New York

The Man Plucked Out Of Time

New York City is a big place, it's confusing and hard to traverse. Yet to a city native it's the easiest thing in the world to navigate. New Yorkers know the ins and outs of the city like the back of there hands. Asking directions is probably the easest in New York, New York, so good you say it twice, or however, that old saying goes.

Now people born in Brooklyn have the same city smarts, hell you have to at some point. Everything happens in the city and people tend to flock there. Now throughout the years, the city changes. It is the city that never sleeps, and never sleeping means continuous growth. Streets change names, trains change destinations, buses stop coming to certain parts, people move from apartment to house, even back to the apartment. Everything is constantly changing. And when you live in the moment, as these changes are being made, you adapt along with them. You grow accustomed to the change and it's easy to live.

But for poor old Steve Rogers, the man frozen in ice, he wasn't able to adapt. He missed being able to change with time. No, he was plucked out of the 1940s and thrust back into the world in 2011. All the changes that occurred, he missed it all. And now he was unable to fit in. He felt so out of place, so lost, so alone.

...

Steve's POV:

Waking up to a different time period was hard. The world had changed so much in 70 years. God, I still can't believe it has been 70 years. All the people that are not here anymore, at least how I left them. Peggy and Howard. My two best friends, Bucky's just gone. I don't know if I can be the person the future wants me to be. I don't know if I want to play the hero, or the solider anymore.

...

It's been a few months since I came back. Things have been stressful and eye-opening, to say the least. So much has changed, New York and Brooklyn, my home, my roots changed. No longer do you see the mom and pop shops littering the streets or the classically styled dinners. The simple things, the dimmer colors, my home.

Now it's all neon lights and cell phones. Man, do they love their cell phones, they constantly stare and always have them. It's weird, nothing is familiar, other than the landmarks that were there before my time and will probably be there forever lest the city floods and gets covered in water. Having woken up so many years into the future was not something good for me. Like some days or mornings rather, I would wake before the alarm and for the briefest moment I think I'm was back in the 1940s, at home in Brooklyn. But realization would hit as soon as the alarm went off. And life would go on as it normally did. 

At the moment I'm walking the streets of Brooklyn in my black non-descript baseball cap and shades. I was told to wear this out an about by S.H.I.E.L.D, a government organization who felt the need to have a long name just to spell out Shield.

They got me out of the ice apparently, along with the help and funding of Howard's son Tony Stark. Shield has an agent watching me at all times. I can tell most of the time. Technically, I work for Shield; Kind of. They only call me in on important 'End of the World' type stuff or so they said they would. But nothing world ending is happening.

Anyway, I'm just taking a leisurely stroll through the back alley's of Brooklyn, I think I'm somewhere near the college, 'Brooklyn College, but I could be wrong, I haven't really walked all the way over here yet. And I don't see any student's. I lost my tail a few blocks away and I'd like to keep it that way honestly.

Yet one of my favorite pastimes is losing the Shield agents that are assigned to following me. Once I would lose them, I'd go down dark alleys or places where people shouldn't go alone and just breathe or relax. It was weird but in those moments I felt calm. Eventually, though I would go back because Nick Fury would call me and "tell/order" me to stop losing his people. And I would sarcastically say sorry and continue to do it.

I look behind me to check if I'm still being followed, I stop walking and turn my head when I get hit in the chest hard. I freeze preparing for a fight yet the weight and the force of the thing knocks me off my feet. I fall landing on my back, with whatever hit me laying on top of me. I open my eyes not realizing I closed them and I see a kid. Apparently, he is the 'what' that knocked into me. He was short and kinda small, at least compared to me. He had dropped the books he was holding and a metal box, a computer I think and his cell phone.

The kid groaned and grabbed his head,

"Fuck!" he said as he rolled off me.

I frowned at the language especially for a kid to say.

But before I could talk he spoke again,

"Damn, what are you made out of? It feels like I just ran into a brick wall. Owwww, damn it."

The kid glared at me as he said this. He slowly stood as I did. I, not wanting to start anything lest this starts a fight.

"Ah right sorry, It was my fault kid I wasn't looking in front of me." I sigh as I start to help pick some of his things up.

He looks a bit sorry because he responds,

"Ah no I shouldn't have got so pissed I was just in a hurry and I did walk right into you." He says as he holds out his hand,

"I'm Stiles by the way." I shake his hand firmly and say,

"Steve." I give him all the stuff I picked off the ground and dusted off my clothes.

The kid now named Stiles was rearranging the books in his hands into some type of order, it didn't make a lick of sense to me though. He then checked his watch and his eyes comically went wide as the moon, and he mumbled a few choice words that I'm not repeating.

He then looked me in the eye,

"Steve nice meeting you in this quite dark alleyway, okay awkward Stiles, but let's just say we're both at fault and leave it as is, cool? Cause I gotta rush college classes to get to, professors to placate and tests to take. You know the usual, so I got to go like 10 minutes ago. BYE STEVE!"

By the end of that long-winded rant, the boy screams by and rushes off towards the college.

What a whirlwind of a kid. I shake my head and head back on my route and take my time walking slowly through the world. Eventually, the shield agent found me again and I decided to head home. What a weird encounter.