Worthy of their Mettle: a Superhero Timeline

Excerpts from a BBC article entitled What You Need to Know about the Vanguard of the Oppressed, 2012

The Vanguard of the Oppressed are a terrorist organization with a general anti-Western agenda, composed mostly of superhumans. The Vanguard was founded by multiple victims of American-backed regimes throughout the world and as such seek to overthrow its world dominance.

[...]

The Vanguard operates out of a small fleet of planes with cloaking devices that are believed to be superhuman-enabled, possibly resulting from research pilfered from Soviet laboratories during the Second Russian Civil War; it is believed much of their weaponry comes from similar sources and is replenished through the black market. Their movements have so far evaded both satellite and psionic methods of detection.

[...]

The Vanguard's origins are uncertain, but it is known that it originated sometime in the mid-1980s in Latin America. Its leader, an Argentinean named Esmeralda Ormanni, who had been put in a concentration camp by the National Reorganization Process regime; her parents are believed to have died in some sort of explosive accident. She is known to have been used in the Falklands War, destroying the bulk of the British fleet, and then rebelling at a parade held in her honor. She then fled, and at some point later in the decade made her way to Central America, where she gathered a band of rogue superhumans and fought against pro-US governments by destroying convoys, embassies, and shipping, as well as other forms of state property such as prisons and military bases.

By the outbreak of the Second Russian Civil War the Vanguard was operating throughout all of the Americas south of the Rio Grande. With the United States preoccupied in the Vucub-Caquix War, they were able to act with relative impunity, destroying shipments of supplies and reinforcements from Latin American regimes to Guatemala.

It is unknown how precisely, but during the Russian Civil War the Vanguard acquired most of its weapons and vehicles. Also during this time, some rogue Soviet superhumans joined them. By the middle of the 1990s the Vanguard had also absorbed several leftist terrorist groups operating in Western Europe, whose normal human members served and still serve as auxiliaries and technical operatives; these included the Red Army Faction in Germany, Action Direct in France, and the Red Brigades in Italy. It is also known that American and Canadian leftists and minority superhumans, Irish republican superhumans, and other rebels from Africa, Asia, and Oceania had joined their crew.

During the Second Russian Civil War the Vanguard attacked allied troops in Russia and in other parts of Eastern Europe, although not in formal concordance with the hardliner forces. It is not believed that there is any significant contact between the Vanguard and the group of former Soviet superhumans led by Vladimir Lenin.

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In 2010 it was revealed that the Vanguard was actively taking part against the American mission in Guatemala with the intention of preventing the second rise of Vucub-Caquix, predicted to be at the end of this year. The American and Guatemalan governments have increased their surveillance of the country and the surrounding area to prevent their interference in the American mission; they have not yet been found in their entirety.

Argentina after 1982. 

Thank you very much. Been a pleasure being here. 

When I get home, yes. 

So South Vietnam still exist in this universe.

Guatemalan Highlands, September 2012

Karoly Bakos, alias the Phaser, led his team through the dark chambers of some sort of makeshift hideaway. This place was found in Spanish-language documents held by Vucub Caquix cultists; the ancient Maya language that they used was still very hard to decipher. Nevertheless, he led his team into the tunnels.

He was accompanied by two other Curtain Jumpers and a team of spec ops. One was Ferid Dodik, a Bosniak who had fled Yugoslavia as Black George all but obliterated his people. His alias was Gale, who could control the wind and the air. The other was Tenzin Karpo, who could control fire, who had fled Tibet after another Chinese purge.

Karpo used her powers to serve as a light through the pitch black tunnels, and the spec ops used the lights on their guns. The footsteps rung out as if they were gongs, so loud were they in the silence. They could hear each other breath.

"What precisely is in here, or what does command think is in here?" asked Bakos into his transceiver. "We're seeing absolutely nothing."

"Keep going," urged his direct liaison, Oliver Hampton. He was a balding intelligence and science officer who had replaced Lubomir Rybalkin as the head of that sort of thing after he had died in the late 70s, and had been there ever since. Hampton had met Rybalkin at a superhuman science symposium at Harvard earlier in that decade and was rapidly brought on as the latter's protege. Bakos saw him as a connection to the man who had nurtured the Curtain Jumpers. "All we know is that this place is attested to in several cultist documents."

They continued their venture.

Footsteps.

Discussions.

They heard these things in the distance, and the darkness began to slowly make way for distant torches. "Stand ready!" cried out Bakos. "Who knows what the hell they're up to?"

There was chatter to an extreme degree, in the ancient tongue that only these cultists spoke. It got louder and louder, and the hallway gave way to a massive chamber, crawling with cultists on a lower level. They did not see the American team on the higher ground, for they were all surrounding some sort of pedestal on the bottom.

Among the ruckus of ritual was one voice screaming. Bakos scanned the area and saw a pale-skinned man in an American uniform of some distinction on a stretcher, or something like one, of a clearly ceremonial nature. He was placed on the pedestal.

"Hampton," asked Bakos, "was there anyone high ranking captured around here?"

"There was a convoy carrying Lieutenant General Kenneth Tovo around two miles of your location. Why?"

"I think we found him."

Some important cultists, seemingly priests, had secured him as such. One priest had a knife; he used this knife, plunging it into Tovo's left breast. From there, he ripped out his heart.

There was raucous applause. The cheering morphed into a chant.

"Cabrakan! Cabrakan! Cabrakan!"

"Does that mean anything? Cabrakan?" asked Dodik, into his transceiver.

Hampton could be heard typing into his terminal. "Yes. According to the Popol Vuh and other texts he is the son of Vucub Caquix and an earthquake god."

The team fell silent.

The walls began to quake.

The bottom of the pit collapsed, revealing another room with some sort of coffin. The coffin rumbled, and out of it climbed a humanoid figure.

It was Cabrakan.

Cabrakan peered around his enclosure, and saw his cheering admirers. He gloried in it.

And then he noticed the foreigners. He glared at them, and the walls began to quake.

"Okay, all of you!" cried out Bakos. "Open fire!"

Dodik hurled a gust of wind at Cabrakan, and Karpo began unleashing an inferno. The crowd began attacking the squad, and the spec ops defended with melee combat.

Bakos himself pinpointed the location of Cabrakan and teleported there. He phased some of the rubble from the shaken walls and dropped it over the deity.

They impaled the deity, who lifted up the rubble and glared at Bakos.

Cabrakan roared, and the earth shook. The entire structure began to shake, and chunks of the ceiling fell out, revealing sun and tumbling dirt.

"Team! Get out of here!" ordered Bakos into his transceiver. "He's going to blow the entire temple!"

"Hampton!" he screamed into his transceiver. "We need backup! He's going to rip into the Earth itself!"

The building tumbled down, and Bakos phased those he could save out up onto the surface. He phased himself shortly thereafter.

The temple became a crevasse, and out of it climbed Cabrakan.