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Description

Before there were Contract Riders —before there was even a Common Rider —the people of Elysium were under threat. The thoughts and fears of humanity resonated with the so-called "kingstones" that the city relied on, and through the zeitgeist field that surrounded them, inhuman and mindless monsters were formed from quantum foam—monsters that would one day become known as "Geisters". Officially, the Elysium City Council did not recognise the Geisters' existence; for eighteen years, the mysterious deaths of Elysium's people were deemed tragic accidents. But Elysium was not unprotected.

Set apart from humanity, but fighting to defend it, was the first of the kaizo ningen, or parahumans. Sakurako Sawatari, a research assistant at Elysium University, found herself transformed into a monstrous insect during one of the earliest Geister attacks; she survived the massacre at the cost of her old life, as she was unable to change back from her altered form and was forced to go into hiding. Sawatari would emerge only to protect people from Geister attacks, clad in a tattered cloak to hide her monstrous appearance and riding a motorcycle that—sometimes—helped her reach the scenes of disaster in time to save lives.

By the time that Sawatari learned to change back to her human appearance, the Elysian government had learned of her existence, and was determined to replicate the capabilities of "Parahuman Ichi-Gou"; they eventually accomplished this through the "Ni-Gata System", a combination of cybernetic enhancement and orthopteran DNA with a kingstone-based energy projection to stabilize it. Their test subject for the system was the young Tsuyoshi Hitomonji, a teenager who idolised Sawatari after she saved his life, and who volunteered for the process so that he could save people like she did; while Sawatari was horrified that Hitomonji would willingly give up his humanity, she reluctantly took him on as a protégé.

Over the next two years, Sawatari and Hitomonji worked together to protect Elysium from Geisters. As she began fighting more openly, having formed a tentative peace with the Elysian government, Sawatari assumed a more heroic persona, exchanging her heavy cloak for a more lightweight shawl. However, she was privately troubled; for years, she had been feeling pain and pressure in her abdomen around the kingstone that protruded from her waist, and she frequently found herself coughing up gravel with no apparent cause. When the Medusa Geister emerged—a Geister more powerful and destructive than any before it, forcing the Elysium City Council to publicly recognise its existence as a paranatural entity—Sawatari became convinced that it was "hers", viewing its petrification abilities as a twisted reflection of her own strange affliction.

As the Medusa Geister became increasingly violent and accelerated towards the city center, Sawatari managed to convince Hitomonji that the only way to end the threat was to eliminate both her and the Geister at once—persuading him that "human life is more important than even peace and justice". Reluctantly, Hitomonji destroyed the Medusa Geister, resulting in an explosion that killed Sawatari. In the aftermath, Hitomonji was officially presented to the people of the dome as the Common Rider, and Sawatari's role in events was quietly covered up. Nonetheless, Hitomonji was left traumatised by his mentor's death, and would do his best to honor her over the course of the following hundred-plus years, styling his armor after her parahuman form and trying—in his own misguided way—to adhere to her dying words.

Ichi-Gou was conceived as a "proto-Rider" akin to Skull Man or Cross Fire, as well as being the "Kamen Rider #1" to Hitomonji's "Kamen Rider #2". Game master RedlineSSB described her as looking like Go-Badaa-Ba (the grasshopper Grongi), so I tried to combine that—the pattern on her chest is nigh-identical to Go-Badaa-Ba's tattoo—with other more monstrous Riders such as Kamen Rider Shin, and Kamen Rider Black's "Batta Man" form.

Several elements of her design, such as the scar across her chest and the way her horns curve back, were retroactively designed so that they could be inspirations for the Common Rider's design; in particular, the light grey on her forearms and feet corresponds to the red on Hitomonji's suit, another reference to Kamen Riders #1 and #2. The difference in her eyes is intended to reflect tapetum lucidum, with their pink color only being visible when the light hits them; however, who's to say that her more heroic image among the public didn't have an effect on how the zeitgeist fields shaped her physical form? The kingstone on her waist is supposed to appear as if it's pushing through her chitin from the inside, forming a sort of ersatz belt. The stone itself has a barely-visible mummified grasshopper inside it.

The name "Sakurako Sawatari" might be familiar to you; that's because Ichi-Gou is an alternate-universe version of the supporting character of the same name from Kamen Rider Kuuga, hence her Grongi design influences. With Hitomonji having been compared to Big Boss, Sawatari is pretty clearly his equivalent of the Boss. Lastly, her mysterious gravel-coughing affliction is an early manifestation of K-Lung .

Templates by Taiko554 , of course.

Description

Before there were Contract Riders —before there was even a Common Rider —the people of Elysium were under threat. The thoughts and fears of humanity resonated with the so-called "kingstones" that the city relied on, and through the zeitgeist field that surrounded them, inhuman and mindless monsters were formed from quantum foam—monsters that would one day become known as "Geisters". Officially, the Elysium City Council did not recognise the Geisters' existence; for eighteen years, the mysterious deaths of Elysium's people were deemed tragic accidents. But Elysium was not unprotected.

Set apart from humanity, but fighting to defend it, was the first of the kaizo ningen, or parahumans. Sakurako Sawatari, a research assistant at Elysium University, found herself transformed into a monstrous insect during one of the earliest Geister attacks; she survived the massacre at the cost of her old life, as she was unable to change back from her altered form and was forced to go into hiding. Sawatari would emerge only to protect people from Geister attacks, clad in a tattered cloak to hide her monstrous appearance and riding a motorcycle that—sometimes—helped her reach the scenes of disaster in time to save lives.

By the time that Sawatari learned to change back to her human appearance, the Elysian government had learned of her existence, and was determined to replicate the capabilities of "Parahuman Ichi-Gou"; they eventually accomplished this through the "Ni-Gata System", a combination of cybernetic enhancement and orthopteran DNA with a kingstone-based energy projection to stabilize it. Their test subject for the system was the young Tsuyoshi Hitomonji, a teenager who idolised Sawatari after she saved his life, and who volunteered for the process so that he could save people like she did; while Sawatari was horrified that Hitomonji would willingly give up his humanity, she reluctantly took him on as a protégé.

Over the next two years, Sawatari and Hitomonji worked together to protect Elysium from Geisters. As she began fighting more openly, having formed a tentative peace with the Elysian government, Sawatari assumed a more heroic persona, exchanging her heavy cloak for a more lightweight shawl. However, she was privately troubled; for years, she had been feeling pain and pressure in her abdomen around the kingstone that protruded from her waist, and she frequently found herself coughing up gravel with no apparent cause. When the Medusa Geister emerged—a Geister more powerful and destructive than any before it, forcing the Elysium City Council to publicly recognise its existence as a paranatural entity—Sawatari became convinced that it was "hers", viewing its petrification abilities as a twisted reflection of her own strange affliction.

As the Medusa Geister became increasingly violent and accelerated towards the city center, Sawatari managed to convince Hitomonji that the only way to end the threat was to eliminate both her and the Geister at once—persuading him that "human life is more important than even peace and justice". Reluctantly, Hitomonji destroyed the Medusa Geister, resulting in an explosion that killed Sawatari. In the aftermath, Hitomonji was officially presented to the people of the dome as the Common Rider, and Sawatari's role in events was quietly covered up. Nonetheless, Hitomonji was left traumatised by his mentor's death, and would do his best to honor her over the course of the following hundred-plus years, styling his armor after her parahuman form and trying—in his own misguided way—to adhere to her dying words.

Ichi-Gou was conceived as a "proto-Rider" akin to Skull Man or Cross Fire, as well as being the "Kamen Rider #1" to Hitomonji's "Kamen Rider #2". Game master RedlineSSB described her as looking like Go-Badaa-Ba (the grasshopper Grongi), so I tried to combine that—the pattern on her chest is nigh-identical to Go-Badaa-Ba's tattoo—with other more monstrous Riders such as Kamen Rider Shin, and Kamen Rider Black's "Batta Man" form.

Several elements of her design, such as the scar across her chest and the way her horns curve back, were retroactively designed so that they could be inspirations for the Common Rider's design; in particular, the light grey on her forearms and feet corresponds to the red on Hitomonji's suit, another reference to Kamen Riders #1 and #2. The difference in her eyes is intended to reflect tapetum lucidum, with their pink color only being visible when the light hits them; however, who's to say that her more heroic image among the public didn't have an effect on how the zeitgeist fields shaped her physical form? The kingstone on her waist is supposed to appear as if it's pushing through her chitin from the inside, forming a sort of ersatz belt. The stone itself has a barely-visible mummified grasshopper inside it.

The name "Sakurako Sawatari" might be familiar to you; that's because Ichi-Gou is an alternate-universe version of the supporting character of the same name from Kamen Rider Kuuga, hence her Grongi design influences. With Hitomonji having been compared to Big Boss, Sawatari is pretty clearly his equivalent of the Boss. Lastly, her mysterious gravel-coughing affliction is an early manifestation of K-Lung .

Templates by Taiko554 , of course.