Chapter Text
“And this is my latest creation!”
Ranboo was never a huge school field trips type of guy, but from the amount of excitement that Tubbo was radiating, he supposed it wasn’t the worst field trip he’d been on.
Even someone like him, who wasn’t a tech guru like Tubbo, or just an overall excitable mess like Tommy, could admit that Craft Labs was something to admire and respect. The latest in technology and science, constantly advancing the way people thought and perceived, with genius inventions… how could people not love it?
That, and the three head scientists of Craft Labs were probably some of the most famous people in all of L’manberg, known famously for their sheer brilliance and achievements.
Dr. Blade was the first, most reclusive scientist, who rarely ever showed up in the public eye—and when he did, it was always a shock to see the hulking mass with pink hair and tiny glasses, defying everything about what a “normal” scientist looked like.
Dr. Craft was the oldest, and the founder, with shaggy blonde hair and twinkling blue eyes, with a knack for seeing things that were never seen before, even the smallest pieces of an equation. Dr. Craft was a bit of a scatterbrain, yes, but his genius was only just barely reigned in by his morality.
The final member of the Craft family was Dr. Soot, who was probably the closest thing Craft Labs had to a diplomat. Charming and silver-tongued, with a cheeky smile and honeyed words, he appeared most often on television, and apparently also did the guided tours, seeing as how he was stood in front of a glass pedestal at the moment, surrounded by wide-eyed teenagers.
“This is Revelare!” Dr. Soot cried out, throwing down the tarp in one fluid motion to reveal a vial of glowing gold liquid that reflected light beautifully, looking slightly thinner than previous serums they had made.
Tubbo and Ranboo both gasped at the sight of something so beautiful, but Tommy just scoffed. “All these fancy serums, seriously? This is like, the third one in five years!” he snarked, and while he did definitely have a point, Ranboo still elbowed his friend to be polite.
Dr. Soot seemed to drink up the “ooh” and “ah” of the crowd, and then he swirled the liquid around in the vial, ever the dramatic. “This solution, crafted by yours truly, will make the person able to see if someone is telling the truth or not!” he exclaimed, and the audience gasped once more.
Useful for police officers, Ranboo thought to himself with a small hum, and he turned to his left to see Tubbo’s eyes glittering with all of the possibilities.
Dr. Soot continued explaining, but it seemed the tour was about to wrap up soon, much to his disappointment. Seeing all of the cool tech and experiments was actually really interesting, even though Ranboo couldn’t really understand most of what Dr. Soot was saying.
Before he could follow Dr. Soot into the room where he would do the final presentation and maybe a pop quiz, Ranboo felt a hand grab onto his wrist and drag him away from the group. “Wha—Tommy!” he hissed, heart thudding at the possibility of breaking the rules.
Tommy didn’t say anything, just grinned as he pulled Ranboo through a glass door marked Employees Only—Stay Out Unless Level 5 Clearance. “Tommy, what the—seriously, dude, we could get in huge trouble!”
Right as Ranboo said that, a small yet adorable robot—Ranboo briefly remembered Dr. Soot introducing those as “Nooks”, one of Dr. Warden’s inventions—waddled up to them mechanically and chirped up at them.
“Clearance pass, please!” it cried out gleefully, in a squeaky voice, and Tommy winked at Ranboo before fishing out a card from his pocket, one that Nook scanned with glowing red eyes and nodded at cheerfully. “Welcome, Dr. Rose! Have a wonderful day!”
Slack-jawed and partially in shock, Ranboo followed as Tommy ducked through hallways like he was just running around for fun. “I heard there was a bug room in the restricted section,” he explained while panting as they narrowly escaped hiding from a woman with flowers in her hair who was desperately searching for her clearance card.
“So, what, you just stole someone’s clearance card?!” Ranboo hissed incredulously. “Tommy, that is all kinds of illegal! We could go to jail for this!”
The hidden messages of that went unsaid; jail would mean having to get bailed out by Puffy, Ranboo’s legal guardian, who would be all kinds of disappointed, and then give him an “I’m not mad just disappointed” talk, and then Dream would get really mad and yell at him, and then Foolish would probably drive home from college just to scold him.
The thought alone terrified him.
Tommy, however, clearly had no moral values or empathy for his best friend, so he simply just grinned and ran inside of a door and into a humidified and terrifying room.
All along the “forest” walls were different types of bugs, each more horrifying than the last. Snails with gaping maws trudged past giant worms with teeth, and each creature seemed more dangerous than the last. Ranboo’s heart started pounding a little faster, and he gripped onto Tommy’s arm, who had taken the camera dangled around his neck to take pictures of the creatures.
“You’ll get sued if you publish pictures of this,” Ranboo informed his friend, and Tommy barely hummed in acknowledgement as he took a picture of a particularly large butterfly.
“These are for personal reasons, don’t worry!” Tommy replied cheerfully, taking a few more pictures and murmuring something under his breath.
How did Tommy even find out about something like this? Ranboo frowned and opened his mouth to say something when footsteps were heard from outside. “Shit, shit!” Tommy hissed, grabbing Ranboo’s arm and yanking him out of the room, both of them running until they escaped the outside, with Tommy casually dropping the clearance card on the floor and kicking it away with a whistle.
“Tommy, we could’ve gotten in so much trouble!” Ranboo whisper-yelled, adrenaline thrumming through his veins like he had just run a marathon or something.
“Trouble for what?”
Both Tommy and Ranboo let out twin shrieks at the sudden voice behind them, both of them turning around to see the Dr. Craft, CEO of Craft Labs and all around genius scholar and scientist, standing before them with an amused glint in his eyes.
Despite being significantly shorter than both Tommy and Ranboo, Dr. Craft still held an intimidating aura to him, but his smile seemed kind enough. “Ah, Dr. Craft, my buddy Ranboo here had to take a massive poo, but was scared he’d get in trouble for stinkin’ up the toilet!” Tommy said, a menacing grin on his face the entire time as he slung an arm around Ranboo’s shoulder.
Wait—what?! Why was Ranboo always the one paying for this?
Dr. Craft’s eyebrows raised up in amusement, but he didn’t comment. “Well, don’t let me interrupt your field trip, then! I believe your school group is leaving right now. Unless, of course, you have any further questions for me? I wouldn’t mind taking my lunch break to chat.”
A personal interview with the Dr. Craft? Tubbo would be so jealous! “Oh, sir, that would be wonderf—” Ranboo started to gush, but Tommy swiftly interrupted with his brash tone.
“Nope, no can do, Dr. Fancy-Pants!” he cried out shrilly, his fingers digging into Ranboo’s shoulder as if he was afraid. “I’m afraid we’ve got to go back to school! You know, learning and all that!”
A sharp pinprick suddenly spiked on the back of Ranboo’s neck, and he hissed out sharply in pain, slapping the area. The pain was gone almost as quickly as it came, and he frowned, the spot on his neck now just a dull ache. Must’ve been one of those weird pain pinpricks people always got.
The ghost of a smile traced Dr. Craft’s lips, but he didn’t protest, and before Ranboo could even give a proper goodbye, Tommy was dragging him out of the labs and to the school bus, where they slipped into the line easily.
“Seriously, Tommy?” Ranboo cried out, incredulous. “We could’ve had a one-on-two with Dr. Craft himself!”
Tommy scowled and shrugged, sinking further into his seat while Tubbo gawked open-mouthed. “You fucking what?!” he shrieked, slack-jawed at the possibility.
As the bus rumbled to life, Tommy shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “Not worth it, man, those doctors aren’t even that great,” he grumbled under his breath, and both he and Tubbo launched into another one of their age-old arguments.
Ranboo had long since learned how to tune out those arguments, and he took the time to stare out of the bus window. The sprawling metropolis of the technologically-advanced L’manberg was all around, with enormous skyscrapers and little corner markets on every street.
A small tingle erupted at the back of Ranboo’s neck all of a sudden, every single hair on his body rising, on high alert. What the hell? What was this? Was something going to—
Without even thinking, Ranboo shot his arm out to the side, where he felt a wad of crumpled paper appear. Slowly, Ranboo’s eyes trailed up until he saw Tommy’s shocked face in the seat in front of him. “Uh… nice reflexes, big man…?” he tried, and a shaky chuckle came from Ranboo.
Right. Tommy did that all the time, threw paper balls at his head, and yet he somehow managed to catch this one without even thinking. Was that what the weird tingling sensation was? Could his body, like, see into the future or something?
No, that was ridiculous. Ranboo chuckled to himself—how stupid was he to think that? There’s eyes on you, a tiny voice whispered in the back of his mind, barely even a voice at all, and Ranboo turned to the seat across from him, where one of his classmates was staring.
What was his name again? Something with a “P”, he wasn’t totally sure, but Ranboo remembered having done a project or two with the sarcastic blonde. “Nice catch,” the boy said, voice low and quiet, and Ranboo tilted his head.
Did this boy know something Ranboo didn’t?
-
Back at Craft Labs, a doctor was close to salvation. On the tip of his tongue, ready to reveal it to the world, to unveil the lies and stomp on them to everyone around, he was ready for it. His family advised against it, but that was no matter. They did not have to know, they could assume it was someone else, he was prepared.
Who would be the villain of his story? The hero of their own? Balance was a concept he knew well, something where one thing could not exist without its opposite. Who would be his opposite? The sun to his Icarus?
It filled him with excitement, with possibilities, made him sew his costume just a small bit faster, prepare his speeches with a bit more haste.
For now, however, he was simply a scientist, well known and beloved. He was a twin to a fellow genius, and an older brother to… well, not a genius, but someone he loved all the same nevertheless (although objectively he knew that the young boy would never be quite the man he is).
The school group was long gone, with his little brother refusing to even acknowledge him, but that was alright. He could have his secrets from the school, it didn’t bother him.
The sight of something small and dark in the ground caught his attention, and he picked it up with nimble fingers, calloused from his restless nights of strumming the guitar to the distant melody of his brother’s flashing video games.
Pinched between his fingers was one of their genetically modified spiders, the one that had failed all of the experimentations on rats. The only way the spider could be dead was if it had either bitten someone or been squished, but its body was entirely intact…
Had it somehow escaped the confines of the restricted section and bitten an unknown passerby? Today was a tour group day, which would certainly not bode well for the poor soul who had to deal with the side effects (and death, if it went anything like with the rats), and he frowned at the possibility of legal troubles from this.
Nobody could trace it back here if the person died, though, because nobody else knew about the bug room, so it was fine, right?
He frowned and deposited the spider into a nearby trash can, only the smallest bit of sympathy flashing through him at the thought of someone going through what those rats did.
However, there was more on his plate to worry about than just one of Phil’s tossed-aside experiments.
After all, Wilbur had an alter ego to debut, and nobody would stop the inevitable show that was about to begin.