Prompt request from Nianque:
"After-effects from the Infinity Stone: Something like Power (incarnate?) flowing through you [the Guardians] and 3 or 4 people has to do something weird I would think."
This is going to be a six-chapter (possibly with one extra bonus chapter) story, probably one chapter every other week. I have a whole bunch of other half-finished stories to work on (one more chapter of Thrusters, six of ReN, and more chapters of The Hunt and Risky Business), but this was in my head all night last night.
I do, unfortunately, have a full time job- I write before work and on my lunch break- but will be away for almost two weeks starting next Wednesday- first to an anime convention, and then to some business trips immediately thereafter. I'll see any of you going to Katsucon! I'll be 100th Anniversary Gamora on Friday (the version of her where she wears Indiana Jones style clothing, has pink-colored skin around her eyes and black eyebrows), Rocket on Saturday, and Naoto Shirogane (from Persona 4) on Sunday, and I'll be at the official 2PM Marvel shoot on Saturday with my Star-Lord. Basically, I'm going to be on hiatus until Feb 22- I may post another chapter of something (Risky Business if anything, so somelittlemoster has time to write another chapter if he wants), but unfortunately, this may be the last thing I put out before I hit the road.
I'd also like to take a moment to recommend my absolute favorite ongoing single fic right now. There are a lot of one-shots like Thanks for the Memories that I love, but not so many long-running stories.
a Bit of Both by BunnyRock
This one is fantastic, and because it's only on Fanfiction and rated M (for violence), nobody sees it. Go read it. Do it now. I implore you, give this writer more views. Like me, they do have a lot of typos due to medical reasons (I'm blind, BunnyRock has dyslexia), but it is so good you will not care.
On to your regularly scheduled hilarity.
It was their first full 'night' on the Milano, and Rocket woke up freezing. He never woke up freezing; the opposite was usually true. The Milano was an M-class ship, the kind Rocket usually stole himself before becoming part of this stupid bunch of idiots, but these things were meant for one, max two. Sure, they were huge, but they were cargo ships, and the cargo bay was only pressurized, grav'ed, and filled with oxygen if cargo was live. The actual living quarters were tiny, and barely slept two, let alone five. Sure, the mods Nova made to it made it habitable enough, with a permanent habitable field installed in the cargo bay that had been broken up into a smaller space for actual cargo plus living quarters, but the cargo bay was a vertical space, not a horizontal one, and with Rocket's quarters a neat cubicle above Drax's, and artificial grav in full force, heat rose. Rocket liked it that way. Rocket's sleeping quarters could be accessed by a ladder, built into the side of a wall, and were just large enough for himself and one human-sized person to crawl in; the area was just a mattress with locked shelving secured to the walls of the cube, no windows.
Warm, dark, comforting. As he liked it. It also meant the space that was supposed to be his sleeping room was now a much larger workshop. The space above Drax's room was indented to be storage, but Rocket spent the first day onboard readjusting until the two spaces had been switched.
Despite Rocket's need to wear full clothing in front of others, mostly as a sign of his sentience, he preferred sleeping in the buff, puffing out his fur and curling into a nest of blankets. His fur was plenty warm enough.
But Rocket woke up freezing and huge and awkward, head and feet both pressed right up to the padded inside of his quarters (hey, if grav goes down, you don't want to smack your head on a hard metal corner).
He felt big, and cold, and numb.
He screamed, and it wasn't his voice that escaped his lips.
It was Peter's.
X
"Peter?!" Gamora bolted awake from her bunk, and looked to the other side of the alley between the galley and cockpit where Peter's bunk was located. Peter was half on his bunk, arm dangling off, drooling and snoring loudly into his pillow. But Gamora knew what she heard. Peter. From the cargo bay below.
Gamora took a quick stock of her surroundings. The low hum from the cockpit was Drax's, and Groot, having just opened his eyes that morning when they left Xandar, was ensconced in a small greenhouse in the galley. Peter was still in his bunk. Which meant the only person conceivably in the cargo bay was Rocket, in his new quarters. She slipped out of bed, and made her way down below deck.
She definitely heard whimpering. "Rocket? Are you all right?" she asked, as she climbed the ladder and slid open the storage door, sitting on the small outcropping next to the door opening.
"Gah! No!" Rocket cried, but the bulkhead was already open, and Gamora was many times stronger than Rocket, especially now that he was… human? Peter? The human was frightened, cocooning himself in blankets when Gmora noticed the flash of purple across his eyes.
"Rocket," she said with finality. "I think the stone did this. Calm down." But Rocket wasn't calm; trying to squeeze himself into the back corner of his now too-small room.
Gamora needed to think fast. If the Stone did this to Rocket, the last to take in it's power maybe she could…?
She felt her mouth and nose begin to fuse and extend as a unit- painless and far-off. When she touched it, she had soft fur, her nose now textured and wet.
"Looks like it's not just you," she said, as Rocket watched in surprise, slowly uncurling himself from the far corner. Gamora's voice was somewhere between her own register and Rocket's.
Gamora thought of her own face, it's soft green features, and felt the snout recede back to a nose and mouth. She was more relieved than she'd ever let on, knowing that she could transform back. It didn't feel like a risk, it felt like she just knew she could.
Less than a week ago, back on Xandar, they had all become a single being for mere seconds, awash in each other's minds and bodies from contact with the Stone. Gamora expected nightmares, or flashbacks or memories of the other three to surface in her mind. But actually become them? Was this the aftereffect of the Stone for those who banded together to use it?
Either way, her little display of trust had worked. Peter-faced Rocket was now breathing at an even pace, and reached a hand out to Gamora.
"How did you turn back?" Rocket asked, still, jarringly, with Peter's voice.
"Just think of yourself. Focus on it."
Rocket closed his eyes, and Gamora felt the large, calloused human hand shrink inside her own, forming a more calloused, tiny clawed paw. She looked up, and the face that had been Peter was slowly extending and fusing back into the furred beast, ears rising and settling atop the head, snout forming, fur and whiskers sprouting like grass. Only when he finished did he start shaking, and Gamora scooped him up, still in a blanket, and rocked and held him in her arms.
"Th-th-thanks," Rocket eventually sputtered. "Not used to people carin' bout me still. Sorry if I'm scratchin' ya."
"Are you okay?" Gamora held him closer, without applying too much pressure. She could still feel Rocket's heart pounding a mile a minute.
"Think so."
Gamora gently placed the bundled Rocket back in his tiny room.
"Do you need anything?"
"I'm… I'm good," Rocket replied. "At least if I wake up as you next time I know what to do."
Gamora ruffled his fur on top of his head. "I wonder what it's like to be you, completely," she mused. "Would I become as smart as you? This might actually be a useful skill."
"Well, I know when I was Peter I felt kinda numb. And blind. And deaf. And couldn't feel nuttin'. How the flarg does he function? Only good thing was his height and even that's a problem in here." Rocket's fur puffed up in indignation as he spread his arms wide to take stock of the crawlspace. "Probably cool to be Drax though. He can lift a groundcar without thinkin' bout it."
"Let's go back to sleep and sort this out in our next cycle," Gamora said, stretching. "I think I have had enough excitement for now."
"Point," Rocket said, pulling the blankets tighter around himself. "G'night, 'Mora." He neglected to mention he'd smelled his own scent coming from Peter's hotel room back on Xandar the night after they'd touched the Stone. It sat in the back of his mind, mulling there, as he drifted back to sleep.
X
Peter woke up first, oblivious to the events of the night before, and rolled out of bed into the shower. When he stepped out of the stall, jumping into his pants, he smelled eggs and toast. He never had woken up to cooking before- usually he'd snuck out of his one-night stand's quarters before daylight broke, trudging himself back to his own ship to boil some
oatmeal or fry an egg if he was lucky.
He put money on Drax; Drax had already cooked them food once before in their suite while they were waiting on repairs of the Milano and their own bodies. Who knew the brute was a chef? Then again… knifework.
Speaking of repairs of their own bodies… Peter was glad he'd gotten his own room back on Xandar. The first night after they'd touched the stone, he had felt it surging through him… everyone else's whole… well, everything bombarding his body and mind. He was glad it had happened where Rocket was the first one he'd become, flipping out in a fit and jumping out of the pile of now-too-big clothes just in time, as he'd turned from Rocket to Drax in the hotel room. Eventually it rounded back to his old self, and he was too startled and embarrassed to say anything to the rest of them.
Being Groot, even if it were just for five minutes, was weird as hell. Weirder even than Rocket. He practically tasted the floor with his hands when he'd been Rocket and being Groot was even more odd than that.
At least it had been a one-time thing, he thought, or, when he'd been told that he was only half-human, maybe it was just his dad's side kicking in? Once they were all settled, he wanted to try shapeshifting again, see if he was limited to the rest of the idiots on the ship or if he could turn into anything he could think of.
So, when he toweled off his hair and plodded back up to the upper deck to the galley, only to see his own face staring intently at a pot full of poached eggs, he was only half in utter shock.
"Mornin' princess," came his own voice out of his own face in his own body, that was definitely, totally, not his. "Sorry, borrowed some of your clothes. Pretty sure you'd be pissed at me swingin' your bits around for the universe to see."
"I… what… Rocket?!" Peter sputtered out, bug eyed.
"Hey, I smelled me coming from your hotel room last week," Rocket said, tapping his human nose with a finger tilted slightly inward, so he wouldn't claw himself (despite no longer having claws). "When I started transformin' myself last night, I put two and two together. We can all turn into each other. Also, this ship is built for freaking tall people and I couldn't reach any of the pots without walking directly on the stove. So I stole yer face."
"So this is Stone related?" Peter said, still half in shock, as he sat down at the table near the stovetop.
"Gams seems to think so," Rocket replied, struggling with the toaster oven, and holding on to a no-grav bar, placed for if the artificial grav shorted out to have something to cling to. "Dude, walking as you is giving me serious vertigo. Can you cook? I need to turn back."
"Has Gamora turned into me, too?" Peter finnaly sputtered out, taking the spoon from Rocket as Rocket carefully walked himself down the steps, gripping the grav bars the whole way.
"Just me, I think, and only part of my face," Rocket replied, his voice melting back into his own timbre as it got further from the galley. "Fuckin' creepy, that was." Rocket darted back up the steps, himself again, wearing a loose tank top and shorts, carrying Peter's clothes. He deftly folded them back up and put them in one of the lockdrawers at the foot of Peter's bunk near the galley.
"You folded my clothes?" was all Peter could say, as he spooned out the poached eggs, and plated the toast with warm soft cheese.
"I don't make a mess of things," Rocket replied. "When you're my size, some strewn clothes is a mountain, a gun on the floor's a landmine. Everything's got a place."
"You knew I turned into you," Peter said, holding out two plates, as Rocket jumped up on the table eager for food. "Why didn't you say anything then?"
"Thought it was some sort of Terran thing I just didn't know about. Some aliens have tactile kenesis. Figured it was normal for ya since you weren't freaking out, scent-wise." Rocket paused and sniffed his plate. "Got any ketchup? 'N can I have a dish of water?"
"No, and yes, and ew. Ketchup on eggs?"
"Shaddup. We prolly have different taste buds, anyway," Rocket replied, snatching the offered water dish from Peter and dunking his fingers in before picking up the toast.
Peter sighed, and slumped into the seat next to Rocket.
"Probably do."
"When you turned into Groot, it smelled like an adult Groot," Rocket said, a few moments later in between bites.
"I was. It was so weird. I didn't even know how to breathe, I thought I was going to die," Peter replied, as he hailed down Gamora as she rose from her own bunk.
"So you can change as well," Gamora said drowsily, as she fixed herself her own plate for breakfast.
"Maybe we should teach each other," Rocket said thoughtfully, licking flecks of cheese off his claws. "How to be us, I mean. Like, if we need to do something in a tight spot, I ain't opposed to someone else bein' me, too. If you're okay with it, Gams, you're the stealthiest of all of us- that'd definitely come in handy. If we need muscle, we can have a team fulla Draxs n' Groots."
"And if we need to dance to distract a homicidal maniac, or seduce unsuspecting waifs, we can all turn into Peter," Gamora finished, slyly. Peter responded with a raspberry and a playful middle finger.
"I wonder if Groot can talk if he turns into one of us," Gamora added, fishing in the cold storage for some marmalade.
"He understands words just fine, just can't enunciate with his larynx," Rocket said. "So, yeah, prolly. If he can transform like we can. The stick I held when we touched the stone isn't the one I replanted. We may be able to turn inta' him, but I dunno if he can shapeshift too."
A squeak from mid-deck, followed by the sound of a pot shattering.
"Groo?" came Drax's voice from the space beyond.
"Dude, I just planted you and you already ruin your pot?" Rocket called, before hopping and sneaking under the curtained divider. "And eff, put on some flarkin' pants, man."
