Synopsis / Summary / Plot
The Young Avengers are fighting Mr Hyde at the illegal Mutant Growth Hormone lab he's running. Wiccan has found Eli Bradley injecting himself with MGH, a drug which gives super powers to ordinary people. And Billy realises that Eli doesn't have any powers. His Patriot abilities are all due to MGH.
Hulkling, Kate Bishop and Stature are left to fight the villain, who injects himself with his own drug and becomes even more of a Hulk. Teddy and Cassie are both down, leaving Kate to try to choke Hyde with her bow. But he snaps it, and holds her as a human shield against the police who have surrounded the place.
Captain America is visiting Faith Bradley, who explains how she and Isaiah (the black WWII Captain America) took their grandson in after their daughter Gail remarried and took the other children with her. Steve explains that he met Eli at Avengers Mansion (in #3), where he demonstrated his grandfather's Super-Soldier powers.
Faith is confused. It turns out that Eli's story (#3 again) about gaining the powers from a transfusion of Isaiah's blood is a total lie. (And he didn't just inherit them either.)
Meanwhile Jessica Jones is chatting to Cassie Lang's mother Peggy. Peggy has already guessed that Cassie is Stature. Jessica explains (from #3 again) that Cassie had often stolen doses of the size-changing Pym particles that made her father Scott Ant-Man. And now she can change size without them.
Peggy is extra-worried because of the heart condition that Cassie had an operation for when very young. She asks Jessica to persuade Cassie to give up super-heroing. And not to tell stepfather Blake Burdick, who is a cop who hates superheroes.
Back at Hyde's warehouse, Wiccan magics Kate out of Hyde's grasp, and tries to hold him off. Then Eli, suited-up as Patriot, takes on the huge villain. MGH has made Eli almost as big. During the fight, Patriot takes another needle of MGH and appears to be about to give himself another dose. Hyde stops him, mentioning in passing that another dose might kill Eli. But instead Patriot injects the villain. And Hyde collapses, breathing but unconscious.
Now the battles over, Cap, Iron Man, Jessica, Luke Cage and Spider-Man turn up. Pumped-up Eli wants his team to walk out on the Avengers. But his friends want the Avengers to help him. Angry Patriot stalks out on his own, but Wiccan renders him unconscious with a spell.
When Eli wakes up he's in Avengers Tower and he's been purged of MGH. He's being looked after by the new Vision, who says he has the memories and emotions of Iron Lad.
Vision takes Patriot to join the other YAers with Cap and Jessica. Eli tells them that when Iron Lad came to the Bradley house he was looking for Eli's uncle Josiah, who had inherited the Super-Soldier powers. But Josiah disappeared a year before. So Eli pretended to have the powers, and then sought out MGH to give him some.
Since then he's been busting MGH dealers, as he did in #2. But he's been confiscating their product for his own use.
Now he quits the whole thing. (But he'll be back next issue.)