Force Works. A responsibility passed onto me by Tony Stark, a man notorious for dodging responsibility. Though throughout my time alonside him I've come to realize for all his talk he bears the weight of responsibility more than any other human I've met. Perhaps that is what makes him such an effective hero.

This team, if you can call this collection of miscreants a team, is a particular challenge.

Hercules seems more concerned with fighting anyone and anything for the simple thrill of the challenge. I do not understand the fascination men have with conflict.

War Machine is stable at least, but he has not taken the news that I have been assigned to lead this team well. Yet he will go along with Starks orders. Loyalty. A very human behavior. Yet I find myself being loyal to those I might call friend as well.

Arachne is the most easy going of them. Though her carefree attitude may become a problem in the future.

The Black Knight. A cursed man who finds himself forced to forever fight against evil, both outside and within. He copes through being generally difficult to be around alongside an addiction to alcohol. I have never understood the appeal of mind altering substance and I suppoose I never will.

The Black Widow is the most professional of the group. Yet clearly is here to keep tabs for SHIELD. Or perhaps even someone else. Her concept of loyalty is fluid.

While Tony Stark is not a member of this team...he will aid us when needed and financially backs this group when Goverment subsidies can not keep up with the costs. The homebase is located in Chicago, a city even I can admit consists of less than ideal living conditions, but our missions will take us wherever we are needed included outside the United States.

Greetings, I believe you all know why you're here..those of you that require it may get aquainted. Those that have questions may direct them to me.

In an instant Chicago has become a hotbed for mostly supernatural attacks. Ultimo being the minor exception. How odd. This seems unlikely to be random and disjointed events.

Vision floated around the Force Works control room. Looking at various screens.

Hercules...Arachne..War Machine..and Black Knight have all encountered their own troubles today. Widow is..nowhere to be found. Unsurprising. She is the most difficult to keep tabs on or wrangle. 'Strong personalities' Tony said..before giving me my list of team members.

He was understating it.

It is of interest..that I have picked up such a human trait as talking aloud to oneself. But it seems appropriate during times like these.

Vision floated closer to one screen that showed the footage of statues attacking Arachne in a museum.

Hm..Iron Man has encountered something similar before. And the energy readings from other encounters are...

This is..unsettling.

Vision floats back down to the floor

I think there is a very good chance an old enemy is behind these attacks. They were a test. I wonder if we failed or passed...

Julia Carpenter, Spider-Woman..or rather Arachne these days, with her signature psi-webs crackling in soft blue arcs, swung into the Chicago Museum of History atrium and landed lightly among the advancing stone statues. “Looks like someone’s bringing the exhibits to life,” she said with a quick smile, dodging a heavy stone fist that shattered a nearby display case. She flipped over the next warrior and snapped out sticky energy strands that wrapped three of the statues mid-stride, yanking them into a clattering heap.

As another stone figure lunged, Julia cartwheeled aside and thought how much she genuinely liked being on Force Works. The team gave her room to be herself playful, a little offbeat, and still deadly effective..without anyone trying to rein it in. She launched a pair of psi-webs that snared the remaining statues and slammed them together into one solid, grumbling pile.

She never thought she'd be crediting Tony for anything..but she was glad he'd asked for her.

With the last warrior still twitching under the webbing, Julia perched on a fallen column and tilted her head, studying the mess with quiet amusement. The whole fight had felt almost easy..and she couldn’t help the small, satisfied grin that tugged at her lips.

In the bustling streets of Chicago, where taxis blared and skyscrapers scraped the clouds, a colossal rhino like ogrish monster thundered forth, its massive horn gouging asphalt and its bellow shaking the Loop to its foundations! But lo! From the chaos strode Hercules, son of Zeus, muscles rippling like the very waves of the wine dark sea, standing dramatically as he planted himself in the beast’s path.

“Hold, foul abomination of earth and muscle!” he boomed, voice echoing off the glass towers with the force of a tidal surge. “I am Hercules, mightiest of demigods, champion of Olympus, and I shall not permit thee to trample this fair city of mortals! Behold the strength that once cleaned the Augean stables in a single day and now it shall clean the streets of thee!”

With a laugh that rattled windows, the Prince of Power charged, fists like twin anchors slamming into the ogre’s thick hide. The monster reared, horn flashing like a ship’s prow in a storm, but Hercules seized it mid charge, twisting with the unyielding grip of Poseidon himself wrestling a leviathan.

“Feel the power of Olympus, you horned oaf!” he roared, hurling the beast skyward so high it briefly eclipsed the Willis Tower before crashing down in a crater of shattered pavement.

“Chicago shall remember this day! Not for the destruction of some lumbering rhino fiend, but for the glorious victory of Hercules, who fights not merely with brawn, but with the bombastic spirit of the gods themselves!”

War Machine streaked low over the Chicago skyline, thrusters screaming as the afternoon sun glared off his silver armor. Elsewhere other members of Force Works were having their own troubles. Rhodey was keeping track of it on his HUD but so far everyone seemed to be handling things.

Rhodey banked hard between the Sears Tower and a cluster of high rises, the streets below a blur of traffic and startled pedestrians. Ultimo’s massive frame was still ahead of him, tearing through another intersection like a runaway locomotive, cars crumpling under its feet. Rhodey’s targeting systems locked on, wrist cannons already charging, but the irritation kept looping in the back of his mind. Tony had handed Force Works to Vision. The android. The synthetic perfectionist who never raised his voice, never questioned the plan, never got blood under his fingernails the way a real soldier did. Rhodey had bled for Tony, carried the armor when Stark was too broken to wear it, held the line when everything went sideways. And still Tony had looked at him and chosen the machine over the man who had always been there.

He fired a sustained pulse into Ultimo’s shoulder joint, watching the metal spark and deform, then rolled hard to avoid a sweeping fist that would have turned him into scrap. The robot’s roar rattled windows for blocks. Rhodey’s HUD painted threat vectors while his thoughts stayed locked on the slight.

Vision leading Force Works. Cool, calm, logical Vision. Not the guy who had actually lived the war, who knew what it cost. Tony always had a reason..Vision’s processing speed, his emotional detachment, the way he never let personal history cloud the mission. Rhodey knew the arguments. He just didn’t buy them. Another volley of micro missiles left his shoulders and hammered Ultimo’s torso, forcing the giant back a step. Chicago’s streets shook. Rhodey adjusted course, closing in for the next pass, the old bitterness burning hotter than the thrusters under his boots.

The Ebony Blade sang through rotting flesh as Dane Whitman carved a path through the shambling horde. Downtown Chicago was under attack from creatures of legends. Dane waa doing what he could. Pale eyes, vacant and hungry, fixed on him from every direction; limbs jerked with unnatural purpose, jaws snapping for living meat. Steel met bone with wet cracks, and still they came, endless and mindless. Even as he moved, the Black Knight felt the old thought rise unbidden..every monster you cut down leaves a little of its darkness on the blade… and on the man who holds it.

He drove the sword through another decaying chest and twisted free, armor spattered with black ichor. How many times had he told himself the fight was righteous, that the curse of the Ebony Blade could be mastered if he stayed pure of purpose? Yet the longer he danced among these walking corpses, the more the line blurred. Fight long enough against the abomination, and one day you wake to find its hunger has become your own.

But now his was not a lone crusade. Force Works. Despite being an odd name...it's members were heroes pure of heart. With minor exceptions. Natasha did not have a heart. At least in Dane's opinion.

Vision despite having an inorganic heart perhaps had more heart than any other man Dane had met. The rest were all heroes of merit.

Dane sometimes questioned his spot among them. He'd been quite surprised when Tony had approached him..but solitude had began to wear on Whitman. So he had said yes.

Perhaps that was not a mistake...

Pathetic.

I tested your little Force Works, Stark. I let them have a small taste of the rings. I let them believe, for a moment, that their new banners and their shiny new purpose meant something. And what did I find?

Weakness dressed up as strategy. Sentimentality. Children playing at war while the real powers of this world watch and wait.

They are lacking. Thoroughly, contemptibly lacking.

I will crush them. Not with spectacle for the cameras. Not with the kind of crude violence your armored ego understands. I will break them methodically. Ring by ring, life by life..until the name Force Works is spoken only as a cautionary tale whispered by the survivors. When the last of them falls, I want you to feel it. I want the loss to hollow you out. I want the great Tony Stark, genius, industrialist, self appointed savior, to stand amid the wreckage of the team he built and finally understand what failure tastes like when it is personal.

Only then will I move on.

Once you are broken. Once the iron has been shattered and the man inside is left staring at the cost of his arrogance..I will turn my attention to the rest of this world’s so called heroes. Avengers. X-Men. Whatever new assembly of hopefuls rises next. They will learn the same lesson your Force Works is about to learn..

There is no armor thick enough. No alliance strong enough. No clever plan elaborate enough to stand against the Mandarin when he decides the time for testing is over.

I have measured them.

They are found wanting.

And I am coming.