I squinted as I looked around, thoroughly unimpressed by what I saw. Always thought Nowhere would be more...you know, mysterious?
It was certainly beautiful to look at, in a bizarre, Tatooine sort of way. Strange ships zipped past overhead, forming a chaotic, interconnected webway of activity. Different factions owned different corners, but the Collector and the Ravagers were the law among these parts. They had the largest share of the mining operation and owned the most mercenaries, some of whom turned out to be Cambions.
Two hundred years of interbreeding with humanoids had made them nearly ubiquitous throughout the Galaxy. Most of them served a king or lord, but some roamed free. Small clans with similar powersets who worked mostly as mercenaries, custodians, spies, information brokers, miners, farmers, and everything inbetween.
Given the war raging between their home world and, or rather, the conquered world and the Novans, you can bet they're not very well liked or welcome, even on Nova Prime or other worlds near the core, but if you looked hard enough, they were there.
All to say, in a place like Nowhere, I fit in perfectly, even though I wasn't technically here.
A peculiar bipedal alien walked past my invisible floating form. Manny stood beside me. He was a life-like automaton packed to the absolute gills with runes and sensors.
"I've located Ronan the Accuser's ship, sir," a voice sounded in my head. "He's about finished with his meeting with the Collector."
"What do you think he's after, Manny?"
"Anything from an Infinity Stone to information about an ancient weapon," he said with his not-quite-human-like voice.
"I suppose we'll have to ask him now, won't we?"
It'd been over a week since I finished my work at the Blackhole and my little chat with Odin Borrson, and I took his advice to heart, but not in the ways you'd think.
His little comment had given me inspiration, or more accurately, pushed me to be more proactive with my powers.
I created a second generation of sentinels. 10 AIs were sent all over the Galaxy, all with different assignments. Whenever they had updates, they teleported back into my dimension and fed messages to a Messenger Sentinel, who instantly teleported to me and relayed the information.
It was by no means perfect. Really, we would've been better off if communication through the Astral Realm was an option. Then I could stay in touch at all times.
Ronan stomped towards his ship with his entourage of Kree soldiers, their hands firmly on guns and weapons. The crowd parted before them. Manny and I fell in lockstep, boarding his jump ship and following him all the way out of his ship.
Ronan was taking a bath, of all things, when I shimmered into observable view and scared the beejesus out of him. Water went sloshing, and the Accuser rose out of the pit and grabbed his hammer. The motherfucker came leaping at me, dong flapping through the air, a bestial scream warbling out of his throat.
The hammer came down like a comet. I traced a rune in the air, and space extended. The hammer crashed just shy of my boot, cratering the stone floor. He tried picking it up and swinging again, but it wouldn't budge, and neither would his body. His back and the hammer were covered in gravity and telekinetic runes. With another twitch of my finger, I applied several telepathic runes as well. Ronan was approximately 350 years old and had run into plenty of telepaths, mind mages, and monsters that preyed on emotion.
His mind was largely immune to surface-level reads. You'd have to carefully peel back the layers of scars to get to the unprotected center or risk giving the ancient brute a lobotomy. Not that I was completely opposed to that.
The runes I'd applied were designed to do just that. My new rune skill was awesome. I really don't say that enough.
"Demon!" he hissed.
"Ronan, the Accuser," I smiled back at him, brightly, as I felt the ship start to drift away from Knowhere. From the technician's mind, I knew they were headed for a system long dead. Nobody had been there for thousands of years. "I never figured you out for a bubbles guy."
"You're him, aren't you?" he sneered up. "Forgemaster. You're the Moonsplitter's brother."
I blinked. "Right. I forget I'm kind of famous now." I mean, it wasn't the worst name. Certainly better than Angel...
Ronan let out another roar as he pulled against his restraints. "Face me like a proper warrior. Enough of these tricks."
"Sounds like a skill issue to me," I said with a smirk and received another growl back in response. Slowly, I circled him.
"Your kind is an even greater blight on the Galaxy than the Skrulls," he said. "You're next after I'm finished with the Novans."
"You really mean that, don't you?" I said, reading his surface-level thoughts finally. Ronan was so certain of himself, even when he was hopelessly outmatched and unable to contact his guards. I'd sealed off the room, obviously.
The Kree grunted at me in response.
"Why did you visit the Collector?" I asked. "What weapon are you after?"
A sudden serenity overcame the brute, as he finally realized the reason for my ambush. He tried to shield his mind from me. Think of anything aside from the Aether!
Oh wow. Well, isn't that something? "You were right, Manny."
I patted the Sentinel on the shoulder. He'd been modelled after myself, covered in synthetic skin and clothes. If it weren't for this mechanical voice and the purple band around his pupils, you might've never known he was synthetic.
It wasn't just Ronan that knew about the Aether. The demons knew about the location, as did the Novans and a few other powerful factions. With five of the Infinity Stones already out of play, they were desperate to snatch up the last one and solidify their positions.
It was a race to one of the most powerful weapons in all of creation, and I was starting at last place. Well, it was a good thing I had a magical gem that could bend space like taffy. And there were no jump gates into the system. So that bought me some time.
It's time to head back to Earth. I've got a robbery to interrupt stylishly and a few people to see.
"Wrap things up here, Manny," I said. "Copy everything in his head, dispose of him and the crew, and staff the Aster with a crew or sentinels."
"What?" Ronan blurted out.
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