April 10, 2018:
Rocket helps Valkyrie move her ship safely out of a certain monarch's claws.
Hoboken City Recycle Center
Characters
NPCs: None.
Mentions: T'Challa
Plot:
Mood Music: None.
Fade In…
Given the recent news easing its way through S.H.I.E.L.D. ranks and given associates, this is the sort of thing that Rocket needs; a distraction. This, this he can deal with. Staying around the Triskelion will just coax him to drink and end up a sobbing mess again.
He's here now, a place he's probably come by at least once in his scavenging trips, but it's been a good while since he's even bothered to come out this way. He's got his usual oversized artillary tossed over a shoulder along with a backpack containing any number of tools and potentially explosive materials, and whatever he figured would be useful.
"Heya Val," he says, his greeting somewhat subdued but he tries not to let it show to much as he hefts the strap of his backpack and approaches. "So. What's the situation?"
*
It's probably best for both of them that they don't know each other very well. They don't know that the other is a little out of sorts, which means it doesn't create a power imbalance. Valkyrie shifts a bit awkwardly, a bit paranoid, even. She peers past him, then down to him again. "I've got a problem. One of the Terrans managed to track my ship. I need to move it before he comes back. But I don't have the skills to get her flying again, even just long enough to move her."
*
"Relax, I'm the only one here," Rocket assures her, waving a clawed hand, but he can understand her paranoia. "Oh yeah? These Terrans can be pretty clever, I'll give 'em that. You scare him off, whoever he was?"
It's his turn to look around, not that he thinks he'll just see the ship out in plain view. "Well, let's see what the damage is. I hope at least your computer systems are running enough to pull up some schematics, otherwise it'll be a lot more trouble to use my fabricator an' we'll just have to do stuff the old fashioned way."
*
"He was a man in the habit of a felid. His technology is far above anything I have seen so far on this planet." And Valkyrie looks annoyed about that. "He wouldn't let me explain my situation. He simply attacked. He made off with a device that had gathered scans of my ship."
She takes one more glance past Rocket, checks a device at her hip, then touches a remote. Behind her, a cloaking field disrupts, revealing the bisected hull of the Warsong. Most of the body seems intact, but it was clearly sheered in two. The pieces have been wedged back together and there's been a cursory attempt to weld the two halves, but it doesn't take someone with Rocket's level of skill to see that structural integrity will be a problem. He'll have to get quite close to it to pick up any scans. "I've disengaged the visual cloak. The dampner should still be functioning. But that will do me little good if the infuriating man in the tight outfit returns."
*
Ah, there we go. While no stranger to cloaking, the whistle the raccoonoid emits is in response to the obvious damage. Now that is one big mess.
"Scanned yer ship? Great, just what we need, Terrans with alien tech. Just gets all to their heads." He snorts, once again adjusting his load before starting closer towards the Warsong. "Looks like this thing got hit by a giant cleaver. Was that from the portal or sudden re-entry?" he asks as he swings his pack around to the front so he can fish around in it for his scanning device. "She still turn on at least?" Scanner in hand, he looks for the best way in, whether it be through the cracks or an open hatch.
*
Valkyrie lifts up her hands, weighs. "The sheer forces of the portal were extreme, but I was unconscious through the actual crash. And of course, my logs for the crash itself were scrambled." She looks up at her ship and sighs. She hasn't actually looked at the damage from the outside much. She couldn't risk lowering the visual cloak. "He was the most unreasonable Terran I've ever met. Hell, one of the most unreasonable sentients. And I've been around a few of those. He simply attacked. He wouldn't hear any explanations."
The ramp is lowered, so there's a way inside. Inside is not particularly large. This is clearly a vessel designed for short-range speed and maneuverability rather than long haul interstellar flights. If more than two or three people were travelling in it for any length of time, they'd have to like each other a lot. The rear cargo hold was clearly converted into two rows of jump seats with harnesses of various sizes, and shackle points on the floor. There's a rear containment area as well - one that looks like it was designed to hold something serious, like toxic waste - or a particularly unruly customer. The door has been peeled back like a can opener.
Val climbs up the ramp behind him and pulls down a control panel. "The main power core is still intact, but my fuel reserves are low. I'm not sure what would be a good substitute. I've not been able to run a complete diagnostic because I couldn't risk fully powering up my systems. Before the felid came, I was barely staying hidden."
*
Nose wrinkling at the thought of such a Terran, Rocket shakes his head again. "Well, not gonna say I haven't run into anyone like that before, but yeah, they are unreasonable in that. Which serves 'em right when you end up having to blow 'em up or maim them."
He starts inside, looking around the unfamiliar ship. "With someone knowing your position now, ain't no point in not taking that risk. We're gonna need to see how much this baby can still boot up if you wanna get anything fixed. It'll make it a lot quicker if we know what exactly needs to be done over just eyeballin' it, especially if we can cut corners just to get what needs to be functioning to move the thing."
He looks around the cramped space, the back and its holding area. Coming back towards the cockpit, he dumps his stuff behind the seat before tapping at his device. He almost moves to clamber into the seat itself to see about powering it up, but manages to keep from doing so as he looks to Val. Her ship.
*
Valkyrie makes hand motions and shrugs as if to say, 'right?!' on the subject of justified explosions. "I just want to be certain that when we fire the thrusters, we're not going to leave half the ship on the ground. I'm not an engineer, I'm a pilot. I know enough to be dangerous." She runs a hand along the irregular seams where she welded things back together. "I know this won't take space flight, but I'm also not sure it will even handle the vibration of the engine without breaking apart."
She motions towards the seat in open invitation. Now is not the time to get territorial. "I'm not sure I asked you how you came to find yourself on this planet." Once inside, she shrugs off her cloak and moves more freely. She tugs down another screen and starts examining the readout. "It must be difficult to be somewhere where the people look so much alike."
*
Needing no further invitation, Rocket clambers up into the seat and sets right to work, his hands seeming to know exactly where to go after giving the console a once over. He might not have piloted any ships like this before, but he's piloted plenty enough to know they've all got similarities, just that things might not be in the same places, but he knows what he's looking for, and in any case, for now he just wants the systems to boot up. Claws dance over switches and toggles, flicking a few and hitting buttons until the panels start to light up.
"You didn't. It's kind of a lame story anyway," he says with a shrug as he works. "Short version, wild party on Asgard, you find out the hard way even Asgardians have limits to what you screw up when yer drunk, an' then suddenly we're on parole here." He snorts, muttering to himself as he flicks his scanning device on, then gives the console in front of him a couple of whacks until a holoscreen pops up. "Alrighty, let's see here…"
Hopefully the ship could still perform a diagnostical scan. "Eh, it's like that on any planet you go to. 's home to some people or another. You want variety you go to places like Knowhere."
*
Aside from a few aftermarket upgrades, there's not much about the Warsong that is particularly remarkable by Rocket's standards. The profile is clearly meant for intimidation, as is the paint job, but the interior is pragmatic, spartan even. The only thing that might impress the raccoonoid is the pair of hull-mounted turrets with a remote motion activated interface. That means she can fire them even when outside the ship. The left one has a cracked housing, but they're otherwise intact.
She pokes away at her own panel and gets remarkably still at the mention of Asgard. Her shoulders tense and the screen gets poked a bit harder than necessary. She doesn't comment on her homeland, instead she goes to, "We? You've a crew, then?" And then a snort. "Knowhere. It lives up to its name. The smell sticks with you just as much as the filth."
*
Oh, Rocket always appreciates some decent firepower. Of course, he also knows they're little good if damaged, but nothing that can't be fixed, and they certainly look to have fared better than the rest of the ship. He's watching her out of the corner of his eye as he waits for scans to run, brow arching slightly as she jabs at the screen.
"Eh, kind of. Gammy's off doin' her own thing, as is Drax, I'm assuming. It's jus' me, Quill and Groot. Quill came from Terra though. Said he was born here." Spends his days carousing with women and who knows what else, not that Rocket can really get mad at him for it when he and Groot are left to do as they please.
"It ain't no vacation spot, but it's got its uses if you know where to look for what you need."
*
"Seems an odd thing, to send you to a limited-contact world for 'parole.' Are you supposed to be helping the Terrans?" Valkyrie eyes the readout and wrinkles her nose. "The power flow is off to the central core. Do you see that? I'm worried that the intermittent flow will stall the thrusters. Which…" she head-wobbles, "Not such a problem in space. In atmo, that's a bit more of an issue."
*
"Hell if I know. Personally I think Thor just wanted to torment us." The small Guardian shrugs, looking then at the screen with a frown and a furrowed brow as he nods.
"I see it. Lemmee grab your ship scans and I can upload it to the fabricator, get it right to work," he says."
*
"The reputation of the God of Thunder isn't one that suggests torment. His brother Loki, however…" Valkyrie is distracted by an angry beeping from the systems. She pulls a switch in irritation. "Half the time, when I attempt to power up the secondary systems, things shunt into overload. I've blown a half a dozen convertors trying to repair it."
If he's nosy, he'll find that the ship schematics and flight plan more or less conform to her 'story' of being a bounty hunter who hit a portal. Since he's familiar enough with the ass ends of the universe, he might even know the coordinates of Sakaar when he sees them. The only name on any of the logs and on the manifest is 'Scrapper 142.'
*
"Eh, Loki's got a mouth but he ain't the one that brought us here." Beat. "Although we did kinda somehow summon him here from a statue of butter but he was a good sport about it."
Rocket's got the means, so of course he'll poke around. It's not too much more of a few screen flicks and taps to bring up system logs and such. He tries not to frown at the mention of Sakaar that comes up, but flipping back to the ship schematics, he starts eyeing things in terms of what parts he might have on hand from Sakaarian salvage that might be able to be repurposed for the Warsong.
"One thing at a time. Actually, while this is doin' that, lemmee have a look at the connections for the secondaries."
*
Valkyrie makes another one of those snort-sounds accompanied with a bit of an eyeroll. It's more a reaction of 'of course' than 'wtf, butter?!' This is why she never tried to hide she was an Asgardian on Sakaar. But she hasn't exactly been walking around Earth advertising it. Well, except when it becomes apparent when she throws guys across the room the way someone else might flick off a fly.
"Might I ask what you did to earn the wrath of Odin? Although I hardly call exile to this place wrath." Meanwhile, she flicks her display over to his so he can check on the systems she was working on. In short: yeah, she's not an engineer. The repairs were clearly carried out by someone who has an admirable knowledge of her ship, but not enough to do more than basic repairs and troubleshooting.
*
"Oh, not Odin. Thor got pissed when we broke his ol' man's statue though," Rocket says with a shrug as he looks over the display that comes out with hardly a blink. He hums to himself as he scrolls through the specs and slides levels, taps a few buttons.
"So why's an Asgardian hang around a place like Sakaar," he asks offhandedly as he works.
It's clear he knows his way around the computer systems better than whoever had slapped the thing together for her. He hops down from the chair and pulls out a tool from a pocket so he can jimmy open a panel beneath the main console.
*
"That seems the very height of vanity, to exile people to Midgard for simple property damage." Since the jig is up, Valkyrie doesn't deny it. It isn't long before she's poking at another panel. She can't stand to be idle when others are working. Not when she's sober, in any case. And she's been disappointingly so since she crashed.
"I ended up there, as many do by way of the portals. It seemed as good a place as any." A fine place to lie low and disappear from view, at least. "Tis not exactly a place one points one's ship at on purpose."
*
"Right? That's what I told 'em- although not exactly in those words." There was probably a lot of alien cursing involved. He can't remember exactly what he'd said, but he's pretty sure he was still kind of drunk. And of course they waited until he was hungover to actually make the trip out this way.
Rocket just nods to himself as Valkyrie doesn't dodge his question, confirming his suspicions as he sets aside the panel he'd just loosened. He squints as he peers inside, then pulls out a circular light, tabbing it on before sticking it against the interior wall so he can have a better look at things.
"Well, yeah. I mean, it's Sakaar," he says, his voice muffled amongst the wiring, his tail swishing languidly as he works. "Had enough problems with Sakaarians that I don't care to ever go visit the place myself."
*
"Oh I don't know. I get the feeling you'd make yourself too useful to be thrown into the arena." Just as Valkyrie did. "And the Grandmaster can be generous to those in his favor." Hence the fairly well-appointed ship they're standing in. Or, it was decently well-appointed until it got bisected.
She's quiet for a moment as she checks various levels and tosses the results to his panel with a flick. "We haven't yet spoken of your payment for your assistance."
*
The raccoonoid hisses at a very audible snap of electricity, jerking his hand back out of the panel enough to wave it around before he delves back in again. "Flargin' piece of- ah, there we go…"
The readouts flicker slightly, and Rocket pulls back, reaching over for his bag again so he can root around in it for something. "Grandmaster? Oh, I dunno. Ain't too crazy about workin' under anyone unless the pay is good- but even then- Ah-hah!" he pauses, pulling out a roll of brightly colored ducttape. He tears off a piece, draping the ring around his arm before his upper half disappears into the open panel again with the strip he'd cut. "-best if the jobs are temporary. Don't like bein' saddled in one place. What fun is that?"
There's some unintelligible words muttered and the raccoonoid nearly disappears up to his knees inside the thing as he twists around to get a better angle at whatever he's trying to patch up. "-oh yeah! Speaking of payment. Yer right, we didn't." For a moment it seems he's stuck, but he turns about and fidgets enough to pull himself back out again. "That should do it. Try powering that up again."
*
"Fair enough," says Valkyrie. She can appreciate a wish for freedom. And in a way, her time on Sakaar did grant her a limited kind. Freedom to hide, and to be inconspicuous with not much expected of her.
"Stay clear of the secondary thruster shunts. They're…not shielded," she says, with only moments for him to do so before she attempts to run through the power-up sequence.
*
Rocket seems fairly confident that whatever he'd just ducttaped will solve the problem of the earlier overloading. He does move at her warning however, making sure his tail is well away from the paneling and any obvious conductors.
Hopping back up onto the pilot's seat, he pulls over the screens again to monitor along with Val as things power up. "Looking good…" he says, leaving her to make sure of that as he turns his attention to the process on the diagnostics upload.
*
Valkyrie is surprisingly easy to work with once they find a rhythm. She has no problem being directed in areas she doesn't understand, and she doesn't seem overly protective of her ship. There's also no pride to bruise when it comes to any of the more menial tasks, or just things where brute strength is required. She also doesn't feel the need to fill the space with smalltalk, though she responds if engaged.
It takes a good few hours of work to stabilize the ship's systems to the point where they won't shake apart if they try to lift off. "We'll have to shunt a lot of my reserves into the cloak when we move, or this whole endeavor will prove fruitless. I've identified a site on top of a building in a place called Clinton, on the roof of a power substation. The interference from the substation should add an extra layer of protection. The problem with being in this junkyard is there isn't a lot of other energy signatures to confuse a scanner."
*
"Yeah, well when you crash land and junk over half your systems, you can't really be choosey," Rocket says, shrugging. "Sounds like a good plan though. I think it'll make the trip if we keep an eye on the power fluctuations- how far's this Clinton?"
At least with the Guardian, Valkyrie doesn't have to worry too much about prodding for information. He's got his own past crammed up somewhere that he doesn't often poke around, but he's not entirely secretive about it himself. It's just a whole lot of unpleasantness. The work goes by pretty quickly with the Asgardian's assistance, and with them both so focused it certainly helps, especially when she's willing to do her part. But when it comes to ships, Rocket knows that if you don't put some blood, sweat and tears into your own ship, then you wouldn't go so far as this.
*
"I have an infuriating habit of ending up in junkyards," says Valkyrie. Then she grins a bit, the first such expression since they've started working. "Perhaps the galaxy is trying to tell me something?" Now that he knows what she is, she's also not hiding her natural Asgardian cadence. "Not far," she says of her chosen landing site. With a flick of her wrist, she tosses the coordinates over to his terminal. "This place has the added benefit of being quite near several sightings of my prisoners. Which should make securing them a touch easier."
*
Rocket snorts, smirking back at her. "Eh, who listen's to the dumb galaxy anyway?" He manipulates the screen with hardly a pause, turning his attention towards it as he has a look at the map. "Okay, yeah. Looks doable. I think the cloaking should hold for that long."
Zooming back out so he can eyeball the distance between their objective and their current location, Rocket nods. "Hear anything about 'em, by the way? I'll admit I haven't been keeping an eye out this past week but stuff came up."
*
"I've got my eye on a few of them. I'm leaving most of them be unless they cause trouble, and I think word has gotten 'round." Valkyrie nods towards her rear hold. "Not like these accommodations are exactly comfortable should I wrangle them. I'd imagine they'd rather lie low in the city than risk being chained and shackled for the foreseeable future." Valkyrie checks a few more levels, then stands up to check a welded seam where the hull cracked nearly in half.
"I think a group of them are trying to assemble a transmitter. And Midgard does not need the attention of the friends of the people who would be trying to do that."
*
Rocket subtly copies over the coordinates, not that he imagines that the building will be hard to find now that he knows the name of it, but eh. He flips through screens and diagnostics just to check on systems again to make sure he hasn't overlooked anything as he listens to Valkyrie.
"In general I don't think no one'd prefer bein' chained an' locked up," he notes. "That gonna hold?" This in regards to Val's welding job on the ship. He'd been doing more technical stuff and had only gave the thing a quick lookover.
"I doubt that the people here'd be very happy about it. There seem to be some pretty capable Terrans here who might object pretty hard if anyone came with unnecessary force. But I guess it'd be better to head that problem off at the pass."
*
"It wouldn't if I tried to break atmo, but it should hold for a shot jaunt across the city, yes." Valkyrie looks over at him and pushes her tongue against her cheek, looking a bit mischevous for a moment. "Don't worry. If we crash, I'll catch you." Reassuring.
She slides a hand down the weld again, then returns to her seat. "Are we ready. then?"
*
"Heh." The raccoonoid flashes a grin. "I've been through my share of crashes so I guess either way I'll deal." He looks around for a good space that he can brace himself against should the need arise, pulling his stuff together, throwing loose tools back into his bag.
"Yeah, let's fire 'er up," he says as he brings over the readouts so he can monitor the ship's systems for anything concerning while Val handles the rest.
*
Valkyrie moves from the diagnostic station to the pilot's seat. She moves far more naturally once she's seated than she had been poking at the ship's innards. There's a hole in the windshield, but that shouldn't be a problem considering they're not going very high. The Warsong starts to rumble in protest as the primary systems boot up. Sensors calibrate and flare to life, dumping data about their surroundings into the computer core.
In case you ever wanted a complete inventory of the Hoboken City Recycling Center.
Slowly, she pulls back on the controls and the engines point down to give the ship vertical thrust. A few warning klaxons blare, the display declaring that the ship is not fit for high speeds or interstellar travel. "Yes, yes, I am well aware!" she barks back at the klaxons as they shimmy and shake. Slowly, the view out that cracked windshield starts to change.
*
The sounds are something Rocket's well familiar with. He smothers a laugh as Valkyrie shouts back at the ship, moving from his place to check sensors and side panels, particularly in the case of any concerning creaks. At least the ship finally moves, a definite good thing.
Rocket pulls up the diagnostics as he slips into the place Valkyrie had occupied a moment ago, tapping through various windows. "Obvious alerts aside, we're lookin' good. Lemmee know when you've got cloaking up and I'll make sure the power doesn't fluctuate."
*
There's a lot of power in those engines, which is part of the problem. The Warsong is built for speed and maneuverability, which means she's built like a sportscar. When structural integrity is intact, that's great. It means she can outrun other scrappers (or dogfight when she gets into scraps.) But it also means it's hard to fly her slow and gentle
"I'm going to engage the primary thrusters before I engage the cloak. Doing both at the same time might cause an overload." If she sits here and overthinks it, she might never do what needs to be done. "All right. Here we go." There's a sudden drop for about two meters, before the primarily engines kick in and push them back in their seats with sudden g-force. She hits a series of buttons and the light turns sort of purply in the interior to indicate the cloak is active. And then they're moving a bit too fast towards their destination.
*
"Gotcha."
As Valkyrie shifts the ship, Rocket feels his stomach drop slightly with the Warsong's brief fall. He adjusts himself with the practiced ease of someone who's been in their share of starships, giving not so much as a flinch as he continues to focus more on the information coming over screens, alert for any subtle and concerning sounds that might be better off brought to Valkyrie's attention.
"Cloaking up… Okay- um, you might wanna ease off on your main thrusters there. I like a good race as much as the next person but if you push her too much it's going to start throwing everything out of whack."
*
"I am doing my very best, but something's wrong with the injectors." Valkyrie's voice is steady despite the fact that this is indeed a problem. "If I pull back too much, I'll stall the engine, but the minimum speed I need to stop that from happening keeps increasing."
Though neither of them have likely seen it, it's essentially the spaceship version of Speed. Except replace 'explode' with 'drop out of the sky like a stone as main power goes offline.'
The Manhattan skyline is speeding beneath them. She banks hard and comes back around as they nearly overshoot their target. With minimal inertial dampners and no artificial gravity, they feel most of that stress quite viscerally.
The good news is? The cloak is stable.
*
Rocket's gesticulations across the holoscreens in front of him seem more frantic, but he's still keeping a level head as he skims the information he pulls up, swapping over to other readouts as he tries to pinpoint the problem.
"Of all the glarkin'— yeah, I think I see what's going on here," he grumbles, teeth grating as Val's words fall into place with what he's looking at on the ship's running diagnostics. It's a shamefully overlooked problem but Rocket can see how the both of them had missed it, being so intent on the more technically related problems and the power flow that they'd neglected to check what actual parts might be affected and if they were functioning in accordance with the rest of the systems. Didn't really do any good if the systems were running and actual shut-offs just weren't getting relayed.
"Just make sure we don't hit anything!" the raccoonoid shouts as he hops away from the flurry of screens he'd pulled up, dropping to the floor to scrounge around his bag for one of his tools. He starts to move again, only to nearly get thrown off his feet as Valkyrie brings the ship around sharply, slamming him into the wall opposite the side he'd been aiming for. At least the ship's narrow so there's not so much space to get tossed around, but it still hurts- although not nearly as much as it could have. He drops a few colorful curses picked up from the worst bars in Knowhere as he shakes his head and reorients himself towards the side panel across from him, yanking the already loose cover to the side.
If they can keep steady enough it'll help for him to be able to find the right wires, but he'll have to do some temporary manual adjustments to fool the system back into thinking that they're moving at a reasonable pace— without altogether cutting off the engine.
*
"Sorry!" Valkyrie calls back as she hears him rattling around back there and cursing a few even she hasn't heard. "We're way off target and I don't want to end up in another city!" And then she murmurs, "I've only just learned to navigate this one."
If they keep accelerating at this pace (and don't rattle themselves apart) they'll be halfway to Toronto, let alone overshooting by a dozen city blocks.
Something beeps on her display. "Whatever you're doing, keep on it!" The ship decelerates, but it's still a little too fast. An alarm blares, signalling a hull breach along one of the weld points.
*
Braced against the edges of the panel, his arm vanished completely inside, Rocket cranes his head around in Val's direction. "Tryin'— Aw crap that doesn't sound good," he grunts, ears flattening as he can hear the hissing. He looks back inside the panel, tool still locked into position, but he can't loosen it too much. He thrusts his other hand into the mess, shoving wiring aside as his eyes rove over the other fuses.
"Ow, owowow!" There's the sound of a zap and a brief flicker over the screens but everything remains on, but now Rocket's practically within the wall of the ship as he has to brace himself with his foot just in case Val makes any more wild turns while he's got his hands full.
*
Now that she can decelerate, Valkyrie can turn them in a less dramatic arc. They're still pulling a few gs, but it's easier to prepare for and brace against. Fortunately, she's a good pilot. She's making course corrections to compensate both for their slow decrease in speed and their change in direction.
"Yes yes yes!" she yells at the bleeping klaxons again. She unhooks a small throwing knife from her belt and deftly chucks it at a panel. It lets out another displeased beep before it trails off and winds down in a sputter of sparks. She'll worry about fixing that later.
After a few moments, the ship seems to be…flying gently? At least compared to a few minutes ago. "Injection's stabilizing. We're coming up on the landing site."
*
"Oh good! I think I'm startin' to get a cramp!"
It's not a very comfortable position for him, and Rocket's shout is somewhat muffled on the account that he's almost entirely surrounded by wiring, but he's afraid that if he shifts he'll disturb the precarious adjustments that he's tampered with. He'll just have to trust that Valkyrie can set them down without further incident.
*
From Rocket's perspective, the last part of their trip is far less dramatic than the first. There's the feeling of the ship banking, then decelerating, then slowing. He'll feel the main engines power down from his intimate place in the guts of the ship.
"Going to thrusters," calls Valkyrie. The landing thrusters kick in, and then they're descending vertically. After a few seconds, the ship lands quite gently in its new home.
"Well!" she says as she locks a few of the controls. "That went all right."
This is followed by a low metallic groan as the main weld gives way and the ship sort of…bends at the middle. The klaxon control panel she just silenced with a throwing knife lets off another sputter of sparks and a low pitched whine before falling silent.
*
He can feel the ship go through the motions and finally set down, releasing a sigh once he hears the thrusters quiet down as the ship rocks in position. Slowly Rocket eases his hand away and then pries the tool back to weave it around the mess of wires as he carefully extracts himself from the panel and falls out and onto the floor.
"Uh yeah, so don't go firing the engines up right away cuz we miiight have to reconnect a few things in there," he says, shaking out his hands and flexing fingers. He freezes completely at the tell-tale sound of metal reaching its limits, shoulders hunching up as he cringes, watching the back half of the ship start to sag in a way that any ship really shouldn't.
"…not that you can probably go anywhere right away anyway," he adds.
*
It's only the way the landing gear sits and the relative integrity of the rest of the hull that stops every welded seam from popping open. Valkyrie gives a few experimental pokes at the break, but everything seems more or less stable. "Well," she begins with a slow intake of breath. "At least now the feline will have a harder time tracking me down." She looks over at him. "You all right?"
*
"Yeah, I'm fine." Nodding, Rocket gets to his feet, dusting himself off before kicking up his tool to catch back in hand. He flashes a grin at Valkyrie. "One problem down. Guess we'll have to run diagnostics again, but at least we can take a little time with repairs now."
*
"Indeed," says Valkyrie as she takes stock of the damage. She walks over to the panel and tugs out her throwing knife. She returns it to the spot on her belt. She snaps as something comes to mind. "I should have left a trap for the feline back at the junkyard." She claps and chuckles, "Though it's enough to imagine him slashing out with his claws at the air, expecting to find my ship."
Snicker. Snicker. Uh, serious moment. Right.
Then, rather than immediately getting back to work, she goes for a storage bin. "This calls for a drink."