Disclaimer: I only own my original characters.

First Step: Boy Meets Princess

It has been almost a month now and police are still no closer to solving the case about the missing Toei Company employee. Sasaki Motoharu. We caught up with the lead investigator Sakamoto Kenji this morning…

"We're completely baffled. There are no physical signs of a kidnapping and the surveillance footage just shows him walking around the corner, turning static for a second and then nothing. It's like he vanished into thin air."

Police are appealing for anyone to come forward if they have any information on the disappearance. Now on to business news and let's get a quick snapshot of the current numbers from the Tokyo Stock Exchange…

"We're heading out!" Togashi Katsuo slipped on his shoes, grabbed his school bag and prepared to leave his home. He had a brown winter jacket and red scarf draped over his black winter school uniform. He had his black hair covered by a red hat as well for additional warmth.

"Take care!" called out his mother before turning back to the morning news program.

As the fifteen year old boy and his twelve year old sister exited the house, he closed the door behind him and began the walk to school on a cool crisp December morning. His thoughts went to Motoharu, the senior who had helped tutor him on some of his weaker academic subjects and prepare him well enough to pass the high school entrance exams. Katsuo found him a pretty cool guy. Heck, Motoharu had been nice enough to buy some Rider cards to use in the Kamen Rider Battle: Ganbaride game as a congratulatory gift once he found out that the younger boy enjoyed playing that game.

Katsuo had put those cards to good use both in the arcade and in his eighth grader delusions where he had the fantasy of being a dimension hopping traveler like Decade and DiEnd just like he had seen on the TV show and movies. He even spent allowance money on buying both the DecaDriver and DienDriver just so he could switch between playing the snarky hero and the trolling thief in an instant. These days, his schedule was pretty packed with studies, spending time at the Karate Club in school, training three times a week at his Kyokushin Karate dojo to prepare for his second dan black belt exam and just hanging out with his friends at the arcades, playing other games instead of the Kamen Rider card game.

Speaking of the Kamen Rider arcade game, the new one came out very recently and used a brand new set of cards. The ones from the Ganbaride game wouldn't work in the updated interface and he wasn't in the mood to shell out any money to get the cards needed to properly play Ganbarizing so he pretty much dropped that game. He did feel a bit sad about it, parting with something so close to his childhood but it was another sign that he was growing up. It was just like how he hadn't watched any Kamen Rider since Sept 2011 when Fourze began airing.

'Maybe I should marathon some of those shows one day during summer break.' After all, it was that Tokusatsu franchise that inspired his young self to study Kyokushin Karate seriously and aim to get a motorcycle driver's license.

"Ah, it's December! That means Christmas and New Year is around the corner along with the debut of the new Sailor Moon anime!" In a way, he envied his sister Takara. She had more free time than he did so she could just enjoy doing what she liked which was watching magical girl anime. Then again, as a twelve year old in her first year of junior high, her responsibilities wouldn't be as hectic compared to his workload as a first year high school student.

"I bet you 1,000 Yen that it'll be postponed again for another couple of months."

"Onii-chan, don't jinx it!" The sibling pair squabbled for a bit before encountering Katsuo's sleepy senior.

"Good morning…" The other boy yawned loudly and scratched his oddly shaped brown hair in an effort to stay awake.

"Sagara-sempai, you've been playing games late again?"

"I had to! 'Nobunaga no Yabō: Sozou' just got released yesterday!" The sleepiness seemed to disappear temporarily as Sagara talked about his favourite game. "Of course I would be up all night playing it! Still got a long way to go before finishing the first route though… man, I wish I didn't have to go to class!"

"Then grab yourself a coffee before you go. Otherwise, you'll just stumble all over the place." Katsuo moved over to help his senior keep up right.

"Thanks! So yeah, Sozou really looks a lot crisper in terms of graphics when compared to the predecessor." And there went Sagara, talking about his favourite game again while Katsuo and Takara tried to grin and bear it.

As the trio reached an intersection with a traffic light, Katsuo spotted a vending machine to the side. "Takara, you and Sagara-sempai go on ahead. I'll go buy a coffee for him."

"Katsuo, you're such a thoughtful kohai!" If this were an anime, exaggerated tears would be streaming down Sagara's face.

"Yeah, yeah…"

"So in any case," began Sagara as he crossed the street with the middle school girl. "It seems that the game's recruitment conditions are a bit stricter…"

'Uweeeh… is this how I sound when I talk about magical girl anime?' Takara made a mental note to thank her older brother for putting up with it for so long. He really did spend a lot of time with her and on her hobbies, even joining in on an original Sailor Moon anime marathon, when he made it clear that magical girl shows weren't exactly his cup of tea.

The loud screeching of a truck jarred her thoughts back to reality before she felt herself thrown to the ground thanks to Sagara shielding the both of them from the sudden accident from behind. When they both got up, they saw that the vehicle smashed up a part of the sidewalk and some vending machines located there and is now tilting on the right side. It must have been making an extremely sharp right turn and lost control.

Wait a minute… Katsuo had gone to get coffee for Sagara just a second ago. "No… it can't be…"

"Takara-chan, wait here!" Meanwhile, the older boy grabbed his phone and dialed 119 while keeping one arm firmly on the girl so that she didn't go towards the accident scene. "Hello? I'm reporting an accident! Please send a fire truck and ambulance here as soon as possible!"

"ONII-CHAN!"

"Have all the preparations been made?"

"The drones are on standby and the warheads have been loaded." The activity in the observatory was rather busy with activity as the crew of scientists worked on their task. The spatial anomaly was scheduled to appear again within the vicinity of the Moon and they wanted to be ready to take care of it as per the Queen's orders.

"Anomaly is estimated to appear again in sixty-four seconds," reported another technician.

"Good." Sailor Mercury kept her eyes on her personal computer as it fed her data from the drones when she heard the door from behind her slide open to reveal a familiar figure. "Your Majesty…!"

"Hello, everyone." She was as graceful as ever, even with her long hair in that dumpling style. Her attire consisted of a simple one piece white dress which left her shoulders bare. A special marking shaped like small crescent moon was visible on her forehead. "I take it that everything is going well?"

"Yes, we have everything under control. You did not have to leave your event."

"It's only for a few moments." Besides, it was best if the Queen stayed nearby in case an emergency came up that required her power.

"We have contact!" All eyes turned towards the main monitor in the room which displayed the depths of space and the fabric folding oddly.

"It's unfolding similarly to the same phenomenon observed in the sun last week," murmured Mercury. That phenomenon only occurred once and had been very brief in how long it had been active but it had been enough to unnerve the Queen. Enough to warrant taking a more active role in investigating future spatial anomalies. "Have the drones switch out of surveillance mode and prepare the warheads to neutralize the anomaly."

A few seconds of frantic keying later, the drones did their work and reset the space fabric to normal but not before a small spark of light seemed to escape from it and head towards the castle. "Something's come out of it!"

"Trace the trajectory!" ordered Mercury.

"Tracing… it's heading towards the Northern Imperial Garden!"

"Serenity!" Both the Queen and her Senshi looked alarmed for a moment before Mercury quickly recovered and began searching her communications channel.

"I'll contact the nearest Senshi in the area and get them over there to cover the area and protect the Princess."

It felt warm again.

Different from what he had felt just a second ago when his entire being got plunged into that hole of nothingness just microseconds before he would have died from that reckless truck. That cold nothingness gnawed at his soul for the duration that he had been in it. His thoughts at the time turned towards thinking that maybe it would have been better if he died back at that vending machine. That way, he wouldn't have had to enter that cold void.

But that passed now. There was a sense of warmth here.

With his sense of touch starting to come back to him, he finally became aware that he had been gripping something tightly in his right hand. The last memory of what he had been doing came back to him. 'Ah, right… I was getting a coffee.'

Katsuo had been expecting the can in his hand to be crushed and for his right sleeve to be drenched in warm liquid. Instead of a can though, he had been gripping a deck of cards. His Rider Cards to be precise that he used for the first Ganbaride game. He had been meaning to put them away since the old game got swapped in for the new one at the end of October but he must have forgotten to remove them from his coat pocket.

His grip relaxed a bit but he still felt sick to his stomach. The air felt weird here which made it harder for him to breathe and his hands were shaking. Right now, he just wanted to curl up in a futon or a bed and not come out until this fatigue had passed.

His hearing picked up a pair of approaching footsteps along with the voices of two young ladies. "Ah, over there!"

"Princess, don't get too close! It could be a trap!"

"Are you alright?" He couldn't fully open his eyes. All he could see was a bit of a white dress which looked quite regal. With whatever strength he had at the moment, his vocal chords managed to get a single word out before he passed out.

"H…h-help…"

It had been thirty six hours since the Princess had found the strange boy who slipped into a coma. While he had been placed in a medical ward, the Queen had gathered her trusted advisors along with the four Senshi posted at the palace for a meeting. All of them had been provided with details on the patient and those odd looking cards on him through their personal terminals. "Mercury, what's the condition of the young man?"

"Stable for the moment, your Majesty. Compared to when he arrived at the palace in the first place, it's a big improvement." Mercury tapped a few buttons on her personal computer to summon a holographic display of the patient's vital signs. "Based on the readings from that time, his nervous system had been highly stimulated and caused him to develop a case of acute stress disorder. You might also want to know that the Princess has been checking in on him regularly."

"He did reach out to her for help before falling unconscious," admitted Sailor Mars, recalling the incident she witnessed. "She must have felt responsible for his well-being here. I'm a little surprised to see that she's taking this responsibility rather seriously considering her preference to daydream about a certain someone."

Sailor Jupiter took this information into account. "Still, what if it's a trap to get her to lower her guard and then strike?"

"I can't detect any evil presence in his soul. In fact, I felt the presence of noble spirits in some of those cards he had been carrying," replied the Fire Senshi. "I'm certain that they helped shield him from the trauma of being suddenly transported to the palace."

"Wait a second. You're saying that his cards have noble spirits living in them?" Jupiter paused for a moment before flipping through her terminal and landing on an image of a card which showed a skull faced helmet wearing a hat. "Even though this guy looks like a bad guy, you're saying he's good?"

"Yes, that's one of the cards which housed a noble spirit," replied Mars in a slightly irritated tone.

"Mars only said that she felt the presence of noble spirits in some of those cards, not all of them. Besides, you should know better to judge someone based on appearances," said Sailor Venus from her side of the conference table.

"So if what I'm understanding is correct," began the Queen. "The spirits of that boy's equivalent Senshi inhabit those objects?"

"That's right. And it seems that they've transferred themselves into the Central Mainframe of the Castle's main computer system just last night." Mercury briefly brought up some video footage to help further explain. "When we brought the cards over to decipher if there was any meaning in those barcodes, they all vanished into what looked like streams of data before directly entering a terminal. So far, all they did was upload some new files in an encrypted folder on the hard drive. It hasn't affected any other functions the system looks after so I've delayed attempting to hack into it until I hear your opinion on what action to take regarding that folder."

"I see." The Queen took some time to consider this before coming to a decision. "We'll have to see what possible sub-systems could be affected by us trying to forcefully break into that folder."

"Agreed and-" Mercury's computer beeped briefly, alerting her of a status update of their guest. "It looks like our patient is recovering consciousness."

The first thing that Katsuo noticed when he woke up was how comfortable the bed was. Since when did hospitals in Japan have the budget to buy comfy beds? If anything, the surplus money should have went into improving the quality of care and buy extra equipment to save a person's life instead of going towards making a person more comfortable.

The boy also felt the wires taped to his body, obviously there to monitor his vital signs. He wouldn't be able to wander off very far from this room. He would have to be careful when moving about.

When Katsuo sat up from the bed, he noticed the wall structure looked fancier than what he had been expecting. The walls and the floor seemed to have been built out of marble or something along those lines. And he had no neighbour next to his bed which was odd since hospitals would normally have a few beds lined up together for conserving space and increasing the efficiency of the service. He hoped that his parents didn't dip deep into their savings just to put him in a private hospital luxury suite and get him the best care.

'My folks, Takara… I need to get a hold of them!' He didn't have anything on him since he was dressed in a patient robe. With no cell phone, he would have to use the hospital phone to call home. Hopefully, they wouldn't charge for that as well.

The sound of the door opening got his attention and he turned to see his visitor who greeted him warmly. "Hello there. I see you're looking better."

Katsuo's mind went blank for a second as the person who entered the room looked like a fourteen year old girl with blue eyes, a white dress, a gold bracelet on her right wrist, blonde hair in a meatball style with a pair of pearl accessories in her hair and a golden crescent moon on her forehead. She seriously looked like that Princess Serenity character from that Sailor Moon anime he watched with his sister. "Thanks for your concern. By the way, that's a really great cosplay you have there. And you really nailed that voice."

His visitor had a puzzled look. "Cosu… pluh-ay?"

The boy nodded. "Yeah. You look exactly like that Princess Serenity."

"But I am Princess Serenity."

"Uh huh… and I'm Kamen Rider." Okay, it was obvious he must be dreaming or hallucinating or something along those lines. Either that or he encountered someone who had delusional eighth grader syndrome.

"Why don't you believe that I'm Princess Serenity, Kamen Rider-san?" She frowned for a moment as she thought about something. "Should I be calling you Rider-san or Kamen-san?"

"Y-you… I… gah… ARGH!" Good grief, this meatball head actually believed his name was Kamen Rider! That settles it. From now on, he is no longer going to marathon magical girl anime with his sister! Geez, how long will this delusion of his play out and drive him nuts?

"Serenity, there you are."

"Mother…" The woman who entered the room looked virtually identical to the Princess except older with a different dress on and silver hair colour.

"And let me guess… you're Queen Serenity and right now, I'm on the Moon Kingdom?"

The good Queen nodded. "Yes, that's correct. If you don't believe me, you can take a look out the balcony."

With some effort and being mindful of the wires, Katsuo moved his body off the bed and reached the balcony before he took a good look outside to see the planet Earth in the distance in all its blue glory. 'Okay, time to snap out of this delusion…'

He pinched himself on the cheek a few times to wake himself up from this bizarre dream but no matter what happened, his view didn't change and he still saw the Earth in the distance.

'So I really am in the Silver Millennium…' Incoming freak out in three…

Two…

One…

"HOLY SHIT!"

TO BE CONTINUED…

There are plenty of Rider stories taking place in the modern era or Crystal Tokyo but I haven't seen any take place in the Silver Millennium/Moon Kingdom so I decided to give this a whack and spin this off of my Bujin Gaim storyline in a sense. Standard Rider fic policy applies in that this will only be worked on when I need a break from my main Rider story which is Bujin Gaim. Priority might shift if this gets plenty of reviews so if you want to see more of this, you know what to do.