My bad. This muse insisted to come out, despite the fact I'd rather continue on my WIP should Ankh muse revive. But no... this had to come. Pfft.

I'll be putting up a temporary title for now until I could think of a good one.

PS: To whomever concerned: I usually self-beta, but occasionally I missed some. My grammar wasn't always perfect. If you think I worded something wrong, please point out what was wrong instead of just complaining. It may be that either of us could be mistaken, but at least I could try checking it out. That was better than me trying to read your mind because I could not find the things you're expecting me to find. If you cannot even do that, don't bother leaving anything. I won't mind not getting new reviews.

Since half the time I posted, I might be tired by then and any wording would be weird.


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Prologue: Dreams

Written by Izzu

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Once a while he had imagined how it would be like when he finally succeed to find a way to bring Ankh back. After all, there was no guarantee that he could achieve that so easily—even if he had asked Kougami about the location of that place where he had found the origins of the Greeed. Though actually, he should not have gone that far. After all, Kougami had those vast amount of document stored in his secret vault. Eiji could have just asked to read all those records.

But no, he did not want to do that. He was not that studious type after all, and he could not just ask Gotou to do that for him. Or any other one of his friends. All of them had resumed to live their own lives after all. Date, back to doing his old job; Hina, back to her usual college life; Shingo-san with his police job—he even helped Gotou to rejoin the force.

All of them had returned to the life they used to have before, so he should not involve them any longer with his own selfishness. For all they know, he was back to his old ways as well—travelling the world without any specific direction, reaching out his hand to anyone who needed his aid. They did not need to know that during his wanderings, he was also looking around for any trace of the scattered, lost core medals. They did not need to know that prior to his leaving, he had told Kougami that he would like to personally look for any other documentation about the Greeeds that have not yet been found as well as recovering the cores. Kougami did not even mind for him wanting to do that, but he would rather have the rest of his friends kept in the dark about what he was attempting to do. They had been worrying about him when he had quickly recovered over Ankh's loss, to their surprise; if they knew about this they would have stopped him from leaving. They would think he was keeping himself from moving on with his life by clinging on to Ankh.

But that assumption would be wrong. He was moving on with his life, he realized now that he had the method to achieve the things he wanted to do. His way of thinking had also changed for the better.

Even then, it should not hurt to also try to find a way to bring Ankh back. Because he refused to think that Ankh had died for real. He did not think that was true, he could still feel him being around after all. Occasionally...

Occasionally, he saw Ankh right after waking up from bed. Ankh would grin at him for being such a sleepy head but as he reached out to hold Ankh's hand, Ankh would fade from view. Some other time, when he was out walking... he could feel as if Ankh's arm had been hovering nearby. And sometimes he could swear he saw Ankh looking back at him from amongst the crowd around him.

If he told this to Hina or the others, they might say that he was seeing things. Or worse... saying that Ankh's ghost was haunting him. Oh, no. He could not even imagine that happening. Ankh... a ghost?

He could not imagine Ankh ever becoming a ghost for anyone. Even himself.

xxx

"Eh? You have the red ones like this broken one I had?" asked Eiji hastily in English as the kid was nodding vigorously at him and urging him to follow. Eiji could not imagine his luck to be this good. So far, his search was never so easy. Occasionally he would hear rumours about someone finding an odd-looking coin or more, and he would pursue that lead only to find that they were not medals. At least the type of medals that he was looking for. Yet right now, this kid was telling him that he found some of them... even better, all of them were red medals—If that was no luck, he could not say anything else.

Eiji could not believe his eyes as the kid showed him the medals. Since the kid did not only have a few of the red cores but also some cell medals!

Eiji took out Ankh's broken hawk core from his pocket but suddenly dropped it to the ground as he stared at it in surprise. The broken core... had gone hot to the touch for no reason—and before he could recover it, the two broken cores started to shake before they combined with each other. He blinked as the once broken core restored itself anew before the other cores and cell medals flew towards it. The piles of floating medals started to form a shape before bursting into light.

Eiji opened his eyes as the light started to fade before noticing Ankh standing in front of him. Ankh started to open his eyes as his body remained bathed in light. He cocked his head towards Eiji before his body disappeared, leaving just a right arm. Eiji started to reach out with his own hand before opening his mouth...

xxx

"ANKH!" Eiji cried out before falling off from the bed. He immediately opened his eyes to find himself back inside his room.

Eiji sighed before rubbing the bump on the side of his head. "Ah... that was just a dream."