Avengers Arena (2013 series) #1

The issue begins with a flashforward to something called Day 29 as Hazmat (Jenny Takeda) of the Avengers Academy runs through a wood with blood and her radioactivity and toxicity leaking through a hole in her protective suit. We see a video game rating type of icon giving her 2/6. Then she's attacked by a feral X-23 (Laura Kinney), X-person and also Av Academy student. Hazmat blasts her face, burning the skin off, but this is nothing to the junior Wolverine. X-23 stabs her with her claws and Hazmat prepares to die.

The rest of the issue is labelled Day 1, and it starts in the Academy campus on Christmas Eve night with the teachers all away at a party held by Tony Stark. Most of the kids have gone home for the holidays but 5 are left. Juston Seyfert is working on his Sentinel robot. Reptil (Humberto Lopez) is teaching X-23 to play table tennis and she's already beating him. Jenny and Ken Mack (Mettle) are in bed together in her totally shielded (to protect everyone from her radiation and toxicity, but it means she can take off her Hazmat suit) room (Ken's metal skin means he's safe from harm). Then something happens.

We see the 5 students hanging in midair in a circle with 11 others. In the centre is a hovering device with multiple camera lenses. We then see the criminal mastermind lounging in a chair being served coffee by a hovering bot. He's facing the map of an island dived into 4 numbered zones with an indication that the 16 victims are in the middle. The 16 are labelled, and beside the Academy 5 we see Chase Stein and Nico Minoru of the Runaways who they've met. There's also a well-established young hero Darkhawk, plus Cammi who we've seen before as the sidekick of Drax The Destroyer, and a female Red Raven who's made a few appearances. The other 6 have names we've never heard of before.

Now over an intercom he orders them all to come awake and they do. He tells them they won't be able to move or talk yet, but says he's cleaned them up and prepped them while they've been asleep. And he adds that in some cases he had to dress them, which embarasses Jenny.  They can't scream when they realise they're suspended over molten lava, from which a bubble emerges containing their tormentor Arcade who reminds them of his career building death traps for superheroes like the giant pinball machine in X-Men #123. But he has to admit he hasn't succeeded in killing many (any?) of them, so he's taken a lead from some 'kids books' he's read and set up a superhero death match. They'll have to kill each other to survive, and in 30 days only 1 of them will escape alive.

2 of the newbies labelled Anachronism (seeming caveman with a crude axe) and Bloodstone (with a Punisher skull emblem on his sweatshirt) take an aggressive stance. 'Gentlemanly' Kid Briton (with a Union Jack uniform) offers to let 2 ladies 'go 1st'. Cammi (Camille Benally) just as politely declines but Nara (Atlantean in a water-filled helmet) accepts the offer. Hazmat and Mettle charge in alongside Reptil as a dinosaur. Arcade expected this and blasts Reptil into Mettle. Hazmat blasts *him* but he shrugs it off and sends her flying into surrounding woods. Darkhawk (Chris Powell) and Chase combine continuous blasting but the villain blasts back at them and also damages Juston's Sentinel (which wasn't in previous scenes). Then he gets fed up and just causes an earth tremor which sends them all flying. (Long-time Marvel readers may be wondering where Arcade got all this power from. They'll have to wait for #7 to find out.)

He now causes an elevated throne to self-assemble and then asks if they're wondering why each of them was chosen. He suggests it's just chance and maybe Wolverine's X-school had better security. Anachronism protests that they're not going to just start killing each other because he wants them to. But Arcade points out that no-one here knows all the other people so how can they be sure there's not a killer amongst them. He predicts that the game will reveal killers, cowards, liars and maybe the odd true hero. He declares that the game will start now with *him* killing the weakest player, but *they* have to choose who it is.

Meanwhile Mettle has gone off in search of his love Hazmat. Outside the ring of trees he finds snow, and Jenny ploughing through it. They can hear Arcade's speech through loudspeakers. We see that Mettle's rating (and some of the other players') is 6/6, but Hazmat's is at 5/6. Jenny wants to go back and help fight the villain but Ken suggests they play along with him for now. He says he doesn't care *who* Arcade kills as long as it isn't *her*. But Jenny *does* care. Arcade is going through a countdown when she blasts him from behind. But he survives and his response is to declare *her* the 'winner' and starts to break her back (her rating is down to 4/6). He pauses and asks if anyone wants to volunteer to take her place. No-one answers so he continues and gets her in agony and down to 3/6. But then Ken arrives and declares that *he*'s the weakest link. So Arcade drops Jenny and blows Mettle apart (and his rating drops to 0/6). The villain leaves Jenny weeping but as he leaves he turns back and says to them all "Welcome to Murder World".