Hiya! I'm new to these sort of things, but I wanted to throw in a Captain America compete. I've got backup plans if mine's not picked, so no worries.
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C E N T E N N I A L[/b][/color][/h1][hr]
[img]https://pm1.narvii.com/6055/ac93fd15366cfa884b3963f05530e8819c3b98ea_hq.jpg[/img][h3][sup][sub][color=LightBlue]S T E V E N   R O G E R S   [color=1E90FF]♦[/color]   W R I T E R   [color=1E90FF]♦[/color]   C A P E   C O D  [color=1E90FF]♦[/color]   U S   M I L I T A R Y[/color][/sub][/sup][/h3][img]IMAGE/BANNER[/img]
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[CENTER][sup][color=ADD8E6]"I’m loyal to nothing… Except the dream."[/color][/sup][/CENTER]
[INDENT][INDENT][i]Steven Grant Rogers was born on the 4th of July, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York. His mother, the once Sarah Grant, was an Irish Catholic immigrant who had come to the United States with naught but the clothes on her back, while his father, Joseph W. Rogers, came from an old colonial family – ol’ Joe used to say, with evidence he was willing to show to anyone who’d listen, that a Rogers had served in every American war since the Revolution. He also used to say, with just as much pride, that his son was the American Dream personified, the union of the tradition and status of old America with the work ethic and pride of these new upwardly mobile immigrants. Such a person, he’d say, was bound to be someone, although such talk seemed to fade as his son got older and was beset by illness after illness, one after another, leaving him asthmatic and frail, barely able to climb up the stairs, let alone fulfill some grand destiny…

…but fate is a funny thing.

America was going to enter WWII. Despite President Roosevelt’s protestations, everyone who was anyone knew it for certain, and Joe Rogers prided himself on at least trying to be someone – and so his son knew too. And so, on his 18th birthday, Steve went, with his best friend Bucky Barnes, to enlist in the army…but, where the athletic, six-foot-while-slouching Bucky was accepted sight-unseen, Steve’s myriad health problems relegated him to desk duty, if anything. Not content to serve on the sidelines while his fellow countrymen gave their lives, Steve did everything he could – memorized the eye chart, stuffed pennies into his shoes, even forged doctor’s notes – but the mere fact of his stature and weight kept him out of active duty, no matter how hard he tried.
Enter Dr. Abraham Erskine. A Jewish refugee, the good doctor had been working on a serum designed to unlock the potential of the human body…whatever that meant. Supposedly, though, it could cure Steve’s conditions, and so he was willing to try it – whatever the consequences. And so, on July 4th, 1942, Steve’s 20th birthday, a new breed of soldier was born – the super-soldier, Captain America.

Everything was different for the young Steve Rogers now. Where once he could barely climb a flight of stairs without wheezing, now he could fight for days on end without resting. Where once he struggled to take his trash down from his third-story apartment, now he could bring whole buildings down with ease. The limitations of even the finest human athlete were well behind him – much less those of his old, frail body. He was well and truly a superhero – one of the first, and the first to have been purposefully made by the US government. 

But just as soon as it started, it was over. The Allies won WWII, Hitler was dead, and the world had no need for superheroes anymore – not in the messy, espionage-laden world of the Cold War. The military was more than happy to promote Cap to full officer, but Steve wasn’t sure he could stomach being involved in post-war activities of a country in which he had once believed so strongly.. With a generous army pension and a reputation to rival the greatest military heroes, Captain America retired to a quiet estate on Cape Cod. He’d occasionally publish some article or memoir, or appear on color television talk shows to discuss his opinion on some issue or other, but he was content to live out the rest of his days in peace…

…but fate is a funny thing.

As it turned out, Erskine’s enhancements weren’t just external, but internal – the same biological processes that let him fight for days on end without tiring kept his cells dividing near-perfectly, keeping him not just fit, but young – for every decade that passed, Steve’s body aged a year, if that. The government’s best scientists estimated he’d live to be a thousand – assuming something didn’t get to him first, and that seemed less and less likely every day. 

And so the world’s first super-soldier languished, unwilling to fight but unable to die, barely aging as the world changed around him…but change, of course, isn’t always bad, and eventually, the age of heroes came again. It took Steve a few years to get back into the game, but now, a hundred years after his birth, Captain America rides again.[/i][/indent][/indent]
[COLOR=1E90FF][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3]C H A R A C T E R   M O T I V A T I O N S   &   G O A L S:[/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][/COLOR][INDENT][INDENT][i]Captain America’s always been an interesting character to me. The first Avenger, struggling with a world that’s advanced past him and yet able to overcome those struggles and carve out a niche for himself with nothing but his indomitable will and a shield. That said, at risk of sounding cynical, it’s always felt like a story that… pulls its punches, at least in terms of its effects on ol’ Cap. It may be in part due to his connection to the Avengers and how he needs to get himself together quickly in order to lead them, but I’ve always felt like even a super soldier should struggle with the fact that the world he’s in is, quite fundamentally, a different one from the one he was made to serve. To that end, I think a Captain America who was never frozen, but instead rendered inactive as a superhero – such as, for instance, through widespread anti-superhuman prejudice – could be an interesting way to really dive into the themes common to many Captain America stories while still providing a fresh new take on the character. 
One distinction I particularly want to explore is that between his two periods of activity as Captain America. Though he’s often called the first Avenger and referred to as an early superhero, during his WWII days, he really was more akin to a soldier – a super-soldier, sure, but still very much a part of military command, taking and giving orders, performing reconnaissance, planning tactics, the works. This meant, of course, that just about everyone he fought against or alongside was there because they wanted to be – as opposed to the world of superheroes, where he might end up fighting alongside a teenager who was bitten by a radioactive animal against their will, or against a desperate thief who sold their soul for magical powers. As a result, the idea of donning the stars and stripes – fundamentally a symbol of government and power – takes on a very different meaning; rather than representing his country against people who signed up to fight it, he’s now representing his country against people who are its own citizens, albeit ones engaged in various kinds of illegal activity. To a Steve familiar with the post-WWII political landscape, seeing the effects of Vietnam and the forever wars in the Middle East and their effects on both government and populace, this distinction would be all the more apparent, and lead to him becoming more skeptical of the idea of the Captain America identity over time. Depending on where things go, he may even drop the shield and become Nomad for a time, or he may come to the conclusion that the country is not its government and he can represent his own ideal of America, whatever that may be – it all depends on the tone of the story. At the end of the day, though, this is a more conflicted, world-weary Cap, although one who still has much of what makes him Steve Rogers hidden just beneath that hardened surface.[/i][/indent][/indent]
[COLOR=1E90FF][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3]C H A R A C T E R   N O T E S:[/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][/COLOR][INDENT][INDENT][i]As much as I love Captain America, his powerset can be a tad inconsistent at times. Depending on who’s writing him, he can go from more or less a badass normal on par with Hawkeye and Black Widow to a true-blue superhuman. For the purposes of this RPG, I want Captain America to be firmly on the far-superhuman end of that spectrum, more like the MCU version that can go toe-to-toe with Iron Man or Spider-Man than any peak human interpretation of the character. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, it’s never made sense to me personally that the government would spend billions and recruit a mysterious German scientist to create someone who’s effectively a talented athlete, much less that the formula used to create this athlete would be some great mystery few if any were able to perfectly recreate. Secondly, it makes the idea that the serum could have significantly slowed his aging feel less outside the realm of possibility to me – it’s more one enhancement in a suite encompassing just about every biological function than a one-off superpower in an otherwise fairly mundane arsenal used to justify his presence in the modern day. Lastly, it’s just kind of more fun to write if he’s both this famous, well-respected old superhero who can also throw cars around than to have him be a glorified martial artist, at least in my opinion.[/i][/indent][/indent]
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Midnight. Miami, Florida. 

No matter how many years passed, Steve Rogers could never get used to the sight of men in tights. He’d spent seven-eighths of his life on-and-off following the exploits of so-called superheroes, but every time he saw some guy trying to fight in spandex pulled tighter than a drum-skin, something in his mind couldn’t get past the idea that they might rip mid-punch and expose everyone to something they certainly didn’t need to see. That’s why, when the army wanted to dress him up in a special costume, to show the world that they could make superheroes, not just recruit them, he was adamant that they start with a soldier’s uniform. Sure, they could change it, dye it red, white, and blue, move the buttons over to make room for the stars and stripes, even add some special bracers to make his super-strength a bit easier to use, but ultimately, it had to be the sort of thing a fighting man could wear – because, before he’d ever even considered being a hero, Steve Rogers was a soldier.

And so Steve winced when the flying Frenchman slammed into his shield once again. It wasn’t because it hurt, since the shield had taken tank fire and Steve had barely felt it – no, it was because Steve couldn’t help but wonder how much that purple spandex could take, not least because the last time he’d fought the eccentric Batroc the Leaper, the mercenary’d been wearing gold…

Another clang echoed through the air as Batroc, well, leapt, both steel-toed soles landing on the outer stripe of the shield this time, just barely missing the sharpened edge…Damn, that was a close one! Steve thought, He could’ve lost a foot there, if I wasn’t careful. Pushing forward, he felt Batroc’s weight leave his shield, the Frenchman contorting himself into a far-too-flagrant flip as he flew through the air, landing with a flourish worthy of the greatest showman. “A chanté, mon capitaine, a chanté,” Batroc cried, bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet, a smile staining his mustachioed mug, “It’s so rare I get to fight anyone as good as you!”

We fought two weeks ago, Steve thought, though he didn’t choose to say it. Instead, letting the sounds of the gathered crowd’s hushed whispers and smartphones clicking, he quickly thought up a retort worthy of tomorrow’s newspaper, or at least some kid’s Snapstagram – “I don’t get to fight people as good as me, either.” 

A snarl spread across Batroc’s face as the implications of the statement seemed to hit him almost all at once. “Pute!” he swore, leaping into the air once more, but even as he added a unique half-twist to cause his full-body kick to come in far left this time, all it met was the metal of the shield. A few more camera shudders flashed, and instead of pushing him off, Captain America himself turned to one side, shifting his shield out from Batroc and letting the mercenary’s kick find the concrete. It shattered beneath his blow, and no sooner was his weight on the ground than did he send out a roundhouse kick, one that Cap almost struggled to get himself out of the way for. The leg came down, and that’s when Cap realized it was a feint; his whole body followed his newly-planted leg, causing his two far limbs to swing to Cap’s right side – the side that didn’t hold his shield. It almost caught the seasoned super soldier off guard – but almost wasn’t good enough. 

Reaching out, Captain America caught the mercenary’s boot out of the air with the same grace and ease he might catch his shield – that is to say, effortlessly, despite it being a far more complicated task than it seemed. He hated to use his powers like this to win fights, especially when there was a crowd watching, but Batroc was good – better than he was expecting, after their last fight. Besides, he had places to be.

Sweeping Batroc’s standing leg out from under him, he swung him like a ragdoll through the air, bringing both of his arms out in a grand clapping motion that slammed the mercenary together with the underside of his shield. A final clang resounded through the air, and Batroc fell to the ground, spitting blood – it looked like he had bit through his lip at the moment of impact. “I underestimated you, capitaine,” he said, flashing a blood-soaked smile.

“A man’s gotta be more than his tools,” Cap replied, returning the grin, “More than his best moves, too. Keep that in mind and you might teach me a thing or two.” The words felt strange in his mouth, like they belonged to someone else, but he tried to remind himself that he wasn’t just saying that to Batroc – an honorable mercenary was still a mercenary, after all – but to everyone else who might see this fight. The stars and stripes still meant something, after all. They had to.

“Anyways,” he said, finally turning to face the crowd, “I’ve got a plane to Washington to catch.”
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[COLOR=1E90FF][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3]P O S T   C A T A L O G:[/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][/COLOR][INDENT][INDENT][i]WIP.[/i][/indent][/indent]

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