A race of shapeshifting aliens with considerable prowess in the development of time-bending technology. Their presence on Earth has so far been muted in the wake of the first advent of the Masked Rider System, even winding up having a minimal stake in the Void Hour Incident. A near-catastrophic asteroid collision much like the one that brought the first Worms to Earth so many years ago changed that, however.

God Speed (Love), Faruko Albark

2092 was an uneasy year for much of the world - early in February, deep-space telescopes triangulated the trajectory of an asteroid hurtling into the Solar System from parts unknown - and poised to impact on Earth's surface within nine months if not stopped. With many of the world's space programs stagnated following the last Rider War and pettier political conflicts, the populace scrambled to find a way out of Armageddon.

Luckily, at least one space program was up and running - that being a semi-privatized JAXA with - you guessed it - Tachibana and D&P throwing their assets into a deep-space launch vessel. But even the might of both corporate titans of the Void Hour Incident did little to assuage fears of an extinction-level event...until the pilot volunteer for the craft showed up.

On October 17th, the "Anti-Meteoric Defense Capsule" Ialdabaoth launched from Tanegashima Space Center, helmed by Void Hour Incident veteran Faruko Albark (Kamen Rider Super-1 and Shinka-1, ret.). Successfully delivering a combined atomic and subatomic payload of nearly 230 megatons (that's two live-fire Tsar Bombas and half a test model, for those of you seeking scale), Faruko shattered the asteroid as it breached Martian orbit and eluded the debris cloud on her return trip to Earth via the most exotic - and only remotely survivable - of maneuvers: allowing the radiation of the atomic ordnance to thrust the capsule home, risking her own body in the process.

Splashdown of Ialdabaoth was confirmed on November 15th, Faruko managing to return to Earth alive with only two benign tumors that were excised over the course of the next three years. A spot of cancer, sadly, was the LEAST of what she'd managed to bring back from space.

Going Native

Four fragments of the asteroid within "acceptable" size and impact limits crashed to Earth over the following month. Three landed in the bulk of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the water cushioning much of their already-depleted velocity before tectonic damage could be inflicted. The fourth smacked into, irony of ironies, Shibuya, halted further only by the expedited deployment of JUNKER's "ELS 1" microwave-transmission satellite and a deft reroute of its output into a trajectory-displacing laser blast.

Rapid response teams at the impact site confirmed the presence of alien lifeforms almost the minute the smoke cleared, a confirmation of them being larval Worms delivered by JUNKER R&D some time later. The lifeforms were immediately quarantined, on the off-chance they would be of the Native persuasion whose cooperation had led to the development of the ZECT Gears so long ago.

Of the 230 larval Worms counted still alive in what Shibuya residents call "Second Impact," 184 were quarantined by JUNKER and Tachibana's Strike Against Uncooperative Lifeform (SAUL) division. All were eventually deemed Natives and allowed to take human form among the general populace.

Of course, there's no telling how many WEREN'T identified in the wreckage, or if those among the unknown number share the same sentiments as those known Natives...

Mechanical Benefits:

Worms gain 4 points' worth of Morph - 3 ranks of the power at 1/rank to signify the human form they take, and 1 point of the Metamorph feat for switching into kaijin form.