Gamora failed to hold back a yawn.
Mercifully she, Rocket and Groot had managed to make their way to Nova Headquarters without incident- Xandar's journalists likely still had to replace all their broken equipment.
Dey had set them up in an empty office- one of many considering the Corps lack of manpower- and had promptly rushed away on urgent, unspecified 'Denarrian' business. The immediacy of his exit had set off Gamora's already-ringing alarm bells, but it didn't seem to bother Rocket, who wasted little time plugging both his infoglass and Quill's walkman into the system.
Between her own exhaustion, Quill, Drax and Cosmo's unresponsive sleep and now Dey's frazzled state, Gamora had a harder time shaking off the feeling that something was at play. Theoretically at least she was in the safest part of the Galaxy, seated in Nova Headquarters with a cybernetically-engineered badger tapping away at his infoglass and a small tree dancing along to Magic. And yet…
"I am Groot?" asked Groot, staring up at her with wide, concerned eyes.
"He's asking if you're alright," translated Rocket, without glancing up from his tablet. "Says you've got a look on your face."
Perplexed, Gamora frowned. "What look?"
"I am Groot."
"Like you're Drax trying to figure out if something's a metaphor or not." Rocket gave Groot a proud little smile. "Which is a metaphor. Good job Groot, I'll have to throw that at him sometime."
"I am Groot!"
"Now that's just being mean."
"I'm alright," Gamora replied, doing her best to dismiss her concerns and concentrate on the task at hand. She stifled another yawn, the monitor before her continuing to display an empty screen.
"Yanno…" Rocket hesitated a moment, no doubt reconsidering whatever it was he was about to say; only relenting when she met his eye. "If you're tired you can head back to the Milano. Get some rest. I can handle the dumb report."
Gamora blinked, trying to recall why the offer sounded so familiar.
Rocket must have taken it as a dismissal because he hastened to backtrack. "Dammit, I can't believe I volunteered for more work." With a groan, he buried his face in his paws and turned to the floor. "Forget I ever said that, okay? Don't know what's gotten into me-"
"Your parenting class." The zeihoberei interjected.
"Urgh! Don't remind me. Who am I and what have I done with the real me?"
"It's not that," Gamora rolled her eyes. At times, Rocket could be just as overdramatic as Quill. "I was just wondering why your offer sounded so familiar."
"Right, yeah. I pretended to be tired so I could… do that." Rocket sighed and slumped against the desk. "Look I never-" He cut himself off with a shake of his head, hesitated, and finally forced himself to continue from another angle. "I- you know when something's important to you- Or someone is- l-like Groot-"
"You don't have to explain yourself," Gamora cut in, as the Groot in question waddled over to the distressed badger and wrapped a pair of rapidly-growing arms around his muzzle. "For the record, it was a little surprising, but I'm impressed and honestly a little proud." She let that hang in the air for a moment, watching as the tension eased itself out of his shoulders, before turning back to her blank report. "We don't have to talk about it if it upsets you."
"Right," Rocket rubbed at his face and took a deep breath to calm himself- Gamora made a mental note not to bring up the class again. Evidently it was a rather touchy subject. "Thanks."
"No…" Gamora failed to hold back another yawn. "...problem."
"Although if you are tired-"
"I'm fine, Rocket," she insisted. "Thank you," she added, not wanting him to think her dismissal had anything to do with him. "I know you can handle it, I just…" She hesitated briefly, but figured it was her turn to share some of the thoughts weighing her down. "I can't help but feel like something's going to happen."
"What kind of something?" he asked, raising an eyebrow and screwing his face up in consideration. His ignorance was an act, likely made in an effort to preserve his pride and not seem paranoid, but from the way his tail lightly spiked with fear, Gamora could tell that his own sharp instincts were picking up on the same things setting her on edge.
"I don't know," the assassin admitted. "But what are the odds of Peter, Drax and Cosmo- all different species with wildly different biologies all suffering from exactly the same symptoms." Gamora paused as Rocket squirmed uncomfortably in his too-large seat.
He wasn't a coward in the strict sense of the term, but he did hold his self-preservation in high esteem and it didn't surprise her to see that what she was saying scared him. In truth it scared her too, especially considering their recent encounter with the Children of Thanos. In her experience things rarely came down to coincidence… And suddenly, with a rush of cold dread, she felt like the Galaxy's biggest idiot for leaving all her helpless teammates unpro-
"That er- that might have been my bad," Rocket interrupted, pulling out a set of pills from his pocket and clearing his throat awkwardly. "Concentrated temazepam. Normally I just take it to sleep, but I think some of it might have gotten into the food last night."
Gamora blinked, still feeling like the Galaxy's biggest idiot- granted for an entirely different reason now.
"My bad," the badger chuckled, pulling the pills out of the reach of Groot's vines while his other paw held the twiglet at bay.
"That's why you offered to finish the report?" the zeihoberei deadpanned, connecting the last two dots. Somehow, she was more annoyed than anything that all of her wariness had been the result of Rocket misplacing his medicine.
"I was trying to make it up to you," Rocket scowled, which was likely the closest she would get to him being genuinely apologetic. "And I will!" He smirked, turning his infoglass to face her as he continued to wrestle with Groot. "Check this out."
A looping video was playing on the screen, displaying a figure cloaked in a particularly frayed garment, storming into what looked a lot like the sleazy bars of Corix and shoving past a pair of rough and gruff Contraxians.
"Get out of my way!"
The film itself was rough and grainy, but there was no mistaking the figure's voice.
"That was two days ago, on Contraxia," Rocket explained, curling slightly to shove Groot away with a foot, as he swapped the feed to another security holo. "And a few hours later…"
The rough and gruff Contraxians this time gave the cloaked figure a wide berth as she stormed back out, a shining, golden humanoid held at knifepoint.
"Try to look less conspicuous!" she barked, ushering the Sovereign forwards.
"If I had to guess, she's piloting a Sovereign craft. And she really should take her own advice because I seriously can't think of anything more conspicuous." The badger grinned, turning the infoglass back towards himself. "Should be easy to track once we catch her trail. And let's just say she'll have to chop off more than an arm to get away this time." Rocket failed to suppress a mean little snigger as he winked at her.
Gamora would have smiled, but something about the comment rankled her. "How do you know about that?"
Rocket blinked stupidly. "Didn't you er- mention it? When we were watching Star Wars the other day and the dad did it to his son?"
"No…" said Gamora, recalling a similar sense of de-ja-vu when Quill had brought up the particle generator… Gamora had dismissed it, assuming mono or dual molecular systems to be some sort of common, familiar in-joke among technicians, but now, knowing that she hadn't mentioned the Nebula thing to anyone other than Peter, and accounting for Cosmo's malfunctioning collar…
She pinched the bridge of her nose, mentally kicking herself for not noticing sooner. "The comms are bugged, aren't they?"
To his credit, Rocket didn't insult her intelligence by trying to deny it. "I-I have trust issues, okay!?" the badger snapped, finally winning his battle with Groot and pocketing the remaining temazepam pills. "You guys brought Cosmo aboard, ignored me when I said I didn't want her to stay and then spent a couple of hours snooping behind my back- an' yanno I genuinely thought you were just gonna ditch me on Corix!" He squirmed guiltily, and squeezed his paws together to stop them from shaking. "I didn't do it to snoop, I was just…"
Scared, Gamora finished as the badger trailed off into silence.
"I'll take 'em off," Rocket promised, eyes downcast, ears drooping despondently. "You're mad at me, aren't you?"
"A little," Gamora admitted, because there was no point lying about it. "But I understand." He gave her a perplexed look, prompting her to sigh. "You've met my 'psycho siblings' and you of all people know what kind of reputation Thanos has. Trust doesn't come easy and it has to be earned. I understand. But you're doing yourself no favours breaking it like that."
Shamefaced, Rocket nodded. "Sorry," he grumbled, picking up his infoglass and flicking through the screen.
"Misplace your medicine again, and you will be," the assassin yawned, rubbing at her eyelids.
"I can't tell if you're joking or not."
Gamora dignified the question with a smile and turned her full attention back to the report. It had been a joke, or at least had been intended as such, but considering she'd spent the entire morning so far trying to set herself at ease, it was only fair to let him squirm a little.
"No seriously, that was a joke, right?" asked Rocket, voice spiking with genuine concern.
"Just focus on your report." And just like that she was all business again. "I'll handle the conflict with the Black Order, you can talk about the aftermath and what you were doing before."
Rocket nodded and they worked in silence for the next minute or two. Gamora had just dropped onto her second paragraph when the door to the office burst open to reveal a rather distressed-looking Dennarian Dey.
"Take not one step closer, Star Lord!" snarled the hulking stormtrooper (that for some reason sounded a lot like the ravager Taserface) at the end of the hall. "Or it will be the last step you ever take!" A dozen blast doors burst open behind him as an unending horde of armoured troopers rushed to flank their commander.
"Is that so?" Smirking, Quill tossed his Jedi robes aside, hit the music and, unable to stop himself from making the frankly awesome sound, ignited his lightsaber with a vocalised "DDDDSSSSHHH!"
The air filled with the sound of blaster-fire as multi-coloured lasers whistled through the air towards him. Quill darted forwards, taking about a dozen steps-that-weren't-his-last, his blade a whirlwind of blue.
'Oh, ho, ho, it's magic, you know
Never believe it's not so
It's magic, you know
Never believe it's not so!'
"Vmm, wum, vmmm, wmmm!" Quill was one with the force as he hummed to the tune of his blade. Was this how Gamora felt with her sword? Did she make all the wooshing and swooping sounds too?
"Focus, Peter," the zeihoberei deadpanned, appearing out of nowhere and casually beheading Taserface-the-stormtrooper with ruthlessness that would have made a Sith Lord blush. Quill was unsurprised to find that her lightsaber colour was green. "And for the record, I don't," she said seriously- turning to cleave a Stormtrooper in two with a 'Kkkkshhhhh!' of her own.
"Suuuure," Quill winked at her as the two fell back to back, effortlessly cutting through the willhelm-screaming stormtroopers.
"Why do you say it like that?" she demanded, slicing a blaster in half, and booting the unfortunate holder of said blaster into a skittle-pile of fellow stormtroopers.
Before Quill could answer, Boba Fett rounded the corner twirling a pair of twin blasters very familiar to the legendary Star-Lord.
"Hey! Those are mine!"
The momentary distraction allowed one of the stormtroopers to get close to him and smack him hard across the face with surprisingly cat-like claws.
"I AM GROOT!" yelled Chewbacca, coming to Quill's rescue and smacking aside the offending, Rocket-sized stormtrooper.
Gamora understood even if Quill didn't. "He wants us to go after Fett," she explained, using the Force to throw lightning at the nearest twenty troopers- something that might have concerned most Jedi, but to be fair, she had been raised by the real-life equivalent of an evil Empire.
"You sure you guys can handle it?" asked Quill, who had secretly been hoping to ask the Wookie for his autograph and was reluctant to leave him behind.
Both the little and big Groot answered the question for him, with identical, distinctly Chewbacca-like-roars. Nodding at each other, Quill and Gamora leapt upwards to confront the bounty hunter on a set of elevated platforms.
It was a fierce duel, made fiercer by the personal stakes at play- sure Quill didn't have the best relationship with Yondu but those blasters still meant something. The three leapt from platform to platform, Quill and Fett with the use of their jetpack and rocket boots respectfully, Gamora with sheer willpower. Even on the retreat, Boba was a formidable opponent- and indeed was putting up more of a fight than the entire army of stormtroopers down below had. It helped that he was using the finest pair of blasters in the Galaxy, but his own skill was nothing to sneeze at. Quill knew from experience that shooting while flying backwards was both awesome and a lot harder than it looked. And he was doing all that while holding off both him and Gamora in hand-to-hand combat.
A particularly impressive ricochetting shot forced Quill to duck and Gamora to raise her blade to block- allowing Fett to jetpack away to another higher platform. He landed before the pair could recover, and gave the blasters a mocking twirl.
Only for a TIE fighter to plough into him and send him cartwheeling into a conveniently-placed Sarlaac pit.
Despite the tinted aerogliss, Quill knew there was only one guy in the whole Galaxy crazy enough to use a spaceship as a battering ram. "Dude!"
"You're welcome," Rocket scoffed, climbing out of the craft, paws akimbo. "Seriously, you guys would have taken forever."
"Yeah but he had my blasters!" Quill pointed out, gesturing at the Sarlaac. "Which that thing just ate!"
"I really don't see the problem here." He wilted under Quill's scowl and Gamora's frown and finally raised his paws in surrender. "Fine, fine, I'll get them back." He peered over the edge of the platform at the waiting teeth and tentacles below and swallowed audibly.
Rocket returned a moment later, sporting Quill's blasters, Boba Fett's jetpack and a giant lipstick-stain that covered the vast majority of his face. Evidently he'd tried to take the Peter Quill solution to dealing with tentacled aliens… to moderate success.
"Whole base is going on lockdown in ten minutes," he explained, wringing stomach fluid and Sarlaac spit out of his tail. "Ideally the alarm doesn't get raised before that." The raccoon shook himself mostly-dry with a groan. "This would be so much easier if she wasn't on my frickin' tail."
"I love you too, Rocky-boo!" cooed the sarlaac, giant tentacle literally curling around his tail.
"And I thought Aaskavarians were clingy," Quill quipped as the raccoon was dragged away with a scream. "He'll be okay, right?"
"We can rescue him later," Gamora said matter-of-factedly, Rocket's noises of protest and the disgusting, wet smooches of his new girlfriend fading into the background. "For now we have to save Aalderan."
"As if I'd let you!" came the harsh, semi-robotic voice of Nebula, Gamora's evil blue sister, igniting a pair of lightsabers that, to Quill's surprise, were also blue.
"Kinda thought they'd be red," the terran mused out loud.
"Peter, go," ordered Gamora, not once breaking her opponent's eye contact. "Remember the plan!"
Quill hastened to obey as both Daughters of Thanos proceeded to shoot lightning from the tips of their fingers. He rounded the corner to a larger observation room when a fist ploughed into the side of his head and sent him hurtling sideways.
"So… Khhohhhhhh... Pwhhhhhrrr… you've come."
Most people, when confronted with Darth Vader, would turn tails and run. Peter Quill was not most people. He didn't think he was especially brave or anything, but he couldn't stand by and do nothing while Xandar stood undefended. "I won't let you beat me and cut off my arm," he said, preparing himself for the fight of his life.
"Now's that any way to talk to yer daddy?" the Sith Lord demanded, removing his helmet to reveal!
"Yondu!" gasped Quill, who had been expecting David Hasselhoff.
"That's right, boy!" the Centaurian flashed his crooked teeth and whistled his arrow into his hand, where it turned into a (red, double-bladed) lightsaber. "And there ain't nothing you can do to stop me from getting my hands on that there troll doll."
"We'll see about that!" smirked Quill, remembering that he had a plan. "Drax, now!"
Right on cue the Destroyer burst through the wall behind him, wearing nothing but Leia's bikini. Because his back was turned to the kylosian, the Legendary Star-Lord took no damage- Yondu had no such luck, however, and was sent hurtling backwards into the control station. He was instantly knocked out, but not before the image had been permanently ingrained in his mind's eye.
"I quite like these garments," said Drax, and Quill screwed his eyes shut just to make sure he didn't catch a glance of the kylosian's reflection.
"Yeah you look great man!" Quill chirped, trying to figure out who had come up with this plan. "Hey, you know Rocket could really use some help right now."
"What is it he requires assistance with?"
"Oh you know, relationship advice and stuff."
Drax barked in delighted laughter and gave Quill a hearty pat on the back. "I am the most qualified person for this task!"
"You sure are!" Drax wasn't exactly ignorant where relationships were concerned (having been married and all) but mostly Quill expected him to help by knocking out the Sarlaac (and possibly Rocket too).
"This ain't over, boy!" snarled Yondu, recovering almost as soon as the kylosian left the room. Once more whistling his lightsaber into action, Yondu entered his battle stance-
"So sorry to interrupt," said Cosmo, trotting into the scene as it froze around her. "But could you please wake up? Cosmo really needs your help."
Quill blinked stupidly.
"How you say, how you say, toilet," the spacedog explained with some degree of urgency.
"Oh, oh right. I think there was one near where Nebula and Gamora were fighting. Just take a left past the stormtroopers-"
"Comrade Peter, you are dreaming," Cosmo pointed out. "There are no troopers of storm." She raised a curious eyebrow. "You know you are dreaming, right?"
"... To be completely honest with you I didn't," said Quill, glancing around at the lightning-shooting, sarlaac-smooching, stormtrooper-fighting and Leia-bikini-wearing chaos all around him. "But this is starting to make a lot more sense."
"Right. Sorry to interrupt," the spacedog said genuinely. "Normally I open door telekinetically, but today I can't. Please don't ask. I really don't know why. But Cosmo would prefer not to spend second day as Guardian getting kicked out for peeing on carpet-"
"Yeah I'm up, I'm up, don't worry," said Quill staring in horror at the abominations his mind had conjured up in his sleep and clearing his throat importantly. "Just so we're clear, we agree to never talk about this to anyone?"
"Da." She considered the dream as it began fading away. "Cosmo is beginning to feel this is something she will have to do a lot."
"Three detonations already!?" demanded Rocket, scurrying into the lobby ahead of Gamora, Groot and Dey. "And you're telling us now!?"
Fring was waiting for them, alongside an impressive force of four Corpsmen, and twice as many cadets.
"So far it's only been unpopulated areas," Dey hurried to explain. "Districts we closed off after Ronan's attack. I-I thought it might have been something I overlooked- a scheduled demolition-"
"But the Corps do not use Kree Immolaters," Fring cut in, watching as an explosion enveloped the nearest screen.
Just then another corpsman rushed inside, offering a hasty salute. "There's been a fourth one sir, no sign of the culprit-"
The Captain hissed and dismissed the officer with an irritable salute of his own. "Whoever it is, they're fast."
"Or well-prepared," Rocket pointed out, hastily tapping at his infoglass and frowning at whatever it was that popped onto the screen. "Your signal's down."
"We noticed," said Fring curtly, clenching his jaw shut.
"So they cut off your communication? Damn, these guys are good." Rocket hastily turned his chuckle into a cough when he recalled his present company.
Gamora, who found the situation a good deal less amusing, was the first to offer a solution, and wasted little time dialling up Rocket's homemade comm. The badger was momentarily startled when his device buzzed to life, but his muzzle split into a grin when he noticed it was shining bright green.
"Hey, good thinking Gams! I forgot about the comms."
"Whatever jammer they're using won't bypass something as straightforward as this," Gamora explained as the assembled cadets (and most of the Corpsman) looked on in wonder and admiration.
"If they're bombing uninhabited districts we could theoretically catch them on their way out," said Rocket, drawing up a map of Xandar and marking all the closed-off locales he could think of.
"Our priority should be restoring communication," interjected Dey.
"We just did-"
"Throughout the entire Corps," insisted Fring. "There's no telling what we're dealing with. We could be facing a vast number of culprits- which would also explain the speed of the attack. The bombings will spread our forces thin around the city- it already has."
"There's a communication tower here," Dey went on in a less confrontational tone more suited for the badger's ears. He pointed at a spot on Rocket's map. "Just on the outer edge of Central Xandar."
"Alright, we can check it out," Rocket allowed, frowning in consideration. "I'll come with in case it's a technical bug. If Gamora stays here we can stay in touch with HQ-"
He was interrupted by a deafening, mechanical voice and the sound of a dozen shutters and blast doors beginning to slam shut all around the building.
'LOCKDOWN INITIATED!'
"I didn't do anything!" cried the nearest cadet, who was quickly realising they were not built for this line of work.
Gamora was the first to act and rushed headlong towards the doors of the lobby. Rocket would deny it later, but she was sure the badger called her name in unison with Groot as the shutter rushed down to meet her.
The glass shattered on impact, Gamora tucking into a roll as two more layers of reinforced metal slammed shut behind her.
"Gamora!" chittered Rocket, voice uncharacteristically frantic as it buzzed from her comm unit. "Gammy you okay?"
"I'm fine," she replied, getting to her feet and brushing off some of the broken glass. Her skin was naturally tough- though not to the same extent as Drax's and a few shards had left their mark. "A few cuts but nothing serious."
"Don't ever do that again!" he snarled. "You scared-" and here he only just managed to stop himself from letting his emotions get the better of him. "-Groot!"
"I am Groot," the sapling echoed, likely voicing his agreement.
"We have bigger things to worry about," said Gamora, turning her concentration back to the situation at hand. "I'll head for the tower. I'm of no use out here but I might be able to restore communication or get some more information about what we're dealing-"
"But if whatever's at the tower is something technical you might not be able to fix it anyways!" Rocket screeched, voice spiralling into a panic. "A-and what if it's a trap!? Not for you necessarily but like, for whoever goes to fix it-"
"Someone will have to spring it eventually," Gamora pointed out, already heading in the tower's general direction. "I'd rather it was me than someone who's not expecting anything."
Seeing as he had no way to actually stop her- even if there weren't a dozen blast doors standing in the way of him trying to- Rocket took a breath to calm himself and finally relented. "Fine, fine! But stay on the line and keep us updated on your location. And don't do anything stupid!"
Footnote: Gamora's perspective is a lot easier to write for when there's some kind of action at play I find- still not as easy as Rocket and Quill but it is significantly easier to write her doing 'plot stuff' rather than 'everyday stuff' if that makes sense. Mostly I wanted to stay out of Rocket's head for a bit as he's been hogging the spotlight a biiiit too much. And because it's fun watching the plan we all know about play out from the perspective of someone not aware of said plan.
The Quill dream sequence was a lot shorter at first, but as you can probably tell I had way too much fun writing it all out. Surprisingly for a fic that had dream in the title at one point it's only the second dream sequence. And also probably the most purely chaotic thing I've ever written. Probably a bit tonally jarring in what is an otherwise more 'intense' chapter but this stuff is all for fun anyways.
Hope you enjoyed!