Story arc continued from AVENGERS #313
Removing the Controller’s disc from Namor’s neck sends the Atlantean warrior into a violent rage from which only Captain America can calm him. Cap explains the situation and Namor responds with details of the Mystery Man’s approach to him with the offer of membership in a team of supervillains. Namor proposes pretending to join them but is later unable to locate the mystic portal….
In Washington, the Red Skull is musing on his disappointment with the consortium of masterminds when the transdimensional doorway explodes to reveal…Magneto. The mutant leader announces he has come to seek vengeance on those who persecuted his family during the Holocaust, meanwhile casually sweeping away the Skull’s guards and metal traps. The smooth-tongued Nazi villain reasonably points out that Magneto is no different from Hitler in his dreams of a "master race" controlling the Earth…but Magneto will have none of it. The Red Skull sprays his Dust of Death in his opponent’s face but it is deflected by a magnetic force field. The Skull then traps his enemy in a plastic bubble and flees. Magneto bursts the bubble and pursues, easily tossing the Controller out of the way. The Master of Magnetism descends into the building’s basement, dispatching a huge robot and several mechanical doubles of the Skull on the way. As the Skull attempts to flee in a private subway train, Magneto rips up the tracks with a wave of his hand….
Upstairs, Captain America, having traced the Red Skull to Washington, arrives at the damaged office building to be greeted by the enraged Controller. They battle violently for some time, while Crossbones casually looks in and, recalling the last time his boss chewed him out for fighting Cap without orders, leaves. The Controller, with his superhuman strength, hurls wreckage at Cap, who manages to press one of the bad guy’s own control discs onto his forehead, creating a feedback loop that renders him unconscious. Cap follows the trail of shattered and twisted metal down to the tracks in the basement but there is no sign of the Red Skull or his mysterious adversary….
The Red Skull awakens to find that Magneto has locked him in a lightless underground cell, with no means of escape and a limited amount of water. His objective: the make the Skull suffer as he made others suffer….
Story arc continues in AVENGERS SPOTLIGHT #29.