What?

How he got here wasn't really important. Perhaps a mishap in ripping tears in the fabric of time and space, or an intentional endeavor, either way he ended up here.

He stretched, loosening up and dusting off the tribal clothing he'd acquired from his grandmother, and looked around to see exactly where he had ended up. It'd been a while since he had allowed himself to just rightfully explore his abilities, and since he had Odea watching the house, and his daughter, he was free to do so. It was just a problem when he couldn't ever tell where he was.

"This looks... kinda familiar... maybe?"

He shrugged.

Koudo was forced to shield his eyes from the myriad of bright colored lights that engulfed him. Not only was it blinding, but it was especially so with his sensitive dragonic senses. If hadn't of shielded his eyes then he'd be seeing stars for the rest of his life.

Once the high beams died down, he moved his arm and blinked a couple of times to adjust to the new scenery around him. Below his feet, there was a platform that showed the land that he had come to and he immediately recognized it. There was no way he wouldn't recognize a place he had been to before; A place where he had lived a nice bit of his life.

"See who's talking to me. Kinda rude to remain a disembodied voice, unless you are a disembodied voice. In which case... my bad."

Koudo placed his hands on his hips and squinted at the girl that appeared, trying to place her face anywhere that he may have seen her. He couldn't say he'd ever heard the name, but Koudo had always had trouble with remembering names anyway. There were few occasions where he remembered someone, or something, that he didn't come to blows with.

He leaned in a little bit, then leaned back and paced around her. "Nah, your name's not ringin' a bell, but I couldn't mistake them features no where." While he definitely couldn't place her, she bore a STRONG resemblance to a certain family of individuals that had vanished from the world he called home.

He stopped his pacing in front of the construct of a girl, folding his massive arms as he did so, towering over her in terms of height. "Nah. I wanna bother somebody, if this really is the Veritas. Surprise me with who, the headache I'm gonna give 'em is all the same to me." He shrugged his shoulders, "Think you can do that Tina?"

Koudo smirked, but only a little bit. He guessed Tina had to have some knowledge about him if she was able to deduce the perfect person for him to mess with. He would have accepted if she'd called Chita too, but after the last time he saw her he wasn't really sure he was prepared, mentally, for a reunion. While being just friends was all fine and dandy, getting friend-zoned still hurt the young drake's pride.

He waited, for a while, after Tina put out her call and went eerily silent, in the sinister silence. He got a little uncomfortable staring at the, almost literally, dead silent Tina and approached her, curiously, to see what the deal was. He didn't touch her, having learned to respect some semblance of boundaries, but he did get unbearably close to her her to look in her almost lifeless eyes and search for any sign of life, or brain function.

"Weird..."

He couldn't help but whisper, but the docile tones of a familiar dialect filled his ears like nails on a chalk board. He could smell her, and feel her cold, before her ice seal appeared and was shattered, and he turned around, standing beside Tina, to fold his arms and bear proper witness to her flashy arrival. It was an arrival that he could respect, he never used his portals in such a fashion, but he loved a flashy entrance.

He rose a hand to stroke his chin, rubbing his rough fingers against the five o'clock shadow that was beginning to form. "I don't believe we have, actually. I seem to remember someone that wore a black dress." His response didn't do much to deflect her fiery gaze and cutting sarcasm in her voice, but he was willing to return the sardonicism without the burning glare.

She didn't look that much different at least, even her energy gave off the same signature, but Koudo was sure that she'd be at least somewhat surprised by what stood before her, if she could see past her tsundere tendencies. He stood at least half a foot taller than the last time they'd seen each other, much more built, in terms of muscle mass and definition, and a longer crop of raven colored locks than he'd ever sported as a snow haired lad. Still, his eyes remained that same deep sapphire   as he met her crimson stare.

Sure, maybe it was a touchy subject, but Koudo had long since forgiven her. They even talked it out the last time they saw each other, after he got friend-zoned by Chita. Now, the people that were normally around him... they were a very different story. Thankfully, she needn't worry about the twins because they were now a singular being who, at face value, cared very little about the affairs of Koudo. If it didn't directly affect her, or Yui, then she allowed him to do as he liked and deal with the consequences.

Besides Mana and the twins, Koudo never told anyone else about what happened. Maybe out of fear, at the time before her family disappeared, or out of shame and embarrassment, but he was able to deal with those feelings like he had learned to deal with everything else tragic that ever happened to him. Unfortunately, Mana wasn't so forgiving, and certainly held a grudge, even though they weren't dating at the time, and weren't now either.

He stopped stroking his chin and let out a hearty laugh, reaching to scratch behind his head, "Yeeeah, I actually have no idea how I ended up here." Truthfully, he was just fiddling around with the intricacies of his abilities and just so happened to end up here at the dimensional gate of the Veritas. He wasn't sure if he had unconsciously wished to come here, and his tear in space and time reacted in kind, or if it was just a random occurrence. Either way, whether he was lost or not, he was kind of glad he ended up somewhere that he had some formal knowledge of and not a random dimension filled with energy vampires or something. Yikes.

He stopped scratching his head and folded his arms again, "I am really glad to see you though, even if your tsundere tendencies won't let you bring yourself to believe me and get the warm fuzzies because I said it." Genuinely, he was glad. To him, it had been... at least 2 years since he'd seen any semblance of the Veritas, or was able to stumble across it's universal barrier. Traveling to alternate universes wasn't something that he could just... do, and he'd lost access to the device he'd used before. Destroying it in a fit of rage over the friend-zone thing. No matter how laid-back and lucid he could seem, some times he just couldn't control his temper.

Anyway, being able to, now, stumble across the universal barrier without the device was a testament to the amount of power he had gained over the time that they hadn't seen each other, but the fact that he wasn't sure how he got here was a testament to how untrained he appeared to be. Koudo never neglected his training though, he just focused more on the abilities that kept him exceptionally lethal and didn't have much time for experimentation with the more... whimsical abilities in his arsenal and how they had grown.

Once she acquiesced, she allowed Koudo the satisfaction of seeing her defeated. Even if it wasn't anything more than a verbal victory, it was still something. If memory served him correctly, and he always remember confrontations, there were seldom times he had actually overcome Priere in actual combat, so this was a moral victory.

He didn't allow himself to relish, though in more youthful years he would have, not that he was that much older. Circumstances had changed him and he had and experienced many things that forced him to either grow up or get out of the way. Koudo's personality didn't allow him to ignore any challenge, even if he didn't necessarily tackle it immediately, and his pragmatism allowed him to tackle the seemingly impossible with only a small amount of thought.

Koudo was alone, now, because he couldn't take Yui with him when he wasn't entirely sure how the particular power that brought him here really worked anymore. He'd not only be a bad role model, but a bad father, if he put her life in danger while he tried to figure this all out. The twins were more useful to him as the singular being, known as Odea, who wielded more power than either of them could ever dream of having, and while that cut down man power, it increased the lethality of the unit and allowed for a more natural home environment for Yui where she had a singular paternal figure and singular maternal figure. Okami, who would have accompanied him, had all but become Yui's best friend and most loyal protector, so she barely left the girl's side now.

He smiled. If that was the best that she was going to give him as a welcome, no matter how lackluster it was, he would accept in kind and approached her, "Excellent!" Casually, he snaked his tree trunk of an arm around her petite waist and lifted her higher than she was floating, holding her under his arm like a bundle of logs, "Let's go!" Certainly he'd learned to respect boundaries, but for someone like Priere? He knew she liked when he got handsy, even if she wouldn't allow herself to admit it. He saw her eyeballing him like he was a piece of prime cut meat. Besides it was a special occasion, she could let it slide right? Wasn't like he was trying to cop a feel or anything.

"Affirmative," Tina suddenly called out as though she'd been completely coherent and conscious the entire time, without skipping a beat, actually. Before their eyes, an image of the Ice Palace sprouted up from the model of the Veritas that they stood upon, just like one looking at the overview of a World Map in a video game, and when Tina's vessel she was using at the time dispersed in a burst of crystal, the two, Koudo and Triere, would begin to glow in a shimmering light that drew them both down into the Ice Palace, which began to grow larger as they became smaller, or appeared to be, that is. Their next destination would be right at the door of the Ice Sanctuary in the heart of the Crystal City of the Dawn.

( https://theveritas.forummotion.com/t1200-crystal-palace-special-guest#9768 )