Arriving in Multiverse #31216, Kaito found himself arriving on a rooftop in Fujinomiya. Looking over the edge to the bustling streets below, he saw a mix of different species coexisting with one another; from humans to yokai previously once thought to be found in tall tales and folklore of old. 

The time traveler recalled the words of Raikou: “You are to either resolve it without traveling to other worlds or you die with it.” The sound of her voice haunted him in the back of his mind, like a neverending echo that followed him wherever he stepped. 

He let out a big sigh and took out his tracker, noting the locations of four points of anomalies in time: Mt. Fuji, Aokigahara Forest, Kyoto City, and Kyushu Island. Kaito looked up at the mountain in the distance. 

With his belt, he input a command to cloak his presence, rendering him invisible to the naked eye. The traveler leapt from rooftop to rooftop, making way toward the closest blip on his tracker. However, on his way there, he noticed a little creature running in the same direction, parting the sea of this world’s inhabitants; a tiny little dragon in a strange uniform frantically running on its tiny legs, as though it was late to a meeting. The little dragon ran and ran, occasionally stumbling along on the way and dropping a few posters about a lost cat. 

Kaito dove off a rooftop, snatching one of the posters before teleporting back up. Quickly giving it a once-over, the poster simply said: “Lost Nekomata named Tama-Go. If found, please report to the nearest Kaida at your earliest convenience!” A cute stamp of the dragon’s face was stamped as its signature in the corner. The time traveler tossed the poster to the side, continuing to follow the little creature’s path out of Fujinomiya and up to the forest leading to Mt. Fuji.

The little dragon scurried between the treeline with Kaito in hot pursuit, but a strange sensation suddenly sent shivers down his spine.

“Chae, you were followed.” A voice called out, hidden among the leaves of the dense forest. “Return to base and we’ll handle the intruder.” 

The little dragon looked around all panicked then ran into a bush, disappearing from Kaito’s sight. 

“Go, you two, deal with him.” The same voice ordered without a moment’s hesitation. 

A red hooded girl with a rapier in hand launched herself out of the treeline, forcing the traveler out of his invisibility to dodge backwards. 

“Look, I’m not here to fight!” Kaito pleaded as his belt registered a record of the first attacker’s weapon. A block of ice then suddenly encased his feet, preventing him from taking another step.

A tall elven man in a robe stepped out from behind a tree, his grimoire open in one hand, and the other raised with a magic circle in front of his palm. “Intruder subdued.”

“General, what should I do with this one?” The red hood continued to point her blade at him as she circled around him. She placed two fingers on her ear piece. “Roger that.” She glared daggers at the intruder. “For what reasons do you have to come to Mt. Fuji? Going by how you’re dressed, you’re not another measly tourist with that fancy-looking belt.” 

Kaito quickly took out his tracker and showed them. “I’m looking for the anomalies on here and I’m following the closest one which” —he paused then pointed at a tree to the west of him— “is right behind that tree.” 

Suddenly, the tall elf was right next to Kaito, an ominous glow emanated from his hand right next to his head, the red hood held the blade of her rapier up to the traveler’s neck and lastly, their General, a red-headed woman donning black and red armor snatched the tracker out of his hand. Her sharp gaze alone felt more lethal than the duo under her command.

The General stared down at the tracker before tossing it back to Kaito. “What do you want with Director Seiryū?”

“Please, I have important business with him!” he pleaded. 

“You can state your business directly with us—”

“Stand down, all of you,” a strong voice interrupted as a figure stepped out from hiding. Dressed in a dark robe with subtle patterns, he cast an air of authority over them through his rounded sunglasses. 

Kaito took note of the figure’s cyan horns and dragon-like tail. “Seiryū?”

The dragon crossed his arms then waved his subordinates to back off. “General Ryofu, Robin, Azure. All three of you are dismissed. Return to your patrol along the barrier,” he calmly ordered, yet firmly.

All three combatants saluted then quickly disappeared from sight.

Seiryū opened the palm of his hand and a strange beam of otherworldly energy shot out, melting the ice that encased Kaito’s feet, freeing him. “Before we go any further, I must know…” He said as he lowered his hand to his side. “Are you the same Mizukiba Kaito that Kōryū and I were previously in contact with before?” 

“The one and the same,” Kaito tells him.

A solemn smile formed upon the dragon emperor’s lips. “You have no idea how relieved I am to see a friendly face outside of the Tenryū Kikan.” 

“The Tenryū Kikan?” Kaito appeared puzzled. “But I thought it was called the Seiryū-kai.”

“There’s a long story behind the change,” Seiryū told him. “Follow me.” 

Side-by-side, the traveler and the dragon walked up the mountain path to a small, scarlet shrine. The pair went behind it and entered the mountain through a crevice hidden by an unseen, otherworldly barrier. The faint sound of their footsteps echoed through the narrow tunnel, which led the pair to a well-guarded entrance, reinforced with a high-tech steel gate that blended in with the surrounding rocks with the help of magic. 

“Welcome to the Tenryū Kikan,” said Seiryū as he opened the gate.

Inside Mt. Fuji, a hidden city hummed with a quiet energy. The streets below were lit with subtle, low-glow lights, casting their surroundings in an aura of cool blues and greens. Sleek, modern buildings curved along the inner walls of the mountain, interspersed with data hubs and intelligence stations. In the very heart of this secret society, a white sakura tree stood tall with many tiny cracks scattered in the mountain’s surface to allow sunlight to reach it.

Looking around, the pair saw agents moving with precision, making their way toward their destinations within the Tenryū Kikan.

“In all of my travels, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before.” Kaito confessed, looking over at the sight before him.

“I know you didn’t arrive in our universe, much less our timeline just for a friendly visit.” Seiryū saw right through him and got straight to the point as he led Kaito up the stairs, passing by some agents and little dragons that accompanied them.

The pair eventually reached an office high above the hidden city. A high-ranking sanctuary where technology and ancient aesthetics coexisted. A glossy floor held the insignia of the Tenryū Kikan. It glowed blue from the incoming sunlight through a skylight above, revealing cherry blossoms overhead. Seiryū stopped in the center and faced the time traveler. 

“Now that we’re away from prying eyes and curious ears,” Seiryū stated. “Tell me what business you have for arriving in our timeline.” 

“Do you know what a singularity is?” Kaito asked, carefully deciding what his next words will be.

“Depends on which definition you’re referring to,” the dragon replied. 

“To put it into perspective,” Kaito made a hologram of an aquamarine line appear before the dragon, spanning from one end of the room to the other. “Imagine a point where all our understanding collapses—a future boundary that holds the ending of cause and effect, knowledge and ignorance, thought and reality.” He made a red dot appear on the holographic timeline, where the rest of it turned black afterwards. “That was what I meant when I asked. That’s a singularity.”

“I can observe every moment in time unfold before my very eyes,” Seiryū remarked. “But even for me, the future of this timeline in particular has become so clouded that I can no longer see what lies ahead.” 

“Should this timeline and universe collapse because of this singularity,” the traveler continued as he picked up the red holographic dot between two fingers, the blackened portion faded like ashes falling away. “Even you, a god of time, could be pulled into nonexistence.”

“Great, now we have another problem on our hands,” Seiryū clicked his tongue out of annoyance. “Is there anything else you came here to tell me?”

Kaito placed the red dot back on the hologram. “Well…” As he did so, the line branched from the red dot, creating many more lines which grew out like the many branches of a tree. Each branch of time would flicker and change rapidly. “This was what your timeline was like recently. So many alternate paths came to be yet they were all destroyed as soon as possible.” He stared down at the everchanging hologram before them. “I never saw anything like this before, so if you had anything… to say—” Looking up from the visualization before him, he began to notice something strange about the dragon. 

Afterimages of past and future events that did not and could not exist haunted Seiryū like phantoms. It was as though these anomalous remnants refused to die with the timelines they were birthed from. 

Kaito silently observed the anomalies surrounding him and he slowly began to realize that each one involved both Seiryū and Kisaragi Sekai. It finally dawned on him as his eyes widened with shock. “It’s you, the source of the singularity.” 

Seiryū closed his eyes as his expression went from soft and friendly to a serious demeanor. When he opened his eyes again, Kaito could feel the dragon’s gaze piercing through him.“And what will you do with me? I have my reasons and if you were in my place, I’m sure you would do the same.” 

“I can’t change this timeline any more than you already have.” Kaito lowered his eyes and clenched his fists out of frustration. “If I even try to, I could destroy everything.” He raised his gaze to meet the dragon’s. “That means erasing the past, present, and future of this time. I can’t do such a thing. Not again.”

“Again?” Seiryū shook his head. “So we’re both destroyers in the end,” he sighed. “Then it’s time I tell you why I had no other choice.”