Vindicates Chapter 1

Chapter One of Vindicates.

## Story

**AGE OF VINDICATION

- 2183, May 20**

It's been almost a hundred and fifty years since the Age of Heroes ended...

Times have changed, a lot. I'm sure that there's some of you wondering what happened back then exactly? Well it doesn't matter now. All of those old heroes, however you want to remember them, envision them, whatever version of them you have in mind, they're all dead.

I suppose you want to know who I am? My name's Rhodey Stark, a descendant of Tony Stark, my great-grandfather, if that means anything to you. The world, or rather galaxy we live in now is largely controlled by fear. There aren't any "heroes" around anymore, any enhanced individuals that do exist are either locked down in a lab somewhere in secret, being experimented on, in constant surveillance as a "free" citizen, or they're being used as as a weapon for the military to deploy against rebels or aliens. Super soldiers, not heroes, are all that fight against those who would destroy us in 2183, but I'm going to change all of that.

Why am I doing this? Going against the law, putting a team together? My reasons vary. The Terminus Systems are full of pirates nobody wants to do anything about, the UEGA itself is corrupt and mixed in with a bunch of giant, multi-planetary corporations with there own paramilitaries that govern themselves, without their people's best interest in mind. There are four, going on three super-powers in the Milky Way, and none of them have the power to do anything about the threats that are coming, not while they're butting each others heads. There's the Citadel, an intergovernmental organization more akin to the old United Nations on Earth, albeit a bit more centralized and organised, the Galactic Federation, which is of course a federation, the Covenant, a fanatical theological Empire, and the United Earth Government Alliance or UEGA, which calls itself a republic. The UEGA is the youngest, and it's shrinking every day thanks to the Covenant's campaign against humanity. There are multiple threats to humanity aside from just the Covenant, including but not limited to Metroids, Geth, numerous hostile aliens on colony worlds, and all of the different gangs of pirates in the Terminus Systems. We're caught between multiple rocks and two hard places, and we're being squished as the Covenant continue to make vague innocuous threats to both the Federation and Citadel if they continue to support human elements in their respective governments, whilst the former plead for them to stop. I calculate it's only a matter of time before both get involved.

Through my own research, I have reason to believe several galaxy-level extinction events are coming to us soon, and it's all connected. There are things lying dormant in our galaxy, in dark-space, things that dispatched all of the previous empires that came before us, and if we don't work together, we're as doomed as they were.

I'm here to make sure that despite all of the fighting between different factions, there will be response teams, and if we need it, an army, to counter the threats that are about to befall the galaxy. In short we need heroes again.

When I first found the old Watchtower, it was broken and in dire need of repair. The Waynes and Starks funded and built this thing together, this was a part of my family's legacy. It was akin to finding an old musket your grandfather used in the Civil War, albeit more fun to use. I landed my ship and made my way straight to the control tower, uploaded J.A.R.V.I.S into the mainframe, and got to work. Just as I thought, there was an old MK7 suit still here. It obviously needed to be upgraded with new tech, but otherwise was good to go. I asked Jarvis to show me our possible candidates, and as things were, the bounty hunter Samus Aran seemed to be the most viable recruit at the moment...

## Trivia

Chapter One is the only chapter written from a first-person perspective. In-universe, it's likely a recording from Rhodey.

Deviantart link here.