Chapter 1: ¡Hola! A Taco-Powered Heroine!
Kamen Rider Taco
by Present Perfect
Chapter 1: ¡Hola! A Taco-Powered Heroine!
"Look out, Tornado Tigre!" shouted Sonata Dusk. "The unkillable Robo-Diablo has you in his metallic clutches!"
To Sonata, it didn't matter that she knew Tornado Tigre, the Avenger in the Orange Mask, wasn't in any real danger. It didn't matter that she knew he was going to pull the cotterpin that unhooked Robo-Diablo's elbow, setting himself free to knock Robo-Diablo's head clean off. It didn't matter that she was starting to memorize the dialogue. ¡Tornado Lucha! was her favorite comic book, and she'd read it seven times, including this one.
Well, it belonged to Señor Relleno, so it was her favorite comic book that she was borrowing from her boss.
But really, she just liked reading it aloud and adding in extra narration. And doing the voices.
"'You think you have defeated me?' laughed the wicked Doctór Mécanos! Tornado Tigre assumed his fighting stance, wary of the doctor's confidence. 'How do you expect to stop me when your robot is no more, Doctór Mécanos?'
"Suddenly, the headless body of Robo-Diablo swooped out of the sky and entangled Tornado Tigre in robotic tentacles once again! They stretched and writhed, more than a match for even his mighty, magical muscles! 'I've got you now, Tornado Tigre!' shouted Doctór Mécanos. 'I told you Robo-Diablo was unkillable! Soon, your mask will be mine, and you will be powerless!'"
"Señorita Dusk!" called a voice from the kitchen behind her. "More dishes to wash!"
"Coming!" Sonata closed the book. "Darn."
She'd wanted to finish the issue, but when Señora Paella called, she hopped to. After all, Sonata knew that Doctór Mécanos would unmask Tornado Tigre, robbing him of his mystical strength and seeing his face for the first time. The final panel of the comic showed the reader the bold orange stripe running through Tornado Tigre's hair, his face a mystery until the next issue.
Or, at least, she assumed it would be revealed eventually. She enjoyed reading those comics so much, it didn't matter to her that she would never have the next issue.
"Coming, Señora!" she called, and clambered up the back stoop into Chile Relleno's, Canterlot's premiere family-style Mexican eatery.
Dean Miamore Cadenza breathed steadily through her nose as she peeked past the curtain. The auditorium seats were filled with students, parents, and faculty, former and current. Crystal Prep hadn't had a new principal since some of those parents had been students themselves.
If only Abacus Cinch's replacement were...
Ah, but she had dealt with that feeling already, hadn't she? Things were better this way. She was more suited to her own job; her day to lead would come in time. Jealousy and pettiness were best left to the student body.
Her name was announced over the PA, and she strode to the podium, polite applause cascading over her ears. She kept her expression pleasantly neutral, as befit the ceremony. When she reached the podium, she held both hands up and lowered them gradually, the applause dying out.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, in measured tones. "Faculty. Alumni. Friends." She smiled. "It is my honor tonight to induct you all into a new era at Crystal Prep. An era where we look not backward at the mistakes of our past--" more than one member of the audience lowered their head-- "but forward, to our glorious future. It is with no small amount of pleasure, therefore, that I introduce you all to a man some of you might already know."
That got the crowd buzzing. The announcement mailed out hadn't informed any of them who the new principal was, only that one had been chosen and an assembly would be held to introduce them. A touch of theatrics always added spice to any occasion. Now they were, to a person, straining to know: who might he be?
"He is a man who has led this fine school once before. He was more than willing to come back from retirement, because he loves this school and what it stands for. His dedication and loyalty speak for themselves." Unmentioned was that he was the only person who, on short notice and after such a disastrous Friendship Games, was willing to step into the principal's shoes.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped to the side. "Without any further ado, I give you your new administrator. Principal Sombra!"
The crowd burst into applause, Dean Cadenza leading it. Many of the older teachers cheered as Sombra walked on stage. Clearly, they remembered his name and the great things he had done for Crystal Prep in the past.
Age bent a tall, thin frame that had once towered over the student population. His dark grey skin and white-tipped obsidian hair glistened beneath the auditorium lights. A cane clacked against the stage as he ambled his way to the podium to deliver the same shushing motion Dean Cadenza had. It wasn't quite as effective.
Once the crowd had settled down and Principal Sombra began his welcome speech, Dean Cadenza faded into the shadows behind the curtains. She wasn't one of those who knew Sombra from before. But she looked forward to working with him nevertheless.
"Here you are, Sonata! I've been looking all over for you!"
Sonata lay flat atop a dirty mattress, one she had clipped the pokier springs from. Car hoods perched atop two broken-down clothes washers formed a roof above her, concealing her from sight. She held to her eyes two empty tin cans -- one had held beans -- their tops and bottoms removed, and gazed through them at a more distant pile of refuse.
"Shh! Over here, Aria!"
The clattering of metal on metal accompanied Aria clambering her way up to where Sonata lay.
"Ugh, I shoulda known." Aria grunted as she hauled herself onto the foot of the mattress. Despite the disdain dripping from her voice, she kept it low. "Dinner's ready, and if you don't get your butt back home, I'll eat it. Don't think I won't!"
Sonata said nothing, gazing gamely ahead and occasionally twisting the cans, as if to adjust them.
Aria loosed a dramatic sigh. "You're waiting for that 'Green Guy' again, aren't you?"
"The Purple Man," Sonata corrected. "It's taken all year, but I think I finally found a pattern. Just tell Adagio I'll be back once I see him."
There was a long moment filled with nothing but Aria's soft fuming. Then the mattress bounced and the junk below them shifted.
"Fine. Whatever. Gonna eat your food, just you watch."
And then Aria was gone.
Sonata couldn't blame her, sometimes. Yes, the things Sonata did sometimes made such little sense, even she had trouble explaining them. Yes, both Adagio and Aria blamed her for their previous trash pile caving in and their needing to move. Yes, Sonata had definitely eaten Aria's dinner once when she was working late. They both agreed that had been a big mistake.
But it wasn't like either of her sisters ever tried to understand her, either. Here she was, investigating a true mystery of their time, and neither Adagio nor Aria gave a fig for her intrigue. Not even the mystique of the unknown, of the impossible, could stir them from the funks they had woven about themselves like scarves ever since they lost the Battle of--
"Ooh."
The air above the junk pile she was watching shimmered. Sonata rotated her cans. From out of nothingness stepped a strange human figure.
It was purple and brown and hunched over. Whatever it was wearing, it was hard, not like clothing, and looked kind of melted. At least, that was how Sonata described it to herself. The figure moved with a limp, and not just because of the junk shifting underfoot. While she couldn't get a good enough view to make it out, there was definitely something bright and colorful in the figure's hand.
Sonata watched intently as the Purple Man shimmied down the pile of refuse. He kept his balance until the very end, tumbling the last few steps but regaining his footing with a flashy front flip. It was only when Sonata's applause caught his attention that she remembered this was supposed to be a covert operation. Luckily, if he saw her, he showed no interest in investigating.
Turning, the Purple Man thrust his hand into the base of the trash pile. He dug through it for a moment, then deposited that colorful thing in the hole and let the refuse slide down to cover it. Flicking his hands, he looked to either side quickly and began to scale the heap.
But as he looked toward Sonata, she caught the glint of starlight off his helmet. For just a second, two round -- well, mostly round -- eyes stared right through her. They were filled with a multitude of yellow facets that stood out from the purple, brown and black of the rest of his suit. In that brief moment, Sonata was entirely fascinated.
"He's like some weird bug guy," she whispered.
It took him some scrambling to make it to the top, but when he finally did, he merely stepped forward, and the grey shimmer consumed him. Sonata remained watching, just on the off chance the Purple Man had forgotten something and would return, until the rumbling in her belly reminded her of Aria's warning.
She shimmied backward off the mattress, slid down the pile of trash, and headed home for dinner.
Sonata clutched at her rumbling stomach as she lurched through the piles of junk, kicking at stray cans and whatever other refuse got in her way.
"Stupid Aria," she muttered. "She really got me good. I guess now I know... oof, what it felt like."
Her minutes of hungry, regretful wandering had taken her to a spot she recognized: the pile of trash the Purple Man had appeared on earlier that evening. With nothing better to take her mind off her hunger, she made her way to where she'd seen him hide his colorful something and began digging.
It didn't take her long to find what she was looking for. Beneath a half rotten political sign, a yellow shape glistened. She yanked it free and gasped when she beheld it fully.
"A taco!"
She shoved it in her mouth.
Unfortunately, like more or less everything around her, it was plastic and covered in garbage. Spitting, she dangled it before herself.
"Who comes through an interdimensional whatchacallit to hide a plastic taco in a dump?"
But it was, on further examination, no run-of-the-mill plastic taco. A long strap hung from it, and from that, a small container that held a bunch of small, colorful things... which fell out as she held it up.
"Whoopsie!" She scrambled to pick the things up, grabbing a handful of red, yellow, blue and purple rectangles that kind of looked like fast food sauce packets. She stuffed them back in their holder, gave the ensemble another long look, then wrapped it around her waist. The strap fastened behind her, the taco-holding part sitting snugly against her tummy.
"So it is a belt! A taco belt!" She grinned and wiggled, watching the taco joggle back and forth. "It's not just a taco, it's a fashion statement!"
Giggling, she looked down at the taco again. Something was amiss.
"Oh, silly me! Put the taco on upside-down!"
With a flick of her wrist, she spun the taco. It rotated smoothly, came to rest right-side-up and clicked into place.
The taco emitted a loud tone and a brilliant white light that encompassed Sonata's entire field of vision. She yelped and leaped back, learning only too late that it is impossible to escape that which is fastened securely around one's waist.
When the light subsided, Sonata's world was rimmed in a sequence of green lines.
"Am I in a video game?"
The distortion of her voice made her gasp. She looked down at her hands, to find them wrapped in plasticky white armored gloves. She flipped them back and forth, then grasped the sides of her head, to discover she was wearing some kind of helmet.
"What happened?"
"Atarashii yuuzaa ga kenshutsu," said a voice in her ear. It was masculine, accented, and somewhat mechanical and tinny. "Eigo ga ninshiki sa reta. Initialize language change. Greetings, new user. Please state your name."
"Who are you?" she asked, looking all around but finding nothing that could have spoken. "Why do you need my name?"
"I am Taco Driver," said the voice. "Name is required to register new user."
"Uh." Sonata marched in place a little. Yes, she was definitely wearing some kind of weird armor or something. "My name is Sonata Dusk."
"Registering new user," said the voice. "Okay, Dusk-san!"
Sonata laughed. "No no, it's Dusk, Sonata."
"...Okay, Sonata-chan."
"No, Sonata Dusk."
Something in her helmet whirred and beeped for a few seconds.
"Okay, Mistress! Would you like to begin tutorial?"
"Tutorial for what?" She shivered. "I'm not very good at school."
"Taco Driver is a state-of-the-art personal combat enhancement system. Tutorial is recommended before beginning use. Would you like to begin tutorial?"
Sonata once again tapped on her head and ran her hand over the surface. There were smooth, round lenses over her eyes.
"Wow," she whispered reverently. "I'm like some weird bug guy too, now."
She looked around the junkyard, really looking, and the green lines followed her movements, outlining the contours of the land around her. Bouncing on her heels, she found that the armor, or whatever she was wearing, was lightweight and easy to move in. She tried throwing a few punches. They were clumsy, just like her.
"Personal combat system, huh? So like, you're gonna teach me how to fight?"
"Affirmative, Mistress."
"I guess I could stand to blow off some steam. Sure! Activate tutorial!"
"Starting combat simulation."
A trio of green wireframes sketched out three monsters in Sonata's field of vision: a bat, a spider and a bug, all of them human-sized and really, really ugly.
"Ooh!" cried Sonata, her heart rate accelerating. "It is a video game! And so lifelike!"
"Begin training mode!"
Upper Crust was not built for rummaging through heaps of garbage. But, as Crystal Lullaby enjoyed reminding her, when the Boss sent you on a mission, you didn't say no. Not if you liked keeping your head attached to your body, anyway.
So here she was with Crystal and Jet Set, picking through the City of Canterlot Waste Management Center -- aka, the town dump -- on a wild hunch that was probably going to lead to nothing but shoes full of mud and filth. She could have been living a life of luxury back at her dorm, but no, some low-life tattletale had had to let on they'd seen something here.
She picked a filthy shoe from the pile of refuse she was sifting through. It was full of mud. "Euck."
"Just keep digging, you priss," said Crystal irritably from across the way. "You don't always have to pretend to be a stuck-up socialite."
Upper Crust snorted. "Spoken like someone who doesn't have an image to uphold. I mean, really."
Crystal narrowed her eyes. "Need I remind you the Boss put me in charge of this little outing? I could kick your butt clear back to Crystal Prep if I thought you were slackin' off!"
Upper Crust returned the expression, hands clenching to fists. "You wouldn't dare."
"I got half a mind to right now!"
"More like you have half a mind, period!"
"Why I oughta--"
"Wait!" cried Jet Set, standing abruptly, a rotten banana peel clinging to his hair. "Did either of you hear that?"
The two girls, mere inches apart, separated, eyes flicking back and forth.
"Hear it?" Crystal rushed toward the pile of junk in which Jet Set stood, pointing to the distance. "I can see it!"
A bright light emanated from that direction, accompanied by a loud tone. Jet Set narrowed his eyes, and the three of them ran towards the light.
"I'd know that sound anywhere," he growled.
Upper Crust grinned. "Do you mean what I think you mean? I could stand to blow off some steam." She cracked her knuckles.
They rushed behind a wall of refrigerators and crouched, peering out over the top of an abandoned sofa. In the midst of three piles of trash stood a lone figure, clad in white and black armor, its back turned to them. It seemed to be talking to itself. It definitely had not noticed their approach.
"Bingo," said Crystal. "Level one, even. Let's kick its ass and take the belt back to the Boss!"
"You said it, sister," said Jet Set, standing. "Level one it is."
Crystal Lullaby lifted her hands in front of her, palms forward and fingers splayed.
"Furutsu Batto!" she cried.
Her fingers became long, bony and connected by thick webbing. Her ears grew tall and tufted. Her eyes became beady and her nose large and heart-shaped. Strawberry-red hair grew over her entire body.
Upper Crust crossed her hands at the wrists, fingers grasping the air, claw-like.
"Hoshi no kumo!"
She grew eight spindly legs in place of her arms. Her head ballooned into a bulbous blue abdomen with a star pattern. A spidery head appeared face-down where her stomach was and hissed.
Jet Set made a fist in front of his face, fingers out. As he slowly opened it, he shouted, "Parasuparaito!"
His body transformed in much the same way Upper Crust's had, with spindly, insectoid legs for his arms and a bloated head. His eyes turned yellow, growing to the size of his original head. Thin, veined wings sprouted from the back of it.
The three newly transformed monsters cackled a monsterish cackle and rushed at the lone figure. There was no way it could know they were there; this would be easy.
Thus it was perhaps no surprise that the bat monster was completely blindsided when the white figure spun and threw a punch square into its nose.
It went sailing end over end, crashing into a pile of rusty water heaters. The other two looked at each other, looked at the armored fighter, looked at each other again, and roared.
First, the bug monster surged forward, throwing rapid-fire punches. Each missed, as though the white figure knew where every last punch would come from before it was thrown. Opening its oversized mouth large enough to swallow an entire person, the bug tried sucking its adversary into itself. All it received for its trouble was a pair of right hooks to the head and a side kick to the abdomen. It fell to the ground, out cold.
The spider monster held its ground. Its many legs quivered in unison, and it launched a net of webbing into the air. The white fighter rolled neatly under the net, avoiding it completely. Then the entire spider was quivering in fear as body blows rained over it. It wasn't long before the spider, too, was out of steam and collapsed on the ground.
As the figure caught its breath, the bat monster, having roused itself during the fight, flew in from behind and snared it in a chokehold. They tussled and writhed, each trying to overpower the other.
But as the bat went in to bite at the figure's less-protected neck, it wrenched an arm free and threw up a backhand. The bat staggered, clutching at its nose. There was nothing it could do as it was soundly pummelled in the face, three, four, five times, until it was completely dazed. The white figure hauled the bat by its shoulders and hurled it through the air to land in a heap with the other monsters.
The white figure crouched and tilted its head, as if considering something. The monsters, groaning, drew themselves to sitting. As one, they all cringed. The white fighter launched itself into the air, struck a leg out to the side and rocketed at them in an explosive kick.
They literally all exploded.
More precisely, there was an explosion in their vicinity as the kick struck home, sending all three monsters flying. Motes of light burst from them, the monster forms evaporating into the nothingness from which they'd come. After the smoke cleared, three black-skinned figures lay where the monsters had been. They slowly roused themselves and, with a series of chittering noises at one another, took off for the landfill's edge.
The white figure didn't even notice them.
"End training mode. Perfect score! Transform off."
Sonata's view of the HUD darkened and her ears filled with a whirring down. The armor dissipated, leaving her standing in the night with the Taco Driver wrapped around her waist.
"Wow!" she said, cracking her back and bouncing on her toes. "That was really fun! And that flying kick at the end? So cool! I didn't know I could do that! I haven't had a workout like that in a looong time! Good training, taco guy!"
"Next time, try saussles to power up!" it said.
Saussles? Maybe it meant those little sauce packet things she'd found with the belt. She pulled one out, admiring the red, squishy surface shimmering in the night air. "Okay!"
She was trying to figure out how to unlatch the belt when, in the distance, she caught sight of three black figures scampering away. Sonata's heart leapt into her throat, and she clutched at her chest.
The Taco Driver fell from her grasp and clattered to the ground.
"Wait, the video game was real?"
Eyes still glued to where the figures had disappeared from sight, she scrabbled at the dirt until she had the Driver and saussles in hand. She scooped it all up and ran in the opposite direction the figures had gone, heart pounding.
As she wove her way around the piles of junk, looking for the one she called home, she kept shooting glances behind herself, like something might spring out at her from behind a discarded television set. She hadn't felt this way in... quite some time. Beating up real-life monsters in a video game was not her idea of fun.
"There is no way I'm telling anyone about this!"
"I am not happy to hear you telling me about this."
Upper Crust cringed. Her two compatriots had abandoned her shortly after electing her to tell the Boss about their failure. Now she was alone in the darkened school office, the Boss merely a shadow and a crooked hand scratching furrows into the bulky desk between them.
"H-how could we have known," she began, "that the Rider could overpower us? It was three against--"
"Silence!" The fist slammed against the desk, and Upper Crust fell onto her butt. "Idiots, the lot of you. Level one is for reconnaissance only." The thin fingers drummed against the hardwood. "This new threat concerns me..."
The hand disappeared into the shadow, likely to stroke at the chin Upper Crust knew was in there. Somewhere.
"Send in the next delinquent," the Boss said at length. Upper Crust jumped to her feet and scampered out the door.
A few minutes later, a nervous boy with blue skin and wavy hair stood before the same desk, his arms pinned to his sides by two leering black figures. It wasn't his first rodeo, as they said, but usually he was dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to meet his punishments. Who knew what to expect from a new principal?
"Yes," said a rough, oily voice languidly. "I think you'll do nicely."
When the green flash lit the room, all Royal Pin could do was scream.
Author's Note
Welcome to Kamen Rider Taco! Things will only get crazier as the story progresses. If you're worried about that On Hiatus marker, well, I'm sorry to say, I just wanted to get this posted before the EQG shorts canon-screwed what the Sirens are up to. I'll start posting regularly once I finish the story, and I can't promise when that will be. I won't feel bad if you just put this on tracking or something and forget about it.
Thanks to Pascoite for feedback and suggesting Pokey Pierce (Royal Pin) at the end, and Wanderer D for being my Mexican culture coordinator. Everything else is my fault. :V
