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You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?

Dick Grayson was only fifteen years old when he was recruited to train for a secret mission for the US Army in 1940. An orphan whose father had been in the military, Dick had spent most of his life around army camps, and took to the training very quickly. He didn't know what he was being trained for exactly, except that it was important, and after going to the movies one night, he started to take inspiration from Captain America, studying his every move and incorporating what he did into his own training.

After his sixteenth birthday, he had one final test, and was introduced to a man he recognized immediately: Captain America was really Bruce Wayne, and Dick had been training to be his sidekick and partner.

He was given his own uniform and codename - Patriot - and ran missions with Cap, the Sub Mariner (Prince Orin of Atlantis), the Human Torch (Barry Allen) and Toro (Wally West) throughout the war. At some point, he was given a weaker version of the serum that had been used on Bruce: although he had advanced strength, durability and speed, it took longer to take full effect, which meant he still grew naturally and still isn't as tall as Bruce was.

In 1945, while confronting the Red Skull, Cap and Patriot tried to stop him from dropping new bombs powered by the Tesseract on major American cities. While trying to deactivate one of the bombs after the Cube incinerated the Red Skull, the plane exploded. Dick was thrown clear and landed in the water with Cap's shield. Both were presumed dead until almost seventy years later, when Grayson's body was discovered preserved in the arctic. The serum had kept him alive, and the ice had prevented him from aging.

He was thawed out in New York City in a SHIELD facility, and handed over the shield and uniform. Initially reluctant, he stepped into the role of Captain America to help the newly formed Avengers stop an alien invasion masterminded by Loki, and stuck with it in following confrontations. Still adjusting to life in 2012, he splits his time between exploring the city, working for SHIELD, and wishing Jim Kirk was less of an asshole.

Some time after the first Avengers Initiative, he ran into New York's newest superhero, Spider-Man, who was really just a teenager with superpowers who was apparently smart enough to know Dick had been Patriot, and was kind of a huge fan. The two hit it off pretty quickly, and Spider-Man quickly became a sort of unofficial member of the team. Dick began to look at Tim as the younger sibling he never had, and eventually the two started hanging out as Dick and Tim, and not just Cap and Spidey.

When Tim was seventeen, his aunt was targeted by the Green Goblin and killed before he could get to her. Dick was with him when he discovered the body, and pretty much immediately stepped up to take care of him after the incident. With the help of SHIELD, papers were falsified that said that Dick was his cousin, so Tim moved into his apartment and became a more legitimate member of the Avengers, while still balancing school and trying to act like a normal teenager.