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The entire square fell silent, as if someone had hit mute.
Quill, Gamora, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot all stared in blank disbelief.
Lady Witch?
Calling who?
Calling this little girl who'd snatched the orb and bolted, who had stamina that defied all reason, who'd treated a fake Power Stone like a capsule toy and cracked it open to find a doll inside?
Quill's brain short-circuited. The words were out before he could stop them. "She's the Cabbage Witch?!"
The moment they left his mouth, an invisible force cracked across his face.
SLAP!
He flew like he'd been hit by a freight train. One agonized cry, a wide parabolic arc through the air, and he sailed a good 30 meters before slamming into a flowerbed at the edge of the square. Dust erupted around him. He did not get up.
Hermione lowered her telekinetically extended hand. Her expression had gone flat and cold. She swept her gaze over the remaining three.
"Anyone else feels like adding colorful prefixes, I'll throw them into deep space."
All three swallowed at exactly the same moment. The sweat that broke out on their backs was immediate.
They'd almost shouted it right along with him. Lucky the idiot had been faster. He'd taken that slap for all of them.
Gamora especially. The moment she heard the words "Cabbage Witch," her pupils snapped tight.
She finally knew who this girl was.
She'd never seen her in person before. But the name "Cabbage Witch", she'd heard it from her adoptive father, Thanos, more than once.
This was her. This small, soft-looking girl. The one who had single-handedly wiped out her father's entire Chitauri Army.
A wave of helplessness moved through Gamora's chest.
What was she doing on Xandar?
Weren't Earth's powerful mages supposed to be homebodies? Creatures of habit who never left their own world?
This was a serious problem.
She'd told herself that even if the Nova Corps arrested her, she could find a way out eventually. She had the skills. She had the patience.
But standing in front of the legendary Witch now, that quiet confidence evaporated completely. The will to fight, to resist, to even consider struggling, gone. Not suppressed. Just gone.
The gap was that absolute.
Rocket Raccoon and Groot weren't doing much better. Nobody had imagined the legendary Witch would turn out to be a girl who looked like this.
"Whoa!" Rocket's shock lasted about two seconds before his research instincts took over completely. He leaned forward, eyes bright with curiosity. "Okay but what kind of biotech went into those cabbages? Silicon-based or carbon-based? What was the energy conversion rate? Could I get a few samples? Just small ones, for—"
Another crisp SLAP. Rocket landed directly in the flowerbed beside Quill.
Groot watched his companion's trajectory, considered his options, and wisely said nothing. His branches trembled slightly.
Hermione dusted her hands off, casual as someone who'd just swatted a pair of flies.
Yondu stood nearby with his head down, eyes focused on nothing, apparently blind to everything that had just happened.
10 minutes later.
Quill and Rocket were dragged out of the flowerbed, faces bruised and puffy. The four of them were fitted with specialized energy-suppression cuffs and lined up together.
General Rhomann Dey arrived shortly after, drawn by the commotion. His gaze moved across the group and stopped on Gamora. Something shifted in his expression.
"Thanos's adopted daughter." He stepped closer, studying her. "Gamora. The most dangerous woman in the universe — and she's been caught on Xandar." His tone carried genuine disbelief.
Gamora stared at him.
Then she looked sideways at Hermione, her expression asking a very clear, silent question.
You're sure that's me?
Quill, squinting through one swollen eye, watched Dey zero in on Gamora and ignore him entirely. His indignation boiled over.
"Hey! What about me! Peter Quill! Star-Lord! Ring any bells? The legendary Star-Lord! You're just going to focus on the green girl and act like I don't exist?"
Dey frowned, threw him a brief glance. "What Lord? Never heard of it." He waved a hand. "Take them."
Quill's mouth opened and closed.
Not lethal. Deeply humiliating.
As the four were being led away, Yondu stepped forward. "General. I'd like a word with Quill. Privately."
Dey looked at Yondu, then at Hermione. Hermione didn't object. He nodded. "Five minutes."
Quill was separated from the others and brought into a small, temporarily sectioned-off room.
Yondu walked in, took one look at the indignant scowl on Quill's face, and cut straight to it. "Where's the real Power Stone? Where'd you stash it?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Quill set his jaw. "The one on Morag was real. Not my fault there was a stupid doll inside it."
Yondu looked at him for a long moment. The kind of look that went straight through a person.
He'd raised this kid. He knew every tell, every trick, every lie before it fully formed. Quill's poker face had never been worth a damn in front of him.
"Hmph."
He snorted, asked nothing else, and turned for the door.
"Hey! Yondu!" Quill lurched forward. "You're not going to get me out of this? After everything we, "
"Get you out?"
Yondu stopped. Turned around. "Lady Witch said let you sit in a cell and think things over."
"I know she's got you under her thumb," Quill said. "Why haven't you just run?"
"Run."
Something flickered through Yondu's eyes, not amusement. Fear, old and settled. The image that surfaced in his mind was vivid: the crew members who'd tried to steal a ship and bolt. The way they'd looked afterward. Cold and still.
He shook his head slowly. "You don't run. You're a plaything. You run, you're prey."
He paused, reading Quill's blank expression, and kept going.
"Yeah, in the beginning, she had us. No question about that. But somewhere along the way, we started figuring out how she actually operates." His voice took on a complexity that hadn't been there before. "You don't cross her lines. You don't second-guess her calls. She doesn't touch your freedom. That's the deal."
He thought about the months on Xandar. "Assisting with public security." As absurd as it sounded, it had been the most settled, the most stable life any of them had ever lived.
"An unfathomable backer covering for you. Moving openly through major systems without looking over your shoulder." He spread his hands. "Doing a few things for her in exchange, what's the problem with that? Better than living with a knife at your throat every single day, always one step from getting caught by someone with a grudge."
Quill said nothing.
Yondu didn't push it. He turned and walked out of the room.
---
Once all four had been escorted away, Yondu drifted back toward Hermione and lowered his voice.
"My Lady. I know that kid too well. He's definitely got the real orb hidden somewhere."
Hermione was eating an apple that had appeared from nowhere. She made a vague sound around a bite. "I know."
Yondu blinked. "You... know?" He hesitated. "Then why let him go to prison? Why not just keep him here and get the location out of him directly?"
Knowing Hermione, pulling someone out of prison or keeping Quill out of it entirely would have taken no effort at all.
A slow, meaningful smile crossed her face. "Because I'm not the only one who wants the Power Stone."
She clapped her hands together once. "Pulling them all out one by one is too much work. Let Quill sit in a cell. He'll draw out every rat hiding in the shadows. Once they start coming into the open fighting over the orb, I'll take care of all of them at the same time."
The smile stayed on her face. Her eyes were perfectly flat.
"Anyone who touches something I've already claimed." Her voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "Not one of them walks away."
Yondu's mouth twitched.
He asked carefully, "And Quill — he's..."
Hermione glanced at him. "Relax. He won't die."
The breath left Yondu's lungs. The kid was a pain and a liability and always had been, but he'd raised him. That counted for something.
Then Hermione's next words hit, and the breath he'd just released went straight back up into his throat. His pupils contracted. The expression that crossed his face was something close to terror.
"By the way," Hermione said, like she'd just remembered something small and unimportant, turning the apple in her hand.
"Do you know Ego?"
➤ Next: Knowhere — The Conversation
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