Tetsuji Takagi | KR Taunt

(note: background contains general spoilers for Kamen Rider 555 - this character is part of my post-canon au set a few years after the events of the series)

Taunt is a rude, menacing voice on the end of the phone. His specialities are intimidation, tracking, and silencing - calling it assassination implies something a little more stealthy than burning your house down. He is incredibly antisocial and focused, building his own rider suit using prototype data from Smart Brain. Orphnochs know him as a bodyguard for hire, a human ally who threatens and when necessary kills humans who are trying to hunt down the last remaining stragglers. He resents humans as whole, and believes the Orphnochs should be the ones to inherit the earth.

Background

Tetsuji was a Ryusei student who quickly was cut out from the rest of the group after siding with the Orphnochs. His disdain for humanity had been building for years, and after discovering the Orphnochs were meant to be the successors to humankind he gained an almost religious devotion to them, doing everything in his power to assist Smart Brain's cause. He worked for a time as a salaryman nearby before transferring into Smart Brain itself. Quickly becoming frustrated with what he saw as slow progress, he hacked the internal Smart Brain network to retrieve data on the prototype versions of the rider gears, and constructed his own over the course of the next few years. Smart Brain of course fired him months before completion, since he was so exhausted from overworking himself on the Taunt project he would regularly fall asleep in the office. Using the Taunt suit as protection more than anything, he tracks the remaining Orphnochs in hiding to offer his services as protection against humans hunting them down.

Arsenal

Using the Taunt Driver and a Taunt Burnerphone, Taunt can use the dial code 202 to transform. The Burnerphones are one-use, bursting into flames and turning to ash after he detransforms. Once transformed he has access to the Taunt Shot knuckleduster (essentially the same as Faiz and Kaixa's), and he can also summon the Tauburners, a pair of large flamethrowers. Due to the Taunt Gear being made by its user, it is weaker than the main riders, and he tends to rely on the collateral damage caused by the Tauburners to cause damage and escape rather than engaging in direct combat.

Reference Sheets