The bodies wore their deaths like accusations.
T'Challa counted twelve clone troopers sprawled across the corridor, their white armor scorched black at the chest, the back, the neck—precise killing strikes from a lightsaber wielded by someone who knew exactly where to cut. The metallic tang of burnt plastoid and flesh hung in the recycled air.
He knelt beside the nearest fallen soldier, fingers finding the gorget where the helmet sealed to the chest plate. Still warm. The kill was recent—minutes, maybe less. T'Challa's jaw tightened behind his mask as he looked across the corridor at the other bodies, each one a brother, a son, a warrior who deserved better than this.
"Bast guide you," he murmured, closing his eyes for three heartbeats of silence.
When he opened them again, his gaze swept the scene with tactical precision. No Grievous. No Acolytes. Whoever did this had already moved on, leaving only—
The air shifted behind him.
T'Challa spun, but not fast enough. A boot slammed into his sternum with pile-driver force, launching him backward. He twisted midair, claws extending, and drove them into the deck plating. Vibranium absorbed the kinetic energy as he skidded to a halt in a three-point crouch.
The figure stood where T'Challa had been a moment before, backlit by emergency lighting that painted him in shades of amber and red. White cape. Blue and orange armor scored with blaster burns and lightsaber marks. A shield mounted on his right forearm—not vibranium, but the design was unmistakable. Wakandan influence, filtered through someone else's understanding.
The mask caught T'Challa's attention last. Skull-white, with glowing red eye-lenses that tracked his every movement.
"Oh," the figure said, his voice filtered and strange—layered, as if multiple people spoke in imperfect unison. "Now that's a dramatic entrance. I can respect that."
T'Challa rose slowly, claws still extended. "Who are you?"
The stranger spun his lightsaber in a lazy circle, the crimson blade humming. The movement was practiced, performative—someone who enjoyed the theater of combat. "Is that really the question you should be asking?" He tilted his head. "You could say I've spent my entire life preparing for fights exactly like this one."
T'Challa's patience, already worn thin by a day of relentless battle, snapped. "I'm not interested in games." The words came out as a growl. "Give me your name or give me your best."
The figure went absolutely still.
Then he laughed—a sound like breaking glass amplified through a broken speaker. "Finally! Someone who speaks my language!" He shifted into a combat stance, shield raised, lightsaber held in a reverse grip. "Very well. I am Taskmaster."
He moved.
Fast. Impossibly fast for someone his size. T'Challa barely got his guard up before Taskmaster was on him, shield leading. T'Challa twisted, drove a roundhouse kick toward the man's ribs—
The shield intercepted it, angled perfectly to redirect the force. The lightsaber came around in a tight arc, scored a line across T'Challa's abdomen that sparked purple against the vibranium weave, and—
Now. T'Challa dropped low, swept Taskmaster's legs, followed with a rising knee to the chin, and backflipped away. His boot caught the mercenary square in the jaw on the way up.
Taskmaster crashed to the deck, rolled, and came up in a fighter's crouch. Behind those red lenses, T'Challa could feel the man's eyes narrowing. Taskmaster glanced at his lightsaber, then at the point where it had struck T'Challa's suit and failed to penetrate.
"That armor," he said softly. "Interesting."
T'Challa didn't give him time to analyze. He closed the distance in two strides, led with a palm strike that Taskmaster caught on his shield, followed with a spinning elbow that the mercenary ducked. They traded blows in a rapid exchange—shield blocking fist, lightsaber deflecting claw, boot meeting shin, knee meeting ribs.
"Your technique," Taskmaster said, almost conversational despite the violence, "is exceptional. Precise. Economical. Lethal." He caught T'Challa's wrist, twisted, drove his shield rim toward the prince's face. "You're a warrior born."
T'Challa jerked his head back, felt the shield's edge whisper past his mask. He slammed a knee into Taskmaster's gut, followed with a hammer-fist to the shoulder. The mercenary grunted, drove his shield into T'Challa's shoulder in response, then ate a flying knee for his trouble.
Minutes blurred into motion. Each man probed for weakness, tested defenses, measured reflexes. T'Challa felt the familiar rhythm of combat settle over him—the warrior's trance where thought and action merged into one.
Then something changed.
Taskmaster's attack pattern shifted. The mercenary threw a combination—jab, cross, high kick—that T'Challa recognized with bone-deep certainty. That sequence was his. Taught to him by his father, refined through ten thousand hours of practice, shown to no one outside Wakanda's borders.
"That attack—" T'Challa blocked it on pure instinct, but his mind raced. How? The movements were too perfect, too fluid. Not a lucky guess or convergent evolution. This was mimicry.
"I've never seen a style quite like yours," Taskmaster said, and there was something hungry in his filtered voice. "Unique. Sophisticated. Worth adding to my repertoire."
T'Challa's blood ran cold, then hot. "You dare—"
He lunged, drove a backhand strike at Taskmaster's throat. The mercenary caught it on his shield, simultaneously thrusting the lightsaber toward T'Challa's chest. T'Challa twisted in midair, felt the blade kiss his ribs—and Taskmaster's free hand snapped out, grabbed his arm, and hurled him overhead in a perfect Wakandan combat throw.
T'Challa hit the deck hard enough to crack the plating. He looked up to see Taskmaster raising his lightsaber for a killing stroke—
T'Challa slammed both palms against the deck.
The kinetic energy he'd been absorbing throughout the fight—every blocked punch, every deflected kick, every impact his suit had stored—released in a single devastating pulse. The shockwave caught Taskmaster dead center and launched him thirty feet into the air. He hit the ceiling with a sound like a gong, then crashed back to the deck in a tangle of limbs and cape.
"What—the hell—" Taskmaster wheezed, rolling to his hands and knees. "What was that?"
T'Challa rose, energy still crackling purple along the lines of his suit. "Are you ready to surrender?"
Taskmaster's shoulders shook. For a moment, T'Challa thought the man might be injured—then he realized the mercenary was laughing. He stood, rolled his neck until something popped. "Not even close."
The floor chose that moment to betray them both.
The entire corridor lurched sideways. Structural damage from the battle outside—or something worse. T'Challa widened his stance, rode out the tremor. Taskmaster caught himself against the wall, muttered something sharp and profane under his breath.
"This fight's just getting started," the mercenary said. His helmet tilted, as if listening to something on his comm. "But it seems we're about to have company."
T'Challa's own comm crackled with desperate transmissions—more breaches, more casualties, the city's defenses crumbling sector by sector. He needed to end this. Now.
Then Taskmaster raised a clone trooper's blaster rifle—appropriated from one of the bodies, T'Challa realized with fresh anger—and fired.
The bolt caught T'Challa square in the chest. His suit absorbed it, converted kinetic energy to potential, stored it for later release. He felt the familiar warmth spread through the vibranium weave.
"Let's test that armor's limits," Taskmaster said, firing again. And again.
T'Challa smiled behind his mask. "By all means. Continue."
He charged.
Taskmaster kept firing—disciplined three-round bursts that any clone would be proud of. Each bolt fed more energy into T'Challa's suit. By the time he leaped, he was a coiled spring of barely contained violence.
Taskmaster's posture shifted subtly. T'Challa, focused on his aerial approach, didn't see the mercenary's free hand come up until it was too late.
Something invisible hit him midair—a concussive blast from a repulsor mounted in Taskmaster's gauntlet. Stark tech, T'Challa's mind catalogued even as he flew backward, crashed through a door, and tumbled into chaos.
The hangar beyond was a warzone. Clone troopers and droids locked in desperate close-quarters combat. Umbaran soldiers advancing in disciplined lines. Starfighters screaming overhead, their engines drowning out the screams below. Explosions painted everything in strobing orange and white.
T'Challa landed hard, rolled to his feet. Through the smoke and carnage, across fifty meters of active battlefield, he found Taskmaster standing in the doorway.
Their eyes met.
Everything else—the explosions, the blaster fire, the dying—faded to white noise.
"T'Challa!" Taskmaster's voice cut through the din, amplified by his helmet's speakers. He gestured with his lightsaber, a duelist's invitation. "Shall we continue?"
T'Challa's claws extended with a metallic snikt.
He charged into the maelstrom.