This fic is part of my Origins series, and fits in with other stories in that AU. In particular, this fic goes through a number of events depicted in my fic: It's Not Easy Being Green (also posted on this site), although it is not necessary to have read that story in order to follow this one.

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Chapter 1

Joe Asakura turned over on the hard, lumpy platform that passed for a bed in his tiny metal trailer. Yet it wasn't his physical discomfort that was preventing him from sleeping.

An image of Ken rose up in his mind. When they had been returning from Hontwal the previous week, after the launch of the missile to bring the Van Allen Belt back into position, Joe had been filled with relief to see his friend back in his chair on the God Phoenix, where he belonged. At that time, the Condor had been in command of the Science Ninja Team for days. He had quickly come to discover that he didn't relish the role at all, and had been, in fact, eager to relinquish it back to the Eagle. Even more, the entire time he had been in command, Joe had been worried about Ken and his 'radio silence', fearing that his friend might be hurt, or in trouble. Whatever their differences, Ken was like a brother to Joe, and his disappearance had been difficult for the Condor to deal with.

Joe had attempted to tell Ken how good it was to have him back, but the Eagle had barely heard his friendly words.

"Berg Katse," Gatchaman had growled, "it's your fault that my father is dead! I'll chase you to the ends of the Earth and finish you off with my own bare hands!"

The Eagle's words and manner had been more angry and vicious than the Condor could ever recall seeing before. Of course, Ken had just been dealt an enormous emotional blow. The father he had presumed dead for fourteen years had suddenly turned up alive… and in the form of that bastard, Red Impulse… only to be suddenly ripped away from Ken again moments later. It had been an emotionally devastating moment for the usually reserved Eagle. Joe supposed Ken could be forgiven for being distraught.

Joe had tried to talk to Ken on more than one occasion since then, but each time he had been rebuffed. The Condor understood the need for emotional privacy; hell, he was practically the poster child for the role of 'brooding loner'. So he had left the Eagle to his own devices. Yet Ken's continued silence bothered him more and more.

This wasn't the Ken he knew. These days Ken was reminding Joe more and more of himself. It was an uncomfortable feeling, especially as the Condor didn't like what he was seeing. If the Eagle stayed like this, would he continue to be an effective leader for the Science Ninja Team? After stepping into that role involuntarily over the past few missions, the Condor knew that he wasn't the man to fill Ken's shoes.

A sharp knock on his door disrupted his gloomy train of thought. It was still dark outside; a little early for visitors. Still, it didn't look like he was going to be getting more sleep anytime soon.

Cautiously, Joe stood up, moving toward the door, prepared for a quick strike, if necessary. He put one hand into his pocket, gripping some feather shuriken, while opening the door with the other.

Ken.

"Can I come in?"

"Yeah, why not?"

Joe stepped aside to let his friend into the small trailer, then shut the door behind him.

"What brings you by, Ken?"

"I… I needed to talk."

"Okay… so talk."

"It's not that simple, Joe. I..." the Eagle suddenly rounded on the Condor, a desperate look in his eyes.

"How do you do it, Joe?" he asked anxiously. "How do you get through each day, knowing that your parents are dead, and that the bastards who caused it are still out there, somewhere?"

Oh, was that all?

"It wasn't easy, at first." Joe admitted. "But then, I was only five years old when they were murdered. It took me a couple of years before I stopped thinking about them every single day."

"But you still think about them?"

"Of course I do!" Joe replied. "But I have other things to focus on now, like the Team."

"And the reason you wanted to join the Team in the first place was to get revenge on Galactor for what they did to your parents."

"True," Joe admitted, "but I seem to recall that you had a similar motivation, Ken."

"That's different…" Ken protested.

"How?"

"Well, I thought my Dad had died because his plane had been sabotaged fourteen years ago…"

"By Galactor."

"Well, yes, but…"

"No 'buts', Ken! Your Dad is dead, and it's Galactor's fault. None of that has changed. So what's different, now?"

"What's the difference?" yelled Ken, outraged. "The difference is that Galactor stole fourteen years of time away from me! Time I could have spent with my father!"

"Ken…" Joe's voice broke off as he found that he couldn't bring himself to voice his thoughts aloud. Ken felt that Galactor had taken fourteen years from him, but it had been Ken's father and Dr. Nambu who had staged Kentaro Washio's 'death'. The elder Washio had become Red Impulse and had stayed away, not even maintaining the most basic of contacts with his only child.

From what Joe could see, the separation hadn't bothered Red Impulse at all.

From what the Condor knew of Red Impulse, he could easily believe that Ken's father was a coldhearted bastard who had had no feelings at all for his own son. Yet Joe could hardly voice such a thing to Ken, who had cultivated an intense hero-worship of his father, even before discovering the man's 'identity'.

No, better to let things lie. Red Impulse was truly gone now, and that was for the better. Why hurt Ken with his suspicions at a time when the Eagle's emotional wounds were still raw?

"What?" Ken asked, clearly irritated that Joe had stopped speaking mid-sentence.

"Let's go to the Snack." Joe suggested, scrambling for a response. "You could use a familiar place to think things through." That much was certainly true. Since they had left Dr. Nambu's villa to live at the ISO Building, the Science Ninja Team had never truly had a home. As much as was possible, the Snack J filled that void in their lives, and perhaps there, Ken would be able to relax enough to deal with this cloak of anger he had wrapped around himself.

"Okay." Ken replied in a defeated manner. "I suppose Jun's Joint is as good a place as anywhere else."

"It's going to be all right, Ken." Joe reassured his friend as they left the trailer.

The Condor was confident in this statement. Now that Red Impulse was truly gone, everything could go back to how it had been before this Hontwal nightmare had begun.

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"Awaken, Kentaro Washio."

The man formerly known as Red Impulse sat up, rubbing his eyes and blinking blearily at his surroundings.

The room was cold enough that his breath frosted in front of his mouth. He was sitting on the ground, atop a worn blanket, and he suddenly realized that only one other blanket lay between his bare flesh and the icy air. His red uniform was gone.

"Where am I?"

"You are with me." Sosai's voice echoed in his mind. "I have taken you here to speak with you."

"You took me here…" Kentaro shook his head, attempting to remember despite the haze that filled his mind. The V2 Termination Missile… he had floated up into the atmosphere, detonating it far above the Earth's surface… he had died…

Or had he?

"You have proven yourself worthy of another chance." Sosai declared.

"I have?" Kentaro asked, amazed.

"Yes. You were willing to sacrifice your own life to do my bidding." the alien entity acknowledged. "Your loyalty is unquestionable. Your only fault has been in this unreasonable competition with Berg Katse."

"I only wish to be more worthy of you, Sosai." Kentaro replied. "And if you wish for me to cease competing with Katse…"

"I am not entirely certain that you are capable of that." Sosai sneered. "It isn't within your weak human nature to push your enviousness, your covetousness, aside. Yet despite that weakness, you passed my test."

"Your test?"

"Yes. I asked you to perform a task that you could not possibly survive, and yet you did my bidding regardless, without hesitation. It is for this reason that I pulled you out of the missile and brought you here."

"And where is 'here'?" Kentaro asked curiously.

"You humans know this place as 'Siberia'." Sosai replied. "We are on the edge of the Ural Mountains. It is an isolated and remote area; far enough away from Berg Katse that he will not suspect your presence here."

"Katse doesn't know…"

"No. He does not know that I have saved you. I told him that you were dead, and that I was pleased with his performance." the alien entity revealed. "Berg Katse has been something of a disappointment to me."

Kentaro Washio felt hope rise up in his heart. Sosai had been right when he had said that Kentaro would never be able to push his rivalry with the purple mutant aside. But if Berg Katse was not meeting Sosai's standards…

Perhaps there was still a chance for Kentaro Washio.

"How so, Sosai?" Kentaro asked.

"Katse has been unable to defeat the Science Ninja Team." the alien entity complained. "Time and time again, he has been defeated by them, and I grow tired of his constant excuses."

"I understand." Kentaro nodded vigorously in agreement.

"Make no mistake, Berg Katse is Lord of Galactor," Sosai declared, "but it has occurred to me that perhaps I should seek out other methods of achieving my goals. If you and Katse were both working toward my ends, those ends should be reached that much more quickly."

"I am happy to serve you in any way you require, Sosai." Kentaro groveled.

"I hope so, Kentaro Washio." the alien entity replied. "Now, tell me everything you know about the Mantle Plan…"

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The Snack wasn't open yet when Ken and Joe got there, but Jun was up, and after one look at the expression on Ken's face, she let them in without a word. They sat down at a booth, and the Swan silently got everyone cups of coffee, before sliding in next to the Eagle.

Ken sipped quietly at the steaming liquid in his cup, keeping his eyes down. That set the pattern for Joe and Jun, who also refused to look at the Eagle. But the Condor's gaze met the questioning one of the Swan, and all he could do was shake his head, indicating that she should remain silent.

"Thanks…" Ken mumbled after a few minutes.

"Anytime, Ken." Jun said quietly. "I know you've had a rough time of it, lately."

"You don't know the half of it."

"So tell us, Ken." Jun urged.

"I agree." Joe added. "This is eating you up, Ken."

"You both know what happened." Ken said in a bitter voice. "You don't need to ask me that."

"Of course we know what happened." Joe replied. "We were there. What concerns us is how you're dealing with it."

"I'm dealing with it just fine."

"Is that why you showed up on my doorstep at four am, and why we're here at Jun's before sunrise?" Joe asked wryly.

"I just can't take this waiting around!" Ken exploded, slamming his coffee cup down onto the table and spilling the dark liquid across the Formica surface. "I need to do something… to…"

The Eagle looked up, heedless of the hot coffee dripping off of his hand. The expression on his face was one of intense pain, as if he were barely able to deal with the very thoughts running through his head.

"I have to go." he said brusquely, pushing past Jun and out of the booth.

"Ken, wait!" Jun cried, running after him. "Talk to us! We're your friends…"

But the Eagle was gone, the front door of the Snack J banging behind him. Jun turned back to look at Joe, her eyes desperate.

"What should we do?" she asked. "I've never seen him like this…"

"He was like this once before." Joe admitted. "When we thought you had died…"

"What snapped him out of it?" Jun asked.

"Your Birdscramble. Once we knew you weren't dead."

"I guess that's not going to happen in this case." Jun sighed, slumping back into the booth, across from Joe.

"God, I hope not."

The Swan looked up sharply at the venom in the Condor's voice.

"What are you talking about, Joe?"

"You're not telling me that you had any love for Red Impulse?"

"Hardly." Jun snorted. "He was a pompous, arrogant ass. But even so, he was Ken's Dad…"

"Didn't make him any less of a pompous, arrogant ass." Joe retorted. "In fact, I think it made him even more of one. Abandoning Ken like that… ignoring him for all of those years…"

"But he had a good reason…" the Swan protested weakly.

"Good reason my ass!" Joe growled. "I wouldn't ever abandon someone I loved. I don't care what Galactor did. My first priority would always be the people I cared about…"

"But what if sacrificing yourself was the only way to save the people you loved?" Jun probed. "What if cutting yourself off from them was the only way to ensure that they were safe, and happy?"

The Condor didn't have an answer for that.

He just hoped he never had to find one.