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Revelations and Memories

Knowing that the eclipse was a problem wasn't enough for Rose and the rest of her crew to conclude that the freak eclipse was something. They could now see that the 'ghosts' had started to become solid and managed to touch the people around them, which spooked them to the point of creating unnecessary panic. Dairyu and the rest of the group were still contemplating the events when a familiar deer-dragon hybrid grabbed Dairyu's scaly hand and made hand gestures combinations which Dairyu knew what it was.

"Wait, Sei...." He didn't have time to finish the sentence when a blinding light engulfed them in a split second before they materialized in another place, seemingly different and quite...oriental. While the rest of the group pondered on the surroundings, Dairyu was the only one surprised. He had no words to describe it as Seiryu contemplated his surroundings.

"Goddamn it, we missed the point," said Seiryu.

"Scratch that, Seiryu! Did you just do an inter-continental teleportation jutsu, while carrying all five of us?! You could've just killed yourself!"

"Dude, I'm already dead. Did you forget?"

Dairyu was struck by that small reply, which made him lost on words. But after a while, the older black draconian said, "What do you mean by 'missed the point?'"

"I'm supposed to take you to sensei's, but I off-shoot it by thirty miles. That message I gave you...do you know what it means?"

"I know about it, but again, why are we going to Sensei's?"

Just then, his companions, realizing what happened, started to panic, demanding to know what's going on. Rose and Amhyr realized they left their kids.

"Oh my goddess, we left Brandon and Byron back home!" exclaimed Rose. "Hey, whoever you are, jump me back to bloody Caldwell!"

"We are in the middle of a situation here, wolfie girl!" said Seiryu back. "I thought your race is the one aware of the danger of an eclipse!"

Before a fight broke between them, Dairyu stepped between the two different races and said, "You know, I'll appreciate a good fight between you two, but not when we are having a problem at hand. If you want to fight, do it peacefully. Seiryu, I know it's important, but can you take Rose and Amhyr back to where we start?"

Seiryu begrudgingly agreed to what Dairyu said, and took the couple back to Caldwell, but didn't immediately come back. Before the black draconian could be worried, though, Let approached him and said, "He's a bigger dick that what you told me."

"I am not trying to taint his memory."

"You still talk bad about him."

"At least not to an extent, right?"

Seiryu then returned to the group with Rose, who coughed afterwards. Without saying anything, Seiryu approached a nearby cab and started talking Aitsukese, to which the Orient in it nodded and talked some more, but before Seiryu could say anything more, Dairyu intervened and said, "<Don't worry, he's in a bad mood today>"

The cab could actually hold the five of them, yet they were charged more because of the presence of both a winged Scylla and an Aquros, which greatly reduced the levitation height of the cab (fun fact: despite of being on the same size as a draconian, Scyllas weighed 500 pounds in average, 200 pounds more than a buff draconian). They were levitating towards a place only both Dairyu and Seiryu knew, which was a big stone oriental style building that looked like a feudal era fort, but was given an upgrade so as not to get old-fashioned, while keeping its historical value.

Once by the front door, they were held by two green colored Oriental guards, holding their spears in front of the door.

"<What is your business here?>"

"<We want to meet with Segata sensei. This is important...>"

The two guardians suddenly turned towards each other, occasionally eyeing the young black Orient as if he was crazy, but before Dairyu could explain to Seiryu, the guardians said, "<We're...sorry, but the previous sensei passed away 30 years ago. The current sensei is Midori-dono."

Seiryu was pleasantly surprised, as did Dairyu, but the older Orient smiled and said, "Well, well, it seems your girlfriend actually becomes a teacher."

"Shut the fuck up, Dairyu," said Seiryu with a blush. "But anyway, <do you get any sightings around here, like ghosts?>"

"<Ghosts? What are you, ghostbusters?>"

"<Just tell me if it's happening in here then I'll tell you...>"

The door flung open inward, interrupting Seiryu's demand. The two guardians were surprised and spooked as hell when a supposedly dead Orient walked out of the dojo, which also stopped any training happening inside it. Unlike both Orients, Segata was white-scaled with blue eyes, yet retained most of an Orient features, but aligned more to a draconian than a deer hybrid like Seiryu. He looked old and wise, but despite of the Orient's thinned state, he stood gallantly, like still feeling young.

But Dairyu knew that because Segata had died, the one appearing before them was a materialized 'ghost', like Seiryu. Nevertheless, both bowed before the old Orient, in which Segata said, "<Rise, my young apprentices. It's such a pleasure to meet both of you again, Dairyu, Seiryu, even if this is not a normal circumstance, owing that both me and Seiryu had already meet our ancestors>."

"<And you look like the way you do when you're still alive, sensei>."

Segata laughed like he had a good stamina left, while Dairyu needed a little more energy to maintain his laugh. Then, the albino Orient noticed both Let and Capisa, and made a smile. He then approached both of them and said, "Greetings to you, visitors. How do you like Aitsuki?"

"It's...fine, I guess?" said Capisa, still got surprised that the Orient could also talk with common language.

"Anyway, in this dire time, we cannot sit tight. Seiryu, you, me, and some of my old masters are given a chance to go back because of a danger, but despite of you knowing about it, it is not going to mean anything if I don't explain to all of you about the eclipse's significance."

Despite of some awkward events going on around them, the five didn't get any more problems until they reached the master's room, where a young aqua blue colored deer-draconian hybrid was waiting for them. She saw Seiryu and suddenly jumped to him, while crying. They talked for a moment before Segata said, "Now, do any of you is an expert in quantum displacement?"

Not any of them made indications that they were an expert, though Rose knew about the research. Segata sighed and said, "How about dimensions?"

"Oh, it's a dot, line, 2D, 3D, and 4D, right? 2D is form, 3D is room, and 4D is senses."

"The wolf woman is right, but the fourth dimension is not practically senses. It's time, and we haven't transcended the control of time yet. In my youth, I was a researcher of a team to harness temporal energies, but I was one of the skeptic, believing that we can't harness time if we haven't even mastered space travel yet. Thus, I quit the project and become a monk...and the project was shut down for so many years I forgot the year when we start doing it. Time travel can only happen in fictions. That's what I thought, and still not proven yet that time travelers actually existed, not after years we had mastered space travel and colonization. But...the invention of relays was one of the greatest point in time that we thought, the fourth dimension is the world in the Forthering Trans-space Leap, or what you all known as faster-than-light speed. But, after I died, my sub consciousness wasn't actually dead...I literally met my grandfathers and their grandfathers, all in their youths."

"What?! You mean, we meet our ancestors in the Afterlife?" said Rose. "For a former scientific worker, you do know that it isn't possible."

"Oh, but it is, wolf-san."

"It's Rose."

"Rose-san, our scientific knowledge is limited to the known four spaces of the universe. The theory of multiverse and parallel dimension, along with the afterlife and the supernatural, are not entirely religious, but instead, it can be explained by science."

Segata paused for a moment, before he said, "There's a dimension outside the four, which is the Fifth Dimensions. Many of us said that this is the theoretical Outer Limits, some know it as the Twilight Zone, and some may also say it's the Fringe, but any of those names are applicable to this dimension. It is the dimension of everything that's supernatural and out of common sense. You might as well say that anything here is beyond our reality."

"Hold on a sec, sensei. If it's beyond our reality, then why are we able to make sense of it?"

"Because they are giving us what we can perceive as making any sense. Those who embraced the or succumbed by the Twilight Zone cannot cross dimensions because even if they could, nothing would even make sense in this dimension. No...nothing would ever make sense if they ever intervene, like now."

"You mean everything wrong that ever happened here?"

"Is there any particular disaster that killed so many people in one stroke these past years? Aside from the intergalactic war, of course."

"Our research station was blown by a freak supernova..."

"What did it research?"

Capisa hesitated, though back in his mind, he thought it would be okay since the albino Orient in front of him was, in normal sense, a ghost, and would not be able to tell others of what they were researching.

Yet, Segata could see that Capisa didn't want to break the truth, and said, "It's...classified, isn't it?"

Gathering his thoughts, Capisa decided that whatever reason he needed to cover was uncovered anyway, so he said, "It researched a stable wormhole inside a nebula, somehow giving us a shortcut to another galaxy."

"I see. Then?"

Capisa was surprised that the old Orient wasn't even surprised, but again, he kept reminding himself that the he is a ghost. He might had seen something that mortals couldn't comprehend.

"I know...nothing more than that, I'm afraid."

"Well, I give my praise to that research team, but apparently that's a grave mistake. The wormhole inside a nebula is a temporal breach that opened when a supernova's massive energy was sucked into the black hole. The massive energy was dispersed into the space as nebulas, but the energy was contained the wormhole. A freak supernova was because of the blast being released by something. An accident, maybe. But the resulting released caused massive space and time distortions that opens the bridge between our dimensions, leaking reality-altering phenomenon into the real world."

"So that release caused the death of a million space station inhabitants and making these ghost interaction/sightings?"

"Unfortunately...yes..."

While Capisa and Segata was talking, Dairyu suddenly realized that the 'ghosts' were people who had deceased. Sudden memory flow and realization rushed through him in that faithful moment when his comrades and friends died helping him killing the Master, or what many said, Controller. The makeshift bomb Jackson and co. put in strategic places throughout the ship wasn't enough to blow the ship up, but a combined strength of energy discharges proved to be a strong thing that could happen, igniting almost all of the poison gas that leaked after the massive circular saw cut the organic ship/weapon.

His trail of thoughts returned him to the point where the ship was leaking the gas. Dairyu was trying to hold his breath and drove the poison gas away, but while he could sense air current, he could sense air toxicity, and the gas was invisible and not having a smell. It started to ravage his systems and he was too weak to walk. Blood started pooling inside his throat, and by reflex, he coughed it out. Knowing that he was doomed to die, he struggled to walk, also realizing that his friends would possibly had lost consciousness because of the gas.

Just as he lost all of his strength and started to succumb to the invisible death gas did a giant hulking figure inside a power armor grabbed and carry him to the ship. Dairyu was half-conscious at this point, but he could clearly see that it was a human, wearing an EVA power suit and greatly protected by the environment. He then proceeded to put Dairyu inside Azure, where the rest of the crew and the guardians were. The guardians were also straining to stand due to the gas started to overwhelm the regulator in their suit.

Dairyu had trouble hearing by this point, and his memory was hazy. But one thing he knew he saw, was the operator of the suit. Past the domed glass head was the face of a man he had known as a best friend and comrade for many years, smiling to him. Dairyu's head couldn't process it more than remembering a face he thought he wouldn't see, and the face that he knew he would remember from all the failure he had brought to them.

Then, seeing Seiryu again after moving on from his memory was satisfying, but a little painful. Then, realizing that these phenomena would actually took Jackson and the others back to the living and interact with them overwhelmed Dairyu with guilt, so much that he couldn't stand to be inside with the sensei. The rest of the group didn't notice except Seiryu, who told Midori to let him go for a moment and pursued Dairyu, who had started to ran towards the giant door.

"Dairyu, where do you think you're going? Segata's explanation is far too important to be let off! Look, if you think you want to call your Western friend, this is probably not the..."

"I don't want to be part of this!"

This kind of answer caused Seiryu to get stunned. He never realized that someone that he could think of as a friend and like a brother to him, someone he respected the most, would do something like this.

"What the hell are you talking about, Dairyu? I know Segata-sensei's explanation can be overwhelming because of the fact, but..."

"No...your presence is proof that I can't leave my past behind!"

"You mean about my death? That's my decision, not yours!"

"That cab driver that infuriated you was telling the truth. The Warriors are called Neo-Warriors and there are many other Orients like you who decided to corrupt their body for their greater good, all because of my foolish actions!"

"Dude, talk reasonably!"

"15 years ago, there was a massive alien invasion that threatened the whole galaxy. We defeated the threat, but the remaining Warriors were all killed by the explosion."

This surprised Seiryu. "Y-you mean..."

"After you died, I tried my best to end the war and creating the Federation, but as a result, I also make the Warriors into lowly space bounty hunters and I was restricted to land here. Everyone...except me and Al...were killed in that ship."

Seiryu couldn't reply. He never seen his comrade and friend to be like this before. It was as if age had started to take on him, despite of a draconian's slow aging. Aside from the clear body change, Seiryu noticed that his former partner was making as if walking on the living plain as hell.

"And now they are revived and I'll take all the blame for what fate that fell them! They shouldn't have broken protocol...I should've known Arrowhead is a suicide mission..."

"Dairyu...Jackson and the others chose to die for you."

Dairyu then turned his head around. "What?"

"Did you forget? Arrowhead wasn't supposed to be a suicide mission, but a mistake can jeopardize everything. Unfortunately, Arrowhead is an effective, but greatly flawed, strategy. Unless someone's not willing to sacrifice themselves, it wouldn't be a success. On the other hand, if no one's willing, the ship that infiltrate the enemy's line would be destroyed, either by the enemy or by allies."

"Yes...but I was the one suggested the Arrowhead Operation to commence. If not for me..."

"Then not everyone in this fucking planet will survive! Dairyu, if Arrowhead wasn't used, then Terrans will lose the war and you will not do your job to prevent total annihilation of this system and creating a peace! Maybe that green draconian would not be alive and have kids with the Lycan! C'mon dude, why are you always taking the worst of things?! Everything in this world that ever happens always affecting the next. It's like the ripple!"

"You...shut your element's philosophy before I throw you away with my goddamn wind. I am a wind dragon, not a water dragon!"

"At least take my advice and don't be a bitch. Your friends need you, as do I!"

When Dairyu didn't reply, Seiryu then moved toward Dairyu and somehow lifted him, despite of his status as a ghost. Also, due to his status as a ghost, he could easily lift him with supernatural forces helping him. Before the older Orient could react, Seiryu slammed him to the ground, causing a crater and an aftershock that could be felt from the dojo. Dairyu, on the other hand, wasn't affected by it, but the action snapped him out of his hesitation.

"If you have lost that righteous spirit of yours and revert into an alcoholic bastard, I'll make sure you suffer in your waking hours," threatened Seiryu. "What is your answer, Dairyu Tsukasa?"

Again, Dairyu remained silent, but unlike before, he glared at his former partner. While his glare weren't threatening, Seiryu knew that Dairyu was angry on being slammed into the ground, yet another point was that Seiryu gave Dairyu a choice that the older Orient had abandoned long ago, making him not as a righteous warrior, but was actually a thinned-out alcoholic. Normally Seiryu would be disgusted, but as he released Dairyu from his grip, he felt pity that his mentor and friend would actually got depressed, and he had realized that the supposedly ruthless, cold, and brutal Warrior was suffering from PTSD.

Thus, Seiryu didn't want to push Dairyu more, and silently left him in the middle of the street, knowing that he needed time, despite of the danger.

"Guess the only way to make him snap out of it is to find Jackson's soul and talk to him personally," said Seiryu to himself. "But leaving him alone for now might be the best...huh?"

Seiryu then saw that there were some people, definitely ghosts, wearing ornamental armor and carrying what looked like a traditional non-magic katana. At first, Seiryu thought that these ghosts were historical victims, but then, when a human came to them, thinking that they were costumed people, one of them suddenly drew his sword and cut the man. This surprised Seiryu so much.

One of them noticed him, and before Seiryu could react, he moved to the Orient and drawing his sword, intending to kill him.