Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time Tommy met Phil was incredibly brief and occurred during a robbery. It was made slightly awkward by the fact that Phil was the one doing the robbing but Tommy couldn’t really hold that against him.

If Tommy’s big brother wasn’t a hero he might have tried a little larceny on the side to supplement their monthly budget. Seriously, there was only so much scrimping, saving, and intensive meal prep that one teenager could do before they went insane. Every once in a while he just wanted to pig out on takeout chinese, was that so much to ask?

Dream kept reassuring him that things would change, that his next promotion would make everything better. The problem was, Dream never got promoted, a fact Tommy had raged against when he was younger.

Problem was, Dream was too noble to do the kind of schmoozing that would have gotten him ahead in The Agency. So no promotion beyond where he had stalled out and no chinese take out binge money for Tommy.

It hadn’t been all that eventful, all things told. The Angel of Death had walked into the bank with the Blade and Piper at his back, an array of minions behind them. Tommy had been in the corner, curled in on himself as he tried to make the budget for the week make sense.

He hadn’t even noticed them at first, not until the screaming started. The heist hadn’t even lasted long, the group had been as courteous as possible as they had gestured to be led behind the counter and into the vault and had been out just as quickly.

Dream hadn’t even gotten a chance to hurry out of the back room where he was trying to deal with their parent’s trust before the group was gone.

The second time Tommy met Phil wasn’t so much a meeting as a hero nearly killed Tommy by throwing the villain through a wall. Tommy had screamed and then spent a few seconds pretending he definitely hadn’t done that before The Angel of Death had crawled his way out of the crater he’d made in the wall and looked at him.

“You alright, mate?” He’d asked.

Tommy had nodded at him and the villain had been gone again. The school had canceled classes for the rest of the week after that incident and Tommy had resolved to thank the man for that the next time he saw him.

The third time Tommy had met Phil it was late and Tommy was walking to the bus stop when he’d noticed someone sitting on top of a building, feet dangling over and kicking against the side carelessly. Tommy blinked up at the man, glanced around to make sure that there weren’t cars coming before making his way across the street.

He scrambled up the fire escape, backpack thumping against his lower back as he went. The metal hurt his hands, it was old and vaguely rusted and the palms of his hands were too fucking sensitive at times like this but there was someone on a building and if he didn't do something and they jumped…

Tommy makes it to the roof in time, making his way over to the man sitting on the edge and plopping down next to him. The man blinked, like he’d just started to come out of a dream and turned to look at Tommy.

He was blonde with blue eyes a few shades darker than Tommy’s own and he was old. He was older than Dream and that made him very old indeed. There was a green robe thingy that Tommy had seen in some anime or other draped over his shoulders and he wasn’t wearing shoes.

“Hey, Big Man,” Tommy kept his voice low, completely cutting out the upper part of his register, not wanting to startle the man. “You alright?”

A grim smile slipped across the man’s face and he raised an eyebrow. Tommy winced because, yeah, that was a bit of a stupid question, considering.

“Wanna talk about it?” Tommy asked.

“I probably should.” The man went back to staring at the pitch black sky above them. “He always loved the stars, bitched so much about light pollution when we moved.”

Tommy looked up at the sky, there were a few stars scattered across the darkness, it was better than it was at the city center but Dream had taken him out camping once. There had been so many stars Tommy had spent hours staring at the glittering tapestry above his head, had even fallen asleep like that and woken up to a fox snoozing on his chest.

“It’s been a month but…” The man paused. “It only just sank in, you know. Took that long to find our mole, at least he didn’t feel anything when he went.”

“What happened?” Tommy asked.

“Someone pulled the plug on his life support,” the man spat.

Tommy’s eyes went wide as the affable man bared teeth that suddenly seemed too sharp, face going dark with rage. In that moment he looked dangerous, like a predator seconds away from pouncing on an unsuspecting mouse.

“He got caught up in a fire and his lungs were wrecked, no one even noticed something was wrong until it was too late.” There were tears in his eyes now, angry, painful tears. “We were in the hideout, he should have been safe, we should have been able to trust the people around us.”

His breath hitched and Tommy reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t know what to say to this man, hadn’t even known what to say to Dream when their own parents had died.

“It’s my fucking fault, I should have done better background checks,” the man hissed.

Then he buried his face in his hands and started to sob. Tommy’s eyes went wide and he glanced around the roof for someone, anyone but there wasn’t anyone because it was the middle of the fucking night and they were on a roof.

Tommy hesitated for a second before leaning into the man’s side and wrapping his arm more firmly around him. The man leaned into the touch but otherwise didn’t react.

They stayed like that for a while, Tommy watching the street below as the man sobbed into his hands. There were a few implications Tommy was very carefully not thinking about and the fact that the man next to him looked incredibly familiar was one of the bigger ones.

“Even the best background checks miss things,” Tommy said. “Can you tell me about him?”

The man laughed, it sounded wet but he wasn’t struggling to breathe with his grief anymore so Tommy was going to take that as an improvement. The man wiped his eyes off on the sleeve of his robe and reached up to pat Tommy’s arm.

Tommy let his arm slip off of the man's shoulder and he shuffled away a bit, so they weren’t sitting so close. He was still crying but it was more discrete now, just tears trailing down his cheeks in silent sorrow.

“Will was… he burned so bright and sometimes that was a bad thing but it was so beautiful. He loved music and random facts about nature, hated anteaters even though it never made sense,” the man laughed again. “You know I caught him eating sand once?”

Tommy’s face scrunched up in confused disgust. “Who the fuck eats sand?”

“Will was a handful as a teenager, didn’t help that his gift came in late, though we knew it would be coming, voice related gifts always have a bit of a delay. First time he used it was to get his math teacher to let the entire class out half an hour early,” he said.

They stayed like that for a few minutes, the man - Phil - talking about his son and Tommy chiming in with embarrassing things he and his brother did when they were younger. It was nice, Tommy didn’t have many friends, an unfortunate side effect of being the weird kid that talked to the class hamster back in elementary school and the ones he did have weren’t interested in hearing about the weird shit that happened around Dream before they realized that his gift affected probability.

Then Tommy remembered he had curfew and had excused himself from the roof before he could miss the bus. Phil had laughed and followed him down to street level before turning to walk in the opposite direction.

“Thanks, mate,” he called over his shoulder. “See you around.”

*****

Tommy woke up the next morning to Dream sitting in the kitchen and staring at the television. He didn’t register what was on the screen at first but when he did his eyes went wide and he sat down hard.

There was an anchor woman standing in front of the Hero Center, she looked vaguely sick and there was a line of police tape behind her. The tv was muted but Tommy could take a guess as to what she was talking about given the headline running along the bottom of the screen.

“And there goes our mole,” Dream sighed, reaching out to turn off the screen.

“Mole?” Tommy did not have a good feeling about what the answer to that could be.

Dream hummed. “We finally manage to get someone inside the Syndicate and they find him out in under a year. Damn, I’ve no clue what we’re going to tell Purpled.”

“Yup, did not like that answer,” Tommy muttered.

“What?” Dream asked.

“What?” Tommy blinked innocent blue eyes at his brother.

Dream’s acid green eyes narrowed.

“How much did you get out of the Syndicate before he was found out? Why wasn’t he extracted sooner?” Tommy asked.

Why had he been ordered to pull a defenseless man’s life support?

There was a chuckle from one of the open seats at the table and George rippled back into the visible spectrum. Tommy didn’t jump, he was used to George’s random disappearance and reappearance by now but he did glare at his brother’s friend.

“Not a lot, he started out pretty low level and most of that’s going to be useless now that they know he was the mole. There was more in the last few weeks, some of it flawed but…” Dream trailed off and let his head fall forward onto the table. “And that should have been our first sign, damn it, we just thought he’d started to get people to trust him. They wanted to know if he was the mole.”

Tommy stood and went to rummage through the freezer, he’d thought he’d seen a pack of toaster strudels in there the other day. He didn’t want to cook that morning and since both George and Dream actively burned water they weren't going to be any help.

“Which leaves one question, why was The Angel of Death so vicious when they confirmed the mole?” George said.

“Well, it’s only been a month since Piper died,” Tommy offered.

Success. There, in the very back of the freezer was a square of flakey, raspberry filled goodness. He didn’t even notice the fact the room had gone deathly silent until he popped the treat in the microwave.

Tommy turned to look at the heroes sitting at the table. George had his head tilted to one side, face scrunched up in confusion but Dream had his hero face one, the face he only used on Tommy when his brother had done something incredibly stupid.

“Tommy,” Dream drawled. “What do you mean that it's been a month since Piper died? I know he was injured in the last fight SBI participated in but that doesn’t mean he’s dead.”

Tommy abruptly realized his mistake and tried to keep the guilt off of his face, it didn’t work. He knew it didn’t work because Dream abruptly got the squinty eyed look that meant he was trying to figure out what Tommy had broken.

Tommy stayed quiet, that was almost always the best bet when Dream realized Tommy had done something he wasn’t supposed to. He might not have been the one who had to deal with endless paperwork and higher ranking heroes all day but Tommy could still be as stubborn as an ox when he wanted to be.

“Tommy, what did you do?” Dream asked.

“I didn’t do anything!” Then again, Dream always knew exactly where to push.

“Uh, huh,” Dream drawled. “And if I decided that you didn’t get minecraft privileges for the rest of the week?”

“I didn’t do something that bad!” Tommy yelped and, great, he’d just admitted he’d done something warranting a minecraft ban.

“Then how bad was it?” Dream asked.

“I,” Tommy hesitated, debating whether or not Dream would throw a fit if he knew and go off to stab a super villain in the face. “Look I was coming home last night and saw someone sitting on a roof. Went up to fucking check that he wasn’t going to jump and he told me that a mole in his organization had pulled his son’s life support and no one noticed until the next morning and they didn’t find out who had done it until recently.”

George hissed in sympathy and Dream’s eyes squeezed shut. He brought his hands up to dig his fingers into his eyes and Tommy noticed his nails had been painted a deep green.

Weird, Dream didn’t paint his nails often but Tommy had seen him do weirder shit to tip probability in the right direction. Tommy still didn’t know what the firework incident had been about and didn’t particularly want to know.

“Oh, Punz, you stupid bitch,” Dream groaned.

“We knew this wasn’t a good idea, we told them that, Dream.” George reached out to lay a hand on Dream’s shoulder. “And you told Punz not to take any risks.”

“He murdered a super villain's son, George. What the fuck was he thinking?” Dream asked.

And yeah, Tommy got that, there were certain lines that you didn’t cross. They went mostly unspoken because no one really wanted to voice them and jinx it but they were there for a reason.

Killing someone in mask was on the table, villains and heroes regularly engaged in powered combat after all but killing someone while they were a civilian? That right there was beyond the pale, even the worst of the worst didn’t interfere with a hero’s civilian life beyond the occasional kidnapping of a relative.

The last villain who had broken that rule, who had actively hunted a hero and their family until they were nothing more than a blood smear on the wall, had been Israphel. He hadn’t been taken into custody, his own community had gotten together to plant his head on a pike outside the hero agency’s headquarters.

Spies and moles were on the fringes, operated on slightly different rules but even they limited themselves to mission specific information. Tommy knew that there were a few kids at school doing presentations on the realities of heroes and villains vs the portrayals in the media for their English final.

Shutting off someone’s life support, that was just beyond low and cruel and didn’t follow any of the societal rules set out to prevent heros and villians from tearing each other to bloody bits.

“He was thinking the way he always thinks, Dream,” George said. “We all knew he was slipping, it’s not your fault that we didn’t know how far.”

Dream took a second and then looked up at Tommy, letting him remove his pastries from the microwave before speaking up. “You’re grounded.”

“What?” Tommy waved his pastries at his brother. “All I did was talk to someone and make a friend!”

“You made a friend?” Dream deadpanned.

Tommy nodded because he’d talked with Phil for hours last night and could already tell that Phil was awesome. The man had actually paid attention to everything Tommy said, Dream couldn’t even boast that much some days.

“You made friends with the most wanted super villain on the planet?” Dream sounded like he was regretting waking up that morning.

“Well, when you say it like that.” Tommy shoved the corner of his pastry into his mouth.

Dream made a disbelieving choking noise and buried his head in his hands. From somewhere deeper in the house Tommy could hear Sapnap laughing his ass off.

“You're grounded,” Dream moaned. “For a week.”

“Wha’?” Tommy said around his breakfast.

“Don’t make me make it two.” Dream pointed at him.

“But I didn’t do anything,” Tommy whined.

“It’s not about what you did,” Dream protested. “I just need to do recon and grounded means I’m not keeping you off the streets for your own protection.”

Tommy made a face of utter disgust but didn’t protest. His brother had done similar things in the past, at least now he was telling Tommy when things were a manipulative ploy rather than just assuming Tommy was telepathic.

*****

A week later, when he was no longer grounded, Tommy was sitting in one of the many parks in the main city, chattering to one of the stray cats that had taken up residence there when someone sat down next to him. He glanced up and blinked when he recognized Phil.

“Hey, mate, your brother finally let him out of the house?” The villain asked.

“I’ve been told that if you recruit me Dream is going to devote his life to making sure you never succeed on a mission ever again,” Tommy said. “Also, none of them had any idea Punz was that mentally unstable.”

“Figured that out already, mate,” Phil smiled. “If they had and they’d let him do it, well, there wouldn’t be an agency left now would there?”

And for some reason Tommy found that declaration comforting rather than terrifying.

Chapter Text

There was a swarm of bees in the backyard.

“Huh.” Tommy stared a for a few seconds before closing the door and pulling out his phone.

After a quick google search he made his way into the kitchen and pulled a pot out of the cabinet. Dream looked up from the paperwork he was trying to do on the table and blinked at him.

“I thought you were going to go outside,” Dream said.

“There’s a swarm in the backyard, I’m making sugar water just in case,” Tommy said.

“Should I call a beekeeper?” Dream asked.

“I don’t think they’re going to settle here but I’ll ask.” Tommy started filling the pot with water.

“I thought you couldn’t do insects.” There was some paper shuffling.

“I can’t do pheromones.” Tommy started measuring out sugar. “Bees have body language, bitch. It’ll be simple but I can talk to them.”

“Do I even want to know how you know that?” Dream asked.

“Nope,” Tommy grinned.

Dream sighed and went back to his paperwork. Tommy ignored him as he started making the sugar syrup, it didn’t take long but Tommy had left sugar unattended on the stove before and refused to make that mistake ever again.

Tommy pulled it off the heat before digging around for a cookie sheet and cooling rack. Dream blinked at him as he wandered out of the kitchen but made no other comment.

Setting up in the backyard didn’t take all that long and Tommy sat down a few feet away from the tray of sugar syrup. He waited, absently scrolling through social media as the swarm buzzed to itself on the fence.

After a few minutes a handful of bees detached and made their way over to the cookie sheet he had filled with syrup. Once they got close enough he could hear the hunger in them, the desperation of stomachs left empty for far too long.

The swarm must have been in the air for days for them to feel that hungry, bees were pretty resilient and it was the tail end of spring, they should have had enough nectar to last them a while. Tommy waited another half hour before he even attempted to communicate, hunger would make anyone cranky and several thousand bees wasn’t exactly a fight Tommy wanted to participate in.

“Hello,” he called.

There was a pause, a stutter in the collective consciousness of the swarm and then the feeling of intent attention. Tommy swallowed heavily, he’d never talked to a wild swarm of bees before, though he had had a brief exchange with a captive hive at the natural history museum last year.

“ Who? ” The swarm asked.

“Friend,” Tommy replied.

“ Lie. Swarm or not. ” The swarm buzzed.

“Not but human,” Tommy said.

It was strange, the buzz of the swarm acted like an accent but Tommy was used to that with new species. Cats had been weird too when he’d started talking to them and he still had issues with foxes but there was something else as well, something that itched at the back of his brain.

The swarm buzzed some more, muttering to itself in a way that wasn’t audible to Tommy. The teenager waited, insects weren’t very individual animals, they tended to think as a collective and while most times that collective was in harmony there were times when they very much weren’t. If Tommy tried to listen in on the conversation he wouldn’t get a lot out of it, not while the swarm was like this.

“ Safe? ” The swarm asked after a couple of minutes.

“Safe,” Tommy agreed.

There was a pause and then the swarm shifted, undulated on the fence as it scuttled towards the grass as one being. Tommy frowned, squinting at it as it moved and appeared to grow even as the low buzz of the swarm started to fade in and out of his ability to hear.

The swarm warped, twisting together into the shape of a human hand and then it was a human hand, pressed against the grass. Tommy’s jaw dropped as he watched the swarm twist around itself to slowly build the body of a boy out of insects. That definitely explained why he’d been having a tough time understanding them, they weren’t exactly insects to begin with.

Once the boy was fully formed he blinked big brown eyes at Tommy, grinned, and promptly fainted into grass like some sort of Victorian maiden. Tommy recognized him, it would be difficult not to, what with Dream’s rants about underage villains… and sidekicks, the sidekicks more than the underage villains actually.

No one knew how old Hive Mind was but everyone knew he was a teenager of some stripe, though that didn’t stop him from being a cyber nightmare and brilliant thief. He didn’t go for big scores, preferring to lift diamonds from larger chains and hack into government databases for fun and upload edited super powered fights onto the internet.

Tommy liked him, purely for the videos he’d done on Dream, capturing some of the best bits of probability twisting Dream had ever done in public and most of the more embarrassing ones too. If the other boy gave up villainy he would have a serious career in PR waiting for him.

And here he was, passed out in Tommy’s backyard after his swarm form had eaten a good half of the sugar syrup. Dream was going to throw a fit but at least it wasn’t a Ranked Supervillain this time.

*****

“Hey, Dream, is your opinion on underage villains still the same?” Tommy asked.

Dream’s pen paused mid sentence and his head raised, slowly, like he didn’t want to see whatever it was Tommy had brought into the house. Tommy huffed in irritation, it wasn’t like he’d bring anything dangerous home.

The lion cubs didn’t count, they were lost and babies and the zoo had come to pick them up before they’d done anything more serious than maul the couch. Really, Dream had been over reacting when he’d screamed in terror as one of them tried to climb the shower curtain and got water everywhere.

“If I encounter them in civilian life I don’t call it in, like I would an adult, I don’t fight them if I can help it, and I don’t think they should be tried as adults and need therapy more than anything no matter what age they are…” Dream said. “Why?”

“The swarm of bees in the back yard wasn’t a swarm of bees,” Tommy blurted out.

Dream blinked at him and then groaned, letting his head fall to the table. Tommy huffed at him because that was also a complete overreaction.

“God dammit, Tommy,” Dream moaned.

“It’s not my fault!” Tommy protested. “I didn’t know it was a person and now they’re passed out in the backyard! Can I at least bring them inside?”

“They?” Dream asked.

“They were a swarm of bees five minutes ago, I’m not gendering them until they tell me to,” Tommy said. “Can I bring them inside?

“Yes, then call Phil.” Dream ran his hand through his hair in exasperation.

“You actually want me to call Phil?” Tommy asked.

“Well, we can’t exactly keep them, can we and Phil’s better equipped to deal with them than we are,” Dream said.

“And he doesn’t allow anyone under eighteen to do villain work,” Tommy said.

“And he doesn’t let anyone under eighteen do villain work,” Dream confirmed.

Tommy shrugged and went to drag Hive Mind into the house. And call Phil, he’d been planning to call Phil anyway but having Dream’s permission to call was nice.

He’d just gotten Hive Mind situated on the couch when the doorbell rang, which was a suspiciously fast turn over rate for Phil. Tommy didn’t want to think about how quickly Phil found him most days beyond the occasional grumble about mother hening.

Dream answered the door, Dream always answered the door because ‘I’m the one trained as a hero Tommy, Tommy stop laughing’ and Tommy had stopped arguing after the drunken George incident.

“Can I help you?” Dream asked, loud enough for Tommy to hear.

“Yes.” That wasn’t Phil, Tommy didn’t actually recognize that voice but it was loud and boisterous, booming through the house like a fog horn. “I’m looking for my son, bout this tall, brown hair, likes bees.”

Tommy stared at Hive Mind, there was no way the man at the door was actually the villain's father, not with the injuries Tommy could see and the fact that he was unconscious at the moment. Even if he was, underage villains didn’t tend to come as a result of stable home lives. Hell, Wilbur hadn’t joined Phil in his plots until he was eighteen even though he’d been begging to help for the better part of five years.

Phil had told him about that, eyes sad but he hadn’t started sobbing outright which was an improvement from a month ago. Techno, Phil’s other son had been a villain when he’d taken him in but Phil had made him scale back once he’d adopted him.

The man at the door was a threat, a blatant one and Tommy was suddenly incredibly glad he hadn’t answered the door. He swallowed and carefully scanned the brunette on the couch for anything that could have been being used as a tracker.

“Sorry, man, it’s just me and my brother. He didn’t even bring anyone over after school today,” Dream sounded calm. “Might try further down the street, I heard the Miller kid was planning a block party.”

“Oh, no need, Tobius doesn’t like crowds,” the man at the door paused. “Are you sure-”

“Schlatt.” Tommy relaxed as Phil’s voice cracked through the air. “You want to tell me why you're harassing someone under my protection?”

“Phil! Always a pleasure!” The man - Schlatt - called with false cheer. “I thought this man was a hero! What brings you to this neighborhood?”

And Phil knew him, knew the man that was claiming to be Hive Mind’s father. That meant one of two things, mafia or villain, a villain strong enough that he’d been around for more than a couple of years, Phil had stopped teaming with most of the villain community as soon as Wilbur was old enough to watch his back.

He’d never particularly liked teaming with most of those villains in the first place, that had only really been an excuse. A lot of the bigger villains were far more violent than Phil preferred and caused too much property damage for his taste.

“Visiting a friend,” Phil said. “Why are you bothering someone you thought was a hero while they’re out of mask.”

“I’m looking for my son, I think you would understand that, wouldn’t you Philza?” The tone was light but the words were aimed to cut.

There was a rattling noise that Tommy recognized as feather shafts shivering against one another. He crept into the doorway to the kitchen and peered in, trying to get a good look at the door but Dream was blocking most of it and he only caught a side long shot of curling horns before Dream shifted and the man in the door was completely out of view.

One of the villains with a visible power mutation then, those were few and far between, the ones on the outside anyhow, too recognizable. The rule of the mask might stop heroes from going after villains they knew the civilian aliases of but that didn’t mean that cops couldn’t put two and two together and come up with four.

The Blade was one of the few that were powerful enough that cops wouldn’t even try to apprehend him, his ability was terrifying and he could shift shape to hide while in civilian guise. The Blade probably wouldn’t be too happy at Phil for telling him that but that didn't really matter at the moment.

Horns, who were the villains with horns? Tommy couldn’t remember any villains with horns which meant the man was mafia. The Mafia might actually be worse than a villain, they didn’t follow the same code of ethics if they could get away with it and they ran most of the underground potions trade.

The few mafia groups around town weren’t particularly careful about who they sold to or what they cut the illegal shit with. Tommy had lost a few schoolmates to the potions dealers before everyone in school wised up enough to know not to touch mafia bought potions with a ten foot pole.

“You dare,” Phil’s voice had gone deep, vibrating in his chest like a bass drum and Tommy shrank back a bit before he remembered that that voice wasn’t aimed at him. “You dare to disrespect my son’s memory when you’ve been nipping at my borders for the past month and a half. Sorry to break it to you, mate, but that has done nothing to endear you to me.”

“Phil, I don’t know what-” Schlatt tried to interrupt.

“‘He’ll be distracted, looking for his little rat. Blade will be busy keeping him stable enough to function, that rabid dog isn’t worth much more than that.’ Did you think I was the only one with rats in my ranks?” Phil asked.

There was a long pause and Tommy watched Dream’s back. The hand behind the door was twitching toward the bat hidden under the key rack. Their parents hadn’t let Dream keep his ax by the door, hadn’t liked that he had the ax at all but he’d sixteen and a hero intern when it had been given to him so they could do jack shit about it. They could stop him from keeping it in the main house, Dream hadn’t protested but he’d told Tommy, in private, that he was good enough with knives that he could use the ones in the block by the sink if he needed to.

“Get out, take the lackeys hiding in the bushes, and don’t threaten those under my protection again or I might decide it's time for a changing of the guard,” Phil finally said.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Schlatt hissed.

“You tried to use my son’s death for your own gain, Schlatt, try me,” Phil said.

There was the sound of expensive shoes scuffing over the sidewalk and Dream’s shoulders relaxed. Tommy ducked into the kitchen and came up behind him just in time to see a tall man in a suit ducking into a car.

“Phil!” He smiled up at the winged man, pretending he wasn’t memorizing the plate number as the car tore off down the street.

“Hey, mate, why’d you call me?” Phil asked.

“Tommy found a swarm of bees in the backyard,” Dream drawled.

Phil cocked his head and folded his wings back into the pocket of space that meant they weren’t visible to anyone. Even without the wings the way his head was tilted made him look like a giant fucking bird.

“It wasn’t a swarm of bees.” Tommy reached out to tug on Phil’s sleeve.

Phil blinked and let him drag him inside. When he caught sight of the villain on the couch his eyes went wide.

“Oh,” he breathed, dropping to his knees next to the couch. “Oh, you’ve been through the ringer haven't you, mate.”

*****

Tommy was at his locker, grabbing his lunch when he heard a high pitched buzzing and an unfamiliar weight wrapped itself around his back. He froze, staring into the depths of his locker and waiting to be spun around into a fist.

It had been a while since a group of bullies had decided he was easy pickings, he wasn’t but he looked like it sometimes. It never ended well for the bullies in question but people tended to forget that his brother, who was a fucking superhero, had started teaching Tommy to fight when he was ten.

“Hey, Big Man!” A voice yelled in his ear.

It was a familiar voice but only because he’d heard it two days ago, briefly, when Hive Mind had woken up from their nap. Phil hadn’t stayed long after that, he’d bundled the underage villain off under his wing with the kind of tender overbearing care that Tommy had learned to expect any time he ended up with so much as a bruised knee.

Tommy turned in the arms on his waist and stared down into big brown eyes and a brilliantly bright smile. His lips twitched and he smiled back before gently prodding Hive Mind off of him, or well, Hive Mind’s civilian self.

“I didn’t catch your name before Phil bundled you off but it’s good to see you again,” Tommy said.

Hive Mind let him go, dancing back so that they were at a more manageable distance, one that wouldn’t have them dating in less time than it took for them to finish lunch. They looked visibly better, even though they were still too thin and there were still bags under their eyes. They were in clothes that mostly fit and they had a backpack slung across their shoulders, it was yellow with black stitching.

“I’m Tubbo!” Hive Mind - Tubbo - sounded like they were about to vibrate out of their skin in glee.

“Pronouns?” Tommy asked, trying to process the backpack, the grin, and, most of all, the fact that Phil had enrolled a known super villain in Tommy’s school. “I didn’t want to assume when we found you.”

“We’re a they! Thanks for asking, most people don’t!” Tubbo smiled with all of their teeth.

Tommy just stared down at them. There was a bee on their tongue, he hadn’t been able to get a good look at it considering it was in their mouth, but he’d been able to tell it was a queen.

He was beginning to realize that he might actually be the sanest person he knew, or well, Dream might be but he didn’t count. He’d worn a wedding dress with a thigh high slit and stiletto heels solely for the sake of probability once. Don’t get him wrong, if Dream had wanted to wear them Tommy wouldn’t have had an issue but he’d done it entirely for the sake of probability and that just made it weird.

“I’m Tommy, nice ta meetcha, Big T,” Tommy said.

Tubbo just kept smiling and Tommy realized, in a moment of complete clarity that this little hive of chaos was going to be his best friend and he smiled back.

Chapter Text

“This is a kidnapping.”

Tommy blinked up at the man standing over him and wondered when kidnappings had ever been this polite. He’d been kidnapped before, sometimes as a crime of opportunity but mostly to get back at his brother for something or other. None of his previous kidnappers had just politely informed him he was being kidnapped and then waited for him to stop petting one of the various raccoons arrayed around him in a tiny council.

“Excuse me, do I know you?” Tommy asked.

He reached out to tickle Clementine under the chin and she accepted the gesture with grace before snatching an apple out of his bag. He sighed, Clementine was the best of the raccoon colony he regularly came to visit and she knew he wasn’t worth her attention.

“You know Phil,” the man drawled.

Tommy blinked and glanced back up at him, really taking in his features this time. The man was tall and built on thick lines, he wasn’t fat but there was a layer of softness over densely packed muscle. His hair was pink, a soft sakura shade that didn’t look like it was dyed but that and his ruby red eyes were the only things that really marked him as a hybrid.

He was wearing jeans and a white button down shirt. There were a handful of gold chains looped lazily around his neck and one of his ears was pierced. There was a similar gold chain dangling from his earlobe, weighed down by a chunk of uncut emerald.

Tommy blinked, he’d seen a matching earring in Phil’s ear a time or two and the videos of the Angel of Death always made sure to zoom in on the little stone as it taunted the heroes trying to catch him. There was only one other person who could have that earring unless someone suicidal had stolen it.

“Technoblade?” Tommy asked.

Because that was who this had to be, even though the man looked entirely human save for the hair. Tommy had seen footage of The Blade in battle, everyone had, every single time the man appeared in public a news camera showed up, like he just attracted them or something.

Golden crown, crimson cape, nethrite battle ax almost as big as his torso, there really was no missing him. And that wasn’t even counting the fact that the man was a piglin hybrid with the snout and tusks to match.

Technoblade, Phil’s only surviving son, grunted. “He told you my name, he must trust you then.”

Tommy quickly distributed the rest of his apples before zipping up his backpack and slinging it onto his back. He’d learned a long time ago not to leave his bag open if the raccoons weren’t distracted by food, they had a tendency to steal his pens.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. The Blade. Where am I being kidnapped to?” Tommy asked.

Technoblade tugged him out of the alley and Tommy had enough time to wave at his colony before he was deposited onto a bike. He took the helmet when it was thrust and him and put it on, grumbling under his breath about not being a bitch.

Technoblade just snorted at him in irritation before climbing in front of him. Tommy didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around the older man’s waist, he’d ridden bikes before, Dream hadn’t owned a car for the longest time and things were made much easier if you weren’t squeamish about skin contact.

Technoblade paused and took a deep breath. Tommy didn’t say anything as the older man visibly collected himself, he just squeezed gently and let the villain have the moment.

He’d stumbled across a couple of landmines with Phil early on in their friendship and it almost always resulted in the older man sobbing his eyes out. He had no idea how The Bloody Blade would react to a reminder of his brother’s death and he didn’t want to find out either.

After a moment of two Techno relaxed and turned the bike on. Tommy relaxed into his back, letting the big man maneuver them out into the street and between the cars. He drove faster than Dream did but he also didn’t have to deal with probability screaming at him like Dream did.

“Driving is like… like a constant ringing in my ears. There are so many factors and so many people on the street, you know,” Dream had told him once. “The probabilities are too much and my power’s pretty much useless.”

Tommy had had to accept that his brother was insane years ago but the fact that he drove like a granny when his bike had a top speed of 150 miles per hour… The dichotomy was utterly ridiculous and Tommy didn’t know how to feel about it.

It didn’t take long for them to get out of the city, Tommy had been on the edge already, closer to the suburban area where he and Dream lived. Tommy hadn’t really been paying all that much attention until they turned off the main road and onto one of the smaller streets that wound out into the countryside.

Then he leaned around Technoblade’s bulk and gasped as he saw where they were going. The Esempe County Fair had come to town earlier that week but Tommy didn’t think he was going to have a chance to go, the annual guild dues were coming up and Dream’s last paycheck had been docked about a hundred dollars because his superior had double booked his shifts and Dream had passed out in the office midway through the second one.

The ten dollars for parking might not have set them back too much but Tommy didn’t think there was much point in just wandering around a fair and not doing anything. Tommy hadn’t said anything about wanting to go, he didn’t think Dream even knew that there was a fair in town at the moment and Tommy was going to keep it that way.

Or, well, he was going to keep it that way but if Technoblade wanted to take him to the fair he wasn’t going to complain.

*****

It had taken Tommy about ten minutes to realize that Technoblade was the third most awesome person he knew. The realization had happened on a rollercoaster and he’d screamed it into Techno’s ear, making the pink haired man laugh.

“Who’s more awesome than me then? Because I feel that that’s pertinent information,” Techno had asked once they’d gotten off.

“Tubbo,” Tommy had told him in between stuffing his face with the burger Techno had bought him for lunch. “And Phil obviously.”

“Beaten out by Bee Hive and my own father, I can live with that.”

They’d ridden most of the rides already, the teacups had not been a brilliant idea right after lunch but Tommy had no regrets, and were sprawled out in one of the picnic areas listening to the local band play soft pop songs when Techno finally seemed to relax fully. It was strange, Tommy hadn’t noticed how tense he’d been, not on a conscious level but once he’d finally relaxed he’d been able to tell.

“Wilbur would have liked you,” Techno said.

Tommy blinked and rolled over to stare at him. “What?”

“Wilbur, he would have liked you,” Techno repeated.

“You think so?” Tommy asked.

“Know so, you’re exactly the kind of chaos gremlin he would have enjoyed encouraging into driving Phil up the wall,” Techno said.

Tommy rolled back over, trying to hide the blush that was working its way across his face. It was weird, being treated like he was actually worth something by someone other than Dream. Even after two months of Phil and Tubbo he couldn’t quite get his head around it so he changed the subject.

“Why do you call him Phil?” He asked.

“Why wouldn’t I call him Phil? It’s his name,” Techno’s tone said that the fact was obvious.

Tommy huffed at him, nearly managing the irritated chuff of a frustrated piglin and got a confused squealing noise in response. “I mean he’s your dad right?”

“You know piglish?” Techno asked.

“Little bit.” Tommy pinched his fingers together. “Easier than fucking french, that’s for damn sure.”

“Huh,” Techno sounded like he was considering that. “Phil found me when he was still The Crow Father. You do know about his vigilante phase right?”

Tommy scoffed. “Do I know about The Crow Father? Of course I know about The Crow Father.”

“Right,” Techno sounded like he was smiling though his lips didn’t even twitch. “I met him while he was still The Crow Father about a year before he became the Angel of Death, I was fifteen going on sixteen. He adopted me and he’s legally my father but I was too old for another dad especially given… given.”

Technoblade didn’t elaborate and Tommy didn’t ask, just kept staring up at the clouds for another few minutes. Then his curiosity got the better of him again, it always did, Dream constantly complained about the fact that they hadn’t had a dog when they were younger rather than a cat because then he would have learned obedience rather than how to be a tiny asshole.

“I mean, how can you be too old for a dad?” Tommy asked. “Dream a bitch but he’s always gonna be my big brother.”

“Yeah,” Techno sighed. “But you two are blood, it’s different with us.”

“Wha?” Tommy blinked in confusion. “No, we’re not. Dream’s a filthy American. Blended family you know?”

Techno made a tiny choking noise. “But you two look so alike.”

“Yeah, weird coincidence, never could figure out why we looked so alike, our parents married when I was like four so no one really questions it, other than the age gap,” Tommy explained.

There was a loud pause that spoke of thoughts being gathered and arguments being raised like bulwarks against conversation. Tommy just kept staring at the sky, at the wonderful swirl of clouds that looked like it might turn to rain in a day or so.

“Wilbur was… Phil already had a son. Wilbur was twelve, I was fifteen, and I don’t think he ever hated me but we didn’t really get along at first. He was jealous that I was allowed to do villain work and I…” Another long pause. “He was so soft , Tommy. He had edges and little baby tusks but he wasn’t… The world hadn’t eaten him yet.”

“Like it did you?” Tommy rolled onto his side.

Technoblade looked away, glaring at a couple acting disgustingly married off in the distance. They didn’t seem to notice the death glare leveled their way but the old woman standing next to them certainly did and glared right back at them.

“You don’t look eaten, big man,” Tommy said. “A bit chewed, some bits nibbled off maybe but I’ve seen people that were eaten by the world and you're not it.”

Tommy had seen people that Techno would probably class as eaten, so beaten down by the world that there was nothing but emptiness behind their eyes. They were more animal than human at times, using unhealthy means to escape the pit that someone else had put them in.

Techno laughed, low and bitter sounding. “You didn’t see me when the voices were in full control.”

“I’ve seen the footage.” Dream had wanted him to know exactly what he was getting into when he became friends with Phil.

Technoblade still hadn’t been eaten during that period and Tommy had told Dream that when they’d watched the footage together. Dream had nodded in agreement after a few minutes because Technoblade hadn’t been empty eyed and going through the motions, he’d been furious.

Technoblade sighed and looked back at Tommy. “Do you want cotton candy? I should probably bring you home soon.”

“Cotton candy, fuck yeah,” Tommy yelled.

*****

Tommy vibrated as Techno knocked on the door, he couldn’t really knock, he was holding the extra cotton candy. There was the sound of pounding feet and then the door was practically ripped off its hinges, a snarl plastered across Dream’s face.

Dream took in Techno, Tommy, and the five massive bags of cotton candy Tommy was clutching in his hands. The snarl fell away to reveal relief followed by mild horror at the cotton candy and how Tommy was vibrating.

“Hey, Sap, I’m going to call you ba- YES, HE WAS WITH HIS FRIENDS!” Dream yelled into his cellphone.

Sapnap’s laughter was loud enough that Tommy could hear it. Dream cut it off by hanging up and shoving the phone into his pocket.

“Well,” Techno drawled. “Not that this hasn’t been fun but he’s your problem now.”

“Did you have to give him sugar?” Dream asked.

Oh, he was learning, Dream wasn’t even questioning the presence of the villain that had kidnapped Tommy. Then again, it wasn’t really a kidnapping, Techno had fed him lunch and bought him a stuffed cow before loading him up on cotton candy and bringing him home.

Then again, maybe Dream didn’t recognize Techno, he looked absolutely nothing like the nightmarish vision of The Bloodied Blade that had come onto the scene or the current warrior that walked in Philza’s shadow.

“Yes,” Techno said.

Then he turned around and walked back to his motorcycle. Tommy watched him go and when he started the bike he waved one, cotton candy filled hand.

“Bye, Mr. The Blade, tell Phil I said hi,” he called.

Dream choked in horror from behind him and Tommy turned around just in time to catch the look on his face. The bug eyed shock was fantastic and Tommy wished that he had a hand free to grab his phone, oh well, the cotton candy was worth it.

When Dream finally stopped looking like a beached fish, Techno was already turning the corner down the street. He stared at Tommy for a moment, face painfully neutral and Tommy attempted not to look like he was ten seconds from bursting out of his skin.

He knew there was a reason he wasn’t supposed to eat this much sugar, other than the typical answer of diabetes and Dream normally didn’t have to enforce that rule because their budget was so tight. Tommy’s mother’s family had been the one with the money and Dream couldn’t access the trust until Tommy turned eighteen and even then that was going to Tommy’s college and nothing else.

“How much candy have you had?” Dream asked.

“Techno bought me seven bags.” Tommy grinned and Dream whimpered.

The next few hours were going to be interesting for the both of them and if Dream was smart he’d hide the rest of the cotton candy. Tommy would still find it, Tommy always found the candy Dream stashed no matter where he hid it but that was part of the fun.

“Well,” Dream sounded vaguely like he was about to face a firing squad. “At least you haven’t been talking with hummingbirds recently.”

“Hey!”

It was a fair statement, hummingbirds were aggressive little fuckers but still!

“You tried to get in a fight with a mirror,” Dream deadpanned.

Tommy winced, that hadn’t been one of his brighter moments. In all fairness he’d been ten when that happened but on the other hand, he’d been ten.

“Did you have fun at least?” Dream asked.

Tommy grinned, wide and manic but still genuine. “Techno’s the best! After Philza and Big T of course.”

“Good.” And the rest of the tension in Dream’s shoulders fell away.

Chapter Text

Part 4: Subject Seventeen

Being shaken awake at four am was never a good sign, Tommy had learned that if he was being woken up before dawn it normally meant that either Dream had gotten called in for an unexpected villain fight or someone had died. The last time he’d been woken up at four am it had been because Gambler had decided to take over the casino district again.

Dream had come back from that fight dripping the kind of rage that only came from having the worst of all possible headaches pounding away behind your eyes. Tommy hadn’t been as much of a little shit as he could have been that day, he wasn’t a complete asshole after all but he’d been sorely tempted.

Tommy hadn’t actually expected to be woken up at four am, Dream had taken the mid shift that week so he wasn’t going to be woken up to be told that he wasn’t going to get driven to school or that school wasn’t going to be happening at all. So being woken up halfway through his sleep cycle on a Saturday resulted in immediate panic.

His eyes snapped open to stare up that the stupid, smiling mask that Dream wore while on the job and screamed. There was a hand clapped over his mouth so the sound didn’t actually travel that far, Dream had been anticipating the scream.

Tommy fell silent as soon as he noticed who had him by the mouth and Dream let him go. They stared at each other for a moment and then there was the sound of shuffling feet from the hall and Tommy sat up.

There was a man standing in the doorway, no, a boy, he had to be Tommy’s age, he still had the tell tale softness of youth in his face. The height was what had made Tommy think he was older, tall enough that his three inch horns would be brushing the ceiling if he weren’t hunched in on himself.

He was clearly a hybrid though one of the oddest Tommy had seen, his body seemingly split between a near albino cast and a darkness so deep he seemed to fade into the shadows around them. One eye was red, the other green, and they glowed like newborn stars.

 Tommy took a wild guess at who the boy’s ancester had fucked and landed on enderman with a dash of something else. There was no way that those taffy stretched limbs were the result of anythign but an enderman.

He was wearing hospital scrubs that didn’t fit him in the slightest and there was a bruise on his cheek. Tommy blinked and his gaze skittered down the boy’s body, taking in the injuries he had missed at first glance.

“Dream?” He asked.

“I don’t have time to explain, I need you to call Phil,” Dream hissed.

“Where the fuck did you find him?” Tommy hissed back. “Shouldn’t you be taking him to headquarters?”

“In a government lab, why do you think that I want you to fucking call Phil?” Dream asked.

Tommy stared at the tall boy standing in the doorway, turned to stare at his brother, glanced back at the boy, and then raised an eyebrow at Dream. He could feel the embarrassment radiating off his brother, the feelign thick in the air.

“Sapnap,” Tommy said after a lond moment. “Is never going to let you live this down.”

“I know.”

“George is going to keep making star wars jokes.”

“They had him in a ten by ten padded cell with a supression collar on, what was I supposed-” Dream snarled and pulled his mask off so he could stare into Tommy’s eyes. “Fucksake, Tommy, just call Phil.”

Tommy swallowed, he’d been in suppression collars before, they weren’t exactly a fun experience. It had been due to a legitimate medical emergency rather than just for kicks but it had been patiently unpleasant. The feeling of a hand squeezing at his vocal cords and a second yanking on the pathways in his brain had been awful.

Tommy called Phil.

*****

Phil had taken Tommy and the skinny ender hybrid back to his hideout and had looked half tempted to steal Dream away too before the hero had reminded him that he was still on the clock. He had to go back to Headquarters, had to turn in a report, couldn’t miss a check in or there would be too many questions for him to comfortably answer.

They’d been shuffled onto one of the sitting rooms that were meant for members of the Syndicate rather than allies, which was a distinction Tommy had never thought he’d be familiar with. The boy Dream had rescues had been silent the entire way there and had stayed mute when they’d been sequestered in the room, only making a tiny terrified noise when he caught sight of the glasses of water on the table.

Tommy had gotten rid of those, replacing them with warm glasses of soda, people forgot that enderians were allergic to water, a fact that made Dream froth at the mouth in outrage. It was a simple allergy to remember, especially since water left acid like burns across their skin.

“Soo,” Tommy drawled after five minutes of mostly awkward silence. “You got a name?”

The boy blinked at him, face blank of expression and Tommy had a moment of acute rage at the thought that this boy might have been in that lab long enough to forget what talking was. Or maybe he’d been in there long enough that he’d never learned to talk.

And then the boy’s mouth opened to reveal a row of long pointed teeth that were more like a row of needles than actual teeth. The boy made an enderian noise, deep and croaking and then there were words in Tommy’s head.

His eyes widened a bit, it had been a long time since he had encountered an enderian hybrid with that particular ability. It was rare, rare enough that most people found it disconcerting and foreign enough that movies didn’t have accurate subtitles.

“ I’m Ranboo, ” Ranboo said.

The mental voice was soft and a bit weak, like he hadn’t been using it recently. It was nice, a warm tenor that sounded like it was meant to laugh, like there was a smile edging into the corners of his mouth.

“Name’s Tommy Innit,” Tommy said.

“ Innit ?” Ranboo asked.

“Better than Dream’s, his is Taken, though his ma said that was a botched translation of the original they couldn’t get changed back because government,” Tommy said.

He reached out to grab a sealed water bottle, there was a bee sitting next to it, slowly creeping its way toward the sugar dish. Why Phil always insisted on having coffee, tea, and the accompanying necessities around Tommy didn’t know but it certainly made it easier for Tubbo to get a pick me up when they needed it.

Tommy ran a gentle finger down the bees back before letting it go about its business. Ranboo watches in quiet compilation, mouth closed again, lips not even showing a hint of the dentistry hiding behind those lips.

“ His name is Dream? ” Ranboo asked.

“Yes, stupid name if you ask me,” Tommy drawled. “Better than his hero one though, Coin Flip. The media really did him a disservice with that one, I make the right pun and he’s bangign’ his head against the wall for an hour.”

Ranboo was silent for a moment and then there was a weird sound, like a cat hacking up a hairball. Tommy stared for half a moment before the feeling of humor brushed its way across his mind and he realized the sound was a laugh.

After a few moments Ranboo stops and his head jerks to the side, eyes fixed on the air vent that sat high up on the wall next to them. A swarm of bees calmly buzzes its way out of the gaps between the metal and settles on the chair across from Tommy.

Tommy watched, always mildly fascinated by the way The Swarm melted from thousands of tiny pieces into the familiar form of Tubbo. They were wearing skinny jeans, a dark green button up, and ugg boots, it should have made them look like any other teenager out on the town but the smile on their face was deadly.

Ranboo made a choking noise in the back of his throat and Tommy blinked at him. The bicolored teen was staring at Tubbo like they were holding the answer to the universe in the palm of their hand.

“Hey there, Big Man,” Tubbo said.

They settled back into the chair, throwing one leg over an amrest, and lounging across it like an indolent god. It was strange, now that Tubbo wasn’t half starved for power, now that they could let both of their forms feed as much as they needed there was a definite sense of majesty about them.

It was easy to miss, easy to dismiss as just a half formed thought but it was there. Tommy had never ignored it, he was perfectly aware that his friend could snap him in half without even trying, not that they’d have to do that in order to kill him. Finding out that the stingers their swarm form had could be packed with compounds other than standard bee venom had been an… interesting discovery that hadn’t been at all terrifying.

Not at all. Tommy hadn’t had nightmares about screaming himself to death as he choked on his own blood or anything.

“Hey, Big T!” Tommy said. “You done with Monday’s paper?”

Tubbo rolled their eyes. “Course I am, Phil said he’d let me hack NASA if I got it done early.”

Tommy knew that his brother would have something to say about that if he heard about it. Dream always had a weird sense of civil duty, it was what had led to the whole hero gig in the first place, was probably why he wouldn’t quit either.

“Phil let you hack NASA?” Tommy asked.

“Well, not yet,” Tubbo wrinkled their nose up in irritation. “He said he wanted Techno there to subversive. Apparently NASA has a Technopath on the payroll and he’s a bit worried that something will come out of the computer.”

Tommy was once again reminded that his friend was insane.

*****

Ranboo does not show up at school one day like Tubbo did, though to be honest Tommy hadn’t been expecting him to. Ranboo was very noticeable, he was freakishly tall, bicolored, and his jaw could unhinge itself like most people thought snakes could, making it so that the man could crush a cantaloupe between his teeth if he’d had the jaw strength to do it.

If Ranboo had showed up at school, casually as you please, there would have been no hiding him. A glamor might have been able to hide everything save for the height but Ranboo couldn't talk and magic of that quality was expensive shit.

Phil could have afforded a decent glamor but Ranboo hadn’t wanted one, apparently. Tommy had shrugged when he’d said that and gone back to petting one of the crows that followed Phil around. They were spazzy little things, chaotic balls of feathers that were far more intelligent than any animal should be.

Ranboo did, however, take to following Dream around on patrol, a fact Tommy hadn't known about until George had mentioned it. He’d laughed at the whole situation while Dream bemoaned his life because now it wasn't just him that the villains were following around.

 Not that Ranboo was technically a villain but he was a fugitive from the government and that had the count. The fact that Dream tried to argue the technicality with Sapnap only made Tommy more sure that it counted.

Then one day Tubbo came over dragging Ranboo behind him so that they could play video games together. It was a nice day, a Saturday morning with clear sky and fresh smelling air.

 They didn't end up playing video games, instead they ended up in the backyard just lounging around while a boombox blare the music at them. Tommy hasn't finished his homework yet and Tubbo had to decided to drag him through their classes kicking and screaming if need be so he’d started it when Tubbo had mentioned it before drastic measures had to be taken.

Ranboo didn't have any school work but he had admitted to them both that the sight of sky was enough to hypnotize him even after the weeks he had been out of the facility. It was sad but Tommy tried not to pay attention to it, the fact that the government that was supposed to protect him and everyone else had taken one of his friends from their home and had been unethically experimenting on them.

In all fairness there was a government inquiry going on but only because there had been a villain hired by the facility that the heroes had needed to go in to stop. If that hadn't been the case the facility probably wouldn't have been discovered for another few years and then the entanglement of the agencies responsible for overseeing the experiments that had gone down would have been much more of a fuck up to untangle.

 As it was Dream was pulling over time as one of the heroes that had participated in the raid. It was the only reason that the three of them were in the backyard, Dream couldn't exactly be accused of harboring a fugitive if he didn't know the fugitive was there and everyone at this point knew that Tommy was friends with villains.

None of the heroes came over without calling first at this point. It was one thing for Dream to ignore the villains in his home, it was quite another for his hero friends to have to ignore those same villains. That was tap-dancing incredibly close to the ethical lines that the unspoken rules of heroism and villainy protected each side of the debate from.

Even though Tommy was doing homework it was nice, soothing to lounge in the grass with his friends. Tommy had never really had that many friends before, other than the ones he made over the internet but those friends were in different cities and didn't know his face. It was refreshing seeing his friends in person, being able to lie with them in the sun and listen to music cranked up too loud and not have to worry about whether or not they would have find him annoying in real life or the fact that he tended to take on the traits of the animals he talked to strange.

“I have my eyes closed, do y'all want Lemonade?” Dream asked from the back door.

 All three of the boys in the grass cheered.

Chapter Text

Part 5: The Piper’s Ghost

The phone rang while Tommy was taking a shower. He didn't pay much attention to it, it was the old handset that they kept in case someone called about bills or bank accounts or the school needed to know if Tommy was sick or just skipping.

Of course, with what had come to light over the past month it could just as easily be the Agency calling Dream in for a shift even though he’d only gotten off his last one five hours ago. Finding out that Punz had been double dealing Agency secrets had kicked over an ant hill the likes of which no one had seen in decades.

The fact that they had found out that fact solely because one of his mercenary pals had shown up hung from the flagpole outside the offices with a set of liar's dice shoved down his throat hadn’t helped.

Neither had the death of Schlatt, an event Dream and Tommy had been bracing for since Tubbo had shown up in their backyard. Apparently, the idiot had been the one to pay Punz for the hit, if you could even call pulling a defenseless man’s life support a hit. The resulting power vacuum was… causing interesting problems, especially in relation to Lord Luck.

 Dream was the one to answer it, his voice a low murmur in the early hours of the morning. Tommy didn't particularly want to be awake this early but he'd been talking to too many songbirds recently and that tended to encourage the habit of waking with the dawn. Luckily he hadn't actually woken up at dawn, or before it, he would have been utterly furious if he had.

 The conversation lasted for long enough that Tommy was out of the shower and getting dressed before he heard the click of the handset being placed back in its cradle. He took another moment to towel off his hair before leaving the bathroom and making his way to the kitchen.

 He grabbed the box of cereal on the counter and poured himself a bowl before he registered that Dream was giving the wall a grim look. That was never a good expression and Tommy's first instinct was to say that he was failing one of his classes, even though he knew he had far better study habits now then he had even a month or two ago.

“Dream?” Tommy asked.

His brother sighed and ran a hand on his face before looking at him. His eyes were sad but they didn't have the change of disappointments that always followed the school's complaints about him. It wasn't that Tommy was a bad kid, Dream had said that he was a good person after all and their parents had never seemed angry with him for any of his quirks but the school system was far less forgiving of those with behaviors tied into their powers than most would think. Especially with the kids who were the least likely to go into hero work.

 It was one thing to discipline a kid who sometimes acted like a hyperactive squirrel because he had been talking to hyperactive squirrels, it was quite another to do the same things to a child that broke a lunchroom table because he had super strength. Not that Tommy was speaking from experience in that regard.

“It was the animal shelter,” Dream said. “They pulled a raid and now they have over 30 fighting dogs that they need someone to evaluate.”

 Tommy brightens at the first sentence before letting his shoulders slump at the second. He loved working at the animal shelter, especially the local one that took good care of their animals. Shelters weren't a good habitat for most animals but you could tell the good ones from the bad ones or at least Tommy could.

 But raids on the fighting pits almost always resulted in casualties. 30 dogs wasn't even the largest group he'd had to look over. It was heartbreaking but if he didn't do it someone else would have to and they would be unable to tell I parked the dogs that were genuinely insane and the ones that could be helped.

 There was a distinction but if you weren't able to hear them speak, to hear what the dogs were saying underneath the gruff and growl then it was all for naught. It was hard, being the only person who could hear what they were going through, really hear it rather than guessing.

He had a better rate of survival than most of the behavioral analysts on staff but he was still a kid. They called him in to do the preliminaries before having the real experts do the work they were trained to do.

That was what Dream hated, the fact that Tommy got the first perage of fear and rage that dogs taken from the fighting pits felt. He didn’t think that the shelter staff took care with Toomy’s health or mental well being and to be fair, they didn’t.

Tommy didn’t blame them for that though, they were focused on the dogs, they couldn’t afford to be worried about him when he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Besides the fear and rage weren’t all consuming, they didn’t seep into his consciousness, he wasn’t around the animals long enough for that to happen.

“When do they want me?” Tommy asked.

Dream visibly decided not to argue with him, a wise decision because Tommy was stubborn at the best of times and he was not budging on this. They’d had that argument, repeatedly and at length, and it never went well for either of them.

“As soon as you're done with breakfast,” Dream said. “There’s ten that they think need to be put down.”

Tommy’s stomach dropped at that comment. He could understand why Dream had been on the phone as long as he had if the shelter thought they’d need to put some of the dogs down. Tommy hated admitting a dog needed to be put out of its misery and madness.

*****

It hadn’t been ten dogs.

It had been fifteen. Fifteen pitbulls, rottweilers, and boxers so mentally scarred that they’d been unable to string more than a handful of sentences together.

They’d been insane, not just mad but warped beyond the point of recognition by the trauma of whatever pit they’d been dragged out of. One of them hadn’t been able to talk at all anymore, there hadn’t been words under the barks and growls just sick, cackling laughter.

Tommy was walking home from that , trying to catch his barings when he passed the cemetery that was between the shelter and the bus stop. He stared out at the headstones, at the graves meant for human bones and human lives.

The dogs he tried to help wouldn’t get a gravestone, none of them even had names, just numbers, maybe a stage announcement. But none of them had names, none of them would get a grave, none of them would get the dignity of a funeral.

Tommy hated the world sometimes, not enough to ever go full villain but what it put him and his brother and every innocent through was horrible. It made him sick to his stomach, it his furious that the two of them were barely holding on by their fingertips, that Dream would never make enough for a retirement fund, even if he got old enough to have a retirement.

Tommy tipped his head back to stare at the bright blue, cloudless sky above him. Things needed to change, a lot of things but Tommy didn’t have the power to change them or the will to beat his head against the brick wall of society until it gave way.

He caught sight of the sign above the cemetery and blinked at it. ‘Our Lady of Mercy’, the plaque next to the gate said it was a private cemetery funded by the Archangel Foundation.

The Archangel Foundation was Phil’s legitimate business, the one he’d set up to help disadvantaged youth that didn’t want to turn to crime. If this cemetery was funded by them then…

Tommy hopped the fence, it didn’t take much thought or energy. He’d always been good at climbing and he really needed a quiet place to sit by himself at the moment.

It took a while, probably around half an hour before he found the right gravestone. Wilbur Soot Minecraft, born in 19XX and dead no more than a year, ‘loving son and idiot brother’.

It was surprisingly respectful, the older man would have hated it from what Phil and Techno said about him but putting ‘Suck It! I Got Here First’ on a grave stone wasn’t exactly the height of class.

Tommy folded himself down into a sitting position in front of the stone and stared at it for a moment. It had one of those decorative bases on it and someone had put a white orchid on it along with a stuffed animal. It was a small thing, barely larger than Tommy’s fist but it was bright blue despite its apparent age.

“Hey, this is probably going to be a bit awkward for the both of us,” Tommy said. “I don’t even know if your dad mentioned me, which he really should have, I am the best, don’t let Dream tell you otherwise.”

He paused, listening to the sound of the faint breeze slipping through leaves.

“Well, actually Tubbo’s the best but they’re made of bees and your dad keeps letting them hack NASA,” Tommy corrected.

The graveyard was silent around him, he was the only living bit of animal life there, he could tell. It was a bit creepy actually, normally cemeteries had a colony of mice or a bird or two since humans didn’t stop by all that often. Phil had probably payed for anti-pest spells though and people who set those up around graveyards included all animal life in those wards.

“I wish I’d gotten to meet you, you sound pog, pog enough to know what pog means. Phil keeps slipping it into conversations in the most awkward places and I know he’s doing it on purpose,” Tommy accused.

More silence. It was starting to creep him out actually and his powers itched at the absence of animal life.

“He got him, you know,” Tommy said. “The guy who pulled your life support, got the asshole who paid him to do it too. The Agency wasn’t at all happy when they found out Punz was double dealing under the fucking table, bitch.”

Schlatt had been a piece of shit mob boss wannabe who abused kids and ran his business dirtier than sin. It hadn’t exactly been surprising that he’d paid Punz to kill a rival’s vulnerable kid but Tommy had genuinely thought he was smarter than that.

The Angel of Death was a ruthless man and loved his children deeply. Not to mention the backlash if anyone had found out he had done it, shit like that was against the rules.

“Killed him too quick if you ask me, ‘specially after what he did to Tubbo,” Tommy reached out to trail a finger over the ‘s’ in Soot. “He broke the laws and he wasn’t going to stop. There’s a reason the organized crime task force actually got off their ass when he started running shit.”

It was silent for a bit, Tommy enjoying the quiet, or trying too. He didn’t typically find cemeteries creepy, they were just cemeteries, empty fields full of the dead but the fact that there wasn’t a single crow within eyesight was unsettling to say the least.

The crows hadn’t left Tommy alone for a moment over the past few weeks. They hadn’t been particularly happy about leaving him alone before then either but they’d been more obvious about it after the double dealing rock was turned over.

Come to think of it Tommy hadn’t seen them while he’d been walking to the shelter from the bus stop either. That had to be a sign of some sort, Phil used them as spies and messengers so they were probably helping him with something but what could be big enough that one of the feathered fucks wasn’t bugging Tommy.

He needed to get home. There was something going on, something big and he didn’t want to get caught in the middle of it, whatever it was.

He checked his watch, he had about ten minutes before he’d miss his bus. Tommy stood and brushed off his jeans before pausing to stare down at the gravestone, at the boy who had started all of this.

“I really wish I’d met you, from what Phil said you’d have dragged me and Dream into your dad’s house kicking and screaming,” Tommy said. “I wish you’d gotten to do that. I wish I’d gotten to see it happen.”

The blonde gave the grave a two fingered salute. There was a crunching sound behind him and he turned to see who was coming up behind him, right before the baseball bat smacked him in the side of the head.

Tommy stumbled back, knees catching on wilburs gravestone, ears ringing with pain as he blinked back tears. The fucker who’d hit him with the bat was grinning at him and Tommy recognized him, hard not to with the stupid purple three piece suit that the fucker always wore.

“Purpled,” Tommy spat. “What the fuck?”

His mouth tasted like blood, the meaty copper tang the least of his worries yet the one he was most focused on at the moment. His teeth ached from the rattling they’d taken but none of them felt damaged and the pain was only making him more furious.

“Sorry, Tommy, nothing personal,” Purpled shrugged.

He spun the purple - of course it was fucking purple - bat with an absent fluidity that made all the hair stand up on the back of Tommy’s neck. He’d just spent the past two hours talking to dogs whose lives were nothing but pain and fighting and he’d never been the best at suppressing his powers when he was pissed.

“Sure feels fucking personal,” Tommy growled.

He could feel his canines elongating, all his teeth sharpening in preparation to rip the throat out of the man in front of him. There was adrenaline coursing through his veins, hot and bubbling under his skin like a pool of lava.

“There’s the beast I was looking for,” the mercenary said.

Purpled smiled and Tommy abruptly had a thought. Punz had been Purpled’s mentor, they’d both been deep, deep into the mercenary underground that had eventually been Punz's downfall. Schlatt was dead and Philza would touch the mercenary groups with a ten foot pole.

Who the fuck was holding Purpled’s leash?

There was a prick in the side of Tommy's neck and he whirled, hand coming up to slap against the injection sight. Lord Luck stood behind him with an auto injector in his hand, it had to be Lord Luck, even though he wasn’t wearing his costume, there wasn’t anyone else Tommy could think of with a grudge against Philza and gold teeth.

The scar was more impressive in person, a knot of bright pink tissue that wound its way up his cheek and over his eye. The eye was still intact, still a vibrant black but there was a glassy quality to it that told Tommy it was fake.

Tommy’s vision blurred around the edges, fading in and out, swirling colors together like an abstract painting. Whatever the bitch had given him was strong if it was working this fast.

“Tech got you good, didn’t he?” Tommy smirked.

Lord Luck snarled in rage and everything went black.