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In Yondu's defense…..he didn't know shit about Earth.

What he did know was that the fine levied against captains who were found operating on backwater systems near no-go-, blacklisted jump points was nearly eight million units. And this particular galaxy was monitored fairly closely by those assholes at the Intergalactic Non-Interference Corps.

The blue skinned, red electronic fin topped alien shrugged at the two boys the retrieval beam had caught, holding a med device out and noting that both of them were only part human. And the stowaway looked…..well, Yondu knew that look. "Well, we got us two for the price 'o one, boys!" He hollered to his ramshackle crew, who cheered loudly. Yondu glanced at his first mate and said. "Toss 'em both in one of the cleaners' quarters and lock 'em in. We'll deal with them once we make it out of this boring galaxy."

"Yes, cap'n!" His first mate acknowledged, thumping his right fist over his heart- on a strange flame-like symbol- before the human space pirate reached forward and tossed the two unconscious boys over his shoulder like grain sacks.

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Harry James Potter was very confused.

But after the week he'd had, that wasn't really an unusual state for him to be in.

His crazy week had started six says ago, when Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had bundled he and Dudley up and out the doors of Number Four in the wee hours of the morning.

"Now listen here, you little freak." Uncle Vernon's jowls were quivering even more violently than usual, having taken the young Potter aside once they reached an airfield of some sort. "We're going to take a plane and fly to a conference with the owner of my company. If I sense that even a drop of your freakishness slips out and messes this up for me, you'll be eating nothing but stale bread for a…a month! And double chores!"

Harry nodded fearfully and they had boarded the fat silver plane.

Then, of course, once they had made it to St. George, Missouri, things had gotten even weirder.

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had made a mad dash to get him 'new' clothes- shorts, a t-shirt, socks, underwear, and shoes!- from a weird store called 'JC's Pennies' when they were rather unsuccessful in maintaining that he was a 'hellspawn'.

That was day two.

Of course that was before the Dursleys' lunch with the owner of the company, who- vocally and frigidly- found one of Vernon's jokes to be in bad taste, leaving the eldest Dursley to scramble to try and make up lost ground with his bosses' boss. In the aftermath of the Disaster Lunch they took to a shopping center, where Aunt Petunia seemed to buy one of everything sweet for Dudley, who was in tantrum mode.

That was how they had ended up the St. George hospital, hours after bedtime. Because Dudley had gotten a stomachache that had turned into a really bad case of the trots, which sent Aunt Petunia into hysterics.

Harry been listening, quietly, in the hallway for hours when a nice nurse-lady came by and gave him some sort of fruit cup, having heard his stomach protesting on one of her fifty-seven trips by him.

Naturally Uncle Vernon had come out of Dudley's room and seen Harry being given the fruit cup. Pasting on a smile that looked homicidal to Harry, Uncle Vernon had ordered Harry to go wait by the rental car.

And Harry had!

But-

When he saw the boy from the room down the hall- "She'll probably pass tonight, poor dear." Nice-nurse had murmured to one of her fellow nurses, out of range from the family in question, but near enough to Harry. "That boy is going to be heartbroken without his mama. Single parent, so he'll be an orphan. I think the uncle might take him, but the family isn't really- well, I had better not say."- come flying out of the glass doors, towards the small park Harry had glanced at the doors of the hospital and decided to go after him.

Harry knew what it was like to be an orphan. An orphan with family that wasn't thrilled with his existence.

Then, just as he walked up behind the boy, there was a bright light and-

Darkness.

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Peter and Harry high-fived each other. "Score!"

Yondu, his arms crossed across his leather-clad chest, rolled his red eyes and thunked them both on the head. "Yes, geniuses. Congratu-fucking-lations."

Harry and Peter stiffened, turning around nearly comically slowly to see their captain staring down at them.

"Ahahaha!" Harry laughed nervously, slinking closer to the control console they had been hidden behind, his arm coming up to rub at the back of his neck. "Hi Yondu!"

"Don't you 'hi' me, you little stowaway!" The blue-skinned captain barked, reaching forward to grab both boys by their ears and hauling them over towards the crewmembers- nonhuman, but humanoid- who had gotten doused in the sparkly pink glitter. "Now, tell me where you gots' the glitter!"

Harry bit his lip nervously and Peter kicked him in the shin.

"Well?" Yondu prompted, twisting their ears a bit.

"We-we got it from the lady-girls. On Parthax!" Harry cried out, tears appearing in his eyes.

"We stole it!" Peter corrected, shooting Harry a sour look through his own teary eyes. "From that one lady who said Ravagers were all scum!"

Yondu let go of their ears and clapped a heavy hand on each of their shoulders after spinning them around to face him. "The lady with the really expensive data pad?" He demanded.

"Yeah." Harry replied glumly, scuffing his shoe on the dirty floor of the upper hold. "We stole her datapad and bought some random crap from the nearby vendors before we slipped it back in her room."

"Define 'some'." Yondu commanded, kneeling down to their eye level. When the boys said nothing, the man whistled, causing a laser-trailing arrow to detach itself from its holster and hover warningly.

Peter scowled and looked over at Harry, who scowled in return. "I stole it an' Harry hacked it." The slightly older boy grumbled, crossing his arms petulantly.

"It wasn't hard." Harry muttered, shifting uncomfortably under Yondu's grip. "Hacking into-"

"Dude!" Peter protested, causing Harry to glance up guiltily, blanch, and then look down.

"Well, it looks like we've got a couple con artists on our hands." Yondu drawled, letting his arrow return to its sheath as he slid smoothly to his feet and smirked at his crew. "Maybe I won't let ol' Brahl eat you two after all!" The captain stepped past them and starting yelling at the milling crewmembers in Xandarian.

Harry could recognize it, but couldn't speak it. Yet. And Brahl was a pink skinned alien with little ridges instead of hair, with milky, too-wide eyes, and a sleazy look about him that made Harry and Peter scared the humanoid would actually eat them.

"Your generosity is unparalleled." Harry whispered to Peter, who doubled over laughing.

"Dude! You've gotta stop watching those stupid Nova dramas!" Peter wheezed as they edged away and made a break for their rooms.

"Try an' block them and I'll block your favorite skin channel!" Harry threatened seriously as they hit the end of the upper catwalk, climbed on the rails, and made the jump onto the water pipes that would take them to their rooms without the need to go through the common areas of the ship.

The boys shard a grin as they slid around the last corner, input their password, and then activated the door before the second apart of their prank went off. Harry tapped furiously at a datapad they had stolen a while back, hacking into the security cams just in time to see their least favorite band of idiots step on the platform they had rigged one of Harry's 'energy effects' to.

Well, one of Harry's 'energy effects' and one of Peter's rig jobs.

The boys held their breaths as Horuz- a human-ish jerk with scraggly hair and a dumb beard- and his cronies stepped on the platform support-

"Work, work, work." The two boys chanted softly, their eyes glued intently to the camera feed.

They both whooped with delight when the man's clothes disappeared a split second before six rapid-fire splashes of paint coated the trio of morons in fluorescent colors.

"Yes!" They both cheered, heady with success and their door-verified alibi. "It actually worked! That's awesome!"

Both of them gulped in trepidation when Yondu strode into frame and looked directly up at the camera.

"How does he always know?!" Harry cried, cutting the feed and hiding their datapad away, both of them wide-eyed with terror at what the lead Ravager might do to them.

"Maybe he reads minds?" Peter offered weakly as they counted down the seconds it would take Yondu to reach their room.

Which was only clean because Harry regularly scrubbed it.

The door disengaged and there stood the captain, the electronic red fin on top of the blue-skinned man's head seeming to glow ominously. "You two-" The captain announced with a chilling, sharp-toothed grin. "-have been holdin' out on me. Training rooms. Five minutes." Then he reengaged the door, his thick boots impacting heavily with the metal of the hallway.

Peter and Harry gazed at each other in horrified dread for a long, suspended moment before Yondu's words sunk in and they scrambled to get ready.

"We are so dead!"

"Deader than dead!"

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