Dean Dawkins was prone to fits of anger, generally caused by getting in trouble with a school teacher or his parents, so Dean would take out this anger on the scrawny Steve Rogers. There was no one better for Dean to use as a personal punching bag, he didn't want to fight someone who wouldn't fight back, but he also didn't want to fight someone who was actually going to pose a threat so little Stevie Rogers was perfect.

"Come on Rogers, stand up and fight like a man." Dean Dawkins taunted, standing over Steve with a sneer on his pudgy face.

Steve was laid out on the hard ground behind the school, blood already dripping into the grass from a well placed punch to the nose. Dean had cornered Steve on his way out of school, unbeknown to the teacher unfortunately for Steve. Dean had chosen a prime day to start a fight with Steve, Bucky was home sick with the stomach flu and wouldn't be coming to Steve's rescue today.

Steve held back a grunt of pain, his nose ached something awful and Steve wondered if it was broken. Steve tried to stem the flow of blood with the back of his hand but it really only resulted in getting his hand stained with blood.

"Maybe this will teach you not to back talk to me." Dean spat venomously.

Steve knew that Dean was only picking a fight with him because he wanted to vent his anger, but to justify his actions, Dean was using an altercation that had happened a week ago as an excuse. When Dean had been starting a fight with another kid who had apparently looked at him the wrong way, Steve had told Dean to leave him alone. This had incured Dean's wrath and had the teacher not shown up, a fight would have broken out.

Steve wanted to get back to his feet and stand his ground, no matter how much of an advantage this brown haired bully had over him, Steve wasn't just going to lie down and take it. But before Steve could even move to get up, a foot came flying fast towards his face. Steve waited for the pain to come, but just as the foot was about to hit its target, everything went to black.

Steve let out a small gasp as his eyes flew open and the dream faded away. He sat up in the foreign bed, trying to remember where he was and what was happening. For a brief moment he couldn't even recall what year it was, 1930, 1945, 2012, 2014, everything seemed confused in his head. He felt as if it was 2014, but if it was, then why was he in this small body? Then after a moment's more of thought, the events of the day came rushing back and he remembered where and when he was. It was 2014 and earlier that day he had woken up to find himself a size that he hadn't been since the 40's. He was now in the SHIELD base along with four of the other Avengers.

Steve let out a long sigh and ran a hand through his dirty blonde hair, the tired feeling of waking up from a nap washing over him. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and saw that the time was 4:47. So he'd had a pretty long nap, and Bruce had been right to advise it, he did feel fairly better, despite a lingering letharic feeling.

Steve tugged the bed sheets off of his body, pushed himself off of the bed and got to his feet. Bruce had said that the Avengers would be meeting at 5:00 so Steve figured he'd start heading down to the conference room now, it wasn't as if he had anything else to do. Steve grabbed his shield that was resting by the dresser where he had left it before going down to the medical center. Though there was no reason he should need it and even if he did, he didn't even know if he would be able to properly use it without all of his previous strength, Steve liked to have it with him as often as possible.

It took a little longer than it should have for Steve to get to the conference room, he was still unfamiliar with the new SHIELD base. Though this base was considerably smaller than the Triskelion had been, it was still pretty big for an underground place that had been unknown to anyone but Nick Fury until very recently.

By the time Steve managed to find his way to the conference room it was almost exactly 5:00 and all of the other Avengers were sitting around the large conference table except for Tony. Steve was sure Tony was trying to be fashionably late or something idiotic like that. Steve honestly wasn't sure if he would be able to put up with Tony Stark's attitude, not with everything that was going on.

Steve could feel the wondering eyes of the other Avengers as he stepped into the room and took a seat. It was still surreal to them, seeing Captain America so skinny and small.

"Any luck?" Steve asked Bruce, who had abandonded the white lab coat and had his glasses tucked away in the pocket of his blue button up shirt.

Bruce shook his head, "Nothing yet, I have the computer running an analysis over the blood sample right now, it should be done in about a half hour." Bruce told him.

Steve nodded in understanding, he had never expected it to be that easy. He wasn't an expert on science, but he knew that the Super Soldier Serum was difficult to work with. Dr. Erskine had been a genius to be able to create such a complex formula, and he was the only one who could understand it. Unfortunately he was long dead, the secrets of the serum gone with him.

"I say if Stark isn't here in the next minute, we start without him." Clint proposed, twirling an arrow between his fingers that Steve could only hope wasn't explosive.

"No need to get your feathers in a twist." Tony Stark said as he stepped into the room, the usual smirk on his lips.

"The next time you want to be late, don't be." Natasha said, arms crossed over her chest.

"Three minutes guys, calm down." Tony said as he took a seat next to Bruce who wore a slightly amused expression.

Tony glanced over at Steve and a surprised expression temporarily interrupted the arrogant grin. "Oh yeah, forgot you were tiny now." He said, his expression returning to its usual.

Steve just glared at him coldly for a moment before pulling his gaze away. He wasn't going to give Tony the satisfaction of getting angry, he knew that was what he wanted, or at least it felt that way to Steve.

"Wait a second, I thought spangles wasn't supposed to be a part of this because he's the size of a 7th grader." Tony said.

"Captain Rogers has more experience with HYDRA than all of us combined, not to mention military training. If we're coming up with a strategy, he should be involved." Natasha told Tony smoothly, her dangerous green eyes glaring at him as if daring him to argue with her.

"I'm still not down with this whole 'plan' thing by the way, it's not really my style." Tony said, putting air quotes around the word 'plan'.

This was one of the reason Steve and Tony just didn't get along. Steve found it difficult to respect a man who made no effort to use strategy or make plans and instead insisted on improvising.

"You heard Fury, HYDRA always has a plan, if we don't have one then we'll have no chance." Natasha said.

"Speaking of Fury, where is he? Isn't he the one that called us in in the first place?" Tony pointed out.

"Said he's busy and that we should be able to figure it our ourselves." Clint said, still twirling the arrow.

"Basically, he's too lazy to help us." Tony said.

"Okay, enough of this. Stark, keep your mouth shut unless you have something actually helpful to say. Clint, stop playing with that arrow before I break it in half." Natasha said, shooting Clint a warning look.

Clint grumbled something under his breath about Natasha being bossy as he slid the arrow back into the quiver that he had hung on the back of his chair. Tony quietly said something about Clint being whipped and Natasha threw Tony a look that seemed to threaten death. Bruce was just leaning his head on his hand tiredly, watching the whole scene in front of him.

Steve let out a long sigh. He was starting to regret coming to this meeting.