Chapter two part three (flaming shots)
The bar burned.
Customers poured out of the back door like ants from a hive. The plasma rounds must have hit something in the roof, insulation foam, pipe cladding, something cheap and polymer based to go by the stench of burnt plastic. At least two off the awful vinyl seating bays on the ground floor had gone up as well, adding their own fragrance to the rapidly growing fug. It was strong: it would have to be to be noticeable over the hot-metal smell of the plasma rounds and the stink of scorched fur and cooked meat coming from Rocket's shoulder. He was all right though. Well, Quill could feel him squirming in his hand and his curses would scorch the air if the plasma rounds weren't doing it already, so Quill had to guess he was okay. He had dragged him half way to the Concrete parking bollards before he even realised he was holding him. A plasma round from inside the bar splashed off the sidewalk in front of him and showered him with sparks. He fired off a few rounds back in the general direction of the shooter and rolled into the shadow of the bollards with Gamora. He didn't remember grabbing his pistol either. As he made that last desperate push for what little cover there was he was very aware that if he hadn't grabbed Rocket he'd have two guns to shoot back with. Stupid noble instincts.
"We don't leave a man behind." He said, more or less to himself. "Racoon behind. Mammal. Whatever." Quill slammed his back up against a parking bollard to get the maximum cover from the goons from the ground-cars. Gamora looked at him as if he'd gone mad from her position by the next bollard, and Rocket kicked him in the hand.
"Let go of my tail, numb-nuts!"
"Oh, I'm sorry. Maybe I'll check it's okay with you first next time I need to haul your stripy ass into cover!"
"Better cover than that storm-drain over there? The one I could fit down and was a whole goddam yard from me before you dragged me all the way over here? Oh, and my shoulder's fine. Thanks for asking!" yelled Rocket, unlimbering his glass from his back and readying his gun. "It's not like I used that arm much!" As his gun whirred and clicked its way to full size, Quill glanced to the left. There was indeed an open culvert close to where Rocket had been shot. Given the proximity to a cheap bar it probably saw more vomit and second hand beer than storm-water, but sooner that that a plasma bolt to the face, and Rocket could probably have fit inside with no trouble. And then terrorised everyone in town in range of a culvert like Pennywise the freaking clown, rather than being stuck here with me and Gamora. He though glumly.
"Okay! My bad!" yelled Quill, drawing his second pistol. A Kree goon popped up inside the bar and loosed a couple of shots through the big glass windows, before Rocket and Quill's return fire sent him diving into a seating alcove for cover.
"We've got no cover here!" yelled Gamora, flinching as molten glass rained down. "The bollards will shield us from the Kree by the groundcars, but we're yards from the Kree in the bar!"
"With nothing between us and them but a wold of plate glass!" yelled Rocket. "Frickin'. Fishbowl."
"How many adversaries do we face?" yelled Drax. All three of them looked to their right. Somehow he'd been able to squeeze under a parked groundcar, and was lying there with both knives out and, apparently, no concern whatsoever. He might as well have been back on the Milano for all the worry he showed.
"Let me check." Said Quill. He popped a head around the bollard and pulled it back a moment later. He then stood up to see into the bar, and sat down again very, very quickly as a dozen rounds from both directions cooked the air where he had been. Drax and the others looked to him.
"No idea, went too fast, forgot to count. Fifty?"
"There nine by the groundcars." Said Rocket. He watched a reflection in one of the few unbroken ground floor bits of bar window, angled the reflective edge of his info glass carefully like a mirror, and then shot over his shoulder without exposing an inch of himself. "Make that eight." He said. "Can't tell about the bar: they're indoors and downwind of us besides."
"I make thirteen." Said Gamora.
"Same." Said Drax.
Quill winced. "Well, unlucky for some. Does anyone see Star'l'in?"
"Upstairs!" yelled Gamora. "Last I saw six Kree had him and were dragging him to the top floor."
"Why?" yelled Quill. "If they wanted him dead, they could have shot him and walked away. If they wanted him alive, why not drag him out the back door? It's not like we could stop them right now!"
"Why don't you go in and ask them yourself?" asked Rocket. Quill started. Rocket had booted up his glass and was running a kitchen-timer app.
"I'm sorry are we boring you! We're pinned down by a bunch or armed Kree, and you've got a cooking app out?" Rocket glared at Quill.
"Might as well seein' as you got my shoulder flash-fired! Those are old Kree military M1 plasma carbines. Solid, reliable, and strictly semi-auto."
"they seem to be producing a prodigious amount of fire power for a semi-automatic weapons!" said Drax. Rocket grinned.
"You know what blooming is? It's the tendency of a plasma round to loose cohesion and spread out over a wide area before it hits its target. Plenty o' ways to solve it, but kree weapons use a containment coil linked to a regulator, prevents blooming, but limits rate of fire. Old merc's trick, overclock the Blooming-regulator, turns the carbine form a long-rage semi to a short-range full auto."
"And?" asked Quill. Rocket held up the glass, showing a one-minute countdown set to go.
"Overheats the regulator! The weapon has to eject it, pops right out of the top of the gun to air-cool! Can't be fired again for at least-"
"-one minute." Said Quill, grinning. "We stay alive long enough for that to happen, we can take those guys behind the ground cars!"
"What about those guys in the bar?" asked Gamora. Quill shrugged.
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." Said Quill
"Will crossing that bridge put us in advantageous terrain when we fight the Kree?". Said Drax. The team gave him that open mouthed expression again. Quill turned back to Rocket.
"How long until they overheat?" Rocket shrugged, hosing down the booths in the bar to keep the heads of the shooters inside down. "The more rounds they fire, the faster it will be. Give them something to shoot at, and it'll happen fast."
Quill looked at Rocket for a second, and then decided to act before he could think about how monumentally stupid an idea this was.
He pulled out his holo-imager, still programed with that historical data from the wrecked museum on Morag, aimed it at one of the surviving windows of the bar, and activated it.
Instantly the volume of fire form the thugs increased at the holo reflected off the glass and they suddenly saw a whole bunch of people spring into existence in front of them. (Quill briefly wondered if they recognised it as the hiding-place of an infinity stone, or would have cared if they did )It was a cheap trick, and one that would only last a second, but it bought Quill time for phase two of his very stupid plan.
Whilst they were all shooting at ghosts millennia dead, Quill activated his helmet, booted up his HUD, and fired off his Rocket-boosters. He heard Gamora shout his name in shock, and he thought he heard Rocket hiss in frustration, but there was no time for a clever plan and besides, if he was honest, planning was never his thing.
For a second, he honestly believed that he would make it to the dumpster on the corner without getting hit.
Then there was a clonk and a fierily stab of pain through his right foot, and the asphalt of the street came up and kissed him. He managed to roll away most of the damage the fall should have given him, and keep hold of his guns. He tried to right himself from his sprawl, only to see a tattooed Kree thug less than fifty yards away aim a plasma carbine right between his eyes, grin, and pull the trigger.
There was a toaster-popping noise, and the carbine's tortured blooming-regulator popped out the top in order to get some desperate and much-needed air cooling. Klu-chunk! The gunman moved his eyes sideways for just an instant to look, and then Rocket moved his eyes sideways half a block for him with a well-placed round. There was the gentle patter of falling teeth and Rocket, Quill and Gamora hunkered down and waited for the shooting to slacken and give them some time to think.
Quill crawled sideways along the street to the dumpster, trying to get to better cover. As he did, he noticed Rocket lean out from behind his bollard and give the Kree a gesture Quill didn't recognise, but that the Kree evidently did. A torrent of fire hit the bollard Rocket was behind, and Quill could see him flinch as the concrete started to glow red-hot and sag, and they just as it looked like they'd melt the bollard into slag, there was a whole chorus of pop-tart noises, and Mr Chief the friendly cooking app declared. "One minuet. Fifty nine, fifty eight,"
Quill slid out from behind the dumpster at floor level, propped himself up on his elbows, and started blazing away at the heat-signature his HUD showed behind one of the ground-cars. Gamora leaned out from behind her bollard and downed a Kree gunman with a throwing-knife she appropriated from gods-knows-where, and Drax pulled the hub-cap off the ground-car he was hiding behind and Frisbee'd it into the face off a particularly suppressed looking Kree who went down hard. Who does he think he is, Captain America? Thought Quill.
"Fifty five- fifty four,"
But Rocket had the most fire-power, and used it. He switched his ammo-feed to his less-lethal electro-bolas , and put a couple of shots into each of the three ground-cars. There was a momentary pause, followed by the crackle of electricity that still made Quill wince with memory of Rocket shooting him with the damn things. All three groundcars were suddenly outlined in violent blue sparks, and three of the five surviving Kree who had been incautions enough to be touching the metal of the vehicles they were hiding behind got a twenty-thousand volt how-do-you-do by way of a reward. The other two leapt back in shock. Quill dropped one with a stunner round from his pistol, and Rocket slotted the other with an old-fashioned kinetic slug. There was a momentary pause, and then all hell broke loose again as the Kree inside the bar started shooting out, and two of the windows from the upper floor blew out and two gunmen appeared there and started shooting almost vertically down at them. There was an undignified scrabble as Drax, Gamora and Quill ran to hide behind the other side of their car, bollard and dumpster, and Rocket rolled into the gutter behind the curb, and both sides started trading pot-shots again. The timer hadn't even reached fifty when someone shot it.
Quill gestured for Gamora, who had the least cover, to get behind the dumpster with him. She nodded, and after a shared glace he and Rocket laid down covering fire enough to buy time for her to leap over. Thanos build his daughters fast, moments later she too was hiding behind a filthy dumpster in a puddle of grey-green goo.
"You okay?" shouted Quill over the sound of combat. Gamora lifted up a hand from the puddle she was sitting in and watched quite calmly as the liquid squolched and slithered its way off her fingers.
"I'm going to kill them all for this." She said, quite calmly.
"That may be unwise. You should at least leave one for me to interrogate." Said Drax next to them. Quill and Gamora looked at him. Rather than leave cover of the vehicle to make his way over to the dumpster, he had ripped the door off the groundcar, taken off the handbrake, and rolled his cover over to them.
"What? An interrogation of these Kree nationalist may prove informative. Also, they irritate me: viscously beating them would help relive a great deal of the frustration I feel pinned down by their shooting."
"Well, were' not going to be able to get out from here unless we can find a way to get into that bar, stop the guys on the top floor shooting at us, or both." Said Gamora. Quill nodded. "You and Drax are wasted in a firefight, you need to close with these guys and take them on up-close." Said Quill. He glanced above the dumpster for a moment, and a plasma-round vaporised an inch of metal too close to his head for comfort. "We need to take out those two on the top floor: if we can, we can rush the bar and get in close with them." they all shared a long look, then glanced left.
Rocket was doing his best road-kill impression, lying in the gutter like an abandoned slinky and flattening himself to a worrying palliates-accident degree. His breathing was so slow it was hard to see. He looked dead, with only an eye and a shoulder showing over the curb, which was the whole point. He fired his gun in short, controlled bursts, resting it on the kerbstone like a parapet. As he and the gun were horizontal, the muzzle climb sent the bullets out in neat horizontal arcs at a convenient ankle height through the booths of the bar, and every now and again he'd be rewarded with a short sharp shower of metacarpals and the sound of a large body hitting the deck and screaming, which he quickly silenced with precise double-taps. Quill briefly hoped all the civilians other than Star'l'in had made it out, until he remembered what dicks they were to him.
"Rocket! Rocket!" Quill yelled. "Hey, Bottle-tail! Get over here!"
"Yeah? Kinda busy here star-lord."
"No shit Ranger Rick, get your ass over here, I've got a plan!"
"You have a plan? Why am I not feeling confident." Muttered Rocket as he begun to wriggle on his back though they gutter towards their dumpster, trading the odd round with the Kree inside. "Idiot's got a frickin' plan. Bet this one involves me getting shot or beat up just like all the others. Bet Gamora and Drax and the humanoid crewmembers stay intact… oh man, that's nasty. When's the last time someone cleaned this gutter? Yeah, What?" asked Rocket as he made it too the other three behind cover and shook himself off, much to their displeasure. Quill, who had lowered his helmet to talk, took the time to wipe the splatter-pattern of gutter-grime off his face before asking.
"Can you take out those two guys on the upper floor?"
Rocket looked at him as if he'd just starting drinking paint, then looked up, to the upper floor of the bar, and then looked back.
"You're kidding, right? there're twenty feet above us, and less than thirty away, with partial cover, and if they step back from the window even a pace, we can't see them at all over the window still but they can still see the top of our dumpster: if we stick our heads out, It'll be a shooting gallery. We climb the wall, and they shoot us down from a nice safe position six feet behind the window where we can't see them from the ground. We're not in proper defilade here! All we have is this stupid dumpster and it ain't enough. We're exposed, and if they pull back into the top floor, we can't see them and all of a sudden they've basically got reverse slope defence!" Rocket looked to Quill. "You didn't understand a word of that, did you!"
"No! You saying that you can't hit them? 'Cause I really need for you to get up there and murder Cyril Sneer and Mr Knox for me right now! "
"Not from here! Not with a direct-fire weapon! And we step out of here, were dead. Maybe if I had my grenades, a mortar, something that works indirectly that we could lob through the windows…" Rocket looked up at the windows, then looked around the alleyway, searching for ideas. Then at the gun in his paws, and at the window again. He had his idea.
"Awww Crap." He said. "We have one indirect-fire weapon: me."
"Huh?" asked Quill.
Rocket muttered a response.
"Hey, speak up, I can't here you over the shooting!"
"I said, you need to throw me!"
"…what?" said Quill, Gamora and Drax at once, and as much as he was really, really, hating what he was about to suggest, Rocket had to admit it was almost worth it for the look on their stupid bald faces.
"You have to throw me: if we pop up anywhere on the ground, they'll kill us. We pop our heads up through that window, they'll kill us. We need something we can throw into the room that can roll past the window out of their killing ground and take them out from floor-level. And I really, really wish it was a grenade but we don't got none so it's gonna have to be me, isn't it?"
"That's the most insane thing you've said for almost a week." Said Drax. "I admire that level of wanton insanity.
"Well I don't" said Quill. Gamora Nodded in agreement before adding. "Rocket, you'll die. " Rocket snarled, as a plasma round from the floor above punched thought the dumpster and landed six inches off his foot. "Yeah, because staying here is a naturally tenable recipe for a long frickin' life! Trust me, I don't wanna do this, but we've got at least six Kree goons on that top floor, with our best lead, and a maybe bunch of other civilians in there, and no other plan, so you, Starlord, you reckon you can make that jump with your fancy jet-boots? "
Quill looked at his damaged right boot. With all the adrenaline he had hardly noticed the glancing plasma-burn. He flexed his foot, it moved okay, and the diagnostic on his boosters said they'd still work.
"I guess." He said.
Rocket nodded. "Give me a second to cause carnage, and when you hear it, you follow me through, guns blazing." He turned to Drax. "Hey big guy, you recon you could throw me though that window?" he said, pointing to one of the pairs that the two Kree goons had smashed. "Left window, I want to shoot down the length of the building and get Enfilade fire on the ugly SOB's!" Drax looked, and nodded. "You sure?" Asked Rocket. "You mess this up and I'm in for a world of hurt."
"I will not miss. I was a player on my schools scrumball team in my youth." He said.
"Yeah? Well I didn't take you for a cheerleader somehow." Said Rocket.
"Yeah, defiantly glee cub." said Quill, before truing to the rest. "Gamora: once Drax throws Rocket and I make the jump, you and Drax hit the ground floor hard, try and head them off at the stairs. You get any civilians left out the back door, Drax, you get up the stairs and take out any hostiles up there. Rocket, you sure about this?"
Rocket looked up. When you're three foot nothing, twenty feet seems an awful long way.
"Not as sure as I was five seconds ago. This goes wrong, you guys gotta look after Groot for me. Treat him right. Oh, and help yourself to the fruit-roll-up I'm fermenting behind the fridge, just don't blame me if you go blind. Deal?" he asked, checking his gun out of force of habit.
"Deal." Said Quill, activating his helmet again and readying his pistols. Gamora weighted her sword and tensed to sprint over to the bar. Rocket took a deep breath and told Drax. "You screw this up, I'm gonna come back and haunt you."
"I was not aware you believed in an afterlife."
"I don't, but for you I'd make an exception. Just get me thought the right window, and not too hard, okay?"
"Do not worry." Said Drax, hefting Rocket by the front of his armoured onesie "I was a player on my school scrumball team." He declared, before throwing Rocket through the window.
The window to the right of the one he was supposed to. The window that was still very much glazed.
Gamora, Drax and Quill watched this backwards defenestration somewhat surprised as shattered pieces of glass rained down over their alleyway. From inside the bar, came a Kree shout of surprise, a long, drawn out groan of pain, a louder Kree shout of surprise, and a lot of swearing mixed in with flashing gunfire that culminated in one of the other windows getting shredded by plasma rounds a fraction of a second before a small furry bullet hurled itself though and crash-landed in the dumpster with enough force to rock it back on its wheels. Horrified, Quill and Gamora turned to Drax.
"I thought you said you were a player on your school's scrumball, team!" said Quill. Drax had the good grace to look embarrassed for a moment before his baseline anger re-asserted itself.
"I was a defensive player: tackling other players if they got the ball was my role. I seldom made long passes."
"So… kind of you to mention that before." Said the dumpster. Rocket rose up like some Golgothan devil, fire reflecting in his eyes and his teeth barred in an expression of pure murder that the rotting pizza slice stuck between his ears did little to detract from. He pushed himself upright with his gun, before levelling it at Drax. "Perhaps you'd like to mention that before we try this again." He said, dripping sarcasm and week-old spray on cheese.
Drax hesitated for a moment and then shrugged. "If you think it will help. I was a defensive player: tackling other players if they got the ball was my role." He said, grabbing Rocket by the chest just as Rocket remembered that Drax didn't do sarcasm. "I seldom made long passes." Said Drax, throwing Rocket again.
This time, his aim was true, and no sooner than he saw Rocket pass through the window, Quill fired up his boosters and sailed through into a strobeing, smoke filled vision of hell; but with disco lights, and sculpted velour seating. Awful Kitsch: I've come home thought Quill, a true child of the 80's. He hit a glass-topped table, which unlike Rocket he was heavy enough to crush, and rolled, arms flailing and pistols firing wildly, behind an elegant chromed bar just as a volley of plasma rounds impacted into the mirror behind the bar. Either the plasma rounds hit a bottle of something dangerously strong, or the heat from the burning roof (which was abominable, even though his leathers) had boiled off the ethanol. Either way, all the liquor bottles started to cook-off one by one like firecrackers and shower him with shrapnel and a flaming cocktail of… well… cocktail. But one not even Rocket would want to drink. Probably
As he frantically tried to leaver himself up without shredding his hands on the shards littering the floor, he realised there was a shadow looming over him. Most people would have looked up to see who it was: Quill just shot them in the legs; Rocket wasn't tall enough to loom, and he didn't think Star'l'in would be particularly spritely post-kidnap. Just in case, he had his pistols on stun.
As it turns out, Kree don't stun easily. There was a bellow as the Kree took the shot to the knees and fell, but on his way down he punched Quill in the head. The helmet took a lot of the blow, and Quill punched him back. He had a pretty good punch, he recorded, and his pistols wrap-around hand guards added weight and solidity. The knee, however, must have had 40 pounds on him, and despite the hit to the jaw levered himself up to his knees and begun slugging Quill repeatedly in the head. Quill pulled himself up and begun hitting him back. After twelve painful and dizzying rounds of rock-em-sock-em-robot, Quill remembered that pistols also work as ranged weapons and shot the guy four times in the chest.
Quill stood up, and another Kree was there. Quill has just enough time to push the plasma carbine away from his chest, before the guy hit him under the chin with the butt. Quill went backwards into the shelves of bursting bottles behind the bar, and fell hard. The Kree leaned over the bar with the gun to finish him as Quill hand closed on a miraculously unbroken bottle and threw it. Smokestack's Old Spacers Whiskey smashed the guy's nose and filled his eyes before the contents caught with a dull woof and he went down screaming. Quill vaulted the bar to finish him off, only to land on other table and smash it under him, cutting his thigh. After a smoky and confused moment of pain, Quill found himself on the floor grappling another hostile in the wreckage, and realised that the jolt of landing on the table had set off his Walkman, and even with it around his neck, heard as it started to play.
Awesome mix tape, Part two; Nick Lowel: I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass
"Oh thanks a lot Mom!" yelled Quill, grabbing a shard of the shattered table top and stabbing his assailant in the shoulder. He had no idea where his right-hand blaster had gone. He cut his hand on the shard, but the Kree roared and rolled off him. Confused and punch drunk, Quill lay in the wreckage of the table, fumbling at his Walkman controls. If seemed very, very important to turn off this particular song, although Quill could not have said why. Dimly, he saw a large bald person pull a shard of glass out of his shoulder and come towards him with it like a knife. He's Blue. I'm going to get shanked by Papa Smurf. He thought, and giggled, before reality re-asserted itself.
"Oh Shit!" said Quill, struggling to raise his left-hand blaster. Slow, too slow… the Kree leered and he grabbed Quill's left arm, blaster hanging uselessly, and raised the glimmering glass knife up to plunge deep into Quill's unprotected heart-
There was a series of soft popping noises, barely noticeable over the snap, crackle and pop of the fire, and a half dozen Quarter-sized holes appeared in the Kree's bare chest and sprayed Quill with blue blood. It tasted different to how blood should. Quill knew lots of alien species had copper in their blood instead of iron, but he had never wanted to taste the difference.
The Kree looked down at his chest, surprised, and then looked to his right. Rocket leapt up from his hiding place onto the top of the bar and there was a loud pop and the Kree's jaw and a good chunk of his throat disintegrated. He fell over sideways, and Rocket leapt down onto the ruins of the table next to Quill, snarling and sparing the body with bullets for good measure.
"Idiot!" he yelled, gabbing Quill's earphones and tugging at them with naked contempt. "It's a firefight dummy! Let yourself get distracted and you won't get a chance to live to regret it. You gonna fight, fight, don't let your mind get caught up in anything else- hey!" yelled Rocket: as he was lecturing Quill a shape in the smoke solidified into A Kree hard-nat who grabbed Rocket's gun by the muzzle. Rocket tried to pull the gun back, shocked, but the Kree pulled harder. Rocket didn't let go, so he just got picked up with the gun, hanging off the handle, legs wiggling uselessly as the Kree screamed and swung Rocket and the gun into to the wall by the bar, hard. Rocket was caught between the unyielding concrete and the butt of his own gun as it slammed into his ribs with a sickening scrunch. Rocket dropped grimacing in silent agony, but landed agilely on three paws, the forth clutching his chest. The Kree swing the gun around with military precision, planted the butt in his shoulder, aimed at Rocket, and pulled the trigger. There was a momentary pause and then a blip as the palm-print system locked the gun down and gave the Kree a shock that made him drop it. Still grimacing and dripping blood form his mouth, Rocket stood on the bar top on three paws balancing with his tail, but now the forth paw held the shock-prod, extended behind him like a samurai sword.
"All right big guy, you wanna dance?" growled Rocket, and then looked up, fire shining in his eyes as he prepared to leap forth and-
The Kree grabbed Rocket and picked him up by the head, yelled in a mix of rage and genuine fear, because he'd never had to fight a talking Rat before and it was weirding him out, and then drop-kicked Rocket out of the nearest window, his boot connecting squarely with Rocket's crotch before he sailed out through the glass. The police siren that Quill had been hearing for several moments without really registering got a lot louder briefly, and then there was a screech of breaks, a dull thud that could be something small and furry getting hit by a bumper, and then the now familiar sound of Rocket landing in a dumpster at speed. From behind him, Quill heard the sound of Kree laugher, Jim Star'l'in yelp in pain, and the high-pitched whine of a plasma weapon charging.
Quill started to think that they did not have the situation entirely under control.
As soon as Quill Rocket-jumped through the window, Drax and Gamora rushed the ground floor. Drax noticed Gamora kept low and moved fast well. She was clearly practiced at this. Drax, however, never had the same luck keeping low. He was too big a target to truly benefit from such strategies, and he found it slowed him down too much. So he just ran. Without the fire from the upper story, and with most of the Kree in the bar hiding behind the seating for fear of Rocket's bullets, he made it to the front door before the shooting started, by which time it was too late. He didn't want to stop to open the door, but it didn't look that solid, so he didn't. He just lifted a foot, and stepped off the curb with enough force to propel him foot first into the door to kick it.
Drax slammed into the safety glass of the door, hard, his arms spread at an uncomfortable angle and his cheek smushed up against the glass. He stepped back a pace, confused, as Gamora vaulted through one of the broken windows to a chorus of screams. He looked at the door with a renewed respect.
"This is an extremely well made structure." He remarked, before trying again. The door rattled, but did not open. He looked down. A small brass relief built into the handle said "Pull." He pulled, wondering who in their right mind built a door that opened out onto the street. A Kree with a sword-slash to the face spilt out onto the street, screaming and blubbering. Drax held the door for him and watched for a moment, before drawing one of his knives and rushing inside to join the fun.
A Gun-barrel poked out from the weapons rack by the door. An obvious hiding place, suitable for a fool or a coward. Drax said as much as he grabbed the gun and pulled it thought with enough force to shear off fingers if they didn't release quickly enough. He lobbed the gun away over his shoulder contemptuously: hitting one of the three blade- wielding Kree Gamora was duelling with in the head and giving her the opening to open him from Kree hip to Kree knee. He then jabbed both his knifes through the wire of the rack. The Kree behind yelped and leapt back, as if stabbing you was my aim though Drax, setting his legs wide apart and lifting with his thighs.
Fighters often went on about upper body strength, people always forgot about lower body and core muscles. His face contorted with effort for a moment, but then the screws holding the rack to the floor failed, and he lifted the rack by his knives, roaring defiance at the Kree behind the rack, who screamed back. It reminded him of his wife and daughter's screams, and he remembered that there were Kree hard-nats: loyalists to the old empire, supporters of Ronan's cause if not actually his men. The Kree fumbled in his belt for another weapon. If he needed arms, Drax was happy to provide. He threw the rack, a wire wall of guns and blades and cudgels, slamming the Kree to the floor under it, before picking it up and slamming it again and again until there was a Kree-shaped impression in the metal. Only then did he recover his knives and turn to the bar. A civilian, one of the construction crew that the bounty-hunter hadn't taken, looked at him from under a table, terrified. "Out." said Drax, pointing to the door with his blade. The man fled.
Drax lifted up the bar-partition and walked along behind the bar. It gave him some cover, and he did not want to be surprised by anyone behind there. He stepped over the unconscious bouncer, a steaming plasma-crater in his shoulder, and the shivering serving-wench, cradling him and a scattergun both.
He then stepped out at the other end of the bar, close to the rear exit. He checked it was secure, and then begun walking back to the front of the bar in the centre of the room. A Kree with an over-heated rifle saw him from a seating booth, pulled out a knuckle-duster, and rushed him. The Kree yelled and planted a solid blow in his stomach. Drax looked at the man. He yelled loudly, dropped his weight and punched again. Drax slashed him across the face, taking care not to hit his eyes. He wanted to see how this hard-nat would respond. The hard-nat filched back, but to his credit came forwards again, punching him, this time coming for a kidney. Drax shifted to take the blow on a rib instead: painful, but not as serious. Drax slashed him across the face again. He turned and fled. Disappointing though Drax, slashing the man across his bare shoulder and opening the blue muscle to scapula and rib. He then ducked and slashed low, his knife catching in the hard-nat's lower spine and abruptly silencing his screams. He stepped over the crippled man and charged to where Gamora duelled the final two: Rocket's shooting seemed to have killed the rest, with at least two bullet ridden corpses much in evidence.
Drax charged silently, not giving away his approach and although she must have seen, Gamora gave the men she was fighting no clue, for which Drax was grateful. He only roared a challenge as he was already committed, slashing at the back of a Kree's knees and cutting the ligaments. The Kree, armed with pistol and a short-cutlass like blade, screamed and fell, but had enough focus to aim the pistol at Gamora's face as he fell, she spun away, whirring her sword from low to high and gutting him like a clam, groin to throat, before administering a final blow to the side of his skull with a hollow clock as the blade bit deep into bone.
The last surviving Kree steped away, dropping his blade and pulling out an apple-sized orb of delicate and exquisite evil and yelling "Back away! Back away! You know that this is, do you?" Drax frowned. A few days ago he would have ignored that and charged. But the man had asked him a question, it was only polite to rely. And thanks to Rocket, he knew the answer.
"A quantum grenade." Said Drax.
"Armed." Said Gamora, circulating with her sword held high in the head-parry position.
"Yeah, armed." Said the Kree. "Do you know what happens when one of there goes off? Partial matter transfer: you enter the quantum state where you can pass through solid matter, but you're still subject to gravity. You start falling thought the floor, but that's not all. Your clothes start falling through your body, your bones thought your flesh, your organs through the caul and bones meant to hold them in place, and then the effect wears off, and you're embedded in concrete with your kidneys where your balls should be and your brain hanging out your chin. Developed to take down Mobile infantry in powered armor, they boast about man and armour being one, these make it a fact that medics can't fix afterwards. I hear they have to mercy kill most of the victims, "he said, leering evilly at Gamora "that is, the ones that don't die of shock when they turn inside out with their heads hanging out of their cun-"
The barmaid fired her scattergun, both barrels, and blew the delicate circuitry of the grenade to pieces, along with most of the Kree's arm above the elbow. He had just enough time to behold the blue ruin of his hand and start screaming before Drax stabbed him through both lungs and Gamora put a perfectly executed Raddoppio through his throat.
Gamora and Drax looked to each other for a moment, and then became aware the police lights from outside as a police groundcar screeched to a halt, accompanied by a metallic banging and sudden yelp for some reason, a counterpoint to the sounds of fire and fighting from upstairs. Without a word, they both rushed upstairs.
Quill rolled of the table, groaning, and looked over his shoulder. Two Kree were standing at the far end of the burning bar, near the stairs. One had got Star'l'in in front of him, kneeling and with hands on head, a plasma carbine pressed to the back of his skull. The other sat casually in a sculpted velour both, a neural jack in his hand. Quill grew cold at the look of that. They were going to try and access his memories, and then kill him. They didn't need him alive for long so they didn't take him out the bar when they had the chance, but they didn't expect us to get involved.
"Hey hey, what do you think you're going to find in his mind? Let's put the jack down and talk."
"On your knees!" Yelled the Kree who had booted Rocket, picking up a plasma carbine. Quill looked down. The floor here was mostly broken glass. "Yeah, not gonna happen buddy." He said from behind his helmet. Apparently this was the wrong answer, and the Kree screamed "Your blaster, drop it, drop it now! Helmet down, want to see your face!" Quill sighed, annoyed. This guy was clearly a graduate of the same Kree school of public relations at Korath the pursuer. He retracted his helmet and dropped the blaster, however. He didn't want to get shot. "On your knees!" Mr personality repeated. Quill looked down. Broken glass, blood and spilled beer. Lovely.
"Oh man." he muttered, dropping to his knees carefully, trying not to cut himself. As he lowered himself to the ground, Quill caught sight of a random curve of metal, under a table half way between him and Star'l'in. A random piece he recognised. The handle of his other blaster. He looked away. It was a good five yards. Not far, but far enough if you were on your knees with a gun to your head.
"Who are you?" asked the Kree playing with the neural jack, almost casually. "Who are you that would so willingly die for this sad old man?"
Quill didn't answer, so the lounging Kree waved, almost causally to the one standing over Quill with the gun. He kicked Quill in the ribs, hard, and screamed. "Who are you!"
"Peter Jason Quill." He replied, grudgingly.
"Who?" said the Kree, in a way that suggested, to Quill's well trained ear, that they had almost been expecting a different name.
No… it couldn't be. The news can't spread that fast.
"Although there is another name you might know me by…" said Quill, looking up directly at the Kree leader. "Starlord."
The Kree leader gaped, his eyes bulging, and the Kree with the gun to his head actually gasped and that was too much for Quill to handle. He started laughing, he actual couldn't' help it. He started laughing, and actually punched the air with joy. "Finally. Do you have any idea how long I- whoa, sorry dude!" he said, to the Kree guarding him who mistook the punching the air for a sign of aggression and almost shot him in the head. "Sorry, it's just, I've been waiting for a while for the name to catch on, kinda glad to see it's getting some traction and-" he noticed at the confused look the Kree was giving him. "Never mind, forget it."
The lead Kree, the one with the neural jack, beckoned.
"Bring him. There is much about the locations of these infinity stones we could learn from him as well."
"Woah, woah, with a mind jack? Just ask me, I'll tell I mean: you're just gonna mind jack two people in a public place with the police outside, what's this, two heads are better than one? You'll never get away from here!"
"Bring him!" yelled the Kree leader. The guard standing over Quill booted him upright, and obligingly begun to walk him towards his spare blaster. Quill kept them talking, to distract them.
"Well, if you've heard of Starlord, surely you've heard of the team I roll with. A pretty bad bunch, just outside, If you don't fear the police, fair enough. The police don't pull out spines or shock-prod people in the eye. I'm just saying you ought to be afraid of my team-"
"We can handle your so-called Guardians of the Galaxy."
"Huh? That name stuck? But we only used it like once." shoot, I was holding out for 'Quill's Questers.' Thought Quill as he moved forwards, he became aware of something reflected in the broken glass. He smiled.
"Trust me. Even I can't handle the Guardians of the Galaxy, and I'm their captain. Now!"
Quill grabbed the Kree walking alongside him with the gun, activated his helmet, and gave him a fraction of a second bust of rocket-boots for good measure, just as Gamora and Drax stormed up the stair. He knocked him down, and with the speed from the lick of rocket-boot, surfed him along the floor of broken glass, grabbing his blaster as he went past it and rolling to a halt inches from the Kree with the Mind-jack as the Kree with the gun to Star'l'in's head turned to face Drax and Gamora and then really wished he hadn't as they both laid into him. The Kree leader rolled too, slipping out of his chair, and diving for the carbine his goon had dropped. He got a hold of it, snared defiance, and rolled on his back, gun facing up.
Gamora's Sword pricked him under the throat, almost gently. Drax loomed over her left shoulder, and then a third figure appeared, red eyes glowing sinisterly in a monstrous helmet, as Starlord leaned offer her right shoulder, and aimed a blaster square at his head.
"Put the gun down or there will be… trouble." Said the masked figure, the voice sounding sinisterly robotic though the helmet. The Kree dropped the Gun and raised his hands, and under his mask, Quill smiled. He popped the visor on the mask and leaned in.
"So, I think you handled that well. Don't you?"
They stood in the foyer of the bar once the fire department had finished hosing the place down with orange foam, and the local sheriff took statements. The wounded were laid out on the sidewalk, the dead a little way along from them, and the three relatively un-hurt Kree handcuffed on the floor of the bar, letting the ambulances do their thing before they called in the recovery wagon for prisoners. Two civilians had been killed by plasma rounds, and one wounded by a kinetic slug that could have only come from Rocket's gun, Bruno the bouncer had been stretchered off with a gaping crater where his left shoulder used to be, and a dozen people, Star'l'in amongst them, hauled off to hospital for smoke inhalation. So Quill was surprised that the Sherriff, when he got around to talking to them, didn't haul them all off to jail.
"You kidding me boy?" he said, in a thick drawl that reminded him of Yondu . "This week we've had five bar brawls, a lascavarian honor killing, a decapitation in a bank, six gunfights and a drunken Saurus race through the streets. Now I've got the bar's owner, the security holocaster footage, and about a dozen witnesses that say these guys turned up and fired on you without provocation, set the bar on fire, and then you went in to fight them and rescue this old guy and the two bar staff. Hell, I ain't got time for arresting the folk I wanna arrest. You want to get arrested boy?"
"No sir."
"Hell, then you just sign hear saying that you agree with the witnesses version of events and promise to come back and testify at trial if needs be. Should be in about a year, if that. These guys' lawyers could drag it out longer, you know how Kree get. You're hereby given a formal caution for reckless endangerment of your own lives and discharging energy weapons in a public place, but given our city's stand your ground laws, I release you on your own recognisance. Just don't do it again. Only person I need to talk to is whatever damn-fool let off that solid slug hit the bypasser in the leg."
"Yeah, that would be Rocket. You haven't seen him have you? Last I saw he was getting kicked out of a window." Started Quill
"Quill." yelled Gamora. Quill Turned.
Rocket limped into the bar, preceded by a smell no-one wanted to experience. He was grimacing each step he took, walking in a funny bow-legged waddle (or at least more so than usual) and dragging one foot slightly. He had the butt of his gun under one arm and was actually using it as a crutch to support his weight as he walked along. He was also covered in vegetable peelings, bits of old food wrappers, and general dumpster goodness.
"Hey, buddy, you okay?" asked Quill, genuinely concerned. He looked beat.
"Never. Better." He muttered, limping up. "One question. Just one question. Where is the son of a bitch who kicked me in the crotch?"
There was a moment where everyone just stared at Rocket, horrified with how beat up he was. Quill pointed to one of the handcuffed Kree. Rocket nodded, and limped over to him.
"Hi there!" he said, leaning in to give him a good look at his trash-covered fur and bared teeth, before leveling his gun, switching the ammo-feed to electro bolas, and shooting the guy in the groin. Quill and Gamora moved Quickly, leaping on Rocket and trying to pull the gun away from him, but even so, he got a good three or four shots on target, partly because even with clothes stinking of brunt plastic Quill didn't want to wrestle some that covered in filth.
"Come on! I just wanna shoot him in the crotch a couple of hundred times!"
"Rocket, no, let go of the, no put down the- Oww! Don't you dare bite me Rocket I'm your captain!"
"Listen to Quill Rocket, he's not worth it!" yelled Gamora. "Besides, that's not the guy who kicked you in the crotch."
"Huh?" said Rocket and Quill at once. Rocket stopped struggling and Quill put him down.
"We'll he's not." said Gamora, flustered. "You said the guy who kicked Rocket out of that window was the same guy who you knocked down with the rocket-boost. That's the guy you knocked down with the rocket boost." said Gamora, pointing at the Kree to the left of the one Rocket had just shot.
"Really? Oh yeah. My bad." Said Quill. "Sorry!" he said to the guy now writhing on the floor in agony.
"Yeah, sorry about that pal." Said Rocket, raising a paw in apology to the Kree leader, before turning to his henchman and cocking his gun. "Hi there!"
It took Drax and four sheriffs deputies to pull him off.
"Rocket, not cool!" said Quill, when he calmed down some and ran out of electro-rounds. "There are police everywhere.
"I think I'll put that down to delayed shock." Said the sheriff, gazing at the ceiling "and a heart-felt desire to ensure that the prisoners were well secured. As for the other matter… I know you by reputation Mr Rocket. Word is you're a bounty hunter by trade?"
"When I can't get merc work or get bored robbing banks." The sheriff pretended not to hear.
"So as a licensed Bounty hunter, you have a license, right?" Rocket glared sullenly, but nodded and fished out a very bartered looking filmy from some dank pocket in his body-glove.
"So as a licensed bounty hunter, you must in fact be registered as an officer of the court somewhere in this quadrant. Say as a Justice of the peace, that being the most common route to a bounty-hunting license.
"Wait, Rocket is a justice of the peace? Rocket?" said Quill
The sheriff grinned. "Most systems it's not a hard qualification to get. All you need to do is pay a registration fee and get someone to vouch for your good character."
"Wait, Rocket got someone to vouch for his good character. Rocket?" asked Quill. He paused for second. "Were they drunk?" he paused again "Was it Groot?"
"Hah ha. It might surprise you to know they spoke eloquently an' touchingly as to my good and moral nature." Said Rocket, growling.
"Really, what did they say?" asked Drax. Rocket waved him away.
"Well, they were speaking through an interpreter…"
"It was Groot." Said Gamora.
"Yeah. So?" asked Rocket. "Still legal, right?"
The sheriff smiled and walked off. "Seems to me that as a justice of the peace you're insured against injury or lawsuits by the court that licenced you, so long as you kept paying your fees. If for whatever reason, bounty-hunting being such a notoriously unreliable source of income, you fell behind on your fees, a bulk-payment to get you paid up to date would protect you from any lawsuits arising from accidental firearms discharge in the course of you duties."
"How much? Asked Rocket, and fifteen minutes and two inter-system calls later, Rocket was in the clear and the team poorer by three-thousand units and the team released unconditionally until the eventual trial, according to a local circuit judge they called who had bigger problems out here on the fronteer worlds. The sheriff gave Rocket a big slap on the back, that made him wince, whipped his hand on his pants, and walked away to deal with the prisoners. Quill sided up to Rocket.
"You okay? You're looking pretty done for?"
"I look like Roadkill. I smell like week-old Roadkill. I need a hot shower, a cold drink and a good doctor. But given my luck with findin' doctors who have any clue how it all fits together with me, I'll settle for a good veterinarian." He winced and shifted the cloth around his crotch uncomfortably "one good at setting fragile, fragile bones."
That's when Quill knew it was serious: if Rocket was even tangentially comparing himself to an animal, he must be desperate.
"Okay buddy, we'll get you there. Gamora, Drax, team mate down. Drax, you go get Star'l'in's stuff from that motel, get it back to the ship and secure, we'll call and get you to meet us at the veterinarian's okay?"
Drax nodded, and walked out. As he did, he noticed a small black object lying in a pool of broken glass. It was rockets shock-prod. Without thinking, he picked it up and put it in the pocket of his pants.
Rocket would probably be wanting it later.
Chapter three: epilogue (Digestif)
"Cuts from glass, minor abrasions, major abrasions, second degree burn to the right shoulder, ligament damage to left anterior talo-fibular ligament, calcaneo-fibular ligament and posterior talo-fibular ligament," said the veterinarian counting off from a data slate as Quill and Gamora stood glumly in the waiting room. Behind them, not quite muffled by the doors, they could hear Rockets treatment.
"- I swear lady, you get that damn thing away from me and get an ear thermometer, Or I'll jab that somewhere even it's never been before, like an eye!"
-"eight bruised ribs, three broken ribs, one cracked mandibular pre-molar, burnt out axillary servo in his arm I had to call an engineer to replace-"
"-no offense lady, but I don't get on well with people in white coats. Hey, what the… help!"
"Bruised testis, fractured baculum; now that's something difficult to fix, I can tell you. Wanted to 3D print a new one, a lot of his skeletal system is 3D polymer anyway, but he had… opinions on that. Had to inject nanites to re-alight the bone and start building a protein scaffolding around it that will hold until it sets. Without anaesthetics, because the subject's endocrine system"
"Rocket."
"Excuse me?"
"His name is Rocket." Said Quill. "You might not want to call him 'the subject' to his face." Said Quill. Gamora, who knew what the word baculum meant, winced, and tried not to laugh. The veterinarian looked at Quill, and sighed.
"Look sir, I know your… friend... is unique and no doubt very special, but he bit one of my nurses and used such language one of the others had to leave in shock. I have no doubt that what's been done to him is horrible, and no doubt that he's felt that for most of his life he's been alone because people see him as something of an oddity because of what they did to him. He's wrong: he's been alone for most of his life because he's a jackass. Now, what they did do to him was give him chemical-warfare systems designed to protect him from most drugs and poisons, but leave his kidneys and liver more or less untouched. Do you understand the implications? The dosage between a painkiller having no effect on him and one destroying his fragile kidneys is negligible. I hit him with enough Fentanyl to put a creature of his mass out for two hours, and he still jumped off the table when I tried to make a preliminary incision to repair that servo. Anaesthesia just doesn't work on your friend: and given the vast about of surgery he's had to make him what he is, they either developed something I've never seen to keep him under, some experimental zydrate derivative of similar, or-"
"Or?" asked Quill. The Doc shrugged.
"Just, just take care of your friend. He's an ass, but if something really bad happens to him, I don't think anyone bar whoever made him would know how to fix it. And I doubt he'll like that. Other than that, he's good to go." Said the veterinarian, holding up a plastic cone. " You'll want this."
Quill stated. "He's sentient, he's not going to chew out his stitches!"
"Oh, I never said there was any medical reason for it. He's just a jerk. You want the cone of shame or not?"
Quill considered it. "Tempting, but I'm gonna have to pass." He said, as the doors to the surgery swung oven and, wincing slightly as he walked, Rocket appeared. Somehow Quill had been expecting him to be in an ass less medical gown, but no such luck, he was in his usual armored body-sock. He guessed veterinarians didn't stock them.
"Hey, buddy, how you feeling?"
"Shut up, pay the man, and let's get back to the ship. Groot needs feeding and a bed time story and I'm wasting valuable drinking time here-" Rocket stopped suddenly. Drax had entered, holding what looked to Quill like a black metal roll of quarters until memory kicked in.
"Hey, that shock-prod. You must have dropped it. Glad to get it back?"
"Huh. Oh . Yeah. Glad." said Rocket, looking anything but. The color drained from the visible bits of his skin and he looked hurt, almost afraid must be in a lot of pain from the fight. Quill thought, pressing on with the conversation. "Where did you get such a nasty little weapon anyway?"
"Had it as long as I can remember." Repeated Rocket, stating at Drax and curling and uncurling his fingers almost like he's about to draw a gun on him thought Quill, frowning. Rocket stared at Drax nervously, as he came forwards.
"You dropped this." Said Drax, holding out the shock prod. Rocket watched uneasily, as if Drax had just offered him a venomous spider. After a moment of studying both the prod and Drax's eyes his paws shot out snake-fast and snatched the weapon back. "Thanks." He muttered gruffly. "But don't go touching my stuff, okay?" He huffed, limping off at high speed. He quickly hid the weapon away, where it could cast no accusations.
Quill and Gamora shared a look, and Shrugged. It wasn't like they didn't know Rocket was messed up, and it could still be the Fentanyl talking. They paid the man: they had set up a communal pot for medical bills on the first day after leaving Xandar, because they would be stupid not to, and then went back to the ship after Rocket.
Drax watched them go, trying to hide how worried he felt. Rocket seemed genuinely frightened to see Drax with that weapon: and Drax thought he knew why. He wondered if he should tell the others. He decided not to. If Rocket wanted them to know, he would tell them, he reasoned. And anyway, he could be wrong. They may be his family now, but these were not his people. They painted pictures with lies and lived happily in them, and it was impenetrable to him at times. It was, after all, just an old shock prod. It could have come from anywhere. There was probably no significance at all to the faded laser etching, just visible on the worn handle.
Property of Keystone Life Sciences: Project P-13
