OOM.

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?”

OOM.

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.

OOM: The eclipse.

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.