Move my hand. More memories. Inching closer, yet more memories. All of it real time I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming, hallucinating or going insane, but as my life in Marvel played in real time I ever so slowly moved toward the stone emitting more and more energy. As I did, the visions assaulting me became more real. 

—

“Watcha doing?” I whispered in his ear. 

“Jesus Christ!” Rock gasped. His hands shaking in fright, he nearly dropped the small ball of clay in the cylinder. 

“You don’t even know who Jesus was,” I retorted. 

Rock grumbled, slowly setting the ball in the cylinder. His meaty hands fitting inside the slim cylinder somehow. Letting out a sigh he set a cap on the end and began welding it to the hollow metal rod. No tinting glasses covering his eyes, the alien man looked straight into the arc. 

“You curse him enough, I might as well know him,” Rock grumbled in his deep voice. 

He was a Buscani species. His skin thick he had four long meaty fingers on each hand. Wearing a leather vest, he had no pants. Thankfully sexless, at least there was nothing below the belt, he had gray skin that was thick and veiny. No hair anywhere on his body, either because of his species or he kept blowing the hair off. Like a walking four limbed dick, he was of course my bunkmate on the Ravager ship. 

The unofficial munitions expert and engineer, Rock had been with the group for years before I showed up. Having only been with Wallum’s team for the past few weeks, I was learning a lot about starships, weapons, and the Ravagers themselves. 

Rock finished welding the top of the cylinder on. The item most likely far less explosive for some reason, Rock picked it up and tossed it. The sealed pipe spinning in the air, the alien caught it without issue. 

“What’s this new explosive?” I asked as he walked toward the engine room. 

“Just a little booster,” he said. “Though we can warp to different gates around the galaxy, most of our time is spent speeding to or from something. When we are really trying to speed away, we need a little extra kick in the engine.”

“So NOS?” I asked, referencing the speedy juice from Fast and Furious.  

“What’s that?” He asked, his long thin eyes staring at me. 

“This gas we put in cars to make them go zoom,” I said. “I think its short for nitrous oxide.” 

“Nos, I like it. I’ve been calling them Boom Sticks,” he said.

“I told you, those are guns,” I said. 

“I named them that long before you joined up, Rookie,” he said. 

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. As we walked to the engine room a blue and black cat dislodged herself from her perch and landed on my shoulder. The only female on the ship, Tabi lazed her days away in the engine room or on my shoulder. Rock set his new Nos stick on a line of other ones. Writing on the side to label it differently, he said each would do something special to the engine. Whether it would give a boost, or make it burn way hotter so we could use it to burn people getting too close. 

“Alright, what today, Rookie?” Rock asked. 

“Hmmm, we dug into propulsion, the burners, afterburners, postburners, inertial amplifiers, and most everything. You still haven’t taught me to fly though,” I said. I wasn’t sure why, but I really wanted to learn to fly a ship. I still didn’t have my old memories back, and I assumed once I got the opportunity to try I would get a huge download of memories making me really good at it. But the captain and vice-captain or first mate were big sticklers about who got to fly the ship. 

“Eh, we can do that later,” Rock said. “Let’s uh dig into the Warp Drive.” Happy to learn something new I went with him to the other main engine of the ship. A few other Ravagers around, they gave us a wide berth as Rock climbed over the cube shaped drive.

He began a long explanation about how the Warp Drive worked, but I was having trouble wrapping my head around the whole warp technology. In most every universe there were quite a few worlds. In Marvel specifically, there were thousands of species with interplanetary travel. Some having been around for millenia, they established the Warp Drive network. My understanding wasn’t helped by the fact that Rock went on different side tracks as he explained. 

Basically, starships were allowed to warp to certain locations to get to the ‘civilized’ solar systems. Civilized meaning those with common interstellar travel. Uncivilized were planets like Earth, where warp technology was a thing of the future. The real trouble was getting these coordinates to warp to. You had to be friends with Kree, Shi’ar, and any number of other species vying for the top spots. 

Since you couldn’t warp from one end of the galaxy to the other, you had to leap frog from one warp coordinate to another. The Warp network itself having been established thousands of years ago by some now unknown aliens. Because there were a lot of worlds uncivilized, or on the cusp of perfecting warp technology, there were a lot of inbetween warp locations. 

Though plenty of aliens had tweaked and added to the warp network, there were still many unknown uncivilized people along the paths that ships traveled. Though people didn’t know where Earth was, it most likely lied near one of the Warp points, which was why we had so much alien traffic back home

. 

Also because you were jumping from one civilized location to another, you tended to find a lot of trouble in between. Many uncivilized systems made up the network and that was typically where you would have run-ins with pirates. Which was why captains were usually well connected individuals. 

“Wallum is pretty good,” Rock said as his explanation took another tangent. “Some twelfth heir to the Ghol empire. He has a bunch of coordinates and shortcuts to the civilized worlds. Which is why it's important to have the right captain. The more coordinates you know, the more likely you are to choose a warp path that doesn’t include pirates or cops.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, I’m lucky I got Wallum,” I said again. “Back to the-” 

“Rock! Weston!” One of the other Ravagers yelled. “Meeting time.”

“Alright!” Rock yelled back. Tabi sauntered over and jumped to sit on top of the short man’s head. Like she were at the front of a ship she stood with her chest out as the calloused alien headed off to the meeting room.

The Ravager ship like it’s own small town, it was in the shape of a long cube, or whatever they called a three-dimensional rectangle. With straight paths, with tons of interconnecting hallways, it was pretty riot proof since you had to go up to levels with ladders, and take a lot of turns in the halls. I was getting pretty close to not becoming lost all the time as of late, and mentally only took two wrong turns as we made our way to the bridge. 

The bridge itself was a large room that was big enough to house every one of the Ravagers under Wallum. Nearly a hundred men, they were a myriad of different races. From large rock men to tiny floating fairies less than a foot tall. Each had their own bunkmates and role on the ship. Whether it was mess hall or watching cargo. Every one of them was expected to help with jobs. 

As Rock and I stepped into the bridge, Rinxtar gave me a rage-filled glare. He was some kind of Slender man. About nine feet tall he was rail thin with long arms and legs. When he was ready to fight he ballooned out like a puffer fish, adding muscle with the expansion somehow. 

The alien had given me trouble when I first joined. With the Captain and first mate on top, seniority and strength were how the rest of the Ravagers chose their rank. Since Rinxtar was considered the top dog he tried to show his dominance to me. I kicked his ass within the first day, and though I could have justifiably taken his much larger room, I didn’t mention it. Sticking to Rock in the small bunk near the engine room. 

Since then he had been giving me the stink eye during the few times we ran into each other. I was pretty sure he was planning to ambush me with a couple of his lackeys, but I didn’t much care. Though I hadn’t received any quests since I joined the Ravagers, I was happy to learn all the little machinations of the ship and its crew during my time. 

“Alright,” Ly barked. The female looking first mate made everyone jump to attention. “We are finally at our main job. Shut up and listen in.” At the center of the room was a large three-dimensional hologram. An image of a planet with two moons appeared. 

“This is Ajux,” Wallum said. The captain much quieter as he addressed the men. “The people here are the Jux.” Beside the planet a humanoid appeared. The alien species shown had light pink skin, pinker than my own, more like a sakura petal tint than anything. Two normal arms and legs, instead of hair they had tentacles that drooped down from the top of their head.

“We were commissioned by a rival of theirs to mess up a bid they are putting forth for the Kree. Some major company on Ajux specializes in genetic alteration.” The image changed to that of a large skyscraper sized building. “We go in, blow some stuff up, steal a few things, then we are out of there.”

Men growled and nodded, all getting excited for the job. “We land in a few hours. New guy!” Ly barked. 

“Yes sir!” I barked in his same energy. 

“You run point,” he said with a slight smile on his lips. 

“Cool,” I said, getting nervous. 

“But he’s never done this before,” Rinxtar whined. His voice was much higher pitched when he wasn’t ballooned out.

“Shut it, you know the Ravagers rules,” Ly said. That was one thing I noticed about these people. They always had some sort of unwritten rules. I was pretty sure they made them up as they went along, like some kid teaching his friend how to play chess the wrong way so the game ended in his favor. “We want to be in and out of there as soon as possible, people. We knock out, fuck up, then ravage.” 

Men cheered. Rinxtar grumbled but most ignored him. Prepared to make the guy have an accident I couldn’t help but wonder why I had been given a quest to join these people. Was the System, or whatever Tabi talked about, leading me, or was I just supposed to go along with whatever these people wanted? Only time would tell. 

—

The back of the ship crashed into the side of the building. Like a cannon blast going off, the ramp was forced forward, pushing into the building. The glass exterior breaking, a path was revealed. I went in first, wearing my Shi’ar armor. I didn't have any worries about being struck. 

People inside screamed and ran as we all rushed in. As the first wave of Ravagers, our job was shock and awe, so I did just that. Charging my hands with haki soaked Hoken, the black electricity shot out of me in a giant net. Striking everyone within eye sight they were knocked out instantly. 

The roaring Ravagers slowly stopped yelling, realizing everyone was knocked out. Some giving me a thumbs up or their equivalent of it at least, they kept running inside. Though killing wasn’t necessary, it wasn’t exactly frowned upon in the Ravagers. I wasn’t too comfortable with it though, so I made sure to knock everyone out. 

As the guys kept running inside I slowed, looking around. We appeared to have entered some office building. Weird squares all around I guessed they were cubicles. All the Jux I had knocked out were in uniform clothing, telling me that they weren’t fighters. 

I continued forward with the other Ravagers. More Jux inside, these were knocked out with some sort of time freezing grenade. Unsure how else to put it, a wide area of Jux were frozen in place. Their eyes moving slowly, their bodies stayed frozen in whatever they were doing. One guy was even falling, his body floating a few inches off the ground as it slowly fell. 

“What the hell are those?” I asked Rock. The smaller alien had been near the back. Though I was supposed to lead I was at a loss for what was important, so I didn’t mind taking it slow. 

“Populses,” he said. A massive gun in his arms. He had a wicked grin on his lips as he pointed the gun at a wall. An explosion ripping apart the wall I could feel his Haki fill with battle lust. “They freeze the area in time for a bit, then knock them out after-” As he said it, those in the Populse range dropped down. 

“Woah, space is weird,” I said, shocked there was such a thing that controlled time. 

“You have no idea,” Rock said. “Come on. We gotta be in and out.” He led the way, following the group of Ravagers. The ship had dropped off another group further above and we met in the middle. People tearing out what looked like computers, my groups grabbed everything they could and threw it in packs. 

I wasn’t exactly sure what to grab so I acted like I was doing something as I ran around. Plenty of experiments going on I found a few different species in the midst of being dissected. Though I knew it was some sort of genetic testing lab, it was still weird to see. I kept expecting to find some human being trapped inside, instead I found some other creatures I knew. 

A raccoon, rhino, and octopus were amongst dozens of cages. The others filled with animals I didn’t know, I could feel these people knew where Earth was. How else could they have a few of our species? 

I moved toward the cages, considering letting them free when Rock ran up. “What the hell are you doing?” 

“Freeing them,” I said with a shrug. “Seems a shame to-” I stopped talking as someone shot at us. Grabbing the projectile out of the air before it struck Rock in the head. I took hold of the cylinder as it exploded. 

Rather than some concussive blast, a pulse went out, hitting me, Rock, and the other animals. My eyes wide, I stared at my hand that held an exploded Populse. My mind not slow I raged internally as my eyes turned to where the shot came from. Of course it was the ballooned out Rinxtar. The man had a wicked smile on his face. 

“Have fun,” he said in his now deep voice. Pushing a button the door between us shut. 

I locked eyes with Rock. He too was furious and scared. Both of us frozen I tried to power through the time freeze. At a loss for what to do I tried to activate my own Timeflow, but nothing worked. A ringing blast rang out suddenly, bursting my ear drums and making me lose all the strength in my body. Without a word it all went black as we were abandoned on an alien world.