Avengers Arena (2013 series) #4

Arcade has kidnapped 16 teen heroes and taken them to his latest Murder World island. Mettle and Red Raven are already dead. And last issue Juston Seyfert was crushed within his Sentinel and Darkhawk's amulet left his possibly dead body.

But we look in on the 2 representatives of the Runaways team, Chase Stein and Nico Minoru. We see that they have claimed the beach of quadrant 3 of the island. Nico has magicked up a tree continually bearing life-sustaining fruit so they plan to wait out whatever's happening with the rest of the islanders.

Chase remembers how his super-genius parents disdained all his sports achievements and were very disappointed with his low academic scores, especially in science. And then he and the rest of his friends discovered that all their parents were supervillains gaining powers by sacrificing to demons, and they became the Runaways. Since then he's seen people die:- His parents, the Runaways' leader Alex and his girlfriend Gert (twice).

Now Nico's sleeping and he's on watch. He hears something and blasts it. Nico wakes up and they discover it was only an owl and a chipmunk. She decides they need a change of plan and uses her Staff Of One to cause their magic tree to uproot itself and go walkies. She intends to find some 'roommates'.

Next stop is quadrant 4 where the remainder of the Avengers Academy contingent (minus Mettle and Juston) have set up camp in a wood. Reptil returns to Hazmat saying he's not found Juston or any food. X-23 comes in from the snow outside to say that the wreckage of Juston's Sentinel has been dragged into the neighbouring desert quadrant. They suspect that Arcade has cut the food supply off to persuade them to start playing his murder game. Jenny Takeda wants to go search for Juston but Humberto Lopez points out that it's days since the Sentinel was destroyed and Juston won't have survived in the desert, and neither would they. But Jenny is still grieving over the loss of her love Ken Mack and won't let anyone else die.

At this point Chase and Nico walk in with hands raised. Despite the 2 teams knowing each other the Academy group are paranoid and send Reptil to attack them as a dinosaur. But then the magic tree arrives. They think it's another foe and Hazmat threatens Nico with a radiation blast to make her call it off. But Nico tells them it's food. She explains that she and Chase were no good at hunting so she experimented until she turned a bush into the tree with an inexhaustible supply of delicious fruit. As they know this required her to cut herself to make the Staff work each attempt. They demonstrate that the food is good by eating some themselves. Jenny is still suspicious but they try some and are soon gorging themselves while Chase and Nico sleep.

Later Chase and Reptil talk about what this place is doing to them. 'Berto says he was near to ripping their throats out earlier, but also he's wondering about the girl he's left behind (Ava Ayala). Chase says he himself has always been a bad person, never doing the right thing for the right reason. Even when the Runaways saved the world from their parents he really did it just to piss his old man off. He figures if Reptil kills *him* he'll be doing the others a favour, but if he hurts Nico then he'll kill him.

Chase then wanders off to take a leak. And while he's gone a fireball hits Lopez, severely burning him and reducing his 'power' rating to 2/6. X-23 finds them and accuses Chase of doing it. Hazmat joins them and prepares to blast the Runaway, but Nico appears and creates a defence and also douses Jenny in water. Chase is ready to take on the other 2 but Nico proposes a compromise. Jen and Laura can keep all the fruit they want and she and Chase will leave with their tree. But Hazmat kills it with radiation and toxicity.

They still let Chase and Nico leave. Chase says Nico can make another tree but she reminds him that she can't use the same spell twice. And he should know how much it cost her to do it the 1st time. And now she blames *him* for screwing things up, whether he attacked Reptil or not. She leaves him, and when she's gone the Darkhawk amulet and chain drops from a tree into his hand. And then it penetrates his chest and he becomes the new armoured Darkhawk.