1,444The entourage of space pirates in red coats seemed a little nonplussed at how nonchalant the five teenagers were in the face of their unwashed and ungroomed appearances, as their leader continued his question about the missing Stone. Which he thought was an orb. "Whoever answers first, we won't eat."
"You're a centaurian, aren't you, sir?" Hermione checked. She was the only one present who took cultural studies, and was able to tell the blue-skinned pirate leader apart from kree by his teeth and eyes. "I didn't think your culture had much of a history of eating other sapient species."
"Well I ain't exactly normal for my kind, am I? Raised a battle slave by the kree, I learned to do things. And that wasn't an answer. Maybe I'll eat you first, girlie."
"I don't think kree arena masters would allow cannibalism, either," Luna mused, having blithely wandered over to inspect some of the crew members more closely. "Too much chance of passing diseases. Are you acheronian?"
"Achernonian," the skinny, bald, violet-skinned reptilian man answered. Most of the rest of the crew were so human-looking there was no way to tell what kind of alien species they were.
"Are you really?" Hermione was suddenly interested. "Can you become immaterial? I know you have double-joined limbs, so I assume the immateriality is just a rumor because you can escape from prisons no one would expect."
"Oh. Those guys," Harry recalled. "What's your planet like?" He'd associated them in his brain with an outer plane, Acheron, from D&D.
"Do I gotta kill the chubby one to get your attention?" the leader asked, frustrated, looking at Neville and throwing back his coat to show a metal arrow as if that was a major threat.
To be honest, the Longbottom heir was barely chubby anymore, but he still frowned sadly at the insult. He had Harry's saber tucked under one arm, but maybe the runes were keeping them from really noticing it. Seeing he was thinking about using it, Harry answered, "I don't think that would go the way you want. But anyway, don't you have this… orb, I guess? A guy in the same coat is probably the one that got it. Guess I don't see him here."
"Pale pink skin like you? Fuzzy red hair?" the pirate lord groaned.
"Yeah. I think he had on headphones and was dancing?"
There was a collective murmur of annoyance among the pirates and a couple of them mentioned "Quill" to each other.
"Brahl, Kraglin. Keep an eye on these kids while I make a call."
The achernonian and the tall, dark-haired human-looking pirate that were left in the cargo hold watching the overly-confident teens did not look as confident as their prisoners. "So you guys don't have it?" Harry checked.
"Uh. We know the guy that took it. Yondu will sort it out," probably-Kraglin (the taller pirate) answered.
"Cool. You're going to get it back from him? Great. I need to make a call too," he said, fishing in his pouch for the mirror.
"So we're from Earth and Vanaheim," Dean said, interrupting the men before they thought to stop Harry. "What's your deal?"
"Uh. Xandar. You're from dirt?"
"Earth," Dean repeated, confused.
"Translator issue," Hermione realized. "It has problems with synonyms in Bulgarian, too. Dar-Benn is always calling it Terra, instead."
"Oh, Terra!" Kraglin nodded. "I been there…"
Meanwhile, across the room, Sirius answered Harry's call immediately. "Pup! Thank Frigga!" He was still clearly on Morag. Several faces crowded behind him as they realized who he was talking to.
"Bunch of pirates looking for the thing picked us up to ask what happened. I think one of their own double-crossed them and took it. So if we stick with them, we've got a better shot at finding it. They said it was an orb," Harry summed up.
Dumbledore explained, "It's likely this one is contained in a protective sphere, because it would be very dangerous for it to touch organic matter. It could be deadly to anyone that contacted it. There are legends of it destroying whole planets if placed on the surface." He gave it a beat and added, "It's purple."
"We probably don't want pirates to get it, huh? Honestly, though, I didn't get a bad vibe off of them. They threatened to eat us, but Hermione figures they're bluffing."
"I guess they won't just bring you back to get the rest of us?" Sirius checked.
"Doubt it. I think they grabbed us because we're kids and they aren't scared of us." Harry glanced over and said, "Looks like Dean's comparing martial arts already. If we can't make friends, we'll figure out something."
"And how will you get home?" Mrs. Weasley demanded.
"One guy says he's already been to Earth. If we can't get a ride home on a spaceship, I have some other ideas. Oops. Looks like their boss—Yondu, blue-skinned centaurian—is coming back. I'll keep you updated!"
He stowed the mirror as the pirate captain with his entourage yelled, "While we go see if we can't stop the kid from selling my score to my buyer, why don't you kids explain why you were after it…"
A few hours later, Harry felt like he'd gotten more information than he'd given. The occlumency training was paying off, and his friends were happy to follow his lead on what to divulge. They were generally so naturally curious about everything they were seeing that it wasn't hard to forget to answer questions themselves. Most of the pirates were thrilled by teens honestly-and-openly taking an interest.
The pirates were called Ravagers, and this large ship was part of a loose collective. They did the kinds of things you'd expect of space pirates. The guy who'd taken the orb (he'd admitted it when Yondu called him, just refused to split it with his crew) was an Earth human they'd abducted as a kid and raised among the crew while constantly telling him they might eat him.
He probably harbored a bit of resentment.
Interestingly, they seemed familiar with the runes they saw on the teens' outfits, and some careful digging unearthed that one of the other Ravager crews had a member that could work some form of sorcery. Hermione and Luna were both very excited to go home and research why no one had ever mentioned the Lem to them.
Yondu quietly put it together and began to consider what use he might have for teens that had the same capabilities as his old "buddy" Krugarr.
Recognizing this useful resource was probably why he dragged Harry along once they landed on the planet Xandar, keeping the other four as "hostages" on the ship. "You give me any trouble, my crew will cut yours up for tonight's dinner," he threatened, without any heat to it. Harry didn't know him well enough for Soul Stone empathy to kick in, but it felt like a lot of his threats were to keep his status up with his crew, rather than out of any real malice.
The capital city of Xandar was clearly heavily designed. Angular peninsulas were visible from the air to form a giant logo for the Nova Corps. On the ground it was all perfectly maintained white concrete walkways on multiple levels overlooking fountains and plazas. Hundreds of healthy, attractive people in a variety of skin colors, some of them never seen on Earth, strolled across or stopped to talk.
He was accompanying Yondu and Kraglin, and it was clear the two Ravagers knew exactly where they were going, leading Harry to a small shop on one of the upper levels of a plaza. The dimly-lit place looked like a high-end jewelry shop with just a few small glass cases with a handful of displayed rarities.
Yondu seemed fascinated by a small jeweled frog (or perhaps an alien that looked similar when rendered fancifully). He asked the broker, "Do you got any other cute little buggers like this one? I like to stick 'em all in a row on my control console."
The elderly, birdlike man answered, "I can't tell if you're joking or not."
"He's being fully serious," Kraglin explained.
The broker began to say, "In that case, I can show you–"
Yondu cut him off with a laugh. "But first, you gonna tell me why you underbid me on that orb and whether you bought it off Quill."
"Ah, yes, Mr. Yondu," the man finally recognized the pirate he'd hired online. "I, of course, told your associate my deal was with you. I had suspected he might be double-crossing you and I wanted no part of it."
Harry's empathy wasn't exactly firing but Snape had taught him about tells. "That's not why he didn't buy it," he told the Ravagers.
The man pursed his lips and said, "I admit I also didn't expect him to mention that Ronan was after it."
"Who is Ronan?" Harry asked. "The guys we were fighting were trying to get the orb before he got there."
Kraglin shrugged and said, "One of them kree Accusers. Went rogue. Still fighting the war."
"Call him what he really is," the broker said with some heat, "a fanatic, who will not rest until Xandarian culture, our culture, is wiped from existence!"
"Yeah, Accusers suck," Harry nodded. "We've got Dar-Benn being a problem at my school." He remembered the encounter in the Room and added, "Is Ronan really tall, with blue skin?
"That's him," Kraglin agreed.
"Rumor is that he's working for the Mad Titan," the broker gossiped. "And I want even less to do with that one."
"Thanos is a myth," Kraglin disagreed.
"He ain't," Yondu said, finally speaking up after quietly listening to the information being revealed. "Buncha folks I know got half their people killed by him."
"He's trying to murder half the universe," Harry said, it all slotting together for him. "That's what he needs the orb for."
Yondu absorbed that detail, and it wasn't clear whether it had triggered his better nature or his greed. He told the broker, "Then we need to know who else Quill might try to sell it to."
Clearly worried by visions of half or more of Xandar dying, the man put up a token objection of, "Sir, the high-end community is…" he saw that Yondu was about to get in his face and said, "...at the whim of one particularly high-end Collector."
"Is that guy still around?" Harry asked, remembering that was whose base on Jotunheim he'd raided the previous year. "Named Tivan or something?"
Shooting Kraglin a look like "who is this kid?" Yondu actually said, "I hearda that guy. Guess we're off to the middle of Knowhere…"
By the time they'd taken the smaller attack ship back up to the huge Ravager vessel in orbit, the other four teens had broken all pretense of being captives. Hermione was learning to use the astrogation computer from one of the helmsmen. Dean was picking up space martial arts moves from a couple of the burlier pirates. Luna was dutifully recording stories from some of the more talkative crewmen in her notebook, for later use in her father's newspaper. Even Neville had found an audience for his tale of the fight on Morag where he'd saved Harry's godfather and almost killed his family's nemesis.
"Am I runnin' a daycare up here?" Yondu complained, but waved everyone off when they acted like they were going to throw the teens back in the cargo bay. "Get us ready to go to Knowhere."
It was a long trip, even with faster-than-light engines. Trading on their success making friends with the crew earlier, the teens wound up passing the time playing card games most of the way. After scraping up enough trinkets they'd be willing to part with to get staked in, they were soon running the table on their disbelieving new sort-of-allies.
At Hogwarts, card games were one of the main forms of entertainment.
After five years of playing together in various team-based, turn-taking games, the teens were able to coordinate wordlessly. They'd all gotten good at picking up new games quickly. And Hermione and Harry both had a couple years of statistics from arithmancy class. Occlumency also made it really easy to count cards.
By the time they were getting to their destination, they'd each amassed a non-trivial pile of what they were told were intergalactic credit units. Additionally, Luna had accepted a small energy pistol, Neville had a pretty wicked-looking knife, and Hermione was sporting her own red Ravager jacket (that had been wagered because it was too small to fit anyone on the crew).
They'd been chatting about what Knowhere was, but seeing the space station built into the head of a long-dead Celestial out of a ship window was still awe inspiring. "I'm so glad I got to go on this adventure," Luna breathed, shoving her notebook at Dean so he could sketch the city-sized skull floating in a nebula.
Inside the head, it was some odd combination of a many-leveled construction site and the Goblin Market turned up to 11. "I'm gonna let you kids come with us because it'll be educational. And 'cause that's more eyes to spot Quill," Yondu told them. "Don't stray far… or double cross us…"
"Or you'll eat us?" Harry checked.
"Nah. I'll just leave ya. You'll wish we'd eaten ya."
It really was a rough crowd in the lawless mining concern/pirate haven. Even rolling with a dozen Ravagers, there were plenty of stares like some of the sketchy aliens might make a grab for the clean and healthy-looking teens if they could figure out how to get away into the crowds with them. "It's like the Foot Clan hideout in Ninja Turtles," Dean opined.
"Or Pleasure Island from Pinocchio," Harry added.
"Y'all really do talk like Quill," Kraglin scoffed. "That guy won't shut up about his Terra stories."
"We have to wait," Dean informed them. "Hermione and Neville found a shop."
"What ya tryin' to buy Celestial bits for, girl?" Yondu demanded, as the line of pirates stopped and turned to where the Gryffindor prefects were haggling with a semi-humanoid slug at a booth with stacks of metal bottles and other containers. "That's just used in weird research crap."
"Extra credit in chemistry class," she explained, handing Harry the few jugs she'd purchased to put in his bag of holding. "I don't know what Celestial tissue will do in a potion, but I doubt it's nothing."
"I got Cotati seeds," Neville said, pocketing his own purchase. "And I want to see if I can get them to grow."
"Crazy kids," the Centaurian huffed. "Got any more shopping to do or can we get on with finding my orb? I doubt we're gonna get in to see Tivan with nothin' to sell, but if we set up nearby maybe we can catch them before they go in… in this crowd, though, I don't know how we can be sure–"
He was interrupted by a huge explosion nearby that shook the entire station.
"Enough power to destroy Xandar," Hermione put it together first. "I hope it's not going to spread!"
"It came from Tivan's," Yondu agreed. "Trust that idiot to blow up his buyer! C'mon!"
A short sprint against the flow of fleeing people and they indeed saw what seemed like the aftermath of a terrorist bombing. A large building's front was completely blown out.
And there was a small flight of dark, rounded ships coming in on them as well that seemed like they weren't search and rescue, but were more competition for the orb. They spotted the human man Harry had seen back on Morag through the crowd, and Yondu shouted, "Quill! Don't you move, boy!"
The guy saw them, clocked the landing ships, and bolted. Running with him was… was that green woman Harry's first defense teacher, Gamora? Were they both with the raccoon and tree that had tried to kidnap/bounty hunt him over the summer?
"Small universe," Harry muttered.
A huge, gray-skinned bald man with intricate red scar tattoos and a pair of knives was marching towards the landing ships yelling, "Ronan the Accuser!" And, sure enough, the Accuser that Harry had seen simulated in the Room had stepped out. He had some really weird black gunk on his face that he didn't have before, but it was hard to mistake that towering height. The guy was closer to Hagrid in height than to Harry.
"We gotta get Quill!" Yondu ordered.
"But if we kill Ronan now…" Harry suggested.
"Then we'll lose Quill and he'll sell to somebody else!" the Ravager leader insisted, already hustling off vaguely in the direction he'd seen his rogue pirate headed.
They missed what Ronan was saying quietly to the scarred man, who screamed, "You killed my wife. You killed my daughter!"
A bald, blue woman told Ronan, "It is Gamora. She is escaping with the orb." She turned to get back on her ship and the Accuser looked to be about to as well.
"No!" the knife-wielding widower shouted, racing up to stop Ronan from leaving.
"We should help that guy," Neville decided, the revenge angle inspiring him even more than the chance to take out a bad guy that hadn't yet hurt him personally.
And it looked like it was needed. Ronan casually dodged the first knife swing and told his adjutant, "Nebula. Retrieve the orb."
Ronan didn't even keep any of his soldiers around, confident that he could handle his attacker and any other threats by himself. And that confidence didn't seem to be misplaced. The man with the knives attacked quickly and with a power that would easily kill any of the teens, but he couldn't lay a hand on the Accuser. Moving stiffly but with great speed and precision, the fighting style the kree employed wouldn't be possible without superhuman control of his own body. As soon as the attacker made a wild swing, Ronan unleashed a short palm-shove that knocked his massive opponent back more than a body length.
"Don't let him hit you," Dean cautioned, the teens taking the time to size up the opponent. The Ravagers had run off, so the Hogwarts students were committed to the attack. "I don't think our armor would hold up for long. Distracting attacks. Harry, wait to put a portal behind him, and we'll knock him into it."
"On it," Harry agreed. He yelled at the scarred man, "Can we join in and help you, or is this a solo vengeance thing?" With the wildness of the fighter, there was every chance he might come after them for kill-stealing.
It was a testament to how frustrated and worried Drax the Destroyer was becoming—since he couldn't lay a solid blow on his nemesis—that he took a moment and said, "If you also want revenge, we can be allies, small children."
"And what slight have I done to you?" Ronan asked, the depth of his voice almost covering the sarcasm as he sized up the new antagonists.
"Well, we didn't get revenge on Accuser Dar-Benn, directly, so you'll have to do," Harry joked, trying to draw attention while his friends spread out. The area had mostly cleared from the explosion and kree ships arriving, but people were starting to come back in at the fringes with the entertainment on offer. "And we can't let you get the orb for Thanos."
"Ah, the embassy to Vanaheim," the towering judiciar intoned, suddenly adapting his style to Dean and Neville rushing in to attack from his flanks while their temporary ally made another charge from the front. He at least had to exert more effort, moving in a way that let him shoulder-check Neville while hitting the big man with his warhammer and forcing Dean to fall back ahead of a massive kick. "You're far from home."
As the boys fell back, Luna managed to get her blaster to work and Ronan interposed his weapon to block the shots while shoving a returning Neville into Dean. Hermione tried to grab the hammer in her magical whip, but couldn't seem to get purchase on its energized haft. The bald man was still struggling to his feet after the direct hit.
Honestly, Ronan's fighting style reminded Harry of Equilibrium's gun kata. Somehow, with a total efficiency of movement, the kree was able to stand at the center of the storm of attacks, making his assailants more of a danger to their allies than to himself. Presumably this was the reason for his confidence, and the fear that Xandar had of him.
But what if he was surprised by a portal?
Waiting for his moment, Harry let the Accuser ignore him and then spun open a portal on the ground behind him, the other opening as far up as he thought the artificial gravity might still catch. If the fall didn't kill him, hopefully it would at least knock him prone.
Well, it should have been a surprise. "Lem tricks," Ronan said, somehow transferring all his weight to the foot that was not about to step through the portal. Leaning forward to headbutt the big man out of the way, he let the Universal Weapon hit the edge of the portal, instantly making it collapse and giving Harry a sudden, splitting headache. "I am done with this farce."
Slamming the head of the hammer into the charging widower, he sent out a shockwave that threw him back insensate into a wall, knocked the boys to the ground, and even upset the girls' footing.
"When he wakes, tell him I don't remember killing his family. Enjoy the reprieve of knowing none of you are worth my time to kill today." And then he just ignored them and strode away, speaking aloud to his communicator, "Bring it to my ship. I will be there soon." That probably meant that his people had retrieved the orb.
Harry just let him go. Maybe with the rest of the Avengers, or just if the five of them had more versatile spells off Vanaheim, they could have done something to stop him. Disappointed, Hermione complained, "Everything here is some weird material or alloy. I couldn't transfigure anything. And I forgot about my holdouts."
"At least nobody got seriously hurt," Harry sighed. "Anything we threw at him might have hit one of us."
"I have to learn that style," Dean said, rubbing his chest where he'd taken a glancing hit.
Neville grimaced, regarding his new knife that had gotten smashed in the fight. He'd have broken the arm if he'd tried to save it. "I doubt Dar-Benn will teach you."
"He's alive," Luna was checking the fallen man. "I wonder what species he is."
"I am Groot."
"Oh, kylosian, that makes sense… Groot!" Luna said, suddenly realizing the tree man had wandered up. She threw herself around one of his tall legs in a hug. "I am groot, I am Groot, I am Groot?"
"I am Groot," he agreed, patting her on the head.
"And I am Drax," the big man came to and finally introduced himself. "You are strong warrior children, though as useless as I was against Ronan."
"Harry," he introduced himself and his friends, "Dean, Hermione, Neville, Luna. How did Ronan catch up to you?"
"I am Groot."
"Calling them here probably wasn't a very good idea," Luna agreed.
"I see that now," Drax shrugged, still winded from the impact.
Before anyone else could pile on for the idiocy of calling a genocidal maniac to the world-killing item he wanted in hopes of revenge, one of the mining pods they'd seen flying around crashed, already damaged, to the ground near them. Groot's raccoon partner opened the hatch and stumbled out. "Blasted idiot. They're all idiots! Quill just got himself captured!" Somehow already in tune with what they'd been talking about he screamed at Drax, "None of this ever would have happened if you didn't try to single-handedly take on a frickin' army!"
The big man said contritely, "You're right. I was a fool. All the anger, all the rage, was just to cover my loss."
"Oh, boo-hoo-hoo," the bounty hunter started to spin himself up into a rant then noticed everyone else. "When did these kids get here? This that Potter kid? That bounty isn't even good anymore!"
"I am Groot."
"Huh. Fighting Ronan? Maybe that's why that Accuser lady put it out on him, if he's trying to kill her buddy."
Harry interrupted, "Wait, Dar-Benn hired you to kidnap me last year?"
The small cyborg mammal waved a paw in a universal "kind of" gesture. "She put out a bounty. Guess nobody else was as clever as us to nearly get you. Anyway. It don't matter. Come on, Groot. Ronan has the stone. The only chance we got is to get to the other side of the universe as fast as we can and maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to live full lives before that whack-job ever gets there."
"I am Groot."
"Save them? How?"
"I am Groot."
"I know they're the only friends that we ever had, but there's an army of Ravagers around them. And you said just Ronan already beat all these yoyos."
"We weren't really ready for him," Harry argued. "And he's probably better against martial arts than, I don't know, explosions. Plus, I might be able to call in some extra help if we can find out where he's going."
"What help?" the trash panda asked, suspiciously.
"Probably the Ravagers. And maybe some other people if I can get a call through."
"Those pirate idiots that got Quill and Gamora? They're going to kill them!"
"I seriously doubt it," Harry shrugged and the other teens nodded. "The crew figured he's basically like Yondu's adopted son."
"So we got five magic babies, this big moron, and a bunch of dumb pirates to stop a guy with a battleship and an Infinity Stone?"
"I am groot."
"Well obviously I was including us, too. Because I guess I got brain damage now. Fine. Let's go be…"
"Big damned heroes?" Harry said in his best Malcolm Reynolds drawl.
"Yeah," the raccoon sighed. He still hadn't introduced himself. "Let's go get Quill's ship and see if that idiot is still alive…"
This chapter wound up being more tourism for Harry than I've done with previous movies. There were enough coincidences in Guardians 1 that were needed to get the group together that Quill not staying one step ahead would result in huge changes to his story (at bare minimum, Drax would never join the team if they never made it to the Kyln). And if the Guardians don't form, that's probably it for the universe when Ego finally gets hold of Quill. Consider it Norns meddling, if you like. The real changes can start now that the Guardians are together.
Also, rewatching the Ronan scenes in Guardians, that dude is a beast. Drax seems to be one of the most terrifying melee fighters in the MCU, and Ronan no-sells him, even before getting the Power Stone. Like many of the MCU villains in this phase, it's a shame they didn't really give him enough screen time or stuff to do. This observation is just expectations-setting for how combat encounters with him aren't going to be a walk-over, even with extra protagonists involved.
Finally, I've started getting a bunch of PMs offering to do fan art. I have no idea how many are legitimate fans, and how many are just trolling every story with enough reviews to ask for commissions. I'm not responding to them individually, but if you'd like to do fan art for this (or any of my stories), feel free. Send me a link to include in the notes, if you'd like. However, I'm not purchasing art for my stories at this time.