Back in Stark Tower (after Tony's obviously escaped the newsies), Tony pours himself a drink as he watches the speculation about "Iron Man" all over the news. He's contacted by various departments, and then is told that an envoy from the House of M has arrived.

Tony meets with a two-headed telepath, who claims she knows what he's doing. Shocked, Tony blanches, mentioning his new Q-series workpad. The telepath, however, is interested only the Vision project, which the House of M wants for its "National Defense Initiatives." Furthermore, the envoy reveals that they believe Iron Man is Johnny Storm, since he's the only person with the requisite expertise who's gone missing over the last day. Tony tries to stall, but the woman makes him sign the contract ceding all Vision project information to Magnus. Tony will of course get royalties. The envoy leaves.

Howard enters and makes note of Tony's psionic inhibitor, which obviously kept the telepath from discovering the truth. Then he berates Tony for his actions. Tony counters with Howard's piloting of the human-killing Sentinel, which Howard says is irrelevant compared to the potential millions of deaths the Vision project could mean. Tony claims that standing up to the mutants would only get the company taken away from him, and Howard counters that Tony only signed the documents to get rid of his fear. Besides, Howard says he was going to put out the fire next to the humans, not kill them, before Tony got in the way. Regardless, Tony's doing exactly what Howard wants - all he has to do is destroy the suit.

Later, after a drink, Tony watches reports of Sentinels setting up detention camps for humans in Chicago's Soldier Field. The envoy is rummaging through the files as Forge and Hank look on, grumbling about the fairness of all the HoM actions.

Tony descends to the sub-basement and lifts a cannon off the wall, pointing it at the Iron Man suit. Suddenly the suit speaks up, surrendering - it's Johnny Storm, who somehow infiltrated Stark Tower, got into the most secret lab in the place and opened the IM suit, but couldn't get it turned on. :) Johnny is ecstatic, thinking Tony built the suit to fight for humanity, but Tony just wants to destroy it. Johnny, however, won't let him - he wants to fight. As they discuss the situation Tony's Wyngarde workpad beeps and displays a holo of Hank Pym being rounded up by the internment troops. Johnny convinces Tony to rescue him.

At Soldier Field, Pym's about to be processed when he hears something and looks up. At first there's nothing, but then Johnny Storm flies down (in his own armor) and grabs Pym. Pym mumbles something about this not being in the plan... They are followed by Sentinels and armored mutant troops as they fly to meet Tony. The troops catch up, but suddenly Pym opens a canister and the mutants writhe in pain, then disintegrate. Pym explains that his gene bomb works, targeting and destroying cells with the mutant gene! Johnny's upset, but Tony wants to know if Pym made any more. Of course he has. Tony asks "where?" and Pym points down at the teeming metropolis below.

"Everywhere."

Review: Well, this certainly moved things a long. Reviewing the story by memory, it's really pretty decent, with the whole Howard/resistance subplot really working very well alongside the father/son dynamic. But the art. Ugh, it's killing me. Lee does a really good job with the tech, but the people are just off and the action isn't really very clear. The best part by far was the HoM envoy. Those two heads were REALLY freaky looking and it worked so well. On the flip side, Hank McCoy (assuming that's who it was) looked more like Pym, which was completely confusing - both Lee's and the colorist's fault, should have had brown hair and big feet and hands. Forge's comment about reservations, though, was spot on.

Interesting that HoM wants the Vision. Was wondering about that, since Wanda's original delusion included her and Vision married as she birthed their children. The fact that Wanda is human, unmarried and hasn't been seen in HoM might seem to indicate that she is not really in control here, and Magneto is, since he would want her as safe as possible in the altered reality, which means powerless, since no one would come after her, and also not with Vision, of whom I think he never approved.

Anyway, another thing that I didn't get until the last time through was Pym's "This isn't the plan..." - at first I wasn't ready to accept that Tony's such a wuss here, and thought it might have been his plan, hence tracking Pym. Now, though, I think it must have been Howard's plan, which Tony is messing up - again. Howard was seemingly in favor of Pym's mutant gene work. BTW, nice to see that pay off. I wonder what Howard's plan is - I wonder if it's all to goad Tony into action.

As for Tony, as I said, I wasn't convinced that he could be such a patsy, but the truth is, with his father there to criticize and also back him up, he really may never have developed the strength of self he has in 616. So all in all, this makes sense, and the story is certainly coming along, even with the shaky art.

Unfortunately for X-fans, this really doesn't connect much to the main story, but I figure that it will be something like AOA, where all the various minis came together for Omega, so if you want to understand how Iron Man shows up in HoM 8 or whatever, read this LS, or just accept it as fact when he does.