Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“What is the bird call that you most prefer?” 

Despite the fact that he hadn’t spoken in over an hour, Tech asked the question with a casually conversational tone that took Echo a little off guard.

The cyborg blinked at the engineer with more than a little confusion. He’d only been with the Batch for two days and he was already learning that the brains of the bunch tended to live and think at a higher speed than the rest of them. It fascinated Echo, his half-mechanical mind whirling as he imagined what his new sibling was capable of with his immense knowledge and lightning-fast computation skills. It was also beginning to grate a little at times, such as now, when Tech would randomly come back to reality and act as if everyone was aware of what had been going on in his exceptional brain while he was stuck inside it.

Echo wondered just how far inside his own head the inventor had been, since he went so quickly from tinkering with the cyborg’s new comm device to asking him about birds .

“ Bird ?” Echo finally responded, repeating the word as a question.

Tech breathed a slight sigh, his eyes shining from behind his goggles in a way that could have been taken for condescending. After Wrecker had explained the engineer’s often anti-social behavior, Echo knew the real emotion he was expressing was just vague chafe, likely at his companion’s slow uptake of his topic. “Which bird call do you find most pleasing or interesting?” he repeated. “Or, which avian itself is your favorite?”

Echo felt rather stupid with Tech staring at him expectantly like that, but then again, the engineer had that effect on nearly everyone. Should he have a favorite bird? Was that a normal thing to have? 

As soon as the thought crossed his mind he banished it and would have kicked himself if he could have. He was the most normal clone in this squad, with three prosthetic limbs and all! If having a favorite feathered creature was the status quo, surely he’d know. Rex would have told him, or Fives would have. He would have known Fives’s favorite bird. 

Surely it must just be another Bad Batch quirk.

Tech cleared his throat gently and Echo realized he’d been staring off into space again. None of the Batch ever seemed angry about the little pockets of time when he would fixate on something and mentally leave the planet, but he had noticed that Tech had begun to try to coax him out of them more quickly. The engineer was probably worried that the episodes were a side effect of his mental trauma from Skakko and the Techno Union.

If anything was going to make Echo feel worse than not knowing he was supposed to have a favorite bird, it was causing his brilliant new batcher to worry about him unnecessarily. He turned his brain inside out quickly for any kind of bird he could remember seeing or hearing of. “A…an avril?” he ventured. 

Tech made a face. It was so unexpected that Echo nearly burst out laughing. The combination of Tech’s usual determination in everything, even being miffed, and the way his goggles seemed to magnify his eyes and the funny little scrunch his nose acquired was far too adorable to be seen on a battle-hardened war veteran.

“An avril is a fair favorite, as it is a formidable creature in its own right,” the engineer said almost cautiously. Echo realized with surprise that the man was trying not to hurt his feelings, thinking surely that the creature really was his favorite bird. In reality, the cybernetic didn’t know what the thing even looked like. He wasn’t even entirely sure where he had heard of it. “However, the cry it makes is cacophonous – some natives of the moon it inhabits have described the sound as ear-shattering .”

Well, Echo thought, better make a note of that for the next time he was asked about birds .

“The creature also makes a habit of feeding upon the young of said natives, the Melodies, choosing them even over the more readily available reels and purellas.” Tech was continuing steadily, his hands still working over the comm device, tweaking different things or maybe just checking them. He was moving his fingers so deftly and quickly that Echo couldn’t tell. “While it is not considered sentient and therefore not innately bound to the basic idea of morality, this would render its cry a less than ideal choice for your callsign, even if the humanoid throat were capable of replicating it.”

Echo’s head tilted sideways and his eyes narrowed. “Callsign?” he repeated again, and wanted to kick himself again . He was beginning to give the engineer a taste of why he’d been given his name in the first place.

“Of course.” Tech, once again, succeeded in making him feel very stupid, those big brown eyes blinking owlishly at him from behind the glass lenses. “You are now part of our squad. As Hunter, Wrecker, Crosshair, and I each have a unique bird call by which we can be recognized, it follows that you should choose one as well.”

Now the cyborg was more intrigued than skeptical. “You use bird calls as identifiers?”

Tech was already working on something else that had been lying on his worktable. Echo was beginning to think that the other man’s brain was hopelessly symbiotic with his fingers – that one couldn’t operate without the other going a hundred kliks a minute, too. “When necessary or convenient,” he answered. “Our personal call signs have come in handy quite often in a few of our more risky missions, or in the many times one or more of us has been captured or isolated from the rest of the squad. Birds are common inhabitants of nearly all planets, so their sounds are not usually taken into account as important. Even though each of our chosen calls belongs to a different species, the particular four of which would not be present on the same planet under any circumstances, not a single opponent has ever noticed this or seemed to think it relevant if they have.” 

Echo settled into the pilot’s chair, easing his scomp arm onto the armrest gingerly. The now-nonexistent part of his arm where his elbow used to be was sore and throbbing dully again, the phantom pain still a mild irritant in his day-to-day life. He wondered if it would ever end.  “What are the others’ calls?”

Tech’s eyes took on the new glow that showed up only when he was talking about his brothers. At first, Echo had thought it was just a brighter gleam than usual, but he had been paying close attention over the last two days and he had discovered that the light actually seemed to emanate from inside the engineer’s eyes. It was as if his heart itself was glowing. 

“We chose our calls as cadets, which resulted in the species of choice being slightly imaginative ,” he answered. “Crosshair’s call is that of a Cloudripper, a species native to the ocean moon of Kef Bir in the Endor system. I believe he chose it more for its high-flying capabilities than for its rather low, gull-like cry.”

Echo was silent, soaking up the information like a sponge. He had expected the Batch to take longer than two days to warm up to him completely, especially with the hard-nosed exclusivity the group had displayed among the regular ranks of the GAR. Yet here he was, hardly forty-eight hours into his new life aboard the Marauder , and one of the two most outwardly wary 99s was freely telling him personal, apparently cherished memories from his cadet hood. He wasn’t sure if he should be honored or shocked.

If he was honest, he was a little bit of both.

“Wrecker was far more indecisive. First, he thought he would choose a Mantellian flutterplume, a carnivorous bird from Ord Mantell that possesses four legs, wicked talons, and a blindingly rainbow array of feathers. Its grotesqueness piqued his imagination, but upon learning of its inborn attraction to death and blood, and its habit of preying upon the injured left on battlefields, he dismissed it in favor of an Argonian Ruffle bird."

At Echo’s confused expression, Tech smiled and explained further. “A small, downy-feathered bird found on several moons in the remote Belderone system. Its plumage ranges from dark gold to bright purple, with the young of the species remaining silvery blue until adolescence. According to many sources, it is, to quote directly, quite adorable .”

The cyborg snorted. “That’s Wrecker’s callsign?”

“In his defense, he was not aware of the appearance of the creature until after he had chosen it. At the time I had access only to recordings of the bird’s song, which is a series of whistles and chirps that are rather simple to imitate and easily passed over if one is not listening for them. By the time I discovered what the Ruffle bird looked like, it was too late. Besides,” Tech continued with a smirk. “Hunter believed it suited Wrecker quite well, as far as the word adorable applied.”

“Uh, what?” Echo couldn’t help but ask. The sight of Wrecker was likely to give any Ruffle bird a heart attack. Echo would probably have one as well, if he ever saw the bruiser imitating the call of such a tiny little avian. One that was apparently “adorable.”

“Remember, we were cadets. Fourth-years, at the latest. Wrecker did not receive his trademark scars until we were sent out to battle, and even though he quickly surpassed the rest of us in size he was arguably the least visually displeasing of our batch. According to General Shaak Ti, at least.”

That got Echo’s attention even more than the Ruffle bird. “You knew General Ti?”

“Yes.” Tech blinked at him with one of those wasn’t it obvious ? looks again. “She knew our oldest brother, who is now deceased, and he introduced us to her at some point during our earlier years. When her time on Kamino overlapped with ours, she was fond of coming to our barracks to gauge our welfare. Wrecker was her favorite, no doubt owing to his naturally outgoing personality.”

“And because he was cute.” Somehow Echo still had a hard time imagining Wrecker as a cadet, especially a cute one.

“She was also fascinated by his red hair.”

Echo stared at him. “Wrecker had red hair?” There he went, echoing again. But what else was he supposed to do with that bombshell?

Tech nodded. “A few of the other cadets had at one time sported hair pigments genetically divergent from the Kaminoans’ standard clone, but I do not believe General Ti had ever seen one with red hair. At least, I gathered as much from her reaction.”

“Wrecker had red hair,” Echo repeated again, more to himself.

“I will find a photo for you, once I have completed resyncing the comms,” Tech assured him. “The explosion in which Wrecker gained his facial scars seems to have rendered him permanently bald, so there is little chance you will see what it looked like otherwise.”

Before the conversation slipped into a melancholy tone (if that was a possibility with Tech – Echo thought he was far more happy to have his brother alive than to waste time worrying over how he felt about being bald for the rest of his life) the cyborg shifted it back to the main topic. “What about Hunter’s call?”

Tech shot him a grin. An actual grin . Echo’s heart thumped quickly in his chest, knowing nothing more than the fact that Tech hadn’t even grinned when telling him about Wrecker’s flutterplume or ruffle bird so this had to be good .

“Hunter is capable of vast vocal ranges, so he had far more options to choose from, whereas the rest of us were constricted by our more commonly structured plica vocalis . He chose the Shyyyo bird. It is a rare creature, once thought to be only a legend, and is found on Kashyyyk, where it is known as an excellent hunter and preys upon the giant spiders and slugs that plague the forests. The Wookies hold it in high regard as a symbol of peace and protection, and claim its feathers bring good luck.”

Leave it to Hunter to pick something based on its symbolism over any other attribute, Echo mused. He was idealistic enough for something like that. 

But Tech was still grinning, and he hadn’t picked up on anything that should be embarrassing or funny about Hunter’s callsign. Echo was beginning to wish he’d read birding guides instead of regulations manuals. 

“And it’s funny that he picked it…why?” he prodded.

Tech’s eyes were practically dancing with amusement now. “The Shyyyo bird is massive . One of the tallest avians in known existence.”

Echo sucked in a breath. He was sure his eyes were bulging with the effort to not laugh.

Then Tech chuckled, and after two days of seeing the rather stoic engineer instead of this more emotional person in front of him, Echo did too. He laughed and realized suddenly that he hadn’t laughed like this since before the Citadel. Before he’d lost Fives.

He’d never thought he’d laugh like this again.

Nope . He stubbornly threw that thought back into the black space at the back of his mind and focused on the moment instead. He’d deal with his demons later. 

“He’s always been shorter?” He let the laugh die off and brushed his hand across his eyes quickly. 

Tech was smiling easily now. “Wrecker has been much larger than the rest of us since decanting, but for several growth cycles Crosshair, Hunter, and I were the same height. Then during our sixth-year growth spurts, Crosshair and I suddenly gained several inches and Hunter did not. Whether it was due to some anomaly caused by his enhancements or merely another defect, even the Kaminoans could not tell. His height has been a running joke among us ever since.”

“I’ll make sure not to mention it,” Echo grinned.

“He is not as sensitive about it as you might think. He did, after all, have to survive Kamino as the only clone with long hair. And his insufferable nose .”

Echo choked on his sound of surprise. The engineer smirked. “Believe me, he is quite aware of his differentiating facial features. We did grow up with Crosshair, who possessed even less of a verbal filter as a cadet than he does now.”

That was almost as hard to imagine as Wrecker as a ruffle bird.

“Back to the topic at hand, the callsigns,” Tech remarked. He was still holding the comm unit in one hand, but it seemed more of a placeholder than a current project of importance as he settled into the other pilot chair. “My own is a –”

“Wait, let me guess.” To Echo’s surprise, Tech acquiesced and waited for him to give his reply. 

The cyborg looked at the inventor closely, trying to think of any bird he’d ever heard of or thought he had heard of to pinpoint one for Tech. Wrecker may have chosen a creature very different from himself, but Tech seemed more practical and Echo doubted he was quite as fanciful in some ways as his brothers. 

“An owl,” he finally said. He was rewarded with a blink and a smile from his new sibling. 

“Yes,” Tech said with a slight undertone of pride that Echo allowed himself to think was the result of him guessing correctly, and not because of the apt choice the engineer had made as a cadet for his own callsign. “A convor, actually.”

“Because of the goggles?” Echo asked, because he had to. 

“My eyewear certainly adds to the resemblance,” Tech agreed. “However, Crosshair actually helped me decide. As my projected usefulness to the GAR included my splicing and hacking abilities, he thought I should select a stealthy creature for my call. Convorees are quite the sneaks when they like to be, and often work in groups to attack their own predators and drop them to their deaths from the treetops on their homeworld of Wasskah.”

“Yikes.”

“That was my opinion of the matter. But Crosshair assured me that I can be, quote, “very mean” when I want to be, and therefore the convorees would not be offended.” Tech looked at him expectantly. “On my datapad, there is an expansive collection of the most interesting avian species in the galaxy, and many of the audio files are downloaded. You are welcome to look through them, if you would like, and select the one you find most fitting. That way we can solidify your callsign as soon as possible, before we are sent on any major assignments.”

For the next hour, Echo learned more about birds than he ever thought he would want to, but somehow the time flew by and he hardly noticed. After letting him scroll through the files on his own for a while and realizing he was getting hopelessly distracted by the detailed descriptions and photos of brightly feathered creatures, Tech decided the rest of the communication adjustments could wait and joined him in poring over the datapad. The engineer was obviously very interested in birds – or maybe just in everything, and birds were the current topic – and Echo found himself enjoying listening to the other clone’s endless stream of knowledge as it poured out in his clipped, Coroscauntian accent. One day he’d have to ask him where he’d picked up that manner of speech. He was pretty sure an accent couldn’t be engineered, and even if it could, the Kaminoans would have had no reason for doing so.

“This one would be a good choice.” Tech pointed out a medium-sized avian that bore two ear-like crests on its head and feathers that gleamed in varied shades of yellow, blue, and orange. “The Tiga Loreng of Bimmisaari is held in high regard by the natives of that planet, due to its regal appearance and its long history of surviving in secret even when hunted nearly to extinction. The Law Elders of the planet have placed a ban on killing any of the species, and it has rebounded with surprising resilience after being almost eradicated from the face of its homeworld.”

“What does it sound like?” Echo wondered aloud.

Tech reached over and scrolled down the page until he came to another photo of the bird. An audio file was nestled next to it, and he activated the sound function. A baritone trill emitted from the datapad’s speaker, surprising Echo with the deep sound for such a light-colored and almost fragile-looking bird.

“I believe that should be a simple enough call for you to make, with your gruffer tone of voice and a little practice,” Tech mused.

At the engineer’s urging, Echo tried it a few times. He felt his cheeks heat up as he, an elite ARC trooper, clumsily imitated a bird , but Tech seemed unbothered by the seemingly embarrassing nature of it, so he decided to not let it bother him so much. Now, if Crosshair came in, that would be a different story.

Finally, Tech approved his recreation of the bird call and took the datapad to look up Echo’s file. The cyborg was confused until he realized that the engineer wasn’t updating his GAR file, but an unshared one that seemed to be much more personal. When Tech clicked out of the document after noting that Echo’s call sign was now a Bimmisaari Tiga Loreng , the ARC saw four more files next to his on the list – Wrecker, Crosshair, Hunter, and Tech. His was right beneath Crosshair’s and somehow it looked like it already belonged with the other names.

“Hey, anybody in here?” Wrecker’s booming voice echoed into the cockpit from the open hall. Three sets of footsteps – one thunderous, the other solid, and the last hardly audible – told the two other clones that their three comrades had returned from the supply run to the nearest village. This little inhabited moon they had landed on the night before wasn’t glamorous or even welcoming by any means, but Echo had been surprised to see the ease with which the Bad Batch navigated the locals and seemed to be perfectly at home in the crowded market area. He had come to the conclusion that they had been there before.

Tech gave a brief eye roll as he rose. “Yes, as you could have deduced from the fact that we never left ,” he called back. He strode through the doorway, leaving Echo alone with the datapad for a moment as he undoubtedly went to inspect what his brothers had brought back. Echo had quickly learned that if Tech was well-informed about most other topics, he was dialed in on nutrition and his siblings’ health seemed to be something of an obsession. The cyborg could almost hear Wrecker hiding some kind of food item that he knew wouldn’t pass the Tech test.

Before walking out to join the others and presumably take up for the loveable hunk of muscle that was his new biggest brother, Echo clicked the datapad on once more and tapped his way to the bird files again. When he reached the Tiga Loreng – his bird, he thought contentedly – he noticed something he hadn’t when he had first glanced over the description with Tech. Beneath the photo and audio file belonging to the Tiga Loreng’s profile, the engineer’s crisply typed notes read:

The Law Elders have placed a ban on the killing of any tiga lorengs, with the punishment for infractions ranging from five standard years of hard labor to death by firing squad. As the birds have become a planetary symbol of resilience and survival, the sentence is usually death.

Well, that was a little harsh. Or maybe not. Echo wasn’t very fond of other beings trying to kill him, so he couldn’t imagine the fluffy little bird in the photo was either. Still…he wondered if Tech had another reason for guiding him toward this particular avian. In Wrecker’s brief warning about how the engineer could be, in his words, “sort of not good with people stuff,” the giant had mentioned that their brilliant brother often expressed himself in different ways. Ways that were so subtle that regular people couldn’t see them, or perhaps didn’t understand them.

Tech had made a clear point of noting the creature’s resilience, which not even Echo could miss as a comment on his recent trials. Did that mean that the rest of this description applied to him, too? Would the Batch really kill for him – and was Tech comfortable enough to tell him that, after only two days?

He had a lot to think about. Not just about the bird and its maybe-message from Tech, but the engineer had let it drop that the 99s had another brother who had died . Rex hadn’t told him that. Actually, Rex hadn’t told him much about the Batch before he’d left. And what did Tech mean by their time on Kamino occasionally overlapping with General Ti’s? Were the 99s taken off-world as cadets for…some reason? 

He had even more questions than he could list at the moment, most of which would have to wait to be asked. When he looked down and saw his name on the folder next to the others’, he felt his brain start spinning again, trying to understand the answers he already had. Tech must have begun the file as soon as he'd boarded the Marauder – maybe even before that, while they were still on Anaxes – to have this much information compiled about him already. Some of it was about prosthetics and there were notes beside the illustrations, mostly shorthand scribbles done with a stylus and nearly all recommending ways to improve or strengthen the pictured design. 

A warm hand clenched around his heart and gave it some kind of almost painful squeeze. He glanced back at the beginning of the document and took careful note of the bird name and callsign that had been added just beneath his name. With a jolt, he realized that he didn't feel so disconnected anymore. Somehow having the Tiga Loreng right there, just like Hunter's Shyyyo bird, Crosshair's Cloudripper, Wrecker's ruffle bird, and Tech's convor, made him feel like he had both feet on the ground again instead of stumbling blindly along. 

He sat there, looking at the file for a few more minutes while the talking and cheerful banter rose in volume in the next room. He trilled the little bird whistle again, as quietly as he could, and a piece of something that had broken deep in his chest inexplicably clicked back into place.