Cap was walking down a Manhattan street along the perimeter when a bright light hit him. What the hell. He sensed danger. And nothing conventional. He called his shield to his arm. He then let his angelic senses guide his hand.
A metallic object crashed against the shield. Cap flipped back and landed in a crouch, shield protectively held before him. He looked over its circular top.
"Skull." Red skull held a magical sword and laughed. "Yes Captain." Cap looked around. They were still on the street; but were in some kind of pocket dimension. Cap slowly stood. "You wanna do this now?" Skull rested his sword against a shoulder. "Do you have somewhere better to be?" "You're gonna hit the civvies again." "You call them that; but we know what you really wanna call them. You can just say it…" "I'm not a fan of them. I'll gladly admit that. But I don't want them gone…" "unless you have to…" "true. But Wakanda is helping. Most will go. There's no need for genocide or anything as extreme."
Skull pointed his sword tip at him. "But that's exactly the point isn't it? You would do it if you had to." "As a last resort yes. But hydra and the Nazis did it readily." "Yes we would. But we never denied what we were; what we wanted to be. That was never the issue…"
Skull lunged at him. Shield and sword clashed together. Skull unleashed a series of speedy and fancy moves. As old cap it would have been hard to evade them all. Even as an angel he could do it much better but it was still challenging. The demon Mephisto had really made skull a devil's deal he couldn't refuse. Then again they were all devils anyway.
Skull went on offense. Cap maintained his defensive posture against skull's well placed strike attempts. Cap would go on offense eventually; when the ideal moment presented itself. Not yet Steve. Wait for it.
It came. Skull overextended himself. Cap spun around skull's stabbing blade and sent a solid punch to skull's jaw to stagger him; he then followed up with a quick back fist strike to him with his shield. This knocked skull to a knee. Cap moved in…
"You wanted the Japanese interned…" cap stopped. Skull chuckled. "You wanted the bombs dropped. I read the files Captain. I read where you stood on those views. And that was during the war." "Your point?" "Is that you and I aren't all that different after all…"
Cap readied to strike skull but another bright flash of light hit cap and blinded him again. When it was gone he was back on the same street. He looked for skull; waiting for him to strike again. But nothing happened. Nobody came. What the hell is going on here.
Then he saw it. There were bodies everywhere. Black bodies mostly. There hadn't been that many bodies not that long ago. What just happened. Cap reached out with his power. Time had past… he checked his watch.
A week had gone by… what? That fight was only a few minutes at that. Skull did something while I was in there with him… what did he do?
"Steve…" "Sharon." She ran into his arms. "Thank god. We feared the worst." "Sharon; what happened." She sighed and bowed her head. She then met his eyes. "All black Americans are dead Steve."
"What're you talking about?" "It happened right after you left to fight the skull. It was some kind of massive temporal energy distortion. Anyway, blacks everywhere in America started dropping dead. Men women children. All of them." "How?" "A virus of some kind. A magical virus combination. Totally devastating. And after it happened, everyone on the enemy side just pulled back into the shadows again."
Cap moved over slowly to a car and rested against it. He looked at the rotting black bodies around him. "Red skull and Mephisto did this…" "that's our theory too." "The Wakandans?" "They're fine; as is Africa. But all blacks in the western world are all dead. Most died within a few days."
"Fury's gone too." "Yeah. Hill's acting director now."
Strangely enough their mission had been accomplished… "the homeland?" "Stable for now. It seems that hydra did the deed." "They want a white America too." "Maybe. But they still wanna rule it too." He nodded. Order, not freedom, would always be their endgame. And order really meant tyranny. Regardless of their racial preferences that would never change.
Skull drew me into that fight as a distraction. Because he knew I'd always want him dead more than anyone else.
In the end they had to keep moving forward. Never backward. Just like d day... Just like d day. He took Sharon's hand. They just stood there for a long while.