The problem with badass 80's style arming montages is they never seem to show all the hassle that goes with sorting weapons, armor and ammunition, double checking that it's all clean and safe, or even just moving without the correct military load-carrying equipment. I bet Arnie never got his boots tangled in webbing, thought Quill, as he frantically tried to cut his feet free with his old boy-scouts penknife as the tape deck gave up on This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us, and moved onto the far less fitting Abba track his mother had apparently put next in the mix. Around him the rest of the team geared-up in whatever kit they thought best: Drax was using a strop to sharpen his knives past the point of sheer insanity, Gamora was running through slow-mo sword patterns with her eyes closed, her rhythmic sweep and swish at odds to Quill's swearing and sweating, and Rocket resembled nothing so much as a very small ambulatory battleship. Apparently the gun, underslung matter-scrambler, shock-prod and armored orange body glove weren't enough, and he currently had the Hadron Enforcer strapped across his back, a front-and-back Ceramite and diamond-silk trauma plate tabard, his C2 headset, a bandoleer of cutting charges, spray-on det cord and quantum grenades, and a confused and clingy Groot still riding parrot on his shoulder. He saw Quill looking, and turned giving his best cocky psycho grin.
"Showtime," he said, cocking his gun dramatically, somewhat let down by the music.
"…you can dance, you can jive! Having the time of your life!..."
Rocket frowned as his ears caught up with his ego. "The fuck?"
Quill and Drax stared, and Gamora even open her eyes a millimeter to watch as she ran thought her final forms.
"You think you have enough weapons?" asked Quill, sarcastically stepping out from the webbing and giving it up as a bad lot. He'd put on the full control-belt for his rocket thrusters in case he needed to do any fancy flying, and strapped the flechette rifle he'd taken from Ker across his back, but was otherwise trusting in his normal equipment to see him through.
"Rocket or myself?" asked Drax. The rivet in the ships wall he hung his strop from had come loose making his task harder, and he'd been focusing on his blades and was unsure as to whom Quill was addressing.
"Both," said Quill, after a very sarcastic pause.
"Oh. Then yes. To both."
Rocket snorted. "Sure, 'cause a third knife would be excessive. You sure you don't want some body armor? Or, ya know, a shirt?"
Drax looked over the startling array of weapons that Rocket had managed to lay out on his workbench as if he'd never seen them before, a whole galaxy of rifles, pistols, lasers, mazers, phasers, blasters, and doodads passing under his gaze. After a moment he paused, and visibly looked back down the line, and then pointed to a particularly evil-looking oversized pistol in a nasty red and back with far too many protruding Sydney-opera-house blades to be ergonomic for anyone who didn't have blades growing out of their arms.
"That one. Hand it to me, small pelage covered Armaphile."
"That one? Wow. An excellent choice if I say so myself," said Rocket, picking it up and presenting it to Drax with all the enthusiasm of a sommelier getting to show a rare vintage. "Mark Four Dracon-beam. Something of a rarity, got it from his six-limbed Blue furred fucker over at-"
Drax picked up the weapon by its barrel, and turned it over a few times examining it as Rocket starting getting into the backstory, weighing it and feeling the heft of it in his hands as the raccoon spoke.
"-and then I woke up and there was this thing crawling into my ears, but Groot got a root up there and plucked it out, so then of course I had to blow his ship up and-"
Rockets face froze in an expression of unadulterated horror as he saw Drax turn suddenly, holding it by the barrel, and, before he could stop him, use the butt of the pistol to hammer the loose rivet holding the stop back into the wall. After a moment he took a step back, and made a minute adjustment, straightening the strop so that it hung level. He nodded, satisfied, and then handed around two-thirds of the gun back to Rocket.
"Thank you," he said, returning to his knives. Rocket cradled the pistol in his paws like a broken bird, before slowly looking up.
"I hate you. So much."
"It could be worse," said Gamora, breathing again now it was clear that the fuel cell wasn't about to rupture and kill them all. "He could be throwing a live quantum grenade around to prove a point."
"Hey, that happened once like, two months ago."
"Yeah and we made a ship rule about it. No quantum grenades. Ever," chided Quill. "Take them off, Ranger Rick."
"But you just used one to threaten Wade!" complained Rocket, stripping the grenades from his bandoleer with bad grace. Quill was at least pleased to see that each grenade was attached with the correct magnetic clasp: he'd seen someone try the trick of dangling grenades by their split-pins at the Ravegers once.
Once. The funeral was a very informal affair, although in hindsight perhaps serving Xandarian Gazpacho at the memorial meal was in bad taste, but Yondu had been trying to make a point.
"Yeah, and I took the power core and arming circuits out of mine. Wade couldn't tell a live womp-rat from a dead one, let alone a live grenade," retorted Quill, taking the useless power core from the pistol, a small warm wafer about the size of a credit card but a lot thicker, then the grenades from Rocket, and putting them back in his box o' bombs, Rocket's belief in the explosive stopping powers of cardboard apparently as undaunted as ever. Then again, as Rocket had pointed out, if that lot went off, nothing within ship it was put in would do more than add extra shrapnel to the mix. And he did keep his detonators at the exact opposite end of the ship, which Quill gave him credit for. Quill took the arming circuits and put them with the detonators, then frowned. "Whoa. That's a lot of different detonators. Timed, wire, comms activated… are those sympathetic fuses?" he asked. Rocket nodded.
"Yep. Put them in some plastic and set of a bigger exposition near-by and the pressure wave will pop the tops of em' and trigger the secondary charges, neat as you please."
"And these?" asked Quill, holding up some small pen-detonators.
Gamora looked over and answered for Rocket. "Light activated. Using a low power laser or flash-bulb. High-value targets are routinely protected from remote-detonated explosives by blocking comms nearby or with other electronic counter-measures. Lower tech solutions like photo detonators or sympathetic fuses are a good way to bypass high-end security."
"Huh," said Quill, putting the pistols power-cell next to the box and taking a comms activated adhesive backed micro-detonator the size and shape of a button, and turning it over in his hands. The back had the comms number you called to detonate helpfully etched on the removable backing for the adhesive.
"So these comm detonated ones are basically useless? Because in all the spy fills I've seen, remote controls set off everything. That or a timer with a big L.E.D. countdown." Rocket snorted and this primitive Terran thinking, and Gamora shook her head.
"No-one uses visible count-downs, not unless they're an egomaniac who want to taunt the bomb-squad, which is dumb as they're usually better at bombs than serial killers- because it's their job. And yes, people do use comms detonated bombs, but not usually for assassinations, it's too easy for bodyguards to block the comms. Trust me, I know."
"Huh," said Quill, turning the coin-sized detonator in his fingers. "The more you know."
"If I can't bring the grenades, then can you at least give me some time to saw down a couple of plasma-carbines into pistols?" pleaded Rocket.
"Let me think about it… No. Hell no." said Quill. "Next think I know you'll be using festive gift-wrap to tape guns to yourself."
Rocket grinned, and with a rip of Velcro produced a small gauss derringer from behind his head.
"Yippy Ki-yay," grunted Quill, to hide his surprise.
"No more TV for you. Ever," said Gamora.
"Why?" asked Quill. "It's not like it's a bad influence on him; he was like this before TV," he replied, as they began to walk up to the bridge to head out.
Gamora snorted, checking her swords, laser pistol, and canteen as she adjusted the brace on her arm: she was a daughter of Thanos; stabbing some to death with her ulna wouldn't stop her fighting, but it still ached a lot and was a little stiff. "I wasn't talking to him," she muttered. "You need a hobby Quill, we've got to find you something to occupy your time other than TV."
"Willing to work on that whenever you are," said Quill, flirtatiously. Gamora had to laugh at that.
"Sure, some time when we're not about to face off against armed killers or get kidnapped or shot at"
"So in a couple of years then, given our luck," muttered Rocket under his breath, trying and failing to deposit Groot in his play pen, before resorting to a portable force-field generator and inventively foul language to keep him in place; he'd proved handy in the bar, but there was no way in the galaxy Rocket would risk him in a full-on firefight, which was exactly what it looked like they'd be walking into.
Quill popped the primary-aid kit by the steps and took a couple of syrettes each of Nova Corp morphine, a wound packing-foam syringe and a handful of robotic tourniquets each and tossing them to each of his crew. Rocket discarded the morphine on the basis that it didn't work on him, and Gamora was about to discard the tourniquets on the basis that her blood vessels were modded self-sealing, and them hesitated and kept them. It might not be her she needed to stop bleeding, after all.
"Okay. Let's go and find the Watts Brothers," announced Quill, stepping up into the cockpit. He froze on the top step, and his jaw dropped.
It looked like the Watts brothers had found them first.
Yondu had always described Belamy Watts as "a slow fuse". Wade was crazy, and just plain unpleasant, and there was no getting away from that, but big brother Belamy Watts a class apart. Belamy was quiet, intelligent, watchful, hard as old nails boiled in piss, and had had the single worst temper of anyone on the Ravager crew. "Black Belamy", they called him, and with good reason. He had dark moods, and although they were not frequent, nor easily provoked, they were always there, burning away under the surface. It took a bit of work to bring them to the fore, but once they did, there was no stopping them, and no passively riding them out. The man's black moods were a tidal wave; you either attacked them head on and dammed the consequences, or got swept away. He wasn't the first person Quill had seen introduce a man's jaw to the curb, Yondu held that dubious honor, but he was the first man Quill has seen curb-stomp someone for no reason other than he spoke out at the wrong moment. Most everything he did was to protect his brothers, and given that Wade could provoke anyone, what you got in practice was a grizzly bear guarding a Chihuahua. Add alcohol, guns, serious momma issues and a third brother with an IQ of 70 to the mix, and people got killed more frequently than Yondu liked, for reasons that were no damn reasons at all, in ways that did not necessarily become a respectable tribe of reprobate hillbilly pirates. The three happiest days of Quill's difficult adolescence were the day Yondu gave him the Milano, the day he lost his virginity to that Krylorian chick, and the day Yondu marooned the Watts bothers, in that order. Even the lowest of the low on that ship had been glad to see the backs of them.
So he would be less than happy to see Belamy again under ideal situations, like dead in a ditch. Walking into his cockpit and seeing him front-and-center fifty paces ahead of his prow with a semi-circle of armed goons surrounding them was so far from ideal that Rocket couldn't hit ideal from there with his rail-gun, self-steering munitions and an orbital nuke.
Attack the wave, thought Quill, walking to the helm with a calmness he didn't feel, obscenely grateful for the palms-thickness of armor-crys between him and a B.A. Baracus anger management coach. With all the cockiness he could muster, he leaned in and causally spoke into the comms as he flipped on the external loudhailer and mics.
"Oh, hey there, Bel, long time no see. How'd you get thought our sensor grid without setting of the alarms? Are you a ghost, because I'm not gonna lie, that would save some time, and as it happens I know exactly who I'm gonna call to deal with that."
Belamy looked up slowly, revealing his face bit-by-bit from under the brim of his black boss-of-the-plains, just in case people couldn't deal with it all in one go. He had the blue skinned scars-and-stubble look Quill remembered, and a jawline that was square enough to use as a parade ground, but there the resemblance to Yondu ended. As a Bolovite rather than a Centaurian, he would never be as strong as a Centaurian of the same height and build, and made up for it by being built like a partly-shaved refrigerator. One of the fancy ones, with an ice dispenser. Above his jawline the rest of his face had drooped, like a bulldog played by Marlon Brando, but every line looked hard and sharp, like a crease accidentally ironed into denim jeans. He had a full murder's worth of crow's feet, and looked tired and pissed off as hell, like he hadn't slept in a century, which given that he couldn't have been more than early middle age just showed what positive thinking and clean living could do for your looks. His eyes were red, and should have looked mad as hell, but instead were long-lashed and lazy, and just seemed to gleam slowly and dangerously like the L.E.D. countdown that apparently no-one used on bombs in real life.
It's almost like Hollywood is lying to me on purpose, Quill thought.
"Quill," grated the voice. Belamy stood for a long moment, just watching, looking Quill up and down. He seemed disappointed. "My station. I got people with signal jammers, same as anyone. Heard you spoke bad to my brother. He's not happy."
"Has Wade ever been happy? Truly?" asked Quill, very aware that behind him, below the field of Belamy's view, Rocket was arming the forward cannons. Quill reached down, and, careful he couldn't be seen, put a hand on Rocket's wrist before he could take of the safeties. He might have been marooned by the Ravagers, and Quill might have quit, but they had been crew once. There were certain niceties you observed; if Belamy hadn't just blown up the ship when they were inside getting tooled up, they couldn't just gun him down until he was done talking.
Besides, we can always wait until he turns to walk away, then gun him down with the forward cannons, he thought.
"Truly? Couldn't say. Day Momma died mayhaps. Reckon it don't matter none. You spoke bad to him. I don't like that." Belamy looked to the Milano's left flank, and Quill realized he'd left the refueling hatch open, and a length of line from where he'd tried to syphon of the wrecked ships. Belamy wasn't stupid; he'd get the implication. He looked back to Quill.
"I expected better'n this of you. What you limp in here for Quill? You're out of fuel and there is nothing for you here, I guarantee it."
"Well, folk here might beg to differ. Call it pest control. What about you? Didn't have you down as Count Bling's lapdog. No money in cleaning up your brother's mess?"
Over the comms he couldn't hear Belamy's intake of breath, but he saw it, and saw him close his eyes and count to ten before exhaling as his right fist clenched and unclenched. When he opened his eyes and spoke again, there was a note of deeper menace in his voice, and Quill knew the slow fuse was burning.
"Looks like there's more than there is polishing Yondu's pecker, otherwise you wouldn't have left for Nova. Done some reading, got someone to help with the big words, before you make that joke, found out about your little party with Ronan. Won't say I approve, but won't say I ain't impressed. So you've gone one way and we've gone another. We can still be sensible. I ain't never liked you, that's a fact; always too keen on Yondu's praise, little stuck up towards me and mine, like your shit don't stink like the rest of us, but I never had you down as a fool. It looks like you're all outta gas, and, as it so happens, me and mine happen to have all the fuel and oxidizer on this forsaken head. Now my boys here know how to play pump-attendant as well as the next guy. Could be if you want to pack up and leave, then that would save the both of us a lot of trouble and fuss. We'll even throw it in gratis. Or, could be you're serious about playing hero, then, well, you might still get the fuel, but I can attest you'd find it a little too hot for your liking. Understood?"
Quill felt something turn in his stomach. "Like that poor girl on Coraxia?"
Belamy frowned for a second, as he tried to remember exactly which misdeed Quill was referring to.
"That whore? Damn' near took Wade's eye out. Did what I had to do. Family honor."
"Yeah, well way I heard it, Wade didn't give her any other choice. That was the last straw for Yondu, wasn't it? Gives you boys one day shore leave and there's a perfectly good flop house burnt down. He'd've kicked you out for that alone, but I don't think he'd have marooned you if you hadn't tied her to the bed first. Go to hell, Belamy; I'd wipe my ass on your family honor, but I'm afraid it would leave it dirtier. We're here to stay. Like you said, you got the fuel. You could go anywhere in the galaxy, now you're going nowhere on Knowhere. You were given your chance to clear out, you just lost it." He said, snapping off the safety and booting up the lift repulsors so he could turn the hovering ship to get more people in the line of the cannons.
Belamy watched impassively as Quill lined up the cannons on him, and then allowed himself the very smallest smile. He raised one finger to a translator behind his ear, the same as Quill's minus the helmet, and projected his voice over the comms "Now, you're not going to shoot an old crewmate mid parlay, are you?"
Quill snarled "Crewmate? Unless you missed the memo, neither of us are Ravegers anymore!"
Belamy shrugged clearly fighting down his own urge to take on the Milano with his bare teeth, as around him his men panicked and begun to run for cover or draw beads on the ships engines. "The Milano, still in Ravagers colors, still wearing your old gear, still got your patches," he said, indicating the slightly less faded area on the arm of his own leather duster and growling. "I couldn't get my stinking patch off soon enough. Before he was out of my sight on that dirt ball he dumped is on, I'd ripped it off. And yet here you are, still wearing yours. Funny," he said, as if he'd never had the concept explained to him, "You can't fly that ship and her cannons though the streets and always, you want this station, you come and get us out of it." He snarled, pointing. "I'll be waiting!"
"You think I won't shoot someone in the back? You've seen me do that before!"
"Yeah, but only on stun. Besides: I heard you're heroes now," he said, starting to walk away. Quill watched, his fingers on the twin triggers as he ground down his teeth. Belamy had a point; he'd fought plenty dirty before, but he wasn't about to reduce a man to pink-mist half-way through speaking to him.
One of his men seemed slightly less sure that Quill wasn't about to gun them all down, and dropped his plasma carbine and begun to run for it. In his haste to get away, he accidentally shoulder-charged Belamy.
Within a second Belamy had shoved him away, and downed him with a quick kick to the knee, roaring. Like many people who'd never been calm enough to feel fear, Belamy had no time for cowards, and clearly frustrated with his talk with Quill, he picked the guy up and threw him face-first into a nearby ship's jet intake. It wasn't running at the time, but having one's face introduced to ceramic turbine blades at speed is seldom conducive to good health even if said blades are stationary. Before the man could slump down, Belamy grabbed the turbofan and begun to turn in manually, heedless of how much it cut his own hand, and pressing the individuals face to it with the other hand for the full mandolin effect. After a few moments of snarling and hissing at this with his face contorted like he was taking the world's biggest shit, he let the man fall. Quill had thought that at that point he would let the guy up, but clearly he'd pissed of Bel more than he thought, because he wrapped a fuel-line dangling from the engine nacelle around his throat and wedged the other end up where he couldn't reach it. Given the engine was only a few feet above the ground, the guy could just stand up to relive the pressure on his throat, so Belamy kicked him in the small of the back, hard, putting all of his weight into it. Over the engine noise, Quill couldn't hear the guy's spine snap, but his legs stopped kicking like a puppet with cut strings, leaving him to claw impotently at the armored fuel-line as it choked the life out of him. Even Rocket winced at that.
Quill moved to pop the canopy on the cockpit, and instantly Rocket and Gamora raised objections of the "are you fucking insane?" type, as Quill begun to root though his pockets. After a moment he didn't release he had quite what he wanted.
"Rocket." he hissed, out of the side of his mouth. "I need the wallet you took from the guy you killed in the bar."
"You what? How drunk are you still?"
"Now, Rocket! Hey, Belamy, World's greatest boss!" Quill called. Belamy turned with blood on his hands and pure murder in his eyes. Quill checked the inside of the wallet, making the adjustments he needed and making sure that the holo-pic on the mining-pod license inside was visible, before tossing it over. It bounced off Belamy's chest with a dull thump, and landed satisfyingly, with the picture up. "Seeing as you take such good care of your men, why don't you take that and get a proper funeral for Asov. I've taken twenty for Rocket, to cover bullets and wear and tear on his gun and what not, but there should still be plenty for a good send off for Asov."
"Who?" he asked through gritted teeth. Quill snorted.
"Do you even know the names of the goons working for you and your brother?" he asked, as Bel took the wallet as stared stupidly at the photo, before he realized that every one of his hired goons was starting at him, suddenly aware of exactly how crazy the guy they were working for was and having real second thoughts. He snarled and dropped the wallet in the outer pocket of his duster, level with his thigh. With a final snarl and a gesture to his now quite freaked out guards, he stalked off out of sight.
"So now what, genius?" asked Rocket. " The guy is pissed and you just know he's going back to his secret lair where he's got all the fuel stashed and he's gonna get all his boys together there and then come for us with a small army."
"Yeah. I guess." said Quill, pulling his combination holographic projector and scanner out of his coat pocket. "That's kinda why I put that tracking device in the wallet."
Rocket, Gamora and Drax stared, and Quill had to say he'd never felt like more of a captain than when all of them gave him looks or awe and respect.
It was kind of a pity then that Groot's thrown toy hit him in the eye.
As it turned out, the Watts Brothers had set up their hidden lair in a small industrial bay on the far side of the station, near to the ruins of the Collector's collection. It was a good spot, in a rip in one of the cheeks of the dead Celestial that made up Knowhere. It had its own private airlock to the outside, a long, armor-crys viewing gallery and sensor suite so you could see any hostiles approaching the main approach to Knowhere, even its own small ship-refueling station which was packed with enough fuel and oxidizer to keep the station and all its support vessels running for the best part of a year. In fact, it was only their very real need to get fuel for the Milano that convinced Rocket that the best way to fight the Watts wasn't to just throw his entire bandoleer of explosives over the fence of the fuelling station and run like fuck and then come back and sift through the ashes to confirm the kill afterwards.
"No, it's simple, right?" said Quill, fiddling with the comms unit on his helmet. Rocket had chastised him the whole way there for playing with it, but it had taken a while to get it synced with the comms equipment worn by the rest of them, and he'd been surreptitiously trying to add a new number to speed-dial without them noticing. "We wait until they come out of the base, all tooled up and badass looking, and then we ambush them." Quill said, from his vantage point behind a low wall, a few hundred yards up the street from the warehouse they were in, arguing about how to kill him. "The street is nice and broad, with no cover at all. From here one guy can cover the entire street, with good cover. Rocket, you bed down here. You get a good shot, you take it. Just go crazy. You can keep them bottled up and kill, them at your leisure. Once you open fire there are only two directions they can head in: back into the warehouse, or down that alleyway and into the viewing gallery. And it's a corridor, no more. No cover, just gently curved around nearly a mile until it gets to the private airlock and sensor suite. Drax waits by the warehouse, waltzes in when they open the door 'cause he won't look out of place in Belamy's men and we've established he doesn't even know the names of the guys working for him. Gamora sneaks into the viewing corridor and lurks there to pick off any who make it that far, and I fly roof-to-roof picking of guys and helping out anyone who needs it. Clear?"
Drax raised a hand. "Yes Drax?" asked Quill, feeling weirdly like a school teacher.
"Would it not be better if I walked into their den of inequity instead of waltzing? Formal dance would be out of place and may give me away."
"I leave that entirely up to you. Use your own initiative. Yes Rocket?"
"Yeah, so do you have some sort of 'leave him, he's mine' personal frickin' history with these guys, or can we just shoot them? 'Cause if you're gonna go and sulk if someone else kills them, then I want to know. Because you sulking is frickin' hilarious and I'm hung over as fuck and need a laugh."
"Shoot 'em. I'm too lazy to hold a grudge, and if I was the grudge-holding type, these guys are not worth it. Gamora?" asked Quill, as she placed her hand on his arm.
"Get in position. Looks like they're coming out."
Quill looked over the ridiculously convenient chest-high wall. Looked like she was right.
"Showtime," he muttered, snapping down his helmet.
"Dagnabbit," grumbled Wade, kicking open the doors "I'm just sayin' that you should have just burnt-out their ship when you went down there. What in the Sam Hill were you thinking trying to scare 'em off like that? Dammit brother, you're my kin but you're thick as grox-dung at times."
"I was thinking that they'd have taken off, flown into space, put out the fire with the runtin' vacuum and then turned around and strafed us with their cannons. I love you, Wade, but if you ever impugn my intelligence again, then you and I are gonna have words like ain't happened since momma died. We had nothing to lose warning em' off, and what you've never got into your thick skull is you fight the fight you need to, no others. You're terrible because you need to be, no more. Got it?" He looked around. "'Sides, I remember Quill a mite better than you do. He weren't never stupid. Even odds were he'd think straight an' see the light. Too late now. We go in fast and hard, we kill him and his crew, we go out. No show-boating, got that? You grand-stand around this guy and he'll nail you to the wall."
"Relaaaax, bruv, Ah can take him."
"You couldn't take a long piss without me there to hold your cock. And speaking of your pecker, what's this I hear about Yullivan? Count Bling is comin', or has that part of the deal slipped your mouse-turd mind, and when he does, he's gonna want to take over the bars an' the gaming houses an' the brothels, and you've drunk the first dry, rigged the second and we are rapidly running out of whores for the third, so you'd best explain yourself."
"Hey now remembered momma always said, all wimnin' save her was whores so-"
Belamy turned and backhanded Wade in the ear so hard he staggered and dropped his plasma carbine.
"Oww, motherfucker who hits someone in the ear? What was that fo-"
And then backhanded him in the other ear.
"I ain't the one who got fixated on momma's sex life. She was a wrong un and you knows it. My current-"
- slap
"-issue"
- slap
"- is with the stone-dead prostitute in the fucking bathroom. Now, I am a professional thief an' thug for hire and in this line of work it behooves oneself to remember that there is always someone nastier than you, so if you could try not to attract their wrath by killing every whore in the town we're meant to be softening up for them, then that would be a courtesy of the kind that ensures you never have to find out what your left testicle tastes like. I do not drink, I do not gamble, and when I fuck whores-"
"When you fuck whores they're fucking male!"
Slap.
"-and when I fuck whores, I pay them and send them on their way discreetly, I do not rape and kill them. That is not what we do, because we are professionals and not fucking psychopaths, you got that bother? 'Cause if you ain't, I'm sure Bling has some real nice boys of his that can explain it to you using small words and smaller knives. I am losing my temper with you, and you can't afford to lose any more toes, so I suggest you shut it. Don't fuck this up for me: it's hard enough dealing with one retard in this family. Hey Hue, get over here!"
If Wade was of heavier than average build, and Belamy was built like a refrigerator, then Momma Watt's third and final son was a walk-in freezer with legs. Looking up from a simulated lizard-baiting game on a holo-pad, Hue Watts shambled over, the normally tripod-mounded heavy necrobalster slung around his neck like a toy gun. It would be hard to say if Hue might have turned out relatively normal with less insane patents and less evil siblings, but Momma's idea of fixing electrodes into the pleasure center of his brain to reward him when he did something she wanted, like kill his deadbeat dad, had left him no more able to make moral decisions than a rat in an addiction study. More so then Wade, Belamy felt sorry for him and looked out for him. But that did not stop him giving him orders and using the remote to encourage him to do them.
"Yeah?" said Hue, a little frightened. He was frightened by things he didn't understand, which were most things.
"Go with Wade now, and do what he says. You go set up your gun where he says, and shoot down the ship he says if it tries to take off, and I'll give you ten minutes on the remote," said Belamy, not unkindly.
Hue considered this. "Twenty," he said. He wasn't great with numbers, but as soon as it came to how long the electrodes were fired for, he became a lot better.
"Fifteen." said Belamy, trying to fight down his frustration. "And I'll get Wade to make you some mashed tubers," added Belamy, resorting to the second most popular childhood bribe of their mother, right after 'being let out of the basement'. Hue considered this with a great deal of solemnity, and then nodded. "So what are you doing?" asked Belamy. Hue panicked and looked to Wade for help. Bel hissed with frustration. "You're going with Wade and doing what he says. You'll go set up your gun where he says, and shoot down the ship he says if it tries to take off. Okay?" Hue nodded and Belamy nodded back. He looked to the hired goons to either side of him, who had the good grace to develop a sudden and fixed interest in their shoes. When they first got to Knowhere, someone had made a joke about Hue. Belamy would say they were soon laughing out of the other side of their face, but that would imply they had enough of a face to be considered to have sides. More sort of fractals, if you thought about it.
Belamy checked his blasters, same make and model as Quill's and was about to give the order to move off, when Rocket took advantage of so many hired goons looking down to avoid eye contact and opened up with a burst that downed four before they even knew it, and glanced a round right off Belamy's chest-plate, knocking him off his ass. Instantly, he pulled Hue down into cover, and kicked Wade's legs out from under him to get him down as the rounds scythed through their mob, and of the forty hired guns they had, at least a quarter went down in the first few bursts. Wade rolled into cover, both pistols drawn and firing, but he didn't have a fucking clue where the shooter was, although he could guess who he worked for.
"Go!" he yelled, kicking Hue to his left, whom scrabbled back into the warehouse, following several fleeing goons lead by a large tattooed man Belamy didn't recognize. He looked to his right, and saw that Wade had rolled into the cover of the alleyway that lead to the viewing platform, as he got to all fours and crawled to cover of a doorway. As he did, a bullet punched a hole in his forearm, narrowly missing bone. He didn't feel it. He was too angry to feel it.
And he was about to get a whole lot angrier, as he looked up and saw, leaping from roof to roof with those idiotic rocket boosters, Peter Jason Quill.
"Starlord!" he snarled.
Rocket got a good look down his iron sights as the Watts Gang stood and bickered in full view (hey, it's not just us!), and he thanked the gods of combat he didn't remotely believe in for the opportunity. They then rewarded him, by having at least four of them look down to avoid eye contact with Belamy, and the rest look at his argument with his brother like it was a soap opera. It was too good to waste; he lived for moments like this, so he put the gun flat on the chest-high wall (head high for him), turned it sideways, and opened up full-auto. The recoil sent it scooting along the top of the wall, sending out a perfect chest-high spread down the street, and when it reached one side he flipped it over an mashed the trigger, sending it back, before shouldering it and flicking it to three-round burst and dropping the two still standing with a wild yell of joy. Fifty bald-bodies, at least eleven of them not getting up again. He ducked behind the wall and begun to scuttle over to a new position near Gamora as the rounds of retaliation begun to ping off his wall, wondering how the others were doing.
"Yippee Ki-yay," he muttered.
Drax charged into the warehouse, and as he'd half expected, around twelve of the Watts goons followed. He paused, as they panicked and tried to hide themselves from Rocket's tiresome bullets, and looked though a small viewport out onto the street. He couldn't see Belamy or Wade. They must have ducked down the alley leading to the viewing gallery. Good. He turned back to the remaining goons. One appeared to be trying to rally them to go back out and fight for Belamy. He had a very annoying voice. Drax took him by the side of his face as he walked past and smashed his head into the concrete wall. The others fell silent as he walked past his twitching body, and looked to him. He nodded.
"Good. I am only going to say this once so attend carefully. The Watts brothers have abandoned you. Lay down your weapons and give up without a fight."
"Who the fuck are-"
"I am Drax the Destroyer. Father to a wife and a child murdered by Thanos by means of his minion Ronan the Accuser. Perhaps you remember his visit to this station. My captain, his crew and I killed him, and all his followers. Lay down your weapons. I will not repeat myself."
He drew his knives, and looked around. One by one, the members of the Watts gang threw down their guns. Except one, bigger than the rest. Bigger than him, even. He stared, stupidly.
"What, what will happen to Belamy and Wade then?" he asked. Drax frowned, and lowered his knives. He seemed to have some learning difficulty, and he did not want to frighten him. He shrugged.
"I will imagine we will kill them."
In hindsight, he didn't expect him to hit him quite that hard at that point.
Gamora waited quietly in the viewing corridor, looking out the armor-crys into space. The stars were really quite beautiful, when you thought about it. And waiting was fucking boring.
She heard the shooting start, and stepped back into the shadows, readying herself. Soon. Three, two, one…
She was always amazed how few people even knew how to deal with a sword-wielding adversary in a confined space. They tended to hesitate out of surprise, and take a step back from what would be their normal fist-fighting position out of sheer shock, which just meant that they were too far away to punch or knife her, too close to shoot at her, but in a nice, convenient, sword range. They also had a tendency to bunch up.
Once they started doing that, it became purely mechanical. Like chopping wood. Swish and up, turn and up, feint up, cut low… One had clearly more self-preservation or sheer bastard instinct that the rest, though, and took a running jump into the back of his friends, forcing two to stumble forwards. She caught both on the sword, but the weight tangled the blade and he reared up as she stumbled, razing a rifle butt like a club. She drew the target laser and shot him thought throat, but the shot self-cauterized, and he swung down with the gun butt and-
-and Rocket, who had his gun butt firmly in his shoulder and nothing but contempt for self-cauterizing weapons put a round though the back of his head, which Gamora really wished he hadn't as the interesting origami effect it had on the front of his face was something she'd need to drink to forget. He looked to her, and nodded. She narrowed her eyes, razed her target laser, and gripped a knife from her thigh scabbard. Rocket saw her expression, and flung himself flat, a nice gesture, but a redundant one given he was a meter tall if that, and she fired twice and threw the knife, downing the three goons behind him. As he gingerly picked himself up from the hostile he had landed inside, creating an inadvertent carnage-angel, she nodded back. He scrubbed at his face with his paws, removing the worst of the gore, and then picked up his gun. It was totally clogged with viscera, and he begun to work the bolt, but he couldn't get it to clear.
"Ugg, and I thought they smelt bad on the outside. You good, greeny?"
"Fine," she replied, vaporizing the skull of a gutted hostile as he tried to rise. "We cyborgs need to stick together, short-stuff."
Rocket snorted, and they both turned to walk back to the main battle, when a figure ran around the corner, and then stopped.
"Well well well, ain't you the pretty one, sugar? And such a cute little pet. Tell you what, we can make a nice little bag out of him, bring all my toys to bed. Eh?" asked Wade watts, as he sleazed his way towards them drawing a custom made marksman's pistol, and levelling it at them.
Gamora twitched her gun up experimentally, and he shot it out of her hands, burning her fingers. He was good with pistols at least. He cockily held up the gun, putting it at the ceiling.
"So, you about you two and me talk bedtime?"
Gamora's last knife would have taken him between the eyes if he hadn't got the pistol in the way just in time. As it was, it just shredded it. He glanced at it shocked, and then grinned, pulling out a knuckle-duster. "Well, I like a little spirit in a woman…"
Gamora and Rocket just started, with identical duck-faced 'people actually say that?' faces. Slowly, without breaking his 'you're stupid' face, Rocket drew his shock prod. "You go for his throat, and I'll get his balls," said Rocket, sparking up the prod and slapping it into his palm like a baton.
"Agreed." said Gamora, readying the sword in the high guard position, before they charged.
Wade began to think that he'd made a bad mistake.
Quill zoomed from roof to roof, firing at the few thugs still in the street, driving most for the cover of the viewing corridor, but downing some, and feeling pretty good about things, right up until he noticed the smashed-in doorway three stores directly below him.
It was as he was just perched on the parapet leaning over to examine it, that the door to the roof kicked open, and Black Belamy rushed him from behind.
A sane person would, at this point, have just shot Quill three or four times in the back at close range, but Belamy was in the depths of a black rage, and presented with Quill's unprotected back so near to him, he took a running jump and latched onto him, and then started trying to shoot him. As they were both falling towards the street.
The first Quill knew about this was when a huge weight pitched him over the edge and something flash-burnt his arm as a blaster went off pressed to his side and skimmed him, because it's famously hard to tumble and aim at the same time. Quill gave his rocket boosters a lick of power just in time to turn the fall from fatal into merely very painful, and then looked up, stunned and groaning, at which point Belamy's face eclipsed the distant roof-lighting, and tried to throttle him. Quill understandably bugged out at this point, and very sensibly gave his boosters another kick, sending Belamy flying back, and sending him skidding along the floor towards the viewing corridor. Belamy bellowed to a number of his men to follow, as he tried to straighten out a wounded leg. Quill noticed a number of men fleeing back out of the warehouse, a fact explained a moment later when Drax and what looked like a shaved bear rolled out into the street trying to energetically knife/punch/ beat-with-giant-necrobalster each other to death. However, before he could get to enjoy this bizarre sight, he shot into the tunnel, and was presented with a dark corridor lit only by the stars visible thought the giant windows to his left. He then flipped over onto his front and used the control belt to level his flight off at around four feet from the ground before he road-rashed his crotch off on the flooring. The sounds indicated that he was probably being followed by the best part of twenty goons. Good, I can lead them on a merry dance, and so long as they follow and we don't get bogged down fighting them, we should be fine…
At this point, Quill passed Wade Watts running the other way, screaming and clutching one hand to this throat and the other to his groin, chased by a small furred blood-soaked daemon wearing Rocket's stuff and wielding a shock prod, and Gamora. Burning his feet on the floor trying to break suddenly, he realized that they were running towards the party of goons, and turned back as fast as he could. Guessing there was no time for warnings, he just hit the rocket boosters on full blasts shoving them into a side corridor and shot past them, ploughing into Wade and his following goon-squad. Rising to punch the first body in front of him, his foot slipped under him, and he fell badly, his pistols spilling from his hands. He went to reach for them and-
The sound of his own blaster warming up to full charge was as familiar to Quill as the sound of his own breath. It didn't mean he wanted it in his ear at close range.
"Well well well, look what I caught," said Wade, stemming a cut to his throat with one hand as Quill was forced, on his knees, to stare the man square in his suspiciously electrically-burnt crotch. "Hands on head, Starprince, and let me say If I see a trace of the green whore or that fucking rodent again, I'm gonna blow your brains out."
"Aren't you going to do that anyway?" asked Quill, putting his hands on his head, and looking around. Belamy seemed not to have arrived yet, but Wade was a damn good pistol shot, and had retreated out of punching range. Even with the rocket boost, he'd get a shot off before Quill got to him. Glancing behind him he saw a heavy pressure-door, one of many to seal hull-breaches, and not much else.
"Nah, too quick for you. Tell your rodent buddy and the woman to retreat up the corridor, at least ten paces back from the pressure doors," said Wade, pulling out an info glass and checking for life-sighs on it. "Farther back, pretty please."
"Rocket, Gamora, pull back. Unless you guys have a shot, in which case, killing him wouldn't go amiss."
"I can't see squat Quill, just the back of your frickin bald-body head and a fuck-ton of starts."
"Same."
"Yeah, I figured." said Quill, streaming. He was a big believer in the idea that you were measured by the quality of your enemies, and the idea that he'd get wasted by a peace of shit like Wade Watts was sickening. He always figured it would be a smart, Hans Gruber sort that would get him.
Hans Gruber…
Quill looked to Wade and his men, as he begun to gloat at inordinate length, scanning person to person. They all seemed to have the same sort or micro-translator favored by the Ravagers, but none of them seemed to have gone for the option of the atmospheric helmet like him. Quill grinned.
"Hey, dogbreath," he said, derailing Wade mid-gloat about what parts of Rocket he'd feed to Quill while he fucked Gamora. "Didn't Belamy ever warn you about not showboating when you've got a hostile at your mercy? Just kill them, idiot."
Wade stared, angry at being interrupted "What did you call me?"
Quill grinned. "Idiot. Dog breath. Other names come to mind. What's the matter, don't you speak English?"
Wade laughed. "Who in the hell speaks primitive hick Terran languages when you've got translators?"
"Fair point, but I hear there is, like, a two second delay on those if you switch languages suddenly. Speaking of sudden changes in subject, Any of you guys ever seen Die Hard? No? No one? Pity."
"Why?" asked Wade, confused and lowering his pistol a fraction.
"No reason," said Quill, grinning, before shouting "Hey Rocket! Schießen die Fenster!"
There was a moment of awfull, beautiful waiting, where Wade just stared at him, and a brief agony as Quill thought that Rocket hadn't got the reference, but then the distinctive wump of the Hadron Enforcer firing told him that Rocket's enhanced memory and quick wits had got the message, a moment before he saw Wade's jaw drop slack… slacker, if he was being honest… as he got the translation and raised his gun far, far too slowly as behind Wade, Baelamy ran towards the corridor screaming at him not to showboat, and behind Quill the Hadron Enforcer hit the glass and it all went to hell.
Contrary to what Hollywood has taught you, you can survive an explosive de-compression pretty well if you're properly prepared. Quill had his mouth open, so the pressure equaled in his ears and his eardrums didn't burst, and eyes closed so as to stop his tears boiling off as the vacuum lowered the boiling point of liquids to practically nothing. And although there was a loud wind as the air begun to get sucked out, that would last only a fraction of a second before the pressure doors slammed and cut of the section: as the amount or air dropped, the rate it left the station fell rapidly and the force you felt dropped off exponentially. But most importantly, Quill though, it helped to have a damn good airtight helmet, air supply, and rocket boosters complete with spinning moment-control gyros in the buckles and a private air-lock close by. That was really handy.
It didn't stop the sudden drop in pressure outside your body making you piss yourself, but you had to look on the bright side, he thought, as Wade spun helplessly in space, shooting wildly, the recoil from the baster spinning him around. Quill flew over and reclaimed his basters, kicked Wade firmly in the ass as he tried to latch onto Quill's coat, and aligned himself with the Collector's private airlock and boosted towards it, calling Rocket on the comm. "Hey, first officer, nice defenestration of pricks, but can you please open the door for your captain before I die? If that's okay with you."
There was a crackle of static over the comm, weirdly loud in contrast with the completely silent flailing suffocation of Wade and his men as they drifted away, and then Rocket's voice.
"Sure thing Quill. Couple of internal walls between us and the airlock controls, but I think I've got that." He said cheerfully, followed a moment latter by the distinctive flash and smoke of cutting charges visible thought the viewing corridors remaining windows. "Nice thinking there with the windows; I wouldn't dump people into space myself: they'll just drift forever and freeze solid, so sooner or later they'll get in a gravity well and get sucked towards it and hit something really hard and ruin someone's day, but if we're lucky they might hit a dead planet and seed it with bacteria. In a trillion years your descendants can kill a whole planet of assholes. But not bad thinking. A solid seven out of ten."
"No problem," replied Quill, starting to feel uncomfortably hot as the vacuum trapped his body heat around him. But the good news is it should boil off the urine before I get back in, he thought, watching the airlock pop open in front of hm. Thank god for small mercies.
As Quill waited for the outer door to shut, Rocket and Gamora took the opportunity to assess their situation on the security monitors at the airlock. It could have been far worse, but it could have been far better, and as Rocket mechanically worked thought the lock controls, he kept half an eye on Gamora running through the holo-feed channels, frowning.
"Still no sign of Belamy?" he asked, focusing on not crushing Quill with the outer door, as it slammed slut and he begun to aerate the chamber. Gamora shook her head.
"None. I suppose it's possible he got sucked out when you blew the window, he was running that way, but I didn't see him, and besides…"
"Yeah. Our luck ain't that good. As a team, I vote we don't call 'em as dead until I'm sitting on the carcass. It's a rule stood me in good stead over the years."
"Agreed; Thanos had a similar rule," she said, not looking away from the channels as she flicked though with practiced ease, culling the useful information and winnowing away chaff. She paused a second on Drax, still brawling with Hue Watts and getting the worst of it, and narrowed her eyes. Rocket glanced up, as he begun to activate the inner doors.
"Yeah, we need to deal with that first, but that security panel is still our best chance to find Belamy before he finds us. We need to help Drax as fast as possible, and then take our short-cut."
"Our short-cut?" asked Gamora, tightening her grasp on the sword. Rocket nodded.
"Yeah. We keep looking for Belamy, of course, and I'll sync my glass to the security station to help with that, but we both know where he's going. We came into his home and fucked with his family; only one place he'll go now," he said, grimly. Gamora nodded.
"Back to the Milano, to repay the favor. Rocket, look if you need to run now, save Groot-"
Rocket shook his head. "Thanks, but we're faster together. I've got a short-cut but it needs Quill and you an' Drax to pull it off. Besides, Groot's safe; I still got that remote we crushed Ker with. Brelamy gets within a hundred yards of the ship I'm taking it off and emptying the cannons."
Gamora nodded, relieved, resting a hand on her forehead to focus, and then she snorted with laughter.
"Sorry, it's just, how is it that we only ever get along this well when someone is trying to kill us or when we're mocking Quill?"
"You and me, or the whole team?" asked Rocket, booting the door open and wrinkling his nose as Quill stormed out guns ready "I dunno. I guess the small stuff like how we disagree on everything doesn't matter as much right now. And its thing only thing we're all good at and the only thing you and me think alike on."
"What's the only thing the both of you think alike about?" said Quill, slamming down the helmet and snatching up Gamora's canteen; a hard vacuum left you thirsty, even if you had your own air supply.
"How Drax is the most attractive male on the crew," said Gamora, deadpan and she begun to jog away towards where Drax and Hue were trying to beat down walls with each other's faces and Quill and Rocket double-paced behind. "I mean the whole questing widower thing is very sexy, and he's just so ripped."
"What? Him?" said Quill, aghast.
"Oh yeah," said Rocket, not missing a beat. "I mean, putting aside the fact you're all disgusting bald-bodied freaks and I'm totally not into any queer shit or nothin', I'd totally go for him over you. It's those abs," added Rocket, very nearly but not quite hiding the chortle at the end of the sentence.
Quill ran along for a moment, and then his brain caught up.
"Oh. Fuck you two! We're in middle of a running battle and you still take a break to fuck with me?"
"Well, yanno, might not live to get another chance," said Rocket, as they rounded the corner back into the industrial park where they sprung their ambush, "and besides, she started it!" he said, as they entered the warehouse the Watts had been using as a base and came across a scene of utter carnage. "Oh crap," he said, skidding to a halt and readying his gun by reflex. Quill had to agree.
Hue Watts was making huge, swinging bull-runs at Drax, and although Drax was nimbly dodging them and even landing a punch or two, he seemed unable to knock the man down or get him in a hold that would floor him, and the larger, clumsier Hue was taking advantage of that to pound on Drax each time he stumbled or didn't quite dodge a rush. As Quill watched, Drax dodged to one side, got an opening for his knives, hesitated, and then got flattened with a punch to the sternum and ruled up again, cursing.
"What the hell!" yelled Quill. "Drax, you could have had him there!"
"This man appears to be possessed of a genuine learning impairment!"
"…so?"
"I can't kill a disabled person! It would be like killing a child!"
"Oh for god's sakes," said Quill, face palming and resting a hand on his hip as Hue threw Drax around again. "He's huge, he's going to kill you if you don't kill him!"
"I am trying to avenge my family! I. Will. Not. Hurt an innocent."
"Just man up and Of Mice and Men him so we can go home! We're missing Gilligan!"
"Quill!" snapped Gamora in moral outrage.
"Quill!" snapped Rocket, as Hue realized they were there and begun desperately barreling towards them.
Quill sighed. "Oh all right," he said, flipping his baster to Taser mode. "I was going to suggest we stun him eventually. I'm not a complete monster you know," he added, shooting Hue in the face as he bore down on them. In doing so he shorted out the electrode in the pleasure centre of Hue's brain, and his face broke into an expression of rapturous ecstasy and he slumped over backwards into a pillow of pure bliss. Quill and the rest frowned, not having seen that response to Tasers to the head before, and formed a small huddle around him. He grinned up at Quill, ecstatic.
"I… love… you," he said to Quill.
They all took a second to take that in.
"Well look on the bright side Captain; at least someone prefers you to Drax."
"Go knock over a birdfeeder, hairball. Come on. We need to deal with this… somehow… later… but mostly find Belamy."
"We're way ahead of you on that," said Gamora, folding her arms and nodding to Rocket. "Rocket and I agree he's most likely heading for the Milano and Rocket has a plan to beat him there. Don't you?"
Rocket grinned. "Yeah, but I'm not sure you three will like it…."
"Okay, just so I understand," said Quill. "Why couldn't we just use my rocket boosters for this, Rocket?"
"Because I can't fit in your boosters and my gun is gene coded so you can't use the matter scrambler. I need to be here, where the bone in Knowhere's skull is weak. Me, at this spot. And this spot happens to be twelve feet above ground and you couldn't find a ladder so why don't we all shut up, stop playing with your speed-dial settings, Quill, and let me work," said Rocket, wobbling slightly as he struggled to keep his balance. He re-adjusted his aim, and prepped the matter scrambler to fire. "A little to the left," he demanded.
Drax and Hue shuffled over, Hue vaguely stroking Quill leg which was quite distracting for Quill, and tired not to drop Gamora and Quill, who held Rocket to the Sutra-line in the skull of Knowhere. After a brief burst of weak force, the bone collapsed into goo, and Rocket fell thought to the other side. Swearing and coughing at the stench, Gamora, Quill, and Drax piled through.
It was a good short cut, cutting back onto Knowhere's main drag near the bar they seemed to keep winding up at when they caught sight of Belamy ducking through there to reach the docks. Quill moved quickly to intercept.
"Rocket, Drax flank him, run around the front door, me and Gamora will follow through the back."
"On it boss."
"Affirmative."
Quill and Gamora pounded up the rear steps to the bar, across the veranda with the good view over one of Knowhere's 'Eyes.'
"Hey Gamora! This is where we first almost-kissed!"
"Time and a place, Peter, for Fuck's sakes!"
"I guess!" said Peter Quill, kicking open the back batwing doors and sailing thought with rocket boosters, firing of a Taser shot at the feeling figure, just in case it wasn't Belamy. As it turns out, it was, and his shot knocked a blaster out of one of his hands. He turned sharply, and pointed the other one of the pair. Quill would have fired and dammed the consequences if it was pointed at him, but it was aimed behind him, at Gamora, so he hesitated.
Belamy panted, like a wounded animal. He'd been crying, and looked certifiably insane, and for that, at least, Quill couldn't blame him.
"You killed Wade," he said. The slow fuse seemed to have burnt out, for the first time in his life, and whatever was left of Belamy Watts was cold.
"Yep. Sucked him into space."
"And Hue?"
"Wouldn't say he's unchanged, but he's unharmed. Shock to the brain like that, who knows who he'll be when or if the head-rush wears off. He'll be fine. We wouldn't hurt someone who didn't know better. You, on the other hand…"
"Me? Hell, all I did was protect my kin, right or wrong. You think of all the bad things you did because your daddy Yondu said to, think of the sort of people you run with now, Gamora the assassin, Drax the Destroyer, mother-fucking-Rocket! And you stand up for them? Ain't no difference, Quill. You stand's up for your own, right or wrong. Simple as it. And don't say I forced you to this, Wade asked you to join us, I asked you to walk away. You could have left anytime, you chose to stay and take this place for your own, just like me; I know you boy. You killed my Wade and thirty of my men, and for what? So you are top dog and not me?"
"The people here deserve better than you and Count Bling," said Quill.
Belamy grinned.
"Then let's let the people choose. I still got men here. You think you and Nova can do better for them? Prove it. All in favor of Star-prince here, step forward!" he said, sarcastically. Quill felt the bar's patrons try to shrink into the walls around him, and pretend they weren't there.
So what? he thought. "Okay, I've seen high noon," he started. "I know how this works. No-one puts their neck on the line for the crusading Sheriff, and frankly, I wouldn't either. But have you seen Nova planets? They ain't that bad. And you know why? Because shit like this doesn't happen on them! Come on guys, law and order, isn't that hard; if it was, cops wouldn't be able to do it! I'm not saying I can guarantee my crew will be better protectors of you than the Watta gang, but my crew's never raped anyone, my patron Nova has more guns than Count Bling, and if you hadn't noticed, the Watts gang is becoming an endangered species in these parts. I'm not saying be selfless and moral, I'm saying be selfish and moral. Best of both worlds! Because we can offer you a raping-free alterative, and we can also wipe the floor with this sorry sack of shit," said Quill, as Drax and Rocket stepped in behind Belamy. Gamora raised her target pistol slowly to Belamy's head, and Quill was instantly gratified that the barman produced a laser riffle and aimed it squarely at Belamy. Quill pulled down his helmet dramatically, to take advantage of the slightly robotic voice.
"Your move, creep."
Belamy scowled, and lowered his blaster. "Real man with a mob behind you. Too frightened to take it outside?"
Quill heard the objections from his crew, mostly of the "are you insane" type, but at that point it was too late. A fellow Ravager had called him out. He had to answer. Not hearing, he walked out the front door. Belamy followed.
They lined up on the main street, Belamy sneered, and rolled his eyes, Quill noticed, and spat, and told Quill to give him the count of three. They both readied their blasters, as Quill counted.
"One." He said. He heard Gamora move behind him.
Belamy scowled.
"Two". Drax and Rocket took their positions.
Quill was about to say three when Belamy rolled his eyes again, and Quill remembered what he'd said about still having men.
Quill hit the deck firing before three, moving his aim up in an arch, like the direction Belamy's eyes had taken. He got one goon on a roof-top as Belamy's shots spun over him (who fell off the roof, clutching at his wound and screaming), and as he rolled along in the arch, he saw Drax's knives and Gamora's laser take four more, before the Milano's cannon opened up and begun to shred the rooftops as Rocket blew off steam. He dropped his aim and fired at Belamy, but he'd ducked behind cover and yelled, "I told you I had more boys, Quill!"
"They all as loyal to your family as Asov was?" asked Quill running up to his position. He was pretty sure he was to the left of that dumpster…
"Who?" asked Belamy, popping up to the right of the dumpster and holding a blaster to Quill's head. Quill held out his guns in surrender, but ginned under his helmet. Showboating again!
"Let me remind you. Comms! Speed-dial, Asov Wallet!" said Quill.
Belamy didn't even have the time to tighten his trigger finger before the button-sized comms-activated detonator Quill had put in the wallet went off, and ruptured the credit-card sized fuel-cell from the pistol Drax broke, messily removing everything below Belamy's left knee. Quill moved to one side and stanched the blaster before he could reflex-fire, and then kicked him in his remaining knee. After he went down, he looked at him impassively for a second, before stamping on his leg-stump, hard. Belamy screamed, but Quill kept up pressure on his femoral artery for long enough for him to get a robot tourniquet out of a pocket and drop it. He screamed again as the ratchets tightened, but he'd live.
Rocket and Gamora stared.
"You… you." Said Gamora.
"Planed ahead using what I had to hand. Yeah. I was a Ravager for most of my life: If I didn't do cunning occasionally, I'd be dead. Come on."
"You… you could have done that at any frickin' point you liked?" asked Rocket, aghast.
Quill looked confused. "Yeah well, it only counts as cleaning up the town if you have a gunfight in the main drag. Come on guys, get with the program. Don't make me make you watch Bonanza."
"Quill!" said Drax.
"Yeah I know it was a little show-boaty, but so long as you don't monologue you should be safe…"
"Quill!" said Gamora, and he saw their stares, and begun to turn.
Belamy rose up like last night's drunken takeaway, blaster in hand, and Quill reached for his, as time slowed to the ancient and noble duel of the old west-
-And Belamy's blue skin lit up and turned green, and his skeleton lit up inside him as his flesh sloughed off in stinking waves leaving a screaming, leering, glowing skeleton in a cowboy hat and wielding a laser gun like Meatloaf and the Grateful Dead's lovechild, and his bones fell to the floor and crumbled into dust.
Quill Gamora and Drax looked in horror, and then Quill threw up a little in his mouth.
"Like I said." said Rocket. "Rearrange." He stated, lowering the matter scrambler as it emitted a noxious green gas eye-watering even over the aroma of Watts soup. He looked around.
"So the bounty on these guys was dead or alive, right?"
"You are never allowed to fire that again. " said Quill.
"Agreed," Gamora added.
"What, this is bullshit, I save your ass and this is the thanks I get?"
"We've established that irradiating us all and melting people isn't saving us! Drax, hand up, now! There, three to one, never used again."
"Oh, come on!" yelled Rocket. "I'm covered in blood in pain and I saved you, like, twice today. Can't I just melt the occasional person?"
"Let me think about it…. HELL NO! And for that matter, get the water re-connected, I want a shower that doesn't involve you wielding a loofa at shin height! And some gas for the tanks, and we need to get some food and medical kit and-"
And with that first colossal argument, the Guardians established their base on Knowhere.
Home is where the heart is. Or where the giant head is, at least.
Awsome Mix tape Vol 2: Homeward Bound- Simon and Garfunkel.
