#so like a regular-ass adult I s'pose!

[gentleoverdrive]

(198/?) I'll cut your armies down

It went fine. Aside from some brow-beating, the whole shebang of the meeting was over before long, even if I ended up feeling supremely stupid at the end. ---- Then again, feeling stupid means that I'll do whatever it takes to avoid feeling stupid again on that one very subject. Or die trying. ---- So, back to some more studying... well, after catching some shut-eye, that is. Meetings might not be much of a big deal, but they sure as fuck leave you feeling physically exhausted, don't they? Anyway, ta-ta! See ya' later, alligator! ♫

[ravager-life-for-me]

Aim to Fire - Chapter 1

Summary:

Peter Quill goes from Cargo to Ravager. And perhaps it isn't the dad we've always wanted, but the bullet holes we gather along the way.

It's Kid Peter, it's Yondad, it's grumpy Kraglin, and some odd bunch of Ravagers. Also, Peter getting kidnapped (again) and Yondu havin to go all badass and save him, I s'pose.

Chapter 1: How Come

“Quill! Come ‘ere,” said Yondu from the entryway. He’d had a harebrained idea and before it went whistling out of his skull and into nothing, he figured he’d try something different. Had to make him useful sooner or later, ‘fore the men decided he really would make a good meal.

Quill was slumped down in a pile of rubber tubing. They kept the stuff piled up in one of the supply closets, nothing fancy, the whole mess covered in an old tarp. Built it up like a regular nest by then. Quill kicked his foot out to get a better view, betraying his secret hiding place with an errant foot. There was a perfectly good bunk in his quarters, his own quarters, too, which was a damn privilege, but the Terran always squirreled away in the closet, like he enjoyed garbage. Regular junker.

“How’d you find me?” Peter asked.

“Boy, you think I don’t know my own ship?” Yondu snapped back. “Every nook? Every cranny? Yer a damn fool if you think I didn’t figure out where you was going. Now, I said come here. I wanna show you somethin’.”

“How come?” Peter asked from his nest. He pulled the orange foam earpiece down around his neck and clicked off his Walkman, giving a bit more of his attention. He wasn’t completely dismissive of the Centaurian. Not yet.

It was only a few weeks after he’d been picked up by the aliens—abducted was the word for it, that was for sure—but they didn’t go find Quill’s father. That had been the first thing Yondu said to him after he set him down in the bright spotlight, Quill quivering and crying, snapping his head around at the strange noises. The bright light from the heavens. Peter thought his dad had come for him, come for little Star Lord just like his mom promised. If he was a being a pure light, Peter was standing in it. There were some barks, some clicks, little flicks of a big blue hand and he blinked back, trying to focus on anything. Quill didn’t understand. He squinted despite his black eye, his cheeks puffy, his throat raw from screaming back at his mom. His mom. And then, just the thought of her made him well up more, his whole face screwing up into a mess of angry tears.

“Take my hand, Peter,” she had said, rasping for air. It had been right there. Right there! Peter looked down at his own hands, ignoring everything around him. He let them come into focus before he looked up again, expecting someone like him, but older. Instead, stepping into the bright circle of light was a stocky blue man in a long red coat. He loomed over Peter. Maybe it was just the fear pickling his brain, but he was a giant! A monster! That weren’t his father. It couldn’t be! And then the big blue guy jabbed a piece behind Quill’s ear, this little sticky bit of metal that bit into his neck, and suddenly they were all speaking the same language.

“—tell him we’re taking him to his father, all right?” said the blue man. “He don’t need to know. Neither do the others. Hey, there we go. Don’t go scratching that, neither. You’ll pull it out and scramble yer brains. You hear that, Boy?”

Quill heard. He heard and he looked up then, calm, quiet, his breath catching a little in his chest. It was like a whole new world was switched on. Peter looked between the blue guy with his crisp red eyes and the greasy man beside him. Two adults. Two strangers. Peter nodded between them, hiccupping once as he ran his forearm under his nose. The blue one stepped back and then Quill leapt after him, wild. He started biting at anything soft and vulnerable he could find. Chomped down on a blue hand and started pummeling anything, kicking anything. The other guy, the human-looking one with a long stringy Mohawk and a few blue bruises on his lip, a greenish looking welt stamped on his eyebrow, hooked Quill up under his armpits and pulled. Soon Peter was swinging his feet. There was no traction and the pull on his arm sockets started to hurt, so Peter went limp.

“You got some teeth, Boy,” said the captain as he wrung his hand out next to him. “Y’see that? He broke skin!”

“That he did, sir,” answered the other man. “Don’t know if it’s advised, but we could just take out his teeth.”

“I like yer thinking, Krags.” Then the Captain got down on Quill’s level, his mouth peeling back in a cocky, shark-tooth grin. “How’s that sound, huh? You want we should yank out yer teeth? Could give you a set of chompers good as mine.” Then he chomped his teeth, once, twice, to make his point. They were sharp and fangy and at least two were coated in metal. Real villainous teeth. Quill flinched back into the gritty hands of his captor, flailing just once before he settled again. The tall human-looking one was strong. Had a tight grip on him. It all seemed pointless then. The whole fight started to melt out of him as he realized this was it. “Thought not. ‘Sides, ain’t no way we can get you new Terran teeth now. We’re practically across the galaxy from that place. And we can’t go and harm the cargo, Kraglin.”

“Shame,” said the other man, but he let Quill go. Almost dropped him too. The man called Kraglin was tall. Like, actually tall, now that Peter got a good look. And he was young too. Not, well, not young. Not a kid. But there was patchy stubble on his smooth face—smooth as it could be with a bunch of lumps. That Kraglin guy liked to get into fights too, it seemed. He looked down with his big dark eyes and gave Peter a gentle push over towards a bunk set in the wall. “Got some blankets in there, too, if’n yer cold.”

“C-Cargo?” Peter managed to get out at last, stumbling a little.

“Don’t worry ‘bout that, Boy. Listen, get in that bunk, shut yer eyes, and we’ll be back on the Eclector ‘fore you can say ‘Who’s yer dad,’ alright?”

“Who is—”

But this time the Captain put his hand on Quill’s shoulder and nudged him on over to the bunk again. Right as he reached the mattress and his shin bumping a hard metal shelf, he felt something prick his neck again, right next to the little translator implant. It was almost like a mosquito sting and then he was out like a light.

*

Life changed pretty quick from there. Peter didn’t wear any colors, no flames, but he stayed on the ship and was always close by Yondu or Kraglin when there was anything to do. Not to learn, ‘course. They weren’t going to teach him jack. But he cleaned what they told him to, he kept his eye on everything, he picked up a few tricks for the nav systems when he was on the bridge. Sure, he slipped up a few times. Dropped parts. Got in someone’s way. Got a boot to his back more times than he could count. So he threw a few punches, got in some scraps. He could fight.  Maybe he couldn’t fight with aliens, specially some of the really big guys. They threatened to eat him seven times in a week! With their giant flapping mouths, Peter thought they really could eat him and he shook in his too-big-boots every time someone threatened him.

But sometimes he was tired. He was tired of all the aliens, the weird, the new. He just wanted to listen to his music, please, just a little bit, just to remember his mom’s voice and hold his hand up over his eyes, not crying or anything, but just thinking about it. That’s when he found the closet. Once the eight cycles were over when he was supposed to be scrubbing the bridge or following Tullk around the bulkhead or tighting screws on the bridge, Peter would find his closet and curl up on the rubber tubing. It was comfortable. It was dark. And, most important, it was quiet. Peter didn’t think anybody knew about it. He’d never once been interrupted when he hid there, going through his tape a few times before he crawled out and returned to his bunk near Yondu’s quarters.  

Since he was so tired and emotionally stretched, Peter let it slip out. “How come,” he had said, not thinking, just saying it like that. “How come?” It looked like it went over with Yondu about as well as he’d expected.

“How come?” Yondu asked. He turned, hands on his hips as he blocked out the light from the corridor. He didn’t threaten it, but the Yaka arrow was visible and Peter kept an eye out for the familiar red flash atop the Centaurian’s head. “A captain tells you to do something, you don’t say ‘how come.’ You say ‘Yes, sir.’ How come my ass. You a part of this crew or what?”

“No,” Peter shot back. He was already in up to his neck, why not just swim straight for the deep end already. “I’m not!”

“What’chu say?”

“I’m not. Yesterday you said I was cargo. You said—”

“Oh, hells with that ‘cargo’ shit,” Yondu answered, waving the sentiment away. He squinted into the dark room, his red eyes aglow. “We may a picked you up from Terra for a snack, but you ain’t cargo. Now, getcher ass up outta there ‘fore I say so again. I’m gonna teach you something.”

“Teach me? What?” Peter asked, squirming out of the garbage.

Once he was up, he grabbed the raggedy flannel that had been uniform since he’d been abducted. There was the old black sweater that smelled like crude oil that Kraglin shared with him, but that was about it. Yondu said, as soon as they had time, they’d outfit him with something proper. Until then, Peter was gonna have to make due.

“Teach me what?” Peter asked again as he trailed behind.

“Don’t ask again, son, ‘fore I change my mind,” Yondu growled over his shoulder, stomping on the grimy grated floor down towards the hangar.

Kraglin Obfonteri was lounging in a mostly empty hangar bag, minding his own with his feet propped up on a dead control panel. The thing was on the fritz after Scrote decided to pull out all the wires one drunken evening and make himself a wig, trying to prove a point. What that point was, neither he nor Scrote could rightly remember, but they figured they’d repair the thing before anybody got wise. Kraglin was propped on it then as said reminder. There was a cold metal bowl resting on his chest, propped there with one hand as he slurped up some blue fowl thing into his mouth. He was humming around each bite while one of his feet was twitching to an audio file buzzing from a thin earpiece pressed up on the side of his head, clipped into his earlobe by a coppery wire. He’d replicated the songs from the Terran’s mix tape. That little Walkman was Peter’s life and Kraglin came up with the idea of copying the music, just in case something dire were to occur.

“Wouldn’t want you to lose it nothing, hey, Pete?” Kraglin asked, talking nice and slow as he knelt down in front of Peter who had his knuckles sucked up to his mouth like his teeth might fall out. Two of them already had. Yondu thought his threat had come through by sheer force of will, but the Doc informed him that Terrans had a second row behind their first and it was just pushing them baby teeth out of the way. Nothing crazy like the rows of teeth a Scavarian might have, but still. “And, see?” said Kraglin. “It’s all good. How’s that?”

Peter had snatched his tape back with quick greedy hands. He was faster than Kraglin expected. That was a good sign. The kid was going to have to be quick out in space. Quill turned the tape over and over, peering at it up close and personal like, reading every spec of it, every scratch, every ding. He was practically reverent of the thing. Kraglin’d done good by ripping the audio files.  When Peter slid the tabe back into his Walkman and tentatively placed his headphones back around his head, he just about melted to the sound that came through, as clean and clear as it had been back on Terra.

“See?”

“Thanks, Kraglin,” Peter said breathlessly.

Kraglin almost ruffled Peter’s hair then. Almost. He’d never gotten particularly close to the cargo before. There’d been no need, of course. All of them who’d passed through were with them a couple of cycles. But Peter wasn’t…Kraglin didn’t think of it, that’s what. He knew Yondu didn’t need to be reminded, so he just took that weird little sentiment and clamped it down by chewing the inside of his cheek. He clapped his knees and stood up, whistling a pathetic Ravager tune as he went back to his duties.

Nobody had asked him to. Nobody said Yondu was coming by with his Terran, but Kraglin had put on the audio file and was just then tapping his toes gently to Blue Suede Shoes, like it was the most natural thing in the galaxy. Then his captain came up on him and barked out “Kraglin, my M-ship ready? I’m taking us down to Mondar for a bit.”

Kraglin didn’t skip a beat. He just slurped on his ration and asked, “How come?”

“How come?” Yondu repeated back.

Peter giggled.

“Oh, y’think that’s funny, then, huh? ‘How come?’ I hear someone ask me ‘How come’ one more time, I’m blowing all the airlocks outta this joint!”

Peter swallowed and put on a straight face. Yondu slapped Kraglin’s feet off the console and grabbed his rations, chucking them clear across the hangar where the metal dish clanged against an M-ship. It bounced off as harmless as a flea. More harmless, maybe, since fleas bite and that metal bowl didn’t do shit.

“Hey,” Kraglin whined, but was quick to acknowledge his captain’s anger. “I mean. Yes’ sir. Straight down to Mondar. You, uh, you lookin’ for something particular, or this just a scouting mission?”

“Target practice,” Yondu said, making sure to enunciate every letter with vicious, biting precision. “And get Umber and Zu up here, too. Could be good to have a few extra hands.”

“Extra eyes, I s’pect,” said Kraglin.

“Ain’t that why I asked for ‘em?” Yondu snapped.

“Yes, sir, Captain.”

Kraglin pumped his fist against his chest, two strikes, before he went off and made quick work of his start up procedures. He prepped the nearby M-ship. It’s bright hull gleamed in the low hangar lights and despite the dings, the fire burns, the grease, it was as beautiful as ever. Yondu stood center stage in the hangar as hisman got everything ready, waiting for the two octolops to scurry up from their shift in the engine room. Peter waited nearby, watching Kraglin work, admiring how Yondu made anyone step in line.

“What’d you mean about target practice?” Peter asked, pinching at the end of his sleeves and balling them into his fists before he wrapped himself up.

“Mean what I said,” Yondu answered. He nodded and ducked under his ship, helping with the fuel line. He touched the small of Kraglin’s back, nodded at him and flicked his head back. Kraglin didn’t smile, exactly, but there was a little crinkle in his eyes as he scurried on over.

“What’s he mean about target practice?” Peter asked, trailing after the lanky Xandarian. “Kraglin? Should I be worried?”

“Always, Pete,” Kraglin answered in his offhand way. He had skipped over to the other side of the hangar and rummaged around in one of the crates. He finally grabbed what he was looking for and dragged it out, shaking it a few times. “Here it is. Hey, take this.”

Kraglin presented a tough red leather jacket. There weren’t any flames on it, not on the sleeves, certainly not on his chest where a ranking officer might keep his. The kid hadn’t earned that yet. But it was the same tough leather that the other Ravagers wore. Same stitching. Same rusty red. Kraglin held it up again, nodded at the size of it, and tossed it over to Peter without ceremony. It was too big. It gapped on his shoulders, went down past his fingertips. His neck was swimming between the lapels. But Peter’s mom said he was always growing so fast. He could hear her say it then. He could feel her gently touch his face and say, “You’re getting so big, baby. Won’t be so little anymore, Star Lord.” Peter worked a lump out of his throat. He wished, for a moment, that he could show her his cool new jacket and tell her about all the crazy weird things he’d seen, but the thought just burned in him and made his stomach hurt. Yondu was already in a mood, neither dark nor joyful, and Peter wasn’t sure what would tip him one way or the other, so he decided to swallow his feelings and stand aside.

The octolops, Umber and Zu, were twins that they’d picked up from a raid out near Haderfast. They were bipedal, sure, two legs, two arms, thin skin that was dark and streaked with red lines. Peter didn’t know if the lines were just how octolops looked or if they were tattoos like Kraglin had all over his chest. But they had eight eyes that blinked up and down their foreheads and a beak that looked like it could tear out Peter’s throat without trying. Neither of them had threatened him. Not to eat him, not to fight him, nothing. They were quiet, but Peter still took a cautionary step back, putting some distance and a well-placed Yondu between him and the aliens. Yondu may be blue and a mean sonuvabitch, but he had just the two eyes.

“How you feel about going off ship to keep a lookout while I teach our youngest here how to shoot a blaster?” Yondu asked the octolops twins. He asked as a kindness, really. They were quick to pound their fist to their chests in a two-thump salute before they ran over to help Kraglin under the heavy latch of the grav-line couplers. “See that? That’s how you do it, Boy.”

“They didn’t say ‘sir’ or ‘captain’ either,” Peter mumbled. Yondu looked down at him, his face in profile, his big eye peeking from a scarred cheek. Peter quickly added, ‘Can’t be translated, though, I guess.”

“Yer just not listening,” Yondu said. “That little translator chip we put in you doesn’t pick up their tongue. Not well. But it’s like Centaurian.” Yondu clicked something like a staccato command, three groups of noises. Three words, maybe. Umber and Zu turned back and waved. “Close enough. Accent gets in the way sometimes. But maybe they don’t talk to you cause you’re a whiny one-language speaking shit. You think of that?”

“No,” Peter mumbled. He’d been excited to get off the ship and learn something new, but now it seemed that the captain just wanted to verbally abuse him all day. He’d get plenty of that just doing his duties onboard. He wished he was back in his supply closet again.

“Don’t mope, son,” said Yondu, and clapped him on his shoulder. Usually it hurt. Yondu wasn’t gentle, he didn’t hold back as far as Peter could tell, but the red leather jacket helped take some of the blow and Peter only staggered a little. “You boys ready to go shootin’?”

“Yes, sir!” Kraglin answered, and the two octolops clicked something, giving Yondu another two-thump salute.

“Hey,” Yondu said, and shook Peter, patting him again before he led him over to the M-ship. “You ready?”

“Yes,” Peter answered, felt a squeeze near the base of his neck, and added, “Yes, sir.”

But as they climbed the plank up into the M-ship, Peter started to feel some of the thrill return. He hadn’t been off ship since they first took him from home. There were plenty of different species on the Eclector. Ravagers picked up anybody that was good at thieving and followed The Code, as Yondu put it. But Peter had never seen another planet besides Earth. He smiled, despite himself, and felt some excitement build in his chest as Yondu took his captain’s seat in the cockpit, Kraglin in his copilot and the twins strapped down behind him. Peter looked around, wondering where to go. He almost went and sat on the shelf where Yondu made him sleep when he was first abducted before Yondu snapped his fingers and told Peter to come over. He grabbed the boy off the ground without any effort and sat him there on his lap. Told him to hold tight as he punched in the start-up sequence and took the M-ship out into space.