Entering the room the first thing that was clearly Visible was a large Poster of Captain America in action against some Nazi’s on the wall behind Naslund’s large oak desk.

The desk was clean with nothing but a small name plate, a file basket with a few files in them, and a  small clock on the left hand side.

The walls were a light tan color, to the right was a large file cabinet and to the left was a large bookshelf.

There were two large chairs facing the front of Willam’s desk.

CH 2 Starts:

Williams had had a restless night, Odd dreams, his room seemed to be extremely hot and stuffy, but checking the temp it was ok, He had Jocasta run a quick diagnostics and all systems were good,
When the morning came he had gone down for a quick cup of coffee from the Keurig machine and headed up to his office, He got himself comfortable at his desk and flicked the mouse to wake the computer, a few news feeds had flashed by his notices and a message that his inbox was almost full…. He took a sip of the coffee and started to clean up the inbox. He scanned a few realizing most were a few days old, It had been a while since he had check all his e-mails. But there were a few that had  come in that caught his attentions

Subject :*Urgent*Belial stakeout.

William e-mailing you to inform you that there has been no further communications with the agents you requested to send out to Belial ‘s last known whereabouts in Laredo TX . Last communication was yesterday @ 10:30  a.m. the report indicated that Ghost Rider was seen in the area but since that transmission the agents have failed to report in. We sent a group to verify the last location, all that was found was the agents side arm and radio’s. This may be one for your team to investigate.


Task Force

Hello William I hope all is going well and you are somewhat settled in.

I have attached a list of the supers we had previously discussed prior to your leaving for TASK Force. Sorry for the delay.

I wish you and your team the best of luck.

William looked over the first e-mail

Belial’s last known location was near Laredo TX. Listed was his Last know partner being Antón Miguel Rodríguez  AKA The Tarantula  a villain of great agility and fighting skills who used poison tip combat shoes to defeat his enemies.
The odd thing is there were reports that he also had since gone missing. Some rumors were that Belial had consumed him or something to that effect.
There were also recent reports of mass hysteria starting in Lerado. Sightings of a devil, demons, and a skeleton on a motorcycle one person described a normal looking man in sunglasses but when he removed the sunglasses he had mouth for eyes.
It would be very farfetched has there not also been a sighting of Ghost Rider been confirmed Which explained the Skeleton on a motorcycle but the devil and Demons were not referred to as being Ghost Rider, There was also the fact that there was the 2 now missing agents.

He did a quick search on the web for recent events in Lerado, The reports were getting weirder,
The local authority were blaming possible water contamination or airborne virus. The death toll was starting to rise also. The Government was looking to Quarantine the town soon if the reports continued.

He scanned a few more and cleaned out his inbox. He sits back and ponders his next move while he finished his coffee, going through the  file that Director Hill had supplied.

Seeing the S.H.I.E.L.D. Logo on the top of the PDF his thought went to the team. He hoped his choice in the people he had picked were ok. A couple were extreme but he had his own reason for his choices.  Their concerns were valid, but he hoped in time they would understand what this team meant or would come to mean to the world at large.


He would let the team start their day and set up to prep them for their 1st mission.

<<From Hanger

"See, no popping in.  I walked with you like a regular person this time," Kevin told him.  "There's a couple of things we still kind of need to hash out.  First off is the money.  I pretty much financed this operation with what I swiped from the Dragon Tong, but that's not exactly a reliable, sustainable source of income.  So, we need to think about an independent income source."

"I don't want us beholden to SHIELD.  Eventually they will want a return on their investment," Kevin told him.  "Also, I know how organizations work from Devereaux.  Everybody spies on everybody.  Figure SHIELD has people undercover in HYDRA and the reverse is also true.  Whatever SHIELD knows about us, HYDRA will likely also soon know about us."

William put the files and laptop on his desk he’d dig through them later. The information Taskmistress offered was valuable and William was curious.
He gave Kevin a smile at the popping in comment and a slight nod. Listening to his concern William nodded.
You can put SHIELD out of you mind Kevin,  As I have stated we do not work for SHEILD but I am keeping the line open with Director Hill out of courtesy but that being said I do the same with Tony Stark. They are only aware of some of the going on of Task Force, If I deem it important enough and they are returning the same courtesy to me. They as a whole are not being briefed on our missions, contacts, day to day or information gathered unless I want them to, which I don’t.
As for funding, Yes SHIELD supplied us with one of their old bases and the initial equipment to get things up and running. But I am finalizing the last bit now,

As if on Cue Jocasta’s voice cam over William’s desk phone

Mr. Naslund, Mr. Osbourne has arrived.

William gave Kevin a smile.

  And here it is now.

A young looking red head man with a slim figure stood at the door. He nods and enters the room, Confidences exhumes from the young man, you can feel it as he enters.

Mr. Naslund! Very happy to see you again, How have you been?
He turned and saw Kevin in the office.

Oh I’m sorry for the interruption.

William stood and shook the man’s hand Not at all Harry, We were just discussing about our future.

William looked to Kevin. Kevin meet Harry Osbourn. He said making the introduction.

Williams explains to Kevin that after his disappearance from the team Green Goblin headed back to Oscorp. During the week that followed Norman let Harry know about his involvement with Task Force, but he wanted more then to be a member so started to look into his own group, Norman got so obsessed with it that when a few researchers and Harry walked in on him Norman sort of went off the hinge and ended up killing the researchers and attacked Harry. Luckily Harry had been wearing some armor his father had made (a precaution due to the high profile of Norman and Oscorp)

(Harry tapped his chest and a hollow THUD THUD was heard) as he gave a slight smile.

Harry was able to subdue his father. He called me for help unfortunately the team was dealing with Texas at the time, but I was able to have SHIELD sweep in and help take Norman into custody. In return for helping him he has offered to help us.

That is correct, My father had been on such a tear previously and although he did attempt to change when Mr. Naslund asked him to join, his intentions were more for sinister reasons. 

Kevin paused while he processed the news.  Norman Osbourn was the Green Goblin.  And he'd left the Task Force to form his own group that he would run.  It... kind of fit.  While Oscorp hadn't been one of Devereaux's prime target, it was still a fairly big corporation, maybe a step below Stark Industries, but big enough for Kevin to have heard about it.

And, yes, Kevin could see a guy like Osbourn wanting to run things.  And he wouldn't have been able to run things completely since Naslund was in charge.  So, Kevin could buy it.  He knew himself well enough to know that he wanted to buy since it fit pretty well with his own biases.  But.

But the man himself hadn't really seemed like that.  He hadn't pushed to be in charge.  He was actually kind to Harbinger.  Also, another of Devereaux's maxim's came to his mind.  Follow the money and see who benefits.  Well, with Norman Osbourn in custody for murders committed while having a psychotic break, that kind of put Harry here in charge.  And now Harry was here to presumably offer to support the Task Force.

Which brought up Devereaux's take on the Golden Rule:  The one with the gold rules.

Out loud Kevin said in what he hoped passed for an earnest tone, "It's good to meet you, Mr. Osbourn.  I'm sorry to hear about what happened with your father."

Harry Shrugged. It’s nice to meet you Kevin, And don’t be sorry, My father was Psychotic, He is where he should have been a long time ago. He said.

I’m happy Mr. Naslund gave him a chance here and that is why I have come to offer Oscorp’s help. My Father wasn’t a good person, but William tried to help him and that speaks volumes for me.
He turned back to William and waited a second as if he wasn’t sure on continuing but William gave him a nod that it was ok.

As we discussed on the phone earlier this week. It’s clear that having SHIELD in your back pocket is both good and bad, But lets face it, They remain SHIELD. Harry said with a smile.

Our dealing with SHEILD have been friendly for the most part but they continually try to attain more information than we are willing to part with and that causes problems for us considering some of our competitor. Some of our experiments might make some toes curls should SHIELD or others add extra controls to what we can do. This is why we choose to remain independent. However adding Task Force could be a great benefit.
I can help with certain equipment, supplies and costs, And you can provide us with information on tech that is out there and maybe a shot of finding new tech we could integrate into further Oscorp programs.
This message was lightly edited by the player at 18:59, Mon 29 Apr 2019.

William nodded Yes I agree, SHIELD although is friendly now I have seen first hand how they work and know that should things go sideways it can be quite the feat stay off a receiving end of their “purges”. My direction from the start was made clear with Director Hill and agreed upon by her that this move for the final little ties to be done with was expected and will not be a problem. He tells Harry and Kevin.

William and Harry discuss that moving forward the systems and items the team would need and use will be supplied by Oscorp, Doc Oct would be the main contact between Task Force and Oscorp and he would run on an independent system. This way if they were ever hacked no one would be able to find that one was working with the other. Doc Ock would take the lead on tech research and equipment creations.
As the team went out into the field should they run into new techs like the Silverman cyborg they can supply the information to Harry.

This last job provided just that, with the information the team had gathered from the casino. Within those files was the blue print for Silvermane’s suit.

Kevin maintained an uncharacteristically quiet, even deferential demeanor during the meeting.  He kept his answers to question polite and short.  Lots of "Yes, sirs."  "No, sirs" and "That sounds excellent, sirs."

Inside his own mind, he was blessing Devereaux for giving him lessons in self-control and hiding his reactions - even if those lessons had tended to be painful, humiliating or, more usually, both.  Still, it was a struggle.  Harry Osbourn had an air of entitled confidence and a handsome, really punch-able face.

Once the meeting finally ended, Kevin let the polite, friendly mask his face had become lapse into a more sour and not in the least deferential expression.  "You know, not for nothing, but one of the last conversations I had with the so-called "violently psychotic" Green Goblin revolved around trying to put together a Quidditch team to practice our powers with.  He thought it was cool and really wanted to be a beater."

"The last time I was in this office, I told you that Spider-man had insufficient experience with depravity," Kevin told the other man.  "I have to say that now I don't think your experience with depravity is up to snuff either."

"We're concerned about how what and who we find might be used, so we don't want to share it with SHIELD, a multinational security agency that by definition has to balance competing interests against each other," Kevin continued.  "But we're okay sharing that stuff with a private, for-profit corporation answering only to its stockholders, which means that..."

Kevin pulled out his Freakphone and tapped a little than continued "...since he now controls his and his father's stock Harry Osbourn is the majority shareholder in Oscorp and so answers pretty much only to himself."

"Even if everything he told us is true and he has the very best of intentions, I don't want somebody other than us controlling our purse strings," Kevin told Williams.  "There's a lot of bad people and organizations in this world.  HYDRA, AIM, the Maggia, even regular drug cartels.  They're worth billions.  So let's go after those billions, bleed their money and take it for ourselves to get independent and to screw with their ability to do Bad Things."

William looked at Kevin as he gave him his point of view. William nodded and sat back in his chair taking in a deep breath.
Kevin was partially right in his view of William’s depravity. William was holding back, He wanted more time to be properly set up, He was not sure how far he wanted to really push the team to possibly go down a potentially dark road just yet.

But with this last mission against the Maggia they managed to catch a huge break. William was about to say continue the conversation with Kevin when Jocasta’s hologram appeared.

I’m sorry to interrupt Mr. Naslund but, I will have to agree with Kevin, Being the AI of the complex Jocasta was pretty much able to hear most of the discussions going on through the complex, The only exceptions were the bedrooms.

SHIELD has been running low level algorithms on our systems to gather some information, I have managed to disable them and have disabled certain systems from the network to avoid any more possible leaks. We still do not have data for it to have made difference and no valuable information was transferred or lost,  but I have worked with Otto to re-route all our systems and we have now installed an upgraded security protocol to avoid any further connections.
We are now officially no longer connected to any SHIELD system. We should not be running this risk with Oscorp either.
I have run some diagnostics on the laptop the team brought back from the Maggia, I do have an alternative now and have taken the initiative  to There was enough information for me to re-route quite a significant amount of their funds to us.

She said sending the information to Williams’s screen. William sat up listening to Jocasta’s news, he wasn’t really surprised that SHIELD had their nose in their files and actually expected it, for now there was nothing to hide.
William looked at the screen and gave a nod turning the screen to Kevin.

On the monitor was a screen shot 2 things became clear.

1st  the Maggia seemed to more than just a local gang  Looking at one of the screen shots, the information seemed to point to an Italian family Nafaria which were a very powerful mob family in Italy.
and
2nd Seems the Maggia had quite some extremely deep pockets due to this Italian connection which would explain the Villains suit and Silvermane cybernetic project.

The 2nd screen shot was of account numbers from various offshore banks listing the sum of the accounts at over $14 billion.
Jocasta switched to another screen that now showed the Maggia’s balance at $40 million.

I was shut out before being able to get the rest, but this should allow us enough to start to allow us to start without anyone else. She informed them.

Well Kevin, Looks like you guys did just that and secured our independence. Looks like we may have made a rather large enemy of the Maggia if they connect us to the missing funds. Should be fun! he said with a smile

 I am also searching the database for any other useful information  that we can use, But this will take some time. The encryptions are quite sophisticated and will take some time.

As it stood now this solidified Kevin’s point to occur sooner than later. It was the right time to forgo any external connections and with the new funds the time to go full independent was now.

"So I know this'll come off as more MPD than Bloodrager, but I'd hold off on some of that," Kevin said.

"Figure the best way to avoid getting on SHIELD's shit list is to let them know, or think they know, what's happening.  So, let's let them think their spying worked and we can set up a, a, what-the-frak-did-Andru-call-it... oh, yeah, a virtual machine," Kevin suggested.  "That way they'll only learn what we want them to learn."

"As for Osbourn Jr., take his deal, to some extent, anyway," Kevin said.  "His money gives us that most important of criminal/spy-dude resources - a visible source of income.  Plus, connections go both ways.  It might be helpful to have an in at Osbourn Inc if it turns out that the Apple of Crazy doesn't fall too far from the Tree of Crazy."
This message was last edited by the player at 05:21, Thu 02 May 2019.

William nodded to Kevin, Then Looked at Jocasta and Gave her the go ahead for a virtual system that would filter some of their data base info to a bone minimum. William looked at his screen seeing Jocasta was already writing a program for this.

I’ll have a conversation with Harry then, In the mean time Have a discussion with the others to get a feel for their thoughts. I’ll go through few more things with Jocasta on these systems and with Doc on what happened with the construct.

"Yeah, we definitely need to get everybody's input on this," Kevin said.

"I mean, we have 14 billion dollars now.  We could potentially set up our own agency.  Call it..." Kevin paused for a good minute, clearly working through something.  "Oooh!  Supers World Oriented Response Department.  I know.  It's cheesy.  But it was the only way I could get SWORD as an acronym."

"Any who, good talk.  I'll check in with the others and see how they're getting along," Kevin said as he left.

Outside the door he noted a few people gathering in the Rec Room so he headed there.

>>>To Rec Room>>>

With their new funds Jocasta and Doc had bought a new warehouse and set up a small lab and highly secure storage center off site over the Brooklyn bridge in Vinegar Hills should something happen. Clockwork Knight was kept in what Ock hopes was now a secure storage locker. This Building would be used for the Doc’s research and special projects.
Doc Ock and Jocasta worked to see what information they could pull from the construct calling it self Clockwork Knight. But there no real way to connect to it to allow access to it’s “mind” or “mainframe” or whatever made this thing tick. There didn’t seem anyway to recharge it either, Doc though maybe this was some sort of an information construct. It had mentioned something about Eternals and a few thousand years of having been around but that didn’t make any sense.

There was no way this sort of technology would have been available back then, nor did “Eternals” mean anything to anyone. However that rift that happen a while back that established the Avengers may have had something to do with it. If it did come from that “New York incident” how dangerous would this construct truly be? Could it be a homing device? Was it gathering info from earth to send to somewhere else? No one could figure this thing out. So for now Jocasta set up a system to keep an eye on it to see if there would be any power surges, Online activity or anything else that would allow her to see if the construct would become active.

Back at the main complex Williams was going through the files on the drives and on the pages from the last mission to see if there was anything further he could use. Besides Jocasta redirecting many of their previous funds there was more then just money to look at. Williams anonymously called in to the police about the Maggia’s car theft ring located on the jersey shores. No major names had been taken down but it had put yet another major kink into the Maggia’s inbound fund.

There had also been a report of the police finding over 2 dozen Maggia thugs riddled with bullets when they arrived. No one seems to know who attacked them, Suspicions were on the anonymous caller but the police could get no leads. The Maggia had been dealt a couple of very crippling blow and it would be some time before they would be fully operational again, But William asked Jocasta to keep tabs in the back ground. In the mean time Williams searched his system for some other files.

Williams ended up getting a call from Doc Ock from their Vinegar Hill complex.
William, This robot we have, Clockwork. I think I have found something. I found a recording It’s from a few months ago before Clockwork was brought to us, in is a town in North Carolina called Asheboro. Williams settles in his chair as the video plays…

Fade to black…….

TBC. Next Chapter…