ARMAMENT

Membership: Jessia Adjei, B.A.D. Girls Inc. (Asp, Black Mamba, Diamondback/Rachel Leighton), Baxta, Renata Best, Hamish, Marthe, Rowan McAbney

Purpose: To monopolize the market in hired assassinations

Affiliations: Dario Agger, U.S. Department of Justice

Enemies: Griffin LaChance, Sabine LaChance, White Widow (Yelena Belova), Zelda

Aliases: Armament Properties LLX, Armament Industries

Base of Operations: Idylhaven, Pennsylvania, USA

First Appearance: White Widow I#1 (January, 2024)

History:

(White Widow I#4 (fb) - BTS) - After her father was assassinated, Renata Best decided to establish a corporate assassination bureau to employ the world's best assassins then drive them out of business. Using the sophisticated robot Hamish, Renata incorporated her company as Armament under Hamish's name so her involvement would remain secret. She headquartered the corporation in Idylhaven, Pennyslvania. Armament began building cybernetic equipment and encouraging assassins to use it. Unknown to the assassins, the equipment was recording them so that Renata could duplicate the intelligence they gleaned and program it into a series of assassin robots she had built, intending for the robots to eventually supplant all human assassins. Armament quickly gained interest from venture capital investors and the U.S. Department of Justice.

(White Widow I#3 (fb)) - Armament recruited the assassin Baxta and gave her a prosthetic leg. They arranged for her to pay off her medical bills by performing assassinations for the corporation.

(White Widow I#3 (fb) - BTS) - Armament recruited Rowan McAbney, who suffered from myalgic encephalomyelitis. They offered to cover his medical expenses if he worked in their disability outreach strategy.

(White Widow I#1 (fb) - BTS) - After the assassin Marthe was injured battling Captain America, Armament recruited her to be an "Armament Augmented Ambassador." They placed a cybernetic attachment to her hip. They also recruited assassin Jessica Ajei, giving her a cybernetic gauntlet.

    Armament began buying up other businesses in Idylhaven, including the Idle Reader bokstore, Beans n' Jeans coffee shop and Dita's Drugs pharmacy. However, Zelda refused to sell her candy store, Sharpsweets.

(White Widow I#2 (fb)) - Armament also began seizing control of private property by convincing Idylhaven's city council to pass an ordinance allowing them to terminate leases. Sabine LaChance led a proest against the ordinance but it passed.

(White Widow I#1) - Jessica Ajei used her cybernetic gauntlet on an assignment and told her friend Yelena Belova about how good the equipment was. As Yelena began to see the businesses in Idylhaven were all being bought up by Armament. Armament sent Mathe to attack Sharpsweets in the hopes of forcing Zelda to give in to the corporation. However, Yelena fought off Marthe and took a Armament eyepiece Marthe had been wearing. Armament sent drones under Hamish's command to spy on Yelena at her home.

(White Widow I#2) - Another one of Yelena's fellow assassins contacted her to tell her she'd joined Armament. At a farmer's market in Idylhaven, Rowan tried to recruit Yelena's friend Griffin for an internship at Armament. When Griffin tried to examine the Armament technology Yelena had found, her mother, Sabine, cautioned her that Idylhaven Academy was converting to an Armament charter school that year and the school had a zero-tolerance policy against tampering with Armament technology.

    Armament realized Yelena was tampering with their technology and sent Black Mamba and Diamondback of B.A.D. Girls Inc. to retrieve the weapon in Yelena's possession. Black Mamba told Yelena they could put in a good word for her at Armament if she wanted to join, slipping her an Armament Augmented Ambassadors business card. Yelena continued to hold out, so an Armament drone delivered papers to her and her neighbors informing them they were being evicted from their homes.

(White Widow I#3) - The White Widow broke into Armament's headquarters and stabbed Hamish, discovering then that he was only a robot. As she returned home, three of Aramement's Augmented Ambassadors were sent after her (one of them named Baxta), just as the Widow was speaking to Rowan, who recognized the trio as his co-workers. The three Armament assassins fought the White Widow but when she recognized one of them as Baxta, whom she'd met in an earlier assignment, the fight ended. When Yelena asked Baxta to identify the true leader of Armament, she and the other two assassins had bombs activated in their Armament equipment, claiming they violated their non-disclosure agreements (NDA) with the company. The bombs exploded, killing all three assassins.