Brann and I returned to Hiroshima Castle after the all clear had sounded at 10:15. We succeeded in rescuing all of the remaining prisoners and brought them to the Bridge. I was exhausted but afraid to dip into the energy well pulsing about me for fear of decomposing my body into dust. I did not think Brann would go for killing another person just to provide me with a mount. I was not too thrilled with the prospect either.

My head throbbed with pain. After a bit of rest however, I soon realized the throbbing was not so much from pain as it was from someone trying to reach me telepathically. It was Mr. Morgue, the others had also tried but could not get through.

Mr. Morgue and the other three were on their way to meet us at Hiroshima Castle. when I told Captain Brann about this, he paused in lighting his last cigar and asked if they had finished their missions. My contact with Mr. Morgue had been brief but I had gotten the impression that they had not.

Brann cursed as the match flame singed his fingers. He flapped it out and flicked the burnt match away. Reluctantly, he put his cigar back into its waterproof bag.

Company x assembled outside the castle.

Brann asked for immediate status reports.

Williams had discovered and destroyed two anti-aircraft batteries.

Four Eyes had located one radar station. He had killed the technicians manning it and disabled it.

Willie had only killed two high ranking officers by poison dart before Mr. Morgue had contacted him.

Mr. Morgue had disabled several cars by ripping out distributors and he had begun to wreck a rail car track when he had been spotted. Mr. Morgue explained that he had killed a high ranking Jap officer who had challenged him. Mr. Morgue drained the Jap's brain discovering that this officer Alad been in charge of a secret weapon project, one located in the bowels of Castle Hiroshima.

This project had to do with a death ray which could knock the propellers off of planes or it could kill the crew by disrupting their cellular structures. The team of scientists were poised to test this weapon the very next morning on any plane which flew over Hiroshima.

Laughing, Mr. Morgue said that sometimes he got jumbled impressions from draining brains too rapidly, because the Jap officer had also had a vivid impression of trying to revive a giant lizard with the death ray.

I felt a sudden chill crawl down the remnants of my creaking and crumbling spine.

"My God, it sounds as if they found Gojiro. I exclaimed in dry, whisper.

What the hell is Gojiller?" Brann asked.

"It is an ancient South Seas legend. There is this giant lizard which periodically terrorizes the Pacific regions, including Japan and China. Purportedly he is shaped like a Tyrannosaurus Rex but has the ability to project rays of some sort from his eyes or some type of magical fire from his mouth, depending on the accounts you hear. He usually only rampages for about a week or so before he runs out of energy. Then he hibernates in a volcano or at the bottom of the sea, again depending on the story.

"What does this fairy tale have to do with us?"

"Am I fairy tale, Captain Brann? Or are you or Four Eyes or Bear or Mr. Morgue or Willie or even Madame Curie?"

Brann stared at me with a look of such vehemence that if it had force I would have been knocked on my butt. As if I had something to do with Gojiro being real.

"If either this death ray or this monster exists, then they represent a threat to Operation Centerboard, so we have to find them and destroy them, if we can." Brann said and started on down the hallway. He gestured for Mr. Morgue to lead the way to the secret laboratory.

Mr. Morgue lead us to a unmarked door with a combination lock on it. He opened it swiftly and stepped inside silently, gesturing for us to follow him. We emerged into a long, white tiled and brilliantly lit hallway, at one end was a large set of double metal doors also painted white. Off to one side of the doors was a soldier sitting at a desk. He was fast asleep. As we approached closer to the door my exhaustion abruptly increased, I reached into the energy field but I could no longer feel it, much less tap into it.

"Damned place must be shielded, I can't keep us invisible," I whispered as I felt my power fade.

Brann did not even pause when I told him this. Sticking an unlit cigar in his mouth, he increased his step and raised his hands up cupping the cigar, forming his invisible bugle.

The dozing Japanese soldier awoke with a start. Unfortunately he was one of those rare individuals who awaken instantly alert. Seeing us he raised and fired his side arm.

While Brann the Bugler blew "Taps" Choctaw Williams howled in pain as two bullets stitched across his stomach.

The pain of the deadly wounds unleashed all the restraints on Williams, knowing he was dying he allowed all the rage and ferocity in his soul to burst forth onto the surface. His aura flared into visibility taking on a blood red tincture. It quickly formed the shape of the grizzly and surrounded Williams like a form fitting bear shaped fog.

In two bounding leaps Williams reached the desk. With a howling roar, the Bear ripped open the Japanese soldier's belly, the aura around Williams hands having solidified into large claws. Radiant red fangs formed around Williams teeth and were given temporary corporeality by Williams' will and desire to rend and kill.

The Japanese soldier's throat exploded in a kaleidoscope of red. Blood founted around the glowing crimson jaws of the Bear.

The Bear dropped its prey and with a angry defiant roar, he charged the white double doors. The doors creaked and bent under the tremendous weight of the enraged Bear but they did not give, not the first time nor the second. On the third try the doors popped open like a jack in the box lid.

A deafening roar sounded as the Bear charged into the room beyond the double doors.

It was shortly after midnight. Rapid gunfire followed the Bear's entrance into the other room. As we rushed to follow we

heard shrieks and the thick, meaty thuds of flesh being torn asunder.

Fifteen Japanese soldiers were firing at the Bear. Williams was so riddled with gunshot wounds that bones, organs and exposed blood vessels gleamed out from a lattice work of tattered flesh. That he was alive and standing was amazing but the aura that sustained him also held him together so that he had not disintegrated from the force of the blasts

Six Japanese soldiers were already dead and two more were dying at his claws and teeth when we caught up with them.

Williams fell after several more shots hit him. The bearish aura snapped off as if controlled by a light switch. His body hit the white tiled floor, splitting and crumbling like so much red, white and pink cheese.

I did what I could to form a defensive shield and Captain Brann blew "A Mighty Fortress on his invisible bugle.

Mr. Morgue and Willie the Snake rushed to the front. Mr. Morgue fired his M-16 and Willie the Snake threw his poisoned darts in quick flinging handfuls. Japanese soldiers fell but several more rushed from the far doors at the rear, reinforcing the fallen soldiers.

The fire fight in the enclosed hall was deafening, thunder boomed back and forth as slugs whined and careened with piercing whistles and screams.

Cordite smoke and dust from pulverized ceramic tile filled the air creating a fog and giving us a smoke screen to hide behind.

Our defensive shields were not adequate to the task. Although slowed considerably the bullets punched through. The strain of maintaining the shield was telling on me, sharp daggers of pain stabbed at my eyes and temples. The shields began to crumple. Mr. Morgue was hit once in the leg and out of ammunition when he leapt off to the side to re-load.

Mr. Morgue landed badly and he screamed as his leg crumpled beneath him. He slammed hard against the white tiled wall and slumped into a heap.

Willie the Snake was hit with a full barrage of gunfire. He made one contorted double handed wrist flip forwards as dozens of impact and exit explosions shredded him. His final deadly fistfuls of darts found three victims who fell a second after he did, their dying convulsions mirrored his to some extent, although they not smear the tiled floor with sanguinary giblets.

Four Eyes gave out a sound between a gasp and a sigh. I turned to see if he were hit. He was crying, the tears leaked Out from the rims of his dark glasses. Willie had been his best friend. Jerking the glasses from his face, he screamed in agony as his eyes burned. Through our bloodlink I felt his pain. It was the most pain I had felt in nearly a century. Perhaps I had never felt pain that intense.

Not even a second passed before his eyes glowed with a glossy, reflective black like chips of obsidian glass. Twin beams of black energy shot from his eyes. The black rays crackled through the air obliterating air molecules in their path. Nothing was safe, even light was somehow drawn into the black rays and dissolved. The air in the room grew thinner and the room became dark and shadowed as air and light were sucked into the destructive black beams.

As the beams hit the Japanese soldiers, they were not drilled through like the Buck Rogers lasers instead they seemed to instantaneously shrink, collapse, dissolve and disappear, leaving behind absolutely no trace that they had ever existed.

In a matter of seconds the deadly eye beams swept across all the remaining soldiers and they were gone.

All the while his eye beams had destroyed the Japanese soldiers Four Eyes had screamed in a raw, discordant inarticulate ululating shriek of agony. When the last soldier had vanished, he slapped the glasses over his face and fell to his knees. Four Eyes sobbed freely, yet it was blood which streamed down his face and collected at the point of his chin, a beard made up of dripping, crimson bubbles.

Captain Brann grabbed Four Eyes elbows and lifted him to his feet. He guided Four Eyes towards the doors further down the hall.

Mr. Morgue shook himself from his stupor and collected himself. He stood up shakily and limped over to us, using his rifle for support. He had been nailed through the calf of his right leg. One of his talents was quick healing so the bleeding had ceased.

Brann remarked that Four Eyes would be blind for a while and had Mr. Morgue lean on and guide Four Eyes.

We reached the doors at the end of the hall only to find them locked. Brann formed his bugle and blew "Jericho" After three times in quick succession the door cracked in half. Brann blew the charge and the doors flew inwards.

We found five Japanese scientists inside, oblivious to the mayhem, still working on far into the night on their secret experiment.

The death ray was a huge glass or plastic coil about eight feet high and ten feet in diameter. Inside the coil were rows of vacuum tubes. wires and valves. Several wires lead from the coil to a small console on wheels and from there to a large portable generator.

There was another coil similar in size and shape but pointed inside a large hole in the far wall.

For a second the Japanese scientists stared at us in surprise. Then one of the younger ones snapped on a switch on the console of the coil and swung the coil in our direction.

Energy swarmed over me like a ants over a rotting carcass. The energy was so overwhelming, so immense that I could not dampen it, I could not get a fix on it. I was swept along a current of power like a leaf down the Niagara.

My borrowed body dissolved into dust and I hit the floor hard, my skull bouncing along the white tile like a tennis ball. I was beyond noticing any of this, yet was aware of all that went on about me.

As the invisible ray struck Mr. Morgue, he stood paralyzed, his body broke into a thick sweat. Bulges formed all along his shaven skull. Grayish polyps sprouted out of his dark brown skin like mushrooms after a summer rain. The polyps quickly grew in size, mushrooming to the size of apples and then to melons.

They were not polyps but brains, all the brains he had sucked dry burst forth from his head. His head became obscured by the growths and the weight of them forced him to his knees and then forward onto his face, as if kowtowing to the coil.

With a scream, Four Eyes pulled his glasses off. The twin beams of black entropic energy shot forwards, singing their way through dissolving air. The eye beams hit the coils, spun around inside them and shot back at Four Eyes. Four Eyes shrank and disappeared leaving no trace of him behind.

Black light exploded from the coils of the death ray enveloping four of the scientists. The light imploded silently and collapsed upon itself vanishing without a sound. Gone also were the death ray and four of the Japanese Scientists.

The Death ray had affected Phineas Brann also. He had told me that a side effect of being one of my blood brothers was aging backwards. He had been about twenty before the ray struck him, now he was about ten years old. His shirt dwarfed him, flopping down to his knees. His pants were looped around his feet.

Brann took no time for recriminations or regrets. He picked up the large pants in his tiny fist and searched through the pockets. Pulling out a knife he sawed off the legs until they were a suitable length. He took the hacked off pieces and cut them into strips which he made into a short rope. Brann tucked the shirt tail into the pants and tied the makeshift belt about his waist. Picking up his waterproof back he stuffed in it inside his shirt and buttoned it up tight. This entire process took about two minutes.

When the ray shut off the massive cluster of brains weighing Mr. Morgue down receded. They shrank until his smooth skull was dotted with dozens of pinkish gray fungoid like growths about the size of an average toadstool. Mr. Morgue stood up and shook his head violently as if attempting to dislodge the conflicting thoughts I felt swirling around in his head.

Mr. Morgue tried to weep away the memories but could not. He had never truly wept any of the memories away, merely dislodged them from his consciousness. Once he sucked a mind into his own, the chemical memories were imprinted on his brain tissues. The act of weeping them out merely caused those memories to become dormant. Now they were all fully activated and the conflicting memories were driving him mad. Only the force of will which had allowed him to keep these minds dormant kept him sane, for the moment. I could feel his ego crumbling under an assemblage of personalities fighting for dominance.

His normally ebullient face was set in a grim mask of rage and hatred. He launched his large bulk at the remaining Japanese scientist. Phineas Brann attempted to stop Mr. Morgue but was swept aside by a powerful arm.

Using both of his large hands, Mr. Morgue grabbed the screaming and slightly built man by his temples and squeezed tightly. Mr. Morgue plunged his thumbs deep into the man's eyes, thumbnails slipping through the eyeballs as if they were gelatin. Blood, aqueous humor and vitreous humor squirted past his thumbs like foam from a shook up soda bottle.

The Japanese scientist convulsed and screamed as pain ripped through his body. Mr. Morgue echoed the very same motions with own body as his victim's thoughts became his own.

With a final convulsive seizure the Japanese scientist stiffened and collapsed. Mr. Morgue withdrew his gore and gray matter caked thumbs and sucked them clean. Licking his lips, he stared at us blindly, his eyes throbbing as information was decoded and stored in his brain. Before our eyes another pinkish gray mushroom, shaped like a tiny brain on a stalk, blossomed on his skull, this time directly above his right eye.

Slow tears began to leak from his eyes as he giggled. The new acquisition had triggered the memory dumping mechanism in his system, but I feared it would only dump this current victims unwanted memories.

Mr. Morgue giggled wildly and said, "This was unnecessary. The death ray does not work, it will not even kill a pig much less a man nor does it affect solid matter, so it could not knock down planes. These scientists had lied about the weapon to their superiors to save face.

"The ray sure affected us. What about this gojiller monster?" Brann asked.

Mr. Morgue expression went slack for a second, then it suddenly contorted wildly and a hoarse, shrill laugh brayed out from his throat. "Let me show you," he said and started for the other death ray coil.

"Wait!" I shouted. My naked vocal chords had nothing to amplify my voice so it sounded like a loud whisper. "Get me a body."

Brann gave a look of utter loathing. I found his disgust and hatred even more disturbing coming from his childish face, it was a deep chill against my soul. He picked my sword out of the skeletal remains of my former body and chopped off the head of the Japanese scientist Mr. Morgue had just killed. This action

demonstrated that despite its childish appearance Brann's body still retained a supernatural strength.

"Come and get it, El Jefe" Brann said sarcastically as he and Mr. Morgue walked towards the death ray coil set into the far wall.

Although it had been quite a while, I snaked across the room using the trachea, larynx and spine trailing from my skeletal head. Upon reaching the headless body, I lashed the spine, hopping myself into a reclining position. My skull hit the white tile with a loud clink and the spine and vocal chord slid into the neck hole connecting themselves to the neural and vocal apparatus of the borrowed body.

Tactile sensation returned with a rush and for a time I felt the vitality of a fresh body.

Sitting up, I followed Brann and Mr. Morgue over to the door next to the death ray coil. They had waited, albeit impatiently, for me to join them. Luckily, years of experience and hundreds of borrowed bodies had made the joining and take over of bodily functions almost instantaneous.

Pointing to the death ray coil, Mr. Morgue said, "The death ray affected us because we all were already irradiated in some degree, our genes and blood carrying radioactive traces. The ray merely amplified our radioactivity and produced more mutagenic changes.

Smiling a wry smile, he continued, "This is why they did not dare release Gojiro. Some Japanese forces found Gojiro hibernating in a dormant volcano on some pacific island. They brought him here hoping to revive him and use him as a weapon

against the Allies.

Of all the things they tried on him, the death ray was the most effective, however it only awakened him for a few seconds at a time with deadly results. One of the results of the death ray treatments is that it left Gojiro a restless sleeper. He awakens every now and then for a few seconds and reacts as if in a hostile setting.

They planned to use Gojiro as a last ditch weapon should an invasion come. To awaken him they would give him the full power of three death rays.

"I still don't get it why wouldn't they use him otherwise. Brann asked suspiciously.

Mr. Morgue opened the door next to the death ray coil. We walked through a small hallway to another small doorway. Stepping through the doorway we exited into a vast, clammy darkness. Mr. Morgue moved ahead of us a few steps and snapped on a light switch.

Bright, stark light from several flood lights, revealed us to be in a cavern. We stood on a vast expanse of a teak, some four hundred feet long. The teak floor pitched and listed slightly as if it were in constant motion. In the center of the teak floor was a huge bundle some three hundred feet long and about fifty wide, covered completely by black tarps. Dozens of mooring cables and anchor chains crisscrossed the width and breadth of the tarp covered bulk and were fastened in huge rings set in the teak floor. On the side nearest to us a rectangular frame of metal was bolted to the floor.

Mr. Morgue pointed to the rectangular frame and said, "There is one on the other side and one aft. Those are the frames for the death ray coil devices.

"Where's this Gojiro beastie at and what's that thing they got so wrapped up.

Look at the tarps, don't you see them rise and fall? Can't you feel the motion under our feet? That big lump over there is Gojiro, his breathing is causing the rocking under our feet. We are on the biggest raft in the world, a converted aircraft carrier deck.

"I thought you said, he was only fifty to seventy five feet tall!" Brann said, turning and boring his eyes into mine in an accusatory glare.

He was sixty-five feet tall when they found him, Captain. The death ray does wake him but it also makes him grow. The research team calculated that the require dose of death ray radiation needed to fully wake Gojiro from hibernation would double his present size. That is why they never used it, they had no way to control him once he was awake. His massive bulk and huge size would wreak devastation where ever he walked.

Yet they were willing to destroy the coastal cities by unleashing him on the US armed forces , Brann said and shook his head in wonderment. "Can we kill the beastie?"

"It is invulnerable to all known weapons. Mr. Morgue said with a sour expression. Perhaps we can shoot it through the eye or the nose"

Captain Brann nodded. We followed Mr. Morgue to the aft section of the raft. He explained that this raft was floating on a man made lake underneath Hiroshima Castle. When the American Invasion started the Japanese planned on floating the raft out a tunnel and into the Motoyasu river and out to Hiroshima bay. Once there the scientists would start up the death rays and wake Gojiro. He pointed to a large U-handle switch by the door. That was an emergency release which would unloose the raft moorings and open the sea door allowing the raft to float out of the chamber and up to the river.

Mr. Morgue lifted a section of the tarp, revealing a craggy, expanse of dark green material remind me of glossy lichen covered pebbles set inside polished green wood. This was Gojiro's scaly hide. Mr. Morgue had Captain Brann and I take hold of either side of a crack in the hide and pull. Using all our strength the hide parted, revealing the slick, glassy surface of Gojiro's eyeball.

Mr. Morgue fired a burst from his M-16 directly into the eye. The eye did not burst into a fountain of goo as we had hoped, nor did the bullets ricochet as we had feared. The bullets were caught in the surface of the eye like flies in amber. With the acrid stench of molten metal the lead and brass trapped in the skin of the eye dissolved in several puffs of smoke.

"Oh, shit! " Mr. Morgue exclaimed.

The huge eye glowed faintly then grew in amber radiance much like a vacuum tube does when it is warming up. Brann and I let go of the eye lid and leapt to one side. A lambent beam shot from the eye and caught Mr. Morgue full on. He glowed yellow for half a second and then burst apart in millions of glistening particles which winked out a second later.

Lying prone, Captain Brann stuck his last cigar back into his mouth. It was huge to his little' boy's mouth. Forming his invisible bugle he blew Taps just as loud and fast as he could. The huge eyelids quivered and then slowly slid closed.

Brann stood up cursing a blue streak. The cursing sounded odd coming in his child's voice. He would have liked to kicked Gojiro for all he was worth but was afraid of reviving him.

"We'll just leave him right here. Hopefully, the bomb will destroy it." He walked back to the door leading back to the laboratory, expecting me to follow. I did so after a minute but before doing so I looked at the vast, sleeping bulk of Gojiro.

Another victim of radiation, as was I. Another freak of nature as was I. I made not a conscious decision but a decision of conscience. When I walked past the doorway leading to the laboratory, I reached over and pulled the emergency release lever.

Hearing the clamps holding the raft loosen I walked out the doorway.

Brann was waiting for me in the corridor outside the laboratory. He needed me for my invisibility shield, otherwise he would have left me behind.

Brann and I made it to the Aioi bridge without any problems.

Brann dismissed the prisoners, telling them to make their way furtively and quickly towards the hills outside of Hiroshima. He told them that he had one more mission to accomplish and that hopefully one day he would see them in the good old USA.

He was lying to them, verbally and visually. Because he did not want them to react to his new biological age of ten he had me create the image of his older self for them. He lied to them verbally because, his mission was over, he had decided to die.

I also wanted to die but was feeling severe pangs in my underdeveloped conscience. Certainly, if I was the cause, either intentionally or inadvertently of the mass produced death in the German concentration camps, I deserved to be executed.

My soul was stained with the blood of those I had killed in vengeance, for convenience and by accidentally creating monsters and I knew I deserved, and wanted, extinction. Yet, what of the innocents who would be killed achieving my execution, what of the civilians surrounding the atomic flash which exterminated me.

Was this not a holocaust in a different form? I knew that there were differences, this was not the cold, calculated methodical gassing and shoving of people into ovens but the end result was the same except that thousands would be incinerated in one huge atomic oven.

My soul, I felt for certain was damned but what of the soul of my homeland? What of the soul of America, could it withstand such a blot, could its collective conscience ignore the thousands of innocent dead? I wondered. Certainly such an act would have dire consequences. Perhaps, not at once but eventually the guilt would consume the nation as a whole and America would turn on itself in self-loathing and despair. Violence would beget violence and overwhelming and unacknowledged guilt would shatter society and culture. Social classes and generations would fight amongst themselves until only chaos reigned.

This one unthinking act of mass murder could be the death of America. I wondered how I might prevent it and save America from its own folly.

My thoughts would not be understood by Brann and I knew he would prevent me from stopping the bombing if he could.

Brann and I took cover under the Aioi bridge and waited for the bomb. We sat invisible waiting for the bomb to drop. He scratched a match on the stone of the bridge and lit his last cigar. It was truly a bizarre sight, seeing a ten year old child smoking the last eight inches of a foot long cigar, he could barely get his mouth around it.

Shortly Brann fell asleep. I thought about killing him but could not bring myself to do so. For all my crimes, I have never killed a child and despite his chronological age, he was a child. This put him beyond the line I had drawn for myself.

As it neared dawn the huge raft carrying Gojiro floated past us. I hoped this was a way of getting Brann out of my hair for a while. When the raft was barely in visible range, I nudged Brann awake and showed him the raft floating down the river.

Brann rubbed sleep from his eyes and stared at me with luminous child-like eyes. "You bastard! What the hell did you set him free for?"

"There will be enough innocents killed today. Why should there be one more?"

Brann stared at me silently for a second, grabbed his partially smoked cigar and took off running. I knew he would never catch the raft.

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