Galactic Surge

Goin' Knowhere

Joules' POV

We were on board Peter's ship, the Milano, heading to Gamora's buyer's location, but Rocket and I got bored real quick.

So he decided to try and build a bomb from some parts of the Milano and I decided to use the magnetic function of my boots to attach to the ceiling and hang upside down to retrieve parts from the ceiling structure to hand to Rocket.

Meanwhile, I was working on perfecting my orb creation, even after two years. I managed to create a remote-detonation code that would connect the orbs to the screens implanted in my gloves, but it wasn't fully connecting wirelessly as I'd hoped.

After I charged up the orb to test it out, I felt the veins in my wrists constrict painfully before loosening again. I looked at them from under my gloves to see they were turning a dark purplish gray color, meaning I was running low on energy and soon the chip's poison would be making its way through my system.

"Kid, can you give me a hand here? I need to charge this thing." Rocket asked.

"Runnin' low here." I gesture to my neck just before Peter came storming in yelling at Rocket,

"Yo, Ranger Rick! What are you doing? You can't take apart my ship without asking me! See, what is this?" Peter yelling at Rocket, ignoring the fact that I was hanging upside down from his ship's ceiling, and the last question was directed to what he was making.

"Don't touch that! It's a bomb." Rocket warned.

"A bomb?"

"Yup."

"And you leave it lying around?"

"I was gonna put it in a box." Rocket said as he pulled open a drawer to reveal a small, colorful box tied up with a little blue ribbon in a bow.

"What's a box gonna do?"

"How about this one?" Rocket took the small present out.

"No!" Peter kicked the hand with the present in it to where the box went back into the drawer and he kicked it shut.

"Hey!"

"Leave it alone."

"Why? What is it?"

"Shut up."

"What is that?" Peter asked about the other bomb Rocket was making.

"That's for if things get really hardcore. Or if you wanna blow up moons." Rocket replied.

"No one's blowing up moons." Gamora told him from behind us.

"You just wanna suck the joy out of everything." Rocket muttered as he began to connect some more pieces together. I crossed my arms upside down and that's when Peter finally noticed my position and questioned out loud,

"What are you doing up there?!"

"Trying to find a power source..." I told him blatantly. He looked away with a face that just screamed 'why did I get stuck with these wackos' before turning to Gamora,

"So, listen, I'm gonna need your buyer's coordinates." As everyone started to gather around a table that had the Orb on it.

"We're heading in the right direction. For now."

"If we're gonna work together, you might try trusting me a little bit."

"And how much do you trust me?"

"I'd trust you a lot more if you told me what this was. Because I'm guessing it's some kind of weapon." Peter picked up the Orb and motioned it to her.

"I don't know what it is." Gamora took it from Peter and placed it back on the table, where Drax picked it up.

"If it's a weapon, we should use it against Ronan." He stated and Gamora proceeded to yell at him,

"Put it down, you fool. You'll destroy us all."

"Or just you, murderess!"

"I let you live once, princess!"

"I am not a princess!"

"Hey! Nobody is killing anybody on my ship! We're stuck together until we get the money." Peter interrupted their bickering before it could escalate any more.

"I have no interest in money." Drax tossed the Orb back to Peter, who managed to catch it.

"Great. That means more money for the four of us." Peter negotiated before Groot came in and was hurt we'd forgotten about him again.

"For the five of us. Partners."

"We have an agreement, but I would never be partners with the likes of you. I'll tell the buyer we're on our way. And Quill, your ship is filthy." Gamora told Peter before she went up to the cockpit.

"She has no idea. If I had a black light, the place would look like a Jackson Pollock painting." Peter said looking around his ship with a look of amusement on his face.

"You got issues, Quill." Rocket flatly told him.

"Why don't we just see for ourselves?" I asked as I grabbed a small, open-ended glass tube and held it between my hands as some ultraviolet photons flowed between my gloved hands and it created a black light. Sure enough, the whole ship was covered in blotches of every kind of color imaginable.

"That's seriously disgusting, Quill." I started to say before the makeshift blacklight started to fizzle out and I dropped the tube as my veins had turned even darker and I could feel the lack of electricity in me.

"You alright?" Peter asked me cautiously as I gripped my wrists.

"Yeah, I just... need to charge." I told Peter before flipping down from the ceiling, hovering right above the floor before landing on my feet.