Years earlier than we were last with our team, a young woman, 19 years old, was in the middle of a heated argument with her father. This was nothing new, it wasn't a particularly important argument. It had been had many ties before. However the day it occurred on, well, that was important.

This was the day before what was only ever referred to as the Program, the best and brightest and toughest trained to be fast tracked into special ops. There were four different divisions to the Program, to teach each cadet a specialisation. Leadership, Technological Analyst, Weapons expert, and Undercover work. The Program was unique, the first of it kind as it allowed those training in it to make a completely fresh start, choosing a new name if they so desired, which would become their legal name.

This was when Skipper was born. Before then, she had used the name given to her by her mother, with her father's surname.

The argument was about this:

Her father had been a high up officer in the American Military, and had moved away after an early retirement.

After the woman he had married died, he returned to the US, bringing his daughter, and returning to his job at the military.

The daughter, who at that point was called Lola Brixton, wanted to do something for the country her father had always talked about, begged him to let her enter the program.

In the end he relented, agreeing to pull a few strings and get her accepted into it. On one condition, his daughter, who he had always seen as a disappointment, would have to change her name, so she would lose her connection to him, and his reputation would be secure.

Lola didn't see why she had to do this, but in the end agreed, vowing that she would be better than him one day and that he would wish he had not enforced this, as he would want a claim on her reputation.

It had taken a while, or maybe, when she looked back on it, not long enough, to come up with a new name.

Skipper had been a nickname when she was 6 that had stuck until she was 13, when her American friend that used the name moved back to the US. She couldn't remember why he had called her that, but it seemed fitting somehow- a fresh start in America using a name given to her by one of its own. What was his name... Alexander Rogers, that was it! Alex. He was a year older than her if she recalled correctly, her first friend, most being scared of her, as she was a tough child, her father making her take all types of defence classes.

So she became Skipper (no last name needed, people would know it as her, after all, she was going to devote her life to rising up the ranks of this system and showing her father she didn't need his damn name to get somewhere) and Skipper knew where she was heading in life.

As she argued with her father one last time over the name fiasco, she wondered if Alex would recognise her if they met now. Probably not, she had changed a lot since he moved away. It may have sounded melodramatic for a 19 year old, but Life had taken its toll, and her once bubbly personality was lost behind a grim mask of determination.

That night, Lola lay down to sleep in the barracks, ready for training to start in the morning, but it was Skipper who awoke the next day, Lola gone, in Skipper's mind, as if she never existed.

The first thing that happened at the program, was that groups were formed, each having four members, one from each specialisation. This was where Skipper met the others. In her group they had the young genius that went by the name of Alexander Kowalski.
Filling in the role of weapons expert (in training) was Richard Collins, a nice enough man who, told them to call him Rico.

Then there was the British James William Private, who was only 15, but apparently his uncle had pulled strings and got him in early, according to Private, because he kept getting into fights and 'needed a way to protect himself'.

There had been a couple of raised eyebrows over the name 'Skipper' but nobody questioned it. When the teams where set individual tasks, they failed miserably if it wasn't in their immediate skill range, but when working together, they were unbeatable, consistently coming top, until of course the time came to change the teams. Skipper found herself in a group with a couple of guys who obviously thought themselves better than her. That lasted all of one day. After that Manfredi and Johnson didn't bother her again, and after the program ended, the three were made an official team, gaining another member, Hans, who quickly became Skipper's best friend.

Her friends from the training team had not left her mind, but she had higher priorities to focus on, and soon she lost contact with them.

She didn't really see any of them much, maybe only Kowalski or Rico in the corridors after a mission, but she didn't see Private at all, she was too busy. Then, of course things happened, and at the age of 32, she found herself being on a team with them again after all this time.