Synopsis / Summary / Plot
The issue opens with someone applying lipstick and purple nail varnish to go with the purple dress she's wearing, and donning heels and an expensive necklace. She looks like Kate Bishop (but she doesn't have the usual array of sticking plasters on her face) and she's in the Hawkeye Investigations office/apartment when Ramone Watts, Johnny Watts, Mikka Nguyen and Quinn arrive with pizza for an arranged (last issue) meeting with her. Kate brushes that aside and instead takes them out for the evening to Sunset Strip where she gets them all into a dance club.
Much dancing later Johnny sits down with Kate for a breather and asks her where her dog Lucky is. Kate at 1st doesn't seem to know what he's talking about, maybe because of the noise. Then she vaguely says Lucky's with his friend and surprises/distracts Johnny by kissing him before leaving to get some more 'water'.
As she touches up her makeup in the ladies room she hears explosions on the dance floor. She goes out to see chaos and Quinn tells her it's Oddball, a costumed opponent of the male Hawkeye (Clint Barton). Kate shocks him by suggesting they duck out of an exit but he protests that people need her help. She reminds him that she doesn't have her arrows and stuff and kisses him to get him to come with her. Quinn says he's dreamed of this since he met her but heroically goes back into the club.
Kate now tells herself it might be fun, and maybe "new things might develop". She joins the other 4 who want her to tell them what to do. 1st she tells them just to stay out of her way, but then she suggests they herd the 'sheep' out of here. Her split skirt allows her to do a flying kick into Oddball's face, and we see she got daggers strapped to her thigh. She gets annoyed when he calls her "lesser Hawkeye". The villain wants to know why she didn't just stay in New York.
He tosses a magnesium flare ball which she counters with a thrown dagger. The objects meet between them and she's very annoyed when the explosion singes her hair. He asks how come she's using daggers and she replies that she left her arrows at home and there's no room in her tight dress for guns. However she opens the purse she's continued to clutch and pulls out a small 1, with which she shoots through the supports for a canopy which drops down on the bad guy.
The dance floor is otherwise empty until her 4 friends return. Johnny points out that Oddball might suffocate under the heavy cloth so she reluctantly cuts a slit he can breathe through. It also allows him to threaten revenge as the other 4 leave again. Kate hangs back to tell him to shut up or she'll smother him again.
Outside Johnny asks if the gun was hers. She lies that it was Oddball's, and weirdly comments that she's disappointed she didn't develop any new powers. But she changes the subject to going for tacos. Ramone and Mikka hang back to confer. Apart from tacos everything else about Kate doesn't sound right.
So now we see the real Kate (with sticking plasters) with Lucky in a 'jail cell' in Madame Masque's basement where we learn that MM is now inhabiting a clone body of Kate. And she can follow what MM is doing on a tracking screen that several minions are watching. Now she plans to escape. She takes the ID disc from Luck's collar and throws it at a guard, causing him to spill his coffee in an open electricity box on the wall. The power goes out and her cell door unlocks. Several punches and kicks (and bites from Lucky) later she has all the guards down.
On the way out girl and dog see her father Derek Bishop trussed up and gagged. She reminds him that she told him (#8) not to trust Masque. But before going out to confront her foe she pauses to ask her dad if he killed her mom.