Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Black Panther is visiting the West Coast Avengers Compound to work with Dr Pym installing some new Wakandan computer equipment. Scarlet Witch bursts in hysterically begging them to help her husband Vision. But Henry Pym has already done all he can and T'Challa doesn't see anything wrong with the synthezoid, so she storms out. Hank explains that when he rebuilt the android after the Government disassembled him the result was the same as he was when T'Challa knew him (back in Av#57-87). But since then he became more human and the person the Wanda Maximoff married. However that person has no chance of returning because Wonder Man refuses to let him have a copy of his brain pattern again. And as the furious Witch leaves she studiedly ignores Simon Williams waiting outside.
Wasp is having a training session with some robots when WM switches it off to have a talk with her. Simon admits that he's in love with Wanda. Janet Van Dyne says she's known that for ages. After all Vision had Simon's brain pattern and he loved Wanda so it makes sense. Simon says he couldn't tell Wanda because she was already married to Vision when they met. (Remember that Vizh was created with a stored copy of WM's brain pattern while Simon was thought dead.) And now Wanda hates him but if he restores Vision then she'll go back to *him*. Romantic Jan is sure she can work something out, and she's about to confess that she and her divorced husband Hank are back together when an alarm rings to say someone's stolen a quinjet.
Meanwhile new team leader U.S. Agent approaches Tigra's bungalow to have it out with her about her habit of eating live mice. But she rushes out of the door in feral feline form and into the woods. He follows her but knows he's no tracker. However he finds her waiting for him in her furry human form, and she comes on to him which he doesn't know how to handle. But with relief he hears the alarm and they both run to investigate.
They see the quinjet taking off and Wasp reports that whoever's in it refuses to answer. They obviously know how to fly the craft so presumably it's Wanda and/or Vision. We see that it's both. The synthezoid persuades the Witch to let the others know what she's doing. She opens comms and tells them that she's going to get Vizh the help they won't give him but she doesn't want them to know where that is. So she switches comms off again and activates the stealth shield so they can't track the quinjet.
But they know which way she's headed and Wasp follows a hunch. She, Henry and Simon take another quinjet to Grosvenor Memorial Hospital in Seattle, Washington which is where Prof Phineas Horton is recovering from the events of #44. He built the original WWII android Human Torch which Wanda is still convinced Vision was created from. But when they get there the hospital hasn't seen her. So now they don't know which way to go. Simon is worried for her because she's got no-one now, not even really Vision, and when she was vulnerable like that previously Magneto recruited her for his Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants.
The 1st quinjet lands on a helipad at Absolom College, Saunders, Texas. Last issue Wanda received a letter saying they could help Vision. But we know they really want her. Jeremiah Random, Dean Of Robotics, heads a delegation that greets them and takes them inside. When they've gone the helipad hinges open and crushes the quinjet and swallows it, and a student kicks a stray bit of metal in with the rest. But an alarm blinks on ...
... and in the (East Coast) Avengers Mansion Captain America and She-Hulk rush to see where on a map a quinjet has been destroyed. They can also tell it was a WCA craft but since Cap declared both teams as parts of a whole (Av#305) then it is also their responsibility so they decide to go and investigate.
Random sends Vision off to have some preliminary tests and he takes Wanda to rest while it's done. But the room he ushers her has no furniture and he locks her in. She tries to hex her way out but a piercing sound fells her and muddles her mind. Random appears on a wallscreen to explain that she had been chosen out of all mutants as powerful but not too powerful to be controlled. Homo Sapiens is in the process of being supplanted by Homo Superior (ie mutants). His 'people' have been unsuccessfully trying to incorporate the mutant gene for millennia, and she is their best hope. He orders the assimilation to begin. A black substance oozes into the room and starts to engulf Wanda.
And in the WCA Compound another nanny Lauren Timm notices Wanda's twin boys disappear.