#tbb hunter

"Just keep it moist, but not soggy" You directed.

Hunter stares down the plant, then glances back at you "Uh, sure..."

"I'll write down instructions..." you offer.

"No need. Think I got it." He perks up.

"You sure?" This plant is THE prized one in your collection, having nurtured it from a tiny wee sproutling.

"Yeah. How hard can it be?" He shrugs.

********

Hunter makes sure to water your plant daily. He even sits next to it, to help him remember, while sipping his morning caf.

He waters it from the bottom like you advised. However...he starts OVERTHINKING the process...

The soil looks dry-ish to Hunter.

"Moist but not soggy..." he says to himself.

Then starts watering from the top in addition to pouring water onto the dish under the pot.

Several days before you are to arrive home, Omega finds Hunter sitting next to a very wilted and yellowing plant.

He's anxious.

"You watered it from the top too?" She surmises.

Hunter sighs and nods.

"It's probably got root rot. Too much of a good thing" She adds.

Hunter smiles at her plant smarts. "Guess I should have consulted the plant expert, huh?"

Omega lays a loving hand on her brother's shoulder. "You did the best you could" She reassures.

"Should have let Y/N write everything down. I overestimated how picky plants are..." Hunter berates himself.

"Plants are hard" Omega commiserates "Like trying to keep a goldfish alive...I should know!"

Hunter nods at the memory of Omega and the Batchers standing over the household toilet, saying goodbye to "Wobbles" the defective feeder goldfish Omega HAD to rescue from the local pet store. Tech had suggested a funeral ritual to help Omega process the grief of her pet passing.

"Need to take action" Hunter starts formulating a plan. "Can't have Y/N come home to...THIS." He motions to the plant corpse.

Omega pulls out a datapad "The plant store closes in two hours."

Hunter smiles "You got it! We'll get a replacement..."

"AND a plant care book, too!" Omega adds.

Hunter grabs his keys and nods to Omega "You riding shotgun?"

"Of COURSE!" Omega beams.

"We MIGHT even have time to get some ice cream too..."Hunter winks.

Omega squeals with joy and runs ahead to the minivan.

********

Stay tuned for the NEXT PLANT BATCH: WRECKER!!!

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It was on the journey to Kamino that Echo started to notice something… troubling about the Bad Batch. Something that activated a long-dormant instinct to protect. The realization was slow to dawn, but each and every time it hit him, it hit him like a cannonball to the diaphragm: They were thrice-dammed, honest to karking force, babies. The terrifying, eccentric, frighteningly competent crew of renegades who had single-handedly saved Echo from captivity and experimentation twice in the short time he’d known them were also deeply terrifying children in desperate need of supervision.

It started with Hunter. After imploring Echo to think about joining his crew on a permanent basis, Hunter left him to wander the ship as he saw fit. He made Tech surrender his study to Echo as a sleeping quarters, not wanting to subject him to the shared bunk room just yet, and encouraged him to rest, read, or socialize as he saw fit. Thus, Echo began his investigations.

Hunter was, weirdly, the most obvious. It was written in his easy, trusting smile. It was evident in his too-bit coat and the frankly juvenile amount of skull motifs on his hat, bandanna, not to mention on his face. The dark skull tattoo that obscured half of the man’s face made him look exceptionally intimidating in the right light, but also handily disguised the lingering traces of baby fat on his cheeks. Echo had assumed that Hunter was a young man trying to look like an older one. Hunter was, in fact, barely out of adolescence and trying to look like a young man.

Hunter put up a good show. He seemed tough, calm, and self-assured. He was competent as a fighter and as a captain, but Echo was beginning to see his demeanor for the mask it was.

It was the following night where the mask slipped and fell completely. Echo was leaning against the railing on the upper deck, looking out at the stars, when a sudden movement in his periphery broke through his musings. He turned to see Tech frantically making towards Hunter’s cabin door, hauling a large canvas bag marked with an aurebesh “H.” Tech opened the door without knocking and, in his hurry, didn’t close it behind him.

Curiosity getting the best of him, Echo crept up behind Tech and slipped through the door into the pitch-dark cabin. In front of him, Tech stiffened and turned abruptly.

“Leave now or close the door at once,” Tech whispered, so quietly he nearly missed the words. “And don’t make a sound.” Echo closed the cabin door as quietly as he could manage. The faint thump of the wood was met with a quickly bitten off whine from somewhere within the dark room.

Echo stood still to let his eyes adjust. As they did, the scene began to take form: Tech, crouching silently behind the narrow bed; Hunter, laying sprawled on his face, head barely visible beneath a pile of bedding; Tech, reaching into the canvas bag and pulling out some unidentifiable object.

“Hunter,” Tech barely breathed the word. “Please, surface so I can help you.”

From the pile of bedding emerged a low whimpering sound of protest. Tech merely waited however, and after a few painfully long moments, the pile shifted and Hunter’s face peeked out. Tech silently held out the object and tied it around Hunter’s head. It looked to Echo like a bandanna similar to the ones worn beneath the captain’s tricorn hat.

Hunter grabbed at the soft strip of cloth, tugging it over his ears and across his tightly screwed up eyes. He pawed blindly at Tech, who reached into the bag and carefully set a canteen of water and a small container of unknown herbs within easy reach.

Echo stood silently and watched the strange display of care unfolded. Everything he had gathered about Tech and Hunter both was being rapidly rewritten. The scholar, so bizarre and tactless in his discussion of Echo’s prosthetics, carefully tending to the distress of his captain. And Hunter, who sauntered through the world like there was no bigger fish than he, looked so painfully small and heartbreakingly young with his blanket nest and blindfold.

The silence was nearly hypnotic, the heavy atmosphere undisturbed until-

“TECHHHH!”

The booming voice of Wrecker broke the stillness.

“Tech you need to get over here REALLY SOON or we’re gonna be in TROUBLE!”

Tech flinched at the volume as Hunter gave a low whine of pain. Anxiously resettling his spectacles, Tech began to flail his hands at Echo in the dim light. To his utter bewilderment, he recognized the movements. Republic battle signs.

I pursue, he signaled. You hold position. He hesitated, before adding, Important.

Echo nodded dumbly, and Tech hastened from the room. Before the door shut behind him, Echo heard a hissed reprimand to “shut your mouth or face the consequences.” No further exclamations were forthcoming from beyond the cabin.

If the atmosphere was oppressive before, Echo felt positively suffocated now he was left alone with the incapacitated captain. In the quiet, he found his mind wandering. He landed on a foggy, untethered snatch of memory from his childhood. He didn’t remember a single detail of where he’d been. All he could summon to mind was a vague image of a face nearly identical to his own, a sense of heavy sadness, and somewhere, a grandfather clock punctuating the silence at unforgivably regular intervals. Tick Tock Tick Tock Outside, He heard the sound of shouting and felt the impact of something that shook the room. A cannon fired. Tick Tock Tick The sounds of combat reached him through the heavy wooden door, and Echo wasn’t sure if they came from the Marauder or from his own half-a-memory. Tock Maybe both, he decided. Probably both. Tick- “Mm-mm.”

“Hunter?” Echo whispered.

“Eh-” the huddle of blankets tried again. “Eh-oh?”

He took a half step towards the bed, as quietly as he could manage on metal legs. “Yeah, I’m-I’m here.”

With scary accuracy for a man doing a worthy impersonation of a surfaced blobfish, Hunter’s hand shot out of the blankets and snatched Echo’s one remaining flesh limb. Echo was yanked closer to the bed as Hunter tried to use him as a ladder, clumsy hands pawing at him as he struggled to rise.

As soon as he realized what the man was trying to do, Echo clamped his hand on Hunter’s heaving shoulder and pressed him back down. “Woah, Cap’n,” he said as quietly as physically possible. The words still drew a flinch from his escaping charge. “You don’t look seaworthy just now.”

“Gotta ‘elp m’crew,” the pain in his voice hurt Echo too. “’Elp me up.”

“No can do,” Echo pushed him down again, and this time, he stayed where he was put. “I don’t know what’s up but Tech was pretty clear about wanting to keep you here.”

“Mph,” Hunter settled back into the bed, but didn’t release Echo’s hand. Instead he pressed the captured palm to his own forehead and grumbled. “Head. Better now.”

“Not better enough,” was Echo’s verdict. “I can help them if you want? Tech will forgive me if you said you ordered it.”

Hunter’s head shook beneath his palm. “Mmmno he won't. Stay.”

Echo was pulled again, this time he was nearly yanked on top of Hunter. He regained his balance, taking a knee beside Hunter’s head. Hesitating, not wanting to overstep his fragile connection to the man, he started to rub circles onto his forehead with his thumb.

“Okay, I’ll just—stay here. I’ll stay, k-” kid, he didn’t say.

There was no way. This was a grown man, with a ship, crew, and successful nautical career.

Something was wrong here.

___________________________