Interesting word choices: Yondu, a career thief, chastising Rocket for stealing batteries “you don’t need”.
I don’t think Yondu steals for fun, though. Yondu steals for money. For him, it’s a job. (And for a former child slave, he’s probably very serious about doing the job right, the first time, because of financial security and Consequences and all that endlessly unpackable stuff …)
Rocket, on the other hand, steals purely for the lulz, and Yondu might really be annoyed about that from a professional standpoint. It’s a risk you don’t need to take, for batteries you probably can’t even fence! It’s dumb! He’d smack Peter upside the head for pulling that kind of unprofessional shit (and probably did).
Also, on some level I guess Rocket could be said to be stealing /from/ the team – risking their client satisfaction (and their lives) for something he may or may not have cut them in on – and we know Ravagers don’t do that to each other.
otoh, Yondu certainly aims to steal more than he or his crew could ever practically need – the orb payout, split, say, 200 ways for the crew, would have left them all more than comfortable, and Peter in vol1 is already slinging around more money than the amount Rocket thinks would make him and Groot rich.
Also, Drax becomes complicit in Rocket’s theft as soon as Rocket shows him the stolen batteries. Drax could have intervened or prevented Rocket from keeping the batteries — instead, he just laughs. I guess this ties in with Rocket’s later reply to Yondu “That was mostly Drax” — he’s, at least partly, rationalising that, if Drax didn’t prevent him from stealing, then the theft must be okay…
Yes. Although I think he certainly knows that he could get away with things with Drax that he could never get past Peter or Gamora in a million years.