Source: VnV: New Dawn, GM: BurningBones

Hiroshi Takahashi was a young officer in the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Second World War.  He graduated Kaigun Heigakkō, the Japanese Naval Academy, in 1942, after the war with America had begun, adding to the already-burdensome war with China.  Hiroshi graduated with high marks and was rushed from graduation to service.  Japan needed every soldier and sailor in the war against the distant juggernaut.

His first assignment was the IJN Shimakaze, a prototype destroyer.  She was intended to be the head of a new class of super-destroyers, but the realities of war meant there would be no others like her.  There simply wasn't the time, money, or materials.  Beginning as a junior lieutenant, Hiroshi worked diligently and hard; but all around him there were signs Japan was now losing the war.  A creeping fatalism slowly infected the men; the question wasn't if they would die, but how.  Through it all, Hiroshi struggled to be a good officer and keep his obligations and duty.  He was barely 22.  His fate was tied to this one-off destroyer - perhaps the fastest destroyer of her time.

In June 1943, Shimakaze  participated in the evacuation of Japanese troops from Kiska Island towards the end of the Aleutian Islands campaign. She was present in June 1944 at the Battle of the Philippine Sea. In October 1944, she was present at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, although she played no role in the battle except for taking on survivors from the Battleship Musashi. While serving as the flagship of Destroyer Squadron 2 under the command of Rear Admiral Mikio Hayakawa, she was attacked and sunk by American aircraft from Task Force 38 on 11 November 1944 during the Battle of Ormoc Bay.

The explosion had rocked the entire ship and blown at the bridge.  A previous bomb had killed Rear Admiral Mikio Hayakawa, the ship's Captain and XO; technically, LT Takahashi was in command.  His command lasted 10 minutes, the time it took for another bomb to break her back.  Shimakaze was bound for the ocean floor.  Hiroshi gave the call to abandon ship, but in the large it was too late.  Bleeding, one eye ruined, he was prepared to ride her to the bottom.  He closed his good eye.

Another bomb hit, and a great white flash...

And he found himself sputtering and coughing, alone in the water.  How could he have survived?  Where were the American planes, the other ships?  His crew?  And... why were there two moons high in the day-lit sky?

If he hadn't been close to shore, he would have drowned and never learned the answers to his questions.  But fortunately Hiroshi knew how to swim, and despite his wounds the shore was close.  Even so, he barely made it.  He felt so heavy, and even the water seemed unnaturally thick. Dragging himself out of the surf, he collapsed on the beach.  A few bits of flotsam from Shimakaze also washed ashore.

When he next awoke, he was surrounded - a prisoner.  But his enemy wasn't the Americans.  They were unlike anything he'd ever seen before.  They surrounded him with spears, and had the appearance of feral, tribal warriors.  But they clearly weren't human, or at least, not any humans Hiroshi had ever seen.  They looked like spirits, and Hiroshi was truly convinced he was dead and this was some kind of afterlife.

The truth was, perhaps, even stranger.

Immensely strong, the strange ones took him - speaking not a word he could understand - and brought them to a strange wooden sailing craft.

Over time, Hiroshi would earn his freedom.  He would fight alongside these strange savages when attacked by their enemies, the Valth - vicious reptilian brutes.  He would save a lone G'arm pup - a winged canine of massive proportions - from execution after it was injured by the Valth.  And he would learn the true history of this world, which he called Seishin, after the spirit.

Once this world, too, had suffered a terrible war.  The Tengu (as he called the people) and the Valth had both been civilizations of technology far beyond the world Hiroshi had known.  And in a savage, short war, they lost it all, reducing each other to barbarism and near-extinction.

The Tengu were savages, and brutal in their own way.  But compared to the Valth, they were far more human.  And there was really no doubt as to which side Hiroshi would help.  By this time, Nagato - as he named the G'arm pup - had grown to serviceable size, and the two were inseparable.  When next he rode into battle, it would be astride the winged beast, in formation with the Tengu tribes.  His struggle against Seishin's greater gravity, in combination with native foods, had tripled his strength.

That was when Hiroshi found himself riding a crested wave of deja vu.  For once again he was on the losing side of a vicious war.  The Tengu were being driven back and killed against the more advanced and cruel Valth.  Hiroshi attempted to even the odds with his superior tactical training and the introduction of as much 20th century technology as he could.

It wasn't going to be enough.

And so, even as he had once prepared to ride Shimakaze down to the sea floor, Hiroshi was determined to go down fighting.  But an encounter with a Tengu shaman brought old legends and history to light.  Rather than die fighting - Hiroshi had an idea on how to live, and be victorious.

He would take Nagato and journey into the ruins of the old cities of the Forbidden Zone, in hopes of finding a weapon to turn the tide.  The Tengu bid him farewell mournfully once they learned they could not dissuade him.  To enter the Forbidden Zone meant death.  None had ever returned.

Hiroshi would be the first.

In the ruins, he found the remains of an ancient arsenal.  Some of it was beyond his comprehension, but he found an ancient suit of armor.  Upon examining it, it subtly changed its appearance to match that of a samurai of olden times.  Irresistible.  Hiroshi took it and found that, at his bidding, it could create weaponry out of thin air!

Thus he returned a legend.  The young man was not even yet 25.  They called him "Shimakaze" and "The one-eyed legend" after his return.  He'd often told them of the valor of his ship, the Island Wind.

Now he would help them repel the Valth.  With Nagato at his side and the miracles of the armor - which he called Yoroi, the Japanese word for armor - they turned the tide.

But during the climactic battle, Hiroshi learned the Valth, too, had raided the old ruins.  They had a strange weapon of unbelievable power.  And they used it on him.

Thus, on his 25th birthday, LT Hiroshi Takahashi, aka "Shimakaze", and his loyal companion Nagato... found themselves back on Earth.  In New York, America, as a matter of fact.

Over 65 years had passed on Earth...