Retaliation | Spies Protectors Book II

Chapter Nineteen

Daddy Issues
Andrew Coles

I returned to my home, it was the upstairs of the Taskmasters old Blacksmith shop. After my parents died he took me in, he trained me and taught me nearly everything I knew.

To find out that he was a secretly a shape shifting Portal Jumper all along? To find out that he never cared for me, but it was simply just a mission to him was devastating. I had no one now, nobody to say that I care for, nobody who I can call family.

The blacksmith shop itself was closed, after the Portal Jumper without a face disappeared so did all of the Taskmasters workers. Not only did they stop working here, but they're no records of any of them ever existing, similar to the Taskmaster himself. Hell, all of the Blacksmiths customers either don't remember who he was or have disappeared. These Portal Jumpers were the safeguards of the dimensions, and while they're only three of them, they are some of the most powerful beings in this universe.

No wonder they can erase there trails really well.

It was strange to see the shop so empty however, usually there are several workers around here, banging on anvils and working on orders for customers. Sometimes there would be a bounty hunter coming in here and the Taskmaster would send them out to do something.

I wondered how much of all this was staged? Was all of this, the Taskmaster raising me, running a shop and staying by my side. Was it all to prepare me for this upcoming "Threat" and how did the Taskmaster know that I would become the Chosen One.

I walked upstairs to where the Taskmaster lived, his bedroom was empty, nothing was left in it that use to belong to him. There was no bed, no lamp, no tables. It was just a empty room. A few months ago however there was a note, I burned the note using my energy core the moment I finished reading it, but I'll never forget what it said.

"I'm Sorry. -Signed Taskmaster" 

Did he some nerve? This shape shifting Portal Jumper probably thinks that I don't matter, he only ever saw me a weapon, or some kind of defense mechanism against this threat. 

"I am human too" I mumbled as I walked away from the empty bedroom.

I took a seat at the small table in the apartment. I suppose the Taskmaster never truly lived here, and while I did know where he lived, that place was emptier then here.

I remember when the Taskmaster first took me in, I just lost my father. 

My mother died of cancer a few years after I was born, and my father took care of me up until I was around six or seven. I'm still not entirely sure on how my father died, but the Taskmaster told me that some punk with a gun took a shot at my father in the market one day.

Who knows if that's true.

I felt my powers light up in my palms as I wondered.

If the Portal Jumper knew what I was to become, did they kill my father?

A single beam of energy escaped my hand and turned my large refrigerator to ash.

Deep breath.

I was a loose canon, I could destroy this entire dome if I wasn't careful. Maybe, the Taskmaster, or the Portal Jumper was just trying to prepare me for this, if they did kill my father, maybe the world was safer that way. But that doesn't mean that the Portal Jumper should abandon me the first chance he gets. 

I'd get answers.

One day.

John Kenway

I pushed my way through the crowd that had gathered around the market, this was the same market that the Spies saved only a few days ago from bandits.