Walter Langkowski sits in the common meeting room of C.S.I.S. HQ, reading over papers on neuroligand changes and base nitrogen pairs. Julia Carpenter has long since gone home with her daughter and will not be back for several days. Langkowski is not worried, no signs have appeared that the Omega Flight pair will be needed anywhere. A good a time as any to get some research done. C.S.I.S. is rarely a buzz of activity anymore, with the staff cuts and redirection to a more clandestine investigation goal.
His calm is broken when the door opens. It's not the sound that breaks his calm, but who enters. Myra Haddock, pushing a wheelchair with none other than General George Chasen. Both look grim and worn. Haddock closes the door and sits down across from Langkowski, silent.
Chasen: Well, Doctor, I'm surprised you're here. One would think a Renaissance Man such as yourself would be doing the 'mad scientist' thing at this time of night.
Langkowski: No less surprising than what I see before me. I heard about your poisoning, I wish I could help. Nice of Myra to take care of you...
Chasen: Haddock is just being pleasant, she's not my nanny. I don't have the strength to get around much anymore and she was needed here anyway...
Langkowski: So what do you want?
Chasen: My daughters grew up a long time ago and I don't have grandchildren. I have no one to tell stories to. I miss it.
Langkowski:confused So Myra's here to wipe off the drool?
Haddock: No, Doctor, I'm here to make sure it's told right. It is a good story.
Chasen: Look, Langkowski, I'm not here to mend fences. But my story will be of use to you, be assured.
Langkowski: Then go ahead, maybe I'll be amused.
Chasen:Settling back in his wheelchair as Haddock leans forward As you know, things have been awfully rough the last few years. Seems Department H and Alpha Flight were always fighting an uphill battle, even before Hudson died. From the signs I see, nothing is going to change in this world.
Langkowski, I lived my whole life in defence of my country. I don't intend to leave this life in worse shape than when I joined it. But when I looked at the assets at my disposal a while back the cupboard was bare. Alpha Flight was barely breathing, Department H was in decay. No agents were joining the cause, no exceptional ones anyway. We were not building for the future, success, or whatever may come. Excuse me, but your bastardized Omega Flight and C.S.I.S. are no replacements for all that.
Northstar will never come back. Hell, what mutant will? Aurora, Box, Diamond Lil, they all treat us like we're back in kindergarten. Snowbird wants to play with the gods, she'll help if needed but she doesn't feel tied to humanity anymore. Talisman was never happy being a superhero, she'll aid us if called. But neither will join this team, or any other, for the long haul. I'm sure you've had contact with them all and gotten the same doors slammed in your face.
Langkowski: No argument here, though I wouldn't say my face was unwelcome.
Chasen: To explain why we're here, I need to go back and explain a few things.
After Hudson died we in the military weren't too upset. We felt we could make his battlesuit and outfit the army, no problem. As you know, we failed miserably. We couldn't build the damn thing, couldn't make a suit that could fly and make a forcefield and shoot bolts at the same time.
That suit Heather wore wasn't as good. They made one for Tygerstryke and gave it jetpacks so he could fly. Heather got the geothermal suit. Nobody could figure out how Hudson did it. After all, his original was blown to pieces.
When he came 'back' he was no help, he didn't want to remake his old suit, he was a cyborg and didn't need to. That and he was still against creating an army of Guardians.
You may know that other people tried to recreate it. Reed Richards and Anthony Stark even gave it a go. Richards understood that the helmet was key but even he failed to make it work. Stark was worse. Richards was heard to say that to build and use the suit you had to think on a different level. Being smarter wasn't good enough.
Langkowski: No news to me. Building his suit was one thing, the helmet another. To get it all to work, you had to understand why it work, and how too. Just knowing the nuts and bolts wasn't enough, you had to think organically. Maybe 20 people worldwide could be that Guardian.
Haddock: Out of my sphere of expertise but I know how Department H tried to replicate his success, and failed.
Chasen: We were at a loss. It was obvious we needed Guardian back. Heather was a better leader, but Hudson was Guardian. As our forces dwindled month by month we tried to get Hudson to fix things, but he refused. His synthoid couldn't do it, either.
So we looked at other avenues. Department H was always tied to the military so we did our best to have R & D a priority. Then all hell broke loose.
Alpha Flight gets lost, then goes to Plodex world or whatever it's called. You get your makeshift team and wind up creating time-displaced copies of Alpha Flight from before Hudson's death. They eventually disappear and then your team gets wiped out by that idiot mailman. I'll bet they wished they had stayed in space. SHIELD puts a ton of pressure on us so Department H closes and Omega is created, so to speak, under SHIELD's watchful eye. Luckily, we weren't sitting on our hands the whole time. And that's about to pay off for you, my friend.
Langkowski: What did you do?
Chasen: We took advantage of what fell in our lap. Current Hudson wasn't going to be any help but pre-death Hudson, maybe. We convinced young Hudson to build us another battlesuit. Then we worked on downloading his memories and personality and all. Then M-Day hit and he vanished with the rest of them. I think that's what messed up that Yukon Jack, seeing his wife vanish. I'm not sure M-Day did him any other favours.
The day before your team was wiped out we were able to get Hudson to allow us to access his memories too. Apparently Heather got him to do it, that it would be nice to have someone else take over Alpha Flight so they could raise their daughter, make a family. Langkowski winces I know, famous last words. I think she also made a point about how cyborg Hudson wasn't the man she fell in love with, that the machine hurt the man. She loved him dearly but she knew what she lost.
We had what we wanted. The Beta Project had only produced one viable synthoid, and cloning was out of the question. A good clone would take 20 years to get right, we didn't want a clone dying in 5 years of old age.
Langkowski: So you went back to the synthoids?
Chasen: No. We took advantage of a unique opportunity. We had Nemesis take some of his life force. Haddock re-fired up the Prometheus Pit. We entered his biomatrix and DNA and memory downloads into the Pit matrix. And Haddock went to work. We knew they were shutting us down but I got her a reprieve until she was done. The Pit was a wonderful thing, partially based on the magics of Shaman's pouch. Alec Thorne may have gone mad from looking into it but lunatics can still release secrets, even at a distance. We had accessed that helmet of his and made the Prometheus Pit. It was haddock's job to control it from the start.
Haddock remade James MacDonald Hudson. She finished two days ago. The Pit is now gone. We had only one shot, and it worked. Guardian is back, the real deal. And we didn't stop there.
Langkowski: Judd.
Chasen: Good guess. If Nemesis could take some life force of Hudsons' to make a new Hudson, why not Puck? His body alone wasn't decaying, as you well know. It was like he wasn't dead somehow. Nemesis used her sword to re-implant his life force and it worked like a charm. Judd seems no worse fro wear.
And to answer the unasked questions, no, we couldn't do the same thing with anyone else, we had decaying bodies and only one chance with the Pit after all. And H.A.M.M.E.R. knows we did something and isn't happy about it. Like SHIELD, they believe in the Monroe Doctrine and are more actively pushing that 'sphere of influence' crap on us.
Langkowski: So you're saying Arachne and I will get Guardian, Nemesis, and Puck back?
Chasen: Give the man a prize. Guess I'm being too obvious.
Langkowski: But that's not all you have to say, is it? Haddock and Nemesis did there best but that as awfully risky. Yu weren't going to rest on that alone, were you.
Haddock: I thought we had a 10% chance of bringing Hudson back to life. Maybe 20% with Judd. If we had access to Flashback's powers I would've felt better. But we did have another agent who just needed some improvements.
Chasen: We had various engineers try to get Manbot to 'morph', so to speak, so he didn't have to be so big and clunky. Lachenay tried to help but he couldn't get a handle on his systems. Then Suu decided to redesign Manbot back into a Boxbot design, simplified, so that Lachenay could possibly control some morphing to some extent. It failed, or so we thought. But It simply took time for Lachenay to reorganize his 'body' to fit his new design and capabilities. We toyed with calling him 'Box' since he looks like the original so much, but we're staying with Manbot. He prefers it. He'll be on your team, too.
Lankowski: This all seems pretty far fetched, General. You were kicked out of Department H years ago, I doubt you'd have such insider information and control like you make out.
Chasen: Gone but not forgotten. I still had security clearance, I still had contacts, and I still outranked Clarke. I never took my fingers out of the pie. I didn't have direct control but it was good enough. Chasen starts to sag, he is very tired
Langkowski: So why not bring them here, my 'team'?
Haddock: Because they don't work for C.S.I.S. They work for Department H. Your old friend Brown is the new Liaison for the Department. We're 1/10 our previous size but we're back. Alpha Flight is back.
Chasen: Starting to tire very noticeably You and Arachne are no longer members of Omega Flight. Guardian leads Alpha Flight, after all.
Langkowski: And you two?
Chasen: I'm not long for this world. Fixing this mess was my last chore.
Haddock: Without the Pit, I've no job. So I'm the new Director of Department H, small as it is. I like it that way.
Langkowski goes to collect Arachne and together with Haddock they meet up with Guardian, Puck, Nemesis, and Manbot. Chasen dies a few days later, his job complete. And the story continues....
