Sarge
Early Life
Christopher Vaughn was born in California in 1974 to parents Wayde and Ata. Wayde had been a member of the U.S. military and served in the Vietnam War, but his current profession caused the family to have to move around the country quite a bit. This instability could have had a negative effect on someone growing up, but luckily for Chris he had two very loving and great parents. The three became a very close unit, perhaps in part due to Chris never having the time to develop close friendships with anyone his own age. He decided while still in high school that he wanted to join the U.S. military.
In 1992 he went to United States Marine Corps boot camp and graduated from the Recruit Depot in San Diego, followed by combat training at Camp Pendleton. During his time with the USMC, he took part in intervention and rescue deployments in Somalia (1993-1995), the Central African Republic (1996), and Bosnia (1997-1999). Chris distinguished himself in the USMC and rose to the rank of Gunnery Sargeant. After his time in Bosnia he made the choice to train to become a member of the elite U.S. Army Special Forces and went to Camp Mackall where he both succeeded in his goal and highly impressed his trainers. He met his furue wife Dany Fernandez in between tours, and the two eventually married in 1999.
Chris was among the Special Forces soldiers who were part of the initial invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. It was there that he had his first "close encounter" with an alien species - the Elder Worms. In 2002, while clearing a suspected Taliban hideout in a remote cave in northeatern Afghanistan Vaughn's unit came across a small force of Elder Worms who it was later discovered were searching for one of their artifacts of power. Post-incident reports clearly show that it was Vaughn's ability to react calmly in the face of such a bizarre and unexpected enemy that saved the lives of his entire team. This caught the attention of the UNTIL division known as Stargazer.
Project Stargazer
For several years Chris worked for UNTIL Project Stargazer under the command of Major Jason Larke, quickly becoming the leader of an elite team of operatives. His unit was routinely relied upon to respond to any situations involving an extraterrestial species making an incursion on Earth. These situations varied in scale from ones that the general public would have been aware to those that almost no one would ever learn of. Although highly successful in his work for UNTIL, the unpredictable nature and risk of the missions strained his marriage with Dany and they divorced in 2006. While Sarge's unit battled known alien species such as the Gadroon, Elder Worms, Qulaar, and Roin'esh, it was an encounter with a previously unknown species (or so he believed until relatively recently) that lead to the catastrophic ending of his tenure with UNTIL in the latter half of the year 2009.
According to the initial report and subsequent investigation into the incident, Vaughn's team followed a heretofore unknown species of alien through a portal to an unkown destination without calling for backup. Overwhelmed by a much larger force on the other side, most of the team was killed in combat and their bodies never recovered. When Vaughn was found in a delirious state by a rescue team on Monster Island, he had the body of Sargeant John "Reaper" Grimm with him. The injuries that were found to be the cause of death came from conventional weapons. Due to the inability of the investigative force to either confirm or deny Vaughn's story he was suspended from duty and held under a great deal of suspicion by officials and fellow soldiers at UNTIL. There was belief among some that he had simply snapped and killed his own troops.
Dark Times
The next several months of Vaughn's life were filled with grief and depression over the death of his unit. Unable to dig up any evidence to prove his story, he began to doubt his own memory and sanity. His ex-wife Dany, now living and working in downtown Millenium City reached out to him and the two briefly reconnected. Despite her efforts, Chris was still unable to get past the trauma of the incident and left one day, traveling to his parents' new hometown in a rural town in Washington state. An incident at a casino in the town involving a brawl with several of the casino security guards led to Chris being locked up in the local jail right when the Qulaar invasion of Millenium City occurred.
Dany's apartment building had been almost completely destroyed in the early minutes of the invasion and she was killed as a result. Another person close to him had been killed. He had failed to be there to protect her or use his skills to fight the invasion and help save any lives in the city, instead the invasion was fought off by a new wave of costumed superhumans. Vaughn began to spiral further into grief and depression. Then someone came along who offered him a new beginning: UNTIL Colonel Stephen Carmack. The colonel believed in Vaughn and knew he desperately needed an outlet for his rage and grief, a way to get back into the action and possibly even find redemption in the process. Carmack used his inluence to get Chris selected as a new recruit for the Department of Emergency: Limit Tested Agents program. He knew it would be hard for Vaughn to work within a team of super-powered individuals, that it would be difficult for him to even pass the training partly due to his age (35 at this point). However he also believed that if any man could do it, Vaughn was the one. And Vaughn did the colonel, whom he began to develop a kind of father-son relationship with, proud.
DE:LTA
Quotes
"Who you callin' 'old' punk?"
"Hi. My name's Chris."
De opresso liber (To liberate the oppressed) - Special Forces motto
Pictures
