A Dragon's Tail Ch. 10-11

Then it happened. The roar was more than my ears could take.

In the bay, a large gray form appeared in the water. The roar was deafening. As it rolled around in the water, arms and tentacles could be made out. A large head appeared. The morning sun had still not touched the water, but the long 30 meter form was defiantly a live creature. A bolt of electricity hurled itself over us and headed into the heavens. There was a second roar as the creature started coming straight at us.

The head became more apparent, and someone on the platform cried "It's a dragon!"

With that, a second lightning bolt burst into the skies.

I would like to tell you that the next two minutes of terror was my best acting job I ever did, but I would be lying. I turned into a blithering mother screaming, "Save my baby! Save my baby!" There were shouts of "Save the Royals", while others calmly simply pulled out their cell phones and took pictures of the dragon in the ocean. The businessmen and students who had gotten off the train grabbed us and covered us with their bodies. Royal Security emptied their firearms into the beast, as it turned away and dove back into sea. It didn't matter how weird my story sounded, it was now believed by all, and they had become heroes when the snow princess had turned into a dragon and came after my son.

We were hustled into the royal security vehicles. As we neared into the limousine, I saw Janice. I went near her and took her hand. We entered the limo together. We sat as security helped my sone in the car.

The lady had her cell phone to her face. "Yeah, your whale submarine just blew a gasket or something. You were lucky that it didn't beach itself. It served its purpose, and I think the Imperial House has a solid cover story now."

I looked back at her in relief, "That was a Submarine?"

"Yeah, with all your fascination with robots and tech devices, I figured the Japanese would be the first to build a Mech, but we beat you to it. It was supposed to look like a whale, but I have to admit that it made a pretty convincing dragon, don't you think?"

I nodded, and gave her a hug. "We will need to talk later. I still have some trust issues with you, but we need to talk. Can we set up an appointment in a week or so, when this calms down?"

I held out the doll. "I don't know about the violin, but this doll makes me trust you."

Janice presented me with her card, and left the violin with me. She got out of the limo, and disappeared into the crowd on the platform.

*** *** *** *** *** ***

Simultaneously with the departure from the cave.

Bob stood a half Kilometer away from the Train station with the interpreter and the member of the Japanese Special Forces unit. Their instructions were clear; at the train station, only Janice could be dropped off, and they had to drive away. They had followed the instructions until the jackal who was sitting on the vehicle gave a thumb's up sign. They turned to a side road and parked at a curve in the road, and flashed their lights. Janice Williams waved back.

Bob pulled out a suitcase and started setting up the camera array, much to the dismay of the jackal.

"There was nothing said about recording the event."

When the jackal didn't respond, Bob had the interpreter repeat his response. The jackal nodded.

The cameras looked like modified brownie cameras, and were made to all take a ten second exposure at the same time. With dark matter photography, the lens is ignored, because it bends light, but not dark matter waves. A pinhole camera is best, but it gathers little information. With the sun coming up soon, Bob had to make a judgment call as to whether or not to keep the lens caps on. The caps were made of plastic, the regular light would be blocked, and just dark matter images would appear. The cameras, including the shutter, were gold plated, and then painted with black lead based paint. To avoid strange looks from the other two humans, Bob decided to remove the lens caps. The array had seven cameras, in a hexagonal pattern, with a camera in the center, mounted on a tripod.

The cameras would act together, and the seven photos would be computer enhanced later.

With each camera loaded with a 72 shot roll, Bob took a few pictures of Janice and Benzaiten. Benzaiten was not illuminated, but would still show up in the images. He then waited until the four vehicles pulled up to the train station, and two people get out and put a third person into a wheelchair. Bob started to slowly take pictures. One person walked back to the vehicles, and all of them took off.

Bob became confused. The two people had normal souls, and not enhanced souls. Where was the target?

After a few minutes, Janice went over to the side, and Benzaiten signaled, and four jackels came into view. Bob started taking more pictures. Three jackals were assigned to Janice, and the two other people in the platform. One jackal stayed close to Benzaiten as she changed shape.

Bob had never seen a transformation, and he tried to take as many images before Benzaiten stopped, but it only took her 30 seconds to complete, and with ten second exposures, this meant only three photos were shot.

Two of her arms flowed down her back and down onto her legs, while four extra arms started to lengthen. Then the two arms had reached her ankles, all six started to gain feathers. Benzaiten was not just an angel, she was a seraphim, a high angel. She sported two set of wings on her back, and a third set on her ankles, similar to the Roman god Mercury.

Bob uttered one work, and it was heard by both men neadby. "Raphael?"

She grabbed the jackel and took off, with Janice and the two at the train station none the wiser. Bob got one image with the final transformation, before Benzaiten ascended from the platform. The two other observers heard Bob mention the Angels name, and were now wondering what was happening.

The train arrived and Bob took a few pictures of the people streaming out, and gathering around the three people on the station platform. Bob kept turning his head and following the angel carrying the jackal out to sea. The angel started to descend, and dropped the jackal. Once again, the angel started to change shape.

The other two both knew that Bob could see, because of the dock. They had heard him say the angel's name. They watched him track the angel out to sea. It didn't surprise them when he started to swing the camera array towards the sea.

Bob started to take more pictures, but this time, at a dark object that was surfacing.

Then the thundering noise came, and the angel elongated and became something else, landing on the object. The jackal grabbed something and started to yank on it. The item broke and a lightning bolt shot out of whatever the jackal had grabbed. Benzaiten then illuminated, and everyone on the station platform could clearly see the head of a large creature. The jackal grabbed another object and another lightning bolt shot past the platform, and Bob saw it terminate into a tentacle.

Bob took another picture, but it was of the object in the water, and not the leviathan that was slowly floating away.

"What the hell?"

The two observers were shocked as Bob dropped the camera control, and walked away from the camera array, The interpreter grabbed the camera control and began wildly shooting up the rest of the roll, taking photo after photo of the object. Bob looked down at the platform, where he saw lot of people with their cell phones taking pictures. He knew from the tests, and even the illuminated angel would not show up on the electronic devices, they were useless. The dark matter waves reacted to the silver nitrate in regular camera film, especially black and white film, but not to electronic photocells. They would get inconclusive blobs.

"Damn it! It's a fucking dog and pony show!"

What amazed Bob was that the leviathan had actually assisted in this farce. Everytone thought that the leviathans were actually non-intellegent monster jellyfish. The object, whatever it was, was supplying sound, and some sort of charged devices to fake lightning bolts. Benzaiten was illuminating herself to make the object look like a dragon like creature, but it was all just for show, and not an actual close encounter with a actual creature. Everything was set up for later deniability, just as it always was. It was fucking Area 51 again, and their fucking light shows!

Bob was pissed. The world was going to be kept in the dark, again.

Janice appeared a half hour later, and they drove off.

*** *** *** *** ***

Back at the train station.

I had my son, and we were safe in the Limousine of the Royal Security Forces.

I had Royal Security drive us back to my car and the tunnel. We secured the place before the Americans or regular Japanese Special Forces could get there. I toured the entire series of tunnels, and found three diaries that the 'Sisters of Bondage' had missed, and took them with me. I held a press conference in the tunnel and repeated the story. It didn't hurt that almost ninety three thousand one ounce gold coins were found in the tunnels. It was declared a genuine 'Dragons Lair'.

The next day, my son was unable to participate in the Kendo tournament at the 3-5-7 festival. But he had so many girls around him asking about the snow princess, I don't think it mattered. That simple 5 course meal turned into a 17 course meal full of the most savory treats. By the end of the day, my son had gorged himself with so much food, that he could hardly move.

A week after the event, I was slipped a note from a Geisha entertaining at the palace. 'OUR ANGEL IS SAFE'.

Chapter 11 -- Aftermath

As I was looking for my son the previous afternoon, several photographs of Ahiko surfaced as 'The Angel of the Mountain', but some of them were over twenty years old. The tabloids had a field day, spinning stories about the snow princess. With Japan having only a foreign population of only 1-3%, a cute foreign nine year old in pilgrimage clothing had attracted many cameras over the years. Within days, over 12,000 photographs and 2,000 videos appeared, spanning the last 24 years showed up, all having the same foreign child, who never seemed to age. The regular news media started featuring the stories, too. With an ageless child could not be explained away by any expert, and the dragon/snow princess legend grew. It didn't hurt to have a dragon's lair, with almost a hundred thousand gold coins in it. Stories then started to surface about miracle healings that had occurred to people who had gone on pilgrimages, and many remember having lunch with the little girl, and being hugged by Ahiko. The photographic evidence made it so that almost every Japanese person knew someone who had personally come in touch with the dragon. My son got such a swelled head, as the man that a dragon had fallen in love with. He was impossible to live with, for the next three months.

A contest was held to name the dragon. Because of the European features of Ahiko, many European nations claimed that the dragon was theirs. The English claimed that it was Viviane, the name for the Dragon Queen from King Arthur Legions, who is also known as the Lady of the Lake. The Polls claimed it was Melucine. The French claimed that she was Melucina, and when my son mentioned that she had sung French nursery rhymes, it stuck. Some of the French Royaly is supposed to be descendant from the Fountain Fairy's daughter Melusina, who later turned into a winged dragon, and Ahiko's image did have a striking resemblance to a young Marie Antoinette. The idea of the French Royalty and the Japanese Royalty joining gave rise to many romantic stories in the press. In the weeks that followed, 'Melucina' caused a renaissance for the Shinto Religion. Plans were even submitted to build new shrines to the 'Dragon of Japan'. The gold coins found in the cave were re-pressed with a specially designed dragon logo, and sold to pay for the new shrines. People paid way over the actual going price for a one ounce gold coin, to have a piece of the dragons lair. From the diaries, I found out who Ahiko really was. Robert Hennski was an American of Polish/French decent from Indiana. After Poland fell to the Germans in 1939, his father went to Europe to fight against Germany. He ended up being part of the French underground, where he fell in love with, and married, a French woman named Loraine. They had Robert in France, while living in northern France. It turned out that not only Loraine's heritage could be traced back to Melucina legend, that Robert's heritage placed his ancestors in the in the Polish city of Vistula, which is where the water Spirit Melucine was supposed to originate. That had me a moment of shock, when I realized that several of the names given by the Europeans were having some basis of truth. Maybe I was living in a fairy tale?

The French songs that Robert had sung were taught to him by his mother. He had transformed in America from a man into a girl. In an effort to figure out what was going on to his body, he had become nearly a lab animal in the fabled area 51. He had escaped, and managed to get to Vietnam. The Buddhist spirits took him in, and helped him avoid recapture. The spirits then advised Robert to flee Vietnam, and sequester himself in Japan. The Shinto goddess Benzaiten welcomed him, and led him to the abandoned tunnel, which he converted into his home.

I had records checked, and Robert was never divorced. He was now a widow, as his first wife died eight years earlier. I relayed this information, along with the obituary to the Geisha.

In her twenty five years of living in Japan, the goddess Beinzaiten had been particularly helpful, and Robert had vowed to serve her. Robert, the man, ceased to exist, and became Ahiko, shrine maiden to Beinzaiten, goddess of eloquence and the arts. I also confirmed that the 'Sisters of Bondage' were actually Geisha, who also consider Benzaiten their patron goddess. Ahiko figured out that 'healing' a perfectly normal breast caused it to grow a half a cup size, and had opened up business serving only licensed Geisha. She had been performing around 250 'breast augmentations' a year for the past 20 years. She also had an entire maternity package worked out, which included removal of stretch marks, breast lifts after lactation ceased, strengthening the Cooper's ligaments, and vagina reconstruction. She could not open a bank account, so she had been accepting her fees in one ounce gold coins. The Flower and Willow World of the Geisha was full of secrets, and Ahiko was one that the ladies of entertainment would never give up. Ahiko had a powerful ally whose tentacles stretched into every business, private or public, in Japan.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

In March, I received a call from the mistress. "She's miscarried, and she's asking for you. Will you come?"

"Is it safe?"

"I don't care about that anymore. I worried about angel. She's in love with your son, she's miscarried, and she's asking for you. Will you come?"

"Yes."

I got to see Angel again. She was safe, and her miscarriage had left her at deaths doorstep. Her efforts to save her daughter had drained her. In the end, she was performing a healing on her unborn daughter several times each day, to keep her daughter alive. Ahiko could not keep up, and her body could not recover before her unborn daughter was once again at death's door. After six sleepless days, where the healings dropped to every 90 minutes, Ahiko collapsed. Two days later, when Ahiko came to, she could no longer see her daughter's soul within her body, she collapsed into a depression. She never got to say goodbye to her.

The happy smiling girl that I knew was gone, and now looked like a survivor of a death camp. She had lost 1/3 of her weight. Her skin was nearly translucent, and what was left of her muscular physique was clinging to her bones. As I picked her up, I watched her try to say "I'm Sorry", but she was too weak to speak. She was so dehydrated, that she could not cry. As she sat on my lap, I told her, "It's OK Ahiko, I will cry for you." I openly sobbed for her daughter and my grandchild.

After holding Ahiko for over an hour, and getting her to take in some fluids, I spoke to Mistress.

"There is a time for discretion, and a time for action. You can come if you like, but I am taking her to the Royal Physicians."

There was no argument from Mistress. The three of us walked out and got into the Limo. I held her as we went to the Imperial Palace. She was still on me lap when the royal physicians came in.

I looked sternly at the physician and the two nurses. "This is not the snow princess as the press has made her out to be, but a mortal woman with birth defects. She is the oldest person in this room, and she can't mature into puberty. She ran away, and was chased into the sea. This lady found her washed up on the shore, and we are going to nurse her back to health. If this gets out, and everyone finds out that this is just a mortal woman with some birth defects, then we are going to lose all the momentum that has just come over our country in the Shinto faith. I hope I have made myself clear."

Everyone cooperated, and she was soon resting in bed with an IV pumping fluid into her. I started to get her to drink fluids. I called Janice Williams, and she came back to Japan. The three of us took turns holding our little angel, and nursing her back to health. After two days of constant attention, she started to gain weight. It was over a month before I would see her smile again.

She went through a partial rebirth, and started aging normally. She had gained DNA from the pregnancy, including some green eye pigment which gave her hazel eyes, black hair, the Asian single eyelids, and her skin deepened to an Asian completion. Her tail, angel buds, and vocal chords remained, but the other changes made her look different from the photos that were now recognized everywhere. Her two sets of nipples had also changed, and she was now blossoming into a woman. She now sported four little buds that would develop into breasts. Ahiko no longer looked European, and she could walk out in public, and not be recognized.

I took her in, and kept her company. I spent many a night holding her as she cried herself to sleep. Her breasts shrunk after the miscarriage, but after while, her body started to smooth out, and she started to grow, and began the process to change from a girl to a woman. Her well toned body started to lose its crisp detail, as her skin thickened and softened her form. By the end of the summer, she was ready to gain back her strength. Janice accompanied her on a trip to Shikoku Island to make the 88 temple pilgrimage. It took the pair eleven weeks to complete the entire 1647 kilometer hike, but Janice returned from the trip with a fully healed hand, and without a limp. Janice had spent at least two hours of each day counseling Ahiko, so Ahiko came back from the pilgrimage more whole spiritually as well.

Ahiko loved the arts, and wanted to become a Geisha. Ahiko loved to play music and sing, and felt protected under the white makeup of a Geisha. Many people think of Geisha as ladies of the evening, and this is far from the truth. I want you to understand, just like any western musician or actress, Geisha can and do fall in love and have relationships, but this is entirely a private matter, and never part of their job. Ahiko still became nervous when she was around many people. It was almost like she was slightly telepathic, and if she was around too many people, the thoughts of all the people around her would overwhelm her. As a Geisha, she could choose smaller venues to entertain, and this suited her.

When it turned out that there was no risk of deportation, Ahiko was secretly adopted by a highly regarded Geisha house in Kyoto. Geisha houses will occasionally adopt girls who want to go into the service, so it was not considered an unusual event. The house mother, who had spent over fourty years in the Flower and Willow World, had received treatments from Ahiko years earlier, and was honored to be the adoptee to the Dragon of Japan.