As an inn located far from the nearest city, Shorty's got some unusual visitors. Humans were commonplace, and the other two-legged people such as elves who might ride with a caravan or follow the trade trails. But they also got the occasional creature that in other circumstances would be considered a monster.Tonight's monster was an armored wolverine the size of a bear.Both waitresses were busy when the beast pushed the swinging door open with its muzzle and padded in. Long, sharp white claws cl

"Holy shit!"You've been down this beach a hundred times, seen the pier and the shadowy rocks underneath, seen the oil derricks in the dim distance, smelt the salt air. You've seen plenty of sea lions. Just never one with a set of human feet sticking out of its mouth.You stop and stare. A pale-skinned set of feet hang down on either side of the sea lion's lower jaw. The heels disappear under its bulging cheeks and a swelling in its neck shows where the mostly swallowed person's legs are. Further

Tame campBy
Strega
"The
animals are tame," the native guide told Sally. "They
don't hurt you if you don't try to hurt them."
How does that
happen? How do lions, and hyenas and other creatures become so safe
to touch that the camp can advertise them as "tame?"
She found out.
The camp consisted of a dozen connected campsites, each far enough
from the others that a screen of vegetation offered some privacy.
Trip to Africa are not cheap. She made the most of this one

Family Matters
By Strega
 
Rocket is the only Uplifted raccoon. His parents and siblings died in the lab...or so he thought.
 
This story takes place after Sanctuary.
 
*****
It was a year since Ego. A year since Nebula and Kraglin joined the Guardians and almost that long since Rocket met his soul-mate Lylla. The Guardians were busy these days, but there were still quiet times. This was one of them. The entire clan - Star-Lord, Drax, Gamora, Mantis, Kraglin, Nebula, Groot,

Sleeping space
By Strega
 
Finding Rocket asleep in his sock drawer didn't make Peter mad, or worried. The little raccoon's sleeping habits hadn't quite caught up with current events, was all.
 
No sooner had they got the Milano flying again after Ego than a Kree privateer blew another hole in the ship. Rocket's little round "Travel bed for anthropomorphs, size four" had been sucked into the void. For the second time in a month they'd gone through a near depressurization

Two
Strangers in an alley
By
Strega
"What
the hell is that?"
"Oh,
check out the new boy," his partner said good-naturedly. "That,
son, is a tree."
"Don't
give me that." The Kree policeman rapped the trunk of the tree
with his shockstick. It was, as far as the eye and the thunk of
metal on wood could say, a tree. "It wasn't here yesterday."
His
partner raised an eyebrow. Like a minority of Kree he was
blue-skinned. His partner's had the more c

What happened to the rabbit?
By Strega
 
It wasn't the first time Thor landed in New York City. For a time it had even been home. But since his disastrous failure to kill Thanos at Wakanda he'd been very busy. The loss of half the world's population - seemingly at random - created a host of disasters that demanded his attention.
 
Over a thousand jetliners crashed in the wake of that incident. That was only the tip of the iceberg. Literally millions of vehicles were suddenly dr

First,
do no harm
By
Strega
"Get
that nerve, Rocket," Lylla said distractedly. Then, "Oh,
I'm sorry, dear. I wasn't thinking."
Not
so long ago Rocket's ears would have gone back, either at the
implication that he'd made a technical error or because, Peter knew,
the phrase "Get that nerve" brought back horrible memories
of his early life. But their tough little raccoon teammate had
healed a lot since he met them, and especially after meeting Lylla a
year ago.
&qu

Sanctuary

By
Strega

Chapter
1:
Never again


Summary:
An
E-mail from a friend. That's all it takes, and Rocket is ready to
kill to keep the horror from starting up again.

Chapter
Text
It
started one day in the most innocuous way imaginable: nothing more
dramatic than an E-mail.
"Hey
Rock," Quill said, slumped back in the pilot's chair idly
scanning the screen as he helped Rocket work on a problem with the
Milano. "Got a letter from your doctor friend.&qu

Living with Rocket 4By Strega
Things soon settled down to a
routine on the Milano. After Ego, many bounties and assorted
interpersonal dramas the crew were learning to live and work as a
family. Mantis was proving surprisingly useful in many ways; Rocket
was teaching her the rudiments of equipment repair, she was useful as
a non-threatening negotiator (valuable in a crew full of thugs) and
of course there wasn't a single crew member who didn't need therapy
of some sort, even if that was sometime

Just
a temporary kidnapping
By
Strega
Rocket
swam up toward consciousness. He very, very badly wanted not to,
because between him and the light was a thick, greasy layer of pain.
Despite his best efforts he rose, into the pain, into light like
daggers in his eyes.
“Aw
man, my head.” Gently he felt with his sensitive little hands,
sure he’d find blood and brains leaking out. Instead there was
just the fur, his ears pressed back against the sides of his head
where they only lay when he

Two
visits to EarthBy Woozletania
"Terra,
Terra, Terra," Rocket grumbled. He flicked one planet after
another off the screen. Once in a while, rather than discarding the
display, he flicked it off to a side screen. "All he even talks
about. D'ast Terrain music, d'ast Terran people. You'd think he
never left that rock."
"I
am Groot," observed the three foot tall tree in the co-pilot's
seat.
"I
know," Rocket said. He flicked a fourth world onto the side

Rocket:
In the beginningBy Strega
It
was a little clawed hand, half as long as a man's, and a month before
it was a paw. Five-fingered and nimble, a clever paw, but still a
paw before surgery, repositioning of bones, and implanted cybernetics
turned it in to an actual hand. At this moment the little hand was
digging its claws into the thick plastic cover of the operating bed,
sinews standing out in the shaved furry wrists as it tried with all
its might to either rip free of its restraints or bu

Living
with Rocket 3By Strega
It
wasn't Peter, for a change, that convinced Rocket to do something the
little raccoon didn't want to do. It was Drax and, to everyone's
surprise (maybe even hers), Gamora.
They
were collecting a bounty on a particularly violent group of renegade
Kree when it started. As usual Drax waded into melee with Gamora
while Peter and Rocket picked off stragglers from a distance. The
last few Kree charged Drax and the Destroyer, being all but
invulnerable, went after them w

Living
with Rocket 2By Strega
Ego
had been hard on everyone. Peter Quill had lost his father -
arguably both his fathers, though if you asked him now Yondu was the
only one he would acknowledge. Gamora had gone through a torturous
reunion with her sister Nebula, Drax had been reminded once again of
what he'd lost to Ronan, and their newest member, Mantis, had lost
the only home and the only father she'd ever known. Even Groot had
been tormented by the Ravagers and nearly crushed by Ego.
And
Roc

Living
with RocketBy Strega
Rocket
was a tough little guy. Rough, tough, foul-mouthed, often angry and
almost always heavily armed. You might not like him, but you had to
respect him. Peter Quill had learned soon after meeting him how
commanding the little raccoon could be. The prisoners at the Kiln had
no trouble taking orders from a furry, three foot tall, fifty-pound
creature. Stature wasn't everything; confidence and a willingness to
use force counted for a lot. Rocket had both of those

Good
news, bad newsBy
Strega
"No
magic," the gul said, and lowered the enchanted spyglass. If
you didn't know the trick it was exactly that, a spyglass, but if you
spoke the command word it also showed glows where magic items, spells
and other arcane frippery were in its field of view.
"None
at all?" The speaker was a hestan woman, one of those lithe
cat-people with fur and claws and in her case, a nicely curvy shape.
She was at least a foot shorter than the hulking wolverin

From
the Encyclopedia Galactica: The Mrish.
Mrish
are commonplace in the Commonwealth Survey and Observer corps, and
are sufficiently adventurous and open-minded about coexisting with
other species as to be found in small groups on other-species
colonies through the Three Galaxies. As a fairly typical
oxygen-nitrogen breathing species it is chiefly their gregarious
nature and urge to travel that distinguishes them. There are some
two hundred worlds or orbital colonies with mrish populations ab

The
face of the enemyBy
Strega
There were
three of them, now. There had been five when they were put in the
cage, but one had refused to eat and the other had died before that.
Many died in the presence of the Enemy, even their supposedly
resistant species, and with their medical nanotech stripped away with
their gear they were more mortal, more vulnerable now. To the eye you
would think them strange, six-legged weasels, big as tigers. If you
did know their species you'd recognize them as Fal

Hialfi's
world
By Strega
"Welcome
to my world," the drunken foxtaur said, and belched.

The
minotaur tugged his nose ring and grinned. He'd been telling the fox
about waking up next to a spectacularly ugly bugbear with no memory
of how he got there. He had a flexible view of what constituted an
acceptable bed partner and would take almost anything there,
sometimes whether said partner wanted to be there or not. This time,
though...what had happened to her face?

"Re

Maluek
and Blossom
By
Strega
It was a
surprisingly small cottage the messenger found at the end of the dirt
road, yet it was clearly the right one. Atop a mortared-together
plinth of stones high as a man's hip was a wooden carving of the
couple who lived here. The messenger paused to look at it, because
this couple was an odd one.
The female was
of the otterfolk, human-sized and sleekly streamlined. The sculptor
had carved her in mid-dive. Otterfolk were rare but the messenger
had met them b

Sergeant
Fur
By
Strega
His
name tag read Furayl and when asked for a first name he'd just shrug.
Everyone called him Sergeant Fur and you would too, if he let you.
He and some friends were sitting around a battered folding table
playing cards when Fur smelled smoke.
The
two junior airmen, Carl and Matt, were nearly out of money anyway.
The nickel-dime-quarter game might cost you twenty bucks if you had a
really bad night, but even so no one was willing to lend them so much
as a dollar to cont

An excerpt from the Great War
By Strega
Lurha was dying noisily on the combat channel, and Hsaa couldn't bring himself to cut it off.
Lurha was a big, tough falan - they were all big and tough, but he more than most - but a very
lucky or very well aimed plasma gun shot had punched between the flank plates of his suit in just
the wrong spot, piercing the brain beneath his middle set of legs and his rear heart. If it were only
that he might heal, given unlimited time; Commonwealth s

The Interview
By Strega
Alan woke in stages. 
His first dim realization was that the bed felt odd, foreign. 
The surface he lay on was fuzzy, and rather than sheets he found
himself covered with thick, light coverlets with the texture of fur. 
Eventually, gaining awareness, he stretched out and found the bed too
short for his frame.  His feet hit at one end and his head the
other.
When he opened his
eyes he had to blink a few times before he understood what he saw. 
R

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