Sky Blue

A GotGalaxy fanfic based on nothing but previews because I haven't seen the movie yet.

It was the sky that tipped Quill off.

It wasn't aqua or indigo or slate gray or puke brown. It was blue... sky blue.

Peter Jason Quill lay on his back in a pile of oozing mush and studied the sky while he tried to catch his breath. Whether his difficulty stemmed from the realization of where he was or because he'd just been body slammed into the planet of his birth, he wasn't sure. He watched what had to be a jumbo jet moving across his field of vision at what was probably considered high speed by the locals.

Something poked him in the head. Actually, someone poked him the visor control, causing his helmet to retract so he could discover that the pile of sludge was an stinky as it was squishy. Great, his first whiff of home just had to be on a garbage pile.

"You alive?" Gamora asked gruffly. Quill hoped that she was covering up her concern. Sometimes it was hard to tell with her.

He sat up, fighting back his gag reflex. He hadn't liked dinner well enough to see it again.

"I'll take that as a yes," Gamora said. She moved away, studying the lay of the land.

Rocket, the sarcastic raccoon, sniffed the air disdainfully. "This planet reeks of hydrocarbons," he reported. "In case you can tell over the pile of crap that we landed in."

"No, I would have never suspected," Gamora, the green skinned assassin replied. She looked up after the disappearing jumbo jet and mused aloud. "I wonder if that thing is purely for atmospheric flight or if it's capable of space flight?"

"It's not," Quill replied, finally managing to catch his breath. "I don't think there are any space ports around here."

"Great," Rocket muttered. "So where did that Cosmic Cube drop us?"

"You mean, the Tesseract," Drax corrected.

Rocket shrugged off Drax's comment.

"You've been here before, Quill," Drax said rather than asked.

"Yes, a long time ago," Quill said.

"So, they might have put in a space port since you were here last," Rocket said. The lack of sarcasm made the mutated raccoon's voice sound a little wistful.

"Could be," Quill said.

"Where would one be?" Gamora asked, turning to face him. She didn't seem to be angry at him, which was a plus in Quill's book.

"Possibly Cape Canaveral," Quill replied. "Maybe Houston." He knew that names wouldn't mean anything to them, but they felt good in his mouth.

"And how close are either of those?" Rocket demanded.

"I am Groot," Groot said curiously.

Rocket looked around. "Hail, yeah, it does look like somebody put up a statue of Gamora."

Now Quill knew exactly where they were. He turned around gingerly, only partly because he was worried about his footing. Yes, the Statue of Liberty was gracing a rather transformed skyline of New York City. "We're at least a thousand miles from the nearest possible spaceport," he informed his team. He didn't want to admit that he only had a shaky grasp of the geography of his home planet. But dammit, he'd been a kid when they'd been grabbed.

"So, what is this planet?" Drax asked.

Oh, yeah, he hadn't told them that this was the planet of his birth yet.

"It's a place filled with more quarreling bipeds and un-modified raccoons than you can shake a phaser at," he said, looking at Rocket.

Rocket actually gaped at him. "EARTH? This stinkin' mud pile is EARTH?!"

"Maybe that's why they call it Earth," Gamora said mockingly.

Rocket gave her a dirty look, but had too much self-preservation to smart off to her. "Does the entire planet smell this bad?" he demanded of Quill.

"No, it's just that we landed on a garbage scow," Quill said. He'd looked around enough to realize that they were not on solid ground. Somehow that seemed to be the story of his life.

"I am Groot."

"What he said," Rocket added. "So what do we do now?"

Quill rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a massive headache coming on. One that was only partly due to his hard landing. "We could go downtown and check out the library. If there's any information about spaceports, it will be there."

"Why a library?" Gamora asked.

"Because they're free," Quill replied. "We don't exactly have a lot of local currency on us." He was starting to feel hunger pangs, in spite of the smell.

They started to pick their way across the piles of trash. "Keep an eye out for discarded bags that we can use to carry our weapons," Quill instructed.

"Why?" Drax asked.

"Because this smell is nothing compared to the stink we'll cause if we try to stroll through New York City carrying around this much firepower," Quill said.

"Oh, what about the stink the locals will raise when they see us?" Rocket snapped.

Gamora focused on pulling out bags from garbage, including a golf bag with a five iron that had seen better days.

"I don't know what you mean," Quill said blandly.

"Are there a lot of people like us around here?" asked Drax.

"I doubt they see a lot of talking trees, green skinned assassins and..." Rocket added. He scowled at Drax, who scowled back. "Drax," Rocket finished.

"No, they don't," Quill said.

"You think we might be noticed?" Gamora asked sarcastically.

"Possibly," Quill admitted.

"Only possibly?" demanded Rocket.

"This is New York," Quill pointed out as if they should know what that meant. He paused as he emptied out the an ancient backpack."But if somebody does notice, tell him we're from California."