Karl wandered through the skeletal remains of what used to be Edgewater, the wind tugging at his coat and whistling through fractured glass panes. Broken signs leaned at awkward angles, and the skeletal frames of storefronts groaned under decades of neglect.
Then his eyes caught it — a familiar, almost painfully nostalgic shape through the dust: the ruined, abandoned shell of a Gashapon Bandai Official Shop inside the Mitsuwa Marketplace. The paint was chipped, the glass counters shattered, and gashapon capsules spilled like forgotten memories across the cracked floor.
Karl stepped deeper into the abandoned Mitsuwa Marketplace, boots kicking up dust as he moved through the half‑collapsed Bandai Gashapon Shop.
Capsules lay everywhere like frozen candy — cracked, melted, faded by two centuries of sun and storms.
His boots crunched against a faded plastic capsule, and he bent down, brushing off layers of ash. Inside, a tiny figure — a miniature Kamen Rider—lay almost perfectly preserved. Its colors dulled by time but unmistakable.
The plastic was brittle, but the tiny Rider inside — cobalt helmet, silver crest — was intact.
Karl carefully picked up the tiny figure, feeling the familiar weight of plastic in his hand. For a moment, he allowed himself to drift back — to the boy who dreamed of being a hero, whose heart burned with impossible courage.
"Agnes…" he murmured softly, voice almost trembling. "Look at this… I can't believe it's still here."
Her tone softened, a rare warmth threading through the usual teasing: "Mmm~ my perfect driver~ even after two centuries, you still find joy in the small things, huh? That's… admirable."
His chest tightened.
Not from injury.
Not from Vythra depletion.
But from a place older and softer than either.
His thumb brushed the miniature's visor.
And suddenly the smell of dust and rusted metal was replaced by a memory — the faint scent of antiseptic and warm blankets from hospital rooms he'd lived in more than he'd ever lived at home.
He remembered being seven years old, too weak to stand for more than five minutes, sitting cross‑legged on his hospital bed while Reginald brought him a big plastic bag filled with gashapon capsules from a Bandai shop just like this.
"Kamen Rider again, Master Karl?" Reggie had teased.
Karl remembered grinning, that huge impossible grin only sick kids with big dreams could make.
"They're heroes, Reggie," he had said.
"I wanna be one too."
Even when his lungs burned.
Even when he walked with braces.
Even when he had to breathe through machines.
Little Karl had always believed that one day he wouldn't just watch heroes.
He'd become one.
Back in the ruins, present‑day Karl let out a slow breath.
Agnes' voice drifted in, uncharacteristically gentle.
"...You're remembering again, aren't you~?"
He didn't deny it.
"This place… these toys… this was the only world where I wasn't fragile."
He gave a small huff of a laugh. "When I couldn't even run without collapsing, I used to pretend I could transform like them. Pretend I wasn't breakable."
"Mmm~" Agnes hummed softly, almost lovingly. "Seems your little heart knew what your body didn't~ You were always meant to be more."
Karl picked up another capsule — this one empty, its figure long gone.
His hand shook slightly.
"I used to think being fragile made me weak," he said quietly.
"But I guess… that's what made me want to build something stronger. Something that couldn't break like I did."
He sat in the dust, surrounded by the tiny plastic heroes that had raised him more than his parents ever got the chance to.
And then he did something he hadn't done in decades — maybe centuries.
Karl stayed kneeling in the ruins of the Gashapon shop for a long moment, the faint plastic smell of the miniature Riders mixing with dust and rust. His younger self — the frail boy with trembling bones and hospital bracelets — felt closer here than anywhere else on Earth.
For a second, he almost forgot the wasteland outside.
A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. The sound of his own heartbeat seemed louder here, echoing against the ruined walls. He remembered the hours he spent as a child, eagerly collecting them, arranging them, imagining battles where he was the hero.
A laugh escaped him, quiet but genuine. "All this… all this destruction… and yet… some things still survive."
Agnes hummed approvingly. "Just like you, Karl~ Some things, some people… endure no matter what."
Karl's grip tightened on the miniature Rider. "Yeah… just like me."
And in that shattered shop, amid the ruins of decades, Karl allowed himself to feel a flicker of pure, untainted hope — the kind only a child's dream could spark.
Karl moved slowly through the wreckage, picking up a few more scattered capsules. Each one felt like a shard of memory: a miniature figure of a Rider he had loved as a child, a tiny vehicle he had imagined racing alongside his heroes, a cracked sticker of a battle emblem. Each object whispered fragments of his past, and for the first time in centuries, Karl let himself feel human again — more than just a body sustained by Vythra.