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Rocket and the bunnies 2 By Strega

Gamora was the first of the crew to learn about Rocket's odd eating habits. Oh, she'd seen him dine often enough, sitting at the table with the others. He ate less than they did, being a third the mass of even herself, much less the other male Guardians, but if you ignored his fangs and muzzle the little not-a-raccoon ate and drank the same as everyone else.

She hadn't really wondered why he'd come back from some shore leave a few months back with a bit of a paunch and healthy, glossy fur. She'd just chalked it up to him spending some hard-earned Units on good food instead of the shaky fare Quill stocked on the Milano. It wasn't until she had a chance to see him really eat that she learned what strange and horrible abilities he'd been given when he was made.

They were flipping through bounties on the ship's computer one morning, arguing over which to go after or whether to go after any at all when the image of a heavily cyberneticized, black furred rabbit appeared on the floating screen.

"Hm," said Rocket, putting down the Gauss pistol he'd absently stripped to its parts and put back together half a dozen times already. "Rankin. Been a while since I saw him." He scanned the bounty. "Sixty thousand? Wanted for, check this, terrorist activities. Usually he's more the bank robbing type, like Selva."

"Selva?" Gamora was a high-end assassin and lacked the breadth of underworld contacts the little raccoon had. She also hadn't slept in as many garbage-filled alleys, which she considered a fair trade.

"Rankin is a minor crime lord, guess you'd call him. He and his gang of black bunnies. Selva was one. There were about a dozen of them. Ten I guess, now." Rocket didn't elaborate but there was a sly grin on his muzzle that he didn't quite conceal in time.

"Let me check with Nova Corps," Gamora said. "We may be able to find out why they want this him so badly."

"Whatever," Rocket said. "Good bounty, so I say we try to get him anyway, but knock yourself out."

Thanks to their now more or less friendly relationship with Nova Gamora was back in half an hour. Rankin, it turned out, had done some very bad things and had last been seen on Quorn, where they were parked. But it was a big city and a bigger planet and a bunny the size of Rocket would be hard to find.

Rocket leaned back in his chair, unconsciously grooming his muzzle fur. "We're never going to find him directly. We'll have to catch someone who knows where he is."

That was why Gamora found herself in a grubby back-alley bar the next evening, sitting across from Rocket and sharing a bottle of utterly vile booze. Rocket made a show of slugging the stuff down but in fact took only small sips, his beady feral eyes always in motion. Nothing happened in the bar that he didn't see and she took the hint to similarly stay sober while seeming to drink.

A furry ear flicked and she'd been around the little raccoon enough to notice when his whiskers shifted. His surprisingly expressive muzzled face stayed frozen even as his eyes turned toward a patron who entered the bar and Gamora took another drink, stony faced as her furry friend, and watched tall upright ears disappear behind a table and then appear on the other side.

"Borin," Rocket breathed. "Just stay cool. He hates my guts and should do all the work for us."

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the look of absolute loathing the rabbit shot Rocket. The long-eared felon found a spot at one of the smaller tables - this bar served both patrons Gamora's size and Rocket's - and proceeded to ignore them. Exposure to Rocket had caused Gamora to pay more attention to the mobile ears of certain species, though, and she noted that one tall ear was swiveled toward them seemingly by chance.

Rocket took theatrical slug from his shot glass, refilled his drink (and in fact poured most of the fluid into an ashtray). The fingers of the hand holding the glass twitched and she recognized a smuggler's hand signal. 'Play along', he meant, and she adjusted her hood as she waited to see what her furry little comrade would do next.

What he did was suggest, a little more loudly than was really proper and with a drunken slur in his voice, that they retire to the alley behind the bar. He could make it worth her while to help him take the edge off of some built-up stress.

It wasn't the first time someone called Gamora a whore and in fact it was a useful role to play when approaching an assassination target. A cruel smile curled her lip as she replied. "I don't know, furball. Doubt you have anything much to offer me at your size."

Rocket had his moments of vulnerability but those were largely in private. In public he knew all about putting up a tough front and trading barbs. Servos whined in his forearm as he made a fist that came down on the table hard enough to make the glasses jump. "That big enough for ya? Not that I care, it's my Units. Don't really care if you enjoy it, long as I do."

Gamora grinned in the shadows of her hood and Rocket grinned back. There were times she really liked the angry little creature. They both watched the twitching bunny ears without seeming to do so as they haggled over the price, then Rocket slammed a Unit chit down on the table and they made their way to the door, neither of them particularly steady on their feet. Nor did either of them seem to notice the black bunny ears making their way through the crowd after them.

Borin waited a full minute at the entrance, pretending to watch an increasingly violent argument at a nearby table before stepping out the door. He'd seen which way the mismatched pair turned and their overheard conversation made it plain they'd be in the alley next to the bar. Sure enough, when he peered cautiously around the corner he saw a pair of furry raccoon ears sticking up past a dumpster. The ears were going forward and back with an accompanying rhythmic growl and occasional half-drunken words of encouragement to the whore Rocket was fucking. She must be on all fours or even lying down given their size difference.

Borin felt the blaster warm in his hand as he flicked off the safety but all he'd get if he fired now was a furry ear and he wanted more than that. He stepped forward and just for a moment he forgot to check his flank.

A moment was all it took. There as a blur of movement and fingers like steel coils clamped down on his wrist. The blaster hung from nerveless fingers as another hand took his scruff and drove him face-first into the side of the dumpster.

Gamora was surprised the bunny kept struggling even after that but Rocket was at her side quick as a flash to slap a metal disk onto a bit of exposed cybernetics that protruded from the rabbit's black fur. Borin shuddered and went limp in her grip and Rocket grinned as he searched their prize, liberating various weapons, bits of tech and incidentally a credit voucher.

Only then did the little raccoon pause to do up his fly. Gamora's eyes widened. "You weren't really -"

Rocket shrugged. "Had to make it look realistic."

"You're disgusting."

"You got no idea, babe. Here, hold him." Rocket pulled a collapsible snare from a pouch and bound Borin up tight as a mummy. The quick, professional way he did it reminded Gamora that his occupation prior to joining the Guardians had been as a bounty hunter. Then he slapped a round device not dissimilar to their space suit generators on the rabbit's chest and Gamora blinked as the bunny faded from view. He was still there, his forty or so pounds supported by her hands, but the light was somehow bent around.

"Just an active camo field. Keep anyone from seeing anything weird on the way to my safe house."

"You normally carry cybernetics disruptors and holofields that hide bodies?"

"'Course I do," said the raccoon as he finished examining the rabbit's gear for tracers or other trickery. "Don't you?"

Gamora shook her head as she followed her furry companion through a maze of narrow streets. It was easy to underestimate Rocket. It was also usually a mistake. Take your eye off the little rodent for one moment and there was no telling what deviltry he might get up to. The last time someone assumed he was harmless that seemingly reasonable line of thinking had gotten Ronan the Accuser killed.

Ten minutes later Gamora was eyeing Rocket's safe house with both approval and dismay. A seemingly solid wall in a fetid, garbage filled alley had opened at his touch and they entered a snug little room barely tall enough for her to stand upright. Half-built bits of homemade technology littered every horizontal surface and it was obvious even to her that the three narrow entrances to the place, one in each of two walls and one a brick-lined tunnel in the floor, were heavily trapped.

"Don't touch anything," Rocket said unnecessarily. "This is just a bolt hole I use sometimes. Got 'em on a buncha planets. I keep a few weapons and tools here but mostly it's a trap in case someone is after me. Muck around with stuff and the whole building'll come down on us."

Gamora let the bunny fall onto the revoltingly dirty bedroll that was both Rocket's sleeping accommodations and the only space not littered with bolts, circuits and other gewgaws. Rocket was there in a moment to pluck the active camouflage module from the rabbit's chest. His clawed fingers manipulated the metallic disk stuck to the bunny's cybernetics and Borin's eyes popped open. The first thing out of the bucktoothed mouth was a curse.

"What did you do to me, you fucking rat?"

Rocket sat down in front of the bunny, who was stretched out on the bedroll. "Nothing too bad. Just kept you from shooting me in the back...again."

The bunny scowled. "I should have done a better job the first time. Who got me? You were fucking that whore," he gestured with his head toward Gamora.

"I was fucking my hand," said Rocket with a grin. "And 'that whore' is Gamora. Maybe you've heard of her." The sudden contraction of the bunny's pupils and the frightened twitch of his ears showed he had. "But let's get to why you are here."

"You're after Rankin," Borin guessed, and Rocket nodded. "Not telling you a thing. He'd kill me."

"I was hoping you'd say that," growled Rocket. "So here's what you need to know about me. Thanks to my augmentations," he touched one of the polished bolts at his collarbone, the most visible of his cybernetics, "I can hold my breath for about five minutes."

"Like I care," the bunny said,

"Just lettin' you know," Rocket said as he shuffled on his knees until he was behind the bunny, "How long you have to decide to talk."

"What does that have to do with - hey! What are ya doin' back there?"

Gamora watched, as puzzled as the bunny, as Rocket's small but strong furry hands grabbed the rabbit's feet. Once again he made the 'play along' hand sign, out of sight of Borin, and though she had no idea what the raccoon was doing she did did just that.

"Five minutes," she said, glancing at a chrono on a shelf. She kept the puzzlement off her face with some effort as Rocket yawned, wondering if he as going to bite the long-toed bunny feet. Instead he stuffed the toes into his mouth and she couldn't keep the surprise off her face as his jaws lurched forward. His narrow muzzle gaped impossibly wide as he worked his maw rapidly over the rabbit's feet. In just a few seconds the brown-gray fur of his neck and bulged and rippled as Rocket swallowed and the rabbit's ankles followed its feet down the raccoon's throat.

Luckily Borin had his head craned over his shoulder and hadn't seen her astonishment. The bunny kicked as Rocket worked his jaws inch by inch toward his knees, but the raccoon skillfully met the attempt to push him away with wide-open jaws and Borin only succeeded in shoving his knees into the advancing maw.

Gamora had seen stranger things in her trips across the galaxy but her eyes were still wide as she watched. She thought she knew Rocket, at least a little. She knew he had been made in a lab by uncaring researchers trying to build a cybernetically augmented slave soldier. He'd been just an animal when they started and bore deep scars, mental and physical. It seemed she didn't know nearly as much about the modifications he'd gone through as she thought. Rocket's jaws had already taken in the rabbit almost to the ass and he was clearly set on swallowing his victim whole.

"What the hell!" Borin squirmed, his legs deep in the raccoon's throat and sliding still deeper. Rocket's muzzle bobbed as he swallowed and then his servo-augmented hands gripped the bunny's rump and helped force it into his maw. Black fur disappeared inch by inch into the raccoon's stretched cheeks and Rocket's armored tunic bulged below his sternum as his feeding forced a set of kicking bunny feet his stomach.

Rocket's eyes flicked to the chrono and Gamora recovered her composure. "Four minutes," she said calmly. It had taken Rocket only a little more than a minute to swallow Borin to the ass and the tied-up bunny was still sliding deeper, pulled by the little raccoon's powerful hands and sucked in by hungry gulps. Rocket's jaws had long since stretched far wider than was reasonable and his ribcage creaked and popped as he swallowed a bunny very nearly as large as himself. Gamora couldn't imagine why researchers would give a soldier this ability but Rocket clearly had it and Borin whined as his hands, bound tightly to his side by the snare, slipped into Rocket's gullet along with his fluffy bunny tail.

Rocket let out an irritated grunt, glancing at the chrono again, and Gamora went on. "In three minutes," she said, for the raccoon's feeding had slowed as he reached the bunny's hips, "Rocket's going to need to take a breath. He can do that after coughing you back up or he can do it after swallowing you. What's it going to be? Do you want to be racc-" Rocket let out a full-throated growl of annoyance and she changed words in midstream, "Rocket fuel?"

"Oh gods," the bunny muttered as Rocket worked his jaws up over his elbows. Two thirds of him was inside the raccoon now and powerful little hands gripped the bunny's shoulders, stuffing him in inch by inch. Rocket's normally trim belly was grossly swollen already, bulging still further as the tied-up bunny's knees pressed against his pelt from the inside. "I can feel my pawpads starting to dissolve."

"Rocket's stomach is augmented too," Gamora said, though that was only speculation, albeit very well-founded speculation. "But our lives will be easier if he doesn't have to take a day off to digest you. Where's Rankin?"

The bunny's face twisted as he struggled to wriggle free, but Rocket's jaws slipped up around his shoulders and with a sudden lurch all that protruded from the raccoon's maw was long ears sticking out over a terrified face. With a slow chewing motion Rocket got his narrow muzzle seated around Borin's and leaned back, his stretched neckfur twitching as he readied himself to swallow the bunny down.

"Two minutes until Rocket has to decide to spit or swallow," Gamora said, and the bunny finally broke. Gamora clicked on the recorder she carried for just such occasions as a flood of names, places, dates and times spilled out of Rocket's prey.

It went on for at least a full minute and Rocket must have told the truth about his ability to hold his breath, because she watched him become progressively more uncomfortable. His throat was stuffed full of bunny and not a sip of air was getting in.

Finally the bunny's long flood of names came to an end and he begged for his life. "Wait! I've got more! Spit me up, spit me up!"

Gamora realized that this whole while Rocket had been gradually working his jaws forward, overtaking the bunny's face from below. Borin's eyes were in the shadow of the raccoon's upper jaw now and his ears protruded from either corner of his mouth.

"Rocket," Gamora said, but it was too late. The raccoon stretched his muzzle upward and Borin's muzzle and begging mouth slipped out of sight. With a visible effort the raccoon got his jaws shut around the bunny's muzzle and then there was just the last great bulge moving through his neckfur as Rocket swallowed. Black bunny ears slipped into the corners of the raccoon's mouth and Borin was gone.

Rocket grunted, his armored - and it turned out, unexpectedly elastic - tunic stretching around the massive bulge in his middle. Somehow he'd managed to swallow Borin whole and the curled-up shape of the rabbit squirmed beneath the yellow and black material. His strong little hands found purchase on the bulge, helping hold his meal still, and a long belch bubbled up out of him as his hands squeezed. He'd really done it. Even Gamora was surprised. She hadn't thought he had it in him.

"You are a horrible little thing," Gamora mused. Rocket just grinned.

"Feelin' sorry for him? Make you a deal," Rocket growled. "Daughter of Thanos, you tell me with a straight face this is the nastiest thing you've ever seen, I cough him back up."

She was silent, and the raccoon went on. "No? Top five? How about, is this the most horrible thing -you've- ever done to someone?"

"Time's a-wastin'," the raccoon said. The struggle in his middle was visibly weaker now. "Oh well." His little hands squeezed, and another long burp oozed up out of him. "Too late."

Borin was still at last, swallowed alive and suffocated inside Rocket. A low gurgle emerged from the raccoon's middle as his stomach began to work on its huge meal. The bunny weighed almost as much as Rocket did and he stretched out on the filthy bedroll to give his belly room to spill out.

"He might have had more information," Gamora finally managed. Her violent little comrade was more ruthless than she'd ever imagined.

"Ha! Kind of late to bring that up. But look." Rocket put a clawed finger on his back. "This port right here, next to the lower left bolt in my spine. When I've digested this shithead I'll just plug in here and we'll have a complete analysis. Everywhere he's been, there's some residue he carried with him and we'll know it all."

Rocket yawned and rubbed his belly as Gamora thought about that. There was a small sanitation station crammed into the corner of the safe room and that, presumably, was where the raccoon would dispose of most of the bunny. All that mass had to go somewhere no matter how efficient his digestive system. He'd still go home well-fed and sleek, and she'd seen that before.

"A while back you came back to the ship fat and healthy," Gamora said. "Selva?"

Rocket smiled. "Selva and his brother Kranix. They wanted to hire me for a job then tried to kill me when I turned them down. These black bunnies are assholes but they're mighty good eatin'. And their cybernetics fetch good money once I cough 'em back up. I had little Groot with me that time, he gives good belly rubs."

Gamora ignored the obvious invitation. "Rocket, I know they did horrible things to you when they made you, but why would they make you able to swallow prey whole? Even with the analysis thing you have it doesn't seem practical on the battlefield."

Rocket shrugged. "That part was mostly Doctor Ernst. I don't think the rest of the team got it either. He was the one who came up with the swallowing-whole thing."

"You could ask him," Gamora said, and wasn't surprised at the answer.

"Most of the team's hard to reach now, what with all the bullet holes," Rocket said.

"And Ernst?"

Rocket just smiled, and Gamora noted how very far along the sides of his face the smile went. 'Always treat your pet monsters well,' she'd heard Thanos say, 'Lest they get loose and come straight after you.' Thanos hadn't followed his own rule with herself or Gamora, leading to rebellion, and Ernst hadn't followed it with Rocket.

The little raccoon settled down to sleep off his meal without another word, and though she didn't ask, Gamora had a pretty good idea what had happened to Doctor Ernst in the end.