The apparatus had all been set up. Large, whirring generators were placed in each corner of the attic, and on the operating table lay the test subject - a wax figurine of a woman, thousands of individual black hairs sewn into her scalp and a gown covering her body. Wires had been stabbed into the figurine, and poured down her throat were ashes - her ashes. Kotaro figured that to aid the resurrecting process the original DNA would be needed, but as with every dead person in Japan, only the ashes remained. Whatever. They would have to do. Kotaro couldn't help but wonder if this would really work - bringing an actual corpse back to life was one thing, but trying to animate an effigy that merely had a DNA sample seemed a completely different task altogether. As he scoured the room, flipping the switch for the generators, Kotaro began to wonder if he'd gone mad. This was a taboo like no other - to bring back the dead was to try and play god, after all. However, he had come this far, done his research and played his cards. Even if he couldn't resurrect a human, at least he could say he tried.

"Here goes nothing."

Electricity already surging overwhelmingly into the effigy, Kotaro threw open the attic window. Outside, the weather was miserable, the sky as black as ink and rain hitting the ground like bullets, thousands and thousands of bullets. In the distance was the faint crackle of thunder, and occasionally Kotaro's vision would be completely swarmed in white as down came the lightning. What he needed - but would be rare - would be for the lightning to strike the effigy. One billion volts of pure energy and he would have done it.

Kotaro raised the operating table, lining it up with the window as best as he could before steering clear himself; he'd seen what lightning could do to a person and did not feel like going that way himself just yet. He watched, and he waited. He grew impatient. Minutes felt like hours and just as he was ready to give up, to go and turn himself in to the police or a mental institution, it happened.

Ducking behind the door, Kotaro saw the lightning strike, the effigy beginning to convulse like an animal in pain as electricity visibly circulated around her body. Trying not to be electrocuted himself, Kotaro eased around the generators, trying to find the emergency switch. Once he did, he yanked it down and the effigy stopped convulsing. Kotaro pulled the operating table down from the window, quickly shutting it before observing what had happened.

The effigy was miraculously unscathed by the strike, for there were no burns or damage to her vessel other than a discolouration of the skin. Oh god. She started bleeding, bleeding profusely as she started to twitch. Kotaro audibly gasped, before rushing back downstairs to find bandages like a mouse, clambering his way back to attic and trying to heal her before she bled out in a crazed panic. She'd started groaning, perhaps in pain? Either way, Kotaro started tenderly wrapping the bandages around cuts that had suddenly sprouted from her neck, leg, torso and head. Just what the hell had happened to her when she was alive? Kotaro would have to save that question for later. For now, time to play nurse.

"Do you know who you are?" Kotaro asked calmly as the zombie gnawed on some squid, slumped over in a seat back downstairs. All the zombie could do was groan.

"Oh yeah. You probably haven't woken up yet. I guess it wouldn't hurt to tell you anyway."

Silence. Now it was Kotaro's turn to groan.

"Your name is Tae Yamada. I'm not sure who you were when you were alive, but let me tell you something. You're legendary. You're the first human being to have been raised from the dead. You are, in a way, a miracle."

Tae turned to look at Kotaro, still eating the squid.

"Well, at least you're listening. Anyway, enough about you. My name is Kotaro Tatsumi. I'm the legendary idol necroducer! While you're unlucky enough to have died, you're lucky enough to have brought back. By me!"

Tae still seemed unresponsive.

"Could you at least say thank you? 'Oh, Mister Kotarooooo, thank you eeever so muuuch for bringing me baaaack!' Don't zombies have manners?"

Tae groaned in response to Kotaro's yelling.

"Ehh, whatever. I'll take that. Aaaaaanyway, you, my dear little zombie friend, you are about to be a part of something extraordinary. You'll have to wait before I tell you what is though! I gotta gather more groupies before I tell you all what it is. Just thought you should know! Oh, and one more thing."

Kotaro held out a bit of squid for Romero, who came up and snatched it from his hand and started tearing it apart.

"Don't go trying to leave the mansion. If you do, little Romero here will tear you limb from limb. That's all for now."

Kotaro retired to his office.