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edenfallingSummary: "Let me make sure I've got this straight: your universe-jumping doohickey just happened to activate at the same moment Gamora caught the Tesseract, and that means she got zapped to wherever your lost crewmember is, and you wound up here instead?"
The leader of the teleporting trio -- blond, younger than Peter, suspiciously human looking for someone with that kind of technology -- glanced around at the rest of the Guardians, shrugged, and shoved his own mini-blaster back into its holster. "Yeah, pretty much."
Note: This ficlet was written on 2/21/15 forsamparker, in response to the Three Sentence Ficathon prompt: Guardians Of The Galaxy/Star Trek: AOS, Peter/Jim, sarcastic boys with a soft side. It ended up as a companion piece to Rattle the Cage, a ficlet wherein Natasha Romanova discovers Gaila imprisoned in a HYDRA lab. I went this route because it let me set up a scenario for filling samparker's Gamora/Gaila prompt, and I am a semi-compulsive organizer of fictional worlds.
[ETA: The slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]
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Following the Girl (1,200 words)
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Peter didn't lower his blaster, but he did edge his finger away from the trigger in a show of good faith once the mysterious intruders got their translation tech working and attempted to explain. "Let me make sure I've got this straight: your universe-jumping doohickey just happened to activate at the same moment Gamora caught the Tesseract, and that means she got zapped to wherever your lost crewmember is, and you wound up here instead?"
The leader of the teleporting trio -- blond, younger than Peter, suspiciously human looking for someone with that kind of technology -- glanced around at the rest of the Guardians, shrugged, and shoved his own mini-blaster back into its holster. "Yeah, pretty much. Sorry about sort of accidentally kidnapping your friend. Wait, does it count as kidnapping if we don't have her? That seems wrong somehow. Maybe interstellar trafficking?"
Drax made an impatient gesture with his knife. Simultaneously, the teleporter in the red dress, who might have been Gamora's long-lost twin sister (aside from the whole different species, different colors, and different universes thing), kicked her leader's ankle and hissed something into his ear.
The blond man winced theatrically. "I ramble sometimes, sorry about that. But hey, we worked together well enough against these assholes" -- he nodded at the dazed, bleeding, or just plain dead thugs Nebula had hired to retrieve the Tesseract from the hole where Loki of Asgard had stashed it -- "so why not keep up the pattern until we both get our people back where they belong?"
Peter exchanged an incredulous look with Rocket. "Oh. Well. In that case, why not," he said.
"Yeah, great plan," Rocket agreed, still aiming his beam canon at the pointy-eared weirdo in the blue shirt with an unidentified beeping gadget in his hands.
"I can't see any way this could possibly go wrong," Peter continued. "It's not like we have an entire universe to search through -- and I don't know about you, but squeezing seven people into the Milano for the next million years wasn't high on my list of life goals."
The blond man blinked. "The whole universe? What the hell is this Tesseract and why was it being stored in this dump? No offense if it's your dump, of course."
Peter had never been any good at resisting straight lines. "Dump? This wonderful example of post-Trichloric architecture has been in my family for generations, since the days of the Second Kree-Xandarian War, when my great-great-great aunt was awarded her choice of a hundred battle-trained bilgesnipe or a controlling interest in this valuable and state of the art iridium mining facility you're calling--" Okay, the worried expressions were starting to slide toward annoyance; time to wrap up. "Nah, it's not our dump. It's just the place the Tesseract landed when its last owner ditched it before he got thrown back in jail. As for what the Tesseract is... hey, Rocket, you wanna take this one?"
Rocket grimaced but grudgingly set down his beam canon -- Groot immediately edged forward and did his best to loom protectively, which was stupidly adorable coming from a four-foot-tall sapling -- and began to explain. "I don't know how much of this is true and how much is just razzle-dazzle bullcrap, but the story goes that at the very beginning of time, six singularities got trapped inside our universe. Laws of physics being what they are, the singularities got crunched down into what look like stones. Yay big, more or less."
He held his paws wide enough to grasp the Power Stone, then a bit wider to show the dimensions of the Tesseract.
"Thing is, they're still singularities -- the whole power of a potential universe, folded up tight. People try to use them now and then but it's a fucking terrible idea. They do weird shit if you get too close. And they may or may not be conscious by this point."
Rocket shrugged, fur rippling uneasily over his shoulders. "That's what the Tesseract is."
"That is consonant with the residual energy readings I've recorded from the overlapping transports," the pointy-eared man said. He looked over at Peter, his face and eyes disconcertingly hard to read. "Searching the entire universe will be unnecessary. I have a directional lock on your crewmate's transport. The sooner we leave, the sooner we will find both her and Lt. Gaila."
Lieutenant meant military or security -- not that that hadn't been obvious from the uniformity of the teleporters' outfits and insignia, and not that they seemed all that uptight, considering. But still. It was against all Peter's training and principles to just roll over to law-and-order types' demands.
"Hey, hey, slow down partner," Peter said. "We still didn't agree to take you. What's stopping us from just stealing your little beacon and doing this on our own? I'm still not real hot on squeezing you all onto my ship. It's crowded enough already."
"Because you understand why we can't give up on Gaila," the blond man said, his easy smile falling away into unexpected earnestness. "She's crew, she's our friend, and we don't leave anyone behind. Just like you would never leave your friend -- Gamora -- behind if there was any way you could possibly reach her. Help us, and let us help you."
And dammit, Peter was still weak against people who wanted him to do the right thing. He sighed, and lowered his blaster all the way. "Fine. We'll take you."
"Thank you," the blond man said. "And it occurs to me that we skipped introductions in the chaos, so. I'm Jim Kirk, this" -- pointy ears -- "is Commander Spock, and that" -- the woman who still looked far too much like Gamora for Peter's peace of mind -- "is Lt. Uhura. We've inconveniently left our ship in our own universe or transport wouldn't be an issue."
"Peter Quill, Drax, Rocket, and Groot," Peter said, pointing at his own friends. "My ship's just upstairs, and I think the mine's airlock is still intact so we won't have to lend you pressure suits to get onboard. But I make no promises about comfortable sleeping arrangements. Uhura can take Gamora's bed, but you two may have to bunk in the cargo hold."
Kirk grinned. "What, no offer to share? I've been told I'm fun to sleep with..."
Peter paused halfway through his turn toward the elevator shaft. Huh. Definitely less uptight than usual for a high-ranked security type. He raked his eyes up and down Kirk's body, and shrugged, because nobody ever got rich signaling real interest on the first offer. "I've seen better, man. But I'm open to persuasion if you want to try."
And he wasn't going to get a better exit line than that, so. Time to make like a tree and leaf. Peter activated his jet boots and zoomed upward to check on the airlock.
He hated not knowing where Gamora was, or whether she was alive -- there was no guarantee either she or this Lt. Gaila had arrived anywhere with a breathable atmosphere, after all -- but maybe the trip to find her wouldn't have to be as grim as he'd feared when the Tesseract flashed and tore a hole through space. After all, it had been a long while since he'd had company in his bed.
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End of Fic
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And now, onward to Gaila and Gamora! *writes busily*
The leader of the teleporting trio -- blond, younger than Peter, suspiciously human looking for someone with that kind of technology -- glanced around at the rest of the Guardians, shrugged, and shoved his own mini-blaster back into its holster. "Yeah, pretty much."
Note: This ficlet was written on 2/21/15 for
samparker, in response to the Three Sentence Ficathon prompt: Guardians Of The Galaxy/Star Trek: AOS, Peter/Jim, sarcastic boys with a soft side. It ended up as a companion piece to Rattle the Cage, a ficlet wherein Natasha Romanova discovers Gaila imprisoned in a HYDRA lab. I went this route because it let me set up a scenario for filling samparker's Gamora/Gaila prompt, and I am a semi-compulsive organizer of fictional worlds.[ETA: The slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]
---------------------------------------------
Following the Girl (1,200 words)
---------------------------------------------
Peter didn't lower his blaster, but he did edge his finger away from the trigger in a show of good faith once the mysterious intruders got their translation tech working and attempted to explain. "Let me make sure I've got this straight: your universe-jumping doohickey just happened to activate at the same moment Gamora caught the Tesseract, and that means she got zapped to wherever your lost crewmember is, and you wound up here instead?"
The leader of the teleporting trio -- blond, younger than Peter, suspiciously human looking for someone with that kind of technology -- glanced around at the rest of the Guardians, shrugged, and shoved his own mini-blaster back into its holster. "Yeah, pretty much. Sorry about sort of accidentally kidnapping your friend. Wait, does it count as kidnapping if we don't have her? That seems wrong somehow. Maybe interstellar trafficking?"
Drax made an impatient gesture with his knife. Simultaneously, the teleporter in the red dress, who might have been Gamora's long-lost twin sister (aside from the whole different species, different colors, and different universes thing), kicked her leader's ankle and hissed something into his ear.
The blond man winced theatrically. "I ramble sometimes, sorry about that. But hey, we worked together well enough against these assholes" -- he nodded at the dazed, bleeding, or just plain dead thugs Nebula had hired to retrieve the Tesseract from the hole where Loki of Asgard had stashed it -- "so why not keep up the pattern until we both get our people back where they belong?"
Peter exchanged an incredulous look with Rocket. "Oh. Well. In that case, why not," he said.
"Yeah, great plan," Rocket agreed, still aiming his beam canon at the pointy-eared weirdo in the blue shirt with an unidentified beeping gadget in his hands.
"I can't see any way this could possibly go wrong," Peter continued. "It's not like we have an entire universe to search through -- and I don't know about you, but squeezing seven people into the Milano for the next million years wasn't high on my list of life goals."
The blond man blinked. "The whole universe? What the hell is this Tesseract and why was it being stored in this dump? No offense if it's your dump, of course."
Peter had never been any good at resisting straight lines. "Dump? This wonderful example of post-Trichloric architecture has been in my family for generations, since the days of the Second Kree-Xandarian War, when my great-great-great aunt was awarded her choice of a hundred battle-trained bilgesnipe or a controlling interest in this valuable and state of the art iridium mining facility you're calling--" Okay, the worried expressions were starting to slide toward annoyance; time to wrap up. "Nah, it's not our dump. It's just the place the Tesseract landed when its last owner ditched it before he got thrown back in jail. As for what the Tesseract is... hey, Rocket, you wanna take this one?"
Rocket grimaced but grudgingly set down his beam canon -- Groot immediately edged forward and did his best to loom protectively, which was stupidly adorable coming from a four-foot-tall sapling -- and began to explain. "I don't know how much of this is true and how much is just razzle-dazzle bullcrap, but the story goes that at the very beginning of time, six singularities got trapped inside our universe. Laws of physics being what they are, the singularities got crunched down into what look like stones. Yay big, more or less."
He held his paws wide enough to grasp the Power Stone, then a bit wider to show the dimensions of the Tesseract.
"Thing is, they're still singularities -- the whole power of a potential universe, folded up tight. People try to use them now and then but it's a fucking terrible idea. They do weird shit if you get too close. And they may or may not be conscious by this point."
Rocket shrugged, fur rippling uneasily over his shoulders. "That's what the Tesseract is."
"That is consonant with the residual energy readings I've recorded from the overlapping transports," the pointy-eared man said. He looked over at Peter, his face and eyes disconcertingly hard to read. "Searching the entire universe will be unnecessary. I have a directional lock on your crewmate's transport. The sooner we leave, the sooner we will find both her and Lt. Gaila."
Lieutenant meant military or security -- not that that hadn't been obvious from the uniformity of the teleporters' outfits and insignia, and not that they seemed all that uptight, considering. But still. It was against all Peter's training and principles to just roll over to law-and-order types' demands.
"Hey, hey, slow down partner," Peter said. "We still didn't agree to take you. What's stopping us from just stealing your little beacon and doing this on our own? I'm still not real hot on squeezing you all onto my ship. It's crowded enough already."
"Because you understand why we can't give up on Gaila," the blond man said, his easy smile falling away into unexpected earnestness. "She's crew, she's our friend, and we don't leave anyone behind. Just like you would never leave your friend -- Gamora -- behind if there was any way you could possibly reach her. Help us, and let us help you."
And dammit, Peter was still weak against people who wanted him to do the right thing. He sighed, and lowered his blaster all the way. "Fine. We'll take you."
"Thank you," the blond man said. "And it occurs to me that we skipped introductions in the chaos, so. I'm Jim Kirk, this" -- pointy ears -- "is Commander Spock, and that" -- the woman who still looked far too much like Gamora for Peter's peace of mind -- "is Lt. Uhura. We've inconveniently left our ship in our own universe or transport wouldn't be an issue."
"Peter Quill, Drax, Rocket, and Groot," Peter said, pointing at his own friends. "My ship's just upstairs, and I think the mine's airlock is still intact so we won't have to lend you pressure suits to get onboard. But I make no promises about comfortable sleeping arrangements. Uhura can take Gamora's bed, but you two may have to bunk in the cargo hold."
Kirk grinned. "What, no offer to share? I've been told I'm fun to sleep with..."
Peter paused halfway through his turn toward the elevator shaft. Huh. Definitely less uptight than usual for a high-ranked security type. He raked his eyes up and down Kirk's body, and shrugged, because nobody ever got rich signaling real interest on the first offer. "I've seen better, man. But I'm open to persuasion if you want to try."
And he wasn't going to get a better exit line than that, so. Time to make like a tree and leaf. Peter activated his jet boots and zoomed upward to check on the airlock.
He hated not knowing where Gamora was, or whether she was alive -- there was no guarantee either she or this Lt. Gaila had arrived anywhere with a breathable atmosphere, after all -- but maybe the trip to find her wouldn't have to be as grim as he'd feared when the Tesseract flashed and tore a hole through space. After all, it had been a long while since he'd had company in his bed.
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End of Fic
---------------------------------------------
And now, onward to Gaila and Gamora! *writes busily*
(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-24 05:47 am (UTC)Now wondering what the green ladies are up to!
(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-24 06:51 am (UTC)As for Gamora and Gaila, they are being annoyingly difficult to maneuver into any situation that could reasonably described as tender. But I shall persevere!