I posted these a few weeks ago on the Archive of Our Own account DrAphra. Check out that account for sooner updates!
[LK was here. And she wrote this to The Moon and the Fool by Cold Kingdom. Shout out to my sis for posting this on her account!]
Yondu gripped his ele-mace, a corroded and out-of-date weapon even by his uncivilized standards. He and twenty other battle slaves were about to be dropped via military hovercraft into the midst of a Kree skirmish. Since Udonta had shown such promise in the practice rings he'd been slated to test himself on real war-ground. The thirteen-year-old exhaled.
3…2…1…
The drop horn sounded and they were sucked into pods and jettisoned into the soil of Hosqanaq Prime. The world rang.
His pod ejected him and he tumbled out onto a veritable hellscape. Torn and twisted rebar; buildings whittled to debris as far as the eye might behold. In the middle of it all? Kree vs. the noble Hosqani.
Yondu got clipped by an element gun and sent spinning into a piece of chain-link fence. He was then pinned there by a heavy force. Someone, whoever someone was, was going to squish him!
His smaller frame began to sink in the mud. A hand pressed him down until the chain link diced crisscrosses into his head.
"Kree slave shit," the Hosqan above him, snarled.
Something in Yondu broke. He lowered himself further in the mud and once glazed enough, wriggled out of his assailant's grasp.
As if born of reflex, Yondu buried his mace in the Hosqan's chest.
He watched him die while numb fingers slipped from his weapon's handle.
His first kill.
"Don't just stand there!"
A fellow slave shook him out of his reverie. The Luphomoid wasn't much older than he was. He projected stern more than he projected friendly and his look brooked no argument.
The young Centaurian couldn't remain petrified and live to see tomorrow. He moved.
He loathed being strapped to this chair. He felt he could condemn every battle in which he'd dug down deep and beaten paralysis; could forsake them. What lick of good was Kree training here?
Those loyal to him in the crew were hauled past, pleading for him to do something. To move. His red stare hollowed as the torment continued. Soon a path of corpses led to the Eclector's airlock like a macabre trail of crumbs. Yondu watched dear friends float to their deaths from where he sat, fastened. Space, cruel space, froze them stiff.