A night out at the opera becomes a psychotic (and emotional) murder attempt against Mister Fantastic! Good thing Cecilia Reyes and Beast took a night off from the X-Mansion and are at the same performance!
In a Stark-Fujikawa laboratory in New York City, scientist Bradley Beynon is putting the finishing touches on his new miniaturizing device, aided by his robot assistant Hadley. A colleague arrives and invites Beynon to join him at a Reed Richards press conference. Although Beynon views Richards as an arrogant hack, he attends. There Richards announces his intent to donate to the Defense Department his newly-designed hand-held miniaturizer. Livid, Beynon makes a scene, accusing Richards of stealing his design, but he escorted away by police.
Later, intending to demonstrate his device to his superiors, Beynon is instead accused of stealing Richards' invention and is summarily fired. After business hours, Beynon and Hadley sneak into a storage area containing various high-tech artifacts, in hopes of finding something with which he can exact revenge. He soon uncovers an armor suit and hatches a plan.
At Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, Hank McCoy (Beast) invites his teammate, Cecilia Reyes, to an opera at the Met, while Logan (Wolverine) insists Sam Guthrie join him at a poker game that night to help him watch for cheating. By coincidence, at the Fantastic Four's new Pier Four headquarters, Reed and his wife, Sue (Invisible Woman) prepare to attend the very same opera performance, as Ben Grimm (the Thing) forces Johnny to come to his poker night.
That evening, as Ben, Johnny, Logan and Sam play cards, they are attacked by what appears to be the Psycho-Man. The quartet easily defeat the intruder, discovering that it is actually a robot (Hadley) in Psycho-Man's stolen armor.
Meanwhile, having learned of Reed Richards' attendance at the opera, Beynon sneaks into the backstage area of the Met, and begins haphazardly turning knobs on the device he stole, Psycho-Man's Emotion Stimulator Box. Although Beynon mistakenly thinks the device is not operating, the performers and the audience begin to act upon intense feelings of hatred, fear and self-doubt. Before Reed fully succumbs to the doubt wave, he manages to snake his arm through and then out of the building so he can set off the Fantastic Four signal flare to alert the Thing and the Torch.
Torch and Cannonball fly off toward the Met, but Thing and Wolverine find their vehicles had been damaged by the robot, so they must resort to taking a taxi. En route, they are again attacked by Hadley, and, again, the robot is defeated.
At the opera house, Boynton's random fiddling with the controls burns out and disables the box, allowing everyone to regain their senses. Hank and Cecelia meet up with Reed and Sue, while the audience runs out in a panic, leaving the theater a shambles. They soon find Beynon backstage, and later the rest arrive. While Reed and Hank examine the device, the others discuss what to with Beynon, but he somehow manages to slip away.
He returns to the lab, but waiting there for him is the Psycho-Man, demanding the return of his control box. The combined team of X-Men and the FF burst in. Unable to activate the damaged Emotion Stimulator Box, Psycho-Man tries to physically defend himself against Thing, Torch, Wolverine and Cannonball, while Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Beast and Cecelia confront Beynon. Beynon's miniaturizer is damaged in the fracas, but he tries to use it to shrink Mr. Fantastic. However, before Beynon can activate it, Thing hurls Psycho-Man at the device, and the resultant release of energies from the miniaturizer's ruptured core reduces both Beynon and Psycho-Man to sub-atomic size.
The eight heroes return to Pier Four, where Reed, Sue, Hank and Cecelia discuss the night's events, while Ben and Logan try to resume their interrupted poker game.
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