Appearing in "Shards"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- Demon monster (Death)
- Female bomber
- Badoon
- Abusive boyfriend
Other Characters:
- Mar-Vell (Mentioned)
- Tyler
- Unnamed alien girl (Death)
Locations:
Items:
Synopsis for "Shards"
In a desert, Captain Marvel has spent months in meditation, trying to harness his cosmic awareness. Now in tune with the universe, he speeds from place to place, saving those he believes need saving. He first travels to Los Angeles, stopping a drug deal from going down and killing the drug dealer, secretly an alien in disguise. Next, he travels to Israel, where a woman is preparing to blow herself up on a crowded bus. The suicide bomber sees a young woman breastfeeding her infant child and hesitates for a moment, but just before she can detonate the bomb strapped to her chest, Captain Marvel intervenes, strips her of it and hands her over to the police. As he is flying away, the young woman with the baby pulls out a gun and shoots her. Rick Jones chastises him for not saving the woman, despite his cosmic awareness warning him this would happen. Captain Marvel responds that he knew it might happen, but could not wait around to see if it would.
Next, he travels to a distant alien world where a battle has just been fought. He finds a dying alien begging to be reunited with its mother, and promises to bring it to her. When Rick Jones questions the importance of this task, Marvel snaps at him, telling him that he doesn't know why he needs to be here, only that he needs to heed the will of the universe. Before he can finish this task, his cosmic awareness gives him another vision; in one place, the Badoon are invading a planet, in another, a young girl is about to be beaten to death by her boyfriend. He leaves the corpse of the alien floating in space as he rushes to stop the Badoon, deciding that saving millions of lives outweighs saving one. As he is fighting the Badoon, the girl is beaten to death, and he receives another vision: the girl would have grown up to become the greatest peacemaker in the galaxy, and would have ushered in an age of galactic tolerance and peace.
Overwhelmed by his mistake, and the unending situations his cosmic awareness reveals to him, each with their own infinite threads of consequences, he falls to the ground and is rendered catatonic.
Notes
- Rick Jones mentions his "own personal miracle". He's of course referring to when he suddenly regained his youth in Captain Marvel (Vol. 4) #26.
