Avengers Arena (2013 series) #14

Arcade has kidnapped 16 teen superheroes to his Murder World island, and some of them are (possibly) already dead. Last issue was a filler showing how Arcade is keeping the rest of the world from suspecting what he's doing. #12 ended a sequence where Apex (Katy Bashir) was controlling some of the others to attack the rest, and she and Death Locket got defeated by Nico Minoru and wound up inside Arcade's control complex.

This issue belongs to Cullen Bloodstone and he gets an initial voiceover. He remembers how 4 days ago (end of #11) he and 6 others (Anachronism, Cammi, Hazmat, Nara, Reptil and X-23) decided to leave their idyllic beach to go find Nico and help her defeat Katy. 3 days ago they got lost in the forest and Reptil became a flying dinosaur to scout around but never came back. 2 days ago he and Cammi realised that Arcade was disorientating them by moving the environment's artificial 'sun'. This morning Hazmat (Jenny Takeda) ran off screaming for dead boyfriend Mettle and X-23 (Laura Kinney) went after her. They haven't returned either. So now they're down to 4, himself, Cammi the astronaut girl, Nara the Atlantean and Anachronism (Aiden Gillespie), and they've found themselves back on the beach where they started in Quadrant 3.

It's day 28 of Arcade's promised/threatened 30-day 'game' which only 1 of them will be allowed to survive. Nara heads for the sea and asks her latest 'boyfriend' Aiden to join her but he elects to stay with the other 2 to figure out what to do next. Cammi's convinced there has to be *some* way to get control of the game, but Cullen thinks she's fooling herself. Aiden tries to intervene but his friend Cullen turns on him with a punch that bloodies his nose and knocks him down. Anachronism responds by punching him in the face and also drawing blood. Nara returns from her swim and persuades Aiden to come with her into the woods for a while.

Cammi tells Cullen some of her past. Her mom was a drunk. Then Drax, appropriately named the Destroyer, took her away from all that into space (in his mini-series). He was the only person she ever loved and he left her to go kill somebody (Thanos in the Annihilation series). And that was the best part of her life. But now that she's told him *her* secret she asks him to tell her his. He denies having 1 but she says she can see the darkness behind his eyes.

Cullen tells her about his father Ulysses Bloodstone who was more than 10,000 years old and killed monsters for a living. On Cullen's 10th birthday dad loaded him up with supplies and weapons and took him through an interdimensional portal to the Black Realm Of Klimtor. 1st Ulysses killed a couple of Zimbumblers while his son erected their tent. Then he taught him how to disembowel a Greediblix whose tongue they ate for dinner. Then dad went back through the portal leaving his son to fend off Soul Beasts overnight. But Ulysses never returned (because he got killed) and young Cullen was stuck there for about 2 years.

We take a break from this harrowing tale to see X-23 catch up with Hazmat in Quadrant 4. It turns out that Jenny isn't mad and there really is a Mettle that she's been following. But it's not Ken Mack but a robot with an orange gas that is the (enhanced) trigger scent that drives Laura berserk, and she attacks her friend. And 'Mettle' disappears into the ground.

Cullen continues his history. It seems he was trapped in Klimtor for 27 months but he can only really remember the 1st 6. All the while his sister Elsa thought he was in boarding school. But 1 day when she popped into their father's mansion she found Cullen half-swathed in bandages like a mummy with no memory of how he escaped. Then something vague happened and then he remembers the mansion in ruins and Elsa telling him she'd dealt with an unspeakable evil. She gave him a Bloodstone ring to keep his darkness at bay and also make him strong and tough like herself and their father. And then she sent him to the Braddock Academy for British kids with powers.

Now he's just about to tell Cammi what happens when he takes the ring off when they see a cloud of orange mist approaching from the sea, and they decide running away is the wisest option.

Meanwhile in the Quadrant 4 wood Nara watches Anachronism taking his anger out on a tree with his big axe. He doesn't understand why his best friend Cullen hit him. She suggests 2 reasons. 1st that most of them are going to die. 2nd that the 2 of them are an item. Aiden still doesn't get it so she makes it clear that Cullen fancies *him*, and that's also why he hates *her*. But then they too are faced with the orange mist and X-23 stalks out of it with bloodied claws out.

On the beach Cammi and Cullen are surrounded by the gas when Aiden and Nara come running chase by Laura. Nara falls and Aiden turns back to defend her with his axe which X-23's claws slice bits off. Cammi shoots at her with her space gun but it only hurts the 'Wolverine' and doesn't stop her. So Cullen removes his ring and becomes a giant monster.