North by Northwest
Gamora studied her blade through tight fingers.
The light of the falling sunset refracted dimly off the old metal, off of the small details engraved along the side. It resembled the tall grass behind her; golden in color and yet dusty in texture, like a shiny item left to rot for eons. A light breeze pushed and bent the grass out of shape, only for it return to normal form when the breeze passed by. The rocky plains in front of her were different than the malleable plant life to her back, for they knew only the stillness of the ground and no movements whatsoever. The hardest of winds could blow and the only thing that would be slightly affected would be the surface's dirt. She spotted a small tumbleweed not far from her, eagerly following the breeze as it traveled along the planet's surface. Nothing could stop it from moving along and nothing could change its mind about tumbling after the breeze. Because it was a plant--a dead seed, really. It couldn't think for itself.
Her eyes narrowed, brimming with frustration. Something was wrong with this planet and Ego--something really big-- and Quill thought her to be jealous, not cautious. She wasn't jealous of a growing relationship that could be fake or have some dark goal at the end of it, she merely aware that something was amiss now. It was just her luck that she felt it after Quill had come to accept his father. Her thoughts idly asked whether Quill would be that same position with her if she and...her adoptive father were the ones reconnecting. She snorted; if this were that situation, she'd believe Quill before he even said anything.
The thought brought her back to a talk with Mantis just a few minutes prior to now, with Drax there too. En route to their sleeping quarters, She asked the bug woman why she was the only other sentient creature on the planet, or which the response was that she was like a flea amongst the other fleas on the planet; she served a purpose. But when Gamora questioned just what purpose it was that she was referring to, Mantis changed the subject easily to the meaning of dreams. Even Drax shared a suspicious look with Gamora.
But it meant nothing if Quill didn't really with her on this, or Trixie too. They were both caught up in the feelings of having a family, or at least some semblance of a family. Gamora had grown used to the prospect of being forever alone or being in the company of an insane warlord for the rest of her life. She had things long ago that were taken and instilled this acceptance in her; the distant memory of her real parents, the first time she met Nebula...and--
Cha had brought her a few days ago, and she'd been this whimpering, liquid-eyed thing through all of that time. Cha said she was to be Gamora's sister, and the little girl was very happy for the first time since being taken from the massacre of her homeworld. She remembered telling her parents how much she wanted a sister growing up, and she remembered their hopeful faces in response. Maybe they were expecting when she was taken from their draining bodies, throats fresh with bloody gashes. Now Father--he must have caught on to her loneliness and given her what she wanted all along. Finally, a little sister to call her own…
It was jarring, to see someone so depressed and unhappy, but Gamora made the most of this fragile blue girl. It took a day or two of cautious waving and platonic affection when it was allowed, but the blue luphimoid started to brighten up whenever Gamora entered the room. Grinned Even, whenever they locked eyes. And so Nebula became her sister in those few days. And Gamora became hers.
Nebula had a sort of curiosity within her bald head, yearning to know her parents had been beheaded and why she was given a green sister immediately after. When Gamora failed to give an answer to such a difficult question and mused that the only way to find out would be to ask the scary purple monster, the Luphimoid was happy with asking smaller questions instead. One day Gamora had been talked into giving her little sister a tour of Sanctuary I, and they were traveling down the hallways and interconnected bridges. The jade girl would occasionally point out a specific area that was fun to be in and a place that was reserved for punishment. After pointing out the recovery room, Gamora felt a timid tap on her shoulder.
“Gamora, ” Nebula asked softly. “...Do you miss them?”
“Who are you…” It didn't take much thinking to realise who she was talking about. Gamora gave her a few slow nods. “...I do. Every day.”
“...I wish I knew how to make the pain stop. In my heart...I can't really sleep at night.” Nebula wiped at her face, and Gamora noticed the bags under her tired eyes. They slowed to a halt next to each other, drowned in silence. “...I wish I could just forget them, sometimes.”
Gamora didn't say so, but she wished the same at certain occasions. It would save her a lot of rest if she was allowed to forget those smiling faces of theirs. After a moment of thinking, she brightened up. “You can stay with me in my quarters tonight if you can't sleep!”
“W-what?” Nebula seemed hopeful. “Really?”
She nodded eagerly, her smile growing wide again. “Its what I'd do with my parents if I couldn't sleep. Maybe it'll work for you too!”
“Hello, Daughters.”
The girl's smiles died instantly.
Gamora was the one to speak for both of them. “Hello, Father. Hello, Cha.”
“H'llo, Cha, ” Nebula squeaked.
Cha fought against a grimace. Gamora often wondered if Cha willingly went along with the plans of his taller, more threatening friend. The two often argued, but it was never anything serious. “Greetings, you ones. Off for a harmless stroll, I see.”
Thanos caught the emphasis of the word harmless, shared a smiling glance with Cha. “...Well, nevermind us, Daughters. We were just passing through, ”
Gamora nodded and, gripping Nebula's hand in a gesture of comfort, tugged her past the Titan. The aging warlord and his advisor watched the children go about their business down the hall, both of their gazes differing. Thanos was certain that Cha saw nothing wrong with the two as they scampered further and further out of sight...but there was a darker meaning to this. This was foreshadowing for something unfortunate in the future that had to be stopped before it started.
“Delightful children, aren't they?” Cha remarked.
Thanos stared at him. “Yes, I almost envy them. In this present time...it warms my heart to see them both bonding like this... ”
“...In this present time?” He asked almost immediately.
Thanos raised his broad shoulders with a weary sigh, arms folded behind his back like a soldier with a stressful duty ahead of him. “I’ve single-handedly destroyed their childhood...and now they've gained some small part of it back. If they think themselves to be allies, they will eventually rise up against me as a united pair.” He growled under his breath. “I need them both to be loyal to me and not each other.”
“United or not, they will still eventually try to kill you.” Cha frowned.
“They are less likely to try alone.”
“You really think that?”
“Trust me, Cha. I've thought this through.” Thanos turned to nod at his old friend. “The best brainwashing allows the subject a modicum of independent thought. I'll allow them to hate me because it gives them the delusion that they have choices and free will. They don't know that they're too accustomed to this life now; they've ingested my philosophy and accepted my dominance, whether they like it or not. They are my children, and while children may hate their parents, they rarely raise a hand to them.”
Cha sneered openly. “Rarely, ”
Thanos swallowed down memories of A'Lars and the ruins of that building on Titan. “Like I said, They are less likely to try alone...and even less likely to succeed.” He smiled widely. “We'll start with sparring.”
Cha didn't look pleased with the idea, but he nodded all the same. “So we shall,” He said, thinking sadly of Gamora and poor, timid--
Nebula tensed up suddenly, awakening from the dream. Or rather, the memory.
Her eyes instantly darted to the nearest living thing on the ship, then calmed down when they saw just how familiar the creature was. Maud had apparently caught on to steering a ship easily. The crooks of her ankles were placed firmly on either side of the steering wheel, keeping it from swirling this way that. The seat had been raised enough for her to comfortably sit and lean upwards at the same time. Nebula wondered about a time where right now, snapping the pony's neck seemed like a one-way ticket to starting a new life far from her wretch of a sister and her demon of a father. Back when she had been left to be watched by Maud, as a prisoner. Despite how far they had come, Nebula still felt the capacity to immobilize Maud and end this silly trip to redeem her relationship with Gamora.
She was still thinking deeply when Maud glanced over at her, expressionless as always. “You're awake.”
“An understatement.” Despite herself, she felt comfortable enough to yawn near the equine. “Where are we right now?”
Maud squinted at something on the dashboard, pursing her lips slightly. “Within the S'lestyul galaxy, if this navigational mechanism is correct. A couple miles off from the planet.”
Nebula nodded as she sat up straighter in the co-pilot seat. Her mechanical eye focused more acutely on what was waiting for them in the distance. The small speck became a moderately sized planet in her eye, with strange formation on its surface that almost resembled a face. She thought nothing more of it. “That's the planet, alright.” After a stretch of silence, the cyborg swallowed quietly. “...so...remind me again how we do this thing?”
“We land, tell Quill and the others what's going on and then you tell Gamora what's on your mind. The apology you want to give her, ” Maud slowly retreated her hooves away from the steering wheel, and the ship thankfully stayed the course. The pony turned to face her, her expression blanker than ever. “You're holding yourself together very well for someone in position as nerve-wracking as yours.”
Nebula made no comment to that, but she was certain her body language indicated how much she agreed with that statement. She was practically terrified about what she would have to say when the time came, but in the face of daunting situations her face always became a hardened neutral expression. After musing over her acquired facial habit, she suddenly lurched out of her seat and towards the back of the ship to rummage around in the compartment. She allowed herself a small smile when pulled out a pair of familiar weapons, which she carried back to the dashboard. “I meant to give you these back earlier, but I suppose my… nap got in the way.”
Maud's eyes somehow lit up while remaining half-lidded. “The gloves.” She said with bored surprise, glancing from the bronze hoofwear to the cyborg. “Thank you. These are going to be very helpful for adding things to my rock collection when I get back home. How did sneak them away?”
Nebula scoffed. “Cybernetic daughter of the galaxy's most fearsome warlord, remember?”
Maud had been staring at the planet, now growing larger and larger as they approached it and her gloves were already snug around her front hooves, like bronze socks in a way. “ Sorry. Hard to remember when you do nice things like this. I get you confused for a good friend instead.”
Nebula just rolled her eyes, trying ignore the strange and sudden warm feeling spreading in her chest. She could swear that this equine's...goody, gooey emotional effects on her were going to be the death of her. She huffed as she stopped next to the pilot seat and leaned against the backrest with an arm. “Let me land us. I know more about ship protocols than you do, ”
Maud turned to look up at her, one. Eyebrow raised just the faintest bit. “Why don't you teach me? I've learned a lot this far.”
“You want to learn?”
“If you fish for a pony, they have fish for one day, ” The mare stated with a certain tone that couldn't quite be placed. “But if you teach a pony how to fish, then they have fish for a lifetime. Do you understand what I'm getting at?”
Nebula stared blankly. She wanted to say that she didn't and she wanted to ask why a herbivorous species would have any need for fishing to begin with, but she knew that would bring up an entire pointless conversation that could be discussed much later. The luphimoid sighed as she examined the pilot seat once again, judging its availability for two. “..Well, I can teach you. But it will be...awkward.”
Maud barely scrunched her nose. “Awkward how?”
Wordlessly, Nebula stiffly lifted her out of the pilot seat and sat down in it herself. True to her word, it was quite awkward for Nebula to sit there with a pony sitting on her lap, facing the wheel and blocking about half of her view. It was even more awkward to be guiding Maud's hooves to steering wheel and then holding them there to properly guide their movements. “Do you see what I mean?”
Maud's ear flicked--probably because Nebula was practically speaking right into it--but she made no physical movements to signal any weird feelings about their proximity. “I’ve had stranger experiences.”
“Well, this is one I don't want being talked about outside this ship.” Nebula warned.
Maud nodded once. “Duly noted.”
Gamora decided that she'd been brooding long enough, so she took to standing up instead of sitting down. The breeze of the planet brushed past her unnoticed, went off to bother bendable plant life. She started at the bending plants with a sigh of tiring, of uncertainty; What if she was just jealous of Quill, deep down inside? She was so used to the proximity of a family of heartless murderers--perhaps to see a family getting along as well as they did caused her some discomfort. She wondered if Quill would be jealous if the roles were reversed if he were the son of a lunatic with immense power. She wondered if she could ever bring herself to apologize given the height of her prideful feelings. She wondered if she should even try to apologize, to begin with, to save herself some embarrassing words. She idly wondered if there was some unspoken thing that she was refusing to acknowledge.
But most of all, she wondered what that noise was.
It had been so soft that she hadn't noticed it at first, mentally dismissed it as part of the gentle sound of the breeze. The sound grew in volume over the course of a full minute and now became a distant humming noise. It was too continuous to be a bug, and yet she could see nothing for miles in all directions. Wait, there was something behind her in the horizon. A tiny dot in the sky that was gradually starting to increase and size and volume.
Gamora squinted, wrinkling her nose.
Nebula was pleased to find how fast of a leaner Maud was becoming and surprised to find how easily her hooves worked with the controls just as easily one with opposable thumbs would. It wasn't long before they'd broken the atmospheric surface of the planet and then steadily made their way down to the bottom. The cyborg was smiling as the pony pulled up slowly, bringing them into a flying position that would be ready to land at any moment. Just as Nebula was about to advise a good spot to land given the planet's many land formations, Maud suddenly straightened up from her spot in her lap.
“Hey. I think I see Gamora, ”
Nebula looked up sharply at the sound of the name, her eyes widening as she took in the landscape of the peaceful plains in the flow of the sunset. Indeed, at the edge of the horizon, there was an unmistakable green figure facing them with apparent confusing in their body language. Her cybernetic eye enhanced the image of the person just outside; their dark hair tipped with violet, their dark attire, their infuriating green face. Her intentions with her sibling were peaceful ones, and yet the moment she took in her full appearance...something in Nebula's partially robotic mind snapped.
Nebula's eyes became impossibly wide as both her pupils shrunk to pinpricks, and she became eerily silent.
“Well, I suppose our plans changed a little. We'll land so you can talk to her first, ” Maud nodded to herself, then stiffened. “Uh, Nebula...why are you squeezing my hooves? Wait, what are you--?”
Just when she was close enough to see who was piloting the ship, Gamora ended up jumping to the side to just barely dodge an onslaught of gunfire. She half stumbled, half sprinted forward to avoid being impaled by fist-sized lasers and ended up charging a good distance ahead despite being barely able to see in the cloud of dust that had been thrown up by the ammo. The jade woman was so blinded by the need to run away from imminent death and the plumes of dust rising from the ground that she didn't realise there was a tall cliff up ahead until she was in free fall. Had there been nothing but a sheer cliff face, she would have landed in mess of broken bones and probably have snapped her neck hitting for ground.
As it was, Gamora merely bounced off different rock formations and slopes that jutted out of the cliff face. Her body rolled to a halt on the ground as the ship flew overhead and upwards into the sky once more, reserving their next round of fire. She glared after the flying vessel as she remembered the mental image of just who was trying to kill her. “Psychopath,” Gamora seethed as she scrambled to her feet.
She couldn't fight Nebula while she was flying around in that ship; she needed cover and time to assess how to ground her. Her peripheral view alerted her to a cave connecting to the cliff face, and she was soon darting right for it as the sound of gunfire rained down behind her.
“Nebula. What are you doing? Stop.” Maud wasn't sure if she could be heard over Nebula's bloodthirsty screaming and cursing, or over the mental strain she appeared to be going through. The cyborg was practically foaming at the mouth in anger, eagerly smashing the firing button in hopes of a spray of blood being thrown up. “I said stop. Let go of the wheel.”
Finally, Maud forced her hooves out from under her metallic hands and slammed her weight forcefully into the biped's chest. Nebula grunted as Maud attempted to use her gloves to control the metal components in her body and hold her back from the steering wheel, making the ship lurch into a half-hearted barrel roll. She eventually overpowered the energy of the gloves and landed a cracking blow to Maud's temple. The pony’s body flew to the side and lay in a groaning heap against the wall.
Snarling words that one couldn't even begin to say in public, Nebula returned her hands to the wheel and rammed into the mouth of the cave.
That psychopath! She actually followed her inside with the ship, breaking off the wings almost instantly and plowing within even further thanks to the thrust of the engine pushing her forward. Gamora wheezed and panted as the ship gained her thought stopping, like the ever-present hatred that her sister showed towards her. It ignored damage from inner rock formations and thick hills just gain distance towards Gamora, and the lasers never seemed to stop pouring out of it. For an excruciatingly long ten seconds, the two of them were locked in a stalemate chase; one able to remain one step ahead of the trailing danger and the other never losing any distance.
Gamora didn't know it at the time, but Maud gained her bearings enough to use her gloves and pry Nebula's arms from the steering wheel. She only saw the ship flying over her head and coming to a particularly painful halt against the back of the cave, crumpling like paper. Only, paper doesn't catch fire when it crumples up against a wall. The Jade woman watched with tense muscles as small pockets of fire quickly appeared around the ship's lower portions, melting just enough for the front part to be lowered to her view. Behind the cracked glass, she could see that the crash had forced one of Nebula's arms into a part of the dashboard and each attempt to free herself only electrocuted her. Maud, sporting a massive bruise on her forehead, was trying pull Nebula free from the fiery wreckage around them.
Gamora growled as she stepped forward, but paused when she noticed something large lying in the rubble. She picked it up quickly and her hands worked feverishly to hot wire it, balancing its girth on her shoulder. The mechanical weapon, two times her size, charged to life and began firing.
The angry Zebhori stomped towards the destroyed ship as round after round of laser ammo pelted the hull of the grounded aircraft. She screamed all of her rage and fury as the glass refused to break, even when both Nebula and Maud flinched from the way it cracked and splintered. The fires rose higher underneath the ship, no doubt cooking the both of them inside. Despite the heat of death licking at he, it seemed Maud was unwilling to abandon the cyborg.
She dropped her weapon beside her.
Gamora, numb to the scenery, briefly wondered why the pony was so willing to help someone so harmful. Why couldn't she have just left them alone and allowed their hatred for each other to grow? If it were just them alone here, fighting to the death on this planet, she would allow Nebula to burn to death or die in a fiery explosion.
She watched as the blue woman not far from her looked up at with a brief flash of fear in her eyes.
“P-Please, sister.”
Gamora narrowed her eyes down at the quivering form of Nebula, clutching her injured arm close to her. Her fingers were bent all the wrong way and her elbow was dislocated too far out of the socket. Gamora would have enjoyed being in her position, so bruised and beaten that she would many wonderful scars to boast about as an adult. But here was her singing, weakly sobbing and begging for mercy. It was something that father was growing tired of seeing.
“You are a pathetic sister, ” Gamora snarled. “I am ashamed of knowing you,”
“Kill her, daughter, ” She heard father say from behind. “I will bring you another sibling in the future. One who will not break so easily.”
She raised her spear with the intent to ram it into Nebula's chest, but she did not follow through. She realised, much to her anger, that she couldn't do it herself. Something in her mind was keeping her from making the killing blow. Gamora stared at her with a crumbling glare and Nebula cried all the more, fearing death but also fearing the fate of getting metal limbs. The Zebhori teen knew that killing Nebula would be a mercy to her--would finally end her miserable life and give her peace eternal. Perhaps she would see the parents she still had nightmares about, and would no longer be under the strangling grip if the mad titan.
She dropped the spear. “I will not.”
“...Is that so?”
“You give her these...biomechanical implants to improve.” Without looking Nebula in the eye, she leaned down and careful lifted the girl to her feet. She began leading her past Thanos, who blinked down upon them with an expression she couldn't determine. “You shouldn't have her killed because of boredom. She just might beat me one day, father. Patience is a weapon, as you once told me.”
Thanos frowned as if he wished to argue, but he miraculously stayed his hand. “...yes. I suppose your points stand, my daughter, ” He watched them go with a slow nod. “Know that both your food rations will be cut down by 70% for the week. If you disobey my orders again, I will kill you both myself.”
Gamora kept walking, and Nebula did too.
Gamora crashed through the front of the ship, desperately landing next to Nebula and ripping her arm out of the dashboard in an explosion of sparks. Maud, while deeply surprised to see her rescuer, wasted no time in helping to push her injured cyborg friend out of the broken windshield. The trio of heavily breathing beings made it to the nose of the ship within a few seconds, and Maud was just leaping down to make the transition to the ground easier for Nebula when the fires finally became too high. A rippling explosion blasted all three through the sky before the ground happily came up to greet them again. All was silent for a while, save for the crackling of fire.
Gamora wheezed out a mouthful of dirt and rolled off of the small boulder she'd crashed into, her body screaming at the slightest movements. She almost instantly became aware of a strange feeling in her arm and she drowsily looked to see a funny hump in her shoulder. She inhaled as she crawled to a kneeling position, braced herself and flung her body shoulder first into the boulder again. Given the loud popping noise and the pure agony that rippled through her body, it seemed her shoulder was back in place.
Panting like a tired dog, she looked for the other two. Maud was struggling to get up to her left, though her limbs looked to be fine. Her head sported a fresh gash across the temple which bled profusely. She also had a bruise that completely closed up one of her eyes, and she had a feeling that it wasn't from the explosion.
Nebula was the one to take the worst of the explosion, it seemed. Not only did she smell like fire and smoke, but her physical condition was horrible. The cyborg swore and huffed in pain as her twisted limbs forcibly began to shift back into place, each metal part whirring to click into another part. Her left leg twisted 180°, her elbow snapped back into place and her finger straightened again. Gamora noted that her jaws crooked, her eyes widening when a metallic hand reached up and pried at the side of her jaw. Nebula’s hands shook as they relocated her jaw's joints in a split second,and they shook harder as she fought the urge to urge to whimper at the pain.
Gamora locked eyes with her, heartbroken at the sight. She'd spent so long not really caring about the woman's physical state that she never realised just how much of her was...real. Gamora opened her mouth to say something, anything to--
“gRAAAAAR!” Nebula lunged forward and knocked Nebula into the ground, spittle flying from her mouth.
“Are you kidding me?!”
Gamora kicked her off easily, but Nebula had far too much adrenaline flowing through her to be slow to return. They exchanged a small flurry of hand to hand combat moves, each one Gamora sent begin blocked by her sister. The Luphimoid was at her angriest this night, her rapid hits emphasizing the anger pumping through what remained of her actual body. Nebula finally shot a hand around the green woman's wrist and tugged her forward into the clenched fist of the other hand, pounding into her abdomen with enough force to knock the breath out of her. Gamora wasn't given a second's worth of time to recover either.
With a flipping kick, Gamora's head bounced painfully against the ground. Nebula was on top of her in an instant, metal hand wringing her neck with shaking fury. She roared into the face of the suffocating woman below her, who flailed and kicked for a way to get out from under her. Eyes narrowed to slits, Nebula watched her struggles start to slow down as the lack of oxygen weakened her and made her gurgle strange noises. This was perfect--finally she would kill her and the waking nightmare of her life would be one step closer to ending. She just needed to press in a little farther and Gamora's neck would snap like a twig. Just a little farther.
She released her with a shriek of rage and rolled off. As Gamora rolled onto her stomach and fought to regain her breath between hacking coughs, her sister started to laugh a long bitter chortle. She grinned darkly in her direction. “ I did it. I won--I've bested you in combat.”
“Y-you psychotic wretch…!” Gamora spat and looked as though she would have resumed the fight if she weren't so winded. “I saved you from that ship! I saved your life!”
Nebula's smile vanished. “And you were a fool for letting me live!”
“You let ME live!” She shot back.
“I don't need or want you always trying to beat me, Gamora! You--”
Gamora grabbed her shoulders tightly. “You're the one who wanted to fly across the universe just to fight me!”
“Do NOT tell me what I want!”
“Why would I tell you what you want when its so obvious?! You want so badly to win--”
“You were the one who wanted to win, ” Nebula roared at her. “I just wanted a Sister!”
The flames of the wreckage eagerly roared and gurgled to fill in the silence after that statement, as if the silence was too deafening to handle. Gamora's saddened eyes widened as she stared at Nebula, whose head hung low and weary towards the ground. When she spoke again, her voice lost all traces of anger and malice. “...Y-you were all I had. After he took me from my parents’ corpses...I thought you would be able to fill the void they left, be my only real family...but you didn't want a sister.” She sighed pitifully, sadly. “You just wanted to win. And it didn't matter to you if it costed every leg, every arm--my own brain...just as long as you won.”
“...” Gamora trembled, sniffled the slightest. “...I-I'm sorry.”
Nebula lifted her head and stared at her. “...Yeah. I know you are…but what happened has happened.”
“You're absolutely right, Nebula.”
The two sisters flinched and relaxed; Maud was limping over to them with a hoof pressed against her bleeding forehead. The emotionless pony sat inbetween them both and winced as she struggled to get comfortable. Gamora wasn't sure, but Nebula looked the slightest bit apologetic about the pony's condition. “What happened has happened. There is literally no way for Gamora to go back and change anything, and no way for you to do the same.” She explained. “There is one thing that can happen right now that can lead to an endless set of possibilities.”
Nebula blinked. “...What is that?”
“Change your future. Stop this fighting, ” Maud glanced between the both of them with a forlorn frown. “Please. You don't want to spend the rest of your lives in a death struggle, over something that cannot be changed. Change your situation now, and who knows what will become of you two in the future.”
Gamora swallowed the lump in her throat. “...It's not that simple.”
“You keep saying things like that. When did I say ever say it would be simple?”
“I think that Gamora assumed you meant change would be simple, ” Nebula said slowly. “Because of how you say things. No offense, but you’re kinda unsettling the way you are.”
Unsettling was a harsh word, but Gamora found herself nodding reluctantly. To the surprising amusement of them both, Maud rolled her eyes. “In case you haven't noticed, I don’t express emotions the same as everypony else.”
“Everypony?” Gamora raised an eyebrow.
“Whatever. The point is that you should both try to look past what happened.” Maud pointed out and shrugged, much to her painful chagrin. “If you start today, you might both be old Grandmas eating fruit together on a porch eighty years from now.”
Gamora and Nebula locked eyes with each other, exchanging unspoken words. They both sighed, weary of their endless struggle with each other and nodded once. They wouldn't hug, they wouldn't cry and they wouldn't be accepting apologies today...but maybe tomorrow things would look different. Gamora slowly got to her feet and popped her spine. “Actually Maud, if we did keep fighting, we might still end up as old ladies eating fruit on a porch. I'd poison her fruit though, ”
“Like I'd fall for that, ” The cyborg rolled her eyes. “I'd use my one good arm to punch your frail face in.”
“Like you punched me?”
She flinched at the pony's words and rubbed the back of her head. “I apologize, Maud. It was a heat of the moment thing, I guess. Sorry about your eye, ”
“That reminds me, ” Gamora said as she began to walk towards the entrance of the cavernous tunnel. “I got a good look at you when you first swooped down. What was Maud doing in your lap, Nebula?”
Nebula's cheeks turned darker, and she coughed. “She wasn't in my--...y-you mu--”
“She was teaching me how to drive, ” Maud said, perhaps a bit quicker than she usually spoke. “ So that's why I was…yeah. Anyway, how have you all been? We got captured by The Ravagers.”
“Well, maybe that'll give Quill incentive to leave this planet. He's in one of his stubborn moods, ” Gamora said as she passed a huge opening in the side. She kept walking, then slowed down and paced backward to stare into the dark, small cave. “Do you two smell something?”
Nebula inhaled. “...It smells like death in there.”
Maud walked forward to the mouth of the small cave and picked up a tiny white pebble with both hooves. “This is a tooth.”
The Cyborg leaned down to peer at the object herself. “What?”
“It's a tooth.”
Gamora furrowed her brow and tried to look into the darkness of the cave. She snapped her fingers for her sister's attention. “Nebula. Light.”
Nebula's cybernetic sparkled to life, flashing a bright light through her false pupil into the dark cave to illuminate it. Gamora gasped, Nebula flinched back and even Maud's eyes widened the slightest when they saw piles upon piles of what was in the cave. They were all stacked together, in mountains of death that were far too many in number. The stench of the small cave was nothing compared to the sight.
Nebula breathed. “We have to get off this planet,”
Billions of toothy skulls smiled at them.
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Very interesting. Not really sure who Cha is, but considering I haven't read the Thanos book, I'm sure he's a character in that.
Gotta say, I'm absolutely LOVING the development between Gamora and Nebula here, especially with the added flashback scenes coinciding with main events. It really emphasizes their relationship as sisters and even that, thanks to Thanos, has been strained. It's tragic. It's heartbreaking. But with Maud in the mix, bringing them back together, it's even better.
That last line was especially haunting.
Great work here.
Great chapter once again. I like the little changes but still keeping with what originally happened. Well done
Not necessarily relevant to the chapter but I thought it was neat
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Much appreciated!
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You thought right!
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Hmm, to sum him up...Cha is a dude that found Thanos after he was exiled, and was pretty much his inseparable bro from then on. He was kinda like Gamora and Nebula's super nice Uncle, in a way. He kinda fell off when Thanos started to get infinity stone-hungry, and killing in the masses.
So Thanos snapped his neck and threw him off the ship.
That aside, thanks!
What Thanos book?
This would be cute, if Daddy Thanos weren't there to ruin it.
See?
Damn, I wish I could draw that.
I like to imagine she makes Maud angry enough to break monotone.
"You two have worse issues than Pinkie and I!"
Dun dun dun DUN!
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It's a Chapter Book called Thanos: Titan Consumed.
9435032 Oh, wow. That's tragic.
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Watched this in Intro to Cinema in college
When the shipping bells in your head start ringing, but then you realize Maud has a boyfriend.