Looking around at the madness that surrounded me my first instinct was the same as any other living creature who wished to stay alive; run for cover. This instinct turned into more of an urge when the flying robots suddenly descended and then fired upon Groot who still stood where he was with the battery in his hand. Then my urge disappeared and my instincts thrown out the metaphorical window when, for the first time that I had seen, Groot became angry. And as it turns out Groot had what I liked to call a 'Hulk mode', and thus began fearlessly punching robots out of the sky.
And I swore when he shouted 'I am Groot' at the robots I heard the true meaning behind the words, 'Groot smash'. Oh please let it be so! Anyways I now had the uncontrollable urge to go wild and break some stuff. And I had the perfect way to do so.
Now if you were paying attention I'm sure you remember me mentioning earlier that I went through some significant changes when I was sent so space, besides my hair turning white. If you were not then you might want to keep up, this is a little important. Perhaps I shall give a demonstration.
One of the robots seemed to have taken some interest in me, quickly it levels it's surprisingly cheap looking gun at me. And vaguely I noticed that somebody was shouting at me over the machines speakers trying to get me to move back to my cell. Smirking wickedly at it I cracked my knuckles. It was time to play.
Slowing my hands started to glow with an eerie blue smoky light that sort of began to curl around me when I first saw the light it reminded me of the tesseract. And that was what it all boiled down to. That stupid glow box had cursed me and caused my afterlife to be as messed up as it was. But at the same time I did have to thank it.
My streak started to glow as the voice on the speaker began to shutter nervously, encouraged by his fear I put my hands together before thrusting them forward sending a burst of electric blue energy at the robot. If I had used too little such a hit would do nothing to the machine, in fact, I believe it might actually power the device, only I had put a bit too much into the hit.
The overwhelmed machine began to squeak and beep frantically, broken chunks of dialog being mixed in as the machine had a meltdown before ultimately exploding in a dazzling light show.
I smirked victoriously lowering my hands turning to me left to find one of the inmates starting at me in terror. My smirk increased as I flashed my teeth and greeted, "Boo."
The big tough prisoner let out a terrified girlish shriek as he stumbled away from me, screaming about a monster, only to run right into a wall. Aw, the idiots of the universe amuse me so.
The guards continued to shout over the speakers, ordering the prisoners back to their cells. Though I don't know how they expected anyone to do this if they were shooting at everything that moved.
Setting my hands on my hips I once again began looking for the members of my group, Groot was easy to find mostly because he hadn't really moved at all. Only now he had a furry scarf on his shoulder-oh wait no. That was Rocket, trying to avoid the robots shooting.
"You!"
"GAH!" I shouted jumping a bit to turn to see a vaguely familiar face looming over me. I quickly recognized him as the blue shirtless guy from earlier, I was wondering where he had disappeared to. He looked down at me growling accusatorily, "You are part of the group?"
"Um… yes…?" I answered trying not to move away from the lumbering giant.
"Excellent." The man announced suddenly much more chipper as he leaned back to his full height, "We must assist the small furry one and the tree."
"Sure…?" I agreed not really sure how I should be responding to this guy. Was he a part of our group now? Why wasn't he wearing a shirt? Aw man, did we have to split the money six ways now?
Before I could ask him any of this questions, or you know his name, he seemed to decide that our conversation was over and began walking threateningly towards an armed group of guards coming in on the left. Glancing to my right I found the same.
"Looks like I got right." I decided hopefully picking up on what the blue man was saying. Either way it was time for my next trick.
I began focusing on one spot in the middle of the three guards, once I found the perfect spoke I smirked again and… well, it's kind of hard to explain. I just sort of mentally pushed myself forward, causing me to disappear and then reappear in the spot I had been focusing on in a flash of blue smoke.
Unsurprisingly I had the upper hand, with the guards begin focused on the vicious raccoon a wooden Hulk and all. Typically when I did training of combat I preferred to stay on the sidelines, firing from a distance with my sniper rifle and teleporting to different locations to get the shot I needed. But if I really did need to go into full combat mode I normally had my weapon of choice to go back on. Since I had neither of them with me I was forced to use my hand-to-hand to break some bones.
The second the world reappeared in my vision my elbow came up, slamming the guard next to me in the throat with a surprising amount of force. He flew back making strange choking sounds though I was pretty sure I hadn't broken his windpipe. The second one at least managed to turn to me before I quickly roadhouse kicking him in the chest sending him flying into his friend.
The last guard managed to actually aim at me, but sadly before he could fire I knocked his gun out of his hand, possibly breaking his wrist, and then took a cheap shot to the groin. As it turns out that hurt all species.
My next problem?
Avoiding Rocket's friendly fire.
I was looking down at the downed guards proudly for a moment with a satisfied smile on my face, only to glance to the side when I heard somebody screaming. I was totally calm for a second as I registered what exactly I was looking at when I did my eyes widened and I tensed up. It was only thanks to my abnormally fast reflexes that I managed to avoid getting shot in the head. I managed to leap behind one of the overturned metal tables, releasing a shrill surprised shriek as Rocket's bullets came alarmingly close to killing me.
Out of instinct, I covered my head waiting for his fire to pass as I bitterly cursed whoever gave him a weapon. Thankfully he seemed to be moving in a circle so the fire passed over me without much issue, allowing me to get up and find somebody who wasn't so trigger happy. Frowning in disappointed when I couldn't find Quill or Gamora I set my hand on my hips. I guess they might have taken cover as well to avoid Rocket's maniac shooting.
I became increasingly confused when people, more accurately guards, falling from the sky. Glancing up with mild interest I found Gamora on the upper floor totally kicked some serious butt, she totally reminded me of a less vengeful Natasha. Gamora was going through those guards like a knife through butter.
And speaking of guards, one of them was pointing a gun at my head.
I didn't bother looking to see who it was who was threatening my life, let alone what he might have been shouting at me. When he was in mid-shout I casually lifted on hand and flicked a finger at him sending a small burst of energy. Just enough to overload his brain and knock him out.
What was I supposed to be doing here again? Did I have a role in this, or did I just need to wait for the others to do their thing?
Realizing that I had some free time I decided to keep myself busy, but what could I do? It was then that a brilliant idea popped into my head, this was going to be amazing. Checking to make sure Rocket wasn't about to kill me by accident I bolted for the abandoned kitchen area.
I found the panel I needed with ease and I began expertly fiddling with the numerous brightly colored wires. No one seemed to care what I was doing and so no one tried to stop me. Probably because I was doing more good than bad at this point.
It's not like the kitchen was being put to good use.
"Phoenix, head for the watchtower!" Somebody shouted at me over the noise. Without looking up I waved at them dismissively, I was working it dang it! I was almost done, it could wait a moment whatever it was.
Once done and thoroughly satisfied with my work I rose to my feet and began looking for a way up to the watchtower. I spotted Gamora on the platform that lead to the entrance which gave me a place to port in. I think I might have scared Gamora though.
I had teleported in right next to her and when I appeared she sort of stumbled back startled. Mumbling a meek apology I looked over the railing to see Quill… holding a prosthetic leg? I really hope he didn't just randomly steal that from somebody.
I shook my head instead to solve the mystery of Quill's kleptomania later I began working on the panel on the watchtower doors. Wow, this stuff was so old! I mean not as old as the Walkman, but Nova really needed to get some upgrades in here! Third-graders could get this door open with a screwdriver if they wanted.
"What are you doing?"
I glanced over my shoulder to see Gamora looking down at me, having recovered from her little scare. Rolling my eyes I nodded towards the door in a 'duh' voice, "Opening the door? What else?"
Gamora decided not to bother me again as quickly the rest of our group had arrived on the platform, everyone was waiting on me. It only took another second for me to cheer victoriously and hop to my feet. Taking a step back I crossed my arms as the towers door seamlessly slid open revealing a single unarmed guard in the room.
He turned slowly to face us, gulping nervously as his eyes got impossible wide. Carefully he raised his hands in surrender, which we accepted by throwing him out of the tower. That was basically the same thing, right?
Wasting no time Rocket leaped at the controls, starting to work on something I didn't really feel the need to ask about. Instead all my attention was on the very obvious elephant in the room.
Quill.
More specifically the leg he was carrying.
It would seem that in the chaos of the prison Quill had decided that his best course of action was to take somebodies prosthetic leg. Was this some kind of sick joke that I was missing out on or was this guy a bigger jackass then I originally thought?
"Why is this one here?" Gamora demanded pulling me out of my thoughts, it only took me a moment to realize who she was talking about. And that would be the giant blue man.
"And do we have to share money with him?" I asked concerned my attention momentarily brought away from the leg.
"I promised he could stay by Gamora's side until he kills her boss. And I always keep my promises, especially when there to muscly whack jobs who will kill me if I don't," Quill explained helpfully somehow making all of that sound reasonable. Then as if he was just remembering he set the leg down next to Rocket and announced, "Here you go."
"Oh, I was just kidding about the leg." Rocket admitted with an amused laugh before gesturing at the two other devices the others had gathered, "I just needed these two things."
"What?!"
"Oh, and here I was thinking that you were just being a dick." I laughed patting the stunned Quill on the shoulder.
"I thought it be funny, wasn't it funny?" Rocket asked eagerly turning to face Quill, "What did he look like hopping around out there?"
"I had to transfer him 30 thousand units!" Quill exclaimed in disbelief. Rocket's only response was to turn back to what he had been doing snickering evilly. Then suddenly the tower shock as an explosion went off outside the tower. It took me a moment to realize what it was, when I did I began to chuckle darkly.
"What was that?" Gamora demanded.
"The kitchen just exploded!" Quill reported loudly as he looked out the window, trying to access the damage. My chuckling quickly turned into more of an evil laugh, which in turn caused everyone in the room to pause for a moment just to stare at me with looks of horror. Except for the big guy and Groot who seemed pretty okay with my pyromaniac actions.
Getting my laughter under control I shrugged in defense, "What? It's not like they were actually using it!"
"That's fair." Quill admitted nodding as the rest of the group seemed to be satisfied with my explanation. Everyone tensed up again when something besides the kitchen went boom.
"You have a plan right?" Quill shouted at Rocket sounding suspicious, "Or was that another thing you made up?"
"I have a plan, I have a plan!" The raccoon assured us as he worked on the controls.
Rolling my eyes I snapped a little annoyed, "Stop repeating yourself and do it man!"
"Silence your yammering and release us from this earthly confinement." The blue guy ordered sounding a little bored with us. Was he a Shakespeare fan or something?
"Yeah, I'm gonna have to agree with the walking thesaurus." Quill joked weakly as he glanced outside trying to lighten the mood.
He did the opposite of lighten the mood, as the blue man turned on Quill. Which left me in a very awkward position standing directly between the two of them. Thankfully the blue man was tall enough that he could glare over my head to growl threateningly, "Do not ever call me a thesaurus."
So, Shakespeare fan who couldn't take a joke.
"It's just a metaphor dude," Quill stated nervously, seeming to try to lower himself to hide behind me from the unamused giant.
"His people are completely literal." Rocket called from the control panel, "Metaphors are gonna go right over his head."
"Hey! Less talky more worky up there!" I snapped at the raccoon moving back so I wasn't stuck between Quill and the big guy. Quickly I began fiddling with the door controls, this whole thing was just taking way too long. And it would really suck if someone just opened the door and shoot us in the backs while we weren't looking.
I still almost found myself shouting in despair when I heard the blue literal man begin to describe how fast his reflexes where. And you know I think Gamora summed up our whole predicament quite nicely.
"I'm going to die surrounded by the biggest idiots in the galaxy."