Hi, there! My name is Butch Flowers. I've worked for the division for something like twenty years now, and I'm super pumped for our mission today. After today I get to go on an all-expense paid trip back to the good ol' US on the division's money. Better yet, I'll be going there in the company of none other than Captain America himself, in the flesh! I still remember back when I was little, I used to have the full set of trading cards; this guy was my childhood hero. If only I had them with me, bet I could even get them signed!

Oh, but maybe I should start from the beginning: You see, a couple of months back, fellow agent Carol and I got assigned to a particularly mysterious mission in the UK. We get to do secret agent type stuff all the time, but I'd personally never been to the homeland of James Bond and the like before, so I was very excited. We were supposed to investigate the source of the recent rash of super-science based villains in the isles recently. You see, most of the time, these super-science types? They have to home-grow all their science, right? They know how it works, they know how to use it, and they know how it's best applied.

But all the kiddos running around England with disintegrator guns and freeze rays and lasers and jetpacks, they looked like they carried these spiffy, designer type items. Reminded me of those old toy ray-guns I used to have as a kid. But anyways, they had a level of tech that they really, really weren't supposed to. And to make matter worse, some of them probably didn't even read the manuals, because the tech kept going on the fritz. Dad always used to say, "If you want to grow something right, there's no substitute for getting your own two hands dirty." Guess that extends to science too, huh?

Anyways, Carol and I traced the tech back to the source; turns out a couple of mutants had managed to get their hands on a shipment of Hydra technology. One the up side, my partner and I were able to mop up those thugs lickety-split! On the downside, we now knew we had a Hydra branch to deal with. So we were able to pick up a few leads, and eventually hunted down their main base of operations to an isolated island off the coast of Wales. But you see, Hydra isn't the kind of group you can just charge at, guns blazing, and expect to be done with them. No sirree Bob, you need to have quite a bit of backup if you want to catch these rapscallions.

That's where the Captains come in.

I'd known all about Captain America, of course, but it came as quite the ol' surprise when I met Captain Britain! Oh, and it turns out he prefers to be called Union Jack. Funny, that. It looks like the two have quite the history, stretching all the way back to World War Two. I tell ya, it's not too often that I end up working with people that have more experience than I do! But we'd sorely need it: Hydra works with the goal to prove that the only people who deserve to run society are those strong enough to take it by force. And that's just silly. Be that as it may, it means that only the meanest, toughest soldiers and officers get accepted into their ranks. But that shouldn't mean much to the living symbol of good-ol'-fashioned American determination! We're all set to conduct a raid on the Island, and hopefully dig up whatever secrets Hydra's trying to hide from the boys back home. I'll finish this mission log afterwards. Flowers out!

The quartet sat in the small, black, tarp-covered boat, the inky sky stretching out across the top of the windshield and the pitch-black waves extending in all directions, riding more or less in silence. The red-headed woman in the hard-to-name-shade-of-bluish-green bodysuit leaned forward and tapped on the driver's shoulder. "Butch?"

Butch Flowers, a man in a suit with a blue jacket and slacks glanced back at the woman. "What can I do ya for, Carol?"

Caroline looked at the small radar display on the console. "How much longer?"

The driver shrugged. "I'm chugging right along. Problem is avoiding all the mines, you see. Whole place is just lousy with the little stinkers!" He smiled. "But hey, we're almost through. Shouldn't be too much longer."

"Jolly good," one of the other two passengers quipped. This man was garbed in a stark white bodysuit with black lines outlining a Union Jack motif across the chest. He had neatly trimmed black hair along with a glorious matching mustache. At the moment he had taken an old-fashioned, bolt action rifle with full-length wooden furniture apart, and was carefully reassembling it with utmost care. "It's been far too long since I last shot a Jerry."

"Yeah, Reginald, it has been quite some time since you've fought these guys." The blonde man sitting across from Reginald seemed more on-edge than usual. He was clad in a violet bodysuit with green trim, his fingers tapping nervously on his trademark shield: a golden-hued metallic disk with a honey-comb pattern lining the surface. "I've been keeping track of them since the old days and trust me, they're a lot more than just Nazis with ray-guns now."

Reginald shrugged. "Well, it simply wouldn't be like the good old days if we didn't have some surprises in store for us, now would it, Steve?" His friend only returned a quick nod. The Brit frowned before leaning in a bit closer. "Don't worry, if she's here, we'll find her," he mumbled under his breath.

"And away we go!" Flowers piped from the front of the boat, the radar having cleared considerably. The small boat picked up speed, but not enough to make a noticeable amount of noise.

Caroline looked out the windshield and could see the island, a heavily fortified affair with high cliff-faced capped with smooth, perfectly-straight walls reaching even higher above the waves. Its resemblance to a cartoon-villain's lair would have probably been amusing were it not for the group housed within. She looked back into the boat at their two passengers. "Okay boys, we're now approaching the entry point. Masks on, and prep your grapple gloves, looks like the satellite intel was right. We're going straight up."

Everyone put their various identity-concealing item on: the captains pullet their suits' masks over their faces, Caroline put a gold, reflective domino mask over her eyes, and Flowers pulled a pair of round, silvery shades from his coat and put them on. Then wordlessly, Caroline handed out several pairs of grey gloves out among the operatives.

Flowers pulled the boat up right alongside the cliff-face and dropped the anchor, and pulled the tarp back from the top of the boat, revealing the black, starry sky. "Okey dokey then, who's first?" he asked looking around the boat.

"Is there ever really any doubt?" Reginald touted cheerily before slapping Rogers on the shoulder. The Captain rose from his seat and leapt the small gap between the boat and the cliff, his gloves clinging to the cliff face like it was made out of Velcro. The rest of the team soon followed in short order, slowly and stealthily climbing over first the craggy wall, and then the man-made barrier, slowly but surely reaching the top.

The four lined up just beneath the lip of the wall, everyone needing to wait a few moments for Flowers to catch up. The seasoned agent panted heavily as he took position besides Captain Brit- sorry,Union Jack. "How… do you two…manage?"he asked, half-grinning at the Brit.

"Years of training and talent, dear boy," the man answered. Flowers couldn't help but notice that the small lump indicating Reginald's mustache wiggled beneath his mask when he talked. It was just silly enough to coax his focus away from his aching arms for a moment.

Caroline tucked her feet between her chest and the wall and whispered into a small earpiece so her teammates could hear. "Now, breach on my mark… Mark!" the word had barely escaped her mouth before she kicked off the wall, swinging her legs out and flipping over the top of the wall, landing on her feet with catlike grace. Captain America was next up, not quite as showy as Caroline but still plenty quick in vaulting over the ledge.

Caroline drew a suppressed pistol and put a bullet through the head of a Hydra guard a couple yards away, and the Captain tossed his shield at a guard patrolling the opposite direction, knocking him out and rebounding the shield back to his arm. Union Jack finished the trifecta, pinning the closest guard to the ground, and pressing his rifle across the man's throat until he stopped struggling.

Flowers finished scrambling onto the top of the wall just as the last guard went limp. He stood up straight and dusted his jacket, although he was still breathing heavily. "Hoo boy…" he tugged at his shirt collar, "That'll really take the wind out of your sails." He took his gloves off and stowed them in his jacket, his sweaty hands needing some air.

Without a word between them, the team advanced a little further down the wall until they reached a steel hatch set in the floor. Caroline turned back to the rest of the team as they moved. "It won't be long until those three are missed," she surmised, opening and dropping down the hatch. "We're going to need to press the element of surprise for as long as we have it."

"Got it." Flowers reached inside his jacket and activated a small EM disruptor, a top-of-the-line jamming device that would dissolve even the sturdiest CCTV's data into a static-filled mess. "Surveillance taken care of, ma'am." Hardly a moment after he finished the sentence, a man in a Hydra uniform rounded a corner, further up the hallway. Flowers drew his taser and caught the guard square in the chest, sending him twitching to the ground. The agent reloaded the stun-gun without even breaking his stride.

Captain America stepped over the terrorist like one would a bump in the road. "Any idea where this weapons depot is? It's where we'll be most likely to find whoever's in charge around here."

Union Jack, who'd started lagging behind, returned to the group with a small fold of paper in hand. "That last guard had himself a grunt-level map of the place. I suggest we use that." He handed it over to Caroline. "Whatever's in those blacked-out spots is probably something they wouldn't trust a grunt with. Sounds like an interesting shopping destination, doesn't it?"

"That it does…" The red-haired agent pulled out a small camera and snapped a photo of the map, before taking a small wire and connecting the camera to Flower's shades. "How's that looking, Butch?"

"Mini-map's looking crystal clear, chief!" the agent nodded, the photo of the map appearing as a small map projected in his glasses. "Ready for navigation duty."

"Good." Caroline handed the map back to Reginald. "Flowers and I can take care of the weapons depot, but the Director's going to want to know whatever's in that blackout zone. You'll be visible as soon as you branch off, you two alright with that?"

The Captain nodded, half smiling as his English companion loaded his rifle. "I think we'll be able to manage. Keep in touch." He tapped the side of his head, where an earpiece sat inside his mask.

The agent nodded as she stopped at a metal hatch with a retinal scanner next to it. "Got it. Good luck." Captain and Jack proceeded down the hallway, disappearing around a corner just before Caroline inspected the lock. "Hm… looks to be pretty high-grade." She looked up at the ceiling and spotted a ventilation grate. It was bolted straight to the ceiling, making it nearly impossible to try getting inside. She shook her head and looked at Flowers. "You think they'd have learned by now."

He simply shook his head before grabbing a couple of small, disk-shaped explosives from inside his jacket. "Boy, kids today just don't plan ahead." He tossed them up where they stuck to the hatch, and covered his ears. The charges went off, blowing the grate down, so that a piece of it was hanging down into the hallway. "Here you go, open sesame!"

Caroline nodded before leaping up, grabbing onto the grate and swiftly pulling herself into the vent. As she vanished out of sight, Flowers pulled out a suppressed pistol, just in case. The charges were designed to minimize noise, but they were still explosives. It wouldn't be any stretch to imagine that one or two goons would hear them, then come and investigate.

As a matter of fact, it took maybe a minute for yet another green-and-yellow clad mook to round the corner of the hall and promptly receive a trio of bullets through the chest. A moment later a gloved hand reached around the corner, blind firing a submachine gun. Of course, since you need toaimto actually hit anything, the shots all went wide. Flowers frowned at both the shooter's poor form, and that the racket from his little outburst would be enough to call a good chunk of the base down on their heads!

Almost as if to confirm his suspicions, a klaxon started wailing, and several emergency lights began blinking along the corridor. Flowers dashed down the hallway while the shooter reloaded his now-empty weapon and whipped around the corner, neutralizing the guard with a well-placed shot at point blank. He jogged back to the hatch just as it hissed open, revealing half a dozen unconscious (or possibly dead) bodies and Caroline, who was currently pressing yet another thug's face against the retinal scanner on the other side of the door.

"Come on, we don't have much time now." She tossed the guard to the side and started running down the corridor, Flowers close on her heels.

Meanwhile, Captain America and Union Jack were absolutely wading through Hydra soldiers, who had been swarming them ever since they got out of the jammer's radius. It would seem as though the terrorists wanted to defeat the two costume-clad freedom-fighters as quickly as possible, and for good reason, too!

"Oh, come now, chaps, surely you can fight better than this!" Reginald shouted as he struck a soldier in the chin with the stock of his Mauser with a loud crack. Then he flipped around the rifle and put an expert shot through another man's forehead, before dodging behind his compatriot as a hostile took aim at him.

The soldier's weapon fired a bright blue bolt at the heroes, which Captain America reflected back at the offender with his shield, turning him into a scorched, skeletal figure. "Oh, man, I am so sorry!" the captain hollered. Truth be told, he was half serious.

The two fought through the corridors of the complex until they reached a large antechamber deep in the heart of the black-out zone on their map, as the stream of enemies slowed to a halt.

Cap looked around, not trusting the lull in the fighting for even one second. "Well, what do you make of this?" He gestured to a large steel set of double-doors embossed with a large skull-and-tentacle Hydra emblem.

"Our goal's behind it, obviously." Jack rolled his eyes as he walked up to the door. "You know, for a secret terrorist cell that's lasted for the better half of the century, you'd think they'd be a little more subtle in their base layouts." He walked up to the door, and rapped on it. "Knock knock!"

Almost immediately the doors swung open, unaided, with a mechanical hissing.

The two heroes glanced at one another, before walking through the doors. The duo was on full alert, not willing to take any chances that whatever they'd find here wasn't very mean and very deadly. The room could best be described as a sort of war room, with maps and combat statistics and satellite data feeds all streaming on large monitors suspended from the ceiling. In the center of it all was a large, holographic display projecting a globe.

Cap walked up to the globe, poking one of the red dots speckled across the map. A little red tag popped next to the dot, labeled "Nazca." He squinted at the image. "Looks like whatever they're up to here, they're planning a lot more than just gun running."

Reginald poked a few more lines on other spots on the globe. "Wiltshire, Giza… This one looks to be Korean. Terror targets, perhaps?"

"Close." The two men's eyes darted to where a blonde-haired woman now stood, garbed in an orchid-colored bodysuit with a green cape. She held a large chrome-plated weapon with an orange-glowing muzzle, and was pointing it at the two warriors. "Sorry boys, but I don't think I like you breaking into this house of mine. Now-" She racked the weapon, and the orange glow intensified. "I'm going to have to help you leave."

Captain America raised his hands in a submissive gesture. "It's alright, Brigitta. We don't have to do this." He took a slow, precarious step forward as the gun's barrel glowed. "Just put the gun down, we can help-"

"Help what?" Brigitta screamed, he stance widening a bit. "Help me go back, get arrested, serve a couple decades in prison, only to get out and end up playing second fiddle to 'The Great Captain America?'" The room was completely silent as she stood in place. Then a smile crossed her face. No, not a smile, the kind of sneer that a wolf makes before finishing its prey. "No thank you, I think I have a better idea than giving up my hard-earned status." She slowly walked over to a corner of the room. "Oh, and also, the name's Viper now."

She reached a pair of transparent stasis tube set into the wall, holding a man in a blue bodysuit and a man in a red bodysuit. The pair looked identical, save for their color difference. Viper keyed a set off commands with one hand, using the other to keep the gun trained on the captains. The fluid drained from both tubes, which quickly hissed open, and the two figures gasped to consciousness before collapsing onto the floor.

Viper suppressed a laugh before ordering, in her most authoritative voice: "Red." The man in the red bodysuit looked up at the two soldiers. Viper snapped her fingers with a sneer. "Kill them both."

Red bolted at the duo, but stopped short when Union Jack sent a bullet soaring into his forehead. The Brit chuckled as the red-clad minion fell. "Knock knock."

"Wh-Who'-sthe-ere?" Jack looked back at Red, only to see two identical, red-clad foes rising from the ground.

Reginald simply mumbled "Oh, bleeding hell," before cycling his rifle.

One Red charged at Captain America, screaming "HAIL HYDRA!"

Cap blocked his assailant's strike, before bashing the man's head with his shield. This only succeeded in coaxing another duplicate to fall out of Red One. This dupe lunged at the captain, catching him with a full-bodied tackle in the gut before shouting "IMMORTAL HYDRA!"

Meanwhile Reginald was busy fending off Red Two's blows. He intercepted a punch with the stock of his rifle, before flipping it around and delivering a bone-crushing blow to the hostile's leg. It merely stumbled before yet another duplicate fell out of Red Two. They both said, in unison, "Cut off a limb…"

Then all four, as one, shouted: "AND TWO MORE SHALL TAKE ITS PLACE!"

"Oh, well that won't get bothersome quickly!" Reginald quipped as he pushed his two foes back with his rifle. He dodged a swipe from a Red before rolling away from the two, in an attempt to get a moment to plan some sort of retaliation.

"Well then, if that'll be all…" Viper walked past the two fighting men as more and more Reds fell into existence. "I believe we have to clean up the shit storm your friends are causing. She stepped closer to Blue before twisting the ring on her hand, causing a shimmering golden field to envelop the two of them.

Cap, seeing this, charged through the four Reds blocking his path (spawning four more, incidentally). "NO!" he shouted, as he lunged into the field, a fraction of a second before a golden, honeycombed orb formed around the field and vanished from sight.

Reginald, meanwhile, was now stuck in a room with… 1, 2, 3… nine hostiles, with no way to incapacitate them that wouldn't make more. "Oh… Right…" he glanced between the members of the mob of hostiles before bolting for the door. "Ta, chaps!"

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the compound, Caroline and Flowers had located the next shipment of Hydra tech that was about to be shipped out. It was being loaded onto a large, twin-rotor helicopter, by a bunch of Hydra flunkies that were being protected by a sizeable security detail on a roof-top helipad. Fighting them did not take long.

Flowers heard Caroline shout "On your six!" Running purely on instinct he ducked under a blue-colored blast from a Hydra weapon before putting a bullet through the foes hand, then his chest. He scooted up to the hostile and held him by the neck between himself and a few more Hydra mooks. He put them on the ground with a flurry of glacks!

Caroline had disarmed her own bunch of assailants, and deftly bent backwards to avoid a meaty punch from one of them. She put her hands on the ground behind her head, flipped back, and brought her foot up into the offender's chin, before using her momentum to springboard off the floor. She sailed above the mook behind her and folded her legs before clamping them around his head, and then snapped his neck with a twist of her hips. Then she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed off, before kicking the man's limp form into the last remaining mook.

She put a bullet through his head as she walked over him, towards where Flowers was just dropping his human shield. The older agent was panting, heavily, and clutching his side. "You get hit?" she asked with all the finesse of a hammer.

"Hm? Oh no, I'm a-okay, chief!" the older agent smiled as he started walking towards the now-unused helicopter. Now that they'd prevented the shipment, it was up to them to determine what was inside. "Besides, what else could happen? It's just cataloguing and exfil now, right?"

Before Flowers could even finish his sentence a golden, honey-colored orb appeared between him and the chopper. It hovered and hummed for a few moments before vanishing, spitting out Captain America, about three men dressed in blue, and a woman in an orchid bodysuit with a torn green cape. The latter glanced at the two agents before growling. "Are you fucking serious?" She punched in something quickly on one of her bracers, prompting a mighty shudder from the ground, before turning to the blue trio. "Blue! Take care of the baselines, NOW!"

The three Blues came charging at Butch and Caroline, all loading up punches before arrival. To kick things off, the male agent juked to the side before blasting his foe in the stomach with a quick-drawn pistol. When this made a duplicate, he punched the copy in the chin, breaking it and spawning yet another copy. "Oh, fiddlesticks!" He ducked back, dodging several blows and taking a good hit to the gut. Flowers staggered for a moment before leaping back from the Blues and retrieving some demolition disks from his jacket. "I've got presents, fellas!" He tossed them and stuck all three duplicates, vanishing them in a large cloud of smoke.

He glanced over at Caroline, who was fighting something like eight Blues at the moment. Well, guess it's time to help the lady out!

"Ow! 'nade spamming noob!" Butch glanced back at the voice, and saw no less than six Blues standing on the blackened patch when the disks had gone off.Oh, deary me!

Meanwhile, Caroline was getting quite the workout, fighting the eight foes around her. She flipped and dodged and attacked whenever she got the chance, trying to find a way to incapacitate the Blues that wouldn't trigger the duplication process. She tried a strike to the temple. Nope, dupe. She grabbed one of their arms and bent it in such a way that she shattered bones. Nope, dupe. She tried pain stimulus, drop-kicking one in the solar plexus. Nope, two dupes. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Butch catch one of his dupes with a taser, bringing the foe to the ground…without it duplicating.

"Butch! Looks like the dupes are impact driven! Keep tasing them!" she shouted, before quickly pressing a button on each of her wrist-gauntlets. A blue electrical arc began jumping between her fingers, and she put them to use with almost mechanical efficiency. She grabbed each of the dupes with only enough force to get a good grip, using each of them to swing out of range of their brethren's attacks while also stunning them.

Standing over the pile of blue figures, and starting to feel a little worn out, she looked over at Flowers. "How're you holding up, Butch?"

The agent, with all of his duplicates dealt with, offered a weak thumbs-up. Then he put his hands on his knees in yet another attempt to catch his breath. "Say…" He breathed, before looking at where Cap and Viper were fighting. "Where's Union Jack?"

Almost as if summoned, the white-clad hero burst from the stairwell to the helipad, being chased by a pack of red-wearing foes. "Um, a little hand here, gents?" he hollered as he ran.

Captain America had managed to disable Viper's weapon, sliced in half with his shield. Now the two were locked in a heated battle of martial skill. Not a word was spoken between the two. It wasn't necessary.

Viper came at Cap with a flying kick, striking him in the star on his chest. She huffed in disapproval and followed up with a right hook that Cap caught in his palm. He shook his head, a sad look on his face, and pulled her closer before bashing her with his shield and the extra momentum. She ducked beneath his follow-up kick, and grabbed his leg before flipping him onto the ground, belly-up.

She drew a knife, fire in her eyes, and tried to bring it down upon the star-spangled hero. He rolled out of the way, her knife shattering on impact with the concrete. The captain heard Caroline make a call over the radio, but he didn't register her words. He could swear the air had gotten thinner, but perhaps that was just nerves. He sprang back up on his feed and blocked an armor-clad fist with his shield, only to have his legs pulled from under him be a sweeping kick.

Viper smiled at the turn of events, and grabbed the captain by the neck as he fell. She'd put enough force in the grab to push his throat inwards a bit, and the captain saw stars. By the time he regained awareness, she was holding him up by the throat with both hands, and over the edge of the helipad. He realized that it hadn't been just nerves, the air really had gotten thinner! The island base wasn't on an island anymore, it was a floating castle!

He couldn't even see the waves in the distance beneath him. He looked back at Viper, wishing it could have ended differently. He looked into her eyes. All the usual was there. The fire, the animosity, the ambition, the resentment… but there was something else too. Something familiar. Something he hadn't seen in over seven decades. It brought back memories of home, back before "home" became a prison… In a strange way, the fact that even a shred of that had somehow survived made it a little more bearable.

Captain America closed his eyes. He heard her say, nearly a whisper: "I am… sorry, Alfonse."

And then… then… there was light. And sound. And a rumbling in the ground that forced Viper to throw both herself and her captive to the ground, away from the ledge. Cap's eyes shot open, and in the distance he saw a large, angular shape emerge from the clouds. Running lights and signal lights and even runway lights dotted to life on the vessel, a particular strip of them revealing a name: Mother of Invention. Viper sat on the ground, awestruck at the giant aerial ship. Then, slowly, so as to not draw any attention to it, she twisted her ring.

The captain didn't notice until it was too late, the golden orb already formed. Then he bowed his head and retrieved his shield, as a V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor approached the helipad, and was laying down a dense, sonic barrage. He'd witnessed the weapons before; the MPs usually used them to quell riots in less stable regions. The duplicates fell to the ground, clutching their ears, and one by one they all crawled back together, which seemed to restore them from their incapacitated state, but only for a moment. Soon, there was only a Red and a Blue, and the other three heroes were quick to arrest them.

The Osprey landed, a voice sounding off from a megaphone. "Good evenin', folks, this is your hostile neighborhood chauffeur, 4-7-9-R. Please sit down, shut up, and don't whine about the ride." Cap took a seat next to Reginald, and across from Flowers in the cramped dropship. The blue agent almost asked the American hero a question, but he held it in. It could wait until the end of the trip.

Alfonse Jaeger, the German immigrant, a man who'd been a beacon for his American home for almost as long as he'd had it, couldn't help but half-smile. He'd seen it. That remorseful glint in her eye. It had managed to survive after nearly seventy three years now. If that wasn't proof that his sister could be saved, nothing was.