LIBERI FATALIS: The Therianthrope Chronicles

by Eddie-E

A crossover between Ace Combat, Katmandu and another, surprise famous furry comic. A Japanese scientist during the onset of World War II in Europe devises a groundbreaking theory of evolution whose effects will resonate not only on Earth but also throughout the universe for centuries to come. Rated M for language and mature situations.

3. MIDWAY

Act III: MIDWAY

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

George F. Patton

November 27th, AD 1940. Imperial Japanese Air Force Base located at Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan.

-"HIROSE!"

A very bulky man, dressed in military uniform, suddenly and without warning, punched a young recruit in the face, causing him to fall into the rough sand of the beach where they were training in that moment. His fellow soldiers started to laugh like mindless hyenas after seeing how that young man was receiving such brutal treatment.

-"How many fucking times I have to tell you that was NOT A PUNCH you gave me, but a SLAP. You aren't here to fight like a lady, but to fight like the fucking man you are, Ensign Hirose!

The young soldier who was being punched is a young new recruit who was just came fresh from the southern region of Japan, named Akiharu Hirose. He was a 22-years-old, black-haired and slim young man who joined the army in an attempt to pay his university fees, and despite the beating he has just received from his senior officer, he quickly get back to his feet and gave him the military salute.

-"I am sorry, Sargent..."

PUNCH!

Again, the young ensign gets punched again in his face by the enraged soldier...

-"That's MISTER Sanjiro Katagiri for you, ASSHOLE!"-

The rest of the younger recruits were standing still, while they cannot avoid laughing of their unfortunate fellow member, who was receiving a beating from his instructor.

On the other hand, Akiharu Hirose ended up with his face in the white sands of Okinawa, completely bloodied out, a blackened eye and his pride being both figuratively and literally in the dust.

-"AND THE REST OF YOU MAGGOTS, IF YOU DON'T WANT TO END LIKE THIS HOPELESS IDIOT, FOLLOW MY INSTRUCTIONS TO THE LETTER OR YOU WILL END UP BEING SHARK FOOD, OR WORSE! DID I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?"-

-"YES, SIR!"-

But Hirose, despite receiving quite a beating, managed to stand up, against all odds. He knew very well that he cannot afford to give up so easily, especially when the army can be his only chance to succeed in life. He came from a very poor family, but he managed to get good grades at school and he knew the army can be a good way to get the money he needs for his studies, even if he had to die for it. His instructor, Sgt. Katagiri, was deeply surprised of see that young man still wanting to fight against him again.

-"Oh! Looks like you still want to get another ass-kicking, right?"-

-"I AM NOT GOING TO GIVE UP, SIR!"-

Katagiri cracked his knuckles after hearing that, eager to unleash his fury on the young recruit.

-"OK, farm boy, If you're so eager to get another ass-whopping, then that's what you get!"-

But before he could start to fight, the voice of an old man roared across the beach, causing everyone to stop doing whatever they're doing right now, including Katagiri...

-"THAT'S ENOUGH, KATAGIRI!"-

That man, dressed with a military uniform, appeared suddenly in the beach, sporting an angry expression in his face, very likely furious to see how a young man was bullied by his senior officer for no reason other than quenching his thirst of blood, and judging by the colors of his clothes and his military decorations in his chest, he was a very important man in the structure of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

That man was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.

-"AD-AD-ADMIRAL! IT IS VERY NICE TO SEE YOU HERE, SIR!"- Katagiri stammered nervously to see his senior officer in front of him.

But Yamamoto is not having any of that, not after he saw how Katagiri was basically trying to kill Hirose in front of him.

-"Yes, especially when you're trying to kill that poor young man just for kicks, right?"-

-"But sir! I was not trying to kill him. I was trying to straight him up a bit."-

-"A bit", you said?"

And Yamamoto observed Hirose's bloodied, bruised face, while trying to being ready for another beating from his officer.

-"I watched your so-called training from a few meters from the palms since two hours ago, and you look more like some old-fashioned karate sensei or some school bully, rather than a proper trainer. I want some good, healthy young men in the battlefield, not almost dead people!"-

The harsher words from Isoroku Yamamoto, a man who recently was promoted as an admiral a few days ago and was very popular between his men and having important connections with the Imperial family, caused Katagiri to panic, since he knew what could happen to him if he angered such important man in his face.

-"I AM REALLY SORRY, SIR!"- Katagiri apologized profoundly, while bowing in front of Yamamoto. -"IT WON'T HAPPEN AGAIN! I PROMISE! "-

Meanwhile, Admiral Yamamoto put his sights on Hirose, and he decided to came close to the young recruit, mainly to speak with him.

-"What is your name, young man?"-

Hirose was incredibly surprised to see a man so important like Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto wanted to speak with someone like himself, despite his own social and military standing. He already heard Yamamoto came from an old samurai family, but despite his own origins, he was very popular between his men and many of his peers, but he, on the other hand, was not very popular between the higher-ups, especially with Hideki Tojo, his former classmate in the academy and the current de facto leader of Japan. The only thing that prevented him being purged was Yamamoto's connections with the Imperial family. There were rumors about Yamamoto that the only reason why he was promoted to admiral was to prevent him to become a nuisance for Tojo and his plans.

-"Ensign Akiharu Hirose, sir."- Hirose humbly replies to the admiral.

-"From which part of the country you came from?"-

-"Izumo, Shimane Prefecture, sir"-

-"Izumo, right? The Izumo Grand Shrine is located there, if I remember correctly."-

-"Well, yes. In fact, my father is a priest who works in a small shrine in the countryside. My mother is also a miko as well."-

-"And why such a religious man like you ended here?"- Yamamoto asked after finding out the contradiction of a man who practice Shintoism and being a member of the Imperial Japanese Air Force.

-"Technically, I want to go to the university, but I need money and the only way to obtain it is by joining the air force, sir."-

-"And why didn't you went to find a job in first place?"-

Hirose scratched his head in shame...

-"Well, sir, finding a job right now is pretty difficult for me, I never worked in a serious job in my life, and no one wanted to give me employment. And you know the actual situation is very hard for us civilians right now, sir."-

-"Oh, I see."- Replies the admiral. -"By the way, I admire your determination on keep fighting against Katagiri."- After hearing such words, Katagiri blushed in shame. -"Not many people can stand a bout against him, much less being able to stand up after receiving a beating from him, for sure.- Yamamoto explains in a cheerful tone. -"That kind of spirit is the kind of stuff we want here, the spirit of a warrior who can overcome any adversity at any cost."-

Hirose was touched by the words of a man as important as Yamamoto was. He cannot believe he could ever bothered to give some words of encouragement to a poor guy like him. This is possibly one of the reasons why he was very popular along his men.

-"Thank you for your words, sir. I will take your opinion into consideration, sir."-

-"He, he! No need to thank me, young man. I just watched your fight against Katagiri and I thought that maybe you needed some help."- Yamamoto answered, while watching Katagiri's face being completely red in shame, as the bulky man never thought being humiliated in his face by no one else than Isoroku Yamamoto in person. -"Anyways, I look forward for you, and I wish you luck. And, if you excuse me, I need to do other things right now. See you soon."

Yamamoto and his men, who were there along him in that moment, left the beach at that moment, leaving an embarrassed Katagiri with no more words to say.

-"O-OK, you maggots, show's over!"- Katagiri said in an unsuccessful attempt of saving face after being humiliated by Yamamoto in front of his own men. -"Go back to your bunks, we will continue training tomorrow!"- And suddenly, Katagiri put his sights on Hirose. -"AND YOU, HIROSE, CONSIDER YOURSELF LUCKY BEING PETTED BY ADMIRAL YAMAMOTO! OTHERWISE, I SHOULD HAD KICKED YOUR ASS HERE!"-

-"Hey, Hirose! You're pretty lucky for having Admiral Yamamoto as your friend! HA, HA, HA, HA!"- The rest of the recruits laughs at Hirose after they perceive he earned the sympathy of one of the most respected officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and humiliating his senior officer in his face to boot, even if it was never his intention in first place.

But Hirose wasn't exactly very worried about what Admiral Yamamoto thinks about him. The only thing he is worried in this moment is finding a way to survive in that hellish Okinawan boot camp. Not only he had to worry about being bullied by his fellow comrades, he also has to worry about being pestered by his senior officers as well.

-"Well, it can't be helped anyways."- He though in that precise moment, trying to resign himself to his luck.

---

A few hours later, we see Hirose returning to his barracks at the night, which were located on the outskirts of Naha. While they weren't exceptionally luxurious, at least they were much better than the ones the Imperial Japanese Navy had in his hometown of Izumo when he enlisted last year ago. The fact that they were near the beach helped a lot in this regard in the perception he had about the place.

But, just as Hirose entered the place, he saw, and at the same time smelled, something extremely unpleasant coming from his bed:

He saw what looked like garbage, including rotten fish, sweaty socks, used condoms, and even what looked like a dead, gutted chicken.

-"Hey, Hirose! Guess you could ask Admiral Yamamoto to help you on cleaning the mess, smart-ass!"-

-"Yeah! Serves you right! Why don't you go back to Izumo, priest boy? HA HA HA!"-

Hirose quickly figured out his roommates were the culprits behind this. He hopelessly saw how they were laughing at his misfortune, or more accurately, of the misfortune they created at his expense.

But rather than trying to deal personally with the bullies or punching them in their faces, he decided to do another, better, thing:

He decided to clean the mess, without saying a single word.

-"What the fuck are you doing, you nerd?"-

Hirose didn't said a single word...

-"Hey, priest boy! Didn't you hear what I just said?"- The bully replied, probably annoyed by the fact Hirose was ignoring him.

-"Eh, maybe you should keep quiet, man. The last thing I want is to piss Katagiri, or someone worse, once again."-

Hirose started to clean his bed and throw the trash, while ignoring the bullies. He putted the dirty sheets in a bag, while, conveniently enough, he had spare sheets in his luggage just in case.

-"Well. if you excuse me guys, I need to sleep right now, good night."-

And, without saying anything else, Hirose went to bed as fast as he lay down, all of this while completely ignoring the bullies, who wondered what had happened in that moment. It seems that their attempts to screw his life didn't work as planned.

-"Fuck, the priest boy does really have balls of steel, right?"-

-"Well, what do you expect? Since the first day this boy came here, he always tried to ignore us as much as possible, only training and reading all the fucking day. Doesn't he had some kind of life?"-

-"Eh, if I remember correctly enough, he said a few days ago he already had a girlfriend he met while he was on vacations in Hiroshima, two years ago."-

-"Then, at least I hope he could survive here, otherwise his girlfriend will have to pick up his remains! HA HA HA HA!"-

In that moment, a very angry, male voice was heard from very far away...

-"HEY, WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU STILL AWAKE, YOU FUCKING PUSSIES? GO BACK TO YOUR BEDS BEFORE I SHOULD CONSIDER KICKING YOUR ASSES!"-

-"Shit! It's Katagiri! It would be best if we listened to him this time."-

-"Yeah, you're right. Let's hit the bed before he find us awake."-

And then, the two bullies went to sleep before anything else could happen...

---

-"Where am I?"

Akiharu Hirose, who was in his bed just a few hours ago, now we see him in what appeared to be the interior of a warship.

-"Why am I inside a ship?"-

But Hirose noted some very strange things about the place where he was. Despite appearing to be a warship, it was not a normal ship, much less one from the Imperial Japanese Navy, or for that matter, any normal ship he had known before: The ship looked like it was more technologically advanced and its corridors appeared to be wider than those than a warship.

Hirose, without wasting more time, decided to walk through the corridors of that ship. He noticed a lot of things who he didn't even knew before, a fact that frighten him. He also noticed it doesn't even look like an American or even a Western ship, as far as he knew about ships from other countries, be civilian or military ones alike. The pure, sheer, alien shapes of the place he was started to freaking him like nothing else in his life.

-"What the hell is this place? Why everything in this ship looks so different?"-

While wandering across the ship, he found what appeared to be the ship's bridge. By both courtesy, and by naval regulations, Hirose knocked the door that lead to the place...

-"Hello? Is somebody there?"-

But, when he tried to knock the door, he noticed something incredibly bizarre happened with his body: His right hand went through the metallic door as if there was nothing there.

-"What the hell?"-

Without even trying to think about that bizarre situation, Hirose, without wasting a single second, moved his body went through the door, even if he knew doing that was against the rules. Not that the rules mattered in that strange, alien, place either.

Once he was inside the bridge, Hirose tried to hold his breath after watching, in pure, unadulterated horror, what kind of place he was:

-"OH... GODS...!"-

Hirose falls back to the floor in shock after seeing what kind of place he was: What technically it look like like a bridge, it was not a normal bridge in any sense of the word. For him, it was an eldritch location, with lots of devices he never saw before, including ghost-like images, lots of what it looked like radar screens, but some of them bigger than himself and a maddening amount of buttons everywhere.

But the thing that horrified him more was not the things that were inside the bridge, but the people who were inside that place:

The people who were inside the bridge looked like rabbits with human shapes.

-"NO...NO!"-

And before anything else happened, Hirose screamed in sheer terror, and with all his strength, he quickly left the place. He figured out he was not in a normal ship anymore and he was in the company of some creatures he had never seen in his life.

-"CRAP! What kind of place is this? Am I in the company of some yokai or what?"-

The first thing the young Japanese man thought in his already altered state was about the yokai, the legendary creatures from the Japanese folklore who could take many different shapes, including those from animals. But he never, ever, thought about having to deal with such creatures in his own face, much less in such alien place.

And the only thing Akiharu Hirose, the son of a Shinto priest, can do in that moment is pray to the gods to drive away the yokai from that place...

...Until he noticed how futile that act was in that moment, as he noticed the ship was full of those rabbit-like beings, causing Hirose to panic even more than before. He also noticed something else as well:

These beings didn't seem to have noticed the presence of him either.

-"Why aren't they looking at me?"-

But he didn't had time to worry about that. The only thing he could thing in that moment is run away as far as he can. Due of his altered state of mind, he didn't notice a wall that was in front of him. Suddenly, rather than crashing against it, his body went through the wall, without even realizing it. And then, he noticed an even worse thing:

Not only Hirose was outside the ship, the ship itself wasn't even on the sea or in a port. The only thing he saw in that moment was the stars, a few celestial bodies and even some planets near the ship. And in that moment, Akiharu Hirose figured out, horrified, the truth:

He was in the middle of the outer space and that ship was a cylinder-shaped military spaceship.

-"OH, GODS, THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING..."-

-"THIS IS SOME KIND OF SICK JOKE!"-

Hirose returned quickly inside the spaceship, and then, he fell to the ground and panicked, knowing that he had no way of returning to Japan again. He was inside of someone else's spaceship, full of alien, rabbit-like creatures he never saw in his life and they haven't noticed his presence as well.

-"DAMN IT, GODDAMN IIIIIIIIIITTTT! WHAT KIND OF HELLISH RABBIT HOLE IS THIS?"-

But, before he could keep cursing his luck, he heard the voice of a very young man, speaking in a very annoyed tone. Unfortunately for Hirose, he could not understand what he was saying in that moment, If he could try to talk to someone inside the ship, it could be of much help to him, even if he ran the risk of being arrested, or worse, for being a stowaway.

-"Well, it's worth a try. Crying here is not going to help me at all."-

After taking a turn on the other side of the ship, he saw one of those rabbit-like beings, doing what it look like repairing on those iron walls of the ship. Judging by the sound of his voice, the young rabbit, whose fur was darker brown, looked like he was very angry and tired, like he was previously bullied before by someone else. Hirose cannot help comparing the situation of that rabbit with his own: It was more than evident he was bullied by his seniors, just like Hirose was back in Okinawa.

-"Well, even among yokai, there are some things that will never change, that's for sure."-

Then, Hirose tried to speak with the rabbit for help. He spoke first in Japanese and later in English, a language he learned in books when he was in high school in secret, as he didn't want anyone to know about his knowledge of that language, and much less now that Japan was in war right now. Not that matter right now in such bizarre place anyways.

-"Excuse me, my dear friend, I need some help. My name is Ensign Akiharu Hirose, from the Imperial Japanese Air Force, and I need to ask for..."-

But the rabbit ignored him, as if he had not noticed his presence. The only thing he did was continue with his work as if nothing happened.

-"Hey, friend! Can you even hear me, please?"- Hirose screamed in both Japanese and English.

The rabbit keeps ignoring him.

Then, Hirose figured out the reason why everyone else are ignoring him: He was basically a ghost inside the ship and no one could figure his presence.

-"Crap, Good time for being a ghost in this tin-can."-

Hirose noticed something about the young rabbit: He was working wiring some odd-looking cables located inside a wall, and that's the likely reason why the creature was angry: Maybe he was forced to do it against his will, albeit, since Hirose cannot understand his language to figure out the truth, he cannot be completely sure about that.

Suddenly, the rabbit walked away from the wall and it seem he went to his bunk after apparently finished his work. Hirose followed him, in a attempt to find a way to return home. He doesn't like having to stalk people out, but in this case, he doesn't had a choice. Besides, being a ghost helps him to avoid detection.

-"OK, If I follow that rabbit boy down to his bunk, maybe it could help me a bit."-

Once Hirose followed the rabbit straight to his bunk, he noticed several things: Not only he shared the place with other two rabbits like him, those rabbits seems to start to bully him, judging by the sound of their voices and their faces.

-"Geez! That poor guy's life really sucks, and I thought my life was hard enough..."

Then, the rabbit went to another room, which seemed to be a bathroom, judging by the colors and its appearance., but Hirose refused to follow him. Even someone like that rabbit deserved some privacy, after all.

While this was happening, the young soldier realized that the rabbit's roommates began, silently, to throw garbage on the bed of the above-mentioned creature. Hirose cannot do nothing more than complain about this openly, bearing in mind that in his present situation he is powerless to stop them. Even in this place, Hirose thought, these rabbits really likes to use the same bullying tactics like the humans do, and he cannot avoid to compare his own situation with that of the rabbit.

-"At least they're not throwing used condoms and dead chickens into his bed, that's for sure".

And then, the brown-furred rabbit came out from the bathroom and saw all the garbage that was on his bed. while his roommates were making fun of him. But Hirose noticed something very familiar for him: Just like him, the rabbit tried his best to ignore the situation, cleaned his bed and he went to sleep, exactly the same way Hirose did when he went to sleep.

-"I have to admit that this rabbit and me have many things in common, and for being non-humans, these creatures act in the same way that we humans do, included bullying and being bullied as well."

But before Hirose began to think about the issue, the sound of what appeared to be an alarm echoed throughout the spacecraft. At the same time, he also heard a voice speaking in the same language as the rabbits.

And that voice, because of the way that language sounded, among other things Hirose couldn't understand, sounded incredibly uncanny to his ears.

And that voice, because of the way that language sounded, among other things Hirose couldn't managed to grasp, sounded incredibly uncanny to his ears.

-"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT VOICE, AND WHAT IS THAT SOUND?""-

And suddenly, everything went dark...

---

-"HIROSE, WAKE UP, YOU SLEEPIN' BEAUTY!"-

-"WHAT?"-

-"I said WAKE UP!"-

Upon hearing that voice, Hirose suddenly fell out of his bed and realized that his superior officer, Sanjiro Katagiri, was standing in front of him, quite angry. He also heard the sound of an alarm: The alarm that indicated that it was time to get up.

-"Oh, good morning, Sargent"

And then Katagiri beats him with a shinai, a kendo sword made of bamboo, which he normally carries along him.

-"DON'T "GOOD MORNING" ME, YOU LAZY ASS! IT'S TIME TO WORK! We're gonna run all over the beach and I need EVERYONE HERE with me. So, MOVE THOSE CHICKEN LEGS, HIROSE, UNLESS YOU WANT SOME!"-

-"YES, SIR!"-

Hirose got out of bed as soon as he could, and barely had time to get dressed, as the last thing he wanted is to upset Sgt. Katagiri again. He tried to organize his mind at that moment and tried to figure out what he dreamed of that night. Nothing he had ever dreamed of had the slightest trace of meaning, apart from that scene where the rabbit's roommates bullied him on dumping garbage in his bed, just like what happened to Hirose yesterday.

And as for those roommates, they were already outside the bunkhouses, laughing at him for oversleeping.

-"Hey, Hirose! I heard Katagiri slapped your ass for falling asleep too much again."-

Hirose was in no mood to hear more about Katagiri and his methods of punishment, much less after being punished with a shinai.

-"Shut up! I had a pretty freaky nightmare tonight and I'm just trying to figure out what the hell I dreamed of."- Hirose replied angrily against his roommate.

-"And can you say that's what you dreamt tonight?"- The other roommate asked sarcastically and in mockery.

-"That's none of your damn business!"-

-"Oh, come on, Hirose! I'm dying to know what you dreamt about tonight, maybe you dreamed about your mommy, right? Or maybe about Yamamoto's..."-

-"HEY, LADIES! WE DON'T HAVE THE ALL THE FUCKIN' DAY WITH YOUR GOSSIPS, SO MOVE THOSE ASSES AND GET MOVIN'!"-

-"YES, SIR!"-

---

Hours later, Hirose and the rest of the recruits started jogging along the beaches of Naha as part of their physical training as pilots of the Imperial Japanese Air Force. While he didn't mind running every morning, the fact that he had to do it after having a particularly strange nightmare meant that this time he couldn't enjoy the walk like on other times, especially when Katagiri and the rest of the bullies were ruining his day.

-"Looks like you've had a bad day, right?"- Another recruit next to him started talking to him.

-"Let's say I'm the current scapegoat of everyone here..."-

-"I see."-

-"But I prefer not to complain about it. That's not gonna help me at all, let alone in this place."-

-"Understood. Can I ask your name, please? Just out for curiosity."- The young man asked to Hirose.

-"Akiharu Hirose. And yours?"-

-"Saburo Kobayashi. Pleased to meet you."-

-"The pleasure is mine."-

-"HIROSE, KOBAYASHI! THIS ISN'T A BEAUTY PARLOR, YOU FAGS! If I hear you guys yapping at each other again, I'm gonna kick your asses back to you fuckers came from!, so keep quiet and keep runnin'!"-

-"YES, SIR!"-

Both Hirose and Kobayashi had no choice but to obey their bullying superior officer, while the rest of the other recruits began to laugh at both men.

-"Hey priest boy, you seem to enjoy making life difficult for yourself, don't you?"-

-"YOU TOO SHUT THE FUCK UP, IDE!"-

-"Yes, sir!"-

Katsuro Ide, one of the recruits who shared a room with Hirose, didn't like being silenced by Katagiri, much less if Hirose himself had anything to do with it.

-"Hirose"- Ide angrily replied in silence to the young man. -"Hope you had prayed to Buddha, because that's not gonna save you, asshole."-

Hirose remained silent in the face of such a threat, and he kept running as if nothing had happened. But even he couldn't help but think that things couldn't get any worse.

-"Damn, what have I gotten myself into this time?"- The young son of a Shinto priest-turned-soldier thought in that difficult moment.

---

After a day of very hard and tiresome training, Hirose returned to his barracks, trying at least to rest, especially when he seemed to have earned the enmity of many of his classmates within the academy, especially the bullies he had for roommates, and very especially of Katsuro Ide and his other friend, who he hadn't even bothered to ask his name.

-"The last thing I want to have to deal with is that idiot Ide and his friend. That's for sure."- Hirose said after he fell into the bed, and after a hard time with everyone else in the base.

Meanwhile, Saburo Kobayashi, the man he knew after the beach jogging in the morning, was heard in the entrance of the barracks.

-"Good evening, Hirose, can I come in, please?"-

Hirose knew he risked being punished by either Katagiri or any other officer if he allowed the entry of any recruit who did not belong to his barracks, but that didn't mattered anyways for him, especially when Kobayashi was the only person there who wasn't trying to kill him or pestering him at daily basis.

-"Come in!"-

Kobayashi entered the barracks and he sat on Hirose's bed. Because of the way he entered the place and his manner of speaking and acting, especially when Kobayashi sat on his bed without even asking permission, he began to sense something strange about him.

-"Eh... I just want to make one thing clear: I'm not a weirdo, nor am I what you think I might be, if that's what you think. So keep that in mind."-

-"What the hell are you talking about?"-

-"In other words, I'm not gay."-

-"WHAT?"-

Kobayashi laughed hard after hearing such a thing about himself. He didn't even take it as an insult.

-"OF COURSE I'M NOT GAY, YOU MORON!"- Kobayashi keep laughing. -"What make you think I'm one?"-

-"Well, maybe your attitude, your voice and the way you sat in my bed without asking my opinion. Anyways, I'm really sorry for that."- Hirose replied, somewhat shamed for even insinuated his fellow recruit was a homosexual man.

-"No problem. I'm just curious to talk to you about the nightmare you had last night."- Kobayashi replied, ignoring the whole "gay" thing.

-"My nightmare, you said?"- Hirose answered, puzzled about the words of that recruit that he has just met in the morning.

-"Yes, I want to know about that nightmare of yours, and since Katagiri was buggering us, I thought it would be a good idea to talk to you after training.

-"Oh, I see."- Hirose replied again, relieved to have found someone to talk to about the topic. -"In that case, I'm going to tell you what I dreamt last night."-

-"OK, tell me about that nightmare of yours"-

-"Well, here goes: I dreamt I was inside what seemed to be a warship."-

-"What kind of ship?"-

-"This is the part where things get really weird: The ship didn't look like anything I had ever known before, be it made in Japan, in some western country or even in this world."- Hirose explains to Kobayashi what he saw in his dreams and the other recruit started to be interested on the topic.

-"What does that ship look like?"-

-"I don't know. That ship had walls made of steel, just like the floor. There were no windows and the doors were also made of steel. And that wasn't the only thing that was odd about that ship."-

-"What odd thing did you see in your dreams?"-

-"When I was in that dream, I entered what looked like the ship's bridge, but it didn't look like any bridge I'd ever seen in my life. The whole place was full of weird-looking devices that I have never see before, with lots of buttons everywhere, ghost-like images and hundreds of more stranger stuff."- Hirose keep explaining about what he saw in his dreams. -"And I still haven't finished explaining about the creatures that were inside the bridge."-

-"Creatures, you said?"- Kobayashi asked in a very surprised tone.

-"Yes, Bizarre-looking creatures!"- Hirose almost yelled, excited when he explained that part to his partner. -"Those creatures looked like rabbits in human form and they spoke in such a bizarre language that it began to creep me out, so I escaped as soon as I could."

-"Rabbits in human-like form?"- Kobayashi was deeply surprised of hearing such words, as he never thought that a grown man like Hirose could had dreamt such thing. -"Did they tried to attack you?"-

-"No. In fact, they seemed to be unaware of my presence inside the ship, as if I were some kind of ghost."-

-"Ghost?"-

-Yeah, that's right."- Answered the young Japanese man. -"When I tried to run as hard as I could to try to escape from the place, I ran into what appeared to be one of those metallic walls, but rather than hurting myself, I ran through it as if nothing was there."-

-"And... what happened next?"-

-"What I saw afterwards was completely shocking: I saw the stars, one planet or another, and I even saw what looked like several giant metallic tubes floating in the middle of nowhere."- Hirose tried to keep explaining, trying to contain his emotions about what he saw in his nightmares at the time. -"At that moment, I discovered one thing: Not only was I not on a warship in the middle of the sea, or even on Earth, but I was actually inside a space rocket in the middle of outer space."-

Those last words caused Kobayashi to get out of the bed where he was, and he tried to analyze what his partner had just said. What he just heard was not only completely beyond the normal, but it was something that sounded like straight out of Jules Verne's "From The Earth to The Moon".

-"Hirose,"- Kobayashi said in a very worried voice. -"Have you been drinking a lot these days?"-

-"HELL NO!"- Hirose angrily replied, as his partner was implying he was drunk that night. -"I don't even drink alcohol."-

-"In that case, maybe Katagiri whacked your head too many times for your own good."- Kobayashi said in mockery, since he had a hard time trying to figuring out what Hirose said about his nightmare.

-"Don't tell me you only came all this way just to laugh at me and my nightmares?"- Hirose responded visibly frustrated to see that his companion he had just met was also starting to ridicule him.

-"No, don't get me wrong, I wasn't mocking you, nor am I laughing at you either. It just seemed to me that your nightmare was... rather awkward, to put it in kind words."-

-"Yeah, I know that! The odd part of this is the fact I never had dreamt with such kind of stuff in my life"- Hirose lamented himself.

-"In that case, do you and your family have any connection with rabbit breeding, astronomy or anything like that?"-

Hirose tried to think about what Kobayashi said regarding his family.

-"Technically, no, at least nothing related with rabbits whatsoever. But I'm planning on going to university once this war is over, and that's one of the reasons I enlisted to the air force.

-"Do you know what career you plan to study once you're there?"-

-"Biology."- Hirose proudly replied to Kobayashi. -"Does it have anything to do with my nightmares?"-Kobayashi began to think about the answer his partner gave him. Normally, being a biologist wouldn't be anything unusual, but in this case...

-"Well, I mean, technically not, but there could be a very slim connection between your choice of career and the nightmare you had."-

The conclusion that this completely unknown young recruit just gave to him began to freak Hirose out like never before.

-"Wait a minute, Kobayashi!"- Hirose replied with a very worried expression in his face. "What the hell do you mean about my choice of career had something to do with what nightmare? And how did you reach that conclusion?"-

-"Maybe I forgot to tell you, but I studied Western and Asian esotericism when I was in high school before joining the air force. And one of the things I learned was to interpret the dreams and the meanings they might have."-

Hirose couldn't believe what he just heard. That mysterious companion turned out to be a diviner, which was the last thing he wanted to hear, much less in the mood Hirose was in.

-"Sorry, pal, but I don't believe in such bullshit."- Hirose replied furiously to his interlocutor, thinking that Kobayashi was teasing him in the most vulgar way possible. He found himself in no mood to hear ludicrous stories, let alone knowing that his partner might be some sort of prankster. -"I don't believe in either onmyodo (traditional Japanese esoteric cosmology) or any kind of bogus superstitions, regardless when they came from!"-

-"Eh, Hirose, you should believe me! I'm not trying to mocking you, I promise!"-

-"So, if you have something better to say to me instead of telling me stupid stories and superstitions, you'd better get out of here before I lose my patience, which I've had enough of today! And keep in mind that I'm not the kind of person who goes off the deep end so easily, but I'm going to make an exception with you."-

-"Hirose! What makes you think I'm a bully like everyone else?"-

The young soldier thoughtfully listened to that. Someone like Kobayashi would not bother to listen to his story, however ridiculous it might be, just so that the solution to his problem was to talk to an onmyoji (diviner) apprentice. Then, he decided to give him a chance.

-"Okay, I'm going to listen to your conclusions, no matter how stupid they are."-

-"Right." Kobayashi was very happy to see his interlocutor finally understood what he tried to say. -"In my opinion the fact that the creatures you saw in your nightmare were rabbits might have something to do with the fact that you want to study biology."-

-"And what does rabbits have to do with my choice of career? Although rabbits have a relationship with the degree I plan to study, this does not mean that I will have to study rabbits all the time, apart from those I have to dissect, of course."-

Kobayashi tried to gulp down his saliva when he tried to explain to him where he wanted to go with it.

-"They don't had anything to do with you right now, but they could be in the distant future. At least, that's the way how I can interpret your nightmare."-

Hirose construed Kobayashi's words as something premonitory, and probably even ominous, that could happen in his future. But the ambiguity of his words made it very elusive for him to grasp the whole full context of what the young onmyoji apprentice wanted to imply.

-"Are you trying to tell me I'm going to end up being a mad scientist or something like that?*"-

-"Nope."- Kobayashi said with a more serious voice. -"Your descendants will probably work for one in the distant future. and that's not the worst I've been able to deduce on the issue."

-"What the hell are you talking about? And how did you know that?"-

Kobayashi tried to explain better what he researched on regards of Akiharu Hirose's future.

-"Considering what I have read in my books on esotericism, I can deduce that your ancestors will be involved not only in events that will change not only the fate of Japan, or even the world, but the entire universe. And for that to happen, your family will relate to someone who has the power to destroy the world as revenge."-

The young recruit couldn't believe what kind of crazy stuff he just heard in that moment. The fact that some nobody has just told him he will be involved in the unlikely event of the destruction of the world along with his family in a very distant future is something that even the normally nice Hirose cannot even tolerate anymore, but at he wanted to know more about the topic, just in case.

-"And can you tell the name of that mad scientist or at least know when he's going to show up?"-

-"No. I only know he could appear, but not when."- Kobayashi said. -"Maybe he'll show up and maybe he won't. I don't even know if he's a man, a woman or even a person."-

Hirose kept thinking about what his companion has just said: Even for the already low educational standards amongst many of the conscripts of the Japanese Imperial forces, what he had just heard bordered on the most absurd and ridiculous thing he has ever heard in his life.

-"Kobayashi, I have heard enough of your crazy talk and I'm starting to lose my patience!"- Hirose yelled at Kobayashi, after having enough of his crazy talk. -"Aside from making fun of me, you're insulting me and calling me and my family a bunch of genocidal freaks, not to mention all the nonsense I've had to listen to all this time. I only let you talk because I'm a nice guy, but I have enough of your crap! So, if you don't get the hell out of here, I'm going to talk to Katagiri and he's sure would want to hear your bullshit... once he put your head into some shit-filled toilet.-

-"But, Hirose..."-

-"GET OUT! And you better go talk all that crap with some sucker who swallows up that SHIT!"-

Saburo Kobayashi had no choice but to leave the site after Akiharu Hirose decided that he had had enough of hearing such conclusions that the harassed Japanese recruit was nothing but mindless nonsense. Normally Hirose rarely used profanity, but on this particular moment, what he heard from one of his classmates caused him to snap like never before in his life.

After throwing Kobayashi out of the barracks, he went to bed after a very difficult day, trying to find some meaning in everything he heard, no matter how crazy it may have sounded from that mysterious fellow.

-"Shit, The last thing I need to hear is about my future, let alone from idiots like that Kobayashi."- Hirose thought carefully, as he put his head under a pillow in an effort to relieve his headache after so many crazy events throughout the day.

What he didn't know was that another difficult event was about to begin. And this time it came from another acquaintance of his who wanted a rematch...

-"Looks like you're resting nicely, right?"-

Then, someone suddenly shoved Hirose out of bed, intending to pick a fight against him. It was none other than Katsuro Ide, who wanted to get even with Hirose after being groveled by Katagiri on the beach in the morning.

-"When I said you'd be sorry, I meant it! Now get up and get ready for an ass-kicking, fuckface!"-

-"Ide, please shut up. I don't have time to hear your crap today. If you have something against me, go tell to Katagiri, OK?"-

KICK

Hirose was kicked hard in the crotch, knocking him to the ground again, while Ide and his other buddy were watching him suffer.

-"I HAVEN'T FINISHED WITH YOU, ASSHOLE! SO GET UP AND FIGHT!"-

The young recruit from Izumo, despite having been kicked in his crotch, was still able to get up quickly and decides to face the bullies in front of him, but without fighting them. He knew that the last thing he wanted was to have a precedent for indiscipline in the air force, so he tried to solve the problem in a peaceful manner.

-"Ide, I don't have anything against you, and you know if Katagiri see us, we will end being disciplined or even worse. So please, cut it out your nonsense."-

-"WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I'M GOING TO LET YOU GO SO EASILY, AFTER YOU HUMILIATED ME IN THE BEACH?"-

-"Yeah, do you think we're gonna let you go after being the cool guy in the class, even in front of Admiral Yamamoto?"-

Hirose quickly realized that the real reason both men wanted to get even with him was because they envied him for being "saved" by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto and humiliated Katagiri in front of the entire class. So the only way to resolve this was in a proactive and non-violent manner.

-"You two guys are just jealous, that's what it is."-

-"What's that supposed to mean?"- The other, unnamed bully, said.

-"For starters, you two are a duo of losers. While I recognize that sometimes I fall asleep and that no one here likes me, at least I have something you don't have, especially your close friend, Ide."-

-"What the hell are you trying to talk about, Hirose?"- Ide asked menacingly.

-"Well, let's say in your case, Ide, you've been stealing food from the warehouse, you've been seen beating up hookers in Naha, not to mention that you haven't even bothered to pay them and even owe money to the Yakuza (Japanese mafia), knowing that if you die in combat no one will bother to cash you in, not to mention other things I know about you."-

-"WHAT THE FUCK?"-

-"And in your other case, my dear friend, you follow Ide's stuff in everything he does, no matter if your dignity is crushed. And as for the thing that I have and you don't, there's the fact that at any rate I'm Japanese and you're not, right, Kim Sung-Hoon?"-

Kim Sung-Hoon, Ide's partner-in-crime, was a Korean, who, at that time, was part of Japan, and who had enlisted in the air force in an attempt to better his life just as Hirose was doing too. While Hirose's intention was to try to point out the irony of a Korean treating a Japanese badly when it was most likely that Kim was also discriminated against by his Japanese colleagues, his words caused Kim to be enraged and he took Hirose out of the shirt and started threatening him.

-"That's... that's none of your FUCKING BUSINESS!"-

-"Well, at least I find the irony of someone like you trying to ruin my existence as very interesting."- Hirose replied with a sardonic smile in his face. -"I'm not being prejudiced against anyone, let alone Koreans, but I think you should live your own existence instead of following morons like Ide like a fighting dog on a leash."-

-"SAY THAT AGAIN, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!"- Kim threw Hirose to the ground, and was about to start a fight, when then...

-"THAT'S ENOUGH, LADIES!"-

-"Oh, FUCK! KATAGIRI!"- Ide screamed after hearing and seeing the bulky officer, who was behind them in that critical moment.

Sanjiro Katagiri, Ide, Kim, and Hirose's training instructor, appears in front of the two thugs with an unfriendly face. The three recruits at the scene gulped down as they saw that man standing in front of them, fearing the worst.

-"What the hell are you three idiots still doin' up there?"-

Kim and Ide tried to come up with a good excuse to get out of the predicament they got into when they tried to pick a fight with Hirose.

-"Well, sir, we are just... playing with Ensign Hirose, that's all..."-

SLAP!

Katagiri suddenly slapped Ide in the face with no warning.

-"DON'T GIVE ME THAT CRAP, IDE!"- Katagiri yelled at Ide in his face, almost as he was trying to chew it. -"I just saw you and Kim trying to pick a fight with Hirose just because I scolded you in the morning."-

Hirose tried to mediate between his partner who was being beaten by Katagiri, because even if Ide was an idiot, he would not tolerate anyone being punished for a purely personal matter.

-"Sir, please forgive him! We never tried to break the rules at any time!"-

-"THAT'S NOT THE FUCKIN' POINT, HIROSE!"-

Hirose was completely amazed to hear Katagiri, of all people, trying to be moderately reasonable with him.

-"What you said a few minutes ago about Kim and Ide is true."- Katagiri pointed out. -"These two idiots have been stealing food from the warehouse, not to mention I've heard complaints about this couple of bozos having fights with prostitutes and even with the Yakuza. In this place, we train men to fight and die in combat for their country, not to fight with cheap harlots and steal food!"-

And at that very moment, Katagiri set his eyes on Kim.

-"And you, Kim Sung-Hoon, I don't give a rat's ass what part of the world you come from, here in this place you come to train, PERIOD! And you should be ashamed being Ide's little lapdog, doing everything this asshole does, without thinking about yourself.

-"B-but, sir..."- Kim stuttered at the harsh words of his superior.

-"NO BUTS! Now I'm gonna think about a good punishment for you two."- Katagiri smiled with a devious smile in his face. -"Let's see, how about you two clean all the latrines on this base until they sparkle clean?"-

Ide and Kim curse their fate by being punished by Katagiri, and they have no choice but to fulfill the job.

-"Fuck."-

-"I want to see you two at 5 AM with your respective cleaning equipment and you will not stop until those toilets are clean, is that clear?"-

-"Yes, sir."- The two of them replied.

-"OK, now get out of my sight before I change my mind! I want to talk with Hirose alone."-

Kim and Ide leave the place as soon as possible, leaving Katagiri and Hirose alone. The young recruit begins to fear the worst.

-"Sir, I'll accept whatever punishment you decide to impose on me if I did anything wrong."-

-"Who the hell said I'm gonna punish you?"-

-"Uh?"- Replied Hirose deeply surprised.

-"Maybe right now you're thinking, "Katagiri wants to kick my ass" because of the whole Admiral Yamamoto thing, aren't you?"-

-"To be honest, yes."-

-"Well, maybe it's true that I am very temperamental and I don't tolerate wimps and smart guys like you. But I also have principles, and if there's one thing I can't stand, it's the smug dickheads like Ide and Kim, who think the world turns around them. And I don't tolerate discrimination, either, so I don't give a damn where that Kim comes from."-

Hirose was astonished to hear that Sanjiro Katagiri, the man who thought that he was just as much of an abuser as Ide and Kim, was actually much smarter and nicer than he thought, even if he hid it very well.

-"That's very good coming from you, sir."-

-"No need for flattery."- Katagiri humbly replied with an unusual somber tone on his voice. -"If there is a reason why I act this way is because I wish all of you who survive this stupid, senseless war, even if I know that many of you will not. And believe me, this is going to turn up for the worse, in my own opinion..."-

-"I see."-

-"And by the way, I also heard all the conversation you and Kobayashi had a few minutes ago. I was hidden in the other abandoned barracks next door, while spying you guys."-

-"Really?"-

-"Yes, you didn't seem to like what Kobayashi said about your future, did you?"- Katagiri asked.

-"To be honest, no. It seemed to me that everything Kobayashi said was nonsense."-

-"Well, I wouldn't normally make a big deal out of something like that, but I'd like to share something I know, even though it's supposed to be classified."- Katagiri said in a more serious manner. -"The only reason I decide to tell you this is because of what Kobayashi said about you and maybe this might concern you."-

-"What kind of information, sir?"- Hirose replied intrigued by those words.

-"According to some sources within the Japanese Imperial Army, there is a unit within the army that engages in strange experiments. I don't know much about it, apart from the fact that I recently met someone very suspicious who might be related to that secret unit when he and me were in Manchukuo. The only thing I know is that this person studied in Germany, but I don't know anything else about him or even his name, other than he is obviously Japanese."-

-"And it probably has something to do with me planning on studying biology in university, right?"-

Katagiri remained mysteriously silent after that answer...

-"Personally, I don't know. I am not very much a coincidence believer, much less in all the strange things Kobayashi said about you and your family. Considering his personal background, he most likely said that to cheer you up, or so I think."-

-"And do you plan to punish him as well, sir?"-

-"Nope, let's say that was a good way for him to rise your spirits."- Katagiri patted Hirose's shoulder with his hand, in an attempt to cheer him up. -"There is no way to know what the future holds for us, and I don't think there is anyone who has the power to know the future beforehand."-

-"And I imagine you've already heard from me about my nightmare?"-

-"Yeah, but let's just say that nightmare could have been caused by fatigue, or maybe as Kobayashi said, the whipping I gave you could have caused that. HA HA HA HA!"- Katagiri laughed hard, but Hirose didn't find that part particularly funny at all.

-"With all due respect, I do not find your comment funny, sir."-

-"Okay, let's just forget about all this. Now go to bed, because tomorrow will be a hard day."-

-"I will, sir."-

Katagiri leaves the barracks while Hirose decides to go to sleep and reflect on what happened with all the people he has just dealt with today: Ide, Kim, Kobayashi and even Sergeant Katagiri.

Everything that happened started to spin in his head, especially his strange nightmare last night. But he decided to take Katagiri's advice at heart and forget the whole thing. Now what he needs is a good rest...

---

June 4th, AD 1942, Imperial Japanese Navy Aircraft Carrier "Soryu" actually located at the Midway Islands, near Hawaii.

-"Attention all pilots, your presence on deck is requested as soon as possible. Repeat, your presence on deck is requested as soon as possible."-

It has been two long years since Akiharu Hirose enlisted in the air force. After a very hard training process in Okinawa and a lot of effort and sacrifice, Hirose was able to pass all the required trials and now he is a proud pilot of the Imperial Japanese Air Force.

But in that moment, Hirose heard those shapeless words from the speakers of the ship, and he knew what to do in that moment.

-"Looks like it's time."-

Hirose left his cabin where he was and headed for the Soryu's locker room, where he and several of his fellow pilots were getting dressed for combat. An atmosphere of anxiety was breathed into the place, since some of the pilots who were there were rookies like Hirose who had just left the academy and this would be their first experience in combat.

-"Geez, this is gonna be a sortie! I'm already looking forward to flying and taking down some Yankees bastards now."- Katsuro Ide commented excitedly as he dressed neatly in his flight uniform."-

-"Yeah, after we kicked their asses in Pearl Harbor, I can't wait to whup 'em again."- Another young pilot said while dressing as well.

Everyone in the room remembered the IJAF's air strike in December last year against the Pearl Harbor Naval Base on Oahu Island in the Hawaii Archipelago. Some pilots like Ide participated in that air attack, while Hirose did not participate that time because he had been sick with gastritis.

But Hirose didn't seem to care much about not having participated in that battle. His number one priority was to survive the war, and for him concepts such as patriotism, sacrifice and other nonsense in his opinion were nothing but hoaxes invented by the leaders of his country. All he was interested in was to earn some money so he could go to university once the war was over.

Obviously, Hirose's silence did not go unnoticed by some of those who were present there, especially Ide.

-"Hey Hirose, you're awfully quiet today, aren't ya?"-

-"Well, I'm just a little bit thoughtful today. I just wish we could come back alive today, that's all."- Hirose calmly said.

-"C'mon, pal! Why do you say that? We're gonna win the same way we did last year against the Americans and on their own turf. And we are gonna hit them so hard, their descendants will continue to feel it for ages!

-"I hope so, Ide."-

-"What's that "I hope so" stuff? Do you doubt that we will make it?"-

-"Of course not!"- Hirose tried to excuse himself after such words, as Ide was starting to look at him in a negative way." -"I just don't think it's gonna be as simple as Pearl Harbor this time. Keep in mind that Americans are infamous for being extremely vindictive and that they will not rest until they see each of us dead, especially after what we did last year. And we must also take into consideration their racism..."-

"Bah! All Americans and Westerners are the same shit! They think they're the big deal just because they think they're more advanced than anyone else, when in fact they're a bunch of arrogant assholes!"- Ide angrily interrupted him while pointing his finger into Hirose's nose. -"I don't give a single fuck about them, and if it was up to me, I'd blow their asses back to their fucking country!"-

-"YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT, IDE!"-

Everyone in the dressing room congratulated Ide on his patriotic words, something needed at the time.

All of them, except Akiharu Hirose.

-"Well, if you say so."- That was Hirose's only answer on Ide's rant.

Meanwhile, a middle-aged man, apparently one of the high-ranking officers of the Soryu, appeared at the door of the dressing room.

-"Gentlemen, it's time to go."-

-"Yes, sir!"-

After finishing in uniform, all pilots of the Soryu headed for the carrier deck. Hirose kept his characteristic silence all the way, while Ide talked to his friends.

-"Hey, Ide, what happened to your Korean friend you used to hang out with when you were training at Naha?"- One of the pilots asked Ide about the whereabouts of Kim Sung-Hoon, his friend he used to had in Okinawa.

-"Oh, I don't know."- Ide shrugged his shoulders on that question. -"Kim flunked his exams and was expelled from the academy for failing to qualify for the Air Force. It may have something to do with him being Korean, but I personally doubt it, because they never cared whether Kim was Korean or not at all in first place."-

A few minutes later, all the pilots were already present on the deck of the Soryu, while they waited for the presence of both their captain of the ship and their superior officer who would give them the mission they should carry out that day.

The Soryu was one of four aircraft carriers under Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo as a part of the 1st Air Fleet, along with the Akagi, the Hiryu and the Kaga. The carrier herself was under the command of Captain Ryusaku Yanagimoto, a man who was said he used to be a naval attaché in the United Kingdom and then an instructor, and later he became the new captain of the Soryu.

After a few minutes of waiting, both Ryusaku Yanagimoto and another man, Lt. Cmdr. Takashige Egusa, appeared on stage, standing themselves in front of the young pilots.

-"Gentlemen!"- Yanagimoto began his eloquent and powerful speech to the pilots. -"It is a great pleasure for me to be able to speak with a young group of patriots who are ready to offer their lives in the service of the empire. This day we can still inflict another defeat on the United States just as we did last year at Pearl Harbor, and I hope that with your help and the help of everyone, we will achieve that goal. You have the duty to fulfill this mission, but above all, and if possible, to return home safe and sound."- Yanagimoto turned his head towards the officer. -"And now, your superior officer will give you what your sortie is going to be."-

Egusa began to read a paper containing the details of the mission they were going to carry out and started reading it without thinking twice.

-"The Navy Type 0 (Mitsubishi A6M Zero) squad under the other the orders of Lt. Masaharu Suganami will defend this carrier from any enemy attack. You're ordered to fire at will on any hostile plane in the sky. Any subsequent orders will be communicated to you by radio, depending on what happens in combat. That is all."

-"Well, this is going to be easier than I thought."- Hirose thought carefully after hearing his and his comrades' orders.

-"Any questions?"

-"No, sir."- Ide answered to Egusa.

-"Well, in that case, everyone get to your aircraft and wait for instructions. I wish you good luck and may the gods be with you."-

-"YES, SIR!"-

All pilots headed for their aircraft as fast as they could. Hirose wavered slightly as he climbed up, thinking about several things in his head. But at that moment, Lieutenant Suganami, his squadron leader, shouted to him.

-"HIROSE, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?"-

-"Uh, No-nothing, sir!"-

-"Then move your ass into the plane, you idiot!"-

-"Yes, sir!"-

-"Hell, the last thing I need is to babysit a bunch of kids out of the academy!"- Suganami cursed loudly, as he was Hirose's squadron leader and he wasn't exactly thrilled about having many fresh rookies on his squad.

After that brief discussion, Hirose and the other members of Suganami's squadron started their aircraft's engines, awaiting permission from the Soryu's bridge to take off.

-"All the members of Suganami's squadron, you are now ready for take-off. Good luck!"-

-"All right, you heard them, now take off as soon as possible, boys!"- Suganami said.

-"Yes, sir!"-

And at that precise moment, all the Zeros took off from the Soryu bound for the east, as their mission was to protect the carrier from any American aircraft that would get in their way.

---

June 4th, AD 1942, near Midway Atoll

After half an hour of flying around the Soryu, the flight squadron Hirose belonged to was in the air with nothing new to report. While this may have sounded boring, for some, such as the above-mentioned protagonist, the fact that there were no news was a blessing.

-"Well, at least there's nothing interesting to do. The faster we end this nonsense, the sooner we can get home."

But for some people, like Ide, the fact that there was no action was becoming into an unbearable torment...

-"Damn! This is incredibly boring, I want to see some action, not babysitting the damn carrier!

-"Quiet, Ide! No pointless chitchat right now. I AM the one babysitting your ass right now."- Suganami, the squadron leader, scolded him.

-"Ok, sir."- Replied Ide in shame.

Meanwhile, Hirose had other things to worry about in his head right now, things that for him were becoming... pretty unusual.

-"Uh?"-

At that moment, the young Japanese pilot started to see unusual stuff in front of him, including what seemed to be aircraft, except for one thing...

Those aircraft didn't look like anything he knew in his day, including aircraft from the Americans, Germans, any western country, or even any country on Earth.

The first thing he noticed was that the mysterious aircraft had no propellers and their designs were quite unusual for the time, including shapes that looked like fish, and at the same time moved faster than any other vehicle he knew in the 1940s. Everything seemed so real that Hirose could not help but warn the rest of the squadron of their presence.

-"GUYS! DID YOU SEE THAT?"

-"What did we see what?"- Suganami replied remarkably upset.

-"I saw what seemed to be strange-looking aircraft, I can't tell if they were enemy units or not, but I saw something really foreign a few seconds ago!"- Hirose explained himself very excited after what happened, but then he realized that there was nothing in front of his squadron, much less foreign aircraft of any kind, other than clouds.

-"The only thing you saw was some clouds, you imbecile!"- Suganami scolded him hard. -"Haven't you ever flown a plane in your goddamn time in the academy?"-

-"Yes, but this is my first sortie."-

-"Then shut your mouth and do as you're told instead of talking crap!"-

-"Understood, sir."-

-"Hell, just what I need, an idiot who never flew a sortie!"- Suganami cursed his luck loudly, as he thought Hirose was losing his mind in the worst time possible.

-"You should've stayed home like the last time we flew to Pearl Harbor, pal."- Ide mocks Hirose cruelly for not taking part in the battle of Pearl Harbor last year.

Hirose decided to ignore the jokes of his flight mates and continued flying, trying to forget what happened a few moments ago.

-"Maybe I'm just really nervous and I'm starting to see things, that's all."- Hirose thought deeply about what happened.

Hirose continued to fly around as if nothing had happened, even though he felt that what he had just seen might be related to what he dreamt about two years ago in Okinawa. But what he didn't understand was why he started dreaming that in a situation as critical as his own, and above all, why it had to be when he was awake.

But before he could stop thinking about it, the intriguing images reappeared in his head again, this time more intensely than before. Now what he saw seemed to be an aerial battle between those strange aircraft that seemed to be from another world.

But, in spite of how intense the fight was, none of those present in that aerial duel seemed to notice the presence of Hirose's squadron or Hirose himself. It was as if their squadron did not exist for them and everything happened so quickly, but at the same time very intensely, as he had never seen before in his life.

But Hirose, at the same time, noticed two really strange things about that aerial battle, two things that began to shock him: He realized, as he approached that fight carefully, bearing in mind that the participants could not notice his presence, that the pilots of those aircraft were not human beings.

The first thing he noticed was that the pilots of those fish-shaped aircraft had the same appearance as the human-shaped rabbits he had dreamt of last time in Okinawa two years ago...

...And the second thing he also saw was that one of the pilots of the other aircraft of unusual appearance appeared to be a woman with brown hair, but with her body covered with a coat of a slightly darker color, green eyes, and ears and face that appeared to be those of a cat.

Not only was that girl very beautiful, but her face had a very evident rictus of fury, as if she had lost something valuable from those rabbits.

-"Oh, my! She looks very angry, maybe she lost her flight mates?"- Hirose thought.

And at that precise moment, he also saw what seemed to be the leader of the rabbit squadron, a rabbit with gray fur and black stripes and brown eyes. And he seemed pretty angry as well.

-"It seems that rabbit guy is very pissed at the cat girl, that's very obvious.-

But before he could get on with it, Hirose heard a furious voice from his Zero's radio. Apparently, by distracting himself in his dream, Akiharu Hirose accidentally slipped out from the squadron's formation, causing Lieutenant Suganami and others to strongly scolded him.

-"HIROSE, YOU ARE BREAKING FORMATION! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?"-

-"Still dreaming about invisible planes, priest boy?"- Ide snarked hard on him.

The young pilot realized what he had done and that he had drifted far away from his squadron as he tried to follow the events of his dream, and realized that he was in the harsh reality of the Pacific Theater of World War II once again.

-"What the...? Where am I?"-

-"YOU JUST GOT OUT OF FORMATION, YOU MORON!- Suganami yelled at Hirose on radio.

Hirose realized that he had left the formation of his squadron for several kilometers, and he didn't know how to explain what had happened without looking like a fool.

-"I am so sorry, sir!"- Hirose apologized rather sorry for what happened, without explaining his reasons for breaking up with the formation. Obviously the rest of the squadron started making fun of him on the radio.

-"Okay, Hirose, I've had enough of your antics!"- Suganami replied already annoyed to hear what seemed to him to be excuses from his subordinate. -"Either you go back to the formation immediately, or the next time you go out with some other crap like that..."-

But before Suganami could continue the argument, all members of the squadron received an urgent message from the Soryu.

-"Attention all units, attention all units!, we are under attack! Repeat, we are under attack by many American bombers! We request fighter support ASAP!"-

-"Roger that, we're on our way to your assistance!"- Suganami replied as quickly as he could.

-"Shit! How the fucking hell those Americans knew the Soryu's position?"- Ide angrily asked in an attempt to figure out the situation.

But before they could do anything else, several American planes appeared unannounced in the Midway skies. The aircraft were several bombers along with an escort of several fighters, who were on their way to face the Japanese ones, causing Ide and many of the new pilots to panic.

-"This is all your fault, Hirose! If you hadn't break formation, they wouldn't have spotted us!, you fucking RETARD!"- Ide tried to blame Hirose for what happened in an angry way.

-"Calm down, people!"- Suganami replied while trying to remain calm, -"This is not the time to lose your nerves! What we need is to get organized to face the Americans right now."- Then, Suganami barked some orders at Ide. -"Ide! You, Hirose and the rest of the new recruits stay behind us while we, your seniors, attack them. The rest of you guys cover our backs in case any enemies are coming from the rear."-

-"Hanging out with Hirose?"- Ide responded with disbelief to such an order. -"With all due respect, sir, Hirose is responsible for us being in this damn thing, so if it were up to me..."-

-"Do as I say, Ide!"- Barked Suganami at Ide. -"Then we'll worry about Hirose and his stupid nonsense coming home!"-

Ide knew he didn't had other choice but to obey...

-"Understood, sir."-

After this, Suganami's squadron split into two: One with Suganami at the head, and the other with Katsuro Ide leading the other group. Ide's group stayed behind Suganami's group with the intention of protecting their backs from any American attack.

Obviously, Ide was not at all happy with the current situation, and did not even hesitate to threaten Akiharu Hirose on the radio.

-"Hirose, if we get out of this shit alive, I swear to you on everything that's sacred to me I'm gonna kill you and turn your corpse into dog food! You bet your life on that."-

Hirose remained silent to such threat.

-"What's the matter? Are you scared? To begin with, I never liked you!"- Ide keep yelling him. -"I don't know how a Shinto moron out from the boonies like you could have become a pilot! You have always been liked by everyone, even by people like Admiral Yamamoto and even Katagiri, even though you are a complete and utter ASSHOLE!"-

Hirose continued silent, disregarding Katsuro Ide's angry words.

-"Aren't you gonna answer me? Or do you just want to prove that you are better than me, you idiot?"-

Before Ide could continue with his abusive tirade against the young pilot, an American fighter suddenly came out of the clouds, heading for Ide's Zero.

-"LT. IDE! HIROSE! WATCH OUT!"- The frenetic voice of one of the pilots in Ide's group came from the radio of both pilots, in a desperate attempt to warn both pilots of the enemy aircraft, while Ide continued to insult Ide in mid-flight.

-"WHAT THE F...?"-

The American aircraft opened fire on Ide's Zero, who at the time had dropped his guard while arguing with Akiharu Hirose. The bullets hit the tail of Ide's Zero, causing several parts of it to fall off the Zero and causing his plane to lose control.

-"SHIT! I'M HIT, I'M HIT!"- Ide yelled in despair, while trying to avoid further enemy fire, -"I LOST MY TAIL, I REPEAT, I LOST MY TAIL!"

In the meantime, Ide desperately tried to regain control of the aircraft, but all his attempts to do so were unsuccessful, as he realized that he had lost not only his tail, but also parts of his Zero's hind wings and several sections of the fuselage, causing his plane to plummet into the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean. Ide can do nothing but curse his luck and Hirose for his own disgrace.

-"FUCK, FUCK, FUCKING FUCK! THIS IS ALL YOUR FUCKING FAULT, HIROSE! I'M GONNA DIE!, I'M GONNA DIEEEEEEEE!"-

Hirose, who fortunately had not been attacked by American aircraft and who had been paralyzed in the face of such an event, quickly decided in a last-ditch effort to save his flight mate, even if that fellow flight mate had previously threatened to kill him returning home. Even Hirose, who was a devout shintoist, was not so vindictive as to let someone die, let alone anyone in front of him.

-"HANG IN THERE, IDE! I'M GONNA SAVE YOU, IF IT'S THE LAST THING I DO!"-

-"I DON'T NEED YOUR FUCKIN' HELP, YOU LITTLE FUCKING PRIEST BOY!- Ide roared against Hirose, even if he knew he could die, but his own pride prevented him to even accept the help of the person he hated the most in his life. -"THE LAST THING I NEED IN THIS LIFE IS THE PITY OF SUCKERS LIKE YOU!"- Ide kept screaming in rage, not even caring about his own life.

Ide's plane continued to dive into the sea, while Hirose and his Zero followed Ide's plane trying to save him.

-"I don't care what you feel about me, Ide, but I can't let people die!"- Hirose cried for the man who previously want him dead, and in that moment, he dived right to his death. -"Even if you hate me for life, letting you die like that would be just as bad for me!"-

-"HA! I never gave a damn about YOU or anyone else in this life. I've never had anyone who cares who I am and what I do, so dying here like a dog is preferable to living with the shame that an asshole like you PITIED ME and saved my life!"-

-"Please don't say that, Ide!"- Hirose replied in an attempt to convince Ide to let him save his life. -"You can punch me all you want when we get home, if that's what you want, but please, I don't want you to die!"-

-"BULLSHIT! I DON'T WANT YOUR PITY, AND I DON'T WANT YOUR SO-CALLED FRIENDSHIP!"- Ide kept yelling, ignoring anything else around him. -"The only thing I can do right now is to CURSE YOU! I DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL, HIROSE! Hope that you and your fucking family and everything to do with you and they suffer the same as me! At least I'll go to hell with the satisfaction of watching you turn your life into a hellhole! And I don't care if the world goes into shit with you, because at least this fucking world deserves it after everything they done to me!"

-"PLEASE, IDE, STOP WITH THAT NONSENSE!"-

At that very moment, Hirose heard an evil laugh from Katsuro Ide's lips...

-"HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!-

-"Damn, Ide just lost his mind!"-

But before he could do anything else, Hirose heard a thunderous sound and a powerful explosion was seen in front of him, just where Ide's plane was. The shock wave was so strong that Hirose briefly lost control of his Zero...

-"Crap! My plane!"-

Because of how powerful the blast was, Hirose's eardrums began to buzz with pain and he began to lose his balance briefly, even though he was wearing earmuffs to block that kind of sound. Once Hirose was able to regain his balance and the pain stopped, he realized what happened...

-"Oh... no..."-

Ide's plane had disappeared completely, or in precise terms, his Zero was destroyed by several shots fired, which came from several American fighters that approached Ide's Zero and opened fire on him. The shrapnel and the bullets hit the aircraft fuel tank, causing it to explode into pieces and killing its pilot.

Meanwhile, Hirose saw that what remained of Katsuro Ide's plane lay on the sea, along with the bloody and mutilated remains remains of the one who was then his flight mate, and now he was nothing more than shark food, as Katagiri had predicted two years ago in Okinawa.

-"Ide... No..."-

But at that time Hirose knew he didn't have time to cry for Ide, since the American fighters approached him dangerously and the only thing he could do now was to evade them.

-"I don't have time to cry right now, now the number one priority is to survive this war right now.- Hirose thought at that moment, trying to put his mind back together after such a grim event.

The first thing the young Japanese pilot did was climb as fast as he could to avoid the American planes and try to meet with the rest of the group that originally leaded Ide. Since Ide had been shot down, Hirose was now technically the leader of the group, something he didn't have the time to think about, much less to enjoy.

-"This is Hirose speaking, Ide has been shot down, I repeat, Ide has been shot down, over!"-

Hirose tried to communicate with the rest of the squadron, but realized that for some reason his radio was dead.

-"Shit! The radio's gone!"-

But before he could continue to lament, several enemy aircraft suddenly sprang up in various directions, despite his attempts to evade them. Without Ide's support and the rest of his squadron, it was now Hirose's task to face them, but in that instant the pilot felt he was like a solitary gazelle surrounded by a herd of hungry lions.

-"Damn, this is gonna suck."-

The American fighters quickly charged against the Japanese plane that Hirose was piloting, causing the young pilot to undertake evasive maneuvers to avoid enemy fire. Although it was his first aerial battle, he quickly remembered all the details he had learned at the academy about the subject and the first thing he did was try to attack the first enemy plane in front of him in order to escape the ambush.

As quickly as he could, Hirose opened fire on one of the American fighters, bringing him down in one go. Normally that would be considered as a beginner's luck, but he didn't have time to think about such an idea, the only thing he had in mind was to survive.

-"One down..."-

The rest of the American fighters launched a counter-attack on Hirose's Zero, which tried by all means to evade them while they, for their part, wanted to see him dead. Meanwhile, he was again trying to communicate as well as with his squadron as the Soryu at once, unsuccessfully. He quickly deduced that the radio could have been damaged due to the explosive wave caused by the explosion of the Ide's fighter when it was destroyed by American aircraft.

-"Damn, what a wrong time for this piece of crap to fail! Where the hell's my squad right now?"-

Because of the chaotic nature of the battle was becoming, he could not pin-point the exact location of his aircraft carrier as well as Lt. Suganami's squadron either, making it very evident that, due to Hirose's previous attempt to save Ide's life, he had strayed too far from the exact location of both locations, leaving him at the mercy of the Allied planes.

At that very moment the first thing he thought of was trying to go to the last location of the Soryu he remembered in an attempt at least to get home safely. As he headed west, the last direction he remembered, he realized that the Japanese carrier was being attacked by American bombers and that it was too dangerous for him to return. Rather than lamenting about what happened, Hirose headed north in an attempt to evade American fire, while trying to keep his head as cool as possible so he could analyze what was happening.

-"All right, Hirose, think. This is a very bad time to have your first aerial battle. You've just separated from your squadron and your carrier is being attacked by the enemy. Now what should you do?"-

An idea would be to head for the other aircraft carriers commanded by Admiral Nagumo, the Akagi and the Kaga, but due to the number of enemy planes in the skies, it would be very difficult for him to try to evade them and head towards them, and returning to Japan alone would only be a sure suicide, so the options were beginning to run out for the young pilot.

But before he could keep thinking about it, an American fighter jumped up close to him, forcing him to engage in evasive maneuvers.

-"CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP!"-

Quickly, Hirose's Zero took a U-turn, so that he could get close to the American plane and without hesitation he opened fire against the aircraft. The bullets hit the plane, causing it to lose control and crashed into the sea. Hirose had no time to think about the pilot's whereabouts, but it was more than obvious that the American pilot could not have survived the crash.

-"I'm so sorry for you, pal, but it's either you or me..."-

After shooting down that enemy fighter, Hirose realized that there were more American planes headed against him. Considering their numbers, he flew northward with the intention of fleeing them, but the fighters would not stop pursuing him.

-"Damn, that's too many of them for me!"-

But before he could continue to the north, another enemy plane, which Hirose could not notice because he was underneath him, opened fire desperately towards him, but quickly and due to a strange intuition he had at that moment, he was able to evade the attack without any problems.

-"How the hell did I get around that? Normally no one could have been aware of such an eventuality...-

But he knew very well that he didn't have time to think of details like that at the time. Surviving the Battle of Midway was his top priority now.

But then, he heard the sound of bullets very close to his plane...

-"WHAT THE..."-

A large number of bullets from an American fighter that he hadn't noticed had impacted the rear of the fuselage of his Zero...

-"DAMN IT, NOT NOW!"-

While the damage to his plane was not so severe compared to the damage that destroyed Ide's Zero, it was enough to cause the plane to lose power, as the bullets hit several vital systems of the aircraft, causing Hirose to attempt by all means to unsuccessfully regain control of the plane.

-"COME ON, YOU CAN'T CRASH NOW, PLEASE HOLD ON!"-

Meanwhile, the plane plunged into the sea, without the young pilot from Izumo could do anything to avoid it.

-"I DON'T WANT TO DIE IN THIS PLACE, I WANT TO GO HOME! YOU HEAR ME?"- Hirose cried out in anger, thinking he was going to die at that very moment.

And then, the Zero again responded to the pilot's orders...

At that time, the plane seemed to have heard the young Asian pilot's pleas, and while he couldn't stop it from falling, at least his pilot could carefully plane it so that he could at least land at sea. He also noticed there is an island near his own position.

-"Let's see, very close to here looks like there's an island. If I go near it, I could be there until they rescue me. I just hope there's no American soldiers waiting for me there."-

Akiharu Hirose was fortunate that at that time the planes that had shot him down were busy attacking other targets, so they didn't have time to try and finish him off. Similarly, there were no American or Allied ships near the island, so he could get close to it without any problem.

-"Well, here we go, I hope I can get out of this alive."-

Hirose's plane started the descent near the beaches of the island that was near him, as he tried to land at sea for safety. Minutes later, the plane softly landed at sea without much trouble, although the landing caused the plane to receive much more damage than it already had and the water to enter from all parts of the aircraft, but fortunately its pilot managed to get out of it alive.

Once the young Japanese pilot left his Zero and reached the island's beach safely, he could not help but feel somewhat unhappy to see his plane sink into the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean, but at least breathed a sigh of relief that he was safe, at least for the moment.

-"As they say over there, any landing where you come out alive is good, isn't it?"-

Hirose realized a few things about the island where he was: The island seemed to be a bit small, and because no one was going to "welcome" him, it was more than obvious that the island was deserted.

Upon entering the island, Hirose realized that the place had some wildlife and several fruit trees, including some coconut palm trees, so he wouldn't have to worry about getting food while the army were looking for him.

Now the most important thing for him was to have to deal with something of the utmost importance: finding a place to sleep in the middle of the island's jungle. Fortunately for him, he found the right place for that, which was the interior of a dry, hollow tree that was in the middle of the jungle. That tree had the advantage of being tall enough to be able to see the sea and the sky, and thus know if any Japanese or enemy ship or plane was approaching the place.

The only problem for him was that because of the suddenness of his situation, he didn't have time to take out many things that could have been useful from the plane, so the only things he had on hand were some sheets, a knife and his service revolver that had been given to him in case he had to defend himself in a situation like that.

Meanwhile, Hirose could hear in the distance the sound of the fierce battle that was taking place far away from that island, but for some reason, no one had noticed both the island and him, so at least he didn't have to worry if any bombs or bullets fell in that place at the time.

That also implied another frightening thing for him: If no one noticed his presence, it also meant that no one would go looking for him, and it was likely that he could have stayed on that lonely island for the rest of his life.

But once the night fell, the only thing he wanted was to sleep. There'd be plenty of time to worry about that later.

---

June 10th, AD 1942, Unknown Island in the Midway Atoll

It has been several days since Hirose was on that deserted island without anyone bothering to look for him. Judging by the lack of sounds around him, it was more than evident that the Battle of Midway was over days ago, but without other means of communication, he had no way to know the outcome of the battle.

Something that was no longer very important for him anyway...

Despite being alone on the island, Hirose had managed to get enough food to eat and the water he drank was from the rain that had fallen on the spot in the last few days. He also tried to see if any plane or boat from his country approached the island without success.

But at that moment, he began to hear a strange sound coming from very close to that tree that he had turned into his home.

-"WHO'S THERE?"-

Seeing that he might be in danger, Hirose drew out his revolver, which he had fortunately not used for at all, and stepped out of the tree so he could know who was closing in. Considering the sounds he had heard before, it was evident that it was not some wild animal from the island, but something bigger, like a person or something he had not seen before in all the time he has been living on that place.

-"WHOEVER YOU ARE, COME OUT OF WHERE YOU ARE WITH YOUR HANDS UP!"- Hirose yelled in both Japanese and English.

Despite his warnings, he didn't hear anything else...

...so to at least scare off any likely attacker, he decided to open fire with his revolver in the air to at least get some kind of reaction.

-"IF THERE ARE ANY HUMANS AROUND HERE, I'M ARMED AND I WON'T HESITATE TO OPEN FIRE!"- Hirose continued to yell in both languages to make his message clear.

At that instant, Hirose heard a somewhat frightening voice coming out of the bushes of the jungle. The voice was that of a young man of about his own age who spoke English with a pronounced accent that he could not deduce exactly where it came from.

-"Hey, don't shoot please, I'm not going to hurt you!"-

-"Eh?"-

The young man came out of the bushes with his hands held high and no weapons in his hand. This is important to note, since the young man was dressed in what appeared to be the uniform of the United States Air Force, which in normal conditions indicated that he was his enemy.

Except for one thing: That man had no intention of fighting him, much less seemed to be remotely dangerous. What's more, he didn't even seem to be armed with anything, not even some improvised weapon, and it seemed like he was more surprised to meet a Japanese man who could speak English, than the fact that Japanese soldier in front of him was pointing his gun on the American pilot's face.

-"Are you... American?"- Hirose asked in English.

-"Of course I'm American! Haven't you figured that out?"- The strange American man responded, somewhat offended by that question.

Hirose realized that American was not exactly an ordinary person, and above all that he didn't seem to be dangerous.

-"Well, it's more than obvious that you are one."- Hirose replied in his language.

-"At least I should congratulate you on your English. You hardly have any Japanese accent."-

But at that time, Hirose realized some things about the physical appearance of that American: His skin was a little darker than that of many Americans, and by default, many Westerners he had met in his life, but he didn't seem to be of African-American or Latino origin either, so he could only deduce one thing Hirose had read on the subject...

-"Are you, by any chance... an Indian?"-

-"You mean if I come from India, or if I'm a Native American? If that's your question, technically I'm a Navajo, if that's what you mean."- The American pilot responded cheerfully, without being offended by the question, since it was obvious that the only Native Americans that Japanese pilot could have seen in his life were those from the movies or from books.

-"Oh, I see."-

-"Likewise, you don't seem to be like the vast majority of Japanese soldiers I've met so far. If you were one of those guys, you'd have shot me in the first place and without hesitation. What's more, I can even deduce that you're not even in this mess for your own sake, right?"-

-"How did you know all that?"- Hirose asked bewildered at the conclusion reached by the young Navajo man, even if that person had no way of knowing that important detail.

-"Let's just say you're not the only one in this war out of necessity."- The American said. -"I also got into the army to get money for my family, or to be more specific, for my grandma, who is a somewhat sick woman and she needs medicine."-

The young Japanese soldier had no choice but to agree with what his American counterpart said.

-"I think I understand that too well..."- Hirose shrugged. -"By the way, where have you been sleeping these days since the battle on this island? I haven't seen you before."-

The American tried to explain how he had arrived on the island, even though Hirose had not noticed him.

-"Technically speaking, I arrived on this island when the bomber I was going into crashed due of a mechanical malfunction. The pilot barely landed at sea, but the crash was very brutal, and I was the only survivor of the accident. The rest of my buddies died on impact, and I was VERY lucky that I came out of that plane unharmed with only a few minor scratches."-

-"How many days ago was that accident? I don't remember any planes crashing anywhere near here."-

-"That was about two months ago. My partners and me were on a reconnaissance mission in this area when the accident occurred. And if you ask me what happened to their bodies, I buried them on the other side of this island, where I have been living ever since."-

Hirose was surprised to learn that that man had been living on that island all by himself all along.

-"TWO MONTHS?"- Hirose replied on shock. -"And then why hasn't anyone come looking for you and the rest of the crew? Someone should have done it taking into account what you're telling me, and considering your country."-

-"Ha! Do you think my country is gonna bother to look for a miserable bomber who has crashed on some godforsaken island in God knows where, where they most likely thought the entire crew had already died?"- The young Navajo man replied with a certain degree of sadness and anger. -"And even more if they know that the only survivor is a poor and stupid Indian like me, that for them I am completely disposable, as far as they are concerned?"-

Hirose can't help but feel bad for that young man whose country most likely saw him as disposable, just like he did. Even if that soldier was considered his enemy, the young Indian was so resigned to his fate that he did not mind talking about his unlucky situation to someone he should have considered equally as his enemy. At least that man found someone else who was in the same predicament as him.

-"Geez! I'm really sorry for you, buddy..."-

-"Don't ask me. At least I'm happy to find someone I can talk to, even if that person is a Japanese guy. I personally don't care what happens to me right now."-

-"Well, if it's any consolation, I can help you here on the island on what they're looking for both of us, if there's no problem on your part, of course."-

The young Indian was surprised by the generosity of the Japanese-born man.

-"Oh, thanks a lot, pal!"- The American man happily replied.

-"Don't thank me, I also need company and right now any help is good, even if it comes from my enemies."-

-"Well, I think that in the situation you and me are in, we could hardly consider each other as enemies if you take it into consideration."- The young foreign soldier said. -"By the way, we haven't introduced ourselves to each other. Since I got here first and by politeness, what's your name?"-

-"My name is Akiharu Hirose. And you?"-

-"Eh..."-

-"Do you have a problem giving me your name?"-

-"I don't know if you can pronounce it right, buddy."-

-"Please, tell me. I don't think I will have any issue pronouncing your name correctly. At least my name must sound just as weird to you, I think."-

-"OK. My name is Justin Naʼiigeeł. Justy for friends."-

-"Naʼiigeeł?"- The Japanese soldier said a little bit puzzled by the oddness of the American pilot's last name.

-"It means "dream" in Navajo."- The American man explained carefully. -"I don't know if it has any deep meaning, but it sounds so right in my opinion, and as a Navajo, I am very proud of my surname anyways."-

-"Anyways, it's very nice too meet you, Justy."-

-"Me too, Akiharu."

Hirose felt a little uncomfortable because of the familiarity with which the Navajo man was addressing him, for cultural reasons.

-"I'd rather you called me by my last name. You are not a close friend or part of my family to be called by my first name."-

-"And why not? It would be rude calling you otherwise. We're no longer in the army to address each other formally and continuously. Besides, I don't think you can pronounce my last name correctly all the time."-

Hirose realized that arguing otherwise would be completely pointless and didn't feel like arguing about something so trivial and stupid in the such a critical situation that they were both on the island, so he decided not to continue the discussion on the subject about his name.

-"sigh Fine, call me whatever you want. Just a warning: PLEASE do not call me Aki or Haru, those names are for girls in my country. OK?"-

-"Yeah, I get it."- Justy replied. -"Well, then that's settled. Do you want me to take you to the place where I'm living so you know I'm not lying?"-

-"If you wish, Justy."-

-"Then, let's go!"-

A few minutes later, Justy took Hirose to his home on the other side of the island. Justy's home was a mound that he had built and that resembled, in the words of the American, the traditional houses of Navajo culture, with the difference that he built the place with the remains of the plane where he came. Near Justy's home there was what appeared to be the graves of the American's flight mates who died in the crash.

Hirose, struck by the sight of the tombs, decided to offer his respects for the victims with a Shinto prayer, something that surprised the American.

-"You don't have to do that, we're supposed to be your enemies."- Justy commented somewhat surprised by the Japanese young man's attitude, as he did not expect him who was supposed to be his enemy to pay his respects to the victims of the crash.

-"Even my enemies do not deserve such a horrible death like this, much less when it comes to air crashes."- Hirose explained.

-"Well, I think I get that."- Justy agreed to that and quickly noticed his surroundings. -"Jeez, I think it's already dark out too fast! We've been talking so much, I didn't notice the time of day."-

Both men realize that it was dark after spending a lot of time talking to each other, but Hirose didn't want to return home for fear that some wild animal would attack him on the road, so he asked the American to let him sleep at home.

-"No problem, buddy. I got another extra sleeping bag here that I managed to get off the wreckage of the plane, so you can sleep here in the meantime."-

-"OK, thanks!"-

After both young men had a hearty meal, they went to bed as soon as possible in their sleeping bags inside Justy's home, although the young Navajo found out weird that Hirose didn't talk much about himself, nor did the young Japanese pilot ask anything about Justy. But for the American that was the least of it, because he too wanted to fall asleep soon.

---

Akiharu Hirose again is having another one of those strange nightmares he had had years ago and the one he had recently had during the Battle of Midway when he was awake...

...only this time what he was seeing was extremely abstract images that he couldn't understand at all.

-"What the hell am I watching and what does all this mean?"-

What he could witness in his dreams were images of what appeared to be animals with human aspect, among these images appeared those rabbits that he had seen in his previous dreams, but at the same time he would see things that he could not understand in their proper context...

...Among those things he saw was that cat that also had a human appearance, and at the same time saw her with another man or male of her same species, which were in a bed...

...And she was having sex with him. Very wild, almost animalistic, sex.

Normally that would be something that would arouse anyone, but in his case and considering the context of the situation, or the lack thereof, it was something that began to horrify him.

And that's without saying what he just saw afterwards.

Hirose began to see what appeared to be images involving that humanoid cat, including what it appeared to be, in the order in which they were appearing:

Taking gunfire from those rabbits he'd seen before.

Watching her give birth to a cub.

Arguing violently with someone who appears to be her superior officer while she was in a hospital bed.

Seeing the girl in the company of another girl smaller than her, who looked like a mouse.

Crying all alone in a room.

Among other events that he could not elucidate correctly, apart from seeing what seemed to be two shadows of a purely human look, like those of children...

Obviously, that didn't had any meaning or anything that could give him a clue as to what he just saw...

Then...

---

-"Akiharu, Akiharu! Are you OK, man?"-

-"Eh? What the...?"-

When Hirose opened his eyes, he realized that it had all been another of those meaningless nightmares, and that his friend Justy was right in front of him trying to make him snap out of his dream.

-"Where am I?"-

-"Where you at, buddy? You had a nightmare, that's what happened to you!"- Justy angrily replied to him, while Hirose tried to figure out what just happened in his dreams.

-"What was I doing in my sleep?"-

-"Well, if you want to know, you were screaming like hell for a few hours, and you mentioned strange things in your dreams."-

-"Really?"-

-"Yeah, seriously, I actually figured I'd go deaf from your screaming, and then I thought you'd lost your mind."- Justy went on to explain what had happened, as he pointed his finger at his right ear to indicate how loud Hirose had shouted in his dreams.

Hirose was ashamed of what had happened, for he had almost hurt his foreign friend who had barely known him the day before and had to sleep at his home.

-"I'm really sorry, Justy, but recently I've had a lot of strange nightmares since I crashed on this island, and I've even had the same nightmares when I was in Japan."-

Before Justy could accept his apology, he quickly realized that what his Japanese friend was telling him was something extremely unusual and out of the ordinary with respect to dreams, so he asked for further explanations.

-"Wait a second, you said you've had those nightmares back home before?"-

-"Yes, but I had them two years ago"-

-"Hmmm..."- Justy remained momentarily thoughtful for a while.

-"If you don't mind, could you tell me what exactly I was screaming about in my dreams?"- Hirose asked him.

-"Let's see, you were yelling things like "animals", "girls", and "Why are you guys having sex in front of me?", among other dreadful things.

Hirose blushed when he heard this, as it was most likely that Justy was having the worst impression of him.

-"I hope you don't think wrong of me, especially when it comes to the girl and the sex scene. That's not exactly what I was dreaming about."-

-"Don't worry, I'm not thinking about it. In fact, what I think you've dreamed of is even more worrisome."-

The young Japanese man was stunned in shock, as he thought Justy was thinking another negative thing about him.

-"I hope you don't think I'm a pervert, or a homosexual or something like that. I do like girls, if you ask me, and in fact I had a girlfriend back home."-

-"Of course I'm not thinking that kind of nonsense, pal! In fact, what I'm thinking about what you dreamed last night may have an even worse meaning."-

Hirose began to think about the worst, considering that he already had a bad experience with those kinds of people when he was at the academy.

-"What kind of worse meaning is that you mean?"-

Justy took a deep breath before continuing the chat...

-"First of all, I need to explain some things about myself and my family so that you understand the context of what I'm saying, and don't think I'm making things up.-

-"What kind of things?"- Hirose replied.

-"First of all, I come from a family of shamans dating back to ancient times, before white men came to America..."-

Obviously, hearing such a thing caused Hirose to leave his bed furious, for he had had enough of hearing fortune tellers and mystical men since he was at the academy, especially since that incident he had with Saburo Kobayashi two years ago in Naha.

-"Hey, where are you going, Akiharu?"-

-"THAT'S IT! I HAVE ENOUGH OF THIS BULLSHIT!"- Hirose replied quite angrily when he heard that his friend was a descendant of shamans, due to his experiences in the subject. -"Why does it look like everyone wants to try and predict my future? Do I look SO DAMN naive or do they see me as having something special?"-

-"Wait a sec, Akiharu! What's wrong with you? I don't get your attitude and and your reasons for being mad at me. Do you already had a problem with shamans before?"-

Hirose realized that his American friend did not understand the context and the reasons why the young Japanese pilot was furious to know that the young Navajo boy had a spiritualistic background.

-"Believe it or not, I don't believe in such nonsense."- Hirose explained his reasons to Justy, while keeping an angry face. -"That's one of the many reasons why I want to study in the university, and not have to listen to that kind of superstitions every day. At least I thought you were just as rational as me, but I think I was wrong."-

Justy tried to explain to him his reasons for reaching that conclusion, without losing his cool.

-"Could you at least allow me to explain myself better? I'm not saying this to make fun of you, but to try to find an explanation for your dreams. Obviously any conclusion I reach does not necessarily mean that what you dreamed of must be fulfilled in reality."- The young Native American replied at Hirose. -"But first of all I need you to know my personal background, so you know I'm not trying to mocking you."-

-"All right, I'm all ears."-

Then, Justy sat on a stone near him and began to talk about his life and his personal background.

-"First and foremost, my grandma comes from a family well known in the Navajo tribe to be a member of a renowned clan of shamans, whose ancestors date from immemorial times before the arrival of white men to the American continent".

Hirose cannot help but make a gesture of disbelief at the words of his Native American friend, for he had already heard something similar when he was in Japan, except that the person to whom he referred in his mind, Saburo Kobayashi, was an amateur onmyoji apprentice.

-"You don't believe me, right?"-

-"The problem here is not whether I believe you or not, but I'm not a fan of hearing such rubbish. I already had a bad experience with someone who was also a diviner back home."- Hirose answers Justy in discomfort. -"But you can go ahead."

-"OK, Because of that, my grandma taught me the main principles and basics of Navajo shamanism, including the interpretation of dreams and their meaning. Aside from that, I also have read books about the different interpretations of dreams in different cultures, including Asian cultures such as yours, so that my worldview is not exclusively limited to my tribe and my country."-

-"I see."-

-"Well, now that you know who I am, I need to ask you some questions about you this time."- Justy began to look to his Japanese counterpart in his very eyes. -"Do you drink alcohol?"-

The young Asian pilot knew exactly what his American fellow pilot wanted to get to with such a question about his drinking habits.

-"No, I don't drink or smoke, and if you ask me, I don't use drugs either. Do I look like an alcoholic or a junkie?"- Hirose replied indignantly to such a question.

-"Have you ever had an accident where you got hit on your head?"- Justy continued with his questions, ignoring the Japanese man's complaints.

-"Of course not! If that were so, I wouldn't even be in the air force in the first place, nor would I be in such a predicament and on this damn island!"-

-"Now I need you to tell me exactly what you've been dreaming about in the last few years, including what you've been dreaming about when you were in your country. Tell me all the exact details, however ridiculous, vulgar, or insignificant they may be."-

Hirose began to tell Justy about his dreams, including the space ship inhabited by humanoid rabbits and the aerial battle he dreamed of when he was at the Battle of Midway where he dreamed of both those rabbits and the humanoid cat as well, as well as his reactions, events and even that erotic scene where that cat girl had sex with another male of her same species, not forgetting also those strange aircrafts that he had never seen before...

-"In that case..."-

Justy began to draw on the ground several images that didn't make much sense to Hirose. Those images were scribbles that looked like those images he had previously read in some history books about Native Americans, although with some details he had never seen before, probably closely related to what Hirose dreamed that last night.

-"What's all this?"- Hirose asked Justy about the pictures in the ground.

-"You can say it's my interpretation of what you just dreamed of, considering what you told me about it and adding some details of my own to fill in the blanks."-

-"And what exact meaning do all these pictures have?"- The Japanese asked demanding an explanation about those dreams that seemed to be haunting him.

Justy took a deep breath before he spoke further.

-"I'll be honest about all this, Akiharu: I don't really know either."-

The Native American's response stunned the young Japanese pilot, as it was the last thing he wanted to hear. Not only had Justy not solved his problem about his bizarre dreams over the last few years, but he felt that young Navajo might have been fooling around, and he didn't really know the slightest thing about anything.

-"Do you think I'm stupid or what?"- Hirose began shouting at Justy to see that he hadn't reached any satisfactory conclusion to his issue. -"You think I'm gonna be here watching your stupid little pictures all this time, while you're making fun of me?"-

-"Hey, hey, hey, wait a sec, pal! I'm not done with this yet. At least let me drop my conclusions, okay?"-

Hirose sat on the hard dirt floor of the island, quite irritated.

-"Ok, proceed."

-"While it is true that I have not been able to find a solid explanation for the meaning of your dreams yet, if there is a conclusion to which I can reach to all this and that I can tell you that it is something I can deduce with certainty: What you have just dreamt may not concern you at this time, but it may affect your family later in a very distant future."-

-"And what does my family have to do with all this? First of all, I'm not even married, albeit I have a girlfriend back home, and I don't even know if I'm ever going to leave this godforsaken island. And the same goes for you too."-

-"Don't worry about it, Akiharu. You and me will leave this island sooner or later, that's for sure."-

-"Oh, yeah? And who the hell do you think you are, Nostradamus?"- Hirose replied increasingly annoyed by what he had just heard.

-"No exactly, but at least I'm trying to help."- Justy answered with a smile in his face.

-"The only thing I want are two things: One, to know what the hell I'm dreaming of, and two, to get off this island, and if that means I don't have to listen to freaks like you, much better for me."- The Japanese pilot replied frustrated at Justy's conclusions. -"Geez! I can't believe that even in Western countries there are idiots like you wandering around!"-

-"Don't worry, I've been told that several times already. Also, remember that I'm not very good at this compared to my grandma, so I had to improvise a bit."- Justy explained in detail.

-"In that case, you're not really a diviner, but an apprentice's wannabe."- Hirose replied in a snarky disposition.

Justy, who is usually a very patient-oriented person, was beginning to find himself feeling somewhat frustrated by the extremely negative attitude of his Japanese counterpart, so he decided to take further action.

-"Akiharu, What is your problem with diviners and why do they bug you so much?"-

Hirose decided he needed to explain why diviners was a berserk button for him, especially for someone like Justy, who was a shaman apprentice, much for his personal displeasure.

-"When I was training to be a pilot in my country, specifically in Okinawa, I had a classmate named Saburo, who was an onmyoji apprentice..."-

-"Onmyoji?"- Justy asked about the meaning of that word.

-"Basically, he was a shaman like you, in a nutshell."- Hirose continued to explain about Saburo Kobayashi to Justy. -"I met him in person when I was running on the beach as part of my training. And then, for some reason I still don't get it, he started asking me questions about that nightmare I had the last night before that day, since Kobayashi realized that I had slept very badly and that I had a nightmare, just like you did at this time."-

-"I see. And if you can still remember, and if you don't mind, could you tell me what you and that Saburo guy talked about that day?"-

-"Exactly the same thing I've been talking to you about right now. Down to the same answers and conclusions, even with the same question he did about me regarding my personal and mental health. The only question you didn't ask me and he asked me was about my choice of career that I plan to study in university once this war is over."-

-"What career do you plan to study?"- Justy asked carefully.

-"Biology. And according to him, my career choice could influence the future of my family, just as you told me about it."- The young Japanese man continued to explain what happened to him in his country during his days at the military academy. -"He also said that my descendants would be involved in events that would change not only Japan, but even the entire universe. To be honest, I don't know what the hell that Kobayashi was thinking or at least he was implying with such nonsense."-

-"Hmmm"-

-"But there is something else he commented: He spoke about a person in the future of my family, who would be the person who would destroy the world in vengeance. Out of that detail, he didn't tell me if that person was a man, a woman or a human being beforehand. When I heard such crap, the only thing I could deduce was that Kobayashi had lost all the screws in his head."-

-"And then?"-

-"Then, there was something else that intrigued me even more: After that discussion, where I ordered Kobayashi to leave my room, and after a dispute I had with two other idiots, I had a rather strange chat with my superior officer."-

-"Strange chat, you say?"-

-"Yes, he told me about a man he met when they were both in China and who came from Europe. Besides that, I didn't know anything else, other than he was Japanese, of course. The conclusion he came to was that what Kobayashi said was his had said all that just to lift my spirits."- Hirose sighed after this. -"But, after what you told me about my nightmares and what Kobayashi said in Japan, now I don't know if this is just a horrible nightmare, a terrible coincidence, or something worse."-

Justy began to think carefully about what his Japanese friend had said, as there were several interesting facts that he had not previously noted.

-"Let me see..."-

In no time, the young Navajo man began drawing on the floor again, apparently trying to complete in a graphic way the dreams of Akiharu Hirose that he had already drawn before, so he could at least gave a better explanation.

And when he finished drawing, Justy was able to have a sharper picture of what Hirose dreamed... and its foreshadowing meaning.

And what he could deduce from the Japanese young man's dreams was a very shocking thing.

-"Holy... Mary, mother of god..."-

-"What did you just deduce from all this?"- Hirose asked Justy after seeing the grim face of his American counterpart.

-"I just need a final question from you."-

-"Which question do you need from me?"-

Justy took a deep breath before he spoke again...

-"What is the name of your girlfriend?"-

Hirose was surprised after hearing such a question about his girlfriend in Japan.

-"Why do you want to know my girlfriend's name? Does she have anything to do with this whole dream thing?"-

-"Since she's your girlfriend, theoretically yes. I also need another question that I forgot to take into consideration: What color are your girlfriend's eyes?"-

-"WAIT A GODDAMN SECOND! Isn't this just an excuse for you to know what my girlfriend looks like and sleep with her?- Hirose yelled furiously, thinking that the Navajo had lustful intentions with her. But it turned out that the truth was very different from what he expected...

-"Of course not, you idiot! I just need that information to complete the drawing and get a more complete picture of what I'm trying to get. Besides, I also have a girlfriend in my country."-

The Japanese young man quickly understood what his fellow pilot wanted to do and decided to give him that information.

-"OK, I get it."- Hirose thought carefully about what he was going to say at that moment.-"Her name is Rina Fujimoto, she lives in Hiroshima, and her eyes are green."-

-"Green, you said?"-

-"Yes. To be honest, such eyes are very rare to find in Asian people in general, and that's one of the many reasons why I fell in love with her."-

-"Okay, I see. Green eyes, your girlfriend..."-

Justy started doing further drawings on the floor, with the information Hirose gave him. For his part, Hirose himself realized some things about the new drawings Justy had added about his girlfriend: In the newly drawn ones, Justy had sketched what appeared to be his girlfriend, and underneath her, he had drawn several lines leading to other female figures similar to her, green eyes included. Although he had no knowledge of Navajo art, he quickly deduced that those additional figures were the descendants of the young Japanese pilot and his girlfriend.

-"I have to deduce those other female figures could be our descendants, right?"-

-"Technically, yes. But wait until I finish with this..."-

But when he saw the drawings that indicated the descendants of Akiharu Hirose and Rina Fujimoto, there was something that did not match the rest of the female figures. There were several figures whose forms were incomplete, as if something had caused the Hirose clan's family line to stop for a moment at some indeterminate point in the future. Later, the line continued separately from the other family line of the future, as if for some reason, the Hirose clan were split in two in the near future, but that was not exactly what concerned both young men:

What worried them both the most was that the other line of descendants of the Hirose clan had another physical form very different from the human forms of the rest of the Japanese pilot's family, and there was something that especially disturbed Hirose: One of the feminine forms not only looked like a cat, but also had the same green eyes of Rina Fujimoto, his girlfriend. He also notice that underneath the feminine feline figure, two human figures appeared, next to another feline, one of a man and one of a woman, and judging by the color of their eyes, did not seem to have any relationship with the other humanoid figure as much as with the rest of the Hirose clan.

And that was not all, the other family line of the Hirose clan, which still retained its human form, had several disturbing details: One of them was that one of the feminine forms, although it was human and had the same green eyes as the rest of the Hirose clan's female descendants, its eyes had the form of a cat, and two female figures had very different forms to the rest of the human Hirose clan. One of them looked like a cat and the other one looked like a dog.

Obviously, both Justy and Hirose couldn't believe what they were seeing...

-"Could you tell me now what this is all about? Just trying to analyze this thing makes my head spin."- Hirose asked in dismay at what he saw concerning Justy's drawings.

-"Well, now that I've completed the diagram, I can get an idea of the meaning of your dreams. And believe me, your future could be nothing pleasant for your descendants."-

-"What do you mean by that? And as for the feline figure, does she have a relationship with me and my descendants?"-

-"Look, I wish I could know more, but this is what I can deduce about it, because only my grandma would know how to interpret all this in a proper way. I only ask you beforehand that nothing of what I am going to say be taken as something that can really happen in the future, because there are many factors that can alter your fate and that of your family."- Justy explained with a worrisome look in his face.

-"All right, explain it."-

-"At some point in the future of your family, your family will be divided into two and although technically both belong to the same clan, both lines will have completely different heirs and cultures, not to mention possibly, and in the case of the second Hirose clan, either they will cease to be human at some point in history or they will never have been human to begin with."-

-"And what would cause my family to split in two?"-

-"To be frank, I have absolutely no idea. It could be a family dispute, a major catastrophe, or even another war worse than this one."-

-"Then, why are there descendants of different species in both family lines? For example, in the first human family line, two of the descendants are what appear to be a dog and a cat, and one of the human forms has cat eyes. And in the second family line, two of the three descendants of the green-eyed cat are human and one is a male and the other a girl. I also noticed something strange about the human female figure of feline eyes, and it was that along with her there was another female figure that looked like what seemed to be some kind of creeping animal, like a rat, mouse, weasel or something like that."-

Justy tried to put all the things in his head in order to try to give him a convincing answer, but nothing he was seeing regarding those strange descendants made sense, even to him.

-"I think that will be an unanswered question at the moment, and I don't think either of us will live long enough to find out in advance."- Justy replied with some shame, seeing that he could not even reach a definitive conclusion.

Normally, Hirose would not have believed anything that the young Navajo had said about his future and that of his future family, and perhaps would have taken it as coming from the unhinged mind of some diviner, that kind of person he personally hated, due to his logical personality.

But in those moments, even the rational Hirose could not help but think that it was not possible that two people from two different countries and who happened to have the ability to predict the future based on his dreams, had come to the conclusion that his fate was much more terrible than he had thought.

What were those dreams and what was their meaning? In all the time Akiharu Hirose was on that island, neither he nor Justy managed to come up with a rational or conclusive answer.

And, after listening to all this, the only thing Hirose could do was to sit on the floor and put his hands on his head completely strained not only by the large amount of information he had to deal with, but by the sheer magnitude of the events described by Justy, even if he could not be believed at all. Justy at least tried to make empathy with the situation of his Japanese friend, who could not believe what he had just heard.

-"Akiharu, I know very well what you're thinking, and I know that right now what I've just said may sound rather strange or even very painful to hear, given what you've heard previously from that guy called Saburo."- Justy tries to comfort Hirose by putting his hand on his shoulder. -"But remember this: The future is not written in stone and many things can happen that can alter it. Consider this as a warning of what can happen to you and your family, so that you can take action in due course."-

Hirose lifted his head after being a few minutes depressed and decides to ask more questions.

-"What is the possibility that something you're talking about might happen to me and my family in the future?"-

-"Well, consider this: Nostradamus once predicted that a humble priest would become pope. Obviously that priest didn't believe it at first, until many years later."- Justy gave an example in detail. -"But at the same time, Nostradamus predicted many things that were never fulfilled, either because he was wrong or because the people or the organizations he mentioned in his prophecies had the hindsight of doing everything possible to prevent his predictions from being fulfilled. So it is up to you and your descendants that what I have said is not being done."-

-"Should I tell my girlfriend and the rest of my family about your prophecies?"-

-"Look, as I've told you before, I'm not as good a diviner as my grandma is, since there are a lot of details that I haven't been able to give you a proper explanation, so many things may be inaccurate or may result in a distant future very different from what I said. So the best thing would be to not discuss this with anyone, to avoid problems with your loved ones, and most likely, with the government of your country."-

-"Indeed."-

-"For example, for you to understand why I'm not so good at this dream interpretation thing, see this. If you just notice, around this picture is the image of a snake with a horn in its head."-

-"And, what is its meaning?"-

-"I'm not entirely sure, and I'm a Navajo, for starters. In my culture, a snake with horns is usually a sign of bad omen, although in other indigenous traditions of my country, such as Cherokee, a snake is the symbol of a creature that was once a man, but became a monster to avenge his brethren."-

-"Are you implying that my family will be attacked by snakes?"-

-"Not exactly. Keep in mind that all this could be interpreted allegorically and can have many meanings, depending on the context in which it is applied."- Justy went on to explain to the young Japanese man the meaning of his illustrations on the soil. -"There is also something else that I haven't finished explaining and that even I don't understand exactly what it means."-

-"Which thing do you mean?"-

-"This."- Justy put his finger in his drawing, to be exact, on the left side, where there were two groups of figures that Hirose hadn't noticed a few moments ago. -"If you look, on one side of the Hirose clan's second family line, there are other humanoid-looking figures and next to these there are other human-looking figures, which none of them are related to your family. What intrigues me the most is the fact that between both groups of figures are separated by a wall that looks like a mirror, as if the mirror itself serves as an allegory of some kind."-

-"What kind of allegory could that be?"-

-"I don't know exactly, but if I had to deduce its meaning, I could interpret the mirror and the group of humanoid figures could be a kind of reflection, or even, if you could say it in a more technical way, more like a kind of refraction."-

-"A refraction?"-

-"Yes, As you know, a refraction is the change of direction and velocity that a wave, like light, experiences as it moves from one medium to another with a different refractive index."- Justy kept explaining, giving no sign of ending. -"In this case, and in context, we could replace "light" with "humanoid creatures". Out of that detail, I can't give any more explanations without knowing its meaning."-

At that moment, a burial silence was felt in place, since neither of the two young soldiers wanted to talk anymore. On the other hand, Hirose didn't know what to think any more about what Justy had just said, and on Justy's side, he couldn't even give him any more explanations, since he was as confused as Hirose was at the time.

-"Or there is a third option: Maybe everything I've said is nothing more than sheer nonsense that I drew and I said to distract us and waste our time on something useful, so you can ignore me if you want, buddy. HA HA HA HA!"-

Normally, that would have caused Akiharu Hirose to lose his cool, but after thinking about it quickly, he realized that at least that could have been the young American pilot's attempt to forget the whole matter of his dreams and start thinking about how to survive on that deserted island.

-"Well, maybe you're right."-

Likewise, Justy got up from the floor where he was drawing in those moments and sat down with Hirose to continue talking about other subjects.

-"Either way, I'd like to change the subject, this is starting to make me feel uncomfortable too. Although there's one detail I forgot to ask you. Who was that Saburo Kobayashi guy and what happened with him?"- Justy asked about Hirose's former classmate he had back in Japan.

-"He was a fellow student of mine at the academy, whom I met when I was in Okinawa, apart from that, I never knew much about him, since I never bothered to find out many things about my classmates."- Hirose sighed. -"And the truth is that many of them were not even worth remembering."-

-"I suppose they bullied you, right?"-

-"Damn right."- Hirose confirmed that. -"And as for Kobayashi, the only thing I knew about him was when we graduated from the academy, he was transferred to the Navy's military intelligence unit. From then on, I didn't know anything else about him. At least I hope he's still okay."-

-"Is there anything else you can tell me about the subject regarding you back home?"-

-"Well, my parents are Shinto priests and I was born in a town called Izumo in southern Japan, if you want to know that."- Hirose commented in a more cheerful tone than before. -"I had a relatively normal childhood, out of some cheesy details, since I was always interested in biology."-

-"And... what else?"-

-"Considering your expression, you're probably thinking: Why did the son of Shinto priests join the army?"- Hirose looked closely at his American counterpart. -"As you know, religion doesn't feed anyone, much less help you get an education, so if I wanted to study biology in college, the only option I had left was to join the army, to be more accurate in the air force. Besides, I also like planes."-

-"To be honest, you don't look like the patriotic kind of guy, at least for me."- Justy replied when he saw that his Japanese friend was quite outspoken for an Asian.

-"Personally, I don't give a damn about war. Perhaps partly due of my religion and partly because I have always considered myself a rational person. That's why I decided to do something better than just study religion. But to be honest, I was forced to kill some of your countrymen before I crashed on this island."-

-"Never mind that, shit always happens in these cases."-

Both young men laugh out loud at such a joke.

-"And what about you, Justy? As long as I've known you, you haven't said much about yourself and your family."- Hirose asked the young Navajo in an attempt to learn more about him.

Justy made himself thoughtful enough to discuss his life with his Japanese friend.

-"Well, I was born in the Navajo Nation, one the biggest Native reservations in America, to be precise, in Náhodeeshgiizh Chʼínílíní..."-

-"Na-ho-dee-what?"- Hirose replied, unable to pronounce the name of the place correctly.

-"Or as the white men call it, Pueblo Pintado, in New Mexico."- The Navajo pilot corrected immediately, watching as the young Japanese man struggled on pronounce the name of the town. -"Look on the bright side, at least "Izumo" is easier for me to pronounce than the name of the town where I come from. HA HA HA HA!"-

-"I didn't find that funny."- Hirose complained.

-"OK, I see. And back to the subject: I was born on an Indian reservation, in a nutshell. Like many Navajos like myself, I, along with my family, have had to live with many limitations due to our condition as Native Americans, although at least I can say that we do not live in absolute misery. We have a decent house and we live relatively well, but that doesn't mean we don't lack certain things on times."- Justy commented about his life. -"As far as I'm concerned, my parents died when I was a kid. My mother died when I was born, and my father died much later because of alcoholism. I was too young to remember him and I have lived with my grandparents ever since."-

-"Crap, sorry about that."-

-"No worries, I got used to that."- Justy tries to ignore the pity remark of his foreign counterpart. -"As I mentioned earlier, my grandmother is descended from a well-known family of shamans that dates back to the time before white men came to America. Our clan has been known for generations for interpreting dreams and knowing their meaning, in order to predict the future. Like her, I am also learning this craft, although I have not yet perfected it and also decided to add stuff from other cultures so that my world view is not limited solely to the Navajo people. I know some things about Chinese clairvoyance, Jewish Kaballah, African rites, and even Haitian voodoo and Latin American Santeria, although to be honest, I don't know a thing about Japanese onmyoji."-

-"I don't think you'll be interested in that, I assure you."- The native of Izumo replied with some sarcasm in his voice.

-"Uh, I think I understand the reason why."- Justy smiled. -"Back to the topic of discussion, because we lack money, and the fact that my grandfather can no longer work because of his age, I decided to join the army. Like you, I don't have much interest in war, but any honest work that brings money is good, only I didn't expect to end up this way. At least I can thank God I'm alive.

-"Indeed."-

-"Oh! and if you think about asking me what my job is in the air force, that's classified information, but if I can tell you that I'm not a pilot in the first place."-

-"Don't worry about it, the truth is I don't give a damn about what you worked in your country. Anyway, if we have to live on this stinky island for the rest of our lives, the last thing we would have to worry about would be precisely that."-

-"Certainly."- Replied Justy.

---

February 6th, AD 1946, Unknown Island In The Midway Atoll

It has been 5 years since Akiharu Hirose and Justin Naʼiigeeł have lived on that deserted Pacific island since the day of the Battle of Midway. Despite having to suffer many difficulties and shortages, both soldiers, despite their differences, managed to live together in peace and harmony in that place.

Obviously, life on that island radically transformed both young soldiers. Both young men, who arrived on that island at the age of 24 each, were now 29 years old. While both managed to stay in good health, the effects of living on that island caused both Hirose and Justy to lose a lot of weight and both looked somewhat gaunt looking.

What both soldiers didn't know was that World War II had already ended with the victory of the Allies and the defeat of the Axis countries, including Japan, the home country of Akiharu Hirose. But for both of them, the war was just a distant memory they both tried to forget, and their number one priority was to survive on that island.

Until one day...

-"That's strange, I swore I saw something that was close to the island..."- Hirose thought as he picked up some coconuts in the palm trees on the beach.

But, seeing the horizon in detail, he realized something that they had both been waiting for many years: It was a civilian fishing boat that by chance had approached the island to fish near the beach. Obviously, Hirose was more than happy to see other human beings besides Justy approaching the island and possibly rescue them both.

-"HEY, OVER HERE! HEY! HEY!"-

The crew members of the fishing boat, who were so engrossed in fishing, did not at first notice the voice coming from the beach, until they saw the silhouette of an Asian man, who was almost 30 years old, asking for help. Obviously they were more than surprised to see someone living on that island, thinking that place was deserted. They were also surprised that, despite being Asian, the man spoke English perfectly.

-"Wow, I didn't expect to see anyone living on this island. I wonder who he is?"- The captain of the ship said with a certain tone of surprise, as it was the first time he had to rescue a shipwrecked person from an island.

-"From his looks, I take it he's Japanese."- One of the sailors, who stood beside the captain, bluntly replied.

-"I know, but I've never seen any Japanese who can speak English so well, that's for sure. Isn't he some soldier who got stuck here after the war?"-

-"Could be, sir."-

-"Anyway, he doesn't seem to be dangerous because he is more than happy to see us, so it would be convenient to rescue him and find a way to get him home."-

-"Understood, sir."-

The fishing boat came close enough to the island's beach to try to rescue Hirose, but because the island didn't have a berth, it only came close enough to avoid getting stranded in place. Once close by, both the captain and one of the sailors, who brought a rifle just in case something went awry, used a smaller boat to approach the island.

Once on the island, both men approached Akiharu Hirose, who was more than happy to see other people willing to rescue him and Justy.

-"Greetings, young man. I'm guessing you've been living here for a long time, aren't you?"- The captain asked the young Japanese man nicely with a certain foreign accent.

-"Yes."- Hirose replied cheerfully.

-"Let me introduce myself, I'm Captain Théodore Lemaire of the "Atlantis". We come from France, although we sail from Tahiti for fishing. It is good to find lost souls on these forgotten islands, and it is more than evident that you have no ill intentions. And this young sailor's name is Augustin LaFontaine."

-"Pleased to meet you, too."- Augustin greeted as well.

-"The pleasure is mine, as well."- Hirose replied the greeting.

-"By the way, besides you, aren't there any more people living with you on this island?"- Capt. Lemaire asked.

-"Yeah, I'm actually living with an American by my side. His name is..."-

In that instant, Justy appeared from nowhere carrying some mangoes on his shoulders.

-"Hey, Akiharu, what's all that noise?"- Justy asked screamingly, unaware of the fact that they were far from where Hirose and the sailors were talking, that they had come to rescue both of them...

Until he finally realized of the whole thing.

-"I can't believe this, after all these years, someone has come to rescue us from this damn hole!"-

Justy ran quickly to the place where Hirose and the French sailors were together, with tears in his eyes.

-"And you must be..."- Capt. Lemaire asked to Justy as quickly as he could in English as well.

-"JUSTIN NAʼIIGEEŁ, GODDAMN IT!"- Justy replied as he tried to regain his breath.

The French captain laughed slightly at the manner in which the American soldier had presented himself, although at the same time he was puzzled by the looks of the American soldier, since he did not have the appearance of a man of Anglo-Saxon origin as was normal at that time in the US Army.

-"Well, well, well, you don't look American for me, young man."- The Frenchman commented with a certain tone of surprise.

-"That's because I'm a Native American, or to be exact, a Navajo. Do you have a problem with that?"-

-"Of course not. I was just asking. It's just that I didn't know Americans were recruiting Indians into the army, that's why."- The French captain replied with a surprised face. -"And by the way, how many years have you been living on this island?"-

-"About five years."- Justy replied.

-"FIVE YEARS?"- Captain Lemaire exclaimed surprised to learn how long the two soldiers had lived inside that island. -"Oh my, that was a lot of time, to be honest. And how come you two have managed to survive all this time?"-

-"Well, with a lot of effort, dedication, and some luck. At least the island has fruit trees, coconuts and some wildlife to hunt, so we never had to worry much about starving ourselves."- Hirose replied.

Both Frenchmen were looking at each other as they listen to the story of both foreigners and the way they survived together in that spot in the Pacific Ocean...

-"In that case, you won't have to worry about it anymore, because fortunately we have some space to take you both home. If you don't both have anything else to do on this island, we'll leave right away. So welcome aboard!"-

-"Thank you, sir!"- Both men thanked the French captain, who was willing to take them off that deserted island where they lived five years of their lives.

---

And in a few minutes, and only carrying with them some essential things, such as documents and some personal effects, both Hirose and Justy left that abandoned Hawaiian island along with the French fishing boat. As Captain Lemaire had said, the Atlantis was a very spacious ship and there were some spare cabins for both.

Once there, both foreigners received the news that World War II had ended last year in favour of the Allies, although, even in Hirose's case, he didn't seem to worry much about his country having been defeated, and the same was true for Justy, even though the United States were victorious.

The only thing the French didn't want to tell Hirose was how the United States defeated his country, given the horror stories they had heard of some Japanese people they had met along the way, especially when he said he had a girlfriend who lived in Hiroshima. They dared not tell the man who had spent several years of his life in that abandoned place in the Pacific Ocean that the city of Hiroshima was destroyed by an incredibly powerful weapon that no one had ever seen in their lives, and that this was the reason Japan surrendered, and that his girlfriend could probably have died there.

After deciding where to take the survivors, the French agreed, along with Hirose and Justy, to take them to Japan, rather than to Hawaii or the U.S. directly, since it was most likely that if Akiharu Hirose, a Japanese soldier, were taken to American territory, he would most likely be arrested because of anti-Japanese sentiments that still prevail in that country, especially after what happened in Pearl Harbor. On the other hand, if they went to Japan, which was under U. S. administration due to the war, it would be less of an issue since, apart from going to Hirose's home country, they would have no problems with Justy if they spoke directly to the American authorities who were in charge of the occupation of that country, rather with the Japanese ones.

Several weeks later, the Atlantis arrived at the port of Yokohama in Japan, where both Akiharu Hirose and Justy were handed over to the American occupation authorities. Due to his position as a soldier, Hirose was held and locked up in a military prison, while Justy was interrogated by the authorities of his country. The Americans were surprised that, despite being a pilot of the IJAF, he did not hesitate to tell his story, how he arrived on that island and everything that could incriminate the former imperial authorities of his own nation, because anyway, the war was over, and Hirose was never exactly very patriotic or even very interested in the war to begin with.

On Justy's side, he also told his part of how he survived on that island and his relationship with Hirose. Although there was one thing that even Justy never told Hirose himself: he was a code talker on that plane where he was traveling and of which he was the only survivor, but Justy decided not to tell Hirose the truth to avoid problems later and also with his own nation. Justy's original mission was to receive the secret codes used by other code talkers in mid-flight.

Fortunately for the U. S. Air Force and for the Americans themselves, he kept the secret of the Navajo code despite his friendship with the Japanese man, even though his ties of friendship with Akiharu Hirose were genuine and it was never his intention to lie to him at any time, but he decided that his friendship was more important than the war that both nations were mutually waging at the time, so a lot of their conversations that they both had were of the familiar kind.

After several months in prison, Hirose was released by the American occupation authorities. Because the IJA no longer existed and because of the circumstances with respect to Justy, he was never charged with treason, but because of that, Hirose no longer had any jobs, and now that he had to live in a war-torn Japan, where jobs were scarce.

Shortly afterwards, at least, Akiharu Hirose learned that both his parents and his girlfriend Rina Fujimoto had survived both the war and Hiroshima's atomic attack. In Rina's case, she managed to survive because she had moved north to Sendai, where her grandparents lived. Unfortunately for her, her parents and siblings died in Hiroshima, so seeing her beloved again was overwhelming for her, and even more so when she had thought he had died at the Battle of Midway in the Pacific.

On the other hand, after spending a few months in Japan being interrogated by the American authorities, Justy returned to his country, unable to say anything to his friend Akiharu Hirose, something he always regretted for the rest of his life. At least her grandmother was still alive, even though she was sick the last time she saw her when he went to war.

---

December 1st, AD 1946, Navajo Nation Reservation, Pueblo Pintado, New Mexico, United States of America.

Two months have passed since Justin Naʼiigeeł returned home to the Navajo Nation in the United States with his grandmother. Since his return, he had not spoken to her about what he lived on that Pacific island with Akiharu Hirose, much less about his existence. Now that the war was over, there was nothing else for him to do but try to get a decent job, which would be very difficult for him, being a Navajo at that time when people like him were only seen with contempt.

But one day, even his own grandmother began to be frightened by the elusive attitude of his grandson, who before the war was characterized by being very cheerful, even in the face of adversity. Since he returned to America, the only thing Justy did was read the newspaper, go out to lunch with his girlfriend, listen to the radio and nothing else. It was as if something was tormenting him, and based on his expressions, she could deduce that it had nothing to do with his experiences of war.

So that day...

-"Can I come into your room, Justy?"-

-"You can come in, Grandma."-

Justy's grandmother, named Ethel Naʼiigeeł, went into his room carefully. She was an old woman with gray hair, but with a strong appearance and a determined look, and she was willing to know what was going on inside her grandson's head.

Justy was listening to the radio at that moment, as he glanced at the beautiful landscape of New Mexico with a lost look. There was a news program on the radio about a baseball game that had been played just yesterday, but Justy didn't seem to pay attention to what was being said there.

-"Can I speak with you?"-

-"About what?"- Justy answered coldly to her.

The old lady turned off the radio without thinking twice, and Justy didn't seem to care about that.

-"About what happened to you in the war and above all, what you lived on that island."-

Justy began to shake his hand when he heard that, since for some reason, the mere mention of what happened in the Pacific was something he didn't want to talk to his grandmother. He was afraid that if he told her what had happened to her, he wouldn't know what her reaction would be.

-"We've talked about that before. My plane crashed, my flight mates died and I was living in that island dump for five years."- Justy replied to his grandmother without even looking her straight in the eyes. -"Do you need to know something else?"-

-"I'm not exactly talking about the accident, or your dead friends, not even about what you lived on that island."- The elderly woman responded firmly. -"Knowing you very well, Justy, I know that you saw something else that horrified you more than anything else that happened in the war.

-"I don't think you want to know that."- Justy responded with a frightened tone.

-"What do you mean with I don't want to know "that"?"- The elderly Ethel responded with a certain annoying tone as her grandson tried to end the conversation. -"You know well that I've heard of worse things in the past, so I doubt that anything you've seen in the war can horrify me. Or maybe you don't trust me?"-

Justy knew very well that his grandmother wasn't going to set her mind off the issue, but he didn't want to start a discussion with her either, so the only thing he had left was to tell the truth about what happened in the Pacific, even if that might be risky for her.

-"OK, I'll tell you the truth, grandma: I didn't live alone on that deserted island, as I told you or as the government told you, but someone else lived with me."-

-"Who was that someone else? I thought you were the only survivor of that crash."-

Justy sighed for a moment.

-"That person was a Japanese pilot named Akiharu Hirose, whose plane crashed near the island shortly after I lived there, and it was during the battle of Midway."-

-"And I suppose he tried to kill you, didn't he?"-

-It wasn't like that. In fact, he was more scared than I was. Fortunately, he knew English very well, so we had no trouble communicating with each other. Judging by what he told me, he was in the air force out of necessity and not for patriotism, so he didn't care who I was. In fact, we both had an excellent relationship and because of that we were able to survive there."-

Ethel tried to analyze what her grandson had said, but there was something wrong with her about those events.

-"If so, why didn't you ever want to tell me anything about him, or why didn't you want to tell me what the problem was with that Jap?- Ethel responded incredibly puzzled by those words. -"Was he a spy like you? Or was it something much worse?"-

-"It wasn't exactly what he was, but it was about what he said, what he dreamed and what he represented."-

-"What the do you mean by that? And what the hell does that Jap's dreams have to do with you?"- The old lady began to be intrigued in an annoying way by what Justy said.

-"It has nothing to do with me, or even with him right now, but with this..."-

Justy got up from where he was, walked into his closet and pulled out a very large sheet of paper folded in several places, where he had taken his time to copy from the floor the drawings he had made on the desert island about Akiharu Hirose's dreams and his graphic interpretation of them.

-"What is this?"- The aged lady asked.

-"The dreams of Akiharu Hirose, described by me when we were both on the island."- And at that moment, the young native gave the sheet of paper to his grandmother, so that she could read it carefully. -"When I was on the island, and considering what Akiharu told me, he had had some pretty strange nightmares dating back several years, since his time at the military academy in Japan. I had the luck, or misfortune to put it nicely, to witness those nightmares, as he mentioned them aloud in his dreams. And believe me, it was not pleasant to see, nor to describe them graphically."-

-"Wouldn't it have been that your friend suffered from mental problems beforehand?"- Ethel asked in disbelief.

-"I don't think so. He also told me that when he was in Japan, he met an onmyoji, a sort of diviner of his culture, who told him exactly the same thing I did when he was in his country, so I doubt he suffered from any kind of mental problems. Besides, I witnessed those nightmares he described aloud, for god's sake!"-

-"Let me see this, Justy."-

The elderly indigenous woman looked closely at the copy of the drawings that her grandson made during his stay on the island with Hirose, trying to analyze the meaning of the illustrations, in order to draw a more detailed conclusion of the problem, bearing in mind that she had more experience with this. What she saw broadly in that instant began to unsettle the old woman greatly.

-"Justy, I need you to come with me to my place, only I can give you a more detailed explanation of this."- Ethel commented with her voice somewhat shaken after what she saw in those drawings. "This is more serious than I thought."-

The old woman and her grandson quickly headed to the workshop she had on the other side of her house. The workshop was not an ordinary place, as it was a place with a more traditional appearance, full of motifs of the Navajo culture, and where there were almost no other furniture or lighting apart from some candles, not to mention that the walls were full of traditional drawings of their culture.

Once in there, Ethel began to copy on the ground, which was made of dirt and not concrete or earthenware, the drawings that his grandson had drawn on the sheet of paper from where he had copied in due course on the island, from the dreams of Akiharu Hirose, the young Japanese pilot that his grandson knew there and that he had described them graphically.

-"All right, now it's time to give this my personal touch."- Ethel commented as she began adding her own additions to her grandson's drawings.

The old Navajo woman began to make several drawings on the floor, completing or adding other elements to Justy's drawings. Those new elements, along with her grandson's, caused that the drawing that originally fit inside a very large sheet of paper was now an artistic job that occupied the entire room of Ethel's workshop.

Normally, and in the eyes of anyone who had no knowledge of clairvoyance, that beautiful work of art would be something worthy of being exhibited in any museum in the world...

But in the eyes of the Naʼiigeełs, those drawings were just a prediction of something more terrible that would happen in the future, something so terrifying that even Ethel herself, who had years of experience in the art of interpreting dreams, began to panic after what she sketched and making her own conclusions.

-"Oh... my... GOD!"-

And at that moment, the old lady fainted, causing her grandson to freak out, thinking she had had a heart attack.

-"GRANDMA!"-

But after he checked her pulse, she realized she only lost consciousness and that it was nothing serious. Quickly, the old lady woke up as soon as she passed out.

-"GRANDMA! ARE YOU OK?"-

-"OF COURSE I'M FINE, YOU IDIOT! It takes more than that to kill me!"- Ethel answered irritatingly to such a question. -"I just passed out, that's all."-

Obviously, the reason why Justy's grandmother passed out had to do with the conclusions Ethel had reached regarding Hirose's dreams. And maybe those conclusions were holding something very sinister.

-"Justy, my son, I need to ask you a question."-

-"Which one?"

-"When you were questioned in Japan by the occupation authorities, did you tell them about this concerning your friend and his dreams to them or also to the Japanese authorities?"-

-"No, not a thing. In fact, I didn't think they would be interested in such a thing, let alone doubt that they would have believed me if I had. Besides, during the entire interrogation the Japanese authorities were never there, because it was a matter for the American government. Apart from that, considering that no one has asked me a question in the army so far, I doubt very much that Akiharu has said anything on his part, although I think that he too will have to think the same as I do about it."-

-"Good, because if this were to come to someone else's ears, the consequences would be terrible for everyone."-

-"Oh, c'mon grandma! I doubt very much that they're gonna believe a couple of poor Indians like us, and I doubt very much that they'll believe Akiharu anyway."- Justy responded with a certain tone that ranged from disbelief and concern, such as trying to get this whole thing settled and his grandmother trying to rest first before continuing. -"You better try to get some rest, Grandma. You've been drawing like crazy for hours."-

-"Justy, you idiot! You don't seem to understand what I just saw about your friend Akiharu."- The old woman responded irritatingly to her grandson, trying not to show any signs of weakness.

-"That's what I've been afraid of ever since. What did you see?"-

-"Look at this!"- The old woman pointed her finger at the picture of the snake with horns. -"You know very well that a snake with horns is a sign of bad omen. Normally if a snake with horns surrounds a person, that usually means that the person will have a bad future or die later. In this case, the snake surrounds all the people that appear in the drawing, which represents that a great catastrophe will happen in the very distant future, perhaps something much worse than what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so you have commented on the subject. What's more, it could be even worse than the last great war, something that could destroy all of humanity.

After hearing such a statement, Justy began to doubt whether his grandmother was really serious or whether her age was starting to play tricks on her. But after thinking about it clearly, he quickly remembered what he had also thought about in due course when he analyzed his Japanese friend's dreams.

When he remembered that occasion, he felt the same sentiment he also felt in his body at that time...

A feeling of terror.

-"Normally I would think that something like what you said would be a bit of an exaggeration, but considering what I heard from Akiharu on the island, the truth is that I no longer know how accurate that statement would be."- Justy replied with a broken voice, trying to regain some degree of composure in the face of the terrible truth before them.

Without saying a word with her nephew, the elderly Native woman went to a very old bookcase at the back of the workshop, and she began to look for several books inside the furniture, many of those books were very old and dated back to the old west, and some were even handwritten copies by someone in the past, rather than printed in a printing press.

Among the books she extracted from the bookcase, there were several scrolls, and judging by the appearance, Justy realized that those scrolls were older than the 19th century, even long before the Europeans conquered America. When his people controlled the indomitable plains of that region that centuries ago was once their nation and home, and now became a kind of glorified museum for the rest of the white men to enjoy their misery, at least from their point of view.

But at that time, it was not the proper place to recall past memories, especially when his grandmother took out a very old scroll, which most likely dates back centuries, and which he had never seen with his own eyes.

The old woman quickly unrolled the scroll, or the various scrolls that were rolled up, and began to read them quietly. Justy also began to keep an eye on the scrolls, and noticed that they were illustrations that even he, being a Navajo, could not understand their meaning.

But for some reason, her grandmother could understand the meaning of those ancient manuscripts, and once she finished reading them, she lowered her head, as if something really disturbed her.

-"I never thought I'd live long enough to see this with my own eyes."-

-"What do you mean by that, Grandma?"-

The old woman sat on a chair, next to the drawings she made in the room, and leaving the manuscript by her side, she began to explain what she had read from that paper.

-"There was a legend, written down by our ancestors, about a great white snake with a horn on its head, which was said to have come from the east. That snake was a being that besides being white, its body was covered with flames around it, which came from the place that was once its home, and was destroyed by beings with divine powers beyond the understanding of that poor reptile..."-

The young Navajo began to look at the drawing of the snake, which his grandmother had drawn with white chalk on the floor, and quickly noticed that detail.

-"The serpent, who had lost everything to these gods, decided that one day it would take revenge on them, no matter how long it would take that creature to achieve that goal, and no matter how many people the snake had to kill for it, including many innocent people who had to die just for being what they are, because their very existence was a threat to them. Ironically, that snake would manipulate those gods into believing that they are doing what they want..."-

Justy looked at the imagery of humanoid figures that made up the second family line of the Hirose clan, and also noted that as well.

-"Without them knowing it, the white serpent created two events that would benefit that being and bring it closer to the snake's goal of destroying the gods who annihilated his fellow people: The first event was to create millions of living beings who were related to the reptile, but were very different from that creature..."-

Justy continued to look at the drawings attentively as he listened to his grandmother.

-"And the second event was to create such a great conflict, that it would destroy the gods by taking advantage of their own hatred that the very same gods carried among themselves, to such a degree that the gods would self-destruct themselves without the snake having to lift a finger about it. But for some reason, that plan failed."

-"Uh? What do you mean with "his plan failed"?"-

-"That is where the first event comes into action: Those descendants of the snake, without even knowing it, would destroy the gods by surprise and without them realizing it. Once the serpent achieved its goal, the snake would become the new god that would replace the gods their descendants killed for their progenitor, and would rule the world along them for eternity."-

-"And what role will Akiharu and his family play in all this mess?"-

-"Exactly I don't know, but his family will be one of many people who could be manipulated by the "snake"."- The old woman responded as she drank a glass of water to quench her thirst after so much talking. -"In what way, I don't know in detail, although in the original legend it mentions about a black snake that would help the white snake in his plans, but then that snake would repent and it will try to help a group of people to prevent, or at least delay the white snake's plans as much as possible. I don't know if it has anything to do with the Hirose clan, but I wouldn't doubt if it was them or another family with some distant relationship with them.

-"And what role will we play in all this too? Are we going to have to stop the "snake", the Hirose clan or both in the future?"- The young man commented anxiously when he heard all this.

Obviously, with "snake", Justy referred to the 3rd in discord that could be behind everything that could happen in the future. But there was no specific clue as to who the person, or even people, might be, who could represent the "snake".

Hearing her grandson's words, the old woman only shook her head in disapproval instead.

-"No, Justy."- Ethel said with a sad voice. -"Our role is only as observers and nothing else. There's no way for us to interfere in all those events, and besides that, do you think people are going to listen to what a rickety old Indian woman says, along with her grandson who returned from the war? They're gonna think we're crazier than a rabid goat!

-"WHAT?!"- Justy yelled in disbelief. -"ARE WE GOING TO LET THE WORLD JUST GO TO HELL, JUST BECAUSE SOME STUPID LEGEND SAYS SO?"-

-"Justy, please pay attention!"- The old woman said in firm voice. -"Our family has been known to predict events based on our dreams and those of others since time immemorial. For example, my grandfather foretold the Great War (the First World War) and my father predicted this last one, so I don't think it's any different this time. Even if we participate in the events of those wars, as you did, there is no way we can change what may happen next. We will only be able to observe the events and take note of them.

-"Then what do you suggest we should do? Watching the world being destroyed by some genocide-obsessed freak like Hitler?"-

Ethel stared into her grandson's eyes, and she decided it was more important to remind him of something.

-"Justy, remember this well."- Ethel sighed. -"The future is not yet written in stone unlike the past. We may not be able to change the past, nor can we be part of what happens in the future, but nothing I have just said, nor does the legend itself necessarily mean that it will happen exactly as it is described in these scrolls and the drawing you made. Many things can happen in the future, and it is our task henceforth to complete those blind spots that may be in the legend and predictions we make later. I may not live to see all that, but you and your children will have the obligation to follow in our footsteps, and hopefully the great spirit that is in heaven will guide us to continue this work, even at the end of the world."-

Listening to those words caused Justy to break into tears, causing his grandmother Ethel to come over and comfort him. He knew very well that from now on a very complicated job awaits him and that only his descendants will be able to see the end of that task.

And he knew very well that there are only two possible outcomes for this task: The death of the "snake", or the end of the world.

And this is only the beginning of a new chronicle, in which Justin Naʼiigeeł and Akiharu Hirose, two young people from different countries and traditions, were about to undertake, not knowing what fate was about to bring to them and their families...

---

The Aftermath

Akiharu Hirose: After returning to Japan after living on a desert island with Justin Naʼiigeeł for 5 years, he married Rina Fujimoto shortly afterwards and later studied biology at the University of Tokyo, where he graduated with honors. With Rina he had 3 children: Takashi, Yoshio and Hiromi, who also excelled in the field of science like his father, but Akiharu never spoke much about his experiences in the war, much less about his life on the island, nor about Justy. He would die of natural causes in 2007, and Rina will also die a year later.

Saburo Kobayashi: After graduating from the academy, he was transferred to the Navy intelligence unit, where he spent all the time remaining from the war. At the end of it, Kobayashi founded a magazine about the supernatural and fantastic, where he incorporated some elements of his experiences in the war into his talks. Needless to say, not many people, like Hirose in his time in Okinawa, could believe him, however accurate his predictions were at times. He died of cancer in 1999.

Katsuro Ide: Died during the Battle of Midway, and his body was never found. It is rumored to have been eaten by sharks and marine fauna.

Kim Sung-Hoon: He was expelled from the academy because of his violent behavior in Naha with prostitutes and gangsters. Due to a problem he had with the Yakuza, he returned to Korea, where he spent the last years of the war there. He died in Pyongyang in 1952 during the Korean War.

Sanjiro Katagiri: He left Okinawa in the last years of the war, when it seemed imminent that Americans would invade the island. At the end of the war, he joined the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, where he obtained a similar job to the one he had when he was in the IJA, as well as a job as a physical education teacher at a private school in Tokyo. He also married a few years later and died of natural causes in 1989. He left behind 3 daughters, who followed in his footsteps in a similar way.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto: He died in 1943 when American code breakers identified his flight plans and his plane was shot down over the Solomon Islands. His death was a major blow to Japanese military morale during World War II.

Justin Naʼiigeeł: After living with Akiharu Hirose for five years also on the same island and after spending a few months in seclusion to be interrogated in Japan by the American occupation authorities, he returned to his country, where he was decorated with the Purple Heart for having survived in that place. Afterwards, he decided to leave the army and returned to his home in Pueblo Pintado, New Mexico, next to his grandmother. He later married and had 4 children, who took several paths in their lives, but some of them followed in the footsteps of their father and great-grandmother. He died of natural causes in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2002. He never saw Akiharu Hirose again in his life...

END OF ACT III