"Hurry up! Peter, come over here! Cool him down quick!"
"Coming! Catch! Rocket!"
A spray gun was thrown into Rocket Raccoon's hands, and he immediately pulled the trigger on the man lying on the ground. Instead of bullets, a freezing mist was emitted, rapidly cooling the man's body.
"Oh, thank you, little guy." He covered his head and heaved a sigh of relief, "I thought I'd finish this delivery and then rest, but I couldn't hold up. Thanks for saving me."
"No worries, but you really can't keep working." Rocket Raccoon jumped onto a nearby cabinet and said, "If you hadn't run into us, lying there a few more minutes might have killed you."
"I have no choice, I need to deliver ten parcels a day to make the minimum wage." The man got up from the ground and slowly walked away, leaning on the wall.
Rocket Raccoon walked over to Star Lord, handed back the gun, and said, "You know what I find most upsetting? It's not that they're living badly, but that they are actually doing pretty well."
Even though Star Lord was always cracking jokes, he couldn't find anything funny to say at that moment.
The Guardians of the Galaxy were adept at finding jobs in strange environments and setting up a temporary base, having done so for years.
When they landed on a planet, they began by looking for the most densely populated area, found a job that required hands, and with their physical stamina and various high-tech equipment, manual labor was not a problem for them.
After arriving in Gotham, they declined Professor Shearer's invitation to the wealthy area and plunged into the densely populated East District, finding work as movers.
The weather wasn't that hot at first, and their work went smoothly. After earning some money, they rented a basement and began to explore this fascinating district individually.
To their surprise, although the architectural structure here seemed like a sprawling maze, people were actually living well. At least everyone had a home that was sturdy enough to shelter them from the elements.
In this self-sufficient community, there were plenty of jobs available. Those who could handle physical labor worked in delivery, those who were shrewder managed stalls and businesses, and even those who couldn't do much else could do some craftwork at home, barely making ends meet.
This made the Guardians of the Galaxy admire the city's builders and leaders, because undoubtedly with the time and energy it took to create such a steel city, the builders could have earned more money elsewhere. Yet, she chose to improve the lives of the people here instead.
Just when the Guardians of the Galaxy thought they had seen enough and were ready to leave, the temperature in Gotham started to rise, and various problems emerged.
All the huge buildings had air conditioning inside, so ideally no one should suffer from heatstroke, but the East District wasn't integrated into one structure and was broken up into several sections, requiring manual movers between them.
More importantly, Gotham's logistics, which relied on manual laborers, was concentrated at the docks of the East District, handling the city's largest throughput. Most of the youth in the East District worked around the docks. Although their residences had air conditioning, the docks had no such luxury and the sun there was scorching, making it very easy to succumb to heatstroke.
Previously, the Guardians had been doing delivery work between two building complexes. Although they could drive most of the time, the last mile of carrying goods was not easy.
Indeed, they had high-tech armor that made swimming in magma a breeze, but their coworkers couldn't handle it. Some were truck drivers who fainted in their vehicles while waiting, others encountered people who had fainted from heatstroke on the road, and some were overwhelmed by the heat while moving boxes. They were so busy rescuing people that they could barely get any work done by the end of the day.
They had just rescued someone who had passed out at the entrance of the cargo station when Gamora rushed over and said, "Do you have the defibrillator?! Someone's having a heart attack! Hurry!!"
The two of them hurried over, followed the main door of the building along a corridor, with Groot standing at the entrance, Drax performing CPR, and Nebula preparing an injection as Rocket Raccoon quickly retrieved the defibrillator.
After a hectic effort, the ambulance finally arrived, and the patient was placed on a stretcher. Only then did Star Lord breathe a sigh of relief.
In reality, the original purpose of forming the Guardians of the Galaxy was just to have adventures in the cosmos, at most Star Lord led them on missions to gather intelligence for humans, but he worked sporadically at best.
To sustain the expenses of their adventures, they became interstellar mercenaries and occasionally took on missions.
Because of these missions, they traveled to various planets, weaving through different civilizations. How to put it? The more they worked, the quieter they became.
While civilizations varied vastly, one constant remained: the disparity between the rich and the poor existed everywhere. Even in a civilization like the Kree, where everyone was a soldier directly controlled by the Supreme Wisdom, there were still distinctions in power, with no real fairness to speak of.
The vastness of the cosmos, a home to none.
This was the conclusion they had reached during their years of wandering through the cosmos: no civilization was the utopia they had imagined. Even the people of the Three Great Empires had their own hardships, not to mention those civilizations that were inherently weak, suffering both natural and man-made disasters.
This realization had shifted their perspective. Initially, they did indeed have a grand objective to maintain peace in the cosmos, but that was mostly talk. Over time, they increasingly felt the galaxy truly needed a guard to minimize the suffering of cosmic beings as much as possible.
So eventually, the Guardians of the Galaxy became exactly that. They were still a group of mercenaries, but after arriving at a planet, they tried to live harmoniously with the people there and helped the natives with their troubles as much as they could.
The abyss of suffering has no bottom—the deeper they delved into the populace, the more diverse the hardships they witnessed. The more they saw, the more dissatisfied they became with the current state of the cosmos. The Three Great Empires and the Intergalactic Alliance were merely glossing over the problems.
They didn't know if their universe was the problem, but since every universe was the same, this time they had accepted Professor Shearer's invitation to another vast world, also wanting to verify their suspicions.
But before they could even leave the cosmos, they were already tripped up by Gotham. The technological level of the Guardians of the Galaxy truly surpassed that of humans, but they had no good solutions for the current situation.
After a busy day that lasted until dark and saving two more patients suffering from heatstroke and emergencies, the group returned to their base. Rocket placed the groceries he had bought on the stove—they had learned how to maintain their lives at the lowest cost during their years of wandering in space.
Gamora sighed in relief and collapsed onto the sofa. Star Lord filled his cup with ice cubes and poured a large glass of ice-cold cola before finally taking a deep breath.
"Do you think it's possible to get a regional air circulation device?" Rocket contemplated the design in his hands, "Or maybe cool the sea water to achieve natural cooling effects?"
"That's a bit difficult," said Gamora. "This is not like some of the problems we've handled before. It's clearly not anyone's fault, but rather issues that have existed since the city was built; successive generations tried to rectify them, but the problems still persist."
"Exactly," Star Lord said. "The people who built this city did a pretty good job considering almost every aspect. Yet this city has been bizarre from the start—it's not a problem that can be solved by eliminating a few corrupt officials."
Rocket thought for a moment and said, "I think I can utilize the principle of this cryogenic spray gun to create a type of cooling fog, spraying it out to cool down during the hottest times. However, this device would need a large amount of energy, and I don't think human energy levels can afford it."
Star Lord was about to nod, but then he seemed to think of something and said, "Thinking about such a large steel city, and all these air conditioners, who is paying for the electricity?"
"Definitely not the residents," said Gamora. "Considering your American electricity prices, if people used air conditioning like this, everyone would go bankrupt."
"It's not like the electricity cost is that high in every state..." Star Lord spoke in a low voice, but he also knew that the positioning of this city should be similar to that of New York, where electricity is not only expensive but also increases year by year.
However, he also knew Gamora was right. If the residents were paying for it themselves, they wouldn't want to use the air conditioning. Moreover, all the air conditioning systems here were centralized, which should have uniform controls. But if it was said that the city government was managing it uniformly, how could the city government possibly afford that?
"I suspect there's an energy core here." Technical issues were evidently Rocket Raccoon's forte. He said, "It might be an energy core that surpasses traditional human power generation technologies."
"It's not another sort of energy crystal that could explode at any moment, is it?!" Gamora almost jumped up, recalling a previous incident where they had taken an energy core from another civilization's advanced spaceship which ended up causing a massive explosion and left a hole in their own spaceship.
"Probably not?" Star Lord scratched his head and said, "From the city's construction ethos, it's clear that the builders weren't foolish."
"Hard to say," Nebula finally spoke up.
But they all trusted Rocket Raccoon's judgement, since the iron city's situation did seem quite abnormal, apparently unconcerned about energy yet just calculating the energy expenditure of such a large city showed that it was unreasonable.
Rocket Raccoon, stroking his chin, said, "Now there are two methods, one is to get in touch with the city's constructors, tell them we have this technology, and ask if they would be willing to provide a port on the energy core. The other method is to find the energy core ourselves and install a port."
"I choose the first one," Gamora said. "Remember our principle? Respect the destiny of civilizations, do not interfere excessively."
Star Lord nodded and said, "This is Earth after all, not some terrifying alien monster's lair. Since the city's constructors were willing to do so much for the public, maybe they would also accept our technological assistance."
"Do you really think they lack the technology?" Drax suddenly spoke up. "To create such an energy core and still not be able to make a cooling device?"
He had hit the nail on the head, and the others fell silent, but Star Lord still stood up and said, "I'll give Professor Shearer a call. He should know what's going on."