The new Avengers team (Captain America,
Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver) is at the beach, battling a huge
sea monster. As the beach crowd heckles them, they manage to defeat
the creature by having Wanda rile up the waters surrounding it,
presumably scaring it off. Pietro is exhausted and cannot carry them
all back to the mansion so they have to take a bus, another
embarrassing moment....
Tony Stark gives the new Avengers his
latest jet-stream cruiser, though it is short on weapons. That night,
both Pietro and Wanda have a nightmare that the Stranger is coming
for them. Pietro wants to leave but Wanda insists on staying with the
team. They fill in Cap and Hawkeye on the Stranger: he is a
near-omnipotent alien being who was able to defeat the X-Men easily.
Cap tells them all that it is their choice on whether to say and face
the villain, and everyone elects to stay out of guilt. They fly over
to consult the X-Men, resulting in an uneasy first meeting between
the two teams. Professor X tells Cap that the X-Men will take care of
the Stranger sometime soon but Cap insists on immediate action. The
peeved Xavier sends the Avengers off in a trance with the coordinates
of the Stranger's current location programmed into their jet. The
Stranger is in Northern Thailand, approaching a possibly mutant woman
named Cressida. The Avengers arrive and confront the villain who
easily keeps them at bay. Then Cressida lets loose with some power
and suddenly the four heroes are much more powerful than ever before.
They overwhelm the Stranger who, deciding that Cressida is not a
mutant, leaves. Cressida reveals she has the power to increase the
abilities of anyone around her. They offer to make her part of the
team and she flies off with the Avengers, intending to send word back
to her people. What they don't realize is that her people are all
dead, apparently the result of her use of her special ability....