No Man's Task
Somewhere over Brazil…
The cloaked SHIELD Quinjet cut through the cold stratospheric night sky, shaking for brief seconds as it hit a spot of turbulence or an unexpected area of storm clouds. One of these shakes woke Peter up from his sleep, finding himself sprawled out on one of the cots inside the main cabin of the craft.
He glanced around, seeing Luke asleep at the pilot's seat, the auto-pilot controls activated and the jet flying solo towards the destination.
Danny was sitting down on one of his cots and had two small sticks of incense burning as he meditated away, his hands at his knees while he sat crisscross.
In the right corner of the cabin, Sam sat with his feet against the metal hull. He was on his hand-held device, moving it side-to-side and back-and-forth to whatever video game he was playing.
Sitting in the other corner, was Ava, still writing away at her homework. She picked up another textbook, opened it up, and began to fill out a pre-printed worksheet, answering questions on it.
Peter stretched for a moment and sat up on the cot.
"Had a good rest?" Danny suddenly yet calmly asked.
"Sort of. Have you been meditating the whole time?"
"No, I rested shortly after take-off but woke up not too long ago."
"That's good." Peter glimpsed the map of the flight path on one of the screens near the pilot's seat.
"Got any idea what we might be getting ourselves into, Danny?"
The Iron Fist opened his eyes and shrugged.
"Expect the unexpected, Peter. For now, we must be patient. Our enemies may or may not know we are coming. We are at somewhat of an advantage."
"I guess so."
Sam was heard scoffing at the remark in the corner.
"I wouldn't worry about it, web-head. Like I said back on The Guardian, it's probably nothing!" He stated, shifting his hand-held around as though he were flying it.
"Aren't you at least somewhat curious, Sam?"
"No. A weird place with SHIELD's diary entries is the least of my concerns. I've had to fight off galactic titans before when I rolled with the Guardians, this is nothing."
Peter rolled his eyes.
"He's just mad that he couldn't get his Friday night make-out sessions with MJ." Ava coolly added.
"Don't be jealous that I get more action than you do, bookworm."
"Please. With the way that you kiss her in the hallways, I actually pity the poor girl for messing around in that disgusting mouth." Ava smartly remarked.
Sam hesitated to respond.
"…at least I'm getting some tongue action." He murmured to himself.
"Anyways." Ava ignored it, putting down her pen and looking at Peter. "To answer your question, Parker, I looked at the SHIELD logs on their database here on-board earlier in the trip. There's significant mercenary activity in the area but nothing that should indicate the facility was under attack."
"You actually found something on it?"
She gestured with her hand. "So-so."
"Not really. The Archive is listed as a remote training facility. A literal footnote in most logs pertaining to it. Maybe that's how the facility goes unnoticed." She went on to explain.
"Sounds like something Deadpool would love to break into and steal the information from." Sam remarked. "Anything to make a quick buck."
"Do not forget what Director Fury said before he left." Danny pointed out. "There were 'persons of special interest' kept there. I have been contemplating those words the whole trip."
"What, like prisoners?" Peter wondered.
"Maybe. SHIELD isn't above keeping prisoners. They have 'black sites' all over the world full of war prisoners." Ava added.
"Yeah, SHIELD's into some serious stuff." Sam commented, adding a sigh as a sound coming off his hand-held indicated that he lost a game.
"Well, let's admit that SHIELD does a lot of dirty stuff, stuff necessary to keep the everyday lives of the normal citizen afloat. Fury himself has done some questionable stuff that he's been investigated a thousand times for." She also explained.
"Hard to imagine." Danny frowned.
"Well, I guess we can only wait and see what we find down there." Peter concluded.
"Agreed." She nodded, standing up. "Let's wake up Luke and get ready. We're almost there."
In the skies near The Archive in the Amazon Rainforest…
The Quinjet hovered silently above the sea of dark green jungle, hidden within the mists that floated above. With the night still in its closing chapters, they had the element of stealth on their side. Coming up near the edge of elevated terrain, the shadowy facility came into scope.
"There it is." Power Man pointed out, lowering the Quinjet closer.
Most of the facility was built within the terrain, with only a small section sticking out that held the unmistakable eagle insignia of SHIELD. Within moments, the Quinjet began to pick-up various heat signatures at the roof of the section that was visible.
"Well look at that." Power Man glanced at the heat-signatures coming up on the digitally enhanced window interface.
"Those look like agents." Nova commented. "Thanks for yet another wild-goose chase, Fury."
"Wait a minute." Tiger sounded unconvinced. "Can you zoom in on those heat traces?"
"Sure."
Power Man utilized the interface to zoom in, revealing a more detailed look at the figures.
They were armored, holding rifles at the ready and they each had a sword sheathed and strapped to their backs. The most distinguishable trait were the familiar-looking skull masks that covered their faces.
"Hold on, I know those masks. That's what Taskmaster's mercenaries wear!" Spidey quickly identified them.
Suddenly, the interface went black, obstructing their front view of the facility.
"What the hell?"
Power Man began punching away at the controls but the screen remained black. That was, until it started to indicate that a line of communication was being transmitted to the Quinjet from The Archive itself!
Without warning, a familiar foe's face appeared on-screen. Taskmaster.
"Well, well, well, isn't this a surprise?" His deep and condescending voice echoed through the jet.
"Taskmaster!" The whole team exclaimed.
"SHIELD's response time has fallen short of expectation." The skull-faced mercenary pointed out. "To think this is considered SHIELD's most secretive location."
"What the heck are you doing here, Taskmaster?!" Spidey demanded. "Don't you have some mercenary school to run?"
Taskmaster briefly chuckled.
"What's the use of being a mercenary if you're not out accepting contracts, Spider-Man? I'm here to fulfill an old contract of mine, a lot of trouble it's been finding this place. Not that it'll be of any worry for you much longer."
"Boss!" One of his mercenaries called out from behind him. "We checked the cell! There's nobody there!"
"What the?!" The mercenary angrily growled, glancing back. "Check again! He must be here!"
"I see things aren't going to plan." Tiger smirked.
Taskmaster returned his attention to the team.
"We'll adapt. As for you all, you've interfered with my plans for the last time. Enjoy hell, you stupid kids."
The transmission immediately cut off, just in time to see a violent spur of rapid bullet-fire being shot off from mounted turrets at the roof of the facility where the heat signatures were standing.
"Ah crap! Everybody, hang on!" Power Man ordered as he pushed the Quinjet controls down to maneuver the jet downwards.
The bullets started to impact hard onto the hull, making loud popping noises as the Quinjet tried to fly away from the turrets.
With the bullets being shot from the turrets distracting them, they didn't see the mercenary on the roof that positioned himself with a guided missile launcher on his shoulder. He aimed down on the launcher's optics and once it locked onto the Quinjet, he released the missile, which quickly rocketed off towards the aircraft.
The Quinjet's pilot controls flashed the SAM warning. Power Man steered the controls to try and avoid the missile while everyone held on as hard as they could.
The missile flew closer and closer, all the way until it was impossible to escape.
"Watch out, guys!" Power Man cried out as he violently steered left, barely missing the missile as it violently blew off one of the Quinjet's wings.
The team immediately felt the sensation of the freefall as the Quinjet spiraled down, crashing hard into the thick of the rainforest, breaking off parts of the jet before it made its final impact.
Taskmaster watched the Quinjet fall to its doom from the roof of the Archive. With his hands clasped behind his back, he felt a sense of relief come across him, returning his attention to his men.
"Let's make sure those kids are dead. I want no more interferences while we try to find this man." He ordered.
Several minutes later, within the wreckage of the Quinjet…
The masked wall-crawler slowly regained consciousness after that violent crash landing, hearing faint voices calling on his communicator. He opened his eyes, his vision a little blurred. Looking around, he discovered that he had ended up face down onto the rainforest floor with flames and debris everywhere.
"Spider-Man." He heard a whisper that seemed to speak in his head.
He snapped to full consciousness at that moment.
"Jeez… How the heck did I survive that crash?" He felt aches across his body as he stood up and started to look around.
"Nova? Power Man? Iron Fist? Tiger?!" He cried out, but was met with a silent answer.
"Damn it. I hope they're not dead." He placed a hand over his chest, feeling as though it was heavily bruised.
Suddenly, a garbled voice called out over the communicator.
"Spider-Man. Come in, Spider-Man."
As he looked down at it, he saw nothing but static.
"Nova? Power Man? Is that you guys?"
"No." The communicator answered.
"W-who is this then!?"
"Where are you?" The deep garbled voice questioned.
"Uh…" Spidey started looking around, seeing that a column of debris and fire that outlined the crash landing of the Quinjet.
"I don't know. I'm next to some of the wreckage from the jet. There's a trail of debris spread out across. We sure took a hardlanding!"
"Taskmaster's mercenaries are closing in on your position, Spider-Man. Find whoever is still alive in your team and rally them up. I'll be there soon."
The communicator promptly turned off afterwards.
"W-what!? Hello? Who is this!?" He demanded, but no answer.
"Ugh, great."
He mustered his strength and trekked along the trail of debris that had literally cut through the jungle. The flames from the crash illuminated his path along the way. Once he made his way closer to the final impact, he began to see a familiar blue aura floating across the top of the forest.
"Nova." Spidey identified.
He shot up his webbing to grip onto the trees and began swinging towards the blue aura, eventually catching up to him through to another section of the wreckage that was located in the upper levels of the rainforest. Nova levitated lower and spotted Power Man, quickly hovering closer to help him.
Once Spidey caught up, he saw that Nova was trying to pull Power Man out of his pilot's seat, the safety straps were jammed.
"Webs!" Nova cried out after him. "Help me get the big guy off this thing!"
The two of them attempted getting Power Man out of his seat. With him being knocked out from the crash, it made things a little more difficult for them. So instead, they shifted his weight forward and ripped the straps off to get him off.
In the process, Power Man fell at least two stories down to the rainforest floor.
Spidey and Nova jumped down and sat him up against a tree.
"Where are the others?" Spidey anxiously asked.
"No clue, web-head! I just found you two!" Nova snapped. "Big guy over here should've let me drive, this wouldn't have happened!"
"Will you just shut up for a second!? We need to find the others before Taskmaster shows up with his goons and tries to finish us off!"
"How do you know Taskmaster sent his guys after us? He probably thought we died in the crash." Nova skeptically asked.
"Someone on the communicator told me. I don't know who it was but he didn't seem to be working with Taskmaster."
"Didn't seem? Seriously, webs!? Taskmaster's employed deception before to kill his enemies! Don't you remember when he was our gym teacher? Now he's definitely going to come find us to try and kill us because he knows at least one of us is alive now! Good going!"
Spidey rolled his eyes. Nova glanced over and saw Iron Fist's body slowly sitting back up through the jungle brush.
"There's the fortune cookie. I'll go get him and you go find Tiger. I think she might've landed somewhere back over there." Nova pointed to another area behind Spidey.
"Alright, I'll go do that. Just… stay on the lookout, bucket-head, that's all I ask." Spidey remarked before shooting his webs up and swinging himself up through the dark jungle.
Moments later, he landed down into an open area where the shattered parts of the jet's engine core lay sprawled out, parts of the wings accompanying it.
"Tiger!?" He cried out loudly over and over as he walked through the area. "Tiger, are you here!?"
Suddenly, he heard a small grunt behind a pile of debris. He ran towards it and started to shift the debris off, discovering Tiger laid out underneath. She looked badly hurt.
"Spider!" She gasped, followed by a quick cough.
"Don't worry, Tiger, I've got you." He knelt down next to her, instantly noticing that the lower right side of her costume was tinted red with blood.
As he took a closer look, he noticed that large shards of glass from the Quinjet's windows had wedged themselves deep into her right side.
"Oh no…" He whispered to himself.
Without thinking, he tried to remove one of the shards, sending a jolt of pain which caused Tiger to scream in pain and slapping him across the face.
"W-what was that for!?"
"It'll only hurt more, moron! I'll bleed to death here if you take them out! Did you not learn anything in first aid class!?" She angrily questioned.
"I…"
"Do you want me to die or something, web-head!?"
"No, I just wanted to help." He solemnly responded.
She sighed, calming herself down.
"Just pick me up, Parker."
He reached down with his right arm around her back and his left arm underneath her knees and picked her up and started to carry her back to the others.
"Where is everyone?"
"Nova just gathered up Power Man and Iron Fist. We're all just waking up back to consciousness. That was a bad landing."
"No kidding." Tiger rolled her eyes.
Just then, he heard the brush behind them start to rustle, as though someone was moving past the leaves of the forest. It started to grow louder and louder as the seconds ticked by.
He couldn't ignore it anymore. He softly placed Tiger down on the ground, motioning her to stay quiet.
"What are you doing?" She anxiously whispered.
"I hear something, I'm going to go check it out."
"Don't leave me here!"
"I'm not, don't worry."
Suddenly, the rustling stopped, turning dead silent. Spidey looked around but could see nothing past the dim illumination of the fire that burned around the crash site. As he began to back up, he felt his head come up against an object.
"Not a single move, Spider." Taskmaster's recognizable voice spoke.
"Crap."
He slowly turned to stare down the barrel of Taskmaster's pistol. His masked mercenaries appeared out of the rainforest, most of them aiming down at Spidey while two of them grabbed Tiger by her arms and kept her restrained.
"Don't you hurt her!" Spidey cried out. "She's hurt and needs treatment!"
Taskmaster briefly laughed.
"You can't do a single thing about it, Spider. Fury made a mistake sending you five down here into a mess that doesn't involve you all. A mistake that you all have to pay dearly for."
"T-tell me why you're here, Taskmaster. Help us understand." Spidey tried to rationalize with the mercenary.
"We'll talk about that later once we're back at the Archive. I've elected to hold you all ransom for SHIELD until we can get Fury to give up the location of our target."
"Target? What are you talking about? All this just to kill someone?"
Taskmaster sighed.
"No, not to kill someone. I'm not prepared to explain this to you, Spider-Man. Just know that my motives are my own. You might not see it because you're a young fool, but SHIELD's wronged more of their own agents than anyone else in this world. It's high time that it's stopped and SHIELD be brought to their knees."
"Whatever you've got planned, it won't succeed." Spidey defiantly stated.
"I'm not looking for your approval, web-slinger. Now, the rest of you, get ahold of the rest of our team back at the Archive, let them know we've captured Spider-Man and his band of heroes. We're headed back."
Other mercenaries emerged from the brush, having subdued Nova with a tractor-beam rifle and Power Man and Iron Fist by placing them under strong wrist-cuffs.
"Let me go you freaks!" Nova squirmed as he floated away in mid-air, not able to even shoot off his energy beams to fight back.
One of Taskmaster's men was attempting to contact the Archive, but he looked like he was having trouble with his radio.
"Taskmaster, I can't raise them. There's static in the frequency." The mercenary grunted.
"What? How can that be true? The signal is good." Taskmaster checked his own radio. "Unless, someone is interfering with it."
The mercenary quickly looked at Nova.
"Hey, don't look at me! I can't even do signal interference! At least, I don't think I can." Nova informed them.
"Then who…?" Taskmaster looked around the jungle, hearing rustling all around the area.
"Taskmaster." One of his mercenaries called him over, pointing to something in the trees.
He motioned for his men to aim towards there using hand gestures.
"Shoot him!" Taskmaster ordered, firing a volley of shots towards the trees, scaring away all the wildlife nearby and scattering them about.
"What the heck are you firing at!?" Spidey questioned.
"He's over there!" Another mercenary cried out and started to shoot in another direction.
But, something blasted a column of electrical energy towards the mercenary, frying the front of his body, causing him to fall forward, dead.
"What the!? You! Go after him!" Taskmaster ordered another mercenary.
"I can't see him! The mercenary panicked, aiming in all directions.
In a split second, a dark hooded figure appeared from thin air and withdrew a sword, immediately swinging the blade around, pirouetting between mercenaries, and cutting them down within seconds.
Taskmaster turned and pointed his pistol at the attacker, giving Spidey enough time to shoot his webs at the mercenary's pistol and disarm him. But, Taskmaster, having learned Spidey's moves once already, quickly caught on and anticipated Spidey's next attack and deflected it.
However, Spidey was able to luck out on a kick and was able to send Taskmaster flying backwards onto the ground, next to his pistol.
The mercenary quickly picked it up and aimed down towards Spider-Man, standing back up on his feet.
But he quickly noticed that all of his mercenaries laid dead, violently killed with severed limbs lying about in a massive pool of blood. It was now just him, Spider-Man, and Spidey's team, who had quickly taken the time to release themselves from their captors and were ready to fight Taskmaster.
All except for Tiger, who was still injured.
"Looks like you've got nowhere to run this time, Tasky!" Spidey coolly pointed out.
"This… this is impossible. But, who?" Taskmaster lowered his weapon, realizing he was in defeat.
Then, the dark figure reappeared, again out of thin air, behind the mercenary. Taskmaster slowly turned to face him.
He was tall, hooded, and the metallic bracers that covered his forearms emanated an electrical blue power pulsating through it.
"We meet again, Taskmaster." The shadowy figure spoke, his voice deep and mature.
"Phantom, I should've known."
Taskmaster gripped his pistol tight, ready to fire again.