//------------------------------// // The TBS Teasers / A Scattering of Ideas (Noncanon Draft) // Story: L-B-X ~Lyra-Bon Bon Extreme~ // by BioniclesaurKing4t2 //------------------------------// Bon Bon awoke to find herself with her hands tied behind the back of a chair. In her line of work, this was bound to happen eventually. Actually, it had already happened a few times, which is why she was already working on secretly untying herself. To pass the time, she decided to take a look at the room she was trapped in. It was generic enough: roughly box-shaped, white plaster walls, lamps hanging down from the tall ceiling, one door on the wall to her left, the chair she was tied to sitting in the middle of the floor, and a table in front of her. On the table sat a box with several clear plastic objects in it. Upon seeing them, she pulled at the rope around her wrists. No good, yet. Then the door opened, and a man in a suit walked in. He had dark gray skin and pale teal hair that was styled in a slightly curved-back mohawk, sort of clashing with the “official” look the suit was trying to give. He picked up the box off the table and held it in front of Bon Bon. It had six rectangular slots on the top of it in a 2-by-3 pattern, five of which were filled with transparent plastic objects that resembled flash drives. “My, my,” he said, “now this is quite the collection of Gaia Memories you’ve got here.” He put a pair of fingers on the brown and light gray Memories on the bottom row. “Two.” He moved his fingers to the white and darker gray Memories in the middle row. “Four.” He moved his fingers to the top row, but paused at the lone pale beige Memory. “Five. Now, it seems to me like this case is capable of holding a full set of six.” “I’m planning ahead,” Bon Bon said simply. “I’m going to put this plainly,” said the man. “Where’s the green Memory?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bon Bon replied in a sweet-sounding voice. The man took a breath before pausing with an open mouth, and, trying to sound as friendly as he could, said, “We’ve seen you with a green L Memory before, one that is…of particular interest to us. Where is it?” “I don’t have it,” Bon Bon said very matter-of-factly. “Wrong answ—” “With me,” Bon Bon added, “but I can get it for you.” Somewhere in a large dimly lit multi-floored hangar-like room, a girl with pale green skin and minty green hair, who was listening through Bon Bon’s mind to the conversation while reading five books at once, looked up. She took another sip from the straw in her mouth before slamming the wheat cola cup down on the floor of metal grating in front of her. “Show time,” Lyra said, before jumping up. “How about you just tell me where it is,” the man continued, “and I’ll go get it. It’ll save you the trouble of a trip, and it’ll save me the risk of letting you go.” Bon Bon smiled as the rope tied around her wrists fell limp. “No need. I can have it right here as easy as three…” Back in the hangar, Lyra dashed across the walkway portion of the second level’s metal grating floor, skidding to a stop at the far end to leap down to the first floor below. She landed feet first and dove forward, rolling over once so her feet were flat on the ground again, before pushing off and sprinting the last few steps. She turned around in midair, landing with force back-first into the large red cushioned chair in front of an assortment of display screens, letting it spin a few times from momentum as it slowed to a stop. She loved doing that. “…two…,” Bon Bon continued. “One green Gaia Memory coming right up!” Lyra said with excitement as she held up in her left hand a transparent light green Gaia Memory with a script ‘L’ fashioned after half a lyre on the center front. She clicked a button below the letter with her index finger. Lyra She then slid the Memory into the rightmost of two red slots attached to the silver gadget setup strapped around her waist like a belt, a green flash coming from the Memory as it clicked in. It then glowed and dissolved into what resembled green streams of code that faded away. Lyra put her hands behind her head and lay back. “…one.” A green light started glowing from the right side of the fanny pack strapped around Bon Bon’s waist. Bon Bon smiled up at the man. “See?” With a puzzled look, he reached down and unzipped the top of the pack. He tried to look inside, but as he pulled the flap forward, the zipper continued to slide down the side and then across the bottom before the whole pack came loose and pulled off. “What the?” he said as he dropped the empty pack before looking back and seeing strapped to Bon Bon’s waist the same type of red and silver belt device that Lyra had been wearing, with a light green Gaia Memory sitting loosely in the right slot. Before he had a chance to react, Bon Bon kicked up with her right leg, hitting the box out of his hand and knocking the five Gaia Memories loose and into the air. Dropping the rope that had bound her hands, she jumped out of the chair, bringing her right foot back down and kicking the chair back. Her left hand flew around and hit the top of the green Memory, pushing it down fully into the slot with a green flash. Her right hand shot up and snatched the pale beige Memory, bearing a script ‘B’, out of midair, her finger clicking the button on the front. BonBon She slammed it down into the left slot on the red and silver device with a blue and pink flash, and then with both hands pushed the two Memory slots out to the sides, pivoting at their bases, making the assemblage now resemble a capital ‘W’. Lyra BonBon Bon Bon spread her arms open in a “come at me” stance. A pale green script ‘L’ with a darker green outline and a pale beige script ‘B’ with a blue and pink outline appeared in front of the red belt device. The ‘L’ then rotated down forward and the ‘B’ rotated up backward, letting the images of half of a gold lyre and half of a cluster of three blue and yellow wrapped candies rotate into the letters’ respective former positions. The half-and-half image disappeared into a flash, and green, blue, and pink electric bolts shot out into swirling rings of the same colors, which broke apart into a cloud of debris that flew onto Bon Bon starting from the feet up, assembling itself into a full-body suit of light armor that was pale green on the right half and pale beige on the left half separated by a silver double line down the middle. Each side bore a wristband, ankle band, shoulder pad border, and ‘V’-shaped stripe across the chest that was mint green for the right side and a double stripe of blue and pink for the left. A silver ‘V’ was attached to the forehead of the suit’s mask, with its arms spiking out like glaring eyebrows over a yellow right eye and a blue left eye, which flashed to signify the transformation was completed. Bon Bon reached out and grabbed a Gaia Memory out of the air with each hand at once, reached again and grabbed the remaining two, and then turned and thrust her left leg forward, kicking the man in the chest and knocking him back, where he fell backwards over the table and took it down with him. Bon Bon put her right foot on the box, which had fallen to the floor, and flipped it back, catching it on her foot before tossing it back into the air where she caught in between her Memory-holding hands, clicking it onto the right side of her belt. She held up the four Memories in front of her to check them, then clicked them into their slots in the box. Behind the fallen table, the man staggered back to his feet. The green right side of Bon Bon’s armor suit stepped forward and pointed at the man. “So, you wanted that green Memory so badly, huh?” said Lyra’s voice as the suit’s yellow right eye lit up with each word. “Let’s see how much you still want it after this.” The man only smiled and breathed a brief laugh before reaching into his suit and holding up a Gaia Memory of his own, this one almost black and bearing a ‘T’ fashioned after a lightning bolt shooting from a cloud. He clicked the button on it. Thunderlane He turned the Memory in his fingers so the connector was facing out, then reached behind him and plugged the Memory into his back. A dark swirling cloud encircled his body as lightning began flashing around him. Bon Bon took a step back. “Uhhh oh,” she and Lyra’s voice said together. The wall of the hallway outside burst open as Bon Bon was knocked through it, hitting the far wall as the electricity from the hit dissipated off her armor. She quickly got up and leapt out of the way of another yellow lightning bolt as it flew out of the hole in the wall and zapped the spot she’d been rammed into. Getting back to her feet, she turned back up the hallway towards the hole. “Okay,” Lyra’s voice said, the yellow eye lighting up, “maybe my Memory isn’t the best one for this situation.” Under Lyra’s control, Bon Bon’s right hand reached down and turned the belt’s Memory slots back vertical, sliding the green Memory out. Lyra put the Memory into the top right slot in the box before reaching down and taking out the brown Memory from the bottom row. She held it up and hit the button. “Let’s try this one, instead.” TimeTurner She slid the Memory into the right slot before pushing the slots back outward. TimeTurner BonBon A brown script ‘T’ outlined in darker brown and the same ‘B’ as before appeared in front of the belt, rotating to make a yellow hourglass and blue and yellow wrapped candies half-and-half image. The image disappeared in a flash, and a wave of energy flowed right from the suit’s silver dividing line, turning the green half to brown. Though the mint green bands became dark brown, the suit’s eye stayed yellow. Bon Bon took on a fighting stance as a rumble of thunder echoed out of the hole, before something stepped out. It looked like a person-shaped black storm cloud monster, with flashes of yellow lightning jumping back and forth over its surface between random points. This was the Thunderlane Dopant. The Dopant threw out its arm and shot a lightning bolt at Bon Bon, but this time, the TimeTurner Memory activated its power. The lightning bolt, and in fact the entire scene around her, slowed to a crawl, and she sidestepped to the left, letting speeds return to normal and the bolt fly harmlessly past her. Surprised, the Dopant shot another lightning bolt, but Bon Bon slowed it again, this time jumping to the right to dodge. Bon Bon ran forward at the Dopant, which shot a third lightning bolt, and Bon Bon slowed it yet again to jump up over the attack and the Dopant, in midair pushing the Memory slots back vertical and pulling her Memory out of the left slot, sliding in the darker gray one before pushing the Memory slots back outward and touching down crouched behind the Dopant. TimeTurner Octavia The brown script ‘T’ and a black-outlined gray script ‘O’ appeared in front of the red Driver belt, rotating into a yellow hourglass/pink G-clef note half-and-half image which disappeared in a flash. A wave of energy swept left from the silver dividing line, and the left half of Bon Bon’s armor turned gray and the bands black, the suit’s eye staying blue, and a cello bow materializing, strung over her left shoulder. She reached behind her back with her right hand to grab the handle of the bow, whipping it back around to the front before standing and spinning right, slicing the Dopant across the back and causing a spray of sparks. It staggered forward and turned to see her holding the bow sideways against the forward-facing palm of her left hand, and the bow’s string start to glow pink. “Insert clever music-based comment here,” Bon Bon said. “Original,” commented Lyra’s voice. The Dopant lunged forward, but Bon Bon’s right foot flew up to intercept it, and she slashed it with the bow to knock it back, sending a spray of sparks flying. She ran up to slash it again, but the Dopant swiped its left arm out, hitting the bow and sending an electrified jolt through it and up Bon Bon’s arm. She spun and kicked her left leg around at it, but it threw its right arm at her. Literally. The cloud arm surrounded itself in lightning and broke off, flying forward and hitting her in the chest, dissipating in the process, and knocking her back up the hallway. Still shaking from the electric discharge, Bon Bon stood back up, watching the Dopant’s right arm reform with a fresh rush of storm clouds from the rest of its body. “You have too much energy,” Lyra’s voice said, the right arm under her control raising the bow it was holding and Bon Bon holding out her left arm. “How ’bout a lullaby to send you off to sleep?” The Dopant gathered lightning around itself before charging forward, but Bon Bon held her left arm up in a defensive position. Lyra then set the bow against the gray-armored arm and slowly slid it across, pink sound waves emanating from the string’s contact point with the arm. The waves washed across the Dopant, making it stop in place. It charged up more lightning on itself, but Lyra pulled the bow back across the arm, a second round of pink sound waves washing over the Dopant, making the lightning flashes subside. The Dopant’s balance wavered and it staggered as if it was falling asleep where it stood, which it sorta was. “Now let’s finish this,” Bon Bon said. Leaving the Driver’s slots angled outward, Bon Bon pulled the Octavia Memory out of the Driver’s left Memory slot and plugged it into the bottom of the bow’s handle. Octavia She held the bow horizontal against her raised palm, and the string again started glowing pink. Maximum Drive “Octavia! Rapid Crescendo!” Bon Bon and Lyra’s voice shouted together. Bon Bon jumped forward. The Dopant shot another bolt of lightning at her, but she slowed it and ducked sideways to avoid it. Stopping right in front of the Dopant, she struck forward with the bow, skidding it to the left across the Dopant’s midsection as if it was a cello, sending a spray of sparks and leaving behind a glowing pink streak. Before it could react, she quickly slid the bow back to the right across the same path, then back to the left then the right again and again at increasingly blurring speeds, each swipe making the pink streak grow larger. After one final swipe to the left, she gripped the bow tighter and spun to swing it to the right, a pink trail streaking from the bow’s tip as she slashed it right and down across the Dopant. A large shower of sparks flew from it as it was knocked back, and the force of the swipe spun her a half turn to face away as the storm cloud Dopant exploded into a burst of flames. The man fell back into the wall and bounced forward, landing facedown on the ground, and the Thunderlane Memory skidded away from him across the floor. A gray foot coming down stopped the Memory. Bon Bon picked it up, tossing and catching it again. “I’ll be taking that,” she said. She pulled the Octavia Memory out of the bow and turned her Driver’s Memory slots vertical again, taking out the TimeTurner Memory. The armor and bow shattered away as the Lyra Memory dissolved into green code from its slot in the box. Bon Bon held up the three Memories in her hands before clicking them into the three empty box slots. She then took a black strip from a nearby pocket and flicked it. The strip popped open into a black fedora, which she slipped onto her head as she started running up the hallway to look for a way out of the building. * * * Bon Bon pushed the doors open and stepped into bar. She scanned the scene. About half the seats filled in an uneven pattern, at least twice as many glasses sitting on the tables as people in the seats, the ambience of indistinguishable chattering. Yep, this was your average run-of-the-mill bar, be that a good thing or not. Let’s get this over with, she thought. She started across the room to the specified row of stools. In the process of passing parallel to another row along the side, some guy spun around on his barstool to face her. “He-llo—” “Not happening,” she said without looking over and kept walking. The guy paused with his mouth hanging open for a few seconds, then, still his posture still frozen, used his foot to turn his stool back around to the bar. “Ooh,” Bon Bon heard someone sitting near the guy say, “shot down and shut down!” She rolled her eyes as she reached the appointed spot and sat down. She didn’t like these kinds of places, and that was part of the reason why. She wouldn’t even have been here, had she not been asked to by her latest client. The anonymous client had wanted to meet here as opposed to at Bon Bon’s detective office for reasons of their own. They probably figured that a crowded public place was more secure for discussing potentially sensitive information than an isolated office designed for such discussions for…some reason. She’d never got that line of thinking. If they didn’t want to be seen approaching a private detective, why didn’t they just wear a heavy jacket and a hat while walking to their offices? Naturally, her suspicion meter had gone into the red at this request, which was partly to blame for some of her projected apprehensiveness. She didn’t want any unneeded wildcard factors to have the chance to distract her. Still, she liked taking on these “ordinary” kinds of cases, those that were firmly rooted in the regular world and not in some way tied to Gaia Memories. They helped to serve as an anchor point for her life, to keep her grounded and able to see just how insane some of the Memory-related stuff could get. Unfortunately, Gaia Memories were so unpredictable that they could surface at any time, so Bon Bon never went anywhere on a case without her Double Driver and set of Memories, whether or not she expected to use them. Bon Bon was pulled back into the moment by glimpsing something out of the corner of her eye. It was a woman with pale violet skin and puffy purple hair making her way up the row stool by stool from Bon Bon’s right. She wondered if this could be— “Hey-llo,” the woman said in the same tone as the guy from before. “Really?” Bon Bon said in annoyance, failing to stop herself from throwing her hands up. Bon Bon turned to the woman, seeing that she had some sort of spider-looking tattoo or something pattern over her lips, and an absentminded stare in her eyes. On a rather solid hunch, Bon Bon held her finger up in front of the woman’s face and moved it back and forth. Her eyes didn’t follow. “Look,” Bon Bon said in the kindest sounding voice she could muster, which wasn’t much, “I’m here to meet with someone specific, and I don’t want someone like you scaring them off by being…”—the woman hiccuped—“that. I’m sure you can’t comprehend a word I’m saying, but could you just, y’know…scram?” The woman turned and slowly slid away back down the counter. Bon Bon turned forward and went back to waiting. Then she heard a clattering behind her, and turned to see the woman trying to push her way through the crowd of patrons. “What the?” Bon Bon whispered. Then a thought hit her. She looked down at her right hip to see that the zipper on the cover for the Gaia Memory case was partly open. She yanked the cover completely open and saw the case. The top and middle rows were empty. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” Bon Bon cried, looking up and seeing a cluster of Memories held tightly in the woman’s left hand. She pointed and shouted across the barroom, “Hey! Stop her, she has my—uh…” How could she talk about Gaia Memories in public without giving anything away? The woman looked around at the eyes jumping to her and, seeing that her escape would no longer be covert, turned back to Bon Bon. She raised a small clear purple object in her right hand and clicked something on it. BerryPunch Bon Bon was disappointed that she wasn’t as surprised as she thought she’d have been. “Oh, every time.” The woman flipped the Gaia Memory upside down in her hand, and Bon Bon now realized that the strange tattoo pattern over her lips looked exactly like a Living Connector. The woman tipped her head back and plugged the Memory into the Connector as if she was chugging a bottle. The Memory glowed and was absorbed into her before she was engulfed in a burst of liquid. In her place now stood what was apparently the BerryPunch Dopant: a monstrous amalgamation with the body and head of strawberries and limbs made of grape clusters. The patrons that had gathered around the suspected thief slowly began reacting and started to flee, many trying to climb onto tables, those with sense left about them heading for the doors. “Why?” Bon Bon continued to groan. She pulled the zipper of the fanny pack around her waist all the way around, tearing the pack off and tossing it aside, revealing the Double Driver that it was the pack’s sole purpose to conceal, and grabbed the Driver’s right Memory slot. Off in the underground hangar, Lyra was sitting on the metal grating second floor, holding a small vial in one hand and a mini brush in the other, trying to paint her nails. It was something she’d heard about females often doing in the outside world, and had decided to try it for herself while Bon Bon was off working a case that she wasn’t needed for. “Lyra!” Bon Bon’s voice suddenly shouted in her head. A jolt of surprise jumped through Lyra, and she immediately dropped the vial and brush, her leg kicking out and knocking over several more of the vials arranged in front of her. She quickly tried grabbing and standing the vials back up, only managing to knock others over in the process, as Bon Bon’s voice continued. “A Dopant just went and stole half the Memories, including mine!” Upon hearing that, Lyra looked over and down to—“Don’t you dare try to get to your favorite chair first! I don’t want any delay!” Lyra fumbled to pull out her Memory and hit the button as quickly as she could. Bon Bon was not someone to mess with when she was angry. Lyra Lyra slammed the Memory into the right slot on her Driver with a green flash, and the Memory glowed and dissolved into streams of code. In the right Memory slot of Bon Bon’s Driver, streams of green code materialized into the Lyra Memory. Bon Bon took out the light gray Memory from the bottom left slot of her box. “Hey, look,” said the guy from before, walking up on her left, “if you could just give me another chance, I think that…” Bon Bon turned her head and gave him a blank stare. Then she clicked the button on the Memory. Derpy Keeping the blank stare on him, she pushed the Lyra Memory fully into its slot with a green flash before shoving the Derpy Memory into the left Driver slot with a pale yellow flash and pushing the slots to angle outward. Lyra Derpy A mint green-outlined pale green script ‘L’ and a pale yellow-outlined light gray script ‘D’ appeared in front of the Driver before rotating into a lyre/bubbles half-and-half image, disappearing with a flash that shot green and yellow electric bolts out into swirling rings that broke apart into a cloud of debris which assembled itself onto Bon Bon as a light armor suit pale green with a yellow eye on the right half and light gray with a blue eye on the left half. The eyes flashed to signal that the transformation was complete. “R-right…,” the guy said, slowly turning and walking away again. Bon Bon turned back to the Dopant. The BerryPunch Dopant seemed surprised at Bon Bon’s transformation, taking a step back. It seemed to try and speak, but only managed to gurgle before hiccuping. A small crowd of bar patrons who apparently thought it was a good idea had begun approaching the Dopant as if to fight it. The Dopant swung its right arm at them, throwing a barrage of large grapes at them. Upon impact, the grapes burst like water balloons, drenching the people in some purple liquid resembling grape juice. It then swung its other arm, throwing more apparent grape juice balloons at patrons on the other side. Bon Bon watched as the affected people began staggering aimlessly around the bar, but consistently forming a blockade between her and the Dopant. The Dopant tilted its head and waved at her before turning and making a beeline for the door. Bon Bon looked down at her right hand. “It probably won’t work,” Lyra’s voice said, the suit’s yellow eye flashing. “They don’t seem to be listening to anything right now.” “You’re right,” Bon Bon said, preparing to raise her left arm. “Guess it’s a good thing this is one she didn’t take.” Bon Bon jumped up and threw her left arm into the air, a giant bubble inflating from her hand that let her float forward over the staggering crowd. “Give back those Memories, Dopant, before I—” The Dopant turned and swung its arm and let loose another barrage of grapes at Bon Bon, hitting and drenching her and bursting the bubble. As she began falling from the air, she felt her mind cloud and her vision blur. Suddenly her right hand, under Lyra’s control, grabbed her left arm and pointed it down, another bubble inflating from her left hand a second before hitting the ground. She rammed into the bubble instead, a much softer hit, and it slowly deflated, easing her to the floor. Bon Bon looked up to see what she figured was the Dopant escaping through the door as several ghostly images of both it and the door drifted back and forth across her vision. She struggled to her feet and ran forward, bursting through the doors into the nighttime street outside. She looked around frantically, and though she couldn’t see clearly, she saw enough to tell that the dark street was also empty. She let herself stagger back and leaned against the door frame for support. “And she’s gone,” Bon Bon breathed, exasperated. “I’ll even bet she was my anonymous ‘client’ all along.” “I think that this resembles the state one is left in after consuming copious amounts of a particular beverage,” Lyra’s voice observed. “I’ve come across many sources all but praising it, but if this is what it’s like, then I can’t imagine why.” Bon Bon sighed at Lyra’s tangent. “I guess the key is when you’re in this state you don’t notice it, or you don’t remember it afterwards.” She pushed the Driver slots back vertical and pulled out the two Memories. Her armor shattered around her as the Lyra Memory faded into streams of code. Back in the hangar, streams of green code reassembled themselves into the Lyra Memory in the right slot of Lyra’s Driver. Lyra opened her eyes and pushed herself up from the floor into a sitting position, seeing that she had fallen into and again spilled the vials of nail paint. She wiped a hand across her cheek and found it dripping with the paint. She slapped her hand onto the floor in frustration. * * * Bon Bon was climbing through an air vent. Despite how cliché and paramount this was for the spy and detective genres, she’d actually never done this herself before. She now also wondered why anyone had before, as it was extremely cramped in this square passageway and every tap against the flat metal walls sounded like it echoed throughout the entire building. It was also a rather nice day outside, meaning that the building had decided not to employ its air conditioner today, and the air here in the ducts was rather still and stuffy. Meanwhile, Lyra was, as usual, sitting back in her cushioned chair in the luxuriously cooled hangar secretly located underneath their detective offices. She wasn’t doing much right now, just waiting for Bon Bon to encounter some sort of trouble and need assistance through the Double Driver. Sometimes she did other things while she waited, but nothing had perked her interest today. Lyra yawned. She spun her chair around again, letting it slowly bring itself to a stop. She’d almost locked down the equation for how long it would take to stop after a push of a given force, and which direction it would be pointing when it did. She knew that such equations already existed, but she liked solving puzzles herself first before checking her work. As she’d correctly guessed, she eased to a stop facing the display screens for the security cameras. Her eyes shot open at what she saw. On the feed from outside the front door, a group of three men and two women was slowly approaching. The one who stood out the most, and was likely the leader of the group, was the woman with red and yellow hair standing at the back. She motioned her arm forward, and to of the others walked up to the door. Lyra knew the sign in the window said that “The Detective is Out”, but that apparently didn’t stop them from pulling at the locked door. “Uh-oh,” Lyra whispered to herself. She reached down and grabbed her Double Driver. “Uh, Bon Bon, bit of a problem here.” Bon Bon stopped crawling as she heard Lyra’s voice in her head. “What’s the matter,” she responded with a huff, “does your mini-fridge need restocking? I’m a little busy here.” Lyra leaned forward and clicked on the camera’s audio feed. “If you need to use a Memory to bust open a door…,” said the red and yellow haired woman as she pulled her palm from her face, aiming it up and fanning her fingers out with a flick of her wrist in a sign Lyra had come to associate with frustrated annoyance. “Unless a team of Gaia Memory-wielding people are closing in on your position as we speak,” Lyra said, “I think this should take priority.” There was no immediate response. “You there, Bon Bon?” “Huh?” Bon Bon finally said. “Y-yeah, it’s just…that’s kinda sudden, are you sure? How did they find it?” “You do advertise it,” Lyra pointed out. “That I’m a detective, yes,” Bon Bon said, “but not a Kamen Rider.” She worked her way to a corner in the vent shaft so she had enough room to maneuver into a sitting position. “Since I’m all the way across town, I won’t be able to come to your rescue, so you’re on your own.” This time there was no response from Lyra’s end. “Lyra, did you hear…wait. You’re in your zone again, aren’t you?” Lyra was indeed “in her zone”, head down and eyes closed, the state of mind where she could skim the surface of the information hidden deep in her mind. It’s where she’d been just before she’d stopped Bon Bon from using her own Gaia Memory on herself, and it’s where she’d gotten her information about Dopants and how to deal with them. She’d often try this to get them out of a seemingly impossible puzzle, though it didn’t always work. This time, Lyra just hoped there was something in there she could use. Some source of inspiration… Suddenly a thought hit her. She looked up and said, “Reverse the Memories.” “What?” said Bon Bon. “Put your Memory into the Driver’s right slot,” Lyra explained, “and see if it gets transferred to my Driver.” “Do the Drivers even work that way?” Bon Bon said. “That sounded a lot less certain than usual. Is this another thing you just seem to know, or are you guessing?” An alarm went off in the hangar as a red light on the control board underneath the screens started flashing, prompting Lyra to check the feed again. From a camera inside the office, she could see the intruders filing in and fanning out. “Well we’d better find out quick,” she said, “they’re inside right now!” “Okay then,” Bon Bon said, propping herself up against the vent wall. She took out her Gaia Memory and hit the button, hoping that anyone nearby really didn’t care about suspiciously loud voice-like noises coming from the inactive air vents. “Here goes nothing.” BonBon She clicked the Memory into the right slot on her Driver with a blue and pink flash. A second later, it dissolved into streams of blue and pink code, and Bon Bon leaned back as she felt herself blacking out... Streams of blue and pink code materialized into the BonBon Memory in the right slot of Lyra’s Driver. “So far, so good,” Lyra said, standing in the middle of the hangar’s lower floor and clicking the button on her Memory. Lyra She pushed the BonBon Memory fully into the slot with a blue and pink flash, then shoved her Memory into the left slot with a green flash, and pushing the Memory slots outward. BonBon Lyra The script beige ‘B’ and green ‘L’ appeared in front of the Driver and rotated into a trio of wrapped candies/lyre half-and-half image, which disappeared in a flash and shot out blue, pink, and green lightning that formed rings of the same colors, breaking apart into a cloud of debris that assembled itself onto Lyra as Bon Bon’s usual armor, but this time with the left half being green with a yellow eye and the right being pale beige with a blue eye. The eyes flashed to signal the transformation complete. “Whoa,” said Bon Bon’s voice as the blue right eye lit up. “This feels weird.” “You get used to it,” Lyra said. “Speaking of,” Bon Bon’s voice continued, “maybe you’ve been locked up in here for too long, I mean, do you even have muscles? We need to install a home gym in here. I say exercise should be your next escapade into our culture.” “Really?” said Lyra as she started making her way to the emergency side tunnel exit. “You’re gonna get into that now? And I thought you physically having the rest of the Memories with your unconscious body was our only problem.” “You go off on worse tangents all the time while I’m trying to concentrate,” Bon Bon’s voice countered. “No I don’t,” Lyra said as the tunnel door slid open, revealing a vertical shaft with a series of handles running up the side. “Do I?” ”Do you even listen to what you’re talking about or realize how distracting it can be?” “I…,” Lyra trailed off. Instead of responding, she just started climbing. In the upstairs office, some of the intruders had returned to the woman with red and yellow hair empty-handed. “Keep looking,” the woman said. “Of course they wouldn’t just be lying around out in the open. Can’t you think of these things yourself?” “Not any better than the others,” one of them responded. “You’re like a little kid,” continued Bon Bon’s voice. “You say you act like you do because you don’t know better, but there’s a point after which you should have learned by now.” “Keep talking,” Lyra shot back as she kept climbing the mounted handles up the round metal-walled shaft, “that flashing eye might be enough that we won’t need the lights in here anymore.” “At least I’m not the one who’s gonna feel this tomorrow,” Bon Bon’s voice said. Then she added more quietly, “Maybe this’ll give you a taste of what I’m always going through.” “What do you mean?” Lyra asked, any previous maliciousness in her tone disappearing. “When you get knocked around in a battle, I feel it, too.” “Wait, you do?” Bon Bon’s voice said in surprise. “You’ve never told me you did.” “And why would I need to?” Lyra snapped. “It doesn’t affect you, does it?” “Well, no, but,” said Bon Bon’s voice, sounding concerned, “it’s the kind of a thing…I mean, I just thought—” “If we keep this up,” Lyra cut in, “Double will be too out of synch to function. Let’s just agree to settle this later, okay?” Bon Bon paused. “Alright, then,” her voice said. “Which means I’m locking you in to there being a later, so let’s not lose this one.” The woman was standing in a large, open, and largely empty warehouse-like room sitting adjacent to the detective agency. She had her lackeys searching it, this time not for hiding spots, but for trap doors or other secret entrances. She’d found nothing useful in the obvious rooms, and just knew there had to be others hidden somewhere. She also just knew that there was someone staring at her. “Looking for me?” said a voice behind her. She turned to see Kamen Rider Double standing atop a large crate near the wall. The woman snapped her fingers, and her four-person entourage ran up and gathered in front of her. “Hmm…,” the woman said, carefully analyzing the Rider. “You look different than usual.” “Yeah,” Lyra said, “I think I like it this way better.” “Hey!” cried Bon Bon’s voice with a flash of the blue eye. Lyra jumped down from the crate and stepped towards the intruders. The woman snapped her fingers again. Each of the four people reached into a pocket—the same pocket for each—and pulled out what looked like dark gray Gaia Memories, but with something resembling rib cages reaching around from the back on the portions above and below the image at the center, which, instead of being a script letter, was on all four Memories an equal sign. They each clicked the buttons on their Memories in turn from left to right. Equal Equal Equal Equal In the same order, they each sequentially dropped their Memories from their fingers to a full-hand grip, held out their left arms, and jammed the Equal Memories into an identically-placed Living Connector on their outer forearm. In a flash, each was outfitted in a black outfit whose chest, sleeves, and pant-legs were covered in a pattern of horizontal white lines resembling both a ribcage and equal signs. They each wore face masks bearing a similar pattern, though the white stripes here were physically raised off of the mask’s surface like ribs. Another snap from the woman, and they ran forward at once. “I think have something you may want to have a listen to,” Lyra said. She threw her right hand forward, and three blue and yellow-wrapped candies flew out at the Equal Dopants. They unwrapped in midair and grew to several times larger, hitting the ground by the Dopants’ feet and exploding into a large cloud of dust, making them skid to a stop. “Oops,” Lyra said, lowering her right arm. “Right, gotta remember that everything is on the opposite side this time.” “I was about to tell you that,” piped in Bon Bon’s voice. “Every power is in the other hand,” Lyra continued to herself. Lyra threw her left hand forward, and this time a gold lyre flew out, which she quickly clamped her fingers to catch. She passed the lyre to her right hand, and then brushed her left hand across the strings. Waves of green energy emulated from the humming strings, washing over the closest two of the Equal Dopants as the dust cloud cleared. The Dopants stopped and swayed, their eyes starting to glow green. Lyra brushed the strings again, in the process waving her hand and pointing at the other two Dopants. The two Dopants with green eyes turned at rushed the others, slamming into them and batting them wildly with their arms. The woman stepped forward and gave a chuckle. “Ah,” she said as Lyra turned to face her, “now I see why we want the green one so badly.” She reached into her jacket and held up a yellow Gaia Memory bearing a script ‘S’ fashioned like a yin-yang symbol, clicking the button. Sunset Lyra looked on as the woman was engulfed in swirling red and yellow energy, getting rammed by a sudden wave of heat.