Hercules,
Black Widow, and Iceman (plus Ivan Petrovich) of the Champions are being held at bay
by the villain Rampage, threatening to kill the unconscious Angel with an
armored blow to the head. Herc wants to leap forward but Iceman blasts him in
the back to discourage rash action. The team chooses to walk away to protect
their teammate—but Iceman whirls around and freezes Rampage in a larger cube
than before and they rescue Angel before the baddie can smash his way out.
Rampage retaliates and he blasts Ivan who pushes Natasha out of harm’s way.
Fearing he may have killed Ivan, Rampage hurls a car at Herc which explodes
when the Greek demigod punches it and Rampage leaps unseen to a rooftop in the
confusion. As Stuart Clarke, he hides the costume in a crate and walks out,
pretending to be a workman….
As the emergency
personnel attend to Ivan and give Natasha an optimistic prognosis, she vows
revenge. Angel persuades her that the Champions are not about vengeance and
proposes that the team needs a leader and suggests she be the one, Herc agrees
and so does Iceman who is secretly planning to leave the team soon anyway;
Bobby also believes he speaks for the absent Ghost Rider. They head to the
hospital….
At his home,
Stuart Clarke’s ex-lawyer Amos Crawley is watching TV news coverage of the
incident and recognizes Rampage’s costume as an invention of Clarke’s. Smarting
about being fired, he calls the police and tells them who Rampage is. Shortly,
the police surround Clarke’s lab and demand his surrender. Fearing prison and
with boot jets too damaged to fly, he dons an experimental jet pack and crashes
through the door, unaware there was an officer standing near it. Worried that
he has committed a second murder, he panics and just wants to escape. Result: there
is a running battle with the police down Hollywood Boulevard. The Champions,
having heard the news on the radio, arrive at the scene and take the bad guy on.
Natasha informs him that both Ivan and the injured officer will recover and
demands his surrender. Surrounding him, they take turns hitting him; deciding
to die rather than be captured, Rampage slams his jet pack to the ground,
causing it to explode. Iceman hastily surrounded the pack with an ice shield,
protecting his teammates but the blast was too close to the villain and he is
seriously injured. The Champions head home as Amos Crawley, assuming Stuart
Clarke hadn’t changed Crawley’s power of attorney, makes plans to sell off all
of Clarke’s company assets and keep the money….