Complex Cosmonautics (III)
Rocket Racoon stared at the now empty spot, aghast.
Jason Quill sighed long-sufferingly, rubbing a palm over his face. "It seems I'll be testing the worth of your word sooner than any of us might like, Raccoon."
"Eh?"
Which was when the man opened another portal at the same time that the co-pilot's chair lurched violently and tossed him right through it.
"AAAGH!" Rocket screamed as he flew forward and then fell sideways into a pile of smoking slag in the middle of Knowhere. "Unh! Hngh! Agh!" he cried as he tumbled down. "Ha-ah-ack-ah-aaargh that's it! THAT'S IT!" The harried space mammal jumped to his feet, barely averted falling back on his face due to the loose debris that caught under his foot, then he started shooting up the first bunch of uglies he could find. "That's!" Bang! "Fucking!" Blast! "It!" Slag. Slag. Slag! "I don't care anymore! The next person who gets in my face is never again going to HAVE a face, do you hear me assholes! Take it with you to the bank, I am no one's performance act!" Rocket's eyes teared up from the sharp mix of pungent smells that assaulted him, oils and fuels and who know what other things but fuck that shit, he was coping! He was still coping.
He was coping just fine dammit!
"Rocket?" Quill's voice cut through his berserker rage.
Barely.
"What!?" Rocket whirled around.
The only reason he didn't drop his laser cannon entirely was because it was strapped on.
Gunfire. Rioters all over. Flames. Smoke. Hovercars rushing away in haste to reach the outskirts. Ship fire blasting every which way everywhere around. And in the middle of it all stood Star-Lord, hands glowing white as he projected a massive forcefield beyond which loomed The Collector's Museum-Ship. It was in the last stages of wrenching free of Knowhere's structure, screeching and groaning with the noise of tearing metal and stiff hinges built ages ago. And it was leeching fluids and blowing smoke from holes and pockmarks that had very recently been blasted in and out of it all over.
The massive crack in its side from which the last trickle of escaped specimens had just jumped was a pretty big clue too, that things in Knowhere had gone rather topsy turvy since… since…
"Not even an hour since your soul fucked off and THIS is what you have to show for it!?" Rocket felt just about ready to explode in outrage. "Your old man's right, you're fucking nuts! And stupid! 'I went and fucked an A'askvariian' stupid! Times squared! To the power of infinity!"
Whatever Peter would have replied was put on hold on account of his forcefield being struck head-on by a massive beam of molten metal accelerated to a fraction of the speed of light. Rocket blinked. A magnetohydronynamic cannon? What was this, take your ancient technology with you to work day?
Peter grunted. "Just a moment." Somehow managing to maintain the rapidly shimmering forcefield with a single hand, he pointed the other at the farthest side of the ship in his line of sight. Then he wriggled his hand in a now too familiar motion.
A circle of sparks bloomed into a massive portal with the low orbit of some planet or other on the other side.
"Star-Lord you jackaaaaaas!" Rocket howled as he was yanked off the ground along with everything else within half a mile because depressurisation was very much definitely a thing this time.
That was when Star-Lord waved his hand sideways and the portal swept over the Collector Museum-Ship like the universe's biggest mobile door made of razor-sharp fire filaments before shutting down.
Rocket Raccoon crashed to the ground and slid ungainly across scuffed, pockmarked backtop until he bumped into Peter Quill's feet from behind. His head was spinning, his heart was pounding, his lungs couldn't seem to get enough air, and his soul was seized with the most holy urge to bash Star-Lord's head in.
All such thoughts, alas, suffered an early demise when Quill looked down at him while glowing with white light. "Sorry Rocket, but I'll need a raincheck on any righteous retribution you might want."
Star-Lord walked off, mood grim and silent, and abruptly blasted off into the air in a streak of red, gold and pressure waves.
Rocket stared after him. That… This…
He picked himself off the ground, still staring after the man as he flew up and away and away until he just… stopped in place right in the actual middle of Knowhere.
Then, in a way felt like it would reach eerily all the way to the edge of the dead head, the crazy whatever-he-was began whistling.
And a streak of red and white light shot out from him and began violently pacifying every other spaceship in sight that was still blasting at things.
Rocket Raccoon stared silently at… whatever this was. Despite his best efforts, his mind kept falling short of just what Quill was or wasn't doing. He didn't know what to feel either.
He was only distracted from the arrow and its trail of destruction by the sound of wooshing and clanks intruding on the otherwise unchallenged music.
Rocket turned to the place where the museum once hovered, now a giant hole in the Celestial skull's… well, skull. Quill had clearly substituted accuracy for haste, if the piece of scenery he sent away alongside Tivan's ship was that enormous. Above it, though, now hovered a miss-matched but surprisingly even path of floating slabs, rocks and sheets of whatever or other.
Rocket Raccon put his laser cannon back on his back, took out his laser pistol and proceeded to carefully climb up the obviously beckoning path.
Roll with the punches. Roll with the punches. He was good at that.
The rampage of whistling destruction continued behind him as he walked over the gap, explosions growing rarer but not stopping entirely. Even when he reached the other side and stepped inside the late Boot of Jemiah, the only part of the Exitar mining colony that didn't seem to have smoke pouring out of it.
When he entered, what he found was nothing like Rocket expected.
Or, rather, who. "… Cosmo!?"
Cosmo the Space Dog sent telepathically from where he stood front and center among everyone and their grandmother that had escaped from the Collector's museum over the past hour. Which seemed to be… a hurctarian, some weird tall thing, a xeronian, that one-eyed alien he always wanted to see the insides of, a frost giant of all things, that giant blue butterfly, even Howard the Duck. Basically most everyone Rocket recalled seeing there in the last timeline. And then some.
He cautiously holstered his weapons and peered at the only other miss-evolved mammal he cared enough to know. "… Are you why I've been fighting over a chunk of irradiated nothing on the other end of space?" That wasn't strictly what happened but it was going to be his version of things until further notice. Cosmo had turned from normal dog to super-intelligent psionic dog because of cosmic ray bombardment, right? Way back however many timelines.
And now, apparently, this one. Belated as it was.
Except now it was more like a moon dotted with a bunch of colonies, mines, special interests, and every last type of scum in known and unknown space.
"I think I'm starting to see why Star-Lord came here," Rocket said. Though not why Quill elder had tossed him over through whatever way he had of perfectly aiming for his son across time and space. Star-Lord obviously didn't need him.
…Or did he?
That was when way too bright light started to seep in from outside.
Rocket ran out of the Boot of Jemiah with gun in hand, just in time to see the whole of Knowhere being… overlapped by the weirdest bubble of inverted not-world he'd ever seen.
Then a mighty voice boomed everywhere, deep and unrecognisable. "ATTENTION PARASITES. YOU HAVE UNTIL THE SEVENTH TURN OF THE CYCLE TO GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"
Because why wouldn't the madman make it sound as if the Celestial was resurrecting instead of just claiming the remains by right of inheritance or something, Rocket thought dumbly.
Star-Lord did need him, Rocket thought faintly. He needed him to give him a good kick in the head when he was getting too big for his breeches. Which, apparently, he was on the very border of. Right this moment. And a certain Royal Asshole hadn't even needed to be here and see all this to know.
"Old Man Quill…" Rocket Raccoon muttered lowly as he went to do his part in the hostile takeover of the dead head of a god. "I really hope you aren't evil."