Hey all! I promised a Rocket origin story, and this is it! Many of the one shots from Nova were actually practice pieces for this story here, cut up and re-imagined in their proper place- those who have read my anthology Nova We Have a Problem probably noticed that a small subset of the stories were all in the same continuity, separate from the other one shots, and that's because I never wrote fic before and wanted to test the waters of some different writing styles for this piece.

That being said, I will post more than one chapter at a time if the chapter relies very heavily on already written one-shots. You'll always get at least one new chapter of material with every update. Even the older stuff is pretty heavily reworked in many cases (not all, some parts are pretty verbatim).

I used the original Rocket origin of Halfworld cranked up to 11 for this story, and it seems that's how the new Guardians TV show is doing it as well (likely due to keeping it a kids rating by NOT having Rocket murder a facility's worth of scientists upon escape). For those of you that haven't read the original comics, I'll explain my divergences at the end of the relevant parts, so as not to spoil.

Onwards!

None of the Guardians were expecting a flash bomb to go off, but, hey, worse things could happen on a mission. Drax blinked his eyes a few times, but the scrawny-but-fast thugs they'd been sent to take out had long fled.

He watched as Peter rubbed his eyes. No harm done.

Or so he thought.

"Groooooot!" Groot yelled, pointing at the floor in front of him. Both Rocket and Gamora lay comatose. Rocket didn't have far to fall, so he was fine, but Gamora probably broke her nose. With the nanobots in her system temporarily disabled, she'd need a splint and cotton to stop the blood flow.

"EMP," Peter cursed under his breath. "Groot, you know what to do. Drax, can you carry Gamora?" Peter hastily pulled emergency supplies from his knapsack and bandaged Gamora's face, while Groot picked up the small furball, holding him in a lock. Rocket's body typically woke up before his cybernetics did, and that meant a confused woodland creature who would want to get the heck out of wherever he was, biting and clawing if necessary, before his smarts decided to override his instincts.

The slimeballs, Peter thought, could always be caught another day. Right now, they needed to get their two cyborgs out of harm's way.

Rocket always woke up way too fast from an EMP (always being twice by Peter's count and sixteen by Groot's), they hadn't even made it back to the ship before they heard the high pitched screeches from Rocket's lips. Groot held on tighter as not-quite-yet-Rocket continued to whine and scramble, lazily scratching behind Rocket's ear as Rocket's instincts started to realize he was curled up in a tree. A sentient tree, sure, but Rocket's animal brain didn't distinguish. His breathing calmed, and he curled himself in a ball, going to sleep in Groot's limbs. Groot looked down at his small friend, safe in the knowledge that when he'd reawaken, he'd be a person again. Not that Groot particularly cared either way, a friend was a friend.

Peter unlocked the cargo door of the Milano, closer to the bunks than the main bay entrance, and walked with Drax and the knocked-out Gamora back to her cabin. "Hey, Groot, buddy, let me know when Rocket's back online, okay?" he said, quietly, as he disappeared down the hallway with Drax.

"Grooo…" Groot cooed, half at Peter and half at the sleeping ball of fur in his hands.

Groot sat down in a quiet corner of the cargo bay, continuing to stroke Rocket's head gently, checking for bruising and feeling Rocket purr through his very limbs.

"That's nice…" Rocket said lazily, only half awake. Good. He'd come back. "Peter, I guess they had EMP's or flare weapons if we have returned to the ship. I can hear the engine and smell the oil… did they overload my sensory processors?"

"I am Groot," Groot replied gently. Groot knew how well Rocket could smell, see, and hear compared to the humanoids. If the bomb had messed around with his senses, Rocket was likely going to need Gamora to do a reset. The two of them knew each other's basic systems well enough to do some maintenance on each other.

Rocket opened an eye. "That… was intriguing," he said. "I cannot understand it, but maybe I should keep my hearing set as they have? I heard undertones, Groot, I think I can learn your…" Rocket trailed off, and shot up, tail swishing. "Oh," he said, as if coming to a realization, looking up at Groot. "This is… inconvenient."

"Groo?"

"This is Gamora, Groot, not Rocket. And I suppose Rocket's mind is inhabiting my body as well," 'Rocket' replied.

Groot looked petrified, picking up the now-fluffy Gamora and holding her tightly in an embrace. Gamora felt something at the back of her now-feral brain telling her she needed to get out, and, without meaning to, began to squirm and thrash, letting out a bestial shriek. Groot let go.

"If those primal urges to flee are a thing Rocket needs to contend with daily, I can understand why he is so wary of touch," Gamora said, matter-of-factly, trying out her new snout and wiggling her ears. "The amount of trust he places in you despite that fight-or-flight instinct is impressive."

Groot beamed, and Gamora attempted to stand up, only to topple head-first on the cold metal floor. She tried again, to no avail, and settled on walking on all fours. "I do not know how he does it," she remarked. Despite still having Rocket's voice, it was easy to tell it was Gamora. Groot stood up, looming even higher than usual over 'Rocket' due to Gamora's gait, and walked down the hallway, beckoning her to follow.

Gamora laughed, and it escaped her as high-pitched chitter. "So his normal laugh IS fake. Well, then, let's see if Rocket is faring better in my body than I am in his."

Drax carefully deposited Gamora's warm-but-still-comatose body into her bunk, laying a light quilt over. "I will go and steep some tea and prepare some food. Both will likely need something to regain their strength after they awaken," he said. Implicitly, he was also giving Peter some quiet time alone with his girlfriend. Well-sort of girlfriend. The two of them really didn't have a label for their relationship, despite everyone else on the ship knowing they were an item.

Peter brushed back the hair from her brow, noticing the green roots showing under the black hair. Peter didn't know why she dyed it, and would love to see her real hair color, a dark foresty color, peeking through, on her for a change. But it was her body, not his, and if that's how she liked it, so be it. He could hear the plate in her cheekbone start to move and adjust; she was coming back online. He peeled the splint from her nose so the nanobots could fix it the way it was supposed to be, and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

Gamora awoke with a start. "What the frak, man?" her sultry voice exclaimed. With just the intonation and those four words, Peter guessed at exactly what had transpired.

"…Rocket?!"

"Yeah dumba…" Rocket replied. "Okay, w'happened to my voice?"

"Nothing happened to 'your' voice," Peter said, half amused and half disgusted that he'd kissed 'Rocket' on the cheek AND Gamora was still hot, even with Rocket as a temporary occupant. That was an invasion of Rocket's bodily space, if nothing else. "I knew running around the universe long enough would get me involved in a body-swapping plot. It always happens- 2AM B-movies never lie. Thank whatever deities are watching that I didn't get switched with Groot."

"It's like I have cotton stuffed in my ears and nose," Rocket groaned, as he came to realize he was Gamora. "At least I still have decent eyesight."

"You DO have cotton stuck in your nose," Peter replied, now afraid of seeing Gamora-as-Rocket eye-to-eye when she and her probably fuzzy pelt eventually decided to face him. "Gamora broke her nose when she fell. Her nanos should have fixed it by now, so the gauze can come out, but I'm not tweezing it out for you."

Rocket lifted a free hand. "Goddam sausages," he mumbled, looking at the slender green fingers. "How am I supposed to get any work done with these?" He flexed his digits, touching each to his thumb.

"I fix the ship just fine," Peter said, affronted. "And my hands are even bigger."

Rocket laughed, clapping his hand over his mouth before realizing he wasn't chittering, but laughing like a humanoid. "Wonder how Gamora's doin'. I'd bet money that she don't even know how to stand up."

As if on cue, a thunderous knock on the bulkhead door. "Groot, buddy, in here," Rocket called out.

Peter just pulled on the tufts of hair on his head. It would have been easier if he'd switched with someone. Anyone. He could be Drax. That would be okay. This was just weird. And he'd done the horizontal tango with an A'askavarian- well, technically, given the species, it was on an incline and half underwater. So much for the mental image.

Groot opened the door, and Rocket was right, Gamora was on all fours, nose twitching. "This is, for lack of better terminology, insane," Gamora said. "I can smell and hear everything on the ship. I can tell that Drax is in the galley, he is boiling water, and there are pastries in the heating unit. I can hear the undertones in Groot's speech! How do you make sense of all this?"

"The same way that you can walk around without needin' a tail for balance," Rocket said. "This is nuts," he added as he sat up in the bunk. "I'm as tall as Quill."

"Speaking of which, how do I stand up?" Gamora asked.

"Groot probably locked me in the down position so I didn't hurt myself," Rocket said, with Groot nodding. "Clench your back legs together and rock back until you're standin', then release. You'll feel your-my-whatever spine click into place. If you want to curl up, lock your knees together and you'll feel the mechanism come loose, then bend forward 'till you're on all fours and you feel another click. If you're good, you can do it in one motion to go from sittin' to standin'." Gamora shakily did as instructed, and wobbled unsteadily on what she saw as too-small feet. Peter looked at Gamora, struggling to stand, and a wave of emotion washed over him. She was adorable. And he was getting more and more uncomfortable as he watched the two of them be totally okay with this. If he woke as Rocket he'd probably think it was cool, he hadn't skittered through the ductwork of a spaceship since he was a little kid, and ladies in bars would probably lavish him with attention, but waking up as Gamora would be a nightmare on several levels. Also, how could such a thing even happen in the first place? He knew about teeps, and species with powers, but, never anything like this before.

After a few more tries of switching between stances (Gamora didn't even know that this part of Rocket was mechanical, he did it so fluidly), and a little bit of Rocket's flailing reminders to relax and let her tail take care of balance, she was pacing around the small room.

"Next, you're going to wanna learn to climb proper-like. Nothing is ever gonna be the right height," Rocket said, after he seemed satisfied, swinging his (her?) legs over the side of the bunk and attempting to stand himself. "Whoa, this is not easy."

"Take off my heels, Rocket. There are some flats in the closet." Rocket fumbled with the zippers on Gamora's boots, and scooted and reached out to her wardrobe.

"I can reach everything, this is a head trip," Rocket said, bewildered. He found a pair of shoes without heels and slid them on. "Hate shoes, but this is just a rental, right?" he asked aloud at nobody in particular as he pointed to himself.

"I think so, it should be easy enough to fix," Gamora said thoughtfully. "I keep nightly backups of my data banks, so I just need to reload from yesterday. I won't remember this but I'm sure Peter will hold it over my head." She grinned, bearing Rocket's canines. "Whatever those goons threw was probably a data scrambler; we haven't, as Peter so loudly proclaimed before I got in here, switched bodies because I have your instincts and I can't remember my childhood, just an adult reminder I planted in my virtual memory that I had a time before Thanos. Something tells me if you swim in my subconscious you'll resurface memories of mine from before I became Thanos's blade, and won't be able to remember who you were before your modifications as well." Gamora turned backwards and addressed Groot, still standing in the doorway. "Groot, hug him. Tightly."

Rocket braced himself to swallow his normal instinct to run as Groot wrapped his arms around him. But the irrational feeling of dread never hit. It was only the feeling of soft comfort, without any of the flight response buried underneath. It was… really nice actually. Warm. Rocket wriggled his arms free and hugged Groot back, to both their surprise. "You're… right," he finally admitted.

"So," Peter said mulling, "everything stored on Rocket's hard drives is being read by Gamora's machinery and vice versa? Do we do a data transfer and everyone's good again? Why even bother with walking then? Just do it."

Gamora shook her head. "A data transfer is a bad idea. We will both get everything mixed together, I will get all of what is in here, " she said pointing a clawed finger at herself, "including Rocket's instincts, and Rocket's going to get my suffering at the hands of Thanos before he installed the drive. No. We both just restore our backups and everything's fine. If I had one of those bombs they tossed we could be back to ourselves as fast as the original switch took place, but, without, it will take me about ten hours to do a full restore, we will both have to be unconscious. Anyway, Rocket's body is screaming of hunger, so let me eat something and then I'll set us both up for repairs- and I'd like to do that under my own locomotion, thank you. I don't need to be carried and fed."

"No wonder you are so calm about this," Peter replied, after a beat of silence.

"It's happened to me once before. But now I know who we are dealing with as adversaries, as they are likely the same organization," Gamora replied. "Last time it was myself and Nebula, though, so the difference was not so great," she said, spreading her furry arms wide.

"G'mora," Rocket finally squeaked out. "I… I don't have a backup. I thought my hard drive WAS my backup. For my brain." Gamora, Groot, and Peter looked on in horror.

"How long ago was it installed?" Gamora asked.

"I am Groot." Rocket's face went sour.

"I can't hear you anymore, big guy," Rocket said, solemnly. "But I'm guessing he told you about six or seven years ago. I'm about eight years old."

"It takes me about five minutes per day for a backup, and I'll set you up with one. Mathematically that's…"

"About eight to ten days straight," Rocket finished, mentally calculating at a blinding speed. "That's still pretty good for… how many petabytes of data?"

"Better than not being able to switch at all," Peter replied. "And the rest of us can go track those asshats down in the meantime for the quicker route. We can bring you food, Rocket, or does he have to be unconscious for the whole thing?"

"No, no, we'll both only need to be unconscious for the restore," Gamora said. "I have a wireless setup for backing up. Rocket just couldn't stray too far from the ship- or, if he does, it will just pause and resume when he returns within range." He can do whatever he wants while it copies," Gamora paused, holding up a finger, "Within reason."

"That's… not terrible," Rocket finally said. "I get to be you for a week and watch Peter squirm. You'd better not do anything to my fuzzy rear end, got it, Quill?"

"Noted," Peter said. The week wouldn't be so bad for Rocket or Gamora, it seemed, but it was not going to be fun for him.

DAY 0 (3.8% complete):

The rest of Day Zero (as the team now called it) was pretty low key. Groot helped Rocket walk through the hallways in his now too-tall legs, and Gamora scampered between walking on twos and fours just so she could practice the switch. Drax, once he was assured that their problem was reversible, laughed, clapping a hand on each of them, and reminded Gamora sternly that she was not to have any caffeine or chocolate.

Gamora set up the data backups for Rocket after they had eaten (Rocket noting he felt full after less than one pastry, and saw Gamora look uncomfortable asking for thirds. She'd have to get used to his appetite) and both went back to their respective bunks. Rocket realized he wouldn't fit in his bed and sleeping curled up in Groot's arms was unfair to both Gamora and his now less flexible humanoid back. He doubled back to Gamora's room and the two of them shared her bunk for the night.

Gamora dreamed of the woods. She smelled wet vegetation, moss, rotting trees. Her own mechanical memories, and, by extension, her personality and selfhood, recognized this as something of Rocket's, from his real brain. Something from Before.

Rocket felt his own cold, wet nose press on the back of his neck, and he shuddered in his sleep, remembering one of the first things on his hard drive. The wet bloodiness on the back of his neck from having had it freshly installed. He tried to push away whatever was pressing into him, but, when he found it to be fuzzy and warm (the specificity that it was his body-slash-Gamora were not registered in his half-slumbering mind) he hugged it close and drifted back asleep.

Gamora reached up, paws to the sky, tasting unpolluted air and smelling the flowers. She felt a pressure circling around her and panicked, but Rocket's brain supplied the warm feeling of other small fuzzy mammals that looked like him- two small and one much larger, warm and soft. Tonight, without access to most of her early memories of Thanos, before the hard drive installation, for the very first time in a long while, Gamora's dreams stayed in that forest.

Rocket's, however, did not.

Rocket woke up, cramped and cold and wet, for the first time feeling as if he knew that these things were Not Good. He didn't know why they were Not Good- just that he wasn't comfortable. He let out a whine and felt something stuck at the back of his throat.

Cold, he thought, and the thing stuck inside of him made a series of beeps and clicks.

Suddenly, three Large Things, not things like him, they were upright and glinted under the dim light, came to his side, seemingly from nowhere. He certainly didn't smell or hear them coming.

"The subject has voiced displeasure at being below an ideal temperature. Shall we remedy or observe?" one asked, tinnily.

"Let us provide the needed comfort," responded a second. "He will be tested much over the coming cycles, and without time to rest and recuperate, we will lose him to his own sanity."

"That is only a possibility, given prior information. We do not have enough to conclude."

"The lowered body temperature," interjected the first, "Seems to be due to partial rejection of the installed hardware from 5 standard hours prior. He will need to be cleaned and monitored. A heated enclosure upon completion of the diagnostic and repair would be advisable."

"Similar conclusion reached," commented the second.

"This unit still asserts that monitoring conditions for at last half an hour is ideal," protested the third, but the first had already picked up the small creature by the scruff in its claw, and rolled down to the operating wing to monitor the unit though the centralized testing mainframe.

Rocket never really liked any of his wardens, but he liked Three the least.

Robots, by all definition, shouldn't need to speak to one another, especially the Halfworld variety with their extensive tech and wireless capability. But these machinations were intended to interact with those in Halfworld's mental health wards, the areas the 'normals', as the automatons referred to the non-incarcerated population (because, as Rocket saw it, those in the institutions were just as locked up as he). They were ceaseless in their efficiency, certainly, but lacked empathy. When you cannot bleed, or die, or feel the slightest bit of pain, how could you comprehend that of others?

And thus, when the order came down from Gideon- long forgotten who, what or where He was (He for convenience, some did say She or It or simply Gee), etched into the programming of all menial automatons to find a means of being (through upgrading) or creating a more amicable successor to their tasks facing out to the Shangri-La inhabitants of Halfworld, their combined processing power came up with the idea of sapient animals- cute and empathetic, with their intellect, to take their place.

It did not help that Rocket's cries of pain every time an operation was preformed was just considered a normal response to stimuli.

Rocket wondered if they had put intelligence in, right at the end, long after the rest of their modifications (most, like One's and Two's for better interaction- bipedalism, more dexterous paws, memory storage, sturdier bones and longer lifespan, and some like Three's that were simply to further the cause of science)- he wondered if he would have stayed, done his job as he'd been programmed, a living Teddy Ruxpin as Peter had once called him. Cute, charming, cuddly, both able to be one of many planned companions for the patients but also able to administer medical treatment and the facilities themselves, leaving the robots to handle things away from nuanced, emotive work- cooking, cleaning, driving the Normals from place to place…

Actually, Rocket realized at the end of the night, as he relived himself torching the facility in his mind, sparing the continued pain of the other creatures in cells large enough for their bodies but far too small for their mental wellbeing, he would still have probably been bitter. They gave him a conscience. But they gave him no choice.