Synopsis / Summary / Plot
There's this cult called Take Back Control and they'd kidnapped a college journalist named Mikka Nguyen who was investigating them. Kate Bishop/Hawkeye and her Scooby Gang came to a party they were holding to rescue her. Hawkeye found her drugged and bound to a chair in a basement but before she could free her a muscle-bound man in a TBC mask interrupted.
Now we see that Kate is tied in a chair too. She does what she does best (apart from archery) and talks at him. She guesses that he's amplifying hate and feeding off it, and the little TBC stickers are a drug which helps it work. Maybe he has a codename? And he supplies the answer 'Aggregate'. She advises him to check no-one else is using it. Take it from her it's a pain being 1 of 2 Hawkeyes. She also comments that he looks different than before (when she saw him leading a meeting in #2) - he's bulked up and gained height. But he can tell she's really just laughing at him and he angrily lashes out at her, sending her and her chair smashing into a wall. Which is what she planned as the chair shatters and she's free.
However she's battered and bruised and fighting to stay conscious. She extracts a hairpin from her hair and throws it at him, saying it's a 'bomby pin arrow' which goes off with a flash that temporarily blinds him.
Then she frees Mikka and they help each other up the winding stairway from the 'dungeon'. Mikka explains that the TCB patches lace people with neurotransmitters which allow him to control them. Partway up the stair Kate judges they are facing the ground floor party room and she kicks her way through the false wall (that she noticed last issue). But all the people in the room have control stickers (including Mikka's stalker Larry Gort from #1, but not Kate's pals Quinn, Ramone Watts and her brother Johnny Watts). And as the crowd put on TCB masks and Mikka suddenly says she's going to kill her, Kate realises that Aggregate is back in control.
Kate tells Ramone that her (ex-)girlfriend has been dosed and she should take her away and get the stickers off her. Meanwhile as Quinn and Johnny fight off cultists, Hawkeye runs outside to retrieve her bag of arrows and collapsible bow that she stashed last issue. Then she threatens the crowd with multiple arrows simultaneously nocked, hoping they won't realise that she won't actually shoot them. Ramone and Mikka are in a clench but controlled Mikka declares that she never loved her. But Ramone refuses to believe that and kisses her. And Mikka is freed from the hate!
At this point Aggregate arrives without his mask and Kate recognises him as the frat-boy Greg she chatted up last issue. She says she has no qualms about shooting *him*. But he replies by absorbing all the hate he's cultivated in the others, which makes him Hulk-out. So she looses the 3 arrows but they just bounce off. She backs out of the room and falls down some steps. More arrows don't stop him leaping at her and punching her to the edge of the house's grounds.
But then over the fence comes a song from the film The Sound Of Music, and Kate realises it's from the outdoor revival film festival that Quinn tried to invite her to (in #2). She hatches a desperate plan. If Ramone's love could drain the hate from Mikka then maybe all the people singing along with the film might affect Greg. So she uses her arrows to bring down a large banner and wrap her foe in it, forcing him to lie there and listen to the positivity-filled song. And slowly he shrinks to become even skinnier than he was as Greg.
Congratulating herself on her team-up with Julie Andrews she leaves the mopping up to the arriving police led by Detective Rivera. Back at Hawkeye Investigations she finds her gang of 3 plus Mikka who hugs her in gratitude. Ramone tells her that the cult followers calmed down after Aggregate left and they got all the stickers off them so thing should be OK. Kate looks round and realises she's gained a family.
Next morning Det Rivera calls Kate (her face covered in sticking plasters Clint Barton style) in to the Precinct to say that Greg wants to talk to her. Kate annoys her by insisting that they're partners, but Rivera just hopes Greg will say something incriminating. She reminds her to get a PI license. Kate's response is to ask for a $200 loan to pay for it.
Kate notes that Greg has gotten less skinny and he says there's plenty of hate here to fatten him up a bit. He also says that he's learned that she's Kate Bishop since last night, and now he sees the resemblance. While she's trying to absorb that he asks if she's wondered what the point of his operation was, and suggests that he's part of something bigger that involves her da...
At this point he goes incoherent with pain, his flesh starts to melt and then he explodes.
Later Kate contemplates the mystery. Aggregate seemed to be claiming to work with/for her father. The father she came to Los Angeles looking for (this is the 1st we've heard of that).
Then she goes home to her apartment/office where she finds her old friend and fellow PI Jessica Jones waiting. With Brad (the person in #1 we *thought* she was looking for).