5 Times Zach Was Hugged (+ 1 Time He Hugged Someone Else)

Chapter 5: 5) Ground Crew

Zach wasn't entirely sure when the Wild Kratts had decided they could call him up whenever they wanted a bit of extra help.

He was even less sure of when it had become true.

"No no no, you big blue idiot!" Zach hissed into his computer, sitting crosslegged in the Tortuga. The person he used to be would be scouring the room for parts, instead he was stuck babysitting. "Blue Boy, get out of the way of the laser before I fire it anyways!"

"It's a little hard to keep track of where I'm going with all these Zachbots flying around!" Martin complained, his voice having an odd chirping quality from his current Cheetah form. "Give me a second and I'll get out of the wa– oops."

"'Oops'?" Zach repeated, watching an alert pop up on his laptop screen. "HOW DID YOU ALREADY DAMAGE THE LASER?!"

"Well, this is going better than I expected." Koki smirked, sharing a pizza with Jimmy across the room. "Better than the time we tested the gravity bombs, anyways."

Zach's eye started twitching at the reminder of that particular incident. "How much longer until Aviva's back, again?"

"Her niece's birthday is tomorrow, she should be back the day after." Jimmy responded around a bite of cheese. "I can pilot us closer to her after the test, if you want, to speed things along."

Zach scoffed. "I do not need things sped along, Gamer Guy, I'm perfectly capable– How the Hell did they even get that stuck there?!" He yelled at his computer screen, growling as he frantically typed commands to his Zachbots.

"Hey, Zach?" Koki started, once the typing had slowed back down to normal crazy inventor levels.

"Yeah, Orange Lady?" He'd tried to call her 'Phone Lady' at first, but a wrench much too close to his face quickly changed his mind.

"Is Aviva the only person you don't have a nickname for?"

Zach looked up from his laptop screen, blinking at the unexpected question. No-one ever really asked about his nicknames beyond telling him to stop calling them something. After a minute, he slowly answered. "...I don't have one for Gourmand."

"Why not?" Koki asked cheerfully, boredom and curiosity fueling her as usual.

Because when he tried to give him one, Zach found himself proof-reading cookbooks and learning waaay more about a stripey-horsey's internal organs than he ever wanted know, in exchange for his freedom. "He didn't like it." Zach shrugged, returning to his laptop.

With Martin finally out of the way and the remote repairs finished, Zach fired the Tortuga's new laser, taking out several Zachbots while leaving the area around them unharmed.

The laser's secondary affect of boosting the Creature Power Suits went off without a hitch, and the Bros were soon zooming their way through the remaining Zachbots. Now all he needed to do was get the charge time down on the laser...

Actually, this was a free job, Aviva could deal with the charging issue herself.

"It worked!" Jimmy laughed, clapping.

"Good job, Zach." Koki walked over, lightly punching Zach's arm.

Zach flinched, more out of habit than pain, and grinned. "I told you it would."

"Yes, yes, you were right." Koki rolled her eyes. "I can't believe it really worked, though. If we can get the beam smaller, we'll have a mostly-safe way to send the Bros emergency assistance or power. This is genius, City Rat."

"'City Rat'?" Zach repeated, tilting his head.

"'Cause you're not quite a Wild Kratt." Jimmy guessed, bringing the pizza over. "I like it."

Zach humphed, not admitting that he kinda liked it too. He stared at the pizza that was put in front of him. The last few successful weapons tests had ended in the Crew hugging and jumping excitedly at their success, with Zach watching in bemusement, not semi-calm snacking.

Zach noticed the other two staring at him and realized they were trying to include him in the celebration because it was his design. Well, his design after Aviva had triple-checked and modified it, but still...

It was the first one of these things he'd run without her looking over his shoulder, and they were being nice to him about it. Koki had even kept the mocking down to a minimum during the process. He sighed and nimbly jumped off the weird table-thing he'd been sitting on.

"Yay, we did it." He deadpanned, making jazz hands. "Don't you guys normally get all touchy-feely about these things? Or is that just when it's Aviva's inventions?"

He internally winced, not having meant that to come out like that. Sarcastic was just the headspace he lived in, he guessed.

"Well, we thought you'd..." Jimmy trailed off, but 'freak out' was easy to guess.

"I'm in the turtle-ship-thingy, not stealing anything, helping you Wild Rats." Zach growled. "My comfort zone was breached a while ago."

Not that anyone had ever actually cared much about his comfort zone. They usually just cared about how unproductive panic attacks made him. Avoiding hugging each other so as to not exclude him was... New. And not unappreciated, if he was being honest.

When Koki and Jimmy still seemed unsure, he just raised an expectant eyebrow at them, trying to make his expression stop being a scowl. He must have at least partially succeeded, as the next thing he knew he was being pulled into a group hug by the grinning ground Crew.

Zach was not a Good Guy. But maybe he could admit, to himself, that being friends with the good guys wasn't too bad.