Wrongly Attacked
After a limited amount of debate, I decided to blame Quill for all of this, or Star-Lord or whatever other nonsense he insisted on calling himself. One way or another this was all entirely his fault! If that idiot had just left that accursed orb on that long forgotten planet then none of this would have happened, and more importantly, I would not be on a one-way trip to space jail when I was just seventeen years old!
I hadn't even done anything remotely illegal; I hadn't shot, maimed, or stabbed anyone despite the extremely powerful urges that came up during moments of high stress and annoyance. I had been trained to do all of them too, but thankfully I had will power so to avoid going to jail. But then there was one little slip-up, which I could barely classify as a slip-up, broke my perfect record.
My slip up was caused in part by a very particular fight that I hadn't been involved in, I had only been watching it with mild amusement until I was very wrongly attacked. So yes my response to being attacked was to very purposefully attempt to break somebody's nose, an attempt is the key word there. I didn't even break it!
For heaven's sakes, I should have been praised for punching a wanted outlaw in the fact, but no! Now I was the bad guy!
Maybe now would be the time to back up a bit, huh? Step back and start from the beginning.
Well firstly my name is Alexandria Stark, well it was. I'm still a little iffy on how this whole thing works. Not too long ago I had been a regular-ish high school student in New York City. I was also heir to a multi-billion dollar company, the only daughter of one of the richest and smartest men alive, training to be a member of one of the world's greatest spy organisation. And the best of all I had been in love with my best friend in the whole world.
For the first time in my life everything had seemed absolutely perfect; so naturally fate had to throw me a curve ball.
My memory is still a little fuzzy on what exactly had happened, whenever I looked back to remember everything always seemed like it was a dream. I could remember somebody shouting my name over a roar and the ground almost seemed to shake before the world went black.
But when I did finally open my eyes I realised that not everything was how it seemed, I found myself laying on my back in some soft grass... countless miles away from home. I'll clue you in right now, I had woken up in space.
I found that my ash blond hair had been drained of its pigment, turning it into a startlingly soft shade of white. And then there was also my streak, I think I had been born with it. But then again that was just going off my own speculation since there wasn't really anyone I could ask who would really know. It had once been a lighter shade than the rest of my hair, reminding me of that fashion expert Tracey something, but it had now turned a pretty cool looking electric blue. It was almost like some psycho with Photoshop had gotten a hold of my DNA and had decided I needed a paint job.
So to sum it all up: I had found myself on some planet, lost and without a clue as to what was happening or what to do.
For some reason, neither my high school nor SHIELD had a class to teach me how to deal with this kind of situation.
Thankfully there was one small lifeline that I could cling to in this chaos; from a young age, I had been taught by a very strange man a number of important but probably emotionally scarring lessons. He was an evil man who had recently revealed himself to be a monster and had, of course, tried to kill my father. Because everyone did that. Anyways one of those skills he had taught me was the importance of adaptability, something that would have been extremely important if I had become the head of Stark Industries, as unlikely as it seemed at the moment.
I had calmed myself down, mostly through distracting myself. I began by making up a number of possible theories that could explain these events. Well, I gave it my best shot with the limited amount of data I had gathered.
My first priority was location, it wouldn't take a genius to uncover that I was one another planet besides earth. After all the soft grass, I had found myself on turned out to be blue and the natives were talking asparagus people, well they looked like asparagus anyway. But as I had said I had a limited amount of data I could go off so I was definitely missing more than a few pieces in between.
The asparagus people weren't that much help either as they only wanted to have me for lunch, literally they wanted to eat me. They were polite about it, though, but it had still been terrifying and I was sure that I would suffer from nightmares until I was at least forty years old.
But as I said there were theories that I had managed to come up with, the one I found to be the most likely was that I had died. As I said before I don't quite remember how I had died all I know was that it happened. This simple fact led me to believe that this whole thing, in the simplest terms, my afterlife. This strange slightly messed up adventure was what I deserved for living my life the way that I had.
Personally, I would have preferred to be reincarnated or something but I supposed I couldn't be too picky, especially when I took into consideration the various different ways humanity had described the afterlife. At the very least I managed to get off the planet of the polite man-eating asparagus people, utilising some honest money that I had made. Even in space being the daughter of a genius did nothing but help me.
Once off the asparagus home world, I discovered that out there in space behold my blue planet there was quite a bit more life out there, and not just the Asgardians. I found myself again wondering if all agent mythology was the result of psycho bored aliens coming down to earth because they wanted something to do. Some of the aliens were even reasonable, some polite like the asparagus people.
I was a little surprised to find that quite a few aliens were actually quite familiar with the planet Earth. though for some reason they called it Tera, and all of them seemed to have almost no interest in it.
They spoke freely about it if I asked, not bothering to censor what they said since no one seemed to peg me as a human. I guess the change in hair colour did have some advantages. I choose to use this to my advantage, as it seemed that most aliens looked down at humans as inferior beings.
To help with my clever ruse, I chose not to go by my birth name, as it sounded far too human for my tastes. It took me a little over two days to think up a good alternative, I blamed procrastination for that one.
Fix-It, Widget, Ratchet, Nightingale, Silver, etc. You name it I probably considered it at one point.
It was times like these that I wished Hawkeye was here, when I had been enrolled in SHIELD's program he had been one of my trainers and had promised to help me come up with a cool code name.
In the end, I found my name in a moment of nostalgia when I was thinking of my dad. It was one of those jarring 'holy crap, this shit is real' moments when I realised that one of my biggest goals, to actually get to know my father, had just been torn away from me.
I found it tragic but at the same time, it reminded me of some of the biggest lessons that I had ever been taught. Stark's survived.
It didn't matter how, or why, or what we had to do, Stark's always get back up no matter what. If my father could walk out of a twelve months captivity as one of the greatest heroes of our time as one of the greatest phoenix metaphors to date, then so could it.
And that was how Phoenix was born.
Over the years, I had developed multiple key skills, skills that were found to be impressive even among the highly advanced aliens. Starting with that one small device, I put together without a second thought. I realised there was something I could do, so I took up in my grandfather's footsteps. I decided to make something of myself as a sort of wandering mechanic.
Not to brag but I had a lot of potential and not just in my mechanical skills. There were other things that made me promising. But for now, I'll leave that as a surprise.
So fast forward a bit and we finally reach where our story kicks up. Starting on the lovely planet Xandar, a place that I had become well acquainted with in my travels through the stars. It was a generally peaceful planet with a good economy which meant that I had a lot of clients in the area. In fact, on that very afternoon, I had a few meetings lined up.
One of them was with a rather shady centurion, a man who had made it very clear that he would pay me top dollar (units) to repair two very rare and very old ships. He declined to share anymore about it though, I had grown reasonably concern and had done an interesting background check. As it turns out he may or may not have been the captain of a rather successful group of space pirates. More commonly known as the Ravagers.
So naturally I had assumed that he would be the most interesting character I would meet, then again I couldn't see the future. So I couldn't see what was really in store for me. Actually even if I was psychic I don't think I could have figured out that because of a few coincidental events I would end up partnered with an anthropomorphic raccoon, a tree (also anthropomorphic), a hot-temper woman with green skin and knives, a violent raging blue man, and kleptomaniac human who was playing cowboys in space.
The first of the coincidental evens was the fight.
While I was waiting for my next meeting in Xandar I had seated myself down on a bench in a nice open area. Similar to most other teenagers, I had found myself bored and so had begun fiddling with my Aegis.
It was one of my first new inventions that I had decided to keep for myself. It was a small metallic band around my left wrist that had holographic capabilities likes the machines dad has in the labs. It also doubled as a music player.
I hadn't been very interested in the world around me, from what I could hear from the only ear that didn't have a headphone everything sounded rather busy and boring. Until suddenly there was a bit of a commotion. Though I didn't see it, it did sound much more entertaining than the email I was reading from an over-dramatic trophy wife. So I had taken a chance to glance up.
And then I did a double-take when I registered what the heck I had just seen.
Looking up I pulled my earphone out like everyone else in the area I watched the two fighters in the street. The strange thing was that they were laying on their backs, doing some kind of lazy fighting on their backs.
Either laziness had actually turned into a major epidemic or they had better street performers than New York.
One of the fighters was noticeably green, they appeared to be a woman with their long dark hair and curved figure. The other one however was either a guy or a rather large woman. From this distance he actually almost seemed.... Wait a minute. Was that dude human?
I stood up but not to step in and stop the fight. Instead I stood up to get a better look, the New Yorker in me taking great pleasure in watching a fight that for once didn't seem to have the potential to destroy the planet. Not that I'm pointing fingers. Dad...
Anyways logically I knew that one of them had done something to deserve this, statistically speaking it was probably the dude.
The woman shouted suddenly as she flipped over onto the man's chest pulling up. In the process of doing that she pulled out a long and undoubtedly very sharp knife, which she lifted over her head. It made me think she was going sacrifice him or something. Maybe she was in some kind of cult.
It looks like things were about to take a turn for the bloody.
I moved quickly... by pulling up my recording software and immediately began recording. Except surprisingly nothing bloody actually happened which was all the better. The better part was when the green chick was tackled football style by a raccoon. That's not even counting the walking tree who had a kidnap sack at the ready.
From where I was I could hear somebody, possibly the raccoon, ordering someone else to put the guy in the bag.
There seemed to be some kind of gender issue there because instead of the now escaping guy the tree actually grabbed the girl and was trying to get her in the sack. Oi! You, chuckles! Stop laughing! That is not funny!
Filming really seemed to be the best course of action to this, it was the same reaction every New Yorker has. In other words: Find a way to get the best shot possible because this shit belonged on YouTube.
I needed to do this for the vine!
In other words, I had no idea what was going on and quite frankly I really did not care. All I knew was that this stuff was kind of super amazing, and it would be hilarious to watch later.
I had actually been just about to move to get a better look at the scene when suddenly things starting coming towards me. The guy, who seriously looked human, began rushing towards my general direction. Now that he was up and running towards me I could see the Ravager garb that he was wearing. Wait, maybe I was supposed to meet him.
And here is where that accursed orb I mentioned earlier comes into play. I hadn't really paid much attention to it at first, it didn't look like anything special at all. In fact I only registered it when the green woman threw a knife at it. Thankfully (or unfortunately) things once again didn't turn bloody because she had some amazing aim.
All her knife did was knock it out of the hands of the guy. Before anyone could stop it, not that civilians where rushing to do anything, it rolled right off the edge. I had cleverly followed it hoping to get more film. I had rushed to the edge holding my wrist over the edge to watch the orb fall to the ground. My mouth opened and I took a breath in as I began to make my comedic remark.
And then I was attacked.
I had heard him coming up behind me, clearly running after the oh-so-precious orb. I had assumed that he would have the common sense not to run into me. In my defense I hadn't known Quill at this point. This will be the last time I ever associate 'common sense' with Quill.
Instead of moving maybe a two feet to the right of left Quill managed to hit me head on from behind.
I let out a shrill shriek of surprise as I flipped over the railing. Air rushed passed me as the ground got alarmingly close in a short amount of time. I opened my mouth to scream only to slam into the ground at full force.
I laid there stunned for a moment, the events around me going past without my care. I pretty sure someone thought I was dead because I heard somebody scream in terror. That got me moving, my head slowly cleared as the throbbing lessened. I shook my head forcefully trying to get rid of the ringing in my ears. Oh my head was immediately killing me. Isn't that lovely? I had a concussion now!
Blinking my eyes open I attempted to use willpower to make everything turn into something besides blurry figures. Everything moved into focus slowly but even then it took a moment for me to see the idiot who knocked my off. I spotted hum when the green chick was thrown into a nearby fountain.
Following her movements back my eyes locked onto my target. I was on my feet before my head realized it. I made a beeline for the jerk who seemed to be completely at ease. Completely unaware that there was yet another girl on the field who wanted to kick his ass. He totally deserved it too, I mean really who the hell just knocks someone off a walkway. He didn't even check to make sure I was okay, or you know if I was going to sue him or something.
Sure nothing was broken, but that wasn't really the point here. Good god, I sound like a YouTube troll.
"Hey!" I shouted as I stomped over, getting the man's very quickly. This close I noticed that he was actually human, weird. The other human turned calmly to me as if expected to be greeted by a friend, only to be greeted by my fist connecting with his face. Sadly I hadn't had the patience to aim properly, so his nose had not been broken. I did however send him stumbling back in shock as he clutched his nose, his eyes squeezed shut.
Taking advantage in the Ravagers pain the tree abruptly shoved him into the bag, just before I could tackle and break the idiot's nose.
"What the what?" I demanded glaring at the tree, "Hey, dude, I was attacking that guy!"
It may have just been the concussion, but the tree almost seemed apologetic as it walked past me. Like a spoiled child who had their toy taken away I crossed my arms with an angry huff as I watched the tree leave.
I didn't move as I watched the green woman, having recovered from her dip in the fountain, came over and cut off the trees arms.
She made a move for the kidnap bag, but as soon as it was opened something shot her in the face. It sent her flying back again. The jackass in the bag took that opportunity to make a break for it, realizing at last that a lot of people wanted to kill him.
You might call me bitter, but I didn't like that.
So if I laughed when the raccoon shot him with a very impressive weapon which sent electricity of some kind at the jerk you can hardly blame me. The electricity seemed to travel through the jerks body making him scream in pain until he collapsed. Vengeance was sweet.
I smiled satisfied as I turned ready to walk away and wash my hands of this, and never see any of these people ever again. I only walked about four feet before I was cornered by three armed officers.
"Put your hands up!"
My eyes widened and I blinked startled. I looked back behind me trying to see if one of the crazies were behind me. Finding no one behind me I turned back.
Slowly I raised my hands as I snapped bitterly, "You have got to be kidding me."
