2 Years Later...

3rd Person POV with Rocket, Groot, and Joules

On Xander, Capital of the Nova Empire, Rocket is watching Xandarians that are passing by as Joules is surveying the area with the new scanner goggles that Rocket helped her make. In addition to the goggles, she also had upgraded her boots with hover and magnetic abilities.

"Xandarians. What a bunch of losers. All of them in a big hurry to get from something stupid to nothing at all. Pathetic." Rocket observed, disgusted, as he looks around with a tablet scanner.

"Look at this guy! Can you believe they call us criminals when he's assaulting us with that haircut?" He comments on a man with short blond hair that's swept to one side.

"What is this thing? Look how it thinks it's so cool. It's not cool to get help! Walk by yourself, you little gargoyle!" Rocket refers to a small child being guided down a small flight of stairs by their parent.

Looking over to an elderly man talking to a young woman with bright red hair, "Look at Mr. Smiles over here. Where's your wife, old man? What a class-A prevert." Rocket starts to laugh, before saying,

"Right, JJ? Groot? Groot?" Rocket and Joules, after pulling her goggles up, look over to see Groot drinking water from a nearby fountain.

"Don't drink fountain water, you idiot. That's disgusting!" Rocket scolds Groot, but he shakes his head 'No' pretending he didn't do it.

"Yes, you did. I just saw you doing it. Why are you lying?"

"That's disgusting." Joules bluntly told him before Rocket's scanner and her goggles start beeping, alerting them of a wanted fugitive sighting.

"Whoop. Looks like we got one." Rocket looks around with his scanner as JJ looks through her goggles at a Terran who was chatting with a pink-skinned Xandarian.

"Okay, humie, how bad does someone wanna find you?"

Joules is able to use her goggles to identify him as Peter Quill, wanted by the leader of a Ravager clan, Yondu, who was also the one to put a huge bounty on him. Rocket, then, announces excitedly,

"Forty thousand units? JJ, Groot, we're gonna be rich." Before he and Joules look over to Groot and see him drinking from the fountain again. Rocket shakes his head as Joules slaps a hand to her forehead.

"OK, here's the plan: we'll wait until he's out in the open, JJ, you paralyze him, and when Groot drops the bag on him, we run outta here to go collect his bounty. JJ, you go hide over there until we need you." Rocket explains to his teammates and they nod in agreement and JJ touches a nearby electric city light to siphon off some of its energy to use as she makes it over to her position.

"I Am Groot." (He's in there now.) Groot points to 'Peter Quill' entering the Broker's shop and the doors close behind him.

"Then we wait until he gets out." Joules mencingly whispers into her comlink as she pulls her goggles down to see the two heat signatures of the Broker and Peter in the building.

Time Skip To Gamora Attacking Peter

"This wasn't the plan." Gamora says just as she's about to bring her weapon down on Peter's head when she's quickly pushed aside by Rocket.

"Put him in the bag. Put him in the bag!" Rocket refers to Peter, but Groot extends his roots out and grabs Gamora instead,

"No! Not her, him! Learn genders, man." While struggling to stay on top of her head, Gamora yell before she bites his paws, "Biting? That's not fair!"

Meanwhile, JJ was sending shockwaves through the metal in the ground to try and shock Peter as he fled with a metal orb in his hand, but he dodges the wave and it hits a street light, making the light post spark up before it slightly melts out of place.

Behind her, Rocket is struggling to stay on top of Gamora's head while yelling, "Take it easy!", but she manages to rip her arms free of Groot's branches and throw Rocket off her head into another electric map guide.

Joules attempts to block her from pursuing Peter by preparing her gloves for a paralyzing zap, but Gamora swiftly kicks her in the stomach before she could, making her fall and land on her back as Gamora picks up a piece of metal and throws it at the hand Peter was grasping the orb in.

He drops the orb and it rolls off the balcony, landing on the sidewalk below and Gamora jumps over a few tables to get down, sheathes her sword as she lands on the ground below, scoops up the orb, and begins to run off.

Just as she tries to get away, Peter leaps off the same balcony, landing on top of her, and they briefly roll before she lands on top of him and straddled him.

"Fool. You should have learned." Gamora says before Peter replies,

"I don't learn. One of my issues." Just as he grabs the orb from her hand, attached one of his rocket boot boosters onto her side, and presses a button on his leg to send her shooting off toward a water fountain.

Tossing the orb into the air, smirking, Peter doesn't hear Groot behind him as he places a bag over his head and hauls the bag up onto his shoulder as Peter yells muffled from inside, "What the..."

"Quit smiling, you idiot. You're supposed to be a professional." Rocket tells Groot before he does a double-take, "You gotta be kidding me." Gamora walks over sword drawn.

"Hey!" Rocket protests after he tried to grab his gun off his back, but was pushed over.

"Oh no you don't..." JJ glares as she attempted to block her again by using her hover boots to quickly avoid Gamora's attacks, but is swept off her hovering position after a quick swipe was delivered to her arms as they crossed over her face to shield from an attack back onto the ground, cutting them in the process.

Gamora, then, starts to hack at Groot with her sword, cutting off his arms in the process, before sheathing it to open the bag. No sooner than she did, Peter used his blaster to shock Gamora and, while she was writhing on the ground, he made a run for it.

"What do you say Rocket?" JJ created a few sparks in her hands as Rocket pulls the gun off his back and says,

"I live for the simple things. Like how much this is gonna hurt." He aims it and, as he's doing so, JJ winces as she touches it to give it a major boost of power.

When Rocket fired it, a sphere of electricity shot out and hit Peter in the back making him fall to the ground and yell in agony.

"Heh heh heh...Yeah. Writhe, little man." Rocket chuckles as he looks over at JJ, who's wrapping her forearms in tape, and Groot, who's whimpering sadly about his severed arms before Rocket says,

"It'll grow back, you D'ast idiot. Quit whining." Just as he said it, golden beams went off around him and Groot, capturing them in magnetic rays.

JJ was left on the ground where she was tackled down by two officers and had an electrical dampening collar put around her neck as she struggled against them.

"Subject 89P13, drop your weapon." A Nova Corp officer commanded from his ship.

"Oh, crap." Rocket groans as he drops his gun.

"By the authority of the Nova Corps, you are under arrest." The same Nova Corp officer says as Peter is being brought up by two more officers.

"Alright. Come on up." Corpsman Dey says as he and another officer lift Peter from the ground as the charges are read from the background,

"...for endangerment to life and the destruction of property."

"Hey! If it isn't Star-Prince." Dey says to Peter.

"Star-Lord." Peter groans in defeat.

"Oh, sorry. Lord. I picked this guy up a while back for petty theft. He's got a code name." He says to his partner as he and JJ are being escorted at the same time next to each other.

"Come on, man. It's a...it's an outlaw name."

"Just relax, pal. It's cool to have a code name. It's not that weird."

"And if it isn't J75-4." The other corpsman said to JJ.

"It's Joules now." She grumbled flatly.

"Oh, that's so much better, being named after a measure of electrical energy." The man started laughing as JJ sent him a death glare.

"Fascists." JJ heard Rocket mutter, and she silently agreed with him, as an unconscious Gamora was brought up beside him and Groot.

Later At the Nova Corp Headquarters

"Well, some good news. Looks like we've apprehended one of Ronan's compatriots." Denarian Saal reports in to Nova Prime as she finished up a, not so good, conversation with a Kree leader.

"Gamora. Surgically modified and trained as a living weapon. The adopted daughter of the Mad Titan, Thanos. Recently, Thanos lent her and her sister Nebula out to Ronan, which leads us to believe that Thanos and Ronan are working together." Dey announced to Saal as each of the fugitives are being scanned and wrap sheets are being brought up.

"Subject 89P13. Calls itself Rocket. The result of illegal genetic and cybernetic experiments on a lower life form." As his description is being read, he spits on the floor in annoyance.

"What the h*ll?" Saal says suspicion.

"They call it Groot. A humanoid plant that's been traveling recently as 89P13's personal houseplant slash muscle." Groot gets closer to the window to look at Dey and Saal through it.

"Subject J75-4, more commonly known as Joules, known to be one of the last of the Chrysinthean species after their entire planet was wiped out along with its people. She's been an apprentice bounty hunter-in-training for 89P13 and has been known to possess electrokinetic and hyper-regeneration abilities." Joules made their point on the last piece of info when she unraveled the tape from around her forearms, dropped them onto the floor, revealing that her wounds were completely healed, and just stands with her arms crossed as she looks at the two men through the glass with a look of annoyance of using her lab name as her primary name.

"Peter Jason Quill, from Terra. Raised from youth by a band of mercenaries called the Ravagers, led by Yondu Udonta."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know how this machine worked." Peter apologizes as he winds up his middle finger like a music box.

"What a bunch of a-holes." Saal says flatly as Dey smiles a bit.

"Transport all four to the Kyln."

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