-- History --

[shadowsandflame]

This history section is a mix of canon information and headcanon created to fill in gaps in her story.

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Shroud as born with the name Koizumi Fumine in a small bustling city called Fuuto, well known for it’s wind-power, culture, and mystery. From the age of five onward, Fumine was best friends with a boy named Narumi Soukichi after he moved into the apartment complex where she and her family lived. In high school Fumine was on a rifle and archery team, as well as the track team. These however took a back seat to her misadventures with Soukichi in his aspirations of being a “hardboiled detective”. She became interested in medicine and originally pursued becoming a doctor after having to take care of Soukichi after fights he got in whole trying to break up street gangs and bring justice to his city. She harbored feelings for Soukichi that she never acted on, and after becoming tired of waiting for him early in college, she met Sonozaki Ryuube who steered her toward mechanics and engineering. She married him and founded Museum, and with had three children: Saeko, Wakana, and Raito.

The Sonozaki family traveled for a while before returning to Fuuto and discovering the Gaia Well, the access point to all of the memories contained within the Earth, founding their archeological foundation “Museum” over the site. For several years, all went well for Museum as they began to explore how to sort and store the data contained in the Gaia Well so that it could be easily accessed through USB Drive-like devices called GaiaMemories. This caught the attention of a group known as Foundation X, and Museum formed a partnership with them to have the research funded. Fumine wrote back and forth to Soukichi all through this time, learning that he had moved to Osaka, married, and had a daughter of his own, Narumi Akiko. Over the time they wrote, Soukichi divorced his wife and moved back to Fuuto, and Fumine would occasionally visit him as he founded the Narumi Detective Agency and set himself up as the private investigator he had always played at being. She happily raised her three children, her family becoming more dear to her than anything else in the world.

It was then that tragedy struck when Raito, only five years old, fell into the Gaia Well and died.

The well used the data of Raito to revive him. None the less, the blow was devastating for Fumine, who began to grow somewhat distant from her family, losing herself in her work when she could while still trying to be a mother to her children. The divide became impassible when Ryubee began to experiment with Raito and the access the young boy had gained to the Planetary Bookshelves, containing all of the Earth’s memories to weaponize the GaiaMemoires under the direction of Foundation X. The idea became to use GaiaMemories to implant the traits of the memories onto Humans to force an evolution in them, turning them into beings called Dopants. Refusing to allow her son to be a tool, Fumine tried to take Raito back. Ryubee used Terror GaiaMemory to break Fumine mentally, also causing her to believe she had been physically disfigured by the attack. Not wanting her children to see what she had become, she gathered as much of her research and belongings as she could and left, ignoring the cries of her daughters as she walked out. Among the things Shroud took with her were plans and prototypes for experimental GaiaMemory weaponry, such as the Magnum series, experimental connector applicators, and several early memories including Bomb and Skull. To this day, her only regret is not taking her children with her, even though she knows that would have been impossible.

For a period of two weeks Shroud dropped completely off the grid, leaving Fuuto entirely and used the Bomb Memory and became the Bomb Dopant. In her rage and grief, still deeply affected by the psychological and emotional damage Terror had inflicted on her, she very quickly lost control of herself and devastated a small town. She was stopped only upon nearly killing a child and mother. Seeing the mother willing to sacrifice herself for her child, Shroud regained her sense of self and returned to Fuuto and to Narumi Soukichi for protection and help. She never told him about becoming the Bomb Dopant, and planned to take that secret to her grave.

She lived in secret in the garage of the Narumi Detective agency after Soukichi took her in, masking herself and taking the name Shroud. For the first six months Shroud lived in the garage of the agency she developed items to assist Narumi against the rising threat of Dopants born from her research. She hid during working hours, and Soukichi claimed the garage was haunted by a “ghost” to keep his partner Matsu from venturing down there. They often taunted each other back and forth on the point of her being called a “Ghost” and Soukichi’s refusal to call her “Shroud” instead of “Fumine”. But this was always lighthearted bickering. Six months into her stay, the first of Museum’s dopants emerged, attacking a young singer named Melissa who was friends with Soukichi and Matsu. Soukichi chose to fight the Bat and Spider dopants to protect his city, and learned that the identity of the Bat Dopant was his partner Matsu, who had used the memory out of jealousy of Melissa’s affections for Soukichi over him. Soukichi began to fight a losing battle against the dopants. Fearing for his life, Shroud forced him to become Kamen Rider Skull so that he would have the power to withstand and defeat Dopants he encountered. Soukichi killed Matsu after he used an ability to release spiders into Fuuto that embedded themselves beneath the skin of anyone they touched, and would then transfer themselves upon contact to the person the host loved the most. Soukichi became embedded with one of these spiders, thus taking away his ability to ever see his daughter again.

This incident set the tone for the remaining eleven years Shroud lived with Soukichi in the agency. She often made herself scarce during business hours so as not to be seen by any arriving clients, but Soukichi never took another partner, and for many years the atmosphere of the agency was very dark as both coped with the pain they had brought upon their city. As time wore on, neither ever forgot the tragedy, but began to heal as the number of dopant-related cases began to rise. Justice trumped emotions. A young boy named Hidari Shoutarou, now enamored with the idea of being the same sort of hardboiled detective as Soukichi after having been present the first time Soukichi had saved Melissa from the Bat Dopant, began hanging around the agency and pestering Soukichi to take him on as an apprentice. Eventually Soukichi relented. Shroud gained a distaste for Hidari Shoutaro as he began to hang around Soukichi, too reminded of the children she left behind to develop any fondness for him.

When the time finally came for Soukichi and Shoutarou to move on Museum and recover Raito, Soukichi aksed Shroud to stay behind. In the past she had been his partner, but for this case she was his client and that meant he had to do this without her. Shroud reluctantly agreed to wait for Soukichi in the garage. The rescue mission that became known as “Begins Night” ended with Soukichi being killed by Museum staff led by Shroud and Ryubee’s eldest daughter Saeko, now the Taboo Dopant, due to Shoutarou’s recklessness.

After Shoutaro returned to the agency with Raito, renamed Philip by Soukichi just before his death, Shroud recovered Soukichi’s body and buried him herself in the woods in the south of Fuuto, remaining there to isolate herself and continue working to find her own ways to save her children from the monster her former husband had become. She discovered that there was a certain brain pattern present in some that was unaffected by mental attacks from memories such as Terror. The first candidate was a man named Isaka, to whom she gave an unrefined Weather Memory. Isaka however was a mentally and emotionally unstable man who misused the memory, attacking a family in Fuuto, killing the husband, wife, and daughter just as their son, a police officer named Terui Ryu, arrived home. Terui vowed to avenge his family. Shroud discovered that he too possessed the mental qualities to be unaffected by Terror. She refined the Accel GaiaMemory, building a newly modeled Driver that would allow Terui to become Kamen Rider Accel. She fully intended for hi m to surpass Accel and take Shoutarou’s spot as Raito’s partner in Kamen Rider W, a Driver system that Raito had designed and built off of copies of her research. through this, she encouraged Terui Ryu to give into his anger and hate and grief over the loss of his family, to the point that she was willing to sacrifice herself to his rage and allow him to kill her in order to cement this happening. This was interrupted by Shroud and Ryuube’s second daughter, Wakana, who had become the Claydoll Dopant and was hunting Shroud. She revealed that Shroud was she and Philip’s mother, causing Terui to reconsider the actions he was taking against her and what her motives were.When Terui next confronts Shroud, he says that it’s not to give into hate, but to forgive her. He asks her why she left her family, and she tells him her story. He reminds her that everything she has worked for has been out of love for her son, not out of hate for her former husband. Terui recognizes the flowers in the spot he meets Shroud as ones he saw at his family’s grave and Shroud admits to placing them there, and the deep regret she feels over the death of his family. Terui assures her that he, Philip, AND, Shotuarou will put an end to Ryuube’s plans. Shroud assures him that she won’t do anything more or put anyone else at risk.

From there Shroud withdrew from acting directly against Ryubee, Museum, and Foundation X, choosing instead to honor her word and leave it to the Kamen Riders. At a "family dinner", the final gathering of the Sonozaki family, Shroud told Raito that he was no logner part of the Sonozaki family, and that his place was with his partner, Hidari Shoutarou. She then withdrew and returned to teh woods. She met Wakana one last time there as Wakana demanded information on how to use the Gaia Impact that would allow her to create a miracle and shape the Earth to her desire. Sheoud told her that she could find the informations he needed int he Gaia Library. When Wakana expressed surprised that Shroud gave up that information without any reluctance, Shroud takes her hand and states that it is because they are family and that she just wants Wakana to do what she thinks is right. She then falls over onto Wakana and dies.