( even at the best of times, peter's sleeping habits are poor. shitty. suboptimal. apparently it'd been four am(ish) when he'd gone to bed last night ("last night"), but that'd been earth time. he has, frankly, no idea what time it'd actually been or how long he's been asleep, but based on the way he feels, the answer's definitely: not long enough.

peter thinks he recalls something about the galaxy ending or being destroyed or something equally dramatic, which he'd ignored because the thought of moving hadn't thrilled him. he supposes there's a chance that groot and the other (ha) guardians had decided to deal with whatever it was by themselves, which was frankly grand, but—

—god, he feels like shit, imagines he probably looks it too, as that'd been all anyone felt like bringing up before he'd gone to bed, but he supposes it was either that or "peter, you're an embarrassment right now."

but christ, he's cold, and the scrolling text is just bright enough that he reflexively closes his eyes and groans, before cracking open eye and reading the message. given where he'd been, it makes precisely zero sense, although 'release locks' at least manages to sound promising.

yes it is, then. )

Ugh, ( is groaned unceremoniously as the pod opens and peter all but falls out of it, pausing momentarily on the ground as he gets his bearings. his gaze slides across the other pods, one by one by one as he gets to his feet, eyebrows pulling together in a tight frown.

anything he'd been about to do is briefly interrupted by a network chime which peter soundly ignores, choosing instead to pad towards another pod at random. he leans forward to peer into the glass, expression searching, he pauses and pulls at a sleep, rubbing it across the glass in an effort to see through the frost and the — ice?

he doesn't get very far. there's a sound behind him and he jumps, startled, spinning round to face—

—whatever other poor soul has just woken up, really. )

( there's an announcement that says the lethe — which is both a far more ominous name and far less charming than, say, milano or ryder — is not 'combat ready', which given the preceding message about a hospital ship and hostiles strikes him as less than ideal.

fortunately, peter had awoken on the lethe in much the same manner he'd gone to bed — that is, in his clothes. unfortunately, 'falling asleep in his clothes' was not the same as 'falling asleep armed'. his element gun is almost certainly exactly where he left it: next to his bed, back on the ryder.

after the third message — suggestion? — had popped up on the network, peter had pointedly stopped what he'd been doing and scrolled back. peter had managed to just about experience the joys of clippy before he'd left earth, and he finds himself thinking that the unstructured 'jumper bay', 'weapons', 'bridge' commentaries contain more than a few similarities.

that is to say: they're flarking useless.

the weapons bay is — something, as the incredible 'inconclusive' commentary states. it exists, and that's about all he's willing to piece together. the jumper bay is suggested as a priority for power restoration which, given the first, first message, makes sense.

he lingers in a hallway, weighing up his options. he knows what he'd do if he was on the ryder but he's not. there's a small part of him that thinks this could all be some d'ast trap, but bad ideas and a sense of foreboding have never done much to stop him before.

—jumper bay, then. he doesn't pass many others on his way, the ship seemingly eerily empty and quiet, but when he does encounter hints of other people, he slows, ducks into empty doors — where they open — and hides behind convenient objects. there's a chance they could be just like him, poor saps who'd woken up in a freezer with no knowledge of how or why, but there's a chance they could be who and what put him there.

peter jason quill: not a man who easily trusts.

when he eventually finds his way to and into the jumper bay, peter's decidedly underwhelmed by what he finds. given the series of messages, he's not really sure what he'd been expecting, but he'd hoped for more than what he (they've) got.

he gravitates towards the suits first, fiddling with them one-by-one to ascertain charge levels and— )

—Come on, ( it's a frustrated utterance, volume increasingly somewhat towards the end and punctuated by the sound of blunt impact. )

( he creeps through the keros cautiously. for as much as he hates all of this — there's a consistent, constant question at the back of his mind that mostly amounts to 'what the fuck?' — it's enough of a distraction that he has precisely zero (0) time to stop and pause and reflect. it's familiar in a way that's disturbingly comforting, even if he'd be more comfortable if he had his element gun.

still, he's found a weapon and he's clearly and evidently at home with it. if there's a part of him that struggles with or internally debates the morality of fighting the pirates, it's not obvious (conveniently aided by the fact that he doesn't, at all).

the pirates remind him of the ravagers, loosely speaking. he doesn't think he'll be able to talk his way out of anything or talk them into anything, and whilst he's not bound by any hippocratic protocol, peter doesn't dive into fighting them indiscriminately, he's not armed enough for that. )

Oh, fuck. ( half an exclamation, half a release of tension when he enters a room and realises he's not alone. the weapon — claimed from a pirate — is pointed first at the stranger before peter realises they're not one of very attractive fellows attacking the ship(s). ) Woah, hey, it's okay—.

( is it? who knows. maybe they're in the room with the trash monster, maybe it's just the realisation that this is all a bit of a shitshow, but it's probably not quite okay, not yet. )

( if you want to do something else, feel free to drop a starter — i'm v. easy and happy to go w/ the flow as far as prompts go/be flexible w/ rhys vs alyce, however i'm heavily leaning towards rhys as quill's starting ship.

outside of that, for anyone familiar with the comics, quill's canon point is vol 5 of GOTG, near the beginning of cates' run. )