Quill stepped past the cluster of older guys smoking by the entrance, pushed the doors to the bar open and stepped inside, scanning the room for trouble. The place was quite busy, but not packed. A gang of construction workers with the odd prison tattoo amongst them were loitering at one end of the bar, and a couple of teens too young to drink in a law-abiding establishment were on a small dance floor gyrating to a selection of old spacer classics played by a tone-deaf squid-headed band on the synth-bassoon. Other than that, most of the patrons kept to the booths that they had seen through the windows, (upholstered in unlovely wipe-clean maroon-vinyl) and kept to themselves.
"Check your blasters." Said a wall of scarred blue skin poured into a cheap suit. Quill looked the bouncer over quickly, before patting his blasters theatrically and saying "Check them, okay… yep, there still, there. Thanks for the heads up."
"Quill." said Gamora behind him, unbuckling her swords and placing them on the wire box-rack inside the door. The bouncer grunted at Quill, who smiled sweetly at him and unhooked his gunbelt and handed it over.
"Need to check the purse too." Snorted the bouncer. Quill glared, and handed the satchel over. Whilst he stood and watched the bouncer paw through his things with fingers like Bratwurst, Gamora went and got a booth with a good line of sight over most of the bar. Quill, who had clearly made a friend, got given a needlessly aggressive pat-down before he was permitted to join her. When he saw the booth, he nodded approvingly. You could see the whole bar pretty much. The only blind spot would be the main doors and the empty barstools near it, and given Rocket would probably sit there, he could cover the exits. A tired looking waitress in clothes ten-years too young came over and asked if they wanted anything.
"Beer." Said Quill without thinking, as Gamora ordered a club soda. Quill leaned in to the waitress. "We're here to meet a friend of ours, J. Star'l'in. Older guy about my height, bald, grey goatee?" the waitress looked at him blankly "What am I? Your social secretary?" she said, leaving to get the drinks.
Gamora looked to Quill. He shrugged. "Worth a try. Keep your eyes open but let's not start roaming around looking in booths until Drax and Rocket are here to cover our backs."
"Agreed." Said Gamora, fishing for her credit slip as the waitress came back. Quill put a hand on her arm to stop her. "No, no, allow me." He said, before dropping his voice and leaning in to whisper in her ear. "People are watching. They probably think you're my date, so let me pay for things and try to look like you're not on a stake-out at least every now and again. Now smile and laugh like I've just said something funny."
Gamora laughed, sweetly and musically before leaning in erotically and whispering back "If you ever tried to date me, and presumed to take me somewhere like this, I'd shove your beer-bottle so far inside you you'd never walk normally again." She said, smiling and fluttering her eyes. "So let's find the guy and get out of here so I can have a long, hot shower and try to forget just how sticky this awful vinyl seating it." She said, as Drax entered the bar, spotted them and walked over. Quill was annoyed to see Rocket wasn't with him.
Drax walked over to the alcove that Gamora and Quill were sitting in, and sat down opposite them. He couldn't see the doors from here, but he could watch the seat near the door that Rocket had pointed to from outside and indicated he would occupy to act as look-out. It was a raised stool adjacent to the serving-surface, and Drax wondered if Rocket has chosen it for the extra height it would give him to perform his duties as look-out, or if he had chosen it for its proximity to alcohol. Unfortunately, someone else had walked over and seated themselves there. As he sat down, Gamora and Quill gave him curious looks, but just as Quill was about to speak a serving-wench arrived with liquid beverages.
"Would you like anything?" she asked. Drax considered this. "Revenge on my family's killers. Also a glass of water." The serving wench gave him the open-mouthed look before saying "I'll see what I can do." Quill briefly buried his head in his palm, possibly also searching for tiny idiots. Quill then leaned in to pay her for the drinks, and as he did Drax noticed that he dropped a filmy of J. Star'l'in on her tray along with the credit-slip. Either the beer had cost 80 units or there was some other unspoken transaction being carried out. The wench's eyes barely flickered, but she said "I'll see what I can do about that other order." with no hesitation. Quill then turned back to Drax.
"Well?" asked Quill, raising his hands open- palmed and leaning-in.
Drax considered this. "I am in good health, yes. Thank you for asking."
"Oh well that's great. Well as in where the hell is Rocket!" Quill hissed.
"There is no need to take that angry tone with me!" said Drax, causing Quill to finch as people looked around at them "Given your instruction that I was to sit with you and he was not, Rocket though it would allay suspicion if we arrived at least one minute apart, a course of action that I very much agreed with!" he continued.
"Uh huh, because we're allaying suspicions now, sure enough!" Said Quill. Gamora put a hand on his arm. Quill sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "All we needed to do was come in, and sit down. Is that so hard?" he stood looking from Drax to Gamora with both hands on the corners of their table "Now everyone in the bar is looking at the table with the huge shouty tattooed man, and it'll take a train wreck to get their attention off us!"
"You're fucking kidding me? Two units to check in a gun of that size? Listen buddy, I wouldn't give two units for most of the other weapons on that rack, so if anything happens to my guns or some slimeball leaves their greasy fingerprints on the barrel of that I'm gonna make them eat it!"
Drax got a very good view as Quill's facial expression froze, and congealed into dull horror. Seated opposite Quill, he could see what Quill couldn't as the muttering and sotto voce complaints about thug bouncers got louder, culminating in a cry of "Hey! Get outta my chair asshole!"
The man sitting in the lookout-stool disappeared with a yerk, his drink half-way to his lips as the stool was violently pulled from under him. Drax couldn't see what was happening over Quill's shoulder, but there was the unmistakable snick swish Tzzzt! yelp of someone taking a shock-prod directly to the spine, followed by the agonizingly drawn out keening screech of a bar-stool being dragged across a polished floor.
It went on for some time, and as it did Quill started biting his lip and staring at the floor, eyes, scrunched up tight, hands still on the table-corners. Gamora winced every time the sound spiked. After an eternity of waiting and a brief agony of despair, the top of the stool re-appeared and Rocket calmly climbed up, stood on the stool to see over the bar, and slammed his tiny clawed fist down and yelled. "What's it take to get some frickin' service in this place! Hey you, monkeyman! Smokestacks, straight up. And make it a double." The barman looked offended, but hooked his tail over the celling rails and swung off to get the drink none the less. The man Rocket had de-stooled stood up, waked up behind Rocket, raised his glass back to smash Rocket in the face with it, and then got a look from Rocket, at which point he thought better of it, and left quietly. Rocket caught Drax's eye in the mirror behind the bar, and gave him a little grin.
Quill re-opened his eyes when, somehow, a fight didn't break out, and Gamora stared breathing again. "Well, you did tell him to behave the way he would in any other bar." She said.
"Yeah, in hindsight I should have thought that through more. On the other hand, people have their train-wreck. Let's mingle." Said Quill, getting up. "Drax, watch our backs and keep an eye on Rocket, okay?" Drax nodded.
Quill and Gamora sauntered off, Quill desperately trying to look casual.
Quill didn't want it to be too obvious that they were searching for someone, and so sidled along to the restrooms, edging past people with an easy "Excuse me, pardon me, Woah! Didn't see ya there buddy, try truing off the adaptive camouflage!" and finding excuse to get in as many people's way as possible and so check them out and look in the booths. Within twenty seconds, he had knocked over the drink of a quiet, easy-going-looking individual who as it would turn out, was anything but. Not knowing this, Quill pressed on.
Gamora, wanting to check out the area around the dance floor, headed off to the gambling machines near it, and put a few units in. As the lights bleeped and whirled, she looked over the bar, assessing who was watching who, who looked armed, and who looked like they didn't need to be. She was an assassin and she was good at it. What she was not, however, was a gambler. If she was, she'd have spotted that the machine she went to had recently been heavily bet upon by a number of drunks, and was therefore at its highest odds of paying out. She would also have probably spotted the three heavies who had been watching it and have realised that she'd just cut in line between them and their prize.
Rocket sat at the bar, drinking his Smokestacks (or his second, or his third. Who was counting?) and not watching the door. People noticed watching, and he knew damn well that he didn't need to stare. His sense of smell and hearing were sufficiently good that actually looking on lookout was kind of redundant, he figured, and besides, it's not like this was the most dangerous job he had ever been on. Unfortunately, his hearing was sufficiently good that without even trying, he got an earful of what the construction crew at the end of the bar were saying.
"-flattened. The CBD is a total write off. That kree ship just wrecked the city. That's why I'm heading there. There'll be work for years just putting everything back how it was, let alone the other options for civic regeneration and all that crap."
"Yeah, kinnda a pity the whole city didn't get wrecked. Way I heard it, it was a close run thing. Some kree loon with a doomsday device hits the planet, nova get caught sleeping and it's up to some costumed nut-nuts to save the day."
"I heard pirates. The Ravengers?"
"Nah, it's the underwear-on-the outside freaks this time. Some loon vigilante, calls himself star-prince." That made Rocket smile.
The largest and most prison-tattooed of the gang, who looked like the very first proto-scaffolder to crawl out of the primordial ooze and build condo's for lungfish, snorted and turned to the other workers, with the tone of a father educating a young brood, and spake thus:
"You're both talking out of your assholes. I heard how it went down from a cousin o' mine. This star-lord guy was a Ravenger, but he couldn't hack it and quit. Spends a few months trying to make it alone as a 'legendary outlaw' " said the scaffolder, making the world's biggest inverted commas in the air "and then suddenly he's out of prison and working for Nova. Some bitch from inside Ronan's organisation too. They get a walk from prison, get out of the Kyln, the day before everyone else there conveniently dies in a 'terrorist attack'. Then suddenly, they're working for Nova, full pardon, and they save Xandar from an attack Nova swears would destroy the entire planet, but won't say how? Come on!" he said, leading back and swigging his beer. "It's an inside job: a cover up!"
The rest of the construction crew started booing, good naturedly, and throwing GeGeNuts. "Conspiracy nut!" one yelled. Another mocked "Let me guess, you're gonna say it wasn't a ship-crash at all, it was a cruise missile! You got that theory from spare units, and that didn't make any sense anyway!"
"Hey!" said the Scaffolder. "It's a Nova trick to empower the military-industrial complex. Scare everyone, have some lone freaks save the day and appeal for a bigger budget because no-one wants to have to rely on some random 'hero' to save them. Otherwise explain how they got out of the Kyln? No-one escapes the Kyln. "
"Except maybe…. Rocket!" said one of the others, jokingly, making a weird little devil-horns gesture above his head with his fingers. Most of the crew began to throw GeGeNuts and jeer him instead, but some of the more jail-bird members of the group looked thoughtful.
On the other side of the bar, Quill saw someone with his back turned to him and seized the opportunity to push on, unawares of the tragedy pooling behind him as the laid back looking man desperately tried to dry-off his crotch. He grabbed the guy facing away from him by the shoulder and said "Hey! Jim I- Oh sorry." He smiled sheepishly "Sorry buddy, I thought you were someone else. Looking for a friend of mine Jim, Jim Star'l'in. You seen him about?"
"Piss off, bounty hunter." Said the guy, shrugging him off. Quill's sheepish smile did not so much fade and freeze up. In hindsight, turning up at a bar visibly armed, with someone like Drax in tow, and asking a ton of questions, didn't seem like that good an idea. Of course people would mistake them for bounty hunters, and if they were friends of J. Star'l'in the last thing they would do was help them find him. In fact they were probably lucky if someone didn't call him and warn him off. Still, too late now, so Quill smiled disarmingly and pressed on. "Whoa there buddy!" he said, spreading his arms wide, and knocking another drink over, onto the laid-back looking guy as he desperately towelled himself with a disposable napkin. "You've got the wrong idea, I'm just an-"
"An old friend of the family? Concerned for them and trying to find them to let them know that a friend has died? That maybe they left them something in their will, and that a share of that cash might be forthcoming to anyone who helps you find them?" said the guy. "Do you think I was born yesterday? Tell me something that hasn't come from the same script every bounty-hunter uses to try and get people to tell you where their mark is?" the Guy looked at Quill and raised an eyebrow. "Well?"
Quill opened and closed his mouth a few times, before settling on "I don't suppose you'd believe a story about some magic glowing stones of doom and defeating Ronan the accuser in a dance-off?"
The eyebrow raised some more. "Thought not." Said Quill. "How'd you make me? You a bounty-hunter?" it would explain how he had not only seen through, but known the sorts of introductions that got people to part with other-peoples location: more people would lead you to someone if they thought you were helping not hunting your target.
"Me?" The guy laughed "No, but he is." He said, pointing. Quill's face scrunched in horrified confusion as he turned to see who he was pointing at. As he turned, he bumped right into a previously laid-back looking man who had been approaching him rapidly from behind intent on violence, who had just enough time to say "Yondu sends his regards- Ahhh!" before they collided and both slipped on the spilled drink and went down in a heap.
Gamora spotted this and decided to meld back into the shadows, walk around to behind the guy and try and flank him, when she felt a displacement in the airt behind her and turned, suddenly.
"Hey! Where are you going so fast, Sweetness?" asked a skinny, evil-eyed Xandarian in a tone that didn't even contain the slightest trace of genuine lust. "You think you can come over and play my machine just before a pay out and then waltz off so fast?" he asked, shaking his head sadly and Gamora became aware of the two far larger goons that had materialised to either side. There was a snick as a switchbade appeared in the Xandarian's hand "Ahhh, and you so pretty, sweetness. Such a shame…"
"Oh come on!" said one of the construction workers at the bar. "Rocket? He's an urban legend. A boogie man custody-sergeants use to scare their kids. It's a fairy story! No-one escapes twenty-odd prisons in, what? Five years? Six? It's make believe, all that crap about breaking out of Longheath with just chewing-gum and a toothpick, it's kids' stuff, wish-fulfilment."
"An inch of wire. What good's a toothpick? You'd need something frickin' conductive to short the door controls." Said a voice. No one paid it any attention.
One of the older, more tattooed members of the group leaned in. "I wouldn't be so dismissive, if I were you. I was in a cell once, which a guy, who's previous cell mate saw the Rocket. Broke out of a maximum security wing in ten hours. Hacked the computer system using the outgoing phone lines, called his 'lawer', but it was a rent-a-cloud computer, used the prison commissary account to buy the computing power to hack a bank account for money to buy more computing power and so on until he could brute-force the jail's computer core. Apparently," he said leaning in conspiratorially "he's six foot tall, with eyes like fire and a shock of flaming red hair."
"Really? I heard he's two foot tall and scaly, like a lizard."
"I heard a Robot: he was once part of a Rocket."
"I heard he's a seven foot tall tree, with some sort of weird pet follows him around everywhere." The scaffolder snorted at that.
"I heard the tree bit too, but way I head it they were a couple of queers. He's some sorrta mutant. Some fucking failed experiment that crawled outta a perti dish and didn't have the good sense to die. Tho' way I heard, one of 'em's dead: heard they were on Xandar when the trouble happened, and they were walking around like a couple of dopes, when the kree ship fell outta the sky and smashed his fucking tree to splinters and the little fag actually started crying over his retarded tree-"
scrinch.
The construction workers burst out laughing at this. Scaffold, however, thought he heard something and looked left. A few seats away, a small furry alien with a long black and white tail was looking calmly at its clever little hands and, without any sign of distress at all, pulling the shattered pieces of a glass out of its palm. It did not look up as it spoke.
"So you think that's funny, do you?"
"Huh?"
"I happened to lose a good buddy of mine on Xandar, Pal. I was asking you if you think that what happened on Xandar was somehow funny." The small alien said.
The scaffolder and his buddies stared, open mouthed. And there was a single, perfect moment of balance where it looked like things could go one way-
"Shit me! A talking cat!"
- or they could go the other. And did.
The construction crew begun roaring with laughter, Gamora Kicked the knife-wielding Xandarian in the crotch, and as Quill and the bounty hunter struggled up, a stunner dropped to the deck and clattered off onto the dance-floor.
So it was probably just as well that Drax was there to save the day.
He did not do it like you'd expect.
Spines were not pulled out.
Sitting in the corner drinking his water, Drax observed Rocket acting as look out by the doors, Quill working the room and Gamora watching the crowd from the gambling machines, and reasoned that if he was to contribute to the team, then he should do his part to help find Mr Star'l'in. Looking around the bar, he spotted a pay-coms in the far corner. Calling Ronan and asking him to come had worked, he reasoned. Sort of. He could just look up J Star'l'in in the communications directory and call him. He would not even have to necessarily convince him to come: there was a possibility that he was already in this place and he would just have to see who in the crowd answered his communicator.
Satisfied with that line of reasoning, Drax got up and begun to walk across the bar. As his path would take him across Gamora's location, he would tell her his intent.
The Xandarian Gamora had kicked reeled back in a small private world of hurt, and stumbled. As he did he put out his hand and lent of a wall to steady himself. The wall then spoke.
"Gamora. I am going to try and locate J. Star'l'in's name on the pay-com directory. If we can locate him quickly we can progress, and I will be closer to avenging my family's killers and you will be closer murdering your step-father." Drax looked down. The Xandarian leaning on him and wheezing had a switchblade in its hand. He took it and held it up to the light. It had a ceramic blade, so fine you could almost see through it. "This is a very nice knife." He said, his face lighting up as he studied it. "I like it I'm keeping it." He decided, as he walked off, still holding it to the light and admiring it.
Gamora and the Xandarian and his two goons both watched in stunned silence as he walked across the dance-floor towards the pay-com. The Xandarian looked at her and she crossed her arms and rubbed her cheek, trying to hide her face with embarrassment.
"He… he does that some times. I'm not sure he's quite normal in the head." She said.
"Right." said the Xandarian. They both stood there in an embarrassed silence for a bit. One of the two goons whistled under his breath before muttering "awkward."
"Yeah, yeah." Said the other goon. "Look, lady, I think we got off on the wrong foot. We just want to get to that gaming-machine because it's about to pay out, and if you let us there'll be no more trouble."
"What? Oh, sure." Said Gamora, stepping aside.
"Oh Come on!" said the knife-wielding Xandarian. "She kicked me in the balls and we're just going to let her get away with it? Get her!"
"Shut up Randal." Said one of the goons. "Mom's gonna be pissed that you lost granddad's knife."
"Oh but that's so unfair!" he wailed. Gamora decided she needed a drink after all.
Quill and the bounty hunter observed the stunner skid away across the floor, looked at each other for a moment, and them both tried to leap for it. Quill got further, but then the bounty-hunter grabbed Quill by his trailing long-coat and Quill lost balance and started slipping again on the wet floor, so he turned and punched the bounty hunter in the gut, hard, as a result of which they both fell over again as he dragged Quill down. The guy then punched Quill in the face and somehow managed to leaver himself upright on the back swing, but then Quill fired up his rocket-boosters and shot away as the backwash from the boost knocked the guy over. They both spun on the floor, half-upright, half crouched, as the guy reached into his coat for a shoulder-holster and Quill drew for the guns on his hips-
And they both stood there for a moment, with their hands in strange and unnatural positions as they realised that their guns were sharing adjacent spaces in the wire rack next to the door of the bar, a good thirty yards away. The bouncer watched with mild amusement.
"Ah. Kinda forgot that doorman took my guns." Said Quill.
"Yeah, me too. And the guy was really rude." Said the bounty hunter. "he gave me this, like, totally unnecessary pat-down, and then he insisted on searching my Satchel."
"I know! He called mine a purse." Said Quill, glad to have finally found someone who had also known the unjust persecution of sensible man-bag owners.
"Well." Said the bounty hunter "Yours kind of does look like a purse."
There was a moment of heavy silence before Quill through a bottle at him and they both surged for the stun-gun again. Unfortunately, the spilled drinks and the punches they had exchanged turned this from a mad dash across the room into a frantic ducks-on-iced-pond drunks-first-time-on-skates race and they lent on each other and pulled at each other and slipped and slid and bambi'd along for about ninety seconds and eleven feet until Drax walked past, examining a switchblade that looked comically tiny in his huge hands with the air of a lepidopterist who has found a rare butterfly parked on his finger.
"Drax! A little Help here buddy. Drax!" yelped Quill, as he started to slip for the third time in four seconds.
Drax stopped and one-handed picked Quill up by the front of his shirt and deposited him on dryer ground, to his relief. To his horror, he then did the same for the bounty hunter, and then gave him his stunner back off the floor, clearly completely oblivious to the fact that they had just been fighting.
"Thanks." The guy muttered, before getting a good look at who had just helped him. The color drained from his face like the syrup form a snow-cone.
"Drax the destroyer." He whispered in a hoarse voice. Drax looked away from the knife for a second at this and nodded. He then turned to Quill. "I'm going to try and summon J. Star'l'in with the pay-com. Gamora has gone to the bar."
"Gamora. Gamora the assassin who worked for Ronan, and killed the president of Argo One with a fork." Said the bounty hunter. There was hardly any syrup left at all now.
"Yes." Said Drax. "And also she worked for Thanos and killed many others." He turned back to Quill. "I think she will sit with Rocket."
"Rocket." said the hunter, flatly. "Touch-my-booty-and-I'll-kill-you, we're-still-finding-bits-of-the-last-guy, doesn't-play-well-with-other-bounty-hunters Rocket. And you know these people?"
"Yeah." Said Quill, Putting his hands on his hips and flaring his coat behind him dramatically. "I'm their captain. The name" he said, relishing the look of fear on the bounty -hunter's face. "is starlord."
The bounty hunter's face went blank for a moment, and then he looked down and pulled a filmy, the type of cheap one you could get printed out free at a public data-terminal, and then looked back. "Never heard of you. Shit, sorry about that there: I've got a bounty out on a Peter Quill, and the pic on the filmy looks a bit like you. Except, you know, better looking. And taller." He patted Quill on the shoulder. "Honest mistake, starlord: for a second there I thought you were someone important." He said, as he walked off.
"If you were looking for a bounty I believe Rocket has no designs on the construction workers by the bar." Said Drax, unaware of just how untrue that statement was getting with each passing second. He then walked off to the pay-com, still examining the knife; the handle was hornwood inland with mother of pearl and lapis, and was truly lovely.
Quill stood there for a long moment as he considered rocket-jump-punching the hunter in the back of the head, but Jim Star'l'in could arrive any moment, and a brawl would probably scare him off. He decided to get some ice at the bar for his head, and maybe a stiff drink to go with it.
Drax patiently entered the queue of the pay com, behind the serving-wench he had seen earlier, and then realises that he didn't have any money, and unlike before there was no operator to threaten into making the call for him. So he decided to head back to the bar. Rocket would have money, and may well lend him some. If he was in a good mood.
Rocket sat up straight, rolled his shoulders back and forth to loosen them up, cracked his knuckles, tilted his head from side to side, and then swivelled on his bar stool. He regarded the laughing drunks dispassionately for a moment, before throwing his head back and laughing in his best totally-real laugh. After a second or so the constriction crew realised they were being mocked by a yard of fur and stopped.
"What are you laughing at?" Scaffold said. Rocket theatrically wiped a tear from his eye, and poured himself another drink before replying.
"Ahahaha, no it's kinda funny really, when you think about it. All that shit that went down on Xandar, all those con's killed at the kyln and what have you, all those poor SOB's dead: I wonder how many of them were sitting around joking about Ronan right before he came outta nowhere and killed 'em. Just, sitin' about, laughing like a bunch of bug-fugly idoits eating urinal-cake GeGeNuts as they drink their last two brain-cells to death and never, ever knowing just how close the guy they're mocking is, or just how little time they got left before he'll destroy them." said Rocket, looking them over each in turn and smiling with all the warmth and compassion of a fox eating shit of a barbed-wire fence.
There was an expectant pause as the construction crew tried to work that out.
"Who are you calling Ugly, you little rat!" yelled one, getting up and rushing Rocket. Emphasis was on tried.
Rocket chucked his drink on the floor almost casually as the man charged forwards, and griped his bar-stool with his other paw and swivelled to the right. As the man slipped on the drink and went down, Rocket kicked him with both feet as he swivelled, guiding the man's fall neatly sideways into the bar-top. There was a crack as the man's chin hit the linoleum and he went down like a sack of shit as Rocket calmly swivelled back to face them, still grinning.
Scaffold leapt up and grabbed a heavy-bottomed beer bottle. He stood flat-footed, and Rocket watched where he held his weight. Probably dumb enough to fall for the same trick as the last one Rocket thought.
"Bad call: You're gonna be in a world of pain, rat." He leered. Trip him, put shot glass on bar where his eye will land…
"Yeah, well. It's a small world. Gonna get smaller for some, pal." Said Rocket, as he casually weighed his glass in one paw and rested the other on the Velcro at the base of his tail. Sock-prod for the second, lump the bar and grab the scattergun I can smell. Third, forth. Improvise for the fifth…
Scaffolder screwed up his face in confusion, trying to work out why something so frickin' small would want to take on him. "Just who the hell do you think you are?"
Rocket grinned, happy that the guy's exclamation on the word hell had covered the riiiip of Velcro unsticking.
"Buddy, if you haven't worked that out by now, you deserve every ounce of what you're about to get." He said, tightening his grip on the shock prod and getting ready to leap up and-
"Rocket, I need to borrow two units for the pay-com." Said Drax. Lumbering up and halting just off Rocket's right shoulder. He had an ornate and very sharp looking switchblade in his hands, Rocket instantly noticed, because noticing things like that was why he was still getting in to bar fights and not a scarf.
"Not. Now." Rocket hissed, and then his brain caught up. "Wait, what?"
"Wait, rocket?" said Scaffolder, with a cocktail of horror and disappointment.
"Two units. For the Pay com." Said Drax.
"Why? You calling for some frickin' take out? I'm in a bar fight here." he said waving his hand about. snick "I've got a shock prod and everything!"
"Shit me!"
"I was going to dial up J. Star'l'in on the pay-com directory and see if there was a contact number listed for him." Said Drax, as the bulk of the construction crew begun to edge their way down the bar away from Scaffolder and Rocket, who stared into space for a moment and just said. "Huh." Rocket leaned back, and started scratching the small of his back with the shock-probe. "That might just work."
"Wait, sorry." Said Scaffolder. "I'm confused. You're Rocket? The Rocket."
"Yeah. Sure. The legendary bounty-hunter and breakout artist is in a bar scratching his ass with a shock probe. What little clue was it gave me away? The bit where he said my name?" said Rocket sarcastically.
"You." Rocket said, pointing dramatically with the shock probe, which sparked impressively. "Are an asshole." He concluded. "You are, however, the luckiest asshole in the galaxy, because Drax the frickin' Destroyer came up behind you with a knife when he did, and asked me for change, as opposed to say, a second latter when you might have attacked me, in which case if he'd seen that he'd be feeding your d'asted vertebrae into the pay-com coin slot. You are also the luckiest asshole in the galaxy because my Drax the Buzzkill's ruined my fighting mood and because my boss, Peter Starlord Quill, told me it was a waste of time to haul in half of you sorry sacks for your monumentally petty bounties. Mister parking tickets." he said gesturing to one. "Mister skipped bail on a drugs misdemeanour, or you, mister indecent exposure. And as for you." He said, pointing to the prison-tattooed scaffolder. "If you are gonna fall for and elope with the guy who ploughed you in prison then at least pay child-maintenance to your ex, you goddamn deadbeat! Prison tats! Honestly, why don't you make it easier for me to look up your ID's! Get outta here and leave me alone! You are honestly the saddest bunch of bounties I've seen in my entire flickin' life, and I've met Peter Quill!"
"What's this about me?" said Quill, wincing as he sat down at a barstool the other side of Scaffolder and grabbed a lump of ice from a bucket and applied to a cut on his eyebrow. Rocket frowned. "What the hell happened to you?"
"Could ask the same, seeing as you're threatening half the bar with a shock probe. Bounty-hunter punched me on the dance-floor."
"Why, you try to chat him up? Compare satchels?"
"Ummm, actually yeah."
"Bounty-hunter?" asked Scaffolder "Where?"
"Probably that guy." Said Rocket, pointing with the probe. The Scaffolder turned to see who he was pointing at and so he caught a barbed stunner-round in the eye. Quill and Rocket watched for a moment as his writhing and screaming competed with the crackle and buzz of the stunner round, before turning back to the bar.
"Pretty good shot." Said Quill, as the bounty hunter screamed at the other construction workers, and martialled the ones with outstanding bounties into a rough line. The bouncer eventually slouched over, and after the merest glance and the guy's bail-bond recovery license grabbed the scaffolder by one very damp trouser leg and started dragging him out of the door.
"Meh. I've seen better." Said Rocket putting his shock-probe down on the bar, as the other bounties were marched out, hands on heads and hearts in mouths. He poured himself another drink, and passed the bottle to Quill. "Drax thinks we should just look up Star'l'in's contact details and call him. Could work."
"Yeah because I'd never think of something that incredibly simple." Said Quill, glaring as he reached over top take the bottle "I gave the barmaid Star'l'in's pic and I wrote on the back asking her to find him or his contact number when we first came into the bar! She's already looking up for me." He said, holding the ice to his head and razing the bottle to his lips and Gamora came over and took the seat next to them. Drax sat between Quill and Rocket.
"I'm not just a pretty face, you know." Said Quill, taking a pull from the bottle. His pretty face turned a deep shade of beetroot and his cheeks budged, but he managed to hold the drink in and just cough violently rather than spraying the bar, to Rockets disappointment.
"Jesus! What is this stuff?"
"Smokestacks old frontier spacer's whiskey. Best drink in the house."
"Was the house on fire? It tastes like a burnt tire!"
"It's an acquired taste." admitted Rocket. "Acquired by mercenary's, mostly. You can use this stuff to de-grease grav-tanks turret bearings, light fires, make MRE bombs, scare of blood-flies." He took a pull of his drink. "and it don't kill you of make you blind. Had worse in prison. Made worse in prison. Turns out the dead leaves Groot sheds in autumn ferment pretty well if you hide it behind a heating coil-"
"Because I really needed to know that." said Gamora, ordering a vodka-quinine. Whilst the simian barman was there, Quill leaned over.
"Hi, could I get some ice with this? And a splash of soda? And a completely different drink? Thank you."
"So J. Star'l'in is not here?" said Drax, ordering another glass of water. Quill looked to Gamora, who shrugged.
"Well, I didn't see him in here, and Gamora didn't. We'll see if the waitress gets back with a contact number, and if not I'll have to call Dey see if he's got any other leads. May as well sit around and have a drink." He said, raising a beer to his lips.
They sat in silence for a moment and watched their reflections in the mirror behind the bar.
"We suck at this, don't we?" said Quill.
"Yes." Said Drax.
"Yep." Said Rocket.
"Oh so much." Said Gamora. "But we'll get better. We just need more practice at things other than wanton destruction. We're good at that." She looked around. "And drinking in really awful bars: this must be worse than that bar in Knowhere."
"Nah, the bar at Knowere had better beer." Said Quill, helping himself to GeGeNuts.
"It had unusual cruelty based gambling." Said Drax.
"It had a clientele who washed their hands between takin' a piss and sticking their fingers in the complementary nuts." Said Rocket. Quill spat nuts across the bar.
"You're mad. This place is so sleazy." Said Gamora.
"I dunno, it's not all that bad." said Quill turning to look at Gomorra. At times she was almost approachable "For example-"
"Hey, wanna buy some deathsticks?" asked a sleazy looking horned alien sliding up between Quill and Gamora. Quill stared at him.
"Um let me think about it. No!"
"You sure, finest Quality, fell of the back of a Badoon transporter. Fair price."
"Oh yeah, this place has real class Quill." Said Gamora. "Please, take me more places with knife-fights and runty drug-dealers".
Quill glanced up at Gamora, and then glared at the dealer. "You don't want to sell me any dethsticks." He said in a firm voice.
"I don't want to sell you any deathsticks?" the alien repeated.
"You want to go home and re-think your life." Intoned Quill, waving his hand in a strange manner.
The alien considered this. "No, I think I still want to sell, you some death sticks. Bulk purchase and I can get you good discount."
"Piss off! How dumb do you think I look?" asked Quill. Rocket snorted into his drink and muttered something under his breath that Quill made a mental note to get him back for later. "I'm not buying them, they cause cancer!"
"No they don't." said Rocket. "You're thinking of cigarettes." He said, before muttering something that sounded suspiciously like ' frickin' hick hummie.' Into his drink
"Huh?" said Quill.
"He's right." Said Gamora. "Aneurisms, narcolepsy, unexplained rectal bleeding, sudden and unexpected multiple organ failure, but they're not carcinogenic."
"They don't cause cancer?" asked Quill.
"No, but still the health risks involved are-"
"I'll take twenty." Said Quill, getting out his credit-slip. Gamora frowned.
"Didn't you hear what I just said?"
"Oh, yeah, I did. But people look so damn cool smoking these things, and besides, it'll probably never happen to me."
Gamora, Drax and Rocket all frowned down the bar at Quill and he popped open the packet and lit up. The chorus of "you're an idiot" from the lot of them echoed and mingled unpleasantly, but Quill paid them no mind as he took that first smooth, refreshing pull, and promptly started to gag and cough uncontrollably as he struggled to stay on his barstool. The others watched unimpressed.
"You know" Started Rocket. "Back where I-" he paused. "back when I was-" he stopped. That wouldn't do either. He stared into the middle distance moodily and drummed his fingers on the bar as he tried to find the correct words. When he spoke again, it was in the tone of someone weighing everything very carefully.
"This may come as a surprise to you all, but I got a look inside a behavioural laboratory once."
"No shit Sherlock." Managed Quill, through the waves of tears and racking coughs. He didn't want to look week in front of the crew, so took another pull. It was agony.
"Anyhoo. They had a monkey in there. Part of an addiction study I think." Said Rocket. "They had the poor thing smoking around a thousand deathsticks a day."
"That's horrible" said Gamora.
"Tell me about it." Said Rocket, taking a pull from his drink and staring into space. "Little bastard never once offered me a smoke." Rocket turned to the dealer. "Gimme two hundred."
"Rocket!"
"What? I ain't gonna smoke 'em! I value my skin far too much. I'm gonna wait until this idiot is hooked and sell them to him at four times the price."
Gamora remonstrations were interrupted when the bouncer slouched over to them, took a look at Drax's knife, Rockets shock-probe and the hand Gamora had around Quill's throat and said, with the instinct of all true bouncers.
"You can't smoke that in here pal, outside!"
"What?! But look at the" Quill said, pointing to Gamora's hand "and the" he gestured to the weapons sitting openly on the bar in front of Rocket and Drax. The bouncer folder his armed and grinned, and Quill, who could occasionally spot a doomed cause before it was too late, sighed, got up, and slumped off to the front door, puffing moodily on his deathstick. As he stood up, Gamora grabbed the dealer by one of his tiny freakish trumpet ears and started to drag him in the direction of the back door where she gave him a short but very to the point talk on the value of civic responsibility and how if she ever saw him again she'd pull out his spleen.
Drax was left alone with Rocket, who he noticed was still taking repeated deep pulls on his drink that made him scowl and mutter darkly. Well, made him scowl and mutter darkly with a greater frequency than usual.
"Are you unwell?"
"Nah. Just still steaming about those dumb bounties tried to mess with me. That sortta thing really gets my goat, yanno?"
"I was unaware you kept livestock."
"I mean, it's a bar. You get all kinds'a people in bars. You don't know who you might meet, so why start something with someone you don't know? He could be the biggest baddest SOB in the quadrant and you'd never know until it was too late."
"You did take the time to get to know me before provoking me to drunken violence on knowhere."
"Exactly! And prison tats, I mean really!" Rocket stared gloomily at his reflection for a moment, before addressing it.
"Do you have any idea what I wouldn't give to have what they have? To be normal lookin' and inconspicuous and blend with a crowd, and how do they treat it? They get themselves cut so that every dope in the galaxy knows that they're ex-cons. It's stupid. I mean, you… you were never gonna win a blending in contests and I'm guessing that the, yanno, the scars have something to do with your dead family and what not." Rocket, looked to Drax, who held his gaze coolly for a moment before nodding. "and I get it, that's fair enough" said Rocket. "But prison tats I ask you. Stupid." He hunkered down and poured a drink, somewhat unsteadily. "I ain't never getting a tat."
"You have a tattoo."
Rocket stopped, and put the bottle down carefully. "Come again?"
"You have a tattoo." Repeated Drax. "You have a bar-code and a serial number tattooed inside your left ear."
Pause.
"Yes. Yes I Do." Said Rocket, painfully carefully. "Well spotted, Drax. Not many people ever notice that. Now, could you please do me a favour."
"That would depend on the nature of the favour, but in all likelihood yes."
"Nice. So, Drax, could you please keep that kinda comment to yourself in future and never mention that subject again, otherwise I'll have to kill you in your sleep." Said Rocket, extremely carefully.
Drax considered this for a moment and nodded.
Outside the bar, Quill stood and smoked his deathstick gloomily. It was starting to look like this entire trip had been a waste of time. One of the gaggle of older guys standing around outside the bar and drinking beer as they smoked noticed him holding the ice to his face and snorted.
"Been in the wars, son?"
"Oh yeah, got stuck in a three-day running battle leading up to the crash on Xandar, so though I'd relax tonight with a nice little fist-fight with a bounty-hunter."
Most of the old men snorted with laughter, but the one who had spoken to him looked curious, or as curious as you could look standing half-hidden in deep shadow.
"You were on Xandar during the attack? Mind if I ask you a few questions about it."
"Hey, go buy a news filmy: I'm having a bad day, okay?" Said Quill, as the door opened behind him. The man looked offended and turned to go. As he did, Quill noticed the waitress form earlier come out of the door towards him. "Oh what now? Was I smoking too close to the door or something?"
"No." she said. "You were looking for Jim Star'l'in?" she asked.
"Yeah?" she pointed over Quill's shoulder at the retreating back of the older guy he had just offended.
"Looks like you found him." She said.
Jim Star'l'in was walking away from the bar cursing the younger generations when a voice behind him called out "Mr Star'l'in? Mr Star'l'in? Excuse me, pardon me…. Hey Old Dude!"
Jim Star'l'in turned. The rude young man from the bar was running up behind him.
"What do you want?" he asked.
The man ran up to him panting slightly, as people were wont to do after their first deathstick, but pulled up to him and offered his hand.
"Hey. I think we got off on the wrong foot there. Name's Starlord, legendary outlaw. Maybe you've heard of me?"
This man is clearly an idiot, Star'l'in thought.
"Okay, so you've never heard of me. I also go by the name of Peter Quill. I'm an old friend of Rhomann Dey, and me and my friends flew a long way out here to meet you."
"Uh-huh? Look kid, Dey's a good Guy, firm but fair. Chased me away from enough crime scenes back on Xandar, but always friendly and ready to talk afterwards, would understand that a reporter's just doing his job as much as a corpsman, would buy you a drink if he saw you in a bar. And if you were on Xandar when that Kree ship crashed then maybe you've got interesting things to say. But you are one monstrously rude kid, so give me one good reason why I should help you out."
Quill's face froze a second as he desperately tried to find a good reason.
"Dey says you're like a huge Thanos expert, spent years trying to track down info in him?"
"I have some knowledge of him, yes." He said, making his entry in this years 'galaxy's cagiest remark' contest.
"How'd you like to meet one of his daughters?"
Star'l'in snorted. "Good answer. Now try one I'd actual believe."
Quill frowned. "No really, one of my crew is one of his daughters. Gamora."
"Okay, so you've done some research, looked up the name of one of his, but that still doesn't give me any reason to trust you: there might be people in the past I've reported on as having links to Thanos, and a lot of them took the inference badly. A lot of people have reason to want to do me harm. So why should I go back into that bar with you?"
Quill remembered he was talking to a journalist. "I'll pay for your drinks."
"Done." Said Star'l'in truing back to the bar. No true writer ever turns down free drinks.
Quill took him buy the arm as he walked him along. "You know, when we first got here and couldn't find you, it looked for a moment like some giant bar-brawl was going to break out, and I was worried that we might scare you off."
Star'l'in snorted. "It's okay, I don't scare easy. Besides, you only came here to talk to me, you say? What's the worst that could have happened?" he said, as Quill pushed open the door.
Drax had the Bouncer in a headlock. Gamora was trying to fight off three lascavarian thugs with a bar stool, and Rocket was standing on one of the tables, menacing a teenaged couple with a scatter gun he seemed to have got from somewhere. Star'l'in and Quill stood in the doorway and stared in utter horror, until Rocket spotted them and lowered the gun as if nothing was happening
"Oh Hey Quill, what's up?"
Things settled down (not without a lot of shouting) and Star'l'in looked quite amused as Quill stood and counted out units to the Waitress, who, as things would have it, was also the bar's owner.
"hundred and twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, I swear ma'am, this sort of thing never usually happens to us."
"Uh-Huh? You just count yourself lucky that Jim here was willing to vouch for you, and that I'm an old friend of corpsman Dey as well. If anyone else had pulled that sort of shit in my bar, I'd have Bruno here take them down to the stockyards and throw them in the slurry pits!"
"-Hundred and ninety, two hundred. And again, I cannot say how sorry I am about all this." He glanced to the Bouncer "and again, Bruno was it? I have to apologize for the language Rocket was using there: I'm sure your mother is actually really nice."
"I'm his mother." Squawked the waitress.
"Really?" asked Quill. The waitress was more than a head shorter than him, and a different color to Bruno. Both Star'l'in and the waitress shrugged.
"Interspecies offspring are more common out here than you would think." Said Star'l'in.
"Tell me about it." Muttered Quill, handing over the last of the cash and taking Star'l'in's drink and carrying it over to the booth for him. Star'l'in hadn't run away screaming, and had vouched for them to the bar owner the second he'd seen Gamora with his own eyes. He agreed to help them, so long as he got to interview Gamora first. The team were all sitting there already, and had the decency to look ashamed (expect for Rocket, who Quill was stating to suspect never did) and had all offered to pay their share of the damages (except for Rocket, who said he'd consider taking it off the interest Quill owed him for ship repairs).
Star'l'in sat himself opposite to Gamora, and for the next half hour of so asked her questions more of less non-stop. He wrote down her replies in a little pocket-book filled with filmy scraps, something that seemed odd at first until you realized that no-one could hack an old-fashioned note book. Mostly his questions were on Thanos's previous role in assassinations and attacks, and a few questions on Nebula and Gamora's other 'sisters'. He asked a few questions into Gamora's personal past early on, and having got glacially cold replies, soon stopped. The then, briefly, asked them to explain how they'd met Gamora and what had happened on Xandar, and to his horror Quill found the other three members of the team turning to him. Him! So he told his story, as best he could. Rocket chipped in occasionally, and Drax rarely, but Star'l'in seemed to be legitimately interested and was a good listener, so Quill told him pretty much everything, except what had happened after they had defeated Ronan. Nova prime Rael might be a reasonable person, but he was pretty sure she wasn't above arranging actual murder if you leaked the location of a highly classified super-weapon to the press. Around an hour and five drinks later, he seemed satisfied and put his book away.
"So, you actually touched an infinity stone?"
"Yeah. I don't recommend it as a health-regime to anyone, and unlike Ronan I wasn't building it into any weapon and holding it aloft and shouting 'I have the power', but yeah. I did."
"And the side effects…"
"Unpleasant. Hallucinations, severe pain, dissolving from the inside out. Death. The usual. I was pretty much a goner until my friends helped me, like I said."
"And you held it?" asked Star'l'in "I mean the power. The four of you actually held the power, and controlled it?"
"Five." Said Rocket. "Five of us. I was holding onto Groot at the time: the one bit of Groot that started growing back afterwards."
"Wow. Just wow." Said Star'l'in, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Do you have any idea how long people have been trying to harness Infinity stones unsuccessfully?"
"Meh, I think I saw space Liberatchie give a talk on that, yeah." Said Quill. "But what I'd like to know is, what the hell is an Infinity stone, and why does Thanos want them?"
Star'l'in leaned in close and gestured for them to do the same, he glanced around the bar and lowered his voice before he would speak, but then continued.
"They say that there are six infinity stones, as old as time or even older. That they were involved in the creation of the universe, and might be involved in its destruction. One stone, the space stone, the Tesseract, we know was hidden on Terra long ago, we believe by the Asgardians. The terran's tried to make use of it however, and we think it drew Thanos interest and lead him to organize the recent Chitauri invasion of terra-"
"Wait, what? Earth got invaded? When, how. What happened?" asked Quill, shocked. He stared into space for a moment. "Did they have tripods?"
"Why would they have tripods?" asked Gamora.
"I dunno, why would they invade earth! My life went very 'flight of the navigator' about twenty seven years ago and I haven't exactly been keeping up with current affairs back home since!"
"The invasion failed, Terra is fine, as I understand it, and no, there were no tripods. Flying doom whales, yes, but no tripods." Said Star'l'in. "You want to hear this or not?"
"I'm not sure any more!" said Quill. Star'l'in, who had clearly been getting this sorted in his mind for some time, however, pressed on. "It looks like Thanos has had possession of at least two of the stone at various points, the tesseract, that his Agent Loki captured during the invasion of earth, and another stone, no-one is sure which, possibly the mind-stone, which he gave to Loki to lead the invasion. So as far as we can guess, although he wants all six stones, he's not going to be idle with the ones he has, he's going to use them or give them to others to use for him until he's got all six in his control. As far as we can tell the mind-stone was lost in the invasion of terra, and the tesseract taken by the Asgardians. We believe they also found the Aether, the reality stone on terra, and gave it to the collector, Taneleer Tivan, for safekeeping, so tracking down the stones before Thanos does will be easy with his help, or a complete nightmare without it."
"Oh. Goody." Said Rocket. "And the stone we found?"
"I found it!" said Quill. Rocket glared.
"the stone our glorious captain found and then hid in his purse." He said.
"It's not a purse!"
"Based on your description, probably the Power stone. That leaves the Time stone and the Soul stone somewhere out there unaccounted for, with Thanos after all six."
"Why?" asked Quill. "Do you get a limited edition collectors watch if you send in all six box-tops?"
"No. you get the universe." said Star'l'in, simply. "As far as I can work out, if you get all six, you're effectively what the gods would call god."
That killed the mood around the table.
Although not as much as what Star'l'in said next.
"Oh crap." He said, and tried to hide under the table. Instantly the team looked around. A dozen very tough looking kree had just walked in through the back door of the bar.
"Friends of yours?" Asked Quill.
"Friends of Ronan's. I might have done a very negative press article on then a few months back attacking kree hard-line nationalism and suggesting it's being backed by Thanos, and they've been after me ever since."
Quill looked to his weapons, on the rack, by the door. "Ookay, were gonna get you to my ship, asap."
"No! My research, years of intel on Thanos! I can't go without it. It's in a motel two blocks from here. The hungry heart. Grab your weapons and meet me there in ten, I'll get Bruno to delay these guys to give me some time." Quill looked to him, and nodded. He didn't like the idea of leaving him alone, but these kree didn't know they were on Star'l'in's side, and if they never learnt that until Quill had them on the wrong end of his pistol, all the better. Rocket was already armed and out the door, checking for more. He gave the all clear through the big glass windows. Gamora and Drax followed Quill out into the street. Jim Star'l'in tried to look casual, as he called the waitress over and whispered in her ear.
Out on the street, Quill started to buckle on his gun-belts slowly and carefully, trying to clear his mind. A tangle with kree hard-nats was the last thing he wanted, but even so two to go. Soul and time. Don't like the sound of that. Not one bit.
Drax and Gamora walked slowly, like he did, trying to keep it casual, but Rocket was practically leaping from foot to foot with impatience.
"Come on! We want to make it to this motel before those goons do so we can ambush them! " said Rocket, as behind him a groundcar rolled up slowly and wound down its windows. "The last thing we want is to get surprised-"
The only thing the passenger of the groundcar got wrong was to accidentally hit the control for both windows, not just the near-side one. The resultant through-breeze of air flowing in one window and out the other was the only reason Rocket smelt the burnt-tin taint of the plasma-coil warming up a fraction of a second before the drive-by was in the correct position. It wasn't the gunman's first time running a drive by and in his defence, against almost anyone else it probably wouldn't have made any difference.
As it was, Rocket dropped his weight hard to his left mid-sentence, spun on the ball of his foot, flung his tail out wide for balance as he dropped-then-pulled-in his gun, letting him pirouette with balletic grace, levelled, and drew a bead on the gunman before he'd even thumbed off the safety of his plasma carbine. Rocket saw, analysed, adjusted for the car's movement, and fired before the passenger even realised he'd been made.
Unfortunately for Rocket, the driver of the groundcar chose that exact moment to sneeze, and applied the slightest touch of brakes by mistake, so the shot that would have decapitated the gunman if the car had kept moving at the same speed only cosmetically troubled him and instead passed through the open near window, an ear, the open far window, and then in order a mailbox, a child's bicycle, a shinbone, an expensive pet lizard and a parked ambulance's engine block some two hundred yards distant, were it came to an abrupt halt; which was just as well for the owner of the shinbone because it meant there were a lot of paramedics on hand.
However, the shock of this brush with death and the loss of a perfectly good ear was such that the gunman spazzed up his first shot and jerked his arm up reflexively, so the wild, inaccurate plasma-carbine fire that would have otherwise went well low of Rocket instead went mostly high of Rocket and the first shot glanced off the shoulder of Rocket's insulted body glove knocking him sideways into Quill's shins and downing them both in a cloud of obscenity, vaporized graphene, and burnt-fur-stink.
Unthinking, Quill grabbed Drax's leg and pulled him down into cover behind a parked vehicle.
Gamora had leapt behind a parking bollard a few yards away and three more cars of gunmen rolled up, and suddenly it was too noisy to think. Plasma rounds were everywhere, the very air felt cooked, and as molten metal and glass rained down, Quill turned behind him just in time to see the kree hard-nats grab Star'l'in and start dragging him up the stars to the abandoned night-club on the top of the bar, as another group of armed goons stormed the bar from the back and started shooting from inside the bar out at Quill. He realized with a jolt that he was outnumbered, outgunned, pinned with no real cover, and if he wanted to save his best lead on Thanos, he was going to have to fight his way into the bar full of murderers.
A bar that due to all the poorly aimed plasma rounds, was now on fire.
Awesome Mix tape 2 track; The Tramps: Disco Inferno.
