Chapter 1 - Single Motherhood is a Statistic
Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
Beyond Good and Ego
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“-. .-“
Summary: There are people and powers in the Cosmos that notice and look into the shadows of possible futures and times undone as a matter of course. One doesn’t even need to travel beyond Earth to find them. Sadly for all but one of the parties involved, one wholly intended consequence of this is that a close encounter of the third kind ends up overlapping a DMT trip.
[Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers, Marvel Comics Expanded Universe]
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Chapter 1: Single Motherhood is a Statistic
“-. 10 November, 1988 .-“
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Chapter 1: Single Motherhood is a Statistic
“-. 10 November, 1988 .-“
It was a clear and tranquil night in Fulton, Missouri. The moon was shining, the stars were glinting, his guts had stopped spewing, and his mother was almost done dying of cancer on the bed in the room over there in the corner.
Which was good.
“Excuse you?” grandpa Jason balked, because he’d apparently said that aloud. “Boy, one more crack like that and I’m putting a stop to this here trip. Even if I have to let your mama go without fulfilling this last fool fancy of hers, I’ll do it and that’s a fact!”
It was good that she hadn’t died yet despite them having taken her out of the hospital for this, is what he meant.
“Of course you did,” Grandma Meredith the Older shook her head, because he’d apparently said that aloud too. Which, okay, is what he’d meant to do all along but he hadn’t been sure. He wasn’t all there at that point, even though it shouldn’t have happened yet with what he’d already had. Post-vomit endorphins sure was a rush!
Grandpa frowned but left it at that. “Come on, Peter. Your mama wants to speak with you before it happens. Which will be any moment now if I weighed things right, and I always do. Now come on. Take these fool things off.” His grandfather then took the headphones and mixtape off of him, turning off the Walkman and taking him to see his mother. She was lying sick in bed, weak and diminished. Also bald.
Not too out of it to notice the more obvious things about him though, unfortunately. “Have you been fighting again, baby?” So he had gotten a black eye. He hadn’t been entirely sure. “How on earth did that happen? When did you even have the time between now and then?” He wasn’t sure about that either, at this point. And he hadn’t even taken the second brew yet!
“Now how’d you know about that?” Grandpa jumped on the latest of his slip-ups. “Have you been spying on your mama, boy? Now I’ve twice the mind to stop this right here, right now.”
“Oh leave off it, Prince Charming,” said grandma, taking hold of the one of mama’s hands across the bed from him. “We all know you won’t do anything of the sort.”
“But I should,” Grandpa grumbled, picking him up – hey! – and dropping him on the bed next to his mama. “And I sure as heck would if that fool Nixon wasn’t full of it. Bad enough he botched things up with his first great ‘war’ that my girl doesn’t have any more hope today than two decades ago. Now I won’t even be seeing my daughter coherent in her last minutes because she’s dying to fight against that fool in his second great ‘war.’ ‘War.’ Ha!”
Grandpa always managed to turn things to politics somehow. Or at least politicians whose jobs he felt he could do better. Which was all of them as far as he was concerned. Peter didn’t roll his eyes at him as he usually did only because he didn’t want to risk becoming queasy again.
“Who’d you fight, baby?” Mama asked him.
Peter shrugged. “Some kid who was beating on a little guy who ain’t done nothin’. Kept smacking him with a stick.”
His mama smiled weakly. “You’re so like your daddy. You even look like him. And he was an angel. Composed of pure light-”
“Mer?” Grandpa interrupted her, same as he always did when she started to talk about his sperm donor. “You got a present there for Peter, don’t you?”
“Of course.” His mama touched a small wrapped present and card on her lap. Grandma helped her hand them over to Peter, who didn’t have the chance to unwrap them because Grandpa took them and put them in Peter’s backpack over there by the bed and when had that gotten there again? He always did carry it with him everywhere, but this time he didn’t remember doing it. Weird.
“There. I’ve got you covered, Peter. But that’s just half of the present, right Mer?”
“Sure is,” his mom reached weakly for two large, lidded mugs on the bedside counter. Grandma pre-empted her though. She removed the lids and then handed one of the steaming cups to Peter, while she helped his mama drink the other one.
It smelled sharp and tasted foul as heck, but after the first stuff of an hour or so before this was nothing.
The minutes ticked by as all three of them waited for… whatever it was they waited.
“You open that package up when I’m gone, okay?” His mama told him after he watched tension and pain slowly seep out of her face like the last of the sunlight outside. She’d hummed and then sung their favourite pop songs all the while. Peter was surprised he couldn’t feel his eyes start welling up with tears. “Your grandpa is gonna take such good care of you. At least until your daddy comes back to get you.” Peter wondered what she’d say if he told her he didn’t care. “What’s that baby?” What, that he didn’t want anything to do with his pop, whoever he was? Did she mean he hadn’t kept it to himself like every other time? Shit! “Whoa! Foul things are a’comin outta that there mancave.”
Peter could feel three pairs of eyeballs looking at him like he’d just spoken Groot.
“Ohh…” his mama finally sighed in the sort of relief he hadn’t heard for her in weeks. “The stars. They’re coming for us, baby.” She reached for him then, half-blind already. “Take my hand.”
Peter felt like this was the part where he should begin to cry, but whatever he’d been given had long since started to carry him someways. The world was turning strange colors that were the same as they ever were, but it wasn’t falling away. Which was weird because the stars sure seemed to be falling closer. How weird! Wasn’t there a ceiling and several walls between him and them? If not for his mama calling him from across light and space, he wouldn’t know what to even do or say. But she was. And she did.
He reached back.
It felt like moving through the hypergravity of Hala, that’s how slow he suddenly was. Bizarre as fuck, he felt none of the other signs. Then he just seemed to drift closer and closer to having no speed of his own at all, even as the Cosmos moved and changed around him until it slipped from under him.
“Take my hand,” his mama’s voice came again. Which is exactly what he was doing, didn’t she see? It’s not his fault that the Cosmos moved in its own time.
Most of the time.
“Take my hand, Peter!”
With tears he didn’t remember welling in his eyes, Peter took Gamora’s hand. Drax then grabbed his other hand and Rocket grabbed Drax's hand. And just like that, the power from the Infinity Stone spread between the four of them.
Whoa! What a weird hallucination to have in the middle of a life and death fight for the sake of the Galaxy! He’d already embarrassed his way into swiping the Infinity Stone from Ronan the Accuser. He really shouldn’t waste the chance he bought with dancing another man to distraction by hallucinating about the future past. Refuge in audacity wasn’t going to work the same way twice, especially without extenuating factors involved! No homo, man! He was shocked it worked the first time, when Ronan could easily have just dropped the hammer instead. It would even have been the low-effort option!
Events thereafter proceeded exactly as he recalled them, unlike the memory of his last day on Earth. He used the Power Stone to destroy Ronan, Gamora used the orb to contain the stone, Yondu coerced the orb out of their possession without realising Peter had switched it for a fake, and they all lived adventurously ever after until Thanos snapped him out of existence three years later.
All things considered, it was kind of a relief when it happened. Bad enough that he learned Gamora had been murdered beyond saving, but he’d also embarrassed his way into destroying their best chance to get the Infinity Gauntlet away from Thanos and winning the whole matter. That’s what he got for not using his head when it counted, instead of his heart. As if he couldn’t have wailed on the bastard to his heart’s content after the last two seconds it would have taken to neuter the guy.
"I don't use my head to fly the arrow, boy. I use my heart."
Ha! He should’ve known Yondu was full of shit when he said that, like every other ‘lesson’ he ‘taught’ him over the course of his life. As if anything could be done like that. To think he’d rearranged his system of beliefs around that pirate’s attempt to sound cool and suave. As if anything could be done without any sort of thought! Even when he was wailing on his space god father using his own power, there wasn’t a moment when he didn’t think of where and how his next hit should land. It was just a difference of which part of his brain did the thinking, not that it didn’t happen at all!
The moment he was faced with the worst father figure in his life, he started treating the second worst father figure in his life like he’d done him no wrong. He was a real piece of junk, wasn’t he? Like so much else that was left adrift in space. It was a wonder he hadn’t ended up on Sakaar like so much else. Behold, the abductee and child soldier slash pirate forced to eke a life amongst the stars! He doesn’t even know when to treat an absurd claim like the hyperbole it was!
Death equals absolution and don’t your forget it, you dumb Earth boy. You got your life stolen away by an evil space marauder who threatened to eat you every day of your life. But it’s okay because the one who hired him to do it turned out to be worse! Lie is truth, Evil is Good, and acting on impulse is most certainly not the opposite of wisdom everywhere you look!
God, he was a textbook case of Stockholm syndrome if ever there was one.
His pity party was suddenly cut short by the appearance of a bearded Asian man he’d never seen in his life.
Peter Quill did a double take. Where had he come from?
“So you’re the biggest waste of life in this aborted time.”
… Those words had no business at all being spoken by such a kindly old man voice!
The man’s light/smoke/flaming cane swept up and poked him in right between the eyes.
Peter Quill zoomed. Peter Quill flew.
Peter Quill fell downwards into the stars above him, away from Titan towards a different Titan. A Titan that spun around a planet on the other side of three galaxies away, past interstellar mass and clouds and constellations. The gravity of countless stars and planets grasped at him but all of them loosed him just as fast. Until he was suddenly falling into a strangely recognizable planetarium and one planet suddenly didn’t.
Pluto tugged at him despite that he felt like he weighed nothing at all. He felt it as the planetoid tossed him like a slingshot strait at Neptune, who pulled and spun and threw him at Uranus, their gravity acting bizarrely like a chain of gravity amidst substance, motion and consciousness that he could and couldn’t fathom. The outer planets then loosened their hold on him without actually surrendering it, which suddenly gave him reason to start wondering if he could escape gravity entirely. He didn’t seem to have done it despite being dead.
Through it all, Power Celestial seemed such that even the Fragments of Infinity couldn’t unmake them. It expended behind him, filling and covering every inch of the space he tumbled through.
Jupiter had him then, the last and final waypoint of all celestial bodies that passed in and out of the Sol System. Peter Quill could see its entire function now, how the super planet decided whether a planet or an asteroid or comet turned further inward into the System of if it was slingshotted back out and away from Sol. Whatever death had done to his understanding, it was enough that he could see the part that the Outer Planets played in the great void. Their role in grabbing foreign bodies in their gravity and throwing them deeper in or back right out of Sol. They were the eternal protectors of the Sol System and Earth, the only planet in their scope that had ever given life naturally.
And he could also see their role in fertilising the Sol System and the globe, from the comets and micrometeorites that fertilised the world, to the superbodies that impacted on it in the far past, even if it meant ending and starting ages with each one that smashed into the world.
Then there was all the life that lived and didn’t live around those worlds and their moons anymore. The entire history of Titan played before his eyes in fast-forward as he shot past it, even though it felt nothing like fast-forward at all. He fell past the Jovian moons, then, and saw life and lack wax and wane across history on them also, before he fell away from Jupiter entirely. Mars proved a mixed bag of death and history too, as he fell past and beyond it. There, the less and more he saw of the remains of primordial Earth’s other half, the more and less he wondered. And so, soon enough he passed over Earth and its Moon as well, both playing forward and back across the loop of time, but uniquely not showing him any age where there was no life on them at all. Neither within written nor throughout fictional history, whatever its early eons.
That was when he realised that Jupiter hadn’t tossed him into the Sol System, but across.
Without slowing from whatever passed for speed in this new no-thing, he shot past the historically inconsistent inner planets, felt as if he was being looked at as he fell through the Sun, then he was out the other side and flying/falling/dreaming his way out of system and star cluster, a long, expanding line/river/current of Cosmic Self spanning all the space and line of sight he left behind.
The only thing left for him, then, were the Constellations.
He fell past Perseus and Triangulum, slid between Pisces and Taurus, and could see Cetus loom gargantuan ahead of him as he descended all the way to the foot of Aries.
Maybe other newbies would have faceplanted, but not him. He was old hat at void stunts, and it was all the easier when he was already slowing down without having to put effort into it. Finally, he landed at the lowest end of one of them.
Aries.
Wasn’t Aries his own star sign? The sign that he never cared about but always looked down on him no matter where he was, and wow, that was a weird thing to think all of a sudden. Astrology was never something he paid attention to, seeing as the stars in his sky changed from day to night and day again. All very odd things to think, now when he shouldn’t be able to think anything at all seeing as he had died. He supposed it was nice that there was an afterlife, assuming this wasn’t just the last hallucination while his brain finished not being a thing anymore, but this was just bizarre.
He touched down on a star. The furthest and last of the 49 SX Arietis to be specific. Which he shouldn’t know enough to identify by its Terran designation, but okay. He’ll just go with it. It was the size of a beach ball, or at least a giant beach ball, but it felt firm and almost flat under his feet. Huh.
A path of light stretched before him, from one of Aries’ stars to the next and on.
The man was waiting for him right in front of his landing.
He was looking at him with the sort of calm dismay Peter would have seen on old hermits if he’d stayed on Earth more as a boy. He thought.
“You, boy, are a statistic if ever there was one.”
The man then turned around, motioned for him to follow and set off on the path of light.
Well shit. His inner Wise Guy was an Asian Wizard Dude with a goatee, robes that looked way too dressy to walk in, and the most impractical headdress he’d ever seen despite visiting he didn’t know how many worlds. Peter gaped.
Because seriously, what the hell? What issues did this mean about him?
But he had nothing else to do, so he followed.
And as he followed down the path traversing stars towards the apex of his Sign, he started seeing things again. A barbarian conquering the Hyborian Earth here. A convenient night-time assassination against a married couple there. A parentless genius and his next of kin being born into the world while skipping a generation. An implausibly familiar Abilisk shooting out form nowehere in pieces and being knocked away by a cane smack from the old robed Wizard Dude. Whoa! His inner Wise Guy was almost as badass as he was. It was almost enough to distract him from all the other stuff playing, sounding and hologramming its way in an out of being every time he stepped from one star on the path towards the next. He could have sworn he even saw that red-caped Wizard Dude falling sideways screaming at one point. Except he didn’t have the cape and didn’t look much like a Wizard Dude. Any Wizard Dude. And especially not his inner Wizard Dude, although the latter did seem to shoot the screaming guy a weird look as he fell sideways by. It was a strange – heh, Strange – cross between a teacher that was fondly embarrassed on your behalf even though he wasn’t your teacher, and the way his mom looked at him on her deathbed back in the day just before he was abducted by aliens.
Peter felt queasy all of a sudden. It wasn’t this that was supposed to indicate some hidden complex in his brain, did it? He didn’t harbour a secret crush on a guy he barely met, did he? Or any guy! He wasn’t into that scene, no way in hell or heaven or whatever this was. He was a basket case for sure, but he definitely didn’t have those kinds of repressed urges, nu uh. No homo, man. No homo!
It was almost enough to distract him from the itchy feeling that bloomed behind his eyes, then grew and strong and out until it centred on the middle of his forehead.
Inner Wizard Dude stopped when they reached Alpha Arietis, turned around and waited for him to join him atop the widest and brightest of the stars they’d walked across.
Then he lifted his cane and hit the ground.
His footing broke beneath him and he fell up as he grew small then he fell down as he grew large and forth and out of universe, memory and time.
Suddenly, he could see Every-Thing and No-Thing from outside. Except not really because… because… because this was too much too fast too unfathomable as he fell and the part of him that was Some-Thing rose to take him and everything and not-time in a natural bid to become one with Eternity only to be pre-empted by someone who went and did that before anyone else he’d ever fathomed or run across in his death and life.
Then time looped forward down, forward back, backward up, upward forth behind him, then right back down and through the point in space and time that he’d fallen out of.
And away.
And back again.
And down again.
And back again and down again and forth again and through again.
And again.
And again.
And again and again and again until all left was a single point of undecided fate amidst a great snarl of aborted timelines. Only there weren’t timelines. They all were just the same, single time looped and knotted on itself one, twice, a hundred, a thousand, a million, all fourteen million six hundred and five different times. All different. All similar. All wiped clean of their six core colors within years of their rewind reset. All with the barest tint of green left as the same dash of color jumped from one fold to the next, vainly looking for itself even as its holder didn’t.
Until, finally, it did and the Cosmos rewound just once more.
The snarl shuddered and shook and seemed to break and pulverise in a motion so slow that he thought it would take an infinite number of his lifetimes to go on and dissolve. Then it got a good shake.
The Now split in two nows.
For an instant.
The they diverged in opposite vectors, looped up on opposite sides of that lone point of reference that wasn’t, looped far past that last instant in the recent not-now that was his life, and came together far before along the not-line/sphere/universe that was and Was and IS all that there isn’t in the No-Thingness.
The two nows plunged into the Now at the same time in the same no-Time, then out again.
And in again.
And out again.
And in again.
And out again.
And again and again and again like a weird spiralling seam in the fabric that never wasn’t.
Then he fell back out of the No-Thing and everything that wasn’t nothing just as the nows threaded through the Now the six hundredth and sixteenth time and didn’t split again.
He crashed back on his mama’s deathbed with an indignant huff an hour before dawn.
“Easy there, Peter,” his grandpa said, startled awake but more than self-aware enough to steady him. Despite the exhaustion on his face and his reddened eyes.
Peter blinked and jerked in place, looking around in confusion as the dream became really unfamiliar in its familiarity.
“Peter? You with us?”
Star-Lord blinked stupidly. “… I, uh…”
“Wherever you were, you’re back now. Took your sweet time coming back too.”
He was dead and No-Where and he didn’t mean Know-Where and wait a minute…
“Peter?” grandpa prodded. “You planning to leave your mama waiting?”
“Take my hand, Peter,” his mom sighed softly, looking no more then and there than he was.
His hand – which he realised was extended just out of reach of hers again as if he’d spaced out for just a moment instead of a whole night’s worth of uncanny hallucination – was poised to travel that last breadth. And wow, the words that came to his inner monologue these days!
That too fell away from him, though, when he noticed everything about his hand he hadn’t noticed.
That’s it! He knew what this was! Seems like it wasn’t just his life flashing before his eyes, he got to live again his life except better.
“You’re so bright, baby,” his mom whispered, putting words to what he’d just noticed himself. “Just like your daddy, shining with white light.”
Seeing her hand tremble under its own weight, he finally won against the slowness of everything around and in him and took it.
And Inner Wizard Dude overlapped him like a ball of light over his own and the light that spanned his self suddenly reflected the memory of a light distinct but similar.
“All that traveling the Cosmos and not one exposure to a proper shrub,” Inner Wise Guy said, sounding bizarrely like a kindly old man even while he was lamenting the latest of his inadequacies. Which, okay, was what he sounded and looked like the other two times too, but it felt so strange with such rude lines! “It wouldn’t even have taken anything blatant enough to rouse that Celestial side of yours. Humans have more than enough power on tap as it is. Pay attention, now, Peter Jason Quill. All it takes is Earnest Demand, Confident Expectation and Positive Will.”
The words seemed strange for something told by his inner voice. He’d never been so optimistic. But that seemed to be the whole point here, wasn’t it? Earnest Demand, Confident Expectation and Positive Will.
Earnest Demand. Show him what health looks like on her. Show him what Ego did to her. Stretch his astral body around and beyond until it overlapped hers fully.
Confident Expectation. The light that wasn’t his painted her insides and the history of the tumour filled his mind with full exactness. Everything. The health of before. The sickness itself of after. The bio-etheric engineering Ego had not put in to make sure it ran its course even if humans discovered the treatment. What an odd thing to leave out. Or maybe it was that there was no such thing as a disease without a cure? A cure that was a painfully simple method only unknown because his grandpa was right about Nixon all along. But now he was just getting distracted and Inner Wise Guy Dude pointedly signaled him so. Somehow.
Positive Will. Mama. Be well.
And so she was.
This was turning into the best dream ever.
“Peter…” Grandma and grandpa both whispered, astounded.
“Oh baby,” his mama groaned. “Just like your daddy…” she sighed, falling out of consciousness but not into death on account of being back to her pre-chemo weight and a full head of hair.
Dream all-powerfulness did good work, if he did say so himself.
“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 traspari-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.
“Well spank me purple!” Yondu said and what was he saying!? “If I didn’t know better I’d’a said that there’s one o’them Spartax thugs!”
“Peter,” Jason Quill asked, his terse voice completely at odds with how carefully he laid his hand on his head and his cape over the entirety of him. “You with me, boy?”
… Did he mean it wasn’t just Inner Wise Guy Wizard Dude that was bubbling up from his subconscious? Wait! That’s it! He had also created an idealised version of his old man as a way to expose his issues from having been entirely deprived of father figures worth a damn! “…I’m definitely starting to get a hand of this dream vision thing,” Star-Lord bumbled woozily, trying and failing to sit up. Then he giggled suddenly. He couldn’t help himself. “And that’s a fact!”
“Hellooo the shield wall!” Yondu cawed something or other. “I don’ s’pose we can settle this here thing like two proper bizfolk.”
Peter snickered and giggled yet more. Hysterically. He didn’t understand jack shit but he bet it was funny.
“I’ll take that as a no,” grandpa muttered.
“I gots me one good, long history in creative contract reinterpretation, if you get me meaning,” the pirate was still talking. “Why, there ain’t never been a case where everyone who left after a conflict of interests weren’t 100% satisfied with my results.”
“You can leave warm or I can make you leave cold,” Jason Quill said. Flatly. Coldly. “I will, indeed, be satisfied with either those results.” It was as if space Spartan grandpa and his politically incorrect grandpa were completely different people and wow, subconscious, you’re a genius! Even the way he visibly had to force himself from shutting his eyes in cringe was exactly what Peter would have expected this super grandpa to do when his mouth ran away from him like it was doing right now. He’s perfect!
“You see, friend, that there’s called an impasse,” Yondu said as his arrow hovered next to him. It twitched occasionally, betraying his unease. “Here I be, offering parlay when it’s already been tossed in my face once!” The Ravagers left made noises of agreement, even as they did not slacken the grips on their guns one bit. “And you cannae even be bothered to stick a head outta from ‘hind that picket fence.”
Yondu Udonta was talking. A lot. That meant he was either stalling for a getaway or stalling for an inbound upturn of the situation via adapted contingency. The former was something he’d just refused. The latter was…
~I'll just stay a victim if I can for sure~
“Well lookie here,” hollered Horuz from behind them. “Captain! Dare I say these here strumpets be what we call leverage out in the wider world?”
The vid feed on the inner shield changed to a rear view of whatever camera Jason Quill had on the back of his helmet or someplace. Was it hidden in that huge crest or something? The joke was on Peter though, when the image cleared. The moment it did, the boy froze in actual fear and grandpa’s face went white as if it’d just been bleached.
Horuz. Gef. Retch. The three stooges. Manhandling his mama. And grandma. Dragged them out of the house by broken dress straps and their hair.
The world was still awash with fairy lights and the stars danced weirdly up in the sky. But despite all that, Peter Quill’s mood went as cold as his grandpa’s did. Suddenly the dream wasn’t that good. No no indeed.
“Alright… New terms then.” Jason Quill slowly stood up and turned until he could track both situations from the corners of his eyes, even as he kept the shield between Peter and everyone else. “You can leave warm or in pieces that I cut off you lot one by one while you’re still alive.”
“Hahaha!” Yondu laughed.“Check out this here second total failure at parlay! As if we all cannae tell who’s it that’s got the high ground now.” The pirate sauntered on over to mama and grandma like his grandpa wasn’t holding a blasting spear aimed right at his head the whole time. “Seems to me like we’re ‘bout to have a nice negotiation when there ain’t no certain parties in a poz of strength, am I right boys?”
“Hoo-ah!”
“’Ere’s how this here’ll be,” Yondu dictated. There was nothing else to call it when his tone turned like that. “You stop pretendin’ like y’all have any more control ’n me over this here predicament.” Yondu then shoved his gun under his stoned-out mama’s chin. “I stop acting like I think you’re some random Sparthug instead of some special snowflake that done deserted and eloped to the asshole of another galaxy.” The Centaurian grabbed his mama by the chin none too gently then, looking at her face. “Not that I can relate any, what with a gal as plain as this as the port for yer sparkplug if you follow me, but to each ‘is own I s’pose.”
Grandpa stiffened with rage that visibly poured out of him. Literally. Peter could see it like he could see everywhere he glowed with light and everywhere he didn’t within half a mile. On the other side of the yard from them, Yondu Udonta jerked his gun against mama’s throat and smirked confidently. Because whatever else the pirate was, the thing about Stockholm Syndrome is that it never takes with even the best and worst of tyrants if they don’t have style.
The moment loomed before him. Fast as Yondu’s mood swings. Slower than a full turn of the world. Peter still hadn’t understood a word of what the Ravager had said, but he could guess what he was going to say and do next pretty damn well.
Give up the brat or we’ll off the little lady.
“Give up the brat or we’ll off the little lady.” A short whistle from the corner of his mouth had the Yaka arrow hovering tip-first right by mama’s eye.
Back off and he might let her live.
“Back off and I might let ’er live.”
After that, stand back and don’t meddle more in our business and we might let the old broad behind when we leave.
“Ya’ll stand back now and not meddle more ‘n our business and we might leave the old fish here before we’re on our way.”
Now that we’ve established where things stand, I’m willing to entertain offerings in exchange for benefits.
“Now that you ‘n me know where we both stand, I’m makin’ meself open to offerin’s in exchange for boons and the like. Aren’t I grand?”
You can start with yourself, rich boy, and what all of that fancy shit you’re wearing you’re ready to sell.
“You can start off with yerself, rich boy, and what all you’re ready to sell o’ that fancy shit you’re wearin.’ My advice? If you’re any particular hotshot you tell me right quick. If’n you got a proper ‘nough bounty, there might just be in it for you somethin’ approaching term flexibility.”
The moment loomed and Peter Jason Quill pondered pasts and presents. Young or old, free or slave, things always seemed to wind up the same. He could guess what had been said. He knew what he would do. He knew what he would say.
Jason Quill, though, didn’t. “So what you’re saying,” grandpa instead said lowly. Slowly. “Is that I have everything to lose and not even what’s mine to gain.” Perfect badass grandad say what now? “What you’re saying,” Jason Quill added when no answer was forthcoming. “Is that you want there to be nothing between you and me except revenge.”
Jason Quill spoke lowly. Slowly. Feeling every bit like the opposite to what the light and mild Peter was feeling that was his.
Absolutely murderous.
“Interesting thing about all things that be,” Inner Wizard Wise Guy said then, tapping Peter on the forehead with one hand and plucking at the afterimages of the Yaka arrow with another. The memory of its flight path glimmered into view mid-way through vibrating its way out of existence as though it were a musical string dissolving in the wind. “They witness all things that were and remember.” A musical string that contained the memory of everything through which it moved. And why. And how. “Now you begin to understand me.”
The itching that had gradually mounted behind his eyes engulfed his entire head, his neck, his spine, his limbs, his gut and all the way to the ends of his feet and arms, until he even itched all over and through everything that wasn’t part and parcel of everything aforementioned.
And so the moment loomed before him until it suddenly didn’t.
Grandpa’s feet shifted in prep of a charge. The Ravagers put up their guns. Yondu’s lips curled down in puffed up frustration. And one eight-year-old boy named Peter Jason Quill hummed in on the pulses oscillating in and out of a head crest and whistled.
Yondu Udonta heaved.
Then the Centaurian pirate wheezed through a punctured throat, fell to his knees with the most bewildered look on his face, then toppled forward dead with the universe’s most confused death rattle, crest arrow controller sparking uselessly from a hole blown wide.
The Ravagers stared in shock. Those still surviving anyhow, which suddenly got fewer by another pair. The two manhandling his mama and grandma suddenly fell all over them with holes shot through their throats when he went on whistling.
Served them damn right, fucking sons of bitches.
“G-Get’em! Kill everyone!” hollered the one farthest. Halfnut. He shot at Peter. And he didn’t miss.
But Grandpa didn’t miss either when he blocked with his shield. He also didn’t miss when he whirled around him and flourished his half-cape over Peter like a protective field. The lattice-weave locked tight and intercepted whatever blaster fire his shield wasn’t there to turn aside, scorching, burning and tearing but deflecting all harm away until Peter stopped whistling.
The last of the Ravagers that had touched down on the world fell over with his head sporting an all-new prick. The prick. That left just the one guarding the M-ship, so Peter breathed in and whistled low and long.
The Yaka arrow shot at the ship’s ramp, flew up and in, dodged every last port and bend, drove straight through the single blast doors it couldn’t, and finally took out Tullk’s right eye along with his life, such as it was.
He could have driven it through the transpari-screen right into the bridge, but he’d never been so well off that he would so lightly choose to damage salvaged finds.
One last time, Star-Lord breathed in and whistled low and long.
The implausibly powerful arrow of his erstwhile abductor yet-to-be flew back the way it went until it stopped in front of Jason Quill. The man who was astonished and shocked but not stunned and certainly not diminished in caution or protectiveness. He did not budge from the arrow’s path. Not when it flew at him and not when it stopped.
It was just as well. He’d made his point, Peter dared say.
His whistling tapered off and the arrow fell to the ground, motionless.
Boy but did these post-death dream ghosts behave realistically. Even Yondu in all his patronising self-assurance that never left him even when he was just faking till he made it.
“Now I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been given something with my drink,” Jason Quill muttered as he got to his feet. He looked down to him though. “Peter. What the hell was that, boy?”
Excuse him? He wasn’t the one with the cliché trap door and stash full of all the fancy goods of his secret alien identity.
But the man had just fought for him and risked his life for him and killed for him, so whatever. “Yondu Udonta dying a virgin.” The boy replied, scratching his left arm – the only part of his body not scraped or smudged somehow – in a vain attempt to make the tingling stop. “Not that he never got any, because pirate don’t you know. And sometimes he even paid for it! But his girls, man, they were always so basic that if you dropped even one of them in acid, it’d simply balance the pH.” He was actually proud of that burn. And to think he’d never thought he’d get to say it!
Steal from a guy, kick him when he’s down, then kill him and insult his manhood just to be sure. All hail the Ravager code! Or a joke version of it anyway. Maybe.
Grandpa shook his head. “Where even are you now, boy?” But then the man knelt and hugged him, long and full and enveloping. It sent him on really long and brief trips through time and stars that weren’t his. And when the man stood again, he didn’t let him go and instead carried him to his woozy mama and wincing grandma. Even then he didn’t put him down, though, moving Peter to sit on the crook of his arm instead.
That was just as well too. Getting such an intimate view of that high-tech and probably ceremonial battle armor was more than enough treat to appease whatever boyish embarrassment he was too stoned out of his mind to remember he should be feeling. He even got a close-up look at the helmet unfolding from his head and turning into a mantle over his shoulders and upper chest.
“Like mother like daughter,” grandma said as grandpa kicked big, thick and peanut-brained off of her. “And now like mother like son, looks like. I guess we’re all of us forever doomed to get involved with them space man, and that’s a fact.”
Possibly-not-as-sane-as-he-thought-she-was normie grandma said what now?
But nobody answered his question – he had said it out loud, right? Right? – because grandpa finally put him down – too bad, it felt kind of nice – and then was too busy gathering mom off the lawn and carrying her back in the house to talk to him. At least other than to reluctantly hand him the Yaka arrow when mom was tucked back in bed where she could be safe and stoned for however long.
“Peter,” grandpa said, slowly as if trying to get a simple concept through to the dumbest kid in the cluster. So cool! “I have some cleanup to see to. I have no choice but to trust you to keep mama and grandma safe. You’ll do it, won’t you?”
“Sure grandpa,” said Star-Lord to the ultimate vindication of every last bit of hate he felt towards his daddy issues and then some. “You can count on me!”
“I really can’t,” said implausible space Spartan granddaddy. Which hey, rude, but it’s not like he wasn’t high out of his mind so okay. And dead, can’t forget that. Besides, reassuring his delusions was basically the same thing as reassuring himself, wasn’t it?
The rest of the hour leading up to dawn, Jason Quill spent looking all through the ship until he found the location remitter. Then he unbolted, unwound and cut out the bulky machine, stuffed it in the explora-pod along with all the alien corpses – stripped of all the loot of course – and sent the whole bunch off into the far reaches of space. Peter watched it all through the window while finger-spinning the Yaka arrow in increasingly complex ways. He’d normally be ashamed to admit how many hours and days he wasted practicing for it with random sticks, back when he started getting his first solo assignments. But he was high as a kite and dead besides, so he wasn’t shy about it no more. Not even when it was grandma asking.
The weird faces she made at his answers were worth their weight in units too, he must say. And that was really weird of her, because who was it that had married the guy with the cliché secret stash in the barn stuffed with alien artefacts from a mysterious past? Granted, seeing as this was all a dying delusion of his, the obvious answer was obvious, but it was the principle of the thing. This dream-whatsit was anal enough to make him unable to understand alien languages but had trouble reacting as it should to this of all things?
How long until it all ends again?
As if summoned by the question, Inner Wise Guy Wizard Dude stepped into view from behind him – where he hadn’t had any issue seeing him thanks to the astral body’s magical 360 degrees magic vision of magic or whatsit – and motioned him to follow.
Well shucks. Just because he was wondering when it’ll all be over didn’t mean he wanted this cool dream to be over.
Oh well.
Mama was still not coherent enough to question her newfound health but fixated enough on her baby to want to follow regardless. Grandma, to the shock of precisely no one, decided it would be a great idea to help her uncoordinated daughter hobble after him and on. A weak, recently dying woman supported by the fragile, only slightly less feeble older woman that seemed to conveniently forget she could barely lift a wine bottle without wincing most days. These women, honestly, it was a good thing the sickroom wasn’t upstairs or dying wouldn’t need to involve marauding alien pirates from outer space.
What exactly was this part of his dying delusion supposed to teach him about him?
Oh well.
He followed his Asian Inner Wise Guy Wizard Dude out of home and hearth into the breaking dawn, then off on his recently travelled path across the field on the way to passing just shy of the M-ship itself. And his grandpa, who came down the ramp just as he sauntered vaguely by.
He did a double take. “Peter!? Gods dammit boy, are you still high? Where the heck do you think you’re tripping off to now?”
The man then rushed after him as if he could actually join him on The Path and grabbed him by the shoulder from behind, bringing him to a halt. “Dammit, boy, don’t you go wandering off! I’ll drag you to your room and tie you to the bedpost, don’t think I won’t.”
In front of him, Inner Wise Guy Wizard Dude took a few more steps, turned around, pointed back with his cane and spun it around.
Sparks from nowehere cut a hole in the air and sheared it larger and wider until it was big enough for all four of them to walk onto a mountain plateau a couple continents over.
“My name is Yao,” Inner Wise Guy Wizard Dude stood in the flesh and spoke to his grandpa. Not to him but his grandpa. “I would like to extend you and yours an invitation to join me at my estate for a year and a day.”
Life, sensation and physicality suddenly crashed into Peter Jason Quill with all the lack of grace he’d only ever seen displayed by that slave chick of the Collector’s mid-way through blowing herself up with the Stone of Power.
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