✪ American Noise ✪ [Captain America]

Chapter 13: Liz IX

"You're coming to my birthday tomorrow, right Steve?" Billy asked him for the half-dozenth time that week before continuing their game of Uno, "Skip Emma."

Emma made a point to remind her brother, "You mean our birthday."

"Of course I am," Steve responded, sounding like he was trying to hide a laugh, "But can I tell you a secret?" Steve's tone had hushed slightly as he said this.

Liz overheard the exchange as she was preparing dinner for the four of them in her apartment. The twins' mother, Catherine, needed to finalize the details of a big surprise she had planned for tomorrow's festivities (a surprise that was a mystery even to Liz), and Liz was keeping an eye on Billy and Emma for the evening. Liz paused from stirring a boiling pot of spaghetti to look curiously through the archway to her living room. Billy, Emma, and Steve sat around the coffee table playing the card game that had once kept Liz occupied for hours on end when she had been about the same age as the twins.

Steve continued in a hushed tone as he placed down a card, "Tomorrow is my birthday, too. Reverse to Emma."

This was met with excitement from the twins:

"No way!" said Emma.

"We have the same birthday as Captain America!" Billy almost shouted.

The two of them had cornered Steve in the shop a few weeks ago the afternoon following the news report much in the same manner that Liz had. Steve had been honest with them, and they had agreed not to spread the fact like wildfire that Captain America was their upstairs neighbor. The twins forgave him easily and then got to their real motive: asking as many questions about his super-friends (primarily Iron Man and Black Widow) as possible.

The fact that tomorrow was also Steve's birthday was met with slight panic from Liz. I've almost finished the twins' gifts, but now what about him? What on earth do you give a superhero for their birthday? Liz returned to the stove, racking her brain for ideas.

* * *

"Can you hand me another heat shrink?" Liz asked Steve as he returned to his stool at the workbench. He had just changed the record that had been playing in the background on the old tabletop player Liz had finally gotten around to rewiring earlier that week. The two of them had come down to the back room of Dolan & Son's Antiques once Catherine had picked up the twins after dinner. Liz was completing the final bit of electronics work for the Black Widow and Iron Man gauntlets for Emma and Billy, and Steve had been curious about the process.

Steve handed Liz a short rubber tube no more than an inch long. "I can't believe you've made these from scratch."

Liz shrugged and placed the tube over a point that she had just soldered together, joining two pieces of wire; a piece that connected a small speaker to a soundboard she had programmed with noises to emulate Iron Man's hand repulsor rays. "I've always liked making and fixing things," she paused as she warmed the tube with a lighter. The rubber instantly shrank down to hug the soldering point snugly, ensuring that no metal on the wires was exposed.

Liz then quickly mounted the speaker in the gauntlet, then added batteries to the battery pack she had attached earlier and mounted that inside as well. She slipped the entire gauntlet on her hand and turned it towards Steve, then pulled her hand back so that her palm faced him. A pale blue light began to shine as a charging sound emitted from the speaker. Liz could not help but start to smile. She pressed her thumb inward, and the light flashed brighter as a repulsor sound was triggered. "By Dumbledore, it works!"

Steve was smiling at her success as well, "Dumbledore?" he questioned.

Liz sighed, "You need to read and watch Harry Potter." She started slipping the Black Widow gauntlet on her other hand.