Chapter 54 - I don't like what you're Saiyan

I felt annoyance flood me even as I read the short read-out that Phineas was projecting on my tiny HUD. Of course I can't just have a quiet outing, no, that's just too much to ask in a world of gods and monsters, heroes and villains. Just my luck that I'm facing Carol Danvers, aka Ms. Marvel, Binary or Captain Marvel (depending on who and when you asked). I knew that she would get a movie in-between Infinity War Part I and II, but sadly that was the extent of my knowledge.

That did explain why the woman in front of me seemed vaguely familiar though: she was definitely an actress that I had seen in my previous life. I couldn't remember her name or what movie I saw her in (it has been close to thirty years since I switched universes after all) and of course I had never been able to see her version of Captain Marvel, so my meta-knowledge would be pretty much useless here, almost non-existent as it was.

I do know that there had been fears (from myself included) that she would end up being a Mary Sue, appearing at the last second just to save the Avengers and kick Thanos' ass, which would invalidate the struggles and sacrifices of Infinity War, but since I had never seen Infinity War Part II, I had no idea how truthful that prediction would had turned out to have been become eventually…

Man, proper grammar when dealing with alternate dimensions is a bitch and a half.

Sadly, my in-universe knowledge of her wasn't much more expansive. Phineas quickly had access to her service record, showing the time she was enlisted with the Air Force, her designation as MIA (presumed dead, but without any sign of a body her death was never officially confirmed) and he even found her obituary in the local newspaper of her hometown. It was written by one Monica Rambeau, a fellow Air Force officer serving alongside Danvers'.

'Her call-sign was Avenger? Huh, what a coincidence.'

"Phineas. Keep looking. Also go through our own databases, specifically Sterns' alien files. If I'm correct, then Danvers should have some connection to the Kree. Start there." I subvocalized again, already trying to find ways to defuse the situation before I would need to resort to violence.

As it was, I could easily use this situation to sway public perception in my favor (even more so than it already was, that is). The hero of humanity, arrested by some lady showing up out of nowhere who hadn't been there for the horrors of the One Day War and Hell Week, leaving them to fight for themselves? Yeah, that wouldn't go over very well to say the least.

However, if things did get violent (as they had a tendency to do in my new life) then there could be… complications. I knew that I hadn't fully recovered from my stint in the Dark Dimension, I probably wouldn't for a while. The insomnia and the jumping at shadows, jittering insects and sudden movements were signs enough of that. If I were to be attacked in my current mental state… I don't think "holding back" is in my dictionary at this point.

But someone like me, going all-out on one of the top-floors of Avengers Tower, surrounded by squishy humans and slightly less squishy Avengers, while the streets below were filled with mourners for Natasha? The damage I would do, the deaths I would cause, even just as an unintended consequence of my destructive potential would be enough to evaporate a large part of my public support and confirm the fears many in the Government have regarding me.

Leveling this tower and crushing the people below in rubble and human-bits was only going to prove them right which would end up… problematic for me and my people.

It took only a few seconds for me to go through this scenario, hardening my resolve to not punch my way out of this situation, but until Phineas could find more info on this MCU-version of one of the most powerful humans in the Marvel setting, my options were limited. I needed more time to think things through, stall somehow.

Thankfully, someone else volunteered to buy me that time.

Without a hint of fear at the woman who was apparently powerful (and/or foolish enough) to stare me down, Barton stepped up until they were only inches apart, his hands clenched into fists at his side and his teeth bared in a snarl.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" he asked in a furious hiss.

Danvers leaned slightly back from him, one eyebrow raised unimpressively. I could understand how she was feeling: while an accomplished agent and marksman, Barton was still human. Him acting threatening towards a being on our level of power would feel like being threatened by a Chihuahua or something.

Still, the archer pressed on, almost vibrating with fury.

"I just had to bury my closest friend… I had to bury family today! And you want to do this shit!? Here? Now?! Have some goddamn fucking respect before I fucking send an arrow through one ear and out the other!" Barton snarled, his sheer rage filling the room even though he didn't raise his voice.

Damn, Barton. You've got balls, I'll give you that much.

I cast out my telepathy, touching on the minds of the others, trying to gauge their reactions and determine whether or not they were on Barton's side, or on Danvers' side. I was surprised to find that many of them only really knew Danvers' name and face, but not much else. Carter and Fury had briefly introduced her to them, before whisking her away, off to some meeting or other. Brushing up against Steve Roger's mind revealed a little more from the bits and pieces Carter had revealed to her lover, though she kept a remarkable level of secrecy even with him. Apparently, they had gone off to various meetings with some military bigwigs and a whole bunch of Senators. Surprisingly little SHIELD personnel, but the reason for that became quickly apparent when I looked in on Peggy and Fury.

They both considered Carol to be a hidden Ace up their sleeves, something to make the currently upset balance of power more equal. Basically their nuclear option in dealing with me: they hoped that her strength added to the Avengers would not only take away their own fears and the fears of those within the world government who shared them, but that it would also keep me in check, make sure that I wouldn't start acting out or against the best interest of humanity.

Given how powerful they believed Carol to be, and how desperately they felt they needed her on their side, Carter and Fury had been determined to keep Hydra as far away from the superwoman as possible. Too bad that they had invited Pierce to the meeting due to his sway over several of the present senators and generals.

I should've killed that man a long time ago, I thought despondently. It just… never came up. Which was a shame, considering that left Bucky still in his clutches. Thinking it over, I felt rather bad that I hadn't alerted Captain America that his brother in all but blood was still alive, if brainwashed and under the enemy's control. There had been some vague ideas when I first sent Carter and Rogers after Zola, together with a list of low-level Hydra personnel, but I had mainly concentrated on keeping SHIELD and Hydra focused on each other so they'd stay out of my hair (… you know, figuratively). After actually getting my hands on Zola's secrets and using them to resurrect Phineas, I had completely let the Hydra-situation slip from my mind.

Carter was dealing with it, which meant I didn't have to deal with it, and with how utterly hectic my life has become, I felt that that was a good thing and left it at that.

Since I can sense frustration from the SHIELD Directors, their plan to keep Carol around as a sort of passive-aggressive deterrent didn't work, someone apparently giving her the tools and the push needed to come after me.

Hydra's influence at work, no doubt.

While I had learned from Whitehall that the organization was on its last legs (its infiltrators in the Government harassed by the remnants of Gao, Bakuto and Alexandragon's factions of the Hand and its infiltrators in SHIELD harassed by Carter) but I felt it was high time that the final heads of the organizations should fall. Permanently.

Especially since some of the remaining leaders were apparently becoming desperate enough there were some tentative talks about throwing caution and anonymity in the wind and going back to their roots: focusing solely on returning Hive to Earth at any cost.

Yeah, better for everyone if I cut that little scheme off as soon as possible. Good thing my Hysminai are already deployed in the field to raid a few of Hydra's remaining toys, their locations generously (if unwillingly) provided by Whitehall.

Barton's angry words shake me from my errant thoughts, buying me some time by keeping Danvers' attention on him, but it also does little to defuse the tense situation. The Avengers, who have steadily been drawing closer to the confrontation, share his feelings for the most part. Steve is torn between his loyalty to Carter and his loyalty to his dead friend, but the others are much more clear on where their loyalties lie.

Banner and Stark had very little faith in SHIELD to begin with, and they don't appreciate a woman they barely even know just walking into their home apparently ready to pick a fight with the guy who has saved Earth twice now. More importantly, they didn't want her picking a fight with the guy who was speculated to be capable of leveling city blocks right here in the tower.

They (and more importantly, their girlfriends) lived here after all.

Thor was interesting, partly because due to his Asgardian royal lineage, his mind was much more difficult to read than the others. But he wore his emotions on his sleeve and I hardly needed telepathy to understand that Thor was pissed at the disrespect the woman showed his dead friend and battle companion.

Disrespecting the dead is a big no-no in Asgardian culture (making Hela's acts even more villainous come to think of it).

Danvers herself was… also interesting. There was a brief flash of annoyance at the way Barton got in her face like that, but she was quick to dismiss him, her focus almost immediately returning to me. She wanted to fight me, I realized. Exploring her surface thoughts a bit further, it was easy to see why.

Her entire mindset was… rigid. She saw things in black and white, heroes opposing villains. There were problems and dangers facing innocent people and it required those with extraordinary skills and abilities to combat said problems and dangers and thus save the people.

The ideal version of the classical hero, with her sense of self firmly rooted in said vision.

For her, the current situation was simple and straightforward and she was struggling to understand why other heroes were getting in her face over it instead of following her lead or at the very least stepping aside to let her do her damned job: I was the bad guy, she was the good guy, ergo I was in some dire need of being punched in the face and she was all too glad to provide said punching.

There wasn't even any specific hatred towards me personally: it was more the concept of me, what she had been led to believe that I represented. This was right, this was the way the world worked. Whenever there was evil, she would show up and defeat that evil in glorious combat, thus saving the day and being the ideal hero.

It was a remarkably… simplistic world view. Rather militant as well. I figured that discovering what created such an extraordinary worldview would allow me to better steer the current situation away from a violent confrontation, so I pushed somewhat deeper into her mind. Thankfully, a three-way shouting match had evolved between Barton, Fury and Stark, which kept Danvers' attention away from me right now.

I barely paid any attention to the argument as I delved deeper, only keeping a superficial "eye" on it. Stark and Barton were basically going 'what the hell dude?!' at Fury, while he was going 'look, this is the best I can do, alright!?' back at them. It seemed Carol's little stunt here was definitely not how Fury and Carter had envisioned her role here on Earth, but since they couldn't exactly drag the powerful woman away from me, they had doubled down and decided to stick to their guns, determined to portray some kind of control over the situation.

Ironic. Their lack of control over me fueled much of their original fears, but the person they brought in to deal with said fears proved to be equally difficult to control.

Reading deeper into Danvers' thoughts, I saw why the superwoman had gone off-script. Carter and Fury's original plan would've kept her on Earth for an extended period of time, at least until they felt that they had gotten back on their feet again, instead of being left in the dust compared to Othrys and (more importantly) me. But Carol felt extremely little for that plan, chafing at the thought of being chained to a single planet, kept around like a scary attack dog for who knows how long.

She wanted to get away from Earth. Or maybe not so much away from Earth as back in outer space. As I had suspected, she had been waging a one man war against the entire Kree Empire, and while said empire of highly advanced superstrong blue-skinned aliens was far too expansive for her to do any crippling damage to, her efforts had tied up enough of their military might that they were slowly being forced to give ground to the Nova Empire.

Hence the possibility of peace talks that were being broadcasted onto almost every news outlet when I had visited Xandar, which gave me hope that Sterns had picked up some information on her when he was snooping around its massive library.

Carol didn't want to be contained on Earth at someone's beck and call for an undetermined amount of time: she wanted to go out there and fight the good fight. Considering the scale of battle that she had been operating on for the past thirty odd years, Earth just seemed like small fry to her (it was also why she wasn't really bothered by this being the day of Natasha's funeral. She had seen plenty of death after so much war that it was just a part of life to her now, not really anything special or noteworthy). In the theater of war between the forces of Good and Evil, Earth was just some minor side-piece.

Of course she'd come and help when needed (though reacting to a signal from a pager that first had to travel from the one end of the universe to the other, it inevitably meant that she would always show up too late for the party, that's what heroes do after all. But this tiny, underdeveloped backwater was hardly enough to keep the star of the show contained. No, a person with her power should be front and center, fighting off the villain of the week and being regarded as a hero by all.

It wasn't because she was a glory hound, but she literally couldn't think of herself as anything less than a hero. No, not just a hero: the hero. That rigid world view of hers was built entirely on a self-image that was almost childlike in its ideology and simplicity (not to say that it was childish, but it was very… uncomplicated).

This deep in her thoughts (I wasn't fully inside her mindscape or anything, but I had definitely gone beyond mere surface level thoughts) I could see what that worldview was based off: massive amounts of damage to the very essence of her mind.

This damage wasn't just old, it was structured. Targeted. Someone (or something) had ripped apart and broken down who and what Carol Danvers was, and rebuilt her from the ground up. It was difficult to determine what she had been turned into and how or when without delving even further, which would leave my body in a sort of trance like state, but I could tell that it was focused on rapid decision making, aggression and a focus on physical responses to outside stimuli.

My best guess was that she had been turned into a soldier of some sort. A weapon.

Had being the operative word here: the changes themselves didn't make up the majority of the damage after all. Those had been delicate and clean, surgical alterations in her very thoughts. I wouldn't be surprised if I found physical alterations in her actual brain as well.

But the majority of her mind was covered in the mental equivalent of harsh jagged cracks, or massive burn scars. The weapon that Danvers had been turned into had been broken, her programming ripped apart. Clearly, Carol had broken free from her Kree masters, though I couldn't tell how. Afterwards, she had built herself up again, but destroying whatever the Kree had done to keep her in check didn't just magically undo the damage already done the original Danvers. So, Carol had tried to reinvent herself, but was only left with the broken and repurposed remains of the soldier she had been (Vers, a thought flows towards me).

So she had meshed the broken shards of this Vers together with whatever was left of Carol and thus Captain Marvel was born. But young Carol Danvers already had a me vs. them mentality, which had only been enhanced by her Kree programming, merely directed against the Empire's enemies (and shit, Skrull were real after all, though for some unfathomable reason Captain Marvel thought they were friendly).

So when she rebuilt herself, it led to the very type of hero that had inspired fear in me when I first woke up in the MCU.

A hero that is uncompromising in their battle against whatever they perceive as evil. A soldier in the name of all they think is good and right and woe to whoever stands in between them and their goal. Captain Marvel was the type of hero that enjoyed throwing villains through buildings and making the classic three-point landing and dramatic power-ups and force beams and at the end of the day they would look back onto the burning city and be satisfied they had saved the day (the nickname of Victoria Dallon, a hero in the Worm setting, suddenly came to mind: Collateral Damage Barbie).

And right now, I was that bad guy, threatening the safety of her home planet, so she would just have to quickly deal with me and then get back to being a hero on an intergalactic level.

It was all she knew, after all.

All that she could be. The dilemma that Steve went through, of the soldier without a war to fight and wondering whether he should be grateful or depressed, is something Captain Marvel apparently never went through. She couldn't. Her mind had been torn down, restructured and restructured again, until all she was, and ever could be, was a soldier.

She just needed a war to fight and the Kree had been an acceptable target, both to Vers the soldier and Carol the human (who was also a soldier).

It was like Frank Castle's condition when he became the Punisher, endlessly stuck in a fight or flight response. Only with superpowers.

'Yeah…' I thought to myself as I settled back into my own mind again, focusing back on the superwoman who was honestly thinking she was doing the right thing here.

'I don't really see a way in which this doesn't end in violence.'

Less than a couple of seconds had passed while I dove into her mind and already Barton looked really close to socking Fury right in the jaw. Fury looked like he would very much like to do the same to Barton, though his hands were still clasped behind his back and his frustration was less aimed at Barton and more at me, Carol and the world in general instead.

That's what you get when you tell a mentally traumatized superwoman who has been away from Earth for the past thirty years fighting an interplanetary Empire that she should stick around on Earth and do nothing but look scary.

She's going to say 'fuck it' and look for something to punch so she can get back to whatever she was doing.

In this case, that something was my face.

"Look, I'm sorry for your friend. I am. From what people told me, she was a good soldier and she died a hero. That doesn't change the fact that this man is dangerous. I've seen his kind a thousand times before: they look genuine, help out the little guy and all the while they keep hoarding power, until it's too late and suddenly everyone has to bow down to their new all-powerful dictator. I'm not going to let that happen on Earth. Either he comes quietly, or I knock him out and drag his ass behind me, but we are doing this now. I'm not going to give him the chance to run to that fortress of his and hide inside. You don't have any idea how annoying it is to breach evil overlord lairs. They always have traps that try to crush you, gore you or set you on fire. Some of the more clever ones have traps that do all three. So, again, sorry for your friend, but dangerous evil warlord over there that I gotta take in. If you're with me? Good. If you're not? Step aside." Carol suddenly cut in, her voice a hard tone, her lidded eyes and turned down lips giving off an air of bored annoyance.

To her, this was a song and dance that she had performed a hundred times already, and it always ended the same way: with her standing victorious over the broken body of some local villain that had been terrorizing some planet or something.

She just wanted to get this over with and didn't even see me (or the other Avengers) as a real threat. Just things that were getting in her way and slowing her down while she could be doing more important stuff.

While I knew that she wasn't entirely to blame for her skewed world view, her dismissal of my power irritated me immensely. I had crushed the Chitauri Armada. I had erased Belathauzer. I had fought Dormammu in his own realm until he admitted defeat! I am Hyperion! I'm the New Titan of the East!

Nobody disrespects me!

Seeing the air around me waver, I realize with a start that Extremis was burning brightly inside of me, my veins casting an orange glow over my black suit as the air around me wavered. All conversation halted and the air turned cautious as all Avengers regarded me warily.

Carol just smirked in anticipation.

I calm down when I see a new stream of data on my HUD, courtesy of Phineas, as his voice hurriedly speaks up in my ear.

"Ask her to identify herself!"

I don't have to answer, Phineas immediately picking up on my unvoiced question.

"One of the rules for arresting someone to identify yourself, identify the person whose being arrested and then explain what charges are listed on the arrest warrant! She's only done two of those, and she hasn't shown us the warrant yet, if she even has one! We can fight this! Not like fight fight, but you know! Legal fight!"

Inwardly I pat myself on the back for teaming up my supersmart AI ghost friend with my supersmart lawyer on putting together the PDF guidelines for the UNOOSA. It seems that Phineas has picked up quite a lot from that ongoing project by assisting Hogarth.

"You gotta take me in, you say?" I rumble quietly, getting a confident nod from Carol as she uncrosses her arms and places them on her hips, looking at me challengingly.

"And you are… who exactly?" I say with a lazy smile, getting a furrowed brow in return.

"What's it to you?" she asks in wary tone, anticipating either a sudden trap or a boring stereotypical villain speech of general evil-ness.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." I merely quote back at her with a relaxed smile as the last heat of my Extremis gently fades away.

Carol's confused, but Carter, Fury, Tony and Bruce immediately catch on to what I'm getting at, if their looks (ranging from immense frustration to sadistic glee) are anything to go by.

"There is something called the constitution, you know? Maybe you've heard of it? In particular, there's the Fourth Amendment, which states a few rather very interesting things about what you're currently attempting." I continue, my own smile growing wider in accordance with Carol's rising frustration.

She never likes it when the villain starts talking, she just wants to get to the punching part already, dammit!

As I'm repeating almost verbatim what Phineas is whispering in my ear, I'm also looking through the files he's thrown up on my HUD, pulled from Sterns' cache of alien information. It's mainly news articles regarding activity in the outer reaches of the galaxy, discussions regarding a single figure that has been rumored to fight off the Kree on a multitude of planets. It's mostly speculation, mainly about her identity, her motives and even on whether or not she's even real. It would seem the Kree have done a fine job of hiding the fact they were consistently getting their asses kicked by a single person, but there was enough there that an idea started to form in my mind.

As I directed Phineas to dig up more files and start putting them together for what I needed, I continued talking about the Fourth Amendment.

"A valid arrest warrant must be issued by a neutral judge or magistrate, who has determined there is probable cause for an arrest, based upon sworn testimony or an affidavit in support of the petition for a warrant. The arrest warrant must specifically identify the person to be arrested. If a law enforcement affiant provides false information or shows reckless disregard for the truth when providing an affidavit or testimony in support of an arrest warrant, that may constitute grounds to invalidate the warrant. So, let's get a few things in order. First, I'd like to see some credentials: proof that you're an officially licensed enforcement affiant. Second, I'd like to see the warrant itself. Third, I'd like my lawyer present." I rattle off, counting on my finger with each point, almost in sync with each jump in frustration that it causes Carol.

Carol's irritated, but also struggling how to react. As a hero, it's her job to stop the bad guy at any cost, but flaunting the law is something that villains do. It's not like she knows the law like the back of her hand (she sure as hell doesn't care about property damage or going after villains to make proper citizen arrests), but it's more like a nebulous construct to her that keeps the line between right and wrong clear.

Okay to bend as far as needed when the situation calls of it, but not something to be broken just for the sake of a little convenience.

"Carol Danvers. US Air Force." She bites out, arms crossed in front of her torso again.

I smile as she walks straight into my (or rather, Phineas') trap.

"Air Force you say? Well then, Miss Danvers, I regretfully have to inform you that you are currently violating the Posse Comitatus Act. Please refrain from trying to detain me or I shall have to contact the authorities and have you arrested." I say as I spread my arms wide, giving her the biggest, fakest smile I could.

The sudden reversal of our roles is enough that she drops her hands by her sides as she looks at me in surprise. Several of the people present, being connected to the military or SHIELD in various ways, know what I'm talking about, or at least recognize the name, but Thor is completely out of his depth, looking confused at the turn the conversation has taken.

"What is this Pussy Committee Act?" the prince of Asgard asks confused and there's a few seconds of stunned silence as we all look at him, before Bruce is the first to regain his composure, answering the Thunder God.

"The Posse Comitatus Act states that Army and Air Force personnel are expressly forbidden from being used in police actions. Not even the president himself can order a member of the military to violate the Posse Comitatus Act, to the point that if they are ever deployed in a way that even resembles law enforcement capacity, they are explicitly sent in unarmed."

He blushes as we turn to look at him, nervously tugging on his sleeves with a self-deprecating smile.

"When I first started running from Ross, I looked into finding some legal way to get him to back off. Problem is, most of those kinda laws state that there are exceptions to the rule in unique cases and pretty much everyone agreed that the… the Other Guys is pretty unique."

He trails off, before shooting me an apologetic look.

"They probably authorized something similar for you, I imagine." He says with a weary tone, his years of experience on the run from his own government clear in his tone and thoughts as he addresses me, one feared monster to another.

Carol's sudden grin snaps my gaze back towards her, and she spreads her arms as well, mirroring my earlier gesture.

"And I'm not armed either, as you can see."

Bullshit. I've seen enough of her memories and from the various data that Sterns has collected to know that there's not just her strength, durability and flight to worry about, but her laser beams as well.

"You are still a member of the Air Force. You literally cannot apprehend me. Lay so much as a finger on me and not only will I have you arrested, I'll sue you, SHIELD and every single idiot senator and general that authorized this little scheme of yours." I say harshly, anger rising in me as I feel the situation sliding back towards outright violence again.

"That would be the case... if she didn't happen to be on loan to us from the US Air Force as a special operative dealing with high-risk confrontation and containment situations. Unusual, I'll admit, but we talked it over with some… friends in the military and they were more than happy to help. We've authorized Danvers to act in the field as an Agent of SHIELD with Level 9 clearance. As for the warrant, it's right here. Feel free to look through it if you want." Carter says smoothly, physically brushing past Carol as her slim hand reach into an inner pocket of her suit jacket.

With a smooth motion of her arm, she retrieves a long, slim folded piece of paper, presenting it to me with a steady hand as she keeps her gaze locked with mine. Her eyes are expressive and her unvoiced message to me is as clear as day, even if I didn't possess telepathy.

'Please. Please play along and come quietly. None of us want this to escalate.'

… Yeah, sorry but no. I know that I didn't want this to turn violent, but this just takes the cake in brazen asshole-ishness. If you'd just been straightforward and honest and just contacted me like a normal person (I have a website with my info on it for crying out loud!), asking me politely to come to the Capitol to reassure various branches of the Government that I wasn't just going to go Evil Overlord on them all, I'd be happy to indulge you. Stability works in my favor as well you know?

But no, you just had to go all paranoid superspy on me and suspect me of completely disregarding the existing powerstructure of modern day society with some nebulous goals towards world domination somewhere down the line.

... fine, you're actually correct in assuming that, but still!

I get that you all being here can be pretty much solely be blamed on Carol's impatience in dealing with me, but that doesn't change the fact that you're confronting me on the same day as one of the Avengers was buried with full honors. That's just distasteful.

So no, I'm not going to just play along and go quietly. I won't go at all. I'll still try to resolve things non-violently, but at the end of the day, I'll be going back home to Othrys and nowhere else, and certainly not wherever someone else orders me to go. Whether I'll go home leaving a trail of broken bodies in my way is entirely in their hands now. They try and use any level of force or coercion on me, and I'll unleash hell on them.

... figuratively speaking, of course.

As I finish ranting in my mind, I take the slim envelope from her hands with my massive fingers without a word. I deftly flick it open, taking mere moments to scan the document and then a few moments more to cut through all the legalese bullcrap and flowery language to get to the heart of the matter. It's pretty much exactly what Carol first accused me off. They believe I've taken the Scepter and the Tesseract, and that I've killed those three soldiers when I first recruited Sterns while Blonsky and Banner were ripping up Harlem, and have cited they have several witnesses that would agree to come forwards and attest to both claims.

Interestingly enough, there's nothing about the theft of Tony's Arc Reactors in here. While we never really went to court over it (sure, our legal teams circled each other occasionally, but the cost-risk assessment never really favored either party at the time) and it hadn't really gotten in the public eye, Fury and Carter should definitely be aware of Stark's own suspicions of my criminal past nonetheless.

The fact that they haven't incorporated it into the warrant confirms my suspicion that they haven't involved the Avengers (or at the very least Tony) in setting up this little scheme. The fact that they think they have witnesses is worrying though: going along and fighting this out in court might actually work against me if they can make a strong enough case out of this. It would certainly harm my credibility and my popularity with the general masses.

"This is a very nice piece of paper. But you and I both know that that is all this is: a piece of paper, not even worth the ink that's printed on it. All these outrageous claims of yours sure are sensational, but without proof they're useless. The SHIELD objects I have allegedly stolen are classified to hell and back so you wouldn't even be able to use them in court and even if you were so desperate to take me down that you'd disclose both of them, my lawyer would still utterly rip your ownership claims to absolute shreds. The scepter was brought to Earth by Loki, so it isn't SHIELD's to begin with and the Tesseract, if it even belongs to anyone, is Odin's. Good luck fighting him in court. As for those soldiers... the destruction that Blonsky caused in Harlem is well known. What are people going to think when they realize you've been digging through the mountain of corpses he left that night, trying to find a few you can try and pin on me? This? This will never hold up. You've got nothing." I growl back, letting the paper fall to the ground with a dismissive flick of my hand.

I can feel Carter's resignation as she briefly closes her tired eyes, and the rising anticipation of battle in Carol, but surprisingly it's Fury who steps forward, a tight, grim smile on his face.

"Funny thing, you bringing up the Fourth Amendment. See, I've been doing my homework too, catching up on my reading. And there's a very interesting thing the law says about arrest warrants, something you brought up yourself as well. We don't need proof. Proof, is for the courts. There you can give all the speeches you want and that lawyer of yours can do all the 'shredding' she wants. But out here? Right now? All we need, is a little something called probable cause."

He leans in a bit further, tilting his body so his good eye is focused wholly on me.

"And some dude who can level skyscrapers, maybe even level motherfucking cities? Now that... I'd call probable cause." he says lowly.

"Face it, McCole. This only ends one way: with you finally unable to hide anymore behind a legal team and your fancy walls. After today you'll be answering for every single crime and murder you've been trying to hide. The only thing left to decide now, is whether we're going to do this the easy way... or the fun way." Carol says with a smirk as she crosses her arms again, giving me a challenging look.

For a moment, a pregnant pause silences the room as I slightly bow my head in thought. I can feel the hidden relief coming from Fury and Carter as it finally seems I'm giving up and coming along, as well as the annoyance from Carol that she isn't going to get the fight she wanted.

The Avengers... don't really know what to think and for the most part have individually come to the same conclusion: they'll protect themselves and the innocents around us, but aid neither Carol or me should we come to blows.

The silence is suddenly shattered (as are Fury's and Carter's hopes) when I suddenly look up with a devilish grin.

... again, I mean that figuratively.

I had only kept silent for a moment because I needed to buy Phineas a few seconds for him to complete our impromptu little project. Now that it was finished, however, it was time to unveil my new method of attack. I swiftly dip a hand in my pocket, revealing an average sized, smooth glass plate, which I nonchalantly toss a little forwards, until it's about halfway in-between me and Carol.

Instead of falling completely to the ground, it hovers in place, hanging smoothly in mid air roughly a meter and a half from the ground. Almost immediately, a series of large holographic screens bloom out to surround it on all sides, showing... Carol.

Having taken every little scrap that he could find in the databanks that Sterns had brought back with him, Phineas had created a collage of everything Captain Marvel, from news articles, to found footage short films, blurry pictures and even forum discussions. All edited and put together to paint the worst possible picture of Carol Danvers.

His efforts in that regard were made significantly easier by the fact that, to most of the galaxy, Carol was something of an urban legend. Operating deep within the Kree Empire's borders or on the outer edges of the Galaxy, not many people had actually met her or even seen her in action. There were reports and sightings of course, but the very notion that a single organism was flying around taking down Kree battle fleets was utterly inconceivable to most aliens and she had a sort of Bigfoot-status amongst most of them.

This was intentionally done by the Kree Empire. They kept a tight lid on any news of Captain Marvel reaching the outside world and their propaganda machine was tireless in taking every single act that Carol did and twisting it around until to most of the Kree, Captain Marvel was nothing short of the boogeyman. The fact that she apparently waged war on the Kree in service of the Skrull (some of the major baddies in the comics and several shows, I recall) served to enhance this image.

All in all, cleverly splicing the Kree propaganda with the other articles Sterns had picked up (which even included some promotional material from when Carol was fighting for the Kree as well, even though officially it was banned after her rebellion) served to create a horrifying picture.

What was that quote in Doctor Who again? Ah, yes.

"The most feared being in all the cosmos. Nothing could stop it or hold it or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world..."

We just made Carol look worse than that.

"This... these are lies! This isn't true!" she yelled in shock and anger.

For a woman whose whole worldview is constructed from a self image as the ultimate hero, seeing herself vilified like that must be a punch to the gut, super durability be damned.

"Really now, Captain Danvers? Can you not see the irony here? The hypocrisy? Clearly, you've destroyed starships, leveled bunkers, toppled skyscrapers, on some sort of crusade for the Skrull, which are apparently a monstrous race of deceivers and liars. In their name have you caused untold death and destruction amongst the planets of the Kree. You've chased them away from habitable star systems and even on occasion kidnapped them by the dozens! Yet you claim that this is a misrepresentation of the truth. Other parties have twisted your image to make you appear as monstrous as you do. Tell me now, Captain: can you not see the parallels between you and I? I've protected humanity, using all of my power and skill, but because others fear it and crave it, they've painted me as a monster and then pointed you in my direction."

"We're not the same! We're nothing alike! I'm not a villain and I'm nobody's puppet!" Carol hisses furiously, and there's a glow beginning to build in her eyes.

I look back at the various screens that light up the room, gently rotating and rapidly shifting from one scene to the next. Slowly, deliberately, I reach out and touch one screen with my index finger. It sticks there, halting the steady turning of the whole of the projection, before with a sudden snap, the other screens disappear. The one stuck to my finger rapidly increases almost ten times in size, making the scene easily visible to all.

As I let go, the video continues playing. It's a military installation, a low-slung, durable looking bunker of sorts, definitely in Kree territory judging by the architecture (something I've gotten familiar with over the long time I've been studying the Kree City here on Earth). The footage seems to come from some security camera on the outer perimeter of the compound. The video quality is surprisingly good, though there's no audio. We don't need it, as we see panicked looking Kree run around like an agitated ant-hill, and from somewhere in the building there are brief bursts of light.

Gunfire would be someone's first guess, but I know better. And sure enough, part of the roof of the bunker explodes outwards as if it were a volcano erupting. From the massive spray of rubble and flame rises a blinding point of light, which slowly dies away until a single flying figure can be seen, wreathed in flame.

And then something critical inside of the base goes horribly wrong, there's a wall of light, flame, stone and heat that races towards the camera... and then nothing. Just static.

"How many, I wonder? How many died in that attack? How many more in the fall out? A populous planet in the outer rims of the galaxy without a military presence? A gift-wrapped present for Ravagers and slavers alike. And this… this is just one base. On one day. You've been attacking hundreds of their worlds, Miss Danvers, for the past thirty years. How many blood is there on your hands, all for this Greater Good of yours, this righteous cause?" I coldly muse, looking at Carol from the corner of my eye.

"Between the two of us, tell me honestly: which one of us looks more like the villain here?"

That seems to send her over the edge, and there's a sudden bright flash and a dull 'whump!' sound as she immediately shrouded in a corona of flame-like light. Her eyes are blazing and her hair seems to move in an unseen wind as her casual business suit whips around her.

"Lying won't save you. I'll just beat the truth out of you if I have to. You may have others fooled, but I know what you really are and I won't allow you to ever hurt these people!" she bites in a voice that's barely able to hide her rage, her feet slowly lifting off the ground as she starts hovering.

"Wait, what?! She's a Super Saiyan?!" I can hear Phineas shout in my ear, but I'm barely listening to him, more confused as to why I'm suddenly picking up Jude Law's face from Carol's roaring mind.

I can't really focus on figuring that out though, since I've got bigger fish to fry: once again the air around me is wavering from the heat I'm giving off.. Being so close to someone who's clearly going to attack me is setting my combat instincts on high-alert, and my veins are blazing with the glow from Extremis before I'm even consciously aware of it.

Slowly glancing the glowing woman up and down, I leisurely raise an eyebrow even as I viciously hammer down my own combat instincts that are screaming at me to engage in battle and level everything around me in a ten mile radius to the ground.

"That's a neat trick. I can do something similar." I rumble slowly.

With those words, my Meteor Fists blaze to life, the flesh of my hands a molten glowing gold as I keep my open palms slightly raised in front of me. But I don't stop calling on my Chi. Instead I keep gathering my internal power, continue focusing on the metaphysical might of my body as I draw from a well of force deep inside of me.

And as I suddenly clench my hands into fists with a grunt and the baring of clenched teeth, the glow blazes from every other part of me as well, my entire form enveloped by the tell-tale blazing shine of my Chi.

Being stuck with nothing to do but train my mind and body for so long while experimenting with my new powers of energy absorption and emission derived from close contact with the Power Stone has done absolute wonders for my Chi abilities.

I haven't really felt a need to bring it out until now, so Phineas is rather understandably floored by my sudden new appearance as a molten humanoid sun enveloped in a glowing blanket of visible glowing force.

"Wait?! You're a Super Saiyan too?!"

Not now Phineas. This is difficult enough to keep up as it is, requiring massive amounts of my concentration. you can gush and geek out later. Looking back up at the similarly glowing Carol (though there are subtle differences: her glow is a flame-like shroud that envelops her body, whereas my glow is like the steady brightness from the sun and coming from within my body), I can see that's she's surprised at my new form, before she sets her jaw and narrows her eyes.

Right, it takes more than a light-show to make her back down from a fight.

There's a sudden bright flash off to our side, almost like an overpowered camera or something, but when we both slightly turn that way, we see that it was Thor instead. He has summoned Mjolnir to his hand and is now in his full battle regalia (without the helmet of course), cloak settling in heavy folds at his back as he stares us down with a frown.

To his left, Tony has suited up as well (and behind him I can see a slimmer Iron Man armor envelop a worried looking Pepper), while to his right, Bruce is doing something far more scary looking than his fellow Avengers' suit up sequence.

He merely takes off his glasses with a sigh, handing them over to Betty with a small smile as he also quickly takes off his watch. Giving her hands a firm squeeze, he gently pushes her to stand behind him, before turning back to face the two of us as he merely places his hands in his pockets.

His eyes are a blazing shade of green.

"Look, I'm sure you two glow-sticks just can't wait to have a dick-swinging contest about who can pretend to be Christmas decorations better - no offense lady- but I'd much prefer it if you didn't have that contest in my living room. It's where I keep my most expensive whiskey after all." Tony's mechanical voice comes from the speakers in his armor as he lifts his hands, palms forwards.

What's usually a peaceful gesture becomes something much more threatening as each repulsor is trained on Carol and I. Though more threatening is somewhat relative here, since those blasts aren't really going to do much damage to either of us.

I've tanked far worse than his repulsor blasts, even without my Aurelion Armor or Power Shield, and considering Carol has survived entire battleship gun batteries firing one salvo after the other, I'm pretty sure she'll be fine as well.

However, add that firepower to the other Avengers (I can even see Rhodey and Happy running out of the room together, presumably to go put on their own armors as well), and those glowing palms suddenly become something not so easily dismissed.

Glancing at the floating Carol from the corner of my eye, and recalling Phineas' shocked exclamations, I can't help myself from grinning despite the current situation.

"Let's fight somewhere empty." I casually say towards Captain Marvel.

She has just enough time to look at me with a confused look, before a portal snaps open behind her. Taking a portal takes some time to set up, with the casting time decreasing the higher the mastery of the Sorcerer. Now, I wasn't on the level of the Ancient One (yet), or some of the elder Masters at the Sanctums that hadn't died during Hell Week, but my skill level was pretty decently above average.

Which is why I made sure to finish the casting before I grabbed Carol's attention.

She has superb reflexes, already moving away from the glowing circle before it's even fully finished forming. I doubt she has had much (if any) experience with spells or magic, but she does have decades of experience of people hurling dangerous shit her way.

Still, as fast as she is… I'm faster.

A simple flex in my legs absolutely shatters the floor beneath me, a tremor shaking the building as I destroy several of the large windows behind me. The push-off, combined with my flight, sends me across the room in less time than it takes someone to blink, and I can see Carol's eyes widen as I go from standing several feet away to right inside her guard as nothing more than a golden blur.

And then her eyes widen even further as a massive fist buries itself deep in her stomach, her expression turning into one of shock and… some mere pain? Damn, she's tough. I expected to knock her down (if not out) with a single hit. Not that it really matters. For just a single moment, time seems to freeze as she's hanging there in mid-air. Then reality kicks in again, there's a sound like a thunder-clap filling the large room, a shockwave of force and air bowling the nearest people in the crowd straight off their feet and Carol is launched through the portal at speeds faster than sound.

There's a stunned silence as I straighten, still in my full-body Chi form, before I glance to my left where Carter is helping Fury to his feet. Both are looking at me wide-eyed.

"We'll discuss this further… at a more appropriate time." my voice booms loudly, my throat of course enhanced by Chi as well.

Yeah, they fucked up big time and they know it, judging from their expressions. I can hear a sonic boom coming through the portal and I realize that the fight has only just begun, so I make to go through as well. Right on the threshold, however, I turn to look at the ruffled Avengers.

"... sorry 'bout the floor Stark. My bad. Send me a bill, alright?"

Seeing his slow nod, I give him one in return, before stepping through the portal as well, letting it snap shut behind me-

"Whoah!"

-and immediately throwing myself vertically Neo-style as a force-field covered arm sails through where my head was mere moments ago. Unlike Neo when he did the most famous bullet-dodge in movie history, I can fly and instead of merely leaning back, I fly horizontally as Carol passes me overhead.

Right until her feet are above me. My glowing hands shoot out, grabbing her left leg right underneath the knee, wrapping almost entirely around her shin and calf.

And then I fly up and forwards myself, throwing myself into a frontwards flip as I bring down my hands with a roar towards the ground… and throwing Carol towards it at break-neck speeds as well. Once more, she's nothing but a blur for a second or two, before there's an earth-shattering boom! as a cloud of sand and dust blasts out in all directions.

I did exactly what I told her before I punched her halfway across the planet: I took her somewhere empty. Specifically, the Namibian desert, not so far off from where the ocean meets the endless sands as I find out when I glance out towards my left.

While engaging in battle wasn't the best outcome of that confrontation, I realized it was somewhat inevitable. Carol saw what she thought was a villain (apparently similar to Jude Law… somehow) and wanted to deal with it the way she had dealt with every villain she's faced so far: pure, overwhelming force.

To be fair, it certainly has seemed to work out for her. So far.

That was difficult enough to deal with on it's own, but the way Carter was prepared to counter my own arguments, coupled with her and Fury's memories told me that the law wasn't on my side here. If they really did have dirt on me, then letting it come to light in a massive court case could have devastating consequences for my company and my people. It didn't matter whether or not they were bluffing: clearly the Government was eager to put a leash on me and while they managed to use the law to their advantage this time, it was foolish to think that they'd even bother with such things in the future.

Like Bruce said, there were plenty of exceptions that could be made for unique circumstances.

This was a US Government that was infiltrated by Neo-Nazi's and corrupt to its core. They were already disregarding the law and lying through their teeth just in dealing with the general populace and foreign powers. If they decided to go all or nothing in how they handled me, if they really wanted to give it their all to put me under their control…

Laws might as well be non-existent at that point.

So, the best thing to do in that case was something similar in how people protect themselves in prison: you find the biggest, baddest, meanest guy around, and you beat the everloving crap out of them. Captain Marvel was the Government's biggest guy since the Avengers didn't really dance to SHIELD's tunes anymore (if they ever really did, that is), so I would do the same to her. Just not in the middle of New York where heroes and innocent crowds might get caught in the crossfire, instead taking the fight to a location of my choosing, where I could cut loose.

It was meant to send a message to the people behind this move, and to those who supported it: Do. Not. Fuck with me.

Hopefully, they'd get it and not do something… unwise.

Speaking off, in the short while that I had been going over the events of the past five minutes, Carol blasted off from the sands, her corona of power shining a blinding white as she rocketed up towards me at impressive speeds. I briefly stop flying, immediately plummeting several feet as I twist myself around, before blasting off again, neatly avoiding Marvel's blind charge.

However, it quickly becomes apparent that she anticipated this, since she keeps rocketing upwards in the direction of the sun, the glow of her power blending seamlessly with its powerful rays in the blue clear sky. Twisting myself around, I'm forced to look up towards her, and I can barely distinguish her as she moves in front of the sun.

Clever girl. Most other beings would be too blinded to really see her, allowing her to freely attack from above.

Which is exactly what she does next, as several blinding bolts of energy come screaming down at me in a barrage of furious attacks. I spot them too late to dodge, and several impact my body. My suit, despite being treated with the Amber Armor, is smoking and charred wherever she hit me, the blast themselves having enough force to them that each impacts knocks me back in the air as if I'm being punched by something remarkably strong.

Despite this, I can't help but… well, laugh.

Not because I don't respect her strength or anything, but because of the imagery this attack provides. She thinks energy lancing down from the sun can harm me? I'm Hyperion, bitch! This is my domain!

Cutting off my full-body Chi form (I can't keep it up and charge a massive spell at the same time) I instead move my arms quickly through the same patterns that I used against Belathauzer, connecting to the blazing sun above me on a level that goes beyond simple magic. Meanwhile, the blasts keep hammering down on me, and my suit is looking absolutely ruined by now. One the other hand, each thundering impact allowed me to absorb slight remnants of its energy, almost like tasting it. And each blast made me more attune to that distinct taste.

Carol must've seen that I was up to something, because she immediately doubled her rate of fire, even though each blast didn't diminish in strength (if anything, her desperate bid to cut off my attack made them feel even more powerful). It wasn't enough though. I certainly felt each and every impact, and while they stung, I was durable enough (and my pain-threshold high enough) that I managed to ignore them, even as bits of her energy seeped through my skin.

And then it truly didn't matter what she tried anymore, because with a roar, I raised one of my hands, palm splayed open. Then I closed it around something pure and solid and powerful, and I violently brought my hand down. As if I were a conductor and the sun my orchestra, it almost seemed to follow my movements, appearing to fall from the sky, it's size and glow ballooning immensely, outlining the figure of the flying Captain Marvel in stark contrast.

And then the beam impacted her back and blasted her into the majestic dunes below at speeds rivalling that of light itself. The beam was gargantuan, almost like a physical tower made of pure sunlight as I kept the attack going, my arm trembling and my teeth bared, my entire body glowing with Extremis as I pushed my body and self-control to the limit.

I didn't have to focus as much on containing the destructive energy of the blast here as when I used this attack against Belathauzer during Hell Week, considering there was nothing around us for miles. But I still needed to take care so I didn't set the atmosphere on fire or something. After a full ten seconds, I gave a deep gasp as I let my power slide away from me, straightening with a huff as the solid beam broke apart and almost gently dissapeared.

I let out a whistle as I looked below me.

It was like a cracked and blackened mirror was looking back up at me. In a roughly circular pattern nearly two miles in diameter sat below me, nothing but glowing molten glass where my collected beam of pure sunlight hat hit the desert sands. The glass gradually went over back into sand again, but surrounding the circle of Hell-looking Earth the dunes were blasted back as if a giant had taken a shovel to the Namibian desert with the intention of flattening it into a pancake.

It's the very picture of excessive amount of firepower, but Carol's supposed to be tough if she can take on the Kree by her lonesome, which definitely her in the same category as the Hulk and Thor, so she probably survived that. So, until I see a body, I'm going to remain cautious.

I've died from making that mistake far too many times to be anything less than paranoid even now.

I cut my power of flight, plummeting a few miles down to Earth in the span of a few seconds, my impact shattering the cooling glass in a massive blast, spraying pieces of the red hot molten sand around me. My eyes scan my surroundings for any sign of activity, but I can't spot Captain Marvel's body. I don't believe that attack completely burnt away even her skeleton, so I keep looking, all of my senses on high-alert.

Good thing too, since there's barely any time to react when the ground a few feet to my left suddenly heaves and buckles, before the pissed off form of Carol Danvers bursts from the ground, attacking me with murder in her eyes.

Her skin is the tell-tale red of someone who has gotten a sunburn, and her hair is definitely a lighter blonde than it was before by several shades. Most of her business suit is destroyed, either burnt or completely gone, especially across her back. The rags are barely holding on enough to protect her modesty, which is probably because the brunt of the attack was withstood by her own energy field.

Clearly, that field doesn't block the heat and radiation as well as it did with the sheer power of the attack.

Not that I really bother to focus very hard on her appearance. Ever since Hell Week ended, I've been forcing myself to not react violently when someone makes a sudden movement near me. It's been… difficult, and there are a lot of people out there that are blissfully unaware of just how close they got to being turned into sushi, spared only by my iron willpower and determination in holding my own body back.

But that was when I was dealing with innocents: that category hardly applies to the beserker woman mere inches away from me.

I move almost on autopilot. Assisted by my flight, I violently twist out of the way, evading her outstretched grasp while staying roughly in the same place. She tries to react, but she's less capable of abruptly accelerating, decelerating and turning on a dime like I can.

Thanks, Heartshaped Herbs!

As she's flying past me, roughly at the level of my torso, I brutally bring my knee up, again catching her full in the stomach. The force of my blow changes her trajectory from forwards to upwards, but she's only moved a few inches before I bring down a double-fisted hammerblow straight to the small of her uncovered back.

She rockets into the glassed ground beneath us, sending shards of glass flying everywhere, but before the molten sand has a chance to even hit the ground again, my foot crashes into her side, as if I'm punting a football. And much like a football, Captain Marvel shoots away from me in an arc through the air for several yards, before crashing through the upper part of a dune, blasting the entire thing apart with her body.

It briefly reminded me of the scene where Superman first learns to fly in Antarctica, crashing through a mountain in Man of Steel.

You know, just with sand instead.

While I'm fairly certain that I outclass her in the power department in pretty much every aspect, I'm still wary of letting an opponent with her level of strength, skill and speed out of my sight, so I follow her trajectory right on her heels.

Only to be greeted with a blast straight to the face the moment I burst from the dust cloud she left in her wake. I manage to absorb a significantly larger part of the energy in the blast this time (even if it is with my face), so the blow doesn't really sting quite as badly as the others had, but I'm still blinded for a few moments.

Long enough to be taken off guard when I can sense a shadow falling over me. Blinking the last bright spots from my vision, I look up-

"What the-"

-straight at the underside of a derelict ship as it rushes towards me at a startling move for something so quick, its metal skeleton groaning and distorting under the massive forces that are tearing its body apart, even as they are propelling it straight at my face at speeds rivalling bullets.

I manage to get my hands up just in time, but the sheer speed combined with its enormous mass still means I'm shoved back hundreds of meters as the shipwreck crashes into me. The bones in my forearms creak in protest and a sharp flare of pain in my wrists and hands tells me I've either sprained or broken some of the smaller bones there.

Considering I just caught a fucking ship that was thrown at me, and I'm not really that surprised.

My entire sight is taken up by the darkened underside of the ship, but I can still sense Carol's energy signature approaching me rapidly, coming from my right and slightly below in a diagonal trajectory. Her own level of power is working against her here, since it makes it easy for me to track. With a grunt, I bite through my slight pain, my fingers sinking deep into the metal underbelly as I use its momentum. I'm still being pushed backwards, but instead of fighting it to come to a stop, I fall away instead, turning right with an enormous heave as I pull the ship with me.

And with a torturous groan of snapping supports and tearing metal, the entire thing is whipped around as I send it slamming into Carol's side like a baseball bat made of ship. Very briefly I can spot her wide-eyed look, but then the side of the ship crashes into her, wrapping around her as I send her off flying back towards the (actually quite beautiful) shoreline of Namibia.

Of course, exerting such massive forces of such little surface area has completely torn the ship apart, and I drop the shorn off bottom-half of the prow that I'm left holding as the rest of the ship crashes back into the sands where it has rested undisturbed for decades.

It tumbles a few times, slinging off parts of itself, before it slides to a stop, the pitiful rests of an already dilapidated wreck.

Because I've viewed nearly every single available piece of footage the intergalactic community has on her, I already know Carol's next move: it's the same one she used in the little clip I played in front of everyone, after all.

As predicted, a bright missile of light slams outwards from the ruined wreckage, spreading rusted metal everywhere as she becomes a literal rising star.

Right until my fist meets her face at the apex of her rise, having predicted her movements damn near perfectly. I added a little bit more of an 'oomph!' this time, however, purple veins shining in stark contrast with the rest of my body's orange glow. Like I did when I addressed those crowds at the docks when they wanted me to resurrect their dead, I leeched energy from the Power Stone and directed it through my body.

Except, this time, instead of taking a little and sending it to my throat, I sent it into my fist instead.

And I took a lot.

It's almost like when I first hit her with my full-body Chi punch, but there are some differences. For one, instead of a blast of force and air rocketing out, it's a hazy crackling purple energy field and its area is much, much larger than before. Also, because I hit her face this time instead of her stomach, her trajectory isn't as smooth. Instead, she's sent spinning heads over heels completely out of control as she rockets away from me, down and towards the shore.

When she impacts the ground, it's in the shallows, very close to the dividing line between land and ocean, just a few feet off from the beach itself. The crash is massive, a spray of water, mud and sand flying high into the air while the water itself is blasted back from her impact zone, a several feet long and deep trench.

As the ocean slowly trickles back in, evaporating into steam wherever it touches her, I can see that the water there is less than a few feet deep, as amazingly enough, the still conscious Captain crawls out of her crash site on trembling arms, refusing to stay down. She falls back into the water with labored gasps, trying to gather her strength as she tries to push herself up again, to get back into the fight.

At least until I slam down on top of her fit first, crashing straight into her chest. The impact once again pushes back the water with a gale force of displaced air and sheer power, burying the alien-enhanced woman further into the sand with a pained gasp.

Her expression turns from rage to fear though, when the water rushes back in again… and I don't move. I can feel her desperately try and push me off of her, but I keep pressing down instead. As the water closes over her face, she tries to dart off to the sides instead, trying to slip from underneath my shoes. However, that too fails as I keep her in place using my telekinesis, while pushing straight down on her with my flight, effectively trapping her.

My mind is strained to its limit whenever she makes a desperate move, her limbs churning the low waters and throwing loose the sands, the mental feedback from my telekinesis trying to contain her strength like sharp lances through my brain.

It's like trying to stop a rampaging Hulk with nothing but your thoughts.

However, her frantic movements and enormous strength mean that she's also throwing away the sand around and underneath her, and on the same principle that a boa uses to constrict its prey, whenever there's a little space between her and the seafloor, I push down further, and again, and again, and again.

She's literally digging herself a watery grave.

Because it doesn't matter how durable you are… if you still gotta breath, then you should be just as afraid of drowning like everybody else. Yes, she could survive in space, but only when encased in that powerfield of hers, and it kept shorting out whenever I pushed her further into the sands.

I can see the realization settle with her as well when I'm up to my belly in the cold ocean waters, her form barely visible through the murk of the disturbed sands. Right until she explodes with light again, roaring in rage and desperation as she redoubles her efforts to try and buck me off.

She almost succeeds, and to my surprise I find that the water level (boiling as it is) receding until it's just below my hips. Seeing her success, Carol's shroud of power manages to increase even further as she digs deeps and pushes on, bubbles bursting through the water as she roars in defiance.

Right until my right leg suddenly glows gold, a crackling of purple energy barely visible through the rips in my pants, before I violently bring it down on her. As my heel crashes into her sternum, the resulting shockwave doesn't just blast back the water and the sand. It's almost like the entire world heaves, reality itself acting like it got a punch to the gut. A shuddering motion simply lifts up the water as slams it to the sides, as if I'm Moses parting the Red Sea, the surface of the Ocean for miles around shuddering and roiling.

Behind me, dunes crumble and the beach crashes into the water in foaming sprays as this part of Namibia's coastline sinks several feet further into the Ocean, even as the entirety of the seafloor in a radius of several dozen feet gets flattened and shoved down, as if God himself took an invisible step on the Earth.

And Carol… she goes slightly cross-eyes from the pain as all that power crashes into her torso, the breath snatched from her lungs and replaced with the unforgiving cold of seawater. She starts coughing and shaking, but it's a far cry from her titanic struggles from before. Still, even this battered, she refuses to give in, her left hand balling into a fist as she slams it into my lower leg. The force is negligible, almost on the level of a mere human, but she repeats it again, even as her lungs keep filling up, and again, even as her sight gets blurry from the tears streaming from them, and again as she lets out one last mighty yell…

And then she's shivering and coughing after I simply reach down with one hand and pull her from the ocean by her head. She's just hanging there in my grasp, looking like a drowned kitten, her eyes barely capable of focusing on me as she keeps coughing and gasping.

Her hands are still balled into fists though.

Turning, I casually toss her to the beach, where she lands in a pitiful heap of gangly limbs and ruined clothes, flopping around a couple of times before she manages to lie on her stomach, heaving as her body desperately tries to remove the water from her lungs.

I casually stroll towards her at an easy pace, and she hears my approach. Shivering, she tries to roll so she can see me, spit and bile staining her lips. I raise an impressed eyebrow when defiance still manages to find it's way back into her gaze as she locks eyes with me, even as I'm looming over her defeated form.

Said eyebrow rises a little higher when she digs her hands in the ground underneath her, grunting and struggling before she manages to lift her weary body. She lacks the strength for now to fully work herself to her feet, only managing to get her torso upright as she kneeling in the disturbed sands, even though she's looking healthier by the second.

Give her a couple minute and she would probably recover to the point you couldn't even tell she had nearly drowned. Give her around an hour and she could potentially be back in full fighting shape. I could tell that she was like a tank, running on empty, but from some unseen well deep inside of her, sheer energy, pure and powerful rushed back in to fill said tank again.

It reminded me of Jessica's field, but with the dial turned to Eleven. Something in the activation of her powers must have been ridiculously powerful to jumpstart it like that, and given how long she was a weapon for the Kree, I doubted that she would fully qualify as 'human' anymore, so that could explain this souped up version of Jessica's power.

The Kree did enjoy tweaking human genetics in order to turn us into weapons after all.

Oblivious to my thoughts, Carol hacks up the last of the seawater in her lungs, spitting it at my feet, before she leans back, staring at me in rage and defiance.

"Come on then. Finish it. I'm not afraid of dying, and I'm sure as hell not afraid of you." she manages to bite out, tilting her chin up at me as she tries to stare me down.

That… is precisely what a hero would say in a cheesy movie or something. Even now, Carol's idea of herself as a classical hero was undiminished, her worldview unchanged. Impressive or disturbing, I couldn't really tell.

"Kill you? No, Miss Danvers, I'm not going to kill you." I muse.

Carol blinks at me a few times in confusion (or to just get the salty ocean water out) and I continue, stepping closer to her as both my hands light up with Chi.

"No, I'm going to do… worse."

And with that, my hands close around the sides of her head as I pull. I have had centuries (I think) to practise how to absorb trickles of energy from the Power Stone, both during my fights with Dormammu and that impossibly long amount of alone-time when he fucked off during that last loop. I also had more practice with absorbing foreign energies into my own body through trial and error (... mostly error. Very painful error). So now, I just did the same.

I 'grasped' that power that was steadily flowing back into Carol and literally dragged it into myself instead. The process was far from gentle, as indicated from Captain Marvel's agonized screams and even my own grunts of effort. The foreign energy seeped through my skin, saturated my flesh, settled in my bones and roared through my veins, even as I kept on pulling more and more of it into me, shunting it from my hands to the rest of my body.

But the energy was just that: foreign. It alternatively felt like liquid fire being injected into my muscles or someone shoving their fingers into my veins. It was uncomfortable to say the least, but since I've actually experiences such tortures (and died to several as well) I could force myself through it. Even as my skin felt taut across my body, as if I was ballooning from the inside out, I didn't stop forcing that immensely powerful energy from Captain Marvel into my own body.

It was the work of minutes, as I labored on and Carol didn't stop screaming once, clutching at her chest as she could probably feel a painful emptying out of her metaphysical self. I kept leeching her power, even as the influx of energy trickled down from a massive waterfall to a trickling stream. I kept mercilessly pulling it away from her and into me, even as it dried up completely. I kept on siphoning the last vestiges of Captain Marvel's powers even as she started to feel hollow from the inside.

The sun was nearly dipping beneath the horizon when I finally shut off my power, Carol falling limply back to the sands with small gasp, her voice hoarse by now. I barely pay any attention to her though, my focus completely turned inwards to my own body. I can feel the massive amounts of energy surging through me, and my body reacting to it as well. It feels like I ate a nuke or something, and I fall to a knee with a pained groan.

From the corner of my eye, I can see Carol try to work herself to her trembling elbows, looking at me wide-eyed, displaying true fear for the first time. I barely pay any further attention to her though, a wave of nausea and muscle cramps rolling through my body, making me tense up and close my eyes.

I know from personal experience how devastating it can be if you absorb too much energy, or energy that's too powerful and volatile. In this case, it's both, and I'm trying my hardest to calm down so I can work on not blowing up in a shower of visceral blood and gore.

Thankfully, functional immortality inside of a time loop means you're fine experimenting with new powers, even if they repeatedly kill you and those tests do tend to give the most interesting insights (mostly along the line of 'OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS HURTS, WHY GOD, WHYYYY?!'). So, with a frustrated groan, I will myself to my feet, lifing my face to the heavens and roaring my defiance. I activate my full-body Chi, my entire form glowing a deep gold, equalling the last bright embers of the setting sun, my surroundings a burning red from the Extremis within me. As I supercharge every last cell of my body with energy, I actively concentrate on my field that I gained from Jessica's DNA, calling on it and trying to power it as far as it goes.

For a brief moment, I stay there, a delicate balance between my body, my powerfield and the absorbed energy within me. Then I take a deep breath and something shifts with a slight popping feeling. Like those pains you sometimes get in your torso, and they just… disappear when you take a deep enough breath. The bloated, strained feeling from before is gone, as if the energy finally found a little place within me to settle into. Like with my Chi and Extremis, its power is buzzing in every part of my body, charging and buzzing around in every cell, every nerve, every organ and muscle group. But it's also… merged, with my previous force-field, indicating that I was on the right path regarding how Captain Marvel's powers worked and how she could have gotten them.

Opening my eyes, I look down at myself. I realize that I've begun floating, hovering above the ground about two feet or so. My entire form is still a molten gold, highlighted by the orange streaks of Extremis running through my veins. But my powerfield is actually visible now, a corona of light, just like how it was on Captain Marvel's powered up form, though with some slight differences. Mine was… thicker, and closer to my skin, seemingly floating out of it into the field instead of merely surrounding me. The flame pattern was also more pronounced than it had been with her, though its motions noticeable slower. It started a deep gold closer to my skin, but flared out into the purest white I had ever seen, more brilliant than even the freshest snow.

If I had to guess, that was connected to the Light-Dimension somehow, but I'd need further testing to be sure.

Giving myself a final once-over, I can't help but grin as I recall my friend's earlier words.

"Phineas?"

"Yes Michael?" his voice comes, soft and awed.

"Now I'm a Super Saiyan."

It takes a few seconds before he responds, but when he does, his excitement is almost tangible.

"That's so cool! Hey, does that make Sterns Krillin? Oooh, can I be Mr. Popo?!"

AN: So, not entirely happy with this. I felt that the original version of this chapter (before I lost almost everything due to a save error or something) was better, but I also don't think endlessly shaving away at every line is going to do anyone any good, so I'll leave it at this. Feel free to give me your feedback, maybe I'll find a way to do this chapter better. Though, allow me to head off some of the questions some of you will probably have:

Carol drowning. I realized only when I was nearly finished with the chapter that Captain Carol probably doesn't need to breath, given that she seems just fine in outer space. Couple that with how she has aged, and I think her powers keep her body in a stasis of some sorts, meaning she probably doesn't need to eat or drink either. But, I also didn't want to go back and delete the entire last part of the chapter, so I kept it in. I'm justifying it as her needing her powered-up form to acquire super not-drowning skills, and Michael stomping down on her makes it short out. Whenever it does, water rushes in, over and over. Let me know if you have a better justification, maybe I can work it in.

Michael's armor/weapon and him drawing on the power stone. Michael's armor is almost nano-technology. Almost, but not yet. What he does is have his armor disassemble itself, like the Iron Man armor whenever Tony gets out of it, and then shrink it down using Cross Tech. It has been established that, even shrunk, the Stones don't lose any of their effectiveness. In this case, Michael's armature are hidden on his person much like Peter Quill's helmet. I wanted to work that into the story, but didn't find a way to make it fit. Maybe when I get around to rewriting it, I'll get around to that.

Other than that, let me know what you thought. Many of you were quite vocal with how Michael should deal with Captain Carol and a lot of your ideas were pretty cool. I didn't manage to include them all, but yeah, let me know if you thought the chain of events was believable and if the fight scene was satisfactory. To those who wanted to see Captain Carol get stomped, I hope I delivered that, and to those who wanted more depth to her character instead of me merely bashing her, I hope I managed to gave you that as well. I know I can't make everybody happy, but if I can have the majority of you like it, and the rest of you tolerate it, then that's all good in my book. So yeah, sorry for the delay, enjoy the chapter (or don't, your choice after all) and cheers!

Fun Fact: Sean Gunn, the brother of the GotG Director James Gunn plays both Kraglin, Yondu's second in command, but also does all of the motion-capture for Raccoon. Meaning that in the scenes where Rocket Raccoon, Yondu and Kraglin are racing towards Ego, technically it's Michael Rooker (Yondu) playing against two Gunn's. Three if you count the Gunn behind the camera.

As always, a huge thanks to my Patrons, I truly do appreciate and love you all! IronmanMarkIV, Shaman95, justlovereadin, Daniel Dorfman, DoctorTortoise, DavidJP, CJ Elsen, Sam, Carn Krauss, ReaperScythe, Thordur hrafn, CrankyD, Kamalpreet Singh, Devon, Kyle Reese, Kahn, RLStrained, Vu, Roman Krupkin! Thanks again for your support!