In another life, I'm a DJ

It's true. In addition to writing Pat O'Neil, I'm also a DJ. I like to think of myself as a modern day Renaissance Man. Why do you care, you ask? Because you have a chance to help me out. I've entered myself into the Let's Mix Next Generation DJ contest. The top prize is a chance to play the Winter Music Conference in Miami, a DJ Contract and some other spiffy stuff. However, in order to progress to the next round, I need to get 200 votes on my mix by January 31. I know it's not much time, but I think we can mobilize the Pat Masses (or, if you want to call the readers something else, I'm cool with that) to vote, and get everyone they know to vote, and I can make the cutoff. It would really mean a lot to me if I could get your support in this. Just go here and throw me a vote. Thank you very, VERY much.

Tetsuo's Speech

"Woah, woah, woah!" I cut in. "What's all this 'good news of your impending death' stuff?"

The ghost army responded, "You've never heard the 'Impending Death' speech?"

"No," I replied, "no I have not."

Alistair scoffed. "Seriously? You've never heard the "Impending Death' speech? One of the three most famous speeches in the history of the universe?"

"No," I repeated, "I certainly have not."

"Jeez, man," said the ghost army, "do you live in a cave or something? They play that speech on tv and the radio all the time. You'd have to live in some god-forsaken backwater in order not to have heard that. Where you from again?"

"Iowa."

"Which one?"

Alistair cut in before I could question this. "Iowa 4871-j3."

The eyes of the ghost army widened. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhh," they said in that way that says 'I just found out something embarrassing about you but I don't want to make a big deal out of it' way. "So, then...yeah...You really haven't heard it. That's, um, that's too bad. It's quite interesting."

"Would you like to hear it?" Alistair asked me.

"I dunno," I responded, "you think I should?"

"Sounds to me like maybe you should," he said. "And we've got a copy of it on the ship. We could probably broadcast it easily."

And with that, he scampered into the ship, made some things click and pop and I heard the whole speech. Here's how it goes:

I am Tetsuo Hatayama, destroyer of the Planet Eaters, and I bring you the good news of your impending death.

For many years, I have investigated this universe, and all I see is weakness and failure. You, the living beings of this universe, are unable to see past your own small concerns. You are too weak or too lazy to think past your own lifetime. Even more, most of you can barely see beyond your own family groups or tribes. Thus you take from others, murder them, destroy their happiness and that of their descendants.

I, myself, have been guilty of this. When I was young, I erased an entire species from the universe. The planet eaters were slow, dumb creatures, who knew not what havoc they wrought on lives and families. They devoured my own family, and I revenged myself on them. It took me many years, but I hunted each and every one down and killed them. But in their deaths, I found no peace.

Perhaps I expected the family shaped hole in my heart would be filled by the death of a species, but it wasn't. The only thing I gained for my revenge was guilt. I could not understand why I had to have so much pain and suffering. So I went into seclusion and meditated. I learned to stretch my mind and consciousness throughout the universe. I learned to inhabit other minds. I sat in the minds of millions of creatures, watching them live their lives from birth to procreation to death. And I saw the same things over and over again. Now, I am ready to share the truth with you.

Each and every one of you thinks you are special. More than likely, you have elevated your feelings that you are privileged into a religion that tells you that you or your tribe or your species was created by some super being in order to live out his, her or their will. But you are not special. You are just another in a line of beings that stretches back to the beginning of the universe. There were millions of lives before you and there will be millions of lives after you. You, personally, are meaningless.

I can feel the reaction beginning already. You are shouting "That's not true!" You are becoming angry, or sad and that is inevitable. That is the fundamental nature of live in this universe. You believe that you are special, but the universe disagrees, and this causes conflict. You constantly think of the world as you would like to be, as it should be, as you were told it would be. But still, you live in the world as it is. And this gap, the deadly space between ought and is, is where you suffer.

You do not get the things you want. You get the things you don't want. Those you love die. Those you hate prosper. Your whole family is devoured by a giant fish, or disease or war. You are subject to conflicts you didn't start. You are forced into modes of life you hate by people you will never meet and have no power over. And this, all of this, just isn't fair.

And you are right. It is not fair. But it is true. All of this causes pain in each life. It causes us sleepless nights of anguish. This situation allows us to build dreams of what things will be like if we can just get this or that. But then the universe crushes us by not allowing to have this or that which we desire. All of this points to one, inescapable fact: the universe doesn't care about you.

In the cosmic perspective, you do not matter. You have no importance. You are a mote of dust that survives for an eye blink on a summer afternoon. You are nothing more than a drop of dew that will evaporate in the morning sun, unloved, unknown, unheralded. If you do something amazing, maybe your name will last a thousand years or so. But, in the end, it all disappears and the universe keeps going.

This is how we suffer.

There is only one remedy to this situation, and I am he. The universe will never be anything other than what it is. It will never become what it ought to be. The only way to eliminate the gap between is and ought is to eliminate all those who wish for ought. Sadly, every sentient being does this. Therefore, I, Tetsuo Hatayama, have made it my goal, my mission and my vow, to kill every sentient being in this universe.

Only then will there be no more suffering. Only then will the gap between is and ought be eliminated. Only then can the universe rest, at peace with itself.

I am coming."

When the speech finished playing, I couldn't say anything for a bit. I think I peed myself a little, but I wasn't totally sure.

"S...so...um," I stammered, "is he coming to kill me?"

"No," the ghost army replied. "His plan didn't work out quite as well as he'd hoped. It's theorized that the turning point is when he hooked up with Clan Platypus."

When he stood

"Once Testuo Hatayama stood, the universe changed. No one knew this at first, of course, but the lives of every man, woman, child, beast, man-beast, woman-beast, childbeast, man-woman, man-child, woman-child and man-woman-beast-child would be forever changed.

"It all began very slowly. Hatayama returned to society under an assumed name, Joe Smith. He posed as a drifter for many years, wandering around space stations and planets, washing dishes and doing odd jobs to feed himself. He spoke little, but he was a hard worker, so his bosses never noticed him. He spent many a year hitchhiking around the known universe. He would get rides whenever possible, so as not to risk giving away the secret of his identity. But when it was time to move on and he couldn't get a lift, he would go somewhere quiet and isolated and simply jump off the planet.

"Tetsuo was not washing dishes for the sake of work, though. In his years as a drifter, he was collecting information. If you want to gather information, silence is often your best friend. If you remain silent long enough, most people will start talking, just to fill up the void that you are leaving. And Tetsuo was a master of silence. His subjects would begin talking and, just before they felt they'd sufficiently filled the silence, Tetsuo would deepen his silence, causing his subject to talk more about more significant things. In the end, he built up the universe's largest collection of rambling, pointless stories about ordinary lives, which was exactly what he wanted."

"Now hold on just a durned minute," I cut in, "I, myself, got a big ol collection of pointless ramblin stories, but they ain't never done me no good unless I wanted to put a roomful of people to sleep, which I only ever needed to do that once. No, I ain't proud of it, but I had to make that deal with those gypsies to get Albert back..."

"Have you sat in meditation for millions of years?" they interrupted.

I scratched the back of my head. "Well, no, can't say as I have."

"Then you hear stories differently than Tetsuo Hatayama."

"How bout that."

"You, like all mortal beings, hear stories simply as stories. Maybe they entertain you, maybe they teach you a lesson, but no more than that."

"There's more to stories?" I asked, amazed.

"Yes."

"What?"

"To Tetsuo Hatayama, each story contains a piece of the story teller's soul. In the stories he heard, Tetsuo Hatayama could see the minds of his subjects in more detail than they could ever see it themselves. He saw their happiness, their sadness and, most importantly, he saw their limits and their weaknesses. Through their need to fill the silence, the people who spoke to this mysterious Joe Smith were giving their listener the tools he needed to control them, to dominate them and even to kill them."

"I gotta stop tellin stories..." I mumbled.

"Not so fast," they reassured me, "there's more to come. You may want to listen to the rest before you make any major life changes."

"Allright," I said, "I can live with that. Please continue."

"We shall."

"Shall away."

"Yes," they cleared their ghost throats all at once, which is near to the most disgusting sound I ever did hear in my life. "During his time as a drifter, in addition to collecting deep psychological profiles of everyone he talked to, 'Joe Smith' was also hearing little bits of his life story, disconnected from one another, to be sure, but still recognizable to one who had lived through them. It was as if, walking along a beach, he saw bits of wood scattered about and knew that they had all come from the same boat. Snippets of his legend survived. Like a spinster with cats, he collected these snippets, locked them away in a room and never, ever cleaned up after them.

"Slowly, painstakingly, he pieced together what had happened to the universe while he'd been sitting. He figured out that intelligent life had spread out to more planets, new societies had formed and died, people had fought wars, loved, hated, had children, but, as a whole, not advanced in any way in the previous couple of million years. People were the same. Societies were the same. Sometimes their technology would advance and then they would be overtaken by greed or stupidity, and would tear themselves apart, letting their decedents to clean up the mess and begin the cycle anew.

"He also learned that he, personally, had enough money to interrupt this whole cycle. The first step was to visit the planet where the bankers overseeing his fortune resided to get an exactly measure of his wealth and reach. It took them four years to confirm his identity. If you think it's difficult trying to get a new driver's license when you've lost yours, you should try accessing a fortune large enough to buy galaxies after an absence of several million years. Only because they were bankers, used to detailed thinking, were they able to do it in a mere four years. Most people could spend their lives trying to do it and die unsatisfied.

"Once his identity was confirmed, Tetsuo ordered all investments to be called in and no more to be made. This was a shocking idea to the bankers. They had spent many thousands of generations overseeing the growth of the Hatayama Fund. Many of the bankers secretly believed that Hatayama was dead and that they and their descendants would be able to manage the fund until they owned everything in the universe. They all committed mass suicide when it was told this would not come to pass. Following this, the head of the banking clan came to see Hatayama, to beg him to allow the investment to continue. He sited the suicides, the opportunity that existed for Tetsuo to never have to work again, no matter how long he lived, and the real likelihood of galactic economic collapse. In response to the banker's passionate, reasoned arguments, Tetsuo pulled the banker's heart out of his ears and ate it.

"After that, the bankers were quick to pull out of all investments and update their resumes. It took twenty years, four thousand lawsuits and, as expected, total, universal economic collapse. But, in the end, Tetsuo Hatayama had gathered all his wealth in a single account, which only he had control over. Then he scorched the banker's planet. He killed every living thing on the surface of the world. He made the earth black, the seas boil and the sky constantly gray. He then found all the bankers that had accepted jobs in other firms and killed them, quite often brutally and gruesomely.

"Finally, secure in the knowledge that he, and he alone, knew the extent of his financial power, he settled into a cross legged position, expanded himself into the universe and broadcast his unforgettable announcement into the mind of all living beings. "I am Tetsuo Hatayama, destroyer of the Planet Eaters, and I bring you the good news of your impending death.'"

Tetsuo Sat

I just wanna apologize for takin an unscheduled week off there in the bloggin. I got myself all tied up doin this thing I had to do. I didn't think it'd take as much as it did in order to get it done, but, in the end, it took exactly as much as it took to get it done. And let me tell ya, I was none too happy about it. But it's all over now and it's lookin like I got some good chunks of freer time this week that will allow for the writin and the story tellin and, if I'm lucky, the nappin. I'll try to get you the rest of this here question 2 nonsense this week and then move on to tell y'all about goin after them ninjas and all the hullabaloo that was. Now, where was I in this thing? Right...

The army of meth addled ghosts continued their explanation. "Tetsuo Hatayama came back from his campaign against the planet eaters as a paradox. On the one hand, he was handed fame and fortune. He was hailed by all intelligent species as the greatest hero to ever live. He had, single handedly, freed everyone in the universe from the fear that, on any day, a giant fish could come and swallow them up. He was rewarded lavishly by every planet that knew his name. His rewards added up into a significant holding; enough to buy and sell several planetary systems.

"But Tetsuo did nothing with his fame or fortune. In fact, he shunned the spotlight and the money for years. After his years in space, killing the unkillable, he flew to an uncharted, ice covered planet and built himself a simple wooden hut to pass his days in. Many thought he was simply waiting for his death to come. Others believed he was trying to transcend his own body. Still others were positive he was communing with the spirits of his lost family.

"Religions were born around these ideas. They grew from legends and half-truths about Tetsuo's life and thoughts. Then, they started to argue with each other about which of the half truths was more true and, finally, they ended up destroying each other in a series of bloody theological battles. And still Tetsuo sat.

"His legend grew and died. And he sat.

"Statues to his memory were built and crumbled. And he sat.

"Cities rose and fell. Still he sat.

"Planets sprouted life, grew and withered. And Tetsuo sat.

"Stars were born, grew, became suns and collapsed on themselves. And through it all, Tetsuo Hatayama sat in his simple hut on a ball of ice somewhere out in the universe.

"Then, without preamble or warning, he returned to society. He had been gone so long most didn't know his name. Among those who did, most had only seen his name in scraps of manuscripts that had survived from the time of legends. That last group, though, knew exactly who he was and what he had done. But they knew because it was their job to know.

"When Hatayama had disappeared, his money was put into a savings account with the interstellar banking clan. Due to the amount of money, three bankers were assigned to watch his money full time. They accepted the responsibility with heavy dignity and took their duties incredibly seriously. Really, if you're going to manage the money of a man you know can kill planet eaters, you're not going to slack off. Those three bankers invested often and wisely, seeing returns of 5-6% per year, which is very good for that kind of investing.

"Years turned into centuries and the money in the Tetsuo fund grew from amazing to truly stunning. Along with this, the number of bankers who were tasked to oversee his account had grown from the initial three to almost three billion. They all occupied the planet of Klaxxon and worked around the clock seeing the fund grow and prosper. In their non working hours, they would share what stories they knew of Tetsuo and imagining how he would reward them when he returned.

"And reward them he did, but not in the way they expected. When Tetsuo Hatayama stood up, he stood with a plan. And the army of bankers with more money than had ever been seen in one place in the universe was just the beginning."

Question the Second .2

"What you need to understand about Haruki Hatayama is that he was a child of privilege. His father is the feared Testuo Hatayama. Tetsuo built his fame and fortune by assassinating the last of the great world eaters, galaxy-sized, sentient fish that swam through space devouring whole systems. They were so massive, in fact, that they bent light around themselves and so, despite their size, their approach would be undetected until the entire system was gone. For thousands of years, the world eaters were the bane of all space fearing cultures.

"That is, until they ate Tetsuo Hatayama's world. At the time, he was a low level executive in Clan Platypus and, as such, had been selected to attend the annual smoke bomb conference in Lincoln, Nebraska. He chose a couple of promising looking models and then slipped out early. A snowstorm kept his interstellar cruiser from lifting off on time. He cursed and raved at the skies, but that snowstorm saved his life. He arrived back at home not three minutes after his galaxy had disappeared into the maw of the giant fish.

"Then and there, he swore he would have his revenge. He entered super-secret ninja training and taught his body to go without air, light or gravity for months on end. He hardened himself until his skin was like titanium and his bones were like cut diamonds. Then, he launched himself into space, naked but for the sword at his waist.

"Years he spent in those cold reaches, slingshotting around planets. Slowly, but steadily, he closed in on the planet eaters and, when he found one, he showed no mercy. He cared not to hear its cries for respite. He only needed their deaths. That time in the depths of space did something to Testuo. It made him cold and hard; nearly dead inside. In the end, he had eliminated the world eaters, to the elation of all space-faring cultures everywhere, but he had done it at the cost of his soul."

"Wow," I cut in. "That's some crazy talk goin on there. But I don't see how it's got nothin to do with us defeatin them ninjas." Boy howdy, I hate it when I'm expectin a straight answer and things end up gettin all twisted and weird. If I wanted to deal with that kinda steam-fudge, I'd watch the news.

"Nevertheless," the ghost army responded, "it is imperative you understand all this in order to defeat the Clan. And to understand that, when you choose to fight Haruki Hatayama, you are going up against an enemy of unimaginable power and a heartlessness rarely seen in the universe."

Question the Second .1

I scratched my head. "All right, then, my second question is; how do we defeat the ninjas and clear them off the planet?"

"That," said the ghost army arrayed before me, "is the correct question."

I blushed. "Well, thank ya kindly. I was rather proud of it."

"You're welcome," they responded, much more hospitable now that they had a sympathetic ear.

Then we waited in a kind of verbal Mexican standoff. I didn't feel I had much more to say on the subject, but they didn't seem like they was gonna be forthcoming with the information. But the whole thing was a lot more complicated, strategically speakin. For one, they had spoken last, so it was prolly my turn. But they left me in the position that my next phrase was likely to be a question; somethin like 'Y'all wanna give me that information now?' Sure, it would be a sarcastic question, but I couldn't risk them bein a bunch of literal jerks like all them genies in them dirty jokes Douggy's wife keeps tellin when she's had a touch too much wine. And it's like my pappy always used to tell me, if you can't say nothin nice, or you can't say nothin without gettin yourself trapped by some sorta verbal contract between you and a supernatural entity, it's best to say nothin at all.

I tried to get them started with some throat clearin. They responded in kind. Then I tried some beard scratchin. They came back with sniffin. I hit them back with a raised eyebrow. They came in heavy with a significant incline of the head. They had my back to a wall, both literally and figuratively, so there was only one option left to me. Don't judge me, I had no choice. I had to bring out the big guns.

I cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger on a, "Yep."

They were scrambling. They tried to rally with a weak, "Uh-huh."

I had them. It was a simple matter now of dealing the final blow. With a small, almost imperceptible nod, I gave them a knowing, "Mmmm," while wrinklin my eyebrows in thought.

They knew they were defeated. "Ok, ok!" yelled the ghost army. "No more! We'll tell you."

I just wish every contest could be as easy as a silence off. I been workin on winnin those since I was a kid. We'd go on long road trips and my pa would challenge Frank and I to the quiet game. In our final game, neither Frank nor I said a single word from the time I was 12 until I was 14. The school we went to worried about us and was fixin to put us in a special program when Frank, in order to fulfill her 'team activities' requirement was forced to join the debate team. I thanked my lucky stars that she'd signed up for her activity too late to get on the bowling team and, after her first debate was over, I gloated for weeks. Plus, that two years taught me a couple things. I learned how to communicate a whole bunch of stuff without ever resorting to more than a knowing nod. I also learned that language is an abstract construction that cultures implicitly agree to use in order to cement our societal rules and regulations, reinforcing norms and cultural assumptions on the very youngest members, therefore ensuring that our view of the world, or at least the communicable aspects of it, will be carried on in perpetuity. As such, language assures that cultures maintain themselves, for better or for worse, until language itself changes. And finally, I learned it's difficult to cover up farting when you're not making any sound.

"To defeat Clan Platypus on this planet, you will need to defeat the 13 sons," the ghosts explained. "And to defeat the 13 sons, you will need the staff of Haruki."

"That sounds like an interesting story," I told them. "Please continue."

"We shall. "The year was 1983," they began. "It was a great time to be a ninja. Clan Platypus was heavily invested in cocaine sales, and sales were good. They had been organizing things politically so that the economic boom would be concentrated amongst the rich, who were the only ones interested in buying cocaine. The poor were still killing the pain of being poor and cold and hungry all the time in the same way they always had; by drinking cheap beer and yelling at their families.

"It was into this high life atmosphere that the young necromancers graduated and began their careers. Being young in the 80's, they felt they could change the structure of how the Clan did business. Most of the young ones began by joining financial firms which, despite their utter lack of training, was made pretty easy through their families' political connections. Ten of the thirteen began working on a new type of economics, which combined money know how with dark magic.

"Their plan was to concentrate wealth at the very top. They sold this idea to all the people of the world saying that, by giving money to the top 5% of earners, those people would spend the money on goods and services, thereby allowing the money to trickle down into the economy. As ridiculous as this sounds, they sold it pretty well. However, being in the top 5% of earners themselves, they knew that rich people were the most against spending money. After all, one doesn't become wealthy by giving money away.

"Then, once money was taken from those who needed it most and given to those who needed it least, they would infiltrate the airwaves with shows about how rich people lived, making the poor jealous. They then used this jealousy to pass gambling legislation in a few states and expand state lottery operations around most of the country. The poor people were willing to go along with this because they felt it gave them a chance to live the lavish lifestyles they were seeing on TV every week, and the rich went along with it because it made them even richer. And, of course, it didn't hurt that the people passing the laws were amongst the top 5% themselves.

"Their final goal was far from economic, however. From the first, the new necromancers planned only to increase the surplus suffering in the world, because this suffering is where dark magicians get their power. They would then harvest this suffering and turn it into a sweet, sweet nectar. In the final step of their diabolical plan, they would inject this nectar into a new type of soda and sell it back to the people, creating a suffering feedback loop and expanding the people's capacity for suffering exponentially. They anticipated this final harvest would make them the most powerful necromancers in the known universe.

"Because their plan involved economics to increase suffering, they came up with a name for it; Voodoo economics. They began their work slowly and carefully, concentrating as much suffering as possible and distilling it in their labs. When they were ready, they made a test batch of their conceived soda. They combined the suffering with carbonated water and waited to see what happened. They became worried when the pure suffering turned their soda a radioactive green, but they pressed through and found that the color and its horrible, godless flavor appealed to the poor. Pleased with this development, they went into production and soon, all the world was inundated with Mountain Dew. It is made from and causes suffering.

"But there was a flaw in their plan. It was discovered by the three sons who had taken up other careers; Tetsuo Yamazaki, Ichiro Toei and Haruki Hatayama. What they did changed the very nature of the world."

Question the First

"Question the first," I began, "What the heck are y'all? You were like a dragon, but now you're a bunch of trucker ghosts. What's the deal here?"

They responded in a voice that sounded like the Vienna Boys Choir, if the Vienna Boys Choir were made up of adult ghosts. "We are the tormented spirits of meth addicts. The leaders of Clan Platypus on this planet searched far and wide to find those who were the most desperate, the most broken and the most addicted. They collected us together and took us to their underground base, deep beneath the Earth, where the dinosaurs roam free and the cheese fountains flow.

"At first, we thought we were the luckiest people in the world. Not only did we get to live with dinosaurs, which the ninjas had tamed and were using as beasts of burden, but Clan Platypus gave us all the meth we could use. It was heaven for a time. We would wake up in the afternoon, get spun on meth and then do whatever we took a mind to do.

"We built stuff, we cleaned, we collected things and we souped up the dinosaurs with blowers and slicks. And we listened to a whole lot of Skynard. But it was a lie, it was all a lie. The ninjas were just building our addiction to their horrible drug. Slowly, very slowly, they began to spread rumors that they were running out. We would receive less and less each day until, finally, we got none.

"It took mere hours for the withdrawal to kick in. We were shaky and itchy. By that time, it felt like ants had colonized under our skins, because the crystals had grown there. We scratched and scratched until the skin came off. Incidentally, this is how we learned we could feel pain again. We began to feel the throb of arms and legs we'd broken while doing our wild activities. The worst, though, was the emotional pain.

"Without the drug, our minds began working again. We started to see what animals we were becoming. We wondered aloud at some of the things we did, especially souping up those dinosaurs. Dinosaurs don't need giant, fat racing tires on them. They're animals, not cars. We also realized that our favorite music besides Skynard, which was mostly Kid Rock and Slipknot, totally, totally sucks. Strangely, Skynard still rocks pretty hard. We figure that's because they were making music before the drug became popular and they'd possessed that one thing that has become a detriment in modern music; talent.

"Then, just when we thought we were going to be clear of the drug, the ninjas brought more. We began to binge. We built and destroyed, built and destroyed. What we didn't notice is that they were keeping us off the drug longer and longer. When you're addicted, every day is much like the last. They just go by in gray blurs when you don't have the drug and in colored blurs when you do.

"Clan Platypus kept up this boom and bust cycle of meth of years. They were very scientific about it. They would dry us out before we did lethal damage to ourselves and they would deliver more drugs only after we were over the worst of the withdrawal. Finally, they cut us off entirely.

"At first, it was like every other time. We went through the withdrawal knowing that more drugs would be delivered to us soon, if we just stood it. But it was not to be. We waited and waited. A month passed. Then another month. Then a season. Then one day we woke up and found a year had passed since they took the meth away. Yet we were not clear of the itching, the hurting and the craving.

"Clan Platypus had induced in us a state of permanent withdrawal. We craved and craved, but the drug never came. We searched, we fought, we cried, but no drugs were to come. We became twisted and hateful inside. We all became extra destructive. Some of us destroyed things; tearing the tires of the dinosaurs, pulling down the dams on the cheese rivers that had been meticulously built out of toothpicks. Others destroyed other people, getting into fights that, more often than not, ended in murder. The rest of us destroyed ourselves.

"It didn't matter how it happened, or how long it took to break, all of us ended up dead in one way or another. And when we did, instead of the sweet release we were hoping for in death, we only got more slavery at the hands of Platypus.

"The Clan has a special council of 13 necromancers, consisting of the sons of the 13 top members. At first, the leadership didn't know what to do with their necromancers. Sure, they knew that their sons had gone off to Ninja college and gotten it into their heads that they were going to study Necromancy instead of something respectable like Disemboweling or even something practical like Camouflage Techniques. The leaders all thought their sons were just going through a phase and would eventually change their majors, but it was not to be.

"On the day the 13 sons graduated, the fathers finally accepted that they had necromancers in their ranks now. It was considered shameful at the time and many of the leaders attempted suicide before they had to show their hooded faces at the next ninja convention with a necromancer for a son. Two of them succeeded in their attempts, only to be revived by the very sons that gave them shame.

"It was this revival that made Clan Platypus reconsider. If the 13 sons could raise the dead, even after the dead had been eviscerated, beheaded and thrown in a volcano, then what else might be possible? They gave their sons free reign to experiment and develop their skills. We, the twisted souls you see before you, were one of their early projects. They purposefully corrupted our souls until our only outlet was death. Then, when we tried to die, they trapped our souls in glass bottles marked with two particular sigals; one that instructed us on what to do if ever we were released, and the other to continue to torture us. Then, they took those bottles and placed them strategically around the entrance to their underground volcano lair.

"Until today, we didn't know what our instructions would be. But then you and your group broke open our bottles and set us free. Many of us tried to flee, but the pain became too great. We were slowly pulled back to the corporeal sphere and we naturally formed into a dragon. Then, the hunger hit us. It was like the hunger each and every one of us died feeling towards meth. We had to feed, and so feed we did.

"But then you, Pat O'Neil, gave us the kick in the behind that we needed. Your scolding made us use our minds again. And your understanding has eased our suffering. You have set us free, good sir, and we shall always be indebted to you for that."

I was stunned. "Wow. That is some story, fellas," I said.

"It sure is," they responded. "You have two more questions to ask."