Synopsis / Summary / Plot
There's civil war in the Baltic nation of Slorenia, and it's approaching the capital Tblunka. State troopers are ordered to evacuate peasants from the northern quarter, even if they don't want to go. But when they check upstairs in 1 house they feel suddenly cold and find an armoured form with glowing eyes and deadly claws.
Scarlet Witch tries to exorcise her demons, like the death of Wonder Man in #1, by battling holograms in the Vroom Room. But it's no good so she opts to move to the Chaos Chamber to try to use her special connection with the Chaos Computer (see last issue) to see if she can locate any trace of his scattered ionic body, passing the enigmatic robot Recorder RE-404 on the way. But instead she picks up a crisis in Slorenia (notification of which the Recorder suppressed last issue).
She tells the AI P.L.A.T.O. to call the other Force Works members to the Chamber. He notifies Spider-Woman who is having breakfast with her daughter Rachel Carpenter and her nanny Consuela. Then he wakes U.S. Agent, and finds the alien Century watching Beavis And Butthead on TV. Tony Stark (with his physiotherapist Veronica Benning) is welcoming 2 new members of staff at The Works:- Amanda Chaney for Public Relations and Fisher Todd as Technical Chief. But he has to leave PLATO to continue the briefing.
Soon the team (which includes Century but not the Recorder) is heading in a Hex-Ship to Slorenia. Stark as Iron Man can't understand why the Chaos Computer didn't do its job and predict the crisis long before it became serious. US Agent and Julia Carpenter are flying the ship by thoughts alone using new Liveware helmets.
IM brings them up to speed with the situation:- Slorenia used to be part of the Soviet Union but when that broke up they replaced their Communist government with a Capitalist 1 which has been trying to do a deal with Stark Enterprises. Wanda Maximoff remembers the country as bordering Transia where she and brother Pietro (Quicksilver) were born and raised. There has always been racial tension between the ruling Slorenes and the minority Dudaks, which now seems to have erupted into civil war.
2 Slorenian jets intercept the hex-ship. Scarlet Witch contacts them in Slorenian and says they are emissaries of SE, which gets them an offer of escort to the airport. But before they can accept an unidentifiable energy from the ground brings all 3 planes down. Our team survive the crash but find themselves surrounded by dead Slorenian soldiers. It goes cold and the being we met at the beginning attacks them.
Blasts from his hands send USA and Century flying backwards into a wall which collapses on them. But Century teleports them to safety. Spider-Woman tries to trap the enemy in her psi-webs but his claws shred through them. Scarlet Witch hexes a load of rubble into a defensive barricade which he punches straight through. So Iron Man steps up to the bat with phased plasma streams from his gauntlets. This succeeds at 1st but then the foe counters them with his own energy blasts (which brought the ship down) and the resulting power clash overloads IM's armour.
When they all recover the enemy has gone. But a Slorenian turbocopter gunship lands and disgorges a platoon of killer robots. We will learn next issue that they are drones controlled by the armoured man who now confronts them and names himself Black Brigade. And he accuses Force Works of invading the country and destroying the Slorenian planes and troops.
There's a 2nd short tale in this issue:-
Familiarisation
Pencils: Tod Smith, inks: Kevin Yates.
This shows PLATO giving the talk to Chaney and Todd where he describes the team members.
Scarlet Witch is Wanda Maximoff, and he mentions her father Magneto and Brother Quicksilver. Her mutant hex power alters probabilities, and she has learned some magic (from Agatha Harkness). She is along-time Avenger and is leader of this team (he skips over her brief leadership at the end of the West Coast Avengers).
US Agent (Jack Daniels) was a replacement for Captain America before he took his current ID. (He doesn't mention that in that early period he used his real name John Walker. Supposedly the team know about those previous identities now, but it's not totally clear when they found out. In fact it seems a toss-up issue-by-issue what civilian name they call him by.) He threw away the costume and shield he used in the WCA because they were too like Cap's. Now in Force Works he has a new costume and photon shields/weapons on each gauntlet.
Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) has psi-based spider-powers. PLATO mentions her daughter Rachel and her nanny Consuela live on the base.
He mentions Iron Man as Avengers and Stark Enterprises employee, but declines to tell them who is inside the armour.
He also mentions Wonder Man who was killed in #1.
And mysterious alien Century is a hanger-on. Amanda Chaney thinks it's a PR problem that they have an 'illegal' alien who they know nothing about. She's also incensed when she hears that he and the team are now in Slorenia, an international relations nightmare.
Her rant is interrupted by little Rachel Carpenter bursting in claiming she's bored. Fisher Todd offers to take her on a tour of the facility which as resident tech-guy he knows all the secrets of (even though he's only just arrived).