legionworld | Trouble Brewing

Entry tags:

Trouble Brewing

Who| Closed to Rocket and Rich
What| Rocket's up and awake. In a strange medbay. This will end well.
Where| Medbay
When| N/A
Warnings/Notes| N/A

Rocket had something of a history with hospital settings. Absolutely none of it could be considered something to look back fondly on. Which was why, if you knew about why Rocket had all sorts of cybernetics embedded in him, his reaction was, if not entirely reasonable, understandable.

If you'd just been taking care of the latest newcomer to have a bad encounter with a planet full of poison gas, though, it looked a lot less understandable and more like there was now a complete maniac awake in the medbay.

Rocket had scrambled atop his bed's pillow, fur standing on end as he looked around wildly and tried to go for a gun that was (unfortunately for him, fortunately for everything else) not there. "Where in the-" He bit off his curse with a guttural noise of frustration, looking around with narrowed eyes. "First one to tell me where my guns and clothes are only gets shot in the shins!" he yelled, doing his damnedest to sound authoritative. "I ain't sticking around for whatever you've got planned, so we can do this the easy way, or the 'surgical bay blows up in your face' way! Which'll it be?!"

Not the most diplomatic way to announce he was awake and ready to be briefed on what had happened, but it was an excellent way to let people know exactly how foul of a mood he was in.

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Rich heard yelling.

More to the point, Rich heard yelling in a very, very familiar voice. Fortunately, he was now at the point that he was up and about, walking around with the help of the orderlies to try to rebuild his strength again, so he rushed over to the room the yelling was coming from, shoving past the nurses and orderlies starting to crowd in.

Unlike the others, he was clearly also a patient, wearing similar patient scrubs instead of a medical uniform. An IV cuff on his arm, and a nasal cannula on his face led to a hovering little bit of equipment with IV bags and a little oxygen generator device. He also looked sick, thanks to the pale skin and messy hair.

"Rocket?" Rich said, eyes wide and surprised. "You know, on Earth, we have this ancient Earth saying for situations like this. 'Chill the fuck out.'"

Rocket jerked his head in Rich's direction as soon as he heard his name, his ears flattening. It was some guy who looked like a patient speaking, and he wasn't entirely sure if that better or worse than one of the staff knowing his name. "Do I know you, buddy?" he snapped, his posture still stiff and his fur still bristled.

"And oh, forgive me if I'm not taking waking up in some friggin' medbay without my stuff well! It's just one of those things that makes a guy just a little bit suspicious!"

On the plus side, he certainly didn't feel like he'd been opened up and worked on again. He didn't feel good, but it was more of a lingering headache and wooziness than the old, familiar soreness and pain.

"I'm gonna ask one more time! Easy way, or explosion way?"

"You don't recognize me?" Maybe this was a time thing. Maybe Rocket was from before they met. Or maybe he was from an similar alternate dimension, like Gwen, where some stuff was the same, but some things were different. "Okay, table that. We might be from alternate timelines or different time periods."

Rich gestured for the nurses and orderlies to back off.

"Out." One of them started to protest. "Out. Or he'll take off your legs at the knees. Trust me on that."

They backed off and Rich pressed the button to seal the door so they didn't come back in.

"They took your stuff because it was contaminated with radioactive and chemical crap that'd make you sick enough to make the Skrull flu look like a head cold. They're probably having it cleaned," he explained. "So simmer down. This is a normal med-hospital with normal medicos, that treats normal people of various species. You almost died. You were brought here to keep that at 'almost.'"

The talk of alternate timelines or different time periods earned a scowl-it sounded stupid, but then again, the galaxy was full of a lot of crazy, stupid, hard to believe things. He'd lived through some of those things, after all.

Getting the staff out, though, was a point in the other guy's favor. A minor one. Rocket's ears unflattened a little as the door was sealed, but he stayed atop the pillow, eyeballing Rich suspiciously. "Yeah? And how it'd get contaminated? Last thing I remember, I-"

That gave him pause. The last normal thing he remembered was griping at Groot's (lack of) dancing ability while pot-bound. But the actual last thing he remembered, now that the adrenaline rush was dying down and he was actively trying to remember things, was suddenly finding himself somewhere cold, dark, and very hazardous to his health.

Rocket groaned, running his hands over his face in exasperation. "Do I even want to know all the details, or does this just fall under the whole 'cosmic crap screwing up my day, again' header?"

"It's a bit of both," Rich said wryly. "Definitely cosmic crap screwing up your day, but you're also gonna want to know the details."

Rich held up both hands placatingly, a show of 'see, no weapons' and took a seat at the end of Rocket's bed, wincing and holding a hand to his chest in a way that made it clear he wasn't really feeling well enough to have this whole conversation standing up.

"You were randomly zapped to a dark, freezing cold planet with an unbreathable atmo. Do you remember that? It happened to me, too. It's happened to a couple people. There's a whole thing going on with it and this Medbay takes in the people rescued from it."

Rocket kept eyeballing Rich as he spoke, but he nodded. "Yeah. Couple of seconds of 'what the crap,', then I was out." He snorted a bit as he looked around the room again. "That big of a problem to have a whole medbay for it, huh?"

That plus confirmation of 'cosmic crap' wasn't real heartening. Rocket looked back to Rich, frowning, and signed. "Okay, zapped in, didn't go well, brought here. Annoying-" and for a few minutes there, terrifying- "-But makes sense. What else?"

Rich drew in a deep breath, partly because explaining this was going to be a bitch and he was resisting the urge to sigh, partly because talking just generally required a lot of air.

"Okay, so all of this is huge and it's a lot to say. And I had a guy put his arm through my lung the other day. Talking ain't easy. So how about we make a deal: I explain all of it in one go. And even though it's all bonkers and you're going to want to interrupt and ask questions, you keep a lid on it and don't interrupt me until I'm done. Sound like a fair deal?"

He was already paler from having to talk this much.

The mention of someone's arm going through a lung made Rocket glance toward Rich's chest for a moment, but after a few seconds' consideration, he nodded.

"Sounds fair," he agreed. "Tell me."

It was a way to get it over with all at once. Keep all the urge to bang his head against something (or someone else's head against something) contained to one single conversation.

"Right now, you're in another universe. There's a galactic government here called the United Planets. They've got their problems but they're about as good as it gets as far as interplanetary governments go. They had a team of superheroes that fought cosmic threats, protected the galaxy, and kept the corruption in line. The Legion of Superheroes. Pretty decent people. Whenever somebody's getting their sentient rights trampled on, they're all over it like Traversian parasites on a badoon, ruining somebody's day. A little over a year ago, most of that team disappeared in a freak accident while fighting a sentient sun-thing."

That explained the Legion well enough, right?

"Apparently, some kind of big bad cosmic mojo attached itself to this universe. This...dimension-eating eldritch evil thing called Chronoblivion. It consumes whole timelines and if it takes out this one, we might wind up waving bye bye to our home universes, too, because it'll be impossible to stop it once it gets too strong."

And that explained Chronoblivion.

"Because the leftover Legionnaires couldn't take this thing on their own, this other cosmic being native to the universe, the Time Trapper -- he's been yanking random schlags like us from other universes and changing us to have superpowers or mucking with the ones we have to make it so the Legion can have some help. The Legion's last battle together was on that world we showed up on. There's this dimensional rift there, so the Time Trapper yanks people through and dumps them on that world. The Legion's got an outpost set up in orbit, so they can threshold down to rescue anyone that gets yanked through."

And that explained the stupid planet.

"We saw the Time Trapper fess up to it all and one of the Legionnaires confirmed with science I really don't understand that there's definitely some really nasty googly moogly attached to this universe. A lot of us displacees have hooked up with their outfit to try to fight Chronoblivion and keep the United Planets from falling apart. When it's over, the Legionnaires want to try to get us home, but they can't do that while the Time Trapper is screwing with things and he's not going to stop screwing with things until the big bad end-of-existence threat is gone."

As for where they were...

"Right now we're in the Medbay on Legion World, the Legion's base of operations, a big ol' moon-sized ship that orbits Earth. The Medbay here's for when Legionnaires get injured while heroing, but they also help people that pop up on the planet to recuperate. Now that you're here, you can either help out, or they'll put you up as a guest on Legion World and you don't have to do squat, or you're free to go. The UP's a big place and us dimensional guests get the same legal protections as UP citizens, so we're all free to wander around."

And that was probably everything.

"That's the most important stuff. You may commence with the freaking out and hating the cosmic bullshit-ness of it all now."

Edited 2016-06-03 03:16 (UTC)

True to his word, Rocket kept his mouth shut through the whole thing. It took effort-at one point he clamped his own muzzle shut, his ears laid back, as he let out an exasperated huff, and there were moments where a groan got through-but he didn't actually say anything.

After Rich finished, there was a pregnant pause as Rocket got his thoughts together.

And then promptly began punching his pillow. It was a softer option than punching the bedframe or the wall.

"I JUST GOT DONE WITH COSMIC BULLSHIT!"

Claws got involved at some point in the punching, and little puffs of stuffing began to drift through the air.

"Join the club," said Rich. "Before this I was facing an invasion of other eldritch horrors in my home universe. Then before that it was the Shi'ar. Then before that it was Galactus, then before that it was the Phalanx, and before that it was Annihilus and the war..."

He'd dealt with enough cosmic bullshit to last him a lifetime.

"Incidentally, if you've already been dealing with cosmic crap but don't recognize me, we might be from similar-but-different timelines. Because back home, I'm friends with my version of Rocket Raccoon."

"Infinity stone bull," Rocket said wearily in response to Rich's listing off of the various things he'd dealt with. The last comment, though, made his ears splay to the side. "Quill said I'm a raccoon, you're calling me 'Rocket Raccoon', what's with the raccoon thing? I've never seen one. I've never even heard of 'em, besides from you and Quill. Is this some kinda multi-universal screwing with me thing?"

Rich just nodded sagely at 'infinity stone bull.' He'd gotten tangled in that more than once during his superheroing career.

"It's a species of non-sentient mammal from Earth. Our Rocket was genetically engineered and messed with by these jerk scientists to be sentient," he said the words slowly, understanding it might be a delicate subject. "There's a whole group of animal people they did that to. General consensus is they took the animals they did that to from Earth."

Edited 2016-06-03 04:10 (UTC)

"Like I told Quill," Rocket grumbled, flattening his ears back, "Ain't no thing like me, 'cept me." He didn't comment on the origins, though-that hit too close to home. But a bunch of other people like him? That was something he could scoff at.

"Anyway," he said, trying to keep the conversation from going further into the topic, "Who're you? You might know some version of me, but I got no clue who you are."

Touchy subject. Rich made a mental note to leave off the 'raccoon' thing in the future.

"Did the Guardians of the Galaxy already form where you're from? 'Cause if it did, and you don't know me, that definitely means different universes instead of being from different points in the time stream."

He just wanted to make extra sure because time travel was not something he wanted to be dealing with.

That got a small chuckle out of Rocket. "Ronan the Destroyer's the one who called us that. Trying to do some high and mighty speech before killing everybody." He bared his teeth in a grin. "Quill ran with it. It stuck after that; I think we kinda earned it."

As far as group names went, 'Guardians of the Galaxy' wasn't half bad. No complaints from Rocket's end of things.

"...okay, you are definitely from a similar-but-different timeline. Ronan's...well, he's Ronan, but he's an ally to me and the Guardians back home. A kind of crazy, destruction-happy one, but still an ally."

Definitely different timelines then.

"My name's Rich Rider, aka Nova Prime. I'm an Earther like Quill. Back home, me and the Guardians are allies, and Peter's one of my best friends. Whenever the big cosmic to-dos happen, we're usually all on the front lines together."

His mouth quirked into a little grin.

"And usually afterwards we find the nearest alien dive bar and try to get drunk enough to forget what happened."

Edited 2016-06-03 04:36 (UTC)

Rocket snorted. "Destruction-happy's putting it lightly. Try 'genocidal maniac', at least where I'm from."

Rocket wasn't sure he'd want to meet an alternate Ronan, even if he was less murder-happy. One Ronan seemed like more than enough for a lifetime.

The mention of Rich's heroing name got him an amused look. "Nova Prime, huh? Yeah, you're definitely different from the one I've met." Not that he could complain too much about the Nova Corps, at this point. They might be too fond of enforcing rules and regulations, but the clean record deal was nice.

"...And that sounds like Quill, yeah. I just hope yours is better at tactics."

'Distraction by way of dancing' might have worked, but it was still kind of inherently stupid.

Rich raised an eyebrow.

"Tactics are kinda his thing, actually. He was my right hand man and head tactical advisor during the war. Could've led the damn thing himself if he hadn't had so many hangups."

The idea of a Quill that sucked at tactics was amusing. After all the times Quill chastised him for not being able to find his ass if he had a map, treating certain things Rich hadn't picked up on as painfully obvious, an incompetent Quill was a funny idea.

"Now when he was younger I heard he was an idiot. Even said it of himself. Rash, impulsive, hotheaded..."

"That's actually kinda terrifying," Rocket said, sounding amused. "Just a bit." Sure, Quill could come up with ideas on the fly, sure he was crazy enough to try plans that were pretty much idiotic, but he never struck Quill as a tactics type. "But yeah, that? That sounds like Quill. We follow his lead, yeah, but sometimes? Complete friggin' idiot."

"How old is he? I wonder if it's some weird timeline...thing. He's gotta be at least forty-something in my universe. God knows I've never been able to get his real age out of him."

There were a lot of things he'd never been able to get out of him.

"He's been at this whole cosmic bullshit thing for ages."

"Eh, I ain't great at guessing ages," Rocket said with a shrug, finally opting to sit down on the (ruined) pillow. "Adult? Ish? Technically?"

Maybe very, very technically, given Quill being...Quill.

"The one I know's new at it. Kinda kicked off the whole infinity stone mess by finding the stupid thing." He paused, then added, "And if any more of that particular cosmic bull shows up here, I officially opt out of the 'almost killed by it' group. Once was enough."

Rich laughed. Hard.

"You're stuck with a young Quill. Oh, you poor bastards." Rich shook his head and laughed even harder. "Blue blazes, the universe is a funny little place sometimes. A universe with a young, dumb Quill leading the Guardians."

That was pretty hilarious.

Another thought occurred to him, though, and his face fell a little. His expression grew furtive, hesitant.

"You said I was a different Nova Prime than the one you knew. Is the Nova Corps still standing in your universe?"

Edited 2016-06-04 02:34 (UTC)

Rocket's ears twitched a little at the change of expression, and he nodded. "They lost a bunch of guys, fighting Ronan and his goons. But they're still standing." He chuckled a little. "Even cleared all of our records up, as a 'thanks for not letting the planet get destroyed' gift."

He scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Still not sure I really get their rules on theft, though..."

Rich held his hand to his chest again, and it wasn't just the messed up lung thing this time. His heart was doing a little staccato in his chest.

"And Xandar? It's still there?"

It was a hell of a question. Asking if a whole planet was still there. But it was one he had to ask. Because of the possibility that it wasn't.

"The civilian population's okay?"

"Little scorched, in spots, but still standing. Civilian population's fine-that was Ronan's deal, he wanted to 'judge'-" - cue airquotes- "-the place and destroy it with the stone. Didn't go like he expected it to."

Rich closed his eyes tight for a moment and he wasn't sure what it was he felt. It wasn't his universe. Hell, maybe he didn't even exist in it. Maybe he did, but would never become Nova -- it was a bunch of freak circumstances that'd made him a human rocket and sent him out into the stars.

But just knowing that somewhere, the Corps didn't fall, that Xandar didn't fall...

"A whole Corps. I'll be damned."

It felt like one of those things that would be the same in every universe. A single horrible reality that was inevitable. But maybe it wasn't. Maybe in one universe they were a little battered and beat up, but still standing.

"There's a kid named Sam that's here. He's from my universe. He inherited his Nova powers from his father, who was a Centurion. Black ops from the sound of it -- it's the only way I wouldn't have met him. We had to have been the only two human Nova Centurions in the entire Corps."

He was rambling. God, he probably sounded like an idiot.

"It's just us left. Me and Sam. Because he got his powers from his father. He's just a kid, he's never been up to Nova Command or anything like that. Of the active Centurions, I was the only one that survived the fall of Xandar. That's why I'm Nova Prime. It's the highest rank possible -- and you, uh, you get a automatic promotion when you're the only Nova left."

He figured he might as well explain. It'd come up eventually.

Rocket stayed quiet for a few moments, letting Rich talk-clearly, bringing up the Nova Corps struck a nerve, and-well, the guy had cleared out the staff and filled him in on the insanity, might as well let him get out what was on his mind.

He understood that sometimes, you had to ramble things out. ...That didn't always stop him from snarking at it, but the need was understandable.

"Not gonna ask what happened," he said after a moment. Not digging was also something he understood. "I dunno how many there are, exactly, but yeah, where I'm from, still plenty of Corps guys running around. Maybe you'll meet some more, just from the wrong universe."

There that was...helpful, right? This was awkward; it wasn't usually the type of conversation Rocket got into. Losing a whole planet, though-that made the fur on the back of his neck stand up a little. There but for the grace of a purple space rock went his universe.

Rich had needed to say it because Rocket needed to know. Sam and him talked about it often enough, being the last. A tiny little corps of two.

So that was the right thing to say, that Rocket wasn't going to ask what happened.

See, he got it.

It made Rich smile a little smile.

"You may not be the Rocket I know -- and who knows where Rich Rider is in that whole mess of things in your universe, if he's there at all." He shrugged. "But we're both here, now, and you're a lot like my Rocket. Whatever you decide, whether it's helping the Legion, or staying as a guest in Legion World, or wandering off on your own -- you being like him, that's enough. You ever need anything, I'm around."

The little smile got bigger.

"Honestly, doesn't matter what universe any of you knuckleheads are from. You, Peter, Drax, Gamora, Groot, all'a you lunatics. It's pretty much hardwired in my brain to cover your asses anymore. God help me."

"The other four show up, they're gonna need ass-covering," Rocket said, sounding amused. "But yeah, speaking of helping the Legion-guess that's what I'm gonna end up doing."

He snorted a little, shaking his head. "Not 'cause of any big, speechy, heroic reason, but because I kinda want a universe to get back to, eventually, and everything being dead'll kind of get in the way of that. And it'll get taken of a lot quicker if I'm shooting things than if I'm playing weird new universe tourist."

Rich laughed.

"Yeah, not gonna lie, but if any of you was gonna show up, I'm kinda glad it's you. Usually my Rocket's the least trouble and best at taking care of himself. The others..."

Rich just let out a breath in a little inarticulate noise. It was the kind of noise only a broken man made. That was what the others had done to him.

"You're gonna have to dial down the shooting people a little, though. They got, like, laws. The Legion's technically a law enforcement body. We'll probably be able to get as trigger-happy as we want on the giant, world-ending, cosmic horror stuff, but normal criminals, they gotta come in all alive. And un-maimed. No bullet holes."

Edited 2016-06-04 04:03 (UTC)

That got a snort out of Rocket-not one of amusement, but the possibly familiar 'friggin laws' sort of snort-scoff. "None? Not even a single one? Because the aim's trickier, but I can bring in people alive, with a small number of holes. They might be missing some of their blood and less than vital bits, but alive!"

Missing a few non-vital parts didn't really count as maimed, right?"

"Law enforcement, sucking the joy out of everything," he muttered.

"Sentient rights, though. That's the thing -- ain't nobody gets holes in 'em. Nobody. Can't do it to the criminals, but the law's 'nobody can do that to anybody.' Back home's the wild west compared to this place. Lawless. You had the Corps, right? But Corps has its limits, has the worlds that don't recognize their authority. Imagine if the Nova Corps had a genuinely galactic spread. All those rules, but the Kree, the Skrulls, the Badoon, every little lawless backwater world -- they had to obey the same laws."

It was different here.

"It's not perfect. Of course not. There's still a crime planet. There's still corruption. But otherwise, they've got an actual functional government, with an actual functional system of checks and balances. Decent enough court system. Somewhat competent police. And a hyper-competent team of galactic defenders that will go after even government regimes if they're doing something that violates sentient rights. Damndest thing I've ever seen, but you actually don't have to kneecap people here that much. And then the laws that are like 'hey don't kneecap people' actually protect innocent people, too, the way they're supposed to."

Rocket considered this for a moment. "This place is gonna be a pain in the ass to get used to," he finally grumbled, folding his arms. He was pretty fond of the wild west approach. It was loud and violent and got results.

"What about zapping them? That worked pretty well before. Zap, goes down, no holes. ...if your me's anything like me, weapons-wise, you know guns are what I do."

Rich laughed.

"Zapping's generally accepted as okay. You can zap to your heart's content."

Really, that was probably the best he was going to negotiate him down to.

"Okay. Zapping...ugh, I'm gonna need to work on all of 'em, that'll be a pain." Rocket scratched at an ear as he thought, going over his mental catalogue of a gear. "And I'm gonna need..." He paused. "Even getting stuff to work on my guns is gonna be weird. Watch as I need a part that doesn't exist in this universe."

Pessimistic? Maybe. But it seemed like it'd continue the cosmic bullshit trend.

"Don't worry, there's like this supergenius, green guy here who -- well, you're probably gonna hate each other -- but he's like a living computer. He'll be able to get you anything you need."

He chuckled a little, thinking about Rocket and Brainy meeting. That was going to be...interesting. The chuckle quickly turned into a little cough. Then it turned into a bigger, hacking cough with a little wheezing.

"Mmm," Rich hummed with a wince, holding his side, when he finally caught his breath. "Think that's my cue to get back to bed. Like I said before: arm. Through a lung. Not fun."

He pointed at Rocket with an accusatory finger.

"Now, listen, the medicos here are like the decent kind that went into medicine to help people, blah blah blah. Be nice. They just wanna get you fixed up and on your feet. They'll also send in some Legion staff to talk to you about the stuff I explained and joining the team. They'll give you more info. There's, like, health benefits and everything. A stipend. It's cushy."

He stood up, gingerly. Shakily. Holding his arm protectively over his chest.

"I'll be right nearby, anyhow, out on the main Medbay floor. If you need anything or someone's doing a piss poor job of explaining something, just yell. I'll hear it."

Edited (spelling d'oh) 2016-06-04 07:21 (UTC)

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Trouble Brewing

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