Chapter Text
He should have known that nothing lasts forever.
It’s late at night the next day when the minor future he’d seen before explodes into his brain, and he estimates that they have about thirty minutes before the people arrive.
He bursts into action, rousing everyone in the house and frantically packing bags for them all.
He’s shoving Wilbur, Techno, and Phil out of the back door when he hears something slam into the front door.
“Go!” Tommy cries, shoving his friends outside as the front door comes crashing down and the people spill into the house.
Tubbo, who is already outside, yelps in fear and wavers in the air, as though forcing himself not to fly away.
“Run. There’s a hole in the fence in the right corner where you can get out.” Tommy shouts, shoving at his friends, who are frozen in place.
They jolt into action and start running, and as Tommy moves to follow them he feels hands around his ankle.
He screeches, flipping around in the air and beating his wings around the head of the man who’d grabbed him.
Tommy feels hands on his wings, pulling him down, and he kicks out blindly with his free leg as he’s forced to the ground.
His foot connects with someone, and he registers a small pain in his arm, the glint of metal, but he’s too focused on trying to escape to think about what that means.
His vision is filled with people in military uniforms, pinning him down, and he can hear Tubbo crying somewhere nearby.
He beats his wings wildly, trying once more to escape, but his limbs are growing heavier and it’s getting harder to keep his eyes open.
Darkness creeps at the edges of his vision and Tommy feels oh so very tired.
His eyes grow heavier, and his mind grows fuzzy as he falls unconscious.
-
Tommy groans as he opens his eyes.
Light floods into his face, and Tommy winces, raising a hand to shield his face.
When his eyes adjust, he stands and looks around at his new surroundings.
He doesn’t recognize this room; how did he get here?
Memories of earlier that day rush back to him, and Tommy realizes that he must have been drugged.
With a grunt, he glances around the room, hoping to see something that will help him escape.
It’s pretty plain; white walls, white floor. There’s a bed with a single blanket in one corner, and a door in the other that turns out to open into a bathroom. There’s another door, heavy and metal, that Tommy assumes leads out into the rest of the facility.
He tries to ruffle his wings, and thats when he realizes that he can’t .
Tommy feels sick when he realizes that there’s clamps on his wings, stopping them from being outstretched all the way.
He shudders, hating the feeling of being grounded.
He hopes Tubbo and the others are okay.
When he tries to look into the future, he cries out in shock, because the silvery branches are gone, replaced by nothingness.
For a moment, Tommy thinks his powers are gone, and then he realizes that the facility must have some sort of magic blocker.
The door opens, and Tommy's head snaps around.
A man enters, holding a gun. “Follow me and don’t act up, or I’ll shoot you in the head.” He says, voice low and growly.
Tommy clenches his fists a couple times, debating whether or not to follow. He misses his foresight.
His problem is solved when the man presses the gun to his temple, and so Tommy reluctantly follows the man into a large room with a door on each wall.
It feels like he’s suddenly walked into a forest.
The room is massive and very very tall, with ledges of various sizes scattered around the wall, painted to look like rocks.
The floor is dirt, though Tommy can’t tell how deep it goes.
There’s fake trees scattered around the room, with large branches sprouting from the trunks.
Tommy’s lip curls as he sees what looks like a river tailing through the room, obviously man-made. Did they expect him to drink from that water like some sort of animal? Fish splash around in the river, ranging from small to massive, and Tommy blinks in confusion.
What’s the purpose of this room?
He grows even more confused as the man unclamps his wings and vanishes out the door they came in from.
Quickly, he flies up to one of the ledges, just in case.
For the rest of the day, he is alone in the room. When the lights turn off, Tommy goes to sleep. When the lights flick on, Tommy wakes up.
He’s hungry, incredibly hungry, but no one ever comes with food.
He stares down at the river, down at the fish , the silvery, wriggling fish.
Do they expect him to eat the fish?
Tommy scoffs, tearing his gaze away from the fish, despite the fact that they look incredibly appetizing.
As if he’s going to eat raw fish.
But as the hours drag on, and still no one arrives with food, Tommy gives in.
He glides down to the river and crouches on the bank, trying to figure out how to catch them.
He tries to grab them, but the fish always seem to slip from his grasp.
Then, he gets an idea, and when one of the smaller fish flits past him, he hooks his hand forward and essentially splashes the fish out of the water and onto the ground beside him.
Well, he’s got the fish. How does he eat it?
Tommy stares down at the fish, frowning. Can he eat it raw? Is that one of his hybrid abilities? Almost reflexively, he glances into the future to see what effect eating the fish will have, before remembering that his powers are blocked.
He pokes at the fish, which is flopping around piteously, and impulsively decides to just eat it raw and deal with possible consequences later.
After all, his stomach is curling in pain, and the fish is food.
He picks up the little fish by the tail and closes his eyes for a moment, steeling himself before plopping the fish into his mouth and swallowing it whole.
It’s slimy, and he gags a little bit, but he decides that its not that bad overall.
He catches another fish, larger this time, and then realizes that this one is too big to swallow without chewing.
As he contemplates how to eat it, because he can’t exactly bite into a fish, his mouth feels tingly.
Tommy’s hands fly up to his mouth, and his wings flutter in surprise as he feels it changing .
Within moments, his mouth has shifted into a beak-like shape, hooked like a hawk’s. He wonders if this is another part of being a bird hybrid; if so, why is it only showing now?
Tentatively, he hooks his “beak” into the side of the fish and pulls at the flesh. It gives easily, and Tommy grins as his wickedly sharp beak rips through the fish like it’s butter.
He carefully picks out the scraps of meat that he wants, avoiding the bones and the eyes (He can never stand eating fish eyes. They’re just so rubbery and the way they pop always make him cringe).
After he finishes the fish, he leaves the scraps scattered across the ground and returns to his ledge, where he begins to ponder why he’s in here.
Maybe it’s a test on his animalistic traits or instincts? That could be it. It would explain why they’d stuck him in here.
But what’s their end goal? Perhaps they have none, Tommy muses.
He jolts out of his thoughts as one of the other doors bangs open, and a person is thrown into the room.
The soldier outside shouts something angrily before slamming the door closed.
Tommy cautiously glides over onto one of the branches of the tree closest to the person, close but not too close to them. Just in case.
They look like a fox hybrid. Tommy frowns, because he didn’t know there were other hybrids. The man has fox ears and a bushy tail, and his hands are closer to claws.
He looks familiar somehow, but Tommy can’t see the man’s face clearly.
He squawks in surprise as the man groans, clasping a hand to his head. When the fox hybrid pushes himself up onto his knees, Tommy realizes with a jolt who the person is.
“Fundy?” He says incredulously, flaring his wings behind him as he carefully shuffles closer to the end of the branch.
Fundy looks up in surprise, eyes widening. “Tommy?”
Tommy gives a shocked laugh as he slips off the branch and glides to the ground. “They caught you too, eh?”
Fundy grunts, eyes sliding to the side. “..Yeah. They showed up at my house yesterday. No idea how they knew I was a fox.”
“I mean, I didn’t know you’re a fox.” Tommy says, though he’s not sure why. “And I can see the future an’ shit.” He adds.
“You can what? ” Fundy asks, gaze snapping to Tommy’s face.
“I can see the future. Not in here, though, because they have some sort of blocker on it.” Tommy elaborates, not elaborating at all.
“Mm. I can turn into a fox.” Fundy says, then scrunching his face in confusion. “I guess I can’t in here, either.”
Fundy glances around the room. “Um. What is here, anyways?”
Tommy shrugs as he stands up. “No idea. They put me in here yesterday. I think it’s to test our animalistic instincts, or what our animal genes allow is to do or something.”
He points at the river. “They didn’t bring me any food, so I had to fish. Turns out I can eat raw meat.”
Fundy’s lip curls. “Ew, man. I hate fish.”
“They’ll probably put in mice or something for you to hunt.” Tommy points out, flying up onto a low branch on the tree. “Foxes don’t really eat fish.”
Fundy frowns. “I don’t want to eat mice, either.”
Tommy sighs, ruffling his wings. “Yeah, it kind of sucks. Hopefully they’ll take us out of here eventually.”
“Yeah.” Fundy mutters, and the lights flick off.
Tommy scowls. “Time to sleep, I guess.” He says as he squints in the darkness, shuffling to the right so he can lean against the trunk of the tree.
Tommy wraps his wings around himself and mutters a quiet, “Night, bitch.”
Fundy chuckles a little. “Goodnight, Tommy.”
Maybe this won’t be so bad after all, if he gets to have a friend by his side.