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[centre]Beyond Villains[/centre]

[b]Location[/b]: S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier 2
[b]Position[/b]: 15,000ft. Exact Coordinates Classified. 
[b]Time Index[/b]: 0730 hrs Sept 4th 2013

His eyes snapped open. His breathing became shallow. The panic rose in his chest. What was he doing here? Where was he? [i]Who[/i] was he? It took a few moments before the device lodged in his brain kicked in and he remembered. He was Tony Masters, he was in his room on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier and he always hated when this happened. The organo-drive always took a split second to interact when he came conscious from sleep or being knocked out. It was an unfortunate side effect of the device and a tactical disadvantage in the field but it was unavoidable. The crossover between man and machine was a complex one and the interfacing on such a level was not without its bugs. Masters swung out of his bunk and groaned. The bruises were still fresh on his body from his last mission. It seems jumping onto a moving train from a helicopter was not a very viable option but I had been the only one. Plus the environment suited Master’s talents. He was one of the best CQB combatants that S.H.I.E.L.D. had on staff, with exception of few other super-powered agents of course, and as Captain America was on mission trailing the Red Skull, he was next in line for the job.

He sat up in bed and looked along the wall the cot was attached to. Pictures covered almost every free area of it. There were pictures of places. Pictures of people. Pictures of faces. Faces that Masters couldn’t remember. He was in some of them. He reached out and grabbed one at random. He vaguely recognised the place. A city, the lights illuminated behind her. He didn’t recognise the person in the photograph though. Tony ran his thumb over the face. It was a girl. Short, dressed in a black jumpsuit. Looked like the S.H.I.E.L.D. ops uniform. The pitch black pixie cut had a single hand running through it. The movement hid a vague smile. Masters turned over the photograph. On the back, he saw handwriting. “Jubilee. One of the most immature students I’ve had. One of the finest agents I’ve had as well. Hong Kong. August 2013.”

Jubilee. Masters wasn’t surprised if he’d forget the name by the end of the day. He’d just have to trust his own judgement. He stuck the picture back in place. He did know that it was a thing his doctor had recommended to help his memory and try to combat the new condition he’d identified. What was it he called it? Cognitive patching? His brain had begun “sewing” unrelated events that had been fragmented to form new memories. The condition had been discovered when, going through his post-mission memory recall exercise with the Doc, when asked who was the current President, he’d answered with “Benjamin Asher”. Upon further probing, Masters recalled an attack on the White House and wondered why S.H.I.E.L.D. had not intervened. They learned that Masters’ brain had taken a memory of a film that he’d forgotten he’d watched but not forgotten the events of and cobbled it together with real life to make sense of the rogue fragment. In short, to cope with the info, Masters’ brain had integrated it as part of reality. He still couldn’t get over that. A fictional President.

Masters swung out of his cot and strode over to the sink in his room. He was one of several people relocated to the helicarriers after the attack on the Triskelion. He gripped the edges of the sink bowl as the water ran from the tap. After the attack, he’d gone to Fury and demanded to join Cap and his team. Fury had declined. When asked why, Fury had said that “information on a new threat had surfaced” and that with Captain America on the Red Skull’s tail and Jubilee mediating between S.H.I.E.L.D. and the mutants on the Purifier situation, Taskmaster was apparently the best qualified superpowered agent left. He chuckled at that thought. Comparing his “power” to that of Captain America or even Jubilee was absurd. Still, the amount of agents on S.H.I.E.L.D. staff that had any form of powers were small, and even those with them were very specific. Dead Girl, for example. She had the power to talk with the dead and only “die” for a short time. Masters felt a kinship with her, being that she couldn’t remember anything of her past and S.H.I.E.L.D. could not find any info on her. 

Masters looked up into the mirror in front of him. He didn’t know what Fury wanted the Taskmaster for or what this new threat was, but if it was enough to stop Masters going after the Skull, it was definitely going to be bad.