Bit of Both holiday special

Authors note: this doesn't follow on as closely to the end of chapter two as chapter three does, And I'm not sure in my own mind if it even happens chronologically between two and three. It might in fact happen in an entirely parallel cannon. It has little to no bearing on the overarching story I'm trying to write, is silly, goofy, and makes really very little sense. You should probably stop reading now and find some better, sensible, fanfiction. Seriously, why are you even still here? Go and spend time with your family: it's Christmas.

Happy Holidays.

BunnyRock

It was the night before life-day, and all on the ship, not a creature was resting, not even poor Groot...

"Merry Christmas crew!" yelled Quill as he staggered down the access ladder from the cockpit into the common area weighed down with bags and boxes of festive treats. The crew, who had been quietly playing cards whilst he was out, stared: Quill was wearing a bright-red conical felt cap of some kind that he'd lined with awful faux-fur and added a white bob to the tip of. They were all looking at him with expressions running the full gamut from curious (Drax) confused (Gamora) Ecstatic (mini-Groot, as always) and Horrified (Rocket, although it didn't stop him helping himself to some more cards from the bottom of the deck while the others were looking away.)

"What?" asked Quill.

"What are you wearing?!" Asked Gamora. "You look ridiculous Peter!"

"And you're wearing a hat." Added Drax, innocently, seconds before Rocket could. Quill frowned.

"It's a Santa hat. I found a guy selling fabric who made it for me."

"A What?" asked Rocket, trying to decide which of the two ridiculously overpowered hands he'd just made from the deck he should keep, as without looking Gamora, who was getting used to this, reached over and knocked his cards out of his hands.

"A Santa hat. You know. Santa Claus, Father Christmas Père Noël, Kris Kringle, Jolly old Saint nick. Any off this ringing a festive jingle-bell?"

Drax frowned. "Did all these people own that hat?" Gomora, who had been paying the most attention when Quill went out shopping, wrinkled her brows as she tried to work it out. "Is this connected with, oh, what was that called, the terran festival that Yondu let you celebrate on life day…"

"Christmas! Yeah, so I figured, we've still got a little cash, were gonna be holed up in this space-station overnight, may as well introduce you to a few terran Christmas traditions. I got hats for us all, food, decorations…"

Rocket spat at the mention of Life Day, as he had all day.

"Life Day: what a rip. Excuse for fat rich oligarchs to eat themselves to death while people get trampled in shopping malls or left to freeze on the streets. Meh, why bother? It's a day like any other."

"It is traditional on most planets with seasons to want to celebrate Life and hope in the depths of winter." Said Drax. "Although, since the adoption of the standard Xandarian calendar it only falls in winter for specific hemispheres of around 40 planets at the moment, so many develop summer celebrations at this time,: such as the Strine and their tradition of life-day beach barbecues."

"Yeah, well if you're on Strine the beach is about the only place the flying spiders aren't about to murder you. And even then there's the cuboid jellyfish and estuarine leopluradons to worry about." said Rocket. "I'm just saying Life-day's a con."

"I disagree. It is good to celebrate life, family and hope in the darkest point of the year" "Said Drax. "My daughter used to love life day…" he started, before trailing off.

The ship seemed that much darker and colder.

Gamora reached over and took Drax's hand "I used to love life day too, before I lost my family."

"Yeah, and Christmas with my mom…" said Quill, before running out of words.

Rocket looked from one to the other, and then to Groot. He sighed, then picked himself up with a steely look in his eyes, like he was preparing for battle. "Okay, give me the damn hat. Let's do this."

After that, it wasn't so bad.

Rocket and Gamora decorated the ship under Quill's careful eye, whist he and Drax worked on the food. The decorations weren't much: paper chains made from old legal flimys with names and dates and warrants, a cardboard fireplace mounted under an air vent at Quill's insistence. Rocket salvaged a string of multi-colored LED's from the local station junkyard to make some lights whilst Gamora folded little origami baubles and made tinsel out of an old silver emergency blanket. Quill fretted about the lack of a Christmas tree, until he spotted Groot looking lonely and left-out as the others worked. Rocket was concerned at first, but once he had satisfied himself that the lights weren't about to electrocute or set fire to Groot, he was perfectly happy, although entirely baffled, to let Quill drape Groot in lights and tinsel. Groot seemed to love it, particularly the little star-shaped hat Gamora made him. Drax and Quill roasted vegetables and a nice plump lizard (the closest thing in many years that Quill had found to turkey). Once the ship was as decorated as it was going to get, Gamora and Rocket came over and tried to understand the point of egg-nog.

"People actually drink this?" asked Gamora, tilting her cup. "Willingly?"

"Well, yeah. On earth our milk isn't usually blue, and we usually use bird eggs not snake, so it's not like it's this color back home but still…"

"I like it." Said Rocket, who had drained four cups and acquired a ridiculous blue moustache that Quill and Gamora had instantly formed an unspoken agreement not to tell him about. "Milk, good, hot milk with eggs sugar and spice, good. Hot milk with eggs sugar and spice and booze, even better." He held his cup up in both paws, for once looking almost cute. "Any more?"

After that, Quill sat them down and tried to explain to them the finer points and deeper meaning behind Christmas.

"I do not understand." Said Drax. "Explain again."

"well, it's kinda… Look: it's celebrating Jesus's birthday, allright? He's like a really big deal in one of our planet's main religions. "

"So it's a religious celebration?"

"Well kinda. Sort of. It's also about family, and food, and presents. It a lot about the presents." said Quill, with the brutal honesty of someone who left earth before the age of ten and was as greedy as only a little boy can be. "Mostly that. And Santa."

"Who's he again?" asked Rocket.

"I have no idea." Admitted Quill. "But he's a great guy. He brings you presents if you're good. He brought me my Walkman: all Jesus did was die for people's sins."

"He gives you stuff?" asked Rocket. "Why, what's in it for him." He paused. "And how good are we talking about? I crashed a ship into Ronan, broke my tail, helped save Xandar. That's got to be worth something, right?"

Quill looked worried, as anyone would when trying to fit such massively opposing ideas as "Rocket" and "Good" into their head at the same time. Quill waved his hand dismissively. "He only visits people on earth." He said. Gamora looked at him sadly. She was pretty sure that this Santa was a folkloric figure who didn't, when you got down to it, exist. And she was pretty sure Quill knew that. But she was also pretty sure that when Quill had been taken by Yondu the idea that Santa hadn't visited him because and only because he was no-longer on earth had been an important anchor for him, linking him back to his home. In many ways Yondu was pretty clever in getting Quill to merge Christmas and life-day in his mind: it would have made the transition to his new life much easier.

Quill tried to explain for about half an hour. He even sang a song about Santa. The rest listened in polite horror before deciding that anyone who knew when you were sleeping or awake and crept into kids rooms in the middle of the night was creepy as hell, to Quill's chagrin. Rocket freaked out and begun to build Santa-traps (Quill was pretty sure he didn't really think Santa was going to break in in the night and was just utilizing a semi-socially acceptable excuse to fill the sip with man-traps, but it seemed to make him happy so he let it go.) Drax pointed out the similarity between leaving out milk and cookies for Santa and the traditional votive offerings of strong fortified wine and spice-pies offered to winter spirits in high Xandarian life-day traditions. Quill wondered what sort of deranged lunatics would leave alcohol out for Santa, despite Rocket thinking it sounded a great idea. He found the idea of someone piloting a flying sled whilst drunk particularly hilarious.

So they hung up their stockings, had a good meal of roasted lizard, had few drinks, and maybe a few more, and discussed Life Day presents they would like to give each other if they were rich. Quill wanted the NES Neural Entertainment System, a new direct-frontal lobe entertainment system that allowed users to record and share dreams and memories. Rocket snorted and said he'd pay not to have to see Quill's dreams "If I wanted to see Gamora naked, I'd drill a hole in the particle shower." The traditional Christmas dinner fight then kicked off, but there was no real malice to it, and things were still friendly and festive when the call came.

Rocket had just told a joke that for once, was actually pretty funny, and Quill was laughing fit to bust a lung when the coms-unit rang. He staggered up, passing the bottle of wine to Gamora whist Rocket continued a comedic falsetto impression of a corrupt magistar he'd been paid by the magistar to break out of jail, but without his knowledge paid by his rival to then deliver to a gangster called Big Knife. "-and the guy was like Oh, do you really think I need to put the sack over my head and I was like 'sure, if you don't want the cops to recognise you', and the guy actually did it, and then he got back in the trunk of the air-car on top of the body and starts to tie his own wrists like I told him-"

"Hello, Peter Quill? uh huh, … yeah well I guess… now wait a sec, yeah, a… surely though when we had our records cleared after Xandar city… what do you mean, 'it only covers criminal cases' well how much? How much!?" said Quill, shocked. "Is, is there anything we can do? I see. Yeah, happy Life Day to you too buddy."

Quill staggered back to the table in a daze. Rocket was still telling his story, and Gamora and Drax were still chuckling away when Rocket looked up, mid gesture, and froze.

"We, I…. they're taking the ship. The Milano. They've activated then stations holding clamps, we can't take off, we're, we're going to be impounded."

The crew stared. Rocket kept his paws held out in the same mocking gesture, but scowled and screwed up his face in shock. Gamora dropped her fork, without looking away from Quill. Drax and Groot just stared.

"What?"

"They're impounding the ship. We… I… when I first started running jobs for the Ravengers, independently of command, without an older pirate looking over my shoulder, I stopped here. At this space station."

"You said. You said it was safe." said Rocket, accusingly, he was starting to grind his teeth, angrily.

"I… I didn't pay docking fees. I flew off from the refueling station without paying. Dey and Nova prime, they quashed all our criminal convictions, wiped the slate when we beat Ronan, so I thought we were safe. Apparently… apparently there was a civil case as well. The station owner sued me, they found against me in absenta. We… we need to pay or they'll repossess the ship."

"How much?" asked Gamora.

"Eleven thousand units."

"Eleven Thousand? We've barely got two thousand between us!" squawked Rocket. "How are we supposed to pay eleven thousand?"

"We're not. The greedy bastards want the ship. We've got until the morning to get our stuff and clear out. I'm calling Dey, see if he can sort this out."

The crew sat there stunned as Quill called Dey. Dey was as shocked as they were, and promised to get back to them as soon as he could. That proved to be half an hour. The news was not good.

"When we redacted your criminal records and pardoned any outstanding arrest warrants, we did ask any civil plaintiffs to drop their cases, but I've checked with Nova Prime, and that's all we've got the power to do, ask. If the space-stations owners, HelpStone industries want to press their case, we can't compel them not too." Dey shifted uncomfortably. "I'd normally recommend you appeal to the owners better instincts, but the owner of HelpStone, a mister Eb Stone-Egorosc, is a famous hardass. He's not left his luxury quarters on that station since his business partner died, and as far as we can tell he's greedy, friendless, and cares only for units. I honestly wish we could help more, but I don't know what we could do." Dey shifted uneasily. "There are some places available on our Thanos task-force, consultancy work, mostly. If you felt up to it, well it's not the same as hunting him yourselves but the money would be okay-"

"It's not coming to that." Said Quill.

Dey looked defensive. "I'm just saying, if you need it-"

"It's not coming to that." Said Quill, hanging up.

Despite the decorations, the ship felt cold again.

"You Idiot!" snarled Rocket. "Returning to the scene of the crime." He snared. Quill was shocked to see the seeds of tears in his eyes. "Just when we were starting to work, just when it was starting to be safe for me to… for me to… every time I get close to having something whole, some shit like this comes along!" he threw his plate of lizard on the floor. ""This is exactly the sort of reason I hate life day!"

"Hey!" yelled Quill. "I screwed up, I screwed up bad, and I admit it. So blame me! Don't take it out on our crockery, don't take it out on Drax's cooking and don't take it out on life day, you little Scrooge!" yelled Quill. He stopped, and his face suddenly went very blank, as it sometimes did when he was having an idea. "Little… scrooge."

Rocket, however was grabbing Groot and starting to energetically strip the lights from him. He'd also grabbed his bag off stuff, clearly believing in getting out before the bailiffs arrived.

"Rocket." Quill said.

"- I mean this is as bad as that time someone stole my clothes and I caught a cold and lost my voice. Spending life-day in animal control because you can't speak to tell anyone you're sentient, that was real fun-"

"Rocket, Shut Up! Those dream machines, the Neural Entertainment System. Could you hack one?"

"Huh?"

"Yes or no, could you hack one? Make someone experience a scripted dream?"

Rocket looked confused, but he saw something in Quills eyes. It looked like hope. He bit back his pithy retort and replied with a grudging "Yeah, I guess. The hacks for them have been on the outer-net for a while. You know how it is with any new tech: especially a life-day must-have."

"Go out. Buy three. Four if you can, but three at least. Buy don't steal; if this works out we can leave here tomorrow with clear records."

"Four? On life day eve? That'll be a thousand units. All our money. We're on a station, you seen what happens to down-and outs stranded on space stations? If you're lucky they leave you to starve, if not, they rescue you with Assisted Work Placements. You ever seen an AWP camp? I have. Twenty-three prisons I've escaped from, and every one of them better than that. What the hell is so important that you need three high-tech toys?"

"Let's say I think I have a way we can reach this guy, convince him to wave the charges." Rocket frowned.

"Your gonna torture him?"

Quill stared "Um let me see…NO! just get the damn things! Go! We don't have much time."

"Torture could work." Said Drax. "or blackmail."

"That can be plan B" said Quill, sarcastically. "We don't do that. Not now. Not on life day. Rocket, before you go, give me that info-glass of yours. You can get books on this? Earth books?"

"There aren't many terran books, but visitors to earth did add some to the outer-net, why?"

Said Rocket as Quill searched by author. He started at "D". He was not disappointed.

"No reason. Get the dream-machines, and hurry back. We'll need your break-in skills. And the rest of you, better start learning your lines." Said Quill, smiling as he booted up the book he was looking for. "Expect the first ghost when the clock strikes one…."

Quill's Christmas Mix-tape: John Lennon -"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)"