Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Whoever invented computers was homophobic. Sure, Tommy wasn’t gay, but he was having to mildly inconvenience his computer science teacher, Sam Nook, the only man ever, and the best coder alive, about the GitHub program not working. He was pretty sure Mr. Nook was gay, judging by the various rumors of the lunchbox note wars between him and his husband.

As he went up to the desk, Sa- Mr. Nook, in school hours- was furiously scribbling on a sticky note. Tommy was pretty sure he read the word sweetheart and amputation in the same sentence, which did not bode well for the rumor mill. Or the Other Mr. Nook.

“Mr. Nook-” Tommy dragged out his name, “The program isn’t working again.”

Sam sighed, giving Tommy a playful look. He got up and ambled over to the computer, “Why is it that your computer never wants to cooperate anymore?”

Tommy bit back the answer of, Tubbo could manipulate them to get me a good grade before. Now the stupid hero program made him drop out and my grade has gone with him. It wasn’t that the computer was even at fault. Tommy was useless at anything technical. Phil had taught the basics of how most machines worked to Techno and Wilbur, about how to use a VPN and whatever else. But as soon as Tommy’s powers hadn’t sprouted at the age of 10, he seemed to have… given up. That’s Tommy’s guess. He already knew he took after his mum, a black haired woman that only existed in photographs and dreams. Being powerless too was just the icing on the cake.

It wasn’t that Phil was a bad dad or anything. He just chose not to be Tommy’s. Phil chose to not include him on family bonding time, fought harder for Techno or Wilbur to stay than for Tommy to. He chose to become a superhero, the Number One, in fact. And he chose to bring Wilbur and Techno along with him. Leaving Tommy, an 11-year-old, home alone most evenings and nights.

So Tommy survived, like always.

Sam’s triumphant noise brought him back to reality. The game he was crudely trying to make, ran. Not well, but better than he had hoped for.

“Great work otherwise, Toms, but the problem was that somehow a void character was inserted- probably something from the textures being copy-pasted-” Tommy zoned out after that, warmth radiating from the hand on his head, ruffling his hair. Sam was proud of him.

He wished he had a father like Sam.

That train of thought was abruptly interrupted by the bell, and Sam groaned. He had only just gotten it working too.

Tommy slept through his next period, English with Mr. Grian, and was only awakened by him shaking his shoulders.

“Are you alright, Tommy? You haven’t seemed well at all the past few lessons.” Grian was a kind, if eccentric man. He wore a red sweater, emblazoned with a parrot on it, and once tried to blow up the cafeteria on a student dare. “Should I call Mr. Minecraft?”

“No, no, big man, I’m tip top! You see, I’m tired from getting all the women every night,” Tommy tried to wink but the sleep crusted along his eye made it look like an aggressive bout of pinkeye. Grian’s mouth twitched. His sweater was rolled up to his elbows, and Tommy could see the crisscross scar marks on his wrists. Parts of them seemed… methodical. Not as in self harm- though others seemed to have that origin. But others seemed to form patterns, like a crude warning sign, or an eye being crossed out. The most obvious one being the cross on the back of his hands, that was even from all angles. It was intentional, there was no doubt about that.

Tommy was not stupid enough to ask about it. He liked Mr. Grian. He also liked lunch, as he realized that class was over. That meant meatballs in the cafeteria. Grian’s parrot wings fluttered as he turned back to his desk, but by the time he went to speak again, Tommy was already halfway out the door. He yelled a ‘stay safe’ after Tommy, and turned to pack up his things.

Tommy spent his lunch alone. Tubbo, a master manipulator over any type of technology, and Ranboo, the Hero Force’s only method of Teleportation had been whisked away by the government to begin their training program immediately after their powers had been discovered the year prior. It was a mystery that they could hide it for so long in the first place, but after 6 or so years, they both got caught.

It didn’t mean too much, the program just replaced school and taught them about… whatever Heroes get taught. Tommy didn’t ask. He was just bitter that he now had no school friends. And his only two friends reported to Phil as their boss. Gross.

Tommy scoffed down the meatballs, as chalky as they tasted, and made the mad dash to the library. The librarian, Eret, was a part time hero and loved him. Or was nice to him because Phil was his boss. One of the two.

He liked to think that he wasn’t as much of a pain as Techno made him out to be.

Tommy greeted Eret, who smiled and then turned back to her book as Tommy made his way through the paper tombs. He pulled out the book he was supposed to be reading for English, Swallow My Angels, which was a bit of a depressing read. It was about the death of the biggest unpowered activist, Kristin Minecraft. His mother.

On second thought, maybe he didn’t like Mr. Grian as much.

He knew it was the government that created the syllabus but shit, could he take a fucking break? It was easier to get mad at the face of his teacher than the entity that masqueraded itself as the government.

This sounded suspiciously anti-capitalist of him. He could feel Karl Marx smile down on him. Maybe he should become a communist.

That would upset Techno.

He should become a communist.

The lunch break passed as he skimmed the book, barely processing anything. It was fine, if Mr. Grian got angry about it he could always play the Dead Mum Card.

It was worth a shot.

He went to his next class and slept through that as well. He was good at Art; he could bullshit his way through that. Mr. Jumbo let him sleep every class, let Tommy rant about his disdain for Phil and in return Mr. Jumbo talked about his hatred of most heroes. Mr. Jumbo was a stoutly man who was one of the only people in the world to legally own redstone. It was a controlled substance, one that was used within potions and explosives and everything outlawed. Although, judging by the almost paint-like splatters on Mr. Jumbo’s button up, he just used it for art. Tommy hoped his teacher wasn’t a terrorist or a drug dealer in his spare time.

He darted out of class as soon as the bell rang, sprinting to the entrance of the school. On Tuesdays, Wilbur picked him up from school- one of the rare times he spent alone with the lanky bastard.

And his car wasn’t there.

Tommy’s phone buzzed, it was Wil. He had sent a text, can’t pick you up today, work emergency. At the same time, he got a notification saying that the villain Dream was fighting Phantom after a robbery gone wrong.

Sounds about right.

Tommy wished he was powered, wished he could live like Wilbur and Techno. Maybe then they could finally feel like a real family. It was alright, Tommy was a big man who could walk home. It was only half an hour, plus there was a house with really cute cats.

Tommy wasn’t so lucky as he felt an arm loop around him, one of Dream’s many apparitions.

Dream was a hero-turned-villain, and he used to be Number One. His power was confusing and partially unknown, but everybody knew that he could create clones of himself- Tommy was just unfortunate enough to have been on Dream’s good side.

“Fuck off, bitch,” Tommy really was the height of hospitableness.

“I’m walking you home, Tommy.” The clone ignored Tommy’s disgruntled attempts to get it off of him.

“What do you want from me?”

“To be safe because your brother isn’t ensuring that,” Dream had had a fascination with Tommy, hell-bent on one day having Tommy join the villains’ side.

His entire family was superheroes, it wasn’t going to happen.

But Dream persisted, and Tommy had grown used to the masked figure.

“We’re taking a left, Wilbur and I are fighting up Squid Street.”

“It’s creepy how you report in on yourself, you know that, big man?” Tommy could hear Wilbur trying to charmspeak the other Dream while being thrown into a building.

“It’s a hive mind, Tommy. We’re like bees.”

“Still creepy.”

After a long walk, though it felt like an unnaturally quick amount of time, Tommy came face to face with his house. He looked around, Dream nowhere to be found. Tommy figured he had merged back into the original Dream.

The neighbourhood he lived in, L’manburg, was one of those overly rich ones, with neatly trimmed gardens and expensive doorknobs. The rich pricks had robbed the rest of the SMP blind, with Pogtopia, Snowchester and other areas being significantly poorer. And although he was a resident to L’manburg, he hated what they did to the rest of the country.

Tommy was always down for a little bit of theft.

Especially if it involved visiting the quaint pawn shop in Pogtopia, an area where slums reigned supreme. Nobody would blink at solid gold doorknobs being pawned off.

On second thought, he might have had a clue why Dream wanted to recruit him.

As Tommy toed his shoes off in the doorway, he faced the empty house and grinned. He had a plan for crime and no one would be around to stop him.

Chapter Text

The rest of Tommy’s family were working, as they did until after Tommy went to bed.

It was the perfect time to commit a crime.

Most of the doorknobs were made by a blacksmith, the only one in L’manburg was Foolish. Foolish has the power of Midas- every doorknob he made was solid gold. Terrible for the economy, great for Tommy.

That would go for a pretty penny in Pogtopia.

Tommy donned the mask he had hidden under his bed, as well as a resistance vest from the armory next to Techno’s room- it wasn’t often that he committed crimes, but he came prepared. Tommy threw a hoodie over the vest and looked himself in the mirror.

He looked fly as fuck.

Hell yeah, the rich pricks of L’manburg wouldn’t know what hit ‘em.

Since Pogtopia was lower class, a lot of the citizens didn’t mind him walking through with stolen items. As long as no muggers were out- or brave enough to fight him- it would be a pretty easy way to get cash.

Tommy planned to move out as soon as he hit 18, and Phil didn’t allow him to get a job. Something about not trusting the places that were hiring. Not that Phil would’ve noticed his absence, but at least he pretended to try and set boundaries.

Either way, stealing was way more fun, and he could get a quick $10k off just a few of the knobs.

The rich pricks didn’t need them anyways; they could have regular door knobs like the rest of SMP society.

He jumped out of his window, ducking low below the fence line. The neighbors were mostly out, or holed up watching the spectacle of the villain fights on their TV. Angel of Death and the Monarch vs. Flare and 404, infamous from the Dream Team. Interesting, but he’d rather not see Phil’s ass get kicked.

Tommy had picked the perfect time ever- 11:30 pm. He snuck from house to house, unscrewing each knob, and using one of Tubbo’s laser pointers to blind the CCTV cameras. He felt like a spy. The only reminder that he’d ever been there was a burnt out camera and the lock strewn on the porch floor. Aw yeah, he was so cool.

He had gotten through about 10 houses, his backpack heavy, when he turned and came face to face with the Phantom’s symbol. The one that was emblazoned on the Phantom’s chest. He dared a look up, and was suddenly very glad he was wearing a mask. Granted, it had a mesh film over his eyes that dulled colors, but he knew that was Wilbur.

Wilbur stared down at him, furious.

Tommy ran, slipping under the other’s arm.

“Stop! Stop running!” Wilbur’s charmspeak wove itself into every word, but Tommy had been living with the bitch long enough to find the loopholes in his commands.

Tommy Innit Watson-Minecraft, the manliest man ever, started to skip. It proved to be faster than running, even with the solid gold doorknobs stabbing him in the back at every possible moment. Bastards. They would be going to a very nice pawn shop, Connor’s Pawnts, and this is how they repayed him? He saved the knobs from a life of being touched by rich pricks! Rude.

“Stop skipping!” He started to run.

Tommy was not going to get outplayed by a bitch wearing spandex and a trench coat. Call it dumb instinct, call it the younger sibling gene, but he started to scale the sides of one of the houses. Phantom was hot on his tail. He pulled himself up the building, and wasted no time jumping from the rooftop to the next, determined to lose Wil.

“Surrender!” Wil cried out. Tommy’s heart stopped, Brain working overdrive to loophole what Wil said.

He stood on the edge of this rooftop, facing the Phantom, hands in the air. The Phantom stalked ever closer. Phil was going to kill him if he found out. Phil hated whenever Tommy lashed out, all teeth and bones and instinct. Techno was brutish, Wilbur was stubborn yet calm- Tommy was feral and impulsive. A match made in hell for the Angel of Death.

“Hey, Phantom. We can talk this out, right?” He didn’t look impressed, “After all, I was just taking the doorknobs back to Foolish for a polishing! Yup, a routine maintenance. You could ask him yourself.”

“Why were you wearing a mask and a voice changer as you did it, then?” Phantom cocked his head to the side. He moved like an insect, all spindly and sure of itself. It was something he did on purpose, to freak out villains- he had told Tommy one afternoon.

The only answer coming to Tommy’s brain was because I’m pog but he didn’t think that was appropriate. He tried, “Cosplay?”

Phantom let out a deranged huff. Tommy wasn’t sure if that was the correct answer. Still, it gave Tommy loophole thinking time.

Phantom was barely in arms’ range.

He had it.

Wilbur may have told him to surrender.

But he never said to what.

Tommy took a step back, and jumped off the building.

The fall down was cold. The wind whipped through his body, piercing every part of him uncovered. The commands that Phantom were no doubt yelling were lost in the icy air. Time seemed to slow, the backpack bruising and pressing on all of his soft spots.

He closed his eyes.

He was going to kill the fucker that made dumpsters a thing.

Turns out, he was standing on top of the death and wills office in L’manburg, and now he had at least five papercuts from landing in their trash.

Tommy laid there, just for a moment. Basked in his shame.  The papers covered every inch of him.

Heavy boots landed on the metal of the dumpster. Tommy resisted the urge not to call Phantom a prick.

He ducked his head underneath the papers, completely submerging himself. Cursing every loud ruffle that the papers made. He could feel Phantom gaze down into the dumpster, then the gravel crunched underneath another pair of boots.

“Where’d your robber go?” Techno asked. Tommy could imagine Wil’s jaw gritting as he spat out an answer.

“I don’t know, Blade. Can we just go home now?” He spoke with a fury Tommy had never had directed at him. On the bright side, neither of them knew it was Tommy.

“We gotta do some mission reports first, c’mon Wil,” Phantom’s boots scratched the metal as he slid off the dumpster.

Tommy waited until he couldn’t hear a sound from either before he sat up. One of the papers caught his eye- it said Phil Minecraft on it.

He picked it up, shoved it in his backpack, and made his way home.

Chapter Text

Perhaps falling off a building into a dumpster was not the best course of action. Tommy was sore, and his backpack was still full of solid gold doorknobs. That was heavy. He stumbled downstairs, greeting both Techno and Wilbur at the table with a grunt. Phil was cooking pancakes, and he waved to him over the counter, face barely holding a grimace.

He didn’t hate his family, far from it. Wilbur was still his favourite person, even when the Phantom tried to chase him. Techno still brought Tommy trinkets-weapons, but Phil didn’t need to know about that- back whenever he went on a work trip.

But they had forgotten his birthday this year. Too obsessed with some work thing- a kidnapping situation, Tommy vaguely remembers- or maybe that was the year before- that Wilbur had to negotiate. That was important, Tommy couldn’t- and wouldn’t- say otherwise. But when was it his turn? Phil hadn’t noticed the bruises that flowered on his skin that time when a senior has beaten him and Tubbo up. Techno hadn’t bothered to comment on the stench of blood that seemed to permanently follow Tommy when he had been stabbed- a mugging gone wrong. Wilbur didn’t bring up the fact that Tommy walked with a limp that morning.

It seemed like he was growing up without them knowing.

Phil sat at the table, and Tommy could feel the air shift- Phil was an empath, and he controlled the emotions of the room around him. Also had big fuck-off wings and was immortal, but those were secondary. He was the first to talk since Tommy had come down the stairs, “The annual Red Banquet is coming up again boys, we’ve still got to get fitted for suits and the like.”

“Hasn’t Bad been running that for like, 9,000 years or something?” Wil said, nursing his cup of coffee as he spoke. His hair was a mess and he wore that stupid jumper with a llama on it. Tommy hated that jumper, with its beady eyes and ever-cheerful grin.

Next crime; he was going to burn that fucking sweater.

“Kings have risen and fallen in the Red Banquet’s lifetime, mate. It’s an honor we’re invited every year,” That meant Phil, Techno, and Wilbur were invited. Every hero, villain, politician and notable vigilante was going. A night to put aside biases and grudges, to find connection in the ones you fight.

It was a political nightmare, Tommy thought. Bad used sigils and wards to ensure peace, but putting a group of government destroying reformists and anarchists in a ballroom with Schlatt was never a good idea. Yet he made it work.

Except for that one year Bad’s husband pulled a prank on everybody and stink bombed the entire ballroom. Phil and Techno had complained about the smell for weeks. Wilbur has sat in the river until it stopped. The air in the room shifted for a second, Tommy’s annoyance flaring up before being unnaturally dulled by Phil’s power.

Phil shifted awkwardly, clearing his throat, “So, uh, Toms that means we’ll be leaving for a few days- I think it’s three? I’ll make sure you have enough money for food and such, mate. This thing always sneaks up on me.”

“You have dementia, old man. I’m gonna put you in a home.” Techno deadpans.

“You little shit-” Phil made a grab towards Techno half-heartedly, “I’ll have you know I’m only 8,546 years old, you fucker!”

Tommy stumbled away from the table, snorting. His plate is half eaten, the syrup almost spilling off the edge. He scoops it into the trash and salutes the table, “Adios! Off to meet some women.”

As soon as he walked out the door, his soreness increased and the agitation thrummed at his skull. God, he fucking hated Phil’s power.

His first two classes were a drag, PE with Mr. Nappitus- which he was pretty sure was a fake name, and the guy couldn’t be older than 20- and English with Mr. Grian. PE had him do a weird form of dodgeball- MEGA- the teacher called it. The people who got out just got to throw balls at the other team from behind, and that couldn’t have been safe. His back was already bruised enough as it was, could they give him some rest.

He had caught a glimpse in the locker room mirror, his back was shades of purple and splotchy brown. It looked horrifying, and his classmate- and only solace from the hells of PE, Purpled- had given him a concerned Look as he saw the blonde’s back. Tommy gave one back that hopefully read as ‘don’t worry I’m not being abused, I just fell into a dumpster,’ and not ‘constipated fear’.

English was… fine, he supposed. Mr. Grian was a fast talker, and Tommy struggled to keep up at the best of times. He was talking about unpowered people and the powered people that weren’t useful. The ones that were, like his family, Tubbo and Ranboo, were indoctrinated into the Hero Force program. There were others that became vigilantes who hid their powers- like Purpled but Tommy wasn’t supposed to know about that- and others that became villains. Some of those villains rose through the ranks of the Hero Force, just to be demonized- like Dream. And others hid their powers until older; those were the ones who could have a secret identity.

Unpowered people and the useless powered ones were regulated to jobs of their skill level. Mr. Grain was a parrot hybrid- he had wings and his song made others happy, but there was no use in fighting with his ability. Sometimes, they rose above it though. Unpowered people became villains, or vigilantes. Never heroes. Punz was a notable hitman and villain that was unpowered. He saw Purpled freeze at the mention of the villain. And other times, they gave themselves powers. Grian got serious at this, wings folded to his back. There was some people who performed black magic to give themselves abilities, often at great cost. Others who use these curses to lock away their own power. The board held the same symbol he had seen scratched into Mr. Grian’s hands, a perfectly symmetrical X. It was used to bind powers, to make them useless for good.

He wondered what power Grian had held that was so bad.

He explained that most who used black magic to have a future-seeing power, often went blind. People who wanted to read minds or be warned of danger went deaf, or induced migraines or developed paranoia.

“The body isn’t meant to handle that sort of foreign magic. It will kill itself trying to accommodate.”

That was positive, Tommy thought. That was some real happy-go-lucky stuff. Tommy dredged his way to the library, sliding an apple to Eret. He was here to do research, for once.

His biomagical science class was also going on about body magic this semester, maybe he could try and hand in the same essay for both classes. It wasn’t too bad of an idea.

A book caught his attention, one that look worn and leather bound. It reminded him of one of Phil’s old journals, detailing the rise and fall of the various empires. He picked it up, fingers gliding over the golden symbol embossed on the cover.

A perfectly symmetrical X.

On the spine read, ‘Sigils, symbols, and other spell engravings’. This would definitely be useful for his classes. He turned to borrow the book out, but there was a voice in his head telling him to steal it, to just slip it in his bag and go.

Tommy was always down for a little bit of crime.

He slipped the book into his backpack, cursing at the sound of the doorknobs knocking together. He’d forgotten those were in there. Eret still didn’t look up, too entrenched in their book about flamingo care- weird but he was the one with a backpack full of doorknobs so he really wasn’t the type to judge.

Tommy didn’t notice the blond boy in the multicolor hoodie slink into the bathrooms.

Perhaps if he did know, he’d have been a bit more careful.

Biomagic was always pretty interesting, with them learning about how body magic actually works- and how black magic is just a more powerful form of that. Wards were technically a form of black magic, as they used redstone to activate protection sigils, but were among the few commonly accepted types of black magic. Sigils were only harmful with the intent behind them, and redstone being used in the process. Body magic was still used via scarification, but glowstone dust replaced the dangerous accelerant. Those were used in healing cases mostly, to make the skin heal correctly, or to make the worst criminals that the government caught forget who they were. Tabula Rasa, a blank slate.

Fundy, a criminal fox hybrid had made it to the top of the biggest political party in the SMP. He had killed for that position. And then they wiped his mind as soon as the party he was in didn’t win. Fundy was recruited to the Hero Force a year later, still young and dumb and vulnerable. Tommy felt sick every time he saw the fox. He had the mental awareness, and memories of a 10-year-old. He was essentially being spoon-fed propaganda, straight from the hands of the company.

It would’ve been better to kill him than leave him a child.

He had a study period after bio magic, that he spent studying the book that he had stolen. Tommy had holed himself up in one of the rafters that overhung the courtyard. He surveyed the school.

The book contained a message in a language he didn’t understand on the back of the front cover. However, the rest of the book was in English, and it contained instructions.

Big men’s least favorite thing.

However, it listed the benefits of each sigil and symbol, some like mind control, and mind barriers to stop mind control. Fire resistance, etc.

Phil was always meddling in his sons’ emotions. Whenever Tommy got too angry, too loud, Phil preferred to make him drowsy. When Techno fell into a blind rage, he levelled him out to baseline.

The cold, unfeeling way he’d just… turned down the notches on their emotions. He made it pleasant at the dining table this morning, even though Tommy was tired and sore and desperately on the verge of snapping.

He could fix that. He could fix Phil meddling with him.

The book had a page, dedicated to blockers and binders. Power, chest, wings, hybrid features- all kinds of binding, and the sigil stuck out to him. A mind blocker, with a fancy Latin name, that stopped all mind influencing powers from taking effect. Illusion, telepathy, charmspeak. Everything Tommy needed.

It was a simplistic eye design, with a line striking through it vertically. It was other one of the ones on Mr. Grian’s wrist, although his had a few differences.

Mr. Grian’s wrist scar glowed because of the glowstone- that’s how it is determined legal. His hand ones didn’t.

The one on the pages of the book used redstone. And Tommy knew it was a stupid idea, with Grian warning the class of this. And the HIGH RISK sticker stamped onto the page. But he was a big man, nobody needed to know.

So he, out of pure curiosity- nothing else- read the instructions.

1.Use a sterile silver or golden blade to make the mark of the sigil illustrated above. Blood must be drawn, but the incisions should not gape further than 0.5 cm.

2.Visualise intent-imagine mind barriers being contrasted within the soul, as if they were bricks being placed for a wall.

3. Once all of the incisions are made, layer the sigil with redstone dust opaquely.
4. Bandage wound and keep covered for 24 hours, then wipe off redstone dust with Isopropyl Alcohol.

Tommy could do it.

Techno kept a stack of sterile silver blades in the bathroom- shaving razors, but they would do.

He could steal redstone off Mr. Jumbo, and buy bandages on his way home from the pawn shop.

This was viable- a solution to his issue. And visualizing intent was the most dangerous part, which Tommy was such a big man about, he could visualize like a boss.

How bad could it be?

He headed for the art room after his lunchbreak ended. Tommy limped up to Mr. Jumbo, “Hey, bitch- I mean, teach!”

Mr. Jumbo sighed, voice heavy, “Hi Tommy, how could I help you?”

“Well as you know I am the poggest of men and I was wondering if you could fill me in, compadre, on anything you know about redstone?”

“What are you getting up to, Tommy?” He leaned against the art tables, trying to act natural. He was so cool and pog and definitely not committing crimes.

“Nothing, my friend, my dear boy Jumbo, I just have a biomagics assignment and you’re the most dangerous man I know with your… physique. And access to otherwise illegal substances.”

Mr. Jumbo paused, and leaned into Tommy’s ear.

“If you want redstone, just ask. I know you’re friends with Tubbo,” He whispered. Tubbo! The person who would logically want redstone, as it also powered nuclear warheads. And Tubbo controlled all electricity, as well as having the ability to make shit blow up. He was so cool, it was unfair. Tommy got abandonment issues and no powers, Tubbo got abandonment issues and the ability to wipe out a nation. Rude.

“Yes, I want redstone, Mumbo Jumbo.” God, that was a weird ass full name.

The classroom was empty, sans for Purpled sitting in the corner with his earphones in. They both knew Purpled didn’t give enough of a shit to say anything. He had been the only witness in a few different student drug deals- only reason he hadn’t gotten expelled was mysterious paperwork going missing at the admin office.

Mr. Jumbo leaned back, grin on his face. He shook Tommy’s hand. He felt a weight drop into his palm, and he shoved his hand into his pocket to deposit it.

“Pleasure, Tommy.”

The class began to fill up with students, as Tommy slid down next to Purpled.

“If you’re planning on doing black magic, you’re dumber than you look.” Purpled whispered. Tommy slapped his hand over his mouth, looking around to see if anyone had heard what the other had said.

Purpled licked his hand. Fucking gross. He wiped his hand on Purpled’s hoodie, as the bastard spoke, “It’s fine, dickhead. They can’t hear me; it just looks like we’re sketching.”

“Huh? Are you insane?”

“Illusions, my power is illusions. The outside world can’t hear us unless I wanted them to,” Purpled flipped the page in his sketchbook, continuing to draw as he spoke, “Why do you think I’ve been involved in so many drug deals? I’m not a lackey, I’m an asset-” he lifted his hands as spoke, sarcasm heavy in his tone, “And if you tell anyone, I’ll let them know about the redstone in your pocket.”

“In my defense, I did nothing wrong, ever. And I won’t tell them about your power- what the fuck, the hero system is fucked anyways. They took Tubbo and Ranboo out of school.”

“I know,” Purpled looked depressed at the mention of the boys. Or maybe he was just depressed.

“I know a really good therapist you could see,” Well, he didn’t exactly know if Puffy was good, but she was nice to him whenever he was in the diner, so that was enough for him.

“What? Anyways, uh, be safe or whatever. If you die, I’ll have no one to aim for in dodgeball.”

“You bitch!” Tommy made a grab at Purpled’s sketchbook, but he had already turned away from Tommy.

“Language, Tommy. Anyways, so effigy work was oft used in spell crafting, as a vessel of energy,” Mr. Jumbo paid no mind to either of the boys as they quietly bickered.

Before long, second lunch had passed as well as his last class of the day. Tommy hopped on the bus that went to Pogtopia, clutching his backpack close.

The doorknobs would be worth at least $20,000, and that money would go into the fund he had to move out. He wanted to go to the Badlands, a suburban county with picket fences and a low rate of crime. It was boring, but nice. He hoped, one day, once Tubbo and Ranboo got out of the Hero Force, they’d join him.

Tommy forced himself not to flinch as he went into the pawn shop. It was sketchy, with mold growing on the ceiling and a door that creaked at every movement. The teen behind the counter couldn’t have been older than Tommy, but her eyes seemed haunted. Like something was going to pop out from behind the shelves lined with trinkets.

“I’ve got uh- I’ve got some stuff I’d like to sell,” Tommy said, and the air seemed to shift as the girl brought her attention to Tommy’s backpack. She beckoned him closer, watched as he unzipped the backpack and emptied it out onto the counter.

“Midas? This is Foolish’s work. Interesting. $10.”

“What? No, get fucked. This is worth $300,000 at least-” He squinted at the name on her name tag, “Drista, god. What a shit name. I’m guessing your parents don’t like you very much.”

Her face seemed to contort, and suddenly it became very obvious that it wasn’t her face. It was something she donned, like a mask. The zip was only peeking out of her hairline. But she laughed, lips not quite moving naturally.

“Okay, that’s fair, Tommy-” She said mockingly, “I’ll give you $25k for the lot, along with some advice.”

“Advice? That’s a shit trade, but whatever, I’ll take it,” He snarked, shifting uncomfortably. The money seemed to move of its own accord, stacks of notes crawling into Tommy’s bag.

She crossed her legs, now levitating just a few feet off the ground, “For once, trust Dream. He genuinely wants to help. And protect the guy in the colorblock hoodie, he’s more useful than you know.”

“It sounds like you know the future there, Big D.”

“Gods know everything, Big T,” He highly doubted she was a god- goddess, whatever. But he still bid his goodbye and walked the rest of the way home, a clean $25k in his bag and redstone in his pocket.

Chapter Text

Home was… a complicated space. Phil barely flinched as Tommy slammed open the door, hollering about the walk from school to the house. Of course, he didn’t come from school but they didn’t need to know that.

“Ayup, mate. Why are you late?” Phil said from over the hood of his laptop. Hero business, ugh. Probably mission reports.

“My biomagics report needed to be read over, so I stopped by the lab.”

The older man nodded. The air was sickly sweet pleasant, like Phil was trying to keep stuff under control, “Why are you so nervous?”

Fucking empaths, Tommy had almost never had a lie slip by Phil, “Well, my friend, it’s a funny story, so there was this girl, Cassidy. Oh sweet, lovely Cassidy-” And so he continued with his lie, not even checking to see if Phil believed it.

“-Anyways, I’ve got my biomagics report to edit so I should, uh. Do that. See you,” And so he darted up the stairs, taking two at a time. He almost crashed into Techno, and bit out a quick apology before slipping into his room and locking the door.

In his room, there was no magical manipulation, no charmspeakers or empaths. Just Tommy, what was essentially the cocaine of magic, and $25k.

He slipped out the book, to the page where the solution to all his problems lay. The sigil burned into his brain.

Tommy reached into his pocket and took out a knife. It was one of Techno’s fancy ones, wrapped in cloth and plastic, an airtight container. Sterile, just like the instructions demanded.

He pulled up his pant leg, just enough to expose his outer thigh but be covered by every bit of clothing that he owned.

Tommy put the blade to his skin. Air filled his lungs like false confidence, as he watched as the blade bit his skin, the wound almost ripping itself open to reveal his pale pink insides. He exhaled, and sucked in a breath at the sting. Carefully, precisely, Tommy carved out the symbol. It was damnation, it was renewal of innocence. On his third- he think it was his third, the utter ecstasy that came with this certain freedom made it hard to think- the cut gaped deeper, and yellow bubbles were visible, as if markers of the manipulation that permeated his body. He felt clean, a blank slate from the commands that Wilbur gave, or the way Phil had controlled what his emotions were. He felt like Tommy.

His creation stared back at him-literally- an eye with a line through it, as if to cross it out. The redstone was still in his pocket, so he fished it out. With a pinch of his fingers, he brought some out of the bag and sprinkled it into the symbol until there was an opaque layer of the redstone glittering over the cut. He bandaged it, feeling slightly nauseous at the amount of blood there was. Tommy clean up what was cluttered on his floor, and then curled up into bed and slept.

Slept was a loose word, as his thigh burnt for the hours until dinner, in which Wilbur slammed his fist into Tommy’s door and yelled out, “Come down for dinner gremlin!”

And so he did, but not out of the compulsion often willed by Wilbur’s powers. It was his choice, albeit his hunger was definitely a motive.

He smelt spaghetti from downstairs, the one that used to comfort Tommy whenever Phil made it. Now, however, it made his stomach churn at the thought of having to chew it, swallow, and keep it down.

Maybe he was getting sick, he mused to himself.

After an eternity, Phil placed the plate in front of him. Phil had a plate of just the sauce and noodles, while Techno had more meat than noodles in front of him. Hybrid things.

Tommy could tell he looked like shit, with hair slick to the back of his neck and eye bags that would fit his school books in them. Only Wilbur glanced at him for more than a second. He could hear Phil and Techno chatting amicably, about something with the Hero Force. That seemed to be the only topic in the Minecraft household.

Tommy could smell the influence Phil was trying to exert with his powers, but they didn’t reach Tommy. It was like straight vanilla essence, overpowering and aggressive- but it didn’t wash over Tommy like usual. He kept his anger, curling up into his stomach like a bad meal. The emotional wave prickled at his skin, the stench of it making him nauseous. He picked up his fork, the last to do so, and shovelled a bite of spaghetti into his mouth.

It tasted awful. He chewed, trying not to pull a face. Everyone else seemed to have been eating fine, so it was just him. It was as if the stench of Phil’s power and the meat had mixed, making it rotten and revolting. He swallowed, with help from the glass of water. Tommy kept his head down as he pushed the spaghetti around the plate.

No one commented on him barely eating a bite.

He retired to his room, muttering an excuse about how he wasn’t that hungry. Nobody really heard him. His stomach burned as he laid in bed, as did his thigh. Maybe that had a part in this… food thing, whatever it was.

The next morning, unfortunately, went a similar way. He was ravenous, but that smell, the stench of Phil’s powers, of Wilbur’s command, and the food all mixed. Wilbur’s power scent was fishy, literally. Salty and wet and unpleasant as it combined with the sickening empathy.

Suddenly, the bacon and eggs weren’t that appealing. He picked at it, spitting the bite he did take into a napkin as the egg became rotted in his mouth. He looked around the table, with Techno only having three eggs on three bits of toast, Phil only having the bacon and toast, and Wilbur having a regular plate.

No one mentioned his sudden aversion to food.

So Tommy tried to eat at school, an apple that was quickly thrown away when the school reeked of old meat and curdled milk- and sweat but that one was usual. Purpled glanced at him, at his meagre attempt at lunch, and shrugged. An ‘I told you so’ look on his face, even though he really didn’t.

The day was depressing, but at least Tubbo had picked him up at the end of school, Ranboo- the lanky bitch- not comfortably fitting in the car. He would meet them at the diner. Tubbo and Ranboo finished early on Thursdays, so they would pick Tommy up and go get lunch at Puffy’s. Every week, like clockwork. It was nice, it was stable.

 But Tommy was betrayed because nobody else had to suffer Tubbo’s maniacal driving. The only reason that Tubbo even legally had a license was because he made a deal with the Hero Force to let him pass in order for him to not blow up the whole building. Tubbo was the hardest for the Hero Force to recruit. Tommy was so proud.

The horned boy tackled him as soon as he left the school gates. Tommy winced, but let him drag them out to the car. He yammered on, getting into the driver’s side, “-and I think if Eryn- that’s the new recruit- agrees, then we could go on to try and sneak into the Red Banquet using their power-”

He let Tubbo continue, surveying the boy. Tubbo stuck his finger into the car key hole, a fortunate aspect of his power was the ability to drive the car with one finger. It was like the car was a seamless part of him, just another arm to use. He envied the ram hybrid. However, the drawbacks of having more than one ability was something he did not envy, as Tubbo tied back the hair out of his face, the fringe that usually hung over his eyes. One of his eyes was clouded over, a scar like lightning striking through it. He had a cochlear implant in one ear, that sparked every few seconds. There was a downside to having electricity coursing through his veins permanently. Tubbo pressed down onto his temples, and then gulped down some aspirin in one fluid movement. He continued to talk, but quieter. They pulled up to the diner in an unnaturally (illegally) fast manner. Tommy felt even more nauseous after getting out.

He started hailing the ground, grateful to be alive. Tubbo kicked him in the arse, and Tommy stumbled back to his feet, “C’mon asshole, my HUSBAND is waiting~”

Biased asshole.

He said as much, and Tubbo kicked him again.

“What can I get you boys?” Puffy said in a mock southern accent.

It was a quaint diner, on the edge of Snowchester and L’manburg. Puffy was one of the only living ex-heroes, one of the ones who made it out without going villain. Her son was the reason she quit, supposedly, and Foolish had dodged the Hero Force draft. As well.

“Can we get a bucket of fries? And three soda pops. And a bag of ketchup. And-”

“The usual, I get it. You don’t need to do the spiel every time, Tommy,” She led them to their table. Ranboo waved excitedly at Tommy, and Tubbo slid into the seat next to Ranboo.

“How would you remember it? You could’ve gotten amnesia, or gotten a memory spell done. Or-”

She cut him off again, “Why does every single one of these reasons have magical causes?”

“Because you couldn’t forget this beautiful face.”

Puffy rolled her eyes, playfully jabbing Tommy in the gut, “The usual coming right up!”

He sat down, hands folded across from Tubbo and Ranboo.

They mirrored his stance. Neither of them talked.

He wouldn’t be the one to break.

“So, what crimes have you committed in our absence?” Tubbo asked. Ha! He won.

“Theft, arrest evasion, identity theft, and general mischief,” Tommy shifted, the sigil on his leg burning, “What about you?”

“They still won’t kick us out of the program after I blew up the training room.”

Tommy cut in, “Their fault for having electricity.”

“I feel like they didn’t really expect someone to blow up their super cool training center though-” Ranboo said, sighing.

“Once again, their fault. Listen, big man. The more damage you can cause, the better,” Tommy reached for a chip, but the thought of having to chew it exhausted him. He stuck it in his mouth.

The grease coated every pore the potato chip had, the oil tasting more like sweat than anything pleasant. The salt on it almost made him throw up, stinging his tongue. He spat the chip into a napkin. Tubbo and Ranboo watched him warily.

“Everything alright, Tommy?”

“I feel  like I’m being pranked- does this chip taste normal to you guys?” Tubbo and Ranboo nodded, “Well, everything I’ve eaten tastes like shit, and I don’t know why.”

That part was a lie, he had an inkling as to why. The real reason niggled at his brain as he pushed it down. Mr. Grian said there would be side effects, but this wasn’t adding any magic to his body! It was the opposite, with even Puffy’s truth telling senses bouncing off of him harmlessly. Puffy’s dinner smelled more like bratwurst, thick and warm in the air. At least this smell was less unpleasant. He was certain that only he could smell it, just like Phil and Wilbur’s powers. Ranboo looked thoughtful, a common site for the boy as he was- as Sam put it- the only one with a brain cell, “Maybe someone’s cursed you? It should wear off in about a day or so, if that is the case.”

Yes! That was it, he was sure of it. Someone must have put a curse on him. Not the sigil still emitting some red light under the bandages as it took effect. A curse. It made sense.

A sound rang out throughout the diner, the cuff around Tubbo’s wrist beeping. He frowned at it. Tommy’s stomach dropped.

It was one of those stupid hero alerts.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry, Tommy. We gotta go and fight some fucking villain because the SBI needs a teleporter and-”

“It’s okay guys, just go, I’ll pay. I’m a big man, I’ll be alright,” Tommy was already packing up their food, as Tubbo and Ranboo disappeared in a flash of purple particles. Puffy looked at him sympathetically.

“It’s alright, Toms. Hero business is bullshit anyways,” She clapped him on the shoulder. He nodded, and asked for the total, “It’ll be $10.70 but for you, it’s free.”

He dropped a hundred on the table anyways, running out before she could try to make him take it. She may not have been a charmspeaker, but she was worse.

A mother.

And that’s all Tommy needed to know to get out of there before she tried to care for him. The walk home was a long one, but he caught glimpses of the hero battle up the street.

“Hey Tommy! Stay safe!” Dream had yelled out, turning back to Wilbur- Phantom- and throwing him across the street. Wilbur hadn’t acknowledged him.

Chapter Text

Tommy was a zombie. Classes seemed to drift by, slipping through his fingers like the sands of time. Each meal time with his family- which felt more of a hollow husk of the word by the day- was spent with his head down, muttering some bullshit excuse that even Wilbur seemed to take without a fight. And that was saying a lot, as Techno and Phil were usually the only ones to let it slide. Wilbur cared for him, right?

Right?

He couldn’t think right, the walk home that was usually accompanied by a Dream clone was now rather one-sided. Dream begged him for the fire he usually saw in the boy, as Tommy barely registered he was there. He missed Tubbo and Ranboo. Quite literally as he had forgotten it was Thursday and had started to walk home before being, rather angrily, picked up by Tubbo.

He had just forgotten; hadn’t even really known he was alive. He hungered, but even when he managed to swallow food, he had ended up with it clawing up his throat. It was lunchtime, he thought.

He was in the cafeteria, at least.

Purpled was across from him, just staring.

“The fuck you want?” He managed to snap out. Purpled said nothing, just threw a bottle across to him.

“The fuck is this?” Tommy said, more to the air than to Purpled.

“Regen pot. Might help with… whatever this is,” Purpled gestured vaguely to Tommy. He chugged it, pulling a face at the taste, but it wasn’t like the food he had tried to eat.

It only tasted bad because Regen tasted bad, not because of this fucking curse-side effect- whatever.

Praise fucking Prime.

Well, praise Purpled.

“Wait- how did you get this? Aren’t potions super expensive?” Tommy could remember Phil refusing to waste it on Tommy’s broken arm- but there were countless times after patrol where Techno and Wilbur were practically doused in it. Those memories left a sour taste in Tommy’s mouth; and it wasn’t even the potion.

“Mr. Grian was concerned so he gave it to me, said it would look better coming from me than him. Something about the rumours of teacher-student drug deals-” As Purpled caught the look on Tommy’s face, he backtracked, “With Mr. Nappitus and this student they haven’t caught yet, I don’t even think they’re a student, just young looking. Colourful hoodie. Blond guy.”

Tommy shrugged, “No clue. Tell Grian thanks for me.”

“I did.”

“What do you mean?” Tommy’s head was still foggy, but he swore he could see through Purpled.

“Illusions, man. Illusions.”

Purpled disappeared, and Tommy let his head slam onto the desk. He groaned. Fucking powered people.

The regeneration made him feel somewhat less dead. He still looked like a shambling corpse, but it was getting better. Slowly. He managed to stay awake for a whole period once! Granted, it was PE, but it still counted with him running (shuffling) the laps. He counted the days by the regeneration potions that would show up in his backpack. At home, there was still no comment on the way Tommy practically turned green at the mention of food. Phil had long since stopped leaving plates of dinner by his door.

It was a Tuesday, he thought dully. Wilbur had picked him up, and he desperately tried to keep up with the pace of him ranting. Tommy thought it was about the Red Banquet? It was coming up anyways, in just under a months’ time. He usually rejoiced at the Red Banquet, as that meant he had the house to himself for a few days. All he could feel now was a cold pit of dread pooling at the bottom of his stomach.

But still, he persevered.

He stayed up that night, the Tuesday. He stared at his biomagics report, still unfinished. They had said he was supposed to write something on the effects of glowstone versus redstone. He didn’t care, but still duly noted down whatever was written in the book he borrowed.

Terrible side effects aside, it was a good book.

His stomach ached, trying to eat the skin layered on top of it like a flesh driven prison. If he didn’t find a way to reverse the side effects, he’d turn to Sam, he vowed to himself. He’d give it a week.

Tommy didn’t need to rely on anyone else.

He lumbered into the hallway, mind set on the regen potions he knew Phil had tucked away in the bathroom first aid cabinet. A hiss came from the door he was about to open.

He did the smartest- and only- thing he could think of, and grabbed the heaviest thing next to him before flinging open the door.

Techno stared back at him.

“Why are you holding a lamp?” Techno turned away from him, shirt off as he tended to the large gash across his torso. Shallow, but heavy bleeding.

“Self-defence,” He coughed out, trying to inconspicuously put down the lamp. He leaned on the bulb at the top, before stumbling into the door frame. Tommy decided that putting the lamp back to its original spot would be the best course of action.

Techno turned back to tending to the wound, “Phil and Wil think you’re developing powers, y’know?”

He did not, and definitely did not cough violently at Techno saying this, “W- what’s made them think this?”

“They can’t sense your magical energy anymore. Can’t control your emotions or actions. That’s what usually happens before a surge of power, even though you’re six years late,” Techno grunted as rubbing alcohol stung the wound- Techno had the power of almost impenetrable skin, a suiting power for a warrior. Unfortunately, that meant that when his skin was cut, he had the pain tolerance of a whiny toddler. Tears sprung to the corners of his eyes, Tommy held back a laugh, “Do you uh, do you know how to stitch?”

Tommy nodded, pulling out the needle and thread at the bottom of the first aid cabinet. He went to work, as the two brothers sat in relative silence. Tommy’s eyes caught on a scar on Techno’s chest. It looked familiar. He nodded at it, “What’s that scar? The one that looks like a bunch of interconnecting T’s?”

Techno shifted, and Tommy grimaced. So much for neat stitch work. Techno cleared his throat, “It’s uh, It’s a sigil. From a villain who wanted to leave a message. It’s Chat.”

Chat was- from what Tommy gathered, not only the voices in Techno’s head, but also were the sentient tendrils that were the Blade’s biggest weapon. They oft curled around Tech’s legs and arms like sleeping snakes, guard dogs to his every order.

He recognised the sigil from the book, one that warns and protects the user from paranoia. That certainly manifested as protection, but Techno had an insatiable bloodlust and a body count higher than Tommy’s grades due to it.

He remembered the nights that Techno almost killed him. One where he woke up screaming, Techno with a knife that was soon plunged into Tommy’s gut. One where Techno had smashed a ginger ale bottle over his head, one where Techno had smashed Tommy’s head into a wall. Nights where Wilbur had come into his room, bloody and shaking as Phil took Techno away for an escape, until everything became normal again.

There was a mound of carcasses Tommy’s height just beyond the city border.

And a reason Tommy knew how to stitch.

Techno loved him- or tolerated him, but he assumed that was similar, but the Chat drove him to madness, and he took it out on the doe eyed boy, barely 11.

And the government made him a sanctioned killing machine, second only to Philza. But that was a done battle, because Philza had 9000 years of experience on Techno. The only man that outshined them both in kill count was Dream, the reason he had transferred sides in the first place.

Tommy felt safe in the hands of the world’s most prolific murderer.

Wonder what that said about his home life.

He had finished stitching, hands shaking at the aftermath of the precision used. Techno warded him off with a thanks, and Tommy went to go collapse into his own bed. He had just gotten comfortable when he felt the regeneration potion in his back pocket, with the residual slime that Chat left on it. Gross. He had someone- or some conglomerate- looking out for him at least. A paper wedged underneath his bag stuck out, and he rolled off the bed in order to grab it. It was the paper he had picked up from the night that he landed in the dumpster. His back was healed now, thanks to the constant regen potions.

It had Phil’s name and signature on it. He opened the letter, scanning through it.

His stomach dropped.

It was his mother’s will.

Kristin Minecraft’s Final Decree, the top of it read in cursive letters. To Phil, she left the other half of their house, as well as all earthly possessions. To Techno, Wilbur, and Tommy, she had split her inheritance into thirds, a sizeable sum for each of them. However, a giant red ‘OVERRULED’ had been stamped over the top of it.

Phil had overruled her will, and written him out of it. Like he was trying to write him out of his life.

Tommy’s hands shook. It was the proof that he wasn’t insane, that Phil not caring for him was intentional.

He’d show that bastard. 

Chapter Text

Tommy was tired of being third best. Of never being good enough, because of some higher power not giving him powers. Techno was the favourite son- though treated more like Phil’s friend than his child. Wilbur was a close second, with their father-son relationship being more obvious in the ways that Phil interacted with him. Tommy was the roommate that was just there. He existed, and that was about it.

Even Phil thought that, apparently, from the will that he had edited.

He was determined to become something to them, to Phil. If trying to be a good son didn’t work, then there were always other ways to get noticed. Tommy sat on the floor of his room, another one of Techno’s shaving blades in hand.

Psychokinesis- \t/

The instructions mirrored the method for the blockers. Tommy would finally be able to defend himself. His hip throbbed, but Tommy had barely felt the first cut. It was methodical, like the only moment of clarity that he had ever had. This symbol was shallower than the previous one, but he could still see the skin-like layer underneath. It took a second to fill, so he sprinkled in the redstone before it could.

He bandaged it. Tommy reached for a regen potion, scrounging around his bag. He pulled the bottle out. Empty. Fuck, he’d have to make a trip to the local Alchemy store.

Tommy pulled up his shorts, hobbling to the door. Nobody was home, so he locked the door behind him.

The walk to the shop, Elk-Aiming, was a quiet one. There were no villain fights, surprisingly. Just him and the crisp air of the night. He walked past Puffy’s Diner, taking a glance inside before double taking.

The heroes.

All of them, not just his family. Tommy could spot the Warden, Monarch, everyone he had come to meet over the years.

Including Tubbo and Ranboo.

They looked peaceful. Not in the physical sense, though with Ranboo’s arm draped around Tubbo, wedding ring glinting in the diner it was hard to argue that that wasn’t also a truth. But Ranboo and Tubbo looked contented, in a way that Tommy never really got to see. At more ease around people with blood on their hands, lives torn away, than with Tommy.

Phil looked younger, no stress on his face. He was made to be a hero, made for something bigger than a normal life.

If he could become something more, so could Tommy. None of the Heroes saw him as he walked past, hood up.

Someone saw him though, as Puffy caught his eye. Her shoulders slumped as she saw him, a sympathetic look on her face. She knew of his plight, though not the full extent of it.

Tommy ended up at Elk-Aiming, a store just a block away from Puffy’s. It was enchanting, with candles floating around the storefront from dusk until dawn, music stringing through the air visibly like the fog in Studio Ghibli movies. The store was open 24 hours. Very convenient for Tommy.

Although the cashier never seemed to sleep, always lethargic. She was usually sprawled on top of the bookshelf that was right behind the counter.

The bell rang as Tommy walked in. As usual, he went straight to the RESTRICTED isle. As usual, the cashier dropped down from her nap spot.

“You can only go in there if you have a permit to buy redstone-enhanced potions, or if you have enough money to make a bribe.” Drista droned. Always the same speech.

“Drista, it’s Tommy,” Drista seemed to work at most of the places he went, always a different iteration, but always with the same unique charm.

“Oh fuck off asshole, who needs that many goddamn regens? Go call the Suicide Hotline if you’re that desperate.”

See, a unique charm.

The zip that held her face together was unzipping, the same way a backpack would when you’ve put too much stuff in it. She watched as he pulled potions out from the shelves, checking the time they’d be effective for, and putting them on the counter.

“Just clumsy, that’s all.”

“Bullshit, isn’t your dad the Number One Hero? I bet he’d have to do some distressing after work.”

“What the fuck, he’s not hitting me. How did you know he was the Number One hero?” Tommy recoiled, Drista only just managing to catch the regen potion in his hands.

“Gods know everything, Big T,” She said once again, like she’s said every time Tommy asked her how she knows something she shouldn’t. Tommy called bullshit.

“Whatever, bye Drista,” The regen was heavy in his bag as he walked out. Three potions had cost him over 1k, his savings draining faster and faster.

Tommy was always down for a little crime.

He ducked down the alleyway to the side of Puffy’s Diner, and spotted what he’d been looking for.

In the alleyway, there was a set of grey lockers. It held every bit of civilian and spare hero gear that the heroes had deposited. Phones, jewellery, everything that could tie a hero back to their identity was kept in the lockers, along with various knives, and weapons that the Warden- Sam- manufactured.

Tommy snuck closer to the lockers. The locks were… surprisingly ordinary. A blood tie, something Tommy had grown used to seeing on Phil’s, and later on his brothers’ office doors.

Redstone was a vastly unknown substance; no one knew its full capabilities. However, it was one of the only substances that could replicate blood. Blood which confused all sensors, that was recognised as anything the system wanted it to be recognised as.

The vial in his pocket weighed down on him. There were no cameras in the area, Puffy had detector sensors, it sensed a magical signature. Said signature was blocked due to the sigil so intricately carved into his thigh. He was invisible, the shadow on the wall, as he dusted the redstone into the locks.

They clicked open, the pressure dissipating with a hiss. There were about five lockers, with stuff crammed into every one. He could spot Phil’s watch amongst Techno’s copious amounts of gold laden on top of Wil’s coat, the tattered coat he adored so much. It was so dear to him, that he had an identical- albeit newer-looking coat in his Hero outfit.

There was an uproar of muffled laughter coming from the diner.

Next locker over hung two necklaces, the golden rings they usually held missing. There was a postcard sticking out in between the two phones that sat on the shelf. He pulled it out. It was Tubbo, Ranboo and Tommy, one of those class field trip. Puffy had taken the photo, she chaperoned because her daughter was there.

Tommy couldn’t remember her daughter, but he could remember the day the photo was taken. They had gone to the Hero tower, all about 11 years old. It had been a year since Tubbo’s powers sprouted up, so he wore small crosses on the back of his arms, a weak form of body magic that only really prevented the accidental sparks that came out of his hands when he was excited. His nanny had been the only witness, so she covered up all signs of his powers. Ranboo was a late bloomer, so he didn’t have powers yet.

It seems Tommy had always known that being a Hero was one of the worst fates bestowed upon you. He begged the others, tears in his eyes to not end up like ‘Techno, he hurts me’. The grade was shown around the Hero Tower (They even met Dream! The Number One Hero! Oh, how the mighty fall).

The photo was in Sam’s lab, a cold and sleek place. Certainly not the place for kids to be hanging around, but Sam had already grown a soft spot for them. Tubbo was unscarred, tongue hanging out of his mouth. Ranboo’s vitiligo wasn’t as noticeable, with only a few of the darker spots showing the dark purple pulsating power that everyone mistook for bruises.

Tommy looked young, and carefree. His eyes didn’t seem to stretch down his face, a twisted gripe for help weathered over the once smooth expanse of his skin. He looked like Phil did in the diner.

Tommy put the photo in his pocket, and continued his theft.

There was a gun in the locker that the Warden used. As well as a black and red facemask, and a wedding ring. But the gun was now Tommy’s.

“I declare you Henry, precious gun,” He said to no one in particular. He took the voice modifier from another locker, as well as one of Eret’s knives. It was now that he noticed the diner was suspiciously quiet.

“Who the fuck are you?” Welp, that wasn’t ideal.

Tommy grabbed the facemask from Sam’s locker and sprinted further down the alley. The hero followed on his trail. Many more footsteps thudded onto the concrete, and he could hear the flap of Philza’s wings as he launched himself into the air.

 Time to check out that psychokinesis thing he carved earlier.

Tommy felt the air shift around him, as he visualised his body getting lighter, the air getting harder and materialising, blocks of air acting as a staircase to leap into a poor, unsuspecting balcony. He crashed through the glass doors, as Philza tried to fly into the apartment.

He heard the yell of confusion, as well as the shouts from the ground below the balcony, an armada of heroes being made useless. The building shook as Techno undoubtedly tried to use Chat as a climbing mechanism, the tendrils bashing into the building with a ferocity. The Warden’s Icarus Wings buzzed, a metal façade of Phil’s.

There was a solid wall of air that Philza couldn’t get through. Tommy told himself this, over and over as his father slowed, stalking his prey. Phil stepped forward, and his hand reached out to touch the air.

It had worked. Red sparks danced from his fingertips.

“Listen, kid, you won’t be in trouble if you just surrender. All we want is our stuff back,” There was a dangerous hint to Phil’s voice, one that wouldn’t be caught by anyone but Tommy. He had heard him use the same line on every single vigilante or villain that crossed his path.

That landed Foxface mentally disabled and eternally-exploited. Tommy wasn’t going to fall for the same mistakes.

“Don’t call me kid,” He decided to opt with, snarling the words as if his own mouth had offended him.

There was buzzing from the door behind him, the one he had been backed into in his hurry to cut off Philza.

The Warden had entered the fight.

The Warden was a figure to behold. His powers worked much like Tubbo’s, an electricity thief. Unlike Tubbo, his power was more magnetic, with every conductive metal working to support him. His Hero suit was almost entirely made of Netherite, a material that only enhanced his reach. Light as a feather, melded to his skin like clothing.

Sam created. He was never meant to be a Hero. He was content with just being a lab jockey, living out his technical dreams in the form of Heroes, the real Heroes, requesting equipment. Hybrids didn’t manifest the same way that powered people do. Tubbo’s husband, Ranboo, Sam thought his name was, was a visible hybrid, only presenting at 12, but his power came from his hybridity. Sam presented at about 19, aging much slower like creepers do. The scales on the sides of his face once resembled eczema, now were a deep emerald green. He was always good in the office, always great with technology. One day, one of Phantom’s speakers sparked across the room, and Sam felt his body alight. It flowed through him, short circuiting most of the tech in lab.

He had been marched up to Floor 45, the hero training centre, and told to do it again. And over and over until he felt his brain fry.

Sam was one of the lowest ranking Heroes to ever grace the top 50. He refused to kill, refused to leave someone mortally wounded. He was a rescue mission.

But he was good at his job as a technician. The door was seconds from being burst off the hinges. Sam could tell the boots the kid- god he really was just a kid, a scrawny and scrappy one- were one of Sam’s very finest models. Made of obsidian acrylate, the shoes were made to withstand fights.

How the fuck this kid got his hands on them was a mystery.

Said mystery was not one to ponder as the door finally broke, the hinges snapping under the force of Sam’s power.

The kid stood taller than Philza, about ten paces away. Sam stared at him. The kid stared back.

His feet were swept out from under him, as his armour is bathed in red light. He was thrown against the wall, the kid flinching at the loud impact.

“Sorry Mr. N- Warden! Sorry Mr. Warden,” The kid’s voice crackled under the modifier, a few pitches deeper than natural. He really was just a kid. Sam had seen him in the alleyway, curled into himself. Even when stealing, he seemed unsure of his every action.

Sam glared at the kid’s boots, willing them to drag the boy closer. And they did, leaving claw marks though the wooden flooring. Weren’t those the boots he made for Tubbo?

“Fuck no, Mr. Warden sir! Not today,” The kid slipped off the boots, his socks were a mismatched and discoloured pink and white. The only thing left on his person that Sam could sense was a bottle of redstone.

Sam did the only thing he knew to do. There was a layer of clothing- blast-proof, if the kid knew what he was doing- Sam looked up and saw a resistance vest. The pants must be.

Creepers have one of the most variable cell structures known to man. When a stressed out, angry, or otherwise distressed creeper is pushed, they will explode.

Sam concentrated on the bottle of redstone in the kid’s pocket, visualising all his energy.

The sound rattled the windows, he could feel the burning heat searing itself into the boy’s leg. Sam’s hands were still reforming, the gun powder off the floor slowing rising to complete them. There was a scream, of anguish. His eyes reformed, refocused, following the kid in the corridor as he limped away. There was blood trailing the corridor. He wasn’t meant to be wounded, only down. The red light that once glistened off Sam’s armour faded to its usual purple.

He didn’t mean to hurt the kid.

He could’ve moved. Same could have got up and stopped the kid, taken him the training facility just like he himself was taken.

But that was a cruel fate, one that landed the kid in the position he was in now. Numb, frozen to the spot.

He could see Phil, ambling through the mess of furniture debris.

The glass of the window at the end of the corridor shattered, as Wil- Phantom, formally, dived through, perching himself on the ledge.

“Stop right there.”

”Eat shit and die, fuckwit,” The kid spat at Wil, before shoving him back out of the window. He turned the corner, not looking back at any of the heroes he had just bested.

Chapter Text

Being the bad guy was fucking fun. First of all, he had thrown Wilbur into a building twice this week. Second of all, he felt more alive than ever. Third of all, his savings account was now flourishing with about 40k worth. Drista was not kind in seeing his face every afternoon, and yet he felt good.

Since Phil, Techno and Wilbur all patrolled together, it was pretty easy to avoid them when coming home. Sure, his leg still seared with pain every time he saw Sam- his leg had taken a while to fully close up, but the redstone was embedded in his skin and made him buzz with energy when he was awake.

Sure, he slept through every class because he was up all night, and only able to snack on the occasional fruits.

Another development! He was able to eat fruits! And those trail mix seed things that Purpled always packed, but Purpled was criminally insane so that didn’t count.

“I think your new power has just made you immune to cafeteria food, dude,” Purpled sat back in his chair, sipping on a Tropical Punch juice box. Tommy nursed a regen potion like a beer.

“Nah, the milk still makes my stomach churn.”

“Did it not do that before?”

Purpled did have a point. The cafeteria food was always heinous on the best days.

“The best part about all this? Seeing all of them frustrated every morning because they can’t catch ‘the menace in red’ and they’re frustrated my powers haven’t bloomed yet-”

“The menace in red what the hell type of name is that? That’s so stupid. You should be called some sick shit- like lazereyes! Or some of that Roman stuff- call yourself Mars, that’d be cool.”

“Purpled, my dear compadre I am not naming myself Lazereyes,” Purpled huffed, Tommy continued, “especially when I don’t even have laser eyes!”

“That’s the point! Like the countries-”

“What’s your powers then, Purpled? Are they red?”

Purpled sputtered, juice splattering onto the jumper Tommy wore, “Fuck off asshole. What even is the point of being a villain? It’s just being a dick for no reason.”

“What’s the point of being a vigilante?”

“The good of the people,” Purpled said sarcastically.

“No, really, why do you do it?”

Purpled shifted, suddenly looking a lot wearier, “I- uh, I want to prove my brother wrong. I want to be a good guy to show him it’s possible without being a hero.”

That was surprisingly raw. Tommy blinked. Purpled’s hands shook as he continued, “He and I were raised by- by some assholes. And they managed to convince him that all Heroes, all people were like that. That he should just embrace violence or whatever your brother said that one press conference.

“He’s only putting me through school because he thinks it will help with ‘seeing the world more realistically’, experiencing shit. Says that the Hero Force takes them out of real schooling at 10 to better fill their brain up with mush. Guess he’s not wrong on that one.”

Purpled’s brother wasn’t wrong at all.

“Why do you do it, Tommy? All the theft and the violence against the Heroes? Wouldn’t normal teenage rebellion be easier?” Purpled gave a half smile, rocking back into his seat.

“I was never going to mean anything to my family, not really. They talk about me every morning at the breakfast table, but only ever about my ‘potential powers’. Unless I suddenly grow wings, this fad will wear off and they’ll go back to being invested into their own bloody lives. I want to show them I can do something, even if it is something destructive. Show them Tommy Innit is not his family, is not his grades or his attitude. Show them that Tommy Innit is a force to be reckoned with.”

“Cringe,” Tommy socked Purpled in the arm, a sluggish thing, only propelled by the red force that made his veins glow. The magic was tied to his every movement, even when asleep he was able to shuffle through classes. Purpled put on a mock posh accent, eyes glittering, “Anyways Redboy, what’s the villainous plans for this evening?”

“Well, my good sir, I am going to patrol the city tonight and perhaps commit some minor crimes,” Tommy matched the accent.

Tommy’s official villain outfit was fly as hell, with stolen boots (another pair from Tubbo, no longer a sparky purple but still as useful), a resistance chestplate shirt, some armoured leggings that he had stolen from Wilbur, and a rather lacklustre helmet- which was the actual thing he was planning on stealing tonight.

He did not need Purpled getting in the way of him breaking into the Hero Tower. And so the day passed slowly and sleepy, the red-hot anticipation coursing throughout his veins.

Mr. Nappitus was always late to class, wore two wedding rings on a necklace around his neck, and was entirely too comfortable with telling stories to the class. He had two husbands, one of which was mistaken for a literal student (Mr. Nappitus had laughed the drug deal accusations off with a wave of the hand), and the other was out of town, working on his business as a …postcard guy. Mr. Nappitus had semi-frantically looked around the classroom for a business that the other Mr. Nappitus could have possibly been doing.

Every student in Tommy’s class denied the pause when asked, but always hesitated before saying postcard guy, just to imitate the man.

The walk home was dreadful once again, as Tommy was faced with the daunting realisation that it was Tuesday again. And Wil’s car wasn’t in the parking lot again. There was no text this time. No notification. He sighed, and began his walk down one of the backstreets.

A flash of green.

A weight settled around his shoulders, one that was entirely too comfortable being there, “What do you want, Dream?”

“Have you considered becoming a villain? Your brother is seeming awfully neglectful right about now. You sure you don’t want to bash his brains in- just a smidgen?”

“No, Dream- to both questions. I’m not going to become a villain,” Tommy’s mouth quirked up while saying the end bit. Oh if only Dream knew. Dream’s mask covered his entire face, so the deranged grin that he wore was only conveyed verbally.

“A little birdie told me that there was an up and coming villain on the streets-” Dream’s voice sounded more sincere, “Stay safe man, we don’t know what this guy can do. We’re trying to recruit him, too, actually.”

Tommy was eager to switch the topic, the adrenalin itching through his veins, “So, who are you fighting right now, big man?”

Dream’s head quirked sideways, his movements becoming a lot airier. He swept his arms around, “No one, actually! I’m in a meeting with S- Flare and 404, I’m also buying ice cream right now somewhere downtown. And another one of me is listening to the bugs planted in the Hero Tower.”

“There are bugs in the Hero Tower?”

“Well, duh. And even if you tell Angel, they’ll never find them all! That’s also how I knew that Wil-”

“Don’t use his name.” Anger curled in Tommy’s stomach, a dark thing. As if Dream owned the name.

“Sorry, sorry, Phantom was staying late at the office. Something about testing out the rebuilt training centre.”

Tommy snorted, turning the corner to Squid Street. They had rebuilt the destroyed street pretty well too. Nothing out of place, a prim and proper L’manburg.

“Why are you a villain, Dream?” It seems this was the question of the day.

“Fun, Tommy. I like chaos. I like wrangling with the Crowfather, the Angel of Death, whatever moniker he goes by now. It’s all semantics, all the same game. I know 404 does it for power- he feels his best when driving Heroes insane with his nightmare illusions. Flare’s got a family, this is his living. He does some work on the side but this is what allows him to thrive. What would it take for you to be a villain, Tommy? Why aren’t you?”

Tommy shrugged. He knew the spiel. Dream’s grip hardened, a possessive thing, “You know they treat powerless kids like shit when they reach the real world? You come from the most prolific Hero family in the world- you’re going to be the worst off.”

“I know. I want to make a change with my life- become something.”

“You could be mad with power, drunk on the feeling of crushing Heroes underneath your boots.”

“You’re crazy, Dream.”

Dream freed Tommy from his grip, the cool leather of his gloves sliding to the nape of his neck. It was meant to be a comforting measure. It felt all wrong, like Dream was a spindly thing instead of the built figure he appeared as. They walked past Stone Cold Show Austin’s Cold Stone Ice Creamery, a man in a darker green hoodie passed them two ice creams.

“Aw yea cookies and cream! Thanks, dude!” Tommy nodded to the other man. Stranger Danger had never been one of his strong suits.

“Tommy, that’s also me.” The Dream next to him spoke. The other Dream winked, a facemask still covering half his face, only showing the same blue eyes that Tommy sported, with the same scar above his eyebrow. His hair was distinctly Dream’s though, a lot straighter and scruffier than Tommy’s own.

“How can you steal my face, you bitch?”

“I mirror faces, whatever yours is- I’ll just show it back to you,” Dream rubbed the back of his own neck, Tommy took a lick of the ice cream in his hand. It melted against his hand, a sweet thing to cool down his skin.

“So do you have a true face?”

“I- well, sort of? I did, once, and I can kind of recreate it. But, uh, that’s been lost to time.”

“What does that me-”

A tattered coat-wearing Wilbur ran up behind them. He stopped, panting and clutching his knees once he was a pace away from Tommy, “What the fuck are you doing?”

Dream turned to Tommy, lifting his hand in a mechanical wave, probably the first wave he’d ever done in his life- straight laced fingers and a jerky wrist. He disappeared in on himself, collapsing like a black hole. Tommy turned, “Walking home, Wil.”

“You can’t be talking to Dream-” He spat the word out, offended by the very taste in his mouth- “He’s a villain! He’s just trying to gain your trust to, like, kill you or something!”

“He bought me ice cream. And walks me home sometimes- pretty nice guy if you discount the murders,” Tommy was not about to mention the insane ramblings, or the desperately-trying-to-recruit-Tommy thing.

“Oh, Toms,” Wilbur engulfed him in a hug, one that gave Tommy almost no time to stick his ice cream cone out to the side so it didn’t spill, “Come on, I’ll walk you the rest of the way.”

Surely he was just doing this because his family thought he was developing powers, right? Wilbur had been thrown off a building last night- courtesy of Tommy- there was no way he’d willingly walk Tommy home after that bad of a night.

“So, Dad and I think you might be getting powers,” Wilbur wiggled his fingers, Tommy took a larger lick of his ice cream, and focused very intently on the cracks in the sidewalk. Right to business.

“What do you mean?” Tommy’s head buzzed, the salty smell of Wilbur’s charmspeak soon permeating the sweet treat.

“Well, you haven’t been eating right, and Techno can smell blood on you at all times- which means you might be a hybrid! And, you’re totally immune to my power. Dad can’t even sense you anymore!” Tommy threw his ice cream out at the next bin, the cookies becoming too hard and the cream becoming too fishy.

“Dad wants to take you down to the Hero training facility, test out what you could do.”

“Absolutely not- I probably don’t even have a useful power. I can’t become a Hero,” Tommy added on as an afterthought, “You can’t give me that hope.”

It was a manipulative move, one that called back to the doe-eyed, 10-year-old Tommy that came home with his tail between his legs and face down. Wilbur seemed to stop, his hands gaining a slight shake.

Right in the feelings, Wilbur looked hurt. Tommy remembered that birthday.

Superhero-themed, like most birthdays were. A cake in the shape of a sword, a mighty T. He wore an offbrand superhero costume from the dollar store. He had refused to wear any Hero merch, because ‘he wanted to be his own Hero when he grew up’.

Tubbo was there, crosses on his ankles that were covered by socks.

Tommy didn’t really want to be like Techie, or Wilbur- didn’t want to be a Hero in that he knew Heroes got hurt. But he wanted to be the good guy. Deep down, he wanted to be like his brothers in that he wanted that same sort of admiration.

He blew the candles to his cake own. Him and all the people in his grade 5 class gorged themselves on the chocolate cake.

The gifts were all Hero themed- Nerf Warden guns, the Captain foam swords. Someone had given him the Folklore for Birds, a man that was hazy at best in his memories. A baby face, a bright hoodie.

From Techno, Wilbur, and Phil; his very own training suit. It glistened in the afternoon haze, streaks of red and white. He could feel the resistance suit scales underneath his fingertips. Perfectly fit for his 10-year-old body.

And then the day after, when Phil woke him up, took him to the Power Registry. Nice and early, 8 am. The crows cawed as they had gotten out of the car. There were nine crows cheering them on, Tommy had thought.

They walked up to the counter, had requested for an energy draw. The girl at the counter seemed to only be around 15- a twitchy thing, unused to her own skin. She wore a green hoodie, and a shawl around her head. Tommy could see metal poking out from under her chin when she talked.

They brought a machine into the room, stabbed a needle into his arm. The band aid they gave him had spirals on it.

Phil’s face dropped when he saw Tommy’s blood in the machine.

“It- it’s got to be malfunctioning. Why are there no particles being sucked up? Read the machine, what does it say?” Phil said, erratically reaching out to grasp Tommy’s hand.

The girl rolled her eyes, and obliged with checking the reader, “It’s indeterminate. The machine says your son-” She checked the chart they filled out, “Tommy, is unpowered.”

Phil’s face went stony, before the mask slipped on. “Well that’s ok, isn’t it? Toms, that just means you’re more special than the rest of us!”

Tommy nodded warily. Phil ushered him back into the car. Only one crow remained, perched on the registry building.

Wilbur unlocked their front door, the doorknobs of the houses being temporarily replaced by a stone knob. It seems Foolish hadn’t had time to come to L’manburg amongst all the hustle of the rebuilt training centre. Wilbur seemed to read his mind, “Foolish is helping Sam out, replacing some more electrical wiring in the centre. They’re trying to hook Sam into the mainframe.”

“That’s wild, why?”

“So Tubbo feels less entitled to blow it up.” That was a pretty solid reason, actually. Tommy shifted his weight, the house still suffocated in a sickly-sweet smell. Phil was home, apparently. Tommy tried to relax, tried to let the waves roll over him. It was more like a concrete pier in the ocean, uneroded by the harsh waves. The smell seemed to attack him at every turn.

“That is a pretty solid reason,” Tommy toed off his shoes, turning to go upstairs.

“Why are you limping?”

Tommy’s heart dropped. He bit his tongue, I mean it’s not like I’ve got third degree burns or anything.

“Tommy, tell me why you are limping.”

Tommy stiffened, as the fishy smell stabbed at his nose. In the most mechanical voice he could muster, “Got beat up.”

“Who did you get beat up by?”

Tommy searched his mind, desperately for names, “Henry?” He tried.

Ahh yes, the Mystical Tommy Innit was beaten up by a gun. If only Wilbur knew. He looked murderous, an iron grip on Tommy’s arm. Mechanically, as though to supress his anger, he dragged Tommy into his room.

Wilbur’s room was nice, with big bay windows and soundproof walls. There was a guitar stand by the window, and a desk with papers pinned up right over it. The bed was a mess of the dark blue comforter Wilbur had, and various pillows. He borderline threw Tommy onto the couch by the window.

“Why did you get beat up? Who is Henry? Why didn’t you tell-”

“Wouldn’t let him cheat off me for the biomagics assignment, guy in my class, and because I didn’t want this-” He gestured to Wilbur’s frantic form, “to happen.”

He felt bad lying, Wilbur seemed so distraught. Wil tugged on his hair, a few strands falling out. He circled the room, eyes looking down at the floor- a reflecting moment.

“Toms, we have to tell Dad-”

“We’re not telling Phil, he’s going to go batshit,” For all his faults, Phil did seem to be possessive of his safety. That’s why Tommy wasn’t allowed a job, or to hang out with Purpled.

“We’re not telling Phil what?” Philza leant on the door frame, wings stretched out along the doorway. His green robes made him look more fatherly, wrapping around him like another set of wings.

Wilbur looked at Tommy, Tommy sent a pleading look back. He straightened his back, pushing his chin forward.

“Nothing, just some stuff for one of Tommy’s assignments,” Wilbur flinched as Phil undoubtedly sent his powers to probe at Wilbur’s emotions. Tommy was once again overcome with the sickly sweet smell, like cupcakes gone rotten. He felt the tendrils nip at him, much like Techno’s Chat. He gagged.

“Ok-” Phil seemed to find Wilbur’s emotions satisfactory. He set his gaze on Tommy, like a shark smelling blood. He spoke with the same tone he used in press conferences; colder, every word dripped together like a melted ice cream, “Tommy, we’re thinking of booking another appointment at the Power Registry. Does Thursday work?”

“Uh- I’d actually rather wait for my powers to present on their own. If that’s alright.”

Tommy looked up, at Phil. The older man had a strange glint in his eye. Something Tommy couldn’t quite place. A hint of desperation, a shift to nostalgia.

“Ok, mate. As you wish,” Phil shifted from the door frame, “And Wil, you and Techno are patrolling tonight. I have some more paperwork to do.”

“Right, ok,” Wilbur let out a sigh of relief as Phil shut the door. His footsteps faded into the hallway.

“Please let me know if this Henry lad tries to start shit again, I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“I will,” Tommy observed as Wilbur pulled off his coat, his arms a crisscross of scars and burns. They sunk into his skin like dog bites, tearing away at what was once pristine.

“Please don’t make me lie to Dad again,” Wilbur pleaded, eyes following Tommy, clear desperation- but no charmspeak. There was a hint of guilt pressing into Tommy’s palms.

“How did you fool his power?” Did he fool it or did Phil just accept the lie?

Wilbur rubbed the nape of his neck, suddenly more put together, looking sheepish, “I learnt how to when I was a teenager- about your age. Just affirm yourself that nothing you’ve said is a lie, even if it is. It’s just being completely in control.”

“Why’d you have to do it when you were my age?”

Wilbur stopped, a little half smile forming on his face, “I was only a trainee, obviously, so Charlie, David and me used to sneak down the pier, meet some friends.”

“What kind of friends?” Tommy wiggled his fingers.

“Rhianna and Jack-” Two unpowered people. They were seniors when Tommy was a freshman. They had disappeared after graduation, moved to another unknowing metropolis with nothing but the bags on their backs. “We used to sit by the beach, during training hours. David was older than the lot of us, or at least, he looked it. There was a liquor store by the beachfront so we’d used to get smashed and sit on the beach for hours.

“It was all teenage rebellion, all that sort of fanciful way of saying ‘Fuck you, Dad!’. So I’d sneak back into the house smelling of Axe deodorant and fish- bribing Techno to not say anything- and with all the confidence of a drunk teenager, I’d tell Dad training ran later.”

“Prime, did he ever catch you?” Tommy leaned in, enthralled.

“Always. But he would only be able to tell I was lying, not what the truth was- so that’s how the tale of Sally the Shapeshifting Salmon existed.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not, and I used to charmspeak you into talking about the ‘mermaid girl’ I visited!”

Tommy cackled, the burn in his thigh forgotten. He and Wilbur talked until Wil had to get ready for work, the mention of it souring the room. It felt familiar, like Tommy was a kid again.

Chapter Text

The Blade didn’t do research. That was his endearing quality, the way Techno seemed to follow like a guard dog to Phil’s every command. Kill first, ask questions later. It was one of the only ways that the public seemed to figure out they were related- once they noticed the control that the Angel of Death had over The Blade, rumours of them just being friends seemed to dissipate.

Of course, there was always rumours of them being lovers, but the only time the Blade had ever shown emotion was the utter disgust that he had expressed to an innocent journalist trying to get the scoop on the Blade x Angel of Death.

He had just said, “That would be incest.”

That had gone over well.

But the Blade still trusted the Angel on his every word. Which is why he often didn’t know about new villains on the scene. Sure, Wilbur had caught the occasional ‘trash kid’, who he swore was the same one every time, but other than that, Techno liked to stick to the known villains. More importantly, the known villains with the known weaknesses.

Dream was his least favourite, the only one being able to outwit him, rather than rely on his power- of which Techno didn’t fully know. But he pulled out tricks, mislead Techno, and was decent at hand to hand combat. He always got out. Techno had managed to capture him, put him in cuffs to drop off at Pandora’s vault at least three times. But each one, without fail, he would blink and the masked man would be gone.

Techno had tried to unmask him as well, a low blow but he had been desperate.

Everyone knows that you don’t unmask someone, for your own safety.

He didn’t even remember that night, just the aftermath of blood, of a ringing in his ears that didn’t stop, and a few new scars. One etched into his torso, that buzzed and drove him to kill, drove him to madness.

Chat.

So he was wary of villains, even more so of the masked ones. Sure, Flare’s head was literally a fireball, but at least Techno knew he could change it to a human face, so he still counted. But the kid that had shown up at the Hero Tower was a whole new level of ‘what the fuck’. First of all, he had a mask with a severed pig snout mask on, and Techno was not offended at it. At all. Secondly, he could move shit with his mind, which was, as Tommy would put it, some fuckery. Third of all, the entire Dream Team had come to defend him. He was lithe, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, bantering with Dream.

Phantom had ordered him to stand down, and the kid had just tucked his feet underneath him. Levitation. Likely just another aspect of telekinesis, but Techno still thought it was unfair. The Warden was with them though, so at least it was still 4 against 4.

He swept his axe towards Dream, as Phil divebombed Flare from the sky. Phantom and the Warden were taking on 404 and the new kid. Dream duck out of the way of his axe, and made the ground crumble beneath him.

No, the ground crumbled towards him. It engulfed one of his feet as Dream stalked closer.

“I’m not going to kill you, Blade.” He spat the name out as if it was a foul taste.

“Like you could,” Techno sneered back, fishing another knife out of his boot and throwing it towards Dream. It connected with a sickening thud, the green of his hoodie slowly staining a dark brown. Dream didn’t flinch.

“I want revenge,” Techno flinched back, Chat suddenly an assault on his brain.

TECHNOLAME

E

E

/RAINBOWCHAT

LOL HOMELESS

YOUR TIME WILL COME, BLADE

E

E

E

TECHNOLAME

It curled around his arms, grabbing at Dream. Dream caught Techno’s axe in the middle of its swing, and guided it to cut through the black, inky tendrils of Chat.

They screamed, the sound making his ears bleed as he dropped the Axe of Peace to cover the sides of his head. Dream stalked ever closer, and the memories of that night came flooding back to him, making him sob.

He was desperate. Desperate and young, had cornered Dream with the Axe of Peace and a mechanism that Illumina, their mechanic, had made for him.

Dream snarled, hands and feet pinned to the wall.

Every other time, Dream had escaped. No particles like teleporting endermen, nothing on his files to suggest an invisibility power. His files were wiped clean, just a Hero name, a birthdate, and the day that Dream had gone rogue.

But he had gotten him. Techno had gotten Dream, and he wasn’t going to let him escape.

“Every single other time you have evaded me, Dream. You have escaped my grasp. Not now, not today. I’m going to take your face as my prize, burn it into my brain-” He reached over, thumbing the bottom of Dream’s mask.

“You don’t want to do that, I’m like, really ugly- uh-”

“I’ll be the only one to know what you look like, and I’ll hunt you down if you ever make it out of Pandora’s vault alive,” He couldn’t even blink. The air was electric. Dream stiffened.

Techno pulled off the smiley mask.

And saw blood.

There was a skip in his memory, a part where Dream had carefully lasered out. He had unmasked Dream, and then saw himself kneeling on the floor of the same room, shirt off. Unmasked. Bleeding profusely. It didn’t stop as he covered the wound, and his fingers came back with glittery blood, pulsing a sickeningly bright shade of red. There were glass shards littered on the floor.

Dully, he could feel them stabbing into his knees. In the reflection of a particularly big shard, He could see Dream. His hood was down, another first. He had dirty blond hair.

His mask was off.

But once again, the image of his face was lasered out of his mind. It was replaced with a fuzzy image, one that Techno didn’t recognise at first. Pink eyebrows, a long claw mark scar across the face, tusks that poked out of the grimace that his mouth held.

Techno’s own face stared back at him.

There was a burning pain in his left arm, one that didn’t belong to the memory. Slowly, the smell of metal brought him back to the present.

He stood over the new kid, Axe of Peace raised. His leg was injured, and Techno couldn’t remember how he got in that position. Chat was unhelpful, as always.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

KILL THE KID KILL THE KID

TECHNOLATE

He moved to bring the Axe down, to cleave the boy in two. The kid’s hands turned a fiery red, keeping his axe in the air, even as Techno tried to bring it down. Dream sweeped in, mask splattered a sickening shade of bright red, Phil’s blood. Dream pulled the kid away, before shoving Techno to the edge of the building. The kid stood, shaky on his feet. Techno decked Dream, Dream kicked his chest back. The kid bowled closer, before pushing both himself, and Techno, off the building.

Tommy surveyed the city, particularly the Hero Tower, with an analysing eye. Henry, the gun he took from the Warden was strapped to his thigh, as well as a rather intricate knife in his boot. He wore the same facemask he stole off Sam, the black and red one.

One of the biggest things Villains are taken down by is not Heroes, but injuries. Brain damage, going blind, head being crushed or being thrown into a wall just a bit too hard. Dream had gone on a tangent about it one afternoon, after 404 was taken out of commission for a week. Dream had said that head gear was the most important thing a villain needed.

Villains that don’t have armour or a medic don’t last long. Although Tommy had a large supply of Regeneration potions, he did not fancy pouring the battery acid mixture of healing into his open wounds.

So he crouched on top of the biggest apartment building in L’manburg. He visualised a bridge, from where he was to the window of the Hero Tower right at his eye level.

There were no Heroes in sight, no distractions to behold. It was a peaceful night.

Tommy leaped off the building just in time to make solid contact with the floor of air. One foot after the other, never losing concentration on the floor.

He had found out the hard way that if he lost concentration, his powers would fail him- Purpled threw a juice box at his head at lunch the day before to ‘test the theory’. The sticky residue stunk his jumper for the rest of the day.

Henry was soon retrieved from his thigh holster, a sleek little gun. Tommy didn’t look up before shooting the window in front of him. The glass shattered, a halo of glistening light shrouded him.  He stepped though. The glass crunched under his foot, the linoleum tiles not giving way to his weight. A silent alarm must have gone off.

Tommy went up the floors, until he reached the one he was looking for. Floor 42. Confiscated items. Harsh fluorescent lights lined the corridor like a runway. Various weapons lined the walls. Including Dream’s Axe, the one that had been taken from him when he was bested by Techno. The second time Techno had brought him to the gates of Pandora’s Vault. A dying man on the verge of repenting. Praying for 404 and Flare, for their ensured safety. He had disappeared on himself again- or that’s what Techno had said. Left behind a coin, a Drachma, Techno had called it.

Techno’s face had been engraved into the coin, a face much older than what he was at the time. He aged perfectly into it, like a role made for him to play.

Nightmare.

He wielded it, feeling the smooth oak from underneath his fingertips. He strapped it to his back.

His boots made a clicking sound on the tile floor.

At the end of the hall, his very prize. The NutPig mask.

NutPig was the martyr hero, the one who died for unpowered people. It was a fairytale, whispered within the ranks of the Hero Facility. NutPig often called herself by another name.

Death.

She swept the ranks of villainous kings, toppled emperors with her Angel by her side. Before the position of Hero became a thing, became a moniker to pursue, there was Death. Fighting for the ones who couldn’t hold their own because they were unpowered. A graceful figure, with eyes as sharp as her sword, and a smile just as dangerous.

The stink of rot permeated her.

She was unpowered, technically. Immortal only in the sense that age couldn’t kill her, an old curse held back from her younger years. She had no ability. And yet she was the best of the best.

Her gravestone held so little of her life, just a name and a quote.

Kristin Minecraft

Death hath no hold on the woman who wield it

He donned the mask. He was the only biological son, with Techno and Wilbur being adopted young- he was the only surviving link to her. Phil used to sit on his bed, tell him stories about his mum. Techno and Wilbur were told about Phil’s life, something more personal, more of a connection to the boys that he chose.

Tommy was meant to keep Kristin alive.

The mask clicked on, sealed perfectly to his face. A severed pig snout attached to the nose, something to hide the voice modifier. It fit him like a second skin.

There were footsteps coming from the stairwell, a cacophony of noise reverberating around the room. The Heroes had arrived. He took out Henry, steady handed. The cool metal clicked back- safety off, ready and aimed at the stairwell. He had one exit to take care of, the floor was otherwise sealed off. No windows, no doors, no elevator access. Tommy shifted, one foot behind the other. Planted his feet. Sure, he was a skinny thing, a willowish figure with only the muscles that puberty provided, but Techno had taught him to stand his ground.

Speak of the devil.

Techno had unconsciously mirrored his stance- or maybe it was because Tommy had learnt it from him. Chin up, shoulders squared. Teeth set in his head like stubbornness grated under his fingernails.

Techno stood at the top of the stairwell, silent. Two brothers, fake blood coursing through their veins, the thrum of bleeding redstone underneath their skin. The Axe of Peace lay dormant in his grip.

Impenetrable skin and Chat, a conglomerate of a thousand voices curled around Techno’s calves, inky and plentiful. He stood two feet taller than Tommy, boar mask shining in the light. Piglin genes made him a brutish thing, carnivorous king.

He made the first move, a sweep of the Axe, and like a dance cut short, Tommy leaped back. The Axe bashed- because really, there was no graceful word for it- against the cabinets that lined the walls. Spraying glass caught the light like malevolent confetti. Techno stalked forward. Magic burned through Tommy, red sparks wrenching the Axe of Peace from the other’s grip. He swang the Axe at Techno- a sharp shallow cut across the torso. Techno hissed, pulling a dagger from his boot. He stabbed at the hilt.

It was enough to make Tommy unclench his hand, slicing across the tendons. Not a severance, just a reminder to make Tommy drop it. Tommy took the few seconds he had while Techno was repositioning the newly held Axe, leaping up the stairwell before the Heroes could run after him.

The floors got progressively darker, lightbulbs being blown out whenever Tommy reached the entryways. The Warden was surely tailing him, cracks of electricity nipping at his heels. There were yells, melding into each other like the passerine birds in the morning, all crooning and heavy.

Floor 45, he could make out a figure in the middle of the training centre. Only inches taller than him, stalking him like lacerated prey. Easy, languid movements.

“Come here, piglet, wouldn’t it be easier to surrender? You must be so tired, limbs heavy and lethargic,” The Phantom hummed, licking his lips like the shadows that sunk into his movements.

“Fuck right off, dickhead,” Tommy bit out, the voice modifier gruffer than intended. He darted further up the stairs, the rooftop view a sight to behold. A million shiny stars, dotting the cityscape. He was 46 floors up.

He turned, the wind piercing through his leggings. The Blade followed, heaving and slow. Phantom, spindly- all leg and no fight to him. He stood, snarled at them before unsheathing Nightmare. He could hear the beat of wings, of Phil arriving at the scene. The only real way to get out of the 3 v 1 fight would be to distract them, then hightail it.

Techno startled first, the axes clashing together in an ear-piercing shriek. Techno swept his feet out, Phantom yelling charmspeak commands to no avail.

Then he saw them, clear as day. The blank smiley face stared back at him, from the sky.

He could hear Flare, with a voice almost familiar as he reigned a fireball onto Techno. Dream dragged him up, only just bothering to make sure he could stand before throwing himself back into the fight. Flare and Dream switched spots, with Flare looking at him up and down. He shoved him onto the floor, before ducking himself, away from the magpie-like swoop of the Angel of Death.

Four crows perched on the ledge, staring intently at them.

404 was wrestling Phantom, powers disregarded for the time being as 404 got a heavy hit in. Tommy scrambled to help 404, anything to get the Angel of Death off of his back.

For Prime’s sake, he was wearing the Angel’s dead wife’s Hero mask.

That made him a bit of a target.

He met Warden with a block of the axe, the hilt of the Warden’s mace being inches from his face. 404 slammed into him, knocking him off centre. Tommy swung the Axe down at the Warden, his helmet splitting. Phantom pulled him off the Warden and threw him into the ground. His back made an awful crack.

404’s obstacles slammed into Phantom, solid blocks materialising to push the man back. The Warden swept 404’s feet, but he knocked him out with a well-placed obstacle to the head. Not dead, Tommy could still hear his vitals whirring from inside of his suit.

Tommy’s back ached, mottled and bruised. He willed his psychokinesis to let him get up- the stringent molten magic in his veins glugged down. He was tired. Techno stood over him. A far-away look, shoulder slumped and mask cracked. Stuck inside of a memory inside of a memory.

He looked the same as when he was barely 16, a mean mug. Screaming out for everyone to shut up! Shut the fuck up! The time he had pummelled Tommy, broken his little 10-year-old skull- a boot to the ribcage and his hands twisting Tommy’s head almost right off of his shoulders. Chat, ever the aggressor, egging him on.

Techno moved to bring the Axe down, to cleave him in two.

Red sparks shot out of his hands, coating the axe like oil to hold it in place, just inches from his sternum.

Dream sweeped in, mask splattered a sickening shade of bright red, Phil’s blood. Dream pulled Tommy away, before shoving Techno to the edge of the building.

Tommy stood, shaky on his feet. Techno decked Dream, Dream kicked his chest back.

Plant your feet, I’ll bowl you over. A mantra teenage Techno had drilled into Tommy. Over and over.

Techno didn’t plant his feet. Tommy charged him, head first. They fell together, off the Hero Tower.

Chapter Text

Somewhere on the way down, Tommy decided that if he made it out of the wreckage alive, he’d kill Sam for not giving Techno a parachute on his suit.

Somewhere even further down, only a split second later, Tommy remembered that he had the power to control objects and make them move.

Another split second later, he and Techno bounced off the concrete sidewalk, as if it was overly large marshmallows instead of solid ground. Tommy opened his eyes, the sudden light of the night sky obscured by a smiley mask. Dream hoisted him up, a shaky thing as he fell into the older man. Techno was sprawled out on the pavement, bound by the same mechanism that he had showed off to Tommy, years ago. A trapper, as his wrists and ankles were bound to the floor.

Techno snarled at him, brutish and hungry. Tommy flinched, stepping back. Dream prowled closer, gaze intense.

Dream stood with Techno in between his legs. The tip of Dream’s Axe- something that Tommy had dropped during the fall- tilted Techno’s head to make their eyes meet.

“Oh, you could be so brilliant if you only turned your mind to chaos instead of your following nature, nipping at the Angel’s heels,” Dream purred. He paused, glanced around to ensure that only Techno could hear- and Tommy but Dream payed no mind to him, “I’ve never seen anything like you. You’re a stunning freak of nature.”

The words were earnest yet still mocking, the edge of sincerity. Dream turned, back stiffening. His movements only seemed fluid when he was fighting, taunting his prey like a natural born feline.

Dream grabbed Tommy’s arm, an inch too tight, and curled in on himself, sucking Tommy into the blackhole with him.

The world span, a mess of the bruise coloured scars twinkled through the molten blaze. He was stumbling again, rough sandpaper hands grabbed at him, almost aggressively. Tried to stop him from falling, but their nails dug into his arms like a man who didn’t know his own strength. They settled, heavy and restless, around his shoulder, guiding him towards the warm glow of entrance light.

Tommy flinched, eyes refocusing. It was a room much like the Alchemy store, with shelves teeming with potions and books, mahogany doors with symbols he didn’t recognise engraved on them.

Dream squeezed his shoulder, “Wait here.”

He went through one of the doors, indistinguishable from the others. Tommy sat in one of the plush chairs that lined the other side of the room. They were wood with deep emerald green cushions and backing, intricately carved with gold, glowing sigils. Basic protection ones, from what Tommy could remember.

He stared into the floor like a kid in the principal’s office. Wooden flooring. The room was small, no bigger than a waiting room- though he supposed it was just that, seeing as he was waiting.

The shelves lined one side of the room, along with a spare suit of armour, and copious amount of bandages and burn creams.

One of the doors creaked open, and a man stepped out. Though, man wouldn’t be an entirely accurate descriptor. It stood about three feet taller than Tommy, a figure shrouded in robes and shadows. His skin looked like black leather stitch work, with gaping holes of white eyes that bored into him. His cloak pooled down to the floor, an endless cavern of black that seemed to lead to nowhere.

With a figure that never ended, and the feeling of hopelessness that incurred whenever Tommy glanced at his eyes, he was expecting a voice to rival that of Techno’s monotone, a deep, gravely thing.

“Hi! I’m Bad,” The figure squeaked, “What injuries have you got that need attending to?”

Bad? As in the same Bad that hosted the Red Banquet?

Dream took over, resting a heavy hand on Tommy’s shoulder, “His back, it made a horrendous sound when he was thrown on the floor.”

Bad snapped the mechanism on Tommy’s chair and it reclined to resemble a stretcher. Tommy startled, and pain burned up his back like a wildfire. He cried out, a wordless shriek. Dream laid a hand on his calf, voice soothing, “It’s okay, we just gotta get your back fixed and then you’ll be able to go home. You’re ok.”

It was a strange sight, Dream so complacent. So nice. Bad pulled up a holochart, a hologram that showed vitals and potential injuries. It was a device Sam had made, had gifted it to Bad as a good peace measure. Sam had a similar one in his suit.

The chart read; One broken rib, three fractured vertebrae, two redstone-activated sigils, burst blood vessels on the back, heavy malnutrition, low blood sugar, low blood pressure, third degree burn.

Bad stared down at him like he was a basket case.

“Who are you?” Bad asked, genuinely perturbed.

Tommy stared on the poster behind Bad, one of those generic doctor’s office one. Contract of confidentiality, a cartoon graphic with seven crows on it. He glanced at Dream.

“Promise you won’t tell anyone?” A promise was another binding sigil, a safer one. One that kids drew on their palms during recess before telling each other lacklustre secrets. Bad took out a white sharpie from somewhere in his cloak. He drew the sigil on Dream’s hand, then his own, then Tommy’s.

Tommy pulled off the mask.

Bad’s eyes widened, a caricature of recognition. Dream’s smiley mask stayed the same.

“Knew I’d get you,” Dream finally broke the silence. The man chuckled, raising his shoulders in a placating gesture.

Bad said nothing about it, instead choosing to gesture to his back. Dream pulled Tommy’s hands until he was in a sitting position. He winced, hands cool as death resting on the worst of the bruising.

“I’m a medic, I heal anyone who comes to me, no matter the offence. Are you ready, kid?”

Tommy nodded.

He screamed. Bones stitched themselves back together like a surgery without anaesthetic, the cold piercing every crevice of his being, filling him whole and hazy. Wounds formed and healed in a matter of seconds, cells shuffling around to make space for the newly-begotten bones.

 His blood froze in his body, hardening as if he was made of stone himself. Waning on the precipice of the total annihilation of the self, an ego death of sorts. Transcendence; evolving beyond the shackles of power, the wielding of it, leaving it behind. Returning to True Nature and learn to live beyond the confines of power’s dualistic reality.

Tommy was sitting in a train station. Not one that he had ever been to- there were no extra wide doors for powered people, no construction signs for the constant destruction caused by the powers. No people, just an illuminated sign that read BAKER STREET station.

He sat, for hours, for minutes. He aged, the skin on his hands no longer taut, scars appearing and fading in seconds.

A weight joined in on the bench. She flickered in and out of existence like the lights overheard, like a character in one of those flip books.

She said, “I miss you, Toms.”

She said, “He doesn’t know how to show his love for you.”

She said, “I love you.”

She said, “Everything you need is within you.”

She said, “You are stronger than you know.”

She said, “You are the daylight.”

She said, “You are the night.”

She said, “The darkness you fight is within you, the light you seek is within you.”

She said, “You are not alone.”

She said, “I love you because you are love.”

She got up, walking into the train that has arrived. The LED lights on the train label it ‘Jubilee’. She was draped in black, a gown, and wore a large black hat, one to block out the light.

Tommy looks at the spot she left. The NutPig mask is in her place.

“C’mon, Toms, wake up.” His face was being slapped. Lightly, though he knew how well those hands could destroy.

“I-I’m here,” A gasp, air finally making their way into his lungs. Relief.

Bad sat on a nearby chair, looking as concerned as one can when they have no discernible facial features.

“I- uh, I tried to heal over the sigils, make them less of a hassle. I think that put your body into a state of shock for a second there, buddy,” Bad ran his hands through his hair, sleeves slipping down to reveal a mess of sigils carved and recarved, all glowing in white. Clumsily, Tommy pulled up his pant leg. The sigils were faded, entirely closed up. To the unknowing eye, it was like nothing was there in the first place.

Tommy also didn’t feel like he was dying all the time, so that was a great start. And the burn was gone! Everything was coming up Tommy today.

Dream looked at him, a strange glint in his eye.

Dream’s mask was off.

Tommy’s own face stared back at him again, stretched out over the canvas of the older man’s face. Bad shuffled out of the room, back into his office- or that’s what he assumed the door was.

Tommy shifted, the itch of magic still racing through his veins. Bad healing him didn’t get rid of his powers- also a positive.

“Do you know why I wanted you to become a villain?” The question hung in the air, heavy and daunting.

Tommy shook his head.

“My little brother looked like our father. Same horns and everything-”

“Horns?” Dream pointed to the blonde nubs that just barely grew out of his head.

“But me, my sister and our half-brother all look like our mom, who Dad hated. He used to tell us stories about how mean she was, and eventually when we grew up, he’d tell my little brother stories about how cruel we were. Didn’t matter that he was the one with the switch in his hand, apparently he was the one being beat.

“He loathed us. Because us four were all spliced from him and his sister, who were gonna raise us together-”

“Your parents are siblings?”

“Not biologically, but they weren’t in love or anything either. They just both wanted kids, so we were all lab babies. Then after my brother turned about 3, Mom got put out of the Hero’s Commission. Dad couldn’t get any more money out of here, so he hated her ever since then. Couldn’t get his drinking money,” Dream let out a sardonic laugh, something deranged and mean.

“He gave us up, I became a hero. My little sister just like to cause chaos on a minor level. Our half-brother is living with Mom, he’s like, a blacksmith or something.”

“What about your other brother? The one your dad liked?”

“He’s living in some shitty flat apartment with a mate, in the Heroes Training program. Got away from that evil fucking man, thank Prime. I send him a couple hundred every few months. Dad used to get him real good once he developed his power. Used to make him do his bidding, rig polls. Until Tubbo’s power was discovered and he couldn’t do that anymore.”

“Your brother is Tubbo? Wait- your father is Schlatt? Your father is the fucking President?”

“Ha-” Dream rubbed the nape of his neck, “Yeah, it’s a long story. I managed to get out of there by faking powers.”

“Faking powers?”

“Tommy, I was unpowered. That’s why he saw no use in the rest of us. Thought the ones who looked like Mom were a bad batch, kept Tubbo for himself.”

“Was?” Tommy’s eyebrow quirked up.

Dream’s face shifted, a swirling mass of colours that gets darker and darker, until only a hole is left. Not the inky blackness, but as if it had been carved out of Dream’s face, a look straight into the unknown. In it, a bright, floating symbol.

}{

“I’m a god, Tommy. I’m immortal, endless iterations of me sprawled throughout time. I am everything, and nothing all at once.

“I made myself this way, pushed too far into blood magic. It’s a lonely existence, even with my sister by my side. She’s the only one like me. Pushed too far, got hurt. Lives only for the chaos.

“I could destroy every hero. I could destroy you. But I won’t. Because none of you, really, mean anything in the game of life. I’m here to be a nuisance to the higher beings, the ones that surround us, the crevices of shadows. Life himself, Death herself. I want to fulfil my goal.”

“What is it?”

“I want my father to die, and to deliver him to Death herself.”

Chapter Text

The Dream Team safe-house was swaggy as shit. It was an entire underground basement setup that Dream had led him through. No windows, and yet the entire cavern was filled with natural light.

He was sat in one of the offices, Dream’s, he assumed. The SBI floor on the Hero Tower was bugged to high hell, and the live recording was playing through the speakers on Dream’s mic set up

“- and I reckon they’ve been working together since the damn kid showed up. He’s too good. The kid must come from a family of murderers to be that comfortable hanging with Dream. God help us all if he catches the attention of a god,” Phantom was distraught, his ‘trash kid’ becoming a fledgling villain.

“He’s definitely got experience, but there’s still time to get him from the claws of Dream. What does he even want with the kid?” Techno chimed in.

Phil just sounded tired. He could imagine his father, elbows on the desk, head in his hands. Judging by the distance Wil had from the bug, he was standing behind Phil, rubbing his shoulders- he always did that when Phil got depressed. During the first year after Mum died, it was a common sight to see them, at the dining table, Wilbur just… being there, for his dad.

“I don’t know, Tech. He’s got Kristen’s mask; all I care about is getting it back.”

Phil had told them the story of the mask as they got back, voice filled with the same amount of reverence it was when he told the story to Tommy. He had never told the older boys; a fact Tommy had only realised when he heard Wilbur’s voice waver, a broken edge to it.

“Little Theseus must be getting invited to the Red Banquet, especially if he’s got friends in the big leagues. Strike in Las Nevadas.”

“Jester wouldn’t allow that; he runs the city on neutral grounds. And Bad is his father-in-law, he may have handed the land over, but that doesn’t mean he’s completely separated from the heart of the city.”

“They doesn’t need to know,” Techno suggests, a humourless lilt to his voice.

Tommy gulped.

“Stop it, Tech. We’re not ruining nine thousand years of neutral grounds to go after a kid.” Phil said.

Dream walked in, Flare tailing behind him. Tommy’s mask was still sat firmly on his face.

Flare was a character to say the least. He had a fireball for a head, and yet he still forgot about it and burnt his hands every two minutes. Bandages lined his arms, singed at the fingertips. His white sweatshirt was covered in soot and ash. He stumbled in, flames licking the doorway.

“For Prime sake, Flare. Put your human face on,” Dream says, a hint of affection in his voice.

The flames that protruded out of Flare’s neck slowly receded, leaving scruffy black hair and a disturbingly familiar face.

“Mr. Nappitus?”

Flare looked down at Tommy, not registering there was another person in the room. He squinted, as if he could see through Tommy’s mask.

“Who are you?”

Tommy pulled off his mask again. Flare gawked.

“I’m assuming you two know each other,” Dream drawled, an amused hint to his voice.

Flare ignored him, “You’re the new villain?”

Tommy nodded, still shell-shocked. His PE teacher was one of the Top villains that reigned over the city.

Of all the teachers he though would turn out to be terrorists, Mr. Nappitus was not the top one. The was third, to Mr. Jumbo and Mr. Grian.

He still thought that Mr. Jumbo had potential to be a villain.

Flare sat on the floor next to Tommy, silence heavy. Silence was easy in the way that it wasn’t. The obvious observations hung in the air, mutually understood. Phrases like what the fuck, and, Jesus fucking Christ, how do you hide Villain injuries came to mind. Dream shuffled, turning down the volume on the SBI floor bugs.

“So, what the fuck, Mr. Nappitus?”

Flare let out a sharp bark, a surprised, yet amused, noise, “Well, it runs in my family. And I just… fell into committing petty theft with friends. Dad found out, hated the way Jack and Rhianna made me act. So he took me out, introduced me to Ge-404, and the rest is history. What about you, Innit?”

Tommy shifted, voice growing sombre. He cleared his throat, “Well, it sort of runs in my family as well-” he let out a sardonic laugh, “My brothers are the Top Heroes, I’m nothing compared to them. So, I thought- y’know hey, if Phil doesn’t think I can become something, why not prove him wrong? Why not be an absolute thorn in his side? Maybe then, he’ll see me.”

“How very teenager of you,” Flare said, no heat behind the words. Tommy gave a half smile, “Why choose villainy? It’s a far cry from the more conventional ways of making a name for yourself.”

He gave the same answer Dream had on the walk home a few days prior, “Fun. I’m unpowered. Or at least, I was. And now I get to have the royal opportunity of kicking my brothers in the ass without them ever suspecting it was me.”

He turned to Dream, a sudden realisation, “I have to get home, they’ve gotta be coming home sometime soon.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve already sent a text to Phantom-” He said very deliberately, glancing at Flare, “using your phone. Currently, you are hanging out with hot, hot women, and Bill from school.”

“I don’t know a Bill.”

“You do now,” Dream took his mask off once again, having the decency to mirror Tommy’s face so they didn’t have to stare into the abyss, “You’re staying with us, just for the night. If you have an allergic reaction to Bad’s healing and we’re not there to monitor you, Bad will kill us.”

Flare shuddered.

“But I have to get home-”

“I don’t think you understand, Tommy. You’re going to stay here. You don’t have a choice,” Dream’s voice grew dark, a sinister edge.

“Okay, big man,” Tommy’s blood ran cold. Dream’s voice was multiplied, a chorus within a sentence.

Dream’s mouth twitched upwards. He gave a hearty, “Awesome!” before walking out, into the kitchenette area.

Flare- well, Mr. Nappitus- leaned back onto his forearms. The heat from his hands worked as insulation through the wooden panels, as Tommy felt a rush of warmth.

“Mr. Nappitus-”

“Wait, do you know my real name?” He interrupted, an amused twinkle in his eye, a half smile forming as Tommy shook his head, “It’s Sapnap, Sapnap Halo.”

“I fucking knew it was a fake name,” Were the first words out of Tommy’s mouth, biting down on his discovery.

Sapnap gestured wildly, “Yea, no shit, dude. Who the fuck has the last name of Nappitus? I’m pretty sure that’s a disease.”

“Aren’t you a HPE teacher? Y’know Health and Physical Education,” Tommy said, incredulous, “If you don’t know it, I sure as shit don’t.”

“Why do you think we’ve never spent a lesson in the classroom? Bro I’m absolute dog water at all that academic shit,” Sapnap shrugged, “Listen, I know computers, I know dodgeball. Not much else is going on up here.”

“How the hell do you grade us? Is this why I’ve been failing?”

“Bribery, mostly. And sorry, I didn’t wanna grade the kid of my enemies very highly. Your dad throws me into walls most nights, is it really my fault if I tell Purpled to aim for you?”

“Yes! Very much so!”

The rest of the night went a similar way, with Dream eventually giving up on trying to cook his weird paleo meal and ordering them Chinese food.

“Where’s 404?” Tommy asked, halfway through a dimsim.

“Helping Bad, doing some assistant work for him while he gets ready for the Red Banquet,” Dream wiggled his fingers, putting on a mock spooky tone.

Sapnap choked on his fried rice.

Through a mouthful of food, Tommy inquired, “So, how is Bad technically neutral if you guys are so close to him?”

Sapnap chose to answer this time, using chopsticks as a gesturing guide.

“He and Pa refuse to commit crimes. Since Dad is a registered medic, he can’t be targeted because it’s a war crime. So, he chooses to heal whoever comes to him. Good or bad. Pa- that’s Skeppy to you- is an assisted nurse technically. Not that he does much, but it’s just a label to get him out of trouble. Villains don’t want to mess up the only chance they have of a competent healer. Heroes don’t want to incur the wrath of a demon and the reign of every Villain ever treated by him.”

Tommy nodded. That was another thing he had learnt- apparently Sapnap was Bad’s kid. How a gay demon could reproduce was beyond him, but then again he did have Sapnap for a health teacher.

“So Bad only treats for free because it benefits him in the long run?”

Sapnap nodded, “Plus the healthcare system is utter shit.”

Dream eventually herded them into bed, as Sapnap mocked him for calling the two of them ‘ducklings’.

The spare room reminded Tommy of his father’s room, albeit that one was settled up in the attic, an open balcony for him to fly off.

Curtains coloured in a deep, emerald green that swept to the floor like the gowns his mama used to wear, the same colour as the duvet- which was plush and warm, almost unnaturally so. The room stunk of vanilla, a calming sigil on the wall that made Tommy’s head spin.

Eating in the Dream Team hideout was a solace in comparison to his own house. No one had mind altering powers, no one smelled of sickly rot, in whatever form. Sure, Sapnap stole off his plate- but at least he could eat.

He wanted to stay there forever.

Guilt struck him. Shallow, shuddering breaths. His house- Phil’s house, wasn’t home any more.

It hadn’t been for a long time.

In that house, the walls there watched him. They breathed. A constant tension, leaving Tommy high-strung and taut.

In the guest room, there was total stillness. A lock on the door, a trust unspoken. It was settled, a warmth throughout the house that wasn’t artificial. Sure, there were protection wards and calming sigils, but they felt like an enhancer rather than a restrictor.

He could hear the TV, set on low as Sapnap sat in the room beside his. The bed engulfed him, sinking. Sleep followed soon after.

The train ride to school was accompanied by Sapnap, clothed in a generic polo shirt and cargo pants. His hands were scarred, burns prematurely healed over.

Tommy fiddled with the bottom of his hoodie- a blue one, two sizes too big. Dream had tried to put him in green at first, but he had quickly vetoed that idea. Sapnap had mockingly thrown a blue hoodie at him, telling him Oh, Tommy-Tom, it goes with your eyes.

He had thrown a mug at him from across the room, perfect aim. Dream called it unfair that he used his psychokinesis- he bit back that Dream had disappeared in on himself every time Tommy tried to throw something at him.

The NutPig mask and his other gadgets sat heavy in the bottom of a borrowed backpack. He and Sapnap went their separate ways after they stepped off the platform. Tommy, bee-lining towards a convenience store.

Drista greeted him at the counter, “You met my brother?”

“Right to business, I see,” Tommy picked out a chocolate bar and a coke, ambling his way to the counter. Drista raised an eyebrow, Tommy sighed, “Yes, I did. Believe it or not, I’ve known the man for a few years now.”

“Yea, no shit, Sherlock.”

Tommy remembered the first time he and Dream had met. Phil never allowed him in any Hero meetings. He was too young, too vulnerable. Dream had already had his Hero status revoked. A bomb was planted in the Hero Tower. It had killed 20 people- all lower ranking heroes. Left a smiley face shaped hole in the floor. A signature.

Phil had mourned, mourned the death of his once-friendly competitor.

Tommy had forgotten they had been friends once.

Tommy had been waiting for Wilbur outside of the middle school. Gaggles of kids rushing past, a fast-paced track.

A flash of green. A hand on the center of his back.

“If you don’t cooperate, I’ll kill you,” He had whispered, head hovering right about Tommy’s ear. He led him to a car that was driven by another clone of Dream.

He shuffled into the car. The other Dream had waved at him, as hyper as can be.

“Hi Tommy, did you want some Ice cream?” He started driving before waiting for an answer.

“I- uh, I feel like the whole kidnapping thing is meant to work the other way around. Ice cream, then threatening,” Tommy stuttered out.

“How would you know? Have you ever kidnapped anyone before?”

Tommy sputtered, “No- what the fuck.”

“Language!” The Dreams said in unison, “Did you want chocolate or vanilla?”

“… cookies and cream please.”

It had been a leverage attempt; Tommy had found out after. He had wanted some sort of freedom to walk around the city- if he wasn’t breaking the law, that was. It had only been granted after a two-day standoff, Phil caving and begging Schlatt. But Dream seemed to have genuinely liked him, or at least he hung around a lot more often after that.

In the low moments, Tommy had caught himself hoping Dream could be his brother. Something he would never admit to himself or his brothers.

The walk to the school passed quickly, head in the clouds. He didn’t feel real- it was the aftermath of healing, Sapnap had told him. Left him lagging, begging for the pain that was suddenly absent. His stomach no longer growled, he could focus- even despite the healing shock.

He slid into Biomagics, Mr. Iskall rambling about some tangent of a tangent- he was talking about pigs. Tommy leaned over to Purpled, “What the fuck is going on?”

Purpled glanced at him, “Pigs.”

“Yea, duh- I meant for the assignment. I haven’t actually been working on it. Kinda been busy-” He gestured to himself.

The other boy ignored the question, “My brother saw you get on the train with Mr. Nappitus, he thinks you two are all buddy-buddy.”

Purpled turned his body to Tommy, then spoke, “Why, pray tell, is my brother telling me to stay away from you?”

Mr. Iskall interrupted their conversation, an indignant air around him, “Mr. Grayson, Mr. Minecraft, would you like to share your thoughts with the class?”

“Did you know the Hero Tower got broken into, sir? What’s your thoughts on it?” Damn Purpled for being quick on his feet.

“Well no, I didn’t- that reminds me- who can tell me the gene differences for powered and unpowered people?”

Another kid raised his hand, and Mr. Iskall shifted his attention. Purpled turned back to Tommy expectantly.

“I don’t know,” Tommy lied. Purpled’s brother was a Villain, of course he’d know all about the Dream Team. Anyone could put together that the guy with a copious amount of burn scars and the Villain with a literal flaming head might know each other. Honestly, he was surprised no one had put it together. Not like Tommy had, but at least he had the excuse of- what was it Bad said?

“Heavy malnutrition, low blood sugar, low blood pressure, third degree burn.”

His excuse was airtight. Not like he’d caused it himself or anything.

English was similar, with Mr. Grian finding new and creative ways of telling Tommy and Purpled to shut up. He was impressive like that, fluttery arms and wings like the human version of a back massager. Grian’s wings dropped feathers as he talked, the ground a- frankly astounding- array of colours.

After the class, Grian pulled Tommy aside.

He looked down at the ground, and Tommy could suddenly see just how small he really was. Mr. Grian cleared his throat, “I-uh, you’re looking better Tommy. I’m really glad.”

Grian gave a soft smile.

Tommy smiled back, “Thanks, sir. I feel better.”

Turns out all he needed was to break his spine and get a nine-foot-tall demon to heal him. If only all his problems were this easy.

“Good, now go. You’ve got class to get to.” Grian hurried Tommy out the door.

The Business class was already in full swing as he arrived, Mr. Swaggins singing a rhyme about profit revenue and capitalists. He really wasn’t the most appropriate guy to be teaching Business class, but anybody who could come up with a song describing all the different types of stock options for businesses got an A. Nobody complained.

Tommy took a deep breath, his lungs feeling rejuvenated. He was glad to be alive.

Chapter Text

Childhood memories were held in the basement, an endless cavern of discarded gifts and toys, awards that no one but Phil cared about, and Tommy’s hopes and dreams.

Cobwebs on every wall, coating the various boxes in pallor. Warmth was leeched from the cave, climbing up the walls to a place without the damp guilt. The unforgiving nature of the basement was the boundless aisles that had no organisation, no method to their dumping. It was what was convenient, or at least it was at the time.

He shuffled through one of the boxes, Wilbur’s sloppily written Hero shit on the front. There were many masks, all in some or another state of disrepair. One of Techno’s old knives, broken in half and put in a plastic bag.

There it was.

The scales heated up under his fingertips, a callback to a simpler time. He pulled it out.

The Hero suit. What was supposed to be his hero suit. The red iridescent scales glittered under the dim sunlight, the only light in the entire room.

He scurried upstairs, with the suit hugged tightly to his chest. The suit was pristine. He picked up the glove, what looked a couple sizes too small.

It resized to his hands, fitting like a second skin.

Oh this was going to be fun. He scrambled back down to the basement, ruthless in his search.

The summer after Techno broke Tommy’s skull, Phil was on a ‘trying to develop healthy coping mechanisms’ kick. There was yoga, punching bags, needlepoint, boxing gloves and much more down in the basement. More importantly, there was spray paint.

Not just any spray paint, but one that really wasn’t easily washed off. Something that Phil learnt after he had let Techno spray paint a mural on the side of the house. The outline of a thousand screaming spirits was still there if he looked close enough, even after Phil’s power washing of it. Six times.

This one was easier to find, stagnant on the top shelf of the first aisle. When he had first met Ranboo, he had propositioned a fun social experiment.

Turns out spray painting penises on the Hero Tower was not girlbossing, Your Honour, and was in fact vandalism.

How was he supposed to know that?

Petty crimes aside, he did need it to paint the suit that he would use to commit petty crimes. So petty crime really just seemed in his nature, apparently. Very convenient.

He opened the windows in his room, half hanging out one of them, and sprayed his suit.

From white to black, from red stripes to a lightning pattern, scattered across his torso. He added red soles and palms, to match the NutPig mask. To prove he didn’t want it for the status- to prove that he was the sole descendant of the NutPig inheritance.

Also to like, majorly piss Phil off.

Definitely a bonus.

His suit looked… fly as fuck.

The moment night fell and his father and brothers were out of the house, Tommy was off. He used his power to propel himself to the top of buildings, jumping from top to top.

By about 2 am, he could hear the Warden on the street, clanking with every step as he ambled his way through patrol.

He liked Sam, he did. But he also had sixteen years of ingrained Hero hatred coursing through his teenage veins. And a barely-healed over burn scar that still ached.

Red sparks flew from his fingertips as he watched the Warden from a rooftop. The Warden was right about the walk past a manhole cover. Tommy flicked his wrist, and the cover hit him, heavy, over the forehead. Tommy flinched at the impact.

He heard it before he saw it, an explosive crack sounding off right next to his ear. The edge of the building crumbled away. He scurried off, going in the Warden’s opposite direction.

The buzzing of Icarus wings only made him sprint harder, the beating of his heart in time with the way he leapt off buildings, propelling himself further.

Eventually he heard it. The catcall of Phantom, a languid voice that had once made his limbs heavy, now only worked as an adrenalin boost. He could hear Sam slowing down, the influence getting to him. This was why the two didn’t work together all that often, With Wilbur’s powers working in unexpected ways on hybrids. Techno was a hit or miss on whether he was totally immune to Wilbur, or if he fell under his spell the second he opened his mouth. Phil was a pushover, easy to fall.

Tommy, although not being a hybrid, had always been difficult. Being difficult was in his nature.

So when Phantom flew at him, a ball of blue and siren song, he let himself fall off the building mid jump, sliding down the wall with only a small stumble. On the ground was more dangerous in terms of coming across obstacles, but at least he didn’t have to try hand-to-hand combat. Small mercies, he mused, before almost getting stabbed in the foot with a dirty needle.

The heroes didn’t usually patrol this far out.

He was in Pogtopia, once again. Everything always lead back to Pogtopia, a smaller city within the confines of the SMP. It was less of a country and more of a state, with the clusters of cities, clusters of homes.

Hands grabbed at him, tearing at his clothes. He turned halfway, before pushing them off, red sparkles flying. It was like the person had anticipated it, already dodging. He pulled at the air, catching loose metal catchments, and ducking before they went flying at the other’s face.

It was Eret, he realised a second too late. She had the power of foresight, a split second before it happened. To them, everyone was living their life lagging. Tommy pulled Eret out of the way, but she caught his arm just in time. He dropped to the ground, sweeping her legs out before bolting. It wasn’t that she could’ve seen it coming, but she couldn’t have moved in time, her feet falling one after the other. He could still hear her boots beating down on the pavement before he pushed in the wind upwards, his body going with it.

Phil caught him.

Strong hands gripped around his biceps, rough and muscular. A beat of wings.

“So, The Blade is calling you Theseus.”

He didn’t respond.

“Listen, mate, if you don’t wanna make conversation then the ride to Pandora’s Vault is going to real awkward.”

Nothing.

“Little Ickle Theseus it is then.”

A flash of green, his legs suddenly becoming heavier, before he was sucked away altogether.

Dream dropped him off on a nearby rooftop, still surrounded by the Phantom and the Warden.

“Couldn’t you have teleported us further away?” Tommy griped.

“Where’s the fun in that-” He gestured to the practically frothing Wilbur, “Besides the odds are almost even.”

“Almost?”

Phil landed again, circling the two like a bird of prey. It was unsurprising to hear that he was a crow hybrid, especially since his wings puffed up, making the canvas of the night sky a suffocating display. He cawed, a horrific sound coming out of what Tommy wouldn’t even call a beak really. Does it still count if it’s severed off the body? His mask had the same set up as the NutPig mask.

A severed bird beak on the front of the mask, voice modifier hidden inside. The eyes of the mask resembled one of those gas masks Tommy remembers seeing in History, wide and all-knowing.

“Yup, almost.” Dream flicked his wrist, the concrete of the rooftop flying up towards Angel. Tommy pushed a gust of wind towards Phantom, throwing him off balance before charging towards his brother.

He connected, pulling out Henry- the gun had done him well as he shot at Phantom, aiming for the hips. The armour Phantom wore almost covered his entire body, making space for connectors- clips that left skin visible, only an inch.

From the horrible sound Phantom made, he had hit his mark. It was a non-fatal spot, but one that certainly felt it as metal scraped on bone.

Purple particles circled Phantom as he pressed the help button on his suit, nestled within his collarbones.

Ender- Ranboo with a split mask- zipped in and out of the rooftop scene, taking Wilbur with him.

Ender wasn’t a fighter, limbs too lanky to know his own surroundings. He was a rescue mission, a toy for the Heroes to use. Ranboo knew this, Tommy did too.

Tommy turned his focus back to the Warden, whose metal wings were stabbing the building as makeshift grappling hooks. He could feel every hit.

Tommy took a deep breath, before looking over the edge of the building. The Warden stared him down, hands preoccupied in his tool belt, undoubtedly trying to pull out another weapon to get him with.

He shifted, until he was over the Warden entirely. Dream was still battling the Angel, debris flying towards Tommy haphazardly.

The Warden was almost to the top.

Tommy jumped off the building, feet first.

The Warden’s wings ripped from his suit with a shrill metal screech, as they fell. Falling was easy. The Warden had no time to react, but Tommy was sure he would be fine. Resistance suit, armour, creeper skin- all things that worked in Sam’s favour.

Tommy made no effort to soften the fall, desperately trying to fight back the instinct to slow the air. Self-preservation never won against the great Tommy Innit “Theseus” Watson-Minecraft.

His name was getting long.

All things he thought on the way down. There was no panic, senses dulled by the comfort that he’d be landing on the Warden.

The concrete cracked below them, a grating sound as they connected with the ground. Tommy’s ass hurt, his knees shooting pain and adrenalin up his body. He stumbled off, ignoring the pain the best he could. Red light engulfed his lower body, an active effort to lighten his body.

The air kept him upright. The Warden recovered a lot quicker, stalking towards him. Two pairs of boots circled him.

He had forgotten about Eret. The Warden fiddled once again with his tool belt, Eret lunging towards him. He pushed a gust of air towards them both, trying grab more distance. She twirled out of the way, using the wind to propel herself to Tommy’s side.

Pain exploded in his shoulder, burning through the skin to burrow itself in his muscles. His arm went dead, all nerves shut off. A scream ripped from his throat like a wounded animal, fire broiling through his tendons.

Like a cornered dog, he reacted. Red sparks slashed through the air.

Distantly, he could see Eret fall to his knees, clutching his eyes in violent agony.

The Warden strode closer. He hit the ground, sending concrete flying for every crevice in the Warden’s armour. Tommy tore the Warden’s wristplate armour through his arm, Netherite cracking throughout the older man’s bloodstream, shards impaling his veins.

Sam staggered back, whether out of shock or out of pure, unadulterated torment.

A flash of green.

He was back in Bad’s office. In the same plush chair, sinking. Adrenalin made way for the sluggish pain, the slow spreader. He bit back a sob.

He couldn’t feel his arm.

Numbly, he noted that Dream was there, soothing. Numbly, he noted the muddy brown stains on his hoodie.

After any length of time, whether an hour or a day, Bad walked through the door.

He sat with Tommy. A holochart. Words he couldn’t read, a blur of colours.

Bad laid a hand on his arm. Coldness spread through his entire body.

He was in the train.

Techno was there, in a cross between his Hero gear and his day clothes. Gold glittered in the light of the train, chains hanging from his ears, nose, neck and waist. He grinned a wolfish grin.

“Was wondering when you’d get here.” His glasses sat on the tip of his nose, teetering on the edge of falling off. His hair had a white streak in it, stark amongst the pink. He looked older.

“Where am I?”

“We’re going home, little Theseus.” He said, an affectionate tone to his voice. He patted the seat next to him, an offer. The boar mask sat in his lap.

“Why are you calling me that?”

“Do you remember, when you were little and Wilbur and Phil were out of town, and you’d have nightmares? And you’d run up to my room begging for me to save you from the monsters?” He traced Tommy’s fingertips, as if it was the first time he ever saw them.

Tommy’s fingertips were stained red. Not blood, but the same colour as the sparks. His hands were scarred.

Techno grew sober, “You asked me to save you ‘from the bad Techie.’”

There was a scar that wrapped around Techno’s neck. It was old, from when he was just shy of 17. It was an episode- bloodlust spattered across his face as Chat tore into his psyche. Wilbur had screamed, his voice breaking. After, he had told Tommy- much, much later, that what he said was the only thing he could think to stop Techno.

And Techno had complied. Putting the razor- double sided, thinner than paper and sharper than obsidian- up to his throat.

They didn’t speak of it.

Techno still wore a bandage around his neck, 6 or so years later. Only on the bad days, the ones that caused him to scratch at his own throat.

“I don’t want to be like you.”

An honest statement. One that bled with years of history. Techno pulled him closer, nestling him under his arm, “In doing that quest, somehow you’ve become exactly like me.”

“I- I’m not. I didn’t mean to.”

Techno continued, “Sh, Theseus. Your aggressors are worlds away from mine. And yet we both acted out of desperation. You threw us off a cliff acting out of instinct.”

“I-”

Techno shushed him, “Instinctually, you chose to be the aggressor. Tommy, the thing is you’re using words. But the thing about this world, Tommy, is that the only universal language is violence.”

“I refuse.”

Techno cackled, a sardonic thing. The train’s ceiling started to drip, molten plastic sticking itself to their skin. Techno turned to Tommy, and suddenly, he felt like he was nine again.

They were standing on the precipe, something much later than themselves. Techno put his hands to Tommy’s chest, “I’m sorry, little Theseus, but you’ve already made your choice. You will only feel whole in death.”

Techno pushed him, and suddenly he was falling.

Tommy jerked awake, clutching his chest with his hand. Clutching the very place that Techno had pushed him from. His arm burned, a fire ripping through every breath he took.

Dream startled from his spot, “Tommy, are you alright? Is anything sore? Bad, come in here, quick!”

Bad scurried into the room, a small white dog following him. He spoke, an air of anxiety surrounding him, “So I’ve just reconnected the nerves back in your arm, and tried to heal the shock that your knees went through, but that’s something that is better healed with physical therapy to strengthen the muscle. It might hurt a little-”

Tommy cried out in pain as Bad tried to move his wrist, a shockwave rippling down his spine.

“But that’ll subside. I’m sorry but because of your power blockers, I can’t do much for the pain.”

Tommy swore, vile and loud. Bad didn’t bother to chide him, offering a sympathetic smile.

“How long have I been out, doc?” Tommy tried to have a lighthearted tone. Bad and Dream looked at each other apprehensively.

“A day,” Dream finally said, after an intense staring battle with Bad.

“A fucking-” Tommy tried to get up, before quickly crumbling to the floor, “-day? I’ve got to get home.”

Bad looked at him incredulously, “Tommy, don’t be silly. You can’t walk.”

Panic and bile rose in his throat, Phil knows Phil is going to kill him he knows he must, if he comes back a day later with a fucked up arm that’s so fucking obvious.

He was wearing clothes that were too big for him, laced up basketball shorts and a green hoodie. A hand on his back, rough and sturdy as it patted him. A man who doesn’t know his own strength, a touch too heavy- reminded him of Techno’s hands, the way they were a slight bit too clumsy for delicate tasks. The way his words were a slight bit too clumsy. It beat in a rhythm.

4, rest, 4, rest, 4

He followed it, eyes trained on his shaking hands. His fingertips were pink. It reminded him of Wilbur, with callouses on the very tips of his fingers, always scarred over and bitten, rough from the strings of the guitar.

He breathed.

“You’re okay Tommy, you’re okay, little Icarus. You’re alright.” Dream repeated, voice low.

Once Tommy’s breathing was stable enough, Dream crouched down till he was at eye level with Tommy.

“Do you remember the day we met? The kidnapping?”

Tommy nodded, not trusting his voice to betray him.

“Wanna go for Round 2?”

“W-what?” Tommy looked down at Dream, a slight feeling of dread dripping down his back.

“I can put a call out, say I’ve captured you. I’ll bargain for more inane shit,” Dream propositioned.

Tommy remembered the look of utter heartbreak on Wilbur’s face. Wil had refused to sleep without Tommy after he had come home, nestling him in bed like a mother bird.

He couldn’t do that to him again.

The memory flashed across his brain, of Wilbur viscerally telling Techno to slit his own throat. The scream that had ripped itself out of Phil’s lungs. The struggle for the blade, knocking it out of Techno’s hands before he made the cut deeper.

When Wilbur got emotional, he got mean.

Tommy shook his head, “I’ll deal with it, big man. Give me a wheelchair and send me on my way.”

“I- this goes against my Hippocratic oath. Tommy, I can’t let you do that.” Bad clicked his fingers. Tommy slumped down, all of his limbs going limp.

“Wha- What are you doing?”

“Listen, I know Phil. I’ll tell him you’re under my care, that you got mugged,” Bad said. Dream looked at him, solemnly.

“I’m sorry, Tommy.” Dream stood up, walking through another one of the mahogany doors.

It felt like a lifetime, a staring contest between him and Bad. Eventually, Bad sighed, and walked through his office door, leaving it slightly ajar. Tommy tried to move his legs, but they refused to budge.

He could hear Bad talking, a garbled voice on the line replying back.

“Yes, yup. I’ll be expecting them.”

Bad hung up the phone, an archaic looking landline, with the spinny thing ringing as Bad used it. A rosary dial- or whatever Phil called it.

Tommy stared at the floor. Bad pulled up a chair, across from him. Tommy stared at Bad. Bad stared at Tommy.

“What’s the worst word you know?”

“I- Tommy, uh, what?” Bad sputtered.

“I said, what’s the worst word you know?” Coolly, Tommy levelled his stare at the demon.

He thought for a second, “Lingua.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Bad winked conspiratorially at him.

Two minutes later, on the dot, footsteps thundered down the hall. 120 ticks of the clock that Tommy lay parallel to.

“Where the fuck is he?” Wilbur burst through the door, the same one that Dream had escaped out of.

Tommy raised a lazy hand, wincing. He scurried over to him, desperation painted across his features. Techno walked in after him, still in his Hero suit. Chat reached out to him, inky tendrils lightly wrapping themselves around his legs, cold yet comforting.

“Tommy, I swear to fucking god if you ever disappear on me again, I’ll kill you myself.” Wilbur said, a failing attempt at light-heartedness. The light caught the scar on Techno’s neck, bruising and purple still- from the Fall.

He weakly hugged him back, still fragile from the weird spell Bad had entranced him in. Techno stayed silent.

Bad looked frazzled, caught off by the Heroes in the room. He snapped his fingers again, and Tommy felt a rush of energy course through his veins. He tried to stand, shaking like a fawn. Techno sighed, before scooping him up by his legs bridal style.

“Don’t scare me like that, Tommy,” He whispered in his ear, quiet enough so Wilbur couldn’t hear him.

“And thank you again, Bad,” Wilbur said, before sliding a letter over to him, “That’s our RSVPs for the Banquet.”

The Banquet, a social event that quickly becoming a staple in Tommy’s life. A three-day holiday where all of the trainee Heroes, unknown vigilantes, and up-and-coming villains would wreak havoc in the city. It was an event that only the elite, the invited, and the people having cover for them, knew about. Tommy was the very latter group.

Techno dropped him into the car rather ungracefully, leaving him something to bitch about on the ride home. And he did, very loudly.

“I’m already injured, this is entirely a-bal-is-em or however you say it. You could’ve killed me,” Wilbur met his eyes, a soft look in them.

“Tommy, you utter dickhead. It’s ableism.” Wil said.

“See! Even Wilbur agrees with me,” Tommy said, sticking his chin up at Techno.

Techno sighed, massaging his temple, “Oh no, this is the worst thing I’ve ever done. How will you forgive me?”

Tommy had seen the carcasses from Techno’s killing sprees, piling up. Phil had doused them in gasoline, ready to set them alight. It wasn’t a pretty sight, a grim look to their faces. Wilbur had told him not to look. He had already seen it. He was just shy of 12.

Tommy shook his head of the memory. He didn’t want to be reminded that his brothers did terrible things. He didn’t need to know.

“Get me McDonald’s?” Tommy said, forcing a hopeful note into his voice. The car smelled like booze and fish guts, courtesy of Wilbur and his stupid fucking power. Tommy would have rather thrown up, than sit in the backseat eating the McDonald’s fries.

“We’re not- it’s 2 am Tommy, they’re not going to have anything set up,” Techno argued.

Tommy considered his choices, “I don’t care, I want my filet-of-fish.”

“Filet-of-Fish? Bruh, you have bad taste.”

Tommy continued, “Filet-of-Fish is actually the superior burger option, as it is simply better and you are wrong.”

“I’m not wrong, it’s all processed garbage anyways.”

“Excuse you- Ronald McDonald would never lie to me-”

“Tommy, shut up,” Techno interrupted.

Fuck Techno, he didn’t get to tell Tommy when to shut up. He continued, slightly louder, “And I’ll have you know that in the ads, they get their products from local-”

“Tommy, shut the fuck up,” He growled.

“No, and-” Before Tommy could finish, Techno slammed his head into the dashboard, covering his ears with a deafening yell.

“Shut the fuck up, Chat. I’m not going to fucking kill him.” Techno’s face was covered in blood. Chat’s tendrils reached out to Tommy, tugging his injured arm. He yelled, agony racing up his arm.

Techno screamed, almost in response. Wilbur charmspoke something to Techno, more calm then the two of them. Tommy couldn’t hear over the ringing in his ears.

He curled up in a ball, Chat trying to grab at his arm, provoking noises out of him.

Techno was asleep. His chest rose up and down, slow and steady. Chat revoked itself from tormenting Tommy, lapping themselves around Techno’s legs instead. Wilbur drove on, staring intently at Tommy in the mirror.

They got home in silence, with Wilbur acting as Tommy’s crutch. They left Techno in the car. Tommy grabbed onto the stair railing, while Wilbur stayed downstairs and traded quiet words with Phil. A conversation not meant for Tommy.

He looked at the state of himself. His knees were bruised. Eyebags had carved a way under his eyes, despite supposedly being in a coma for a day, he still hadn’t gotten enough sleep. His hair was sticking out in all different directions, and he hadn’t had the time to notice he was wearing Dream’s hoodie.

Not his iconic hoodie, not the one he wore when in costume. But the same one he wore at the ice cream shop. Same one he wore when Dream had kidnapped him, the very first time they met.

Overall, he looked like utter shit.

He looked like Wilbur when he was 16.

Less of a tumblr-esque vision to it all. But he looked like Wil. Time repeated itself, over and over. Tommy was not the first to try and rebel, but he reckoned he outdid Wilbur in that aspect. It was strange, as he made faces in the mirror, desperately tried to separate himself from his brother, from the same man who had told Techno to kill himself- he felt comfortable. Like his insides matched his outsides, for the first time in a while. A rabid, feral boy with too much on his shoulders.

Chapter Text

He’s got to hand it to Wilbur, he’d be a great kidnapper. The man was incessant in his smothering, suddenly attuned to every single need or slight want that Tommy expressed.

He fucking hated it.

Hated the pity eyes, the soft touches. The way Wilbur would melt under Tommy asking for something, as if he was a child that had said his first words. The magic itched through his veins, the only thing keeping him upright.

His legs were slightly tinged in red, looking more like a bad sunburn than the only reason he could really walk. His knees still gave out if he retracted the power, but he’d been weaning himself off it, little by little.

Wilbur mothered Tommy incessantly- asking if he’d done his homework (he had- just like he had the last three times Wilbur asked) and frowning whenever Tommy gagged after eating some soup- he’d told him it was a side effect of Bad’s magic.

The older man had insisted it was his powers developing.

He hadn’t talked to Techno in the two days after his outburst. There were new locks on his door, ones that locked on the inside.

Phil had also been absent. The only sign he was still in the house was the piling of coffee-stained mugs in the kitchen sink. On the night after Tommy got back, he had snuck down the living room.

He had been itching for a fight. The blood burned like fire in his veins, adrenalin making him dizzy. Tommy wanted to scream, to scratch at the walls. It tore at him, leaving him in red ribbons. The fog of sickly rot and the smothering scent of fish and cigarette smoke weighed him down. He’d rather burn himself using his magic, with his shot knees and fucked arm, melting himself apart until waste remained then spent another second in the house where the walls breathed a siren song.

Phil had been sat at the dining table, bandaging up his arms. The scratches- though that was sugar-coating it, the gashes sat a neat two inches apart, four in a line. Techno’s claws had made them. The skin gaped open.

Nausea sat in the pit of Tommy’s stomach, bile rising up his throat. Chat had tormented Techno, he could hear it with the punches in Techno’s wall, shaking the house.

Phil looked tired. His hair, usually tied up now hung limply around his face. He took a closer look between the gashes. There were ink tattoos, thousands of them all over Phil’s body. Techno’s cuts had caught on the edge of one of them. Five flowers, all attributed to his family.

Techno was an apple blossom, the pinks vibrant even as the years passed. Phil was a bay laurel, a yellow thing that blended well into his skin. Mum was a pink carnation, the only flower she ever put in the vases around the house. Wilbur was a belladonna, deadly with his words.

Tommy was a purple hyacinth- he had had a phase of repeating the word, trying to slip it into every conversation when he was younger.

The cuts had slashed through the purple hyacinth, leaving it a bruising thing. It was the lowest on the flower cluster, the most vibrant of them. It had been a stormy night in, thunder and lightning dancing in a macabre melody. They made the avian hybrid anxious, the flinch in every crack of thunder clear in the fluttering of his wings, black as the night itself.

Mum had sat him down in the living room, as far away from the eye of the storm as possible. Her hands glid over a leather packet, a satchel that was tucked away until the special moments. Tattooing required steady hands, it worked as a regulator for Phil’s emotions. On bad days, he’d be holed up in his room, needle in hand. There were constellations on his legs, the stars from a thousand years passed painted over his body. On the great days, like when Techno and Wilbur first presented their powers, he’d brought them up to his room.

They had left a few hours later, a tattoo- tiny, but still seemed to sparkle in the yellowed kitchen lights. An emerald, tucked behind their ears. Phil had two emeralds, larger, on his ribcage. They danced across his skin, a striking display among the rest of the black and white torso tattoos. The only coloured tattoos were family.

That night, the night the storms got bad, horror stricken and sketched into Phil’s features; Mum had picked out a needle, picked out a few colours- the outline. She worked, painstakingly through every flower. It was one of the nights Tommy wasn’t told to go to bed, joining Techno and Wilbur in watching.

Her focus blocked out all obstacles, a reason as to why she was so effective as a persecutor.  She had swept the battlefield, a harbinger of suffering. Unstoppable. Silken robes flowed to the bottom of her chair, an inky black. As she poked- an understatement of the art she crafted- Phil stilled, as if the ink worked as a drug, sedating his nerves.

Trust traded like quips, quiet and shared between the lovers. Something Tommy felt an outsider to see, the voyeuristic window into the soft love shared by practically-immortals. It came easy to them, falling into a dance of pseudo-fighter and victim, lover and the loved as Mum administered the pain straight into his veins.

Tommy was there to prove it was real- there to exist as both the cameraman and an extra.

And Techno had ruined it. Had shattered his role, writing him as the fragmented boy. The unpowered.

Phil had sat at the living room table, 8 or so years later. Bandaging up the gashes. When Tommy had turned the corner, spotted his father, they both froze. Two deer, two headlights. As if they didn’t know which role to play.

“I- uh. Water.” Tommy nodded to the fridge, thankful to have left his suit underneath his clothes.

Phil nodded, his shoulders relaxing but his wings still puffed up, fight or flight mode.

“Tommy?” He turned, looking to the older man; he suddenly looked ashamed, like a child once more, looking up at Tommy, “Nevermind.”

His hands shook, so he shoved them in his pockets, careful of his arm. Phil crossed his, looking out of place- a dim light, balanced precariously on the kitchen island was the only light source in the room, casting shadows across their faces.

Unspoken questions hung in the air, both parties left unsatisfied, answers were hidden behind gritted teeth.

From Phil; Who are you? When did you get taller than me? What do you like? Are you still the same boy who I took to the Power Registry that day? Did you die, reborn as the almost-man you are today?

From Tommy; Will you still hold me? Will you still see me as a person once/if/when you find out the truth? Can you see me now?

And they stood at the crossroads, two unknowing strangers.

Wilbur had gotten called out, some emergency mission that involved some Snowchester vigilantes and an oil factory, smoke wafting through the air two districts over- totally not courtesy of Purpled. He had been stubborn, having to be threatened with termination to leave Tommy’s side, convinced he’d present his powers any day. Techno was the only one patrolled that day, Phil caught up in some matters better left unsaid.

Techno had recovered quickly from his episode, like he always did. It was baseline, instinctual to his being- euphoria at giving in, followed by immediate regret. Wilbur had tried to justify it once, the giving into his nature. He was on a philosophy kick at the time. Said it was inhumane to deny him from living out his full capability related to his species. A horse being kept in a stable and being treated well its whole life may not have been suffering, but to not be able to gallop across their natural habitat, not being able to socialise with other horses was still not their ideal living circumstances. He was passionate, talking empathy into every word.

Techno had shut him down with a ‘I am the last of my species, you pretentious fuck.’ And that had been the end of that.

He hadn’t spoken to him yet. Techno had left a simple woven bracelet- gold, of course- on the table outside of Tommy’s room.

Magic still thrummed through Tommy’s legs, but he could walk. He poured regen into the marred flesh on his arms.

It had been three days since Theseus’ last appearance. Long overdue, even if Dream had thought otherwise. Tommy was itching, begging to be hit. A new shock, a distractor to the pain that he had grown tired of.

And so he jumped, gravity not applying as he rose, higher and higher. Sure, he was in bad shape. But he was persistent, needing to feel alive. Soft touches didn’t feel as real, feather light and dreamlike. Taking a punch was air leaving his lungs. Forceful as his jaw would get wrenched to the side.

Blood was real. Blood made things real.

He ran, more gliding across the ground than truly beating the pavement. It was cheating, a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Wilbur whined.

It was a while until he came across another person, let alone a hero. With three of the most prolific Heroes out of commission- or in Wilbur’s case, in a mission, the city was pretty quiet.

Blonde hair. A mean scowl. Gold chain and a white hoodie. Punz, one of the only unmasked Villains. Nothing to hide, no power to obscure. Handy with a knife and even better with a gun. He hadn’t been to jail because he hadn’t been caught, efficient in his craft. And he hadn’t been taken out because no Hero or vigilante could hire someone with a shot good enough to hit him. He was the best.

On the ledge of an apartment building, there he sat. Tommy walked to him; he made sure to let the footsteps echo. He meant to be there. He meant for Punz to know he was there.

“You’re the new villain that the Dream Team busted their ass trying to save.” Tommy couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement. He hummed in agreement anyways.

“What makes you special, Theseus?” His voice dripped of amusement, and an emotion Tommy couldn’t quite identify. The brothers were similar, Punz and Purpled. Both practically unreadable, but Purpled made himself a little more palatable.

“I’m incredibly charming,” Tommy matched the tone, a low thing, trying to get into Punz’s head- more so trying to figure out what made the older man tick. He was a mystery, Tommy suspected to even Purpled. Reverence swirled into Purpled’s mentions like a fine wine, a taste of Punz diluted into Purpled; in a way he never truly understood.

Punz scoffed, a hearty thing. He fiddled with the chain around his neck, absentminded, “You have a lot of potential, Theseus. But why? What are you fighting for?”

He let himself unravel, limbs going easy. The city bustled below them, a daydream away. He finally spoke, after a moment too long, “A life. A life separated from who I was meant to be. The person I can never be.”

Punz nodded, seemingly satisfied by the answer. Tommy gestured to him, as if in silent question. Punz stood, “The system is corrupt. Glory is the only measure worth seeking- it’s what all the Heroes really stand for. At least I’m honest about wanting to be the best. Even if it is in an unconventional field.”

 Purpled was right, his brother’s ideology was straightforward. Tommy spoke again, “So why send your brother through the same system that breeds the Hero worshippers?”

He stiffened, turning a squinted eye towards Tommy, as if he could see right through him. After a moment, after apparently finding the thing he was looking for staring back at him in Tommy’s mask. His movement turned to fluid once again, slinking down off the ledge, “Because I know that boy is smart enough to see the truth. And if he doesn’t, if he represses the very ideology that allowed him to live for the first half of his life? That’ll be his choice, and he’d be safer for it.

“Now for the next round of twenty-one questions; how the hell do you know my brother?”

It was the first moment that Punz was real, was caught off guard and showed it. Tommy allowed him a little bit of solace, “Old friends. I only want to see the best for him. I promise.”

He made the promise sigil sign in the air, a fleeting moment. Punz dusted the dirt off his pants, before poking up his head like a meerkat, “The Blade is en route. I suggest you get out of-”

Before Punz had the chance to finish his sentence, a black tendril- Chat- shot out from Tommy’s left, trying to grasp at Punz’s feet. Trying to knock him off balance. Tommy sprung up, bolstered by his power. He tried to grab Chat with his mind but it slipped off, a noose tied too loose. Chat readjusted, shooting off another branch to try and grab at Tommy.

Tommy blocked a second too late, Chat growing tighter and tighter until it pulled him towards The Blade. He dangled by his ankle, blood rushing to his head. Tommy squirmed, getting enough lee way to pull out the knife from his boot. He slashed across Chat, black blood spraying at him. They dropped him onto the rooftop.

The Blade flew at him, axe at the ready. He barely managed to block in time, yelling for Punz to ‘get the fuck out of here’. Tommy grabbed at the hilt of Techno’s axe, twisting his wrists out of the grip. Techno kicked up at him, Chat extending the movement. They moved as one, like that one comic-book villain Tommy used to see when he’d go with Wil to the store.

The boar mask Techno wore was snarling, his tusks poking out from underneath the jowls of it. It stalked, ever present. Chat curled around his waist, throwing him off-centre before Techno charged him, seven feet of hulking muscle. Tommy dropped to the floor. He kicked up at Techno’s legs, using it to pull himself up. He focused on Techno’s boot, red magic encasing it solidly, sticking him to the rooftop. Techno growled at him, “Theseus, we meet again.”

He swung at him after saying it, less of a friendly reunion, more of a warning. Tommy dodged.

Too slow, the axe shredding skin off his bad arm. A scream tore from his throat, rising bile and memories from just days prior. His arm was a foreign object, a parasite that only existed to hurt. Tommy took a few steps back.

He took out Henry, aiming square between Techno’s eyes. It wouldn’t kill him- thank the impenetrable skin- but it would sure knock him out. Let Tommy leave, all pieces intact.

Chat knocked the gun out of his hands, it spinning across the rooftop. Tommy lurched forward, an involuntary movement. The Blade swept his axe. Right across Tommy’s throat.

He gurgled, blood spraying across his suit. This was it, little Icarus, said a voice that sounded too much like Dream.

It was a comfort.

Chat tore itself- a bloodcurdling, inhumane noise. A thousand noises, ones that Tommy had never been able to hear before. He stumbled back. This is what it felt like. A scream of a death, scraping down every crevice of Tommy’s body. His ears were vibrating, about to bleed.

It was all too much, the precipice of something greater than himself. The edge of the building, the edge of himself. A screech, desperate and surprised and something so inhuman. Something that didn’t come from him.

He forced his eyes open, a task for the momentous. Techno was on his hands and knees, heaving. The black swarm of Chat shot towards him, like a hive. It pulled into the gaping gash on his neck, swimming into him- whole and heady.

His head was underwater, the noise becoming a world away. Thousands of voices reverberated around his skull. Sweat dripped down his spine, and then up it. It was the creeping, vein-like slime that accompanied the voices.

TOMMY

OMG HI

POG

POG

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD KING

TOMMY

TOMMY

TECHNOBALD

TOMMYBALD??

SHUT UP

KILL YOURSELF

DO IT DO IT

KILL TECHNO

HUNT WILBUR DOWN

NO WE LIKE HIM

NO WE DON’T

KILL TECHNO

KILL YOURSELF

TOMMYYYYY

His head was about to split open, the weight of a thousand words. Chat stopped his throat bleeding, sluggish and darkening quickly. His head still span, but he could somewhat focus on keeping one foot in front of the other.

SEE, WE HELP

He turned, a hard task on shaky legs. Mostly working on auto pilot and the will not to die. Techno didn’t seem to be fairing much better, clutching his wrists where Chat had ripped themselves out of him. A mourning- one that worked like an amputation. Painful and phantom. He paid no mind to Theseus.

Tommy took a glance at Techno’s axe. Tempting fate, tempting himself to give into Chat’s commands.

He kicked the axe away from Techno.

Chat’s tendrils tried to grab at it, a mind of their own. Screaming at him for blood, “Chat, fuck off. I’m not going to hurt him.”

Techno looked up at him, with a look in his eyes that Theseus couldn’t quite place. Tommy crouched, until they were at eye level. The two Chats intertwined, like curious dogs.

KILL HIM

BLOOD BLOOD

SCARE HIM INTO DEATH

TECHNOBALD

“Why would I need to hurt him? I now know who he is,” Tommy smirked, hands twirling around a chat tendril.

Techno lunged forward, falling pathetically onto his arms.

sauntered away, magic still the only thing keeping him upright. Techno didn’t need to know how close he was to crying and collapsing. How close he was from letting the blood loss consume him whole, an angry thing.

He dropped off the edge of the building, letting the red fog surround him and soften his blow.

Unforgiving tiredness weighed on his bones. He let Chat take over his mind, a mix of the words left, right, blood and pog, repeating themselves over and over.

It had led him to climbing through Ranboo and Tubbo’s apartment window. He dropped onto the couch, pulling off his mask. He waited, it would only be a few minutes until Tubbo came home. He’d tell him everything.

Ranboo blipped into the kitchen. Tommy startled, falling off the couch.

“Where’s my book, where did I put it? Dining table, bookshelf, Tommy, why the fuck are you here?” And then a second later, “Tommy, why the fuck are you in the Theseus suit?”

He rubbed the nape of his neck, hissing at the wound that was still open, just pitch black.

WE’RE NOT FUCKING MIRACLE WORKERS

“Sit down, Boo. I’ve got a lot to explain.”

Ranboo obliged, setting his only weapon on the coffee table. Tommy did the same with his knife.

He explained most things, left out the identity of Flare, and the maiming of Eret and the Warden. The latter was because it was unsaid, the silence hanging heavy in the air.

“Where’s Tubbo?”

“He’s- he’s taking over for Sam for now.”

Oh.

Tommy made a note to tell Dream to avoid the Warden and Nuke for a while.

“So what do you need help with?” Was the first thing out of Ranboo’s mouth in response to everything he said. He had sat back in the chair, hands resting on the armrests, legs crossed. Comfortable.

Tommy sputtered, “I- you aren’t even going to question it? Lecture me? Turn me in?”

Ranboo looked at him incredulously, “Tommy. Tommy, level with me here. Do you remember all of the times you covered for Tubbo and I? The time you pissed in a cup for us so we’d come up as unpowered? It’s payback.”

Tommy nodded slowly. Ranboo continued, “However, if you ever go after Tubbo, even if you’ve been ordered to-”

Ranboo leaned forward, face going serious, “I will hunt you down and kill you with my bare hands. I will leak your identity to everyone in the Hero Tower. I will fucking ruin you.”

“I would never- I- Tubbo has been my best friend for longer than you’ve known him. No offence. I would rather out my own identity than let him get hurt.”

The truth was heavy. Chat screamed at him.

Ranboo perked up, “He’s going to be home soon.”

“Shit, that means so is Techno if he’s taking over for Sam. I gotta run,” Tommy said. Ranboo stood, clasping Tommy’s shoulder.

“Stay safe, Tommy.”

Tommy nodded. He yelled goodbyes to the wind as he ran home, magic making him faster as it carried him through the air. It was second nature. He got home a few seconds before hearing the door downstairs slam open, a deadly quiet Techno entering. Tommy threw on the closest hoodie and pants he had.

He walked out of his room, Chat comfortably curled around his waist. Techno stormed up the stairs.

His shoulders were tense, head set forward in a scowl. His chat curled around each wrist.

BRETHEREN

TECHNOBALD

KILL HIM

STAB HIM

YAY TECHNO

TECHNODAD

THE ORIGINAL

Techno’s shoulders slumped when he saw him, tensions visibly leaving his body.

“You’re okay,” Techno muttered, more to himself than Tommy. He stepped forward, Tommy suppressed the urge to flinch. Techno wrapped his arms around Tommy, pulling him in. It was a touch too heavy- a man who didn’t hug often. But it was comfortable.

Techno let him go, after an eternity. The Chats groaned, Tommy suspected in unison. Techno straightened, as if it was a fluke, “Chat seems to love you today.”

“Aren’t they usually screaming to kill me?” Tommy asked. A grim look flashed across Techno’s face.

“Uh- yea, that’s why it’s strange,” Techno shuffled further away, opening the door to his room, “Good night, Tommy.”

Tommy said it back, before returning to his room. He collapsed onto the floor, a heap of himself. Chat called him a baby, said he was too weak. Said they would train him to be stronger. He crawled into the bed, legs refusing to work without the addictive magic running through his veins.

There was a letter on his bed, a formal scrawl of hand writing on the front.

It was addressed to Theseus.

His blood ran cold. He opened it, fear and fervour mixing.

It was an invitation to the Red Banquet.

Chapter Text

When the world goes to shit, the bathroom floor is always a comfort. With sleek white tiles, a sterile nature, and a lock on the door, the bathroom is the perfect place to question your life choices.

VOUCH

MICHAEL IN THE BATHR-

I AM GOING TO SHOOT YOU

[CHAT MESSAGE REMOVED BY MODERATOR]

BLOOD

BLOOD

BLOOOOOOOOOODDDDDD

Hours passed, the cicadas crowing an awful tune outside the window above the toilet. He stared at the cabinet, white wood panelling warping to laugh at him. The icy solace of the side of the tub cooled his burning back. His hoodie was shucked up, fabric gathering around his shoulder blades. The gaping slit to his neck covered still. If he didn’t see it, it didn’t exist. The overly-bright LED light that beamed down on him only contorted his features, leaving a shadowless face. Scars so white they blended with his skin.

 All blemishes removed in the filter.

He put his hands in his lap, ignoring the slimy ink that dripped off them. Ignored the way they were red raw from trying to scrub off Chat. Trying to scrub off skin. It- they- whatever dripped up his back, playful in their approach.

“Why?” A simple word, echoing around the room. The only word he’d said in hours. More a plea than a question. Chat nevertheless responded.

WE DO NOT FULLY KNOW

WE LIKED YOU

YOU GOT INTERESTING

WE DIDN’T WANT YOU TO DIE

FUN

VOUCH

MUMZA SAID SO

YOU HAVE THE ABILITY TO WIELD US

YOU ARE MORE LIKE TECHNO THAN YOU KNOW

THAN WE KNOW

YOU ALREADY HAD SIGILS

WE LIKED PLAYING WITH YOU

It was too loud. He cradled his head, a mess of overlapping words, “But- you made Techno hurt me.”

ALL PART OF THE FUN

ANGST

ANGST

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

Tommy nodded, slowly. Chat traced his veins, settling there for the time being. The blue shadows on his arms, bulging out soon became a pale, thin grey. He sighed, turning his hands over. Inspecting them. The nicks and scars. Bruises on the knuckles. Pale, pink fingertips, bitten and raw.

The beginnings of a migraine were setting in, the shouting becoming overwhelming. One particular chat voice stood out, dulling the noise of the others.

YOU KNOW YOU CAN TURN THE CHAT TO SUB-ONLY MODE, RIGHT?

“What’s- what’s that?”

ONLY CERTAIN CHAT MEMBERS CAN SPEAK.

“How do I do that? And who are you?” He stuttered out.

HOLD ON- I’LL DO IT. AND I’M A MODERATOR.

The noise halved, but only the most bloodthirsty of those remained.

KILL

KILL

KILL

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD KING

SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE

/rainbowchat

BLOOOOODDDD

He slammed the back of his head against the tub, a sickening crack reverberating throughout his skull. The Chat roared like a Roman crowd. His fingers met the back of his head. It was wet. He held his fingers in front of him; they were slick with blood. Chat roamed up his palm to meet it. They licked it off, leaving a grey slime in its place.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD KING

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD KING

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD KING

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD KING

“Who’s the Blood King?”

WELL BLOOD GOD WAS ALREADY TAKEN

YOU ARE

THESEUS IS THE BLOOD KING

YOU ARE THE BLOOD KING

THE BLADE IS A FOLLOWER OF THE BLOOD GOD

TECHNO IS THE FOLLOWER

YOU HAVE AN AUDIENCE NOW

YOU ARE SOMETHING LARGER THAN YOURSELF

TWO HALVES OF A WHOLE

“What- I- I don’t want to be the Blood King.” Techno had given him this fate, let Chat become enthralled with him. He should’ve died on that rooftop, soul bleeding out through his neck. And what a sad way to die, killed by kin.

He didn’t know which outcome he preferred.

Violent images of slit wrists and throats flashed across his brain. Involuntary. Constant images and sounds. Some stupid, inane. Others turned his guts. Chat egged on misery, anything to feed them.

There was a knock on the door. The plywood that had to be replaced last year, the wood at the knob having been rot through. Soaked in rust and water and blood. Too many nights where one of his brothers was patching themselves up.

Tommy stood on shaky legs. Fawn, Chat cooed. Soon enough he’ll learn, the mass choir repeated. He gripped the edge of the dye-stained sink and unlocked the door.

Wilbur stared back.

“You look like shit,” He said, stating the obvious. Tommy looked at himself in the mirror. Ghastly, echoed back at him. The hoodie swallowed him whole, a lithe, frail thing with a wiry face. Opened his mouth, yellowing teeth that grew sharp in the light. Feral. He turned to the side, bruises already mottling on the back of his head.

“I think I’m catching something,” Sick to his stomach, Chat jeered.

“Come to bed, Toms.” Wilbur commanded. No longer could Tommy fall into his easy voice, a slumbering thing. But he heeded the words all the same. His footsteps treaded the ground with a certain uneasiness, stepping past him.

Wil stopped him by throwing his arm out, straight across Tommy’s torso. He hit the arm with a solid whack, “Tommy, is your head ok?”

Even without the charmspeak, the pure worry in Wilbur’s voice didn’t allow Tommy to do anything but tell the truth, “No.”

He herded them back into the quaint bathroom. Wilbur sat him down on the toilet lid like he was a fragile thing. So reminiscent of the night he did this with Techno. The older man took a step back, crouching to rifle through the medicine cabinet. He pulled out a box triumphantly.

It read ‘Pet Care Kit’, with a light blue cross on it.

“Uh, Wil?” Tommy started.

He looked at the very kit he pulled out, an amused look passing across his face, “Tech is a pig, Dad's a bird.”

Tommy shrugged, a light chuff exiting his lungs. Chat curled around his ribcage once again, lethargic and comforting- in a strange sense of the word. A constant companion, a choir of judges. Wil looked at him, as if seeing him in the light for the first time. All his features harsh and unforgiving, the shadows making no solace. No place to hide under the strange brightness. Tommy nodded his head to Wil, before turning to expose the back of his head.

Sharp pains needled at the site. Wilbur got something prepared behind him. He’d rather not know, even if Chat screamed danger. Danger at leaving your back turned.

He understood why Techno went mad.

He remembered nights where he would wait by the bathroom door as it was Techno that sat on the toilet seat cover, with Wilbur meticulously stitching up every cut. Or vice versa- the nights where Wilbur had gotten a little too drunk, a little too rowdy. Ended up with a split lip that he didn’t even try to stop, eyes pleading for a sobering of the mind.

Phantom didn’t often meet people who could resist his mind control, so ending up hurt was usually out of carelessness.

Tommy would wait by the door, ears pricked for every whimper and comment made by the pair. And now it was his turn in the- strictly metaphorical- hot seat. Wilbur hissed at the site of clotting blood and his mottled skin.

He touched it, however lightly. Tommy flinched back. Wil muttered apologies as he went, right before pressing whitehotpain into his skull.

Tommy cried out, biting down on his hand to muffle himself. His throat brushed against his hoodie, head splittingly painful. He rocked back and forth, trying to ease the pain in either area. Wilbur whispered soothing words, charmspeak laced into every one, but Tommy couldn’t quite catch them. They slipped through his hands like sand. Like memories of when Wilbur’s pain soothing worked.

Chat just generally insulted Wilbur, to kill, maim. He waved them away, a small movement that Wil wouldn’t catch. A moderator- their voice temporarily dulling the rest- pinged sub-only chat off.

The pressure was immense, cramming into every inch of his skull. He felt like he was going to explode. He gripped the sides of his face, keeping the pressure off his neck. Chat flooded in support. A small respite, that outer Chat wasn’t so bloodthirsty.

Wilbur pressed the pain in again, that time Tommy was able to catch the word ‘sterilise’, so it mightn’t have been unnecessary torture, but it still felt it. He grit his teeth, muffling several swears and confessionals.

“It’s almost over, you’re alright.” He didn’t feel it.

Soon- a lifetime later, cool liquid poured in, slicking the back of his neck. Healing, Tommy vaguely registered. He angled his neck, letting some of it drip though to the gash on his throat. He could feel the outer edges of the skin pulling itself back together. Wilbur took it as relief- which it was. He ruffled the top of Tommy’s head, kissing the curls. Wilbur recorked the bottle, piling them back into the Pet Care Kit with a meticulous eye.

The medicine cabinet fell shut with a bump of Wil’s hip, and Tommy turned to face him. A mix of bile and desperate little lies, soothing things clawed up his throat as he saw the pure heartbreak thinly veiled on Wilbur’s face. He looked like a little kid again, in a sweater too big for him. Doe eyed boy. One that Tommy only faintly remembered from childhood, even then when Wil was taller than him.

Wilbur saw him for who he was, a messy, hurt boy. The curtain of childhood naivety had dropped. He reached down to grab Tommy’s face.

There was a moment, one of silence and turmoil. Wil seemed to snap himself out of it, after a lifetime of them staring at each other. He beckoned Tommy up, holding him by the shoulders.

He let Tommy lean most of his weight on him, as they hobbled back to Wilbur’s room. Tommy threw himself onto the bed, no longer flooding the magic into his legs. Chat groaned in protest at the position. He shifted, looking at Wilbur.

“Thank you, Wil,” He said.

Wil nodded, more to himself than to Tommy. Wilbur sat on the side of the bed, wary. As if he thought the slightest movement would set Tommy off, a frenzy. Tommy curled up, making himself as small as possible. Giving Wil enough space to breathe easy, even if Chat pulsed around his ribs.

WARM

LIKE WIL

WIL GOOD

WIL SAFE

KILL HIM

STAB HIS GUTS

/RAINBOWCHAT

POG

 He got into bed beside Tommy, laying a hand on his back, right beneath his heartbeat. As if to make sure he was still alive during the night. The two settled, and drifted off in comfortable silence.

Chapter Text

Ranboo was smarter than he appeared. He wore the crown of ‘Amnesiac’ like a descriptor. Made him easy to digest. Easy to forgo the nuances of his person when he forgot the conversation twenty minutes ago. And he used it well.

He had slipped under the Power Registry radar until his hybridity was too obvious to cover up, having made one of the girls in PE class teach him the ins and outs in concealer. When he had been caught, a fire lit in his eyes. Unlike Tubbo, who was a feral, snarling thing that had blown up the school admin, Ranboo was more subtle.

He tried, so valiantly, to make them think that the amnesia was his power. That his hybridity messed up his genes- it had, it was a very common trait.

But he had forgotten about the book.

Ironically so, as the ‘DO NOT READ’ book was confiscated. They found his power. They exploited him. The night it all came out, he cried. Played an innocent lamb who didn’t know any better.

It had taken them threatening to test the whole school for powers for him to give up the act. Turning stoic. There were too many people hiding their powers for him to even consider it. He chose the Hero Registry. On a technicality, one that saved a lot of people from being in danger.

When Tommy had shown up on his couch, blood soaked and weary, he had decided to make his choice. Sure, he had been playing with the Heroes’ side. But he chose Tommy. He chose to help. He chose to not write it down, for fear of it being found again.

He chose people, not sides.

When Tommy had texted him, begging for a coffee meet up, he cancelled his Hero training. Said he was sick. The sort of head-sick and dizzy that left him nauseous. Nervous wreck.

So he sat, back straight like he was any sort of dignified. He wore half of his suit, tie and blazer forlorn. It made him feel like the good guy, the suit and the crown. Like he wasn’t a fucked-up runaway with too little self-confidence and memory issues. And the whole ‘accomplice in whatever crimes Theseus committed’, but that one was a temporary hiccup.

Tommy sat, another guy sitting in the seat beside them both. He vaguely recognised him, but his brain turned up no names.

Tommy gestured, “Ranboo, this is Purpled. Purpled, this is Ranboo. Play nice.”

Purpled gnashed his teeth at Tommy. Playful, but both boys caught the way his teeth grew sharp, if only for a second. A trick of the light.

“So, why’d you want to meet up, Toms? And why is he here?” Ranboo cleared his throat, wiggling his fingers towards Purpled. Purpled was lazy in his chair, oozing confidence.  He saluted Ranboo.

“Purpled’s an illusionist, he’s making sure we won’t get caught talking about… it.” Tommy waved Purpled’s presence off.

“You see, right now, you look like a regular sized guy with normal features,” Purpled said, mocking yet light hearted. Ranboo touched one of his vitiligo spots self-consciously, the glowing purple veins pulsing underneath. When he was first indoctrinated into Hero Training, he was told there was something distinctly unsettling about him. The way dark, obsidian colours spots littered his skin like burn scars. The way his mouth contorted, fangs and a forked tongue. But his eyes were so very human.

That was the tipping point, his eyes. Blue as the sky, so unusual for an ender hybrid.

He shook his head. Tommy observed him. Tommy was more careful than he looked, mouth puckered with scars that knew how to talk his way out of trouble. His hands were restless, beating against his chin with an easy intensity. He knew how to cross the line. Knew how to stay endearing.

“I need a favour,” The blond said bluntly, “I have been invited to the Red Banquet.”

“Oh,” Ranboo said. His voice caught in his throat, “I- If it’s anything I have to lie to Tubbo about, I can’t do it.”

“Would it be okay if you didn’t tell him?”

“Sure, just… If he asks- I- I can’t lie to my husband. I’m sorry.”

Tommy considered him carefully, “That’s alright. I wouldn’t ask that of you.”

Ranboo slumped down, as if he was a puppet whose strings had just been cut. The tension in the air faded. He spoke, “What do you need?”

“I need you to forge a field trip letter so I can go to Las Nevadas,” Tommy spoke with an air of seriousness. Purpled snorted. They turned to him.

“Why can’t you just say you’re staying at Ranboo’s for like 2 nights? It only says suit fittings for the day before, and then the Banquet on the letter,” Purpled said.

Tommy pulled out his letter, carefully shoved in between his laptop screen and its key board. He showed the two of them. It read;

Dear Whom It May Concern,

We formally request the pleasure of your company at the annual celebration of the Red Banquet.

Time: Sunday the 3^rd to Friday the 8^th

Location: The Hall, Las Nevadas

All accommodation will be paid for

Bring a mask or another identity hider if you wish to remain anonymous

Regards,

The Jester

Purpled scanned the note, “That’s weird, he must want to meet you or something.”

Fear made its way up Tommy’s back, icily spreading across his wingspan.

Ranboo seemed the least perturbed, nodding at the note. He started, “So you need me to just… write a letter? About going to somewhere for a couple days?”

Tommy nodded. Ranboo shrugged.

They shook hands, before Ranboo blipped away. He would give the new letter to Tommy in a few hours, going to deliver it into Tommy’s school bag while the blond was having dinner with his family.

Tommy turned to Purpled, “I met your brother, y’know?”

Purpled’s eyes turned comically large. He grabbed Tommy by the shoulders, “You- how?”

“I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.” Tommy blinked, a slow drawl to his words.

“For fuck’s sake,” Purpled rubbed his eyes, “You’ve got a deathwish.”

“Says the vigilante.”

“I’m not the one fighting my brother every few nights.”

Tommy gave him a look. Purpled sighed, “Ok, well. Maybe I am.”

YEA, PURPLED

POG

VOUCH

POP OFF KING

“Listen, did you want to forget all this and go get some ice cream?” Tommy asked.

Purpled nodded, shoulders hanging heavy.

Tommy got home relatively unscathed, despite the Flare and Nuke fight that was raging on the outskirts of his block. He toed off his shoes, whistling a bird-like greeting to Phil. Phil whistled back, similar to Tommy’s but distinctively inhuman. Phil was sitting cross-legged near the small side table next to their bookshelf. He sat on a rug, one encrusted with the NutPig symbol, a pig jawbone with pink carnations nestled behind the teeth. The side table held a few candles, two skulls, and pictures of Mum.

Tommy slipped his bag down beside the kitchen island, before joining Phil in prayer.  They stared longingly at the picture of Mum, wishing. The two stayed like that, until the sun went down. Until Techno came home.

He woke them from their stupor. In one hand, he carried three pizzas. In the other, he grasped Tommy’s shoulder and helped him up. Chat curled lazily around his waist, cool yet comforting.

MUMZA

MUMZA

MUMZA

MUMZA

VOUCH

Tommy went upstairs, two steps at a time. He yelled to the two that he was just washing his hands. Stumbling into his room, he fixed his posture before placing his school bag by his bed. For a second, he fiddled with the strings on his sweatpants, then went to turn back to the dining room.

As he was headed back down the stairs, he heard the tell-tale blip of Ranboo.

Tommy tapped the railing, an acknowledgement. He continued down the stairs.

The pizza, despite looking heavenly, was pooled with grease, and tasted like it had been sprayed with perfume. He choked down half a slice. Willed himself not to gag. Phil and Techno talked over the dinner table. Mostly about work, about how Sam was recovering. Tommy acted confused- as if he wasn’t the reason why Sam was hurt in the first place.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD KING

DOESN’T HAVE THE SAME RING TO IT

BLOOD

BLOOD

FUCK EM UP TOMMY

“Well, that new villain, Theseus. He’s one of those telekinetic fuckers- put Netherite through Sam’s bloodstream. Now everyone’s unsure on whether he can use his powers or not. He might have to go back to being a lab jockey,” Phil said.

Techno snorted, “Like he doesn’t want that.”

“Techno, mate!” Phil chided, wings ruffling up.

Chat- Techno’s Chat- reached over to grab him another slice, “He hates being a Hero, Dad. You and me, we’re made for it. Got violence running through our veins. But some people-”

He glanced at Tommy, “Aren’t made for it.”

BURN

NEED SOME ICE

POG

POG

BASH HIS FUCKING SKULL IN

TECHIE-WECHIE

Tommy shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The other two conversed without him, an easy banter. Practiced. Techno was never really Phil’s son. Ever since he presented, he had always strived to be Phil’s equal. Putting in so much effort to be seen as older than he was.

FAWN TECH

LIL BABY

Tommy observed the man. Techno rubbed his eyes with bruised knuckles, “Chat, why are you calling me a baby?”

WE CAN COMMUNICATE WITH OTHER CHAT

OTHER CHAT CAN HEAR US

BUT NOT TECHIE-WECHIE

The two Chats intertwined under the table, a truce entirely on Tommy’s leg. Techno continued talking.

“Oh, wait, Phil!” Tommy remembered the excursion note, “I’ve got a field trip note for you to sign.”

Phil nodded, gesturing for him to get it. Tommy shoved Chat back up his shirt, them groaning at the loss of contact.

He tripped over his own feet, the magic giving a too-large pulse of energy. Techno laughed. He felt his face heat up, but continued up the stairs anyways. He grabbed the note from his school bag, the paper crumpling between his fingertips. Tommy glanced at the page. It looked official enough.

Phil and Techno were laughing at the table. He could hear them from where he stood. His legs went weak. Chat slithered down them, reinforcing. A brace.

The red sparks he had grown so comfortable with faded in his fingers, before re-lighting. He hastily patted the edge of the page he left, the burnt singe almost unnoticeable. It pulsed once again as he tried to go down the stairs, almost flying. His body felt weightless, like he had one of those slow-fall potions that Phil always had stocked in his medicine cabinet.

Phil acknowledged him with a nod. He placed the sheet in front of him. Tommy turned, reaching over the counter to nick a pen from the island.

NEVER LEAVE YOUR BACK TURNED

DANGER DANGER

TECHNO WILL KILL YOU

NOTSAFENOTSAFE

WE

DO

NOT

TRUST

THE

CROWFATHER

Chat ruptured his head. They pulled from behind his eyeballs, shrinking him into a mass. He heard a yell. One that came from his own throat- he realised after the fact. There were hands on his shoulders, pushing down. Grounding. Chat- his own chat, the one that was almost an extension of the self- slipped under the hands, under his hoodie. They were a barrier.

Chat was trying to protect him.

Like a puppet, he was pulled into Techno, by the strings of his being. A warm vibration. Chuffing, a Piglin trait that Tommy could only do a poor imitation of. Techno’s Chat melted over him. A black waterfall of cold and slimy. They couldn’t help their physical form.

Chirping- chittering. Chuffing. Two hybrids calmed him. Phil’s scent washed over him, like icing gone bad. He pressed his head into Techno, trying to hide.

“I-I think I have a migraine,” The words warbled out of his mouth, the feeling unfamiliar. Talking was unfamiliar. Chat roared inside of his head. They were a desperate, cornered animal. Keening to lash out, to fight. He willed them to stay under his shirt. He mumbled to himself, “Stay under, stay calm.”

Over and over, until even Chat repeated it. A hand on the small of his back, leading him to his room. He dully nodded, a grateful note to the whine he let out, barely knowing how to communicate. It was painful. Suffocating.

The bed was warm. A contrast from Chat. Techno and Phil talked in dulcet tones, words he wasn’t supposed to hear.

“It’s- he’s like when I am when Chat is screaming for blood.” A shift, “Phil, you can’t tell me you haven’t noticed it.”

“I- mate. I want him to have powers- obviously I do. But if he develops Chat, he’s going to die.” The room grew heavy, Phil’s scent taking on the tinge of rot, “He’s just a kid, he wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

“I was younger than him when I was given Chat.”

“That’s different. You’re stronger than him. You were already presenting as a Piglin.”

Techno’s voice got bitter, “Stop infantilising him. He’s 16, he can handle a power.”

“I’m not saying he can’t handle power. I’m saying he can’t handle Chat.” Tommy cracked an eye open just in time to watch Chat give a half-hearted slap to Phil’s shoulder.

THIS IS SO RUDE

WE CAN HEAR YOU YOU KNOW

“Then let me teach him.”

“Enough. Techno, I’m going to bind his powers if he develops Chat.”

Frantic images of Mr. Grian’s hands flashed across his mind, the binding of his powers. He couldn’t do that. He’d be vulnerable. Chat protected him. The mind altering power blocker protected him. The glowing telekinesis protected him. They kept him alive.

“I can control it. I can teach him to.” He heard Phil scoff, then the rustling of fabric as Phil pulled up the new claw marks over his arms.

The Piglin hissed. Phil made a soothing chirp in the back of his throat. They closed his door, but not before Phil set down the signed permission note on his desk. Footsteps faded into the background white noise.

Chapter Text

The week before going to Las Nevadas passed too quickly, anxiety building up in the palms of Tommy’s hands. His bag was crammed with the clothes he was going to take. Safety pins held the burst seams together. Ranboo sat in his chair, legs tucked underneath him as Chat grabbed several unnecessary items and tried to shove them into the already-full bags.

Ranboo’s suit was creased, he was too tall to fit comfortably in the swivel chair. “So, how are you going to get around seeing your family?”

“They think I’m going to, uh-” He glanced as the fake permission form, “The Badlands.”

“So, what? You’re going to wear your mask the entire time you’re in Las Nevadas? You do know you’ll be occupying the same part of the city right?”

Tommy froze. He hadn’t thought of that. Only other logistics, like how he would be hanging around with Dream and Bad. Accommodation. Normal things to worry about on a trip.

“Luck?”

Ranboo gave him a look, “Luck?”

“And face masks. And beanies, and sunglasses.”

“So you’re going to go around looking like a bank robber?” Ranboo drawled.

Tommy raised an eyebrow, “Do you remember 10^th grade?”

Memories of Ranboo desperately trying to hide his face, his hands. Anywhere the spots leaked, purple points of terror. Long sleeves and a beanie in the summer, sweating his guts out. It was a time.

“Fair play.”

The alarm on his phone rang. Chat ceased with their fussing, withdrawing back into him. Ranboo stood slowly, cracking all of his limbs. The bag was heavy, so Tommy shot a hand of red sparks towards it, a warm crimson glow enveloping it. They dragged their feet down the stairs, both laughing at Tommy’s struggle. Eventually, Ranboo grabbed one side of the bag, while Tommy grabbed the other. Phil greeted them at the bottom of the steps.

“Hullo, boys,” He said lowly, clutching a warm mug in between his hands. The steam rose, visible in its ascension. His wings were semi-groomed, the under feathers straightened and neat.

“Hi Mr. Minecraft,” Ranboo said. Tommy nodded at Phil. His robes were perfectly in place, wraps as well. He had risen with the sun, like many avians do. Phil braced Tommy, hands on his shoulders.

“Call me if anything goes wrong,” He said simply. Phil turned back to Wilbur, who had been previously unnoticed in the hammock chair. Wil waved him off, before returning to grooming Phil’s wings.

It used to be a family routine, every two weeks. Mum would sit, brushing through Techno’s hair. Braiding the hair, with beads and discarded feathers. Solid gold chains, and whatever else she could find. Wil and Phil would sit adjacent. Wil would pick out the molting feathers as Phil purred. A weird avian trait. It was always as the sun came up, so Tommy would wake up halfway through their ritual. Still young.

The last time it had happened he was about 7 or 8. Too young to know much besides love. He had sat next to his mum, curled in on himself. Comfortable.

She hummed a familiar tune. One he could never quite place, that had never held as much weight as it did in his memories. It was a jumpy tune, as her hands danced in Techno’s hair, clapping as her golden bracelets banged against one another. Techno had placed a solid hand on his head. He was always brutish for his age.

Techno was just a kid.

He didn’t have Chat yet. He had barely presented. But anger coiled in his arms. On guard. He wasn’t violent, not before Chat came along.

Techno never knew his strength, always thought he was a wiry thing. Like Wilbur. Even though they were brothers- biological, at that, Wilbur never got the Piglin traits. Only a power.

He was overly interested in martial arts because he wanted to protect Wilbur, protect himself. Tommy didn’t think he knew that he was a hulking mass of potential threat.

Well, until he got Chat.

His mother was already in her day dress, at least two swords hidden in the folds of her gown. Once she finished twirling beads through Techno’s hair, she swept through the house, donning her Hero mask. She knelt, to look into Tommy’s eyes. Mum smelled like rot, always. It was a comforting nuance.

“I love you, my little Icarus,” A warbled note left her mouth.

He couldn’t remember what she sounded like anymore.

Techno got his love of mythology from Mum. Techno was dubbed Protesilaus. Wilbur dubbed Podarces. Phil was Zephyrus, formerly Daedalus. And Tommy, Tommy was little Icarus.

Both Techno and Tommy were cautionary tales. First to die. Brothers in that right. Mum promised they would be dubbed god's names when they grew up. Just like Dad. She rushed through the house, preparing them for the day. Phil made breakfast.

She walked out the door, the robes of her dress flowing behind her.

It was the last time any of them saw her.

Phil had taken them out of school, halfway through the day. Sat them down. The NutPig mask in his hands.

Nobody knew exactly how she went.

Phil never said how he found the mask. Just that he did.

Wilbur deftly weaved his hands through Phil’s wings. He had continued the routine, even after Mum had passed.

Tommy turned his back to them, hooking arms with Ranboo. They blipped out of the house.

The airport was a swirling mass of white, too cold and loud. A fake sanctuary. He tripped down one of the endless corridors. Ranboo was more orientated, leading him to the gate.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay, Tommy?”

“Never been surer, big man.” He felt like he was going to throw up. Red thrummed through his brain, the veins on his calves turning an inky black. He haphazardly bid Ranboo a goodbye. Like a marionette, his body moved like there was something pulling at the strings. He gave a gaping grin, sharp and lopsided.

Nobody was on the plane, just a flight attendant. Chat unfurled itself, imitating people as it sat in the seats next to him. It was kind of horrifying to see. Shadow, faceless people.

OI

THIS IS RUDE

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD KING

FUCK YA

His hands shot out, red sparks at the tip. The camera all shot towards him. They ripped themselves off the wire hinges and flew towards his head. He ducked.

Well, add property damage to the bill. His reflection in the airplane mirror gave him a grimace.

He waved down the flight attendant, ready to play a game of 21 questions.

She was a shrinking thing, with a black eye and bright pink hair. A bright gash across her neck, mirroring his. A lopsided smile and scars that trailed her porcelain arms. “What would you like, young man?”

She said young man the same way Tommy would say bitch. Tommy cleared his throat, “Why am I the only one on this plane?”

“Did no-one bother to tell you? Jester. Ok, this is a Las Nevadas plane-”

“Obviously.” He gestured to the flag that hung near the cockpit.

“Don’t interrupt me. So Jester doesn’t want you to be on a plane with the other Heroes and Villains because someone-” She pointed the sky above, as if to note a bigger sentiment that they weren’t aware of, “-who’s on his side thought it would be a bad idea.”

“Who thought that?”

She shrugged, her shirt slipping down slightly to reveal the sides of a tattoo- a few leaves at least, “Beats me, I just take orders. Probably one of Jester’s friends or husbands, they’re usually in your area.”

“Why do you work for him?”

“I don’t.” At Tommy’s confused look, she continued, “I’m a… freelancer, let’s say. He just gives me some jobs or I ask him for favours. This is arguably the easiest job.”

“What is it?”

She snorted, “Make sure you get to The Casino alive.”

Chat screamed, trying to lash at her. For even suggesting that Tommy could die. Lazily, she batted them off.

“So is there a chance I could die?”

Las Nevadas, the city of angels. With big neon signs and glowing sigils on the brick walls of every building, it was the magic epicentre of the SMP. Winged people thrived with the traffic signs placed on the tops of buildings. The home of the Jester. The only neutral land left.

“You’re asking if you could die when there is going to be an influx of Heroes and Villains into Las Nevadas?”

Touché.

Tommy drew his legs up to his chest. The woman sat in the aisle seat across from him, laying languidly. She flashed a feral smile, teeth inhumanely sharp. The light caught on the gold necklace she wore.

“So what are you?” He said.

“Depends, what are you?” She spat back, watching him carefully.

Tommy pondered it. He wanted to know what side she was on. But that would involve telling her that he was a villain.

Somehow, the thought of lying didn’t cross his mind.

“Human,” He chose to say, answering a different question than the one he asked. She snorted, an amused glint in her eyes that said she didn’t quite believe the answer. He elaborated, “My father’s a hybrid, Mum’s unpowered.”

She seemed more satisfied by this answer, “Thought I could smell something strange running through you.”

“So what are you?” He repeated, watching the way she tilted her head towards the lights of the cabin, her pupils turning into slits.

“Vampire.” She said, breathing through her mouth as if the words were smoke. Chat withdrew itself.

DANGER DANGER

UHHHH

THAT’S KINDA HOT

STOP THAT

BLOOD?

“Chat, shut up,” He hissed. He turned his focus back to the woman, and stuck out his hand, “I’m… Thomas. I’m Thomas.”

She nodded, lazily shaking his hand, “Niki.”

He took the plunge, “What side are you on?”

“Whichever one gives me the most.” A non-answer. He grimaced. She spoke again, “I hope you’re a villain so I don’t have to kill you one day, you seem nice.”

She straightened up, “Why does Jester want you alive so bad? He doesn’t even escort his husbands this way. Though I guess that draws more attention to them.”

“I don’t know,” Tommy said, truthful in his delivery, “Why doesn’t he escort his partners like this?”

“Because they’re like, top-secret or whatever. No citizen knows their identities.”

The seatbelt sign clicked on, and Niki gave him a two fingered salute. She swaggered towards the stewardess cabin. Before she faded out of sight, Niki turned to him, “Make sure to switch into your suit before you get off. Security reasons.”

He nodded, scrambling for his bag that was in the seat beside him. He pulled out the carefully-wrapped suit, as well as a resistance vest, his mask, and his weapons. Reworked old weapons that were in his basement, all new and shiny again.

Getting clothes on while on a plane was surprisingly difficult. His ass was numb from sitting in the too-stiff seats, his legs burnt of disuse. Talking to Niki made the flight a lot less taxing, but his body still reminded him of it.

He snorted. Ass. Chat swarmed his suit, pulling it up over his weak legs, as he clipped the vest into place.

The final touch, his mask. It sat heavy in his lap. He would be a Villain, bearing the mark of one of the greatest Heroes of all time.

How sacrilegious. He hoped his mum smiled down on him. Thought it was a real funny joke, at the very least.

Icarus, not heeding Daedalus’ commands.

There was a joke in there, he thought. Something to smile at. He did.

Oh, he really was a cautionary tale.

Theseus, sidekick to the Dream Team. Theseus, helping fight his own father. Theseus, removing every part of him that made him Icarus, and replacing them all the same. Was he still Theseus? Was he still Icarus? Was he the same boy who his mother loved?

Did it really matter?

Tommy shook himself out of his trance, the image of the blood-soaked mask from so long ago still burnt into his brain. The plane was landing, the wheels screeching against the tarmac, a desire to be airborne once again.

He donned the mask. Clipped himself out of the seat, bag slung over his shoulder. In reality, the bag was only held up by the magic making it lighter, carrying it through the air.

But hey, at least he didn’t look like a wimp.

He stepped onto the aisle. Making eye contact with Niki.

Making eye contact with Nemesis. One of the Villains who had betrayed the Heroes, but refused to join Dream. One of the former Heroes that Wilbur used to be friends with. Her Hero name was Nihachu, before Techno had accidentally condemned her partner to death. Manifold, a half-cyborg who Techno didn’t see before exploding a car right in his face.

Tommy was flooded with Chat showing him the still memory of Techno seeing Manifold.

He was hunched over, swaying towards Techno like he wasn’t sober. Manifold’s metal legs seared into his skin, the burns rippling up his body. Raw, fresh.

Techno had done this.

Manifold looked up, pleading. A gargle came out of his mouth. Wet and slick. Blood and oil splattered on the pavement. One of his eyes was still the electric blue, laser focused on Techno. The other was empty. Clots poured out of it, staining him red. On closer look, the eye was there. Just splintered, blood making up the majority of it.

Techno hadn’t wanted to do this. He was trying to catch a criminal.

But the damage was all the same. Chat had delighted in it.

Tommy almost puked. He looked away, before Chat found their new focus and stopped blasting the horrific image in his mind.

Nemesis gave him a reassuring half-smile. Half her face was covered, the other half almost unrecognisable. Instead of the small fangs she had sported when talking to Tommy, there were sharp canines that almost protruded entirely out of her mouth. Her lips were stained blood red. Tommy glanced at her hand to see the culprit, a Band-Aid outline underneath her hand wraps.

She leaned on an umbrella, one that looked alarmingly similar to Puffy’s. Niki beckoned him closer. Her breath stank of metal, he noted as she leaned forward to straighten out his mask. They walked off the plane together.

Night settled into the pink skyline, neon lights starting to turn on. A pathway right into the heart of the city. Nemesis still used her umbrella, skin going noticeably paler in the natural light. It looked like a glow. Ethereal. He followed her out of the tarmac field and into the airport. Of which, was a small, purple-lit mall centre. Pop music played from the various speakers positioned as life bustled through it.

He grabbed onto her arm. She weaved in and out of rooms, corridors, and people’s ways. No one bat an eye at the two Villains travelling through the airport.

Las Nevadas truly was neutral grounds. A large glowing sigil was carved right about the entrance to the airport. He only vaguely recognised it as one of the ones in the Dream Team house. It was protection or calming or one of those generic sigils.

It was both an eternity and about three seconds before they got out of the airport. Tommy checked his phone. It was only five pm, despite the twilight. Niki nodded at his disbelief, before leading him again through different alleyways.

Glass crunched under their feet, the arterials of the city swarmed with drunk and powered people. The entire city glowed purple, with lights around every building. Even in the dark, Tommy could make out the details in the side walk.

From maps, the entire place looked like a target. All surrounding the Casino, the Jester’s place of residence. The only person allowed to swindle you in the city.

Actually walking through the place was a different story, as Niki turned down every alley and market stall visible. She picked up a pastry, and threw it to Tommy.

“How much is this?” He said to her.

“Free, I own the stall.” The girl at the stand- it was fucking Drista again goddammit- nodded to Niki’s statement.

Tommy shrugged, before biting into the best tasting bun he had ever had. Suddenly, he was debating moving into the heart of Las Nevadas purely to get fat off these buns. Drista smirked.

The brick road shone with golden embellishments, all glowing under the dusky light. It led into the inner ring. Everything lead back to the Casino. Purple veins travelled up the sides of the buildings, like a river rushing water and crowds through. Niki stepped away, Tommy followed. Even the graffitied walls of the alleyways were vibrant, a city made for darkness. It depicted shining bastions and the deep orange throws of magma- the brick spiralling into deep Netherrack. Nine crows perched on the fortress of brick.

It was the Old World, the world where powers came from. The world with portals still littered around the Overworld, Netherite seemingly abandoned right outside of them.

The Nether.

There’s a common belief- one that Mr. Grian loved to go on tangents about. The Old World is where souls were born, where they cultivated magic and mystic and potions. When those souls passed on- not quite died, but reincarnated into the Overworld beings- they are sent to the same ground Tommy walked on. The same people, just a different time. A different place. Some souls came to the Overworld without dying, constructing their own path.

Phil was one of them. He never liked to talk about those days. Mum was another, surpassing Phil by a century.

And the belief says that when Overworld souls die, they go to the End. They shake hands and live out their days in purple static solitude.

He hoped his mum got to be at peace in the End. If it existed.

Niki nudged him forward. The road under his feet turned solid gold, his footprints a visible marker. He looked up.

The Casino.

It stood as the centrepiece. A giant, golden beating heart suspended in the middle of it. The purple veins ran up the building, illuminating every window. The rest of it was a sleek white. A molten fountain spurted out pink water in front of it. He took a step forward, the perspective of the building forcing his entire head upwards. Nemesis skipped up to a security guard, whispering something that turned the man a pale shade of fear.

Glimmering golden arches gave entry to a fancy hotel-looking hallway. He tried to grab a glance into the various pokies, bars, and poker segments that shot off of the main hall. Chat tried to grasp at each and every one, trying to pull themselves in.

The only one they stopped long enough for him to get distracted by was one of the machine pokies areas, which contained a very different aesthetic to the dignified hall.

Inside, men in suits and hunchbacks sat limply over brightly coloured machines. The floor was the same as the 70s arcades, gaudy and eye-catching. Even from the distance away he was standing, he could still spot a dribble of drool out of one of the men’s mouth.

It seemed the main attraction had not arrived yet, as Niki got more fidgety by the second. He leaned over to her, “Are you alright?”

She pointed up at the artificial lights. The hallway was the only place so far in Las Nevadas that was properly lit. Nemesis said in turn, “I’m sensitive to bright light. I want to get out of here quick before I get a sunburn.”

“Vampires can burn under artificial light?”

“We tan,” She hissed, disgusted by the statement. The workers and various gambling-addicted customers milled around them. None of them payed any mind to the two Villains.

The noise stopped. Not as if time froze, but like everyone stood to attention. Tommy whipped his head around wildly.

There he was, bathed in the golden glow light. Like a prince entering his own coronation, he stepped down the stairs with a careful intensity. Tommy looked him up and down. Black slacks, suspenders that held three different old-fashioned guns, yellow wings that peeked out from over his shoulders like a halo, a grizzled expression and a long, thick scar slashed across his face.

The Jester.

Chapter Text

The crowd kneeled before the Jester. All in awe of the man who ran the city of gold. He beckoned them up with a sweep of his arm, his wing shadowing the movement. With every step forward, his boots clicked against the floor, the sound bounding off every wall. Jester stopped once he saw Tommy, saw the severed pig snout mask.

He lunged forward to greet Tommy. Tommy shifted, Chat swinging with the momentum. Jester settled an arm around Tommy’s shoulder, steering him away from the hall. A hard task for someone who was barely 5’8, but he managed. A jovial expression settled on his face as he waved Nemesis to another worker. She nodded to Tommy, a goodbye.

Jester pulled him through several different smaller hallways, each more ominous than the last. Whenever Tommy tried to speak, Jester would shush him, eyeing off the lights that hanged right above them.

He stopped, pushing a door through to another grand hallway. Red and gold carpets lined the wooden floors like a catwalk, all leading to the set of mahogany doors at the end of the hall.

Jester nodded to one of the guards that stood left of the doors. They snapped their fingers. Carvings of fights, of poker chips and pickaxes were engrained in the slats, all coming to life. The carvings all ran into the hinges of the doors, the animated faces speaking reverence of the Jester. Eventually, there was a hole big enough for them to fit through. Jester stepped into his office, settling behind the foreboding desk.

Tommy stepped in, lingering by the cool magic door.

“Hello, Theseus,” Jester drawled.

On one of the plush seats that faced the desk sat Bad. He was sprawled out, scribbling something that wasn’t English in a leather-bound book. Bad paid no mind to the Jester’s dramatics.

Tommy decided to play into the act, “Hello, Jester.”

Jester gestured to one of the seats in front of him, “Sit, I insist.”

He sat, crossing his hands in his lap and leaning forward. Jester mirrored his stance. Chat poked at Bad. Tommy didn’t stop them.

They sat in tense silence. Tommy shifted his foot to be under him. Jester’s wings fluffed up at the movement, the yellow making the light dance around the room. A few ungroomed feathers were shaken out, falling to the ground at the motion. His eyes followed them, leaving the staring contest he was having with Jester instead to watch as the feathers fell.

“Your wings aren’t being cared for.” A statement, one that broke the silence.

“That’s not what I’ve brought you here to talk about,” Jester replied in turn. Tommy’s fingers itched to straighten out the plume. That wing looked painful, with the underbrush bent in the wrong direction and the feathers stuck together out of pure spite.

“Then talk.” He snarked back.

Jester straightened his back. His eyes seemed to look into Tommy’s very soul. And they found nothing useful, by the way he switched his gaze back to Bad.

“Bad, can you confirm that in this meeting that I am not and will not attempt to use my power or any other means of deception to swindle, mislead or misconstrue Theseus, and that if I am found guilty of doing any of these things, I will be severely punished in any way that Theseus see fit.” Jester declared, holding his hand out to Tommy.

Bad nodded and confirmed.

“Do I have to say all that? Because you might have to write that down if so,” Tommy said, clasping the Jester’s scarred hand.

A warm glow flooded through their hands. It travelled through Tommy’s body, his fingers and toes prickling at the sensation. One of his sigils- mind power blocker- burned, just below the skin.

“It’s just a precaution because of my power, Mr. Minecraft.” Jester knew who he was. Jester only used Theseus for formalities.

Maybe that was a bad thing.

Tommy tested the man, “So if you know my name, can I know yours?”

Jester regarded him, something unrecognisable in his eyes. It was a second before he spoke, “My friends call me Quackity.”

“And your enemies?”

“You don’t have to know that yet, Mr. Minecraft,” Jester gave a feral smile- dangerous but not condescending. He knew Theseus. Tommy didn’t hold the upper hand, despite his attempts to gain it.

His skin itched at being called Mr. Minecraft. That was Phil’s name, not his. Not his title to bear. He was NutPig’s son, Death’s son. His mother’s boy. Chat hummed an irritated agreement. He took his mask off, laying it in his lap. Jester showed a flicker of surprise. He spoke, “Call me Tommy.”

“Holy shit. You’re younger than I thought.” Jester said, a light-hearted edge to it. The man took the bottle that was on the desk beside him and put it behind his desk. Whiskey, Chat supplied.

Bad finally acknowledged the two, “That’s why I’m here, Quackity. I have to make sure you’re not mistreating Dream’s newest protégé.”

Quackity waved him off, “I knew he was younger than 19 but, kid, how old are you?”

“16,” Tommy’s eyes scanned the room. The bookshelves that lined the walls were all filled with either classics or poker strategy books. All pristine. Dust lined them, the leather and clothbound books going into disrepair. Quackity’s wings puffed at his answer.

“Okay. I’ve got to adjust this deal a little bit.” Quackity frantically moved documents, scanning the pages, “Since you are the newest addition to the Dream Team, you’re going to be a very valuable asset. However, since you are also a literal child, that asset-ness is going to be a deal that comes into action when you are 18.”

“Depends on the deal and whether I take it.”

“Of course, Tommy. So-” Quackity straightened his back, “This deal may sound extreme, but remember you have the choice to not take it. If you so choose to accept, you will be held to your end.”

He nodded, “I understand.”

“I have a plot to take out the president of the SMP. Schlatt, in my opinion as mayor of the city, is a man who is in power for his own gain. The way he runs the SMP forces people to never move social class, and damns unpowered people to either menial jobs or villainy. It is unjust, and only serves himself and his party.”

It was a studied phenomenon, one that Tommy certainly agreed with. The only unpowered person he knew that wasn’t a villain- his mum- had been reigning as a Hero for thousands of years, even before the program started. Tommy nodded.

“So I will need some help with this. You’re unpredictable, as a new villain. While many of the powered Villains are going to be wearing blocker bracelets on the day of the Red Banquet, that sort of temporary enchantment doesn’t work on sigil powers. Different magical sources. So you’ll be in the position to use your powers. But we have to make it count.”

Tommy tilted his head.

“I want to use you to kill Schlatt.” Jester watched him carefully. Tommy considered it.

“What’s in it for me?”

“I will formally reveal you as a Villain- not only that but give you 100% immunity in Las Nevadas. If your identity gets revealed, we will protect you from anyone. Anyone.” Jester laid out his hands on the table.

“Isn’t Las Nevadas already neutral ground?” Tommy questioned.

“Neutral means Villains can’t be prosecuted for existing while in disguise. It doesn’t mean you can’t be trialled for the crimes you commit in other cities. Just that if you’re walking down the street, you’re fine. Immunity means that while you’re in Las Nevadas, you can do anything and you won’t be punished, nor for your previous crimes. Heroes can’t arrest you, or even come looking for you. We’ll provide you with accommodation, a job. A whole different identity if needed.

“There is another condition to this though. Just to make it fair,” Jester leaned forward, eyeing Tommy. Chat perked up. “Once you turn 18, you have to protect two particular people. With your life. If you switch sides, you still have to make sure these two are left alive.”

“Who are they?”

“Flare and Timescape.”

Flare- Sapnap. The man with two husbands. Jester, the other man with two husbands.

How could he have been so fucking stupid?

“You’re fucking my HPE teacher?” Tommy exclaimed. Jester jumped back, his features morphing to surprise, then amusement.

“You’re a student of my husband’s?” Jester mocked back. Bad looked between the two with bemusement.

“Wait- and Timescape?”

“Isn’t it funny that we have a man on every side?” Jester smirked, like him and Tommy were colluding, “Because I’m a neutral party, and we have a Hero and a Villain.”

Tommy blinked. Jester’s face went blank, before melting back into the professional mask he had donned just before. He spoke with an air of certainty, “So do you accept my offer?”

“I do. Can I groom your wings now?”

“Fine, Prime, you’re worse than Karl,” Quackity shifted in his seat, making room for Tommy to stand. He did so, placing both hands over the primaries. He worked quickly- Phil had told him that being groomed was an intimate affair, but Jester’s wings were horribly uncared for. Deftly, he shook out the loose feathers. Straightened the bent ones as he went, paying no mind to the way Jester slumped forward. After a while- about ten minutes of silence, Quackity cleared his throat. Tommy withdrew his hands. Jester gestured to the door, mumbling something about accommodation, and Tommy couldn’t help but comply.

Another guard- a man with the shiniest head Tommy had ever seen- escorted him to his room that night. Chat liked this man, chattering excitedly amongst themselves about… feeding him potatoes?

They stopped at a door just like the rest of the doors that lined the hall. It was white. There wasn’t much to say about it. On the black plaque was inscribed ‘703’.

HAHA IT SAYS TOE

“Shut up, Chat.” His voice crackled under the modifier. The guard looked at him strangely. He gestured to the door, so Tommy stepped forward to unlock it, key heavy in hand.

Tommy saluted the man as he went.

Back at the Casino, Jester and Bad talked in low tones.

“You’re getting a kid to murder?” Bad stared at Jester.

Quackity sat with his head in his hands, “Listen, I knew it was the son of Death. But I didn’t realise how young he was to be doing sigil magic.”

“You couldn’t guess?” Bad’s hands flapped wildly. His robes slid down his arms, the white sigils glowing brighter when he moved.

The younger man sighed, “I- I just didn’t connect the dots until I saw his face.”

Bad slumped down. After a moment, he spoke, “Although I really don’t approve, Tommy is a great vessel for sigil magic. His body absorbs it amazingly. He even took on The Blade’s sigil power- unintentionally.”

“What?”

“The story I got from Dream is that Theseus and Blade were fighting, and Blade went for the kill. His power reached out to Tommy and saved his life.”

Quackity blinked. If Tommy could harvest powers, he would be more useful that he thought, “So if he’s on the brink of death, he’ll get magic from the nearest source?”

“I don’t know, but if you try and kill him, you’ll have Dream coming to hunt you down. And Sap would be pissed as all hell.” Bad was rather blunt, eyeing Quackity carefully.

Jester put his hands up in surrender, “Chill out, Bad. I’m just saying that he’s going to be more useful than either of us thought. The Red Banquet will end in chaos, it’s nice to have another contingency plan.”

“Why are you making him protect Sap and Karl?” Bad’s white eyes followed Quackity’s hands as he brought the whiskey up and poured himself a glass to nurse. A bad habit when he got stressed, along with his bitten hands and the small nicks on his knees from twirling his knife too low.

Quackity considered the question with a clouded eye. He felt for the glass, rather than trusting his depth perception, and took a sip to clear his throat, “It was a bid to win his trust.”

Bad’s eyes turned analytical, raising a barely-visible eyebrow. Quackity continued, “Two things. One, it’s in the reputation to give people deals that benefit me more than them. He would’ve been suspicious if another clause wasn’t there. Sapnap and Karl are capable and smart, there are very few instances where Tommy would have to save them. Two-”

He set his glass aside, placing his hands flat on the desk, “You really think he would’ve taken the deal if he didn’t already trust Sapnap? Kid is desperate for the pseudo family he’s made. He trusts them, I am trusted by extension.”

“So what will you do with his trust?”

Quackity took a sip, the whiskey burning all the way down. A horrible flavour, but it was his ex’s favourite. Old habits die hard. He spoke with an air of finality, “Keep him as safe as I can. After all, the safest place in a murder scene is behind the gun.”

Chapter Text

Soon day broke and the yellowed sky shook Tommy from his slumber.

That and the Chat trying to viciously fight the goopy green cat that was trying to attach itself to his skin. He shifted back, the sheets entangling him further. The ground fell away from under him in his attempt to escape it. He hit the ground with a solid thud, fighting his way out of the treacherous sheets.

The cat shifted, growing larger and larger in size. Tommy backed himself into the corner. Chat reached out their tendrils, trying to grasp at the hulking mass.

It was a… man? Something with identifiable arms and legs, the torso and legs swirling darker and darker until they formed something resembling clothes.

Tommy shot his hand out, the lamp behind the man flying towards him. It went straight through his gelatinous body, plumes of electrical smoke rising out of the bulb. It was like his body was literally made of jelly.

“Hello Theseus from Pogtopia! I am Slimecicle from Las Nevadas!” He raised a hand that was still dripping slime onto the floor. Tommy raised one back. They both did a wave that did not at all look like a wave.

“Hi, guy in my room. Who are you, exactly?”

“I’m Slimecicle from Las Nevadas!” He said in the exact same tone he used before.

Tommy thought over his words, “Why- why are you here?”

Slimecicle slapped himself on the head, a very clearly mimicked gesture from elsewhere, “I am here to collect you! For the Jester!”

Tommy nodded. He unwrapped himself from the sheets. Slime watched him patiently. Expectantly, Tommy gestured for him to leave the room, before picking up his pants.

Slime slapped himself on the forehead again, even more goo splattering on the carpet. Staring into the floor, Tommy winced at the potential cleaning bill.

Like a routine, he slipped on each part of his outfit like it was a second skin. Over his suit, he pulled on a hoodie that Flare had gotten him, along with some cargo pants.

The mask stared at him, the filtered eyes staring back a ruby red glow at him. Tommy looked at himself in the mirror. He looked presentable. Less like he was breaking down, but the bruises and scratches under his suit told a different story.

The thin scar that spanned his neck stared at him. It could only be seen in a certain light, but the skin was raised, thicker than before. He had survived. Despite the odds being very fucking unfair.

He slipped the mask over his head.

Slime was waiting for him by the door, playing a knock off word game that only took words that didn’t exist. Or at least it looked like it, judging from Slimecicle’s guesses of “ghunt” and “quohn”. Or maybe he was just really bad. He nodded to the man.

Slime slinked down the hall, following the same route that the guard had from the night before. Tommy was not stuck in thought this time, so he was trying to memorise the little differences in every single hallway. A backup escape plan. The Hotel was a part of the Casino, so it was both the safest and least safe place to be.

One of the hallways, one that was closer to the entrance of the hotel, had a plaque. Carved in shining letters- The Casino was designed and built by Mumbo K. Jumbo.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS

POG

Tommy stared at the plaque in disbelief. The Mumbo K. Jumbo? The same one that sold him illegal redstone? His art teacher?

Oh he would be hearing about this.

Slime tugged him forward, giggling when Tommy tripped over his own feet. He flashed a feral grin to the slime creature. As they got further and further into the body of the Casino, more people started to walk past them. It was as if life was only contained within the small pocket of the Casino, only for the customers to see. Once again, he only got acknowledging nods from passer-bys, as if they didn’t care enough to be scared by the villain’s appearance in the Casino.

By one of the same areas that he had travelled through with Jester sat his previous guide, Niki. She scribbled in her notebook, eyebrows furrowed in focus between the words. He waved a hand in front of her.

Nemesis startled, her cheeks going rosy. She visibly perked up when seeing him, her hands reaching out to grasp his. Lowly, she spoke so only he could hear, “I hope you’re well, Theseus.”

He nodded, returning her smile. Even though he was wearing a mask, he could see the glimmer of recognition in her eyes as she watched his mask shift in a way to represent a smile. The snout moved up, the cheeks creased, he was happy. Slime audibly awed. He grasped the shoulder of the gooey man, moving with him into the Jester suite once again.

The guards didn’t bat an eye at Slime, turning to shift the door open. Once again, the door swirled to life, the animations showing recognition for both Tommy and Slime, various scenes turning and smiling at the two.

As the door revealed the inner workings of the office, Tommy’s insides turned to a cold sort of stone. There was a stretcher to one side, with Bad polishing several very sharp surgical blades. Tommy then turned to Quackity, who held a carefully measured jar of Redstone. All of his senses- and Chat- screamed danger!

And yet he was the idiot that stepped into the office. His footsteps alerted the two to his presence, the soft sound of his padded feet on the wooden floors barely making an impression. Bad carefully set down his blades, before beckoning Tommy to sit on the stretcher with a wave of his hand.

“Uh, what the fuck is going on?” A rather blunt sentence to grace the room. Chat parroted the sentiment. Quite literally parroted, in high-pitched mocking warbling sentences. Bad looked affronted.

“Tommy! Language!” He snipped.

Jester stepped forward, holding the Redstone like it was a dangerous item. To be fair, it was. Today, he wore a necklace with two rings on it, and a twitchy demeanour, “Tommy, it’s part of the plan to kill Schlatt.”

Tommy gestured for him to keep talking.

“His death will have to be extremely quick, so we can get you out of there. So we need to give you another power. One that can work to kill him in a matter of seconds.”

“So what is it?” Tommy kept an eye on both parties and a hand on the door.

Bad flashed a sheet, a simplistic drawing of a long, thin rectangle with a blacked out oval at one of the tips. Tommy felt less like a cornered animal once he saw it, more assured that they weren’t trying to trick him. The symbol was one that was in his book, the book that was carefully stashed away in the top shelf of his closet, in between old textbooks and computer parts.

He knew what it meant, he knew he was going to be okay. Chat chittered away. He stepped up to the stretcher.

Bad grabbed his palm, “All you need to do, is to shake Schlatt’s hand. That’s all, Tommy.”

He nodded. Quackity and Bad worked in sync, with Bad holding the surgical blade with a steady hand. It bit into Tommy’s palm, the pain shocking him at his elbow. He pushed his mask up with the other hand, forcing his jaw around the suit fabric so he didn’t yell. The cut burnt like fire, his arm shooting forceful pins into his wrist.

Unlike Tommy’s own incisions on the thigh sigils, Bad was light with his touch, a careful intensity in his pure white gaze. The cuts split open, not nearly as wide as on his thighs. Jester coated the slits as Bad continued.

“This one’s going to hurt.” One of them muttered. Bad angled his blade until it was almost parallel to the skin, slicing around a single point. Tommy cried out, his mind going white. It was as if he was bleeding internally, the warmth of the blade traveling through his veins like a truck in a small tunnel. Like all of his nerves were being stretched to accommodate, a mass hole.

Vaguely, he could hear low tones of soothing murmurs being directed at him. The sounds never made sense, as he bit back into reality.

Numbly, he watched as they bandaged it. There was a warmth in his veins that wasn’t there before, a new presence. An intensity that Chat was desperate for him to use. He tried to stand, a wave of nausea sinking through him.

“Don’t be silly, Tommy. You need to rest, and heal so you’ll be ready for the Banquet.”

NO

WE WANT BLOOD

BLOOD

BLOOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD KING

It rattled around his skull like a song he knew every word of. Scraping at the walls of his head. He barely managed to nod his head at Bad, giving a toothy grin that he was sure didn’t look right.

Quackity carried most of his weight, a heavy thing with the resistance vest. They hobbled back to the hotel room, passing every hallway once again.

TEAR HIS FUCKING THROAT OUT

BLIND HIM

GORGE OUT THE OTHER EYE

GO RABID

He shook his head violently. The mask came unstuck at one point, his vision skewed. Jester said some words he didn’t hear and locked him back in his hotel room.

Chat thrummed at his head, breaking at the seams. He gripped his hair, tufts falling out. The new power stayed locked away for now, its presence still known. A vicious scream. Mirrored the roars of Chat in tandem. A shaky hand grasped the edge of the nightstand, pulled himself up. A mirror.

The glass distorted the shapes of his face- a bug eyed freak. Someone with a jaw too long to be real, teeth too sharp to be anything but carnivorous. A lick of a burn up the side. The glass was smashed. His hand hurt. He had hit the glass, a belated realization. Chat pulled at the pieces, trying to wildly stab them into his skin.

There was blood on the ground.

It was his.

He brought a bloody hand up to his face, smearing it over the mask that sat in his hair. Flicked his tongue out of his mouth, the lips feeling foreign.

A burst of energy buzzed through his fiery veins. He threw his head back, Chat hitting the ceiling in the momentum They crashed through a layer, the dry wall coming down on the small part of the roof. All of his bones cracked, an intensity running through them. Rejuvenation.

Tommy screamed. His body shook. He threw the mask back on. Red sparks flew out the balcony; he followed.

A leap of faith.

At the last second before hitting the ground, his body was yanked back up, the sparks using the momentum to throw him on top of a rooftop building. He slid, shooting out a leg to brace himself. Chat forced him upright a second later.

The air made him bound from rooftop to rooftop, a carelessness in his wake. Chat roared, the tendrils falling off him like smoke. They screamed for blood.

He dug his heels into the edges of the building. A moderator put chat on sub-only mode. His skin itched, like every scar on his body was reopening.

GIVE US CONTROL

GIVE US CONTROL

YOU HAVE TO GIVE IN OR YOU’LL KILL YOURSELF

He sunk, letting the thoughts of bloodlust fully consume him.

Dulled sounds, dulled sensations. Being slammed against brick brought him out of it. His head bounced off the wall, eyes going fuzzy. A crack. Chat whipped around, pulling him out of the way. An axe swept through the air he was just in.

He was fighting. An astute observation.

He threw out a hand, trying to push the swirling hulk of his opponent off. Buy him some time. Tommy backed into the alley beside him, taking the few seconds he got to will his eyes to work.

The Blade.

Blood was splattered on the side of his mask. Metallic scent filled the air like an ever-present reminder. To the side, Wilbur. Barely breathing, but still holding on.

Tommy had realised very quickly that he had backed himself into a corner, the end of the alleyway leading into a chain-link fence. Chat gnashed their collective teeth. The conglomerate begged to be unleashed again, as if Tommy even remembered the first time. As if he wasn’t facing the consequences of those actions.

The Blade stalked closer. Tommy stayed just out of arm’s reach, red sparks acting as the only thing stopping the Blade from slashing the Axe of Peace across his throat.

A beat. Footsteps crunched on glass littered around the street. Tommy tried to rush forward, but the Blade swept his feet. Theseus hit the floor with a solid thud, biting back a groan.

“Let him get up, Blade,” Jester, his saving grace. The man stood, facing Techno with an intensity Tommy couldn’t quite place.

“Theseus is a villain, Alex.” The Blade’s voice was gravelly, an executioner ready to fulfill his duty. The Axe of Peace’s tip rested against Tommy’s ribcage, ready to cleave him in the middle of the alley. He’d haunt Phil for giving Techno that fucking axe. Techno’s phase of throwing knives to string Wilbur and Tommy to the living room walls was bad enough, Prime knows it.

Chat buzzed in general panic.

The conglomerate unfurled itself from around his waist, seeping around his wrists, the cold of its tendrils making a calming gesture.

“Theseus is formally protected by Las Nevadas, Technoblade,” The Jester- Alex, apparently, according to his brother- copied The Blade’s stance, no weapon in hand.

Chat was forming a plan, however lackluster and haphazard.

Techno’s blood dropped onto his face. Gross. And he’d have to wash his mask.

“And informally?” As if Quackity was going to give Tommy up if Techno just asked politely. The tendrils creeped around Techno’s calves, melding into the ones Techno kept in the split. It inched to engulf Techno’s legs, and Tommy could vaguely hear his chat screaming miscellaneous “E, /rainbowchat, Technolame, BLOOD FOR THE BELOVED,” and other distracting phrases.

“Informally, you’re a little bitch,” Tommy yanked his hands forward, the chat’s tendrils coming with it. Techno’s legs also came with it, stumbling as he tried to catch himself. Tommy rolled out of the way of the axe, ripping it from the former’s grasp and using the momentum to position himself, steady on his feet behind Techno. The Jester wrapped his hands around the back of Blade’s head, bringing his knee up to connect with the latter’s eye. Chat split itself again, using a solidified tentacle to anchor him, and another to pin Blade to the wall. Quackity used his forearm to pin Blade by the throat, while the Chat pinned his hands.

E

E

E

KINKY

QUACKNOBLADE ARC WHEN??????

TECHNOLD

Quackity spared a glance at him, screaming at him to run.

And he did, with the Axe of Peace in hand.

Chapter Text

Quackity stared at him. Tommy stared back.

They sat in silence, the only notion that they were not frozen in time being Chat; it ebbed at Tommy’s wounds. Ever the mother.

A cough broke the air, wet and bloody.

“You’re internally bleeding.” A statement. Quackity watched as he reached for another tissue.

Tommy fought off the urge to say well isn’t that where the blood is supposed to be, “I don’t know what happened out there. Chat took control.”

OH YEA BLAME US

REAL MATURE TOMMY

DICKHEAD

Chat flicked him. Jester sighed, “Bad will be arriving any minute. Now, what made you think letting Chat take control was a good idea?”

The memory of overwhelm. The constant screaming for something to hurt, something to kill.

“I couldn’t help it- they were all so overwhelming,” A quiet admittance. A reminder that he was still a kid. Still couldn’t handle things, “Is Wilbur going to be ok?”

Quackity’s eyes softened. He pulled out a glass and a bottle, poured himself a drink, “He’s been healed by Bad, kid. He’s going to be fine. Probably gonna have a chip in his shoulder about it, but not any worse physically.”

Tommy slumped, a breath leaving him. Wilbur would be okay.

“Kid, you will need to get Chat under control by the Banquet. I’m going to have Bad draw up some ideas to keep them steady, but in the meantime, you have to try to stop them getting their way, I can’t have a wildcard in my ranks,” Quackity sighed, looking more tired by the second.

“It was because of the new power. They- I couldn’t handle it,” He stared at his hands. Hands that were blood-soaked a few hours prior.

“Okay, we’ll deal with that. You’re going to be fine,” He stared at Tommy intently. Searching for something he didn’t find, “Jesus Christ, you really are just a teenager.”

Tommy didn’t respond, looking down. Chat hummed, quieter than they’ve ever been. Some peace came in the silence. Quackity pushed another glass over to him, only half-filling it. Tommy took it, nursing it in his hands like he’d seen Phil do.

They sat in with a comfortable tension. After a while, Bad knocked on the door. It opened, Tommy nodding to the man. He didn’t break the quiet. Simply put his shadowy hands on Tommy’s shoulders, forcing him down into his own head.

Chat hummed, supplying him, finally, with the memories of the fight.

He had stalked Wilbur down by the scent of fish rot. An unfortunate side effect of his blocker sigil had turned into a tracker on Wil. A wolf hunting its prey. Chat swept their conglomerate across, throwing Wilbur against a wall. Dragged him back despite his struggles.

A knife cut through Chat, a thousand screeching voices. They feasted, making Tommy hit Wil over and over. The crunch of his ribs against the pavement.

His older brother. His Wilbur.

Blood sprayed across the concrete. Tommy’s, as Wilbur managed to get a proper slash. He threw the man again, shoving a large metal shard into his shoulder. A ragged cut, one that kept him down.

A sharp crash across his skull. He whipped around, the memory clouded in sepia tone. Chat pushed. Techno stayed stagnant. His Chat pushed back, sending Tommy stumbling. The Axe of Peace swept down, he narrowly blocked. He pulled a knife, positioning it to stab right through Techno’s collar bone. With enough force, it went through. The Blade cried out, before throwing him into the wall.

Tommy was forced into fronting.

He woke- still in the plush chair that the Jester’s office held. Bad’s hands glowed a bright silver, pulsing, before fading back to their usual black.

“I’ve uh- I’ve drawn up some temporary sigil jewellery. Just to help with uh-” He gestured vaguely to the swirling black mass, “them.”

He pulled out a note book and a simple black box- one that jingled with every movement. Chat protested, shouting for Bad’s head on a pike. Tommy ignored them.

“These should- while not fully blocking your powers per se, they would dull them-” Out of the box, Bad pulled out a large golden ring, big enough to fit around his neck- two twisted golden hoops with a break in the middle.

Chat gnashed their teeth at it, jeers of bad dog, just like Techno. Techno, nipping at Angel’s heels like a pet. Loyal companion. Tommy bared a feral snarl, “I am not wearing a fucking dog collar.”

“It’s not a collar, Tommy! It’s an old status symbol in Ancient Greece. Rich men used to wear them to show off their wealth.” Bad put up his hands in surrender, “It’s called a torc, and the only reason it’s tight to your neck is because you’re the muffinhead who got a new power fused to his throat.”

The healing gash over his throat thrummed warmly.

“It will just take away some of Chat’s power- give them less influence over you,” Chat tried to knock the torc out of Bad’s grip, but he held firm.

FUCK YOU

WE WILL NOT BE DETAINED

Tommy nodded, some sick sense of relief running through him. Not at the thought of control- though that was a factor. His body didn’t belong to him, with unnatural magic running through previously pure blood- he made his identity off the powers that never were truly his. From the moment he picked up the book that held the magic, he was always bound to use it. Always bound to become Theseus. Chat was just another trinket of his slowly-growing collection. One that was far more dangerous. One that wasn’t his choice.

No matter what, his life would always be ruled by the way Techno treated him. With Chat, with the scars hidden in his hairline and down the base of his spine. With the angry, horrible creature that howled inside of him, begging for blood on his hands. Not Chat- that one was all Tommy. All the wrong instincts fitting into a too-small body. He wasn’t born angry, just another thing that didn’t belong to him.

He didn’t want to look in the mirror one day and see Techno staring back.

He took the torc from Bad’s outstretched hands. Delicately, he thumbed the small gap between the two ends of the twisted rods. Bad tapped the torc, the stiffness of the gold melting away until it was just a thick chain in his hands. Tommy ducked his head through it, the gap at the base of his throat. The ends were parallel to the end of the healing gash that covered the front of this throat. They provided no cover for it. The cut was arguably more visible, with the golden eye-catchers that hung around it. Bad tapped the torc again and it went stiff. It sat heavy around his neck. Chat ebbed up to probe at it.

The voices were dulled, as if he were underwater. Only catching glimpses of sentences, the meaning lost. It was quiet.

Tommy’s head felt lonely, for the first time ever. The noise was a welcome distraction at usual moments- and an unwelcome one other times. But now it was white noise, as if he were far from it all. Bad gestured to the mirror that sat on one of Quackity’s bookshelves, one that he hadn’t noticed before.

The gold was interspersed with dark veins, thorns of Chat spiking through the top. They nudged at his skin, half-heartedly trying to separate it from the golden jewellery.

“Now, Chat should still be able to move the same, but they just can’t overwhelm you mentally anymore,” Bad commented, observing as Tommy lightly touched the band.

Another question swirled around his brain, on the tip of his tongue. He spat it out, afraid of the answer, “Why didn’t Techno get any of this?”

He didn’t want to think that Techno was willing to do the things he did. That Techno wanted to massacre, that he wanted to hurt.

Quackity rubbed at his temples, “Your brother and I have a… long history. He doesn’t get access to certain resources because I control those. I wouldn’t have let him go to the Banquet if he wasn’t the Angel’s companion.”

“What did he do that was so bad?” A curiosity. An urge to know how his brother hurt others, how he wasn’t alone.

A milky white pupil seemed to bore through his skull, “He put a pickaxe through my skull.”

Tommy’s fingers threaded through the back of his hair, ghosting over the shattered Lichtenberg-like scar that ran down his hair, “I just got a regular axe.”

Quackity searched his face for a lie, but he only found a grim humour. He bowed his head, the split hairline strengthening the truth. Jester straightened.

“Seems like we’ve both made enemies with your brother, then,” The man said after a moment, sporting a grimace.

Bad watched them in silence, noting down various symbols that Tommy couldn’t read.

A quiet moment, one where he could make out what Chat was saying. He ignored them, “I don’t hate him.”

An admittance, however reluctant.

“He almost killed you- multiple times, apparently.”

“Doesn’t really matter,” It did, so desperately. He wanted Techno regret it. Tommy didn’t think he did. Quackity nodded, eyes glassy- clearly living in a moment that was not the present. With a lazy flick of the hand, he waved them out.

Chat was a comfortable creature when they weren’t bloodthirsty. Curling around him playfully. On the edge of loving. His body was on autopilot, taking him back to his bed without even realising it.

Days passed as the Banquet grew closer and closer. Phil would call Tommy once every two days, reporting back in on Wilbur’s state. One was a video call- Tommy had scrambled to throw on a hoodie big enough to hide the golden choker.

“Oh, Tommy! I can see you. Looks like the Badlands is treating you well,” Phil said in an awkward, stuffed tone.

He fiddled with his sleeves, pulling them down over Chat. He cleared his throat, “Uh, yea-” A short, huff of a laugh, “Looks like Las Nevadas isn’t treating you as well.”

Wilbur’s wheezy exhale was audible. The man robotically raised a hand to Tommy, greeting him without words. He had broken a few ribs, cracked his skull. Gotten a few shiny scars, some from Tommy, others from scratching at his throat trying to pull air in.

Phil grimaced, before his face settled neutral again.

“I’ll be fine by the time we fly back, don’t worry,” Wilbur reassured, a small smile on his face. Phil nodded. They looked awkwardly at each other for a few moments too long.

“I- uh, I’ve got to get back to the cafeteria, my friends are waiting for me,” Tommy lied, staring at his plate of unfinished noodles on the desk, right next to his mask. Relief flashed across Phil’s features, and then guilt. Tommy could tell he was glad the conversation was coming to a close.

They exchanged awkward pleasantries like money, Tommy rushing to turn the laptop off.

Nemesis sat on his bed, legs crossed. She was engrossed in her own plate of noodles, barely taking a glance at the blond boy. Her fangs made it hard for her to slurp the noodles, but she still managed, taking off a chunk of beef that was barely cooked.

Tommy sighed, twirling his food around a fork. Niki broke the silence, fangs clacking against each other, “Have you ever been to a formal event before?”

Tommy shook his head, choking down the noodles before replying, “No, my family never takes me to any.”

Her eyes flashed, “Why not? Why were they going to formal events without you? You’re almost an adult, surely it’s not a matter of maturity.”

Tommy glanced down at his plate, the smell of the noodles still a bit repulsive. He could tell her everything. Niki was as neutral as a Villain could be, even going to the extent of refusing to kill Heroes that she thought ‘didn’t deserve it’. Held the biggest grudge against Technoblade, no wonder after he killed her partner. Images of Manifold flashed across his mind once again. He chose to answer a different question, “Why didn’t you retire? Why did you become a villain?”

“You aren’t answering my question.”

“They’re more related than you think.”

She sighed, her eyes seeming to look through him. She took a swig of her drink- something fizzy and metallic smelling. Tommy shifted, and she spoke, “I was angry. That- that fucking pig killed my best friend and only went on probation. It’s not even his fault, those kind of powers should never have gone uncontrolled. At least you have the excuse of being a Villain and only recently getting the powers, but for fuck’s sake, he grew up under the supervision of the Hero facility. He has no excuse for what he’s done.”

His mind flashed to when he was nine, eleven, twelve- any age in which he got beaten by Techno, his broken bones stabbing into his skin. Any age where the voices got Too Much for him.

Phil had always intervened too late. The scar on his head pulsed. Phil, the man who could control emotions, couldn’t stop Techno from beating a child. He found that hard to believe.

“My wife quit the Force around the same time, her son went off the rails so we decided that she would leave amicably, so she could live her life. I wanted to tear the place down, couldn’t stand the sight of the place that mistreats so many people,” Niki’s eyes turned into slits, teeth grinding at the memory, “So answer my question, Thomas.”

She called him by the name he gave her when they met. Sure, even Phil had called him Tommy, but she didn’t. Niki respected him.

“My family is all powered. A lot of them hybrids. The only one who was unpowered besides me was my mother, and she’s dead now-” He could feel Niki stiffen, “And I was always excluded. Or beaten, but that’s just the consequence of having a Piglin hybrid for a brother.”

Something flashed in Niki’s eyes, widening before leaving just as quick.

“He- They have destroyed any chance I had at living a normal life. The least I can do is become something. Even if it is something violent,” His voice wavered. Tommy took a sip of his Coke, washing down the words. Niki looked at him curiously.

“There’s more, isn’t there?”

Tommy couldn’t look her in the eyes. He replied in a small, pathetic voice, “Is it bad that I want to hurt him?”

He didn’t know if he meant Techno or Phil. The aggressor or the enabler.

“I don’t know, Theseus. I don’t think so-” She started, her eyes glassing over. She wasn’t thinking of Tommy, “Growing up with so much hurt inside of you will destroy you. This anger is only understandable to an extent.”

“What is that extent?”

“I don’t know,” She repeated, desperation written on her face, “I don’t- Puffy tells me that it is that you can hurt them up until the point that they’ve hurt you. Does that make us the same as them though?”

Puffy. Puffy knew Nemesis. And the desperation told Tommy that their relationship was a lot more intimate than that. Niki waited for an answer, but Tommy didn’t think she was waiting for him.

They sat in silence, the melancholy laden thick in the air. Niki perked up again, after a few moments, “I don’t think it matters right now.”

“Why? What?” It was Tommy’s turn to look at her curiously.

“Because, a little birdy told me-” She leaned over, with a singsong voice and a predatory smile, “That you are going to kill Schlatt.”

Tommy sputtered, spinning around in the swivel chair that the hotel had provided. He cleared his throat, cheeks hot, and spoke, “Okay, but how do you know that?”

“You’re interesting. Jester wouldn’t wield a weapon he didn’t know how to use,” Niki leaned back, “Sigil magic doesn’t work under traditional bindings. The only other sigil users are ones that Jester and Bad personally know. You’re the wildcard.”

Tommy put his plate on the desk. Elbows pressing red marks into his knees, Chat curled around his shoulders, “None of this feels real. I don’t know how to play my role or anything.”

“Well then, let’s start with the Banquet itself-” Tommy nodded, gesturing for her to continue, “You will be put into a special pair of cuff links like every other powered person- though they won’t work at suppressing you, obviously. You’ll have a date to be escorted in with, these are pre-prepared for safety reasons. Which just means Jester wants to cause the most awkward conversations but I digress. He’ll let everyone mingle for a while, and then make some long speech about peace and other stuff he doesn’t actually believe in. And then the food starts, everyone gets drunk and stumbles back into their hotel rooms at 2am with someone from the opposite side.”

“That sounds kind of horrible,” Tommy admitted.

Niki laughed, “It kind of is, yea. You’ll be getting your suit fittings tomorrow; I have to escort you to that one.”

“Who’s your date for the night?” He wondered if it would have been Manifold in past years.

“My wife- even though she quit the Commission, she still gets invited to these events. Who’s yours?”

“I have got no clue,” At this, she pulled out her phone. After a few minutes of humming silence, she turned to him in confusion.

“You have two?” She said it more like a question than a statement. He scrambled to her side, squinting at the screen. It read Theseus-Punz-Purpled. Oh, that would be fun. He could only imagine the amount of contempt Punz held for vigilantes. He let out an airy laugh, waving away Niki’s look of confusion.

“It doesn’t matter right now,” He said, quoting her lines from earlier. She stared playful daggers into his soul.

“Motherfucker-” She lunged at him, food forgone to the side. He leaped back, she tugged Chat.

He yielded, “Okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

She smugly got comfortable on his bed again. They ate the rest of their noodles in relative silence, chatting about lighter topics than what really weighed on their mind.

The suit that the dress maker picked out was uncomfortable. It fit well enough, but the Kevlar lining scratched against in hairs, getting caught on every single one. The collar of it hid his torc well, but at the cost of it pressing into his throat. The shirt he wore was a pressed white, with a red blazer and pants. The NutPig mask matched the colours of the suit, and his fingertips- now a permanently stained pink- kneaded into the golden accents of the suit, including the cuff links with deep, redstone encrusted crosses embedded into them. The cape, which was really just a really long blazer, stopped at his ankles, looping back up. Overall, he looked fly as fuck.

He stepped out of the wing of the Casino, right into the eyesight of Purpled and Punz. They were very pointedly not looking at each other.

He nodded to Punz, the other man watching him with a certain reverence. Purpled shook his hand, pulling him into an embrace. His mouth was positioned just above Tommy’s ear. A quiet remark, “Jester is a cruel man for putting us with Punz.”

Tommy nodded, stifling a laugh at the way Purpled- in his full, bright purple gas mask, just peered at Punz, watching his brother’s every movement. Punz waved back, an easy smirk on his face. Purpled quickly looked away. Tommy clapped his hands, a motion shocking the two out of their trance. He strolled forward, letting the Theseus persona wash over him. They followed, one flanking him on either side. Purpled made quiet comments on everything. From the way the waiters were dressed, to the tacky, horrible rug. It seemed like bitching was his method of coping.

Eventually, after about 15 separate complaints from Purpled, they reached the main hall. With grand doors, sigils of varying size and depth intricately carved into every inch of the mahogany. As Theseus stepped forward, the doors opened, revealing a ballroom filled with conversation that stopped as soon as he stepped through.

The Red Banquet was starting.

Chapter Text

The chandeliers glittered with an array of golden light, reflecting off of every piece of jewellery worn. There were countless sigils embedded into the walls, as well as scenes of glorious battles, of portals and other worlds, all bathed in a rosy tint. A long, cherry wood table spanned the length of almost the entire room, with carved legs to look like swords. The table was draped in a deep red cloth, countless candles lining the spine of it. On each side of the table were flocks of people, their clothes intricate- the entire hall reeked of expensive taste. At the very head of the table were two miniature thrones, one gold, the other black. Jester and Bad surveyed their crowd. Jester, shrouded in the same blood red of the table cloth, his cloak a stunning display. Underneath was his typical white button up, with golden accents that made him shine. Bad wore a longer dark cloak, the hood removed and replaced with shiny silver chains glinting under the light. A crown made of solid iron thorns nestled into his slicked back hair. The white sigils that normally glowed on his pitch black arms were a dulled grey, courtesy of the power binders his suit was laden with.

Most of the guests had arrived, slipped through the doors with a practiced quietness. They didn’t want attention to be drawn to them, a room of Heroes and Villains with trigger-happy paranoia. Any wrong move would send the room into a destructive state. The power blockers were the strongest ever created, the only people in the room able to exercise any sort of magic were The Blade, Dream, and a few of the smaller Villains- ones that Jester was assured wouldn’t cause any fuss.

Schlatt and 404 talked icily, their drinks- whiskey and Coke respectively- gripped tight. 404’s mask did not betray the grimace that was certainly there. Dream and The Blade ignored each other, circling the room like eagles. Jester smirked, bringing his drink up to his lips. He had thought it so funny to pair them together. Others mingled indiscriminately, ignoring the bruises, limps and other injuries that they had probably caused to their partners. He paired direct enemies up where he could. They couldn’t hurt each other, that was for certain. The wards of the room disallowed direct harm. The worst it would get was catty gossiping.

And damn, did Heroes and Villains get catty.

They were all waiting, whether they knew it or not. Waiting to announce the newest Villain, and for the biggest scandal of the century.

The doors, these monstrous things, creaked open.

The light from the hall poured out, a wave of noise that suddenly stopped. Punz stepped forward first, then Theseus, then Purpled. The air went cold- thousands of eyes watching Theseus’ every move. Jester, who was draped lazily over his throne, moved to greet him, beckoning him in. Jester’s wings were outstretched, his dress shoes making the only noise in the room. The slow tap that was coming for Theseus.

He stepped to greet him, keeping his head raised. Shoulders squared. Plant your feet, I’ll bowl you over, said the memory of Techno. Everyone watched. Jester, with a gentle hand on the small of his back, led him up to the head of the table.

 There was a small carpet, black roses carved out of it. Quackity gestured for him to stand there. A small sigil etched on the podium beside it. Jester tapped it, every word amplifying over and over, rushing through the captive audience.

“Greetings all, I would like to welcome you to the annual Red Banquet-” A applause broke out, “-for years I have preached for a respect between sides. An acknowledgement of the power your enemy holds, and a new appreciation for it! And this year is no different.  We must create a culture of peace. This does not mean to put aside your differences indefinitely- but to realise the enemy is not each other. That we are all by products of the society we grew up in. And to come to terms with the fact that you and your enemy are more alike than you may realise.”

Jester gestured grandly. Tommy- Theseus, for the night, followed his fingers, splayed open. The index pointed to Schlatt, the ring finger to Philza. Theseus kept a wary eye on the two. He’d have to avoid Phil for as long as humanely possible, and try to talk to Schlatt when he was the furthest away from his father. He turned his eyes back to Jester.

“And now, for another announcement; Theseus!” The crowd clapped politely, “Theseus is formally protected by the city of Las Nevadas! As long as he is inside this city, he is not to be hunted or persecuted for any crime he may commit or face. Anyone who tries to enact harm on Theseus while in the grounds will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

He could see Techno fume, all tusks and nails digging into his palms. A small smirk made its way onto Tommy’s face. Chat spread up his back like veins, a poor imitation of Jester’s wings.

“That’s enough of me, now go! Mingle like you don’t hate each other for one night,” Jester winked, turning back with a flourish. Tommy nodded to him, Jester nodded back.

Theseus stepped off the mat, seemingly a signal for everyone to go back to their conversation. He surveyed the crowd.

Pink hair! Nemesis was deep into a conversation with one of those smaller Villains- Entity. Entity was retired- had been since around the time that Dream switched sides. Entity was draped in black and purple, a royal purple Lichtenberg pattern embroidered on the back of their cloak, which faded around their legs like twilight. And bright, brilliant wings- with a white exterior and a rainbow array of colours hidden, only seen when they were outstretched. Villain was a slight misnomer, as they weren’t malicious. They had been a future seer, an oracle of sorts. Being able to view from years into the future to just seconds. They were old, older than the SMP itself, but only started causing trouble around 16 years ago.

They were only labelled as a Villain because they opposed the Heroes. A clean streak of no civilian kills. Heroes weren’t so lucky. Lionmaker, Sky, Aphmau. All the fallen Heroes, slain by their hand. They needed to die. To keep the future right. That was always their justification. All of them were going to do horrible things. I prevented them.

Entity was rarely seen around, only ever with Timescape, the two time ‘fixers’ intent on getting it right. Whatever that meant.

Theseus approached the two. Entity startled, feathers loose. Their head bobbed, swivelling around like a parrot. Nemesis laughed, half her face covered in a simple black mask. Entity sputtered, a glitchy British accent coming through their mask, “Oi, that’s not fair. I didn’t know you knew him!”

“Can’t you see the future?” Nemesis replied, a light-hearted tone to her voice. She smelled like alcohol and copper. The entire room was suffocating, the power blockers like a thick must.

Entity held the back of their hands up. Two symmetrical crosses. Power binders. Permanent ones, the golden and silver cuff links on everyone else’s wrists absent. In its place, a bracelet with three crows on it. Nemesis nodded, accepting the answer. Theseus had seen those marks before, but the memory escaped him. Chat pulsed, straining to tell him.  Entity leaned forward, “Theseus, I know how this ends. Good luck, I will try and aid you.”

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Entity turned, their form rippling under the warm light, “Well, Nemesis, it’s been nice. Theseus, I wish you all the best in your travels. I must go and find my partner.”

Niki blinked, “Partner?”

Entity’s eyes twinkled, “He’s one of the waiters, it was a favour from Jester. Bloody hell, he’s probably off talking to someone about his cat. Barely acknowledges me, the dope.”

Tommy scanned the room, every waiter’s face looking uninteresting. He turned back to Entity, but they were already gone. He shifted through the crowd like a cog in a machine. Nemesis was cradling her drink in one arm, talking with Puffy. Techno didn’t turn to him, making polite- or, as polite as he could be, the awkward bastard- conversation with Illumina.

A hand stopped him, a light tap on the elbow. Theseus turned on one foot. He looked up. Angel. He had this look on his face. Pained, yet trying so hard to be forgiving. Theseus shifted, keeping his hands together, but not crossed. Fiddling with the power blocker cuff links, eager to keep the sigil on his palm covered. Chat crept up his neck. Phil spoke, “I don’t think we’ve officially met, Theseus.”

“Indeed,” Tommy replied. Shoulders squared, on edge. It was like talking to a cop. He noticed something strange. Phil didn’t smell like sickly rot anymore. Aftershave, cedar wood, and crisp air. But not the power that Tommy had grown used to. But it was more than that. Even with the power blockers, laden on almost everyone’s wrists, there was still the faint scents of powers, straining to be used. Phil’s was almost unconscious, the constant need to control everything in the room. But he didn’t smell of anything. He had made the effort to stop using his power when talking to Theseus. He was letting him feel objectively. Tommy felt a certain respect for the man. Barely a truth, really.

“Well, I’m Angel, though I’m sure you already know that. Over there-” He gestured vaguely to his brothers, both looking somewhat uncomfortable, “- are my sons, Phantom, and The Blade.”

“Why would you name your kids that?” Tommy deadpanned, looking Phil in the eyes, “I mean truly, those are really bad names for kids. Did you want them to be bullied in school?”

Phil wheezed, his wings shuttering at the remark. His crow’s feet became more prominent when he smiled. Chat whirled around. After a second, Phil straightened, “It’s a family tradition.”

Tommy grinned. He stepped back, clearing his throat, “I’m sure. Is there a reason you wanted to talk?”

Phil looked through Theseus. As if he wasn’t really there, a memory of a memory. He spoke, “Sa- The Warden, he said you were young. Is that true? After he injured you, he kept asking us to not go after you.”

“I-” Tommy stuttered, Chat screaming instructions at him, “I am, yes.”

Phil’s wings drooped, a flash of dejection washing across his face. Chat prodded at him. Phil placed a hand on his arm, “Kid, why are you messed up in all this? You could be a Hero, protect the city. Why be the bad guy?”

Tommy bit his tongue. He turned to a waiter, taking out of the appetisers to cradle in his hands. He spoke, “I am a very… angry person. Bitter. Don’t you just want to hurt? To play with people like a cat to a mouse?”

Tendrils of Chat slithered up his arm, engulfing the appetiser in one bite. There was a certain look on Phil’s face, one of both horror and understanding. He wiped his mouth with an emerald sleeve, “I don’t know how to say this, so please don’t take offense. I believe something must have truly fucked with your head to think that acting on those urges is healthy.”

The scar that carved into the top of his skull burned. He laughed, something sardonic and dark. Oh, he wondered what could have made him lash out. Phil startled, only slightly but Tommy could see the way he suppressed a flinch, “I agree, Angel. However, this is what I’ve chosen.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” And there was something so earnest in that statement, “You can switch sides, retire, choose to do good.”

“I don’t want to. That’s what you don’t understand, Angel-” Chat was getting sick of him. A gut-full of the preaching man.

“But I do. I know how to hurt, better than anyone you’ve met. You will crash, and feel the worst guilt you can imagine.” He shook his head, half way between condescending and empathetic.

“And when that day comes, I’ll leave you a message in blood,” The tip of Tommy’s mouth twitched up. Phil smiled. Teeth on display, sharpened and yellowed. His wings were close to his body, but Tommy could spot the small featherless parts, the scarred over skin.

He moved forward. Phil let him go. He kept his head down through the crowd. Before long, Tommy bumped into a solid mass. The Warden. Head to toe in emerald green, his suit glittering in a way that meant it was weaved in with something stronger. Netherite, was Tommy’s guess. He looked up, and then a little bit further. Sam’s face was still covered with the signature gas mask, but his eyes were left visible. A pitch black.

They used to be blue.

Sam stuck a hand out, Tommy flinched. Sam watched him with curious eyes. Theseus straightened his back, Chat reaching out to grab at Warden. They liked him. Liked the pain Tommy had caused him. It was a fucked up sort of thing, the more pain Tommy caused a person, the more Chat liked them. Were fascinated by them. Theseus shook his hand, a quick, weak grip. Sam’s hand was cold.

“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t realise how badly I had hurt you-” Tommy spoke quickly, a fragile air to every word, “That was- that was never what I wanted to do.”

The Warden shook his head. Green strands of slicked back hair fell into his eyes. The Warden chuffed, smoke rising out of the sides of his mask. It was comforting to hear the soothing noises, ones that reminded him so much of Techno. Tommy pulled his arms to his chest. The Warden- Sam finally spoke, “You’re just a kid, prime. You shouldn’t be entangled in all this. It’s not your fault.”

Something got stuck in Tommy’s throat. An argument, he thought. A rebuttal, I knew what I was doing, or, I’m a horrible person, or get fucked, fuck off. Sam pulled him in. Tommy grabbed him, grabbed at the button up he wore. The Warden hugged him, something desperate and forgiving. Tommy just about broke, something shattered inside of him, leaving him gasping for air.

Nemesis watched, nodding to the Warden. He let go, after too long and not long enough. Theseus straightened out his suit and mask. The Warden held out his hand again. In it, a number scribbled on lined paper. School book paper. Tommy caught his breath, “What, all out of the fancy business cards, Mr. Warden?”

Sam half-chuffed, half-chuckled, “I don’t think you’d trust those enough to take it from me.”

TRUE

SAM NOOK STRIKES AGAIN

A chorus of Chat rung out. Tommy considered the paper, “What is this?”

“A last resort,” The Warden said, “A way out. No Heroes, no strings attached.”

He took it. Or, more accurately, Chat took it. Absorbed it into their heaping black mass. Warden couldn’t hide his look of faint disgust at the sensation of slime. Tommy nodded to the hybrid, “Thank you. Truthfully, I-I don’t know why you’re doing this- you don’t have to extend that hand, we’re on opposite sides.”

I’m supposed to hate you. But all I can see is the kind lab technician that gave me ice cream when I was 10. I’m supposed to hate you. It was all Tommy could think about, the words getting stuck in his throat. Warden, the unwilling Hero. Theseus, the eager Villain. Warden flicked his eyes over to Nemesis. She watched him back, wary-eyed. There was an unnerving quality to a vampire’s stare. Something inherently predatory. It reminded him of Techno, though on a much smaller, more agile frame. The hunger.

Warden herded him away from the throws of people, resting on one of the walls of the ballroom itself. It took him a second to speak, but his eyes showed no consideration. Tommy didn’t think they could have given away anything, his irises, pupils and sclera all bathed in black. Though, they flashed, this vivid purple and green at moments. A side effect of the Netherite coursing through his tired veins. He cleared his throat, “If it is any consolation, Theseus. I hated being a Hero. It was a ruthless job. It was serving the President, rather than actually helping people. It’s over-glorified bullshit.”

Believe me, I’m aware. Tommy thought.

“I’m a teacher. Did you know that? I teach kids the same age as you. I’m a lab jockey, I like programming and electricity and not much else. I wasn’t made for killing. I don’t want you to die. When I look at you- and I mean, truly see you, I see one of my kids. I see witty Purpled, or Naomi the book nerd, or Tommy, this fucking spitfire of a kid. And my job title says I am either meant to kill you or damn you to a life much worse.”

He looked Tommy in the eyes, desperate, thankful and fucking wild.

“You don’t understand Theseus, you’ve saved me,” The Warden clenched the front of Theseus’ suit, Chat curling around the hybrid, pulling him closer. A thousand voices, all screaming.

THE BLOOD KING IS RIGHT

THE BLOOD KING IS RIGHT

They wanted Warden, they wanted, with a primal yearning, to make Sam their own. Images, thousands of them flashing across the screen, of devouring him. It was out of love. Cracking his ribcage open and stuffing themselves inside, loving him in a way that only they could understand. This fucked up sort of love- the kind that made you feral, violent. That was Chat. Chat was not malevolent. It was mentally ill, at best. But it saw violence as fun and abuse as love.

It was in that moment, Tommy understood. Techno didn’t hate him. Techno loved him.

Chat had no hold on him, so he pulled the Warden into an embrace with his own arms. His weaker arm buzzed, the energy Chat generated going electric in his blood.

He was the spark between two rocks hitting each other. He was a wildfire, barely able to assuage Warden. The other man, a glittering, green thing, let go. Nodded to him, an acknowledgement. Less of a farewell, and more of a see you on the other side.

Chapter Text

The crowd ambled around him as he tried to figure out the politest way to say get out of my way. Fortunately, or not, it came in the form of a very unexpected guest, “Theseus, so I heard you’ve been staying in the creation of mine, huh?”

Mumbo fucking Jumbo. The man, who was dressed like he always was, just less stained. He slung an arm around Theseus’ shoulder, and only then had Tommy realised just how tall he was.  Mumbo steered them towards the refreshments, pouring him a glass of something definitely alcoholic. He shoved it into Tommy’s hands. It looks like piss. Tommy didn’t take a drink.

“So, Mr. Mysterious, what really brings you out to the Red Banquet?” Mumbo kept his gestures grand, hands flailing. Tommy noticed all the small details. The dark red tips to his fingers, the sharpening of his ears. He wondered if Mumbo had similar sigils carved into him, in all the bits he couldn’t see.

“My good friend, and ally in Prime, Jester invited me. Said I would be a good man to keep on his side,” Tommy shifted slightly, changing hands so the drink did not rest against the newly formed sigil on his palm, “And what brings you?”

“I’m the organiser. Nothing to do with Heroes or Villains, just here for my pay check and the free wine,” Mumbo replied, eyes gliding over Tommy’s form. Lithe, pathetic. Unassuming at best. All the strength was hidden, wired into his veins. It reminded Mumbo of the Casino. So very alive, but mechanical underneath.

Tommy put his drink on the table, one of the edges where another chair was protecting it. He spoke, “Then why hang out with the Heroes and Villains?”

Mumbo Jumbo considered him with a slow drag of the wrist, “I wanted to meet the main attraction. A scene like this hasn’t happened in a century, and complete immunity in Las Nevadas? Would you forgive me if I had to see it myself?”

“I suppose, but that’s not all why you’re here, is it?”

“A favour. For a friend, who says that I need to check out the redstone sigils. They’re to die for,” Mumbo winked. Tommy startled, something small and slight. In that second, Mumbo pushed him forward, towards the man he was really trying to see.

Schlatt.

Laser focused on Tommy, these big saffron-coloured pupils with thin slits in the middle.

Schlatt beckoned him forward with a grand sweep of the arm. Theseus stepped towards the President. The man’s voice reverberated around his skull, “Theseus, the newest Villain on the block. I am... pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Tommy straightened his back, Chat poised on his shoulders. He copied Schlatt’s tone, “As am I, Mr. President.”

Schlatt pulled him forward, hands rough and coercing, “Is there any chance that you would be interested in joining the Hero Training Program? Surely it would be more productive than letting my Heroes run amok after you.”

“Not a chance in Nether, Mr. President,” There was a flash of anger in Schlatt’s eyes, gone as quick as it had arrived. He stuck out a hand to Theseus.

“Ah well, you’ll be sent to Pandora’s Vault eventually,” He laughed, something mocking in it. Tommy shook his hand. The power coursed through his body, like a dam had just burst. Chat buzzed.

Nothing happened, in the first moment. Theseus stood back, 404 nudging him away from the President. There was a moment of confusion, complete disappointment. And then, Schlatt tipped the glass of whiskey into his mouth. The match carved into Tommy’s hand burned.

So did Schlatt.

Smoke poured out his mouth, coughing desperately. His torso shook something furious, as he pointed a shaky hand towards Theseus. He spewed fire, catching on his clothes. A choked, bloody scream as his charred limbs fell. The suit smouldered, the smell of burning meat permeating the air. The desperate clamouring. No one could react fast enough.

It was strange-certainly morbid- that Tommy could spot the exact moment that Schlatt’s body became just a fiery corpse, rather than the remains of the President. The moment the life in his eyes disappeared.

It happened within a few seconds, the room going silent. 404 pushed him away. The movement sparked a crowd of them, a thousand people with bared teeth pointed at him. Dream was on the other side of the ballroom.

Techno crashed into him, Chat- Tommy’s Chat- barely managing to whip around in time. The conglomerates melded together, a chorus of bloodthirst. He ripped out of Chat’s grip, turning them sharp. He slashed forward, catching Phil’s outstretched wing as it attacked. Tommy stumbled back. Techno stalked towards him. He grabbed Tommy’s Chat, pulled it as if it was slime and smeared it over his suit.

A hand grabbed Tommy by the back of the suit. It lifted him. There was a shout, for them to let him go. But it didn’t come from Tommy. He twisted around and shot out the harsh stab of Chat, barely missing the shock of white, curly hair. The Captain. It wrapped around her wrists, forcing a release. Nemesis caught her by the waist and lifted her away from Tommy.

Phil-Angel, Tommy forced himself to separate the two- barrelled towards him with his fists clenched. He ducked and darted to the left. Flare caught him, shielding him from Techno once again. Techno’s Chat called for him, their voices faint yet strong. They told him to duck left, twist right. It left him an opening, a clearing. He took the opportunity. Tommy swept Chat as if they were a pair of wings, pushing through the crowd. Angel matched his stance, flighty and wary. Tommy held his hands out, letting Chat form themselves into spears. He charged forward, aiming a spear towards Angel. The other man deflected, grabbing at his hands. Chat met Angel’s hands, engulfing them into the slimy conglomerate.

Angel looked at him. They shared the bright blue, fiery eyes. Tommy stumbled back, feeling the full force of Phil’s powers wash over them. Deafening sounds, thousands of crows assaulting his ears. One of Wilbur’s stupid lyrics came to mind.

You’ve got the same eyes as your father.

Chat whipped Angel, lashing out at the man. Angel grabbed a glass and broke it, stabbing at the tendrils. Angel threw the shattered glass at him, the shards digging themselves into the side of his face. Phil’s hands were bloody. Tommy’s were charred.

And you carry the same kind of temper, too.

It had turned into a brawl; Punz- and Sam surprisingly- taking on Techno, Flare and Phantom, Nemesis and the Captain. The last two were arguing, but Tommy still felt bad about it. Quackity and Bad kept their distance. He went to collide with Angel again, sending the ceramic plates hurtling towards him. The telekinesis sigil still worked under the room wards. Angel ducked and bared his teeth, vicious and proud.

But what a shame for the people of your community.

Dream broke another glass over the Angel’s head. The man stumbled forward, his blood dripping down his face. One of Techno’s fists collided with Tommy’s head. The world went white for a moment, his legs giving out. He couldn’t hear. The deafening cacophony of crows still rung in his ears. He gripped the side of the banquet hall table.

Favourite things; a fight and a lager.

Angel persisted. Impressively so, Tommy mused. He met Angel in the middle of his punch, grabbing the loose fist and squeezing it. Angel shrieked, the glass shards that lodged themselves into his skin slicing through the tendons. He held his hand to his chest, cradling it.

Name a better way to spit out a jaw or two.

Angel’s wings sliced through Tommy’s torso, a deep gash tearing itself open. He looked down, pressing the skin together. His bones were sticking out. His ribcage heaved, as if they were a pair of wings sheltering his heart. Angel had a sickening look on his face. He was so torn. Halfway between horror and reverence at his own actions. Wearing his own hangman's hands. The sound of crows still deafened him. There were less now, the crows silencing themselves. One remained.

He’s a model citizen, through and through.

Chat jeered, awful and fearless. Tommy staggered forward, clutching at the hole that separated his chest. Blood oozed out. The room went still. He nodded his head upwards. Nemesis caught his eyes, her face broken in two. She wasn’t really looking at him, but looking through him. Caught in a memory.

Manifold, Chat supplied.

He swivelled his head, catching another. Techno.

He had this morbid look of understanding. Techno’s Chat pulsed. They went docile, gathering around his calves. In his mind, he could hear Techno’s Chat yelling at the man, telling him to save Theseus. Tommy’s Chat tried to sew him back up- inky, threaded stitch-marks attaching themselves uselessly to his chest.

He was so hot. Not physically- although, the ladies- but his skin was burning. Heat sweltered at the base of his neck. Tommy slid his fingers up to the scar on his neck, past the torc. His fingers were freezing cold, a mismatch. Two extremes. His fingers travelled further, grabbing at the threads that kept his mask in place. Dream barrelled towards him, seemingly in slow motion. He soothed in words that Tommy couldn’t hear. Tommy tried to reply. Blood bubbled up instead, a wet, hacking cough.

He reached out a shaky, blood-soaked hand.

Techno met him. The piglin kept him upright, on the other side of Dream. He was surprisingly gentle, trying to shuck off Tommy’s jacket. Guess it wasn’t the best time to rough up a dying kid.

Holy shit, he was dying.

The blood rushed out too fast. His heartbeat was pulsing through his entire body, the beat of it throwing him off centre. And it was still too hot. Flames seemed to lick the inside of his hands.

 He pulled off his mask.

Dread washed over Techno’s features. His fingers dug into Tommy’s arms, mouth moving faster than Tommy could ever lip-read. He looked back at Phil. He was distraught, rushing forward with an intensity that made Tommy flinch. They fussed over him like he was a sick patient. Tommy didn’t understand why they changed so suddenly. It wasn’t like he was dying.

Oh, wait.

Cool sweat dripped down his face. After a belated moment, he realised that it was Phil’s tears. The man sobbed, visceral wails wracked through his body. Wilbur held him up. They mumbled words, shielded him from the crowd. Phil kissed his forehead.

Hello, Little Icarus.

Chapter Text

An endless, starry sky. Splotches of purple and blue, with bright-white pinprick stars. It was vast, spanning every crevice that he could see. The only contrast was the rough, sandstone-like ground. Jagged bits stabbed into Tommy’s back. He breathed, sucking in the air. It didn’t help the pressure on his chest, the ice cold roots. He touched his fingers to his chest. They came back covered in black oil, it dripping onto the endstone.

He turned his eyes to the sky again. To the landscape, the pillars of black rock, which glittered under the starlight. The End was as beautiful as every depiction he had ever seen of it.  Tommy pulled himself up. The oil- his blood, he realised belatedly, dripped over his legs and hardened, forming a fabric-like material. It covered him, crawling up to shroud him in robes.

He stood, staggering as he turned. In the distance, perched on an altar, was a woman weeping. Her hair flowed down, impossibly long, and in it, Tommy could see shifting shapes, could see scenes of people laughing, fighting, dancing. He got closer, features becoming clearer. A couple, dancing in a ballroom. One with big, black wings, the other with a gown that swept the floor.

She wore a sunhat, adorned with animal bones, and had gold jewellery that shone against her skin. She wore a single emerald earring. Her body was turned away from him, but Tommy could see her shoulders shaking.

“Are you alright?” Tommy mentally kicked himself. She swivelled her head towards him, and Tommy realised that she wasn’t crying, she was laughing. Hysterically so. Black tear marks were still carved into her face, but she had a rabid, feral grin. It was familiar.

Tommy’s own mannerisms stared back at him. Hs mother stared back at him. She spoke, “You’ve done it, Icarus.”

“What have I done? Mum, please-” She shushed him, pulling him into an impossibly tight hug.

“I was going to kill Dream for not keeping you alive longer,” He hoped she was joking, “But now, I can protect you myself.”

“I-I love you. I miss you. But, Mum, I don’t want to die.” She pulled back on him, the grin still stuck on her features. His mum was so impossibly warm. She smelt of rot, but it made him want to bury himself deeper into her chest.

“Let me tell you a story, Little Icarus.”

Imagine this:

You are a crow- or a magpie, raven, whatever bird vaguely resembles them. You have friends, a murder of them. You are sitting on the ledge of a house, watching the boy.

The boy is scrawny, a skinny thing for his age. Tousled blond hair and these bright, bright blue eyes. He is angry. When is he not?

You and your friends follow this boy through it all. You try to caw out to him, let him know what danger is lying ahead. He does not understand you, but considers you all the same. Notices you’re there.

He is tired, a haggard boy for his age. Has bright, angry red knuckles and bruises on the odd parts of him. Hates his father, but most teenage boys do. There are scars on him- images that he creates himself. You do not know what they mean, if anything.

He is peculiar, has this thing running through him. He hurts, so he hurts. This awful thing, a battalion in a man. He grows under your guidance, your hive mind’s guidance. He loves until he runs dry. And then bleeds some more. The boy creates a name for himself, and then another. A parental, animalistic moniker.

It suits him, you all muse in unison. A feral boy, one who does not know his place yet. He grits his teeth, kills some.

These big, black, monstrous things grow out of him. They are beautiful weapons.

He meets a thick-haired girl some years later. She is not like him. A curious mind alike but does not share the pain. She changes him, you all rejoice. She gives him another path. One with pain buried, but used. He changes his name- from something you are honoured by, to something she is honoured by. He likes her enough for all of you.

The Crowfather stowed away, an Angel of Death in the ashes.

No, I am telling the story wrong. Let me try again.

***

Imagine this:

You are Icarus. Your father has given you the means to make yourself known. To escape the monotony of workshop Midas has you in. He is giving you freedom. Too much for a boy. You run your hand over the wax wings, chicken feathers plucked individually for the task. A lot of pain for freedom, but trodding on the lesser is something you are comfortable with.

You take a breath, and then another. The salty air tastes like home. You’ve never been home before. You jump, flapping your arms. You soar. The sun is like nothing you’ve ever felt, drunk on the power of choice. It warms you, aching at your core. The sea breeze tickles at your sides, a touch from the world.

You take a breath. It is love. The sun is your mate, fitting between every soft curve of your gnarled skin. There are no rough edges in the golden light. The wax slides down your arms, engulfing you in the heat. Air slides down you, embracing your slender frame, caught on each rib.

You are falling.

This realisation hits slowly. The wax drips down faster, a race against the orange, hazy sun. It threatens to burn you. You don’t care, another realisation. You would let the sun destroy you over and over for a taste of the freedom you receive. There is that certain death that comes with love. Infatuation. Drowning.

Perhaps it is in your nature to fall.

The feathers rip away from your arms in a brilliant display. The water reaches to meet you, catching your fall. Two lovers reunite. It is perhaps the best thing you’ve experienced in your life. It is the only thing you’ve experienced. The water swallows you, the splash mimicking your wings. The taste is like fermented grapes, bursting the sweet nectar of the ocean’s water on your tongue. There is no way to describe it well. Not everything feels like something else.

The story is still not right, let me tell you a different one.

***

Imagine this:

You are another crow, and there is another boy. Practically identical to the first, except for the fact that they are totally different.

They both kill some sort of royalty, and a leader.

No, that is incorrect.

One kills some sort of royalty- a leader.

The other kills some sort of royalty, and a leader.

The messy blond hair and bright eyes remain the same. The anger remains the same. The will to hurt, to be hurt, to know pain is his only pasttime. He hates his father, idolises his mother, and is an unreliable narrator, what’s new?

He has a brother, two in fact. They love him a little too much. One is trying to get by, the other is plagued. The boy is tired, beaten and bloody. The plagued brother cannot help but contribute. It is in his nature, of course.

The boy falls into the same path he didn’t want to. The same story. Making a name for yourself. Hurting. He is more powerful than the first. The images he scarred into himself are different, even you can feel it. He hurts, so he hurts. He is born a blank slate, something to write the scriptures on. He creates a new name for himself, and then from his mother. He gives himself parental, animalistic relations. The others do not know his pain. There is only solace in trying to trip up others.

He grows these big, black, monstrous things. They are beautiful weapons and they want more. He obliges, though reluctantly. He tries to claim that he wasn’t created to hurt. He was. It is written in his palms and on his face. The boy is a weapon, even when injured. This natural-born skill to maim.

People know of it. People use it, they let him hurt others to their advantage. He is still a boy. He should not know of it.

Alas.

He is sharp, reasons himself into the right places. Intuitive charm, he is the gun hidden under a lady’s petticoat, or the knife in her bra. He is all soft curves and elbows, even when gaunt. Unassuming, until the moment that it all clicks. It is why people pity him. They should fear it.

I do not like this version of the story, let me tell it again.

***

Imagine this:

You are a mother. That is not all you are, but it is the one soft part of you. It’s a better way to start a story, mostly. You are the unassuming gun, once again. But people have heard about you. A gown that sweeps the floor, this deep royal purple. They call you many names, two stick.

You are not like the rest of them, not for lack of trying. You do not wield this same power that courses through their veins like second nature. It makes them snide to you. But there is one.

You meet him when you have a knife to his throat. He was an angry thing that didn’t see it. That pain did not belong to him, but he held it all the same. He is nice though. You could see the way his hands shook when talking to you. You’ve always been good with emotions, and so is he.

The violence was an unfortunate side effect of killing tyrants. However, you were good at killing tyrants, which counted for something. You revel in the thought of them suffering forever, their slow, braindead mind stuck forever on the last moment of pain. It was satisfying. He is different, less about the power of tyranny. He did it for the hunt, for the sickening snap of bones. You show him how to direct the anger. Make it more useful. He humours you, too enamoured with your eyes and the way your hair curled to disagree. And it became easy, steady.

There is still that hunger for power. To be recognised for what you were. You may be unpowered, but you are not powerless. There’s the civil options, the protests, the campaigning. None of it works, but it’s nice enough to say you tried it. You and him are both clever, too quick for your own good.

There is a machine. It is supposed to give you power. The ability to compete without trying. He wants you to do it, and you love him enough to try. You both spend too much time working on it. You are the only test subject. You laugh at him, something disgustingly fond. He smiles. You smile. It is a happy day.

You step into the machine hub-

The moment surrounds Tommy, and suddenly he is in the laboratory. He sees Phil, a younger man. A happier one at that. Phil fiddles with the knobs on a control board, protected by a latex film of glass. Bulletproof, he assumes. On the other side stands a woman. She is beautiful, but her teeth look like fangs under the harsh, fluorescent light. Phil says something Tommy can’t hear right. All of the words are underwater, like they are air bubbles coming up to the surface. Her voice, though. It is clear. It is the only thing that exists to him. She laughs, and it is so familiar that he wants to die. It is his laugh. She and Tommy share the same laugh.

Her olive skin looker paler and sickly in this lighting. Her weapons and mask are placed on the table by Phil. She waves Phil off, and she looks so much like Tommy. Well, Tommy looks like her, but he was only able to place those actions on himself. She steps closer to the machine, asks Phil if it’s ready.

The realisation hits. He knows what moment he is witnessing.

He stumbles forward, breaking out into a desperate lunge but he cannot seem to get any closer to the scene. It stays behind the glass of memory. She steps into the cubicle, and Tommy can only watch Phil’s face.

There is the horrifying, grinding sound of metal against bone. Phil rushes forward almost immediately. He is too late. In every iteration of this story, he is too late. A shriek makes both men stagger back. And then silence. The silence is worse. There are blood splatters on the glass. There are blood splatters on the mask.

The irony of what she died for makes Tommy sick. Guess they are all the same, after all this time.

Twin hearts stay stagnant. He looks at what remains of his mother, just a blood splatter and torn fabric.

The scene shifts. It is her, staring into the endlessly starry sky. The craters of the endstone dig into her legs. A man sits beside her- tousled blond hair, it seems she is familiar with him. The green hoodie gives it away.

“What are you doing here?” She asks, “Am I not dead?”

There is that last, fighting bit of spirit in her. He looks down, takes the mask off of his face. His features seem to tweak every few seconds, but Tommy is sure that is his face. Dream’s original face. He speaks, sympathy clear in his voice, “You are dead. I’m sorry, Kris. I am here because I’m a god and, well, I wanted to offer you something.”

She looks wary, fists clenching and unfurling her dress fabric, “What is it?”

“I cannot offer you life, I can offer you godhood. The chance for a little bit of reign,” She considers what he says.

“Why? Would I be able to go back to the Overworld? Like you do,” Her eyes narrow, words spoken with an intensity. His hands buzz with energy.

“Unfortunately, no. You have no mortal form to return to. You can observe, but not interact corporeally. You would be able to control who dies, and where they go. You can wield the power you’ve always dreamed of,” He gestures, his hands still staying in front of his torso.

“And what if I don’t take it?” She lays back, elbows digging into the end stone. It does not seem to hurt her.

“Then you will die, like many great Heroes before you. You will go braindead, and never feel anything again.”

“I want my son to be protected. Tommy, he’s only a boy. He’s unpowered, I can feel it,” She says, her tone begging. Desperate.

Dream gives her a soft smile, “If you become a god, when the time comes for him to pass, you can offer him a choice. Any choice. In the meantime, I will help him. Protect him the best I can.”

She nods. Her form shifts, a sudden surge of power glowing under her skin.

Death had become a God.

This is still not the story I want to tell, just the interlude.

***

You are an observer. Perhaps a crow, perhaps the shadows that trail the plagued brother. Either way, you are multitudinous. You are a product of anger, scarred into the bicep of another warrior. A follower for the man. The plagued brother is this brutish thing, violence carved into every crevice. He is only beautiful because he is the perfect fighter.

He maims, he kills. He loves too much, and you help the only way you know how to. You turn his expressions of love into overwhelm, letting his nature do the rest. You don’t know how to handle power, or love. Anything top-full and heavy.

He loves the boy. It is a tragedy. A play in four acts.

Act One; the violence sets in. He breaks, over and over. Nobody knows how to handle something so rough. The boy- the original boy, who directs his anger- tries to do the same for his son. For the follower of the man. After a while, it works. The breaking is more handled by medication, but he does not tell his father this.

Love is about lying to the people you value. Being naked, vulnerable, and under examination is what love feels like. Sometimes your heart cannot handle it. So, he lies. So, they all lie to each other.

Act Two; this burden is transferred. This story is ultimately about the boy- the one he loves too much. The one who seeks his own, seeks to put the pain somewhere else, just like the plagued brother did to him. The plagued brother could not help it.

It’s in his nature, after all. This story is prewritten, played out on hundreds of stages.

Act Three; they are on an equal playing field. The two met three times, and the messengers have split between them. They are competing, even if they do not know it. The messengers- that is you, for the moment- are deciding who is who. 

Act Four; the boy is offered a choice.

I think you know what it is already, Icarus.

“I do.”

And what have you decided?

“I do.”

The Blood God has been revived.

Chapter Text

He was just a boy. His skinny, cold limbs curled in on themselves, a look of utter peace on his face. There was so much blood. His little brother and his blood. The only things that existed.

Blood was real. Blood made things real.

Tommy was so light. Techno held him in his arms, bundled up the boy. His blood still spilled out of him, he had so much blood. Dream pat him on the back. A rare look of sympathy. Phil pawed at Tommy, his shaky hands clasping over the wound. It was too late.

Chat whispered the same, that he was gone. Tommy- barely bigger than a tall child- looked like he was sleeping. Phil sobbed every prayer he knew. The joint of one of his wings was slick with blood, the front of his suit stained. Techno brushed the hair out of his brother’s eyes. There was twisted golden rods around his neck, an opening at the front of his neck. A torc, if Techno could recall correctly. Engraved with sigils, the gold stark against his skin. Against the knotted scar at the base of his throat, one that Techno had given him.

He had hurt Tommy. For once, without realising it. It seemed in his nature to hurt the boy. And Techno’s hands were stained with his blood once again. All great Neptune’s oceans couldn’t wash the blood from his hands. Chat jeered, their mix of pride and sorrow sickening. The one stain that never comes out.

Wilbur stood frozen. Techno couldn’t look at him, the scar on his neck aching. He watched as Techno carried their brother to the thrones. Bad stood, and then kneeled beside Tommy as he was lowered down. He fussed, pressing into various sigils that littered his arms. After a minute of bated breath, the entire room watching as his brother bled out, Bad stood. He shook his head. A weight sunk in Techno’s stomach. He wiped the corner of his mouth, some quick, flighty gesture, and his cheek twitched at the wetness. Bad clasped a hand on his shoulder. Phil held his other hand. Wilbur kneeled by Tommy’s head, wiping his blood off his face. His little brother was gone. Chat- Tommy’s Chat- still desperately tried to seal the wound. Like they had when Techno slit his throat.

Another wave of guilt wracked through him. He fell, clasping his hands over his head, resting it above Tommy’s abdomen.

A beat, a sob.

A beat, and Chat roared.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

He jerked back violently, falling back. He screwed his eyes shut, the Chat beating at his skull. They were bloodthirsty. There was a scream, something broken and desperate. Techno forced his eyes open.

Tommy’s body, rising into the air, arms outstretched. Christ-like. His blood turned a vibrant golden, dripping up, as if it were creating wings. It surrounded him in a halo. Chat forced him up. Techno staggered, Chat willing his knees to bend. For him to kneel.

Tommy’s eyes were wide open and pitch black. Blood- not the golden blood that dripped from his brother’s chest, but something pure crimson, stained his teeth. The torc shattered, the shards piercing his skin, and Tommy let out a feral scream. The scar- the knotted slit that Techno had given him- unthreaded itself, oozing the blood of Chat.

Phil snapped out of his rapt gaze. Tears streamed down his face, his eyes transfixed on Tommy even as he was backing away.

The Blood God laughed. Tommy laughed.

It was the same sound that he heard on early mornings, whenever Phil told a particularly bad joke, or when their family used to play those shitty board games. It was Mum’s laugh. The exact same, an echo of a better time.

Tommy fell to the ballroom floor, landing on his feet. He stumbled, falling into the stance of a preying insect. He reached out, brushed the front of Techno’s jacket with an outstretched, bloody hand. Chat crept up the limb, engulfing the arm in their black slime. Tommy jerked his arm back, tearing Chat away. Sharp, exploding pain wracked through Techno’s body. He staggered back further, clutched at his chest. There was this hole in him. An emptiness that left him breathless.

His head was quiet for the first time in seven years.

Tommy didn’t wait to push past him. His eyes gave no hint as to where he was looking, but Techno knew he was headed for Phil. Techno raised out an arm, but Tommy batted him away. There was no remorse in the way that he moved. It was heavy, like every step was a stomp. He came to a stop right before Phil. Phil reached out, with a trembling hand. Tommy took it, desperately clutching at his father. For a second, all Techno could feel was relief.

Then, he heard the bones in his father’s wings snap.

They bent at horrible angles, looking more like Chat than a pair of functioning wings. Phil fell into Tommy, a pained sob wracking through the man. Tommy pushed him off, into the arms of Wilbur. Wil tried to speak- Techno could see the vocal chords straining to work. But no noise came out. Techno looked around, as no other person, Hero or not, had interfered. They couldn’t. There was a thick, black mist that separated them from the others in the ballroom. There was no way out.

Tommy snapped his head back to Techno, spindly and robotic. Techno planted his feet. Squared his shoulders, made himself look mean. His brother spoke with an air of finality, in a voice that wasn’t his, “You will ache like I ache. You will bleed like I bled.”

The slit on his neck burned, pulling itself apart. His fingers cracked, bending in all the wrong directions. Another blow to the skull, and agony shook through the corners of his being. Techno tried to stand. Tommy held him, pressed his fingers into the caved-in bit of Techno’s skull, flush with fresh pain. The way he hurt was so loving. As if he couldn’t handle it himself.

Chat. Techno realised. Chat was a facet of the Blood God. Violence was love. Love was violence. He tripped through a memory, Tommy forcing his head underneath the water. He resurfaced, younger and shorter than he had ever been. All skinny and top-full of love.

Techno touched his face. His teeth, no longer the heavy tusks that they always were. They were small and slight, like everything else in this memory. He looked down, at the pen he was holding. His pale, unscarred hands gripped the pencil so hard his joints hurt. Math equations swam in front of his vision, the 2’s becoming swans, 5’s were snakes and he was just really, really bad at math. It took him a moment to realise that he wasn’t seeing through his own eyes.

He was seeing through Tommy’s.

There was a bang at his door. A screaming match that he had only just managed to tune out. It was Techno- the Techno from Tommy’s memories, not the one witnessing them. He could tell from the way the door splintered under the weight of an overgrown 16-year-old. Tommy ran to his closet, to barricade himself in, away from Techno. Techno- the real one, he thought to himself, the one that wasn’t 16 anymore- realised that he had no control over the body he inhabited. Of course he didn’t, he thought stupidly. Waited for Chat to berate him.

It didn’t come. The silence was deafening. He was truly, and utterly alone.

The door broke, a brutish teenager came barrelling through. He screamed, pulling Tommy out from his hiding spot. The teen held a wild look, and smelt of sulphur and copper. Techno tried to flinch, but he wasn’t in his own body.

Tommy wasn’t ready for the hit, neither was Techno. The pain rattled his bones, as if it was pulling his eyeballs out through his nose. He felt his skull cave in, now only a bystander to the agony. There was this thing growing inside of him. It was like an air bubble in a sculpture, growing and empty. Tommy’s throat buzzed, something trying to worm its way down his oesophagus.

“Why are you doing this? Techno, stop.” Dad tried to pull the teen off. Tommy-Techno curled further in on himself. Themselves, the two-turned-one as he saw through Tommy’s eyes. For Phil’s efforts, Tommy heard his nose snap under the force of teen-Techno’s elbow. Blood sprayed over his homework. It pulsed, gently mimicking the waves of the ocean. The swan-2’s bobbed up and down over them. For a split second, it was quiet again.

He could hear Wil, his siren voice crystal clear through the pain. It was desperate, tinny and loud.

“Stop, Techno. Stop h-” His voice faltered, the command failing halfway through, “-urting him. Techno, kill yourself.”

The Techno in the memory complied. The razor he carried on a necklace- some remnant from being an emo 14-year-old, was snapped off the string. He put it up to his throat-

Tommy-Techno turned away, and he couldn’t tell who the action belonged to. There was a skip in the memory, a bit where all Tommy seemed to do was stare at his blood-soaked homework. Then, at his blood-soaked hands, as Phil rubbed a damp rag over his back. The emptiness- the not-quite-wholeness- it seemed to engulf him. Phil poured a regeneration potion over his head, and it was like he was clean again. Whole. Stitched-up. As if the blood was never truly there, despite what his innards said.

Phil crouched, looked him in the eyes. The older man looked quite silly with a bandage over the nose. He mumbled some words that Tommy-Techno couldn’t really hear. His head was spinning, unable to fully focus. Phil left. In his place, a young man shrouded in black robes, his eyes a stark white. There was black splatters of skin ebbing down his face. Vitiligo- though the stark black looked less like melanin and more like corruption. It took Techno a few seconds to recognise him without the signature darkness.

Bad. With hands tipped in darkness and pure white sigils carved into his tanned arms, he lifted a finger across Tommy’s face, swaying it up and down, right to left. Techno recognised it as a sigil, but not what type. After a moment, that stretched into an hour, the fog cleared. He could hear, even if it was still slightly warbled.

“How are you doing there, buddy?” Bad placed his hands on Tommy’s knees. Tommy giggled out an answer, still probably delirious. Techno watched Bad, as the man moved with a certain grace only reserved for sigil-wielders. Bad met Phil, pressing his hands into the other man’s chest.

“He should be able to handle getting hurt easier. I’ve- for lack of a better word, I’ve carved him out, like a bowl- the pain will simply fill him, not affect him.”

“Will he remember this?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Phil guided Bad out. Tommy sat, staring at his hands. At his clean, porcelain hands.

Techno resurfaced, gasping for breath. He grabbed at Tommy, at the robes he wore. Tommy gave him a look of love. He spoke in a shaky, light voice, “I have remembered, Techno. Do you understand why now? Do you understand who I am? Who you’ve destined me to be?”

“I’m sorry,” All that he could manage was an apology. All that would come out of his mouth. Tommy shook his head.

“You were destined to do it from the start,” He looked at Techno again with a look of bloodlust. It felt more sincere than the adoration that followed, “They had loved us both, had set us both up. You could’ve been me.”

Techno moved to speak, his lips moving but the words failing him. Tommy’s hand moved in the same sigil pattern that he had seen.

“Alas, now I am your God.” Tommy floated up, hands raised to the sky. “Wil, you’ve tried, so, so hard. But it was not enough to protect me from the pain.”

Wil collapsed, as if he were a puppet cut from his strings. He tried to get up, his hands glowing a bright golden light. Techno moved to meet him, dragging himself towards his older brother. Wil clutched at his throat, a golden thread spreading up his face like veins. They turned his eyes a bright, blinding gold. It dripped from his eyes- just long enough for Techno to realise that they were tears.

“I can see it all,” Wilbur whispered, such adoration in his voice. Relief, devotion, Techno couldn’t tell the emotion. Wil spoke again, “I can know safety. I see you as you are.”

Wilbur turned his hands over. Techno faced back at Tommy, “What have you done to him?”

Tommy swatted away his words with a flick of the wrist, “Wilbur spends his days throwing himself into buildings because he does not know who he is. He was a teenager sneaking out to drink after training, then an adult ripped from this safety. Have you noticed that, Techno? Did you care? He has the power to stop them. Quite literally, as you know. So, why doesn’t he?”

“I don’t know. I don’t- Tommy, please.”

“Techno, why do they take 10-year-olds for Hero Training?”

“I- Tommy.”

“You know why. You’re complicit in the system because they took you before you could think too hard.”

“Tommy,” Techno begged.

“How old were you when you got Chat? How old were you when the government thought they could send you on a mission to hunt the biggest Villain?”

“I was fifteen,” He reached his hands out to Tommy. Hands stained in the same blood that dripped from his brother’s chest. Tommy stared, an unreadable look on his face.

“He let you,” Tommy fell, slow and steady. He landed like a cat, prowling towards Phil. “You let a child hunt the biggest Villain in the world? You let the child manifest violence as a love language?”

Phil stared pathetically. He whispered broken apologies, a rosary with a skull on the end of it clutched in his fist. He held it up to the light, to Tommy.

“It is what I have for you. She wanted you to have this. I am so, so, very sorry,” Phil was almost inaudible. His father shook from the pain, his wings barely keeping him upright. They bent at odd angles, the sound of grinding bone occasionally breaking the tension.

Tommy took the rosary, nodding at his father. He turned on his heel, a smooth gesture that made no sound on the floor. He disappeared on himself, with only the outline of a crow remaining, burnt into the tiles.