CHAPTER THREE:

THE FIRST SUPER SOLDIER

CHILDREN WERE PLAYING on the streets, some little boys playing a bit of baseball as the occasional vehicles drove by with their honks being directed towards the children if they were close to almost being hit by the cars. Some teenagers and adults were grabbing boxes from the back of their cars to bring them inside.

A very nice looking vehicle could be seen driving by the group of little boys that were playing baseball on the streets, yelling at each other to grab the ball when one of the boys had fumbled with the ball. Inside of the back of the car, Y/n could be seen sitting in between her sister and Steve as she looked down at her book.

"I know this neighborhood. I got beat up in that alley." Steve recalls as he points down an alley before doing the same when they drive by a parking lot. "And that parking lot. And behind that diner."

"Did you have something against running away?" Peggy questions, curiosity in her tone.

Steve shakes his head. "You start running, they'll never let you stop. You stand up, you push back. They can't say no forever, right?"

"We know a little of what it's like, to have every door shut in your face." Y/n admits with a slight frown.

"I guess I just don't know why you'd wanna join the army if you were a beautiful dame." Steve comments as he stares at her, eyes quickly widening. "Or a-- A woman. An agent. Not a dame. You are beautiful, but..."

"You have no idea how to talk to a woman, do you?" Peggy guesses in question.

Steve chuckles a bit, looking away. "I think this is the longest conversation I've had with two. Women aren't exactly lining up to dance with a guy they might step on."

"You must have danced." Y/n concludes in a soft tone.

"Well, asking a woman to dance always seemed so terrifying. And the past few years, it just didn't seem to matter that much. I figured I'd wait." Steve informs.

"For what?" Y/n asks.

Steve shrugs. "The right partner."

Peggy notices her sister's stare lingering on the smaller man, to which she looks away with a knowing smile. Soon enough, the car parks on the side of the road outside an antique shop and the three of them step out of the vehicle. Steve holds the door open for Y/n, holding out his hand for her to take so he could help her step out.

Y/n places her hand in his as she climbs out, both feeling sparks when their hands touch. She drops her arm as Peggy ushers for Steve to follow while they moved in the direction of the antique shop. The door opens with a ding of a bell and Steve closes it behind them when they were all inside. After a couple seconds, an older woman walks out from the back.

"Wonderful weather this morning, isn't it?" The woman points out.

Peggy nods. "Yes, but I always carry an umbrella."

Without saying anything, the woman moves behind the counter and underneath the counter, she secretly moves her hand and presses a small button as Peggy and Y/n lead Steve to the back. They push through the curtain and when they came to a stop in the middle of the room, Steve found himself glancing around in confusion as to where they were headed when the bookshelves opened up, revealing it to be a secret door.

The smaller man doesn't say anything as he only follows the women in through the secret door. Many of the people in the hall they were walking down stopped to look at him until they reached a pair of doors that were opened for them. When they walk through, they stop so Steve can look around. The scientists in the room come to a stop as well when all their gazes land on the blonde.

Erskine happened to be one of the doctors at the bottom level. As she looked around, Y/n noticed the disbelieved expressions on the doctors faces, clearly not believing that Dr. Erskine had chose this man. Placing her hand to gently hold Steve's elbow a bit, the blonde looks to her as she uses her head to lead him down the level, trailing right behind Peggy as they did so.

When they reached the bottom level, they met with Erskine halfway, who greeted Steve with a shake of his hand just before someone flashed a camera in their face, taking a picture. That person walked away when Erskine told them to. From her spot beside her sister, Y/n watched as Steve took a worried glance at the machine that he'd be laying in, a machine much bigger than him.

"Are you ready?" Erskine questions, receiving a shaky nod. "Good. Take off your shirt, your tie, and your hat."

Only nodding in response, Steve begins to do as told as he takes off his hat, tie and then unbuttoning his shirt. The man felt self-conscious when his bare torso was shown, revealing just how skinny he was. With shaky legs, he moved towards the machine and climbed on top until he was laying himself down, taking in many deep breathes.

"Comfortable?" Erskine asks when he came up beside him.

"It's a little big." Steve replies with a little smile. "You save me any of that schnapps?"

Erskine shrugs. "Not as much as I should have. Sorry. Next time."

Just then, he was calling out to a familiar name that had Steve perking up. Turning his head to the side, the blonde watches as Howard Stark moves past the Carter sisters until he was right beside Erskine, responding to the doctor's question while he looked Steve up and down before walking off to the control panels.

Addressing the females in the room, Y/n tore her eyes away from Steve when she heard Erskine's voice, only nodding in agreement to when he suggested for her and Peggy to head up to the booth where the others were. Following behind the more older agent, Y/n takes one last glance over her shoulder at Steve, seeing he was already looking at her before leaving the room.

It didn't take too long until they reached the room where Colonel Phillips, Senator Brandt and many other people could be seen inside. The two agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. moved to sit at one of the seats as they stared through the glass window, the younger woman's eyes lingering on the man in the machine. Facing the booth, Erskine taps on the microphone to make sure it was working.

"Do you hear me? Is this on?" Erskine speaks into the mic, realizing it was on. "Ladies and gentlemen, today we take not another step towards annihilation, but the first step on the path to peace. We begin with a series of microinjections into the subject's major muscle groups. The serum infusion will cause immediate cellular change. And then, to stimulate growth, the subject will be saturated with Vita-Rays."

The nurses had been strapping Steve to the machine as he had been talking while getting the needles ready to inject into the smaller blonde young man. When he finished speaking, the doctor moved to stand beside the machine as he watched Steve close his eyes with a deep breath, the nurses injecting the needle into him.

"That wasn't so bad." Steve murmurs.

"That was penicillin." Erskine tells him.

Steve looks at him with a little panicked look before the doctor began announcing the serum was ready to go. The sound of his voice counting down could be heard as parts of the machine moved till the needles were touching Steve. Once he finished counting, one of the doctors in the room turned the handle on the control panel as the serum began being injected into Steve.

Howard had followed the order Erskine gave him and pulled a handle down, to which the machine started moving upwards until it was standing straight as parts of the machine moved and closed in on Steve. Y/n felt her heart skip a beat, worry coursing through her when Steve completely disappeared from her view and she couldn't help but lean forward a bit.

Erskine knocks on the machine a little bit. "Steven? Can you hear me?"

"It's probably too late to go to the bathroom, right?" Steve calls from the inside.

Erskine smiles a bit, turning to the other doctors. "We will proceed."

Howard only moved towards another part of the control panel as he began turning something on before placing a pair of glasses over his eyes to make sure the brightness didn't get to him. The others in the room followed just when he grabbed a small wheel, beginning to turn it and announcing every percent he had been going to.

Y/n felt her leg bouncing up and down as a brightness came from the inside of the machine, which has Erskine squinting his eyes a bit while using his hand to cover the top of them to make sure it didn't hurt his eyes. The sound of Howard's voice announcing the percentage could be heard and just as he reached seventy percent, Steve began screaming out in pain.

Without any hesitation, Y/n moved up from her seat as she rushed out of the booth, hearing Peggy call out after her. The young woman had moved pushed the door open, hearing her sister behind her while she stopped at the top of the stairs, hands gripping the railing. Erskine had moved to the front of the machine, calling out to Steve.

"Shut it down!" Y/n shouts.

"Kill the reactor, Mr. Stark!" Erskine demands. "Turn it off! Kill it!"

"No!" Steve yells out, causing everyone to stop. "Don't! I can do this!"

Howard looked a bit hesitant as he moved back to the wheel before continuing to turn it. Y/n felt her grip tighten on the railing as she stared at the machine, having to squint her eyes a bit while she heard her fellow friend announce the percentage. It wasn't too long till it reached a hundred percent and sparks began flying out from everywhere.

Y/n and Peggy looked away a bit from the brightness until it suddenly faded. Everyone in the booth slowly stood up to their feet as they waited for something. When the machine suddenly opened when Howard pressed a button, everyone's eyes widened at the sight of a tired Steve inside the machine, but with a much larger figure.

Eyes wide, Y/n rushed down the steps with Peggy right behind her. The men in the booth had moved out of it and were now entering the room while Erskine, with Howard right behind him, rushed to help Steve out of the machine. The now much bigger blonde man placed his hands on their shoulders while he stumbled out of the machine, sweat over his body.

"I did it." Steve pants out.

Erskine nods. "Yeah. I think we did it."

"You actually did it." Howard whispers in shock.

Just then, Y/n was pushing through the doctors that had been surrounding them until she was right in front of the slightly older man. His tired blue eyes now looked down at her as she seemed to examine him for a couple seconds. He noticed relief in her gaze while they looked at one another.

"How do you feel?" Y/n questions.

"Taller." Steve mumbles.

Noticing a nurse standing beside them, a shirt in her hands for Steve to wear, Peggy stepped forward and she grabbed it from the nurse while she unfolded the plain white t-shirt and holding it out to Steve, who looked at her.

"You look taller." Peggy comments.

Many people were moving to surround the now super soldier as he took the shirt from Peggy and placed it on. Usually, a shirt like this would look so big on him, but it fit very snug on his torso and arms. When he got the shirt back on, his eyes looked back to the woman in front of him, seeing she was still looking at him.

There's a moment where they're staring at one another just when a loud explosion echoed from the booth, the entire booth exploding as glass flew everywhere. The screams of the nurses could be heard while everyone ducked and Steve immediately moved to stand over the female in front of him, making sure none of the glass hit her.

The sound of Erskine's voice yelling the words 'stop him' could be heard as he pointed at a man, who had been the one to explode the booth, and was taking a bit of the serum before he pointed a gun right at the doctor, pulling the trigger. The sound of a gun caused more screams to escape as people continued to stay ducked down.

Erskine collapsed to the floor when the two bullets hit him and Steve frantically rushed towards him while Peggy stood up from her crouched position, a gun now in hand as she shot at the man who had shot Erskine. One of the bullets was able to nail him right in the shoulder, though it didn't stop him from speeding out of the room.

Y/n snapped her head in the direction of her sister when she chased right after the man. Grabbing a gun of her own from beneath her skirt, the woman rushed right past Steve, who was crouched above a dying Erskine as she sped up in the direction of the stairs. When she reached the top and the front of the antique shop, she saw the same woman from before on the floor, bleeding.

Hearing gunshots from outside, her heels clicked on the floor as she pushed the door open, seeing the same vehicle they had arrived in was on fire, clearly having been exploded and Peggy was standing in the middle of the road, gun aimed towards a yellow vehicle as the same man from before was entering it.

Yelling out her sister's name, Peggy looks over as Y/n moves onto the road with her just when the revving of the vehicle catches their attention. The yellow car was speeding towards them, the man in the driver's seat as he drove straight towards them. Both women held up their guns, pulling the trigger many times as they tried to get at the man.

Y/n noticed a bullet she shot go through the front window and nail the man right in the shoulder, which had him gripping it, though he still didn't stop pressing on the gas. Just as the car was about to hit them, Steve was suddenly speeding out of the shop and tackling the women to the opposite side of the road as the vehicle drove off.

Even in a moment like this, Y/n felt butterflies in her stomach at the feeling of the blonde's arms around her just as he let go and got up to his feet. Peggy followed right away while her eyes narrowed on the man. Meanwhile, Y/n had stayed on the ground, though she sat up as she looked at the blonde that seemed to glance at her to make sure she was alright before moving away.

"We had him!" Peggy exclaims.

"Sorry!" Steve tells her as he rushes off.

With a newfound speed the serum was giving him, the blonde sped off as Y/n moved to her feet, stumbling a bit at the feeling of her heels touching the ground. Letting out a breath she had no idea she had been holding, she wipes her forehead a bit as she watches him run off.