CAPTAIN AMERICA: MV1 #490
Written by Jeff Melton
SEPTEMBER, YEAR 3

“Taking AIM!”

CAPTAIN AMERICA CREATED BY JOE SIMON AND JACK KIRBY

WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE: Cap uncovers a drug ring in Florida that operates to funnel money back to the United States for AIM. After defeating Tarantula and the super-strong LMD version of himself, Cap charters a small private plane to take him to Nebraska, where communications were discovered from the AIM base in Florida...

“Thanks for flying me on such short notice, son,” Cap offers. He is sitting in the co-pilot’s seat of the small aircraft, as the pilot continues to look on, but nods in understanding.

“Hey, no problem!” the young pilot remarks. “You might not remember this, but you saved my grandfather when his plane was shot down over Germany.”

Grandfather! The word hits Cap harder than he ever thought it would. He has been used to hearing stories about young men’s fathers during the war, but now this young lad is telling him about his grandfather.

“Your grandfather, and the other soldiers and pilots, were the real heroes of that war,” Cap offers. “They answered the call to put an end to Hitler’s plans for world domination.”

“Pretty scary time, from the way they always told it,” the pilot offers.

“Yes, I suppose it was...in a lot of ways,” Cap replies, images of close battles and great losses filling his mind’s eye. “Where is your grandfather now?” Cap asks.

The young pilot is silent for a brief moment, then looks over at Cap briefly: “He passed away a couple of years ago, Cap,” the pilot explains. “Cancer.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Cap responds with compassion.

“Yeah, it was pretty tough for all of us,” the pilot replies. “I was always pretty close with him, though. He did a better job of raising me than my father—and he sure put more effort into it!”

Cap starts to respond, but before he can do so, the plane shakes violently, as if hit by a large object!

“We’ve been hit!” the pilot replies. “I don’t know by what, but we’re going down!”

INTERLUDE

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, the faux Steve Rogers walks along with his friend down a Brooklyn street, nearing the subway station.

“I’m glad you agreed to come see this psychiatrist,” she offers. “I’m hoping he can help you out. I have a friend or two who have seen him before.”

“Well,” he responds. “I want to get to the bottom of this as much as anyone...more, in fact. I’d like to know who I am.”

Just then, a brown Nova drives erratically down the road, coming up on the sidewalk, as it continues to swerve, barely missing telephone poles, but side-swiping cars as it continues to run along the sidewalk, but swerving back to the road and along the grass.

The faux Steve looks at the approaching car with great concern, as he sees a young woman walking her infant child in a stroller...directly in the path of the reckless vehicle.

Without a second thought, Steve rushes down the street at speeds that the fastest athletes have not been able to reach, trying to reach the young woman and her child before they are hit by the car. He arrives before the car, but the woman and her child to not have time to move out of the way. With one fluid motion, he grabs the car just under the driver’s door, and effortlessly flips it on its side, where it continues to move forward, exhausting its forward momentum by smashing head-first into a parked delivery truck!

Steve rushes over to the car, ripping the driver’s door off its hinges, and throwing it onto the ground behind him. He reaches in, grabbing the intoxicated driver out of the car. The driver is conscious, but obviously drunk, and smells of cheap liquor.

“You stupid drunk!” Steve admonishes, as he slams the driver against the underside of the car, his legs dangling off the ground, as Steve pulls the driver closer to him. “You could have killed that young child and his mother!”

Steve slams his fist into the driver’s face, as teeth are knocked out, landing on the ground below, as blood starts to flow from his mouth. What remained of his consciousness was knocked out of him with that blow, but Steve is still enraged. He sends another blow—this one to the driver’s mid-section. The driver coughs up more blood. Angered, Steve then throws him back onto the side of the car (which is standing upright), where he remains, unconscious and bleeding badly.

Steve then looks at the car with disgust, as he approaches it once again, not content with the damage he has caused the driver, who already has a concussion and massive internal injuries. Just as he starts to grabs the driver by his legs, his blonde-haired companion puts her hand on his arm, stopping him.

“I think we’d better get going,” she suggests. “I don’t think we want to stick around and explain this to the cops.”

Stepping back to look at the carnage, Steve nods his head. He feels like he is not really there, but only watching the scene. “Yes,” he replies uncertainly. “I suppose you’re right.”

Meanwhile, in the mountains near Nebraska, Captain America is parachuting down, carrying the unconscious pilot in his strong arms, as he watches the plane they were on mere moments earlier crashing into the side of a mountain.

“We were hit by something,” Cap silently muses, as he continues to glide down towards the ground, “and my best guess is that it was a missile. That indicates to me that those transmissions Fury picked up coming from AIM were coming from this area.”

As if in answer to his question, a small fighter plane flies over the mountains, heading their way. On it, Cap can make out the AIM insignia. Cap has seen many such fighter planes, and he knows that its motions indicate that it is moving in to attack.

Cap does not have to wait long. The plane quickly dives downward, and fires a series of machine gun torrents at Cap, who instinctively puts up his shield, blocking the bullets from hitting him and the pilot he is trying to protect! However, the parachute carrying them is soon riddled with bullets, causing them to descend faster towards the hard ground below!

As Cap hits the ground, he immediately goes into a roll, while covering up the body of the young pilot in his arms. As he ends the roll, he places the pilot on the ground...just in time to look up and see the plane descending once again to blanket the area with a machine gun barrage!

Cap puts up his shield quickly, blocking the machine gun shots, even as bullets hit the ground and the rocks all around him. Cap avoids the bullets, and the plane once more takes to the air, avoiding the mountain behind Cap. As the plane begins to ascend once again, Cap takes the opportunity to rush into a small cave opening, leaving the pilot there so that he will be safe from any further attacks.

As Cap steps back out of the cave, he is soon surrounded by five armored guards, all dressed in the familiar AIM red.* They all start to advance on him, as he instinctively raises his shield in defense.

“If there was any doubt that I was in AIM territory, this pretty much erased it,” Cap thinks to himself.

‘Surrender or die!” the chief armored guard warns, raising his arm, revealing a laser cannon attached to his wrist. He immediately fires it at Cap, who quickly raises his shield, blocking the blast, which ricochets into a rock, demolishing it!

“I suspect that surrendering or not surrendering makes little difference,” Cap replies, leaping over a blow from another armored guard, which crashes into a large bolder, splitting it in two. “AIM’s been at work on their exo-skeletons, it seems.”

The leader starts to fire his weapon again, but Cap quickly throws his shield at the head armored guard, striking him directly in the wrist cannon. The guard’s eyes widen, as he realizes that his cannon has already been activated, and Cap’s shield shattered the barrel. The cannon backfires, knocking the guard ten feet back through the air, crashing onto a series of boulders, unconscious and severely injured!

While this is happening, the other guards are taking advantage of Cap not having his shield. One of the guards fires a series of laser barrages. Cap leaps onto the ground and rolls out of the way of the blasts, which scorch the ground where he was standing mere moments before!

Another guard leaps towards Cap, who ducks out of the way, causing the guard to crash head-first into a large bolder. Although stunned, the guard gets to his feet slowly.

The last guard picks up a large bolder, weighing perhaps two or three tons, and throws it at Cap, who leaps over the bolder, placing his hands on the bolder as he is over it for momentum. He then uses this momentum to leap into the air, catching his shield in the process.

As Cap leaps through the air, he lands in front of the guard who threw the bolder. He quickly slams his shield across his foe’s neck, breaking the lock for the headpiece of the armor. Cap then flips the helmet off the stunned guard’s head and connects with a left hook that sends the guard into a curled hump of flesh on the ground!

Cap turns slightly, deflecting another laser blast from the second armored guard with his shield. The guard, however, keeps the heat up, continuing to keep Cap off-balance with his laser attacks.

As Cap is distracted, the third guard grabs him by the leg and drags him along on the ground, as he jerks him upwards. Cap does not resist the surge forward. In fact, he uses that momentum, and adds to it his own forward thrust, causing himself to go higher than the guard intended. Cap utilizes this opportunity to slam his shield onto the back of the guard’s neck with tremendous force, causing him to fall forward...and release his grip on Cap’s leg at the same time!

Cap then lands on the ground and quickly whirls around, kicking the guard in the chin with great force, causing the helmet’s lock—already weakened by the blow from the shield—to snap and his helmet to fly off into the dirt behind them! Cap quickly brings around his left leg to knock out the guard!

Cap then does a backflip, as another armored guard starts firing at him again with laser blasts, even as the other remaining guard moves around for a better firing position himself. Cap continues to do a series of backflips, which take him out of the way of the laser barrage, which causes cracks and chips on the large rock formations behind them.

Moving forward with great speed, Cap surprises the other guard, who was not expecting Cap to rush him! Cap does so, however, and the guard merely stands ready to fight, confident in his exoskeleton to be sufficient to the task. However, just as Cap is upon him, Cap dives down under his foe, leaping in between his legs.

As soon as Cap is behind his foe, he reaches up, grabbing his opponent by the neck. He then flips him towards the other armored guard, who was continuing to fire laser blasts. The guard is unable to stop firing in time, and strikes the guard who Cap flipped his way. Although the lasers do not kill him in the armor, they destroy the armor’s exoskeleton and badly damage it. The armored guard falls to the ground, unconscious!

Cap looks over at the stunned guard, who cannot believe that he is the only one of his armored companions remaining. He does not want to be the one to carry failure to his superiors. Also, he is mindful of the fact that their team leader was defeated first. If he could defeat Cap on his own, perhaps AIM would make him a very rich man.

With this on his mind, the guard then fires laser blasts out of both wrists, creating a fiery walkway between he and Cap! Cap backflips out of the way of the laser attack, even as the determined guard continues to expand his barrage outward, trying to catch the flipping Cap with a solid blast!

Cap leaps back onto a series of smaller rocks. He then leaps upwards, along the rock formation. As he stands on the top of the formation, the armored guard fires at the rock beneath him, trying to drive Cap to the ground. However, Cap leaps forward, grabbing his foe in a headlock, and using his momentum to send them both crashing to the ground—although Cap maneuvers himself to be on top, so that the guard will take the brunt of the fall!

Cap swings his shield around, catching his foe on the side of his helmeted face! Not letting up for a moment, Cap then delivers another blow, as he brings his shield back around! Cap then leans forward, using his shield to drive into his foe’s neck and pop off his foe’s helmet.

The armored guard can then only look up through horror-filled eyes, as Cap leans forward, delivering a right cross to his opponent’s cheek, knocking him out with a single blow!

After Cap has dispensed of his foes, he returns to the cave entrance, where he finds the pilot still unconscious on the hard ground. He leans forward, placing his hand on the young pilot’s neck.

“His pulse is fine,” Cap thinks to himself. “He’ll be waking up in a few minutes. I’ve got to find a way to keep him safe, while doing what I need to do here.” Cap puts the young pilot back on the ground, listening for sounds of anyone approaching the cave entrance.

Cap gets to his feet and starts to walk to the cave entrance. He looks back once more at the unconscious pilot, and then he moves forward, out the entrance into the opening.

As Cap returns from the entrance to the cave, he is dealt a powerful blow to the back of his neck that doubles him over. As he turns around, he is kicked hard in the mid-section—with force sufficient to drive him back against the wall, which he crashes into!

Cap moves forward to rise himself from the ground. As he does so, he looks up to see NOMAD standing in front of him, dressed in his more recent visual, although his hair is short.

“You can stay on the ground,” Nomad offers, “or you can get to your feet. Either way, you’ll wind up just where you are now!”

“Nomad?!” Cap asks, uncertain of what is happening.

EPILOGUE

The faux Steve Rogers and his companion are led into the waiting area by Dr. Faustus’ assistant, who has long blond hair and is wearing a blouse and a tight-fitting skirt.

“Come right in,” she offers. “The doctor will be with you in a moment. He is still with a patient.”

They do not wait long, however, before Dr. Faustus emerges from his office, as does his patient. She is a middle-aged brunette, whose hair is starting to turn gray.

“Make your next appointment with my assistant, Miss Raymond,” Dr. Faustus offers, his hand on her shoulder. She nods her head and turns away, not facing the two patients waiting in the waiting room.

“Come into my office,” Dr. Faustus offers, as he walks up to the faux Steve and his companion. “I understand that you are suffering from amnesia?”

As Steve looks up, he sees Dr. Faustus. He instantly recognizes his face, although he cannot remember why or where! However, as he reaches out his hand to shake the red-bearded doctor, he starts to grow cold once again. He cannot control his shivers, which become more and more violent.

Soon, he drops to the ground, just as Dr. Faustus stands over him, looking on with interest.

“Let’s get him in my office,” are the last words that Steve hears the doctor utter. “I will deal with him there.”

NEXT ISSUE: Cap vs. Nomad! More on 50’s Cap’s dilemma! Plus: What Zola’s up to! Don’t miss it!

LETTERS TO THE LIVING LEGEND

Welcome, everyone to what I know is a seriously over-due issue of Captain America. Things have been pretty hectic in the Melton home of late, but we’ve got a new daughter to show for it (and I thought things were hectic when we were waiting for her...! ;) ).

Cap’s a lot of fun for me to write, and I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things with this title. As always, I welcome any and all comments about the direction of the title, if you enjoy it or not, etc. Feel free to write to me at jx2melton@hotmail.com .

I am pleased with your writing on the MV1 Captain America series. Any idea when you will pick it back up? The Sentinel of Liberty’s adventures must be chronicled. Please let me know.

Mike Stone

How about right now? Thanks for the kind comments, Mike. I hope it was worth the wait.

That’s all for now. Be back next time as the AIM saga continues, with some twists along the way.

Jeff Melton