The heavy, oscillating roar of the Quadjet engine tore through the quiet Louisiana evening, kicking up a massive cloud of dust as it touched down near the sprawling airplane garage on the Rambeau property.
Max had been sitting on the porch, his sketchbook in his lap and a blue crayon in his hand, when the ship landed.
Maria Rambeau emerged from the house a second later, her face set in stone.
She grabbed a heavy wooden baseball bat from beside the door, her protective instincts instantly flaring.
Eleven-year-old Monica rushed out right behind her.
Max slid off his chair, clutching his sketchbook, and quickly waddled over to hide behind Maria’s legs as they approached the strange aircraft.
The jet’s ramp lowered with a hydraulic hiss.
Two figures walked down into the humid summer air.
One was a tall Black man in a dark trench coat.
The other was a woman wearing ordinary, slightly grungy civilian clothes—a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt, a flannel tied around her waist, and a leather jacket.
Her blonde hair caught the evening light.
Maria stopped dead in her tracks, the baseball bat lowering slightly.
Her breath hitched.
“Auntie Carol?” Monica whispered, her eyes wide.
Before Maria could even process it, Monica sprinted across the grass.
She slammed into the woman, wrapping her arms tightly around Carol’s waist in a fierce hug.
Carol froze.
Her hands hovered awkwardly in the air, her posture stiff and stoic.
She looked down at the young girl clinging to her, a storm of fragmented, locked-away emotions swirling behind her eyes.
She slowly, hesitantly, patted Monica’s back.
“I…
I don’t remember you,” Carol admitted, her voice thick and uncertain.
She looked up, her eyes meeting Maria’s over the child’s head.
“But I feel like I should.”
Maria dropped the bat.
The wood clattered against the gravel.
“Carol,” she breathed.
Max peered out from behind his mother’s jeans, taking in the scene.
He clutched his sketchbook tightly, his teenage mind calculating the immense shift in the timeline, even as he played the part of the timid toddler.
They moved inside to escape the sweltering heat.
While Maria and Carol went into the living room to talk, Nick Fury stood at the kitchen sink, washing a glass and filling it with tap water.
He took a long sip, letting out a tired sigh, before turning around.
His single good eye landed on the small kitchen table.
Sitting there was a four-and-a-half-year-old boy.
He had fair skin, light hair, and was entirely absorbed in drawing geometric shapes in a sketchbook with a blue crayon.
Fury raised an eyebrow, his gaze shifting from the boy to the family photographs on the fridge, and then back to the boy.
A distinctly white child in a Black household.
“Well, look at you,” Fury murmured, walking over.
“Didn’t know Captain Rambeau expanded the family.”
Maria walked back into the kitchen to grab coffee, catching Fury’s gaze.
“This is Max,” she said, her voice carrying a fiercely protective edge.
“I adopted him a few years ago.
He’s my son.”
Fury held his hands up in a placating gesture.
“No judgment here, ma’am.
He’s a cute kid.
Focused, too.” He looked down at Max.
“What’cha drawing there, little man?”
Max looked up, giving Fury a shy, innocent, toothy grin.
He held up his sketchbook, revealing a surprisingly neat drawing of a five-pointed star.
*The symbol of Captain Marvel,* Max thought to himself, though he simply let out a happy toddler giggle.
Maria poured the coffee.
“Monica, why don’t you take Max out to the backyard for a bit while we talk?”
“Okay, Mom,” Monica agreed, taking Max’s hand and leading him out the back screen door.
In the dining room, Maria brought out a cardboard box filled with Carol’s old life.
She pulled out a handful of photographs, sliding them across the table.
Carol picked them up, her eyes tracing the images of karaoke nights, flight lines, and barbecues.
Monica had left Carol’s old dog tags on top of the pile.
Carol picked them up, rubbing her thumb over the stamped metal.
“You are a mom,” Carol said softly, looking at a picture of Maria holding a baby Monica.
“To two now,” Maria replied with a gentle smile.
“Monica was devastated when you disappeared.
We both were.
You were family, Carol.
You lived here as much as you lived at the barracks.”
Carol traced the edge of a photograph of the two of them standing by their jets.
“I just…
I want to remember.
But it’s like a wall is there.
Every time I try to look past the crash, it hurts.”
“We’ll figure this out.”
Before they could delve deeper, the front doorbell rang.
Fury instantly drew his sidearm.
Carol stood up, her fists igniting with blinding photon energy.
Maria grabbed her shotgun from the hall closet and cautiously approached the front door.
She peered through the peephole.
It was Tom, her white, middle-aged neighbor, wearing a polo shirt and a curious expression.
Maria cracked the door open, keeping the chain lock engaged.
“Can I help you, Tom?”
“Hey, Maria,” Tom said, trying to peek past her into the house.
“Just saw that…
well, whatever that is parked out by your garage.
That is one cool ride.
Everything okay over here?”
“Everything is fine, Tom.
It’s classified Air Force property,” Maria lied smoothly, her tone leaving absolutely no room for debate.
“I’m going to have to ask you to head back home and mind your business.”
“Oh.
Right.
Understood,” Tom stammered, holding his hands up and backing away.
Maria shut the door, locking it tight.
“Could be a Skrull,” Carol muttered.
Even though she checked by sending a brief plasma pulse.
Fury narrowed his eye.
“You don’t seem particularly surprised by the concept of shapeshifting aliens, Captain.”
Maria didn’t miss a beat.
“I’ve flown a lot of missions, Agent Fury and my best friend is back from the death.
Takes a lot to surprise me.”
Before Fury could press the issue, a loud, obnoxious *slurp* echoed from the back of the house.
They all spun around, weapons raised.
Standing in the kitchen, having casually strolled through the backdoor, was Talos.
He was holding a fast-food cup with a plastic straw, looking entirely unfazed by the glowing fists and drawn guns.
“You know,” Talos said smoothly, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
“You really should be kinder to your neighbors.”
“Give me one reason not to blast you right now,” Carol threatened, her eyes narrowing.
“Because we just want to talk,” Talos replied.
He took another sip, then casually pointed a long, green finger toward the kitchen window that overlooked the backyard.
“And because my science officer is already getting acquainted with your children.”
Maria’s blood ran cold.
She bolted to the window, Fury and Carol right behind her.
Outside in the yard, Monica was standing on the grass, talking to someone.
It was Maria.
A perfect, flawless duplicate of Maria Rambeau.
But Max wasn’t fooled.
Through his *Gamer’s Mind*, the shifting magical energy of the Skrull was glaringly obvious.
Playing his toddler role to absolute perfection, Max let out a terrified, high-pitched shriek.
He dropped his toy, scrambled backward across the grass, and bolted toward the porch, pointing a trembling finger at the fake Maria.
“No!” Max screamed, tears of manufactured terror welling in his eyes.
“Not Mommy!
Fake Mommy!
She is not Mom!”
Inside, the real Maria racked her shotgun, her protective fury exploding.
“Call him off,” she snarled, pressing the barrel directly against Talos’s chest.
“Right now.”
Talos held his hands higher.
“Norex!
Come inside!” he yelled through the screen door.
The fake Maria sighed, her form rippling with green energy as the human disguise melted away.
Norex, the Skrull engineer, walked inside, looking apologetic as Monica scooped up a ‘crying’ Max and hurried into the house behind him.
Once the weapons were cautiously lowered, Talos explained the truth.
They weren’t terrorists; they were refugees.
The Kree were the oppressors, hunting the Skrulls across the galaxy to extinction.
Dr.
Wendy Lawson—Mar-Vell—had been building a light-speed engine to help the Skrulls find a new home.
To prove his point, Talos reached into his coat and placed a scorched, metallic device on the dining table.
The black box from Carol’s crashed jet.
He pressed a button.
The scratchy, distorted audio of the 1989 crash filled the room.
They heard the roar of the engines failing.
They heard Lawson’s voice, desperate and breathless, telling Carol they had to destroy the core.
Max, safely held in Monica’s arms, watched Carol closely.
She was trembling, her hands gripping her head as the audio ripped down the mental walls the Kree had built.
“You have to destroy the core, Carol,”
Lawson’s voice crackled.
Then, a blast.
Lawson’s dying breath.
The cold, ruthless voice of Yon-Rogg demanding the coordinates.
“You want it?” Carol’s own voice echoed from the past, defiant and furious.
“You’re gonna have to go through me.”
The sound of the engine exploding filled the room, followed by dead silence.
Carol gasped for air, tears streaming down her face.
She closed her eyes, the full weight of her stolen life crashing down on her.
The Kree hadn’t saved her.
They had kidnapped her, wiped her memory, and turned her into a weapon.
She opened her eyes, looking at Maria.
The confusion was gone, replaced by a burning, incandescent clarity.
“I remember,” Carol whispered.
“My name is Carol Danvers.”
With Carol’s memories restored, they deciphered the data Lawson had hidden.
“These state vectors,” Carol said, looking at the coordinates on the decrypted file.
“They aren’t on Earth.”
“They’re in orbit,” Maria realized.
“Lawson didn’t build the engine on the planet.
Her laboratory is a cloaked ship floating right above us.”
“We need to get up there,” Talos said.
“But your jet isn’t designed to breach the atmosphere.”
Norex, the Skrull engineer, stepped forward, examining the schematics on the table.
“I can modify it,” he offered confidently.
“If I bypass the localized inertial dampeners and tweak the thrusters using our pod’s tech, I can make it space-worthy.
Give me a few hours.”
While Norex went out to the garage to work, Carol stood in the living room.
Under her grunge clothes, she was still wearing the Kree Starforce uniform.
Now that she knew the truth, wearing their colors felt like a betrayal.
She rolled up her flannel sleeve and manipulated the holographic interface on her forearm.
Her suit shifted through a ridiculous array of neon colors.
Monica, who happened to be wearing an old, favorite vintage t-shirt bearing the bold red, gold, and blue colors of the Air Force, sat on the sofa with Max.
“No to the neon green,” Monica declared, shaking her head.
“You look like a glowstick.”
Carol chuckled, swiping her wrist.
The suit turned stark white and black.
“Too plain,” Monica critiqued.
Max slid off the couch.
He waddled over to Monica, pointing a chubby finger directly at the vibrant red, gold, and blue fabric of her Air Force t-shirt.
He looked up at Carol, tapping his sister’s chest with a wide, adorable smile.
“Cap-tain!” Max chirped.
Carol looked at the colors on Monica’s shirt, a slow, genuine smile spreading across her face.
“You’ve got a good eye, kid,” she said softly.
She tapped her wrist.
The suit rippled, the alien green fading away entirely.
It was replaced by the vibrant, patriotic red and blue of the Air Force, separated by a gleaming gold star on her chest.
She looked down at her hands, finally feeling like herself.
She turned to Monica, her expression softening into deep affection.
“I couldn’t have figured this out without you.
You’re the bravest kid I know.
You keep your mom in line while I’m gone, okay, Lieutenant Trouble?”
Monica beamed, snapping a crisp, perfect salute.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Carol then knelt down in front of Max.
She playfully poked his nose, making him giggle.
“And you, Little Soldier.
You watch her back, okay?
Keep the fort safe.”
Max gave her a firm, serious nod, returning the salute with his tiny hand still clutching his blue crayon.
*Don’t worry, Captain,* his teenage soul thought, his vast mana reserves thrumming quietly beneath his skin.
*I’ve got the whole planet covered.*