Carol Danvers had answered Nick Fury's message eight days ago.
She'd changed course before the transmission had even finished playing.
There were very few things in the universe that could make Carol Danvers drop everything and head for Earth at full speed.
Nick Fury using the emergency pager was one of them.
Nick Fury telling her to find a ship called the Guardians of the Galaxy before things got worse?
That was new.
And annoying.
Because space, Carol was reminded, was vast, lawless, and crowded with idiots.
She'd spent the better part of eight days tearing across trade lanes, pirate routes, abandoned outposts, scavenger corridors, and refugee channels trying to track down one crew of supposedly heroic space disasters.
Every lead went cold.
Every scavenger ship she intercepted either had nothing useful, lied badly, or panicked the second she appeared glowing in their cockpit like divine tax enforcement.
"Guardians?" one nervous broker had squeaked. "No, no, never heard of them."
Carol had looked past him at the dashboard, where someone had very clearly scribbled Quill owes me 900 units into the metal with a knife.
"Sure," she'd said flatly. "And I'm a florist."
By the time the ship fled into a jump lane, Carol was already back in open space, jaw tight, patience thinner than vacuum.
It felt like chasing ghosts.
Or worse.
Men with playlists.
And every time she came close to getting a real answer, the people who might have known something bolted before she could pin them down. It was turning into a cosmic game of cat and mouse, and Carol Danvers had never enjoyed games she couldn't win quickly.
By the fourth hour of the third day, she was considering the deeply therapeutic option of just grabbing the next pirate ship she saw and shaking it until coordinates fell out.
That was when she noticed it.
A ship.
Small. Sleek. Quiet.
Too quiet.
It was shadowing another vessel at a careful distance, matching changes in trajectory just enough to avoid detection from anyone not specifically looking for it.
Carol slowed slightly, drifting in the dark between stars, and narrowed her eyes.
Now that was interesting.
She ignored the scavenger freighter she'd been about to interrogate and angled toward the two ships instead.
The one in front was ugly in that patched-together, overflown, questionably legal kind of way that screamed important idiots live here.
The one behind it moved like intent.
Not random.
Not curious.
Hunting.
Carol crossed her arms as she flew alongside an asteroid shadow, tracking both ships.
"Well," she muttered to herself, "this is already better."
The stalking ship accelerated.
The front ship, either finally noticing or simply maintaining its usual relationship with imminent disaster, banked hard.
Carol followed.
The chase lasted less than five minutes.
The stalking ship surged forward, latched onto the rear docking point of the larger vessel, and locked in place with a metallic clamp that echoed even through the void.
Carol didn't hesitate.
No point asking pirates questions when the universe was finally serving up an answer with action attached.
She blasted forward in a flare of gold-white light and hit the hull just as the intruder breached the ship.
The outer hatch peeled open under pressure.
Carol slipped through the gap like a living missile.
Inside, chaos had already started.
Which, Carol would later reflect, was apparently the default emotional climate aboard the Guardians of the Galaxy.
The corridor was full of shouting.
A woman with green skin had one blade drawn and murder in her eyes.
A raccoon with an oversized gun was halfway up a crate, screaming something that sounded both strategic and deeply insulting.
A massive tree-man was wedged into the hallway in a way that suggested subtlety had never once visited this ship.
And in the middle of it all, a human man was trying to give orders while holding a blaster like confidence alone made him qualified.
"Everybody calm down!" he shouted.
No one calmed down.
The intruder moved fast.
Blue-skinned, cybernetic, furious.
She hit the green woman first, blades ringing as they clashed.
"Sister," the intruder spat.
The green woman's expression shifted instantly from combat-ready to soul-deep exhaustion.
"…Nebula."
Carol took in the scene in one sweep.
Okay.
Family issues.
Armed family issues.
With knives.
Still manageable.
The human man saw her first.
"Wait, wait, wait," he said, pointing. "Who the hell are you?"
Carol hit him with a clean right hook before he finished the sentence.
He dropped instantly.
Out cold.
The raccoon stopped mid-shout.
The tree-man tilted his head.
The green woman blinked once.
Nebula, to her credit, barely had time to look confused before Carol crossed the corridor and drove her straight into the wall hard enough to crater the plating.
Nebula snarled, tried to recover, and got one look at Carol's glowing fists before Carol slammed her back down again with precise, efficient force.
That ended that.
The whole thing took maybe seven seconds.
Silence fell in pieces.
The raccoon lowered his weapon first.
"…Well," he said. "That was hot."
"Rocket," the green woman snapped.
"What? I'm right."
Carol flexed her hand once and looked around.
The human man was still on the floor.
Nebula was conscious, technically, but only in the sense that storms were technically weather.
The green woman slowly straightened.
Her gaze swept over Carol, wary but calculating.
"You're not with the Kree."
"Nope."
"You're not Ravager."
"Nope."
"You hit Peter first."
Carol nodded toward the unconscious human.
"He was talking."
The raccoon barked out a laugh so violent he nearly dropped the gun.
"Okay, I like her."
The green woman pinched the bridge of her nose.
"That was Peter Quill."
Carol looked down at him.
Then back up.
"Should that mean something to me?"
From somewhere deeper in the ship came an angry mechanical voice.
"Why is everyone yelling? If Peter's dead, I call his room."
Another figure appeared in the corridor.
A woman with antennae and wide dark eyes, taking in the scene with immediate confusion.
She looked at Quill on the floor.
Then at Nebula.
Then at Carol.
Then back at Gamora.
"…This feels tense."
"Understatement," Rocket muttered.
Gamora lowered her blade by an inch.
"What do you want?"
Finally.
A useful question.
Carol crossed her arms.
"I'm looking for the Guardians of the Galaxy."
The raccoon spread his arms dramatically.
"Congratulations. You found the dumbest people in known space."
Mantis looked offended on everyone's behalf.
"We are not the dumbest."
Rocket pointed at Peter's unconscious body.
"He tried to negotiate in the middle of a boarding attack."
"That was brave," Mantis said.
"That was stupid with branding," Rocket shot back.
Gamora still hadn't lowered her guard completely.
Carol respected that.
"Nick Fury sent for me," Carol said. "Earth's in trouble. He said if I found you, I'd find answers."
At that, the mood shifted.
Not lighter.
Sharper.
More serious.
Gamora's expression hardened.
Rocket cursed softly.
Even Mantis went still.
On the floor, Peter made a small groaning sound.
Carol ignored him.
Her gaze dropped briefly to Nebula, who was beginning to stir with all the warmth of a waking landmine.
"And apparently," Carol added, "I found your stalker too."
Gamora's eyes flicked toward her sister.
A storm moved across her face.
Complicated.
Old.
Painfully familiar.
"She's coming with us," Gamora said after a beat.
Rocket threw up both paws.
"Absolutely not."
"She knows Thanos," Gamora said.
"She also knows stabbing."
"She is my sister."
"Yeah," Rocket said, "and that has gone super great so far."
Nebula let out a ragged laugh from the floor.
"How touching," she spat. "I get concussed and suddenly I'm a family reunion."
Carol crouched beside her and looked her dead in the eye.
"You get one shot," she said. "You try anything stupid, I put you through the next wall harder."
Nebula's lip curled.
"…Noted."
Peter groaned again and finally rolled onto his side.
"Why," he rasped, "does my face hurt?"
Rocket looked delighted.
"Because new girl met you."
Peter squinted up at Carol from the floor.
Then, because apparently he was exactly as dumb as advertised, smiled weakly.
"Okay," he muttered. "Worth it."
Gamora closed her eyes.
Mantis looked curious.
Carol stood.
Yeah.
This was definitely them.
A disaster crew with trauma, weapons, no adult supervision, and exactly the kind of luck that kept the galaxy alive through sheer refusal to behave sensibly.
In other words, Fury had sent her to the right idiots.
She looked at Gamora.
"How fast can this ship turn around?"
Gamora answered immediately.
"Fast enough."
Rocket was already moving.
"If we're going to Earth, I'm driving."
"You always say that," Peter groaned from the floor.
"Because you always crash stylishly."
Mantis helped Peter sit up.
Nebula was hauled to her feet under Carol's watchful eye.
Groot, who had remained mostly silent through all of this, looked around the corridor at the wrecked wall, the unconscious captain, the restrained sister, and the glowing stranger now standing in the middle of the ship like she owned the oxygen.
"I am Groot," he said.
Carol looked at him.
There was a beat.
Then Rocket translated, sounding tired.
"He says welcome aboard."
Carol let out the first real smile she'd had in hours.
"Yeah," she said. "Let's go save Earth."
And somewhere far behind them, the stars burned cold and indifferent.
Ahead of them, blue and fragile and far too full of people Carol might not get there in time to save, Earth waited.
The first Avenger had turned for home.
And she wasn't coming alone.