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This time, it was Erika's ears that perked as a knock was heard. She turned away from the balcony and saw Dr. Aurora waiting at the door. "Erika?" she called to the snow leopard, "It's time to bring it back in."

"Oh, alright," she nodded before lowering her head, "Gotta go. Sleep well, Arata..." With that, she yanked off a device from her waist, causing a silvery belt to snake up inside of it. Erika pocketed it in her vest as she followed the collie back into her office. Soon enough, the pair found themselves back in the positions they'd been in before the break. "You know, I'm really glad this thing is so soft," Erika said as she sank back into the chaise lounge, "I doubt I'd be willing to spill out my emotions sitting on a stiff, plastic chair or something."

"Definitely," Dr. Aurora nodded, "I try to eliminate as many distractions for my patients as possible, so giving them something comfy to sit on is something I made sure to do."

"It's definitely appreciated," Erika sighed as she hung her head back over a cushion.

"Anyways, how about we get ourselves back on track?"

"Mmhmm."

"So earlier, you were going over the reasons you felt responsible for your friend's..._unfortunate_situation. This led to you recounting the history between you two."

"Well, _part_of our history, but yeah."

"You went over when it all started as well as when things started to take a turn for the worst."

"And then I got all emotional and you called for a time out, yes."

"Erika..." Dr. Aurora tilted her head slightly, "there's no reason to feel ashamed over that. Listening to your emotions is what we're here to do."

"Yeah, yeah, opening up n' all that," the snow leopard sighed dismissively, "...I'm sorry, I just... This isn't easy for me."

"I doubt we'd be here if it was," Dr. Aurora quipped, earning a soft smirk from her patient, "Now, we've already gone over why you feel responsible, and the moments that warranted your feeling of responsibility. But I would like to point out that those moments were very much out of your control. They were products of those very specific situations. If anything, they were Arata's decisions. Are you convinced of this now that I've brought it up?"

"Not even a little bit," Erika shook her head, "Sure, Arata chose to do the things he did, but if it weren't for the things I had done, he wouldn't be in those situations in the first place."

"And yet, it was other people's' decisions that brought you to make your decisions."

"...I'm...sorry? I don't think I follow."

"You're arguing that your actions produced situations that prompted Arata to make decisions that led to his situation. Or, to simplify things, under your logic, Arata isn't responsible for his actions because your actions made him do them."

"Y...yeah, that sounds right."

The collie nodded. "Well, by that logic, responsibility can still be shifted further back. There are actions made by other people in your past that have done the same to you. Like...let's say...the black market dealers. Uh...what was their name?"

"The Earth's Tree. It's alright, I only said it once or twice."

"Mmm. Well, you could say that, if it weren't for them taking the action of selling Gaia Memories in the black market, you and Arata wouldn't have been put into the situations that led to your individual actions."

"Well..." Erika's ears flattened, "N-no, but, even if that's true, I'm the one that made the decisions I made."

"And that's_what I'm trying to say. While I understand your reasoning for doing so, you shouldn't hold yourself accountable for the actions and decisions someone else takes. Of course, there are some cases where someone _should take responsibility, like say...lying to someone, but your situation is not one of these cases."

Now Erika was sitting up. "B...but Arata-"

"Arata chose_to do what he did of his own accord. You didn't force him. You didn't coax him. In the case of him becoming a Rider for the sake of your safety, he could have easily quit after that first time. Instead, he _chose to continue fighting for your sake. Not because he had to, but because he wanted to."

"...Well...maybe..." Erika muttered, "b-but I don't feel right in shifting the blame to him..."

"And that's normal. But keeping this blame on yourself isn't healthy, especially when it's undeserved."

Erika sank back into her seat. "...I guess..."

Dr. Aurora jotted down some notes before continuing. "I get the feeling that you're still not convinced. We'll take a different approach, then. Given what you've told me about him, would it be fair to say that he's reckless?"

Erika let out a chuff. "That would be putting it lightly. The guy practically throws himself into danger whenever he feels compelled to. Most of the time without even a second thought."

"So do you think that, if you hadn't been the one that allowed him to become a Kamen Rider, that recklessness wouldn't have led him into an equally dangerous situation?" Erika opened her muzzle to respond, only to realize that she had nothing to respond with. As she closed it back up, Dr. Aurora jotted down more notes. "We'll come back to this later. For now, I'd like to talk to you more about The Earth's Tree. According to my notes, they play a big part in the events following Crusade's attack. Could you tell me more about them?"

"Uh...r-right, right. Well, like I said, they're the ones responsible for the distribution of Dopant Memories."

"The devices that allow users to turn into monsters, correct?"

Erika nodded in response. "Well, during Crusade's attack, Arata learned that all of the Dopants that had come to our city, not just the ones Crusade was leading, were attacking us to promote the purchase of Dopant Memories. The way he summed it up was that all of the attacks were more or less an elaborate ad campaign. The Earth's Tree wanted to scare civilians into buying the very items that made the monsters they were hiding from. Literally the most aggressive marketing tactic imaginable.

"We never did see an actual deals ourselves, but every now and then, one of the major sellers, Daiki, would pop up to try and fight us off. To 'protect the merch,' so to speak. It tended to happen whenever we were clearly getting stronger. He and Crusade were really the only forms of insight on the company that we ever got."

Dr. Aurora furrowed a brow. "Wait, it...it says in my notes that there's one other person..."

Erika smirked. "And I was just about to get into that..."

Kamen Rider 00

_H_eld _A_llegiances

It just felt like business as usual when another Dopant attack began. When we saw that the Dopants were chasing someone, we thought nothing of it. Just a civilian that failed to get inside during the lockdown, y'know? When the team and I got to her, though, we learned that she was part of The Earth's Tree. A traitor that had escaped. That's what we were led to believe, anyways; she had us fooled right from the start.

Mira was her name. The second I met her, she told me how to defeat the Dopants that were after her. Then, after she was rescued, she began spilling a bunch of secrets. She told us about all of the Memories that were in circulation at the time, as well as the weaknesses of the Dopants each Memory produced. She won a lot of us over pretty quickly because of that. I wouldn't learn about how she won the rest of us over until much later...

As it turned out, Mira was an expert hypnotist. Even though she primarily used a Memory to accomplish this, given the right circumstances, she could hypnotize someone all on her own. I never really thought about how much she enjoyed having one-on-one time with everyone at the base. I was...distracted by other things at the time... In our fights following Crusade's attack, Arata started having problems mid-battle. Every now and then, he'd collapse, completely unresponsive. He...he never......

He found out that the reason he was collapsing was because he'd developed ALS. He'd developed it after using his Memory to become a Dopant. He never told me, though... Never. I didn't even...I didn't even find out through him, you know... He said...he said he wasn't telling me because...because he didn't want me to......

He didn't want me to worry. He thought it was pointless. But, SURPRISE surprise, that just made me more worried. Every time he'd collapse, I'd ask. Everytime I'd ask, he'd dismiss it. Every time he dismissed it, I got angrier at him. And all of that worrying and anger made me miss out on the clues that would've told me that Mira was bad news... One by one, she claimed her victims and cast her "spell" on them, all while working under the ruse that she was here to help us.

And then she got to Arata...

Apparently, Crusade had planted doubts in Arata. Learning that the Dopant attacks were nothing but ad campaigns made him wonder if there was really anything worth fighting against. Crusade made him believe that no civilians were ever meant to be harmed. Anyone that did get harmed would be due to an accident. As stupid as it was...it worked on Arata, and Mira took full advantage of that.

With him doubtful over which side to take, and him knowing that his time was...limited, Mira got him to switch sides and fight_against_ us. He never tried to harm us, but he definitely kept us on our toes. ALS or none, he still had his powered up form. And of course, with him keeping us busy, Mira was free to run amok and claim even more victims. All the while, she was working towards her ultimate goal.

Thankfully, Arata didn't stay on the other side for long. I eventually managed to knock some sense into him, both metaphorically and literally. I'll never be thankful over him having ALS, but...it...it definitely played a role in helping to convince him to come back with us... Of course, he was kept on a short leash after that, but a lot of us were happy to have him back. He wasn't exactly favored by the public eye, but not many of us cared. I definitely didn't.

I have to give credit to Mira on what she did next though. As much as I despise her...she pulled off a ballsy move. She purposefully made us doubt her by giving the team's troops Memories that ended up working against them. Though it made them stronger, they left them vulnerable to one of The Earth's Tree's Dopants. It was one that she was "unfamiliar with." This one seemed to take inspiration from Arata's most recent event and turned our troops against us. Granted it was more physical than mental, the general idea was still there.

Mira played it off really well. She didn't overreact or under_react. Well, it was either that, or the mass hypnosis she had over most of us. I probably would've been more suspicious of her if I wasn't so distracted with Arata... Either way, she managed to make herself not the _only one kept under suspicion. Arata was even put under suspicion at one point.

But then she slipped up.

With me being one of the ones she hadn't hypnotized yet, she decided to have some one-on-one time with me. Of course, with the whole failed upgrade thing still happening, I was still wary around her. But she managed to make me drop my guard by bringing up Arata and his...condition. She said she had insight on what could be wrong with him (as I still had yet to learn what was going on). Of course, I was interested to know, so I followed her along into her little trap.

I only turned my back on her for a second. Apparently that was all she needed, because the next time I saw her, she was in her Dopant form. I didn't have enough time to react; all it took was her raising her hand to put me to sleep. Under any other circumstance, she would've won then and there. I was knocked out cold with no way to defend myself from her hypnosis. But as it turned out, having a little voice inside your head has its perks.

The Valkyrie, who'd only been speaking to me in my head whenever I transformed, took over my body again and stopped Mira before she could go any further. She drove her out of the base, but not before she took advantage of all the little hypnotic seeds she'd planted on everyone else to get away. With the team fighting its own members for the third time, Mira was able to slip away without a scratch.

Things weren't looking up for us after that. The public was still hammering down on Arata, Amnesia's credibility was severely shot, and The Earth's Tree was beginning to look like a force to be reckoned with. On top of that, no one was sure who was and wasn't affected by Mira's hypnosis, a majority was benched due to injuries, Arata wasn't getting any better, and he was still keeping me in the dark over his condition. Everyone was in an odd spot to say the least.

We didn't even have time to sort any of that out, though, because the very next day, we received an urgent call. Mira and Daiki, the Memory salesman, had broken into Amnesia's factory and were causing havoc. Most of the team wasn't in the condition to fight (the Valkyrie hadn't exactly gone easy on them), and no one was sure who else was under Mira's "spell." We couldn't just ignore the call though; someone had to go out there. Obviously I was going, but for some reason, the team decided to send Arata with me.

Arata the one who'd clearly been hypnotized by Mira, the one who was collapsing mid-battle, and the one who was the least qualified out of everyone to be going out to fight, was the person they wanted to send with me. I didn't understand why he wasn't the one to stay behind and guard the base instead of our few good troops, but it was clear to them that the factory was important, and they needed their strongest members to go out and protect it.

That was a sign I probably should've picked up on, in retrospect...

I can't blame myself too much for missing that though; I already had enough on my mind as I was. When we got there, to our surprise, Mira wasn't the one who greeted us. Daiki was the one trying to fend us off. Granted, he was still keeping us on our toes the entire time, he wasn't exactly catching us off guard with anything new. We'd fought him plenty of times before, so we knew how to deal with him. And even though Arata himself wasn't in the best shape in the world, he'd still grown much stronger.

By the time we got past him, Mira was already really far into the factory. It was then that we learned why Daiki had been our obstacle instead of her. Because we were aware of her powers, her hypnosis had no effect on us. Her Dopant form still put up a good fight though, and a long enough one that allowed Daiki to catch back up with us. We still managed to hold our own against the two of them, at least, until Arata collapsed.

I held them off for as long as I could on my own, but even with the Valkyrie's help, I couldn't handle them both on my own. Both Arata and I were taken down, but thankfully not out. Because of that, we were able to learn why Mira had come here in the first place. We hadn't noticed it before, but Mira had left most of the factory machines in tact. She'd only destroyed the ones that were in her immediate way. She didn't have any intention of destroying the place; she'd come here for information. She wanted to know where the raw materials for this place came from.

And that information would shock all of us.

The suppliers of Amnesia's Memories weren't from some obscure company or organization that none of us had ever heard about. It was from a company all of us were intimately familiar with. One that none of us were expecting.

The Earth's Tree.

Something clicked into place then. All of Amnesia's troopers used blank Memories to transform. As it turned out, these Memories were hollow husks of existing Memories, repurposed to better serve the troops. In most of our battles with Dopants, we very rarely destroyed their Memories by the end. Those Memories were always collected by Amnesia, and we'd always thought it was just for "safekeeping." Apparently we were wrong...

Our world was turned upside down as we realized that The Earth's Tree's "ad campaign" was more elaborate than any of us had realized. Arata and I weren't fighting against it; we were all part of it. None of us were doing what we thought we were. We were all just playing parts, with Arata and I as the "protectors of the city" and Mira and Daikia as "the salesmen." Amnesia wasn't a special ops group dedicated to defending against Dopants; it was a ruse set up by The Earth's Tree to give the city's occupants a security blanket, and one that they could yank away at any time to make them desperate enough to buy Memories.

We were just cogs in a machine, actors in a play. We weren't changing the world; we were keeping it as it was. Realizing this left most of us distraught, but Mira wasn't among us. If anything, this only seemed to fuel her on further. She'd come here for a goal, and now she was more intent than ever to reach it. The rest of us just seemed to return to our default roles then, purely out of instinct. Daiki continued to hold us off while Mira searched deeper for what she was looking for.

And, when she got what she needed...she abandoned Daiki. In the pursuit of her own goals, she betrayed her partner in crime, as well as her one and only brother. We were able to take him down after she got away, but neither of us felt good about it. We weren't sure if there was even a point to fighting anymore. We could try and expose Amnesia, but with how big the organization was, odds were that they'd cover it all up again. We could turn Daiki in, but if Amnesia was just another part of The Earth's Tree, what would that even accomplish?

Both of us just wanted to throw in the towel then and there. We'd already been through so much, and we didn't want to waste any more time and effort on this...performance. All we wanted to do then was drop everything and leave this life far behind us. We probably would have too...if Daiki hadn't decided to tell us what Mira was up to.

While her infiltration of Amnesia had primarily been to please their Headmaster, Mira had plans of her own. The entire time she'd been with us, she'd been searching through Amnesia's database for the location of a certain Memory. The Amnesia factory was the one that prepared and shipped the troops' blank Memories, but this factory wasn't where the Memories came from. Before they were blank, they had to become blank, and according to Mira's research, there existed a Memory that did just that. A Memory that drained the abilities of another Memory and kept it as its own. A Memory so powerful that it was never meant to be used by one person alone. And what else could that Memory's name be...

...but Amnesia?

Mira had already set her eyes on taking over The Earth's Tree, but after learning that she'd been wrapped up in one big, secret conspiracy, her eyes were now set on taking over the world itself. And with a Memory as powerful as Amnesia, there'd be nothing that could stop her. I won't lie; I was tempted to just let it happen. The world had already screwed us over, especially Arata. But he...he stayed true to himself. He wasn't willing to just...sit by and watch. For the first time in a long time, he was the one that talked sense into me.

So, the two of us went after Mira. Alone. We couldn't trust Amnesia anymore, so we didn't tell them. We didn't even tie Daiki up or anything because neither of us had the heart to do so (It wasn't like there was a point to doing so anyways). Once we found the place she'd been headed, there were armed guards ready for us. Whether they were hypnotized or simply treating us as traitors, we didn't know. We fought past them all the same. But then...she showed up.

"ARATA MOVE!" I shouted as the Valkyrie warned me of an incoming attack. I rushed over to him and tackled him to the ground just before a huge torrent of water came sailing over our heads. When it had finally passed and we got back up to our feet, she came in walking at a calm, almost leisurely pace. She was dragging a thick saber along behind her, and she was dressed in armor that looked strikingly similar to that of Amnesia's troopers. The key difference, two bright eyes glowing from beneath the purple dome on her helmet.

"Erika?" I heard Arata call, "...Is that..."

"...Yeah," I answered, already knowing what he was about to ask.

"So does that mean we..." He didn't finish, but I still knew what he was going to ask. It was pointless to answer him though...we both already knew we were too late.

"So then," said Mira, her voice clear as day, "even after learning the truth, the two of you still want to get in my way?" We didn't grace her with an answer, not a verbal one anyways. We both knew that we couldn't take any chances with her, not with what she had at her disposal. We went in to attack with the full intention of ending things here and now, but she outplayed us every step of the way. With years worth of Memories at her disposal, all of the abilities we'd previously faced one at a time were now being thrown at us all at once. Even with Arata at his strongest, the two of us were no match for her.

And then...

With Arata and I collapsed to our knees, Mira stood over the both of us and boasted. "As thankful as I am for this trial run, the two of you have already served your purposes..." She didn't even look at us as she plucked her Memory out of her Driver and plunged it into her saber.

AMNESIA: MAXIMUM DRIVE!!!

"Farewell..." The second I saw her go for Arata, I was back on my feet. I ran full speed at her, with the Valkyrie warning me over and over again how ready Mira was to strike me down. I barely listened to her. All I cared about in that moment was protecting Arata. I fought her off for as long as I could, but eventually...she got me. She used her new ability to rob the powers from my Memory, taking away my Rider form...and the Valkyrie...

Once Arata saw how much trouble I was in, he shot right back up and fought her off. Just like I had, he did the best he could against her. He was outplayed, outclassed, and out of his league. And when Arata collapsed again, it was all over. Mira took the powers of Arata's Memory away without a second thought, and with both of us powerless, she saw no reason to kill us then and there. She said it was her "gift of mercy," or whatever. Then, she just...left.

She'd gotten what she came for here. All she needed now was to go to the warehouse of stocked-up Dopant Memories were, and she'd be set for life. We could do nothing but lay there as Mira sauntered away. And not long after, we were arrested by Amnesia itself. I guess with our powers gone, we were useless to them, and they didn't want us to be spreading the word about them. And that would've been the end of our story, but Amnesia made the mistake of sending in troops that weren't in on the whole conspiracy.

Getting back to base, we'd been under the impression that everyone was in on it. But the only one that was aware of everything was the commanding officer and his second-in-command. They kept everyone else in the dark to make the facade feel as real as possible. Because of that, it was only a matter of time before the info slipped out of us. One thing led to another, and soon enough, the rest of the team turned their backs on Amnesia itself and freed us.

Even though we'd just taken care of one problem, we still had one more to take care of before we could celebrate. Mira was still on her way to the warehouse, and we couldn't exactly stop her without our powers. Luckily for us, our solution came from an unlikely source; Crusade. Amnesia had collected the Memories from him and his "crew" after the attack, and apparently several of them were still being held in the base. While I was glad that there was one for me, I was significantly less glad that there was also one for Arata.

After all we've been through, and after everything that's happened to him, he was STILL intent on ending this once and for all. At that point, I knew it was pointless to try and convince him otherwise. We were still low in numbers, and considering how poorly I'd done against her with my full powers, there was no chance I'd be able to take her all on my own with_out_ my powers. And so, with what little resources we had left, we scraped together a small team and set out for...well...out last fight together...ever.

Things got dire the moment we arrived. She took down a majority of our back up not even two minutes after we'd gotten inside. The only reason all of us weren't struck down immediately was because she was going mad from the sheer multitude of powers that were coursing through her system. Her mind just couldn't take them all; they were making her degrade from a cold, calculated, manipulative snake into a more psychotic, deranged, power-drunk maniac. She wasn't totally gone yet, though, and she was still able to adequately control all of her new powers because of that.

One by one, the rest of the team fell, and eventually it just came back down to her, Arata and I. But unlike her, we couldn't master the new abilities we'd been given then and there. So it was only a matter of time before those powers were taken from us as well. She was clearly toying with us now, because she could've easily ended us then and there. Instead, she let us run off with our tails between our legs.

As we were hiding and trying to figure out what to do, I couldn't help but once again feel the urge to just...quit. We'd already done so much, and I was so tempted to just...let Mira go and destroy the very foundation this whole conspiracy was grounded on. Besides, why did it have to be us? Out of all the people in the world, we were the ones that had to be thrown into a role we never signed up for. We couldn't handle her before, and we certainly couldn't handle her now.

But then we realized...it had to be us.

We weren't under orders to come here...we hadn't been ordered to become heroes... We were here...because we chose to be here. We were the ones that chose to fight for the people, to keep fighting despite everything that had happened to us. Our title wasn't manufactured...it was given to us by the people. We weren't just soldiers in an army; we were genuine heroes. We were the protectors of the city. We were the rays of hope in the times of darkness.

We were the Kamen Riders.

Once we realized that, we knew we had to go back out there. So we picked ourselves up, grabbed the blank Memories our backup was using, and went forth.

"Are you ready?" Arata asked me as we strode down the walkway. Try as he might, he couldn't hide the fact that he was trembling. He was struggling just to walk, and I just couldn't ignore it.

But instead of address it then and there, I grit my teeth and replied, "...You're damn right I am." And with that, we stepped out into the open, with Arata taking my right, and I taking his left. Mira just laughed and spread her arms wide open when she saw us coming.

"Decided to accept your fate then?" she taunted, "Maybe when I'm through with you, you can serve as my footstools for the rest of your lives!"

Neither of us felt like humoring her; she and the rest of her organization had taken enough our time. We wanted to bring it to an end, and the two of us knew that it was going to be now or never. So, after giving each other one last glance, we faced forward, plugged our Memories in, and roared out in one unified cry...

" HENSHIN!!!"

With our armor donned, and our swords drawn, we rushed forward together ready to give her everything we had and then some.

BULLET DRIVE!!!

To challenge our charge, Mira sent a barrage of bullets our way. Even as they pelted and peppered us, we didn't slow down one bit.

**WATER DRIVE!!!

**

But a huge torrent of water changed that. It stopped us in our tracks and nearly drove us off our feet. Instead of letting that happen, Arata drove his sword forward and got in front of me, dividing the stream and allowing us to cut through like a knife.

EDGE DRIVE!!!

Just before we could reach her, Mira cut off the stream and lunged at us, striking us all around with a flurry of slashes. Both of us were knocked backwards, but not before we landed several hits of our own on her.

MAGMA DRIVE!!!

She cackled like a deranged child as she sent a wave of magma right at us, creating the world's most dangerous game of "the floor is lava." We acted quickly and leapt up onto the railing set on either side of the walkway. We used each other for balance as we closed back in on her and landed some more solid hits.

MUSCLE DRIVE!!!

With a sudden swell of strength, she grabbed both of us and threw us backwards, nearly sending us right into the pool of magma she'd left behind. When I realized Arata's body wasn't letting him get back up, I rushed in without hesitation. My heart skipped a beat each time Mira swung with her saber, all too familiar with the strength she was towing. Instead of blocking or slashing, I ducked and weaved through all of her attacks before lunging forward and stabbing my sword against her chest armor.

ASCEND DRIVE!!!

Just when I felt like I'd been gaining the upper hand, Mira flipped the script on me and began weaving through all of my attacks. The change in fighting style was just so sudden. Before I knew it, I was knocked backwards and crashed into Arata, who'd managed to get back up. Then a blinding light flared to life right in front of us. Mira got free shots on us as we shielded our eyes, and I could do nothing about it.

"ERIKA! BACK TO BACK!" But apparently that's not what Arata thought. Once we found each other, he pressed our backs together and said, "Hey! You remember those old top toys we played with as kids?"

"Yeah?"

"How about we try it against her?" As stupid as it sounded, it was better than nothing. So following his lead, we rushed right up to Mira and slashed at her one after the other. The second one of us finished a slash, we'd tag the other in to do the same, spinning around each other again and again to deliver strike after strike and making her blinding light obsolete. When Arata couldn't maintain the loop and stumbled, I rolled off of his back to deliver an_extra strong wallop_ on her. And with her staggered, the two of us lunged forward and struck her at once, knocking her over the railing and off the walkway.

NINJA DRIVE!!!

But we didn't get the satisfaction of hearing her hit the ground. Instead, she leapt out in a blur and struck us from all sides.

ILLUSION DRIVE!!!

Then she was suddenly everywhere at once, confusing us with copies upon copies of herself. They all floated around us and taunted us, daring us to attack them. Neither of us bothered; we knew they were all fake.

CRUSADE DRIVE!!!

But several of those fakes suddenly became very real. In a flash, the copies leapt down upon us and started knocking us around like pinballs. Arata thought fast and let himself fall to the ground, prompting all of the copies to converge on him. That let me single out and close in on the real Mira.

GHOST DRIVE!!!

But when I swiped at her, my sword phased right through her. By the time I realized it wasn't because I'd cleaved her in half, she punished me with an onslaught. Arata managed to bail me out by jumping in when she least expected it, and that reminded me of the fact that Mira herself had told me of this power's weakness. So we struck only when she made a move and made her phasing powers effectively useless.

DRAGON DRIVE!!!

That forced her to change tactics again, but with how far gone her mind was at this point, she didn't realize that she'd switched to a power she'd also exposed the weakness to. With our swords bouncing off of her armor, we coordinated each other to strike at her exposed parts; her joints, shoulders and stomach.

TIME DRIVE!!!

But suddenly, neither of us could move a muscle. Mira laughed like a deranged maniac as she hacked at our frozen selves with reckless abandon. Now we were _really_in trouble. We both knew this power's weakness as well, but it wasn't one that we could easily exploit. The only way to escape her time freeze was to get out of its range, and we couldn't exactly do that frozen in place.

Luckily for us, Mira wasn't thinking her actions through. With how wildly and savagely she was swinging her saber, she ended up knocking Arata's sword out of of her "time zone." After she swat Arata out of the air, his sword bounced off the wall and back at her head. Once she lost focus, the time freeze was released, and Arata and I were freed. With Arata barreling towards us and Mira seconds away from reactivating the time freeze, I knew I had to act fast. So I hurled my sword in the air before hurling myself onto my back and kicking Arata up after it.

With Arata out of her time zone when it activated, he was able to catch my sword and carve into her right down the middle.

FREEZE DRIVE!!!

She became nothing but a screaming child at that point as she screamed out in pain and fury, blindly swinging around and hurling waves of ice everywhere. "Erika!" Arata shouted, "We should strike now before-" He stopped as his legs suddenly gave out. My heart dropped faster than the rest of myself as I knelt to help him up.

"Arata are you-"

"Now! Before we lose this chance!"

"But-"

" ERIKA!"

Even through his mask, I could see the pure determination and resolve in his eyes. Regardless of whether it endangered him or not, he was going to see this through to the end. And hell if I was gonna get in the way of that. After ducking beneath another stray ice wave, we got up, shared one last look, and drove our Memories into our belts.

MAXIMUM DRIVE!!!

Both of us screamed at the top of our lungs as we raced towards the deranged maniac with everything we had. With another rogue wave coming at us, the two of us leapt into the air side by side, yet still as one. Then all together, with every ounce of our power surging into our feet, we roared with all of our might, " DOUBLE! RIDER! KICK!!!!!!"

Our feet crashed into Mira's chest before unleashing our combined strength all onto her. As tough as she'd been, she was simply no match for our us, and so, we kicked her right out of her stupid "rider" form and reduced the Amnesia Memory to nothing but dust. After landing on the ground and seeing Mira collapse unconscious, I was almost overwhelmed with joy. "We DID IT!" I cried, "We actually DID IT! Arata why aren't you-"

The second I turned around, all of that joy and relief left my body at once. Arata wasn't up on his feet anymore. He wasn't_moving_ anymore. The mere concept of joy left my mind entirely, its absence filled by sheer horror. With my heart racing, I rushed over to his side and tore his Driver off of him. Once his armor faded and I could see that he was still breathing, I took off my own Driver and held him in my arms.

"A-Arata?" I could barely get his name out with my throat closing up on me, "Arata wake up... W-we did it!" My heart ached as I his eyes fluttered open to reveal an unnatural grayness to them. He drew in a slow, shallow breath as he reached out to me.

"Whhh..." his voice was barely even a whisper; I had to lean in closer just to hear him, "we really...did it? We...whh...we beat her?" I opened my mouth to respond, only to end up choking down a sob. Before I could stop them, tears began to flood out of my eyes. My paw was trembling as I took Arata's and pressed it against my cheek.

"Yeah, buddy... We did it... We won..." I felt my heart shatter to pieces as a weak smile crept up his muzzle.

"Good... I'm...I'm glad..." I choked down more sobs and squeezed his paw tighter. Even as he looked at me dead in the eyes, I had the feeling that he couldn't actually see me anymore. Despite that, his smile remained, and it only made my heart ache that much more. "Erika...not to sound...cl...cliche...but...i'm...really happy that...you're here...with me."

That...broke me... Unable to hold back for any longer, I broke down into uncontrollable sobs. "You...goddamn idiot..." I said through grit teeth, "Why did...why did you have to go and say that?" I heard him let out a faint chuckle, and that just made me break down even further.

"Erika...I'm...sorry for-"

"NO. DON'T...don't you dare apologize now. So just......just get up so we can...so we can get back to base. You can ap-apologize to me there."

"I...can't..."

"Arata..."

"I'm sorry..."

"Arata..." There was no point in keeping my eyes open anymore; all of the tears that were flooding in them were blinding me.

"Erika...I need to ask you something..." I tightened my grip on his paw as I waited, "Since I...can't...anymore...please...continue to protect this city...for the both of us..."

I nodded furiously. "I will, Arata...I will..."

"Good... Looks like...I can......relax......now......"

And that was the last time......I'd ever his voice...come from his mouth......ever again.........