A Discontinuity

It is a world much like our own. In fact, it is identical, up to a point. On May 3rd, 2004, at 3:37:021 PM UTC, on this world, there was a discontinuity.
Everyone, everything, everywhere lost seven minutes, thirty three seconds worth of time. There are people, three years later, who view the fact that no one died during or resulting from the discontinuity as a miracle, a sign from god.
No one knows what happened during that time. No one. The ones who say they do are lying.
No one knows for sure that the discontinuity caused the Bloom, either. But no one's really betting against it.
The Bloom. Like flowers reacting to the rising sun, in the wake of the discontinuity, powers began to blossom. A pretty picture. There are other pictures, other names as well. All of them freighted with the hopes and fears of the namers. Whatever one wants to call it, it is clear what it is.
Some unknown, but likely relatively small, percentage of humanity has, for lack of a better term, evolved. Homo Superior, just like the comics. There are at last count 264 powers walking the Earth. There are 357 known powers, and the remainder are either dead or gone.
In the here and now, some of the world's most powerful heroic powers have come together, to work in concert against threats too big for any of them on their own.