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disastercyborgecho · 14 days ago

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Hope I did this justice :)

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Logically, the Ghost Crew knew that their newest member was just a man. But logic and them were never close friends before, now were they.

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The first victim was Ezra, who swears he was minding his own business when he stumbled across Kallus napping in the small kitchen of the Ghost. This should have been normal, they all grabbed sleep wherever and whenever they could.

But Kallus was sleeping standing up.

Ezr had sleepily shuffled in at an ungodly hour in search of caf and potentially a sugary snack that Kanan and Hera didn’t need to know about. Instead he was met with Kallus, stock still and holding a caf mug, eyes closed and a small snore escaping his lips. Ezra just paused for a moment, unsure if he should wake the man up. Eventually, he shrugged and went about pouring his own mug. At least Kallus was nice enough to leave the pot warmed up.

The soft noises of ceramic on alloy seemed to rouse the man a moment later, and Ezra watched, a little dumbstruck, as Kallus just shook his head a little, took a breath, and then pulled out a datapad and resumed whatever project he had been working on. He took a sip of caf and then had the audacity to look insulted when it was lukewarm, as if he hadn’t been fully asleep a moment ago. He took no notice of Ezra at all.

The padawan shook his head and headed back to his bunk. “What the kriff?” he muttered under his breath in a soft awe. He decided he needed to make Kallus teach him how to do that.

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The second victim was Hera. The incident was also in the kitchen, coincidentally. It was early morning, and she had gone to make herself some breakfast before running protocol checks for the Ghost before they lifted off, and Kallus had beaten her to it. Starting a little at his presence, used to her morning routine being a solitary one, she quickly moved to pour herself some cereal. Kallus was reading something on his screen, squinting, but the sound of her breakfast seemed to remind him why he had entered the area in the first place, and he joined her at the counter.

“Mind if I use that after you?” he gestured to the cereal box.

Hera shrugged her consent and passed it over, humming.

Then watched aghast as he poured his milk in first and then his cereal.

She looked up at Kallus, hoping to detect some kind of sign that he was messing with her. This man was a highly trained and specialized operative, this had to be a bit.

But Kallus was happily sipping his cursed breakfast, none the wiser, and Hera was forced to move on with her day as if this information hadn’t irrevocably changed her.

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The third victim was Kanan. He liked to pretend he wasn’t affected at all, but Hera had photographic proof of his expression, which she periodically reminded the man of.

They had been taking a break, desperately needed, and Hera had landed the Ghost next to a small isolated cove, the water clean, clear, and an almost eye-straining blue. Ezra and Sabine had immediately donned bathing suits and threw themselves into the water, cackling and trying to push each other under. Zeb settled himself under an umbrella with a book and a mug of tea, mumbling about salty water and fur, and Kanan rolled his pants up to wade along the shore with Hera. The water was delightfully cool on his feet and he signed in contentment.

Then Kallus made his way off the Ghost. Ezra waved at the man and shouted for him to join them, and he smiled, seeming to enjoy the sun on his cheeks. Kanan was happy to see more color in the ex-imperial’s face, the bags under his eyes a little less prominent. Then Kallus shucked off his boots and joyously made his way into the water. With his socks still on.

Kanan refuted this later, but Hera swore he gagged. The camera shutter of the blasted photo being taken pulled Kanan from his initial shock and disgust, but he couldn’t stop staring. Kallus looked down, shoved his hands into the sand and pulled out a glittering pick shell. Excitedly, he turned back to show Zeb, who peeked over his sunglasses and nodded approval before going back to his book. And Kanan could not tear his eyes away from the now soaked pair of socks on Kallus’ feet. Hera had to pull him away, nudging his shoulder.

“Let him enjoy himself, love,” she said.

“Yeah, sure,” Kanan mumbled distractedly, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it for at least a whole three more rotations.

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The fourth victim was Sabine. At this point, the Ghost crew was acclimating to their newest member and his quirks. Ezra had once referred to Kallus as their ‘friendly cryptid’ and wouldn’t elaborate, but Sabine wholeheartedly agreed. She thought they had mostly gotten used to learning about the completely mundane but quirky aspects of the blonde man.

Apparently she was sorely mistaken.

After learning that Kallus enjoyed sketching some in his freetime, she had delightfully invited him to join her and work on art together on a day where they were stuck in hyperspace. When the time came, and he hesitantly knocked on her door to ask if the invitation still stood, his sketchbook clutched in his hand, she happily let him into her bunk. She had been adding to the mural painted on the ceiling, trying to fill in some of the blank spots with tiny doodles, and gestured to a spot she had yet to get to.

“You’re welcome to add something if you like, no pressure,” she said.

Kallus nodded, still taking in the swirling colors of her walls, but eventually he picked up a paintbrush of his own. Sabine left him to it, getting sucked into her own work, but when she leaned up to crack her neck and stretch out her cramping muscles, she turned to check in on the man.

He too was invested in his painting, taking no notice of Sabine, which allowed her a solid minute to watch in disbelief at the way he held a paintbrush.

It was gripped in his fist in the way a child might pick up a pen, all fingers wrapped around it, zero finesse, as he stared up at his work, a small dribble of orange splattered on his cheek. And listen, Sabine was the last person to judge (sometimes), but genuinely, what the actual kriff.

She never did say anything about it though, because the painting did end up turning out well, and the whole thing felt a little like a fever dream. Kallus hummed happily as he made his way back to his own bunk when they finished, his hands stained with bright colors and his shoulders relaxed. Sabine decided that the next time they did this, she would just have to never look at his hands until he put the blasted paintbrush down.

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Zeb refused to admit he was caught off guard when it happened. Kallus was his friend, he would not be taken aback by the weird things the man sometimes did. He was an incredibly competent strategist and spy for Force sakes, what did anyone care if the man poured his milk in before his cereal?

Then Kallus walked by one day in the cramped hallway of the Ghost and Zeb smelled the most horrific, plasticky, fake cinnamon scent on his breath. The Lasat had to hold his breath until Kallus made it into the cockpit before exhaling in a huff and immediately high-tailing it to the fresher.

On the shelf where they all kept their hygiene supplies, in the small spot Kallus had taken for himself in the corner, a tube of cinnamon-flavored toothpaste was tucked innocently against the wall. Zeb glared at it. This would not stand if he ever wanted to speak to Kallus again. And why did the man even own something like that? What kind of mad-man would brush his teeth with cinnamon?

But Zeb was a problem-solver. And if Kallus went to use his toothpaste and found regular old mint with his original tube suspiciously gone, that was simply none of Zeb’s business.

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Kallus was long integrated into the Ghost crew. A part of the family. But they had yet to run any complicated missions with the man, since much of his time was spent working in Intelligence.

Then he’s sent as their backup with them as they break into an Imperial compound for information on flight plans that the Rebellion desperately needed.

And the Ghost crew was reminded why Kallus had survived this long in his line of work.

Kallus was taken prisoner. Again. A mission had gone wrong, and when he had gone to meet an information, he was met with an overwhelming wave of stormtroopers instead, and immediately taken into custody.

But the Ghost crew was going to get him back. They didn’t leave family behind.

They arrived at the facility, and though an alarm had been triggered, it was going well. Ezra, Sabine, Kanan, and Zeb made their way quickly through corridor after identical corridor, searching for the cell Kallus was supposed to be kept in, according to Chopper. The droid wheeled ahead of them, beeping at them to hurry up.

They were all worried about their newest member. The Empire knew that Kallus had defected to the Rebellion, and the Force only knew what kind of interrogation he was undergoing even as they sprinted closer and closer to him.

Sliding to a stop to avoid another squad of stormtroopers as they marched past on the search for whoever tripped the annoying flashing alarm on their base, Chopper beeped that they were almost there.

“What’s almost, you bucket of bolts?” Ezra complained, panting.

They got their answer just as Chopper was about to zap Ezra in answer when a stormtrooper, sans bucket, flew out from the corridor to their right, sliding to a stop just as Kanan’s feet. Emerging from the smoke that was slowly curling out of the darkened hallway, Kallus stepped into the flashing light. He was barefoot, wearing only his cargo pants and thin white undershirt, which was splattered with a concerning amount of blood. His hair was wild and stained red, and his nose was crooked, bleeding and smeared across his cheek. He rubbed a fist across his face, only making it worse, his knuckles busted open and bleeding as well. In his hand he held a shard of metal, cloth wrapped around it as a handle, edge scraped to a dangerous level of sharpness. Blood dripped from there, too, and down his arm.

For a moment, the ghost crew didn’t move, frozen in surprise. Kallus looked up at them, seeming to brighten, and a smile spread across his face. A tooth was missing but Kallus seemed in better spirits having seen them. He walked over casually, as if he wasn’t in horrific shape.

“Great to see you, why don’t we get out of here?”

Slowly Kanan nodded, and shaking himself, he pushed the rest of their members towards their exit plan, Chopper once again in the lead. As they passed the corridor Kallus had come from, a pile of unconscious stormtroopers could be seen, the broken lights sparking over red smearing over the walls and a fire still burning at the entrance of a cell, the door to it blacked and charred.

Ezra glanced at Kallus and then looked back at Zeb as they ran. Zeb could only shrug his shoulders and shake his head.

‘What the kriff?’ Ezra mouthed at him.

They made it to the Ghost, parked down the side of the cliff by the compound’s hanger, with no one harmed (anymore than they already were), and Kallus settled himself down in an open seat of the cockpit, shiv still tucked in his pocket and blood still staining, well, everything. The rest of the crew followed after, piling into the cockpit as they watched Hera masterfully guide the Ghost out of the atmosphere and into hyperspace.

Then Kallus tugged up his pant leg, where a twisted piece of rebar was curled around and stuck into part of his calf. Grunting, he tugged it off, slowly pulling the metal from the meat of his leg. Tugging off his undershirt he staunched the bleeding that followed and twisted around to glance over at Kanan, who was closest.

“Think you could grab me the surgical glue?” Kallus asked.

“What the kriff?” Ezra said. And then the room devolved into shocked shouts and admonishments and heartfelt cursing and Kallus could only look on bemused.

“Can I please just have some surgical glue?” he asked again, unhelpfully.

***

Haven't gotten a chance to write Kallus before this which is ridiculous 'cause he's my fav, but really enjoyed this short little blurb! Hopefully in the near future there will be more <3

Every day i yearn for a 5+1 crackfic where its 5 times the ghost crew realize that Kallus is just... a dude (and kind of a weird one at that.)

Im talking stuff like... bro is eating chips with tongs and Ezra nearly loses his fucking mind

Or he commits to a bit so hard that Sabine honestly cant tell if he's joking or not

Ir smth like he wont be caught dead wearing a hat. Helmets? Fine. Hats? Evil. Nobody knows why, and he refuses to explain, but tbh Kanan gets it.

And then the plus one is an instance in which theyre all reminded that, oh yeah, HES CRAZY WHYD WE FORGET THAT HES FUCKING INSANW

#cryptids writing

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