Prologue: Born in Fire
Lightning is not supposed to strike from a clear sky, but sometimes it does...
Luthor Engles was a 5 year old child, happy, inquisitive, and adventurous. His parents loved him greatly, but without spoiling him (except on celebrations like his birthday). Without looking too closely, one might not notice he did not look quite like any other child in Japan. His eyes and straight black hair favored his mother's Japanese features, but his wide flared nose, thick lips, and dark brown skin were clearly from his father's heritage.
Garman Engles was also of mixed heritage. Raised by a single mother until she died of a drug overdose brought on by preventable medical error in a Hospital in Los Angeles. Knowing no close family, he stayed with friends until he turned 18 and joined the US Army to become a helicopter pilot.
マリカ Ito was a child of Americanophiles. They passed away in a car accident after visiting Disneyland in Los Angeles. She was raised by her grandfather, Hiroshi Ito, a groundskeeper at Camp Zama, like his father Akira before him. Marika worked in a shop at Camp Zama selling Japanese snacks, toys, and knickknacks. She took lunch to her Grandfather every day. It was at her job that she met Garman, now a Blackhawk pilot at the base, who had come to her shop to buy a Gundam model. Their attraction was immediate, and the common subject of Los Angeles, while sad, gave them shared experience to talk about.
Both parents came from tragically broken families, and were determined to give their son, Luthor, a loving and fulfilling upbringing. Unfortunately, it seems Destiny had other plans. After her Grandfather passed away, they decided to take some time in America, trying to reconnect with distant relatives from Garman's side. As JapanAir flight JA 15 was taking off from the Tokyo airport (NRT>LAX Aug 14, 2010, 5:15 PM), an unexpected lightning strike caused a small aircraft to veer off course, out of control. It crashed into the Doeing 565-300ER just after it had lifted off the runway, forcing the larger aircraft violently back to the ground before erupting in a catastrophic explosion.
Emergency crews found no survivors of the crash, except for the small boy, Luthor Engles, miraculously unharmed except for a burn on his left cheek below the eye.
With no known family, Luthor was placed in an orphanage to be cared for and raised. Already 5 years old at this time, he was too old to be desired by most adoptive families, and even less desired because of his exotic heritage. Most parents were just not interested in facing the difficulty of raising a child who would inevitably face social prejudices for such appearance, even if it was beyond the child's control. And as he grew older, the possibility of adoption became more and more unlikely.
Luthor's childhood was almost stereotypical for a person like him in a situation like his. While he had casual friends among the orphans, and later among public schools he was sent to for a proper education, he was always a bit of a misfit. With academics and athletics, he was competent, but not exceptional. He studied martial arts for self defense, because he was regularly harassed by "Goon," a bully from his orphanage. Luthor wasn't especially adept at fighting, but he was good enough to be more trouble than it was worth to pick on. He and Goon never became friends, though they eventually developed a polite but unfriendly tolerance of each other. Furthermore, Luthor had a near obsessive fascination with isekai... light novels, manga, anime. For him it was escapist fantasy that helped him cope with a life that was difficult and sad.
One of the interesting aspects of the "Special Education Curriculum" employed by the orphanage was the wide variety of camps and field trips they sent the children to, trying to expand their capacity for finding a calling they would not inherit from family. Diving, rock climbing, zoos, endless vocational training introductions. All the children learned a smattering of many skills in hopes they would take to one with grace and aptitude.
But it was at one of these camps, where they were learning to rappel down the side of a mountain, just before Luthor's 18th birthday, Goon shouldered into him hard on a narrow path when nobody was watching. Luthor fell off a steep cliff, his terrified scream caught in his throat as the ground rushed up at him.
August 14, 2010, 5:18 pm...
In the ruins that used to be the Tokyo airport, a fire fell from the sky.
This world had many similarities to the world we know, but it also had many differences.
Across the world, on every continent, portals to the underworld released demons that possessed great beasts and warped them into horrific giant monsters that would rampage through cities, destroying everything out of sheer malice.
They were not unopposed however. These gates to Hell had originally been created by alien invaders from the stars and beyond. They came to the world in giant mechanical monsters of their own, and misused forces they didn't understand to open dimensional rifts thinking they had found a source of endless energy. Well, the energy was there, but it came with a price. The aliens were the first to succumb to the demons, becoming vessels of evil, but losing control of their mighty war machines. The beasts soon followed, and soon after, many humans fell prey as well. Humans made poor hosts for the demons though. They were short-lived and fragile, and most who became infected by infernal trespass became little more than zombies and ghouls, wandering the land seeking prey weaker than themselves.
A few of the aliens managed to avoid the fate of their peers, but had to forego use of their mecha to stay hidden. Their life-force was such that if they joined with their mech, it became a beacon to the monsters who would swarm the region with death and destruction. Those last few aliens who resisted the urge to reclaim a dominance that would probably fail instead became unlikely allies with the humans they originally sought to vanquish. They taught humans how to control the mechs, how to merge with them in spirit and body. But there was a price. They had to be depleted of their life force before they could do so. To join with one of these alien contraptions that gave them the strength to stand against the monsters, they had to die.
Upon a human's death, under the right circumstances, the spirit and body of the human would be severed, the spirit would enable the machine to interface with the body that would then pilot it. From this process, which eventually became ritual, was formed the Revenant Corps. Alongside the Corps was the Revenant Academy, where the greatest soldiers and tacticians would train to claim bonds with the most desirable mechs.
But mechs, now called Iron Angels, could be destroyed, or dispossessed. There were always more becoming available too. The invasion force had stalled in space, and sometimes an Iron Angel would fall from the sky. There was no guarantee they would survive the fall, or be usable after, but the most powerful were highly sought after by the Revenant Corps.
Remember the fire from the sky in Tokyo? It was just such a machine. But it was not obvious to most. Though it survived, it was too small, practically a runt compared to other Iron Angels. Furthermore, it seemed unwilling to bond with any pilot. Eventually it was moved to storage and abandoned as useless.
This mech was called Phoenix Kaiser, the same name as it's primary ability. It was the King of Rebirth. And it was waiting for the right pilot, whose spirit had already left the body, and bound itself to this angel of flame. Now the body just needed to find it's way there as well.
