There was a long, protracted silence after Kamen Rider Kiva had spoken those words. Night Rogue still reeled from the full-on kick to the face he'd recieved, mask gently smoking. Kamen Rider Build was still on his knees, clutching the wound inflicted by his enemy's blade. And Blood Stalk stood there, taking it all in as the two Smash behind him looked uncomprehendingly at the scene and growled.
Stalk was the first to speak. And, as usual, what he said threw everyone there off.
"Oh, my God, it's Batman!" he cried.
Kiva dropped his stance and turned. "Dude, we've been over this. I'm not Batman."
"Shut up, you're totally Batman!" Stalk looked as thought he wanted to start hopping up and down on the spot. "Come on, do the voice! The growly Christian Bale one!"
"No," groaned Kiva.
"Come on, do it! Do the-"
Stalk was interrupted as, with a grunt and a hiss, Night Rogue came to his senses and pulled himself upright. The shattered glass of his visor, a spider-web of cracks over the yellowish bat-shape, was plainly visible as he turned his head to face Stalk. It looked as though somebody had driven a truck straight into his face - which, given how hard the kick had been, was an apropos comparison.
"Stalk," he growled, "what are you doing?"
Stalk shrugged with almost casual nonchalance. "Who, me? I've been doing the thing you wanted me to do. And I gotta say, I'm doing a better job of it than you are right now. Seriously, you let the comic book nerd get the jump on you?"
Rogue said nothing, too focused on getting back to his feet to come up with a retort. But Stalk's words had a more immediate effect on Build. He immediately began to rise as well, ignoring the pain of his wound - though it made him wince behind the mask - to try and focus on the red-clad invader and his words. And perhaps it was because the words held more significance to him, but he managed to get back to his feet a lot quicker than Rogue did.
"Thing?" he demanded, voice sharp. "What thing?"
It was then that Stalk seemed to notice him. "Oh, hi. Nice colour combo, by the way. Red and green really suits you! Too bad I chose it first, but-"
"Stalk." That was Rogue, already losing his temper.
"Oh, right." Stalk gestured to Rogue and turned to leave. "This way, if you don't mind." And he began to saunter off down the corridor as though he were on the red carpet.
"Wait!" Build moved, dashing to try and catch up with the cobra-masked warrior. But he had to come to a stop, because two other figures suddenly barred his way, snarling.
"Oh, you know," crooned Stalk, "I'd love to stay and chat, Build. I really would. But these guys..."
"...they're kinda overprotective."
Build lashed out with one hand, but the purple Mirage Smash caught it with one of it's bladed forearms. And then, before he had time to reach, the white Needle Smash threw out an elbow that hit him inthe head and made him reel back from the sudden pain and force of it. Kiva quickly ran up to his side, catching him and stopping him from falling over, but the two monsters had succeeded in holding the other Rider off. By the time Build recovered, Stalk was already gone, and Rogue was following in his wake, the bat-masked man pausing only to turn his head to deliver an ominous glare at the two.
"This isn't over," he growled.
And then he vanished, leaving the two Riders to face the Smash on their own.
There was a moment of tense silence as the two sides squared off.
"Gentlemen," Kiva announced at last, "these are some of the ugliest creatures I've ever laid my eyes on."
"They're called Smash," was the reply. "Synthetically Modified Agressive Superpowered Humanoids."
"Wow, I'm impressed you got a whole acronym out of that."
"Take an ordinary person," went on Build, voice cold with anger, "and pump them full of unnatural compounds from the far reaches of space. The end result? A hyper-agressive engine of destruction, incapable of rational thought. That's what Faust does, every day of every week, to innocent people they drag off the streets."
"At least they're not spending hundreds on Warhammer."
Build was about to reply when the Smash, losing patience, roared and attacked.
The two Riders, of course, readied themselves, and were able to dodge the first wild swings. But the first proper punch Build threw never hit, because his target - the Mirage Smash - had chosen to split itself into three copies, all of them identical in movement and appearance. Build therefore found himself frustrated as the first one he struck disappated into mist, only to recieve a blow from behind he couldn't have anticipated. Startled, he wheeled around with a kick in response, only for that one to vanish and the real one to aim a slash right at his original wound, causing him to stumble and nearly fall from the pain of it.
Kiva had very similar problems, although they were unique in their own right. His own attacker wasn't as nimble or endowed with such power, but it was covered in spikes that made landing a blow difficult. Each punch the Rider threw carried the risk of scratching himself on accident - and his opponent seemed to know it. Sensing that its target was confounded, the Needle Smash quickly pressed the advantage, throwing more agressive claw swipes that Kiva found himself struggling to block reliably, yet unable to respond to with so little surface area to land a hit on.
The situation quickly compounded itself when the two Riders found themselves caught between their attackers. The two monsters, sensing their targets were pinned, redoubled their efforts, pushing the two backwards with the energy and fury of their blows, and it was all the Riders could do to keep the Smash from knocking them down. They inevitably bumped together as they staggered away, and as the gravity of the situation hit them they just managed to raise their arms and block the next blows their chosen opponents delivered.
There was a tense moment as they stood back-to-back, shoving hard against the two Smash, who growled like murderous car engines.
"Don't suppose you got any more of those wonder bottles in your asscheeks?" grunted Kiva.
"Okay, first of all," retorted Build, "you're not one of the people who can talk about those! Secondly-"
"Wait, there's more than one?"
"-that's a stupid place to keep things! I keep them in my pockets! And third..."
Kicking his attacker away, Build whipped two bottles out of the aformentioned pockets and gave them a shake.
"...why wouldn't I?"
And then he quickly slotted them into the gaps on his belt, one after the other. The Smash, sensing something was about to happen, redoubled their efforts, the one attacking Kiva actually throwing the other Rider aside to strike at the other target. But it was too late - Build was already turning the handle as rapidly as he could muster, and the sudden sprue-like constructs that appeared before and behind him blocked the incoming attacks.
ARE YOU READY?!
"Build up!"
And with that command, the two pieces of the sprues snapped together, the new form locking into place with a hiss of steam.
The Unseen Jungle Hunter! TigerUFO!
YEEEAAAH!
In most cases, Build would have taken the time to pose, or spout one of his usual catchphrases. But with everything that had happened today, he simply wasn't in the mood to do so. He merely dashed for the nearest Smash, lashing out scouring it across the chest with the shining claws of energy that formed around his hand. The thing staggered back with a snarl and tried to retaliate, swinging both blades in an overhead stroke - but it was in vain. Build had already moved, seeming to vanish and reappear like a mirage to deliver another strike to it's back, causing it to stumble forward and knock over it's companion by accident.
Kiva, watching all of this happen, didn't seem as impressed as he ought to have been.
"Guess it's my turn, then," he grumbled, pulling a sort of greenish whistle from his belt. Only briefly checking to see if the two Smash were still distracted, he slotted it into the mouth of his bat-shaped belt buckle - the thing that had allowed him to transform to begin with. A jaunty, jazz-like tune played as the whistle was inserted, and the eyes on the buckle briefly flashed green.
MERMAN MAGNUM!
Even though he'd seen Kiva transform before, Build didn't quite twig that this was a form he hadn't seen before. And in any case, he'd been occupied with fighting - stopping to check out another person's transformation sequence hadn't been on his mind. It only caught up to him when one of the Smash, trying to attack him from the side, was shot with a watery blast and knocked flying, and he turned around to confront the source of it.
"...where did you get that one?" he asked.
"A gay merman," was the reply.
A pause.
"...is that all the-?"
"Yes."
"Fair enough."
-------
Meanwhile, Blood Stalk was talking about nothing related to the situation. As usual.
"...and then I told him, 'Babe, why you gotta be like this? All I said was did you want the cinnamon or the chocolate chip?' But once you get that guy started-"
"All very fascinating," rumbled Night Rogue as he followed his red-clad comrade. "But what does that have to do with Doctor Light's papers? You promised me they would be here, but none of my Guardians have found a sign of them. And if I find out-"
"Dude," Stalk interrupted, sounding peeved. "I didn't promise anything. You just made that shit up so you can blame me when something goes wrong. Not everything is my fault, you know! If you have so little faith in me, just say!"
"...so where are the papers?" Rogue repeated.
At that, Stalk stopped walking. And then he made an odd whistling noise through what one could only assume to be his teeth. With the voice modulation on, it sounded like a dial-up internet connection plummeting off a cliff, Wile E. Coyote style. Rogue, who had known this man for several years and thus had come to recognize what that meant, froze as dawning horror creeped in like a perverse spider.
"...what?" he hissed.
"I... may have forgotten to mention one of my activities," said Stalk. "I apologize, that was wrong."
"What did you do?" Rogue's voice was rising to a snarl. Stalk turned, and you didn't need to remove the mask to see the shit-eating grin on his face.
"...I might have set the papers on fire."
You could have heard a pin drop from the silence.
"...and also triggered the delayed self-destruct sequence on the base."
Still nothing.
"...and also swiped some fruit winders from the-"
"WHY?!"
As discussed, Night Rogue was not one given to much emotion. He considered it beneath him as a man who had committed a wide range of atrocities in his life. But there were those very rare occasions where something - somebody's own incompetence, a major setback or an unexpected wrench in his plans - caused him to briefly lose composure. And Stalk's words were the something that caused his already-fraying temper, and his voice came in a mechanical roar that reverbrated off the metal walls of the corridor. If it were possible, steam would he shooting from his ears from the sheer anger he was giving off at that moment.
"They were strawberry!" Stalk cried, seeming to deliberately miss the point. "I had a strawberry craving all of a sudden! Gimme a break!"
"I mean the papers, you unbelievable-!"
"ALERT! ALERT! SYSTEM COMPROMISED! SELF-DESTRUCT IMMINENT!"
The two looked up, seeing the red alarm lights blaring and hearing the klaxons going off. Then Stalk looked back at Rogue, who was still visibly seething, and shrugged.
"We'll talk about it later, okay?" he spoke - loudly, over the noise. "Let's just book it! And if those other Riders get caught in the explosion, that's a bonus for us! Right?"
Rogue paused. Clearly, part of him wanted to continue shouting at Stalk for what he saw as an unbelievable stupid move on his part. Another just wanted to shoot the other man right in the face and be done with it. But between his own anger and the blaring klaxons, his usual tactical mind was struggling to come up with a strategy of his own. And every second he stayed in one place debating with himself, the closer he came to a watery grave...
In the end, he gave up.
"Fine," he snapped. "But we are having words when we get back!" And he set off down the corridor as fast as his legs would allow him. He knew the Guardians would respond to the alarms and get themselves back to the submarine, but there was less hope for the Smash to figure it out. Either they came back and survived, or they didn't and got blown up - he didn't care which. There were always more of them in their cages and cells, and it wasn't as thought they couldn't make more of them anyway.
Stalk watched him go.
"Idiot," he chuckled, and ducked round the next corner.
-------
Build and Kiva were as startled by the sudden alarms as Rogue had been.
"Who's fucking," hollered Kiva, "and what are they fucking with?!" Build didn't immediately respond at first, pausing and seeming to stare into the middle distance.
"Stalk..." he muttered.
And then he seemed to jolt back into conciousness, realizing the danger that was present and growing closer.
"We gotta wrap this up quick," he shouted. "The longer these Smash delay us, the shorter time we'll have to get out!"
"Don't need a physics genius to tell me that!" was the retort.
The Smash, by comparison, were a lot less focused than their Rider enemies. As the klaxons went off, the two had jolted back with startled shrieks, clutching their ears in obvious pain. And even as the Riders held conversation, they'd writhed and hissed on the spot, seeking the new enemy that seemed to be all around them, the hideous noise that was causing them so much discomfort. It was possible that their minds, addled by the Nebula Gas, couldn't comprehend what was really happening - all they understood was that something was wrong, but had no idea how to defend themselves from it.
And that was the opening the Riders needed.
VOLTECH FINISH!
WAKE UP!
And before the Smash could respond, Build swooped it on the holographic saucer, knocking them up into the air with his energy claws. At the same time, Kiva opened fire, a tornado of pressurized water consuming the two monsters and shredding their armoured bodies like a whirlwind of razors. With dual screams the monsters detonated, which was the tradition for all things that had to deal with Riders, or even the Sentai tech that the late Dawn had once pioneered.
Their charred, still-intact bodies hitting the floor was new, though.
At least, for Kiva. He stared at the two crumpled forms suspiciously, even as the other Rider landed back on the ground and ran up to inspect them.
"Well, guess I'll just go fuck myself, then" he said. "That merman really ripped me off when he-"
"Shut up," snapped Build," and help me get these guys out of here!"
Kiva did a double-take. "Wait, what? But we just-"
"I told you," grunted the other Rider as he tried to heft the Mirage Smash onto his shoulders. "They're normal humans, infected with Faust's formula for Nebula Gas. But if we can siphon it out of them, we might be able to save their lives. There's a chance they might not remember what happened just before they became Smash, of course, but those are the risks you gotta take."
Kiva stared.
"Wow," he said at last. "Your villains are kinda massive dicks.
"Don't I know it," was Build's response. "Now, let's get these guys out, and maybe I can-"
Just then, the ground began to shake. And the two Riders knew enough about the Teapot, and the way it was laid out, that this was a bad sign. Carol Parthan had once spoke of working with sonic disruptors in her time at Rutledge, and had gone on at length about the destructive capabilities that they had. Evidently, Dawn had come to the conclusion that nothing said "get rid of the evidence" quite like a rapidly-rising sub-sonic forces that could liquify a man's brain. Which, unless they moved, the Riders would experience that first-hand
Kiva turned to Build.
"Don't suppose you got a bottle combination that could get us outta here real quick?"
Build stared at him.
"...stupid question, of course you do."
-------
Some time later, and Vincent Simmons and Vent Light stood on the shores of the bay where the Teapot had once been.
There was nothing there now. Only the rising smoke coming from the calm waters of Kuwahawi. A faint orange light told of fires still raging, where electrical components had been exposed to the salt waters and inevitably given up the ghost. If one peered closer, they could possibly see the sheen of metal, shaken to pieces by the sonic disruptors and reduced to crumpled lumps of iron and whatever other materials had been used to make it. Somewhere down there was all the fancy equipment, artefacts and weaponry that had once belong to the extended Cosine family.
As well as Dawn's body.
The two stared at it for a long, long time. The bodies of the Smash, stripped of the Nebula Gas and restored to human form, lay in the sand behind them. But they paid them no mind, too focused on the destruction that had taken place in the waters.
"Well," said Vince at last, "your mom always wanted to be buried at sea, right?"
Vent blinked.
Then he turned away and buried his face into his hands, shoulders shaking.
Vince realised that, this time, his quips hadn't helped.
-------
Back at Faust's base, and things weren't anywhere more peachy. As Blood Stalk demonstrated when he smashed against the wall and collapsed to the floor. The watching technicians winced in sympathy pain, but knowing that they were there and taking his side was of no help to the red warrior, who was in a considerable amount of pain. None of them were stepping in to say anything or lend him a hand back up, or to check his head where he'd banged it against a coolant pipe.
Or to get between him and the gun pointed right at his face.
"You have ten seconds," snarled Night Rogue, "to explain why you destroyed all the notes. Starting from now."
"Because, you bat-faced jackass," snapped Stalk, rubbing his head, "we didn't need them! We just needed the Kobbers to not have them! What, did you want them to figure out the Nebula Gas thing and start making Drivers of their own? More unsanctioned Riders to give us trouble? Because I'd love to see how you'd plan around that, Mister Genius Military Tactician!"
A pause. That explanation had taken more than ten seconds, and Stalk knew it.
"...then why draw my attention to them in the first place?" was Night Rogue's next question.
"What, and not give you the chance to ice the one Kobber who could have decrypted those notes?" Stalk got to his feet as he spoke. "I know you, Rogue. You don't want anyone who's not you making all these discoveries and pioneering this tech. And Dawn was the one person who might have beat you to it, never mind what she did to you before. You think I was gonna let you miss out on that?"
"But," continued Night Rogue, "that leaves us with nothing. Whatever Doctor Light managed to divine from his studies is forever lost. We're back to square one again."
By way of reply, and in a manner similar to a schoolboy showing off his gold sport's day medal, Stalk pulled the USB drive out of a pocket and waved it about.
"Mommy, mommy, look what I found~!" he trilled, just to complete the image.
Rogue stared. Then, in an uncharacteristic burst of energy, he snatched the device from his ally's fingertips, holding it up for closer inspection. It shone in the dim, sickly overhead lights like a lump of polished gold, reflecting off the plastic and the glass of his faceplate.
"Is it...?" he began to say.
"Yep." Stalk leaned back against the wall and grinned. "Every single file. Including the stuff that wasn't printed off. I told you, Light never trusted anyone fully. Always kept his most private and clandestine stuff behind lock and key - or should I say, firewall and ICE. And trust me, there wasn't anything on the paper files we didn't already know. That pen drive is Fort Knox compared to those."
He watched, clearly amused and pleased with himself, as Rogue examined the drive some more. Good. He'd spared himself from sharing Dawn's fate. That had been a very large hole taking up most of her forehead - it would not have suited him in the slightest.
"...This won't go unnoticed," Rogue said, at last. "Build will have realised that we were here to steal something. And it won't take him long to figure out what we've found out, and what we need to complete our goal."
"And who wants to bet," added Stalk, "that he's gonna jump over to that other world to warn his precious, not-yet-dead friends about it?"
"Never bet on a certainty, my father always said." Rogue turned and strode back to where his throne sat, overlooking the entire lab. Now that his wrath had been pacified, he seemed to have settled back into his usual monotone speech pattern and self-possessed attitude. As he settled into his accustomed place in his chair, the USB stick in one hand, he seemed to once again become the leader of Faust, and not an armoured psychopath half-revered and half-feared by his inferiors.
"Stalk," he droned, "you redeemed yourself with this, although barely. Therefore, against my better judgement, I'm going to trust you with this next assignment. So listen closely, for once in your life. If what Dawn claimed is true, then the most important component in our project lies in the other world, with something we cannot obtain here. But as of now, our means of transport - the old Universal Transit Gate built by David Wulf - is unreliable. It takes time to warm up, and has repeatedly malfunctioned on occasion, to fatal effect."
"I remember," cut in Stalk. "Rest in peace, Red Widow. Or pieces, as it were."
"We know," Rogue continued, "that the Cosines were in the process of building an upgraded form of the Sifter before they departed this planet. And it is likely that Build, with his newfound knowledge, will attempt to complete it. That device would allow him much easier access to the other world than his previous methods, and would also be less destructive. It would give him the time he needs to warn those in the other world of our approach, thus causing major hinderance in our plans."
"Your task, Blood Stalk... is to steal that prototype Sifter."
Stalk looked at him. He looked over at the white-coated lab assistants. And then back at Rogue.
And then he said:
"Nope."
Night Rogue froze.
"...what?"
"I'm not gonna do it."
A long, icy pause.
"...and why not?"
Stalk snapped his fingers and jerked a thumb behind him, just as three figures emerged from the shadows.
"Because they are."
TO BE CONCLUDED...
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