Me: In the dark of the night, I arrive on silent wings... quills and scrolls are my company in the forgotten library of ideas found and forgotten.

Bahamut: ... The hell are you doing?

Me: I'm setting the mood. Why don't you try it?

Mewtwo: ... From the shadows I walk through the veils of the full moon's light, seeking a purpose amongst they who walk in the light of day.

Bahamut: Hrmm... Through the fires of destruction, I fly towards the horizon line, forever searching, forever guided by the strings that make me a puppet in the hands of mortal life.

Me: Yes! That's what I'm talking about!

A/N: Just to let everyone know, the basic background, that is the beginning of the beginning, shall be told next chapter. Now, without further ado, let us begin the final saga of the Kamen Riders! UNLOCK!

Kamen Rider Tsukiyo: Return to the Equilibrium

By Corvus no Genmu the Prince of Slumberland

The Rising of the Moon

"I… am about to go into my final fight. If anyone is watching this then hopefully it means that the battle is over, the Past-that-Was has been restored and our world, our future is safe. If I have failed… know that there is nothing else that can be done… accept the future and pray that you'll live long enough to see the dawn…"

The slums of the Ice District of New Eden were, at the best of times, referred simply as the Snowfields. At the worst, it was called a Frozen Hell. Both were rather strange names as the Ice District, contrary to the name, did not have snow or ice at all, no matter the season. Rather it was because of the massive super computers that powered the entire eastern side of New Eden's technologies. However, this also made the Ice District a prime target for sabotage.

In the darkness of a moonless night, a small troop of soldiers marched through the empty streets. Though they were of human shape and body, only a few of their number could be called as such. They who wore only the basic of protective armor whose eyes shone in the black, bringing light to the darkness. It was thanks to them that the human race, what little of it there was, had a chance to continue their existence for reploids are protectors of humanity.

The leader of the troop, marked by the captain's stripes on her shoulders, was one of the two pure-born humans in the troop. The rest were all machines, copies of life, as she privately thought them to be. Though she was born and raised amongst them, Captain Maria subconsciously held the same disgust that had passed through her family in concern to the reploids. Her cobalt eyes fell upon one such soldier whose face, though stoic, faintly twitched with unease. 'Bad enough they can be so human but to actually be able to breed with each other or us… What is Cyberdynne thinking? If the human race dies, at least these templates will live on?'

Her thoughts were interrupted by her 2IC, a reploid by name of Digger. "Sir."

"Where and how many?" She asked in return, raising her gun to the dark. Hesitation was forbidden in the armed forces and attention was never drawn from these patrols unless a target was in sight.

"Ahead, twenty meters. It moved out of range before Milesight could scan it completely." Captain Maria spared a quick glance back at the reploid in question but otherwise kept her eyes to the front. The rest of her troop had their weapons raised and ready to fire.

"E Class then… Darkstalker I'm assuming?"

"That much we know." Digger agreed.

"Great… Spread out and move in, scanners at maximum."

The troop slowly ambled forward, spreading out to form a half-circle, eyes scanning the darkness for any sign of their prey. A small thump before a white-hot blast of laser fire lit up the night. There was a pained scream and the scrabbling of claws as something stumbled away from them. One of the soldiers walked over into the dark and came out holding a bloodied arm. The arm was small, humanlike but ending in three wicked sharp claws and covered in sickly green scales.

"Private O'brien?" intoned Captain Maria.

O'brien, the second and last human of the troop stepped forward and took the arm from his fellow soldier. The visor that served as his eyes both in and out of missions lit up. "Got it." A holographic image appeared in front of the soldiers' visors; depicting a small creature roughly two-and-a-half feet tall with short stubby legs but long arms like an ape's. Its head was squatted like a frogs but it had large ears like that of a bat. "It's a gremlin."

"Fuck…" cursed Maria, glaring at the arm as the image vanished as quickly as it came. "Of all the monsterra…"

GREMLIN

Type: E-Class Darkstalker

Alone, a gremlin is a mere nuisance, the housefly of the monsterra world. However, in greater numbers, they unleash an unholy terror upon whatever land they're ravaging, particular if delicate machinery decorate said environment. Gremlins are referred to as the rabbits of the Darkstalker breed of monsterra for their ability to multiply with the slightest drop of water.

Maria reached up to her visor and twisted the settings about until green blood shined like neon signs in the darkness. She followed the trail and cursed, chasing after it as her soldiers followed her. "It's heading for the cooling tanks!" The reploids of her troop seemed to nod as one to her unspoken command and rushed ahead of her and O'brien. They turned a sharp corner and disappeared from sight.

Their screams echoed after them, lost in a roar that shook the earth.

"Shit!" Maria pressed her back to the wall as O'brien did the same behind her as laser fire lit up the street. She watched the shadows of her men firing on something that was definitely NOT a gremlin. Her visor paused on the better picture of the monsterra's shadow, a sickening image of it tearing one her men in two like he was made of flesh and bone, not titanium and cold iron. Beside the paused image of the shadow, an energy marker was jumping about wildly, trying to get an accurate range of the creature's level when it finally paused as its image spun slowly in front of her eyes.

It was the exact of the gremlin in a lot of ways. It was tall, measured at least seven feet by the visor's estimates, and was far more muscular than the spindly gremlin. He, for it was distinctly a male, wore nothing but a loin cloth made up of hair and fur. His head was covered in a small mop of red hair with two snail-like ears sticking from the top of his head.

"Oh fuck…" cursed Maria, her grip tightening on her gun. "It's an ogre."

OGRE

Type: C-Class Darkstalker

Ogres are one of the most dangerous of C-Class monsterra for their sheer strength and overall bad attitude. Quite docile when left to their own devices, ogres become maddened beasts whenever their "territory" is invaded. Unfortunately, their territory changes quite often as ogres have poor mental facilties and suffer from short-term memory loss. Their lack of intelligence is all that separates Ogres from the higher classes for they can easily tear a reploid in two without breaking a sweat.

"I am unable to gain a signal lock, Captain." O'brien whispered into his headset, his voice being heard as though he were whispering right into her ear thanks to their helmets' systems.

"What?" She hissed back, looking skyward as she attempted to find a signal lock of her own and matched the cyborg's success. "That's impossible."

"Cap… tain…" The pair turned and saw on of the reploid soldier had made it back, missing an arm and leaking artificial body fluids. The fluids could serve to maintain a human body but to the flesh eaters and blood drinkers of the monsterra, it was like finding your beef was replaced with dirt. "We… will hold it off… Run…"

Maria scowled, her teeth clenched tight as her grip on her gun. She might have little love for their kind but reploid or human, she would not run while her team was being slaughtered! "Your breaking rank, Private!"

"So-Sorry… but the Third Law dictates… that your and O'brien's survival… is all that matters now…" A small cube dropped from the reploid soldier's remaining hand. It landed on the street with a hush ping before a rectangular field enveloped Maria and O'brien. The troop captain cursed, firing at the field with her gun only for the energy bullets to be absorbed into it. Private nodded and fell lifelessly to the ground, his duty complete. The field would hold until reinforcements arrived.

The chances of them making it were slim, made slimmer by the vile little Darkstalker currently trying, and failing, at disrupting the shield generator. Maria seethed at the gremlin even as it did the same to her. Lacking an arm, its wound still bleeding, there was only so much it could do short of bringing the ogre's attention to them and even it wasn't that stupid. Maria and O'brien could not break the shield from inside and they couldn't scare off the gremlin without attracting the ogre's attention.

All in all, it was a lose-lose situation.

There was a faint sound of metal clashing against metal and the gremlin looked down, thinking it had succeeded in breaking the portable generator.

That would be its last cohesive thought.

From the darkness shot out a pair of chains that wrapped tight around the gremlin's neck, cutting off its ability to breathe before it was pulled off its feet into the shadows. A lithe young form of a boy could just barely be seen in the darkness, even with the aid of the visors. From his height and stature, Maria guessed him to be at least teenaged in appearance but to be invisible even to the eyes of her military gear…

He couldn't be human.

The boy's hand was tight on the gremlin's neck, which he broke with an audible crunch. He tossed the corpse to the ground, hard enough to break the spine. The gremlin's body lit up in emerald fire before it fell to ash on the wind, its soul floating above where its body had been tossed in obvious confusion. Something whizzed past Maria's face, mechanical wings just skimming the surface of the force field, moving at speeds that blurred in the human eye but to O'brien, it was clear as though it was moving in slow motion.

A screen capture of the thing appeared in Maria's visor. 'A mechaniloid?' She thought before shaking her head. 'No… Cyberdynne's never made anything THAT small…' But what else could it be for surely it was more than a mechanical bat that appeared better as a form of decoration than anything else. Colored in shades of red, black, and dark amber, the mechanical bat could easily blend in with the dark and so struck its prey with ease.

The Dark Soul was swallowed in a swift bite before the robotic bat flew to the boy and deposited something in his hands. Maria tried to zoom in on it when the ground shook beneath her feet. Her spine seemed to stiffen as she slowly turned her attention to the slowly advancing ogre whose eyes were fortunately not upon her and O'brien.

"Meat…?" The abnormally large Darkstalker rumbled, his piglike snout sniffing at the air before his beady eyes widened with elation. "Souls!"

"Too easy." Maria turned her head sharply ready to yell at the boy for drawing the creature's attention when she realized it wasn't he that had spoken, but the bat. Though small in stature, the robotic creature spoke with the voice of an adult man who had seen enough of the world's madness to be pushed to the very brink. His robotic eyes shined amber as he leaned forward on the boy's shoulder. "Only a C-class… and here I was hoping we could… stretch our wings."

"Aluc," the boy whispered, his voice distorted as though it was more than person speaking. One voice sounded young, carefree while the other sounded darker, rougher. He pocketed whatever the bat, Aluc, had given him.

"Fine, then," sighed Aluc. He eyed the boy beside him. "Ready?"

"Shut up and do it."

"As you wish, 'Master'…!" A small robotic jaw spread wide, revealing four gleaming fangs of steel and ivory before they bit down on the boy's neck. A sudden flash of light and the sound of steel chains and there was a strange belt now adorning the boy's waist with a buckle not unlike a bat's roost. The boy gripped Aluc tightly and placed him on the roost of his belt.

"Unlock!" Chains surrounded the boy, covering him from sight before shattering like glass. Maria and O'brien both cried out in pained shock as their visors nearly exploded with the sudden intense spike of youki, demon energy, coming from the transformed youth who now stepped fully into the dim light of the district streetlamps.

He wore an obsidian bodysuit made of a leatherlike material while his armor was, for the most part, made of a shining silver, a stark contrast to his nature and power, except for his chest which was colored a dark red like the muscles of a human chest cavity. The rest of his torso armor was bulky, especially about the shoulders where they were made to resemble clawed hands spread like the wings of a bat. Both of his gauntlets looked as though they were locked in place made all the more obvious by the thick chains that were wrapped around them. His helmet's visor was shaped like that of a bat's or perhaps the fangs of one, it was hard to tell the difference though as they were a vibrant shade of gold. A small crown like a crescent moon marked the helmet's brow and the mouthpiece was looked like a pair of vicious claws were holding it to the helmet. As a finishing touch, there was a small topknot of blood-red hair at the back of the black helmet.

Maria felt her heart stop in her chest and she knew that O'brien was feeling the exact same though she dared not look away from what was standing before the ogre. It was something out of legends of the Past-That-Was, something that even the great and powerful Cyberdynne Corporation failed to recreate in the century since.

"What you?" grunted the ogre, tilting his head in confusion. "Durahan?"

Maria shook her head at the monsterra's stupidity. 'No, nothing of the sort. This is something more powerful than any monsterra could ever be…

'A Kamen Rider…'

The reply from the Rider was a swift and powerful punch to the ogre's face, that made it meet painfully with the unforgiving concrete. "I am no mere monsterra, beast." Like before, he spoke with a duality of voices. He bowed his head as if he were sad. "You've lost your place in this world."

The ogre roared with a feral rage and tried to grab him in a tight grip but the Rider met him hand-to-hand, doing the impossible by meeting and pushing the ogre back into a streetlamp that toppled back under their combined force. The ogre screamed in anger, tightening his grip only to be pulled down to the asphalt once more. The Rider stood back and pulled a strange glasslike whistle from a side pocket built into the belt. Aside from the mouthpiece, the clear Crystle held a red colored end that resembled a hellish bat. He placed the whistle to his mouth and blew.

"Savage Bite!" A shrill cry like a predator on the prowl came from Aluc as he launched himself from his perch and flew in tight circles around the Rider's arms, cutting the chains with his sharp wings before resting once more upon the belt. The Rider stooped forward, spreading his arms out to his side as though he were preparing to fly as the chains shattered and the silver gauntlets peeled back into themselves, vanishing from sight.

The gauntlets were now a matching red to the Rider's torso with three glowing crystals along their length colored blue, purple, and green respectively. The crystals shined brighter as the Rider shot forward, flying over the ground with a ferocious cry, "Blood Moon!"

The ogre had just rised to his feet once more and was hit heavily in his meaty torso by the vicious one-two punch from the Rider. The Darkstalker flew back into the wall of a building as a crater not unlike the shape of the Rider's helmet appeared behind it. It groaned loudly before it slumped to the ground, bursting into flames before a Dark Soul tried to fly off amidst the cloud of ashes.

Aluc was quicker and had overtaken the Soul with ease and returned to the Rider's waiting hand with a pleased air before he deposited a small gem color not unlike the ogre's tough skin in his palm.

'A Soul Gem!' Maria gaped in open astonishment. She stared long and hard at the mechanical bat. 'Only the Maverick Hunters are allowed to carry that tech and even then it's much bigger! Where did he get it?' She started when she realized the eyes of Aluc and the Rider were upon her.

The Rider held up a hand, palm facing the two humans. "Sonic Swarming." A shrill explosion of sonic waves and the two soldiers knew no more.

"Oh… my head…" moaned Maria, slowly placing a hand to her forehead, surprised at the feeling of bandages. "W-What…?"

"Captain Maria?" A small form hovered over her, a tiny creature shaped like a human but bedecked with techno-organic wings. She was dressed in a nurse's uniform and as she looked around the small room, Maria recognized the walls of the Medical-D Center and the smell of burning ozone that accompanied a freshly made BioEmergance Field. "How are you feeling?" asked the Cyber-Elf, Melo-D according to her name-tag.

CYBER-ELF

Type: D-Class Lightwalker

A strange form of monsterra that are more like computer aid programs than actual life-forms as they possess no actual body outside of cyber-space or a BioEmergance Field. Cyber-Elves are used for a variety of purposes inside Reploids and Mechaniloids but their primary function is to ensure the 'loid in question doesn't go Maverick. A precious few are adept at the healing arts and so are restricted entirely to the Medical-D Center to heal humans and reploids alike.

"Just… peachy…" she groaned. "What happened?"

"Actually…" Melo-D sounded strangely reluctant as she hovered by Maria's bedside. "We were hoping you could tell us. Your troop vanished from the field grid so suddenly the Board thought you dead until the signal dishes in the Ice District suddenly came back online and Hunter Fenri was able to find you and Private O'brien."

"We…" Maria growled and pressed her hand tight to her forehead. "We were attacked by something…"

"By all evidence a very powerful something, an orge to be precise," chirped Melo-D, looking down at her pint-sized data pad for confirmation's sake. "There were also traces of gremlin blood but no other signs of it or the orge. There was a lot of damage done that I'm sure will keep the mechaniloids happy but the only signs left of the gremlin and the ogre were piles of ash. Do you remember anything that happened, Captain Maria? Specifically what could have killed a full-grown ogre so easily?"

"I—…" Maria shook her head, struggling to remember. "A… durahan?"

"A durahan?" repeated Melo-D, sounding quite disbelieving. "A B-Class Darkstalker, Captain? One that killed not one but two of its mutual kin and left you and O'brien alive?"

Maria growled angrily at the elfling that made the cyber-elf flutter back in fear. "Th-That is to say… all's quite possible nowadays! I'm sure your memory will come back with some good rest. I'll be back to see how your ears are doing later, Captain Maria."

"Wait, hold on! What about my ears?"

"Um, well, your ear-drums had been ruptured by something utilizing ultrasonic waves. Several windows in the area you and O'brien were found will need replacing…" Maria didn't have anything to say to that and Melo-D didn't wait for her to do so. The little Lightwalker flitted through the open doorway and slowly flew down the long hallway with a pleased smile. It wasn't often she got to BioEmerge so she would enjoy it while the effects last. She hummed merrily past a young teenaged boy that was walking the opposite way, a small bag of "borrowed" medical gloves and mask in his hands.

The boy quirked an eyebrow at the strange antics of the cyber-elf but was otherwise glad for her distraction as he continued on his way. He was dressed in the usual casual wear that most teenagers, human or reploid, preferred though his own were colored in strangely matching hues of forest green and russet red. His hair was black with faint hints of turquoise if the light hit it just right and his eyes were a dull brown, almost black. He passed by Maria's room but paused and stepped back to glance inside.

Seeing her otherwise unhurt and asleep, he smiled before continuing on his way. Attached to his belt were two small keychains with tiny little shapes dangling in opposing colors and designs. One was a small bat with big red eyes and a vicious smirk on its little face. The other was better described in three simple words.

A crescent moon.

"So… after all these years, a new player has entered the field." Chuckling within the darkness as a massive checker board rises up. A flash of light and several distinct pieces are added to the playing field with the last piece to arrive being the Rider himself. A hand reaches out to hover over the piece, shining eyes staring down upon the frozen image of the Rider.

"Let's see how well you live up to our expectations… Tsukiyo…"

To Be Continued...

The World as We Know It