[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/kB5eaxR.png[/IMG] Moments to relax had been few and far between ever since the Guardians had left the Kyln. A combination of misadventures both thrust upon them and of their own making had continued to spiral out of control from one day to the next. A brief delay on a world of grateful locals wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Peter didn’t particularly want to linger on the statistical chances that another band of Badoon had been in the process of terrorising a peaceful single world society out in the almost uncharted systems they now found themselves ‘just’ as the Milano was flying within comms range. True, the Badoon were widespread and even their independent bands tended to favour the more violent means of acquiring wealth and resources, but it felt a little convenient to run into yet another warband out in the same space, just in time for their intervention. He pushed the thought from his mind as he wandered out of the rustic tavern-style bar he carried the latest order of drinks from. It had been designed in a style he imagined was nostalgic for the locals, reminding him of faded memories of old science fiction artwork back on Earth. The local inhabitants of the world, Apangea in their tongue, had largely tried to keep to themselves over the years but they were hardly an undeveloped society, they just favoured these small communes over the bustling cities of grander peoples. It was just a short walk back to their table, past some minor debris from their battle with the Badoon, or perhaps from the limited raiding which had occurred before their arrival. There was much fanfare and celebration around them, the grey-skinned forms of the locals continuing to party and as the remainder of the Guardians sat around their table, taking part in the presented festivities. “That’s gotta be your fifth plate of those bug things, K.” Rocket laughed in a surprisingly jovial, rather than mocking, tone (at least by his standards) as the Kryptonian munched through the last bite of what amounted to fried snack food on Apangea, before flexing a finely toned bicep at the smaller Guardian. “What can I say? Throwing a whole transport out of the inner orbits of a solar system works up an appetite. These powers must come with a super-metabolism.” She paused her retort with a flash of a smile to Peter as he set down their next round of drinks on the table. Each of them had an enhanced metabolism in their own varied way, but it still didn’t make the celebration not worth having. “Yeah, if that’s so how come you’ve got such a huge a-“ “I am Groot.” Came the interrupting rumble from the large arboreal Guardian perched somewhat awkwardly at the end of the table. “Groot’s right, Rocket, lets not antagonise the lady who might punch you through time and space.” Peter laughed as he slid the drinks around, three rather normal (by the local planet’s standards) drinks for the three of them and what amounted to a mineral watering can for Groot. “Hey it’s not a bad thing, when I’ve finally worked out our official uniforms it will be more room for adspace.” Rocket continued, raising his voice as Kara moved out of her seat to make room for some of the celebrating locals, flipping him off as she did so, earning a thumb’s up from Peter at having learned the expression. She turned in place, the grin on her features suggesting another round of jovial barbs were about to be traded before suddenly looking up and away, towards a sky that was blazing red with the colours of twin setting suns. “What is-“ Peter’s question was cut off as a the sight became visible to those not blessed with Kryptonian senses, a sudden bloom of light that pierced through the fading light of day, winking in and out of visibility. A star that was certainly not a star. A moment later the communicator on Peter’s wrist flashed red, a sonorous beep along with it. “Another distress call.” He mused, pressing the device into silence even as he looked to his companions with concern. “Chances of that happening twice to us in the same system?” Rocket voiced Peter’s earlier concerns, now with the addition of further evidence. “About as slim as us still being alive, Kara, get up there and see what we’re dealing with. We’ll catch up.” Peter nodded to the Kryptonian, who only pursed her lips for a moment before providing a mock-salute and rocketing into the sky, the woman swiftly becoming a blur of red, white and blonde. “No rest for the wicked.” He mused quitley, before turning to sprint towards where ever it was Rocket had managed to ‘park’ the Milano. [hr] “It’s a ship, not doing well, but whatever it’s made of is doing a good job of letting me see inside.” Kara drifted in the void of space not far from the derelict mountain of metal that was currently hurtling through the system. She still hadn’t gotten used to her ability to not only survive but more or less act freely in this environment of nothing. She doubted even Uncle Zod’s experiments had ever touched on the possibility this is what they could be capable of. She pushed the sad thoughts of her past, of the universe’s future, out of her mind as she added to her report. “But the distress call has to come from someone right? I can’t just push this thing out of the way of collision.” She had less difficulty adjusting to the raw strength she could harness. Throwing things? She was quite good at that. “The pulse isn’t automated, a deliberate trigger, someone’s still alive in there.” Peter confirmed, his voice chiming from the small device nestled in her ear, the vibrations passing through her own body allowing her to hear in the vacuum of space. “Going in then.” She replied simply, before she surged towards the ship, what had been a large and bulky shape in her vision rushing to become a vast terrain sprawling before her as she neared. “Kara, just wait for..” The response was interrupted by her impact with the outer shell of the ship. No shielding, she crashed through scorch marked metal with an impact she hoped was small enough not to alter the ship’s path too much, at this stage. That might risk any environmental pockets still present in the ship. She had hoped that punching through the out wall would allow her to scout out the vessel with her modified vision, but even within, she found its structure frustratingly opaque as she blinked through the visual spectrums, the physical act helping her to focus her powers on each. When she finally let out a sigh, the noise lost in the rush of air passing around her out of the rent she had just made, allowing her eyes to filter back into normal visual light, she tilted her head in curious study, approaching the walls of the corridor she had punched her way into. “K…Kara, are you,….the,” The signal must have been truly bad for ‘her’ not to have been able to pick out meaning in the static, but she replied none the less, voicing her thoughts more than anything. “It’s…. biological…I think, like a grown metal?” She reached out to touch the wall before her in the long dark stretch of strange starship she found herself in. The sensation of the metal did much to confirm her suspicions but add only further questions. It felt like solid metal, yet the contours of its shaping were sinuous, like flesh and muscle knit together in lieu of mechanical construction. “Have you encountered anything like that?” She asked through the comm, turning her head slightly to look down the corridor, then up and out of the rent she had punched through the ship. “Only once, Kara I think you sh-.” The contact fully cutting out was enough to turn Kara’s look of puzzlement into a frown. Not interference then, at least not by accident. It didn’t take a genius to guess what Peter might have been trying to say, but a reminder he wasn’t in charge of her might be in order. “It’s alright Peter, just because something is creepy doesn’t mean I’m suddenly not invulnerable.” She was fairly sure the audio device wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up the slight swoosh of her hair flick through the vibrations of her body, but she did hope so all the same. As she turned back to the wall her hand was still pressed against, she blinked in surprise. The wall blinked back at her, a large set of chillingly white eyes. “What in Rao’s name,” She managed, before the wall was suddenly not a wall, a living thing rushing forwards, with enough speed it struck her before even her reflexes could react. They crashed through the ship, deck after deck of this strange, mutated flesh metal as she grappled with the creature. It had pulled itself from the wall, seemingly made of the same material as the ship itself, or vice versa, with enough speed and force to prevent her from adjusting to it. The black sinuous form seemed to both wrestle her and coat her own, although as a great set of jaws lunged to bite down on her, it was suddenly sent reeling in a shriek which battered her ears, but not enough to suppress the smirk on her features. “More than you can chew?” She managed to recover enough to reverse the fall, twisting in the air as they crashed through another level of the ship, before she managed to pull her head free of the tangle of hostile matter. She didn’t speak again to punctuate her point, instead sudden twin pulses of light from her eyes heralded the scorching rays of her vision, powering into the amalgam creature with enough force to blast it clear of her, sending it crashing into the depths of the far larger chamber she now found herself. The follow up howl it released as it fell suggested it enjoyed the impact of her heat vision even less than it did the experience of trying to bite through her skin. “The blue skinned one did not lie.” The voice seemed to echo through the chamber, all around her, all at once. “She said you would come to save them, that you would make an excellent host, with you, we can be free.” When she pushed her vision she could see through the dark now. The voice spoke from many mouths, individuals, humanoids, suspended in pods not entirely unlike her own along the walls, but each stained black with the same amalgam material that had infested the ship, and attacked her. “Let them live and I can think about helping you, what keeps you from being free?” These were not her people, but leaving any number of beings in this state was a fate she didn’t wish to consider. It was the duty of a Scion of El to put an end to things such as this. “Your will is not required, your form will break our chains and free us from the King In Black, then the Mad Titan may have you, as promised.” The words hissed from many lips, but this time, she could sense the oncoming movement, hear the writhing in the walls. “I’m going to have to decline.” She was moving before they struck this time, but there were many, many, more of them. Shapeless horrors leaping form corrupted metal to attempt to latch onto her. Her eyes blazed and some of the tide fell away, but it wasn’t enough, even at her speed, there were many, from every direction. They may not have been as fast as her, but they were fast enough, and she wasn’t trying to flee. She rushed towards their captives, fighting as she went. The sudden thrum of firepower behind her heralded the arrival of the Milano, bursting forwards as its weaponry enlarged the gap she had fought through the ship into a space large enough for the vessel to fly. “I was suspicious, but I didn’t predict ‘alien symbiotes luring us onto a derelict’ sort of suspicious.” Peter’s voice finally crackled back into life on her comms device, shortly followed by a tone she had come to know as concerned. “I am Groot.” “I’m fine, help me get these people out of here.” Kara hoped that with the benefit of the Milanor’s flood beams that the others could see into the depths of the hold enough to notice the prisoners, but even still, she cut a bold and bright swathe through the grim tide of grim horrors to be able to follow. “Get back aboard K, if they get a hold of you who knows what these things will do.” Rocket spoke next, a brief pause in his cadence the only clue that he was focusing on the Milano’s weaponry, bright beams of energy sweeping all around the ship to prevent the small number that had diverted from Kara to attempt to board, or bring down, the craft. “One of them already tried, I think I chipped its teeth.” She spoke back, although that proved a mistake. With the number of aliens swarming around her in diving attacks, an enterprising life for went for what it presumed was a weak point. Kara choked as she fell, crashing from her flight into the hold, scattering crates as she went. The Milano immediately dived after her, and there was no hint of complaint over the comms as it did. For all the Guardians dysfunctionality, none would leave one of their declared own. A second mistake, bringing the agile craft too close to the Symbiotic swarm. The Milano had the firepower and the hull to resist many of them, but not all at once. Countless impacts shuddered through the hold, panels were pressed in then buckled just enough for the near-liquid forms to press through. Engines burst into screams in what limited atmosphere still remained within the derelict hull, then went silent, as the Milano began spiralling down the short trip to the hull plating below. [hr] The impact wasn’t hard enough to break the hull open, but the Milano was stricken, and without it’s shielding, easy prey for the primordial alien hunters. Rocket swore as he pulled himself from his jumpseat, whatever dark science had made him gave him a particularly resilient frame when it came to surviving impacts without much in the way of pain and he had enough of his senses to remove his laser cannon from beneath his seat, just as one of the crazed creatures burst through the shattered nose of the Milano towards him. Bright light cascaded from the weapon, and the shrieking creature was sent sprawling back out of the vessel. Rocket then turned to regard the rest of the cockpit. Peter and Groot were a little slower to recover than the smaller Guardian, but they were still alive, human groans and the creaking of slightly splintering wood heralding their movements as they unbound themselves. “Well, this is truly farked.” Rocket groaned, as much to himself as the others, although certainly loud enough for them to hear, a murmer of assent from Peter a surprisingly unwelcome, in this circumstance, change from their usual bickering. Any continuation to the conversation was cut short with the loud scream of an unfamiliar alarm from deep within the Milano. “..I ain’t heard that before, and that’s never a good sign.” " [img]https://i.imgur.com/YkGJrIe.jpeg[/img] " “Not good…not good.” [hr] Kara forced herself up, exhaling with the full force of her breath, rocketing out what remained of the symbiote after she had quite unceremoniously bit through half of it. Whatever vulnerable interior it had hoped to find had proven false. Her eyes went wide in shock however as she beheld the stricken Milano, and only wider still when she heard the scream of the alarm. She was racing towards them, her new friends, already, but redoubled so. Calling out through the comms system. “Get away from it! It will kill you all!” “Kara?” Peter’s confused tone replied. “I think your pod is starting to speak.” She ignored the response for a moment, yelling out in her own tongue. “Deactivate! Threat response declined!” “Request denied.” The sonorous chant of Kryptonian, that had once been a comfort to her, sent her mind reeling. “You can’t deny me! I am Kara Zor’El, Daughter of the Great House of El, you were made to serve me, deactivate!” She was already in the cockpit as she spoke, landing down with enough forced to scatter any of the remaining consoles that had survived the impact, sending her allies unceremoniously scattering as she did so, staring down the monolith of her Synthship as it floated among the wreckage of the Milano. “We do not serve, we protect. Purge commencing.” Kara didn’t have time to swear, to curse or protest. Only to act. She could not whisk her allies away in time, the pod was designed with Kryptonian capabilities in mind, she could not get them far enough to save them from the eradication. Only one power could, the one she’d avoided using ever since discovering it by chance. In the picosecond it took for her mind to reach this conclusion, before any other Guardian could react, Kara Zor’El drew on this ability and punched downwards, not through the skin of the Milano, but through the skin of reality itself, calling on her memory of the string of numbers they had pilfered from the vaults of the Collector. [hr] They fell for eternity, or not time at all. Through a infinite tunnel of impossible colours. They saw all of existence but forgot who they were, time ran out into nothing, as their skin was warmed by the light of the first star. The nothing, then … [hr] [h3]The Acadian Forest[/h3] Then they were falling. Not in the space between reality, but the real thing. Falling. Down. Fast. The collision was sudden, but surprisingly soft. And cold. Kara pulled herself from the snowbank among the dense thicket of tree cover as she looked up. A shimmering rent in the sky itself was slowly closing behind them, shimmering light giving way to Winter sky. “…Where the fark is this.” The crass tone of Rocket resounded from within a shifting mound of powdered snow. “…I think this is Earth.”