//------------------------------// // Steve Rogers // Story: Six wishes for six elements // by Malcolm Merlyn //------------------------------// "I am certain I will surprise many of you when I tell you this, but I am actually 96 years old." Steve said as he begun his story. "It all started I think in 1942 when I tried to enlist in the military. At the time, I was 24 at the time and just your average beanpole with a ton of health problems. As a result, this made it so I couldn't enlist." "Why did you want to fight?" Armin asked. "Similar reasons to you. While the Nazis didn't exactly kill my family or burn my hometown down, my best friend, Bucky had enlisted to the military to go overseas to fight the Germans. Oh... everyone knows who the Nazis are... right?" Sanya didn't. Neither did Armin. "Well to make a long story short, they were people who were attempting to take over the world at the time and committing various atrocities overseas. The price of freedom is high... but it was something we all had to be willing to pay. Thankfully, a great man by the name of Dr. Abraham Erskin wanted to give me a chance to fight. He had devised a serum that would create an army of super-soldiers. I would be the first one." The memories came back now. The clapping, the cheering the congratulations, and the new feeling of stepping in to a powerful body that could lift two tons, run at 30 miles per hour and tear a man in half if he so much as wanted to. And then... "Erskin never got the things he had deserved. The very moment I became enhanced was the same moment he was killed. By a HYDRA agent." "Hydra? As in the monster of ancient greek myth?" Raynor asked. "Yes. That's their... inspiration. If I recall correctly, Hydra is very fond of their phrase "cut off one head, two more shall grow to take it's place". At the time, HYDRA was a SS division that researched weapons for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Their developments would soon grow to be a threat to the entire world. We had to stop them." He took a shot of hard liquor this time. The memories... the memories... too bad all the liquor in the world wouldn't make them go away. Why are they made of apples anyways? "I don't exactly get PTSD. We may have given HYDRA and the Nazis the boot but it wasn't without losses. I lost many friends along with seventy years of life in the second world war. I was awoken later only to find that there were still more battles to go. My hometown, New York was almost flattened by an alien invasion. Two years after that, I got to find out that HYDRA really did live up to it's name and had seeded itself in SHIELD, the very organization that I had worked for to stop them. But in the end... the price for freedom... it was paid." "Can you tell me more about HYDRA?" Slade asked. "Does it stand for anything?" "It stands for tyranny and oppression. The things that I've sworn to fight." Steve replied. "You... a soldier? Still?" "You can bet your good eye that I am. I'll serve my people and country till my last breath." Slade said nothing as he sat back in his chair, toying with his ballistic staff. "So... how did you get here?" Sanya asked as she bit into an apple. "Well... I can't go into full detail or I'd have to kill all of you, but to make a long story short, I was to help move a shipment of "volatile and dangerous" resources. Of course, they never told me "volatile and dangerous" meant so volatile that me starting the truck would make set them off. I didn't notice the purple light until it was too late, and then I found myself in the forest and heard the shouting and met those two. Armin over there was having some trouble with a snake... this thing was huge! I've seen boas that are really big but this... it took the cake! But anyways, after we killed the snake and gave ourselves some "introductions" Slade told the two of us that he had met the locals or your people... I mean ponies. That aside, he mentioned that he overheard the conversations of two guards about another human being in the castle. Being Mr. Assumption, he assumed that they were holding him or her prisoner or something along those lines." "Well... there wasn't just one human, there was four. Sanya and Jim were here first I believe..." Twilight recalled. "And then Armin and Medic. You two were just late to the party." "The doctor over there is the reason I am not in a wheelchair or on a hospital bed." Jim said as he recalled his diagnosis. Numerous cracked ribs, a minor concussion and a sprained ankle. "Thanks." "Ja... Herr Rogers, can you please continue?" "Of course. Anyways, so we get to the part where Slade thought going across a bridge that was probably older than me was a good idea which ends with Armin almost falling to his death. After that, you can see why it was pretty hard to agree on anything when he made the dumb choice of almost killing someone." "Hey... I actually thought that it would..." "No gives a damn about what you thought. Maybe next time you get to be the testing dummy... anyways... so after that, we did come to the agreement that we should have at least take a look at who was being held at the castle. So we hitched on a train and made our way through the city when it was dark. That was when we broke in and..." "I have to say... how did you manage to take out at least twenty members of the royal guards without anyone noticing?" "We've had plenty of practice." Slade said. "Oh yeah... tell whomever is in charge of the royal guard that I applaud their tactical intelligence of being on par with a potato, and tell whomever trains these warhorses of yours that they are worse than low-budget mall cops and have no business defending anything." "Gee, my brother will definitely be glad to hear that..." Twilight said as she rolled her eyes. "But Steve, you were..." "Oh yes. Right. We checked the dungeons to find that there was no one there so we decided to go check on the upper floors. That was when we ran into Sanya... yeah..." "Sorry kid. I just get a little bit too into my job sometimes." Slade interrupted as he smiled disarmingly. Well. His "disarming" smile looked like the same facial expression of what a shark may have when it finds a lone fish. Said "smile" made Sanya almost want to crawl underneath the nearest place to hide. "It's okay... it didn't hurt..." Sanya lied semi-audibly. In truth, she still felt like she broke every bone in her body. "I hope I didn't hurt you..." "Of course not." Slade lied back. "Though that was a good punch. Shattered the steel chest plate." (And felt like she shattered a rib.) "So that's pretty much how it ends. Oh Slade... if it didn't hurt... why did you hit back?" "I'll call it a few love taps to the head." "And she fell unconscious too... huh..." Steve grinned wolfishly. At this distance, he could almost feel Slade fume. "Yeah...yeah... your outfit is still ridiculous." Slade grumbled back as he took a drink of hard liquor. The only thought on his mind was why the hell everything was made from apples. This comment was of course, coming from the guy who was wearing Kevlar underneath metal and had something that looked almost like a hockey mask. "So... Slade... why don't you go?" "It's really nothing... just another average work day..." "I have a feeling your "average" work day is going to be a lot like my "average" work day." Raynor said. "C'mon pal, my average day involves me making things explode and stealing alien artifacts. What's your average work day?" "Alright. Alright. Well..."