Cloaked, Iron Man and Goliath watch a Kree news bulletin detailing the arrest of the Avengers.They split up, with Iron Man getting Goliath the tracking device to find Deathbird while Iron Man heads to the Citadel of Judgment to free the Avengers. Inside, a pair of accusers remove Capt. America from his cell to be taken for official accusation. Meanwhile, fallen Emperor's Ael-Dan and Dar-Ben are brought before the Supreme Intelligence, strapped to neural extractors, and their minds are emptied into the Supreme Intelligence's gestalt brain. Iron Man attacks the Citadel of Judgment but is confronted by Ronan. Meanwhile, Goliath finds Deathbird hiding in the sewers and forcibly convinces her to testify that the Avengers were working with her on her assassination attempt, and the pair break into the Citadel of Judgment. Iron Man's battle with Ronan causes his life-support systems to approach overload; Tony decides if he's going to die then he will take Ronan with him, and activates his armor's self-destruct sequence, but the Avengers arrive, having been freed by Goliath, and drive the Kree back, so Iron Man aborts the sequence. Deathbird has escaped, but Goliath tells the others that she told him that Shi'ar plan to launch a nega-bomb if she doesn't return to the Shi-ar by a certain time. Iron Man decides they must stop it, but Goliath wants to rescue the missing Capt. America. Iron Man incapacitate him and the Avengers leave. Meanwhile in space, a Skrull ship notices a Shi'ar craft towing a nega-bomb.

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