There are four elements in the world, or so was the general consensus in the ancient world. Fire. Water. Earth. Wind. All these elements of this great planet have been responsible for both the survival and deaths of humankind and all other forms of life. Every few eons, an element of the four would take its turn in attempting to exterminate all life on the planet. Our human records speak of the great flood under the powerful forces of water, or the great asteroid that collided into the planet under the crushing forces of element earth. Life survived, continued, prevailed, recovering from each of these disasters. After thousands of years of humans� perfecting of methods of destruction by use of fire, humankind began to fear their growing immense power over fire and their ability to release its destructive power in overwhelming amounts instantly. They feared that the earth would end in fire or ice, or even water as they saw their great masses of water creeping up from beneath them. That wasn�t so. Fire had had its turn during the aftermath of element earth�s asteroid collision, while earth had its turn when it blocked the sun. And ice had had its turn both in the great flood and the ice age. It was wind�s turn. It had not had a try since its influence during the ice age. But wind had something different up its sleeve this time. It was only a matter of whether life would survive a grand attack once more...

It was the turn of the century, the turn of a millennium. Humans had spread across the globe worldwide, most of whom were oblivious to the destruction of nature taking place all around them. Oceans were rising. Forests were disappearing. All other forms of life were being exploited by humans for recreation and comfort. And life was disappearing even without the help of any of the four elements. And day in and day out, all forms of life continued to survive upon and battle against the four elements of the earth. Humans had a pretty good idea that they had control over Mother Nature and her four elements. Or so they thought.

05:57, GMT -5. Norfolk, Virginia. Geo-Watch Center. A sliver of golden light peeked from just below the edge of the horizon out in the Atlantic. The fresh, crisp chill outside accompanied the morning silence among the dew-covered cars in the parking lot of the facility. The sky stretched a pale blue face today. It was going to be a very pleasant day.

Inside, a young man lay asleep on the controls of the facility, drooling onto a drying puddle of saliva on the main terminal computer. The sound of changes in air pressure and suction behind him woke him. The automated doors closed behind the man who had just entered.

The startled guard tumbled backwards out of his tilted chair and slammed his face straight onto the cold metallic platform. The guard lifted his face from the floor, still lying flat on the ground. He wiped a dangling string of drool from his chin and stared in the direction of the door. There stood a silhouette of a man, whose outline was barely visible with the help of the LED�s glowing on the control panel at the other side of the room.

The guard had no idea who this person was. He had been nearly dead sure that the entire Geo-Watch Center campus had been locked off from everyone for the weekend. He stayed on the ground, too paralyzed with trepidation to move a muscle. The man remained in the shadow near the door. His head was raised towards the ceiling. He was examining the room.

Suddenly, the air began flowing out of the air-conditioning vents on the ceiling. The man near the door looked at the vent and slowly moved his hand over the vent, slowly rotating it in the path of the air flow. As he did this, his gaze turned into an intense stare, as though the man was shutting out the whole world around him from his mind.

The man�s high concentration was broken by the wristwatch alarm on the guard�s wrist. The man began to approach the guard slowly, and his shoes had begun to come out of the shadow. The guard frantically tried to press this button and that, in a clumsy attempt to stop the alarm before the mysterious man did anything terrible to him.

The guard did not look up for an instant, fearing to see what was approaching him. He banged and banged on his watch, trying to stop the alarm. The mysterious man extended his arm towards the guard, and the guard shut his eyes and shielded his face with both of his arms, whimpering. After a few seconds of silence, the guard slowly opened his eyes, confused. He saw a beige glove before his face. The guard still could not see the man�s face when he looked up at him, but he saw that he was dressed in a blue outfit with golden stars on it. The guard held on to the mysterious man�s hand, and the man helped the guard to his feet. The guard, now on his feet, looked away from the man�s hand and towards his wristwatch. He easily switched off the alarm now that he was relaxed.

"Thank you sir - ". But there was nobody in the room. The guard jerked his head left and right, but he saw that he was entirely alone in the room.

* * *

About five hundred years ago, mysterious winds caused weather changes, especially in Europe. Unusually hostile weather for crops placed the continent on the path towards famine. Meanwhile, a strange airborne virus from the Mediterranean began spreading north, and then west and east, carried by the mysterious winds. However, the other three elements, hungry for influence and control of the fate of life in the world, began working together against the wind�s quest for worldwide disaster. Fire allowed itself to be used when upper class citizens began burning peasants� homes, and water dried the burning areas. Meanwhile, earth tried to nurture the recovery of crops in Europe with the help of water.

About one century later, the spreading influence of wind ceased, and wind had only managed to wipe out a large portion of the population of Europe, not the world.

Wind�s millennia-long attempt to stir hurricanes in the Atlantic, cyclones in the Pacific, and typhoons in the Indian Ocean, and tornadoes worldwide was a complete failure because water and earth prevented wind from causing worldwide disasters.

So wind began realizing that it would never have a turn at worldwide disaster on its own, especially with the other three elements hindering it every time. Thus, wind sought assistance from the most powerful form of life - humans.

* * *

Nobody knew when it happened, but what was known was that there was a man who lived in solitude high in the windy mountains of the Himalayas. A decade or so earlier, he had settled in the Himalayas after losing all of his closest friends in a one-month trek. He was the only survivor of the avalanche that wiped out his entire team. The supply line assumed that he and his entire team were dead. Consequently, only one helicopter was sent to circle the area to search for possible survivors. The one survivor surfaced out of the ice just in time to scream and wave at a leaving helicopter. That was the last time he saw any sign of humans, aside from his friends, who he buried in the ice. He tried desperately to survive on the dehydrated food that had been brought along, but when the food ran low, he packed all of the remaining food in a backpack and trekked in random directions, hoping to find more food. After one week, he had caught a cold from using the snow as a source of drinking water, and the cold water entering his empty stomach everyday made him feel so sick that he lay on the ice, wanting to die.

He lay there for hours, letting the snow fall on his back. He wanted to be buried under the snow. He hoped that the freezing snow would make his body so numb that he would no longer feel the pain in his legs, and sooner or later, in his entire body.

Then, a bell rang in the distance. When he looked up, he saw that it was a yak. At that moment, his will to live came back to him, and he tried to get up. But he was stuck. A fairly thick layer of snow had formed on his back. He screamed for the yak to help him, and he began clawing at the air.

To his amazement, the yak did something entirely unexpected of a yak. The yak walked over to the man and pulled him out of the snow. The man vowed at that moment that he would never kill the yak for food, or any yak for that matter. The yak was his friend, and humans were not. Humans had abandoned him. His friends had abandoned him when the avalanche began to fall. That was why he was still alive, and his friends were not. He settled in an abandoned cabin that he found nearby, which had been mysteriously abandoned with intact furniture, supplies, and herding equipment. Among the things in the house that had been abandoned was the yak that rescued him.

The man�s hate for humanity began to grow from that point. He loved animals, but he made sure that he would remain a misanthrope. The man stopped caring about how he looked and about personal hygiene. He never washed himself or combed his hair or cut his hair. He never came in contact with humans ever again, and people in the area made up stories about a horrible being in the mountains, who they called Yeti, the Abominable Snowman.

* * *

Soon after wind began seeking help from the Abominable Snowman in its quest to destroy life in the world, fire, water, and earth began seeking for help from forms of life on their own. Water spared the lives of several beautiful girls who had fallen off a boat and turned them into aquatic humanoid creatures, who were later known as mermaids by humans. Earth had taken in a scientist in Oregon who had suffered abnormal hair growth and abnormal height after being exposed to radioactive soil in an accident in the lab. Fire, who had already begun secretly expanding its influence centuries ago by giving some dragons fire-breathing power, had lost all of its dragons over the last several centuries. So, with the permission of water, fire converted a whale into a fire-breathing aquatic dragon and made sure that it never endangered itself by preventing its contact with humans. The people of that area told tall tales over the years about a dragon who lived in the lake. They called it Loch Ness.

* * *

The man who survived the avalanche, thought of himself as an unknown ruler of the world who lived on an icy throne high above everyone else in the world. As he began convincing himself of his greatness, he began to pay attention to hygiene again. He decided to be clean shaven, and he began wearing shoes again. He created beige gloves for himself, as well as a blue outfit with golden stars on it, all of which he made mostly out of yak hair.

He made his first journey in a long time down the mountain slopes with the help of his yak and the wind. Nobody ever knew how he journeyed across the Pacific, but water tried everything it could to stop wind�s new partner from reaching North America.