Kamen Rider EqG

by BioniclesaurKing4t2

Chapter 14: Total Internal Reflection

Total Internal Reflection noiƚɔɘlʇɘЯ lɒnɿɘƚnI lɒƚoT

Immediately

“She’s not there.”

There was a silent pause, she didn’t count how long. Those three words hung in Rainbow’s mind, taunting her.

“What?” she snapped. She turned to Kit, who immediately took a step back with hands raised.

“Hey, don’t look at me, I didn’t know that part,” he insisted. “I was sent directly to get you when I arrived.”

Rainbow looked to the others, anger melting into desperation.

“We just heard this a minute ago,” Applejack spoke up, walking over to put a hand on Rainbow’s shoulder.

Kit ducked around them to reach Master Eubulon. “How could she not be there? I mean, that’s where you go when you’re vented—I’ve been there.”

Rainbow spun pointing to Eubulon. “Are you sure you didn’t miss checking a corner somewhere?” she prodded. “Did you look under the couch?”

“I know every inch of the Advent Void,” Eubulon said, remaining calmly seated. “Trust me, I checked everywhere.”

“Then check again!” Rainbow cried.

“Are you sure you checked the right Advent Void?” said Pinkie, leaning in from the side. “Just saying, but I’ve been hearing lots of talk of a bunch of both mirror and alternate places lately, and they’ve meant two entirely different things, and it’s been kinda confusing keeping track of them all.”

“I checked the Advent Void her Deck was designed to send her to,” Eubulon said, “the one for this world, twice. If Sunset had been there, I would have found her.”

Rainbow’s arms slowly sank to her sides. Without a word, she walked to the far end of the table and dropped into a chair, staring forward.

“But since I didn’t,” Eubulon turned to her, “that leaves only two possibilities. Either you were incorrect in thinking that she had been vented, which is unlikely, or someone else got to her first. And from what I’ve been told, if it’s the latter, then there’s only one person who it could be, and he’s not exactly a person.”

Turmoil stood in his dark lair, staring as he flipped through projected screens of video feeds, each looking from a different mirrored surface somewhere in the city. He stopped on one showing three girls with excessive hair, the yellow and magenta ones fighting over a microphone as the cyan one watched while absentmindedly eating a taco.

“Decent candidates,” he said, “but too likely for my taste to try turning on me. I need allies I know I can control.”

Flipping to the next image, he found a blue-skinned girl with a star-patterned purple cloak and pointed hat standing in an alley. She tossed a pellet on the ground, but started coughing amid the larger-than-expected smoke cloud.

“A viable option,” he noted, “though I don’t think I could stand her for long enough to make any use of her presence.”

He flipped to the next image: a pair of schoolboys, one blue and squat and one yellowish and lanky, arguing over trying to film an ill-advised skateboard stunt, only one had forgotten the camera and the other the skateboard.

“Hhhhah-ha-ha…” Turmoil almost couldn’t breathe through the wheezing of his laughter. “Like I’d ever be that desperate.”

He swiped again. A girl in a hood with her hands in her pockets was sitting in an isolated corner.

“Ohhh…?” he cooed softly. “Hello…”

Twilight was sitting silently at her computer, trying not to visibly rock back and forth. Unlike usual, she was now disconnected from the conversation by distress instead of dismissal. Eubulon had seemed so powerful with his advanced technology and otherworldliness, she’d never for a moment considered that maybe he couldn’t do something he’d said he would. He was less a person and more a force of nature she felt could live up to the standards she judged herself against, a hypothetical projectile’s perfect parabola of motion instead of the mess of reality where air resistance couldn’t be considered negligible. With this sudden failure of his infallible image, she was suffering from a breakdown of certainty; two plus two was no longer four. And she’d never allow anyone to know it, because that would be worse.

“So you mean Turmoil has Sunset,” Rainbow said. She sat inert for a second. Then kicked her end of the table a few inches to the side, some of the others flinching.

Kit quickly jumped to the center of the group still standing. “O-okay look,” he tried to not stammer, “for the rest of you, I told her on the way back here that I’d been vented once and Master Eubulon got me out just fine. Now I know the situation now must seem hopeless, but back when I first became a Rider, Master Eubulon had been lost for decades, and as it was explained to me, venting was permanent, Len never thought the Advent Void could be opened again, and I didn’t either until I was pulled back out. At least this time we all have more to hope about.” He looked around the room. “Right?”

There was a pause. Not even Pinkie echoed back.

“We appreciate the optimism,” Applejack spoke up, “but we still don’t know where to find him. Or even how.”

“This is a war,” Eubulon said. “Not every battle will be won on the same day it begins.”

“Not helping,” Rainbow hissed to herself. “Not that you ever were.”

After watching this, Pinkie turned to Eubulon. “Timing,” she noted.

Wanting to break the tension, Rarity cautiously approached Kit. “So, it seems you’ve got your personal emblem on your outfit like all of us do. Is that something our worlds share in common, or did it happen when you arrived like the other Twilight’s transformation?”

“What?” Kit asked, searching his clothing. “Oh, you mean this?” He pointed to the golden thread-sewn dragon face emblem over the left pocket of his jacket. “No, it’s just the Dragon Knight symbol, it’s always like that, this is my Rider team uniform. My skin, however,” he flexed his pale red hand, “isn’t usually this color. Which gets me wondering about…” He turned and pointed to Eubulon.

“My current appearance is a disguise,” the Advent Master said to everyone, “as I don’t belong to Kit’s species. This is a standard appearance of people on Ventara and Earth that let me blend in, but it seems the projection doesn’t adapt to this world like humans do upon arrival.”

“Right,” Kit said. “Still forget that sometimes.”

“Ah,” said Rarity. “Well it seems there are still a few gaps in the story insofar as we’ve heard.”

“Very well,” Eubulon said, spreading his hands out across the table before him. “The easiest place to start, is back where it began, with the war on Karsh.”

“Maybe we speedrun events,” Lumen spoke up. Eubulon turned to him. “Just saying.”

“Ooh,” Kit piped in a ‘pick me’ sort of way, stepping forward, “I just reread Maya’s book, I’ve got this story off the top of my head.” Eubulon silently settled farther into his chair. “Okay, so basically, the Ventaran Riders thought they defeated Xaviax, but the original Dragon Knight, not me, betrayed them and let Xaviax win, stealing everyone off of Ventara. One Rider escaped and recruited me while Xaviax sent the other Riders’ twins after us. We found Master Eubulon long after he’d gone missing, brought back all the old Riders, the original Dragon turned good again, and we beat the bad guy, Dragon letting me take his place on the team officially. I also became this black dragon guy named Onyx for a while there, it was really neat with a stronger copy of every—”

“And that’s essentially what happened,” Eubulon finished. “However, this was not the end of the struggle, and not just of returning Xaviax’s victims to Ventara or hunting down the straggling monsters of his army.”

“When we were taking apart Xaviax’s ‘Fortress of Doom’,” Kit cut back in, “Master Eubulon found something.”

“It appears,” Eubulon picked up after a pause of staring at Kit, “as if stealing the populations of two worlds was not ambitious enough for Xaviax. According to his salvaged notes, he had been working on several side projects, one of which involved an attempt to ‘extend’ the mirror plane to access more worlds than simply Ventara and Earth. He succeeded.”

“By reaching all the way to our world,” Flash said. He met the round of glances. “I’m here too, by the way.”

Eubulon continued. “He had sent some number of Mirror Monsters through as an advance scout to assess the viability of this new world, complete with a teleporter and beacons. Fortunately, it appears that we defeated him before he could act on the matter further.”

“Score one for the good guys,” piped Pinkie.

“Unfortunately,” Eubulon said, “someone else had since gained control over the Mirror Monsters sent here, and was using them for their own purposes.”

“Turmoil,” muttered Fluttershy.

Eubulon nodded. “After discovering Xaviax’s experiment, I reestablished the extended mirror plane connection and journeyed through to arrive in your world. I quickly discovered the presence of Mirror Monsters attacking not this world, but the world behind its mirrors.”

“My world,” Lumen said.

“I tried to fight them,” said Eubulon, “but I realized that I had arrived too late to help, only minutes before zero hour, and could only escape before the entire population was taken at once by the teleporter. It may not have been Xaviax in command, but it seemed to be his strategy. I was, however, able to save one individual.” {Last time…}

In an alley, a figure in black armor with pale orange stripes on its chest and upper legs and a cricket-like helmet with short antenna and a shiny black bug-eye visor was sparring with a pair of mechanical humanoid insect monsters with metallic casings, one silver and one gold, each with large jagged eye covers and striped bee stinger decorations draping off their shoulders. Feet away, the stack of disks atop a slim silver transporter beacon gave off a low bleeping tone.

The Advent Master kicked away Buzzstinger Bloom, the gold monster with faded red feet and bright red eye covers, where it rammed into a line of trashcans along the wall. Buzzstinger Frost, the silver monster with blue feet and yellow eye covers, latched its pair of short daggers around Eubulon’s long and spiky black sword and tried to wrestle it away from his grip. Getting its footing, Bloom drew back the string on its segmented golden bow, a glowing arrow appearing as it aimed at Eubulon.

Spotting this, Eubulon used his free hand to pull a card from the left side of his black Advent Deck, the card green with a barcode down the side and the horizontal image of a red-glowing engine, and swiped the barcode across the edge of the long silver box over his right wrist. The card vanished in a plume of blue flame.
Speed Vent

Grabbing his sword with both hands, he spun to yank it out of Frost’s arms, then almost without moving his feet, his image blurred over to Bloom. He slashed to cleave off the top half of the startled monster’s bow before speeding back behind Frost and ramming it with the side of the sword now leaking blue flames, shoving Frost at speed across into Bloom and slashing through both of them with a blue fire trail. The monsters exploded behind him.

Ahead of him, someone walked by the alley’s entrance, but stopped short upon seeing him. They stared at each other for a second, before Eubulon heard the teleporter beacon’s beeping begin to speed up and get louder. Eubulon let go of his sword.

In the blink of an eye, he sped over to the person, grabbed them, and pulled them into the alley, past the beacon, and jumped with them through a window’s reflection as they saw over Eubulon’s shoulder the beacon release a visible pulse wave that swept across the area, everyone walking along on the street outside briefly glowing before stretching up and vanishing all at once.

The sword clattered to the ground, kicking up some dust.

After it came to rest, only silence remained.

“And thus the Armored Hero was born,” Lumen said.

“You say there were a dozen other Kamen Riders like Kit already?” Pinkie brought up. “How come you didn’t have them help from the get-go?”

“Unfortunately again,” Eubulon responded, “although the mirror plane can be extended between our worlds, the two worlds themselves are somewhat ‘incompatible’. As I found out myself during my first visit, there seems to be a time limit that someone from one of the worlds can spend in the other.”

Pinkie tilted her head. “Or else…?”

Eubulon held out his arm. “Look closely,” he said. As the girls leaned in and squinted, they could faintly see the outer fringes of his hand, arm, and even jacket…for lack of a better word, ‘hazing’.

“That looks like what happened to Sunset,” Applejack said.

“Perhaps,” Eubulon said, pulling his arm back, “but however similar they may look, they are very different. I have sustained no damage from battle, I have merely been present in this world. If I were to stay too long, I can only imagine the extent this effect might reach. That is why I couldn’t risk sending the Ventaran Kamen Riders here.”

“The connection across the extended mirror plane is unstable,” Flash spoke up again. “You may remember my ‘must be another provider’ excuse from that one phone call Rainbow Dash overheard? I was communicating with Eubulon across the plane when the portal suddenly closed.”

Twilight finally turned to them. “It took a while for us to get it open again.”

“Owing to the ‘disagreement’ between a Ventaran’s body and your world,” Eubulon continued, “I could not risk having a similar slipped connection while any of the Riders were here. Luckily, alternative strategies existed. I could, perhaps, have tried to reassign the genetic lock on the Advent Decks to individuals from this world. This, however, would have left Ventara short several Riders, which it may have needed for its own protection, not to mention that the difference between people from both worlds could not be bridged in the conventional manner. Instead of simply reprogramming them, which takes seconds, the Decks would need to be wholly reformatted for essentially a different type of genetic profile, which I wasn’t sure I could do nor undo afterwards. The remaining choice was obvious.”

“Just make new ones,” Lumen said.

“With the new genetic template built into them from the start,” Eubulon said, “making new Advent Decks only required candidates to decide Advent Beasts for, and those were in no short supply.”

Suddenly a whistling ringing echoed throughout the room. Everyone looked around in frustration.

Fluttershy gave a disheartened sigh. “Again?”

“That’s the third time today,” Pinkie moaned. She glared at the ceiling. “Haven’t they done enough?!”

“You don’t have to respond if it would be too much for you,” Lumen offered.

“Hey…,” Rainbow said darkly from her chair, staring forward, the first she’d spoken since the conversation’s start. “Shut up.” She turned to look at him, and he silently froze. “We’re still in this, no matter what tries to knock us down. Remember that.”

“Much as I agree with the sentiment,” Applejack said, looking at the latest few messages on her phone, “I can’t stay here any longer today. I’m already runnin’ late for a family event I have a history of bein’ early for, and I can’t miss it on an unexplained reason.”

Pinkie turned to her. “Wait, is this the…”

Applejack nodded. “The anniversary, yeah. Big Mac’s been fine for a bit, but Apple Bloom still seems to need me.”

“There are more than enough of us here already,” Rarity spoke up. “Go on. Hurry, hurry.”

“Thanks, guys,” Applejack said, nodding to them. She walked through the mirror as everyone else was getting their Decks out.

Looking in from the sidelines, Kit waved tentatively. “I can…still kinda fill in for…someone. A veteran’s here, remember?”

* * *

On a rooftop overlooking a courtyard in front of a tall office building, two nearly-golden figures waited, one skinny and leaning over the edge in eager anticipation, and one bulky and standing back. As the six Riders arrived from the reflective marble walls of the building into the courtyard below, the skinny one, an eternal sinister grin molded onto its face, tilted its head, then stepped back and waved a hand across the courtyard in a dramatic flourish. It’s time, my friends, to rise…again! {Who knows?}

As everyone looked around for a sign of the new monsters, Rainbow heard a screeching static that sounded eerily familiar. After glancing up, she spun to the source, seeing a charred and blackened fox head with glowing pinprick eyes peeking up from behind a nearby bench: Manglethal.

“What the?” Rainbow muttered. An image of the original white-headed Manglethal swinging at her upside down flashed in her mind. “But Sunset destroyed that thing. How is it back?”

“Huh?” Pinkie asked, popping up beside her. “What do you mean, what’s there?” She looked at the bench, but didn’t see anything odd about it or around it.

Meanwhile, as Rainbow glared at Manglethal’s face, it ducked back down behind the bench as a shadow rushed off to the right, the static sound following it. “Hey!” she shouted as she ran after it.

“Rainbow Dash?” a concerned Fluttershy said. “Where are you going!” She ran after her.

“What?” a confused Kit said. “Hey, hold on, wait!” He ran after them.

Pinkie just stood there. Usually she was the one to act like that. Is this what the others were always left feeling like? Huh.

“Where are they going?” Rarity asked, looking on as half the Riders left without explanation.

“Stay sharp,” Lumen replied, stepping past her. “Whatever’s going on, it’s—huh?” Scanning the perimeter of the courtyard, he spotted something that couldn’t be there, a charred and rotten reddish fox monster, missing half its right arm and jaw hanging open, just standing on the sidelines and staring at him. “How are you…?” The scorched Vulpatch sprang to life and dove at him in an instant, bursting into a murky cloud on contact.

To the others, all they saw was a cloud of dark haze suddenly erupting from his armor before he staggered back from nothing.

“Lumen!” Pinkie shouted, turning to him.

Losing his senses of direction and balance, each breath feeling to bring less and less air, and his vision pulsing darker with each heartbeat, he could make no effort to stop himself from tilting over and hitting the ground.

Rarity immediately slotted a card.
Sword Vent

Catching her conical sword, she quickly swept her gaze over the area, but… Do you ever feel like you were looking right at something but missed it? Noting something from the corner of her eye where she’d already looked, she jerked her head to see a burnt-over Chikaraves charging at her. She swung her sword, but it sifted right through the monster’s inky form before Chikaraves reached her. Rarity stumbled back disoriented and collapsed in a cloud of shadowy smoke that was bubbling out of her armor.

“Rarity!” Pinkie cried, turning to her, then looking back to Lumen. The others were weakly writhing on the ground from attacks by unknown assailants and she had to be next.

Pinkie stood tensely in place and carefully scouring the courtyard until movement caught her eye. A greenish scorched bear figure with a top hat and one ear missing was slowly dancing across the edge of the courtyard. She kept her eyes locked with the phantom Jawzbear as it stared back, unblinkingly, until it tapped behind a tree but didn’t emerge from the other side.

“Eeeaasy, there…,” she muttered, taking a cautious step back.

And bumping something.

Pinkie sprang forward and spun around to find a sickly greenish golden assemblage of worn and hole-filled soft casing segments approximating the form of a humanoid rabbit lunging and swinging its arm at her. Then the ground vanished and she dropped.

Swiping through nothing, Trapispring caught his lunge. He looked at the ground by his feet, bare mechanical feet covered with tendrils of a dried slime of indescribable nature that still looked wet, but only saw concrete. Bah. After taking another look around, he turned eagerly to finish up with his other victims.

Feeling like she was floating, Pinkie opened her eyes to see an open silvery expanse with reflective cubes floating around and a mirror surface just above her, past which stacks of glass boxes formed larger shapes. It was almost like the Mirror Plane, but a bit different. Then she saw a form floating just beneath her: Pinkrhynch! The platypus looked over its shoulder and honked to her; not wanting to risk there being water or something here if she opened her mouth, she just waved back.

Looking back up, she saw three figures amidst the scene, Lumen, Rarity, and the rotting rabbit, all from underneath, realizing the glass boxes vaguely formed the shape of the building, benches, and trees of the courtyard. This must be what Pinkrhynch sees as he’s swimming around before jumping in through the mirror puddles.

He honked at her again, nodding back more times. Realizing what he meant, Pinkie grabbed onto his shoulders.

Rainbow stopped running in a nearby courtyard, looking around as Fluttershy and Kit caught up, panting. Rainbow kicked the ground.

“Where’d you go!” she spat.

“Where’d what go?” Kit asked. “You took off after nothing. I thought Mirror Monsters were only invisible to those who hadn’t been through mirrors yet.”

“It was there!” Rainbow said. “Taunting me.”

“What was?” Fluttershy repeated.

Then a sound echoed through the courtyard. A faint, high-pitched laughing.

“Is that…,” Kit asked, looking around, “a little girl?”

Then a large golden figure faded in standing amid the Riders. The humanoid bear made of soft, darkened yellow casing segments in a small top hat pulled back its arm and gave a deep roar. As the Riders spun to it in surprise, GuldJawzbear shoved its open palm against Rainbow’s chestplate with a shower of sparks, launching her back and down skidding across the ground.

“Rainbow!” Fluttershy let out. She turned to the monster looming over her, but it faded away as Kit tried tackling it with a shout, stumbling past her to the left while trying to not fall over.

“That’s a new trick,” he said. Then GuldJawzbear faded back in next to him. He swung a kick for it to dodge, then took the chance to start pelting punches it easily held back with a raised arm.

“Didn’t we beat a bear monster already?” Fluttershy asked.

“No, this one is gold,” Rainbow groaned, sitting up, “that makes all the difference.”

GuldJawzbear swiped up, knocking Kit into the air and dropping a bit away.
Flutter Vent

Fluttershy threw her hand forward, and the arch of pink metal butterflies began shooting forward. After being pelted on the left side by the first few, GuldJawzbear turned and bellowed at the incoming projectile swarm, the air wavering. They stopped midair a foot away, gathering into a cloud in front of it before falling together to the ground and shattering.

“Emergencies only, huh?” Kit said. “I think this counts.”

He pulled out a card and held it up, turning it to face forward: with a golden border and round gold symbol in the corner by the top row of red bars, a vortex of fire began swirling in the image background behind a golden left wing bearing a red gem. As strands of flame started whipping around Kit, he threw his left arm forward, a coil of flames pushing his slotter forward into his grasp as a newly formed tall and thin dragonhead-shaped weapon. Its mouth opened, and he placed the card in a sideways slot inside, snapping the mouth closed.
Survive Mode

A burst of fire surged over Kit, changing his Rider armor from black and silver plates on a bright red suit to dark shiny red and gold plates on a black suit, his new bulky red chestplate curving back over his shoulders as spikes, and a gold top rim of his wider faceplate: Dragon Knight Survive Mode.

“Whoa, whoa, hold up there,” Rainbow said, rushing over. “What’s with the sudden upgrade?”

“Don’t you have one too?” Kit asked. “I thought all Advent Decks had a Survive Mode card.”

Rainbow crossed her arms. “First time I’m hearing about this. Don’t tell me Eubulon short-changed us new girls.”

Trapispring slowly approached the disoriented boy in indigo knight’s armor, savoring every shambling step.

“Hello,” came a young voice.

Trapispring turned around to the right, but saw nothing that could have spoken. Another ghost following him, perhaps. Still…to be sure…the more the merrier. He followed the echo in his tall ears, his right nearly missing but still working, following slowly, so as not to startle the child.

Then he stopped. No. This was his imagination again, and it was wasting his time. He turned left to the girl in a white and purple suit surely too delicate to be armor, taking a stride in her direction.

“Hi,” came the voice again.

Trapispring lurched left again towards the sound, giving a hiss. They were persistent. Could they be daring to mock him again? He took a step forward.

The voice laughed behind him.

Trapispring spun to the right to face the fading echo, again seeing nothing.

The voice laughed behind him.

Trapispring spun back left again. No…

The voice laughed behind him.

Trapispring spun back right again.
Spur Vent

Trapispring spun back left—Pinkrhynch leapt arms wide with a shrill honk at him, clamping onto him in a violent hug before bringing his back feet around and stabbing their spurs into the monster’s gut and back. Learning from last time, Pinkrhynch quickly leapt off before Trapispring could swing at him, splashing back-first into an appearing mirror puddle before it dried up again.

Trapispring clutched at the impact point on its gut as pink spider web cracks began expanding from it. The decaying rabbit had already started twitching as Pinkie jumped in and kicked it stumbling away, leaving a wispy trail of smoke.

Meanwhile, the dark clouds bleeding off of Lumen and Rarity had begun to dissipate, their vision and breathing starting to clear and ease.

Pinkie pointed at Trapispring as it turned back to her. “Fired up for more to even up the score!”

An orange glow erupted inside its chest casing as the monster lurched in place, flames beginning to peek out as smoke leaked through the rotted holes.

Pinkie nervously withdrew her arm. “Um…not what I…meant?”

Rainbow held up her crossed arms to block as GuldJawzbear swatted, propelling her back in a spray of sparks; she kicked the air for a distance before her feet dropped back to the ground, stumbling until she rammed into Fluttershy, who finally brought her to a stop.

Pushing himself off the ground, Kit pulled a handle at the back of his new slotter weapon, a transparent red panel springing out from the side. Pulling out a gold-rimmed brownish card showing a red dragon spitting a huge fireball with Attack 4000, he slotted it into the panel and pushed the handle to snap it closed again.
Shoot Vent

Dragreder roared as it flew in from above, a shine spreading across it as its body bulged slightly before its outer casing shattered off front to back, revealing a new, larger wingless red dragon with large shoulder and hip blades and a much longer tail: Dragranzer. It swooped in and skidded to a midair stop, snaking up to hover reared up just behind Kit and snarling, its new segmented silver underbelly almost seeming to be continuously moving upward like a conveyor belt.

GuldJawzbear stared on, simply beginning to fade away again, but Kit pointed his dragonhead slotter at it and shot a white laser beam from its mouth. The steady beam hit the fading GuldJawzbear, anchoring it and forcing it back solid again. The bear gave a deep howl as if in surprise.

“Where are you going!” Kit shouted excitedly at it.

Dragranzer took in a deep breath, expanding its chest segment as it pulled its head back, then threw its jaws forward as it shot a large fireball. As soon as it hit GuldJawzbear, the beam broke, a fiery explosion consuming the area around the monster. As the smoke cleared, GuldJawzbear was no longer standing there.

“Did I get him?” Kit asked.

GuldJawzbear faded in next to Kit, already pulling its arm back, and slammed its open palm onto the surprised Rider’s chest, taking him to the ground in a shower of sparks. Kit tried grabbing at its hand as it pushed down harder, growling at him, more sparks continuing to spray off from the contact alone. Dragranzer roared and hurled itself forward, ramming into GuldJawzbear and pushing it back a ways, but its feet skidded to a stop, turning the counterattack into a shoving match. Kit sighed as his arm dropped, the outline of his Survive Mode armor glowing and then fading with a flash, leaving his original form. At the same time, Dragranzer’s exterior glinted and shattered away, leaving Dragreder recoiling away from GuldJawzbear, the dragon quickly shooting off into the sky as GuldJawzbear tried swiping at it, missing its tail as it fled.

Kit moaned while getting up. “Uhhg…okay. So that’s a good gauge of its power.”

Pinkie quickly spun over to Rarity. “You guys are okay now, right? Most spells seem to get broken by punching the caster, so I just figured.”

“Yeah,” said Lumen from nearby. “Seems it just needed to fail a concentration check.”

Rarity stared at him for a second before responding to Pinkie, “Yes, much appreciated, darling.” She stood up with Pinkie’s help.

“Now what’s this thing?” Lumen asked, turning their attention to the increasingly flaming Trapispring.

Who was rushing at them.

Pinkie shoved Rarity away and ducked back as Trapispring swiped at the spot where they’d been, but its arm froze mid-swing as its head twisted to the side suddenly. Wrenching its head back the other way, Trapispring turned towards Rarity and charged, but the fingers on its hand suddenly flexed back as it tried grabbing her, letting her slip past it with a spin, chipping its back with the beak sword she was still holding.

Trapispring used its other hand to force its seized-up fingers back closed, but they locked into a fist. It hissed, but as Cavalier ran up and slashed it across its back with his knight’s sword, its jaws sprang open as it stumbled forward, snapping shut again a moment later as a spasm rolled over its body.

Trapispring spun around with a wide swing of its arm, but Lumen and Rarity ducked under it to deliver a double stab that send the monster stumbling back, Pinkie leaping between them to land a swinging slash from her webbed gauntlets that sent it back even farther, spews of fire accompanying the usual spraying sparks.

Though its feet brought its momentum to a halt, Trapispring kept twitching. It reached out at them, but its elbow suddenly bent and its torso jerked sideways over its hips.

“It’s like it doesn’t even work right anymore,” Pinkie said, approaching as the others cautiously hung back. “I guess this is just what Spur Vent does. I almost feel sorry for it at this point. Almost.”

She held her arms sideways to prepare for a double slash, but Trapispring suddenly lurched into her, slinging her away with an arm swing that almost pulled itself over.

Taking the chance as GuldJawzbear faded out again, Rainbow dashed up to Kit. “So much for the upgrade, guess making them for us would’ve been a waste of effort anyway.”

“Hey, Survive Mode only has a limited energy supply,” Kit defended as he tried to stand steady, “but it’s only run out on me once before.”

“Well, I thank you anyway, you’ve distracted the monster long enough to prepare our secret weapon.” Rainbow crossed her arms and turned to look at Fluttershy, currently standing a safe distance away.

A few seconds later, she realized Rainbow meant her. “What? M-me? How can I help?”

Rainbow dropped her arms. “Don’t you remember studying your deck?”

“I remember you looking over my shoulder.”

“You have a net weapon,” Rainbow explained with a groan, walking over, “we can use it to catch this Monster. We saw it can’t vanish while it’s being hit, remember? A tight net around it should count as hitting it for ages, right?”

Fluttershy nervously pulled out a bright yellow card with Attack 2000 showing a thick butterfly net over a yellow swirl background with its rippling net ballooning out mid-swing: Snare Vent. “But I’ve never been the best in the middle of a battle, and I’ve only ever used this card in a practice fight with a garbage can (that I may have almost lost), w-what if I don’t swing right, I’ll just be too busy thinking of how bad it’d be if the Monster grabs me to focus that it’ll grab me for sure.” She looked at an unimpressed Rainbow. “And other assorted reasons.”

“Fine,” sighed Rainbow, “then I’ll do it.” She snatched the card and stepped away to slot it, holding her hand straight up to catch the net.
Snare Vent

With a flash, the stocky 4-foot butterfly net with a segmented handle and a taut net as flat as a tennis racket’s fell from the sky. And bounced off Fluttershy’s helmet. She fumbled to catch it as it spun off of her hands repeatedly, eventually clattering to the ground.

Rainbow looked back at her. “Huh?”

“Ah, right,” Kit grunted, still rubbing his sore back, “should’ve warned you that wouldn’t work.”

Rainbow spun to him. “Ya think?”

As Fluttershy stood up with the net, the spot around her dimmed, like clouds blocking the sun. She turned and let out a yipe at the looming GuldJawzbear, instinctively swinging the net. Its short length made it barely miss the monster, but like soap on a bubble wand, the sudden movement let the taut net surface catch the air to stretch and balloon out, a large bubble splitting off and hitting GuldJawzbear. On contact, the bubble of net split open and shot forward, grabbing and wrapping itself tight around GuldJawzbear, who let out a deep howl as the net began crackling with electricity and spraying off sparks.

Fluttershy stared frozen at the struggling monster until Rainbow ran up and pulled her away, snapping her back into focus. GuldJawzbear wrestled against the net and tried fading out, but could barely start before the constant electric surge pulled it back solid again.

Shaking off, Kit jumped in beside the girls and pushed his slotter open, pulling out a red card with a gold Dragon symbol over a red starburst background, Attack 6000. “Stand back!”
Final Vent

Kit put his arms forward then swung them around while crouching as a roar came from above, Dragreder snaking down and looping past in front of him to twist and loop back the other way and into the sky again. Kit quickly stood and launched himself up, flipping around as Dragreder snaked around him once, twice, the dragon’s head coming in behind him as he’d angled a kick down at GuldJawzbear. Dragreder let out a screech as it breathed a burst of fire to propel Kit shouting in a flaming streak. The kick knocked GuldJawzbear back and away from Kit, a series of fiery explosions erupting as it hit the ground and slid across it before ramming into the wall of a building at the edge of the courtyard, the flame shockwaves catching up to it and reflecting off the wall.

The net having blasted away, GuldJawzbear collapsed limp to the ground in a sitting position with its hands splayed palms up, its head tilting over, and its jaws hanging open, stray wires trailing out of its shoulders and missing left ear. A faint disembodied child’s laugh echoed as GuldJawzbear slowly faded away again. Rainbow looked around, but saw no sign of it reappearing.

Kit sighed loudly. “Now did I get him?”

Final Vent

Rarity pointed her sword at Trapispring as tendrils of water circled her feet, coiling around her legs and lifting her as it turned to her, its sneer cut short as its head suddenly rattled on its neck, flopping its ear and a half around.

Elegrence flew in behind Rarity with a caw, stomping down and launching her forward with a powerful flap of its wings, sending her corkscrewing amid water tendrils sword-first into Trapispring. The impact and wave of water crashing over it threw it back against a building’s polished marble wall, extinguishing the flames to leave its scorched and half-gutted form to slide down the wall. Instead of exploding as expected, it simply continued twitching as sparks began jumping off of it, its twitching speeding up into convulsions to the point of a full body seizure, the sounds of internal mechanisms springing back and forth now clearly audible.

“What?” Rarity said in mild shock. “How did it even…?”

Pinkie added, “It’s like it just keeps going, and going, and—”
Final Vent

Caballkhan galloped past the girls, Lumen on his back with his lance and round shield, the steed skidding to a stop as Lumen impaled the thrashing Trapispring in the stomach. Lumen pinned and slid it up the wall with his lance until it was held above him, its twitching and sparks fizzling out to leave it hanging limp. Lumen paused. Was it over?

Suddenly Trapispring’s eyes flared a blazing purple, grabbing the lance with its left hand and in one tug running itself fully through and sliding down the lance like a zip line, shouting a hiss as it reached for him with its right hand. With Lumen frozen in surprise, the energy pulse building on the lance’s handle shot up on reflex, hitting Trapispring’s gut and lurching it to a stop, jerking its head casing to unhitch from something inside, Lumen watching in perceived slow motion as the head slid up just enough for a rotted shape to become partly visible through the gaping mouth before his eyes focused on the hand swiping down at his face. Leaning back, the fingertips passed less than an inch shy of his mask. Then the energy surge pushed Trapispring back up the lance and into the wall with a purple flash amid the explosion, charred debris flying away.

Caballkhan immediately reared with a loud whining neigh and stepped back from the explosion, almost throwing Lumen off before he made the horse stamp back down. Appearing in a flash, a sickly greenish energy ball rose from the scrap, but neither Advent Beast approached. The energy ball floated back down to the ground. Lumen gently kicked Caballkhan’s side, but the horse still didn’t move.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Go on.” He spurred Caballkhan’s side, but Caballkhan only reared again, more forcefully than before. “Whoa!” Lumen tossed his weapons and somersaulted off backwards, running back around in front of the flail-kicking Caballkhan. “Whoa there, calm down! Hold it!” Caballkhan stamped down again before turning and galloping a short distance away. He looked back at the Riders and snorted.

“I don’t think we should have any of our Advent Beasts absorbing that,” Rarity said, eyeing the energy ball. “It almost looks…infected, somehow.”

“Well we can’t just leave it here,” Lumen replied, “we’ve made that mistake twice before.”

Rarity tilted her head. “We?”

“Well I’m not touching it,” announced Pinkie.

Rarity sighed, pulling out a card. “I’ve got this.”
Splash Vent

Sharpened water tendrils rose from the ground and coiled in a sphere around her, grouping and shooting off as she thrust her hand out. They drilled into the energy ball, bursting it apart in a flash. Rarity sighed.

Turning to approaching footsteps, Rarity saw Rainbow, Fluttershy, and Kit walking back over.

“Anything interesting happen to you on your little tangent?” Rarity asked.

“Not much,” Rainbow replied. “How ’bout you?”

“Not much,” Rarity said.

Above them, the evening sky was beginning to turn orange.

“Something tells me neither of these monsters played by the normal rules,” Kit spoke up, “is that common over here or are you just as—”

Suddenly Pinkie shouted to the sky, “Someone please tell me today is over already!”

Kit pointed awkwardly away. “I-I’ll, just…yeah.”

* * *

That Night

There upon a midnight dreary, a girl was walking slowly all alone through the streets of the city she called home. There was a mild chill in the air, but it was still more than she’d expected. She’d wanted to clear her head, but now the shift in ambiance left her only wanting to get back inside. She hurried her pace and turned the next corner.

Then a blinding light suddenly glared on in front of her. She stopped in her tracks and covered her eyes in a half-recoil, sure it was a car about to hit her. But there was no engine noise, and nothing else happened. Then she heard clapping.

As her eyes adjusted to the light, and one set of clapping became a crowd, she looked past her raised arms, seeing a line of half-hunched red figures with large X-shaped objects strapped to their backs, and in their center stood a tall grey-skinned man still largely silhouetted by the spotlight leading the applause.

“Congratulations!” Turmoil exclaimed, holding up a large bouquet of red roses as the Gelnewts clapped harder. The girl stood frozen at the sight as he stepped forward. “You are the one chosen, all congratulations! Welcome to the team.”

He held out the bouquet to her. Sitting amid the flowers was a blank dark purple Advent Deck.

---

Next time, on “Kamen Rider EqG”…

Pinkie held out her Advent Deck. “Kamen—”

The pronged hand of a jellyfish monster quickly slapped the Deck out of her grasp with a zap.

“Okay,” Pinkie’s voiceover said as a jumping Advent Cycle rammed the monster, but got zapped by its prongs, the Cycle tipping over and skidding along on its side, “minor problem.”

“I…” A figure in bulky black armor stepped up. “…am…” They looked up at Pinkie. “…Brute.”

There was a sudden metal clamping noise.
Like Broken Glass

Comments

[Moproblems Moharmoney]

Oooh evil rider time! I'm hype.

[nightshroud96]

8717126
Will Spike become one too?