Cassius's POV
We were finally arrested after ending our short yet violent brawl back on Xandar, and taken to the Kyln under the authority of the Nova Core for disturbing the peace of others and minor wreckage to public property. This is the first time me and Alenna have officially been in trouble with the law. And it had seemed as though the others had some crucial time in prision to catch up on for committing crimes such as murder, mechanic theft, and sexual assault. I don't understand why my parents would never tell me about their pasts, and that they were all infamous galactic outlaws, although seeing it from their perspective I do think it was to protect us.
Why would you hide stuff like that though? They're keeping secrets from us, their own children. I didn't even know how good they were at physical combat. I've only seen them do petty things on the Milano, like fights between Rocket and Drax over the last plate. But watching Mom attack us like that was admittingly shocking.
And I now know where Alenna had inherited her trademark flirtatious abilities from, after observing the behaviour of Dad – I mean, Peter. I also need to try and call my parents by their actual names, or it will obviously ruin everything. And it felt right to call them by their first names, as if they were different people.
We have to find the Infinity Stone fast because we could disappear, and this would remain the official reality. The wormhole of the space-time-continuous could collapse, therefore ruining the paradox. I'm not exactly sure if we will transport back the time we left though, I haven't studied the conclusions of time travel well enough.
The only alternative way to get back would be to travel at the speed of light, which may be physically impossible. So, Infinity Stone it is.
When Alenna and I had entered the prision identificator rooms, they were not able to track down our pasts and some personal details so they blame it on technical difficulties and throw us all in the prison anyway.
Xandarians are idiots.
So far I have discovered that Rocket and Groot have escaped twenty-two prisons, my mother is an infamous galactic assassin, and my father 'owns a song'. I'm still trying to figure out where Drax is though and when my family manages to meet him. Time is running out, Alenna and I need to escape this prision fast and find some way to make things return to normal. Who knows how long we will be in custody for?
The prision has an incredible high-rise ceiling that allows barely any light inside, every surface is made of some tough metal or forbidden material, and there is a tall and intimidating watch tower to the right where the 'guards' protect us from above. Fellow prisoners swarm the area, gradually noticing our presence with disapproving snarls. They begin yelling threats and insults at us, colliding in a massive jumble so I cannot even comprehend a single sentence. My frown deepens and then Alenna stands close by me, with a mixture of strange fascination and cower as she stares up at all the buff prisoners standing on higher platforms.
"Go to hell, Gamora!" A female prisoner shouts roughly above the rest, and throws a piece of stale bread towards her. Gamora simply ignores them all with a bored expression, simply dodging the limp piece of bread.
"Like I said, she has a rep." Rocket tells us over the overlapping voices. I clench my teeth and force myself not to snap back at the prisoners, it would be foolish. "A lot of prisoners here lost their families to Ronan and his goons." Rocket explains and I glance back at my mother, finding it hard to imagine her slaughtering families under Ronan's command. Ronan the Accuser killed many innocent people and declared war on Xandar yet failed. Afterwards he somehow suffered a fatal death from a group of guardians – the book I was reading didn't provide enough information but I didn't mind. I'm not exactly interested. Apparently he is alive during this time period.
"She'll last a day, tops." Rocket nods towards my mother. One male prisoner jabs me in the ribs forcefully and I stumble back, glare, and continue to walk.
"The guards will protect her right?" my father asks causally, but he seemed genuinely concerned.
"They're only here to stop us from getting out. They don't care what we do to each other inside." Rocket answers my father. I hear Alenna whimper quietly behind me.
"Check out the new girl," a small group of male prisoners approach Alenna wearing appraising smirks and massive egos. Alenna scowls at them and attempts to move back away, but the 'leader' of their gang grabs her arm and tugs her forward. He has an ugly jaggered mark starting from the right corner of his lip, travelling across his eye and to the arch of his eyebrow. Let's call him Scar. "Where do you think you're going, hun?" Scar asks lowly and chuckles, his little group joining in.
"Step away from her, or else." I threaten sharply and step forward.
Their laughter silences slightly but Scar refuses to let go Alenna, who is now squirming under his insanely tight grip. "Or else what, pretty boy?" he asks with a humorous sneer.
I conjure a transparent blue knife in my hands menacingly and the group of people behind him begin to grow in large numbers. Scar chuckles deeply, "You don't know what you're getting yourself into, boy." He warns darkly.
"Actually I do." I say simply, and smirk. "A man who cannot fight for himself." I gesture towards his now large group.
Scar instantly advances towards me with gnarled teeth, and a tightly clenched fist. I manage to duck under his swing but one of his group members come from behind and tug me straight up. Scar raises his fist above his head with a cruel smirk, ready to punch.
Suddenly a tall figure defends me and Alenna, and I blink a few times to realise that it is Groot. Groot raises Scar off of the floor and has his hand growing harshly around his neck, causing him to choke and wheeze. The shouting and insulting crowds grow silent. My eyes widen as I watch Groot let a grown man's body dangle helplessly centimetres off the ground.
"Let's make something clear," Rocket shouts across the prison. "These two here are our booty. You wanna get to them, you go through us." Rocket goes on. "Or more accurately, we go through you."
Groot lets Scar drop to the floor with a loud thud and he begins coughing, pressing his fingertips to his reddened neck.
Why did he protect us like that? I could have done it myself, but Groot has always been the same. Ever since we were kids when people decided it was a great idea to bully us Groot and Rocket liked to have a word or two with them, much to the dismay of my parents. But now he only made us look weak in front of all these tough prisoners.
"Hey, thanks." Alenna mutters, her eyes not making it up to mine. "Whatever." I mumble back, obviously irritated.
"I could've done it myself." I walk past Groot and over the damaged and whimpering body.
Groot grunts and follows me, and Rocket trailing along. "I'm with them." Peter says with a nod before stepping over the body himself.
"Wait up!" Alenna shouts and catches up with us.
"Twins?" Peter repeats with disbelief and his eyes flicker between me and Alenna. "Are you sure?"
I lean against the prison railing beside the table and cross my arms, "Unfortunately, yes, I am sure." I answer with a smile. "We are fraternal." Quickly clarifying. This question has been asked many times considering that we looked barely alike and had nothing in common whatsoever.
Alenna says, "I know it's a little hard to believe I'm even related to…that, but I assure you we are siblings, although there are rumours of Cassius being adopted." And I roll my eyes. Even though it was a joke, Alenna has always been embarrassed to be my sister. Every time she brings her so-called friends over she makes sure that I am out of sight, or doing something else on the Milano. I wasn't exactly bothered about it, it was just that…
Rocket and Peter chuckle and I shake my head at them. I don't care at all actually.
It feels really strange to be having a normal conversation with my family members, but I'm enjoying it more than I should. I could barely talk to my father in the present without starting an argument, and I barely knew anything about him.
After the showdown, everyone in prison decided it was best to steer clear of us. They feared us; and I liked that. Alenna, Rocket, Peter and I were chatting on the second platform of the prison layout, eating the last of our low standard meals before we could be sent to our male/female sectors for the night. I'm not sure where Groot and Gamora are.
"So Peter, what do you think of Gamora?" Alenna asks, leaning across the table with an innocent smirk. Of course she must ask that, it's incredibly typical for her to do.
"What about her?" Peter asks cluelessly and tilts his head to the side, making a face as he attempts to eat a spoonful of the dark colored slosh.
"Do you like her, Peter?" Alenna gets to the point quickly.
"Yeah, she's alright." Peter answers simply and Alenna sighs deeply, face palming her forehead. "Not in that way." She shakes her head lowly.
He raises his eyebrows as a wave of realisation washes over him, "Oh." He mummers slowly and a smirk forms on his face. "Well…I mean she is really attractive and all, but she freaks me out. She's not exactly my type." He answers.
"You'll be surprised what the future can hold." Alenna sing songs quietly under her breath, and takes a sip from her metallic cup. They don't seem to hear, thankfully.
"Why do you ask?" Peter asks Alenna suspiciously.
"No reason." She grins and raises her right shoulder. Peter makes a "fair enough" face and continues eating. How can he eat that? I try taking a spoonful too.
"How old are you, anyways?" Rocket asks, sitting on the edge of the steel table.
I open my mouth to answer when Alenna says, "Nineteen." I look at her and she smirks smugly, crossing her legs up on the table. I give her a stern look. They couldn't surely believe that we, sixteen year olds, looked to be nineteen.
"You're young." Peter comments with disbelief. I raise my eyebrows with shock. They brought it? Do we look older than our age?
"Not that young." I say tapping my foot awkwardly, and then clear my throat. What would they think if we told them that we were actually sixteen?
"That's not what I'm getting at. You're both so advanced in kicking ass. Where the hell did you learn to do that shit?" He asks and I watch as Rocket accidently knocks his bowl of slump off of the table, but doesn't seem fazed. It didn't appeal to me either.
"At Xandar?" I question slowly. The scenes of fighting my father flash back in to my mind; I used teleportation mostly, since it was a strong act of defence and didn't use much of my energy. It was easier to fight against my father now, because he didn't know about the magic abilities that he possessed.
"Yeah, what was that?" Rocked pipes up, suddenly interested in the conversation.
I smirk, "You mean this sort of stuff?" I say and raise a hand, mustering energy in to Rocket's food bowl lying on the floor. I've recently started learning more skills, and I guess now is a perfect time to practise. The bowl rises above our heads, twirling slowly, and they stare with fascination.
"Telekinesis." Rocket says and I smile.
"Show-off." Alenna mutters harshly. She has always been irritated about what I can do, and what she can't. I look at her with a smirk and flick my hand towards her, the energy transferring to her direction. The bowl hits her on head, and the excess of what seemed to be lumpy soup was in her hair. She gasps loudly, bringing her fingertips up in to her head with a grimace.
"Cassius!" she screams, and stares at me with a nasty glare. People begin to stare from lower levels. I shrug at her, and she grunts with frustration, running in the other direction to clean herself up.
I roll my eyes as I turn back to Rocket and Peter, "She'll get over it." I assure them, half expecting them to lecture me or something similar. "And I learnt everything I know from my father." I say, glancing towards Peter expectantly who simply nods.
"Where are your parents now? And do they know yet about…this?" he asks. I smile a little and think up an answer that is truthful but not giving away enough information.
"They're closer than you think. If they found out they'd probably just ground me until I'm forty and find every way possible to make my life miserable." I finally say and then shake my head, "They don't seem to care anymore about us." I add, looking towards the floor. Why would I say that?! I decide to quickly change the topic before he pushes for any more information. "What about you?" I wonder. Maybe he met Meredith and Adam already.
"Don't have parents." He dismisses quickly and looks up at the ceiling. He tries to look casual, but he seems fairly hurt. I guess families were a sensitive topic.
"Sorry." I mutter an apology seeming it was the right thing to do. What do I say? I am horrible with social situations.
"I'll be back." He excuses himself quietly and walks elsewhere. This wasn't exactly my fault; he brought up the topic first.
And then there were two.
"You're on a roll." Rocket chuckles and watches as Peter wanders down the hallway, taking a few turns until he was out of sight.
"It's a trait. I can't help it." I use as an excuse. And it actually was a trait.
"A trait to push people away?" he questions, and I sigh with nothing else to say for once. "Not something to be proud of." He says, and a frown forms on my features.
"And stealing spaceships for a living is?" I counter back defensively. Now he is sounding like present Rocket. He stares at me for a while as if to study me and shakes his head, "Listen kid, I don't know if you really are from the future or if this is some sort of gimmick but you have a lot of potential. Don't go throwing it to waste." He tells me and jumps off of the table. He gives me one last look before walking away to find Groot or do something similar.
Potential for what?
When we awake from a ridiculously comfortable slumber and change in to a fabulous new pair of prison slacks – note my sarcasm – we gather our lovely looking breakfast, and notice that Drax has somehow joined us. Something happened last night between the group, where Alenna and I were not invited, causing him to be a part of our little 'team'- if you could call us that. And I didn't even notice that Drax was in the prison at all. Rocket was telling me that his family was killed by Ronan the Accuser, and he has been trying to get a knife to his neck ever since. I can't believe that Drax had a family before us.
Well, its official, my family collaborated in a prison.
"I don't know about you guys, but we need to get out of here." I say and take a bite in to stale bread around as we walk down the stairs to find a vacant table, which would be easy with our current reputation. Alenna nudges past me roughly, and then looks behind her shoulder with a faint glare to her dark eyes. She's still not happy with me, after what had happened before. Women.
"Oh don't worry, we're escaping. But if we want to get out of here we're going to need to get in to that watch tower." Rocket says and subtly nods up towards the tower with bored looking guards inside, drinking from cups or sleeping over their electric panels. "And to do that, I'm going to need a few things."
"I'm listening." Alenna says. She has always been sneaky and sleek with the way she does things, so she would actually be a major help although I'm not going to admit that. It's only going to boost her already massive ego and she'd probably think that I'm being sarcastic or something.
"The guards wear security badges to activate doors. I need one." Rocket begins, and there is a guard at the top of the watch tower typing in a numerical code in to his security arm badge.
"Leave it to me." My mother assures Rocket confidently. I'm sure she didn't need help, so I wasn't going to offer.
"That guy there. I need his prosthetic leg." Rocket refers to the man hobbling towards us with an evident prosthetic leg. Why would you need that of all things?
"His leg?" Peter and I question with a frown. We both glance at each other.
"Yeah," Rocket nods. "In fact I think we'll be helping him, look he's useless." he mumbles and Alenna laughs a little as he walks past us.
"Alright." Peter agrees, and we find a table to be seated on. As I turn back, Drax has disappeared off to somewhere. I choose not to worry, he'll be back soon.
"And finally, on that wall back there, is a black panel, blinky yellow light." Rocket says and looks back to the wall he was referring to. I glance at the wall and notice the light straight away. "See it?"
"Yeah." Peter answers.
"There's a quarnarx battery behind it, silver box, green wires. To get in to that watch tower we need it."
"Quanarx batteries are extremely sensitive." Alenna says. "It has to be removed quickly."
My eyes flicker over to Groot who begins to walk over to the watch tower. The group continues to talk but I fade out of the conversation just watch Groot, who grows to the level of the quarnarx battery and pulls off the black panel with ease. The lid hits a bystander on the head, making him collapse to the floor. "Guys." I try catching their attention, but they don't seem to notice.
Drax appears at the side, watching as well. We both look at each other then back to Groot. Groot slowly pulls out a silver colored battery, connected to a green wire. The wire keeps growing and growing and Groot struggles to pull it out.
"And you defiantly need to get that last." I can hear Rocket say in the conversation. I open my mouth to speak but no words form.
When Groot does finally manage to tug the battery off of the wires, every existence of light in the prison flickers out. Now it's dark until the security system activates. Red and blue lights are beginning to flash and there is an ear blistering siren ringing throughout the prison.
Groot turns towards us offering the battery in one hand with a big grin. I sigh and smack my head down on to the table. Rocket shakes his head and looks up, "Or we could get it first and improvise!" he says as if it is a good thing.
"I'll get the armband." Gamora says.
"Leg." Peter rushes out of his seat.
Rocket groans and rubs his face with frustration. Numerous robotic protection bots fly around the area, circling Groot's tall form. "Rocket, what we do?!" Alenna asks urgently, removing herself from her seat. I glance to Rocket, and get out of my seat too.
Rocket looks up to Groot who is frowning at the bots circling him dangerously, and then a voice erupts over the speakers in warning "Prisoner, drop the device imminently and return to your cell or we will be forced to open fire."
"Rocket!" I shout desperately, we needed to do something before it was too late.
"I AM GROOT!" Groot shouts. The bots begin shooting Groot with thick bullets from different directions but Groot blocks them all, whacking them with his massive wooden arms. One is sent flying in our direction, and I quickly duck and take a deep breath. They're flying everywhere, bursting in to pink explosions of flames but more continue to come forward.
"I need you both to attack anything in our way." Rocket orders us quickly. "Got it." we nod simultaneously. "Work as a team!" he yells as he rushes off somewhere amongst the crowds.
Work as a team.
I look to Alenna and she folds her arms, with a frown. "No." is all she can say. "We are going to have to take orders whenever you like it or not!" I tell her and her mouth is pressed in to a thin line with consideration as if she had a choice. "Fine, but this doesn't mean that we are at peace." She gives in. "At peace?" I repeat and arch a brow.
Blue uniformed officers swarm the stairs heavily armed with guns and other weaponry. "All prisoners stand down!" the front one shouts.
I hear Alenna suck in air through her teeth – I notice that she always does this before making harmful decisions or fighting against others. "Let's do this." she finally says and I nod with a smirk. Back on the Milano, we were only training for defensive mechanisms but now this was being put in to real life action and anyone could get hurt. So we had to trust ourselves to do the correct moves and make the right choices.
Several officers come forward at us with guns and repeat their threats, which I simply ignore. Alenna instantly grasps hold of one of the nearest guns and pushes the thick handle back in to user's face forcefully, knocking him out to the floor. She uses the gun to attack the advancing officer. "Get her!" the furthest one shouts. I take a step protectively in front of her and conjure a shield around us entirely while she finishes off one last officer with the gun. The gun was slick and powerful but heavy and slow. Officers begin to shoot at the shield, in attempt to break it with failure but continue to try for some reason. What idiots.
Alenna is panting deeply and drops the gun to floor, "That gun is bullshit." She says and kicks over the limp officer's body. I glance down at the body and back up to her, "Is he-"
"No, he just passed out from the energy withdrawal. The gun isn't exactly harmful physically but can remove a large amount of insanity and activeness causing you to collapse. That's why it's so heavy." She explains, placing her hands at her knees while she finally catches her breath.
"Yeah, I think I'm about to collapse in a minute." I tell Alenna, suddenly feeling tired and weary as I continue to hold the shield up.
"You're going have to get out of their some time!" the officers yell from outside of the shield, with muffled voices and continue to shoot. Alenna shouts back, "We'll be with you in a few minutes, assholes!"
"Cassius, let go." Alenna tells me. I frown at her and she says, "Trust me!"
I take in a deep breath. I can trust my imbecile sister, right? I finally let go of the shield, feeling myself being forced to the floor by a pair of hands. I turn to the side and see Alenna staring at me wide eyed. We both look up and see Drax attacking the officers and Rocket wielding a large gun upon Groot's shoulder.
"Are you okay?" Alenna asks me cautiously. "You shouldn't have held that shield up for too long."
"I'm fine." I say and rise to my feet, wobbling slight and press a hand to my forehead.
"You can rest you know." She goes on.
"I said, I'm fine." I tell her, getting frustrated. She frowns at me and before we have a chance to argue about utter crap a metallic chair flies over our heads and I sigh.
How did my parents do this for a living?
Thank you all of reading and sorry for the longer wait! I'm going back to school tomorrow, but I will find the time to write. This chapter is a little longer, but I hope you don't mind. And the rest of the story isn't going to be the boring cliché character tag along; I might change up the plot a little to keep things interesting, a few deaths here and there. What are you guys thinking so far? I accept all criticism and feedback!
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