A very special thanks to imaginationrunsfree and czabboxoxo for their reviews, you can't know how much it means to me.

Here's the new chapter! Not much action in this one, but our favorite bunch of a-holes deserved a break.

04 - Chitchatting and campfire stories

A few minutes later, Rocket was still working on the spacesuits, more precisely on the helmets. The rest of the team had almost finished cleaning the area, slowly evacuating the cadavers through the side door of the cockpit, after Peter had made sure that no more creatures were near the ship. The task was arduous as the dead beasts were heavy and slimy as hell, but it helped keep their mind off the fact that more monsters were waiting for them on the lower parts of the ship, ones that were very much alive.

They were working like a well oiled machine. Gamora dragged the bodies closer to the ladder, Groot hauled them up to the bridge and handed them to Drax who threw them out, then Peter pushed them down on the ground while remaining vigilant and looking out for any more danger coming from the outside.

After what seemed like an hour, Quill finally kicked the last cadaver off the wing of the ship, watching it drop on top the other ones. He made a quick scan of the place, seeing no threat coming but noticed that the sky above him was a little bit darker as the sun had almost disappeared behind the horizon and the temperature was cooler than it was when they made their sensational arrival on this damn planet.

He jumped back into the cockpit and slumped into his chair, exhausted. There wasn't a muscle in his body that didn't ache. Drax sat next to him, sporting the same frown on his face he had when he was trying to decipher Rocket's weirdest metaphors.

"You look worried, friend. Don't you believe in our capacities to defeat those deceitful invaders?"

Peter smiled gently at him. "I do believe in us. But, first the thing appeared out of nowhere and forced us to crash on it, and then we get attacked by invisible monsters… It makes me wonder what this planet has in store for us next, and where did it come from in the first place? We're basking in craziness."

The frown was back on Drax' face.

"It's just an expression, buddy." Peter yawned and rubbed his tired eyes.

"I think I know what this planet is," Gamora said from behind, startling him. As usual, he hadn't heard her coming. "And if I'm right, the sooner we leave the better." She sat on the metallic ground between her friends and facing them, her back resting awkwardly against the console. Her posture was tense, almost defensive, as she often did when she was about to reveal something from her past.

"What do you mean?" Peter asked softly.

"It's something I heard in my first years with Thanos. I was with Nebula and another of our brothers, a very new one… He was tough, but such a sweet boy. He died shortly after; I can't remember his name…" She shook her head to clear her mind. Now was not the time to get emotional. "We sneaked out of our dormitory and were on our way to the sparring quarters —we were constantly challenging ourselves as Thanos encouraged our competitive spirit; but we heard something in one of the labs that made us stop. Two scientists were arguing and one of them seemed to be afraid. What intrigued us was that this man was the worst being we knew, as he was the one that uh, worked on us. I remember he was saying that though Thanos was great, he couldn't match the Celestials' powers."

"The Celestials," Interrupted Peter, "As, somewhat space-gods eradicating worlds with an infinity stone, mining colony made out of one's severed head, Celestials?"

"Yes. They also were inquisitive scientists with limitless abilities, and often used entire worlds to experiment on. From what we could gather on the conversation we overheard, Thanos wanted to recreate one of their experimentation on a whole solar system, to see if he could displace it in time and space. What spooked our Doctor was that the Celestials' trial had gone badly: the displacement triggered a chain reaction into the sun which made it age too fast. The average star turned into a red giant that destroyed the planets which were the closest to it and burnt the others, as the radiations killed life on the planets or drastically changed the DNA of the ones that survived. Plus, the displacement had a glitch and the whole system got stuck in an unpredictable spatiotemporal loop. If that's what is really happening to us, we need to get out of here before the whole thing flashes back to another time and space and takes us with it. We'd be lost forever."

"And here I was, thinking this day couldn't get any worse," Peter sighed. "This reminds me of a story one of my marks told me when I got him drunk enough to uh, do what I was hired to do. He kept blabbering about the time he crashed on a planet that didn't show on any radar and how most of his crew got killed by ghosts, except that what he landed on was mostly sand and not rock like here. He said he was lucky enough to crash next to the wreckage of another ship and pillaged it for parts, but that's when a lot of his men died. If I remember correctly, he said that when he finally took off, he noticed the planet was covered with wrecks, as if his wasn't the first ship to crash here. After the job, the story kinda stayed with me and I talked about it to the other Ravagers. Of course, they made fun of me but after a while and a few drinks, they all had their own legends to talk about, similar to this one, about ships disappearing, ghost planets or sole survivors of weird crashes. I guess I never really believed it until now, but it makes sense…"

Peter scratched his head, getting his still gore-covered hair messier than it already was. The stuff had dried and was itching like crazy. "Problem is, even if we manage to get rid of all our invaders the Milano took too much damage to go to space, and though I have some spare parts in here, we're missing some pretty big and crucial components."

"What you both heard matches too much to be a coincidence," Drax said, thinking out loud, "even if Quill's stories were told in an advanced state of inebriation which means their content is probably exaggerated, it signifies that there is a solid chance there are some shipwrecks somewhere on this planet that we may scavenge for parts."

"True." Gamora nodded then looked up at Peter. "The Milano cannot go into space for now, but do you think you and Rocket can get it repaired enough to fly over the surface of the planet and scan for the wreckage of other ships?"

"I think so," Peter said, shrugging. "With a good weld it could work."

"Hey, up there," Rocket's voice boomed into the comms, "when you've finished chitchatting and bonding over campfire stories, maybe you can come here and try on the suits?"

Peter chuckled. "Coffee break's over."