Work Text:
You must’ve gotten here somehow. You don’t remember it exactly. There are lots of things you don’t remember- gaps in your memory. But you remember enough to recognize the gaps.
Working at a café seems right, though. Even if you’re not sure how you got this shop. The sign outside the front is empty. You’re going to have to come up with a name to put there.
Though the store itself looks very much like it’s in the state of pre-open, when you start preparing for opening, the physical chores come surprisingly natural to you, which means you probably also did similar things before your memory gave out. Okay. That’s something you can work with. You try to make a coffee. It turns out you don’t like the taste of coffee.
“Sorry to bother you in your retirement.” says the disheveled man, head dropping to a bow, handing out what looked like a plastic gun towards you. “But we need your help, True Hero. Would you act as support for your successors?”
Not a single word that comes out of his mouth makes sense, but when you don’t even really remember who you are, and there is a man who does know who you are, it doesn’t look like such a bad idea to take his word for it. What harm can it do anyway? You take it, the gun fits the calluses on your palms.
⚙️
And it’s fine! It’s cool. You can transform into a superhero and fight monsters with your lightsaber gun given to you by a man who looks like he sleeps in the park.
He calls himself the guardian of the boundary between the nouto world and the human world. Then he gives you a crash-course on the lore there.
You don’t get it, exactly, because it’s a lot of things to take in at once (he offers you a summarized guidebook for reviewing in future days) but what you’ve gathered from this briefing is that you are going to be in charge of a group of five other momotarou-themed guys called the Donbrothers: keeping track of their contributions and giving them well-done points that would allow them to trade for wishes and stuff. And also help them out if they get stuck. So basically a manager. Great.
“Take this do not push button.” says the man, who called himself Momoi Jin. “Do not push it.”
“Alright.” You say. “What does it do?”
“It’s a security system that activates DonKiller, a killing android designed by the Don Clan to stop the Donbrothers if they ever go rogue. It’s not a great system. Don’t activate it unless absolutely necessary.”
“And you want me to keep this button?”
He nods. “You’re the admin. You might want to keep it in a safe in your base, so no one presses it by accident. That’s your café, by the way. That should be your base.”
“My base?”
“Not yours specifically. The Donbrothers’. Where they will come by after heroing and rest and eat and hang out with each other. That kind of stuff.”
Okay, so less manager, and more kindergarten teacher.
“You know, the leader of the Donbrothers is my son.” says Momoi-san. He sounds proud about it. “I found him floating down the river in a giant peach.”
⚙️
You get a safe, one with a twelve-digit-code that you put in with a randomized generator, which may be overkilling it a little, but better safe than sorry, right? This is all to make sure no one accidentally calls a killing machine on your future hero colleagues. You decide to name your shop Café Donbura, after the mysterious Donbrothers.
You look at Zenkaiser Black through the mirror and can’t help but frown at the lack of color. It looks as if someone drained out all the hues, leaving only the pale blue of the visor and the gold antennas.
Why would a suit like this come out from the bright red geartlinger? You sweep your gaze over the bold letters painted across the side of your lightsaber gun. This doesn’t seem like a very matching choice.
You suppose there’s a cool, sleek look to the black and white design, but a splash of red can’t hurt, right? And maybe yellow too, and green. And blue, and pink. And the shoulder bits could be gold too, to make the whole look brighter. You would look much more approachable that way.
But approachable or not, you don’t feel particularly heroic, even when dressed in this very clearly hero-looking suit and being called True Hero, Forever Hero.
It’s hard to get into the role when you can’t remember how you became a hero the first time around. What was your motive? What were you fighting against? You must’ve reached some point in your hero career to be retired now, right? Did you have allies, or were you fighting alone? If you did, where are those allies now? And even if you were a hero in the past, can you still be one with only instinct left to guide you?
You’ve accepted the job though, and you intend on doing it proper. As proper as you can, or at least seem that way. So the first thing to do is study up on that guidebook that Momoi-san gave you.
⚙️
It takes a while before the whole Donbrothers thing starts happening. But everything else happens, and the café grows busy with all kinds of people coming and going. You temporarily hired a girl looking for a job, and later learned that she’s gone and become an idol. You make friends with Santa Claus on break after the Christmas season. You try to make a sundae as per request of a boy coming in with his mother, and it turns out that you have a knack for making sundaes.
Momoi-san’s peace baby son- Don Momotarou delivers packages to your café regularly. He’s very responsible, and gets the job done. He doesn’t engage in much conversation. When he transforms, it’s with a differently shaped gear than the one you use.
You study your own gear under the evening after hours at the café, pick it up and turn it over, and when you move your finger over the 45 printed on the face, you feel a spark of something in the gaps in your memory poking at its seal, ready to leap out.
⚙️
Perhaps a little overbearing of you, but you show up to the newfound Donbrother’s first few fights, just in case something happens. They don’t really need help. Or more accurately, Don Momotarou doesn’t really need help. He is a powerhouse, and he barrels through fights single handedly. It kind of defeats the point of a team, you think, but this is not your place to interfere.
When he defeats the monster made from desire- a hitotsuki, they’re called- it drops a gear, and you catch it in your hand. It’s like yours, and not the Donbrothers’.
When you hold it up to read the 43 on the face, you think you remember yourself slashing down the middle of a giant sushi conveyor belt, weirdly enough.
These gears, they’re scattered, you realize. Up until your own, the 45th. They hold pieces of the gaps in your memory. You put number 43 in your buckle- empty before - and wonder if this is supposed to happen at all.
Suddenly you think there is sense to when Momoi Jin called you Forever Hero - you don’t know about forever, but you’ve done this before, the hero thing, not because someone else told you you did, but because you remember by yourself, you reclaimed a lost part of your past, and it’s yours now, even if it’s something as absurd as chopping down a giant sushi conveyor belt.
“Goshikida Kaito, True Hero.” You say out loud. It’s a vow of commitment.