My Star Spangled Invisi-Gal [MCU/Dispatch] (Complete)

[Ceartugarda]

The HR guy is such an idiot.

If you're going to arrest somebody, do it right, or not at all.



Or, if you want to piss off everybody involved, including his own security, cause a massive mess for everybody, you know, like he just did. Idiot.

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More importantly violating their contract with her. The entire 'Leave my Past behind' part was all she wanted to start heroing. If anything sounds kinda like a lawsuit XD

 

[ThedudeManBro]

More importantly violating their contract with her. The entire 'Leave my Past behind' part was all she wanted to start heroing. If anything sounds kinda like a lawsuit XD

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... You think Shroud needs to even try? It seems like an errant sneeze would be enough to make this clown circus of a tower of cards they call a company to tumble down and break everyone on the way down.

 

[htgriffin]

"Sir, I take full responsibility for the outcome." Robert said evenly. "I turned up the clues, they ran their plan by me, I dispatched them to this task."

"I'm the branch manager. The responsibility falls on me." Blonde Blazer said immediately.

"We didn't even tell her what we were doing until after it blew up in our faces." Robert cut in immediately. "She's blameless."

"It was my entry plan, and I led the team in." Captain America stated. "Robert was in an advisory role."

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This is the sort of argument one wants to see their supervisors/field commanders/etc. get into.

Phenomaman immediately let go of Visi's shoulder and stepped back. "Then I cannot lend my strength to perpetrating such an injustice. After all, our primary purpose as heroes is to uphold the law and defend the innocent."

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Not exceptionally bright, vastly less well adjusted, but his heart is in the right place.

And yet, you STILL need that warrant as you have no actual evidence that Visi is currently still working for Shroud. Her having the cybernetic augmentations is purely circumstantial without an actual confession/admission. Until then, there's still the possibility she broke away from Shroud's group, as impossibly small as that chance might be.

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In short, suspension without pay or dismissal for lying on the application could be gotten away with. This cannot.

 

[Ceartugarda]

... You think Shroud needs to even try? It seems like an errant sneeze would be enough to make this clown circus of a tower of cards they call a company to tumble down and break everyone on the way down.

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Oh absolutely, if Visi was actually a spy in this series then Shroud wouldn't even have to do his whole violent coup to destroy SDN, he could destroy them by how stupid their HR is. Though to be fair all HR is at the end of the day is jobs for singleminded sped people who otherwise wouldn't survive because of how useless they are.

 

[KaitouPrism12]

I want to kill that HR agent or at the very least humiliate him. There are so many times during that confrontation where I wanted to play a security footage video of Visi being cornered by Toxic and Shroud that includes the Russian Roulette and ends either after they leave or when Shroud finishes talking about her change in behavior.

 

[Aleh]

The HR guy is such an idiot.

If you're going to arrest somebody, do it right, or not at all.

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Well, now that we've gotten to the HR idiot and it isn't spoilers, I can mention that I went into a good bit of detail on this and the Phoenix Program on SB. Unfortunately, I've been informed that a good bit of that discussion goes a bit for for Rule 8 standards here, especially where I start comparing what's shown of the Phoenix Program to real-life rehabilitation programs, so I won't be cross-posting.

But, yes. One of the things I got into is that even if you're actually on probation, not even your probation officer can directly declare your probation violated and order you brought in. He has to go to a judge and get a warrant to get you brought in... and declaring your probation violated requires a court hearing where you get to defend yourself.

 

[cliffc999]

Yeah, Dispatch's worldbuilding has some holes there. I mostly didn't bother spackling them, although the corpo idiots are scheduled for an eventual comeuppance of extraordinary magnitude.

 

[Aleh]

Yrah, Dispatch's worldbuilding has some holes there.

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A lot of the background bits of the story run on handwavium, yes.

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 44

"I don't believe it." Blazer said immediately, to Visi's shock. "Just to start with the most obvious objection, if Shroud were actually trying to send someone undercover among us he'd remove their identifying markers first."

"This is not even remotely proof that she's a double agent, and I don't think it's even legal for you to be using her medical records like that." Cap questioned.

"Is that your solution to this grave a security breach? To shove your head in the sand?" the HR rep questioned incredulously.

"All you've proven is that Visi had at least one contact with Shroud at some point during her previous villain career." Blazer protested. "Which is maybe a bit surprising, but is hardly impossible for a then villain… and as the Captain said, doesn't even begin to prove your accusation!"

"I have no intention of arguing this with people who are too obviously biased to be objective." The HR representative sniffed. "And maybe you can sufficiently abuse legal technicalities-"

"The Sixth Amendment is a 'legal technicality' now?" Cap glared at him.

"-to save her from arrest for the moment-" he blustered.

"You can't even try to take this 'evidence' of yours to the grand jury as the Captain suggested." Blazer scoffed. "That would violate the medical privacy laws!"

"BUT SHE'S STILL NOT STAYING HERE!" the HR rep exploded. "California state law allows an employee to be discharged at any time, for any cause or none, and by my authority as a senior HR representative of SDN I say she's gone! And not even you can block that, Ms. Branch Manager!" the red-faced man snarled.

"You can't use her medical records to fire her that way!" Blazer protested angrily. "SDN would be sued into oblivion, and there are multiple people in this room who would blow the whistle on what you've done – not least of all me!"

"I can entirely use her medical records to fire her for medical reasons, and I will." The HR man sneered. "After all, Miss Doe's asthma is recorded as having significantly interfered with her ability to work in multiple incidents just this month. Clearly the initial decision to allow someone with a disqualifying physical condition to engage in strenuous work involving law enforcement and emergency first response was ill-advised, and should be reconsidered. HR is withdrawing her medical waiver. She's fired." The man sneered. "And oh look, now that she's no longer employed she's violated the terms of the Phoenix Program… so she gets to go back to jail anyway!"

"No she doesn't." Cap cut him off. "The others are here as conditions of their criminal sentences. Visi turned herself in to SDN voluntarily; she was never charged in a court, let alone convicted. She's as free to leave as I am."

"And your reason for discharging her is an obvious post hoc rationalization-" Blazer began.

"And it's still one that will take her months of litigation in court to even begin to try and overturn… and against SDN's legal team, she's welcome to try! Especially on her budget." He scoffed. "Your discharge stands, Miss Doe. You will hand over your employee ID and all company property immediately, and then you will be escorted by these gentlemen to clean out your locker and be thrown off the grounds-"

"You two stay right there." Blazer glared at the security guards, who immediately flinched back yet again. "I'll escort her. You've done more than enough."

"Captain, you stay here." the HR rep turned to him. "Your own conduct today merits serious discussion, and your position will only be saved by… cooperation."

Cap stared wordlessly at the man for a long moment, before taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders.

"Stay with him, Captain." Blazer begged. "Don't burn any bridges you don't have to. I'll take care of Visi, and hopefully this will last exactly as long as it takes me to call HQ and reach somebody who isn't crazy."

"Do it." Visi asked Cap softly. "I've already cost you enough."

Cap stared helplessly after the two women as they left. When he turned back to face the HR representative, his face was a stone mask of rage.

* * * * *
​

"Courtney, I'm so sorry." Blazer apologized tearfully for perhaps the fifth time as they reached the front gate. "I have no idea why the head office has gone insane recently, and I'm so tired of making meaningless apologies that don't change anything. But I really hope you believe me when I say that I've always rooted for you, and that I still have faith in you. And I will write you the best letter of reference possible for any new job you apply for."

"You shouldn't." she said brokenly, the first words she'd spoken since leaving the conference room. "All I've done is hurt everybody around me." Courtney slumped. "You… Cap… the team…" She sniffled. "I keep screwing up, and other people keep suffering for it. But at least I won't be doing that anymore."

"Absolutely not!" Blazer hugged her. "Just because I won't see you at work anymore doesn't mean I don't want to stay in touch! And I'm sure everybody else you've worked with will say the same thing! Especially Steve!"

"Not sure if I would." Chase's voice interrupted them as he came up to the duo. "But this firin' was such bullshit the way they handled it that even I'm startin' to wonder if maybe you ain't as bad as that fool says you are." He looked at Blazer. "Speakin' of which, that fool is screamin' for you to get back inside right now."

"Darn it!" Blazer swore. "Courtney, please just promise me that you won't disappear on us, all right? I'm going to give Steve the afternoon off as soon as I can get back inside, so just wait here for him. Or call him to meet him somewhere else. But don't-"

Courtney looked up at Blazer dejectedly, and the heroine's heart broke at the look in the defeated woman's eyes. "Tell Steve I'm sorry. And… good-bye."

Blazer reached out helplessly as Courtney vanished.

* * * * *
​

The unlocked door swung opened and Steve Rogers entered the small studio apartment. "Courtney?" he called out, wincing at the sight of the mostly-packed suitcase laying out in the middle of the floor.

"Steve?" The woman sitting on the bed and staring dejectedly out the window answered without turning around. "I'd forgotten you knew where my apartment was."

"Thank God you're still here." Steve gasped in relief. "And I'm going to have to thank Waterboy. Because having to come here to pick you up a new set of clothes after you got soaked is the only reason I could find this place." Steve closed and locked the door behind him and came up alongside her. "Would you really have left without saying good-bye to me?" he asked, his voice soft and hurt.

She turned to look at him as he sat down adjacent to her, her eyes full of tears. "If I'd stopped to say it to you face-to-face, then I wouldn't have ever been able to leave at all."

"Well, maybe you shouldn't leave then." Steve replied gently. "Look, I know that you've had bad experiences before with nobody believing you. Trust me, this time people will believe you. There's no way you actually betrayed us to Shroud."

"But I did." Courtney protested. "I- not the warehouse raid, no." She slumped. "But I entirely helped him do things just as bad."

"Before you joined SDN, or after?" Steve questioned, and nodded at the unspoken answer clear on her face. "So you did villain things back when you were still a villain." Steve protested. "But I already knew that about you, and I didn't care. It doesn't change anything for me to find out that Shroud was one of the villains you used to do villainy with. You've already left that life behind."

"Are you even fuckin' listening to me?!?" Courtney protested incredulously. "I just told you that I used to run with the master villain who's been fucking up the entire city and running rings around everyone, and you don't even suspect anything might be wrong? Chase is right, you're so- so deep in a relationship with me that you're completely fuckin' blind to reason!"

"Courtney, if you're a double agent then I'm the Red Skull in disguise." Steve shook his head. "And I could give you any number of logical reasons why HR's theory is absurd, but you don't need logic right now. You need to rest assured that this time, when you're falsely accused, that people will actually take your word for it." He took her hand comfortingly between his own. "And they will. I certainly will."

"I was there that night." Courtney blurted.

"When?" Steve asked gently.

"The night Robert's life was ruined." Courtney explained. "I- I didn't run with crews, not usually. But Shroud offered me an augment that would increase my lung capacity, cure my asthma. In return for which I'd have to work for him for years, paying it down."

"That augment." Steve pointed a finger at Courtney's chest. "But clearly it hasn't cured anything."

"So for a few weeks I was part of the early Red Ring, shortly after Shroud had broken out of jail." Courtney continued as if he hadn't said anything. "And then one day Shroud said that I had a chance to get out from under the entire debt free and clear, if I could only manage to do one thing." Courtney swallowed. "Place a bomb on the back of Mecha Man undetected."

"Okay." Steve nodded.

"Okay?!?" Courtney exploded. "I just told you I'm the person who ruined the whole life of and almost murdered one of our friends, and ended the career of a hero who didn't deserve a single bit of it, and you just nod at me and say 'Okay'? Are you not even fuckin' surprised?!?"

"Actually, no." Steve reassured her. "Courtney, you had a traumatic flashback just from pretending to be a villain invisibly sticking things to people backs and then me making a reference to the Mecha Man incident out loud. The date you turned yourself in and joined the Phoenix Program was barely two days after Mecha Man's defeat. And when trying to cheer up Robert once I'd done a post-incident walkdown of the whole thing with him, just like I did for you with the donut shop, and one of the first things I noted from his account was the approximately two minute window of opportunity where the armor had been stationary and restrained underneath that catwalk – just long enough for an invisible person to climb down the restraining cable, attach a bomb, and climb back up without being seen. And where there hadn't really been any other plausible way for that bomb to get there. And you were one of the very few people in the building as emotionally invested in the success of the Proto-Pulse tests as Robert was, which meant that the Mecha Man incident had to have been of great personal significance to you in some way." Steve smiled at Courtney's expression, where her eyes had been getting wider and wider throughout his speech. "I've already been pretty sure of what happened there for the past several weeks."

"… and you didn't say anything?" she gaped.

"You said that you weren't okay with talking yet." Steve replied simply. "And if you needed more time, then that was what was more important."

Courtney gave a quiet little heartbreaking sob. "I quit the moment I placed the bomb. I walked out before it even blew. And my augments stopped working the very next day… so I signed up for the Phoenix Program." She slumped. "Which just gave me the chance to fuck up the lives of more heroes. Especially you."

"You haven't done any of that." Steve protested.

"Steve, I know you." Courtney looked at him sadly. "If you're sitting here when you're supposed to be at work, then I know exactly what you did. You took your employee ID and your communicator and you told that HR guy to shove 'em both straight up his ass."

"Did you really think that I was going to let this be good-bye?" Steve confirmed her suspicion. "SDN's treatment of you was my last straw. So wherever you go, I'm coming with you."

"That's the problem!" Courtney cried. "I'm going nowhere good, and you- you could have had every opportunity, if you hadn't thrown them all away because of my worthless ass!" Her eyes leaked tears. "Chase once said that people like me were black holes. That we just sucked everything in and gave nothing back. And that's all I've been doing to you."

"That's not true." Steve denied heatedly. "Right after I arrived here, I was as miserable and alone as I'd been right after coming out of the ice. I'd barely begun to know one new world, then had it ripped away for an even stranger one I didn't even have a historical connection with, and was expected to hit the ground running. Getting a job, renting a place… that was just going through the motions. Just doing life maintenance, but not really living. You know when that changed?" He smiled gently at her. "When I met my invisible gal." He drew her softly but irresistibly into a hug. "I don't think I've ever been as happy as I've been during the time I've spent with you, and for that alone – and it's not been that alone – you'd deserve everything that I could give you."

"T-that's sweet of you to say, but… I-I don't feel it." She sobbed in his arms. "I just feel so fuckin' empty."

"It's been a whole emotional rollercoaster for you the past few months, and up until just now you haven't even been able to talk about this with anyone." Steve reassured her as they drew back. "You'll level out soon enough."

"When I started the Phoenix Program, all I wanted was for someone to look at me the same way people look at Blazer." Courtney almost whispered. "Even if it was just once, you know? I thought that'd be enough." She pulled back and looked entreatingly into Steve's eyes. "And then you came along and you looked at me exactly that way, right from the beginning. Like I was beautiful, like I was good."

"I did." Steve affirmed simply. "Because you are."

"But even when I had what I wished for, it still felt so fake!" she sniffled. "I felt fake. I couldn't stop being afraid that the light in your eyes was just you seeing a mirage. That you'd wake up one day and finally realize what a fuckin' chump you'd been played for, and then move on to- to not being stuck with me." She shook her head. "And even though I knew it couldn't last, that I was just setting myself up for a bigger crash in the end the longer I let it go on… I still couldn't let go of you. Because even just clingin' to the delusion a guy like you, and a girl like me… just being able to kid myself, just for a little while… was still better than facin' up to reality."

"Courtney." Steve kissed her forehead gently. "You're not a mirage. You're real. We are real." Steve glanced over at Courtney's bedside table, where a certain pencil drawing was just visible sticking out from underneath a book. "Remember when I drew you how I used to look? The awkward original me, not the surface appearance the serum gave me? And how you said you'd have liked to have grown up alongside that kid?" He smiled down at her. "You've already seen past my mirage, and you still stood by me. Why wouldn't I do the same for you?"

"Because you think I'm good, and I know I'm not." she shook her head. "I keep doin' different shit, sayin' different things, actin' a different way… but it's still the same old me." She slumped. "I put on new faces, make new smiles, kiss a new boy, but I don't feel any different inside. And I haven't for months."

The melancholy silence fell at her words… only to shatter at Steve's chuckle.

"The hell is so funny?" she asked incredulously.

"Months, huh?" Steve quirked a smile. "Courtney, have you noticed exactly what you've been depressed about during this entire conversation?

"Uh, fuckin' everything?" she looked at Steve confusedly.

"You're in mourning for lives that you've harmed. You regret things that you've taken and not given back. You're ashamed of the sins you've committed… or even just think you've committed." He smiled. "None of what you're feeling low over has been about not getting what you want. None of your self-criticisms are about how you didn't look out for number one enough, they've only been about how you're afraid you've let other people down. What kind of person does that?"

Courtney's jaw dropped and she blinked rapidly in realization, literally dumbstruck.

"The reason you haven't felt like you're making any progress recently on becoming a good person is because you already are one." Steve gave her the sincerest smile he possibly could. "And you have been for a lot longer than you've been giving yourself credit for."

Courtney's eyes met Steve's and held them, helplessly transfixed, before she slowly leaned forward and brought her lips against his.

At first they kissed gently, then more urgently. Steve's hands came to Courtney's waist and pulled her tightly against him as he leaned deeply into the kiss. Courtney's arms reached up and clasped as tightly around his broad shoulders as she possibly could. She pulled him on top of her as she fell backwards onto the bed with her legs coming up to clasp solidly around his waist, and the two of them cast all self-restraint to the winds for one timeless, passionate moment.

Finally they separated, each panting slightly for breath. "I've been dreamin' about this for weeks." Courtney blushed incandescently. "And it was not remotely as G-rated as your dreams, and it was all happenin' right here on this bed."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Steve asked simply.

"All that dumb shit I was thinkin' about how this had to be temporary, about how one day you'd finally wake up and leave." Courtney blinked away tears of joy. "Havin' that much of you but then havin' to give it all up soon after… that would've killed me. But- but you are staying, right? You're really staying?" she pleaded.

"If you ever want to get rid of me, you're going to have to pick me up and throw me." Steve grinned wildly down at her.

"… get those fuckin' pants off." she replied hoarsely, as her smile turned positively molten. "'Cause I'm showin' you around all those curves I promised right now."

* * * * *
​

"It's a good thing you had a contraceptive implant." Steve admitted embarrassedly as he came out of the shower and began to dress. "Because I really did not stop to think about protection."

Courtney giggled as she cheerfully ogled the view from her vantage point on the nearby bed, having showered and cleaned up and dressed first. "Thinking was definitely not on our agenda there for a while, no." She winced slightly as she moved. "Did the serum boost that kind of endurance for you too, big guy? Because I'm certainly not complaining, but we might want to go a little slower next time."

"Uh, is it not normal to recover that quickly?" Steve questioned.

"Oh, right." Courtney chuckled as she remembered Steve's lack of dating history. "No, in my experience that's definitely not the average. Which only makes me an even luckier girl, because you were awesome."

"I'm glad you had a nice time." Steve replied happily.

"Steve, if I'd had much nicer of a time-" she blushed cutely, and then chuckled at being interrupted by her growling stomach. "Okay, if I'm this hungry then you must be starving. Come on, let's go get something."

"That pizza place is within walking distance, isn't it?" Steve agreed. "I could definitely eat."

Serious conversation did not resume until about halfway through the second pizza. "This was wonderful-" Courtney corrected herself. "Is wonderful, and will keep on being wonderful, but… the overall situation is still not." she sobered.

"Shroud." Steve nodded. "Just because we don't have jobs anymore doesn't mean he's not still out there."

"Yeah." She sighed. "And all our friends are still stuck dealin' with him."

"Which reminds me." Steve pulled out his phone and blinked hard at the sheer amount of backlogged texts and missed calls on it. "Is your phone exploding too?"

"Probably will be when I turn it on again." Courtney winced in anticipation.

"I'm just going to send a group text to everybody that I caught up to you and we're fine and I'll talk more tomorrow when we know more about what's going on, if that's all right with you." Steve said.

"Yeah, do that." Courtney agreed. "I'm a little surprised Blazer hasn't done a flyby of my place yet looking for me, I really must've left her frantic."

"Lucky for us that it's not quite end of shift yet." Steve blushed slightly as he composed and sent the text. "Because I don't think we remembered to close the curtains either."

"Aheh, whoops?" Courtney flushed.

"Okay, on the more serious front – the first thing we need to do is move." Steve began to think out loud. "We have to presume that Shroud knows or can find out where we both live, and we don't even have whatever protection working at SDN was anymore. And you used to work for him, however briefly, and then turned against him. He might be holding a grudge about that."

Courtney winced slightly as the click of a revolver dry-firing echoed in her mind. "He is."

"What's wrong?" Steve noticed her reaction.

"About three weeks ago – the night before we did that classroom exercise, in fact - Shroud and Toxic showed up at my place. Cornered me in the laundry room." Courtney said slowly. "He said that he wanted to me to work for him again – to double-agent for him for real, just like that HR idiot accused me of doing. He said that if I did then he'd turn the implant on again, fix my lungs."

"And he just took no for an answer?" Steve marveled.

"I love that you don't even ask what my answer was." Courtney smiled wistfully. "And he…" She flinched and reached out to Steve, grasping at his hand for comfort. "Shroud has this thing where if he really wants to intimidate someone, he'll play Russian Roulette with 'em. Has this big old antique revolver he always likes to use for it." She looked Steve directly in the eyes, trying to will him to stay calm and hear her out. "He put the muzzle to my head while Toxic had me pinned and said 'For every further word of defiance, I pull the trigger once'." she imitated his voice.

"My God." Steve swallowed hard. "What did you do?"

"I told him to eat shit and die." Courtney flinched at the memory.

"Four trigger pulls? And you survived?" Steve gasped. "Why didn't you say yes? Or pretend to say yes?"

"I've seen people try lying to Shroud." Courtney shook her head. "He sees through 'em every single time, even when he'd have no possible way of knowing. It's like he's got a lie detector built into that sensor helmet of his or something."

"Telepathy?" Steve asked. "I've heard that's possible."

"So have I, but I doubt it. If he could read minds he wouldn't need to send people out to recon shit for him, but that was most of the work I did for him in those few weeks before the Mecha Man thing happened." Courtney shook her head. "And I didn't say yes for real because…" She smiled at him sadly. "Because the first thing he'd have told me to do would be to hurt you. Or Blazer, or Robert, or… anybody."

"And you actually thought, for even a moment, that you weren't really a hero?" Steve gaped at her incredulously. "Okay, first off, I have met maybe three other women in my entire life who could do what you did and their names were Peggy Carter, Natasha Romanov, and Maria Hill. And I've already told you some things about some of them, and when I tell you the rest you will appreciate just exactly what kind of heroic company you're already traveling in."

"First off implies a second off." Courtney desperately tried to play off just how moved she'd been by Steve's last statement.

"Second off, right at this moment I really want to break their heads open with my bare hands." Steve breathed out heavily, fighting for self-control.

"After the fourth trigger pull Shroud finally acknowledged that I just wasn't going to do it and there was no way he could make me." Courtney eventually continued. "So he said something about not wanting to spook SDN before some other shit he was working on was ready, and that's why he wasn't going to just kill me then. Then he gave up and left."

"Why didn't you tell someone you'd been attacked?" Steve asked softly.

"Because he also said that if I breathed a word about it to anyone, then 'those whom you least desire to learn more about you will instead learn everything about you'" she quoted. "And back then I was still afraid of that."

"Come here." Steve reached over and gave Courtney another hug, finding words inadequate.

"So, what's our next move?" she eventually asked.

"First we rent a truck and move you out of your place right after we finish eating, and then we clean out my place tonight." Steve decided. "We find a new place and a storage locker to stash whatever we have that doesn't fit in that new place. We pay in cash and use fake ID or no ID."

"I know how to do that, no problem." Courtney acknowledged.

"And after we finish that, then we start figuring out how we're going to find this skull-faced bastard." Steve swore vehemently. "Because we already needed to do something about that guy, but when he hurt you like that? Then he made it personal."

* * * * *
​

"The Sardine." Visi muttered as her and Cap lurked in the gloom of almost-midnight and watched the seedy bar where it squatted on the corner of an alleyway and the side street. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." she orated theatrically.

"You sure any of Shroud's people will be drinking here?" he asked.

"It's the villain bar in Torrance. If the Red Ring's making a dominance play then no way they won't have their people showing the flag here. Besides, if you want to drink in costume without a long-ass commute downtown then it's either here, Crypto Night, or sit around your house with a six pack." Visi explained.

"This is the place Flambae invited us to come drink at one time?" Cap said incredulously.

"Like I said, there's not too many places in town you can drink in costume. Particularly not with the entire team. Generally the guys have enough villain cred still built up from their prior career they can get in and out of there without more than the occasional friendly barfight but I, uh, would probably get in a non-friendly barfight." Visi admitted shamefully.

"You were a villain for eight years, that's longer than many of them." Cap doubted. "You didn't build up any street cred of your own?"

"Remember when that corporate slug called me 'Invisibitch'? That wasn't him trying to be sexist, that had legitimately been my villain name. And no, it wasn't a tag that was hung on me by other people, it was one that I'd picked for myself." Visi recounted mournfully. "As a brag… and a warning label." She sighed. "Short version is, I really didn't make any friends in the villain community while I was working there."

"Good thing we're not going inside then." Cap nodded. "All right, the bouncer can't see us from where we are, so now we just wait."

"Eugh, I hate stakeouts." Visi moaned. "So much not doing anything."

"You never did finish telling me about how that book series ended." Cap said amusedly.

Visi glared cutely up at him. "Right now you're as transparent as bleach and twice as irritating."

"I'm amazed you actually had the attention span to finish that sentence. It had two whole clauses." Cap teased back.

Visi tried to maintain her glare but couldn't, and eventually snorted in laughter. "Jerk-" She straightened up. "We've got a pigeon. White-haired woman, the telekinetic who joined up with them after the prison break. I think they called her 'Psyche-Out'."

"Parking is horrible around here if she had to leave her car that far down the street." Cap acknowledged as he pulled on a black ski mask.

"Wait here a minute, then start the distraction." Visi ordered, and faded out of sight.

Sixty seconds later Cap strode openly down the sidewalk, the mask on his face, and walked directly up to the hulking figure of the serpent-faced man who was the Sardine's doorman tonight. "Who the hell are you?"

"You don't recognize me? I'm the Terrorizer!" Cap protested angrily.

"I don't know you, and I don't like not knowing people. Beat it, or get beaten." The doorman looked down at Cap from his six greater inches of height and opened his mouth, searing energy flaring menacingly over his tongue as he readied his breath weapon.

"You can't talk to me like that. I'm the crimelord of Tulsa!" Cap hammed it up. "I was invited down here to transact very serious bus-"

The bouncer's hamlike fist took Cap across the chops, and Cap deliberately turned with the punch and sold the fall as he went sprawling. "Get lost, poser. It takes more than a dime store costume and a bullshit origin story to make a real supervillain." The doorman sneered, and Cap picked himself up and cringed away, to the laughter of the several patrons waiting to get in who'd stopped to watch the show.

As soon as Cap made it safely around the corner Visi faded into visibility alongside him, triumphantly holding up Psyche-Out's cell phone.

"Well done, now let's get moving." Cap congratulated her as they hiked down the sidewalk. "I want to find somewhere we can use this where we won't risk being caught on camera. I just hope this actually works."

Several blocks away and almost half an hour later, the two of them were standing on the top floor of an incomplete construction site. The number they'd hoped to find had been one of the contacts listed in Psyche-Out's phone, and Cap had finished sending multiple texts to that number from his own phone with no response. After waiting a short while to confirm the results, Visi finally typed in and sent a single text from the villainess' phone while Cap remained hidden inside a nearby room, then went invisible and waited in a shadowy corner of the roof.

Situation's come up. Need immediate RV, these coords. Stealthy approach.

Barely four minutes later a winged figure swooped silently out of the sky and did a discreet low circle over the building, methodically checking for possible ambushes and eyewitnesses before landing. She touched down warily, her weapons at the ready as she peered warily around.

"Hello, Coupe." the materializing Visi greeted her, with her jacket off and her shirt pulled up just far enough to clearly show her Red Ring augmentations. "We need to talk."

* * * * *
​

Author's Note: HR guy may have put himself out on a limb, but he's too proud to not saw it off regardless. And even if he might or might not be legally vulnerable later, he's still pissed and cocky enough to try his rationalizations on right now.

Not that Steve's in a mood at the moment for clever legal maneuvers anyway. Seriously, he was that close to punching the guy. Didn't, but almost did!

But hey, at least these two crazy kids finally took the next step in their relationship and Visi finally got all the hugs, over everything she's been feeling guilty about. Which, yes, Steve had mostly figured out chapters ago anyway.

'I was originally part of the Red Ring a short while before the Mecha Man job came up' is as valid an interpretation of the way Visi tells her backstory in episode 7 as the other way, so I went with it.

What an emotional roller coaster of a day these two crazy kids have been having, eh? From the depths of despair to the heights of euphoria, then back down to Earth. But at least they've finally cleared the decks and Visi's finally able to accept that no, she really is loved just the way she is and there is no dark secret in her past left unrevealed and that will make her boyfriend suddenly abandon her. Visi's basically hit her endgame character development and we're not even to the equivalent of episode 6 yet. Plus, of course, we are now going well off the canon track.

And no, Cap wasn't the only one having a dream. Courtney had the canon episode 4 dream. In fact, she's been having them for a little while. She just didn't bring it up before because, well, you know.

Regarding the moment, there's a persistent rumor - I think it may be dev commentary, but not sure - that there were spicy scenes cut from the game and that the episode 7 locker room moment would have been one of them if you'd been far enough down Visi's romance path. That it wouldn't have just been a last desperate kiss she tried for once the final walls had come down, but instead she'd try for everything. So once the final walls came down here, then everything was entirely going to happen. *g*

And Steve finally finds out about Courtney's bravest moment, and the comparison/compliment he gave her is entirely sincere. (Before anyone asks why the list wasn't four names long, remember that he hasn't actually met Sharon yet.)

The telekinetic villainess is canon, you glimpse her briefly during the big fight at the end. She doesn't have a canon name, so I threw one in.

 

[ThedudeManBro]

My man cliff expanding the Dispatchverse and main story like this was Star Wars and he was Alan Dean Foster.

What an absolute Chad.

 

[ShogunTrooper]

Well, way for HR to shoot into SDN's foot.

Seriously "You can't sue us, because you don't have the cash to afford that!" is the most mind-bogglingly stupid "defense" I have ever seen. Lawyers would be smelling blood in the water, and offer their services for a cut of the settlement money alone, let alone the large amounts a judge could demand of them, because with that behavior they could wring that company dry for all they are worth, easily making up for any short-term loss incurred by that. Even more, Cap has two reliable witnesses that can testify on his and Visi's behalf, namely Blazer and Phenomaman, both of them have pretty much no reason to remain quiet on that. The former because she has an axe to grind against corporate, especially now, and the latter, while socially a bit inept, is all about doing the right thing and upholding justice, so he'd just plainly state what he saw when the judge asks him to.

And then there is the PR ramifications. We're talking about Captain America, the one man that has not only the charisma, but also the will, to come out of that appearing to have the moral high ground (which he actually does, but you know how public opinion is). Because seriously, what are they gonna do to him? Blackmail? Only more motivation for him to take you down. Hush money? Good Luck with that! Smear Campaign to discredit him? What even is there to slander? The man is as squeaky-clean as you can get.

I can just imagine some higher-up in the company is currently reaching for the Whiskey bottle once the news breaks, because his underling messed up on so many levels, it's amazing to behold.

 

[cliffc999]

Seriously "You can't sue us, because you don't have the cash to afford that!" is the most mind-bogglingly stupid "defense" I have ever seen.

Click to shrink...

And yet large institutions IRL use it all the time. And it works... right up until when it doesn't.

I'm not pretending HR guy wasn't an idiot. I am just saying his brand of idiocy is a thing real-life lawyers do eat out on, kinda often.

But hey, at least he provided the catalyst for Courtney to finally open all the way up. And, of course, Steve hears her darkest secret and goes 'I love you anyway'.

(Honestly, Natasha has actual war crimes in her ledger, and Steve's still OK with her as a person because he accepts she's sincerely reformed. Courtney had no comprehension just how much cushion she was operating with.)

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 44

"You work for Shroud as well?" Coupe exclaimed. "What, were you a mole the entire time?"

"Worked." Visi shook her head as she pulled her shirt down. "Past tense. And then Shroud screwed me over… just like he's done to you."

At that revelation Coupe immediately looked around suspiciously. "You would never have let her come alone, Captain. Show yourself!"

"We're not here to fight." Cap said, stepping slowly out of a nearby doorway with his hands raised and empty. "Shroud tricked you into thinking you'd been abandoned by your teammates so you'd be open to his recruitment offer. And we have evidence."

"Here." Visi immediately picked up the thread before Coupe could protest. "Check these two phones. One of them is Psyche-Out's, the other is the Captain's. Check the recent texts."

"Set them both down there, then move over to where he is. Stay visible at all times." Coupe ordered, and Visi did as she was told and then carefully walked over to be adjacent to Cap.

"I picked the top of a building to meet on precisely so that you could leave in an instant and we'd never catch up." Cap reassured her. "This isn't an ambush."

Coupe acknowledged that with a silent glare and picked up both phones and carefully looked down at them, keeping both heroes in the corner of her vision at all times. She frowned, and then looked more closely.

"… all of these texts were sent within the last twenty minutes. But I only received the one from Psyche-Out's phone." Coupe acknowledged, and then deliberately typed out a test message on Cap's phone and sent it to her own number… to no result.

Coupe's stared down at the damning screen with an impassive face, then reached into her pocket and withdrew her own phone. Her nostrils flared as she breathed deeply in and out, once, then twice. Slowly, methodically, she pressed the 'Off' button on her phone to power it down and carefully returned it to her pocket-

-immediately before explosively flinging a shower of wing-knives at a nearby wall. "Son of a BITCH!"

"Oh, he is." Visi agreed grimly. "Bastard promised me an implant to cure my asthma, then turned it off the day after I finished paying my debt. I don't even know why he jerked me around like that, he'd already gotten what he wanted. I joined SDN right after because…"

"You'd needed somewhere to be, and your old life had proven… insufficient." Coupe agreed quietly.

"Did Shroud tell you who took down the assassins that your old employer had sent after you?" Cap asked.

"All he told me was that it had been taken care of." Coupe replied.

"Well, it was taken care of." Visi said acidly. "He just 'forgot' to mention that it was us that had done it." She hauled out her phone. "If you want proof, I actually saved copies of those idiots' booking photos just to laugh at. Those were some of the stupidest looking costumes I'd ever seen."

"The Serpent Society." Coupe raised a mocking eyebrow at the pictures on Visi's phone. "Yes, they did dress like idiots. Although several of them were formidably lethal idiots."

"Blazer suspended our taking the customer service calls for two whole days while the team worked full-time on finding those guys and taking them down before they could find you." Cap explained. "Losing your job was a stupid and unfair decision made by the SDN head office, but nobody you actually worked with wanted to cut you loose… or leave you without support."

"Punch Up?" Coupe asked softly.

"Was going nuts trying to get in touch with you." Visi assured her softly. "He still tries from time to time, but whatever virus Shroud put in your electronics is running one hell of a communications blackout on you. Even the new burner phone he tried calling you from apparently didn't work. Whatever Shroud tagged you with must have at least some kind of semi-intelligent call screening capability."

"All he ever got was voicemail. Shroud's program probably sends every call not from a whitelisted number direct to voicemail first while silencing your ringer, then deletes the message if the voice recognition is from its blacklist." Cap speculated.

Coupe's expression turned downcast. "When you see him next, please tell him that I'm sorry I was such a fool."

"Why not tell him yourself?" Visi asked quietly.

"… because I can't go back." Coupe mourned as she began to pace. "The terms of my parole have been violated multiple times over by now. If I return to SDN, I only return to prison."

"That's not what we were asking." Cap surprised her. "Because right now there's three people standing on this roof who got fired by SDN head office for no valid reason."

"Technically two people. You quit, only I got fired." Visi replied.

"Seriously? What are they even doing over there?" Coupe puzzled.

"At this point I'm seriously considering the possibility that Shroud has compromised or is collaborating with someone at SDN headquarters." Cap replied. "Have you seen anything that might indicate that?"

"Shroud explains very little about his plans to any of us beyond the parts that we individually need to know. And we are only assembled as a team when a mission requires multiple supervillains. Toxic might know the answer to your question, but I don't. My own assignments to date have largely been to take down single targets across LA's organized crime community, or to act as an on-call mobile reserve for other squads that need support." Coupe explained.

"No single big villain headquarters for us to go raid, huh?" Cap said disgruntledly.

"The sheer amount of parts and resources that Shroud has had us accumulating – both by hijacking and by black market purchases – means he almost certainly has a large facility somewhere, one with significant manufacturing capacity." Coupe informed the duo. "But I don't know where it is. Only the ones who have been working with Shroud for a long while get to know. The rest, including me, are still in a probationary period. I can try to find out-"

"Bad idea." Visi argued. "Shroud has some kind of lie detecting power or tech. I wasn't in the Red Ring very long, but I was there enough weeks to see it in action several times. If you try double agenting, odds are way too high he'll find you out."

"I can't come in." Coupe shook her head. "It's far too easy to have someone killed in prison, and right now there's no way I can avoid at least some time in a holding cell while you negotiate with the authorities. And the instant I turned myself in Shroud would be certain that I am betraying him, as opposed to my merely being at risk of suspicion now. It's actually safer for me, at least in the short term, if I try to brazen it out."

"Unfortunately, you're right." Cap agreed ruefully. "I'm sorry for putting you on the spot with this, but our window was limited. And just letting you keep on going without even trying to tell you the truth-"

"No, you couldn't do that." Coupe agreed. "And so we are all three of us now in a situation with no ideal options. We have no employers, no resources beyond ourselves, and no backup."

"In this context, no employers is actually as much of a benefit as a limitation." Cap said. "We don't have to give a crap about SDN's idiot rules anymore. And that means we're free to do what's right."

"Right and wrong are… things I still don't fully understand." Coupe shook her head slightly. "But retribution against those who have wronged me - wronged us - that I understand very well."

"Well, we all have to start somewhere." Visi grinned crookedly. "I mean, hey, you remember what Invisibitch used to be like and look where I've ended up!"

"And as for 'no backup', judging by how they've been blowing up our phones since we got bounced earlier today I think the only reason the Z-Team hasn't had a mass mutiny yet is because they have to stay out of jail too." Cap reassured Coupe. "So even if it's going to be entirely after hours and off the books, once we find them a target to hit I'm pretty sure we can rely on them all piling in to help hit it."

"We're gonna talk to them tomorrow, and also Blazer and Robert if we can." Visi agreed. "But before we did that, we wanted to find out if we could tell them about you."

"Understandable. And yes, I would look forward to… working with them again." Coupe agreed quietly. "Anything else?"

"As much as they try to make us – or their paying subscribers – believe it, SDN isn't actually the only law in town." Cap said. "Now I just fell out of a wormhole so I personally don't know anyone to talk to, and I doubt you two have a lot of friends in the law enforcement community-"

"Yeah, we're both just a little unpopular at cop bars." Visi drawled amusedly.

"But Blazer or Robert should know someone that we can trust." Cap continued. "And if we can find a useful contact there, then you can hope to trade testimony against Shroud for immunity. Hopefully that won't take more than a few days for us to set up."

"What do we do in the meantime?" Coupe questioned.

"Our worst limitation so far has been that we're working almost entirely blind." Cap nodded. "We can only guess vaguely at Shroud's ultimate goals, and we don't know nearly enough about his powers, his resources, or who else he might be working with or have paid off. For as long as he can keep us from knowing anything about him while he learns more and more about us, he can keep playing chessmaster with us as easily as he's been doing so far. But the thing about chess is, the rules of the game assume that you can always see all of the pieces."

"For as long as he does not yet discover that I am working with you, we will know at least one significant thing that he doesn't." Coupe agreed.

"Two significant things." Cap nodded. "I'm from another dimension, so the only thing Shroud knows about my past career are things I've told SDN, or demonstrated while I'm working there. And so far I've just had to be a cross between a cop and a community outreach worker, so that's all he'll really know about me. But this is now a counter-terrorism case - literally, thanks to that truck bomb - and that's how I'm going to try and work it from now on. Hopefully he won't be anticipating that either."

"I knew that you hadn't been lying about having been an operative." Coupe nodded in vindication. "That skillset overlaps enough with mine that like could recognize like."

"I picked up a burner for you. Flip phone, the dumbest model I could find, so hopefully it'll be too dumb to hack. Still wouldn't recommend actually carrying it into Shroud's presence, though." Cap reached into his jacket pocket and handed Coupe the burner phone. "This is for emergency use only, but keep it on when you can so we can emergency page you if need be. For regular contacts we'll use pen and paper. We'll both leave any messages on the roof of the diner at 45th​ and Lake, and we'll both try to check it at least once a day. After I check in with the others and find out what we've got to work with we'll try to set up something more robust for drops, this is just to start out."

"What do I do in the meantime?" Coupe asked.

"First off, don't try direct action against Shroud." Cap shook his head. "Even disregarding the ethical component, your odds just aren't good enough."

"That's not a knock on your skill." Visi said hurriedly. "But it's not like Shroud doesn't know what you did for a living. So I'm pretty sure 'keep the former assassin in plain view at all times' is something that never leaves his mind when he's meeting with you, any more than he ever gave an unguarded back to me. The instant you break line-of-sight he'll go to instant red alert, and since he always keeps Toxic sticking to him like a leech during villain meets doing the job from the front is also a bad idea."

"As very tempting as the thought of solving the problem expeditiously was, I had already figured that out for myself." Coupe agreed. "Unfortunately."

"So yeah, keep your head down, don't take any risks." Visi continued. "And if Shroud makes you and you can't escape, then cooperate. If he forces you to feed us false intel, then feed away."

"Your duress signal if that happens is to not remember to ask us if Punch Up is still acting like an idiot in any message." Cap went on. "Even if Shroud dictates your messages word for word, he shouldn't know to dictate the 'still safe' signal. And when you have time, try to summarize everything you've already learned that you think might be useful and leave it in the drop. Oh, and it goes without saying, but if Shroud is putting hack programs in your electronics then don't say anything even remotely incriminating on that phone."

"It might not even be safe to talk near it, but there's nothing we can do about that right now." Visi admitted. "And depending on how good Shroud's lie detector is, even all these precautions might not save you. You sure you want to take this risk?"

"Whether I come in now or I try to remain in place, either way it's a risk to my life that we can't calculate." Coupe denied. "And only one of those risks lets me keep fighting."

"I certainly understand that." Cap reluctantly agreed. "Anything else either of you can think of that we need to cover right now?"

"If you've been fired, what are you two doing for money?" Coupe asked.

"We've got savings." Visi denied.

"I know how much SDN was paying you, and how short a time the Captain has had to save anything." Coupe denied with a twitch of her lip. "However, crime has been paying rather well recently – the one character flaw Shroud cannot be accused of is miserliness. I haven't even begun to spend what share of the proceeds I've already earned, and I like to live simply anyway. Check the drop site tomorrow evening, by then I should have ten thousand dollars in cash there waiting for you."

"There's no way we'll be able to pay that back any time soon." Cap denied.

"I prefer to think of it as Shroud helping to fund his own downfall." Coupe retorted. "So long as it's spent towards the goal of giving that bastard what he's got coming to him, you won't need to repay a dime."

"Then thank you, Coupe." Visi said warmly. "I'm sorry we weren't better friends when we were working together."

"The people who know me personally get to call me Janelle." she smiled slightly.

"I'm Steve. She's Courtney." Steve smiled back. "Nice to meet you, Janelle."

* * * * *
​

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 45

"Mr. Saunders, please explain to me how you so epically screwed up what should have been a simple task." The furious Vice-President of Marketing glared at the man helplessly cringing where he stood in front of the SDN executive's desk.

"You told me to make sure she was fired, no matter what." the HR representative pleaded. "And I did that!"

"The purpose of sending her back to jail where she belonged was to split that little tramp away from Captain America so he'd stop clinging to the Torrance branch office like it was his only port in a storm and start actually looking outward!" the VP replied. "In light of that, did it not begin to occur to you that perhaps you should have begun to exercise a little more subtlety as soon as he arrived to witness events?"

"As soon as Blonde Blazer unaccountably chose to ignore such an alarming sign of an infiltrator in her own shop, I had very limited options! She was supposed to immediately bounce Invisigal herself!" Saunders begged. "I didn't know that I should have aborted as soon as things went even the slightest bit off-script instead of trying to recover-!"

"Well, then we've both just had a very unpleasant lesson in what happens when you assume that other people will only act like they're supposed to." the VP glared frostily at the man. "Because not only did you manage to throw the baby out with the bathwater, you've also potentially exposed the company to a very serious lawsuit."

"I've what?" Saunders blinked confusedly.

"… what are they teaching you people in HR?" the man moaned. "The short version is, I'm afraid to even tell Legal what just happened because that will result in the VP of Legal personally naming his next two ulcers after both of us!" He shook his head. "You've given any six-weeks-out-of-law-school idiot operating on a contingent fee a gift-wrapped opportunity to take SDN to the cleaners. She's got us over a barrel for violating both the medical records privacy laws and the Americans with Disabilities Act, and those are the two single worst third rails of death you can ever touch in litigation… and on top of that, you managed to have two of the most well-renowned heroes in the entire company present as eyewitnesses to the whole thing! At this moment we need to pray that both Invisigal and Blazer are too ignorant of the legal subtleties to actually know what I just said, or else Legal's only option will be to offer our least favorite asthmatic felon at least seven figures in settlement to hopefully avoid the company being on the hook for at least eight figures in punitive damages!" the man roared. "If not more!"

"Oh my God." the HR rep turned pale and trembled.

"The only reason I'm not burning you yet is because we don't know yet if she knows to actually call a lawyer." The VP hissed at him. "If we're very very lucky, she'll just crawl off to find a new gutter to live in and never know that she had a free chance to use SDN as her personal Powerball jackpot. But if she does sue us… well, then it's a good thing that I never gave you any instructions in writing, or where anybody else could hear us."

"Sir, you promised-" Saunders begged.

"You promised me that you could handle this, and obviously you haven't." the VP snorted. "When that warehouse exploded and they asked your office to review the files of all those involved, and in the process you thought you'd found the 'silver bullet' you knew I'd been wanting… I just wish I'd had the brains to throw you the hell out of my office as soon as you came to me with your cockamamie plan." The VP furiously clutched at his hair. "As it turns out, you didn't even think to check her file closely enough to realize that she wouldn't actually be sent to prison if she lost her slot in the Phoenix Program, you merely assumed she would be! And that's what you'd told me as well! So now that you've completely fucked the whole thing up both in theory and in practice, you still want me to risk my ass covering for you? Do you need to schedule yourself for a drug test?"

"You approved this entire plan!" Saunders protested heatedly.

"Because I'd assumed that you, the actual HR specialist, knew what the fuck you were talking about regarding Human Resources matters!" The VP denied heatedly. "The more fool I! So if SDN is fortunate enough to escape the consequences here, which I desperately pray that we are, then you escape along with me. But if we're not that fortunate then the consequences all of these mistakes – and they were your mistakes – will be all on you." He snorted. "And don't even think of trying to burn me first. You have no proof, and you've already clearly demonstrated that you're just not good enough at this game."

"And Captain America?" Saunders desperately persisted. "If we can-"

"After what you did? I can't possibly imagine what he sees in her but he's obviously made up his mind that where she goes, he goes." The VP snorted. "And offering to immediately re-hire her – even to promote her along with him, however absurd a thought that might be - would only be further admission of our guilt useable in any future lawsuit, so we can't even risk that. Clearly they didn't hire the Captain for his brains or his good taste, but what's done is done."

* * * * *
​

"Do you have any idea how worried we've been?!?" Robert almost shouted at Courtney.

"Actually yeah!" she protested, before slumping down in her seat on the picnic table in the park where they'd arranged to meet during lunch hour. "I'm sorry I ghosted you guys yesterday, but I couldn't stop freaking out. Being targeted by a witch hunt brought up some really bad memories. It took me hours to stop spiraling."

"Well thank God that Steve caught up to you then." Robert looked at the man sitting adjacent to Courtney. "I went by your apartment last night and Blazer went by hers, but you were both gone. What happened?"

"We moved out." Steve explained. "We didn't know if Shroud would start targeting his more vulnerable opposition… and without SDN, that included us. We're trying to set up a new place that's a little harder to find."

"Sounds paranoid to me, but then again I'm not the one with the military and intelligence background." Robert acknowledged.

"Is Blazer not coming? We invited both you guys." Courtney asked.

"She had to stop and get- ah, there she is." Robert answered.

Both Steve and Courtney turned to see a beautiful brown-haired woman walking up to their table. Steve's artists' eye immediately spotted the facial resemblance while Courtney was still trying to catch up.

"That's not just changing your hair, you're at least two inches shorter and your muscle tone is entirely different as well." Steve analyzed. "You were the other person Robert mentioned knowing whose powers made them look different?"

"Yes." the woman replied with Blazer's voice. "Hi. I'm Mandy." She smiled at them both.

Courtney looked back and forth between Mandy and Steve. "Oh God, you're even more drop-dead gorgeous with your powers turned off and you're really a brunette." she moaned. "I am so lucky Robert ran into you first."

Everybody else at the table, even Steve, shared a chuckle at that.

"I just wish they hadn't made my hero name 'Blonde Blazer', then maybe I'd be less self-conscious about it." Mandy acknowledged embarrassedly.

"To get down to business, the bad news is that you're not getting your job back." Robert began soberly. "Mandy was on the phone reporting our idiot friend from HR as far up the chain as she could reach, but all she got was stonewalling. Nobody would firmly commit to backing that idiot's decision, but nobody would actually reverse it either."

"The good news is, Sonar caught me up this morning on several things about HIPAA – the federal laws that govern medical information privacy rights, among other things – and the ADA that I hadn't known." Mandy continued. "The short version is, what happened to you was done so incorrectly and blatantly that the punitive damages from any lawsuit would mean you'd never have to work another day in your life. We are talking tens of millions of dollars, at minimum. And with Phenomaman and I both testifying to how that idiot was stupid enough to say the quiet part out loud, winning the case would be a slam dunk."

"Wait, what?" Courtney goggled in shock.

"I thought what they'd done was playing more than a little fast and loose, but I hadn't known it was that bad." Steve acknowledged. "But to be honest, our old jobs were the least important item on our agenda right now. Leading off with our number one item of business, we met Coupe last night and we managed to convince her about how Shroud had tricked her into cutting herself off."

"Wow." Mandy blinked. "Maybe you two should lose your jobs more often if it gets this kind of results." she joked.

"The bad news is, Coupe can't come back." Courtney said. "Because the way things are now, if she does come back then she goes right back into custody. And then Shroud knows she tried to quit him and she gets prison shanked."

"They're right." Robert said to Mandy. "That's exactly what he'd do."

"But she's also in danger if she stays there, because Shroud's not stupid and he possibly has some type of lie detection powers." Steve reached into the tote bag sitting next to him and came out with a manila folder. "That's a summary of everything Courtney can remember from the few weeks she spent working for Shroud before joining SDN, plus what Coupe wrote down for us about her own experiences. Right now we're assuming Shroud can hack basically anything – just wait until you hear about the job he did on Coupe's phone – so please don't enter this into any computers or spread it around too widely. But hopefully it'll give your own investigations a starting point."

"It also leads into our next request, which is to find a way to get Coupe out before Shroud realizes she's a double agent." Courtney continued. "We're praying that Mandy knows someone relatively senior in law enforcement or the DA's office who can set up a new immunity deal for Coupe – her testimony against the Red Ring in return for not going back to jail."

"Try the FBI as well, if you know anybody there." Steve suggested. "Guys like Shroud don't survive without intel sources of their own, and he might have people in the police. Hell, given all the suspicious decisions coming down from headquarters recently I've been wondering if he has someone inside at SDN. But he might not have thought ahead enough to realize that his truck bomb stunt the other day would escalate him from crime boss to domestic terrorist, so hopefully he hasn't concentrated on the local field office yet."

"Inside SDN? No wonder you were worried about Shroud possibly having your addresses." Robert realized.

"I doubt that what happened to you is because of that." Mandy shook her head. "If nothing else, you've just proven that losing your jobs has only made you more dangerous. If Shroud really wanted to counter you both then he should have made sure you'd still have to waste as much of your time as possible punching the clock."

"I think that's what Steve meant." Robert said. "Not the recent firing, but the headquarters directives we've been getting since even before the Red Ring case broke open. They've been doing nothing but waste our time and get in our way. And sure, there's a saying about never attribute to deliberate malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, but-"

"There's also a saying about how even paranoids have enemies." Mandy admitted ruefully. "I'll go back over the recent corporate nonsense again and try to see if there's a pattern there that might support what you're saying. As well as try to figure out why Courtney was so recently and viciously targeted, because while I still don't see how that makes sense for Shroud to do it you're right in that it has to make sense to somebody."

"Thank you." Steve said. "Sorry to dump so much on you right away, but things are moving pretty fast."

"One more thing." Courtney began nervously, and Steve took her hand reassuringly.

"What's wrong?" Mandy asked.

"Like we'd just said, I used to work for Shroud before joining SDN." Courtney began mournfully. "And one of the things I did there – my last job for him, in fact – you really need to know about."

"Her asthma had been getting worse. Shroud offered her a cybernetic implant that was supposed to cure it. She'd been getting desperate." Steve broke in insistently.

"Let me tell it, please." Courtney almost whispered, before forcing herself to look Robert square in the face. "That night. In the steel mill. I planted the bomb on your suit." She forced down her trembling.

Robert's expression immediately went blank. "So that's how it got there." He said grimly. "I'd never been able to figure that part out." He glared at Steve. "How long have you known?"

"I suspected shortly after you'd given me the play-by-play of that incident." Steve replied forthrightly. "I found out for certain only yesterday, when Courtney was finally able to talk about it."

"And did you even think of coming to me with your suspicion?" Robert protested, as Courtney shrank slightly back.

"No I didn't." Steve shut him down immediately. "Not for a single second. I didn't enjoy making that choice between you two, but there was no doubt in my mind that protecting Courtney was my first priority. You're my friend – our friend - but she's my best girl." Steve looked meaningfully at Mandy and then back to Robert. "What would you have done in my shoes?"

"Robert." Mandy said softly, entreatingly, as she put her hand on his arm.

"I'm so fuckin' sorry." Courtney blinked away silent tears. "And I know saying that doesn't mean shit, but I am really so fuckin' sorry I ever did it. That's why I left Shroud and joined the Phoenix Program. I couldn't deal with what I'd done. I wanted to leave it all behind." She looked up at Robert again. "But it just came around full circle on me anyway. I guess we can never escape having to pay for who we used to be."

"I just- I have no idea what the fuck to do with this. Because it's a lot. It's really a whole fuckin' lot." Robert swore.

"You don't have to do anything." Courtney sighed. "You don't owe me any forgiveness. Nothing I do will ever make up for what I've already done to you. I almost murdered you. I took away everything you'd ever worked for. I gave you the single worst day of your entire life."

"Right now, I'm thinking that it was the single worst day of both your lives." Mandy interjected compassionately as Robert turned to look his girlfriend directly in the eyes.

"… yeah, I guess it was." Robert agreed eventually, turning back to Courtney. He reached out to touch her fingertips with his own. "Mandy's right. We already knew that you used to work for him, and we'd already accepted that that didn't mean you weren't on our side now. It shouldn't change anything if your last job for Shroud happened to involve me."

"Shouldn't?" Steve asked worriedly.

"Mecha Man was all that I had." Robert sorrowed. "Losing the suit… I almost didn't survive it." He looked sideways at Mandy again. "And if a nice lady hadn't come to help me out, I don't think I would have. But if I hadn't lost the suit then I'd never have met her in the first place. Or the team, or you guys. So that's why I'm not sure what to do with this. Because what do you even call it when losing your whole world only helps you find the woman you love?"

Steve raised an eyebrow at Robert. "How do you think I felt?" he sympathized, and the tableau froze for a long moment before breaking out in quiet laughter.

* * * * *
​

Author's Note: My problem in composing the upcoming 'Steve goes full SHIELD on the problem' bit is that since I am not actually an expert in counter-terrorism, I need to take extra care not to write the next part stupidly. Hence the slightly slower update rate while I work that bit out. But I can at least start the setup here, and I do.

'It was the worst moment of my life too' is of course from Robby and Miguel's reconciliation scene in season 5 over Robby having accidentally broken Miguel's back in season 2 of 'Cobra Kai', one of my very favorite TV shows.

I would like to thank all of my readers who helped explain to me the legal ramifications here, which I had originally been largely ignorant of. Fortunately I was able to fold them into the plot without having to substantially change my story outline – after all, Steve and Courtney aren't even thinking of things like lawsuits now, they've got a supervillain to bust. They can do that other stuff later.

And yes, the root of at least one part of the corpo stupidity is revealed as having been just a stupid petty plot. As for the other corpo stupidity, it might be, it might not be. We'll find out.

 

[Lillie Jones]

thanks for the chapters

 

[Sto Odin]

Not exceptionally bright, vastly less well adjusted, but his heart is in the right place.

Click to shrink...

Phenomaman isn't great at humaning, but he's not bad at being a proper superhero. INo surprise: it's simpler and, as you say, his intentions are good.

 

[The Unicorn]

And yet large institutions IRL use it all the time. And it works... right up until when it doesn't.

Click to shrink...

The thing is, the main way they actually get away with this sort of shit is by NOT actually admitting that's what they're doing, especially not in front of witnesses.

This isn't even a matter of getting sued - the only way any of SDN's legal team could keep working for SDN without risking their license to practice law is if SDN fired the idiot to show the idiocy was all on him.

I'm not pretending HR guy wasn't an idiot. I am just saying his brand of idiocy is a thing real-life lawyers do eat out on, kinda often.

Click to shrink...

I'd like to think you're wrong about that...then I remember the idiots who had ChatGPT write a legal opinion for them without checking it, and lied to the judge about it when they were caught.

"Mr. Saunders, please explain to me how you so epically screwed up what should have been a simple task." The furious Vice-President of Marketing glared at the man helplessly cringing where he stood in front of the SDN executive's desk.

"You told me to make sure she was fired, no matter what." the HR representative pleaded. "And I did that!"

"The purpose of sending her back to jail where she belonged was to split that little tramp away from Captain America so he'd stop clinging to the Torrance branch office like it was his only port in a storm and start actually looking outward!" the VP replied. "In light of that, did it not begin to occur to you that perhaps you should have begun to exercise a little more subtlety as soon as he arrived to witness events?"

Click to shrink...

That is certainly a believable way to have that idiocy come about. Given Invisigal was never convicted any competent HR flunky the VP tried sounding out on his plan would be raising objections.

Also glad to see they managed to contact Coupe

 

[htgriffin]

Cap stared helplessly after the two women as they left. When he turned back to face the HR representative, his face was a stone mask of rage.

Click to shrink...

The flashbacks to The Incredibles were intentionally induced, weren't they.

"The Serpent Society." Coupe raised a mocking eyebrow at the pictures on Visi's phone.

Click to shrink...

I wonder how many others get this reference....

"The purpose of sending her back to jail where she belonged was to split that little tramp away from Captain America so he'd stop clinging to the Torrance branch office like it was his only port in a storm and start actually looking outward!"

Click to shrink...

Well the latter bit was managed, at least.

– even to promote her along with him, however absurd a thought that might be

Click to shrink...

The depressing part? No bug up the bum concerning the Phoenix Program means this bit right here would be considered a valid price to get Cap on the PR circuit and more to the point would be considered before rolling the dice on Steve siding with her over anything.

"The short version is, what happened to you was done so incorrectly and blatantly that the punitive damages from any lawsuit would mean you'd never have to work another day in your life. We are talking tens of millions of dollars, at minimum. And with Phenomaman and I both testifying to how that idiot was stupid enough to say the quiet part out loud, winning the case would be a slam dunk."

Click to shrink...

How did that at-this-point-old song go?

~Tri level mansion, Hollywood Hills. SDN's HR People, paid for the bills....~

 

[ThedudeManBro]

Phenomaman isn't great at humaning, but he's not bad at being a proper superhero. INo surprise: it's simpler and, as you say, his intentions are good.

Click to shrink...

The fact he is a legitimately good person that WANTS to do good but is just awkward as fuck was, in this rotten world where people are used to Brightburns and Homelanders, the amazing swerve the people needed without thinking they did so.


You cannot imagine the amount of lemmings that kept saying Phenomaman was actually evil. The funny thing is that the musical score helped sell their delusions: if you are pursuing Mandy, his first appearance's track is ominous af, and if you aren't the song is heroic. I think it's neat.

 

[cliffc999]

You cannot imagine the amount of lemmings that kept saying Phenomaman was actually evil.

Click to shrink...

Jesus wept, right up until the final episodes there was no end of people saying Blonde Blazer was actually evil. The single greatest subversion ever was the reveal that no, she was legitimately as nice as she first appeared.

(add) Found this meme laying around.

Spoiler: Blonde Blazer Meme

The funny thing is that the musical score helped sell their delusions: if you are pursuing Mandy, his first appearance's track is ominous af, and if you aren't the song is heroic. I think it's neat.

Click to shrink...

The hilarious part is that I think the ominous music is Robert's guilty conscience. If you didn't kiss another man's girl, your internal mood is not freaking out.

 

[Aleh]

Jesus wept, right up until the final episodes there was no end of people saying Blonde Blazer was actually evil. The single greatest subversion ever was the reveal that no, she was legitimately as nice as she first appeared.

(add) Found this meme laying around.

Click to shrink...

I mean, I have my issues with Blazer as a character -- there's reasons I can't waifu her, as it were -- but the "actually evil" thing has me WTFing pretty hard and shaking my head at fandom behavior.

There were no indications of that in the narrative. It's not even "evil 'Manipulative' Dumbledore" levels of unsupported.

Edit: Typo.

 

[ShogunTrooper]

I think that mainly came due to how common the Twist Villain and Evil Superman Clone have become. So, of course people are gonna assume Blazer is evil, considering that, in the game, she was the one to make the decision to cut someone from the Z-Team when it absolutely wasn't the time for that, leaving Robert holding the bag since he's the one that has to actually put it into action, making it feel like intentional sabotage, while Phenomaman's somewhat-awkward behavior makes it seem to some like he has something to hide, or has something otherwise sinister going on.

But no, Blazer just made a genuine mistake, or, failing that, had her frustration with the team's behavior boil over, given she has been dealing with them far longer than Robert had, that simply came at a very bad time, rather than an act of malice, let alone actual sabotage. And Phenomaman simply isn't used to Human social cues due to being, from his perspective, surrounded by aliens, and seriously crashes out when the one person he made a true connection with breaks up with him, leaving him feeling isolated (something he can, notably, actually come back from), but is otherwise as straight-laced as you can get, with his heart firmly in the right place.

Neither is perfect, but they are still good people.

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 45

"The hell happened to you guys?" Visi looked at the bedraggled Z-Team in shock. Everybody was visibly disheveled, and even Robert had a bloody nose and skinned knuckles.

"The team really needed to blow off steam after all the recent crap, so they chose this evening to go out drinking. I went along to try and keep them out of trouble, and…" Robert trailed off ironically.

"Let me guess, you went to the Sardine." Cap stated as he and Visi sat down at one of the tables outside the taco joint in their civilian clothes. Flambae had texted the duo to ask them to meet the team there late in the evening. "And the inevitable barfight happened."

"You've already been there?" Flambae exclaimed.

"We were staking the place out last night, looking for any of Shroud's people." Cap replied. "But we didn't go inside."

"Should've come in with us tonight, then, because you missed the fun part!" Prism said cheerfully. "You should've seen Mecha Boy here go at it! Man was a barfightin' machine!"

"Wait, you guys know?!?" Visi blinked incredulously. "And you haven't set him on fire yet?" she turned to Flambae.

"I almost did." Flambae admitted sheepishly. "But fortunately for myself I remembered in time that I would probably not get away with trying something that stupid twice."

"Fortunately for yourself?" Robert gave Flambae the side-eye. "After you cleared the decks regarding secrets and all of that earlier today, I felt like a hypocrite for not doing the same thing with the rest of the team." Robert continued to Visi. "So yeah, I came clean to them about being Mecha Man shortly before you got here."

"How did you guys know?" Malevola asked.

"Found it out by accident a while back, sneaking around." Visi explained.

"Makes sense." Malevola nodded. "Have you guys been doing okay since you got cut?"

"We're fine. I'm… doing a lot better than I expected to be right now, actually." Visi reassured the team.

"Ooo, does that mean you two have finally stopped 'takin it slow'?" Prism snarked, and then laughed out loud at Visi's blush.

"A-ha, finally! Can we finally get an answer to our question now?" Malevola grinned wickedly. "How good is he?"

"If I told you bitches half of what we've gotten up to you'd both die of jealousy, so clearly my continued silence is only for your own good." Visi smirked back.

The entire table burst out laughing at that. Flambae gave Cap a cheerful thumbs-up, to which he responded with an urbane shrug.

"The important question is, how are you guys doing?" Cap redirected the conversation.

"It sucks." Golem rumbled. "Work sucks, the new rules suck, everything sucks."

"About the only thing that's going to get me to come into work tomorrow is the eventual anticipation of watching you legally burn SDN at least halfway to the ground." Sonar said.

"Yeah, Sonar explained that to us. Congratulations on winning the lottery, Visi! Don't forget your old friends once you cash in, hey?" Punch Up grinned.

"We don't even have time for that right now, honestly." Cap said. "Employed or not, Shroud still needs taking down, and we both still owe that guy a good pounding."

"Hrmph!" Flambae snorted. "At this point in time, who gives a shit? If SDN cares so little, why should we? The only reason we still stick with this bullshit is to avoid jail, but they are getting the absolute minimum from now on and not an inch more."

"Yeah, I mean look at what they did to Visi." Prism spat. "She turned her everything around just like the company claimed they wanted everybody in the program to do, and did it better than anyone… and how did she get thanked? By bein' dumped on even more stupidly than what they did to Coupe!"

"By now the pattern in the memos is pretty obvious." Sonar agreed. "SDN corporate is out to sabotage the Z-Team as hard as they can. If we'll get screwed no matter how many hoops we jump through, then why jump? Obviously they'll never believe we can change."

"Guys, I've told you. It doesn't matter what they believe, you know they're wrong about you. I know they're wrong about you." Robert insisted.

"That's not the point, Robert." Malevola said disgruntledly. "We know that you – and even Blazer – want to have our backs. The problem is that that's not worth anything anymore. You both did your best and you couldn't even slow this corporate crap down. Not for Coupe, not for Visi, and not for us."

"They just won't have any faith in the Z-Team, no matter what we do." Punch Up agreed vehemently. "So fuck 'em all."

"You're wrong." Cap shook his head. "The entire problem is that they do believe you might pull it off. That's exactly why they're doing this."

"The hell kind of crazy talk you talkin'?" Prism said incredulously.

"Back during the war, the B-17 pilots had a saying – 'If you're taking flak, then you're over the target.'" Cap quoted. "If SDN corporate really believed that your failure was inevitable, then the only thing they'd need to be doing to you right now is nothing." The Z-Team began to straighten up slowly as Cap's message began to sink in. "You only need to make an active effort to sabotage someone if you're afraid that they'll succeed. I don't know why the corporate HQ wants the Phoenix Program to fail, or why they're trying so hard to make it fail. But I do know that the harder they have to try to stop you from succeeding, the more that just underlines that you guys have been. Visi's not the only one here who's been turning their life around, or who maybe hasn't realized just how far they've already come. But if you can't take assurance of that from your friends, then take it from your opposition – and how desperate they are to try and stop you now."

"Cap's right. You can't just give up and coast, guys." Robert chimed in. "That's exactly what they want you to do, so you've got to dig in and spite those bastards."

"Dig in for what?" Flambae said. "Seriously, outside of keeping us from going to jail, what does keeping our bullshit jobs actually accomplish?"

"We're talking about stopping Shroud." Visi answered. "SDN is ignoring him but he's definitely not going to be ignoring us. Or the city. The cops can't stop him, the A-Teams aren't even trying to stop him, and that means it's all down to people like us."

"Not that we aren't going to try and talk to some honest law enforcement as well, if we can find any." Cap said. "But the entire plus side of us two being fired is that we don't have to play by SDN's rules anymore. As long as we don't actually get ourselves arrested, we can do whatever we need to do to try and find Shroud's operation."

"The city lost one indie hero recently." Robert said knowingly. "So why shouldn't it get two more?"

"But the two of you cannot defeat all of Shroud's people on your own." Flambae said knowingly. "So when you find them, you will still need backup."

"Backup like a team of superheroes who might not mind going a little rogue when the time comes." Cap agreed. "But where could we possibly find people like that?"

"And this time we'll look inside the truck first. Promise." Visi admitted shamefully.

"That wasn't even your fault, really." Flambae denied. "But now that you remind me, I certainly still owe Shroud something for trying to blow me up!"

"You're a clever man, Captain, and Visi's a sneaky lass and a half, but what makes you think you can find him?" Punch Up asked.

"And that brings me to the good news part of this conversation.. . and also the part you all have to be very careful to keep secret, or else it might get someone killed." Cap said. "I honestly debated not telling you, but even if it's not the most logical thing to do right now you still all have the right to know." He looked at Punch Up. "Coupe said to tell you that she's sorry she was such a fool."

"You found her?" Punch Up did a heroic spit-take.

"We did." Visi said. "And we convinced her of how Shroud played her – it was just like you suspected, he was deliberately blocking out her ability to communicate with us. She's… not entirely out of danger yet, but so far Shroud hasn't figured out that she's been talking to us on the side. And she's entirely on board with helping us take the bastard down."

"We don't intend to leave her out there for very long, but we've got to arrange some kind of legal escape for her first." Cap assured them. "That's one of the other things we're trying to work on."

"As are Blazer and myself." Robert assured them.

"Uh, I g-got the tacos." Waterboy interrupted them, carrying an overloaded tray. Cap immediately got up and helped him start distributing the food.

"Here, let me chip in." Cap said, laying a hundred-dollar bill on the tray.

"How is the unemployed guy more flush than we are?" Punch Up wondered.

"Modest spending habits?" Visi joked.

* * * * *
​

"Coupe." Shroud addressed the winged ex-assassin tonelessly, as Toxic stood loyally by his side.

"Sir." she nodded to him briefly, masking her nervousness. They were meeting in an unused storefront, one of the several locations that Shroud irregularly rotated between for meetings with people who weren't trusted enough yet to know where his headquarters was.

"Captain America." Shroud stated, and only a lifetime of rigorous training kept Coupe's expression from changing. "You have already recounted the origin story that he provided you to me, but what else do you know about him?"

"I… am not sure I understand the question." Coupe replied slowly. "I only worked with him briefly before they fired me." She deliberately let the bitter resentment she still felt over SDN's corporate stupidity fill her voice at that one. "And we did not share any assignments during that time."

"What the fuck is up between him and Invisigal?" Toxic broke in.

"That was by all appearances sincere." Coupe gratefully seized on the subject change. "Invisigal is not at all a subtle person. While I still found her change in demeanor to be inexplicable, I never doubted that it was genuine. She simply isn't that good an actress."

"Such was my experience with her as well." Shroud agreed. "You weren't aware that she used to work for me?"

"Actually I was." Coupe replied tautly, remembering the advice she'd received to never try lying directly to Shroud. "She… hardly made a public announcement of it, but I had occasion to glimpse her augmentations once while she was partially undressed. And after I started working here, I could of course recognize the significance of what I had seen."

"At any point during your mutual tenure on the Z-Team, did the Captain seem to be engaged in any… intelligence-gathering activities? Was he attempting to ingratiate himself with the team? Learn more about you?" Shroud pressed.

"At first it was like he didn't even want to work with us." Coupe denied. "He couldn't get out of the first team meeting he'd attended quickly enough. He began to become… more approachable… relatively quickly, but with one exception he didn't attempt to be more than a reasonable co-worker with any of us during my tenure."

"So you saw nothing that would indicate he had been assigned here." Shroud questioned. "Or that he was keeping in touch with any… old contacts."

"No." Coupe shook her head.

Shroud stood staring silently at her for a long moment. "Report to Morphus and join his team for tonight's operation. You already know the location."

"Yes sir." Coupe nodded again and departed.

"So, what now?" Toxic asked after Coupe had left.

"She does not trust me and her loyalty is still only dictated by fear and pragmatism… but that was already a known factor." Shroud replied tonelessly. "Recruitment by deception always carries an element of risk, but if kept bereft of any of her emotional anchors then soon enough she should resume the pattern of the only life she has ever known – to trade performance of her skills in return for security and remuneration. And in her case the risk was worth it for the opportunity for further intelligence-gathering on the Z-Team, as well as the utility an operative of her caliber would provide should her loyalty eventually be secured after all. As for the more immediate question… the divergence in result from the original plan is at present minor, but still concerning."

"Yeah." Toxic nodded. "Blowing the truck bomb put the Z-Team on the back foot and locked them up in a corporate holding pattern just like we wanted, but wasn't Visi supposed to be back in jail and the Captain sent off to Hollywood by this point?"

"That was the calculated result of the incident encouraging SDN's corporate headquarters to do a detailed review of the personnel files of those involved, but not the actual result." Shroud agreed. "As is, they are both now free agents… and thus, potential rogue factors."

"Well if it helps any, they might have just blown outta town." Toxic replied. "I swung by Visi's place late last night just to see what was going on there, and she'd grabbed her stuff and split. That got me curious enough to swing by his place to see if she was shacking up there now, but turns out he'd moved out too. So if they've decided their reaction to SDN's screwjob is to just say 'fuck it' and pull up stakes, then fine by us. If they're not here, they're not in our way."

"That would be ideal." Shroud agreed. "But of course we would need confirmation of that fact before relying on it."

"I'll put the word out and see what info we can gather." Toxic acknowledged. "Any other changes to the program I need to make?"

"Not at present. Despite minor deviations, the plan proceeds apace."

* * * * *
​

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 46

Courtney leaned over in bed and kissed her boyfriend good morning. "We gotta find a more permanent living solution than a new motel every night."

"At least motel clerks don't ask questions as to why two young and good-looking people are checking in for one night only and paying in cash." Steve replied amiably.

"I wonder if they think we're just passing through, or if I'm your side business and you've actually got a wife and two-point-four kids somewhere?" Courtney joked as they got up and dressed.

Steve's cell phone ringing provided a useful distraction from Courtney's last statement. "Rogers… Mandy, how have you been? Really? That's very useful, thank you. Sure, we'll be there." He closed his phone and stood up. "She's got us the meeting with the Feds, nine-thirty downtown. We'll make it if we hurry, but we'll have to grab us something on the way."

"Walking right into the Federal building." Courtney whistled nervously. "Let's hope it doesn't turn into a roach motel situation.

"It wasn't the address for the Federal building." Steve shook his head. "As for the rest, we'll find out where we get there."

LA morning traffic was its usual horrible self, but fortunately generous travel time had been allowed for the meeting. The address provided turned out to be that of a small nondescript three-story building tucked in-between two office buildings in an unremarkable part of the LA business district.

"The heck kind of place is this to be meeting with the Feds?" Courtney looked up at the building confusedly. "There's barely even a street number on it, let alone a sign."

"It's got 'safe house' written all over it." Steve smiled with satisfaction. "That's a good sign. It means they're taking this meeting seriously."

"Good morning." The polite young doorman greeted them inside the cramped lobby from a behind what Steve's eye picked out was a bulletproof glass booth doing its best to not look like bulletproof glass. "Do you have an appointment?"

"Rogers and Doe, nine-thirty." Steve answered, and after looking at both their driver's licenses the athletic young man nodded.

"Please wait here, I'll call them." The agent dialed a number on his extension and spoke briefly, and after a short wait the interior door was buzzed open to reveal a large, athletic middle-aged black man dressed in a neatly pressed office shirt and slacks. His badge was clearly visible hanging around his neck from a lanyard and with his jacket off, his holstered sidearm was also in plain sight.

"Assistant Special Agent in Charge Nick Washington, FBI." The man greeted them, and held out his credentials for both of them to examine. "Follow me."

He led them down the hallway to a stairwell and down to an interview room in the basement, already occupied by a younger agent sitting at a table with a lined pad and several pens. One wall of the room was composed of one-way glass from waist-height upwards. Courtney drew a deep breath at the sight of the younger man.

"Okay, we can start." ASAC Washington said as he gestured for everyone to take their seats. He announced the time, date, and place, and then continued. "With us today are Steven Rogers and Courtney Jane Doe, and the subject of this interview is domestic terrorist activity. I am ASAC Nick Washington and with me is also-"

"Senior Special Agent Tom Sullivan." He stated.

"-both of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office." Washington continued. "First off, do all parties consent to this interview being recorded? Please state your name and your assent verbally for the record."

Steve and Courtney did so, to be followed by the two agents.

"All right. Mr. Rogers, Blonde Blazer communicated to me yesterday that you two had information regarding the Devon Foods truck bombing-" ASAC Washington began.

For the next forty-five minutes the two heroes swiftly yet thoroughly walked the two FBI agents through everything they had learned and suspected, and then the two agents asked a round of penetrating questions. Steve also handed over the cell phone they'd taken from Psyche-Out and the written notes they and Coupe had both made.

"All right, recorder off." Nick said, and then wearily rubbed his eyes and both agents got up to walk over to the coffee pot. "How do you take yours?"

"Black." Steve said. "None for me, thanks." Courtney contributed.

They brought the mugs back to the interview table and Nick pushed one of them across to Steve before the agents started to drink from their own.

"Ugh, what a mess." SSA Sullivan said.

"Hopefully it's a believable mess." Steve replied mildly.

"The part about you actually having been in the business certainly is, Captain." ASAC Washington nodded, holding up one of the neatly written sheets Steve had provided. "The way you formatted and organized this reads just like everything else we get from DIA or JSOC, and it's entirely different from how Ms. Doe or Ms. Weaver wrote theirs. Clearly you've shared at least some of the same training as we have."

"Is there enough jurisdiction here for the FBI to come in?" Steve pressed.

"By itself, borderline, because neither Torrance PD nor LA County has actually requested our assistance on the Devon Foods bombing – despite our having heavily hinted that we'd love it if they did. So officially that's not a federal case yet." Washington answered. "However, I entirely agree with your theory that it forms a pattern with the oil refinery fire, and the instant there's a pattern it's unambiguously a domestic terrorism investigation."

"What's your theory on why they set the fire?" Sullivan asked. "Because while I agree that the M.O. of the sabotage matches in hindsight, be damned if I can see any motive."

"At the time I thought it might possibly be a one-two attack, like the insurgents in the Middle East liked to do. Use the first IED to lure out a reaction force, then ambush our troops while they're deploying to respond to it." Steve replied. "But nothing happened, so it's possible my having put scouts out against flank attack made them abort."

"Reasonable." Washington said. "But it could also have been a reconaissance. Do a test attack, then measure response times and study opposing force doctrine. There were any number of rubberneckers with cameras."

"Also possible." Steve agreed. "Shroud's clearly a chessmaster type, and like I was saying the other day, it's kinda hard to play chess if you don't know where all the pieces are and what patterns they move in."

"We certainly know he's patient and methodical." Sullivan agreed. "Are you familiar with the circumstances of his prison escape?"

"Only in outline." Steve acknowledged. "Took him almost fifteen years to set up, didn't it?"

"More accurately, it took him twelve years of good behavior to earn trustee status, and two more of incident-free trustee status after that before he was able to cut a deal to trade his scientific genius in return for helping develop medical prosthetics, as volunteer medical research on prisoners." Washington summarized. "A few months of showing promising results in the medical trials – under strict supervision – and only then does he finally go for it, along with the accomplice he recruited in prison."

"So your chessmaster analogy certainly fits. Slow and patient build-up in the early and middle game, then the endgame is him suddenly going on the attack and capturing pieces like crazy. Speedblitz to checkmate." Sullivan nodded.

"All the more reason we need to stop him while he's still in his build-up phase." Courtney finally contributed. "He's bad enough now, he's gonna be fucking terrifying if people keep sitting on their hands."

"Okay, before we go any further I've got to address one thing for my own curiosity." Sullivan looked at Courtney. "I arrested you a few years ago-"

"I remember." Courtney said embarrassedly.

"But if I hadn't reviewed your most recent file entries last night, I wouldn't even have recognized you today." Sullivan continued confusedly. "I always thought that SDN's Phoenix Program was - to put it charitably - not very well organized, but it's actually delivering results like this?"

"You actually got caught?" Steve teased Courtney.

"It was an industrial espionage case." Sullivan explained. "Her client was the big fish, she was just little fish. So we offered immunity."

"The person who needs immunity right now is Janelle." Steve pressed. "And relatively quickly, because if she doesn't come in soon it's entirely possible she'll end up killed."

"Yeah." Washington agreed soberly. "Every amateur thinks that undercover work is as simple as not telling the truth when you join up, and of course it doesn't work that way. You try infiltrating even a teenaged gang without lots of specialized training first, let alone a major criminal conspiracy, and it is very likely you'll be blown. It's not as if those types of places wait for things like 'a preponderance of the evidence' or 'beyond a reasonable doubt' before acting on suspicion."

"We'll be talking to the US Attorney later today and stressing the urgency." Sullivan said. "But even if we can't get immunity right off the bat, we can certainly at least get protective custody. So tell her that if she even thinks they're getting close then she needs to bail immediately and not to worry about her landing place. We'll give her full wit-sec in the interim."

"We'll probably be able to get it, though. Her contributions so far already look useful, and given the size of the detonations Shroud's already been willing to use just as set-ups to something else, my boss is 99 to 1 going to sign off on not just waiting around to see just how big a blow-out that lunatic intends for his grand finale." ASAC Washington.

"What's our next move?" Steve asked.

"First step, this phone you obtained for us is an intel gold mine." Washington smiled. "Even if they're using burners and even if they change it out soon, the contacts list still gives us all the phone numbers that Shroud's lieutenants have been using this week. Even before we discuss Janelle's immunity I am getting warrants to wiretap every single one of those numbers and start running the call records back to Original Sin."

"Just to confirm, you did find this lying outside of the Sardine, right?" SSA Sullivan asked, grinning.

"I saw Psyche-Out drop it on the sidewalk plain as day." Courtney smirked, as she wiggled her fingers in the classic 'pickpocketing' gesture.

"So let the record show." ASAC Washington also grinned. "Also, we need to get you two off the streets. We'll set up a discreet apartment through witness protection, that should cover you for the immediate duration."

"If possible, we'd like one closer to Torrance than downtown." Steve replied.

"Officially, we cannot condone any vigilante action." ASAC Washington said soberly. "Unofficially, LA's had nowhere near enough independent heroes recently. Mecha Man was really the last one, and working with most corporate-sponsored ones is-" he trailed off diplomatically.

"A mixed experience." Sullivan nodded.

"So I've been learning." Steve nodded. "But at least there's a few we can still trust."

"I still can't get my head around how right now the only definitely uncompromised assets available at SDN are the Z-Team." Sullivan eye-rolled. "Seriously, their criminal records and psych evals make hers look tame and no offense, ma'am, but yours were really not great."

"Well, you're not lying." Courtney admitted sheepishly.

"I had to work with them and help train them." Steve acknowledged. "Even more than your files are telling you, I know that they can be erratic and often undisciplined. But I also believe that with the right push they can be exactly what we need."

"And you certainly can't have any doubts about Blazer." Courtney contributed.

"Certainly not, considering she's the one whose recommendation got you in the door here." Washington acknowledged. "We threw ourselves a little pity party around the field office when SDN promoted her to the Torrance branch, because having her downtown made our lives so much easier when working cooperation cases. I just wish the rest of them had the same attitude."

"Well, either way we've got a lot to do." Steve acknowledged.

"That we do." Washington stood up and the others followed him. After a brief round of shaking hands, he called the agent at the front desk to escort the two heroes out and introduce them to the agent who'd be setting up their new arrangements.

"So." Washington turned to Sullivan as soon as the door had closed behind them. "You're the one who's actually worked with her before. You smell anything off-color?"

"Surprisingly, no." Sullivan agreed. "Last time getting any useful testimony out of her was like pulling teeth, and that even with her cooperation being the only thing keeping her out of jail at the time. Today it was like I was dealing with the good twin from a mirror dimension!"

"Did you spot anything else?" Washington smiled.

"You mean the way they were practically holding hands?" Sullivan chuckled. "Or the way his body language momentarily went from 'Sir yes sir' to 'Touch the lady and I will drop you both' the instant it even looked like I might be getting out the cuffs?"

"Well, it's not as if Blazer hadn't forewarned us." Washington acknowledged. "But yeah, I agree, they seem genuine."

"You think we can get the US Attorney to sign off on making it our jurisdiction?" Sullivan asked.

"Enough to put the field office onto following up every lead we currently have? Certainly. Enough to call in a whole task force?" He shook his head. "Not unless we turn up something else substantial."

"Or until Shroud blows up something even worse." Sullivan agreed ruefully.

* * * * *
​

Author's Note: Still not quite finished detailing the actual counter-terrorist plot whys and wherefores, but at least I can advance it a step further while I work and you wait.

Yes, the barfight and the reveal happened off-stage. Running parallel tracks and having only one of them with camera POV is such a useful labor-saving device for an already busy author. *g*

Shroud manages to miss Janelle is a double agent so far, because so far he's still only seeing what he already expected to see. Ironically, his cynicism is what kept him from making the spot immediately. Still, she's definitely not having it easy.

And yay, people are here from the government and they want to help! (Surprisingly enough.)

Readers of my old and obscure shit might recognize one of the NPCs in this chapter, and they are correct. Special Agent Nick Washington is indeed me reusing a fave OC from my old Jumpchain fanfic, 'Five Seasons Is All You Get'. Obviously this isn't the same continuity or even the same omniverse as that, but he is a timeline counterpart.

Yes, Nick's rant about 'amateurs and undercover' is indeed the author taking shots at the unwisdom displayed by a certain insect-controlling parahuman in a certain coastal city during a certain early plot arc in a certain popular web series. If I pretended otherwise, I'd be lying.

And yes, Steve was indeed deliberately quoting what Fury had said to the World Security Council about the Avengers. *g*

The circumstances of Shroud's prison escape are a blank in canon, so yet again the USS Make Shit Up fills in here.

I had fun with Courtney being 'TFW when you come in to get help from the Feds and you realize one of the interviewing agents is the same guy who busted you last time'.

 

[Simonbob]

"Yeah." Washington agreed soberly. "Every amateur thinks that undercover work is as simple as not telling the truth when you join up, and of course it doesn't work that way. You try infiltrating even a teenaged gang without lots of specialized training first, let alone a major criminal conspiracy, and it is very likely you'll be blown. It's not as if those types of places wait for things like 'a preponderance of the evidence' or 'beyond a reasonable doubt' before acting on suspicion."

Click to shrink...

I was going to say something, but your notes beat me to it!

"I had to work with them and help train them." Steve acknowledged. "Even more than your files are telling you, I know that they can be erratic and often undisciplined. But I also believe that with the right push they can be exactly what we need."

Click to shrink...

Nick Fury said it first, yes, but how would the Cap have heard it to say it now?

 

[cliffc999]

Nick Fury said it first, yes, but how would the Cap have heard it to say it now?

Click to shrink...

... do I really have to explain the basic common sense of 'Somebody told him'?

 

[Simonbob]

... do I really have to explain the basic common sense of 'Somebody told him'?

Click to shrink...

No, not really.

It's just, he said it to the Council, I was wondering who repeated it. Likely Nick, at some point, but I have the image of the lady on the Council trying to strike up a friendship with the Cap, because he's both good in looks and infuence.


Or, Nick might have said it about some other group, when the Cap was around.


It's not important, but now I'm curious.

 

[cliffc999]

It's just, he said it to the Council, I was wondering who repeated it. Likely Nick, at some point, but I have the image of the lady on the Council trying to strike up a friendship with the Cap, because he's both good in looks and infuence.

Click to shrink...

Nick also records those meetings, and Maria Hill reviews the records. (Seen in unused Avengers 1 scene.)

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 46

Despite their hopes Cap and Visi spent the most of the rest of the day continuing to debrief themselves to the FBI in further detail, both together and in separate interviews. SSA Sullivan and several specialists of the LA Field Office did the follow-ups while ASAC Washington was busy organizing the investigative efforts being sent into motion based on the heroes' initial report as well as informing his chain of command.

And late in the afternoon, the beleaguered deputy was called into his boss' office for the third time that day.

"Washington." Special Agent in Charge Anna Davis, head of the FBI Los Angeles Field Office, looked up at him from her messy desk. "I just got out of the longest teleconference I have ever had with DC in my entire career, and that after having spent a good chunk of time at the US Attorney's, so I'm out of the loop for anything in the past several hours. Any new emergencies?"

"No ma'am." Nick nodded at her.

"Good." She breathed out in relief. "All right, first up, did the court agree with fast-tracking those electronic surveillance warrants and has anything else significant broken loose in the case?"

"The court did agree, and we put in the spikes at the cell service provider shortly after one PM." Nick reported. "We've also been tapping new numbers as they call in to the numbers we already have warrants for, as soon as we can prove that the new phone belongs to someone already on our suspects list. Most importantly, Psyche-Out has a new phone so they're aware that her old one's been lost, but they still haven't started changing out their phones for new burners. So apparently they're not paranoid enough to think that her old phone's fallen into unfriendly hands and are just accepting that she must have misplaced it while out drinking."

"Stroke of luck." Davis agreed. "The taps getting anything?"

"Confirmation of their involvement in several suspected robberies and gangland clashes over the recent past, but nothing hot." Washington reported. "The preliminary traffic analysis confirms several things, though. One, Shroud is running his operation on a loose cell system. Everybody mostly knows who everybody else is, but they're still divided up into ad hoc operational sub-compartments and every working team only knows about what they're doing, not anybody else. Two, Shroud himself isn't on the phone net. All communications run through Toxic as his deputy commander. And three, he's physically disabled the GPS locator hardware on the phones they're using so we can't track on them that way."

"Coupe?" Davis asked.

"Her phone as well. Although the emergency burner Cap gave her does have a lost-phone tracker, despite being a brick of a flip phone otherwise, so if she ever turns it on we can at least track that. Right now she's keeping it dark."

"Any progress on the legwork?" Davis asked. "And if we backburner every other non-emergency case in the office, how many bodies can we get for this?"

"I actually haven't started flooding the street yet because doing that alerts Shroud that he's now a federal case, and that's a strategic decision I wasn't going to make without speaking to you about it. So while we have some people out knocking on doors, so far it's only at a routine-appearing level." Washington said. "That having been said, I've pulled around forty people off other cases already and set up a war room just for this. Right now they're all on their computer terminals and phones doing everything else that can be discreetly done. If we backburnered the rest of our non-emergency cases and made this one a sole focus, push that up to maybe a hundred people."

"Oh, this case is hands down our top focus right now." Davis nodded. "The US Attorney and DC Field Office both concur that Shroud is now a major domestic terror threat and DoJ has officially signed off on treating him as such. It's not just the Devon Foods bombing and the refinery fire, but also the jailbreak – particularly the hostage gambit the man pulled with imploding a hospital building just to force Blonde Blazer to break off pursuit."

"That's one of the parts I just can't figure. Shroud's clearly trying to stay low profile while he finishes his setup, so why the hell did he do multiple events in rapid succession practically begging us to step in? Is his influence over local law enforcement and SDN so great that he was that confident we'd never be called?" Washington puzzled.

SAC Davis chuckled. "I was wondering the same thing, until DoJ pointed out something that I'd overlooked. Most of the relevant statutes that are allowing us to come in on a domestic terror case like this are less than fifteen years old. Shroud apparently didn't stop to give himself a refresher course on managing his legal risks before resuming his criminal career."

"Hah!" Washington laughed. "Oh, that is the funniest shit I've heard today!" He steadied his breath and continued. "Speaking of, what decisions have been made above our pay grade about this?"

"First off, Shroud is officially the highest-priority domestic terrorism case in the history of the Bureau since the Oklahoma City bombing." SAC Davis stated flatly. "DC absolutely does not like the thought of other would-be little masterminds deciding that Shroud's style of escalation is now the new normal, and so they want this squashed before it catches on. We need to bag him and make an example out of him in front of a federal judge. The whole three-ring circus, with hard time in ADX Florence at the end of it."

"And second off?" Washington asked knowingly, more than familiar enough with his boss' mannerisms to pick up that the bad news was coming in right after the good news.

"And second off, Shroud's not the only problem we're having right now." Davis acknowledged ruefully. "Something has clearly gone significantly rotten with the SDN system in the LA area without our noticing until now, and they're just praying that it isn't something endemic to the privatized hero system in general. Rogers' preliminary evaluation that we'll have to treat everybody at SDN as potentially compromised until and unless we're assured of their reliability as individuals is something they – and I - concur with. And that means, among other things, that we have to devote at least as many resources to doing a full counter-intelligence and anti-corruption probe into SDN corporate as we are devoting to Shroud. And we have to do those both concurrently."

"Wouldn't it be nice if we could only have one major case to work at a time, just like in the movies?" Washington said ruefully. "So how are we splitting the workload?"

"The Shroud half of the equation is all yours." Davis agreed. "ASAC Jenkins gets the SDN probe. You both set up parallel task forces and each concentrate on your own primary area, and cross-coordinate as needed – you're both big boys, I don't need to hold your hands there. But when you split up the available manpower, factor in that we're getting seventy more field agents to augment the Shroud task force for the duration. DC's peeling them out from other field offices right now, they should start arriving tomorrow. Tell Williamson to start working on the logistics of getting them all per diem, hotel rooms, working space set up for them in the building, the usual."

A pair of sharp knocks rapped smartly on the doorframe. "You wanted to see me, ma'am?" SSA Sullivan greeted her from the open office doorway.

"Good, you're here." Davis said as the man entered her office. "Anything significant to the case from the follow-up interviews?"

"Several items of interest that will be in the report, but nothing of immediate necessity." Sullivan stated.

"Right. Now for why I really called you here. What's the personnel evaluation on our two principals?" Davis said.

"Starting with Invisigal…" Sullivan placed one of the several file folders he was carrying on Davis' desk. "The preliminary evaluation is that we blew the evaluation last time. Our behavorial science guy's best guess right now is that she wasn't borderline personality disorder after all, she just did a very good job of presenting that way – even to herself. The actual problem appears to have been… okay, the formal psych write-up is in there, the layman's summary is that after a lifetime of basically everyone telling her that she was nothing but worthless shit and 'born evil', she believed them. Right down to childhood anti-metahuman persecution."

"Damn." Washington swore. "You barely even see that anymore. It sounds like some crap straight out of the 70s."

"It was." Sullivan nodded gravely. "Seriously, after she finally managed to get it out I wanted to go punch a wall over how she'd been treated and I'm the agent who wrote the recommendation against granting her immunity the last time."

"If she's in that kind of headspace, then that doesn't sound like her current relationship is on a healthy footing." Davis said worriedly.

"If it were with someone else, it could easily not be." Sullivan agreed. "Which brings me to Captain Rogers' evaluation."

"Ah yes, our dimensional refugee. You believe his backstory then?" Davis asked.

"Ma'am, his evaluation was so startling that I would not believe that man even exists if I hadn't physically shaken his hand and spoken to him." Sullivan answered flatly. "Now granted that his results have to take into account that he readily spotted that some of the 'follow-up interviews' were actually a psychiatric evaluation – which she hadn't spotted – but then he willingly cooperated with the evaluation anyway. Anyway, his write-up's in here, and I very much recommend a detailed read of it, but the short version is that this guy is the single toughest and most mentally-focused SOB I have ever met in my life. And we really do not want to fuck around with him needlessly. There is a switch in that man's head that can go from 'peace' to 'war' in zero seconds and he has absolute control of that switch. It's the same sort of mentality that our HRT shooters have, only perhaps at an even higher intensity level. So his backstory of having been a Tier One special warfare operator in his home timeline's versions of both the OSS and then CIA Special Activities? We need to believe it. In fact, for safety's sake we should assume he's understating it." Breathing out heavily, he continued. "That having been said, by all indicators his training wasn't for deception ops but instead for the more straightforward end of the equation, so we don't have much worry we're being played here. Judging from his comments when his old agency needed subtle shit done they made sure to partner him with a more subtle operative. His job was batting clean-up."

"How does a man like that end up partnering with a girl like Invisigal, particularly in this situation?" Washington asked confusedly.

"Because his being that hardcore was not a natural trait, but a learned reaction to having been up against actual World War II Nazis and their full atrocity parade." Sullivan replied. "He's a one-man army if he feels it necessary, but the preliminary eval is that he only escalates that high in reaction to either extreme threat or extreme provocation. Left to his own devices he doesn't much want to hurt people at all. Witness his performance history at SDN."

"And him and her?" Davis asked. "Not that the more personal element is really any of my business, but if there's about to be a psychological trainwreck happening then I'd hate for the Bureau to have had any part in enabling it."

"He's aware that she could potentially be very emotionally vulnerable to him if he took advantage… but he's deliberately avoiding that. And he has at least a basic awareness of the psychology involved, which is enough to not to fuck it up." Sullivan said. "And while she's definitely vulnerable, lots of people are vulnerable one way or another. She's still not actually dysfunctional. As for why they're together at all, it seems to be a combination between two people both of whom were very starved for human connection each for separate reasons happening to meet at just the right moment, and a genuinely deep underlying compatibility. But again, that's just from initial interviews. You want anything firmer than that, you'd need to get both of them into a therapy cycle and a prolonged evaluation."

"Speaking of which?" Davis probed.

"Behavioral Science says he could probably use some outpatient PTSD counseling and decompression – the guy's been on continuous active duty op-tempo for like four years before coming here, half of that time in World War II of all places. But he's already aware of that fact, and was in fact getting that counseling prior to his wormhole journey." Sullivan reported. "She could use some counseling as well for her own trauma, but again it's at the 'outpatient only' level and it's nowhere near the threshold that would require an immediate intervention. Practically speaking, if you wanted to put them back out there on the street for this then there are no indicators that they're not stable enough for that."

"Last but certainly not least." Davis smiled slightly. "Recruitment possibilities?"

"'Softly, softly, catchee monkey'." Sullivan quoted the proverb. "They're fresh off having been burned by their employer and they both had emotional roller-coaster lives before that, so at present they're not in a joining mood for anything. If we make an offer, it should only be after the successful resolution of this case and after we've all had a big victory party together and become trusted friends. And remember that Captain Rogers had already turned down the military's recruitment offer when he was initially being resettled."

"I saw that offer in his file." Washington said. "They weren't offering much – which to be fair, he was a complete blind bag pick at the time – and their recruiting officer really wasn't being very diplomatic. Not surprising he bounced it."

"And factor in that while he's absolutely capable of it – and by all accounts very skilled at it - he doesn't particularly enjoy killing people as first option." Sullivan agreed. "Joining the Army in the first place was because of the Nazis, and this SHIELD outfit he was with largely seemed to be a case of 'not having many other options coming out of the ice'. Arriving here, on our world, is maybe the first time he's had to make an unpressured choice about what to do with his life since he graduated high school and he's not going to waste that opportunity. So if you want him for the Bureau we're going to need to go slow and subtle."

"Oh, if he's half as impressive as you've described then I absolutely want him for the Bureau." Davis smiled sharply. "And if her personnel evaluation cleans up as nicely as you've implied it will, she could be a good prospect as well. But you're right in that's a long-term concern. For right now, we have a case to solve."

* * * * *
​

Lab robbery. Vanderstenk Inc.. Target is experimental mutagenics serum. Tonight. Is Punch Up still being an idiot?

The emergency text from Coupe glared damningly from Cap's burner phone.

"Shit." ASAC Washington said from where they were sitting in the safe house's conference room. "We're still working on getting her a safe place to land, and we're already risking compromising her."

"We're talking about a group of terrorists getting their hands on something that can be easily repurposed as a biological weapon." Cap said insistently. "That is simply not a situation where you can hang back and take a pass, regardless of political or operational risks."

"I'm not disagreeing. I just don't see how to finesse using this so that we don't blow our source." Nick shook his head.

"Vanderstenk has a platinum SDN subscription." Visi interjected. "Some of our most annoying bullshit calls came from that account. If his lab's silent alarm goes off, SDN will roll on it immediately."

"You're not saying that we should leave it up to them." Sullivan said incredulously.

"No." Visi said. "But I am saying that our friends still work there… including one of the dispatchers." She smiled.

Cap snapped his fingers in realization. "You're saying we both deploy to the lab robbery, not the Bureau. And that we cover our being there by making it look like Robert tipped us off under the table."

"Which leaves Shroud aware that you're both in the field and still acting against him…" Nick also snapped his fingers in realization. "But he'll think you're lone-wolfing it as indie heroes, which means he won't think that you came to us first. Split the difference between covering the critical case but not tipping our hand."

"I've heard worse improvisations, particularly when on this short a notice." Sullivan agreed. "But how can we guarantee that SDN's network will pick up the intrusion?"

"Well since we know where, we can just sit on the target all night." Cap said. "And as soon as Shroud's people show up I text Robert, who then makes sure to get an 'alarm indicator' from the lab whether there actually is one or not."

"All right." Nick decided. "Head up there right now. I'll make the calls."

Several hours later Cap and Visi saw Coupe swoop by overhead from where they were hidden near the lab complex, as the winged woman scouted out the block surrounding the laboratory complex. Outside of having one simple acknowledgement of receiving her text they had not made any further attempt to communicate her or reveal themselves to her right now. What Coupe didn't know, Shroud hopefully couldn't detect her lying about.

They're here. It's about to happen. Cap texted to Robert's private phone.

I'm in the lab's security systems. Let me know when to start the noise. Robert texted back.

A nondescript van pulled up to the back gate of the lab and three costumed people got out. Their leader was a man carrying two red glowing energy khopeshes and wearing a skull mask. The other two were a large skinheaded man with giant outsized mechanical arms grafted to his shoulders above his real ones and a woman with several green glowing energy constructs protruding from her back in the shape of spider legs.

"Armstrong, get the gate." Khopesh ordered, and the skinheaded cyborg tore the steel security gate loose from the ground and tossed it aside.

Well, that made it easy for me. Alarm sounded, trouble call out. Malevola ETA five minutes. Robert texted.

We'll give it three, then go and interrupt them. Cap texted back. The villains marched openly across the parking lot and Coupe swooped down out of the sky to join them, and the squad entered the lab building.

"And… go." Cap said, and him and Visi started their car and, driving as if they'd just come a long way to get here, pulled out of their surveillance spot and up to the gates of the lab. Cap paused briefly to pop two of the tires on the getaway van with the edge of his shield before they entered the lab building.

"Armstrong and Spiderlegs are outside, meaning the leader and Coupe are inside." Cap whispered to Visi as they peered down the hallway outside the secure bio-lab. "I'll take them both out there, you slip past and go for the one in the lab. If we can clean sweep here-"

"Right." Visi nodded.

Cap's shield toss took the unaware Spiderlegs directly in the head, knocking her cold. The shield rebounded and flew back into Cap's hand as he charged Armstrong, just in time to let him block the cyborg's furious hammerblow. Armstrong's outsized arms gave him several feet of reach advantage over the Captain, so denied an immediate opportunity to strike a counterpunch Cap fell back and settled on a defensive strategy as the blind berserker hammered at him again and again.

The invisible woman slipped right through the doorway that Armstrong had just vacated and entered the bio-lab proper. Coupe was maintaining a watch on the doorway while Khopesh was busy attacking some type of cracking device to the sealed containment array that held the serum.

"What the hell is going on out there?" Khopesh called angrily.

"It's the shield guy!" Armstrong said. "Don't worry, I got him!"

"Wait, Captain America?" Khopesh straightened up immediately and looked around warily, and Visi immediately aborted her approach to crouch down behind a nearby lab bench. Materializing briefly, she caught her breath and went invisible again. "But that means-" He turned and immediately slammed a button on the nearby control panel, activating the lab's fire suppression system.

Torrents of water drenched down from the sprinklers, immediately voiding Visi's invisibility. "There you are!" Khopesh snarled, sending scythes of cutting energy her way with furious scythe-swings. Visi dived for cover as Khopesh's furious command rang out. "Coupe, take her!"

Coupe nodded in silent acknowledgement and threw a barrage of wing-knives, deliberately aiming them just wide enough to give Visi a chance to dodge again. Visi took advantage of the opportunity to vault directly over a lab bench and come directly at Coupe in a flying kick, a charging attack that Coupe readily stepped into and parried.

'Can you help me take him?' Visi whispered softly as the two women grappled and exchanged hand-to-hand blows.

'If I take the serum back, Shroud might trust me enough to let me know where his main base is.' Coupe whispered back as she 'subdued' Visi in a choke-hold.

'He can't leave here with it!' Visi whispered back as she 'elbowed her way free' and the two women resumed their martial circle.

'On three, then.' Coupe agreed as Visi and her deliberately moved their 'struggle' closer to Khopesh. 'Two… one-'

"Coupe!" Khopesh's shout broke in, as both women looked guiltily over at the villain… who was now triumphantly holding the serum bottle. "Leave her to me! Get this out of here!"

Khopesh leapt directly to the attack after tossing the serum vial through the air towards Coupe, and Visi was forced to fall back as the winged double agent reflexively snagged the vial out of the air. With a helpless glance at Visi, she turned to run out the door, furiously brainstorming how she could possibly 'lose' the vial without revealing herself-

-only to have the question answered for her as Captain America sent her sprawling with a legsweep from where he'd dropped down low outside the lab door after disabling Armstrong. Coupe was genuinely taken off guard and sent flying, but then smiled in realization at what had happened as she deliberately 'lost' the vial in her fall and slowly regained her feet to face off against the Captain.

"Okay, let's make it look good." Cap murmured to her as the two combatants squared off and began a showy martial arts battle. "Visi, status?" he shouted.

"Could be going better!" she called back from inside the lab where Khopesh furiously had her on the defensive. His lightsaber-like scythe-weapons made it impossible for her to close the gap on an alerted opponent, her invisibility was neutralized by the fire sprinklers, and Khopesh was a brutal and superhumanly strong close-combatant.

"Fall back on me! I need help with Coupe!" Cap called out, and then whispered to Coupe. 'Stab me in the stomach, I can walk it off.' And then he deliberately left himself open just enough-

Coupe nodded in sober acknowledgement and used the opening to ram one of her knives up to the hilt in Cap's abdomen, deliberately angling to miss the liver or spleen. Cap shouted in pain and went to his knees, and Visi shrieked in rage and leapt furiously to the attack.

"Back off!" Coupe ordered her, pretending to take the 'helpless' Captain hostage with another knife to his throat. Visi stopped in shock, only to relax slightly at Cap's wink.

"And to think we ever trusted you." Visi snarled bitterly at the heroine. "But I guess you're exactly where you want to be now, aren't you?"

"Just stall a little more…" Cap whispered to both of them.

"Seems as if." Coupe agreed grimly. "Khopesh, get out here and find the vial! I've got these two neutralized for the moment-"

A glowing red portal opened up and Malevola stepped out of it, then rapidly took in the tableau. "Coupe? What the hell-?"

"Drive her off." Visi mouthed silently at Malevola, and the half-demoness raised her two-handed sword and stepped forward to attack. Coupe snarled and threw Captain America at Visi, knocking them both down, and turned and fled for her life.

"Cap's wounded! Help me with him!" Visi called plaintively, and Malevola stopped. The furious Khopesh came out to see three heroes confronting him, half his team down, and Coupe having been sent into a retreat, and stepped back inside the lab and fled. The faint sound of him slicing his own exit open through the opposite wall came from inside the room.

"So, I guess we won?" Malevola joked as her and Visi helped the wounded Captain to his feet and then recovered the serum vial.

"For a certain definition of 'winning'." Cap joked back, and then groaned.

* * * * *
​

Author's Note: As we recall from Avengers 1 Cap got shot in the gut with a Chitauri blaster and then fought the rest of the battle without medical attention and was up and around a short time afterwards. So a knife to the gut, particularly one that deliberately missed all the vitals, is not going to hurt him much. It does certainly sell the fight, though.

And yes, the FBI is still doing FBI things. But hey, it is amusing to have the FBI from like a Tom Clancy novel meet a comic-book plot, even if accomodations will have to be made to make things fit. And the local field office is already starting to get reinforcements, even if it's still 'dozens of agents for a crash full-force investigation' as opposed to a significant combat deployment.

The lab robbery actually is a canon dispatch from the game, even if all the implications are not.

And yes, the 'you can't just ignore terrorists going for a biological agent regardless of how iffy the deployment might be' is indeed a deliberate reference to Captain America: Civil War. Seriously, just letting HYDRA goons walk off with a live smallpox culture was never a viable option, even if consequences happened the other way.

 

[Lillie Jones]

thanks for the chapters
Continue on
Cheers!

 

[htgriffin]

"And to think we ever trusted you." Visi snarled bitterly at the heroine. "But I guess you're exactly where you want to be now, aren't you?"

Click to shrink...

*chortles at little double meaning thing here*

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 46

"I'm still mad at you." Courtney glared down at him.

"I'm fine." Steve pleaded from where he was sitting up in a hospital bed, a large bandage still wrapped around his abdomen.

"You had a piece of your large intestine severed! If they hadn't stitched you up and pumped you full of antibiotics we're talking likely risk of death by peritonitis here!" she ranted as she paced.

"They didn't even need to do that, my metabolism literally can't get infected." Steve pointed out reasonably. "And even without stitches those kinds of cuts heal for me very quickly. By tomorrow morning you won't even be able to see a scar."

"What if she'd hit an artery in there while she was stabbing you?!?" Courtney fumed, glaring down at him with her hands on her hips.

"Then Malevola would have rapidly gotten me to the emergency room, where prompt treatment would certainly have had me out of danger." Steve continued.

"People die in ambulances on the way to the ER all the time!" Courtney shouted.

"Courtney, I have literally had multiple bullet wounds and still walked over a mile back to the battalion aid station." Steve insisted. "My durability and my healing are significantly into the superhuman range. I still don't enjoy getting hit, but it's been a long while since I've had to worry about simple injuries."

"Simple!" Courtney exploded hysterically. "Do you- are you even-?!?"

Steve lightly grasped her hand and gently tugged her down, Courtney willingly falling into an embrace. "I'm sorry I scared you. I didn't stop to think that you really weren't familiar with how that part of my powers worked."

"I originally thought you'd just faked getting stabbed." Courtney sniffled into his shoulder as they hugged. "And when I found out you'd actually let her put the knife in the whole way then I thought you were gonna die. You can't- you can't just kiss a girl and then run off to heroically sacrifice yourself right away. 'M not Peggy, I couldn't handle that."

"You're a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for." Steve denied. "But I entirely agree with you, I don't want to kiss and run either."

"You'd better not." she insisted, their noses practically touching. "You promised that if I wanted to get rid of you, I'd have to pick you up and throw you."

"Well I'm glad you're not, then." Steve smiled, and she wiped the smug expression off his face with a kiss.

"You're still staying in this bed until tomorrow morning. Until after the medics clear you." Courtney insisted with a vindictive grin after they separated.

"So the truth is out, this is just revenge for how I benched you at the fire." Steve smiled back.

"Just for that I'm picking the most horribly unrealistic war movie I possibly can." Courtney's grin turned positively crooked.

"I can still wrestle you for the remote from here!" Steve reminded her.

Courtney already had the TV remote in her hand and was paging through the Netflix listings. "Oh hey, this one's supposed to be 'the Towering Inferno, only on a battleship!' And they somehow padded it out to almost two hours! Sounds perfect!"

"This has to qualify as some type of Geneva Conventions violation." Steve sighed as Courtney queued up the horrible movie and the opening credits rolled.

* * * * *
​

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 47

"Seriously, you walked off being stabbed in the stomach?" Nick Washington greeted Steve incredulously as the duo walked into his office in the Federal building.

"I have superpowers, why is this such a revelation to everyone?" Steve sighed wearily. "Anything new broken loose while I was still on the blocks?"

"I just got in, but we had a whole office full of people doing legwork all last night. The several robberies Coupe's statement referred to showed a disturbing pattern when we followed up on it and similar cases in the area." Nick said tensely. "High-pressure hydraulics systems, bulk lots of industrial-grade myomer, heavy machine tools, high-tensile steel… he's building something big. And in addition to what he's stealing, initial checks with the specialty manufacturers in the area who make similar things turned up that someone's been ordering large quantities of related items recently through a corporate front that leads to nowhere."

"If he's buying stuff for some massive construction project then his crime spree and territory grabbing recently isn't just him making a splashy entrance onto the scene, it's also a fundraising drive." Courtney reasoned. "But if the money is just the means to an end for Shroud, then what's the end? And how does the serum theft last night fit in?"

"That one we know, the phone taps picked up a conversation between Khopesh – the squad leader of the lab attack – and Toxic last night. The serum was apparently a contracted job – a Chinese biotech firm wanted it, and Shroud was going to sell it to them for a very hefty chunk of change. So his fundraising efforts just took a serious knock last night." Nick nodded.

"Which means Shroud's going to be pissed as hell at the mission failure and probably pick the whole job apart with a fine-toothed comb looking for what went wrong." Steve worried. "We need to think about pulling Coupe out soon."

"The problem there is that we need her still in place so she can give us another emergency attack warning if necessary. Because another thing that turned up is that the same front accounts that were doing those suspicious tech purchases? Have also been making bulk purchases of fertilizer." Nick pulled a sheet out of the loose pile on his desk and handed it over.

"He's buying that much?" Steve's eyebrows raised. "That's enough to build at least a dozen truck bombs, each at least as large as the one Shroud detonated on us. What on Earth does he even intend with that kind of bombing campaign?"

"The deliveries were made just yesterday, so it'll take him a few days more to finish making and planting them." Nick nodded. "But yeah, things officially hit condition panic when that one turned up. The boss lady's in the comm center right now with all the other alphabet agency SACs for LA, doing a conference call with DC about plans and options. We're waiting on what word comes down."

"We still need to extract Coupe soon." Steve said. "Despite everything we could do to sell it, the fact remains that Shroud failed a big job last night and she's one of the only two people who made it back. Doing a post-mission fault analysis would be elementary practice after that kind of failure, and the last thing she needs right now is Shroud's detailed attention."

"We're hoping to have her out of there within the next 48 hours, after we set up more surveillance and further penetrate their comms." Nick assured them. "But right now she's the only early warning of a potential mass casualty situation that we have."

"How many reinforcements can we get?" Courtney asked as the two of them sat down. "Like, doesn't the government have entire teams of heroes to send?"

"Not as many as you'd think." Nick explained regretfully. "Sure, we have some superpowered agents, but they're all split up among various agencies so it's not like there's an entire team of heavy hitters just sitting around waiting for an alert siren. And a lot of them have powers picked for utility rather than being trump cards like Phenomaman. The simple fact of the matter is, government jobs don't pay as well as comparative private sector positions. They never do. And add in that the majority of emergency situations that need superheroes tend to be situations that flare up quickly, even if there was a powerful national superhero team its basically guaranteed they'd always be thousands of miles out of position whenever something popped up somewhere. It's catch-22. The people who are sincerely interested in doing the most good they can generally won't take that kind of job, because it's a lot of waiting and never being in the right place at the right time. And the people who are in it for the paycheck generally won't take it because the private sector pays more and has better working hours. So they don't even try budgeting for that kind of team anymore, but just largely rely on local heroes always being available locally for obvious emergencies. It's why the privatized hero industry has gotten so large over the past ten-fifteen years."

"My original world was very different, but then again, we had much less enhanced people running around than you do." Steve opined. "As near as I can figure out your distribution of supers is several decades ahead of ours."

"Yeah, I saw that part in your original debriefing." Nick nodded. "Regarding the emergence of supers in the population, your timeline seems to be about where we were thirty-forty years ago. Nowadays there's enough superpeople to make an industry out of it, even if that industry is obviously having some teething pains and awkwardness as it evolves. But it is an industry, because heroing is a full-time job."

"Unless you're a billionaire playboy or something, kinda hard to be a superhero and still have enough time to work a full-time job in addition. And at the end of the day even the most altruistic hero has to pay their grocery bill and rent." Steve agreed. "So independents like Mecha Man are almost extinct nowadays because almost everybody needs a job – and even he was largely running off an inheritance. And in order to be able to pay their salary, whatever company employs a hero has to figure out some way to monetize that hero in addition to their doing the genuine 911 stuff."

"And thus all the bread-and-butter nonsense we sweated through." Courtney realized. "But don't local or state governments just hire heroes directly?"

"When they can, but usually not in large numbers because a lot of the time it's much more convenient to just subcontract as needed instead of budgeting them full-time. Plus, government employment usually pays less and works longer hours." Nick nodded. "Hence SDN's ongoing retainer fee from the state and the county of LA for basically handling all the super 911 calls for them."

"So normally a situation like this would be easy for you – SDN alone can turn out enough A-Teams to swamp almost any imaginable super-crisis in the entire metropolitan area, let alone calling on what supers might be privately employed by other LA corporations in a real 'mobilize everyone' emergency." Steve analyzed. "Except right now the list of people there we can safely assume are not possibly compromised by Shroud is largely Phenomaman, Blonde Blazer, and a good chunk of the Torrance branch… and until after the corruption probe you're running clears them, basically not anybody else."

"Yeah." Nick nodded. "So for conventional reinforcements we're just fine – by this afternoon we'll have circa one hundred SWAT and E-SWAT qualified field agents just in the field office, what with the augments that are arriving on top of our own local assets. And if we need more we can draw in additional tactical teams from ATF, DEA, Border Patrol, and others. If we really hit the panic button we can get the National Guard. It's just that Shroud is reeling in what looks to be most of the freelance supervillains in the LA area and anybody else willing to make the trip down here, so while we have a substantial numbers advantage against his rank-and-file we're currently barely making parity on the superhuman front… if that much."

"So how can we help?" Steve asked.

"Coupe's statement gave a list of several regular meeting places that Toxic links up with the action cells who aren't trusted enough to be told where the main base is." Nick said. "We just got warrants to bug those places, but that still doesn't actually get the bugs in place." He smiled. "Do you happen to know anyone with stealth-based superpowers and experience in bypassing security systems?"

"Hah, I used to think I just had 'villain powers' and now I'm doing warrant service." Courtney chuckled. "But I don't really know anything about planting bugs."

"We've got some training materials set up downstairs." Nick got to his feet. "It shouldn't take you too long to pick up the basics, they're designed to not require much engineering expertise to plant."

"And me?" Steve asked.

"Right now we're looking ahead to having you go in first when it's door-kicking time, but that means the tactical teams actually have to get to know you a little so you can coordinate your movements." He said. "Sullivan will give you a ride out to the training range we use, we've got some of the reinforcements there right now cycling through to knock the rust off a little."

"And it also lets you actually test if I know what I'm doing or if I'm just all talk." Steve smiled knowingly at the man.

"And it does exactly that." Nick agreed. "But first, we've got some paperwork to do."

"Paperwork?" Courtney sighed.

"What, you don't want to be paid for your contributions?" Nick surprised them. "And that means welcome to the wonderful world of government subcontracting. Just because you're not SDN anymore doesn't mean you can't be put on a temporary hero retainer."

* * * * *
​

"Proto-Pulse Test Number 18. Failure." Robert swore frustratedly as he finished helping extinguish the fire in Royd's testing lab.

"We pushing a little too fast." Royd said as he put away the empty fire extinguisher.

"Shroud's almost ready to make his move." Robert said urgently. "I have got to get the suit back in action before then."

"If only wishing made it so." Royd agreed sadly. "We getting almost enough power now, but de pulse stability just not staying stable."

"It's the one problem we can't seem to crack." Robert sighed. "Even the idea of using multiple of the lower-intensity Proto-Pulses in parallel along with a capacitor bank to avoid brownout isn't planning out. The 'cooled' Proto-Pulse reaction might take several days to destabilize instead of several minutes, but it does eventually destabilize."

"Something your papa – or whoever helped him - do to make de Astral Pulse run steady forever even at max reaction, dat I just can't figure out how to duplicate yet." Royd agreed.

"Wait, 'someone who helped him'?" Robert questioned.

"Like I tell you when we start out, you got two types of super gadget makers – de science nerds and de gearheads. Science nerd know de weird physics, de exotic particle reactions, stuff like dat. Gearhead know de nuts and bolts, de troubleshooting and mechanical assembly." Royd explained. "You could fix every armor system of de Mecha Man suit in your sleep and troubleshoot all de interactions, but you never know anything about how de Pulse work." Royd waved a hand up at the now-defunct armor. "But more I look at de suit, more I realize dat your papa was probably gearhead like you. Almost everyting in de suit from de muscles to de weapons to de sensors is all an adaptation of existing tech – very good adaptation in most places, innovative combinations, top tier precision engineering. But still all gearhead stuff. De Pulse is de only thing in de suit that need high-end science nerd to invent it, which is why I really start to wonder if your papa did make it or if someone else did. Maybe if we can find whatever person your papa do collab with back in de day, or at least deir notes-"

"I certainly don't know who he might have been working with." Robert mused. "But I know who might."

"You want to know what?" Chase glared up at Robert from his desk several minutes later.

"Who helped my father create the Astral Pulse?" Robert repeated. "Because right now me and Royd are almost entirely certain he didn't do it alone."

Chase reached over and tapped a command into his terminal, signing himself out and switching his incoming calls over to one of the other dispatchers. "Come on. If we're gonna talk about this, we're gonna do it in private."

Robert led Chase to the office supply room and shut the door, locking it from the inside. "Okay, spill. What's the big secret?"

"Given a choice I'd have gone to my grave never tellin' you a word of this." Chase said. "Because… you'll figure out when you hear it. But one of the two people I'm about to talk about is dead and can't defend themselves, and the other one don't deserve a damn bit of anybody's sympathy. And I don't know all the truth, just the parts I saw myself, so-" Chase waved an angry hand, dismissing his concerns. "The man who helped your father make the Astral Pulse was an inventor called Elliot Connors."

"Elliot Con-" Robert suddenly gasped in realization as he recalled exactly what file he'd read that name in recently. "Shroud?!?"

"One and the same." Chase acknowledged gravely. "You already know that he killed your daddy when he tried to become a member of the Brave Brigade along with us and then betrayed us. Helping invent the Astral Pulse to power the new Mecha Man Astral armor – the same suit you inherited – was supposed to be his entrance test."

"That night I was ambushed." Robert turned away, his face slack with shock. "Toxic taunted me. 'Shroud says he just wants the Astral Pulse… which we all know isn't really yours anyway.'" he imitated the villain's mocking voice.

"Yeah, that's bullshit." Chase spat. "Whatever claim he had on that thing, he lost it when he fired that bullet."

"Why does Shroud think he has a claim on it?" Robert turned to ask Chase. "And hell, if he wants an Astral Pulse so badly why doesn't he just make himself another one?"

"Deal they had was, Shroud helped your father invent the Pulse and in return he got on the team. Thing is, at the end your dad decided the man was too unstable to risk putting in the Brave Brigade. Shroud felt cheated and challenged your dad to a fistfight… and he got his ass beat." Chase looked pensive. "Your dad… was goin' on him pretty hard. I had to break up the fight before Shroud got himself seriously injured. I asked your dad afterwards why the hell he did that, and he told me was 'testin' Shroud's resolve'. Said if the man could still come back after that, after takin' that kind of trashin' and bein' told he'd already lost, and still want to try again, then he'd have proven he had the heart of a hero for real."

"That definitely sounds like dad's kind of tough love." Robert said mournfully. "But it didn't work, did it?"

"Shroud didn't come back the next day, he came back as soon as he could swipe your daddy's antique gun and then shot him with it. I- I almost made it there in time." Chase sagged. "Almost. Just a damn second too late, even with my full speed. I-I held your daddy's hand as he died, but he didn't have enough breath left for any last words. He was just gone." Chase wiped his eyes. "Ran the bastard down right afterwards, of course. Dragged his ass to jail, where it stayed for the next fifteen years. Didn't change anything, though. And they couldn't even keep him in there, and now we got all this mess."

"So is Shroud really doing all this just to get revenge on a dead man?" Robert wondered.

"Not to bust on you when you're already down, but he kinda already has." Chase said. "The Astral Pulse is gone, the suit's trashed, and…" he trailed off.

"And it's looking like we're not going to be able to reconstruct the Astral Pulse… and the only person on Earth who could possibly help us do it is the last person who ever would, or that we could ever trust." Robert slumped in depression.

"Damn straight you couldn't." Chase shook his head. "Just because some bad shit maybe happened to Shroud doesn't make him any less of a bad person. Even if he thought your daddy had been out of line-" Chase forced himself to continue after halting. "Even if your daddy had been, that still didn't make murderin' him the right thing to do. There were other things Shroud could have done. Maybe Shroud needed a top-tier engineer to help turn the Astral Pulse's theory into practice, but your daddy wasn't the only one good engineer in the world. Shroud could have taken his invention – and it was his invention – and gone on to do a world of good with it. But he didn't care about any of that."

"Science nerds and gearheads." Robert acknowledged. "There's a lot of the second, not many of the first."

"Some people are just plain rotten." Chase agreed. "Give 'em an opportunity to change, and they just go right back to hurtin' people and bein' selfish shits at the first setback."

"You're not talking about Shroud right now." Robert said. "And I honestly think you're wrong there. Not about him, obviously, but about the others."

"They're all still a hot mess." Chase denied heatedly. "Her in particular."

"Chase, Visi wouldn't hesitate to jump in front of a bullet for Steve right now, and probably for any of the rest of us as well." Robert denied. "I agree that she didn't use to be that way – hell, a few months ago she almost killed me-"

"The fuck what you say?!?" Chase exploded.

"Oh, right, I hadn't told you yet. When Visi was still back with the Red Ring, she'd been at the ambush. I hadn't seen her, obviously, but she was how the bomb got on the back of the suit." Robert admitted.

"And you still fuckin' trust this woman?" Chase gaped. "At least Rogers can be explained by the little head drainin' all the blood from the big one, but you don't even have that much!"

"When she finally confessed to me, she was barely able to keep it together." Robert shook his head. "I have never in my life seen anybody who regretted anything as deeply as her, and that includes the face in my own mirror right after I got out of the hospital after losing the suit."

"Why am I the only person in the world who can see past that phony face she's wearin?" Chase vented.

"Are you seeing it? Or is it someone else's face that you keep seeing?" Robert asked wisely. "Shroud had a chance to choose differently, and he didn't. Visi also had a chance, and she did. It's our choices that make us who we are, not how we're born."

"You chose to be a hero because it's how you were raised to be. Same as me, same as Blazer." Chase denied.

"If I was only the person I'd been raised to be – if that's all I ever could be - then I'd be a corpse on top of an empty suit right now." Robert shook his head. "I'm not saying that my new life is as thrilling to me as my old one was, or that I wouldn't like the old one back if I could get it. But I am saying that I'm not the same person I used to be… and that I couldn't be, because when my life hit the skids I had only two choices. Either I could adapt or I could self-destruct." He exhaled. "Visi chose 'self-destruct' for years, so did Flambae and the others. But the thing about that choice is… if there's still enough of you left to salvage, if you haven't quite hit your point of no return yet, then maybe you can choose again later. Find something new to live for." He smiled softly. "Find new people to trust."

"And Shroud?" Chase protested.

"The guy who did fifteen years' hard time, then immediately got back to obsessing on the exact same shit after he got out, and is now rampaging around doing random supervillain shit we can't even figure because the object of his obsession is gone?" Robert said knowingly. "Whether or not he has the capacity to change is a moot point, because he's made it absolutely plain that he just doesn't want to. But that's what Shroud wants. As near as I can tell his point of no return has already come and gone. But that doesn't mean everybody else's has."

"I definitely agree with the part about Shroud. As for the rest… maybe I got some things to consider." Chase trailed off softly. "But about your dad… I'm sorry if I told you anything that makes your dad look… not as much as you remember him."

"My deal with dad was already massively complicated before you said anything." Robert reassured him. "So it still being complicated now isn't your fault. If this whole tragedy was anybody's fault except Shroud's, then it was dad's. And he's already busy talking to God about his part in it so we don't have to carry any guilt for it anymore. Not me… and definitely not you."

"You're a good boy, Robert." Chase accepted a brief comforting hug. "You always have been, and you always will be." He smiled up at him. "So proud of you."

"Thanks, Uncle Chase." Robert hugged him back. "And, same."

* * * * *
​

Author's Note: I didn't expect to have a chapter today, I was just starting to type some stuff for later and then I got into a flow. So while it's a bit short, it's a complete chapter.

Steve is finding out that unlike SHIELD and the Avengers, the people in this world are not remotely used to some of the Cap level insanity he routinely gets into.

On the other front, the way my story is evolving I'm doubting if Robert is even going to get the suit ready to go again by the time the big Shroud fight happens. When I chose to put as big a divergence point into the story as Captain America being isekai'ed here, I forfeited the ability to make all the main plot arcs turn out the same way. But at least Robert gets a personal arc where whether or not he gets the suit up and running it doesn't matter anymore – he'll be able to live without it if need be, even if he doesn't necessarily have to.

And, Robert and Chase have the balcony talk only about a little more stuff as well, and not on the balcony.