While fighting Ultimo, Iron Man quickly realizes that he is out-matched in every way by this dangerous android.
Iron Man Story -"Crescendo!"
In the previous issue, Iron Man was confronting Ultimo, a gigantic robotic creation of the Mandarin. After attacking it a few times and realising that Ultimo is too powerful for him alone, Iron Man runs away. The Mandarin watches this on a screen, and laughs as he realises that Iron Man has reached the volcano where Ultimo was created. As Mandarin watches, he decides that Iron Man is definetly going to die, and so turns Ultimo's eye lasers up to their full power, so that Iron Man will die quickly. However, when Ultimo shoots his lasers, Iron Man manages to get out of the way using his jets, causing the lasers to hit the volcano. The heat and force is powerful enough that it acts as a catalyst in the volcano, causing an eruption that seemingly destroys Ultimo. Watching this, Mandarin realises that Iron Man didn't run to the volcano by chance, and that it was his plan all along to get Ultimo destroyed by the volcano.
Iron Man then rests for a few minutes, so that his automatic rechargers can recharge his armour slightly, before working out how he can get home. Iron Man decides to invade an army base which was temporarily built for the Chinese Army to attack Mandarin from, and he manages to steal a plane from there which gets him to an international airport. Iron Man makes it home from there, but when he reaches his factory, he finds that it's been shut down by the government, since Tony Stark didn't appear before a Washington Senate to explain the powers of the Iron Man armour.
Captain America Story -"THEM!"
Captain America enters Avengers Mansion, to find Nick Fury there. Captain America and Fury then quickly work together to deactivate a trap built into Avengers Mansion, before Fury shows Captain America a tiny model of a human brain. He tells Cap that it was captured by SHIELD from a group only known as Them. He then says that all they know about Them is that they're a group of scientists who are planning to overthrow the government, and that if they can create an artificial brain, they might be able to create artificial people to fight for them. A strange figure then walks into Avengers Mansion, and Fury identifies it as one of Them's artificial men, who is made of various chemicals, and can mix them for different powers.
The artificial man then mixes the chemicals to shoot flames from his hands. Captain America quickly activates one of the Avengers' defences, namely freezing the room just as he and Fury escape. However, it seems to be ineffective against the artificial man, who defrosts himself with more chemicals. The two of them keep trying to defeat the artificial man, but no matter what they do, it seems that he can find some way around it. Fury manages to defeat the artificial man by dropping some SHIELD knockout drops into the artificial man's mouth, which knock him out immediately. As Fury prepares to leave, he says that he had come to Avengers Mansion to see if the Avengers knew anything about Them, but obviously they don't judging by Cap's reaction. Before Fury leaves, Captain America mentions that he had tried for months to contact Fury and see if he could join him, but couldn't get in contact with him, and has been with the Avengers too long now for him to leave them. As he leaves, Fury gives Captain America a small badge with A-1 SHIELD priority.
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