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He enjoys remaining above everyone. It’s part of how you deal with being able to see so much detail at all times of the day. You remain above it, away from it, apart from it.
Unable to be touched and therefore unable to be hurt.
He stares down at the regs that have ganged up on his brother, 9905, the big oaf having accidentally broken something in the room. Even from where he’s perched, ’04 can see that their biggest (and youngest) brother’s eyes are welling up pathetically.
“I didn’t mean to!” He cries, overly loud.
“Well you broke it!” The reg shouts, spittle flying out of his mouth, skeeving ’04 out. “You stupid oaf!”
And that wouldn’t do at all. Only 04 gets to call him that.
04 waits for the reg to turn away, to go and rejoin his batchers. And then he pulls back the stretchy material he’d stolen from Nala Se’s laboratory, one of his toothpicks slotting against it as he drew it back and—
04, 05 and the reg are all in the medbay. 99 looks on, disappointed at the pair of boys that carry his namesake.
“I understand that he upset 05,” 99 placates, his big eyes with new wrinkles underneath them. Stress, age, both, probably. “But you shouldn’t have done that.”
The Reg’s pathetic whimpering is irritating to 04, while 05 and him nurse bruises from the reg’s batchers, who’d shouted, “You conniving little vulture!” Up at 04 before he’d been dragged down by the feet and beaten up.
A toothpick just sticks out of the boy’s shoulder, his eyes huge as the medical droid sterilizes the wound in order to extract it.
04 sneers. He had it coming, but so had the reg's batch mates.
“Why didn’t you step in earlier?” 99 queries, softer still. “I know you well enough that you would have seen Wrecker accidentally running towards the other cadet.”
And 99’s right, of course. 04 had seen that 05 was going to run straight into the kid, and he had seen the datapad the kid had been carrying, that had gotten flung to the wall with the force of ‘05’s impact and smashed into a bunch of pieces.
It’s not his fault that the reg had done that. No more so than it's the reg's batcher's fault.
He keeps his gaze resolutely down.
The reg had started it, he just finished it. Violently.
99 sighs, and pats his leg as the medical droid picks out pieces of broken glass from his and 05’s legs, pieces of the datapad ground into his skin as they took the beating together.
He hadn’t wanted to be involved. He hadn’t wanted to care. He wanted to stay above it all and yet, when the line’s crossed it’s crossed and 04 will finish what others start.
He doesn’t think about that incident for a long, long time.
In truth, he’d almost taken the name Vulture, before he’d settled on Crosshair. That was, of course, until Tech had told him explicitly in one too many conversations how they weren’t actually all that scary. Just scavengers, bottom feeders. They’re big, but they don’t attack things, typically.
Mayday’s bulk against him is like a stone weighing him down. But he does not let go. He finishes what others start, and clone force 99 has a perfect 100% success rate.
Mayday’s too out of it to be much conversation. But Crosshair settles over him like he’d settled over Wrecker back then too, in his own way, the only way he knew how, their now adult bodies locked together, huddled for warmth. He doesn’t have his bucket with him, but he won’t take Mayday’s either, because if he gets any colder, he’s going to die, and that’s if his internal injuries don’t kill him first.
Crosshair curls his gun around him the same way that he’d locked himself with Wreckers after he’d been dragged into the fight. Too late to stop it, but just in time to finish it.
They make it back to the base, against all odds.
Of course they do, he’s got a 100% success rate. He finishes what he starts.
Mayday is still alive, although he’s on his last legs, but then—
He’s staring, at the lieutenant, as Mayday falls.
And he begs. He begs and he pleas and.
He checks Mayday’s pulse and the man is gone, he can see the breath leave him, the way he goes still, he checks it with his fingers anyway because he wants his eyes to be wrong.
And the lieutenant’s pulse in his throat is completely normal. Unaffected. Unbothered.
The same way that the dumb reg’s batcher’s had been, they could have stopped him too, but they chose not to, chose to let Wrecker run into him, and Crosshair had been the one to blame, and if he’s the one to blame regardless.
The vulture’s shadow passes over him.
He considers what they found, what Mayday and his stranded men had been protecting, their replacements armor.
He considers the cavalier way Mayday had discussed explosives, the comparison to Wrecker almost painful in that moment, the big oaf’s parting words to him, that they’d wanted him back, but he’d been so certain at the time he’d known better, had been flying overhead, and instead just was another bottom feeder, scavenging for scraps of glory and finding none here in this fucking wasteland.
He considers the fact that they’d been sent out to die, to be expended, for their replacements, and something solidifies in him, bitter and hot and grieving, because if that’s the game that the Lieutenant wants to play, Crosshair can play it too.
Crosshair draws his DC-17. “Lieutenant.”
And he finishes what the Lieutenant had started, shot landing true.