January 5th - Kamen Rider/CSI - Draft

January 5th, 2003

"About time you showed up."

"Yeah traffic was murder," cracked Grissom in his usual deadpan way, looking over at Brass. "What do we have?"

"One Japanese national dead on American soil," replied Brass, showing Grissom the crime scene. The man looked peaceful but half of his lower body was completely gone, the rest of his limbs impacted by something heavy. "This is the first time I've been puzzled. For a moment I thought it was a train jump gone bad being so close to the tracks."

Grissom looked down at the body, crouching and shifting the shirt off to the side. "Yes but trains don't leave teeth marks."

"Teeth marks?" echoed Brass.

"Looks like our vic was completely, for a lack of a better term, eaten alive and then left for dead." Moving his hand across the vic, checking for more evidence, Grissom frowned as he came upon a hard lump. Carefully extracting it, he found a blood-stained yellow deck with a gold marking on it.

"What do you suppose that is?" inquired Brass.

"A deck, and not the kind you sand." surmised Grissom, cards spilling from it.

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January 5th, 2003 - Same Day

Grissom leaned back in his chair, thinking quietly to himself seconds before a mug of coffee was placed down next to him. "Busy day?" inquired Catherine.

"A little. The latest vic just found outside of town's a puzzle. He got bit in half, and as far as I know, no one's reported that Godzilla's come to town." replied Grissom, taking a sip of his coffee. "Doc Robbins said he's already on it, and it's throwing him for a loop."

"So we have either a large carnivorous animal on the loose, or some crazy circus animal trainer with an attack crocodile." surmised Catherine.

"Or, Godzilla as Greg would say. But I'd say that's more obvious." Grissom sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly. "Got anything else besides coffee?"

"Just one. We ran an analysis of the prints on the deck and cards. Half of them belong to the vic, a one Jiro Yamada. Born in Hokkaido 1978, lost his position as a salary man, and basically has been on the homeless radar for a while. The other... belong to a dead man."

Grissom sat up straight at the second part of the news. "A dead man?"

"The process comes from the NY branch actually, and was processed over a year ago. One Shiro Takami. He was adopted years ago by his American relatives and he died in New York." Catherine handed him the report with the picture of the man on it. "Why a dead mans prints would be on this, just adds to the mystery."

"More reason to find out why this deck is so special."

"You sure it's a deck?"

"It's got cards in it, so I surmise it's a deck of some kind."

"Hey," interrupted Greg, coming to the door. "Brass just called, there's a situation. We've got reports of another body downtown."

"The party train never stops." deadpanned Grissom, getting up and grabbing a swig of coffee before heading out.

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January 5th, 2003 - Same Day

"Got another vic, this one not as messy as the first," explained the plainclothes to Grissom when he showed up. "This one was just simply done, neck snapped from what we can tell."

"That's... pretty normal."

"It would, but the guy is missing his arm. Looks like something was chewing on it." At Grissom's expression, the plainclothes sighed. "This is going to be one of those cases, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Put out an APB, be on the lookout for any transports that could hold large animals." replied Grissom, moving over and putting on gloves. "What've we got?"

"Glass shards everywhere. Looks like someone smashed a window while coming down on this guy. And tracks." replied Catherine, having gone on ahead. "Which... stop at the shattered window."

Examining the window, Grissom frowned. "No trace of blood anywhere, and it's too high up on this building to have smashed it normally. And the glass is on the outside, not the inside so it couldn't have been an impromptu way of getting out of the crime scene. Let's get a look inside the building."

Once inside, Grissom scowled at the appearance of the seemingly neat office building. Inspecting the floor, he sighed. "Now this is odd. There's no blood on the inside. Normally when someone blows out a window, there's little flecks of blood from micro abrasions."

"And no tracks either, other than the office workers?" Catherine asked. Grissom shook his head.

"Sunday. Only people here would be the janitors and according to his statement, he was across the building. Security cameras confirm it. Let's get a copy of the tape though."

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January 5th, 2003 - Same Day

"Rewind. Stop." Folding his arms, Grissom pointed at the large shadow in the reflection of the window. "There."

"There's our animal. But it doesn't look like anything we've seen before on this scale." remarked Catherine. "Can you clean it up a little?"

"Sure." Zooming in, Greg brought up the horribly pixelated image. "It's hard to make out, but I think there's enough to... holy."

"Is... that a giant snake?" Nick remarked, shuddering. "Oh that's lovely. A big purple cobra. That's going to replace something in my nightmares."

"I'm more concerned about the shadow behind it. Zoom in, Greg." said Grissom, pointing at a small patch of the screen.

Zooming in, Greg did his best to clean it up until a relatively sharp picture was taken. Scowling, Grissom adjusted his glasses. "What... is that?"

"It looks like a man in armor..."

"Kamen Rider..." Everyone turned towards Greg. "Ah, I know this. Back in the 1970s there was a group of people in Japan, they called them Riders. I've heard the stories, but this is the first time I've actually seen one."

"So why is this Kamen Rider here killing people in Las Vegas." Grissom folded his arms. "Get in touch with our friends in the Tokyo PD, let them know their residents are killing people on our soil."

"Oogh, might want to rephrase that a little more delicately." winced Greg. "Kamen Riders are Japan's treasures, right up with Gundams and Astro Boy."

"Okay, we tell them a deranged man in armor is killing people with a giant snake." He gave a meaningful look at Catherine who sighed and walked off, saying, "I'll get Brass on it."

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January 6th, 2003

Stepping off the plane, Kaoru Ichijou put on sunglasses as he squinted into the warm Las Vegas sun. Gathering his bags from the turntable, he looked around before noticing a couple of uniforms standing there, with his name on a placecard. Walking over, he nodded at them. "Gentlemen," he said in accented English. "I believe I'm the one you're looking for?"

"Inspector Kaoru Ichijou?" inquired one of the men. "I'm Brass, of the LVPD. Nice to meet you. Thank you for coming on short notice."

"Not at all. When our superiors heard you were having Rider trouble, they put me on the first plane here. Shall we?"

In the car, Ichijou looked around the garish strip that they were passing through. "This is quite the city," he remarked.

"It has its ups and downs," replied Brass, pulling into the police department. "Our expert team is already assembled, and waiting for you."

"Then we shouldn't keep them waiting." Grabbing his case, Ichijou headed in with Brass. What greeted him was a couple of people standing near the bullpen, one of them a young man wearing a red scarf and a Ichigo Mask. The woman in front of him was telling him to take it off for now. "Welcoming," chuckled Ichijou.

"Of all the things for them to do today," grumbled Brass. "Sara, Greg, this is Inspector Kaoru Ichijou, of the Nagano PD. He's the police forces expert on Riders."

"Back in my day we didn't call Kuuga a Rider, but the same thing held true after a while," remarked Ichijou. "Can I see the evidence?"

"Of course it's this way." Sara turned to lead them, elbowing Greg who sheepishly pulled the mask off.

"Nice mask," remarked Ichijou, passing by Greg who grinned and gave Sara a "I told you so" look.

Then, Greg stopped in shock at the last words Ichijou said. "No. 4 was a Rider?"

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"You have one..." remarked Ichijou, staring at the items in question, and not at the body.

"Have what?" inquired Nick.

Moving over to the packaged deck, Ichijou held it up. "The Tokyo PD's been watching the Rider War for a while, but you've obtained one of their transformation decks."

"Transformation?" echoed Greg and Nick together. "Dibs," added Greg.

"Maybe you can enlighten us on what this does," said Grissom. "We're in the dark right now."

Picking up the deck in its wrapping, Ichijou mimicked Yusuke's motions. "To use it, one would be wearing a belt. We're calling them Drivers recently. And then use the word "henshin" which is Japanese for transform. And then you slide it into the belt. I don't want to actually give it a try, because we don't know just how powerful Odin is."

"Odin. Like the mythological figure?" inquired Sara.

"That's right. There was a war, a sort of stealth war. ORE Journal has been following it lately, and helping the police protect people when the Riders are busy fighting one another. There were about 13 at the beginning, but then they've been slowly thinning their ranks."

"No doubt making it harder for the Tokyo PD to keep it under tabs," remarked Catherine.

"We try, but after the Grongi and the Unknown, we're at the point of admitting publically there's yet another Rider incident. The explosion at Seimeiin University was the tipping point for this new Rider situation. To think that one of them jumped over to the States to run rampant." sighed Ichijou.