Chapter 11.

This is the eleventh chapter. Hope you enjoy it.

The ground kept rumbling and then Mark looked out of the windows to see the ground was moving downwards, no, they were moving up. Then it dawned on him. The pyramid was a ship! A launching ship! He ran over towards the windows, looked downwards at the ground, watching them rise. "I am Groot?" He heard Groot ask, making him look over his left shoulder. "Kill' em all." He heard Quill answer. Moments later, as he turned around leftwards and ran in between Quill and Groot, he heard some kind of whirring sound coming from the High Evolutionary, who he was now facing, as he held at them his left hand, which sent out some kind of shock wave, which threw him backwards/down onto the floor. He turned rightwards and on himself on his stomach as he put held his paw-hands on the floor and lifted himself up while bending his hind legs, then looked leftwards to see on the ground below, several massive explosions were happening all across the city. He heard laughter, and looked rightwards to see it coming from the man they were after. "It's amusing, really. How stupid, are you, hmm? It was so obviously a trap." The man spoke. "It's not a trap. It's a face-off." He heard Quill say back. "Now kill them all." He heard then say as Mark got up on his hind legs, then he turned around leftwards to watch Groot open a bit of his chest, letting a grenade fall into his right hand. "What do you have in your hand?" The man asked as Groot activated it, then went over to Groot and grabbed his left arm, Groot shaking him off, and then threw the grenade across to the rear of the room. "Grenade!" One of the people in black spoke as some of them ducked down, then the grenade exploded, the blast causing them all to fall onto the ground. The explosion filled the room with smoke, caused a load of the roof to fall down at the rear of the room. Mark looked around the smoke for a few minutes, closing his eyelids slightly due to the smoke, seeing all the surviving people getting up off the floor. Then he saw Groot take out of himself several blasters which he held out with his arms and vines.

Grinning, Mark ran over to Groot's left side, stopped right in front of him, (seeing Groot throw out from behind his back Quill's Quad-Blasters with vines) and turned around, held up his paw-hands, and fired a Paw-Blast at the nearest person in black, but instead of what usually happened, a blast of red shined in his gloved paw-hands for a second, then went out, looked at his gloved paws, moving them around so he could see, showing a rippled clean through hole in both his paw gloves, smoke coming out of the edges of the holes. It seemed his Paw-Blasts didn't work well when covered in fabric. "Note to self: Never wear gloves in action." He muttered to himself as Quill blasted the man for him, as he took off his gloves and threw them to the floor. He then held up his paw-hands again as Groot and Quill turned around (the two besides him), and so he stepped around with them, and he fired a Paw-blast from both paw-hands at the first people in his line of fire. Then he turned bent his hind-legs, turned his upper body rightwards, held out his right arm and fired in between Groot's legs at the person to the left of the guy Quill just shot. He turned his upper forwards again and then fired a paw blast at one of the two figures in white on his right with his right paw-hand, then he brought it down. Then he held up his left paw-hand and at the second figure in white. The he ducked in between Quill and Groot (Quill ducking down) as Groot grew a shield of vines of the two, which blocked a bit of fire before Groot moved it away, Quill standing up, and Mark taking a step forward off them, stepped in between Quill and Groot and held out his paw-hands and fired some paw-blasts in Quill's frontal direction, paw-blasting and killing several people in black in front of Quill "I AM GROOT!" Groot roared as the trio stepped around in a circle. They kept this up until the last person, minus, the man they needed, was dead. When that happened, silence filled the room, Mark stepped to Groot's left, He saw Quill hold up a Quad-Blaster in his right hand at the man, who was whimpering on the floor. "No! Don't!" "Don't! No, no, no! No, please! Please, spare me! Please, spare me, please." The man begged as he held out his right hand, then got up on his knees, his hands together. Mark then saw Quill move down his blaster. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank…" The man said as he got up on his feet. "That'd be premature." Quill replied, the man's face turning to confusion. Suddenly Quill ran towards the man, ignoring his pleas of no's, ran into him and made them both fly into the window, shattering the glass, and then plummeting out towards the ground! Mark grinned, knowing what this was and looked rightwards/upwards at Groot. "You what to do, don't you?" He asked rhetorically, still grinning, before he sprinted over to the open window and upon arriving at the edge, instantly bent his hind-legs and pushed himself off the floor, bending his upper body and head to point downwards, his arms pointing downwards as he fell, yet unafraid.

Despite plummeting downwards into an exploding planet, he felt a sense of freedom, and enjoyment, the air making his fur fluff, the feeling of the air flowing in his face as he fell, Quill and the man a bit below him. In another world, if he were still human, he'd have never have done that, but this Mark, the Guardian, was willing to do so without a second thought. Especially when he had a means of surviving, as he then moved his arms to his sides, straitened and brought his hind-legs together, streamlining himself, as he then felt a vine from Groot wrapped around his mid-body, and began pulling him towards Groot, a few second later was brought to Groot's chest as they descended towards Quill, who was now falling with the man facing the ground. As they came up to Quill, Groot held his arms out and grabbed Quill's back, Mark hearing the sounds of vines growing on Groot's back, knowing what this was. Groot was growing glider shaped wings made of vines, making them glide towards the ground. Mark was sandwiched between Quill and Groot. Downwards and downwards, they glided, the man screaming as they descended, Mark, as they approached the grassy ground, moved his left paw-hand out above Quill's left shoulder (in the line of sight of the man), and did the middle finger/paw-finger at the man. A few seconds later, they hit the ground, the man fatally being struck on the ground, the impact combined with Groot's wings, making them glide along the ground for around a dozen feet before coming to a stop in a shallow stream, Groot letting go of Quill and Mark and fell into the water. Mark, having bee gripping Quill's suit, jumped off Quill's back to his left, turned his body rightwards, looked downwards at the now dead-man's face in the water. "Groot." Quill ordered, Mark looking straight/forwards before Groot popped out a thin blade where the guns had been, and threw it to Quill, who caught it with his right hand. He the extended the blade and began fiddling with the computer on the man's head, trying to get it out. In the meantime, explosions were happened and heard all around them. Mark then heard the sound of thrusters nearby, looked leftwards to see the bowie ahead of them in the distance spin around for a second before it impacted the ground and began moving towards them. "Whoever's in the cockpit, activate the brake." Quill spoke into his comms. "The steering mechanism is stuck." Gamora's voice came over the comms. "Well, pull harder!" Quill said back, before he got back to work, Mark keeping his eyes on the ship. After a few seconds, the Bowie kept getting closer and closer to them. "Quill." Mark spoke in a worried tone, staring at him. And a second or two later, he got the device off the man's head, and pulled it out of the water. "Let's go. Come on." Quill ordered, but Mark didn't have to be told twice as he was ready to run, and as he instantly turned around and started running the other way on all fours, the sounds of the Bowie's rumbling as it neared, growing ever louder, filling his ears. Getting a few feet ahead of the others, he felt small bits of soil hitting his body and tail, and let out a scream as he felt he had little choice but to duck and so he stopped running and dropped his body to the ground on his stomach. Turning over onto his back, he saw Quill and Groot also on the ground, crawling away from the still moving ship, then they got just below where his hind-paws laid, so he crouched his arms and legs and closed his eyes, then a millisecond later, the rumbling stopped and he felt no impact, so he opened his eyes to see the Bowie had finally stopped, then settled down with a CLANK! He breathed a sigh of relief as he got out of the crouched and laid the back his head against the grass for a few seconds.

That moment of relief didn't last long, for the three of them were quickly back on the ship, Quill taking the controls from Gamora and got the ship off the ground, and piloted towards space. Not too soon, as as far as the eye could see, the whole city, the planet itself was erupting in explosions. Now Mark knew what the High Evolutionary have meant by 'raze it all'. He meant the destruction of all he had created without any sense of empathy. Mark stood in centre of the cockpit, leaning forward, his paw-hands on the grey-light blue structure in the centre, his eyes fixed on the views outside the viewport, watching the explosions happen, becoming more and more frequent and powerful, as Quill piloted the ship into the atmosphere and into space. "What kind of monsters slaughters a civilization?" Gamora asked, Mark barely registering. He felt numb. He thought of all those people down there. The Vampire Bat family, everyone they'd encountered down there. Anthromorphic animals. Talking and walking animals. Just like him. Wiped out without a thought. Slaughtered by that monster. He felt a tremendous sense of loss and pity for some reason. "You shall be avenged." He thought in his head, making a vow, flushing all those sad feelings out of him. "I don't know!" He heard Gamora say as he came back to his senses. He then turned around leftwards and ran after Quill and Gamora, who were running down the corridor. He followed them to the Med-Bay, coming into it as Gamora took the device from Quill, and began setting things up to transfer the date in it into Rocket. Mark headed over to Groot and Gamora's right, eyes on the others as they got to work. It was time to put that device, which probably, most likely, contained the passkey that they had worked so hard to get to good use.

And that's chapter 11 done. Hope you enjoyed it. Please leave a review/comment.

Sorry if this chapter is shorter than the others, but I just wanted to get it done sooner. Oh, and to Sinikettu, you have your answer about Mark's Paw-Blasting and his gloves.

SORRY, BUT ITS GONNA BE A WHILE BEFORE THE NEXT CHAPTER IS OUT. I'M GOING TO NEW YORK CITY WITH MY FAMILY NEXT WEEK, AND I'LL BE STARTED AN INTERNSHIP THING IN SEPTEMBER, SO I'LL HAVE LESS TIME THAN I'VE CURRENTLY HAD ON MY HAND TO WRITE, AND I'LL NEED TIME TO ADJUST, GET USED TO THINGS. NOT SURE WHEN I'LL BE ABLE TO START WORK ON NEXT CHAPTER, BUT I PROMOSE THIS STORY ISN'T OVER, SO PLEASE BE PATIENT!