Torbach was sleeping when it happened; alarms blaring wildly on the Wisecracker as some strange noises and vibrations under the deck jolted him from his bunk. He lifted his girth out and pressed the internal comms button by the head of his sleeping area.
"Dorna, the frig?!" he screamed. No answer.
And then the door to his bulkhead blew clean off and landed in a smoldering clatter half a meter to his right.
"Mornin' beautiful," came a raspy voice, compact silhouette slowly becoming visible through the smoke of the explosion. "Time to meet the reaper, eh?"
Torbach didn't even have the chance to pull out his blaster before 10,000 volts of pure electricity surged through his body, knocking him out cold, sound of a small chittering animal burned vaguely in his subconscious.
Rocket wasn't the only one dealing with a howling juvenile in severe pain. Peter was trying to figure out exactly what to do with Waina. She slept- or some facsimile thereof- on the futon in the cabana living room, whimpering and tossing. Not too bad a previous life my feathered ass, thought Peter, as he perched over her bed on the fourth afternoon of babysitting duities, feathers ruffling behind as he maintained balance.
He was tempted to try what Yondu had told him his pheromones could be used for, but not on a kid, and certainly not without permission. Or a doctor. A vet, perhaps? (By which he meant for himself, not for the girl). He wasn't even sure what kinds of remedies- herbal or synthetic- would even be safe for her to ingest; checking the net was good and all, but she was still a child and he wasn't as good at properly dosing this stuff like Rocket or Drax.
So he warily kept an eye on the girl, hoping when Nova came tomorrow they could tell him about her physiology, or better, bring some pre-dosed medications for his new ward.
"Peter?" Anolise whispered from the doorway of the bedroom. Peter flopped back, flapping his wings for balance. He almost couldn't even remember what it used to feel like, or how he once looked, as he passed his avian reflection in the mirror by the door.
He slowly rolled it shut behind him, and went to the kitchen for some tea.
"What's up?" He asked, craning his neck back at Anolise as she studied him carefully.
"Why do you pretend you're a Xandarian?" she asked.
He swallowed, as he pulled two mugs down from the kitchenette's only cabinet. "That's… well, that's not exactly what's going on, Anolise," he finally answered.
"What is?"
"Well, first off, it's not Xandarian. It's Terran- human- from Earth. Third planet from Sol."
"Never heard of it."
"Far as anyone knows, they don't have FTL yet. Barely made it past their moon. I was abducted as a kid."
"Same here."
"How long have you been shuttled from slaver to slaver?" Peter asked, his ruffling feathers giving away the distaste of the question.
"Nine Kree-standard years maybe?"
"Well, Terrans look enough like Xandarians. Weaker physically, but more resilient to disease. Learned that when everyone on my ship got the Pochi flu but me."
"You were on a ship full of people with one of the most virulent strains of influenza and you didn't get it?"
"Not even a cough."
"No wonder why I saw some Terrans sold off to a science facility six years ago…" she trailed off. Peter blanched. "Sorry," she added. "But still, why fake it? So you don't get bothered by fans when you go out for real? How do you hide your wings, they're huge?"
"I'm only half Retribe," Peter replied, pouring the steaming water into two glasses before dropping in the tea bags. Groot had left them- but at least they were store bought and not made from his bark as they usually were on the ship. "Didn't hit puberty until about a year ago. So that was me dancing off against Ronan… but Nova's been using a body double for me since I started… ahem" Peter flapped his wings behind him for emphasis. "Heck, I didn't even know what my dad was as a kid. Almost didn't believe my mom when she told me he was an angel."
"So you just don't want to make yourself a bigger target," Anolise concluded.
"Pretty much," Peter replied. He put the glass of tea to hips lips. "Uh, so, I'm done here, right? How do I pull her out? Help here?" Peter yelled at no-one in particular.
"Jus' stop flappin' your wings for a while and it'll dissipate on it's own, numbnuts. Read the damn data entry next time," came a gruff voice, from nowhere.
"What's…?" Anolise asked, looking around.
"You're in jail, duh," Peter replied, sipping his tea. "We left Taspis like six days ago. Had any good dreams in the past two weeks?"
"Two...?"
"Sense of time goes funny when you're around Retribe pheromones too long," came the ethereal raspy voice. "Peter's been spraying you every couple'a hours."
"Do not worry, it will not remain in your bodily system for long once he has stopped. Your time will be concerned elsewhere, anyway." This voice was deeper, booming.
"I… what?" Anolise demanded, as she slowly watched the cabana melt away, her own light dress replaced with prison scrubs.
A very unhappy looking Gamora stared at her from the other side of the glass in her cell.
"Enjoy your incarceration, wench," she spat, before turning heel. "And don't worry about reporting to your boss. Rocket blew him up with extreme prejudice."
Anolise Dorna, Bylan Torbach's right hand mate and mole, had been bested by a goofy feathered idiot. She kicked the glass angrily and huffed in a corner, waiting for a Nova officer to come interrogate her. Twenty six years ago Torbach had contacted Yondu about selling the Terran kid for science (Xandarian, ain't worth shit, he'd said, but Anolise didn't smell Xandarian off the kid), and she'd committed his scent to memory for her boss- Silurians aged very well- so that when he got a little older and maybe not so tight under the Centurain's wing they could just steal him off and make a fortune shipping him to the Keystone Quadrant.
Imagine her luck when she'd smelled that same scent two weeks ago on a man who looked to be an even rarer species. He wasn't Terran either, she'd thought, just a juvenile Retribe that the vile pirate had been passing as Xandarian to deflect attention. She knew he hadn't been Xandarian.
Was the bit about him being both a lie? If it were true, she could have been rich and killed Torbach herself, go find some quiet corner of the universe to bask in her riches. If only fate were so kind, she thought.
Fuck Peter. He wasn't worth the units.
"Look, all I'm saying is, you didn't need to leave Waina with me, too, while you got the other victims to Nova custody," Peter said, irritated as he walked back to the ship.
"We needed to make it less obvious. That's why we left Groot with you too." Gamora lightly rested a hand on Peters shoulder.
"Yeah, well it was jack AND shit for a vacation, let me tell you. I had to go back and spray the little mole every three hours- and that included waking up in the middle of the night."
"You are sleep deprived," Drax noted. "You should actually rest now, knowing everyone is where they should be."
"Yeah, I guess," Peter mumbled.
"What was that, hero?" Rocket ribbed, elbowing him gently in the shin.
"…didn't even get a massage…" Peter grumbled, as he climbed up the gangway. "Wish I could spritz myself to sleep or something." Feeling like a zombie, Peter almost literally rolled into his cabin and into the bunk.
Yondu owed him. Big time.
Peter slept thirteen hours straight that night, an undisturbed rest in two weeks since the da'ast slave ship. He awoke, stretched, and followed the scent of eggs and frybread up the stairs to the galley.
Covered in flowers and fake killi-killi trees. Groot came up from behind him and dropped a staw hat on his head.
"The… what?"
"Sir Star-Dork, what shall you be having for breakfast?" came a gruff voice from below. Rocket? In his Nova uniform? Peter thought.
Gamora came around from the side and presented Peter with a bright orange drink in a fancy glass on a platter, also in Nova uniform. Granted, the glass was obviously stolen from the resort Peter didn't get to enjoy, and the platter was just one of Rocket's calibration mirrors, but the effort was present.
"What are you…?" Peter sputtered out.
"Making up for lost time," Gamora replied, serving him a plate of Drax's heavenly-smelling breakfast. "You've got a slot reserved in the sauna in thirty minutes, a mud wrap, and a hot stone massage before lunch."
"When did we install a sauna?" Peter asked, almost choking on the drink.
"When I realized that lettin' the emergency exhaust steam valve release for about an hour won't corrode the engine room. Just don't stay down there longer than that, yeah, birdbrain?" Rocket replied.
Peter laughed.
"Damn do I owe you all one."