At least, the guards seemed to be taking all this crap seriously, finally. I stood back up after I had sealed the doors shut taking a chance to glance out the windows to see what kind of chaos my kitchen exploded had caused. How much damage it had done, but I was distracted by the line of guards that had lined up. All of them dressed up in heavy duty armor and holding some impressively large guns.
"Those are some big guns," Quill announced sounding incredibly worried.
I also became worried when they fired for the first time, which I could only assume was a warning shot which caused the tower to shake. The force of the blast even caused the glass to start to crack.
"Rodent, we are ready to hear your plan!" Gamora shouted somehow managing to stay cool under pressure. Said rodent was still working on the control panel for the watchtower managing to keep his focus.
"Hold on!" Rocket shouted back with a bite in his voice, agitated with our lack of patience. That or he didn't like being called a rodent which as equally likely. I frowned as the guy below us gave the order for the next hit. With that warning, I managed to brace myself for the next hit which ended up causing the class by Quill to crack.
"I recognize this animal," The blue man realized completely off-topic, "We roast them over a flame as children. Your flesh is quite delicious."
"Oh, that's great! Do you happen to know if anyone else here is tasty!" I screamed sarcastically, the cracking glass sending me into a bit of panic.
"Not helping!" Rocket shouted sharply as another round went off again. This one made the building shake so violently I had to grab onto Quill just to steady myself. Quickly releasing him I struggled to think of a good plan, just to be safe. All of a sudden I heard one of the guards shouting abought firing all at once, on this was gonna be bad. Unless...
"Okay, well I'm hitting the deck. I will see you all in hell." I sang cheerily dropping to my knees so I could slide under the control table. The cover wasn't guaranteed to save me but I had a higher chance this way. Once safely hiding I called one more, "It was nice knowing you all!"
Bracing myself for the final hit I covered my ears, ready for the final hit that I knew was coming. I felt the tower jerk and for a second, I thought we were dead... except we hadn't been hit. Surprised I lurched forward to pull myself up over the console, resting on my knees I blinked out at the sight before me. Reluctantly I admitted, "That is clever."
"Thank you very much." Rocket nodded pleased, even puffing out his chest a bit.
"So, did you just cut the field generators completely or-," I began to ask as I looked over trying to see what exactly the raccoon had done on the console.
"Can you please do this later?" Quill snapped an edge of panic still evident in his voice.
"Shut up, Quill." I snapped back at him lightly, only half paying attention to the space pirate. I found it was hard to look away or focus on anything else besides the guards and a few prisoners floating around without any gravity to hold them down. I let out a breathless laugh as I watched guards and prisoners bump into each other, totally clueless as to what was happening.
The control room jerked a bit as it was separated from the rest of the tower, leaving us free to float just like the guards. It's a good thing I didn't get motion sick, otherwise, I definitely would have puked.
The security robots, now under Rocket's control, suddenly came alive and began attaching themselves to the sides of the vessel. We now had a makeshift shuttle at our disposal.
Finally climbing back up onto my feet the pod began to move around heading for the bigger exit that we could fit through. As the pod began to twirl and clumsily make its way through the tunnels I began to think of it as a roller coaster. The movements pretty much matched. Which tempted me into throwing my arms up and shouting like I would if I found myself on one back home.
"Told you I had a plan." Rocket bragged smugly as we passed through the first door. No one had a chance to reply though, as we began to bounce wildly off the walls like a giant game of ping-pong. On the way we even managed to run into a couple of very confused guards, which was kind fun.
Crashing on the other hand, was definitely not fun.
Once our ride had come to a complete tongue, and we were free to speak without there being a chance of us biting off our own tongue, Peter admitted, "That was a pretty great plan."
"Yeah, great plan. Go team! But seriously, who wants to bust open a window? Or is it up to me?" I asked looking between the confused members of the group. As I tapped the glass I explained, "I may have totally sealed the doors shut. Like permanently."
"How did you even -never mind! I got it, just stand back, crazy girl." Quill announced quickly shaking his head and waving me away from the window. Mildly insulted I took a step away from the glass, letting him move in so he could kick the already crumbling glass in. It wasn't the best exit, but thankfully the shoes seemed to be thick enough that the glass didn't embed itself in our feet.
Which meant our first stop was to head down to impound, where we could get all our stuff and get our ride and get out of here. As we searched through the rotating bins I may have been a little less gentle with the other inmates' possessions while looking for my stuff. I heard quite a few things in those bins and some things breaking. But it's not like they were gonna use it, right?
"Phoenix, your bin's over here," Gamora called suddenly as I carelessly throw yet another bin back into its place.
"Oh, thank you!" I gasped too excited to care about whatever had shattered in the big. Mindlessly knocking over a pile of bins I snatched mine up from Gamora's hands, setting it down on the ground I threw it open. Smiling happily down at my material possessions I sighed, "My babies, come to mommy!"
Like a worried parent, I began checking my stuff over, ensuring that no foolish guards had tried messing with any of my precious tech. All the while I will admit I was talking to my stuff, but can you really blame me? Sure it sounded insane, but when I was a kid the only real friend I had was literally a robot that was my house. I almost shrieked in joy when I found my HTW at the bottom of the bin, flipping it over in a mad panic.
The breath I was holding rushed from my lungs as my fingers ran over my mother's necklace, safe and sound and totally unharmed.
"Alright, I am good to go!" I announced as I attached the device to my wrist and then throwing my bag over my shoulder.
"Get my ship!" Quill called pointing out the window as I threw my clothes over my arm, "It's the Milano!"
Moving next to him I looked out the window frowning, "Where?"
"Orange and blue, in the corner. See it?"
"Got it!" I confirmed as Quill turned back to his own bin gathering up his own stuff.
"They crumpled my pants up into a ball!" Rocket shouted insulted as we began to rush from the room, "That's rude they folded yours!"
"You can leave a complaint later!" I promised sarcastically running down the halls ahead of him towards the hanger. Since I knew what Quill's ship looked like it was easy to find, there weren't many custom paint jobs around here. Although, I do have to admit that I the mechanic in me was a little bit impressed by the ship.
She was a beauty, and going off the facts in my head I knew it was an amazing ship to have. It could go remarkably fast in a short amount of time and lasted for a long time.
Note to self: Buy Milano with orb money.
The guards, as I have already mentioned, were not the brightest in the galaxy. Meaning they had set up every ship so anyone could basically walk into any ship of their choice and fly far away. There wasn't even a tracker on the ship, they literally left the keys in the ignition.
It was when I entered the wonderful ship that I discovered the true meaning of a bachelor pad. The glorious ship had been besmirched by garbage and spare parts that litter the ground and ever surface.
I forced myself not to think too much about it, though, after all, the careless guards could have had a party in here or something stupid like that. Before my theory was thrown out the window by logic I made my way to the nearest bathroom. Everyone else chose to change in the open, I guess.
Once done I found that I was the first on done, so I made my way back to the flight deck. Just as I set my hand on the steering controls somebody else did too. My head snapped to the side to see the smaller Rocket looking at me with confusion.
"What are you doing?" He demanded sounding offended.
"What are you doing?" I parroted with much more bite in my voice.
Rocket swallowed nervously glancing around the room. "Um, driving the ship...?"
"Um, no. No, you are not. I am driving the ship!" I snapped now majorly ticked off.
"Do you even known how to drive kid?" Rocket countered without thinking.
There was a moment of total silence. Groot's jaw dropped and he reached up a hand to cover it, Gamora and Drax watched the two of us with interest. One to see if they needed to break up the fight, the other to see if they could watch someone die.
It personally took all the willpower I possessed not to pick him up by his fuzzy tail and thrown him through the window. It took a lot of effort and my face went completely blank.
"Let go of the steering." I ordered in a slow even voice, leaving no room for argument. The edge of unadulterated rage that bubbled just beneath the surface of my voice was enough to get Rocket to back up. As he stepped away he lifted both hands/paws in surrender.
Without looking at him I slipped into the seat and began powering up the ship.
"I guess I'll just take copilot then." Rocket annoyed hesitantly as if he was checking to make sure it was okay with me.
A secret smirk made my lips twitch at the raccoon's sudden change of mood. As the engines began to power up I took a deep calming breath. My eyes closed. And then I realized it.
"Where the hell is Quill?"
"He said to keep the Milano close," Gamora revealed as she took her seat, clutching a bag of some kind close. Probably held the orb.
"He-he said what? Oh for the love of-! I am going to kill him." I groaned slouching down in my seat for a moment running a hand down my face. Straightening up I began setting up the ship to take off. "Let's hope Quill can reach us in deep space."
Unsurprisingly we flew out of the prison with absolutely no problem. It was almost like they had never prepared for prisoners to actually get this far. Their arrogance seemed to be their undoing it. I even waved to a couple of guards on the ground as we flew past. They looked over at one another debating on what they should do before they shrugged and waved back.
Now out in deep space, it was a waiting game. Whatever Quill was wasting time doing I hope it was pretty frickin' important.
"How's he gonna get to us?" Rocket shouted impatiently after only a couple minutes of waiting.
"He declined to share that information with me," Gamora said grumpily.
"Well screw this then!" Rocket yelled, "I'm not waiting around for some humi with a death wish."
"Well, only twenty hours in and we're already abandoning people. Big surprise." I sighed sarcastically as I began to check my nails.
"You got the orb, right?" Rocket asked turning back to Gamora hopefully. The green woman agreed
With that being said Gamora finally felt the need to check to see if she did actually have a bag, I could hear her rummaging through it. It continued for a little while until I heard her curse viciously under her breath. I casually began fixing my cuticles as I guessed, "So, the thief took the orb. Didn't he?"
"Oh, you got to be frickin kidding me!"
"I am Groot!"
"That clever devious son of a bitch. He's smarter than I gave him credit for." I growled angrily under my breath as I leaned back into the seat. "I swear if he went back for that damn Walkman I will throw him out the airlock myself."
And so that is the story of how we were forced to wait impatiently for a wannabee Hans Solo with a death wish. Him and his precious piece of dinosaur tech that I will be dismantling as soon as he got on board.
With nothing to do, I went back to fixing my nails, after setting up HTW to run a search on Groot. Seriously, the curiosity was killing me. I really did have to know what the heck he was and there was really no way to ask someone that politely. Besides, I can probably guess what he would say.
"Behold."
I looked up surprised as the blue man announced. Oh, I had finally learned his name. It was Drax.
Funny story when I asked him who he was, after he questioned me for a bit about my hair, he stood up to his full height and shouted his name. To be more exact he shouted, and I quote, "I am Drax the Destroyer, slayer of Ronan's minions. I shall claim his head!"
Naturally we needed more crazy people around here.
Anyways, I looked out the window to see what exactly Drax was 'beholding'. Floating out there using what appeared to be rocket shoes was Quill.
"Before he gets on, he is not allowed alone with that orb until we are paid. Thoughts?"