"Come in, come in! Do sit down!"

The Taskmaster glowered at Norman Osborn as he was dragged into the room by a heavily armed H.A.M.M.E.R escort. His Stark Tech crutch chinked of the floor in protest as he was forced into the seat in front of Osborn. He glowered at the man, at Victoria Hand behind him, then at the steak frite on his plate. But then again his face was built for glowering.

"Have something to eat, won't you?"

Taskmaster stopped glowering at his cutlery. If not for the size of the H.A.M.M.E.R agents guns, it would have been in Osborn's forehead.

"From your table? Do you think I'm stupid or something? I thought I was done with all this Thunderbolt crap anyway. Hell, I'd figure I was pretty below your radar now hat you've conquered the world."

Osborn threw back his head and laughed so long he nearly asphyxiated.

"No, no, my friend…" He hesitated. "Well, you're not my friend are you? Anyway. Conquered the world."

He almost laughed again, but strangled it for his own protection.

"No. That's a good one, but no. Quite the opposite actually. You'll find it's the world that's conquered me."

He picked up his wine glass like Sisyphus lifting his rock for another round.

"I want you to think about this. Taking over the world, what you've always wanted to do, and not having a single idea what to do with it. Realising that, without good, you, the penultimate evil, are really just another executive who can make explosives and actually proves all those stupid internet conspiracy theorists right."

He swirled the contents around, watching them slap against the sides, silent and hypnotic, like a perfect waste of blood.

"Realising that you've taken over the world and it's the last thing you actually wanted to do."

He took a long drink, then came up for air with a silent, bitter gasp.

"Can you imagine anything more depressing?"

"My heart bleeds." the Taskmaster said stiffly.

Osborn's smile returned. "Careful now."

"Sorry, but I did have a lot invested in that place. Finding top quality training facilities is hard."

"Tell me about it." Osborn broke a piece of bread, deposited most of it on his plate and squashed the small remaining piece between finger and thumb. "We are, of course, prepared to fully reimburse you."

"And why is that exactly?"

"It's part of this ingenious little scheme I thought up ten seconds after I shot the Skull Queen in the head and saved the world."

Osborn stopped playing with the pulp, but didn't put it down.

"You'll find the worst kind of super villain is a lethargic one. Having nothing to do just leaves the Oedipus complex or whatever else is driving you time to simmer. When the opportunity to do something nasty comes along, you find yourself taking vindictive satisfaction in returning library books a day late and deliberately double parking. When you get the chance to show off your powers and have some honest to God fun," the pulp silently exploded between his frozen fingers, then shrank under them as he released the pressure as though terrified of him. ",you flat out eradicate whatever it is your doing and don't plan for tomorrow. And that's just me."

He nodded past the guards and out into the hall.

"Do you really want to think what a bored Venom, Wolverine and Bullseye are capable of?"

"Point taken."

"I thought so." Osborn slowly resumed worrying the bread. "To be honest I have quite a long list of people for my Avengers and the Hood's mob to take care of, but that's work and there's months between each mission. Everything's too damn quite. An alien invasion tends to suck the life out of things for a bit, and since practically every major criminal organization is under my control…well, there's no one to play with really. Oh the heroes will always be there, but at this stage my people can't just take off with them like they used too. Not without making people ask some very potentially damaging questions."

Taskmaster considered this.

"You spent too long building your powerbase to start knocking bricks loose, but you're saying you only want to keep it if you get to keep killing somebody now and then?"

Osborn's grin almost glowed bright green in the evening light.

"A man after my own heart."

"I don't wanna know what's running through your heart, Osborn."

Another almost laughing attack.

"As I said. Full compensation for the island. Hell, name the place, we can probably set you up. We could have you living in the Vatican if we wanted. And being connected to us gives you an in to just about everybody who needs evil henchmen or high calibre assassins, mafia, the triads, the Hellfire Club. They come to us, we give them you and your students. And all those low tier thugs who used to hand over 60% to Wilson Fisk are looking for work, to say nothing of all the people looking to be the next Bullseye now that he's gone off the grid. We give you all this, you give us someone to fight every few days."

The bread was almost less than paper under his excited hands. An eyebrow rose under the skull face plate.

"You saying what I think you're saying?"

"I'm saying I want you to make super villains for us."

Osborn smiled.

"What we do, what we've done for years, is a science. You really think they'd have let Captain America run around with his thunder gods and mutants if they didn't have bigger problems than the Nazis? We practically made him and all his little friends what they are." He scoffed. "If I never dropped Gwen Stacy off that bridge, who the hell is Spider-Man? Just another late night act on cable TV. Us plus them equals…well, I hardly have to tell you that. But now there's only us. And it's so goddamn boring."

He finally, almost reverently, put what little was left of the bread down.

"So! Do I have Ms Hand write up a schedule for you after you get a brand new leg and your own school in Vegas, or do I just have Ares sit on you and pay the Rhino your pension fund to let us kick him in the shins every weekend?"

Silence stretched out across the table. The silence of a man who knew he'd won. Maybe something human in the Taskmaster tried to fight it. But where was the room for humanity in a world where the planet's fifth greatest madman made perfect sense.

"There's this thing." the Taskmaster said slowly. "It's called e-mail."

"That was just what we did to get your attention. Imagine what we'll do if you don't pay attention."

The Taskmaster sighed and picked up a fork.

"My mother always said gift horses were for riding."

"Wise woman." the Green Goblin said. And grinned.

It was going to be a good day.