Hercules and
Black Widow are sitting in the office at Champions headquarters when villains Blob,
Unus the Untouchable, and Lorelei rush in pleading for help—moments later three
Sentinels crash through the walls, tracking them down. The powers of the three
mutants are cancelled by the Sentinels but Herc and Natasha strike back. A
blast hurls Nat to the control panel, as she intended, and she activates the
call for help lighting up the entire building….
Miles away the
signal is spotted by Angel who decides to assume it is real and not a systems
malfunction and heads to a local theater where Johnny Blaze is taking part in a
motorcycle stunt show. In the audience are Bobby Drake and Laynia Petrovna.
When they spot Angel overhead, Bobby turns into Iceman and the surrounding
crowd is incensed to see a mutant; Laynia unleashes her Darkstar side and a
riot breaks out. Johnny Blaze turns on his Ghost Rider and the three Champions
depart with Bobby and GR getting into a big argument. Angel interrupts and they
storm the building, assaulting the Sentinels with their various powers. After
an elaborate skirmish, the three Sentinels are defeated and they ask the trio
of baddies for an explanation. They assert how they were all changed into
babies along with Magneto when they were defeated by the Defenders. When Eric
the Red restored Mags to adulthood, they were inadvertently restored as well.
They were pursued by Sentinels so they came to Angel and Iceman, ex-X-Men for
help. But the Champs do not believe them and rightly so as their leader,
Vanisher, steps out of hiding and stuns the heroes with a ray gun. We then get
the real story: Vanisher awoke on Steven Lang’s orbital platform sometime after
all the Sentinels had been destroyed, discovered a few that were missed because
they were still under construction, completed them and sent them out to find
allies against the X-Men, hence Blob, Unus and Lorelei. But the Champions
weren’t duped into leading the baddies to the X-Men so here’s plan B: let word
of the Champions’ deaths bring the X-Men running. But the barely conscious
Darkstar unleashes some of her power and reanimates a shattered Sentinel to
give the baddies a good whupping. Vanisher tries to shoot her but Iceman has
awoken and freezes his ray gun. The villain tries to escape into another place but
the Darkforce stops him halfway out and possibly killing him. The others wonder
at Laynia’s powers….