The Bad Batch: One Shot Collection

The Domino Batch

"These are Tech, Wrecker, and Crosshair," Hunter introduces, pointing to each of them in turn.

"And we're Fives, Hevy, Cutup, Droidbait and – " Fives starts to introduce.

"And Echo?" Crosshair asks, with a far too mischievous smile.

This is never going to go away, is it?

"Tech hated his name too, 'til he got used to it," Wrecker says cheerfully, punching Tech's shoulder. His brother ignores him entirely. Echo can relate.

"Well, I think we've all got training to be attending before we get ourselves in even worse trouble," Echo grumbles.

"That's our specialty," Crosshair promises.

"Yeah, it's ours too," Cutup agrees sounding far too flippant.

His brothers are all stupid. "Why is it yours?" Echo asks.

"The regs don't like us much," Hunter replies, "So we get in fights a lot."

"I like you," Fives tells them cheerfully, "I suppose we'll see you later."

They start to disperse after that.

Echo has to grudgingly admit he's intrigued by the group. Though, he's pretty sure they would give him far more of a headache when it comes to following the rules than even his own squad could ever manage doing.

***

It's not the first time Cutup's got beaten up by his trainer. And at this point, about all he can do is laugh about it. It's a little bit funny, anyway. Even if it's definitely going to bruise.

He's heading out and back to his barracks when he sees someone dart out of the shadows.

"Crosshair?" Cutup asks, looking down at him. "What are you doing out here?"

Crosshair looks up at him mischievously. "That's classified intel," he says seriously.

"Oh, is it now?" Cutup asks dryly.

He nods.

Which is when Cutup notices that he's holding a tiny handful of something that he's trying really hard to keep hidden.

"What's that?" he has to ask, a bit amused, "I won't tell if you don't."

"Extra snacks for Wrecker. And a little for me," Crosshair gives in finally, "I took them from the kitchen."

Cutup laughs. Yes, it's against regulations. But well, it's a very minor breach anyway. He approves. "Good luck," he tells him dryly as they keep walking.

"Why're you limping?" Crosshair asks, eyeing him.

"I may have annoyed my trainer."

"The brain head?" Crosshair asks, "Oh, yeah. He looks sort of easy to annoy."

Cutup can't help chuckling again. "Brain head?"

"That's what his head looks like."

"It does," he has to agree dryly. "He says it's my fault my squad is failing."

"That's what he beat you up for? Mine does that to me sometimes, too." He shrugs a little. "But now I'm better than all the regs. So, they beat me up instead."

Cutup winces a little. "Sounds tough." He's never been at the top of any of his classes – that would be a hard thing to beat, definitely not consistently, so he wouldn't know what that would be like. Usually, he just fails for being too goofy. He kind of finds it amusing at this point, at least as long as he's still good enough to be a soldier.