WebNovels

Chapter 4 - Mass-murderers

Tenno POV:

Rhino stood up as I pulled his arms apart, ripping the Shackles into pieces and letting them fall to the floor with a loud sound.

The noise made Yondu flinch while Rocket jumped up screaming in surprise.

"WHAT THE HELL, I THOUGHT THAT THING WAS DEAD?!" He yelled.

My fist flew against one of the crews head, flinging him against the wall, not moving anymore. 

Yondo looked confused and happy at the same time and smirked at me.

He whistled and his arrow pierced the heart of the last guard, then catching it while analyzing me. 

I walked towards the door of the cell that closed itself again, and punched it open.

It flew across the hall, into the wall and crashed to the floor, On the other side stood another guard looking baffled.

He immediately shot his weapon at me but It just deflected from my Armor before I started walking towards him, punching him into the next wall.

"That's some strong Armor you got there" Rocket said surprised as he stepped out of the Cell. "You selling It?"

I tapped the armor on my chest twice, activating the Voice Interface.

"You are the Captain, you know how to fly this ship" I said as I looked at Yondo.

On the way out, I saw as Rocket's eyes fell to the floor. Two pistols lay beside the sprawled corpses of Ravagers, still warm. His mouth curled into a sharp grin as he scooped them up and tossed me one.

"This will be fun, you go first, not everyone here is bulletproof"

Rocket said and I just nodded and reached behind my bag with the weapon, klipping it against it. 

Observer POV:

In the captain's quarters, Taserface stirred at the blaring voice of Jay and the Americans echoing through the PA system. His eyes flicked to the nightstand, the drawer gaped open. The fin was gone.

He lunged for the comm, spitting the words.

"He's got it!"

Across the ship, the hoard of Ravagers froze as his voice erupted over the intercom.

"HE'S GOT IT! YONDU'S GOT THE DAMN FIN!"

Retch's head jerked up. "GO!"

The Eclector came alive in chaos. In corridors, cargo bays, and galleys, Ravagers dropped whatever they held, snatching up rifles and shotguns, boots pounding toward the cell block.

The first glimpse of Yondu, Rocket and Groot came around the corner in a slow, measured stride, while Rhino was in the front, pulling all the attention on his shiny silver body. Yondu's new fin gleamed in the low light, Rocket's pistol spun idly in his hands, and Groot perched high, eyes narrowed.

At the far end, Brahl led a surge of Ravagers into the hallway.

Yondu's whistle sliced the air. The arrow blurred, a red streak whipping back and forth, weaving between bodies before they could even lift their weapons. One by one, they dropped where they stood.

Rhino suddenly dashed forward crashing into the other side of the group, toppling them over, broken bones and fractured organs from the collision. He punched the last one in the head and his neck flung pack while staying in an unnatural angle, after which his body fell town like a tree trunk. 

"I really need that Armor" Rocket said while scooping up a second Pistol from the downed Ravangers as he walked by them. 

Rhino didn't slow down, his shoulder slamming through the next door.

The docking bay spread out before them the largest space on the Eclector, Catwalks crisscrossed the cavern, M-ships hung in place like hunting birds looking at them like prey.

Above, a Scurrilous Ravager's shout rang out. "Down there!"

From an extreme vantage, the arrow's flight was chaos incarnate, cutting through Ravagers near and far, bodies falling around them like flies.

Groot's gaze caught movement above, Retch, peering down with sudden panic before bolting. Groot's branches unfurled, slinging him upward in pursuit.

The tiny Woodlord howled, a raw, furious sound, his limbs stretching across the gap. Retch stumbled into a sprint, but Groot's branches coiled around his legs, yanking them from under him, his head bouncing as it hit the floor face first. 

Groot's war cry shook the catwalk as he hurled the man over the edge, sending him screaming down the decks.

By the time Groot landed back on Rocket's shoulder, Retch's fall had already carried him past them, disappearing into the darkness below. The three of them pressed on.

Rhino, now armed with a heavy rifle he picked up along the way, was in front downing Ravangers, as if with Aimbot, left and right, giving headshots on every single Target, while moving forward continuously. 

Finally they came to the room they aimed for, Rhino kicked the door down and after checking the room, gave the hand sign for clear and shouldered his rifle again, after which the others strolled in looking around. 

The security dock was a nerve center of screens, dozens of monitors wrapping the walls, each flickering with feeds of armed Ravagers converging from every direction.

Rhino just crossed his arms, looking at Yondo. 

Yondu whistled again, eyes flicking to a screen. On one monitor, the arrow ripped through a wall, impaling two Ravagers mid-stride. It zipped away.

Down a darkened hall, the red light of the arrow blinked overhead before smashing every lamp into darkness. In the faint glow that remained, shadows collapsed one by one as the arrow punched through them all.

In the spaceport, the streak of red severed the chains holding a ship in place. Metal screamed as the vessel came down, crushing the screaming crowd beneath.

At the bar, Gef sat mid-drink, beer halfway to his mouth, when the arrow shredded his mug. His eyes barely had time to widen before it doubled back, spearing through his chest and flinging him from the stool.

Back in the security dock, Rocket's sharp eyes tracked the monitors, hands moving to the rhythm of the song still playing in the background, as he started shooting through the walls, aiming at the ones nearest to them. His shots punched through bulkheads and blind corners, each finding its target.

Rhino looked at Rocket, nodded pleased, went to a data pad and started researching something. 

Overhead, the arrow and blaster fire danced, tearing the Ravagers numbers apart.

Then Yondu froze, his gaze fixed on one screen.

Taserface. Marching down the hall, gun in hand, eyes locked forward.

Yondu's whistle came sharp, the air around the arrow catching flame through the friction of rapid acceleration .

Taserface turned the corner, the arrow coming at him like a burning comet, flames rippling along its length.

He ducked aside, laughing as it roared past. His grin faltered when the arrow banked, burying itself in a nearby tank. The explosion swallowing him in fire.

The Eclector's hull burst outward in a chain reaction, each blast feeding the next, fire blooming before being snuffed out by the vacuum.

Rocket stared at the monitors, ears flat, watching the ship tear itself apart.

"You maniac," he muttered. "The whole ship's gonna blow."

"Not the whole ship," Yondu said quietly.

The arrow zipped back into his palm, and without looking at the burning wreckage on the monitors, he walked out of the observatory.

Running through the hallways and downing everyone they came across, they came just in Time to the their destination, as the Eclector shook itself apart. Metal screamed, bulkheads crumpled, and the air seemed to tear as one last latch gave way under Kraglin's hands just as they came on the bridge.

With a deep, resonant thunk, the entire rear upper quadrant of the ship wrenched free. Rockets ignited, hurling the smaller craft away as the doomed Eclector blossomed into a chain of explosions behind them.

On the flight deck, Rocket and Groot clung to their seats, wide-eyed at the sight of the drifting wreckage, while Rhino casually sat down, opening a data pad, restarting his research. 

The detached section shuddered, then surged forward, cutting a line of escape through the debris field.

Kraglin's fingers danced across controls, lining up a jump point ahead. Beside him, Rocket was already working the navigation panel, Rhino stopping his research to analyze the ongoing procedure.

"Where to, Cap'n?" Kraglin called typing away on a data pad.

Rocket's claws tapped in a destination. "Ego."

"No, boy!" Yondu barked.

The protest was lost to the roar as the Ship hit the jump point. Space folded, reality rippled, and with a deep bloop, the ship vanished.

It reappeared in the bright blue sky of a desert world, directly over two Kronans locked in brutal hand-to-hand combat. The giants didn't so much as pause before the Ship vanished again.

The interior was chaos. The ship's frame groaned under the strain, every surface vibrating. Rocket, Yondu, Kraglin, and Groot gripped whatever they could as the windows became a kaleidoscope of alien landscapes, Rhino seemingly passed out, sat on his chair, body dangling in his harness.

Their bodies warped with each shift, skin pulling, cheeks flapping, eyes stretching in directions nature had never intended.

"It ain't healthy for a mammalian body to hop over fifty jumps at a time," Yondu warned, voice distorted by the violent shaking.

"I know that!" Rocket shot back, fur standing on end.

"We're about to do seven hundred."

Rocket's ears flattened, his expression somewhere between awe and regret.

The ship blooped into a Pepto-pink void, tearing straight through a colossal amoeba that shuddered around them. Goo splattered against the hull before the next jump point swallowed them.

The scream that rose from the flight deck was half terror, half exhilaration, all four of them howling as their faces twisted through a grotesque parade of shapes, every jump wrenching their bodies anew.

For an instant, they burst into the skies above a crimson planet. A molten yellow sun crawled across the horizon, and before the mind could even adjust, they were gone again.

(AN: A few hours Later…)

The galaxy unfolded like a living map. Filaments of the Universal Neural Teleportation Network shimmered across the void. Along one of them, a single blinking light, the Quadrant, popped in and out of existence, hurtling forward through hundreds of jumps.

The tiny light flickered across the universe's surface, and somewhere inside that ship Rocket, Yondu, and Kraglin were still screaming their lungs raw, distorted to unimaginable forms of their former self's, Rhino, also distorted beyond recognition sat there, seemingly still out cold, a fact of which the others were incredibly envious.

An asteroid field spiraled past. Three towering Watchers turned their heads in unison as the Quadrant streaked by, vanishing in a flash. Slowly, they looked back toward the lone human in a bulky spacesuit and fishbowl helmet.

"Anyway," Stan Lee said, gesturing with gloved hands, "before I was so rudely interrupted, that time I was a World War II vet…"

The Quadrant popped back into normal space. Ego's planet loomed ahead, an impossible marble of color and light, suspended in the blackness of space.

Inside the cockpit, gravity betrayed them. Yondu, Kraglin, Rocket, and Groot tumbled from their seats, groaning and clutching their stomachs, Rhino still not moving. Groot clung to Rocket's shoulder like a dizzy child.

Yondu's voice cut through the heaving. "What the hell you doing, boy?!"

Rocket wiped at his mouth, already pulling himself upright. "I could tell by the way you talked about him, this Ego's bad news. We're here to save Quill."

Yondu's expression hardened. "For what? Honor? Love?" The last word came out like it tasted sour.

"No!" Rocket snapped. "I don't care about those things! I want to save Quill so I can prove I'm better than him! So I can lord this over him forever!"

Yondu's laugh was low, bitter, and humorless. He slid into the pilot's seat, flipping switches with calloused fingers. Rocket's hackles rose as he scrambled to the console beside him.

"What are you laughing at me for?!"

"You can fool yourself and everyone else," Yondu said, "but you can't fool me. I know who you are."

Rocket's glare was sharp enough to cut metal. "You don't know anything about me, loser."

"I know everything about you," Yondu shot back, voice steady. "I know you act mean and hard 'cause you're the most scared of all."

"Shut up."

"I know you steal batteries you don't need, and you push away anyone who's willing to put up with you, 'cause just a little bit of love reminds you how big and empty that hole inside you really is."

Rocket's teeth bared. "I said shut up."

"I know the scientists who made you never gave a damn about you…"

"I'm serious, dude…"

"…just like my own damn parents, who sold me, their own little baby, into slavery. I know who you are, boy… because you're me."

Silence filled the cockpit. The hum of the ship's systems seemed to grow louder in it. The two of them stared at each other, mirror images carved by different cruelties.

Rocket finally broke it. "What kind of pair are we?"

"The kind that's about to go fight a planet, I reckon."

Rhinos head snapped to attention, suddenly clearly up and awake. 

Rocket blinked. "All right, okay, that's, wait. Fight a what?"

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