Ross Ice Shelf, Antartica
She saw that it was a giant of light. She saw the men panic, shouting orders and frantically trying to undo the wrath that they have unleashed. She felt the bright austral summer suddenly darken, and from the hinterlands of Antartica, came winds, blowing with a ferocity that she has never seen in all her years. It tore into her thick furs, biting the tender skin underneath. It blew the tents away, the scientific equipment being strewn about the ice. The men could barely walk as the wind forced them to their knees. She grabbed what felt like a pole, and covered her face with her hands and blue-black hair. Her efforts at blocking the wind was successful, but there was nothing she could do to stop the light. The harsh white light that came from that giant seemed to know where the cracks of her fingers were and mercilessly battered their way through her eyelids.
She was starting to feel something else too. From the giant. Heat. Heat that has never been felt in Antartica for millions of years. It, too, came from that giant. The giant that her father's expedition has been chasing. She started to sob, whether out of fear, sorrow, or because she couldn't think of any other response.
She heard the voices of the men, getting more and more desperate every second.
"The Lance! Put the Lance back in!"
"No good! Energy readings are still ...."
"Adam is still shrinking! We can't stop him"
But where was her father?
"Oh God, no! the ice!! the ice!!"
She heard cracking sounds, then mercifully, unconsciousness claimed her.
"Father?" she asked weakly, her eyes barely responding to her commands.
He told her he was sorry, and he told her that while his own life is forfeit for his sins, his black and tormented soul would never rest had his only daughter die here with him. He told her that he was sorry that he could never face her, or her mother, all the while when they were both still married, when she was still part of a family. He pressed his cross pendant into her hands, he told her to live. His final words on this world would be "I'm sorry we couldn't go see the penguins," but she would never hear his words. He closed the seal on the escape capsule, and his last act was to cover his daughter with his body as the giant imploded, its unearthly energies released at last to do their destructive dance across the ice of the South Pole.
When Misato Katsuragi finally regained consciousness, she would become the only living soul to see a tower of energy erupting from the South Pole reaching all the way to the heavens. The young girl, barely fifteen, would be the lone survivor of the disaster that mankind would forever remember as Second Impact.
Seoul
A hot summer day in the capital of South Korea, even allowing for the climactic changes that Second Impact has brought upon the planet, almost 12 years ago. After the tidal waves that ravaged the world, came the flooding, as the ice of Antartica melted raised the sea level. Next came disaster after disaster as every nation on earth felt the wrath of Adam.
But for the three young women running for their lives along the streets, the latest disaster in their lives is the fault of an irresponsible young woman named Misato Katsuragi.
"Great idea, Misato!" huffed a serious looking woman, pausing briefly to adjust her glasses which were threatening to run their own way off her nose. "Lets go shopping in Korea," the woman said, her voice mimicking Misato's lively tone. "Lots of bargains now their currency's down 400 percent against the Yen" she continued. She was huffing and gasping heavily now, as she wasn't used to exerting herself so hard. She was more of a lab rat, spending her time with organic circuit designs in the biotechnology labs trying to obtain her doctorate. She knew it. Never, ever, ever, listen to Misato.
"Look Ritsuko, how'd I know if they were going to riot?" Misato asked. She hardly slowed down. Her body was more used to the demands she was placing on it. The muscles in her legs flexed with every step she took, as she started to slowly break away from her friends, almost without realizing it. Her ears were almost totally atttuned to the bloodthirsty cries of the mob that was searching for them. The faint cries of "Kill the Japanese" reached her ears. In Japanese. The mob wanted them scared first, dead later.
"Or blame you Japanese for their economic problems?" asked the third woman. "Misato, Ritsuko, look, there's an alley ahead!" Donna glanced behind her. Misato and herself could probably keep on running, after all, they were both officer cadets for NERV. Ritsuko never had to do an endurance drill in her life. This is probably the most excitement the poor woman has had in years. There was the real risk that if they didnt stop running, Ritsuko would tire, and become easy prey for the mob.
"Great! Ritsuko! hurry up! We can hide there till the mob clears up!" Misato almost reached back to grab her friend's arm so she can lead her to safety.Abruptly, Misato stopped dead in her tracks.
She hurriedly removed her sandals, then threw one into a street to her left, then continued running, her bare feet burning everytime they touched the hot pavement, all the while clutching the other sandal in her hand.
"What the hell?" asked Ritsuko, in between gasps.
"Decoy! They'll think we ran down that way" she yelled back at Ritsuko. Donna yelled "hashita!!" at them both, now leading the pack, "almost there!".
All three women practically threw themselves into the alley, landing, or rather, falling, rather hard. The breath was knocked out of Misato as she swore she felt her breasts flatten out from the impact.
They waited there in the alley, praying that they wont be discovered. Misato felt real fear, felt its iron grip choking her throat as she started to pray, first to the Christian God of her father, then the Kami of her mother, then to them both, not caring from where salvation would come, almost daring all the gods to come and save them first.
Then came the dreaded roar and hubbub, louder and louder, then fainter as the enraged mass of Koreans took Misato's bait. Finally, as the din faded into silence, Donna stood up. The Argentinian slowly, carefully poked her head out of the alley.
"I think it's okay for us to breathe, girls," she said, a brave smile on her face. All along the streets as far as her eyes can see were empty streets, and the aftermath of the riots. She can hear sirens in the distance, and in another direction, she can hear the sounds of battle as the police and the mob faced each other in running clashes of stick versus shield, firebombs versus water cannons that were flaring up across the city. The wind blew loose sheafs of newspapers along the streets.
Ritsuko took Donna's advice. She took a deep breath, letting the air fill her lungs. Then she screamed until every last molecule of that air was expelled from her lungs. They weren't alone in the alley.
"Ohmygodohmygodohmygod....." Donna mumbled in horror.
When the three women dived into the alley, Ritsuko had landed on something soft.
The dead men were hidden under hastily laid sheets of newspapers, until Ritsuko fell on one of them. It took every last bit of self-control she had, not to scream in horror right there and bolt from the horrible sight, and take her chances with the mob.
Misato's chest heaved as she gasped for air, her mind a jumbled, exhausted, confused mess. She needs a drink. She longed for the sweet oblivion that would soon come from the bottle. This nightmare was not ending.
Despite her pronounced initial reaction, it was Ritsuko who first got her wits about her. The sweat from her brow dripped down her forehead, now creased in thought, as she started to examine the dead men. The sweat was all over her now, it was running from her temples down her neck, it was running between her breasts, darkening her blue blouse, it was seeping through her pantyhose as well as making her hands slippery, making it harder for her to remove the clothing from the dead men. She took some forensic pathology classes as an undergraduate and now the urge to discover how these men had died overtook her horror.
Donna and Misato stood there, stupefied, as Ritsuko stripped the three dead men naked. It was obvious that they had died violent deaths. Both women felt a certain sense of shame, and averted their eyes from the scene. Misato wanted to tell Ritsuko to leave the dead well alone, but found that she couldn't. She just couldn't.
Ritsuko's eyes narrowed, as she tried to chest. think of any weapon that could do such damage. Each man had identical sets of wounds. Deep stabs, three stab points on each man. Each stab wound formed a horizontal line with each hole an identical distance apart from each other . One was stabbed in the heart. One was gutted. The third died horribly as the three-bladed weapon ripped through his throat. Ritsuko had thought of the sai, a three-pointed weapon she only saw in those old samurai vs ninja movies. But it wasn't a sai.
She could swear that the wounds were caused by claws of some sort. But what kind of animal would posess such deadly weapons?
A cold stab of fear almost stopped Ritsuko's heart as the thought registered in her head.
Not what animal, she thought. What man?
Madripoor
Even with two-fifths of the island submerged by the rising seas, life goes on in the island, just as it goes on elsewhere. O'Donnel's bar still opened, and that was good enough for him. The bastard threw him a surprise welcoming party, and O'Donnel's was the only place he could go for a drink in peace in Madripoor nowadays. The man known as Patch would just have to grin and bear it.
"Glad to have you back from Korea, you ugly bastard" said Jessica Drew, kissing him playfully on the cheek as he growled in annoyance. He didn't feel happy to be back. Someone had set him up good. He was minding his own damn business in Madripoor when the phone rang. It was Eris, a woman from his past, a woman he'd hoped not to have to deal with for a long while. Yet there she was, calling from somewhere in Korea, begging him to help find her daughter. He couldn't refuse.
With a resigned shrug, he wondered how those people faked her voice. Technology? Magic? Luck? Does it matter now?
The second he passed the immigration gates at Kimpo Airport, he was tailed. Suits. It tended to get ugly when those Intelligence people get involved. Everywhere he went they followed. His usual contacts in Korea got the heat put on them bad. Then the sniping started. Wherever he went there would the sniper be,trying hard to put him down. Not bad at his job too. There were a few incidences in Pusan when the sniper had him tagged. Any ordinary man couldn't have survived, but he was no normal man. He had recognized the smell of the sniper blowing in the wind, and dived to safety just a split second before a bullet took the space where his throat had been. He had been frustrated, but his unseen enemy was too.
Because soon after that, the hit squads came. The worst time was in the middle of a riot in Seoul. He'd feared the riots in Seoul had something to do with Eris' daughter. He was desperately trying to track her in the city, avoiding both police and rioters, but to no avail. Nowhere in the city could he detect her scent. And yet the suits come after him. He fought them all across Seoul, leaving a trail of dead bodies mixed with rioters' dead bodies, stuffed in garbage bins, rotting away in the city's sewerage systems.
And some of them lie in an alley along Younggary Street.
He got fed up. He left for Madripoor, and what did he see on CNN, but a glimpse of Eris, among several anti-United Nations demonstrators staging a rather lively protest in New York. He'd been had.
"Any souvenirs for us Patch?" asked someone. "Grief, I got plenty," Patch said, absent-mindedly brushing a hand on his crumpled excuse for a suit.
The man known only as Logan knew that bad things lay in wait for him in the future. His eye, the one covered under the eyepatch, twitched in anticipation of violence that's soon to come. But not today. Today, beer is on the house.
She saw that it was a giant of light. She saw the men panic, shouting orders and frantically trying to undo the wrath that they have unleashed. She felt the bright austral summer suddenly darken, and from the hinterlands of Antartica, came winds, blowing with a ferocity that she has never seen in all her years. It tore into her thick furs, biting the tender skin underneath. It blew the tents away, the scientific equipment being strewn about the ice. The men could barely walk as the wind forced them to their knees. She grabbed what felt like a pole, and covered her face with her hands and blue-black hair. Her efforts at blocking the wind was successful, but there was nothing she could do to stop the light. The harsh white light that came from that giant seemed to know where the cracks of her fingers were and mercilessly battered their way through her eyelids.
She was starting to feel something else too. From the giant. Heat. Heat that has never been felt in Antartica for millions of years. It, too, came from that giant. The giant that her father's expedition has been chasing. She started to sob, whether out of fear, sorrow, or because she couldn't think of any other response.
She heard the voices of the men, getting more and more desperate every second.
"The Lance! Put the Lance back in!"
"No good! Energy readings are still ...."
"Adam is still shrinking! We can't stop him"
But where was her father?
"Oh God, no! the ice!! the ice!!"
She heard cracking sounds, then mercifully, unconsciousness claimed her.
"Father?" she asked weakly, her eyes barely responding to her commands.
He told her he was sorry, and he told her that while his own life is forfeit for his sins, his black and tormented soul would never rest had his only daughter die here with him. He told her that he was sorry that he could never face her, or her mother, all the while when they were both still married, when she was still part of a family. He pressed his cross pendant into her hands, he told her to live. His final words on this world would be "I'm sorry we couldn't go see the penguins," but she would never hear his words. He closed the seal on the escape capsule, and his last act was to cover his daughter with his body as the giant imploded, its unearthly energies released at last to do their destructive dance across the ice of the South Pole.
When Misato Katsuragi finally regained consciousness, she would become the only living soul to see a tower of energy erupting from the South Pole reaching all the way to the heavens. The young girl, barely fifteen, would be the lone survivor of the disaster that mankind would forever remember as Second Impact.
Seoul
A hot summer day in the capital of South Korea, even allowing for the climactic changes that Second Impact has brought upon the planet, almost 12 years ago. After the tidal waves that ravaged the world, came the flooding, as the ice of Antartica melted raised the sea level. Next came disaster after disaster as every nation on earth felt the wrath of Adam.
But for the three young women running for their lives along the streets, the latest disaster in their lives is the fault of an irresponsible young woman named Misato Katsuragi.
"Great idea, Misato!" huffed a serious looking woman, pausing briefly to adjust her glasses which were threatening to run their own way off her nose. "Lets go shopping in Korea," the woman said, her voice mimicking Misato's lively tone. "Lots of bargains now their currency's down 400 percent against the Yen" she continued. She was huffing and gasping heavily now, as she wasn't used to exerting herself so hard. She was more of a lab rat, spending her time with organic circuit designs in the biotechnology labs trying to obtain her doctorate. She knew it. Never, ever, ever, listen to Misato.
"Look Ritsuko, how'd I know if they were going to riot?" Misato asked. She hardly slowed down. Her body was more used to the demands she was placing on it. The muscles in her legs flexed with every step she took, as she started to slowly break away from her friends, almost without realizing it. Her ears were almost totally atttuned to the bloodthirsty cries of the mob that was searching for them. The faint cries of "Kill the Japanese" reached her ears. In Japanese. The mob wanted them scared first, dead later.
"Or blame you Japanese for their economic problems?" asked the third woman. "Misato, Ritsuko, look, there's an alley ahead!" Donna glanced behind her. Misato and herself could probably keep on running, after all, they were both officer cadets for NERV. Ritsuko never had to do an endurance drill in her life. This is probably the most excitement the poor woman has had in years. There was the real risk that if they didnt stop running, Ritsuko would tire, and become easy prey for the mob.
"Great! Ritsuko! hurry up! We can hide there till the mob clears up!" Misato almost reached back to grab her friend's arm so she can lead her to safety.Abruptly, Misato stopped dead in her tracks.
She hurriedly removed her sandals, then threw one into a street to her left, then continued running, her bare feet burning everytime they touched the hot pavement, all the while clutching the other sandal in her hand.
"What the hell?" asked Ritsuko, in between gasps.
"Decoy! They'll think we ran down that way" she yelled back at Ritsuko. Donna yelled "hashita!!" at them both, now leading the pack, "almost there!".
All three women practically threw themselves into the alley, landing, or rather, falling, rather hard. The breath was knocked out of Misato as she swore she felt her breasts flatten out from the impact.
They waited there in the alley, praying that they wont be discovered. Misato felt real fear, felt its iron grip choking her throat as she started to pray, first to the Christian God of her father, then the Kami of her mother, then to them both, not caring from where salvation would come, almost daring all the gods to come and save them first.
Then came the dreaded roar and hubbub, louder and louder, then fainter as the enraged mass of Koreans took Misato's bait. Finally, as the din faded into silence, Donna stood up. The Argentinian slowly, carefully poked her head out of the alley.
"I think it's okay for us to breathe, girls," she said, a brave smile on her face. All along the streets as far as her eyes can see were empty streets, and the aftermath of the riots. She can hear sirens in the distance, and in another direction, she can hear the sounds of battle as the police and the mob faced each other in running clashes of stick versus shield, firebombs versus water cannons that were flaring up across the city. The wind blew loose sheafs of newspapers along the streets.
Ritsuko took Donna's advice. She took a deep breath, letting the air fill her lungs. Then she screamed until every last molecule of that air was expelled from her lungs. They weren't alone in the alley.
"Ohmygodohmygodohmygod....." Donna mumbled in horror.
When the three women dived into the alley, Ritsuko had landed on something soft.
The dead men were hidden under hastily laid sheets of newspapers, until Ritsuko fell on one of them. It took every last bit of self-control she had, not to scream in horror right there and bolt from the horrible sight, and take her chances with the mob.
Misato's chest heaved as she gasped for air, her mind a jumbled, exhausted, confused mess. She needs a drink. She longed for the sweet oblivion that would soon come from the bottle. This nightmare was not ending.
Despite her pronounced initial reaction, it was Ritsuko who first got her wits about her. The sweat from her brow dripped down her forehead, now creased in thought, as she started to examine the dead men. The sweat was all over her now, it was running from her temples down her neck, it was running between her breasts, darkening her blue blouse, it was seeping through her pantyhose as well as making her hands slippery, making it harder for her to remove the clothing from the dead men. She took some forensic pathology classes as an undergraduate and now the urge to discover how these men had died overtook her horror.
Donna and Misato stood there, stupefied, as Ritsuko stripped the three dead men naked. It was obvious that they had died violent deaths. Both women felt a certain sense of shame, and averted their eyes from the scene. Misato wanted to tell Ritsuko to leave the dead well alone, but found that she couldn't. She just couldn't.
Ritsuko's eyes narrowed, as she tried to chest. think of any weapon that could do such damage. Each man had identical sets of wounds. Deep stabs, three stab points on each man. Each stab wound formed a horizontal line with each hole an identical distance apart from each other . One was stabbed in the heart. One was gutted. The third died horribly as the three-bladed weapon ripped through his throat. Ritsuko had thought of the sai, a three-pointed weapon she only saw in those old samurai vs ninja movies. But it wasn't a sai.
She could swear that the wounds were caused by claws of some sort. But what kind of animal would posess such deadly weapons?
A cold stab of fear almost stopped Ritsuko's heart as the thought registered in her head.
Not what animal, she thought. What man?
Madripoor
Even with two-fifths of the island submerged by the rising seas, life goes on in the island, just as it goes on elsewhere. O'Donnel's bar still opened, and that was good enough for him. The bastard threw him a surprise welcoming party, and O'Donnel's was the only place he could go for a drink in peace in Madripoor nowadays. The man known as Patch would just have to grin and bear it.
"Glad to have you back from Korea, you ugly bastard" said Jessica Drew, kissing him playfully on the cheek as he growled in annoyance. He didn't feel happy to be back. Someone had set him up good. He was minding his own damn business in Madripoor when the phone rang. It was Eris, a woman from his past, a woman he'd hoped not to have to deal with for a long while. Yet there she was, calling from somewhere in Korea, begging him to help find her daughter. He couldn't refuse.
With a resigned shrug, he wondered how those people faked her voice. Technology? Magic? Luck? Does it matter now?
The second he passed the immigration gates at Kimpo Airport, he was tailed. Suits. It tended to get ugly when those Intelligence people get involved. Everywhere he went they followed. His usual contacts in Korea got the heat put on them bad. Then the sniping started. Wherever he went there would the sniper be,trying hard to put him down. Not bad at his job too. There were a few incidences in Pusan when the sniper had him tagged. Any ordinary man couldn't have survived, but he was no normal man. He had recognized the smell of the sniper blowing in the wind, and dived to safety just a split second before a bullet took the space where his throat had been. He had been frustrated, but his unseen enemy was too.
Because soon after that, the hit squads came. The worst time was in the middle of a riot in Seoul. He'd feared the riots in Seoul had something to do with Eris' daughter. He was desperately trying to track her in the city, avoiding both police and rioters, but to no avail. Nowhere in the city could he detect her scent. And yet the suits come after him. He fought them all across Seoul, leaving a trail of dead bodies mixed with rioters' dead bodies, stuffed in garbage bins, rotting away in the city's sewerage systems.
And some of them lie in an alley along Younggary Street.
He got fed up. He left for Madripoor, and what did he see on CNN, but a glimpse of Eris, among several anti-United Nations demonstrators staging a rather lively protest in New York. He'd been had.
"Any souvenirs for us Patch?" asked someone. "Grief, I got plenty," Patch said, absent-mindedly brushing a hand on his crumpled excuse for a suit.
The man known only as Logan knew that bad things lay in wait for him in the future. His eye, the one covered under the eyepatch, twitched in anticipation of violence that's soon to come. But not today. Today, beer is on the house.