Chapter 5

Taskmaster woke up to find himself being violently shaken. Confused, he started violently swatting at his attacker to find it was just Victor "What are you doing?" he harshly said as checked the new scratches on his body

"Helping" Victor said as he exited the armored car

Taskmaster stretched and exited the armored car to find themselves back at the barn. Erik was already getting yelled at by the rest of the squad. Since this was technically his fault he should probably get Erik out of that.

Taskmaster approached then, Alexi and Karla were doing most of the talking, it didn't look like Erik got a single word out yet. "Skullface what were you guys doing" Karla said in an authoritarian tone

"Rhodes is dead" Taskmaster simply said, it didn't answer her question but it did shut her up right away

"Nice job" Karla said after taking a deep breath

"Yeah this is almost over" Alexi verified "we'll head towards the city once Walker and Hardy get back, we sent them out looking for you boys" he said before walking off and sitting on the other side of the barn. It was so clear that he was dealing with something. Someone patted him on the back and he turned to find the old man who owned the barn. He didn't say anything, he just gestured for him to go to him.

Taskmaster obliged and went over to him "you alright" Taskmaster said, trying to sound sympathetic with his voice modulator wasn't easy. Alexi was a little hesitant but he looked toward him

"No" he somberly said "were just tools doing their dirty work, killing someone else's enemies"

Taskmaster was kicking himself trying to think of something to say "Look I'm not happy about it either but we're not doing this for nothing" was the first thing he thought of.

Alexi was suddenly up and jamming his finger at Taskmasters chest "You're telling me making your kid cheese sandwiches is worth the lives of two people" he said with authority "I thought I could handle it but it's not that easy" he said causing Taskmaster to glare in fury

"Dumb question, have you met your kids?" he said, knowing exactly how crazy it sounded. Alexi didn't respond, he only raised his eyebrow in confusion. "Say you haven't, say you only heard you had them and were told repeatedly you'd never see them, then maybe this would be slightly easier" he said getting in his face

"Sure only proving those people right" he insulted

Taskmaster grabbed his collar and was ready to punch him in the nose. "What's going on" they turned to see John back from his search

"Nothing," Taskmaster said, backing off. He turned away and speed walked to some lawn chairs and sat down. What did he know? He raised his kids, got to see them in the morning, made them 'Cheese Sandwiches', made them feel safe when they were scared, had them to make him feel better than he had the right too, had them to feel like he wasn't the bastard in a mask he was raised to be. Had to… go to prison and probably miss a lot of their later years, yet still probably knows more about kids than he ever will. Taskmaster let out a long sigh as he mentally kicked himself for being such a douche.

He started hearing footsteps coming toward him, he looked up to see John walking over to him. "Look I'm not gonna pretend I know everything that's going on, but I think you guys just need a breather"

"Yeah I figured" Taskmaster said trying to seem calm. He sucked up his pride and decided that he may as well apologize to Alexi for explaining why he's wrong in a harsh way. He faced John "I'm gonna apologize. You come too, if I get mad you break my arm, I'm counting on you here" he just shrugged and followed him back to Alexi.

"Alexi some things were said" Taskmaster said not thinking too much on what he was supposed to say "sorry I almost punched you"

"Don't worry you wouldn't have done much damage" he said in a joking matter

Taskmaster sucked up his pride and let that slide and clenched his fist. "We get it" John said stepping in and taking the weight off him "no one is benefitting from this, but American citizens are counting on us" he said trying to sound noble, and just sounding preachy

"so we know that Danvers is staying in Doom's palace, we'll sneak inside and take care of her tomorrow, shouldn't take more than a couple hours if we do it right" he said fed up with over elaborate plans

"Fine let's just get this over with" Alexi said as he walked away

"Sorry again" Taskmaster responded as he flipped Alexi off with both hands

"Are you doing alright?" John calmly asked

"Yeah" Taskmaster rolled his eyes under his mask

"I'm not the biggest fan of the guy, but he isn't a hundred percent wrong" John mentioned "if you stay with this mercenary life it won't be the best for your kid"

"Look I don't care if I lose visitation rights a week after I get them, all I want is to meet her once and know that I ever existed" Taskmaster ranted before calming down

"Hey I'm back" Felicia's voice blasted from behind them "and look who I found"

Who she found? What was that supposed to mean

The three of them turned to see Black Cat along with an injured Mystique. The three of them stared in shock, well it was mostly guilt. He locked eyes with Victor; him, Erik, and Karla all had the same reactions. "Mystique! We were really worried about you" he lied

"YOU BASTARDS LEFT ME IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE" she screamed in fury

"What no" Alexi tried to defend them

"Us forget You, we would never" Karla said attempting to sound convincing

"You did, you actually forgot" Mystique said clenching her fists "I had to hike all this way to find you hanging around"

"Hey we're sorry, we… we ugh… weren't sure if you were dead or alive" John said being honest, what a mistake that was.

"You goddamn…. You should have died when I sicked those two on you" she said getting Taskmasters attention

"Hey calm down-" Alexi said trying to ease things

"No, No, what did you mean by that" Taskmaster said demanding answers

"I mean I was the one who exposed squad 1 and told them about the attack on spectrum base" Mystique ferociously confessed

"What!" Erik shouted

"Yeah, and yet you Bellends survived" Mystique insanely continued, Taskmaster finally got a solid look at her face, her eyes now had a red haze on top of their yellow color and she had deep bags under her eyes.

"You almost killed us" Victor said extending his claws

Taskmaster hesitantly turned on his communicator "Rambeau…" he started "I found the mole, it's Mystique"

"Wait 'found the mole' you knew something about this" John said overhearing him

"Mystique, Dammit" Rambeau said through the communicator "Good work we'll take care of it"

"Yeah it was me and I don't regret any of it" she said, shouting nonsense. She was twitching and shivering, it was like she was high on something

BANG

A gunshot came out of nowhere and went into Mystique's abdomen. She started coughing up blood and collapsed onto the ground. Taskmaster looked around and saw a smoking gun in Eriks hand, he placed it back into his holster and turned his back.

"Good riddance" Felicia harshly said before walking away

The remaining five of them stood in shock, this was a lot of information to absorb all at once. So it was Mystique, she was the mole. She was the mole? And Rhodes and Danvers just left her in the middle of nowhere?

The old man and woman came out running to see what the commotion was about, a lot more shocked than they were. John approached them and spoke in Latverian "we're very sorry about this, we promise we'll clean this up and be out of your-"

Mystiques head and upper body exploded and splattered everywhere leaving the area silent and stained

Taskmaster realized he wasn't cornered by killer doombots anymore and could report their success "Rambeau" he said into his communicator

"What is it, is something else wrong" she said slightly jumpy

"Rhodes is dead" he said with solemness

"What he is… Darcy could you…." there was a moment of silence "Um Thank you excellent work, were running out of time so you'll have to speedrun both your missions" she said giving orders

Running out of time? "Huh what's the other mission" he sucked it up and asked, hoping to finally get this over with and see his daughter

"We simply need you to break into Doom's palace and retrieve some data he stole from us" she explained

"You sent an entire other squad just to…protect your search history?"

"That's one way to put it" Rambeau said

Taskmaster stood at a perfect viewpoint of Doomstadt, the remaining squad around him. It seems their little incident last night got Doom's attention and he quadrupled security around the palace, which meant leaving no security in the city itself.

So in order to complete their mission, they have to make their way through a lawless wasteland of a city, sneak past one of the world's most powerful armies into a castle, all so they can fight a superhero (who torn them to pieces earlier and was more or less invulnerable) to the death, ...simple. But they still had those couple of uniforms and a van they stole. Why was he so on edge? There was something so off about Mystique's confession, nothing about it seemed legit. But she was obviously high on something so it's not crazy that she confessed because of that. He still had to keep a sharp eye out.

"Hey" Felicia was snapping at him "we've gotta get going" she said as they both got in the van

The squad drove into the city, which wasn't too hard, if anything the military van helped keep civilians at a distance from them. Taskmaster took a deep breath "alright, it's time to enter the palace"

"Well shouldn't be too hard, you're buddy buddy with Doom" Felicia said in a joking manner. It was a little insulting but she was right, he could save them a lot of trouble.

"Is he?" John questioned "if anyone reported him then they'll just kill us without hesitation"

"Maybe no on did, it's not impossible" Felicia said

"I don't know it would be a huge risk" Karla brought up

Taskmaster thought this through and decided he'd have to be responsible here "alright so were still sneaking in" he said with authority "now, how are we gonna put down one of the world's most powerful heroes"

"I promise I won't run in alone again, we'll do it together" Karla vowed

"Don't know if that'll do much, we're not looking for a fair fight" Taskmaster stated "we've gotta find a way to put her at a massive disadvantage"

Erik approached him "does Doom have any armories in his palace?"

"In the Palace? I'm pretty sure he has them in his bathroom" Taskmaster said in an arrogant fashion. Erik just smiled at this.

Once they made it to the palace Erik and John sat up front in the stolen uniforms to keep up the facade, while the rest of them laid on the floor in the back to hide.

"88726373892" John whispered to himself memorizing the code on the soldiers id card

They finally reached the gate. While the Latverian soldiers were away drinking and playing what looked like cribbage, while an automated droid checked them and ordered him to stay, eyelocked straight at him "ID number please"

"88726373892" John said

The droid moved in closer, completely silent yet extremely threatening "may I see your badge sir" she said in a colder and more horrifying voice. Suddenly a blue light went off on the droid and two Doombots came to its side and waited to see what would happen.

Taskmaster couldn't see very well but John hesitated for a moment before answering "of course" he said in a confident way. John reached below into his bag, he was going to use the previous guards badge that didn't look like him. Taskmaster shook as he went through the bag, Victor doodled again on a tiny piece of paper while sweating like a cow. Victor grabbed John's hand and put the picture in his hand. John took a deep breath, put the picture on top of the badge, then showed it to the droid "here it is, fell to the bottom of the bag"

There was a moment of silence with everyone shaking to see what would happen….. "Everything checks out, you may enter" the droid said as everyone had a sigh of relief.

The droid lit green and let them pass. They parked in the parking garage where five human guards were hanging around. John hailed them over in Latverian " 'Hey we've got a big load, little help' "

The five guards nonchalantly walked to the door. One pulled the handle and opened the door, Taskmaster burst both hands out and twisted his head to the side. Before the others could react Eric and John knocked two of them out with the butts of their guns and Karla smashed the last two's heads together in the most gorey way possible.

After hiding the two unconscious ones in a locker they made their way to the nearest armory. It wasn't very far, to the point where they actually had signs posted at every single one like they were bathrooms. Doom was a massive narcissist and a maniac, he had to have something that could kill his allies if he wanted.

John and Erik had fully changed out of their uniforms and back into costume. He noticed something in John's uniform pocket. He tried to brush it off as nothing… but he could still have a mole problem. After peaking around to make sure no one could see him behind a display shelf, he checked the uniform pocket and what he saw was just a shiny pen. He put the pen down and sulked, how could he be such a paranoid idiot.

He put the pen back in the pocket and noticed something else, it was a small piece of paper. He pulled it out and it was the photo he saw when they were on the plan. It was John with his wife, two kids, and a woman who kinda looked like his sister, a very loving family. Taskmaster sighed as he imagined how lucky John was. He turned it over and there was a note written on the back 'To our superhero daddy, come back soon'

After hearing a harsh breath Taskmaster turned to see Alexi watching him "I was just…"

"You don't have to explain, I understand" he said in an understanding way "there are some things that you can't hide behind a mask" he said tapping his mask

Alexi took the photo and gave it back to John.

"Ugh guys come take a look at this" Erik said as he lifted a large rifle canon of the wall "this might do"

"It does look like a Captain Marvel killing weapon" Victor added

Karla approached "let me see that" she said as she snatched it from his hands. She pulled out one of the shells and sniffed it "interesting". She examined it a little more "yeah this should do it" she said nodding

Taskmaster sucked everything up and got ready for the mission. He led his teammates out of the armory and past the barracks "where's the rest of the guards?"

Victor pointed towards a lobby in the barracks with multicolored strobe lights coming out of it. The squad approached and heard the loud music blasting, there had to have been around ninety guards barely standing up from being so drunk. They were watching and laughing at some weird watland on their tv. "Alright everytime you see a body we take a shot" one said, popping a bottle of champagne, he turned to see Taskmaster, Victor, and Alexi standing in the doorway as Taskmaster cracked his knuckles

After five minutes the squad came out of the lobby "well that was fun" Karla said

Taskmaster took a deep breath ready for the mission "Alright Felicia you delete the information from database, it'll take a master thief for that" Taskmaster praised

"Aye aye captain"

"John, Alexi, you go with her if she gets into a scuffle" he commanded "Erik, Victor, Karla, and I will infiltrate every armory until we find something strong enough to use against Marvel. Once we do we will trick the guards to all go to the kitchen then lure Marvel to us and lead her to the gym" Taskmaster ordered pointing to a map on the wall

"I can do it alone" Felicia said

"It's safer to stay in groups" Alexi told her

"I think we should all take care of the data then Marvel" Erik proposed "stay as a group"

"No we don't want to deal with her with an army backing her up" Karla added

"Alright good luck everyone" Taskmaster said before they broke