"It's not as bad as it looks" ghost ot3?
hello anon who requested this weeks ago, i have apologies to make - exam weeks happened and i was consumed by making parental duties. i’m so sorry! i hope the fic makes up for the wait OTL
ft. a truly startling amount of gaorangers and takeru being takeru
.
.
It's not as bad as it looks, Takeru thinks to himself as he peers down the cliff. Unnatural darkness aside, it's a clean drop and there doesn't seem to be anything other than the ground to break his fall. Worst case scenario: he lands on the flower he's meant to be bringing up and gets nothing but bruises for the trouble; best case scenario: he makes it down and then back up with the flower, completely without incident.
There's only one thing that'll tip the balance to his favor.
He looks back to the boys - one in black, one in white - who'd brought him there, asking for a favor. They don't look like they'd particularly mind if he backed out now, but --
"Just one thing. Who's the flower for again?"
In unison, the boys reply: "Our dad."
Exactly. That's why he'd agreed. Smiling, Takeru tells them to give him just a bit of time.
.
.
.
In the blink of an eye, Takeru misjudges the next ledge he's reaching for, his feet falter on the lip of his thin foothold, and he falls head-first into the blank, black void.
The drop is quick, the moment of unconsciousness when his head hits the ground hard enough even quicker. When Takeru blinks awake from greyed-out black, he wonders if any time has passed at all. As he sits up, there's nothing of his body that makes him wince in pain, though he vividly recalls the solid thump! of his body landing on the ground.
There's dust on his clothes and dark all around him, but otherwise no cause for alarm. Perpetually worrying high pain tolerance aside, there's nothing to feel pained by, and Takeru reconsiders the instinct to panic when he realizes that he can't feel anything at all. He might be dead again, which is a normal conclusion, but also - he might just be in some in-between world, some purgatory-type place that means no harm to people even if they don't exactly belong there.
(He ignores the brighter flash of panic when he tries to call his belt and nothing happens. Purgatory had rules, everybody knew that. Dead or alive, he could become Ghost, but right now he's just in the in-between, that's why he can't. Sound logic. There's no reason to panic.)
It's the feeling in his gut that settles it - there are easier ways to trick him, a cry for help would have done the thing, but the favor was from two sons for their father, and Takeru refuses to think that there's a lie anywhere in those facts.
He gets to his feet, dusts himself off, and looks up - from where he now stands, the edge of the cliff and the flower he'd ventured down for flicker like lightning strikes, an abnormal play of light in a place where there's no source of it. It's a steep climb, not impossible, but without much in the way of 'safe area to step on' or 'secure rock to hold on to'.
Vaguely Takeru thinks it'd be easier if he could just float up, despite the requirement of him being 'just dead enough' to do so. The void swallows the hysterical laugh that bubbles out of him, but not the gleam of light over his shoulder that cuts it short. Something twinkles in the distance, and, lacking any option other than continued hysteria or birthing terrible ideas, Takeru walks towards it.
If he could just find a way up the cliff again...
.
.
.
"It's not as bad as it looks," the man with eyes the color of ginkgo leaves says, his glance sliding from between Makoto and Alain with remarkably little fear despite the fact that they look one word away from full-on assault, witnesses be damned. "I've been there before and I'm here now so, obviously, there's a way out."
"Regardless, that he was even coerced into going there--" Years of kinghood has lent Alain's voice enough steel to be impregnable, but the man interrupts him as if that meant absolutely nothing.
"Oi, let's call it as it is and say he went there on his own. S'not my boys' fault he agreed to do them a favor."
Makoto shifts his gaze from the man who casually refuses to be cowed by their presence to the 'boys' in question, a pair of twins standing at either side of him. One in black and one in white, both tall enough to dwarf their older companion by more than a few inches. They share his careless air with the lack of expression natural to teenagers, and, unsurprisingly, a distinctly inhuman aura.
"So is it Takeru's fault that your boys like to trick humans?"
Makoto's question draws all eyes on him, and identical twitches of the corners of their mouths from the twins. The man between them grimaces.
"... I won't deny that," he sighs, reaching up deftly to pinch the boys' ears and pull them down to bow. The boys bend without fuss, but also don't make any effort to look particularly apologetic. The man continues, "Sorry. They have a really terrible sense of humor, they're working on it."
"We got it from God," the one in black says. The one in white nods. "He'll help your friend."
Alain makes a face and pockets his eyecon. "Another one?" He turns to Makoto, half-exasperated, half-betrayed, "I know you said Japanese religions have many gods, but isn't this too much?"
Frankly, Makoto agrees, but he's not sure which god these twins are referring to, and it already looks like a headache knowing the answer.
"Right. Okay. Since we're doing this anyway--" the man sketches a quick bow and says, "The name's Washio Gaku. The kid in black is Yasei and the one in white is Hokkyoku. You got anywhere big and quiet enough where we can summon God for a bit?"
The temple is close, and Onari's tremulous voice is coming closer; Makoto and Alain barely glance at each other as they agree and introduce themselves, titles and all. Their shared intuition proves right as Gaku stands a little straighter at the words Kamen Rider. He gives them an unsubtle once over before nodding to himself.
"That kid - Takeru - he's a Kamen Rider, too, then?" At their confirmation, Gaku nods again. "That tracks. Alright. When we get to the temple, you two know what to do, ah?" Yasei and Hokkyoku make an affirmative sound, and Gaku faces Alain and Makoto with the resigned smile of a long-suffering adult figure (Alia wears it with more grace, but it's essentially the same).
"It's not likely they'll ever properly apologize, so, if you're fine with it, how about I just owe you a favor from the GaoRangers?"
The name tickles something in Makoto's memory, but it's Onari who stumbles to a stop right behind them, gawking inelegantly before throwing himself into a deep bow.
"Oh my word, of all unprecedented auspiciousness, for the Noble Eagle himself to be here--!"
.
.
.
The light, as it has for the grand total of two times he's followed it, leads Takeru to a youth bathed in light.
"Hello," the boy says, his voice echoing and sending waves through whatever Takeru is made up of at the moment. The light that emanates from him makes it difficult to guess his age (Takeru vacillates between 'disconcertingly young' and 'old enough'), but there's no doubt that he's anything but normal. Why beings of unfathomable power always choose this form, Takeru will never understand.
At least his eyes aren't hurting when he looks at the teenager who radiates an inexplicable sense of authority despite wearing a cap backwards on his head and a t-shirt that has Gudetama on it.
He replies, "Hello," with a smile because it feels natural to do so. There's something distant about the boy, yes, but it isn't suffocating and disorienting as part of Takeru feared it would be.
"I'm sorry to intrude in your space," Takeru adds.
"It isn't by your doing alone." God - at least, Takeru is sure it's some type of god - replies, sounding faintly apologetic. "You were sent for a favor." When Takeru confirms this with a nod, God asks, "Will you finish it, or return now to where you belong?"
Choosing the easier option doesn't even occur to Takeru, who smiles and puts his hands together as he dips into a quick bow to God. "If it isn't too much trouble, I'd like to finish the favor first."
Takeru sees a chip in one of God's front teeth when he grins. "Of course."
.
.
.
"It's not as bad as it looks," Shibuya tells Takeru when he walks up the temple steps with God - 'Call me Fuutaro' - beside him. That's probably a sweet white lie, but the general presence around the temple is calm and untroubled, so Takeru is inclined to believe it.
The it Shibuya is referring to turns out to be Alain and Makoto on their butts on the ground, disheveled as they only ever are after a particularly engaging spar, at the feet of a man in yellow who's grinning at their disgruntled faces. Seated on the steps next to Onari are the twins Takeru had met earlier that day, the one in white holding a jacket and the one in black holding up his hands, three fingers up on the left and none on the right.
"Oh, hey," the man in yellow says at the sight of them, "there you are, Fuutaro." He calls for a timeout and walks towards the twins, grabbing them by their ears and pulling them that way to Takeru. At his side, Fuutaro sighs.
Standing in front of Takeru, the man has to look up a little, as opposed to the twins who stand almost at the same height as him if not taller (and if they weren't stooped over by the man's hold on their ears). "Takeru-kun, right?"
"Uh, yes." Takeru glances at the twins who look completely unbothered by their positions before holding up the flowers he'd traveled through a pocket of the spirit realm for. "I was asked to get these for you, I think-- Mister--?"
"Washio Gaku, and, honestly?" Gaku releases the twins to take the flowers, holding them carefully in his cupped hands. He shoots the teens on either side of him two separate looks of exasperation, but it isn't long before he's smiling, the creases at the corners of his eyes multiplying in an expression of delight.
The twins start to smile too, and Takeru can't help but join them. It's even easier when the twins direct their smiles at him, along with a bow and a chorused "Thank you". He's about to say that it wasn't any trouble at all, but Fuutaro interrupts him, a scolding twist to his mouth that makes Alain and Makoto's expressions darken as they approach.
"You fell off a cliff, and it's only because of your… uniqueness that you didn't suffer much from it." Fuutaro levels a look at the twins that gets them scooting behind Gaku, not quite guilty but not as carelessly confident as they had been earlier. "You're lucky Takeru-kun is both kind and sturdy enough, you owe him for this."
It's Takeru's turn to interrupt Alain and Makoto when they look fit to add more to the sentiment, throwing his arms wide to keep them from looming over the twins and pitching his voice the cheeriest he can as he says, "I'll take the favor, sure, but I'm happy to help either way."
To Gaku (and to reassure Alain and Makoto as well), he adds, "I don't think they were trying to be mean or anything. They said it was for their dad, so I couldn't say no."
"For their--oh." Gaku blinks, looking between the twins as if the idea hadn't occurred to him before then. They nod and, still in sync, grab hold of Gaku's sleeves with one hand each. "Really, you two…"
Alain's harsh stare softens a little at the sight, and Makoto heaves a little sigh that means Takeru is mostly off the hook for worrying them so much.
"...Well, I, huh." Politely, no one mentions the blush spreading over Gaku's cheeks as he collects himself. "Right. Apologies are done, so - keep that favor in mind, alright, Takeru-kun? Onari over there knows how to reach us."
They exchange goodbyes over Onari's flustered bowing, something that Makoto explains as 'mild hysterics about meeting a childhood hero', and Fuutaro gets Takeru to put his number into Gaku's phone. "Just in case," he says, "It's easier than dowsing in a spring."
As they watch Gaku, flanked by the twins and trailed after by Fuutaro, go down the temple steps, Alain asks if dowsing by spring was at all a regular form of human communication. Onari bulldozes over Takeru's casual agreement with an explanation so expansive, Makoto gets away with doing all the fussing over Takeru's completely nonexistent injuries from falling off a cliff by himself.
This means, however, that Alain has to do his own fussing later - but as Makoto tugs Takeru down the hallway he finds that the prospect isn't as bad as it sounds.
.
.
1-Gaku's t-shirt says "It's a beautiful day to leave me alone", because I couldn't find one that says "Yellow is the color of danger".
2-Yasei and Hokkyoku are just. the Wild from Wild (Black Bear) and the Polar from Polar Bear. occasionally when they descend to earth they'd need names, right? esp if they're hanging around with dad? i love yellow's kids who adopted him.
![Gaoranger Roar!! [Actor Special Version]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mws75hwMe91soaaoyo1_1385319221_cover.jpg)