October '08 # 5

STARRING:

Commander Marvel

Iron Man

Goliath

The Wasp

Thor

Photon

ALSO FEATURING:

Scarlet Centurion

???

New York, New York

“Bill, do you want to run through those numbers again?”

Bill looked to the speaker that Janet’s voice had come from and smiled. The team had just dispersed thanks to the disappearance of Thor, and that gave Bill Foster, the newly christened hero Goliath, more time to spend with just one of his colleagues.

“Sure thing. Let me get the analyzer ready.”

As Iron Man stalked out of the room and the floating screen bearing Tony Stark’s image shut down, Photon let her energy form dissipate into her human state. She also quickly exited the lab in the heart of Stark Tower, leaving Bill and Janet to their work.

Ever since the inert particles discovered by Hank Pym had been blasted by Commander Marvel’s stray blast, and coupled with the strange power of the now destroyed egg-shaped stones, Bill and Janet had found themselves gifted with abilities that no normal human possessed. Those inert particles now seemed to no longer be so. *

* (First issue – D)

So far their combined research had yielded little in the way of answers. At the atomic level, proportionally, there was a vast amount of space between atoms. In fact, gauged at the right size, the space between atoms could easily fit a proportionally accommodating city like New York. That was the basic principal they were working with in relation to their newfound size-changing powers.

For Bill, growing as large as a hundred feet tall was only a simple matter of concentration. He estimated that the Pym particles had somehow given him control over the amount of space between his atoms, which would account for the apparent gain in size. What he didn’t know was how his mass increased with it. His strength increased with his size, allowing his body to actually support the hulking brute he could turn into. Then, when he was ready, he would concentrate and revert to his normal size.

Janet wasn’t so lucky. Whatever variables had affected Bill had worked inversely against Janet, who was now codenamed the Wasp. While Bill could grow, Janet could shrink to the size of the smallest insect. Just like Bill could expand the space between his atoms, Janet could apparently contract the space between hers. So far, she had yet to grow back to a normal size and was stuck in her shrunken form.

There was one major difference between their powers, and that was what Bill had hoped to tackle today.

He heard the buzzing noise of the synthetic wings that Tony Stark had provided Janet with, making her sound like a genuine insect. The wings had once been designed for a military-grade spy camera, but the concept had never been sold. They were thin and pliable, and harnessed for Janet’s easy manipulation. It had taken her some practice but she had mastered them in only a week’s time.

“Ready?” he asked once he saw the black speck he knew to be her land in front of the analyzer.

“All set,” she replied, her tiny words being relayed through the stereo system so that she could actually be heard.

“Let ‘er rip.”

What began as a small spark suddenly grew to a torrential stream of yellow and white energy being funneled into the analyzer’s long tube. The shocking power, originating from Janet’s position and dubbed her ‘sting’ looked to be lethal. After a moment she cut the stream off and let Bill make some adjustments to the analyzer.

“I think that will do, Janet. Let’s take a look at the read-out.”

The Wasp’s ‘sting’ was, as far as they could tell, an expenditure of energy left over from the confining of Janet’s molecular structure. It was a basic principal of physics that it is impossible to destroy matter. You can reshape it or convert it, but never destroy it. In Janet’s case she seemed to be channeling the compressed energy between her atoms as an output.

“So you really think that the sting is the key to figuring out how to restore my size?” Janet asked.

“Possibly. Do you recall anything from Pym’s research?”

“Hank never got this far when I worked with him,” Janet replied. “He abandoned the project and marked it as hopeless before Tony lost him to that other company. He never looked back. That’s Hank. One track mind.”

“Sounds like you knew him pretty well.”

“Yeah. You could say that. Even though I was the project lead he took the credit. He never got over that since he was the one who discovered the particles in the first place.”

As the numbers scrolled across the analyzer’s display, Bill thought carefully about his response. Janet was an exceptional woman: brilliant, beautiful, and more than able to hold her own in a fight. She was unlike anyone Bill had ever met before, and he would be kidding himself if he said he wasn’t a little nervous around her.

Before he could say anything, however, the door to the laboratory was shoved open and one of the security personnel stumbled in. “Can we help y—” Bill began to say, but he stopped when he saw all the blood.

The guard fell to the floor and his limbs fell at awkward positions, as if they had been broken. There was a gash in his forehead that was seeping blood onto the otherwise clean floor. He moaned slightly, barely audible above the noise of Bill’s feet running toward him.

He bent down to the guard but before he could examine him another man stepped into the doorway. Garbed in a brown flowing robe, the man’s exposed face looked like it had been hacked at with a small blade, as fresh abrasions bled freely.

“Who are you?” Bill asked as he braced himself.

“I have come for Stark,” was all the horrifying man replied before leaping directly at Bill with murderous intent in his eyes.

Marvel 2000 Proudly Presents...

# 5- "Hidden Agendas "
Part Two of Two

Written by D. Golightly

“Hey,” Thor said. “You had one of those stones before all this started, right? Where did you get it? Are you the real Commander Marvel from the Invaders?”

Before Marvel could answer each of their communicators chirped to life. Simultaneously they replaced the small links into their ears and tapped the sides to activate them.

“What’s happening?” Marvel asked.

“Marvel!” It was Bill Foster, and he sounded out of breath. “God, you have to get back here! This guy…this monster, he’s tearing the place apart!”

Despite the dangerous height and the whirling winds from being far above New York City, both the heroes shared a quick glance before streaking off into the sky. The tip of the Empire State Building, which the youthful Thor had delicately, and oddly casually, been sitting beside faded into the background. A small cocoon of energy enveloped the Commander as he punched through the air, keeping the wind from swirling through his hair.

Donny Blake, as he had revealed himself, otherwise known as the disembodied spirit of the Norse god of thunder, followed Marvel’s lead. A streak of blue lightning that had originated in his eyes made its way down his arm and condensed into the now familiar form of a war hammer. The solid blue construct pulsated with the raging energy of a thunderstorm as Thor used it to provide the momentum he needed fly.

Commander Marvel soared toward Stark Tower, baffled by Bill’s words. What sort of monster could he be talking about? Even though he had already encountered several strange and powerful creatures since his recent debut, he would be hard-pressed to imagine something that could cause a person with Goliath’s abilities to tremble.

Upon reaching Stark Tower, Commander Marvel could see no signs of forced entry. He pulled back in his flight and assessed the situation. Whatever so-called monster was inside the building, it had left no obvious path to follow.

“Keep moving, Marv!” Thor cried as he rocketed by, nearly brushing against the Commander.

Marvel briefly thought of trying to intercept the young god, but decided it best to follow his example. Swiftly diving down, Marvel pushed through the lobby entrance of Stark Tower and shot through the first floor to where the elevator was waiting. Several bystanders right inside, Stark’s employees from other floors, gasped and screamed at his entrance. He saw Thor touching down right in front of the elevator as he approached.

“I’m not waiting for an elevator,” Marvel commented as he turned to look for the stairwell entrance.

“Who’s waiting? Guys like us don’t wait, dude.”

Thor raised his hammer and smashed it down into the stainless steel elevator doors. The left one bent back while the right one dislodged entirely. Smirking, Thor grasped the right door and yanked it back carelessly into the lobby. He faux-saluted Marvel and jumped into the elevator shaft, falling down through the floors toward the basement laboratory where Bill and Janet were fending for their lives.

Marvel briefly looked back at the patrons and employees populating the lobby. He grimaced before jumping in after Thor, realizing that even if his past caught up with him before he was ready, he was going to have to start working on his overall image.

“Rhodey, get off my case already!”

Standing at two inches over six feet tall, a black man that held himself with an air of military training shook his head. He wore a tailored silver suit, but it was obvious that they weren’t the clothes he was most comfortable in. He ran a hand over his bald head and sighed.

“You’ve been in the suit too long,” he replied. “And cut it with that ‘Rhodey’ crap. My name is Rhodes. James Rhodes. You just came back in from that bank heist and you need to get out of the suit before—”

A soft click silenced Rhodes. Iron Man stood before him, the only other person with him in the large and impressive office on the top floor of Stark Tower. The armored hero’s helmet was firmly in place now, sealing off its wearer from the rest of the outside world. Iron Man turned and stared at his advisor, and even though it was impossible to tell what his expression was beneath the helmet, the vibe Iron Man was giving off was clear.

“You heard the alarm from the lab,” Iron Man’s filtered voice replied. “Bill’s in trouble. Probably Janet, too. I have to get down there and without the armor I’m as useful as a little kid. You just worry about evacuating the building. And since when did being called ‘Rhodey’ get on your nerves? My dad called you that all the time.”

“Yeah, well, your father never kept this many secrets. And he wasn’t stubborn like you either. You now as well as I do that the longer you interface with that armor the more you’re liable to have an aneurysm.”

Iron Man started walking away from Rhodes toward a set of stainless steel doors. He slid open a panel on one of his gauntlets as he walked, checking the failsafe he had installed the week before. “I know, I know. I designed the interface, remember? I’m fully aware of the risk.”

Rhodes swiftly stepped between Iron Man and the doors. “Are you? Since the team came together you’re spending more time in that tin can than the projected parameters allow. It’s not safe.”

“I’ll be fine. Move.”

Rhodes sighed again, but he stepped aside and let Iron Man tap the button on the wall to open the doors to the private elevator. Iron Man stepped in, waved half-heartedly to Rhodes as the doors closed, and began to descend to the basement. He ran through the boot-up programs through his HUD, making sure that all his systems would be online before he jumped into whatever was going on in the lab.

The alarm had instantly reached him in his office where he had been sitting at his desk, going over the schematics for an armor upgrade with Rhodes. Someone had breached his security. Someone that had the capability to get onto a floor that was supposedly inaccessible. There were only a few dozen people on the planet that even knew that lab was down there, and all of them were accounted for. Rhodes had told him to contact the others and let them handle it, but he wasn’t about to let someone break into his house and not investigate personally.

James Rhodes had been a man that his father had trusted, and that trust had transferred to the person inside the Iron Man armor now. He truly did trust Rhodes with his life, which was obvious given that he was the only other person who had ever seen what he really looked like. Of course, for the company to have become what it is now, that was a necessity, but he liked to think of Rhodes as almost family.

The elevator dinged to signal his arrival on the lowest floor, the basement lab. His weapons were online and his targeting computer was already scanning his field of vision to lock onto something. When the doors opened he hesitated, shocked by the scene of chaos.

Janet was nowhere to be seen, but that was expected since it was hard to find her anyway. But Bill was unconscious on the floor, amidst scattered debris, instruments, paper, and broken glass. Iron Man’s visor locked onto him and identified the obvious injuries, scrolling them across his HUD: two broken legs, a fractured right arm, a sprained left ankle, and a concussion.

The intruder who had done this, as well as destroyed the lab in the process, was currently fighting with Commander Marvel. His flowing brown robe covered most of his body, except for his face, which was bright red. His head had some tufts of white hair across his scalp. Upon closer inspection Iron Man realized that his face wasn’t naturally that color, but had rather seemed that way because of all the massive cuts that had been sliced into his features. Blood trickled down from the wounds freely like a dripping facet that needed one more good turn.

“Hold it right there!” Iron Man ordered, using his helmet’s synthesizer to bolster his voice.

“Get back!” Marvel hollered without bothering to look at him. He was much too busy fending for his life against the strange intruder.

Marvel stood in the center of the lab, throwing punch after punch at the man in the brown robe. For as fast as he was moving, the intruder was moving faster. With each possibly killing blow, the intruder weaved between the punches with ease. After the third missed throw, the man twisted oddly at the waist and grabbed Marvel’s wrist, twisting it. The man spun on his heel and used Marvel’s own momentum to yank him into an expertly performed judo maneuver, tossing him across the room and slamming him into the far wall.

Marvel growled with rage as he fell into a kneeling position and the bands around his wrists suddenly erupted into a blazing inferno of power. “I didn’t want to do something like this in close quarters,” the masked hero said, “but you’re not giving me a choice.”

“Whatever you attempt,” the man replied, “it is useless.”

Marvel took his shot, firing a concentrated burst of yellow and white energy at the assailant. The beam sliced through the room, carving a hole into one of the workstations as well as the wall. Even though the beam was slender, it still did plenty of damage. The intruder, however, had dodged at the last instant and remained unaffected by the display.

“Ah, another has come,” the intruder said as he shot a look squarely at Iron Man. “I thought I felt something approaching. But you…you’re different somehow. Your soul isn’t like the others. I wonder…”

The man’s robe flowed around him as he vaulted over a long, enclosed table, looking for cover. Iron Man locked his targeting computer into place and fired his repulsors. The concussive force struck him as he leapt, knocking him down behind the counter.

“What are you doing?” Marvel demanded as he stood up and stalked toward the counter.

“Saving your ass. I hit him; you didn’t.”

“You don’t understand what this monster is capable of. Get back! Find Photon and regroup. I’ll hold him here as long as I can.”

Irritated, Iron Man rushed across the lab to flank the counter that the man had fallen behind. Marvel wasn’t the one who commanded in the field and he didn’t see what the problem was. Obviously all he had done was caught the intruder off guard. Marvel approached the counter from one side as Iron Man came up from the other, his repulsors at the ready.

He stepped behind the long, enclosed table and was shocked to see that the man in the robe was gone. “Where is he?” Iron Man asked as he lowered his gauntlets slowly.

“The Father sees all,” someone rasped from behind him.

Iron Man whirled around, but it did little good. The robed man ducked under his feebly swinging arm and stuck something into the side of his breastplate. Iron Man stumbled back as the alarms started sounding inside his helmet. He looked down to see what looked like a simple knife jabbed into the side of his thick, reinforced armor, and it was playing havoc with his mobility.

The man jumped into the air and kicked out both of his feet, striking Iron Man on either side of the pentagram on his chest. His strength was amazing; much more than Iron Man would have thought possible for such a person. In his armor, Iron Man weighed as much as five men, but the dropkick sent him sailing back into Marvel where they both crashed into the wall.

Iron Man’s armor began to shut down, system by system. He was trapped. Whatever he had been stabbed with, it was much more than just a simple blade. Commander Marvel was pinned under Iron Man for the moment, but when the robed man lashed out again another knife was thrown into his chest, ensuring that he would also become immobile.

“The Father grants me the ability to look into your soul,” the man said as he stepped forward with a horrifying look on his face. “Your movements are known to me even before they are known to you. I can anticipate and adapt, I can mimic and impersonate. I can match your soul with my own and in a manner of speaking, become you.”

Iron Man struggled inside his armor, fighting to regain control of his limbs that were held down by the bulky second-skin. He managed to swivel his neck where he saw long blonde hair hiding the face of Thor only a few feet from the elevator he had come down in. The god was also incapacitated, although he couldn’t yet tell how. From what he had witnessed in the field, Thor was one of the toughest on the team. However he had been taken down, it had to have been effective.

With Thor unable to lend aid, that left Photon and possibly Wasp to conceivably come to the rescue. Of course, that was also assuming that they were still alive.

“Who are you?” Iron Man demanded. He was trying to manually reboot his armor, but the failsafe wasn’t kicking in yet. He needed more time.

“I have come for Stark. I was hired to find him and obtain certain things from him…but I believe that will no longer be necessary now. You see, the Father favored me above all others once. But He betrayed me and took my very soul away as punishment.”

Blood continued to trickle down the intruder’s face, dripping onto Iron Man’s red and gold armor as he leaned over the fallen hero. Their faces came close together; one locked behind a metal mask and the other deprived of several layers of skin. If Iron Man’s armor hadn’t been locked down he would have blasted the horrifying man away just to keep from looking at his disgusting disfigurement.

The intruder placed a palm onto Iron Man’s chestplate and his eyes briefly rolled into the back of his head. “Now I am forced to fill the void that He left me with by stealing away parts of another person’s spirit. It grants me their strength, their thoughts, even their body language. I become one with them…and right now I feel the imprint of your soul. I must say, I’m surprised. Even more so than the hybrid with the bracelets over there.”

“You’re just a hired gun. A lackey.”

“Whatever I am needed for I accomplish. The Father saw this, as does my employer. In fact, whatever task he has set me I have accomplished flawlessly. My employer is so pleased he has even given me a moniker: Taskmaster.”

“So you’re some kind of religious nut?” Iron Man asked, still trying to buy time for his armor to reboot.

“Religion is a joke. Each man is his own god. I’ve been forsaken, but at the very least I’ve come to make a living from it. Someday I’ll find a soul with the key to Heaven inside it. The thunderer came closest, but he’s not quite right. His soul has been deluded too much. But I’m not here for my own personal gain…no, I’m here on behalf of my employer. There is someone working behind your own operations that seeks to dismantle you from within, and I am the tool he has sought to use to learn about you.”

“If that’s true,” Iron Man said under labored breath, “why tell me?”

“Because he has seen the future and there is nothing you can do about it. You will all be destroyed, scattered, and forgotten. Soon you will—”

The intruder paused, snapped his hand away from Iron Man’s chest, and gripped something in the air. He stood up to his full height and uncapped his hand to see the tiny form of the Wasp twitching in his palm. “With my heightened senses, it is impossible to sneak up on me, little one. I don’t think you will be stinging me anytime soon.”

“But she’ll serve nicely as a distraction!”

Energy sliced through the room, stabbing into the intruder viciously from both sides. To the left, Commander Marvel, battered as he was, unleashed a solid fury of equal parts concentrated light and concussive force. His bracelets glowed nearly as bright as the sun as the searing power lanced through the room, melting a test tube that it came into contact with. He staggered somewhat but he maintained the assault.

To the right stood Photon, once more brandishing the angelic body bestowed upon her by the Scarlet Centurion. Like Marvel, a blaze of engulfing energy erupted from her arms and cut into the intruder. She had stumbled onto the scene and met the Commander’s eyes, knowing that it was going to take all she could muster to take their enemy down. She poured herself into the attack, feeling the power at the core of her body slowly flow up her torso and down her arms, only to slip out between her fingers.

Their target stretched out his arms into the center of both beams, a large grin stretching across his face. “Yes!” the Taskmaster screamed over the torrent of energy. “Extend yourselves! Create a stronger avenue for me to walk into your soul!”

What happened next disoriented Iron Man. There was an explosion and he was sure that he saw both Marvel and Photon tossed back. For a brief moment he saw the intruder float off the ground, and then his eyes began to burn. However, even though he was blinded he began to see many different and confusing images swirl in his mind.

A stone hammer hidden deep in a forest.

A scorned woman screaming at the top of her lungs.

Dozens of alien warships hovering in space.

The Scarlet Centurion demanding obedience from his kneeling subject.

Forged documents being handed to a new employer.

As quickly as the mental onslaught began, it concluded with one distinctive image: the Taskmaster’s blood red face, smiling. The stunningly white teeth juxtaposed the dripping blood from his face. The image burned into Iron Man’s mind and it was all he could think about. There was nothing else, only the scarred face of the man who had humbled them all.

“I have what I came for,” the man said. Iron Man could barely see, but he heard the intruder’s words clearly. “I know each of you as intimately as you do yourselves. This knowledge will make it easier for my employer to crush you. I have touched each of your souls and I take that insight away with me. But I leave something in its place: I have given each of you a glimpse into each other’s souls, as well as the secrets that rest therein.”

The Taskmaster casually walked to the exit, stepping over broken bits of equipment and chunks of drywall. Iron Man gulped at the oxygen his suit supplied, breathing deeply to try and regain his bearings quicker.

As the Taskmaster left them behind, broken and defeated in their own lair, it wasn’t the disturbing fact that he had barely flinched at any of their offense that bothered Iron Man. This mysterious figure that boasted of their inevitable future demise was a mere annoyance compared to what he had seen in his mind.

Instead of feeling fear, he felt anger. White hot rage boiled inside him as the glimpse that the Taskmaster provided had apparently revealed the secrets of each of his teammates. While the secrets he had just learned were disturbing, they were nothing compared to the idea that his own privacy had been violated. Just as he had seen the souls of the others, so had they looked into his.

His armor had begun to come back online and his systems were flashing warnings, but it didn’t matter anymore. Not now. The bruises would fade, but the permanent damage had been inflicted last. Iron Man felt as if he had gained nothing from the day and had somehow lost everything. There was one simple truth playing over and over in his head:

No more secrets.

Somewhere in Europe

“I trust your mission was successful, my Taskmaster?”

Stepping through the shadowed doorway, the Taskmaster slipped off his brown robe and draped it over a chair, revealing a sleek bodysuit with half a dozen sharp knives strapped to the sides. He simply nodded and kneeled before the man who had spoken.

“Yes,” the Taskmaster replied smoothly. “They were uncoordinated and sloppy. You will have no trouble dissolving them, and I doubt my now intimate knowledge of their anticipated actions will even be necessary.”

The man, who was dressed in a custom tailored dark blue suit that cost more than most men make in a year, half turned to face the Taskmaster. He stood a few feet away from a desk, which was in front of large, looming windows that looked out onto a factory floor. From this office the man could watch his people work furiously to meet the deadlines he had set before them. Dozens of workers manned the assembly lines, each aware of the fact that he was always watching them.

He slapped the Taskmaster as he scoffed. “Do not proceed to tell me what I can and cannot do.” His accent was thick with German heritage. “I must have every advantage in the coming battle. The future is not written in stone.”

The Taskmaster stood, unaffected by the humiliating slap. “I did not mean to insult you,” he responded. “I apologize.”

“Leave me.”

The door closed and once more the man was alone in his office. He looked over his factory floor for a few moments before turning back to his desk and pushing a button. The windows turned opaque, shutting him off completely from prying eyes.

“Fools…all of them,” he muttered as he walked to the far side of the room and removed a painting from the wall, revealing a large safe. After dialing in the combination the door swung open and revealed the contents of the safe: a worn and damaged costume that had once been a bright blue. He gently picked the fabric up and unfolded it, relishing the Swastika embroidered on the front.

“Once I had the power of a god running through my veins. They feared me. Now I am old. Weak. No longer worthy of the name Master Man. But soon…soon…”

He smiled, now sure of the fact that before long the so-called heroes would be dead at his feet and he would reign over the planet as he was meant to.

MAIL CALL

Someone asked me (I’ve forgotten who now) how I re-imagine a character for the Ultimate universe. Some of the characters I’ve picked for this series are very similar to their 616 counterparts, such as the Golden Age Captain America. Now, I haven’t revealed his entire back story yet, but from a reader’s point of view he’s essentially the same. I’ve got a big plan for him that just hasn’t come to fruition yet.

Other characters are extremely different, such as the Golden Age Human Torch, who is basically a steampunk version of the 616 Jim Hammond. The basics of the character are there, but with a complete overhaul that might be easier to swallow in the modern day type of storytelling.

The Taskmaster was the main threat in this issue and as you saw he is vastly different from the source material. Why? Well, to be honest, the Taskmaster has always come across as a little…boring to me. I know, I know. Fanboys everywhere are squealing. He’s got photographic reflexes, which is a cool idea, but it essentially means that he can do the same karate kick as you.

Why stop there? If he’s connecting with you on a physical level, why not connect on a spiritual level as well? Enter this new version of the Taskmaster. He’ll mimic your movements and anticipate your actions, but he’ll also look directly into your soul and see all the skeletons in your closet. That’s spooky. And it makes him a much more deadly enemy in my opinion.

And that’s the general idea of how I decide which characters get a more drastic Ultimate treatment while I’m writing: is the character I’m working with living up to their potential? Sometimes they are, like with Captain America. Sometimes they aren’t, like with the Taskmaster.

By the way, did you read the back-up story that concerned Master Man? Maybe you should. A lot of what I’ll be doing next builds off of it.

No mail this time, but don’t forget to e-mail me feedback and/or questions - h4hdave@yahoo.com

-D. Golightly