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"We've found Krampus," Soukichi says one evening, as Yugo returns from a day of grocery shopping.

Yuriko beckons him over and turns a laptop around. A man in his forties or fifties, brawny and besuited, is sat on the train with two very unlikely companions: A young man with a bright green mohawk, a dozen piercings, and tattoos all over his torso, barely covered by a fishnet vest; and a woman with fashionably short hair, in a white fur coat with an expensive handbag. The three are deep in conversation in the picture.

"We wouldn't have caught him, but we've had some of Soukichi's weird gadget animals trailing Mohawk Man for a while now. He's definitely a Phantom," Yuriko says. "He hasn't caused trouble yet, so we had bigger fish to worry about."

"Zombie," Phoenix says in his head, and Yugo flinches from the sudden heat at the back of his mind. "He's a coward. Joined Krampus' faction 'cause he thought he could make himself stronger by eating other Phantoms? But it hasn't worked out. The other one's Mara. She's part of Krampus' faction, but she never really worked that closely with him."

"Where's the train heading?"

"Tokyo," Soukichi says, tossing a ticket this way. "You're leaving in an hour."
"Dude. Dude. I wanted to talk to him anyway."

---

Yugo's barely half an hour off the train when he gets a call from Soukichi.

"Police are saying there's been a break in at the particle physics lab of Kirimine University. I'll give you directions on the way."

When he pulls up next to the university and climbs off his bike, it's clear that this isn't just a break-in. There are fire engines pulled up, flames billowing out of the window, and police officers scattering as a skinny, green monsters strides out, heavy package under one arm.

As soon as the monster sees Yugo, it darts away, fleeing across the grass. Yugo grumbles, giving chase, sprinting until the Phantom disappears into an alleyway. When he emerges the other side, it's to a crowd of people milling about, with the Phantom nowhere to be seen.

He tugs his phone out, calling Soukichi quickly. "Hey, it looks like one of Krampus' lot stole something from the university. I lost it in a crowd, but have your - gadget-y things keep an eye out for it, okay?"

"Got it," Soukichi grumbles. "You go find out what it was."

Yugo's about to head back into the alleyway when he feels somebody's gaze on him. When he turns, he catches sight of a reddish, metal thing the size of his hand, which flutters away before he can catch it.

---

Professor Fueki Sou, one of Kirimine University's particle physicists, doesn't seem too upset about his laboratory being wrecked and his university set on fire. Yugo supposes that's what tenure does to you.

"It was one of several early prototypes for a machine which converts common rocks and ores into resonant stones that can act as storage units for meta-energies," Fueki says. Yugo rubs his chin, giving him a blank smile. That seems to moderately annoy the man. "It makes magic rocks."

"That's - kind of an odd project," Yugo says. "You're not with any evil monster syndicates, are you?"

Fueki eyes him severely over his spectacles. "I rather resent the accusation, Mister Fujita. In truth, I was inspired to take up this work by some discoveries of a friend of mine, Wajima Shigeru. His work as a dealer of rare antiques had brought him into contact with these resonant - these magic rocks before. I'll give you his address."

"Aw, thanks, bro."

Fueki sighs deeply at that, but scribbles the address down.

---

The shop is called Omokagedo, and it's a lovely, quaint place, inhabited by an inveterate liar.

"Magic rocks? Phantoms? I like to mind my own business and not get involved in any of that monster stuff," Wajima says the moment Yugo asks about it.

"Dude. Professor Fueki said - ..."

"Sou likes to run his mouth, but half of what he says is pure fantasy. The man works in particle physics, I'm fairly sure most of that is just made up as they go along," Wajima says. "Now, if you don't have anything else to ask me?"

Yugo's about to respond when the shop's bell rings, and a familiar voice remarks that he's back. When Yugo turns, a young man a few years older and a few inches shorter than him is standing in the doorway, with a very small young woman next to him.

"Haruto, he's a - ..." the young woman starts, and Yugo remembers where he's heard that voice before. The other world. The car chase. He and Haruto never saw each other's faces, but they heard each other's voices.

Haruto's expression hardens immediately.

That girl's not human, Phoenix hisses. She's not alive.

"Dude, long time no see," Yugo chirps, bounding over to Haruto. "Oh, er. Maybe we should go outside?"

"Maybe we should," Haruto says dubiously.

---

"You're a Phantom," Haruto says as soon as they're out.

"No more than you are," Yugo says, raising his arm to show off the device grafted onto his wrist. "You're the White Wizard's boy, right?"

Haruto laughs a little at that, smiling and ducking his head. "And you're the Riders' kid. I recognise your voice. Is that what they call me over there?"

"Dude, you know what they're like. All a bunch of judgmental misanthropes," Yugo grins. "I wouldn't be in your territory, but three Phantoms from Shiragiku have come here."

"Mara, Zombie, and Krampus, right? I've been tracking them," Haruto says. "Or trying to. They're slippery."

Yugo makes an agreeing noise, rubbing the back of his neck.

"So," Haruto says. "Is this a team-up thing? We pool our resources and ..." he trails off, looking up. "Do you hear that?"

It takes Yugo a moment, but then he catches it. Flute music, soft and lilting, drifting over the wind. Haruto and the girl next to him seem unaffected, but the people passing by start to slow, then stop and sink to the ground, curling up on the concrete and drifting off.

Over to the right, Phoenix says sharply, and Yugo looks just in time to see a flash of white robes vanishing behind a building.

He's about to go after them when Haruto makes a pained noise, clutching his head. The pain hits Yugo a moment later, like a drumbeat behind his eyes, and he feels Phoenix's presence dragged forward, until it feels like his head is going to explode.

Then the pain stops, and something like sleep settles over him.

---

Phoenix opens his eyes. Across from him, he sees Dragon open his, Haruto's brown irises turned sharp white. He suppresses a grin.

"It's been a while, dude," he says, reaching forward and tapping Dragon's chin.

Dragon snorts. "Hardly."

Yugo opens his eyes.

He is sprawled on a Tokyo street, but it's empty, in a way that Tokyo never is, and the edges of the buildings seem softened slightly. There is snow, but it's not falling, just hanging motionless in the air. He's on his feet before he realises he's gotten up, prodding a snowflake with his finger. It turns to a raindrop, and spreading out in a wave, every other snowflake melts. They drop down as one, splashing against the road.

"Kamen Rider Phoenix," a deep voice says.

He turns. The green armoured figure in front of him is - well, Yugo's never met him in person before, but he's recognisable to everyone on Earth. Kamen Rider Ichigo, first and leader of the Riders.

"Yugo," Yugo says, quickly. "Dude, it's, um. An honour, I guess. You going to keep wearing that armour?"

Ichigo doesn't say anything.

Yugo stuffs his hands in his pockets. "Where am I?"

"This place is nowhere. A gap between worlds, a place that is not Earth or the Underworld or anywhere else, but overlaps with all of them," Ichigo says. "It is not where that Phantom meant to send you. But you are a Rider, and thus you were tethered to the fabric of reality, as we all are."

"Dude, I'm not a very good Rider," Yugo says. "I can't - well, dude, you seem to have been watching. You know what happened."

"You are afraid," Ichigo says.

"Dude, totally. I don't know who I am anymore. Part of me is him now, and I don't like it. I don't trust it. I never asked for any of this," Yugo says. "It was forced on me, all of it."

He wishes he could see Ichigo's face. The man's voice is toneless. "When I was a young man, Shocker kidnapped me, as they kidnapped many of their servants. Doctor Shinigami implanted me with machines and took my humanity. Had I not escaped before the final brainwashing, I would have been another of their minions. Evil took everything I was and made a weapon in its place.

"It is why we fight. Those of us who have lost our humanity must be the shield of mankind to defend them from the indignities inflicted upon us, the sword to strike back at evil. A brother of yours has fallen, and an entire city faces suffering and destruction. Who will come to their aid?"

The water rises from the ground, obscuring Ichigo, and Yugo feels himself falling, tumbling into the void.

---

He lands on a plain surrounded by cliffs, at the feet of a man in a pink shirt, with a camera around his neck.

Yugo groans, rubbing his forehead as the man snaps a picture. A photo is held out to Yugo, and he takes it. It's terrible. It looks like the development has gone wrong, so that patterns of light make it look like wings are spreading from his back.

"Kadoya Tsukasa," the man says. "Kamen Rider Decade."

"Destroyer of Worlds Decade?" Yugo asks, rubbing his forehead.

Tsukasa smiles like a cat. "That's what I hear."

"Ugh, dude," Yugo groans, getting to his feet. He stows the photo in his pocket. "C'mon, bro. Let's get the speech over with."

Tsukasa laughs happily. "You're afraid, right? A lot of us have been there."

"Dude, yeah. Phoenix is powerful and destructive and can't die, and I think that one day he'll take control. Properly."

Tsukasa cocks his head. "I was the leader of Dai-Shocker. With my power, I split the worlds, creating mirrors and shadows, and then I brought them together, to collide them so that every one of them would be destroyed."

He gestures. "This is where I was fought. Every Kamen Rider who has ever lived threw themselves against me, and I destroyed all of them bar one. Eventually, my best friend stepped up. She joined with one of our enemies, became Kamen Rider Kivahla, and slew me. And the worlds reset. Everyone that I had killed returned, and so did I.

"If you turn against humanity, we will still be here. We will kill you if we have to."

Yugo glances at him. Tsukasa's stare is level. "We've done it before."

The world turns on itself, light streaking across like a photograph gone wrong, and Yugo's falling again.

---

It's his own mirror image who greets him this time.

"Dude!" He says delightedly.

"Dude," Yugo returns groggily.

The setting this time is a beach beneath a dark sky, a whispering sea of purple lapping against the shores. Yugo glances around. "This is where you come from, huh?"

"Kinda shitty, right?" Phoenix grins.

"Totally. Harshfive," Yugo says, and wearily raises a hand. Phoenix slaps his hand against Yugo's with a grin. Yugo ducks his head. "This is pretty rough on you, huh?"

"Dude. You had to know I would never just swap one prison for another," Phoenix says. "I was promised sunlight, and food, and water, and everything else you've had your whole life, bro. I'll kill you and anyone else who stops me from getting that."

"You know I can't let you."

Phoenix grinned. "Try and stop me. I always win eventually." He paused, scuffing his foot against the ground. "Kinda burns that Krampus thinks he's gotten away with stabbing us, though. You wanna go stop him? We don't make a terrible team, you know, bro."

Yugo sets his jaw, offering a hand. "Yeah. Let's go."

Phoenix laughs, his human form melting away into a great bird of steel. Twice he circles Yugo, before flying into his chest, metal turning to fire around him.

---

A portal is torn open in a burst of hellfire. Emerging, Yugo sees Krampus and the Phantom of Christmas Future standing around the machine, as snow starts to flutter down.

Yugo spins the disk on his wrist, the flash of heat and light turning the snow around him to steam in mid-air as his armour appears. He feels that sickly feeling in his gut again, the pain in the back of his head, and ignores him.

"... Well, someone had an epiphany, I see," Krampus says resignedly.

Both Phantoms rush him. Yugo drops to a crouch and pushes off, dashing past them to bring his sword down on the machine, severing it through the middle in a shower of sparks. Sanada drops to the rooftop immediately, cracks in his skin fading one by one.

Yugo grins under his mask, twirling his sword in his hand as he turns to face the two Phantoms. "Duuudes. It's totally harshtime."

It turns out Yugo's brothers in Shiragiku do have an idea of where Keisuke - the Phantom of Christmas Future, Yugo finds it difficult to remind himself of that - is.

The shateigashira, though, a man in his late thirties with a cropped beard and a body covered in tattoos, doesn't want to talk, though.

"But why should we tell you?" He snorts, lighting up a cigarette and offering one to Yugo. Yugo doesn't acknowledge it either way. "You've been, what, working as a florist? We'll come tell you if we want a floral arrangement for the bar."

The other men look visibly uncomfortable. Yugo gives the other man a bright smile.

"Dude. That's harsh, bro. That's super harsh," he says. "We're family, bro. My father took you in, accepted your oaths, gave you this nice bar of yours. All I want is a couple of possible addresses from one of my adorable baby brothers and I'll totally let you get on with business."

He rubs his chin. It's a reminder that he should probably shave soon. "I mean, I came to you 'cause I respect everything you've done here, but Dad'll know where to find Keisuke too, I guess. Dude, that is going to be so awkward, he's going to want to know where I've been, what I've been doin', why I'm lookin' for Keisuke and why one of his business partners has gone missing."

The shateigashira sucks in a breath for a moment. The next ten minutes are full of jibes, meant to keep him from losing face, but he still gives Yugo the addresses.

---

Yugo finds Keisuke at the second address on the list, a department store rooftop near the docks that he'd used for 'meetings' when he was a human. He has Sanada strapped to some kind of machine that looks like a giant metal snowflake hooked up to servers and pylons and a mass of pipes.

"Dude, Keisuke," he calls, raising one hand as he enters. "Wanna make this easy and let him go now? I could totally go for that, I'm not feelin' great."

Keisuke gives him a surprised look, turning towards him. Yugo grimaces a little. He's never faced a Phantom who looked like someone he knew before. He touches the disk on his wrist awkwardly, wondering if it would have been possible to make more than one.

"Machine's still gatherin' power," Keisuke says. "Turns out Sanada's a hardier one than I thought. Who would've guessed, scrawny old guy like him. Guess all that money keeps him from falling into despair too quick, huh?"

"Guess so," Yugo says. "Krampus with you?"

"He'll be here when the machine is due to activate. Soon, bro, very soon. The machine'll use him and me and Sanada's Phantom to create snow over Shiragiku, and everyone the snow touches with a Phantom inside them? They're all going to start breaking free, dude. Like a little Sabbath ritual," Keisuke says.

"Dude, you have to know I won't let you do that," Yugo says, and reaches for the disk, moving to rotate it.

Red plumage bursting out of gold armour. The river steaming. Screaming at the sky.

The memory rises up out of the quagmire of thoughts, and Yugo freezes, fingers on the disk. If he transforms, maybe whatever happened to him before will happen again.

"Oh, right. Kramp told me. You lost it before, didn't you? Phoenix took control. Kramp said you went out-and-out Phantom for a bit there," Keisuke says. "But sure, you do your Rider thing. It totally won't go wrong."

Yugo scowls, trying to rotate the disk around. His fingers refuse to move. Keisuke looks highly amused by this.

He also has no compunctions about transforming, as his eyes flash green just before he transforms into a lanky, cloaked figure. He moves towards Yugo with surprising speed, the back of one hand hitting him with enough force to send him sprawling.

Yugo sucks in a sharp breath, pulling the Explosion Ring from his belt and sliding it on. He's about to scan it when he stops, because what if that isn't safe either?

He's dragged off the ground by the Phantom, given another backhand that sends him flying.

Yugo grits his teeth, and forces himself to scan the ring, taking aim at one of the pylons connected to the machine.

"Explosion, please," the disk chirps.

A spike of terror works its way up through Yugo's chest as he feels a pain behind his eyes, wingbeats in his ribcage, and hears Phoenix's screaming like it's own his thoughts. The bruise where Krampus stabbed him feels suddenly livid with sickly heat, and for a second Yugo wonders if he's going to black out.

Will Phoenix take control if I do?

A sphere of light and air flies out of Yugo's hand towards the pylon. He sees the Phantom raise a hand, and the air spiral into darkness, absorbing the sphere. It opens again a moment later to return it towards Yugo, forcing him to dive out of the way.

"This is just sad, bro," the Phantom says. "You're a Greater Phantom, the Lord of Fire, and you're sprawled on a rooftop too afraid to do anything. Why is this always how it goes with you guys? Dragon's enslaved, Chimera's a traitor, who knows where Ogre is. You used to be the best of us."

Yugo feels Phoenix's rage bubbling up again. He forces it back, clamping his hand around the disk on his wrist. He just needs a few minutes of transformation, that's all. He wills himself to turn the disk, but he can't bring himself to move his hand.

The Phantom twists his hand again, and Yugo feels another portal open, this time beneath him. He has just enough time to yell before he tumbles into it.

---

"Is it ready, then?" Krampus asks, brushing a hand over Sanada's jacket some hours later. There are purple cracks starting to form over the man's face, slowly but surely.

"It's ready," the Phantom of Christmas Future says.

Yugo goes crashing through the penthouse window, the flames he used to propel himself flickering out behind him, and comes face to face with Keisuke menacing an elderly man in his pyjamas - who Yugo presumes is Sanada. He remembers, as Keisuke reaches out one hand towards Sanada and transforms into a looming, cloaked figure, that Keisuke had been down in Tokyo on business when the Sabbath ritual had created the Phantoms.

He's moving in to attack when chains burst from the ground, fending him backwards and then wrapping around him. Yugo feels Phoenix scream with rage inside his head, as another Phantom, one with horns and glittering armour all his own, emerges from the ground.

"Forgive the intrusion, Mister Phoenix," he says, and beckons Keisuke - the Phantom of Christmas Yet To Come, even - away. Keisuke grabs Sanada and retreats into a portal, which closes with a snap of cold air around him.

"... Dude, are you his boss?"

"I am one of the executive admins of operations here in Shiragiku, yes," the Phantom says. "Krampus."

"Dude. Festiveharsh."

"I would have introduced myself earlier, but I was reluctant to face one of the Greater Phantoms. Had myself and my brethren not fled from Tokyo, Wiseman would surely have hunted us all down. He would have killed us, or chained us as he did Legion," Krampus said. Yugo wriggles slightly, seeing if there's any way out of the chains. There isn't. There is only the monologue. "Each time we feed on another Phantom, we grow stronger, but it's difficult to gauge precisely how much more powerful we've become."

Yugo squints through the mask. "Are you just going to monologue at me?"

Krampus stares at him for a moment. Then, in one fluid movement, he produces a sword and slides it through Yugo's chest, the armour cracking around it.

Yugo just foggily feels Phoenix flare at the back of his mind before hellfire explodes outwards from his armour, incinerating the chains and forcing Krampus backwards. For a brief moment, it feels like he's not in control of his body, that Yugo has been forced backwards and Phoenix is at the forefront now.

His armour is boiling. Cracks are spreading along it, glowing red, flickering with embers. Krampus sweeps his chains around himself, sending waves of frost out. They turn to steam in the air.

Something thumps in the middle of Yugo's head. The world blurs and goes black.

---

He pries at the disk on his wrist and screams. The dirt turns to ash.

---

He wakes up feeling like he hasn't breathed in hours. His lungs suck in air painfully.

Scrambling, he touches his chest. He can feel where the sword passed through. There's a bruise there, still livid and tender to touch. But as sick and weak as he feels, it's only a bruise.

Soukichi and Yuriko are standing over him.

"- How long was I out?" Yugo starts.

"We found you this morning. It's evening now, Christmas Day," Soukichi says.

"... Is Sanada?"

"He's not turned up yet. That probably means he's alive. I have connections in the police looking for him, and Yuriko has 'bots out doing patrols."

"How did I get away from ... ?" Yugo blinks. His armour turning to fire, Krampus staggering backwards, gold metal moulting to admit red plumage, diving out of a window. A sharp pain in his head makes him stop thinking about it.

"Sanada's penthouse was wrecked, but we didn't find you anywhere near it," Soukichi says, and Yugo notes the tinge of suspicion in his voice.

He finds himself scowling, and wonders where the bubbling up of anger in his chest is coming from, because he's not like that. He's never been like that.

He rolls out of bed, and Yuriko's hand is on his shoulder immediately, nearly pushing him back down. She's stronger than any human is, he knows that, and he wonders how much self-control she uses not to crush people's limbs in everyday life.

"You should recover," she says sternly. "We'll deal with - ..."

"Dude, you can't, remember? Neither of you can transform safely, you can't deal with anything," Yugo says, perhaps a little more harshly than he means to, and eases her hand aside, standing up and picking up his t-shirt. His legs feel like they're going to give out. "I'm going out looking. Maybe my brothers will know where to look."

They left some turkey for him, he notes. He downs some on the way out of the flat.

"Sanada Yamato, local business mogul," Soukichi says on the morning of Christmas Eve, tossing a photo of a rather miserable man in his sixties onto the table. Yugo peers at Soukichi over his coffee, then over at Yuriko, before carefully adding a lump of sugar. "Mostly deals in - ..."

"Yeah, bro, I know. Payday loans," Yugo says, picking up a chunk of natto and dunking it in his coffee. Yuriko makes a face. "He's a business associate of my family."

"... You mean he's a criminal," Yuriko said, and makes an annoyed noise, downing her coffee. "It's Christmas Eve, do we have to help him out? He's probably working for Gorgom or something."

"Not since, like, the nineties, bro."

Soukichi clears his throat loudly. "Sanada claims to have received a threat that he'll be visited by three spirits this night, which will drive him to despair so that he - ..."

"- Can give birth to a new Phantom," Yugo and Yuriko finish in chorus. They've heard the favoured line of the Phantoms before.

"Yugo'll stay and guard him. Yuriko, you and I will try to track down the Phantoms before they can get close to him, and we'll call Yugo if we hear anything."

---

Yugo recognises the six burly, tattooed men who are guarding Sanada's penthouse.

Worse, they recognise him.

"Dude! Yubro! Why didn't you tell us you were in town, bro?"

"Fucking hell, dude!"

"Bro!"

Yugo groans, but engages in the expected conversational rituals of a dutiful younger-older-brother. He does manage to prise out a promise that they won't tell his father, even if it does involve a few meaningful 'Dude's accompanied by glances at their fingers.

---

The Phantom of Christmas Past is very, very obvious, because why would a small, pale young man in white be wandering up to the penthouse of a money lender? That would make no sense.

Yugo comes up with a reason to direct his brothers away - and hopes they don't come back with a dozen more of his siblings - and moves to block the young man's passage.

The Phantom of Christmas Past stares woefully at him, and coughs delicately into a handkerchief. "Please, I just need to ... talk to ... Mister Sanada ..."

"Dude, it's, like, ten o'clock at night on Christmas Eve, you are obviously here to kill him. C'mon, bro. C'mon."

"... Ugh. Fucking Riders, I swear."

The fight that ensues is short and loud. Yugo manages to duck out of sight to transform out of his armour just as his brothers come running back to see what's going on.

---

"Hey, we've found the ... the Phantom of Christmas Present. He's about three blocks East of you," Yuriko says.

"Duuuude. Blockharsh. What's he like?" Yugo says, taking the stairs down two at a time.

"... Um. Jolly. Hang on."

His phone dings. A picture appears.

"... Dude, is he a shopping centre Santa? Did he not think to quit when he became a ravening despair monster? I respect this Phantom's work ethic, bro."

"Don't let that stop you from killing it."

"Yes, ma'am."

---

Yugo's sword separates a writhing beard of snakes from the Phantom of Christmas Present's body, sending him stumbling backwards. With a snarl, the Phantom parts his robe, releasing what Yugo can only describe as demon children to latch onto his armour.

He can practically feel Phoenix's disapproval in his head.

A wave of hellfire sets them alight, and they die while wailing about the injustices of the world as Yugo scrapes his blade across the disk on his arm, igniting it with red-gold fire.

The Phantom of Christmas Present tries to flee. Yugo swings his sword, and a bird of hellfire flows from the tip, twisting and rippling in the air before engulfing the monster.

"No refuuuuge," it wails as it burns, "no resooouuu - ..." And then it explodes. Because they always explode.

Yugo knows that his brothers are behind him before he turns around, and for that reason remains transformed. Tadashi, a brother several years older than Yugo's father but with a level of accomplishment lower than most teenagers, gawks at the golden armour like he wants to sell it.

"... Are you Spiderman?" He whispers.

Yugo is momentarily at a loss for words.

"Tadashi," one of Yugo's other brothers says sternly, "everyone knows that Spiderman wears red and blue. That's Sanagiman."

"I am pretty sure it's the Magnificent Zubat, dudes."

Yugo runs his hands over his mask slowly, only daring to look over his fingers after several minutes. One of his brothers is very, very close, and looks like he might try to touch the armour. The other four are peering at him from afar.

Something icy curls in Yugo's stomach. Where's the sixth?

"... Where's Keisuke?"

The bloodcurdling scream from the penthouse is almost on cue.

Monday.

Yugo didn't even need to guess at who the Phantom was. The clown in the sad make-up would have been the obvious candidate even if he wasn't standing over a cowering man, one comedically oversized boxing glove raised, wailing at him to give into despair and give rise to a new Phantom.

When he noticed Yugo, he made a dramatic flourish, glowing and shifting into something red and hairy.

“The Chupacabra Phantom is pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Dude,” Yugo said with enthusiasm. “Totally. Henshin.”

Tuesday.

“... Dude,” Yugo just said, squinting behind his armour. “Aren't you just the Mandrake Phantom? Didn't I kill you, like, weeks ago? I totally remember vines, man. Don't go harshing my memory like this.”

The Phantom tittered behind one hand. “A foolish mistake by a foolish human!” It declared dramatically. “'Twas but my younger brother that you defeated. I am the Alraune Phantom. Note the red of my flowers and the green of my vines, whereas my fallen brother had purple flowers and yellow vines.”

Yugo paused for a moment. “Dude, that is totally fair. Sorry, man.”

“You shall be!”

Wednesday.

“Dude, this isn't fair, I defeated you weeks ago too,” Yugo said, just a little irritably, at the canine Phantom tearing apart a shopping centre. “What, is the Werewolf Phantom your brother or something?”

The Phantom gave him a steely gaze. Softly: “No. I am the - …”

“... Sister?”

“No. I am the Ghi - …”

“... Cousin?”

“No. I am the Ghilli - ...”

“... Dude, dude, father?”

“I will kill you now, Lord Phoenix,” the Phantom said firmly.

Thursday.

“Bro, please tell me this isn't going to be a daily thing,” Yugo said, the edge of his sword tickling the Bicorn Phantom's throat.

The Bicorn Phantom paused thoughtfully. “I can't really promise that, mate.”

Yugo sighed. “Ah, well. Thanks anyway.”

“No probs.”

Yugo scraped his wrist brace across his sword, listening to the device chirp out its declaration. “Rising! Slash Striiiiiiike.”

Friday.

“But why a jazz bar?”

“Well, it's an interesting story, actually - ...”

“Never mind. Henshin.”

Saturday.

“Dude.”

“Dude.”

“Dude.”

“Dude!”

Yugo stared at his mirror image. The other Yugo rubbed his chin, then stuffed his hands in his pockets, grinning a grin that Yugo had seen in the mirror a few times before.

“Dudes call me the Doppelganger Phantom,” the other Yugo said.

“Harsh.”

“The name, or - … ?”

“Dude, no. Copying my face, man,” Yugo said reproachfully. He reached to the driver on his wrist, rotating the disk on it. “That's totally rude. Henshin.”

Doppelganger rolled his shoulders into an easy shrug, and reached to the driver on his own wrist, white-grey to Yugo's own gold device. With a flick, he turned the disk on it about. “Hey, man. I have my orders from Krampus. Don't be harshin' my obedience now. Henshin.”

Identical magical circles floated over them, armour forming in their wakes. Yugo sighed, rubbing a palm over his helmet. It was too late in the week for this.

“Dude, it's harshtime,” Doppelganger said.

“Yeah,” Yugo mumbled. “Totally harshtime.”

Sunday.

“The Chupacabra Phantom is - ...”

“I killed you on Monday,” Yugo said flatly, without putting down his coffee. “Go be dead now.”

In a dramatic motion, Chupacabra swept his hands around, billowy pink-yellow-and-green chequered sleeves flapping about him in an entirely undignified fashion. “What a foolish folly of a fool! Does not even a fool - ...”

“Henshin.”

“ - Know that amongst all the Phantoms that owe their allegiance to his lordship, the great and most reverend Krampus ...”

The device on Yugo's wrist yelled over Chupacabra. “Rising! Slash Strike.”

“... The Chupacabra Phantom is most famed and respected for his ability to revive himself but a single ti - ...”

“Dude, he said a single time, right?”

“Well,” Soukichi murmured without looking up from his newspaper, “he was going to.”

“Have you ...” Weresheep cleared his throat deeply. “Have you tried switching it off and on again, sir?”

Hongo Hitsuji had been dead for six months. Plucked from his room by a figure in white (and try as he might, Weresheep still couldn't figure out who that was, although he was told it was the legendary Wiseman), he had been left on a stretch of Japanese coastline. As the moon froze in front of the sun, Weresheep had burst out of him with a triumphant bleat.

“No, I – I – I know, sir. L-listen, why don't I make you an appointment ...”

He was sweating. Sweating was never good. The office, with its ocean of cubicles and harried men and women in short-sleeved dress shirts and cheap ties, had the curious effect of amplifying every foul smell.

Go to the human world, they said. The sea doesn't beg you to kill it there. There's sunlight there. Plants grow. Plants are fun! While all these things were technically true, Weresheep couldn't help but notice that his fellow Phantoms had failed to mention the daily nine-to-five grind of the office.

Frankly, it was a more effective tool to induce despair than anything the Phantoms had ever come up with.

“Sir,” he mumbled plaintively, and ducked his head so that nobody could see the flicker of neon orange in his eyes, or the way lightning was starting to spark from his hands, “I will – I – I – will have you know that I d-don't have to put up with t-t-t-t-this kind of verbal abuse in the w-workplace.”

His hand was shaking. He needed a fix. He needed it badly.

Chiyoko was a bubbly free spirit type, with a pink kitten bracelet, and when Hitsuji had been alive he had harboured secret hopes of heroically rescuing her from her (obviously terrible) boyfriend. He'd never met the man, only seen him from afar, but he was called Yamato and rode a tricked-out motorbike, and Hitsuji had known with the deep certainty that Weresheep was sure could only spring from vast reserves of self-delusion that both these things meant he was a dick.

Weresheep had no such designs on Chiyoko. Humans were weird, it was a well-known fact, and Weresheep had no desire to find out just how weird in intimate, fleshy detail. Still, out of a kind of respect for the man who had been his Gate, his self-from-another-world, he had taken to walking her back home and occasionally making half-hearted remarks about how her boyfriend must be terrible.

(Weresheep kind of wanted that tricked out motorbike.)

And, okay, two months earlier he may have gone straight from blandly comforting her about her mother's illness, to the hospital itself to drain the old woman of mana, leaving her as a still, pale body. But he had needed a fix, and frankly, Hitsuji had been a serial killer waiting to happen anyway.

“Back to the grind tomorrow,” Chiyoko said as they reached her door, as she always did. “See you then, Hitsuji.”

Weresheep suppressed the natural twitch all Phantoms got at being referred to by their Gate's name, and smiled thinly. “S-see you then.”

The door clicked shut behind her.

Weresheep sniffed the air, sensing the presence of another Phantom nearby. Turning, he caught sight of a tall, horned figure across the road. As it emerged into the lamplight, it melted down into a human man, middle-aged, gruff-looking, dressed in a sharp suit.

Weresheep bowed low. “L-lord Krampus.”

Krampus raised one gloved hand. “Come. Have some coffee with me, Weresheep.”

In the upmarket coffee shop, Krampus ordered a coffee so absurdly complicated that Weresheep couldn't keep up with it. Weresheep stuck to a blueberry milkshake.

(So tangsome.)

“You know this woman?” Krampus asked, delicately setting a picture of Chiyoko down on the table.

Weresheep nodded. “She w-worked with my Gate.”

“Then you know how to drive her to despair,” Krampus said briskly. “Can I trust you to do so?”

Weresheep picked up the photograph, staring at it for a second. He did want that tricked out motorbike a lot. But on the other hand …

“Isn't there a K-kamen Rider around?”

“If you can call Lord Phoenix that,” Krampus replied. Weresheep swore loudly. Several customers gave him sour looks. He ducked his head.

“He'll kill me.”

“You have more immediate concerns.”

“Like w-what?”

“Like me,” Krampus' pleasant demeanour faded in a split second, replaced with snarling. A second later, the mask of calm slipped back into place, and Krampus gave him a bland, emotionless look. “Your hands are shaking, Weresheep.”

“I – need a fix,” Weresheep admitted, trying to still his hands. “I haven't even eaten a Ghoul for days. I need mana.”

“We all suffer in this place. Dragged here by Wiseman, and then cast out and called traitors for that we would seek basic sustenance,” Krampus' voice took on a hint of the snarl again, but this time Weresheep was grateful it wasn't directed at him. “Drive the Gate Chiyoko to despair, Weresheep, and when a Phantom is born from her we will hold it still while you drain the mana from it.”

Weresheep peered at Krampus again, then down at the photograph. Closing his hand, he crumpled it in his fist.

“Consider it done.”

“Explosion, please.”

A blast of fire and air flung Weresheep off the rooftop, followed by a streak of red and gold. With a flash of orange fire, the distance was closed between them, swords sparking as they landed against each other.

”Rising,” the device on the Rider's wrist announced, ”Slash Strike.”

The Rider's sword ignited with red fire, swirling, momentarily flaring blinding white. With a crash, Weresheep felt himself land on a car, the roof crumpling beneath him, the alarm blaring. He groaned and rolled off, the shards of his sword scattering behind him, smoking, a gash on his chest venting sparks.

Metal hitting concrete. Weresheep turned, one claw clutched to its chest, to stare at the luminescent red Rider. With a hiss, Weresheep tossed a dozen stones onto the ground, watching as they sprouted and grew into Ghouls. Waving them towards the Rider, he fled.

“Dude,” the Rider murmured. “So harsh.”

“Have you tried switching it o-on and off again, sir?”

Mumbling.

“That m-m-might help, s-sir.”

Mumbling.

““I will – I – I – will have you know that I d-don't have to put up with t-t-t-t-this kind of verbal abuse in the … in the ...” Weresheep groaned slightly. As the customer kept screaming over the phone, he looked down. Beneath his garish yellow tie, blood was soaking into his white dress shirt.

He wiped his brow, his arm coming away drenched in sweat, and gazed blearily out over the office. Chiyoko hadn't come in today. She had taken the day off, to visit the hospital where Yamato-of-the-Tricked-Out-Motorbike was.

His shirt was blossoming red. With a low whine, Weresheep dropped the phone down onto his desk, letting the customer scream into empty space as he staggered towards the bathroom. It was amazing, he reflected, how few stares he got. Everyone was too absorbed in their work, or even more absorbed in procrastinating from it.

He barrelled into the bathroom. There was one man already there, zipping up his trousers, swaggering towards the door with the gait of someone who had blissfully managed to convince themselves they were a high-powered businessman. Weresheep snatched him by the chin, hauling him up against the wall. The man barely had time to express surprise at the small Phantom's strength before Weresheep was drawing in a breath, sucking in the mana from him. It emerged from his skin in motes of purple, drifting into Weresheep's mouth, until his eyes went glassy and he dropped to the ground.

The bleeding hadn't stopped. Weresheep was still shaking. He leaned over the sink, screwed his eyes shut, and with a low gurgle, spat blood onto the ceramic. Motes of purple flowed out with the red, drifting away down the plug.

“You seem troubled, Weresheep.”

Weresheep looked up. Krampus was standing behind him, adjusting one of his gloves. The older Phantom peered at him owlishly for a moment. “The Gate I assigned you to. Has she been driven to despair?”

“Phoenix ...”

Krampus sighed deeply. “Finish the job, Weresheep.”

“I n-n-need mana, Krampus. I can't think straight. I'm not healing,” Weresheep said plaintively, resting his head against the mirror.

“The hunger won't kill you,” Krampus said dismissively.

He stepped forward, taking Weresheep by the shoulder and easing him around. With a low sigh, he traced one finger over the patch of blood. For a moment, a chill spread through Weresheep's chest, then faded, taking the pain with it, leaving only a dull ache. He touched his chest. The wound had stopped bleeding, at least.

Krampus stepped back, wiping his glove on a handkerchief. “Finish the job, Weresheep. Bring the Gate to despair so that a new Phantom may come to this world. Then you may have your meal.”

At least he had the tricked out motorbike.

He drove it for an hour.

It was nice.

”Explosion, please.”

Weresheep reflected, as he was flung off the top of the hospital by the blast, that deja vu sucked.

The streak of red followed, sword bursting into flame.

Weresheep considered himself lucky to escape once. Escaping twice was a miracle.

He dragged himself into an alleyway, eyes flaring orange, bleeding motes of purple magic behind him. He wasn't even surprised when he found his chin resting on a shiny shoe.

“Weresheep,” Krampus said, with an intensely weary tone that Weresheep found himself struggling to care about. “I see you've failed again.”

“I'll – a t-third time. Third t-t-t-time's the charm, right?” Weresheep protested weakly. “I just need mana.”

Krampus nodded agreeably, crouching down. “You came closer than Werewolf, Mandrake or Cockatrice before you. For all your … quirks,” his lips twitched, “I truly do count you as one of my most reliable Phantoms. You may even succeed on your third try. Maybe I could help you.”

Weresheep smiled as best he could, flashing bloody teeth. The motion turned into a coughing fit, spraying purple light over the ground. Krampus gave him a brotherly pat on the shoulder.

“Together,” Weresheep said, “they wouldn't be able to stop us.”

“Quite so. But Weresheep,” Krampus squeezed his shoulder slightly. “You are not the only one who's hungry.”

Krampus' grip tightened, crushing bone. Weresheep squirmed, trying to flee as purple light came off him in streams, flowing into Krampus' mouth, into his nose, into his eyes. With a rattling breath, Weresheep went limp, body fading into smoke.

Krampus rose to his feet, wiping his mouth, and looked towards the hovering object at the end of the alleyway. It was a camera with bat wings attached, hovering gently. “You're one of Narumi Soukichi's little toys, aren't you? Sent after Weresheep to spy on him. Take a message. Tell Phoenix that I weary of his interference.”

“Tell Phoenix that I weary of his interference.”

Soukichi tipped his hat lower, drawing in a breath. Nearby, Yuriko scowled.

Yugo stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Dude. This all totally just got, like, ten times worse, man.”

“Harsh,” Soukichi murmured.

“Totes harsh.”

Yugo has a massive grin on his face as he follows Moist outside, letting the other man pick the spot.

(He's quietly hoping for somewhere shaded. It's hot, dude.)

It's about two days after the attack by the Cockatrice Phantom that Yugo pokes his head into the archives.

(Yugo has spent much of that time training, and a not inconsiderable amount analysing the data they got from the Cockatrice Phantom. He has the latter in a folder under his arm.)

"Dude, you here? Dude? Duuuude?"

They emerge out on a rather nice plaza with a fountain and, on the far side, an ice cream shop. It's a sunny morning, and people are rushing about on their way to work, in business suits and practical clothing, and it looks to all the world like a busy, normal city.

(The perceptive may note that sitting atop the fountain is a statue. Those who are more perceptive might notice that it's kind of a weird statue - it's bronze, male, corded with muscle in the style of Grecian statues of Apollo, but hairless and with its facial features only roughly carved in: Vague hollows for eyes, only a slight suggestion of a mouth, lumps for ears.

It has three faces like that, one in the regular place and one on each bicep. There are wings on its back, stretched out wide.)

"So, dude, this is Shiragiku City," Yugo says cheerfully. "It's a pretty nice place. Kind of reminds me of Futo without the wind turbines."

With bonus Misa/Medusa, Gnome, Cait Sidhe and Hellhound.

The sort-of-morning is accompanied by Yugo poking his head around the door of Autor's room, murmuring 'duuuude' for about twenty seconds, and then waiting outside until the boy is ready.

When he is, Yugo guides him down an array of hallways until they reach the slightly dingy room that Soukichi, a middle-aged man in white currently reading a Raymond Chandler book, has turned into a makeshift training gym.

"Dude, this is Soukichi. Soukichi, dude, this is Autor. He is small and kittenlike."

The monastery is vast, well-fortified and old looking. The mountain it's on is high enough that the ground can't be seen, and the monastery itself appears to be half built on whatever wide ledges and plateaus it can, and half into the mountain itself.

The door takes them out into a courtyard of white and grey stone, mostly covered in a layer of snow. It's on the lowest proper level, but at the top of a rather long series of stone steps that lead not to any kind of visible way down, but instead to two stone pillars with a wall of grey haze between them.

It's night-time, but there are enough lanterns scattered around that the courtyard is fairly well-illuminated anyway.

"So, dude," Yugo says as he closes the door (which appears to usually lead to a maintenance cupboard of some type). "This is it. You can't see from here, but it goes all the way up to the top of the mountain, which is where any big meetings happen."

(Hver en makt)
Her må vi være som ville bølger
(Hver en makt)
I storm som kommer så altfor fort.
(Hver en makt)
I liv vi gnistrer som ildebrannen,
Usynlige som når månen snur seg bort.

A fuzzy shape of dim blue light swings across the snowy courtyard and towards Yugo, one arm whirling like a whip. Yugo ducks out of the way without thinking about it, wooden sword flashing, passing through the shape’s abdomen. It dissolves into a haze of steam as four more materialise at the edge of the courtyard.

Soukichi looks up from his copy of The Big Sleep, which after five months of foreign language Disney is his only comfort in the world, and frowns.

“He’s behind schedule.”

“Relax,” Yuriko doesn’t even bother looking up from her magazine’s Agony Aunt page, where someone is lamenting their husband’s ill-considered extracurricular activities. “We’ve had no Phantom activity anywhere yet.”

“He was supposed to be up to scratch after three months. It’s been five, and I wouldn’t trust him to defend a city. We have, at most, another month before they make their move,” Soukichi grouses. “You should know better than anyone the dangers of going out into the field underprepared.”

Yuriko gives him a scathing look and, reaching up, snaps her sunglasses over her eyes. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Soukichi.”

Three of the shapes dissolve. The fourth manages to nick Yugo’s shoulder, leaving a shimmering blue line across it, before it too falls.

“Dead,” Soukichi calls. “If that had been a Phantom, it would have taken your arm off at the shoulder. Let’s go again.”

Saa hajimeru zo
honkidase
nasakenai zo otoko darou
omae ima no mama jya
onna ni mo otoru
Ore ga kitaeteyaru

Yugo nods, takes a deep breath, and hefts the wooden sword again. This time, six blue shapes appear.

“Kasumi from Osaka’s daughter is marrying a man she believes to be unsuitable,” Yuriko says mildly. “What should she - hey, Yugo, you’re leaving your left side open! Tighten up your guard! – do, or should she just step aside?”

“Have a stern talk with him,” Soukichi says, turning a page, “and threaten to break both his legs.”

“Is that what you did with your son-in-law?”

“I like my son-in-law. He’s a sweet enough guy, and he knows when to shut – Fujita, pick up the pace, you’re a sitting duck – up.”

Comme un homme
Sois plus ardant que le feux des volcans
Secret comme les nuit de lune de l'Orient
Comme un homme
Sois plus violent que le cour du torrent
Comme un homme
Sois plus puissant que les ouragans

Yuriko waves a hand absently. As Yugo takes down two of the blue shapes, a red shape shimmers into view at the edge of the courtyard, storming forward. She can hear Yugo’s protest of ‘duuuuuude’ as he raises his sword.

“Maybe we should’ve let him just go home,” Soukichi says, frowning. “Live out his life.”

“It was his choice. We made the same choice once,” Yuriko replies.

“We rather paid the price for that, I think,” Soukichi replies. “I don’t think we’re the best examples.”

“Maybe not. But I don’t have any regrets. Do you?” Yuriko finally looks up from her magazine.

Soukichi remains staring at his book. “Several.”

- - -

The alert comes mid-way through training.

Yuriko summons a holographic display in the middle of the monastery’s courtyard, staring at the information displayed. “A Phantom has appeared in Shiragiku City’s Northern Ward, at the docks. Werewolf Phantom.

“They weren’t meant to show up outside Tokyo,” Soukichi growls, putting his book aside.

Yugo puts his practice sword down, striding over to the holographic display. “Shiragiku? Er, dude, how are we meant to get in? Walled city, no visitors.”

“You, not us,” Soukichi says. “Yuriko and I can sustain physical form at the Temple – or even outside it if we’re in close enough proximity to you and your Phoenix – but if we were to transform, it’d sap our energy in minutes.”

“You’re on your own,” Yuriko chirps.

“Dude,” Yugo says, running a hand through his hair. “That’s so harsh.”

“Scared?”

“Kinda terrified, dude.”

Yuriko grins, tapping a few glowing marks on the display. “I can open a dimensional wall to take you directly there, but it’ll take me about ten minutes.”

“Right then, dudes,” Yugo says, fiddling with the gold device on his wrist, and tugging at the blandly grey gi trousers they gave him. “You totally kept my clothes, right?”

- - -

Passing through dimensional walls is weird. Like passing through a waterfall, except the water isn’t wet, and has no temperature, and you can feel it running past your skin and through your internal organs, and for just a second you can’t breathe at all.

On the docks of Shiragiku, people are running and screaming. Yugo frowns, trying to locate the Phantom – it only takes a second. It’s twenty feet away, a six foot tall humanoid monstrosity of grey metal, with a red jewel set into its chest and a head like a wolf, jaws currently dripping with something like acid.

It’s looming over a woman who looks to be about thirty or so, in a smart business suit that she doesn’t seem comfortable wearing – although, Yugo notes, that may just be because business wear is not well-suited to monster attacks.

Werewolf is snarling, fingers flexing back and forth. “Let the fear of death drive you to despair.”

Yugo does the only thing he can think of. “Hey! Wolfdude! I need to distract you for a moment, man!”

Surprisingly, it works. Werewolf turns to him sharply, staring at him – and through him – like it’s not sure what to make of him.

Yugo takes a deep breath, reaching one hand to the device on his wrist. Soukichi and Yuriko had shown him how to do this, demonstrated it with diagrams, and, when Yugo had panicked and told them he wasn’t sure, had wryly remarked that it was simple enough.

He twists the gold disk about half a circle, and taps the jewel with one hand. “Henshin.”

A pause. Nothing happens. For a second, Yugo wonders if he’s done it wrong. Then, the device speaks, chirping in that mechanical tone it has.

”Error.”

Yugo taps the jewel again. “Henshin, dude.”

”Error.”

“Henshin, bro.”

”Error.”

It sounds almost satisfied with itself. Realisation dawns on Yugo: The problem isn’t him, and it isn’t the device. Soukichi and Yuriko had told him at the very start he had to channel Phoenix’s power, and this is Phoenix, telling him in no uncertain terms that it isn’t going to be channelled.

Oh dude, he’s the worst superhero ever and now he’s going to be mauled by a metal werewolf because of it. So harsh. So harsh.

Werewolf advances on him, dripping smoking acid on the ground behind it, and Yugo takes a step back. At least it’s not going after the woman anymore, and that’s something. He feels like he’s achieved something.

“Dude, dude, dude,” he murmurs to the device, and feels like an idiot for doing it. “Phoenix, bro, I know you can hear me. Guess what, dude, if I die here, you die too, because I can’t come back to life like you can. And then you never get to burn anything. And that would suck, dude. That would really, really suck.” He slaps the jewel. “Henshin.”

”Error.”

“Dude! You know what you’re doing now? What you’re doing now is being boring, when you could be fighting and having fun. So stop sulking, dude, and do something.”

With a growl, Yugo slaps the jewel again. Werewolf stops dead in his tracks. After a moment, Yugo realises that everything has stopped dead in his tracks.

He looks up. Darkness. He feels something red and hot behind his eyes.

With a shimmer, the darkness fades to his family home, the genkan, and his mother arranging flowers, all in shades of silver, the colours muted to almost nothing. He feels Phoenix next to him before he sees him.

“Dude,” he says.

“Dude,” Phoenix returns. “You want me to fight my own kind.”

“Don’t give me that, man,” Yugo says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Like that bothers you at all. You just don’t want to help me. But we’re both going to die if you don’t do something, and I bet you don’t like that idea.”

“You could run,” Yugo detects a slight sneer to Phoenix’s voice. “You ran from the bar, didn’t you? Without even leaving a note. What were you so afraid of?”

“Not this,” Yugo says, feeling a little bit stung. “The dying part is fine by me, dude.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You’re me,” Yugo says, lifting his chin. “Have you ever been afraid of dying?”

Phoenix considers this for a moment, pacing past Yugo. Then his form wavers like smoke, expands, ignites into a great, red bird with a hooked beak and bright blue eyes. Yugo holds its stare as best you can.

“If we do this,” he says, “you’ll be driven closer to despair. A year or two and you’ll die, and I’ll take your place.”

“I know.”

“I’ll go after your family,” Phoenix says, “as revenge for keeping me locked up. I’ll take your body to the bar and I’ll go after your friends there, too.”

“I know, bro.”

“And you still want to do this?”

Yugo grins. “When the time comes, and you’re getting free, I’ll be fighting you every step of the way, man. I totally intend to win.” He raises a hand. “Talon-five.”

Phoenix rumbles out a laugh, and lifts a vast talon, smacking it against Yugo’s hand.

The flash of light and fire is blinding.

“Henshin.”

Ring by ring, the circle forms above Yugo. The phoenix with its wings outstretched, the runes, the flower, the sun, the tear and the heart, and the runes again. Werewolf has to shield his eyes as the circle passes down over Yugo, a whirlwind of glowing feathers following it.

As the armour forms, Yugo feels Phoenix’s mind shift alongside his, until their thoughts are almost indistinguishable from each other.

With a sweep of his hand, he sends the glowing feathers flying, drawing a deep breath in through the armour.

Werewolf recognises him now. He sounds terrified when he talks: “… My lord Phoenix …”

Yugo laughs, but it’s not him laughing, it’s Phoenix, a mad laugh that doesn’t bode well for anyone. As their minds snap back together, he sweeps his hand, his sword appearing in a flash of fire.

“Dude,” he says, pointing at Werewolf with the tip of the blade. “It’s harshtime.”

It wasn’t until the cool breeze woke him that Yugo realised he had been sleeping.

It had been a dreamless sleep, or if there had been any dreams he couldn’t remember them, but waking felt intangible enough that it could have substituted. The sunlight pouring through a nearby window was a cold silver-yellow, not the fierce amber of the eclipse, and beneath him was a Spartan but comfortable bed, when he’d been expecting rocks and ocean.

His eyes swivelled to look at one hand, then another. They were both intact, although he could barely move his fingers, with no side of talons or red feathers. He had remembered his hand shattering, the skin and bone flying, but as he looked at it now, it was intact and smooth, with nothing to show for the experience.

Maybe he really was dreaming.

Yugo’s gaze drifted up. The golden disk was still on his wrist, its prongs buried in the skin, surrounded by livid purple and red bruising. That was comforting, at least.

Slowly, he twitched his fingers one by one, trying to get the feeling back in them. He crooked his elbows, feeling his numb limbs draw sluggishly into position, and pushed himself up into a sitting position. The pain that arced through his body immediately made him flop down again with a wince.

The sun hadn’t seemed to move by the time he was ready to try again, but it was shining even brighter. With a grunt, he forced himself past the pain, moving to a sitting position and then rolling out of bed and onto shaky legs. They were reluctant at first, trembling with the idea of supporting his weight. Yugo eased himself gently onto them, and stood with one hand pressed against the wall until he felt stable.

The air was cool, but not unpleasantly so, but Yugo still had no intention of wandering around a strange place stark naked. He pulled the thin blanket from the bed, wrapping it around his waist. After a moment’s thought, he also picked up a broom propped up by the door, in case he was in need of a weapon.

He moved carefully to the door, opening it and peering out. Where was this place, anyway? It looked almost like some kind of monastery.

Hefting the broom, he edged out into the narrow corridor, making his way along it, past the lamps and the braziers of something smoking and fragrant, towards the utterly incongruous gunmetal door at the end. Yugo stuffed the broom under his arm, turning the wheel at the door’s front until he felt it click, and heaving it open.

Beyond was a great hall, the walls bright red and the floor a rough stone, with candles gathered wherever there was space for them. Vast windows at the sides had been thrown open, revealing snowy mountains, sheer cliffs covered in ice, and gently falling snowflakes.

Yugo wondered, for a moment, why he didn’t really feel cold.

There were two people talking, a man and a woman. Yugo hid behind a pillar and listened.

“We should have at least a dozen more Riders here to stand guard over him,” the man said roughly. Yugo could hear him pacing, “or if not that, then at least Decade. What does he even do?”

“Guards over about a dozen other worlds? Everyone’s busy, Soukichi,” the woman replied. “And Yugo hasn’t woken up for a week. He might not wake up at all.”

“And if he does, we don’t know if it’ll be him,” Soukichi snapped back, “or if it’ll be the Phantom. You’ll excuse me if maybe I don’t trust the reliability of a device cobbled together in a week.”

“If you’re that worried, you’re welcome to go try to shoot hi - …”

“You know I ca - …”

“Er,” Yugo blurted out, moving out from behind the pillar. If anyone was going to discuss shooting him, he couldn’t help but feel that he should have a role in that conversation. “Dude. Dudette. Totally didn’t mean to interrupt you, but – er. Hi. I’m Yugo. Apparently been asleep for a while.”

Beat.

Yugo looked down at the blanket around his waist. “Could I have some clothes?”

- - -

“The eclipse has caused almost no reaction in the news,” Soukichi, who had introduced himself to Yugo somewhere on the way to get clothes as ‘Narumi Soukichi, Kamen Rider Skull’ said, arms folded. “Most of the people kidnapped and taken to the coastline reappeared a matter of hours afterwards, and returned to their homes, families and jobs. There were a few exceptions, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

They had left the great hall, travelling down an array of corridors until they reached a bafflingly high-tech room filled with floating holographic screens. They were displaying images of the eclipse. Yugo kept his gaze focused firmly on the gold disk on his wrist.

“I saw people shattering on that coastline,” Yugo said, trying to keep his voice level, “and monsters bursting out of them. You’re telling me they’re okay?”

The woman, Yuriko, whose voice Yugo recognised as that of Kamen Rider Tackle’s, shook her head fiercely. “No. But the monsters – the Phantoms, they’re called - that came out of those people have their memories, can take their appearance, can basically impersonate them perfectly,” she says. “We think they came from another world. A world of magic, and that they’re like – reflections of people in this world.”

“We’ve identified one other survivor,” Soukichi said. “We suppressed your Phantom with technology, but this other survivor did it with sheer willpower. When the Dragon Phantom was about to burst out of him, he forced it back down.”

“Dude. Awesome. When do I get to meet him?” Yugo asked.

“You don’t,” Soukichi said brusquely. “Not unless you absolutely have to.”

“We managed to get you here,” Yuriko explained quickly, putting a hand on his shoulder. “But this other boy, Haruto, was approached by someone else. He called himself the White Wizard. But we don’t know who he is or what he wants. We thought all of the mages were dead, but he somehow evaded our notice. For all we know, he could’ve caused the eclipse.”

Yugo felt his shoulders tense. He remembered the flicker of white, the figure he never quite saw. Lightly, he moved away, letting Yuriko’s hand drop.

“We can’t be too trusting of someone who may be being influenced by an unknown. He’s a Rider, so we’ll extend to him all of the privileges that entails, but we’ll keep him away from you,” Soukichi added.

“But we can train you, too,” Yuriko said to his back. “Your Phantom – Phoenix. He’s powerful. One of the most powerful Phantoms there is. If you can channel him and control him, you could help people. Stop something like this happening again.”

“Or you could just go home,” Soukichi added. “That device on your wrist isn’t permanent. It will wear out eventually. Ten years at the absolute most. But if you choose to use Phoenix’s power, it will burn out even quicker.”

“I don’t even know if I can control him,” Yugo said, and he was surprised by how sharp his voice was. “He’s – violent and destructive and I’m pretty sure he’s a psychopath.”

“He’s you,” Soukichi said harshly, and Yugo nearly flinched. “Stop acting like he’s some kind of alien force that just happened to attach itself to you. He’s your shadow, and he’s always been there, and everything he is, you could’ve been as well, and vice versa.”

He heard Yuriko punching Soukichi’s arm. “If you go home, you’ll be safe – for a while, at least,” she said.

“But other people will die, right, dudes? The Phantoms didn’t come to have tea and play Monopoly.”

“The eclipse did more than just release those Phantoms,” Yuriko said. “They unlocked hundreds of other Gates. The Phantoms will organise, and then when they’re ready, they’ll try to drive those Gates to despair, so that their own Phantoms can break through.”

“And if I just go home, how many more people’ll die?”

“Maybe none,” Soukichi said. “Or maybe hundreds. We’ll do what we can.”

Yugo shut his eyes. He could, he realised, feel Phoenix now, a heat lurking just behind his eyelids, ready to break free.

“Dudes,” he said, and did his best to sound cheerful, “I’m going to need an iPod loaded with every Rocky theme and ‘I’ll Make A Man Out Of You’ in a dozen languages.”

- - -

”Sei ein Mann!
Wir müssen schnell sein wie ein strömender Fluss,
Sei ein Mann!
Mit der ganzen Kraft eines mächtigen Taifuns,
Sei ein Mann!”

“This kid is worse than any monster ever,” Soukichi grumbled, massaging his temples as they entered the fifth hour of non-stop rousing Disney.

He is under the orange light of the eclipse, and Autor is plucking pages from books, one by one. The boy tears the last page from a red book, and tosses it away. The paper twists in the air, and when it hits the ground it disperses into orange lily petals.

There is a pause. Like he’s waiting for a question.

“The man in white,” Yugo says.

“He is a wise man,” it’s Dinah now, not Autor, and she steps amongst the flowers, letting the petals flutter around her. “He has been patient.”

“Patient?” Yugo asks stupidly.

“It is a great wrong,” Joshua says by his shoulder, “for humans to live in the sunlight, while their shadows live in the darkness.”

“The bird …”

“In one world, Fujita Yugo was born with hands,” Charles says, and eases past his shoulder, “and in another, Fujita Yugo was born with wings.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“Time is endless in the Underworld,” Beref says. Yugo turns to face her. “The other you lived an eternity in colourless despair, beneath a crystal sky, glimpsing the sun through your eyes.”

“One way or another,” Demeter says, “day always turns to night.”

“Despair turns into hope,” Mark adds.

“… And hope turns into despair.” It isn’t anybody from the bar, now, not anybody Yugo knows. The other him faces him, eyes bright red, a grin stretched across his face. Yugo can see the flames flickering at his back, like wings. For a moment, his own visage and that of the fiery bird are the same, utterly inseparable.

There is a meek coughing.

Both Yugos look to one side. The Cheese Man holds out a tray for them meekly. “The cheese is here to welcome you,” he says.

For a moment, both Yugos squint at him in confusion, then in unison they turn back to each other.

“Dude,” the other Yugo says. “It’s time. The eclipse is here.”

Yugo fixes the other Yugo with a stare. “When I leave, and you’re – free. What will you do?”

The other Yugo’s grin turns savage. “Dude,” he says, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, “the Underworld doesn’t burn. I have a lot of lost time to make up for.”

Yugo’s eyes snap open.

He’s by the sea, on a rocky stretch of coastline that Yugo doesn’t recognise, with the morning tide lapping up against the sand and stones. The sky is blue. It strains his eyes to look, but he can see the sun, the first sliver of the moon’s shadow moving in front of its glare.

He’s not alone.

As Yugo adjusts, he notices what must be at least a hundred people beginning to wake up along the coast. There’s a boy not much older than him just next to him, and twelve feet or so away a schoolgirl is already on her feet, staring around in panic. There’s a child crying, a little girl who can’t be older than six or seven, while an elderly man attempts to comfort her.

The moon is still moving, its curvature visible over the sun, but nothing is happening. Yugo wonders without hoping whether nothing will happen after all. Maybe the moon will pass harmlessly over the sun, and continue on its way, and they can all go home.

But, he reminds himself, nobody kidnaps dozens of people to make them just watch an eclipse.

The moon edges onwards. It’s nearly covering the sun completely now. As it moves onwards, Yugo catches something at the edge of his vision, a flash of a white figure standing on a hilltop. When he turns, the hilltop is empty.

The moon settles over the sun completely, the light streaming around it to make a ring of red and gold around a black void.

Then, it stops. The creeping movement comes to a halt, the moon stilling in front of the sun. Yugo tenses, trying not to panic. He isn’t the only one who has noticed, he can see that. People are staring at the eclipse, wondering what is happening. Several of them are trying their phones, only to find they won’t switch on.

Thump.

It isn’t a physical noise. It’s like ears popping, times a dozen, spreading like a wave over the entire coastline. Several people crumples, staring blankly ahead.

Thump.

Knees hit the ground. Amongst the rocks, red cracks of light start to appear, just barely illuminating people. Yugo catches the flash of white again out of the corner of his eye, treading amongst the people, and turns - …

Thump.

The pain rushes over him. Yugo grits his teeth, biting back a scream as agony shoots through his body, as if something is ripping through him. He lifts one hand to his face, watching as a particle of skin drifts off, fluttering away into the wind. A crack, purple and glowing, edges along his hand.

His mother, arranging flowers on the genkan. In slow motion, she looks up and smiled at him. As Yugo smiles back, she is bisected by a fissure of purple light. With flashes of purple flame, her eyes burn away, and from them cracks spread, down her face and across the genkan, and the wall behind it, like a spider’s web.

Yugo doubles over with a scream of pain, feeling his spine creak and his shoulders burn. In a spray of feathers and fire, two wings tear out of his back, sending scraps of skin flying. Yugo can’t hear himself screaming any more, can’t hear anything, but he can feel something warm running down his back and soaking his clothes, and he doesn’t know if it was blood or just fire.

The cracks slither along one eye. The vision in it glares purple and then goes dark.

Yugo’s mother dissolves in front of him, like sugar stirred into water. Behind him, the distant figures of his father and brother breathe out long sighs and turn to silver dust, drifting away in the wind. Yugo opens his mouth to say something, but no sound comes out.

He is going to die.

He is looking forward to it.

“We’re too late.”

A silver skull swims into view, topped with a ragged white fedora. Yugo stares at him with his one good eye, uncomprehending. The silver skull man is shoved aside by a young woman in red, with a helmet like a ladybug, and Yugo recognises her, almost, from old photos. Tackle, a Kamen Rider.

“We’ll do it anyway.”

At the wrist, his hand shatters to release a talon. Moving independently of the rest of his body, it swings up towards her helmet. The silver skull man catches it deftly, holding it steady as Yugo finds himself screaming, a wordless outpouring of rage. That rage isn’t his. It can’t be. He’s never been angry in his life.

Tackle grabs his arm, pulling something from her belt – a slim golden disk with a blue jewel in its centre, and a triangular blade like a knife extending down from it. With a grimace, she slams it down onto his wrist. Two prongs slide out, snapping into the skin, winding their way organically around bone and blood vessels.

As Yugo watched, the jewel glows. It hums, as if charging something.

The cracks spread, vividly purple, and Yugo’s memory starts to fall apart around them, the house crumbling into dust.

“It’s not working,” the skull man snaps.

“You’re too impatient,” Tackle replies.

“This place will be swarming with monsters in seconds.”

Tackle glowers at him. “Then we can stick around for seconds, can’t we?”

The hum grows louder, becoming a high pitched whine, like a swarm of insects. Then, with a rumble, the device speaks, a mechanical voice grinding out.

”Seal, please.”

The air shifts, the cold morning chill replaced by searing heat.

Tackle and the skull man spring backwards as, ring by ring, a circle of sigils and symbols spread out in reddish-amber light beneath Yugo’s feet. A phoenix, with its wings outstretched, occupies the centre, and around it jagged writing, a rose, a sun, a teardrop, a heart, revolving on rings.

The glow brightens. For a moment, it outstrips the dimmed light of the eclipse, obscuring Yugo in an aurora of sunset colours.

The purple cracks glows orange. They are blinding as they closed, the light pouring out of them like the sun through a window.

The dust gathers and starts to reform. From the knees up, Yugo’s mother begins to reappear.

The figure in white flickers past the edge of Yugo’s vision.

“He’s coming,” the skull man says.

“Then open the portal,” Tackle replies, grabbing Yugo and hefting him up with ease.

“The process isn’t finished, he could still - …”

“Open the portal!” Tackle snaps.

As a rectangle of smoky grey appears, tiredness sweeps in to replace the fading pain, and Yugo’s vision goes dark.

Yugo wastes his week.

There’s work, tending to his own collection of flowers, a string of casual encounters with very nice women, and terrible television. On the final night, as he lies down and tries to sleep, the only thought in his head is that he could have said goodbye to his family, or to the people at Milliways, or set his affairs in order, and that only a colossal but oddly misdirected cowardice kept him from doing so.

The clock ticks by to one in the morning. He still can’t sleep.

Something white flickers past the window. Yugo tries not to turn and look at it, tries to stay staring at the ceiling.

It flickers by again. It’s closer this time, shaped like a person. He turns, and there’s a final flicker of white before he slips into unconsciousness.

Professor Utahoshi Kengo peers at the device on the table, and around him, four Riders – Double, split in the middle between green and black; Kivaara, tall and slender in white and purple; Skull, arms folded and hat low over his mask; and Tackle, prodding near the device as if she’s half expecting to get an electric shock – peer as well.

The device in question looks unimpressive – a gold disk with a blue gem in the centre, and a triangular blade of burnished gold extending out behind it.

“You did good, kids,” Skull rumbles. “I genuinely didn’t think you’d get this thing done on time.”

“We were lucky,” Kengo says, “Emoto and Gamou had notes left over about the control of mystic energy. It was never something they seriously pursued, but they looked into it.”

“And there was no shortage of data accessible within the planet’s records,” one half of Double adds, the green side’s eye flickering, “this is not the first time a device like this has been attempted, it seems, and without the benefit of our modern technology. Actually, the first successful attempt - …”

“We won’t be able to get close, though,” Kengo says sharply, cutting through Double’s rambling. “Fujita – and a lot of other people – were taken this morning, and brought to a stretch of coastline about half an hour’s drive from the edge of Tokyo. The concentration of energy there is already fatal to humans, and it’s only set to rise.”

“Then we’ll go,” Tackle says, and claps Skull on the shoulder. “We’re dead already, right?”

Any gathering of Kamen Riders is a sensitive affair at best.

Nobody talks as they arrive at the mountaintop temple, emerging through dimensional walls that shift and swirl like planes of smoke. They appraise each other, the environment, form strategies for taking each other down if necessary, and then settle onto their seat, set into a tall pillar, one of many that form a circle.

Ichigo and Nigo – battered and scorched, in green and red and silver, nearly identical – arrive together and last. Ichigo takes his seat. Nigo doesn’t, settling by his companion with folded arms. The silence is different now – it has taken on a reverent quality, because these are the first, the oldest, in whose footsteps everybody else has followed.

Ichigo’s mask betrays no trace of emotion as he rumbles deeply: “Raise your hand if you read Professor Utahoshi’s documents.”

The more scientific ones raise their hands, as do the more conscientious ones, with a pause that indicates they didn’t really understand it. The surlier Riders stubbornly keep their arms down – Skull and Diend go so far as to snort derisively.

Ichigo sounds distinctly annoyed as he continues. “Professor Utahoshi’s readings of his volunteer suggest a build-up of mystical energy. We’ve only ever observed similar energy readings from the Great Leader of Shocker, the Creation King, Shadow Moon and our own comrade, Black.”

Kamen Rider Black waves a hand with wry cheer.

“The energy isn’t identical to any of those, just similar – it also bears similarities to the energy produced by the Dark Nebula,” Ichigo continues, “and most likely originates from a world we haven’t yet encountered, one that borders the Nebula.”

“Keng – um. Professor Utahoshi,” Fourze, resplendent in white, corrects himself, coughing exaggeratedly into his hand, “Professor Utahoshi compared it to an evolving Zodiart. Like – like when they abandon their human bodies, or when their original forms break down and produce a more powerful guy, right?”

“The energy is growing,” Meteor confirms, “rapidly. Eventually, it’ll be too much for the volunteer’s body to contain. Utahoshi says it’ll break down, and something will emerge through it. Like a gate.”

“The dimensional walls have been weakening,” Decade admits. “Not by much, but it’s noticeable. I assumed it was the eclipse.”

“It might well be,” Ichigo said. “Tackle, Skull, what about the world of the dead?”

Skull adjusts his hat, pulling the brim low. “The walls around it have been weakening as well. Nobody’s escaped yet.”

“The weak spots aren’t between it and the world of the living,” Tackle says, “it’s to another world, but so many connect to it that it’s difficult to say for sure which one.”

One of Double’s eyes flickers red. “We could suppress the energy surge,” one of his voices says, “with the data from Professor Utahoshi’s scan, it wouldn’t be impossible to tailor a device specifically to that energy signature, and use it to bind whatever’s creating it.”

“I could assist in its creation, but such a device would only work on this specific volunteer,” Kivaara protests. “There have to be others.”

“And it would only last for a year, maybe two, before it broke down,” Skull added. “This volunteer would still die.”

“Might die,” Double’s other voice protests. “We could find a way to save him permanently in the meantime.”

Skull just makes a dismissive noise.

“Do it,” Ichigo says eventually. “It is our only option right now.”

“Who is this volunteer anyway?”

“Fujita Yugo,” Meteor says. “Nineteen or twenty or so. Fairly regular, nothing especially remarkable about him.”

“I hope he appreciates you prolonging his demise,” Skull says grimly.

Damn, Utahoshi Kengo hasn’t aged at all in the past five years.

Yugo resists asking him if that’s because he’s not actually human. Despite only really knowing him as ‘that guy who was in the floristry club, the really cheerful one’, Kengo had been kind enough to arrange an appointment. He’d played it down as just having some free time, but Yugo wasn’t stupid enough to think that Kengo’s schedule wasn’t absurdly busy.

They meet in the Miraikan, beneath the vast globe that showed the weather across the world. Kengo shakes his hand and Yugo bows, smiling brightly at him.

“Dude, Professor Utahoshi, hi.”

“Good morning, Fujita,” Kengo says levelly. “I’ve prepared the cosmic energy scanner. We’ll do several readings over the course of the day, and they shouldn’t take more than an hour each. You mostly just need to stand in the room and hold still.”

The room, as it turns out, is a tunnel of smooth white panels, nearly a perfect circle (it’s rather difficult to stand in it), some fifteen feet long, with a door at one end and a blue light at the other. The light gets smaller, then larger, then smaller, then larger, like an eye squinting at him. It’s almost fifty minutes before the door opens.

The cutting edge of science is really dull, apparently.

Kengo has him use the scanner three more times over the course of the day. It doesn’t get any more interesting, but it does get a little less long-winded, as if the scanner is now used to him. He finds Kengo looking over the results when he emerges from the fourth spell in the scanner.

“Fujita,” he says, in a voice that suggests there’s no tactful way to say this, “we may have a problem.”

The images are human shaped patches of colour – a normal human scan on the left, faint and washed out shades of blue; and Yugo’s scan on the right – vivid shades of red, purple and orange, almost incandescent in places, deepening to nearly black in others. With each scan taken over the day, the reds and oranges are brighter, the purples deeper and richer.

What disturbs Yugo more than that, though, is that at the outline that marks the edge of his body, the colours don’t stop. They spread out from his shoulderblades, curling against the tunnel, forming the unmistakeable image of vast, burning wings.

When Yugo has left, Kengo taps a few keys on his computer. It takes a few minutes to make a connection, but eventually two faces appear.

“Gentaro, Sakuta,” he says. “You should gather the Riders. They’ll want to see this.”

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Fujita Yugo

October 2015

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Stop Killing Phoenix, Guys

It literally never helps.

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