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The first thing Ranboo notices when Tubbo walks in the room is that he’s doing the slightly-forced wander he does when he’s got something important to say. Hey, Tubbo’s not the only one who can be more perceptive than he seems.
“Hey guys,” Tubbo says, nodding to Ranboo and Tommy, tone just a bit too casual to be really casual.
“Hey Tubbo,” Ranboo replies from where he’s draped over a chair.
Tommy, sitting on another chair across the room, looks up from his phone. “Out with it.”
Tubbo freezes. “What?”
“You’ve got something to say, don’t you? You’re doing the I’m-Tubbo-and-I-act-casual-when-I’m-not thing. Out with it.”
Tubbo sighs and drops to the floor by Ranboo’s chair. “What did the psychologist say to you two?”
Ranboo blinks, surprised by the topic. “The city psychologist, you mean? From a few months ago?” Despite Sam’s pressure to turn down government help, all three of the teens had accepted the two therapy sessions offered.
“Yeah.”
Before Ranboo can answer, Tommy does. “She said I was the biggest man she’d ever seen and someday I’d rule the world. Why?” Tubbo sighs and casts an exasperated look at Tommy. “Fine,” Tommy continues, rolling his eyes. “She said to look out for nightmares and shit like that, but I didn’t seem harmed.”
Tubbo nods, almost sadly. Ranboo starts to reach to ruffle the shorter boy’s hair, then stops. Recently Tubbo’s been so jumpy about touch.
“How about you, Ranboo?” Tubbo asks.
Ranboo hesitates. “Didn’t Sam say it was private? We aren’t supposed to talk about it?”
Tommy snorts loudly. “What’re we gonna do, blackmail you? We know that you’re Ender, if we wanted to blackmail you we’d be doing it already.”
He… has a point. Ranboo shrugs. “She said I have anxiety, but I knew that already. That’s about it.”
Tubbo sighs and leans back against Ranboo’s chair, putting the back of his head against Ranboo’s side. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “That’s kinda what I thought.”
The aforementioned anxiety twists in Ranboo’s stomach. “What’d she say to you?”
“I have PTSD,” Tubbo answers, and he sounds so tired. Ranboo knows the three of them have more responsibilities than most teenagers, but he doesn’t think any sixteen-year-old should sound that world-weary.
“Holy shit.” Tommy puts his phone down and sits up straighter. “From the hostages?”
“From a lot of things,” Tubbo says. “The psychologist recommended I step down.” He spits the sentence out, quickly like he doesn’t like the taste.
“Do you want to step down?” Ranboo asks carefully.
At almost the same time, Tommy asks, “Like, quit hero-ing?”
Tubbo wraps his arms around himself loosely and pulls his knees in toward his chest. “Yeah. Both of you, yeah. I… I can’t do this anymore.”
Tommy frowns. “But we’re a team. The four of us, we stick together.”
“I’m not saying I want to leave you two, or… or Sam,” Tubbo contends. Ranboo can’t help but notice with concern Tubbo’s hesitation over Sam’s name. What’s wrong between Tubbo and their team leader? “But I can’t be a hero anymore. I have nightmares, panic attacks— I just can’t do it anymore.” Tubbo’s breathing stutters. “I just want to live a quiet life with my two best friends, and— you can be heroes or not, I don’t care, but I want to quit.”
Ranboo nods, even though he’s sitting behind Tubbo. Making sure Tubbo can see him, he lays one hand over one of Tubbo’s arms in an awkward kind of half-hug. “That’s okay, Tubs. We’re here for you, yeah?”
Tommy nods vigorously. “Us against the world means we keep each other safe. Have you talked to Sam?”
Tubbo laughs a humorless, sad laugh. “I told him right after I got the diagnosis. He said I’d be letting down the team to quit.”
Ranboo’s breath catches. They saw the city therapist almost three months ago, and Tubbo’s felt pressured into staying on the team this whole time? “We’ll talk to Sam together,” Ranboo decides. “You’re not letting anyone down, and I’m sure he’ll listen to us.”
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Sam does not listen to them.
He narrows his eyes at them, dark goggles pushed up on his forehead. They found him in his workshop, where he’s been more and more frequently over the past several months. He’s working on something big, apparently. Something so big he can’t afford to spend time on movie nights, public appearances, team dinners. “This isn’t funny, Nuke,” Sam’s saying, face twisting in distaste. That’s another habit he’s picked up since they got popular as a team— he calls the others by their aliases, even when they’re in private. Honestly, Ranboo’s a little tired of getting called Ender by his mentor.
“It’s not a joke,” Tommy bites back.
“Sam, please, listen to me,” Tubbo says, squeezing Tommy’s hand where their fingers are tangled. “I haven’t changed my mind about this for months. I’m not asking you to quit. Why do you care so much?”
A smile grows on Sam’s face, but it’s not comforting like how Ranboo remembers Sam’s smile being. A chill runs down Ranboo’s spine. “You’re the key, Nuke, don’t you see?”
“I don’t see, Sam,” Tubbo answers. “I don’t even use my powers in the field, we’ve been over how bad that would be.”
“You don’t have to use your powers in the field,” Sam replies. “Here, here, I’ll show you. This was supposed to be a secret until I was done, but if it’ll convince you three I’ll show it early.” He pulls his goggles back over his eyes, letting his bangs fall back over his forehead. Ranboo’s known him long enough to know that he probably doesn’t actually need goggles for safety, they just indicate he’s working.
Sam rifles around on the cluttered work table, then pulls out a large blueprint. He holds it up to Tubbo, still smiling that terrible not-Sam smile, and says, “I need you for this.”
Ranboo looks over the blueprint, but he doesn’t know enough about Sam’s tech to understand what it’s for. Tubbo’s their secondary tech guy, though, and apparently what he sees is bad enough that he tightens his grip on Tommy’s hand and grabs Ranboo’s.
“Sam,” Tubbo chokes. “You can’t— what are you making?”
“Firepower,” Sam says, and he looks fervent even though his eyes are hidden behind his goggles.
“What is it?” Tommy stage-whispers, leaning toward Tubbo.
“A bomb,” Tubbo breathes. “Sam, that could level… blocks. Maybe miles.”
Sam nods easily, as if that’s a perfectly normal thing for a hero to build. “And you charge the battery. Now you see why I need you to stay on the team?”
Tubbo scans the blueprints again, taking a long moment reading over some specifications in a corner. Ranboo may not know much about bombs or tech, but he can tell it’s measurements of some kind of energy, next to a drawing of a contraption that he assumes must be the battery. Tubbo shakes his head slowly. “That’s… so much.”
“How much?” Ranboo asks quietly. He’s not really sure he wants to know, but he can’t not ask.
For a moment, Tubbo just keeps shaking his head. “Too much. I’d get sick for sure trying to power that. Maybe… maybe worse.”
Ranboo’s speechless, but Tommy’s not. “What the hell? You’re trying to convince Tubbo to stay so that you can kill him?”
“It’s the only way to stop them,” Sam says, voice dead calm despite the subject matter. He sets the blueprint down behind him on the work table. “It’s a small price to pay, really, to have a card like this in our hand.”
“Who’s them?” Ranboo asks.
Sam shrugs. “Villains, petty criminals, that type. People who are why this city needs us. With firepower like this, they’d never disturb the peace again.”
“You can’t build that,” Tubbo says. “And I won’t power it. I told you, I’m quitting. You can’t make me stay.” Ranboo gives his hand a comforting squeeze.
Sam pushes his goggles back up, burying them in his messy green hair. He’s not smiling anymore, his eyes cold and empty. “Nuke. Come on. You can’t do that.”
A knot tightens in Ranboo’s stomach, more than just his usual anxiety. Something is wrong.
“Don’t call me Nuke,” Tubbo tells Sam. “My name is Tubbo. I’m not Nuke anymore.”
Ranboo takes a step back, although he’s not sure if he’s preparing to run or grab Tommy and Tubbo and teleport out.
“Tubbo’s not who I’m appealing to right now. How many times have you put your jumpsuit on and told the press you’d do anything for this city, Nuke?” Sam leans back against the work table and looks down with a sigh. Ranboo releases his grip on Tubbo’s hand in favor of putting one hand each on Tubbo and Tommy’s forearms. If he’s touching them both, he can teleport them all at least into the hallway. Sam’s gaze snaps back to Tubbo. “I won’t let you quit.” Deeper in the workshop, there’s movement— a mech or robot of some kind animated by Sam’s electrokinesis power.
Ranboo doesn’t wait for another sign. He gives a mental tug at the fabric of space, and in a blink and a flurry of particles all three of them are in the hallway, looking through the doorway at Sam.
Tommy leans against Ranboo and groans. “That will never not make me feel sick.”
Sam’s face twists in anger. “Get back in here.”
“We have to go,” Ranboo says, tugging Tommy, who’s still apparently dizzy, and Tubbo, who seems in shock, away from the door. It only takes the other two a second to get their feet under them, and then all three are running.
Honestly, Ranboo’s not sure if they actually make a plan or if they all just have the same ideas. It’s possible that while they hurry through their headquarters back to the common space outside of each of their bedrooms, someone says we need to get out of here, someone else says we probably can’t come back, the third person says we should pack and get out and never look back, but it’s also possible that they just do those things.
They meet back up in their common space, each carrying a hastily packed bag. Ranboo can hear the clanking steps of Sam’s creations, and Sam himself calling for them, from elsewhere in the headquarters.
“I can teleport us to the street through the window,” Ranboo offers. “We won’t have to deal with Sam.”
Tommy nods, face set in grim determination. Tubbo just offers an arm to Ranboo. His face is a dead, flat calm, a hollow expression that Ranboo suspects he could’ve seen behind the goggles of Tubbo’s hero mask at any point in the past several months.
Ranboo grabs both his friends, looks out the window, and pulls them through space onto the street.
They reach the street, Tommy buries his face in Tubbo’s shoulder while the nausea wears off, and they duck around the corner, out of sight of the windows of their headquarters. Old headquarters, now, Ranboo supposes.
“What now?” Ranboo asks.
“We can get a hotel room for now,” Tubbo says. “While we sort things out with the city to separate from Sam and get our own place.”
“We’re sixteen,” Ranboo points out. “I’m not even sure if we legally can get a hotel room.”
Tommy looks between Tubbo and Ranboo and smiles. “Well, Tommy and Tubbo and Ranboo are high school dropouts and can’t rent anything, but I bet no hotel in the city would tell Twister and Nuke and Ender to get out.”
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A couple nights later, Tubbo’s hands shake slightly as he puts in his yellow trefoil contact lens.
“You okay?” Ranboo asks. He has his own hero outfit on too, a cloth mask covering the lower half of his face and the hood of his black-and-white capelet over his hair. Tonight, they announce Tubbo’s retirement as a hero to a journalist who owes Ranboo— well, Ender— a favor. Ranboo’s usually not a fan of “favors,” and either never calls them in or uses them for minor things, but it seemed worth it to have just the one person there.
Tubbo smiles a thin smile. “Just nervous.”
“Don’t poke your eye out putting in the lens,” Ranboo says. It always makes him nervous to see Tubbo placing the lens. “You can skip it tonight, if you want. People can’t really see it through your mask anyway.” Tubbo’s face covering is a stylized gas mask, and the large goggles are tinted slightly green. From afar, it’s hard to pick out Tubbo’s eyes at all, let alone the decorative lens.
Tubbo finally gets it on, then shrugs. “It’s just the one guy, right? There’ll probably be a photo up close, and I don’t wanna look any different than usual. Pass me my toolbelt?”
Ranboo hands Tubbo the belt off the hotel bed. Tubbo fastens it around the waist of his olive green mechanic’s jumpsuit.
Tommy emerges from the room’s bathroom, in his costume. Of the three of them, it’s the closest to a civilian outfit: black leggings and turtleneck under a purple-and-gray baseball tee and gray cargo shorts. If he doesn’t wear the mask, he can almost blend into a crowd.
“You guys ready to go?” Tommy asks. “I bet that Carter guy is already waiting for us.”
Ranboo slides his gloves on. “His name’s Connor. And yep.”
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Connor’s waiting at their agreed meeting spot with a notepad and a camera. He waves happily when he sees them approach. “I’m not usually a photographer,” he says, gesturing to the camera, “but since Ender insisted I don’t bring anyone, I’ll have to make do.”
Ranboo nods. He’d broken Connor out of a false-imprisonment situation once, and Connor had given him a business card and said to call if he ever needed a favor from a journalist. “Thanks for coming out, Connor. You’re doing us a favor.”
Connor shrugs. “You said it was a big story, right? It seems like you’ve done me a favor, letting me break it first.”
“Oh, it’s big,” Tubbo says. He laughs, and to Ranboo’s ears it sounds on edge. He wants to comfort Tubbo, but Tubbo’s asked him and Tommy not to touch him while he’s in costume unless he initiates.
Connor gets his pencil and notepad ready, then says, “So what’s going on?”
Tubbo takes a deep breath. “I’m stepping down as a hero.” His voice is level.
Connor jots it down, eyes wide. “Why? For how long?”
“Permanently.” Tubbo hesitates. “For… mental health reasons.”
“And the rest of you? How do you feel about this, and how does Warden feel?” Connor asks.
Tubbo hesitates a second too long, and Tommy jumps in. “Ender and I feel great about this. Warden doesn’t like it at all.”
“We’re no longer working with Warden, actually,” Ranboo adds. “Keep this bit off the record, but if I were you I’d be careful when he shows up.”
Connor’s still taking notes. “Are you implying—”
“He’s not implying anything,” Tubbo interrupts, voice hard. “That’s off the record.”
“Actually, since I didn’t acknowledge the terms before you said it, that’s not off the record,” Connor points out. “But yeah, okay. Ender, you agree with Twister that this is positive?”
The conversation lasts a bit longer, as they answer Connor’s clarifying questions and Connor finalizes his notes. They agree that while Connor will publish that they’re no longer working with Warden, he won’t mention Ranboo’s concerns about the other hero.
As Connor takes a couple pictures before they go, it occurs to Ranboo that this might be the last time he sees Tubbo dressed as Nuke. He looks over the shorter boy, trying to commit to memory the details that cameras don’t capture: the curl of his hair over the straps of his mask, the creases in his well-worn jumpsuit, the little repairs he’s made to the outfit over the time they’ve been heroes. He knows that with his track record for remembering things, it’s probably a lost cause, but it still feels important. For the first time, it sinks in that this is the end of an era.
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The news, and the opinions that follow it, spread over the next several weeks, and it goes about as well as Ranboo could’ve predicted.
There’s backlash, as any of three would’ve guessed. Op-eds and segments on how Nuke’s let down the city, how this ruins the public’s perception of heroes as superhuman and role models. Some people are even angry at Twister and Ender for “encouraging” him. A memorable news clip asks, “what did we expect from a boy who runs around in purple and a Mardi Gras mask?” Tommy spends several days quoting it at Tubbo and Ranboo whenever he decides to be obnoxious.
To Ranboo’s relief, there’s just as much support, and it seems like the majority of normal citizens understand. Tubbo happily presents an opinion piece titled “What Nuke’s Resignation Says About Mental Health” to the other two. When Ranboo and Tommy go out, people still smile, wave, look excited or relieved to see them.
Regardless of public opinion, the three teens keep moving forward. They find and move into a small apartment, work with the city government to separate themselves and their pay as heroes from Sam. It takes a few weeks, but Tubbo’s visibly happier and less tired, and Ranboo wonders how they ever let it get as bad as it did.
Sam doesn’t appear as Warden at all those few weeks. It makes Ranboo nervous, especially given what Sam was working on when they saw him last, but Tommy insists it’s good for things to be quiet while they settle into a new lifestyle, and even Tubbo tells him it’s a problem for another day.
About a month after Tubbo’s resignation, Connor sends Ranboo and Tommy an invitation to a small press event to talk about the changes and their feelings about it.
Ranboo turns the slip of paper with the time and place over in his hands, sitting with Tubbo and Tommy on their thrift-store couch. “Do you want us to go?” he asks, turning to Tubbo.
“Only if you want to,” Tubbo answers easily.
“We’re already in costume,” Tommy points out. “At this point, it’d be harder to not go.” He has a point, even if Ranboo can tell he’s also nervous by the way he’s almost dropped his mask multiple times fidgeting with it.
“I don’t wanna give a statement you don’t like,” Ranboo says to Tubbo. “Even if you’re not appearing, it’s your business.”
“You’ll be fine,” Tubbo reassures him. “Just go. Throw a bone to the vultures out there.”
“You throw bones to dogs,” Ranboo corrects.
Tommy stands off the couch and shrugs. “Close enough for me. C’mon, Ender, the people await us.”
Ranboo pulls up his face mask and stands as well. “Anything you want us to tell them, Tubbo?”
Tubbo thinks a moment, then smiles. “Just that I’m happier now. I’m lucky to have the friends I’ve got, and I trust you two to take care of the city now that I’m not.” His smile softens. “Be careful out there, okay?”