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"Ah—!"
The two Ravagers closest to the hatch never had a chance. They screamed as the violent rush of air swept them out, and then they were gone, swallowed by the pitch-black void of space.
Through the porthole, two twisting human shapes were visible for a moment before the cold took them. They stiffened into ice sculptures and drifted silently into the dark.
"Grab something!" Yondu roared, both hands locked around his command chair's armrests.
The rest of the Ravagers lurched into action, scrambling desperately for anything bolted down, anything solid, anything to hold on to.
Just as everyone's grip was starting to give,
BANG!
The hatch slammed shut.
The suction cut off instantly. The bridge went quiet. All that remained was ragged breathing and the hollow, shaky silence of people who had just almost died.
Hermione clapped her hands together and turned around, smiling.
"Sorry about that, just a little joke." Her tone was perfectly light. "I still need you lot to find the Orb, after all. Why would I actually throw you out?"
Everyone: "..."
A joke?
Those two are dead. Their bodies are already frozen solid.
She didn't seem to notice the looks on their faces, the looks of people who'd just seen something they couldn't explain, and kept right on talking.
"The thing is, I'd only ever read about what happens when someone gets thrown into space. Never had the chance to see it in person." A brief, thoughtful pause. "Just now seemed like a perfect opportunity."
"You don't mind, do you?"
Her gaze moved slowly across the remaining Ravagers. Eyes wide and guileless. Tone completely sincere.
The survivors' faces drained of all color as they stared at this young girl with her innocent smile, then back out the porthole at the two ice sculptures already shrinking into the distance, outlines nearly gone. A chill shot clean through them, skull to spine.
They finally understood what Hermione was. They swallowed hard. Eyes went to the floor. Heads dropped, one after another, like a collective flinch, each one privately, desperately hoping they would not be the next punchline.
Hermione looked satisfied. She clapped her hands once more and walked over to the command chair with a light, unhurried step.
Yondu sat in it like he'd been bolted there. Every muscle locked. He didn't even move his eyes.
A small, pale hand settled gently on his shoulder.
"!"
Yondu flinched so hard his whole body jerked. He turned his head in terror and found himself looking directly into Hermione's calm, unreadable eyes.
"Let's get moving, Lord Admiral," she said pleasantly. "Xandar."
The Ravager warship opened its bay and carefully brought Hermione's ship inside. Then the engines came alive, and the warship became a streak of light and jumped to warp.
The long voyage through space began.
Inside the massive ship, the atmosphere was suffocating.
The source of it sat in a quiet corner, reading. The book in her hands was thick and old-looking, the kind of thing that belonged in a museum. She turned pages with total focus, starlight from the porthole falling soft across her shoulders, tracing out a gentle outline. She looked like a pretty girl curled up with a good book. She looked like someone's neighbor.
The Ravagers kept stealing glances. Just the corners of their eyes. Nothing obvious.
If they hadn't been there themselves, who would ever believe it? That this harmless-looking girl was that?
Even lunatics like Thanos and Ronan weren't this unhinged.
Eventually, Hermione closed the book.
She got up and walked over to Yondu.
"More. I have a question."
Yondu blinked. He glanced around, then back at her. "That's... my name is Yondu."
"Is it?" She tilted her head. "From now on, you're More."
Yondu stared at her. He had absolutely nothing to say to that, but he forced a smile anyway. "Whatever you say."
"Good." She nodded, apparently very satisfied. "More. Tell me about this Peter you sent. Who is he?"
Yondu's chest went tight. He kept his voice easy, kept the panic buried. "Peter? Oh, you mean Quill. He's just a regular crewman. Nobody. Not worth your time."
Hermione raised an eyebrow. Her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "A nobody. To steal the Orb."
Yondu's smile began to crack. He opened his mouth.
"Never mind," Hermione said. "You don't have to explain. I believe you."
She let that sit for a moment.
"But this 'nobody' of yours had better not fail. The Orb comes back in one piece, or, "
Her voice dropped to something flat and cold.
"I'll kill every last one of you."
Yondu said nothing.
Hermione studied him for a moment with an expression that meant something he couldn't quite read, then turned and left the bridge without another word.
Yondu didn't move. Neither did anyone else.
After she was gone, the pressure in the room eased, barely, but noticeably, the way a held breath finally lets go.
A crewman with a relatively normal face edged over to Yondu's side. "Boss," he said quietly. "I... I think I might know who she is."
Yondu's head snapped toward him. "Who? Kraglin — you recognized her?"
Kraglin kept his voice low. "Boss. You remember a while back, when the Chitauri army got annihilated? Nearly wiped out to the last soldier?"
"Of course I remember." Yondu's eyes narrowed. "Word was some woman called the Cabbage Witch slaughtered the whole lot of them. Their commander, the Other, barely made it back to Thanos. Nobody even knows if he survived."
The Chitauri weren't a weak army, not exactly. Their problem was structural. The whole force ran on a single command signal, which meant any real fighter could gut them by taking out the lead ship. Tactics 101, across a dozen species.
But the Cabbage Witch, from what people said, hadn't bothered with tactics at all.
She'd walked straight into the middle of their army. Alone. And killed every single one of them.
Word spread fast in space. She used magic, powerful magic, unlike anything anyone had catalogued, and apparently had a habit of summoning something that people kept describing as terrifying cabbages. The name "Cabbage Witch" had been bouncing around the cosmos ever since, through every race and every port worth stopping at.
Yondu's eyes had been growing slowly wider as he listened. Then his pupils shrank to points.
"You mean—"
Kraglin nodded. "I asked around just now. The Chitauri were attacking, " He paused. "Earth."
Earth.
Earth.
Earth.
The word echoed around Yondu's skull like something ricocheting off the walls.
"That woman is the Cabbage Witch?!"
He barely breathed it.
No wonder.
Then something else occurred to him.
Quill. Peter Quill. That idiot was from Earth too. Yondu had known him so long he'd basically stopped thinking about it.
Maybe there was an angle there. Some kind of shared-hometown connection he could work.
He was still turning it over when the view through the porthole shifted. The cold dark of deep space fell away, replaced by something else.
A planet, bright and ringed with satellites, technology layered over technology, gleaming in the starlight.
Xandar.
They'd arrived.
➤ Next: Emissary of Asgard
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