My Star Spangled Invisi-Gal [MCU/Dispatch]

[cliffc999]

Author's Note:

And so we embark on my latest authorial exercise, the adventures of an isekai'ed Steve Rogers who gets accidentally dimensionally displaced from the time period in-between 'Thor 2' and 'The Winter Soldier' as he lands in the world of 'Dispatch' just about at the start of the game.

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

Pairings: Captain America/Invisigal, Robert/Blonde Blazer

---

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Minus 106

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Huh?" Rollins goggled.

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

* * * * *​

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *​

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 4

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

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

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

"What happened?" Steve asked politely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steve squared his shoulders with resolution.

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

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

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

Just take it one day at a time.

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *
​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Huh." She raised an eyebrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And then…" he grinned down at her.

* * * * *
​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *
​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Pity." Visi muttered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *​

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

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

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

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not that this was the Army, Cap reminded himself.

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

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

"Blazer." She insisted with a smile.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *
​

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Seriously?!?" Robert jawdropped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How did Invisigal find out?" Steve wondered.

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

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

"She certainly did." Steve agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *
​

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 8

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

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

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

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

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

"Thanks for understanding." Cap nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *
​

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 8

"How's she been doing?" Cap asked worriedly as he checked in with dispatch after his most recent assignment that morning.

"Still at the beach cleanup with Golem." Robert answered him on the individual channel. "It's going to take them more than a while to finish up, but at least they're not sabotaging each other. And while she's not going to pile up any positive points on a mundane run like that at least she's not losing any either, and there's still the afternoon to hope for."

"It's been like watching sharks in a feeding frenzy." Cap replied disgustedly. "Coupe had Sonar ambushed and handcuffed to the gym equipment before we'd even gotten out of the building, and outside of Golem and Visi they've all been interfering in each other's missions all morning! They don't even have the courtesy to not brag about it on the open channel!"

"Even Flambae got in on it, and he was so high up on the leaderboard he didn't need to do anything to guarantee keeping his job except show up for work today." Robert agreed. "I almost wonder if corporate wanted to wreck the entire thing we're trying to build here, because this was the exact wrong move at the exact wrong time. I've started having to match with friends just to try and find mission teams that won't kill each other out there over a percentage point, never mind being able to actually match powers and skillsets to assignment requirements… and someone just locked Flambae in a sensory deprivation tank. Where did they even get a sensory deprivation tank?" he trailed off disgustedly. "Okay, Cap, your next call is a joint run with Sonar, I've texted you the details. I've got to switch channels and hack our least favorite hothead a way out of there."

"On the way." Cap sighed and drove off to the rendezvous point. After waiting several minutes, the man-bat and former financial scammer Sonar flew down out of the sky and landed alongside.

"Captain." Sonar said nervously. "So, uh, we'll be… working together, I see."

"Relax." Cap said assuredly. "I know what kind of morning you've been having, but I'm not here to make it worse."

"That's what she said." Sonar replied suspiciously.

"What possible motive would I even have?" Cap replied, starting to get exasperated. "The cut is going to happen to the lowest-ranking member of the Phoenix Program, which I'm not a part of. I have absolutely no motive to sabotage you."

Sonar narrowed his eyes. "Really? I might be an involuntarily transformed creature of the night, Captain, but I'm not an idiot. We both know that I'm the second-lowest in the rankings… and that if I blow another assignment today the lowest-ranking doesn't even need to win anymore, she just needs to not lose. And I know you've got a soft spot for Invisigal."

"I hadn't even considered your spot in the rankings." Cap replied honestly. "But no. I do want to help her, but I'm not going to help her that way."

"I have enhanced hearing." Sonar said even more suspiciously. "And I was near the break room last Friday. I heard you talking to her and I heard you and our dispatcher talking about her, so don't try to con me. Look, can you just… stay out here and let me sink or swim on my own, instead of actively trying to push me under? Can you at least cut me that much slack?"

"I… won't deny that I felt tempted just now. Momentarily." Cap admitted reluctantly. "And I'm deeply ashamed of myself that I felt it for even a moment. But I don't want to help Visi keep her job, I want to help her become the better person she wishes she was. And cheating to win will only do one of those two things." He huffed disgustedly. "I really wish I didn't seem to be the only person on the team who felt that way this morning."

"Hey, I haven't screwed anyone over yet, I've only been screwed." Sonar denied heatedly. "But… okay, I get that. I mean…" He trailed off. "I know that I creep people out, and that I don't really seem to like anyone except Malevola, and that I get on everyone's nerves, and that I relapse… but I really need to keep this, okay?" He pleaded. "Not just the paycheck, but the… the system, the structure." He sighed. "By myself it was just… the cocaine, and the cybercrime, and everything else that landed me in jail in the first place. And I'm sick of it, but I can't seem to help it." He slumped dejectedly. "Not by myself."

"… then it's a good thing that you're not by yourself." Cap held out his hand, and after a long pause Sonar reached out to shake it. "Oh, and our dispatch system assigned a recovering narcotics addict to a drug bust?" he continued more lightly.

"The idea was that I pose as the buyer." Sonar nodded knowingly. "Which I'm a slam dunk at, given how many actual buys I used to make. But as soon as they incriminate themselves by actually showing the drugs and touching the cash, you're going to need to come in pretty fast."

"Don't worry. I've got your back." Cap assured him.

* * * * *
​

"All Z-Team back to base and in the conference room in thirty minutes." Robert's quietly furious voice sounded in Cap's headset. It was almost lunchtime, and a mid-day meeting was unusual to say the least. But from what Cap had been able to overhear on the team chat, the morning had been a disaster.

"Cap, come see me at my cubicle before the meeting." Robert continued on the individual channel as he pulled into the SDN parking lot. Very shortly after that Cap was walking through the dispatcher floor to Robert's booth.

"If corporate saw what they were doing out there this morning, they'd probably cut the whole damn team." Robert greeted him wearily as he rubbed his forehead with both sets of fingers. "What an absolute zoo. I've got only a few minutes to come up with the speech of my career, and I don't have the slightest idea what I'm going to say to them."

"Well, this morning I learned that I might not have been giving some of them the credit that they deserved." Cap admitted frankly. "Sonar is struggling with his addiction a lot more than he lets people see, but he seems to genuinely not like how he currently is and wants to ditch it. And he only needed a little help to stay steady through our assignment this morning." Cap shrugged. "I still don't know anything about the rest of them, but if even one more of them has a hidden depth, then maybe-"

"What I really wanted to talk to you about was Invisigal." Robert interrupted sadly. "The beach clean-up ate up almost her whole morning, but she had a joint call with Malevola right before I called a time-out. A burglar sighting that turned out to be Lightningstruck, actually."

"Is she okay?" Cap asked quickly.

"Bad guy got away because somebody deliberately tripped somebody else up, and both of them are accusing the other one." Robert sighed. "And one of them turns invisible and the other one has short-range teleportals, so even trying to plot the timing of their movements from what few camera sightings were available to figure out which one could have actually been where at the critical moment is impossible." He looked up at Cap sympathetically. "I know you had hopes for Visi, and I even shared them, but if this kind of crap is still happening at the first hurdle even with all the extra encouragement she was being given then I think she just made up the management team's mind for us. And if I announce the cut right now, then at least the rest of the team can get back on track. I wanted to at least give you the courtesy of a heads-up instead of letting you walk into it cold."

"Triage?" Cap shook his head firmly. "No. If you had proof she was guilty, then… honestly, no, not even then. If you cut everybody who allegedly sabotaged somebody else this morning, you'd be down to a team of three. Blazer already announced what the criteria for the decision would be and when they would be applied, you should commit to that."

"I didn't think you would agree." Robert nodded. "And hell, I don't want to believe it either! But even if it is just Visi's word versus Malevola's, what possible reason would Malevola have to push Invisigal further down? Visi was already at the bottom, there's no point to putting her further down!"

"The reverse also applies. Why would Invisigal sabotage Malevola if she was already that far beneath her? One failed assignment wouldn't be enough to put Malevola beneath Visi, which would mean there'd be no point in Visi doing it either because it still wouldn't get her off the bottom." Cap pointed out reasonably.

"That's entirely logical, but we both know Visi isn't always the most logical person when she gets upset about something." Robert rubbed his nose meaningfully.

"Wait." Cap realized. "Something Sonar said this morning… Malevola's not only his friend but his Nar-Anon sponsor. And if Malevola didn't know that Sonar was having a clean assignment this morning, she might have been afraid that Invisigal might lap ahead of him. I know Sonar himself was very worried about Visi breathing down his neck."

"You think Malevola might have been doing a favor for a friend?" Robert blinked. "That makes sense, but it's still not evidence… but that's the point, there's no evidence. And at least your theory raises a reasonable doubt." He exhaled relievedly. "Which is all you need for acquittal. Okay then, it's still wide open. Which I'm good with, even if it still leaves me with the wacky sabotage races to deal with."

"If I had any more advice, I'd be giving it." Cap shrugged. "I'll go on ahead so it doesn't look like we were collaborating before you come in."

"I'll wait a couple, then catch up." Robert agreed.

Cap didn't have a chance to have a word with Visi before meeting up in the conference room, and didn't dare throw her too encouraging a smile or a gesture in front of the others. Which lack of opportunity to reassure her was disappointing, given that the cheerfully insouciant Invisigal of the morning had given way to a taut, sullen person who had her shoulders planted firmly against the back corner of the room as she warily glared at everyone else.

Cap took up what was becoming his usual position standing near the door and waited. Blazer and Chase both entered, but neither one said anything as they simply took positions around the periphery and waited as silent observers. The room remained full of nothing but suspicion and weariness until all eyes turned to the door to get what for most of them was their first look at their new dispatcher.

"Barring the obvious exception, most people would look around this room and see a bunch of villains." Robert began without preamble, his voice a firm, low rasp. "Not even the super kind. Just plain ass, run of the mill, vanilla fuckin' villains." He stared fearlessly around the room at each one of them in turn. "But that's not what I see. Because lucky for you, I'm not most people. When I look around this room, what I see… is fear."

A ripple of upset reactions went around the room as Robert continued without pause. "You're afraid you're gonna fuck it up again! Like the last time someone gave you a shot… and the time before that… and the time before that. You're afraid of letting people down again. You're afraid of letting yourself down again."

Even from his vantage point on the diametric opposite of the room, Cap saw the brief flash of sorrow, of vulnerability, in Visi's downcast gaze before she assumed her sullen mask again. Robert's speech rolled on without pause. "If you want those times to be different than those other times… I'm here to help." He finished simply.

"You are all part of the Phoenix Program. Any of you know what a phoenix is?" Robert asked.

"Ooh, uh, a city in Arizona." Malevola said amusedly.

"Yeah, the sweltering ballsack of America." Flambae drawled.

"Nah, if Florida's the dick then Louisiana's gotta be the ballsack." Chase wisecracked. "Just, y'know, positionally-"

"The phoenix," Robert interrupted firmly. "according to legend, is a beautiful bird of prey that was so tired of its immortality it tricked the Sun God into dropping a spark on its nest to set it ablaze and burning it to shit. But, instead of dying the Phoenix emerged from ash, reborn. All of you here are phoenixes, and it's obvious what that means." Robert leaned forward and planted both hands firmly on the table. "But for you dumb ones, I'll spell it out."

"The phoenix symbolizes redemption. It's what you're here for." Robert said quietly. "It's what connects everyone in this room… even if you don't want to admit it yet. Because ultimately, you all had a choice to be here. Sure, for some of you the choice was either this or prison… but was anybody in this room really afraid of prison? Or lacking that much confidence in their ability to escape or their lawyer's ability to bullshit an appeal?"

The mood in the room began to shift as Robert continued, as he paradoxically managed to combine an appeal to their pride as veteran criminals with a motivation to change that status. "I've seen your rap sheets, and they were all a long and miserable read. None of you half-assed the job of becoming assholes, you all put some real commitment into it. Especially not today, given how most of you have been busy trying to push the others down, as if stomping other people's shit flatter and then climbing on top of it left you anywhere except still standing in the same place and with your shoes covered in shit." Flambae actually broke out in a brief laugh at that one, acknowledging the hit, as Robert continued. "So it's time to stop that shit and put that same degree of commitment into something new. Into replacing the people you are with the people you want to be."

Robert began to pace slowly again. "Look, while all of you own your own shit, I'll admit that SDN screwed up too. You really didn't help with the dispatcher roulette you were playing earlier, but we should have caught the bug in our training systems a lot earlier than we did. So you were expected to know how to do jobs that you hadn't been fully trained yet in how to do, and now you're all worried about being cut for not doing that job well enough. And that seems unfair to you because it is. Blazer wasn't blowing smoke up your ass when she told you this morning that we'd done everything we could to get those corpo fuckheads at the head office to pull their heads out and give us a fair chance to fix the mistake instead of dumping the blame on you, and they didn't. But even if they can't pull their heads out of their asses, at least we can still choose not to play favorites. And that's why the cut decision remains open, and will remain open right up until the deadline today and be based strictly on merit and nothing else. Because even if the rules aren't fair to us, we can still be fair to each other. And we need to be, or else nothing we try here will ever work."

"Why should we even believe you, boss-man?" Flambae sneered.

"Hey, there's an option B for if you don't believe me, and I'm just about to tell you what it is." Robert replied mildly. "So this is how it's going to be. If any of you aren't really serious about trying to un-fuck your fucked-up lives, if this is just a place you're going to coast until you can finish your time and get back to doing crime, then you can stand up and quit right now. You can save me and Blazer the burden of having to pick which one of you gets the ax, and save all of your teammates from having to worry about being cut. Because if you're not actually interested in redemption, if you already know you can't conquer your fear of failure, then why stay here at all?"

Robert smiled thinly at the room. "That's the carrot. So now you get to hear the stick. The stick is the one you'll beat yourself up with if you decide to stay here and then half-ass it. The stick is you knowing that you not only backed away from the challenge, but you couldn't even have the balls to admit to yourself that's what you were doing. The stick is your own pride."

He crossed his arms and looked at them firmly. "If you leave this room individually, then you leave. You go back to the justice system and try something else. Who knows, they might even give you credit for time served here and let you walk. But if you leave this room with the rest of the team then you're with the rest of the team. And so from that minute forward you'll be expected to perform like you are." Robert uncrossed his arms and leaned confidently back. "That's it. No more speechifying. Your move."

Everybody in the room looked warily at each other, their expressions various forms of disbelieving, challenging, or pensive. Sonar looked at Malevola, Flambae and Prism exchanged glances, Coupe raised a disbelieving eyebrow at a shrugging Punch Up. Invisigal's mask of defiance fell away to be replaced by doubt as she traded a slow, disbelieving glance with Cap. Everyone drew support from what friends or colleagues on the team they had.

And nobody moved.

"All right then." Robert acknowledged after a long moment. "Now get back out there, Z-Team. We've got a shift to finish."

The team stood up as one and headed out, full of nervousness… but also purpose. Cap stood by the door, waiting for Visi, as her position at the back of the room would leave her as last out.

"Visi…" Cap began lowly.

"I heard about Sonar and you." Visi snapped at him as she walked by, and Cap and Robert started following her down the corridor. "You had to spend your morning helping the one guy I actually had a chance of passing still stay ahead of me?" Her voice slightly shook with the effort of not breaking.

"He didn't pick that assignment, Visi." Robert said softly. "I did. The calls come in as they come in, I can only pick the people who are up on the board. And you were…"

"Stuck on the beach." Visi said bitterly. "But you still couldn't have- oh, the hell with it."

"Visi, I-" Cap began again.

"Save it. I've got to get back out there and hustle." Visi cut him off. "Because it looks like I've barely got four hours left to save my ass… all by myself." She turned invisible before anyone could say anything and left the two men standing in the hallway.

"Well, at least she's motivated by something now." Robert tried to say consolingly. "Let's hope the tough love will work even if the kindness hasn't."

"Robert, before I go back out, I just have to say that was maybe the best leadership speech I've ever heard." Cap told him.

"I was pulling that shit straight out of my ass." Robert admitted. "But what you'd just said to me, about having to hope that there was some kind of wish to change down in them that we just hadn't seen yet? I figured trying to pull that to the surface was the only chance we had. Because if they don't actually want to change, nothing will ever make them."

"Gotta have hope, right?" Cap sighed, and with a nod to them all he headed out.

* * * * *
​

Less than an hour before end of shift, Invisigal sat smoking on a playground swing as she slowly rocked back and forth.

Despite her newfound motivation and spite, her afternoon shift had been a disaster. The one joint assignment she'd been able to get with Captain America had gone adequately at best – they'd managed to stop the runaway train, but not before there had been a nontrivial amount of property damage. And the two calls she'd handled alone had been disasters. A bodyguard job at the pier had ended with her spotting and disarming the assassin before they'd even known she was there, but his stray shot as she'd knocked him down from ambush had put a hole in the windshield of the client's limo and he'd furiously turned in the lowest customer satisfaction score possible. And the one with some strange cult recruiting outside a bookstore with what had turned out to be enchanted pamphlets that hypnotized those who read them had been dealt with by her simply setting the pamphlets on fire… which, while it had freed the cultists and their victims from the brainwashing, had knocked them all temporarily unconscious from the backlash and thus had the ending of her case be officially classified as 'excessive collateral damage', also completely trashing her score.

"Visi? You did good. It was three for three and nobody actually got hurt, not even the sleeping beauties." Robert tried to reassure her as she sat their dejectedly. "As for the relatively minor property damage, it wasn't even nearly the worst on the team today let alone historically."

"Yeah, but you're not judging. The system is. And we both know how it'll be scored officially." Her voice was low and weary, her earlier defiance and energy all gone. "But hey, at least I made it easy for you."

Her phone vibrated, and she looked down at the incoming text from Cap. Are you okay?

Visi sighed again and returned the phone to her pocket, the text unanswered.

"No, you're not making it easy for me." Robert said. "Cutting you would not be easy at all."

"Yeah, that's me, everybody's pity project." Visi pouted miserably. "And even with all the extra carries in the world, I still can't get it done." She shook her head disgustedly. "I slowed Cap down so we missed the first jump onto the train, I didn't stop to think that maybe setting voodoo shit on fire might have a backlash on the people linked to it, and I blew the takedown on the shooter." She took another long, miserable drag on her cigarette and coughed slightly. "I guess my thick head is so thick that fate had to knock extra hard on it today to finally pound through the message."

"Fate? The heck are you talking about?" Robert asked.

Visi's phone vibrated again. Visi, I know you had a bad afternoon. Check in, please? The text read.

She put the phone back down and tapped her mike. "Look, I tried, okay? It just wasn't meant to be. Some people are born to be heroes, but I'm clearly not one of them. Blazer, Phenomaman, Cap… those are the real hero types. They've got… hero powers. Strong, brave, right out there for everyone to see. Nothing to hide."

"What's your point, Visi?" Robert asked gently.

"My point is that I have fuckin' villain powers, okay?" She replied heatedly. "I turn invisible, I skulk in the shadows. My powers are only good for stealing shit, spying on people... stabbing 'em in the back. And that's on top of how I can consistently fuck up even the simplest fucking things." She slumped dejectedly. "I'm just not hero material, and I never will be. And the sooner we all stop kidding ourselves about that, the sooner I can stop torturing myself with it."

"Heroes aren't born, Visi. They're made." Robert insisted.

"Yeah, well, you can't make bricks out of shit." Visi replied. "And besides, unless a miracle drops out of the fuckin' sky and lands right on top of my head in the next maybe thirty minutes, it's not even my decision to make."

There was a brief pause on the line, and then Robert came back. "Okay, I used to think fate was bullshit, but you've almost made me a believer. Because you tempted fate hardcore and she just answered us. That Lightningstruck asshole that's been on a spree? Just showed up on a silent alarm two blocks from your location. Maybe third time will be the charm."

"More like strike three and I'm out." Visi shook her head. "Send someone that can actually catch him. He's been trashing shit all over town, he needs to actually be stopped this time."

"Yes, and that's why you need to clock back in and go stop him." Robert insisted.

Visi stared down helplessly at her shoes as she dug her toes in the sandlot.

"Visi? Are you there?" Robert insisted. His voice faded away to an indeterminate buzz in her ears as she just closed her eyes and let the depression win, let the numbness try and take away the disappointment of never being good enough-

Her phone vibrated, and she wearily hauled it out to hit 'delete' on the latest text from Cap without even looking… until she stopped and stared, his last message having caught her eye even though she'd tried not to read it.

Please, Visi. You can't be my first choice if you're not here.

"Give me the location." Visi heard her own voice saying.

"-and you've got to- what?" Robert's voice cut off.

"Location, dipshit!" Visi yelled. "Give me the spot on the perp so I can escort my foot to its date with his ass!"

"85th​ and Western. Jewelry store on the corner." Robert said proudly. "Go get 'em, Invisigal."

Visi rapidly thumbed out a reply to Cap on her phone. OK. Busy. Wish me luck.

Visi's motorcycle pulled up outside the jewelry store, and she swung down off the bike and made ready to go inside-

"I'd like to know where the bad guys are and what the terrain is like before we actually kick off." Cap's voice echoed in her memory.

"Hey. Mr. Overwatch." Visi murmured into her mike. "You got the cameras up yet? What do you see?"

"Jewelry store's all one big showroom floor in front, display cases are barely waist-high and made mostly out of glass. Two goons busy smashing open the cases and scooping shit into sacks, they've both got SMGs slung, Lightningstruck's waving his blaster cannons around while he keeps an eye out in all directions for incoming, and he's either on something or had way too much coffee because he's tweaking like crazy." Robert replied.

"Nobody out back or in front." Visi murmured as she finished a swift yet silent sweep around the outside. "Back door's locked, front door's got a hole smashed in the glass I could ride my bike through. Any cameras in the back room?"

"Yeah. Nobody hiding there this time." Robert replied.

"And thank God for that." Visi muttered. "What other systems you got access to there, hackerman?"

"Give me a moment…" Robert muttered. "HVAC. Sprinklers. Lights. Hmm, if his gear's not waterproof-"

"Oh fuck no." Visi said immediately. "The last time one of his blasters shorted out, it put the guy trying to shoot it in the hospital! You trying to burn down the store?"

"… and I'm actually ashamed of myself that I forgot that." Robert laughed at himself briefly. "You're right, not time to repeat our old mistakes. You're the hero on the spot, what are you thinking?"

"Thanks for the confidence, but I wish I was thinking anything." Visi muttered to herself. "Come on, Visi, what would he-?"

"From what I've seen today you seem to do fine until you either lose track on the target or something unplanned goes wrong... and then you get taken down because you don't have any defensive powers and being an invisible skirmisher working alone only succeeds as long as you don't use up your margin of error or your luck." Cap's voice echoed in her memory again.

"Margin of error…" Visi thought furiously. "Track on target… okay, I can smoke any one of these assholes easily if I can see them and they can't see me, but as soon as I go visible I get shot in the back twice…" Her eyes widened as an idea struck her. "Hey, Robert. Does your hook into the fire sprinklers include the fire alarms?"

"It can. Why?" he asked.

"I go invisible and sneak in the front. When I give you the signal, you pop the siren on the emergency fire door in the back– you know, the one that tells everybody that the door's been opened? Bad guy thinks either civvie hid out inside and is now trying to get away or else he thinks I'm coming in the back door, and what does he do?"

"He… either sends both of his goons to cover the entrance, or he goes himself while they stay on the loot. Either way, you've split them up." Robert realized. "But-"

"But I pick the same side of the door that the big guy is on, so I only have to get behind one target before it's lights out. And once he hits the ground, where his two mooks can't see him go down, they're just easy mop-up."

"I love it." Robert agreed immediately. "All right, let me get into the system…I'm ready. It's your move."

Invisigal took a deep breath and held it, then faded out and lightfooted as quietly as she could through the smashed-open front glass door and into the shop. She paused and crouched tensely as Lightningstruck swept by barely five feet in front of her, and while her fingers itched with the urge to just leap on his back right now and go for it she fought off the temptation. A few quick steps brought her behind the coat rack adjacent to the door, and she used the cover of it to go visible and take another deep breath before fading out again.

Next stretch. Get down the side of the door without being spotted and down behind the cash counter. She thought to herself and tensely crept forward. Stealth runs for her were always an exercise in instinct and nerve… the usual practice to go as slowly and carefully as one could, always exactly placing one's feet, didn't work for someone whose primary stealth power was limited by the duration of her breath-holding. So she'd learned how to walk quietly while still almost moving at a run, even if that meant that what for other people was cautious creeping was for her almost a parkour routine done on flat ground or a freestyle dance… and that while also conserving one's oxygen.

Lightningstruck's nervous tension or amphetamine rush made the entire exercise even more problematic, because he couldn't keep to a consistent patrol route. He'd randomly stop to harangue his mooks to move faster, whip his head around at imagined noises, or just get bored and start walking in a different direction. At one point Visi had to leap and roll silently onto the top of a display case to avoid being walked into, making a small muted thud that sounded as loud as a thunderclap in her ears. Fortunately, the noise of yet another glass case being smashed open covered her movement.

Crouched down behind the cash register, she stopped and went visible again, refreshing her oxygen for the last stretch. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a spare mouse and keyboard tucked away under the counter for the convenience of whoever was using the computer terminal, and with an eager grin reached out to pick up the neatly coiled mouse-and-cord. Few people stopped to appreciate that the humble USB cable used for computer mice was generally a four or five-strand braided copper wire inside plastic insulation, and as such had a higher tensile strength than paracord and made for an excellent improvised garrotte.

Visi remained invisible and crouching down a few feet to the side of the door into the back room, and tapped her microphone three times. Now.

The whoop-whoop-whoop of the emergency door open alarm startled everyone in the shop save Visi, and after a frantic moment of everyone looking around with drawn guns Lightningstruck bellowed "Stay here and keep shoveling! I'll check this out!"

The hulking cyborg thug swept less than an arm's length away from Visi as he kicked open the rear door and charged into the rear section of the store, both of his arm-mounted blaster cannons sparking furiously with their electrical charge. Ready to unleash devastation on a moment's notice, he let the door swing shut behind him as he stopped in the center of the room and furiously scanned around-

"Huh?" Lightningstruck blinked in surprise, staring at the still-closed emergency door.

And then his voice cut off as Invisigal materialized out of nowhere and leapt onto his back, the mouse cord entwined in both her hands. In one swift motion she looped it around his neck and pulled as hard as she could, supplementing the force of the pull with both of her knees pushing solidly off of his back. Lightningstruck gasped for air that wouldn't come, his vision going dark, as he couldn't even understand what the heck was happening to him- until his belated recognition of the female voice speaking softly into his ear finally told him, too late, exactly how he'd been tricked.

"Lights out, Thundercuck." Visi said triumphantly, and then grinned from ear to ear.

* * * * *
​

The sound of applause caught Visi entirely off guard as she frog-marched the captured Lightningstruck in through the front doors of the SDN branch. Normally a villain would be taken directly to jail, but as Royd's services would be needed to safely deactivate Lightningstruck's augments before he could be confined she'd brought him here instead. And while Visi had been expected to be met by the management crew and Cap, she certainly hadn't expected the entire Z-Team to be lined up and applauding.

"'Sup, Thundercuck." The low booming voice of Golem drawled amiably.

"Hey, bangle boy! Or more like bangle bitch!" Flambae sneered at him amusedly.

"Or bitch boy!" Prism laughed.

"Hey bangle bitch boy, fuck you!" Punch Up called out in rapid-fire patter.

Visi drew to a stop as the tall and imposing figure of Malevola looked impassively at her… before she nodded and stepped aside. "Sorry about, uh, tripping you earlier." she muttered softly.

Visi acknowledged the apology with a nod and kept going down the line of applauding people, feeling more and more self-conscious as she went along, until her nervous smile faded into a genuine grin at seeing Cap at the end of the line beaming back at her from ear to ear. Visi was desperately hoping that the blush she was starting to feel hadn't actually reached her cheeks.

"Uh, why are these assholes not being assholes?" Visi couldn't help but ask.

"Robert had a slight mistake with his headphones." Cap fought back a smirk of his own. "And accidentally pushed the button for broadcasting to the entire branch when he meant to use the individual channel."

"You mean everybody heard that?" Visi flinched, her eyes going wide.

"Yeah, we all heard your mission go textbook!" Sonar congratulated her.

"Silent Assassin, Suit Only." Golem said cheerfully.

"And not so much as a paint scratch on the walls." Coupe nodded. "Not even all of my jobs went that quietly. Congratulations."

"Uh, thanks. Which way's Royd?" Visi asked quickly. "I want to ditch this guy before my arm gets tired."

"Over here." The giant profile of SDN's tech genius greeted her, escorted by several security guards. "Yah, you lightning arms goan to have a date with my toolbox, aren't dey?" he taunted Lightningstruck as the villain was led away.

"All right, everyone." Robert said. "That's the good news." He continued more seriously. "The bad news will be delivered as soon as the final ranking calculation comes through in a couple of minutes. But before that, I just want to say… excellent second shift, all of you. Even if you're not fortunate enough to be working here tomorrow, you still have absolutely nothing to regret about how well you did today." He paused briefly and continued. "At least, after lunch."

"Congratulations, Visi." Cap said, as the breakup of the group finally meant they could catch a private moment off by the corner of the cubicle row. "And not just that last job, but all four of them." He gave a disarming grin. "You already know I don't entirely agree with their scoring system." He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, after pausing briefly enough that she could signal if it were unwelcome. "Even if it turns out to not be enough for some unfeeling corporate algorithm, it was still enough to be proud of."

"About earlier." Visi began awkwardly. "I- you were just trying to help. I shouldn't have cut you cold just for doing your job this morning. Of course you didn't cheat, you're you."

"Thank you." Cap said relievedly.

"And… thanks for the encouragement. With the texting." Visi continued softly. "Thank God the whole branch didn't hear those… but they really helped."

"I'm glad I could-" Cap began, only to be cut off by a smashing of glass as Coupe angrily came out of the man-sized hole that had just opened up in the glass panel adjacent to the conference room door and stormed furiously towards the exit.

"… I guess that answers that question." Cap continued.

"Yeah." Visi's breath exploded outward in a gasp of relief. "Pinch me, 'cause I'm still not sure it's real."

"Then let's go check the leaderboard." Cap suggested, and the two of them moved over to stand in front of the giant display panel and wait until the updated stats from the head office's computer finished being entered into the public display.

As soon as the display lights blinked out and then began to ripple into their new configuration, Cap looked away from the board and down at Visi. He exhaled heavily as Visi's lips curled up slightly… not into one of her usual confident or saucy grins, or even some hard-edged expression of triumph, but the first genuinely sweet smile he'd ever seen from her. The soft curve of her lips and the grateful widening of her eyes as she saw her name come off off the bottom of the leaderboard for the first time ever, now ensconced comfortably in third-to-last place… well, second, as Coupe's now last-place score had yet to be removed from the computer after her firing… made Cap's heart beat just a tiny bit faster, as he felt a surge of emotion he couldn't even identify. His heart warmed even further as Visi, entirely unselfconscious of her audience, reached into her pocket to pull out her smartphone and snap a picture of her achievement.

"Good night, Cap." Visi turned her face up to him, apparently still unaware of how she was smiling. "And, thanks." She nodded back at Cap's automatic nod of his head and headed cheerfully towards the door, stopping to give a slightly more awkward thank-you to both Robert and Chase as they stood discussing something near his cubicle.

The two men came over to where Cap was standing, and Cap barely caught the knowing glance they exchanged as they caught a good look at his face. Robert fought back a smile of his own and drew up to a position alongside Cap, carefully not looking at him as he also pretended to study the leaderboard.

"You know, I was recently assured by no less a source than our esteemed branch manager that the company's HR policy contains absolutely no prohibition against relationships between employees, just so long as the relationship is disclosed to their supervisor or branch manager." Robert opined, his tone of voice entirely mild and neutral.

"It's not like that." Steve immediately protested. "We're just friends."

"Uh-huh." Chase grumbled, shaking his head. "Seriously. Absolutely no fuckin' sense of self-preservation at all."

"Well, maybe so." Robert agreed tolerantly. "Good night, Captain. We'll see you tomorrow."

"Looking forward to it." Steve agreed wholeheartedly.

* * * * *
​

Author's Note: You're catching feelings, Cap. I wonder how long it will take for you to actually notice? *eg*

Yes, it's amusing that after I posted above about how chaotic Visi is, I start having mine actually trying to plan a step ahead or two. Cap's being a horrible influence on her, really. (Note still the degree of effort it took her to come up with a plan that intuitively simple, even if the details were still legitimately tight.)

Trying to let Robert keep his Captain America Speech moment even with Captain America himself actually in the room was a writing challenge. I settled for 'Robert notably expands on his canon remarks inspired at least somewhat by an observation Cap made' as a solution.

And yes, Golem is canonically a gamer, so the 'Hitman' reference was deliberate.

Visi's cute smile is at 2:06 in this video, and it really is the first time in the game you see her expression be genuinely sweet.

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 9

"Can anyone tell me why Phenomaman is lying on top of a crushed car in the parking lot?" Captain America asked curiously as he entered the office.

"News story broke this morning. Blonde Blazer broke up with him. Famous superhero celebrity power couple no more." Invisigal said cheerfully from where she'd been propping up a nearby wall. "Morning, Cap."

"Good morning, Visi." Cap said. "So, he's hanging around depressed outside his now ex-girlfriend's workplace? Not a comforting thought for someone as powerful as he is-" Cap blinked in belated realization. "Um… they only broke up today?"

"No, no." Visi shook her head as she fell in alongside Cap as they walked down the hallway towards morning roll call. "The news broke today. Breakup happened a little while ago. I guess Phenomaman was holding it in until he had to watch it on the morning channels all over again and then he crashed out."

"Makes sense." Cap nodded. "And this also makes something else I overheard yesterday make sense. Specifically, Blonde Blazer apparently personally emphasizing to Robert that the HR policy didn't prohibit relationships between employees so long as the chain of command knew about it."

"Really?" Visi raised her eyebrows inquiringly. "Huh, wow, she's rebounding fast if so. Still, Robert is kinda cute. In, y'know, that ex-superhero skinny dad bod kinda way."

"'Dad bod'?" Cap asked worriedly, deciding to tackle the least disturbing part of that statement first.

"Y'know, dad bod?" Visi looked at him askance. "Like… the physique the average suburban guy has? Not fat, but not athletic, because he works in an office?" Her expression softened. "Or did you not have a dad?"

"He died in a mustard gas attack, almost at the end of World War I." Cap acknowledged soberly. "My mother had gotten pregnant right before he deployed. He was gone before I was born."

"… I'd been more thinking 'They grew you in a cloning tank and you didn't know what family was' type tragedy, not war orphan tragedy." Visi replied pensively. "But that other one sucks even harder."

"And you?" Cap asked as gently as possible, thinking he'd heard something in Visi's tone of voice when she'd said the word 'orphan'.

"Oh look, we're here! At the meeting!" she answered brightly. "Are we… still doing the pretending we're not friends thing so the team isn't jerks about it?" she continued more diffidently.

"No." Cap decided immediately. "Sonar overheard us talking Friday, and if nobody noticed anything yesterday evening then the whole team needs eye exams. Plus, if the in-house fragging doesn't stop after yesterday then this team has much bigger problems."

"Still won't stop them from teasing the life out of us about it." Visi warned, and the conference room door opened and the two of them entered walking side-by-side. Prism took one look at the duo and immediately held out her empty hand palm up towards Flambae, who dug a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet and slapped it into her hand with a frustrated growl. Punch Up gave a disgruntled snort, and everybody else reacted with either mild amusement or disinterest.

"Definitely not eye exams." Visi snarked mildly at the by-play, and the two of them took their seats.

"Good morning, everyone." Robert greeted them a minute later. "I asked for this morning roll call instead of just starting the shift out with a round of calls because I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about the new training program. As I mentioned yesterday, there was quite a bit that you were supposed to have been being taught and never was, so now we have to play catch-up. We've condensed the most essential bits into a new series of condensed courses that you'll be rotated through one or two at a time, for an hour or two a day, for the next few weeks. You won't need to take any overtime. The rest we'll handle at our leisure, and the most useless parts we'll just ignore. I've got everybody's new training schedule."

"I want my twenty back, because it's saying that the corpo shill and the teacher's pet are now study buddies." Flambae drawled to Prism.

"I'll take that!" Prism said. "No way they'd be that obvious."

Cap and Visi both immediately looked at their training schedules, to the chuckles of quite a few other people in the room.

"I have… two of my classes with Invisigal, and a lot more than two classes with other people." Cap said quickly, and handed over his schedule to Flambae and Prism for proof. "I don't know how you'd score that."

"… call it I'm half right and you're half right, and I slide back ten bucks?" Prism shrugged, and Flambae nodded.

"Damn, that just burns me up." Flambae said sarcastically, as he ignited his flame powers everywhere but the hand that was still holding Cap's training schedule. "Let's hope I don't lose control…" His expression fell. "You didn't even blink, Captain. I thought I'd get you that time! But okay, at least you got some stones."

Cap just held out his hand politely, and Flambae put his training schedule back in it unharmed.

"And now that the important items on the agenda are finished." Robert drawled with tolerant amusement. "Next up is…"

"Teacher's pet!" Visi fumed as her and Cap headed out the doors to the parking lot. "I'm the teacher's pet now? What kind of bizarro world bullshit is that?"

"I'm so happy that you rushed to console me over the intolerable agony I felt at the accusation of being a corporate shill." Cap teased Visi back.

"How does somebody with such an altar boy face have such a sassy mouth?" Visi snorted. "But seriously, teacher's pet?"

"Take it as a compliment." Cap suggested. "Because the teacher can have two reasons for spending extra time with a particular student, and the second reason is if they think they're gifted."

"If I was ever someone's gift, then they returned it." Visi said with a flash of bitterness, before she relaxed again and swung a leg over her motorcycle. "Well, time to get moving. I'll catch you at lunch if we don't get a call together before then. You know where the place is, right?"

"Contrary to popular belief I actually know how to use GPS. And I'm looking forward to it." Cap smiled back.

"Well hey, at the rate you burn calories somebody needs to show you what diners around here are the real diamonds in the rough or else you'll go broke paying for overpriced trash. Later, Cap!" She revved up her engine and peeled out, and Cap went to his own motorcycle to do the same.

* * * * *
​

"This place is amazing." Cap said as him and Visi sat together in the little snack shop they were eating lunch together in. It was a small place with barely a dozen seats at the counter and only a few tables, but the open grill wafted delicious smells all throughout the corner nook as the short-order cook gladly served Cap a double-sized stack of pancakes drowning in butter and real maple syrup.

"Family-owned places are always the best." Visi agreed as she dug into her own cheeseburger. "And they've not only got portions in heart-attack size but they run the breakfast menu all day and they have an evening staff for second-shift workers. Back when I was working nights, this place was one of the few spots that saved me from living off of McDonald's."

"You don't cook?" Cap asked.

"Never really learned." Visi said briefly. "What about you? Nothing but mess halls?"

"I can cook." Cap answered. "Home cooking, at least. Nothing fancy."

"Beats living out of the microwave." Visi agreed. "So, how's the pancakes?"

"I may just ask them to put a little bronze plaque over my seat so I can reserve it permanently." Cap grinned back at her. "The last time I had any this good was this little neighborhood place in Brooklyn near where I grew up, all the way back when I grew up."

"And that thought makes you smile?" Visi looked at him curiously, and then sympathetically. "I mean… wormhole. One-way trip." She exhaled heavily. "I've been trying not to step on any emotional landmines of yours, but I just can't seem to figure out where they are."

"I'm not saying they don't exist, but they're not there." Steve said soberly. "Back home…" He stopped and thought intensely. "Home, to me, still feels like not only where I grew up but when I grew up. The life that I had back before I went into the ice. And I'd already lost all ties to that life but one before I even hit the wormhole. The modern-day of my homeworld… I hadn't even been it for two years before I ended up on another one-way trip to here. And yes, I had co-workers, partners, even some friends. But no family. No old neighborhood. Nobody… special."

He stopped and looked thoughtfully down into his glass of soda, before looking back up at Visi. "The psychiatrists at SHIELD, as well as Agent Romanov – the partner that I spent the most time working with - kept telling me that I needed to put down new roots in my new era. To anchor myself in the present as deeply as I had been in the past. And you just don't do that kind of thing overnight, and I hadn't even begun to finish the process there before I ended up here. So I suppose that back there in my original timeline's modern era wasn't ever a home for me to lose. It was just a place, that I'd lived in for a couple of years before moving on to another place. Maybe that's why it wasn't anywhere near as big of a shock when I lost it too."

"I don't know whether that's some of the saddest shit I've ever heard or a mercy in disguise." Visi shook her head musingly.

"Well, since it's keeping me from feeling anywhere near as awful living here as I was feeling right after I'd come out of the ice, I'm going to go with mercy." Cap nodded. "Really, right after I realized I was stuck here and this wasn't just a temporary condition, I was expecting to feel much worse than this." Cap smiled at her. "And while I've only been here a little over a week, this is still… nice." He exhaled heavily. "I'd been over a year out of the ice in the other place before I even began to feel this relaxed."

"Whoa, too much somber too early in the day." Visi immediately waved a dismissive hand, before the briefest flash of her cute little smile was visible again. "But yeah, it's nice that... it's being nice." She exhaled heavily and desperately cast around for a new topic. "Sooooo, our boss and our bigger boss. What do you think's going on there, and what do you think about what you think's going on there?"

"Well first off, it's entirely possible that we're reading into nothing." Cap admitted as he gratefully took the life-line Visi was throwing. "But if we're not, then I think they're both very lucky people to have each other."

"I was more asking, in the politest way possible, if you think there might have been something going on between those two before she broke up with her now ex-boyfriend." Visi continued.

Cap exhaled heavily as the timing of Blazer and Robert's original not-a-date at Crypto Night came irresistibly to mind, as well as the mistaken kiss that Robert had confessed to. "I'm not sure I even want to guess-"

"That's kinda an answer to my question." Visi broke in.

"No, I mean it." Cap protested. "But unless she is by far the greatest actress I have ever seen, which considering some people I've known would be saying something, I really don't think she has that kind of double-dealing nature."

"I notice that you're not saying anything about him not having it in in his nature." Vivi pounced.

"In a hypothetical adultery scenario, since we're starting from the assumption that the lady lied to her current partner then it's likely she didn't even tell her new partner that she had a current partner." Cap pointed out.

"Valid." Visi acknowledged. "But yeah, she doesn't seem the type for that kind of skankiness at all. Which means there's a 'Yes, but-' somewhere in what you're saying?"

"Yes, but it's possible that her current relationship was already in trouble, or emotionally unfulfilling, or suchlike, but she was sticking with it anyway either trying to make it work or afraid of change… until she met someone new, felt an immediate attraction to them, may even have regretfully acted on or invited such attraction on impulse, and only then had that clue them into the realization that their current relationship needed to come to an end." Cap conceded.

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking too." Visi mused. "That her life was like, all glitz and glamour and glitter and shit, and she thought that was all there was, until she met a guy who was actually for real and solid all the way through and realized what she'd been missing all along. So there was, like, some impulsive kiss or something, and she guilts about that, until she finally decides to go with what she really wants. So out with the glamor-boy and move on to the man with grease on his hands."

"That sounds very much like the plot of a romantic comedy." Cap realized.

"It does?" Visi denied unconvincingly. "Huh, what a coincidence." She snapped her fingers. "And I've been trying to remember all morning something that I wanted to ask, and I just did. Flaming jerk-boy. You handed him your class schedule just like that. You weren't afraid he'd 'accidentally' burn it up?"

"I have total recall." Cap explained. "So I'd already memorized it before I handed it to him."

"Jeez, is there any part of your genetics they didn't optimize?" Visi asked teasingly as she deliberately flicked her eyes down to where Cap's... waistline... would have been visible were it not blocked from her line of sight by the table top.

"Sometimes I think they missed the part that controls common sense." Cap replied lightly as he fought not to blush, and they both laughed.

"Okay, lunch is about over, so just one more question. Agent Romanov? That sounds like some guy who'd be played by Dolph Lundgren in the movie. So was this SHIELD place multinational, or was he some kind of defector?" Visi probed.

"She." Cap corrected her. "And she was a defector. And as it happens, she was also the person I was referring to when I originally talked to you about tactical synergy because her basic combat style was the same as yours. Stealth, misdirection, then speed and shock. She was a little shorter then you, but about the same muscle mass."

"Huh, no wonder we clicked so well in fights. You'd already practiced the combos. She have powers too?" Visi asked curiously.

"No, just a lot of practice." Cap looked down. "She had a little in common with Coupe as well, if you can imagine that. Mostly in how early her training had started – even earlier in her case - and what kind of training it had been."

"If she had Coupe's kind of early training then her job in this spook show must have been assassin." Visi concluded. "Which if you were her regular partner… uh, exactly what kind of work were you doing?" she asked diffidently.

"Largely counter-terrorism." Cap acknowledged ruefully. "The kind that you didn't do domestically, or with search warrants and judges." He shook his head. "I'm actually a little confused. From my skimming so far history here is the same outline as on my home timeline… same countries, same major historical dates, same names. There's a few differences, but most of them trace to individual events and people unique to my timeline, several of whom I've actually met. But despite all the similarity the international tensions here are so much lower. It sometimes felt like SHIELD was rushing around trying to stop a potential nuclear terrorist this or an international destabilization that practically every week. Here, the worst you've got are those occasional kaiju attacks and they've practically become routine work for superhero teams. I can't figure out why things are so different here."

"Neither can I, but what you mentioned might be another reason why you feel so comparatively relaxed here." Visi said wisely. "You're carrying way less of a workload."

"That's certainly true." Cap agreed. "And speaking of workload…"

"Lunch break's over." Visi agreed, as they stood up and headed to the cash register.

* * * * *
​

"Stop hidin' behind that shield and fight me like a man!" Punch Up roared in this thick brogue.

"Why are we even doing this?" Cap asked exasperatedly.

"If it weren't for your meddlin', then Coupe wouldn't have gotten cut!" Punch Up roared. "And since I can't exactly go downtown and punch the shite out of some feckin' suit what owns the whole company that's keepin' me out of jail, then who's left for me to take it out on 'cept the one man in our office whose actions actually made a difference?" Cap and Punch Up had both gotten a call to go calm down an incipient barfight at Crypto Night – again – and Punch Up had at least helped settle the call first before throwing hands in the alley out back.

"Okay, I'm actually glad you're acknowledging that Blazer and Robert had no choice in the matter." Cap nodded respectfully. "That having been said, if you wanted Coupe to beat out Visi for the cut then maybe you should have concentrated less on hoping that my friend failed and instead helped your friend succeed."

"You arrogant son of a-!" the three-and-a-half-foot tall fighting Irishman roared, coming in low and cocking his fist for a strike directly upwards into Captain America's groin… that fell short when Cap's foot flicked out with precise timing to catch Punch Up just as he stepped into kicking range, but not soon enough for him to have time to react. The kick sent Punch Up stumbling back.

"GODDAMN YOU-" Punch Up roared furiously, circling left and trying a low attack again. Cap easily countered it again, this time with a sweeping leg parry. He took a quick step to close in and threw an elbow strike to the top of Punch Up's bald head, sending the diminutive strongman stumbling again.

"Rrarrrrgh!" he shouted, grabbing the nearby dumpster and throwing it end over end at Cap. Cap rapidly knelt on the ground to brace himself, raised the shield with both arms, and deliberately let the dumpster rebound off the vibranium shield. Aided by his sudden shove upwards just as the dumpster impacted, he sent it bouncing back through the air to land directly on top of Punch Up's head.

"I can do this all day." Cap said testily. "Or I can buy you a drink and let you vent by ranting at me over a glass instead."

Punch Up kicked the dumpster off of him, sending it tumbling to land unsteadily over roughly where it had originally been, and grumbled like a hibernating bear. "And isn't that just the dirtiest maneuver you've pulled on me this whole damn fight, knowin' full well no proper Irishman can turn down an offer by the other fellow to pay for a pint and apologize." He snorted. "Bastard."

"Oh you're not getting an apology." Cap shook his head firmly. "I did my best to help Visi, and you didn't do enough to help Coupe when it counted, and that's on you. And if you want to dispute that, we can go right back to fists."

"You're right." Punch Up exhaled regretfully. "We got too cocky and thought we had it in the bag, so we didn't put in the work that we should. And when we started feelin' the contest get close then we thought dirty tricks and nothin' else could let us get a win. But any fighter knows that's just beggin' to get your teeth pounded in, livin' that way." His shoulders slumped. "Still sucks shite, though. I know she was all cold and stiff to all of you, that she never let on like this was a job she cared about. But that was just her way of presentin'. The lady on the inside wasn't the face she showed the outside, that's just how some people are."

"Yes, it is." Cap agreed soberly, thinking of Natasha. "Maybe she shouldn't have been cut. But Visi shouldn't have been either. Really, no one should have."

"So you already said at the time." Punch Up agreed manfully. "And that wasn't a lie. All right, let's go get that drink."

"Normally I'd say we should clean up the mess we made first… but honestly? The bartender here is rude enough my conscience is clear letting him clean it all up himself. The dumpster's back in place, so he can pick up his trash himself. You should hear what he says about some other customers behind their backs." Cap said disapprovingly.

"Pfft, not surprised at all to hear that he's that sort. " Punch Up snorted. "No proper man with a proper spine would need to call in help this often to keep control in his own bar."

"Well if you only drink for the taste and don't want the super-concentrated stuff to get drunk on, then we don't have to drink here." Cap suggested. "Let's just go find a bottle somewhere and get our own glasses, and we can share it."

"Eh, I'm wise to your tricks, you shifty shifty man." Punch Up grinned. "You just want me to tell you where the good liquor store is-" And then he savagely lashed out without the slightest tensing of a muscle to betray his intention, and even Cap's superhuman reflexes were barely sufficient to let him move enough to take the blow on his inner thigh instead of where it had actually been aimed.

"Agh!" Cap limped painfully, immediately bringing up both of his hands – his shield had been re-slung upon his back – to parry Punch Up's next blow, only to be met with a grin and empty upraised hands instead. "What the hell?"

"The man finally cusses, like a proper man should!" Punch Up said gleefully. "And never in my entire life have I gotten in a dust-up without at least getting one piece of the other fellow before it was over, and I wasn't breakin' that streak now for any money." he continued proudly. "But blood's been drawn on both sides, honor's been satisfied, so now we can go get that drink."

Cap raised one finger frustratedly, before he finally lowered it with a pained smile. "You're just lucky you're not the first Irishman I've served with." he finally said as the two of them walked off together.

"Galway born and bred." Punch Up said proudly. "And don't try to fool me. Ye might not have a trace of the brogue, but there's no way a man what understands properly like you without even bein' told doesn't have at least some of the blood."

"On both sides." Cap admitted. "I was the first generation born on this side of the water. Grew up in a neighborhood where at least half the neighbors were fresh from Ellis Island, just like my folks had been."

"Hah! I knew there was somethin' I liked about yah!" Punch Up laughed, before his manner turned somber. "To tell the truth, I'm just a bit worried about Coupe. She's not gone back to jail, she'd gotten enough credit for time served to keep her probation provided she finds another honest job within the month, but she's just not answerin' her phone. Won't answer me texts either. And I went by her place, but she wasn't there."

"That's not good." Cap agreed. "I'd been hoping that even after she was cut she'd still draw support from her friends."

"Friend." Punch Up corrected. "She wasn't really that close to anyone else on the team. But her and I used to be lovers before we decided to still be friendly, and now-" He shook his head. "If she's gone dark like this then I'm afraid it means that the people she was runnin' from, that she used to work for, might be catchin' up to her. Or that she might be afraid that they are, even if they're not." He muttered. "Hope they're not, anyway."

"If she's legitimately in danger then it doesn't matter if she's an ex-employee, I'm sure Robert will still care anyway. Can you write down everything you know about these people, so we can make sure he gets it?" Cap said.

"You really think he'd give a shite?" Punch Up said wonderingly. "Just because I acknowledge it wasn't his idea doesn't mean I've got the slightest faith that he thought it was a bad idea. And I saw him give her the cut without blinkin' an eye."

"If he showed a single sign of weakness in front of the team, what do you think would happen?" Cap replied. "He's more than experienced enough to know that, and so you only see the face he lets you. What did you just say about some people being that way?"

"Got a point there, I suppose." Punch Up shrugged. "Well, why not. Worst thing that happens is he just uses the paper for arsewipe, at which point shite's no further behind than I already was."

"So, you and our lass Visi." Punch Up asked somewhere around the second glass. Cap and Punch Up had both waited until after work and going off shift before meeting back up as agreed to share that bottle. Neither man was anything but sober, of course, as they both had nigh-invulnerable constitutions, but it was still a good and mellow night to be sitting outside and sharing a friendly drink.

"We're just friends." Cap protested.

"Course you haven't gone farther yet, you've barely known each other a few days." Punch Up said wisely. "But even your just bein' friends with her…" He shook his head wonderingly. "The whole time she's been on the team, Visi's just been the most bitter lass I've ever seen. Always sittin' with her back to the wall or makin' sure she had the drop on you, never actually relaxin' unless she were far enough out of reach. Every word either a jest or a barb, every smile just a mask. Never lettin' herself actually say what she was feelin'." He took another long sip.

"I knew someone like that before." Cap agreed. "Or rather, I knew someone who had been like that, but was only still partly that way by the time I'd first met her. But that was because she'd already met at least one other person she could trust, someone who'd still gone way out on a limb for her when it would have been far easier to make the other call. I don't think Visi ever had anyone like that in her life."

"I very much doubt it." Punch Up agreed. "Not until you came along." He took a deep breath. "So what I suppose what I'm tryin' to say, Captain, is don't fuck it up. Because a person only gets that way after life has kicked the everlivin' shite out of them. And I don't mean the way you and I just did, I mean the way that's just pickin' on those what can't fight you back and then puttin' the boots into 'em good and hard after they're down. A person lives like that long enough, they get like feral cats. Afraid of even those just tryin' to reach out and give the poor thing a little love. So whether or not she's the one for you in the end, or whether or not you go the distance, or whatever the hell, well, that's up to the two of you. But no matter what, you can't… let her down." He trailed off sadly. "I did that once and even with everything I could do to patch it up, it was never entirely good between us again. Be a sin and a shame to see history repeat itself. Best wishes, Captain."

"Thank you." Cap said simply, and topped off Punch Up's glass with the last of the bottle. "I'll do my best."

* * * * *
​

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 10

The champagne cork popped and the expensive champagne bubbled forth, and Steve politely held out his glass to let the sommelier pour it.

"On the house, Captain Rogers." the tuxedo-clad man said. "And with the compliments of the Stork Club."

"Thank you." Steve smiled back at the man and stepped away from the table and began looking around for his date, sipping the glass. The band was playing, the room was full of people laughing and celebrating the end of the war and the defeat of the Axis, and the tall handsome blond man dressed neatly in his class A's smiled – not his PR or his War Bond Tour smile, but a genuinely wide, beaming grin – at several of the men he'd served with. Even Gabriel Jones and Jim Morita were being made welcome here tonight without any rancor, when normally Gabe's skin color and Jim's race would have seen them barred at the door.

"Captain!" James Dugan yelled boisterously at him from a table where he sat with his wife. "Come on over, let me introduce ya to the missus!"

"Ma'am." Steve greeted her, and he traded pleasantries with his first sergeant and his beautiful wife for a minute before moving on with a knowing laugh and a backslap from Dugan. The Howling Commandoes were the finest men Steve Rogers had ever served with, and he was honestly happy that except for poor Bucky they could all be here celebrating their unit's return to the States after V-E Day, but he was still eager to make his date-

"Hey, pal!" Howard Stark came bustling over, his grin as wide as the doors on an aircraft hangar. "Here, give me that." He took the almost-empty champagne glass from Steve's hands. "You'll want your hands free for this!"

"Thank you for arranging all of this, Howard." Steve said earnestly. "Lord knows it would never have fit on the Army's dime, let alone mine."

"Ah, it's just money." Howard waved it off. "It's not important. And I'm sorry we got held up, but last I saw she was just powdering her nose. She'll be along in a minute."

"Thank God." Steve breathed out in relief. "I swear to God, if I'd had to take just one more rain check then I'd have lost my mind."

"It's been a long bumpy road to get here, hasn't it?" Howard agreed. "Been a lot of unplanned detours on the way. But all good things come to those who wait… and hey, there she is!" Howard pointed at the brown-haired woman visible in the distance with her back to them as she drifted around the room searching for Steve, her trim and athletic body looking even more beautiful than usual in her elegant blue dress glittering with brilliant sequins. Seeing the rough-and-tumble scrapper who'd originally won his heart with how unlike a 'proper and conventional' woman she'd been all dolled up in the finest formalwear that Stark's fortune could buy should have been a jarring experience, but somehow it all looked and felt so perfectly right-

"Excuse me, ma'am." Steve said joyfully as he came up behind her. "But I believe you promised me a dance?"

The woman turned around, her adorably sweet little smile sending a lance of happiness into Steve's heart like it always had. "Damn right I did." Invisigal said lovingly.

Steve Roger's eyes snapped awake as he lay there on the bed in his new apartment, his alarm clock beeping mercilessly at him from the bedside table. His breath caught in his throat as he tried to shake off his confusion. For a long instant he didn't know where he was, or why he was no longer in the New York of 1945, or why his promised dance in the Stork Club hadn't been with Peggy- and then his eyes opened wide as horrified realization finally crashed in on him.

"Oh my God."

* * * * *
​

Author's Note: Oh, you thought I was going to give Visi the dream sequence? The one from canon? Well… actually, I was originally going to do that. And then my fingers just started running away with me and somehow this happened instead.

Also, yes, that is indeed a flag-themed blue dress with white sequin stars on it that Dream Invisigal is wearing. Finally worked in the title drop!

Subtle, this was not. But Steve's subconscious apparently decided that the dense motherfucker would never get the message if it wasn't hammered in with a nuclear earth penetrator, and so, he gets that dream.

Story-wise, the timescale of 'Dispatch' gets hinky in the middle game. It's canonical that the game occurs over a period of 'several months' (reference from Robert's speech to the group in episode 7, if you choose the 'Don't Cut Visi' option), but each episode seems to transition tightly from one day to the next. The general assumption is that there's a timeskip or two somewhere in the middle episodes, but nobody can agree on exactly where. So up until now I've had a firm in-game calendar to follow, but from this point the day counter will just wing it as time progresses because the canon timeline is uncertain.

The 'other person Steve knew who'd been that way' is Natasha, of course. Nat's trust issues used to make Fury's look tame, it's just that Clint had already helped fix most of those before Steve was even out of the ice.

The reason international tensions are so much higher in the MCU is because of HYDRA. Zola even explained in TWS that "For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war.", all to make the world so desperate for security that it would sacrifice its freedom. It's not so much that Earth-Dispatch is unrealistically super peaceful as it is that Earth-MCU has been on the brink for a lot longer than anyone there has consciously realized.

As for the rest of this little slice-of-life chapter, again, I have no idea where it all came from. I don't even know how Punch Up even got there! But hey, I think it works, so I'll keep it.