[Heroes Assembled] Groot Fan Fiction - The Maze of Klabaru

 

4918/The Maze of Klabaru

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The Maze of Klabaru
Date of Scene:	28 January 2021
Location:	Outer Space
Synopsis:	The group has a gap in their memories and a minor change to be explained in a future scene.
Cast of Characters:	Groot, Peter Quill, Rocket, Gamora, Nebula

---

Groot has posed:
Groot had heard about Krackerjacks from a conversation between Peter (Quill not Parker) and Drax and been intruiged, so the next stop they made, he described such a thing to several merchants until one pointed him to a small shop on the other side of the planet. He bought a small box full of nutrient sweet snacks in exchange for a chocolate seed and brought it back to the ship. He presented his find to the rest of the group only to find that, on reading the 'interesting facts' on the box, that unlike Crackerjacks, these were one of a kind hand crafted items, sought all over the galaxy due to the strange mystic order of treasure hunters who found rare artifacts or clues for quests inside them.

So, as it was, a small box of highly delicious snacks later, the one of a kind map to the legendary Maze of Klabaru was downloaded into the Milano's star charts in a backwater planet that had an inhabitable planet mainly populated by Space Goats and those that herded them. A beauteous oxygen gas giant with several trees in it that were hundreds of kilometers long was the actual destination. There were thousands and thousands of these trees and without the map, they never would have found the way in. But WITH the map, they identified a particular pile of brances with the supposed final clue that the map, repository of at least 10 different great treasures since it was supposedly good luck to leave something of value inside.

"I am Groot." Groot points at the screen and shrugs.

Peter Quill has posed:
Quill's got the Zune plugged into the aux cord he wired into his station playing 'I Feel the Earth Move' by Carole King over the speakers inside the ship, his head bobbing with the beat. He's also wearing his I'M WITH STUPID SHIRT the arrow pointing at Rocket if he's in his usual spot on the bridge.

"So that's the thing?" he asks Groot when he points to the tangle of branches on the screen. Honestly he was on this mission just to kill time until they had to go get the Kryptonians, he had doubts about maps found in boxes of snacks, but hey, if there was really treasure down there, so much the better. "Alright, the map say what we do to get in that thing or do we just show up and start hacking and ^blasting?"

(Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6913KnbMpHM)

Rocket has posed:
"You had me at 'treasure,' but how the hell did you come across this again? Wait, wait. Forget it. I don't need to know." Rocket is, indeed, in his own seat, as he has demanded to pilot the ship through any tangles of this and that if there's no easier way through. En route to the chair, he patted Quill on the back, an abnormal gesture of friendliness that was accompanied by a smile that looked like more of a grimace.

The reason? A 'Hello, My Name Is' sticker on which he wrote, 'Peter Quill, And I Am A Loser.' That's what he gets for wearing the shirt.

In answering Groot, he rolls his eyes. "No, I was thinking we'd go in all recklessly instead of being careful, because..oh, wait. That's what we do anyway! Now can we just get this stuff and hope it's not all just a lie?"

Gamora has posed:
    Gamora, seated nearby with her legs crossed at the knee arches an eyebrow at Quill, and notes, "... That seems more likely to damage the treasure, than anything." Quietly adding, "If there is any."

    Gamora looks from Rocket, to the sticker he left on Quill, puzzling over it for a moment before electing not to point it out. "I'll go take a look." She says, volunteering to be on the ground team - or possibly BE the ground team - as she rises to her feet.

Nebula has posed:
    One of the advantages to continued backwater destinations is that there's simply no way dad would ever look for them here. On the other hand, lack of civilisation is grating. Also, the stares. Ever since the crew found out Gamora and Nebula were the daughters of Thanos, there'd been considerable weirdness.

    Nebula steps up behind Quill and peers down at the thick forest, "This was a waste of fuel." Much like most of their adventures, they find a way to make it profitable in the end. It's still an uncomfortable world to walk in where worrying about where your next meal will come from and next fuel rod will be sourced actually matters.

    When Gamora volunteers to go explore Nebula pipes up not wanting to let Gamora get one up on her, "I'll go too." She doesn't want for permission, instead, she turns and heads to the gear to get a self-assembly nano-jetpack for the possible spelunking.

Groot has posed:
Under Rocket's careful piloting, the ship descends from the atmosphere down into the continent sized tree. The three saphire rings of the Oxygen gas giant look like infinite oceans against the yellow green star on the horizon. The ship glitters and shimmers as it passes through many clouds along the way, and the vomitous mix of dozens of rainbows looks like Dali had a seismmic fit. As the ship approaches a giant 3 mile wide 'knot' one must wonder the size of the woodpecker that could make such a hole...

Once the ship enters the 'cave' the ship immediately is hit with automatic telemtry, guiding the ship past what look to be nasty automated defenses buried all along the inside of the knot defending it against...SOMETHING, with giant participle blasters pointed out, not in. The ship slowly slides over a giant silver ziggauraut in the shadow of the multiicolored sky outside and lands in an ancient and worn landing pad. When the ship sets down, yellow lights slowly light up one by one on a walk way that opens to a large set of double platinum doors fifty feet tall and fifty feet wide.

"I am Groot."

Peter Quill has posed:
That pat on his shoulder almost makes Quill feel bad for the shirt, almost, but he does give Rocket a heartfelt smile and a thumbs up. Yep no clue what's on his back. Before long the view has his attention. "That is one big tree," he remarks before glazing away for a second to say to Gamora. "Well, we'll just have to blast and chop carefully," he says. Notably Quill seems not to be among those staring at the sisters after the revelation. Well, except for Gamora but he did that a lot before too when he thought nobody was looking.

As they move into the giant knot and see the weapons arrayed for its defense, "Sorry Nebula, looks like you're wrong, nobody puts this sort of firepower around something unless it's worth more than the firepower," he says with enthusiasm. "And that fire power, definitely not cheap." He looks to Rocket. "Find us a place to land."

Rocket has posed:
Rocket's attention sharpens on the defenses, eyes narrowing. "Am I the only one that finds it suspicious that these things aren't firing at us on the way in? What do you wanna bet we might have to deal with them on the way back out? Yeah, I've seen traps like this before. I still want that treasure." Worth the risk, evidently.

Quill's reaction to the patting doesn't make him feel bad for the sticker at all. Not even almost. The gesture only confirms what he wrote, as far as he's concerned. He'll just blame Drax or someone for it once Quill realizes what's there.

"I don't think we need the doors, Groot. Just whatever's behind 'em. So are we all goin' in, or just the /Daughters/ of /Thanos/ because they probably want to talk more about how they're gonna /kill/ us in our sleep?" Rocket wonders, and does so pointedly with quite the stare in their direction.

He adds, "And it looks like it's already bringing us in. I'm not controlling it."

Gamora has posed:
    Truthfully, half the reason Gamora wants to go - besides her characteristicly dogged work-ethic for dangerous nonsense - is to get a bit of space after a long, worrisome time spent among a group of people at various points on the spectrum between distrusting her, and wanting to kill her. In a way, she's been patiently waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the fact that it hasn't yet is starting to unnerve her. This would be far simpler if Peter hadn't inadvertently introduced the unlikely idea of being accepted to her thought process.

    In a weird way, Gamora isn't used to the people around her not having absolute trust in her. Although, she supposes, she's broken THAT old trust as well.

    Gamora straps on a nano-jetback - no concerns of burning her cloak, she lost it back on Eskeem-6 - giving Nebula a wary look when she follows her, before responding to the others. "Well. They wouldn't be the first to try to enslave us, or the last to die trying." She reasons, simply. "... Worst case scenario, perhaps we strip their weaponry for salvage."

    Gamora frowns at Rockets insinuations, clearly bristling at being spoken of that way; but under the circumstances she chooses not to respond.

Nebula has posed:
    "I'm not wrong Quill. Note, as Rocket points out, the guns were not firing," she says and then looks back at Rocket as he loudly points out that they may kill them all in their sleep. Nebula considers for a moment and says, "You're not wrong. Better keep up, who knows how elaborate our plans will become." There, that'll learn him for being so blunt about it.

    She hits the button to open the door and steps out in to the oxygen rich world. The good thing about oxygen rich worlds is how well things burn. Lots of wood, lots of oxygen. Just add heat. A planet sized candle. Fun. Despite how much she loathes Thanos, she misses those daddy daughter moments.

Groot has posed:
Groot gets up from his seat and goes down the ramp. He waits for the others so its clear he isnt planning on staying behind either way. He looks down the ramp and admires the intricate ancient writing along the bottom in a language that he does not understand with tiled arts of joy and death alternating on green and gold tiles (green showing death and gold showing joy) though the gold tiles, unlike the doors, are not actual gold.

While the group is prepping to depart, a giant feathered eye moves over the hole, down in the bottom right corner from the ship's perspective when suddenly the guns activate and a dozen beams of light bright and powerful enough to destroy a battleship unleash on the giant...whatever it is, causing it to shriek in anger and fly away.

"I am Groot." He says this sardonically.

Peter Quill has posed:
Quill points back over his chair at Gamora. "See, someone's thinking positive," he says. "You could learn something from Gamora, Nebula, got to look on the bright side," he says before getting back around to Rocket. "Hey not cool dude, they haven't killed us in our sleep yet despite all of us having no idea who they were. They're not going to kill us now." He says before saying, "We can definitely come with you though, not to listen, but because well," he gestures vaguely at the guns. "If the guns on the inside are as bad as the ones on the outside you guys might need all the help you can get."

That's when the eyes appears and the weapons drives the bird thing away. "Oooor we could all be eaten by Big Bird's fricking massive older brother?" he says. "Okay, so let's speed up this little treasure hunt guys and get off this rock."

Rocket has posed:
Rocket scoffs, "Ruthless killers know ruthless killers, Nebula." Whether or not he measures up to her brand of violence, they haven't got the full Rocket and all he's truly capable of..or have they? They've caught glimpses into his past, but he hasn't given them much more to go on. Maybe he can't yet.

Looks like they're all going on this expedition, so he grumbles under his breath and makes sure to select a very large gun and a good backup. That's when he pauses as the display with the eye catches everyone's attention. His ears flatten and he mutters, "Because that ain't an issue at all, nope." As an afterthought, he nods once to Groot and says, "Those green tiles are probably just for show. Quill, why don't you try one and see what happens?"

Gamora has posed:
    Gamora gives Quill a look that's hard to read. As pleased as she is with his conclusion, she dare not tell him that the odds of them all being murdered in their sleep have actually drastically increased since learning of the two womens origins. "Nebula." She speaks her sister's name in a scolding manner. "Our crewmates need not fear us while we are on this ship." She sighs, "It is only if they abandon us that we need scour the galaxy for their heads." She gives Quill a nod that's... meant to be reassuring? Question mark?

    Gamora's lips are pressed together very hard in a flat line in the moments after the large bird makes itself known, not moving for several seconds before she wordlessly reaches out to grab a laser rifle, finding it... prudent to add to her toolset today. "I have... revised the worst case scenario." She notes calmly, and begins to move down the ramp. "With any luck, they're just automated."

Nebula has posed:
    When has reassuring anyone ever worked? Nebula gives Gamora a deadpan look. Fear. Always rule through fear. Then again, that's dad speaking isn't it? The thoughts drift away as she sees the gigantic eye and her initial impression of burning the entire planet seems far more logical now.

    "Some of us aren't as 'lucky' as others Gamora," she warns and then looks over the alien writing. She's not familiar with it, though it does seem to be indicating either the good path or the bad path, or may be the righteous path and the cowardly path. Alien cultures are hard to interpret.

    She loiters off to the side a bit, making sure to try and make Rocket feel uncomfortable. This'd be even more fun if Drax weren't having a nap. "I suggest the green path also, no treasure worth having is handed over on a golden path."

Groot has posed:
Groot boggles and then finally chuckles at Rocket's statement but steps on the golden tiles deliberately, noticably not being fried in the process. From time to time, he looks up at the knot and lasers as he does so. As he does, the doors open up ahead of him revealing a series of doors all around a large chamber about fourhundred feet wide and a hundred feet tall.

A soft soothing voice says, seeming to come from everywhere speaking in the native language (or closest thereto) to each person hearing it, "Welcome to the Maze of Klabaru. This is a place where treasures of those empires that know they are past their prime are placed in memorium but it is understood that all things change. Those who can navigate the maze may take one Klarn worth of treasure, no more. Since my scans indicate you are seekers, not donors, you are encouraged to leave something of value to you in the chamber at the center ahead of you, though this is not required." Written in ancient Galactic standard it says "Take a Treasure, Leave a Treasure" and is a flat wide 'table' about 20 feet across.

"You may also wish to take a super string tracker with you to help you navigate through the maze. They are located on the right and left of the doors."

Groot takes one of these, eyeballs it curious and finds a 'hook' that he can tap to the door that seems to leave a vibrant yellow energy thread behind him as he moves. He shrugs.

Peter Quill has posed:
Quill meets Gamora's look with a confused expression, "Oookay, right," he says before standing up from his station to explain to everyone "Listen, nobody's killing anyone in their sleep and no one is leaving anyone behind, we're crew, we need to worrying about giant space guns, things with huge eyes and whatever weird crap is between us and the treasure right now not each other!"

"So come on, let's get out there and get rich," he says before tapping his mask into place and drawing his quadblasters.

As for the tiles? "Ha, ha, ha," he says to Rocket. "Why don't /you/ go give them a try," he says, before his attention shifts to Nebula. "And haven't you seen the Wizard of Oz? Of course not, not enough killing, but the yellow brick road always leads to good stuff!"

He starts in that direction before the voice pulls him up short. "We all heard that right?" he asks wondering if he was going crazy. "And what the heck ^is a Klarn??"

Rocket has posed:
"Because /I asked you to first!/" Rocket snaps back at Quill, a sudden bite to his words. Little outbursts like that do happen from time to time. Groot knows better than any of the other Guardians. He pointedly ignores every effort to get them all on the same page, but he does send Nebula a glare and gestures at the green tiles again. "Go ahead. Get yourself lit up."

Once they've reached the next part of all this, and the voice chimes in, they've passed the next set of doors which opens up to the sizable chamber. "Maze of Klabaru? What the hell is a Klabaru?" he wonders, not really expecting an answer. There is one thing he can't resist. "Think we'll find anything here from Earth? Probably not. They'd have to be smart enough to know they're past their prime."

The string gets a shrug. Would it be that useful? This doesn't look like much of a maze up to this point, but far be it for him to ignore something that may make it easier to get back out. So, he grabs a length to hook through a ring set into his jumpsuit. There is a moment of..something different out of him when they reach the table and he mutters, "I ain't leavin' anything here. Everything I have, I need." Is it greed or an actual belief of his?

Gamora has posed:
    Caught between Rocket and Nebula's opinions on the colored tiles, Gamora sighs, "That depends on whether the people designing this place meant for it to greet grand company, or entrap it." She reasons, though the thought makes her think of the bird eye again, which makes her uneasy.

    Gamora is accustomed to grand chambers. They can't usually really fit chambers this grand on mobile space fortresses though. She's not sure if it's impressive, or obnoxious. Gamora snaps to attention when the mysterious voice is heard, but finds nothing during her quick scan of the room. Looking up slightly, asthough making eye contact with the voice, Gamora calls, "Who are you? What was that creature beyond the defense turrets? ... What is a 'Klarn?'" her response doubling as an answer to Quill's question.

    Receiving no answer, Gamora frowns. Nodding once as Rocket speaks, Gamora agrees, "All I have are my weapons and the clothes off my back." Such as they are. "If there are so many 'threads', are we expected to split into different paths, then? That seems unwise."

Nebula has posed:
    Nebula walks up past Gamora and grabs one of the super string trackers by the doors and says to her questions, "Who cares, who cares, and who cares." That's the usual approach their family has when conquering a population after all. They're all special and unique snowflakes. So special, so unique, that they all blur together after the first few million deaths.

    "I suggest we leave Rocket, someone will find value in him eventually." She doesn't make a move to make good on the exchange though, it wasn't meant to be taken seriously. Unceremoniously she moves in to the maze. The sooner they find a klarn worth of treasure the sooner they can get out of here.

    Nebula pauses a moment and turns around slowly, taking in the chamber and doors and tiles and guns. She's not quite sure why she did it.. preserving a record perhaps? may be her callous response to Gamora actually made her stop and consider things ..just briefly.

Groot has posed:
Groot leaves a chocolate seed, a barley seed, a sunflower seed, a rose seed, and a Mike Libinto 2020 Bismo North Dakota Pincunsion Minor League baseball card. He stops and looks around the doors which has 10 doors with symbols, the door they came in, and a door at the opposite of the one they came into that says, written in the native language (or closest thereto) of each person in clear letters, "This door leads to certain death, do not come this way. Seriously, not a trick do not enter this door."

The symbol on the other 10 doors

-A bright yellow sun

-A Frozen iceberg

-A green gem (like an emerald but not quite)

-A wave on the sea

-A gear and screw

-A rainbow

-An alien humanoid head with x's on the eyes and a 'nimbus' arua around their head

-A sword with jagged edges

-A 'camp fire'

-An eight pointed symbol with arrows pointing outward in all directions

Each door is 20 foot tall and 20 feet wide.

Groot has posed:
Groot says, "I am Groot." He looks around at the doors pensively unsure."

Peter Quill has posed:
Quill looks skyward, "Whatever, you're just jealous because Earth is awesome and nobody's heard of the planet of the angry Racoon people," he shoots back to Rocket before grabbing the string and heading where it leads him. When it comes to the doors and time to leave something behind, he frowns a moment, saying to Nebula, "We're not leaving anyone behind," a beat. "Not even Rocket."

He considers what he has to give, and with a grimace he pulls his Zune out of his pocket, it wasn't what the Walkman was to him but...three hundred songs!

He sighs and leaves it with the seeds Groot puts down. So much music... "A klarn better be a shit load of treasure..." he says he walks up and tries the door with the yellow sun.

Gamora has posed:
    Gamora watches everyone else leave, before looking up at the door with the jagged sword symbol. Seems fitting. Before she enters, though, she looks at the table pensively for a long moment before she hesitantly produces a small holo emitter from her gear. Hesitating for a moment, she places it on the table. An errant touch activates it, and it briefly emits an old still image of a pair of very young girls, one green and one blue, carrying practice swords that are just barely not comically oversized for their ages.

    Gamora's eyebrow twitches once before she deactivates it, and turns her back, moving to open her chosen doorway.

Nebula has posed:
    Nebula's eyes roam over the different doors. They could mean anything, but at least a gear and screw suggests technology. Why not see what these dead races created. She goes through the door with the gear and screw. That at least seems obvious in its intention. Since she's part machine, part person this feels weirdly perverse and thus she can't help but go in, letting the string leave a trail behind her heading in to the maze.

Rocket has posed:
"Very funny," Rocket grumbles after Nebula's suggestion that goes nowhere, regardless of what Quill has to say. "And I'm not a raccoon," he tells Quill, almost an afterthought at this point.

He hangs back for a few moments before joining the others, under the pretense of scoping things out. His expression sours, turning thoughtful as he debates internally about what to do. There's no good reason to think about it, but...

Waiting until the rest have all turned ahead to move on again, he reaches up to the table and quickly grabs a few things the others left behind: Quill's Zune, Gamora's holo emitter, and Groot's weird and confusing baseball card. He stuffs them into a pocket, which he closes back up afterward, then he hurries along to catch up. "So which door is it? Do we each gotta pick one? I want the gear one. Groot likes the leaf, but if we have to pick one together he said maybe we'd do the weapon or the gem. I don't know how this is supposed to work."

Groot has posed:
Groot doesnt seem keen on leaving Rocket behind, but seeing the others separate and then seeing the look on Rocket's face as he is clearly planning something he doesnt want Groot to see, he also moves down the way toward the doors, but then waits since he hears Rocket try to choose. He says, "I am Groot." He seems utterly indifferent to a specific door. He definitely did not notice the items being taken. Definitely.

The items are, in fact, taken without any problem at all and the four seeds that were placed there are gone by the time Rocket turns around.

The three who went down the doors see a cooridor. Then it turns, then it turns again, the string moving out behind them seeming to never end, but if a series of 4 right turns are made in what should be a loop shows that they dont see the energy string behind them and yet the string they are holding is still there. After time passes, stairs up and down are introduced and the sheer diabolical complexity of the maze presents itself. There are curious bits of art work on the walls, as if the art itself were a museum to a million different cultures and possibly part of the treasure itself since all are masterfully crafted and never repeat. On and one the maze goes, sometimes choices left and right but no matter how far they go, the coordidors never run into the string. Going BACK alone the string does reveal the exact path they took and for those capable of realizing it, the maze is clearly in five dimensional space and enormously complex.

Peter Quill has posed:
"Where in the hell..." Peter says as he goes through the Sun Door into the maze seemingly wandering aimlessly, activating his holo emitter though to scan what's around him for future reference. He keeps searching, pausing here and there to look at the art and one point pull out a pen and scrawl on an empty piece of wall PETER WAS HERE, before continuing. As for understanding the complexity of the place all Quill grasps of it's design is..."I have no fricking clue where I am..."

Gamora has posed:
    Gamora is, typically, blessed with a strong sense of situational awareness, knowing her place in relation to everything she's seen within a certain space. However, it gradually becomes apparent to her that this space makes no sense, leaving her confused and uneasy. Brief efforts to retrace her steps only further confirm this fact. "What is this place...?" She murmurs uneasily, yet finds herself too willful, or perhaps too stubborn to try to retreat back to the entrance.

Nebula has posed:
    Nebula at first doesn't really pay much attention to the art work as she starts to wander down the hallways. The thing about being a cyborg, one specifically constructed to be 'as good' as Gamora means other parts of her brain, the digital parts, start automatically mapping out the maze trying to determine its structure and thus shortcut travel through it.

    It's the first four corner turn that doesn't look back on itself that causes the mapping program to suddenly switch to four dimensions. Nebula puts a hand out against the wall as she experiences a weird sort of internal vertigo. She shakes her head and finds herself looking face to face with a painting of a civilisation that built beautiful white spiral towers dangling down from gigantic caves.

    Nebula pulls back and shrugs her shoulders as if her uniform were ill fitting suddenly. "Shut up," she says to the painting and the thoughts in her head, "If you were worthy you would have defeated him." Her lips tighten and she pushes on.

    It's when the verticals and the corners overlap that the mapping program causes an even more intense wave of vertigo when it upgrades to five dimensions. She leans against the wall and slides down to the floor on to her butt, holding her head in her hands. "This maze is impossible," she says with annoyance. The mapping program assures her the way back is correct.. and the string dealing her out assures her too. She pushes herself back up and stares face to face with a world that reminds her of home. Beautiful arches and gorgeous homes, distant curved hill tops and puffy brown clouds against a cyan sky. It's not home, but it might as well be.

    Nebula's face screws up in annoyance and she slams her cyborg fist in to the wall next to the painting. "I SAID SHUT UP!"

Groot has posed:
Groot picks the gear since he suspects that is the direction that Rocket wants to go. He is quite patient at first himself but as they move forward, he gets a bit irritated himself. It becomes apparent as they move that this only increases until he finally says "I am Groot" (. o O "No wonder no one robs the place blind its just an exercize in willpower to even deal with this!) Worse, time is obviously subjectively screwy. For anyone who isnt a cyborg, any time they check a time piece, sometimes more time goes by, sometimes less. For those with an internal time monitor, it is static and their brain tells them its static but their subjective experience is still insanely adjusted and it seems like days...weeks even as the maze slowly drains the will and sanity of those that try to -

Groot has posed:
There is a blinding white light. Everyone on the crew experiences it. And they find themselves on the ship, leaving orbit at maximum speed. Groot has a large crystal sphere with him that is blue and a bit like a lava lamp. Everyone is strapped down and the ship moving away with a well plotted course though the logs dont indicate who it was that set it. "I am Groot?!

Peter Quill has posed:
Time. Space. Everything's going haywire, but along the way he's pretty sure some of the art he passes on the wall is a KISS poster and one of the frescos has Kit from Knight Rider... or maybe the place was really starting to get to him. The HUD on his helmet had a clock but the time kept changing, backwards and forwards, seemingly at random. He can't help but hum the tune to Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit' until the time seems to drag on to days and weeks and he starts to panic a little calling out over comms but getting nothing in return.

Then the flash of light and he's on the ship speeding away from the planet, "You said it buddy," he says to Groot as he looks around, "Everyone still here?" he asks before he feels something inside his pocket where the Zune would have been, he reaches into his coat and pulls it out, a tape, with a label written in his mother's printing, 'Awesome Mix Vol 3'. Quill smiles.

Gamora has posed:
    Gamora's confident gait gradually becomes a stubborn trudge, as though iron was chained to each of her ankles, a cold sweat forming as she feels more and more oppressed by the atmosphere around her. Why, she's not sure at first. It creeps up on her as the portraits gradually feature more green skinned creatures among others, until such beings are the exclusive subject of the art. She grows paranoid and agitated, glancing back over her shoulder as she catches hints, faded echoes of a familiar sound.

    Only when the mindlessness of her task has dulled her thoughts does the sound become more prominant, a haunting gentle song echoing through the hallways. And while she tries to shut it out at first, it comes to dominate her thoughts, until she can only think of following that sound, her original task forgotten. She follows it slowly but relentlessly, panting and breathless by the time she sees the faintest figure at the end of an impossibly long hall, so far away that Gamora can't even be sure it's not a trick of the light as she trudges towards it. "... Wh... hhhh... Who...?" she slowly murmurs, before-

    Gamora is seated on the Milano's bridge. In an instant she goes from perfect poise and posture, to putting a deathgrip on both armrests of her seat, lurching forward, and glancing rapidly in every direction. "WHAT?! WHERE- Sister?!" Gamora's frazzled eyes eventually clue into where she is, both reassuring and alarming her in different ways until she hears Peter speak. "Quill? You're..." Gamora looks around, more measuredly this time, "... We're all...?"

Nebula has posed:
    Nebula pushes on. There is something oddly satisfying about knowing the internal structure of this place, even if it is confusingly five dimensional. She can predict just when and where she is when she turns each corner. That makes the navigation easier on her brain and her cybernetic programs.

    It dawns on here then that there may very well be a centre to this place, a vault of sorts.. real treasure. May be even the thing generating this weird pocket space they've entered. That'd be a very fine weapon to use against Thanos. She smirks and picks up her pace...

    ...and jerks in her seat a touch, "What?!" Her head swivels around rapidly even as in her minds eye she rewinds her memories ... flash of white light, here. Gone, just gone. Impossibly cut. She gets up out of the chair she usually uses in the cockpit and catches sight of herself in a reflection.

    Nebula leans in and stares with an open mouth of surprise as the golden strip on her left cheek and the left side of her head. Her fingers stroke over it and she is, unsurprisingly, lost for words. The stylish stripe looks to be her normal parts, just... gold.

Rocket has posed:
Weird place. Strange paths. Abnormal routes. Doubling back does nothing unless it's an actual retracing of the true steps taken. More confusing, even to the point Rocket's analytical mind struggles to keep up after a certain point. It all goes bright...and he's back in the Milano, leaving the place, the others there as well. In his lap is a cyborg arm, gleaming metal, complete with a hand.

After blinking down at it in confusion, his expression turns back toward something more fitting for him. "Hey, Quill.." he says, raising the arm after manipulating the hand so just one digit is extended. One guess which it is. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Elsewhere, the sleeping quarters find an addition for those who had left things behind: the Zune, the holo emitter, and the baseball card. Any questions about that, sooner or later, earn firm denial of any knowledge about how they were returned.