Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Some of the West Coast Avengers are relaxing at the beach. Gwen Poole is playing with her new pet Jeff the baby land shark. (In an interview with her the Reality TV crew (who are paying for everything) suggest that the HQ's insurance doesn't cover pets. Gwenpool retorts that Jeff is a team member not a pet. And he'll bite them to prove it.) America Chavez and her girlfriend Ramone Watts are resting on surfboards watching the antics. They figure the only reason Jeff isn't attacking people is that he's been well fed an hour ago. America is currently not best pleased with team leader Hawkeye (Kate Bishop). Kate's friend Ramone asks her to cut Kate some slack. (In her interview America finally admits to dating Ramone, but won't talk about it.)
Not so relaxing are Kate and Noh-Varr in the building site that is the HQ. Kate's still exhausted after the dangerous deserted funfair affair (#5-7), so she falls asleep while Marvel Boy is trying to demonstrate his convoluted theory (complete with board with papers and pins and string connecting everything up) that a cult called the Temple Of The Shifting Sun is a front for alien Skrulls, and the world is in danger.
To try to satisfy him she calls a team meeting and he goes through it all again. Kate suggests he may have something but it may not be Skrulls. (Noh *would* think it's Skrulls 'cos he's a Kree, and they are sworn enemies.) So he asks who else would be abducting people? This is news to everyone else and they're in for investigating the abductions.
Ramone takes Fuse, her brother Johnny, aside and tells him she doesn't want him to go on the mission. Her recent experience getting caught up in the superpowers battle in the funfair has made her actually realise how dangerous his job is. He tries to reassure her that the rest of the team will have his back. "Even Noh-Varr?" she asks (Noh is Kate's ex-boyfriend and Johnny is her current-). He has to give her that 1.
Kate splits them into 2 teams. Kate, Clint Barton (the other Hawkeye), America, Fuse and Noh-Varr will infiltrate the Cult. Quentin Quire (Kid Omega) will take Gwen to investigate Madame Masque's operation. (Marvel Boy had uncovered a connection between Masque and the Cult, which was why he was on hand when Masque's gang trapped the WCA in the funfair.) Quire is incensed on being relegated to the B-team until Gwenpool points out that Kate has made him a team leader.
The others will go to the cult posing as potential new recruits. Clint will have a special role going in as a celebrity recruit. However Kate doesn't think he's enough of a celeb so she gives him an image inducer to pretend to be Wonder Man.
'Wonder Man' gets fêted with a champagne reception while the others are shown around and then sign contracts before being given drab 'uniforms' and taken to the inner sanctum. They note that all the cultists seem young and attractive as they are led down into a basement which they are told pre-dates Los Angeles. There they see people in hooded red robes and are told that they've been recognised as Avengers. And they're going to be a blood sacrifice.
Outside Madame Masque's house Gwen and Quentin waylay 2 masked guards and steal their uniforms. They walk in but are immediately challenged as strangers (partly because they both have partially pink hair). Gwen correctly guesses the password is 'eight' but it still doesn't work because they are surprised about it (and because they keep bickering). So they resort to Plan B. Kid Omega zaps their interrogator (but then gets knocked out) and Gwenpool deals with the rest with a bravura display of acrobatics and katana-wielding.
But when she's finished Quentin recovers and says he's had a mental call for help from Kate at the temple. Suddenly they're surrounded by more guards. However 1 of them removes her mask and says she's Kate's mother Eleanor Bishop, and she can get them into the temple by a back way to rescue her daughter. Kid Omega agrees, and mentally sends the other guards to sleep.
Meanwhile the other team are fighting the red-robed cultists. America offers to teleport them to freedom, but Kate points out that would leave Clint behind. Marvel Boy produces a hi-tech collapsible bow that fires energy arrows, which he he kept as a memento of their time in the Young Avengers, and tosses it to Kate. Even that doesn't seem to help stop the cultists, who just keep getting up after being knocked down. Then they reveal themselves as not Skrulls but vampires. And 1 of them sinks his fangs into America's neck.