... and the sugar turned bitter.

Title: Courtney Tokusatsu Fan Club!
Universe: Kamen Rider Black RX, Yuugen Jikkou Sisters Shushutorian, B-Robo Kabutack, Kamen Rider Gotchard, 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi, Kamen Rider Gavv
Character(s): Matoba Kyoko, Yamabuki Yukiko, Okubo Reika, Kudo Rinne, Ohara Asako, Tashiro Mitsuko, Liselle Želdac
Rating: U
Warnings: N/A
Summary: Courtney Tokusatsu Fan Club (コートニー特撮ファンクラブ, Kotoni Tokusatsu Fan Kurabu), often stylized as CTFC for short, is a premium subscription service launched by Courtney, allowing registered members to stream her massive library of brainrot.
Length: 802, 703, & 959 words
Author's Notes: I wrote this nonsense entirely for my own amusement. It is the utmost definition of fanfiction. also: external links 1, 2, 3



Heisei Girls Remix
Sight for Sore Eyes

Matoba Kyoko did not think of herself as a private detective, in fact she kept telling people that she absolutely was not, and yet, regardless, she was aware that this was how she had come to be seen. On the ‘Net, there had been a thread hosted by middle schoolers from Futo pertaining to a store selling charm bracelets with a bad reputation.

Despite not thinking of herself as a private detective, she had felt that the matter was something she could not leave alone, even if it ended up being nothing; there was such ill will towards the Crisis refugees and she had a feeling that if things were allowed to fester, it wouldn’t take long for a local rumour to blossom into a national inditement of how former Crisis citizens were damaging society. Her expression had been grim when a further rumour had reached her as she had done the rounds, the blond bartender in Kabukicho reluctantly offering up what he had heard: the proprietress of the store has been known to speak of herself as ‘a irmãzinha de Bruxa Marie Baron,’ and whilst there had been no evidence, private detective or not, such was the kind of thing that Kyoko could not ignore.

She had steeled herself and resolved to stake out the shop, a telephone call to Reiko and Kotaro from a public phone box so couldn’t be traced to her hotel room in order to let them know what the situation was in Futo. It had been fourteen years since the attempted invasion of Japan and the country was already over a decade into a whole new era name; the world had changed, the terrible sadness that had marked her adolescence no less profound but easier to live with now—at least during the nights she did not wake up crying. Since Crisis, they had grown up, and now in the Heisei era, it felt like the very idea of a Kamen Rider had become impossible to sustain, the ‘Net so quick to dissect and discuss any rumour that came their way. The ten Riders before Kotaro had faded into the stuff of myth.

‘Without the Riders, it’s up to us to make a difference,’ an old man at Snack Amigo had told her, and she had bit back a reply about how she had never stopped fighting, about she never would stop fighting for fear of being thought of as rude.

It wasn’t necessarily true, either. In late January, two years ago, after the insurgence of an ancient culture, buried in the tombs of a Neolithic tribe, an ancient belt with a glowing red stone at its heart had been recovered.

There was a commotion as she exited the phone booth, all other thoughts soon pushed away. What she had found when she had first attempted to stake out the charm shop Marie Baron’s little sister was rumoured to preside over, was police already on the scene and a fierce argument, a woman in her late 20s and a girl in her early 20s, the two of them bickering like a married couple.

“What part of subtle do you not understand?” the older woman remarked angrily, dressed for all the world in an ostentatious mix of gold and black, her hand clasping a baton with which she admonished the other woman.

The younger girl, casually dressed in a ruffled white dress with black ribbon at the collar, folded her arms and turned her head sharply away in a display of childish petulance.

“You needed an opening and I presented you with an opportunity, I really don’t see why you’re complaining, Yukiko.”

“Creating an opening isn’t marching into a store full of customers and provoking the owner until she turns into a twenty-eyed hag!” the older woman protested, her face red beneath her overdone makeup.

Kyoko did not care for her uniform. Perhaps on a child it might have been cute, but worn by an adult woman, it was too tight and revealed too much of her long legs, and she clearly looked uncomfortable in it. Yet the mention of a hag with multiple eyes—perhaps the rumours had been right, perhaps the proprietress of the store really had been a relative of Marie Baron.

She pushed her way through the crowds and the police tape, flashing a fake JMDF ID card, and made her way to where the two women stood arguing amidst the broken glass of the ruined store.

“Excuse me,” she said.

Both women turned to her mid-argument, their faces surprising alike despite the lack of resemblance. Like a married couple, she thought again.

She faltered beneath their fierce gaze.

“I’m, ah, a private detective,” she said weekly, hating herself for using such an excuse, “and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

*

Outsiders: Ladies Night
Zeinette’s Basilisk

With an oof, she hit the ground, a glimpse of white metal as she rolled out of the way of a blade as it tore into the dirt where she had been, a scar upon the earth. A flicker of a smile crossed her lips. The fire had long since gone out of her world, but here, in this place, where the Sisters had dispatched them across the threshold to find men and women who might pervert the meaning of the rings they had gathered, there were other travellers, those with the same idea perhaps.

Her smile widened as she straightened up, wiping the blood from her lips with the back of her hand.

“I like this,” she purred, “I’ll enjoy breaking you.”

Before her, the diminutive figure in her glistening white armour lowered the glistening silver blade but showed no sign of relenting. This world’s Kudo Rinne had faced someone like this before, she recalled. Another traveller disturbing the flow of things.

“Zein,” she muttered.

Light caught the wide eyes of the mask the child before her wore, the shredded fragments of a card at her feet, the words that once read Pretty Den-o.

“Zeinette,” came an unhappy voice from behind the white metal mask. In her grasp, the sabre vanished.

The Handmaiden raised an eyebrow.

“What a charming distinction.”

The armoured child pulled out another card, flicking it about between her fingers before she could catch a glimpse, watching as the belt shredded it, relying on that artificial voice to announcement what she had scarce time to prepare herself for.

‘Pepsi Ichigo.’

She tensed as the child tensed, but she was unable to prepare for the speed with the girl moved, the force with which she leapt into the air and the force with which she descended.

Zeinette did not say the two words, yet the Handmaiden felt them in her bruised arms as she brought them up to block the kick and push the child back with her own momentum, her Antrooper Queene armour manifesting about her elbows to prevent every bone in her arms from being broken.

Her lips twitched as she watched Zeinette land in the dirt, old scars opening on her face.

She was displeased.

“Enough,” she murmured. “Enough playing around.”

Zeinette tightened a fist, looking down at it as scraps of the Pepsi Ichigo card fell to her feet.

“This body is that of a child of potential, Sakurai Yukari, a host we borrowed from another dimension so that we, like you, might crossover into this one.”

“I don’t care!” the Handmaiden snarled back, clouds of acrid smoke surrounding her, malice given form. “I’m not interested in where you come from, or what you do, I just want to see you suffer!”

“We are an advanced AI in the body of a child, we do not feel as you feel.”

Angrily, the Handmaiden snatched at the velvet pouch she had had been given, pouring out rings into the palm of an open hand, bands of silver falling to the dirt.

She closed her hand around the first one that caught her eye, shaking the rest free.

‘Falchion, please.’

The ring glistened on her finger, energy cascading outward from the touch of metal and flesh as her Antrooper gauntlets faded, a different kind of metal superseding them, holding her in place as it breached the barriers between states of dreaming, shifting into place around her, scarred flames and black metal.

Across from her, the child drew another card, sliding it effortlessly into her belt.

‘Majade Night—’

The Handmaiden screamed in fury, her blade drawn, an arc of flame, madness swallowing her up at the mention of the name, the memory of an overturned table, dead lilies and stagnant water, broken glass.

Fire swallowed up the figure of the child in her white armour, driving her away in a torrent of flame and fission, a glimpse of shattered blue glass and scorched metal as she retreated into the dreaming between worlds.

The Handmaiden lowered her sword, her breath laboured beneath the breastplate of her borrowed armour.

At her feet, the eyes of etched faces in the metal of those spilt rings looked up at her without feeling.

*

Showa Girls Remix in Hallowe’en Party
répondez s’il vous plaît

“Would you care for an appetiser, mesdames?”

Across from her, Miko reached out and quickly, she pushed the other woman’s hand away.

“Miko,” she chided, her name a warning, the unspoken communication of danger.

Dressed in velvet and a ruffled blouse, her dearest friend, Tashiro Mitsuko, frowned with confusion.

“They’re just sweets, Shosuke.”

She pouted, clearly feeling as if she had been deprived of something. Yet there was no such thing as ‘just sweets,’ Ohara Asako reflected darkly, and this party was dangerous, somewhere they should never have come, not without the aid of real magic. In her garter belt, she had stuffed several Chemy cards that she had been able to smuggle past security but Tashiro Mitsuko and Ohara Asako of the Alchemys Union’s Investigations Department were a long way from the children they had been when they had first encountered the reality of magic.

‘I’ll tell you the ultimate secret of magic,’ a man in a dirty tan trench coat had once told her. ‘Any cunt could do it.’

“Excuse me,” Miko said to the waiter standing with one hand behind his back and the other beneath the expensive silver tray and its wobbling, cubes of jelly. “Excuse me, but I can’t tell if you’re a boy or a girl.”

Shosuke frowned, alarmed at how innocently her childhood friend asked such things.

“Miko!” she chided again.

The waiter frowned, reaching up to brush the curls of silver hair from his shoulder.

“How rude.”

Shosuke nodded with understanding.

“I’m a girl, of course!”

Her eyes widened as she took in this youthful figure in shorts and waistcoat, the crisp white shirt buttoned up to the top. A smile flickered over her childish lips.

“But I can be a boy if you like, madame,” she answered roguishly. “I’ve got quite good at that recently, a little something to keep the wife amused. We’re not as bothered by things like as you people are.”

Shosuke felt nervous, uncomfortable in her fancy dress, feeling the twitch of the cards beneath satin, each homunculus ready to aid her in extricating herself from this party.

“I don’t think we’ll need anything that you’re offering.”

The girl sniffed airily.

“Suit yourself.” She turned away and paused, looking over her shoulder. “But don’t say I didn’t try to treat you.”

As the waitress retreated back to the bar where she conversed with an equally effeminate and indistinct bartender, Shosuke found herself scanning the crowd, trying to pick out the people she recognised.

There was Otohime of great Ryugujo in full regalia, a figure of immaculate white next to her ageless wife in burgundy ball gown and a Letterman jacket two sizes too big. There was the detective, Matoba Kyoko, possibly working the same case as they were, there was one of the Yamabuki sisters, the oldest one she believed, Yukiko, arguing once again with the owner of the Ojousama Group, Okubo Reika. There was the thirty-sixth Jiraiya, Yamaji Kei.

All of these women were those she might never have met had not a witch tricked them into taking into their possession a sports bag full of magical relics when she and her friends had been but 10-years-old.

She exhaled loudly.

Well, she was a long way from 10-years-old now, almost fifty years on since those formulative moments in 1976, but it was undeniable that magic had changed her life, had changed all their lives. Without the witch Bellbara’s ‘gift,’ she would not have been scouted to attend the Alchemys Union’s Academy instead of going to a regular high school, and without such grounding, neither her nor Miko would have joined the Investigations Department.

That bag of witch’s tricks had come with its own tutelary spirit, a genius locorum she had only learnt in later life had also been a Chemy, a trick of alchemy.

Magic had changed her life, it was undeniable. Without magic, they wouldn’t have received invites to this dubious Hallowe’en party also, she thought.

Again, her eyes scanned the crowd, an older woman and a younger girl in floral yukata, the suggestion of another Investigations Department uniform, someone moving quickly out of sight. It struck her suddenly that all the attendees of the party were women.

“You noticed, huh, madame?”

Miko jumped visibly and Shosuke tensed herself, finding again the boy-girl waiter between them.

“Who are you?” Shosuke asked with a frown, annoyed at the unwanted interjection into their investigation.

The girl in her waiter’s uniform bowed low, now divest of her tray of appetisers.

“Liselle of the great Želdac family. We helped finance this little soiree.”

“And that’s why you’re a member of the staff?”

The young girl frowned slightly as if confused by the accusation.

“I’m helping out because it’s fun!” she remarked. “But I’m also aware that your tickets aren’t the VIP tier, and that’s a terrible mistake I wish to correct.”

“VIP tier?” Miko repeated.

“There’s an afterparty at a club owned by the Takarada conglomerate that might be more to mesdames liking.”

Afterparty, Shosuke thought bitterly. I’m almost 60-years-old, the last thing I want is to go clubbing.

“Afterparty?” Miko repeated again.

Liselle nodded eagerly.

“You might even find something good there.”

That though, that was a hook that Shosuke couldn’t resist.

“We can come back here if we change our minds?” she asked.

Or if it turns out that this other party is a distraction from what was really happening, she thought.

Liselle grinned, all white teeth and wide, blue eyes.

“Why, of course!”

She offered an arm to both women. Shosuke hesitated but soon followed after Miko took the girl’s arm without concern.

“Mesdames, let me show you the way,” the girl announced.

Ohara Asako couldn’t help but note that her face was alive with mischief.