Must Include a Unicycle - PG-13 - Darcy/Stephen Strange
“This is all your fault.”
Unamused at the accusation, Doctor Stephen Strange scoffed at the man beside him. “My fault? And how did you come to that conclusion?”
“You brought us here, didn’t you?”
“The kaiju present a significant threat both to Earth by itself and the galaxy at large. Aren’t you the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’? I was just trying to be polite and share jurisdiction.”
“‘Sharing jurisdiction’?” Peter Quill snarked, incredulous. “More like sharing responsibility for screwing it up.”
“It’s not screwed up yet. Besides, I’m not the one who told the pint-sized rodent inventor that unicycles are, and I quote, ‘the most badass Terran military travel device”. Where did you even come up with that one?”
“Dude, you try rolling through the galaxy with him looking to steal everyone’s prosthetics and see if you don’t convince him of weird Earth shit for kicks.” Peter shook his head. “And bringing your girlfriend along?”
“Miss Lewis is not my girlfriend.”
“You’re banging the hot intern and she’s way out of your league. Own it.”
“She’s a highly capable and intelligent young woman. How was I supposed to know that she’d get on so well with your tree demon and psychotic roadkill? And I certainly couldn’t have predicted...this.”
This, as it happened, was a large part of the action taking place below them in the center of Sydney’s abandoned downtown district. An explanation might require backing up a bit. In his day to day life dealing with problems in the Multiverse, Doctor Strange had discovered a parallel universe where Earth became embroiled in a bitter war with massive alien creatures called kaiju. The kaiju were the military might of an alien species that sought to overtake worlds as they needed them. Humanity, of course, being stubborn about their own extinction fought back with giant robots and a combination of sheer will and stupidity. Stephen could think of no way that aliens who travel through dimensional portals wouldn’t be a threat to his own Earth and had decided to do a little reconnaissance on the matter to make sure he was prepared. Aware of their existence and frequent dealings with other universal threats, he’d invited the Guardians of the Galaxy along. And, because he hated taking notes, he’d brought the young woman who’d stomped into the New York Sanctum and demanded that he offer her a job.
He hadn’t known that the furry tech guru of the Guardians would be enamored with jaeger technology. He hadn’t expected that Darcy would be just as enamored with Rocket and Groot. None of them had been the slightest bit suspicious that maybe that trio would do something crazy. Like hoarding parts, stealing the tech to create their own neural handshake, combining it all with some of Rocket’s own homebrew tech, powering the nightmare with stolen Anulax batteries, and then joining in the fight.
Drift compatibility, as it so happened, was a remarkable thing. And Darcy, Rocket, and Groot were drift compatible.
Rolling through the streets of Sydney on its single wheel, the trio’s improvised jaeger looked like something out of a five-year-old’s greatest dreams. It was more sleek and shiny than it had any right to be given that it was cobbled together from scrap. It had a short torso and comically long arms that both ended in spiked fists. To keep balance on the massive spinning wheel Rocket had fashioned in place of legs it used a long, striped tail that bore a striking resemblance to Rocket’s. The whole thing was wired with speakers that blared music so loud it drowned some of the sickening crunches as the jaeger made contact with the kaiju it was fighting.
Stephen and Peter Quill stood on the open deck of the rebuilt Milano, watching the whole ordeal with varying degrees of amusement, annoyance, and dread. Rubbing his forehead, Stephen reached blindly out to the side and flipped the switch to play the connection for their communicators through the ship. It only took a few seconds of hearing Darcy and Rocket cackling in perfect sync while they talked about how stupid the kaiju looked trying to deal with them before he flipped the switch back off.
“How are we going to get them out of that thing?” he asked with a weary sigh.
“Eh. Just let them finish with the monster. They’ll come out on their own when they get hungry.”
“When this is over, we are keeping them on separate ends of the galaxy.”
“Oh, absolutely. Those three together are a fucking nightmare.”