Synopsis / Summary / Plot
The Cotati plant-beings tricked the Avengers into defending them against the Kree/Skrull Alliance, but only to give them time to let a Death Blossom bloom and give the Cotati enough power to destroy the Alliance armada themselves. The Cotati were revealed to be the real threat, intending to wipe out all animal life in the Universe and establish a plant Empyre, starting with Earth. They need access to Wakanda's Vibranium Mound whose mineral-rich soil will allow them to grow Death Blossoms whose power will span the Galaxy. The Cotati are led by the Celestial Messiah Quoi and his Cotati father Swordsman. But now his human mother Mantis has joined the Avengers in Wakanda.
The Alliance is led by the Kree/Skrull hybrid Hulkling (Teddy Altman) as Emperor Dorrek-Vell. He is on the surviving flagship as it's troops fight the Cotati on Earth. With him are Avenger Captain Marvel, recently given the Universal Weapon of the deceased Kree Ronan the Accuser, and Human Torch of the Fantastic Four, and his 4 advisors Kree Captain Glory and Tanalth the Pursuer, Kl'rt/Super-Skrull and the hybrid sorceress Mur-G'nn who have told him that he must be ready to stop the rise of the Cotati by authorising the Pyre which will explode the Sun and destroy the Solar System. But at the end of last issue Captain Glory discovered that Tanalth was actually the Skrull ex-Empress R'klll, and he joined her in a plan to make her grandson Teddy do their bidding.
Now Carol Danvers gets word that Captain America's efforts to get the human military to work together isn't doing well (see the Empyre: CA mini-series). Super-Skrull comments that the Kree and Skrull warriors aren't cooperating too well either. And now Tanalth has gone to her room and the Emperor is off sleeping. But he's awake now and announces that he's ready to activate the Pyre if necessary. CM and HT are definitely not happy and Carol asks the Universal Weapon to check that he hasn't been replaced by some shapeshifter. But Dorrek is confidant and the scan bears him out. The 2 Earthers fight Glory and Kl'rt and win but Hulkling tells Mur-G'nn to deal with them. Reluctantly she does what he asks, but then has to explain the only spell she had ready was teleportation ...
... and the pair wind up in a New York apartment. Carol wonders if Mur-G'nn is on their side, which sounds more likely when Wiccan enters and asks them what they're doing in his and Teddy's place. Johnny Storm explains that Teddy wants to blow up the Sun and asks to borrow a phone to ring Avengers Mountain.
Mr Fantastic takes the call in the lab where he's working with Tony Stark who's building a new suit of Iron Man armour, but with a '4' on the front. Reed Richards asks if this is a productive use of his time in these circumstances. Tony replies that he told Thor to go on a quest because that's *his* kind of thing. Well, creating armour is *his* thing. Reed lets Black Panther in Wakanda know what's going on ...
... and we see T'Challa (with the Cotati-killing Star-Sword Hulkling gave him last issue) fighting Cotati alongside Wakandan warriors of the Dora Milaje and the Hatut Zeraze. Quoi and Swordsman watch the battle from Lake Victoria, but Invisible Woman smuggles herself, Mantis, She-Hulk and Thing in to see them. Quoi asks his mother if she's just here to appeal to his human nature again (as she did in the Lords Of Empyre: Celestial Messiah 1-shot). She says doesn't want him to carry the burden of genocide, but he replies it will be worth it for the peace that will reign once the squabbling animals are no more. She counters that the Kree and Skrulls have made peace with each other, but his riposte is to ask if it was peaceful for the Skrulls to use the Pyre to blow up their own 10-world Kral System in an attempt to destroy the Cotati - and they're probably planning to do the same here. Sue Richards claims that things haven't got that bad yet ...
... but Jennifer Walters says she's lying and the Cotati should take the Vibranium Mound before the opposition gets the chance to use the Pyre here. Our heroes are stunned and Thing asks which side Shulkie is on?! In answer she uses a gamma explosion to blast the other 3 far away. IW uses a forcefield to protect her and Mantis from the gamma radiation while She-Hulk leaps to follow Ben Grimm ...
... but instead of fighting him she explains what happened to her. She says that Jen is dead and her corpse has been taken over by a Cotati. When that is done the body turns green (like Swordsman's did) so it can't usually be used for infiltration. But She-Hulk's body was already green so she made a perfect spy. (The conversion happened in #1 when She-Hulk was taken away and supposedly changed so that Jennifer Walters' intellect could be in control.) And by the time she's finished speaking her body has gone even more vegetative.
Back at the lake Swordsman tells Quoi that their She-Hulk will kill the others. Quoi is still troubled that this will include his mother. And Mantis makes another telepathic attempt to convince him to stop the war. But the 2 foes use 1 of their plant-based teleportation gateways to leave the lake, now that the site's purpose of luring the heroes away from Wakanda has worked.
Back in the NY apartment Wiccan scans Captain Marvel's mind to see exactly what Hulkling said and how he said it. Then Billy Kaplan tells them that the Hulkling they saw *wasn't* Teddy. They may have found a way to fool a genetic scan but that person had none of Teddy's tells, which would show even if he were possessed or mind-controlled. And at this point we learn for the 1st time that the duo are married, and we see a flashback to the ceremony with various other Young Avengers (including Elijah Bradley/Patriot who hasn't been seen since Av: Children's Crusade).