Avengers, The #185

Issue Details

Synopsis

"The Yesterday Quest!" The story opens in the aftermath of the previous issue’s battle with the Absorbing Man. Iron-Man placates the arriving police by stating the Avengers will pay for damages. Captain America introduces Falcon to his new teammates. Disgruntled and embittered, Hawkeye sticks around just long enough to utter a few snippy remarks before storming off in a huff. Across the ocean, in East Transia, Wanda (the Scarlet Witch), Pietro (Quicksilver), and Django check into a hotel for the night. Pietro shares a room with Django across the hall from Wanda’s own. He advises her that she can call on him easily if there is any trouble. Wanda remarks that she feels completely safe as if she’s come home. Pietro has difficulty sleeping. Despite believing his parents to be the Whizzer and Miss America, he has hazy recollections of an earlier life lived among gypsies and of a pair of adults making him promise to always look after Wanda if something should happen to them. Despite his troubled mind, Pietro eventually drifts off to sleep. Very late at night, Wanda's sleep is disturbed by a mysterious visitor, Modred the Mystic. He offers to help her find the answers she seeks but only her alone as the path is dangerous for those without arcane abilities. Reluctantly, she agrees to go with him. Modred magically clothes her in her costume and they fly off into the night. They are seen flying away, however, by a wakeful young villager from her bedroom window. Modred takes Wanda to the precipice of Wundagore Mountain. She is startled to see the remains of the High Evolutionary’s citadel which have fallen into ruins since he departed the world. Yet still, there are defensive security devices that attack them. Although Modred receives a minor injury from one, Wanda disables it with a hex. They enter the ruins of the stronghold itself and see before them a floating book and altar. The book, Modred intones, belongs to his dark master. Then, Modred fells Wanda with a bolt of arcane energy before relating that the altar... is for Wanda! The mountain is silent except for the low rumble of laughter. The next morning, Pietro discovers Wanda missing. Alarmed, he races around the village searching for her but finds no clue. As he slumps to the ground in despair, a young girl (the eyewitness from the prior evening) tells him she saw Wanda fly up to the top of Wundagore last night. Pietro suddenly recalls that Django said there were lights in the sky over Wundagore on the night he and Wanda were born. He races up the side of the mountain so fast that he isn’t aware of someone watching him. He slams full-tilt into a force field barrier, gets knocked unconscious, and tumbles a good length of the way back down the side of it. Quicksilver awakens much later in a small mountain cottage way up the mountainside. He sees a matronly figure who is re-sewing his torn costume and addresses him by name. When he asks who she is and how she knows him, he sees her face for the first time. She is a humanoid bovine and she claims to have brought him into the world!