Between Takemichi Hanagaki and Manjiro "Mikey" Sano and Ken "Draken" Ryuguji and Chifuyu Matsuno and Naoto Tachibana as siblings.
Tokyo's fading daylight draped over Takemichi Hanagaki, the cityscape a blurred vignette as the threads of time unraveled around him. Consciousness gripped him like a vice as he hurtled back through the years, a familiar yet jarring journey he'd now taken more times than he cared to count. But this time, something tugged at his spirit—a whisper from the abyss that bespoke of a shift in the pattern of his temporal odysseys.
He landed roughly on the pavement of a time long past, the screeching of cicadas piercing through the summer air. Disoriented, he scrambled to his feet, adjusting his sights to the figures that stood like sentinels around him. Mikey, with his inscrutable gaze; Draken, his presence like an unwavering beacon; Chifuyu, eyes alight with unwavering loyalty; they all awaited his next move. But as their eyes met, an unspoken realization passed between them—something profound had altered in their connection.
"Why does it feel like I've known you all much longer than I have?" Takemichi voiced out, grasping at the fleeting sensation of timeless kinship.
It was Mikey who first broke the thickening silence, his voice but a murmur that seemed heavier than usual. "Takemitchy, what if I told you... that in another life, our bonds were not just forged by the streets?"
The words hung in the air, laden with a thousand unasked questions. Takemichi's mind raced, grappling with the insinuation. The notion of past lives had always been a mere fancy, a tale spun by those with minds adrift in fantasy. Yet the earnest looks on the faces before him told a different tale—one where the soul's chronicle spanned more than the single thread he had always believed to be the entirety of existence.
A barrage of flashes surged through his mind—images of himself and Mikey, not as the leaders of Toman, but as brothers, warriors side by side in a time of samurai and honor. Draken and Chifuyu too, not as his friends, but as siblings from a clan now lost to the annals of time. Could it be that their spirits had somehow traversed the ages, only to reunite in this life as comrades in arms?
The revelation was astonishing, yet before they could let the implications settle, an ill wind brought a new threat looming over their revelatory meeting. A gang known only as the Kurokumo—a shadowy alliance with knowledge of the past that extended beyond what any of them had ever encountered—now sought to sever the threads of fate that bound them. Their leader, with eyes like voids, seemed to know of their shared history, and his intent was clear: to ensure history would not repeat itself.
As the reality of their intertwined destinies slowly sank in, Takemichi and his newfound brothers braced for the impending storm. The battle that lay ahead was not just a fight for control or respect—it was a fight for the very essence of their shared past and the hope of a future that was theirs by right of blood and sacrifice. It was a battle for the legacy of their souls, a war that would demand everything of them.
And so, beneath the watchful gaze of ancestors unseen, the brothers of both past and present made their silent vow. They would face the trials ahead, not as mere fragments of a once greater whole, but as a family reunited, with the power of their lineage fueling the courage in their hearts. This was their moment, their history, and their battle cry that would echo into tomorrow.