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"Hey, you!"
Matt retrieved his billy club from the sparking electronics of the robot-alien thing and swung his head around.
"Yeah, you," said a guy. He was running toward Matt, his voice getting closer, but there was something odd about the sound of his footsteps. "Red suit, weird-ass horns? Dirt-something - "
"Daredevil," Matt said quickly.
"Right," said the guy. "You're one of those Terran freaks, Revengers or whatever?"
"Avengers," Matt corrected. The voice seemed to be coming from strangely close to the ground. "I guess so." He supposed delineations like 'superhero' and 'criminal vigilante' mattered less when New York was being trampled by robots. Robot-aliens.
"Great! Here," the guy said, as he skidded to a stop, boots - small? Matt wondered - scraping on the pavement, and Matt instinctively raised a hand as an object flew toward him. Metal, shaped into keys. "You drive."
Shit, thought Matt.
"I - I can't drive," he protested, even as - small? did the Avengers have someone with dwarfism on their roster, was he an alien, what was even going on - hands shoved at him and he stopped himself from stumbling toward the car parked on the curb. "I never - "
"Get in the fucking car," said the small guy with murderous intent.
Matt got in the car.
The small guy was muttering to himself. He had something in his hands that hummed with electricity, probably a tablet or something, and Matt sat in the driver's seat, gingerly feeling for the ignition. Maybe he could beg out, if he just jumped out of the car right now he could probably get away -
"Start it up, I've got his attention now," said the guy, with a disturbing amount of glee, and Matt felt a slow creeping horror as the giant robot - the one with footsteps that shook the ground, the one Matt had judiciously decided to leave to the actually superpowered heroes - started toward them. "C'mere, buddy..."
"I can't drive," Matt said weakly. The footsteps were closer, five, four blocks away, and the other guy said, "Look, you want to hack this guy's brain and keep him chasing us? Fine, but I still can't fucking drive, it's not like your stupid primitive Terran crap is made for guys like me, I can't reach the fucking pedals - "
Matt, wincing, turned the key in the ignition and floored it.
"Shit!" said the guy, "watch it!" He slid in his seat, crashing into the side of Matt's arm as he spun the car around, tying to orient the giant robot-alien thing in his head to where he was going. Matt pushed him back - was that, was that fur? "Fuck, you weren't kidding."
"I said I can't drive," Matt said. He could barely tell where he was going - sure, concrete under tires had a different feel to grass, but - he turned a corner, trying to orient the shaking, and bumped over the curb. "What - who are you?"
"Are you serious - left!" shouted the guy, and Matt obediently turned the wheel; the car made a scraping noise as they sideswiped something metal. "I could've sworn everyone knew - fuck, what are you even - " and Matt could barely focus enough to sense inside the car, let alone outside, but there was a rustle in the backseat, no heartbeat, no one there, he was hallucinating already and there was shouting: "Left, left, you moron - " as the guy reached over and wrenched the wheel - right, as it turned out.
The car's tires screeched and Matt winced against the noise, dropping his foot off the accelerator for a moment as the car spun, the side slamming into - some kind of barrier, metal. The giant footsteps were getting closer, Matt thought, and he put his foot down again as the guy swore, his tablet beeping in objection. "Almost, almost," he said to it, and Matt repeated, "Who are you?"
They hit something head-on - a smaller robot-alien, maybe, with a buzzing saw sound that went flying over the car and stuck on the roof, vibrations through metal. The guy huffed and said, "Rocket."
"Rocket," said Matt, and he searched his memory. There was something there, he thought, and then all the pieces fell into place; the strange talking raccoon-alien, the one to which Foggy had said, "Our superheroes are getting weirder every day, man," and Karen had said, "Well, I think he's sort of cute," until he'd started swearing at the paparazzi like, well, like he was swearing now. Matt supposed between a raccoon and a blind guy, it was hard to tell who should drive the car.
Then he realised the buzzing sound was getting louder. "I think something's cutting the roof open," he said, and adjusted the wheel a little as they bumped the curb, scraping past another car with a sound that made him wince. Rocket moved, swore.
"What the," he said, very loudly, "are you even watching where you're going, it's right fucking there - " and Matt tried to focus over the rumble of the engine, over the noise of people outside and oh, that small earthquake was pretty close. "It's a giant fucking robot!" Rocket shouted, "You're driving right into it! Are you fucking blind?!"
"Yes!" Matt shouted back, and that was when the robot broke through the roof.
The next moments were sort of a blur; Matt trying to get out his billy clubs and turn the car around at the same time, barely avoiding the giant robot's feet as the ground shuddered under them, the rustling in the backseat increasing and a high-pitched whine getting louder and louder, making his ears ache before it exploded, a burst of heat in a trajectory upward and the air rushing by. Matt thought, the roof is gone, and he managed to put his foot on the accelerator as the giant robot's foot came down toward them. The car went backwards - somewhere in there it had probably been shifted into reverse - and stopped to a jarring halt against a mostly-intact building wall.
"I am Groot," said the back seat, and Matt put his head on the steering wheel and choked back a hysterical laugh.
"Really?" said Rocket, on the edge of Matt's focus, "Yeah, okay, I think this guy's fucked," and he poked Matt in the arm. "Move," he said, "Groot'll take over."
"Isn't Groot a tree?" Matt said.
"Yeah," said Rocket, "and like three and a half feet tall, he's still growing."
Matt wondered if that was supposed to be reassuring. It wasn't. He moved anyway.
That rustling sound - tree, leaves, moved to the driver's seat, and Matt swallowed. "Is this a good idea?"
"Hey," said Rocket, "he's taller than me, he can see better than you - and I only need a minute. Watch the foot!" he said, and the - the tree drove the car, swerving around the giant robot's foot and starting away. "Man, I should've gotten you to drive in the first place."
"I am Groot," said Groot, and Matt put his head in his hands and prayed.