Let's Mutually Not Kill Each Other

Weird Beasts

The galaxy is chock-full of weird, beastly creatures. I swear on my dying mother that I saw a different species every day.

I myself am a creature with no match. I used to have a home, a family, but unfortunately it all came to a startling end when some whack-job with a glowing rock decided it was time for my planet to meet its maker (ironic, because the stone-wielding whack-job certainly thought he was God). I was off-world when it happened. Visiting some other dingy planet on a school field trip.

"Weren't there other students?" one might ask. Yes, there were. And all of them — every single one — died of fright when they heard the news that our planet had been annihilated in the Kree's attempt to cleanse the universe. "Why didn't I die right there with them?" one might ask. Trust me, if I'd gotten to decide between going down in flames on a burning planet or being stuck in a cramped spaceship with a bunch of terrified nerds peeing their pants, I would not hesitate to choose the former. To put it straight, I wish I had died on the planet along with my family. But for some reason, my will to live sucker-punched my terror and sadness in the face, and I sat swirling a drink while my classmates keeled over and died of shock. I swear I'm not a psychopath. I mourned my mother's death.

So, there I was, relatively young and new to everything in the universe, single-handedly piloting a spacecraft full of floating corpses (the artificial grav system failed me and I'm no engineer). It took me a week to reach the nearest habitable planet — thank God or whatever shit-bag deities created this life that I was able to land safely. I set down with relative ease at the planet's largest spaceport and did my best to ask for help.

Unfortunately, the language barrier was a twelve-story-high steel wall set with spikes. I tried to explain to the weird, orange-skinned, four-armed officers that I did not, in fact, kill all those people inside my ship. I left before they were able to detain me. Thankfully, nearby was a monstrous parking bay. Yes, I stole a ship. And I was outta there as soon as I heard the emergency bells ringing.

I didn't know where I was going. A brief look at the ship's navigation system told me there were a couple planets just a couple hundred light-years away. No problem with the spaceship's space-matter drive. It took me approximately a week to get to get to Xandar. I spent the days getting to know the ship and watching the news. Whoever owned this ship previously (I say previously because now it was mine) must have been filthy with money, because they had nearly thousands of channels, and not all of them were for my virgin eyes. I watched the GNC (Galactic News Channel) to see if anyone would be liberating my poor, disintegrated planet. Apparently a whole planet isn't as important as one might think. There are so many of them. It's difficult to accept, but one stray asteroid and BOOM; planet gone. People gone with it. That's life in the cold vacuum of the cosmos.

I also saw my face on the news. Briefly. A flash on the screen in a string of other wanted criminals. I'd stolen some rich guy's ship after all. It was only formality for me to be wanted for the crime. Certainly the owner could purchase a new one in the blink of an eye.

So really, Xandar was the worst possible place for me to be.

But I went there anyway, because a brief search in the outernet told me that it was a nest for other wanted criminals. I'd briefly considered Contraxia, but the name itself was a dead giveaway — I had a 99 percent chance of contracting something if I went there, and I was not up to date on my vaccines. That, and sex was not the thing on my mind right now.

I landed in a sketchy spaceport and parked the ship. I kissed it goodbye. It was a nice ship — clean and sleek (and it had a sick paint job) and perfectly silent. I wanted to keep it. But alas, all good things must come to an end. If I didn't part with it now, I'd certainly be ripped from it by energetic security guards hoping to cash me in for the bounty on my head. I couldn't remember how much that bounty was, exactly, but I didn't want to know. I knew I was priceless under any circumstances.