Story #2#20.INH (no title given)
Writer:
Kieron Gillen. Penciler:
Agustin Padilla. Inker:
Scott HannaSynopsis
This is a synopsis of #20.INH:-
2 months ago 20-ish (probably) loser
Victor Kohl was arguing with his dad over money. The
Terrigenesis Wave had hit some time previously, and now the rest of his family were suddenly cocooned. But Victor wasn't affected. He rang 911 and the government took the cocoons away. Then he saw
Medusa of the
Inhumans on TV explaining that anyone with Inhuman genes would be affected by the Terrigenesis Wave, and would eventually emerge from the cocoon with superpowers. Victor took this as evidence of what he always suspected - his dad wasn't his dad.
Now, in
Troy,
Tony Stark is bitching to his brother
Arno about
Bruce Banner. He claims that he trusted Banner to solve the Terrigen problem, and left him to it, but Banner has failed as was only to be expected. Arno points out evidence that Tony
himself has tried to find a solution, but Tony accuses him of spoiling 1 of his favourite pastimes - belittling Banner. And they have a more pressing problem, finding
Mandarin's rings and their bearers.
In a virtual reality dubbed the
Ring of Rings the rings are meeting. Only
Nightbringer has no virtual finger in this space, indicating that he hasn't yet located even a
possible candidate for his bearer. Nightbringer just claims to be choosy.
Arno and Tony have built a detector for the rings' energy signatures based on the 2 they've seen in action. But it isn't sensitive enough to detect them when they're not in use. Tony consoles himself with the fact that, according to
Iron Patriot, the military isn't having any more success. Arno suggests sharing their detector with them, but Tony doesn't want to because it is partially derived from alien tech they got from
Recorder 451 (after the
Secret Origin of Tony Stark arc), and he's keeping
that secret. They'll just alert the military whenever they
do detect ring activity.
Nightbringer surveys and rejects some possible ringbearers:- Medusa (too committed to her own agenda),
Longshot (no negative tendencies to exploit),
Hulk (currently too linked to
SHIELD),
Venom (the Venom parasite would vie for control with the ring) and
Red Skull (his new psychic powers would make him difficult to control).
Then the ring finds drunken Victor breaking into the
Inhuman Nativity Center where his family's cocoons are kept. Nightbringer decides to harness Kohl's resentment of his family and the Inhumans, and chooses him to be
Mandarin-Five. Victor accepts, and starts lashing out with the ring's dark energy.
Iron Man of course immediately detects this, and turns up to advise the new supervillain against using powers when drunk. The ring blinds him with anti-light, but Stark uses a satellite link to track his enemy and wound him with a laser beam. The ring teleports Victor away, leaving Iron Man to survey the damage Kohl has done to cocoons.
The ring takes his bearer to an underground cave to heal. Suddenly Victor grows his
own cocoon. And immediately bursts forth as a being of black light.
But then Medusa arrives with the remains of his father's cocoon, which his vandalism destroyed. Victor is confused because he didn't change when his family did. The Inhuman Queen explains that he possibly got a lesser Terrigen dose because he lived apart from his family. And anyway different people reacted to it at different speeds (and obviously took different amounts of time to complete their transition within the cocoon - as we have seen elsewhere).
Medusa tells him that because he has killed other Inhumans (in their cocoons) he is now exiled from their community. Left alone Victor starts to blame himself for the 1st time in his life.But Nightbringer twists his anger towards Tony Stark - it's
his fault because Iron Man didn't stop him. And Kohl takes on the name
Exile.