Chapter Six: Homeward Bound
Part Two: 'Our Engineer was one for putting back the brew'
'Getting the guys to agree to a secret lair and why it's an awesome plan: step one; take them all out to a fancy meal, get them into a good mood, and convince them that Captain knows best -
'Quill's master plan: point one': from a series of bullet points found sketched on the back of a paper napkin, recovered from "The Blue Lobster" the night of the formal inquiry into the death of Benoit Ker, Xandar City. Entered into evidence as people's exhibit 17, Inquiry into the events on Knowhere and the establishment of the interim government. Nova Corp. central archive: clearance level six.
"So apparently there are consequences for building dangerous bullet-steered jet -sleds, killing the guy you're paid to tail, and drugging people. Who knew?" said Quill, scribbling on his napkin.
"You're an idiot, Quill," said Rocket, signaling the waitress for another round of beers; given it was his fault Rocket had slept through the de-briefing, Gamora had let Quill fill him in. Right after she got him to Nova HQ's advanced med-bay, severe drugging being something she took pretty seriously. He'd been fine, but had taken the opportunity to grab Denarian Dey to sign-off on some repairs to his bionics. Quill wasn't sure, and Rocket was in no mood to talk about it, but he thought he saw some fresh surgical scars. Quill suspected that Rocket had had the servo-motors that the veterinarian in Fairport repaired replaced. Not because they were inferior to Nova medical implants, but more because Quill suspected having anything with the word "veterinary" on it in his body set off Rocket's issues with people perceiving him as an animal.
At least that's what Quill hoped he'd had done. He could have grafted a fucking rifle to his dick for all he knew. He'd like to think that no-one he knew would do that, but then again, it was Rocket.
Nah…. Dey would have got weirded out if Rocket tried anything too mental.
Peter Quill shifted in his seat. Gamora was glaring at him from across the table, the effect only slightly spoiled by the fact she was holding Groot in a large pot, who appeared to be trying to eat one of the crayons that came with the kids menu. They were at an open-air restaurant Dey had recommended, the kind of place with cheap plastic lawn seating and queues round the block that needed the goodwill of local cops to survive because it sure as hell didn't have a liquor license and/or the correct zoning, but did have the best seafood in town. Nova Prime said 'don't leave for 20 hours', and given that they were here on official Nova business- and thus could claim legitimate expenses- Quill had decided to damn well make the most of it. Drax was barely visible behind a novelty bib and a plate of streamed crabs taller than Groot, and live giant isopods bumped dully against the glass of the pick-your-own tank by Quill's head. He'd hoped that the magic words "all you can eat" would go some way to buying Rocket's forgiveness, but so far all he'd got from the raccoon was soaking wet and covered in chitinous ricochets, as Rocket took on what looked like the entire planets supply of crawdads and doused them in the fingerbowl, running his nimble little paws over them under the water and striping off legs and shell with the reparative efficiently that suggested he'd be there until the restaurant closed, or the owners dragged him out and shot him for crimes against table-manners. He chewed oddly, Quill noticed, up-and-down not side to side, like a cat, and that and his refusal to answer him in anything but grunts and tiny pulverised pincers was starting to get to him.
"Hey Rocket, come on, I know it was dumb and kinda dangerous, but I never thought-"
"That's true," muttered Rocket.
Quill continued. "-that you'd get hurt. I just… fuck it. I just got freaked out to see you have feelings, Rocket! Yeah, I fucking went there! We all nearly get killed a dozen times, risk everything and you're like 'cool, whatever', but suddenly as soon as something happens to Groot, then you're all over the place."
"Peter!"
"No, Gamora, No. I'm saying it: yeah, it was dumb, and it was dangerous, but you're always the one who faces danger with a snarky comment and or psychopathic rage, but when something happens to Groot, it affects us all! You're not the only one who cares about him, but you act like you are, and if you go to pieces when he does, then that… that's something I don't know how to cope with." Quill stared down at the table moodily. "It's like I've lost two crewmates when that happens. Two friends. We kinda knew you were a selfish dick, and we're cool with that, but we would like you to be functional- and it would be easier if you'd just let us in, so that we realize how worried you are about Groot before the tranquilizers come out. And for that I'm sorry. Will you accept my apology… shipmate?"
Rocket stared, most of a crawfish tail hanging out of his open mouth. After a moment his lower lip begun to quiver, causing mount-crustacean to escape, and for about a second Quill saw that Rocket was genuinely touched for his concern.
"Oh, boo-hoo! I'm Starlord and my crew are my family and when Rocket's sad, I'm sad! Shesh, grow pair, you dumb hummie sap!"
Again, about a second, thought Quill. "That's a slur," said Quill, sorely poking at his Bathynomus Thermadore and wishing he'd ordered something a little less freaky looking. Rocket just laughed and coughed decapod limbs across the table as he reached for his beer.
"No it ain't!" he said, gesturing lazily and spilling suds as he did "I mean, sure, it's an insult but-"
"An insult directed at a specific type of person. That makes it a slur," said Quill, trying to drive his fork between two armor plates on his meal. He gave it up as a bad job, and reached for the chisel. Rocket downed his glass, and begun to pour from the pitcher. Gamora frowned.
"You've just recovered from being drugged and minor surgery; shouldn't you be watching your alcohol intake?"
"Oh I'm watching it right enough sister. I'm watching it real closely," said Rocket pouring with every sign of enjoyment as he casually asked, "So humie is a slur, but calling me booster-seat and ring-tail or Ranger Rick is just fine? Is that fair? Does that sound fair to you Groot?"
"I am groooooo!"
"They are racists!" said Rocket. "Well put Groot… Groot, get you root out of the finger-bowl, that's disgusting. Don't give me that look, I just saw you!"
"Ugg." Quill groaned. "We are not racist!"
"Well, maybe Gamora and Drax ain't…"
"I'm not a fucking racist!" wailed Quill.
"Hey hey hey!" yelled Rocket. "You watch your language around Groot now that he can talk! I don't want him picking up your potty-mouth!"
Quill stared. "You swear around Groot literally all the time," he complained.
"No I fuckin' don't!"
Quill pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay, I can't tell whether it's my translator circuits or if you're just so chronically foul-mouthed you've stopped noticing, but I swear every other word you utter is a swear."
"Oh, what, so us lesser species can't talk proper like what you does now?"
"I'm not racist!"
"But you do often mock him for his freakish appearance. He has a point." Said Drax.
"Thank you Drax," said Rocket
"Stay out of this," warned Quill. "I'm trying to apologize to this jackass, stop agreeing with him."
"If you wanted a way to mock him that could not be taken for prejudice, I would focus on his abrasive habits, strange, sad love of guns, and unnatural and disquieting attachment to our photosynthetic comrade in arms."
"Stay out of this!" warned Rocket. "I'm being apologized to here!"
Drax looked surprised and shifted behind his mound of crabs "What is the point in your talking all the time if I am never allowed to talk?" he grumbled. Rocket and Quill ignored him.
"Your problem Quill, your problem is, you wanna make everyone else's problem your problem, and that's a problem," said Rocket, pausing as he mentally re-ran that sentence in his head. He shrugged.
"Look, I appreciate that you have, yanno, feelings an' stuff, and that you probably frickin' drugged me because in your monumentally tiny Terran brain you thought that it might be good for me to get some rest. And yeah, if you really, really wanna push it, then yeah, it was good for me to open up and, yanno, get all teary-eyed and stuff, but you gotta understand that you can't fix everyone! Some people are just broken and much as it hurts your bleedin' liberal humie heart, you have to realize that you can't save everyone!"
"Just the twelve billion people that inhabit Xandar," said Drax. "Plus myriad others."
Rocket glared, then looked back to Quill. "What I'm saying is, it's not that you drugged me. It's not even that you, yanno… saw me get all emotional and that embarrasses me: it's that you feel I need saving! If Ronan and Ker should have taught you anything, it's that some people just can't be saved, but you have an emotional need to save them. You need to control your emotions a little better, Quill."
"Little rich coming from the guy who just fell apart because his boyfriend started talking to him again," muttered Quill, poking at his food.
After a second, he became aware of a series of indrawn breaths, and a pregnant silence.
Quill looked up. Everyone, even Groot, was staring at him, aghast. Rocket seemed to have pulverized a crawfish in his paw without even realizing, and was staring at him with his face screwed up in what Quill initially (in a moment of utter bowel-loosening fear, because this was someone he'd seen shoot people for less) took to be rage, and then realized with an even bigger shock a moment latter was betrayal.
"I… Rocket, I," Quill started. Rocket threw his food down and tried to struggle out of the high-seat the restaurant had given him so that he could actually reach the table, snarling and spitting at each small indignity he had to go through just to get back to the ground again, aware that by this point everyone in the restaurant was watching him.
"Rocket! I didn't mean-"
"Fuck you!" Rocket snarled, unconsciously grabbing his gun as he turned and ran out of the restaurant.
Drax paused and looked up from his crab.
"I love a good family meal. You make an annoying pouty face just like my daughter Kamaria did as a toddler. It is most endearing!" he said to Quill, smashing a crab-claw with his fist.
Quill sat and stated for a moment.
"I crossed a line, didn't I?"
"Yep." Said Gamora, popping the p.
"And an irrational one." said Drax. "There has never been anything to indicate that Rocket's and Groot's relationship, while odd, is anything but platonic, especially as both of them appear to be functionally asexual. Also, the term 'boyfriend' is misleading, as Groot is a flowering plant, and therefore almost certainly hermaphroditic." He noticed Gamora and Quill looking at him strangely.
"What?"
Gamora and Quill turned back to each other.
"You need to go apologize to him Peter."
"Yeah," said Quill. "Yeah I know. Thing is, and please don't take this the wrong way, but I think that it would be best if someone who he doesn't want to shoot goes and apologizes for me, and then when he's calmed down and doesn't have any guns, then I go talk to him. I think that's best for everyone," he said.
Gamora stared, he stared back, and then Quill wailed.
"Oh come on, it's not like I even know where he's gone-"
"He had a Nova Corp. expenses slip, he's angry and medically speaking should not be drinking, and there's a third-rate dive across the street. We all know where he's gone."
"Third-rate still seems a little too classy for his tastes," said Quill, in the tones of someone who knows that they've already lost.
"You are despicable!" hissed Gamora. "He clearly needs a friend right now and you go and mock him about his biggest insecurity! Now, I do not know him the way you do, Drax doesn't connect with him except when there's imminent violence on hand and Groot is still pot-bound! Now you're the one who shares all those stupid jokes with him and wastes useful time milling around, trying to explain Terran culture to him, so you go and be with him, or, I swear to whatever gods may be out there, I will make the next year of your life a continual sequence of misery! Other than Groot you're the closet he has to a friend. Now go to him!"
Quill stood up, and kicked his chair rebelliously. "All right, but if he shoots me you owe me an apology."
"If he shoots you, I'll apologize. Now go. And take Groot with you: he's less likely to try and kill you if you're holding the pot."
"I can't take Groot into a bar!" said Quill.
"Why?" asked Gamora.
"He's probably underage or something!" said Quill, before realizing just how stupid that sounded. "Okay, dumb comment, fair enough. But for the record I'm still not exactly sure how to play this."
Gamora waved a hand, uncertain herself. "Can't you try some, I don't know, some of that male bonding nonsense?"
"Male bonding nonsense?" asked Quill. "Look Gamora, I know everyone likes to see the world a simpler than it really is, and I know that people sometimes find other people mystifying, particularly opposite sexes, but there is not some special secret 'male bonding nonsense', no more than there is a secret to 'get' women. If you want to be friends with someone and get along with them, you need to work at it. There are no magic shortcuts."
"Really?" said Gamora. "I don't know, can't you just sit next to him and silently drink with him until he's willing to listen? Or failing that, both get so drunk he's forgotten what you were fighting about?"
"Yeaaaah." said Quill. "Not going to lie, that works far less well in real life than sitcoms would have you think."
"-and then the doctor looks at what he was trying to sign the prescription with and says, 'But if that's my thermometer, where's my pen!'" said Quill, fumbling for the bottle.
"Bwa-hahaha! Heh." Rocket leaned in unsteadily on his bar-stool as Quill poured, hitting the correct glass on the third attempt "You know Quill, fuck, I, maybe it's the booze talking, but I can't even remember what we were frickin' fighting about!" he shouted, fighting to be heard over the music.
Quill's face took on the strange tortured rictus of a drunk who was trying to remember something terribly important, or who had painful gas. Or both.
"Something about Groot and… trying to save everyone and… there was something about racism?"
"I am Groooooooo!" added Groot, dipping a tendril in Rocket's drink and them immediately pulling a disgusted face and switching back to his glass of water for the third time in an hour.
"Crawdads? What do racist crawdad's have to do with anything?" asked Rocket, managing to find his face with the glass and, after a pause to handle the next complex stage in proceedings, pour actual liquid into his mouth with only minimal spillage.
"No, he's right there were defiantly crawdads and like, A giant woodlouse thing…." said Quill. He brain then caught up with what he just said.
"What the fuck have I been drinking?" asked Quill, looking into his glass before his face took on another pained rictus, suitably different to the last one. "Uh-oh. Where was the bathroom in here again?"
""You need to piss again? Come on, I'll show you," said Rocket, stepping off his barstool which he had forgotten was taller than he was and falling on his face. Quill found this deeply hilarious, to the point he had to clutch at his ribs to stop the volcanic eruptions of joy, and then he went all Mount Etna and fell of his stool sideways, jarring his coccyx on the floor.
"Ow! What a stupid place to put a floor," he muttered, as Rocket literally rolled on the ground with laughter, before managing to pull himself upright using the stool's footrest. After a moment Quill got up too, and fetched down Groot. Groot made a curiously toddler-like reaching arms gesture to Rocket, and Quill handed him over. Groot swiftly knotted two fronds behind Rocket's head in a hug, and Rocket toot the bottom of the pot. With the pot suspended like that, he could carry it far more easily.
"Whoof… you're getting heavy, little guy." Muttered Rocket. "We're gonna have to pot you on again this week." He then put two fingers in his mouth and whistled sharply, getting Quill's attention and his envy, as he'd never quite mastered that and doing it without real lips just seemed to be rubbing it in.
"Quill, ya drunken moron, left or the bar was where the pisser was in the last bar we was in. Over here. Frickin' hummie, even you ought to have been able to smell if you were going the right way, even over the sweat-and-beer… wait here, Groot," said Rocket, putting him amongst the potted ferns near the neon-lit signs illuminating the gents. "You don't need to see this. And if any-one tries to stub death-sticks out in your pot again, tell me so I can shoot them," said Rocket, swinging the doors open and instantly regretting his advanced sense of smell and habitual bear-footed-ness. Quill followed.
"Gothcha. Thanks' Rocket. So how come you need to pee like every fifteen minutes? 'Cause that's not just the booze, you do that on-ship too, and you don't nearly drink half to much there." Quill did a quick mental calculation. "Sixty-two percent as much on a bad day. You got a bladder the size of a pea or something?"
Rocket turned around, taking in the lavatory in all it's awful glory, and starting to sober up as fast as only someone confronted by room full of aliens shaking-off at their head-height can.
"Walnut, 'tho the attempted play on words was pretty clever for you, Quill. Nah, when they… when I…." he frowned. Fuck it… I'm drunk, he's drunk. A little detail about them won't hurt if he forgets it come morning. "Quadrupeds hold the weight of their organs on their sternum and belly muscles. Bipeds have special caul to keep it all in place. They guys who built me forgot that: the weight of all my organs pushes down on my pelvis, compresses the lowest down organ, which happens to be my bladder, if you gotta know. The bod-mods help hold most of them in place, and my heart and lungs are fine… it's just… rest of me is a little rushed around the edges. Work in progress sorta thing." He said, eyeing up the room. The last bar had had an old-fashioned wall-o-water urinal that went floor to ceiling, but the people who had furnished this palace had a degree of optimism about the aim or their clientele that, like their actual aim, appeared somewhat misplaced, and they had installed real urinals. Which was fine, unless you were three foot nothing and they were at chin height.
"That so?" said Quill, rocking up at one of the two un-occupied urinals and managing, after a few false starts, to find his fly. He was then faced with a secondary challenge in finding the little fly in his underpants and getting it to line up with the first one, which sounds a lot easier before your tenth pint. "Are these on back to front or some shit?" he asked no one in particular.
Rocket, however, took one look at the free urinal, then at his fly, and back at the urinal again. "Yeah, not gonna happen buddy." Given the aforementioned pressing issue Rocket was feeling because of the aforementioned organ pressing issue, he was half tempted to go dislodge Groot from the fern and take up residence himself, when he noticed that the optimism of the bar's owner had extended to those ceramic privacy-shields set between each urinal. They even had cup-holders on the top, a nice touch, apart from the fact it encouraged people to bring their drinks into the filthiest place imaginable, he thought. But they did present an opportunity; he thought backing up for his run-up.
Quill, having taken the Gordian knot solution and ham-fistedly ripped his underwear elastic, started sighing with relief, studying the holo-screen in from of him. As usual, it was there to ensure that even when performing an unfortunate bodily necessity like peeing, the world could still bombard your eyes with advertisements for frivolous crap you didn't need.
"Your own villa on Duna ask us about our time-shares and freehold holiday homes." Quill read out, and then remembered point two on his plan.
'Quill's master plan: point two' having impressed on them what awesome a guy I am, convince them one at a time as to the need for a safe, stable base of operations to refit and maintain the Milano, and to rest and recuperate somewhere that doesn't smell of old socks. At no point use the phrase 'secret lair' because it will make you look like a moron.
"Hey Rocket, know what would be cool? If we had a secret lair."
Shit. Nice work, dumbass, thought Quill.
"A what?" said Rocket, wiggling his furry ass and swishing his tail from side to side as he readied for the jump.
" A secret lair," said Quill, as Rocket ran up and pulled of a perfectly executed star-jump, managing to make contact with both of the ceramic privacy screens to either side of the urinal and to wedge himself in place. The Xandarian at the urinal to Rocket's left yelped in shock and ruined a perfectly good pair of shoes, but Quill, to his right, appeared too lost in thought to notice. Or just too drunk. After a moment of awful slipping, Rocket managed to get a stable grip on both sides and, cautiously, took one forepaw off the slick porcelain walls to see if he could reach his fly.
"A secret lair?" said Rocket, relived to find that he could still work a fly. "Thank fuck! I wondered how long it would take you to think of that. "
"Yeah well if you're not interested… wait what?"
"Come on man, the Milano is about as good a home as I've had in the last few years, but still… Ideally we need a safe, stable base of operations to refit and maintain the Milano and to rest and recuperate after missions. Somewhere with a garden for Groot, and a better med-bay, and a rumpus room or, failing that, just somewhere that doesn't smell of Terran."
"Yeah my thoughts exactly… wait, what? Hey you ain't exactly crapping potpourri! "
"Thank fuck. You seen how spikey that stuff is? And it's got those weird, wooden star-shaped bits that taste bad? Easy mistake to make if you grew up on food-pellets. 'Side's it's not like I need more issues with my body and bad ergonomics," added Rocket, leaning forwards until his front paws touched the wall above the urinal and slowly walking his hands down the wall until he was more or less horizontal above the urinal. He noticed the guy to his left giving him a look of open-mouthed shock.
"What?" snarled Rocket. "What are you looking at pal? Ain't you seen a guy try to piss before? Eyes on the prize! Front and centre! I got a penis bone and a frickin' sheath down here; aiming is hard enough without an audience. That includes you, Quill, "added Rocket, without looking. He didn't need to look, he could feel Quill's smirk.
"Hey, no prob man! I guess we're all just lucky you don't stand five feet back and try to Howitzer it."
"… you have issues, Quill. No, it's a good plan Quill. I wouldn't call it a secret lair in front of the others 'cause they'll think you're a frickin' moron, but other that it should be fine. Hell, if you can talk over Groot tonight, then we got a majority. And the three senior crewmembers: captain, first officer and science officer."
"Yeah… what? Did you just appoint yourself First Officer?"
"Executive officer's job is to tell the captain when they think he's been' stupid. Who better?"
"Huh. Whole crew tells me that tho'."
"Yeah, but only me and you can actually fly the ship. Plus Gamora and Drax are lone-wolves, I hate to say it, but I'm actually the least-awful at team-work out of the lot of you."
"Point taken, but Groot as Science Officer?"
Rocket nodded. "Even in baby mode, he's still by far the smartest person on ship."
"Really?" Quill asked
"Really. Hell I can't even understand half the stuff he comes out with, can you imagine that?"
"No. I have no idea what that must be like." said Quill, shaking off with dead sarcasm. Rocket, however, seem to be facing the complex task of extracting himself from his current position without landing face-first in a urinal. Drunk. And increasingly upside down.
"Shit."
Quill looked over. "You need a hand?"
"No!" snarled Rocket. "I can manage just fine by mysel-" his rear paws slipped, perhaps a centimetre. "Yes! Yes I do! Little help here buddy! Just, give me a second to zip up… okay. Whoa! Wash your frickin' hands, please!" said Rocket, as Quill reached over to grab him by the back of his body glove. Quill washed his hands, and then reached over and grabbed him, lowering him down
"Whoa! Just put me on the basins."
"Sure, why?" asked Quill, and Rocket sat on the edge of a sink begun to wash his hands, and then his feet, and then his face.
"As a kid, you ever play that game where the floor is lava?"
"Sure. And, yanno, sometimes me and some of the Ravengers would get liquored up and play it as grown-ups until Yondu would shout at us to stop. Lot of time waiting around to ambush people as a pirate, it turns out. You have to make your own entertainment. Why you ask?"
"Given I don't wear shoes, something similar here; the floor is herpes. So, any ideas about where to put that secret lair?"
Quill shook his head. "No. somewhere not too far from Xandar; most of our work will be here."
"But we want it to be edgewards of Xandar, not corewards; the Kree border and most of the hot-spots are between Xandar and the Galactic rim."
Quill nodded. "And it's gotta be lawless; if we rock up anywhere with an existing civil government and try to set up our own private base of operations, we'll have lawyers on us like A'askavarian corpse-flies on vomit. Plus that's where we could do most good."
"Yeah, but Quill, we rock up anywhere too lawless, local organized crime will feed us our own innards. If we're lucky. If they're feeling mean, it could be each other's and I have no desire to find out if you Terrans smell as bad on the inside. Speaking as someone who's a professional criminal, not a pirate or an assassin or a vigilante, disorder has its own kinda order to it. Crime runs on it's own rules, after a fashion. If we were going somewhere lawless, we want to either be the first ones there, or we want to rock up just after whoever runs the show had just been taken out of the picture, and opportunities like that don't come often. Hold the door open for me, wouldya?"
Rocket took a running jump out of the washbasin and onto the carpet of the bar, which if anything, was sticker on his bare feet. He looked down at them and shifted despondently as he picked up Groot.
"Yeah." said Quill, walking out after him as the guy who had been staring at Rocket got distracted by them, and slipped on a damp patch smacking his head against the side of one of the porcelain privacy shields. "And it should be someplace we've been to before, so we already know our way around…"
"And it should have bars, every bit as nasty as this one," said Rocket.
They paused, just before they got to their seats at the bar. Rocket and Quill both snapped their figures, and turned to each other.
"I got it!" They both yelled.
After a moment's discussion to make sure they both had the same place in mind, and a ringing endorsement from Groot, Quill resolved to go and tell Gamora and Drax.
"Whoa, slow down there buddy. Hold your hearbeasts… We're both, unless you've not noticed, deep enough in our cups to drown in them."
"Wha?" asked Quill, trying to suck the dregs out of the whiskey bottle. Rocket glared. "Frickin' idiom. Idoil…. Idiot, that's the word. We're both drunk!" he said, trying to steal the bottle back, and failing. He ordered another one. "If we go like this, and force a vote, Drax and Gamora will hate the idea. They won't take it seriously. They'll be really, really pissed off with us. So whatever we do, right? We've got to keep this from them until we both sober up, and can present it as a serious option. You got that? Can you do that, captain?" said Rocket, taking the new bottle and flashing a Nova pay-slip.
Quill grinned, stupidly. "Ahh, I could kiss, you, if you weren't all gross and hairy and things and would bite me. Okay. We tell them tomorrow. When we've sobered up."
"When we've sobered up." Rocket agreed, pouring. "But yanno, one more drink couldn't hurt. So long as we don't lose our heads and tell them. What ever you do, we mustn't tell them, got it?"
Quill raised his glass in a mocking salute to Rocket. "My lips are sealed, first officer," he said, unsealing his lips to drink.
The air-horn woke them both with a start. Quill looked down, and saw Rocket curled up sleeping peacefully on his chest, his whiskers an inch from his face, and was so shocked, he screamed. Rocket, trapped between an air-horn and a screaming Terran woke with a start and screamed louder digging his claws into Quill reflexively, beginning round two of the scream-off.
"Owww… why did you do that!"
"Because you screamed in my frickin' face! Oh stars my head."
" My legs, Rocket, I can't feel my legs!"
"Those are my legs, dummy… shit me… How much did we drink?"
"Ahem." Quill and Rocket turned, sheepishly.
Groot was wearing a Denarian's uniform and a traffic-cone, for some reason, but that was the least of their problems. Drax stood, arms folded and scowling, as Gamora lowered the air horn, and said in a bright, brittle voice that dripped contempt. "Oh, so glad you're awake. Captain… First Officer… just letting you know that the autopilot you set has run its course, and we are approaching…." she gritted her teeth, "approaching the possible location of our new secret lair."
Quill and Rocket looked at each other in utter horror, and scrambled to the viewport, alternating between cries of "Idiot! I told you to keep your mouth shut!" "Oh man, we done goofed!" and the ever popular "Oh man we're screwed… do you have any aspirin? I could really do with some aspirin right now."
These particular concerns were soon overwhelmed and forgotten when they got a look out of the viewport and saw what they were approaching.
"I'm never drinking again," muttered Rocket queasily. "Not with you Quill, for, like, a week. That can't be what I think it is… we can't have been that drunk to think this was a good idea…"
"It's real. We're idiots."
"Oh no." said Rocket, paws pressed to the glass.
"Oh no!" said Quill.
"Oh yes!" said Gamora, evilly. "Course is punched in: you two did it last night and locked the controls. I really hope you two know what you're doing," she said, as outside the viewport, Knowhere spun into view slowly and inevitably, like death or taxes.
"I've got a bad feeling about this," said Quill.
Awesome mix tape Vol 2: Leslie Fish: Banned from Argo
