〘 :*¨༺ 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤 ༻¨*: 〙

"No shit, Sherlock."

ᴠᴏʟᴜᴍᴇ : ▮▮▮▮▮▮▯▯▯

there's nothing you and i won't do
i'll stop the world and melt with you

ELLIE WOKE UP with a gasp as she was grabbed roughly by her arms.

"Hey! Get off me!" She yelled as she tried to pull off whoever grabbed her.

"Shut up, kid!" A man grumbled into her ear. He pulled upward on the block on her collar, making the needles around her spine move around, causing searing pain. Ellie yelled in pain until the guy let go and put a knife to her neck.

"Let go of her! She has nothing to do with me. I don't even know her." Gamora told them. She was already in the grasp of three other aliens, a blade to her neck as well.

"Guilty by association." The guy chuckled. Gamora growled a yell at the alien grabbing Ellie before the two were pulled out of their cell.

"Take her down to the showers. It'll be easier to clean up the blood down there." A guard told the men as they passed him.

"Come on." Ellie groaned towards the guard. How could he not help them? Gamora grunted as she tried to get out of the alien's grip.

Ellie whimpered in pain as the alien's grip tightened around one of her scars where she had a metal implant in her arm.

In another cell filled with sleeping inmates, Quill lay awake. When he heard the sounds coming from the two girls passing the cell, he got up with curiosity. Rocket grumbled as he heard the sound of Quill getting up.

"Quill, where you going?" Rocket asked him tiredly, his fur on half his face flattened from laying on it. Quill ignored him and continued his search to find the inmates with Gamora and Ellie. "Quill." Rocket quietly called out, Quill still not listening to him.

Gamora grunted as an inmate threw her against a pillar, three creatures held their makeshift daggers up to her neck.

"Gamora, consider this a death sentence for your crimes against the galaxy." A creature seethed at her.

"You dare?" A voice boomed. A man with blue, grayish skin with red details was standing at the entrance of the showers. The inmates surrounding Gamora stepped away in shock. "You know who I am, yes?" The man asked.

"You're Drax. The Destroyer." One inmate answered.

Quill quietly creeped towards a different entrance of the showers, Rocket following after him.

"And you know why they call me this." Drax continued.

"You slayed dozens of Ronan's minions."

Rocket's head tilted as he looked around the room, his heart dropping seeing Ellie struggling in the arms of an inmate.

"Those assholes got El." Rocket grumbled, taking a step forward but was stopped by Quill.

"Ronan murdered my wife, Ovette, and my daughter, Camaria. He slaughtered them where they stood. And he laughed! Her life is not yours to take. He killed my family. I shall kill one of his in return." Drax said.

"Of course, Drax. Here, I..." The inmate stammered as he handed Drax his dagger. Gamora swiftly grabbed the other inmates' daggers and hit them in the face, sending them to the ground. She put the two daggers against Drax and the other inmates' necks.

The grip on Ellie's arms tightened as the dagger by her neck came closer to her. Gamora spared a quick glance at her before looking back at the two men in front of her.

"Quill." Rocket whispered as he shoved Quill's arm away from him.

"I got it." Quill muttered to him, swatting his hand back at Rocket before making his way into the room.

"I'm no family to Ronan or Thanos." She told Drax firmly before stepping away. She dropped one dagger and used the other to throw at the alien that was holding Ellie, the butt of the dagger hitting the man in the forehead, knocking him unconscious. Ellie sighed a breath of relief as she rubbed her bicep the guy had been holding. She could already see a bruise forming."I'm your only hope at stopping him."

Drax yelled as he grabbed Gamora by her neck and pushed her against the pillar.

"Woman, your words mean nothing to me!" He yelled.

"Hey! Hey, hey, hey!" Quill quickly interrupted. Ellie whipped in his direction in surprise. Rocket immediately rushed over to her and pulled her away from all the inmates. "You know, if killing Ronan is truly your sole purpose, I don't think this is the best way to go about it."

"Are you not the man this wench attempted to kill?" Drax asked, gripping Gamora's neck tighter.

"Well, I mean, she's hardly the first woman to try and do that to me." Quill chuckled. "Look," He continued as he lifted up his shirt, showing a scar along his abdomen. "-this is from a smoking-hot Rajak girl. Stabbed me with a fork. Didn't like me skipping out on her at sunrise. I got, right here, a Kree girl tried to rip out my thorax. She caught me with this skinny little A'askavariian who worked in Nova Records. I was trying to get information. You ever see an A-askavariian? They have tentacles, and needles for teeth. If you think I'm seriously interested in that, then..." Quill stopped rambling as Drax glared at him. "You don't care. But here's the point. She betrayed Ronan. He's coming back for her. And when he does, that's when you..." Quill did a slicing gesture across his neck.

"Why would I put my finger on his throat?" Drax asked.

"What? Oh, no, it's a symbol. This is a symbol for you slicing his throat." Quill explained.

"I would not slice his throat. I would cut his head clean off."

"It's a general expression for you killing somebody." Quill turned to the other inmate. "You know what this is. You've seen this right?"

"Yeah. Yeah."

"Everyone knows."

"No. No." The inmate quickly said as Drax glared at him.

"What I'm saying is, you want to keep her alive. Don't do this work for him."

Drax looked at Gamora as he thought for a moment before letting her go, dropping her to the floor as she coughed for air.

"I like your knife. I'm keeping it." Drax told the inmate before leaving.

"That was my favorite knife." The inmate muttered.

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

"FOR THE TENTH time Rocket, I'm fine." Ellie sighed as the two followed Gamora and Quill back to their cells.

"Are you sure? I saw that guy and I can find his cell. I'll take something. I'll take his arm, or his leg, or his eye. I've always wanted an eye."

"Why have you always wanted an eye?" Ellie asked, slightly disgusted.

"Listen, I could care less whether you live or whether you die." Quill said to Gamora, pulling the other two's attention away from their conversation.

"Then why stop the big guy?" Gamora asked. .

"Simple." Quill continued. "You know where to sell my Orb."

"How are we gonna sell it when we are still here?" Gamora asked.

"My friend Rocket, here, has escaped 22 prisons."

"Oh, we're getting out." Rocket tells her. "And then we're headed straight to Yondu to retrieve your bounty."

"How much was your buyer willing to pay you for my Orb?" Quill asked.

"Four billion units."

"What?!" Rocket and Ellie exclaimed.

"Holy shit." Quill muttered.

"That Orb is my opportunity to get away from Thanos and Ronan. If you free us, I'll lead you to the buyer directly and I'll split the profit between the four of us." Gamora explains.

"I am Groot." Groot appears from inside a cell.

"Five of us." Ellie corrected.

"Asleep for the danger, awake for the money, as per frickin' usual." Rocket commented. Groot grunted in return.

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

"IF WE'RE GONNA get out of here, we're gonna need to get into that watchtower. And to do that, I'm gonna need a few things." Rocket informed them as they got food and went to sit down at a table. "The guards wear security bands to control their ins and outs. I need one."

"Leave it to me." Gamora told him.

"That dude, there. I need his prosthetic leg."

"His leg?" Quill asked as Ellie rolled her eyes at Rocket's antics, knowing he didn't actually need the leg.

"Yeah. God knows I don't need the rest of him. Look at him, he's useless."

"All right." Quill sighed.

"And finally, on the wall back there is a black panel. Blinky yellow light. You see it?" Rocket asks as they sit down at a table.

"Yeah."

"There's a quarnyx battery behind it. Purplish box, green wires. To get into that watchtower, I definitely need it."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Gamora asked.

"Well, supposably, these bald-bodies find you attractive. So, maybe you can work out some sort of trade."

"Ew! Rocket!" Ellie grimaced.

"You must be joking." Gomora added.

"No, I really heard they find you attractive."

"Look, it's 20 feet up in the air, and it's in the middle of the most heavily-guarded part of the prison. It's impossible to get up there without being seen." Quill told him, Ellie nodding in agreement.

"I got one plan, and that plan requires a fickin' quarnyx battery, so figure it out!" Rocket yelled.

Ellie looked over from the corner of her eye to see Groot reaching for the box that Rocket was talking about in the middle of the prison.

"Uh, oh." She muttered

"Can I get back to it? Thanks. Now, this is important. Once the battery is removed, everything is gonna slam into emergency mode. Once we have it, we gotta move quickly, so you definitely need to get that last."

Groot pulled the battery off the cord and all the lights dimmed as alarms began blaring. He smiled and showed it to Rocket.

"Or we could just get it first and improvise." Rocket shrugged.

"I'll get the armband." Gamora said before getting up.

"Leg." Quil added. They went in separate directions while Rocket groaned loudly. Lights surrounded Groot.

"What do I do?" Ellie asked quickly. She felt so useless without her powers.

"Prisoner, drop the device immediately and retreat to your cell, or we will open fire."

Alarms blared loudly while Groot's branches grew and guns surrounded him.

"I am Groot!"

Guns started firing and Groot swung at the gun drones. Ellie ran and took cover under the table.

"Stay down!" Rocket yelled to her as he bent under the table.

Ellie bit her lip nervously as she ducked from the bullets firing everywhere.

"I hate prisons. I hate prisons. I hate prisons." She whispered to herself repeatedly as she covered her face with her hands.

"Ellie! Watchtower!" She heard Rocket yell.

"You got this. You got this." She muttered to herself as she got ready to run. She peaked around for any guards before sprinting towards the watchtower. She saw Groot creating a ladder for them to climb up.

She got there at the same time as Quill, the leg in his grasp. He quickly gestured for her to go first up Groot as he looked around. Ellie quickly started her climb, having done this many times before, she climbed like a monkey up Groot's back. When she made it to the top, Gamora helped her over the side of the railing.

Quill made it to the top, now accompanied by Drax. They walked up to the double glass doors and it automatically opened. The guard operating the watchtower shrunk into himself as he raised his hands in surrender. As the group began to walk into the watchtower, Groot grabbed the guard and threw him out.

"Spare me your foul gaze, woman." Drax said angrily at Gamora.

"Why is this one here?" Gamora asked.

"We promised him he could stay by your side until he kills your boss. I always keep my promises, when they're to muscle-bound whack-jobs who will kill me if I don't. Here you go." Quill explained before setting down the leg in front of Rocket.

"Oh, I was just kidding about the leg. I just need these two things." Rocket snickers as Ellie rolled her eyes.

"What?!" Quill exasperates.

"No, I thought it'd be funny. Was it funny? No, wait, what did he look like hopping around?" Rocket asks.

"I had to transfer him 30,000 units!" Quill yells, obviously pissed off. Rocket quietly chuckled to himself.

"How are we going to leave?" Drax asked. A drone began to shoot at one of the side windows.

"Well, he's got a plan. Right? Or is that another thing you made up?" Quill yells.

"I have a plan! I have a plan!" Rocket reassures.

"Cease your yammering and release us from this irksome confinement." Drax told them.

"Yeah, I'll have to agree with the walking thesaurus on that one." Quill added. Drax looked at him seriously.

"Do not ever call me a thesaurus."

"It's just a metaphor, dude." Quill told him.

"His people are completely literal. Metaphors are gonna go over his head." Rocket explains.

"Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it." Drax spoke. Ellie covered her mouth as she tried to hide her giggle. It didn't work and Drax slowly looked over at her with a small glare.

"I'm gonna die surrounded by the biggest idiots in the galaxy." Gamora mumbled.

As Rocket worked on the ship, they all watched carefully as a group of guards turned to the watch tower with gigantic guns.

"Those are some big guns." Quill comments.

"No shit, sherlock." Ellie muttered toward him as she joined Rocket, helping him figure out how to work the watchtower. Spending six years with Rocket, you learn a thing or two from him.

"Who is Sherlock? His name is not Sherlock?" Drax asks.

One of the guns fired and it cracked some of the glass.

"Rodent, we are ready for your plan." Gamora spoke quickly.

"Hold on!"

Another shot was fired and broke more of the glass. Ellie and Rocket frantically pressed buttons and pulled off wires.

"I recognize this animal. We'd roast them over a flame pit as children. Their flesh was quite delicious." The man spoke with a smile. Ellie grimaced.

"Not helping!" Rocket yelled.

Another shot fired and the glass began to crack more and a piece fell out.

"Ellie!" Rocket yelled, wanting her to create a force field to protect them.

"I can't do anything, remember?!" She yelled back at him.

"Rocket!"

"Hang on!"

Ellie passed Rocket a group of wires and he connected two of them.

"He turned off the artificial gravity everywhere but in here." Gamora said in amazement as she watched everyone outside of the watchtower float past them.

Rocket and Ellie pushed more buttons and the watchtower disconnected itself from the tower. Ellie brushed her hair behind her ear as she connected to the drones, coding them so that they came and attached underneath the watchtower. Her and Rocket switched spots, so Rocket controlled the flying.

Boosters coming to life underneath it.

"I told you I had a plan." Rocket told everyone. Ellie moved to another screen and unlocked the door they were about to crash into. They all quickly grabbed for stability as the watchtower crashed into the walls.

"Two drones disconnected." Ellie informed Rocket. "Three drones."

Once they landed, Ellie shut the door that they had flown through.

"That was a pretty good plan." Quill comments.

Quill broke one of the windows, making a space for them to get out. Drax opened one of the chests, Rocket and Ellie quickly digging through it, grabbing their clothes and their other stuff. For Ellie it was just her clothes and a pocket knife, as well a few bracelets she had made.

"Yeah! There it is. Get my ship. It's the Milano, the orange and blue one over in the corner." Quill called to Rocket before going to get his stuff.

"They crumpled my pants up into a ball. That's rude! They folded yours." Rocket yelled.

"They broke one of my bracelets." Ellie said sadly as she looked at one of her favorite blue bracelets torn.

"Assholes!" Rocket grunted as the four of them ran down the hall.

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

"WELL, how's he gonna get to us?" Rocket asked as everyone but Quill were in the Milano.

"He declined to share that information with me." Gamora told him.

"Well screw this them. I ain't waiting around for some humie with a death wish."

"Rocket." Ellie warned.

"What? You got the Orb, right?" He asked Gamora.

Everyone besides Gamora and Ellie changed into new clothes. Gamora hadn't done so yet, and Ellie couldn't change until her collar was off.

"Yes." Gamora answered, digging through the bag she was given by Quill. Only to find that the Orb was not in it. She grunted angrily as she hit the arm of her seat.

"If we don't leave now, we will be blown to bits." Rocket told her.

"No! We're not leaving without the Orb." Gamora told him.

"What is that?" Ellie said as she leaned forward in her seat.

"Behold." Drax stated dramatically as they all saw that it was Quill flying towards them.

When he got to the ship they found out that he had gone back to retrieve his Walkman, safe to say almost everyone was mad at him.

**⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

"CAN SOMEBODY get this thing off me?" Ellie asked as she walked into the room. Rocket was sitting on the floor making things with parts of Quill's ship, Groot was watching everyone, Drax was sharpening a knife, and Gamora and Quill's conversation stopped once the young girl spoke.

"Yeah, come here." Rocket said as he gestured for the girl to sit down next to him. He grabbed a couple tools as Ellie took off the prison tank top to give Rocket access to the thin block on the back containing the needle. Having to go through this with other prison breaks, Ellie prepared for the stinging and pulling.

"Christ." Drax hissed as he saw the scars and flexible metal circles on Ellie's back. Ellie squeezed her eyes shut.

"You have no filter do you?" Quill asked Drax.

"I don't know what that is? What is a filter?" Drax questioned.

"Would you shut the hell up? I'm trying to focus here." Rocket yelled at them. Rocket wedged a knife into the small crack through the block, prying off the top of the box. This revealed a circuit board that made a serum flow into Ellie's back through the needles as well as the control for the locking system. Rocket grabbed a pair of tweezers and a tiny Phillips head screwdriver..

"I'm gonna need your buyer's coordinates." Quill said to Gamora, trying to distract himself from thinking of what could have happened for Ellie to get all those scars and metal circles.

"We're heading in the right direction. For now." Gamora replied.

Rocket fiddled with the circuit board until it made a hissing sound, stopping the flow of serum and unlocking the collar, making the front of it fall off into her lap. Ellie felt slightly better, but this was the easy part.

Rocket sighed, knowing the next part was really going to hurt.

"Quill, you got anything for numbing?" Rocket asked, interrupting Gamora and Quill's conversation about the Orb.

"Uh, no