Chapter Text
“Fly me to the moon.....Jupiter and Mars...In other words, baby, kiss me!” You sang along quietly with Frank Sinatra through your Mp3 player.
You were walking back to your apartment from one of the night classes at the local college. It was dark and you were alone, but the city you lived in was known for being relatively safe, and although your music was somewhat loud, you were always alert of your surroundings. The area you were in was mostly industrial, and not many people lived nearby. Safe, right? It always had been before.
“Astronomy 101” was the class that had just ended. The stars... Oh the stars! You loved them to no end. It was infinitely fascinating, and when you saw Astronomy 101 as one of the offered classes, you couldn't help but sign up. Learning about the stars and the universe just really did it for you.
Your light mood changed when felt a chill on the back of your neck, as if someone was watching you. You turned around but couldn't see anyone. Quickly, you took out your earbuds and tucked them into your messenger bag. You didn’t dismiss yourself and your instincts, but you did tell yourself to calm down a little. Your hands had been shaking slightly, and your breathing had become a bit rapid, and in case there was actually something wrong, you wanted to be relaxed and prepared for an emergency.
The word 'emergency' was a tiny bit of an understatement.
Multiple bright lights suddenly flared around you and something loudly hummed over your head. At first you thought it was a helicopter, but it was much too large, and it didn’t sound like it had any blades. And why would a helicopter have more than one light trained on you?
Your body began to move itself, and you were trying to run away, but the large hovering whatever-it-was just followed. To your horror, you tripped and sprawled face-first into the hard asphalt, scraping your palms and cheek. You tried to scramble up, but a blueish-white beam of light began to surround you.
The light temporarily blinded you, and you felt yourself rising from the Earth. You tried to move, but found your whole body paralyzed, and if you weren't panicked before, you were definitely panicking now. You couldn't scream, or call for help. For the first time in your grown-up life, you were completely and utterly helpless.
This only happened in movies. You couldn't be abducted. There was no such thing as UFOs...right? You were the only person in your Astronomy 101 class who didn’t believe in UFOs or those types of stupid conspiracy theories. However, that didn’t mean you didn’t believe in alien life. If there was no such thing as UFOs, what was going on right now? You repeated the question to yourself several times.
You felt yourself being yanked upwards by someone (or something) strong, and before your eyes could adjust to the different lighting and you could take advantage of being un-paralyzed, you felt something sharp being stabbed into your stomach followed by an excruciating pain throughout your body.
Then, everything went blank.
When you came to, you were sprawled on a cold floor on your stomach. You felt groggy, and when you tried to push yourself up, you felt a lot of pain in the place your stomach was stabbed, or whatever they'd done to you. How long had you been out? When you finally were able to sit up, you realized you were in some sort of large cage or cell. The floor and back wall were bare metal.
The cage you were in was surrounded by cargo and crates, and in front of the cage was a table and you noticed that your messenger bag was hanging on a hook on the wall. Your hand flew to your side where your bag usually was. A couple of your possessions were laid out on the table, including your Mp3 player, your pocket knife, and a couple sanitary pads, which had been opened. You could only wonder why they might have wanted to open them.
You looked to the corner to see some sort of odd-looking camera trained on you. You stood up on shaky legs, and when you took a couple steps to the left, the camera followed you. When you did the same to the right, the camera followed you again. That meant no successful escape attempts from you.
You heard heavy footsteps approaching, and when the metal door loudly unlocked and swung forward violently, you jumped backwards and pressed you back against the wall, as far away from your kidnappers as you could. You quickly recalled negotiation tactics and other speaking ideas that could potentially save your life.
You swallowed when you saw that your captives weren’t human-looking at all. The one closest to you, who you figured to be the leader by his authoritative look, was a little shorter than you were and very stocky. He had brownish skin, clown-red cropped hair, ridges on his nose, and large blue eyes. Behind him were several others that looked kind of like him to varying degrees. They were speaking in a language you couldn't understand. It was rough, and unlike anything you'd ever heard before.
He opened the door, using a scanner-thing, and you were ready to fight back, but the alien grabbed you painfully by your hair and clipped something onto the back of your ear. It happened so quick that you didn't get to see what it was. There was an electric whirring and some pain. The alien guy took your temporary distraction as an opportunity to leave and lock the door again.
To your surprise, he spoke and you understood him this time, though his voice was still grating. “Would ya’ look at that now boys!”
“Yer’ a pretty little thing, ain't ya?” One of the others said, reaching through the bars of the cage, reaching his clawed three-fingered hand to you as though you were a dog. With a surge of courage (and some curiosity) you jumped forward, startling the group and sending them back a bit. You realized that they were more scared of you than you were of them. They started laughing, but you didn't.
“We’ll come back later, when it’s warmed up to us.” The leader said, laughing lecherously with a hint of nervousness. On the way out, he ran his claws along each of the cage bars, and you had to suppress a shiver, stepping back some. “The client won’t mind it arriving with a few bruises and scratches, eh?” They all laughed once again.
When they were finally gone, you sunk to the ground, your knees drawn up to your chest. You breathed out a shuddering sigh. What would you do? Your mind began to wonder about the 'client', and how maybe you were gonna be sold as a sex slave or something.
You felt tears well in your eyes, but you wouldn't let yourself cry. Not here, not now. If you wanted to survive, you’d have to be a lot braver than that. You took deep breaths and fingered the seemingly embedded translator device in your ear. You didn't know it, but it was standard procedure for all beings to get a universal translator, as proclaimed by the Nova Conventions.
Meanwhile, aboard the ship Milano, Rocket leaned out of his seat to investigate a flashing light coming from the dashboard. It was an alert signal that lit up when a ship was coming within close range of the Milano.
He looked at the ship’s ID and smirked wickedly. “Would you look at that, Groot. It’s The Weian Hawk.” The tiny potted Groot, no bigger than a stick, blinked at him contentedly.
Rocket slapped the dashboard happily before running down the stairs and through the hall to notify the head asshole of the Milano about the incoming ship and why it was so important.
Rocket headed towards Quill's new bedroom. Peter had originally slept on a small bunk below the cabin, but when the rest of the crew jumped on board, his bunk, and the bunk on the opposite wall, went to them. Peter got his own small room, and Rocket resigned to throwing together a bed for himself in some drawer. Rocket still very much disliked Peter for getting his own room and bathroom.
Peter Quill was laying on his mattress in nothing but his underwear, happily throwing darts into a virtual dartboard and drinking something called “Tiny Vengeance”. He heard knocking on the door and instantly knew it was Rocket, calling him in.
Rocket entered, and wrinkled his face in disgust upon seeing Quill. “Uh, there’s a ship approaching.”
Peter didn’t look at all interested. “And?” He said, throwing a dart and missing the dartboard horribly.
“The bastards stole money from us last month.” Rocket said, growing impatient and recalling what happened.
Peter jumped up, scattering dirty clothes and various empty food cartons and pouches. “The Weian Hawk?”
“Uh-huh.” Rocket said, crossing his arms and feeling the familiar need to just kill someone. He snickered as Quill began looking around his filthy room for his 'cool clothes'. Rocket held the long red coat from off of the floor and tossed towards Quill.
“Thanks.” Peter said, looking at Rocket awkwardly for a second. “Go on, get outta here. Jump start the engines and notify everyone that somethin’s ‘bout to go down.”
“Roger that.” Rocket said, accentuating the 'r' sound and giving a mocking salute to him before running back to the cockpit. He started the engines and locked all targets onto The Weian Hawk. He clicked on the intercom and spoke into it, hearing his voice satisfyingly echo through the ship.
“Rocket speaking, in case you didn’t know. We’re about to slam The Weian Hawk to the bottom of the galaxy. Not too long ago, those guys conned us and ran away. We’re gonna make it all right now.”
Gamora and Drax looked up from a Terran game called 'chess' to listen before getting ready for battle.
Peter ran towards the cockpit, buttoning his pants and pulling the salvaged Awesome Mix Vol. 1 from his coat pocket. He kissed it before popping it into the tape player above his old bunk. Rocket looked down from the cockpit in time to see Quill press the play button.
Rocket groaned loudly.
“OOGA-CHAKA OOGA-OOGA-OOGA-CHAKA OOGA-OOGA-OOGA-CHAKA....”
Rocket excitedly ran to the drawer that stashed his most prized weapons and grinned evilly. “We gonna sink ‘em?” Rocket shouted over the loud, stupid, music back in the cockpit.
“Only if we need to.” Quill said, smiling. Drax and Gamora entered the cabin, ready for battle. Groot waved his tiny arms around, happy to see everyone together.
“A nice, gentle warning shot for now, boss?” Rocket said excitedly, holding the triggers for one of the cannons. Quill gave him a thumbs up.
“Woo!” Rocket yelled as he fired the bolt. It hit the ship spot on.
You looked up and gasped when the ship suddenly lurched to the side with a loud sound. You heard several more explosions before the ship shook violently. Sirens wailed and yellow warning lights flashed across the room. It went on for several minutes before another explosion sounded and the ship shuddered fiercely. All lights and sounds ceased and it suddenly became freezing cold.
You were kind of afraid, alone in the darkness. The main lights sputtered back on, but it was still freezing. You wrapped your arms around yourself, wondering what was happening.
“You give it to us, and I don’t have to use this.” Peter said, gesturing with one of his quad blasters. “It’s simple, something that I know your species is used to.”
The scared-looking Ewig captain of the ship sent his men to retrieve the conned money, wanting to get away with at least his life. “Of course, Star-Lord.” Peter got a lot of satisfaction in hearing someone call him by his outlaw name.
Gamora was scanning the ship for valuable cargo with a handheld device when something surprised her. Is that what she thought it was? She furrowed her brow. Drax looked at the scanner as well.
“Quill?” Gamora said urgently. “You’re not going to believe this.”
Drax spoke up in his typical manner. “I think he will believe this just fine.”
Dismissing Drax’s naive comment, Peter took the scanner and looked at it.
“A female Terran. Another human.” Gamora said seriously.
“Now that’s precious cargo if I’d ever heard of any.” Rocket said in a salaciously comedic way.
“Where is she?” Peter asked hurriedly. If she was cargo, he was sure as hell going to liberate her. “Show me!” Peter impatiently aimed the quad shooter at the Ewig captain's head. They followed him through the cramped ship.
“She’s in there.” The Ewig whimpered, pointing to the heavy door. “The power went out, engaging the auto-lock system. It won’t unlock for another twenty-five—”
Rocket cut him off. “Stand back everybody.” He said, pulling a charge line and set of mini-explosives from one of the pouches on his orange uniform. This was his area of expertise. Besides, he'd never seen a Terran girl before. He set everything up, knocked on the door a couple times to warn the chick, and detonated the contained explosion system.
Before you could register what the tapping on the door was, an explosion blew a hole in the door and you dropped and covered your head. It swung open and you were more than surprised to see a raccoon with a human-like smirk enter the room. At least, you think it’s raccoon. It looked at you, and you moved to the back of the cage.
“She looks like a Xandarian.” The raccoon said in a somewhat disappointed male voice.
“What the hell?” You said before you could stop yourself. The raccoon shot you an incredulous look.
“Get out of my way!” You heard. You looked up to see a scruffy looking young man in a red coat walk quickly to the cage. “Get her out.” He ordered the alien guy from earlier. A green alien woman like from Star Trek entered the room with a WWE wrestler-looking guy covered in tattoos at her side.
The alien captain unlocked your cage and stepped away from it, and the dude in the red coat stepped in front of the entrance, one arm on the top of the door, leaning his head down. He looked shocked for a second as he looked at you.
You didn’t move an inch, but your face looked interested.
“Uh, hey.” The red-coat guy said softly with a cheeky grin. Your expression changed when his did.
“I’m a human too, I guess. My name’s Star-Lord.” He said a little awkwardly. He reached for your hand. What he meant by "I guess" you wouldn't ask.
The raccoon snorted. “No it ain't.” Star-Lord shot him an annoyed look.
You gingerly placed your hand into his gloved one, and he carefully helped you out. He could feel your slight shivering. Could you come across as any weaker? Maybe it was a lack of oxygen or something.
“You cold? Here.” When Star-Lord took off his coat and draped it over your shoulders, you were grateful, among other feelings. The raccoon rolled his eyes.
“Thanks.” You said quietly. Star-Lord looked at you sweetly.
“We’ll be going now, and if I ever see you again, don’t think we won’t sink you.” He threatened the nasty alien, waving an odd-looking device to the captain. You could only assume it was some sort of gun.
Star-Lord wrapped an arm around your shoulders, pulling you close to his side. “We’re gonna go to my starship.”, he said. You didn’t protest. So far, the group seemed trustworthy, and Star-Lord was apparently sort of a human.
“My bag!” You exclaimed after a moment of realization, turning to Star-Lord. He walked back with you to the cargo room and grabbed your messenger bag, picking up your knife and Mp3 player from the floor where it slid off the table and stuffing them into your bag. Your earbuds, on the other hand, were nowhere to be seen.
“Uh, do you happen to have earbuds?” You asked looking at Star-Lord. He looked confused for a second, and you rephrased. “Headphones?” You gestured to your ears.
He instantly lit up. “Yeah!”
If Star-Lord was all that he seemed to be, staying in a starship with him didn’t sound half-bad.