He was born Steven Grant Rogers on the fourth of July in the year 1922, an ordinary kid from Brooklyn who, in his twenty-five years, had led a extraordinary life. Sickly and scrawny, but with a heart as brave as any lion's, he'd been given a chance to be a hero, and he'd seized that chance, becoming famous almost overnight. It had been years since that fateful date when he'd become a science experiment, changing from a scrawny kid into the military's first and only super soldier. Years since the war to end all wars was over. Years since those he'd known and loved died and were buried, forgotten by all but the families that mourned them. S.H.I.E.L.D. had found him frozen in the icy waters and brought him home ....but home had changed.

The war was over, his friends were gone, and the world had moved on and changed. He'd been recruited to help with a new struggle against a new enemy, and being the hero he was, he'd agreed to do his part in the never-ending fight against evil and oppression. But even superheroes needed a break now and then. Evil defeated once again - at least, for now - he had taken to the road to explore the world he'd returned to, a man out of time, going places where no one remembered his name, where no one knew he wasn't just a guy from Brooklyn named Steve Rogers. They knew him by another name, and that name was Captain America.

A motorcycle, he'd been warned, was not the most comfortable form of transportation for a road trip, but he wasn't interested in comfort. If comfort was what he wanted, he'd have followed Tony Stark's advice and holed up in a fancy hotel room with a couple of women to lick his wounds and bring him up to snuff on popular culture, but he wasn't Tony Stark. Instead, he'd taken to the road, traveling from town to town, exploring, learning, seeing the changes and wonders of the modern world for himself.

It was lonely on the road, and in some ways, he felt like a relic, an antique, but at least he was alive, and he was thankful for that. The road trip had been a good one, and he was on his way back to New York, when the storm struck. The storm of the century, they'd said. He knew they'd need help, and what kind of hero would he be if he wasn't there to give that help"

As bad as they said the storm was going to be, he'd never seen anything like this. It came up as if out of nowhere, lightning crashing overhead, the clouds opening up to pour rain from the sky. He knew it was suicide to go on. He could hardly see, and even with his strength and reflexes, he was having trouble keeping control of the bike and keeping it on the road - when he could see the road. He knew he wasn't going to have any choice but to find shelter until the storm passed, but as fate would have it, he didn't have a chance. It felt like the end of the world, and in a way, for him, it nearly was. The sky lit up with a flash of lightning bright enough to blind him, a rumble of thunder the likes of which sounded like canon fire, and suddenly Steve wasn't on Earth anymore.

The space around him seemed to suddenly open up, pitch black, as dark and cold as the icy water that had once swallowed him up, and he thought for a moment that he was drowning, fear clutching his heart with icy fingers. Then he was careening down the road again, but it wasn't the same road. It wasn't even the same world. Steve fought to get control of the bike, eyes wide as something red was coming at him fast, on a collision course with his bike. A car, he realized, and if he didn't do something quick, he was going to become a hood ornament. Squeezing the brakes hard, the bike skidded across the pavement and off the road into the grass, hitting a rut, and throwing the driver twenty feet forward onto the ground.

" ...a bitch, I'm a tease, I'm a goddess on my knees ..." Singing at the top of her lungs generally seemed to help any kind of dip in Dr. Lucy Broderick's mood. Tonight's excuse" An officer of the Watch whose name she was determined to forget, who seemed to have forgotten that the word date did not have the alternate spelling "sex". Which was odd for Lucy, because a few months ago, she would have been all over that. Maybe she was growing up. Not that it mattered right now; she was driving home in the cold dry night that had fallen over Rhy'Din City, straining her voice to sing louder than the voice of her libido so she didn't give up and go looking for a random anyone to sleep with. At least, she was, before a motorbike appeared out of seeming nowhere on the road in front of her.

"Jesus Christ!" She slammed both feet down on the clutch and brake, reaching down in the same instant to yank the handbrake up as fast as she could, only to see the driver of the motorcycle - a very familiar blonde gentleman who should have been at home with his girlfriend, in her opinion - skid off the road and execute the manoeuvre in such a way as to send him flying through the air in the process.

Shocked, Lucy sat utterly still for a brief moment, before well trained instincts kicked it. "Sh*t," she muttered, killing the engine and pushing open the car door. "Sh*t, sh*t ....Johnny! Johnny, you'd better be faking it!" Slamming her car door closed, she ran on her ridiculously high heels across the grass in the cold air, dropping onto her knees next to the prone figure. Expert fingers sought out a pulse on his throat, but despite finding one, she was not reassured. "Too cold, way too cold," she was muttering to herself, dragging a pen torch from her bag. "Johnny' Johnny, come on, this isn't funny. Wake up."

There were a few clues that seemed to point to the fact that this man who had appeared as if from nowhere was not, in fact, who she thought him to be. He was, as she'd already noted, too cold to be The Human Torch, his temperature far closer to that of a normal human being. Though his facial features were so similar they could almost be twins, his hair was longer, sideswept bangs falling over his forehead, clean-shaven as Johnny. If his eyes were open, they'd be an identical shade of blue, but for the moment, they were closed, as if he was merely resting and not unconscious. He was wearing a brown leather jacket over a blue and white checked button-up shirt, a plain t-shirt peeking out beneath that, khakis, and brown leather boots, and no helmet. At first glance, he didn't appear to be hurt, though he had crashed his bike at breakneck speed and appeared to be unconscious.

"Come on, come on, wake up," Lucy was still murmuring, though it wasn't truly an attempt to rouse the man lying on the grass beside her. Her fingers found his radial pulse, counting the minute by his heartbeat at the same time as she counted his respirations in and out. "Okay, basics are normal," she told herself, almost talking herself through a basic triage with little to no equipment.

Very gently, she opened one of his eyes, testing the reaction of his pupil with her tiny pen torch, somewhere in the back of her mind wondering why no one had come out to investigate the sound of the crash out here on the street. It wasn't that late at night, after all. Mind you, most people tended not to approach anyone dressed as she was after dark; those encounters usually produced a vampire or some other creature of the night. After all, not many people wandered around after dark in winter in a little black dress and no coat.

"Shame you're still breathing, I could have grabbed a crafty snog while you're out," she informed the unconscious man, satisfied that his pupils were reacting correctly, if a little slowly. "Sadly, a concussion is not a good enough reason to be upsetting my sister." Tucking her pen torch away, Lucy turned her attention to investigating for broken bones, feeling her way carefully down the back of his neck, along each arm, and then down each leg.

Either Johnny had been working out or this wasn't Johnny, at least, not the way Lucy remembered him. It was hard to tell in the dark, but he was taller than Johnny and weighed more, solidly built with a physique that was bulkier and more muscular than Johnny's. The man groaned as she started poking around, consciousness slowly returning, concussion or no.

The groaning began as Lucy's hands skimmed thighs she recalled being quite a bit less muscular the last time she'd gotten her hands on him. "Sorry, Everlast, this is just a check up," she told him, satisfied that he didn't have any broken bones that she could find. "You're just going to have to wait for your girlfriend to make you feel better." Pulling her phone out of her bag, she leaned over her unfortunate victim/patient, gently turning his face toward hers. "Wakey, wakey, flame boy. Time to warm up."

He found his way to his feet, wobbling a little, more a result of his trip through the Nexus than any damage done by the accident. He reached out to catch his balance and found her arm, standing a good two inches taller than Johnny Storm, broader in the shoulders, solid as an oak tree. He glanced in the same direction as her, that same curious expression on his face. "What' Do the werewolves come out at night here?" he asked, a meager attempt at a joke.

Lucy couldn't help it; it was practically instinct now to check out a handsome guy, and this one was handsome. He was also big, which led to a certain amount of speculation regarding his anatomical proportions. Purely academic, of course. She looked up at him as he attempted to joke. "Uh ....Yes," she told him firmly, grasping hold of his hand. "As I said, time to go. Come on."

The hiss grew louder, definitely coming from the darkness of the park. "Not tonight, thank you," Lucy called over her shoulder as she tried to pull her solidly built companion back toward the road. "I've really had far too much excitement for one night, go and pick on someone less cranky!"

Though curious about what was lurking in the shadows - convinced whatever was making that hissing noise was a what and not a whom - he followed her lead, letting go of her hand to head in the direction of where his bike had careened off the road. "Go ahead. I'll catch up to you." He wasn't overly concerned about whatever it was hissing in the darkness. He could take care of himself, but unless she possessed some sort of superhuman powers he didn't know about, he wasn't sure the same was true of her.

"Wait -" Lucy came to a halt as he let go of her hand, turning to find her companion moving away from her toward his bike. "Look, trust me, your bike is perfectly safe," she called to him, growing increasingly nervous as the sense of imminent threat made itself known. "We can come back for it in the morning. Please, can we just go?"

It wasn't so much the bike he was concerned about, though there was that, as it was the things he had strapped to it, all his worldly possessions and at least one of them was irreplaceable. He heard the nervousness, the fear in her voice, but he wasn't leaving his things there for just anyone to stumble across. "I'll be fine!" he called back. "Get in the car!" If that little red thing on the side of the road was a car. He glanced off toward the hissing noise, narrowing his eyes to try and get a better look at what it was that was stalking them.

"Oh God, don't look at it, for God's sake." Her exasperation with him was audible through the cold air, torn between getting herself out of immediate danger and leaving him exposed. "Seriously, just hurry up, whatever you're doing." Her heels finally made contact with the sidewalk as she backed toward her car, her arms hugging about herself to stay warm in the chill. "Why is it every gorgeous man I meet either has a hero complex, or does his thinking with his dick?" she asked herself, watching the man by his bike.

He bent over to pick up the bike and turned off the engine, snagging the keys and shoving them into his jacket pocket, before grabbing hold of a pack he had strapped to the bike and something else that seemed to shine in the darkness. The pack was tossed easily across a shoulder, while he grabbed hold of what looked like a shield, round with a large white star in the center that shone in the moonlight. He threw another glance at the darkness, pausing a moment as if debating with himself, before reaching a decision. He turned, abandoning the motorcycle for the night, and sprinting toward the car with the quickness of an Olympic runner. The bike needed some work, and for that he needed daylight. He only hoped it would still be there when he returned in the morning.

And it was just as well he decided to run, if the sounds behind him were anything to go by. Lucy let out a shriek as something large and toothy leapt out of the darkness behind the man now running toward her, loping along on all four limbs at a ground-eating pace, completely ignoring the bike and going straight for the meat. "Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t!" Her heels skidded on the asphalt as she rounded the car, jumping in and leaning over to push the passenger door open before her shaking hand turned the key she had left in the ignition.

Almost as if on instinct alone, he seemed to sense that he was being followed, and turned to face his pursuer, tossing the pack toward the car as he slid the shield onto his hand. "You just made a big mistake, my friend," he warned as he raised the shield, not only as a means of defense, but also as a weapon. He waited to see what the beast would do, unafraid, holding his ground. To turn his back to it and run would be sheer suicide.

What pounced him almost before he was braced was the closest thing to a man-sized wolf he was ever likely to encounter. Here in Rhy'Din, the ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggity beasties and the things that went bump in the night came in all shapes and sizes. There was no immediate clue as to whether this was a werewolf transformed on the wrong night of the moon, or something else entirely. Whatever it was, it was angry, fierce, and apparently wanted to rip him to pieces with claws and teeth, pouncing with accuracy and speed.

Well, this was certainly something new, and it gave him pause for about ten seconds, just long enough for the thing to get close before instincts and training and heightened abilities kicked in and he whacked the thing aside with the vibranium shield, almost as easily as he'd just swatted a fly with a fly swatter. At least, he made it look easy. It wasn't really as easy as it looked, and he had a feeling all he'd really done was tick the thing off.

The creature let out a loud yelp of surprised pain, thrown off its trajectory by the solid thump it was given in mid-flight. Winded and more than a little bruised, it flopped onto the grass on its side, breathing heavily, malevolent eyes glaring up at its intended victim. From behind him, a self-confessed cranky woman was shouting from her car. "Will you please stop arsing about and get in the bloody car?"

He could have easily used the shield to lop the thing's head off, but he didn't. "Let that be a lesson to you!" he called to the beast, whatever it was, unsure what the lesson was either, but hoping it was smart enough to stay where it was and not give it another go. He backed his way toward the car, snagging the pack from the ground and hopping inside the small cramped space before the beast changed its mind. "Maybe it'll think twice next time," he muttered as he pulled the door closed. There was little room in there for a man his size, much less his pack and shield. He actually smirked over at the woman behind the wheel, whose accent reminded him of someone. "You're English," he declared with a grin.

"God, what is it with the men in this town?" Lucy huffed as he finally folded himself into her car, surprised to find out just how small her vehicle was when it contained a large man and his large ....shield. Pulling away from the park, she didn't even glance into the rearview mirror to check on the creature as it limped away. Hearing the smile in the voice of the man sitting beside her, she cast him a sideways glance, a smile of her own softening her features. "Hip hip hooray, the Yank guessed right," she teased him in reply, patting his knee blatantly before resting her hand on the gearstick once again. "What is your name, by the way?"

"Hmm?" She glanced over her shoulder at him as the door opened finally, reaching back for his hand once again to lead him into her very small studio apartment. Directly ahead of him were a pair of couches, and an open archway that showed a large bed tucked snugly into a far corner beneath a window. To his left was an open kitchenette, and a little exploring would find the door to the bathroom just out of sight in the little alcove where the bed was situated. The little studio was neat, apart from one end of the table by the sink, which was piled high with notebooks and textbooks. Just because she was a qualified doctor didn't mean Lucy still wasn't learning her trade.

"Oh, I came here of my own accord," she smiled to him. "Come in, don't be shy. What you see is what you get in here." Closing the door behind him, she locked it securely once more, manoeuvering across the room in the dimness to turn on a corner lamp. "My sister had sort of set up shop here, and I missed her, so I got myself transferred from the hospital in Oxford to Rhy'Din General."

It was the first time he'd ever held a woman's hand like this, and it felt strangely small in his, soft and warm and vulnerable. Though he tried to ignore what the sensation was doing to him, just as he'd tried to ignore his body's reaction to her kiss, he was finding it difficult at best. He hesitated at the door, frowning a little as she let go of his hand and stepped inside to show him around the small space. Shy was an understatement. He'd only purposely kissed one woman once in his entire life, and here he was being invited into a strange woman's apartment that he'd only just met not barely an hour ago. And yet, he didn't have much choice but to trust her, at least, until morning.

After a moment of going over the alternatives in his head, he finally relented and stepped into the small apartment, which looked invitingly warm and cozy, especially considering his current state of wetness and cold. "You have a sister?" he asked as he tracked her movement around the room with startlingly blue eyes.

"Yes, I have a twin sister," Lucy chuckled, ever so slightly bemused by her own willingness to offer up this piece of information. Maybe it was because Liv was so firmly ensconced with Johnny now, Lucy didn't need to worry that anyone she met and liked would prefer the quieter Broderick to her. She reached to one of her crowded bookshelves, pulling down a framed photograph of herself and her sister, taken over the summer, and handing it to him. "Her name's Olivia. Guess which one is me."

He stepped further into the room, hoping he wasn't dripping on her floor because that would be rude, and reached for the framed photograph, eyes sliding to take in the two smiling faces that looked back at him. Though they looked nearly identical, it was perfectly obvious to him which was which. This was one guy who even the Broderick twins would have trouble fooling. "That one," he replied without any doubt, tapping a finger against the twin on the left, noticing subtle differences, even though he'd never met Olivia. Their hair was different, their smiles, even the way their eyes looked at the camera, their choice of clothing. Subtle but distinct differences only someone who was carefully observant might notice.

"Wow." Lucy was duly impressed, and secretly a little on the delighted side. No one had ever been able to tell her apart from Liv in a photograph before. Her head tipped back as she looked up at him, seeing the differences from Johnny all too clearly now ....and liking him more for them. No doubt her inevitable brother-in-law would be offended to know that he was coming close to paling in comparison in her opinion to this gentle giant she'd almost ploughed down in the road, but he had a big enough ego. He'd get over it.

"That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all day," she told Steve quite truthfully, laughing a little at how pathetic that sounded. "Okay, we need to get you dry and warm. Bathroom is that way -" she pointed in the appropriate direction - "feel free to take a shower if you want one. I'll see about getting you something to eat."

"You called me Johnny earlier. Why?" he asked as he handed the photograph back, curious now that they had a few minutes to talk without some snarling beast trying to eat them. Or maybe he was just trying to delay the inevitable, the insistence that he get out of the wet clothes, warm up, and stay a while. As confident as he might seem when it came to things like fighting monsters, his confidence failed him when it came to women.

He tilted a glance at the bathroom, and despite his strength and size, couldn't help but shudder as a chill went through him, the temptation of a hot shower too great to resist. There was a door though, and it probably had a lock, so there was that. She wasn't going to play Peeping Tom, unless he let her. "I really shouldn't be here. It's not....I mean, I hardly know you." The calm, cool, collected Steve Rogers stammered, showing a little of his own vulnerability in this situation.

Lucy blinked, the nudge of the photoframe against her hand shaking her out of her slightly infatuated study of his features. "Oh, you look incredibly like the guy my sister is dating," she told him, taking the photo back and picking another one off the shelf, this one of Liv and Johnny. "See" His name is Johnny Storm, otherwise known as the Human Torch. One of Rhy'Din's many superheroes."

Forcing herself to turn away, she glanced down at the shield he was carrying curiously, bending to slide her shoes off her feet with a relieved groan. "Oh, that's better." His stammering shyness caught her attention, making her smile once again. "Steve, I'm the reason you ended up flat on your back in the grass. Let me look after you, all right' Just for one night, then you can run away from me screaming for help if you really want to."

Steve arched a brow at the word "superhero", giving her a pointedly curious look again, before he turned his blue-eyed gaze back to scrutinize yet another photograph. It was obvious to him that the woman in the photograph was her twin, but the man gave him pause. Once again, there were slight differences - the hair, the smirk, the expression on his face, the choice of clothing - but to the untrained eye, the young man in the photo looked close enough to almost pass for himself.

"Human Torch?" he mused, never having heard of him before. The only other superheroes he knew of were all back home, members of The Avengers. Wait until he found out there was another such team assembled here.

He handed the photograph back, forcing himself not to look at the legs that peeked out from the short dress and the stockinged toes that were wiggling around on her rug. "You're not the reason. The....Nexus....is the reason." The word once again sounded strange on his tongue, but he'd get used to it. He'd have to.