"That bitch!" Quill stormed out of the sixth repair shop to turn them down, looking deeply frustrated. "I didn't think she'd have this much pull in this part of town."
"Looks like she's the real local heavyweight after all, unlike someone who only talks a big game," Tony said, needling Star-Lord in an offhand tone.
Registration was about to close, and yet they still had not found a single local mechanic willing to help them. Word had clearly gotten around in advance. The moment anyone saw two Earthlings show up, they shut them down without hesitation.
Just as the two grown men were running out of ideas, the tomboy from before quietly walked up behind them.
"Hey."
"Whoa!"
"Shit!"
Tony and Quill both jumped.
"Oh, it's you."
"You're... Jojani, right?"
"We're not too late to sign up, are we? I can help." The blue-skinned girl looked nervous, both hands tucked behind her back, her fingers twisting together anxiously. Without meaning to, she looked a little like a kid trying to act cute.
The moment Tony saw her expression, he knew she was absolutely determined to get involved.
"Let me see it."
"What?" Jojani stared at the Earthling warily.
"Your father's mechanic's license."
"...Is it really that obvious?" The tomboy faltered. She started to reach into her pocket for the ID, then suddenly caught herself. "No. First you have to agree to split the prize money with me. Half."
Quill could not help replying in a mocking sing-song tone. "Seriously? Half, for doing basically nothing? That crazy old hag wasn't even as ruthless as you."
"I... I need the money, and nobody else is helping you, right? Either we split it fifty-fifty, or you don't get a single credit."
Tony narrowed his eyes with a smile. The playboy leaned down like a charming older brother until he was eye level with her, then asked in a warm voice, "What do you need the money for? Let me guess. You want a decent outfit, maybe a new haircut, so you can finally hold your head high in front of your friends."
"Mind your own business. Just tell me if you agree."
Quill and Tony exchanged a glance, instantly on the same page, then turned and started walking away.
"This is way too much trouble for so few credits. Only an idiot would agree to that."
"Exactly. Let's keep looking. There's got to be some mechanic around here who isn't scared of that crazy woman. No sane person turns down easy money like this."
For two seasoned offworld hustlers, messing with a naïve kid was effortless.
Sure enough, the second they looked like they were leaving, Jojani panicked and rushed in front of them.
"Then how much do you want?"
"Ninety percent. We'll cover your registration fee and give you ten percent of the prize," Quill said without missing a beat. His heart was even blacker than capitalist Tony's.
"That's not enough. Way too little." Jojani shook her head. She hesitated for a moment, glanced around, and when she saw there were not many people nearby, she clenched her teeth and leaned forward, trying to puff up her skinny chest a little. Then she clasped her fingers together and put on the most pitiful expression she could manage.
"Please, kind sirs, give me a little more. I'm not earning money for fun. It's for my dad's reconstructive circulatory surgery. Seventeen years ago, he was following an Imperial mining fleet on an Andromeda survey mission to search for positron-rich zones, and he accidentally inhaled some toxic gas. He's getting worse and worse. If he can get the surgery, he'll live a few more years."
Tony and Quill both fell silent.
Quill turned his head away. "Don't pull that on us, kid. Where'd you learn tricks like that? My buddy and I are gentlemen."
Tony asked, "How much does the surgery cost?"
"One hundred thirty thousand credits."
"The total prize is only fifty thousand."
"If I can just get thirty thousand, I can qualify for a loan and have the surgery done. Then I can pay it back over thirty years. I already worked it all out. If he gets the surgery, Dad can keep working for another three years. By then I'll have my basic mechanic certification, and my wages will be enough for the monthly payments. And if I work even harder and pass the internal selection exam to become an active-duty Corps mechanic, then if I live carefully, I can pay everything off in five years."
Jojani clearly knew exactly what she was talking about. She carefully laid out every step of her future, one by one. It was obvious she had done this math in her head countless times before. Her eyes shone as she spoke, her face full of excitement, like a bird about to fly free.
"We've got four thousand credits in savings, but we have to keep the rest for Dad's medication. If we split the prize fifty-fifty, then I only need to find another thousand somehow."
She was talking so fast the words nearly tripped over one another.
Tony asked, "If he doesn't get the surgery, how long does he have?"
"...The doctor said if the medicine keeps working, maybe four or five years. But if he builds up resistance, then maybe only eight months." The excitement faded from Jojani's face, leaving behind only confusion and sadness on her young, childish features.
Quill muttered something under his breath, then asked, "Hey, kid, did it ever occur to you that if they catch you faking a mechanic's identity, you'll never get certified for the rest of your life? You can make all the plans you want, but one bad move and your whole future is gone. You still willing to take that risk?"
Jojani smiled, bright and youthful. "Who knows what the future will be? If I see a chance, I have to take it."
Tony gave a casual shrug, then held out his hand.
"Pleasure doing business with you."
Jojani stared at him, uncertain and excited at the same time. "Fifty-fifty?"
"Yeah. Half and half. You're taking a real risk here."
"Deal!"
Her slim little blue hand grabbed the Earthling's pale, broad palm. Then she seized Tony and dragged him toward the registration office.
"Let's go sign up right now!"
Star-Lord watched the two of them sprint off together and stood frozen for a moment.
"Hey, did nobody ask for my opinion?"
"Got ditched by your teammate?"
A passing woman had apparently been watching from the sidelines for a while, and now she chose that moment to approach the abandoned Star-Lord.
Quill was already in a foul mood. He turned to snap out a sharp "What's it to you," but the words stopped in his throat.
What he saw was a green-skinned alien woman, not the greenskin ork kind from Warhammer, but a striking, long-limbed beauty with a heroic, untamed air. She was exactly Peter Quill's type in every possible way, the kind of woman who made a man look once and immediately start thinking up baby names.
Quill put on his most roguish smile and got to work charming her.
"Yeah, that jerk always does this. And I, Star-Lord, hate people who break their word, because I myself am a man of absolute integrity. Beautiful lady, may I ask your name?"
The green beauty smiled.
"Gamora."
At the Mechanics' Association headquarters, the scene was packed wall to wall with people. Most of the contestants had brought outside help, and the most extravagant had teams of twenty. Nearly every mechanic had some sort of visible mechanical modification, iron hands, artificial eyes, something along those lines. Looking around, Tony could not help muttering that the place felt like some kind of Cybertron theme park.
Jojani dragged Tony through the crowd to the registration desk.
"Name, race, homeworld of origin..."
"Tony. Human. From Earth..."
The surrounding aliens immediately burst into mocking laughter.
"Earth? What backwater did this hick crawl out of, begging his way to Xandar?"
"Hey! Shut up!" Jojani snapped back without yielding an inch, glaring at them like an angry little hen.
The registration clerk sounded utterly exhausted. "Physical examination and qualification screening are on the second floor, Section F. Once you're registered, head over there immediately."
Tony tugged along the still-fuming Jojani and headed upstairs. They slipped through the lax qualification review without much trouble, and then both had to undergo physical exams.
A red-skinned doctor held a handheld scanner. The thing could see straight through the body, inspect every physiological indicator and genetic marker, and then automatically compare the results against the health standards for different species in the database.
"What is this in your chest, some kind of lamp? And you've still got shrapnel inside you." The doctor tapped the arc reactor, clearly unable to figure out what it was for. "This counts as a Category Two disability. Failed."
Tony put on a shocked expression. "What? That's not a lamp. It's decorative body art from my homeworld, Earth, kind of like a tattoo. We like to stuff a few pieces of shrapnel into our blood vessels, then carve a hole in our chest and install an electromagnet to keep the fragments from moving. That way, if the power ever cuts out, the shrapnel tears through our hearts and kills us. It's our way of remembering how short life is, so we never forget to cherish our time."
The doctor looked like he had just seen a ghost. Even the alien master mechanics nearby, the same ones who had been mocking Earthlings as weaklings, fell silent in awe. Several of them started patting Tony on the shoulder, solemnly declaring that Earth people were truly hardcore.
A torrent of complete nonsense somehow got Tony through the exam. By the time they left the Mechanics' Association headquarters and headed home, Jojani looked conflicted.
"What's wrong?" Tony could tell something was on her mind.
"You... are you saving up for surgery too?" she asked carefully. "How much do you need? I did the math just now. If the interest rate is higher, you can borrow more, so I can settle for just twenty thousand credits. Any less than that won't work."
Tony waved it off with easy confidence. "No need. We agreed on fifty-fifty. Besides, if I wanted to fix this injury, I could have done it a long time ago. You probably won't believe this, but back on my world, I'm a billionaire. I was even the richest man on the planet for two years."
Jojani pressed him several times, making sure he truly was not short on money. Only then did she finally relax.
"I've decided something. When I retire, I'm going to visit your homeworld. When that happens, will you show me around?"
Alien Tony burst out laughing.
"Of course. It's a deal."
"It's a deal!"
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