Chapter Text
Peter felt heavy like a bag of bricks was laying on top of him and every bone in his body hurt in some way. He felt a wave of hot, salty air flood his senses as he looked around at his surroundings with squinted eyes; the sun’s rays hitting them like a dagger. Before he could comment on his predicament, Rocket groaned.
“For flark’s sake! This is why I should always steer the ship, Quill!”
Rocket paced around, looking at the ship collapsed into pieces on the shore. They were on a deserted island on a planet they knew nothing about. How wonderful. He ran to go inside the ship to see if there was any hope in being able to revive his tools and batteries he didn’t have with him, but he jolted away as the flames inside rushed towards him. Rocket sighed heavily, making his presence known again as he waited impatiently for Peter and Gamora to get up.
“Gimme a minute, Rocky.”
Peter hesitantly stood up, nearly falling over as he tried to find his balance without hurting himself. He turned around to give Gamora a hand. She ignored his outstretched hand and got up herself, clearly just as annoyed with Peter as Rocket was.
“Why am I always the one everyone’s annoyed with? It wasn’t even my fault! The ship just decided to randomly malfunction!” Peter argued. “You can fix it, right, Rocket?”
“Eh… maybe? But I needa whole lotta new parts and the tools to actually fix it, which were in the part of the frutakin’ ship that was cooked!”
“More importantly, where is Drax and Groot?” Gamora asked.
“FLARK!” Rocket yelled, kicking a clump of sand that flew towards Gamora.
Gamora responded by putting a knife next to his skull, not needing to say a word as she knew he wouldn’t do it again out of fear.
“Okay, I’m sorry I guess, no need to get violent!” Rocket responded, stepping backwards.
Peter paced around anxiously, wondering where Drax and Groot could’ve somehow gone off the ship. He was just so irritated with the whole situation and concerned about the rest of the team. Who knows where they could’ve landed? He hoped they were on one of these islands, at least. And that they hadn’t gotten into too much trouble if they encountered the civilians of this tropical planet.
“Well, we’re not going to get anything done if we keep moping around. Time to build a raft and actually find an island with civilization on it for starters.” Gamora explained.
“No, no way in hell am I going anywhere near the ocean!”
Rocket crossed his arms angrily, stepping even further away from the ocean to demonstrate his point. He hated getting wet. It felt so unsettling, especially because it brings up memories of his past of endless experiments. He also can’t swim to save his life, so there’s always a risk of drowning. He almost drowned in several tests where they were seeing how long he could survive underwater. There’s always weird creatures lurking in the ocean too. Monstrosities that could tear him apart in an instant, not to mention he was almost completely defenseless right now.
“Rocky, buddy, there’s not really much we can do about that.” Peter explained, kneeling down to Rocket’s level.
Rocket sighed long and dramatically like a kid forced to do chores, only this was terrifying to him.
“Please, Rocket. I’ll even carry you, but we need some help here-” Peter said while carrying a loose log from the island.
“FINE, FINE! I’ll do it, ‘cuz apparently I always need to do everything for you guys.”
Rocket took a deep breath in, trying to calm his nerves. He stretched, then finally climbed onto Peter’s shoulders. He thought about Groot, If only he was there so he could help with the building of this pathetic raft. Because right now it wasn’t looking so hopeful. At least Gamora was more of a help at finding materials than Quill was.
Gamora slashed through the bamboo with ease, the way she could cut through almost anything like it was made out of butter showed she had mastered the art of using them.
Time passed by as the Guardians were building their raft in the scorching tropical heat. The sky was starting to turn into a warm array of colours, signalling that the day was near its end.
The raft they had made was a bit flimsy, but it would do the job in sailing them to the huge island ahead of them. It seemed to have ships sailing nearby, pretty rough small looking ones though. Rocket let out a raspy breath as he looked to Peter and Gamora with an expression that read ‘let’s get this over with already.’
Peter nodded simply and turned on his walkman, playing a song he thought fit the mood.
‘Summer breeze, makes me feel fine
Blowin’ through the jasmine in my mind’