Previously at the Heist…
Tenno POV
I never felt anything even remotely like this before. I could almost taste its energy, the power emanating from it, as my hands were trembling with anticipation just thinking about reaching it.
And then suddenly, I stood right in front of the Vault, as my hands started to shake even worse than before. It felt like an eternity till the Vault finally opened and revealed the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Then I felt a deep suction force. I got pulled out of my Warframe right towards it, and it snapped onto me. Suddenly, I felt the same sensation all over again, the one I felt when I got sucked into this universe in the first place. And the next thing I saw was the inside of my Orbiter.
Carol Danvers POV
Pure Blackness filled my Vision as I looked around, finding nothing but my own body floating in the big nothingness I was now in.
I reach for the Worldmind with a thought, something I've done thousands of times or more, and wait. The thought reached out and met… nothing. I reached for the Nova current, nothing. I tried my own Powers, but they didn't work either. "Last resort," I thought, as I tried to activate my Negabands, only to make them shine slightly more than before, being my only light source in this endless seeming darkness.
My Ribs were sore, some teeth started buzzing, and my tongue tasted metallic. "It was a long time ago, I felt this Mortal," I thought sarcastically. "But at least my Suit sealed shut," I felt at ease, as I looked at my arm.
Emergency glyphs glowed in a deep red along the screen. "Helmet detached, pressure not able to be stabilized".
I just looked stunned. Then slowly, my hands went to my face and touched it. "There is no helmet, how is that possible?" I panicked for a second before finding inner peace again, like we were trained in the academy.
I tried to turn slowly, but like in space, nothing was there to push away from.
"Move," I command the Bands, but nothing happens.
After some more time, the cold slowly started to get to me, and an old instinct caught me off guard.
The arms completed the motion before my mind finished the thought. My arms crossed, the bands touched, like back in the day, when my partner was still...
Then suddenly, the world skipped a beat as, around me, something started to materialize into a capsule. A chair cradled my body and clamped the shoulders, forearms, and wrists. The harness stopped me from moving, while the Bands got pulled apart, resting on my legs.
"Emergency Systems online, Operator vanished from live support, intruder detected, activating Security protocols."
Suddenly, a robotic female voice sounded in my ears.
"Hello, who is there?" I asked, incredibly confused and a little scared.
The air tasted thin and filtered, like in some of the Corpus ships I had been in just some hours ago. The emergency light painted the room outside the chair red.
The ship seemed to have a hole in the right wall, while outside, I glimpsed the blackness from before. "Seemingly a stranded ship," I thought in shock, not comprehending how someone would come here, wherever here was, by their own free will with a whole ship.
On the other hand, if the ship could come here, maybe it could also take me back with it. Wherever it came from.
"Alright," I said to the silence. "Pilot… I demand to see the Pilot," came out of my mouth, now slightly more at ease with the situation.
"Intruder is given one last warning, do not waste precious life support. Once the Operator is found, our programming allows us to change your places. Till then, you are using his life support. If you decide to waste it further, I am allowed to end the imprisonment and will expel you into the Vacuum of space," I heard as an answer.
"Well," I thought, "The Captain seems not to be on board, I guess I will wait."
Tenno POV
After I touched these bands, I suddenly found myself back in the Orbiter, in my Operator Chair. A new kind of Power swept through me, and I felt as powerful as never before. I tried to meditate, but my Void Powers seemed to be sucked up, or rather, combine themselves with the power of these artifacts from the Time-Vault. I don't know how they came back with me, but that is progress for the good, proof that I can somehow get out of here. Or, at least, I hoped it was. But then I felt something coming from the bands, like they received a signal and decided to answer on their own, because somehow they began to heat up.
Then suddenly, the world skipped a beat, while around me, everything dematerialized. The capsule faded around me, my chair no longer cradled my body or clamped my shoulders, forearms, or wrists. The harness that usually stopped me from moving gave way, and eventually pure Blackness filled my Vision as I looked around, finding nothing but my own body floating in the big nothingness I was now in.
There I was, floating around, still on the high of my new powers, while not even remotely comprehending what was going on and that the Orbiter was gone.
After some time, I started to adjust to the energy flowing through me, then went into the bands, while also slowly drifting into my meditation techniques, breathing in and out.
"Wait, I'm breathing," I thought suddenly and looked around, hoping that I somehow left this cursed place, but nothing had changed, nothing, "except maybe for the fact that I could now fucking breathe in space," I thought, enraged, while trying to get back into my meditative state.
"Maybe I can access my Warframe somehow," I thought while getting the hang of the meditative state slowly again.
Then a red light shone through my eyelids because of which I looked up, clearly annoyed. Whatever that was, it finally broke me out of my meditative state, while also not being able to comprehend that something had happened in the vicinity of my real body for the first time.
As the red waves touched my bracelets, Bright golden streams began to flow from them, seemingly responding to the light.
"What are you?" I asked, but got no response from the strange substance.
A force suddenly rolled out of my bracelets, as the black shifted away, and Something old and clever seemingly felt for me through the dark.
Light flared at the edge of my vision, and red and gold began to blend all around me, forming a ball of energy that enveloped me completely. A voice snapped a word in a language I couldn't understand, while another voice, warmer, answered him.
The bracelets began to burn, while the energy previously stored within them seemed to be sucked out, again through my body as the conduit.
Air slammed into my lungs like water. Wood, wool, velvet, I could finally feel something again, not just the inside of my bodysuit. The fresh air mixed with Incense and dust, while Candles made miniature suns along a balcony rail, as my eyes slowly adjusted again to the brightness of my surroundings. Sigils hung in the air as I tried to take the next breath, like I had forgotten how to do that in that strange place.
I tried to sit up, but then I fell, and hands caught me before the floor did. One set me steady and surgical down on the bed, while the other one tried to comfort me by brushing along my head with her hand, with a soft tremor she hid poorly.
Darkness started to creep back into the edges of my eyes as I reached for the bracelets, while a voice murmured, "Kid," and something in it made my body incredibly sleepy.
Observer POV
"Hold him," Wanda ordered Strange, while rushing to a side table, starting to mix some herbs into a potion. "Draw the rest of the surge energy, but make it easy, he's just a Kid, the spell was crafted for her specifically, his body is not meant to be sucked of that much negative energy in an instant, it's a miracle he is still alive." She said, while letting her red energy strings plug more and more ingredients from the walls, while she was proofreading out of a floating book.
"I know all that, Wanda," Steven said, while also looking confused at the boy they pulled out of the Void and not their Carol, whose surge of Negative energy they mistook for their Nova Primes.
"Here, drink this," Wanda said, finally finished with her concoction, and the boy just looked at her suspiciously, but then decided to drink it either way. Wanda began to massage circles around his back, breathing life into his cold body, while casting a warming charm as he finally fell asleep in her arms.
Tenno POV
The Ceiling was made of carved wood. The Walls were covered with book spines and wards shaped like constellations that I knew from my home system. Light pooled warm on thick rugs, while on the table stood an old relic, once called a carafe, holding water, next to it a bowl of fruits and some cookies.
A face leaned into my view. A Handsome face, jaw square with kind eyes. He knelt at the bedside, the way one would to scared kids or older people.
"Hey," he said. "I'm Steve Rogers, head of the Nova Corps and temporary Nova Prime. You're safe here." He said with practiced ease.
"Safe is a word people hand you when they want you to speak." I rehearsed the teachings of one of my teachers in my mind, slowly getting a clearer sight.
"What's your name?" he asked, voice pitched low.
"Tenno," I answered.
"How old are you, Tenno?" Steve asked again, gentle but with a watchman's measure. "You look young."
A shrug followed.
Letting them decide mainly was beneficial for me. People fill in the blanks with the picture they already carry, after all. The woman's gaze softened as she stepped closer and looked at me with a worried gaze.
"You're in the Sanctum Sanctorum," the man in the back said. "New York. Earth. We pulled you from a place we call the Void. We expected someone else. Carol Danvers, do you know her?"
He asked, looking strangely into my eyes, but I just shook my head, and he nodded.
"Thirsty?" The woman asked, and I nodded. Afterward, she held the glass while I drank.
Steve watched all of this and filed it away. "We'll have questions. Not all at once." He stood up, then glanced at Strange. "Let him rest."
They moved towards the door. Wards brightened as they passed, but the woman lingered. "I'll be right outside, call if you need anything," she said and also left.
I waited until the voices settled to a low murmur in the hall, then angled my head toward the door, as the words arrived like a whisper through the wood, but somehow not understandable.
"I'm just happy I'm out of that hellhole," I thought while falling asleep again.
Observer POV
Strange started speaking first, seemingly agitated, "We overclocked the ritual because we read Nova Prime's energy. He isn't Carol. The bands match the signature we chased, but the wielder attached to them isn't the right one. Maybe he killed her and took them. We know nearly nothing about that place."
Steve answered, not believing any of these hypotheses, "He's a kid. Treat him like one."
Strange didn't settle down, though, and retorted, "We don't have the luxury. The breach in our defenses widens, and the Corpus pushes harder every hour. They just bought time to jump lanes we patrol. Someone with pull in the Senate is definitely slacking on paperwork."
Wanda answered quietly, with fierce intensity in her voice, "Mister Knife."
Papers rustled suddenly as Steve's voice tightened, while he stood up from his desk in rage. "Quill's father is the main problem here. The King of Spartax buys the Corpus Tech and with it, sympathy in three Systems. He shakes hands on the Council and probably signs contracts in back rooms. If he wraps Corpus merchants in his political schemes, we'll spend weeks untangling while the Corpus war front anchors new stations on new worlds."
Strange seemed not interested, "He's moving capital and pulling strings, so what, that's what he always does. We have a missing Nova Prime to worry about, and now we also have a boy with a pair of artifacts nearly the same as hers. I think this takes more importance than these political matters. I say, we put him back into the void, where he came from, and can't be a potential risk, or use him somehow to find her."
That seemed to be the tipping point, and Steve suddenly jelled. "ENOUGH. We protect the kid, we keep the Nega-bands in our vicinity, and keep them from becoming a key in the wrong hands. We all know that we are imprisoned in the Negative Dimension with the other pair. If the boy's power is activated by accident even once, and they are about to switch places, we put him back, and that thing lands in the Void as they switch places, like the Nega-bands love to do, as we all know from the first time Carol disappeared. Then no one knows what will happen, once he somehow uses the Void for his gains, and we all know he will. I think we should rather consider the possibility that we just found a third pair and that Carol is somewhere recovering from her injuries and will come back soon enough. There is no way there is such a coincidence, especially a human child, at the place she was supposed to be. She is probably already on Earth, where she changed places with him, and has her reasons for not coming out of hiding. The meeting is over."
Steve finally ordered, while they tried to retort, after which Wanda and Steven reluctantly left his office.
"What have you got yourself into, Kid?" Steve thought sadly as he sat down again.