If this wasn't the most pathetic little critter they'd ever picked up, Yondu didn't know what was. Granted, the Ravagers didn't do much live cargo. They were more interested in weapons, precious materials, artifacts—stuff that didn't make a fuss before you managed to sell it off. They'd had a jaunt or two with slavery in Yondu's earlier days, but profitable as that was, it proved more trouble than it was worth.

This, though, was a lot of money. They wouldn't've come to Terra otherwise. Backwater place, spaceships that handled like a thrown rock, bunch of folks whose skin was on the same range of pinks and browns.

This brat was more on the pink side, especially with all the crying he was doing. "Welcome aboard, boy!" Yondu boomed. When the kid didn't reply, he rounded on his men. "What're you standin' there for? Show him some Ravager hospitality!"

Their hospitality mostly included picking him up bodily and bolting him in one of the empty sleeping quarters. They even stuck him with a shiny new translator, since Terra was so backwards they had to learn languages manually. It was nicer than they treated a lot of their cargo. And a lot of their cargo was quiet and didn't kick its handlers, so all in all it was more than the kid deserved.

Yondu figured that would be that. Grab the kid, keep him in there and fed proper until the two-week trip to their client was up, and hand him off for the money. And frankly, he was itching for this to be over. He didn't much like this job. Gave him the willies.

Ah, well. Fourteen standard days and he'd have his hands clear.

The kid didn't stay locked in the room long.

This was partly the fault of Horuz and Veruk, who'd put in the boy's head that they were planning to serve him up and eat him. They said they just wanted a way to keep him shut up and in line.

And then part of the blame went to Kraglin. Yondu was already chewing on the ways he could use the kid's newfound fear to his advantage by the next night, when the Ravagers were sitting around partaking in their favorite pastimes: drinking and complaining about the current job. Their client was making the latter easy for them. They were taking their turns spitting new, crude names for men who hired the Ravagers and then looked down their noses at them.

That was when Kraglin—gangly kid a little older than their cargo, already showing a mind for running ships—piped up that wouldn't that snotty fracker be so mad if by the time they delivered his kid, he acted like a Ravager?

That did it. Yondu couldn't resist messing with folks, especially if they happened to be folks who got on his nerves. He'd figured how he'd handle it if they let the boy roam around, but that last push sent him down to the sleeping quarters.

The kid jumped when he came in and clutched his bag closer. Yondu smiled winningly at him. "Crew's been talkin' about eatin' you. They were mighty keen on it, too. They ain't never tasted no Terran before."

"What's a Terran?" the kid gulped.

"You're a Terran, boy," Yondu snapped, impatient. But he cooled off pretty quick. After all, he'd come up with the best way to keep a leash on somebody who thought a whole ship of Ravagers was after them. "But I put my foot down. Told 'em nobody's eatin' no part of nobody on my ship, an' that includes you."

The boy swallowed again, and then watched Yondu sideways. "You mean they ain't gonna eat me?"

"Not while I'm leadin' 'em," Yondu assured him. He stepped to the side and opened the door. "Seein' as you're not on the menu, I figure you can wander around. Jus' stay out of folks' way."

The boy believed the whole story. He took to roaming the ship and wasn't any trouble at all. Mostly he stayed off to the side with that little player of his and watched everybody—at least, for the first couple of days. He tended to scamper if any of the Ravagers got leery on him. It was his third day out that Yondu spotted him tailing Kraglin, of all people. Kraglin was smart with strategy and facts and all sorts, more so than half the adult crew, but he was too young to be getting much praise for it. Didn't want him getting too big for his britches, the way Yondu saw it. So Kraglin had a right time telling the kid about this and that, whatever came to his mind, because whatever it was the kid was always impressed by it.

But during meals, it was Yondu the boy stuck to. He tried not to be obvious about it, but any closer and they'd've had to share a chair. Yondu would just smile at Horuz, who'd had a word or two to say about letting the kid out of his cell, and fly casual. He even made a point a couple of times to bring up the Ravager code, a little smug when he saw that the kid was listening carefully.

But it wasn't all liquor and song. You couldn't have people like the Ravagers all put together like this and not have trouble, and trouble there came.

Yondu was handling the flight deck alone between shifts when the boy came in. The kid was in tears, hands balled up into fists.

"What the hell, boy?" was Yondu's flat opening question.

"They took my stuff!" he blurted out. "Pix took one of my things and they won't tell me where they hid it!"

"Why're you cryin' to me about it?"

"I've gotta have it." The kid's voice cracked under more tears. "Yondu, I've gotta have it back."

Yondu leaned against the back of one of the chairs in silence, interrupted once in a while by the kid's sniffles. Then he shrugged, and he reached into one of his belt pouches.

"You mean this thing?" he asked, holding up the music player.

The boy was stock still, gaping at him. After a moment, he managed quietly, "Give it back."

"It's mine now, boy." Yondu flipped it in the air and caught it. "You didn't keep a good hold on it, so it ain't yours."

"Give it back!"

He stroked one finger down the edge of the player. "I have it, so it's mine."

The first punch to the stomach caught him by surprise. The kid might not have had much weight on him, but he had bony little fists. "It's mine!" he shrieked. "That's mine! It belongs to me!"

Yondu endured another punch before he shoved. The kid fell backwards on his rear, but he immediately popped back up to his feet, ready for another round. The Ravager held the player out before he could attack again.

"You listen to me, boy." Yondu's voice was low and deadly serious. "And listen good. You want something, you take it. And then you best be ready to scrap to keep it, because next thing you know somebody else is gonna be lookin' to take it from you." He shoved the player against the kid's chest. "So you take this and you keep it."

The boy clutched the player with both hands silently, eyes still leaking tears.

"That ain't even the Ravager code," Yondu pressed on in a growl, "that's the whole damn universe. You want something, you fight for it." He tucked his thumbs into his belt. "You get me?"

He must have, because the kid didn't let go of the player. "I got you."

"Good. 'Cause next time somebody takes that off a' you and you ain't willin' to get it back, they can keep it."

That was the last he heard of anybody messing with the kid or his stuff. Veruk showed up with a black eye a day later, but he didn't seem overly willing to share the details. But with the kid's bruised knuckles and the wide berth Veruk gave him after, it wasn't hard to guess.

Meanwhile, the kid wasn't showing much progress being a Ravager besides defending what he had. Yondu was half afraid he'd encouraged the kid fighting too much, because it seemed he would jump to defend anybody else too, and that was just plain stupid and embarrassing in this line of work. The kid still stayed with Kraglin and picked up a few tinkering tricks, but it seemed that was all he learned.

It must have been a little over a week when the crew enlisted him to start helping out, especially down in the engine rooms. The trouble was they all had a taste for pulling jokes, and Terra was so dirt dumb with their tech that the kid didn't know any better. It was sheer luck someone figured out the alert in time and commed the flight deck. Yondu got down there to see Kraglin and a couple of engine crewmen hauling the kid out of one of the drives. The boy was gasping for breath; it sounded even over the racket of the drive winding down and everybody shouting and crowding around him.

"What the hell?" Yondu barked. It cleared a path right quick. The boy was huddled on the ground, and Yondu marched right up to him. "What was that? You coulda ruined my engines!"

"I didn't know it would do that!" he protested breathlessly.

Yondu jabbed a finger at the drive. "You know how that works?" He barely waited for the negative response before bellowing, "Then don't climb in it! You hear me, boy?"

"I hear you!" the kid shouted back furiously. He got to his feet and ran for it.

He didn't so much as stay in the same room as Yondu for almost two full days. Even when he did slink back, he didn't bother apologizing. Yondu'd about forgotten about it. No point in it, since they were so close.

Two more days to Spartax.

Yondu finally realized what was making him so edgy about this job.

It wasn't the kid. Well, it was and it wasn't. It was the fact their client was the kid's father. It was the fact they were Ravagers. It was the fact Yondu hadn't sent a confirmation message when they'd picked the kid up and hadn't gotten any request for one since then.

You want something, you fight for it.

Yondu didn't run a daycare, and they weren't a taxi service. They were mercs and thieves and looters. The client had paid them top dollar for this retrieval, but it seemed to him a prince or whatever could've done better, or safer, than them. Hell, if he was so high and powerful, he could have run this job himself, with his own resources, it seemed to Yondu. The kid hadn't had the slightest notion about anyone other than Terrans existing, either. The whole thing was just too damn fishy.

You want something, you really want it, you fight for it.

Well, until Yondu saw an ounce of fight out of J'son of Spartax for his kid, he could wait.

"Horuz," he called. "Turn us back to the Lobis systems."

The whole flight deck turned from their consoles to look at him. "Boss?" Horuz ventured.

"You heard me."

"What about the kid?"

"I got a bad feelin' about this deal," Yondu admitted darkly. He stared hard around the bridge. "We all have. All y'all've been sayin' so since the beginning. Well, a Ravager's instincts ain't for nothin'." He glared at Horuz. "So turn us around."

Not one man argued. In fact, Yondu could've sworn a tension he hadn't noticed disappeared from the whole flight deck. Horuz calculated their route and got them started for Lobis.

"Kid on deck," Rinto muttered from the back.

Sure enough, when Yondu turned around, the kid was just easing in, watching the nav screen. "Quill," Yondu called, and the kid blinked up at him. Yondu grinned. "How'd you like to be a Ravager?"