Taskmaster

**Tony Masters** was born with an ability known as "photographic reflexes" and later joined SHIELD as an adult. This ability enabled him to watch another person's physical movements and duplicate them without any practice, no matter how complex. Later, it was only limited by the fact that the memories he gained by watching others overwrote his personal memories after the injection of the experimental super-soldier serum. He was previously a naturally gifted athlete who trained himself to superb physical condition. He committed to studying the fighting styles of some of SHIELD's top field operatives like Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Melinda May. Tony trained his body to be in peak physical condition and engaged in intensive regular exercise. His strength, endurance, stamina, reflexes, and agility were on the level of an Olympic athlete. Even without the super-soldier serum, he could prove himself as an equal to Captain America. In addition to his ability to copy the fighting techniques of others, he had mastered hundreds of forms of unarmed combat and had created some of his own original techniques as well. Tony had become skilled in the use of most if not all conventional weaponry. He was an unerring marksman as a result of the skills of various champions he committed to memory. These skills included most present-day and many historical martial arts, boxing, wrestling, swordsmanship, archery, marksmanship, gymnastics, aerial acrobatics and sleight of hand.

## Biography

### Early Life

**Anthony Masters** was one of the best agents SHIELD had to offer. During one of his missions, he was sent to take down a Ten Rings cell that was working with Baron Von Strucker's HYDRA to develop more of their modified Super-Soldier serum to be tested on the Mandarin's henchmen. When Tony had infiltrated the facility, he made his way through and incapacitated several soldiers along the way. However just as he was about to enter the center of the base, Tony was shot and became delirious. With more soldiers on the way, and little reinforcements, on stand by, Tony decided that if he was to survive he would need to inject himself with the experimental Super-Solider serum.

### Becoming Taskmaster

The serum instead of increasing, Tony's strength increased his senses to Super-Human levels, enough so that he could analyze attacks coming and know how to counteract them. He used this in making his way out of the facility after setting charges meant to destroy the Ten Rings work in creating a new batch of the Super-Soldier serum. Although he made it out, as a side effect of the serum, Tony received a mild case of amnesia after making his escape. Tony was soon found by HYDRA agents who began to excavate the facility with hopes of finding the serum, but they soon learned that Tony was the only successful product of that venture. With that in mind, Baron Strucker chose to mold Tony from a loyal agent of SHIELD, to a cold hearted agent of HYDRA. As with working for HYDRA, Tony would receive payments from the organization, but would also offer his services to other criminal organizations, earning himself a title as one of the best mercenaries on the planet, even giving himself the alias of **Taskmaster**.

## Powers and Abilities

The Taskmaster acquired his abilities after injecting himself with an experimental form of the Super-Soldier serum, which altered his brain chemistry to make him hypercognitive in the area of skill observation and retention.

* **Photographic Reflexes:**The Taskmaster's only superhuman abilities were that of his photographic reflexes. He was able to duplicate almost any physical act he sees after seeing it done by someone else only once. Taskmaster can use this ability to master complex gymnastics routines and play difficult pieces of music. However, he typically prefers to use this ability to copy the combat skills, both armed and unarmed, of costumed crime-fighters and expert martial artists from around the world, typically seen through watching videos of them in combat situations. He can also copy the subtle muscle movements of others so precisely that he can at times do things such as copying another person's voice so precisely as to fool voice recognition software.
* **Near-Superhuman Mimicry:** Due to these reflexes, he can do things which border on superpowers. For instance Taskmaster has discovered that after watching martial arts movies on fast-forward he is able to briefly duplicate the moves at a greatly increased velocity, effectively giving him a limited form of super-speed. However, as he does not have any sort of enhanced endurance, this puts a great strain on his body and he is only able to fight in this manner for short periods of time.
* **Physical Movement Prediction:** He can also do things such as figuring out the sleight of hand techniques of a master poker cheater simply by watching them. He has often shown the ability to actually predict an opponent's next move before they make it if he has studied their fighting style enough. Opponents who are skilled at improvisational fighting styles, or who have a more random unpredictable style are less likely to have their moves predicted by Taskmaster.

### Abilities

* **Olympic-Level Conditioning:** The Taskmaster was an Olympic-level athlete and was possibly among the most formidable armed and unarmed combatants in the world.
* **Expert Tactician:** Taskmaster is a master strategist and tactician.
* **Other Skills:** Taskmaster learned meditation techniques in Tibet, he also claims to have learned forensic methods from CIA Agents and Mossad Operatives.

## Paraphernalia

### Equipment

**Taskmaster's Helmet:** Originally created by HYDRA to be used exclusively for Tony Masters, the helmet was made in the image of a skull to reflect the leader of the organization, the Red Skull. Within the helmet is a number of features, including a mini-camera with 1080p, a voice filter to both disguise Tony's voice and make him sound more menacing, a communications system, computerized lenses for maping out an environment and taking into account the number of adversaries, and a unique internal structure that prevents physic attacks or detection. The helmet is comprised of a bulletproof metal, making it extremely difficult to penetrate.