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Chapter Text

Narrowly dodge another hit. Feint, then attack from the other side. Dodge. Back up a little bit. Adjust your stance, Dodge. Jump over an attempted sweep. Dodge again.

"You can't dodge forever Red!" A villain shouts at him.

He'd been called in to stop this villain from robbing a bank. Siren is this villain's name. There's been speculation on what his power is, But no one really knows, just being around this villain, People get angry, lash out more. Tommy is used to the effects of this guy, So he knows how to deal with it.  They aren't even in the bank anymore, they've moved out onto the street and then Tommy chased him onto a bridge where the fighting picked up again.

"Are you completely sure, cuz I haven't even-" Dodge "-Started yet" a breath "You just suck at attacking." 

He's lying, This villain is one of the worst. Tommy has been hit by him before and he'll tell you how much it hurts. This guy is fucking buff, One punch is enough to shatter bones. He's trying to stall, Backup is on it's way.

Dodge. Keep up with your opponent. Only a few more Minutes before Dream arrives and he can use his power again, He only has ten minutes that his power can't activate. His opponent speeds up. 

Crack

A fist Collides his shoulder. And he stumbles backward

The villain laughs "I knew you couldn't keep it up forever."

He doesn't even feel it at first, and then it hits him like a train. His shoulder explodes in pain, he stumbles back grasping his shoulder, Something feels broken. He can't afford to lose focus, he finally feels his power reach his fingers, the tips glowing red. He runs forward with new speed, thanks to his power. He goes for the punch. 

And his vision goes black.

_____________

"How could you be so stupid! You should've backed off" Dreams pacing up and down the small hospital room "I was on my way! I could've handled it, You know you're not supposed to go on the offensive Tommy" A breath "You can't keep doing this, You used the last bit of my power you had left and you weren't even able to arrest the guy." Another breath "You should've waited for me Tommy." He stops pacing to face Tommy 

"I'm sorry" He says, eyes on his shoes

"Tommy I can't keep letting you use my power" Dream says "If you're just going To be reckless like this!"

"Are you mad at me?" Tommy questions

"Oh Tommy, I could never be mad at you. I'm just worried" Dream sits on a chair In Front of Tommy "I just don't want you getting hurt anymore" a Beat "I mean, you're just a kid." 

I'm not a kid anymore. He thinks, but it never reaches his mouth. Dream is just protective. Tommy had to spend years with his uncle who can do no good despite also being a hero. Dream didn't have to stay with him because he was old enough. Eventually Dream was able to take him out of his uncle's custody. Tommy was a kid then. He's come a very long way from then.

The doctor returns to the room with a clipboard in hand

"Well the damage isn't too bad, Although your nose is definitely broken," The doctor tells Tommy "it'll take a while to heal but it shouldn't be too bad, Your shoulder is completely healed thanks to the healer, sadly she's out of commission for now so your nose has to heal on its own." She stops to look at her clipboard. "And your wrist just needs a thin brace and then you're good to go."

"Will there be any permanent damage?" Dream asks the doctor

"There shouldn't be," She looks at Tommy "I'll go grab you that brace" and the doctor walks back out of the room.

Silence

"Did you see the footage of me absolutely obliterating Sirens face." Tommy says earning a chuckle from Dream

"I did, it was pretty funny" Dreams says

"Wasn't I so badass"

"So badass" 

Tommy smiles, Small fangs visible on his top row of teeth. Dream smiles back. 

_

It's dark. He shouldn't be out here. Tommy should know better. It's cold, his brother is waiting just around the corner. His backpack feels like 3 tons of weight on his shoulders despite being practically empty. All it has inside is his favorite plushie, a change of clothes and a water bottle. 

Dream promised that if he snuck out today he could get to become a hero, and they could match their hero suits, they could match their powers, and Tommy could be his sidekick and they could fight villains together. He can see dream from where he's standing. He starts to run.

"Tommy!" Dream says happily crouching down and opening his arms to catch Tommy in a hug.

"Dream!" Tommy yells as they stand hugging for a moment 

A van pulls up next to them, The van that all heroes get to ride.

The most perfect moment that nothing could ruin. 

The moment Tommy's life became happy again.

_

He stares at his brace. It's been a few days since it was put on and he's hated every moment. He's currently on patrol with dream, both in full hero gear.

"This brace is stupid" Tommy says. Holding his arm up in his face.

"Why is the brace stupid?" Dream asks

"Well, first of all it's itchy, Second of all I can't grab Shit with it on, Third of all it's green." 

"I think green is a delightful color."

"Exactly"

"Hey!" Dream elbows Tommy

Tommy pushes him back

They look at each other, and laugh.

"I don't think things can get any better than this" Tommy says happily 

"I can think of a million things to make life better, Like finally taking the #1 hero title" Dream says

"Or scientists finding out a way for the human body to only live on candy" Tommy Adds

"That would be fucking awesome."

"I know right!"

"Or if villains just stopped existing, then we as heroes could help everywhere" Dream adds

"And we wouldn't have to focus on the big bads, no area would be neglected."

"Maybe then we could pick our patrol routes"

"I would choose to patrol the couch" Tommy says

Dream chuckles 

"Sadly that won't ever be reality in the hell hole that is the Hero Commission"

A pause

"What if we change it?" Tommy says

"What?"

"We could fight to change the rules! Show people the fucked up stuff and fix it"

"Red, we barely have a say on what we eat. You think they're gonna let us fight against them and let us stay saving people?"

"Well-"

"Exactly. There are things set into place so that if anyone Tries to fix this broken system, their fired"

"That's dumb."

"I know."

Both of their phones buzz, dream grabs his and looks at the screen

"Shit, Blood god has been sighted 2 miles away from us."

"I don't have anymore of your power," Tommy says panicked

"You're also out of commission. I'll handle Blood god, You Keep patrolling." Dream starts to run in the direction his phone is showing him

Tommy follows him.

Dream sighs and stops.

"Your not gonna keep patrolling are you." dream says

"Nope." Tommy says smiling

"Fine." Dream says rolling up his sleeve.

Tommy presses a button and his mask splits down the middle like a crocodile opening his mouth, spikes on both the top and bottom half of the mask, and bites down on Dream's arm. Dream winces. He immediately feels a buzz in his fingers. He wipes his mouth and closes his mask. Dream wraps up the two small holes in his skin as he starts running again Tommy following close behind.

Now an explanation for why Tommy just bit his older brother. Tommy can, by ingesting someone's blood, temporarily use their power, With almost zero of the limitations that the original user had. Nobody except Dream, George, And Sapnap know about this power. Tommy exclusively uses Dreams' power. Dream is the #3, Tommy just Ahead of him in the #2 spot. He can use dreams power for about 4 hours with one drop of his blood.

Tommy can easily keep pace with Dream at his top speed, Dream can control the gravity of things around him, and he uses it to make himself faster, And Tommy can do it better but he chooses to slow down, To be exactly on pace with dream

There's a far off explosion, fireworks explode in the sky. A trademark of The Blood-God.

"Runner I think we should speed up" Tommy says running a small bit faster

"No shit." Dream says also speeding up.

They pass buildings in a blur. When they near the site where blood god is, Tommy launches himself on top of a building and can already see the damage, He can see that a vigilante got there before them, Diamond, Lying In Front of blood god using his arms to push Himself away from Blood God who is aiming his rocket launcher directly towards the vigilante.

Dream was just in time to grab Blood gods rocket launcher. Tommy hopped off of the roof, using dreams power to slow his fall. He reaches the ground and runs towards Diamond who stands and starts to run away

"Hi Red! I'd rather not do this today!" Diamond says while running

"Your injured and I have super speed, I think it'd be wise to stop running" Tommy says speeding towards him

Diamond runs into an alleyway, Tommy goes to chase him but stops when he hears more fireworks. He turns around and runs back into the fighting. He goes to look at Blood god, expecting him to be triumphantly standing with his rocket launcher, 

but the Blood God is on the ground.

The rocket launcher in the hands of Dream . 

He stops dead in his tracks and looks at Dream, Then back to the Blood god, focusing on his chest, Tommy can barely see the rise and fall, but it's enough to know he's just injured. The Blood God Slowly Stands. Swaying ever so slightly.

"Look at that. I know for sure you weren't aiming to incapacitate there- A strike aimed to kill! Must've hit a nerve. My apologies" Blood God says as if he hasn't just been shot with a rocket launcher at point blank range.

"Do you ever shut up." Runner says Adjusting his stance

Tommy knows what he's about to do. 

Heroes aren't supposed to kill . Just incapacitate. That's been the rule since the occupation hero was first introduced to the world. When super powers were first showing up in the world, people took advantage of their abilities and villains started to wreak havoc.

So a group of people, Banded together to stop these individuals wreaking havoc, They were the first heroes in the broken society, They made a set of rules so that They'd be better than the lawless villains. And the very first rule was that, Heroes will not ever under any circumstances Kill a villain, To aim towards incapacitation. 

But Dream was about to use all of his strength, all of his power, to strike Blood God. If he was at full strength it wouldn't kill him, but while he's badly injured, a strike that strong means death .

Heroes aren't supposed to kill .

Dream takes a step forward.

Tommy moves before he can think. He intercepts Dream halfway to Blood God. Pushing him out of the way.

"What the hell red!" Dream yells, as he falls to the ground. 

"We don't kill, Runner." Tommy says turning around to face Blood God, who stands in shock staring at the two of them.

"Red, why'd you stop him mid run, don't tell me you've turned?" The Blood God laughs, "Did you finally see how corrupt everything is."

Tommy walks forward.

"Fine walk away Red" Dream says to tommy 

"Guess what Blood God" Tommy says once he's within 3 feet of the Blood God, he stops and stands facing Blood God.

"Have you actually turned?"

"Nope." Tommy says "Your under arrest" he sweeps The Blood God's feet from under him

The Blood God falls, Tommy quickly bends over to put handcuffs on arms

"The day I let myself get arrested is the day Penguins fly!" The Blood God says as he rolls away from Tommy and smacks the handcuffs from his hands as well

"Isn't the saying supposed to be 'when pigs fly'" Tommy says

The Blood God stands and starts to run, Tommy Chases after him. 

"If that were true I'd be in jail right now." Blood god yells as he keeps running

Tommy laughs, 

He has to admit their banter makes him laugh. It's always been his favorite part of the job, Getting to laugh at your opponent, make snarky little comments, the catchphrases, Amazing. His banter with Siren the other day, Was less fun because Siren is just generally really mean, Blood God was just funny.

Anyways, Back to the problem at hand. Blood God is still running, Tommy knows that the angel of death is on his way. They pass through alleyways, through streets. Tommy speeds up to lessen the distance between them, When he sees The Angel of death in the sky

Shit.

Shit.

What's a man supposed to do, If Angel of death is just going to pick Blood god up then Tommy might not be dead meat, but if Angel of death joins the fight

"Fuck." Tommy Watches as the angel of death lands next to Blood God, The Angel of Death, has the power to heal Or kill with just a touch. The moment his hand touches Blood gods shoulder, Blood looks more energized, And not like he was just shot with a rocket launcher.

"Red this has been nice and all, But we really should get going, And we know your fast enough to follow," a beat "So how bout you leave us and we won't have to fight" The Blood God says

"I'm sorry, but you know I can't do that." Tommy says walking closer to the both of them. 

"I was afraid you'd say that." 

Tommy stops a few feet In Front of Blood God, And Angel Of Death.

He thinks I'm going to regret this. 

_____________

"Red?!" He yells Looking for his younger brother who ran off after a villain, 

He can't believe he almost killed someone. Even though it was a villain. Tommy had stopped him, He- 

"Red!?" Dream yells, desperate 

Tommy has been missing for almost four hours. Tommy ran after Blood God 3 hours ago. The city isn't that big. If he's still fighting he should be able to find him, But if he's still fighting he's gonna mess up because he's been fighting for 3 hours. He should've followed the moment red started to move, he should've given him more power, He should've done something but instead he sat on the pavement and sulked. He knew something happened when Tommy didn't come back for two hours, And all dream did was sit on the sidewalk and doing nothing 

"Red?!!" He yells again

He's such a bad brother. He didn't even try to protect him today. He could be hurt, he could be kidnapped, He could be Unmasked, Or worst of all he could be dead. Villains don't play by the rules, Anything could have happened to him

"Red!?!" He yells again, beginning to lose hope. 

Looking into stores and into alleyways. His comm was turned off, And his GPS would usually be on his right wrist which Tommy has a brace on at the moment, So the GPS wasn't on.

"Red!!?" Again he yells.

There's a beep in his ear, Signaling that Tommy's Comm has been turned Back on. Dream immediately goes to press his comm to speak

"Red! Where are you! Are you ok!?" Dream yells frantically

"Holy crap is this actually how heroes communicate" a kid says into the comm

Shit

"Who are you and why are you on this comm!"

A beep, Signaling it's been turned off again 

Shit

Shit

"Shit!" Dream yells

He continues searching

"Red!?" Dream yells again.

He stops In the entrance to an alleyway, The final place he needed to search. Empty.

He takes his phone out of his pocket, and calls a friend 

A beep Signaling the friend picked up the phone 

"Dream? Are you ok, I saw the fight on the news, the footage cut off halfway through" Sapnap says

"Tommy's missing." 

"What do you mean he's missing, Can't you just track his Comm" Sapnap says Shoving Stuff around in what sounds like a drawer. "Doesn't his GPS also have a tracker in it"

"His Comm was stolen, And he didn't wear his GPS today."

"Ok" a beat "Knowing tommy, he's probably fine, as long as he still has the vials of your blood." 

"His power runs out in 20 minutes Sap."

"What." Sapnap questions "You let him patrol with no Power, And then you let him fight, With only 4 hours of Power."

Dream nods his head even knowing Sapnap can't see him

"I'll call the commission, But you know, he's not #2 For doing nothing Dream, I'm sure he'll be Fine"

But what if he's not fine

"Alright thanks, Bye Sap"

"Bye, Don't worry too much"

"I'll try."

The phone hangs up 

Leaving him in silence

_____________

20 minutes left. 

They must be getting tired. Tommy only has 20 moments, He's backed into a corner. Tommy followed the two villains to an unknown part of town. If Dream was looking for him, first off he wouldn't be looking here, And If he did, He'd never make Before his twenty minutes were up.

He has no options. He has to keep fighting, Keep dodging. Fighting two people is fucking tiring.  

They don't know how much time he has left, They don't know he has a limit, But they will once his 20 minutes is up, There has to be something he can do.

Wait .

There is something he can do.

Angel of death Goes to punch him, Tommy raises his hand to open his mask, the arm shoots next to his face, And he leans forward and bites down on the angel of death's arm.

The angel of death yells out in pain. And yanks his arm back, causing his skin to rip. 

He can hear the tear of fabric, He can feel a new buzz in his hands, The angel of death's power flowing freely in his body. His back aches. His fingers burn, his nails growing into talons, new bones grow in his back.

"What the hell?!" The angel of death exclaims

"Shit that was a bad idea" Tommy says, staring at his fingers, Glowing red.

"What did you do!?" Blood god questions.

Tommy presses a button and his mask closes.

He rolls his shoulders, and stares at both Blood God and Angel.

And charges forward.

_____________

He doesn't know when, But something changed while he was fighting red. A slight change in stance, he looked vicious. Even though he was wearing a mask that covered his whole face, You could tell he was angry. Even though he was radiating anger, He was focused on dodging. Probably waiting for backup.

He was trying to knock down Red before the backup could arrive. He went to punch him, but Red dodged, Opened his mask, And bit down on Phil's arm. He instinctively ripped his arm away, tearing his skin and his sweater, something was definitely happening now. Red stumbled a few steps back

He watches in horror as Blood spews from the hero's back, tri-colored Red, Yellow, and blue wings tearing out of the back of the hero, feathers popping up out of the side of the hero's mask, Talons growing slowly from the hero's fingers. He looks similar to how his son wilbur looked as a young boy

"What the hell!?" He yells

"Shit that was a bad idea" he hears the hero say to himself, watching his fingers

"What did you do?!" Techno yells from beside him horrified.

Looking at the hero's mouth beneath his mask, He can see that it's stained blood red, He also spots two small fangs peeking out of his lips. 

The hero closes his mask with the press of a button, looking up to stare at him and his son, He rolls his shoulders. Techno starts to back up, Phil follows, Suddenly the hero speeds forward. But something is wrong, He's not radiating anger anymore, He's Happy. 

He doesn't know why but phil stands still, Facing the hero

"Angel! Move" Techno yells to phil

The hero launches himself into the air and he does a backflip, in the air. The hero launches into the air and then free falls, catching himself before he hits the ground. The hero then lands gracefully

"This was a fucking great idea" The hero laughs out, Grabbing his new wings to look at them. He then goes quiet as if he's just realized something terrible

"Angel lets go" Techno says

"Wait, Doesn't he seem different" He whispers

Techno looks at Red for a moment

"I mean yeah, He's got wings now"

"No i mean, He Seems like a kid" like wil

"Stop being a father and lets get out of here, He's still a hero" Techno says, grabbing Phil's arm and dragging him away

_____________

Tommy's still staring in awe at his new wings, But he knows they'll fall off soon, He never retains big hybrid features, He tested with his childhood friend tubbo, And with dreams friend george. The process was never painful so he wasn't too afraid, he moved out of the streets and onto the roof of a building, which was easy because y'know, Wings. He won't have them for long sadly. He actually probably still had a small bit of the angel of death's blood, Because Angel was dumb and ripped his arm away, Tearing up his skin, Which will probably leave a huge gash, And also spewing blood everywhere

Tommy wishes he had his phone, He accidentally dropped a while ago. He also wishes he had his comm, But that fell out of his ear when Blood God threw him into a wall, Which was not fun In the slightest. Also his GPS that would usually lead him home, Was unfortunately still on his dresser. He could always borrow a civilian's phone. No, he looks like he's a cannibal, it would be a huge PR disaster. He slow falls down the building he was sitting on

He is going to slowly walk back into the city dream would likely be looking for him in. Very slowly.

You can't blame him, It's been a really tiring day, and he did everything with a brace on. He goes to look at his brace, And it in fact is very broken. It's splint in half and It's very bent, Barely connected to Tommy's arm, At Least his wrist isn't hurting. His back hurts.

He decides to speed up his walk home. 

His back really hurts.

Just like half a mile until he's back into the city

Then if he collapses he'll be found quickly

Shit, It really was a bad idea to bite The angel of death.

He's never tried his power on an Avian hybrid.

Now he realizes how much of a bad idea that was.

He's now a quarter mile from his part of the city.

Taking shortcuts through alleyways will get him back to his part of the city sooner

A nap sounds really good right now, So good that Tommy almost just decides to nap in a dumpster. But he keeps walking, The pain in his back growing

He enters the last alleyway before he enters his part of the city. 

And he collapses 

Chapter Text

“What the fuck was that,” Techno says

“I don’t know, He-” Phil starts to say

“The fucking bastard has a copy power obviously” Wilbur shouts from another room

“But if he had a copy power why would he need to bite me,” Phil says

"Maybe it's a blood type power,” Techno says to Phil

“Wait you didn’t tell me he bit you,” Wilbur says walking into the room “During our fight he opened his mask anytime my attacks landed near his face”

“So he tried to bite you too,” Techno asked

“Sure seems so,” Wilbur said

“He looked like a kid though, Didn’t he Techno, could you see his scared eyes” 

“No, I couldn’t, he wears a visor over his eyes” Techno deadpans

“Don’t tell me you're taking pity on a hero. It was his fault for biting you” Wilbur says

“What if he has trouble getting home, he lost a lot of blood”

“He has tons of devices tracking him, one of his hero buddies will find him”

“Phil,” Techno says

Phil looks behind him at the door

“Phil. No”

Phil takes a short step backward toward the door

“Phil he’ll be fine”

He takes another step back

“Fuckin bird instincts” Wilbur mumbled then louder says “He’s going to go find the little shit he won’t stop until he makes sure the dumbass is safe- it’s his whole thing Techno”

Phil takes another step back

"Fine, atleast put a coat on Before you go" Techno says defeated

Phil walks over to the coat rack grabs his coat and walks out the door, he waves as he leaves

"Gods" Wilbur sighs

"I swear there was something familiar about red. Something ticked Phil into going out there to get him"

"Phil's papa bird instincts kicked in because red had wings, That came from him, Phil’s brain saw him as a baby bird"

"You really understand his instincts, it's like you have them yourself"

"Don't even joke about that Techno"

"It was funny though"

"The most traumatic moment in my life is funny"

"Yes?"

Wilbur chuckles "your right, it's hilarious"

_________________

Tommy distinctly remembers collapsing in an alleyway. So unless this alleyway is just really comfortable, or he remembered wrong. Someone had found him. By the sounds he could hear, It was not Dream who found him. If Dream had found him, he’d hear pacing, maybe some mumbling, and a soft beeping. There was a soft beeping, but there was no pacing or mumbling. Just beeping

He’s probably in a hospital, he doesn’t have the energy to look though his eyelids are too heavy. He feels like he’s gone through all 9 stages of hell. Never at all have the hybrid features he could take on be painful, He’s had wings before, They were insect wings, so those are very different from avian wings, but it shouldn’t have hurt. 

Oh prime! He let the villains get away. He was so distracted by his wings that he completely forgot about them.

He hears a door open, Followed by two pairs of footsteps, A doctor and a nurse most likely, Or maybe a doctor and a visitor. 

“I wanted to discuss something about this patient” the nurse he presumes

“What is it” Presumably the doctor

“Well I was looking at his x-ray, And he seems to have the same bone structure in his back as an avian hybrid.” a pause “He also has scarring all over his back, Specifically two spots that look like they used to be where wings would connect to a hybrid back”

“You think he used to be an avian hybrid” 

“Well his scarring is unusual Like he recently had the wings lobbed off, Like recent as in a few days ago”

“But red-devil, the number two hero has never had wings, It would be Impossible”

“Look for yourself” There’s a shuffling of papers

There’s silence for a moment. Interrupted by a beep

“You’ve contacted Runner?”

“I have.” The nurse says

“I will inform him of This. Watch the boy carefully.” And one pair of footsteps leaves.

The other walks over to a corner in the room and presumably sits in a chair.

The beeping slowly is getting faster. Hopefully, they didn’t do any blood tests Beep Because if someone found out what his power was  Beep. it’d be a nightmare. He and dream would likely be brought Beep Down on the ranking, He’d be taken advantage of Beep by the commission. Heroes and villains Beep would be looking to use his power. Beep.  This is just what Dream warned him Beep. about. Who knows what else Beep could happen? He could be Beep Put in Pandora. Nobody can know Beep. They can’t know Beep It would be Beep. Impossible to know, Beep. But no one knows, Dream always Beep. stops them from doing the Beep. blood tests.

“Well that's odd,” The nurse sitting in the corner said. “His heart rate went up. And then immediately back down.” It then sounds like she’s scribbling something down.

  Beep. Everything is fine. And Dream is on his way Beep. He just has to stay calm and wait beep.

He hears a loud voice, a concerned loud voice. Dream. It's too far for him to make out the words but knowing Dream, He probably said something along the lines of "What happened to him?" Or "Where is he?" Or "Is he ok" Y'know, The usual. He then hears the swoosh of air, Dream running through the hall, Then the door opens. The nurse gets up and leaves behind Dream, Who is slowly walking in.

Tommy suddenly feels compelled to open his eyes 

But, He can't

"Oh, prime's this is all my fault." Dream says

Footsteps get closer to him.

"If I had been there you wouldn't have had to use your last resort"

He starts to pace

"And now you're in the hospital again."

"Prime if I hadn't let you come along you would've been safe."

"But if you didn't come along, I would've killed blood god."

The pacing quickens 

His words are more distant now.

Tommy wants to tell him it isn't his fault, But truly it is. Tommy wishes he could deny it, His brother was being a moron. And left him for dead.

He manages to open his eyes a sliver.

He also managed to open his mouth.

"You're a moron" He manages to say. Very quietly

The pacing stops.

"T- Red?" A pause, And a chuckle "You better not have been fucking with me this whole time"

He coughs. 

Dream runs out to get a doctor.

He can distantly hear him yell "He's waking up" And saying someone's name that Tommy couldn't make out.

Damn. Now Tommy has to open his eyes again. And in front of a team of doctors 

One set of footsteps walks in. Their heavy footsteps, Kinda like saps footsteps, They are always loud, And they sound like strongness. There were no doctor footsteps. For some reason

Tommy opens his eyes fully. 

Oh and his mouth again

"You really are a moron though Dream" 

He is awarded by a snort from Sapnap. Dream is standing there staring. 

And then he laughs a little.

"Told you he'd be fine," Sapnap says, nudging dream

Tommy Sits up

Correction, He tries to sit up

A stab of pain shoots through him as he tries to sit up, Dream who was standing next to his bed pushes him lightly back onto the bed

"Don't hurt yourself" Dream says

"A little late for that"

Tommy sits up again with less difficulty and lays against his pillow, and prepares to be scolded for biting a villain and basically exposing his secret to the entire world of villains, And likely also accidentally making himself feared in the world of villains. He'd also likely be scolded for shoving Dream, inferring with his fight. And just about a million other things

Dream sighs

"What" a pause "Happened"  Another pause "The doctors told me you had Hidden avian features, and already healed scarring" Dream slowly says

"We both know that your power after you ingest a hybrid's ability, when those disappear there's usually scarring, and the wounds don't close immediately" Sapnap continues

"I don't know why the wounds healed faster, it could have been the influence of angels' power, We all know he can heal himself and others."

"We do know that, But your body was already rejecting the power"

Dream looks at Sapnap 

"Do we know who brought him to the hospital," Dream asks

"Some old guy named Phil" Sapnap answers "Guy supposedly had a minor healing power, but not one strong enough to heal the various wounds that Tommy had" A pause "The man brought Tommy in already fully healed, Said that's how he found him"

Tommy decides now is a good time to remove his mask, he clicks it off of his face and looks on the inside

There's dried blood still on the insides of his mask.

Meaning his face is still bloodied.

Shit

He hurries to put his mask back on but Sapnap and Dream are already staring

His mask clicks back onto his face.

"If it makes you feel any better, it's not my blood?" Tommy says

Neither of them say anything.

"He ripped his arm away and blood got everywhere"

Still no speaking

"I promise im not lying"

“We believe you.” A pause “But you might want a mirror” Dream says

“Why?”

Dream takes out his phone turns on the camera app and hands it to Tommy

He removes his mask again and looks at his face. It looks disgusting, the blood on his face is all brown and gross. Tommy opens his mouth to look at his teeth. And he looks like a god damned shark. 

“What the fuck” Tommy says

“It’s not that bad,” Sapnap says “Now your teeth match your mask”

“I look like a shark” 

Dream takes his phone back

“I'm sure it’ll wear down over time,” Dream says

“I have shark teeth”

“More like bird teeth”

“Do birds really have sharp teeth?”

“No, but a lot have sharp ridges in their beaks to grip food, the first avian hybrid didn’t take the beak and ridges, but instead had sharper teeth,” Sapnap says

Tommy and Dream both look at him

“What. my dad had an avian hybrid buddy, so I learned the facts”

“Cool”

“What the hell you weren’t meant to bring him to the house” a voice distantly says

“What was that,” Tommy says

“What was what?” Dream asks

“You had to have expected this tech, i said he wasn’t gonna stop until he assured that the dumb hero is safe” a different voice says

“That- What was that” 

“I think you might be hearing things tom” Sapnap says

“He was passed out in an alleyway i couldn’t leave him there” Another different more distant voice says

“Are you guys fucking with me or something”

“No? Are you okay Tommy” Dream questions

“So you bring him to a hospital!” The first voice yells

“Okay what the fuck”

“You know I don’t trust hospitals techno” The third voice responds

“Tommy, what's wrong what are you hearing?” Sapnap questions

“You still shouldn’t have brought him here” the second voice explains

“Tommy come here I’ll take you out for some air” Dream says shuffling over, and carefully pulling Tommy up, as he stretches up getting ready to stand, his back aches worse than it had before. As he presses his feet on the floor, his eyes open, and suddenly, Dream is nowhere to be seen, there's no hospital equipment, no Sapnap either. He looks around and he appears to be on a couch, in an unfamiliar room. There are a few windows in this room, and on the southmost wall there's a very ornate door, that is obviously the entrance, on the westmost wall is a giant flat-screen TV, behind him which is east, there is a very large very nice kitchen. And in the north. A hallway, and a few comfy-looking chairs.

Tommy is confused as to why he is in a house he doesn't recognize. Actually, it could be Georges's house, he moved from his old house and Tommy hadn't seen the new one yet so that's a possibility. Could be his uncle's house, he hasn't been there since he was 7 so it could be that, but that would be the absolute worst possible thing that could ever happen to him. So on the off chance it could be him, Tommy decides he's going to leave.

 He sits up, black spots start to dot his vision. His head feels like it's spinning, but his breath isn't too irregular. He stands and takes a few breaths, the dots start to clear from his vision, and his head is only lightly spinning. He walks towards the very ornate door. He notices how nothing hurts. His back doesn't ache, his head doesn't hurt, and his fists aren't in pain. he reaches the door, opens it, and walks out. he recognizes the area. it was the neighborhood where his mom had died. he decides he's going to leave this neighborhood very quickly. 

He walks for about an hour before he finds a gas station where he decides to rest. He buys a bag of chips and a Gatorade.

"That'll be uh 5.70$ please," the cashier said without even looking up at Tommy

"Alright"

He hands him a 5-dollar bill and a 1-dollar bill

He takes his chips and Gatorade, the cashier hands him his change, then goes on his phone. Tommy gets an idea

"Hey, could I use your phone?"

The cashier looks up finally. And the look of pure shock on his face was priceless. The boy hands over his phone without hesitation. Tommy opens the call app and puts in Dream's phone number. It rings for a few seconds then he picks up

"Hello, you've reached Runner the number 3 hero, I am quite busy so state your business quickly," Dream says through the phone

"It's me, Runner" Tommy says

"Tommy! Where are you? Are you ok?!" Dream all but yells into the phone

"I'm fine, I'm at the gas station just before Mom's old neighborhood"

"Why were you there? Never mind, I'm on my way" Dream said as he hung up

he took a selfie with the cashier's phone, deleted Dream's number from the cashier's phone, and handed it back to him. He then walked out and sat on the sidewalk and ate his chips and drank his gatorade. He saw Dreams car pull into the parking lot, tommy stood from where he'd been and walked very quickly to Dreams car, Dream slowed as he got closer to the car. he hopped in once he reached the car. Dream looked so relieved to see Tommy, And Tommy was relieved to see Dream. They headed home and nothing bad happened

Chapter Text

Tommy has always hated the paparazzi, the press, y'know those sorts of people. When he arrived back at the tower the number of photographers waiting outside was crazy overwhelming, as he walked to the doors people were crowding him and shoving microphones in his face, asking him invasive questions about what had happened, eventually me and Dream pushed through the crowd and got into the tower. George greeted us when we arrived, he also sent out a few tower guards to shoo the paparazzi away. 

George is The Number 5 Hero. He's a moo-shroom hybrid, and his power is mushrooms, isn't that cool? George is just perfect in Tommy's opinion, even some villains think he's perfect which is bizarre. Everyone in the world agrees that George is perfect. The only people who dislike George are the people who he put in jail. Anyways, We went up to the top five level in the tower, which has bunks for every hero in the top five, It’s on the 29th floor, out of the 30 floors. 

Tommy and Dream, since they were brothers the commission gave them one room to share. It was a massive room. Kinda in a corner away from the other rooms they had a giant flat screen tv and a double-decker couch, oh and don’t forget, vaulted ceilings so the person on the top of the couch doesn’t hit their head. they also had mediocre twin-size beds, as tall people they hated the beds. ANYWAYS. As They walked into the room, Tommy ran for the top of the double-decker couch, grabbing the tv remote and going to turn on his favorite documentary about spiders.

“Are we not going to talk” Dream askes

“About what. About spiders, because I will tell you all about spiders” Tommy responds

Dream sits on the bottom bunk

There's silence for a moment

“I don’t think you should be doing hero work anymore” Dream states

“What? Why, I'm doing great with this hero thing and have been for the past 4 years”

“You started training at 7, your best friend got executed because of you at 10, you were introduced as a high-powered hero at 13, and you were almost killed twice by the same villain at 15. And now at 17, you were kidnapped out of an alleyway.”

“That's normal for heroes”

“But it’s not normal for children. Tommy I'm worried for you”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine Dream”

“Tommy, As your legal guardian I am removing you from your hero duties.”

“What? You can’t do that”

Dream doesn’t respond

“You can’t, no only the commission can remove me.”

“When you signed the contract to become a hero it said right before the sign block unless the commission or a legal guardian wishes your duties to be removed, this contract is binding”

Tommy looked down at Dream from the top couch.

“So yeah I can do that”

“What am I even going to do without patrol every day”

“You're going to go out and be a normal kid,”

“Meaning?”

“Im putting you in school”

________________

Being a normal kid is boring.

Dream put him into high school, first of all, ew, second of all the tests so far have not been difficult at all, it was all things he had been taught by the commission. World history? A+, Math? A+, ELA? A+, Science? A+, World language? (He chose ASL 2)  A+, As for his elective, that doesn't really count for a grade, he got extra P.E credits from it (He chose weight training) And as for his P.E. He also got an A+ somehow. He doesn't even know how but he did

Dream told him to try and make friends, but everyone either thought he was annoying, or terrifying. As a hero who works out almost daily, and who fights sorry Fought villains every few days for 4 years. Tommy is very buff, He wore a t-shirt that barely showed his muscles one time, and suddenly his entire school is talking about him as if he's a bully when in fact he is just buff.

Dream signed him up to be a tutor for people who were struggling with their grades. It was a whole club thingy- they met up before and after school every Monday. In the morning they basically had a big study sesh, but in the evenings they would help other people study Most people in the club were intimidated by him. They are all nerdy and love video games and such, (Tommy does as well but nobody knows that because nobody talks to him) 

the only person who wasn’t intimidated by Tommy, Was this giant of a guy, with black and white split-dyed hair who always wore a mask. they always were the last one in the room, and every time they walked in the door they would their head on the doorframe. While everyone else was cautious and sat at least 4 chairs away from Tommy, this guy didn’t mind if he sat 2 seats away. Their name is Ranboo, apparently. Tommy learned when the club leader/teacher guy called attendance. he also learned that they were on the volleyball team. he overheard some random people in the hall just fawning over Ranboo’s playing- 

Dream tried to make Tommy join a sport, and failed. Tommy did not want the Ranboo treatment, so he adamantly refused to play a sport. Ranboo was also in his math, and history class. In both those classes, he sat next to him. And if they had a group project, the teacher would pair them up. They had talked a few times but never outside of class. Tommy was really bad at making friends he tried. But he ultimately failed. Being normal is hard. 

Every few weeks Tommy would check Twitter, And still, after months #reddevilsdisapearence is still the most trending tag. People theorized that he had died. Or had been fired, Or ran away from the commission, or became a villain. Stuff like that. Nobody had yet guessed that he left to go to school. Dream’s position on the ranking dropped. People were upset at how little he explained. They voted him down to 6th place. I had to listen to Dream ranting about how upset he was about it. But also that he was fine with it for some reason

____________________

One day while Tommy was sitting in class. It was a normal history lesson, politics, gold rush, torture methods- the works y’know. The teacher had paired everyone up into partners, Tommy was partnered with Ranboo. We were doing a slide show kind of project, on Hollywood vs. History. Tomy and Ranboo were just talking about what topics they would like to include in their project when Tommy was called down to the office because he was apparently getting picked up, he waved to Ranboo and walked out of the class and down to the office with his stuff. His first thought was “Why is Dream picking me up right now.” then his second thought was “Is he finally taking me out of school to go back to being a hero” and his third thought he’d thunk when he’d arrived at the office “Shit”

It wasn’t Dream waiting for him in the office. Dream promised he wouldn’t see his Uncle ever again outside of hero work. But there he was. Dream couldn’t have known this would happen. He’s done all he could

He couldn’t stop Schlatt from finding Tommy’s school.

It wasn’t exactly Schlatt, but it was him in his hero costume, his alter ego Judge

Tommy walked into the office slowly.

“Tommy there you are!” Schlatt yelled the moment I came into his line of sight

Schlatt came walking over.

“You're not supposed to be here,” Tommy whispered to him

“Listen, I don’t care. Your dumb brother injured his hand and can’t drive so I’m stuck bringing you back to the tower” Schlatt whisper yelled at Tommy

“I can take the bus there. but I’m not getting in a car with you” Tommy said

“Is everything alright over there?” the office lady called over

“Everything is fine we’re just having a chat” Schlatt yelled back

“It’s either you get in that fucking car, or your brother gets fired, alright?” Schlatt 

“Your bluffing.”

Schlatt laughs “If he is fired you can never be reinstated as a hero red.”

Tommy stands there for a moment. While he would hate to get in a car with a past abuser. Never getting to be a hero again would be worse, Dream getting fired would be worse. Having to sit through an entire car ride with Schlatt would be terrible, but losing the activities he loved and relied on to keep him sane permanently. Maybe a car ride wouldn’t be too terrible.

“Fine,” Tommy says quietly

__________________

“Why would you send Judge to get him!” Dream yelled at a board member 

“Runner, sir, please calm down. He’s been working on his behavior” the board member responded

“Why should I calm down!? You just sent my younger brother's past abuser to pick him up from school.” He yelled again

“You must remember your job is on the line here you shouldn’t be criticizing us” the member responded again.

Dream knows he shouldn’t quiet down, this isn’t fair, he should be allowed to yell at them, what they’re doing is wrong. They found out about Tommy’s power, the villains yelled about it in a fight with him. “ What about your brother Red Copycat? Do you have some weird ass power no one knows about too? He’s fucking weird y’know, grew a whole set of wings out of spite ” Y’know, Dream really hates Siren for that, now he’s about to get fired unless Tommy himself reveals his power. He might also be suspended from hero work for hiding the power from the commission. Dream was definitely in deep shit. Man, he wishes he’d killed blood god when he’d had the chance. What was he thinking, he couldn’t kill him. That's what started this whole debacle in the first place. Shit  

And Tommy would already be shaken from having to ride in a car with Schlatt. Damn it. Someone’s pager beeped

“It’s judge,” a different board member said. 

The guy picked up his phone and put in a number.

“Hello.” a pause “Great, and you're on your way?” another pause “Oh your here?” another pause “What do you mean he’s-.” another long pause “Calm him down before he gets in the building, Runner is very protective.” Another pause “Right, right, you know, sorry for assuming” and he hung up “Red is here. He will be in the building soon”

“Do you know if he’s alright?” Dream asked

“He should be fine.” a board member said

Dream stood up and walked over to the door of the meeting room. 

“Sir please sit back down,” a board member said

“Let him,” another board member said. 

Dream left the meeting room, and saw down the hall judge pushing Tommy along like they were best buds. Tommy looked obviously uncomfortable with the contact. Tommy saw Dream and shoved Schlatts arm off his shoulders. Dream ran towards Tommy. Tommy ran towards Dream. They met in the middle and Dream pulled Tommy into a hug

“Are you okay, did he do anything?” Dream asked holding onto Tommy 

“I’m fine he didn’t do anything, what's” a sniffle “What’s going on”

Dream let go of the hug

“They found out” Dream whispered

“They found out what-” Tommy said realizing, then a look of terror spread across his face “No, no they couldn’t have”

“That’s why we’re here, siren used it as a taunt in a fight” he paused “I’ll be fired unless you reveal it”

“I’ll do it.” 

“What, Tommy what do you mean you’ll do it”

“I’ll tell them.”

“Tommy you can’t tell them, we don’t even know what they’ll do when they find out”

“I don’t care what they’ll do, they can’t do much worse than making me ride in a car with Schlatt”

“Tommy you don’t understand”

“I understand fully, now are you gonna let me save your job or not”

_____________________

Truth be told, Tommy did not understand fully, he didn’t even want to say he’d tell them. But now Tommy and Dream were in the board room, surrounded by all the important people. Everyone staring at Tommy. It was kind of uncomfortable how many people's eyes were on him.

“I assume Runner informed you about why you are here today, yes?” a board member asked

‘’On account of my power,” Tommy answered

“Correct” A pause “The question is, what is it, and why do the villains know about it.” the board member directly in the middle asked

“It’s simple, my power is a blood type, by consuming someone's blood I take on any type of power or hybrid feature they possess. The reason the villains know about it, is because I used it on The Angel of Death as a last resort, this fight was right before Runner suspended my duties and was the reason why he suspended my duties” Tommy Answered

The board members stared, then looked amongst each other and chatted with the people next to them, then they looked at Dream

“Runner, We won’t fire you, on one condition.” a board member says

“What's the condition,” Dream asks

“You will not be fired if you let Red be a hero again,”

Dream looks at Tommy. Tommy looks at Dream

“He has to finish The rest of his school for the year, in the summer he’ll be reinstated.”

“Alright. I think that pretty much concludes this meeting.”  the middle board member says “He will finish off the school year then return to heroism, and you runner will not be fired, meeting adjourned”

Everyone grabbed their things and started to stand up to leave the room, Tommy had already been standing, so he just left the room, and walked down to the surface level, and sat in the waiting room. Dream got into the waiting room moments later

“Why are you still here through you’d have gone onto the bus back to school now”

“Don’t have a car or permission to use yours, and the next bus doesn’t arrive till after school” 

“Right, here’s the keys,” Dream says tossing Tommy his car keys

Tommy catches the keys and stands up to leave

“Thanks, see you later Dream”

“See ya toms” and Dream walks to the elevator

Tommy leaves the building and finds Dream's car. He drives to his school, people at the school in awe of his perfect driving, Tommy parks perfectly, then goes back inside the building with his things and signs in. he heads to his final class of the day, he missed history and ela, and lunch, his final class of the day was math class. Boring. After class, he had tutoring club. Everyone was staring at him, but not in the usual way, they were also whispering, Tommy wondered why, there would be no reason for them to think differently of him so suddenly. Our club teacher stood from his chair

“Settle down, yes it's cool that Tomathy was picked up from the school by a hero but that does not mean we can whisper about him when he’s right there” Our teacher yelled over the class

The whispering settled

Well everything makes sense now I guess

Tommy sighed “If you have questions ask them now- I don’t want to waste valuable learning time” 

Immediately people started moving to his desk, overlapping their questions. One student yelled “Whats judge like,” another asked “Did you get in trouble with the commission or something” The person next to Tommy, Ranboo asked, “Are you a hero undercover?”

That question struck Tommy, but he brushed it off, he was quite good at that

“One at a time,” Tommy said

“Why were you picked up by judge?” 

“My brother works in the hero tower and he had something urgent, and he can’t drive”. Not entirely a lie, but it's close

“Is judge fun to talk to?” 

“Not in my opinion, I know some people enjoy his company, but I don’t really like him”

“What was the urgent thing your brother had?”

“He was in a meeting about red devil and Runner ran out of the room frustrated, my brother tried to stop him and got knocked in the head” a complete lie, he secretly thought, i am so sorry bro- 

“Are you telling the truth?” Ranboo asks

“Why would I lie?” because he's a secret hero whose brother basically fired him

“What other heroes have you met?”

“I have met Amanita, Blaze, Runner, Judge, And Red Devil” All of this is true, literally no lies. 

“Do you know why Red Devil disappeared?”

“I don’t, my brother doesn’t get information like that, he’s just security” complete and utter lies

“Is Red fun to talk to?”

“He’s funnier and cooler than the other heroes that's for sure” Complete truths

“Why would you need to show up for your brother, doesn’t the tower have its own small infirmary?” Ranboo asks

“I have a small healing power, he wouldn’t let the other healers near him.” He’s had a healing power before so not exactly a lie

“How much of the hero tower does your brother have access to?”

“He has access to the 1st floor, and all the floors above the 7th” more lies, dream has access to every floor except the seventh.

“Why are you lying,” Ranboo asks

“Im not?”

“You seem unsure, what are you hiding”

“Okay okay Ranboo, you’ve asked more than one question. Not everyone has asked their questions” The teacher thankfully yelled out

“But is it not obvious he’s red devil?!” Ranboo stands up “He’s lying to your faces,”

The other students go quiet and stare at Tommy

Shit. Shit. Shit

“Mr. Boo that is a very rash assumption,” The teacher says “Your only piece of evidence is that a hero picked him up from school”

“He started only a week after Red Dissapeared, And no security guard would actually get in Runner's way unless they're an idiot” Ranboo looked at our teacher “He also has the same blonde curly hair that Red has”

“Im not Red Devil, he left with no explanation, no one in the hero tower has seen him in months, the meeting my brother was guarding was about sending a search party, Also 9.9 percent of males have blonde hair, that doesn't seem like much until you take into account that there are 7.8 billion people in the world, about 3.97 billion are male, meaning 393 million of those men have blonde hair” 

“Only 2 percent of the population have blonde curly hair.”

“While that is true it’s still a large number, I think about 156 million.”

Students around start taking notes

“In This city, the probability decreases significantly because the population is lower than most large cities, our population of about 200,000, which decreases it to about 4400, which is a great decrease”

“Going by that our school has 843 students, 18 students should have blonde curly hair theoretically. But the actuality is that there are 21 students with blonde curly hair most of them being siblings, why aren’t you accusing them of being Red?”

“They haven’t been taken to the hero tower by a hero.”

“But one of them has. One of the blonde curly-haired boys volunteers in the hero tower, my brother has seen them around. Carrying papers and coffee around the offices, He often gets taken to the tower at the end of the school day by Amanita”

Ranboo pauses. 

“He’s in training to become a hero, volunteering to be in the environment of the heroes Red wouldn’t need training because he’s been a hero for years”

“How do you know Red is even our age, he’s likely around the same age as Runner who we assume is in his mid-twenties?”

“Boys I didn't know this was debate club?”

Ranboo sat down and the other students around sat.

“I apologize Mr. Craft” Ranboo says

“Alright, now tutors find your study buddy and get to studying. I'm sure none of these folks want to fail their tests because you two wanted to debate”

Students got up again and doubled up. Obviously, nobody wanted to be Tommy or Ranboo’s partner. Every other student was tutoring another student. And of course, Tommy couldn’t just leave because he had to be partnered with Ranboo. Unless he could, he texted Dream to call him with fake urgent news, of course, Dream did call him. And Tommy faked hearing urgent news and told the teacher something urgent had happened and he left the class and ran to dreams car which he had borrowed, and he drove back to the hero tower, (he still lived in the tower) he found Dream waiting in the lobby when he arrived, he tossed him back his keys and of course, in overprotective brother nature he’d asked

“Why’d you need to leave your club so early, did something happen?”

And in true, nice, younger brother nature Tommy answered

“Yes actually, I'm going to head up to the training room to get my anger out”

“What happened”

“Dumb Ranboo found out. My first try at a friend as a normal kid figures out I'm not a fucking normal kid”

“Do you need to switch schools, did he tell anyone, did they believe him?!”

“We just had a little debate about it, I obviously won the debate, I had the last word, nobody believed him. I left because we were going to be partnered up and I did not want to talk to him”

Tommy walked over to the elevator and pressed the up button

“Oh.” Dream said standing next to Tommy.

The elevator arrived and both Dream and Tommy got in. Tommy stopped on the eighth floor, the training level, Dream continued up. Only a month until the end of school.

hooray

Chapter Text

The house is silent, it’s never silent at night. Tommy had a nightmare, he went to go find his mother in her room, she was sleeping in her bed Tommy tried to wake her up but she wouldn’t wake up, he used his power to hear if her blood was moving, he should be able to hear it but. His powers are still developing it’s fine he left his mom and went into his brother's room and shook his brother awake 

“What is it, Toms?” Dream asks him

“I had a nightmare and I tried to wake up Papa but she won’t wake up,” Tommy said standing next to his bed holding his blanket

“Here I'll go try to wake her up for you, wait right there” Dream gets up and motions for Tommy to wait in his bed

Tommy hops in the bed and waits, he hears Dream walk into their mother's room

“Mom” Dream says distantly “Wake up, Tommy had a nightmare” he pauses “Mom?” he says panicked “Mom wake up” he yells “C’mon wake up!” he can hear dreams breathing quicken

Tommy is scared, he hides under his blankie, this is worse than his nightmare. He hears Dream rush back into the room, grab his phone off the charger, and run back into papas room. He speaks urgently into his phone, the world gets too loud, and Tommy can’t hear anything, he bites his cheek and pierces through his skin by accident, his teeth didn’t used to be that sharp. He hears sirens coming towards the house, dream comes back into his room and picks up Tommy hugging him tightly. Carrying him into the living room

“What happened to Papa?” Tommy asks

“She’s just having a deep sleep” Dream answers wiping his tears

_______________

Training has always been Tommy's favorite way to relieve stress, getting to beat the crap out of a dummy and no one minds- and if you break the dummy someone just brings you a new one. It's been a few months since Ranboo and his little debate, and the chat about Tommy's power, the commission had the support group make Tommy a new weapon, its a set of knives but they have a hollow inside, and they also have wires that suck up blood from any wound the knife creates, the tubes put the blood into a bottle on the end of the knife, so Tommy can steal their power and use it without having to get close to bite them, also the commission has been requiring heroes to give Tommy a single vial of their blood so that Tommy could have their powers

This was not how he and Dream thought the commission would react, Dream thought Tommy might be put in Pandora to steal all the locked-up villain's powers and be forced to keep them, and Tommy thought he would be removed permanently from hero work, fortunately, neither of those things happened. Tommy was training after school with his new weapons, he would train with Dream and the knives, they did great, and Tommy was used to ingesting Dream’s power, Dream described how he felt when the knife cut his arm, he said “It feels like that weird thing that drys out your mouth in the dentist if it had knives on it”

Which makes sense cuz that's basically what it is. 

The school year ends in 2 weeks. He’s already finished his exam work early. He's been preparing for graduation. He bought a suit to wear under his gown. It's a very nice suit, he has a dark red blazer a black dress shirt and dark red pants. He will look very swaggy its good for sitting and doing nothing while waiting for his name to be called. It's not a good suit for his hero speech so he’s probably just going to wear his hero suit He tried to make friends, and he did manage to make a few. But they were other people in the weightlifting class and they were very Chad- very not nerdy- they were kind of mean honestly, but at least he made friends y’know.

He continues to avoid Ranboo, glaring at them whenever he gets the chance. Tommy hates when people are right. Tommy was usually very careful with his identity, but in this one instance, he wasn’t. Tommy sucked at making friends with people he actually thought were cool. Ranboo was funny, they always could make anyone laugh, they were smart, and they had a really unique sense of style, he heard from other students that for Halloween they came to school in a hatsune miku costume. And on days when they have volleyball games apparently, they dress up in different costumes, apparently one time they were Princess Peach, a banana, sans undertale-, and a hot Santa- 

Which is fucking funny. But of course, Tommy failed to become friends with them. And now they know Tommy’s secret. Tommy was excited to end the school year. He was about to have a second meeting with the commission, about what to say when he brought himself back, the commission wanted him to do a press interview, one of the things Tommy hates the most. And the press interview was scheduled for the day before graduation, so Tommy was supposed to leave school early because he was sick 2 days before so nobody would catch on. 

He was in a class with Ranboo that day.

You’ll want to know what happened so I’ll skip right to 2 days before Tomathy Wastaken’s graduation

He was sitting in his class, and he fake coughed every few minutes. It didn’t sound like a fake cough, the students around him were getting grossed out. It was the second to last class of the day. Eventually, the teacher had enough of hearing Tommy cough over and over and wrote him a pass to the office

“Can someone take Tomathy to the office, and make sure he gets there?”

Nobody offered to take him to the office meaning the teacher had to pick. And knowing Tommy's luck

“Ranboo, why don’t you take him down?” 

Of course. Just who Tommy didn’t want to talk to. Ranboo got up and they walked out of the classroom together. While they were in the hall they talked for like two seconds Tommy tries to start a conversation

“I’m sorry,” He says

“What?” They ask

“Nevermind,” He says fake coughing again. Failure stings bro

Ranboo shrugs

They continue in silence, eventually reaching the office, Tommy goes into the nurse's office and waits, they have already called Dream to come to pick him up

Sadly, his going home today meant his time as a student was ending. but happily, his time as a hero was beginning. Again

_______________

Well, that was weird. Randomly apologizing to someone in the middle of the hall, and not saying why you're apologizing? Weird as fuck. Anyways, the end of the school day was approaching, they heard the final bell ring and they get on the bus as per boring usual. They got home and sat on Twitter for a while. They responded to some of their friends' absolutely rancid tweets. They were kinda bored, they set their phone down on the floor and just lay staring at the ceiling when

Buzz

They got a text, from Some random number, With the name Tubbo, What the hell kind of name is Tubbo- He looked at the text message. It said 

(***-***-****) : Ranboo Last Name Unknown, Age 18, Goes to L’manberg High, Acquainted With Tomathy Innit Wastaken, middle blocker for his school's volleyball team, Birthday November 2nd, 2003. 

What the fuck Ranboo decides to respond

(Me) : What the fuck?

(***-***-****) : Has Black and white hair, Power is minor teleportation, Radius of power is 10-15 feet on a good day, has a small scar on the upper left of lip from running into a glass door as a kid.

Ranboo threw their phone across the room. It kept buzzing from where it landed across the room

“What the hell” Ranboo muttered under his breath

Suddenly the buzzing stopped

Then he heard a knock on his door.

“Nope” Ranboo ran to his room and brought out a bat from his old baseball days and went back to the door

He peered out the window. He couldn’t make out the figure of the person he saw they were standing up against the door. Ranboo pulled the door open and the man practically fell through the door. It was a guy in a red suit. Ranboo pointed the bat in the guy's face, he was wearing a beanie with his formal attire which practically ruins the outfit. One notable thing about the man's face was a scar that stretched from the bottom of his chin to the middle left side of his forehead and that he was missing teeth. 

“Who the hell are you,” Ranboo said to the man now lying in their house entryway 

they hear footsteps from their porch. they didn't turn away, instead, he teleported and slammed the door shut. they turned their focus back to the man on the floor

“I am so sorry man, I swear I mean no harm, I’m Quackity,” the man on the floor says raising his hand out

Ranboo lowers his bat. And swats the guy's hand 

“Why are you here,” Ranboo asks

“I have a colleague who had some business with you, I was pressing my ear on the door to  see if you were here”

“Who’s your colleague?”

“If you could open the door”

Ranboo glances out the window, there's a guy with brown fluffy hair and blonde bangs standing out there on his phone, little horns peeking through the top of his hair. Then turns back to “Quackity” who now stood up and leaned himself against the wall, he looks very relaxed, like he was not just on the ground with a guy threatening to bash in his lungs he also, is very short. Maybe Ranboo is just tall.

“What's his name,” Ranboo asks

“Tobias Schlatt, ”

“Could his name be shortened to Tubbo?” 

“Yeah, that’s his nickname? How did you” Quackity looks out the window at the guy and then says “Jesus Christ Tubbo”

The guy looks up from his phone at Quackity and laughs

“Ok what the hell is going on”

“Open the door he’ll tell you” 

Ranboo stares out the window, trying to decide if they should open the door and let the guy in, or open the door and shove this guy out

Ranboo grabs the door handle and opens the door, “Tubbo” Walks in immediately. Ranboo finally gets a good look at his face, the left side of his face is just one massive scar, and his bangs cover his eyes, he’s wearing a dark green dress shirt and a black tie, the guy looked similar to the guy who was executed for ratting out the heroes to the villains. But that guy got burned alive he’s dead now. Ranboo can’t seem to recall the name of that guy. He thinks it was judge's son. the kid was only 12 when he was burned alive, it was kinda tragic. 

“I’m tubbo, You really need to hide your personal information better” Tubbo holds his hand out to Ranboo 

Ranboo, though he was really confused shook his hand

“You need to work on your introductions toby,” Quackity says patting him on the back and walking away “I’ll be in the car”

“What business do you have with me,” Ranboo asks

“You have something I want,” Tubbo says, though it's hard to discern his emotions because his eyes are completely covered.

“What do I have?”

“You have the ability to teleport, And you have connections to Tomathy Innit Wastaken,” Tubbo says closing the door behind him and walking further into the home

“What does Tommy have to do with anything,” Ranboo asks

“I thought you figured it out? His connection to the hero tower, To judge and Runner?” 

“What?”

“Tomathy is Red Devil” 

What  

“You look shocked? I thought you figured it out”

“Im shocked at how you knew that.” 

“Well when your dad is a hero you learn some things about the heroes”

“Which hero is your dad”

“Jeez you are slow at this- Im judge’s son blah blah blah no I didn’t die in that fire, yes I’m still working against the heroes, judge was a terrible father whatever,” Tubbo says “Anyways I want you to work with us, take down the corrupt heroes, save Tom from ever having to see those jerks again”

“Wait you want to save Tommy? Why does he need to be saved isn’t he like the number two hero”

“I can’t tell you his backstory, that's up to him, but my dad didn't treat him with kindness, in fact almost all of the hero tower, didn't treat him kindly.” 

“Oh”

“So will you take my job offer” 

Ranboo takes a moment to think, would working with this guy really be the right choice? Is it really a good idea to work against the heroes? The all-powerful people who protect everyone.  But doing it to protect Tommy, they hadn’t hung out with Tommy a lot, but they talked in class every day, and every conversation they had made Ended with Ranboo laughing or smiling. Ranboo probably ruined that friendship by calling him out in front of the class, they wish there was a way to fix it.

Ranboo decides, that he’ll decide if it was the right choice later

“Sure, why not? I need something to do in the summer anyway”

 _______________

“Why are you making me wear a suit- I was going to wear my hero suit, normal suits are so hard to move in” Tommy groans

“Because your return banquet today is a fancy event, the guests will all be wearing formal attire so you will too,” Dream says handing Tommy a very nice red suit “I made sure the tailor used the right red so it matches your visor and mask.”

“I don’t want to wear a suit.”

“Too bad, also hows your speech coming?” Dream asks

“I can’t figure out what to write- all I can think of is im back- hi guys what up I can’t write a speech”

“I don’t know how you got all A’s”

“All A plus’s also they didn’t make me write a speech to perform in front of a bunch of cranky rich people, on live TV As a hero”

“I’ll help you with the speech,” Dream says, grabbing a dark green suit and laying it out on a table “Get me a pen and paper”

Tommy grabs a piece of paper from his backpack, and a pen also from his backpack, which he then discarded on the floor, he hands the pen and paper to Dream and he starts writing very quickly, in moments the paper is halfway filled, and Dream hands the paper back to Tommy

“This sounds nothing like me,”  Tommy says looking over the paper. 

“Can you do any better?” Dream asks 

“Probably not. But can you fix it?”

“At least read the whole thing first”

“But I don't want to”

“Just read it”

“Fine” He pauses to clear his throat “Hello Citizens of L’manberge, I have returned to serve you once again, I apologize for not explaining why I had disappeared, I had discovered a new part of my power and I was afraid what the commission would think of it. But they helped me train the new part of my power and now I will protect you to the best of my ability with this new power” he says like the angsty teen he is

“Now practice reading it like your in front of cranky old rich people” 

“But that's boring”

“Stop acting like your 13 again- Your 18 Tommy. Just because we don’t celebrate your birthday doesn’t mean you don’t age”

“Fine I'll go practice it”

“Ok. Also, go try on your suit, make sure you have a belt for your weapons just in case. And make sure you have the blood ok?”

“OK”

“And make sure you can fit your GPS under your sleeve, and don’t forget your phone, and your comm”

“Ok I'll make sure I have all my shit, You make sure you have all your things too.” 

“I have all my things, Go get ready” 

“Fine” 

Tommy goes around grabs up his things and walks into his bathroom and changes into the suit, it’s surprisingly easy to move in, and it’s not itchy like most suits, the red also matches his mask. He puts his weapon belt on and it's easily hidden under his blazer, he shoves a few vials of blood in his pocket, the blood is labeled, one of them with a green smiley face, another with a mushroom, and another with a fire emoticon. He tightens his tie and straitens it up. He puts his GPS under his blazer sleeve, he slides his phone into the pocket opposite from the blood then he puts his comm in his ear and makes sure it's off. Then he grabs the paper and reads it again in the mirror a few times. He walks out of the bathroom and sees Dream in his suit as well as his smiley face mask, waiting and sitting on the floor scrolling on his phone.

“How do I look?” Tommy asks, 

Dream looks up

“You look like a Cranky rich guy”

“You're an Ass”

“Hey I just gave you my honest answer”

“Exactly” Tommy grabs his mask and sits down on the floor next to Dream

“We have an hour till we have to be headed to the center,” Dream says.

“Hopefully it doesn’t go too late, I have to graduate tomorrow”

Dream chuckles

They sat talking for the entire hour, laughing at dumb things Tommy recited his speech a few more times their fun hang-out time was interrupted by a knock at their door meaning they had to head out

Finally, Tommy gets to walk amongst heroes again

Chapter Text

“What the hell you weren’t meant to bring him to the house” Techno yells 

“You had to have expected this tech, i said he wasn’t gonna stop until he assured that the dumb hero is safe” Wilbur responds,

His father uses his power on the Man after laying him on the couch, the hero heals quickly, his back seems to stitch itself back together

“He was passed out in an alleyway i couldn’t leave him there” Phil says gently placing a blanket over him

“So you bring him to a hospital!” Techno Says again

“You know I don’t trust hospitals techno” Phil says turning to look at the two

“You still shouldn’t have brought him here” Wilbur says “For once i agree with you tech”

“Look at him, his back was torn up and he was bleeding out, he could have died” Phil says

“Again- A hospital could've helped him” Techno said “we’re villains, we should not be bringing heroes in to our house”

Wilbur looks at him, with that one look that just pisses him off- It means to stop arguing- Wilbur uses it a lot on him. It's a look that says there's no point, just drop it. And with wilburs power, that look has just that little bit more effect. 

Techno sighs 

“We have to do at least something villainous.” Techno says

“We could take off his mask” Wilbur suggests

“That's a good idea” Techno agrees

Phil looks like he’s thinking about it. For a few minutes. Then he makes his decision

“Fine.” Phil answers 

Phil turns back around to the hero on their couch, he grabs his mask and starts to slowly remove it. The lower part of the man's mask is stained red. And once Phil removed the mask he saw that the inside was stained as well. The man's mouth was cracked up and also bloody. Now with not just seeing the tiny slither he usually see’s when the man's mask opened, but seeing the whole bottom half of his face, he looks less like the brute of a hero he is.- he looked younger, less scarred. Phil grabs the visor and slowly removes it as well. Techno and Wil look at the man once the visor is removed, and..

It's a kid.

He barely looks older than 15. 

He looks like the best thing he’s read is a comic book.

He doesn’t look like the 20 something number 2 hero red devil. But he is. 

This kid was probably not older than 13 when he was introduced as a hero. Meaning he’s only around 17. 

He’s not supposed to be a kid.

Techno looks over to Wilbur who is in equal amounts of shock.

Phil looks like he’s willing to die for this kid, and is wanting to shield him from the world forever.

Wilbur walks over to Phil, takes the mask and visor from Phil and replaces them on Red’s face.

No one says anything. We all stand staring at the hero for a few more minutes. Eventually they move, techno moves to go lean on their kitchen counter. Wilbur leaves the room and goes into his office, Phil stays sitting on the floor, he turns on a kids movie and sits there watching it. Techno gets a glass of water and chugs it. Techno can distantly hear Wilbur shuffling in his office, moving papers, calling people. He can see Phil turning back towards the hero every few minutes while he watches the movie.

Techno stands in the kitchen eating any good snack he finds. Until eventually Phil’s movie ends. As he’s looking for another movie techno walks over to him.

“Phil let him rest.”

Phil looks up at techno, Techno places his hand out, phil takes it and stands up, then phil walks to his bedroom, techno walks to his own. He lays in his bed for hours just staring at the ceiling, while he’s laying there he doesn’t hear Wilbur leave his office. Techno wasn’t able to sleep that night.

He stays in his bed and eventually the sun comes up. He stays in his bed until he hears the front door open then slam shut, techno jumps out of his bed and runs out of his room. Apparently Phil was faster because he had already run almost to the door.  Wilbur doesn't come out of his office. Phil looks out the door, but of course the hero with super speed is long gone, he doesn't even know if the hero still has super speed, but there's no sight of him. 

"You can't have expected him to stay," Techno says to phil

"I almost did." Phil says sighing then walking away from the door " i'm gonna go get ready for work"

“You don’t have to go in to work today phil” techno tells him

“No its fine, it was just my instincts acting up” phil said leaving the room

Ok then Techno thought.

….

A few weeks after the incident Phil got a new student to join his tutoring club. When Phil saw him walk into the room he recognized him immediately. It was Red. Or better known as Tomathy Innit WasTaken. Phil had to step out of his room multiple times while tomathy was in there, he couldn’t  risk his instincts taking over, so he’d step out and think about the multiple times where Red had hit him, or almost arrested him, or Wilbur and Techno. Then he’d return to teach his class. Help with the tutoring. 

Stuff that a teacher would do.

One day, not far from the end of the school year, Another student, Ranboo, And Tomathy got into an argument during class. About the identity of red. It had started when tomathy was picked up by the hero judge. Phil had been in the office printing, and he heard their chat before they left. Tomathy did not want to leave with the judge. He seemed scared of him. Phil decided he would deal with that later. He continued on with his classes after he finished printing his work sheets, During the tutoring club everyone bombarded tomathy with questions

 “If you have question ask them now- i don’t want to waste valuable learning time” Tomathy said exasperated

Immediately people started moving to his desk, overlapping their questions. One student yelled “What's  judge like'' another asked “Did you get in trouble with the commission or something” And  Ranboo asked “Are you a hero undercover?”

When phil heard that question he was disturbed

“One at a time,” Tommy said

“Why were you picked up by the judge?” 

“My brother works in the hero tower and he had something urgent, and he can’t drive”. 

“Is judging fun to talk to?” 

“Not in my opinion, i know some people enjoy his company, but i don’t really like him”

Phil never would have guessed that by their interactions.

“What was the urgent thing your brother had?”

“He was in a meeting about red devil and runner ran out of the room frustrated, my brother tried to stop him and got knocked in the head” 

That one makes sense, Runner was a very violent hero

“Are you telling the truth?” Ranboo asks

“Why would I lie?” 

“What other heroes have you met?”

“I have met Amanita, Blaze, Runner, Judge, And Red Devil” 

“Do you know why Red Devil disappeared?”

Phil knows

“I don’t, my brother doesn’t get information like that, he’s just security” Tomathy says

Phil bets he does know

“Is Red fun to talk to?”

“He’s funnier and cooler than the other heroes that for sure” 

Wow so humble , Phil thinks

“Why would you need to show up for your brother, doesn’t the tower have it’s own small infirmary?” Ranboo asks

“I have a small healing power, he wouldn’t let the other healers near him.” 

Phil bets that a lie

“How much of the hero tower does your brother have access to?”

“He has access to the 1st floor, and all the floors above the 7th” 

“Why are you lying” Ranboo asks

“I'm not?”

“You seem unsure, what are you hiding”

“Okay okay Ranboo, you’ve asked more than one question. Not everyone has asked their questions” Phil yelled over the classroom, hoping to stop the confrontation

“But is it not obvious he’s red devil?!” Ranboo Yells and stands up “He’s lying to your faces,”

The other students go quiet for the first time ever  and stare at Tommy

“Mr Boo that is a very rash assumption” The teacher says “Your only piece of evidence is that a hero picked him up from school” Phil Responded

“He started only a week after Red Disappeared, And no security guard would actually get in Runners way unless they're an idiot” Ranboo looked at Phil “He also has the same blonde curly hair that Red has”

“I'm not Red Devil, he left with no explanation, no one in the hero tower has seen him in months, the meeting my brother was guarding was about sending a search party, Also 9.9 percent of males have blonde hair, that doesn't seem like much until you take into account that there is 7.8 billion people in the world, about 3.97 billion are male, meaning 393 million of those men have blonde hair” 

“Only 2 percent of the population have blonde curly hair.”

“While that is true it’s still a large number, I think about 156 million.”

Students around start taking notes. They shouldn’t be.

“In This city the probability decreases significantly, because the population is lower than most large cities, our population of about 200,000, which decreases it to about 4400, which is a great decrease”

“Going by that our school has 843 students, 18 students should have blonde curly hair theoretically. But the actuality is that there are 21 students with blonde curly hair most of them being siblings, why aren’t you accusing them of being Red?”

Yeah ranboo, why are you accusing him? You know something Phil thinks

“They haven’t been taken to the hero tower by a hero.”

Oh Phil thinks 

“But one of them has. One of the blonde curly haired boys volunteers in the hero tower, my brother has seen them around. Carrying papers and coffee’s around the offices, He often gets taken to the tower at the end of the school day by Amanita”

Ranboo pauses. 

“He’s in training to become a hero, volunteering to be in the environment of the heroes Red wouldn’t need training because he’s been a hero for years”

“How do you know red is even our age, he’s likely around the same age of runner who we assume is in his mid twenties?”

“Boys I didn't know this was a debate club?” Phil yells at the two students

Ranboo sat down and the other students around sat.

“I apologize Mr. Craft” Ranboo says

“Alright, now tutors find your study buddy and get to studying. I'm sure none of these folks want to fail their tests because you two wanted to debate” Phil says, stepping out of the classroom for a breather. He walks back into class, and see’s tomathy on the phone. He hangs up and asks if he can leave. He looks distraught. Phil lets him go.

Tomathy doesn’t come back to the tutoring club for the rest of the year. Phil thinks it's weird that he's continually thinking about this kid. This hero. This formidable figure, A 17 year old straight A student, who is the nerdiest of the nerds without anyone knowing. 

Just a few weeks before the end of the school year, every teacher was given invitations to an event the day before Graduation at the hero tower, this event happens every year, it's the graduation event for student heroes getting licensed to fight crime. Phil never goes, but he decides maybe this year he will, he keeps the invitation in the front console in his car.   

One day as he's walking past the office back to his classroom, about 2 days before graduation, he sees ranboo walking tomathy into the office, tomathy says "I'm sorry" Ranboo doesn't seem to know what he means. Phil knows why he's apologizing. It's obvious he's sorry for having to deny having been a hero. 

That day in his club students were raving about there being a returning hero at the graduation event, someone in the tower leaked the information on twitter. No one knows who the hero is, but everyone guesses that it's gonna be red devil.

Personally, Phil hopes that it's not going to be red devil, because he is a kid, he shouldn't have even started working as a hero. You train until your atleast 19, then at 20 you become a hero that phil, techno, wil (and other unnamed villains) can fuck up. It just feels bad to be hurting a child. He couldn't have chosen to become a hero that early in life. 

Someday he'll realize how fucked up the hero commission was to allow him that young to become a hero. And when he does, the villains will gladly take him. And not make him continue to fight. If he does want to fight, he knows the fighting style and specific training given to heroes, and he knows the weaknesses in the tower, and he probably has access to asset that villains just don't 

he'd be an amazing asset.

….

Today's the day.

Today is the day Tommy rejoins the world of heroes and villains.

He looks at the screen that displays the crowd so you don't have to peek your head through. It was a full house of course.

He watched the house lights slowly dim. An announcer walked on stage and said his little thing blah blah blah, then he finally said "Now welcome your returning hero. Red devil"

That was Tommy's que to walk on stage. The moment he walked out the audience erupted with applause and cameras flashing, he stood right in front of the podium, and started with his speech

"Hello Citizens of L’manberge," He took a short pause as the applause went down. "I have returned to serve you once again, I apologize for not explaining why I had disappeared, I had discovered a new part of my power and I was afraid of what the commission would think of it. But they helped me train the new part of my power and now I will protect you to the best of my ability with this new power" He paused again "Now i am very happy to announce that this year's graduating heroes is the largest we've had in years!" There was applause "And to go forth with that section of tonight's ceremony i welcome the Principle of Logstedshire hero college, and Famed hero, Badboyhalo!" Tommy says then walks off of the stage

Then he goes under the stage and out the side of the building, followed by Dream. As heroes they still had duties. So they headed back to the tower. When they saw a familiar figure in an alleyway. Not familiar in a good way. Dream didn't seem to notice the figure, but Tommy nudged him and pointed back to the alleyway, and Dreams' demeanor immediately changed. they walked back towards the alleyway. he popped out the vial with the green smiley face and took a little sip of the blood then slipped the vial back in his pocket. They looked in the alleyway, and the figure was still there. 

 "I didn't think I'd see you this soon after you'd returned red?" Siren said, nearing the exit to the alley "And dream, the reason for his disappearance" He chuckled

"Alright siren you know the drill, put your hands up you're under arrest" Dream said. 

"Just wait, I have something to ask" Siren says

"Get on with it," Tommy says

"How does it feel to endanger your 18-year-old brother?" Siren asks Dream.

"What?" Tommy says

Dream looks at Siren then at Tommy then back to Siren.

Then dream rushes at Siren.

Tommy took out one of his daggers and ran forward alongside Dream. 

The fight went on as a fight with Siren would normally go on, dodging trying to hit, getting hit, and landing a hit, except, Siren was continually trying not to hit Tommy.  Tommy managed to slice into Siren's shoulder, the vial at the bottom of the dagger filling. Tommy took the vial off capped it then shoved it in his pocket then went back to trying to attack Siren. Eventually, siren managed a good hit on Dream and ran off. Tommy tried to go after him but he was gone before Tommy turned the corner. 

He found Dream standing in the alleyway, seething. Angry at someone, he didn't seem angry at Siren. No, he was angry at something else

"He ran off that way, I didn't see him when I rounded the corner, he's gone" Tommy says to dream. 

"Then we can go back to the tower. C'mon" Dream said, leaving the alleyway, still very clearly pissed

They made it back to the tower dream got healed then went straight to bed when they arrived. Tommy wrote and filed a mission report. Then went to bed. Already a cruddy first day back in the hero biz. Tomorrow they have patrol up in the center of the city, the rich people part.

How fucking exciting 

Cranky old rich people are the absolute worst

One time when Tommy was younger, an old rich family walked past him while he was on a grocery run with Dream and they held their kid away from the two. Like they were the plague, which was fucking rude.

Tommy honestly just wished he could patrol down past Logstedshire a little bit into the worst, worst part of the city, where there was the most crime. But he was forced to help cranky rich people instead of the people who actually need some fucking help. Yes, being a hero is so fine and dandy, and awesome. Also, Dream is so obviously pissed at him for losing Siren, even though it literally wasn't his fault. But in all seriousness, he was happy to be back working as a hero, he enjoyed saving people. 

The pieces that make up his life were finally slipping back into place

Chapter Text

Honestly, central l'manburge is very boring in Tommy's opinion. There was very little crime, not many fun things to do. On his patrol there he just walked around and had people ask for a picture. Dream was with him, but he was silent the whole patrol. Dream and Tommy kept seeing villain citing notification for different parts in the city. All they got to do that day was save a kitten from a tree, stop someone from robbing a gas station. And catch an escaped felon. Meanwhile, George and Sapnap who were in one of the middle cities, got openly attacked, fought a minor villain, caught a vigilante, and saved a kid from falling off of a burning building.

So yeah, Central lmanburg is boring. Atleast they had good coffee shops in central. Which Tommy can't even enjoy because Dream still doesn't let him have caffeine during patrol. 

After the day of patrol, they went home, Dream still looked pissed like he was the night before, he put of pajamas and went to sleep right away. Tommy didn't take off his suit, only his mask and visor just incase. Tommy stayed up a little while longer watching a nature documentary. About halfway through the documentary Tommy got a notification about a villain citing, it didn't specify who but the notif did specify that no current hero was on the scene, and no hero was making a move to the citing.

So Tommy being Tommy. He grabbed his mask and visor and headed out the building. 

..….

"Literally no one is on the street, why can’t we just-" Ranboo said slightly leaving the alley 

"Are you the one who has snuck through this city for literal years? No, get back in the alley Boo" Tubbo tells him 

"Fine" Ranboo Says exasperated.

“We just have a few more minutes before he catches on and follows us,” Tubbo says checking his watch and moving between alleys

“Are you sure he’ll come?”

“Runner has never missed a villain citing notif, And he’s usually in the tower now, waiting, maybe watching a documentary with Tommy”

"What if Tommy shows up instead of Runner"

"He won't. It's late, Runner won't let him. Despite being a terrible guardian for Tommy he did manage to make some good rules"

"Yeah but also a lot of dumb ones from what you told me" Ranboo says

"More dumb than not" 

"Yeah" Ranboo says

There's a noise, like a metal boot hitting gravel 

"He's caught on." 

..…

"Literally no one is on the street, why can’t we just-" A masked figure says

"Are you the one who has snuck through this city for literal years? No, get back in the alley Boo" 

"Fine" ‘Boo’ Says exasperated.

Tommy already spotted them from where he sat on the rooftop, they either don't want to acknowledge him or haven't noticed him. Tommy recognizes both of the voices vaguely. They aren't too similar to anyone he knows but the familiarity is there. Tommy follows the two quietly from the rooftops. He follows them all the way to a bank, where they sneakily break into the back.

Tommy follows them.

This might be a perfect time to say, sneaking was never Tommy's strong suit

Tommy steps into the building a little too loudly. The moment he realizes his mistake, he hides between the door and the wall, he hears someone turn around, he doesn't think they've noticed him, he hears them continue down the hall. Tommy reaches into his pocket that the blood was supposed to be in, and his pocket is fucking empty.

"Fuck" he whispers

Tommy goes around a different corner than them so he can call someone. he dials Dreams phone number

It rings.

No answer.

Right he's asleep. 

He tries George. 

No answer

Sapnap

No answer

Fucking Schlatt.

No answer.

He mutters under his breath "Damnit"

He tries Dream again 

No answer again. 

"You weren't supposed to be the one to respond" A voice says behind him

Tommy knew he recognized the voice now. It was a stolen voice, the voice of a friend who had already passed on.

"Who are you and why did you steal his Voice?" Tommy says slowly turning around

"I haven't stolen any voice Tommy " The figure says, staring at Tommys visor.

"Bee!" A pause "Don't you think it's a bit early for the reveal"

Tommy looks at the two confused, but still on guard. One of the two 'Boo' Was freakishly tall And 'Bee' was short. Very short. Both had their hair and face covered

"It's never too early for a reveal. I've been waiting like 5 years to talk to him again, Ok." Bee Says 

"Well sorry i'm concerned for my identity, i only graduated yesterday" Boo Said then covered his mouth through his mask.

"Ok what the fuck are you guys doing here How do you know my name" Tommy says

"Tomathy Innit Wastaken. 18 yea-" 'Boo' Kicks him in the achilles heel "Ow-" 

'Boo' looks down at 'Bee' for a moment.

"Fine" 'Bee' Says "We didn't actually want to rob this bank, we were hoping to lure your brother here, give him a talking to about allowing you to become a hero so young" He paused "And as for why i know your name, And why Boo knows your name" Bee reaches up and pulls his hood and mask down. Boo Hesitates to do the same, 

He knows their faces. The freakishly tall Ran'Boo' And a face that couldn't possibly be standing in front of him, a face he'd watched melt during a cruel execution. He looked at The shorters face, scanning it for a difference from his friends. The only difference was a terrible burn scar on the left of his face, where the fire had been started, and new eyebags. Everything else was the same. Even the freckles, all perfectly placed across his face

 Despite his better judgment Tommy says

"Toby?" 

"Toms?" Tubbo responds

Tommy couldn't stop himself before he stepped closer and grabbed Tubbo up in a hug Tubbo gave a light laugh and hugged him back, Ranboo stood awkwardly watching the scene. Tommy hadn't noticed but tears started slowly dripping down his face. Tommy felt the shoulder where Tubbo laid his head was becoming damp. 

After at least a minute or two… or five. Tommy let go of Tubbo and set him down

Tommy Wiped off his face and sniffled

They started to talk a little, Tubbo explained why he hadn't died, it was the cause of his power, decoy, he could make fake hims to do whatever he needed them to do, the only downside is that if his decoy gets injured he gets a scar. He doesn't feel the pain, he just gets the scar. 

Ranboo also explained how Tubbo invited him to join him in his villainry, and how fucking creepy he was at first, Tubbo was always good at gathering information, it was what got him almost killed. A little bit later Tommy during their conversation saw a small mushroom pop up next to him. Tommy looked at Tubbo and Ranboo and said 

"You guys need to leave like now."

Mushrooms were growing rapidly around their feet, creating a fairy circle around the two individually Tubbo and Ranboo looked at the mushrooms 

"Shit" Tubbo said 

"Really. On the second day"

"Just go, I'll say you beat me up." Tommy said looking around the corner

"See here's the thing bossman." Tubbo pauses "We kinda have to take you with us"

"What?!" Tommy exclaimed

"Yeah so we kinda were planning to save you from the commission haha right" Ranboo said 

"I literally just got back. I can't just disappear again- It'd be a fucking pr disaster!" Tommy explains

"Well sorry" Tubbo says walking forwards towards Tommy

"I'll fucking bite you" Tommy says taking a step back and pointing at Tubbo.

"I have no doubt you will" Tubbo says

They both stop moving and stare at each other, Tubbo crouches slightly. Then he fucking jumps at Tommy

"NO! WAIT! ACK '' Tommy yells putting his hands up to shield his already shielded face. Tubbo tackles him then stands up quickly and drags him over to Ranboo who starts to pick him up

"No wait, stop!" Tommy says hitting the floor like a toddler throwing a tantrum

As Tommy is hoisted in the air he says "I just got back" All deflated and sad like

"I Hear him!" A voice yells from down the hall.

Tommy gasps and looks into the hallway. Three heroes round the corner. Runner (Dream) Amanita (George) And Ignis (Sapnap) At the sight of runner Tommy yells

"RUNNER!" Slightly reaching out for him.

Ranboo stares at Dream and waves. Just as Dream is within feet of them, their surroundings change, Suddenly they're in complete darkness, then it feels like they're spinning and then suddenly their back in the light. But they're not in the bank anymore, they're in a house. A rather cozy house. A slightly familiar house. Tommy feels sick from the feeling of spinning,

Ranboo sets him down on his feet.

"Sorry" Ranboo whispers.

"Welcome to The Casa de los villanos" Tubbo says. "Also can i see your phone, and gps"

Tubbo doesn't wait for an answer instead he grabs them out of his pocket and snaps both of them.

"Hey my phone!" Tommy says looking at his now broken phone, and destroyed candy crush records.

"Your rich- you'll just get a new one"

Tommy pouts though it's invisible behind his mask that he still hasn't removed.

There's a creak and a few steps. All three people look at the sound, they catch sight of a curly haired brunette, in his pjs holding golden wire rimmed glasses in his hands wiping them off with the end of his shirt

"Hey Wilbur!"

"Hey Tobes"

The Man looks up and stops walking, instead opting to stare at the hero in his living room.

He blinks a couple time, and puts his glasses on

"I'm gonna go tell phil something" the brunette says backing up and practically running to the end of the hallway, opening a door walking in and shutting it

Odd

"Hm" Tubbo says

"I'm gonna-" Tommy starts walking to the door, but Ranboo grabs his hood.

"No" He says plainly

"Oh Toms, we have a room set up for you." Tubbo motions for him to follow him down the hall.

Tommy follows, Ranboo follows as well, They get to the door 'wilbur' ran into, and they turn the corner and go up a set of stairs, And there's another hallway, With 4 doors One Door with a yellow name tag on it, one with a black and white nametag on it. And one with a red name tag on it. The fourth has no name tag. Tommy notices that there's a lock on the fourth door

"The red ones your room, here's a sharpie, write your name," Tubbo says, handing him a sharpie.

Tommy slowly writes T. Danger Kraken Safety Innit 

Ranboo Reads the name and chuckles. Tubbo looks over and snorts a laugh

He hands the sharpie back to Tubbo

"Go inside" Tubbo says

Tommy opens the door and walks into the room. The first thing he notices is the spider terrarium . Also the desk where the terrarium is sat. But spooder. He runs to the spider and stares at it.

"Shroud." He decides

"W h a t" Ranboo says.

"I've named him shroud."

"Is that the only thing you're interested in? just the spider." Ranboo said

"I told you he'd like the spider more" Tubbo says

Tommy noticed a flower also on his desk, a purple allium, his favorite kind of flower ever in the world. 

"Oh I love alliums!" Tommy said, looking at the flower and touching one of its petals.

"Hah" Ranboo says behind him

"Tommy, you should look at the entire room and not just the desk" Tubbo says.

Tommy looks all over the room, Spotting a section of wall just covered in music discs. There was a music box below leaned against that wall. Then on a small table next to the music box were 2 Music discs, One with a green inside ring, And one with a purple and white striped inside ring.

"OMG!" Tommy runs over and picks up the music discs, 

He looks over the back of the discs where he finds his initial carved. 

"It's my discs! Dream threw these out just after I finished my hero training. How did you get these?" Tommy looked at Tubbo

"I found them after he threw them out, I kept them here, While I was spying," Tubbo said, smiling at Tommy.

Tommy smiled back

"You still have to look at the rest of the room" Ranboo said

Tommy turned and looked at the rest of the room, He looked at the bed Where there was an animal crossing blanket, And A bag of bells (Just a pillow, But it looked like a bag of bells) 

"I'm rich!!" He yelled running and grabbing up the pillow

Tubbo and Ranboo laughed lightly.

Tommy noticed that on the bedside table there was a Nintendo switch in its dock. But it wasn't just any Nintendo switch. It was an animal crossing switch, With an animal crossing dock 

The awesomeness of it all almost made him forget he wasn't allowed to leave

....

Y'know, Dream just never seems to get a good sleep.

For like an hour while he's trying to sleep, Tommy is watching his stupid nature documentaries. Eventually he turns it off and goes to bed of course. But Tommy just doesn't rest there, 30-ish minutes after Dream heard Tommy climb into his bed, he gets a call. From none other than Tomathy Innit Wastaken. So of course Dream ignores it knowing Tommy is probably just fucking with him and says.

"Get up and talk to me like a normal person"

He waits for a sec and nothing happens. Dream doesn't ever hear Tommy stir in his bed. About 10 or less minutes after that Dream gets another call from Tommy. Which he ignores by throwing his phone across the room at where Tommy is sleeping.

Dream expects Tommy to wince, or move to throw the phone back, but there's no sound. That's when Dream decides to sit up to look at Tommy

"What do you want" Dream says rubbing his eyes

He has a hard time adjusting in the dark, He sees Tommy hiding under his covers, the coward, he gets up and pulls the covers off of him. that's when he realizes Tommy isn't in his bed. there's just a line of pillows where he should be laughing at the trouble he's causing,

Dream walked out of the bed area and into the living and dining area, it was empty, and the tv was still on. the table where they put their gear and noticed a few items were missing, in the dark he couldn't tell which items, so he turned on the light

 Dream looked back over at the tv it was paused at 30 Minutes and 42 seconds. Right on an image of a spider, Tommy never pauses on the animal unless he has to do something urgently. Dream also notices that the things missing from the table are Tommy's mask and visor but not the vials of blood. Meaning they were either discarded or forgotten

 "Shit." he curses

He Gathers his hero things and quickly heads out,  He looks at his phone He sees a missed villain citing notif and he got a message from Sapnap, and George both asking Why the heck Tommy called them in the middle of the night Dream responded to both with 

"Get your hero shit together meet me in the lobby"

Dream waits in the lobby and within minutes, both Sapnap and George arrive decked out in full hero gear

Sapnap is the first to talk out of the three of them

"So what the hell happened" He questions

"I think Tommy responded to a villain notif, He called us because he left these guys" Dream says holding out the vials containing their blood

Sapnap just leaves the building. 

George looks at Dream

"location?" George Asks

"His phone logs say L'manburge Bank 42nd street, Middle city" Dream says

"Are you guys fucking coming?" Sapnap yells into the door

Both Dream and George look at Sapnap, then run out the door after him

… 

"We're almost there." Dream says running around another corner.

The three rounded the corner and saw the bank, it had no signs that it was broken into. To try and preserve Tommy's safety George used his power to create fairy circles around any person in that building, letting the villains know of their presence so they don't hurt Tommy.

He must be so scared  Dream thinks 

Dream, George, And Sapnap sneak around to the back and they see an open door, as they go inside they hear Noise of struggle. Dream hears a distinct "No wait stop" a pause "I just got back"

Tommy. 

"I hear him!" Dream yells (perhaps a little bit too loud) running down a hallway

There's an audible gasp from down the hall. Then Dream sees three others down the hall, Tommy being held into the air by a very tall person, And a shorter person standing, holding onto the taller. all of them masked.

"Runner!" Tommy Yells

Dream speeds up, He can feel heat radiating from Sapnap, he spots large mushrooms drawing beside him

The taller of the three infront of them waves. Then just before the three reach the other three, they disappear. Into thin air. only leaving behind a few purple sparks. Dream stops in his tracks. He watches the sparks slowly float to the ground. 

Sapnap starts looking around corners in different halls, By the vault. Everywhere. His fire slowly dissipating from around him

George calls The Commision Telling them of what happened, And telling them to publicize it as soon as possible. 

Dream finds a bench and sits on it. Waiting. If only he had been just a little bit faster. If only Tommy had remembered the blood. Maybe if he told Dream before he left instead of hiding the fact by shoving pillows under his blanket like a teenager who went out to go do drugs or something. Tommy needs to learn to communicate better. He needs to remember his things. Dream shouldn't have to watch his brother get taken away over and over just because He forgot something, or He was hiding things.

Dream wasn't upset that Tommy was taken, He'd be able to get back. He'd only be gone a few days. Dream wasn't worried, he decided Tommy wasn't worth the worry

After all, Tommy is an adult

He can fix things himself

Chapter Text

Tommy can absolutely not fix things himself

For goodness sake, Tommy is barely 18, technically he is an adult, but he's still dreams younger brother, dream is stupid and should be actively helping with the search for Tommy, but he's not, and that is dumber than when he didn't let Tommy stop hero work after he was almost killed twice, Tommy didn't ask to stop, but still dream should've intervened then and there, and he didn't.

Dream is worrying out of his mind for Tommy. Dream has been taken off of the patrol list for the past 2 weeks Tommy has been missing. The commission doesn't want dream to find Tommy just incase he finds him dead. George, Sapnap, And Schlatt are all on the patrol list with the specific objective to find Tommy.

And dream is just stuck in his lonely room. That used to be filled with laughter. Dream is overall a bad brother. The commission was good though. They helped dream and tommy out of their dark days.

When Tommy, And Dream, Were 5 (Tommy), and 10 (Dream) Tommy found their mother dead in her bed. When they were 7 (Tommy), And 12 (Dream) Dream saved Tommy from Schlatt and started his hero training, along with Tommy. When tommy was 10 his best friend was executed. When Dream was 16 (Tommy was 11) he started minor hero work, and was labeled as a young prodigy he stayed low on the ranks, never really got attacked, and barely went on patrol. 

And when they were 13 (Tommy), And 18 (Dream). Tommy was introduced to hero society as a full fledged hero, As an "adult" hero, he climbed the ranks quickly, and was the target of many villain attacks, he also had patrol everyday. The commission was running low on heroes and needed the help. They needed more heroes to fight villains.

Dream met George and Sapnap at 19 when they began their hero training and they accidentally witnessed tommy's power. Tommy, At 15, was almost killed twice in the same year from brutal villain attacks. Then at 17 he was kidnapped for the first time. Dream did everything he could do to find him, and he did find him, and pulled the plug on his hero work, and now barely a year later. Tommy is missing again.

He really hopes they find tommy. So they can keep working with the commission together, as brothers, and great heroes. The commission doesn't have any fault in this as many villains suggest, all the commission does is help. They'll find tommy and bring him back. With the amount they insisted on letting tommy become a hero young, they must value him enough to pull out all the stops to find him. Tommy is worth every moment of worry.

Two weeks is too long for anyone to be missing. It's been on the news for weeks, there has been no villain movement. But everyone knows something is stirring, Dream really doesn't want tommy to be stuck in some dingy basement while his world is being destroyed.

There's been villain citing's across the city, but their always gone before the heroes arrive and they don't really cause any damage, or hurt anyone, but They always leave behind graffiti, always with red paint. and Always with the villain group, called the syndicate's symbol accompanied by their motto "sic semper tyrannis"

Their symbol is a sword with wings attached by the guard, With three skulls hovering above.

It actually looks quite cool for the symbol of villains. 

Anyways

Dream was upset that he''d to let tommy continue, but it was justified, it was for the good of the commission. 

They'll find tommy, They will.

Its all for the good of the commission

________

Tommy more realizes his situation now, Tubbo and ranboo may have brought him here to keep him safe from the hero commission. But not all of the villains in the villain house have that same mindset. The first two days in the villain house tommy was stuck in his room. Ranboo and tubbo would bring him food but otherwise his door stayed closed and locked. The third day someone new brought tommy his lunch. 

Per tommy's training he took the food and checked it for anything that could've been slipped in it, he didn't find anything and so he ate it. Once he was done with his food he began to get drowsy, once he felt the drowsiness he put on his hero mask he fell asleep just moments after re-placing it on his face.

When he woke up he was in a dark room, sitting in a chair, a square desk in front of him, two more chairs on the other side, an easy to reach door right behind the aforementioned chairs. And per his training, he quietly accessed his surroundings, the chair appeared to be red stained wood, no these are villains, its blood. The desk also appeared to be entirely wood, and splotched with blood. There were no windows, the door appeared to lock from inside the room, if tommy were to get up he would likely be able to unlock it and leave.

 He listened for any noise before attempting to stand. He didn't hear anyone. He stood and attempted to walk to the door, he only got about an inch forward before seeing the handcuff on his ankle connected to the chair which tommy only noticed then was bolted to the floor

He sat back down. He didn't have any blood to drink so therefore he was powerless. Atleast his hands were free, tommy can pack a mean punch. This room felt like an interrogation room. If tommy's assessment is correct then he needs a game plan, He could bullshit his way through and lie, or he could be silent the whole time, or he could just say fuck you to everything they ask.

Thats a solid plan and has never once gone wrong. Although being silent is also a good plan, its a reliable one. Tommy has never been interrogated before, but he has sat in on interrogations, and they do not seem fun.

Tommy heard a series of loud and heavy footsteps, followed by some light more balanced footsteps. Then followed by the door opening. Two large dark figures walked in. one slightly taller than the other. The taller walked and sat down in the rightmost of the two chairs. The shorter closed and locked the door behind them then flipped a switch and the room brightened.

Tommy squinted at the sudden change, once he could see again he saw the two figures were in fact, Siren and The Blood God. the fact that it was them didn't terrify tommy at all. (is what the author would say if tommy wasn't scared absolutely shitless) 

"Hello red" The Blood god said

Tommy just stared at him

"Y'know the polite thing to do would be to say hi back y'know" Siren said before sitting in the left chair

Tommy folded his arms looking unamused (and trying really hard not to look terrified)

"Alright fine we'll just cut to the chase." Siren said "We have some questions, and your gonna answer em. And im not using my power today, and i don't like to use force so please just answer them"

Tommy didn't respond

"What are some of the hero towers security weak points" Siren asked.

"I don't know." 

"Thats helpful." Siren said sarcastically 

"I know, im so helpful" Tommy says

"Alright next question, have their been any other young prodigy hero students put into hero work but not being labeled as such" Siren asks

Shit tommy thinks

"Why so specific?" tommy asks, hoping to delay his answer

"Answer the question." blood god says

"Fine, there was one, he was in the commission way before i was even sentient, he died in a villain fight, he was like 27, he became a hero at 13" Tommy answered like a bold-faced liar

"Really?" Siren says. "Cuz im not so sure they would, they've only put 404, Ignis, and Judge on your case. Almost no one is looking for you"

"Didn't say i was the unlabeled prodigy." Tommy deflects. 

Siren and Blood god share a look, tommy has no idea what kind of look they share because of the masks obscuring their faces. 

"Guess you didn't" Siren says looking back at tommy 

And Siren just looks at him.

For a solid 30 seconds 

Then he asked "How old were you when you started your training red"

"Why the fuck do you need to know?" Tommy says gaurdedly 

"The commissions strongest heroes trained since childhood. Your the elusive number two hero, no one knows anything about you other than your close with runner, and a rough estimate of your age." Siren explains "just trying to get the average age a child becomes a soldier" 

Tommy contemplates his answer, he could answer truthfully or untruthfully, both would likely adjust to whatever age they think he is.

"7." Tommy answered 

He decided to answer truthfully, for a reason he doesn't quite realize yet

"Alright." Siren responds

"Is that all." tommy asks 

"No, since you trained since you were a kid, you likely knew a lot of older heroes as they were trained, if you could please, tell me weaknesses that you know of for any hero."

"Judge has trouble guarding his back. And his left side its been that way forever. He's also gotten slower over the years. His power also can't work if you can't hear him, i recommend wax earplugs or noise cancelling communicators." tommy said without hesitating

"You didn't hesitate, and you've hesitated on almost every question" The blood god states "Why" He asks

"The bitch deserves to Bleed ." tommy answers 

"Im guessing he was your training hero?" Siren says

Tommy doesn't say anything else.

"Any other weaknesses you know about" Siren asks then pauses "What about runner, what are his weaknesses?"

"Fuck that, im not telling you." 

"Don't be stupid red. If you answer this now we'll only have to chat once." The blood god answered

"Im not gonna fucking just tell you his weaknesses. Literally anyone else i'll tell you about" Tommy says 

"How about amanita, or Ignis" Siren asks

"Ignis's weakness is obvious you don't need to ask me. Amanita's tricky, he's great with guarding himself, hes great with his powers, and he's fast but he loves helping people, if a civilian is hurt his attention goes immediately to them." 

"Alright, now what about Time, does he have any weakness" Siren asks

"I didn't think he has any, theres a reason he the number 1 hero. But he hates listening to the commission, he disrupts the patrol schedule and he leaves the tower whenever he wants, and security is advised to just let him"

"Whats your opinion on the commission." 

"The commission is objectively good, they pay for schools to train heroes, and then they employ the students, who save people after you guys endanger them"

"Thats the answer they want you to give., what has the commission done for you as a hero." Siren says

"I mean, your just a kid"

"They gave me a home." Tommy responds

"They don't seem that eager to get you back to that home." Siren continues

"We were kinda planning to save you from the commission"

"I'm sure their doing the best they can right now." Tommy responds

"Their not even letting runner help look for you, they have multiple heroes sitting without patrol."

"Maybe then we could pick our own patrol routes"

"Your lying, the commission taught us about manipulation so we don't fall victim to it, i know your tactics"

"Im not lying to your red. The commission is corrupt, their letting you stay missing because they know that you see the corruption." Siren says

"Sadly that won't ever be reality in the hell hole that is the commission"

"Theres no way to fix it even if i tried" 

"But there is a way, if you j-" Siren says but is interrupted by blood god

"Siren, he's only been here for 3 days. Its to early, he's still too loyal to them and Ranboo and tubbo would hate us if we asked him today." 

"Fine" Siren resigns.

Then the weirdest thing happens, theres a knock on the door, the blood god stands up and it looks as though he handed a plate, because he was handed a plate. Blood god sets the plate on the table, and its a plate of cookies

"Take a cookie." blood god says.

Tommy takes a cookie and hesitantly eats it.

And very annoyingly obviously, it makes him sleepy. He falls asleep very uncomfortably in the chair.

And he wakes up back in his room, like nothing had even happened

Chapter Text

Tommy can feel the heat of the fire blazing in the small box. He tries to deny what he’s just been witness to. 

They can’t have done something so cruel.

 The heroes are good.

“Glad to be finally rid of that useless fucking child.” Schlatt chuckles smiling at the fire

 Tommy can’t think. How could they do this to Tubbo? What could justify killing children?

The executioner begins to walk away from the scene. Tommy lunges for him. His brother grabs him. He thrashes about. Screaming how he’ll never be a hero. Calling everyone stupid for what they’ve done. Dream holds him while the executioner leaves the stage

“Get him under control or the commission won’t hesitate to do the same to him.” Schlatt warns Dream “oh that would be a hell of a show” He chuckles before walking away.

 The fire still blazes in the box. The stupid yellow box. Dream drags him away.

A week later he’s forced back into training. He screams at them. He hates heroes. They killed his best friend. 

Another week passes, they start to scream back. The heroes are mean, and they know words that Tommy didn’t know existed. Mean words. Worse words than what Schlatt used to yell at him

A month passes, Tommy stops screaming and the heroes stop as well. Tubbo would want him to continue his training. Tubbo would want to be alive. But he's not.

A year had passed. Dreams not around much anymore, he's always off doing his hero work. Tommy has to work harder so they can work together to keep the streets safe

It's been 2 years since Tubbo was.. Tommy has a year till he can be instated as a hero. His training now is more intense, he really has to pull his punches if he wants to be a good hero

It's been three years, and today is the day Red Devil is introduced to the public. Tommy finally gets to pursue his Dream and save people with his older brother

₩Ⱨ₳₮ ₳ ₣ØØⱠł₴Ⱨ ĐⱤɆ₳₥ ₮Ⱨ₳₮ ₩₳₴

_________________

Tommy's had a lot of free time to think about his life, to look back. And as he thinks about it. He didn't have a good life. He can't recap everything but, every major problem in his life could be connected back to the hero commission, now their obviously not at fault but they seem to push out not great people, maybe it's the outdated training regimen, Or that they can't afford proper therapy for their employees, even for the ones risking their lives everyday, Or maybe it's that they force old but still capable heroes to retire because they need to pay the young heroes, but instead they use that money to fund projects that are causing the world to deteriorate. Oh maybe it's the fact that higher income cities get more heroes on the streets rather than the places that actually have crime.

Also While he's thinking. Hero villain fights rarely have any good news coverage, a lot of heroes, while fighting villains, get angry, and violent. then the footage cuts. There is no footage of Tommy's and Dreams last fight with the blade, except for the moment they arrived.

Maybe the commission is at fault a little bit.

In the last week that Tommy has been here he has been questioned 2 more times. They went roughly the same as the first questioning, Asking about various governmental weaknesses, and a young prodigy hero not labeled as such. The unlabeled prodigy was himself of course, but he couldn’t tell them that.

Tubbo and Ranboo stopped locking his door, they figured he’d stay, he supposes. And they were right, because he didn’t leave his room. He would play animal crossing in his room, and eat the food provided to him. Until he didn’t. The meals continuously got unappetizing, he’d think about eating their food and gag. He stopped eating and just left the plates where they were placed for delivery. He could tell they were getting concerned when they picked up his plates and took them to wash and they were still full.

So when Someone else delivered his food and he didn't eat it, there was some trouble. When the tall figure came in and he was sitting awake in the corner, with his mask on, playing with Shroud, he was quite upset, but he didn’t do anything, he just grabbed the plate and walked out. Tommy heard words being spoken downstairs, upset words. Aimed at himself despite himself not being in the room. He heard Tubbo and Ranboo as well. His door was locked that night.

They delivered his food again in the morning. With orange juice. He left all except the orange juice alone, he drank the orange juice. It was good orange juice.

It was tangy but not too tangy, and it had the perfect amount of pulp that it didn't feel chunky but it still had that texture to it.

It was a perfect orange juice.

It was also quite fillling because he had not eaten anything the few days prior.

Why he was specifically thinking about orange juice was unbeknownst to him

But of course the villains had to get their information somehow. Tommy had cautiously put his mask back on after drinking the juice. And of course, shortly after he'd fallen asleep 

_________________

Tommy ca₦ feɆl the he₳₮ of thɆ ₣łⱤɆ ฿Ⱡ₳z͍̦̽ͅei₦₲ i₦ F̰͕͓̈ͣ_̸̶̢̛̤̻̿̍̔͊̈̋ͧ͢͜͡_̴͚̗̻̲͕̖̣̓ͣ̈́ͫͩ̕͘͝͞r̶̢͙̙̞̗͉̘͚͇̹̯̟̽ͤ́̈́̀ͦ̈́ͬ̋͌̓͑̉̕͢͠o͔͓̭͚̤̐̈̑͛͐

₮ⱧɆ ₴₮Ʉ₱łĐ ɎɆⱠⱠØ₩ ฿ØӾ

₮ⱧɆɎ ₩ɆⱤɆ ₩łⱠⱠł₦₲ ₮Ø ₭łⱠⱠ Ⱨł₴ ฿ẽ͚̮̯̪̼̠͔̏͋ͤ͑͊̂ͪ͋̄ͦ͡͠s̴̷̶̫͉̤̟̤̲̲̭̼̞͙̮̟͙̤͌̎ͣ̇͆͒ͤ̐ͤ̈́ͯ̃̀̔́ͦ͞ţ̘͔̳̱͙̦͖͇̤̋̈́ͯ͐̒͆ͬ̒͆̀̎̿̏ͧ͌ͨ̏̒̿̀ͧ̒ͥ͆͘̕͝͝ f̵̠̱̙͚͈̈ͪ̌͌̆̓͑͂̕͘_̴̸̢̫̝̣͈̝͍̖̥̳ͤ͒̊͋͑ͥͦ͌ͅr͎i̷̴̪͎̫̹̻͇̱̝̲̘͓̰ͨͥ͊̉̉́ͯͥ̆̅ͧ͋̂̿̕͠ͅę̵̳͍̎̃͐̌n̷̡̛̼͙̗̣͙̩̼̣͍̭̻̻̦̍̈́̄̋̌͂ͥ̕̚͜͞d̟̺

_________________

"Hurry Tommy, if someone sees i don't know what they'll do" Dream says

Dream rolls up his sleeve, and Tommy moves to bite down just as two people turn the corner.

Two hero students see, Red devil, about to chomp down on runners arm. They stop dead in their tracks, their jaws practically on the floor.

Tommy straightens up and tries to look intimidating. He should be intimidating, as he was just nominated for #5 hero. 

Dream speaks up "It's not what you think."

"Holy shit" The buffer looking one says. "Actually what the fuck were you two doing. Dream what the heck"

Tommy whips his head around to face Dream. "They know your name?!" Tommy exclaims

"Calm down toms" Dream says

And he stands there shell shocked, Dream just said his name in front of two people he didn't know, and that he had never met.

"WHAT THE HECK DREAM!" He shouts out like the little brother he is. 

"What were you two doing?" The slimmer and shorter one says. 

Dream and Tommy look at eachother. Dream removes his mask. "Do you wanna tell them or should i?" Dream says

Tommy sighs and removes his mask as well, revealing how young he really was. The two looked even more shocked than before, rightfully so. 

"Tommy, Tell them about your power." Dream tells him

"Do I have too?" He whines. 

"They already saw you inches from my arm ready to chomp, i think they deserve an explanation" Dream stage whispers at him

"Yeah, I think we do deserve an explanation. For All the shit we've seen." the buffer one says

"Fine." Tommy says exasperatedly "My power is a sort of power replication type thing, the way I replicate is through blood. Which is why I was about to bite Dream." 

"And I think I can explain why the current nominee for the Number 5th hero position looks 12. It's because he was approximately a year ago." Dream explains.

Only 4̶̧̛̱̤̠̞͓̹͔ͣ̏̽͑̅ͩͧ̏ͪ̆̃͜_̵̟̜̦͓̹̍ͯͬ̿͒̒͒̓̒͛ ye₳Ɽs si₦₵E_̷̡̯͉͇̲̲͔̭͉̈͛ͧͮ̽ͧͧ͐ͣͧ̒̀͊̈́͘̚͝͝͝ 

 "Wait, but the commission said he was an adult, that he went through the same training as us" The slimmer and shorter one asks

"Yeah well, They lied," Dream says.

_________________

Tommy wakes up and he's back in the interrogation chair, the table still in front of him, stained lightly with blood.  He checks to make sure his mask is still on his face. And it in fact is still on his face. 

One thing that's different is that Siren and Blood god are already sitting there.

"Ah good your awake" Siren says the moment he notices Tommy stirring "Now listen, this'll be our last chat for at least a few months, so you can stop boycotting the food. We just wanna cut right to the chase." 

Tommy just nods

"Siren is going to use his power if you don't answer." Blood god says. "Okay first question, have you lied to us at all during our last chats"

Tommy shrugs. 

"I don't know, have I lied? You can never trust a hero amiright" Tommy jokes

"Still with the jokes." Blood god says "Why are you protecting Runner."

"I don't know, Why am I protecting runner? Maybe because I'm a decent human being, and he's a young prodigy?"

"Ha Ha." Siren says. "How old are you really?"

"How old do you think I am?" Tommy asks

"Most people think you're in your early to mid 30's, but we know that's not true. So how old are you?" Blade says, sounding more like he's stating it and not asking.

Tommy sighs. He obviously couldn't tell them. But they seemed to already know. He decided to fuck with them 

"I'm 40" He said. "Yep, that's right. I'm an old man"

Siren sighs then speaks again, with a different feel to his voice, it feels like snakes slithering into his ears and wrapping around his brain . "How old are you?" 

Tommy feels his mouth moving without his brain's permission "18" He hears his voice say. But it wasn't him who said it.

He slaps a hand over his mouth, even though he has his mask on, as if he was trying to stop his mouth say what it had already said

Siren and the Blood god both appear shocked. 

Its silent for a moment

And of course Siren speaks up first

"I thought you'd at least be 21, thats bad" Siren says "Shit that's like really bad"

 "That was fucking violating. Don't you know anything about secrecy asshole" Tommy spits out. 

He wants to stab Siren in his stupid vocal chords.

"That's probably why Tubbo and ranboo wouldn't tell us." Blood god says. "Fuck"

"So then he wasn't just posing as a highschooler, he really was a highschooler," Siren confirms."

"That also means that he's had roughly the same amount of training the others have gone through, just way way younger" The Blood god continues

"Oh my god, i can't imagine what that would've been like" 

"Hey ass hats, I'm still here." Tommy interrupts. "If i had my knife right now-"

" Shut up " Siren says in that voice that snakes around his brain

Tommy does not want to but he shuts up

Blood god grabs something from his pocket and tosses it at Tommy. 

Tommy catches it, and it's a key

He tries it on the lock on his ankle, and it unlocks. He looks back up to see that Siren and blade are already halfway out the door. He stands up and stretches, debating if he should follow them. He decides, sure. They let him unlock himself. He follows hastily. 

They walk through a dark hall then up a long flight of stairs. Siren and Blood god are chatting, probably about Tommy. There is a layer of concern and anger in their voices. They finally get to the top of the stairs. And Siren opens the door at the top of the steps, and they're on the first floor of the villain's house, which Tommy only saw once. He see's Tubbo on the couch fidgeting and staring at the ceiling, and ranboo in the kitchen stress spaghetti making.

That's when something happened that really surprised him. Siren removed his mask  

"Ran, toby. We don't need your help dragging him up the stairs this time." Siren? Announces 

That's also when Tommy realizes that it's the same guy with the glasses he had seen on his first day here, named.. Wilbur? 

Ranboo and Tubbo both look over and look instantly more relaxed when they see Tommy standing and walking up the stairs.

Tommy walks out of the stairwell and turns to face Siren/wilbur

"Your a fucking asshole, and i actually wanna rip your vocal chords out" Tommy says to Siren/wilbur

"Thomas!" Tubbo yells, hopping up off the couch and straight onto Tommy's back

He stumbles a bit at the impact

"I do apologize for Wil and Techno's questioning they are stupid, and we hate them" Ranboo says from the kitchen

"Hey, i didn't say you could use my name in front of red" Blood god/techno protests

"What kind of a parent names their kid techno" Tommy says

"The really cool kind" Techno argues

Tubbo jumps off of Tommy's back

"Keep telling yourself that bossman" Tubbo tells techno

"Anyways, Tech it's your turn to go out and do the graffiti" Siren/Wilbur says

"Wait, Why am I out here and not in my room?" Tommy says

"You're not gonna leave." Blood god/Techno says knowingly. 

The hell? Tommy thinks.

Blood god/Techno, grabs a bag, the stuff inside is clanking around. Like spray paint canisters.

"Oh don't forget the new additions of bees and the purple particles" Ranboo says

"I will forget out of spite." Blood god/Techno says then pauses "Im slash j by the way"

"Did you just say a tone tag?" Siren/Wilbur accuses.

"I did" Blood god/techno says. Walking over to the front door.

This is by far the weirdest thing to ever happen to Tommy. 

And he once witnessed two full grown men argue about if giraffes are just dogs with long necks.

He does not want to relive that experience. 

Blood god/Techno leaves, Siren/Wilbur retreats to a different room. 

Tubbo makes him listen to him info dump about random things he did to fuck with the heroes while he was "dead"

Ranboo makes spaghetti and brings it to Tommy and sits on the couch next to them

It was still weird being in the villain house, Tubbo being alive, Ranboo being there and overall being nice which he wasn't in their highschool encounters. Him knowing the real names of two highly dangerous villains.

But it wasn't bad.

Chapter Text

Tommy just finished chatting with tubbo and ranboo in the living room, Siren and blood god pull him into the hallway

Its been a week week since siren and blood gods last chat with tommy,they hand him a suit. And.. weapons. 

"Since you won't tell us how to do it. You have to do it."They tell him, 

He gets sent back into the tower. Siren walks him to the door of the tower and watches him go in.

Nobody stops him as he enters the elevator. He presses the button for the floor he used to call home. He goes up. He arrives and walks out of the elevator. He see's dream on the couch. Sitting there sulking. He doesn't deserve to sulk.

"Tommy?" Dream asks, turning around

Tommy, Approaches the couch and thakes out the knife that the blood god gifted him. 

"Tommy what are you doing?!

Moments later. Everything is red. His vision clouds, its all red. He weeps. 

"Snap out of it!"

A tiny voice in his head yells at him

He obliges and snaps out of it. 

He's back in the bank. Staring at the face that couldn't possibly be real. He'd watched as that face melted, Screams of agony echoing in his ears. He backs up a step. Every feature is the same. the only difference was a terrible burn scar on the left of his face, where the fire had been started, and new eyebags. Everything else was the same. Even the freckles, all perfectly placed across his face. But it couldn't be him. He'd heard the screams, the flames. 

"What the fuck" He says under his breath. 

"Tommy, Calm down, i know this is kind of a shock but-" the dead child says. But is interrupted

"No, no, No i- I fucking watched you-" He stumbles over himself trying to back away "I spent years- fuck" 

Tears sting his eyes, his throat feels like its being put inside out. His hands are shaking. Why are they shaking. Why is he crying. 

"Toms, Calm down." the dead child says walking closer "Fuck- Im so sorry Tommy" 

"Tommy you need to breath" Boo says, staying where he is

The dead child places a comforting hand on his shoulder, the contact feels like nails embedding themselves into his skin

"Get the fuck away!" Tommy yells, Shoving dead hands off of his shoulder.

The dead child stands shocked. He doesn't say anything for a moment

"Oh Tommy, What did they do to you.." The dead child asks

"You can't be him, your just a fuckin face stealer!" Tommy accuses "I watched the flames! I watched them-" He interrupts himself with sobs.

He falls to the floor, clutching his head. 

His heart beat is too loud. 

He can't hear. He pushes himself against the wall and buries his head in his knees. He saw the flames, he saw his uncle laugh, he heard the screams. The flames. 

Why can't he hear.

___________________

Dream enters the building quietly, blaze and amanita following close behind. Theres a distant yelling, too distant to hear the words That has to be tommy he thinks, he starts running in the direction of the yelling. Eventually he hears what the yelling is

"Your just a fuckin face stealer!" He hears tommy yell.

Theres mumbling. Still sounds like tommy.

"I hear him! Over here!" Dream yells, running faster to where he hears tommy.

He turns a corner, Amanita and blaze still else where in the bank. ahead of him he sees two figures one unusually tall and the other unusually short. Both masked, tommy unseen.

"Runner, We've been expecting you" The shorter says

"Where's red." He says stopping right infront of them

"After all you've done, you think i'll just tell you where Tommy is?" The shorter one yells

What the hell dream thinks

"How do you know Red's identity?!" Dream yells 

"I don't have time for this Dream so I'll show you" The shorter one says, reaching and removing their mask.  

No..

Dream looks at the shorters face. And freezes

"It can't be" Dream says under his breath

The shorter laughs.

He wants to throw up. If tommy saw this fuck he probably already has. Dream needs to find Tommy and let Sap and Gogy take over

He hears two loud booms, The ground shakes. 

Its quiet. Mushrooms that were slowly growing towards him, halt and start to shrink.

No. this cannot be happening right now.

This cannot be the day he loses. The fight. Tommy. His friends

He can't bring himself to move.

He can't think, he can't speak. His hands are shaking. 

How could this happen. Tobias was killed. Dream was there, He watched him die. This couldn't be him. His younger cousin can't be standing infront of him because his younger cousin is dead. 

Tommy can't have reacted well. He's probably panicking. Tommy was so young, and how the heroes reacted to a grieving child can't have been good on his mental state, Seeing that face mustve sent him all the way back on his progress.

Fuck.

He has to do something.

"Now listen Dream my least favorite cousin, We just want to talk to you, Preferably not with your little buddies." He says. "I do apologize for the explosions, They'll be fine im sure. After all they're adults, who started training at the normal age. And who weren't fucking 13 and fighting the top villains." 

oh.

Oh . 

Right. 

Tubbo was always protective of tommy when they were kids, Why would that have changed now?

Fuck.

"It really is you isn't it" Dream says.

"Thats not the FUCKING Point here Dream." Tubbo says. "The point is, Tommy only recently became an adult, And has been endangered for years, Under your gaurdianship. I am going to release this information, And ruin your career and ruin peoples trust in the Commission."

"I didn't have a choice Toby. It was the only way to get him away from schlatt, Don't you remember" Dream Says taking a step forward

Tubbo flinches as that. 

Dream falters.

"There was other choices! You literally could've taken him and ran, that would've worked, But no you chose to have him in an even more dangerous enviornment than the first one!!" Tubbo yells. "And inadvertently Caused your youngest cousin to be Fucking EXECUTED BY FIRE!!"

Dream flinches at that.

Tubbo Continues to yell. 

"You are the biggest problem in this whole fucking thing Dream!" The only tone is anger "Your just a fucking puppet for the commission!! You'd Literally do anything the commission asks of you!!"

It's quiet for a moment. The taller figure looks out of place.

The taller figure walks down the hall. Dream doesn't stop him. He doesn't have the leverage. They clearly aren't scared of him.

"Continue" Dream says

"I want you dead Dream, I presume you had already inferred this" Tubbo states. "Tommy didn't deserve to be a soldier at 13, much less training to be one at 7. This is something you could've stopped, and you didn't" 

"And you understand im not just gonna let you kill me, Im going to fight you toby" Dream replys

"I Understand. I understood the moment the executioner shot the fucking fire work at my face. And you fucking stood and watched." Tubbo confirms

Damn

He's really milking this trauma thing

Really trying to guilt trip dream

It might be working.

Maybe

Probably.

No

He's not gonna be guilt tripped

Probably not

He won't be guilt tripped.

Fuck he's being trauma guilt tripped

He can't fight tubbo. 

He said he would though

But he can't

Dream is a sad man.

A sad man who can't live up to his promises

He is definitely not scared of his younger cousin so he made up all these things just to get out of not fighting him. 

Dream sighs. Tubbo brings out some sort of button looking thing and he presses it. The ceiling falls. As it falls on him he whispers to tubbo "Im sorry." Then he closes his eyes.

And everything is dark. And cold.

___________________

"Tommy.."

"Tommy you have to get up. We need to go"

"Tommy take a few deep breaths and then we need to go."

"Tommy. Dream won't stay down for long." A pause "Atleast i don't think so" 

"Just grab him and teleport him away ran" 

"No thats unethical, he's panicking" 

"He's not going to stop panicking, its either teleport him or let him go back to the heroes. Back up will be here soon."

"Don't worry you two, your savior is here" a new voice says. But not an unfamiliar voice.

"Alright i'll get him out of here" A voice says reaching down to him.

Tommy grabs the arm and chomps down. He feels a buzz already. Then he feels fuzzy

"Ow fuck!" Ranboo says

"Wait grab him before-!"

His world spins and he's back in his room in the tower. His hands haven't stopped shaking. His ears are still ringing. He feels sick. His eyes focus on the tv. Paused on an image of a spider. He never pauses it on the animal. His stomach lurches. He runs to the bathroom, throws off his mask and barely makes it to the toilet before letting the contents of his stomach let themselves out. He looks down, and its red. Its all red. 

He lays down on the floor of the bathroom. He's vaguely aware of something dripping from his nose. He hadn't fought anyone but he doesn't know the side affects of the power he took. So it's probably blood. This is the commissions fault. He knew that, so why did he return. That is something he doesn't know.

He wipes his nose with his still shaking hands. Why won't his hands fucking stop shaking. He maneged to sort of calm his breathing, his heart is still trying to escape his chest. He can't stay here. It's not his place. This could never be a home for him. He moves over to his bed room, he finds a suitcase under his bed. He puts his clothes in it, maybe 1 or two of dreams sweaters. 

He puts snacks and money in the bag. Then he zips it up. And teleports somewhere, anywhere but where he is. He needs to get away. He needs to be normal. A normal kid. Only he can't because he's an adult. He jsut needs to be a normal civillian. 

He can't be Tomathy Wastaken anymore. 

He can't be anyone anymore.

He has to be no one. 

He has to forget about what happened. 

He needs to forget.

He needs them to forget. 

This was all the commissions fault.

This is how it has to be.  

___________________

Its been a month. Today is Runner and Red devils memorial service, As Two of many great heroes who protected l'manburg and sadly died in a villain attack. 

Anyone is allowed to attend this event. Amanita, And blaze were the only two others present during the attack and are both still in hospitol. Since this attack villains have been laying low. 

Thomas decides it might be nice to go to the memorial. Afterall he has the money to go, and he always loved the two heroes. 

He ties up his brown hair. And puts on his best clothes. He grabs his backpack and heads down to the hero tower. Normal civilian Thomas Simons. His face is littered with the scars of someone who doesn't exist anymore.

His eyes show the knowledge of someone who he couldn't be. 

He arrives at the hero tower, and theres a line of people going inside. Most of the people there are older, some mothers with children are there. The children dressed up in red devil costumes. Everyone has some sort of memorabilia with them, of either runner or Red devil.

He joins the line, and its only a few moments before he's at the security checkpoint, 

"Hello, Entry fee is 20 dollars. You also must have ID" The security officer says.

Thomas takes out his wallet and hands the man a crisp 100. 

He knows that people in the tower are easily bribed. Tommy gives the man a look

The security officer Hands him a seat number and nods him through.

Thomas finds his seat and sits down. The room is not a room tommy's unfamiliar with, its the press conference room in the tower, seats about 500 people. And theres a stage at the front, with one of those debatey mic stand things. On the stage there is a photo of Runner dead, with no mask. An empty frame next to it, with just the name red devil taped over where the picture would be.

Tommy knew why there was no photo. Because his face was too mutilated to photograph for an audience.

Or they hadn't been able to identify his body.

Thomas knew the answer.

It was because he hadn't died.

He's still alive. 

About 30 minutes later, the doors were closed. And everyone was finished seating. Then the speaker came out. It was a familiar face to almost none. But Thomas knew his face. 

Jonathan Schlatt.

Also known as judge.

"Hello all. Thank you for showing for the memorial of our beloved heroes Runner, and Red Devil." He paused "I am Jonathan Schlatt. I knew these two heroes very well. They were my Nephews. The two sons of Caroline Wastaken. You may know her as Captain. Another hero who tragically passed."

She didn't tragically pass, first off.

"When their mother passed i generously took them in and raised them along with my son, When they asked me to become heroes, i was hesitant because of how their mother passed, But i supported them. I helped them become the heroes of tomorrow."

Bull. And Shit. Second off

"They were great heroes. Runner, the younger son was head of his class and exceeded expectations and became the commissions youngest hero. And Red, The older brother worked harder, And stayed training for years Before finally becoming a hero, And Courageously keeping our city streets safe Together with his brother"

Wrong ages dumbass. Third off

"In a way, They became the cities brothers. With their good deeds, And dedication to the commission. They helped create change for the better."

"Bull shit!" Someone yelled in the crowd 

Tommy was surprised he wasn't the one who yelled. Guards came over and escorted the person out. All the while they were kicking and punching and yelling.

"When i heard how they passed, As heroes. I was torn apart. But proud. I am proud that they died how they lived. As heroes. They both had it written, If they ever were to die they'd want to grant people of lower income, The ability to become heroes aswell. So the hero commission is granting four families children Scholarships to the most prestigious hero highschool. The one they both attended."

They did not have it written, but that actually is true. And they didn't die as heroes. Fourth off.

People around had started to stand up. Some holding signs.

All of them with Faces of slaughtered heroes. One sign saying "THEY ARE BEHIND THIS"

Guards came up and ushered Jonathan Schlatt of stage. 

People are yelling. Chanting. 

"Free the heroes! Free the city!" 

Tommy Finds a sign with his face. He decides this would be a good time to leave. So he runs to the wall where he knows there is a hidden door and slips inside, he then goes to where he knows there is an exit. 

The exit leads him into an alley. He sits down next to the garbage, not looking around him for anyone.

" I knew you'd be here. " A voice above him says " Knew you wouldn't miss this for the world. You here to laugh a schlatt too? "

"Fuck off." 

" Oh Come on Tommy, You could atleast try to be nice to me. I am your brother afterall " 

"It's Thomas now. I'm not your brother anymore. I am the orphan Thomas Simons."

" Ugh your so boring "

Thomas gets up and walks through the alleyways back to his apartment. The voice doesn't bother him again. He makes it home and plops down on his couch. He picks up a letter from his table. 

Its just a bill. He can pay it but he's gonna run out of money soon.

Tommy decides he needs a job. 

He'll look for jobs tomorrow.

Yeah

Tomorrow.

Chapter Text

Thomas is just now realizing how difficult it is to find a job, when you are legally dead. And have no identification of any kind. And are an ex hero. Again who is legally dead. Tommy has a separate identity, But he doesn’t have any birth certificate, Or any drivers license, Any former achievements, No highschool diploma, No art from 5th grade. The only job available that doesn’t require having any of those things is, well. Villainy. The whole point of being a villain is that no one knows who you are. He could try to find somewhere that is super understaffed. There are a lot of places. But that still isn’t guaranteed that they’ll hire him.

He is in fact thinking about this on his walk to the library. He’s looking to see if the library has any way to find job listings.

He does not know much about the world but he does know that libraries carry information. He is looking to find that information. It also just so happens that at this specific library, His highschool teacher Mr. Craft works for the summer. He does not know this as he is walking. He notices this upon his arrival.

Mr. Craft is sitting at the Library book check counter thing. Reading a book. Thomas see’s him and promptly walks the opposite direction (Which is out of the building) Then he realizes he still needs the information and walks back inside and approaches the desk

“Hello, Um i’m new to town and i’m looking for somewhere to find job listings” Thomas says

“Oh um, yeah i can find those for you” Mr. Craft says 

He looks up from his book, taking one glance at Tommy then typing something on his computer. He looks at Tommy again, and pauses typing. Then he looks back at his keyboard and ‘types’ some more Though it sounds as though he is only pressing the backspace over and over.

“Actually, We have an opening here. We don’t do any background checks, or.. We don’t need any personal information other than your bank account and like, your name.” Mr. Craft says.

Oh.

Well that was easy.

“Oh, Is there an interview I'd have to go through?” Thomas asks

“Oh yeah um. What's your name”

“Thomas.. Simons.”

“Your name is Thomas Simons” 

“Yes.”

“Alright, Welcome to the L’manburg library Thomas Simons., you start tomorrow. Be here at seven a.m, I’ll get your bank details then so I can pay you.”

What.

“Oh alright, But why would you hire me so quickly” 

“I can tell when people are good for things, It's um- It’s my power” An obvious lie.

“Oh cool.” Thomas says “I’ll be here tomorrow at 7 then?”

“Yep, See you tomorrow.” 

Thomas walks out of the building confused. Maybe his teacher had recognized him? But that was unlikely, If his teacher recognized him then why would he ask for his name. He headed home.

“ Look at you, So grown up. My brother's first job that he got alone!! ” a voice behind him says “ You’ve grown so much tomathy! ” 

Thomas neglects to answer him.

“ What, not even an I know, Or go away, or my names not Tomathy? Wow, That's really unlike you ”

Thomas just continues walking. The streets aren't particularly dirty. Just the normal amount of trash for a modern city. The alley ways are especially dirty, But that's not a problem because nobody walks the alleyways these days in fear of muggings or a sudden villain attack. Tommy occasionally uses the alleys, But only if he sees someone he recognizes. 

Specifically heroes.

He runs away from heroes as if he’s a villain

When in fact he is just a dead man

An alive dead man

That's a weird sentence to say.

After about a 15 minute walk He makes it home. He’d paid his bill that morning. And now that he has a job he doesn’t really have much to worry over. Other than that he was stupid and forgot that there are cameras in the alleys outside of the hero tower, And inside of the hallways, And in the conference room. AND that he was most definitely detected on them. Maybe not recognized yet, But he was seen. 

He should not have gone to the memorial. That in itself would not be a bad idea if Thomas was in fact Thomas. But Thomas is Tomathy. Nobody can know that Thomas is Tomathy, Because Tomathy is dead. And going to that memorial might have caused people to find out who he is. Or atleast get a start to finding out who he is. Overall a poor choice on his part.

Tommy has made a lot of poor choices in the past months. This was quite clear to him, He made the poor choice of responding to a villain notif without waking his brother, he had left the agency upon watching his brother die. He had his hood down when he went to buy hair dye and someone most definitely saw him. And he made another poor choice of going to his memorial service.

Thomas needs to learn how to make better choices evidently. He runs his hands over his face. Trying to wring out the stress. Failing because it's not possible to just remove your stress. His face was really the problem. No one outside the tower had seen more than maybe his mouth. But to heroes, his face was easily recognisable, they would be able to pick him out in a crowd of a million people. His face was littered with scarring from his time as a hero

Scars that heroes and villains gave him. Training scars. Using that training scars.

Scars that people remember.

All his problems would be fixed if he could just remove his face. But that would hurt. Tommy decidedly does not want to remove his face. But he wished he didn’t have it. 

He laid face down on his couch, turning his head to face the room. He scrolls on various social media platforms. Twitter, insta, tiktok, reddit. Eventually he found a subreddit called hero theories. r/herotheories. The current topic of interest on this subreddit, Was him.

Well not him but, his hero alias Red devil. They thought it suspicious that they had no photo of him at the memorial. And talking about the way Jshlatt sounded like he was reading off a page and had in fact no feeling while speaking about his dead nephew. And the fact that just after the bank bombing, Red devil was sighted with a suitcase walking into a hotel.

Bad choices

He decided that he would add to this conversation 

      Tomminnizz 0 secs ago

     L + ratio + Skill issue

Tommy was proud of himself. Yes. Tommy was quite proud of himself. 

He really didn’t accomplish anything, but he probably either confused or pissed people off. Which was a win in his book. 

He was not proud that people were theorizing that he’s still alive. Because he is still alive. And people shouldn’t know that. This was all very not good.  Very not good

Tommy ignores the sick feeling in his stomach and sets his phone on the floor in favor of shoving his face into the couch pillow. His phone was buzzing and he ignored it.

Okay his phone is aggressively buzzing.

Did he really piss people off that badly?

Was he being doxxed right now

He grabs his phone. And checks his notifications

He was grateful that he was not being doxxed, but very not grateful that he had been spam texted his personal information by a number named Ino hoo-u-r 

Who names their kid Ino

The worst part about it was that he doesn’t have personal information with thomas simons, He has a name, phone number and birthday. But this stuff was super personal. There were pictures too

Pictures of his face, outlining his scars and explaining how he got them.

Really disturbing shit. 

So he did what all reasonable people do.

/gen

He blocked Ino Hoo-U-R And deleted the messages. He did not need that right now. He did kind of want to see who apparently knew who he was. But if they knew he was red devil, Then they knew what he could do. And therefore wouldn’t go to the heroes.

Hopefully

He sets his phone down again and re buries his face into his pillow suddenly there is a knock on his door.

“No ones home!” he yells.

The knocking continues

“I know who you are” The person at the door yells

“How would you know if there is no one in the house hm?!” Tommy yells back

The knocking continues

“UGHHHHH” Tommy groans, getting up from his comfortable spot on the couch.

He sluggishly stomps over to the door, Looking through the peephole. He could only see the top of this person's head. Meaning it was either someone really short, or a child

Tommy was really hoping it was a child

Tommy opens the door and a person shoves past him into his apartment

“Hey- what're you..” Tommy gets interrupted

“Your Tomathy aren’t you.” the person says, now investigating his apartment

“No. Now get out of my apartment”

“No.”

The person continues rummaging through his things. When eventually they try to go into Tommy's room, where he was pretty sure he kept His hero suit (its quite out of use, but he didn’t want to just throw it away. Someone could find it

Someone could find it now

“Nope, your not looking in there” Tommy says running over to the room, But the person has already opened the door fully

Tommy grabs the person by the shoulder and pulls them out of the room. He closes the dor and stands against the door

“Why can’t I search in there” The person asks

“That's my bedroom, I ain’t letting some little rando search through my personal items” 

The person rolls their eyes. Then their shape changes and now they are the same height as Tommy, With his same face. Holy shit this person’s a shapeshifter

“I’m not some rando anymore, now fuckin lemme search” The person says

“No- What the fuck” Tommy exclaims.

“Then tell me what you're hiding or I’m telling the Police that you have drugs”

“Why would I have drugs-” Tommy says. 

“Of course not. But I do” The person with his face asks accusingly

“So you're planning to frame me?” Tommy accuses

The person with his face squints at him. Then his shape-shifts again, back to the short version. Tommy got a chance to take note of his features, Orange hair, fluffy ears, not super short but definitely shorter than Tommy

“I’m Fundy. Sorry for barging in.”

He pauses

“You’re Thomas Simons, We’re not strangers now.”

This confused Tommy. Tommy waited for a second for Fundy to say something, there had to be more to that sentence

And he did

“Now lemme search” He continues

“No!” Tommy yells

Fundy cracked his knuckles “I will, be searching that room”

Tommy had been in lots of fights. But he was out of practice, and he was really hoping that Quacktiy in fact did not want to fight him. Because that was how it seemed

“Come back with a warrant,” Tommy says

Fundy stares back at Tommy. He looked like he was debating whether or not to commit a crime. Y’know he could just go get a warrant. That would be the easiest solution. But no one ever goes for the easy solution. Nobody ever does. 

“Just let me look for two seconds”

“No! Get out of my apartment”

“No! I need to make sure Toby didn’t blow up a bank for nothing!”

What. 

“Excuse me?”

“I will be taking my leave now.”

And Fundy began walking towards the front door.

“Finally”

Tommy began moving away from the door following Fundy to make sure he made it to the door. This was a mistake because Fundy shrunk to the size of a small child, running behind Tommy and reshaping into his normal shape, and barging into Tommy’s room.

The moment that Fundy’s foot crossed the threshold 

“Damnit”

Tommy runs in and notices that Fundy is holding something that he should not be holding.

His godforsaken 

Stupid

Loser

Mechanical Mask

The man's phone is in his hands and he looks like he’s about to call someone.

Tommy being the epic big man he is Kicks the mask and Fundy’s phone out of his hand. Fundy’s phone lodges itself in Tommy's bedroom wall. His mask clatters onto the floor

Fundy just stares at his hand.

Then he laughs

Tommy stays in a defensive stance

“I knew i recognized you.” Fundy says “Your exactly who i thought you were”

Tommy doesn’t say anything, fact he doesn’t even move. Is he breathing? He doesn’t know. He thinks he is- Mostly all he’s thinking right now is various obscenity’s over and over again

“When Wil hears about this he’s gonna be ecstatic.” Fundy says, reaching for his phone

Shit shit shit shit

Tommy can’t really do much to stop Fundy from reaching his phone without injuring him. Fundy’s hand is inches away. Tommy’s moving before he’s thinking. Fundy doesn’t see Tommy get closer until the second before Tommy grabs him. Somewhere along the way Tommy had picked up his mask and put it on. 

Tommy has his arm around Fundy’s throat. Not applying much pressure, but it’s surely enough to stop his ability to breath for atleast a moment.

Fundy forgets about his phone and instead is clawing at Tommy’s arm. Fundy shape shifts into a couple different people, but it does barely anything to help, except in some cases it made it worse.

“ You’ll tell no one. ” Tommy says, His voice distorted from his mask

Fundy coughs. Still scratching

“ If i find out you told someone, I will personally come back to the hero scene just to beat the shit out of you. Alright? ” Tommy says, letting go of Fundy

Fundy falls to the floor, on his hands and knee’s catching his breath,

“ Now get out of my goddamned apartment ”

Fundy scrambles to his feet. Forgetting his phone as he rushes from Tommy’s room. Tom hears his front door slam.

Thomas is not proud of himself in this moment.

He takes off his mask and throws it on the ground. The drawer where he kept the mask is still open. His suit is in there, nicely folded up. His visor rest just on top of it. A handful of knives are scattered in the drawer.

He runs his hands through his hair. Internally screaming at himself

“ Really Tommy? You’re never that violent. Atleast not with civillians ” A voice above him says “ I didn’t know you had that in you. High five for unlocking your dark side ”

“Shut up.” He says to no one in particular

He’s angry at himself. Fundy couldn’t have been much older than himself, Just a curious theorist or some shit. He didn’t deserve to get fucking attacked

Except on the other hand he would’ve exposed Him. That is something that can’t happen

“ Jeez, your starting to sound like me ” the voice says again

“JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP” Tommy yells. Throwing whatever was near him and throwable at his wall. 

He hears a shatter, he presumes that whatever was closest to him was something breakable, he didn’t have too many things breakable near him. He looks to his left, Where he threw the object. 

There’s a splatter of red, covering the bottom half of the wall, splattered all over.

He stares at the splatter.

To think, barely a year ago. He had -sorta- Friends, Fans, A crack ton of money. He didn’t have to worry about his identity.

Barely a year ago he wouldn’t have had to attack a civillian just to keep his identity a secret. 

Barely a year ago, He had a brother .

…

Tommy cuts his thought off right then. He shoves his phone on the charger then dashes to his kitchen, Drinking some cherry juice and popping a melatonin in his mouth. Then crashing on his bed

He was asleep in seconds

He’s gonna need his rest, He’s got work in the morning.

Chapter Text

When he awakes its still dark. It can't be 7 yet. Tommy grabs his phone off the charger and it says 4 am. He rolls out of his bed and turns on his light. He is greeted by a red stain on his wall. 

Right. He decided against cleaning his wall before zonking out. He’s got time to clean before he has to get dressed. He walks into his kitchen and fills a bowl with hot soapy water, And gets a rag off of his counter. He then returns to his room with these items.

He dips the rag in the water. Then scrubs the wall, watching the rag soak up the dark red pigment. As he’s kneeling by the wall He feels something piercing his leg. He ignores it in favor of continuing to clean the strange red liquid off of his wall. 

As he was cleaning he noticed the smell of the liquid. It wasn’t very pungent but it did have a slightly iron-y smell. A familiar smell, Which is how he knew that he needed to clean this. If someone came in and saw the red splatter they’d probably call the police. Of course he doesn't have anyone over ever so it was pretty safe, But what if something like what happened yesterday happened again

So he’s cleaning the wall. And the floor.

It’s got glass shards all over it. Tommy wished he had remembered that before he kneeled on it.

Now he has to clean his knees as well

That's what he gets for doing what he did, he supposes. 

“ If only that blood splatter had been the stain from crushing that pest. ” a voice above him says

“I really don’t want to do this right now” Tommy says continuing to scrub the wall

“ You know you wanted to!! Would’ve been so much free blood. ” it says again. “ And it wouldn’t have the same affect as mine did, cuz he was already dead! ”

Tommy pauses his scrubbing. “I didn’t want to. I couldn’t. I’d never I’m a-”

Thomas stopped his thought right before he thought “hero”

He’s not a hero anymore. He’s a normal civilian who doesn’t commit murder. He has morals and he sticks to those morals.

“ The look on your face! I was totally right! You did want to kill him! ” He taunts. “ You’d do anything to prevent your secret from getting out. That's totally laughable ”

The voice breaks out into hysterical laughter above him.

“I didn’t want to kill him. I wanted to get him to be quiet, and I did a fine job at that. Now shut up! Okay?” Tommy yells. 

His neighbors probably think he’s crazy. A suspicious scrawny boy, who lives alone. Yelling at someone who isn’t in his house. About murder. That reminds him of when the nice old ladies across the street in his old neighborhood would come over to see if everything was alright, Because wow did Schlatt have some pipes on him. Especially to a 6 year old.

Except Tommy isn’t an abusive uncle. And his neighbors aren’t nice old ladies

The voice keeps laughing

Tommy knows who this voice is meant to be. A twisted version of his older brother. Over the month he’s been out of the tower. The month after.. 

He’s heard this voice. When he first heard the voice he thought dream had escaped the clutches of death, but when he turned he saw the ghostly mangled body of his brother. Just for a moment, before it dissipated into mist. Tommy was terrified. He ran back into the hotel room he had been staying in and didn’t leave for an approximate week.

The next time he left was to buy hair dye.

Whatever. Anyways

He finishes wiping the wall, throws the rag in the bucket then walks to the kitchen, limping as he walks. He dumps the bloody soapy water into the sink then leaves the bucket on the counter as he limps to the bathroom to clean his knees. He kneels over on the tile Ow. The glass embeds itself further into Tommy’s knee.

He grabs tweezers that he left on the counter. He slowly and carefully starts picking the glass shards out of his knee and dumping them in the trash can, He does the same to his other knee. He tries to pretend that it doesn’t hurt but it does. it really does

After he finishes removing the glass from his knees he places Band-Aids over the various cuts. He really wanted to wear shorts today. But he’ll just have to wear jeans and suffer in the summer heat. 

“ Hey tommy! I’ve got a joke for you ” The voice says

“Oh, you’re still here?” Tommy says.

“ Fuckin party pooper. What does a liar do after he dies ” The voice begins his joke

“He shuts the fuck up?” Thomas questions

“ No. He lies still!! ” The voice says just as he starts laughing hysterically.

It’s decided. Tommy is going insane, Right along with the mangled remains of a brother. He decided this because he laughed too. Maybe not as much, barely a pity laugh. But it’s a laugh nonetheless.

He returns to his bedroom and rummages through his drawers for an outfit. He finds one of his brother's sweaters that he’d shoved to the bottom of his drawer. He puts it on over his t-shirt. Its going to be hell in the summer air

But he doesn’t care. He swaps out his shorts for jeans as well. Hiding his knees. He looks at the time. He’ll get to the library a little bit early but it’s whatever. Better early than late.

He heads out the door. And down the street. Silently praying that the voice decides not to bug him in public. He doesn’t normally bother him in public but something about today tells him something is going to go wrong.

He gets to the library. And it’s a pile of rubble. Goddamnit.

Stupid hero villain fights getting in the way of fucking everything. He needed that job desperately. Tommy would’ve made sure none of the buildings got damaged in their fight with villains.

But of course, other heroes aren’t as careful. Careful is Tommy’s middle name.

Shit he really needs a job. But nobody else will hire him. Most definitely not without ID. 

He hopes Phil is Okay. He was so willing to hire him. Who would have a grudge against him. He hopes this isn’t too much of a financial loss. 

He starts walking back to his apartment and starts thinking of ways to make money without having a job. He could open a business, and sell shit. But Tommy doesn't know how to start a business.

He could..

He really needs a job. Specifically that job. Shit. He has an idea.

He’s gonna need some paint. 

Yeah

His idea will work almost perfectly hopefully. 

Villains make a lot of money right?

No

No no no.

He is not going down that path. How could he even. He has morals and he will stick to them. Villains are evil creatures with.. Questionable morals. Morals that say it’s okay to injure and kill hundreds of civilians

Tommy is a hero. He could be that again. He knows how much a hero makes. Well actually. Tommy doesn’t think he was ever paid as a hero. Dream was usually the one who took the checks. 

I guess they didn’t think to pay Tommy because he was Underage and they could get in trouble. Why would they get in trouble? Because of a little thing called child labor laws. Nobody but his employers and dream and Sapnap and George really knew his age

And they didn’t see much wrong with it. 

Since Tommy’s left he found that what the heroes did was in fact illegal. And that taking a vulnerable child from his home (No matter how terrible the home was) And training him till he cried was bad. Even if you got a kickass hero from it.

How did they do it? That was the one question still on Tommy’s mind. How did they hide the fact that their number two hero was a Child. The hero whose life is the most public, With people following him everywhere.

With people nitpicking every aspect of his life under the mask. People photoshopping the mask off of his face. People hiding in the tower. Theorizing. 

How did they do it? 

It bothers him not knowing things. Since he left the heroes, he has had to ask many questions. He pretty much knew nothing about being a normal kid. He knew nothing about getting a job. Or how to buy groceries. Or what people do aside from get hurt and saved.

All he knew was Running, Fighting, and Saving. Even now he was running. Still running. And still fighting. 

Well technically he’s currently walking. Back to his apartment that he will soon be unable to afford.

Fuck.

He runs his hands over his face. This was more difficult than he thought. Which makes sense because technically he’s had a job since he was 13. And he was mostly pushed into that.

He reaches his apartment building and just stands in front of the door. Peering in. Fuck shit frick.

He turns around and walks the other way. 

This cannot be happening. Dream was so right. He should’ve made sure the kid stayed quiet. He should’ve done something more. Tommy is an idiot. And there’s Heroes in his apartment lobby.

Maybe that's how the heroes did it. How they made sure no one found out Tommy’s Age. By killing them. That's why his dead brother would have suggested it. Because he helped keep his secret. 

Tommy is walking fast. Determined not to be anywhere near his apartment. They’re gonna find his stuff. 

He looks back for just a moment. And spots the fire escape. That leads right up to his window. He could just. Steal his own things. Then the heroes won’t find it. He turns back, Putting the hood of his sweater up and running to the fire escape.

The ladder that reaches the floor is still up because y’know. No one is escaping a fire. Tommy secretly thanks his hero training as he runs. Jumps against the wall. And grabs onto the grated floor of the fire escape. 

“Ow”

He has not done something like this in a while, Without Dream's power to help him. He climbs across the bottom towards the edge and he puts his arm on the top of the grated floor, Swinging his legs over and pulling himself onto the fire escape.

He just stands on the fire escape. In awe that He can still do that. It’s been at least a year since he’s had to do that powerless. He climbs up the fire escape using the handy dandy stairs until he arrives at his window. 

He presses his hands on the glass and pushes up, The window pops open enough to slide his hands under, He pushes it up the rest of the way like that. 

Then he just hops into his apartment. Leaving the window open behind him. Turning to his dresser to take his things and run, And now he’s face to face with George.

In his full hero outfit, His arm is wrapped in bandages and he’s leaning on crutches, His left leg in a very weird looking boot. 

George stares back at him, Holding his hero mask. In his hand that's not directly holding the crutch. 

“Tommy?” George says

Tommy is frozen. Currently his mind is shouting a thousand obscenities Over and over again. He’s trying to think of a plan. But he’s lost. 

He’s just going to bullshit this guy.

“The fuck is Tommy- Is that some weird nickname- As much as i love having heroes in my home i don’t love it when they touch my cosplays” Tommy says. Hopefully his bullshiting works

“I don’t believe that for one second” George says. “This mask is too accurate and you can’t know which scars he had. Tommy, where have you been?”

Fruck. What? 

“Who is this Tommy? I’m Thomas. Tommy is a childish name. Whoever he is i’m not him” Tommy continues

George puts the mask down, And reaches into his dresser and pulls out two vials of blood from his dresser.

“And, you’re gonna tell me this is just strawberry jam right?” George says, Taking a pause. If Tommy could see his face he was sure there’d be a big frown on it. “We thought you died Tommy”

“Wish I did” Tommy says without thinking

Tommy also does the rest of these actions only thinking about getting the fuck out of this room. With his shit.

Do Not Do This At Home. Those Performing These Acts Are Trained Child Soldiers With Trauma. Do Not Recommend. Barreling into the injured George, Grabbing his mask, Blood, Extra vials And Vacuum knife, And then jumping out the window with the hero yelling after him

Tommy runs down the fire escape. Putting his mask on. And putting the vials in his jeans pocket. Knife at the ready. He gets to the bottom and decides he doesn't want to climb down the normal way, So he just fucking jumps. He hears George yelling

He runs through the alley. Then straight across the street into another alley. Ignoring the cars of people trying to get to work this morning. He hears, Someone is giving chase. He doesn’t look back and check who it is. 

He reaches into his pocket and takes one of the vials, Without checking the label. And downs like half of it.

He feels his fingertips burning. So he’s chosen Sapnaps fire. Hell yes. He turns around, Stopping in an alley and is face to face with.. Sapnap.

He supposes sometimes you can fight fire with fire. Sapnap probably won’t use much force. Against Tommy specifically. He’s a beast against villains though. So he won’t be expecting Tommy's brute force. considering 'Tommy' Is supposed to be a hero too.

He’s not going back.

He puts up a wall of fire. Blocking Sapnaps quickest way to him. Tommy then continues running. Sapnap curses. Then yells after Tommy, Asking him to come back.

Tommy runs.

Chapter Text

It’s dark. Tommy’s first night patrol. He was super excited for this but now that he’d actually out here he’s terrified. He slowly walks down the streets. ‘Patrolling’ 

He’s watching for people who are suspicious. There’s literally nobody outside because it’s the middle of the night. Dream isn’t with him today. Apparently he had an early night because he has a super early morning.

No biggy.

He stops dead in his tracks. He sees someone.

“So this is the new hero the corporation has been bragging about.” Someone taunts

Tommy stands tall. He’s trained for this.

He looks closer, he spots a bottle in the hand of this guy. He’s swaying as he walks. Tommy lowers his guard. It’s just an old drunk guy.

“Y’know.. Heroes aren’t all that.” he states “Heroes are just big ole meanys who dress up in fancy *hic* costumes and paRADe around the city."

Tommy ignores him and keeps walking. He thinks he hears the man fall over a little while later.

Other than that the night patrol was boring.

—---------

Tommy runs. People yell 

“Look look! Red devils back!” “That can’t be red!!” or “Oh no a thief!”

That third one was an accident and he swears he doesn’t know how that ladies purse ended up in his hands. 

All the while he runs. 

His brother laughs at him saying “ I knew you would snap! I so knew it! ” And all the while he’s laughing. Tommy can feel the tears in his eyes begging to fall.

All the while he runs.

He finds a nice alleyway. In the worst part of the city. How did he manage to run that far? Pure determination. Determination to not return. He still has to figure himself out. He never had a choice.

He sits down in the alleyway and takes off his mask after putting his vacuum knife in his pocket. He turns the mask over in his hands. It’s scuffed in certain places, the metal creaks. He really should’ve gotten a new mask. Guess he just liked the design too much.

He searches through the purse he’d (accidently) stolen, grabs the wallet and some loose change and cash from the inside. Then he just sits back and stares at the brick infront of him

 He can’t deny how it feels to wear the mask. It feels amazing. He can be whoever he wants under the mask and the people would still adore him and call him hero. Makes you think about what kind of people are under the masks. They could be anything. They could be anyone. 

He could be anyone

Tommy could be anyone. 

The burning that was resting in his fingers slowly dissipates. It’s a welcome feeling. Free of the guilt that he had infact used someones power against them. And of all people it was Sapnap. He had fought against a hero.

A past coworker. 

He bets that it shocked him. That sapnap, Saw the fire come up in front of him and was shocked. His hands ceasing their smoking. His footsteps coming to a halt. Just standing in front of the flames.

Confused why Tommy, would do something like that. Why the kid he helped train had fought against him. 

He hopes they know why. He hopes they regret letting it go on. 

He places the mask in his hoodie pocket. 

He stands back up, pulling his hood down. He walks down the street. This part of l’manburg is not the cleanest. Heroes aren’t down here as much either. At Least he has never been given a patrol down here. So it’s an unfamiliar area.

People sitting on the street stare at him as he passes. He’s looking for a store. All he sees is apartments. Most all of the apartment buildings have leasing signs on them. He turns a corner. Keeps walking. 

Finally after what felt like hours, probably because Tommy is very tired. He finds a store. He places his hands in his pocket, finding the knife he had placed there earlier. Then he walks into the store and begins to browse. 

He’s not looking for anything in particular. He finds himself lingering in the clothing aisle. He spots an interesting hoodie. He could use the money (that again, he accidentally stole) to buy it. He then walks into the arts and crafts aisle. Then to the sewing aisle. Grabbing various items. Such as ductape, sewing needles, fabric, spray paint.

Then he walks to the drinks aisle, and grabs a bottle of coca cola. And then he makes his way to the register. The store was almost completely rid of people,The teenager stood at the register look tired and bored. He was just sitting on his phone

He drops his items on the conveyor belt. The teen looks up for a second, then a look of disgust flashes across his face, then he looks down and starts scanning his items. He grabs the wallet from the purse he’d stolen and pulls out three twenty dollar bills. 

When his total comes up on the little screen, it comes out to be just under sixty dollars. He hands the teen his cash. The teen hands him his items. Then Tommy heads out of the store and continues down the street.

Tommy continues down the street. Soon he should find some kind of abandoned building, He knows that urban exploration is a popular activity in this part of L’manburg. He opens his phone, and opens google. 

He’s searching for popular urban exploration sites in lower l’manburg, so that he knows what to avoid. He can’t have anyone finding him. Chilling in an abandoned building. Thinking he’s a squatter. Because he is a squatter

He marks off several buildings. He then continues his walk and finds a building he doesn’t recognize from google, that is clearly abandoned. It looks to be an old office building, but the windows are blocked, and the door’s are chained and gated.

No big deal for a trained hero. Who was trained in breaking and entering, Locating, Incapacitating a target, and covert operations. He should be able to get inside. Not that he’d need to use all those skills to get in.

Just the breaking and entering.

He slings his shopping bag over his shoulder and inspects the building. It seems that the only way in would be to hop the fence and climb in through a window, A boarded window. But thats from only inspecting the front of the building.

He walks around to both sides, and then the back of the building. At the back of the building there is infact a door, Which is obviously locked, but kicking in doors is no problem for tommy.

He first of course tries the handle, and to his surprise.

The door opens.

Not ominous at all.

He steps into the building and it’s completely bare. He closes the door behind him and starts walking through the building. It was completely dark. He turns on his phone flashlight. 

And immediately stops in his tracks.

Because there’s blood

Blood. Splattered all over the ground. Splattered all over the walls. 

And he knows It’s blood . 

That was always a talent of his. Knowing what stains were blood. Knowing when a person was bleeding. He didn’t much notice his talent if it was his own blood. Or if he saw the wound being inflicted.

Despite his better judgement he continues through the building. He finds the front door, it’s chained from the inside as well. He looks at the room from the front, and spots a door labeled “staircase”

He walks over, and opens the door, the blood continues. There’s stairs leading down, and up. There’s less blood up the stairs. So of course

He begins descending the steps. His shoes click against the blood. And as he descends further a rotten smell begins to fill his nose.

His senses scream at him, all five of them. His nose is telling him that this is gross. His taste is telling him he really wants to drink that coca cola, his hearing is telling him it’s too quiet. His sight is telling him that this blood is really fucking eery and there is only more the further down he goes

And his feeling is telling him that this blood is way to sticky to be old.

He stops after he’s descended 3 flights of stairs and he’s not yet encountered a door. He slowly begins climbing back up the steps.

“Fuck that” he mutters beneath his breath.

He finds the room he started at, but he just continues up the stairs. He’s thankful that after only two flights of steps he finds another door. There is no more blood. And his senses are no longer yelling at him.

Except for his taste. He’s thankful that this new room he’s wandered into actually has office supplies in it. Chairs, desks, printers, computers, lamps. And as he runs around and inspects every desk he finds, A portable charger!

When he plugs his phone in he finds that it does in fact still have charge left. And so he charges his phone up. He also finds that one of the lamps work. He sets down his bag on the desk with the working lamp. 

And sits in the chair connected to said desk, And takes out his coca cola and starts drinking it.

He then takes out the hoodie he grabbed, and the craft supplies and extra fabric. Then sets up his phone, And means to open netflix but accidentally opens the news app. The top headline is (Thankfully not him) an article detailing the arrest of famous villain “Siren”.

Attached to the article is a video

He supposes that he was just surprised. The villain he had been trained to capture. The villain he’d chased after for most of his career.

Was caught just like that?

He opens the video. Its helicopter footage. He spots the library. Right infront of it stands the big three villains. The Blood God, The Angel Of Death, and in the center of them is Siren. There’s a hero he doesn’t recognize approaching the three. No sign of hesitance in their form.

Siren yells something. Fire erupts from under him. The library crumbles. Angel looks behind him, And then he grabs siren and says something to him. Siren says something. Angel flies up and grabs Blood God. Removing both of them from this scene. Clearly something hasn’t gone to plan. 

The hero runs at Siren. Siren prepares to punch, The hero dodges effortlessly, And knee’s siren in the gut. 

Siren grabs the hero by the shoulders and throws them. The hero stops midair, And flys towards Siren. Grabbing him and slamming him downwards. The hero stands next to where siren lays. He doesn’t move. For a moment.

Then he grabs the heroes ankles and rolls, dragging the hero to the ground. He gets up and the hero gets up. Then Siren runs at the hero. And goes to punch again. The hero dodges again. Grabbing siren’s arm and

Biting it. 

Another blood powered hero?

Siren rips his arm free. And then goes to kick the hero. The hero fails to dodge and gets knocked a few feet to the side. The hero grabs Siren’s leg and twists it.

Siren lands face first in the rubble. He somehow wiggles his leg free. And stumbles onto his feet. Then he looks at his arm, It’s glowing a light orange, And its spreading.

The hero laughs. Siren shakes out his arm and continues running at the hero. The hero is dodging easier now. Basically toying with him. Every hit Siren makes, The hero dodges.

For a moment tommy imagines he’s sitting on his couch, rewatching his own villain fight, and thinking how he can do better. How he can be quicker. And almost always the answer was more blood. He shakes that imagined moment out of his head and keeps watching the video.

After a while the hero starts to look bored. with one quick hit to the back of sirens neck, he collapses

And he just lays on the ground

That’s it?

That’s all it took?

He slams his phone down just as police run into the scene to arrest siren.

He stares at the wall. 

He’s angry.

He wouldn’t admit it before but he will now. He’s angry. Everything he’d worked for, gets done the moment he’s out of the picture. The moment he ‘died’ is the moment they finally fix the problems they had. He’s angry.

He’s angry that he has to hide. He’s angry the he was found. He’s angry that people only protest to save their hero once the hero is dead. He’s angry that he was taken advantage of. He’s angry that no one stopped it. He’s angry that his brother advocated for his manipulation. For his training. For his tears. For his pain.

He’s angry that the villains are still after him. He’s angry that toby didn’t come find him earlier. He’s angry that he’s sitting here alone. He’s angry that his brother let himself die. He’s angry that he had to supress his powers. That he had to hide them

He’s angry that his mother died. He’s angry that the only way out of his uncles house was to become a hero. The only way was to move into a harsher environment. He’s angry that he loves it so much. He loves the fighting, The anonymity. The violence

The blood. 

The bruises

The deaths. 

He hates that he was made to love it.

He’s not gonna hide. And he’s gonna drink as much blood as he fucking pleases. And he think he knew that. He thinks he knew that he couldn’t hide any longer. He thinks he knew that one day he’d be free.

He’ll put his training to good use.

Chapter Text

This week has been weird. Techno can’t deny it. Firstly, There’s speculation that the hero corporation faked red devils death. Lots of it. Too much to be safe for the poor kid. Who’s probably hiding somewhere in lower L’manburg. If he’s smart

He doesn’t know the kid very well, But he was a smart hero. Very resourceful. Good survival instincts. The kid can take, and pack a punch. Though he’d never admit that to the kid's face. At this rate he might not even see the kids face again. 

The kid is elusive

Secondly, Fundy comes home one morning saying that he found Tommy and that he almost just died, Because apparently (obviously) The kid didn’t want to be found. Long story is, Fundy is a kid Wilbur had ‘taken in’ and this kid is a great spy. He found a kid who looked similar to the red we were looking for. 

He followed him around for a couple days, and eventually found his house. He was waiting for a moment that truly revealed he was red. And he was able to see one day through his window, A familiar mask. So he just invited himself into the kids home

Kid attacked him and told him to tell no one

Thirdly, Wilbur keeps saying he has this big plan. He won’t tell them what his plan is. Just that it’s gonna be big. And it’s gonna change their lives forever. Which is totally not ominous.

Fourthly Phil came home from work oddly happy. Too happy for his normal boring day at the library. He was acting as though Him or Wil brought home a giant trophy. When Techno inquired why Phil was so happy. He just said that a former student had visited the library, and Phil gave him a job.

Why that constituted Phil's fatherly joy was concerning. No, confusing. Techno could understand the fatherly instincts around teaching someone younger than them.

 And fifthly, Wilbur is dragging Techno, And Phil to the library, in the middle of the night, in full villain costumes. It probably has something to do with this big plan of his. He’s been oddly giddy this entire time. Like a child on his birthday.

Techno is acutely aware of each little excited gesture his brother makes. Today there are some that he doesn’t recognize. As an example, He’s fiddling with the hem of his pockets. Normally he fiddles with the edge of his jacket if he’s anticipating success. 

Maybe he’s nervous? And he’s messing with his hair, Curling strands around his fingers. He doesn’t know what that means.

He looks in through the windows of the library. His favorite book on Greek mythology is still sitting on the counter. Phil apparently has yet to return it to its spot

Techno’s not opposed to a bit of light terrorism. But in front of the Library? Techno likes the library. It’s one of his favorite spots, And it’s where Phil works. That's his civilian job. He’d rather not hurt the library.

Wilbur’s standing all giddy

“So I heard.” Wil says “There’s a new hero, Today is gonna be his debut,”

Techno chuffs “So we’re gonna be fighting a newbie?”

“Ending their career.” Wilbur says proudly “Before it even starts.”

“Great” Techno thinks “I was really hoping for an easy fight”

Techno stands menacingly, His cape flowing behind him. His pig mask sits firmly on his face. Wilbur adjusts his trenchcoat and mask. Wilbur never had a taste for the extravagant. His costume is boring.

Phil has been rather silent. He ruffled his feathers, and makes sure his veil is fully covering his face

“Could we not have this fight right in front of the library.” Phil complains. “Boys, this is a hotspot for civilians. Not many unjust people come to the library. Maybe a fight at the courthouse?”

“Oh please. We’re already here Angel.” Says Wilbur 

“ Siren. ” Phil says, all dad like.

“This is my plan Angel. I make the choices here.” 

Phil stays quiet. Techno grabs wilburs arm and pulls him, leaning down to whisper in his ear.

“That was not cool Wil. I agree with phil. This is a terrible place to fight. It’ll make too much of an impact into civilian life if we break anything, And i damn well know you are” Techno whispers

“Tech. This is my plan. I make the choices.” Wilbur whispers back. “We fight here.”

Techno shoves Wilbur. Letting go of his arm. He rests his hand on the hilt of his sword. When off in the distance he spots a helicopter. A news helicopter. They’ve been spotted.

He looks forward and spots a new hero. He looks a bit scrawny and small. Like Techno could pick him up and crush him in his hands. 

“Welcome new hero!” Wilbur says Raising his hands out to either side, beckoning the hero to move forwards “To the end of your career”

It all happened in a moment. First, debris launched past his face, then fire. Then ringing filled his ears. He heard yelling. Phil. He turns to Phil, Preparing to unsheathe his sword. He hears Wilbur laughing. He stares to either side of himself. There’s fire all along the sidewalk. Climbing towards the other buildings.

Wilbur appears to be laughing.

Then suddenly Phil takes to the sky, and grabs Techno. Flying the both of them away.

“Phil what’s going on!” he yells. 

No response. At Least not one that he can hear. His ears are still ringing.

“Phil!”

Wind beats against his face, he looks back just soon enough to see wilbur get hit before he’s completely out of view

Techno then realizes how low they’re flying.

Phil always flies at least 7 meters above the tallest building nearby

“Phil? Why are we low?!”

“Wilbur didn’t plan to hurt the hero Tech.” Phil says. “He was planning to hurt us.”

“What?”

“Paradidōmi Techno.”

Techno didn’t want to believe it. At this moment the English major side of Techno decides to come out.

“Paradidōmi actually has a variety of uses-”

“Techno, Please. Not now.”

Techno shuts up. He knows how Phil means it. And realizes that they are rapidly approaching the ground. And their house is still at least a mile away. They land roughly on a random rooftop. Phil stumbles to the ground. Techno runs over to phil. 

It’s obvious what the problem is. Techno helps Phil up. The gash in the base of  phil’s wing is very telling of what his adoptive brother did. Blood drips from the gash. It’s not much blood. Not enough the summon his powers thankfully

Techno becomes overwhelmed with anger. His own brother had done this. His own brother had assaulted someone they loved. And had planned it. And by the look on his face, had enjoyed it.

“Phil-”

“I’m fine.” Phil interrupts 

Phil reaches his arm around his shoulder. Holding the gash in his hand. The skin knits itself back together, the scorched feathers grow back. Then he sets his hands down and leans back. It was always more tiring to heal himself. Healing tech and wil was lightwork

According to Phil of course.

Techno helps Phil up, and they begin walking to the edge of the building to climb down the fire escape. Techno hops down first, Then Phil glides down. They walk through the alleyways. Wil probably beat that hero into oblivion. 

The hero is probably already regretting the years wasted in training. Wil will be on his way to them soon. And if Wilbur is trying to kill them both? Techno could beat him up any day. He’s just hoping not to today. He doesn’t want to kill his brother right now and risk the summoning of his powers.

After about 20 minutes of walking, Phil says he’s ready to fly. Techno doesn’t think he should be flying again but he really doesn’t want to risk getting caught. 

Phil flies them home. They land in their backyard. And rush into the house. Ran and Toby are on the couch. Watching a horror movie.

“Kids” Phil says 

Ran screams, Popcorn launches into the air. Toby leans over the back of the couch.

Toby then pauses the movie

“Hey Phil” The two say in unison

Techno tosses his mask onto the counter, and throws his sword on the floor. Leaning over the counter.

“What happened?” Toby asks “Where’s Wil?”

Ran grabs the remote and changes over to the news channel without a second of doubt in his actions. Techno almost decides to pick his sword up and throw it at the TV.

Until he sees Wil. In handcuffs.

Being dragged away.

Serves the bitch right. 

“Holy shit” Ran says.

Phil takes his veil off and sets it gently on the counter. Then he runs his hands over his face.

On the TV it appears that they’re interviewing the hero.

“ That was incredible! And it’s only your first day. Tell me, how did you manage to achieve such excellency? ” the interviewer asks

“ I’ve been training all my life for this. Though I could never have gotten through it without the spirits of hero’s past. ” the hero says. “ I called upon Red’s spirit, he helped me use his power ”

“ That's amazing, So you have some kind of spirit, poltergeist, ghost, power thing going on? ”

“ That's right, I can call upon the dead’s powers. ”

Bullshit.

Techno calls it.

This kid is telling lies, they're just trying to push the “Red devil is dead!!! Everyone donate to help train our heroes better!!” agenda. Just trying to get more money. 

Still leaves the actual explanation of this power up to question.

“That’s bullshit!” Toby yells.

“Y’know, I was just thinking that.” Techno says.

“How the hell did they arrest Wil. He’s supposed to be uncatchable.” Ran says

“Honestly. I do not care how they arrested Wil.” Techno says, Walking over to the stairs. “He can die for all I care.”

He then abruptly leaves the room, and ascends the stairs. Nothing like a good exit. Leaving people questioning things they thought they knew is the best way to leave. He trudged down the hall and into his room. He throws his cape onto his chair, and sits on his bed.

Just sits. Contemplates. Speculates. cudgels one's brains. Fixates. Dwells upon. Ponders. Broods. Other words meaning thinking seriously of something. The topic of his contemplation, Is why.

Why might Wil have decided that hurting him or Phil, Was a good option. Why might Wil have decided in the first place to hurt Phil. Why might Wil have decided to let himself be arrested. Why might Wil have decided today was the day to do this.

He gets off of his bed and grabs his cloak from his chair, tossing it into the laundry bin. Then he sits in his chair and leans over his desk looking for papers.

His desk was covered in different newspaper clippings, papers with different phrases on them, different dates on them, different names on them. Until he finds a newspaper clipping, From today’s date. Several years ago. Several meaning at least 7 years ago. 

It’s the newspaper clipping from Wil’s debut.

It reads

“ New Villain, Siren Appears! ”

“ Today famous hero, Captain, spotted a suspicious masked person on the streets of upper l'manburg. This suspicious person revealed himself to be Siren, A new villain who would "Make the world pay." Captain engaged with this individual, and the suspect seemingly ran from the scene. Approximately two hours later, That very street erupted into flames. Currently there seems to be no correlation between these two occurrences. ”

Techno chuffs. Wil was always one for the theatrics. He wouldn’t be surprised if Wil planned this whole thing just as his way of retiring. Still gives him no right. If Techno only knew what he was thinking. If Techno could reach into Wil’s brain and pick it apart searching for answers, he would.

He keeps searching the pile. And he finds a trilogy of phrases written down on a piece of paper, That is very obviously not his handwriting. It’s too neat to be his. 

It reads

“bite the hand that feeds you. seclude oneself. Break the chains”

A form of Betrayal , To Separate yourself from others and, A way to grant Freedom .

Retire could be subbed in for separate.

Because in this moment thats what he’s assuming. He’s assuming that this is Wil’s handwriting. He’s assuming that Wil put this here on purpose as a warning to him. He’s assuming that Wilbur just wanted to make a show of his retirement

Because he can’t ever think of another reason, Why his own brother. Might attempt to betray him and phil.

Techno crumpled the small paper. And tossed it in the trash can.

And now, he contemplates.

What might be the next course of action.

Chapter Text

It’s been a week since Wilbur's arrest. And now, a problem is presenting itself to both heroes and villains. Heroes are taking advantage of Wilbur’s arrest to attack various villains and vigilantes. It’s like they have a newfound confidence.

And for the heroes. Every day of this week except for the day wilbur was arrested and the day after. People, who are known to have worked in the hero commission, Are going missing. Seemingly at random.

The people speculate that this is Techno, and Phil’s doing. 

It’s not. But how would it look if Techno, mid fight. Being accused just randomly said “I swear to all the gods new and freaking old i didn’t do that shit.”

Firstly, they’d call him a massive nerd. Secondly, They’d probably not believe him, Or become massively confused.

Techno personally thinks he has a lead as to who is making these people go missing. And he has a list of reasons why it might be this person. But he’s still not sure. And he needs to be sure.

So he is going to desperately look at the order of people going missing, their occupations, their powers and where their homes were located, what bank they used. Ect Searching for any pattern, so that maybe. Just maybe, He can figure out the next target

And stakeout their house, And hopefully find whoever is making people dissapear. And recruit them. If it’s who he thinks it is, Phil would be glad to take him in.

Techno has been waiting to play detective.

The first missing person is an individual named [Not plot important name] He was a recruiter for the Hero commission. The type of recruiter that goes to middle schools and asks for the most exceptional students, and gives them a bunch of tests.

And the students who pass get stolen from their homes. And put in private school with better curriculums for high powered individuals. And immediately after finishing highschool, Get their identity’s changed, and get thrown into hero training.

Ofcourse most of that isn’t public information, and is mostly speculatory. But one can assume.

Mr. [not plot important] lived in middle L’manburg, with his wife and kids. His house was located on Glosqui Ave. And his bank is about 2 miles away from his home, Being the Moobloo bank. Most people in middle L’manburg use the Moobloo bank

Mr. [Not plot important] Has a minor creation power. He can create simple objects. 

The second missing person is named [Not plot important #2]. She actually lives inside of the hero tower in upper L’manburg. Her job is to go around to Elementary schools and tell them about the dangers of different power types.

Like mind control, life and death powers, and blood powered powers. Powers that require or inflict pain upon others.

She tells students with “dangerous” powers that the only way their powers would be good, is if they are never used. Ever.

Her bank is the Schooman Bank. Popular in upper L’manburg among the richest and wealthiest. He power is of persuasion. She can persuade easier

The third Missing person-

Okay maybe he won’t list every thing about every missing person. There is no pattern in the banks, in the location, maybe in the power’s but it’s nothing substantial

there is a pattern of occupations between the five missing persons.

They all work with Minors.

Middle school recruitment. (Recruits middle schoolers with exceptional powers, and intelligence, and puts them in “better” schools)

Elementary power warnings (warns children about the dangers of power misuse. Tells children not to use their “dangerous” Powers)

Elementary recruitment. (Looks for children with exceptional powers, and puts them on a list)

Highschool Mentor (Mentor’s highschoolers before they go into hero training)

Highschool Recruitment (Recruits highschoolers with exceptional Prowess in their powers and enrolls them into hero training)

Those are each of the jobs the Five had.

These are each of the powers the five had

Minor creation (Can create minor objects, like food or paper on a minor scale) 

Minor mind control of sorts (good at Persuasion on a minor scale)

Minor telepathy (Good at suggestion of thoughts on a minor scale)

Majorly enhanced Memory (Good at memorizing on a major scale)

Major Telekinesis (Good at making things float with their mind on a major scale)

Most have something to do with the mind.

Mostly people who visit children below highschool age. That already adds more Evidence to his list of why it’s the person he’s thinking of. But now he’s got to find out who’s going to go missing next. Who’s house to stakeout.

Just as he started to flip through his files he got a phone call.

He checked who it was, and was pleasantly surprised that Niki was calling him

He answered the call immediately 

“Hullo” he say into the phone

“ Hey techno ” She says “ I saw what happened to Wil, and i meant to call much earlier. ”

“No it’s no worries Niki” he says “He got what he deserved for betraying me in phil”

“ He did what?! ” Niki says “ Are you and phil okay? What’d he do?! ”

“Not much, Phil was smart enough to grab me and fly off. I’m actually surprised his papa bird instincts let him” 

“ Y’know, Phil thinks of you as his chick too Techno. Him flying away with you probably was the papa bird instincts. ”

“Fairnuf”

“ Honestly, I am glad Wil was arrested, i was glad before you told me he betrayed you and Phil. Wil is an asshole. ”

“Honestly, That is also fair.”

“ Oh! Have you heard that there’s people going- ”

“Missing? Yeah i’d heard.”

“ Some people are saying that Red’s behind it. That he’s actually alive and seeking revenge. ” 

“Oh really? Why, what led them to believe that”

“ The day before people started going missing, People said they saw someone running from Ignus, Wearing Red’s mask ” She explains “ People think that’s Red. running from some crime. Or some attempted crime ”

“Do you think that it’s Red? Is it worth bringing up to Toby?”

“ I don’t know, It could’ve just been some vigilante deciding to troll the heroes who are still grieving. I don’t think its worth telling Toby. ”

“Alright, I’m actually trying to figure out Who it could be.” Techno says “Just so we can give credit to the correct person”

“ Oh, Any leads? ”

“I think someone might be paying one of the mercenary’s. Like Punz, or Purpled.” He answers “Or possibly a vigilante, like Diamond, Though I don’t think he’d have the guts to actually kill someone. Could be someone new.”

“ You think that their killing the people they make disappear? ”

“What else does one do with a Kidnapped Hero recruiter?”

“ Honestly i don’t know. Get information? ”

“I doubt they’d have any substantial information, Definitely not anything we don’t already know.”

“ Yeah, that makes sense. Anyways, i’ll leave you to your investigating ”

“Alright, Thanks for checking in.” Techno says

“ No problem, Talk to you later Techno ”

And then niki hangs up. He turns off his phone and shoves it into his pocket and continues searching the files. With no distractions.

—---------------

Y’know, George was having a good day. Despite every good thing about his world, Crumbling around him.

Namely, His best friend dying.

And his best friends little brother, Refusing to return to the hero commission.

His bestfriends little brother who may have one of the most dangerous powers the commissions ever seen.

And his employee’s are going missing. 

He was having as good a day as he could okay? The hero commission still has him looking for Tommy. George is convinced he skipped town. Convinced he hopped on a boat. And sailed far, far away. Because there is no way in hell he’s still in town.

And the commission refuses to let him off this mission until Tommy is found, Because quote “An individual with powers like his should never be aloud to just roam.”

And George has searched high and low. 

High and fucking low.

And yet, Tommy Innit Wastaken, Is no where to be found. And if he’s still in town he has to be running out of money. He could be starving. He could be dead somewhere in a dumpster. Unless he resorted to crime. And the Tommy he knows would never even think of turning to crime

The Tommy he knows was also loyal to the commission and would literally die of sadness if he left.

So who fucking knows.

Anyways, Back to the reason why George’s day is going so terribly.

He was just walking down the street, In full hero costume because he never gets a break. He was walking to the coffee shop. When he spotted a mysterious masked individual, That looked nothing like any heroes he knew, And unlike and villain or vigilante he’d heard of.

This mysterious masked individual was peering out of an alleyway.

He had on a black hoodie with red and white accents, But it was still mostly black. His face was completely covered by a mechanical looking mask, That was in fact also black. And his hood was covering his hair.

Upon spotting george the masked individual slunk back into the alley way. He kept walking, but significantly slowed. After a moment another individual walked into the alley, as if being puppeteered. 

George arrived at the entrance to the alley. And waited. Slowly peering in. 

He spotted the masked individual running out of the other side of the alley way. He ran in planning to chase after the individual, when he tripped on the other persons leg. He summoned his powers to give himself a soft landing with a mushroom cap

He hit the ground softly

George got up and looked forwards and the masked individual was gone.

He went to turn and yell at the other person for tripping him, And found that they were infact unconscious on the ground.

This person had a bruise already forming at the top of their head. And a gash across their neck. A gash that wasn’t oozing blood. He reached down to check if there was a pulse, touching directly against the wound

What really shocked him about this, Is that firstly that there was a pulse, faint as it was this person was alive. He stood straighter and pressed his finger against his comm switching to the non-emergency line

“This is Amanita. I’ve just found someone in an alley that was attacked, they have a gash across their neck and a bruise ontop of their head. He’s still breathing but he will need medical attention.”

No one responded. The comm crackled in his ear, than shocked him.

He took it out of his ear and tossed it on the ground, He does not need major hearing loss. Something must be wrong with this comm.

“So this guy wasn’t useless.” A voice says above him. chuckling

George turns around and looks up, Seeing the masked figure hanging onto the wall.

The moment he sees the figure, Everything around him starts to change. The exits to the alley start to darken, before creeping onto the walls of the alley. George attempts to summon a mushroom to push him up to where the figure is.

But his powers aren’t working.

And by the time he realizes this, Everything but the ground he stands on has been consumed in darkness. And yet the masked figure still hangs on the “wall” Above him

A soft red glow is emanating from behind the mask that stares down at him.

The masked figure jumps down and lands a few feet infront of george.

George runs forwards to grab the masked individual, but he falls forwards and right through the figure. He couldn’t tell if it was himself that was intangible or the figure.

The figure laughed at him.

“Silly mushroom man.You can’t arrest a ghost .”

Then the figure disapeared into the darkness.

But he could hear them, Running in circles around him. He Stood up and held his fists up

“Show yourself!” he yelled

The sound of laughter filled his ears, Then the darkness consumed the ground he was standing on, And he fell.

Chapter Text

He wakes up on the floor of his apartment with a massive headache. He was prone to those after all of the head injuries and all the loud noises and all the stress and all the muscle stress and the mass amounts of alcohol and all of the injuries in general.

This one wasn’t dissimilar to those other headaches, He’d just really hoped he wouldn’t have a headache today. He sits up, rubbing his hand over his face. He stands up and walks over to his kitchen counter, Finding that he did in fact leave his phone there, He checks the time

1:42 pm 

Safe to say he’s late for anything he had to do today. He’s definitely late for his “very important” Meeting. It’s another meeting about the “dangerous individual” that is currently on the run from any and all heroes.

He hates meetings, Especially when they’re about Red.

The hero commission tried to cover up the fact that he “defected.” But guess who has a mole planted deep inside of the commission. Probably many crime organizations, But specifically Him.

That’s right, Quackity planted a mole.

Quite a long time ago.

This mole was in a meeting the night of Runner's death and Red devil’s supposed death. The topic of the meeting was to brainstorm ways to cover up the Defection of hero Red Devil. Now, Why does quackity hate meetings about red? Because no one fucking listens to him.

People always suggest finding him and getting him to use his powers for them. Quackity says “Fuck that! You’re fired.”

And then they say “What?! Why?!”

And then quackity says “BECAUSE DUMBFUCK YOU’RE SUGGESTING BECOMING THE HERO COMMISION.”

And then he probably has his men shoot him as he’s leaving. Y’know, the men that don’t suggest kidnapping a child and forcing him to use his powers so that they can be richer.

The kid doesn’t deserve that. Not after what he went through. The kid should use his powers when he wants to and how he wants to. 

Quackity walks to his room, and searches through his closet. He still has things to do. And he’ll just get the notes from the meeting later. But he does need to be dressed in not his pajamas for that. He grabs a random button up, and a random pair of pants and gets dressed

Then he simply puts his shoes on, And walks out the door. Then realizes his phone is still on the counter, as well as his keys.

SO he goes back inside, Grabs those and then leaves.

He gets to the parking lot and finds that his car is missing. Thank you gods for giving him an excuse for being late. 

He takes out his phone and dials charlies phone number

It rings for 0.01 seconds before charlie picks up

“ Hello quackity of las nevadas ” he says

“Hey Charlie, I think my car got stolen again could you-?”

“ I’ll send a driver right away ”

“Thanks charlie”

“ Of course quackity of las nevadas ”

Then Charlie hangs up. Neither of them like the word “goodbye” So they always skip their goodbyes. Tubbo always thought it was weird. 

But that's just Tubbo. Tubbo who “Literally can’t die.” Tubbo ``They tried to kill me and failed.” Tubbo who “is literally god.”

Like, having the power of cloning yourself does not make you god.

Quackity doesn’t have a power. And honestly, he’s cooler than tubbo.

Yep, Quackity, Leader of the biggest crime ring in L’Manburg, is powerless.

A lot of people look down on him for that reason. And then quackity simply shoots them. And then they can’t look down on him. Some people genuinely look down on him. Because he’s short. But again, Gun! 

There has been speculation among the ranks of his organization that the infamous quackity is lying about being powerless. But no, He does everything with pure skill. And money. Money is one of the most useful things in this world. If you promise money to, say, Someone down on their luck, who might’ve just gambled away all their own money, They’ll follow you forever.

That’s precisely the reason why his crime syndicates lair, Is beneath the largest casino in West manburg. Las Nevadas Casino. It’s terrifyingly easy to recruit new members there. 

A car pulled in front of his apartment building, A familiar face sat in the front seat.

“Purpled!” he calls out.

Purpled very slowly rolls down the window. Staring out at quackity.

“You realize what time it is right?” Purpled says

Quackity jogs to the other side of the car and hops in.

“Yeah, I missed that meeting right,” He says. A grin plastered on his face. “That's a bummer isn’t it.”

“Yeah it would be a bummer.” he pauses. “If they didn’t decide to wait for you before starting the meeting.”

His grin turns into a scowl. “Of course they did”

Purpled begins driving. Quackity lays his head back, mentally preparing for this meeting that apparently he didn’t miss. That he really wished he’d missed. 

“Did you hear about the missing persons cases that have been popping up.” Purpled says “it’s probably gonna come up in today’s meeting.”

“I’ve heard of them. Why would it come up in today’s meeting? It’s completely unrelated.” Quackity asks “The only people going missing are people with connections to the hero commission.”

“People, sorry. Our people think Red’s behind it. They think he’s lashing out at the people who hurt him. I think he’s lashing out.” Purpled explains “It does make sense in theory. In practice is where things get confusing”

Purpled swerves, just the slightest bit.

“You can bring me up to speed when we get there. Don’t need you crashing the car”

“Sorry.” Purpled says “I just don’t get it.”

Purpled swerves yet again.

Before you think “hey this kid shouldn’t be driven” “hey is this kid drunk or something?”. Quackity knows otherwise. 

Purpled is a mercenary. “Wow, what a shocker.” The funny think about purpled is that, unlike most mercenaries he has A) Unreasonable low prices and B) He has probably the most annoying drawback for his powers, Ever

Purpled’s powers are as follows. Enhanced aim, Enhanced sight, Enhanced hearing, IF he gets six hours of sleep the night before. IF he doesn’t get a full six hours, his 4th power gets to take over, Steady hands.

Steady hands is not at all how it sounds and was named very poorly. His hands spasm. Sometimes violently, sometimes not. But they spasm enough that he can’t hold a gun. Couldn’t even butter his own toast if he wanted to.

The good part about his fourth power, is if Quackity threw something at him, he’d catch it. Honestly he could catch a bullet if he was about to be shot.

Every spec of dust, Every fly, every slight change in the air space, Purpleds hands are trying to catch them. Causing them to spasm.

And he should Not be driving if his fourth power decided to take over.

Quackity grabs the wheel and pulls the car over. Purpled doesn’t do anything to stop him. 

“You had a job last night right?” he says 

“A heist. Robbing a fighting ring. Thought it would be quick but they had hired help too. They used most of the money i was sent to steal paying him”

“Punz?”

“That guy would do anything For the right price”

“For the right price?”

“He’s really expensive. quadruple my prices.”

“But he’s less picky”

“Yep.”

Quackity puts the car in park. Purpled opens the car door and steps out, Quackity steps out slower. 

“You shouldn’t have let slime send you.” He says. 

“Needed an excuse to leave the casino that wasn’t to brutally injure people.” Purpled says, leaning against the side of the car. His hands are in his pockets, still very clearly spasming.

Quackity leans against the side of the car next to purpled

“People are gonna think we have car trouble. What did you want to talk about.”

“I’ve been offered some really shady work recently. Investigations, assassinations, Heists, Kidnapping, Torturing. The jobs come in every two seconds.” He explains. “And people are getting desperate, and willing to pay me extra.”

“You get disturbing jobs a lot. How are these different”

“Most of them are people connected to heroes in some way. Children of dead heroes, People who were fired from the hero organization, leaders of gangs against the hero organization. And of course, the usual.” He says. “But I got offered a Job that was different from all of those. Even more odd.” 

“How was it different?” he repeats

“All of the others have always been known individuals. They signed the deal request with gibberish.”

"Gibberish?"

"A simple caesar cipher, shifted four, K m f f i v m w l. literally Meaning Gibberish"

Cars zoom past them. One slows but eventually speeds past them.

“What were the contents of this gibberish deal?”

“They wanted me to help them make someone disappear. Someone who just so happened to disappear on their own after I declined. Someone who was taken by whoever is taking these other missing people.” 

“How do you know it’s the same person”

“Because they left a trademark.” Purpled says, then notices that quackity does not know this trademark “I visited the site where all the people were last seen. And there is always, and without fail, blood. Not a lot, but always in the shape of footprints. Don’t know if its the missing persons footprints or the person making them go missing footprints.”

“Well that's unsettling.” 

“I don’t even think that the person needed my help. I think they were just tired of doing it alone.”

“How do you know they’re doing it alone”

“Because there's not a lot of people they could turn to for help with this kind of stuff. If they are who i think they are.”

“I don’t think it’s red.” Quackity says, finally walking around to the other side of the car and hopping in the driver's seat “I think it’s some adult child who wanted to be a hero, and failed the hero exam. And is being pissy about it”

Purpled hops in the car.

“I think you should seriously listen to the others in the meeting.” purpled says. “Aside from the ones who suggest the stupid shit.”

“That's genuinely, all of them.” 

Quackity starts the car.

And starts driving

…

Purpled watches the horizon as quackity drives. It doesnt take long before the casino is in view. Purpleds phone buzzes. Specifically the burner he currently uses for ‘Jobs’. He takes it out of his pocket, its hard to read what it says with his hands still violently spasming.

He recognizes the sign at the bottom of the request. “Kmffivmwl”

He hadn’t told quackity all that was odd about this deal. Instead of paying with money, This person had offered to teach him how to stop his hand spasming. How to control that aspect of his power.

He also hadn’t told quackity the actual contents of the deal. And that he had accepted. He knows its probably a long shot, This random guy using a ceaser cipher gibberish name probably won’t be able to help his control of his power.

But it’s worth a shot

He’s supposed to meet with ‘Gibberish’ today actually. Actually in like half an hour. It’s a good thing that gibberish agreed to meet up behind the casino. He can just skip this and meet up with this mysterious Gibberish

He’s not excited to go on another heist. But He’s hopeful to get rid of the stupid hand spasming. 

The car halts. Quackity hops out. Purpled hops out and follows quackity into the casino. As soon as the doors open he is hit with the sour smell of smoke. He should be used to it by now, but it still always catches him off guard. 

He and quackity make their way through the machines, past the table, past the bar, past the uber discusting bathrooms, and into a backdoor, that opens into a hallway. Qusckity practically runs down the hall, Purpled follows at a more reasonable pace. 

The hallway leads on for practically miles, and it has many connections, and corners, and stairwells. For any random person it could be pretty easy to get lost, heck even Purpled gets lost sometimes.

But somehow quackity never manages to get lost. Maybe because he built the place. Or atleast made the blue prints for it. Quackity starts slowing down, meaning the meeting room is close, So naturally purpled speeds up just enough so he can catch up with quackity.

“Quackity” he says “i just realized i actually can’t attend this meeting with you”

“What!” Quackity exclaims “You want me to walk in this room full of old men who are evil and rotten, Alone? I’m going to kill someone”

“I’m counting on it”

He shoots a couple spasmy finger guns at quackity before backtracking the other direction, you might be asking ‘why didn’t he just not walk into the back and leave?’ or ‘this could’ve been so much faster if he just didn’t enter the building in the first place’ and to that he’d tell you

Probably

That Quackity never enters a meeting alone unless he is literally 5 feet from the door to said meeting. So purpled has to bail on him, when he’s five feet from the door. Unless slime is around, then he can just not enter the building

But that didn’t appear to be the case.

Hopefully the meeting doesn’t go too bad, he can always get the notes from quackity after this job. And hopefully he doesn’t miss his chance.

Because these godawful hallways are so shit to navigate