The Walkman clicked and whirred, the gentle surrus of magnetic tape on the cassette's dust removal pad barely audible over the music and the sounds of the hospital.
Awsome mix tape, Volume one.
10cc: I'm not in love.
Peter Jason Starlord Quill sat numbly on the bench next to the boy as the memory unfolded, fingering his own Walkman absent-mindedly and wishing that he was somewhere, anywhere else. Even the Collectors lair was an improvement over this.
Drax was curled up in a foetal position on the corridor floor to his right, the doctors and nurses walking thought him as if he was as insubstantial as mist. Groot was propped against a wall, almost hidden in the yucca plant in the corner of the waiting room under the clock that ticked restlessly down to midnight. Gamora was clutching her head, slumped under a gurney in the coffee-stained carpet-tiled corner where forgotten things were put by people too busy with other people's pain to notice. Quill had heard, even then, that hospitals had special gurneys with pillows or whatever on top, and sheets handing round them to hide the body-bags strapped to the underside of the gurney. Cadavers spirited out of the room and down to the mortuary in the basement as soon as the mourning relatives had gone, hidden from view so not to remind the other patients that this was a place of death. Even as a child that idea had struck Quill as far more ghoulish than the alternative: secret highways of the dead winding their way through the hospital, past the maternity and children's wards, the orderly's smiling and nodding at the people as the wheels squeak squeak squeeked like three blind mice and the clock no-one ever ran up ticked down to midnight and people lives wound down to that inevitable gurney, out of the room past the babies and lovers and children and old people, into the elevator and down down down to the slab and the final violent kiss of the morticians Y cut parting pale, ravaged breasts. He'd been an angry child, for a long time, but not an unimaginative one.
Rocket, however, was slumped in the child's play area across the toy cars and drooling on the thing with the coloured balls on a bit of wire, and Quill was very aware that it was undermining the seriousness of the moment somewhat. A toddler-cage and a bright plastic Tower of Hanoi toy was stuck next to him, and just how angry the negative associations of those two things would have made Rocket if he was conscious was tickling him slightly. Also, despite how sad he was, and the seriousness of the memory, Quill was very aware that what his younger self was thinking about was how much he wanted to go play with the toy cars, but that he was aware that this was a serious moment and didn't want his grandpa to catch him at something that babyish. That and just how badly his younger self needed to pee: He'd been sat there for a long time, and there was a Pepsi machine in the corner and quarters in his pocket.
Young Quill thought about getting a candy bar with his final quarter in his pocket, and Quill reached and touched the same coin in his, one if his treasured mementos from home, and knew that whatever his younger self was planning on getting, Butterfinger or Hershey bar or Reeses, it didn't matter anymore.
The Walkman whirred and clicked. Kathy Redfern sung big boys don't cry. Doctors went past. The boy on the bench decided on Resses, but it was already too late. His grandfather was walking across the room towards him. The clock had hit midnight. The tape skipped and restarted with the "Ahhhhh!"s and the heartbeat of a synth drum.
He was out of time.
Peter Jason Quill's childhood ended. And as it did, he sat and watched it from the hospital bench. The beep beep beep of the EKG, and the quieter hiss it made, like a radio tuned to the gaps between the music , electrons hitting the phosphor screen of the scope like tears and describing an ever faltering heartbeat. The smell of disinfectant, and the feel of his grandfather's hands as he took the present from him, and tucked it away in his backpack to wait for nearly thirty years. The snoopy get well card on the side. Moments of pain, preserved in amber.
Quill realised that he wanted to shout at his younger self to take her hand when prompted. He realised that he wanted to rage, to hate his younger self for being too frightened to take her hand, he wanted to hate him for denying him that last contact, that closure.
But he couldn't. This wasn't a time for hate. Hate was a small emotion, a sharp hot crack, like a gunshot, and this was all too big for it. An echoing room whose coldness stole that sound and wore it down and reduced it to a hollow pop like a cap gun.
So he just sat here on the bench and watched his mother die from the next room as the doctors drank coffee, the tube-lights flickered, and the vending machine made its little whirring noise, and he tried to remember what Resses tasted like. After thirty years of alien food, he honesty couldn't remember.
"Mom! Mom! MOM!"
"Peter, I need you to stay right here for me, can you do that Pete?" said his grandfather, hands on shoulders.
"Sorry gramps." Muttered Quill watching from a few feet away. "I'm about to go Flight of the Navigator on you. Sorry 'bout that. In hindsight seems cruel. Your day must have really sucked." He said, as his Grandfather ran back into the room with the crash-cart team.
Both Quill's watched their mother code as various relatives wept and his grandfather knelt by her bead, holding her hand in both of his and looking up at her pleadingly as a doctor and a nurse applied oxygen and a third pushed past relatives, knocking the Snoopy card fluttering to the floor as he pushed his mother's breasts apart violently and begun CPR and young Peter was struck by just how perverse that seemed, and older Quill was struck by just how awful the tableau was, but how good the composition was, with people gathered around framing it like some sort of renaissance painting. The Madonna on Chemo by Leonardo Fuck-you-I'm-a-Turtle.
"I need 10cc's stat!"
"Already way ahead of you." Muttered Quill, tapping his Walkman.
Quill looked sideways just in time to see the hospital doors swing. Younger him had split.
"Yeah… I don't want to be here either." He said, following his younger self outside, and into the light of his abduction.
There didn't seem to be anything else to do.
Memories: Part Nine, Big Boys Don't cry.
The memory ended, and Quills stood leg's akimbo, emotionally drained and waiting for whatever fresh-from-the-ovens slice of hell the Collector was about to throw at him.
"Huh." Said the Collector, after some time, voice now noticeably digitised. "That didn't elicit anywhere need as strong an emotional response as I had expected."
"Yeah well, a year ago? Would have done it. Let's just say I got some closure on all that recently." He said, thinking back to the… the whatever-the-fuck it was he'd seen when he'd grabbed the infinity stone. Vaguely, he became aware that the collector-bot was scrabbling about in his mind, but too tired to try and fight it.
What's the point? he thought. Rocket's the closest anyone managed to fight this, and only by being angrier that I could ever imagine being. Like, old dude seeing squirrels on the bird feeder levels of anger, and I don't think I have that in me. Nothing else interrupts the memory's once they start.
Or do they? Quill thought, remembering that Rocket and Gamora had tried and successfully prevented him from seeing a memory by stepping forwards an initiating another one.
Even so… thought Quill, before quashing the impulse. If he thought about it, the Collector-bot could probably extract it right from his mind. The best way to plan was not to plan. To act entirely without a clue what you were doing.
Well, I've got that covered. He thought, as the Collector-bot made an exasperated noise.
"What are you talking about? I can't find any catharsis in your mind recently." He muttered, briefly filling his head with the opening strains of ain't no moutian high enough. "Yes, there is that, but that comes after the catharsis, and I can't find the initial event. How very vexing."
Quill paused to consider this, desperately trying to look like that wasn't what he was doing.
The infinity stone. He can't see our memories from when we were holding it. He froze up, and focused on that moment.
TivanMrk 2 let out an infuriated snort. "What are you thinking about now? I'm getting nothing!"
"Peanuts." Said Quill. "Peanut butter, smooth, not chunky."
"Peanuts?" asked the computer, aghast.
"Resses. I just remembered what they were filled with."
"Peter, I think we can drop the pretense. I've been inside your head: the false buffoonery won't fool me. I've seen the shape of your mind, and it's like a scalpel. Not a weapon except in extremis, but very good and unpicking things."
Quill Shrugged. "Suit yourself. I guess not everyone likes Peanuts." he said, thinking of the Snoopy card again.
The Collector-Bot chose to take that as cue to continue the memory trip.
Peter Jason Quill sat huddled on the steel bunk hugging his knees, looking at the wall. The wall was some sort of metal or ceramic, cold and hard as ice. His jeans were starting to fray, and his clothes grimy: it had been a while since they'd been washed. He guessed that the aliens that had abducted him hadn't considered picking up some spare t-shirts and a change of underwear before they left earth.
His food sat uneaten, a weird violently purple mush and something that looks and smelt like a Buffalo wing except for the fact that it had a clawed rat-like foot on the end, served in a rectangular metal tray. It looked untouched.
He sat listening to his Walkman, until the batteries wound down, and then he just sat. He did not cry. He wasn't going to give them that satisfaction.
He had been here long enough to know that every day or so an alien, one who looked pretty human, would come to pick up his tray, leave a new tray on food, and check the pail that they'd left him if he needed to go to the bathroom. Other than that, they'd left him pretty much alone. He still even had his back-pack with his school books, pencil case, and some supplies from art class.
They'd taken away the quarter he'd had the day before, when he'd used it to unscrew the cover of the air vet and wiggled through into the next room before finding it was an identical locked storeroom, so they welded that vent shut. The day before it had been his safety scissors: he'd got them in the jam of the door and they'd caught him trying to jimmy it open when they came with the tray, so he'd stabbed the guy with the tray in the leg with them. They took the pencils and everything sharp after that. He couldn't even draw or write a note for help now.
There was a hiss of the door behind him, but the guy with the tray didn't come in right away. He looked like a human teenager, clearly got given the job of feeding him because no-one else wanted it, and after being stabbed in the leg and having a pail full of pee thrown at him, he wasn't taking any chances. He sighed, and looked at the pile of uneaten food.
"Staving yourself isn't going to help." Muttered the alien, checking the room for traps. the first thing they had done was fit the dammed cargo with a translator, because if you couldn't threaten the captive it was really, really difficult to control one.
Peter shuddered. "The big guy with the gnarly root-things for hair said you were gonna eat me. You're trying to fatten me up."
Kraglin swore to himself: that joke had gotten the damn thing all riled up, but he guessed it was good to be able to scare it straight if needed. He put the fresh tray down, and moved to pick up the old one.
"Suit yourself: personally I'm on a diet. Lower-fat Terran would be good." He said, playing along as he went to pick up the tray. He paused for just a second stooped over and holding it. It felt wrong: almost papery. He tilted it, and the food slid off to reveal Fourth Grade History: the cause and resolution of conflicts in the 20th century. Kraglin had just enough time to look surprised and glance up from the schoolbook to see Quill diving off the bunk with the tray raised in both hands like Macho Man Randy Savage about to deliver a smack down.
Clonk!
Quill spirited out of the room as behind him the alien rolled on the ground swearing. He remembered the way he had come when they had put him in the cell pretty well, and tried to re-trace his steps, hareing down the corridors past confused and yelling aliens as they started to realise what was happening and chase him.
He ducked under the legs of a big fat one with a bionic eye who tried to block his way, smacking him in the shins with the tray as he rolled past. There was a cracking noise behind him, and small bolt of lightning slammed into the wall next to him. He shot up like a started rabbit and ran down a side corridor, deviating from the route his was familiar with, but now just running for his life. Down the end of the corridor, he thought he could see sunlight.
We're still on earth! He thought with joy at the sunlight. I can get out, get a message to the army or something, let them go all Space Invaders of these pricks!
I can go home! I can see mom again. He started to think, before he could stop himself.
He rounded a corner, and into the sunlight. He stopped.
The entire wall of the room was glass, or something like it, and on front of him three stars orbited each-other, gas giants hanging below him like children's balloons.
It was beautiful, it was majestic, it was pretty, even. But it wasn't home. And he suddenly knew that wherever he was, it was far beyond any help earth could give him.
And it was then as he looked out to the stars, past the refection of the haggard and frightened little boy he hardly even recognised, that he realised just how truly alone he was. No America, no earth, no home. No father.
No mother. Alone.
He dropped to his knees, and pressed both hands to the glass, before lowering his forehead to bonk against it gently. He was tired, and frightened, and hungry, and was starting to smell pretty bad. He wanted a bath. He wanted Pizza hut, and Saturday morning cartoons, and to rent a video from Blockbusters and pig out with his friends, or maybe play Dungeons and Dragons with them and ride his bike around town like he did before his Mom got sick. He wanted to be home. He wanted his mom.
Peter closed his eyes, and started to cry quietly into the stars.
Awesome Mix tape Vol 2. Gilbert O'Sullivan: Alone again (naturally)
A rough hand grabbed him by the shoulder. "Dagnabbit, that's enough young 'un!"
He turned and bit the hand hard, an when it still didn't let go, he drew the sharp shard of broken not-Buffalo-wing bone from in the waist band of his pants, and stabled it hard. As the figure cursed and recoiled, it's trench-coat flapped open, and Quill spotted what looked like a dagger and grabbed it, brandishing it thought the tears.
"Don't come near me! Or I'll stab you" he said, brandishing the weapon. Now it was in his hand it didn't feel like a knife. It was smoother, slender. More like an arrow.
Peter looked down, horrified, and as he saw the arrow, the association rose un-bidden into his mind, the guilt and shame of-
There was a brief whistling noise, and the arrow jumped up in his hand, and because he didn't let go of it fast enough, it slammed him into the ceiling of the corridor, and then towards the glass wall and he fell into those stars, and then hit the glass and everything went black.
Peter woke up slowly, and as he did, he became aware of a tall figure, sitting at the side of his bed, it's hand on his head, checking his temperature.
Oh thank god, it was all a dream.
"Mom?" he asked.
The figure sighed.
"You know young'un, with the exception of a criminally inclined Bolovite dwarf, you are both the smallest and most troublesome cargo I have ever had to transport. I mean even just swapping the book for the tray, that's genius " said the figure holding the book in its hands, before putting it back in Peter's backpack and putting the back-pack on its knees, as it resolved into the shape of a tall blue-skinned alien with a crooked grin, scared face and some sort of metallic Mohawk. He looked like Mr T's evil twin, and Peter recoiled slightly at the sight of that grin.
Yondu realised the grin was scaring the kid, and stopped.
"Transport?" asked Peter, remembering the past few days. "Cargo? You're taking me somewhere? You mean you're not just going to eat me?"
The alien snorted and shifted on his seat, before talking in that tone adults used when they're joking with each other, but don't want you to catch on.
"Well, the crew wanted to. They ain't never tasted no Terran before. And part of me was sorely tempted to let 'em… but hell kid, given how contrary you are, you'd probably just kill them all of indigestion. No, we ain't going to eat you. Not right now, anyways: I can't make no promises as to what will happen if you stab me in the hand again, though."
"Oh. Okay." Said Peter. He wasn't sure what else to say. "Sorry about your hand." He added eventually. He guessed it didn't hurt to be polite to the guy stopping you from getting eaten. He still wasn't 100% if it was a joke or not.
Yondu snorted, and waved it away. "Hell, I've had worse boy. When I was just your age someone came at me with an axe: a little lizard-rat bone ain't gonna do no harm."
"So, what happens now?" asked Peter. "I mean, if you're not gonna eat me, then what happens to me, why are you transporting me?"
The alien shifted uncomfortably, and Peter realised that he'd hit on a real problem the guy was having. Yondu begun rooting thought Peter's things, distractedly, before setting on the troll doll and holding it in his hands as he started again.
"Yeah well, about that. See, normally when we're delivering people, it's for a bounty: they're criminals and we turn 'em over for a reward, either to the law, or to other criminals who they've annoyed something fierce. And if they don't pay, there's bounty recovery agents we can go to, sell 'em on to someone else. You understand?"
"I think. What did the dwarf do?"
Yondu frowned "I'm sorry?"
"You said the only cargo you had who was smaller or more trouble than me was a criminally inclined dwarf. What did he do?"
"Arson. Little man sure loved his fire. No, but you understand? Normally when we do this, when have a customer lined up, and if that doesn't work out, we have other buyers lined up… well, heh, with you we have one and exactly one buyer, and we can't exactly take you to him like this, he won't likely pay for damaged stock."
"Huh?" asked Peter, before looking down.
He was in a hospital gown. Both of his legs were in casts.
Yondu shifted awkwardly
"Sorry about that didn't mean to fling you quite so far down that corridor. You're lighter than you look. I'll... I'll fix you up with some Rocket-boots so you can move around until they heal, if you promise not to try and escape with them. And the thing is, we have other jobs lined up: we can't just go to this buyer with you and wait up for you to heal. We missed our chance to drop you off, and it'll be a while until we're back in this part of the galaxy again."
Peter looked up, surprised, unsure if staying here or being dropped of to some insane alien you payed to kidnap little boys was worse. "How long?" he breathed.
Yondu sat for a long time before he answered.
"Twenty months standard. That's about a Centurian year. By Terran measurement...Two years." He said at length.
He saw they tears start to well up in Quill's eyes, and decided to interject before the damn thing could start crying again.
"Now two years is a long time on ship, and I can't have idle hands and useless lungs breathing up all my oxygen, costs too much, so I'm gonna have to either let the boys eat you, or put you to work. Now, I'm a touch impressed by all those escape attempts. Shows brains and balls aplenty, so I'm going to assign you to help our chef engineer Telzar, help him fix up stuff on ship. Maintain the fighters in the rack. You can help Kraglin with his chores too, seeing how you owe him after that smack to the head you gave him. It'll be hard work, but you look smart enough, so you'll pick it up soon enough, and if you don't well…" he shrugged. "Then there's really nothing I can do to stop the boys from chowing down."
"I'll be good! I can help out!" blurted Peter.
Yondu nodded approvingly, and then sat up off the chair by the bunk.
"Attaboy. Oh, you're clothes were starting to stink-out the bed bay, so I ordered some Ravengers garb in your size. We pick it up tomorrow at Fairport, I'll make sure that you get your old clothes back after we've washed them. Rest up for now. " he said, walking away "Probably a waste of money ordering clothes, I'll like as not let the boys eat you in the morning.." he said, walking away, before realizing that he was still holding the troll doll. Grinning guilty, he tired back and dropped it off on the kid's beside alcove: the med bay had better furniture than the holding cell.
"That's a hell of a nice little do-hickey you got there kid." He said, smiling sheepishly as he gave it back. He then ruffled the kids' hair.
He wasn't sure why he did that, Yondu thought as he walked away.
"Remember, two years, if we don't eat you tomorrow!"
Quill sat back, trying to hold back tears. He wasn't sure he wanted to spend two full years there.
He fell asleep thinking of his Mom.
He did that every night for more than the next two years.
The Collector-bot paused for a moment, and then made an annoyed noise.
"That's ridiculous, you emotional response spiked, but less than when you were watching the other's memories that doesn't make any…. Wait. Wait. Analysing… "
Quill held his breath, and just thought about the infinity stone, trying to keep the Collector out of his head. If he works this out before I'm ready to spring my plan…
Slowly, voice creaking with effort, the Collector bot begun to laugh, a slow, terrible laugh that broke intermittently into white noise.
"Ahhhhhh… precious. So completely and utterly Precious Starlord. How adorable: You actually care, you actually care about your crew so much that seeing them suffer actually hurts you more than your own worst memories. You know your own past, and have put it to bed, but their memories, you don't know what to expect and each and every layer of pain I reveal hurts you, deeply and sincerely. I told you it would be your virtues that would defeat you, Starlord, but I never imagined for one second it would be empathy."
His voice crackled, and shorted electronically, flat and dead when it came back.
"Empathy it is then."
Drax waited in the dimness of the rented room, in front of the date terminal. He had a few scars, but only a single tattoo, so clearly early in his vengeance quest, perhaps right at the beginning.
He sat with the chat-option open, but didn't look at it. He'd been trying to bait them on the outer-net using social media, groups vocal in their support of Ronan, arrange a personal meeting somewhere quiet. He wasn't sure what then. Beat one for information, probably.
On one of the other tabs, a holo floated. His wife and daughter. A vacation photo. He was not in it, he was the one who had taken it after all: he didn't have a selfie-drone, so he was in very few of his own holos and now that he realised how few he had of him with his wife or daughter, the selfie-drone no longer seemed like such a vain extravagance.
He missed them, he missed then so hard it hurt. More than anything. More than the shame of being unable to save them, more than his weakness. More than his rage, and his desire to avenge them, More than his strength. More than his desire to protect others from the same fate by ending the threat that Ronan represented, more than his mind. More than his own ability to survive, more than his desire to fall in battle, to jump of a building, to quietly go into the hotel bathroom, write out a note apologising for the mess and leave a huge tip for the cleaners, and neatly open his carotid artery with his nail-clippers, just end it all so he could see them again. .. more than anything else, was simple every-day loss. He missed them. And everything else, even the Rage, even his vengeance, was just a mask for that simple, childish pain.
What happened to it, what happens to a person's capacity to love when they died, He wondered? Did his wife feel the same way he did now, or did she feel nothing? Did she miss him or was she at peace. He didn't know. His race's very literal nature and lack of metaphor meant that they weren't exactly big on religions, but in a galaxy where Asgardians could turn up on your doorstep or long dead races re-appear overnight, you didn't discount the possibility.
Had he been from a more poetic species, he would have waxed lyrical about his pain and his loss, but he wasn't. He could have said about his anguish, about how his feet longed to walk to the place where she was sleeping, but he must live on, but he didn't he didn't do any of that. He was not from a poetical species. He was not a natural speaker, or a particularly eloquent thinker. He was intelligent, quiet, thoughtful, naturally introverted most of the time. He was an ordinary man, weighed down with a loss he couldn't put into words, sitting in a hotel room in his shorts, stating at a picture, and he was deeply aware about how inadequate that was.
"And this is a man you think off as strong?" muttered the Tivan-Bot. "A man you can protect and look after the team, who can care for you all? He can't even care for himself: no sooner than he killed Ronan, he moved onto Thanos. Because he needs someone to take revenge on. Because without that, all he has is his pain. And it is stronger than he is."
Drax put his head between his hands, and tried to cry. But he just couldn't. He had no more tears to give.
Go home. A voice in Drax's head said. Go back to your home planet. There was so much damage, so much hurt. Many buildings that need re-building. They will need architects and modellers and failing that strong hands willing to rebuild. There will be people there, who will understand your pain. It is all of ours now. Give up this foolish idea of a vengeance quest, and go home to mourn with the rest of your people. Until you do, you will have no closure…
Just go home and…
The console pinged.
Drax looked up.
One of the Kree Hard-Nat's on the Make the Kree Empire Great Again! group had responded. They were willing to meet in secret, to buy a cache of plasma rifles from him. I for one am not going to let any treaty stop me fighting the great fight! they said. They'd sent coordinates for a meet up, only a few kilometres from his location. Alone.
Drax did not have a cache of weapons, but he did now have that man's location, and his fists.
He got up and left without even a backwards look at the screen behind him.
The holo of his wife and child smiled sadly as he walked out the door.
Quill recoiled slightly, and then winced.
"Not quite the family man you thought?" asked Tivan.
Quill shook his head. "No, just surprised by how awful that motel room was. No mini-bar and not even an ice-bucket. Scandalous."
Tivan-bot hit him again.
Groot watched nervously as Rocket laughed, and bragged and boasted, and rolled the dice. He could tell from his small friend's raised body temperature and the dilated capillaries in his ears that he was quite quite drunk. He understood the rationale, as Rocket had put it these guys smell sobriety and they smell a ringer Groot. They're brought up to think if you're too drunk to stand, you're too drunk to cheat. Heh, let's teach 'em the error of their ways. And besides, you're the one who wanted to avoid big heists for the moment. Pass me that bottle. No Groot, not whiskey, the gin: the mark can't tell if you're watering gin: I need to be drunk, but I still want to live through this and have a liver at the other end. Don't worry, Groot, it'll be fine.
Don't worry, Groot, it'll be fine.
"Oh come on, Daddy needs a new pair of rocket-skattes!" said Rocket, Standing up with a clawed foot on one of the planks laid down on the warehouse floor to mark out the edges of the craps-shoot, and threw the dice. And to anyone watching, they were the same dice he was handed the moment before: only Groot's ability to see density could notice the dice tucked in his cheek hamster-like, swallowed when he blew on the dice "for luck" before his throw.
Rocket hooted with victory, arms in the air "Another seven! Okay, ladies, pay up and look big! He said, collecting notes and pressing his thumb credit slips from the other violent thugs who made up this underworld floating craps game.
"Aww yeah, let me smell that cash!" said Rocket, bringing the handful of notes up to his muzzle and inhaling deeply, spitting the dice into his paws and drying them on the notes and hiding it by pretending to kiss his winnings, before grabbing the dice he'd just thrown, and appearing to hand them to the next player, making the switch with deft practice.
"Beginners luck…" muttered the gigantic Kree gangster who took the dice, and several others laughed nastily at that line, but Groot, not playing and just there to act as a deterrent to anyone who got ideas about robbing Rocket, noticed the meaningful looks that the others shared at the joke. Groot was worried: he knew that the most likely score on two unbiased six-sided dice was a seven, but Rocket had rolled a seven every time he'd needed too, and always a six and a one. The odds against it were astronomical, and he could tell that the other players had noticed.
"I am Groot!" he warned. Rocket turned to him, a tad unsteadily, and then waved a paw at him drunkenly in a throwing gesture, dismissing his warning.
"Pah! I know what I'm doing. Don't worry Groot, I've got the feeling that my run of luck ain't about to turn yet."
"No surprise there then." muttered one of the other players, toying with a knife, and Groot begun to get deeply scared. There was supposed to be a strict no-weapons rule, so Rocket had left his guns at the door, on the other side of the old warehouse. It was a long way, and now that Groot turned his density vision onto the other players he could detect the shapes of knives and hand-guns.
The other players laughed along with that, as they started to share glances and nods, forming a consensus. Rocket, too drunk to notice the looks, laughed along with them as they started eyeing him up.
"I am Groot!" he warned, urgently. We're rumbled, you need to get out of here!
"Ugg, whine whine whine. I know what I'm doing mom." Muttered Rocket sarcastically, watching the dice go around the circle of players. He glanced up, sneering dismissively. "Seriously Groot, why you always got to spoil my good mood, dummy?" He asked, taking the dice from the player to his left, and making a fast switch and throwing them.
It was only then that Groot re-scanned the room, and noticed both the knife in the hands of the player who had just handed Rocket the die, and the large "X" cut into one of the dice Rocket had just palmed.
Die. Groot remembered. Singular of dice: Die. Strange language.
Groot shouted a warning, but by then it was already too late. The die was cast, and as Rocket got the warning and his face paled under the fur, the other gangsters watched as the dice, those little rolling bones as they rattled and clacked to a stop. Lucky sevens, and very visibly without the X half the room had seen carved into one of the die seconds earlier.
The room slowly turned to Rocket, half of them pissed as hell, and half grinning evilly.
Rocket froze up, just for a second "E-Heh, ahh, funny story guys. So, I know what this looks like, but apparently, right… Sometimes if you roll dice hard enough it can completely sand-off any marks that might have been scraped onto the dice. You know: like road-rash. True story, happened to a friend of mine once out Xandar way, right Groot?"
"I am Groot!" they've blocked the exit. They have you guns.
Rocket smiled nervously at the gangsters as they closed in, and then spread his paws wide in a gesture of reconciliation. "Okay, guys, ya' got me! Can't blame a guy for trying. So… how do I make it up for you, look if it's a matter of the money…"
"It's a matter of principle." Said the grinning Aascavarian with the knife "We are gamblers at heart, we come for the game. You want to make it up to us? Double or quits."
Rocket froze up, and then sagged with relief. "Seriously? That's it. Oh thank fuck. So what, one more throw to see if I live or die, that sort of thing? Not ideal, but I've had worse odds..."
"No… not dice. A different game. We are gamblers at heart…" snickered the Aaskavarian, as Groot became aware of the barking of dogs, getting louder and louder and louder. "and it's been so long since we've had a chance to use the baiting pit…"
Rocket cut and ran, and got about a yard before someone grabbed him and picked him up by his tail.
There was a thunk. Groot looked down. Someone had hit him with a pipe, at about waist height. The guy looked up, and his eyes went wide.
Then someone shot Groot in the back, and Groot got pissed.
Quill watched as the tendril shot thought the Aascavarian with the knife, then the guy with the pipe, and then Groot extended a tiny shoot on his shin, and got the guy holding Rocket in the face, and then it got way too henti, with wooden tentacles going everywhere, and Quill really, really wished he could look away, especially when it came to what happened to the dogs, who were after all just dumb animals and who didn't deserve that. And through it all, all Groot could think about was protecting Rocket, and once the noise had died down and the squishy bits had stopped flying, only then did he realise he'd no idea where Rocket had scurried off to.
Groot looked around, and suddenly realised all the carnage he'd caused. Again. He kept forgetting how fragile they were.
The big Kree gangster cradling another Kree's head and trying to stem his wounds as he blead out, and crying to himself. He looked up as Groot peered down at him.
"My brother. No gang affiliation. He just came here to play some dice… why? Why?"
Groot hesitated, and went to reach out a tendril to the wounded brother. Maybe he could use a vine to tourniquet the wound, stop the bleeding…
There was the barking chatter of a machine gun, and Rocket dropped snarling from the ceiling onto Groot's shoulder, firing wildly. The Kree's chest dissolved in a spray of blue, and Rocket snarled and kicked the grenade the man and been reaching for behind his back into the bating pit, where it went off with a hollow crump, but in the process he hit the unarmed-brother in the head, putting him beyond the help of any tourniquet.
Rocket and Groot stood there for a moment in the utter silence of the dead warehouse.
Rocket turned to Groot. "Get the money and run, numb-nuts!"
Groot watched horrified, as Rocket scrabbled around picking up blood-slicked notes and credit slips, and he realised then and there that Rocket just didn't know how to quit while he was ahead. If he was going to stick with him, then either this would keep happening, or Rocket would be rolling around on an abandoned warehouse floor in his own blood before too long.
Groot wasn't sure which of those would hurt him most. But either way, he had failed.
Tivan-bot didn't even give Quill the chance to adjust, didn't even speak to him about the utter hopelessness of Groot trying to reform Rocket, before hitting him again.
Twenty-year old Gamora slinked thought the ornate doors of gilt and frosted glass in a black neoprene wetsuit, pistol raised in a way that hit all of Quill's "sexy spy fetish" buttons at once as she sashayed around the corner and into the darkened room. By the salt tang in the air and the slight rocking motion, Quill guessed they were on a fancy yacht. The room was long and dark, and a sofa at the other end of the lush carpet was light by a holo-cine which gave the only illumination as Gamora controlled her breathing and walked carefully across the room, grateful for the deep carpet that muffled every step as she closed on her target. She was miles off shore, the gun in her hand the same make of mazer as the president-in-exile's guards used, the serial number a match for one sold to his aide. The only possible explication in the aftermath of the assassination, that he was murdered by one of his own entourage. It was a perfect job, she thought edging up to the sofa and wishing that he would just poke his head up over the top of the headrest so she could get a shot. Gamora got to right behind the sofa, an then leaned over and pressed the gun to the man's head.
Her eyes widened in horror.
There was a woman on his lap, joygirl by her clothes, or lack of them, from a high-class pressure district. And three more sprawled around the sofa. And a huge pile of what she suspected was uncut 'slaught . I mean, she knew these tinpot minor dictators lead a certain lifestyle, lived fast and partied hard, but this was just Bacchanalian. All four people suddenly stopped their various explorations of the contents of each-other's pants and looked up at her aghast. And she suddenly realised that there was no way to make this fit the carefully constructed killed-by-own-entourage explanation if there were any witnesses to the actual assassination.
The joygirl seemed to have realised this, and silently mouthed a word to her, one word. Please. She looked younger than Gamora did.
I could make it out. She realised. Into the sea. Hope father thinks I died in the attempt and doesn't look for me….
Gamora's eyes flicked up to the other side of the room, just once.
Nebula stood there with the bomb in her rucksack, the backup plan. If the deniable kill went wrong, plan B was to take out the entire boat and just leave everyone confused as to what exactly had happened: they were over an ocean trench twenty kilometres deep, they'd never even find the debris field, but it was still easier to have a patsy. Neater. Nebula looked to Gamora questioningly, her own pistol already picking out a mark.
Gamora pushed her feelings down, and then nodded to Nebula.
They both started shooting.
"Hardly the principled woman you thought you knew, Hum?" asked the Tivan-bot. "You have to wonder how much of Thanos is still in her."
Quill recoiled with the force of three memories in such close succession, and then as he felt the computer prepare the next one, he decided that he'd had enough.
"Right that's it: firstly, if she hadn't, then Nebula would have toasted them, plus god knows how many other people were on that boat, and secondly, I'm activating my plan!" he yelled.
The Tivan bot froze up.
"What?"
"My plan. I have had enough of this shit, I'm busting out."
"Oh, oh really? How, pray tell?"
"Well, I realised that you can't read my memories about when I was in physical contact with the infinity stone, and you showed me that if I take a step forwards then it kills the current memory and starts a new memory… so, if I take steps forwards fast enough and focus on the infinity stone to limit the memories You can see…." Quill begun to juggle and hop towards the exit. "TahDa!"
The collector considered this for a long time.
"Seriously?"
"Hell yeah, dance-off mark two! Constant foot movement to mess with your own rules, mental focus to limit your choice of memories to choose from and I can…" he said, moonwalking past Rocket and right up to the door. "Just dance my way right out of here-"
THHHHHHHZOCK!
Quill was thrown across the room by the force of the jolt, and landed hard near the centre of the room.
"Right." He coughed weekly, after a moment "Right, forgot you could use force-fields. Ugg."
"Yes. Did you have a backup plan?"
"Umm, use the power on imagination to confuse you as to which of my memories are real and which are plot summaries of movies? Because you know: I was only abducted by Yondu because I got the high score on a video game sent from outer-space to recruit people with the skills to be elite intergalactic fighter-pilots."
"Last Starfighter."
"Shoot. Got sucked into -"
"Tron."
"There was this book-"
"Firstly, I sincerely doubt any story involving you and a book in the same sentence, and secondly Neverending Story."
"What about the time I-"
"Back to the future."
Quill frowned. "I didn't even say anything-"
"Back to the future."
"Darn. You're good." Said Quill. He waved a hand vaguely from his position on the floor. "Fuck me that was stupid of me. Just, just roll the next memory man. Let me guess, something horrible that illustrates a personal flaw in Rocket, seeing as we've had Drax, Groot and Gamora?"
"Not a flaw, as such, juts his willingness to give up on life. An ordinary enough thing, but still… weakness."
" Give up? Weakness? Rocket? Pah, no way. Whatever virtual dope you're smoking, I want some. No. Frickin'. Way."
"Interesting, did he or did he not express that he had been close to suicide after Groot got blown up."
"Yeah but… Rocket? Come on what are you saying. That he's suicidal?"
"No, Suicide is a perfectly natural response to intolerable suffering or to archive a goal more important than one's own survival: I myself and destroying my own program to keep you here, after all. No, what I'm saying is far worse: He'll give up on himself. On who he is: you push him hard enough into his own façade of being an unfeeling hardass and he'll revert back to what he was before that, what he was designed to be; a victim."
Squelch. Pain. Squelch. Pain.
The rain was bad. The mud was very bad. The Pain was very, very bad. But the smell, the smell was the worst. Rocket tried to ignore it as he limped along, leaning on his gun. The rain must have dropped the temperature to only a few degrees above freezing, but he still burned. He felt too hot in his own fur.
Squelch. Pain. Squelch. Pain.
He tried not to think about the pain. The rain had hammered his fur flat, got under his uniform and was making it chafe against his fur and the raw, hairless skin around his implants, now swollen and distended with fever.
Squelch. Pain. Squelch. Pain.
He hadn't even noticed the cut at the time. The fight, the crash, the journey… he couldn't even guess which of the various injures of the past week had caused the cut on his thigh. He'd been too tired, too frightened, too high on adrenaline to notice at the time. It was possible he wasn't even conscious when it happened: the number of times he'd blacked out or taken a head injury in the past few days it was a miracle he wasn't firckin' comatose by now.
The smell was getting really quite bad now, even through the wet air and sodden uniform. With the rain knocking scents out of the air, drowning out all sounds and cutting lines of sight, and with the continued magnetic interference from orbital bombardment fucking with both his instinctive pull to the pole and his GPS, he was utterly, utterly lost. He could feel the rain and the thumps of the bombardment all the time, every second, like fingers drumming away gently on the back of his skull. He was covered in mud to his sternum, tired, in pain, and in this downpour he could walk within five meters of his platoon and never even see them.
Squelch. Pain. Squelch. Pain.
He guessed he probably shouldn't have gotten rid of the maggots. He'd read once that they only ate dead flesh, cleaned the wound. Pulling them out was dumb. But when he'd pealed back the graphene from the uniform and seen the fur sticking to it, coming off in clumps and the wiggling… well. He'd freaked out. He had felt the heat and noticed the discoloration a few days before, but the wound itself had numbed as the creeping pain spread up his leg and side (tracking, hidden by the fur, he realised that now) and tried his best to clean it: urine soaked rag, all he had at the time. The urea should have killed off some of the germs.
Should have. Some of. Clearly his best hadn't been good enough. He'd not dared to look at it since the maggots.
The heat was getting bad now. And the smell.
Squelch. Pain. Squelch. Pain.
He'd made for an aid station on the map, the first day, when the bombardment wasn't as bad and he knew roughly where he was. Not a frontline one: there was one of those only eight klicks from him when he first cleaned the wound, but he was pretty sure they'd lost the ridge between him and it, and the enemy weren't interested in taking prisoners, and besides, he'd told himself, it was just a scratch. Right?
Squelch. Pain. Squelch. Pain.
He'd made for a larger M.S.H., twenty clicks away, but safe from enemy action. A longer but safer journey: it was far enough behind the lines that even with the break out as bad as it had been, he was sure the enemy couldn't even get within artillery range of it.
He'd been right.
Squelch. Pain. Squelch. Pain.
Airstrike. The universe loved its jokes. The place was toast: nothing salvageable. Some sort of thermobaric or incendiary he didn't recognise. Left everything covered in a fine grey coating of melted iron filings. Aerosolized thermite? He wasn't sure. It made sense, he guessed: from orbit a medi-suite and a bioweapons suite looked the same: with the wind blowing towards your lines, you'd want something high-temperature to sterile the site.
The worst thing had been the smell, not the one from his leg, but at the hospital-
-the worst thing, an annoyingly analytical part of his brain corrected, was the fact you have gangrene and were relying on finding antibiotics there and without them you're going to die of sepsis-
- the second worst thing about it was the smell. Not bad, he could cope with bad smells-
- sickly sweet, rancid, anaerobic like something gone bad in a fridge. Is it really old meat or really young cheese or is it your leg rotting off the bone? Hard to tell ain't it Roc? Squelch. Pain. Squelch. Pain-
- bad he could cope with. It had been a long war: he'd seen some shit. But he'd been walking a long time to get to that M.S.H. unit, burnt a lot of calories. He was pretty hungry when he started, starving by the final stretch. As he'd walked towards it he was thinking about the rations and cot he'd get with his meds, and he'd picked up the scent of cooked meat long before he'd seen the wreckage of the hospital, and it had been so good and his mouth had been watering so hard when he came over the final ridge, and saw exactly what it was he'd been drooling over for the past two hours.
- and yet, even after you'd seen that, ya still kept drooling, didn't you Roc? Tummy rumbled even as you started crying. Your brain was disgusted, but your nose and stomach they had other ideas, didn't they? I mean who'd ever know? You'd have to fight off the crows, sure, but there was plenty for everyone. The only thing that stopped you carving off a slice or taking a big ol' bite was the fear of a second airstrike and how urgently you needed to push on to the next aid station, the one you should have headed for in the first place you frickin' idiot-
Squelch. Pain. Squelch. Pain.
So he'd headed back the way he came, a couple of days walk in the bad shape he was now. Then the rain had started. The bombardment got a lot worse. He'd ditched most of his equipment before he headed for the wrecked hospital, but after hours of fighting though the rain he'd dumped his ammo, his canteen and his GPS: he wasn't fighting anyone but himself, there was no shortage of water and the GPS was fucked anyway, so ditch the weight. The only reason he'd kept his gun was because he could use it as a crutch. Besides: they were replaceable if he got to the aid station.
He'd been walking since. He didn't know how long: It was difficult to tell day and night with that rain, and he'd blacked out a few times. It was getting harder and harder to think.
Squelch. Pain. Squelch. Pain.
He must be nearly there by now…
Squelch. Pain. Squelch. Pain. Squelch-
Crunch!
He gasped as pain shot up his good leg. Staggered sideways and only just kept on his feet. Cursing, Rocket glanced down to see what the fuck he could have trodden on -
He stared, wide eyed with horror, and slowly lifted up his foot. The screen had a perfect pawprint smashed thought it and it was half-submerged in the grey mud, but it was still quite clearly his GPS.
-You ditched it…what? Yesterday? The day before? Impossible to tell in this rain ain't it? Guess the stride of the wounded leg is a little shorter than the other one. Hell of a big circle to walk in Roc, and even then, million to one chance you'd step on the exact same spot again…
The universe sure loved its jokes.
Rocket Racoon burst out laughing.
He was cold, tired, in pain, burning up with fever, his leg was numb almost to the hip now, and he'd just pissed himself with shock and he laughed and laughed and laughed. He just couldn't help it. He was pretty sure his conception and birth had been closely monitored, his creation, his first moment of sapience attended by dozens of researchers, three with their hands actually inside him, probably studied in every detail by hundreds if not thousands of the galaxy's top scientists. He'd been poked and prodded and probed and analysed by some of the top medical minds in the universe for most of his life, hell, there had been a dedicated microbiologist whose job was just to monitor his heath by studying his poop, they'd spent millions on him, and here he was, dying from lack of basic fucking disinfectants. It was the funniest damn thing he'd ever heard of. Maggots and bread mould could save him, and he didn't even have that. He'd been monitored his whole life, had people watching him every second, hunting for him when he'd escaped, hunting for him in the war, on both sides, people who wanted to find him and break him and kill him slowly and intimately and look him in the eyes as the lights went out and he'd given them all the slip again and again… and now when he needed people, no-one could find him.
Now he needed people, no one could find him… He'd always known he'd die in pain, that was just a given, but he'd never imagined for one second that he'd die alone, and now it was happening, he finally saw the funny side of it.
Laughing, he walked helplessly in ever decreasing circles for a few moments, tears streaming down his snout with the rain until his feet tangled in his discarded ammo belt, hidden under the mud, and he went over on his face, biting his tongue.
The laughter turned to sobs, and eventually even they died out. He'd lost his grip on his gun, and the first little attempt to push himself up just sent his paws slipping thought the watery mud, clay slick and silky between his nimble little fingers, and it was clear that he couldn't get up. And why would he want to? What was the point? He sobbed with relief: the clay felt cool and soothing against his leg, and the water bubbling up around him wasn't that bad, it felt kinda nice, and he was so tired of it all and he finally didn't have to do anything, he finally had permission to just give up. To say fuck it. To become one with the mud and just lie down and sleep…
Rocket started to drift.
….
Safe…. Warm….
He was just nodding off when the limb grabbed him, wrapping around him like whipcord: cold and rough and hard, harder than flesh, harder than he could have imagined. He panicked, tried to reach for... something, something he couldn't remember exactly, some place in his mind, but it was gone, and the limb was dragging him upwards, ripping him away from it and he panicked, paws grasping at mud, and then at air as it lifted him up into the sky, higher than he could imagine and he squeaked with fear and his bladder let go again no no no! I was there! I was so close! I was doing okay, I was peaceful! Just let me go out peacefully! I can't take anymore!
He closed his eyes and squealed and writhed and snarled and spat, trying to get them to drop him. It was soldiers, it was Jaegers, it was men in lab coats, it was them, come to bring him back, back to that place and this time he wouldn't escape, not even into death. They had him, it was about to begin all over again…
"No!" he yelled. "Oh please No! No, just let me die, please! Please!" He screamed, raising a paw to his face to shield his eyes from the rain as he was flipped over, facing the sky and he felt the droplets washing the mud from him, leaving him bare and exposed and naked. Vulnerable. Helpless. Weak.
Caught.
He looked up at his captor, and moaned with fear. It was huge, as tall as a jaeger, at least. It's skin was hard as ironwood, rough as bark. A weird, drooping almost featureless face peered stupidly at him out of the gloom. Its skull was open at the top, it looked wooden, and Rocket knew then it that could only be another of his pet projects, another one of the freaks, sent to hunt him down.
I'm lost.
The thing paused, and then ran a tendril over his wounded leg, and he cried out in agony as it touched a nerve, at just the wrong point. The pain was incredible. He tried to move his leg away from it, but it held him too tight. The helplessness filled him more than the pain: this was going to be his life now, just like before.
He screamed as it plunged a tendril into his helpless flesh, and then gave up. He closed his eyes and pressed his face against the bark, smelling moss and feeling both its roughness and it spongy, almost cork-like texture, trying to escape inside himself, block it out, find that place where the pain couldn't reach him.
Lylla, Reynard, all the others, the escape, freedom… you need to forget them: they'll be too painful. You need to forget your life was anything other than this. You never left K.L.S., you just dreamt you did. Perhaps if you can convince yourself, it won't be that bad…
He could feel it, the numbness, emptiness spreading thought him, a tingling. Good, good let it all go…
Funny. I thought the emptiness would start in my heart… not my leg.
Rocket Racoon opened his eyes.
A fine tracery of tiny white hairs, minute transparent roots, was covering is leg, winding along through the greasy blood-slicked fur. Breaking up the clotting, reaching into the flesh. He could feel it. It felt painful but also cooling: like running a scald under the tap. He watched astonished as it encased the limb. He could feel the roots moving thought his thigh with a tingle, nothing more. Cutting out the dead tissue with a precision that even the tiny jaws of maggots couldn't. Sucking out the water, killing the bacteria with dehydration, secreting acetic acid and acetylsalicylic acid, sap and resins, cleaning him out vein by vein, packing the wound with clean moss laced with lichens and penicillin mould spores: stopping the rot just before it reached the bone marrow. Stopping the pain. Then the thing started walking, huge slow steps though the mud that rocked him back and forth, and he was high, so high he felt he could see a little farther though the rain, almost like he could see forever, if he wanted to.
It tightened its grip on him, held him close to the rough bark of its chest, but just when he thought it was about to crush him and the panic welled up in his chest, it stopped. Like it didn't want to hurt him. He felt… safe.
Rocket couldn't understand.
What are you doing? Why are you helping me? Do you work for them? So many questions he should ask. Why did you save me? Why… why would you want to? Unless you worked for them, why would anyone care? Why would anyone care about me? So many questions.
He started with the obvious one.
"What… what the fuck are you?" asked Rocket, trying to shield his eyes from the rain as he peered up out of the boughs growing around him.
The thing looked down.
It smiled.
"I am Groot."
Tivan-bot sighed, with genuine sadness, his program sounding worse and worse.
"A pity. I had such great hopes for the so-called Guardians of the Galaxy. I saw so much promise. And know what do I see?"
"I see the failed father, who turned his back on his family and spat on the memory of the man he was to turn himself into what he hated on his Quest for vengeance. Who became someone his wife and daughter would be terrified by if they ever met, and who prioritised childish revenge over honouring their memory by moving on and doing something constructive with his life."
"I see the failed friend who couldn't curb the excesses of the common psychopath he hooked up with, and so sat and fretted and worried, helpless, and his companion drunk himself to death, lied, cheated, stole and killed indiscriminately and slowly dragged one of the last, if not the last of the ancient and noble Flora Colossi down to his base level because that Flora Colossi was too weak to ditch the weight and not get dragged under the sea of filth with him. Groot, who failed to save Rocket, who fucked that up, who for all his intelligence and talents keeps fucking up, and who dammed himself in the process."
"I see the daughter of Thanos, a true daughter of Thanos, who despite all her moralizing and efforts to be different, slips slowly back into the patterns of stealth and deception, violence and murder she was raised with, who for all her professed disgust at her adopted father's death-cult, still loves him deeply…"
"…and I see Rocket, or should I say 89p13, or junior. A broken thing that rages against the world, against its creator, and despite all its clear potential, is so afraid of having to face itself it drinks and fights and weeps when it thinks no-one is watching, for after all its lounging for freedom, once it tasted freedom and had seen the consequences of being free to make its own decisions, the cost of its actions, now desires nothing more than to run back to its cage and hide from the trail of blood it's freedom has painted through the stars. A thing that wants to give up and hide in a bottle, because life is hard, and dying is easier than taking some fucking responsibility. That becoming something worthy of its potential is harder than failure, so it chooses failure, and drags everyone around it down with it, because in becoming a beast free itself of the pain of becoming a man. "
"And then I see you, Starlord, and I'm not sure who disappoints me the most."
The collector-bot hid Quill hard then, a barrage of his failures from his life amongst the stars: petty crimes, petty fights, one-night stands, bad things he did when running with the Ravengers endless arguments with Yondu, with Gamora, Rocket and Drax…
"No." muttered Quill, hands over his eyes as he tried to block out the stream of images that washed over him. "No, please, no no no no no…" he said, slumping to his knees.
His younger self, tears streaming down his face, the shame and guilt as his Grandfather broke his toy bow over his knee, and waved the arrow, just a blank stick of bamboo taken from the tomato plants in the garden, his mother crying in the background as his grandfather yelled "Dammit Quill, this isn't a toy! What were you thinking!" and-
"No." said Quill, suddenly far more strongly than before. "No, no you don't mister! No you do NOT get to use my mother against me!" he said, pushing himself to his feet "You don't get to use my crew against me, or my Grandfather. They're my family, and you don't get to do that! Where do you even get off buddy!" he yelled, angrily taking a step forward towards the door.
"So you see me and mine as failures do you? As bad people? As fuck ups? Do you buddy" he yelled, taking another step.
"Really? So you want to know what I see, heh? You want to know what I see?! Okay. I see Groot, someone I didn't even know had a past, who is without a doubt the nicest guy ever born, or sprouted or grown or whatever, who've been treated just awfully by everyone else. And I mean, because he's a plant all the non-plant races have treated him as a freak or a thing or a big dumb object and after all the horror and the degradation and the misunderstanding and just the really, really shitty way we treat plants in general 'caus they can't talk back most of the time, and hell, even after seeing he shitty way we treat each other when we can talk back, you know what? He's still the nicest guy. He's kind and good and dignified and smart, and if the worst you can say about him is that he tries to be not only nice, but to be good, to make a difference in the right way, and it occasionally fucks up, or that he's somehow wasted his life because he tried too hard to be the conscience for someone who doesn't have his natural gift for kindness, then you're still saying something great about him. Groot saved our lives, and we saved Xandar. Without him twelve billion people would be dead, including us. He's not a fuck up, and Rocket isn't his biggest failure, but his' biggest success! It's easy to be friends with a nice person, is being friends with a compete ass that shows who's good at friendship! And being there, unconditionally, for someone as mentally and emotionally wrecked as Rocket? I hope you collect medals too, buddy, because Groot fucking deserves one!"
Groot shivered and shuddered for a moment, and then his eyes started to re-focus, as the Collector-bot was forced to turn his attention to Quill and lesson his hold on the others.
Quill took another step forwards.
"Drax, now, Drax is someone so honourable that he's always the first of us to admit if he's done something wrong. He's always the one who stays focused on Thanos, who gives his all in the fight and yeah, you could say that he's obsessed or that he's insane or that he's a killer, and you tried to break him by saying that his quest for vengeance has turned him into someone his family wouldn't even know but you know what? You're even more wrong than you were with Groot. I'm going to have to invent new words for how wrong. Wrong-ger-er. Yes: he kills people, and yes, he's killed a lot of guys and he does get obsessed and hung up and brooding and frankly goddanmed scary at times but you know what else he does? He cooks, he cleans, he comforted Rocket when Groot got all smushed up, even after all the stupid hateful shit Rocket put him through, he was the first one to comfort him, and he knew exactly what to do. He won't harm a child, he took a real beating rather than hurt a mentally disabled guy. Turned down Isha, before we knew she was a grade-A psycho, because he's loyal to his wife. He feeds us when we're hungry, and comforts us when we're hurting and fights to protect us as won't ever raise a hand to a child and is loyal to his wife even in death and you say he's not the family man he once was? Are you high? He's the most family orientated person I've ever met, and if the Guardians are his family now, then I'm eternally grateful that he's part of it, and if he's obsessed with Thanos, it's because he wants to stop him and prevent any more families from getting ripped apart like his did. You think his wife and child would be ashamed of that, then you're doing them a disservice as well as him. And word to the wise dude? Don't you ever dis his wife of kid in my earshot, because if Drax the Destroyer doesn't get you for that I can name four other people who would, and my name is top of the list."
In the other corner of the room, Drax stopped reciting his wife and daughters name over and over and begun to stir. Quill took another step forwards.
"I'm not even going to start on how wrong you are with Gamora. Ashamed because she allowed herself to feel love for Thanos at one point in her life? Are you fucking kidding me? She's the smartest and most moral and by far the deadliest woman I've ever met, and literally the only flaw you can find with her is that she found it in herself to love someone she has every right to hate? I'm gonna spell this out simply for you. That. Is. Not. Weakness. That is the sort of strength of character and conviction I can't even fathom. So her step dad was an emotionally abusive genocidal lunatic who had her violently and forcibly cyberneticaly modified. So what? You think that just because she allowed herself to feel for him after he saved her freaking life that she's going to turn out the same way he did?" Quill laughed.
"Her? No chance. Oh, she's got it in her to kill, no doubt about that and yeah, she'll go a lot colder and a lot deeper at it than I would to complete a mission, but hell: you think I never loved Yondu? Sure I did, and he was a pretty lousy parent all round by his own admission. You don't turn into your parents, not if you don't want to. Seriously, if the worst you can come up with there is that she had too much love for Thanos and Nebula, and worries she's too much like them, then you've missed the point. The point is, she's made a decision not to be like them, and it's ten times as hard to stand against some who you love when you know they're wrong, than it is to stand against someone you hate. You mistake that for weakness and I'm not even having his conversation with you."
Gamora twitched, Quill stepped forward to within a pace and a half of the door, and took a deep breath.
"And as for Rocket how DARE You. How dare you dredge up all that pain and suffering and anguish and say it made him give up on life? How dare you. In my town back on earth before I got taken up here there were junkies and failures and people who just couldn't cope with the shit hand life delft them and folded in on themselves and gave up, and even as a kid you could see it, no matter how you're folks tried to shush you or hustle you across the street. And you know what? If life had dealt me a hand as quarter as shitty as Roc's then I'd have maybe taken a spacewalk without a suit by now! How dare you say he's given up on hope or trying to be good or trying to do the right thing? How dare you say he's given up on himself? He never gave up on the best of himself, he never gave up on the part of him that still had hope, the part of him that he named after his quest for the stars, the part that fought to save his friends: he did the noblest thing he could do with it; he gave it to others. He put it into escaping from that awful place, he put it into finding out who and what he was, he put it into that awful war, into his squad, into this Lylla, and when life took even that away from him he put it into Groot. He took all the good in his soul, all the thoughts and hopes and dreams it was too painful to bring out and pin to his sleeve every day, and he wrapped them up and put them into another. He played the bad guy, so Groot would never have to. He took the hit, he stayed rooted to the ground, to the gutter, just so Groot could be free to take their dreams and soar with them. He was a goddamed parent to Groot as much as a Child to him! The only time I've even seen him close to giving up on life was when Groot got blowed up, and you know what? Yeah, he drank, yeah, he didn't talk, he had dark thoughts, he even admitted to me he felt suicidal at one point. And what did he do?"
Quill took a deep breath. "He did it again. He put his faith in me. In us, the Guardians. Groot grew back, and he was happier than I'd ever seen him, but for a week or so there, after Ronan, when he was going crazy and sticking Groot-chunks in that pot not because he knew he would grow back but because he'd lost his soulmate and was losing his fucking mind, he had plenty chance to give up and you know what? He's still here, ain't he? He's still here for us. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't pretty and I doubt it will ever really be over for him and I'll admit that no mini-bar is safe but how dare you EVER suggest that because of his emotional and mental health issues he would lie down and quit on himself because, yeah, of course he would. Duh! Anyone will quit on themselves if you find the right leavers to pull: no one's Superman, we all have a breaking point, but more than anyone else I've ever met, he'll never quit on his friends. So don't call him a quitter, because if the sun we're orbiting was to explode tomorrow and the only way out was to crawl a parsec through broken glass with an open fly, Rocket would be the one dragging the rest of us behind him after we'd given up. He's sacrificed more in his miserable little life than you could possibly understand with all your years, so why don't you shut the fuck up and piss off! Because you are not fit to judge any of us, least of all him!" said Quill, narrowing his eyes as behind him Rocket stopped lashing out at the ghosts of his past, and slowly begun to focus on the here and now again.
"-and I am getting really bored of all this shit now." he said, as his team shook themselves of and began to stand and flank him aggressively. "So like moma used to say, end this, now, or I promise you there will be tears before bedtime."
There was a deathly pause, and then the collector-bot broke down into a booming laughter, that started breaking up into modem noise.
"Test sequence…. Complete. All five test subjects show…. Considerable fortitude in withstanding… physical and mental interrogation, and direct memory extraction…. Test reveal extensive experience with required fields. All subjects...within acceptable parameters. Candidates for Operation Improbable selected. Prepare for download of mission briefing material on ten…. Nine"
"Wait!" said Quill, eyebrows shooting up. "This, all this was just you testing us to see if we were suitable for a Job?!"
"High risk. Dangerous information…. Which must not…. Be compromised should you be captured. Needed to know the operatives could withstand…. Physical and mental torture. Seven… Six…"
"And you decided to see if we could by torturing us!?" asked Quill, aghast.
"Limited CPU cycles. Few options. Little time. Seemed… efficient. Four….Three…"
Quill held out both hands and waved them in a crossing and uncrossing motion.
"No! no way! We don't want the job! Not from you! I'd not even consider mercy-killing your CPU after this shit! Well, not unless it's for a stupidly big amount. No! Count us out!"
The Controller-Bot laughed, just once.
"Seemed to have left my wallet… in my other body. Ah now Peter, after all the memories of yours we've shared, I think it's time you saw one of mine." He said, just before his overclocked CPU finally burnt out, and the room went dark and the rest of the guardians were fully released from his hold.
And then It Hit Quill.
He knew what job the Collector-bot wanted him to do. And he saw what would happen to the galaxy if they failed.
"Awwwww shit."
Carina walked in past the cocoon, and made an elaborate, deferential gesture of greeting.
"I present to you, Taneeler Tivan, the Collector."
Tivan looked up from his work, a particular fine example of a temporal-loop creating Marmota Monax and went to greet his guests.
"Oh. Ou. Asgardians." He bowed, trying to hide the little smirk about how clearly uncomfortable his elaborate displays of greeting were making them." It is an Honour!"
The female looked particularly uncomfortable, glancing sideways at the displays, no doubt imagining how easily she could end up in one if he so wished. No need for that. He thought. Yet.
"You know why we're here."
she said, flatly. He paused for dramatic effect.
"Of course."
He gestured.
She nodded to the other one, and then she produced it… and there it was.
He stared for some time, enthralled. So close, and yet, for all that could be done with one, the potential of the full set...
And the consequences should the anti-life get them. And if anyone is foolish or vulgar enough to use thing things, he will notice.
He heard himself speak. "But if I may ask, why not keep it secure, in your own vault?"
"The Tesseract is already on Asgard. It is not wise to keep to Infinity Stones so close together."
So you have re-taken the tesseract from earth. Interesting… I wonder if you know they have the mind-stone there?
"That's very wise." He said, for once meaning it. The interactions of two so close would be… unpredictable. Plus the more you put together, the stronger they will call to the Titan.
"I can assure you… it will be absolutely safe here… in my Collection."
"see that it is." Added Silf, with needles drama, in his studied option, before she turned to go.
He held it for just a moment, lost in the sheer Marvel of it all.
"one down… five to go…"
The other Asgardian popped back up from behind a cage, and started him so badly he nearly dropped the dammed thing, much to Carina's shock
"Ummm, just out of interest, you wouldn't want a dark elf, would you? We have some lying around. Oh, and on our journey thought the Bifrost we seem to have hit some sort of a duck…."
The memory cut to a later event, the collector hiding the Aether, the other stone safely away in a grim looking abandoned fortress on some bleak, windswept world, the stellar co-ordinates briefly burring themselves into Quill's mind…
The computer core of Knowhere being access by Wade Watts after the Guardians blew it up and forced the real Collector to flee, Wade trying to reconstruct corrupted data-disks as Belamy looked over his shoulder and nodded with approval at the fragments recovered, a brief image of an abandoned fort and some partial co-ordinates, quickly forwarded to Count Bligh.
Knowehere's security camera's recording Quill getting stunned by Yondu, a containment sphere rolling out of his hand and getting picked up, putting all of J Star'l'in's speculative information of infinity stones on the open market, for anyone to find.
And, just like that, not exactly entirely the Guardian's fault, but in no doubt partly due to their actions, the Mental back-up of Tivan on Knowhere getting accidentally switched on, checking it's security logs, and realising that between that and the Nova corps building a very visible containment unit for the other stone, there was a very real possibility of some very bad people getting knowledge of the exact location of not one, but two of the damn things, and neither Nova nor the real Tivan had any idea that the information was out there.
Someone had to warn Nova, and even more urgently than that, someone had to help the real Tivan get his stone back before someone worse did.
And given his run of luck and the fact he seemed to be one of the few people capable of touching one of the damn things without dying instantly, Quill had a pretty good guess of who that someone was going to have to be.
See, this is why I HATE honest work Quill thought.
Quill rocked back, reeling from the weight of the day and from that last memory.
He turned to Gamora to ask her what she thought he should do about it, and froze up. She was looking abound with vague surprise, as if trying to get her bearings.
She looked over to him. "Peter! How did you get so close to the door?"
"I.. Gamora, don't you remember what just happened?"
She glared. "Yes Peter, I tend to remember one of the worst days of my life!" she snapped. "It's just… after I got sucked into that… that bad memory, everything else became a bit of a blur. I could see the memories you were sharing with Rocket, and I think I heard your little speech… I.. I'm quite grateful for that, by the way. But after that… was there something about a mission? I… sorry. I'm still a little shaken up, and I think that whatever that computer hit you with right at the end, it was aimed only at you. "
Quill froze up. "Nothing good, but I can tell you later. Come on, let's get home and I can explain." He said, walking over to Drax, and helping the big man up. The tattooed warrior went to thank him, but Quill shook his head and silenced him.
"Peter Quill. I-"
"Hey, come on big guy. You'd have done the same for me. Hey Rocket, can you give me some help with this-"
"Quill." said Gamora, softly.
He looked up.
Rocket was shivering, and hugging Groot tightly as Groot sat cross-legged, the racoon sniffing and snorting and weeping openly, while Groot I-am-Grooted back. At first he didn't even seem to notice Quill, until he walked up and , carefully, not to startle him, put a hand on his narrow shoulder.
"I'm so, so sorry, I'll never call you dumb again Groot I swear I'll- huh? Quill?" asked Rocket, staring up with wide eyes. "Did… did we make it?" he asked.
"Yeah, yeah we made it dude. You okay?"
"What? Me. Fine. Never better. I… I knew we'd make it. I wasn't worried at all. Its.. its… it's just that Groot is a little shook up by this, is all. Groot, not me. Big softy. He just needed, you know, a little pep talk. And a hug, 'cause you know this idiot, he's not strong like I am." Said Rocket, digging himself into Groot like a limpet mine, but slightly more prone to explode when miss-handled. Quill noticed that Rocket's eyes were darting around like a trapped rat, and his body was still shaking with reaction.
"Uh-huh? So…" said Quill, kneeling to be at the same height as Rocket. "Would Groot like a hug from me too?" he said, extending his arms in such a way to make it clear that any such hug would just happen to encompass considerably more Rocket than it did Groot.
Rocket was silent for a long time.
"Yeah, yeah he would." He snorted. "'cause you know, he's feeling pretty low right now. He's just too stubborn and wooden-headed to show it." He said, snorting back a tear and trying to hide how his voice was breaking. "Because you know, people can get really dumb with their feelings like that." He said, as Quill lent in and hugged him.
"Yeah, yeah I know buddy. Would… would Groot like this to be a group hug?"
"Hell yeah he would!" croaked Rocket, nuzzling his face into Groot's, as Gamora walked up and, kneeling, hugged Rocket to her and pressed his fuzzy, whiskered Cheek to hers as Drax came and enveloped her and Quill both in his strong, fatherly arms.
They stayed like that for some time.
Gamora waked down from the cockpit on the Milano, having just entered the co-ordinates Quill gave her to test them out. With one thing and the other, they never did make it to their new home that day.
Quill was sitting at the table in the ship's common area, bottle in hand, drinking and crying.
Gamora frowned
"Not that I can blame you at a time like this," she said, sitting down next to him and poring herself a glass and knocking it back before regarding the glass with a faint moi of disapproval at the cheap whiskey. "… but didn't we get rid of all this stuff this morning, after Rocket's last binge?"
Quill snorted back a laugh, tears streaming down his cheeks. "Yeah. Yeah we did, but you know what?" he said, pointing with his glass held in hand. "You were right. You were completely right. Rocket had stuff stashed in bits of my ship that I didn't even know my ship had."
Gamora half turned to Rocket's sleeping area. He was in what was best described as a nest that Groot had grown for him, at about eye-height, level with Groot's chest, and he was sleeping with both eyes wide open, staring out at the ceiling with a dread intensity.
"How much had he had?" she asked. Peter snorted, poured for the both of them, and then raised his glass. "Him? Not a drop. He's stone cold sober. Dry as a Utah judge. Spooky, isn't it?"
Gamora looked back for just a second, and then frowned. "That's just plain unsettling." she muttered, helping herself to another drink. "Well, the co-ordinates the Collector-bot stuck in your brain seem viable, primitive world, hotly contested sector, last place anyone would look. Last couple of years, though, far more interest in the area… nasty civil war starting up, Nova trying to stop it. If you were superstitious, you could say that something there has started drawing bad things there for about the last thirty months or so…"
Quill snorted, and knocked back another shot.
"Yeah. Sounds about right. Bow and arrow."
Gamora frowned. "I'm sorry?"
"Heh. You were wondering how I managed to break out of the memory trap, just as it looked like it had got me. Bow and arrow. Tivan or simulated Tivan or whatever that was hit just the wrong memory. Got me mad. Got me thinking about family and just how… just how…"
"Strong it is?" asked Gamora, reaching over and giving Quill hand a re-assuring squeeze.
He snorted back a laugh, and shook his head. "Fucked up. Yeah, that's what I was going for, how fucked up it is."
"I'd have been, I dunno. Eleven? Twelve? Pretty typical kid, I guess. Typical boy. Messed around outside a lot, played with my friends, played make believe a lot, not as much as I had as a tiny kid, but still, we'd play DnD over weekends or play-fight after school and pretend we were soldiers or pro wresters or whatever…. And I always used to want to be Robin hood. I'll… I'll fill you in on him some time. Great Guy: old earth outlaw. Stole from the rich, gave to the poor, fought injustice and oppression... all good stuff. Best archer in ye olde England." he made a drawing-bow gesture at her, sadly.
"Got a toy boy for my, I don't know, eleventh, tenth birthday. I mean, it wasn't a proper bow, but not for super little kids, must have had ten or twelve draw pounds, and I worked out you could tighten the string for more. It only came with suction cup arrows, that nocked properly, but I worked out pretty soon that you could pinch the string, draw without nocking, and then if you did that, you could fire anything. Bamboo canes from the garden were best. There was this big old live-oak in the garden. I'd pretend it was in Sherwood Forrest, shoot way up high into it, scare all the birds, shoot these sticks real hard into the ground, just to watch them stick, you know?"
Quill looks staring ahead, past Gamora and into the past.
"And then one day, one sunny early summer day, I see my mom out in the garden, doing some planting, and the idea just popes into my mind, wouldn't it be funny to shoot her in the butt? Like in a cartoon or something, maybe she'll jump up and make a noise, so I nock, I draw, I shoot, and you guess what? It's not funny at all. She takes the hit in the back, just above the kidney, and she's rolling in the ground screaming in agony. It didn't break the skin, but she had a bruise like a dishplate, was in utter agony for days. So grandpa lectures me that a weapon isn't a toy, snaps the bow on his knee and that's the end of it. I'm forgiven. Never spoken of again."
Quill kept staring.
"and I spend the next thirty years wondering… did she already have cancer then? Did she know? Was she trying to stay strong for me at that point? Hold herself together? Was that a good day, as in I have good days and bad. Did she look forward to that day, that last chance to go out in the sun and do some planting while she could, to feel like a normal person for just an hour or so, only to get shot in the back by her kid? Did those plants outlive her? I don't know. I don't know if this was one of those times when she was in remission or if this was before the diagnosis or what. It's not the sort of thing you talk to your kid about, is it? My timeline of it all is confused."
"One thoughtless minor act of cruelty from a dumb kid, and that can grow like cancer to be your one abiding memory of your mother, looking back. One instant can tinge an entire life with guilt. Edge everything else with it. The memory of your mother, and all you can think of is all the hurt you must have caused. Families. They sure know how to stick it in and break it off, don't they? All you want is to end everything on that group hug and fade out to soft music, but then you've got to get up eventually and get to work, and it is hard."
Gamora sat opposite, her face carefully neutral as she tried to hide her conflicting impulses.
Comfort him.
Stay out of it Gammy. You're both a little tipsy, and bouncing back from emotional stress. Don't make this any more complicated that it actually is…
Comfort him! Hug him or something!
Sooner or later the hug has to end, Gammy, like he says, and we all face the music. We're going to fix up the ship, and head off into a warzone sooner than later. You need to be there for him as a teammate, alert and professional. Don't do something you'll regret for a long time…
Peter put his head into his hands, and begun sob into his palms.
Gamora stared for a moment with her face contorted.
Just a moment.
"Shush, shush. It's okay, it's okay. Come on Peter…. You've had enough. Time you get you to bed. It's okay Peter."
She said taking him by one arm and draping him over her shoulder as she tried to steer him to the stairs.
"It's okay Peter. I'm here for you. It's all going to be okay… come on Starlord, let's go to bed."
"I'm sorry…. It's just, Gin always makes me maudlin."
"Peter, that's Whiskey."
"I ran out of gin." He said, as they passed Rocket on their way down to the stars. The sight of him in his little nest seemed to set him of crying again.
"Aww shucks. Poor little dude never even had a family. I mean, who would do someone like that Gamora? Do something like that to a little kid? Not even a kid, a defenceless animal. I mean, a talking racoon, what's even the point?"
She shook her head sadly, as she tried to comfort Quill and lead him down to the bunk-room they shared.
"I don't know Quill." she sighed. "I honestly don't…"
The salesman smiled. It was a good smile. He enjoyed his work, and he was good at it. He had a wife and children whom he loved and who loved him, but at heart he was a salesman. He only really felt alive mid-way through a high-pressure pitch. He liked to joke he could sell teeth to Aaskvarians. He could sell anything. The sale mattered, not what you sold, that was just product. He'd done it for a lot of companies, this was just another one. Who you sold for didn't matter. He was even thinking of setting up a freelancing business one day.
His job didn't worry him at all. He kissed his wife, played with his kids, walked the dog. He was not, in his heart of hearts, a cruel person. He slept just fine. It was just product, after all.
He flicked on the holo, and watched for a few moments as footage from around the galaxy played. Super-powered combat bots, the first Xandarn attempts to wield the Nova force, experimentation on high-powered mutants, some lunatic from a primitive planet throwing a shield around. He gave the audience a moment to take in the carnage, before turning back to them and smiling again and shrugging.
"Super-soldiers: am I right? Can't live with them, can't live without them. Or can you? Don't get me wrong, there has always been a niche in combat for the superior soldier, that elite who can deliver a shock disproportionate to their numbers to break the enemy's will to fight: heavy cavalry, warrior-castes, special forces, mobile infantry; but where do you draw the line? At which point does having a better soldier than the other guy stop being a tactical advantage and start becoming a dick-measuring contest? Oh, we can get very, very close to the perfect soldier now-a-days with the technology we have, robotics, cybernetic, genetic and behavioural modification, powered armour, but is it worth the effort? Is it worth the cost?"
"So say you build a trillion unit soldier, and he can take on entire planets. Okay, that's cool. But those trillion units could conquer a planet by conventional means. There are advantages of a single guy doing it, it's far easier to transport and feed the guy for a start, but unless you are guaranteed that the guy is indestructible, and lest face it, even Asgardians die if you hit them hard enough, then you're putting an awful lot of eggs into one basket. And say you don't go for such an extreme route, you make 500 super soldiers for 50 million each, that's the cost of a grav-tank or light fighter craft per person, and unlike the inorganic hardware, once the war's over you can't just mothball them, stick them on a shelf somewhere and forget about them until next time, not even cryo-sleep is that reliable. So they kick ass and win the war for you, and then what? You've got 500 people who can punch thought walls and have been conditioned to kill without hesitation, good luck rehabilitating them to civilian life, and that assuming that they let you end the war. What if they decide they want to keep on fighting? What if they decide they could do a better job running your country than you do? Or, gods help you, what if they decide to put on a silly costume and try to make the universe a better place without asking your permission? How do you counter that? I'm not knocking super-soldiers, there is a niche for something above Special Forces when waging war at the galactic level, but that's what it is, a niche. Even in primitive times, you didn't get armies entirely made up of elites, and in post-industrial times you don't get armies made entirely of Special Forces, because what's the point? An elite is to give you an edge, to break the moral of the enemy or force a high-value point, hit a target conventional forces can't, or make a hole the rest of the army can exploit. Once that's done, conventional forces can mop up. Wars are won by having balanced forces. Wars are won by the side with the better war economy, the side that makes the best use of its resources, and there are cheaper and more effective ways of waging war than dosing some random pipsqueak with a serum and expecting him to punch out the enemy head of state. "
"Yes, there is a role for super-soldiers in our galaxy, and yes, they are a nice thing to have in your back pocket when times are tough, but they are not the be-all and end-all or advanced warfare."
He smiled again.
"We at Keystone Life Sciences do not sell Super-soldiers: we sell affordable and balanced forces."
"Now, I'm sure you're all wondering what we have that every other military contractor in the galaxy doesn't, and you'd be right to ask that. Well, I'm glad you ask. What we have, is a niche, and one that no-one else can fill."
He looked back to the holo.
"You know, I think part of our cultural obsession with glamorous elites is a hangover from a more primitive age of warfare. I think the reason people want super soldiers is because we all want to be that primordial hero, and they let us do it by proxy. I mean, in the Stone Age, the only way you could win a fight was by being bigger and stronger and faster than the other dude. And then some guy, some really brilliant, ingenious unsung guy invented the sling, and suddenly the skinny guy standing at the back of the fight could take out the big guys. Sure, he'd still need to be strong and fast and skilled to survive more than one battle, but the playing field got a tiny bit more level. And then came the bow, and then the crossbow, and suddenly armoured cavalrymen who had trained since birth and spent a fortune on their equipment were going down to unskilled peasants. Technology made the need for a perfect warrior a little less acute, and by the time you had gunpowder, grown men could be killed by women and children as easily and by other men. "
"You just don't get child soldiers in technologically backwards civilisations, it doesn't happen. You might get children in war, training to be troops later on, squires and cadets and so forth, but if you're in a bronze age battle and you send a ten year old to the front line, you get a dead ten year old. You have a fight where both sides have self-loading rifles, and suddenly the idea is a lot more viable."
Thunk. He dropped prop #1 on the conference table.
"You have one of those babies, proprietary recoilless mazer with neural uplink targeter, and a toddler can use it. Point and click. And let's face it, Children have a lot of advantages over fully grown soldiers. Sure, they're not as strong, but you get shot in the head be a weakling, are you any less dead? A gun doesn't care who pulls the trigger. And in many ways, kids are better: they're smaller targets, you can fit more in a transport vehicle, they eat less, they learn faster, they can be brainwashed far more easily, they respond to simple brides and simple threats, so they're easy to control, and they're cheap: they don't cost you anything to train, really, and if they do die they at least you're not losing a constructive and useful member of society. For smaller nations, without the technology to afford super-soldiers or drone warfare programs or anti-matter deterrents, child soldiers are a cost-effective way to wage war. And far, far more importantly, their biggest advantage: they have no real understanding of the permanence of death, theirs or other peoples'. They are easily motivated to risk their own lives with correct psychological motivation, and have next to no empathy compared to functional adults: Kids are cruel."
"In fact, there are only really two problems with child soldiers. One: children lack the mental capacities for complex planning, or even follow orders properly without constant supervision, and two, child soldiers are illegal. Like, stupidly illegal. Even when the Nova and Kree were fighting a full on thousand year total war with each other, neither side sunk that low. Oh, the Kree re-introduced teenaged naval midshipmen, and Nova tried that experimental project with children controlling unmanned warships, but no-one put kids on the front line, and both consider it a war crime in their own emperies and in their extended areas of influence, which between the two of them, is more or less everywhere."
"Are you getting to a point anytime, or did I walk into a lecture?" Said a voice from the other end of the conference table. Several people turned to look.
Count Bligh took a deep pull on his cigar as one of his three Thylacineowry bodyguards leaned in to light it for him, and then took it out and regarded the Figurados Perfecto in his blue fingers for an appreciative moment before continuing. He did not bother to look away from his cigar, but addressed it instead. "I don't know about you, but in my operation we already have minors working for us in various positions, my employer is less concerned with legality than he is with discretion. Besides, if you're criminal it's not a war crime, it's just crime. And even then only is someone finds out. When I made the effort to come all this way here, I was hoping to see something worth my time…"
The salesman smiled, with genuine enjoyment. He loved a good pitch.
"The point is, we have found a way to overcome those two problems: we can deliver a product that retains all the positive attributes of child soldiers while bypassing existing legislation and increasing their functionality to the level that matches or surpasses the regular infantry of most advanced worlds, and at a fraction of the cost. Legally, these things aren't people. They aren't even any recognised Xandarian animal species because we had our scouting robots harvest the genetic progenitors from a primitive world. By the age of two these things have the cognitive reasoning ability of an adult, but almost no understanding of the reality of death, and are as disciplined and reliable as conventional infantry. You can order a batch and have them arrive in 18 months to familiarize with your specific weapon systems and needs, and deploy them at 24 months. They have one third the target profile of an adult Xandarian, and their fur gives them half the thermal signature. They have a faster metabolism and all the high energy fast-reflex advantages of that, but are small enough to consume less than half the calories of a Xandarian trooper. Their hearing, night vision and sense of smell, well… let's just say these guys don't get ambushed; you don't find them, they find you. And, best of all, you don't need to worry what to do with them after the war is over: their lifespan is calculated not to be long enough to be a drain on peacetime resources, but if you take care of them, they'll fight until they day they drop. And they are above all conditioned to be obedient. "
The salesman gestured to a side door. "Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce, the KLS Universal Ranger!" he said, as prop #2 walked through the door.
There was the usual intake of breath and then, as always, the crowd burst out laughing. One customer, a Badoon war boss, seemed to find in particularly amusing.
"Bwahahahahaha! It's got a little fluffy tail! What is that even meant to be? It's looks like it escaped form a children's holo! I bet that thing couldn't even lift a gun-" he guffawed, scales rustling dryly as his bodyguard joining in.
The salesman smiled. "Okay, let's say you're right. It's a helpless thing." He nodded to the blaster on the bodyguard's hips. "Draw that gun, and shoot it in the head."
The laughter died. Even Bligh seemed to be paying some attention now.
"What?" asked the Badoon.
"Tell your bodyguard to draw that gun, and shoot it in the head. If it's as harmless as you think it is, there shouldn't be a problem. And don't worry about damaging it, if you do, we won't charge you for that one."
The bodyguard hesitated, and then looked to his boss, who then grinned evilly. "You sure as hell have a strange sales pitch my man. Otho, waste the freak."
The bodyguard looked at the creature, and then with visible distaste drew the weapon, and then hesitated.
"It's just standing there… I don't want to, this is sick."
Some of the other warlords laughed, and the Badoon chief scowled and hissed angrily
"Otho! Ya want to make me look weak, waste the thing!"
Otho grimaced, and raised the gun to point at its head. He visibly grimaced, tired holding his gun sideways instead, and then actually winced and looked away as he moved his finger off the trigger guard and onto the trigger.
The showroom model looked to the salesman for just a moment, and then he smiled, and nodded back to it.
There was a blur of russet fur as the creature spun sideways under Otho's guard, and then a single retort of laser fire.
A dozen warlords swore and filched back, and the badoon partially swallowed his tongue as he glanced up from the bare paws on the glass table top in front of him to the crotch of an armoured khaki body glove that had suddenly appeared at eye height, before the creature neatly put prop #1 back on the table in front of him, jumped down to the carpet, and calmly walked away without a backwards glance as Otho slummed to the ground minus the back of his skull.
The salesman beamed. "One of the many advantages of child soldiers: people are more reluctant to kill them than they would be facing an armed adult. We deliberately chose to use creatures whose facial and body shape provoked nurturing instincts in most mammals in order to maximize the effect: big innocent eyes, things like that. They are particularly good for peacekeeping operations since they tend to provoke less hostility from members of the public than conventional troops, or for other operations were a non-threatening appearance is required: our first major contract was to provide security for lunatic asylums back on keystone."
The salesman brought his hands together with a clap that the Badoon flinched at, and then begun to rub his hands eagerly over the rising clamour as half the warlords present started waving order forms and credit slips at him. "So, unless anyone needs a further demonstration, our prices start at…"
"What about reliability?"
The clamour died down a little, and then died by degrees as Bligh leaned back, and slowly crossed both feet on the table top. "I mean, you say the main disadvantage of super-soldiers is they can go rouge. What's to stop these little fuckheads from turning on us the second we sign on the dotted line? I note you have a strict No Refunds policy, but perhaps that's just my inner accountant." He said, looking up from his cigar long enough to swap meaningful glances with the people around him for just a second "I take it I'm not the only one who spotted that clause in the contract, under the expanded warrantee options. You did read the terms and conditions?" he asked no one in particular.
"Ah well, our neuroscientists have implemented a verity of restraining bolts, both chemical, electronic and based on Pavlovian conditioning-"
"I bet you have, after the last time." Said Bligh, cutting off the salesman. "I've seen what your little toys can do. I must be one of the few people outside your company who have had the intense displeasure to have one of those things working for me for any length of time, oh, a slightly different model, no doubt, and I'm sure you'd say it was a one-off, a malfunctioning prototype, and yes, Given how much money the damn thing made for my origination, I can't say it wasn't worth it in the short therm. In the short term." He leaned forwards. "But you did your jobs far, far too well, boys, and now I have an asset running around, out of my control knowing more about my origination than I would like, and what's worse, it seems to have taken up with people of conscience. So before I put my employer's money on the table, I want to know what you plan on doing about it if happens again."
The salesman gave Bligh a cool look for just a moment, before raising his hands in a half shrug and beaming.
"Well, given that you never bought the unit in question from us, I make it a point to know every customer by name and sight, Count Bligh, then it's hardly surprising that the model you found was defective." He said, smiling sadly and putting just enough emphasis on found to imply stole. "If you buy second-hand and out-of-warrantee, then we can't be held responsible. And besides, that was the older units, I'll guess. The mark one star through mark three were always a little twitchy, and the vanilla mark ones were defects and were recalled: the customers who had purchased them issued new models, and found them quite satisfactory. Now our current generation, the mark fours, free from such-"
"The mark ones were never defective."
There was a rustle as the customers turned to the far end of the table, were a cluster of lesser salespeople and other KLS executives had sat at the start of the pitch and been complete ignored by everyone since. Placed at the very end wedged in a corner where people wouldn't see him was a Xandarian, or at least, someone who could pass for Xandarian, with wavy shoulder length hair, neat beard, and a lab-coat. His glasses caught the light and flashed briefly, but he didn't look up from the doodle he was drawing on the clipboard, in fact he hadn't looked up all meeting.
The salesman smiled, and for the first time that day, it seemed somewhat forced.
"Ah yes, the representative from our technical division. Well, even the best technology has bugs on release day: look at the launch of the latest NES com's system, quite literally mind-blowing. Deadlines looming, punishing release schedule, had to launch or take a hit on the stock market. Yes, we did it in the past. Every techy company does it. No blame attaches itself to our researchers." The salesperson laughed, and waved the query away, dismissing it. "No, what I'm sure Doctor Kessler was trying to say was…."
"The mark ones were never defective." Repeated Doctor Kessler, patent as the grave, his tone mild and conversational "They met their design brief perfectly."
Bligh snorted. "I've heard some interesting euphemisms for fucked everything up in my time, but that's a funny way of putting it."
Kessler looked up from his doodle just a moment, and shrugged.
"The mark ones were never designed for combat. In fact, there was in no real sense such a thing as the mark one: What was eventually sold as the mark one star was the batch bred for our closed beta, the mark two's were supposed to be the launch product. Corporate failed to manage expectations, big bonuses were offered to sales executives who's teems hit targets, individual sales reps were put on commission." His glasses flashed again, that the salesman's smile hardened a degree as Kessler continued. " One hundred and twenty thousand units were sold, and we had only a hundred thousand in stock The Kree Xandar war was clearly entering its final phase, there was a rush to get the product out there and contracts sighed with a major player before an armistice, so the beta's were sold untested as the mark one star, and the thousand or so various pre-production test models were grouped together and sold under the designation mark one to make up the numbers on each batch, and they did exactly what it was I had designed them to."
"Which was what, exactly?" asked Bligh, through a haze of cigar smoke.
Doctor Joseph Kessler shrugged.
"Think outside the box." He said "Test the limits of their world. They were only ever designed as a test-bed for the neural architecture, to see how different bodies and stimuli effected it's performance. We had one basic brain pattern re-used in different species. That had never been done before, we needed to discover what would happen. And we did. The data was useful, the test, on paper at least, a success." He said, doodling away. He glanced out for a movement at the salesman.
"Most of the deaths could have been avoided if we had put all the mark ones' in the same consignments as I had suggested, rather than spreading them out between different consignments to make up the numbers where orders were short. As it was, when the inevitable happened and the emergent behaviours began to spread from the mark ones to the other models, rather than having the situation contained in one place it affected all the stock. Even then, I feel the issue could have been dealt with and contained, but the stock was still under warrantee so rather than the messy process of an in-field wetware debugging, corporate decided it would be cheaper to recall all the stock to Halfworld, and correct it there. So all our problematic subjects found themselves back home: all together in one spot, able to swap notes on their experiences , able to make plans, to ask questions, to think outside the box. And some decided they didn't like it in the box, tempers frayed, and in situations like that all it takes for things to explode can be as little as a single match…"
He paused, and then took a second to admire his drawing, before shaking his head and putting it down on the table top. No one bothered to look at it, which was a pity, because it was pretty good: a well-executed, properly proportioned and neatly shaded in line drawing of a racoon. He looked up at the salesperson.
"Deadlines looming, expensive product recall, targets to hit or loose the bonuses. Corners cut…. Yes, we did it in the past. Every techy company does it. No blame attaches itself to our sales-staff."
He said, putting his elbows on the table-top and smiling over his steepled figures "On the other hand, the closed beta proved most informative, if rather louder than originally planned. I can guarantee that the units currently sold do indeed meet their combat design criteria, and that included both reliability, controllability and discretion, Count Bligh."
Bligh grinned, and then waved a hand.
"Okay, but discretion is something my organisation can manage without the need for fancy controls. People working for the person I work for do not blab, and do not screw up as publically as some of your guests here seem to. And no, you don't get to know who it is I'm here to represent. We don't even name him, not if you want to keep your tongue. That's the point of discretion: Things are done quietly, and in house, and yes, some of your rangers may be useful for that, and yes, I'm probably going to buy some, but don't think I'm impressed. You want to know how you manage real discretion?"
He singled the Thylacineowry backing him up. "Thylacineowry, expensive, exotic, terrifying in combat, and about as un-cost effective as it gets in a fight because as you say, a gun doesn't care who pulls the trigger. But a person does, and seeing someone get wasted by a rodent with a lazer might shock them for a second, but seeing one of these things kick through grav-tank armour and eat the crew alive? That stays with them a long time. Makes people think twice before they cross you again, gives you an edge in future negotiations. Weapons aren't just for fighting: they are for show. The nuclear deterrent never seems like the cheap option, until you see the cost of fighting a real war, and then scaring the other guy into backing down suddenly looks a lot cheaper. You could pay to put v-chips in their brains, or whatever you do to control your stock, or you could make an example of the disobedient or indiscreet ones the way my boss does, and I guarantee you'd find the rest far more on point from then on."
Bligh leaned in
"I'm planning something big, an object lesson, you could say, in what happens to people who try my employer's patience. And I'm going up against someone too big for my boss, for anyone, to take in a prolonged war, so the object lesson needs to be sharp and shocking enough to discourage any retaliation, or at least to provoke the retaliation in a way we can predict and steer, and effective as those toys of yours may be, I'm starting to think I came to the wrong place, because the sort of lesson I was looking to teach wasn't on the economy of child soldiers." He said, sighing sadly and trying to re-light his cigar. "I was looking for something a little-"
"More dramatic?" asked Kessler, sympathetically, as behind Bligh the Salesman grinned like an idiot, and ushered in Prop #3.
Bligh considered this a moment, and he struggled to get his cigar to light, and distracted as he was he didn't notice the rest of the warlords shrink back in their seats, or the way his three Thylacineowry suddenly turned as one, and then fluffed up their feathers and hissed, trying to look bigger as they shifted their grips on their weapons.
""Dramatic, sure but more, you know… butch. Bigger. Scarier-"
"More teeth?" asked a voice as the shadow loomed over Count Bligh.
Count Bligh glanced away from his cigar and looked up.
He then looked farther up, and dropped the cigar.
The salesman beamed. "Ahhh well, you see, when I said we a KLS don't make super-soldiers, perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that we don't just make super solders."
"So, mister Bligh, could I perhaps interest you in our Jaeger program?"
Next Chapter: Lost in translation
