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lifblogs · 6 months ago

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The Right Body

@ailesswhumptober Day 20 Enemy/Stranger to Caretaker, Accidental De-aging, "I'm absolutely not qualified for this shit."

Fandom: The Bad Batch Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Word Count: 2874 Summary: The Bad Batch are separated by a cave-in, and Echo is injured and his prosthetic legs aren't working right. He only has Phee to help him, and he's not too sure of her yet. READ ON AO3

Echo couldn’t remember if he’d cried out when a rock hit his spine during the cave-in, but now he was on the ground, blue-gray dirt in his eyes, rocks still settling. He coughed as the dirt got in his throat. Phee was coughing too. Echo didn’t think anyone else had made it to their side of the cave-in, but that meant the rest of his squad was stuck with the pirates who had been idiotic enough to set off a bomb.

His squad was extremely competent though, and some pirates… not so much. Phee was pretty competent, though that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. It got them dragged around too much, in his opinion. He was tired of her adventures and found her too boisterous, but Omega liked her, and Tech liked her, so Echo tried his best. At least he knew Hunter shared his sentiments.

“You okay?” Phee asked.

Echo tried to get up, but a weird sensation came from his prosthetic legs. Not pain, but… it was almost as if nerves he no longer had were being tugged at. His legs weren’t moving right. Painstakingly, exhaling as he used his core, he rolled over, and sat up to get a look at them. His back ached so badly that he adjusted his breathing so his ribs wouldn’t expand too much, causing more pain.

His legs were sparking, and each blue spark was accompanied with that strange feeling.

His back wouldn’t stop throbbing from where the rock had hit him, but since he could move he figured nothing was broken. Well, nothing organic. The rock must have hit the servos that connected to his legs.

Kriff.

“There’s something wrong with my legs,” Echo said aloud.

When Phee came over she crouched down, eyeing his legs.

“Can you stand?” she asked.

“Maybe.”

He didn’t actually think so, but Echo didn’t like anything about this situation. His legs were everything to him. They were how he got around, how he could protect his family. They helped him survive, helped him live.

He was used to doing tune-ups on them, Tech and Omega helping him out, but they were trapped without them.

“Here, I’ll help.”

Phee got on his left side, and put an arm around his waist.

He winced.

“Careful. My back’s injured too.”

She touched him lightly now, and let him put his arm around her shoulders. He tried to stand, and made it to a wobbly crouch. Echo swore as his legs sparked again, and he landed on his knees. He would have fallen onto his face if Phee hadn’t caught him with a hand on his chest.

“I think my legs are broken.”

For Echo that was a completely different statement than for someone else.

“There’s something wrong with the servos, I think,” he panted.

Phee helped him balance, but looked down, and then looked back at him.

“I’m absolutely not qualified for this scrag,” she said.

Echo had figured, but still: “Kriff.”

“Here, let’s get you sitting again.”

Definitely a good idea. Already his torso was aching from this fixed position.

Echo was panting by the time they got him resting against the rock wall again. The pressure hurt his back, but he didn’t have to work so hard to stay upright.

“Do you think the others are okay?” Echo asked.

Phee waved a hand, setting up lanterns so they’d be able to see better. “Pfft, they’ve got Brown Eyes with them. They’re fine. Plus Hunter is as good as his arrogance suggests.”

“That’s confidence, not arrogance.”

“You know from personal experience?”

Echo gave a light laugh. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Phee dragged her bag over, while Echo worked on getting his comm working. Static met him for a few taps, but then the line was clear.

“Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, Omega, are you all okay?”

“We are fine,” Tech said. “Though pirates are firing at us.”

Echo straightened. “How is that fine?”

“He means we’re not injured,” Omega said.

“Not yet!” Wrecker responded.

“Echo, are you okay?” Hunter asked.

Echo could imagine his team running, dodging, and firing all while having this conversation. He figured that soon the pirates would all be dead, or stunned.

“A rock hit my back. It hurts, and my legs aren’t working.”

“What?” Omega gasped.

Phee said into her comm, “And I’ve only worked on ships, and some droid maintenance, so I have no idea what to do here.”

“I’ll walk you through it from here,” Tech said.

“Good luck,” Phee said. “‘Cause all I got is a hydrospanner and a solder.”

“That might be all you need, though a piece of string might come in handy.”

“Excuse me?” Phee asked.

Echo was confused too.

“If you tie it around a motor you can make a…” Tech sighed. “Never mind. Now what part of the prosthetics is damaged?”

“Hold on,” Phee said.

“Echo, you mind showing me your back? And taking off this… What is it?”

“A kama.”

“Do you need help?”

With a sigh, Echo rolled, and laid down on his stomach, propping his head up on his arm.

“The kama’s attached to my belt,” he supplied.

“Ah.”

Phee removed it, then asked, “What about your armor, and your tunic?”

“You can take off the belt and armor, and lift my tunic up,” he consented with a huff.

Echo took in a deep breath, not always a fan of people he didn’t know very well touching him.

“All right, let’s get a look here,” Phee said, his armor now removed. She lifted up his tunic, and Echo inwardly winced, knowing she’d see not just his prosthetics, but the covered implants he had along his spine. “Well, you’re certainly bruising,” she said. “Must’ve been some rock.” Phee must have then looked lower because she said, “Brown Eyes, I don’t quite know what I’m looking at.”

“Describe it.”

Phee did so, and Tech responded, “Oh, that is an easy enough fix.

“Echo, how do your legs feel?”

He frowned, but responded, “Like someone’s tugging on nerves.”

“Ah, that would make sense. Phee, you’re going to have to uncouple the lumbar rotors so you can deactivate the servo encoder without burning through Echo’s cerebral interface. Then you have to solder—”

“In Basic, please!” Phee interrupted.

“That is Basic,” Tech muttered.

“Oh my stars, Brown Eyes, I swear…” Phee cried.

“You see the circular nodules along Echo’s spine?”

“Uh…”

“They’re about two inches in diameter, gray, right above his culet.”

“Found ‘em.”

Echo felt Phee press.

He was anxious to have her work on him when she didn’t know much about this type of technology, but he trusted Tech to do his job well, even through comms.

His back seemed to ache more from this position, and he tried shifting his hips, but his legs sparked again. Echo winced at the strange tugging sensation.

He grunted.

“You good?” Phee asked.

“Peachy.”

“There’s a switch under a panel right in between the nodules. That should begin the detachment process so Echo won’t feel any of this.”

Phee must have hit the switch because Echo’s legs even stopped transferring the sensation of the rocky ground to him.

“Got it,” Phee called.

They talked as Phee worked on him. There was a strange dissociation with not being able to feel any of it. As time ticked on, he felt like this body was wrong, that this wasn’t his. Echo floated away from it, till he could look down and see this body, this strange, strange thing that was supposedly his. But how could it be? From the implants, to the prosthetics, the chemically ruined skin, and the inner workings of him, he didn’t quite understand it. This body had been blown up and tortured and experimented on, and this was what he, Echo as a person, was left with.

It also was strangely intimate and unerring that Tech seemed to know more about his prosthetics than he himself did. It was like he was floating in something that didn’t belong to him.

A few times they had to pause for them to take care of the pirates. But then that was all clear.

“I think we can loop back around and get you two out,” Hunter said.

“No talking,” Phee told him. “Except for Tech. I have to think.”

“How’s it going?” Echo asked, surprised that it was his own voice that came out of him and not something mechanical.

“Shh.”

“It’s my body,” Echo grumbled.

“And that’s why I’m trying to be so careful,” Phee argued. “Hold on, I have to… Tech, what am I doing here again?”

Echo didn’t like that.

“Maybe we should wait for Tech,” Echo suggested.

His sense of helplessness was becoming keener with each second.

“No, I’ve got it.”

Tech’s answer was long, and Phee asked him to break it down again.

“Oh, I already did that,” she said.

“Without my instruction?” Tech asked.

“Sorry, I thought it was what you said.”

“Please do not break Echo,” Tech told her. “Or I’ll be less amenable to being called Brown Eyes in the future.”

“Can you two flirt on your own time?” Echo asked, lifting himself up to shoot Phee a glare.

She rolled her eyes.

“Calm down. I’ve got it. Kinda like a droid when you get right down to it.”

“I am not a droid,” Echo argued. His voice was strong, but his body didn’t feel that strength at all.

Phee paused, looking at him. He recognized guilt in her face, but she didn’t seem like she was going to try and stand her ground on this. She knew she was wrong, and she accepted that.

“You’re not a droid,” she agreed. “I’m sorry.”

Echo couldn’t accept her apology just yet, and simply let out a sigh as he laid back down.

“Are you almost done fixing my legs?” he bit out.

“I think so.”

She continued to work, Echo hearing the slight buzz and sizzle of the solder.

“I really am sorry for what I said. I hope you know I don’t see you that way. I… actually think you look pretty cool.”

“Oh, well I won’t tell Tech that,” Echo joked.

Someone must have had a comm on because Tech suddenly said, “I heard that.”

They laughed before lapsing into near-silence again.

“I guess I wouldn’t blame you if you did see me that way,” Echo admitted. “I even have a scomp.”

“And do you like having a scomp?” Phee asked slowly, carefully.

“Yeah, kinda,” Echo answered, surprising even himself. “I still kind of use it like my arm, and I like being able to help my team, and help others in this way. I know my body isn’t just for them, but I guess that’s who I am. I like helping. It’s what I was created for, basically. Plus you would not believe the kind of stuff droids have access to.”

“Echo, you’re telling me there’s droid porn?”

“That is not what I was getting at,” he laughed out.

“But there could be. You know that rule, if it exists there’s porn of it?”

Echo laughed more now, and Phee was laughing too.

“Fine, there’s probably droid porn,” he relented.

“Probably? I know there is. I swear, one time I caught MEL—”

“No, no, I don’t need to hear it.”

Their laughter continued.

“Okay, but I’ll keep it on the back burner for ya. Hey, what if you and MEL—”

“Are you trying to set me up?” he asked, completely incredulous.

Phee paused in her soldering, maybe to shrug. “Hey, I’ve seen it work before.”

“You’re crazy,” Echo muttered.

“Why do you think Tech likes me?”

“Oh, so he does?”

Phee gave him a light shove on his arm. “Shut up.”

Echo grinned, but then remembered what he had wanted to share:

“So… what I was trying to say earlier about my scomp is that the way the files show up in my brain is so… interesting. It’s like I’m not just my body anymore, but part of the information, part of something bigger. It feels… freeing.”

“Huh, sounds like a pretty good deal then.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

“Hey, Tech,” Phee asked, “I finished recalibrating the servos. Is he all set?”

“Yes. You can connect his legs back to the rest of his body now.”

“All right, brace yourself, Echo, in case I messed up.”

“I sure hope you didn’t.”

There were a few different metallic sounds, and then Echo could feel the ground against his legs again.

About time too because the pain in his back was thundering through him in this position.

“How about we test ‘em out before we get you all armored up again?”

Echo felt a bit odd being exposed still, but with Phee’s help he was able to stand. He had to tighten his abdomen to stay upright though, as his aching back wasn’t doing the work it should have been. That was going to get exhausting.

Echo tested out walking a few paces, Phee near at hand. He couldn’t believe how her presence had gone from strange and irritating to… well, a friend.

“Lookin’ good.”

Echo felt good too. His legs felt completely back to normal, no fake nerve tugging sensations or anything. But he grunted as he moved, the pain in his back worse than he had thought.

“Hey, you good?”

“My back,” he said, voice tight. “It’s hurting a lot.”

“Darn, I don’t have a medical scanner with me.”

“Tech or Hunter should have one.”

Phee was picking up her things, and handed Echo his blaster. “Let’s go find ‘em then.”

Hunter was correct, the tunnel did loop back around. It appeared that the others had taken care of all the pirates as they were nowhere in sight, save for a couple of bodies in the blue-gray cavern.

Light streamed down from holes up above to paint designs against the stone, and Omega was jumping from one patch of light to the other. Though she stopped at seeing Echo and came closer.

Echo was breathing hard and taking smaller steps without meaning to by the time the others caught up to Omega. Phee was holding onto his arm to aid him.

Before anyone could say anything, Phee pointed at him with a thumb. “Someone get a medical scanner and look at Echo’s back.”

Hunter immediately started searching through Tech’s pack, and came over.

“How bad do you feel?” he asked Echo.

Echo gave a tight laugh as he turned around for the scanner to better penetrate into his spine. “Oh, you know, I’ve had worse.”

Hunter gave a light laugh too.

“Nothing’s broken,” Hunter reported. “No herniated discs either, though we could get AZI to look at you, see if there’s something I missed. Seems like you’ve just got a nasty hematoma.”

“Really?” Echo asked, not liking what this meant for how he would have to live his life till he felt better. Already his abdomen was tired from the extra work.

“Yeah, you were definitely pretty purple,” Phee informed him.

Tech came over, Echo glancing over his shoulder at him.

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“Fascinating.”

Echo rolled his eyes. “Quit ogling my medical scan like a cadet seeing a woman for the first time, and tell me what’s going on.”

“I have never—” Tech began to say.

Wrecker said, “Sure you have. Remember that one time when Master—”

Hunter cut in, “I don’t think this is the time for embarrassing stories.”

“Oh, yeah,” Wrecker said. “Another time.”

“No, not another time,” Tech said. “I will not have you airing my embarrassing moments—”

“What is up with my back?” Echo asked. “We can embarrass you another time, Tech.”

Omega murmured to Hunter, “What are we all talking about?”

“Wait till you’re older.”

Echo laughed a bit at that.

Tech said, “Your hematoma is around one of your implants, so I assume it is causing you extra pain. Perhaps AZI will have a nerve block for you.”

Echo nodded, a strange mix of exhausted and amused.

Hunter helped Echo the rest of the way out of the cavern, though Tech, Wrecker, and Omega had all volunteered to do so.

Phee took Tech’s arm. “You know I’m going to have to hear those embarrassing stories sometime, right?”

Wrecker laughed. “Yeah!”

“So you’re really okay?” Hunter asked while Omega pestered Tech and Wrecker about stories of them as cadets—hopefully appropriate ones.

“I think so,” Echo said. “I felt… strange though. Like…” He swallowed roughly. “Like this isn’t actually my body,” he admitted.

“Well, if it’s worth anything,” Hunter began, “I like how your body is. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like what you’ve been through. But it’s the body of my friend, my brother. So to me, it’s just right.”

Echo blinked back tears. Hunter focused dead ahead to give him some privacy.

Echo nudged him with his shoulder, and Hunter nudged him back. He couldn’t say what he was feeling, couldn’t even put it into words. This was all he had.

Omega looked back at him and smiled.

Maybe this… maybe this was the right body for him. It was the body of someone who was loved.

Sunlight beamed down upon them once they exited the cave, and Echo thoroughly enjoyed its warmth.

#ailesswhumptober2024 #day 20 #star wars #the bad batch #tbb #tbb echo #tbb phee #tbb phee genoa #echo #phee genoa #fanfiction #writing #my writing

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talesfrommedinastation · 24 days ago

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“Let us go back to the original plan upon receiving the half-clone hybrid specimen–destroy it, as soon as you can,” said Tarkin, coldly, “Make sure that nothing remains. A simple bolt shot to the back of the head, and then thrown into a furnace.”

“That will be done, governor, as soon as we inform the Emperor of our progress,” replied Hemlock smoothly, cracking his knuckles.

'A Saint's Fire: Part 2', To Guard Against Titans

--------------------

Pictured above is CX-2 and Meg in the next chapter.

It's early, but dang it, I just couldn't say NO to a angry, exhausted, po'd Papa Bear brainwashed clone trooper and his daughter that's not his real daughter as he wields a gun to protect her from imperial fools.

Why am I drinking it's not even 5 pm on a Wednesday

Any diddly hoo, we are getting unhinged here near the end.

Dehumanizing clones/Belters and their families? Check.

Dark Trooper Phase 0? Check.

Tarkin and Hemlock acting like Eichmann and Mengele in space? Check.

Endless body horror because Dr. Meat Muffin rediscovered her love of the Aliens franchise? Check.

I promised To Guard Against Titans would be a lot more gruesome and scarier then Far Past the Ring, and I hope I'm delivering.

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archivewriter1ont · 2 months ago

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Starlight Lullaby (Fic #2 for Tech February)

Tech reminisces about his life during the Clone Wars and all that has happened since while he stays up to take care of his son. Little Darik might be sniffling with a cold, but he inherited Phee's ability to draw Tech out of his too-deep thoughts and bring him back to the present.

A quiet sniffle broke through the nighttime silence, a distinctly uncomfortable sound that was in direct contrast to the peaceful view outside the bedroom window. Tech looked up from his reading, and with a flick of his finger switched the light from his datapad screen to an even dimmer setting. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness that shrouded the room, he yawned – then he exhaled slowly, and listened to the stillness of the room. No more sniffles. But before his eyes could shift back to the screen, he yawned again. It surprised him a little, how quickly and happily his body was adjusting to a regular sleep schedule. The sniffle was louder this time and a single word accompanied it, plaintive as it rose softly over the rustle of soft blankets and very likely a stuffie of sort. "Papa?" Or, a semi-regular sleep schedule.

#tech february #9902 02 collection #tech x phee #techphee #the bad batch #tbb tech #tbb phee genoa #phee genoa #darik #techxphee baby!#darik is a little cinnamon roll #Darik has a cold and his papa is there to take care of him #stargazing #fix it happy fix #family fluff #father-son bonding #father son moment #Tech is the bestest papa

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snotbuggle · 8 months ago

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I think this is actually the first time I’ve drawn her?? That’s a shame. I should do it more often. Still trying to figure out how to adapt her features.

#I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with her hair tbh #I’ll figure it out eventually #star wars #the bad batch #star wars tbb #tbb #tbb phee #tbb phee genoa #phee genoa #bad batch phee

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ladyzirkonia · 1 year ago

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I love her your honor.

Phee Genoa in The Bad Batch 3.12 - The Juggernaut

#I love her so much #and tech he talked to her!!#about his brother #she's the only one who's instantly friendly to him #because Tech knew!!#tbb spoilers #the bad batch #the bad batch season 3 #tbb phee genoa #phee genoa #tbb tech #star wars #zirkonias gifs

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dangraccoon · 6 months ago

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It's Still You

Day 26 ~ nightmares ~

Tech x Phee

Word Count: 665 Content: PTSD, nightmare, brainwashing/mind control and the aftermath of it

Wind howled around him as he crouched on a rooftop. It chilled him down to the bone, but he ignored it, just as his conditioning required.

He could see the target through the reticle of his rifle’s scope. All he needed to do was shoot.

But then the target turned. He almost gasped as Phee Genoa smiled and laughed, unaware that her life was about to end.

“N-no,” he whispered, but his body moved without his permission, realigning the rifle, level with her head.

“Please, please,” he begged. “D-d-don’t!”

His body inhaled, then exhaled. It held its breath, finger moving to rest lightly on the trigger.

As the plasma burst from the end of the barrel, he screamed.

“Tech, it’s okay,” Phee whispered, her hand lightly touching his arm.

He looked around frantically. He wasn’t on that freezing rooftop. Phee wasn’t even the target of that mission, she was sitting next to him here, in their bed. He was home on Pabu, his partner beside him, and their tooka blinking curiously at him from the end of the bed.

“It’s alright,” Phee cooed, hand drifting to rub soft circles against his shoulder.

Once his breathing started to equalize, Tech turned to face her but kept his eyes shut tight, as though it would push away the bloody images in his mind. “I-I’m–”

“Nothing’ to be sorry for,” she hummed with practiced ease, hands gently pulling at him, but not pressuring.

He relented, allowing himself to be pulled tightly against her chest.

“It was just a nightmare,” she said.

“No,” he breathed, hating the way his shaking voice caused her hands to go still. “It was mostly a… a memory.”

She didn’t answer but smiled softly and nodded in a quiet encouragement to continue.

“It was a mission to… I-I cannot remember the name of the moon,” he said, his body–having no trouble remembering the cold–shivering despite the comfortable temperature of their home. “I was sent as…” he trailed off, his voice cracking beneath the weight of his guilt.

“As an assassin?” Phee filled in, her voice soft, unaccusing.

Tech felt like something was clawing up through his throat as he pushed himself up and out of her arms. He needed to move. Staying still wasn’t an option–you move or you’re dead.

He growled slightly as he pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes.

“Tech,” Phee said, her eyes shifting from sympathy to concern. “Come back to bed.”

His hands pushed up, fingers running through the short patch of curls that were still growing in after his Empire-issue buzzcut.

“Whatever you dreamt,” Phee murmured, rising to meet him at the end of the bed, her hand caressing the side of his face. “It’s in the past. They forced you to do awful things–”

“How can you hold me like this?” he asked, no louder than a whisper for fear of the crackling of his voice. “I… I killed in cold blood with ruthless efficiency… no matter the location, the… the target. Phee, how can you… live with me when I cannot live with myself?”

She huffed a slight laugh. “Tech, I love you. This,” she said, gesturing to him. “Is how. After you fell, you were used by those monsters. I know you know that you couldn’t control it because I know you tried, I know you fought. And this… misplaced guilt? It shows me that despite everything you’ve been through, it’s still you right here.” One hand pressed against his chest as the other wrapped around the harsh metal cybernetics that covered the entirety of his spine.

He let her pull him back into their bed, allowing himself to exist in the moment. Her soft words and touches pulled him up to the surface of the deep, dark pool of the thoughts that threatened to drown him, eventually soothing him into a blessedly peaceful sleep.

“I love you, Tech” she whispered against his skin as she pressed a soft kiss to his temple.

« Previous Day Next Day »

Thanks for reading! - River

Whumptober 2024 Masterlist DangRaccoon Masterlist Taglist Form Read on AO3

Tags: @writing-positivelyexisting @nekotaetae @lokigirlszendaya @get-wr3ckered @jediknightjana @idoubleswearimawriter @lucyysthings @unstable-kiwi @6oceansofmoons @l3xi3luv @winter-phoenix1995 @serenityselene @nomercyforthewarrior @ravenclawbitch426 @padawancat97 @error6gendernotfound @techs-goggles9902

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laughhardrunfastbekindsblog · 8 months ago

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Touched

Summer of Bad Batch 2024 | Week 13 | Prompt: "Stop touching me! / I'm not touching you!"

Summary: Tech has nerves of steel - well, most of the time. POV: Tech Rating: G (Word Count: 989)

Read on Ao3

Tech felt something brush across his neck before a weight settled on his shoulder, and he sighed in annoyance.

He and his squadmates were on their third assignment since graduating and being sent out to the field, and while all of them had gone through plenty of simulations to prepare them for survival in wilderness areas, this jungle planet in particular had made Wrecker more than a little jumpy – especially at night. And of course Wrecker somehow always ended up sleeping right next to Tech when not on watch duty, no matter how often Tech rearranged things when they set up camp for the night…

“Wrecker,” he hissed in an undertone, “would you kindly refrain from touching… Oh.”

Having turned his head to look at his shoulder, he cut himself off mid-sentence upon finding it was not the weight of Wrecker’s hand that he was feeling.

Wrecker snorted sleepily. “What’d I do now?” he whined softly, clearly only half awake.

Tech gingerly reached up to coax the creature onto his other hand before holding it up close to his goggled eyes for study. This must be what the natives called a tero spider, one of the species of Theraphosidae he had read about when researching the squad’s assignment. These in particular were non-venomous arachnids and by all accounts quite docile, though large and frightening enough in appearance that Tech knew Wrecker would never be able to sleep for the duration of the mission if he knew these could be scuttling around the campsite.

“Nothing, Wrecker,” Tech replied as he tapped his goggles to capture some recordings of the creature now sitting contentedly in his hand. “Go back to sleep.”

***

Tech, eyes narrowed in concentration as he studied his datapad while making his way along the path leading down to the shore, stopped when a hand gripped his arm, and gave a long-suffering sigh.

To help Shep and the engineers on Pabu plan out the rebuilding efforts, Tech, Hunter, Wrecker, and Omega had volunteered to scope out the extent of the damage the tidal wave had wrought on the docks and shoreline properties, with Phee opting to join them. Tech was well accustomed to the friendly punches on the shoulder Wrecker was wont to give him whenever Wrecker became overly enthusiastic or wanted to emphasize a point or draw Tech’s attention to something, and normally this didn’t bother Tech; but with all the recent excitement of being on Pabu and meeting so many new people, Wrecker had felt the need to emphasize and bring attention to so many things that Tech had just about reached his limit with his brother touching him.

“What is it now, Wrecker… Oh,” he broke off in confusion as he looked up to discover it was Phee who was resting her hand on his forearm.

He was suddenly grateful he hadn’t acted on the impulse to step back and shake off what he had thought was his brother’s grip, though it currently felt like his heart had leaped into his throat – a most peculiar sensation.

“What’d’cha say, Tech?” Wrecker now asked as he came up from behind with Omega and Hunter.

“Nothing,” Tech returned automatically as his siblings stepped around him to forge ahead on the path leading to the right. He now recognized he was feeling the same sudden rush of startled adrenaline he had felt forty-two hours ago when Phee had touched his shoulder while giving him the coordinates to Pabu; the fact that he had had the same reaction every time Phee had been in physical contact with him was a pattern lending to his current hypothesis that he felt more deeply about Phee than just as one of his family’s allies…

“Something wrong?” Phee queried, raising one brow at him.

“No,” he said, realizing he was in a quandary: he desperately wanted to move but instinctively knew that if he did, she would break contact, and so here he remained, frozen in place.

“Okay then, just wanted to let you know we’re supposed to be heading this way,” she said, gesturing with her other hand to indicate that Tech had been about to take the wrong path. “You’re gonna get yourself lost with your attention on that datapad all the time,” she added with a small smile.

His racing heart and the nervous heat building within him would soon manifest in a blush if he didn’t compose himself soon, and that would be humiliating. Research, constructing devices, and sharing his knowledge were the main non-combat areas in which he felt most comfortable; since there was nothing to engineer at the moment and Phee seemed to think he should put down the datapad for now, that left talking as his best option.

“Since this datapad is equipped with various navigation and positioning systems, it would be nearly impossible to get lost while using it. Besides, all clones have an excellent sense of direction – it is part of our bioengineering.”

Phee rolled her eyes at him but still smiled as she stepped away, letting her hand drop from his arm – to both his great relief and disappointment.

Well, at least he could move now… though he found himself wondering when, if ever, he would be daring enough to initiate physical contact with her outside of life-and-death situations like tidal waves…

“Are you suggesting I don’t know where we should be going?” Phee was saying lightly.

“Well,” he said, still desperately trying to recover from the feeling that he had just had his feet knocked out from under him, “given that you are much better acquainted with the layout of this island than I am, I am inclined to follow your lead.”

Phee chuckled now. “Let’s stick together, then, shall we?” she said, playfully shouldering him before starting back down the path.

He was finally feeling more settled, though he couldn’t hide a small smile as he matched her pace. “Indeed we shall.”

@summer-of-bad-batch

#the bad batch #star wars the bad batch #tbb tech #tbb wrecker #tbb phee genoa #techphee #tbb fanfiction #summer of bad batch 2024 #week 13 #stop touching me / i'm not touching you

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