Avengers Arena (2013 series) #13

Arcade kidnapped 16 teen superheroes to his new Murder World island. This issue investigates what their friends outside think has happened to them.

Arcade has watched what happened last issue and is loving it, but is pondering how to ramp the violence up even more. But his little floating robot aid is worried about those outside friends and gets him to listen by projecting a hologram of various adult heroes attacking him. Arcade complains that he'd given the robot enough information and facilities to handle the outside problems but it claims that things are so bad it needs authorisation to play the trump card. Arcade is amazed that it's only taken a couple of weeks to get that far, his own parents forgot he existed for months. He blames modern overprotective parents. He asks who's causing trouble now? A mom, a teacher or a spurned lover? The robot says it's much worse ...

... and we see Molly Hayes, the youngest of the Runaways, complaining to Hank Pym, headmaster of the Avengers Academy, that bad guys stole her friends Chase Stein and Nico Minoru. Nobody will believe her and Hank promised to look after the group (after they met in AvAcad#27-28). Runaway Karolina Dean, who's visiting her Academy student girlfriend Julie Power, rushes up to tell the teacher what they told Molly that Chase and Nico have started a relationship and they left a note saying they needed time by themselves to figure things out, and anyway they text Molly all the time. But Molly thinks the texts are fakes because they won't come home even though Chase's dinosaur Old Lace is pining for him. Karolina points out that Chase and the dino are psychically linked, and if Chase was in trouble OL would go save him. Molly counters that maybe the bad guys are blocking the link, and she gets angry (and she's really strong). Hank calms her down and promises to investigate, and when Karolina says her friends left around Christmas it starts an alarm bell ringing in his mind because some of the Academy students left at that time.

He discusses it with teacher Tigra who reminds him that the full-time students have all graduated now and they know where they are or at least why they left, including Hazmat and Mettle who they believe ran off together after Jenny Takeda's parents didn't want her dating Ken Mack. But Pym wants to talk to their closest friends. They ask Finesse about Reptil and X-23. Jeanne Foucault says that she and Laura Kinney had 'drifted apart' and refuses to explain further. But we see them fighting each other (after Finesse revealed that she'd used X-23's blades to kill Jeremy Briggs in AvAcc#37). Tigra says she thought Jeanne and Humberto Lopez were romantically involved but Finesse tells them it's all over because he was taking things too seriously (after he'd seen them married in the future in AvAcc#21-25), but she believes he and White Tiger became close after that (we see her seeing them almost kiss in AvAcc#39). Tigra talks to Ava Ayala but is told that Reptil sent her a text at Christmas saying he was following some clue about his missing parents.

Pym next contacts Wolverine at the Jean Grey School about his 'adopted daughter' X-23. Logan says Laura's gone walkabout but occasionally texts Jubilee. He knows she can look after herself, and if she doesn't want to be found then he doubts that even he could track her down. He confirms that no-one has gone missing from his school, though he sometimes wishes some of them would. But he adds that he's heard some kids have gone from Captain Britain's school. Then he breaks off the call to stop Transonic from attacking Glob Herman who has just commented that since her 'costume' is her own skin then she's effectively naked.

So Hank tries the British Braddock Academy next where Captain Britain admits that 5 'troublemakers' absconded at Christmas but Anachronism, Apex, Cullen Bloodstone, Kid Briton and Nara are leaving a large trail on Social Media and messes in reality that he's having to pay for. Hank asks Brian Braddock if he doesn't find it suspicious that all these disappearances happened at the same time, but CB says Peter Wisdom and Union Jack went on a pub crawl then too, that ended up introducing karaoke to the Savage Land, but they came back a week later. Pym says that Hazmat disabled their security cameras before she left. CB says his lot did the same but some of the other students have sorted it out. Brian asks if there was anyone else in the Academy at the time. Hank says yes but there's another problem ...

... Tigra is calling the Seyfert house to try to talk to Juston but his father won't let her. He never liked him going to the Academy because he has no powers (just a science brain and a pet Sentinel). Now that he's home and the robot's stored in the barn he's not going to have anymore to do with the Academy. Greer Nelson just wants to ask him about other students who are missing but Mr S just repeats what Juston told him. He saw the radioactive girl (Hazmat) (clearly a danger to his son) arguing with her parents and that's when he decided to come home. He's outside now playing hoops with his brother, and they're all happy. But we see that this Juston is a Life Model Decoy.

Greer and Hank compare notes. 2 Runaways, 4 of their own students and 5 of Captain Britain's went missing at the same time (but no-one's missing from the Future Foundation and the Wakandan school as well as the Jean Grey mutants). They all had plausible reasons for leaving. And Tigra says they must have *left* unless someone's capable of snatching all 11 without leaving any evidence. Pym says he's used SHIELD satellite data to scan for unusual activity in their area at the time. The Academy's computer system now reports a new form of teleportation energy. When he broadens the he's sees it also occurred in Britain but also in many other places all over the world.

So now he visits Maria Hill, Director of SHIELD, in their Helicarrier Iliad. She tells him that new types of teleportation keep being invented and they respond fairly quickly to block them from being used to free high-security prisoners. But the criminal community are wise to this. Whenever a new method is invented it gets sold to as many people as possible and they all agree to start using it at the same time to get the maximum use before SHIELD gets on top of it. And 1 such outbreak occurred in his window of interest, but she won't release the details to anyone especially him because of his dubious history (inventing Ultron and having a mental breakdown). He plays the vulnerable kids card and she lets him know there is 1 extra possible candidate, a cyborg girl with Deathlok tech (Death Locket to us) but Hill 'knows' she was taken by time travel.

Back at the Academy Greer tries to persuade Hank to drop it. He has no proof that anyone's really missing. But he says he has no real proof they're not. Then Finesse enters with a phone call for him from Mettle to arrange a meeting in Oregon. The duo fly there by Quinjet and Ken Mack arrives in a rental car to meet them. He says that Jenny didn't want to come because she feared they'd force her to go back to her parents. His parents are being very supportive. Hank scans him and he seems to be the real deal, but Ken refuses to go back with them for more thorough tests because Jenny's parents have filed a kidnapping charge and he could get arrested. And then he leaves.

Arcade's watching this remotely from Murder World. This was the trump card and Mettle was a robot duplicate but his metal skin stopped his robotic innards from being detected. But his little robot servant asks Arcade what his ultimate goal is. He reminds it that it's to restore his reputation. But the 'bot continues:- To restore his reputation he'll have to reveal to the world that he's killed these superkids. That will have every superhero in the world coming after him. The 'bot can only see 2 possibilities:- its master is committing suicide by cape or he's delusional enough to think he can get away with it. Arcade gets angry and causes the robot to self-destruct. Then he brings out another 1 that he calls Unit Locke 2.0 which readily agrees that the boss *is* smart enough to get away with it.