"Yield?" Steve said, holding Grant Ward against the floor of the ring. Ward grunted and tried to hurl him off, but the attempt failed, again. "Stop being ridiculous."

At last, Ward tapped out. Steve got off him and extended a hand to him. Ward paused and took it, getting up off the ground and dusting off the black and white SWORD armor he'd been issued. "I'm just not used to my new strength," he said, trying to salve his pride. "I'll get you soon enough."

Steve smiled at that and thumped him on the shoulder, "I don't doubt it." And he really didn't. Ward was immensely practical and effective in combat. Quick and effective, a real expert in combat. Honestly, he should've been doing better today than he was. "Got something on your mind?" Steve asked, handing Ward a bottle of water as they stepped out of the practice ring.

"News is distracting me," Ward said, twitching his shoulders in a small shrug as he accepted the water.

"I never liked the attention much either," Steve said, trying to be amicable. Ward had lived more than Steve but Steve was his superior. It was important for him to have a rapport with his soldiers. Romanoff wasn't fully recovered yet and Rumlow was friendly enough. Barton was steady enough. Ward was… pricklier.

"Not the problem, Cap," Ward said.

"Then what's the issue?"

Ward took a drink of water, "It's a personal problem, Cap. I won't let it get between me and the mission."

That was when Steve remembered Ward's brother was running for re-election in Massachusetts. It was one of the problems with the new visibility that the S.W.O.R.D Defense Team that Christian Ward was able to use his brother's work in the Capital Battle to shore himself up against the oncoming shellacking of the Republican caucus members after Ellis' policies led to the Burning of the Capital. Steve didn't like that - Back when he'd enlisted, the expectation had been that officers didn't vote, and it seemed to him like heedless profiteering off the back of a tragedy. Ward hadn't let on that it was bothering before now. "Alright, I get it. Sorry I asked," Steve held up his hands in surrender. Ward seemed to de-tense at that. "Let's talk about the mission then. Why'd you sign up?"

Ward didn't re-tighten, but he gave Steve a sideways glance. "You must've read my file."

"File only says what's in the file, I want to hear what you say."

"I did it all for the love of country," Ward said, his voice thick with sarcasm.

"Really?" Steve said. He did his best to look amused. It wasn't really a funny answer, but he understood bristling at the question. "Because I didn't."

"You're literally Captain America."

Steve shrugged. "Didn't name myself. I love America, but the name is…" Steve shook his hand, "Kinda on the nose."

"So why'd Captain America join the military?"

Steve looked into the distance for a moment and said, "My dad died before I was born, serving. I was always real proud of that, but it meant we were poor and I was just a little guy. I spent my whole life knocked around by bigger, tougher guys. So when this new Napoleon emerged to ravage Europe and Roosevelt was on the radio talking about living at the point of the Nazi gun, I felt for them. I was sitting there furious. People were dying fighting tyranny and we were, what, sending them a care package? Promised myself I would do more than that."

"And you did."

"Eventually."

Ward took a drink of water and stared into the middle distance for a moment. "I got recruited out of juvie. SHIELD cleared my record."

"Term of service is only two years," Steve pointed out. "You've been out of the academy for five, got a lot of commendations in that time. I don't think that was just about a clean record."

"Guy who recruited me said it'd be the hardest thing I'd ever done." Ward said, putting down the empty water bottle with a hollow thud. "It was. But I learned to be a man, take care of myself and not get screwed with by anybody. Got to contribute to something greater than myself. I wasn't in juvie for no reason, my life growing up was - Well, you read my file." Ward's home life had been a disaster.

"Alright," Steve said, gesturing to the ring. "Let's do this again. This time, focus on the reason you joined."

Ward won the next bout.

—

"Michael," Pierce said, as the Heads were sitting at a long table. "Congratulations. Today, the fruits of your plans have born out. SWORD is the most trusted institution in the world and we're leveraging that into high talent recruits from all over the world. President Ellis' approval is in free-fall." In Ellis' defense, he had a big boost from the attack at first. It was only as the Senate and House had returned and started exercising their oversight that he really started plummeting in the approval polls. "Andromeda is the member of a team of heroes known all over the world. Hydra agents make up nearly half of the Defense Team. You've cracked the Super-Soldier Serum, bringing us to the future of human evolution. We owe you a great debt."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

There was a warm round of applause from the group. It was good to be appreciated for my contributions. I wasn't dead in the water for election, but I wasn't doing great, and my opponent was taking the opportunity in the Senate to hammer Ellis and bump up her approval rating. I had been right about literally everything and the public was blaming me for things that weren't even my fault. If I lost this election, I'd be forced to work with (maybe even for) S.W.O.R.D. instead of working over S.W.O.R.D. That wasn't what I wanted, even if I was getting many plaudits for now. I ultimately wanted to replace Pierce, not to labor for him and his cause.

"We'll open our meeting today on the issue of Wakanda. Wakanda is a new player on the field. Public notice has not yet been given, but Wakanda is believed to be substantially ahead technologically of the first world, to say nothing of its superiority to neighboring regime. Michael, would you mind explaining why you obtained and failed to share this information?"

You're a bunch of psychos was not the right answer. No matter how appealing it would be to point out that we had a literal Nazi at the table and I had no interest in becoming King Leopold 2.0. I was not going to make a fool of myself by bringing up such irrelevant objections. "Alexander," I felt his name on my tongue uncomfortably. Whatever else had happened, I was still a son of the south and it was weird to refer to the most powerful man in my organization by his first name. "instructed me to ensure nobody made any foolish mistakes. Intervention into the politics of Wakanda would certainly constitute such a mistake. Wakanda is a dictatorship, a genuine throwback to the divine right of kings. I would not be optimistic about the possibility of overthrowing the local regime or its subversion in the short term. It was more reasonable to hope that they would just leave everybody alone as they have so far, and obtain control of their government in the mop up phase of our pursuit of global domination. The possibility of a fool's gold rush was liable to lead to catastrophe. My continued recommended policy is to avoid entanglement with Wakanda - If you leave it alone, it leaves you alone, the perfect neighbor."

The other heads nodded along. "We'll defer to your advice then," Pierce said. There was a chorus of heads nodding in agreement. That was it. No questions, no pressure. I had proved I had the foresight to be a Head and they were willing to defer to me on matters in my sphere. "Michael, you've spent too much time and energy managing your internal affairs for privacy. Hydra gave you your company, we gave you the PRIDE. We're not trying to take things from you. Relax." This received non-verbal affirmations from everyone but Strucker, whose fist was curled.

"Thank you, sir."

"Are there any other major issues you'd like to bring to our attention?"

I'd lost the staff to Thor, who'd taken it with him to Asgard - Though I guess that spared us Ultron for sure, it also cost us the Twins getting their powers at least in the short term. Wakanda was on the shelf. In the Abstract, I finally had access to technological guidance at my own level. In Tina, I had an actual contact with someone who had some measure of literacy in magic. I had two major potential problems on the horizon. "I've been looking into a phenomena called 'inhumans' and I would appreciate any information you have about it. Try not to aggravate the phenomenon, I just need data. And I have reason to believe that the recent quote-unquote mandarin terrorist attacks are faked, potentially a cover story for failed biological experiments. I need help narrowing the potential suspect list and, ideally, for someone else to broach it."

"We'll look into both, they're your project and we'll be deferring to you." Pierce said, nodding his head. "We do, however, have a request of you." Ah, yes of course. "We'd like you and Andromeda to try to persuade Tony Stark to share his tech with S.W.O.R.D."