C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A LT H E G U A R D I A N S
O F T H E G A L A X Y
"I don't mind dying like the valiant intergalactic hero that I am... but the least you could do is pay attention!"
V A R I O U S β΄ H E R O E S F O R H I R E β΄ G A L A C T I C W A N D E R E R S
A title given in a mocking tone that is slowly becoming a legend, the Guardians of the Galaxy are a band of spacefaring outlaws with a (usually) strong sense of right and wrong. Even to consider them a team, for their formation occurred more from chance than desire, can seem somewhat premature, but bonds forged in the fires of battle are strong. Their story begins in Earthβs past, with the birth of an alien-human hybrid, the child of a human woman and an alien prince stranded on Earth and momentarily free of the responsibilities of a stellar war. Duty, or power, eventually overcame love and so the human was left behind with a newborn. While they may have had no role or even knowledge of their lineage, the child would one day discover their only gift from their father, a twin set of pistols able to harness the elements themselves. Shortly after their lineage would have more tragic consequences, as several groups of aliens would secretly come to Earth in the hope of riches by ransom, or simply revenge. The most notorious of these groups, the Badoon, were at least partially successful, both in infiltrating the Earth and in locating the Quill family. When they struck, under the guise of local armed criminals, they murdered Peter's mother and took the boy prisoner, intent on turning him over to an enemy of Peter's unknown father.
They would never reach their intended destination, intercepted by the Ravagers under the command of Yondu Udonta. The spacefaring bandit felt some kind of kinship and sympathy for the young Earthling, rather than return him to Earth or attempte to fulfill the bounty himself, he adopted Peter into his crew. During his spaceborne adventures, Peter would eventually encounter the cosmic being the 'Star Lord' and deemed worthy of its power, becoming the new bearer of the title. While the Ravagers under Yondu, in particular with Peter's influence, became more akin to the loveable rogues of Earthbound Loxley, eventually their true nature would show, abandoning Peter to the Nova Corps rather than face further pursuit. Locked away in the secure facility of the Kyln, Peter would encounter those who would become his companions. Genetically engineered Rocket Racoon, the last of the Groot, Drax the Destroyer and Gamora. Each of them had been wronged greatly by the wider powers of the galaxy and each of them were capable in their own right. Few might think of any of them as altruistic, but in truth, each felt something of the Star Lord's purpose. The Klyn had been notorious as a facility from which no one could escape, yet it was not long before this particular band of outlaws made their escape, taking with them the Nova Corps ship, the Milano. Due to it's close orbit of a Black Hole, time on the Klyn may have passed swiflty, but the (not yet named) Guardians returned to a galaxy several decades later than that which they had known. This seperation from the situations they had known prompted them to remain united, at least for the time being, picking up where Peter had left off, Galactic mercenaries with a propensity to accidentally do heroic things.
The most recent member of the team is a recent acquisition, the Guardians accepting a contract to retrieve a powerful energy source formed by a contested time-space anomaly sort after by many. Fending off some of the worst denizens of the Galaxy, at the source of the disturbance they instead found Kara Zor-L, displaced not just out of time and space but reality itself. The meeting was not entirely easy and peaceful, but Kara now travels with the Guardians, in an effort to discover the location of this reality's Earth, and a chance to return to her own.
"Quill, of all the mad scut you've dragged us into, this is the worst, I am drawing the line here." Rocket's voice was strained as he fought to keep his senses from spinning entirely out of control as the Milano looped around the exploding remains of a larger craft. Usually spaceflight didn't cause such problems, but the cascade of lights from detonating vessals and the distorting effects of whatever was happening to the laws of space and time were doing a great job of creating vertigo.
"Rocket this was your idea, I just did the improvisation." Peter didn't have time to turn his to reply to the smaller Rocket as he clutched the manual controls of the Milano, the smaller Guardian off to his side on one of the weapon stations, blazing away at the Badoon fighters that were currently circling them.
"Well, we wouldn't have needed to take this job in the first place if we'd got paid for the last one, but you had to give those water collectors away to-" Normally the destruction of a persuing enemy would have brought some cheer from Rocket, but instead they were simply being replaced by a continued stream of targets as the Milano dived through melee of competing starcraft. It seemed anyone who considered themself a local warlord or bandit had shown up to stake their claim to whatever power source had been detected blazing away in what had previously been a very unremarkable asteroid field.
"Be silent the both of you, or keep it off our comms." The cutting voice of Gamora crackled over the comms unit, timed with the sudden thud of her impact on the outer dome of the ship's frontal observation window. Clad in her voidsuit of white and black, the Deadliest Woman in the Galaxy was tethered to the outside of the craft. Superhumanley strong and fast, even in the crucible of combat in space she could do more damage with her blade than by manning a turret, a fact that made their other melee specialist, Drax, exceedingly envious.
"You both waste time, and are half again behind my count." Drax himself cut into the conversation, sitting at the opposite station to Rocket as beams from his own installation evaporated the onrushing form of another Badoon craft, just as Peter brought the Milano away from the collapsing form of the much larger Ravager ship they had been using as artful cover. It looked as if a thousand and one new stars were being born every moment as the fusion cores of spacecraft bled out into the void, only to wink out the next moment. Stranger and more captivating still was the shimmering light blazing off the shattered remainds of one of the asteroids, a light which seemed to bend and warp reality around it. The source of both the great power and the escalating conflict.
"I am Groot." The Shifting mass of wood and vines at the navigational console toned out dolorously , pointing with a finger like tendril at the criss crossing holographic map charting the surrounding chaos.
"Alright, you heard Groot, we have a window." With little further warning, Peter banked the Milano hard, a spiralling dive running parallel to another blazing wreck that had recently be a pirate cruiser of some size. Masked by the blazing conflagration, the small (relatively) craft escaped noticed from the surrounding battle as it fell towards the blazing asteroid. Only a single Badoon fighter noticed their passing, and only for the moment it took Gamora to swing free from the craft, the length of her blade, the Godslayer, passing over its cockpit and venting the pair of crewmen into space. With practiced grace, the daughter of Thanos swung back around, the mag clamps of her boots firing once again to pull her back to the surface of the Milano, bonecrunching force barely noticed by either ship or woman. As they drew closer to the anomaly, Gamora slipped back inside the protective chassis of the Milano, sliding in through the airlock seals to once again stand within the atmospheric pocket of their travelling home.
"Do we have any readings on what it actually is yet?" She asked as she removed her helm, her voice still carrying over the comms as she made her way through the ship to reach the cockpit, momentarily without sight of the chaos beyond, her natural senses had no way of telling they were currently in such a hectic battle.
"The initial pulse was even enough to suggest an artificial origin, but after that its been haywire. Like someone shot a hole through space and time and then just left it to bleed out." Peter spoke up as they drew closer and closer to the asteroid. To say they had a clear approach had been an overstatement, as distinctive looking warships circled the immediate space around the asteroid. "Heads up team, those look like Accuser Warships."
"Kree? That's a hell of a lot more than rogues and pi-" Rockets latest remark was cut off as the closest Accuser warship to the Milano seemed to twist away from the flickering form of the rift, only for a detonation to rock through the vessel, seeming to split it in half, a rolling wave of force passing the thousands of kilometres between them in an instant. "What the flark did that!"
"Whatever it was, it's breaking out of the pull of the rift, we can move to intercept, looks like the ravagers are too." Gamora spoke out from over Groot's 'shoulder' following the navigational holo.
"We're getting paid to bring back a power source, not chase whatever's coming out of it." Rocket grumbled from the turret station, swinging the armament around to track the motion all the same. "Fark, that's a small signal, can't even be the size of a fighter."
As he spoke, the lights of Ravager weaponry opened up, a cascade of aggressive light as the pirate forces looked to engage with whatever had just blazed its way out of the temporarl anomaly. Without much of a pause, Peter threw the Milano around, the sleek craft pivoting in building gravity of the asteroid to blaze after the signal. "Sorry Rocket, anything that's fighting Ravagers is a friend of mine."
"Screw you, Quill. This is why we're so poor." Despite his words, Rocket was already preparing for the incoming firefight. In the short time the somewhat sarcastically named Guardians had been operating there were already few enough Ravager outfits without the directive to shoot the Milano down on sight. They were soon in a new debris field made up of the scattered remains of the Accuser Warship and a building number of Ravager fighters, although there were plenty more still blazing away. The Milano entered the dogfight with all turrets blazing, falling in among the diving fighters with a grace the ramshackle pirates couldn't match. Still, they drew only passing interest from the pirates, who remained more fixated on the tiny signal that continued to wreck havoc among their formation.
"I am Groot."
"No way that's a hu- Oh scut...I think that is a human." As the Milano drew in, visual confirmation backed up what the inscreasingly accurate sensors were suggesting. Right at the heart of the destruction what appeared to be a human woman, out in the vacuum of space, punched her way through the chasis of an onrushing Ravager figher, her eyes emitted twin beams of red energy which decimated another, before her attention swung about to the Milano. "...This could be bad." Rocket breathed.
Despite the potential dangers around them, the figure simply drifted towards the ship, halting the progress of the craft with an outstreched hand, her eyes, slowly decreasing from a red glow to a more natural blue state, fixated on Peter within the cockpit.
"Not a human, a Kryptonian." Gamora was already standing, the Godslayer drawn despite the seperation between her and floating figure outside.
"Those are all dead Gamora, perhaps this is a ghost." Drax contributed, his own expression knit in a forough of deep thought.
"Well we sure as fark aren't getting paid." Rocket let out a dejected sigh.
- Mantis: Peter's yet unknown half-sister, another offshoot of a love affair with the current Spartoi Empire.
- Helena Wayne (Earth-Two): Kara's best friend and daughter of Earth-Two's Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle. Potentially also caught in the same malfunctioning Boom Tube which jetisoned Kara into this reality. Held back to prevent confusion with existing Bat family characters but could be interesting to bring in later.
- Emperor J'Son of Spartax: Peter's father and the dictatorial ruler of the Spartax Empire. Currently seeking the Guardians to both secure his legacy and Kara for what he beleives is a means to harness an Interdimensional power source.
- Hakkou / Holt Industries: Antagonists for the Guardians should they make it to Earth. These are Earth based villains attempting to thwart the plan to replicate the Qunatum Tunneler of Earth-Two to discover the fate of Kara's home.
- Ronan the Accuser: Pesky Kree extremist who doesn't like the Guardians on account of their less than friendly interactions with the most expantionist of Kree elements.
- Darkseid/Thanos: Not exclusive by any means, but should they become relevant to the rp, both have ties to the Guardians/Kara.
- Nebula: Thanos' 'other daughter' still attempting to track down her sister.
- Annihilus: The End Goal Big Bad of the Guardians.
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