My Star Spangled Invisi-Gal [MCU/Dispatch]

[cliffc999]

Author's Note:

People familiar with my snippets thread know that I've been having a persistent attack of vignettes and mental images about a certain crossover 'ship pairing that's been forcing my muse to post omake about it for the past several days. They also know that I swore up and down that I would not try to turn it into a full-length story, that I didn't remotely have that much ambition. To those who actually read the draft snippets, you are warned that you have no guarantees I won't rewrite some things in production.

People familiar with me personally already probably knew that soon enough I'd succumb to temptation and try anyway. And so we embark on my latest authorial exercise that I really hope my muse doesn't fall apart on me in mid-stream again, the adventures of an isekai'ed Steve Rogers who gets accidentally dimensionally displaced from the time period in-between 'Thor 2' and 'The Winter Soldier' as he lands in the world of 'Dispatch' just about at the start of the game.

Time to make you all suffer through my shippy dramedy thing.

Pairings: Captain America/Invisigal, Robert/Blonde Blazer

---

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Minus 106

"Reactor chamber's sealed off and adjacent to the central bunker, here." Captain America pointed at the relevant part of the holographic diagram being projected over the map table in the rear of the Quinjet. "Main control station is here, and auxiliary control is here. Those are the only two places the reaction can be shut down from, so we've got to have at least one of them secured within sixty seconds of going loud. Everyone's already memorized the emergency shutdown sequence, so whoever reaches a panel first enters it first."

"Our approach routes suck, Cap." Agent Brock Rumlow drawled confidently from where he sat sprawled in the nearest chair. "We either have to get through that surface entryway's guard detachment whisper quiet and with zero callouts, and then it's several minutes through all these corridors to the central bunker with the risk that any random idiot we trip over going out for a bathroom break might sound an alarm. Either that or we use the tech-toy we brought to burn our way in straight from the roof… with all the risks that carries of dropping a giant cutting beam straight into the middle of a dark energy research lab we only have outline floor plans of."

"I know they hate telling us grunts about sources and methods, but if we got these plans and codes from an inside guy then the team will at least need a mugshot so we know who not to shoot." Agent Rollins said reasonably.

"Good thinking, but the Director assured me that our source is already clear." Captain America reassured him. "As for our entry decision, that's still a coin flip… and Natasha's still in the infirmary from the Bangladesh mission so we don't even have that stealth option available." He breathed out and nodded crisply, his voice firming with decision. "All right, it's the rooftop. Both options are risks that can't be calculated, so let's go with the one that makes the enemy have to catch up to us and not vice versa."

"Just to review, there's no plan C for us here?" Rollins nodded.

"None that I can figure." Rumlow answered. "Or the Cap, or Fury. Those idiots are going to kick off their wannabe Arc Reactor's first full-power test today, and according to Stark if we let them open up the throttle it's 99 to 1 it'll go unstable and then we've got an unscheduled nuclear incident in Southeast Asia to deal with. Add in that intel says this new AIM outfit's black lab here is actually deniable-fronting for the one of the last governments in the world anybody would want with arc reactor tech and, well, wait and see just ain't an option."

"Speaking of Stark-" Hendricks, the team's technical specialist, began.

"There's no way he could make it this far into contested airspace without them going to a higher alert status." the Captain said regretfully. "His ECM's good, but that suit's not a dedicated stealth aircraft."

"Still wish the heavy metal could be here, though." Rumlow agreed. "But, woulda coulda shoulda maybe. All right, STRIKE, lock in and load up. Time for drop."

"Altitude is ten thousand feet, wind is negligible, visibility is clear moonless night. Stealth mode nominal, no detection." The pilot called from the front. "Drop point in ninety seconds."

"Check parachutes, fore and aft." Captain America called out. "Stack up… door open… standby… stand byyyyy… jump!"

SHIELD's most elite special-operations squad leapt out into the moonless night and arrowed down towards the ground in precise formation, falling towards the expertly-camouflaged enemy complex in the jungle below. Rumlow and Rollins each dropped one of the two sentries patrolling the roof of the barely-visible bunker half-buried in the soil with a silenced headshot before they even touched the ground, then expertly flared out their chutes and came in to a standing landing. The rest of the squad touched down feather-light around them, Captain America grunting mildly with the effort of holding the several-hundred-pound repulsor-powered "tunneller" that Tony Stark had custom-built for this mission on his back.

The large metal cylinder of the Starktech 'tunneler' was rapidly whisked down and set up on its folding tripod, aimed down at the precise center of the precalculated point in the bunker roof. Tony Stark had custom-built it to cut a four-foot hole twenty feet straight down through the top of the bunker and into the main control chamber. The team carefully plotted their entry point on GPS to aim the beam where it would hopefully come down in-between two of the control stations and well away from any critical infrastructure, and then activated the timer. A slight whining built as the device charged up to full power.

"To review, first we put the concussion charge through the hole to shock the room and then follow it down single file in squad order." Cap stated briskly as the 'tunneler' continued charging. "I cover the breach, Rumlow goes for the nearest panel, Rollins as his wingman, everybody else deploys and reacts as needed to whatever we end up facing."

"Still think me and Jack should hold the LZ and you do the run, Cap." Rumlow said amiably. "You're a lot faster than either of us on the sprint."

"It's barely twenty feet, that's virtually no difference at our comparative speeds." Cap answered reasonably. "But whoever's first in has to sweep the entire room for potential threats to give the rest of you a chance to land, and who's got the fastest reaction time?"

"You're the boss." Rumlow nodded, as the whine of the capacitors charging reached its peak.

"Stack up." Cap ordered. "Breaching in three… two… one… now."

The 'tunneler' flared a brilliant blue circle as it's own one-shot miniature Arc Reactor cell destructively discharged all of its built-up charge in one burst, and the repulsor variant beam molecularly shattered the earth, steel, and concrete layered between it and the target. Barely one second later the burn-through completed and STRIKE's demo expert immediately armed the fire-extinguisher-sized giant 'flashbang' charge and dropped it into the hole, the eye-searing flash and devastating concussion almost being felt even on the surface. A fraction of an instant after that a climbing cord was unreeled from the tripod and Captain America smoothly leapt forward and caught it with his rappelling gloves, sliding down the rope with practiced ease just like it was a routine long-line drop from a helicopter with the rest of the STRIKE team hot on his heels.

The darkened room rang with the sound of the Mighty Shield arcing through the air and striking down the only two of the security guards still able to stand with a single two-corner bank shot before flying smoothly back into Cap's hands greeted Rumlow as he touched down, and him and Rollins ran smoothly forward in practiced unison towards the main reactor control station as the rest of STRIKE swept out to secure the room, dropping the just-arriving security reaction force with single aimed shots and making it look easy even despite the dim flickering of the emergency lighting.

Rumlow reached the panel and pulled away the slumped form of the scientist who'd fallen on it, ready to enter the carefully-practiced shutdown sequence-

-and glared incredulously down at the darkened keyboard and controls, which were entirely deactivated.

"Shit!" Rumlow swore. "Panel's dead! I can't input the code!"

"All these panels are dead!" Rollins swore from one of the adjacent stations. "Either the tunneler or the concussion charge must have fragged the room power!"

"What kind of walking lobotomies don't put critical reactor controls on the same emergency power bus as the backup lights?!?" Hendricks swore incredulously. "Hang on, let me try and find the breaker box and reset-"

The room flared brilliant blue through the viewing window leading down into the main reactor chamber as AIM's bootlegged, hotwired kludge of an Arc Reactor attempt suddenly ramped up from standby and began climbing to full. Everyone in the room stopped dead at the realization that they were now at ground zero of a nuclear detonation… with barely a minute left on the clock.

"Rumlow, get them out!" Captain America commanded as he took off sprinting. "I'm going for aux control!"

"Even you aren't that fast!" Rumlow swore as the super-soldier left the main control room at his maximum speed, practically knocking the door off its hinges as he frantically set out to run a full half-circle around the complex to reach the aux control station on the other side of the reactor gallery.

"Well, none of us can outrun a nuke!" Cap's voice sounded in all their headsets with amused sarcasm as STRIKE obeyed their orders and fell back out of the main control room and out into the exit corridors that would eventually take them to the surface.

The entire bunker started to shudder underneath their feet as the reactor began to destabilize. Rumlow's men continued to struggle their way through the concrete-lined corridors towards the illusionary safety of the surface as Captain America's heaving breath sounded urgently in their headsets. Even for his serum-augmented physique he was setting a punishing pace, desperately trying to race ahead of the blast-

"Made it!" Cap's voice sounded in their headsets. "Shutdown code-"

The entire world shook and went momentarily black, as every one of the fleeing STRIKE squad was sent sprawling by the shock wave. It felt like space itself was twisting around them, until the roller-coaster ride suddenly stopped and left everyone on their knees or flat on the ground, desperately trying to hold down their breakfasts.

"Did it blow?" Rollins asked dazedly. "Are we dead?"

"Michaels!" Rumlow called to their squad medic. "Check your counter! What kind of dose did we take?"

"Point… point two sieverts. Maybe twenty rads." Michaels answered breathlessly. "A little hot, but way below the threshold of actual radiation damage."

"Boss." Rollins said in awe. "Look." He pointed back the way he came… at the starlight streaming down from above, visible through the cut-off end of the corridor. Starting approximately fifteen feet behind them the entire complex had just vanished in a circular globe centered on the reactor core, leaving a neat hemispherical depression open to the sky.

"Jesus Christ." Hendricks said dully. "It didn't detonate, it collapsed into an unstable wormhole. Like the one that took out SHIELD's dark energy lab when Loki fucked with the Tesseract there."

"Cap's gone?" Michaels said, his jaw dropping in shock.

"He's random molecules, got to be." Hendricks nodded. "Or else he's been blown so far into the ass end of the universe that the Chitauri are next-door neighbors compared to wherever he is."

"Shit, some guys just cannot catch a break." Rumlow snorted. "Lost his whole world when he went in the ice, and then he just lost this one… assuming he ain't vaporized." He shrugged. "Well, who knows. But doesn't matter, really. Either way we come out ahead."

"Huh?" Rollins goggled.

"Think, you dumbass." Rumlow said tolerantly. "The only reason we hadn't already arranged an 'accident' for him ourselves was because Fury would have been up the entire incident's ass with an electron microscope, and so we'd be betting everything on the hope that we could fake a good enough crime scene to fool that one-eyed old bastard. And we just couldn't take that kind of risk, not with Insight kicking off in only several months. But now the Cap's gone and heroically sacrificed himself in the line of duty, in a one hundred percent genuine tragedy that has no traces sticking to our fingers." He broke out into a beaming smile. "So everybody start rehearsing your sad faces for the debriefing and the funeral, because Captain America is finally out of HYDRA's hair… forever."

* * * * *​

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 3

"Frozen in ice since World War II? Fuckin' seriously?" the elderly black man narrowed his eyes at Steve suspiciously.

"From 1945 to 2011." Steve answered evenly as he sat across the desk from the man giving him his entrance interview. "One of my enhanced abilities is an augmented metabolism, it preserved me without cellular damage when I was immersed in freezing water after the plane crash."

"Which happened after you saved the whole East Coast from bein' blowed up by a fuckin' Nazi superplane carrying a doomsday weapon powered by some super-science doohickey that glowed blue and shat out infinite power that nobody ever figured out how it worked. And then 70 years later they thaw you out and first you fight off a whole alien invasion practically by yourself and then you go right back into some black ops shit for this SHIELD agency." Chase rolled his eyes. "Captain, you tell a tall tale better than anybody I've ever met and I work in a whole buildin' full of fuckin' liars, but you want to try and give me a little something to work with in this job interview?"

Steve sighed briefly. "What part of the whole tale did you find the least believable, Mr. Chase? The Nazi superplane, the alien invasion, or the energy source?"

"Oh that shit sounded perfectly normal." Chase waved his hand dismissively. "But the part where how your joinin' the Army just put you in a position to get your whole life fucked over harder than any man I've ever met, which really means somethin' considerin' some of the people I have met, and you still went back and re-enlisted the instant you got out of the ice?" Chase grumbled. "Do you have the slightest fuckin' self-preservation instinct at all?"

Steve actually chuckled at that one. "If you asked any of my prior commanding officers, the answer would be 'No'." He continued more seriously. "Although I honestly don't believe I'm particularly careless. I just…" Steve trailed off helplessly.

"By all accounts have the shittiest luck ever known to humankind." Chase agreed roughly. "All right, you don't smell like a crazy person or a liar to me, even if your backstory would get laughed out of Hollywood for bein' unbelievable as hell. And I saw the police report on the gear they confiscated when you landed in the middle of downtown, that kind of weapons and tech only comes from the damn CIA or worse. So… I'll sign off on believin' it. Well, the outline of it."

"Thank you." Steve said agreeably. "The government was a lot better than I expected about giving me a basic legal identity, but-"

"Everybody knows magic is real, we even got a demon sorceress workin' right in this branch office." Chase interrupted brusquely. "So other dimensions existin' is known fact, even if crossovers like yours ain't exactly common."

"But I still need a job." Steve agreed. "And while I could have applied for anything… I guess this time I didn't want to re-enlist right away after all. And at least your Superhero Dispatch Network would let me support myself while still using my enhanced abilities to help people, instead of something more… conventional." Steve continued more practically.

"Yeah, you already explained why you rejected the government offer, and who could fuckin' blame you, fuckin' spooks and all their shifty shit." Chase snorted. "Surprised you picked us rather than one of the other corpo teams though. We don't exactly offer the highest salary, and you're exactly the kind of camera-friendly person they love to pack their rosters with."

"Back when I first enlisted the Army had me doing War Bonds tours for months before I could finally get myself a real combat deployment." Steve said disapprovingly. "No. Thank. You. Your company was the only one that agreed to give me a guarantee of no show-pony or PR work, just actual hands-on heroing. Plus, you were one of the only offers that didn't insist I commit to a fixed contract but instead left me the option of resigning at my discretion."

"Still wish you'd agreed to help shoot the PSAs." Chase muttered. "Only other people we got available that have any hope of getting through them without a PR disaster are Phenomaman and Blazer, and he's kinda so-so on them and she's got so many dumped on her already it just makes a man want to weep."

"… maybe later." Steve sighed with pained sympathy. "If she really needs my help. But please… not right away?"

"All right, all right." Chase agreed tolerantly. "Just one more question before I take you down to start your evaluations and training." He raised an eyebrow. "You're Mr. Squeaky-Clean Polite from a bygone era where manners were so good that a gentleman wouldn't even go outside without a hat on, and you haven't even so much as fuckin' blinked at all my cussin' not once? Now I can hardly complain about somebody around here finally havin' some fuckin' self-control for once, but if you don't ever let people see the real you then that's not healthy. For either you or for them."

"Sir, I used to sleep in an army barracks full of World War II paratroopers." Steve raised an amused eyebrow. "Do you really think I haven't heard that kind of language before? Our typical manner of speaking back in the Howlers would have lowered the tone in a maximum-security prison. Our unit's linguist could speak five languages, but he had an encyclopedic knowledge of profanity in maybe fourteen of them." Steve shrugged. "As long as it's just your way of expressing yourself and not meant to hurt or belittle anyone, and your workplace tolerates it, it's not a problem."

* * * * *​

"… I wasn't too hard on the equipment, was I?" Steve asked embarrassedly as he re-slung his shield on the back of his costume. "Sorry, I still sometimes have a problem with that if I don't remember to slow down."

"Dat's okay." Royd, the hulking tech specialist for SDN's Torrance branch office said. "Just a couple of dents, dey polish out of the combat robots easy."

"Well, Captain, your score on the combat test is…" The SDN functionary carefully adjusted his spectacles. "Uhhh… maximum."

"I tink it only be dat low because the metrics dey don't scale any higher." Royd chuckled.

"The evaluation analysis programming did… start providing rougher estimates towards the end." the trainer agreed dazedliy. "In any event, yes, he tests completely out of the hand-to-hand module, he doesn't even need to take the related training. Or the marksmanship module… the tactical situations module… the situational awareness module… the…" He looked at Chase incredulously. "You're sure he's being assigned to our branch office?"

"Rules are rules, and since we can't actually verify anything he put on his resume what with him bein' from another goddamn alternate timeline, that means the only way we can credit him with anything beyond 'did well on the entrance evaluations' is after he proves it in the field." Chase grumbled. "Which means since he officially has zero seniority and zero credit for anything then he gets assigned to an entry-level squad only, and there's only one of those in LA with a fuckin' opening right now. Even if it is a fuckin' waste and a half to send a prospect like this there."

"I started as a private, I can be one again, relatively speaking." Steve shrugged. "And I do have a lot of adjusting to do, so taking it slow for my beginning instead of jumping straight into a higher-level position is fine by me. Really fine."

"'Slow' is not the word I would use to describe what you're in for." Chase muttered darkly. "Still, ain't no way around it. All right, son, it's another day or so of the paperwork and the orientation to learn how our system works and all, and then you report on duty with the Z-Team in the Torrance branch office right here."

"An 'entry level' outfit, with apparently a high personnel turnover if it always has an opening, and that they've labelled the 'Z-Team'." Steve nodded knowingly. "Let me guess… it's what in the Army we'd have called the awkward squad?"

"Awkward squad." Chase laughed briefly. "Yeah, that's a damn good way to describe it. Still, ain't no fuckin' way around it so the only way is through." He nodded. "Should only be for a couple months anyway, you just have to not fuck it up in the field and soon enough we can rotate you out to one of the better teams. But that's for the future, right now it's about time to clock out." Chase waved off Steve's next question. "So let me take you to the cashier's office so you can pick up your pay advance and get enough to buy yourself some things and get somethin' to eat. Also, I called in a favor from a friend and already found you an apartment cheap. Get you out of that motel and into some place you can actually have a little furniture and shit. You can find your own flop next month if you hate it, but this month's on the house. We'll call it 'relocation assistance'."

"Thank you, sir." Steve said politely as they walked out. "You've been very helpful, all of you."

"You're welcome." Chase nodded. "Sorry I couldn't get you in to meet your branch manager yet, but Blazer's been run ragged these past couple of days with ten tons of everything up at corporate and also tryin' to get this, uh, other new project we're hopin' to spin up actually be signed off on. I'll let you know when she's got an opening so you two can get introduced. You'll like her, she's a sweetheart."

"Looking forward to it." Steve gave a polite smile.

* * * * *​

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 4

Steve straightened his costume and after a quick glance at his reflection in a nearby window to make sure nothing was out of place, he shrugged and entered through the revolving door into the music-filled trendy bar. The superhero bar called 'Crypto Night' had been recommended to him as a place where he could begin to check out the costumed hero scene in this part of LA, and also to get a decent drink without having to change. So after having spent a couple of days completing his employee orientation, settling into his new (minimalist) apartment, and buying some clothes and other essentials with his pay advance, Steve had decided while at entirely loose ends to at least try going out to the local hero hangout and seeing who his new colleagues might be.

Standing and luxuriating briefly in the unique sensation of being out in a public place in his Captain America suit without anyone paying attention to him, Steve looked briefly around the room for any of the very people he'd met and could recognize and saw none of them. He shrugged and went up to the bar.

"So, you're the new guy? Captain America?" the bartender looked consideringly at the obviously flag-themed hero. "Here's hoping you're not as much trouble as the last guy who had that seat."

"What happened?" Steve asked politely.

"First off, he came in here without any powers and when he wasn't a hero any longer, when that's against the rules. Then he picks a barfight with like three people at once when they ask him to leave. And finally he dumps a full glass of Everclear on top of a man while his flame powers are already going, singed off all the guy's hair. Left a mess all over the floor, too. Just had to bounce him out a few minutes ago." The bartender shook his head inquiringly. "I have no idea what the hell Blonde Blazer of all people sees in that jerk."

"Oh, she was here?" Steve raised an eyebrow. "I was hoping to meet her."

"You and the entire male half of LA, buddy." The bartender nodded knowingly. "Hottest heroine on the scene. But she's already taken." He shrugged confusedly. "I mean, I thought she was seeing Phenomaman, actually, but she was flirting pretty hot and heavy with the new guy right now… anyway, the relevant point is that she left with him."

"Well, there's always tomorrow." Steve shrugged. "Coke, no ice."

"You came to a bar to drink soda?" The bartender raised an eyebrow. "For what I charge for one glass you could get a whole two-liter at the store."

"With my metabolism, alcohol barely tickles me." Steve shrugged. "And it's not much of a taste either, so why bother?"

"You're not the only one with powers like that." The bartender nodded knowingly. "I got some fortified stuff here, basically pure alcohol with flavor. Slug enough of it back and even someone as strong as Blazer starts feeling the buzz. You want some?"

"Not when I have to work early tomorrow. Coke and keep it coming, I'm just here to meet people." Steve said agreeably.

"Fair enough." The bartender said and handed Steve his drink.

"You said the gentleman before me had 'lost his powers'?" Steve asked after a sip. "How does that work?"

"Oh, right, they said you're from another dimension or something." the bartender remembered. "We had a power armor guy in town called Mecha Man, one of the independents. Was in the game for like fifteen years, didn't do a bad job… at first. But he'd been slipping more and more recently, and finally he gets himself absolutely trashed fighting this guy called Shroud and his whole villain team a few months ago. Armor was totalled, and he'd run out of money somehow so he couldn't fix it. So he gives a press conference saying he's quitting on being a hero." The bartender snorted. "You finally track down the guy who killed your father, and you completely blow the job when you get there? And you quit being a hero because you ran out of cash, and then you come here picking fights and looking for free sympathy? Can you believe that guy?"

"Oh, there was a lot in those last few sentences that I couldn't believe." Steve replied with icy formality. "Thanks for the drink." He pushed the half-full glass back across the bar, laid down just enough cash to pay for it – and no tip – and pushed himself away and headed out the door.

Steve stopped outside the front of Crypto Night and looked up at the brilliant moon in the sky, breathing in the warm California air. It's really a beautiful night, he thought slowly to himself. And this world's mostly at peace, not like the international tensions we were constantly juggling at SHIELD. And yet-

Steve exhaled meaningfully as he began the long walk back to his new apartment. He'd hoped to start getting settled into this new 'community' of heroes he'd joined, but so far the only people he'd heard of who even sounded heroic all seemed either caught up in some corporate maze or else entirely ostracized by the other 'heroes'-

And yet I'm just going to have to adjust. he pondered. Both the scientific and magic experts that SDN consulted about me said they'd keep looking into options, but with the easy solutions already all foreclosed they weren't holding out much hope. Maybe Nick will have some kind of solution for finding me that he kept 'compartmentalized' until he needed it, or maybe Tony will come up with something- heck, Thor was supposed to have a friend who could scan distant dimensions, wasn't he? But-

Steve squared his shoulders with resolution.

But I've already done everything I can do about that. he thought to himself. If a rescue mission comes for me, then it comes. But I can't go all-in on just waiting it to come, and leaving myself with no options if it doesn't. I've got to at least try to actually live here, and not just exist. Natasha already kept telling me that I wasn't doing enough of that, the last thing I need to do is double down.

And I already lost my whole world once, and it felt like I barely had my chance to put my feet down in my new one before I lost it again. Who knows, maybe third time will be the charm.

He exhaled heavily and kept wearily walking. And even if it's not, you have to report for your new assignment tomorrow so just keep putting one foot in front of the other, soldier.

Just take it one day at a time.

 

[Simonbob]

The Cap really does make a lot of setting better, doesn't he?

 

[Aleh]

The Cap really does make a lot of setting better, doesn't he?

Click to shrink...

Cap is a genuinely good man who's generally unafraid to fight for what he believes in... and who's quite good at doing so.

Someone like that tends to have that property, yes.

 

[vladspellbinder]

Thanks for the thread and the chapter.

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 5

Captain America sat stiffly on his chair at the end of the conference room table nearest the door, rigidly masking his… concern… over the gathering he was now a part of.

Chase warned me the rest of the Z-Team were ex-supervillains who were trying to overcome their criminal pasts via public service, but I'd been expecting people a little more like Natasha and a lot less… this.

His eyes flickered from the arrogant and bullying living flamethrower Flambae to the coldly disturbing winged ex-assassin Coupe to the erratic and twitching (and more than a bit frightening in appearance) man-bat-monster Sonar to… well, there really wasn't anyone here who seemed repentant. The attitudes in the room ranged from insolent arrogance to outright apathy to a couple of people who seemed on the verge of a neurotic episode of some kind. Perhaps the only reasonably cheerful and relaxed people in the room were the diminutive strongman Punch Up and the 'demon sorceress' Malevola, who despite her warm and perfectly reasonable demeanor was someone that Steve willingly admitted to himself he'd deliberately picked a seat on the opposite end of the table from because, well, demon. And he still wasn't sure exactly what that meant here, but once you'd fought alongside the son of Odin you kept in mind that that just sometimes, an alleged mythological being might actually be as mythical as they claimed to be.

And then there was Golem, who was some type of mud robot or construct, and… well, JARVIS had been a perfectly reasonable artificial intelligence who Steve was fine with, but that's because Steve had gotten to know him and also knew and trusted the man who'd programmed him. Hopefully Golem would become at least one of those things later on, but for now…?

"Someone's cutting again." Flambae drawled nastily. "Maybe we should tell teacher."

"Fuck you." a strange young woman's voice startled Steve slightly, as the young woman herself flickered into visibility on a nearby chair. "That's like the twentieth time you didn't put together 'empty chair in the room still has a divot in the cushion' with 'hey, one of my teammates is called Invisigal." the lithe short-haired brunette woman rolled her eyes. "Because she, y'know, turns invisible?" she drawled sarcastically.

"Girl, he waited almost twice as long as last time!" the brilliantly-dressed woman who'd been introduced to him as 'Prism' rolled her eyes. "How the fuck did you hold your breath that long? Your little bitch lungs are weaker than Waterboy's pick-up lines!"

Invisigal snorted derisively and answered Prism's sally with an upraised middle finger, not even bothering to look at her.

"Hey, team." a calm, slightly tired-sounding male voice sounded in everyone's headset. "This is your dispatcher, Robert Robertson. I'm starting my first shift-"

Every single person in the room save one burst out in laughter.

"Tell me that's not your real na-" Prism began to gasp out.

"GOOD morning, sir." the Captain 'politely' greeted their new supervisor back, even if the first word had been almost bellowed at the top of his lungs to startle the room into silence. "May I ask what's our first assignment?"

"It's a subscriber assistance call." Robert replied quickly but firmly, as he rapidly seized the life-line that Steve had just tossed him. "Non-combat, but requiring some decent mobility. Should only need one hero…" Their dispatcher paused for a moment before deciding. "Captain, this one's yours. Coordinates and precis are in your commlink, tap my individual channel if you need more details. Everybody else stay on team chat, we have some more things to cover."

"On my way." Cap acknowledged, and with a polite if stiff nod to everybody else he left the room.

"… who the hell was that?" Invisigal looked at the others confusedly, to a chorus of shrugs.

* * * * *
​

"A child lost their balloon in a tree? Really?" Steve sighed into his headset as he drove back from his 'subscriber assistance call'.

"Tell me about it." Robert agreed wearily. "Obviously the non-emergency calls are pushed right off the bottom of the assignment board the instant any of the 911 calls comes in, but apparently this bread-and-butter work is the sort of thing the paid subscribers are paying for. Look, it's my first day here too, and I agree this is not what either of us probably picture when we think of 'superheroing'."

"Well, I asked for something simple to start with, I suppose I can't complain that I got my wish." Steve manfully tried to make the best of it.

"Still, thanks for the bail-out this morning." Robert agreed. "I shouldn't have needed it, but I'm glad you gave it."

"Why didn't they introduce you to us in person?" Steve wondered. "Obviously this isn't the Army, but people still only respond to leadership if they actually see their leader as more than a faceless, distant voice lurking in an office."

"That's what I said, but I don't write their procedures manual." Robert agreed. "Anyway, at least we're getting one assignment done this shift without a client complaint… which is apparently one more than average, as depressing as that sounds. I'll try and give you something more heroic next time, assuming we get any calls for it."

"Boring is fine." Steve reassured his harried-sounding new supervisor. "We loved boring in the Army, it meant nobody was shooting at us."

"I can only imag- and, there's a bar fight at Crypto Night. Captain-" Robert.

"I didn't make myself very popular at Crypto Night last night." Steve admitted embarrassedly. "Might be better to send someone else."

"Seems to be a lot of that going around." Robert agreed amusedly. "Okay, I'll send Punch Up. At least he knows a lot about barfights." A sudden beeping sound echoed in Cap's ears as Robert's headset mike picked it up at his end. "And, 911! Museum robbery in progress, and you're closest."

"Acknowledged, ETA four minutes." Steve acknowledged crisply as he gunned the motorcycle he'd requisitioned from SDN's motor pool and started rapidly weaving through traffic.

The museum robbery was slightly difficult in that the malfunctioning security system was targeting the Captain as well as the robbers, but evading the simple motion sensors that the security system used was a relatively pedestrian task compared to the advanced defensive networks that some SHIELD missions had required him to infiltrate past. Steve was mildly surprised that the robbers were packing energy weapons instead of mundane firearms, but his shield easily dealt with the one or two blasts that he couldn't evade and the thieves were subdued with dispatch.

"Right, now comes the follow-up." Robert said. "The cops ran a 'known associates' and cross-trace on one of the guys you caught and turned up a lead, so we know where the art theft ring's hideout is. And there's already an outstanding mission request to recover some stolen artwork that this particular gang had taken earlier. Thing is, these paintings are valuable so going in fast and hard risks not only blowing the assignment but getting us sued for millions of dollars. How are you at stealth missions?"

"The recovery of the stolen property is the first priority? Not apprehending the thieves?" Steve asked disapprovingly.

"It's both, actually, but the one is slightly ahead of the other. Still, as you are correct this is technically two taskings, I can assign a two-hero team to it... got it. I'm routing Invisigal to your location."

"Makes sense, she's the stealth expert." Cap agreed.

"Exactly. Good luck, Cap." Robert signed off.

Invisigal's own motorcycle soon pulled up alongside where Steve's was parked discreetly behind a building a block away from the art thieves' hideout. "Hey, nice taste in wheels for an old guy." she drawled sarcastically. "Everybody else without movement powers just checks out a boring sedan or something."

"I've always liked motorcycles." Cap replied cheerfully. "Good gas mileage, lets you get through tight traffic-" He noted the growing look of boredom on her face as he made polite conversation, and decided to yield to a temptation he didn't even fully understand. "-and if you're ever really stuck for a ranged attack option you can throw one a lot easier than you can throw a car." he finished with a perfectly straight face.

Invisigal snorted amusedly, for just a moment shocked out of her usual breezy insolence, before she recovered. "So, sneak in and steal the stolen paintings back? Is this just a ploy for you to sit and chill while I do all the work?"

"It's make sure the paintings are out safe, then apprehend the thieves." Cap nodded briskly. "I know what your powers are, but I'm not familiar with your skill set?"

"I stole shit for a living, flag-man." Invisigal smirked confidently. "You name it, I've snuck up on it… and then went home with its wallet, smartphone, and underpants. What's your experience?"

"US Army special operations, then… intelligence agency support." Cap did his best to describe SHIELD succinctly.

"Huh." She raised an eyebrow.

"Hold up." He cut her off as she sprang off the motorcycle seat, visibly ready to just charge in there. "You're the expert at the stealth phase so the entry plan is yours, but I'd like to know where the bad guys are and what the terrain is like before we actually kick off."

"Look, what I do is more of a 'wing it' type business than a 'synchronize our watches' type business." Invisigal stated. "So just let me do my thing and you do yours, and-"

"I have no idea where you are because I can't see you when you're invisible and we didn't tell each other what our plan was, and then I accidentally hit you while taking a shot at someone else." Steve interrupted firmly. "It's called friendly fire, and it's the least friendly thing you can do on a team."

"… fine, we do it the boring way." she sighed. "I'm gonna use that rooftop over there for a vantage point to scope out the sitch, try to keep up." She blinked out of visibility before Steve could reply, and he rolled his eyes briefly and then did a running parkour leap to kick directly off the alley wall and rebound right onto the opposing roof. A brief dash at what for him was a medium pace and which for most people would have been a desperate breakneck run put him at the vantage point, and Invisigal lost their impromptu race by three lengths as she flickered into visibility again behind him.

"… and they said white men couldn't jump." she tried to pass off nonchalantly, as they both knelt down and peered at the building across the street each through a pair of mini-binocs. "Eugh, could we get any more 'generic seedy warehouse'? That's the kind of place where you can draw the floor plan with a single rectangle."

"Which actually makes it harder, as there's no single obvious best place to stash the paintings." Cap grumbled. "You're going to have to search the entire warehouse."

"And I can only stay invisible for as long as I hold my breath." She groused. "And from what I can see through that open loading dock door, the shit they've got scattered all over in there isn't piled high enough to let me hide behind it. So I can't search the whole place because I've got nowhere to catch my breath… crap, so much for an easy win." she swore, before angrily turning towards Cap. "Hey, why are you smiling?"

"Because I just thought of a way to get the thieves to tell us where the paintings are, and to bring them conveniently outside for us… but we're going to need to improvise a little." Cap turned to face her. "Come on, we need to find a hardware store."

"And then?" Invisigal asked curiously, by now completely lost as to where Captain America was going with this.

"And then…" he grinned down at her.

* * * * *
​

"Oh my God that was the funniest shit ever!" Visi laughed until she coughed slightly, almost doubled entirely over as she leaned on her motorbike. "When that smoke bomb I snuck in there went off and then I dipped out and pulled the fire alarm on 'em, they couldn't throw the paintings into their van and peel out fast enough!"

"At which point they drove over the improvised tire strip I'd laid right outside the garage door they were parked inside of." Steve smiled. "Voila, one vanload of sitting ducks, and all it took was a few simple household chemicals, a two-by-four, and a box of long nails."

"Didn't even risk the paintings, because they had to get out of their van to even see us to fight." Visi grinned. "Damn, and here I thought you were going to be all yes-sir-no-sir stick up your ass to work with, but we just aced an assignment and had fun doing it!" She exhaled satisfiedly. "What kind of military manual even gives you ideas like that? I thought they were just boring shit."

"I got it from Sherlock Holmes, actually." Cap smiled back at her.

"'A Scandal In Bohemia', the only story in the Doyle originals with Irene Adler." Courtney acknowledged.

"So what you're saying is, you understood that reference?" Cap joked back, and then their headsets interrupted.

"Jeez, guys, it's an assignment, not a date." Robert's voice cut in amusedly on their headsets. "And next time remember to turn your mikes off before having a moment. That having been said, aces job the both of you. Unfortunately the afternoon rush just started rushing harder, so I need you two to split up again and handle the next pair of calls-"

"Yeah, yeah." Visi groused as she boarded her motorcycle again. "See you around, soldier boy." she said insouciantly.

"You too, ma'am." Cap nodded, grinning.

"Ma'am?" Visi muttered incredulously to herself as she drove off, and Cap did likewise.

After the initial flurry of activity was dealt with the remainder of the shift was largely hurry-up-and-wait, with no more major calls for him. Cap was more than a bit disturbed by several overheard bits of message traffic on the teamchat that revealed that his fellow 'teammates' were having what could be charitably described as mixed success, and that Flambae had apparently been almost-caught committing arson rather than combating it.

Soon enough Cap was sitting in a fast-food restaurant taking his late afternoon break, enjoying an extra-large cheeseburger and fries and pondering over his first day as it drew to a close. The work so far was the exact opposite of challenging, at least for him, but it had been strangely peaceful in its own way. The neighborhoods were clean, the people generally friendly, and even the cheesiest of the 'subscriber assistance' calls still had smiling children or grateful civilians, even if it felt more than a bit USO-like with how some of the calls just seemed like excuses to actually let regular people glimpse a 'superhero'.

He allowed his annoyed thoughts to drift away into a more pleasant recollection of the art theft case and it's amusing ending, as well as the feisty young lady he'd shared that amusement with-

The urgent beeping of his communicator startled Cap out of his reverie, as that particular tone meant 'Emergency Call'. "Captain America here."

"Cap, Invisigal went out on a donut store robbery and now it's turned into a major gunfight, complete with supervillain!" Robert said urgently. "I'm trying to mission-control her through it, but it's- Visi, DUCK!" The feed cut out for a moment before returning. "What's your ETA?"

Cap's SDN-issue motorcycle was already blasting through traffic at over 60 miles per hour with the emergency siren blaring. "Five minutes! What's her condition?"

"Just get there as fast as you can! Bad guy's ID is 'Lightningstruck', details should be in your feed! I'm switching to Visi's channel now!" Robert replied hurriedly and then the headset went dead.

Three minutes and forty-five seconds later Captain America's motorcycle screeched to a halt outside, and his mouth went dry as he saw the ambulance pulling up almost at the same time he did. If Robert had also summoned EMS, then-

"Shit!" Cap breathed out relievedly as he heard Visi swearing up a storm in the donut shop, "Fucking inbred brain-dead mother fucker!" she vehemently stomped out of the store, looking like she'd just been dragged backwards through a barfight and with blood spattered all over her jacket and clothes. "They're in here!" she called out to the arriving paramedics, and then finally caught sight of Cap standing there as she stepped aside to allow them in the store.

"I really hope that's for the bad guy." Cap greeted her as the stretcher was wheeled in. "Are you all right?"

"It's for the shop owner." Visi fumed. "Stupid asshole tried to frag us both with the bad guy's dropped blaster cannon and only blew himself up with it-" She angrily kicked the door frame. "I fucking had the asshole, and then the civvie tries to shoot me!" She stopped and caught her breath, then continued. "I'm fine, this is the other guy's blood."

"Friendly fire." Cap commiserated with her. "Like I said, it's just the worst."

"Well, there was also that part where you didn't spot the bad guy laying in ambush, got yourself tagged when you closed in, ignored my orders about-" Robert's voice sounded in their headsets.

"Shut up!" Visi screamed into her microphone. "Can I at least get back to base and wash dipshit's bloody nose off of me before you all get up my ass? And hey, if you were going to send Cap to back me up you couldn't have sent him a little earlier?"

"Well, I-" Robert broke off frustratedly. "It's just about end of shift, I'm closing down my board. No more calls today. Visi, get back to base and we'll discuss what happened before you go home. Cap, you can clock out along with the rest."

"Shit." Visi slumped as she turned off her mike. "I was actually not fucking it up for once, I finally got one little win, but as soon as I have to fly solo again it's right back to-" Her voice turned low and soft. "You can go home, Cap. Thanks for trying, but I'll just… see you next shift, I suppose."

"If it's okay with you, I'd like it if you walked me through what happened first." Cap said as he escorted Visi out to where their bikes were parked. "I've been through more than one awkward debriefing myself, and it sometimes helps if you phrase things in the language they understand."

"Captain Perfect? Getting ass-chewed?" Visi raised an eyebrow. "Pull the other one, it's got bells on. There's no way you disobeyed orders ever, not you."

"You honestly would not believe me if I told you." Cap replied with complete sincerity. "But for right now…?" he continued gently.

"Fine." Visi pouted. "I rolled up on the donut shop and looked inside, and-" The next several minutes had Cap fighting not to show his shock several times, as Visi described what had to be one of the most elaborate comedies of errors he'd ever seen packed into barely five short minutes… and he'd been on a team with Tony Stark. "And that's how it all went to shit." She snorted. "You'd probably have breezed through this one in a minute flat with one arm tied behind your back."

Cap paused and thought intensely, trying to find a way to phrase as diplomatically as possible to his prideful and upset teammate that yes, she had seriously dropped the ball here and he really would have breezed through the situation she'd just described… before a thought occurred to him.

"I tested out of the combat and tactical training when I took my entrance evaluation, so I don't actually know what's in their training manuals." Cap realized. "Did they include a section about room-clearing or- okay, in plain English, did they actually emphasize that even the most apparently peaceful trouble call shouldn't be called 'all clear' until you've checked all adjacent spaces for intruders?"

"I… don't actually remember anything like that." Visi nodded. "Which probably doesn't mean anything because I wasn't the greatest study, but- no." She chewed her lip thoughtfully as a thought occurred to her. "And the training is scheduled by dispatchers, and Z-Team hasn't kept a dispatcher for longer than two days since we were formed. Probably why Blazer went as far as hiring special hardass Robert for us, because I know he was a special hire- shit, I wasn't supposed to talk about that." she hurriedly blurted. "Forget I said anything. Anyway, yeah, our training schedule is almost certainly messed up all to shit given how nobody's stayed here along enough to even make one, so even if we were supposed to get taught how to do that stuff we probably weren't."

"Okay then." Cap said reassuringly. "So yes, the first big crux point where it all started going wrong was when you relaxed and started picking out donuts instead of checking the back room because you assumed unconscious store owner and missing money meant the bad guy had already left. But-" he raised his hand to pre-empt Visi's angry flare. "That's why I asked about your training, because you can't be fairly faulted for not following procedure you were never told about. So that one's a wash, and… honestly, outside of that one it sounds like you didn't do anything else wrong."

"Sure I didn't." Visi spat angrily. "That's why I'm sitting here covered in shame, bruises, and Thundercuck's fucking nosebleed and boogers. Because I got it all right."

"I didn't say a whole lot didn't go wrong." Cap agreed. "But from what you described it wasn't you, it was bad luck and having to start out already on the back foot. Him bleeding all over you in particular was a killer, because it meant you lost your greatest advantage against him – your invisibility."

"Yeah, if I get shit splashed on me while I'm already invisible for some reason it doesn't fade out with me like my clothes do, even if I go visible and fade out again." Visi nodded. "But then there's the whole Robert told me to disarm the one guy first, and I went for the other. He's gonna blame the whole thing on that."

"And if he did, that would be 'squad leader in the sky' syndrome." Cap said disapprovingly. "So I really hope he doesn't."

"Squad up in the what where how now?" Visi asked.

"It means trying to micromanage troop movements from the safety of headquarters while you're mission-controlling them through the view from a drone or a recon plane or suchlike, instead of letting the commander on the ground make those decisions." Cap said. "Overwatch is highly useful, just of course, like the benefit we get from Robert looking through the security cameras and calling out targets and movements to us is. But in the Army at least, overwatch like that is suppose to be there to give you more information, not to remotely micromanage. The senior man on the spot – which in your case was you, as you were the only one on the spot – has to make the split-second decisions in the middle of a firefight, nobody else. Grand strategy or overall guidance from HQ is something else, but this wasn't that."

"Pretty sure SDN policy doesn't agree with how the Army looks at it." Visi said ruefully. "So I'm automatically wrong."

Cap nodded heavily. "No, it probably doesn't agree. And I'm not even saying that your decision was necessarily right and Robert's was wrong. Because I can't know that for certain, I wasn't there to see. But I am saying that I personally think that it should have been your decision to make, and not his. Because-" Cap stopped and reframed his thoughts. "Now that I think about it, what happened to you has some similarities to the last mission I was on before being dimensionally displaced here. You know, the one where the mad scientist's lab blowing up with me in it is why I got sent here-"

"Hold up, dimensionally displaced?" Visi looked at him oddly.

"That hasn't gotten around the office yet?" Cap shrugged. "In brief; alternate timeline, dimensional castaway, Army experience was all on the other side of the wormhole. Moving on, that mission started out with me having to make a coin flip about which one of two approach routes we'd use. Either route had a chance of working, but either one could also have ended disastrously, and there wasn't remotely enough information to calculate which one was better odds. And we had to make a decision right then and there." Cap snorted derisively. "And then something else entirely went wrong after we were already stuck in, through circumstances entirely beyond our control, and that led directly to disaster. So I can relate."

"Yeah, that sounds way fuckin' worse than just one shop owner needing an ER visit." Visi agreed. "Even if it used the same shit flowchart."

Cap slumped down, his voice lowering. "I don't even know if the rest of my squad made it outside the blast radius before it all blew. I do know that if they didn't then they're dead now. Nobody without my enhanced physique could possibly have survived the wormhole's tidal stresses."

"Damn." Visi looked at Cap, her face shocked. "That really sucks. Were they good guys?"

"I'd only been put in charge of the unit a couple months before that mission, so I hadn't really had a chance to get to know them deeply. Not outside of work. But they were all very good soldiers – brave, dedicated, tough. It was a good team, and I really hope they made it out."

"Must've been nice, having a team like that." Visi mused gently, before her communicator beeped urgently.

"Shit, I'm late." Visi muttered, standing up. "Well, time to go in and see how deep the shit I'm in is this time."

"I'll be waiting outside." Cap got up to follow her. "You can tell me how it went, and I'd just be wondering all night anyway if you waited until tomorrow to tell me."

* * * * *
​

"Didn't go well?" Captain America asked mildly as he stared down at the nondescript wiry brown-haired man who he was almost entirely certain was the Z-Team's dispatcher. The man in question was currently laying flat on his back on the break room floor, cradling his bloody nose.

"I ran into a door." Robert replied wearily – Cap easily recognizing his voice from all the radio calls earlier today – as Cap reached down to help him up.

"Looked like a particularly angry door." Cap replied evenly. "Is the door going to be reported to maintenance?" he continued in an entirely calm, flat voice.

"No." Robert shook his head as he wiped away the blood and stuffed some Kleenex up his nostrils. "She was entirely out of line… but by the end, so was I. I was the one in a more responsible position, I should never have lost my temper even if she'd already lost hers. So if I had her busted for punching me after what we were both throwing at each other, then I'd just be a chickenshit."

"I'm glad to hear that." Cap said much more warmly. "I'd better go and try to calm her down, assuming she's still on-campus."

"If she doesn't want to be found, you won't be finding her." Robert shook his head. "And you really don't have an opinion on what happened that you want to share with me? Because you clearly did with her. I very much doubt that 'squad leader in the sky' is a phrase Visi organically picked up from her own prior experiences."

"No." Cap shook his head. "I agreed to work here, so I agreed to submit myself to the chain of command. And the last thing anyone in a command position wants is some strange officer coming in and undermining their authority in front of their troops. Or backseat driving them with appeals to irrelevant authority."

"I was asking for your advice, Captain." Robert cradled his head in his hands. "Blazer brought me in because what they were doing before wasn't working, but as I was just vividly informed things aren't all going sunshine and puppies with me in charge either."

"From what I've picked up, the Z-Team's usual shifts have gone much worse than the one you just coordinated for us." Cap said. "So you're already making progress, and Rome wasn't built in a day… especially not with these building blocks. Are there things I'd be doing differently if we each had the other's job? Of course, but there's no guarantee I'd be doing better."

"Please, Captain. You were like, a super Delta Force guy." Robert said. "And I just- well, what I used to do was not quite what you used to do, let's put it that way."

"Exactly. I was a military special operations commander." Cap agreed. "Which means that all of my leadership experience was with troops who were already hand-picked for exceptional intelligence, aptitude, self-discipline, and motivation. Does that sound like the same situation you're facing?"

"Hah!" Robert laughed briefly. "No, not even remotely."

"So I'm not even sure my prior experience would apply usefully here. I'm not even sure if the rest of the team even wants to try and improve themselves." Cap agreed. "Granted, I only met them for a few minutes and we really didn't talk. But they all seemed… very unmotivated."

"Umotivated. That's definitely a word for it. But you did seem to hit it off pretty good with Invisigal, though." he pondered. "Which makes you the very first person around here who has. She's consistently been the absolute bottom of the performance chart since the day she joined… which is weird, because she's the only one who volunteered to be here."

"I thought I was the only one on the Z-Team who wasn't…" Cap trailed off diplomatically.

"A supervillain trying to stay out of jail?" Robert nodded. "Yeah. But all the rest of them are convicted supervillains – they got caught, they got busted, they took the Phoenix Program's plea deal to trade public service in return for not staying in the graybar hotel. Visi, on the other hand, might be a 'person of interest' in a whoooole lot of criminal cases but they never actually caught her. A few months ago she just came in and applied for Phoenix entirely on her own. Her only condition was that she not be required to, uh, testify about any specific events in her past."

"Well, that one's called the Fifth Amendment." Cap said agreeably. "So we can't fault her for insisting on it. But you're right. If she's the one ex-villain who actually wants to be here, then why is her performance the lowest?"

"Really wish I knew." Robert sighed. "Ugh, I've got a meeting with Blazer and Chase in like five minutes. If you've got any input you think would help, feel free to come with. It's about time you met Blazer anyway."

"One thing comes to mind; you need to review the training the team was supposed to get and compare it to the training they actually have gotten." Cap remembered. "Because given how chaotic the prior dispatcher situation was and how dispatchers are responsible for the training schedules, it's overwhelmingly likely that they're missing a lot. They can't be expected to do their jobs right if they've never been taught how."

"See, that's exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for." Robert nodded. "Got anything else?"

"I might or might not try to drop something in the suggestion box later, but not after only one day." Cap finally decided. "Until I learned more about what we're really working with here, I'd only be talking in ignorance."

"Well that's where I'm at right now, but I've still got to take this meeting." Robert stood up and stretched. "Thanks for the talk, though, Cap. Helped clear my head a little."

"Any time." Cap nodded to him as he stepped out.

"You really mean all that bullshit you just spouted off about not wanting to tell anyone else how to do their job?" Visi's voice startled Cap slightly as she faded into visibility sitting on the break room counter.

"If I say it, I mean it." Cap replied equably, standing up and heading over to the counter. "You want some coffee?" he asked as he decanted himself a cup from the machine.

"Nah, it gives me the jitters." Visi held up one palm as if to ward off evil spirits. "Thanks for talking him out of narcing on me, though."

"That was a decision he'd already made on his own." Cap protested. "He's not actually out to get you, differences of opinion aside."

"Makes him a rarity, then." Visi muttered. "So, you're really not a secret corporate trainer brought in as a ringer or something? Everybody on the team who actually had an opinion thought you had to be."

"I haven't even met the team yet. Morning roll call doesn't count, I couldn't get out of there fast enough." Cap replied.

"You think there's maybe a reason why I stay invisible through as much of it as I can?" Visi said sardonically. "You not included, this whole outfit's nothing but a bunch of stupid assholes."

"Visi." Cap said commiseratingly. "You know I don't include you in that category either."

"So you do think that about the rest?" she immediately shot back.

"I shouldn't talk badly about people behind their backs…" Cap sighed. "And for most of them I still won't."

"Oh, I've gotta hear this." Visi leaned in interestedly, her crooked grin turning positively vulpine. "Who's on the star spangled shit list?"

"Flambae is a bully, and I'll say that to his face the next time he tries to get in anyone else's. I don't like bullies, no matter where they're from or what their powers are." Cap replied firmly.

"Yeah, well if you ever throw down with him then watch out for his powers that aren't obvious. It's not just being a walking blowtorch, he's almost as strong as you and he can fly too." Visi replied immediately.

"Good to know." Cap replied. "Although I really shouldn't be getting in any fights with anyone here."

"Pity." Visi muttered.

"It occurs to me that we also talked about you behind your back, or at least we thought we were doing that." Cap said. "So if anything I said offended you, then I apologize."

"Apologize for what?" Visi stared at him incredulously. "You're like the first person here that hasn't blamed me for every unsolved crime in the calendar."

"Do you want to talk about why you don't seem to have much luck getting off the bottom of the leaderboard?" Cap asked after a thoughtful pause.

"Fuck no." Visi glared at him furiously. "And fuck you, I was starting to think maybe you were cool but nope, same old lectures as all the rest-"

"Visi, I was offering to help." Cap said entreatingly. "Or more accurately, I was asking if you wanted any help."

"Oh." she replied with dull surprise. "Well… no." She crossed her arms and glared at him suspiciously.

"All right." Cap nodded at her and stood up, slinging his shield. "Well, it's getting late and I won't keep you-"

"You're really not a secret trainer guy?" Visi asked plaintively, bringing Cap to a halt. "Because what you just offered is exactly what they'd do, and, cripes, I can't even remotely figure out how the hell a guy like you would be sent here for any other reason. This is the ex-villain squad, the dumping ground for the losers and the freaks. Even if you fell out of the sky like the Wizard of Oz then your criminal record should be as blank as the rest of your record."

"Dorothy's house fell out of the sky, the Wizard got lost in a ballooning accident." Steve corrected her amusedly. "And since nothing on my resume is checkable, all of it having happened in an alternate universe and everything, then they had to assign me as if I had officially zero credit for anything and zero seniority. I mean, for all they knew I could be a crazy homeless guy with random superpowers and a severe case of Munchausen's syndrome. So I have to prove myself starting from the absolute bottom on up, just like everybody else here."

"Makes sense… but you're still doing evaluations on all of us." Visi replied flatly. "Robert even asked you for some, just now."

"Robert is taking advantage of any ethical opportunity he can scrounge to achieve his mission, which is exactly what a good leader should be doing in his position." Cap said agreeably. "And of course I have opinions. We're all going into combat with each other, and we all should be trusting each other with our lives. So of course everybody's going to have a part of their brain constantly going 'Does that guy actually know what he's doing, or do I have to cover that flank myself?'"

"So be honest with me." Visi demanded. "Who on the team would be your first choice to work with, and who would be your last choice?"

"I'm not answering the one about 'last choice', because that would be talking behind peoples' backs again-" Cap began.

"Figures." Visi mumbled, narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

"But my first choice would be you." Steve continued.

Visi's jaw fell open, her cigarette landing unregarded upon the floor. She immediately stormed over, her face red with rage, to slam one fist against Cap's chest. "Don't fuck with me like that, you asshole!" she screamed, her voice tearing.

"Visi, I mean it." Cap said with as much sincerity as he could muster. "We've already talked about how I can't even talk to some of the others without probably getting in a fight. The rest I- well, I just don't think it would work. But we've already worked together-"

"Doesn't prove anything. You could probably have done that one without me at all." Visi mumbled.

"You're not incompetent, Visi, you're just a little impulsive." Cap said reassuringly. "And I think you take too many solo assignments when your abilities are better set up for teamwork. From what I've seen today you seem to do fine until you either lose track on the target or something unplanned goes wrong... and then you get taken down because you don't have any defensive powers and being an invisible skirmisher working alone only succeeds as long as you don't use up your margin of error or your luck. But if we're working in duo then that's not a concern – I'm a brightly colored distraction and a damage sponge, in addition to being a highly talented close-combatant, and that notably expands your opportunities."

Steve deliberately broke the tension by stopping to refill his coffee cup and continuing. "Some of the best tactical synergy I ever had back on my homeworld was with a woman just about your size and with a similar skill set. If the bad guys focused fire on me, they were wide open to being flanked or ambushed by her. If they were too focused on trying to find her sneaking around, then they were all set up like bowling pins for me. We never failed a mission whenever they partnered us together. So no, I don't think the warehouse today was a fluke. And now that you've put the idea in my head I think it would be a very good idea if Robert sent us out as a mission duo as often as he could swing it. Do you want me to ask him about that tomorrow?"

"I- I-" Visi stammered, entirely nonplussed at what she'd just heard. "I'll think about it!" she finally stammered out, and then immediately vanished.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Invisigal." Cap smiled softly at the empty room she'd left behind.

"Uh, Cap?" her voice floated back down the corridor. "It's Friday, remember?"

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Yes, Cap's first reaction to the Z-Team in all its glory was to unass the room as soon as he politely could. Let's face it, he is not getting paid enough for that shit. *g*

Visi in canon thinks she did fine on the donut shop run (because it was actually notably less of a disaster than her usual performance, which just says so many sad things) and is shocked and angry when Robert rips a strip off her for it. This Visi was still angry at Robert's ass-chewing in this one, but she's much harder on herself about the donut run because this time she had a taste of genuine mission success with Cap first, so of course she's more aware of how unsatisfactory the donut run actually was.

And poor Visi. She has never been told by anyone in her life that she'd be their first choice for anything, not even once. Of course she couldn't believe what she was hearing.

 

[Gindjurra]

Author's Note: Yes, Cap's first reaction to the Z-Team in all its glory was to unass the room as soon as he politely could. Let's face it, he is not getting paid enough for that shit. *g*

Click to shrink...

Ain't nobody getting paid enough for that shit!

 

[Hephaestus]

I like how he is using more of his army experience rather than his heroing because at this point he has been in the army longer that any hero type work evan the black ops type missions are more army type missions than "hero" work

 

[SemiSaneAuthor]

Yes, I get to like it twice!

(Well kinda Thrice for the original snippets, but that only counts about halfish. split the difference and call it getting to like it 2.5 times?)

But yes, this is great and getting to like it again is good.

 

[vladspellbinder]

frighteniug

Click to shrink...

Erm.

"Fuck no." Visi glared at him furiously."And

Click to shrink...

Missing space.

Visi's jaw fell open, her cigarette landing unregarded upon the floor.

Click to shrink...

She smokes with asthma. Does she want to die?

Ah, Cap being the golden retriever that he is and bring light to dark places. Never change Cap, never change.

Thanks for the chapter.

 

[Lillie Jones]

Watching
Captain America Steve Roger's in Dispatch sign me up.
Continue on
Cheers!

 

[cliffc999]

She smokes with asthma. Does she want to die?

Click to shrink...

It actually is a deliberately self-destructive impulse, yes. She's not actively trying to kill herself, but she is punishing herself for being alive. Canon Courtney starts out with some serious self-worth and self-hatred issues.

 

[vladspellbinder]

It actually is a deliberately self-destructive impulse, yes. She's not actively trying to kill herself, but she is punishing herself for being alive. Canon Courtney starts out with some serious self-worth and self-hatred issues.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, a subconscious death wish is never fun. Thankfully Good Boy Steve is here to lift her spirts and make things better.

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 6

"Really sorry to do this to you, Captain, but we needed the help." Robert greeted him as Steve Rogers walked in the front door of the SDN offices that Saturday morning, dressed in civilian clothes.

"At least you're gettin' paid overtime." Chase grumbled affectionately. "Our asses are management. Salaried employees, Ain't makin' an extra dime out of these extra hours."

"You said this was an administrative problem?" Steve asked as the two of them headed across the unoccupied dispatch floor towards the branch manager's office.

"Blazer will explain it." Robert said. "And hey, at least we're finally getting the introduction out of the way too. But yeah, we've got a whole new mess we just turned up and we're all already overloaded trying to untangle it, so we'd appreciate an extra pair of hands helping with the logistics of it."

"Good morning, Captain." Blonde Blazer greeted him with a warm, open smile as she stood silhouetted in the morning light from her office window. She was the most improbably beautiful woman Steve had ever seen in his life, and he'd worked with both Peggy Carter and Natasha Romanov. Blonde Blazer was a statuesque golden-haired lady that Bucky would have unhesitatingly described as a 'stunner', and almost tall enough to look him in the eye and with eyes even more improbably blue than Steve's own. And unlike the celebrities he'd occasionally seen hanging around trying to get Tony's attention, even despite her PR-worthy smile and gestures she still felt like one of the most sincere people he'd ever met.

"First off, I'd like to say thank you for your service to our nation – even if it was an alternate dimension nation…" Blazer continued with a somehow endearing awkwardness. "And on behalf of Superhero Dispatch Network, we're honored that you chose us. Welcome aboard."

"Thank you, ma'am." Steve said sincerely, reaching out and taking the proffered handshake. "Mr. Robertson said you'd called me in about a… logistical problem?"

"Robert's fine. We're on a first-name basis here." Blazer reassured him. "Although I'm Blazer, not Blonde. Well, I am blonde, except-" She stopped and blushed slightly with embarrassment. "I'm useless before my morning coffee kicks in, please excuse me."

"I've lost count of the generals I've met who had the same problem." Steve politely made the excuse for her.

"Anyway." Robert interrupted brusquely. "What you said yesterday about checking for disruptions in the training schedule? You have no idea how right you were. As soon as we started digging into it, we found out that it was-" He trailed off.

"A complete and utter shitshow." Chase snorted. "Between how many dispatchers came and went and how many things they set up in the scheduling computer that were automatically cleared out when the dispatcher quit their assignment but then didn't reset properly-" He rubbed his aching forehead with four fingers. "Not only do we not know who's on first, we don't even know where the baseball field went. Somebody dug it up when nobody was payin' attention and now there's a damn landfill been built on it."

"Effectively, the Z-Team's been running wild with no guidance and no actual training for months, while our automated personnel system was completely oblivious to the real scope of the problem and we couldn't keep a human supervisor for them barely long enough to learn their names." Blazer admitted sheepishly. "And… that's on me." She slumped slightly. "I'm the branch manager, and I let my branch get this disorganized without my noticing."

"Ain't your fault they sent you to supervise a damn zoo full of rabid animals without any real zookeepers. I'm old, I can't do it all by myself, and my boy Robert's the first dispatcher we hired for them that didn't run away screamin' at the first dirty look." Chase consoled her.

"Maybe not my fault, but still my responsibility." Blazer faced up to it.

"How can I help?" Cap asked simply. "Although if you're here to discuss some kind of field promotion, I don't think that would work."

"I'd do it in a heartbeat if I could but you're right, if we even tried it then they'd all lose their fuckin' minds." Chase agreed. "You ain't even been here a long weekend yet and they don't remotely take the flag seriously, so trying to put you in a position of authority over the team would fly like an anvil in a damn Road Runner cartoon. No, that ain't our idea."

"Basically, we need to draw up an emergency training plan that can somehow cycle everybody through at least the core essentials of what they haven't learned yet, and do it in just a few weeks, and somehow be able to answer at least the necessary amount of service calls simultaneously while we're doing it. Blazer can't possibly shut down branch operations for that long." Robert explained.

Blazer looked at Steve entreatingly. "Corporate's already been talking for a while about shutting the Phoenix Program down as non-viable… and what we just discovered here really isn't going to help our position. Unless we can start showing some legitimate improvement in the Z-Team and do it before the end of the quarter, there's far too great a chance that the whole effort will be shut down." She looked away briefly, her voice turning wistful. "And as problematic as they've been so far, I'd really hate it if they couldn't make it. If they never really got a fair chance to."

"Well you know my opinion on Project Phoenix, and it's that we should have burnt the whole fuckin' thing down to the ground and then salted the earth from day one." Chase snorted derisively. "Ain't a one of them with any good in 'em at all." Off of both Blazer's and Robert's disappointed looks, he continued to Blazer without a pause. "But you already know my opinion and you're the boss, so if you say try and make this shit show work then all right, we'll try our damnedest to make it work. I ain't no backstabbin' sneak, unlike some."

Cap began to smile inwardly as he felt a familiar dynamic forming around him. Blazer was the commanding officer, and a genuinely inspiring and honest one if he was any judge, but also but one who'd apparently spent enough time in staff work that she'd gotten a little rusty at line command. And also one who was used to more conventional forces anyway and had no experience at dealing with a unit of misfits. Chase was like every crusty old sergeant-major he'd ever known, doing the detail work of keeping everything running and loyally guarding the commander's best interests even when he didn't agree with them. Robert's 'vibe' felt to Cap like a mustang, someone with serious field experience of some kind recently promoted to a junior officer position and expected to be the interface between the unit commander and the field team, the day-to-day hands-on ramrod keeping everything straight.

Not that this was the Army, Cap reminded himself.

"So we'll all obviously pitch in, but given that this is a big extra problem on top of our normal management workload I thought we'd take advantage of your experience." Blazer continued. "Specifically, that as the former CO of a military special operations unit you would be familiar with things like juggling operational scheduling commitments with training requirements and personnel and equipment availability."

"Operational plans and training. What the S-3 does in an Army battalion." Cap nodded. "Yes ma'am-"

"Blazer." She insisted with a smile.

"I'm entirely familiar with that kind of staff work." Cap continued. "I'm assuming we're going to be making an entire weekend project out of this?"

"You assume correctly." Chase grumbled affectionately. "Right, I spent a good chunk of last night diggin' out the relevant records. The raw records, seein' as how the computer tabulatin' ain't been worth shit. Our job today is going to be to turn all of that entire pile of random junk-" He pointed over at an entire stack of banker's boxes full of paper records visible through the glass window sitting on the conference room table. "Into an actual organized list of who still needs to learn what. Then we'll take that wish list and chop it down into what they absolutely need to know now and what we can push off to later."

"And only after that can we begin to start actually composing a plan for how we make that learning happen." Robert said commiseratingly. "But we can't even start to repair the damage until after we've finished troubleshooting all of the exact places the project's been damaged."

"Oh, and for my curiosity, can you tell me how you found about this problem we were having so quickly?" Blazer asked him earnestly. "Because that's a success I'd like to know how to reproduce."

"I got the clue from something Invisigal told me after the, uh, donut shop encounter." Cap admitted. "I did a little post-incident walkthrough of what had happened with her after I got there too late to back her up, and the informal debrief turned up that she hadn't checked the rear of the store to make sure the apparently departed perpetrator hadn't just hidden out at the scene waiting to ambush the first responders was because she'd never been told that she needed to."

"Oh." Blazer blinked in shock, as Robert looked briefly down at his shoes. "I can… see where that would have given you the clue, yes."

"I'd suggest that we do more after-action walkthroughs with the team after at least a sampling of their cases, but that would require me to believe there's a single one of them that would remotely take such a thing seriously." Robert said.

"I know." Blazer nodded. "I've tried to get Visi talking to me before about what she's been struggling with, and I've barely been able to get the time of day. And I don't know why."

"Up until a minute ago I might have guessed 'She wasn't trying to talk before because she didn't believe anyone would be willing to listen', but if you've tried to reach out to her before and that still didn't work then obviously I'm wrong." Cap admitted. "I can't begin to imagine you acting closed-minded or unduly dismissive of her concerns, ma'am, and surely she'd have seen the same thing." Blazer sighed microscopically to herself at Cap's form of address.

"She's just fucked up, don't strain your brains over it." Chase snorted.

"What was that about trying to achieve the objective even if you didn't necessarily agree?" Steve asked him mildly, and they briefly traded glares before Chase shrugged and yielded the point.

"Anyway, we've got a whole day's work ahead of us and more." Robert smoothed it over. "And even though I had something else I was hoping I'd be able to do this weekend, the job comes first. Come on, the day's not getting any longer."

"Agreed." Blazer led the way out to where the working area had been set up in the conference room. "Let's get started."

* * * * *
​

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 7

"-and that's when the first guy says 'Wait, you mean I had a parachute?'." Chase finished, and everyone at the table laughed.

By the second day of the project everyone had fallen into a relatively close camaraderie, and this particular lunch period had turned into a round of war stories about Chase's old days as the speedster superhero Track Star. Steve had been shocked to find out that the man he'd thought was a senior citizen was actually barely 40, and that Track Star's speed powers had prematurely aged his body and now he was physiologically too old to even survive the strain of using his abilities. Steve mourned inwardly at how a lifetime of dedicated public service had only rewarded Chase with an early death, but the man himself seemed to have come to peace with it – in his own cranky semi-elderly way.

Blazer had had to fly out for a company-mandated weekend PR gala of some kind that morning, but she was expected back to help finish up the afternoon. The training schedule project hadn't been completed yet, but they'd finished charting all the deficiencies, composing a small set of remedial essential skills courses that at least covered the most important basics right away, and started working out a scheduling plan for cycling everybody through it with only an incremental loss of capacity to answer the service calls.

The phone on the conference room table rang, and Chase picked it up and listened briefly. "That was the front gate. Food's here."

"We'll get it." Robert said, and him and Steve got up and headed out into the corridor.

"Okay, I apologize in advance if this is one of those personal questions that offends." Robert broke into the silence as he and Steve walked back from the front both carrying the bags of takeout they'd had delivered. "But it's been making me wonder all weekend. Obviously it wouldn't be a problem but are you… you know, 'don't ask don't tell'?" he finished embarrassedly.

"That… is not a question I'm usually asked." Steve blinked in mild shock. "I'm not offended, but I am confused as to what could possibly have brought it up. And, no."

"Literally every other man I've seen interact with her, present company included, can't help but pine at least a little for Blonde Blazer." Robert explained as they re-entered the conference room and began laying out the food. "Especially not when first meeting her and before they finally have to accept that they've got no shot. But you…" Robert shook his head. "You clearly didn't dislike her, but absolutely nothing has sparked between you two all weekend. And that's completely outside my experience, so I wondered." He shrugged. "Sorry, I've got sort of an engineer brain, so I can't help but obsess a little when I find an anomaly in a pattern."

"I'm very familiar with 'engineer brain'." Steve agreed, his memory briefly flashing back to some of Tony's own historic moments in overthinking about what was going on around him. "And… not to sound conceited, but I like to think I can understand what it's like to have your physical beauty be the only thing anyone can see about you as a person." Steve shrugged. "So if I could personally spare her from having to deal with even a bit of that, then I would." Steve sighed mournfully. "One of the finest women I ever knew first caught my eye because she'd been the only one who'd been able to do that for me."

Robert looked up curiously, then immediately caught Steve's expression and moved to change the subject. "Well, at least you were one step ahead of me. Because I, uh, kinda made an idiot of myself during my job interview with her." he confessed ruefully.

"Hah!" Chase laughed and slapped the table. "Oh, are we tellin' that story? Because if we are then I've got to get into the part where-"

"Chase." Robert moaned exasperatedly as he buried his head in his hands. "We're not getting into that part. But-" he sighed. "She was giving me the corporate recruitment pitch over friendly drinks, but she'd forgotten that the drinks in Crypto Night can come super fortified. Either that, or she'd misestimated her capacity. Because we both got just a little buzzed, and since I hadn't picked up yet that she was trying a recruiting offer I thought I was being flirted with, and-" he trailed off, blushing.

"Hey, thank God that at least you didn't try to slip her any tongue." Chase laughed at Robert's mournful expression.

"Even if there was a mistaken kiss, she obviously doesn't hold it against you." Steve reassured him. "I didn't see a bit of awkwardness between you two."

"Oh, she is a super sweetheart that way." Robert sighed wistfully. "I'm such an idiot."

"Trust me, it could have been worse." Steve fought down a smile. "I got caught in an unwanted kiss once, and-" he broke off chuckling. "It was different in that my mistake had been underestimating just how far a certain young woman who had ambitions of being Girlfriend America was willing to go in trying to achieve those ambitions. And so one day we were talking at work, and the next thing she's grabbing me by the collar and laying a big one right on my lips entirely without asking me, and I didn't react quickly enough to pull away in time."

"How's that your mistake?" Chase chuckled. "Unless she was ugly."

"Gorgeous, but not a very nice personality." Steve admitted. "No, the uncomfortable part was when the lady I had been… involved with… entered the room while this was still going on."

"Oh man." Robert facepalmed in male sympathy. "So how long were you on the couch?"

"Oh, she was entirely calm and professional." Steve replied. "Right up until the point later that afternoon when it came time for the laboratory test of whether or not my new shield really was bulletproof, when she eagerly volunteered to be part of the experiment. While I was still holding it."

"Seriously?!?" Robert jawdropped.

"Four shots rapid-fire at point-blank range, all dead center in the bullseye." Steve nodded. "I didn't get hurt, of course, my shield was the most invulnerable thing on the planet. But I almost needed new underwear."

"And that didn't count as a break-up for you?" Chase snorted. "Remember what I fuckin' said about you havin' no self-preservation instinct at all?"

"I guess my type is the feisty ones." Steve shrugged. "Which in hindsight would also be another answer to your question. Not that I'm implying Blazer's not good at her job-"

"Oh yeah, she can throw down just fine when she needs to." Robert agreed. "But you're right, she prefers to be a much more gentle type of person when she doesn't need to."

"Wait." Steve suddenly realized. "The night before last, I was in Crypto Night – briefly – and the bartender was complaining to me that Blonde Blazer had just left right before I arrived, with someone that she'd been 'flirting heavily' with. Was that you?"

"Shit." Robert swore. "First Visi and now Cap? Sorry, not your fault, but my secret ID security seems to be getting about as airtight as a colander." He looked Steve directly in the eye. "Yeah, you guessed right. I'm Mecha Man. Please don't spread that around. Some of your teammates are people I used to put in jail, and we don't need any more tension in the mix than we've got already."

"How did Invisigal find out?" Steve wondered.

"How else? Sneakin' around invisible and spyin' on everyone's shit, like she always does." Chase grumbled.

"To be fair, it was Blazer's and my fault for discussing it right there in the conference room without making sure we were alone." Robert said evenly. "We can't criticize Visi for loitering around a public area of the building she legitimately has access to, even if she was less than visible at the time." He nodded to Steve. "And if Steve still didn't know about it until I gave myself away just now, Visi's obviously been keeping her promise not to gossip about it."

"She certainly did." Steve agreed.

"See? It's all good." Robert said to Chase, who confined himself to a minimal eye-roll in response.

"Obviously I wasn't here at the time, but after what I overheard at Crypto Night I went and looked things up. So I'm familiar with the outline of your story." Steve began. "Words aren't really adequate for something like this, but I'm sorry for your losses. And the largest thing that made me reconsider if I wanted to be part of LA's corporate 'hero' community at all was hearing the lack of respect some of them had for the sacrifices that you've made." He finished sincerely.

"Thank you." Robert acknowledged soberly. "But one of the reasons I took this job is because SDN offered to fund the reconstruction of my armor in return for my helping salvage the Phoenix Program. So even if it's still very early days, there's still hope."

"I'm glad to hear that." Steve congratulated him, to Chase's approving grumble.

Blazer's footsteps coming down the corridor heralded her arrival, and shortly after the tap-tap of her costume's boots on the floor first became audible she entered the room. "Eugh, what a morning." she sighed disgustedly, before eyeing the takeout containers on the table. "Oooh, you got Chinese?"

"Usual dog and pony shitshow even worse than usual?" Chase said as he pushed a container over to her.

"I ran into one of the SDN vice-presidents there, and honestly, do they even read the reports I send them?" she pouted cutely as she helped herself to a portion of teriyaki. "I was doing an initial exploration of the feasibility of that idea we discussed Friday, not sending them an action plan! I don't even know why it crossed his desk at all, but he actually had read it and since we'd bumped into each other, he gladly gave me a heads-up on how he'd decided to answer a proposal I hadn't actually made yet!"

"Wait, you already got a decision about that idea?" Robert asked in shock. "The proposal about cutting someone from the program to send a hardline message to the others? Uh, I thought that you said you were going to think that one over and then discuss it with us again before even submitting it?"

"I did!" She pleaded. "And I was! The only thing I was asking the head office about was if it was even possible for us to do it at all, or if their employment contracts would mean that we'd need to show more cause! Just a 'if this was going to happen, could it even happen?' question for Legal to advise us on so we'd have the proper information to make a decision with! But instead-"

"Excuse me, ma'am." Steve broke in concernedly. "Robert's just gotten here, and the company already intends to lay someone off? Leaving the question entirely aside of who and with what cause, I can't think of anything that would undercut his authority more in the eyes of the people you're hoping he can lead. Because regardless of the truth of the matter the view from the trenches could see only one of two things – that either he's just a powerless figurehead for a faceless head office's whims, or else that he personally decided to make his introduction to the team be arbitrarily bouncing one of their teammates."

"Shit." Chase blinked. "Man's not wrong. I mean, I'd cut the whole damn team if I could, but they already know I fuckin' hate them. Robert can't do his job if they think he's the one out to screw them." He blinked. "Hey, you think it might save our boy's street cred if you just blamed it all on me?"

"While you are effectively my deputy branch manager here, officially you're just a senior dispatcher." Blazer pointed out. "So no, I don't think it would fly. Not unless I suddenly swapped you in as their official dispatcher, but that would be even more obvious as a face-saving gesture."

"Plus, I'm not sure we even should cut anyone. And if we did, then how would we choose?" Robert agreed.

"Lowest performer?" Blazer suggested, before wincing with realization.

Everyone's gaze involuntarily shifted over to the giant status display board clearly visible from anywhere on the office floor, the one that displayed the weekly performance rankings of all heroes assigned to any of the several teams in the Torrance branch. The display whose bottommost name, by a wide margin, was Invisigal's.

"You didn't see her face after we completed the warehouse assignment. Or when I arrived at the donut shop shortly after Lightningstruck got away. She was so happy that we'd gotten a 100% mission success on the first one, and she was heartbroken at missing the second one." Steve pleaded softly. "I'm certain that Visi really wants to do good here, ma'am, all of her surface… irreverence… aside. She's just… struggling with it."

"I believe she does too, Steve." Blazer agreed gently. "But… the layoff 'approval' I got was basically a direct order."

"Speakin' as the one here with zero personal investment in any of the people involved, I suggest that we-" Chase looked rapidly at expressions around at the table. "-get out a fuckin' dart board and just start throwin'. Whoever we hit will have fucked up somethin' worthy of gettin' themselves fired recently, 'cause there ain't a one of 'em that hasn't."

"As arbitrary as that sounds that might actually have to be our fallback position, assuming that Blazer can't convince corporate that our training schedule revision should be the 'fix it' plan instead." Robert shook his head.

"I'm the one member of the Z-Team who has job offers open elsewhere." Steve said slowly, wondering curiously at his own reluctance. "Would it help if I threw myself on the grenade?"

"You're not part of the Phoenix Program, even if you're on the Z-Team." Robert said slowly. "It wouldn't count."

"Well, the dart board's not plan A. And definitely not the grenade." Blazer decided. "You guys are going to have to finish the rest of the paperwork without me today, because I need to start composing the best position paper I've ever composed in my life. Hopefully I can convince someone else downtown that was a serious failure to communicate somewhere and that this 'approval' should be round-filed retroactively, while I drag my feet enough on the actual laying off to give us time to show results."

"You get back to your office and fire up the word processor. We'll keep the home fires burnin' for you down here in the trenches." Chase assured her.

"Thanks, guys." Blazer said. "And Steve? I'm sorry that overhearing this puts you on a spot, but you can't tell Visi about any of this in advance. And that's whether or not I can head off this layoff mandate."

"Yes ma'am." Steve agreed bitingly, before sighing and continuing more softly. "I'm sorry if that sounded insolent, but I am… not feeling kindly disposed towards corporate life right at this moment."

"That makes two of us." Blazer agreed sadly.

* * * * *
​

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 8

"Morning, Captain." Invisigal greeted him cheerfully as she saw Cap standing in the lobby. "Holding open the door like a gentleman? What, you couldn't get enough of me?" she smirked.

"Visi…" Cap began awkwardly. "Okay, remember Friday how you almost mentioned something while talking to me, and then remembered that you weren't supposed to talk about it? Something you'd overheard around the office?"

"Yeah." She agreed concernedly. "Oh fuck, it got out anyway and they think I spilled the tea? Why do they always blame-?"

"No, no, you're clear. It's not about that." Cap rushed to assure her. "What I wanted to say is that now I'm in a similar position. They had me doing some weekend work, and in the process I picked up a piece of information that I was specifically forbidden from telling anyone else on the team until after it's made public." He sighed. "If it's made public, because they're still not sure if it will happen. I just wanted to make sure that you knew ahead of time, if I didn't tell you it was because I couldn't tell you."

"Corporate bullshit incoming, huh?" Visi's face turned sour. "Yeah, that figures." She looked back up at Cap and her expression softened. "Thanks for being up front about it. But I get it, they put you on the spot just the same way I was put on the spot. So I know how it goes."

"Thanks for understanding." Cap nodded.

"Not the thing I'm most famous for doing." Visi agreed cheekily. "But I guess there's an exception to every-" She suddenly went silent and faded into invisibility right before Flambae and Malevola came around the corner of the hallway, and didn't reappear until after they'd swept briskly by.

"Let's not enter the conference room together." Cap acknowledged her unspoken request, and deliberately went to go get a drink at the water fountain while Visi nodded and went ahead.

The usual round of pre-shift banter, jokes, and posturing fell silent as Cap entered the room. "Hey, star-spangled boy." Flambae said. "They missed your introduction to the team on Friday, but you're already well up on the leaderboard after just one day. So is that your power, mmm? Super-good at sucking corporate cock?" he sneered.

"I wouldn't dare presume to challenge whoever might be the local champion in that regard." Cap replied flatly, something about the arrogant bully's mannerisms bringing out the worst of his smart mouth. "But I'm certain that you earned your spot at the top of the leaderboard entirely through hard work and merit."

Visi almost choked trying to smother her giggles, but went unnoticed because Punch Up's table-slapping guffaw and Prism's peals of laughter drew everyone's attention instead, while most of the rest of the room was still in shock. "Ooo, soldier boy's got teeth!" Prism called out cheerfully. "Were you a pilot, Captain? Because that was some serious napalm strike just got dropped right here!"

"You think you're real hot shit, huh?" Flambae raged, stepping forward to try and intimidate Cap… before realizing as he drew closer that his target was not only slightly taller than him but somewhat wider.

"In the spirit of good teamwork, I'm going to deliberately pass on making the joke you just walked right into." Cap replied with a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth expression. Flambae blinked in confusion for several moments before turning red at the realization.

"My advice? Time for a tactical retreat." Coupe's quiet voice broke in from where she was lounging menacingly nearby.

"Yeah." Flambae growled. "Maybe I catch you later, spangle-man. But for right now, we go on shift." He sulkily returned to his seat.

"So, I believe you asked me for an introduction?" Cap asked mildly, moving to the head of the table and assuming a deliberately stiff position of parade rest. "All right. My call sign is Captain America. My enhanced abilities include superhuman strength, reaction time, and endurance, and my skillset includes tier-one Special Forces training and extensive combat experience. I was a classified military super-soldier project in the World War II of an alternate timeline and spent multiple tours on the front line in the European theatre, and was then frozen in cryogenic suspension for decades. I was eventually retrained and retasked for modern military special operations by the intelligence community, and then ended up involuntarily dimensionally-displaced to here. And now I'm at SDN and enjoying my first opportunity to… have a more normal work life, instead of having nothing but missions and orders. I hope that we can work well together." he finished his impromptu orientation speech.

"Confirmed kills?" Coupe raised an almost-impressed eyebrow.

"Classified." Cap answered her curtly, before stepping aside at hearing footsteps behind him.

"Good morning, everyone." Blonde Blazer greeted them all as she entered the room to their mild discomfiture. "I… wanted you to hear this announcement from me personally, and not from anyone else. I also want to emphasize that the following decision is one that I and all the senior staff at SDN, specifically including your dispatcher, have vigorously protested. But we were unfortunately overruled by the head office. You have my – our – heartfelt apologies for this, but…" She trailed off. "They won't change what has to happen."

Steve's heart sank into his boots as he realized what was coming.

"The leaderboard rankings will be recalculated at the end of shift today." Blazer continued resolutely even as her voice was shaded with disappointment and sorrow. "And at that time, whichever member of the Phoenix Program is the lowest in the rankings will be cut from the team."

Steve sadly nodded to Visi in wordless acknowledgement and apology of what he'd been helpless to prevent or warn her against, and his entire world narrowed down to the helpless look in her frightened eyes.

* * * * *
​

Author's Note: Yup, it's cut day. Everybody who played the game knew it had to come eventually.

And yes, Steve has a surprisingly sassy mouth if he really gets going. Bucky can tell you chapter and verse about what a smartass Steve is if you flick him on the raw. And if you're wondering at Flambae's reaction, the answer is that it's generally a bad idea to hand someone a straightline about "hot shit" if you have flame powers.

In the game, the cut idea is Blonde Blazer's. I tried to keep that in the sense it was an idea she was considering, but would obviously reject when Steve contributed his own input… but then I had corporate jam it down her throat anyway, because it is reasonable she'd check the feasibility of the idea ahead of time and it's already established that SDN corporate is looking for an excuse to just tube the whole Phoenix Program as they think it's a money pit.

You don't usually think of 'Captain America' and 'paperwork' in the same sentence, but nobody keeps legitimate rank in the military without at least being not incompetent at the admin side. Logistics really do make everything run. Besides, it gave me a reason to have the guys hanging out without having to give Steve an unrealistic-under-the-circumstances promotion.

And lastly… Steve, do you think there might be a reason why you don't have the slightest spark with an absolute sweetheart of a dame you might otherwise easily fall for, while simultaneously finding yourself surprisingly reluctant to leap on a golden opportunity to quit a team whose entire membership - with only one exception - you don't really like? *g*

PS: It's okay, Mandy won't be lonely. This timeline's Robert is gone-gone on the Blazer route.

 

[cliffc999]

Ah, Cap being the golden retriever that he is and bring light to dark places. Never change Cap, never change.

Click to shrink...

Thankfully Good Boy Steve is here to lift her spirts and make things better.

Click to shrink...

You have accurately identified the impulse that originally led me to create this fic. I wanted Visi to be happy (even in canon Dispatch on her most optimistic route, she ends the game merely capable of someday being happy) and then somebody else mentioned 'Steve Rogers in Dispatch' within my hearing range and cue the intrusive thought parade.