Synopsis / Summary / Plot
I'm again splitting the flashback parts of this issue from the current day sections.
Flashback 1st:-
Running away from their abusive foster father, Clint and Barney Barton have come across the Carson Travelling Carnival, and now they stand entranced. A friendly dog greets them but then their father catches up with them and starts to beat on them. However they are saved by the Swordsman (Jacques DuQuesne). His flowery language doesn't impress the Iowan so he makes his threat clearer - leave the boys alone or else. But the bully needs more physical persuasion with fists and boot up the backside. They tell their saviour that the man's not their real father, the Government pays him to look after them. The man threatens them with the law but DuQuesne says that Carnival law holds here, so then their 'father' leaves.
Now that the fracas is over other Carnival members come out to meet the boys. The female aerialist, who also seems to be Jacques' girlfriend and we'll see next issue is also the assistant in his act, takes a shine to the youngest lad Clint. Then the boss, Mrs Carson the Bearded Lady, comes to see what all the ruckus was about. DuQuesne explains that he rescued the boys from a bully and he proposes that they join the troupe as partial replacement for the 3 roustabouts who quit in Las Vegas. When the boys explain that their real parents died in a car crash she says they can stay, but only if they pull their weight. (Although since Clint and Barney are very young she presumably doesn't expect that weight to be much.)
It's time for the Carnival to move on, and the 2 young boys help with loading everything in the trucks. Clint spots a knife that Jacques has dropped, and Duquesne thanks him because it was the 1st blade he owned, a gift from his dad. He also commends the lad on his keen eyesight and dubs him Hawkeye.
Current day:-
The 2 Hawkeyes, Clint Barton and Kate Bishop, have gone on a mission for SHIELD to investigate an Antarctic Hydra base where they've supposedly got a new secret superweapon. They had to abandon their mission but only Clint got out, so he went back in to rescue her. But meanwhile she'd found the superweapon, 3 very young children with electrodes in their heads.
As Kate tells Clint what she's found he fights his way through Hydra troops towards her. Kate pushes a big red button which raises a transparent tube which was containing the kids and pulls wires from the electrodes. Then Hydra troops enter with a female civilian scientist who tells her she doesn't realise what she's unleashed, and orders the troops to kill them all. The kids echo her words, each speaking 1 of them. They emit energy and all the Hydra folk die with blood streaming from their eyes. And they ask shocked Kate if she's going to take them home.
At the same time Clint's hearing aid howls and he takes it out. So he doesn't hear a big Hydra Agent with some sort of tech gear on his back come up behind him and knock him down. As the big guy keeps hitting him he's obviously saying something as well so Hawkeye scrabbles for his dropped earpiece. When he finally gets his hearing back the Hydra guy asks him if SHIELD sent him, and warns him that Hydra are the only people who can control the children. He's been down to the lab and found Kate and the kids gone and wants to know where they are.
The answer is they're behind him as Kate shoots an arrow into his hand. The man runs away because he believes the children will kill them all. Kate-eye helps Clint-eye up and the gang stagger out of the building into the Antarctic snow to a designated extraction point where a SHIELD craft picks them up. Kate tells the kids they can't go home straight away, and they say they trust her.
The issue ends with an ominous voiceover from Clint saying that things are going to go bad.