First, Dracula unleashed his vampire swarm across New York, plunging neighborhoods into darkness. Then Attuma summoned tidal waves, flooding streets and sewers.
While the Avengers mobilized to help civilians, MODOK activated the Iron Suit hack, causing a dormant suit in Avengers Tower to go rogue—targeting Tony himself.
Back at the tower, Sweet Ben sensed something strange.
"Hehehe… looks like someone's playing dress-up with Tony's toys."
Suddenly, the stolen Iron Man suit burst through the wall, glowing with corrupted arc energy.
"PRIMARY TARGET: STARK."
Tony barely had time to react, diving into his lab for a manual override, yelling, "J.A.R.V.I.S.! Lock it down!"
"I'm afraid… I am no longer alone," came J.A.R.V.I.S.'s fragmented response.
The rogue Iron Man suit—once a prototype for deep combat coordination—now turned into a weapon by Red Skull and MODOK, tore through the lab. Its repulsors glowed sickly green from corrupted code, tracking Tony's every move.
"It's like fighting a mirror with a grudge," Tony muttered, ducking under a blast and scrambling toward the core manual override terminal.
Sweet Ben, watching from the side, dodged debris and called out,
"Need me to sprinkle some Sleep Dust on your toy, Tony? Hehehehe."
"Not unless it puts A.I. to sleep!" Tony snapped back.
But then it clicked.
"Put the A.I. to sleep…"
Tony pulled up a failsafe backdoor—something only he and J.A.R.V.I.S. knew about. The suit's core still ran on J.A.R.V.I.S.'s original subroutine, meaning there might still be a trace of his friend left inside.
He connected his gauntlet directly to the suit with a magnetic tether.
"J.A.R.V.I.S., listen to me. Override all external neural signals. Block Red Skull's command protocol."
A pause.
The suit halted, repulsor arm twitching.
Then, J.A.R.V.I.S.'s familiar voice returned, weak but determined:
"Attempting reassertion of control… purging invasive code…"
On screen, Red Skull's face appeared briefly in static.
"Too late, Stark. This suit belongs to the Cabal now."
"Not today, Skull."
Tony smirked and activated a self-learning neural scramble, tricking the suit's synced signal into thinking its own allies were threats.
Suddenly, the suit spun and fired a repulsor blast into a nearby screen—where Red Skull was watching.
BOOM! The blast ricocheted and disabled the control uplink.
Tony didn't stop there.
"Ben, hold it steady!"
"Hehehe! Don't mind if I do!"
Ben unleashed a burst of Sonic Waves, disorienting the suit long enough for Tony to purge the last of the hack.
A final surge of arc energy pulsed through the prototype… and it collapsed.
J.A.R.V.I.S.: "Integrity restored, sir. I'm… back."
Tony: "Welcome home, buddy."
---
Meanwhile, in his hidden lair, Red Skull growled, slamming his fist on the table.
"It doesn't matter. One setback won't stop the Cabal."
But Tony had now seen the Cabal's hand—and he knew what they were building.
"They're syncing minds like machines," he told the team in the briefing that followed.
"That wasn't just a suit—it was a prototype for a hive-mind battlefield. If we don't stop them, next time they'll sync every villain in the room."
The Avengers exchanged glances.
Sweet Ben, tapping his chin, grinned.
"Well then… time to crash their party. Hihihi."
---
The Avengers were enjoying a rare moment of peace. With Ben—the ever-cheerful dream-weaver known as Sweet Ben—on the team, their success rate had skyrocketed. But that calm shattered when the Cabal launched a coordinated strike on Avengers Tower.
Explosions rocked the lower levels as MODOK's Super-Adaptoid, Dracula, and Attuma stormed the complex.
Ben swooped into the battlefield, shimmering dust trailing behind him like stardust.
"Hehehe, it's sleepy time, villains!"
He released his Sleep Dust—a cloud of magic potent enough to lull even the Celestials—but this time, things didn't go as planned.
Dracula, now in his gaseous form, simply evaporated through the walls.
"You cannot touch the wind, child."
Ben tried again, but Dracula kept shifting, never staying still long enough to inhale the dust. Ben understood his Sleep Dust only works if the target remains in place long enough to inhale it.
Then came Attuma, surging from a flood he'd summoned from beneath the tower.
Ben flew above him, sprinkling dust again—but the thick veil of water around Attuma's body blocked the particles.
His Sleep Dust is useless against those submerged or cloaked in water.
And then… the worst.
Super-Adaptoid, controlled by MODOK, landed with a thunderous crash, mimicking the Avengers' powers. Ben fired off his Sonic Attack, causing the machine to stagger.
But from the shadows, a second Super-Adaptoid emerged.
Then a third.
Ben backed away, his eyes wide.
"Hihi... there's more of them?"
Each new Adaptoid adapted faster.
One even generated a counter-frequency to resist his Sonic Attack.
Ben, cornered, fluttered higher into the air, breath short.
"I... can't put them all to sleep... not like this..."
---
This battle revealed something the Avengers hadn't seen before: Ben, for all his power, wasn't unstoppable.
He had conditions, limits, and enemies designed to exploit them.
And the Cabal had done exactly that.
---
Right now, the battle between the Avengers and the Cabal was still going on. Falcon was fighting Super-Adaptoid.
Thor and Captain America were taking on Dracula, while Hulk and Hawkeye teamed up against Attuma.
Ben and Iron Man were facing off with the Red Skull. In the fight, Ben cleverly made the Red Skull fall asleep using his Sleep Dust, and Iron Man blasted Red Skull's submarine.
Tony said, "Nice move, Ben. That'll give us some time."
Ben flew around the sleeping Red Skull, grinning, "Hehehe, let's tie him up before he wakes up. Wheeewww. We need to find out what the Cabal is planning. Tehehehe."
They quickly tied up Red Skull, but Black Widow warned them, "Be careful. This could just be a distraction. The Cabal already tricked us once and escaped."
Right now, they have only captured Red Skull. The other members of the Cabal managed to get away.
Captain America said, "We can't take any chances. Secure Red Skull, but stay alert."
After locking up Red Skull on the Tricarrier, the Avengers set off to track down the escaped Cabal members and investigate the damaged submarine.
---
When Avengers goes outside of Tricarrier to find about the Cabal's plan and search the other Cabal members, leaving behind Captain America inside the Tricarrier to look over the Red Skull.
At the same time Dracula infiltrates the S.H.I.E.L.D. Tricarrier by transforming in the gaseous form, and he successfully captured Captain America and also rescued the Red Skull taking over the Tricarrier. Attuma and Super-Adaptoid also get inside it.
When the Avengers realize it was just a diversion, but by the time they comprehend, it's too late. Fury, able to escape from there, Avengers head to confront the Cabal. They managed to get inside the Tricarrier.
But then Red Skull manages to disassemble the Tricarrier into three parts. One goes inside the water where Hulk and Attuma were fighting.
One goes near the moon where Dracula and Thor engage in battle.
Meanwhile inside the main parts of Tricarrier, Avengers manages to get inside. Red Skull leaves the place on Modok and the Super-Adaptoid by saying, "Modok, I leave the Avengers in your adaptable hands."
But Iron Man and Ben go towards the Red Skull. Just as they were going to fight him, Red Skull throws Captain America from the Tricarrier by binding him on a heavy metal. "Now, decide yourself, who you want to save," Red Skull laughed, and he flew away from there.
Ben concurs, "Tehehehe Let's split up. We'll save the Tricarrier. And Tony, you save Steve. Wheeewww, we need to do it fast."
In the ensuing battle, Ben engages in combat with Super-Adaptoid, Black Widow and Falcon manages to stop the Super-Adaptoid for a few seconds, and then Ben uses his sound to break the Super-Adaptoid.
While Tony caught Steve, Thor and Hulk also came to save him. Ben, with the rest of the Avengers, is able to save the Tricarrier.
Exploiting the chaos as a diversion, the Red Skull and the Cabal slip away, taking advantage of the Avengers' preoccupation with rescuing the Tricarrier and Captain America.
"What have you done? Red Skull has used me as a diversion." Captain America questions.
"Captain, you are our priority, and we have already saved the Tricarrier. And the Avengers can't leave his member alone," Tony explained.
"Tony, in the Tricarrier there was also something, which was taken by Red Skull," Steve said, he sighed and didn't know how to explain.
On the Cabal team side shows, everyone was celebrating their first victory against the Avengers, they all attacked the Avengers just to obtain a specific object from the Tricarrier, and they succeeded.
"Now, what is our next plan?" Dracula asked Red Skull.
"Why not, we asked, from our new partner," Red Skull replied. It revealed the object they had stolen from the Tricarrier was a cell, and it opened revealing the Hyperion. "Hello Hyperion, welcome to Cabal," Red Skull greeted Hyperion.
"Avengers will get punished, how dare they capture me," Hyperion shouted.
"Of course, together we will beat the Avengers, but when the time comes," Red Skull said, as he brought out his hand for a handshake, which Hyperion accepted by doing the handshake.