Marvel owns the X-men and the Guardians of the Galaxy, no profit is to be made from this work.
-=+=–=+=–=+=–=+=–=+=-
"What the...? Oh nasty!"
By the sound of things the kid was up and pretty grossed out. First aid wasn't his forte, not unless one counted him being the primary reason a being needed it, but Groot on the other hand...he was handy to have around if a bit unconventional. Groot had made a hammock of vines for the kid to get some shut eye in, and somewhere between boosting to orbit and getting out of the system sneaky like he also got to smearing a whole mess of sap or something over all the kid's cuts, gashes and scrapes. It was enough to leave a being wanting to puke, but microgravity was no place for that.
"I am Groot..." Looking hurt by how his efforts had been received, Groot turned to Rocket with imploring eyes.
"I'm busy!" Rocket snarled.
Life support and the bare minimum in tracking was all he could risk until he was sure the Shi'ar weren't following them, after that it was time to put parsecs between them. That was then, now he was plotting a dicey course through the accretion disk of wreckage around a nameless moon, or at least word had it there hadn't been anyone one around to name it after the fighting had died down. The place had pirate, ravager, scavenger and outlaw written all over it.
"Whoa..." Jubilee gasped, her voice awed and quiet.
"You think this is something? I should take ya to see Knowhere." Rocket added, having his share of good and bad memories of the place that left him torn over how to rate the place.
Out in the wreckage of that long ago battle loomed the mostly intact wreck of a behemoth class warship, stripped bare of anything salvageable before being scuttled. Vacuum tight and structurally sound, it might not be the severed head of celestial being, but at least it kept the hard radiation off a beings back. It didn't hurt that he knew a bar that served a mean cocktail of chemicals that tripped all the switches.
"I get the feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
"Kansas, I thought they called it New York?" Rocket questioned, catching Jubilee's reflection against the cockpit window.
She did that face Pete did when he got to talking with Drax, Humies seemed to have the dire need to relate everything to something else that only they understood.
"Rock, rock, really big fricking rock!" Jubilee yelped, pointing at it as if Rocket hadn't seen it.
Growling and cursing under his breath, Rocket banked around the tumbling chunk of moon, asteroid, or warcraft whichever the case might just be, all the while keeping one eye on his tracking systems that had the other six tagged and vectored. He could have told her about the one impact he did expect, but where was the fun in that?
"You did that on purpose!" Jubilee shrieked, peeking her head out from the cover she found with Groot.
"Maybe." Chuckling and throttling up the thrust, the derelict ship quickly ate the view, beset with barnacles of smaller ships and strange cancerous lumps of twisted metal.
"Your guy who knows a guy, is he here?"
Ask him why he was helping the kid and he couldn't say, by all rights he should have just dumped her somewhere on the rock to look for that Logan guy. Jumping into a fight with stacked odds and a slim chance of survival was Drax, doing it for a lady was Pete, but him...all he had were a few friends and out of them Groot sure as hell wouldn't let him hear the end of it if he didn't help the kid. It was a reminder of why he needed a stiff drink and just maybe a good ol' bar fight if Groot was up for it. The clock was ticking and he had to get the kid in touch with Corsair before the Shi'ar did.
"He'll be here, we got each others back. Even if I've shot him in his." Rocket said, chuckling at the memory of his meeting with the self-avowed Starlord.
Jubilee looked a bit confused but didn't ask any more stupid questions, instead choosing to curl up with Groot and leave Rocket to pilot the ship. Looking for a likely place to berth, he still had a little unfinished business to get around too. Spotting one at last, landing privileges were worked out over a tight beam of laser meant to keep eavesdroppers out. The warning about a target lock vanished with their negotiations complete, just because the old warship had been stripped bare of weapons didn't mean folks hadn't brought their own.
"Make sure you got everything, we won't be coming back." Rocket announced as the airlock cycled, waiting with his blaster ready in the universal greeting of outlaws and mercs.
A deal wasn't done until the units were transferred and the first round was bought at the bar. Somewhere between all that he still had to get the kid a translator implant, she wouldn't get too far without one. Bathed in green light telling that there was breathable atmo on the other side, the double doors rolled away to bid entry to the Whale...or so his shoddy Terran translation mod supplied. Whatever a whale was, Rocket figured the Humies would crap themselves if they ever saw the space faring beast he was thinking of.
-=+=–=+=–=+=–=+=–=+=-
"...and this is why I told you to keep an eye on him!" Peter shouted.
"I did, but the vermin would have none of it!" Drax argued back just as loudly.
"You...didn't actually try to keep your eye on him, did you?" There were times Peter forgot how literal Drax and his people were, a source of many misunderstandings already.
"Don't be absurd, why would I do that when there were many handily available to be plucked them from their socket?" Drax muttered.
"Idiots..." Gamora hissed under her breath.
"Well, he's paying for the fuel, travelling half way across the quadrant to pick up his furry ass..." Peter added, the blame for who let Rocket run off to do lord knows what was a bone he could pick at another day.
The Whale was the kind of place a being went when they expected trouble, similar to Knowhere in that there was profit to be made fit only for outlaws. Salvage picked out of the accretion disk ran from hardware, software, to the down right archaeological for the misfits of academia that hoped to get on the fast track by finding something so important that the bent and broken rules could be overlooked. It was Terra Incognita and the locals liked it that way.
Given the personal fortunes on the line, the kind of desperation that drove a being to risk their life and livelihood out in the graveyard that hung like a noose around the moon, well...no one that desperate didn't come packing. The place had enough firepower to put most planetary system's navies to shame, even a galactic empire would need a real good reason to send ships inbound.
That Rocket had picked it as their rendevous spoke volumes, so whatever trouble he was bringing with him better be worth the units. Walking amongst the other beings milling about the causeway, shopping and visiting the various food carts and street vendors, Peter paused as something caught his eye.
"Hey, I'll catch up with you guys..."
Pausing with him, Gamora followed Peter's gaze into the crowd only to see one lady vendor leaning against her sales counter, her wares on display in more ways than one. Drawing close to the Terran to whom she owed her life, her breath was hot against his ear as she chose her words carefully.
"Just remember Peter Quill, I do not fail at ripping out a thorax...and nor will I use anything so gentle as a fork." Gamora whispered, shoving him into the milling mass of beings before following after Drax.
"That was for information, and it was one time!" Peter shouted after them, the crowd looking at him in interest as he recovered, "What? What?!"
Now of course he noticed the very sexy and sensual looking being Gamora had mistaken to be the subject of his interest, but that was just being a guy and heeding the biological imperative written into his genes, but she hadn't been the one he had been looking at. A girl, unless her species was among those confusing ones, sat at the very counter of that sexy being and he was reminded of his own strange childhood. Taking his time as he approached the counter, he had spent more than enough time waiting for Yondu or Kraglin to get back from one deal to the next at food carts just like this one.
What really drew him to the girl was the way she handled an odd little bit of tech, a slim little metallic thing with a bright and colourful screen, and what had to be tiny headphones vanishing within her ears. Finding an empty stool next to her, he caught the eye of the hostess and waited for her to finish with a patron.
"I'll have what she's having." Peter said as the lady being walked up, looking harried and hurried but still managing a smile for him, "What are you having?"
Proving that they were indeed headphones of some manner, the girl plucked one from her ear and looked up at him as if he were the alien here. Having a sidelong glance at her bit of tech that sat beside her plate, now he really was getting curious, the symbols on the screen the very same as his own walkman.
"Dunno, I was told it's not poisonous and it tastes alright, so that's good enough for me." The girl mumbled, her eyes sizing him up as looked him up and down.
"Yeah, you usually don't want to know what you're eating at a place like this, no offence intended miss." Pete added as the hostess came back with his order.
Maybe not exactly what he'd been after to fill his gut before a bar crawl around the usual watering holes he expected to find Rocket at, it wasn't bad and for the units he couldn't complain. It reminded him of street meat from home, dirt cheap and something you got to crave after a while.
"Can I?" Peter asked, gesturing to the dangling little bud that blared something almost lost to the din of the causeway.
Her boneless shrug stung of painful nostalgia, of girls who couldn't be bothered with him one way or another, back before Yondu and a boys regret over a moment that could never be taken back. If her shrug stung, what played over her headphones was a mule kick to the chest. His mother had given him the best music of the Seventies and the Eighties that she loved, but trips to the hospital with his grandfather had been Johnny Cash and Willie playing over the truck radio.
"How do you know Johnny Cash?" Pete managed to ask, struggling for breath .
"How do you know Johnny Cash?!" The girl fired back just as rapidly.
"You're from Earth!" Their voices echoed as they stared at another amidst the confusion of the other dinners.
"Oh hey Quill, just the Humie I was looking for."
Tearing his gaze from the girl who had turned his world on top of itself, Peter looked down and then up to see a sight that only seemed astonishing in hindsight, Rocket sitting perched upon the shoulder of Groot who had an honest and earnest smile for him that eased away the pain stirred by the reminders of his childhood.
"Groot!" Peter cried aloud and not caring who heard him, jumping from his stool to hug him.
"I am Groot."
"Oh brother, save it for the ship." Rocket muttered, "...wait a tick, you left Drax and Gamora alone?"
"Ah shi..." Peter began, his voice drowned out by gunfire.
-=+=–=+=–=+=–=+=–=+=-