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They have all come together to the eye of the storm, though not all of them know it. They will.
***
Spector, despite being in a rather bad way, nonetheless makes an appropriately heroic (and bleedy) rush to the home of one Marlene Alraune. Her door is locked and no one is answering. Thirty seconds of dramatics later, the lock splinters. Marlene is stretched out sleeping on the couch, a coffee mug sideways on the carpet some inches below her limp hand, leaving behind a dark stain no one cares about. She is alive but unmoving--and true to the assassin's words, neither Spector or his butler can manage to rouse her.
"Believe me, that's not your problem right now."
Vengeance.
***
Taskmaster vanishes into no less than twenty-seven other identities on the way home, changing direction on multiple occasions. No one on the subway, both times he boards, pays him any mind. He is fortunately not bleeding, as he sometimes is at times like this, and so there's no particular rush--and no need to improvise a place to clean up before he bleeds through his disguises. That tends to attract attention, even in a city and a world like this one.
Instead he boards the subway twice, as well as hiring a cab for several minutes before abruptly stopping the car, paying the driver, and disappearing into an alley. When he emerges from the other side, he's someone else entirely. No matter who he is, he's always a careful man.
And all the while, as his senses and eye for detail remain on high alert in case of surprise superhero, he is thinking. Calculating. There are a thousand pieces...if he does this, they'll do this, this, or this, and in response to any of those Spector will...
How much time does he have? Another round of cool analysis; how badly Spector was hurt, how much of that will be ignored through adrenaline and heroic stupidity, how much time he'll waste on the woman. There will be time enough, Taskmaster finally decides as he waves a greeting at a neighbor, unlocks his front door, and slips inside. The image inducer flashes, a line of energy rolling ominously across his body, and then two inhuman yellow eyes light up in the darkness. He doesn't have to fumble for the switch--he remembers exactly where it is, after all.
He has time to stop and examine what few injuries he did walk away with, particularly the incident with the musket. Nothing's broken, however, and a few more bruises under the body armor won't slow him down one bit. He has time to look up a few things on his computer, and time to make a perfectly businesslike phone call to his employers, letting them know he needs to speak with them immediately re: Marc Spector. They don't seem put off by the request, and tell him to drop by the office. They'll be there.
Suckers.
***
The eye of the storm has come and gone, and now in the New York night, it is beginning to snow.
***
"You failed your contract, Asset T."
Of all the things about the next few minutes that are going to make Taskmaster a happy, happy man, he most appreciates the thought of never having to endure another asinine unasked-for 'code name' at the hands of these people. He has a codename, dammit, though in his snarkier moments he speculates that perhaps they simply cannot spell it.
"Nothing is up for negotiation. Our associates will deliver your pay when Spector is dead. He is not dead. Did you call us here only to confess your failure in person?"
"The Profile said friendless and alone. Out of fight and ready to die. He was wrong."
"The Profile is never wrong," says one of the sillhouettes in front of the window, moonlit against the same skyline shown on the videotape that Taskmaster conveniently left behind for Spector to study. "He's on his way here now, to tell you what mistakes you made."
It is perhaps a testament to the usefulness of wearing a mask that no one will ever know if Taskmaster keeps a straight face when he sees Moon Knight's airship angling down out of the snowy skies. Certainly the three men sitting with their backs to the window don't seem to suspect a thing...until the mercenary answers them.
"He's not the only one."
A great many things happen in the next three seconds. The men at the desk fall silent, perhaps trying to puzzle out whether they've just been openly sassed by a lowly hired gun. The moonlight is ominously blocked out by the incoming airship, and in the growing shadow they just might realize what's coming. The window, the wall, then half the building erupts in roaring impact, in glass, in rubble and dust.
And the Taskmaster admits, if only to himself, that Spector's complete batshit insanity is marginally impressive. Not that it will change what happens three more seconds from now, of course, but respect where respect is due.
In the growling rumble of shifting rubble, there is a sudden deafening WSHUNK as Moon Knight triggers the airship's canopy eject and sends it crashing into a far wall. In the tremendous cloud of smoke and dust, a figure rises from the airship's depths, a terrible form wreathed in white.
Moon Knight's eyes are lit--his voice awful--a shadow rising against the moon now visible through the ruined wall. He crouches like a tiger, speaking the coming of the end of the world to the scattered, groaning, bloody, unmoving bodies below.
"VENGEA--"
The unconscious Taskmaster immediately sits up somewhere among the rubble, both guns already drawn. The first shot punches through Spector's lower jaw and spine. The second lances through his skull, and the third the heart. Sometimes overkill is called for.
Moon Knight, no longer quite so impressively posed, slumps forward and falls. Then there is silence, and snow spiralling in on the evening air. One of the men who'd been at the desk makes one last faint incoherent noise, somewhere under the ship, before joining the other two in death.
Taskmaster exhales, and lowers his weapons. Surveying his handiwork, he allows himself a faint 'heh' before holstering the handguns and letting himself fall backward again, a faint puff of dust rising from his uniform. It's a good thing his preferred dry-cleaners don't ask questions.
Hands behind his head, he casually watches the ceiling and thinks even as he runs through the old routine of controlling his breathing, letting the adrenaline pass, and deciding that he's unharmed enough to consider this a successful night. Twenty seconds pass. Forty. A minute twenty.
He begins to hum faintly in a rich voice, not his own, as the snow continues to settle. And after two minutes, he has an idea.
Even were anyone else present and alive, they wouldn't know that he's smiling as he flips open a panel on his gauntlet and begins pushing buttons.
***
Five hours and sixteen minutes from now, having played her unwitting part in all this, Marlene Alraune will wake up well-rested and utterly confused. The butler, left to guard her, will never know that this was merely an eight-hour dose of sleeping potion, purchased from another woman in a place called the Nexus some time ago. Marlene had left her coffee unsupervised for twelve seconds earlier that night, and it had been time enough.
The assassin who'd put it there has no need for such a thing, himself. He always sleeps just fine.
***
As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye.
Spector, despite being in a rather bad way, nonetheless makes an appropriately heroic (and bleedy) rush to the home of one Marlene Alraune. Her door is locked and no one is answering. Thirty seconds of dramatics later, the lock splinters. Marlene is stretched out sleeping on the couch, a coffee mug sideways on the carpet some inches below her limp hand, leaving behind a dark stain no one cares about. She is alive but unmoving--and true to the assassin's words, neither Spector or his butler can manage to rouse her.
"Believe me, that's not your problem right now."
Vengeance.
Taskmaster vanishes into no less than twenty-seven other identities on the way home, changing direction on multiple occasions. No one on the subway, both times he boards, pays him any mind. He is fortunately not bleeding, as he sometimes is at times like this, and so there's no particular rush--and no need to improvise a place to clean up before he bleeds through his disguises. That tends to attract attention, even in a city and a world like this one.
Instead he boards the subway twice, as well as hiring a cab for several minutes before abruptly stopping the car, paying the driver, and disappearing into an alley. When he emerges from the other side, he's someone else entirely. No matter who he is, he's always a careful man.
And all the while, as his senses and eye for detail remain on high alert in case of surprise superhero, he is thinking. Calculating. There are a thousand pieces...if he does this, they'll do this, this, or this, and in response to any of those Spector will...
How much time does he have? Another round of cool analysis; how badly Spector was hurt, how much of that will be ignored through adrenaline and heroic stupidity, how much time he'll waste on the woman. There will be time enough, Taskmaster finally decides as he waves a greeting at a neighbor, unlocks his front door, and slips inside. The image inducer flashes, a line of energy rolling ominously across his body, and then two inhuman yellow eyes light up in the darkness. He doesn't have to fumble for the switch--he remembers exactly where it is, after all.
He has time to stop and examine what few injuries he did walk away with, particularly the incident with the musket. Nothing's broken, however, and a few more bruises under the body armor won't slow him down one bit. He has time to look up a few things on his computer, and time to make a perfectly businesslike phone call to his employers, letting them know he needs to speak with them immediately re: Marc Spector. They don't seem put off by the request, and tell him to drop by the office. They'll be there.
Suckers.
The eye of the storm has come and gone, and now in the New York night, it is beginning to snow.
"You failed your contract, Asset T."
Of all the things about the next few minutes that are going to make Taskmaster a happy, happy man, he most appreciates the thought of never having to endure another asinine unasked-for 'code name' at the hands of these people. He has a codename, dammit, though in his snarkier moments he speculates that perhaps they simply cannot spell it.
"Nothing is up for negotiation. Our associates will deliver your pay when Spector is dead. He is not dead. Did you call us here only to confess your failure in person?"
"The Profile said friendless and alone. Out of fight and ready to die. He was wrong."
"The Profile is never wrong," says one of the sillhouettes in front of the window, moonlit against the same skyline shown on the videotape that Taskmaster conveniently left behind for Spector to study. "He's on his way here now, to tell you what mistakes you made."
It is perhaps a testament to the usefulness of wearing a mask that no one will ever know if Taskmaster keeps a straight face when he sees Moon Knight's airship angling down out of the snowy skies. Certainly the three men sitting with their backs to the window don't seem to suspect a thing...until the mercenary answers them.
"He's not the only one."
A great many things happen in the next three seconds. The men at the desk fall silent, perhaps trying to puzzle out whether they've just been openly sassed by a lowly hired gun. The moonlight is ominously blocked out by the incoming airship, and in the growing shadow they just might realize what's coming. The window, the wall, then half the building erupts in roaring impact, in glass, in rubble and dust.
And the Taskmaster admits, if only to himself, that Spector's complete batshit insanity is marginally impressive. Not that it will change what happens three more seconds from now, of course, but respect where respect is due.
In the growling rumble of shifting rubble, there is a sudden deafening WSHUNK as Moon Knight triggers the airship's canopy eject and sends it crashing into a far wall. In the tremendous cloud of smoke and dust, a figure rises from the airship's depths, a terrible form wreathed in white.
Moon Knight's eyes are lit--his voice awful--a shadow rising against the moon now visible through the ruined wall. He crouches like a tiger, speaking the coming of the end of the world to the scattered, groaning, bloody, unmoving bodies below.
"VENGEA--"
The unconscious Taskmaster immediately sits up somewhere among the rubble, both guns already drawn. The first shot punches through Spector's lower jaw and spine. The second lances through his skull, and the third the heart. Sometimes overkill is called for.
Moon Knight, no longer quite so impressively posed, slumps forward and falls. Then there is silence, and snow spiralling in on the evening air. One of the men who'd been at the desk makes one last faint incoherent noise, somewhere under the ship, before joining the other two in death.
Taskmaster exhales, and lowers his weapons. Surveying his handiwork, he allows himself a faint 'heh' before holstering the handguns and letting himself fall backward again, a faint puff of dust rising from his uniform. It's a good thing his preferred dry-cleaners don't ask questions.
Hands behind his head, he casually watches the ceiling and thinks even as he runs through the old routine of controlling his breathing, letting the adrenaline pass, and deciding that he's unharmed enough to consider this a successful night. Twenty seconds pass. Forty. A minute twenty.
He begins to hum faintly in a rich voice, not his own, as the snow continues to settle. And after two minutes, he has an idea.
Even were anyone else present and alive, they wouldn't know that he's smiling as he flips open a panel on his gauntlet and begins pushing buttons.
Five hours and sixteen minutes from now, having played her unwitting part in all this, Marlene Alraune will wake up well-rested and utterly confused. The butler, left to guard her, will never know that this was merely an eight-hour dose of sleeping potion, purchased from another woman in a place called the Nexus some time ago. Marlene had left her coffee unsupervised for twelve seconds earlier that night, and it had been time enough.
The assassin who'd put it there has no need for such a thing, himself. He always sleeps just fine.
As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye.