Excerpt from a New York Times article, Race Riots Erupt in San Diego, October 2012 Anti-Hispanic riots have occurred in San Diego California, as well as in other Californian cities, in reaction to the apparent emboldening of the rogue Mayan deity Vucub Caquix from his slumber. San Diego, among one of the worst hit cities from the Vucub Caquix War in the 1980s, has nevertheless seen stringent immigration from Latin America; this includes a great many Guatemalans fleeing the country's decades-long civil war. The 'curse' of Vucub Caquix, the genetic indicator that enables the deity's hijacking of descendants of his cultists for his own ends, and misunderstanding thereof, is blamed for the mass hysteria. [...] A mob of mostly white citizens, bolstered by sympathetic sailors from Naval Base San Diego who had stolen military-grade firearms, stormed into mostly Hispanic neighborhoods and killed anyone with apparent ancestry from Latin America, including men, women, and children. Smartphone recordings and other records of the riots show chants of "revenge for San Diego!" and other cities hit by the deity and his followers in the 1980s. [...] As the death toll of these riots escalates into the thousands, Governor of California Kevin McCarthy authorized the deployment of the California National Guard to San Diego. In a press conference at the state house in Sacramento, McCarthy said that the deployment will continue "until peace and order are returned to San Diego." [...] In copycat crimes, similar events have occurred in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, and Fresno, as well as other cities with the aforementioned metropolitan areas. Police and National Guard formations have had mixed success in pacifying them.
Mark Wheeling, alias the Field Marshal, oversaw a routine liquidation operation in the hills of Guatemala. This shantytown was made mostly of ramshackle homes constructed to be moved quickly; this place had not even been seen by satellites, having instead been predicted by the American human computers who had been fed the necessary data. His name was a reference to his powers; he could create force fields that could defend himself and others, or to destroy others. He did so with the armored cars that were thrown his way; simply manifest a field the size of a bowling ball in the middle of the vehicle, expand it, and watch the car evaporate. He did this to several buildings, to clear the village of potential cultists. He spoke into his transceiver. "Townes, are we getting any more readings?" "Our infrared scanners and drone surveillance feeds indicate not a single potential cultist left," responded Townes, in a base near Guatemala City. "Still looking out for anyone who might be here. Remain on your guard." The jeeps and helicopters and infantry and drones scurried about, looking this way and that way for potential survivors of the massacre that had just been undertaken. Wheeling almost expected the earth to start ripping itself apart, or a giant lizard to assail them; that was the latest news. However, there was nothing. And then there were two loud, raucous noises. "Men, stay on your guard! Prepare for whatever the hell these bird-worshipers have next!" bellowed out Wheeling. Wheeling dashed towards the location of one of the blasts, as reported by his troops. He prepared his powers and, after finding cover with some of the troops, put a shield around them. Toward them came a single figure who withstood small arms fire. He held an ax, which he smashed into the ground and took out another group of soldiers. Wheeling manifested a shield around this being, and collapsed it around him. This being was hardly damaged. He threw more and more shields at him, and more and more bullets came upon the figure's body. More swings of the ax, and more men fell. Wheeling ordered a retreat. "Wheeling!" called out Townes from the receiver. "Yes? We are being attacked by not one, but two superhumans of some sort! What could you possibly want?" "I have just received information directly from Langley; they're telling me before anyone else in the Guatemalan deployment. Earlier today, we found two objects in the solar system converging on Guatemala; one had come from the sun, and one from the moon. They were moving at speeds that were too fast to be intercepted. We have reason to believe that these are the Hero Twins of Maya mythology, who defeated Vucub-Caquix and later became sun and moon gods." "And what the hell are they doing here?" "Long story short, they aren't happy we're in Guatemala."
Excerpt from the Online Superhuman Database, 2012 The topic of superhumans in the United States armed forces is one that is fiercely divided into those who support and those who oppose the government position of mandatory military service for those with superhuman abilities. The United States government maintains that the conscription of superhumans into the armed forces is necessary for national defense, whilst opponents claim it is a violation of the 13th amendment to the Constitution as well as other laws. [...] Mandatory military service for superhumans occurred during the Vietnam War; this was less for military need and more to combat the amount of rogue superhumans causing chaos in the country in opposition to said war. Groups such as Weather Underground and Anti-Imperialist League had their own superhumans which engaged in terrorist activity near military bases (such as the attack on Camp David by the latter) and generally provided anti-government superhuman action, including attacking police at various antiwar and civil rights protests. To counter this growing wave, Congress passed the Superhuman Security Act, placing all superhumans under military auspices once their powers were discovered. With the growth of superhuman technology, the ability to detect enhanced abilities was made much easier at younger ages. [...] Currently, there are several superhuman training academies throughout the United States; these include the Rybalkin Superhuman Educational Institute in Leesburg, Virginia, the LeFew School for the Supernaturally Gifted in Columbia, Tennessee (affiliated with Vanderbilt University), the Federal Institute for Superhuman Education in Elko, Nevada, and the Moncure Institute for Superhuman Development in Hanford, California, among others scattered throughout the country. [...] After graduation from these special high schools, education is directly overseen through one of five Superhuman Specialization Institutes, affiliated with major military formations and training facilities. These weaponize superhumans into battle-ready soldiers loyal to the United States and to the Constitution. [...] Superhuman impressment has been challenged in courts multiple times; this has been upheld on the same legal backing as conscription in World War I and subsequent conflicts; the controversy died down in the 1980s due to the general draft for the Vucub Caquix War and the Second Russian Civil War; the occupation of Guatemala has seen similar activism from segments of society, and has yet to see a constitutional challenge in the new millennium.
Excerpt from the Online Superhuman Database, 2012 The Superhero Team was developed by the United States Department of Defense in the aftermath of the Korean War, and first used in major deployment in Vietnam. [...] During the Second World War and the Korean War the United States, like all other nations at the time, integrated their superhumans into the rank and file armed forces without their own units. However, a contingent of superhumans had banded together during the Battle of Pusan Perimeter, calling themselves the Arsenal of Democracy after the American moniker during the Second World War. These heroes, mostly veterans of that earlier conflict, were instrumental in fighting of North Korean and Chinese forces from South Korea. [...] During the war, the Office of Superhuman Research was still attempting to gain additional funding from Washington. Using a significant amount of money, head researcher Jasper Lefew had hired Edward Bernays, the great propagandist, to help him present his case to the American public: that Superhumans were the future. [...] The notion of having superhuman teams curated for special abilities coordinated was still being studied by the OSR, but Bernays offered another compelling reason for their use: propaganda. Taking influence from the pulp comic books of the day such as National Comics Publications and Atlas Comics, the superhumans deployed in Korea and later Vietnam and elsewhere would be organized into teams and aggressively sold to the public as embodiments of freedom, democracy, and liberalism against godless Communism. [...] The success of Lefew's and Bernays' program led to surging support for superhuman research and development among the American public; comic books, toys, and films were commissioned detailing the real and fictionalized adventures of American superhumans. In 1956, the same year that Stalin would drop a nuclear bomb on Kaposvar and the defection of Lubomir Rybalkin and his ilk, Congress authorized the Superhuman Development Act, providing a significant amount of money to the OSR and the formalization of the superhero team as the standard method of deployment in western militaries.
Excerpt from an article on the Online Superhuman Database, 2012 Human Computers are a particular subset of superhumans with powers that are generally mental in nature. In military usage, they are generally not deployed on the battlefield, generally being used as intelligence. [...] Humans with naturally occurring mental ability far exceeding the average person were first harnessed during the governance of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s. These humans were used to coordinate the titanic logistics of running the Soviet Union in a way that would industrialize it to compete with Western powers. During World War II they first began using them to help in military logistics, and the science was continually improved until the war in Afghanistan, upon which the Union's dissolution in civil war rendered research impossible. [...] The United States harnessed the abilities of these superhuman savants after learning of the Soviet program via spies during World War II. Scientist for the Office of Superhuman Research Stephen Hornbeck was the leader in the subprogram studying human computers; the arrival of Lubomir Rybalkin had provided their research with a much needed boost, and the Americans began emulating Soviet innovations. These studies were soon looped into broader support from the US government at large when they were folded into the Central Intelligence Agency's project MKULTRA. Hornbeck, aided by the likes of Harold Alexander Abramson, Harris Isbell, and Louis Jolyon West, worked on the manifestation of telepathic abilities in superhumans as well as increasing reaction speed and information processing speed; the exact details are still heavily classified. [...] Although often having some degree of mind control and other psionic abilities, human computers are not generally grouped among the psionic superhumans that are often deployed on the battlefield. Their use is logistics; they process tremendous amounts of information at a breakneck speed, and can use their intellects to make detailed predictions given sufficient data. Their psionic abilities often include a form of farseeing that is used in place of satellite scans. This ability was first mastered by the Americans and used during the Vietnam War, and was subsequently used in the Vucub-Caquix War and the Second Russian Civil War, as well as the current Guatemalan intervention.
"So you're telling me that these ancient heroes of the Maya are fighting against us?" "Yes, sir." Donald Rumsfeld, President of the United States, was worried. This would be awful for public relations. "Are we sure of this?" Eliza Mellon tried her best not to rip into the President. She knew this, and he was often incredulous of the ground situation in Guatemala. The Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, had manifested themselves and were attacking both cultist and American troops. "Yes, sir. I interfaced with the other human computers and they were absolutely sure of this." Mellon had no aids, only a file of documents for the President. She knew all of the necessary information from memory, which was in part shared with the other members of the task force in Guatemala. Rumsfeld nodded. He paged through the documents. His eyes wrinkled. "Is that -" "Yes. The Hero Twins have fallen in with the Vanguard of the Oppressed." Sure enough there was a picture contained within the dossier with the two heroes fighting alongside that irritating mosquito Esmeralda Ormanni. Rumsfeld looked up. "Do everything in your power to ensure that the public does not learn of this." "Yes, sir." "And, do tell our generals down in Guatemala that I will send our SSBNs down there. The situation has now been escalated."
The cloaked jet glided through the nighttime clouds over Guatemala. Their hold was fill and their soldiers were primed and ready to fight. It landed on the makeshift landing strip. "So they are your friends?" asked Xbalanque, one of the two Hero Twins. Beside him stood his brother, Hunahpu, and Esmeralda Ormanni. "Yes," said Esmeralda. "We have had communications for quite some time. Now, it was deemed that they would best complete their mission by helping us." "You need machines to fly," remarked Hunahpu. "We can do that ourselves." "I can in certain ways," responded Esmeralda. The jet's opening ramp descended down, and out came the reanimated corpse of Vladimir Lenin. Behind him, the other former Soviet superhumans that had rebelled against American occupation. "Greetings! We are here to serve the proletarian revolution, as you requested, Ms. Ormanni." He saluted. Esmeralda did the same. "Your assistance is most welcome." "And these are your compatriots from the sun and moon?" "Yes, we are," stated Xbalanque. Birds overhead flew this way and that way. "Your birds are very active at this time of the night," observed Lenin. "Not usually," replied Esmeralda. "Those calls," remarked Xbalanque. "I recognize them." He glanced towards Hunahpu, who reciprocated the look. "Those aren't any calls! Those are Vucub Caquix calls! He is a bird god and he has his own language. I remember some of the patterns." As if from nowhere the birds began converging on them, divebombing the jet and the rest of the small base. "Take cover!" ordered Esmeralda, who ducked behind some crates. She lifted rocks and other miscellaneous objects and threw them at the flock, to only limited success. She could see the two Hero Twins flinging beams of light at the flock; one of them charred the birds, the other froze them, making them crash into the ground. Sun and moon, she reckoned. She continued to mentally fling objects at the birds. As she continued to do so, she took down more and more of them. She was improving. Glancing over the crate, she saw Lenin focusing intensely on no one thing in particular. His contingent of Soviet superhumans was firing in perfect concord, complimenting each other's moves to the most flawless of detail. She figured it out. That troop commanding power that he was imbued with. He still had it. It would be useful against the Americans no doubt.
"For all ballistic missile submarines deployed in the Caribbean and Pacific Oceans; This is your President and Commander in Chief Donald Rumsfeld. I am certain there are questions as to why we brought you to these locations when our missiles could land on Guatemala from the mainland. The answer is that I do not expect all of our forces to survive should Vucub Caquix be revived. Projections from our intelligence indicate that the likelihood of a direct attack on the mainland is nigh-inevitable should he return on the prophesied day. In that case, we expect him to use his preexisting knowledge of American military assets gained in the last war to attack us where it hurts. He is also predicted to attack more major metropolitan areas than were afflicted in the last war. The last war saw casualties in the tens of millions. It is predicted the coming war will see causalities in the hundreds of millions. Your mission is to lie in waiting under the oceans for an occasion in which the fate of all humankind hangs in the balance. Vucub Caqux will undoubtedly send his sons and his other minions, which would be plentiful, on the US. He knows where are plenty of our bases are and likely routes of attack. He will have an intelligence boost he did not have in the 1980s, and we do not know what monsters he has in store for us. We are hesitant to use nuclear weapons on civilian areas to minimize casualties. Given his potential growth in strength, what we have may not be enough even now. On my order, or on the destruction of Washington and my own death, you are to pinpoint Vucub Caquix to obliterate him, and to destroy absolutely everything in Guatemala and the surrounding countries, to prevent him from rising again. The destruction of the Maya minority in these countries is essential to prevent another resurrection ritual as we have seen over the past few years. He knows where American bases are. He does not know where you are, and he may not easily find you. That is why you are here. You are here to kill a god."
December 14th, 2012 The high priest was worried. "They have returned! The accursed sons of Hun and Xquic have returned!" He seethed. "I thought they would have been content to stay in the skies, not interfering with our plan!" He took deep breaths. The torch-lit chamber provided small solace, even if there were some others with him. "I was worried about this," muttered Cabrakan. The high priest hoped that there would be no other interference from their old compatriots. Cabrakan did not care. "You should have planned." "And we have!" proclaimed the high priest. "We have! We have prepared our best fighters, bred from the best Maya stock, to fight against them should the need arise! We can take down their machines, and surely we can take down these two impetuous children!" Cabrakan mused. He attempted to come up with the best thing to say. He did not want to give off the impression that this cause was doomed. "You underestimate my power." The voice came not from any person. They did not hear the voice, they felt it, speaking directly to them in their very own heads. "I sensed their coming as soon as the pale rodents first arrived from the land across the sea. I could hear them speak, in the distance, as these vermin sent their machines into the sky, and landed on the moon and went near the sun. The twins were waiting for what they deemed the most opportune time to defend their people. I am surprised they did not challenge me in the last war." Cabrakan and the priest nodded. "But fear not. In but a few days I will return. Cabrakan, you and your brother will be the first wave, as you have frustrated the invaders. But I will come, as has been foretold by my priests. I know their weaknesses now, and my rightful reign will commence in due time." "I am sorry for doubting you, my lord! Please, have mercy!" repented the priest. He surged into pain, falling onto his knees. He clutched his head and screamed, begging for forgiveness for this sin. He gesticulated and gasped for breath. Cabrakan merely looked on. The pain stopped. The priest took a deep breath. "That was not enough for death, but enough for discipline. The day of glory draws near." And Vucub-Caquix ceased to speak.
Somewhere in Rockbridge County, Virginia December 15th, 2012 The security doors slammed shut as John Gonzalez and his entourage entered the base secluded in the mountains, far away from any major city (if you could call Lexington and Buena Vista cities). He had been told of events of great importance that could not be discussed via any form of telecommunication, how important they were. He was followed by his staff, but he himself was the man in charge of this installation. "Parker! O'Donnell! Prepare our sentinels for release! It was they who requested this meeting!" They entered the room where all the human computers were restrained, lying on their backs surrounded by a metal cocoon. Connected to their heads were wires and tubes, united in a metal ring around their forehead. One by one, the machines deactivated, the combined psionic energy of the human computers dissipating into their individual minds. The cocoons withdrew, and one by one they got up. "Mr. Gonzalez!" they exclaimed. One, the leader of the team, a woman by the name of Annette Zhou, went up to speak with him. "He is busy, but Rumsfeld wants to hear of this live. We are activating the direct comlink." That comlink, the both of them knew, was the single most secure connection in the world; the only one on which such matters could be discussed. It was psionic merged with electronic, with state of the art encryption beyond anything else in the government. The television screen descended from the ceiling and the entire group took seats in the side of the room; it was designed such that communication could happen easily between all branches of the government with the base nestled in the mountains. Rumsfeld appeared on the screen. Bodyguards were behind him. "What are your findings?" he asked, getting straight to the point. The image of Rumsfeld shrunk and moved towards the side. On the right hand of the screen appeared a tremendously complicated graph of various different waves in a plethora of colors. "We are receiving psionic energy from Guatemala to levels that we have never seen," described Zhou. Gonzalez nodded. "A significant amount of these new emanations are consistent with those emitted by Vucub Caquix since the war in the 1980s. They are increasing in magnitude in just about every way at rates we have not seen in years." Rumsfeld nodded. "So it is doomsday." "It looks like it. But that is not the only thing that is worrying us. The fluctuations of Vucub Caquix's energy are accompanied by an entirely new source of psionic energy, that too gets stronger and stronger, although to the point of the God himself. To make a long story short we are dealing not only with Vucub Caquix but with something else." "What would that happen to be?" "We don't know." Gonzalez glanced at Zhou. She glanced back. Rumsfeld glanced at both of them. The rest of the people in the room glanced at each other. There was a long, painful silence. "Mr. Gonzalez," Rumsfeld said as he broke the silence. "Your weapon." Gonzalez's eyes shot wide open. His breathing became very quiet. "It is nowhere ready, Mr. President. It is too dangerous. You are asking me to potentially rip a hole in reality, and who knows what that could entail." Rumsfeld was steely eyed. "If it works, we will have no more reason to continue the dirty war we have in Guatemala. There will be no more reason for the lynchings of people like you, like that which had your father shot to death in front of you." Gonzalez became very pale. The appeal to his heritage was strong, but he maintained his position. "If it works." "Mr. Gonzalez, as the President of the United States and the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, I order you to activate the weapon." There was another long silence. "Yes, sir," replied Gonzalez. "But we need a human computer as the test subject." He glanced around the room, apprehension in every human computer's eyes. "I'll do it," proclaimed Annette Zhou. "If I need to die to prevent Doomsday so be it."
The metallic clutches strapped Annette Zhou into the machine that was the Department of Defense Superhuman Research Division's hopeful trump card in the coming war. She breathed deep breaths and tried not to panic. The cover went over her, sealing itself into a socket and locking the hatches. In the small torpedo-shaped container, wires and clamps and other implements penetrated her skin. There was a small microphone and speaker that let her communicate with the outside researchers. She knew that the other human computers were locked into other interfaces, but she was the subject. "Annette," said Gonzalez through the microphone, "I know you are worried, but understand that in doing this you are brave and loyal. The other test subjects had gone insane from this, rambling on and on about some sort of being that talked to them. What disturbs me is the consistency, the possibility that there are beings beyond us. But no matter; if this works you will save us all." "Thank you." That is all Annette said. Gonzalez inspected the console one last time. "Everyone, to your stations!" He called out to his crew. "Psionic Amplifiers?" "Check!" "Psionic Conduits?" "Good to go, sir!" "Generators?" "Up and running!" "Life support stable?" "Yes sir!" "Very well!" he proclaimed. He unlocked the glass case covering the activation lever, grabbed it, and pulled it. Electrical noises from the generators began humming, then whirring, then screeching. Tremendous amounts of psionic energy were being shunted into this woman, the most every brought into a single human being. It was tweaked from past experiments, of course, but even so it was the largest amount of the experiments. Annette braced herself. The energy coursed through her, at first shocking her. She breathed more and more heavily, and tried to remain of sound mind. As the energy surged, she began to feel some ... thing. Some experience, some emotion, some knowledge of something ... She felt everything. Everything. It felt as if her mind had opened its doors not only to her surroundings, but to all existence. She experienced the existence of stars and galaxies and planets, and civilizations and beings and indeed other universes. She experienced the existence of things for which words did not exist. She was catapulted from reality to reality at breakneck pace, seeing all that was in all forms. She could barely think. She could only experience. "Annette." It was a voice. It was not Gonzalez or anyone else she recognized. "You have gotten this far, and their test has succeeded. Do not worry for you will get out of this safely." The voice paused. Existence continued flowing into her. "You will save your civilization in more ways than one, and you will save many, many more. I have faith that your efforts will succeed." Everything then stopped. She was back in the compartment, still shackled. She was in a daze, but conscious and alert, but dazed. A daze of other existences still lingered in her. She felt something off. Something wrong. Something malevolent. Something in the back of everything. It was mobile, it was present, and it was not Vucub-Caquix (she knew his frequencies from the data that had been tested; frequencies translated into some sort of odd experience she could not describe). The container rose, the cover lifted, and the shackles unlocked. She was breathing erratically. "Is she alive?" asked Gonzalez. "Are you okay? Annette, do you hear me?" She heard him, felt his presence, his very being. She mustered up the words to speak. "I am alive. I can't say anything else. I don't know what happened, but I felt absolutely everything." Gonzalez' eyebrows rose. "Does that mean ... we've succeeded?" "Maybe." She searched her memories for something, anything familiar. Her home. Her childhood home in Santa Monica. She clung to that memory as a bulwark of sanity in an otherwise insane universe. She willed to be there with all her might, to be in a simpler time in simpler situations. And then there she was. Standing in the yard of the house she had grown up in. Her parents had long since moved out, but there it was. She walked around a bit, testing her strength. She was fine. She was focusing. Other realities were still present in her mind. Of universes beyond her own comprehension. She focused on one, randomly, and lo and behold she found herself in the crowds of an iron city. People in odd clothing and hats (especially hats, which tended towards three points in some way) strode around. She looked up, and saw a gigantic purple crystal, shaped in some vaguely spherical geometric form, towering over the city. Ethereal entities resembling humans floated around in the sky, as did iron ships with red crystals on them. She selected another reality, on a whim. She drifted in space, peering into its vastness. There was a planet and a sun in the distance; the planet was not Earth. There were satellites orbiting it. Nearby were some sort of vehicles, colored in bluish chrome with green accents, firing beams at opponents who were black and purple. They were two armadas at war, for what, nobody could tell. She was floating. She could breath, or did not need to breath. She could also move, and observed the ships. There were windows in the chrome ones, and in them bestrode mechanical insectoid constructions in a similar color scheme, scampering about and interfacing with consoles. She then decided that was enough. She willed her way back into the Rockbridge County installation, in the very room she had awoken from her haze in. She could still feel all reality, but she could hardly make sense of it. It was only a smorgasbord of experiences all felt at once. She could hardly think of words for it. Gonzalez saw her appear. His jaw dropped. "It worked."
"Annette! You're alive!" called out Gonzalez. Annette just stared at him. "I am." He didn't hear her, at least not with his ears, as one would hear sound waves. He felt it, and he knew the sentiment. "Is this telepathy?" he asked. Most normal humans only had limited ability to receive telepathic messages. "I think so." She could feel their emotions, read their minds to a degree. The crowd of researchers and human computers stood there in fear and awe. She could feel it, primally, as she could feel other realities in the back of her mind. "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO - WOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Sirens. The installation's alarms were going off. "What is this for?" asked Annette indignantly, still not opening her mouth. They still all heard her. "Hostile forces converging on this facility. Prepare for lockdown." The siren continued to blare. "All of you, to the safehouse! I will see what my powers can do." "Are you sure, Annette? Are you sure this is a good idea?" blurted out Gonzalez. "You literally just got them!" "We need a field test, and what better time than now?" She envisioned the outside of the facility, and sure enough she was there. A mob of Vucub Caquix cultists, apparently recently possessed, were marching on the facility with guns and jury-rigged APCs made from civilian vehicles. Out of the ground popped turrets, which began firing on the invading forces. She began focusing on one cultist near the front of their group. She focused on him, and could feel the psionic energy welling up inside her. She concentrated all her thoughts on him, and commanded her natural talents to manifest upon him. He stopped, dropped his gun, screamed, and dropped dead. The cultists stopped. There was a frenetic chatter among them, in Spanish and in English. What could she do with her other powers in regards to objects? Metal had no mind, and metal was what composed the APCs. Could she make portals? Of the morass of universes that flowed through her head, she picked some other place with no planets nearby, only the void and distant stars. She focused on that, not willing herself to go there, but willed the universe 'towards' a pickup truck. Under the truck opened a portal to this starry void. The air started flowing into this void, which seemed to suck in things around it. These things included trucks and people. The people screamed and the truck engines accelerated to no avail. The portal closed, and they were gone. They began fleeing. "Could I teleport myself over there?" She envisioned it. She imagined herself standing in front of the fleeing cultists, and lo and behold she was. She focused on them as a group. The psionic energy flowed through her, and materialized around the group as a purplish field surrounding them. They stopped in awe. Then they stopped living. They fell to the ground, and the field evaporated in a shockwave that sent the grass flying out. They were gone. She envisioned other places, other worlds, but did not go to them. She chose to look at places she had been before. Her hometown. Places in Rockbridge County. Washington D.C. Guatemala. She lingered on the base in Guatemala she was deployed on for a while helping with intelligence. She looked at it from overhead. She saw light. Fire. Combat. There was Karoly Bakos and several other superheroes, accompanied by regular army men and women. They were fighting off more cultists, apparently with more to their name than just soldiers. They had birds and other animals of a ghastly kind aiding them. She concentrated on that point. It was in the air, but she felt she could fly based on her experiences right out of the test chamber. She envisioned herself there. Sure enough, there she was, floating over the base in Guatemala. The battle raged. And she was ready.
This base was not only an air base; it was one of the major field logistics centers fielded by the US in Guatemala. Since it was so close to the projected Doomsday Karoly Bakos could only imagine that Vucub Caquix had something up his sleeve, given the massive army of cultists attacking it. They were armed with powers of flame as well as both melee weapons and projectile weapons pilfered from the Americans and the Guatemalan government. They didn't much discriminate based on what weapons they used; they just wanted to fight for their God. Bakos was playing a less direct frontal role; instead of fighting them head on, he would teleport behind the advancing lines and take them out that way, with his own guns or grenades. He would throw grenades into cultist tanks, usually an Abrams stolen from the US, and phase away before they exploded. Otherwise, he had knifes to assassinate soldiers, and pistols for when those wouldn't work. It was exhausting. American bullets flew in his general direction, and he phased several times a minute to dodge fire from both sides. He phased behind an advancing column to breath for a moment. And then some sort of gash, some sort of maw, opened up. He could see distant stars through it. "What in God's name?!" he exclaimed. He phased away from it. The air in the area began flowing away, and the cultists were sucked into it. The portal closed, and there was scarcely anything left of them. He looked in awe. He scanned the area to see if anything was coming. "Hampton, are you detecting this portal thing?" he asked into his transceiver. Hampton, who was helping them remotely in Guatemala City, sounded shocked. "There was an attack on a research facility in Virginia by embedded cultists. It was marked by a tremendous outburst of undirected psionic energy, and now that energy has made its way down there. Apparently, you guys there have backup." "What the hell do you mean, Hampton?" "He means me." Bakos did not hear the voice. He felt it. He thought it. He scampered around, terrified, wondering where this voice came from. "Behind you." He turned around. He saw, floating, a woman in scientific garb unleashing portals and killing cultists with some form of psionic energy. "I am Annette Zhou. We worked together a bit a few years ago, and now, for reasons I don't have to explain, I have all sorts of bizarre powers." "Well, for whatever this is worth, thanks. You're up there; can you see how much is left?" "I can see that they are being routed." "Good show, good show, Ms. Zhou!" acclaimed Bakos. In the distance, he heard cheers at the base. Then screams. He saw planes and tanks and trucks being levitated, crumpled, and thrown about. One slammed right into a control tower, which fell right down. "What is happening?" asked Annette. "I can sense something hostile, but I'm not sure what." "Oh, I know who this is." "Who?" "The Vanguard."
The air control tower that managed this base's incoming aircraft toppled as a crumpled up jet was flung at it. No doubt it was Esmeralda. "They must have known this was somehow coming!" spat Bakos. "Are they in league with Vucub-Caquix?" "No. I can sense the psionic emissions. I feel from them ... opportunism. They saw that you would be under attack and decided to strike when you were weak." Bakos was still adjusting to how Annette spoke through psionic emissions and not through her voice. Nevertheless he understood. "Can you read their minds?" "Not from this distance. But I can get the gist of their intentions." "What the hell are the two of you waiting for?" cried out Mark Wheeling from the battle. "Get over here!" Annette and Bakos each teleported in their own way to Wheeling, who was using his powers of various energy fields to take town cultists. Esmeralda threw a hunk of metal at them, which Wheeling destroyed with a field opening from within it. He enlarged the spherical field, glowing gold, to block other projectiles. "Hampton!" called Bakos into the transceiver, "what is the status of the Vanguard attack?" Hampton could be heard typing and talking into other microphones. "Their main jet is overhead. You could cripple the Vanguard as a whole if you can take it down. It appears most of the Vanguard is on the ground, but even so we could take prisoners." Annette glanced to both of them. "Take down Ormanni. I can deal with the jet." She leaped into the air, scanned for the jet, found it circling the base, and pursued it. Wheeling and Bakos advanced. Wheeling deactivated the defensive energy shield and gathered his strength, only deviating to take down the hunks of rock and metal being thrown at them. Esmeralda hovered closer on her platform, specially made to be manipulated by her. "Your reign of terror is just about over! Just get out, and stop your genocide!" she snarled, almost frothing at the mouth. "I have not seen anything good from your presence, and I can't imagine people as intelligent as you have! Why do you do this?" She said this as she threw more and more debris at them. "Keep her occupied! I need time to set up a two-point field!" Bakos nodded, and teleported behind her. He opened fire on her with his pistol (even superheroes had them, depending on their powers), and before she could respond he teleported again to her side. He zipped around like a particularly annoying bug, throwing punches or bullets. Around them were two yellow points, one on either side of a line with Esmeralda as the center, each slowly forming a hemisphere. When done, it would trap her in a spherical field. Esmeralda, panicked, called into her own transceiver. "Rodriguez, get the jet to my location and provide fire support!" "Si!" called out Rodriguez, the pilot. The jet came zipping towards her, guns getting ready to fire. And then it stopped in midair as a rift in reality opened behind it. The jet was not stopped; rather it was being pulled back into the starry void. Bakos could see Annette floating behind them all. Rodriguez, no matter how good a pilot, could not escape the air being evacuated into the void. The ship came to a brief halt, then fell into the rift. The rift then closed. By then, the field around Esmeralda had completed. She was trapped. "So, Ms. Ormanni, at long last. We can talk," remarked Bakos. "And, as per Washington, I have a proposition for you."
The last few hours were a haze to Esmeralda. She remembered Bakos giving her an offer, but she went out cold shortly thereafter. She woke up in a holding device that surrounded her in her entirety. On her head was a frame that injected into her cranium. She tried shaking it off with her powers, but nothing. It was a psionic inhibitor. When used in certain ways they could prevent superhumans from using their abilities. Here, she was powerless. She looked to the sides, and saw other Vanguard superhumans. The Hero Twins. Lenin. Many other of her compatriots. On the other side of the room was a screen. In front of said screen stood Annette Zhou, Karoly Bakos, and Mark Wheeling, alongside other superhumans and regular infantry. A man in a lab coat walked into view. "They are all conscious, as you have requested." "Very well," replied Bakos. The screen turned on. On it was Donald Rumsfeld, President of the United States. "The Vanguard of the Oppressed, brought to heel at last. Such a shame that it came to this, but this is how the world unfolded. Now, to cut to the chase, Mr. Bakos said we had a proposition. We do." There was a silence of a few seconds. "And that is?" asked Esmeralda. "It's simple, really. Help us take down Vucub Caquix and his minions and we will withdraw from Guatemala." The Vanguard mumbled among itself. Hunahpu tensed up, shaking the capsule but not breaking it. The guards readied their guns. "And how can we be certain?" he growled. "What strategic interest would we have in this country if the main threat is gone?" "Efrain Rios Montt." "Oh, him," sighed Rumsfeld. "He is the person who Guatemala has chosen to lead them. He is the people's choice!" "He came to power in a coup!" spat Esmeralda. "Why would we want to keep him here?" "Tell me, Ms. Ormanni, what choice do you have? The capsules in which you stand are rigged to kill each and every one of you, and if they can't, the men and women in front of you sure as hell can. And besides, if it gets out that you refused to save the world from this monstrosity, you would go down in history as ideologues and jacobins. Hundreds of millions of lives are on the line and yet you fight us? Would not those who die count as 'oppressed?' Are you willing to make that kind of sacrifice for your own vanity?" More silence. Esmeralda knew that he had a point. She detested him and his military-industrial complex, but realistically they had the best chance of taking down a god. And she was no fan of Vucub-Caquix; the Vanguard had defended civilians against the attacks of his cultists several times. He was a greedy, nigh-infinitely powerful thing. And the Vanguard was only a few people. "No." The Vanguard gasped. The Americans remained quiet. "I accept your offer on the condition that all American troops are withdrawn from Guatemala after he is defeated." Rumsfeld nodded. "Of course."
As the Vanguard was integrated into the broader Allied command structure the world looked fearfully on that small Central American country. The world news was waiting with apprehension; would there even be money to earn after this? They didn't know. In Washington and in Guatemala City and in the other capitals of the world the leaders of all the nations prepared for what had been dreaded. The Doomsday Clock moved its second hand closer and closer to midnight, and its handlers prayed that it would be a folly and nothing more. The submarines that President Rumsfeld had dispatched to the Pacific and Caribbean were on high alert. The cities of the United States, and of anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, prepared for the cataclysm. It was doomsday. December 21st, 2012. The new baktun. The new age. Or so they thought. When the sun rose that morning in St. John's and in Joao Pessoa the world seemed quiet. Perhaps it was a fluke? Would it not happen? Those in the eastern parts of that hemisphere hoped to whatever deity they prayed to that this was merely a scare. But the sun in its inevitable march westward came unto the war-torn highlands of Guatemala, and the earth began to shake. As hill gave to ravine, out emerged a flock of birds and other creatures loyal to the rebellious bird god. And then, the giant bird, the bird whose arrival heralded doomsday. Out rose Vucub Caquix. Befitting a deity of the sun, great rays of fire and light emanated from the deity, squashing any and all foreign positions in his kingdom, his civilization. His loyal flocks flew in two directions: north, to the power that currently shackled his kingdom, and northeast, to the power that had shackled it for centuries in the past. Still more went to clear his kingdom for himself. And he began to move northward, destroying anything and anyone that did not match his vision of perfection. And as millions burned, very few were aware of the presence that lurked in the shadow of Jupiter, watching very attentively the affairs of the third planet from Sol. But this presence knew that a small team of researchers had detected its psionic emissions. It knew that they had an inkling of the affairs of something far beyond them. It waited.
Excerpts from a live feed by Der Spiegel, December 21st, 2012, Massive flocks of birds and other creatures spotted off the coasts of the Canary Islands. [...] Contact with the Canary Islands has been lost. All armed forces in Europe are on high alert. [...] Video feet reveals that Cabrakan, the Mayan Earthquake God and son of Vucub Caquix, has made landfall near Huelva. NATO forces are being deployed to Spain. [...] Seville, Granada, Cordoba, Malaga, and other cities in Andalusia have been nearly destroyed. Refugees are fleeing northward towards Madrid and Murcia. [...] Cabrakan's army is moving towards Madrid. The city is being fortified. [...] The surviving population of the Madrid region is estimated at four percent of the pre-doomsday total. [...] American, British, and French nuclear weapons have been launched onto Spain. There are unconfirmed reports of a massive psionic energy field around Cabrakan's army. [...] Ballistic missiles have seemingly froze in the air over Cabrakan's army. Psionic interference is suspected. [...] Barcelona, Zaragoza, Valladolid, and other major Spanish cities have been destroyed via nuclear bomb. Others are being destroyed by Cabrakan's armies. [...] Toulouse has been destroyed in a nuclear blast. [...] Southampton, Portsmouth, and the rest of coastal Hampshire have been destroyed in nuclear blasts. [...] The Cote d'Azur in France has been destroyed in nuclear blasts. [...] Less than ten percent of the population of Normandy is expected to have survived nuclear blasts. Bordeaux and Nantes have been destroyed. [...] French government functions are being boarded onto planes to parts unknown. It is suspected they will go to the British deployments at Akrotiri and Dhekelia on Cyprus. [...] Nuclear bombs have dropped on Paris. [...] Nuclear bombs have dropped on London. British government functions are being evacuated to Scotland. [...] American military administration is being moved to somewhere in the former Soviet Union. [...] There is no signal coming from the Low Countries. [...] Forces from all over Eastern Europe are designating Prague as the the site for a pitched battle. Civilians west of Prague are recommended to move eastward. [...] The Valley of the Ruhr emits no communications. [...] Midnight, Prague time: European forces are converging around Prague. Refugees are being settled in former Eastern Bloc countries. Anyone in Bavaria or Baden-Wurttemberg is encouraged to go north or east; no bombs have hit Berlin or Hamburg or points to the north. Those in France, Spain, or Britain are advised to stay hidden.
Nobody would ever have guessed that one day Vladimir Lenin would be leading US troops in Guatemala. But lo and behold there he was atop a watchtower, directing a combination of American and remnant Vanguard troops. The Vanguard did not have enough survivors to form its own unit and so were impressed into service with the rest of the deployment at this location, named Fort Schwarzkopf. The encampment was being besieged by human and animal acolytes of Vucub Caquix, who was moving northward. They could still see the the firestorms he left in his wake, befitting a god of the sun. Esmeralda and Karoly worked together to defend one gate, as did the Hero Twins on another. Mark Wheeling and some lower-ranked American superhumans guarded a third. And, directly stemming the tide some meters away, fought Annette Zhou. She was rapidly becoming adept at staying the tide of the men and lizards and birds that swarmed them. She opened rifts and sucked them in, and focused on individual soldiers to psionically overwhelm them, thereby having them drop dead. She focused on one group of human cultists. They were armed with weapons taken from the American presence. She began opening a rift behind them. And then she fell to the ground, some malicious entity above her. It was scaly and green, and exuded a tremendous amount of heat. She gathered her strength and attempted to push it off, and succeeded after several minutes of doing so. It occurred to her that she didn't teleport away. The surprise must have affected her to the point that it simply did not occur to do so, and that being physically pinned made it hard to concentrate on teleporting. She teleported into the air, and then realized this was no ordinary demon. It was Zipacna, a son of Vucub Caquix. He roared. "Come down, you pitiable thing!" He looked up and spewed fire from his mouth, invoking the sun in doing so. As she dodged his attacks she tried to psionically overwhelm him. She focused more and more energy unto the lizard, but to no avail. He had some sort of 'shield' if that made any sense. So little things in psionics, and especially with this new ability to rip holes in the fabric of reality, could be truly expressed in words. She opened a rift behind him. Some cultists were sucked in, but Zipacna anchored his claws into the ground. He even could resist the tug of the void while moving, although moving more slowly. She threw voids and psionic energy at him. Nothing. "What is going on? Why? This thing is beyond me! And they thought they'd turn me into a god that could stop this sun-monster, to say nothing of his son!" she thought to herself, getting more frantic. More and more rifts. More and more attempts to psionically overwhelm the beast. More and more dodging. It occurred to her to try something she had not done. Something risky. The presence of her mind of all realities became her half-focus, the other half being Zipacna. She had no idea if this would do anything, or leave her alive even, but some recklessness may be of use. She focused on channeling the two concepts together, if that made any sense. Her mind began entering a haze. She saw everything again. Everything. The blur of all existence overwhelmed her, but it seemed like it was flowing through a conduit. Through herself. "Annette." "What?" she mentally screamed. "Who the hell are you?" "You have found a way to save your people. Practice this, hone this, and your great enemy will be vanquished." The voice paused. "And then you will be called to greater things." "What? What does that mean? What does any of this mean? Tell me! Tell me!" Nothing. She fell to the ground. She dug herself out of a ditch, which was odd, because she did not remember a ditch being there. She climbed out and saw a roughly hemispherical trench having manifested itself. She clambered out. Zipacna was nowhere to be seen.