Synopsis
Civil War: Young Avengers/Runaways #3 synopsis by
Rob Johnson
Rating:
The Runaways were oblivious to the Civil War until SHIELD came after them for being Unregistered superbeings and severely damaged the robot Victor Mancha. The Young Avengers came to Los Angeles to help them but of course they had the usual superhero misunderstanding and they fought. But SHIELD also sent the Kree Cube prisoner Noh-Varr, controlled by the Cube's Warden, to bring the Runaways in. At the end of last issue he arrived and snapped the neck of Runaway Xavin, a member of the Kree's traditional enemy the Skrulls.
Now Noh-Varr throws his victim at the feet of Young Avengers Hulkling (Teddy Altman) and Wiccan (Billy Kaplan) and Runaway Karolina Dean, Xavin's girlfriend. He KO's Karolina, chops Wiccan in the throat to stop his spell-casting and deals with Hulkling with a double strike. All the while he was ignoring the Warden's instructions in his head as he entered the 'whitespace' and became an efficient weapon. With no other targets in the immediate vicinity he exits whitespace to find the Warden giving him permission to kill the half-Skrull Hulkling.
But the new Vision of the YA has detected their comms chatter and attacks the attacker by phasing a hand into his chest and solidifying it. However Noh fights the pain and succeeds in wrenching Vision's forearm off, still protruding from his chest. He lands near the still-not-fully-recovered Victor and is about to stomp his face in when giant-size Stature (Cassie Lang) of the YA kicks him into the sky. Victor doen't know what's going on.
In the SHIELD plane above the Warden declines to tell his SHIELD bosses about the YA's involvement. He has noted that Hulkling, Karolina and Xavin are aliens and so have no legal rights in the US. He can safely take them as his 'special projects'.
Noh-Varr has fallen to Earth some miles away, but the Warden forces him back into the fray. He superspeeds to where Stature and fellow YAers Hawkeye (Kate Bishop) and Patriot (Eli Bradley) are standing over Victor with Runaways Chase Stein and Nico Minoru. He removes Patriot and Stature from the bunch. Hawkeye fires a tranq arrow but the foe deflects it to take out Stature who falls on Patriot. More arrows prove equally useless. Chase tries to revive Old Lace but the cold-blooded dinosaur hasn't recovered from Nico's last spell which froze them all.
Meanwhile SHIELD have picked up the bodies of Hulkling, Karolina and Xavin along with Wiccan, and the Warden prepares to take them back to his domain the Cube. He reluctantly waits to retrieve Noh-Varr ...
... who is currently choking Hawkeye. Nico desperately tries to summon up a spell from her Staff Of One but can't think of 1 she hasn't already used up. She runs through Sunburst, Hellfire and Acid Rain before Noh grabs *her* by the throat. Chase resorts to picking up a tree branch to use as a club when a skyhook swoops down and takes the enemy away.
The SHIELD plane winches him in and heads back to the Cube prison. The Warden tells his staff to inform SHIELD Director Maria Hill that the mission failed and they didn't manage to capture anybody. He's going to keep these subjects all to himself. Then they notice Vision's arm sticking out of their agent's chest.
Back on the ground Nico manages a Wake Up spell and informs Cassie, Chase, Eli and Kate what happened to their assailant. Vision joins them with half an arm missing. He says his processing is distributed throughout his psycho-kinetic body so it took a while to adjust for the missing part. He also reports that their enemy was Noh-Varr. a Kree from another timeline, working for a SHIELD Black Ops team who have captured the other 4. Cassie helps Victor try to stand up. And YAer Speed (Tommy Shepherd) and youngest Runaway Molly Hayes turn up. Tommy's been keeping Molly amused since last issue and they missed the whole thing.
Patriot says Vision can track where their cohorts have been taken, and they should go after them. Chase sums up the Runaways' response. They tried to keep out of the Civil War but it came and took their friends, so now it's time for some Avenging.
And in the Cube the Warden has tossed aside the believed-dead Xavin and prepares to use his surgical instruments on the living 3.