#tibius lark

[raccoonfallsharder]

this question just came to my mind and has been lingering around in my noggin so

if rocket raccoon were to get his own solo movie, what kind of plot would you want to see???

CLOVER BLOSSOM! i missed you ♡ i hope life is treating you to a hundred gentle kindnesses and tasty snacks. this is a great question — thank you so much for asking it!! — and i really wrestled with it. because i think it’s actually so important for our guy to be part of an ensemble cast? he’s been solo for far too long? the map of rocket’s entire life and so many pieces of his identity (especially in the mcu) are based on this aching, painful tension between loneliness & connection: the forced alienation at the hands of his abuser and an uncaring universe; the self-inflicted isolation of his survival strategies and fears and guilty conscience — versus love, empathy, support, communication. joy-sharing. trust. friendship.and not only finding these things, not only offering them — but letting himself accept them, too. letting himself embrace them for himself.

so i think any movie i’d like to see with mcu-rocket would have to have some sort of relational component. (not me, writing way too much raccoon-smut.)

i’ll be honest. i think we got robbed in not seeing gunn’s short film about rocket meeting groot & tibius lark. i would love a rocket & groot film so much, and i'd love to use this as the (really long) cold open for the start of "my" movie. we would zip through the star-systems and asterisms, zooming in on whatever rancid incarceration-space-station gunn had in mind [feature coordinates here], and sink straight from the stardust right down into the pit-prison. rocket, groot, & lark would already be there — rocket trying to figure out his own escape.

i broke outta eleven prisons. this one ain’t no different.

lark will start storytelling, explaining his history with groot — then extracting rocket’s promise to take care of the flora colossus. perhaps, in the course of this conversation — a word i use loosely — lark would express a certainty that rocket would benefit from groot’s company as much as groot would benefit from his.

it’s good to have friends, lark might remind him.

once he’s secured rocket’s promise and groot’s safety, lark dies — which is when rocket uses lark’s leftover (robot) bodyparts to build a means of escape. then, as gunn described, rocket and groot burst upward from the pit, escaping their prison.

[roll marvel opening logo, with all the superimposed images in the letters being frames from rocket & groot comics]

we’d reopen in space, in some ship rocket had stolen from the prison. our two heroes have gotten far away already, and are about as safe as two fugitives with bounties on their heads can be. rocket would be trying to come up with a plan to get rid of groot while still honoring his promise to lark (more or less). he hates what he’s gotten himself saddled with, but he’s not going to break his word, either. lark had mentioned that groot had come from planet x/taluhnia, so rocket decides he’ll take the flora colossus back to his home planet and drop him off — wash the dust from his hands, and go back to hunting bounties and blowing up moons. good deed complete.

groot tries to protest, but rocket doesn’t understand him yet. still, groot’s distress is obvious. rocket only rolls his eyes and pushes onward, more and more irritated by his new ward.

unfortunately, when they arrive on taluhnia, rocket discovers that groot's people are long gone, and his planet is being systematically destroyed: flora colossi slaughtered, forests leveled in the name of planetary harvest. enter our villain: something more-or-less (depending on how cartoonishly-comicky you want to go) inspired by beavertron incorporated, under the advisement of shareholder castor gnawbarque (from blue river score, 2017). a little hacking on rocket’s part informs the duo that taluhnia is not the only planet beavertron has its hands all over. the company's a real piece of work, colonizing and destroying dozens — maybe hundreds — of cultures and planets in order to seize their natural resources.

groot is horrified by this additional information, of course: so many planets, at risk of being destroyed like his own. rocket is starting to understand groot a little better — he can at least read his body language and expressions — and though our little ringtailed guy is disgusted by beavertron, he still tells the flora colossus not to overreact.

don’t you know anything? this is just how people are.

rocket does, however, get super-frustrated when he realizes that his plan to dump groot on taluhnia can no longer — under any stretch of the imagination — be considered sufficient in keeping his promise to tibius lark. it gets him incredibly pissed, i'm sure — pulling his whiskers, probably kicking some grass — before finally sighing with his whole fucken chest and admitting that he guesses he's gotta blow up a frickin' coorporation now, 'cause how else is he gonna get rid of his adopted idiot?

oh rocket. i love it when you try to justify why you're doing something good.

anyway, highjinks ensue. rocket and groot probably manage to incapacitate gnawbarque — maybe there’s a collective somewhere that will pay good money to put this monster on trial. maybe beavertron collapses without gnawbarque, or maybe it hovers in the background to return for a future movie (perhaps volume two or three involves a heist at beavertron headquarters — trying to get some information down the corporation for good).

when the chaos settles and justice has been (more or less) administered, groot stands in the midst of a flattened taluhnisan old growth forest — bereft. rocket stands beside him, grappling with the increasingly-clear knowledge that groot really is the last flora colossus, and maybe this is the moment that our guy begins to realize how much he has in common with his new friend. i imagine rocket tries to offer some comfort — like he did for nebula in infinity war. a gentle, awkward pat on the hand, which groot tenderly and gratefully accepts. i imagine groot seeds as much of the forest as he can with his glowing spores, helping the leftover plantlife grow into something lovely and alive — but not sentient. the planet of taluhnia becomes a bittersweetly-beautiful living memorial.

and i imagine they both cry together. and perhaps that's when rocket begins understanding groot’s speech — fully, for the first time.

and then — standing side-by-side, silhouetted under the taluhnisan sky — rocket says, you know, i could probably bring in some bigger bounties if i hired some muscle. make more money that way.

oh rocket. i still love it when you try to justify why you're doing something good.

and then my babies fly off into the stars together.

[roll credits]

our post-credits scene will just be a montage of groot and rocket in various prison cells, with rocket nonchalantly saying i broke outta ## prisons. this one ain’t no different. on repeat. ad nauseam.

[kaijugroot]

TIBIUS LARK! I'd sell my soul to watch this...

[guardian-rocket]

What if you were the one to write a rocket solo movie? What would it be about?

I'd probably want to do one of where he just escaped the lab and have his story go from his escape to his eventual team up with Groot. I know James Gunn elaborated on Groot and Rocket's first meeting and I sorta wrote it in my roleplay with @antvnger flourishing on it a bit as a story Rocket told him.

Actually have a few stories I made up myself that'd happen before that too, so I have enough of a 'background' story that could fit into an actual movie. The plot would be Rocket before he integrated into society as a fully fledged person. Him having to pick up on humanoid habits. I shared my idea with a couple people but basically he gets taken in as something between a foster kid or a pet by a person, I am thinking an elderly lady who seems very nice. He hasn't really figured out how he wants to be treated yet and is just grateful to have someone showing him some kindness. At first this person's intentions seem very pure, they're kind to him, feed him, start teaching him about the world, he gets to wear clothes... but Rocket's genius shows through (maybe he tries to invent them something nice as a thank you, in addition with his behavioral problems getting out of hand) and a shift in intention happens to his caretaker, who eventually cages him leaving him very confused and scared and tries to take him to sell to the collector. Rocket would be begging for this not to happen, pleading, because he trusted this person.

I'd use the term 'pet' as a backhand when the collector asks Groot if Rocket is his pet and snickers at Rocket's reaction as a throw back to this incident, like they know each other already but Rocket's just there in Vol 1 to get paid and trying his best to not be too angry about it all. Rocket would escape from the collector before being caged up, which causes the payment for Rocket to get cancelled just as the caretaker was about to collect the units.

Insert horrifying man hunt from his caretaker as Rocket has to flee, completely fucking with his mind, getting coaxed with sweet words followed by deep rooted insults that delve into his insecurities. This experience solidifies Rocket's absolute misanthropy.

Following all this, Rocket takes his life into his own hands, he sheds the metal pieces from his body as much as he can, prying off the parts off his face and chest, removing his braces. He starts his life of crime, and starts getting into his love of guns, and there would be a montage of his prison sentences where we get to see him hold his own without Groot. We'd see clips of his various crimes, him enjoying that life, him submitting to his sentences and followed by prisonbreaks. It shows how creative he is, we get some comedy of the crazy ideas he's pulled off, and when he's being a criminal we do see he has pride in himself and his own professionalism and that even though he'll break laws he still has a moral compass under it.

This goes on until he gets sentenced to a prison that lacks any tech for him to use to break out; that's when he meets Groot. It his him, Groot and Tibius Lark who is friends with Groot. He's just in the deep smooth hole he can't climb up and there are armed guards right above the holes anyway. It seems hopeless. Tibius dies, causing Groot to grieve, but Rocket then realizes Tibius was an android and is full of machine parts. He fashions a gun out of his body and him and Groot escape the prison together, Rocket getting to learn to understand Groot and to finally care for someone else and trust again, and then they eventually will be starting their lives as co-op bounty hunters.

As the story arc, it would be Rocket discovering what he wants to see himself as, recognizing himself as an actual person and not just an experiment or a freak of nature. Like he KNOWS he's those things, but he learns to not let people treat him that way. I'd also want to at least show Groot and him having some good times towards the end, kinda showing that their relationship dynamic. It would also have him discovering to trust again, even if it's just a little bit. We'll see him at his worst before picking up the pieces and moving on with his life and learning from it all.

[mrwolfhare]

Wouldn't mind an MCU based solo Rocket comic run of his time from leaving CounterEarth up to meeting Groot and Tibius Lark in the well/hole prison that Gunn had planned for them.

There needs to be a new solo Rocket comic run...

[rocketraccoonmeta]

Who Is Rocket’s Creator?

(No Endgame Spoilers)

Disclaimer: my theory wouldn’t be here today without the planets being pointed out in the Easter egg hunt here

Also, the app butchered my formatting so please open this post in a browser, not the app! 

So, I’m not entirely sure how widely accepted this theory is but I believe that 100% High Evolutionary is Rocket’s Creator.

Obviously, in the comics this is different. Rocket, among other animals like a hare and an otter, is taken from earth and made to be human-like to look after mentally insane beings on a planet called Halfworld.

In the MCU, his origin is also listed as Halfworld, and Lylla (his sentient otter soulmate) is mentioned in the prison lineup screenshot so one might assume that he has the same origins as the comics.

But James Gunn says otherwise.

“As you know, the MCU is one way of processing these characters. [Universe] 616 is a different one. We are going to learn more about where Rocket comes from in the coming sagas. It’s going to be a little different from the comics. We already know a lot about from where he came from. It’s a little bit more horrible than what it is in the comics when you come down to it. We will learn more about that.”

Universe-616 AKA Earth-616 is the main comic book canon universe. Anything that’s not canon to the comic books is set in a different universe with a different number. For example, the MCU number is Earth-199999. So he’s said that 616 Rocket Raccoon origins aren’t the same as our 199999 Rocket.

Also, James Gunn confirmed that Rocket isn’t an Earth/Terran raccoon. Hence the drop of “Raccoon” at the end of his title. Cause he’s not a raccoon!

This is also made apparent when Drax recognises Rocket’s species in Vol.1:

"I recognise this animal. We'd roast them over a flame pit as children. Their flesh was quite delicious."

Anyway, we’ve established that Rocket isn’t from earth, he’s a raccoon-like alien species that someone experimented on. He is from Halfworld but, James has hinted at retconning this.

He didn’t say it was that fact in particular, but he has stated multiple times that Rocket and Groot are his two favourite characters so I believe he would want to explore them more. That, and Gamora being the last of her species has already been retconned in Infinity War. While Gunn could retcon Tibius Lark in Groot’s bio, it wouldn’t make any sense as that Groot is dead, and there’s no one in the comics with that name. A bit of a mystery.

So I would say he’s retconning Rocket’s origin planet, or the fact that one of his listed associates is Lylla (the otter). James Gunn has already basically said that Lylla is not going to make an appearance because their love and Lylla herself could get “really cartoony” which is something they were very worried about as they considered leaving Rocket out of the Guardians films. Either way, it’s safe to assume Rocket was made for a different reason than a companion for the insane.

Now to the meta.

From GOTG Vol.1, James Gunn has said that he likes Adam Warlock a lot and does want him to make an appearance. The post credit scene of Vol.2 hints at his appearance in the next film.

In the comics, he’s not made by Ayesha (The Sovereign High Priestess), but she’s his genetic twin. He escapes his first creators, almost dies at Thor’s hands, then goes into a cocoon again. When he comes out the second time, High Evolutionary AKA Herbert Wyndham becomes his mentor/adoptive father. And also gives him the Soul Stone.

In the movie, Ayesha has created him and that’s all we know from there. Will he seek the Guardians to destroy them like Ayesha wants? Or will he break out before we even see in in GOTG Vol.3 and he’s with Herbert?

The findings in the Easter Egg hunt point out that before choosing Ego, Rocket flicks through a list of planets: Drez-Lar, Hala, Terra and Terma.

Drez-Lar I can’t find out much about. Nova (Ryder) was there once. From the name you can tell it’s a Kree planet, but other than that I had a hard time with info.

Hala is the Kree homeworld. In the comics, it’s actually destroyed. I’m assuming it’s not decimated in the MCU seeing as it’s showing up in the system.

Terra is Earth! Quill’s home planet.

Now, Terma. Terma is only mentioned once in the entirety of the comics. Gunn could have chosen any planet that’s more well known for the viewers to cameo. But he didn’t. Terma is the Kree outworld where two characters found Adam Warlock in his cocoon. After Adam is awakened, he flies to a laboratory inside Terma’s star where he rendez-vous with his adoptive father Herbert Wyndham (High Evolutionary).

This is the important link.

High Evolutionary is a scientist, a master geneticist. Extremely intelligent. Not exactly the most humane person. He did... experiments.

He created the New Men. The New Men are, and I quote, an “artificial race of mutagenically altered, human-sized animals created to possess human-equivalent minds and consciousness”. Sound like someone we know?

Now, there’s a difference with Rocket here though.

Rocket isn’t human sized. My bet is on Rocket being an early experiment of his, instead of him being naturally bipedal, he has a normal alien-raccoon skeleton, so Herbert tore him apart and put him back together over, and over, and turned him... bipedal.

Herbert hadn’t figured out the minutiae of the process, hence why Rocket was an experiment, and not a creation. This also is further supported by Rocket saying “Ain’t no thing like me, ‘cept me”; Rocket was a failure so Herbert didn’t follow the process to make another one like him.

Also, mutagenically altered (how they describe the New Men) and genetically engineered (how they describe Rocket) mean the same thing, just different wording.

Another thing to note: Herbert banished a sentient cockroach (going to be a part of the New Men) into space because he was cocky and refused to follow Herbert’s orders. That sounds like something Rocket would do as well.

Also, it may just be coincidence, but there are a few other things in Vol.2 I want to point out that seem like a nod to Rocket’s past as well.

Firstly, we are reminded of Rocket’s past by the man himself as they try to manoeuvre the quantum asteroid field:

“I was genetically engineered to pilot a spacecraft”

Then right after that, they crash land on Berhert. Which is a real place in the comic books, but it’s also an anagram for Herbert. Coincidence? Maybe. But James Gunn could have made them crash on any other planet in the universe. He chose this one.

Secondly, he is called something he’s not a total of six times on Berhert.

���Yeah, that’s how eyesight works, you stupid raccoon!” - Quill

“I’m sorry. I took it too far. I meant trash panda.” - Quill

“Can I pet your puppy? He is adorable.” - Mantis

“Your associates are welcome. Even that triangle-faced monkey over there.” - Ego

“You’re leaving me here with that fox?!” - Nebula

“Hey there, rat.” - Yondu

Six times on the planet Berhert, the audience are subconsciously reminded that, no, he’s not any of those things. He’s a raccoon-like genetically-enhanced alien.

Thirdly, in a metaphorical basis, The Sovereign drove Rocket into facing his past (Chased them to crash land on Berhert [Berhert = Herbert] plus the constant name-calling bringing his past to attention).

Is this foreshadowing Volume 3? I think so. My predictions for the movie is that Adam (created by The Sovereign) and Herbert will be in it, and that they will be the antagonists. This will force Rocket to confront his past, among other things. I can’t go into much more detail about why I believe this is going to happen because I am not about to spoil endgame for anyone.

I will upload a follow-up theory to go with this one as to why I believe Adam and Herbert are so important for the next GOTG film (+ the future MCU) in the coming weeks. 

[raccoonfallsharder]

I just found out Rockets VA can sing (really good actually) do you have any headcanons based on that?

mmmmm. sorry for the delay, i got distracted by rocket prompt week and also by thinking about rocket crooning in your ear.

he’s always humming, you know? (this is not a headcanon — it’s in the movies.) he’s often humming while he works. and that scene on berhert? where he’s sort of purring along with the music while plotting severe injury to the incoming ravagers? i…

sorry. focusing.

im sure the first few times you hear him mumbling lyrics under his breath, you damn near need to excuse yourself. you know you can’t call attention to it — in a best-case scenario, he'll stop singing entirely. you say nothing, and your silence is rewarded: rocket's mumbling a tune — so low your toes curl in your boots — almost whenever the two of you are working quietly on some project or another. most of the time, he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. the rest of the time, he thinks you can’t hear him.

once, while the entire crew was dicking around in the common room and rocket started humming under his breath, pete had commented on it. you'd shot him a murderous look but it had been too late: rocket’s ears had gone flat and his tail had tucked between his ankles and his eyes had swiveled around the room. he'd been shifting and snapping out harsh words so frantically that you were sure he was scarlet under his fur. you’d had to go a miserable dozen cycles before you’d stumbled across him lilting low to himself again in the engine room one night.

fuckin pete. you still haven’t forgiven that guy.

but things get easier — at least between you and rocket — after that. there's a day when rocket looks up and realizes that you can hear him — maybe you're swaying slightly to the sound of his voice, or lightly tapping the soft pads of your fingertips like raindrops on your knee. he stumbles to a fumbling halt. you don’t say anything, though: you just pass him an encouraging half-smile before returning to whatever you were doing. you’ll hang out with him regardless of whether you get to lull yourself to the sound of his deep, pretty voice or not, you figure.

it happens again — and then again. and eventually, rocket stops stopping. he sees you walk into the otherwise-empty common area while he’s clanging away on some new cannon, or you slide into the seat next to him while he’s piloting the bowie alone — and he tosses you a little smirk and keeps going, keeps humming those bars or rumbling those words up over his ribs and out the corners of his mouth.

you’re not the first person he’s sung to, of course.

there’s a reason groot loves music. when he was just a sprout, rocket would carefully place groot's small pot right next to where he lay his own head, and he’d croon a lullaby from star-lord’s library of songs. this was how the little flora colossus first learned to fall asleep — and how he woke up — every rotation for the first dozen cycles of his life. even when groot got a little bigger and could leave his pot and run around chasing orloni, he’d still drift off sprawled on rocket’s shoulder or across the top of his head: dozing to the sound of his father clinking away on aero-rigs while humming some melody or another.

even before that — i think rocket probably sung to groot the elder, too, at least once or twice. maybe the first time rocket had seen the big guy lose his limbs, before he'd learned that they would grow back. rocket had promised tibius lark that he’d look out for the flora colossus, and now here's groot — mutilated and in pain. rocket had tried to soothe the groaning, moaning groot to sleep, wracked by guilt before eventually realizing the big idiot was just a giant frickin’ crybaby with limbs that would essentially regenerate.

still, rocket hadn’t minded singing to his friend too much after that.

maybe even earlier, too. maybe there had been a time, after explaining music to his cagemates but before telling them about flying machines. maybe he’d hummed for batch 89 too.

they would’ve thought his childish voice was the most comforting, lovely thing they’d ever heard, i think. sometimes, as you might guess, the members of batch 89 would have nightmares or be in too much pain to close their eyes and rest, and when those nights happened, rocket would have hummed them back to sleep, all low and slow and sweet.

floor would have begged for songs every chance she got. teefs would have marveled at how beautiful rocket had sounded, and lylla — lylla would have told him, very solemnly, that he had a gift.

rocket doesn't think about that very often — tries not to think about those days at all, if he's being honest — but eventually, as you know, his past comes out. it's long after he’s gotten comfortable with you, of course — and raised his son, and saved half the universe, and purchased the skull of a god, and freed himself from the high evolutionary for the last time, and become a captain, but now—

now, he remembers lylla's words.

the star children descend from the arête and different households try to take them in, but it only takes one or two failed sleep-shifts across all of knowhere before it becomes apparent that none of the kids can rest. the children have nightmares — of course they do — and they’re used to sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder with each other in cages, on hard floors. they're used to whispering stories and comforts to each other, listening gratefully to the quiet words of their siblings, small hands gripping small hands in the darkness.

it takes a while to figure out, but eventually arrangements are made — at least until the kids can adjust. spaces are shifted so the children can nest together, and it helps — mostly. drax tries telling stories. cosmo recommends warm milk. howard suggests a quarter-shot of ginsky for each kid (you promptly put the kibosh on that one). nebula comes one night to tell the kids in great detail how she’ll destroy anyone who dares to harm them. you’re so happy mantis went on her journey to find herself but sometimes, when you see how exhausted and hollow-eyed the kids are in the morning, you just wish she were back so she could help them sleep.

and then suddenly it's a few cycles later, and you realize you haven’t heard any more concerns about the kids’ night terrors. you look around and realize they’re bright-eyed again, cheeks glowing, chattering at breakfast. curious as to what ended up working — if it was the indigarran lavender satchets sent by one of kraglin’s ex-wives or it it was the broker boring them with the droning details of the histories of various artifacts he’d once had in his shop on Xandar — you come visiting one night on tip-toe, just to check in.

rocket’s there — curled up on an old armchair someone had brought in for the neverending parade of storytellers and caregivers. his voice rolls over the sleepy children, and their eyelashes droop while he lingers on some notes and skips up and down others. the sound of it curls around them — and you. his voice nestles into the shadows, practically plucking up the edges of the blankets and tucking the kids in all on its own.

you watch as, handful after handful, they drift: eased deeply into dreaming by the power and protection of the captain’s voice, all on its own.

[kaijugroot]

Rewatching Gotg vol 1, i noticed that Rocket has 22 counts of escape from prison yet Groot has 15, so this makes me think that Rocket escaped 7 prisons before meeting Groot and then they escaped 15 together maybe? Also again, who tf is Tibius Lark...?

[kaijugroot]

My only disappointment from the GOTG trilogy was we never get to learn about who's Tibius Lark.

His name was on Tibius Lark's name was on Groot's rap sheet on Xandar before being transferred to the Kyln after he had been arrested by the Nova Corps.

He's totally made up character by James Gunn, his name was never mentioned in comics at all. Knowing Gunn told us that OG Groot was treated like an animal for much of his life makes me suspicious of the guy...

I wonder if Rocket ever met him?

[superamatista]

Who’s Tibius Lark?

I looked up and all the results are about the GotG movie.

Maybe he’s a new character that will get introduced in the third movie?

[chl03ph0b1a]

you are so sweet, i missed you too <33 btw this is absolutely amazing i wanna see this as an actual movie NOW

this question just came to my mind and has been lingering around in my noggin so

if rocket raccoon were to get his own solo movie, what kind of plot would you want to see???

CLOVER BLOSSOM! i missed you ♡ i hope life is treating you to a hundred gentle kindnesses and tasty snacks. this is a great question — thank you so much for asking it!! — and i really wrestled with it. because i think it’s actually so important for our guy to be part of an ensemble cast? he’s been solo for far too long? the map of rocket’s entire life and so many pieces of his identity (especially in the mcu) are based on this aching, painful tension between loneliness & connection: the forced alienation at the hands of his abuser and an uncaring universe; the self-inflicted isolation of his survival strategies and fears and guilty conscience — versus love, empathy, support, communication. joy-sharing. trust. friendship.and not only finding these things, not only offering them — but letting himself accept them, too. letting himself embrace them for himself.

so i think any movie i’d like to see with mcu-rocket would have to have some sort of relational component. (not me, writing way too much raccoon-smut.)

i’ll be honest. i think we got robbed in not seeing gunn’s short film about rocket meeting groot & tibius lark. i would love a rocket & groot film so much, and i'd love to use this as the (really long) cold open for the start of "my" movie. we would zip through the star-systems and asterisms, zooming in on whatever rancid incarceration-space-station gunn had in mind [feature coordinates here], and sink straight from the stardust right down into the pit-prison. rocket, groot, & lark would already be there — rocket trying to figure out his own escape.

i broke outta eleven prisons. this one ain’t no different.

lark will start storytelling, explaining his history with groot — then extracting rocket’s promise to take care of the flora colossus. perhaps, in the course of this conversation — a word i use loosely — lark would express a certainty that rocket would benefit from groot’s company as much as groot would benefit from his.

it’s good to have friends, lark might remind him.

once he’s secured rocket’s promise and groot’s safety, lark dies — which is when rocket uses lark’s leftover (robot) bodyparts to build a means of escape. then, as gunn described, rocket and groot burst upward from the pit, escaping their prison.

[roll marvel opening logo, with all the superimposed images in the letters being frames from rocket & groot comics]

we’d reopen in space, in some ship rocket had stolen from the prison. our two heroes have gotten far away already, and are about as safe as two fugitives with bounties on their heads can be. rocket would be trying to come up with a plan to get rid of groot while still honoring his promise to lark (more or less). he hates what he’s gotten himself saddled with, but he’s not going to break his word, either. lark had mentioned that groot had come from planet x/taluhnia, so rocket decides he’ll take the flora colossus back to his home planet and drop him off — wash the dust from his hands, and go back to hunting bounties and blowing up moons. good deed complete.

groot tries to protest, but rocket doesn’t understand him yet. still, groot’s distress is obvious. rocket only rolls his eyes and pushes onward, more and more irritated by his new ward.

unfortunately, when they arrive on taluhnia, rocket discovers that groot's people are long gone, and his planet is being systematically destroyed: flora colossi slaughtered, forests leveled in the name of planetary harvest. enter our villain: something more-or-less (depending on how cartoonishly-comicky you want to go) inspired by beavertron incorporated, under the advisement of shareholder castor gnawbarque (from blue river score, 2017). a little hacking on rocket’s part informs the duo that taluhnia is not the only planet beavertron has its hands all over. the company's a real piece of work, colonizing and destroying dozens — maybe hundreds — of cultures and planets in order to seize their natural resources.

groot is horrified by this additional information, of course: so many planets, at risk of being destroyed like his own. rocket is starting to understand groot a little better — he can at least read his body language and expressions — and though our little ringtailed guy is disgusted by beavertron, he still tells the flora colossus not to overreact.

don’t you know anything? this is just how people are.

rocket does, however, get super-frustrated when he realizes that his plan to dump groot on taluhnia can no longer — under any stretch of the imagination — be considered sufficient in keeping his promise to tibius lark. it gets him incredibly pissed, i'm sure — pulling his whiskers, probably kicking some grass — before finally sighing with his whole fucken chest and admitting that he guesses he's gotta blow up a frickin' coorporation now, 'cause how else is he gonna get rid of his adopted idiot?

oh rocket. i love it when you try to justify why you're doing something good.

anyway, highjinks ensue. rocket and groot probably manage to incapacitate gnawbarque — maybe there’s a collective somewhere that will pay good money to put this monster on trial. maybe beavertron collapses without gnawbarque, or maybe it hovers in the background to return for a future movie (perhaps volume two or three involves a heist at beavertron headquarters — trying to get some information down the corporation for good).

when the chaos settles and justice has been (more or less) administered, groot stands in the midst of a flattened taluhnisan old growth forest — bereft. rocket stands beside him, grappling with the increasingly-clear knowledge that groot really is the last flora colossus, and maybe this is the moment that our guy begins to realize how much he has in common with his new friend. i imagine rocket tries to offer some comfort — like he did for nebula in infinity war. a gentle, awkward pat on the hand, which groot tenderly and gratefully accepts. i imagine groot seeds as much of the forest as he can with his glowing spores, helping the leftover plantlife grow into something lovely and alive — but not sentient. the planet of taluhnia becomes a bittersweetly-beautiful living memorial.

and i imagine they both cry together. and perhaps that's when rocket begins understanding groot’s speech — fully for the first time.

and then — standing side-by-side, silhouetted under the taluhnisan sky — rocket says, you know, i could probably bring in some bigger bounties if i hired some muscle. make more money that way.

oh rocket. i still love it when you try to justify why you're doing something good.

and then my babies fly off into the stars together.

[roll credits]

our post-credits scene will just be a montage of groot and rocket in various prison cells, with rocket nonchalantly saying on i broke outta ## prisons. this one ain’t no different. on repeat. ad nauseam.