"Awwwwww!" cooed Floor, as besides her Lylla, Teefs and the Jackass all blinked stupidly. "You is my friend too!"

Flark this, talking to them hurt just as much as fighting did. Rocket turned away, still desperately rubbing at his eyes to keep the waterworks at bay. He was not going to cry. Not again. Not over something so stupid! Crying was the number one way to get you laughed at.

"Are you alright?" asked Teefs with the kind of exaggerated delicacy one used when handling an unstable atom bomb.

"I'm fine! Just peachy! Fan-frickin'-tastic!"

"You're clearly upset," Lylla remarked, and Rocket didn't need to look at her to know she had her arms crossed over her chest.

"Upset? What gives you that impression?" Not even the hostility of his tone could hide the raccoon's underlying whimper. "If you had any idea what I'm going through y-you would, you would-" The rest of the sentence died in his throat, buried beneath the crushing might of dumbass emotionalistics.

"We may not be aware of what you are going through. But if it's my fault you're upset, I am sorry." The walrus wrestled with his next sentence for a small eternity, before finally adding- "You can still call me Teefs if you want to."

And now the whimper turned into a full on sob.

Rocket didn't believe, as many did, that there was any kind of fairness in the universe. Bad things happened to good people and good things happened to bad people all the frickin' time. There was no rhyme or reason to it. There was no cosmic rationale. Things just happened. Even so, he was pretty sure he'd never done anything to deserve the hand 'fate' (if such a ludicrously moronic thing even existed) had dealt him.

"It's okay." Lylla placed a cold cybernetic paw on his shoulder. "Everything's going to be-"

"No it's not!" Rocket shrugged her off, frantically scampering out of reach. He was beginning to hyperventilate and his heartbeat was skyrocketing. "Nothing is okay! And it ain't gonna be okay, either! By the end of today I-I-I'm gonna be locked in a lab and strapped to a table and torn apart a-an-"

"Sire's just trying to make us-"

"He has no right to decide what is and isn't 'perfect'!" Before he could stop himself, Rocket turned and jabbed a claw into her face. "You were perfect!"

Batch 89 all blinked at the outburst as the raccoon went on in his most defeated voice.

"You all were. Perfect a-and peaceful and good a-and-" Rocket cut himself off with a sharp intake of breath. He turned his gaze downwards, unable to meet their eyes. "You were… Y-you are…"

"Well, maybe they are," J0100 chuckled nervously, jabbing a thumb at his batchmates. "Sire says I've still got, heh, " idly, he scratched at an implant on his chest. "A bit of modification to go."

Rocket glanced up at the Jackass and realised for the first time what he was staring at. The youngest of the batch, the most refined experiment, Sire's favourite plaything. Himself. Or rather, what he had been. What he could have been...

Teefs cleared his throat with deliberate volume. "Can we please not talk about this? I-it makes me uncomfortable." He wheeled over to place a flipper on J0100's shoulder. "You know we don't think we're any better than you."

"He knows," Rocket growled, overcome by a sudden urge for violence. His paws curled into fists as he stormed towards the hare. "But Sire knows best. And no matter how much modification hurts he's gonna sit still and be a good little experiment because he wants that madman to-" Rocket cut himself off. "Because he wants-" And again, because when he looked at J0100 he saw himself. "Because he doesn't want to be-"

"That's enough, P13," Lylla warned, sensing where this was going. "Sire only wants the best for us."

Rocket threw his head back and laughed. "Who are you kiddin'? You're just a frickin' lump of biomatter. A bunch of stupid experiments he's gonna throw away as soon as he's bored." He was glaring down at the hare now, his muzzle pulled back into a snarl. "Do yourself a favour and the next time he makes you wait in the lab- rewire the fire-suppression system, build a flamethrower out of the thermostat and toast his frickin'-"

The next thing he knew Lylla's fist came crashing into the side of his head and Rocket was sent sprawling.

"P13 so mean!" Floor jabbed a leg into the raccoon as she stepped past to help comfort J0100 (who was currently bawling his eyes out into Teef's flabby front).

Rocket was grateful for the pain. It was nothing more than a forceful reminder that his friends were going to be the death of him if he didn't focus. He hadn't even been trying to make the Jackass cry, he'd just been trying to tell them the truth!

"Don't listen to him," said Lylla, gently patting J0100 on the back while Floor held his paw and Teefs dutifully ignored the copious amount of snotty tears being poured into him. "He doesn't know what he's talking about."

"You're not just biomatter," the walrus agreed. "And even if you are, you're still one of my best and only friends."

Ignoring the bubble of guilt and envy swelling within him, Rocket got to his feet. None of his batchmates payed him any mind, preoccupied as they were with J0100. It was just the distraction he needed to crawl towards the cage and more importantly, the Shoplu tech within.

Half a minute later, Lylla and Floor had managed to coax the sniffling J0100 away from Teefs.

"It's good to have friends," the hare chuckled, wiping his eyes dry on the back of his paw.

"Yeah, it really is." Rocket sighed, emerging from the cage with an itchy blanket tucked under one arm and a scraped-together taser buzzing to life in his other.

Lylla groaned. "Oh my god, why don't you just stop!"

"You'll thank me later," Rocket snapped, looking away and somehow feeling inordinately guilty about the fact that he was saving their lives.

The otter cracked her knuckles as she got up. " You know I thought you'd try something like that, but I kind of hoped you wouldn't be stupid enough to-"

Rocket didn't let her finish her sentence and unfurled the blanket in her face. It brushed her whiskers just as he tapped the EMP into it. There was an audible zap as the charge carried over and Lylla's arms fell to her side in a shower of sparks.

The otter blinked incredulously. "H-how did you-?"

"I'm pretty good at fighting," Rocket shrugged. He gave the taser a twirl, and turned to face the rest of Batch 89. "Who's next?"

"L-L06 time to playfight!" Teefs squeaked, eyes bulging in panic.

"Yaaaay! Best game ever!" the rabbit cheered as the buzzsaws came out again.

Having seen more than enough of them to last him a few lifetimes, Rocket threw the EMP at her as she charged towards him. It caught her on the forehead mid-skuttle and unable to move her useless legs, the rabbit flew right past him. There was an audible clatter as she hit the cage and toppled over.

Floor blinked, ineffectively straining against her cybernetics as if willpower alone could bring them back to life. "No fair, P13 cheating!"

"Four on one and you don't see me complaining!" the raccoon shot back as he made a rush for the fallen taser.

J0100 got there first but was either too scared of Rocket's craftsmanship to pick it up or was too naive to use it as a weapon. Instead, he kicked it out of reach and threw a clumsy swing at the approaching raccoon.

Rocket sidestepped the blow and retaliated with a swift jab to the hare's gut, a right hook to the face and an uppercut that sent J0100 sprawling backwards with a bloody nose. "Nothing personal!" he called back, tucking into a roll to retrieve his paw-crafted weapon and whirling around to face the shaking form of Teefs.

"A95 turn off the gravity!" barked Lylla.

As soon as she said it, the world became weightless, and Rocket found himself floating off the solid surface of the ship. He frowned at the walrus' headpiece as it dawned on him. "You're piloting remotely."

"Y-yup!" Teefs beamed despite his terror. "It's a bit slower than wired transmission but a lot more comfortable."

"Easy to hack," the raccoon retorted. "And if you get hit with an EMP-"

Teefs did his awkward shrug-thing. "I l-lose control of the ship and we all potentially crash and burn."

"Unless I can make it to the-"

"This is the cockpit." Lylla snapped, her tail allowing her to float with more grace than Rocket would have expected. She was glaring at him.

Rocket blinked stupidly. "B-but there's no control panel- o-or windshield-"

"We've got built-in sensors, so no need for a windshield and I can pilot remotely, so no need for a control panel," Teefs explained, as if it was obvious.

Fresh rage spiked through the raccoon like a white hot knife. Even let loose into the wider Galaxy some bastard had decided that his friends were not good enough to see the sky. The ship was nothing more than a slightly bigger cage. They were still prisoners.

"Pass the cuffs back to J0100," Lylla ordered, as besides her Floor floated upside-down with a squeal of delight. "I know you don't want to hurt us."

Rocket relented, and watched as his last hope floated inchmeal towards the hare.

"Thank you for your cooperation." Teefs swam towards him and Rocket was momentarily stunned to see that, in the air (and when he wasn't terrified), the walrus' slow, awkward movements had turned into something almost graceful. "Sorry about this by the way."

"What're you-?" The raccoon's eyes went wide as he realised with a sudden jolt of panic what Teefs was apologising for. "W-waitwaitwait!" He clawed at the air in a desperate bid to get out of the line of fire. "Hang on just a- TEEFS!"

The gravity turned back on with a warble and Rocket hit the floor. Half a second later Teefs hit the floor on top of him, completely burying the little raccoon beneath several hundred pounds of blubber. Dimly, Rocket couldn't help noting that this was the closest the two of them had ever been.

"I don't appreciate people who are mean to my friends," the walrus said matter-of-factedly as the crushing weight lifted.

The raccoon could breathe again, even if he was too dazed to do much more. A flipper tapped at his prone form and dimly Rocket heard Teef's voice rise in fresh panic.

"G-guys! I- I think I've killed him!"

"He's fine," Lylla grumbled, giving the raccoon a light kick in the ribs as she passed by. "Reinforced skeletal system, remember?"

The walrus blinked. "Oh. Right. I er- forgot."

"P13, how long till my arms come back online?"

"About… two minutes?" Rocket groaned. He felt sore all over, but forced himself to sit up and glare at the suddenly-very sheepish Teefs. "You weigh a frickin' tonne."

"Are you always this rude or is it just to us?" Lylla demanded, and Rocket was sure if she could have, she'd have crossed her arms over her chest. Or punched him.

The raccoon shrunk in on himself, glancing from the unmistakable hurt in Teef's eyes, to where J0100 was trying to prop a giggling Floor up on her ludicrously long legs and was very pointedly not looking at him. "L-look. That stuff I said about Sire-"

"He said you'd say stuff like that," the hare interrupted, not meeting his eye.

Rocket considered that for a moment, and cocked his head to the side. "What else did he say about me?"

"He said you were clever," Lylla wore a skeptical frown and made a motion like she was trying to shrug. It was clear from her tone that she wasn't sure Sire had been right about that.

"And dangerous!" added Floor, once again collapsing into J0100.

"And that you once did something reeeeally bad," finished Teefs.

"Once?" Rocket made himself chuckle. "He clearly hasn't been following my career."

His batchmates didn't seem to appreciate the joke, so Rocket's chuckle turned into a kind of awkward throat-clearing noise.

"He said you stole something," Lylla amended, squinting at him. "Something that belonged to him."

"Yeah. I did." Rocket sighed and jabbed a thumb into his chest. "Me."

He was met with silence, and glanced up when the pause grew awkward. They were all staring at him, no doubt expecting some kind of elaboration. But he'd been avoiding the topic for years now, and wasn't about to open himself up to what amounted to a bunch of strangers. Even if they were so much more than that…

An audible buzz echoed into the long silence, as Lylla's arms came back online. It was followed a moment later by J0100's startled cry as Floor's legs snapped back into motion.

Rocket wiped his nose on his wrist. "Can we talk about something else?"

Teefs breathed a humongous sigh of relief and wasted no time rushing into a new topic. "Yes please! I've been meaning to ask something actually. What kind of thing are you?"

Fittingly, the idiot had landed on an equally awkward topic. It had been the first question Rocket had ever been asked, and one of the first thing Teefs had ever said to him. It had mattered less back when he shared a cage with Floor- but even then he had spent countless hours wondering why his ears were pointy, why Lylla's were small, why Floor's were floppy and why Teefs didn't seem to have any. He never understood why his tail was poofy, why Floor's was small, why Teef's didn't seem to have one and why Lylla's was streamlined. He had never understood why Teef's teeth were so prominent, why Floor's eyes were so red or why he had a mask.

Since escaping, he'd been compared to all kinds of lower life forms and the only thing that was consistent was that it was never consistent. Raccoon, badger, gerbil, rodent, rat, hedgehog, fox, chihuahua, weasel, hamster… the list went on and on but nothing anyone ever called him was ever anything like him.

By the time Rocket finally shrugged half-a-dozen minutes had passed, J0100 and Floor had lost interest and gone into a corner to play a kind of skipping game and Lylla was wrestling with the cuffs-turned-taser. "Got no clue."

"Don't worry, none of us know what we are either," Lylla shook her head, her voice almost sympathetic now that she wasn't trying to hit him. She wagged a disciplinary claw at Teefs. "You should know better than to ask that."

The walrus wringed his flippers awkwardly. "I just thought he might know since he's travelled around the galaxy."

"Yeah well, never really saw another me. Or another you for that matter." Rocket squinted up at the walrus as if seeing him for the first time. "I think you may be some type of whale. And that ain't just a fat joke. It's just… when I saw you floating. It kinda looked like you were swimming so I'm guessing at least you're something aquatic. Or, well, were."

"I do very much enjoy getting my skin hydrated," Teefs murmured, his eyes wide with wonder as he stared into the raccoon's own- as if Rocket had just unlocked the very secrets of the universe.

Needless to say, that made Rocket very uncomfortable. Clearing his throat, he scooted a bit away from the walrus and turned his eyes to the floor. "How long till we get there?"

"Two more jump points." Lylla hissed as a spark shot out of the Shoplu tasercuffs and singed her whiskers. "And we were specifically ordered to bring you in restrained."

Rocket sighed and held out an expectant paw.

The otter took one look at it and scoffed. "Not a chance."

"I ain't gonna try anything! Just don't want you lot getting in trouble coz of me." He pointed at the walrus beside him. "And if I do something stupid just dump him on me again."

"Sounds fair," Teefs shrugged. "Although, I'm not entirely sure you'd survive a second time."

"Please don't make me regret this." Lylla relented, placing the taser into Rocket's waiting paw.

"I hope you're not asking me to lay down and die," the raccoon grumbled, tearing apart the Shoplu with practised ease.

"It'll only hurt more if you try and fight it," Lylla pointed out. "There's no need to provoke-"

"Sire's already mad at me." Rocket cut her off, snapping the cuffs back into… well, cuffs, and dutifully tossing them back at her. "Ain't much more I can do to provoke the d'ast bastard."

He held out his paws in compliance.

"A little remorse-"

"I ain't apologising," Rocket snapped, as the restraints came back on with a 'click'. "I ain't sorry I ran, just mad at myself for doing it so badly."

The otter shook her head in disbelief and turned to where Floor and the jackass were currently laughing in a tangled heap of robotic limbs and rabbit legs. "Hey guys, we're about to land." She nodded at Teefs, who cleared his throat and tapped a flipper to his headpiece.

"This is 89A95 returning with the rest of Batch 89, requesting permission to dock."

There was a pause as whoever was on the other end of the line asked something.

"It's er- it's just us," Teefs gave Rocket a look and shuddered. "But we have 89P13."

There came another pause, and this time Rocket heard the voice at the other end.

"Permission granted."

"Thank you," Teefs beamed, tapping out of the call. "Well, we're here." His smile faltered as he caught Rocket's eye and noted the fear within them. "A-are you okay?"

Rocket hadn't heard him. His heartbeat was spiking, blind panic was coursing through him like a thunderbolt and his mind was screaming at him to run.

He likely would have listened to it had Floor not chosen that moment to lean down to his height and rub her cheek against his own. "Welcome home, P13!" she cheered, completely oblivious to how much the gesture meant to him.

Lylla placed a paw on his shoulder. "Please don't do anything stupid."

The ship touched down.

"I won't," Rocket promised. He recalled a conversation he'd had with Quill the other day and sighed. "I'm gonna do something 'incredibly heroic'."

Before Lylla could decide what that meant, the doors hissed open- revealing two dozen guards and twice as many cyborgs with weapons trained on the five of them- and more specifically, on Rocket.

"I ain't resistin' and I know you want me alive so drop your guns before I shove 'em up your klankerholes," Rocket snapped, and just like that his fear was buried beneath his usual jackassery. "You, flarknard on the left- no not you- you! Yes, you! You've got some gross ass condiment on your shirt and it's disgusting. Wipe it off before you make me hurl."

He scanned the crowd in search of whichever idiot was in charge and caught sight of the tell-tale white robe and mechanical headpiece of a recorder. It was one he was familiar with.

"Hey Vim."

If one of Sire's chief recorders was surprised that he'd remembered her name, she didn't show it.

"Sorry I never called. Or sent a postcard. Didn't have your address." Rocket slapped the barrel of a gun out of his face and hissed at it's owner as he strolled over. "But you can expect a bomb in your letterbox someday."

Vim did not bother with a reply, and instead turned to address the rest of Batch 89. "Excellent work. Sire will be most pleased. War-Pig, see them to their chambers and make sure they have something to eat. Sire will want a full report of the mission."

"Roger that," grunted a bio-mechanical monstrosity in a voice so high-pitched it caught Rocket off-guard. "Come on guys," she said, waving over his batchmates. "I wanna hear all about it."

"Bye P13!" Floor cheered, as she bounced past.

"See you around," muttered Teefs.

J0100 opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, but thought better of it and very pointedly looked away.

Lylla gave him a stiff nod.

There was an inexplicable weight on Rocket's chest as he watched them leave. Floor bounced and high-fived the thing called War-Pig. J0100 said something funny and got Teefs chortling. Not a backward glance was spared for him and that hurt most of all. Dimly he found himself hoping that this wasn't the last he'd see of them.

"Chambers is a pretty fancy word for cages." He glared up at Vim. Without his friends, this was just another prison and noone knew prisons better than he did. The first rule was to never let anyone know you were scared. The second rule was to insult anyone and everyone who looked like they wanted to mess with you. "By the way, you're a lot uglier than I remember."

Without so much as a glance in his direction she turned to a particularly large cyborg- who's defining feature seemed to be a beak. "Behemoth. Decontaminate him and bring him to the lobby."

"You some kind of bird?" Rocket asked, as the hulking monstrosity stomped towards him. "Pretty sure I've eaten one of whatever you are. No wait, wait, there's a saying that applies to this, gimme a sec. It's a dumb humie one hang on- HAHAHAHA! I BET YOU TASTE LIKE CHICKEN!"

That earned him a kick to the ribs that sent him sprawling, but the fact that he'd already gotten under their skin was making him feel better.

"Geez, tough crowd amiright? I thought that was a good one."

Behemoth picked him up by the scruff and lifted him clean off the ground with an effortlessness that made Rocket incredibly uncomfortable. To mask the panic, Rocket made it a point to brandish his full and impressive repertoire of swear words at anything in earshot. A few recorders fainted from the sheer volume.

Alas nothing faltered false bravado like a decontamination chamber.

The first thing they did was strip him of his clothes.

"Hey! Careful with that! You have any idea how hard it is to get things my size!? And if you crumple it I swear I'll-" the rest of his threat died in his throat as Behemoth casually tossed the bundle into a waiting incinerator.

Flames roared to life and grimly, Rocket couldn't help but wonder whether or not Quill's 'date with the oven' joke had been prophetic. Or maybe it had been a warning? Perhaps the reason Quill and the others had never got to him was because Sire had gotten to them first? Or maybe the reason Sire had even gotten to him was because the others had set him up…

Rocket shuddered and pushed the thought away. No. That was stupid. They didn't know anything about him. There was no way they could do it. And they wouldn't do it either… probably. The raccoon shook his head, and forced himself to think about something else- anything else!

And he knew he spent far too much time in Quill's company because the first thing that came to mind was a song composed by the Queen of England.

"'Cause I'm havin' a good time, havin' a good time, havin' a good time," Rocket mumbled, snorting at the irony.

Behemoth glared at him. "What was that?"

"It's music, dipshit," Rocket shot back. "And not that oversentimental crap Sire listens to, this one's actually got a beat to it."

The next thing he knew, he was mumbling the lyrics as the music played inside his head. It was stupid. Moronic. Exactly the kind of thing Quill would do and exactly the kind of thing Rocket would make fun of Quill for doing. But it kept him from spiraling into a panic. And it wasn't like he was going to live long enough for anyone to make fun of him.

"I'm a shooting star leaping through the sky," He was promptly floored by a pressurized shower of concentrated cleaning liquid built for larger life forms.

"Never thought I'd miss the sewers," he grumbled, shaking off the residual stickiness as best he could and resuming the song. "Defying the laws of gravity."

Hot air wafted up from the vents below him.

"I'm a racing car passing by," he grimaced, as his normally-grimy fur dried into something ludicrously soft and poofy.

"Like Lady Godiva." To add insult to injury, a robotic arm holding a spray can lowered itself to his level and doused him with a scent so cloying Rocket went green.

"I'm gonna go, go, go there's no stopping me!"

He did not give Behemoth the satisfaction of carrying him around anymore and kept a few paces ahead of the cyborg as he made his way towards his possible doom.

"I'm burning through the sky, two hundred degrees, that's why they call me Mister Fahrenheit."

Freddie Mercury bravely held back the worst of his demons as Rocket passed by corridors that had haunted his nightmares for years.

"I'm having such a good time, I'm having a ball." Rocket's tail was gently swishing by the time they reached the lobby. It looked exactly the same as it had all those years ago when he'd first seen the sky.

"Don't stop me now." He was fairly certain Behemoth wanted nothing more than to strangle him.

"If you wanna have a good time, just give me a call!"

"Welcome home, P13." The music ended and Rocket snapped back into reality. There was the familiar note of panic, but he was ready for it. He'd known it was coming and he had prepared for it. He was most likely going to die. And he had decided that if he was, he was going out the way Groot had.

Brave. In a blaze of glory. And lacking a friend to comfort with his dying words, Rocket would settle for violently insulting someone's mother.

He licked his lips and considered the Shoplu cuffs. He didn't dare to hope for anything but there was a very small chance that he didn't die.

Rocket took a deep breath, and despite the sensation of a dozen pins and needles prickling his fur he turned towards the voice and grinned with all his pointed teeth. "Hey, what's with the face?"


Footnote: So, I'm sure many of you people who read fanfics and especially those who write fanfics are familiar with what I would call the 'initial image'- the first thing you see in your head that you then proceed to build a story around. I usually build stories around a combination of a few 'initial images'- I come up with a few cool scenes and then come up with ways they tie together/build towards each other etc etc

I have so much fun writing Batch 89's dynamic with Rocket- they're nice to him because they're naturally just really nice- but from their perspective he is a hyper-violent raccoon with emotional issues who says crazy things like 'you named yourself after your teeth' or 'you were perfect!'

I debated for a while whether or not Rocket mumble-singing the lyrics of 'Don't Stop Me Now' was a bit out of character- I know he does it in 3 but is it maybe too early at this point- but I also know Rocket was humming stuff to himself before he heard any of Quill's music and liked music when he first heard it and he's full on listening to it in Vol 2 which is not set long after Vol 1 so I digress. I imagine the tunes grew on him quickly, he just didn't let the others see it at first. And when faced with the prospect of death and experimentation and pain and misery and with noone who's opinion matters to you watching, why not have a good time?

I also thought it'd be a clever way to implement the musical beats from the movies into the fic without having to tell you guys 'hey at some point this chapter start listening to XYZ to get into the vibe of the scene'. Really curious to seeing what you guys think of that, and also any other thoughts/comments you had.

Next week we either swap back to the Guardians for an action-packed slap fest oooooooor we get Rocket and the HE's face-off. Haven't made up my mind yet x3