Wayward Son: Dead or Alive
Peter Jason Quill slammed the pressure door behind him and, frantically, played the rewind sound of his Walkman to the locking mechanism. There was a brief fizz of electronics, and the door locked and shut down in a way that would take hours to open again. Edging down the corridor cautiously with his back to the wall, and feeling insanely like Shaggy from Scooby Doo as he did so, he reached the junction near the team's last known location, and peered around a buttress at the action across the lightwell. It took him a second to understand what he was seeing.
"Oh no, Rocket… you wouldn't have, would you?" he muttered.
Kraglin was sweating through his shirt even through the calm, cool quiet of his cockpit's climate control system, as he edged the Obfonteri round slowly using the RCS. Dag-nabit Quill, ruining my paintwork like that… Taking a great deal of care to get it right, he lined up his cannons and then, after a moment's consideration, got his gunner to take the safety off his missile pods as well. Normally he would have laughed at that, especially when the target was already covered by half the guns in the Ravengers in a loose semicircle some twenty paces across, and holding nothing more deadly than a baby tree.
Kraglin hadn't spent much time with Quill's crew when they were aboard, preparing for the attack on Ronan, but he'd seen the cyborg's flying, and given he'd handled a Ravenger fighter single-handed in a way many a pilot and gunner couldn't dream off, he wasn't taking no chances. Besides: anyone crazy enough to crash their ship into the bridge of a Kree dreadnought wasn't someone you took unnecessary risks with.
"Hey Whiskers! What's this I hear about you making problems?" he yelled, booting up the com and taking refuge in familiar brash vulgarity.
The creature looked up to him, and over the com he heard its voice a moment after the lips moved.
"Buddy, I'm here to fix them. You want Quill and his crew, alive?"
"Yeah? " replied Kraglin, wondering just how negotiable the alive part of the deal was.
"Well then it's your lucky day, short stuff." yelled the creature, oblivious of the irony. "You got them, signed, sealed, and delivered. You want them, I want out, so take me to Yondu so we can work out some sorta trade."
"Trade? I don't see no Peter Quill there."
"And I don't see no money here: you don't put all you got up front, then agree a deal, do ya? You hear me out, reach an agreement, I can get you Quill." said Rocket, hefting Groot into a more comfortable position on his shoulder and trying to stop him reaching for Gamora. Kraglin snorted.
"And why shouldn't I just blow you and your pal to vapour and then look for Quill myself?" The creature shrugged.
"Honestly? That what I'd' probably do, but then again, do you remember the last time you guys tried to find Quill in this place? He had to call you and give you his location: it's a maze wrapped up in a labyrinth hidden in a warren that we've fucked the internal sensors of, and even if they've got no plans to help us, how long you reckon Yondu's gonna be able to stay here with that Nova fleet eyeing up his ass? Sooner or later some idiot will get bored or spooked or political and fire off a shot, and then we've got a nice little shooting war. You want to get Quill and head home, I want to get out with me and Groot intact. I can find Quill. You can't. Speaking as one first mate to another, we need each other."
Kraglin watched for a long time, thumbs on the fire controls.
"Cuff him. Plicks, a blindfold would not go amiss either now."
"Fuck." said Rocket, putting down Groot carefully keeping his other hand visible and kneeling with both hands on his head before laying himself out on the floor in the approved manner. "Blindfolds? I knew I shouldn't have frickin' trusted Quill when he said not to expect any kinky shit." Plick's' boot to the back on the neck and gun to his head shut him up as the cuffs went on, and Kraglin made sure that Plicks was careful to do them up behind his back, so hard they drew blood. Two crewmen smashed a pair of sliding steel doors from their runners and begun to cuff and then strap Quill's other two companions to the improvised stretchers and fitted some lift-units to them. As Plicks blindfolded the other prisoner and loaded the damn tree onto one of the stretchers where it sat looking around, confused, he called in the Galley to let Yondu know what was going on and check that Hess had been cut out of his ship in one piece. As he did so he glanced down to his chronometer. It felt like days, but as he checked he saw it had been just over an hour since the crew had entered the station, and already they had Quill's crew captured, Yondu had reached the Milano and taken her without a fight. Everything was going better than planned, when you thought about it.
Kraglin watched nervously, as Plicks tied the blindfold, and then the creature's ears and whiskers twitched, and it turned sightlessly right to him and watched him through the armour-crys of his cockpit. Everything's going better than planned, he reminded himself, So why does it feel like the rat is the only one who wants to be in this situation?
I wish Quill was still with us. he thought morosely. He'd know how to handle this shit.
"Fuck!" yelled Quill, kicking over some old couple's trashcan in frustration, a safe distance a couple of blocks away.
"Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckety fuckety fuck fuck balls damn ass fuck! FUCK!" he yelled, moving on to kicking the shit out of some panelling at the side of the building. "Fuck you, Rocket! Fuck you in your furry little traitorous ass! Fuck man! Fuck! I should never have trusted a fucking Chuck E. Cheese character with my crew! You've got a bandit mask and everything! Fuck you, you freaky little Disney reject! Fuck! This is all your fault!" he yelled, leaning back on the side off the house, and covering his eyes with his hands.
"Fuck." he said, far more quietly. "Fuck, this is all my fault. I told you to sell out if it looked like you couldn't make it out alive. I fucking ordered you to. I didn't put Groot out of harm's way like you wanted, I didn't plan ahead properly, I gloated to Yondu when we could have bluffed him into running when Nova showed, and I fucking dumped all this on you and ordered you to get Drax and Gamora out alive. I fucked up, and you did what I ordered you to. Oh…. Fuck me, I screwed up." he said, slumping down to the ground. On the lawn of the abandoned house, he sat and looked up at Knowhere's bone ceiling, hundreds of meters above him, and laughed.
"And the sensor net is tied to the console in the Collector's place, synced to your infoglass, and I'm carrying about a thousand of your stupid sound-activated triggers, all of which probably have some sort of tracking device in them. All you need to do is look down at your glass, point me out to Kraglin, and I'm Yondu's. Well played, little buddy. You got me." he said, rolling over to peek around the corner to where Rocket stood with the Ravengers, waiting for the moment that the Raccoon looked down at the pad, pointed to him, and that this whole ridiculous debacle was finally over. He's gonna have to play it like a hard-ass or Yondu will skin him faster than you can say 'King of the wild frontier'. But deep down, we'll both know he was only following orders. My orders, you dumbass Peter. he thought, watching and waiting for Rocket to point down at him, and for it all to be over.
Rocket looked around, and then lay down on the floor, arms stretched out like he was being busted by the cops, and then a bunch of Ravengers cuffed and blind-folded him and began to load him into the back of the Obfonteri none too gently, followed by Drax and Gamora.
"No, no no no buddy, that's not how it works, just tell them where I am you idiot!" he hissed. "Don't hold out, you don't know these guys like I do, they'll kill you, you stupid flea-bag! You can't just go and double cross these people without some sort of plan, stupid….. Plan." he said, slowly to himself. He looked to a near-by sensor packet, mounted to the wall. It was still dead. He looked back to the Obfonteri as it begun to hover slowly down the street, in the direction of the warehouse where they'd stashed the Milano, and the direction of the private airlock that surely must have the Galley moored outside. Slowly his face broke into a huge grin.
"Dammit Rocket, you cunning little fox, you got a plan don't ya?" he pulled up his helmet, expecting to get some sort of message over the coms, some sort of clue…. Nothing.
"Come on, Rocket, come on…. Dammit." he said, lowering the mask and frowning. "What's the plan, Buddy? What do you need me to do? Okay Quill, focus dude…. Think like Rocket, think like Rocket..."
He tried squinting harder at the retreating ship and then in desperation propped himself up on his elbows, put two fingers to each temple like Yuri Gellar, and frowned and gurned at the ship, contorting his face constipatedly as he sweated and muttered under his breath. "Get in his head, get in his head… guns are sexy… Groot is my life partner… steal Quill's shit and dunk his sandwiches in the sink… get in his head… Fuck!" he yelled, rolling back into the cover of the yard, and raging on the floor like a toddler, before picking himself up. "Dammit Rocket, I don't even know what's supposed to be happening in my head with my plans, how the fuck am I supposed to work out what you're cooking up!" he yelled, frustrated, getting up. "What am I supposed to do?" he yelled, kicking an ugly As'kcavarian gnome across the lawn in a fit of pique as he resumed taking out his temper on a random old couple's garden.
"But I've got to do something, Rocket! Grrrr! You're. Making. Me. Beat. Up. GRASS!"
Kraglin waited till the outer doors slammed shut before he took the blindfold off the prisoner. He'd got Plicks to keep a hand on its shoulder at all times, and he kept his hand on the butt of his pistols as he watched the creature's reaction to having the 'fold removed.
Rocket glanced around the airlock once or twice, and then noticed Kraglin looking.
"What?" he asked, as aggressively as ever.
"Figured you'd asked where we were, or where we put your buddies." Rocket snorted.
"You left Drax and Gamora in the warehouse, moved Groot over to the Galley through the docking port, and then moved me in after he was through, splitting us up to make me nervous as your intentions. Took the long route to the warehouse too, up Second Street… What?" he asked, and Kraglin's surprised expression hardened and he adjusted the grip on the pistol. "Hey pal, Plick here might have some spectacular body odour, but after twenty-three prisons it's gonna take a little more than some bald-body's lack of hygiene to throw off this sense of smell." He smirked slightly, as his ears and whiskers moved in the still air of the little room between the two pressure doors. "Port For'ard airlock. You're taking me straight to the bridge. Servos in the door could use a little work, by the sounds of it. Your moment control gyro too."
"Shut up." said Kraglin, annoyed his attempt to disorientate the prisoner hadn't worked. "Least we got a back-up osmotic membrane."
"Exactly, now I've been bugging Quill about that for months, and he won't do anything about it."
"Boy always was lazy." muttered Kraglin, pushing an eye to the scanner by the door, after a moment it blooped and the door hissed open a little shakily: the servos could use a little work. Rocket snorted with wry amusement.
"Really? That's how you control ingress? Corvax Biometrics? A child could beat the security on those: buy some Gleet biofilters or some shit! Half the time they don't even work! False positives every second go!" he said, as he was marched past a row of control banks he didn't look at with studied disinterest.
"We fitted a second biometric protocol: the locks won't work unless they pick up a second inorganic key, usually a wire implanted in the eyelid." called a voice. "Same system protects our ship's core from external access; you don't pass the biometrics, you don't get into our computing system, so you can stop a' coveting those controls consoles from out the corner of your eye, or I swear you'll lose it." said Yondu, turning in his captain's chair to face Rocket as the crew marched him in. He gestured lazily to an area of floor, empty except for a child's booster seat, looted no doubt from one of Knowhere's family-friendly underworld drinking dens. The various assembled cutthroats and villains laughed at this, but Rocket looked past it at Yondu and grinned in a way that didn't contain even the slight trace of humour.
"I'll stand." he hissed, through clenched teeth. Yondu shrugged.
"Your funeral. Thought you might like to die sitting down, but kneeling or standing is fine by us, we ain't formal, are we boys?" he asked, pulling back his coat to reveal his arrow as the crew roared their approval. Rocket looked from Yondu, to a containment field over Yondu's left shoulder. Trapped in that spinning blue light, Groot placed both fronds on the force-fields and yelled. Rocket couldn't hear what he was saying. Then again, I've never needed to, he thought.
"I thought we had a deal."
"Deal? Well I never agreed to any deal with you, did I now?" he said, raising both hands like a used groundcar salesman telling you it was his final offer. "All you did was turn on your two crewmates and make some claims about being able to find Quill. Seen' as I've got no reason to trust someone who just turned on two of his friends to save his own fleabit hide, and seen' as you four were pinned down and about to be taken by my men as it was, why should I accept any deal of yours when you were only gonna pay me with my own coin? Your friends were as good as mine when you stunned 'em. Ain't no deal if you can't give me nothin', boy. What you think, Kraglin? Heart or gut with the arrow?"
"Knees, Cap'n: Count Bligh will pay triple for that one alive. I believe fire-ants and honey were mentioned as to why."
"Aye? So they were. Seems like a waste of a good pelt to me."
"Only if they start eatin' him from the outside. I believe a very large funnel was mentioned." said Kraglin, looking to Rocket. "Lubricant wasn't."
Rocker snorted. "Bligh always was a sentimental old fuck. And I got something to offer you." he said, nodding his head sideways at the bulk of Knowhere out the window.
"A certain Peter Look-at -me-I'm-Starlord Quill, who I note is absent from this little sorority meet."
Yondu snorted. "Well, unless you've got him stashed about your person, then I don't see why I need you to get that boy. Me and my crew with find him, aye, and we'll deal with him our own way, and Bligh be damned. So I recommend you explain yourself as to why I might need you, and you keep a civil tongue in your head, we are a party of respectable gentlemen adventurers." he said, as his crew roared with laughter. "One more word of sass out of you, cargo, and you'll be spending the trip back to Bligh stowed in a locker with nothin' but a bucket to piss in."
Rocket snorted, and to Yondu's surprise, let out a burst of apparently genuine laughter.
"I'm sorry, is that supposed to be a threat? Ahahahah- I… sorry. Pal, I grew up in a polymer box this big by this big by this big." he said, holding his arms out. "I couldn't stretch, and not as in, I couldn't stretch my arms and tippy-toes way out, but couldn't stretch as in I couldn't unbend my spine unless they took me out for testing. A bucket to piss in? Do you have any idea what I'd have done for a frickin' bucket?"
"And your old buddy Bligh and his funnel o' ants?" said Yondu, leaning across his chair casually to hide just how unsettling that comment was. And I thought my life was fucked up.
"What you do to piss him off anyhow?" asked Yondu.
Rocket shrugged. "I robbed a bank."
"So?"
"Turns out it was his bank."
"Wow boy... just wow. Not smart. Didn't no one teach you not to shit where you eat?"
"Like I said, it was a small box." Rocket shrugged "He's pissed, but I can work something out with him. I don't know about you, but Bligh is all about profit before pleasure. If he were here, we'd be talking about how I could bring him Quill."
"U-huh? And how's that? And don't say something' dumb about using your special friendship with him to lure him out, or damn Bligh, I'll shish-kebab you myself."
Rocket paused "You mean with the arrow, right? Because you hear stories about pirates… yanno never mind. Look, we knew you'd want to find us fast, and we knew that we'd have to make it hard on you. You're not the only one who can hook up a decent bit of biometric security: the station's internal sensor grid is locked up tighter than a prison warden's ass, and it can only be unlocked by one of Quill's crew, from one location. Unless you want to go knocking on doors to find him and finding out just how impossible to govern this damn place is while Nova breathes down your backs and gets closer and closer to deciding to intervene to protect civilians, then you need me to un-fuck the sensors so you can find Quill. "
Yondu paused, swivelling on his chair and grinning evilly as he considered this. "And what would you get out of this particular arrangement, do you think? 'Cause your stripy soon to be funnelled ass is worth a lot to us. One way or another I'm delivering you to Bligh."
"And I have no problem with that." said Rocket. Yondu stared, genuinely too surprised for thought.
"What."
"Well, I'd like to pass on the whole inventively tortured to death thing, but I have no objection of going back to Count Bligh: like I said, he's a pragmatist. I can make him an offer I think he'd take."
"What's that?" asked Kraglin.
"Me. I have skills he could always use: I was his top mechanic for a while, he can always use that."
Kraglin hesitated. "When you say mechanic, do you mean mechanic, or do you mean…"
"Let's just say I've got both skills sets covered. Look, Bligh wants me, you want Quill, we both give them what they want."
"And you get?" asked Yondu, starting to suspect he knew.
Rocket nodded over his shoulder. "Let Groot go. Stick him on an M class someplace and let him be."
"Him?" asked Yondu. "Hell, I've seen what he can do, he's dangerous. Name one reason why I shouldn't put him through a woodchipper and burn what's left before he can grow back again?"
Rocket growled reflexively, and Kraglin and a dozen Ravengers had pistols on him before he could move. Yondu raised his hand, and the guns slowly lowered (but not Kraglin's, not just yet: even cuffed, he'd moved faster than he thought) so Rocket could speak.
"Dangerous?" The cyborg gave a completely-not-faked laugh "That shmuck? He's harmless. Look at him, he's a kid! You wanna get a rep as a guy who hurts kids?"
"No. No I don't, but seems I remember last time he was on my ship he was plenty grown. Seems to me that anyone who was an adult last time we met counts as an adult now." Rocket laughed, for once perhaps a mite nervously.
"Yondu, man, he's had his brain fried: he's rebuilding his mind as well as his body. He's basically a child."
"He waved to me and Kraglin as we brought him in. He remembers us."
"Yeah but man he's… it's like he's got his memories, but not the adult processing that goes with them. Think of him as having the memories of an adult, but filtered through the mind of a child."
There was a tense moment as Yondu and the Ravengers considered this.
"Like Quill?" asked Kraglin.
"Exactly! See, how is he the only one that doesn't see that?" asked Rocket, relief coming of him in waves.
"Okay, so the plant gets a walk. What about Drax and Gamora?"
Rocket waved a paw dismissively. "What's Bligh offering for them? Standard bounties? They have an account, do some work for Nova, if you handed them to Nova, you might get a better price than Bligh. Hell, he just wants them out of the way right? Play your cards right, you could get paid for them twice. Plus," he said, leading in conspiratorially. A hundred pirates leaned in to eavesdrop. "They got a load of info on Infinity Stones, and they hate Thanos something fierce. You free them, you track them, could be you get your paws on something more than one of Quill's plastic toys. Or yanno, whatever. Hand them over to Bligh and it's no fur off my ass. Four billion credits, but I dunno, perhaps you'd rather have another console decoration rather than risk it." he said, shrugging.
"But it's only four billion units. Perhaps one of Quill's Lego's would look really nice there."
"He still has those?" asked Kraglin, disbelievingly.
"You frickin' kidding me? I made the mistake of touching that stupid Terran space-guy with the broken helmet and that dumb construction worker and he nearly had a fit. It's like he thinks that one's special or something." He turned to Yondu. "So, Yondu. We got a deal? Or are you going to spend the whole trip to see Bligh wondering if you've made the worst mistake of your life?"
Yondu Udonta hunched low in his chair, swivelling it from side to side and drumming his fingers on the arm rests.
"You make a mighty fine deal for a set of whiskers and spite, and although I'm not of the inclination to let others do our work for us, I'm inclined to take you up on your offer… if you can answer me one question."
"Shoot." said Rocket, shrugging as cockily as you could with your hands cuffed behind your back.
Yondu grinned evilly. "What makes you think I can't find Quill on my own?"
The crew laughed evilly, and seeing the looks they gave him, Rocket realized with his second jolt of real fear that day that they'd been humouring him all this time.
"What?" he asked.
Whrrrrrrriiip!
The arrow hit him hard enough to pierce the graphene of his body-glove and knock him to the floor, and with a gentle whistling he felt it slice into him easily, pushing him into the deck as the tip moved through his cybernetically enhanced pectoral muscles and stopped just above his heart. He'd expected it to feel hot, given the radiation it must emit, but it must have been fiercely efficient in producing thrust and levitation without waste heat, because it was cold, so very, very cold.
Cold as the laughter of the crew.
"Not a man alive the captain can't track." said Kraglin, not unkindly over the jeering. "Don't need footprints, or tracks, or scent or nothing. Captain wants to know where you are, captain finds you."
"That I do." said Yondu, his skull-ridge glowing. "Get a cryotube, Kraglin, I've no intention on missing out on the triple pay we'll get for this scrap of felt alive, but don't mean I'm gonna miss out on running him through. Point of death is good enough for Bligh, he's got the resources to rez' you again and again if he needs to. You don't play games with me, boy. Time you learnt that. Time your friends learnt that. Past time for Quill. So, goodbye, Rocket-"
"You still won't find Quill." he yelled, "You just think you can because you're Centaurian! And I don't have' friends, I got Groot."
There was a pause, and his mouth tasted coppery from adrenaline and blood and he could hear his own heart, and he felt the fear, and thought how good it would be to just stop running from it and give in and let Yondu finish it, like someone should have so long ago…
He saw a small pair of tendrils, beating at the force field over Yondu's shoulder.
I don't have' friends, I got Groot.
He forced his fear down, and swallowed it and let the anger that he'd felt for so long fill him instead, and just in time too.
Yondu glared, and gave the arrow a 90 degree twist, making Rocket gasp. When he spoke, he was sandpaper and silk.
"What you say, boy?"
Rocket, dug into the the rage, and let it fill him, and laughed. High, cackling crazy laughter that shook his frail body and dug him onto the arrow like a flensing knife, and he didn't care.
"Ahahaha, ha, they don't know, do they? Your own crew, and they don't know, eh? Not all of them! I bet they think that your head glows because that's what's controlling that arrow, yeah? I wonder how long it took the smarter ones to realise that it couldn't be that and the whistling both. Why would you need to arrrrrg, gods that hurts… to whistle if that glowing implant did it? How old was Quill when he worked it out?" said Rocket, guessing. I have no idea if Quill ever worked it out, but I read about Centaurians, I got to bluff this, and bluff it good or I'm toast…
Kebab. Antfood. Whatever.
Yondu glared, but then lowered his gaze and ran a hand over his skull-ridge, contemplatively. "Everyone out."
"But captain…" someone complained. Yondu snarled. "Everyone OUT!... Not you, Kraglin,. Cover him." Kraglin stared, but pulled his gun on the pinned raccoon anyway, as the crew looked to him to guidance.
"What, you all deaf from the As'kcavarian Clap? Captain doing cap'n stuff, clear out!"
There was an awkward pause as Kraglin caught Rocket's eye, and shrugged. He had no clue what was going on.
"When did Quill work it out?" Rocket asked, when the door slammed shut.
"Can't recall. Pretty young, aye. Always a smart kid. Did he tell you?"
"Tell him what, captain?" asked Kraglin. Yondu glanced over, then looked back to Rocket and repeated.
"Did Quill tell you? If so, one more thing I got to kill him for."
"I already knew." said Rocket, completely truthfully. "The guys who made me, they were pretty interested in rare species, guess that includes you. Their data was mostly shit, old spacers' tales. The picture I saw was an old artist's impression, didn't look much like you, but hell, looks like you've had some bod-mods." He made a groaning sound, and coughed some blood. "Hell, who ain't? Not a remarkable species, except for that limited empathic potential. Strong with animals, less so with sentients. That skull thingy, it's not controlling the arrow is it? It's letting you aim at my life-signs. Target vital points. You can't track for shit, you can just feel life-signs and recognise them. Right?"
"Yep, and why shouldn't I just do that to Quill, and find him?" asked Yondu, holding the arrow in Rocket's flesh. He noticed Kraglin's look and shrugged. "Wouldn't do for the crew to hear that, but the rat's basically right. So why shouldn't I use it to find Quill."
Rocket shrugged, and immediately wished he hadn't. It was agony. "Didn't seem to work that well last time you were here. Lot of different sentient species in Knowhere, and as it's a space station, no ecosystem to speak of. Guessing it don't work so well if there's no frickin' biosphere to tap into. He'll know that, hide in crowded areas, confuse the signal. I can find him faster."
Yondu seemed to consider this. "Nah, I still think I can find him, it ain't that hard, see?" he said, and the skull ridge flared a deep cherry red and Rocket felt his mind reach out to his and-
Rocket stood before the Infinity Stone.
It seemed much larger here, in his dreams. Aware as one sometimes is of one's dreaming state but unable to shake it, Rocket walked towards the Stone.
He felt the weight of it, big and small, light and heavy at the same time. He could reach out and touch it, if he wanted to. He pictured that girl in the Collector's office, disintegrating from the inside out, exploding into raw power, and somehow, it didn't seem that bad an idea.
Especially as he could feel the heat of the fire behind, smell the burnt fur, hear the sounds, and mixed into that the hunting calls of Jaegers (but even in the dream he knew that was impossible, that happened much, much later) and the mocking laughter of his cellmate at Oldmotte and the sound of Lylla screaming and his voice, calling him: all the things he wanted so bad to put behind him and it all seemed so clear now that he reached out a paw delicately to it, claws millimetres from touching it, that he never had to go back to it if he didn't want to and-
Groot needs you.
He hesitated, and took his paw away. Groot was staring at him, from the same position relative to him as he'd been in Yondu's bridge. The ship was gone, but they were both still there.
"Groot?" he asked.
-and he was lying on the cold and none too clean metal of the galley's bridge, and Yondu Udonta was clutching at his skull ridge, and the arrow was embedded in the ceiling and still vibrating wildly and Kraglin was waving a gun about and someone was screaming in a terrifying way, and it took Rocket a moment to realise that it was him, and he was gasping because that was the biggest head-rush he'd had since he touched the damn stone, and he had no idea what it meant.
What the fuck just happened? he thought.
"What the fuck just happened?" yelled Yondu, pulling the arrow back down and pinning it at his throat with another whistle. He turned to Kraglin "You see that shit?"
Kraglin swallowed, nervously "See what, boss? You and him just screamed, and you arrowed the ceiling! I didn't see nothing else, Yondu." Yondu stared in disbelief, then turned back to Rocket. His red eyes narrowed.
"Did Quill find some way to block my ability? Is this some Nova black ops classified shit? Why can't I detect your life force, and what the fuck was that purple shit I saw?"
Rocket gulped and tried to fight down his head rush, looked to Groot, and knew instantly that he'd felt that too and said, "Ummm… yeah, sure."
Let's go with that, he thought, because the alternative is that touching the stone somehow did something to my life force and you just poked it with your ability.
…and Groot. …all those little pieces of Groot and the ONLY one that grew back was the one I had in my paw when I took Drax's hand and grabbed the stone.
Oh Fuck.
"Yeah, sorry for you to find out like this, but looks like you'll need me to find Quill after all." he said, panting slightly.
OH FUCK.
Yondu placed one hand on his skull, and snarled. "We put the tattooed wrecking ball and the woman in the warehouse, right?"
"Sure." said Kraglin, looking frightened. "Why boss?"
Yondu glared. "I can't detect them." He turned and glared at Groot, "The tree neither, and I can always detect trees!"
OH FUUUUUUCK. thought Rocket.
Yondu paused, and glared at his prisoner for a long time, and in Rocket's defence, he was so freaked out about the possibility that he'd spontaneously melt from inside because of some delayed Stone related effect that he managed to keep his facial expression totally blank when Yondu looked him over, without even knowing he had. Yondu snorted, and whistled his arrow back to its sheath.
"Okay rat, you got a deal, the tree and your two pals, for you and Quill: on the condition that when we have Quill, you and me and him are going to sit down and explain how you did that purple shit. Comprende? Because if you don't, well…" He clapped his hands together, and gave a kind, winning smile. "The bonus Bligh is offering for you in once piece is good, but you're still just cargo to us. A bounty: Wanted, dead or alive. Get me?"
Rocket pulled himself off the floor, and dusted himself off as good as he could. He sneered back, as cocky as only a hardened jailbird could be.
"That shit? Piece of piss. No problem." he said.
Oh FUCK!
Awesome Mix Tape Vol 2: Bon Jovi: Wanted Dead or Alive
