A/N:Heh... I've always thrived on random feedback on my stuff or else my sadist part gonna be like... hmm... let's do things. Also, that said, be me: want to head straight to stuff I wanna write, yet also I need to remember to lay the grounds that led up to it aka background loose ends XD

In other words, let me conjure up nonsense to try to move the plot closer to my end game lol

Ace found himself in a quaint park in some quiet neighbourhood that he hasn't seen or gone to before. Yet there was something overly familiar about the surroundings that he couldn't quite grasp. Was this a dream? But he rarely ever had many dreams even if he allowed himself to fall asleep, much less having very lucid ones where he was very aware that he was inside one.

So why was he here?

He started walking around before he spotted a lone child sitting on a swing all by himself. Ace approached the boy as he knelt in front of him.

"Hello there... are you lost?"

The boy shook his head at him before raising his head towards Ace. And immediately Ace was struck at how odd the boy's eyes had looked like. The colour of the boy's eyes was blue... and strikingly bright blue it was that it seemed almost supernatural.

Ace tried again to talk to the boy. "So... if you're not lost, what're you doing here?" he asked.

The small boy just shrugged at him. "I'm waiting for my big sis, we're supposed to go home together." The boy let out a soft sigh. "But for some reason, Big Sis was very late! What's keeping her to come here and pick me up?"

Ace smiled at the boy as the way the kid was talking about their sister reminded him fondly of someone. He cocked his head at the boy. "Something must have caused the delay. Is it just your sister though? How about your parents—"

The boy's childish demeanour suddenly turned ice-cold before he looked up at him. "They can't come. Mum and Dad were no more... they were sacrificed unnecessarily for someone else's sick entertainment—and whose fault was that?"

The child suddenly smiled and turned back towards his earlier personality. "I'm sure they'll be fine. But right now I'm just waiting for big sis!"

Ace immediately frowned at the boy. What was that just now? Coupled with the odd sense of familiarity he sensed from the boy, he started to feel that there was another reason why he ended up meeting the boy here. Plus... there was no one else besides them in this 'park'. Even if this was just a dream, wouldn't it be very strange for a playground to not be filled with other children?

"Wait—boy! By any chance, is your name—" Ace grabbed the boy's arm without thinking, and immediately he was hit with a storm of random snippets of memories... before he started recognizing that in each of the snippets, there was one constant presence of a certain someone inside of it...

... and he heard a faint voice... calling for someone!

"—!"

"—A-"

"—Ace, wake up!"

.

Ace found himself violently dragged out into wakefulness—to see both Na-Go and Buffa staring at him in alarm.

"Gosh! Don't scare us like that!" exclaimed Buffa as the man shook his head rapidly. "I don't want to deal with yet another day where I also need to worry about YOU of all things!" said the man again as Na-Go poked the man playfully.

'What happened?" asked Na-Go as Ace cocked his head at them in confusion.

"What're you guys talking about?" he asked as Buffa frowned at him.

"You're mumbling incoherently by yourself, and you seemed troubled by something."

"I did?" Ace gasped as he turned his attention towards his side, where Keiwa was still lying on the hospital bed... unaffected by the voices around him. And he realised that he was still holding onto Keiwa's hand, even before he fell asleep next to his beloved.

"It's nothing like that... I just had a peculiar dream—"

xxx

"Two Tanuki soba, pleas—ah!"

Sara let out a gasp before looking back at Ace apologetically. "Ah sorry, I got too used to ordering two of them every time I came here—would you like to order something else?"

"Ah... it's fine—" exclaimed Ace before Michinaga took the menu off him. Neon started telling the owner that she'd have her usual as the buffalo rider just shook his head at them.

"Can't believe that you guys still kept to your usual motifs even down to your food—Beef udon for me," he started saying as Neon started grinning at Michinaga.

"You were saying—?" she teased him as Miichi started hissing at her.

.

As they started receiving their food orders, Ace glanced back towards Sara.

"Come to think, the last time also... you and Keiwa used to eat tanuki soba at this place as well—" he started to say as Sara nodded her head.

"Yeah... we always frequent this shop, even more during any celebrations." Sara shrugged at him, while also minding Neon and Michinaga who also had joined them for lunch. "Because this was where our family used to eat together when they were still around. My late father and the owner went far back... so we were quite close, even after my parents' deaths. Keiwa was around 11 or 12 back then, so there was barely a lot of memory he still remembered about our parents and of memories spent together now... but I'm just satisfied having just kept this one 'tradition' between us siblings—"

"Sure is nice... having a family being so close with each other—"

Michinaga just glanced at Neon. "Don't you still have your fam—oh wait, sorry!" he started to apologise as Sara turned her attention towards Neon.

"Come to think, I didn't hear much about you talking about your family lately... and there wasn't much on the news either. Even though last time Keiwa said that his colleagues were working on articles about your dad and the Kurama corporation."

Neon just shrugged at her. "There's nothing much worth telling nowadays anyway. The shareholders would be taking over the management while my dad serve the rest of his punishment. And my mother started seeing a therapist to help her deal with her unresolved trauma about Akari-san. And I—well, I'll take my time to resolve my issue with my family."

She let out a soft sigh. "After all, I'm not the only person who needed time to heal. The two of them needed it too."

.

"So it had been THAT long, huh? Since your parents died?" Ace spoke again as Sara nodded slowly. Ace let out a long sigh. "So the Desigra had been hovering around in this era for that long. I used to wonder about that when I first started investigating the management. How long they stayed in a particular time period before moving on to the next, before wiping out their traces..."

Neon bit on her lips, as she started to frown. "The incident involving Akari-san should've happened around that same time so it shouldn't be surprising to think that prior to starting the DesiGra in this era, the staff would try recruiting people to help them to establish themselves here. I mean, from what I heard from my father... there's a lot of work being done behind the scene to keep the public from being aware of the things related to the DGP."

"Anyway, shouldn't you already know all about that? Having been part of the DesiGra for so long yourself?" said Michinaga as Ace rolled his eyes at him.

"Just because I said that I've been spending many lives taking part in the DesiGra and investigating them from the inside, doesn't mean I was there all my lives! There are still those in-between timelines when I need to be reborn and grow up before I could even figure out how to re-enter the DesiGra again. Anyway, all of that was not important now—"

"So if it's not important, why are we talking about it now?" snapped Michinaga at him as Ace bared his teeth at the man.

"Shut up... or I'll bite something off you again!" Ace warned him before becoming thoughtful again. "I just mentioned it, because the DesiGra had some involvement with what happened to Keiwa and Sara-san's family."

"So—" Sara finally spoke out. "This was about Keiwa?"

Ace just shrugged at her. "Maybe. Maybe there's a way for me to reach out to Keiwa."

And then Ace started telling them about the dream he had earlier...

A/N2: I seriously have NO idea what I'm going for with this dream stuff 😃