Issue 1 Downtime

The X-Men appeared on what was, apparently, a teleportation staging platform. The room was clean, with an odd, hi-tech look to everything that they couldn't begin to comprehend without help.

It was also empty, except for a dog sitting in the corner. A golden retriever, actually, by the looks of it.

Wearing a russian space suit, of all things.

Kevin blinked.

"Okaaay... space is really random..."

The dog cocked its head and regarded Kevin.

"Da, but you get used to that after a while, I am thinking."

"Well you would have to," Kevin said to the Russian psychic space dog.

"Wait..." he said, realizing what just happened, "You... mindspeak? Okay, that... that is awesome."

"Let me remind you where we are, Sword-guy. Hint; not Terra."

"Nyet, not Terra. This Knowhere I am welcoming you to." The dog padded over to Bobby then sat down, lifting one paw as if he'd been told to 'shake'.

"....the hell?" Melody quietly said as she stood next to Daniel.

"I think I've finally lost it," Daniel whispered back.

"What's up, space dog?"

Bobby shook his paw, but not too vigorously. He wasn't familiar with Russian talking dog handshake customs.

"I am Cosmo and you are being on Knowhere. Cosmo is chief of security on Knowhere, so you are being good or Cosmo is kicking butts, da?" the dog thought to them as it stood up again, tail wagging.

"Your floating head, your rules, comrade. Da."

Melody sighed, "I give up at trying to make sense of anything that we encounter any more."

Rachel meanwhile, was trying to figure out if the dog was actually a dog or not.

Rachel would not be making much progress telepathically. Not because its brain was too alien, or because it was a robot, but because the last set of psychic shields with that much raw power behind them she'd seen had been Cassiel's.

Rachel blinked in surprise, but kept delicately probing at the shield.

"Glad we are having agreeing, then! And pretty red haired girl should be knowink that that tickle's Cosmo's brain when she is tryink to get into his brain, da?"

A door opened as they walked, and they were led down another hall. "Cosmo gets call from Nova sayink that more busy people from Earth comink to help with big problem with Phoenixes and Skrulls and Shi'ar. Cosmo is sayink to him that Cosmo will be picking them up and taking them to Nova's friends who would be wanting to look into problem but most of them are all being gone with a problem with Badoon. So only two of them are being here to talk about it now. Cosmo take you to them and you tell them all about it, da?"

"Lead on, awesome space dog," Kevin replied with a nod.

Cosmo led them down the hall a little further. "Others are being back later today, Cosmo thinks. You be needing anything you be telling Cosmo and Cosmo will be helping you, da? Cosmo be going to break up fight in marketplace now and will be seeing you later."

The room they were dropped off at was unlocked and inside they would find... a racoon, chatting animatedly to an apparently sentient tree.

The racoon looked up as the door opened and hopped up, standing on the table that he'd just been lounging with his feet up on. "The company's here, Groot!" he said, cheerfully.

"I AM GROOT!" the tree rumbled.

"C'mon in. I'm Rocket. Welcome to the headquarters of the Guardians of the Galaxy," Rocket said, waving a hand around. The room apparently served as a combination war room and lounge, evidenced by the various maps, blueprints, and computer readouts scattered throughout the room, as well as the bottles, workout equipment, and magazines elsewhere.

"I AM GROOT!" Groot repeated.

"Nah, Peter said we could handle this part," Rocket said, glancing at Groot. "Saves time if we get some stuff figured out before he gets back with some of the other knuckleheads."

"All right... after the space dog maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but I didn't see this coming," Cal said in a low voice to Kevin.

"Space. Is. Awesome," he whispered back.

"Rocket and Groot, huh? Pleased to meet you. I'M Brass, and this is Cyber, Lionheart, Scion, Bombshell, and Nomic. we're of the X-Men of Earth. And any news you have on the Phoenix would be appreciated."

Rocket looked at Groot, Groot looked at Rocket, and then they both burst out laughing.

"Right, let me just consult the cosmic oracle that tells us everything, and OH YEAH, don't have one. Come in, sit down, and we do this the old fashioned way. Which is still the only way. We start investigating, and then we blow things up."

"I AM GROOT!"

"Yeah, yeah, calm down, it wasn't that funny, buddy."

"When we're done with this... 'meeting,'" Daniel whispered to Melody, "We're going to go find someplace to get very drunk and try to forget just how screwed we are that we have a talking raccoon helping us."

Bobby shrugged his shoulders and smirked.

"Hey, you didn't want to start investigating until the A-Team showed up. No problem."

"Space booze. And lots of it." Melody sighed quietly rubbing her temples gently with one hand.

Cal, meanwhile, filled them in on the situation, getting about halfway through before finally just asking for access to their computer systems so he could do a better job of it, which was reluctantly allowed to him. ALl in all, the story didn't take a hell of a long time to tell.

Bobby nodded as the info was related, and gave a knowing glance as he saw Cal kept plugged into the computer network.

Right now, intelligence was at a premium, and Cal was their best bet to gather it.

Rachel had withdrawn her mind from contact with Cosmo, and was now trying to see if Groot or the raccoon would be easier to probe.

Rocket's mind was completely easy for her to probe, with no psychic defenses, or really anything that would impede her. His physiology would be a bit odd for her to control, but nothing too bad. Groot, on the other hand, was accessible to her, but his brain structure was odd, being that he was, well, a tree. It seemed very decentralized, and while she could get a feel for his thoughts, they were hard at first glance to translate. Nevertheless she could right now at least get an idea of them, and oddly enough, tell that each time he said "I am Groot," it meant something entirely different.

"All right," Rocket said, after Cal had finished. "Skrull, Shi'ar, Phoenix and someone in a gold ship."

"I AM GROOT," Groot said, voicing concern over suspicions of the identity of this gold ship.

"Yeah, I know, Buddy, but we'll play this one straight. It'll lead us to that answer. All right... Shi'ar and Skrulls. We'll start there. I've got a few old friends that can get us answers about the Shi'ar, but that one looks straightforward enough. You say 'Phoenix' and they say 'how many warships.' Buncha reactionary jerks."

"So... the Skrulls are the oddball here. Shi'ar security isn't anything to laugh at-"

"I AM GROOT!"

"Yeah, but that was me, I laugh at everything. So the question is how they got on those ships posing as Shi'ar. We find out how they did that and we can find out why. I'm going to shoot some feelers out and see what I can turn up, but as soon as the rest of our pals get back, we're probably all set for a trip to Chandrilar."

This is funky as all hell, but they're playing us straight. Rachel mindspoke to the team.

You say funky, I say childhood fantasy incarnate. Kevin thought back.