Kaemon Goryu squatted on the headstone in the Ord Cemetery, normally bright red hair showing as the color of dark blood by the light of the stars and moon.  "What is it that you want to show us Montaro?  It's colder than I like it, and in the cemetery no less."

Montaro Yochin gestured Kaemon closer.  Their girlfriends were with them and they too moved in closer.  "Yesterday I had this weird sensation run through me and I thought maybe you could offer some suggestions given the recent rash of news stories lately."  His hands rested on another headstone, his longer hair fell down over his face as he stared down over the stone to the ground beneath him.

"Well?" Aki Kurabutsu asked.  She liked Yochin, had followed him to America from Japan as his fiancee but they had yet to tie the knot.  She knelt down in front of him and looked up through his brown hair looking for his eyes but could not pierce the shadows.

Shika Tenkuu, Kaemon's girlfriend whom he met stateside, spun around waiting patiently.  Like Kaemon, she used hair dye but opted for a light blue which still managed to look a light blue-gray in the dim light.  "Shika," Montaro said and Kaemon hoped off his headstone and brought Shika in close.

Montaro reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a small flashlight and a stone.  He twisted the head of the flashlight and dropped it on the ground, then dropped the stone next to it.  The light played brilliantly off the large emerald.  Kaemon moved in close, "Is that?" he stopped there afraid to say any more lest he be heard.

"Emerald, as far as I can tell, as pure as the one on my mothers emerald ring.  Watch this though," Montaro reached forward and touched the emerald stone and the emerald shifted in the blink of an eye.  It suddenly became a piece of gravel the exact same size and shape that the emerald was.

"The hell," Kaemon rasped and jumped back. 

Aki reached forward and picked up the piece of gravel and examined it.  "Is this some trick, Montaro?  Cause if it is, I'll kill you, I swear."

"No trick.  And that's not all.  Watch this."  Montaro's eyes glowed as a solid red lava covering flowed down from his brain to cover his eyes.  He raised his hands above his head and the earth around his feet lifted him up into the air onto a pedestal of gravedirt.

Montaro rose up on his dirt pedastal three feet higher.  The others scrambled backwards away from the event.  Shika threw out one hand and then another as if warding off attacks or evil spirits while she hyperventilated.  Montaro looked sharply at her and she let out a small scream.  A quick gust of wind of wind followed the flow of her hand and knocked Montaro off his pedestal and onto the ground.

Shika stood up and her shirt ripped open from the back as a large pair of spiky chitinous wings sprouted with a gossamer membrane stretched amidst the wings.  She clutched at her shirt to keep it covering her chest and her wings flapped strongly downward lifting her into the sky.  It was Montaro's turn to look surprised.  Kaemon's and Aki's mouths dropped open as they lay prone on the ground.

Kaemon scrambled to his feet and used a headstone to push himself up off the ground.  A strange light was coming from his hand and he took the chance to glance away from the freakshow in front of him.  He saw his fingers, now crab-like extensions of his arm, aflame.  His arm looked like a granite version of a Mega-Man cannon, round, cylindrical, protective.  It was burning as well.  He looked at his other arm and it was the same.  His body, felt different, his shirt burned away and he saw that he was just like one of them.  Burning Stone.  Then he looked at Aki. 

Shika let her wings droop as she covered herself with her scrap of clothing.  She was still in shock.  She saw the flames rolling up the arms and across the back of Kaemon.  She remembered their most recent love making, kissing those arms, thin and strong, now stone and on fire.  She looked at Montaro who focused on Aki.  Then she looked at Aki. 

Aki was crying with her back against a headstone, a cross.  Some American hick had died a long time ago and was born even longer before that.  The corn-fed, probably massive and brainless, farmer was loved.  Aki didn't care though that her tears were soaking his grave.  It didn't much occur to her that she'd never cried so much or so hard before that she would actually create a pool of water.  She'd never been this frightened or confused before.  The water welling around her was running away in tiny rivulets.  "Aki," Montaro ventured questioningly.

"What?!  What?!  What?!"  Loud and clear Aki turned her sight on Montaro who's eyes were normal even from the raised earth that was slowly sinking into the ground.  Aki's cries turned into wracking sobs and she slammed her fists into the dirt around her.  The water flew up around her.  It formed a menacing dragon above her head and she stood, using the cross of stone to brace herself.  The water around her gathering back up into the watery translucent dragon that grew wings as her gaze flicked from Montaro, to the now odd looking Kaemon, and then to the winged Aki.

"What the hell did you do, Montaro?  What did you do to Aki?  What did you do to Kaemon?"  Aki raised up into the air  The water dragon flapping its wings and a spray of water flew out around it.  Then she realized that never before had she cried so much, nor could she or anyone else.  She looked at Montaro who now stood on level ground staring at her, "What have you done to me?"

Montaro eyes darted from Shika to Aki and he brought his hands up to his face and breathed deeply inward remembering the martial arts training he and Kaemon had undergone together in Japan.  "Just," he said normally but the tension was too great and as he flung his arms down to his sides he yelled, "Relax!"  A pair of small earthen golems sprouted up out of the ground on either side of him and his own body turned to earth and dirt with stringy black roots for hair.

He looked at his own body and realized that tension was getting the better of them all.  "Just relax," he said more calmly and the earthy aspects of his form reverted to his human self and the miniature earth golems dissolved into the ground.  "Obviously, this isn't something that has happened to only me.  Maybe you didn't exhibit these things before, but this isn't contagious or people all over the world would be super human beings by now.  The news stories that have been surfacing little by little from the beginning of the year are about strange powers and the people disappear.  We need to keep this under wraps for the time being.  If you relax, you will likely revert to normal.  No matter how hard that is to do.  Kaemon?"  Montaro looked over his shoulder at the stone looking Kaemon.

Kaemon was looking at his hands in horror hearing but not entirely listening to Montaro.  He was examining how he felt, but he understood the training, the secret training.  He tried to force the thoughts of his form from his mind and he pictured the dojo, his spot there in the center when no one else was around and tried to join the two aspects together.  He was a creature and he was in control.  He opened his eyes and looked at his clawed hands and flexed them with a mental acceptance.  The stone seeped back into his skin and the odd carapace that was left dissolved leaving normal flesh and bone behind.  "Montaro, it worked," Kaemon said with assurance and with some astonishment hoping that the surprise that still registered slightly in his mind wouldn't bring it back.

Shika flopped down onto the ground and felt the wings with her mind.  She folded them carefully close to her back and willed them away by concentrating on the whirling sound that her staff makes when practicing in earnest by herself.  The sensations along her back were like a cold smooth ivory bone gently playing on her skin.  She imagined listening to the rapid staccato rhythms of one of her techno tracks and she opened her eyes.  Kaemon caught her gaze and said, "They're gone.  he took off his shirt and handed it to her. 

Aki Watched the emanations of strange powers fade away one at a time.  She had seen enough demonstrations growing up and taking Tai Chi to know that the normal limits of a man or woman did not necessarily mean anything.  She had however never seen anything like what had been displayed.  Montaro's admonition to relax did not serve.  She was angry and relaxing was not on her agenda.  She did not want to relax but she felt so drained.  She wanted to take back some innocence.  She wanted to believe that none of what she felt was natural even though it felt like she had lived with it her whole life.  The water was an extension of her, the pull of gravity a mere thought like reaching for a glass of water she had just placed on the kitchen counter.  Instead Aki tensed up, tightened up, brought her knees to her chest and screamed as loud as she possibly could.  The sound echoed across the Nebraskan plains and the water dragon which was tightening around her exploded in a shower of water.  The water seemed to hiss on the skin of Kaemon.  Gently she let herself down onto the ground and looked at Montaro, "Don't tell me to relax when the most freakish thing ever just happened."

Montaro raised his hands in mock surrender, "I take it back."

"So," Montaro continued, "this is an interesting turn of events.  What are the odds?"

"I'd say the odds are about the same as individuals with our particular birth dates coming together," Kaemon said.

"What do you mean?" Aki asked extending her hand towards a flower on a grave.  Faintly swirling black and white fish seemed to appear near the flower and grew more substantial.  The flower suddenly flew towards her and she caught it in the air, the fish disappearing as suddenly as they had appeared.

Montaro stepped close to her and placed his hand around hers, "The first of January, the first of April, the first of July, the first of October, all in 1991."

"Destiny," Kaemon says.

"Yes.  I'll have to think on this some more.  I thought I was unique among us but it seems we are unique among the world.  There are news stories of people with super powers surfacing.  These people are floundering, not thinking.  They are hiding accepting the labels of being freaks.  I think that maybe we are the next stage in human evolution.  If we were to take the stage all of a sudden, could we rule the world?"

"And what would you do with it?" Shika asked.  A strong wind picked up around them and she raised her hand, the tell tale signs of the wind racing around them leaving them in a calm.

"I think we could do anything we wanted," Kaemon said.

Montaro nodded.  "I think you're right.  If you could have anything in the world, do whatever you like, what would be on your agenda?  Don't answer right away.  This is something we should think about.  And with Shika there, knocking me off my pedestal, so to speak, we should consider our weaknesses as well.  We can't go out and conquer the world after discovering we are the new paragons of humanity.  Just like our martial training, this may require some practice."

Aki let the flower fall to the ground and she smiled.  Her mind raced through the possibilities, just the same as the others.  "It won't be tomorrow, but before the end of the year, the world should bow to us."

"For you, my love," Montaro said and kissed her gently on the lips.  "I will make sure they worship us as gods."