Northstar
 |
Jean-Paul Beaubier is a Mutant employed by the Canadian government as part of the super-team Alpha Flight, operating under the name Northstar. His mutation allows him to move with super speed and reflexes; when in physical contact with his twin sister Aurora, they are capable of firing off a blinding blast of dazzling light.
Jean-Paul finds the superhero game to be macabre, and would quit if he weren't so protective of his sister, Jeanne-Marie. Given downtime from a mission, he's quick to hit the bars for a night on the town.
Fiction
Northstar was a member of Alpha Flight, a team of super-agents under the employ of the Canadian government, in particular the ministry of defence subsidiary codenamed Department H. He and Aurora had just set the simulator for combat manoeuvres when a minister introduced the team to Department H's top covert operative Agent K. After Northstar demonstrated his superspeed by dodging an assault of sonic blasts, the minister explained that parliament had recently received a dossier from an anonymous source alleging that the living robot Machine Man had intentionally sent the Hulk to cause damage in Canada on orders of the U.S. government. The minister dispatched Northstar, Aurora, and Sasquatch to New York City to locate and arrest Machine Man, while Agent K did the legwork of tracing the dossier's origins.
The next morning, the agents travelled by limousine to New York City. While K followed his leads, Langkowski and the Beaubier twins were at a loose end in a luxury hotel suite. Langkowski equipped them each with a wrist monitor to track Machine Man's unique bio-radiation; rather than Jean-Paul's suggestion that he and his sister superspeed around the city, Langkowski suggested to simply go to the address in the phone book registered to Machine Man's alias of Aaron Stack. Jean-Paul scoffed, saying that Langkowski took himself so seriously that he made superheroism seem fun. He and Jeanne-Marie instead went to celebrate their youth in the greatest city in the world.
The following morning, while the Beaubiers slept off their party, Langkowski travelled by taxi to Stack's address, from where he was able to track Machine Man to a waterfront warehouse. Despite misgivings that he should have signalled for backup from Northstar and Aurora, Sasquatch took Machine Man on in combat, but the living robot subdued him by dropping him into the river and jolting him into submission with borrowed electricity. Sasquatch was conscious enough to feel Machine Man pulling him from the water onto dry land, making sure he wouldn't drown, and he struggled to contact the others.
Northstar and Aurora found him by searching the city at superspeed. Together, the Alpha Flight members traced Machine Man to a large sewer chamber, where they discovered Machine Man writhing under the effects of a sonic disruptor, beset by masked mercenaries. Alpha Flight immediately took the henchmen on.
Machine Man freed himself by detaching his head and negating gravity to repeatedly ram the disruptor. Though he regained his body, the assault had disfigured his humanised face, and he was driven into a blind rage. Northstar and Aurora attempted to stop him from murdering any of the henchmen by hitting him with a blinding light beam, but Machine Man's finger sensors were impervious to glare and he clocked the twins. Sasquatch tried to grab him to stop him beating on his pals, but Machine Man lashed out and pummelled Sasquatch senseless. He only stopped when he heard Aurora call him an inhuman monster. Horrified by his behaviour, Machine Man drilled his way out of the sewer, asking not to be followed. As Northstar made to go after "that metal plated pig", Sasquatch asked him to call it a day, and Aurora wondered if Agent K had fared any better than they had.
K had in fact traced the anonymous dossier back to the desk of Senator Miles Brickman, whose campaign for president centred solely on anti-Machine Man rhetoric. The news media caught wind of the story and span it into a plot to rig the election by making Canada stand with him against Machine Man. As Langkowski drove the team home, each of them fumed at the way their government had been played. Alone Against Alpha Flight!
