Single Motherhood Is a Statistic (II)

"By the bitch queen Sh-shit," grandpa murmured, astounded. "Peter…" The old man – who really had no business looking as middle-aged as he did now that Peter thought about it – carefully picked him off the bed and put him down next to the door. "Peter, I… you…" He'd never seen the man at such a loss either. Jason Quill then picked him back up and hugged him tight for almost a whole minute before putting him back down with a choked sniff. "Stay here. Don't move." The man then went to check on his mama with all the care of a father shocked to find life where there shouldn't be any and barely daring to touch his daughter from fear the miracle would break apart before his eyes. All the while, Grandma was crying from shock and disbelieving hope across the bed from them, hands over her mouth.

And so, just like he remembered it even if not entirely how he remembered it, Peter Jason Quill went by ignored.

It was just as well. There was one bit to this dream still left to go.

Star-Lord turned around, walked out of the room, stopped, walked back into the room to get his bag, got it, then turned around and left the room again. As well as the house and porch and main yard until he was walking into the empty field where they would have had a second or third garden. If there had still been enough people in the family to work and need so much produce home-grown, which there weren't. Then again, it wasn't remotely empty now that he took a second look. There were all these weird critters living their lives forwards and backwards as he walked by. Not all of them were animals either, and there seemed to be two different layers of world-ness overlapping the real world besides the regular drudge and lowlies. They stared. They stared and they blinked at him.

Creepy as dope, he must say. It really should have been freaking him out, but dreams were supposed to be weird as fuck so whatever. Weirder still was the entire timeline of that grain seed over there in the grass that he could watch in fast-forward as if he'd spent the past half a year being the thing's guardian angel or something. And that was just one of several hundred life and non-life stories he could see playing forward and in reverse as he passed stuff by. Along with all their weird, glowy spirit things that were and weren't all over the place not-as-sometimes. Like the floating not-a-leaf getting in his face. Shoo, leafy not-a-thing whats-your-damage. Shoo! And don't forget to take along your friends, the annoying buggers. They were flickering all over the place. Floating. Blinking. Will-o-wisping him out of hearth and home.

Okay, now he was starting to freak out.

He hurried over to the very middle of the empty field where there wasn't as much stuff for not-alive-lings to cluster so much around. He hoped.

Just in time too, because that's when the M-Ship flared its light in his face.

Gah! The light! It burns! So much light! What was the deal anyway? And he'd just finished going all Jesus on his mama and it hadn't taken even a tiny bit of the bright light.

"Eyes would turn to you from a great vantage, little one," Inner Wizard Dude said, his astral body unfolding from over his and whoa, he was still there? "Some stealth and misdirection is warranted, I'd say, before you 'glow it up' as you Americans would say." Stealth? What was he smoking and could he have some? Stealth? Hah! They looked like bright eggs, both of them! Also weirdness alert the sequel, because Inner Wizard Dude kept talking to him in third person as if he wasn't himself at all. Maybe he should stop trying to figure out what complexes all this stuff was supposed to bring to light. It wasn't like he'd gotten anywhere with the soul-searching since the snap dusting no matter how hard he tried to be all clever.

At least he wasn't dreaming himself into being as much of a pussy as he remembered this whole shebang really going.

Peter Jason Quill hummed to himself while waiting for the tractor beam to yank him up. And when that didn't happen immediately – because Yondu and the Ravager crew were gaping through the transpari-hull in surprise at the nonchalant way he was bouncing on his heels and waving at them, dream all-knowingness was just the bomb – he pulled out his Walkman headphones and hit play.

~Aaaah…~ That's right, he'd been cut off at the best part! What luck! "~Aaaa-ah-ah-ah-ah~," he sang, "~Hooked on a feelARGH!"

A large mass smashed into him and yanked him off and away just as the tractor beam locked on.

Peter Jason Quill gasped in shock and pain – what? – as he and whatever-it-was rolled over the ground, hitting hard earth and soft earth and blowing autumn leaves and mini-fae and pixies all over the place.

The violent upset ended with him on the ground for a moment.

Only a moment.

"Peter, you okay?!"

But he wasn't going to say anything!

A shock blast shot over them, lighting up the shimmering night.

"Of for-!" Jason Quill grit his teeth, wrenched his grandson from the ground, stuffed him under the arm like a sack of turnips and took off at a run. "Of all the times to be tripping balls!"

Peter blinked owlishly at the upset even as he was ~high on believing / that you're in love with meeee~ and eugh, no! No way is that the kind of song he wanted sung while held in these particular arms!

That's when a second blast from the ship's starboard gun lanced where his grandpa had just strafed away from.

Jason Quill growled and doubled his pace. "Pirates! And at the worst possible time because of course they are!"

Normie Earthling say what now?

Peter heard the ship landing and lowering its ramp behind them both because the Ravagers probably didn't want to harm their cargo and wait a minute! This was not how it all went down!

Grandpa ran into the barn, barred the door while muttering "For all the good this'll do," put him down in a corner behind the tractor, and then dashed over to the far end to upend the entire pile of hay bales.

Which was when a very particular whistle pierced the night and a familiar arrow shot through the barn wall, support pole one, support pole two and out the other side.

Then it came again.

And again.

And again and again and again ten times in as many seconds until all the support beams were ripped apart.

Peter barely had time to crawl under the tractor before the roof came down.

The world turned a mess of hay, noise, dust that stuck in his nose every time he breathed in, and wood chips that stuck in his throat every time he breathed out. The racket of the barn collapsing on top of them did weird things to the world too, even though it didn't seem as loud as it should've been. More surprising was once again the pain.

"Can you even feel pain in a dream?" he groaned at the green and pink jerboa/fairy/whatever thing twitching its totally-not-whiskers at the end of his nose. "Also I'm dead should any of this even be happening brain death means a brain and mine's dust someplace or noplace…"

Whatever answer the jerboa/fairy/whatever thing would have given him, he never got to hear it.

The wood debris was blasted off him along with the hood of the tractor and a hand reached beneath to get him. It missed. Twice. Even though he wasn't even trying to dodge it!

Finally, though, it found his ankle, which was when he was unceremoniously pulled out from his cover and out to hang upside-down in the air.

"Well lookie what I found!" Kraglin Obfonteri crowed unintelligibly in a bid to ignore stealth that meant they planned to kill all the witnesses before they left and hold on a second! That hadn't happened the first time either. "Don't seem that alive though, boss, you reckon weRKH!" Whatever he would have said was lost on account of his throat being speared.

Literally.

A whir and gust of wind through the space above him was all the warning anyone got.

A blur enveloped him. A hand grabbed back the shaft. The high-tech spear of make unfamiliar even to Star-Lord wrenched out of the Xandarian so violently that his head literally popped off. And there was not one spot on Peter Quill that the massive blood spray reached because Jason Quill had shielded him with his cape before he did any of the rest. All while punching and kicking the brains out of the two Ravagers that had been flanking the first mate until just then.

Peter Quill stared, astounded, as his vision was filled with gilted crimson and armored synthskin covered by helm and plate of red and gold. What in all the worlds?

Cries of rage, dismay, pain and death rattles filled the darkness amidst enemy chatter that he couldn't understand and why the hell oh! It was before he had the translation implant. Although with how – Crack! - convenient the – Crack-Crack! – dream had been up to this point – Crack-CraCK-BOOM! – it was strange that it would choose this of all places to be hyper-realistic. Bad enough he couldn't see shit, now he couldn't understand shit either? His ~Lips as sweet as candy, its taste is on my mind~ and no, still not the right song and what was this, the blind man's where's Waldo?

Then the concussion grenade grandpa had tossed at some point detonated and hurled half the disembarked ravagers in the air and after that was murder he wrote.

Jason Quill paid no mind to his grandson's bewilderment as he loosed death bolt after death bolt against the mob. Spear bolt, spear bolt, headshot before the pirates even reached the top of their unwanted soar, spear bolt and wrist rocket to the single barn wall still standing because the couple of pirates behind it were nowhere near as clever as they thought they were and then Yondu whistled-

A shield fanned out of a bracer as Jason Quill corkscrewed over his prone form and landed on the other side, glow-red tip lodged in between metal sections and then grandpa's spear shaft swung down amidst whistling just so.

Whistling sounded once more, sharp and startled.

The Yaka arrow jerked out of the shield just fast enough to avoid being smashed into splinters all over the lawn.

They were back in the front yard again somehow. Huh.

A fully deployed Spartan shield rent the ground ahead of him, round and large enough to shelter both grandfather and grandson with room to spare. Also, it was see-through. Or its inner surface projected what was on the other side of the… of the… Peter didn't have his scanner to confirm but it looked a helluva lot like adamantium, hot-damn!

His…

His grandpa had just shown up dressed like a space Spartan to open a can of whoop-ass on space pirates.

This … this was…

Holy shit.