Who: Carol Danvers & Doctor Strange What: Carol arrives When: Right before she posts, 4/6 Where: On the streets Rating: Green
The beeper went off, but it was already in her face. People in front of her, half the population that she had been with, disintegrating before her eyes. Carol looked to the beeper from a place that she hadn't been in a while. Earth. C 53. She didn't know what the hell was going on, but clearly it was bad. Fury never hit the pager, so it had to be catastrophically bad. Of course the people disappearing from her eyes were doing that too. She didn't get to say goodbye to anyone she knew. She turned and flew. Flew as fast and as hard as she possibly could. As she made her way back to Earth, all she could think about was Maria and Monica.
Would they be there? Would she find them gone? There was a dull pain in her chest from the thought of it. By the time that she arrived on Earth, her whole body was engulfed in a flame and glow that no real human could withstand. It didn't take her as long as it possibly should have, she was closer than she had thought. This time she didn't get hurtled through space. This time she landed to where the beeper had been going off, a little gps tracker tucked further away inside.
Carol didn't recognize the area, but she all but barged her way in. Her fists curled up, ready to hit anyone who got in her way.
And then the scene changed, as though an actor had walked through a closed curtain on a stage, where what was hidden behind it was totally different. Where there was chaos, there was now a peaceful pedestrian scene. Cars weren't crashed into one another. They were moving unhindered, with people behind the wheels. People weren't screaming. They were walking, some with their dogs, and a few gave the pair a glance before they kept walking.
New Yorkers had seen weirder things after all. Like aliens invading from a hole in the sky.
Waiting on the sidewalk was a tall man with greying temples, dressed in monk's garb. Over it, he was wearing a red cape that seemed to defy gravity.
"Hello," the man greeted in a deep voice, studying her from a distance. "I'm Stephen Strange, and I help protect this world. I sensed you being pulled into this dimension. You're definitely not from here....or like anything that I've encountered before."
There was nothing threatening about it, rather it was an observation. One borne out of curiosity.
Though she’d been through a lot of different things, all she could compare this to was that moment when she was all at once linked up with the Supreme Intelligence. Which is why she was looking around quite quickly, trying to figure out if that’s where she was. Except this wasn’t an empty chamber, and there was no thing that looked like Mar-Vell here. It looked like a city, it looked like Earth. So she waited a moment. She hadn’t destroyed the Supreme Intelligence, but she didn’t think it could get to her from a random place such as this.
At least here it didn’t look like anyone was fading from existence or disintegrating. When at first no one appeared that she knew, she looked both relieved and confused. Then she saw the man who was clearly looking at her. Maybe she should have changed into her regular clothes before she got down on Earth.
This wasn’t someone that she knew, or recognized. So. Not Supreme Intelligence. Well that was a relief. Not that it meant she was in trouble, but at least it wasn’t that. And he wasn’t attacking her, so she unclenched her fist just slightly.
“I’m in another dimension?” she asked, looking around. It looked like home. More or less. There was still some parts of her that didn’t quite get the whole home thing. She remembered bits and pieces, but it was still largely foreign. “There was something bad going on, and I was coming to help but.. It doesn’t look bad here.”
"Yes," Stephen answered. This woman was wearing a Kree uniform, but not their colors. Her aura wasn't registering as a planetary or interdimensional threat. He wasn't about to treat her like one until she gave him reason to. "It's another universe, albeit a very young one. The timeline splint and I suppose you could say, we took the road less traveled. Things are different here."
Someone walked by and appeared to be stopping to make a snide comment about what they were wearing. Stephen cut them off without a second glance.
"We're working on a routine for a comic con. Empire State, Albany, April twelfth through the fourteenth."
The way that Strange said it brokered no argument. Since it was the most used excuse for any number of costume choices, he was now memorizing the dates of anything nearby. It seemed to work, since the person shrugged and shuffled off.
"Anyway," Stephen continued, now that they weren't going to be interrupted. "There was a decimation in our prime universe counterpart. Half of everything living was wiped out. By Thanos. That bled over here and we lost some people. Nothing as irreversible or extensive as...that."
He coughed, uncomfortable with that topic. Knowing what it was like to get dusted was enough, thank you.
None of that really made any sense. Did that mean they were from another dimension and now they were in this one? Just as she was about to ask something, there was this conversation about.. Comic con? Carol looked pretty damn confused about whatever a comic con was. And why they were supposed to be dressed up like that? Maybe she would come back to that, but she didn’t think it actually seemed important.
“Okay, wait. Let me get this straight. You’re all from another dimension. And.. I suppose that I am as well, since I was seeing people get disintegrated before my eyes. And then something happened and everyone got transported here where that didn’t happen? Except some parts of it, where some people actually did die. Or do you not mean die, you mean lost? To the other dimension?” She just wanted to be sure that she had her story straight.
Well she might as well ask. “What’s a comic con?”
"Don't worry," said the world's most comforting doctor. Not. "I know it's confusing. Not even I have all of the answers. What I do have, is a color pamphlet that covers this. We're a bled over copy of our prime counterparts, brought over into this dimension. This universe decided to spit everyone out into New York City. So, congratulations. You've just crossed over. Things are slightly different here. We beat Thanos, for now. So things are a bit better off than our Prime counterparts."
Stephen held up a pamphlet, which floated over to Carol like the flapping wings of a bird. It hovered, waiting for her to take it.
While waiting for her to take it, Stephen took a moment to explain.
"Comic cons are a convenient excuse. It's a convention, a gathering, where people dress up as their favorite characters from comic books, television shows, or movies. If anyone asks you why you're wearing that? Just say comic con. There's one going on somewhere, most of the time."
The cape made an exaggerated shrugging motion and Strange shrugged a little too. It was a double shrug.
Great. Floating pamphlets. This guy was weird. Of course that was coming from a woman who was wearing a weird outfit herself, so she didn’t have a lot of room to talk. She took the pamphlet in front of her, and then opened it up. She glanced over it, before looking back over at Stephen. She would read this later. “Okay, I’ll read this soon. Thanos? Who’s that? The thing that’s responsible for the disintegrating thing?” That was the only thing that she could think of.
Oh, right. Okay. That made sense. “Oooh, one of those. Got it. Like a Star Wars Convention.” Carol nodded her head, understanding finally. He should have just lead with that. She’d never heard of a ‘con’ before, but it made sense. Not that Carol had EVER gone to a Star Wars convention, back when she had her memories. Nope not at all.
“So what do I do now? I take it there’s not a way back home? Is there a Maria or a Monica Rambeau around? What about Nicolas Fury? Except, don’t tell him I called him that.”
"Yes, Thanos is the one responsible. He gathered the Infinity Stones, primordial aspects of the universe, and used them to balance everything how he thought it should be. Which meant killing half of everything. He's a threat here, but he's without those powers."
Star Wars convention? Stephen stared at Carol like she was a little weird too. Of course, he was weird by default. There was no room to talk, so he left those things unsaid.
"Yeah, and Star Trek. Those are included in comic cons now," he said, although he hadn't really ever been to a convention either. "No way home, so we'll set you up at Thirty Warren, where you'll have your own apartment. I'm not sure about Maria or Monica Rambeau. But Fury is here. He's on the network."
Stephen looked both ways before opening a smaller portal, taking a laptop sized package out of it. It collapsed in on itself to close, before another larger one opened, revealing a clean modern apartment on the other side.
"Welcome to the universe," he said, holding the package out to her the old fashioned way. "You'll find everything you need in this package. The money is loaded onto a credit card. There's a tutorial on buying clothes and food already loaded onto the phone and laptop."
Infinity Stones. “Oh. Like the Tesseract.” The thing that had given her, her powers. And she had only been hit with a blast of it, not the whole thing. To find out that some giant asshole had taken them and was wiping out half the population made her feel all nauseous inside. And he was still here, though he didn’t have the stones. Which meant that she had to find Goose. See if that stone was still inside of him. To make sure that Thanos didn’t get anywhere near the cat.
The moment he looked at her like that, she threw up a hand. “Hey, don’t you judge me for liking Star Wars,” she said with a huff. “Star Wars. Not Trek. I mean Trek is okay, but Wars.” Damn it.
No way home, and moving into a new place. Huh. “I haven’t had a home in a long time.” Another person to look for. Maybe Maria and Monica were safe. “Fury’s here? Good.” She had to talk to him, no offense to this guy who looked like he was actually in Star Trek. Especially with all his portals and shit. Well at least now she wouldn’t get lost.
Carol took the package and frowned. “I’m from the 90s, not the 1790s. What year is it here?”
Dr. Strange knew where the stones were, and they had seperated them out already, into what he deemed the 'Infinity Watch.' He knew that the space stone was now bound into Loki's dimensional pocket, locked to both himself and Thor, as a means of compliance. There was only one stone left without someone to protect it now.
But he wasn't about to go volunteering that bit of information, until he was certain this person could be trusted. He didn't get a sense that she had malicious intent. She was rushing back to help, after all. But she radiated a lot of power, and Stephen didn't want to take any unnecessary risks. Even if they did need the help to fend out Thanos, should he return.
"It's not the nineties," Stephen said slowly, once it fully registered what year she said she was from. "It's 2019, uhh....I'm sorry. Before you go to your apartment, what's your name?"
Better to ask, since she apparently came from outer space. He hoped whatever it was, would be easy to pronounce.
“2019? It’s been twenty five years? Shit.” Oh god. That meant Maria was older. Monica was older. Monica would be nearly her age at that point. It was a little too much to think about. Still it was clear that the time change wasn’t lost on her. She had really only been gone a couple of years, into space and trying to help people. She should have known that the world would continue to move on without her. It had to.
Maybe Carol had assumed by the way he dressed and had all those portals, that he would have known who she was already. Did Fury tell no one about her? Figures. HIm and his secrets.
“Carol. Carol Danvers.”
Fury hadn't said a single thing about anyone named Carol Danvers. That much was clear by the thoughtful expression on Stephen's face as his photographic memory came up blank.
"Glad to meet you, Carol," he said. "Even if it's twenty five years after you remember this place. This must be jarring on you. Excuse me...."
Dr. Strange looked at a teenager who was staring into the portal, having a gander at the inside of the apartment.
"That's not for you. It's for her. Just...no."
"How does this work...?"
"Just....no." Stephen stared at the teenager in a way that was placid but unnerving, until they too walked off. Then he directed his attention back on Carol.
"You'll be able to contact Nick Fury on the network. But unless you want to throw a house party with a few new friends, you might want to...uhh....follow me."
The cape billowed out as he he floated through the portal, and landed on his feet, waiting on the other side for her to enter. Once they were safe from pedestrians gawking at magic tricks, he would depart.
Teenagers. Great. “Yep, let’s go.” There was not a moment that she wanted to stay here any longer. Carol quickly followed him through the portal, and hoped that she would come out on the other side in one piece.
Once she got her feet on the ground (so to speak) she would figure out what the hell to do next.