A/N: I wasn't going to do it... until I ended up doing it, so: the characters no one recognizes with the military bearing are mine, having a very long trip home from another AU ala Sliders as a matter of team bonding. That enough explanation? Okay. Onward.


Steve was still staring at the door a minute later when that same woman joined him in the corridor with a sigh and shut the door behind her. "Sorry."

He frowned at her. "For what?"

"Accusing you of moping around when you actually would have had every right to be moping, sir." She formally held out a hand expectantly. "My name is Ranko Johnson, Captain, and I apologize for not treating you with the respect that you're due. I threw you out because I've got two teammates doing something very delicate and it can go screwy if not handled properly. One of them is fresh off of a vacation leave for stress, and it was best to take precautions."

"Oh." He hesitantly shook her hand, then let go and she leaned against the wall with her arms crossed across her chest. "So... who are you, exactly?" And what was with the red streaks in her blonde hair? They looked almost natural.

She smiled. "United Earth Space Navy... so not from around here, that it's not even funny. Can I call you Steve, Captain?"

He nodded, not sure what to make of her answer. United Earth... what? "Yes. What are they doing in there?"

"Diagnosing your friend. Given what he's been through, letting Elsie read him was pushing it. Is pushing it, and I might put her on monitor duty after."

Steve glanced toward the door. "Diagnosing him for what?"

Ranko sighed. "To help the medical team figure out how best to help him. The first step for that? Layers of coding and how many. Once you know that... I won't say it's easy, but it's easier than doing it blind."

"Oh. Really?"

"Really. And..." She looked at him thoughtfully, then pulled a digital camera from her pocket and handed it to him. "Happy birthday, Steve."

He frowned down at the camera, frowned at her again. "How do you know that it's my birthday?"

She smiled again. "We were at a party by accident in Brooklyn an hour ago. Before I found out where we were, I took some pictures for the heck of it. Mom would have my head if I came back with stories again, but no pictures to show for it, so..."

Steve glanced at his watch, noted the time difference while also wondering how she could have been in Brooklyn an hour ago... "Oh, right. Five hour time difference."

"Just look at the pictures, would you?"

"Impatient?"

"Not really."

He chuckled and fiddled with the camera until he figured out who to turn the memory on, on the back viewing panel, and... "What's Tony doing there?"

"I'm really not the person to ask, Steve. Also, of the two birthday parties I've ended up at by accident lately, I think I liked yours more."

"How so?"

"Yours isn't taking place at an alternate reality equivalent of Chuck E. Cheese."

He frowned and looked up from the pictures at her. "Huh?"

Ranko rolled her eyes at him. "Sometimes, I manage to forget how behind a person gets when they miss seventy years. Did no one drag you to one of those yet? Shame on them. Seriously." She held out a hand. "Give me your catch-up note book right now, there's some things you need to add." He continued to frown, but did so, and she spent a few minutes writing in it while he browsed through pictures before coming across one that made him blink.

"Is this... Chewbacca?"

Ranko looked up, smiled. "Sure is. You'd like him."

"But-"

"Oh the places you go if you give people emergency distress beacons..." She wrote one more thing, then handed the small note book back to him, and plucked the camera from his hands. Ranko searched through pictures, then showed him one... of a dancing, puppet Ewok. "And this is why I liked the park more."

"Right." Steve looked through his catch-up notebook to discover that she'd filled seven or eight pages with things, including a bunch of television series, and a book by a Douglas Adams... "This is a lot. And I've seen The Princess Bride."

"Then you know to watch out for the six-fingered man. No matter what said person might look like."

"Um... yes?"

"Good. And never start a land war in Asia, either."

He paused. "Are you really giving me wisdom based on that movie?"

"Sure." She smirked. "You and your Avengers teammates destroyed an airport fighting each other, just so you could get to Siberia to stop a maniac. If my throwing shade at you with pop culture references makes you think before you act next time, then I'll have done my job. With all due respect, Captain."

"How do you-"

"I'm from another dimension. Things are different there, and we got invaded twenty some-odd years ago by giant shape-shifting spiders instead of an evil purple man bent on universal destruction." She shook her head at him. "And that's all I can say on the matter, because the last time we intervened in someone else's problems, my teammate fought a drugged teen into submission, got full-body aches and a concussion for his trouble, and a fairy empress got mad at us. Fix your own interpersonal problems, because the badness on the way is worse. Much worse."

Steve blinked at her in surprise. "An evil purple man?"

"Probably. In your reality, he might be orange instead. Does it matter? Not really."

The door opened, forestalling him from asking any other questions, and another woman, this one with gold piping on her sleeves, stepped out and eyed the two of them suspiciously. "You didn't tell him about the purple man, did you?"

"Not directly, no. And it depends on which one you mean, Savage. There are two."

"Uh-huh... got the answer for the thing. Twelve. Which is better than Chester's diagnosis, plus by now, Captain Rogers's boy in there has mostly come back to himself, even if he is still triggerable." Savage glanced at Steve. "On the good side of this, it'll take less time, and he probably won't end up with a flower fixation."

Steve frowned again. "A what?"

"Long story, but basically, we had a programmable assassin at home, who tried to kill our grandfather. He failed, and got deprogrammed... badly. But at least they learned things in case they ever have to do it again. Which is good for your friend in there, because we have a treatment plan for you... or rather, for the medical team, since you doing it makes no sense." Savage paused, looked at him appraisingly. "So, really, Captain, sir... Happy birthday."

Steve stared at them both, startled. "You're serious? Bucky's going to get deprogrammed?"

"And hate every minute of said process, yes," Savage told him. "Some of it, he'll have to sleep through, and some... he'll be triggered into passing out, because there's twelve layers of coding. Chester had fifty, and no actual life before he was brainwashed. It's a wonder that he only argues with plants on a bad day."

"No need to scare him with worst case scenarios, Savage," Ranko told her.

"You're the one who told him about evil, purple megalomaniacs. Glass houses."

"Touché." Ranko glanced at Steve again, smiled. "So who was that nice Mr. Nettleton at the party? On the young side, wearing an outfit that just screams 'I'm undercover, don't notice me!'?"

"Bucky's grandnephew, Mason," Steve answered. "And he is undercover, just not with his own family."

"Ah. Do you trust him?"

"Sure. Why?"

"Have you and your in-exile team members written your reports yet for Berlin, Liepzig, The Raft, and Siberia?"

"Weeks ago. Seriously, why?"

Ranko's smile got bigger. "Because we are going back to Brooklyn shortly, to meet up with the rest of our team and leave, and they've probably had him so distracted he's kept them company all afternoon. Go get 'em."

He did.


When Rebecca finally did set her eyes on Mason again, they were packing up the left-over food and the picnic blankets, and Daniel and Michael were getting the sign down. She watched him for a moment as he approached with a dazed expression on his face and a thick folder under one arm. "Are you all right?"

"Fine. I think. And I have to convince Lucinda to send an anonymous diplomatic package to the President. Which... fine. This day was going to be odd no matter what."

"An anonymous what?"

He handed her the folder. "Don't ask how I got it. I'm not sure I can explain that. I don't quite understand, myself."

She stared down at the Avengers seal on the front of the folder. "Right."

"And for some reason, I got the advice to drag both Steve and Uncle James to Chuck E. Cheese when this situation finally does get solved..."


Ten weeks post the Battle of Liepzig-Halle Airport...


Tony was in the workshop when Pepper came looking for him, chatting via a Skype call with a pair of men she'd not met before while he fiddled with... "Tony, is that an arm?"

Tony turned and frowned at her. "Yes."

She came closer and looked at it closer, frowning. "That... is this...?"

"It's Barnes's prosthetic, yes."

"Why are you-"

He nodded to the two men watching them with matching smirks. "I had questions, wanted a medical opinion, Elley's the best guy I know for medical things that I just can't ask anyone else, and the other likes mechanical things. Wave to Pepper, Elley."

Elley waved. "Hello."

Pepper smiled. "Elley?"

"They're from Nebraska."

"They don't look like they're from Nebraska, Tony."

The other guy chuckled. "Nebraska? They have Reindeer Meat Soup there, too?"

Pepper laughed. "Corn. And you are?"

"Michil."

"Hello Mr. Michil and Mr. Elley. So what are you discussing?"

Tony motioned to the arm. "How this thing works when attached to a person. Elley thinks there's a fair amount of pain involved. Michil thinks there's underlying structural reinforcement."

"There would have to be," Michil put in. "Based on how you saw it being used."

Pepper frowned. "So..."

"So we're figuring it out," Tony told her with a pained smile. "I'm even considering introducing both of them to Rebecca."

Elley laughed. "More people? Stark!"

"What? You love medicine, she loves medicine... you'd probably talk for hours and forget everybody else. Besides, it would be good practice for your English."

Elley looked at Pepper from the computer screen. "Considering teaching him Yakut. Make him practice."

Pepper blinked, surprised. "Yakut? So... not Nebraska."

"No. Maybe visit someday? Is nice?"

Pepper decided she liked the two nice men from not-Nebraska.


A/N: There's a Chuck E. Cheese in Brooklyn, according the Google. (It's not the oddest thing I've ever looked up for a story, but it is one of the funnier.)