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Deep Space. The Edge of the Xandarian System.
The massive engines of the Ravager dreadnought, the Eclector, gradually whined down, shifting from a bone-rattling roar to a low, idle thrum. The colossal warship slowed its momentum, eventually coming to a complete halt, hovering in the freezing void a safe distance from the brightly lit jewel of the Nova Empire.
Hermione looked up from her heavy leather-bound book, marking her page with a silk ribbon.
"Why did we stop?" she asked, her voice echoing slightly in the quiet observation lounge.
Yondu Udonta stood near the doorway, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He forced a highly respectful, overly polite smile, though his red eyes betrayed a flicker of desperate hope.
"My lady," Yondu explained, gesturing out the viewport toward the distant, glowing planet. "Xandar is just ahead. However, we are Ravagers. Our biometric signatures and ship registry are flagged in the databases of all the major empires. This dreadnought is... well, it's a bit too conspicuous."
He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to sound helpful rather than eager. "If we jump any closer to their orbital perimeter, the Nova Corps will treat us as a hostile invasion force and open fire immediately with their planetary defense grid."
His tone carried a thinly veiled hint of excitement. In his mind, he had found a brilliant loophole. She can't force the ship to go in without getting blown to space-dust. He figured this meant the terrifying Cabbage Witch would have to disembark and fly to Xandar alone, allowing him and his crew to finally escape her tyrannical, fiery grasp.
Nova Corps, you rigid, rule-following bastards, save me! Yondu prayed silently.
Hermione closed her book and nodded thoughtfully.
She looked out the window at the bulky, jagged, dark-metal dreadnought she was currently standing in. Indeed, the Eclector was clearly not a proper diplomatic vessel. It practically radiated an aura of, "We are here to steal your catalytic converters and kidnap your pets."
"I see," Hermione said, standing up and smoothing out her dark robes. "That makes sense. Alright then."
Yondu's smile widened a fraction of an inch. Freedom tasted like recycled oxygen.
"Come with me," Hermione ordered breezily, walking past him. "You can ride shotgun in my boat."
Yondu's smile froze instantly, shattering like fragile glass. "Ah? My lady, this... I..."
"Is there a problem?" Hermione stopped and raised a delicate eyebrow. The air temperature in the corridor seemed to drop a few degrees.
"No! No problem at all!" Yondu immediately backpedaled, his posture snapping into a rigid salute.
Inwardly, he was screaming in absolute, crushing despair.
Oh no. We just survived the wolf's den, and now I have to willingly march into the tiger's mouth! He had originally hoped that reaching Xandar would be his ticket to freedom. Now, not only was he stuck with the Witch, but he was being forced to actively storm the Nova Corps headquarters—the absolute last place a wanted space pirate wanted to be.
The Hangar Bay.
The two of them walked down to the Eclector's cavernous hangar, escorted by a dozen terrified Ravagers who kept a very safe, twenty-foot distance.
As they approached the sleek, golden Asgardian skiff resting on the landing pad, Hermione seemed to remember something. She paused her steps and walked around to the port side of the vessel.
She stopped, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the spot where the stray debris had violently chipped off a fingernail-sized piece of the golden paint.
Yondu and the Ravagers following behind felt a collective, icy chill run down their spines. Oh god, they thought frantically. She's looking at the scratch. The five-billion-unit scratch. She's going to burn us alive before she leaves.
Hermione sighed softly. She casually reached into her robes, pulled out her slender wooden wand, and gave it a lazy, almost dismissive flick toward the damaged hull.
"Reparo."
A brief, warm flash of golden light sparked from the tip of her wand.
The next second, the jagged, exposed metal smoothly flowed together like liquid mercury. The golden paint stretched and reformed. In the blink of an eye, the scratch vanished without a single trace, the hull gleaming as flawlessly as the day it was forged. It looked as if it had never been damaged in the first place.
Yondu: "..." Kraglin: "..." The entire Ravager crew: "..."
It felt as if a million stampeding space-alpacas had just trampled directly over their collective sanity.
Dude! You can fix it THAT easily?!
It literally took you half a second and a wave of a stick! You were extorting us for FIVE BILLION STAR COINS over a scratch you could fix with magic?! That's not how you stage an insurance scam! That's just pure, unadulterated evil!
But they were completely helpless. Not a single pirate dared to utter a word of protest. They already knew the truth: the scratch was just a flimsy excuse the Witch had made up on the spot to commandeer their ship and their services.
If they didn't expose the lie, they could at least save a tiny shred of face by telling themselves they were paying off a legitimate "traffic accident compensation." If they pointed out the absurdity, she wouldn't need a reason to kill them anymore.
Faced with such unreasonable, absolute power, there was no other way but to swallow the injustice and admit defeat.
It's better to be robbed blind over 'traffic compensation' than to be burned to ash for 'breathing too loudly,' Yondu reasoned grimly.
Hermione pocketed her wand and led the thoroughly resigned Yondu up the ramp and into the golden skiff.
Take care, Boss!
With genuine, unshed tears in their eyes, the Ravagers watched the skiff's ramp close, sealing Yondu inside. Yondu Udonta was sacrificing himself so that the rest of them could stay far, far away from this demonic Witch.
What a hero! What a captain! It was truly touching. It was definitely worth them stopping work for at least half a day to mourn his inevitable demise.
As soon as the golden skiff shot out of the hangar bay and into the void of space, the crew looked at each other in bewilderment.
Kraglin scratched his head. "Um... so... who wants to be the new captain?"
Approaching Xandar.
The Asgardian spaceship flew smoothly through the cosmos, the artificial gravity keeping the ride perfectly level.
As the distance closed, Xandar came into magnificent view. It was a breathtaking planet, boasting lush green continents, geometric, star-shaped cities, and three bright suns reflecting off the pristine oceans.
However, Xandar's automated defense system was highly efficient. As soon as the unregistered skiff crossed the threshold, the planetary grid reacted.
Several uniquely designed Starblasters—eight-pointed, yellow-and-blue fighter jets—detached from the massive orbital space station. They quickly locked together, projecting an interlocking, golden energy net that physically blocked Hermione's flight path.
The ship's comms console chimed aggressively.
A stern, highly professional voice rang out in the cockpit: "Unidentified flying object, you have entered the Nova Empire's restricted defense perimeter. Please immediately power down your engines, identify yourself, and submit to scanning protocols, or we will take coercive military measures."
Yondu slouched in the co-pilot seat, pulling his coat collar up to hide his blue face. We're dead, he thought.
Hermione didn't panic. She tapped the glowing runic control panel a few times. She pulled up the encrypted, golden data stream Thor had installed in the ship's nav-computer and broadcasted it directly through the communication system.
It was the "electronic pass" the God of Thunder had provided her—the digital equivalent of a royal seal.
There was a tense, heavy silence on the other end of the line. Ten seconds passed. Then twenty. It was obvious they were running the complex encryption through their highest-level verification algorithms.
Soon, the communication channel crackled to life again. The sternness was completely gone, replaced by a slight, breathless panic.
"Identity verified! Code Golden-Alpha! Welcome to Xandar, Honorable Asgardian Emissary! Please maintain your current vector; we have cleared all civilian traffic from your flight path."
The Nova officer's voice held an undisguised, almost comical level of surprise.
Immediately afterwards, a small, chaotic commotion bled through the open channel. A secondary voice muttered frantically in the background:
"...My God, Asgardians? Are you serious? They actually came to Xandar? I thought they never left the Nine Realms! Do they have hammers?!"
The primary officer's voice immediately hissed in a furious whisper: "You idiot! The comms are still hot! Shut your mouth!"
A loud smack was heard, followed by the officer clearing his throat loudly. The primary voice returned, dripping with professional apology:
"Your Excellency, please forgive our inexcusable breach of protocol just now. We have instantly informed Nova Prime Irani Rael of your arrival. She will arrange a formal diplomatic reception with you as soon as possible. For now, please follow our Starblaster escort down to the Alpha-Level VIP landing plaza."
Yondu listened to the exchange in completely stunned, open-mouthed silence.
She's... she's actually an official Asgardian Messenger?!
He had spent the entire trip firmly believing that the Cabbage Witch had simply murdered an Asgardian prince and stolen this fancy spaceship!
Hermione herself was pleasantly surprised, leaning back in the pilot's seat. She had initially thought Thor had just given her the cosmic equivalent of a tourist visa to bypass customs. She never expected it to be a diplomatic credential of the absolute highest tier, officially defining her as an "Envoy" representing the Throne of Asgard.
She raised a delicate eyebrow, looking out at the escort forming around them. It seems that although Asgard acts discreetly and rarely interferes outside their local cluster... their political status and hard-power influence in the wider universe are far greater than I imagined.
Even a multi-billionaire cosmic tycoon like The Collector had bowed and scraped when Lady Sif visited him. In the true, elite circles of galactic geopolitics, the name "Asgard" was a prestigious, terrifying brand. Anyone who didn't recognize the weight of the Golden Realm simply existed at a lower level of the cosmic food chain.
The Descent.
Hermione's skiff, now flanked by a perfect, diamond-formation escort of Nova Corps Starblasters, flew majestically down into the atmosphere of Xandar.
In the vast, beautifully manicured, and bustling city below, millions of alien residents and intergalactic tourists paused their daily routines to look up at the sky.
"Look up there! That's the Nova Corps' highest-level VIP escort formation!" a pink-skinned merchant pointed toward the clouds. "Good heavens, who has arrived? Why such a grand, heavily guarded entrance? Could it be a peace envoy from the Kree Empire?" "Don't be stupid," a blue-skinned Xandarian scoffed. "The Kree Empire's ships look like flying bricks. Besides, the Nova Empire has a terrible relationship with the Kree right now because of that fanatic, Ronan the Accuser. They wouldn't get a parade." "This silver and gold spaceship... it's beautiful. I've never seen that design before. But for the Nova Corps to treat it with such extreme reverence... it must be royalty!"
On the ground, rumors spread like wildfire. Countless eyes tracked the descent, filled with intense curiosity and wild speculation about the mysterious dignitary inside the golden ship.
The spaceship eventually slowed, rotating its solar sails as it descended toward a massive, polished plaza—a restricted zone clearly reserved solely for receiving heads of state and cosmic VIPs.
The landing gear touched down with a soft, hydraulic hiss.
The ramp slowly lowered, releasing a cloud of pressurized vapor. Hermione, looking regal and unfazed in her dark robes, stepped out onto the tarmac. Right behind her, looking thoroughly miserable and deeply out of place, was her "bag carrier," the infamous pirate Yondu Udonta.
On the sunlit tarmac, a full honor guard squad of Nova Corps soldiers was already lined up in perfect, rigid formation. They were led by a tall, distinguished man dressed in the crisp, star-studded uniform of a high-ranking Nova Centurion—Denarian Garthan Saal.
Saal looked almost indistinguishable from a terrestrial human, possessing strong, chiseled features and sharp, assessing eyes.
Hermione felt a little more comfortable. Although the Nova Empire was a melting pot of countless strange alien races, its primary ruling species—the Xandarians—were functionally identical to humans, much like the Asgardians.
Denarian Saal stepped forward to deliver the formal greeting of the Nova Empire. However, when his eyes landed on the person stepping off the legendary Asgardian vessel... his professional mask slipped.
A clear, unmistakable look of profound shock flashed in his eyes.
He had expected a towering, bearded god of war in gleaming plate armor. Instead, he was standing face-to-face with a petite, polite-looking teenage girl.
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