Kamen Rider Gr3en

by BioniclesaurKing4t2

Awaken the Soul

It was nighttime on that unicorn spectacular night of nights, the Rainbow Lights Party. Planned as always by Unicornia resident Lily, a dark magenta unicorn with an array of pink, red, and purple in her mane, magenta and teal in her tail, and a downward-pointing lily cutie mark with a curved stem, this Night of a Thousand Lights features every unicorn in Unicornia coming together to help put up hundreds of strings of lights all over every building and lamppost in the city, starting at the castle and fanning outwards. The Rainbow Lights Party is used to celebrate the approach of the Rainbow Day Celebration, wherein between the third and fourth colored shooting stars flying overhead, the four princesses will combine their innate magic abilities with the power of the magic wand to create the first rainbow of the season.

Like every year, Lily had overseen the stringing of the lights, and like every year, it had gone off without a hitch. Everypony had pitched in their part for a spectacular result. Oh, and Rarity had gotten herself tangled up in a strand of lights, the young pink unicorn. Ah well, what’ll ya do?

All the unicorns had gathered in the center of town, admiring the finished product. Countless yellow lights shining bright against the otherwise purple hue of night on the already pink and purple cobblestone roads, strung along every outline and border of every house, tree, and pavilion in sight. Lily stood in the middle of them all and sighed. This was her favorite part. All those smiles on everyone’s faces, everything in perfect order, everyone happy. This is what she did all that work for.

“Well,” Lily said to the others, Rarity beside her and spinning a hooped light strand around her hoof, “it looks like we have everything.”

“There’s one more thing,” said Cheerilee from the edge of the crowd, a pale purple unicorn with a dark pink mane, purple flower trio cutie mark, and the head of the four Princesses of Unicornia, a role almost exclusively of name alone that really only meant something during the Rainbow Day Celebration itself. Still, she lived in the Crystal Rainbow Castle with the other three princesses and was always the one to go to for any needed advice or guidance.

“What?” Lily said with surprise. “Ha-have I forgotten something?” She looked around to check for unlit light strands. Oh, she knew entire strands were always shutting off because of one dead bulb—you had to check every single light to find the problem.

“Lily,” Cheerilee continued, stepping forward, “on behalf of all of Unicornia, I bestow upon you the title of Lily Lightly, princess of all that twinkles and glows.”

Off to the side, a lever was flipped, and a pair of spotlights flashed on onto Lily, prompting a surprised gasp from her as the gathered crowd began cheering. No, no, this isn’t what she did all that work for. As she took a step back in a futile attempt to escape the center of focus, her horn started to glow, emitting a magenta aura. Ahhg! Not this again! Things had skipped bad and gone straight to worse—now everyone would know her horn lit up. Unicorn horns don’t do that! But looking around, she saw everypony’s eyes closed while they cheered. Maybe she had a chance to slip away unseen.

“Uh, thanks, um…,” Lily stuttered as she started walking through the crowd. “I-I gotta, I gotta go now, I mean…um…,” she whimpered as all eyes opened again and started turning to her. This escape was almost going worse than staying put. Even Cheerilee was giving her a mildly shocked expression. She stopped in place; she couldn’t look like she was just bailing. “Shine on, everyone,” Lily said as parting words with fake confidence as she strode on again, “shine on.” She passed the outer rim of the crowd, still holding all stares. “Uhh…o-okay, gotta go. Bye.” And at that, she took off.

Brights Brightly, another one of the four princesses and a yellow unicorn with a rising sun cutie mark and a mane orange over her head and pink down her neck, stood and stared as Lily left down a street leading away from the center of town. She looked to Cheerilee to see her deep in thought; she could guess about what. Brights and Whistle Wishes both walked over to Cheerilee. Whistle Wishes was another of the princesses, pale blue with a mane of yellow, green, and pink, and a cutie mark of yellow stars and a cloud.

“Something’s up, isn’t it?” asked Brights.

“A unicorn with a horn that glows who isn’t a princess?” commented Whistle Wishes. “How could you not think that?”

“I don’t remember exactly,” Cheerilee mumbled, “but I think I read something about that once. Oh, but that was such a long time ago, I can’t even recall where. Whistle Wishes, could you maybe go and retrieve Lily? I have a feeling it might be important for her to stick near us for a while.”

“You can count on me!” replied Wishes. She turned and headed off in the direction Lily had taken…until an immediate fork in the road. She hadn’t watched which way Lily had gone. “Lily?” she called, turning and heading down the right path.

“In the meantime,” Cheerilee said to Brights, “let’s help get Rarity untied.”

Having taken the left path, Lily walked down an empty street, stopping at a pavilion by the small bridge at the edge of town. She took in a deep breath, held it to three, and let it out slowly. As she began to calm down, the glowing of her horn subsided. She sighed. Finally. She didn’t know how her horn kept doing that, but a sudden sense of shock was an easy-to-peg trigger.

From the shadows, something gazed upon her.

A buzzing filled Lily’s ears. A sense of some kind, like a voice in her head. “… be… hin…”

Lily jumped, her horn giving a brief flare. “Wh-ho’s there?” she called, turning right towards a stand of trees, only to see the end of a red scarf whipping behind one of the trunks. “Uh…o-okay?” she said in confusion. “Bye, then. I guess?”

She turned back to face the road that would lead to the bridge out of town, but stopped. “Why would somepony be acting like that? Sneaking around behind things. Speaking of which, what was I doing acting like that? They were all just trying to tell me I did a good job, and I reacted like they shouldn’t be talking to me. I wonder if I should tell them I don’t want the attention. Or would that just draw even more attention with them asking why not? Oh…” She swayed her head back and forth from the path leading farther away to the one leading back. “Maybe I should just go back. I did put this whole thing together, after all, the least I could do is stick with it.” She turned and walked back towards the center of town. “If I’m lucky, maybe everyone will just forget that I up and lef…”

Lily’s words faded as she walked away, as the gaze again looked on from the shadows. A clawed, dull yellow hand reached out and grabbed the side of the tree trunk, and a shadowy silhouette looked out from behind, its eyes reflecting yellow, and a silver object glinting over its left shoulder.

After walking less than a block, Lily felt a brief breeze blow past her from behind. She looked up.

“Yaa-haah!” she screamed in shock, stumbling back a step. Standing in front of her was a tall bipedal figure with the head of a leopard, its lower jaw thick with a prominent chin, and with leathery and spotted dull yellow skin, a long bright red scarf trailing from its neck to the ground, a black leather belt with a spiky spiral buckle, and sandals with knee-high straps. It gave a low growl, and Lily turned and bolted, scampering away and diving down the first side street to her left.

Pantheras Luteus stood and watched her flee for a few seconds before following after her. He turned down the street she’d taken before stopping. She was nowhere in sight. That didn’t matter. He had more ways of finding her than sight. A buzzing echoed in his ears, the power within her resonating from somewhere… over…

Lily was hiding down an alley to the right, breathing heavily. Her mind was…this is…what…just—gah! The buzzing returned to her ears. “… clos… in…” Her horn began glowing again, its magenta spread shining out to the end of the alley.

“No, no,” she pleaded at her horn’s light. “Out, out!”

She heard a growl; her heart stopped. She turned to see Luteus standing in the alley’s entrance. Nowhere to run. No way out. No hope. What was this thing, and why was it suddenly after her? What did she ever do to it?

Luteus walked forward. He held his right hand up to a silver wing-shaped object pinned onto his scarf over his left shoulder, then brought the hand down and used his first two left-hand fingers to trace a ‘Z’ over it. A glowing disk appeared over his head and—aaahhg! The buzzing in Lily’s ears spiked to a painful level. Lily pinned her ears down with her hooves, doing nothing to muffle the near-screech ringing in her head. The pain forced her to squeeze her eyes shut and double over. Her horn began shining brighter than ever as Luteus stood over her, reaching in and grabbing at her neck with his clawed hands, fumbling as Lily struggled back and forth. She knew she couldn’t last long. Was this really…?

“Fight.”

On pure instinct, Lily punched out forward and hit Luteus with her right hoof, sending a burst of light shooting back up her arm and knocking him back a step, hands flying free of her neck. He steadied himself and prepared to attack again, but stopped with a gasp-like snarl.

Lily looked down at her arm. Her usual magenta-purple was now covered in a tight-fitting black sleeve. There was a plate covering the front of her hoof bearing a shiny tint of her own magenta color, next to a similarly-colored wristband with a lone stripe reaching up her arm to a shoulder pad. {Warrior}

“I-I…changed?” she stuttered. What was going on here?

Before she could wonder what or how, Luteus rushed at her again as if in desperation. Okay, then, she thought, seeing she had no option but to push her luck. Here goes everything!

Lily planted her front hooves, pushing off with her back legs to spin around and catch Luteus in the gut with a double-hoof kick. The monster was knocked back as a flash of light climbed up her legs, covering them in the same armor as her arm. Before Luteus could fully regain his footing, Lily turned forward again and let out a shout as she jumped forward, ramming Luteus with a headbutt and throwing him back to the alley’s entrance, the glowing disk over his head fading out.

Landing on her hooves, Lily stood up tall as she heard a charging pulse sound. A silvery-transparent coating expanded up from her left front hoof, solidifying into the same armor, and also expanding a black layer over the rest of her body; a magenta shell grew over her torso and stretched down her back, small magenta shoulder pads also appearing; a magenta silhouette of her cutie mark appeared on the sides of her now-black flanks; her head was covered over by a black casing as a silver sheath covered her muzzle, and a pair of large magenta eye covers grew onto her face with a final crash-pulse. Her still-exposed horn’s glow finally faded.

Luteus struggled back to his feet, looking to behold the sight before him. His lower jaw moved as a graggly voice slowly formed the word, “Kouma.”

Lily looked down and across her new armor. “Kouma?” she repeated. “Th-this is Kouma?” What was a Kouma? No time to worry about that now. Whatever Kouma meant, one thing was sure: it meant she had a chance. She could do this. She looked up at Luteus and stamped her right hoof down and out to the right.

Luteus backed slowly out of alley, eyes pinned on Lily as she stepped out after him. That’s when she saw them. Of course, the lights!

“Alright, you monster, listen up,” she said, trying to sound intimidating. “I am Lily Lightly, Princess of all that Twinkles and Glows.” She reached out and grabbed the end of the nearest strand of lights on the wall next to her. “And this is my night!” She pulled, dragging the light strand off of the building and through the air, slapping it across Luteus with a spit of sparks as several lights snapped off of the end.

Luteus flinched from the hit, but slowly looked back up, having expected more. Lily swung the strand back but Luteus swiped at it, breaking off several more lights. Lily swung again and again, but Luteus swatted it away every time, shaving off more and more lights.

“This,” said Lily as another light broke off with a snap, “is going”—snap—“to start”—crack—“working”—pop—“eventually!” On the next swing, he instead grabbed the dramatically shortened strand, yanking it out of Lily’s grasp and tossing it to the ground. Luteus had realized that his opponent did not have the power he’d feared them to have. He held up his right hand to the silver wing pendant and traced the ‘Z’ with his left, the glowing disk reappearing over his head, but Lily only pulled down the next light strand and continued swinging in desperation.

More lights were broken off, but when the strand became short enough, Lily snagged the lights on each end onto one another and spun the loop of lights around her hoof like she’d always seen Rarity doing, stepping back and waiting. Luteus stepped forward once again, but Lily tossed the loop through the air at him; the loop unraveled back to a strand and snaked around Luteus several times as it landed on him, as was the cords’ natural tendency to do.

Barely more than annoyed, Luteus flexed and pushed his arms out, easily snapping the strand, the lights falling to the ground around his feet just like all those before them. Luteus again stepped forward, but instead of the ground, his foot landed on two of the small round lights. They slid out from under him, and in a bid to regain his balance, he only ended up stepping on more of the lights littering the entire ground around him, staggering and sliding forward.

Lily knew this was her chance, but to do what?

“Kick.”

Responding again to the not so much voice, but rather instinct in her head, Lily stepped her legs farther apart into a crouch, then charged forward at the stumbling monster, jumping and pulling her back hooves up to deliver a midair kick with her back right hoof to its left shoulder. Luteus flew back and landed on more of the lights, desperately clawing at the cobblestone as he slid backwards across the street. Lily twisted in midair like a cat, landing facing away from him front hooves first, touching down with her back left hoof but stopping the right one, keeping it raised in a curl.

Lily took a moment to process that. Okay, she thought to herself, I haven’t spent a day on gymnastics in my life. How did I know how to do that?

Having skidded to a stop, Luteus sat up, reaching over to where he’d been kicked, before stopping short with a growled gasp. He looked at his shoulder to see the silver wing had been snapped off at the base, and several of its broken pieces with smoking edges were lying on the ground in front of him. Above his head, the glowing disk disappeared. He looked up in shock. His sanction had expired.

Lily lowered her final hoof and turned around to face the monster again. It looked over at her again, but in its eyes now it seemed almost terrified. It slowly stood up, not breaking eye contact, before suddenly turning and dashing away. Lily tried to look after it, but only saw the end of a red scarf slipping behind a corner.

Sweet silence finally reached her ears as the buzzing faded away, and she let out a deep sigh of relief, her muscles finally relaxing as she started panting heavily. Her horn glowed brightly again, the armor disappearing off of her, before going out. She stood there.

“Li-ly!”

Whistle Wishes’ voice carried through the streets, bringing Lily’s attention back to the world around her. She didn’t think there was much of a chance, but if anypony knew anything about what had just happened, it had to be the princesses.

“I’m over here!” she called back.

---

Soon to be seen, on “Kamen Rider Gr3en”…

“It called me ‘Kouma’,” Lily said.

Cheerilee read from a scrawl in the margin of an ancient book, “The dangerous mother of war.”

At night, a white bipedal figure with a jaguar head and wearing a long blue scarf drew back an arrow on its bow.

“I think I finally know what it means,” Lily said. Standing in her armor, she threw her right hoof out to her left and shouted, “Henshin!” Her horn started glowing yellow.
Repainting a Legend