Chapter 10: Taskmaster

As the figure moved forward all three heroes had a bad feeling in their gut that things were about to get tough. A female figure with a skull mask didn't speak as she moved forward without a hint of hesitation towards the group.

Dreykov shouted from behind her as the door closed, "Don't kill them, bring them to the lab for the first round of treatments. I'm counting on you Taskmaster. See you three soon." His laughter cut off after the thick door shut leaving the large number of widows who were beginning to recover and surround the three Avengers.

Pulling out a round shield that matched Captain Americas in all but color, it was just plain silver like how Captain Americas looked before they gave it the red, white and blue.

Just as Steve threw his shield to begin the attack, the Taskmaster mimicked him and threw her shield as well but at Tony instead. As Taskmaster did this, she ducked under Steve's shield and dashed forward in one swift motion.

Tony wasn't prepared and was hit solidly in the chest and was thrown backwards from the unexpected force from the impact. The shield bounced off Tony and headed straight for Steve, who like Tony didn't expect this woman to be able to match his fighting style.

As Steve dodged the shield, Taskmaster had moved in on Natasha and began to exchange blows, Natasha was shocked because she was getting pressured like she was back in her training days. As she struggled to gain the upper hand, she felt the sense that this enemy knew what she was going to do before even she did.

Just as Steve had moved in Taskmaster performed a flash kick that sent Natasha into the reinforced glass and into a group of widows who were ready for her, using the momentum from her kick to also push off Taskmaster flipped over the charging Steve and grabbed him by the collar and throw him right at Tony who had just began to charge in himself.

Tony caught Steve and threw him back towards Taskmaster, even tho they have not been a team for very long they were able to coordinate a bit thanks to Steve's tactical mind. Steve tried to clothes-hang the attacker but Taskmaster dropped to the floor and kicked up at Steve's head, as he sailed above her.

Although Steve was able to block the kick, since he was not grounded and in the air, the kick had changed his forward trajectory towards Natasha who had become entangled with three widows who had recovered.

Flipping back up Taskmaster snatched Captain America's shield right from the air, it had ricochet back after it had missed and bounced off two walls to try to come from a blind angle. Using the shield Taskmaster moved in on Tony and picked him apart, Tony was the least experienced in fighting out of everyone in the room. He mainly just overpowered his enemies with his mind and tech.

As Tony was receiving a humbling beat down, Steve had joined Natasha to knock out the widows to try to contain Taskmaster who was much more dangerous than the widows. Tony had begun to regret not doing much combat training as of late, all the training he has done has been light. Now he swore to himself he would put more effort into training his combat skills a bit harder.

"Jarvis, help me out here. Study her fighting style and activate countermeasures." Tony asked helplessly and received an immediate reply, "Right away, Sir."

Jarvis began to study the fight up to now using the various sensors in the suit and then took over the suit and began to slowly put up a little more offense bit by bit as Jarvis learned the style Taskmaster was using.

Just as Natasha and Steve finished knocking the widows unconscious after a rough struggle that had caused many 'I can do this all day' comments from the star spangled man with a plan, Jarvis landed a hard uppercut which knocked off the white skull mask to reveal the face underneath.

Just as Natasha and Steve dashed in to help Tony, Natasha stopped dead in her tracks and subconsciously asked, "Antonia? Oh my god...you're alive... I thought I accidentally killed you..." all Natasha's fight left her as she tried to make since at what and who she was seeing.

Antonia Dreykov, daughter of General Dreykov the leader of the Red Room, had been seriously injured during an assassination attempt on the generals life by Natasha and SHIELD. She wasn't supposed to even be there when they attacked, but for some reason she had come home and ended up in the explosion when Natasha set off the charges they had placed within Dreykov's home. She hated doing it but knew it had to be done to protect not only her own sister but also many other little girls who would fall victim to the Red Room.

They had originally thought the assassination was a success but had also cost the life of his young daughter too, or so they thought especially Natasha. She had taken killing the little girl hard since she had been assigned to protect the young girl many times as the Black Widow when she was with the Red Room.

She had truly grown fond of the girl over time, it had devastated her thinking she had taken an innocent girl's life even though it was to end the life of her father. But now seeing not only Dreykov still alive but now so is his daughter, but she wasn't the cheerful and lively girl that enjoyed tea parties and stuffed animals.

Now her face was disfigured and expressionless, her eyes gave off a dull but attentive glint. A human weapon with no personal memories, only the knowledge of combat and following any orders given by Dreykov.

Using his daughters weakened state, Dreykov had in fact installed a chip into her brain that gave him full control of her mind and body, he knew she was a mutant that had the ability of photographic reflexes and knew she would be the perfect weapon.

After performing various procedures to heal and strengthen his daughter, he forced her to study the archival records of various films of heroes fighting, forcing her to learn every hero's style to prepare to combat them should they show up.

Seeing the three beginning to become overwhelmed Adam decided he had seen enough of the Taskmaster's combat style. He knew what her abilities were, she was a mutant with the ability of photographic reflexes. She can perfectly mimic any action, no matter how unique or complex as she has seen it she can copy it at the cost of her long and short term memory. The only restriction was the movement or act didn't require super abilities. For example she cant mimic flight or if an act required superhuman strength she couldn't mimic it either since she didn't have superhuman strength.

By now she has lost all her memories and is nothing but a weapon programmed to follow orders. She doesn't even remember her own name, since even after hearing Natasha her facial expression didn't change and she continued to fight both Captain America and Tony.

So Adam decided it was time to step in as he began to see Yalena getting back up along with several other widows.

"Alright Eve, disperse the antidote." Adam commanded as he flew up to perform a SPARTAN smash through the ceiling.

Just as the fighting was about to intensify and Yalena, with tears running down an expressionless face since she was about to not only seriously injure the distracted Natasha, but would be subjecting her to the same cruel fate as her and her sisters. Suddenly a rumble was felt and soon thick blue smoke poured into the room thru the air vents. Upon inhaling the smoke the widows stopped their attacks and grabbed at their heads due to feeling the pain from the antidote burning away the Red Dust which controlled them.

Only Taskmaster continued to fight since her control wasn't from the Red Dust but rather a chip that was installed. Seeing the sudden change Taskmaster backed away to get away from the thick blue smoke that she had noticed began to affect the widows.

A sudden loud bang was heard and right in the middle of the two sides Adam came crashing thru the ceiling in his Mjolnir armor.

Landing a perfect superhero landing, his entrance shocking the three Avengers and Taskmaster making them all on guard since they each thought he was with the other.

However as the blue smoke cleared quickly thanks to a large opening in the room, Steve and the others were stunned but ready to attack, but soon noticed the familiar black and gold coloring and helmet with golden visor, then the all too familiar voice was heard which caused them to relax. A little.

"Hoorah!" Adam said as he stood up and got into a battle stance before continuing, "You three look like you're at the end of your ropes, allow me to show you how it's done Stark." This comment caused Tony to click his tongue.

"Jarvis, I want a full scan of that suit." Tony stated to Jarvis as he watched him dash forward to meet the opponent that he and Steve had so much trouble taking care of.

"Unfortunately I am unable to get a reading on the suit. Some kind of energy field is disrupting the scans from getting any readings. However I can confirm that this SPARTAN does indeed have an AI, Sir." Jarvis replied after making attempts to scan the tech.

To the three Avengers shock they watched as the large man moved with uncanny speed and agility as he toyed with Taskmaster.

Seeing such a large body frame you would never imagine the agility and dexterity he was able to accomplish, especially when wearing a metal suit of armor.

"How do you know? I thought the scans couldn't penetrate the energy field." Tony asked as he watched Adam dismantle Taskmaster's defences.

To Tony's shock the image of a digital woman with a perfect figure and long blue hair appeared within his HUD.

"Uh, Jarvis? Since when did you become a woman?"

Tony asked but received no response, except from the woman he was looking at instead.

"Oh don't worry about your friend. He is just busy with a little performance test I had for him to see how well he does. Greetings Mr. Stark, or do you prefer Ironman? I am Eve, a smart AI designed to assist my assigned SPARTAN in various ways." Eve then took over Tony's suit to his horror, thankfully all she did was activate some light emitters on his armor to display herself to the other two Avengers.

"I was tasked to inform you that he means you no harm and that we would to parley. However we wish to speak to your leader since we would like to discuss a few topics. On behalf of the UNSC I ask you to assist the medical team that is inbound to load these women onto our medical transport that will be here shortly. They will need a final medical checkup before they can be released." Eve then pointed to the window indicating where the rescue was coming from.

Natasha quickly spoke up, "You two go notify Fury. I will help them till you return. Make sure Fury knows we will be delayed." Natasha stated as she moved to Yelena's unconscious body.

Steve and Tony looked at the fight between Taskmaster and this mysterious Spartan and seeing him clearly beginning to dominate the fight they quickly took off out of the office to bring Fury up to speed.

As they ran Eve spoke up, "I shall now bid you farewell for now, although your AI isn't up to par with myself I will say it is a fine AI. Good potential. You don't need to arrange transport since I'm sure you will be joining us further and we can arrange your transport if needed." With that Eve vanished from Tony's suit thus bringing Jarvis back online.

"Sir, system intrusion occurred." Jarvis quickly reported since he had suddenly gotten locked out of the suit, when trying to access the suit again a program had sent out packets of data requiring him to solve advanced mathematics and situational problems.

"Yea buddy, a little late there but I guess it's better late than never. Run a full systems diagnostic, check for ghost programs, Trojans, worms or any other program left behind. Check the code line by line, and check my private servers for any intrusion. Also call Fury, we need to update him." Tony said as they exited the office to have a private conversation with Fury regarding recent events.

Meanwhile back in Dreykov's office Natasha was just standing in the middle of the office in shock.

The overload of information from what she was seeing happening in front of her brought many questions to her mind, first Adam ended the fight with a single blow after he had toyed with Taskmaster enough. Then using his light saber he cut into the Panic Room Dreykov had entered. As this happened a red laser coming from outside the aerial facility cut thru the impact glass in the shape of a large square with surprising ease and a large ship appeared out of nowhere.

It hovered at the opening it created and a small group of medics and medical droids that Adam had previously prepared and had sent ahead of him since Albatross' were slower, piled into the office and began loading the unconscious widows onto the ship to take back to Infinity.

Natasha could tell something wasn't right, cloaking technology, energy shields and weapons, so many advanced technologies. SHIELD was supposed to be the leader in tech worldwide in her mind, which is kinda true since Wakanda hid its true technological prowess from the World.

Black Widow watched as Adam carried an unconscious Taskmaster over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, while dragging General Dreykov by a leg. He had forced his way into the Panic Room with ease.

After dropping Taskmaster off with the medics and issuing orders, Natasha was finally brought out of her stupor as an unconscious Dreykov was thrown at her feet and Adams powerful voice followed, "He's all yours to finish off, this time you won't need to guess if he is dead or not if you do decide to kill him."