Post by Midnight on May 28, 2017 20:29:32 GMT -5
El Diablo Rojo!
By P.Michael Hodge
"In a world where men can fly at supersonic speeds, shoot fire from their eyes and bench press a small country, what difference can a normal human make? El Diablo Rojo, The Red Devil, knows that there is no super power stronger than Faith. A man with Faith can change the world."
'Rico Rivera
Ernesto Rivera was a hardworking man. Unfortunately for him, he was a hardworking man in an era in America’s history where the immigrant worker was treated as little better than third class citizens. Initially, when he came to the United States, there was plenty of work for him to have as a migrant field worker but, after the crash of 1929, out of work U.S. citizens began working for migrant worker wages and began taking work away from the immigrants who did the work that, previously, no one else wanted to do.
It was into this life that Frederico “Rico” Rivera was born.
Ernesto’s wife, Louisa, gave birth to little Frederico in the summer of 1934 and, despite being poor, Frederico was a happy child who got along well with the other children in the work camps that he and his family travelled through, following the seasonal labour. No matter what other hardships he had to face as a child, Little ‘Rico always found strength in two things: the love of his parents and faith in his God that his mother taught him about every day growing up.
Frederico ‘Rico’ Rivera (third from left) in a Wichita Kansas work camp- 1939
Eventually little Rico’s mother, Louisa, obtained a permanent domestic position in a local household in Richmond, VA, and Ernesto found work as he could doing odd jobs in and around the city. When he got older, Rico got a job as a messenger boy. Although the other messenger boys all had bicycles to help them in their deliveries, Rico’s family was too poor to buy him a bicycle. Regardless, Rico was one of the fastest messengers in the city based on his knack for finding shortcuts through alleyways and across rooftops that in areas that the bicycle messengers had to go around. On any given day, Rico could be seen scampering up fire escapes or hurdling across alleyways in his quest to be as good as the other boys.
In 1948, Rico had a life-changing experience. His father had bought a wireless radio for the family that year and the whole family sat around it in rapt awe as they listened to the live broadcasts from the London Olympic games. Rico was so moved by the excitement, he promised himself that one day he too would go to the Olympics and win a medal for the United States of America. When he told his friends this, they all laughed at the little 14-year-old Mexican boy who thought he could be an Olympic athlete.
This, of course, only made Rico that much more determined to make his dream a reality and show them all. He trained hard for the next four years, pushing himself harder than professional athletes a decade older than himself and every messenger assignment became an Olympic event in microcosm for Rico. Always pushing himself to beat his previous times.
Despite all odds, Rico was making his dream a reality. In 1952, after having qualified in many of the preliminary meets for the Olympic try-outs, Rico’s dreams were dashed at the edge of fruition as he received notice that he had been drafted into the U.S. Army and would be reporting for duty a month prior to the final qualification rounds for the Olympic Games.
It was an understandably despondent Pvt. Frederico Rivera that was shipped overseas. Not only was he being sent far from his home and his family to possibly lose his life for his country, but he was also losing his chance to fulfill his life's dream.
All thoughts of the Olympics or games of any kind were quickly forgotten as Rico was thrust headlong into the realities of war. Amidst the death and destruction, Rico’s main thoughts now turned to survival and making it home in one piece. As a visible minority, Rico was assigned to the “Underdog Company”, an unofficial name for a company of soldiers comprised primarily of visible minorities and soldiers that the top brass had designated as “screw ups”. Although never officially sanctioned as policy, the Underdog Company was assigned far more than it’s fair share of high risk operations and suicide missions. Despite all odds, Company U, as it was sometimes called, succeeded in 80% of their operations with a survival rate of 90%.
Pvt. Rico Rivera (far right) as part of Company U (The Underdog Company) – Fall 1952
The war ended with the signing of the armistice the following year in July of 1953, only one year after Rico first saw active duty, but by then the atrocities that Rico had seen had already shaken his faith to his very core.
It wasn’t just the death and destruction he saw, nor his orders from his own government to consider any Korean civilians on the battlefield approaching their position as hostile and to be immediately "neutralized" that affected him the most. What affected him the most was the fact that the fear for their own survival, had his own countrymen readily obeying such an order without hesitation; leading to the indiscriminate killings of hundreds of South Korean civilians including women, children and old men. The very people they were supposedly being sent over there to protect.
When the armistice was signed, the majority of U.S. soldiers couldn’t wait to go home. Rico, on the other hand, chose to stay on and assist with humanitarian aid missions trying to help the people of South Korea rebuild in the aftermath of the conflict. While there, Rico met Father Michael; a priest organizing relief and aid shelters on behalf of the Catholic Church. Rico joined Michael’s work full time and the two became fast friends with Father Michael adopting the role of Mentor to Rico as Rico struggled to regain his lost faith. Eventually, Rico found his faith and opted to join the priesthood.
By this time, he had dropped his youthful appellation of ‘Rico and was eventually ordained as Father Frederico Rivera.
Father Rivera continued to do missionary and relief work on the Asian continent though out the 1960's but eventually returned to Vanguard City in early 1970 to attend the funeral of his father. While visiting Vanguard City, he was dismayed by the level of poverty that was plaguing certain sections of this once-proud city. A poverty problem seemingly ignored by the upper class gentry that ran City Hall. Addressing the widening rift in Vanguard City of the "haves" and the "have-nots", Father Rivera opted to remain in Vanguard City to help run an inner-city mission program to help those that city government had failed.
El Diablo Rojo
Father Rivera spent the early 1970’s addressing the needs of the downtrodden and forgotten in Vanguard City through direct involvement in the city’s few homeless shelters, his endless campaigning for better support for the homeless by Vanguard City’s municipal government and by his personal outreach programs to the underprivileged youth of Vanguard City, whose number he was once counted amongst.
Father Rivera became well known amongst the neglected echelons of Vanguard City’s society as well as respected amongst the upper echelons as a tireless campaigner to “clean up” the inner-city problems. His annual fund-raising events soon became legendary amongst Vanguard City’s elite and were planned out to appeal to Vanguard City’s middle class and elite circles equally; quite often organized into two separate events under the same banner. If the middle class were invited to attend an “old fashioned sock-hop” to raise funds, the elite would attend a gala ball simultaneously on the same premises with some common ground/event to link the two and allow the two tiers of society to mix freely. If they chose to do so.
At one such event, a combined “Charity Fair” and “Vegas Casino” event, Father Rivera’s life changed drastically. The event was invaded by armed gunmen who had come to take in the proceeds from the Casino, expected to be in the hundreds of thousands. Father Rivera himself was taking tickets at the Fair’s kissing booth, and playing defacto chaperone amongst a horde of late-teens with home the kissing booth was always popular, when the gunmen appeared. Not wanted the young men, barely more than boys, to endanger themselves Father Rivera cautioned the young men to forego violence and wait for the authorities to arrive. “It’s only money,” he told them, “it’s not worth getting shot.”
Oddly enough, the wealthy patrons of the casino event made no effort to stand up to the gunmen and save the charitable proceeds of the event. The gunmen would probably have gotten away with their theft if they hadn’t made one simple mistake.
When the gunmen started taking hostages to cover their escape, Father Rivera could not stand idly by and let innocents become endangered by his inaction. Not wanting to be a hypocrite however, nor set a bad example for the young people around him, Father Rivera backed away from the crowd and, snatching the costume from a dummy in the “Haunted House” ride, Father Rivera appeared dressed in the horned red mask and cape of the devil. Using his military training and Olympic-level reflexes and skills, Rivera made short work of the gunmen, rescued the hostages and retrieved the stolen cash before the authorities arrived.
When the local newspaper reporting the actions of this “Red Devil” hit the stands, the public was generally unimpressed with yet another costumed vigilante hitting the streets of Vanguard. The impact on Father Rivera, however, was life-altering.
Excited by the rush of adrenaline and the sense of accomplishment he got in dealing with such men of ill intent, Father Rivera began fashioning a more suitable costume for fighting crime and began patrolling the night streets in the poorer neighborhoods of Vanguard City.
Before long the exploits of “The Red Devil”, or “El Diablo Rojo” as he called himself, became a daily feature in the morning papers of Vanguard City.
Despite the fact that he avoided the big city-level events that threatened Vanguard City, his commitment to cleaning up the street-level crime in the poorer sections of Vanguard City struck some central nerve of the reading public and tales of his exploits drove paper sales through the roof.
While the big powered heroes save the city from giant rats and sea monsters, El Diablo Rojo gave hope to the everyday common man that someone was looking out for them, too. He was a source of hope and inspiration amongst the poor, the downtrodden and the forgotten. He was, as one eye-witness put it, “A gift from God.”
Soon the exploits of El Diablo had become so popular that he was eventually approached by The Mistress and Militant, two high-powered heroes, to join them in establishing a new super team. Both were stunned, not only by the fact that El Diablo turned down their offer, but also when they discovered that El Diablo possessed no super powers.
For a while, El Diablo continued to operate solo while Militant and The Mistress operated as a crime-fighting duo. Eventually a battle between the two and their arch-nemesis, Kommander Kaos, spilled into an area near Father Rivera’s mission. Finding a way to negate The Mistress’s magical powers and the high-tech weaponry of Militant, Kommander Kaos would have succeeded in killing his foes if not for the timely intervention of El Diablo Rojo. The fact that he had no powers to negate caught Kaos off guard and El Diablo managed to take down one of the most powerful villains in Vanguard City’s history almost single-handedly.
After this The Mistress and Militant renewed their offer of partnership to El Diablo and, this time, they weren’t taking no for an answer. El Diablo finally joined the two to form The Triumvirate and, together, the three proudly defended Vanguard City from threats both large and small.
Some say it was an odd fit; a costumed vigilante with no powers fighting alongside a one-man tank battalion and a woman who could reshape reality to suit her needs, but together they made a nigh-unstoppable team that had countless adventures fighting evil across the South-Eastern United States.
Returning from one such adventure in the summer of 1978, The Triumvirate returned to Vanguard City only to discover their beloved city under attack from an elemental force of nature, risen from the evil and corruption that festered in the city's dark heart. Towering as high as a skyscraper and made up of pieces of the city itself, the creature wrought massive destruction throughout the city as it decimated all that opposed it.
Arriving as the creature was moving towards one of the most populated areas of the city, The Triumvirate came on strong and hard, pushing the offensive in hopes of driving the creature back. But even the mystic might of The Mistress and the high-tech firepower of Militant were no match for this creature as even their mightiest of attacks served only to slow the creature down, but falling short of stopping it altogether.
Relatively ineffective against a creature made of concrete and steel, El Diablo Rojo was relegated to the rescue and evacuation of the innocent victims trapped in the monster's path. As the battle wore on, faced with the futility of fighting the creature head-on, even Militant and Mistress' actions shifted away from trying to stop the creature to helping El Diablo Rojo save as many people as possible from the creature’s deadly rampage.
After clearing out the latest section of the city to come under the creature’s tread, The Mistress used her mystic senses to try and determine what the creature was in hopes of finding a way to destroy it. What she found was it's Dark Heart, filled with anger, pain, and malevolence. This heart fueled the creature’s rampage and, if this heart could be stilled, the creature would die. As El Diablo Rojo and The Mistress remained outside to slow the creature down and rescue those in its path, Militant ventured into the creature itself through a passing window on the surface of the creature's ever-shifting mass of buildings, roads and the infrastructure of Vanguard City itself.
Inside the creature, Militant found himself in a maze of ever-shifting rooms, walls, ducts and even sewer tunnels and pipework. Even with his computer-assisted navigation, Militant couldn’t traverse these ever-changing passages and found himself buffeted on all sides as walls, ceilings and floors constantly shifted and closed around him. Eventually, the body of the creature ejected the battered form of Militant through a smokestack momentarily appearing on the surface of the creature.
El Diablo Rojo caught Militant’s limp form just moments before it crashed to the ground. Militant’s face was now exposed. His faceplate, like the bulk of his armor, was shattered, exposed and all but useless. Through bloodied and broken teeth, Militant told his teammates of the nightmare within the creature’s shifting form before finally lapsing into unconsciousness. El Diablo Rojo looked up at the creature and then looked to his remaining teammate, The Mistress.
“You stay here and keep saving people, I’m going in!”
“What? I have a better chance of surviving in there than you.”
“No! You’re needed out here. I can’t do a fraction of what you can do to save people’s lives.”
“But, if Militant couldn’t get through, what makes you think you can make it? He had every advantage his armor could give him, what have you got?”
Pulling a crucifix out of his belt pouch, El Diablo Rojo wrapped it’s chain around his wrist to hold it in place. “Faith,” he said, “I have faith.”
And, with that, El Diablo Rojo leapt to a fire-escape, leaping and bounding to the rooftops getting him higher and higher towards the creature’s torso until, finally, he leapt through a passing window, smashing through high-impact storm glass like shattering fine crystal.
Meanwhile, The Mistress continued with evacuation and rescue operations, saving those in the path of the creature. She was so focused on saving others, though, she let her own guard drop and was struck from behind by the creature. Under the sheer power of the creature, her mystic defenses shredded like wet tissue paper and her body was brutally pulverized; shattering bones and rupturing internal organs. As The Mistress lay dying, helpless in the path of the advancing creature she looked on in amazement as the creature faltered, fell to its knees, and crumbled to rubble before her very eyes. Her last thoughts before passing from this world were “He did it…he actually did it…”
It took almost four years and hundreds of millions of dollars just to clear up the damage caused by the creature. It was another six years before the majority of the devastated areas were redeveloped. The cost in human lives may never be truly appreciated as the City Hall refused to release the actual figures on the thousands who died or were reported missing on that day.
The body of El Diablo Rojo was never recovered from the rubble that once was the creature. A few tattered shreds of his costume and a simple silver crucifix were all that was found.
Militant survived his injuries and, while convalescing in the hospital, was horrified to watch as the corrupt crime-controlled media twisted the facts and public perception that it was the presence of the heroes themselves that gave rise to menaces such as the creature. Instead of being honored for their sacrifice, El Diablo Rojo and The Mistress were vilified and said to have become victims of their own vigilante activities.
Eventually when well enough to travel, Militant left Vanguard City and has not been seen since. Before leaving, however, he purchased a headstone for the empty grave of Father Frederico Rivera, presumed killed in the widespread destruction. On the headstone he simply had inscribed:
By P.Michael Hodge
"In a world where men can fly at supersonic speeds, shoot fire from their eyes and bench press a small country, what difference can a normal human make? El Diablo Rojo, The Red Devil, knows that there is no super power stronger than Faith. A man with Faith can change the world."
'Rico Rivera
Ernesto Rivera was a hardworking man. Unfortunately for him, he was a hardworking man in an era in America’s history where the immigrant worker was treated as little better than third class citizens. Initially, when he came to the United States, there was plenty of work for him to have as a migrant field worker but, after the crash of 1929, out of work U.S. citizens began working for migrant worker wages and began taking work away from the immigrants who did the work that, previously, no one else wanted to do.
It was into this life that Frederico “Rico” Rivera was born.
Ernesto’s wife, Louisa, gave birth to little Frederico in the summer of 1934 and, despite being poor, Frederico was a happy child who got along well with the other children in the work camps that he and his family travelled through, following the seasonal labour. No matter what other hardships he had to face as a child, Little ‘Rico always found strength in two things: the love of his parents and faith in his God that his mother taught him about every day growing up.
Frederico ‘Rico’ Rivera (third from left) in a Wichita Kansas work camp- 1939
Eventually little Rico’s mother, Louisa, obtained a permanent domestic position in a local household in Richmond, VA, and Ernesto found work as he could doing odd jobs in and around the city. When he got older, Rico got a job as a messenger boy. Although the other messenger boys all had bicycles to help them in their deliveries, Rico’s family was too poor to buy him a bicycle. Regardless, Rico was one of the fastest messengers in the city based on his knack for finding shortcuts through alleyways and across rooftops that in areas that the bicycle messengers had to go around. On any given day, Rico could be seen scampering up fire escapes or hurdling across alleyways in his quest to be as good as the other boys.
In 1948, Rico had a life-changing experience. His father had bought a wireless radio for the family that year and the whole family sat around it in rapt awe as they listened to the live broadcasts from the London Olympic games. Rico was so moved by the excitement, he promised himself that one day he too would go to the Olympics and win a medal for the United States of America. When he told his friends this, they all laughed at the little 14-year-old Mexican boy who thought he could be an Olympic athlete.
This, of course, only made Rico that much more determined to make his dream a reality and show them all. He trained hard for the next four years, pushing himself harder than professional athletes a decade older than himself and every messenger assignment became an Olympic event in microcosm for Rico. Always pushing himself to beat his previous times.
Despite all odds, Rico was making his dream a reality. In 1952, after having qualified in many of the preliminary meets for the Olympic try-outs, Rico’s dreams were dashed at the edge of fruition as he received notice that he had been drafted into the U.S. Army and would be reporting for duty a month prior to the final qualification rounds for the Olympic Games.
It was an understandably despondent Pvt. Frederico Rivera that was shipped overseas. Not only was he being sent far from his home and his family to possibly lose his life for his country, but he was also losing his chance to fulfill his life's dream.
All thoughts of the Olympics or games of any kind were quickly forgotten as Rico was thrust headlong into the realities of war. Amidst the death and destruction, Rico’s main thoughts now turned to survival and making it home in one piece. As a visible minority, Rico was assigned to the “Underdog Company”, an unofficial name for a company of soldiers comprised primarily of visible minorities and soldiers that the top brass had designated as “screw ups”. Although never officially sanctioned as policy, the Underdog Company was assigned far more than it’s fair share of high risk operations and suicide missions. Despite all odds, Company U, as it was sometimes called, succeeded in 80% of their operations with a survival rate of 90%.
Pvt. Rico Rivera (far right) as part of Company U (The Underdog Company) – Fall 1952
The war ended with the signing of the armistice the following year in July of 1953, only one year after Rico first saw active duty, but by then the atrocities that Rico had seen had already shaken his faith to his very core.
It wasn’t just the death and destruction he saw, nor his orders from his own government to consider any Korean civilians on the battlefield approaching their position as hostile and to be immediately "neutralized" that affected him the most. What affected him the most was the fact that the fear for their own survival, had his own countrymen readily obeying such an order without hesitation; leading to the indiscriminate killings of hundreds of South Korean civilians including women, children and old men. The very people they were supposedly being sent over there to protect.
When the armistice was signed, the majority of U.S. soldiers couldn’t wait to go home. Rico, on the other hand, chose to stay on and assist with humanitarian aid missions trying to help the people of South Korea rebuild in the aftermath of the conflict. While there, Rico met Father Michael; a priest organizing relief and aid shelters on behalf of the Catholic Church. Rico joined Michael’s work full time and the two became fast friends with Father Michael adopting the role of Mentor to Rico as Rico struggled to regain his lost faith. Eventually, Rico found his faith and opted to join the priesthood.
By this time, he had dropped his youthful appellation of ‘Rico and was eventually ordained as Father Frederico Rivera.
Father Rivera continued to do missionary and relief work on the Asian continent though out the 1960's but eventually returned to Vanguard City in early 1970 to attend the funeral of his father. While visiting Vanguard City, he was dismayed by the level of poverty that was plaguing certain sections of this once-proud city. A poverty problem seemingly ignored by the upper class gentry that ran City Hall. Addressing the widening rift in Vanguard City of the "haves" and the "have-nots", Father Rivera opted to remain in Vanguard City to help run an inner-city mission program to help those that city government had failed.
El Diablo Rojo
Father Rivera spent the early 1970’s addressing the needs of the downtrodden and forgotten in Vanguard City through direct involvement in the city’s few homeless shelters, his endless campaigning for better support for the homeless by Vanguard City’s municipal government and by his personal outreach programs to the underprivileged youth of Vanguard City, whose number he was once counted amongst.
Father Rivera became well known amongst the neglected echelons of Vanguard City’s society as well as respected amongst the upper echelons as a tireless campaigner to “clean up” the inner-city problems. His annual fund-raising events soon became legendary amongst Vanguard City’s elite and were planned out to appeal to Vanguard City’s middle class and elite circles equally; quite often organized into two separate events under the same banner. If the middle class were invited to attend an “old fashioned sock-hop” to raise funds, the elite would attend a gala ball simultaneously on the same premises with some common ground/event to link the two and allow the two tiers of society to mix freely. If they chose to do so.
At one such event, a combined “Charity Fair” and “Vegas Casino” event, Father Rivera’s life changed drastically. The event was invaded by armed gunmen who had come to take in the proceeds from the Casino, expected to be in the hundreds of thousands. Father Rivera himself was taking tickets at the Fair’s kissing booth, and playing defacto chaperone amongst a horde of late-teens with home the kissing booth was always popular, when the gunmen appeared. Not wanted the young men, barely more than boys, to endanger themselves Father Rivera cautioned the young men to forego violence and wait for the authorities to arrive. “It’s only money,” he told them, “it’s not worth getting shot.”
Oddly enough, the wealthy patrons of the casino event made no effort to stand up to the gunmen and save the charitable proceeds of the event. The gunmen would probably have gotten away with their theft if they hadn’t made one simple mistake.
When the gunmen started taking hostages to cover their escape, Father Rivera could not stand idly by and let innocents become endangered by his inaction. Not wanting to be a hypocrite however, nor set a bad example for the young people around him, Father Rivera backed away from the crowd and, snatching the costume from a dummy in the “Haunted House” ride, Father Rivera appeared dressed in the horned red mask and cape of the devil. Using his military training and Olympic-level reflexes and skills, Rivera made short work of the gunmen, rescued the hostages and retrieved the stolen cash before the authorities arrived.
When the local newspaper reporting the actions of this “Red Devil” hit the stands, the public was generally unimpressed with yet another costumed vigilante hitting the streets of Vanguard. The impact on Father Rivera, however, was life-altering.
Excited by the rush of adrenaline and the sense of accomplishment he got in dealing with such men of ill intent, Father Rivera began fashioning a more suitable costume for fighting crime and began patrolling the night streets in the poorer neighborhoods of Vanguard City.
Before long the exploits of “The Red Devil”, or “El Diablo Rojo” as he called himself, became a daily feature in the morning papers of Vanguard City.
Despite the fact that he avoided the big city-level events that threatened Vanguard City, his commitment to cleaning up the street-level crime in the poorer sections of Vanguard City struck some central nerve of the reading public and tales of his exploits drove paper sales through the roof.
While the big powered heroes save the city from giant rats and sea monsters, El Diablo Rojo gave hope to the everyday common man that someone was looking out for them, too. He was a source of hope and inspiration amongst the poor, the downtrodden and the forgotten. He was, as one eye-witness put it, “A gift from God.”
Soon the exploits of El Diablo had become so popular that he was eventually approached by The Mistress and Militant, two high-powered heroes, to join them in establishing a new super team. Both were stunned, not only by the fact that El Diablo turned down their offer, but also when they discovered that El Diablo possessed no super powers.
For a while, El Diablo continued to operate solo while Militant and The Mistress operated as a crime-fighting duo. Eventually a battle between the two and their arch-nemesis, Kommander Kaos, spilled into an area near Father Rivera’s mission. Finding a way to negate The Mistress’s magical powers and the high-tech weaponry of Militant, Kommander Kaos would have succeeded in killing his foes if not for the timely intervention of El Diablo Rojo. The fact that he had no powers to negate caught Kaos off guard and El Diablo managed to take down one of the most powerful villains in Vanguard City’s history almost single-handedly.
After this The Mistress and Militant renewed their offer of partnership to El Diablo and, this time, they weren’t taking no for an answer. El Diablo finally joined the two to form The Triumvirate and, together, the three proudly defended Vanguard City from threats both large and small.
Some say it was an odd fit; a costumed vigilante with no powers fighting alongside a one-man tank battalion and a woman who could reshape reality to suit her needs, but together they made a nigh-unstoppable team that had countless adventures fighting evil across the South-Eastern United States.
Returning from one such adventure in the summer of 1978, The Triumvirate returned to Vanguard City only to discover their beloved city under attack from an elemental force of nature, risen from the evil and corruption that festered in the city's dark heart. Towering as high as a skyscraper and made up of pieces of the city itself, the creature wrought massive destruction throughout the city as it decimated all that opposed it.
Arriving as the creature was moving towards one of the most populated areas of the city, The Triumvirate came on strong and hard, pushing the offensive in hopes of driving the creature back. But even the mystic might of The Mistress and the high-tech firepower of Militant were no match for this creature as even their mightiest of attacks served only to slow the creature down, but falling short of stopping it altogether.
Relatively ineffective against a creature made of concrete and steel, El Diablo Rojo was relegated to the rescue and evacuation of the innocent victims trapped in the monster's path. As the battle wore on, faced with the futility of fighting the creature head-on, even Militant and Mistress' actions shifted away from trying to stop the creature to helping El Diablo Rojo save as many people as possible from the creature’s deadly rampage.
After clearing out the latest section of the city to come under the creature’s tread, The Mistress used her mystic senses to try and determine what the creature was in hopes of finding a way to destroy it. What she found was it's Dark Heart, filled with anger, pain, and malevolence. This heart fueled the creature’s rampage and, if this heart could be stilled, the creature would die. As El Diablo Rojo and The Mistress remained outside to slow the creature down and rescue those in its path, Militant ventured into the creature itself through a passing window on the surface of the creature's ever-shifting mass of buildings, roads and the infrastructure of Vanguard City itself.
Inside the creature, Militant found himself in a maze of ever-shifting rooms, walls, ducts and even sewer tunnels and pipework. Even with his computer-assisted navigation, Militant couldn’t traverse these ever-changing passages and found himself buffeted on all sides as walls, ceilings and floors constantly shifted and closed around him. Eventually, the body of the creature ejected the battered form of Militant through a smokestack momentarily appearing on the surface of the creature.
El Diablo Rojo caught Militant’s limp form just moments before it crashed to the ground. Militant’s face was now exposed. His faceplate, like the bulk of his armor, was shattered, exposed and all but useless. Through bloodied and broken teeth, Militant told his teammates of the nightmare within the creature’s shifting form before finally lapsing into unconsciousness. El Diablo Rojo looked up at the creature and then looked to his remaining teammate, The Mistress.
“You stay here and keep saving people, I’m going in!”
“What? I have a better chance of surviving in there than you.”
“No! You’re needed out here. I can’t do a fraction of what you can do to save people’s lives.”
“But, if Militant couldn’t get through, what makes you think you can make it? He had every advantage his armor could give him, what have you got?”
Pulling a crucifix out of his belt pouch, El Diablo Rojo wrapped it’s chain around his wrist to hold it in place. “Faith,” he said, “I have faith.”
And, with that, El Diablo Rojo leapt to a fire-escape, leaping and bounding to the rooftops getting him higher and higher towards the creature’s torso until, finally, he leapt through a passing window, smashing through high-impact storm glass like shattering fine crystal.
Meanwhile, The Mistress continued with evacuation and rescue operations, saving those in the path of the creature. She was so focused on saving others, though, she let her own guard drop and was struck from behind by the creature. Under the sheer power of the creature, her mystic defenses shredded like wet tissue paper and her body was brutally pulverized; shattering bones and rupturing internal organs. As The Mistress lay dying, helpless in the path of the advancing creature she looked on in amazement as the creature faltered, fell to its knees, and crumbled to rubble before her very eyes. Her last thoughts before passing from this world were “He did it…he actually did it…”
It took almost four years and hundreds of millions of dollars just to clear up the damage caused by the creature. It was another six years before the majority of the devastated areas were redeveloped. The cost in human lives may never be truly appreciated as the City Hall refused to release the actual figures on the thousands who died or were reported missing on that day.
The body of El Diablo Rojo was never recovered from the rubble that once was the creature. A few tattered shreds of his costume and a simple silver crucifix were all that was found.
Militant survived his injuries and, while convalescing in the hospital, was horrified to watch as the corrupt crime-controlled media twisted the facts and public perception that it was the presence of the heroes themselves that gave rise to menaces such as the creature. Instead of being honored for their sacrifice, El Diablo Rojo and The Mistress were vilified and said to have become victims of their own vigilante activities.
Eventually when well enough to travel, Militant left Vanguard City and has not been seen since. Before leaving, however, he purchased a headstone for the empty grave of Father Frederico Rivera, presumed killed in the widespread destruction. On the headstone he simply had inscribed:
FREDERICO RIVERA
1934-1978
HE SAVED US ALL THROUGH THE POWER OF FAITH