PRESENT DAY
OBLITUS – 7801
PETER QUILL really needed to pay better attention to details. Details were the critical difference between, say, a deadbeat absentee dad and Darth-freaking-Vader. Or, between a cute-but-gross trash-eating Earth mammal and a genetically altered raccoon soldier with a very large gun.
Or, the difference between getting paid 100,000 units of actual spendable money… and ending up with 100,000 units of useless protein paste in your ship’s hold. Plus, bonus: a crew ready to put your head on a spike.
Peter’s steps sped up as the Milano came into view, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his rust-red armored jacket. His ship waited patiently for him in the exorbitantly priced berthing they’d rented, the first of many ill-advised dealings in this gods-forsaken place.
Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, he had already teleported into the pilot’s seat and left the cobbled together junk heap of a space station that was Oblitus in the rear view. Physically, it was all he could do to keep himself from sprinting for the ship’s boarding ramp. You can’t outrun shame.
This was just the latest in a string of failed missions that was starting to look less like “scrappy team of misfits struggling to get their business off the ground” and more like “hopeless group of idiots barely surviving basic tasks.” The worst part about this particular mission was the fact that they’d actually nailed it, for once. Thing that needed guarding? Totally guarded! People who needed protecting? One hundred percent alive and well! A job well done, deserving of many pats on the back and satisfied handshakes for all members of the Guardians of the Galaxy: Drax (definitely not a serial murderer), Gamora (daughter of Thanos, former assassin), Groot (sole surviving member of the Flora colossus people), Rocket (genetically tinkered mammal of indeterminate species, but definitely not raccoon)… and Peter.
Yes, the failing on this particular occasion was completely down to Peter Jason Quill—Star-Lord, if you’re nasty— bombing on the basic details of getting paid.
“I will kill you, Peter Quill,” Drax said matter-of-factly, his heavy footfalls rattling the deck at their feet ominously. “But first, I will gut that miserable excuse of a flesh bag who hired us. I will rip his limbs from their sockets. I will tear this station apart with my bare hands. I will—”
Peter tuned out the tirade. It was all too easy to imagine Drax, muscles bulging under teal skin and red markings, ripping the hastily welded together ship scrap that comprised Oblitus apart at the seams, cackling with glee all the while. A shiver ran down Peter’s spine, and he gave in to the urge to jog up the ramp and straight for the flight deck.
“They said they were paying hard currency!” he called back in self-defense as he strapped himself into the pilot’s seat and got the engines warming. “It sounded like a perfect deal!”
“But you didn’t ask what currency, did you, Quill?” Rocket spat, his braided beard swinging as he whipped his head around to glare at Peter on his way past. The four crew stations were arranged in a square in front of the pilot, and Rocket climbed into his seat on the front right side. “Anything is currency if you call it that. For instance, I’d love to pay you for your stupidity in live grenades right now.”
“Nah, the exchange rate is garbage,” Peter said, half-braced for an actual grenade to come flying into his lap. You just never knew with Rocket. When he found himself still alive a beat later, he kicked in the lifts and smoothly took the Milano out into open space while the others wandered in to take their seats. Groot grumbled something unintelligible, likely consisting of the words “I” and “am” and “Groot.” He towered like the tree he was over the back of Rocket’s seat, one wooden finger poking him in the back of the head in admonishment before taking his own seat in the front left. Rocket spat a “Tch!” as he finished up his checks of the tactical and weapons systems he oversaw from his station.
“Well then, if we ain’t going back, we should be blowing that scumbag’s fancy yacht into teeny tiny pieces. I could go either way,” he said. “Someone is owed an explosion for this.”
“Sorry to interrupt this amusing bit of flexing, but could we maybe talk about the Nova Corps ship that just pulled out right behind us?” Gamora cut in, bringing up a view of the ship on the main display, then turning to glare back at Peter. Or… was it a glare? It was hard to tell sometimes. With the black tattoos that filled the hollows of her eyes and ran down each green-skinned cheek, Peter sort of felt like her gaze was a black hole that sucked the life force right out of you. Couple it with the fire-red tips on her black hair and the sharp asymmetry of its cut, and Gamora presented an intimidating front.
Groot reached across to poke Rocket again and nodded at Gamora’s words.
“I am Groot,” he added.
“You’re being paranoid,” Rocket said, waving Groot’s comment away. “They are not following us.”
“Oh, they’re definitely following us,” Gamora said. Another few commands on the display, and a highlighted path illuminated in the wakes of both the Nova Corps ship and the Milano. Everyone fell silent and watched the two glowing stripes as the Milano moved farther from Oblitus, putting on speed. Perfect overlap.
“Shouldn’t we stop and see what they want?” Gamora asked.
“Nooo, uh-uh, nope,” Peter said, eyeing the ship warily. “I’m not stopping unless they tell me I have to.”
Gamora sighed. “What was the point of registering with Nova Corps if we’re going to keep running from them? It doesn’t really help our image as a legitimate business to flee every time we see one of their ships.”
“Maybe they haven’t gotten one of our business cards,” Rocket sneered. “How will they know we’re legitimate? Quick, Drax, go throw one out the airlock at them.”
Drax turned to go to the aft airlock, but Gamora reached across the aisle to catch Drax on the way out of his seat and silently shook her head. Drax sat back down.
“Yeah, okay, look, I’d rather not take my chances,” Peter said. “Why are they following us if we haven’t done anything wrong? Maybe we jaywalked while we were on Oblitus or something. Do you know their laws? I don’t.”
“I do,” Rocket said. “Because they don’t have any. And if they did, it definitely wouldn’t be the flarkin’ Nova Corps enforcing them.”
Peter absolutely hated when Rocket made logic noises with his furry little mouth.
The comm alert light blinked over and over as the Nova Corps ship repeatedly hailed the Milano. The last time Peter had an unfriendly run-in with the Nova Corps had been during his pre-Guardians of the Galaxy days, before he’d ever met Rocket and Groot. He’d barely talked his way out of it, and only then because the officer in command, Centurion Ko-Rel, was an old fling. They’d left things on okay terms, but he still hadn’t exactly reformed himself into the squeaky clean, responsible, upstanding citizen of the galaxy she’d hoped he would become. If they could just get this “heroes for hire” business off the ground for real…
“Look, we are not stopping. Any brilliant ideas for our next destination other than back to Knowhere?”
“Yeah, I’ve got one,” Rocket said. “Turn this boat around and take us back to Oblitus so I can plant a little parting gift. Teach that piece of scut to pay in protein paste when he’s got more units to burn than the whole of Xandar.”
“I concur. He was a dishonorable dung pile of a being and his betrayal warrants a proportional response. We should go back,” Drax said. “Also, there is no food aboard this contemptible vessel.”
“There’s protein paste,” Rocket said with a smirk.
Drax turned his head and spat on the deck. “I will not lower myself to consume such vile sustenance.”
“Can we please focus?” Gamora snapped. “If they’re here to arrest us, they’re being awfully polite about it.”
“I would sooner eat the grotesque talking rodent,” Drax continued, ignoring her.
Gamora rolled her eyes and pressed on. “No warning shots? No aggressive maneuvers? If they were out to arrest us—”
Rocket whipped his head around. “Is he talking about me? Because if he wants to eat that badly I’d love to feed him the barrel of my gun.”
“I am Groot,” Groot said soothingly.
“Can we please stop talking about food?” Gamora shouted.
An audible stomach rumble filled the momentary silence that followed. Gamora hissed. “Say something, I dare you.”
“Deadliest woman in the galaxy, team. I would keep my mouth shut,” Peter called back.
“Team? Ha!” Rocket barked. “This ain’t no team. This here is a bunch of losers following another loser failing to make enough money to even keep their loser asses fed. If you ask me—”
“No one asked you,” Peter and Gamora said in unison.
“And maybe that’s the problem around here!” Rocket said. “No one ever asks what I—”
Gamora, in a fit of wisdom born of self-preservation, launched herself out of her seat and dove for the comm controls at Groot’s station. A few quick taps on the control screen and the ceaselessly blinking comm light burned steady as the head and shoulders of a woman in a Denarian’s uniform appeared on the main display. Peter looked back at Gamora with a what the hell? expression, then turned back to the screen.
“Heeey, sorry, didn’t see you back there. What can I do for you, Denarian?” Peter said, all smooth casual charm.
“Are you willing to purchase from us one hundred thousand units of protein paste?” Drax asked.
The woman on the screen blinked. “Dear god, no.”
“Are you here to arrest us?” Rocket asked.
She raised an eyebrow. “Should I be?”
Gamora covered her eyes with one hand and shook her head. “Are you here to put me out of my misery?”
“I am Groot,” Groot echoed.
The Denarian opened her mouth as if to ask, then shook her head and met Peter’s eyes through the screen.
“My name is Mox. You remember me, right, Peter?”
Peter mentally flailed in the practiced panic of one who often finds himself on the wrong end of that question.
“Uh, yeah, totally! Mox! Good to… see you?”
“Better than the last time we saw each other,” she said ruefully. At Peter’s awkward silence, she added: “On Mercury. During the war.”
Peter snapped his fingers as if her words had prompted anything more than a vague sense of familiarity. The Galactic War against the Chitauri had ended almost twelve years ago, after all. Surely he could be excused for not remembering every person he’d crossed paths with. Especially when she was wearing the shiny gold helmet of the Nova Corps, obscuring all but her nose and mouth.
“Yeah. Dark times. Nasty stuff,” Peter agreed.
Understatement. The war had significantly messed up everyone aboard the Milano in one way or another, though Peter knew only the very edges of the trauma that had shaped them all. Not exactly a topic any of them were eager to rehash.
“So, uh, if you aren’t here to arrest us—not that you should be, we haven’t done anything illegal in a while—”
“A while?” Mox said, her eyes narrowing.
“On the contrary,” Drax said. “Just this morning the foul rat beast stole a rather large gun from a—”
“Hey, hey, hey, we were on Oblitus at the time, ain’t no laws against nothin’ there. If you leave your stuff just lying out in the open in a place like that, then you’re asking for it.”
“Is this really the smartest line of conversation to be having right now?” Gamora said to no one in particular.
“I am Groot.”
Rocket stood up in his seat to look back at Groot.
“Aw, not you too, Groot. It was no big—”
“Will you shut up already?” Mox shouted over the line. The Guardians fell silent, turning as one to stare down the Denarian, who looked as frazzled as one can look in a big gold helmet.
“I’m here to hire you,” she said. “Unless you don’t like units?”
A beat of silence.
Someone snorted, trying not to laugh.
A packet of protein paste hit Peter in the face, dropped to the deck, and promptly exploded with gray goo.
Peter stared down at it for a long moment, then looked back to Mox.
“Units of what?” he asked.
PRESENT DAY
THE SPACE AROUND OBLITUS – 7801
MOX blinked, and the silence over the line stretched into deep, powerful awkwardness.
Peter held firm. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
“Units. Of… money? What else would it be? Why do you ask?” Mox said, her mouth turned down in a puzzled frown. Peter relaxed, his face clearing.
“Nothing, no reason. Please continue.”
“Okaaay,” she said. She opened her mouth as if to ask a follow-up question, then shook her head and moved on without comment. “Well. I know you’re busy these days. You probably already have several jobs lined up after… whatever it was you were doing on Oblitus.”
“Only legal things, I assure you,” Peter said. Someone scoffed behind him, but Peter’s full-on charm smile stayed determinedly in place. Drax ruined it by barking a harsh laugh.
“We actually have no work whatsoever and will likely starve within a few rotations, ...
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