Annihilate

On the day where everything goes to hell, Tommy wakes up early.

His (too bright) phone screen says five o’clock in the morning when he blearily takes a look. He’s tempted to roll over and go back to sleep, but knowing that he might be better off getting up early, he resists the temptation masterfully. Meaning he keeps contemplating it until he eventually gives up to rationality and gets out of bed.

It’s snowing outside, he notes with lifting spirits as he looks out of the window of his foster family’s apartment. At least he has that on this unfortunate, annoying, no-good day, also known as the first day of school after winter break.

Tommy, contrary to popular belief, really likes his school. It’s a private academy on the brink of Manhattan, might just get him into a good college if he spins it right, and his teachers aren’t that bad. It’s nothing like the shit school he went to before Phil adopted him, where no one gave a damn whether he made it through or not. He just hates that… he’s not like everybody else.

It’s pretty much the same spiel for everyone. Rich parents, sappy recommendations from said rich parents, interest in science, boom. That’s how one gets into a prestigious science academy. Tommy is fresh out of the system, foster son to a single cop father, he hand-sews his own clothes and sits at the back of class at all times. He came to the academy in his junior year. He has a total of two friends: Tubbo and Ranboo.

He’s an outsider even at a school for outsiders.

Getting up early allows him precious silence and time to himself. He tip-toes around the apartment, brushes his teeth, packs himself lunch, gets dressed, yada yada. Wilbur, his wonderful older brother, is eventually going to get up and start annoying him about why Tommy is up already (He can already hear the teasing “Is me little brother nervousabout going back to school?”), and until then, he enjoys the quiet and tries not to think about the day ahead of him.

They’re going on a field trip to Oscorp today. Which is fine, really, because Tubbo is an Osborn and that means Tommy will probably get to talk to his older brother Dream, who might be the coolest person he’s ever met. But he has to take pictures for the school’s science magazine. Which means he’ll be chilling behind the rest of the group for most of the time.

Yeah, doesn’t matter. He ignores that swiftly. He’ll have Tubbo and Ranboo and he doesn’t need anyone else anyway.

He decides to evade Wilbur’s teasing by leaving even earlier than early and steps out of their apartment at crisply 05:45 in the morning. Snowflakes catch in his hair and he pulls the hood of his jacket over his head. His breath creates clouds in the air when he exhales, and his fingers are freezing in seconds before he stuffs them into his pockets.

It’s dark as shit out still. He might get into trouble for leaving before sunrise. Phil (he still has to get used to calling him Dad and sometimes he thinks he never will) likes to lecture him about how the city is dangerous, which may be true, but he lives in Queens. It’s a nice neighborhood. A nice borough. He personally likes to walk to Flushing from their apartment and simply sticks to the streets he knows, which allows him not to get mugged like Phil always says he eventually will.

Tommy loves the subway at early hours, especially when it’s cold out. Of course, there’s a lot of people there with him, but he’s content to pull on his headphones and listen to music while he rides the metro. At Grand Central 42 Street, he transfers to the Lex Line and gets out in East Midtown.

He shoots the group chat handily named Aspiring STEM Menaces a text.

Yo where are we meeting up??

A couple moments later, Ranboo texts back, front of sams classroom, lets js meet at our lockers.

Tommy looks up from his phone and promptly has to smile when he spots a neon mural in an old station. Lex Line is an old subway line, so old that it has a multitude of abandoned stations because of the numerous changes in the city’s railway system. He has to grin whenever he passes one that Ranboo obviously worked their magic in. His friend is an exceptional mathematician and then also graffiti artist on the side – Tommy’s mood always automatically lightens when he catches sight of one of Ranboo’s brightly colored tags.

His response is an eloquent ok thx boo lythat would probably give his English major older brother Techno a minor heart attack.

He gets to school at 06:30 instead of the usual 7 o’clock. His locker is crammed in between Ranboo’s and someone else’s, which is pretty much how they met. His friend slapped a sticker onto Tommy’s locker somewhen in October. Friendly (definitely not crazy) scientist,it says. Sam (Mr Nook, actually, but Ranboo and Tubbo infected him with the habit of calling him Sam) has yet to report it, probably because Tommy’s locker is right next to his classroom and, as a Science teacher, he thinks it’s funny.

He doesn’t have time to quietly smile about it, because Tubbo has spotted him. “Yo!” is the only warning he gets before he’s enveloped by his best friend. Tommy startles and laughs, slinging his arms around Tubbo in turn.

“Hey, how’s it going?” he asks, amused by Tubbo’s fierce embrace.

His friend disentangles himself from Tommy’s arms and shrugs. “Good, good. I’m excited for the trip. My brother told me he and George prepared this cool bit about genetic enhancements…”

Tommy’s science class is the only class he has with both Tubbo and Ranboo, so he’s letting himself get infected by Tubbo’s excitement a little. The rest of the class pools around them, chattering and laughing. Tommy spots Ranboo from a mile away, since his friend is tall enough to be a Lakers Center, and waves at them. Ranboo waves back and lets the students part before them.

Mr Nook shows up at point five past seven, does his little attendance check and then herds them outside. Tommy takes a picture of the class in front of the bus. Ranboo secures them places in the back and he spends the ride sketching out a schematic for a shirt he wants to sew. He slaps Deo’s measurements onto it – he meant to make him something as of late, anyway.

Oscorp is a gigantic skyscraper in the Northeast of Midtown. Tommy has to crane his neck to look up at it – Tubbo is pointing out architectural facts to Ranboo on the side, but Tommy occupies himself with taking more pictures. The snow is falling less densely now, and he gets some pretty good shots of the building.

They have to go through a whole security check, they get visitor’s badges and everything. Tommy gets a special badge that signifies he’s taking pictures specifically for a school paper and nothing else. He has to sign away the rights to the photos too, but he doesn’t really care about that anyway, so he just does it. He hopes no one gets sued over their stupid science magazine, least of all, well, he.

Dream and George are already waiting for them. He brightens a little at that. Tubbo’s older brother is one of the few people Tommy can actually stand these days. Their father Schlatt never liked him, claiming that a lowborn nothing like him had to be after the Osborn money or something like that, but Dream never doubted his friendship with Tubbo. He never judged him for his background or his interests – in fact, they can geek out over design and science for hours on end, and Tommy just really fucking likes him.

George is Dream’s best friend and pretty much attached to him at the hip. He’s grumpy and British, which allows him and Tommy a field of solidarity. He’s a brilliant scientist, but doesn’t seem to like anyone except Dream and occasionally Sapnap, the third in their trio.

The tour of the place is pretty standard procedure. Tommy gets shoved around by the usual candidates and lets himself fall behind. He trails after the group, snapping pictures of projects in development, the laboratories, the scientists (he asks them if he can take their picture first, of course). Ranboo and Tubbo fall behind in tandem, so they end up being the very back of the group.

Dream has a talent for making things like scientific questions about sensation sound exciting. Tommy listened to Tubbo’s recap of the tour and therefore knows that he’s talking about Oscorp looking into genetic splicing to enhance humans – they’re researching the way spiders have a sense for danger that almost borders on precognition, the way lizards can regrow entire limbs if they get cut off. George intercepts with the occasional demonstration, using holograms and stuff like that. Blah blah blah.

Tommy concentrates on getting a good shot of the spiders they’ve been experimenting on. There’s fifteen of them, and he’s not sure if he should get a close-up of a couple or a bigger picture of the glass boxes.

While he’s contemplating, he absently counts through, and stops short.

“Uh. Excuse me, Miss?” he calls out to a lady that seems like she’s watching over the spiders.

She looks up and frowns at him. Wow. Tommy suddenly feels sorry for existing, but he tries to make up for it with a nervous smile. He does not think it works.

He points at the empty box he was just looking at. “I think one of the spiders is missing.”

Her eyes go wide and she comes over to him quickly, counting through. She blinks, but then she shakes her head and smiles at him. “Don’t worry. The subject is an expert at camouflaging itself. It can’t escape; it’s just invisible.”

He blinks at her. Something about the statement is rubbing him the wrong way. Her smile is straining. Also, he literally saw her count only to fourteen, but he instantly dismisses the temptation to call bullshit on her obvious lie. This is Oscorp. Not his goddamn circus and certainly not his goddamn monkeys.

Just nod and smile, Innit, he thinks. He manages out a somewhat convincing, “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize.” She waves him off with that same fake smile and he snaps a picture of a colorful spider before he turns on his heel and runs to catch up with his class.

The rest of the trip is slightly overshadowed by what he sees when he looks back: The lady gesturing wildly to two security people, panic in her eyes.

Fuck. Should he like. Say something? He glances to Dream, who’s animatedly gesturing over a hologram of the human brain and pointing out molecular structures of different emotions, and bites his lip as he looks back to the frantic lady.

Not his circus. Not his monkeys.

Tommy turns back and shakes the incident off.

He takes pictures of George demonstrating some algorithms, of the girls in his class operating one of the holograms, of Dream instructing Purpled to hold a lizard. Fun. His head is spinning. By the time George hands out sheets of papers and writes down an equation for them to tinker with, he feels like he’s going to be sick with worry. Not his circus, except it’s the family company of his best friend.

It’s just a spider, he tells himself. Just a bug. Someone’s gonna squash it and that’s that.

George tells them to just write down whatever they come up with. His head hurts, but Tommy writes down something quickly and hands it in so he can take pictures of his class pondering the equation. He snaps a good one of Ranboo and Tubbo squinting at the paper in unison and the bad feeling in his gut lifts just a bit.

The trip takes up six entire hours. By the time they’re back on the bus, Tommy’s squirrel brain has already forgotten about the lost spider. He’s looking through his pictures with Ranboo and Tubbo and deleting the bad ones when Mr Nook stands up in the front and shouts over the noise of everyone talking, “Hey, you people! Listen, I hope you had fun today, but I got homework for you.”

Collective groans. Tommy grins to himself when Tubbo curses under his breath. Mr Nook defensively raises his hands.

“Not like you think! Let me finish, please. This is just a little assignment to ease you into the second semester. I want you to write an essay about whatever you thought was coolest about today’s trip – doesn’t matter if you just liked the way the building looked. Just whip something up for me. It won’t be graded, unless I see that you’re not even trying, it’s really just for me to pin down your ambitions and interests a bit. All fun, alright? Two hundred words minimum, you get nothing for overdoing it. Deadline’s next Monday. You’re allowed to get off the bus now. Have a nice day, kids!”

“Have a nice day, Mr Nook,” the class carols. Tommy exhales heavily. Damn, what is he supposed to write about? He didn’t pay attention to shit, too immersed in his photography to do so. Well, he could write about that. Mr Nook did say just whip something up.

Tubbo elbows him. “Hey, your family aren’t home tomorrow, are they?”

“Your family isn’t,” Ranboo corrects.

“Okay, Oxford,” Tommy laughs. “Yeah, I think Wil is in the studio the entire day, and Techno’s got lectures. Why, you wanna hang out?”

Tubbo grins. “Yeah. Ranboo wants to teach us their magic.”

Tommy raises his eyebrows at their friend, who rolls their eyes with a bashful smile. “It’s not magic that makes art. It’s skill.”

“Same thing,” Tommy and Tubbo reply at the same time before high-fiving.

Ranboo laughs. “Whatever. Yeah, I’d really love to teach you guys. Are you free, Tommy? We could write that essay together too.”

Tommy smiles and slings his arms around his friends, leaning his head on Ranboo’s shoulder. “I’m always free for you assholes,” he lovingly says.

Tubbo snickers. “We love you too, Tommy.”