My Idea Box

FANFICTION IDEA: Arriving at City of Towers (an opening to a KR fanfic)

Disclaimer: I don't own Kamen Rider. It belongs to to Toei and Ishinomori Productions.

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Something poked and prodded the usual nightmares of a burning tree and dangling rope, followed by a strange sound: "... ey! Hey!"

Too tired, he didn't respond. It wasn't a crying child, but it wasn't welcoming either. He would have rather remained asleep. At least there, he felt dry.

There was another poke. And another, and another. "Hey! Are you dead?"

With such a shrill in his ears, he at last awoke. It took him a few moments to slowly open his eyes. Instead of flames of ashes, he had been in water and sand. 'A beach,' part of his mind told him before he realized it, its voice almost robotic. 'You are lying on a beach.'

It was more than that. When he stood up, coat rolling off wet sand and feet standing in tiny waves, he saw it lying beyond the coastline: a bustling city running along the slope of the nearby mountain. Not many roads connected it to the beach he stood on, but the few were magnetic rails. By the closest one was a sign, still comprehensible despite the holographic letter flickering on and off.

'WELCOME TO LAS TORRES! SECOND HOME OF THE KAMEN RIDERS!'

An unnatural warmth rose in his cold chest. He had made it. He didn't know how, but he made it. It took hundreds of miles and days of restless travel, but they were all worth it... or they would be once he had gotten inside.

A poke brought his gaze to the boy by his leg. Stick in hand, the boy said, "Looks like you're still alive."

He barely heard the boy. His mind already listed the little one's characteristics.

'Sex: male...'

'Age: Seven or eight...'

'Height–'

"What are you doing?" said another voice, more high-pitched and just as abrasive.

'Sex: female...'

'Age: approximately five...'

"Nothing!" said the boy to the girl running along the beach.

"Doesn't look like 'nothing' to me," said the girl after standing by the boy. Her tiny headscarf framed the frown on her chubby cheeks. "Mom said to not wander off or talk to strangers!"

"I wasn't wandering off. I just found him lying here," the boy said with another poke.

"Why didn't you tell mom?'

"I just found him. And he wasn't moving. Well, now he is." Another poke. "Honestly, it's lame. I wanna see a dead body."

"Ew! Why'd ya want that?"

"'Cause it's cool!"

"No, it ain't!"

"Of course, it is! You tell her. Is seeing a dead body cool or not?"

Caught in between the two children, it took him a moment to realize the question had been directed at him. "I... I am just a traveler," he finally said with a croaky voice. Logical. He rarely used it in the past week or so, which had been as far back as he could remember.

"Hmph, that isn't an answer!"

"Well, your question's stupid," said the girl to the boy.

"No it's not!"

The self-proclaimed traveler stood there, the ocean behind him and two arguing children in front. The more he stared at the latter, the more he realized they shared very similar eyes, brown hair--even if the girl hid most of hers in her head scarf–and chubby cheeks. He raised his finger in between the children, unknowingly catching their attention.

His lips grazed by faint black whiskers around them while his gray gaze met the bug-like eyes. "That..." he croaked again, "... do you know where I can find this?"

"You mean Las Torres?" asked the girl.

"He means the face, stupid!" said the boy. "You might find one in the museum. It's in the Ni-Go District."

"Hey, I'm not stupid!"

"Yes, you are!"

A soft hum of a large, box-shaped vehicle thankfully cut it as it ran along the nearby magnetic rail. Seeing it levitate on said rail leading towards the city, the traveler ran and leaped away from the beach. "Hey wait, you didn't–!" the boy shouted.

The traveler took in the vehicle's soft hum once his bare feet touched the roof and the glowing electric blue lines along it. Not long after he settled onto the vehicle did he once again look at the city of Las Torres.

Every passing second brought the traveler up a ramp which ran alongside the mountain's slope. He held on long enough until the vehicle straightened again and came onto the long pale bridge filled with more vehicles, some identical and others only vaguely similar. A thousand feet beneath the bridge had been the great ocean, already flooding over what were the remains of another city from decades ago. Beyond the bridge, misshapen spires pierced a blue sky littered with hundreds of old satellites.

The traveler sighed when those spires grew bigger with every second. At last, he could stop traveling. At last, he could find help.

"Do you really think so?" he heard.

The traveler glanced at the little girl standing beside him, so unlike the other two who pointed him in the right direction. Her dark hair and white dress went in the opposite direction of the wind, which blew the traveler's equally dark hair and dirty coat aside. Her pale face smiling, she asked again, "Well, tell me? Do you really think you will find them here?"

The traveler forced any words down his throat. He learned early on that if he stayed quiet, the girl would disappear.

That was true when he blinked and stared at emptyair. "Finally," he breathed and hugged his coat close to his lonesome self.

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AN: Just a potential opening to another potential fanfic I've had on the back burner for some years now. Hopefully, I can make something out of it in the future. Until then, I hope you like this. Take care.

-W.S.