Memories Part Four: Perfect Day.

Quill stared at Drax, sitting on the floor and muttering to himself, for some time, trying to keep his face blank and not give the Collector the satisfaction of knowing that he was frightened and thinking well shit. I wonder who will be next?"

"Well. That was interesting… I wonder who will be next?" said the Collector-bot. "Feel like taking another step Starlord, or perhaps given young master Rocket's refusal to move, this will be a case of ladies first?"

"Gamora, do not move. I for one am not giving this guy the satisfaction." Said Quill. "and I don't think anyone else should until we've had a chance to work this out. Okay guys?" he asked.

Rocket snorted, standing up from the cough he had adopted and massaging his thighs: Quill realised that he was trying to change position to stay comfortable without moving his feet. "Sure thing Quill. Wasn't planning on going anywhere anytime soon. Hey, Robo-tard. We gonna get bathroom breaks or is this going to get messy?"

"Based on your life sign readings and your level of dehydration from your last drunken sojourn I give it at least forty minutes until even your minute bladder fails. But let it not be said I'm unreasonable: the parquet flooring is somewhat valuable and racoon-urine is one of those stains that just won't shift…."

There was a papery rattle and a red solo cup dropped from the ceiling, landing about five paces out of Rocket's reach and spinning on its base before coming to a halt. "… There, that should prove sufficient given, a sufficient level of desperation. Of course, one's memories would have to be pretty shameful to resort to that rather that share them and…."

There was a thock and the paper cup disintegrated. Rocket-re-sheathed his gun across his back, and then cocked a paw theatrically to his ear. "Sorry, what as that? I'm sorry I couldn't hear you over the sound of me shooting holes in your fancy-ass floor."

"I am Groot."

"Hell yeah, do you know how many trees die to make one of these floors? Be grateful I don't need to take a dump."

There was a disgusted pause. "Little savage. This is what I get for trying to accommodate you."

"Yeah well, just count yourself lucky you don't have carpets." Muttered Quill, drawing his blaster and setting it to stun. "I'm going to try and stun Drax, see if it'll snap him out of it."

"And if that doesn't work?" asked Gamora.

Quill looked towards the door. It still seemed a a very short distance away, which he was starting to release was of course you point: to make a good trap, the bait had to look attainable.

"Well, then I guess things are going to get messy." He said, shooting Drax neatly in the thigh, which h3e knew from experience stung like hell.

Drax twitched a cried out, but all that happed was they suddenly got a momentary flash of him dragging himself along a desert floor towards a wrecked car, the bone in his leg broken. Quill yelped and tried not to drop his gun and Gamora hissed through her teeth at the unexpected pain, but nothing else happened.

"Oh-Kay. Defiantly didn't snap him out of it, just dragged us in. Good to know, but not helpful." He said, holstering his blaster. "Any ideas?"

"I am Groot."

"Yeah, but where are we going to get an A'askavarian nun at this time of night?" Rocket looked around. His eyes narrowed evilly. "If I can get to that panel, and if there is a binary coupling behind it that wasn't blown when we frickin' infinity-stoned this place, then maybe I can retrofit the linear accelerator on my gun and the plasma-bottle on your blasters into some sort of plasma-cutter. Burn all these razor-wires out of the air."

"Maybe? If? How confident are you on this?"

"Oh, pretty good. forty-percent maybe. If there is a coupling in good enough condition. If not…. I dunno. Eleven percent?"

"That's not much of a plan." Muttered Quill, glancing over to the panel.

"Hell, it's barely even an idea. You got a better one?"

Quill glanced between the panel and the door, judging the distance. "No. it's closer to you than the door, but not by enough, and if it's that obvious then it's probably bait. It would take you five steps, but put you three further from the exit. No-go."

"It would take me five steps." He agreed. "Groot?"

Groot nodded, and begun to extend a tendril towards the panel, twisting and twinging it's way thought the air as it danced between the wires only Groot could detect, wiggling and writing, as Groot grunted with the effort of extending it, and begun to dig-into the floor with his roots and extend the other arm out to counter-balance it, as he reached out, and laid a single finger on the panel-

-and there was a noise best described as tswiiiiiinnn! And his arm fell into tiny little cubes and pattered to the ground.

Groot gasped, and then made a sad little whine, and turned to Rocket, who had buried his face in his paws. Quill swore and turned away. So close!

"I did make it clear I could move the wire at will, did I not?" said Tivan mrkII. He sounded quite amused.

"Oh god: the A'askavarian nun idea is looking better by the frickin moment." Muttered Rocket. A paper cup dropped from the ceiling and onto his head mockingly.

"I am Groot!"

"It'll grow back, dummy! I don't care if it itches!"

"Hey, Idiots." Said Gamora, pointing.

The boys looked up. The panel had taken the tiniest of nudges, and was now swinging on one badly corroded rivet. Inside, the white ceramic tip of a binary coupling was just, barely, visible.

"Okay, that is way to convenient." Muttered Rocket. 2I'm one-hundred per cent sure Groot didn't get a grip on that."

"I am Groot!"

"Agreed." Said Quill. "Anything that convenient has to be bait. Don't go for it Ranger Rick." He bit his lip and glanced to each of his crew in turn.

"I think we're just going to have to go for the door like he wants. Okay, this time, no one person try to take it all themselves. It gets too intense stop, rest, let someone else try, agreed?"

"Peter: if these things can share physical pain, I really don't think I can move. I'm sorry I… I just don't think I can do that to you."

"Same." Muttered Rocket. "Although in my case I'll freely admit wanting to avoid physical pain myself is high on the list of reasons."

Quill took a deep breath, held it for a moment and then breathed out slowly.

"Okay, looks like it's just you and me Jolly Green Giant."

"I am Groot!"

"Quill."

Starlord turned his head to Rocket.

"You go careful." Rocket warned. "I… he… heh, aww hell: me and Groot have been though a lot. Don't assume his memories are going to be a walk in the park."

Peter Jason Quill glanced over to Rocket for a moment, and then nodded. He then turned back to Groot.

"You want to go first or should-" he said, just as he caught Groot uproot a foot and stride forwards purposefully, and Peter Jason Quill's mind exploded.


Peter had experimented with psychotropics before: the Ravengers had a pretty darn lax attitude towards law and order at the best of times and while they styled themselves pirates, space piracy was difficult; Space was Big. Like, Really, really big. Your odds of finding a vessel to rob by chance were next to none. So you needed to either lurk within occupied systems, a poor choice as they generally had their own law enforcement, or ambush people on trade routes, and for that you needed industrial espionage to find a ship with a cargo worth steeling, you needed someone to slip you a copy of its manifest and planed route, you needed a fence to sell the stuff and a smuggler to get it to the fence… The costs built up real quick. They were certainly pirates, but also bank robbers, bounty hunters, mercenaries, privateers in the war between the Kree and Nova, and most of all smugglers: traffickers in people, guns and narcotics. Like an old-school biker gang they would turn their hand to anything with a profit, but moving things that needed moving outside of the law was their main time-consumer and source of income: Quill should know; he'd started his life with them as cargo.

He'd enjoyed running gear: it wasn't even 100% illegal, just 50% Illegal; the Nova empire had strict firearms and energy weapon laws, but doctors and not lawmakers made the rules on the legality of drugs, so the vast majority of recreation drugs were legal, regulated, and taxed. The Kree Empire being far more conservative and militaristic has very lax weapons laws and very strict drugs laws. If you could run the gauntlet of military blockades between the two it was basically a licence to print money: buy drugs legally from Nova worlds, sell illegally at Kree ones, buy guns, sell illegally in Nova, lather, rinse, repeat.

Yondu had a ship to run, so had some pretty strict rules on-board; the most addictive things he permitted on ship were caffeine and alcohol, but if it wasn't habit forming and was safe, what grown men did in their free time was none of his concern the way he saw it. Even so, being raised by him Quill had been nineteen before he'd dared touch more than beer because it's one thing having a cool parent, but quite another thing testing them. And while Nepete pollen and the odd cup of mushroom tea at outdoor concerts had been fun, in his twenties, he wasn't a user. It was just a phase he'd been through as a kid. Other than the one time where he'd stood stock still in the middle of the dance floor for an hour tripping balls and convinced that he was a small stone named Edward, it had been fine.

But he was really, really glad he'd had some experience with hallucinogenics at that point, because otherwise he'd have no idea how to even begin to make sense of Groot's sensory apparatus. The closest he could think of was a description Telzar had given him after taking a dose of Kylarian salvia from a guy dressed as a shaman in a bar for a dare: imagine you're floating above everything, and the floor is an x-ray projecting their forms into the back of your eyes: you see everything, but the angle and the very way in which you see it is all somehow wrong.

That and the colours.

"Oh god, this is some real Raggedy-Ann movie, Yellow Submarine level insanity right here." he muttered, looking around. Or at least trying to; turning his head didn't seem to affect his viewpoint. Or rather, he could see a full 360 degrees anyway and turning his head just rotated everything he could see within the viewpoint, like he'd picked up every object in the room and turned it on his side without the room moving. Then he realised he couldn't see Rocket and Gamora like he could in Drax's memory , and he began to freak out, until he heard Gamora gasp and say. "Oh my god, it's all full of stars."

"I think that's my line." muttered Quill, annoyed that without knowing she'd beat him to the obvious joke: everything was haloed in coloured lights, turning every group of objects into its own starfeild. "Where are you?" he said, looking around. He appeared to be in a forest, if it had been painted by an impressionist in the middle of a heavy session on the absinthe and laudanum enemas while tired into a giant kaleidoscope as part of an unwise bet with Toulouse-Lautrec. The place looked gorgeous, heavy, moss bearded trees, deep cool shade, a ridiculous number of brightly coloured birds and bugs and slugs and ….too much thought part of Quill's brain. It was all just too much information. He tried to focus on just one thing, a small thing: the pattern of a lichen on a small bit of tree-bark, and as he did he somehow zoomed in on it, seeing the fractal pattern of its growth zoom alarmingly, until he could see individual algae and fungi working so well together they didn't know they were two separate species.

"Gamora, are you seeing this?" he asked. He heard a little snort, and then a gasp of joy.

"Yes Peter, I'm here. Still trying to work out where 'here' is, but I'm okay. Are you seeing this in the third person like before with Drax or are you…"

"No… I don't think I'm seeing this in the first person either… my viewpoint changes, but it doesn't seem to relate to anyone's point of view…"

"Second person multiple." said Rocket. It sounded liked he was shocked, and trying to hide it. "He… he mentioned this to me, never thought I'd see it though."

"Wait, do, do Groots have a hive mind or some shit?" asked Quill, starting to get a hang of this and zooming it out far enough to see the scene better. A bunch of Groots were gathered in a clearing in the forest.

"I am Groot."

"Yeah, what he said. Not a hive mind, individual minds tapped into A Gestalt projection formed from the points of view of multiple individuals. Nothing frickin' spooky at all… wait, what the hell does Gestalt mean?"

"I am Groot."

"What the shit is Dasein? Who even has a word for 'being-ness'?" asked Rocket.

"I'm currently seeing this dude from the front, side and inside all at the same time, and this isn't spooky?" asked Quill. "I think we need more not less words for what's going on, if you ask me."

"Agreed." Said Gamora, focusing in on the group of Groots gathered in the clearing. Quill was still looking at the lichen, but somehow knew that was what she was looking at and switched his focus to it was well.

The groups consisted of a series or much larger individuals, huge and moss covered, who appeared to be rooted to the ground in a rough circle, as the smaller, Groot-sized and baby-Groot sized individuals wandered about in the shade they cast from their extended, leafy boughs.

"Woah, there are, like, really, really big Groots." Said Quill, surprised. "I mean Groot's big enough, those things must be forty feet tall!"

"Arbour masters. Groot told me about them." Muttered Rocket. "And Quit calling them Groots: they're flora colossi."

"I Am Groot."

"Although Groot would like to point out that both those terms are ultimately frickin' meaningless as they are not the terms they themselves use. Well, sort of. A lot of what he said was about the proper terminology to discuss Gestalt and multi-node communication from a fixed temporal and local viewpoint and how it affects notions of self and other. Hermeneutic phenomenology was mentioned. A lot." Rocket became aware of the pause.

"What?" He sneered, defensively. "What? The freak ain't allowed to talk fancy-like or something? I do read books you know. Ones without naked people in them, Quill."

"We were just surprised you got all that from 'I Am Groot'! And those people weren't always naked, sometimes they were just Batman punching things. "

"Yeah well, sounds a lot more fun than Hermeneutics certainly. And like I keep telling you, it's not what he says, it's how he says it." muttered Rocket, as Quill focused in on the baby-Groots, the flora funsize he thought, and they gambolled and chased each other around the clearing, laughing and I am Groot-ing to themselves. As they ran thought the patches of light and shade cast by the leaves of the Elders, the Arbour masters, Quill realised that the patches of light and shade were not random, but a pattern. A language, encoding information in amounts and complexity he couldn't fathom, and as they ran though it he was picking it all up just as the Mini-Groot's and adult sized Groot's were.

-is extremely simple: being is time. That is, what it means for a sapient being to be is to exist temporally in the stretch between germination and death. Being is time and time is finite, it comes to an end with our death. Therefore, if we want to understand what it means to be an authentic being, then it is essential that we constantly project our lives onto the horizon of our –

-in a state of superposition, the waveform of which is collapsed when observed-

- a to the power of n + b to the power of n = c to the power of n, so assuming y squared= x(x-a to the power of n)(x+b to the power of n) then we can show there are no proofs for positive integer values of a b or c strictly greater that 2 by simply-

"Whoa. I'm at Groot school. Groot, this is some heavy stuff. How do you even handle all this? I frankly struggled with long division!"

"And spelling." Added Gamora.

"I Am Groot."

"Yeah but he's only terran, cut him some slack." Said Rocket. "Some of this stuff wasn't meant for us to know Quill. These Arbour masters hold all the knowledge of their civilisation; it's bound to be frickin' heavy going."

- nine realms, linked via several mechanisms, chiefly loci of convergence know as Inosculation points. The form of this multidimensional membrane, when viewed in limiting three dimensions, is similar in form to that of an adult Flora Colossi, leading to the idea of a 'world tree' in the mythology of several more primitive wet-fast-hot races such as Asgardians, of which or universe is but a single leaf. One of the most significant Inosculation points is known as the Om point-

- - several catabolic pathways converge on the citric acid cycle, and these are known as anaplerotic reactions-

-the stones, if gathered together, create a localised user-controllable Inosculation point allowing the bearer to exert their will onto he Om point-

-it is essential that we constantly project our lives onto the horizon of our own deaths.

But despite all the information pouring down onto them, Quill could tell that the baby Groots were happy. He didn't blame them: he could see the world from their point of view, and it was a wonder. Small, golden furred squirrel-like creatures scurried about, maintaining delicate and complex structures to support a biosphere he could feel stretching out across the entire planet, and it teamed with life and light and joy.

"Hah! I'm one with mother nature. I'm Mother nature's Brother. Brother nature if you will. But you can still call me Quill, your call."

"This… this is actually very nice one you get used to It." added Gamora, a touch more phlegmatically

"I am Groot." said Groot, sadly.

"What!? This is that memory? Oh fuck, Quill, Gamora, brace yourselves this is going to get real rough real fast."

"What do you mean?" asked Quill, watching the baby Groots running around in the sun and shade, the dappled torrent of information. "This is great! Being Groot is awesome! Everything is awe…. Huh." There was a noise, a low atonal drone slowly filling the green, the sense of everything on the planet, and it was wrong. The baby flora kept running, but the adults and Arbour Masters paused, and looked up.

"Guys, is… is that a ship?" Quill asked, as the roar resolved itself into a hard atmospheric entry. With the second person multiple, he could see the ship and the mini-Groots at the same time. He could see everything that was about to follow.

There was a sonic boom as the ship passed overhead, ripping the sky into something from a Boris Vallejo painting, tortured, flaming blood-red clouds as it came pounding through the sky, black and huge beyond all reckoning and awfully recognisable as a Kree dreadnought. It hit the bottom of its curve with a shudder, and begun to pull up as a single dark shape pealed of from its hull and plummeted towards the planet before bursting open and splitting into hundreds of other shapes.

Seed pod came the flash of thought from across the green: thousands and thousands of Groots seeing it and coming to the same conclusion based on their experiences of similar things. Then the flash of analytical intellect from the arbour masters.

Seed pod from a thunder storm. Thunder seed. Curious. Artefactual object. Rare earth metals and heavy metals detected. Cross reference… Kree Empire…

DANGER! DANGER!

One of the baby Groots was running towards its parent, Quill could feel the memory's focus shifting, focusing on those two, but with the way the Flora Colossi shared their viewpoints and feelings, he couldn't tell which of them was meant to be Groot, the parent or the child.

That would really get to him afterwards. He didn't have the courage to just ask Groot that for the longest time.

The toddler ran towards the adult flora, and it reached out back to it and tried to shout a warning, to reach it, to shield it-

And then the first of the thunderseeds hit the surface of Planet X, and the shockwave spread thought the green, the shared mindscape spreading the sound faster than the sound itself, but not fast enough for the warning to be useful. Instead the shared fear and pain just hit the minds of the Groots in the education clearing a moment before the flash of light lit the horizon, and then the fire swept thought the forest, the atmosphere burring up faster that the speed of sound, and everything went dark.

The sudden severing of the link to the green, the senses of the others hit hard, but Quill suddenly found it difficult to panic. Difficult to… anything. He was aware of the passage of time, of a long time, before he was able to form a coherent thought. He realised that this was part of the memory: he was experiencing Groot's memories or re-growing his body after the attack.

For a long time there wasn't much of anything, just a vague memory that something bad had happened and a need, an increasingly urgent need to re-grow.

Re-growth was easy, easier than he'd have suspected. He was detecting a lot of nutrients in the soil around him. Quill wouldn't describe it as taste exactly, but that was the closest he could get to it with his vocabulary: Magnesium, calcium, phosphorous, potassium… he could taste a lot of potassium. The level of nutrient in the soil was thought the roof, far higher than it should have been. It was vaguely nauseating, too rich. Too full. It didn't feel right, either, too loose and dry, not the biscuity-crum of loam he remembered. He focused on breaching the surface of the soil and growing sensory apparatus. He needed to see what was going on. Bit by bit the memory of what had happened filtered back. The sonic boom, the thunderseeds. He needed to check that the others were all right.

It took a long time for mini-Groot to burst thought the surface of the soil, and what struck him at first was the silence: the light he could detect though his chloroplasts was grey. Flat, constant, no patterns of light and shade. No information, no communication. He focused on developing more advanced visual organs.

Groot opened his eyes.

The forest was gone. The sky a constant grey from the dust the weapons' impact had thrown up, and the forest was gone. Groot looked around. It was possible a fragment of his body had blown some distance and landed in an unfamiliar part of his planet before growing back, but this looked like no part of his world he was familiar with, just and endless flat sea of grey dust that fell in fluffy flakes like snow.

Not dust, Quill realised with a sudden wave of nausea. Ash. It's wood ash. Mini-Groot realised at about the same time, and then he knew exactly why the soil he was feeding on was so rich in Potassium and magnesium. Groot started screaming.

Or at least he tried. In his rush to break the surface he hadn't bothered to grow vocal cords yet. Or eyelids.

It was several days before Groot was able to close his eyes.


Quill slumped to his knees, the intensity of the memory making him feel weak, violated. Unclean.

He wasn't the only one: he heard Gamora muffle a sound that, were it not for the fact she was one of the galaxy's top assassins and beyond such weakness, he could have sworn was a sob. Rocket, either because of his closeness to Groot or his severe hangover took it far worse: he was on all fours, retching into the paper cup the Collector had dropped on him.

Rocker paused, aware of a comforting tendril on his fur, and looked up.

Groot looked at him sadly, and then shook his head.

"I Am Groot."

"Yeah, I know. I… I just wasn't prepared for that, was all. You okay big guy?"

"I am Groot."

"Oh gods… and you call him idiot at least once a day?" asked Gamora, as Rocket stood up, accepting a helping vine from Groot before the Collector decided that that was quite enough touchy feely stuff and pruned it. Rocket glared acidly at Gamora, but Quill could see he was feeling bad about it.

"Yeah, I'm real nasty to him about it. Hey Gamora, you recognise that ship? Here's a hint it was the Dark Aester. The Nova Empire sent a research team to Planet X about a decade ago to ask the Arbour masters some questions about space-folding , and being nice guys they gave them the info they wanted. Why not? They were neutral in all this, why not answer people's questions? That didn't sit well with the Kree, they considered that helping the enemy. So they sent Ronan to make sure it didn't happen again. Tell me, was that before or after you started working for him? Just out of interest."

"Oh no you do not get to do that Rocket! You know full well that was before I worked with Ronan and I don't try to slander you over your association with count Bligh and-"

"Guys, we're playing into the Collectors hands if we fight. Let's just… just keep up with this." Said Quill, as he pulled himself up, and took a deep breath.

"We've got to work as a team, remember? Okay, my turn."

Quill raised one foot ready to take a step forwards, and then paused. "Hey, I want a guarantee that any memories we get are going to be clean an nudity free. No one I repeat no one needs to see me losing my virginity." He said, pointing angrily at the corner with the blinky light. The Collector-bot sighed.

"As much as I feel that would be an effective way to break people, even I have standards. Besides, this machine has trouble extracting memories that last less than thirty seconds."

Quill snorted. "What, are you not including the time spent apologising and trying to find where that condom went after it pinged off and hit her in the eye? I was a teenager: yelling 'oh god oh god I'm sorry I have no idea what's happening' pretty much counts as foreplay at that age." said Quill, putting his foot down and reluctantly striding forwards.


Quill lay sprawled on the sofa on the Milano, reading "the Killing Joke" on Rocket's info glass and drinking protein shake that was supposed to contain all the nutritional input for a person for a day but tasted of snot, and not in a good, guilty-pleasure eating-your-own-boogers as a kid way, when Gamora stalked into the room and he had to hide the ingrained impulse to check he wasn't watching porn on his glass and change the channel.

Present Quill, standing just behind him frowned.

"Hey wait, this is like… a week ago. This doesn't count as a memory! I only just got my cast off: this is after our fight with the Controller." Quill looked around. "Wait, unless someone died on ship and I didn't notice it, and given the mess I'm not entirely discounting that out of hand, then I don't see how this memory can be traumatic for me."

"ugg, it's pretty traumatic for me, I can say that." Said Rocket: because they were back in third person in this memory, he'd got dropped off in the same position relative to Quill that he was in the memory room: it translated to him being wedged between the couch and the table level with memory-Quill's crotch as he sat up strait when memory Gamora walked into the room, inadvertently thrusting it in Rocket's face as he slid into a more comfortable seating position.

"Gah! If this is so recently in the past that Quill's still wearing the same socks, I don't see the point of this one either!"

"Oh, I never said this would be painful for Quill, although it is one of his memories…" Tivan-bot said ominously, as memory-Quill opened up with a nonchalant "Oh hey Gamora, what's up?"

Past Gamora glanced a Quill coolly, in an expression that always made Quill nervous but was in fact just her usual look she always had when she was sure something was going on but not yet sure what or who to blame: a look that most women master by the age of twenty.

"Quill, I was trying to check the summons to our next Nova de-briefing but out com-link seems to be down. At least, that's what I thought, until I discovered that it's up, but it's just unreasonably slow. Something's hogging all the bandwidth. Are you using our Nova Access codes to hack into deep space probes again?"

"Gamora…" said Quill, taking the info glass in one hand and spreading both hands wide in a gesture of cherubic innocence, simultaneously and unconsciously spreading his legs and shuffling forwards on his seat, to Rocket's furious swearing. "Why in the world would I even do that? Deep space probes, do I look like I'm that interested in science?"

"No, but there is a Kylarian research probe passing within thirty light years of terra this month. Close enough to pick up thirty year old radio signals. I just wanted to be clear that the reason why I can't read our important, classified, top secret documents that give us our one source of non-criminal income wasn't because you're hijacking TV signals from your childhood again."

"Me? no. Nu-huh. Are you still mad at me after fraggle-rock-gate? To be honest, even if we had got that message in time, we'd have never been able to stop that assassination… they dropped a moon on him, for Christ's sakes. I don't think any effort from either us or Jim Henderson could have prevented that."

"Not that I don't believe you, but to quote an older me, why should I take the word of an honourless thief?"

"Hey, I resent that: I am an extremely honourable thief: my first word as a child was 'honourable', you know? I'm basically like George Washington in that regard… but with better hair. And teeth."

"You sure it wasn't horrible? And people don't remember their first words, Peter."

"Yes they do!"

Gamora frowned. "No Peter, they really don't."

"No, they do. Hey Drax!" Quill yelled, as the man ambled past, trying to polish a minuet speck of one of his knives. He paused and turned to face Quill.

"Yes?"

"Do you remember what the first word you spoke as a child was?" Quill asked. Drax looked confused and slightly annoyed by the question, but after a moment he nodded, very slightly. "Yes, of course."

Gamora sighed. "Peter, his people take things entirely literally, you can't expect that not to cause some oddities in the things they value culturally. Given his cultural focus on literal truth, recording first and last words as indicative on one's moral character is going to be important and worth recording. He probably doesn't actually remember them, he's had them drilled into him by learning by rote.

"No I have not fooling woman! The only things I have ever had drilled into me were dental crowns and two staples after I broke my leg in the car crash that killed my family!"

Gamora pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. "People do not remember their early childhoods that well, Peter, no-one remembers their first words!"

Quill leaned back and crossed his hands behind his head in victory, grinning evilly (and sliding so far forwards that Rocket was practically forced to limbo to avoid him).

"Oh really? Hey Guys! Rocket, Groot, ship meeting!" he yelled.

"Oh no! no no no! They don't count, Peter! One has an eidetic memory and the other can only say three words, that's cheating! They don't count!"

"We don't count as what?" asked Rocket, mooching in grumpy. He looked like the shouting had just woke him up. "Isn't it a little early in the day for the casual racism, even for you bald-bodies?"

Gamora stared, disgusted "it's fourteen in the afternoon!"

"Well we ain't all naturally diurnal sister." Rocket muttered.

"I have some pills for that." Quill added helpfully. "You dissolve them in a glass of water. Frees everything down their right up, but they do make your pee smell funny."

"As in awake during the day, you ignorant terran turnip-reamer. Can I not be belittled and racially abused from the comfort of my hammock?" Muttered Rocket, yawning and scrubbing at his face with his paws.

"He knew exactly what you meant, he's just messing you around to waste time because he's about to lose the argument." Said Gamora, crossing her arms. "And for once I wasn't trying to insult you by saying you didn't count. No one is abusing you."

Drax considered this. "And surely in order to count as racism, abuse directed at you would have to be aimed at a race: you are a single individual, you do not count as a race by yourself."

"Speciesism then Drax. And thank you very much for salting the wound. Why don't you just give me a nice paper cut and pour some citrus juice into it while you're at it?"

"If you think it will help…" he rumbled, heading in the direction of the galley.

"Guys." said memory-Quill, forestalling Drax's march to metaphor. "Quick test and I want you all to be completely honest… it's okay Rocket, you can look the concept up later… do you all remember your first words as kids?"

"Yes."

"Yeah, so?"

"I am Groot?"

"Oh really, you do? How interesting." Said Quill, theatrically raising his eyebrows at Gamora. " So, for Gamora's benefit, could we all just say them out loud on the count of one… two…wait for it big guy… three! Honor!" yelled Quill.

"'No' which is statistically not an uncommon first worked for a child: for example my daughter…"

"Kill me."

"I am Groot."

"…. whereas my wife's first word was also no."

"See?" "Said Quill, stretching his arms in victory. "You see, I told you that people remember their first…. Wait one sec, what was that last one!?" he said, turning to Rocket as his ears caught up with his gloating. Rocket looked around nervously, caught out by a questioning so soon after being woken up.

"I am Groot?" said Rocket, experimentally.

"No, the one before that."

"I am Groot?" asked Groot, helpfully.

Quill frowned. "Huh, I could have sworn someone said… never mind. The point is Gamora, I think that proves my point!"

Gamora just gave him a look. "Do you even remember what we were arguing about?"

Quill frowned , and looked seriously nervous. "Ummm… no. To be honest, I have no idea what I'm doing. But I know in doing it really, really well." He said, grinning and giving Gamora a two handed pistols drawn with tumbles up pointing gesture like he was the Fonz.

Present Quill frowned. "God, I look like such a douche when I do that."

"Tell me about it. You should see it from thing angle." Muttered Rocket, trying to find somewhere to look that wasn't Quill's lap without moving his feet. Present Quill looked down. "You're actually so concerned that if you move one foot Mecha-Tivan here will memory you?" he asked.

"These things can share physical pain, right?"

"I guess…"

"And did you or did you not here what past me just said? I am not moving an inch."

Past Rocket looked over to Quill. "Ugg, you look like such a douche when you do that."

"Do not." Said Quill. "So, what were we fighting about?"

"Bandwidth hogging." Said Gamora, tapping her foot. Quill froze up, and tied to hide the info-glass behind his back.

"Yeah, totally not me: Probably just one of those random, space-time anomaly type glitches that mess with our signal. I hate those."

"Uhu? So if I go back and check again, my messages will be working, wont they Peter?" asked Gamora, in a way that really, really wasn't a question.

"I'm sure that by then the space-time stuff will have defiantly stopped." said Quill, guiltily, as the crew dispersed.

Gamora gave him a knowing look, her eye lingering on the info-slate for just a moment longer than strictly necessary before turning and striding off.

Literally the second she stated up the stairs to the man com's console in the cockpit, Quill had the glass out and the tab for his comic closed as he desperately tried to sign into the com system before Gamora and remove all evidence that he was recording a transmission of The Goonies that the Kylarian probe had happened to pick up.

"Oh god please, One-Eyed Willy don't fail me now!" yelled past Quill, trying to sign in and watching the loading bar with severe anxiety.

Past Rocket snorted. "Heh, getting forcefully woken up to hear you yell about your one eyed Willy was even worse than I'd imagined. Who knew? Come on Groot, we're going back to bed." he muttered, turning on his heal.

"Yeah well it could be worse bub, just wait a few weeks. Prick." muttered Rocket at his retreating past self as he tried to avoid getting crushed by past Quill's thighs.

Past Quill yelled. "Hey no fair, Muppet reject, you set this hack up for me man, you can't let Gamora find out if been using our secure line for TV! Come on Jim Henderson, help a guy out!"

"Night Quill."

"Shit, said Quill, as he finally logged into the com's server, and transferred all the ongoing operations into his private inbox to hide his TV downloading spree from Gamora.

He slicked his hair back with one had. "Cool, did it…" he trailed off.

There was a message from Nova, high encryption level.

Quill paused, wondering whether to call the team back before opening it, but decided that as captain he should look first.

After a second, he was very gland he did.

*message forward: com's intercept, Kree warship "Hammer of Judgement" to Fleet command. Flagged as high priority by x station 199 and forwarded immediately to Nova Prime Rael. Forwarded to special consultations 616 as a priority.*

*Subject: Nebula*

HoJ. to fleet. Initial investigation into Dark Aester crash site by local operatives and unmanned probe sweep reveals considerable reverse -engineering of ships systems by Nova salvage crew, appears that Ronan was so confided in destroying Xandar with the [TRANSLATION UNCLEAR: Forever gem?] that he did not initiate standard clean-sweep protocols. Reactors did not go critical. Engines and reactors were recovered intact, as were primary weaponry and electronic warfare systems. Ship's computer core appears to be missing, but operatives within Xandarian first responders indicate it was missing before they arrived. Recovery of ships central computer flagged as major priority. Must consider OS 101k compromised. Additional computer security strongly advised.

Addendum: outer picket ship in our battle group disabled by rouge Ravengers vessel near Xandar boarder eleven hours fifteen after Dark aster crash. Sensor logs indicate an older XT-5 Badoon Patrol vessel, Ravengers colours, improvised repair to cockpit shield. Single life sign, matching induvial wanted for questioning: Associate of Ronan and Thanos known as Nebula. No recorded alias. Recovery high priority, has probable information on [fragment missing].

Crew of picket ship slain. Additional 5 Sakaarans requested at next refit. Stolen Ravengers vessel last seen on vector 184o 207o 15. Destination probability assessment: Sakaaran homeworld 0.06, Spartori 0.1, Fort Viderdoom 0.84. Most probable outcome: person of interest now freelancing with the Viderdoom organisation and [TRANSLATION UNCLEAR: Personage of the Blade, masculine, reverential?]. Flag as high risk.

Continuing to next supply rendezvous. The empire will rise!

HoJ. Out.

*end forwarded transmission*

Past Quill stared at the message for a long time, and then deleted it rather than put it back in the general inbox.

Gamora had a right to know, yes, but they had just got the shit beaten out of them and needed to lie low for a while. Chasing off after Nebula when she was working with Rocket's ex-boss did not seem like a good idea right now.

"I'll tell her latter…" muttered Quill to himself, turning back to his comic book. The joker leered at him from the page, and he wondered if he had done the right thing.


The memory abruptly died, and while Rocket breathed a sigh of relief and straitened up, rubbing at the small of his black and muttering, Gamora turned to Quill furious.

"You got word on my sister and you kept it from me!?"

Quill looked started, but then rallied. "Hey! I was going to tell you at some point, that much was clear!"

"Oh really, when oh mighty captain! Because, and here's the thing, I thought that we were all in this together! Or as a woman am I too emotional to be trusted with tactical information when it relates to my family? It's not like I'm a trained assassin and could make the decisions without getting emotionally involved or anything! How many other decisions have you kept from me?"

"None… a few… me and Drax did once, maybe, discuss good ways to kill your dad. Just a little bit. But it was just the once I swear and…"

"Thanos is not my dad!"

"Yeah, exactly, so we're cool right?"

Gamora sighed, and put her head in her palms. "No Peter, we are not cool. You have to treat me like an adult and involve me in decisions like this. This is exactly like when you appointed Rocket your second in command and decided to take over Knowhere without asking me: you have to involve me or it really feels like you're not treating me with respect!"

"Sorry."

"Sorry doesn't cut it Peter, not when you know I'd never do something like this to you."

"Oh really? How interesting." Said the Tivan bot. "How very interesting…"


Memory-Gamora finished making her initial report to Nova Prime Rael, and then hung up. Their long day had made them a just shy of sixty grand richer, and a lot more tired and nervous. As she wearily trailed her way down the steps from the cockpit, she paused in the main living area of the ship. Rocket was perched on a box, his back to her, polishing wire contacts for something or other.

Quill looked around. "What memory is this? I don't remember this."

He glanced to Groot, who just shrugged, so he turned over to Gamora: she and Rocket were staring at each other, pale with horror.

"No." said Gamora "I… neither me or Rocket moved!"

"I know." Said Tivan. "and it was getting dull. If you refuse to play the game, you can't complain when the rules change. Besides, you did verbally leave yourself open to this."

Past Gamora paused. Quill had finished his report to Nova an hour ago and crashed into unconsciousness even before she'd made it up the steps to the holo. He was dead to the world, Drax was in hospital, Groot resting under his sunlamp, trying to recover the biomass where they'd had to cut the catatonic policeman away from him after the fight with the Controller. It was just them; her and Rocket.

"How's Groot?" she asked, pulling up a box next to him.

"Messed up, but going to be taller than me next week, taller than Drax week after. He'll be fine. Quill?"

Present Rocket glared at his past-self with abject horror. "Quill, Quill, close your eyes or something, you cannot see this!"

"Why… are you guys talking about me behind my back. Oh. Swell. That's juts great. I thought we were supposed to be a team!" he yelled, as past Rocket worked the steel wool methodically, like it was the only thing in the worlds.

"Are you drunk?" Past Gamora asked.

"Yep. Not as drunk as I'm gonna need to be to sleep."

"You want to tell me where you snuck off to for so long after that fight-" she asked past-Rocket

"No." he said. "No I don't."

Present Gamora looked to Quill. "Quill, Peter, you cannot judge us too harshly for what you are about to hear, we had your best interests at heart-"

"-And I didn't when I deleted that message? I was thinking of the emotional hurt having to fight your sister again would do to you: her killing us all was a secondary concern, for once."

They sat there without talking for some time, as memory Rocket polished up his contacts and began to lay his wire out in neat rows, sorted perfectly by length.

"You want to spit it out and ask, you may as well." Said Past Rocket, taking up the next spool of wire and cutting of lengths with his tiny pliers. Quill took that as a sign.

"So what's all this about? This is the night of our fight with Sandhurst, right?"

"Ohhhhh fuck, isn't there a way to stop this?" Rocket asked, more or less hypothetically.

Tivan laughed. "Yes, of course there is: play the game. If you take a step forwards, it will override this memory and move onto one of yours."

Rocket's ears shot up. "What?!"

"You heard me: You or Gamora can top this memory any time you like. Nice try Groot." He added, as the tree-man swing a leg forwards and then recoiled as it hit wire and cut the bark of his shin. "But I'm afraid it has to be Rocket or Gamora. You all play together, or you all as a team get to watch this particular memory unfold. I'm just sure Quill will just love where this one goes."

Past Gamora glared, colour rising to her cheeks. "Oh, so you know exactly what it is I was going to ask?" she said, angry.

Rocket and Gamora looked to each other, horrified.

"We… we did promise if it came to it we'd take the hit…" she said.

"Yeah but this wasn't exactly what I had in mind sister! oh fuck the wetwork!"

"What are you two talking about?" asked Quill suspiciously.

Neither met his eye. Gamora was biting her lip, and Rocket looked about ready to vomit.

Past Rocket didn't look away from his work or answer the question asked of him for a very long time, taking his time to cut his wire into nice, neat lengths.

Snip.

"Quill's a hell of a guy." He said

Rocket and Gamora stepped forwards at the same instant, and the memory died just like that.

Tivan Mrk II laughed. "Ahhh, two for the price of one? Oh what fun we shall have? This is all too, too perfect. " he said, as a sudden wave of pain and nausea rocked the entire crew to their knees , and suddenly Quill realised that everyone's memories up until this point had been a warm up for what as coming.

Awesome Mix tape Vol2 : Lou Reed, perfect day.

"Oh, so much suffering to choose from. You spoil me. And all yours. All earned. You're going to reap just what you sow, Guardians."

"Hum, so, ladies first? Then again…. perhaps not…."