The Guardians of the Galaxy Nativity Part two: the Quickening.
Quill stared stupidly for a moment as J'sef and Ma'ri pulled out plasma pistols with a bore that he could easily have put his thumbs down without touching the sides, and then ducked sideways into his own Christmas decorations to dodge the shots, landing face first in his own cardboard nativity set in the bitterest of irony as the near miss singed his hair. Cursing and rolling with the baby Jesus stuck to his face he let out an inventive stream of blasphemy as he ducked behind a bulkhead and tried to reach his guns. Gamora dodged and jinked behind the stairs that lead to the cockpit, Drax and Groot dived to the other side, ripping through the paper chains Quill had decorated the ship with, and narrowly avoided getting fried by the first volley. Rocket, however, tried to use the baby MODOK as a human shield and reach for the riffle slung in his back holster when Modok grabbed him by the whiskers and head-butted him, sending him reeling back into the wall, pinning his rifle against the metal of the hull.
"Dammit! Oh no, it couldn't be a nice, happy nativity story could it, oh know, we've got to have a psychotic Joseph and Mary shooting up the place and a giant evil head with weird little arms and legs! See, this is why I'm starting to get real paranoid about Christmas!" Yelled Quill
"Point taken." Said Gamora, unsheathing her sword and then ducking a stray round. "We do seem to have an inordinate amount of bad luck at this time of year."
"Is… there… a… time… we… don't?" yelped Rocket in between getting throttled by Modok, scrabbling behind him for anything he could use as a weapon.
He noticed Groot, covered in decorations, sitting next to his box of quantum grenades, and yelled "Groot!" followed by miming a 'grenade' gesture with one paw, pretending to pull out a split pin with his teeth. "Throw, me, throw me!"
Groot nodded in understanding and grabbed and tossed over… a Christmas bauble.
Rocket caught the bauble one-pawed, made a what the fuck Groot? face, and then smashed the bauble over MODOK baby's face, glassing it, before booting it firmly in the chin with both footpaws, before grabbing it by its umbilical cord and spinning it around like an Olympic hammer thrower, clubbing the mother around the head as she tried to intervene, before smashing the baby into a wall and throwing it down the length of the ship towards Quill. J'sef rounded on him with a gun, and Rocket was forced to dive behind the stairs with Gamora.
"How is this!" he said, making the biting out the pin and throwing gesture again. "Bauble! What kind of scary ass baubles are you used to Groot!" he yelled, drawing his rife from behind his back and forcing J'sef to duck down as he fired down the length of the ship.
"I am Groot!" he muttered apologetically, hiding his face in tinsel as a plasma round pinged off a decoration by his head, ruining the Gabriel Lan commemorative plaque.
"Can we all just focus on the lunatics with the plasma guns!" said Quill from around floor height, before realizing that the Baby Modok next to him was still moving. He glanced sideways at the bundle, and muttered. "Oh Jesus Rocket, I know it's psychotic, but did you have to hit a baby? That's messed up man, poor little thing…" he said, carefully lifting the swaddling with the barrel of his pistol to check if it was okay.
"You okay little buddy…." He asked. At which point the umbilical cord came to life like a snake, and wrapped itself around his neck, throttling him "Gah!"
"Modok cares not for your pity, earthling! All must die, Modok commands it!"
"What is it with the crazy ones and talking in the third person!" yelled Rocket, trying to get a shot not blocked by Quill.
"Modok cares not for your use of the First person singular pronoun, you plebs!" yelled the bundle of swaddling, arms waving as he struggled to escape his blanket. "Cultist, protect your saviour!"
J'sef and Ma'ri redoubled their rate of fire, focusing on Rocket as he presented the most obvious threat to Modok now he had his gun out, while Quill fought with the umbilical cord and tried to unwarp it from around his neck.
"Little… help… Please!" hissed Quill. He then became aware of another, louder hissing noise, and looked sideways.
The placenta had reared up parallel with his face, and was hissing like a snake as it split in two, revealing a triple row of barbed, shark like teeth. He stared wide-eyed.
"Oh you have got to be shitting me!" he yelled, before it lunged at his face and he caught it with both hands.
"Ahhhhhh! Shoot it shoot it shoot it!"
"I don't have a clean shot, your head is in the way!"
"Someone do something!" he yelled. He had just started to black out from oxygen deprivation, when Gamora combat-rolled down the stairs through the pistol fire and chopped through the umbilical and karate kicked Modok across the ship, away from Quill, before pulling him into cover as the plasma rounds rained down, and she helped him unwind the aggressive placenta from his face and nailed it to the wall with a dagger.
"You okay?" she asked, helping Quill to his feet. He rubbed at his neck and nodded.
"Gah! And I thought that Alien was unsubtle when it came to the male fear of birth! Oh god, so many teeth, I had a horrible vision that I was at an Osmond family concert!" he said, peering around the corner, and ducking back as J'sef fired off a shot at him while Ma'ri kept Rocket pinned down.
He glanced sideways, at Drax who was closest to J'sef. 'Take him out.' he mouthed.
"I do not have my Knives with me!" shouted Drax, completely missing the subtlety of the mouthing. "I was not expecting a violent confrontation over the holiday meal!" Quill rolled his eyes in exasperation.
"Why, haven't you had a family Christmas meal before? Well, improvise!" he yelled, as Modok lept at Quill, and he grabbed the first thing that came to hand, a Playbeing magazine, rolled it up quickly and smacked the Modok away from him, sending it flying into the wall. He then looked at the magazine. "Huh, having a nudey mag made the baby Jesus cry. My god, my Sunday school teacher was right."
J'sef heard a sound of the oven door behind him as Drax flanked him and turned, gun raised, but he was just too late.
Drax grabbed the Rap-liz-Fro, and holding the giant turkey like roast by the legs in both hands, raised over his head, and slammed it down over J'sef's head like a bag. The Spartori screamed in pain as he fought against the boiling hot meat suffocating him, trying to get it off his head frantically as it scalded and burnt him horribly, and before he could get a grip on the greasy meat, Drax pulled out the pop-up turkey thermometer and begun stabbing him with it again and again as he yelped and moaned, dying horribly from repeated puncture wounds before Drax drove the thermometer into the roast at the approximate location of the man's eye, silencing the screams.
Ma'ri wailed in horror as J'sef fell, but just as he dropped, Rocket popped up brandishing the gun.
"All right bitch, the festive firefight stops now you crazy little-"
Modok then appeared behind Rocket, and stabbed him in the neck with the epidural, grabbed his gun, and kicked him in the face, sending him sliding along the floor. Ma'ri fired at him as he was down, but Groot ran out and grabbed him, growing extra spines to try and shield him from the shots as he ran into cover behind the bulkhead with the rest of the Guardians, followed by Drax. All five Guardians now sat huddled in their own kitchenette. Quill popped off a few shots around the corner, and then his blaster beeped at him: out of power.
"Shit, I'm out. Guys?"
"I have no knives."
"I am Groot."
"Out of Sword range." Said Gamora, looking around for something to throw.
"Rocket?" asked Quill. "Anything?"
"uhhhh… I'll have the eggnog." Said Rocket, high as a kite having been stabbed with the syringe, "Look at me, mom, I can fly!"
Quill looked sideways, at the pot boiling away merrily on the hob .
"Eggnog, huh?" said Quill, as the shots rained down. He reached out, took the deathsticks from Rocket's pocket, and lit one on the hob, taking a Drag.
"I've got a plan guys."
Ma'ri, weeping over J'sef, started firing with renewed passion.
"Heathens! Heretics! Modok is the supreme being, and I, Ma'ri, have born him into the world! Our saviour walks the earth, the dark messiah is reborn!" she screamed, taking up her hideous son in her arms, and waving the pistol one-handed.
"Yo, bitch." Said Quill.
Ma'ri looked up, as Quill stepped out, smoking he deathstick. He lowered it from his lips, and held it at his waist between his thumb and middle two fingers.
He grinned, as Ma'ri's eyes went wide with shock as she noticed Gamora and Drax grab Groot and pull him backwards as he held onto a bulkhead reinforcement ring on each side of the ship, stretching his arms out like his body was one giant slingshot, and balancing Rocket's boiling hot, highly unstable overproof eggnog on his face like ammo.
Quill nodded, grimly.
"He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy." He said.
Gamora and Drax let rip, and the pot of scalding liquor hit baby M.O.D.O.K square in the face, drenching both the baby and Ma'ri in boiling rum with a hint of eggnog, and then Quill flicked the lit deathstick. It tumbled twice, end over end, and hit M.O.D.O.K square in the chest, lighting both him and Ma'ri up in an apocalyptic violent blue column of flame.
Awesome Xmas mix tape: the Carpenters: Merry Christmas Darling.
"Merry Christmas, motherfucker." Muttered Quill as the pair burned. He then looked around.
"Yep, happiest time of the year." He said, sarcastically. "I do love the Holidays." He said, as the ship filled with smoke and screaming.
"Worst Christmas ever?" asked Gamora, helping Rocket to his very, very drugged feet.
Quill considered this. "Well, it's gonna be a close second to the time I asked for a M.A.S.K toy and got a Voltron toy, but it's certainly bottom five." He said, finding the glass of Eggnog he'd put down earlier, now the only non-burning liquor on ship.
"Merry Christmas!" he said "And to all a good night."
"Quill!" yelled Gamora in warning, but it was too late.
Peter Quill turned around just in time to see the burning M.O.D.O.K hit the large button on the wall labeled with a hand-written sign "Self-destruct: do not press while drunk. THIS MEANS YOU PETER!"
"Oh darn." said Quill, just as the ship exploded, and the force of the blast hit him like a slap and vaporised everyone.
Slap!
Quill woke up suddenly, very much aware that he was lying on his back in the Milano, covered in Eggnog and with a pronounced pain in one cheek, and very much un-exploded.
"I think he's frickin' coming around." said a familiar racoonish voice, and Quill could feel Rockets hot breath and the tickle of whiskers on his face.
"Wzaf?" said Quill. "I'm awake. What happened. Are we all dead? Is this heaven? If so, did we lose points for the whole nativity thing?"
Slap! Rocket, sitting on his chest, slapped him across the other cheek. Hard.
"Ow!" said Quill. "I was awake!"
"I know, I just felt like slapping you again." said Rocket, standing up and walking across Quill face as he hopped down onto the deck plate.
"Gah! Wash your feet dude, you have fur sticking between your toes! What happened, did we get blown up by the baby Jesus?"
Gamora and the rest shared a look. Gamora then answered, helping Quill to his feet.
"You drank Rocket's Eggnog." Said Gamora, by way of explanation.
"And?" asked Quill, clutching his head. He sure felt like he'd just got blown up.
"And you drank Rocket's eggnog. You started chittering and convulsing and then passed out." Said Gamora.
"I blame the home made rye: Eggnog, ergot, same difference." Said the racoon, sipping at a cup of eggnog with the confidence of a mammal whose chemical warfare mod would take the hit.
Quill sighed, with clear relief. "Oh thank god, I had the most horrible dream. And you were there, and you were there, and you were there, Rocket, and you really weren't pulling your weight: I mean you failed to shoot anyone and got drugged really early on, you were, at best, a dead weight dude."
"Coming from the guy who passed out and peed himself over eggnog?"
Quill glanced down at his crotch, which was perfectly dry.
"Made you look." Said Rocket, putting down his Eggnog and drawing his gun.
Quill took up an expression of extreme relief. "Oh thank god, for a second I thought we'd been sucked into some sort of weirdly festive peril again! Ha, screw you destiny, not this year!"
"Well about that Quill." said Gamora, buckling on her sword. "We did wake you for a reason. The space station we're on; it's under attack by space ninjas fighting Santa!"
Quills sighed, resigned, and grabbed his pistols.
"Again?" he said. "How passé. Okay team, let's kick some festive Ninja ass!" he said, popping the hatch and flying out guns blazing into furious ninja combat.
Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps sat in the flickering glow of the TV, Judy in a hand-knitted Christmas sweater and Nick in a Santa hat that clashed horribly with his fur, both watching open mouthed in amused shock, popcorn half way to their mouths, as they watched the spectacle.
"Oh my god, Ninjas? Who writes this crap? This is giftedly bad!" said Nick, chewing popcorn. "A violent si-fi Marvel comic's nativity? This is joyously stupid!"
"Hey, shush up you, it's not that bad!" said Judy, helping herself to popcorn as she snuggled closer to Nick. "It's pretty fun, stop being such a cynic."
"Oh come on, this is crap… so bad it's good crap, but still crap. I mean, a talking tree, a cyborg raccoon and aliens I could accept, but Humans? That's just way to far-fetched!" he shrugged. "But then again it's Disney, what did you expect? Character development?"
"Merry Christmas Nick."
"Merry Christmas Carrots."
And a Merry Christmas to you, wherever you are. Bunnyrock.
