Night.
The world seemed to tremble. The earth seemed to roar.
"Let the world... be reborn..."
The rumbling, seemingly coming from far away, was strange indeed.
Everyone who heard it looked up at the sky.
Even outside the base, and in the streets of Tokyo-3 where the ice and snow were gradually melting, people gazed up at the eyebrow-thin crescent moon.
Alarms rang through NERV ANIMA, and the key staff assembled in the Central Control Room.
BOOM!!!
The control room shook again, its consoles creaking.
"Have you located the source?" Misato Katsuragi asked gravely.
Her workload had been light that day, and she had returned to her quarters early, just about to visit next door.
Then this inexplicable tremor had spoiled her plans.
"We still can't determine the source of the tremors."
Ritsuko Akagi, who had likewise been unable to visit next door that night, answered before furrowing her brows.
"Wait. It looks like there are tremors all over the world."
"What do you mean, all over the world?" Misato Katsuragi froze.
On the main screen, the display of sensors scattered across the globe began flashing.
Data from around the world filled the screen, all showing the exact same time.
Shigeru Aoba said, "Tremors were detected simultaneously worldwide. Not just the timing-even their seismic intensity was exactly the same."
"How is that possible!?" Misato Katsuragi exclaimed.
As the leader of a military organization in an earthquake-prone country, she understood what that meant.
Had identical tremors struck the entire world at exactly the same time?
"This clearly isn't a tremor on the level of planetary physics," Ritsuko Akagi said.
BOOM!!!
Another massive tremor struck, the shriek of the earth's rumbling echoing through the control room.
"Emergency call from sky surveillance!" Maya Ibuki, head of the science department, shouted.
"Three peaceful years