A/N: Review Responses are in my forums like normal. Thank you for reading.


Chapter Four: Pyrrhic Victory

Swan felt the eyes on her from the Kree of Yon-Rogg's little ship. Bron-Char was the most circumspect; Vin-Tak was the most open in his admiration.

The two hour wait felt much longer; she occupied herself by looking through the non-classified portions of the Helion's database. The Kree had a large database on the Shi'ar Empire, and even considered themselves as a successor to the ancient, galaxy-spanning civilization.

"Lady Swan, may I ask you a question?"

Swan looked up from the terminal Yon granted for her use at the awkward young Kree, Vin-Tak. Unlike the others, he was a thin, gangly youth with the faint ritualistic scarring on his cheeks that told other Kree that he was not a native of Hala, but rather one of their colonies.

"What do you wish to know?"

Swan could see Bron-Char listening, though he carefully made a point of not looking.

"Your wings," the young Kree said. "I was wondering...are they flight worthy? Can you fly without aid?"

"What do you think?"

"I...think they are small for your size and shape, my lady."

"You'd be right." Swan closed her terminal. Despite the young Kree's awkwardness, she found it diverting to speak to someone who was not genetically engineered and cybernetically enhanced to obey her every word. "I can glide in normal planetary environments, but I cannot sustain lift. I normally use a thruster pack and nullgrav for full flight."

"Oh." Vin-Tak settled down onto the seat beside her. "But that...I don't mean to intrude, my lady. If I offend, please…"

"You don't offend, Vin-Tak," Swan said. "What is your question?"

"I mean...if they aren't flight worthy...were they engineered?"

"Not to my knowledge," she said. "But they are not without their uses."

She hardened her wings...the visual effect was like a wave of crystals folding over the feathers. She could make the effect as fast or slow as necessary. Here, on this ship, she allowed the transition slowly, so that her awkward companion could watch the transformation.

"My wings are as strong as the neutronium in my great sword. Or they can be as soft as natural feathers." She allowed them to transition back. "They've been that way for as long as I can remember."

"That's amazing," Vin-Tak said with an oddly touching, wondrous smile. "Thank you for showing me, my lady."

Yon-Rogg walked across the ship. "My crewman is not bothering you, is he, Lady Swan?"

"Not at all, Commander. Have the Accusers arrived?"

Yon nodded briskly. "Indeed. We're ready. Are you sure you don't need space gear?"

"I've gone as long as a week in an open void without ill effects," Swan said. "My helm does provide a small pocket of air for speaking, so I'll be fine. Your airlock, please?"

The airlock was the main ramp. The door closed behind her and she felt the air evacuated. It made her skin tingle as the outer ramp opened, and in the endless star field before her, three Accuser warships sat like anvil-shaped shadows obscuring the stars.

Swan studied them early in her waking life, just as she did all potential threats to Thanos. Each Accuser carried a squadron of fifty fighter drones and a complement of variable-yield missiles that could either destroy a city, or crack a continent, depending on the need. They were not designed for ship-to-ship combat, but were instead planet killers. They did not normally enter a battle until the Kree Starforce had dealt with any opposing ships. Although the vessels bristled with ranged and close-quarter weapons emplacements, they were designed to be long-distance carriers and missile ships.

She jumped free of the Helion, letting the biting cold of the void caress her face and exposed biceps without effect, aside from the hoarfrost from the water vapor in the ship's atmosphere. She activated her thruster pack and flew toward the left-most of the formation. When she landed on its hull, her first impression of the ship was quickly disabused.

The hull she landed on appeared jagged and pock-marked from past battles. If they were following the plan, its drone and missile bays were all but empty, save for the bare minimum necessary to destroy a fixed target. The missiles the ships fired were, themselves, expensive pieces of ordinance.

In the void, her boots made no sound as she adjusted her suit's grav system to provide enough pull to stay on the ship surface. In the hull below, she knew there would only be a skeleton crew of twenty Kree at most, when ordinarily it would hold two hundred. The ship, and those aboard it, were expendable.

It was an honor to die for the Kree Empire, evidently.

With all the damage to its hull, she found little difficulty in securing handholds for herself. Above her, the Starforce ship glimmered before disappearing behind a cloak. Using the small pocket of air her armor provided about her face, Swan signaled her allies. "I am ready."

The Accusers engaged their massive fusion thrusters. The vibration of the machines, here on the outer hull without the benefit of shielding and sound absorption, made her insides quake. The hull under her grip vibrated as the massive craft began clawing its way through the emptiness toward the distant planet the Kree called DZP-92.

The world was little more than a marble from this distance. Focusing her eyes beyond normal bipedal limits, she let the cosmos fall away as the world rushed forward in her senses. She could now see that it had a green-blue tint to its atmosphere, with massive oceans surrounding a few small, mountainous continents. On the southern continent she could see a spinning cloud formation that likely heralded a respectable storm.

She relaxed her eyes and the intense, telescopic focus eased until she once more beheld a distant marble. The vibration of the fusion drives eased as the three ships flew forward on inertia. The fuel-saving technique was not normal Kree procedure, she knew. But in this case, the ships were also operating with only a fraction of their H3 stores.

The planet's distant primary was an orange-yellow main sequence star. In seven or eight billion years, she knew that it, too, would explode just like Chita Primary. All things ended.

So, too, would this Vers.

"How are you faring?"

Yon-Rogg's voice sounded calm in her helm.

"I am well. Do we have any sighting yet?"

"Nothing yet. Vers tends to stay close to the planet she defends, though there have been times she surprised us."

Abruptly a streak of scintillating rainbow light flashed to Swan's right. Swan turned and stared as Vers appeared from empty space behind their formation. The impossible being struck the right most of their formation directly in the middle of the fuselage. Rather than bounce off or cause damage to the hull, her power allowed the former Kree to pierce the ship entirely, like a knife plunging through flesh.

"Damned! All units, Vers spotted!" Yon-Rogg called over their communicator. "Vector 120 degrees high! She's attacking the ship formation from above the orbital plane!

Vers must have been on a Skrull cloaked ship in orbit.

The stricken Accuser warship didn't even manage to get a single missile off. Swan could only stare, astonished, as the streaking creature blasted her way through the warship so effortlessly it seemed as if the Warship's hull was made of nothing but Kree spite and broken dreams. Vers broke through the ventral side of the ship, and upon her exit the massive craft erupted in flaming outgassing from the catastrophic failure of its fusion drives. Even from the inside, the fusion drives were so heavily armored Swan doubted she could have punctured them.

The two remaining ships banked sharply away as the dying craft exploded in a violent burst of primordial energies. Swan bowed her head and let the thermal wash blast over her skin and armor. The hull under her glowed as it absorbed the energy, but only briefly.

Swan lost track of their target with her naked eyes, but with a few commands on her vambrace her helm's holographic HUD provided a tactical map. She had the map up just in time to see the second Accuser struck with photon blasts easily as powerful as any capital ship cannons. The blasts came from the ventral side of the formation.

She's going to pierce my ship.

As the second Accuser Warship also exploded, Swan pushed herself to her feet. The directed gravity of her armor kept her firmly in place on the back of the last warship. She drew her greatsword and walked down the hull toward the aft engine blocks. She would have, at best, seconds. She braced herself as best she could and gripped her sword with both hands.

She felt the ship tremble as Vers punched through its underbelly. A portion of the hull three meters from Swan began to glow; using wings to grip the hull and the maglocks of her boots, she pushed forward as fast as she could. Rearing her sword back, she set herself and swung with all her power.

Her timing was the first thing to go right.

The hull erupted in scintillating, rainbow light as a figure with glowing eyes burst out. Those glowing eyes blinked a split second before a two-ton blade of depleted neutronium alloy with thousands of tons of force behind it struck the woman in her midsection.

The living star shot toward the planet, losing its glow moments later.

Swan used her directed gravity as leverage to jump from the dying warship. She pushed her thrusters to full power as she flew after her target. "Helion, now!"

The Starforce craft decloaked almost on top of Swan. She directed the thruster to move closer to the Helion just as the warship behind her disappeared in a ball-shaped cloud of vaporized hull fragments. Rather than board the Helion, she gripped its starboard stabilizer fin and held on as the sleek ship sped after the falling speck of living dust.

The light around the figure began flickering again. In her chest, Swan's nervousness turned to determination, and even admiration. What a powerful creature this Vers was! If Swan had managed to land such a blow on Thanos, even the Titan himself would have been hurt or even killed.

She knew, though, that if Vers regained her senses, they were done. Swan knew she could not fight a creature who could create her own leverage on an equal footing in space. The Helion surged forward; Swan gripped her blade and launched herself from the ship as they came upon their target.

Vers was obviously hurt from the first blow, and shaking her head in an attempt to regain her equilibrium. She had only a second to see the unlit, blackened wings and glint of the distant sun on Swan's armor before Mercy struck true once again. Once more, Ver's light went out and the figure blasted down toward the waiting planet's surface.

The Helion caught up with her again, and once again Swan gripped a stabilizer fin. They hit the atmosphere so hard that for a moment she almost lost her grip. Plasma erupted all around them, momentarily blinding her and those on the ship to their target.

Abruptly the plasma burned away; the heat passed doing Swan no harm. She glanced through the barely visible canopy of the Helion but could not see inside. What she did see were wispy clouds and a fast approaching ocean below.

Where was…?

A force hit her right on the side, more powerful than even Thanos' strongest blow. It blasted the air from Swan's lungs and sent her precious sword spinning away through the air. One glowing fist gripped Swan's thruster pack, while the other pointed back the way they came and sent a powerful blast of glowing energy at the Helion.

The ship tried to avoid the blast, but failed. The energy impacted toward the rear and sent the craft and her crew spiraling away toward the surface.

Swan made no effort to move the hand from her pack. Close quarters was to her advantage. With Vers herself providing leverage, Swan struck the woman in her throat with stiff fingers.

Instantly the other creature's grip on her broke as Vers fell away, grasping her throat desperately as her power flickered and she fell once again.

Swan spread her wings and activated her null grave and thruster pack, only to realize why Vers grabbed her pack and not her throat. The other woman managed to damage both her thruster pack and her nullgrav generator. Again! She watched helplessly as Vers fell away from her. Her wings did nothing to stop the fall of her armor-weighted body.

No! I'm not letting her get away!

With a touch of her vambrace, the outer armor opened and slipped heavily from her body, leaving the softer black underlayer against her skin. She pulled off her helmet and even her vambraces in a desperate bid to reduce her weight. Free of the heavy armor, she spread her wings, caught a wind, and this time was able to more easily direct herself after the falling Vers. She could not fly-not truly. But she could fall with grace and deliberation.

Below her, Vers continued to tumble toward the ground as she clutched at her throat. The surface came fast. Swan watched as Vers crashed in the shallows of a large island. She appeared to struggle as she tried to make her way to the shore.

Swan took a deep breath, and then dove right onto Vers. The sound of the wind was lost in the rush of water and the shock of impact as she drove both of them into the soft sands of the beach. She couldn't see through the muck, but she could feel hair and flesh, and it was that which she targeted. Her fist moved through the water and dirt almost unencumbered, and she felt bubbles and heard the groan and cry from her target.

She punched again, and again. If she could not beat Vers in open air, she would crush and drown her in the water. It was the only way it could end.

Only, that's not what happened. Swan caught a flash of light brighter than a sun, and then a second later a glimpse of the sky tilting crazily seconds before she slammed face first onto wet, volcanic black sand.

Before she could orient herself, another flash of light caught her right in the face. The blow sent her flailing through the air as if Cull had caught and thrown her. The thought of her brother brought to the fore hard-won instincts. She flared her wings, stopped her uncontrolled flight, and fell back to the sand.

A dozen feet away, Vers knelt on the shore, coughing and still holding her throat as waves lapped at her legs. Her face was bruised and bleeding blue-green Kree blood from Swan's assault, and she cradled her side in obvious pain. Her throat was blue from Swan's strike.

Vers raised both hands, each glowing like a particle cannon, and fired her photon blasts. This time, Swan saw them coming. With a flap of her wings she was able to jump over both as she charged forward. Vers fired her powerful blasts again, and again.

Swan hardened her wings and deflected one blast, though doing so actually knocked her to one side from its kinetic energy. That caused the second blast to miss and brought her to within feet of her target.

Vers stood and lashed out with a beautifully executed wheel kick enhanced by her power. Swan spun under it and slashed at the planted leg with her wing.

Rather than have her leg cut off at the knee, Vers just used her power to float effortlessly above it. In doing so, it took her feet off the ground. Swan leapt up and grabbed an ankle and tried to pull down.

Vers flew up, and for all her physical strength Swan had no way of countering the inertia. So instead she squeezed. She squeezed with all her power until she felt the bone snap and shatter.

The flying terrorist screamed in agony, turned to glare at Swan with teary, bruised eyes, and then blasted her full in the face with both hands. This time, the blasts struck true. It felt like that first horrid training, when Father struck Swan hard in the head. She felt her head snap back as she lost her grip and she fell.

Vers was smart enough not to let an opportunity go to waste. She shot down after Swan, her whole body assuming the glow of starlight, until she struck Swan mid-body. The moment her fists struck, they exploded with new photon blasts that sent Swan crashing into the sand so hard it exploded around her as she formed a crater.

A second later, Vers came crashing down good-foot first. The sole of the boot that struck glowed with her power as she unleashed a burst against Swan's unarmored stomach. For the first time, Swan cried out in pain from the blow, but she wasn't done. Vers was powerful, but Swan was too.

She reached up to grab Ver's legs, only for the woman to once more launch herself in the air. Before more photon blasts could hit, Swan shielded herself with one hardened wing.

In doing so, she cut off her own sight of the enemy. Vers took advantage of it by flying close and then slamming an empowered first right to the side of Swan's partially exposed head. The blow shocked her. Her eyes filled with strange, hovering dots of color and her ears rang loudly, as if someone were blowing a whistle in them.

She lashed out blindly; she felt her wing connect. Over the ringing in her ears, she heard an angry scream.

Scrabbling desperately, Swan fought to claw her way out of the crater. Everything felt strange and heavy to her, and she fought hard to focus. Nearby, Vers lay on her knees again clutching a horrid cut through the meat of her thigh. It was the same leg with her crushed ankle. Her face was covered in bruising and blood, but her eyes blazed with determined anger.

"I don't know where Yon dug you up, but you are so dead," Vers said.

Swan froze. She tried to move, but couldn't. "That...this language. What language is this? How can you speak this tongue?" Sharp, piercing pain shot up through her skull. Swan collapsed to her own knees, crying out in pain. "Why does this language hurt me? What tongue is this?"

"Holy shit," Vers whispered. "You're speaking English. This isn't the translator; you're actually speaking English."

"English?" Swan tried blinking back dots from her vision, but when she spoke the painfully familiar word, the dots began to swarm across her field of vision in a swarm that kept her from seeing anything clearly.

"No!" She reached back behind her for the implant that let her see. "No! I...Father! Father, I can't do your will blind! Bring my vision back!"

Her answer was a fist to her face, followed instantly by a photon blast that sent Swan flying back. Her head rang worse as her back ached. "Father! Maw! Turn the implant back on!"

Surely they were monitoring her words, weren't they?

Powerful, burning hands pulled at her hair. With an angry scream Swan slashed backward with her wing. In answer, she received a photon blast in the one place where all her strength failed.

The blast struck her unarmored back, just on the edge of her unhealing wound. The pain was so intense-so impossible-that she didn't even feel the second blast between her wings. She went utterly still as that first, horrid wave of agony surged through her. Only when it passed and the second wave of pain began to build could she suck in a breath and scream.

All other sensation was lost as she collapsed into the sand. She barely felt the following blasts, not against that first, horrid agony. For the longest time, all she could do was curl up on herself as Vers exacted revenge against her. When some semblance of awareness eked its way through her pain, Swan realized the other woman actually straddled her and was beating her over and over again with her empowered, glowing fists.

Abruptly it was over. Swan lay blind in the sand, wracked in agony, as Vers straddled her in absolute, unconditional victory. Burning fingers once again gripped her hair, but instead of pulling to the point of pain, Vers just moved the hair back from her neck.

"Son of a bitch," the older woman said in that impossible language of hers. "That asshole did it again, didn't he? Take a freakish strong girl, wipe her mind and slap a conditioning chip in her brain, and you get to have Vers two-point-oh. Ten years ago, you would have killed me, kid."

The words sent more pain stabbing into Swan's mind. Tears stung her eyes.

"I'm a daughter of Thanos," Swan breathed. Just doing so hurt. She couldn't say if it was a declaration or a prayer. "It is an honor to die in His name."

"Oh, I'm not going to kill you," Vers muttered. "Hell, I'm not even sure I could. I don't know what the hell you are, but I've hit you with blasts that could take out a fleet. But then again, I don't need to kill you, do I?"

Swan jerked in alarm when she felt those burning fingers grab her vision implant and pull with shocking strength. All the pain she felt before magnified tenfold as she felt her brain torn apart. In her mind she could almost see Thanos' mauve eyes glaring at her for her failure.

I'm so disappointed, daughter.

Ver's weight lifted off her. The air hummed with the woman's power, and then swooshed as she flew away.

In the darkness of the blind, Swan tried to stand, but her muscles were spasming so hard she could not control her limbs. It was as if her whole body was shutting down. Was Maw right? Was the ship not just for vision, but for her very life?

"Don't leave me like this," she gasped, though she wasn't sure anyone was left to listen. "Please don't leave me in the dark again. Finish me! Please! Somebody? Father!"

Only the wind answered.


A/N: For Taylor to grow and learn the truth of her story, she must escape Thanos. It will be a painful process for her, but she will emerge all the stronger for it. (And yes, Telos in her full power could easily have beaten Captain Marvel. But Black Swan, with only her unending physical strength, was at a disadvantage.)