Chapter Text
Wilbur shoved Ranboo, not unkindly, out the van door as the working day ended.
"Run off now." He told Ranboo, all concealed smiling annoyance, fondness choking in Wilbur's throat as he pretended to be tough on him. "I've got adult things to be doing. Don't need a child hanging around."
Ranboo also suppressed a smile, not able to help the slightly proud eyebrow raise as he rolled his eyes. God, in moments like these, Wilbur almost acted like an average person. Almost acted as if he hadn't a long trip ahead of him to redeem himself in the eyes of others and actually prove he'd changed. Almost being the key word.
"Adult things". Ranboo scoffed. Adult things like tugging on Quackity's pigtails, he reckoned. Wilbur's cheeks tinged slightly blue in embarrassment and a long fingered hand brushed through his hair defensively, smudging the defined line between brown and white.
"Yes, now shut up." He said and Ranboo laughed at his embarrassed tone, giving him a fond smile as he folded down the canopy. To be honest he found Wilbur's obvious infatuation with the man quite sweet, if a bit inconvenient (wasn't he already married or something like that?) Still it was nice to see him getting even a little social interaction.
Ranboo frowned, on the track of social interaction, Wilbur had been quiet for far too long after being teased, usually he jumped right back with a mildly embarrassing, but not harmful observation. He turned back to face him. For some reason Wilbur's demeanor turned smug instead of embarrassed at Ranboo's laugh and Ranboo fumbled slightly with the fabric as Wilbur threw him a knowing look.
"What?" He asked, somewhat defensively. Smug was never a good look on Wilbur, especially when Ranboo didn't know what caused it
"Don't think I don't know about Tubbo." Wilbur countered, turning to lock the van and clearly considering the argument won.
Ranboo groaned. Loudly. Wilbur had somehow gotten the impression he was a crushing teenager, with the object of his feelings being Tubbo. And yeah, maybe he shouldn't have given Tubbo that pink tulip where Wilbur could see them but honestly! Michael liked flowers and Tubbo was leaving to visit him! He had to catch him before he tridented away!
"I'm telling you it's not like that!" Ranboo insisted. "There's no feelings I have for him I didn't have before the RanVan! We're nothing like you and Quackity!"
Wilbur levelled an unimpressed stare at him. "I'm sure Ranboo." He mocked. "Don't worry though, I'm sure one day you'll get a rivalry that'll make your heart sink." He smirked. "It's not like you don't have a perfectly horrid opposing burger flipper already, right?"
"Tubbo isn't horrid." Ranboo muttered. "He's just... Mislead, is all."
"Mutual respect!" Wilbur crowed like it was some sort of gotcha. "You have the foundations for it! And don't worry, I'm sure Tubbo can be plenty horrid."
Unbidden, the thought of Tubbo easily giving away their cookie outpost rose to mind and Ranboo brushed it aside. He knew Tubbo had a good heart, it was just his experiences in life that caused him to have some... Less than stellar coping mechanisms, was all. Compassion was key here, Ranboo wasn't going to just give up over some misunderstanding.
"See!" Wilbur shouted triumphant as he caught what must have been a glimpse of the resentment scatter across Ranboo's face.
Ranboo rolled his eyes again, slightly more annoyed. Feeling those things didn't mean he didn't like Tubbo, it just meant he was a person who experienced feelings. They just needed to talk it out. Address what had happened. Communicate the very thing he was feeling. (Stop dancing around the subject whenever they went to visit Michael) "Seriously. Drop it." He said, giving Wilbur a look.
Wilbur wasn't great with non-verbal signs of discomfort a lot of the time, so Ranboo had to make sure not to tread around his feelings and to just speak plainly about them. It had taken awhile to realise that Wilbur also didn't entirely understand a lot of the 'obvious' non verbal communication but it was slightly refreshing to be able to actually talk to someone without them getting offended about Ranboo being 'too blunt'. Ranboo loved Tommy, but the amount of times he couldn't just say "I think this is unhealthy for you." and had to instead hint around it, was enough to make Ranboo want to scream. Of course Wilbur might just be autistic like Ranboo was, but he didn't want to just assume and he hadn't gotten around to actually asking.
"Right." Wilbur nodded, leaving the subject immediately and Ranboo smiled slightly, Wilbur wasn't intentionally insensitive. He definitely had a good heart. "You going to your super secret base now, then?"
'It's not a secret base!" He squawked, relieved to move on. "It's literally just a house!" It wasn't, it was a mansion, but Wilbur didn't need to know that.
"You have a house! At Philza's! Having a second house somewhere you refuse to tell me is a secret base!"
"Oh my god. I am not interacting with you." Ranboo moaned, dragging a hand down his face. "Have a good rest of your day, Wilbur."
Wilbur grinned at him widely, teeth slimy looking and yellow from years of disuse that a quick go over with a toothbrush couldn't quite fix. It was strange, what the afterlife would and wouldn't give him, no need for food or water, but grimy teeth. Completely working unscarred guts and intestines, but a visual reminder of the wound across the skin. Cosmetic nitpicks that only served to make his death slightly more uncomfortable than it would be otherwise. Limbo indeed. "I will! Say hi to Tommy if you see him!"
"I will." Ranboo echoed, shifting his head and eyes downwards to the left in the move he'd been taught by the council to mean a respectful goodbye. Wilbur waved in the human equivalent, and kept waving until Ranboo was out of sight of the Ran-Van.
Right.
Ranboo took a calming breath as he prepared himself mentally for the interaction that was sure to happen at he and Tubbo's shared mansion. It wasn't going to be anything bad of course, just incredibly awkward, they had lost the easy interactions that had been so simple before. Ranboo suspected the awkwardness was mostly on his side, Tubbo was incredibly good at repressing and not thinking about what he didn't want to deal with, after all, and straight up ignoring tension would go along with that.
Ranboo's tongue shot out to lick his eye involuntarily and he gave the sky a distrustful look in response. It always did that when it was about to rain, Tubbo'd thought it had something to do with the rising humidity, Ranboo wasn't sure but the tongue hadn't been wrong yet. He scratched a line down his torso to access his inventory, going elbow deep into his chest to snag his helmet, quickly shoving it onto his head. He reached back into his torso and lugged out his chest plate as well, it thudded against his legs as it was hooked onto the hot-bar to quickly free up his hands. Ranboo dove back in to hook a claw around his trousers and then his shoes, clipping them onto his belt as well to gather his bearings, Ranboo stared at the sky consideringly. It would be best to put on his armour now, rather than wait till the rain really began.
Like Ranboo's tongue had predicted, it started to sprinkle after he'd finished strapping down the chest plate, but that was good as it allowed him to use his trident.
Tridenting was hard to get used to. The magic imbued into the weapon found the most inconvenient way to gather up enough speed to start flying, and spinning vigorously wasn't exactly something people were built to do. Ranboo had seen many people get thrown off their trident while learning, the centrifugal force too much for them to handle. The trick was to arrange yourself against the handle immediately after throwing, in order to keep yourself close to the centre, if you gave an inch it would fling you a mile.
He quickly made his way over to the mansion, the rain hammering against his helmet switching to snow in the cold air. He dismounted in a particularly fluffy pile of snow so he didn't have to bother being careful about it, and shook himself off before he got to the mansion.
He paused before he entered, hand raised towards the handle. Still a part of his mind insisted that Tubbo wouldn't want to see him, even though his husband had never even hinted towards feeling the same sort of neglect Ranboo had after hearing about the outpost. He still obviously cared for Ranboo, hell, they'd kept interacted like normal. It was just Ranboo knew he wouldn't be able to shake the feeling until they actually talked it out, which would be impossible until Tubbo acknowledged the problem, which, knowing Tubbo, would take a lot.
The door opened, interrupting his thoughts. Tubbo stood before him, holding the enchanted book that had transferred them to another server a couple of months ago.
"... Hi?" He said, drawing the word out, obviously confused to why Ranboo was just standing there.
Ranboo's eyes flicked to the ground automatically before he forced his gaze to at least focus on Tubbo's remaining eyebrow. He always forget about the hair cut.
"Yes, hello." He said, flustered. "Sorry I was just coming in to see Michael, got lost in my head."
"Well it's very dangerous in there big man, must have been terrifying." Tubbo broke the ice with a smile as he always did, mowing through the tension like a netherite hoe. "I was about to give the travel book back to Jack, just realised I never actually did." He shook it slightly for emphasis.
"Makes sense." Ranboo smiled. "Can I have a look at it actually, my brain made the details a little fuzzy. I know what happened and all, but I don't actually remember what it looks like."
"Sure!" Tubbo agreed, passing it over. The tips of his blunt nails skimmed against Ranboo's claws. Ranboo ached to just reach over and hold his hand properly. "It shouldn't activate without anyone else here."
"Yeah, because of the prefix. Right?" Ranboo recalled, tracing the first three letters of Galactic etched into the leather binding. "It's a three person trip, not a two."
"Yeah the people in the other server called it a Portkey. I wonder if enchanted books are more common over there, they managed to enchanted that stick to levitate shit, do you remember? It was awesome."
"It was heavily modded." Ranboo agreed, thinking of their delicious bread and the extremely tiny spider corpse which had disappeared from his inventory as soon as he entered the smp again, much to his disappointment. "Had way more women as well, which made me feel a bit sexist if I'm being honest."
"Yeah but you taught them about gay people." Tubbo argued. "It evens out. You done?"
"I taught one person about gay people." Ranboo argued back, folding the book closed again and holding it out to Tubbo. "I think he was just sheltered. And yes I'm done."
"Oooh! What's this?" Wilbur said, from right beside him. What?? How?? Had he seriously followed him all the way to Snowchester? Just as Ranboo's fingers brushed against Tubbo's again, Wilbur said "Yoink!" And reached for the book before Ranboo could react
The word rushed to dark around them as Ranboo felt the overwhelming urge to strangle Wilbur with his own two hands.
----
Being a hero was annoying sometimes. Hawks thought. His wings hurt after flying all day, his back muscles hurt even more, and he had a headache from controlling his feathers.
Of course, all of that was happening because of the extra weight he had to carry, which was in the form of what made hero work slightly less absolutely mind numbing.
"You don't have to hold me like this you know." The unwieldy chick huffed, his Quirk poking out a head to caw an agreement.
Hawks scoffed at Tokoyami's insulting insinuation. "All bird mutant-types need at least a shot at flying. It's in your DNA, Tokoyami."
Honestly. Hawks thought corvids were supposed to be smart, though with Tokoyami's hooked beak, he found the chances of the aspiring hero actually belonging to that family very slim. Most likely he was some sort of raptor and a quirk doctor with absolutely no knowledge of birds had just seen his black feathers and called it a day.
"You ever get looked over by ornithologist?" He asked absentmindedly, scanning the cityscape for new prey (or, well, criminals. But Hawks found that thinking of them as prey heightened his reaction time by working in tandem with his instincts. Oh! That was a tip he could pass onto Tokoyami if he ended up being predatory! He was such a good teacher)
"What?" Tokoyami asked, audibly confused.
"We're going to get you looked over by an ornithologist. I don't actually think you're a crow." Hawks explained distractedly, furrowing his brow as what appeared to be an optical illusion or spacial distortion formed in an ally right before his eyes. He started circling the area to keep a closer eye on the potential illegal quirk use, angling his primaries to enter a lazy spiral as not to draw attention to his movement. The human eye was attracted to quick and dramatic gestures unless the human in question had a quirk which helped it not.
"What?" Tokoyami asked again, sounding even more confused.
"Hold that thought." Hawks instructed, he shifted his wings into the position for a gradual descent, his gaze locked onto the space where three people had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. "The people at the USJ had a transportation quirk at their disposal, right?"
Shit. One of the suspects had animal like horns. If they had the eyes of a prey species as well, they had a better shot at noticing slow movement. Plus another definitely didn't have baseline eyes, almost glowing red and green in the dim light. Hawks hoped they didn't look up.
"What!?" Tokoyami exclaimed, sounding significantly more alarmed. He shifted in Hawks' grip to peer urgently at the city below them. "Yeah. It's how they got past security. It was a smoke-like teleportation quirk. The guy who used it was made of mist and used his body to create portals, it made him very difficult to attack."
Smoke-like, huh? Hawks thought. Not much like the warping of space he'd seen. Still. "Hey, kid. Don't be alarmed, but I saw someone use a teleportation quirk below us, and I'm going down to confront them. It probably wasn't the USJ attackers because I didn't see any mist, but I'm still gonna put you on a rooftop nearby just to be safe, okay? Don't be worried, I'll come and get ya if it's nothing to worry about."
"Are you sure you didn't see any mist?" Tokoyami asked. His mantle feathers were flatter against his head and neck than their usual relaxed spikes and they betrayed his anxiety, even as he sounded the same edgy teen he always did. Hawks wondered how often Tokoyami used his steady voice as a sort of poker face to fool those who couldn't read bird facial expressions. "They almost took out All Might last time."
"I know." Hawks assured, shifting Tokoyami so the boy was more against his chest as he straightened to land. It had caused a huge ripple in the Hero Commission and his handlers had urged him to work even harder incase he ended up as Number 2 sometime soon in the future. Hell, he had even taken Tokoyami as an intern to get more information on them, which he guessed he now was. "And I'm sure there wasn't any mist. I promise. Also, watch your step."
Hawks alighted on the rooftop above the ally, careful to not overbalance with the added weight, flaring his wings to counter it. He set Tokoyami down gently and walked over to pear over the edge.
Two of the people had mutant-type quirks, one in a fast-food like uniform tailored to his extraordinarily tall frame and the other (with the goat-like horns he had seen before) in clothes for a significantly cooler climate, the third didn't and was wearing a similar uniform to the black and white one, but more slick as if for a managerial position. Hawks felt himself relaxing slightly, it was unlikely that a villain would choose the getup of a wage-slave as a costume. Perhaps one of their quirks had acted up in a restaurant to bring them here, the manager's face looked pretty western (the waiter had features that were too off baseline to tell and scars reached across the others face, obscuring the eye Hawks could see from his position and disrupting the horned male's flesh whilst also carving a chunk out of his nose cartilage) so maybe they were from somewhere with colder weather, like Canada. But maybe not, Hawks didn't want to stereotype.
The three were bickering amongst themselves. The manager had an ornate book in his grasp which the waiter gestured at exasperatedly. He seemed to be taunting the waiter, although there was no malice in his posture, and the waiter was definitely reacting. The manager swiftly held the book behind his back as the waiter shot out a hand for it and then switched his grip to holding it behind the waiters back instead as the tall man lunged to wrap his arms around him, performing a sort of makeshift hug to grab at the book. The horned man, who had up to that point been looking into the scene with a bemused tilt to his mouth, calmly stepped forward and plucked it out of the manager's fingers. He procured a small knife from his belt and before Hawks could even twitch or send a feather to stop him, stabbed it into his scarred over eye and drew it down his face, opening his flesh and exposing a void which he quickly stored the book in.
Not just a mutant-type quirk then.
Hawks watched at the two others squawked at the horned man, immediately ganging up on him. He tilted his head back slightly to keep his eyes on the ally and called to Tokoyami, who had been standing stock still behind him the entire time, slightly tense. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're not the USJ attackers. Do you wanna come down with me to deal with them or would you rather stay up here?"
The feathers Hawks had hidden in Tokoyami's costume felt the boys posture relax somewhat, and he walked to peer over the ledge with Hawks.
"I don't recognise any of them." He said, relief flooding his tone. "I'll come down with you."
Hawks chirped cheerfully, tilting his head to the side, bird-like, to look at his intern. Tokoyami's mantle finally raised back up at the noise and the boy chirped back instinctually, before covering his beak in evident embarrassment. Hawks turned back to the ally to hide his slight smile.
"Right then!" He said, pretending to have not heard the slip. "Let's assume the position!"
Tokoyami rolled his eyes but let Hawks hook him under the arms. Hawks swept his wings up and down to take off, feeling the extra strain he didn't experience when it was just him.
Well. Hawks thought. Hopefully they spoke Japanese.