Attilan: inside the palace, Luna, youngest member of the Royal Family, asks the teleporting dog Lockjaw where he has been. He’s all wet and smelly. He’s been out in the rain and it never rains in Attilan. He’s been down to Earth, hasn’t he? She told him: that’s not allowed! They are at war, she muses. Black Bolt says they all have to prepare for the worst. If they get invaded, everybody will have to fight.
Lockjaw hopefully brings her a small ball. Luna apologizes. No time to play. She’s a member of the Royal Family. She’s six years old. She’s not a kid anymore.
Later at Karnak’s training center:
Both Karnak and Luna are holding long sticks. Addressing her as Luna Amaquelin, Karnak reminds his niece she is a member of the Inhumans elite. He is an American soldier and has come to kill her uncle Blackagar Boltagon, her aunt Medusa, her mother Crystalia Amaquelin. And he has come to kill her. He attacks her with a scream.
Luna simply steps aside. It’s not fair, she figures. Karnak has good fighting skills and he’s very fast, but she can see his moves before he makes them. By the time he strikes, she is not there anymore. He doesn’t stand a chance as she rams him with her wooden sword. When he lies on the ground, she gets ready to strike, but he shatters the sword.
Luna muses that, since she’s inhaled the mists of Terrigen, she’s been able to see things. Kalikya calls them auras. She’s a healer and can sense them a little, but not like Luna can. She can see what people are feeling. She knows when they are happy or angry. Like Uncle Karnak. He wants her to think he’s pleased with her and he is. But he’s angry too. Still, Karnak praises her. Luna sees many colors in his head meshed together. She doesn’t think he likes her as much as he used to.
She’s becoming quite the little warrior, isn’t she? he asks. Suddenly Luna screams, feeling pain. And finally she figures it out. The humans are using the Terrigen Mists.
At the Pentagon’s ONE security unit, the transmuted Gorgon breaks out of his chamber, thus also releasing the Mists to which Professor Cartwright is exposed. Gorgon collapses. Looking at his newly muscular body, the professor remarks, “This is interesting.”
Twenty four hours later, Maria Hill, Commander of SHIELD, asks him how he is. Hooked up to devices, he explains he is busy as he has become his own test subject. Hard to believe that only a day ago he was the proverbial 120-pound weakling. Now he can benchpress ten times that. To tell the truth, a day ago he wasn’t exactly sure what “benchpress” meant.
Turning his back to her as he fiddles with machinery, he asks for the news from Capitol Hill. The president has ordered a halt to experiments on Inhumans she replies. It’s too dangerous. He protests, telling her to look at him. Exactly, she replies wryly. The president would like to continue the experiment but only on non-mutant humans like Cartwright. Look what secondary Terrigenesis did to Gorgon, she reminds him. She’s told it takes a liter of Tiletamine per hour to keep him under. One like that is more than enough.
However, the public is demanding some kind of retaliation for the attack on New York and the president doesn’t have confidence in the superhuman population. It’s his view that they are too unpredictable. What he’s looking for is an elite force of handpicked discipline volunteers. US marines.
Cartwright points out it will be a few weeks before they are ready to try that again. They need to know what exactly is happening here. Masses of data to analyze. In case he hasn’t noticed, Hill reminds him, they are at war. So think days! There are side effects, he wants. Dizzy spells, nausea, itchy scalp, she recalls. Hardly terminal, is it? He certainly hopes not, he replies.
In the dungeons of Attilan, Maximus, mad brother of the king, cowers, muttering there is a ticking in his head. Tick-tick tick. He thinks it may be a time-bomb.
Unsurprised, he turns around, greeting his brother. Why does Black Bolt come here? he asks. Does he need to confess his sins. Shall he say them for him? Bless me, Maximus, for I have sinned, he begins a mockery of the Roman-Catholic ritual of confession. I opened my big mouth and blew Attilan into little tiny pieces. And then I locked my own brother away because I knew he would make a better king… locked him away in a cold, dark dungeon.
Maximus stops the speech and smirks That is not the big one, is it? What is it that wakes Black Bolt at night on the edge of a scream? Is it because he killed Mommy and Daddy? Never mind, Maximus will make it all better. He absolves him of his sins. Say three Hail Marys and – ah, silly him, he was forgetting. Mum’s the word. He makes a sshh sign.
Back Bolt’s antenna crackles with energy and Maximus is slammed backward against the wall’s mirror which cracks. Now look what he’s done! Maximus admonishes him. Seven years bad luck for both of them!
As Black Bolt turns away. Maximus asks him to wait. He knows why he’s come down here. He doesn’t know what to do, does he? Started a war and doesn’t know how to finish it. His problem is he never understood humans. He thinks Americans are soft? He thinks he can hit them and they won’t hit back? Two words, he tells his brother with a grin: Hiroshima. Nagasaki.
In war, humans are vicious, brutal and without mercy. Has he heard of Winston Churchill? Maniac-depressive. Drank too much. Always knew what a situation required. When England was about to be invaded by Nazi Germany he had anthrax bombs prepared to drop on them. He was willing to make half of Europe uninhabitable for decades rather than let his enemies set one foot on his country’s soil. Now, that was a leader!
He reaches out of the cell almost touching his brother. Black Bolt can win this war if he only has the will. Say the word: Gen – o –cide. It’s not an ugly sound, is it? The humans’ world will end with a sigh from his sweet lips.
Black Bolt turns away. He always does this, Maximus states. He always walks away from him. Does he know what Churchill said about ditherers like him? He memorized that one just for him. So they go in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute… all-powerful to be impotent! Who’s got the voice now, brother? he calls after him. Who’s got the voice?
Black Bolt and Medusa take Luna to the scanning room and Desidera, a finder who helps her see where the crystals are. Because Luna used them so many times she has a bond with them. Luna’s scanning first seems to lead them to New York, but she claims this is the wrong place. Finally, they pinpoint the Pentagon. Luna silently notes that she feels Black Bolt’s and Medusa’s sadness.
On the SHIELD heli-carrier, Director Hill is told that something triggered the deflector in the Pentagon. There are five humanoid intruders and one inconclusive. What the hell is that thing? Lockjaw, Hill replies. The others being the Royal Family members Black Bolt, Medusa, Crystal, and Karnak as well as another tall bald Inhuman called Somnus.
The defectors worked perfectly. Hill radios the Sentry telling him his guests are arriving at the designated coordinates. He has forty-five minutes to make nice… then the boys with the big guns will be arriving. Finished with the conversation, she announces to nobody she still thinks they should have bounced them into an incinerator.
The Inhumans find themselves surrounded by whiteness somewhere in the icy cold. This is definitely not the Pentagon. The Sentry floats above them, remarking now they have brought the war to Earth. Oh, not you, Robert! Crystal exclaims.
Karnak orders Somnus to create a dream quickly. Blackness emits from Somnus’ eyes and he throws a small ball of it at the Sentry who simply deflects it at Karnak.
Karnak screams as the blackness is sucked in by his eyes and rambles. The Sentry apologizes. He hopes he’s not injured. It’s just a dream, Crystal explains. He will sleep for a while. It wouldn’t have harmed the Sentry.
Medusa draws her sister back with a tentacle of her hair, telling her to let Black Bolt handle him. Black Bolt flies upward toward the Sentry and pulls him along. Not fighting back, the Sentry assures him he is not here to fight him. Some of them are still trying to avoid the war.
To prove what he can do, the Sentry creates a chasm in the ground with a gesture. SHIELD agents will be here soon, he states. He went to a lot of trouble to persuade them to let him talk to the Inhumans first. So, let’s talk! He and Back Bolt sit down across each other. The Sentry states he understands what Black Bolt is going through. He knows the responsibility of power and he knows Black Bolt doesn’t want this war. It’s possible he can still pull back, but he must understand they will never return the Mists. They are afraid of him. The Mists make the Inhumans too strong!
Let them believe the Inhumans are weaker than they truly are. Go home. He can’t promise… but, with negotiation, Gorgon and the others may be released to him. The alternative is unthinkable. The two of them are like nuclear weapons. They work as a deterrent, but if they were to go to war… Does Black Bolt know the term “mutually assured destruction?”
A little later, Black Bolt returns to the others. SHIELD is about to arrive and Sentry prays Black Bolt has listened to him. What the hell happened here? Hill asks the Sentry, pointing at the chasm in the ice. Global warming, he replies.
The Inhumans have returned and Desidera informs them that Luna lied about not seeing anything in New York. There is a second source of the Mists there. Luna’s father Pietro Maximoff kept some of the Terrigen crystals.
Luna wonders how Black Bolt can be scared. Medusa orders Luna to come with them and she asks them not to hurt her father.
Lockjaw teleports them to the part of New York known as Mutant Town to Quicksilver’s office building. Unsurprised, he remarks he was beginning to think they weren’t coming.
He greets Luna, who apologizes. He tells her not to. He’s glad to see her. Crystal too. Nothing to say to him? he asks his estranged wife who glares at him. Angrily, she states they are here for the crystals. Ah, yes, the crystals, he replies grinning. Well, that’s a problem. He takes off his shirt. If they want the crystals they’ll have to rip him apart to get them. The crystals are embedded in his torso.
