The first rule of falling out of the sky into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, James quickly learned, was finding someone who knew how to keep a secret.
Luckily, he had landed in the backyard of one of the most competent women on Earth.
When child services came sniffing around the Louisiana farmhouse, Maria Rambeau played the part of the bewildered but big-hearted citizen flawlessly.
She presented him as an abandoned infant she’d found swaddled in a strange fabric near the edge of her property.
What she didn’t show them was the small, localized impact crater he had left in the soil—a crater she had spent the entire night filling in with a shovel and covering with fresh sod.
Maria had flown alongside Carol Danvers.
She knew exactly what lay out there in the stars, and more importantly, she knew what the United States government did to things they didn’t understand.
There was no way she was letting a mysterious, sky-falling baby become a lab rat for the Department of Damage Control or some shadowy intelligence agency.
With no parents to be found and a suspiciously frictionless bureaucratic process—aided, perhaps, by Maria calling in a few old military favors—the adoption went through.
James Carter was legally dead in a universe he left behind.
He was now **Max Rambeau**.
For a reincarnated adult, being a baby for eleven months was a special kind of psychological torture.
His brain was fully conscious, analyzing his surroundings with the sharp wit of a grown man, but his body was a prison of uncoordinated limbs and zero bladder control.
He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t walk, and his spectacular cosmic powers were firmly locked behind the system’s one-year adaptation firewall.
He was bored out of his absolute mind.
However, the agonizing wait was softened by the overwhelming warmth of his new family.
Despite his initial detachment, Max found it impossible not to grow attached to the Rambeaus.
The eleven months were filled with moments that slowly cracked through his cynical, world-weary shell:
Seven-year-old Monica took her role as a big sister incredibly seriously.
Convinced that Max was an alien superhero, she spent hours in the living room “training” him.
She would build elaborate forts out of pillows and read him her entire collection of comic books, giving him detailed lectures on how to properly hide a secret identity.
Max, unable to do much else, would simply gurgle in agreement, cementing his status as her loyal sidekick.
The unlimited food-summoning tablecloth—the ROB’s parting gift—became Max’s permanent “blankie.” Because he hadn’t deliberately activated its summoning properties, it remained a bizarrely durable piece of fabric.
Maria found it amusing that no matter how much dirt, spilled milk, or baby food got on it, the cloth wiped completely clean with a single damp rag.
She wrapped him in it every night, unaware she was swaddling him in a cosmic artifact.
Babies don’t sleep through the night, which meant Maria didn’t either.
During the quiet, exhausting hours of 3:00 AM, as she rocked him in the dimly lit nursery, Maria would sometimes let her guard down.
She whispered stories to him about her days as a pilot, about the stars, and sometimes, with a heavy, grieving voice, about her best friend Carol.
Max would purposefully stay quiet during these moments, resting his tiny head against her chest to offer whatever silent comfort an infant could provide.
Around the ten-month mark, Max’s adult ego decided he had spent enough time crawling.
He calculated the physics, gripped the edge of the coffee table, and hoisted himself up on two wobbly legs.
He turned to give Maria a triumphant, smug look—only for his baby center of gravity to betray him instantly.
He tipped over like a felled tree, landing squarely on his heavily diapered rear end.
Maria had laughed so hard she had to sit down on the floor with him, pulling him into a fierce, affectionate hug while Monica cheered his attempt.
By the time the calendar flipped to November 1991, Max was eleven months old.
He had adapted to his new name, his new family, and his temporary helplessness.
He loved Maria’s fierce protectiveness and Monica’s unyielding optimism.
He really accepted them as his family.
But as the days ticked closer to his first birthday, he doesn’t know can it still be called that, a familiar, phantom warmth began to build in his chest.
The shadows in his nursery seemed to stretch just a little bit longer in the evenings, leaning toward his crib as if awaiting an order.
The one-year system lock was almost up.
Max Rambeau was about to come online.