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Owner Pose
Xion T-SHAVE, a Thai shaved ice pop-up downtown in the prefecture of Tokyo that Sougo's school occupied and ont he way home had been just a bit too out of the way to and from class to ever get around to.

Now, with Woz IWAE'ing on the radio, the pair have ducked into the glass-walled facade of the blue and white canopy'ed street store that sells boba tea and shaved ice.

Inside the short shop is an ice cream counter, and a tea setup behind, servicing the combined role of slightly foreign delights.

Outside, in the sitting area, are a few tables, under umbrellas that have heaters in them. With a warm August evening, they are currently off.

Woz has his pick of the shaved ice of various foolish flavors.
Sougo is as happy to be here as he decides to be.

Up and down the street are a mixture of light commercial and residential spaces, shops and walkable spaces among some houses. Outer-city living.

They have had long moments here. Those moments come to a sudden end, when, down the nearly-empty sidewalk comes a call.

"So, you're just going to say it? That it's you? That you're the Demon King?"

Xion, who had not introduced herself on the radio, walks down the road. She wears a pair of white sneakers with black laces and soles, black leggings, blue jean shorts with a silver button, a black t-shirt, and a mustard yellow jacket with white interior.

"Are you going to explain yourself?"
Timespace Riders      Woz would proclaim that, as the retainer of the rightful king of time, no choice of shaved ice on his part could ever be foolish. Nevertheless, he chose the mystery flavor for his first time and is quiet only because of the perplexing experience of attempting to suss it out.

     Sougo, seated beside his retainer beneath one of the umbrellas, is wearing a wide smile around his colorful boba straw. His smile falters only slightly when Xion asks for his explanation.

     Woz's more or less 'neutrally pleased' expression sours more than mystery shaved ice could possibly play. He rises with a start to stand in between Sougo and Xion, but Sougo holds out a palm.

     "It's okay, Woz." His hand rests gently on Woz's shoulder, and Sougo steps forward, to explain himself, with a slightly pained, brave-face smile.

     He looks anything but royal, in red hi-tops, highwater jeans with the cuffs rolled up, a baggy blue silk button-up and a large barn coat. If anything, he looks like he's late to a book club. "Woz showed me the future where I'm Ohma Zi-O. I've wanted to be king since I was little..." His eyes twinkle despite the discomfort of that memory. "But not like that. Not if it means hurting and terrorizing my subjects. I want to be the greatest, kindest Demon King, instead."

     Woz heaves a sigh, eyes flicking between Sougo and Xion.
Xion The mystery flavor is starfruit!
Woz's uncertainty in flavor is due to the mildness of the actual flavor of starfruit!

Xion, eyes blue under a black bob of hair, watches Sougo Tokiwa silence his herald with a touch and step forward, away from the safety of sitting under umbrellas, boba tea and cicaidas.

"Tokiwa Sougo. No, Zi-O." Xion lifts her hand, pointing index finger at Sougo (and Woz). "It was okay, until you joined the Concord. But this can't. You can't join the Concord and keep saying you're just fighting for the benefit of 'your subjects'. You can't smile your way into being king."

Xion's hand falls, curling as her gaze drops into it, checking the contents. Her thumb drops into her palm, moving one medallion - the Chaser one - out of the way.

Chase wanted his own shot, already.

With her palm cleared, she presents a faded-gold medallion, which trembles and ripples before becoming a swing phone, which she sweeps out, thumb pressing over numbers with a

blink
    blonk
        blunk


    'Standing By'

"Even the Kindest 'Greatest Demon King' is still that thing."

Pressing the 'send button, Xion places the phone in the air over her waist, and then slot-clicks the phone 'in place' in the air, lines of gold tracing themselves over her waist, shoulders, chest, and legs. A surge of black completes the armor, with a cross-slash of magenta spreading the color over Xion's Xsa Armor.

'Complete'

Drawing a summoned gunsword from her hip, she fires a trio of blasts at Sougo Tokiwa!
Timespace Riders Jikuu Driver!

     Sougo's smile is gone by the time the belt fastens around his waist. Holding up a futuristic pocketwatch bearing the face of his armored form, Sougo presses the timer. As if matching her accusation, the Ridewatch announces, ZI-O.

     Woz, the loyal retainer, intervenes for his Demon King, the mysterious time traveler's dark scarf enveloping Xion's gun arm to pull her shot wide. He himself is shot for the attempt.

KAMEN RIDER o/` ZI-O . . .

     As Woz belts into his silver and green ensemble, Sougo is enveloped in the gears of some far-off clock, with a dizzying spatial distortion hot on its heels. The ominous chime of a bell completes his transformation.

JIKAN DESPEAR!

     It's Kamen Rider Woz, not Zi-O, who makes the counterattack--the latter is apparently frozen in some internal struggle.

     "Precisely what I have sought to instill in my Demon King. He is soft--too much so to do what a king must." The spear, leveraged with the silver rider's shoulders as he advances, makes several probing strikes at her center of mass to test her guard, followed by a low sweep with his advancing right leg.

     Zi-O's grip on his sword tightens. "You're both wrong," he says softly, helmeted visage peering at the ground.
Xion Xion's eyes remain at their accusatory stare until the magenta X crosses over her brow and fills in outline, bright face and black body crackling with motion. She advances quickly, dashing behind her spray of shots, and bowls into Woz as his transformation begins, hand going wide and up as the scarf takes it. and her shots rake retainer and not regent.

"Well, sorry, but I'm not here to teach him to accept his fate." Xsa grunts from under their helmet. "It's really the opposite."

Rolling their front out of the way of the thrusts and swinging the reverse-bladed Xsa Blaygun down and across the angle of Woz's sudden counterattack, the flashing lightsaber is able to drive the point of the Jikan Despear down into the ground with the corrective force, sparks and ground debris blasting up.

Xion remains pushing, hopping the sweep and stepping down the mid-length of Woz's spear to force her blaster towards (Kamen Rider) Woz's head. He has plenty of time to react while she reaches to the Blaygun's butt to draw it back and charge the shot.

"I don't want a Demon King at all - not an unkind one!"

On target or not, the charged Blaygun shot fires off a drilling blast-!
Timespace Riders      Woz grunts as Xion's parry forces his weapon into the ground, struggling against her. As she might have guessed, he whips his head around to avoid the shot from the Blaygun.

     This, of course, allows it to strike the hesitating Zi-O dead-center. Staggered by the force of the spark-showering impact, Sougo nearly drops his sword. "I'm not having this fight here," he quietly, but firmly states, before procuring a different ridewatch.

ARMOR TIME!
3-2-1 Four-ze! o/`

     A white-and-orange set of armor materializes in the air as a silhouette of a Rider, bearing the sleek and aerodynamic lines of a space shuttle. It snaps into place overtop the Zi-O armor, and Sougo takes off on rocket boosters. All around, other patrons of the cafe and neighboring businesses are fleeing in panic.

     "If you're so set on stopping me... do it where my subjects won't be hurt!" Taking to the skies, Sougo, fully anticipating a pursuit from Xion, leads her to a forest clearing just outside of town, absent any urban development. Touching down, he levels two rocket-arms at her. A salvo of guided missiles fires out the moment she arrives. "I've already decided the kind of Demon King I'm going to be!

     The sound of a deer scare and a puff of smoke. Kamen Rider Woz rejoins the fray, armored in a purple variation of his usual, complete with flowing scarf and a chest-mounted shuriken. Hot on the heels of the missile salvo, Woz bounces between trees, flinging oversized energy shuriken at Xion to add to the attack.

     "I'm going to protect people's smiles as king! Believe that, or don't--but I won't stop chasing my dream until I find it, or until someone kills me!"
Xion '... do it where my subjects won't be hurt!'
Xion tumbles past Woz and comes up in a crouch as Zi-O takes the hit -- and takes the chance to change his armor. The magic of long zoom-in cuts on a presented watch - and a fully SFX'ed change into the Fourze Armor.

Blasting off while claiming to be protecting people, Xion frowns in her helmet and drops her expression, X-crossed mask scanning the area for Woz and not finding either the king of time or his herald.

"If you're going to just get shaved ice and tea in the middle of a city, they're not your subjects, they're just random people..."

ONE JUMPCUT LATER

Xion appears, still in the Xsa Armor, leaping on-set to immediately disappear in the smoking haze of the twin explosion of the Fourze-Rocket haze, disappearing into detonations.

Shinobi Woz's energy shuriken split the dust cloud revealing -- nothing. Empty air and splinters.

From behind a pair of trees -- Woz having time to see and speed to react, but Sougo threatened -- Xion's magenta-gold-black Xsa Armor leaps from crouch while reaching for her belt-mounted phone.

'Exceed Charge!' (pronounced 'ecks-seed')

A crackle of magenta fills the golden light-lines of her rider-style armor, charging power into her foot as she dives forward..

"They're not your subjects! You don't run Japan! You're just talking about being demon king on the radio -- you're going to be the kindest:"

"By being the shortest-reigning!"
Timespace Riders      There is no fighting spirit in Zi-O's evasion of Xion's attack. The kick itself is avoided with a sedate sidestep, the explosion from the photon lance nevertheless kicking up clods of earth and other natural debris that rake across the Fourze armor.

     A moment passes, here. But for Sougo, it's a lot more than a moment. One chapter of a lifetime passes in the blink of an eye. "Let me ask you something."

BUILD! BEST MATCH!

     A caution-striped drillsword makes a half-hearted thrust. Sougo follows up with a brisk, competent but highly unspirited snap kick from the right. "How many times have you felt 'less than?' And how many times have you been saved from that pain by someone sharing something special with you?"

     Woz scoffs. "My Demon King, these questions are pointless. She clearly wishes nothing but--"

     "It's *never* pointless to try and understand someone, Woz. Stay out of this--that's an order!"

     Having raised his spear to join in, Woz offers an irritated noise in response, the silver-armored fighter hanging back.

     "I wish I could say that I had everything planned out--every decree, every problem. But what I do know is that everyone deserves to feel whole, and if it kills me, that's the kind of future I want. Not one where I'm king just for the sake of being king. I know one other thing:"

     Sougo removes the Build ridewatch entirely, his armor disappearing.

     "I don't want to hurt good people to hold that dream. If you think I'm going to be an evil Demon King... I'll make it easy for you." Sougo bows his head, the light of the forest catching the cuts he's already sustained from the fight.

     "My Demon King!!"
Xion Gathering up the energy of her armor all onto the leading edge of her heel, Xion smashes into the clodding dirt-spray of the ground outside. Now, in the Conveniently Spaced Trees (for brawls and camera work) outside of the city that was reached via rocket, the black armored warrior meets her reverse gripped weapon to the haphazard swings of a drilling sword.

Zi-O trails the flares of armor-activation while the Drill Crusher crackles against the gold photon line of the Blaygun. Xsa's mask, and Xion's face behind it, leans in to the press. The pair are sepearated by snap-kick, Xion carried farther away by the kick's choreography to land in a crouch.

'and how many times have you been saved from that pain...?'

Rising from the crouch slowly, Xion doesn't bring up her stance. Woz scoffs, and Sougo commands.

Xion extends silver claw-topped armored pointer finger, pointing at Sougo once more -- and then raising, to waggle. "If you're going to reach out and touch me with your feelings, Zi-O, it'd be more convincing the other way. If you had fought your hardest, and really showed me what it meant to put 'your life' on the line meant, maybe I'd believe you."

"But this isn't it." Xion's hand stops, finger pausing its metronome, and then drops to her belt with a light flop of fingers across phone, to lift out of the summoned belt, and pull free. Arm swinging out, her armored thumb hovers over the 'end' button.

And stops there. "I can't count every second, Zi-O. If I did, I wouldn't be able to think about anything else completely, because I'd always be counting time."

"That's how often I feel 'less than'. It doesn't get better, all at once. Sometimes I'll fit a piece in, or try something really meaningful, but I want things. I want to be complete."

"I want to stop hurting." Xion finishes at a mutter. Her voice rises as she finally presses END, her armor disappearing back into lines of retreating energy. "This 'demon king' thing, seriously. 'Kindest' is -relative-."

"For example, this is probably among the kinder assassinations you've ever had."
Timespace Riders      Resigned sadness. Quiet despair. These things radiate from Sougo's heart as he looks up at Xion, having lowered to his knees. "So do I. Everyone in the know calls me 'Demon King,' now that I'm in the Game of Kings. And even if they don't call me that, I can see it in their eyes. They see that future me, and they think that's the only way I can turn out."

     His hands rest upon his knees, his eyes beginning to brim with tears. "I thought... if I took it, made it my own, then it would hurt less. It did, for a while. So did having someone that really believed in me." His voice falters and his hands squeeze his knees tightly. Unable to look at Woz, he instead fixates on the ground. "When he called me that, it was different. It always felt nice. Like it was something we shared, you know?"

     Woz flinches, taken aback by Sougo's admission.

     "I want to believe that 'kindest' *isn't* relative. But today I've managed to do everything wrong, trying to be kind. Maybe those people are right, and an evil king is the only thing I can be."

     "...You have taken advantage of my king's kindness for long enough." Woz leaps in to put himself before Xion. "M-my Demon King, what are you--"

     Sougo's unarmored form crashes into Woz's still-armored body, his hands grasping for purchase in an effort to keep his retainer from striking at Xion. The only reason the struggle isn't entirely one-sided is for Woz's perplexed restraint.

     "STOP!" Tears run freely down his face now, as he shoves his armored retainer away. "A good king helps people! Fighting her doesn't help anyone but me."
Xion "It's not 'fate'. It's 'the most likely outcome'." Xion answers, to the riddle of the Demon King of Time.

Sweeping in her swing-phone's top with a thumb, her hand-grip on the item releases. The phone drops, transmogrifying back into a medallion as it drops - and disappears before it hits the ground in black motes.

"What's in your heart, right now, is Oma Zi-O. Not at the surface, the moment to moment words, but deeper. What pulls your heart to beating, squeezes your feeings, is Oma Zi-O. That's why people call you it. Because it's true."

Xion stands there, eyes quarter-lidded as she looks down her face at Sougo on the ground.

Past Woz, who snaps and bites and tugs at the chain of his king, about his waist.

Her eyes snap up, to the still-armored Woz. "You're part of the problem, herald. You're 'another person' confirming he's the demon king. You can wrap it sweetly, and make it sound nice, but you're also ultimately making him accept the demon."

Xion shakes her head, bringing both hands to the lapel of her jacket to shake it out and hang there, hands wrapped about the flaps and posed. "... 'My' demon king. Your words, your decisions. You're already addressing him as yours. Try to be his friend, herald, and maybe you won't dutifully walk him to the end he's begging not to have."

A black yawning void splits open behind Xion, an aphotic purple 'liquid' surface peeled open within the ring in the air, hanging two-dimensionally.

"If you're Zi-O, then what you're seeing is the result of the 'Kindest Demon King'. And you're holding his herald. You are sharing something. Make sure you're sharing what you actually want, Tokiwa Sougo."
Timespace Riders      Woz removes the Ridewatch from his belt, returning to his unarmored form in a wave of green light. He is left with Sougo struggling against him. The future king ceases his struggles, but remains clinging tightly to Woz's apocalyptic garb. The wet warmth of quietly shed tears against his clothes softens the retainers scowl, drawing his attention down to Sougo. With the book he's clutching so tightly, and the watch in his other hand, he has none free to console the king who so desperately needs it--and for a moment, he allows the realization to bother him.

     The retainer's expression hardens. "...Be careful that you don't presume to know my calling, or my king, better than I," Woz coolly announces with affected, venemous politesse. "No doubt, he will forgive you, for this is his way. But I, Woz, am not so forgiving."

     "Don't." Sougo looks up at Woz, at last, removing his hands from the time traveler's coat to wipe his eyes.. "Don't spend yourself fighting her just for me. It doesn't fix anything, help anyone, or even prove her wrong. Woz... let's go home, please," he tiredly requests.

     Woz saves a glare for Xion, but nods his head, reaching for his scarf. "As you wish." With a flick of his wrist, the dark garment billows outward in defiance of space, a sudden wind kicking up sand from beyond time. The scarf envelops the both of them, folding inward like water pulled down a drain, until nothing remains but empty space.
Xion Xion watches the pair go, disappearing into wet cloth and glares.

She drops her shoulders and chin, exhaling sharply. He had wanted the last word.

Xion didn't have a reason not to give it to him.

"You don't fight people in the street for forgiveness." She mutters, and then turns to exit through her own summoned Corridor.

Not a great time for boba and ice cream, as it turns out, but there's always crying in a nearby rumble forest.