Work Text:
Ping!
Tom shifted on his spot on the couch, digging around in his pocket for his phone. Managing to snag it, he pulled it out to see who had messaged him. Tom frowned. It was Tord. He disappeared every so often into his room and usually wouldn't insinuate or respond to any form of interaction on his, Matts, or Edds part, so it was weird to get a message from him. Not that Tom wanted anything to do with the communist. He opened the new message and read it.
Commie: hey you wont kill me right?
Raising an eyebrow, Tom typed in his reply with some difficulty, thanks to his permanently half shifted claws.
Jehovahs: edd doesnt want me to so no.
Commie: but do you promise not to kill me
Jehovahs: no
Commie:...
Commie: dont murder me but pls come into my room
Jehovahs: why
Commie: i really, really need help
Tom paused for a moment and thought. Tord wouldn't ask for help even if he had a harpoon in his chest, so it had to be something really bad if he actually wanted help.
Jehovahs: fine
Tom pushed himself up off of the couch, almost tripping on his tail, and made his way over to Tord's room. He pushed the door open, ducked inside, and abruptly stopped in shock. The entire back wall of the room was missing, revealing what seemed to be a lab of some sort, filled with various mechanical stuff and instruments of science. He walked forward into the lab area and looked around.
"Oi, commie. Where are you." Tom could swear that his voice echoed in the metal room.
Ping! Went his phone again. He growled and pulled it out.
Commie: look down
He did. All he saw was black and yellow striped caution tape. Tom was about to snarl something about pranks when he heard it. The slightest shifting noise, like cloth rubbing against itself, under the table in the back covered in green goop.
He walked over to it and crouched, almost completely covering the underside in shadow. He squinted. He could see a dark red outline moving closer. Then it spoke.
"H-hi, Tom."
Tom jerked back, startled. The accent was unmistakable!
"What the-Tord?!"
Tord moved into the light, no more than six inches tall.
"S-so, um...you can probably see what I meant when I said I...uh... needed help."
"Yeah, I can definitely see that." Tom leaned in closer to take a better look at Tord, re-enveloping him in his shadow. "What the heck did you do?"
"I-I um," Tord rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "I-I might've broken a beaker filled with, um, chemicals, a-and got some on myself. Um, o-on the table."
Tom looked up from Tord at the table where there was, indeed, a broken beaker with the aforementioned chemicals resting in a green puddle around it. The beaker had a torn label on it, so Tom reached for the beaker to read it.
"Don't touch the green stuff!" Tord called up to Tom.
Tom swung his head around to glare at Tord, making him flinch.
"Well, duh, that's pretty obvious, commie." He looked back up and gingerly lifted the beaker with his claws to read the label. Half of it was torn off, but the first half clearly spelled 'Shri' before it cut off. Tom dropped the beaker and growled, looming over the miniaturized Norski.
"Were you planning on using this on us!?"
Tord backed away from Tom, back under the table. "Uh...Eh heh...N-no...I-I, Uh, I-"
Tom twisted, snatching Tord up in a purple clawed fist before he could bolt. "You WERE, weren't you!" Tom snarled, baring his, quite frankly, large canines.
"Uh-uh-uh n-no I-I-I-EP-" Tom tightened his grip on Tord, growling.
"Ah-Ah-Ah-" Tord frantically patted Tom's finger, gasping. "Y-y-m-maybe a-a l-little?"
Tom stood and growled louder, borderline roaring, purple smoke coming from the corners of his eyes, his body growing bigger, scales crawling up his arms and his horns growing longer.
"I KNEW we couldn't trust YOU!"
Tord squirmed, trying to escape the fist that now engulfed and threatened to crush him.
"I SHOULD-No, Calm, Calm Down, Don't Wanna Break Down The House Again, Breathe, Breathe, breathe-" Tom crouched, his almost fully shifted form dwindling away to his normal half shifted form and his deep, I-Eat-Gravel-voice smoothing out as he calmed himself. He loosened his crushing grip on a blue-in-the-face Tord, who gasped in the biggest breath he could.
"Alright, alright."Tom stood and turned toward the door, lifting Tord’s, who was clutching Toms fingers at the sudden elevation, head with his thumb claw to see his face, which had a terrified expression on it.
"Alright, I'm gonna take you to Edd, that way you can be his problem." Tom now had his usual apathetic expression plastered on his face. He started forward to the door, gaining a startled noise from Tord, and opened the door. Tom looked back at the lab one last time, before walking out, the door swinging shut behind him.