The Bad Batch: One Shot Collection

Lula Awakens

In which Lula comes to life.

This fic was written for the Pabu Days Zine

The voices of her parents drift in slowly, and she blinks up at the ceiling. All of them are already awake and going through their morning routines. She wishes she could move to see them, and she feels her arm twitch a little.

Wait. Her arm. Moved. It moved!

She's never been able to do that before.

Lula wobbles as she pushes herself into a sitting position, peering in the direction of the rest of the ship. She's in the gunner's mount, and her parents are in the room right beside her, drinking caf.

She hops to her feet, waddling over to the ladder, hopping down the rungs to the floor. She lands with a dull thump, and suddenly, all eyes are on her. ... Why are they looking at her like that?!

Hunter chokes and starts coughing. Omega makes a tiny gasp-squeak sound.

"You seeing this?" Crosshair asks, leaning over to Echo.

"Seeing," their eldest replies, "Still working on believing."

Lula frowns, or she would frown if she had a proper mouth to frown with.

"What?" she demands, and no, she doesn't know how her voice is working, either.

"Has this ever happened before?" Emerie inquires.

"This is actually a first," Tech responds. Lula's happy to see him back. Everyone was so miserable when he was gone, but he came back the same time as Emerie joined them.

"Hi," Lula chirps.

"Tech, how can she talk?!' Crosshair demands, and he's sounding increasingly hysterical. What? He made her!

"You did give me a mouth," she argues.

He chokes. "You remember that?"

"Yeah," she replies cheerfully, "that and when you first gave me to Wrecker."

Wrecker laughs. "I knew it was you!"

Crosshair glowers wordlessly at him.

"And you're alive!" he continues, unperturbed by Crosshair's reaction. He approaches her, and woah, the floor does sort of vibrate quite a bit from each of his footsteps. He scoops her up, and she squeaks in surprise before giggling.

This is amazing. Wrecker has held her many times, but it feels more real when she can respond to him.

He squeezes her very lightly and it feels ridiculously ticklish."You're still squishy," Wrecker observes, perplexed.

Lula giggles, twisting her arms up enough that she can hug one of his wrists. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"'Cause how can you talk?"

"She doesn't have a normal heartbeat," Hunter speaks up, confused, "but I can still sense her. I don't understand it."

Tech comes over to her with a scanner. "I do not understand," he says. "The scanner shows that it is alive, but that should be impossible."

Lula would make a face if she was able. "I have always been alive," she protests, still hugging Wrecker's wrist. "I couldn't move or talk, but I still knew what was happening!"

"Can I hold you?" Omega asks, holding her arms out. Lula brightens at the prospect, wriggling around to extend her tiny arms to Omega. Wrecker hands her over, and she finds herself in the much smaller girl's arms. Omega hugs her tightly to her chest, and Lula tries to hug her back as best she can. "Do you need to eat?" Omega asks her, "or is that not a thing?"

"I don't think so," Lula answers. "I'm not hungry."

Tech pokes on his scanner a bit more. "I do not believe she has anything inside of her. She is composed of the same materials as she was last night."

"So fabric and stuffing," Crosshair says skeptically, "but it's still talking. Can you explain that?"

"Maybe it's some Jedi thing," Echo suggests uncertainly. "General Skywalker might have been able to explain it but..." The rest goes unsaid but Lula's pretty sure he's probably dead if he's a Jedi.

"Did you see things come to life with the Jedi?" Emerie inquires.

"Well, this is the first, but I can't say it's too outlandish."

"Let's show her around the island," Omega suggests brightly, "since this is the first time you can walk and talk."

"Yes!" Lula agrees eagerly. She's often left behind on the Marauder, and she really wants to see more of the world.

Pabu is beautiful.

She's missed seeing the green of the plants, and so much water. The water reminds her of Kamino.

Meeting the animals is fun too. Or at least it was until Batcher attacked her with his tongue. And now she's all wet!

"I feel weird," Lula whines.

"Whaddya mean weird?" Wrecker asks, instantly worried.

"I'm all wet and it won't go away." She doesn't like it at all.

"You can dry off in the sunlight," Omega suggests. "That should help."

Ew. She needs to keep away from Batcher's tongue. Far, far away. It's annoying that she only tried to lick her when she realized she was moving around. Otherwise, she's mostly ignored her.

Lula stretches out on her back on the sand, lying beneath the warm sunlight to let it dry her like Omega suggested. Tech and Emerie come to sit beside her, still working over their scans and attempting to figure something out. They're still muttering to each other about how she came to life, and Lula giggles at their confusion. She really likes being like this. It's so much more interesting.

Wrecker, Crosshair, and Omega are running around together not far away, playing and laughing with each other.

Hunter and Echo are talking nearby.

It's... peaceful here.

And they all look happier than she's seen them in so long. It's nice. She hopes it can stay this way.

Final Notes: Reviews are always appreciated! ^-^

We've set up a new discord server! It's new, so we won't have many people for a while, but please feel free to join if you like this fic!! Or if you just want to talk about the fandom. We have sections for all three fandoms we're writing in, and we're hoping to soon have an audience ready to interact with in all three! (SW, MCU, now HTTYD)

https://discord.gg/MkCdY32BYS