It's a Slow Fire of Sorts: Part I

Rescue

A sharp squeeze on Brunnhilde's hand has her immediately pausing the story. "Hey Kamala," Carol says quietly. "Can I switch you places for this bit?" Kamala nods.

"Sure," she says, and Carol rubs her back.

"Thanks, baby."

Kamala wiggles out from her squished position between their arms, leaving space for Carol to slide over. Brunnhilde wraps one arm around Carol's neck, and as Little Marv settles on the other side of the couch, words a jumbled mess of- "She destroyed the Supreme Intelligence, and I totally called it"- Carol rests her head on Brunnhilde's shoulder and sighs.

"You okay," Brunnhilde whispers into her hair. America and Kamala have taken up squabbling in the background:

"You literally already knew that."

"Yeah, okay- and?"

"You don't have to do this," she reminds. Carol nods.

"I know."

She interlocks their arms and squeezes Brunnhilde's hand again. "But I want to keep going. Just... maybe don't..." her voice trails off. Brunnhilde kisses the side of her head.

"I got it," she assures. "I'll skim over that part."

***

By the time Brunnhilde has reached level five, she's about done with all of this running crap. Her head hurts. Her neck hurts. Her legs hurt. "You good? You sound like you're dying-" Marks rudely quips. Brunnhilde scowls.

"Keep your opinions to yourself or get off my comms."

"I've got an update on the whole 'Hala' situation," he retorts, and at the mention of Hala, Brunnhilde slows her pace. She draws her knife and leans against the wall, scanning the fifth floor through the hazy glass on the door.

"Already?" she asks, counting the number of guards and trying not to panic. "That was quick."

"Word travels fast on the back channels."

"And?"

"The computer god is gone." Brunnhilde freezes. She turns away from the door, voice aghast.

"What do you mean by gone?"

"Destroyed," he explains. "Wrecked. Murdered. Dead-"

"Yeah. Enough with the synonyms."

He blows his nose, then coughs out, "Hala is in a flarking spiral. There was some kind of ceremony or something, but it went wrong... went to *cough* garbage and killed a lot of people, and that's about all I've got. There's too much random chatter to piece together the rest."

Brunnhilde has no idea how to process this- Was it because of Vers? What kind of ceremony? What did she do? What's the extent of the damage? What even happened?- so she ignores it. She pushes it all away and thinks through her attack strategy, because she's running out of time. She can address the Kree Empire and their ethical pitfalls later.

"I'm going in," she says, before she can rethink it. "You've got about a minute to tell me which iso pod she's in," and with that, Brunnhilde is slamming open the door.

"Come and get me!" she hollers.

The guards in the hall barely have time to glance at her before she's rushing them, immediately flarking crap up. The Greens and Yellows are the first to snap out of their haze, but they go down with ease, too busy freaking out over the escaped slaves to put up much of a concentrated fight. She slices through a random Scrapper, carves her knife through a Blue, kicks another out of the way-