Superman tapped his fingers onto the table, and Cap could tell that he was getting impatient.

Thor had called for a meeting with the entire Vanguard regarding the matter of Surtur, and everyone had come – in the exact same seating arrangement they were in during the meeting that was interrupted by the Altantean invasion -….with the exception of Hank Pym and Barry Allen.

"Sorry, guys," Wasp said, looking down at the table. "Hank's not answering his phone. And he won't respond to our Vanguard earpieces, either."

Thor slammed Mjolnir onto the roundtable. "Ant-Man needs to show up as soon as any human possibly can! I want the entire Vanguard to hear this! And so does Flash!"

"Well, you know how Barry is, Thor," Wonder Woman said, placing her hand on his arm. "Give him like another minute."

It turned out they only needed to give him a few more seconds, because it took that long for the teleporter to be heard and for Barry to super speed towards the roundtable, taking his seat in-between Hal and Cap. "Sorry I'm late."

"Well," Superman said with a tint of lamentation in his voice. "For once, you're not the last person to show up."

Barry looked around, and noticed that Hank was not with them. Cap was now getting a little worried; but at the very least, he thought, Hank showing up would mean no argument between him and Hal.

"Okay, look, we have Hank's girlfriend here," Hal pointed out, his hand extended towards Wasp's direction. "She can just brief him on what we discussed here. With all due respect, Superman, aren't we wasting valuable time?"

Superman cleared his throat. "Yes, Hal, I agree with you, but…."

"But it is best for every single Vanguardian to sit here at this roundtable and listen to my warnings on Surtur!" Thor yelled out.

"…Thor is complicating things, Hal."

Hal shook his head. "Well, Hank clearly doesn't give a shit, so leave him to his little playground of a lab -"

"Do NOT refer to my lab with any correlations to playgrounds!" Hank suddenly shouted out…but no one could see him. No one had any idea where he was…until Hal's chin jerked up, as if someone had just landed an uppercut upon him.

Hal cupped his own chin, a look of disbelief painted onto his face. "What in the hell was that?!" he screamed, and now Cap's initial reassurance that at least there would be no fighting was now tarnished, as he knew things were about to get ugly.

Hal immediately shot a look towards Wasp. "Jan, just what the hell is Hank up to?"

"How many times do I have to tell you guys? I've been kept in the dark!"

It was then that Hank grew to the size of ant, and he was glaring right at Hal.

"What is this about, Hank?!" Carol shouted out, and Cap could see that she was beginning to get irritated with whatever Hank was up to. And he couldn't blame her; he wanted some answers himself.

"….I was trying out a new experiment. Trying to see how small I can possibly make myself. Today, I was the size of an amoeba, which is a new record."

Wasp rolled her eyes. "Yeah, good for you, honey, but did you have to do this here?"

"I wanted to test this out in a room full of people, to see if anyone would notice me."

Cap looked over to see Superman, and he saw a face of anger that he had never seen painted onto the Man of Steel before. "Hank, you and I will be having a little talk after the meeting today."

Hank had no response. All he did was take his seat next to Wasp, and Thor began to go on about the nature of Surtur. Cap did try his best to listen, but he couldn't help but think about Hank Pym as he did so. The dude had come off to him as, for lack of a better term….a dick. And this stint made him wonder why Superman didn't call a vote to decide if Hank should even be allowed on the Vanguard of Justice anymore…but Cap himself wasn't the leader, so he wouldn't question the Man of Steel's judgment.

Though it looked like Hank was on thin ice anyway…

Cap's feelings about Hank being right on the line were proven correct after the meeting. By this point, everyone had left except for him, J'onn, Banner, Wasp, and Zatanna, not counting Superman and Hank who were still in the meeting room. Cap was just walking by the meeting room, and though its doors were closed, he decided to press his ear against them, just out of some strange curiosity about the whole thing.

"Hank, your attitude lately has become more and more intolerable!" Superman shouted out, and Cap almost jumped in surprise at the anger in his voice.

"Clark, can you stop talking to me like I'm some high school bad boy?!" Hank yelled back in protest.

"Hank, I understand that you are an adult. I understand that you have your own life and your own agenda to complete. But what I don't understand is why you felt the need to carry out this little experiment in the middle of a Vanguard meeting! That is one of the worst possible places you could've conducted it! And let alone that, you decked Hal right in the chin!"

'Well…damn,' Cap thought to himself.

"Alright, look, Hank. I know you and Hal don't like each other! Neither of you are subtle about it, and I also know that Hal himself can sometimes be the aggressor. But regardless of what you personally think of his intellect, at least he knows not to pull this nonsense at a meeting for the Vanguard of Justice! I swear to God, Hank, I'm just about had it up to here with you! If you pull one more incident like this, I'm gonna call for a vote on whether you shall be allowed to stay in the Vanguard."

"Right, right…" was all Hank said in response.

After a few seconds of silence, Cap felt that he should try to walk away, to make it seem like he wasn't eavesdropping. And sure enough, just a few seconds after he began to walk away, Superman and Hank both came out of the room, with the latter sporting a rather dirty look and the former just looking displeased.

Superman flew away, and Hank just stood there, looking down at the ground for a few moments. Then he pressed the center of his utility belt and shrank down, escaping the sight of Captain America.

Cap let out a 'hmm', not sure how else to react to Hank's predicament.

He then heard Zatanna letting out a chuckle, and turned to his right to see her walking by, with Wasp shrunken down and sitting on her shoulder.

"Oh, no they didn't!" Wasp shouted out, beginning to laugh herself.

"Oh, but they did, Janet. They truly thought that they were just going to see some generic white rabbit, so imagine their surprise when an Indian Rhinoceros came out of my hat."

"That must've been one heck of a show, Zatanna!"

Zatanna laughed again. "Oh, it was, Jan."

"You are the best at magic!"

"It just takes years of practice."

Then they both stopped when they took a look at Cap, and then looked at the walls that contained the Vanguard meeting room, evidently noting the lack of shouting.

"So is the good ol' Last Son of Krypton done chewing out my boyfriend?" Wasp asked, though she didn't seem angry or upset like Cap figured she'd be.

"…Yeah, they just got done. Hank just stood there silent before shrinking down and leaving somewhere."

Wasp let out a sigh. "That's typical of him. He's probably off doing yet another experiment of his. That's all he ever seems to care about sometimes!"

Zatanna began to very gently stroke Wasp's tiny leg with her thumb as the later activated her ear comm and began shouting out for Hank, and she just looked down at the ground. "Yeah, Hank is a real handful. Both on a team, and as Jan here can attest to, in a relationship."

Cap simply nodded his head, unsure of how else to react. "That…I'm sorry to hear that about Hank."

Then suddenly, Hank grew back to normal size, and stood directly behind Zatanna. "Well, come on! My research is very important to me!"

Wasp flew off of Zatanna's shoulder and grew back into normal size as well. "Well, Hank, if you could just once seem connected to the real world, that would be great!"

"Oh, here we go again, Janet! How many times do I have to explain how important this research is to me?!"

"Well, Hank, how many times do I have to tell you to engage with other people just once in your life?!"

Hank let out a very loud sigh of exasperation and began making motions with his hands. "Well, I just –"

But Wasp did not let him finish. "And you could at least be nicer to everyone else, including Hal?"

"Hal Jordan is a glory hound who makes me lose respect for the Air Force every time he opens his mouth!"

"He wouldn't have gotten in the Air Force, or even just be a pilot in general, if he was as stupid as you treat him as!"

Cap back to step back a little. He was not afraid….just uncomfortable. He really wished he wasn't here right now. He would rather have been anywhere else but here. And he could tell that Zatanna was feeling the same way.

Then she nudged him. "Let's just leave them be," She whispered to him. "I know somewhere we can go."

"That would be fantastic."

Five minutes later, they were in Keystone City, Kansas, walking around. Zatanna had teleported them there with her magical powers, and Cap felt odd being here in the Midwest when just a few minutes ago he was in New York City. She had also changed his clothes with her powers, so now he was in civilian attire, and he had his hands in a brown leather jacket.

"So, I have to ask," Cap whispered to Zatanna, not wanting to be too loud since they were in public. "Just…what is Hank's deal to begin with? First off, why does he hate Hal so much?"

"To be honest, Steve…I'm not even entirely sure anymore. I just remember coming to the Tower one day and suddenly seeing those two ripping each other's heads off. Carol told me that Hal was making some jokes about the whole idea behind Ant-Man, and okay, that's jerky, but Hank should just get over it."

Cap sighed. "Right, right….and he and Jan don't seem to have the best relationship…"

Zatanna shook her head. "No, they don't. Janet and I have gotten pretty close, since everyone else is either hard to talk to or just have their own special groupings, and man, she always complains about Hank. I usually take her out to eat – my treat – to lift her spirits, but Hank just keeps on being an asshole."

"Asshole sounds about right, Zatanna." Now that Cap had his questions answered about Hank, now he felt he should ask why Zatanna picked Keystone City of all places. "So, another thing…why come here?"

"Two reasons. One, there's a great Village Inn here within walking distance, and I hear you're a fan of that place."

Cap let out a small chuckle. He did indeed enjoy that one breakfast he had with Barry, Hal, and Carol.

"But the other reason is…" Zatanna then shrugged. "Just because, I guess. So real quick, how familiar are you with smartphones and laptops and all that? You been getting used to them."

Cap had to laugh again. He just had to. "Oh, they are interesting. Let me tell you, back in 1945, I never dreamed that we would have such things."

Zatanna then brushed a smirk onto her face. "So, which phones do Apple make and which phones are called Androids?"

She had caught Cap red-handed now. He hadn't really looked into which smartphones were made by which company, and now he was unsure of how to answer. "Well….um….. none of them are rotary phones, that much I can tell you."

"Oh, Rogers….what are we going to do with you?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know…"

There was then a few seconds of silence as the two continued their walk before Zatanna quickly broke it. "So, Rogers, what do you think of our current economic –"

Zatanna was not able to finish, for Martian Manhunter called both of them before she could.

Captain America, Zatanna, where is your current location?

"Keystone City." Zatanna answered.

Come back to the Vanguard Tower now. We've just discovered Hydra's latest stint!

Cap would be the one to reply this time. "Erm…give us a second to find another alley, and then sure."

Luckily for them, there was another alley not too far away. Zatana and Cap both sped walk there, and walked well into the alley before using pressing their teleportation buttons to go to the Watchtower.

There, by the roundtable, stood Cap, Zatanna, Hank, Wasp, Banner, and J'onn, with the leader beginning to brief everyone else on what was going on.

"Alright, listen up, everyone. I have received word from Wayne and Stark that Hydra has already raided a series of research facilities all across New York. We've located a group of them under the Mercury Labs headquarters in the Bronx."

With some sort of remote – Cap wasn't entirely sure what it was –, the Martian Manhunter displayed holographic images of two people. One was a statuesque red-headed woman with green eyes and a yellow jumpsuit with black spots here and there, and the other was a gigantic yellow-green monster; unlike the Hulk, he looked more like a true monster than a green man with his scales and ears that resembled bat wings.

"The woman is Dr. Doris Zeul. She is a doctor who we believe has been researching Hank's 'Pym particles' to try and change size. As you can see, she is already a very tall lady at 6'6 like Wonder Woman, but we believe she has gained the ability to grow gigantic thanks to her research. The man is Emil Blonsky, a former KGB agent who went off the grid after the Cold War ended. This is the first time he's been seen since 1991, and it seems Hydra is trying to make its own Hulk."

Hank gritted his teeth to this. "We must stop this at once! My research cannot fall into the wrong hands! It just can't! This Giganta woman needs to be stopped!"

"…And, you know, we have to stop Hydra and save lives, too." Banner said in a rather deadpan tone.

"Not now." Martian Manhunter said, and Cap was happy with him for doing so. "Alright, Vanguard, let's move out!"

It seemed that learning about Dr. Pym and smartphones would have to wait for Cap. Hydra took priority.