Iron Man and a miniaturized
Hawkeye are doing a reconnaissance on the
Kree homeworld of
Hala under cover of a cloaking field. They discover from a public news broadcast that the
Avengers have been arrested in connection with
Deathbird ’s assassination of the Kree rulers (in AVENGERS #346). Iron Man plans to free his comrades from prison while giving Hawkeye a tracking device to locate Deathbird to capture her and force her to clear the Avengers. Clint tracks his quarry to the sewers where he grows to giant size and threatens to crush her; Deathbird agrees to accompany him. [Elsewhere, the
Supreme Intelligence absorbs the minds of the dead leaders into his own brain.] Meanwhile, Iron Man enters the
Citadel of Judgment and comes face-to-face with
Ronan the Accuser . The two are evenly matched but Tony’s life-support system, damaged in the fight with
Shatterax (last issue), starts to fail. Choosing to sacrifice his life for his friends, he sets his system to self-destruct and engages Ronan. But the other Avengers have escaped as Hawkeye and Deathbird arrive and the team takes on the Accusers. The battle ends when Clint as
Goliath brings down the ceiling and they escape into the sewers. Deathbird has vanished but
Captain America is not among them either, having been in the interrogation room when the others escaped. Hawkeye reveals that Deathbird mentioned a massive bomb set to destroy the Kree but he insists on rescuing Cap. Iron Man stuns him with a blast; the threat to the universe outweighs the life of one man….
In space, the
Skrulls suddenly come upon the
Nega-Portal —the
Shi’ar weapon in question, where it was stranded
in WONDER MAN #8 ….
Continued in
THOR #446
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