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In Tommy's defence, if museums didn't want their stuff to be stolen, they really shouldn't make it so easy to get in.
He'd strolled straight in the front doors, for free no less! Spent an hour peering at the exhibits - most of them were boring as fuck, paintings and statues and a bunch of old shit, but he liked the taxidermy and the dinosaur bones. Tubbo kept trying to get him to focus the fish eye lens they'd stuck to his jacket on the informational boards, but Tommy was great at ignoring things he didn't want to do and so deftly turned his earpiece off every time he started to yell.
This did result in Tommy missing the signal to find a way to hide, but the big commotion in the entrance hall was thankfully a lot harder to miss, and so as everyone ran towards the noise, either to be nosy or to try and help, he ducked away into one of the blind spots they'd marked on the cameras, and hoisted himself right into a cleverly hidden vent.
They'd debated sending Ranboo in, the Enderian theoretically able to teleport straight inside the storage room to just hang out until close, but they were also known for freezing when confronted, which wasn't ideal in such a risky situation. Tommy's claws were sharp enough to drag himself up and in, carefully fixing the metal plate behind him as he started to squirm through the vent.
He sneezed repeatedly, which was probably a very suspicious thing for a vent to do, but no one seemed to notice as he did his best not to breathe. They really ought to clean these things out more often. It was really inconvenient for anyone hiding inside.
Then came the hardest part of all, since Tommy was 'directionally challenged' according to most of his work references, and 'a fucking idiot' according to Tubbo. Look, left and right were hard, okay? He prefered to just sniff out things he needed - his nose was way more accurate than any map.
It was hard to smell anything in here, though, surrounded by metal on all sides, disorientating him.
He could probably blame what happened on that disorientation, or on Ranboo's shitty planning skills, or on Tubbo still yelling in his ear. He could blame it on their boss, who'd given them very little information on what they were actually stealing. He could blame it on his entire life up to this point, the system that failed him, the open arms of organised crime that welcomed him, yada yada, very sad, very tragic, would make a great autobiography once he moved up the ranks of Villains and actually got to be cool instead of a petty thief.
But no amount of blame was able to change the fact that when he dropped down through the vent, into the storage room he'd been assured would be empty by everyone working on this case, there was in fact instead the Crowfather perched on a chair, looking at him with the utmost amusement. Or at least Tommy assumed he was amused, since most of his face was covered by that creeping fucking bird mask.
"Hey mate!" the Crowfather, top league Hero, worldwide idol, most dangerous man on the planet, said, "You alright? You were sneezing pretty hard up there."
Tommy's tail bristled, and he tried to angle his body so the Crowfather couldn't catch glimpse of the bottle-brush fur. There wasn't much he could do for his ears, stood straight and alert even as he tried to smile.
"Oh I'm great! Don't mind me, I was just uh… cleaning the vents! Dusting them out, you know? Terribly dusty, really I should've negotiated for higher pay - you know what they're paying minimum wage workers now? A scam, I tell you! But anyway, sorry for interrupting, I gotta go find my dust cleaning equipment so I can-"
"I wouldn't do that, mate." the Crowfather said mildly, "Stay where I can see you, please. Hands up."
Tommy may not be omniscient, but even he could tell that this probably wasn't going to end well for him.
"Tommy?" the voice in his ear crackled, Tubbo's impatient voice coming through, "I said, status update! Head towards the-"
"Wanna toss me the earpiece?"
On the end of the line, Tubbo paused. "Tommy, do you have company?"
"Yeah." Tommy replied, to both of them, fumbling with the wire strapped securely to his twitching ear and then throwing it gently through the air towards the Crowfather. He briefly debated straight up lobbing it, but decided that the Hero seemed to be acting peaceful for the moment, and he'd rather keep this non violent. If only the boss would let him take any of the awesome weapons that came from the armoury! He could've shot the guy in the wings and been out of there in.. okay yeah no even Tommy knew that was unrealistic. If the Crowfather could've been taken down by a wing-shot then he would've been a distant memory already.
His tail whipped hard, distress widening his eyes as the Crowfather dropped the earpiece to the ground and very casually crushed it under his boot, leaving sprinkles of very expensive plastic on the ground.
"I'm gonna have to pay for that, you know." he said petulantly, hands still raised. This hurt his arms actually, how did people in movies do it? "They're expensive."
The Crowfather snorted, "See, this is what you get for being like, moderately evil. I don't pay for any of my own tech, even when I drop it in the middle of battle. Repeatedly. Through no fault of my own, they need to build sturdier ones."
Tommy squinted, "I'm pretty sure I've seen footage of you like, hurling your equipment off the edges of buildings."
"Through no fault of my own! It throws off my flight and itches and-" the Crowfather seemed to remember where he was, wings rustling as he straightened, "That doesn't matter right now. I'm actually stumbling a bit, cause I was informed someone uh… a little higher up than you would be here right now, and I wasn't prepared for a kid to drop out of the ceiling. Don't suppose you have an actual Villain as backup?"
"Hey I am a real Villain!" Tommy declared, trying to puff up his chest fur, except his shirt was in the way and so he just looked weird, "I'm supposed to be proving myself or some shit - could you give me a pass or something, big man? Or even like, let me nick something small? There's a semi-decent chance I'm gonna get murdered otherwise for fucking this up and I don't really want to be murdered, you know?"
The Crowfather stared at him for a long moment, and then-
"Of course they sent the fucking raccoon…"
"Hey what the fuck? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Raccoons are pretty well known for being thieves, mate. But no, I can't let you "just nick something small'. I should arrest you, really, this is definitely breaking and entering."
The way he phrased that… a tiny spark of hope fluttered to life in Tommy's chest that maybe he wasn't about to be thrown in a cell for the rest of his life? But still, the pressure of exactly who waited outside for him was bearing down.
"Just one little statue? A painting? A really ugly vase?"
"No, no and still no. Why would I let you steal something right in front of me?"
"You could turn around and then you'd have plausible deniability," Tommy pointed out, "And uh.. because you're a good person who doesn't want me to be murdered?"
The Crowfather looked at him for a long moment, "Do you even know what you're here to retrieve? Do you have any sort of protection?"
Tommy squinted, "I'm here for like… a box. Or something. I dunno, it wasn't that clear? There's a box somewhere here and I gotta get it and I can't under any circumstances open it which I probably won't but a peek can't hurt, right? It's a museum, even the ugliest vase can't actually hurt me."
"Fuck, they really didn't tell you?" the Crowfather lifted a hand to his face, only to pause when it met the leather of his mask, "Right, shit. I don't have the time, and you don't have the clearance, but what was inside that box was not a vase, alright mate? You might have survived contact with it, but it wouldn't be much of a life afterwards."
That was… concerning. Tommy knew logically that he had no reason to take the Hero at his word. They were sworn enemies (technically), and this could all be some big ploy to get Tommy to leave empty handed. But… there wasn't a reason to lie, not really. Even if Tommy doubted him, there would be no fight, no struggle, no scenario in which he left this room unscathed and with the ability to go hunt down this box. So unless he was trying to deter the potential of a higher level villain later…
"Okay so assuming I believe you… please can I take something? Like, this has gone from a heist gone wrong to 'someone actively tried to kill me' and I'm gonna need some cash while I'm working this out."
Crowfather paused, "Do you think this was… a personal attack? Do you have any enemies who'd go to this length?"
Tommy thought back to everyone he'd ever pissed off in the compound. There were a lot.
"What can I say, I'm just too good. They're jealous. So yay or nay on the thieving?"
The Hero didn't reply. Tommy shuffled in place, fiddling with the bristly fur at the end of his tail and looking anywhere but that impersonal mask.
Finally, he sighed, "Put your hands behind your back, please. You have the right to-"
"What?" Tommy squawked, "Dude you can't fucking arrest me! Cmon! Someone tried to kill me! I can't leave- I can't be arrested!"
"I'm pretty sure I can, actually. Breaking and entering for one, and I'm sure once I get that mask off I'm gonna find a host of things linked to your name. I'm not arresting you, though - not officially. The handcuffs are for everyone's safety. If you're being honest with me, and you're in danger from the Villains league, I'm sort of required to bring you in for assessment. There's programs and shit for kids like you-"
"Still not a kid!"
"-and you'll likely get the full package in terms of benefit. Guarded accommodation, food, health care, therapy-"
"So basically a prison with a nice name."
"No! Not a prison!"
"Can I leave?"
The Crowfather paused, "Well no-"
"See? Look man, thanks for the heads up and the saving my life thing but… I gotta pass."
For all his status and practise, apparently the Crowfather didn't see the possibility of 'the criminal I'm apprehending throws a knife at my face and makes a break for it' in the cards. Maybe it was the ears. The fluff was unassuming. Maybe he'd just gotten complacent over the years, being literally top ten strongest person in the world, and he'd forgotten that ordinary people could make his life very difficult with fairly little effort.
Either way, in the seconds it took the Hero to react, flinching out of the way of the knife and whirling back round to stare at Tommy accusingly, he was already launching upwards, claws hooking onto the edge of the ceiling vent and hoisting himself inside.
A taloned hand snatched for his ankle, but the space was too small for the Avian's wings to flare, and Tommy managed to give it a solid kick before rapidly starting to crawl back down the length of the metal as fast as he could.
"How the fuck did he jump that high?" he heard, faint but distinct, echoing down the vent after him, "Jesus fuck - Tech? Can you hear me? We've got-"
Several people screamed, as Tommy burst out of the vent in the museum hall, covered in dust and sneezing like a maniac, and he used the shock to bolt past them, stopping only to make a quick pick up for his troubles. As he slid out the front doors, an alarm began to blare through the building and security swarmed but he paid neither any mind, already dashing down the street.
He needed to find Tubbo and Ranboo, explain what had happened, and then they needed to get the fuck out of this city. Helped along, of course, with the vase he'd managed to snatch on his flight out. He had no clue what a 'ming dynasty vase' was, but he was sure it was worth something.