prologue

"YONDU, WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?" A young Peter Quill asked, staring out of the ships window at a planet that looked gray and dirty, much unlike the vibrant planets that they had visited in the past. "Listen, boy," Yondu replied, handing Peter a small gun. "this place is called Halfworld. Now, we got word that there's some people down there that're wasting extremely expensive metal. Tons of it. All we're here to do is take that metal that they wastin' and sell it to a third party. Got that?"

Peter nodded, still sort of scared and not used to the blue man that kidnapped him. "Good," Yondu sighed and walked away from him, expecting him to follow. To put a long story short, the mission went South fast. Guards at the Experimental Hospital immediately spotted the Ravagers and attacked while Trial 14 was on her daily walk around the grounds. Trial 14 knew that day was the day the men were going to replace her human brain with a robotic one, (the last step of becoming one of the most powerful assassins in the galaxy, and the cause of death for the last 13 trials.) and to say she was anxious was an understatement.

      However, because of her lack of education on the subject of emotions (as the scientists were trying to make a human without any) she had no idea what she was feeling. All she knew was that she wanted to leave. The scientists had trained her harshly not to break the rules, but she knew that what she was doing was wrong. She knew that she wasn't supposed to leave the grounds, and she definitely wasn't supposed to sneak onto a Ravager ship, and she absolutely wasn't supposed to cut the tracker out of her arm and smash it until it broke.

"Who are you?" A small voice asked from behind her. She whipped around and unhinged her fingers from her hand, preparing to shoot from the mini laser blasters from each metal knuckle. "Woah, woah, woah, I'm not gonna hurt you." He held his hands up and took a step back. "My name is Peter. Me and, um, my friends came here to do a job, and it went a little wrong. One of my friends told me to come back to the ship. This is our ship. Are you okay?"

     She slowly lowered her hand and one by one swung her fingers back and attached them to her metallic palm. "Trial 14." She replied, taking a step closer. "What?" He looked confused, but took a small step closer to her as well. She pointed to her chest and repeated "Trial 14," her eyebrows were knitted together. "You are Trial 14?" Peter asked, tacking another small step. She nodded, her short hair shaking against the sides of her face. "That's dark. I li-"

      Peter was cut off by raucous screaming and laughter coming from outside if the ship, and it was coming closer. Trial 14 unhinged her fingers again and pointed her arm towards the opening of the ship. "Who the hell is this?" A tall blue man stood over the girl, but he was barely as threatening as the men in the Experimental Hospital. "I thinks she's one of the experiments from that place," Peter answered for her, and stood in between her and the blue man. "So? What's she doin' here?"

      "She's one of those scrap metal pieca' crap half robot things from the E.H." One of the bunches of men that were running onto the ship commented as he was running by. "I'll shoot you," She replied harshly, powering up her hand blasters. "Sure you will, scraps." The man smirked, his teeth rotted and yellow. She shot a beam into the middle of his chest, sending him to the floor. The man and the boy in front of her whipped their heads around, ready to fight back. "He's not dead. I tased him." They looked back at the body that still jittered a bit on the ground as the rest of the ravagers ran around him. "Okay," Peter mumbled.

      "Did you run away?" The blue man asked, kneeling down to Trial 14's height. She was shocked for a moment; nobody had ever bent down to her level before. "Yes." She nodded, her hair shaking again. "You got a tracker on you?" He asked. She pointed to the pile of crushed metal and black blood on the floor a couple feet away from them. "You're small. Skinny. You've got a taser hand. You'd be a great asset to the team. You got a name?"

     Trial 14 looked back and forth between the blue man and Peter. "She calls herself Trial 14." Peter spoke for her, and watched quizzically as she reattached her metal fingers again. "You want a name, kid?" The blue man asked, turning towards her. She nodded once. "Yes."

     Unable to think of a girls' name off the top of his head, he said "You got any ideas?" with a small, nervous smile. "Juliet." The girl immediately replied. Forced to study the names of every planet, the girl was always partial to the name of one of Uranus' moons, Juliet. She figured it was a proper name for a girl, but she never really knew, as she was forced to call everyone she knew either Doctor or Opponent. "Juliet," The boy beside her repeated. "I guess I could see that."

      "Alright, Juliet. You're a Ravager now." The blue man smiled. Unaware of what smiles meant, let alone what they were, she nodded in return. The same kind of nod used in conversation when the person you're talking to is speaking a different language, and you don't want to be rude and tell them that you don't understand what they're saying at all. And for the most part, she didn't.