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[b]March 20th, 2005
18:05pm[/b]

Nick Fury leant against his desk and rubbed his sore neck with a heavy sigh. As soon as he'd come to he'd dispatched SHIELD agents to Sharon Carter's home in New York and frozen Stephanie's bank account. The first twenty-four hours after someone went underground were crucial and when that person happened to have Abraham Erskine's super soldier serum coursing through their veins they were even more important. If they didn't find Stephanie soon she'd be a ghost. She was too well-trained otherwise. Her mother Sharon was Stephanie's blind spot. Fury wasn't close with Stephanie, even less so after he'd told her about her being passed over, but he knew her well enough to know that she'd be going there first thing.

The doors to Nick Fury's office opened and through it stepped James Buchanan Barnes, or Bucky as the world had known him, though now he was something else. He was Captain America. He stood before him in a uniform that had been heavily altered to meet Bucky's specifications but that looked ever bit as iconic as Steve's had looked. The helm and the breastplate resembled the original but Barnes had insisted they make the rest black. His boots and trousers were black and most notably he had asked for two additions: a knife on one hip and a Luger on the other one. Fury liked it. It was practical, stealthier than the original, and it made sense for Barnes to want to blaze his own trail.

Fury smiled at him as the two locked eyes. "How does it feel?"

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"Honestly?" Barnes said uncomfortably. "It feels like... like when I was sixteen and used to put my dad's old uniform on so I could sneak to the bar a few clicks out of Camp Lehigh where all the guys went during their downtime. I feel like an impostor, Fury, like any second Steve is going to turn up and tell me to stop being an idiot and take this damn thing off."

Director Fury nodded. "Yeah, well give it time and you'll feel weird when you're [i]not[/i] wearing that thing. First things first though you're going to have to head to New York and get the shield back. What good is Captain America without a shield?"

It wasn't the shield that made a man Captain America, Bucky thought to himself with a glib smile, it was more than that. A scrawny nobody from Brooklyn that had been beaten on his entire life turned into the greatest leader the world has ever seen. That had nothing to do with the serum or the shield and [i]everything[/i] to do with Steve. Bucky knew he was stepping into some big shoes, knew he'd never been and never would be half the man that Steve had been, but the world needed him to try to be.

"How fond are you of this Stephanie Carter?" Bucky said grumpily. "Do I have to bring her back in one piece?"

Fury let out a little laugh. "She's Sharon Carter's daughter, Barnes, and that name means something around these parts. Get the shield back, make sure she learns her lesson, but try not the murder the poor girl."

Bucky nodded and strode out of Fury's office. Stephanie Carter, former SHIELD agent, Sharon Carter's daughter turned traitor. Something didn't sit right with Bucky about this. It felt like there was more going on here that met the eye. He'd been unable to shake that feeling since the moment he'd opened his eyes in the Triskelion medical lab. He pushed his doubts to the back of his mind and made his way to the roof where a helicopter was waiting for him. The pilot looked round at him as he climbed in with an astonished look on his face. Bucky supposed he'd have to get used to those.

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[b]19:20pm[/b]

Bucky peered through a pair of tiny binoculars into Sharon Carter's apartment to check it was still secure. Sharon sat at a table, the agents were dotted around the room all looking anxious, when the wrong began to ring. She reached out for it and pressed it against her ear and began to speak. Bucky had been staking Carter's apartment out from a rooftop two blocks down and upon seeing the old woman beginning to speak began to scan the alleyways around it. Stephanie Carter was here. He [i]knew[/i] it.

[i]There[/i]. A tall blonde in a leather jacket with a phone pressed against her ear was walking away from the apartment. She was dressed down and would have been completely innocuous to someone with less experience than Bucky had. Where was she going? She had to have some escape route. Barnes leapt across a rooftop and fell short of the opposite one by some way but managed to grab a hold using his metal arm. Who knew sleeping for sixty years would make you a little rusty? He pulled himself up and continued to look around.

Then he spotted it. A covered bike hidden away out of sight. He burst into movement, sprinting towards the alley as he saw Carter pick up her pace, before finally making it into the mouth of the alley to hem Carter in.  

She grabbed the shield, tore off her jacket to reveal the blue suit underneath, and turned to face him. “So Fury sent you, huh? Well, he’s at least serious about this then. Good. Once I send his lapdog back to him, maybe he’ll realize I was right. Because you are not taking this shield from me.”

Bucky shook his head gravely at her words. "I'm nobody's lapdog. And that shield doesn't belong to you."

He unholstered the Luger on his hip, cocked it, and pointed it in Stephanie's direction. She stared at him. It wasn't the first time she'd had a gun pointed at her from the defiance in her eyes. Good, Bucky thought, he didn't want he scared. He needed to blow off some steam and though he'd promised Fury he wouldn't hurt her too badly he hadn't said anything about not blowing her kneecap out.

"One chance, Carter, hand me the shield or I'll put you down for good."