LAND OF 1000 SCARES
Hi guys! It's been a while.
First, I'd like to say that I just saw Vol.2 on theater yesterday and it's as awesome as I thought it would be. I'm walking on a little cloud of joy right now.
As for the following story, I found the prompt below on the Guardians of the Galaxy kink meme on livejournal and I really hope the person who submitted it about 3 years ago will like it if he/she happens to read it. At first I thought it would be my usual short fiction but the thing took a life of its own and became the longest work I've ever written in both English and my birth language.
Also, I started working on it almost exactly a year ago (I'm a very slow writer) and we didn't have any information about what Vol.2 would be like at the time, so some details here won't be Vol.2 canon, especially the technology they have access to.
The story is complete, I will try to post one chapter per week. I hope you'll enjoy it and feel free to leave a comment (or multiple ones! ^^).
PROMPT: I'm imagining a planet of creepy Gollum-y things but it can be anything. Just something kind of scary where the Milano is temporarily out of action, they're fighting with limited ammunition, and the entire planet is hostile and terrifying.
Some scariness would be nice, some peril, team looking out for each other, maybe being captured or imprisoned, I'm just interested to see the team in a scary situation that they cannot immediately fly/fight away from.
1 - A sensational debut.
"Okay guys, hang on to anything you can, landing's going to be rough!" Peter exclaimed through gritted teeth while trying his best not to crash the Milano on a planet that freaking appeared out of thin air.
Two seconds before, they were on their way to Knowhere after completing a boring but lucrative mission on Guna, gently flowing through the emptiness of space. Then everything took a reddish hue and if it wasn't for Quill's fast reflexes, they would have been splattered on the side of a gigantic and arid mountain like a mosquito on a windshield.
Peter quickly swerved the ship to the left, only missing what looked like a petrified forest by a few inches. Well, considering the ear-splitting scraping sound which came from under them, he might not have missed it at all. Awesome.
The ground was approaching way too fast now, and there was not much he could do apart from keeping the Milano as horizontal as possible and aiming for a surface plane enough to land on. Various alarms were blaring in the cockpit, one of them literally screaming "you're screwed!" If they got out of this alive, Peter would have a word with Rocket about that. Not funny, dude.
The ship finally touched ground with violence, ricocheted a few times and then carried on sliding on the rocky surface, shaking and shrieking, until it stopped only a few inches away from a very pointy and very deadly branch of a gigantic petrified tree. Peter's brain choose not to register the fact that if the ship had continued to slide in that direction, he would have become a Quill-kebab and focused on the basics like, for instance, breathing very loudly and being relieved that he didn't pee himself.
"Well… That was something. Everyone okay?" For the first time since all Hell broke loose, he glanced at his friends. Drax and Gamora were paler than usual, both still firmly gripping on their armrests. Rocket looked flabbergasted, eyes unfocused and jaw hanging down, and Groot looked uh, like Groot. But a little bit shocked. Apart from that, they all seemed perfectly healthy.
Rocket shook himself and took a deep breath. "Quill… WHAT THE FLARKIN' HELL?"
"I don't know, man. One second we were in space and a second after we were on this planet. I mean..." He tried to access their itinerary on the main computer but the thing wouldn't cooperate. "It's like the planet teleported itself on our way. Have any of you heard of something like that?"
"Planets cannot teleport themselves, Quill." Gamora said, brushing stray hair out of her face.
"That you know of. That could be an explanation for our situation, because I know I didn't make any mistake with our flight plan. And even if I did, the thing just materialised out of thin air!"
"I did not detect a thinness nor a thickness quality to the air that could…"
"Figure of speech, Drax."
"It didn't materialise alone." Rocket's voice sounded distant, as if he was lost in his thoughts.
"What do you mean?" Peter said while crouching under the board to access the main computer's parts and wires.
"There's natural light, moron, and long shadows. That means there's got to be a sun somewhere behind us. And I see at least two moons from here. "
"So… either a solar system jumped right in front of us, or we got somewhat sucked into a wormhole and landed here. Ouch!" Peter shook his newly burnt hand and sucked his finger.
"All this yammering is not getting us out of this place. I suggest we assess the damages the ship sustained in the crash first." Drax said, stretching his back and arms.
Peter extricated himself from under the console. "Yeah, you're right. Rocket, see if you can get this damn thing to reboot, while Gamora and I go outside and check the fuselage for breaches. Drax, there's an emergency box with some stuff we might need for the repairs under my bunk, bring it to Rocket and then check if everything is in order."
"Your bunk is never in order and it is neither the time nor my role to clean it."
Peter ruffled his hair, sighing. "I meant check if the crash caused any damage inside the ship as well, buddy."
Drax smiled. "Then I will do it, my friend."
"I am Groot!"
"No, I didn't forget you, Groot. Would you mind assisting Drax with everything?"
"I am Groot."
"Thanks. Gamora?" He turned around but she was nowhere to be seen. "Wha...?"
"She's way ahead of you, Star-dork." Rocket said from under the console.
Peter chuckled on his way out. Gamora's stealth was still a great source of awe for him, even though it had been approximately a year since they defeated Ronan on Xandar and became the Guardians of the Galaxy. He couldn't believe the name had stuck, but it did, and they got quite the reputation.
He stepped out, and was almost blinded by the flaming arc of light which occupied at least one third of the skyline in front of him. Rocket was right; the planet had come with a sun which was either very close to it or very, very big. Through his half closed eyes and shielding hand, he could see the coronal loops dancing on the red star's surface, and that was just the tip of it. Around him, the sky was a reddish gray with three big moons floating above them. As far as he could see in the blinding light, they had crashed on a desert which was not surprising considering the intense heat coming from the star. He hoped the thing was setting instead of rising, or else they'd soon be fried. The landscape reminded him of Morag, minus the rain and geysers. Everything was sharp black rocks, red dry earth and pointy mountains. Hell, even the trees were made of stone. If they didn't get out of here fast, water would become a problem.
"We need to find some water." Gamora said behind him, echoing his thoughts.
"Yeah. But first, the hull." He turned over to take a proper look at his beloved ship. The bottom part of the fuselage was badly scraped and bumped, for lack of a better word. Flattened might have been more adequate. "Damn..."
Gamora put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Maybe it is not as bad as it looks. Come with me."
Meanwhile, Rocket was fighting with the cables and circuits composing the Milano's subsystem. The good thing was that the life support system was intact and functioning. The bad thing was that despite his best efforts, he couldn't get the altitude control nor the command and data handling to reboot.
Drax and Groot were back from their investigations with positive news, as it seemed that beside some of his and Peter's personal junk (they were both the hoarders of the team), nothing was broken beyond repair. And Peter's emergency box had proven to be useful. To think of all the bombs he could have built if he had known they had all this stuff was… was… maybe the reason why Peter hadn't told him about the box. Yeah. Stupid hummie could be smart sometimes, go figure.
"I am Groot?"
"Yeah, good idea… Hold this while I put this cable here and..."
"You're screwed! You're screwed! You're screw-"
"Yep, not such a good idea after all."
"I find this new alarm of yours to be irksome, friend."
"Oh, come on big guy, that's exactly why it's funny!" Rocket laughed a little. So what if the team didn't like his sense of humor? Life was a joke anyway. If it made him laugh, that's what mattered in the end.
"I am Groot."
"Okay, okay, I'll change it you big dummies." He unplugged a wire and plugged it on another slot. "There. Y'all happy now?"
All the lights flickered in the cockpit for a few seconds, and then the main computer made a booting sound. Rocket got up and scratched his head as he watched the screens coming back to life. "Huh."
