"I insist that you come with us,"
Imakarum said, stepping forward to wrap his arm back around the
young Guyver’s body and then subtly tightening his grip on the
boy’s shoulders. "Sho," he said, switching effortlessly back
into his native Japanese, "have you used this telepathic power
of yours to contact Agito in the past?"
"Yes," Sho said, nodding as Imakarum
cursed inwardly. "It’s what we used to coordinate our attacks on
those large Chronos bases, back before…" he looked mildly
uncomfortable. "Everything happened."
Problems on top of other problems,
Imakarum mused, concealing his irritation with long practice.
Dealing with Atkins was less taxing than this. Of course, all of
their latest exchanges had happened over the phone. There was no
need for Imakarum to worry over what his face displayed when he
was speaking to someone who couldn’t see him. He only had to
make sure his tone of voice and choice of words didn’t hint at
what he was now.
Noticing that Ryan Crouger was no longer
with them and wondering for a moment just how the Fifth Guyver
had managed to slip out of his hold when he had been sure that
he had a very tight grip on the boy, Imakarum saw that he was
heading for the miniature motorcycle-esque vehicle that he had
ridden to escape from the Zoanoids that had been sent after him.
Incensed, Imakarum fired a Gravity Bullet at his back. Stealth
be damned; that brat would die for defying him.
The fact that the boy managed to dodge
was annoying, but the fact that the Gravity Bullet he’d fired
ended up hitting the very thing that the young Guyver had been
interested in at the outset was something of a consolation.
There was now no reason for young Ryan Crouger to want to leave.
For a few moments, the boy who was the Fifth Guyver – though not
for much longer if Imakarum had any say in the matter – stood
staring at the wreckage of what had once been his vehicle.
His fists were clenched, and his posture
radiated rage; Imakarum could not have cared less. There was
nothing that a mere human could do to harm a Zoalord, and if the
boy had learned to utilize the power of his Guyver Unit, he
would not have been trying to flee from Chronos’ forces on such
a flimsy vehicle in the first place.
When the young Guyver turned to
look at him once again, his expression a mask of determined
anger, Imakarum offered him a tight smile. The boy was weak, and
Sho would never attack his old
friend Murakami; there was
nothing that he could do. Ryan Crouger was helpless. That was
what made it so very amusing to watch the boy as he stalked back
toward their little group.
"So, are you prepared to come along
quietly now?" he asked.
When Mr. Murakami had fired that
strange blast – something that almost looked like the Guyver’s
Pressure Cannon – at Ryan’s back, Sho hadn’t known what to do.
He was glad that Ryan had managed to dodge, but seeing his
dirtbike get blown up – blown up by Mr. Murakami and
why had he even done that?
– had obviously made him very angry. It hadn’t sounded very much
like an apology, what Mr. Murakami had said to Ryan, and the
look on Ryan’s face was still one of anger.
What was going on? Why had Mr. Murakami
tried to attack Ryan the way he had?
When Ryan punched Mr. Murakami, first
in… a particularly sensitive area that made Sho wince in
sympathy, and again under the chin when Mr. Murakami doubled
over in pain, Sho was torn between rushing to help Mr. Murakami
and helping Ryan. Mr. Murakami was his friend, but Ryan was a
fellow Guyver, and he’d helped them both to escape from the
Zoanoids that had been pursuing them.
+What the flying fuck?!+
+Ryan? What’s going on?+
+Hey, you know this guy, right?+
+Mr. Murakami is a friend of mine. Why
did-+
+You could have at least told me your
friend’s got intensely freaky eyes, you know.+
+What?+
+His eyes—they look like some mondo
bizarro cross between a cat’s and a person’s. Like, if you took
a pair of yellow cat eyes and stuck them into the whites of a
human eye and—why the hell am I even telling you this? You’ve
seen him without that visor of his, right?+
+Well, I…+
Now that he thought about it, Sho
realized that Mr. Murakami had never worn a visor like that.
Even back when he’d been wearing those green sunglasses, he’d
still taken them off. And Mr. Murakami’s eyes had looked just
like every other pair of dark eyes that Sho had seen in his
life.
+Ryan, are you sure that’s what you
saw?+
+Uh, yeah! What, you don’t believe me?
You’re welcome to come and take a look for yourself, buddy-boy.
In fact, I think you should either try to talk your old pal here
down, or get your butt in gear and help me!+
Turning to look from Mr. Murakami to
Ryan, Sho watched in shock and growing horror as Mr. Murakami –
the one who had helped him and Agito in their early battles
against Chronos and taught them what it took to fight against
them – fired another of those strange blasts at Ryan’s feet.
Ryan managed to leap out of the way, thank God, but the fact
that Mr. Murakami had even attacked him in the first place was
terrifying to Sho.
What had happened to Mr. Murakami that
he would do this?!
+Sho, when I asked for your help, I
kinda meant today!+
Ryan was still up and dodging the blasts
that Mr. Murakami was firing at him, but then the doors of the
trucks – the trucks that Sho had almost forgotten were even
there in the first place – burst open as a small army of
Zoanoids flooded out onto the roadway. As the mass of Zoanoids
started to gather around Mr. Murakami, Sho got the feeling that
things were still not right. The Zoanoids didn’t seem to be
ready to attack Mr. Murakami the way they always seemed to do;
in fact, if Sho didn’t know better, he’d almost say that these
Zoanoids were looking to Mr. Murakami for orders.
But that couldn’t be true; Mr. Murakami
was an enemy of Chronos. He had been helping them to fight
against the Zoanoids ever since they had first met.
But all of the Zoanoids were gathering
around Mr. Murakami, and they weren’t moving in to attack him.
It even sounded like one of them was asking him for orders, but
that was even more impossible. But then, that seemed to be just
what was happening: Mr. Murakami pointed at Ryan, his manner
suggesting that he was even glaring at Ryan, and said something
in English that Sho didn’t understand.
The fact that all of the Zoanoids
leapt at Ryan while Mr. Murakami stood back and watched—watched,
with a disturbingly gleeful expression on his face – made Sho
wonder what on earth had happened to Mr. Murakami. Whatever it
was, he was beginning to doubt it was anything good.
"Mr. Murakami!" Sho ran at the
laughing—Why was he laughing?!
– form of his old friend. "Mr. Murakami, what are you
doing?!"
Even running as fast as he could –
in human form, at least – Sho could still see Mr. Murakami
turning to face him. Mr. Murakami still had that disturbing
smile on his face, and then he fired another of those strange
Pressure Cannon-like blasts. This time, Sho could see that the
blast was aimed at him.
More than that, he could see what Ryan had been talking about:
Mr. Murakami’s eyes were
bright yellow, but from the distance he was at, Sho couldn’t see
if the pupils really were catlike the way Ryan had said.
"Mr. Murakami!? What are you doing?!"
"That should be obvious, Sho," Mr.
Murakami said, grinning in a very unnerving way. "Die!"
A volley of those strange blasts ripped
into the place where Sho had been standing just half a minute
ago, and he covered his face with his arms to shield himself
from the flying debris that had once been part of the street.
"Mr. Murakami, please stop!"
"Never!"
This time, Sho could see Mr.
Murakami’s Incision Wave – the same one that he had used to kill
those Enzyme IIs in the forest according to Tetsuro – heading
straight for his torso. Diving to the ground, knowing that that
attack would split him in half if it connected, Sho looked up at
the strangely dressed form of his old friend.
Come to think of it, Mr. Murakami’s
never worn anything like this before. And… he seems stronger
than before…
A flash of strong emotion – annoyance
mixed with a healthy amount of fear – came through to him over
the link he shared with Ryan, and Sho turned. Seeing Ryan go
down, buried beneath a veritable pile of rushing Zoanoids, Sho
felt his heart seize up for a moment. While it was true that he
hadn’t known Ryan for very long at all, the other boy was still
a fellow Guyver, and to see him die like that…
But then there came an explosion from
the center of the group of Zoanoids that had enveloped Ryan—a
kind of explosion that Sho was very familiar with. It was the
same kind of explosion that he had been witness to – and at the
epicenter of – more times than he could remember. When the dead
Zoanoids had all collapsed to the ground, Sho saw Ryan’s Guyver
form for the very first time.
It wasn’t really all that much different
from his own, but the coloring made it seem so—that and the
strange armored collar. Ryan’s Guyver was a smoky gray, the
coiled tendrils between the plates giving an interesting
contrast with their bright red-orange color. In fact, with its
combination of colors, Ryan’s Guyver armor almost gave the
impression of being a paler version of Agito’s. All except for
the head—that looked more like his than any other Guyver Sho had
seen.