🐺 ~PROJECT SAC-1~ ⚔️

Chapter 17 - As far as first dates go... 😆

A/N: 

We never see how the Bad Batch look when they're younger, but since they haven't been in battle I imagine Wrecker with actual hair when they are cadets and first deployed before his apparent accident XD I've seen some pics where he has light hair like Crosshair and Tech, and others where it's the same as all clones... I leave that to your imagination

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Picture it:

🌫️ Coruscant 🏙️
2️⃣2️⃣ BBY
🔫 Shortly after the outbreak of the Clone Wars

Four young and inexperienced deviant clone commandos fresh off of Kamino, with the physical maturity of twenty years but nowhere near the emotional and mental maturity of that age.

And despite being exceedingly different in appearance then their reg counterparts, one even having silver-toned hair and the other roughly the size of a wookie and even having the strength of one, the squadron still thought themselves looking very plain, very dull, very BLAH...

🔅🔹🖤🔸💀🔸🖤🔹🔅

(NIK'S PARLOR - LATE MORNING - DAY 7 SINCE DEPLOYMENT)

Good thing was, during his cadet years Tech had researched the various ways to enhance one's appearance through the HoloNet, and now the self-proclaimed 'Bad Batch' were in a position to make them look more unique, more dangerous-looking and the cherry on top, more rebellious. 😈

Bad part was, they didn't know you had to pay for these sorts of things too, and had spent almost all the money they didn't have on their very first meal that wasn't gross Cafeteria food, or the tasteless ration bars they'd supplied with. 😕 They had an inkling about having to trade credits for things, but they didn't expect the prices they were hit with when entering the five-star reviewed tattoo parlor this side of 79's.

Hunter was going to be the example of strength and set the foundation for him and his brothers getting over their needle phobia, and all he wanted was a black skull tattoo on the left side of his face, the badass symbol of their badass squadron. The tattoo would be odd pick me up of sorts, after that awful experience at the drinking establishment last night, and all dishwashing they had to do that still didn't pay off their exorbitant tab yet, the bartender said.

... But Hunter did not want to pay hundreds of credits for the skull tattoo, especially since he didn't have hundreds of credits.

Misunderstanding their apparent lack of credits at first, the co-owner of this place known as Nik's Parlor, Nik himself stood behind the counter with his arms crossed and said with a no-nonsense tone, "No money = no tattoos, guys." A stark contrast from how he enthusiastically treated the rest of his paying customers.

The Parlor got stragglers all the time who wanted to weasel cheap, sometimes outright FREE tattoos out of him and his co-owners. Or haircuts. Or piercings. Or clothes. It was only to be expected that he'd immediately assume this band of strange misfit soldiers in strange armor, standing in front of the pay counter with discontent looks, were exactly the same those sleemos, 'meekly' saying they didn't have the estimated number of credits to buy their Sergeant a tattoo.

Yet Nik's suspicions were quickly expunged when the difference between those sleemos and these guys is when Tech did hold out the pitiful amount of the measly dozen credits to their name, their mouths were pressed in hard lines instead of mock pouts, and their droopy eyes gleaming with not only embarrassment but shame and confusion and misery and they just looked so LOST. The people who tried to weasel freebees out of them could never be this sincere, a mischievous glint always giving them away. And there were exaggerated stories about a family member suffering a grave illness that's treatment sucked them dry of every spare cred they had, or how they knew the owner or manager and this downright disrespectful treatment would cost them their job, yada yada yada-