Observer POV
Emptiness, all around, and complete silence.
Then, suddenly, there was something, and with that something came light.
Tenno stepped out of the rift he had used, which closed behind him, as he looked around.
"Same old, same old, I guess," he said to himself as he floated about in the immense darkness.
"Well, then let's get to work."
A golden glow began to surround him as a chant started. He tried to create a portal, but the spell collapsed in on itself, and the light was swallowed by the darkness once more.
"Wouldn't be fun if it was easy, ney?"
He joked to himself as he began channeling some energy into his nega bands, while searching for the connection to the other pair.
Something in his mind felt a connection to Carol, but her mind was too distant and too weak to form a strong one.
But he could feel where she was.
He again began to channel his energy, but this time using the void around him, as he tried to create a portal. First, it looked like it worked, but after some time of stability, it collapsed, and the void energy was sucked back into the surroundings.
"Ok, this will take a while," he thought as his shoulders slumped down in defeat. He began to turn toward the direction he felt the connection, channeled his inner energy, and made a void jump in that direction.
It was the most significant void jump he had ever done, and he felt all his energy drained afterwards.
Peculiarly, the next instant, the void around him surged into him, refilling his reserves to the maximum.
"AGAIN," he thought, and another void jump followed.
He reached for the connection, but it didn't feel any less far away.
"Ok, this is not even the slightest bit annoying."
He thought as he again began to void-jump, taking fewer and fewer breaks in between.
At some point, it even felt like he was continually void-jumping, but he was still only taking little steps on a massive road ahead.
(AN: one eternity later)
He did not know how long it had taken him to get to where he was now. Time worked differently in the void after all, but after what felt like an eternity, he finally saw something in the distance.
He knew he was close, he could feel it, and after some more time, he finally laid eyes on something different than this eternity of space. He laid eyes on the orbiter from far above as he canceled his void flight while he got near it and decelerated.
The time it took him on the way was enough to train his abilities more and refine them within the Void. He had found out a lot of things, as within the void, he did not have to look out for his reserves and could waste a lot of energy, so in the end, something like void flight came out of it.
Ashe analyzed his ship. For the first time in a while, he realized how incredibly big his orbiter actually was, since he was usually only in its cockpit. Especially compared to the Liset, after all, it was only the orbiter's landing ship.
After some searching around, he finally came to the damaged section of the ship, reaching downwards into the transference chamber, where Carol probably was. He flew downward, squeezing past some sharp angles, till he finally reached the most challenging part.
Once he reached his destination, he saw the closed chair from outside for the first time in a while, and at the same time, his connection to Rhino surged back, but he decided to finish his mission first.
He went over to the chair and tapped on a display to open the shell.
"Operator recognized, emergency detainment procedure deactivated," said the ship's emergency AI, while the chair opened up.
Inside the chair, he saw the shell of a woman he knew from the empire's archives. She was lying there, completely strengthless, as she looked up at him in confusion.
She tried to lift her arm, probably to fire an energy beam, but he just pulled out his Master emblem and showed it to her. The arm that wasn't even half its way upwards now just hung there in the weightlessness of space.
And as she looked him up and down a bit more, she saw his master robe, and as her mind slowly booted up again, she started to relax a bit.
He conjured a spell, tapping first on his and then on her forehead, which she begrudgingly accepted, knowing it was the mind connection spell.
"Hello there," Tenno carefully spoke into her mind. "I'm Tenno, and I'm here to get you home."
He began to slowly guide her out of the chair, as she leaned onto him.
"How did all of this happen?" she asked as Tenno took her and went over to the hole in the ship's side.
"Well, as much as we understand it, we would say that you tried to escape the Void by using the exchange ability of your nega bands, but that backfired."
"How did it backfire?" she asked weakly.
"Well, it searched for another pair of nega bands within the vicinity, but there were none, so it searched further and found me."
Carol's mind suddenly became much clearer as she began to untangle the situation she found herself in.
"They reached through me and activated the ones that lay dormant in the universe I projected myself into at the moment. These one's…" he said, showing her his own, as he continued, "then connected to me and forced us to swap places with each other."
Her head slumped downwards as she heard the last part.
"So this is all my fault to begin with," she asked while drowning in self-pity.
"I'm afraid it gets worse," Tenno replied, as they reached a tricky part of the hole, where only one at a time would be able to pass through.
"Once I was in your position, pretty much directly afterwards, Strange and Wanda reached out to what they thought was you and pulled me back into your universe. So if you had just waited a bit more, they would have rescued you right away."
At these words, Carol just fell silent, as she fell into what seemed to be a state of shock.
At that point, they finally reached the outermost part of the orbiter's hull and were outside in the total nothingness of the void.
"But it's not all bad, at least not for me. I think I've found a way to get back home, thanks to all of this. I have to get some stuff back first, though, before returning to your universe."
He projected into her mind as he took her hand and concentrated on the one-time spell. Strange had put on his nega bands.
"But now let's get you home first, let me just contact them and they will get you out of here."
In the next second, the same golden and red energy that he saw as he got pulled into Carol's universe appeared around them.
"Please tell Wanda that I'm sorry and that I will miss her. I will come back once I've finished collecting my things," he said as the golden and red energy began to surround them.
"What do you mean?" Carol asked as the man before her teleported backward out of the glowing energy ball, and in the next second, the encapsulation around her closed completely, while the light before her eyes vanished.
A lot of blurry images appeared in her head before she felt the connection to the nova force again, and her power reawakened. She took a big, deep breath and smiled as the air around her body began to shimmer.
Then she heard Wanda's voice, angry and afraid like never before, ask a question,
"Carol, where is Tenno?"