Ready to have your socks rocked off?
Those of you courteous enough to wear socks?
Just play!
Way off, Hawkeye!
Out! And...
Out! Again.
Bar none, the best training session.
What is that, eight zip?
Yeah, is there a point to this?
I'm with Falcon.
This isn't the best team building exercise you've ever come up with.
What he said.
Well, that's because this
isn't about team building.
It's about team busting.
When the Cabal hijacked my Pre-Play system,
I had to put together an even
better program to give us an edge.
New data. Algorithms. New everything.
The Stark Probability Engine.
It predicts a sure path to
victory in any combat situation.
There are no sure things in combat.
You're forgetting the human factor.
The human factor is in there. It's just...
insignificant. Statistically speaking.
"Insignificant?"
Do it again. We've got a little surprise of our own.
Activate the laser battle balls.
With pleasure.
Sonic Shredder!
Plant one at Cap's feet.
I hate this game.
This is how we'll beat the Cabal.
The Probability Engine is perfect.
No more surprises.
Um, I'm surprised. Anyone else?
Scanning. Locked. Hyperion!
Okay, to be fair, the
Probability Engine was off.
Hyperion took Hulk to the river.
Jarvis, lock down the Tower and
scan all frequencies for the Cabal.
Looks like we get to trash
the Cabal ahead of schedule!
Stark Probability Engine is active!
Sir, there are no signs of
the Cabal near the tower.
It's a distraction. I'm running the probabilities.
Thor, get down there and...
Hold on.
SPE says there's an eighty-five percent chance
Attuma's waiting in ambush.
SPE?
Stark Probability Engine?
Ah. He's all about the branding.
Skull believes the Asgardian
will appear any second.
Falcon! Funnel, now!
Redwing mode. Full thrust at twenty-two degrees.
Prepare to... Huh?
Nice try, Attuma!
Fish out of water.
Smoke and mirrors are not enough to def...
How about smoke, mirrors, and Mjolnir?
Skull! It's not going as planned!
Hyperion?
Bye-perion. Ha!
'Twas a good one! No?
Not good enough.
Actually, it was pretty good for Thor.
Comedy's like his third language. Whoa!
Not through with you!
Hyperion, disengage!
Never!
The numbers do not lie, Hyperion.
There is a seventy-five percent
certainty of your failure.
Disengage.
More like eighty-three
percent, but who's counting?
Still doubting the numbers?
Why don't you ask Hulk?
We need to get him back to the Tower. This isn't over.
"The numbers do not lie?"
They do not. But sometimes we do.
A masterful performance,
especially with the Hulk.
The first domino falls.
Two minutes before Hyperion knocked
in our front door, this happened.
A cosmic anomaly in Death Valley. Lasted just a few seconds.
No one was hurt, but...
It turned the desert to glass.
The energy readings are off the charts!
Readings we've seen before.
Tesseract?
The greatest power source
in the known universe,
though we've never seen it do this.
I think that the Cabal
attacked to distract us.
It was more than a distraction, Tony.
They targeted Hulk.
Until he heals...
Hey, I'm working here!
I can take a pretty boy in a cape any day,
winghead. Ow!
Debatable.
We should not underestimate
the Skull's cunning.
We're not underestimating anyone.
We're out-thinking them.
Whatever the Cabal's up to,
with the SPE, we can handle it.
Tony, we know you're the
smartest guy on the continent,
but there's more to what
we do than probability.
Sir, S.H.I.E.L.D. satellites are
detecting a spike in cosmic energy.
Triangulate its position now,
before we lose it again.
There! Huh?
Fury is gonna be so jealous.
Not once it's a pile of scrap, he won't!
Do you think their sudden
departure seems a little...
convenient?
Sneaky little Skull.
They intercepted the coordinates of
the Tesseract and have a head start!
Move it or lose it, team!
I can fly faster than this!
I can get to the Tesseract ahead of them, maybe figure out...
SPE doesn't like your
chances in that scenario.
Tony, I'm a scientist, too, okay?
But even I think you're getting a
little obsessed with your new toy.
What's going on?
All right, look, when the
Skull hijacked my armor and
unlocked our playbook...
he got our secrets.
I put you all in danger.
It was a mistake, Tony.
I don't do mistakes.
Even the best leaders make mistakes,
Tony. You can't live in fear.
Who said anything about fear?
Fear comes with the job.
It's how you deal with it that matters.
If I told you the odds that
you were gonna say that,
would you hit me?
No, but that will!
Adaptoid at twelve o'clock!
Brace for impact.
SPE's got this... I hope.
Your magic number engine
didn't see that coming?
Actually, it did!
I didn't want Skull to know we were ready for it.
We weren't ready for it, Tony!
You've got to let us do our jobs!
Speaking of...
Falcon, now you can go! Fly ahead.
Try and secure the Tesseract!
Well, I guess that's convenient.
Hyperion's coming around!
Is the plan to let him punch us to the moon?
Thought about it, but how about Thor handles him instead?
But the Avenjet?
Trust me. Hulk? Group hug!
Oh, no.
This is risky, Skull. The stakes are too...
I know the stakes better than any of you.
Imagine it as a simple game
of super-powered chess.
And we are your pawns?
Hardly, MODOK. You are my knights! What?
Surprise.
Admit it, you didn't see that one coming.
Have you gone mad? You'll destroy us all!
You know as well as I do you can
save us all with one order!
MODOK! Deploy the Adaptoid!
Thanks!
Sam, we still have one big
bad guy unaccounted for.
Probability says he's coming to you.
Roger, Tony. Coming up on the coordinates.
Wow, that's dark.
Your game has improved considerably, Stark!
But I wonder just what sacrifices
you're willing to make.
Fry-perion? Nay, too much.
Keep hitting him! Don't let him use his mind-mojo!
You think?
We're stretched too thin, Tony!
We're winning! Just stick with your partners!
Look at the big picture!
Hulk's fighting with one arm and Falcon can't land!
They're setting us up!
Cap, please, trust me.
He should listen to you more often.
Hello, Captain.
Tony! They're doing
a teleport swap!
You said to stick with our partners,
but they didn't stick with us!
No, they didn't.
Kneel before me, animal!
MODOK just blinked out of here.
Tell me your Probability Whose-a-whatsit saw this coming!
Just stay on target!
That's a no. Uh...
Hyperion! Coward! Face the thunder!
A-hem!
How perfectly blonde of you.
This was your big play? Swapping partners?
Would it surprise you to hear, I was counting on it?
I've been planning this fight since
you formed this little league team.
I almost don't care about
beating you to the Tesseract.
What I care about is shutting you down.
The SPE said there was a ninety-nine percent
chance you'd try to take me on personally.
Now it says there's a hundred
percent chance I'm gonna do this!
Checkmate.
M-my heart...
Will be fine. Your armor's shorted out,
but it'll keep you alive long
enough to get to a cell.
Don't feel too bad about losing.
You never really had a chance.
The numbers don't lie!
So you say...
so you always say.
Listen up, Avengers!
A few more seconds and we'll end this for good!
Not sure we have those seconds!
I'm getting my shield handed to me down here!
You said you didn't want
to make more mistakes;
I think you're making one right now!
Skull is down and the Tesseract
is just over this rise.
Everything's played out exactly as...
Where's the bright shiny thing
we've risked our lives to grab?
I'm at the exact coordinates we... No!
Skull didn't just steal our coordinates,
he replaced them with false ones.
I'm in the wrong place.
Avengers!
Break off your attacks and converge on the Skull!
Converge on the Skull!
They can't, Herr Stark. Even if they wanted to.
Huh? What? No way!
What do your numbers say now?
They say... we can't win.
Armor integrity is down to
less than five percent.
I'd just as soon never hear
the word "percent" again,
thank you.
A true genius manipulates the odds,
he does not let them manipulate him.
You were right.
I couldn't win against you, not without the Tesseract.
So I let you follow your precious
numbers to their logical conclusion.
Two miles away. Amazing, isn't it?
A decimal point shifted one place,
and your entire strategy becomes
naught but empty figures.
That can't be happening.
It already happened.
Enough posturing, Skull.
Let's finish them and be about our work.
What's happening?
The Tesseract is unstable.
If we are to keep it, we must contain it.
Stabilize it.
You have no choice!
Would you risk it all now for petty revenge?
If you leave them alive,
they'll come after us.
They're beaten, not broken!
And now you'll see the lesson that I have
learned, which your fragile ego has not.
Better to create the odds than to play them.
Two missiles. Los Angeles. Las Vegas. Which city will you save?
Or will you let both perish to follow us?
Cap, I... I messed up bad.
Save it. What can those missiles do?
Normally, they wouldn't
even scratch the Hulk.
But augmented by cosmic energy?
I... I don't know what to do.
By my calculations, we can only save one.
And that's why you have a team,
for the one time when the guy with all
the answers doesn't have the answer.
Two teams, power, speed,
and skill evenly split.
You, Thor, Hawkeye and the Widow on one.
I'll take Falcon and Hulk.
Those missiles are shielded. They have the latest evasion software.
They were some of my best stuff.
We are your best stuff.
Well then... Avengers, Assemble.
I have a visual on the target.
He wasn't kidding about the countermeasures!
We've handled worse, on the dodge ball court.
You're kidding.
He's not kidding.
That didn't work in dodge ball!
It's called rising to the challenge!
Don't worry about my
missile, worry about yours!
Let's get ahead of it.
I am.
I thought your arm was hurt!
It is.
Shred it, Hulk!
You sure your shield will protect you?
Always.
Ow! Yeah!
Yeah!
A little help?
I'll catch up with Cap!
One down.
Yeah! We're not gonna let
them show us up, are we?
Even if your targeting systems were online,
you would be unlikely to overcome the
missile's supercharged shielding, sir.
Sometimes, I'm too good for my own good.
You give me the right weapon, I can hit it.
No one can hit it!
Just figure out your power problem.
Put this on.
Whoa!
Aim for me.
Seriously? Cool. All I need is two shots.
One to make it move...
And the second has to be big
enough to take it down.
Thor, I need a jump.
With pleasure!
Sir, cells are up to three
hundred five percent capacity.
Any time now, Hawkeye!
Not to rush you, but the missile's
about to hit its target!
No! And...
blam! Yeah!
And that, my friends, is what a hundred percent probability looks like!
Can I keep this?
Run it again.
Any sign of the Tesseract?
No. Skull's smart enough to have it shielded.
We won't know where it is until
he comes knocking with it.
You know this is bad.
Tony, we can handle bad.
We're not numbers.
Yeah...
We're Avengers.