"And…break!"

"I don't need you to tell me to break. I'm already the best at this game," he said, waving a hand past the cartridge locked into the Gamer Driver around his waist. "And I ain't gonna shoot til you shut up. You wanna be here all night?"

Fats Porker obliged by leaning on his pool cue and falling silent. His opponent knew better than to think it was out of respect as a rival. Let alone respect for the game. The grotesque Corrupture didn't want to put him on his guard so early in the game.

Kamen Rider Hustler was sure of that.

Still, it was time to start the game and show this Corrupture just what a mistake he'd made. The Rider tweaked his suit's plastic-looking fedora straight, contrasting well with the faked half-finished cigarette melded to the front of his mouth plate. He bent over the table, aiming the stick with his right hand with the index finger arched over the tip. Left wasn't his dominant hand, but he couldn't keep the right arm steady enough anymore to make the shots he needed to be a champion pool player.

It didn't matter, though. Because he'd learned to be a champion pool player with his other arm.

His opponent chuckled. "You're gonna shoot at an angle to break?"

Hustler didn't answer. The game would speak for him. It was a language all its own. He hit the ball. It banked off the side in a V-shaped arc and sent the other balls bouncing all over the table. The 9, 10 and 11 balls disappeared into three different pockets at the same time.

Fats laughed and ended it with a snort. He wriggled his drooping pig ears and sniffed the ears with his wide porcine nose. At least he didn't smell like a pig too, Hustler thought with some small gratitude. "Looks like you're playing stripes, huh?" the obese Corrupture giggled.

With a nod, Hustler answered, "And looks like it's your shot now."

The Corrupture got up and walked over, his belly bouncing around under his straining button-up vest and shirt. Horrible brown drool trickled down from flabby jowls holding rows of uneven yellow teeth and tall fangs. The table sagged a little when he leaned his weight on it, lining up his cue to take a shot of his own.

"Watch this fancy shooting, human!" he snickered. Carefully aiming his stick, Fats knocked the cue ball bouncing off the edges of the table in an upside down V arc wider than Hustler's shot. Balls clattered all over the table and the 2 and 5 balls disappeared down the top left and bottom right corner pockets.

Hustler chortled. "Not bad."

He was expecting Fats to fly into a squealing, saliva-spewing rage at his genius going unrecognized. Instead Fats gave a snorting, sniggering laughing that sent his ears shaking and awful brown slobber spraying down and staining the table where they landed. So he was part-right, anyway. "I been waiting for a smartass like you to play, who can actually play," the pig sneered.

"Any clown can say he's amazing," Hustler shrugged. "It takes talent, it takes dedication to be the best."

Fats snorted in amusement. "And you're the best, I guess."

The Rider shrugged again. "I guess we'll find out if we stop talking and start playing."

His opponent held out his hand across the pool table. "Lead on, MacDuff. It's your shot."


Eyes seemed to be watching the game from the smoke-filled darkness around them as the game ticked by. When Hustler tried to look back, he wasn't surprised to see nothing there.

Fats noticed him looking and chuckled. "Afraid I think I can't beat you fair, and I'll have somebody jump out and stick a knife in your back?" he slobbered.

Hustler shrugged. "You've got to admit there's a lot of history for that kind of thing."

Suddenly the Corrupture's face erupted into a silent snarl of rage. "You still think that was me, when we were kids," he squealed. Fats gripped the pool cue like a staff and stomped closer on a cloven hoof.

"Because Bugsters and Corrupture aren't known for fighting fair," Hustler replied calmly.

A weird purple glow came over the pig monster's eyes. "Are we responsible for what happened when a few opportunistic humans tried to pull the strings?" he asked with unusual eloquence, then it was gone again, his eyes the small beady things they'd been before. Fats Porker snorted in annoyance and turned back to the pool table.

He shot. It carried the cue ball around the table, knocking the 3 ball down a side pocket and knocked a ball Hustler had been planning to sink on his turn out of the way. "It wasn't me. I didn't push you off the edge back then," he grunted. "Bet you think if your arm hadn't got messed up from that you'd've already won this game."

Kamen Rider Hustler gave his opponent a sideways look and stepped up to the table for his own shot. "Glad to have you around to tell me what I think so I don't need to worry about doing that for myself," he replied. "And matter of fact, I don't think you're the one who pushed me, Poke."

He shot, ignoring the squeal of anger he heard from over his shoulder. The 12 and 13 balls bounced off the cue ball and off at angles in a Y shape. In the blink of an eye they disappeared down the pockets at two opposite corners.

The next thing he knew Kamen Rider Hustler wasn't looking down at the table anymore. He'd been yanked around to stare right into Fats Porker's deformed face, a puff of steam blowing up that fogged the lenses of Hustler's mask. "Don't. Call. Me. That. Again," warned the Corrupture.

His head jerked upward when the tip of Kamen Rider Hustler's cue slammed into his flabby chin. The Rider stepped back and calmly leaned against the pool table. "Then tell your boss not to send somebody I know to try and knock me off my game," Hustler answered. "He wants to try to get inside my head, only fair for me to do it back." He crossed his arms in front of him and he puffed a plume of smoke from the cigarette stub in his mask. "So you gonna play, or you just wanna fight?"

Huge wrinkled belly heaving grotesquely, Fats Porker stepped back up to the table and lined up his next shot. He knocked the 6 ball spinning across the table, knocking aside another two balls Hustler had been hoping to sink with his next shot. The 6 ball disappeared into the darkness of a side pocket, and Fats Porker whipped around as menacingly as he could with his huge, bulky body.

Looking back over the sweat-stained shoulder of his shirt, Fats Porker snorted. "I can beat you either way, human."

Silently, Kamen Rider Hustler nodded. "Then let's play the game, Poke."

With an annoyed snort and wrinkling his nose, Fats stepped away from the table and extended his hand, silently telling the Rider to take his shot. Keeping one eye on the deformed shadow his friend had become, Hustler lifted his cue and took aim.


It seemed cliché, but he supposed he knew it would come down to this.

The glistening black 8 ball was the last one on the table.

And it was Fats Porker's shot.

He stomped up to the table, laying his cue up on the edge and bumped the bottom into Hustler's stomach as he lined up his next shot. "Whoops," Fats snorted. "Guess I'm too caught up in the game."

"That's nothing new, is it," Hustler muttered.

Suddenly Fats whirled around and caught Hustler in the side of the head with the stick. "Are you looking for a fight?!" squealed the pig Corrupture. "You that afraid I'm gonna win that you gotta change the game?"

Hustler staggered away, still dazed from the blow upside the head. "You do think I pushed you! You still got a grudge with me over your messed-up arm!" Fats thundered and squealed at the same time, making his words come out sounding even more disturbing.

The Kamen Rider had managed to compose himself by then and jabbed Fats in the stomach with the tip of his own cue to push him back to a safer distance. He retorted, "It's the truth. You always did get too caught up in the game. No, you didn't push me down that time, but you still got too caught up in games."

Squealing furiously Fats raised his cue like a staff and swung it down at Hustler's head. He deftly lifted his own to block it and planted his foot on his attacker's belly and shoved him away. "Don't try to deny it, Poke," Hustler said quietly. "It's why you played Kamen Rider Chronicle when everyone tried to warn you it was dangerous. It's why you're working for the monsters now. I'm gonna get you out, though. I promise."

Fats was silent for a minute. Then another minute. Yet another minute. He spun around and for a fraction of a second Hustler got ready to defend himself from another attack. Instead, Fats was leaning over the table and hit the cue ball at the last ball waiting to be sunk.

The 8 ball bounced off the edge of the table at a lazy angle, crawled rather than rolled up to another edge and banked sleepily to a stop in the middle of the table.

"Your shot, human," Fats grunted and stepped aside.

Before the Corrupture had a chance to change his mind Hustler stepped up and took aim. He hit the cue ball hard enough to leave a blue chalk stain on the side when it went bouncing off one side of the table then hit the other and snaked over to where the last ball on the table was sitting. It was a sloppy, chaotic shot. Hustler knew he could've done much, much better.

But he also wanted more than anything to finish the game before he was forced to fight his old friend.

White hit black. Rolling with malicious slowness, the 8 ball bounced off the back rim off the table and to the side pocket. Hustler expected it to stop and hang halfway over the rim. Instead it fell right in and clattered its way to the groove in the side of the table.

"GAME CLEAR," announced the bodiless voice that always announced a Kamen Rider's victory. Around the two of them the darkened pool hall started peeling away pixel by pixel.

Fats stomped up to Kamen Rider Hustler, his eyes no longer his own. Instead they were glowing a forbidding shade of dark purple. The voice he spoke in then wasn't his own. It was someone else's, someone Hustler didn't recognize, and it seemed to echo with a hundred other voices softly saying the same words in unison.

"You think you're clever, don't you human?" Fats questioned. "I bet you think you won because you convinced your old friend you can save him…but I saw everything that happened. The two of you are nothing compared to my power."

Hustler asked, "So…not up for a game of darts instead?"

Fats Porker's obese body was breaking down and drifting away like the pool hall around them. While he disintegrated he said, "I'm not impressed by your little jokes, human. Soon my kind will be in charge of the world, just like I'm already in charge of your old friend here. But you…I'm going to remember you, and next time we meet, I'll destroy you, Rider. Hourakou Byougen always repays a debt."

Then the pool hall and Fats Porker were both gone, and Kamen Rider Hustler was all alone in the empty lot where they'd met for their challenge.

He slapped the tip of his cue against his other hand. "I'll be waiting for that day, Byougen," Hustler whispered. "I'll be waiting."


Merry Christmas, or whatever you celebrate, everybody!