Synopsis / Summary / Plot
We rejoin Tony Stark (in Crimson Dynamo armour) and Pepper Potts (in Rescue armour) in Kirensk. Tony is about to blow Pepper's head off, but his deteriorating brain recognises who she is in time. He apologises profusely, and kisses her.
Meanwhile Madame Masque has them in the sights of her sniper rifle. Norman Osborn sent her after Stark. But her conflicted feelings for him prevent her from shooting him. She tells herself she's going to kill Pepper first.
Osborn calls Masque to ask for a progress report. But she throws her communicator away.
Back in New York Maria Hill is confronting Black Widow in her civilian guise. She wants Natasha to put her in touch with Bucky Barnes, the current Captain America. She wants to give him a hard drive from Iron Man.
But Natasha doesn't know whether to trust Maria. She is wanted for blowing up a factory in Texas. Which was where Tony sent her to get the drive, and which we know from #12-13 was deserted and being used as a base by the Controller.
Natasha leaves, but Maria won't give up. What follows is a rooftop chase as Hill desperately tries to keep up with the more agile Widow. After they crash together onto a car, the chase continues on foot.
But now they are joined by gliding HAMMER agents, who trap Hill on the ground. Widow is back on a roof. Maria tells her to shoot the harddrive before HAMMER gets it.
Instead Natasha rescues her with a Widow-line, and they go on the run together. Natasha is beginning to believe her.
Pepper wakes up in Stark's lab beneath the Tunguska crater, (possibly) naked in bed, because she was exhausted and Tony removed her armour. Tony is leaving notes for himself because his ongoing brainwipe (to destroy the only remaining copy of the Superhuman Registration Database to keep it out of Osborn's hands) is making him forget things.
Sensing time is running out, Pepper thanks Tony for everything he's done for Jim Rhodes (War Machine), herself and her deceased husband Happy Hogan. But Tony's forgotten who Happy was.
Later Tony returns from chopping wood to find someone's cut a hole in the door to his lair. Inside he finds Madame Masque holding Pepper prisoner. Tony begs Whitney to let Pepper go. But Masque tortures her with an electric cable attached to the power source embedded in Pepper's chest.
After more pleading by Tony, Whitney Frost says she wants revenge on Tony for what he did to her. But she takes off her mask and says she'll let them both go if Tony can truthfully say he finds her disfigured face beautiful.