Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Last issue the Avengers used Hydra's time portal in Japan to discover what the baddies were up to in the prehistoric past and the mid-20th Century. But the portal was booby-trapped and the group was split into 3 teams rather than 2 and sent to 3 different times. Last issue we concentrated on Captain America, Hawkeye and Quicksilver in the deep past, where they discovered that there was no way to get home. But Cap had a plan.
This time we'll see what the other 2 teams find.
Black Widow, Iron Man and Spider-Man are in Japan near the end of WWII. A rundown Japanese battalion is guarding the Hydra base at this time. IM doesn't want to risk disturbing the timestream, or bringing even more Japanese troops here, so he suggests they use stelath rather than superpowers to get in. Natasha Romanoff and Tony Stark can both speak Japanese - they just need disguises.
Widow leads them to a Kabuki theatre. Shellhead puts on a samurai outfit, and Natasha and Spider-Man don kimonos and whiteface makeup. Tony assures Spidey that it's traditional for men to play women in Kabuki, but Peter Parker's not convinced.
They bluff their way past the Japanese guards as Stark claims to be a Yashida Clan samurai. 1 soldier goes to fetch a superior officer, but the trio don't wait and reach an inner Hydra guard. The Golden Avenger dons an Iron Man glove (from a box the other 2 are carrying) and blasts the guard. Spider-Man gladly discards his disguise, as do the rest.
As they fight more Hydra goons inside, Widow suddenly finds herself up against 1 who can disappear to avoid her blows and reappear instantly elsewhere. After he knocks her out he tackles Iron Man. The Hydra guy reveals that he's from the future (beyond even the present the team started from), and has superior technology. He points his finger and IM's armour system crashes. But BW has recovered and tags him with a taser from behind.
All the Hydra guys dealt with, the team penetrate the centre of the base and find the time portal. Tony Stark examines their computer and ascertains that it's August 1945. The installation is intended to use energy from the coming atomic bomb. The Hydra team here also dug a shaft down into a big hole that we learned last issuethat other Hydra guys excavated and filled in back in prehistoric times. At the bottom the 1945 guys found something we're not going to be told about yet.
Now we skip to the future (where the advanced-tech Hydra guy came from?) to see what Bruce Banner and Scarlet Witch are doing. They are in the ruins of a Japanese city in an atomic wasteland. Bruce has spent 2 days building a shelter and cobbling together a radiation suit for Wanda. (He says he doesn't need sleep because he gets enough of that while Hulk is in control.)
But his efforts are somewhat negated when a Hydra agent breaks in with a large device formed of 2 tetrahedrons joined by a short tube. The Hydra guy refers to it as S@M, and tells it to extrude 2 guns and attack. Banner turns into Hulk to protect the Witch. But it is SW who encloses the device in a hex sphere and clobbers the Hydra guy with it.
Wanda figures their shelter is wrecked, so they may as well take the war to Hydra. She opens the S@M device and discovers biotechnological wetware inside. As Hulk doesn't seem to want to turn back into Banner again, she has to investigate it herself.
Whatever she does is enough to track down the Hydra base. When Hulk breaks in they find the time portal again. But these future guys are also able to dematerialise out of the way of his fists. They claim to be surfing probablity waves. If Hulk reverted to Banner he could probably find a way to stop them. But all this zipping about just annoys the Green Giant.
The Hydra agents also keep doing the finger-pointing bit, though it's unclear what effect it's supposed to be having on Greenie. But when Scarlet Witch turns up, flying on S@M, and encloses them each in hex spheres which chop off hands and feet, this rather terminates their aggressive and defensive tactics.
Witch and Hulk also discover the filled-in hole that's been there for millennia. And it holds the deeply-buried menace that Wanda sensed in #1. With Bruce still a no-show, Wanda uses the tools at hand - she gets Hulk to dig is way down the hole. They find a large cannister. Hulk rips it open and inside they discover the body of Captain America. With a note pinned to it reading "Bruce or Tony, thaw me out".
This was Cap's plan.