MEPHISTO tips his hand! Revealed as the true leader of the Six-Fingered Hand, he and his demonic comrades have devised a plan to make Earth a living hell, and only the Defenders can stop him!
Maya, leader of the Six-fingered Hand group of demons, taunts the Defenders in Hell, where he has also captured Hulk, Namor, Clea, and Silver Surfer.
Clea explains that he caught them by pretending to be Dr. Strange, asking for help.
Hellstrom attacks Maya, and Dr. Strange tries to free the captured Defenders, but to no avail. They are caught in globes that leech their life force if a rescue is attempted.
Kyle Richmond thanks his new nurse, Luann Bloom, for taking care of him. They bond, but when she walks out, the strangely-acting Hellcat, wearing Devil-slayer's Shadow Cloak, teleports in and takes Kyle away.
Back at Patsy's old house, we see that demons have continued to come out through the other discarded Shadow Cloak.
Maya takes the Defenders on a tour of Citrusville, which was taken to hell. Gargoyle, however, stays behind, suddenly having an idea.
The Defenders see that the inhabitants of the town are all faceless creatures now, pathetic in hell as Maya says they were in life. The Defenders can't accept this disrespect for their fellow humans, and attack the Six-fingered Hand demons. The controlled townspeople join in on the demons' side, and the Defenders aren't sure what to do, since they don't want to hurt them.
Suddenly, however, the townspeople start turning back to normal. This change is followed by the charge of the previously-caged Defenders, and Gargoyle. They rout the demons, who start to shrink down to miniature size. Gargoyle explains that he realized his power is to drain life forces with his blasts, and that he could also increase life force as well. So he provided the captured Defenders with enough extra life force that they could destroy the cages without hurting them.
Patsy and Kyle appear in the desert. She walks them into a cave, where they see Satan.
Suddenly Maya, the only Six-fingered Hand to stay his normal size, reveals his true form--Mephisto. He explains that he was just using the other demons, who are now returned to their true minor power level. Dr. Strange had been using a spell to teleport around to intercept the Six-fingered Hand at various points around the world for the last few months, and that spell had been weakening the walls between worlds. Now Mephisto's armies would invade the normal world through many portals.
We then see that a now-transformed Hellcat and Nighthawk are at one of the demons' portals, along with Satan and an army of demons.
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