The Superior Squad

Origins
World War II saw a number of enhanced combatants, men and women with incredible strength and superhuman abilities, enter the field of war. After the war ended, many of these combatants were dismissed from service and left to fend for themselves in a vastly more complex world, and it was only a matter of time before one or more of them became a threat from which innocent people would be unable to defend themselves.

Nobody saw the danger of this more than the most renowned enhanced combatant himself, the American operative known as Agent Apex. Having been present on the frontlines as the enemy unleashed their own enhanced humans, he knew that a real threat was now being posed to innocent people across the world.

Agent Apex outlined a plan for an enhanced defense initiative named the Superior strategy, which focused on creating a network of superhuman operatives who could be called into action if and when a threat to humanity emerged. However, this plan was dismissed by arrogant government officials who declared that if humanity had seen its way through two World Wars, it could protect itself against anything the world could throw at it.

Although disheartened by this dismissal, Agent Apex knew that his plan was valid, and began developing the strategy independently.

The Superior Strategy
Over the following twelve months, Agent Apex travelled to a variety of towns and cities across the country, finding individuals who had been identified as potential enhanced humans and offering them the chance to be a part of the Superior strategy. His reputation and quiet passion for the program gained him a lot of acceptance, and he began to form a strong and cohesive network of individuals across the country.

Although the network remained off the books and strictly unofficial, Agent Apex advised the recruits to train and prepare for the unimaginable and, inspired by the world's greatest hero, they each took to the task with vigour.

The Founder Invasion
The Superior strategy was called into action for the first time in July 1947, when an alien race known as The Founders launched a worldwide invasion of the planet Earth, intending to destroy all life and rebuild the world so they were able to colonise. When their spacecraft materialised in the skies above a number of major cities and landmarks around the world, Agent Apex's first move was to activate the Superior strategy and call his fellow enhanced humans to arms.

Heroes around the world answered the call and took the fight to the Founders on battlefields around the world. The frontline of the defense was in Roswell, New Mexico, where the Founder mothership had appeared and a core group of superhumans had gathered.

The heroes of Earth fought back and ultimately the Founder Invasion was repelled, the invaders fleeing into outer space in the knowledge that the planet was protected.

The Superior Squad
In the aftermath of the Founder Invasion, governments of the world agreed to create a more cooperative relationship in order to better protect the planet, and ultimately the Unified Nations was formed by 97% of the nations of the world as a single democratic government entity dedicated to the preservation and prolonged survival of the human race.

This new unified government was more receptive to Agent Apex's superhuman defense initiative than the former United States government had been, and they reopened discussions of the Superior strategy. They offered Agent Apex free reign and funding to build the network, under the condition that they would be a part of UNION, the Unified Nations global peacekeeping force.

Knowing that large organisations, however benevolent, are run by people with agendas that may prevent them from being able to assist in certain missions that required their attention, Agent Apex declined this offer, deciding that the Superior strategy was too important a thing to be left open to compromise and corruption.

He had also come to the realisation that he was better suited to leading a small group rather than attempting to coordinate a worldwide network of unrelated operatives. So while the aspirations of the strategy were still global in scale, he elected to leave the responsibility of building such a network to his former comrade-in-arms, the British enhanced combatant known as Monarch, who was better connected and more suited to the role.

Agent Apex, on the other hand, gathered some of his closest allies from the Founder Invasion and formed a team which would come to be known as The Superior Squad, tasked with leading the defense of Earth against extraordinary threats.

The Cult of Creed
The first mission of the newly-formed Superior Squad saw them in direct conflict with a charismatic cult leader calling himself Creed, who had taken over a small town in Montana and instructed his followers to carry out acts of violence and chaos with the promise of ascending the mortal plane and becoming one with the universe. The Superior Squad arrived in Montana and attempted to contain the violence while ensuring no harm came to the inhabitants of the town, whether or not they were part of Creed's cult.

In actual fact, Creed was a psychic vampire who was using his superhuman abilities to exert mind control on the inhabitants of the town, while feeding on the negative psychic energy of their violent actions. He was able to brainwash Doctor Photon, the youngest member of the Squad into becoming one of his thralls, and for a short while it looked as though she would be lost forever.

However, while Creed had become extremely powerful thanks to his ongoing influence over the town, the Squad was able to distract him for long enough for Doctor Photon to break free of his control and disorient him with a powerful blast from her Photon Staff. This caused his concentration to break, and his control over the inhabitants of the town faltered, allowing the team to incapacitate him without causing any injuries to the townspeople. Creed was imprisoned in a brand new UNION facility known as The Vault and the Superior Squad had their first official success.

Worldwide Influence
Subsequent missions took the Superior Squad around the world to face a variety of threats.

In Arthurstone in Scotland, an army of clockwork robots menaced the population under the command of an insane scientist calling himself Professor Mainspring who wished to destroy modern technology and return the world to a simpler, more elegant time. Skywatch and Doctor Photon proved themselves adept at disassembling these malicious automatons, while the Beacon was able to convince the Professor that invasion and destruction would not bring him contentment. This distraction gave the Eclipse enough time to intervene and teleport the scientist into UNION custody, and his remaining clockwork robots were broken down and locked away in a secure facility.

In Kuningaskunta in Finland the team battled an ancient iron golem who had awakened and started attacking local mining communities, angry that their drilling had disturbed him from his long slumber. Using the power of the moon to convince the creature that the prophesied Eternal Night had fallen, the Eclipse was able to drive the golem back into his long slumber. The rest of the team confronted the mining bosses and Cinder advised them that there were much worse things sleeping under the surface of the Earth than an iron golem, and the longer they kept drilling the more likely they were to awaken one of the bad things.

Later the team journeyed to The World Under All, a magical realm thought lost in a great cosmic accident, and helped Queen Maeve of the Seelie Fae to rid her people of a strange magical plague. While Agent Apex, Skywatch and Doctor Photon fell victim to this plague, it was left to Beacon to coordinate the magical heroes on the team. The Eclipse discovered that the plague was linked to the dark being of shadow known as Oblivion, whose influence was beginning to spread throughout the magical realms, and ultimately Cinder was able to burn the infection away from the World Under All, saving the Seelie Fae and her teammates.

They even faced threats from the future, and the alternate realities bordering on their own, proving victorious against a variety of strange and unimaginable threats over their tenure as the world's greatest superhero team.

The Siege of Kymeria
In the mid-1960s a hostile foreign nation known as Kymeria came to the forefront of the Unified Nations' concerns. Having refused to join the UN in the aftermath of the Founder Invasion, the country had made several aggressive moves towards the global government in the subsequent years under the command of an insane despotic ruler named Countess Chaos. This had been monitored for a number of years, until in the year 1962 when they erected state of the art, impenetrable force shields around the borders to the country, sealing themselves off from the outside world and encasing themselves in a bubble that rendered the contents invisible to any and all monitoring technology.

Rumours swirled around the country as to what was occurring within their borders, with theories ranging from advanced weapons technology research to dark occult rituals. All attempts at investigating the actions of the country were blocked, both by advanced technology and by international politics that prevented the UN from interfering in the affairs of a nation who had refused to join the coalition.

In 1964, a Kymerian death squad instigated an attack on a town in the neighbouring country of Stelmaria, utilising a prototype poison gas which killed thousands of innocent civilians. This was the incident which the Unified Nations used to intervene, and ordered a covert, off-the-books mission to infiltrate the country and bring back vital intel about Kymerian resources and intentions. The Superior Squad was tasked with carrying out this mission, as their members were uniquely suited to combat potential superhuman threats, and it was agreed that Agent Apex and Skywatch would go undercover in Kymeria.

The initial infiltration was successful, and the pair were able to return valuable data about the country. They identified that Countess Chaos was using a combination of technology and dark magic to brainwash the denizens of the country into becoming her own army, with the goal of provoking war in the outside world and ruling over the wasteland from the comfort of her Kymerian throne.

However, Agent Apex and Skywatch were lured into a trap, and surrounded by scores of brainwashed Kymerian civilians. Unable to fight back for fear of hurting innocents, they agreed to be brought before the Countess to be judged.

When the Countess appeared to them, her first action was to brutally murder Skywatch in front of his teammate, making sure the members of the Superior Squad who had remained on the outside of the force shields were able to hear their friend and comrade die. She then took Agent Apex prisoner, and subjected him to multiple days of torture and interrogation, during which time he refused to give up any information.

On the final day of his incarceration, Countess Chaos hijacked satellites around the world to make a global television broadcast. She wished to show the world their greatest hero, broken and begging for mercy, and the world watched in utter horror and despair. When Agent Apex once again refused to bow to her, and she received reports of UNION troops and the remainder of the Superior Squad gathering at the border, she mercilessly executed Agent Apex on live television.

The entire world was shocked, and in the following moments the sorceress Cinder, a member of the Superior Squad and wife of Agent Apex, unleashed the full fury of her fiery magic and immolated the entire country of Kymeria, burning every man, woman and child, every animal and every acre of ground to white hot ash. The flames burned so hot that the nation was scorched off the face of the planet, the entire country being transported to the hell dimension known as Tartarus. Cinder fell into a coma, the stress of conjuring such an inferno forcing her body to shut down, and the rest of the team were helpless to do anything.

Aftermath
In the days after the Siege of Kymeria ended, the remaining members of the Superior Squad considered their options carefully. With two members dead, one incapacitated and their global reputation shattered, they made the only decision they felt to be fitting, and disbanded the team, going their separate ways and allowing a new generation of heroes to rise up and inspire the world.

Members
The Squad retained the same core group of members over the years, occasionally recruiting new 'honorary' members for particular missions.