For some years now, Scott Sherman has been on the run. He has been bumped from foster home to foster home, orphanage to orphanage, never finding a real home before ‘they’ caught up with him. They seem to have wanted to harness his deadly laser powers. Scott has the uncanny ability to shoot differentiating degrees of laser energy from his fingertips.

He finally crossed the continental divide to London, Canada, where he saw a gas station. He thought that he would find refuge here at least for the night. It was open all night and it was an Esso, Canada’s equivalent to America’s Exxon. He wondered if they had oil leaks too.

It was near dinner time and he was starting to get hungry. When he opened the door to the gas station’s convenient store, he heard a jingle-jangle of the bell attached to the door.

The first thing that he saw a pretty young girl behind the counter. She was chewing a huge wad of bubble gum and blowing enormous bubbles and popping them with her long fingernails.

“Do you know where the bathroom is?” Scott asked.

“It’s like y’know to the back, fer shure.” For someone working in Canada, she certainly had the Valley Girl speak down pat.

“Thank you.”

Scott then took his leave of the girl and entered the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He turned on the faucet and washed his hands and face. He was tired, beaten and weary.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.

“Mr. Sherman, open up! This is the FBI. We have a warrant for your arrest! Open the door slowly and come out with your hands up.”

Scott proceeded to slam the door open and make a break for it. He ran past the feds blasting the aisles with his lasers so that the merchandise would come falling down on top of them. Feds and him just didn’t mix.

“Shit. Get him, men.”

“I don’t want him dead just wounded if possible.”

The remaining feds got up off the floor, pushed the merchandise away and started shooting at him. The Valley Girl wet her pants.

Scott was able to create a laser forcefield so that the feds’ bullets just melted before they hit him.

And in seconds, he disappeared into the forest.

He thought that he was in the Canadian forest for hours, days even, when he came to the lake and the clearing. There was a brook and he decided to set up camp there. It was days since he left the Orphanage. It was a horroshow there; he didn’t know when he was going to get out of there because the civil servants there were just simply torturing everyone there, including himself.

When his mutant powers of controlling laser light manifested itself when he was thirteen, he tried to keep it hidden. But the occasional accident here and there had developed into everywhere and his secret was surely out in the open.

Scott Sherman made a trail of leaves while he collected firewood for the camp fire he was sure to set by the brook. The advantage of having a fire by the brook was that in the morning after meals were cooked, he could gather some spring water to put it out.

“Fancy meeting you here,” a voice, soft and decidedly female said from across the dread forest.

Scott spun around and saw a very familiar face. It was his girlfriend that he left at the Orphanage, Stacy Holland. “What are you doing here?’ he asked gently.

Scott was curious to find out exactly what his question entailed. Had she followed him here? Did she want a piece of him, of the action? What, then?

“I’m,” she started to say, struggling with the words. Then she bolted, searching her surroundings for some kind of enemy, she was on alert. “I hope you know how to use those laser powers of yours to defend yourself as you did for those government agents at the Esso. Because we got company.”

“I don’t see anyone. What are you, part bloodhound?” Sherman asked. His eyesight wasn’t the best (in fact, at a very young age he had been given glasses but never wore them), but granted it was better than most and he couldn’t see anyone or anything for miles, for the life of him.

“No, they’re here.” She said it flatly, point blankly.

“Who?”

“Alpha Flight. They’ve come to get us.” There was a heavy tremor in her voice as it raised an octave or two in decibel levels in fear.

Then, Scott saw them. It surely was Alpha Flight, in all their misguided glory. An elderly woman stepped up to the spotlight and addressed them as if they were animals about to be hunted.

“Mr. Sherman, Miss Holland, you have been on the run for quite some time now. You both don’t want those men at the Esso, who are on your tails right now, to catch up with you. You will come with us.”

Then, Granny stepped back into line.

Now it was Kamikaze’s turn to step forward to speak. “Talk is cheap. This is the way my people deals with business. The easy way.”

He threw something that was round, black, and had a pin that he pulled out. Some green mist escaped it and suddenly, Scott Sherman and Stacy Holland collapsed on the ground.

A shipyard by the Canadian docks…

Beta Flight was holed up by a couple of crates marked ‘Fragile’. Garrison Kane was the leader of the group and he would be taking the point. He liked to give out orders.

“Okay, this is how we’re gonna play it,” Kane said, barking out orders like he was born to do that little thing. “Marrina will go first to knock out the guards with that oil slick secretion thingie of hers. Then, Dei Guan will change himself into the Jade Dragon and—“

But Kane was not able to finish his thought, when Wyre stood up, machine guns blazing, and starting shooting at the guards, killing them abruptly.

“Wyre, no!! Stealth is the word for today, not cold blooded murder!” Kane shouted at Wyre but it was useless, to no avail.

“Does this mean that we have to stop him?” Dei Guan asked, naively. “Or do we just join in on the fun?”

Marrina extended her claws. “I say we join in. Wyre dug himself a deep hole and we have to stop the thieves before Wyre digs himself deeper.”

Marrina launched herself into battle, followed by Dei Guan, who had transformed himself into his dragon self.

Kane sighed. “Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be the leader. What difference does it make when your team-mates don’t listen to a word you say?”

Wyre had reached the boat in seconds flat, dead bodies laying in his wake. He saw the outline of a figure on the boat, a helmeted and caped figure. Beside this figure was the object of their search; the Pirate and his band of followers, the Pirate Brigade. The Pirate was everything cliché about pirates from long ago. He had an eyepatch, lost a hand in battle only to be replaced by a hook. Wyre was almost expecting Peter Pan to be flying around with his young charges.

“Where’re the jewels, Pirate?” Wyre asked, as he pointed his machine gun at the Pirate’s chest. A shot to the heart would kill him instantly, and then, he could search the boat and his person for the object of his search.

“I don’t have them.”

“Who does?”

“He does.”

Wyre turned around to the person that the Pirate was pointing to. It was the figure in the dark. He was Bedlam, the Brain Blast.

“Oh, shit,” Wyre said, breathing some breath out of his slightly open mouth. “Not you. Don’t you ever stay dead?”

“I try not to. I am very hard to kill,” Bedlam said, telepathically.

Then, the boat exploded, by way of Bedlam’s telekinetic powers, as Bedlam, the Pirate, and the Pirate Brigade flying to safety in a force bubble. Wyre was hurled to the docks with the rest of Beta Flight.

Wyre stood up, staring at Kane’s disappointed look. “Sorry, boss. Guess I failed ya.”

Kane smiled. “We’ll regroup and tell big daddy Mac what happened. That his favorite creation is among the living.”

The Infirmary at the Alpha Complex…

Scott Sherman and Stacy Holland woke up simultaneously at the Alpha Complex, when the effects of the knockout gas wore off from Kamikaze’s grenade. Scott sat up straight.

“Is that how you treat us, Guardian, like lab rats and animals to be tested upon?” Scott said, nearly shouting it.

Guardian walked forward with Granny right behind him. “I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t my fault. That was Kamikaze’s doing. He is very reckless in his endeavours. But we thought that it was necessary to prevent those American Federal Agents from catching up with you. It seems that the Orphanage that you were being held and tortured in was on the American-Canadian border and they wanted the goods before we did.”

“That makes sense,” Stacy said, nearly whispering it.

“No, it doesn’t.” Scott replied. He gave his girlfriend a sharp look, then she bowed her head in shame for contradicting him. “And I think it is a very good idea if she shut up now. We don’t know what they want yet.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“You didn’t let me finish, Mr. Sherman,” Guardian said. “You must have heard of the Prime Minister passing the Canadian Paranormal Recruitment Act. This Act allows us to recruit paranormals to our team.”

“Sounds intriguing,” Stacy responded, even though it didn’t warrant one. She seemed to be in the mood for defying Scott and his holier-than-thou attitude.

“Aw, what do you know?” Scott asked.

“Think about it, Mr. Sherman,” Guardian said. “What will you do? Stay on the run? Who else will take you in? We’re your only hope of salvation.”

“I don’t think so. Where will we stay? At last count, your team, Guardian, was pushing in the double digits, with the addition of Beta Flight.”

Granny voiced her opinions. “That is where you are wrong, young man. Guardian has constructed the Nursery to house our young charges. I am its headmistress. You will be happy here. You have no choice in the matter.”

Guardian reached out his hand. “Welcome to Alpha Flight.”

Scott shook his hand. “I guess Alpha Flight it is.”