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thebustedandtheblue · 5 years

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The Busted Ch 5: Good Times Bad Times

The Busted Ch 4: Over and Over and Over

Chapter 1| Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Days pass into weeks. Scullery duty continued, but there was a distinct air of hesitation from the rest of the crew when the two worked. There were no more incidents like with the orloni, and while the name calling and jeering still happened it wasn’t nearly as often as it had been that first day. It appeared that N’Zar had been accepted, although she suspected it was done at the behest of the officers of the Starhawk. She no longer tagged along with her charge although she did spend a bit of time with him. Eventually Yondu broke off from mess duties, and she kept washing dishes.

She still didn’t know much about him, where he was from, what he did before becoming a Ravager. What little he spoke to her was usually orders or grunts. She almost never saw him smile, and when he did, it was always with some wicked reason behind it. She had to find out from Tullk. She was scouring the sink of grime from the previous meal when he came by on his break.

“What’s Udonta’s deal?” She asked him, brushing off the grime from her trousers.

“What d’you mean?” He asked, ha

“I mean why’s he always so angry? It’s like he just wants to fight about everything all the time.”

“It’s the only thing he knows. He was a slave most of his life.”

“I figured that but I mean...I’ve known people who’ve been slaves before, I’ve never met anyone like him before.”

“Prolly cause he was a battle slave.”

N’Zar stopped mid scrub. That explains a fair amount. To fight for the Kree without actually being Kree was damn near a death sentence. She had never met one in person, but she had heard stories. They were the vanguard of the ground troops, cannon fodder. He knew her kind more as those that should be destroyed than as actual people. She felt for him, she truly did. Military life, especially forced military life, and at such a young age, was hard.

N’Zar snorted. “No wonder he hates me.”

“I don’t think he hates you. Don’t take it personally he’s like that with everyone. We just got used to it. It’s how he is.”

She was about to say something to him, when someone entered the mess. The Krylorian with the now-crooked nose from the fight.

“Captain wants to see you. He’s with the other officers.” He said.

In so many years of her life, being told to see the boss still scared her. A thousand scenarios went through her mind. She’d been found out and they’re going to send her back to Knowhere; they knew who she really was and they’re going to collect the bounty on her head; they just don’t like her and she’s getting spaced. She could feel her heart beat against her ribs as she made her way to the officers’ quarters, a slightly more spacious section of the ship, where Udonta and the officers were waiting for her. They were all sitting around a table. Stakar, his wife Aleta, his first mate Martinex, Charlie 27, Krugarr, and Yondu. The gang was all there. She stood military stiff in front of her superiors, beating against her chest twice, hard as she could, her back as straight as she could muster.

“Miss N’Zenne”, Stakar started, “We need you

“We’ve been contracted to steal this.” A section of the table shimmered and a projection of a bust of a woman adorned in black robes of obsidian. It was a fairly unimpressive thing, save for a brilliant red jewel in the center of her throat. “That is the Neramani Star. The client just wants that, not the statue. It’s currently owned by this her.” The projection changes, and a Shi’ar woman appears in the bust’s place.

N’Zar relaxed her shoulders, let her back slump slightly. She cocked her head and looked at the ruby. It must have been the size of her fist. “All right but what does this have to do with me?”

“I’m getting to that.” Stakar said.

“We need you to trade places with this man.” another projection appeared. A Strontian man, slightly younger than the Shi’ar. “Her assistant. We need you to pose as him.”

“Oh! Oooooh. Okay I thought I was in trouble.”

The captain smirked and shook his head. “No you’re doing fine. But if you help us with this you’d be doing us a solid. So what do you want to do?”

“I’m...Wait what are you asking?”

“Give us a plan.” He motioned towards the hologram “What would you do to make it so that his employer doesn’t suspect you, and how are you going to get that stone?”

N’Zar took herself out of the room for the moment. There was a great deal more information she would need if she were to configure a plan.

“What else do you have on him?” She asked, a half demand.

“That’s all we got.”

“I think…”she started, “I’d tail him. No not tail him. Not just me anyway. Get a few guys to watch him, get his routine down, see where he goes in the span of a few days, maybe a week if this was extended. A month if this was deep cover. If this is just a day then following him for a few days or so’d do.”

“Then what?”

“If he’s got a regular place he goes, and by the look of him he probably does. Maybe a bar or he goes and spends time with someone on the weekend, go and see him then, try and chat him up and get him alone.”

“This is very elaborate, N’Zenne.”

She didn’t hear the captain.

“I’d get him alone and the others jump him and knock him out. Hide him in his house or something. Then I go in the next day, check out what she has for security and report back, and then we rob the lady.”

“Sounds like an all right plan.”

N’Zar returned to the land of the living and looked up at Stakar. “Wait what?”

“That was a bit much but we just wanted to know if you were on the same page. You’re joining Yondu here, and a few others, to go and take that stone.”

N’Zar understood now. She knew why the captain didn’t flay her outright when he found her stowed away on his ship. Her sob story did nothing to help her. He was willing to take her on whether she was tragic or not. She almost regretted spilling her guts until the thought of what she would have had to endure back on Knowhere.

“What do I get out of this?” she asked

“You get a cut, and anything else you find is yours.”

N’Zar looked at the holograph. She looked up at the officers and Udonta.

“All right, I’ll do it. Where are we going anyway?”

“Spartax.”

“Oh cool. Spartax. I have no idea where that is.”

Aleta snorted.

N’Zar walked down the sun drenched cobblestones of an old part of the Spartoi capitol. The ancient buildings of stone and glass around the open square stood dignified in contrast to the monstrous skyscrapers of downtown and the floating transports that crisscrossed the sky. There were a few booths and carts set up around them selling all manner of produce, a few selling wines or other libations. This was what she had always imagined what her ancestors’ home had once been like.

“Enough sightseeing, N’Zenne. The guy’s coming up on your left.” Udonta’s familiar abrasive drawl said through her earpiece.

And so he was. Lean, violet skinned, somewhere in his forties and running through the square like several others that morning. N’Zar wandered around him, keeping a good few meters away. The mark turned the corner of the block, she was a good ten feet away from him. The mark stopped at a crosswalk. When the signal changed, she noticed that his pace had picked up. Had he noticed her? She hung back a little bit. She didn’t want to scare him.

“Get closer, N’Zenne.” Udonta said.

“I’ll spook him if he gets closer”

“Get closer. That’s an order.”

“I’m fine.” She insisted. “You’ll lose him.

She stops and looks up into the tall buildings above her. “I know what I’m doing, Udonta.”

On a roof some five blocks away, with a very powerful pair of binoculars, a man with blue skin and a red mohawk of an implant scowled. He would not tolerate insubordination, or some little shit Skrull talking back to him.

“Get back to him. Now.” Yondu demanded, an agitated rumble in his voice.

She glared in the vicinity of the building, and returned to tailing the Strontian man.

“Don’t be so hard on her.” Tullk said from across the room. He had been monitoring her target’s movements. “It’s her first mission, Yondu.”

“She shits the bed I’m going to be the one paying for it.”

“Have some faith in her. She’s probably done this before although it probably ended with a wallet.”

Yondu grumbled. “I have a lot riding on this mission, Tullk.”

“I know.” was all Tullk said and waved him off. He looked through his own scope. The sun was still low in the morning sky, and the scope each could see her in a terran-esque shift with olive skin and dark hair. Her eyes remained the same. “She’s not that bad looking like this.” “If you like skinny green shapeshifters.” Yondu scoffed.

“What if I do?” Tullk asked.

Yondu wasn’t sure if he was trying to get a rise out of him, or if he was genuinely interested. But he turned to look at his scarred and tattooed friend. He squinted. He wasn’t sure if his friend was serious or not. Getting duped by a skrull was one thing, it was an entirely different thing to go to bed voluntarily with one. He could understand the appeal to some degree, shifting into whatever he wanted, any race, any gender, but as she was was different.

“I ain’t her keeper anymore. If you want to ask her out you do you.”

“Then maybe I will.” Tullk said, a ghost of a smile on his face. “What’s she like in bed?”

“He wouldn’t know he never got that far. And I’m not skinny!” A distinctly feminine voice said over the comms. The two men had momentarily forgotten they were still speaking over an open channel. Somewhere in orbit around Spartax, in the officers quarters on board the Starhawk, Aleta Ogord let out a horsey peal of laughter.

She wasn’t that skinny. Not anymore. A few good-ish meals on the Starhawk saw to that. She was lean, but she wasn’t skinny. What would Udonta know anyway.

She followed her orders, catching up to the mark. The old buildings fell away to modern homes. More angular and dull rowhouses. She saw him walk up a flight of stairs to one of the last traditional-looking brick buildings on the street. It was a modest thing of two stories and made of red and creme brick. She walked passed the building, making note as he walked into the house.

“Now we know where he lives. So now what?”

“Wait there, N’Zenne.”

A small and growing blip in the sky came down, a transport, parking a block away from the house. From the cabin of the car came Yondu and Tullk.

“Alright so now what do we do?” She asked once again.

Yondu looked up at the building.

“Y’think you can turn into a bird?” He asks.

“Yeah but I won’t be able to fly or anything.”

“Ah...what?”

“I’m gonna be too heavy to fly, and I won’t really know how to fly since I never practiced being a bird. Might be able to glide, but I don’t think there’s enough wind to get me very far. What did you want me to do crash into the window?”

He scowled. “If you’re so smart what do we do?” Yondu grumbled.

N’Zar looked at her two partners. Both were scruffy, one was ill-tempered, the other one too many tattoos for what she had in mind, but it might still work.

“You guys got any money?”

The two men searched the pockets of their leathers. Between the two of them they had a little shy of thirty units.

“This should do us...we gotta find a thrift store.”

“Thrift store?” Yondu asked.

“Yeah a thrift store! That transport got a GPS?”

He was in the midst of dressing for work when the doorbell rang. He wasn’t expecting company, but perhaps it was that package from home he had been waiting on? The one his father said he would have to sign for. The strontian man heard the doorbell ring again, this time with some slight urgency. Down the stairs he went to see three figures behind the frosted glass. He opened the door and in front of him was a small strontian woman holding a very thick, dog-eared book. Her outfit was conservative, a dark skirt and blazer, with a white shirt and dark tights. Around her neck she wore a bright gold ankh. Behind her were two men in a similar mode of dress. They all looked rather tired and haggard, with beads of sweat from the summer heat on their faces, and dark patches under their arms.

The woman gave him a toothy smile. “Excuse me sir, I hate to be a bother on this very lovely morning, but do you have a moment to talk about the Magus? It will only be a moment of your time.”

Unies. Great.

“I’m very sorry but I don’t have the time right now.” He said, and began to close the door only to have it stopped by her foot in the threshold.

“Perhaps some other time then?” She squeaked. “I could come back later today if you’d be so inclined.”

She was being persistent, and from the looks of her she had been running around in those clothes most of the morning. He looked into her sad golden eyes. He honestly shouldn’t. The two behind her looked mean, and the Centaurian in particular looked like he was ready to stab someone His employer does not like to be left waiting, and he generally was not a fan of the Universal Church of Truth, but at the very least he could be polite and let her in for a glass of water.

He sighed, and opened the door wider to let her and her compatriots in.

She gave a slight curtsy and the three walked into the house. The Centaruian kept his eyes forward, not even looking at his host. The last one, a man with scars and tattoos, came up to the man and shook his hand heartily. “Thank ye very much, sir.” He said, sticking a small metal disc to his hand. He looked into the man’s face, a wicked grin on his face. Behind the two men the Strontian woman’s violet skin was changing to an olive green. Her hand was reaching for something around her wrist, and it was the last thing he saw before a shock and the floor rushing up to him.

#yondu udonta #guardians of the galaxy #gotg #fanfic #the busted #ravagers

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