What a bunch of A-holes

    " ... "

The silence is pointed and sharp and could probably be used as a deadly weapon, or at least to inflict grievous bodily harm.

      "You got robbed. You got robbed.                       You got robbed.

    " -- try telling that lie again when you're not       standing in a fully classified area, surrounded       by, let's see:

                    three,                        four,                           five!

  "Don’t we all?"

(She chuckles, though it sounded a little wan.)

       "--yes, well, I doubt we'll be so lucky         twice in a row."

He brandishes his tablet, swipes a finger across the screen to send the file its displaying to her own.

     ❝Not that I'm ungrateful, but a city to         come back to would also be great.❞

And right now, they're just holding Ronan off, nothing more.  They can  only do this  for so long. He guns his ships engines again, adds a little  more acceleration  against the thrust of the Dark Aster.

She had being trying to reach Vis, her brother… Getting in hadn’t been as easy as she’d thought and now she was glad she hadn’t managed it. They might have figured out who she was if she’d managed to get to her sibling. 

    "--oh, so you were succeeding in breaking in to      a secure Nova Corps building?

             That doesn't exactly help your case."

Were people always this stupid? Had they really been this stupid when he'd first joined Nova Corps? Surely not. Surely he would barely have lasted a week before he rolled his eyes and called it enough.

       "----Terra," he completes for her, another        glance down at the scanner. "You know,        I know  another Terran.  I'm beginning to        think this is a species thing."

Another harsh sigh, eyes cast heavenward as though appealing for divine aid in his plight.

"Nova Prime."

   After one week in a coma and two    in a hyperbaric chamber, fractures    and burns and a really, really bad    migraine?

       (The last possibly just a residual from         dealing with Quill & co.)

And Maria’s got a feeling this guy isn’t going to be much better. Not with an opening line like that. 

(Suddenly, she finds herself missing the  Asgardians. A pain in the ass, yes, but  at least they’re polite.)

"If you want refreshments, find them yourself.  Take a nap on your own time, and there’s a  window if you’re that desperate for a change  in scenery.”

The acting director of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a busy woman, and the patience she has for this kind of bullshit is exactly zero.

The sharpness in  her tone doesn't  seem to faze him. If anything, it's a reflection of his own, most days, and even if the  planet's unfamiliar, it seems  like manage- ment is the same everywhere. "-- ah, good. So you are --"

            (he checks the portable screen, mindful              of strange names and ranks and all the              unfamiliar trappings)

                   the over exuberant character within                said box has very little qualms with                appearing in offices, mind you, but                this isn’t where he intended to go.  

      “ hello, pl—- “        not what he        was expecting.

   " -- you don't say."

A brief, awkward silence follows. Saal glances towards the wall-panel, which has failed to register any unauthorised intrusion, and back to the unexpected stranger.

    " -- obviously."

You'd think at some point that people would come up with a  slightly more  original excuse.  At least something that would give him a good laugh.

          " So when  you were  picked up  by these             wrong people -- namely Corpsman Rosek             and his partner -- you were not..."

  (he glances back down at the portable        screen in his hand, raises an eyebrow            and returns his gaze to her.)