Chapter 7

The jet roars into the sky, leaving behind the chaos of the base. Fury leans back in his seat and exclaims "Damn! This has been the most fucked up day of my life. And I've seen some serious shit in my time."

Max turns to Fury and says "I have a feeling that the day is not over yet. It might get even more fucked up."

Fury's face instantly changes and he yells "Oh hell no! You say you're from Earth. Don't you watch movies? Every time someone says that, some crazy shit goes down."

Vers and Max laugh at Fury's reaction, but then they all fall silent when they hear a "meow" from behind.

They turn and see a cat with brown and orange fur. It is standing on some boxes, clinging to them to avoid falling. Vers looks at the cat and says "Let me help you."

She then stabilizes the jet and the cat jumps down from the boxes. It walks to Vers and sits on her lap and rubs her face. Fury, who was sitting behind them, picks up the cat.

He says to it "She's gotta fly this thing. Don't bother her. Now, who's a good kitty?....who's a good kitty?..." Petting it.

He then feels the collar around its neck and checks the name on it. He reads it out loud "Goose"

He then continues to pet it and says "So, you're Goose, huh."

Goose then leaps from Fury's hands and goes back to Vers. Vers doesn't want Goose to distract her or press something, so she puts it on the dashboard, where it lies down and purrs.

Max stays away from the cat, knowing what it can do.

Vers then takes out a photo and says "I still can't believe I had a life here." Staring at her blurred self in the background.

Max nods and says "Even I can't believe that you lived on Earth but still looked down on it every time and compared it with the Kree empire."

Vers says "I really can't remember anything clearly. I do keep seeing flashes of my life here on Earth, but I was told that the Skrulls planted those memories in me."

Max sighs and takes out another file he was carrying with him. He hands it to Vers and she opens it. She sees the photo in the file and the name on the file. The name was Carol Danvers and it was her photo.

She goes through the files and they have information on everything she did when she was at Pegasus. Every time she sees a file, she starts seeing glimpses of herself in that place or situation.

Fury looks at the files and says "Carol Danvers, huh! The dumbass who came up with the name Vers didn't put much thought into your name."

Vers ignores him and is still going through the flashes of her memories. She quickly shuts the file. Max says to her "Vers, you have to calm down. You're putting too much stress on your brain. It could hurt you."

Vers holds Max's hand and looks at him. They both gaze at each other in complete silence before Fury fake coughs again and says "It says here that you kicked the bucket 10 years ago, but doesn't say how. It's also the same year Lawson crashed the jet."

Vers, who is relaxed with the help of Max, says "It still doesn't make sense and the only one who can give us some answers is the person who saw Lawson and me last, Maria Rambeau."

They all agree with what she said and change course to the address recorded in the file. While they're flying, Max turns to Vers and asks "So, what do I call you now? 'Vers' or 'Carol'?"

Vers looks at Max and says "Max, I still don't know what the hell is going on. I don't even know who I am."

Max says to her "I don't give a damn who you choose to be, I'll stand by you."

Vers smiles at Max and he smiles back too. Fury says from behind "And I don't give a damn what's going on with you, I want to know how to get off this fucking jet."

Hearing that, their faces turn red and they immediately look away from each other. For the rest of the journey, Fury decides to talk to Max to keep him from starting another awkward staredown with Vers.

Fury also sees this as an opportunity to get as much information from humans as possible, but Max doesn't spill anything to him. He's also a cop and knows what to say when talking to someone who's snooping around.

They arrive at the address in the papers and land their jet at the open space behind the house. They walk up to the door and ring the bell. The door opens and everyone is stunned at the person who opened the door.

It wasn't Maria Rambeau, but Alexander Pierce, the skrull who is now posing as Fury's boss.

Fury shouts "How the fuck did you get here?"

Alexander Pierce looks at him like he's an idiot and says "You took off with a jet. It took us two minutes to track your jet. Even without that, we found Lawson's files lying around in the records room. We found Maria Rambeau and got here before you."

Then, Maria Rambeau and her daughter Monica Rambeau come to the door and are shocked to see Vers. Monica Rambeau runs to Vers and hugs her.

She says "Auntie Carol. I knew you weren't gone. You promised me you would come back and teach me how to be an awesome pilot like you."

Vers, looks at her and that triggers another memory. She closes her eyes and remembers her and Monica Rambeau lying on the grass and gazing at the stars.

Monica calls out for her "Auntie Carol" worried after seeing her pained expression.

Vers opens her eyes and sees Monica Rambeau looking at her with a concerned look. Vers says "I might not be the person you remember."

Monica and Maria are now baffled. Maria asks "What are you talking about, Carol?"

Alexander Pierce interrupts them and says "Now now ladies. Why don't we take this inside. We don't want to cause a scene."

Vers and Fury don't listen to him, but unlike them, Max walks into the house, confusing Vers and Fury. Max enters the house and sees four more men in black suits who were definitely skrulls.

Seeing Max walk in, Fury and Vers also follow him. Alexander closes the door and turns to Max, who was the only person willing to listen to him.

Alexander says "Thanks a lot for giving me a chance."

Vers says "There's nothing to hear. Kree Starforce will be here tomorrow and you'll all be dead."

Alexander ignores Vers and says to Max "I need your help convincing her to help us."

Max asks "Why should I help you and what do you want from her?"

Alexander replies "Dr. Wendy Lawson is a Kree scientist who agreed to help us and built a light speed engine that could help us get away from this galaxy."

Vers says "Who would believe you? I'm pretty sure that you want to use that light speed engine to launch an attack on the Kree empire. Also, I saw you skrulls kill Lawson."

Alexander turns to Vers and says "I don't know why you would believe that after everything. She was helping us while risking her life, we would never kill her. You might not believe me given our history. We were a little too cocky and went around starting wars everywhere, but now, all we want is to survive. We don't want to build an empire or anything, but the Kree won't let us live. They hunted down every skrull who were refugees on other planets. We just want to get out of this side of the galaxy and find ourselves a home. So, I need you to please tell me where you were flying the jet with Wendy Lawson. We saw your memories and you entered some numbers. We need you to tell us what they mean."

Vers says "Do you really expect me to believe that?"

Maria, who was listening to the whole conversation, says "Lawson used to always say 'This isn't about fighting wars.."

Vers completes the sentence ".. it's about ending them."

She then suddenly starts seeing more memories, memories of herself in the jet with Lawson and their flight.

Vers looked like she was in agony. Max goes to her and hugs her. He rubs her back, which seemed to help soothe her. He says to her "Vers, don't fight the memories. Let them flow."

Vers listens to Max and relaxes herself. The memories become more vivid.

*Memories*

Lawson and Vers get onto the jet and take off. While in the air, Lawson says to Vers "Enter the coordinates for our destination."

Vers enters a few numbers that Lawson dictates and after entering them into a screen, she asks Lawson "Are you sure these are the right coordinates?"

Lawson replies "Yes"

Vers heads towards their destination and on their way, strange spaceships appear out of thin air and start firing at their jet.

"Who are they?" Vers asks.

Lawson replies "People trying to stop me from doing the right thing. Lead them away from the destination Carol. They can't follow us to our destination."

"Roger that" Vers says and maneuvers the jet, dodging all the lasers while leading them away from the destination, but she can't dodge all the lasers from the spaceships and one of them hits their jet.

"We are hit." Vers says and struggles to control the jet.

She tries her best but the jet rapidly loses altitude. Vers dodges all the trees in their path, and crashes the jet near a lake.

After the plane crashes, Maria asks in the radio "Carol, do you copy?"

Vers replies "We hit the ground. I copy."

She then gets out and checks Lawson. She is bleeding from the forehead. Vers looks at the blood and says "Your blood.... it's blue."

"Help me out, will you" Lawson says and Vers brings her out of the wreckage. She lays her on the sand and Lawson is wounded from the crash.

She says to Vers "Carol. They found me. I don't have much time. Carol, I am not Wendy Lawson. My name is Mar-Vell and I come from a planet called Hala. I need you to remember those coordinates. You have to help them on your own. Remember Carol, our work is to end wars. Now, leave before they find you."

Vers refuses to leave her and says "You look like you can still move. I am taking you with me."

Lawson shakes her head and removes a blaster from her jacket. She says "I have to destroy this engine before they find it."

She aims it at the exposed engine with blue glowing light, but before she can pull the trigger, she is shot in the chest.

Vers is shocked and she immediately turns to the direction the laser came from. She sees a figure walk towards her and quickly picks up the gun.

From the smoke of the jet crash, Yon-Rogg emerges with his gun pointed at Vers. He says "You don't have to die. Just leave from here and we can all act like nothing happened."

Vers says "Paramedics are on their way. You will be completely surrounded. Surrender now."

Yon-Rogg says "Then I see no reason to prolong this conversation."

Seeing that Yon-Rogg is ready to shoot her, she remembers the final instructions from Lawson and swiftly turns her gun to the glowing engine.

Yon-Rogg shouts "No" but he is too late. Vers shoots the engine and there is a massive explosion, with some radiation from the engine entering Vers.

*End of Memories*

Vers now remembers everything from her time on Earth. She pulls away from Max and looks him in the eye. Max sees the turmoil in her eyes and wants to comfort her, but Vers quickly runs off to the room she used to stay in when she lived with Maria.

Max is just standing in the hallway with complete silence from everyone. Maria breaks the silence by asking Alexander "Didn't you say you were from some Shield or Sword? What is all this Kree and war stuff?"

Alexander turns to his skrull form, startling both Maria and Monica.

Maria screams "What the hell are you?"

Talos says to her "My name is Talos and I am a skrull."

The other men in the room also transform into their original skrull forms and both Maria and Monica are totally shocked.

Maria says "I don't care what you are or what you want, but I need you to get out of my house right now."

Max stands there for a while before walking to the room Vers ran off to. On the stairs, Max turns to Fury and says "Fill her in on what happened till now and make her shut up."

Maria is clearly offended by what he just said, but then she saw the sorrow in his eyes as he walked the stairs. She was glad that someone cared so much for Carol.