The South Pole: The continent that surrounds it comprises nearly a tenth of the world’s land mass, but is owned by no one. One may wonder who could desire an environment where darkness prevails for six months each year and where temperatures rarely rise above negative nine degrees centigrade and where the landscape is as blank and hostile as the moon. There are however, a number of nations willing to send teams of scientists to seek new forms of energy. Canada is one such country willing to do that.
The winds wail in over Cape Evans, threatening to tear Ice Station Readleaf from its moorings on the glacial shelf. Inside, the research station, several scientists are going about their business. ‘Quite a blow, eh, MacGill?’ an older scientist says to a handsome younger man. Pouring the older scientist a hot drink and calling him Barstow, MacGill tells him it will be the last one they will hear forever. A woman sits on the floor and feeds several dogs as she asks MacGill if he is not coming back.
MacGill smiles and tells the woman, Shaw, that the only thing he will miss about Project Hotcore is having spent six months in isolation with a lovely lady such as she. ‘I’ll give my fiancee your endorsement’ Shaw jokes. Barstow tells Shaw that there is still time to change her mind and marry one of them. The young man at the radio control, Davenport, chews on a pencil as he exclaims they could have worn down Shaw’s resistance if Ottawa had given them another year down here. He declares that it is just like a government bureaucracy – send an exploratory team to pinpoint vast geothermal currents beneath the Pole – then cut off their funding just when they were getting close.
At his computer console, Barstow declares that they are getting close, as their monitors have been recording signs of massive geothermal buildup. He wishes that power source could be tapped – but MacGill cuts him off exclaiming what he has obviously heard before – ‘We know! We know! Nations could scrap nuclear power and turn to clean energy!’ ‘Not to mention simply boiling huge pots of tea!’ exclaims Shaw, when suddenly the dogs begin to howl.
Davenport asks what it is that has startled them, but Shaw doesn’t know. Suddenly, books and equipment begin to fall all over the floor when some tremors start. MacGill calls everyone outside, as Barstow wonders what an earthquake would be doing in Antarctica. Davenport calls into the radio, shouting ‘Mayday! Mayday!’ as he calls to Icebreaker Montclair.
Outside, Barstow informs the others that Davenport has gotten the SOS out, so help should be on its way – his voice trails off when he gazes up at what Shaw and MacGill are looking at – ‘like I said’ says Barstow ‘a massive geothermal buildup’. MacGill asks if it is a geyser of steam coming from the Earth’s core, and Shaw points out that it appears to be melting the ice on its way up.
Suddenly, the ice surrounding the Redleaf Station slips away, Davenport calling to Montclair declaring that they are falling into the sea – and within seconds, he and the station have sunk into the freezing waters. Shaw calls to Davenport, but MacGill declares that he has gone, and exclaims as he looks at dinosaurs and cavemen running towards them that Davenport may have been the lucky one. The trio of scientists run from the approaching pre-historic men, but one of them grabs Shaw as the others knock the two men out, and leave their bodies as they leave with Shaw.
Soon, but too late: the Montclair Icebreaker has made its way through the snowstorm and a group of scientists paddle their way over to land in a small boat. Someone declares that there is no sign of life, when suddenly a huge green dinosaur falls into the water beside them. Someone exclaims that it is a pteranodon, but someone else asks what it is doing at the South Pole, let alone in the Twentieth Century someone else adds. One of the scientists tells the others that they need to find Redleaf, but getting onto the ice, they see no sign of the Station.
One of the Montclair crew tells the others that they must be too far in land, but someone else reminds the others that it has fallen into the sea. One of the scientists looks through his binoculars and finds MacGill with a crushed skull.
Another scientist discovers another dinosaur and calls his colleagues over, ‘Allosaurus … I think,’ someone says. Huddled up against the dead dinosaur is Barstow – who is alive, but barely. A scientist discovers Barstow has a bad head wound, and figures he must have been struck down before crawling beside the dinosaurs warm carcass to keep himself from freezing. He gets out a flask and tells Barstow to swallow some of the brandy in it, but Barstow can barely mumble ‘Beware…’
A week later: ‘Now this is what I can being really shipshape!’ exclaims Madison Jeffries, a.k.a. the Alphan known as Box, who has used his mutant powers to manipulate the metal of the Box armor, turning himself into a jet, to transport the other members of Canada’s premiere super hero team on their new mission. Sitting in a chair, Wanda “Sasquatch” Langkowski exclaims ‘Go Alpha – and leave the flying to Box!’ ‘It’s the only way to travel,’ Jeffries replies. Alpha Flight’s team leader – Heather McNeil Hudson a.k.a. Vindicator turns to her friends and asks them for a little less levity, given the seriousness of the situation.
Vindicator casts her mind back, to earlier in the day, when a priority call Gary Cody made to them interrupted life as usual at the team’s headquarters on Tamarind Island. Via a communications screen, Alpha’s government liaison informs Alpha Flight of the situation and declares that Ottawa thinks only Alpha Flight can investigate in time. Heather seems somewhat hesitant about having to go to Antarctica, especially with the Station being gone for a week. Wanda declares that there is probably no chance the missing scientist is still alive, but Jeffries exclaims that he doesn’t think the missing woman is what the fuss is all about.
‘Meaning what, Mr. Jeffries?’ asks Cody. Jeffries tells him that he thinks Redleaf discovered the source of the geothermal energy they were looking for, and Canada wants it whether or not the expedition survived. Gary Cody quickly reminds the heroes that Alpha Flight is sworn to defend Canada’s interests – ‘No!’ exclaims Heather cutting Gary off as she asserts herself, declaring that Alpha exists to defend the land, not the people who govern it. Wanda thinks to herself that Snowbird and Shaman would be proud to hear Heather say that as she changes into her Sasquatch form.
Gary tells Alpha that he knows relations between them and Ottawa is somewhat strained and declares he is asking them as a friend. Heather tells Gary not to beg, for she already decided they will go – for the missing scientist’s sake. Jeffries jumps into his Box armor, exclaiming that as far as their transportation goes, there is something he has always wanted to try, and transmutates his armor into a ship. The two Beta Flight members, Manikin and Purple Girl watch through a window and are impressed that Jeffries has turned himself into an aircraft. ‘Sorta small though?’ asks Whit. Madison informs everyone that they will have to carry equipment so will add its mass to that of the Box armor and “grow with the flow”.
Now: Heather admits that she detected the uncertainty and the contempt in Cody’s voice. She thinks that despite all the changes Alpha Flight has been through, to Gary Cody, Alpha Flight is still Mac’s team, and even though she wields the power of Vindicator, to everyone at Ottawa, she is still just the wife of the late Guardian. ‘But Mac’s Alpha is dead, disbanded, while mine is doing quite well, thank you,’ Heather exclaims.
Jeffries asks Heather if she is still brooding about Cody and tells her that she does not need to prove her ability to lead to that twerp. Heather tells Madison that it is not Gary or Ottawa that she needs to convince – but herself. ‘Excuse me for eavesdropping, but that’s bull!’ exclaims Sasquatch who reminds Heather that she has “done time” in both Alpha Flights and can categorically say that this Alpha Flight, while numerically smaller may be just as strong as the original, ‘given that this gaggle of misfits and malcontents are far more stable’.
Sasquatch reminds her friends that the original team was always on the verge of tearing itself apart, and even had Mac lived, she doubts he could have held it together much longer. Sasquatch tells Heather that she means no disrespect to Mac’s memory, but that he tried to be everything – hero, warrior, scientist, leader and in the end he spread himself too thin – and it killed him! Wanda tells Heather that her strength lies in recognizing her own limitations while bringing out the best in the rest of them.
Turning to a computer console, Sasquatch asks Box if he reads what she is seeing. ‘Yeah, a volcano erupting at the South Pole!’ A little known fact about volcanic activity, is that the release of such geothermal energy is capable of producing atmospheric disturbances - one such disturbance strikes the Box aircraft, shocking Jeffries and knocking him out, sending him plummeting to the land below.
Sasquatch grabs the manual control, Heather asking her to use her strength to pull them up out of this dive. Glancing out the window, Heather is “greeted” by flying dinosaurs! Heather gets up from her seat as she tells Wanda that the scientist who visited the site of the ice station reported finding the corpses of such creatures. ‘Lucky us to go on location! Live! They’re attacking us!’ Heather tells Sasquatch to save Box while she flies out into the open sky.
‘I’ll tend to these creatures!’ she exclaims, blasting one of the flying prehistoric beasts with her electromagnetic powers. Heather is shielded by the forcefields in her battle suit and defends her team like the leader she is. She glances to the Boxship, and sees that Sasquatch has taken control and is pulling it out of dive, meaning they will land. Heather’s thoughts are for others – and never for her own safety – much to her loss as she is struck by the atmospheric disturbances and because her electromagnetic suit is linked to her nervous system, she thinks this costume is also a weapon– but there is a downside.
When the battle-suit’s formidable force fields are penetrated, by lightning for instance, what the suit feels, Vindicator feels. She plummets from the sky, downward to the ground, passing through a small hole and into a lush world below.
Sasquatch doesn’t see Heather through the storm clouds and realizes that she must have gone down. ‘And so are we!’ she exclaims as the Boxship lands with a thud on the Antarctic continent. A large growl and a shadow looming over Sasquatch signals the arrival of a dinosaur, to which Sasquatch looks up at it and after it growls, she asks it if that is the extent of its vocabulary.
The dinosaur lunges at Sasquatch, who barely dodges its razor sharp teeth. Sasquatch jokes that she was just asking about the vocabulary thing and tells the dinosaur that there is no need to get snappy – although it does seem determined to have her for lunch. The dinosaur roars and Sasquatch jumps onto it, exclaiming that she agrees that small talk can be maddening, ‘so lets cut the chatter and dance, shall we?’
Box regains consciousness and sees Sasquatch on the back of the large dinosaur. Jeffries transforms his body from a ship, back into an over-sized version of his regular form, supposing that the “Great Beast” within Sasquatch cannot resist a good fight. Jeffries jokes that the critter Wanda is fighting is ten times her size, but that she could probably score a TKO given time.
But they do not have the time, and as he transforms his body into a metal dinosaur to match the one Sasquatch is fighting, Jeffries exclaims that they have to find Vindicator. ‘Somebody’s always trying to cut in!’ jokes Wanda as she jumps onto the Jeffries-dinosaur as he rams the real dinosaur, telling Sasquatch that his interest in her dancing partner is purely platonic! After knocking the dinosaur onto its back, Jeffries leaps onto it, informing his teammate that it is spreading himself thin to get to this size, and hopes that the critter does not get a good slash in.
He opens his mechanical jaws and goes for the real dinosaur’s throat, ‘I oughtta be ashamed of myself for killing an extinct species!’ he exclaims before joking that it is a good thing Greenpeace is not here to see him now. Box exclaims that he will send Greenpeace a donation and whole lot of dinosaur-skin belts when he gets home, before asking Sasquatch where the critters came from. Wanda motions towards the volcano and tells Jeffries that it is emitting steam, not lava.
Sasquatch suggests to Box that the same geothermal current the missing scientists were searching for must have created a tropical pocket inside the earth, keeping the dinosaurs alive for all these millions of years. Box declares that the dinosaurs are an unacceptable by-product of the geothermal energy and thinks they should seal the crater and leave. Sasquatch tells Jeffries that they cannot, and when the armored Alphan asks ‘why?’ Wanda reveals that Vindicator is down there.
‘Where am I?’ asks Heather as she comes to in a small clearing beside a river. ‘Who am I?’ The lightning strike apparently did more than just short out Vindicator’s now-tattered battle-suit – the shock has also induced memory loss. But as a large snake slithers towards Heather and wraps itself around her body, she doesn’t need to know who she is to know that she is going to die!
Instinctively however, Heather tries to channel power through her gauntlets – but nothing happens and so she wonders what it was she was trying to do. But not for long, as she has to deal with the snake hissing at her. The creature bares its fangs as it prepares to strike the injured Alphan, But Heather cries ‘No!’ and reaching for a thick branch on the ground, she grabs it and shoves it into the snakes’ mouth, causing the snake to release. Heather runs away, leaving the snake slithering around with the branch rammed down its body.
Heather runs into a forest, when suddenly, she trips and falls against a large tree trunk. But looking up, she sees not a tree, but an enormous long-necked dinosaur. “Grunk?” the dinosaur “says” as it leans down towards Heather. Heather starts to crawl away, asking it if it eats vegetables, ‘I’m meat!’ she says to it – but as she turns around she is confronted by sharp-toothed meta-eating dinosaur. It growls but turns its attention to the larger dinosaur and Heather runs away, telling them to play with someone their own size.
Heather McNeil Hudson feels like an hors d’ouvre in a hungry realm and seeks her salvation in running away – but retreat only delays the inevitable, as a large sabretooth tiger lunges towards her. But the key to survival in this Savage Land is strategy – which Heather has plenty of. She grabs onto a strong vine and lifts herself up, out of the large cats reach, causing the prehistoric tiger to land in a tar pit.
Heather climbs up the vine as she looks below, seeing the tiger sucked down, she is relieved that she is finally safe – when she is suddenly grabbed at the waist by a prehistoric man. He presses his face up to hers and says “Gnurrk?” as Heather asks him to stop, declaring that he is hurting her, however from the man’s perspective, the embrace is meant to be passionate. As he pulls Heather closer to him, she swings her body around shouting that she said ‘Stop!’ and traps him in the vine, putting him into a noose before asking him if he is into petting and letting him fall into the tar below. ‘Let me introduce you to something you can pet for hours!’ Heather exclaims.
Alone at last, she swings over to a sturdy branch and rests upon it, wondering if the whole world is like this and if it is how did she survive as long as she has? But she thinks that this may not be her world after all – but if that is the case, how did she get here? How will she live long enough to get home? Fear and exhaustion begin to give way to despair – but not for long. ‘No tears!’ Heather exclaims, as she thinks that whoever she is, somehow she senses that she is not a weeper. ‘This may not be my world, but I'm stuck here, and I’ll survive!’
Days later, on the surface: As Box drills into the snow beneath him, Sasquatch points out that only the ice station they constructed from the old station’s metal has enabled the two of them to survive this long. Jeffries replies that where Vindicator is it is warmer, they know that from the dinosaurs. He adds that the only problem is drilling through all of the snow left behind by the frozen steam geyser to reach her.
As she plows through the snow with her mighty fists, Wanda thinks that Jeffries will never give up, because he loves Vindicator, ‘but Alphans have died before…’ She asks Box if he is getting an readings from Heather’s battle-suit, or any signs of electromagnetic activity at all. Box declares ‘No’ before bringing up that her suit may have been damaged. But he cannot bring himself to say the rest. If her suit was damaged, how could Vindicator possibly survive in a world that spawns monsters from the dawn of time?
A large prehistoric bird screeches as an arrow strikes it, and Heather, carrying a bow and arrow, her battle-suit ripped to better accommodate the heat of the Savage Land, rushes over to it, declaring ‘Dinner!’ Heather remembers that it too her a long time, many hungry days to get good enough with her makeshift bow and arrow, but suddenly, she hears company and runs into a thick part of the jungle, just on the border of a village. Heather has already met one “representative” of humanity down here and would just as soon pass a second opportunity. Yet she knows that on the other hand, she doesn’t want to be caught napping, so she ought to see what her primitive forebears are up to.
She hauls herself onto the high wooden fence, and as she peers over it she thinks that if the primitives are well organized then they could pose a real danger to her – or anyone else unlucky enough to fall into their hands. What Heather sees is a ape-like man being led up the stairs of a temple to the tribe’s leader, possibly as a sacrifice. A winged female is held captive in a small cage, while an odd looking man is trapped on a small rock, surrounded by a moat of flowing lava.
Heather sees this as a sacrifice, with the “normal” Neanderthals getting ready to offer up their village’s misfits. ‘Misfits?’ Amnesiac though she may be, something tugs at the edges of Vindicator’s memory. Some sense of knowing well how it feels to be one of society’s outcasts. Images of people she has some connection to flash through her mind – her longtime teammate Sasquatch, her lover Madison Jeffries, and one of her best friends whom she was recently forced to slay: the beautiful Goddess Snowbird. Heather now has some feeling that she has to take sides.
The tribe’s chief chants something in his native tongue as a geyser of steam billows out onto the primitive man tied to a slab of rock. Standing on top of the winged woman’s cage, Heather exclaims ‘That’s not the golden rule I remember, friend’ and tells him to drop his carving knife before she does unto him what he is about to do to his captive. The chief just curses at Heather, which she responds to by shooting him with her bow and arrow, hitting him in the arm.
Vindicator turns to the caged woman below her and asks her if her wings are just for decoration, and as she breaks the cage open, the woman flies out, enabling Heather to climb onto her back as she goes. The winged woman says something in her native tongue, which Heather figures means the winged woman is scared and wants to fly away. Heather tells her that she is scared too and wants to leave as well, but that those she presumes to be the woman’s friends are still in trouble. Heather tells the woman that they will help them, and repeats what the winged woman only moments ago said to her: “Da’Malara Shi’Taar”.
The winged woman swoops down to the small island surrounded by lava and picks up the rock-like creature in her talons as Heather supposes he must be heavy and declares that he reminds her of a primitive precursor of the Fantastic four member Thing. As he is dropped onto the mainland she wonders if he is as strong as the Thing too, and when she sees him pull a part of a rock from a larger rock she sees that he is. Now free of the molten prison that threatened to melt his mineral from, the creature proves capable of mastering his fear of the lava as he turns it against his tormentors by scooping it up and throwing it onto the tribes’ houses, setting them on fire.
The final captive is inspired by Vindicator’s example and makes good use of his captors’ distraction by biting through the rope that binds him and leaps off the temple steps, leaping past some armed warriors. Heather is carried away by the winged woman as the strong man punches their escape exit through the fence. She tells them to head for the forest where no one will ever find them – not foe, or friend…
Shortly, Box and Sasquatch have finally burrowed their way into the Savage Land, and see that their assumptions about there being a world down here were right. Sasquatch informs Box that the X-Men once told her about a Savage Land – a pocket of prehistoric existence hidden beneath the South Pole, but that she also heard it had been destroyed. She thinks that either some of it survived, or that this place is another hitherto unknown land at the Earth’s core.
Suddenly, Sasquatch sees some fire in the distance and alerts Box. Box declares that he sees it, and it seems to be coming form some small city in the jungle. As they fly over to the village, they realize that the villagers all seem really angry and must have had some unfriendly visitors recently. Jeffries soon spies a woman tied to a stake in them middle of the village. When they land, they see that it is Doctor Shaw, the missing scientist.
Hearing Jeffries and Sasquatch speak English, Shaw realizes that they must be from the surface world. Box breaks her restraints as he informs her who they are, as Shaw declares she had given up all hope, before revealing that the other sacrifices were freed by a woman, and she was left behind. Sasquatch asks Shaw what she means by “other sacrifices” and “strange woman” as Jeffries thinks it must be Vindicator!
‘Welcome to the Hideaway Hotel!’ exclaims Heather to her newfound allies, informing them that the same perimeter defenses she constructed and guided them through should prevent their kinfolk from catching them by surprise. The four begin eating some meat that Heather has cooked on a small fire. In their native language, the three Savage Landers extend their thanks to Heather, who tells them they should instead teach her the language so they can communicate, and so that she can train them to work as a team so that their enemies cannot try to capture and kill them again.
The three Savage Landers agree, and Vindicator falls almost instinctively into a pattern she established as the leader of a team she no longer remembers. Determined not to die and aware that her own abilities, beyond dauntless courage and a keen sense of strategy are minimal, she forges the misfits of the Savage Land - Crag, Avian and Primate – into a formidable fighting team.
Heather’s plan ensures their survival, and hers. In the days that follow, her evident care and concern for her charges create an unbreakable bond between them. Primate tells Heather that she has learned their language quickly, and Avian compares it to the quickness that the three of them have learned survival skills. Crag declares that alone they cannot combat their persecutors, but as a team they can endure. Heather tells them that she still does not understand why they were persecuted, and asks that this land must be big enough for all that dwell here. Crag begins to tell Heather their tale.
(in flashbacks)
The Savage Land was once much vaster, but a giant came and destroyed much of the realm, causing men and beasts alike to flee. Many died and cold claimed the Savage Land, killing many more. The survivors wandered around, at last finding pockets of survival, heated by warm currents from below. However that same warmth that saved them, somehow changed some of them – and made them outcasts among their own kind.
(Present)
Crag tells Heather that by saving them, she has incurred the wrath of the gods, but Avian tells Crag that the gods are dead, for the giant slew them when he razed their homeland. She asserts that only men remain, their kinfolk, who will rue the day they sought to slay them. Primate informs Heather as the four walk through the jungle that despite the other’s condemnation, they are still blood of their blood, and he does not want to cause them harm.
Heather suddenly recalls another team faced with a similar dilemma, but the memory fades, and soon this team’s foraging brings them back to the village where they were recently imprisoned. Airborne, Avian discovers than an enemy tribe is spying on her former peoples as they rebuild the burned part of their village and knows she must tell the others.
Flying back to Heather and the others, Avian informs them that the enemy masses for an assault while the walls are still breached. Crag exclaims that if their people are attacked now then they will be faced with a massacre. Avian exclaims that they three will be avenged, but Primate disagrees, trying to reason with Avian by pointing out that while they cast the three of them out, they are still their people, and that he will hasten to their aid, with or without her.
Vindicator asks Primate to wait, and tells him that if there is one thing she has taught him is that there is strength in unity. She tells Avian that she understands her bitterness, but asks her to understand her people’s fear, before asking her who she would rather share her world with – them or her enemies?
Soon, Avian flies to her former people and tells them to look to the skies as the outcast returns. Someone declares that the outcast is mocking them, as another suggests she may be attacking and orders them to fetch their weapons. Avian flies out of the village towards where Heather and the others are waiting, and they see soon that their plan has worked, for the villagers are running after her, armed to the teeth. But Crag points out that they think the four of them are attacking.
That misconception results in one casualty before the truth is known as spears are thrown at Avian, one of them hitting her in the shoulder. She falls to the ground and Heather runs over to her as the enemy tribe begins to attack at the same time, with the outcasts caught in the middle. Crag and Primate try to fend off the enemy village, stunning their own people who see the ones they cast out defending them. The tribe decides that any being, no matter how different, willing to die for their sake must be worthy of living among them and begin to engage the enemy, working alongside Heather’s newly formed group.
Crouching beside Avian, Heather tells her that her people now accept her and her teammates, but Avian quickly alerts Heather to the danger approaching from behind her. Heather is knocked to one side by the chief of the enemy tribe, who Heather realizes blames Avian for the failure of his surprise assault. With Avian hurt and helpless, the enemy leader is about to kill her. Heather wonders how she can save her, and raising her hand to the air she screams ‘Plasma burst!’ and from the glove on her hand, a powerful blast is released, knocking out the enemy leader. The power was always there, lying dormant in the battle-suit’s circuits, only the memory of how to use it was missing.
Heather’s EM signal is picked up by Box’s sensors as he flies over the Savage Land with Sasquatch and Shaw searching for Heather. They follow the co-ordinates, relieved that Vindicator is alive.
The enemy tribe’s leader still stands, but Heather continues to pour the power on, realizing she must have built up a reserve of it in the last few weeks. The power stops suddenly, for Heather’s suit is shredded. Suddenly, she experiences a revelation.
(Hallucination)
Heather sees Crag and Primate coming to her defense – and now Box and Sasquatch! ‘That’s the secret to being a leader, Heather!’ exclaims her dead husband – Alpha Flight’s former leader, James “Mac” MacDonald Hudson a.k.a. Guardian. Mac tells Heather that she understands it better than he ever did, and that her true power lies in her team. Sasquatch; Primate; Crag; Box; Avian and the late Snowbird.
(Reality)
‘M-Mac?’ asks Heather as she comes to, but is greeted instead by Sasquatch and Box. Jeffries exclaims Heather is delirious, and Sasquatch points out the large bump on her head. Jeffries asks her if she is okay, exclaiming how worried about her they were. Heather asks Jeffries how it is that they found her and Madison points out that they homed into her battle-suit before asking her why she never used her power sooner.
‘I…forgot…,’ Heather replies. Motioning towards Crag and Primate who are tending to Avian, Sasquatch tells Heather that she obviously didn’t forget how to lead and asks who they are. ‘I guess you could call them Alpha Prime,’’ Heather declares before revealing that they are the outcast of this society, whom she has tried to train to survive as strangers in their own land.
Heather kneels beside Avian, and the winged woman tells her that she has succeeded, before revealing that if she survives she will use her powers and abilities to defend her people – whether they will have her or not. Heather turns to the villagers and asks them if they hear what Avian just said. She tells them that they can either accept these beings that they tried to cast out or take advantage of their strengths and skills and become stronger for it. Or, alternatively, they can reject the gifts they freely offer and suffer for it. ‘It’s your world, and your decision, choose wisely, choose well’.
After Shaw has quickly translated, Sasquatch tells Heather she made a nice speech and suggests she try it on Ottawa. Box compares the two, seeing that Ottawa is about as trusting of it’s super heroes as the Savage Landers are of theirs. Heather declares that societies will always fear their misfits. Primate asks her if she has to leave them now, and Heather informs him that she must return to her own tribe, who is not so different from his own. She tells Alpha Prime that the three of them have gifts that make them more than human, but points out what they already know – that those same gifts can also be a curse.
Heather tells Alpha Prime that because of their gifts some men will envy them, and some will hate and fear them. Box turns himself into another plane, and after Sasquatch and Shaw have boarded him, Heather proceeds to do so, telling Avian, Crag and Primate that because they feel the loneliness of being different. They will seek to live in the company of men, but although they defend the tribe, they should never fully trust them – for their powers may make those they aid their enemies.
Avian asks Vindicator who it is that they can trust then, and as Alpha Flight take to the sky, Heather calls back ‘Each other! That’s what will make you a team!’
