  The question as to what the relevant effective degrees of freedom at the
chiral phase transition are remains largely unanswered and must be addressed in
confronting both terrestrial and space laboratory observations purporting to
probe matter under extreme conditions. We address this question in terms of the
vector susceptibility \chi_V (VSUS in short) and the axial-vector
susceptibility \chi_A (ASUS in short) at the temperature-induced chiral
transition. We consider two possible, albeit simplified, cases that are
contrasting, one that is given by the standard chiral theory where only the
pions figure in the vicinity of the transition and the other that is described
by hidden local symmetry (HLS) theory with the Harada-Yamawaki vector
manifestation (VM) where nearly massless vector mesons also enter. We find that
while in the standard chiral theory, the pion velocity v_\pi proportional to
the ratio of the space component f_\pi^s of the pion decay constant over the
time component f_\pi^t tends to zero near chiral restoration with f_\pi^t\neq
0, in the presence of the vector mesons with vanishing mass, the result is
drastically different: HLS with VM {\it predicts} that \chi_V automatically
equals \chi_A in consistency with chiral invariance and that v_\pi\sim 1$ with
$f_\pi^t\approx f_\pi^s\to 0 as T\to T_c. These results are obtained in the
leading order in power counting but we expect their qualitative features to
remain valid more generally in the chiral limit thanks to the VM point.
