levi-venn · 1 year ago
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Cross and Tech and Omega and Egg
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 (Final) Available also on AO3
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When CT-9904, the clone that would one day become "Crosshair", was first pulled from his birthing tank, he did not cry.  
This was by design.
Engineered to become a “stealth soldier”, 04's vocal cords were shaped so that he could not raise his voice above a frustrated rasp. It was often muted by his incubator.
CT-9903, who would one day adopt the moniker "Tech", was also silent, but this was always a cause for concern. When 03 was quiet, he was most likely attempting his next escape. He had kicked the latch off his first incubator. He had poked the hinges off his second. By the third, Nala Se had nowhere to put the baby escape artist.
Putting 03 in 04's incubator was supposed to be a temporary solution.
A week later, when the new, reinforced incubator arrived, she picked up 03, and found his hand locked with 04's with an iron grip. 
CT-9903 cried. 
CT-9904 hissed.
And so, the ever patient Nala Se left 03 where he was there.  There were no more escape attempts after that.
One day, CT-9903 began to cry.
Nala Se was in the middle of calming 05 who was trying to wreck the changing table with tiny, but mighty fists.
"Omega, see to 03, please, he needs to be changed."
Omega slid off her stool and without looking up from her datapad she said. "It's 04 who needs changing."
"How do you know?" Nala Se asked.
"03 cries louder when 04 needs help."
***
Too bright. Too loud. Deafening silence. Sudden isolation. Stimuli deprived and overloaded. Nothing. Everything. Relentless. Overwhelming.
Even if Crosshair did have the capability to scream, he'd never give the science officers the satisfaction. Let them wonder the limits of his body and the sanity of his mind. 
He lost count of how many experiments they put him through, but one thing always remained the same: He gave them no data to work with.
Until today.
Omega didn't see him. The stormtroopers were moving her and Nala Se towards the lifts, and the glass chamber he was kept in was too far from the main hall, and there were too many other cells and test subjects between them. But there she was, shooting defiant looks at the troopers as they shoved her along.
It broke Crosshair in a way these scientists couldn't.
He tried to call out to her, but his throat was dry, his vocal chords ached, and his very DNA denied him. All he could do was let out a raspy growl.
The scientists took note of the sounds. It was the first reaction they had received from him. They congratulated themselves on their findings.
Omega disappeared into the elevator. She never looked back.
A science officer turned a dial. There was a lightning strike of agony. And Crosshair passed out.
***
It was dusk when Crosshair woke up in his cell. An obsidian eye gazed unblinkingly at him. Egg's caw was subdued. It usually was on lab days.
He shakily rose to the window with his plate to share his corn and bits of unidentifiable meat, when he saw something that wasn't there for him this morning: a travel biscuit.
Tech came by. Crosshair told him not to, but he still-
Suddenly, Tech popped up in the window. "You're back!"
Crosshair was mid-bite into the biscuit and choked, turning away to cough. "Tech, dank farrik!"
"A human cough,” Tech declared, “has the estimated speed of a hundred and sixty kilometers per hour. A wookiee cough averages two hundred kilometers an hour."
"I told you to stay away."
“You did,” Tech said simply, breaking his own biscuit in half to offer to Egg. “But I disregarded your request. Consider this revenge for ignoring my wish for solitude when my legs were being reset."
“You carry grudges that long?" Crosshair asked, his amusement outweighing his exhaustion. "I just wanted your dinner roll."
“I see…” Tech said, then reached into the cell to snatch the biscuit out of Crosshair’s, hand. He took a bite, then handed it back. “Now we’re even.”
"Tech…Omega is here,” Crosshair murmured.
Tech’s face fell for a fraction of a moment, before it gave way to an analytical frown. “How long has she been here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were they experimenting on her?”
“Not that I could see.”
Tech was quiet for a moment. “When our brothers-”
Crosshair slammed his hand against the bars. Egg ruffled his feathers and let out a craah of protest. “I swear on the kriffing stars if you finish that sentence I’ll-” he stopped himself, not because he physically couldn’t do anything, but because the devastation in Tech’s eyes obliterated the empty threat. "If they do come, let it be for her. Let me rot here. I made my choice. I deserve-.”
"Give me your hand." Tech said, evenly.
“What? Why?”
Tech removed his glove and slipped his bare hand through the bars. “Because you need it.”
Crosshair stared at the hand, his memories drifting to the first record-shattering storm on Kamino he had ever experienced.
“When will it be over?” Crosshair had snarled, curling around his cadet rifle on his bunk while the storm raged outside.
“By my calculations," Tech said, laying in the bunk below him, "another three hours and then the winds will carry it Southward.”
“I hate your calculationsss,” Crosshair hissed, pressing his cheek against the cool metal surface of the rifle barrel.
“You can’t hate calculations,” Tech said, climbing onto Crosshair’s bunk. “They didn’t do anything wrong.”
Crosshair said nothing, hiding his face in his pillow.
“Give me your hand.” Tech said, laying down on the other side of the rifle. 
Crosshair wanted to say no, but just then thunder shattered the sky outside as if trying to get into their room and pull them all into the sea. Crosshair’s hand shot out and clasped his brothers.
“The fear of thunder and lightning," Tech said, "is called Astraphobia. It isn't an irrational fear as an ocean storm is the most vast and dangerous sort of storm. We, however, are in a structure designed to withstand a storm twice this size,” Tech said. "It is safe." 
It is safe…
Crosshair looked at his brother's hand extended to him through the bars. Scarred and callused like his, familiar and different, but always safe.
“We aren’t leaving without you both," Tech said, his hand suspended patiently. "I’m not leaving without you. You have my word."
Crosshair clutched Tech's hand and Tech pulled him forward slightly, giving Crosshair's hand a sturdy jerk as if to shake loose any resistance to his words. "Do you trust me?" Tech asked.
Crosshair tried to summon a biting reply, something to chase away the comforting relief this simple contact created. 
Instead he pressed his head against the cell bars and squeezed Tech’s hand tightly. “I trust you.”
***
A week later, when Tech woke up, he didn't know the Marauder was coming to Weyland the following morning.
Even if he did know, it wouldn't have changed his plans for the day. Egg still would still screech in his face, urging him to get up. He still would make the trek back to the facility. 
The last few days Crosshair seemed to be in better spirits all things considered. Today was lab day, Tech was determined to make it back to Crosshair's window before then, travel biscuits stocked on the window sill, hand ready to hold.
Until then, Tech and Egg were on a mission.
There were other windows to look into. Tech had looked into most of them searching for his sister without success. Today, he was down to his last four windows.
The first two were empty, the last one had a pair of Devronian hands clutching the bars. The third, however, a tuft of blonde hair could be seen and little else, as if a very small humanoid was gazing up at the cloudy blue sky.
It was then that Tech executed his three-phase mission:
Phase One: Establish that he is alive and well.
Phase Two: Inform Omega that Crosshair is also in the facility. 
Phase Three: An ongoing phase. Tech would do his best to split his time between Crosshair and Omega. This may prove difficult, both in travel times…and the length of time away from his brother. 
Even now, Tech found himself wishing he was at Crosshair's window, waiting for him to return. Waiting to be reassured his brother had survived whatever the science officers put him through that day. But Omega may need him, too. He would do whatever he could for his siblings, with his limited resources of travel biscuits and various informational tidbits.
Phase one began similarly to how he presented himself to Crosshair: A neatly carved message on a piece of wood light enough for Egg to carry. 
Egg made himself comfortable on Tech's shoulder, sometimes watching with keen interest and other times preening Tech's unruly hair.
The message read [Tech Lives]. 
Seemed direct enough.
Egg flew up to the window and Tech could hear his sister's startled gasp followed by an inquisitive voice. "Oh hello! Are you a crow? Where'd you come from? What do you have there?"
Tech used to ask questions like this to every single person and animal he met. He wondered if they both received this inquisitiveness from Jango Fett or perhaps Omega picked this up from Tech.
Oddly enough, he hoped for the latter.
"What?" Omega exclaimed, evidently reading the message. "Who gave you this?"
Tech raised a finger. "That would be me."
The whole point of this gently revealed plot twist was to avoid any loud outburst that may rouse a guard.
It didn't work.
"Tech!!!" Omega shouted.
Tech grimaced, but he waved. "We should keep our voices at a reasonable volume."
"I knew you were alive! I knew it! I kept saying 'we never saw a body. He's still out there!"
Tech touched the side of his temple, missing his goggles immensely. "The 'No Body, No Death' Theory is not an exact science, Omega."
"It is for us," Omega said, stubbornly.
Tech smiled. "Are you alright?"
Omega shrugged. "They brought me here to push Nala Se into working on a project. I've been assisting her. Don't know exactly what we're doing yet, but it involves clone science and advanced genetic manipulation."
"It may or may not have something to do with whatever they are doing to Crosshair here."
"Crosshair is here?!" Omega bounced up and down, presumably on a bed. "Is he okay?"
"No."
Omega's pained expression made Tech wish he could have presented that answer gently. "But he will be," he added.
"Is this crow a friend of yours?" Omega asked, stroking Egg's chest feathers.
"More precisely Crosshair's friend. His name is Egg."
"Because he likes eggs?"
"Evidently."
"I've missed you, Tech." Omega hoisted herself up to get a better look at him. "I'm glad you're okay."
"I'm also glad you're well. My advice is continuing your work with Nala Se. Don't raise a ruckus and-"
"And our brothers will find us! Soon!" Omega said with far more confidence than Tech felt at this point.
"My thoughts exactly."
"There's something else you should know." Omega said, stroking Egg's feathered chest. "There's a scientist here. She's a clone, too…I don't think she was made on Kamino, though. She might have been born here."
"That's unsettling. Jango's genetic code has been depleted as far as I know. She would be a very distant relation to us."
"She's not one of us," Omega said, venomous. "If she was, she wouldn't be hurting our brother."
Tech wished he had his goggles, more importantly the camera attached to it. He could have provided Crosshair proof that his siblings care about him, indisputably.
"I'm inclined to agree."
"If Crosshair's not okay, Tech, you should go back to him."
"You don't need me to stay with you?" Tech asked.
"I'm with Nala Se. I'll be fine. Go back to Crosshair."
Tech nearly left immediately, but his concern for his sister lingered. "Are you sure, Omega?"
"He needs you," she said, with a knowing smile. "And you need him too. It's always been that way."
Tech frowned at the pointed statement…and frowned further at the truth of it. 
He didn't have time to ponder, he needed to get back to Crosshair. 
He needs me. My need to know he's alright is purely a coincidence. 
Tech climbed up to Crosshair's window, ducking out of sight just as the droids dumped his brother onto the metal floor of his cell. Tech wasn't prone to anger, his logic cooled his temper before it could boil, but he felt the light crunch in his hand before realizing he had crushed one of the travel biscuits in his trembling fist. 
He waited for the sound of marching droids to fade away, then he sat up and set the biscuit on the sill. Then he waited.
Egg cawed. Incessantly at first. Then mournfully. Then sat quietly and waited, too.
Dusk turned to night. 
Tech felt a knot in his gut as he gazed at the stars. There was a time when he and his brothers would lay out on the roof of Kaminoan science center, watching for the clouds to part just long enough to see stars. 
Tech would try to identify as many planets as he could before they disappeared again. 
Crosshair would make up planets to annoy Tech and they'd get into a slap fight. 
Wrecker insisted they were just dumb little lights. 
Hunter swore he'd visit every single planet before the war was done with him.
It wasn't so long ago, but it was several lifetimes ago. They were different. The galaxy was different. Tech knew it was useless to grieve for the past. Life is ever changing and evolving. He did wish he had spent more time cherishing those moments, however. 
They are over too quickly to quantify.
Egg flapped and let out a soft craah. 
"Tech…"
Tech's glove was already removed when he sat up, reaching into the cell to clutch Crosshair's hand. "I'm here."
"You're late," Crosshair sneered, tiredly. 
"So are you."
"Omega?"
"She's fine. They aren't hurting her. I believe she's leverage to press Nala Se into the Imperial service. She asked about you."
"Course she did," Crosshair said, dryly.
"Believe it or not, Crosshair, I'm not the only one who mourned your loss to the Empire."
Crosshair grunted in response. 
He fell quiet. His grip on Tech's hand was weakening. When he spoke again, his voice sounded hollow…distant… "I'm tired, Tech. I don't know how much more I can take."
Tech tightened his hold on Crosshair's hand. "Think of it as a sunk cost fallacy. You've come this far. You've endured this much. You might as well keep going until-"
Crosshair's hand slipped suddenly from his. 
"Crosshair?"
He heard Crosshair collapse on the bed. 
"Cross?!"
Tech pressed his face against the bars, but could only see a blurry darkness. 
Egg tapped the bars insistently, letting out a distressed chitter. 
Then they both fell quiet.
And listened.
Faintly…Tech heard a very light snore. 
Logic did nothing to soothe Tech's nerves at this moment. He was tired too. He was also hungry. Starving actually. Travel biscuits didn't have enough nutritional value for a full day's energy and he saved most of the biscuits for Crosshair.
They were both on borrowed time.
Tech leaned against the wall beside Crosshair's window, then slowly slumped over, curling up as best he could.
In addition to being uncomfortable sleeping on the concrete slab it was also dangerous to fall asleep on a high ledge. He didn't care. Tonight, just for tonight, he needed to be near his brother.
***
Crosshair awoke to what sounded like a sarcastic rooster mocking the morning sun.
It was Egg. Of course it was Egg. And it was most definitely sarcastic.
When Crosshair slowly rose from his cot, still sore from the previous days experiments, he didn't see Egg's scrutinizing gaze, however, he saw his tail feathers.
"Egg," he wheezed, holding his aching side as he struggled to stand on the cot. "What're you looking at?"
Tech was curled up on the ledge. His brother slept here all night. 
Crosshair didn't remember much when he came back to his cell, his mind foggy from the drugs and his body pushed to a limit he didn't expect. 
He must have passed out. And it must have scared the dank out of Tech.
He sighed and picked up the half eaten biscuit left on the sill. There were a few peck marks but it seemed Egg left most of it for him..He threw it at Tech, which bounced off his cheek.
Tech didn't move. Crosshair rolled his eyes. 
In their cadet days, Crosshair often had to  physically roll Tech off his bunk to get him up. Tech didn't just sleep, he'd pass out. There was no such thing as a steady sleep schedule for him and every few days his body would crash. 
Crosshair had been so wrapped up in his own situation it didn't occur to him that Tech was more alone than he. 
…and what else has he eaten besides travel biscuits? 
The droids had already dropped off his stale hash brown and eggs this morning. Crosshair took two bites, gave a little egg to his crow and set the rest aside for Tech to wake up. That would be their routine from now on, he decided. Crosshair could live on very little food, he'd give the rest to his brother. 
His brother who needed him.
Something distant in the cloudy sky caught Crosshair's gaze. At first he thought it was another crow, though he hadn't seen another since Egg showed up.
It wasn't a freighter either. Not an imperial one. And it was coming in at an odd, off-kilter angle, something Hunter often did when flying covertly under radar, though not nearly as gracefully as Tech.
Hunter…
"Tech!" Crosshair wheezed. "Tech, get up!"
Tech shot up, hair sticking up every which way, his cheek creased from laying on the rough ledge. "CT-9903 reporting for…duty…." 
He blinked and looked up at Crosshair. "What happened?"
Crosshair smirked. "G'morning, sunshine." He nodded to the horizon. "You were right."
Tech followed his gaze, shielding his eyes from the sun. "They found us?"
Crosshair couldn't stop smiling if he tried. It was a thin smile, almost a sneer, and it made his cheeks ache. It felt good. "You sound surprised."
Tech whipped his head back at Crosshair, squinting and smiling. "Not surprised, just…shocked…that it took so long."
"Uh huh…Hunter and Wrecker aren't exactly the brains of our operation. You and I were always the smarter ones."
"I would never say that."
"You always say that."
Tech adjusted his non-existent goggles. "Perhaps…occasionally." He stretched and winced. "I better go meet them and give them the intel."
Crosshair dryly. "I'll stay here and watch the place."
Tech smirked. "Rest. Eat. We'll be together again soon."
Crosshair's jaw tightened, trying to summon the pessimism that kept his sanity stable, but he was tired, and in pain, and full of kriffing hope.
"Fine," Crosshair said, quietly.
Tech started to leave, legs swung over the edge of the platform. He paused. "Cross…?"
Tech rarely called him that. Just as Crosshair rarely called him "Techie". The names were reserved only for the rare moments fear and rarer moments of sentimentality. The last time he was called Cross, Wrecker had blown himself up with his own damn grenade. 
When they left behind cadet training and dove head first into combat missions neither of them could afford childish fear or vulnerabilities. They left the nicknames behind with their childhoods.
"After you're free, Tech said, "we will drop you off wherever you want to go…" Tech's eyes seemed bigger even without the goggles magnifying them. "But I hope you stay with us."
Egg clicked indignantly at Tech.
"Egg, too?" Crosshair asked.
"Of course."
"I'll let Egg decide. He's the real brains of this operation."
"While I can't argue with that as he was the reason I found you, how do we know what he will-"
Egg flapped noisily with a shrill squawk and landed on top of Techs head, seating himself and screeching pointedly at Crosshair.
Tech grimaced, careful not to move. "Well….that seemed evident to me. Do you concur, Cross?"
"I concur…Techie," Crosshair smirked. "Now get me the hell out of here."
---
Thank you so much for reading. I’m grateful for the kind words, memes, and I loved the fanart of Egg!
If you enjoyed my writing, please consider checking out my book “Error: Detective Not Found (A Cake Pop Noir)”. You can find more info on it on my main tumblr account @blueberryhelper
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notherpuppet · 5 months ago
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Good morning 🍎📻
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lotus-pear · 1 month ago
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charm stat at debonair ‼️‼️
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likeprongstostars · 3 months ago
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james: can we keep them
*distant roaring*
regulus: sure if you survive their mother
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selfindulgentraptor · 9 months ago
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Thinking about his wings
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corviiids · 10 months ago
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got into bg3 a few months ago and it's about time i inflicted my astarion posts on tumblr. i sure post about him a lot. you'll never guess who my favourite character is. that's right! it's gale
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frogfacey · 3 months ago
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swinging a bat at a hornets nest and all that but I can't believe some ppl will see a character who, when you look them for more than two seconds, was in the text assigned male at birth and because of this spends the entire narrative being miserable as a man and feels failed by and is accused of failing at the expectations of masculinity and is trapped in a set of unspoken societal rules that he feels he has no hope of escaping and their first thought is "I think he's transmasc!"
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eggnogtoast · 3 months ago
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get a load of this guy.
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lilybug-02 · 3 months ago
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This kiddo is absorbing about 20% of the lore.
Bug Fact: The Mexican Jumping Bean gets it's characteristic jump from the moth larvae that pupates within it.
First || Prev // Next
Masterpost
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nestedfeathers · 3 months ago
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it must be hard, seeing what others dont
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levi-venn · 1 year ago
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Tech and Crow
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 (Final) Available also on AO3)
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On Eriadu, statistically speaking, humanoids died more often from unnatural causes than old age.
Seventy percent perished from animal attacks.
Ten from disease.
Eighteen percent from venomous plants. 
One-point-ninety nine percent from the Empire.
The remaining zero-point-zero-one percent were given to those flinging themselves from a moving monorail car to save their siblings from death.
Eriadu is not an ideal place to die, Tech thought, midfall. But it’s preferable to dying on a fool’s mission for Sid.
For a few treasured seconds he seemed to be floating rather than falling, the cloud cover making it near impossible to orient himself in any direction, though his stomach was telling him his back would meet the ground first. It would be a painful, but hopefully quick death.
The trees, however, had other ideas, both on how Tech would land, and whether he would survive or not.
The first branch shattered against Tech’s pauldron sending him spinning. Another branch broke against his shin guard. There was a nest of twigs, cotton, and unfertilized eggs that slammed into his helmet essentially blinding him.
As he continued in this downward spiral he attempted to quantify how many branches were needed to slow his fall and increase his survival rate. The fact he was hitting branches once every half second told him the odds were in his favor. Evidently, the Eriadian redwood forest was an ideal place to free fall from a considerable height.
Good to know.
While he couldn't control the rate in which he was falling, nor the amount of branches he was shattering, he did manage to land on his back. And in doing so, he jettisoned the remaining breath from his lungs.
He lay there, very still, unfortunately awake, and gasping for air that wouldn't come. Darkness crept around the edge of his vision. He struggled to stay awake. Struggled to breathe. Panic was rising within him.
There is no need to panic, he tried to remind himself. This is just a reaction to present trauma. There is no immediate danger. Breathe...breathe...
Even as the breath returned to him, a new problem arose. He couldn't slow his breathing down, nor calm his heart rate, and the anxiety frayed his nerves as if he were still falling. 
He tried a different tactic: He recalculated the unnatural death toll on Eriadu:
Seventy percent perished from animal attack.
Ten from disease.
Eighteen percent from venomous plants. 
And now two percent from the Empire.
As a youngling, Tech's exceptional mind had mastered every intellectual acuity test presented to him. However, no amount of brilliance would help him when it came to combat training. All altered clones had a defect in one form or another. His came in the shape of bowed and twisted legs, not suitable for a soldier.
It was logical that the Kaminoans broke his legs to reset them. Logical and agonizing. Tech was bed-ridden for weeks. 
They gave him a datapad filled with as much reading material as he could absorb, but even then there was no distracting him from the pain nor the panicked episodes that came with it.
He didn’t want visitors. Didn’t want to appear weak to his brothers. Soldiers weren’t bed-ridden. Soldiers didn’t cry from fear of an uncertain future.
Crosshair ignored Tech’s request for isolation. He appeared every day, three times a day, always for meals. He claimed he was just there to steal Tech’s bread roll, but he only ever took a bite and stayed long after Tech ate the rest of the meal.
Crosshair wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but he would sit on the edge of Tech’s bed, cleaning his beloved DC-15A cadet blaster rifle, and casually ask Tech questions. 
“Why do Kaminoans have such long necks?”
“Who would win in a fight? A Jedi with a vibroblade or a Mandalorian with a lightsaber?”
“How many B1s would it take to equal the power of Jango Fett?”
Tech stared up at the Eriadian sky, mostly obscured by broken branches and his cracked and smudged lens. 
He’d give anything for one of Crosshair’s thinly veiled questions to distract him from the pain and panic.
And truly...he’d give anything to see Crosshair again, regardless.  
***
It took fourteen days and seventeen hours to find Mount Tantiss on the planet, Weyland. It would have taken half that time if Tech had his goggles, a working datapad, and (admittedly) his siblings. Fourteen days was plenty of time to heal his body from its fall, but even at peak condition the climb up the mountain was arduous. Tedious even. Slower as he had to make camp and find food and disarm Imperial sensors the whole way up.
Seventy-eight hours later, he found himself at the base of the Imperial science facility. 
He also found himself exhausted.
“Come on, Tech! You can do it!” Hunter had cheered all those years ago as young Tech clung to the middle rung of the monkey-lizard bars high over the training grounds. The platform might as well be located on another planet.
Tech’s legs had been reset the previous year. He was fully healed. There was no excuse for this fragility. Yet his muscles shook with effort, sweat poured down his face, stinging his eyes.
“I’m gonna get him,” Wrecker said.
“No!” Hunter pulled his brother back. “He can do it!”
“No, he can’t! Look at him!” Wrecker whined, face full of worry. 
“C’mon, Tech! A little further!” Hunter looked worried too, even as he cheered his brother on. 
Even as Tech’s grip began to slip.
To this day, Tech didn't remember Crosshair's reaction to his failure that day. What was the point of recalling it, anyway?
Utterly meaningless, he always told himself when he'd try to recall. And he would attempt this often.
***
A carrion crow visited Tech the morning after he collapsed from fatigue a kilometer from the science facility. 
The corvid landed on his back, then proceeded to hop in little circle as if Tech was his own personal, albeit ineffective, trampoline.
Tech hadn’t noticed he had become an amusement ride for the crow until it cawed rather rudely and directly into his ear.
Jolting awake at the caustic alarm, Tech jumped to his feet, pulling his blaster and pointing it at...a few feathers that had been jostled from the startled bird. The crow landed on a nearly smooth boulder nearby, croaking as if flabbergasted by the audacity of Tech’s reaction, then flew off in a cackling rage.
The day was spent doing recon of the area. The sheer density of this side of the jungle kept troopers away, and by nightfall Tech had made a decent, albeit temporary, base.
That evening Tech dreamed.
“You remember ‘C’, don’t you?” Tech asked the small boy sitting beside him. It was a very real memory, but his subconscious twisted timelines, making him a fully grown adult sitting next to a small, gray-haired boy hunched over the datapad, stylus awkward in his little fingers.
“I remember,” Crosshair said, stubbornly, stylus making a vertical line.
“C is for curved,” Tech recited the pneumonic, smiling to himself as Crosshair quickly readjusted his stylus, making a shaky but clear C.
“Now an ‘R’.”
Crosshair hissed in frustration, stylus lifting and lowering onto the screen making little angry dots on the workbook page. “I don’t want to.”
“Shall we do it together?” Tech asked.
“No,” Crosshair insisted, even as he sat closer to Tech and leaned against him. Tech put his hand over his brother's to guide him. “Up, and around, and down to the ground.” Tech said.
“I can do ‘O’ by myself,” Crosshair said, pushing Tech’s hand off of his own, though he still leaned against Tech as he drew a mathematically perfect circle. 
The dream had taken liberties, but the scene was more or less how Tech remembered Crosshair writing his name for the first time. The dream neglected to recall Crosshair asking Tech not to tell their brothers that he struggled to write his own name.
But Tech was allowed to know. Only Tech. And Tech kept his word to this day.
“Let’s see how you did,” Tech said, in this more or less accurate dream.
He picked up the datapad and read in perfectly block letters.
[H E L P  M E]
Tech startled awake. 
He told himself it was just a dream. Memories and information and out of context stimuli colliding together into something nonsensical.
Utterly meaningless, he told himself, even as he wiped the tears from his cheeks.
It was still night. The moonlight punched its way through the canopy of trees, offering illumination that only helped to remind Tech just how alone he was on this mountain.
Actually, Tech corrected, the moon doesn’t illuminate anything. The light I’m seeing is a reflection of the sun. 
This factoid did little to alleviate the situation. 
But he felt better acknowledging it.
***
The crow returned the next morning holding something in its beak: a small pinecone, young and green. The pinecone had no nutritional value to the corvid, nor was it proper nesting material.
Crows have been known to offer gifts as a sign of gratitude for an agreeable exchange or action.
The gift was obviously not for Tech considering he had pulled a blaster on the corvid upon their first meeting.
Who are you giving your gifts to? Tech wondered. A bored trooper? A sensitive officer? A desperate prisoner?
“A desperate prisoner wouldn’t sacrifice food for trinkets,” he concluded to the crow.
The crow hopped around the boulder once, twice, then flew directly at Tech, who ducked just as the crow smacked a wing against his head mid-flight. Even with the pinecone in his beak, Tech swore he could hear a throaty cackle.
Tech continued his recon of the science facility as best he could without being discovered. Getting close to the building wasn’t an issue, it was getting near anything resembling an entrance that was the issue. He had one blaster against an unknown amount of guards, which meant all he could do was recon. And then he would fill his siblings in when they arrived.
It never occurred to him his brothers and sister wouldn’t eventually come to the same conclusion as he. They would find this planet. They would find Tech and receive his very useful intel, and then they would save Crosshair. The squad would finally be reunited.
It would all work out. It had to.
He couldn’t afford to think of the alternative. Worrying about it was useless.
Utterly meaningless…
***
The next morning, he awoke before dawn. No crow was waiting for him.
Trying a different tactic, he broke off a bit of plastoid from his cracked pauldron and set it on the crow’s boulder.
He waited.
Just after dawn, the crow landed on the boulder, cawing immediately at Tech, feathers literally and proverbially ruffled at an unauthorized object occupying his boulder.
But then the corvid calmed, eyeing the object properly, pecking at it as if appraising its value.
“I assure you, it is of a high-quality material,” Tech told the crow. “The fact it is broken means it worked as intended. It did not survive the fall so that I could.”
The crow listened, or at least stared at Tech with intensely black eyes, and then decided - perhaps entirely on his own - to take the plastoid and fly off.
This time Tech ran after crow. 
As he hypothesized, the crow flew directly towards the science facility.
Tech kept his goggleless eyes to the sky as he ran, thanking his imperfect genetics that he was far-sighted, allowing him to track the crow in his pursuit. So long as the crow didn't require him to read a datapad, he only needed to worry about the thick underbrush tearing his compromised under-armor, thorny vines scratching his cheeks, and the uneven ground threatening to trip and trap him.
“Come on, Tech! You can do it!” Hunter’s words echoed in his mind. He chose not to think of Wrecker’s face full of doubt. The crack in Hunter’s voice betraying his words.
Actually, Tech realized. I can do it. 
A crow is capable of flying over ninety kilometers an hour. Tech, even at his healthiest, could reach thirty kilometers an hour.
The crow wants me to follow him, but to where?
As if to answer, the crow suddenly dove towards a hole in the fortress and Tech skidded to a stop just below it.
He gazed quietly at the barred window approximately seven meters above him, the crow’s tail feathers twitching and wiggling as it seemed to be eating something on the sill. 
And then he saw it. Briefly. A flash of familiar fingers. Long and callused and always itching to pull a trigger. 
Fingers that used to wrap around Tech’s hand when the lightning was too bright outside. Fingers that would hold soggy bread in the rain, hoping to conjure a bird that would never come. Fingers that could draw shaky C's and perfect circles.
I found you, Tech thought, his heartbeat growing irregular from this sudden turn of events. Now to get your attention.
***
“Where the hell are your goggles?”
It wasn’t not the first question Tech expected, but a fair one nonetheless.
Tech touched his temple reflexively, trying to adjust goggles that clearly weren’t there. “A long story that I can narrate at a later time. Are you hurt?”
Crosshair pressed his forehead against the bars. “What do you think?”
It wasn’t the answer Tech had hoped to hear.
“How did you know the crow was coming to my cell?” Crosshair asked.
“You used to birdwatch when we were children. That combined with the lack of incentive for anyone on this base to feed a carrion bird. It was obvious. So I gave the corvid a message to give to you.”
“His name is Egg.”
“Egg?” Tech frowned up at Crosshair. “Why is his name Egg?”
“He likes Eggs.”
“So, by that logic, if he enjoyed Colo Claw Fish-”
“Does it look like they feed me sushi here?”
Tech raised a finger…then lowered it. “Point taken.” 
“How are you going to get me out of here?” Crosshair asked. His head disappeared from view a few times and Tech assumed it was to ensure they were speaking privately.
“We’re going to wait for our siblings to retrieve us,” Tech answered.
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“When are they coming?”
“I’m uncertain.”
“Then how do you know they are coming?” Crosshair asked and the crow - Egg - seemed to echo with an indignant craah. 
“Because they were searching for you when we were separated, and I managed to find you on my own. Given that they are lacking my brilliant mind, it may take some time, but I am sure they will figure it out, find the path to Mount Tantiss and we will be reunited...eventually.”
“Eventually…fantastic,” Crosshair hissed.
It could have been Tech’s impaired vision, but it looked like both Crosshair and the crow rolled their eyes at the same time. 
Tech had missed his brother’s sarcastic wit terribly.
Even if it was directed at him. 
Part 3: Cross and Tech and Egg
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vaxxman · 6 months ago
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Could I request Medic having The Mom Grip on Scout’s shoulder after the speedy moron almost let a mercenary secret slip while they weee getting groceries?
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Three Europeans and two Americans walk into a grocery store in New Mexico.
I hope this is the right meme.
More silliness below.
This comic is the antithesis of the "wtf is a kilometre" joke.
The faces they make when they can't quite identify the type of brown bread in the bread aisle.
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You don't know how [insert nationality here] you are until you go overseas and things are different.
Spy obviously has no problems with pretending to know how much a gallon of milk is, he just peeks into his conversion chart notes, pretending it's his shopping list.
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I want to think Heavy is completely fine with having to readjust to a new unit system, he just eyeballs most practical things anyways by holding them up and mumbling about how they approximately weigh like a chicken or his kettle bell etc. He's always been living in practical ignorant bliss.
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Medic has a peer reviewed meltdown the first time he realises there's no uniformity in "a cup of ____" because every object has different densities. He's diligent about memorising the conversion rates for ounces, pounds, the most common things etc., and recovers ok. He goes through the same stages of grief rage when he finds out about distances and lengths.
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Just remember four inches are 10.16 cm and pray no one asks you to specify anything bigger than inches.
Everyone does a mental victory lap when they manage to guess how much Celsius the weather is because they keep forgetting it's Celsius*5/9+32=Fahrenheit, Engineer reminds them patiently.
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The true victories are the correct temperature guesses we've made along the way.
One time, a friend asked me if I actually knew how much a tablespoon of flour was in gramms to convince me that metric users also make use of volume based units without thinking about them. But little did she know a heaped spoonful of 405 flour is about 15g and a level tablespoon is 10g.
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They claim Oolong just tastes better when it's boiled to 80°C exactly with a Bunsen burner.
You only asked for one scene but somehow I came up with a bunch of other things. This post was drawn across 2 months so the artstyle is all over the place. Thanks for your ask!
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dcxdpdabbles · 7 months ago
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First of all your writing is amazing 🤩🤩!!!
You give so much life to your writings.
So I've been seeing a lot of snippets that have Danny claiming Dani as his child and also somehow carrying the cores to her clone siblings. And I was wondering how you would depict that. Maybe with a Dan maybe not. He could be living with Vlad or maybe he had to flee Amity and gets found on the streets by one of the bats if he's in Gotham or Alfred is the one who brings home the stray. Maybe he's Bruce's kid maybe not. He doesn't even need to be in Gotham. Maybe it lines up with Lian and he somehow saves her (I forget what happens to her).
Danny had only been in the new dimension for about thirty minutes when a terrorist attacked. He had originally traveled there with them since Clockwork promised if he relocated in a timeline so far away from Dan. He would allow Dani- de-age to five though her mental state stayed the same- and the cluster of her clone siblings' cores to live.
Clockwork claimed that Dani and the clones were destined to be corrupted, causing more devastation and death than Dan. They would expand their mercenaries' attack across dimensions and timelines, wiping out millions and millions, and so the clock ghost had enlisted Danny to destroy them.
He had gone under the condition that they would leave Dani alone, but when Danny saw the clones' cores, something in him had not been able to kill them off. Seven of them rested in a nest-like ectoplasm cave, and even though they were locked within their cores, Danny could hear their little heartbeats.
Could sense the being within, resting like a child in a mother's stomach.
It sounded a lot like an ultrasound, but he quickly found out only he could hear them, for Tucker, Sam, Jazz, and Dani had only seen glowing egg-shaped targets. He had thrown himself over them, begging them to not harm the children.
Danny didn't know where the connection came from, but there was no denying that there was one. He had bonded with the cores, and he wanted nothing more than to care for and nurture the children that were forming within.
Clockwork's deal hung heavily over his head, but after speaking to his friends and family, he decided to move far away for the children. He would be a single father to Dani and her seven siblings, worlds away from everything he knew and loved.
It is Difficult, but other parents have left their home countries to try and give their kids a better future before. He could do it, too.
Danny would even share his natural ectoplasm with the cores to help them grow like a ghost incubator. Yes, it would weaken him, but no more than any other person who was pregnant, and he would not have to deal with mood swings or food cravings!
He bid his family fair well, taking with him funds from Sam and Vlad, and had hopped over. Dani held his hand, and his core children were safely tucked into his backpack in warm towels. They had five suitcases with them, taking their essentials - such as government documents Clockwork swore would be what that world used, clothes, food, and the few techs they could carry- and had stepped through the spinning portal.
He had stopped between the two worlds, turning back only once to wave goodbye and ignore the tears rolling down his face.
His mother had called out, "Don't look back, sweetie. If you do, you'll never be able to see your children in front of you!"
Danny had turned and not looked back again. He and Dani were dropped in what looked like a large city. The first thing he wanted to do for them was find shelter, so he wiped away his tears, helped a sobbing Dani clean her face, and then marched them away, hoping to find an apparent complex with a vacant room that would be open.
They had just been passing by a sweet of houses when the bombs went off. Dani screamed, throwing herself against Dani's leg as houses started to crumble around them.
For one heart-stopping moment, he imagined the cores shattered like eggs, shimmering against the red of Dano's squished body. Danny had dropped their bags, gathering Dani in his arms and flying to the closest shelter.
He invaded a house, pressing his daughter and her siblings against his chest as more and more bombs went around the city. With a cry, he threw the strongest shield he could muster around them, encasing his ectoplasm in ice, but still, the blasts rocked the house and tore apart the building. Trust Clockwork to throw them into a war zone!
"Danny!" Dani screamed as large bits of the ceiling fell onto the shield. It caused cracks on his shield, and the ghost boy gritted his teeth to strengthen them. He had just feed a lot of his power to the core not even twenty minutes ago. He's basically tapped out. "Danny, I think there is someone in the house!"
I don't care, Danny thinks ruthlessly. You and your siblings come first.
"Danny! I think it's a kid!"
Danny's tunnel vision of keeping his kids safe suddenly shatters as he registers the screaming. It's high pitch and frightened, someone young. It's coming from upstairs, just slightly above the rocking and booms of the city.
"Danny! I can't go ghost; you need to help them!"
But his kids-
"Danny, please!" Dani screams, looking up at him with her tiny five-year-old face and the burning protective core in her eyes.
He can't say no to that. With a flick of his wrists, Danny freezes the inside of the shield, encasing it a second time until only a small hole is left. He throws the backpack carrying his other children into his eldest's arms with a command: "Protect your brothers and sisters!"
He had to force himself and reach deep within to grab hold of what little Ectoplasim he had left, but twin rings of lights formed around him, shifting him from human to ghost. He could tell that the transformation wouldn't last. His limit is likely fifty seconds, but that's all the time he needs.
He flies through the hole, going intangible to the rumble and blaze, flying through the crumbling building until he spots a little girl humbled up and crying as the ground breaks underneath her. It feels as if everything slows down as she starts to fall, descending into the flames that burst around her- a bomb had been flung to the house, and it detonated upon impact- and Danny knew that if she hit the ground, she would die.
Danny knew what he had to do.
He would be cutting his transformation time, but it was a sacrifice well made. Phantom pushed everything he had into flying as fast as he could, reaching her just before her feet hit the flames. He curled his arms around her, pressing her to his chest and encasing her small body as best he could with his ice like a hastily made baby carrier. Then, he flung himself backward towards the first floor, where his children were waiting.
His vision started going blurry, and his flying was uneven. Intangibility failed him as rocks and fire slammed into his back. The little girl he rescued was protected from most hits, but he still curved around her, ensuring that if anything went to her, it would need to go through Danny.
They slammed into the shield, his ice retreating long enough for them to phase before the entire building collapsed. Danny hit the ground hard on his side, absorbing most of the impact as best he could for the girl, who was covered in inguires.
"Danny!"
Dani's horrified scream was the last thing he heard when the world faded to black.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No. No. No. No. no
Roy ran as fast as he could through the destroyed city, racing towards where his safe house and his daughter once stood. When the reports of Prometheus first arrived, he had known that Star City was among the target places, but when they showed him the map of the areas, his heart fell through his body.
He hadn't stayed for the briefing, had ignored the outraged cries of the heroes, and he knows he just hurt his chances of being in Justice League, but none of that mattered.
Lian needed him!
He heard Dick and Jason not far behind him, likely noticing the same thing on the map, but he could barely think as he leaped over destroyed buildings and rescue crews. He almost had no idea where he was; nothing looked the same, and dust and devastation were everywhere.
Only when he spotted a lump of crumbling wood and rocks he realize this was supposed to be his street. The broken building before him was his house, and it had been wiped from the face of the earth.
"Lian!" The scream that was ripped from him was inhuman, grief-stricken even as he crumbled to his knees, trying to push the wood out of the way to reach his daughter. "Lian! Daddy's coming. Danny's here! Hold on!"
He threw everything out of his way, desperately clawing at the heavier bits, but even as he spoke, his sight was blurry from his tears. Dick and Jason quickly helped him, letting pieces and moving stones with steady but sadness clouded their faces.
He's seen those particular expressions on the Bats before. It was during their search and recovery missions.
They were looking for a corpse.
No. no. no. no. no Please not my little girl
"What is that?!" Jason called out, pointing to a large caved-in roof with a faint green glow. Roy looked up, half numb from everything, to watch Dick and Jason push the roofing off with a grunt of effort.
A dome of glowing ice appeared, and he could make out the three figures inside it. The ice cracked, shattering as Roy stumbled towards it, eyes unfocused.
Then his gaze sharpened when his daughter's tear-covered face turned to him. She held out her hands with a sob, " Daddy!"
"Lian!"
He raced towards her, stumbling over a few steps, but he had his daughter in his arms, warm and safe and, most importantly, alive.
"Daddy, the alien saved me!" Lian said, "He's hurt!"
Roy can bring himself to leave his head from his daughter's hair, but he hears Dick take control, racing over to the alien that was crumbling on the ground.
"Stay away!" a young voice said- which- was the alien a child? He peaked one of his eyes up, only glazing at the sight of a body and a little girl hunched over them in a defensive posture.
"Hey, we mean you no harm. We just want to check on your friend there," Dick tells it.
"He isn't my friend, He' s my dad!"
"That's great. Does he need medical attention?" Jason said, stepping closer only to back away as the girl bared her sharp teeth. "We just want to help."
"You promise you won't hurt him?"
"We promised. He saved someone really important to us."
"You won't hurt my siblings either?"
"If we find them, we won't-
"They're right here with Dad. They just aren't born yet." The girl cuts him off, patting her father's back and the little bag.
Shit. The alien was pregnant? And he risked not only his own health but his unborn children for Lian? Roy doesn't care which side this alien is on, how they got to Earth, or what they planned to do.
He would protect them with their lives.
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julijbee · 7 months ago
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in awe of the beauty of the world
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pakchoys · 1 year ago
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there's going to be a doctor who renaissance someday soon and when you finally give 12 a chance you will come crawling to my door and say i was right all along. that weird old man does fuck so hard after all
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brushstrokes-art · 2 years ago
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au where pit’s a trans girl who hasn’t figured it out yet and then the mirror of truth speedruns dp’s transition. and nothing else changes.
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