Over three hundred years before James Owens was born and almost four hundred before his change to Maiha Nakatoma, the Human Empire fought a bloody war of succession between two brothers for the Imperial Crown. At the end of the war one was crowned Emperor and the other sent into exile. One of the outcomes of the war was the Temple of Ida-ten was no longer the Imperial Temple and had been branded Outlaw. To even consider hosting a Temple to Ida-ten was tantamount to High Treason. So why would one of the most loyal of the Emperor’s followers even consider this act? The answer was simple in Maiha Nakatoma’s mind. If you beat them don’t join them. If you don’t like the Temples that are around then revive an Outlaw Temple in an act of defiance.
For over four hundred years the Temple of Ida-ten has been an Outlaw Temple and its followers considered criminals. Outlawed because the Temple Elders refused to recognize the winner of the Succession War as the true Emperor for the Human Empire. To Maiha Nakatoma this was more than enough reason to revive this Temple and bring back its followers. Five military orders of peace keepers. All of whom are sworn to the ideal that all humans are equal in the eyes of their god and deserving of their protection no matter who they worship. For the followers of Ida-ten there is but one mission the succession of the Emperor. For them, this is their calling. To insure that peace reins within the Empire no matter who sets on the Imperial Throne.
Unfortunately for Maiha, and the newest members of the Temple of Ida-ten, there is a problem. That problem is the Temple of Holy Light and the Cardinal Richelieu. A man so bent on returning his family line to the Imperial Throne. So bent on this goal is the Cardinal that he has been plotting with the Longfellow yakuza clan to corrupt the students of Joan Eunice Smith School for Young Ladies and its sister academies. Can Maiha revive the Temple of Ida-ten in time to save the students of the four premier boarding schools in all of the Empire or is she doomed to failure?
For Maiha has no choice but to succeed. To do anything less is goes against everything she has ever believed in; for her there is only victory or death in everything she does. She cannot help herself as to do so goes against everything that Death Dealers stand for. The Death Dealers have a moto that sums up the way they deal with all problems. ‘Death is dealt by our hands.’ The concept of failure is so foreign to them that must never even consider they will fail. They never give up and they never back down. It is this philosophy that Maiha will impart onto the new members of the Temple of Ida-ten as they each become new Second Generation Death Dealers.
Death Dealers that are as much machine as they are human. Now that Maiha knows the secrets of the nanites, that changed her from the old man that she once was, she has decided to pass the power of the second generation onto the new followers of Ida-ten. The first of which are the Daughters of the Dragon and the Sisterhood of the Nightingales. It will be from these two small groups that the new Temple of Ida-ten shall grow.
While Maiha rebuilds the Outlawed Temple there are forces moving to stop her and take control of the Empire before she can ready the new followers of Ida-ten. How she and her family deals with this new unseen threat is one that no one saw coming.

**