards the front of the school. “I’m gonna go pick up that invisible shuriken before someone trips on it,” he said back to her.
“Y-yeah…,” she replied, not actually having heard what he’d said.  He probably noticed.
As she heard Cavalier warp through a glass door or something, Rainbow de-armored.  Glowing light blue lines ran along the outlines of her armor plating, a large energy ring appearing hooped vertically along her profile, splitting down the middle into two rings and sliding out left and right, pulling the image of the armor off of her.
She stepped forward and kneeled down, running her fingers along the cracks in the stone surface.
“What happened?” she asked aloud to herself.  She remembered back when Sunset had stood in front of their world’s statue with a hammer, threatening to swing it.  “Duh, looks like someone smashed the portal.  But why?”  Her finger tracing reached the center of the web of cracks, and a thought hit her.  The surface was covered in cracks, but other than that, it was almost perfectly level.  If the stone had been hit with something, shouldn’t there be an impact crater?  The realization dawned.  She looked at the stone surface as if trying to see through it.  “And on which end?”


Not wanting to be gone too long, Rainbow soon slipped out of the Mirror World through the school‘s glass doors, but as she started sneaking up the main hall, she heard them warp behind her.  She turned to see Cavalier standing in the reflection.
“Off to tell your friends all about what happened this time?” he asked.
“You expected me not to?” she replied, walking back to the doors.
He shrugged in reply.  “Just wanted to add something else to the report.”
“Oh?” Rainbow asked, tilting her head in intrigue.  He was actually offering something without prodding?
“It’s time for the next stage,” he said.  “Bring them all out front here tomorrow morning.  Unless you want to think that being busy somewhere else would be more worth it.”  He faded from the reflection.
Rainbow crossed her arms and stared at the blank glass door.  “Okay, you’ve got my attention,” she said to herself.


* * *


That night, Rainbow Dash lay awake in bed.  Of course she’d passed the message on to her friends, but right now she was thinking only about the cracked statue base.  Did it really mean that the connection of the portal had been broken…in the Mirror World?  Maybe that was just a sign that the Mirror World didn’t have any place for it to connect to.  Then why did it need a sign for that?  But what if it really had been…?
She turned over, hoping in vain that it would help her fall asleep.  Instead, it only brought her Advent Deck into view, sitting on her bedside table.  She had an idea, but knew there had to be a reason why she shouldn’t.  She lay there for another minute trying to think of one.  Oh what the heck, she wasn’t sleeping anyway.  She threw off the covers, reaching over and grabbing the Deck.


Rainbow appeared unarmored in the reflection of the school’s glass doors, looking to confirm there was no one around before stepping out into the darkness.  She couldn’t get the Mirror World’s statue out of her mind.  But she wasn’t in the Mirror World.  She slowly stepped forward towards the uncracked statue in front of her world’s school.  Stopping right in front of it, she raised her hand.
“I wonder…,” she muttered, reaching forward.  She held her open palm up to the stone surface and slowly pushed forward.  The surface beneath her hand gave a white glow and rippled, letting her hand start to pass into—she quickly pulled her hand back in surprise.
She turned and glanced around, making sure that still nobody was there.  She looked back at the statue base, slowly backing away before turning to leave.
Overhead, the moon slowly climbed higher into the sky.





Next time, on “Kamen Rider EqG”…
The silhouette of a warrior with a sword stood in a red glow.
The silhouette of a warrior with a large mallet stood in an orange glow.
The silhouette of a warrior with a sword and shield stood in a purple glow.
The silhouette of a warrior with fan-shaped gauntlets stood in a pink glow.
The silhouette of a warrior with butterfly wings stood in a yellow glow.
The silhouettes of all five warriors stood together in a palate of glows: red, orange, purple, pink, and yellow.
Supernumerary Hues


Also, coming soon…
A young man sat at a table in Sugar Cube Corner, a magenta camera hanging around his neck.  He held up a card bearing a faded gray image.
“No,” he said, slapping it down onto table.  He held up another.  “No.”  Slapping that card down, he held up a third.  “Definitely no.”  He slapped this card down too.  “Well,” he said as he gathered up the cards again and took out a flat white plastic case, flipping it open, “looks like that guy isn’t a Rider we need to find.”  He slid the cards away into the case.  “Good.”  He was about to close it, but paused.  He slid out another card.  “Although…,” he humored, noting the pictured ax-wielding figure’s diamond-shaped eye cover.
Kamen Rider × Kamen Rider: EqG & Decade
The World of EqG