Joules' POV

"I guess most of Nova Corps wanna uphold the laws, but these ones here, they're corrupt and cruel. But, hey, that's not my problem. I ain't gonna be here long. I've escaped 22 prisons, this one's no different. You're lucky the broad showed up, because otherwise, me, JJ, and Groot would be collecting that bounty right now, and you'd be getting drawn and quartered by Yondu and those Ravagers." Rocket says to Peter Quill as all five of us, including, me, Groot and Gamora, are being guided down a hallway to the detainment area.

"I've had a lot of folks try to kill me over the years. I ain't about to be brought down by a tree, a kid, and a talking raccoon." Peter boasted.

"I ain't a kid…" I grumbled under my breath.

"Hold." The prison guard leading them stopped at a locked door.

"What's a raccoon?" Rocket asked.

"'What's a raccoon?' It's what you are, stupid." Peter retorted back.

"Ain't no thing like me, except me."

"Ain't nothing in the universe but us." I repeated what Rocket told them and he just scoffed.

"I don't need no echo JJ."

"Pft whatever…" I examined my cuffs to see if there was a way to disarm them.

"So, this orb has a real shiny blue suitcase, Ark of the Covenant, Maltese Falcon sort of vibe. What is it?" Peter asked out of nowhere.

"I am Groot..." (Something bad...)

"So what? What's the Orb?"

"I have no words for an honorless thief." Gamora replied flatly.

"Pretty high and mighty coming from the lackey of a genocidal maniac." Rocket taunted as Gamora looked back at him.

"Yeah, I know who you are. Anyone who's anyone knows who you are."

"Yeah, we know who you are. Who is she?" Peter said, directing the last part quietly to Groot

"I am Groot." (Daughter of Thanos)

"Yeah, you said that."

"Recently, she's been working for Ronan." I told him.

"I wasn't retrieving the orb for Ronan, I was betraying him. I had an agreement to sell it to a third party." Gamora explained.

"I am Groot."

"Well, that's just as fascinating as the first 89 times you told that. What is wrong with Giving Tree, here?" Peter asked.

"Well, he don't know talking good like me and you. So his vocabulistics is limited to "I" and "am" and "Groot". Exclusively in that order." Rocket told him emphasizing the last part.

"Only me and Rocket can understand him dummy." I told him quietly in a half lidded glare.

"I tell you what, that's gonna wear real thin, real fast." Peter started to say before he noticed that a guard had a strange yellow box with wires coming out of it and started to get mad,

"Hey. Put that away." Peter stepped into the room the guard was in just as its door closed.

"Hey! Take those headphones off. That's mine. Those belong to impound. That tape and that player is mine!" The guard came over and electrocuted Peter with a rod, but he continued to persist,

"Hooked on a Feeling, Blue Swede, 1973. That song belongs to me!" He was interrupted by another shock.

As Gamora, Groot, Rocket, and I watched Peter getting electrocuted again, I tried to use my abilities, despite the collar, yet it failed and the collar tightened around my neck, cutting off my air. The guard that was leading us before came over and grabbed my arm roughly before speaking to the guard who was electrocuting Peter,

"Not around this one!" Gesturing to the electric rod in his hand.

"She goes separate." The other guard said bluntly as I was dragged away to a separate room.

There, I was sprayed down with a cold yellow liquid, unlike the orange decontaminant "normal" prisoners were sprayed down with, and given a yellow prison shirt, pants, and some brown shoes instead of my boots.

I was pushed out in time to catch up with Rocket, Groot, Peter, and Gamora as they had blankets shoved into their chests and we made our way into the containment area where there were tons of prisoners and all of them started throwing things and yelling,

"You first! You first!"

"Murderer!"

"Coming for you first, Gamora!"

"You're dead!"

"You're scum!"

"You're scum!"

"It's like I said, she's got a rep. A lot of prisoners here have lost their families to Ronan and his goons. She'll last a day, tops." Rocket told Peter as we followed behind him into the area.

"Murderer!" Another prisoner yelled out.

"The guards will protect her, right?" Peter asked, looking the tiniest bit concerned.

"They're only here to stop us from escaping." I groaned looking around at the guards as they went about their business.

"They don't care what we do to each other inside." Rocket finished my statement.

"Whatever nightmares the future holds, are dreams compared to what's behind me." Gamora said as Peter turned around and came face to face with a giant, blue-skinned being.

"Check out the new meat. I'm gonna slather you up in Gunavian jelly, and go to town..." He said talking to Peter while stroking his face with his hand just before Groot came over and stuck his fingers up his nose, growing his vines out inside his head as Rocket announced

"Let's make something clear. This one here is our booty! You wanna get to him, you go through us! Or, more accurately, we go through you." Groot dropped the guy onto the ground where he lay holding his nose, sobbing in pain.

"I'm with them." Peter tried to say casually and I rolled my eyes before starting to follow them before a guard came over and grabbed my arm saying,

"Not you." And he led me over to the same cell Gamora was in and shoved me in, making me fall to the ground inside.

After the guard left, I got up and saw that Gamora was sitting on the bench, trying to ignore the yells of the prisoners outside.

"I hate you!"

"No cell's gonna protect you for long!"

"You're dead! Dead!"

Eventually, they left, and Gamora asked me,

"Why did they put you in here?"

"Don't know don't care."

I just shrugged as I went to sit in the corner and hugged my knees to my chest until I fell asleep.

Later that Night

My sleep was full of nightmares. One minute my planet was being destroyed along with my mother in front of my eyes again. The next minute I was back in the outlaw lab, having to endure all the tedious and excruciatingly painful tasks that were demanded of me.

Just as I was trying to mentally shake myself back awake, my eyes shot open just as a prisoner hauled me up by my arms as some more were dragging Gamora out of our cell with the one holding me following them.

"Leave her alone! She has nothing to do with this!" Gamora yelled at the prisoner holding me.

"Take her down to the showers. It'll be easier to clean up the blood down there. And get rid of this one while you're at it." The same guard that threw me into this cell was saying as two prisoners were holding Gamora with a knife over her throat and another held me with my arms and a knife twisted behind my back.

"Gamora, consider this a death sentence for your crimes against the galaxy." The prisoner with the knife to Gamora's throat started to say before,

"You dare?" We turned and saw another prisoner who had gray skin with red markings. I instantly recognized him as Drax the Destroyer from the reports I've read about him in the two years I'd been bounty hunting with Rocket and Groot.

"You know who I am, yes?" He asks the prisoner with the knife.

"Y-you're Drax. T-the Destroyer." He stammers out.

"Quill!" I hear Rocket whisper harshly and I see him and Peter sneaking towards us. As soon as Rocket sees I'm involved, his eyes widen, but doesn't come out from the shadows.

"And you know why they call me this." Drax asks.

"You slayed dozens of Ronan's minions." The prisoner responds back, slightly nervous.

"Ronan murdered my wife, Ovette, and my daughter, Camaria. He slaughtered them where they stood. And he laughed!" Everyone flinched at how he yelled the last part of his sentence before he continued,

"Her life is not yours to take. He killed my family. I shall kill one of his in return."

"Of course, Drax. Here, I..." The prisoner says presenting his knife to him before Gamora twists herself out of the grip of the prisoner holding her and grabs both their knives and holds them to their throats.

"I'm no family to Ronan or Thanos. I'm your only hope at stopping him." Gamora says just before Drax pushes her against the wall with his hand around her neck and I struggled to free myself to help her. Sure she was a goon for Ronan, but she tried to help me earlier and I'd be damned if I didn't at least try to help her out

"Woman, your words mean nothing to me! -"

"Hey! Hey, hey, hey! Hey! You know, if killing Ronan is truly your sole purpose, I don't think this is the best way to go about it." Peter comes out from hiding and confronts Drax before he could kill Gamora.

"Are you not the man this wench attempted to kill?"

"Well, I mean, she's hardly the first woman to try and do that to me. Look, this is from a smoking-hot Rajak girl. Stabbed me with a fork. Didn't like me skipping out on her at sunrise. I got, right here, a Kree girl tried to rip out my thorax. She caught me with this skinny little A'askavariian who worked in Nova Records. I was trying to get information. You ever see an A'askavariian? They have tentacles, and needles for teeth. If you think I'm seriously interested in that, then... You don't care. But here's the point. She betrayed Ronan. He's coming back for her. And when he does, that's when you..." He rambles before making a slicing motion with his finger across his throat.

"Why would I put my finger on his throat?"

"What? No, it's a symbol. This is a symbol for you slicing his throat."

"I would not slice his throat. I would cut his head clean off."

"It's a general expression for you killing somebody. You've heard of this. You've seen this, right? You know what that is." Peter asks the prisoner who had the knife before.

"Yeah. Yeah."

"Everyone knows." Peter added as Drax gives the prisoner a dark look.

"No, no..."

"What I'm saying is, you want to keep her alive. Don't do his work for him." Peter manages to convince Drax and he drops Gamora from where he had held her against the wall.

"I like your knife. I'm keeping it." Drax pockets the knife and the prisoner whispers,

"That was my favorite knife."

"And release the child." Drax adds to the prisoner who's still holding me and he finally lets me go. I run to catch up with Peter, Gamora, and Rocket after I gave him a grateful nod.

As soon as Rocket sees me, he starts checking to make sure I didn't have any injuries from the prisoners and repeatedly asking if I was alright.

"I'm fine Rocket, quit being such a worrier." I tell him as he goes near-hysterical about a new cut on my shoulder that was already starting to heal. When he realizes that he was overreacting he straightens up and coughs a little.

"Listen! I could care less whether you live or whether you die." Peter yells to Gamora as she's storming ahead of him coming towards us.

"Then why stop the big guy?" She retorts angrily.

"Simple. You know where to sell my Orb."

"How are we gonna sell it when we and it are still here?"

"My friends Rocket and JJ, here, have escaped 22 prisons." Peter motions over to me and Rocket.

"Since when did we become friends? And it's Joules to you." I snap at him.

"Oh, we're getting out. And then we're headed straight to Yondu to retrieve your bounty." Rocket says as Peter breathes through his nose and asks Gamora,

"How much was your buyer willing to pay you for my Orb?"

"Four billion units." She responds after hesitating.

"What?" Rocket exclaims.

"Holy sh..." Peter starts to say before Gamora cuts him off,

"That Orb is my opportunity to get away from Thanos and Ronan. If you free us, I'll lead you to the buyer directly and I'll split the profit between the four of us."

"I am Groot." (Hey.) Groot peeks out at us from the cell door.

"Five of us. Asleep for the danger, awake for the money, as per frickin' usual." Rocket says sarcastically.

"You really do need to work on your timing buddy." I tell Groot and I groan as he starts asking me about the cut.

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