Chapter Text
[M] v2, ch1: 754 ac
[tommy getting kidnaped maybe? end w "unconscious" (dead)]
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“Get up,” Tommy says, little more than a whisper with his eyes locked onto the coffin. It stays closed, the lid well and firmly latched--from the inside, lest he get any ideas while unsupervised--and the room is silent.
Without taking his eyes off the coffin, Tommy reaches out to the side with his foot until it connects with something bony and limp.
He pokes at it with his foot and hisses, quiet as the damned, ”Get up!”
The coffin still doesn’t stir; he can’t be sure, can’t ever be sure, but he thinks the Vampire might have finally fallen asleep for real this time.
Nothing else in the room stirs either, unfortunately.
Tommy sighs softly out his nose and, painstakingly, turns his gaze away from the coffin and toward his barebones nest of scrap-cloth and straw. It’s the sort of thing you only ever really saw out in the sticks, and only when times got really, really tough and even something like a proper nest was too tough to come by.
It’s the sort of thing Tommy hasn’t had to see since he was a baby, the sort of thing he only even knows how to make because Technoblade insisted he learn when they were all drilling survival skills last fall. Tommy had been a little horrified at the look of it, honestly, though he’d found it surprisingly comfortable when all was said and done. Sometimes you made do with what you had, and he’s never quite felt as seen by one of Techno’s stupid mottos as he does right now.
It’s a good nest, even if it makes Tommy dream of the day he can make a right proper one again, but it’s definitely more comfortable than the cold stone floor of the dungeon-esque cellar.
At least Tommy’s roommate seems to appreciate it, if the deep sleep they’ve taken to and the way they’ve curled inside it means anything. Though honestly it might not, with how the night before must have been. Tommy doesn’t know the specifics, but it turns out that sounds—and especially screams—carry well underground.
Tommy looks back to the coffin, still quiet and unmoving, and steels himself.
He doesn’t have time to be indecisive.
They don’t have time.
The Vampire won’t sleep for long, the coffin sure to creep open soon enough, teeth sure to sink into Tommy’s throat the moment he hesitates.
The fact that the Vampire has to sleep at all is a fucking miracle, let alone that he left enough of Tommy’s feathers within reach. Though, in his defense, no normal Avian would benefit from a few handfuls of loose feathers. No normal Avian would have survived the first night with the Vampire either, but you won’t catch Tommy telling him that.
Miracle after miracle have stacked atop each other, his only chance finally presenting itself. He’d be spitting in the face of the Universe not to take it, not when the stars have aligned for this, the fates kissing his knuckles and pushing him away from the coffin.
Before him, the Vampire’s puppet sleeps on.
Their tail flickers in time with the candlelight, the only sign of their restless sleep. Their face is flat and calm, curled into Tommy’s threadbare nest like they’re searching for any semblance of warmth. They seem peaceful, for all that Tommy knows they’re probably stuck in a brutal reenactment of the night before.
Tommy wraps a hand around their wrist and yanks, mindful of the ugly bruises left from padlocked shackles still healing on their arms.
The Familiar lets out a quiet noise of surprise and attempts to struggle away, but Tommy doesn’t relent. He pulls them up to their feet with the same upward dragging motion the Vampire had used to rip them off their knees at least a dozen times before.
“Tommy?” Ranboo asks, their voice quiet and sleep-soft but still damningly loud. “What’s going—“
Tommy cuts them off, his heart inside his throat. “Quiet,” he hisses, his voice painfully sharp and demanding, and entirely without room for argument.
Ranboo’s jaw snaps shut so quickly their teeth click together painfully.
Tommy can see Ranboo waking up, he can feel their stillstone heart beginning to beat as their pulse threads to life beneath his hand, so he drags them away from the still-silent coffin before they can come-to enough to fight him.
“Follow me,” Tommy demands and, like a good little Familiar, Ranboo bares their throat in deference and lowers their gaze to the floor, following with a blind obedience that dulls their eyes like matte paint.
[M] v2, ch2 - 611 ac
Puffy was always going to be the one to do it. Always.
The first time it happens, she thinks she was being hazed. Maybe she was, but in retrospect, it's one of the best things that could have happened to her career.
Her boss had sends her off to the most bizarre-sounding town with the most bizarre-sounding problem. She isn't exactly happy to be shuffled off onto the one case none of her coworkers seemed to want to touch, especially at the start of her career.
Basilisks, while prime for folktales, are not an issue that support workers are supposed to deal with. They're also not supposed to be real, which she quickly gathers by the horrified and mysticized expressions from her bosses after driving back to the station with it curled in her backseat.
The second time it happens, she figures it's just chance. Everyone gets the weird cases. Everyone gets a report of corpses crawling out of coffins and throwing tea parties. That's the whole point of being a supernatural support worker. What Puffy doesn't realize for some time was that while most of her coworkers get weird cases, very, very few solve those weird cases.
By the third time, she's volunteering. She figures, if no one else is going to do it, she might as well make sure it actually gets dealt with.
It doesn't take long before she makes a name for herself. She shows up to the calls about demon children and possessed dogs and fairies pulling heists at the casino. She shows up, because no one else is going to. She gets the funny cases.
They're called funny cases because, most of the time, the results are a little funny. Sometimes it's a misguided granny, or a dragon with a really annoying splinter, or a very loud and yowly cat. She still has the scars from that particular capture, and the cat, though he's much more behaved now that he lives indoors.
She has a pretty good way to measure which cases are going to have funny results. If the case involves a monster, animal, or unidentified chicken-eater, it's probably just a lost, displaced, or injured creature that probably won't officially exist until Puffy files her report.
She's got a checklist--nothing official, mostly just intuition, really--that tips her off if a case isn't going to be very funny, because sometimes the results aren't funny at all. Sometimes it's a real ghost haunting your house, or the demon possessing your kid is actually just severe trauma, or the dinosaur in your backyard is a long-dead swamp beast unearthed by a landslide and surrounded by child-sized skeletons.
Those cases, uncommon as they are, stick with her. She gets the funny cases, but she's the only one of her coworkers who really knows that the funny ones aren't always that funny at all.
That being said, it doesn't take long for Puffy's alarm bells to start ringing when the call comes in. It's Puffy the secretary directs it to, because of course it is. She was always going to be the one to do it, even if she's never been called out to wrangle a couple of "sewer kids" before.
If she's lucky, it'll be a couple teenagers pranking their neighbors.
If she's not…well, it won't really be her who's unlucky, if the case isn't funny.
---
Puffy can tell the moment she pulls up to the house that this case isn't going to be funny.
She's not certain --never is, in her line of work--but she's worked this job long enough to know when to listen to her instincts. And, right now? Her instincts are practically screaming at her.
[puffy situation
tommy and ranboo crawling in and out of the sewers, hiding underground: this is fine
the neighbor lady: wtf john call the fire department there are children coming from the drain
puffy, a supernatural crisis support worker and rescue officer, rolling up her sleeves: dw, i got this]