Chapter Text
tommy’s life goal was to be a hero. but he was too bossy, and loud, and annoying frankly. he really did try to be quiet, be kinder. but he was always too much no matter what he did. he was annoying and stubborn and nobody seemed to be able to handle him.
he never really had a home all his life. he tried to avoid adults, keeping to himself. he roamed the streets and stole from street vendors to get food, and he had become damn good at it too.
he had only ever made one friend all his life, who’s name was ranboo. at age 7 while hiding away he ran into this lanky streetkid. just like him, ranboo never really fit anywhere even though they had tried.
ranboo was kind to tommy. they shared a fort in an alleyway that they had built over the past year or so. they never really kept track of time.
seasons were easy, but exact dates and years were much harder to figure out unless it was plastered on every doorway or window in the city. they couldn’t really tell how old they were anymore either. tommy was around 17 and ranboo might’ve been 18 now, but they had no way to tell if they were right - the only hints they had were what others perceptions of them told.
the fort was difficult to make, stealing materials for it was absolute hell. they needed tapestries and wood and scraps of metal. sometimes they had borrowed tools to actually hold the thing together.
their fort was in a much smaller, crowded part of their city. the buildings were stacked on top of each-other and rope bridges and ladders were used to get to different levels. if you were lucky - in a richer area - there were stairs or elevators, but the extremely rich areas didn’t even need to stack their buildings because they had huge mansions.
ran and tommy were just two of many streetkids and stray animals that lived in the poorer areas. dogs, cats, rodents, and small children roamed the streets and would beg for scraps from vendors, but the older and smarter you got you would learn that stealing was the best option if you wanted to survive.
there was something else special about this city though, many of the people who lived there were gifted with special abilities. if you were born into a rich family with a power, your parents would get you into school to really hone your abilities and make you the best hero you could be. as for the poorer people, abilities just meant you could work. if you were strong you could pull farm equipment like a bull. if you were fast you could deliver mail or food. (they don’t call it doordash for nothing, right?)
but our friends toms and ranboo were gifted the great powers of shapeshifting and invisibility, respectively. however, they had no family and no connections, nobody would take two teenagers dressed in rags as workers- especially since their powers couldn’t exactly help at an office or a store -and there was no way in hell they could afford to go to school. plus neither of them had been to a regular school, seeing as they didn’t have any parents to enroll them, so they were pretty socially inept.
they did have a job, just not a conventional one. they were what you could call vigilantes. it may sound silly, but the "real" heroes of the city were off saving the rich folks in suburbia from the horrors of being given the wrong drink at starbucks. maybe thats an exaggeration, there are some villains that the heroes would fight and fend off, but plenty of people get mugged in tom and ran’s part of town, so where was the dream team and their allies to stop that? they didn’t seem very busy.
—
the sun was just starting to rise over the stacked houses and shops, but tommy was already awake. he had some nocturnal instinct inside of him that made him wake up in the middle of the night. this was good though, as he liked to sneak out and steal newspapers off the neighbors’ porches.
he peered out the fort’s door and quickly climbed up one of the ropes that held it together. he landed on top of the neighboring building and crawled toward the edge. the paperboy came by at this time often, he had blondish hair that was obviously dyed because of his dark roots. suddenly, a rolled up paper landed on the porch of the house. tommy carefully leaned over the awning and snatched the newspaper. he scrambled back on top of the roof and darted towards the fort.
ranboo should be waking up soon, he thought. they’re usually awake right when the sun is up. once safely back inside the fort, he sat in the ripped rolly chair ranboo had brought in a few weeks before. unfurling the paper, he realised something was inside. an envelope? he didn’t mean to take the neighbors mail, he only wanted the paper. setting the open newspaper in his lap he held the envelope in his hands.
the back read "DEPARTMENT OF HERO SERVICES" in large bold red print. why the fuck would our neighbor be getting a letter from hero services..?
as tommy was about to open the letter, suddenly the curtain that surrounded his and ranboo’s bed swung open. he quickly hid the letter between the pages of the newspaper and acting as if he had just been reading it, nothing more.
"um..alright. good morning to you too, tommy, that wasn’t suspicious at all," ranboo said.
"i’m not sure what you’re talking about, ranboo. nothing suspicious about me today." tommy replied.
“mmmkay,” ranboo narrowed their eyes at the other. “do we have any plans for today?”
“well, i was thinking we could go downtown to the vendors and—“
“—no.” tommy was quickly cut off by ranboo. “toms, i’ve told you this before, we- we cannot go harass the street vendors and pretend that we’re heroes.” ranboo dragged their hands down their face in frustration. “it’s not right.”
tommy sputtered. “w- well i’m sure the REAL heroes do the same thing at their dumb coffee shops!” he rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. “oh! i’m dream, look at me! can i have 16 free caramel frappemachiatolattes please?” tommy said in a mocking tone, putting on a silly voice to really perfect his impersonation.
"tommy,” ranboo said in a calmer tone, “how about we just do surveillance on top of buildings again? that was alright for you yesterday, right?"
tommy huffed. ranboo never wanted to do anything fun. “fine,” he’d just sneak off at some point, he always did that eventually. “get your outfit on.”
when tommy and ranboo went out on their “missions” (if you could even call them that.) they adopted the identities of morpho and veil.
tommy’s vigilante costume comprised of black cargo pants, a long sleeved red-and-white shirt, winter gloves, a crossbody bag, a gas mask to hide his identity, and two belts for the aesthetic. the gas mask had been painted red in some places, which probably wouldn’t help if he needed it to protect from dangerous toxins, but it would be alright for now as he only needed to hide his face from the paparazzi that morpho and veil most definitely have.
ranboo’s costume was different, and more elegant by comparison. they wore a dark purple hooded cape that nearly reached the ground, black button up shirt, black jeans, arm length gloves, and a gas mask that they had painted half white.
“y’know i still think you should’ve painted your mask purple to go with the cape,” tommy spoke as they climbed onto the roof of a building near their fort.
“i told you already, the black represents being visible and the white represents-“ ranboo struggled as they tried to scale the roof. “-invisibility!” tommy was really weirdly agile compared to them, even though he was so scrawny.
tommy grabbed ranboo’s hand and pulled them up, “well, i for one just don’t understand how the white is ‘sposed to mean invisible, you can see better in the light!”
“see better..? you can only see when its light out..” ran muttered as they planted their feet firmly on the rooftop.
suddenly, an explosion rang out from the street below and was immediately followed by screaming.
“what the FUCK was that.” tommy shouted, turning to face ranboo as the building shook.
“why are you looking at me?! it came from down there!” ranboo screamed, looking for something, anything that they could do to help. “we need to evacuate the street,” they yelled over the roar of the explosion’s blast, and grabbed one of tommy’s hands. “we need to go now, come on!”
ranboo tugged tommy back off the building the way they came, and bounded towards the ground.
tommy landed on all fours, his tail flicking from side to side, ears pinned against his head, and his fur spiked up. of course he had to transform right now, as if this wasn’t the absolute worst time to be a small animal. this had happened before when he was scared. he wasn’t as freaked out about it as he used to be, but it was very clear he wasn’t happy about it. especially since he was trying to be a hero, not a scared little cat.
ranboo pushed themself up from the floor, and upon seeing the newly cat-tommy cracked a smile. "look at you!"
"don't. say. anything." tommy spat back.
"i won't, i won't, are you able to transform back?" ranboo asked, "we really have to help evacuate the street and its probably better if we have human-you for it." they added, looking around the alleyway that they had fallen into.
there was a brief pause before tommy sighed, his body slowly shrinking back into its normal shape.
“good, let’s get moving” ranboo grabbed his hand again and started towards the street.
another explosion in a different building.
ranboo had sprinted off towards some bodies laying on the ground while tommy tried to look around for the source of the explosions. suddenly, he spotted a figure flying on some type of hoverboard. that was strange, he couldn't remember any heroes having a hoverboard.
a boy who looked around 7 ran towards him. he held his hand out and grabbed the boy’s arm. "hey! are you okay?" tears streamed down his face and he was shaking badly.
the boy turned to the masked stranger holding him. he pushed tommy off of him and ran away in a different direction.
“CYCLONE I KNOW YOU’RE HERE!” an earsplittingly loud voice screamed. the figure tommy saw zipped past him on their hoverboard
cyclone? he could be a pretty dangerous criminal, but was easily defeated before by the hero sapnap. another thing tommy noted about this new hero though, was that they were definitely wearing a voice changer.
another explosion came from the direction the figure had went, and tommy charged toward it. if this was a new hero and they were fighting someone by themself in this area? not only was it serious, but it was really dangerous. no heroes had enough training to safely navigate the stacked buildings that wind into mazes you could easily get lost in if you didn’t know them well - and no heroes were from here, so obviously they didn’t know them well.
and that’s where our protagonist, tommy aka morpho comes in.
he found the alley which the most recent explosion happened, and found the new hero and cyclone.