MASKED RIDER MAXIZ
Prologue: The Day After
If finally happened. The Third World War. Armageddon.
We don't know how exactly did it start. All we know is that we are unprepared. All the humanity is unprepared. We thought we were safe. We thought no one will attack our insignificant country. We were wrong. We were dead wrong.
Two hours after the Zero Hour, the initial strategic nuclear strike on the United States, ICBM warheads descended on the unprotected islands. We don't know where the storm came from, but two dozen nuclear bombs detonated almost simultaneously at the greater Metro Manila area. All metro cities were immediately obliterated. Millions of lives were instantly cremated in the super hot nuclear-fueled fire. Thousands of people survived but were killed by lingering radiation. The once beautiful city and its thousand year old history were turned into smoking rubble.
Not only in Manila, but all of the cities in the Philippines was destroyed on the first day. On the second day, the smaller towns were pulverized. On the third day, almost the entire Filipino nation was wiped out.
Yet some of us survived.
Slowly, we began stumbling out of our hiding places. The world that we know is now completely destroyed, some of us thinking we survived the nuclear war but we will die a short time later because of hunger. We have no food, animals and plants were all decimated, rivers and stream boiled into steam. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. We were scavenging food, gasoline, firearms, then moving from place to place to avoid the creeping death of radiation. We started as a group of at least fifty. After twenty five years of drifting the wasteland, only ten of us finally reached our new home.
It was a place on the south banks of the once-mighty Pasig River. An old factory warehouse, with thick walls that, amazingly, protected the inside from the nuclear blast. The radiation here is almost non-existent, and the place is isolated enough to protect us from looters and criminals. The warehouse is a treasure house of fuel, food and supplies. We decided to settle here permanently. We were inspired by the three towers of steel girders in the ruins, forming almost three perfect crosses. That is why we called this place Calbarrio.
Fifty years after the thermonuclear war that destroyed the world, our little world in Calbarrio began to slowly rise form the ashes of war. Eight hundred people are now living here. We grow crops and raised animals for food. We use methane gas and solar power for electricity. But we still need to scavenge fuel from the ruins of cities. Life started to get normal, that is until we were discovered by a rouge gang of drifters.
We tried to be accommodating and hospitable, but these scums wanted all that we have. We have no choice but to drive them out. Lots of them were killed in the fighting but a few manages to escape. Now we know that our secret for fifty years, the existence of Calbarrio, is no longer a secret.
We have to prepare for them. Our military force is not enough, so we have to think something that is out of the box. Our scientists are developing a powerful weapon to even the odds and help us combat this threat to our existence. The only problem is no one among us can handle this weapon. But I believe someday, the chosen one will arrive.
I hope and pray that he is out there…somewhere.
--testimony of the Supremo.