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Schlatt. Master of the earth, manipulator of nature, powered by the land.
The Willow. Silver-tongued siren, manipulator of minds, commanding with the voice.
The Blade. Bloodthirsty warrior, manipulator of swords, feared across the world.
The Angel of Death. Winged omen of destruction, manipulator of life, reaper in the night.
And Tubbo Underscore. New recruit.
He’d waited his entire motherfucking life for this day.
He arrived at the training facility ten minutes before he’d been asked to sign in; it paid to be prepared, after all, and Tubbo was nothing if not prepared to begin his new life as a superhero. Mr Watson had given him the directions again, although he hadn’t needed them; he’d committed that first car ride, blind to his very near and very thrilling future, to memory already. And that led him here, on the early bus, stepping out into the cold late March air and towards what looked like a normal (if pretty large) house, but which he knew had a much more interesting interior.
He pressed the buzzer at the gate.
“Um - hi! Tubbo Underscore - Phil sent me? I’m here for training again?” Phil had used an electronic key when he’d been letting the pair of them in, but he’d specifically added on to the end of Tubbo’s instructions for today that he should buzz with his name and wait for the gates to open. Sure enough, after a few seconds, a clicking noise sounded and the painted black cast-iron doors began to swing open slowly before him. Tubbo slipped through the gap as soon as it was open wide enough and made his way down the gravel driveway to the front door.
A pair of dark eyes met him through the letterbox. Tubbo would recognise those eyes anywhere - and not just on TV.
“Blade?”
“You’re Tubbo?”
“Um - y-yes, sir.”
“Skip it. Did Phil give you a code?”
“... No?”
“Good. He only gives codes as a red flag for me. That means you’re clear.”
Tubbo fist-pumped silently into the air. “So, uh… can I come in? I’m gonna be honest, it’s pretty fucking freezing out here.”
The Blade’s eyes disappeared from behind the letterbox and, a second later, the door clicked open. Tubbo was in.
Tubbo was in.
He followed the corridor around, from The Blade’s limited direction (being a single wave of his hand towards one door rather than another), and eventually found a staircase. This was interesting - when he’d been working with Schlatt the previous day they’d done everything outside, so that he’d been able to actually, you know, demonstrate to Tubbo what he was capable of. Inside the room that he arrived at once he’d descended the stairs, Schlatt wouldn’t have been able to do shit, except possibly cause a cave-in.
There were chairs, so Tubbo took a seat and pulled his phone out.
After a while (he checked - 9:02am), somebody joined him.
Tubbo looked up to see who it was that was taking their second and third steps into the basement, which was largely undecorated and only lit by the fluorescents overhead and a few double-glazed slats on the far wall. It turned out to be another kid, not a superhero - taller than him (although most boys his age, unfortunately, were), very obviously affected by some kind of skin condition that rendered the right (Tubbo’s left) side of his face a stark burgundy red colour on an otherwise pale face, thin-pressed lips and a gaze that wasn’t meeting his. The stranger’s arms crossed over their chest self-consciously and they didn’t seem to know where to place their feet, or indeed any of their self.
“Hi,” Tubbo offered.
The other kid didn’t reply.
“You can - sit here if you want,” he tried again, valiantly, “or across the way if you’re…”
They took their seat in the corner. Not diagonal from Tubbo - which he would probably have taken as a personal slight if he were being honest - but certainly not With Him.
Well.
Luckily, he didn’t have to stew in that rejection for long, because before more than a few minutes could pass a third kid pushed through the doors and immediately began to analyse their tiny crowd. “What, you two had a fight already?”
“I think he’s just shy.” The admission felt stilted, but that was British politeness for you. “Um - Toby. But my mates call me Tubbo.”
“That’s fuckin’ weird,” the third kid grinned, “I’m Tommy, he/him.”
“Oh - me too.”
Tommy took a seat next to Tubbo (well, not quite next to Tubbo - he left one chair as a gap, which was appreciated, given that Tubbo wasn’t really much for physical contact anyway and especially not with strangers), so he put his phone away. “So. Superpowers, eh?”
“Superpowers.” He’d almost forgotten that was why he was here. “You go to school with Mr Watson too?”
“Yeah - fuckin’ bastard’s the only one who’s ever got the balls to give me detention. But I love ‘im. Suppose that’s why - he was a hero too once.”
“Angel of Death, I know! He was brilliant!”
“You know a lot about him, then?”
“I’m gonna be honest, I am a little bit obsessed with the whole superhero thing - I guess you could say I’ve done my research. That’s why it’s so mad, actually being here. I feel like Spiderman.”
“Oh, fuck the Tom Holland Spiderman, completely goes against the self-made thing, he just hangs out with rich people and they sort everything out for him. But - yeah. I get what you mean, I do.”
“So what’s your power?”
“I fuckin’ - wait, let me - well, don’t tell the Willow I’m doing it without - but - I’ll show you, watch this -”
So Tubbo did watch as Tommy began scowling at the kid across the room with a laser-eyed glare, and then - and then they turned their head to look Tubbo in the eyes and said, with a surprisingly deep cadence, “I’m so fuckin’ powerful.”
Then Tommy shook his head beside him, coughing slightly, as the kid flinched away and stared down at their lap again with reduplicated intensity, like they were coming to terms with what had just happened. “So that’s - that is actually very fucking cool, you can go in and -”
“Make people say shit, yeah, I’m a little bit of a comedian.”
“I was gonna say do shit. You moved as well.”
“I did, I did.” Tommy paused to consider Tubbo’s words. “I’m powerful like that.”
“Clearly.”
“What about you? What’ve you got going on?”
Tubbo screwed his eyes shut and found Tommy’s phone in his pocket. He heard the buzzing, harsh against the plastic chair, and then calmer once Tommy had shifted around to pull it out and investigate. “Fuckin’ell. That’s - sorry, that is such a random power.”
He let the connection go and beamed. “It’s good! I could probably hack security cameras or something if I knew how. That’s what I’m here for, I guess.”
“Right. Training. Because we’re -” and here Tommy leaned in closer “- are we meant to be taking over for them lot? Willow and that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I’d be fuckin’ -”
“Terrified, right?”
“No.” Tommy frowned. “Sounds like a dream. You’d be scared?”
“Well, it’s pretty damn insane, isn’t it? We’d have some big shoes to fill. I’d be scared I was doing it wrong pretty much all the time. Like, I’d be on the phone to Mr Watson all the time, going did I do that mission right, should I have done this, what if I didn’t do that - you know.”
“You’re approaching it wrong. You gotta have more faith in yourself, big man.”
“Big man?”
“Yeah,” grinned Tommy, looking aside like he knew he was making a bit of a fool of himself, “I’m a bit of a nickname user, myself.”
“Alright. What would you call them, then?” He gestured at the other kid across the room.
“No idea - don’t have anything to work with, do I?”
“I s’pose.”
The kid looked up, cleared their throat. “Um. I’m Ranboo, also he/him.”
“Nice to -”
“Oh, that’s easy then, you’ve almost got boob in the name already, Ranboob.”
“Really?”
“What, what?”
Ranboo stared at the pair of them. (Well, not right on - it looked like he’d locked on to a spot on the wall about equidistant from each of their heads.) “Is that the best you could come up with?”
Tommy spluttered out a defense - “I don’t - you can’t just - I can’t believe - how could you - that’s just - it’s not -”
Tubbo just let a smile spread across his face.
“You bitch,” Tommy ended up finishing. “I’m a fucking name genius.”
“I’m gonna need a little more evidence,” Ranboo quipped again.
“Fuck you!”
“Okay,” Tubbo decided to throw his hat into the ring, “so if you’re such a big name guy - you probably came up with a superhero name already, yeah?”
“What?”
“Like, Willow, Blade, Schlatt. You’ve got your whole possession thing going on, what would you be called?”
Tommy blinked. “It’s not po… Shelf that one, actually. Um.” And then he was back to his usual bravado, and he declared, “I’m gonna be the Phantom.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Why’s that?” Ranboo tilted his head.
“Cause - y’know! In one minute, out the next, I’m like a fuckin’ ghost and shit. Leave no trace, or whatever the fuck. Now you see me now you don’t, I’m like that song, I’m fuckin’ melodic. Plus it’s got Tom in it.”
Whatever crack this guy was on, Tubbo wanted to meet his supplier.
“Alright, Phantom,” Ranboo nodded, “I can see it. First hand, actually.”
“See, Big T? Ranboob likes my name suggestions. Knew he’d come around.”
“Very impressive,” he rolled his eyes. He might have only known Tommy for a maximum of ten minutes, but he was already getting a very good handle on exactly what kind of friend and teammate he was going to be. Tommy had better hope his powers were consistently useful, or he’d probably be unpopular with the crowds at home, at least at first. That was a strength of the current generation of heroes - they were all very reserved at public appearances, none of them taking a particularly brash approach to their image, and not only did it keep a large majority of Tubbo’s peers from caring all that much about their identities and personal lives, it seriously cut down on the number of large threats to their personal security as they aged out of the profession. Heroes in other places, other counties, other districts, were known to have dedicated arch-nemeses and rogues’ galleries to watch out for, but their area was pretty low on performative crime because of how uninteresting the Willow, Schlatt and the Blade were for potential rivalries - they got in, they got out, they didn’t say much. (Well - the Willow looked like he’d like to, but that he’d been counselled against it.) You had to be invested in superheroes as a group to a pretty high degree to get involved in the scene deeply enough that you were well versed in the local group like Tubbo was.
And other mental tangents he’d gone on without realising. Tommy and Ranboo were still bantering.
“I’m sure he was super into it.”
“You fuckin’ know it, man. I could do this shit all day.”
“What would you name Tubbo, then?”
“What, like, hero name?”
“Sure.”
“Um.” Tommy looked him up and down. “Techno.”
Ranboo coughed.
“What?”
“I… have bad news about the Blade’s full name.”
“Fuck,” he grinned. “Wait - yeah, of course they put you with the Blade. He - Technoblade?”
“I guess. He just told me to call him Techno.”
“Fuck,” Tommy said again, and reached into his pocket for what looked like a piece of sticky tack, which he promptly started fidgeting with as he turned back to Tubbo. “Alright. What’s your last name then?”
“Um, Underscore.”
“Right, you were fuckin’ built for all that technoshit, eh?”
“Nominative determinism,” Ranboo added. Tubbo assumed it was relevant, because he didn’t really know what it meant, and nodded.
“But I’d rather not pull a Schlatt, you know? I’ve got a whole family. Mum, dad, siblings. I’d hate for them to get mixed up in my career if we get big enough for villains, I’ll be honest.”
“Schlatt’s his real name?”
“Yeah, yeah! J Schlatt!”
“Jay, like his name’s Jay?”
“No. We don’t actually know what the J stands for. It’s just part of the early autograph.”
“Why have you seen Schlatt’s -” Ranboo’s head tilted again “- early autograph?”
“I’m a hero fan,” Tubbo massively understated. If all of this worked out, they’d know how obsessed he’d been with hero culture for the past… forever, pretty much. And if not, then he’d saved a couple more people from the deluge of information that every poor fool who’d ever told him it was okay for him to talk about it for as long as he’d like had been exposed to.
“Whatever,” continued Tommy, “I’ve had an idea. What d’you think of Network?”
He rolled it over in his head. “Network.” Network and the Phantom. (And whatever Ranboo turned out to be.) “Sounds pretty good to me.”
“Fuck yes,” Tommy pumped a fist, “I literally never miss.”
“That’s extremely debatable.”
“Yeah? What about you then, Ranboob? What would you call yourself?”
“Anything but that,” he quipped, rolling his eyes.
“No, seriously, if you’ve got an idea I wanna hear it.”
“... Not yet, no.”
“Alright, so work with me!”
He looked like he was strongly (strongly) considering whether he was better off leaving now, but in the end he rolled his eyes again and raised his head. “Sure. Fire away.”
“Well, I need some help first, or I won’t be able to get it right,” Tommy explained, with some irritation. “What do you do?”
“Uh. Like, for fun, or -?”
“What’s your power, mate?”
“Right.” Ranboo looked around; Tubbo’s storytelling brain decided he was looking for the windows, for a potential escape route. “I teleport.”
“Oh. Cool! Can you -”
“Not well on command. Like, I can go three feet right now, but I can’t clear a building unless I’m kind of freaking out.”
“Shit,” Tommy mused. “How’d you find that one out, then? Did your mum just go, oh fuck, where’s the baby, one day?”
“It didn’t actually - show up till really recently, actually? Like, really recent, like, two days?”
“Yeesh.” Tubbo made a face, and Tommy was right there with him on it. “So what’s the story there, then?”
“Oh. Uh - you, uh, I guess you guys go to different schools, right?”
“Yeah. Never met ‘im.”
“Yeah, uh, I don’t… Like, I’m not at the best school, and there’s a lot of… you know, people don’t really like me?”
“Mood,” Tubbo couldn’t help but mutter. Tommy exhaled a laugh.
“Mm - yeah, so I was kind of - you know, they don’t usually go after me like that, but I guess - the guy they usually focus on, his name is Charlie, I guess he wasn’t there? So I was kind of getting - I guess targeted. And I hit a wall, and I was freaking out, and then bam, I’m in a parking lot three miles away.”
Wow. “Damn.”
“And then Mr Watson came looking for me and then he sent me here and that’s pretty much all of it,” Ranboo rushed out, “so. Yeah.”
“Right,” said Tommy, straight back to business. “You teleport. There’s gotta be something good in that. There must be a lot of good in that. Who teleports already?”
“There’s a guy called the Wraith in London,” Tubbo felt the need to mention, “can’t do that unless you don’t mind overlap.”
“London? You know a lot of ‘em, then?”
“Yeah,” he chuckled. His encyclopaedic knowledge of hero names and powers went back a solid few years, and he wasn’t so bad for the rest of the decade before that. “Sound off, I’ll let you know if somebody else has got it.”
“Okay. Teleporter, teleporter… Flash?”
“The Flash is already taken by comics. He doesn’t even teleport.”
“Oi, go easy on me then, I’m talking more flash in the pan, gone in a flash, you know? What would you suggest?”
“Particle,” Tubbo smirked, with zero hesitation.
“Why particle?”
“He’s like a Minecraft Enderman, right? Purple particles.”
“That’s - fuckin’ - alright,” Tommy shook his head, but he was holding back a laugh, “I am no longer taking suggestions from you.”
“Rude.”
“One more chance.”
“Phantom?”
“I - Tubbo, I’m already gonna be the - just fuckin’ shut up, will you?” He was smiling, though. Job done on Tubbo’s part.
“Alright, alright.”
“Flicker,” Tommy said, trying to get back on track. “Blip. Wipe. Washout.” Ranboo doesn’t react positively to anything he throws out. “Damn it. This never would have happened to the Angel of Death.”
“God, he’s so cool,” Tubbo agreed.
“God, he’s so cool! Truly just - just the only man ever.”
“They’re all fuckin’ awesome if you look into it. I know most people only really know about the Angel, and about the Trickster - but, like, Schlatt-Willow-Blade are really good as well if you watch for the stories, y’know? Like, the way they exposed Rising Corp, and we’d still be buying their shit and funding their research to this day if they hadn’t brought all that to light, and the way the Blade dealt with that one guy Squid, it’s just - it’s insane, I honestly can’t believe we’re succeeding them.”
“Yeah. I mean, I don’t, actually, follow them all that closely, but, like - my dad was always big on the Angel and the Trickster, I guess I always filed it away as dad shit. I mean - now I’m gonna be that shit.” Tommy paused. “God. Dads are gonna go mad over me. Phantom. And kids are gonna sit through it all. Probably bored to death. I mean - unless I do something cooler than the Angel of Death, but that’s… I mean, I could…”
“You’d be hard pressed.” The Angel of Death and his long-time partner the Trickster (or, as he now knew and was still recontextualising, Mr Watson and… his wife? His best mate? They were obviously inseparable until the day they disappeared from notoriety, but who knew if it was romantic) had accomplished some impressive, death-defying feats in their time. “They’re all brilliant, though.”
Ranboo nodded again. “I don’t really know a lot about them, but Techno seemed nice. The Blade.”
“Yeah, the Willow was a bit - fuckin’ bit of a twat, but he knew what he was talking about. He didn’t tell me what his name was.”
“Wonder why he’s called the Willow, anyway,” Tubbo pondered. “Siren song doesn’t go with it.”
“Sounds good, though,” argues Tommy, “it’s like a will’o’wisp, it’s fun.”
“Wisp.”
“What?”
They both turned to look at Ranboo. “The Wisp. I like it.”
A series of emotions cycled across Tommy’s face. Finally, it landed on what Tubbo would deign to label impressed. “Alright, Ranboob. I will admit it’s good. What are we up to then? Phantom, Network, Wisp?”
“Sounds pretty cool to me.”
Tubbo said something similar to the affirmative. His mind was busy spelling it out.
The Phantom. Whisper in the mind, manipulator of actions, wit like a knife’s point. (One day.)
Network. Spark on a live wire, manipulator of technology, herald of total shutdown. (On a good day.)
The Wisp. Vanishing shadow, manipulator of space, gone before you know he’s been. (Given it’s his day.)
They made, Tubbo decided, a pretty fucking brilliant trio.
The sound of the door handle turning alerted all of them to the other side of the room, where Mr Watson was - no, Tubbo decided as he caught his first glimpse of the black wings that trailed gracefully behind their new mentor - the Angel of Death was entering the room.
“Alright, lads,” he began, pulling up an empty chair to address them all, “My name’s Phil, if you didn’t know already. No more of that school formality bullshit - I’m not your Student Support Officer any more, I’m your Director, if all goes well. I heard you’ve already been chatting a fair bit from down the hall; that’s great, you’ll want to be close, it makes teamwork a hell of a lot easier. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and it’d be bad news if you weren’t all willing to do it together.”
The boys nodded at each other, and Phil smiled.
“Right - you ready to make the world a better place, boys?”
Tubbo had waited his entire motherfucking life for those words.