*female*(Y/n) and the Bad Batch

A Message From Criminals

I did not have to wait long before Omega and Hunter came back from the other room and into the room with a holoscreen. I knew that Hunter knew what was happening, because he locked the door behind him, and Wrecker was in front of the door ahead of us.
Nervousness flushed through my system as I glanced around the room; everyone had a serious expression with sympathy hidden behind their eyes. Omega was just confused.

"What's got your wands in a knot?" I asked, shrugging nervously, biting my tongue accidentally.

"We found something on Raxus that might be of some news to you," Tech answered, pulling out his data pad and typing on it quickly.

I thought I could taste my own blood in my mouth, my throat went dry with nervousness. My everything was tense, ready to run away from an invisible enemy.

Finally, Tech finished typing and placed his data pad on the table.

"It turns out the, 'secret location function', that you two installed without us knowing came in handy," Echo rolled his eyes, but I could see a lot of other emotions behind it.

I could not speak for a few minutes, I could not decide whether to be angry, surprised, upset, or afraid. I decided to suppress them all, and assume an analytical mask.

"You mean... Vial?" I scowled at the way his name tasted on my slightly bleeding tongue, it was sour, "is it bad or worse."

"Technically neither," Tech responded, "although, I am cautious to trust it."

He pressed a button which displayed a large image of a video frequency, most likely a data log. I shifted uncomfortably and waited for them to play it.

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" Wrecker put a hand on my shoulder, "you know... with-uh...well."

"Don't worry Wrecker," I patted his shoulder and turned my attention to the holoscreen, "let's see it."

Tech pressed some buttons on the screen, and the tape began playing. Thankfully, I could not see Vial's face. The urge to hit the hologram would have been too much to bear.

"Audio Log... colon: secret," Vial began, his smooth, velvety rich tone smoothing over me. But I knew better than to trust it, if you paid attention, he had a much more sinister tone. When he wasn't trying to hide anything, he could sound like Dr. Sawyer from "Poppy Playtime."

"Ugh, of course he's the type of person to actually say the word, 'colon,' when it's implied in the sentence..." I murmured, making Omega laugh.

"These logs contain the information that I hold dear but... it hardly matters, even if someone knows about it, it won't matter," he mused, "I'll apply my superior intelligence to the matter. No one except a few will even know these logs exist."

I rolled my eyes, just get to the tea, Vial.

"Anyway, there is something I must say that is most amusing," Vial continued slowly, speaking with purpose, "the empire is so... gullible... not something that could take half of what they say. I should know. I work with them, and they don't even know the advantage they have given me. They have given me more eyes across the entire galaxy. So... interesting that they suspect nothing of me. Not even the pathetic clones I'm looking for know it, she doesn't know it. Hmm... I wonder when she's going to figure out that it's not her magic in sensing over millions of galaxies... or whatever it may be at any given moment. It's the empire."

"Fucking hell," I swore unintentionally as the words he spoke flowed through the air.
Leave it up to someone like him to be manipulative like that.

"Y/n, language," Hunter returned.

I kept my face down; again, because of my senseless assumption that Vial was all that he says he was, I worried my entire team. Some friend I am.
I thought that I saw one of them giving me a funny look, a concerned look, but I was not paying attention to who it was.

"Heh... she's predictable, despite her distance from me I've still got her wrapped around my finger of influence." Vial snickered, "...well... I suppose the empire shouldn't know that either. They have no idea what kind of deal they made with me. Not at all. It's funny, despite being isolated here on my little moon, I still hold the sphere of influence I always have."

I felt my anger rising, Vial really liked talking like this. It was his favorite thing to do, put other people down for his own sake. Praying on their sense of distress they feel when making their actions. It was never a sense of whether I was less intelligent than him. It was only ever a matter of, how much can Vial make himself feel more confident by squeezing me. Clenching his fist firmly on what I hold dear so that I am forced to make decisions or believe things that may not be actually true to help the people I love.

I've seen it before, it happens all the time. Digging and then drawing a line. Someday he'll pay the price.

"Regardless, even if they do know, I would be ready," Vial continued, "there's nothing they could do against my advanced ways. Especially with the advancements I made in Lycanthropy. She's seen it firsthand. Nothing will stop me, not the empire, not clones, not her."

The message cut out with static, nothing more to be heard. I looked down, thinking deeply about this; I wasn't quite sure how to take this. I mean... I had to hand it to Vial for not being careful, thinking I wasn't still aware, but... could I trust that?

"As you can see," Tech adjusted his goggles, "it is... a questionable source."

"Vial, a liar," I mused, "I didn't think I would see that... I didn't see that coming."

"What do you mean?" Echo asked, "he did lie to you!"

"About what GhostFace?" I looked at him, "he never lied about loving me, the only thing he's lied to me about is this."

"That..." Tech thought intently, "might be true..."

"Regardless of this being an exception or not," Hunter put his hand on my shoulder, "if this is true, you don't have to worry about Vial randomly finding you just because you exist."

"Yeah, I wouldn't have to worry about using magic anymore." I smiled, "that would make things a little easier around here... In the right circumstances that is."

"Yes, but we don't need... others finding out about you Y/n," Hunter cautioned.

"If you're talking about Cid, I know already," I frowned, "still don't really trust her by the way."

"The Jedi trusted her," Echo responded, "why don't you?"

"Just because the Jedi, the keepers of peace by war, deemed Cid a useful asset doesn't mean that she is still and ever was truly trustworthy." I stated, "I had never heard of Cid before this, and I think it was for good reason. Cid is a hustler. If the empire gave her enough money and we were falling short, she would sell us out."

"Then we make sure that doesn't happen," Omega said supportively, "but... maybe you could be wrong? She has helped us out a lot you know."

"Yeah," I scratched the back of my head, "I know. But I still can't seem to bring myself to trust her."

"I bet we seem like the suspicious ones now," Wrecker chimed in, "we should probably go."

I nodded, "yeah."

We exited the room, and were soon greeted by Cid.

She crossed her arms and walked over to us, "hey, I got another mission for you boys."