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Knowhere. The Collector's Museum.
The ambient gravity in the center of the museum seemed to warp and yield.
Golden sparks flared and faded, leaving Hermione suspended effortlessly in mid-air. Her dark robes drifted around her ankles as if submerged in water, defying the artificial physics of the severed Celestial head.
Below her, Taneleer Tivan's eccentric, aristocratic face was grim. His white hair was slightly disheveled from his earlier panic, but he forced himself to remain calm. He adjusted his thick-lensed goggles and looked up at the floating teenager.
"Cabbage Witch!" Tivan called out, his voice echoing off the thousands of glass containment cells. "You've arrived quickly! But tell me, don't you know the unwritten rules among the universe's supreme beings?"
He gestured wildly toward the glowing purple stone resting on its pedestal. "You already possess two Infinity Stones! Yet you still covet the Power Stone. Are you trying to incite public outrage? Do you want all the major cosmic forces to unite and attack you?!"
Hermione tilted her head. Her dark, clear eyes widened, filling with a picture-perfect imitation of profound confusion.
"Rules?" Hermione asked, her voice light and musical. "What rules? I've never heard of them before."
"You..."
Tivan was momentarily speechless. He stared at her, his jaw working. Looking at Hermione's remarkably genuine, innocent expression, a desperate, rationalizing thought suddenly popped into his ancient mind:
Could it be that she really doesn't know? After all, for all her apocalyptic power, she was so incredibly young. And she had supposedly lived her entire life in complete isolation on that remote, backwater mud-ball called Earth. It was entirely possible, even normal, for her to be completely out of touch with the geopolitical realities and gentleman's agreements of the wider cosmos.
Tivan composed himself, sensing a tiny sliver of hope. He tried to reason with the living weapon hovering above him.
"Take my advice, Witch. Stop now," Tivan urged, his tone taking on the cadence of a wise elder. "More Infinity Stones aren't necessarily better. Excessive greed will only lead to your own destruction. Leave now, and I can pretend nothing happened here today. Otherwise, once the news gets out that you are building a full set, you will become the target of the entire universe's wrath!"
Upon hearing this grave warning, Hermione brought a delicate finger to her chin. She wore a deeply serious expression, her brow furrowing slightly, as if she were genuinely weighing the pros and cons of galactic war.
Tivan felt a wave of relief wash over him. She's listening, he thought. There might still be room for maneuver. I can keep the Stone!
Peter Quill, Gamora, and Rocket watched with bated breath, praying the terrifying girl would just turn around and leave them all in peace.
After a long, agonizing moment, Hermione broke into a bright, absolutely radiant smile. Her tone was light and cheerful.
"Hmm... I've thought it over."
Tivan was delighted. "You've figured it out?"
Hermione nodded enthusiastically.
"I've figured it out! Since we're already here, it really wouldn't be good manners to go back empty-handed."
She lowered her hand, her cheerful tone shifting slightly, dripping with a dark, chilling mockery.
"As for the troubles and the 'wrath' you mentioned... I welcome them to come to me. To be honest, I happen to need a few obedient puppets lately. The more, the better, really! It gets so tiresome doing everything myself."
Upon hearing this, the temperature in the room plummeted.
Not only Tivan, but Quill, Gamora, Rocket, and Groot gasped in collective shock. Gamora's hand instinctively drifted toward the hilt of her sword.
This girl looks so harmless, Quill thought, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck. So why are the things she says so absolutely terrifying?!
Tivan's brief hope was utterly shattered. His face turned ashen, contorting into a mask of pure, desperate rage.
"You won't listen to reason!" Tivan roared, throwing his hands in the air. "Do you think you can act recklessly in my Void all by yourself?! Attack! Kill her!"
At his shrieking command, the museum's automated defense protocols engaged instantly.
Hidden panels in the ceiling and walls slid open. Dozens of heavy, multi-barrel energy cannons tracked Hermione's hovering form. Countless blinding, superheated energy beams and high-velocity physical projectiles roared toward her from every angle in a deafening crossfire.
At the same time, a large swarm of Tivan's elite mercenaries, armed with heavy blasters and electro-spears, emerged from the surrounding corridors, completely surrounding the airspace.
"Sigh. They just won't listen to advice."
Hermione sighed helplessly, looking mildly disappointed. She didn't even bother to dodge or draw her wand. She simply raised one hand, palm facing outward, and made a loose, dismissive pushing gesture.
Buzz—!
An invisible, pale golden barrier—a heavily modified, non-verbal Protego Maxima—instantly unfolded around her in a perfect, shimmering sphere.
The barrage of energy beams, plasma bolts, and armor-piercing projectiles struck the shield. Instead of exploding, they were silently, utterly annihilated the exact moment they touched the golden barrier, dissolving into harmless puffs of static electricity.
Immediately afterwards, Hermione flipped her outstretched hand over, palm facing the floor, and gently pressed down.
Snap! Crackle! CRUNCH!
The elite guards, who had been charging forward so aggressively just moments before, were slammed into the floor tiles by a sudden, irresistible, crushing gravitational force.
The heavy, ceiling-mounted defensive emplacements were violently ripped from their housings by the same telekinetic pressure, crashing to the ground in showers of sparks and twisted metal. Bones groaned, metal warped, and the entire attack force was rendered completely immobile, pinned to the floor like crushed insects.
The entire counter-attack was swift, silent, and entirely effortless.
Tivan stared in absolute disbelief, his whole body going ice-cold.
His prized, multi-billion-unit defense system was as flimsy as wet paper in front of this little girl's casual hand gesture.
It seems, Tivan realized with dawning horror, the 'Cabbage Witch' is even more terrifying than the cosmic rumors suggest.
"Please! Have mercy, Your Majesty!"
Tivan, instantly discarding his dignity as a Cosmic Elder and a billionaire Collector, dropped to his knees with a loud thud. He pressed his hands to the glass floor, his voice trembling uncontrollably.
"I surrender! The Power Stone is yours! Please, have mercy on my collection!"
It highlighted the ultimate survival trait of an immortal: the ability to be completely flexible and adaptable when faced with absolute, overwhelming force.
Hermione slowly floated down, the toes of her shoes clicking softly against the glass floor. She looked around at the groaning guards and sparking turrets, then glanced down at Tivan kneeling at her feet.
Her brows furrowed slightly. She actually looked somewhat displeased.
"Just you?" Hermione asked, her tone laced with genuine annoyance. "I thought Ronan and the others should have arrived by now. Tsk. You surrendered a bit too early, Tivan. I should have waited until everyone was gathered in one room before we started. That would have saved me so much commuting."
Tivan: "..."
She wanted to fight all of us at once?! Tivan thought, his mind reeling. All he wanted now was to get rid of this living plague god as soon as humanly possible. Losing a Power Stone was incredibly painful, yes, but it was infinitely better than having his entire museum, and his skull, turned to ash.
He quickly, frantically signaled his remaining, uncrushed servants to bring over the containment vessel for the Cosmic Orb, preparing to seal the stone and present it to her with both hands.
Just then, a terrifying, suffocating sense of oppression descended from the sky above them.
The artificial starlight filtering through the glass ceiling of the museum was suddenly blotted out.
Everyone—Hermione, Tivan, Quill, and Gamora—looked up.
A massive, menacing black warship, shaped like a colossal, jagged cross, had silently broken through the spatial barriers of Knowhere. The Dark Aster hovered directly above the Collector's building, casting a massive, terrifying shadow over the entire district.
A blinding flash of blue, teleportation light struck the center of the hall, just a few yards from the Power Stone's pedestal.
When the light faded, a towering Kree warlord stood in the room. He was clad in heavy, black-and-silver ceremonial armor, his face painted with thick, black, ritualistic blood markings. His eyes were cold and devoid of mercy. In his right hand, he wielded a massive, glowing Cosmi-Rod warhammer.
Ronan the Accuser.
Ronan didn't even glance at the petite Earth girl standing nearby, nor did he look at the groveling Tivan on the ground. His fanatical gaze was fixed solely on the blinding purple light of the Power Stone.
He slammed the butt of his warhammer against the glass floor, the sound ringing out like a death knell.
"Tivan!" Ronan commanded, his voice a deep, vibrating rumble of absolute authority. "Hand over the Orb! Otherwise, this entire Void will be reduced to ashes beneath my fleet!"
Hermione looked at the towering Kree fanatic with great interest. Then, she slowly turned her gaze back to Tivan, who was still kneeling on the floor. A wicked, playful smile curled on her lips.
"Oh, Tivan," Hermione clucked her tongue, her voice dripping with mock sympathy. "You're supposed to be an ancient Elder of the Universe. How come you're so lowly that every passing warlord thinks they can just step on you? Look at Ronan. He's so imposing. He didn't even say please."
She leaned in slightly, twisting the knife. "You're nowhere near as good at this as your older brother, the Grandmaster. At least he demands respect."
Tivan's eccentric face instantly turned as black as the bottom of a pot.
Being threatened to his face and robbed by Ronan the Accuser in his own home was humiliating enough. But having this little Witch publicly mock him, exposing his ancient familial insecurities in front of a room full of escaped convicts, was unbearable.
Tivan desperately wanted to order every single mercenary on Knowhere to rip both Hermione and Ronan apart. But looking at the staggering, incapacitated guards groaning around him, and feeling the terrifying pressure of the Kree warship above, he could only swallow his monumental anger in bitter humiliation.
Just when the tension in the room was about to reach its breaking point, a sudden, horrifying change occurred!
A female alien dressed in a tattered servant's uniform—Carina, Tivan's pink-skinned Krylorian maid—suddenly burst out from the shadows behind the Collector's desk.
Her eyes gleamed with a toxic mix of sheer madness, decades of suppressed trauma, and a desperate longing for freedom.
"Power... infinite power is mine!"
Carina screamed hysterically, sprinting past the stunned Guardians. She reached her pink hand out, lunging desperately to grab the violently humming purple gem exposed on the pedestal!
She had overheard the entire, terrifying conversation about the secrets of the Infinity Stones. Her long-suppressed resentment towards Tivan's cruel, endless servitude had erupted instantly. She truly believed that if she obtained this gem, she could gain the limitless power needed to overthrow her master and burn his cages to the ground!
"CARINA! YOU IDIOT! LET GO!" Tivan screamed in absolute, unfiltered horror, scrambling backward on his hands and knees. "You can't touch the Power Stone directly! IT'LL TEAR YOU APART!"
Tivan knew the cosmic mechanics intimately. Artifacts like the Eye of Agamotto, the Tesseract, the Aether, and the Mind Scepter were all specialized carriers. Their main purpose was to channel, filter, and safely unleash the raw power of their respective Stones.
But the Cosmic Orb was different. It had absolutely no functionality whatsoever. It was purely a heavy-duty containment vault. Its sole function was to prevent the holder from dying instantly upon contact—which truly showed the unparalleled, volatile danger of the Power Stone.
Unfortunately, Tivan's warning came a fraction of a second too late.
The exact moment the red-skinned girl's trembling fingers made physical contact with the raw surface of the Power Stone, an unimaginable, apocalyptic surge of violent purple energy instantly flooded into her biological system.
"AAAAAAAAAAAH—!"
Carina unleashed a piercing, inhuman scream of absolute agony.
Countless jagged, glowing cracks instantly appeared across the surface of her pink skin. Blinding, volatile purple light burst out from the fissures, her body acting as a failing, overloaded battery.
"Get down!" Quill yelled, tackling Gamora to the floor.
BOOM—!!!
A deafening, catastrophic explosion rocked the museum. A blinding, roaring storm of purple cosmic energy instantly engulfed Carina's body, vaporizing her completely.
The violent, uncontrollable power of the Stone raged outward in every direction. The apocalyptic shockwaves spread out like a tangible, crushing force, tearing through the glass cages, shattering the artifacts, and causing the entire massive hall of the Void to shake violently as if the Celestial skull itself was about to be torn completely apart.