(Your story starts here!)

Despite the fact that he had been born on these streets, much had changed in the years that he had been away. The buildings were bigger. There were more automobiles than he could count, and the lighting from signs and street lamps threatened to turn night to day. But one thing that would never change was the smell. The smell of too many unwashed bodies pressed together on these river islands. The smell of desperation, urine, hope, garbage, and opportunity. The real New York. The kind of New York you don't see in the stories and the talkies. And after so many years away in foreign cities and foreign lands, the man calmly walking down the lighted streets could only think one thing.

Why would anyone want to live anywhere else?

Especially on a night like this, when the moon was shining, and there was such interesting company to meet. For instance, the man walking down the street wearing a fine white trench-coat was supposed to meet the associates of one Tommy Gagliano. Oh, they didn't know that he was coming, but he had no doubt that they would extend him every hospitality. If there was one thing he could count on in this life, it was the passion and traditions of Italians, and their recent decedents. Which was good for business. And why was this white-clad man making an unexpected visit to the associates of Tommy Gagliano? Maybe it was because he was a respected local businessman. He controlled the main ice distribution business for all of the Bronx, after all. Or maybe it was because he was a mafia Underboss with dreams of rising to the top by stepping on the toes of his betters?

He was dignity distorted, bravery become knavery, sanctimoniousness masking sin. He was a mirror, jeering at the subject it reflected. Yet so muted were the jeers, so delicate the inaccuracies of delineation, that they evaded detection. True and false were blended together. The false was merely an extended shadow of the true.

Musing were a private a affair, and certainly not while he was working.

Walking up to the front door of the warehouse, the lights finally revealed the full form of Anthony Masters, aka, Taskmaster. Tonight he was wearing the obvious snow-white trench-coat, with matching white-leather driving gloves and wingtips shoes, with one minor addition. The trench-coat bore a hood, which was definitely not typical in local New York fashion. The hood did little to hide Taskmaster's features, which was by design, as it was a stylized skull mask that stared out into the night. And it would be the last thing that these gentlemen would see tonight. Which was unfortunate, but almost an inevitability when one crosses Lucky Luciano.

Raising one gloved hand, Taskmaster gave a solid knock to the heavy door, and waited to be greeted by the hospitable gentlemen that lay within...

”Hey!” shouted someone on the other side of the door.

”Who’s out there?”

A distinct click of a hammer being pulled back.

"Bonjour! I have a message for Tommy Gagliano. Or, if he isn't here, I'm supposed to give it off for whomever is running the site!" Taskmaster called back through the door, as casually as if he were a paper boy delivering the morning paper.

Why greet death with anger and fear, when you can meet it with a smile?

If he was concerned that he might be blasted through the door, he didn't show it. Setting aside his speed, he was confident that the Vibranium scalemail that lined his suit would protect him from most small-arms fire. Once again, if only the world at large knew of what wonder Wakanda held...

The warehouse door began to slide open, the mook already had his gun out. The moment he saw the skull mask he stopped pulling and tried to aim…

With a speed and a grace that made the complicated movement so casual looking it might as well have been a handshake, Taskmaster disarmed the poor lug and ejected his ammunition before handing the weapon back.

"Now now, none of that. I realize I have a reputation, and a look, but don't you think I would have started off this conversation by blasting through the door, if I was here to start a massacre? Take me to your Boss. I have a message," he repeated again, as if to a thick child.

”Um yeah…sorry about that…we’re all on edge Y’know…that other skull guy is causing’ problems…”

He escorted Tony past stacks of crates to the ceiling.

The five mugs at the table playing cards started to get up as they passed.

”It’s OK guys! He ain’t the Punisher. He just’ deliverin’ a message for da boss…”

"Ah, yes...cet homme Punisher. It seems he is aping my fashion. While it is flattering to be imitated, I suspect someone is going to finally pay me enough to go after him someday. C'est la vie," Taskmaster shrugged, only vaguely aware of the vigilante's recent antics.

He waited patiently until he had been lead to the ice warehouse Boss. And kept silent until he was sure that he had the attention of everyone present. It was amazing how quickly a skull mask and visible weaponry could do that, even among hardened gangsters.

"In the western portion of the old capital city of Lo Yang there was a ruined cloister, in which stood an enormous pagoda, several hundred stories high. Three or four people could still find room to stand on its very top.

Not far from it there lived a beautiful maiden, and one very hot summer’s day she was sitting in the courtyard of her home, trying to keep cool. And as she sat there a sudden cyclone came up and carried her off. When she opened her eyes, there she was on top of the pagoda, and beside her stood a young man in the dress of a student.

He was very polite and affable, and said to her: 'It seems as though heaven had meant to bring us together, and if you promise to marry me, we will be very happy.' But to this the maiden would not agree. So the student said that until she changed her mind she would have to remain on the pagoda-top. Then he produced bread and wine for her to satisfy her hunger and thirst, and disappeared.

Thereafter he appeared each day and asked her whether she had changed her mind, and each day she told him she had not. When he went away he always carefully closed the openings in the pagoda-top with stones, and he had also removed some of the steps of the stairs, so that she could not climb down. And when he came to the pagoda-top he always brought her food and drink, and he also presented her with rouge and powder, dresses and mandarin-coats and all sorts of jewelry. He told her he had bought them in the market place. And he also hung up a great carbuncle-stone so that the pagoda-top was bright by night as well as by day. The maiden had all that heart could wish, and yet she was not happy.

But one day when he went away he forgot to lock the window. The maiden spied on him without his knowing it, and saw that from a youth he turned himself into an ogre, with hair as red as madder and a face as black as coal. His eyeballs bulged out of their sockets, and his mouth looked like a dish full of blood. Crooked white fangs thrust themselves from his lips, and two wings grew from his shoulders. Spreading them, he flew down to earth and at once turned into a man again.

The maiden was seized with terror and burst into tears. Looking down from her pagoda she saw a wanderer passing below. She called out, but the pagoda was so high that her voice did not carry down to him. She beckoned with her hand, but the wanderer did not look up. Then she could think of nothing else to do but to throw down the old clothes she had formerly worn. They fluttered through the air to the ground.

The wanderer picked up the clothes. Then he looked up at the pagoda, and quite up at the very top he saw a tiny figure which looked like that of a girl; yet he could not make out her features. For a long time he wondered who it might be, but in vain. Then he saw a light.

'My neighbor’s daughter,' said he to himself, 'was carried away by a magic storm. Is it possible that she may be up there?'

So he took the clothes with him and showed them to the maiden’s parents, and when they saw them they burst into tears.

But the maiden had a brother, who was stronger and braver than any one for miles around. When the tale had been told him he took a heavy ax and went to the pagoda. There he hid himself in the tall grass and waited for what would happen. When the sun was just going down, along came a youth, tramping the hill. Suddenly he turned into an ogre, spread his wings and was about to fly. But the brother flung his ax at him and struck him on the arm. He began to roar loudly, and then fled to the western hills. But when the brother saw that it was impossible to climb the pagoda, he went back and enlisted the aid of several neighbors. With them he returned the following morning and they climbed up into the pagoda. Most of the steps of the stairway were in good condition for the ogre had only destroyed those at the top. But they were able to get up with a ladder, and then the brother fetched down his sister and brought her safely home again.

And that was the end of the enchantment."

"Now...what is the moral of this story?" the big man asked, clasping his hands together and cocking his masked face.

The Boss shrugged.

”Don’t forget to shut your window?”

"Close. If you don't want to catch an axe, don't deceive your family," Taskmaster said cheerily.

With that, he opened up his trench-coat and withdrew a large hatchet from within it's depths. And with a casual flick of his wrist, he sent it flying through the air until it lay quivering in the ground beneath the Boss' feet.

"Now, Lucky already had the polite conversation with you. He doesn't care what you smuggle in the ice, as long as he gets his fair cut, and you don't deal it near any schools. You have failed to listen after a more than fair length of time. So, either you men hold him down and take off his left arm with that axe and the new Boss is more amenable to doing business the right way, or I leave this warehouse with a sack full of heads, and it reopens in two weeks under new management. Capisci?" he asked, turning to the assembled gangsters.

From his body language and tone, he was completely at ease, and didn't particularity care which option they went for. And in truth, he didn't. This was just a job to him, after all.

They may have looked at the hatchet for a moment.

From outside the warehouse, one could see flashes of gunfire and hear the screams, along with crashing of crates and shattering of the liquor inside. Then…silence.

An hour later, Taskmaster emerges from the warehouse with a very full sack over his shoulder.

At a far less swank bar, a known messenger for Winton Fisk approaches you.

”Mister Masters, my boss was impressed with your recent work, and has an assignment for you. If you are interested, please meet him in the back room of his casino at 9pm tomorrow.”