Annihilate

School is literal hell.

Tommy is so distracted that it’s almost painful. He doesn’t pay attention in class and keeps drifting off mentally, to the point where Mr Nook asks him with genuine concern if he’s slept enough. He can’t remember his own answer to that question five minutes later, so it’s definitely a no. He’s jumpy and the general loudness of the school doesn’t do wonders for his enhanced hearing.

He keeps flinching at everything for no reason and it starts pissing him off.

After science with Mr Nook, Tommy goes to refresh himself in the bathroom. He splashes water into his face and tries to focus himself. He needs to concentrate. He can’t go home. He needs to think. He can’t go home. He needs to plan. He can’t go home. He can’t go home. He can’t go–

Panic wells up in his brain and he doubles over the sink, the same gag reflex from yesterday overcoming him suddenly. But he doesn’t vomit this time, just retches uselessly. He fucking hates this. Why does anything that has to do with family and home make him want to puke?

It might be the trauma, a helpful voice in his head suggests.

Shut the fuck up, he thinks.

Once he’s sure that he’s not gonna throw up in the sink, he splashes more water into his face. It works about as well as the first time. He stares at himself in the mirror and doesn’t recognize the boy looking back at him. When did his eyes get so tired? When did he start looking like he doesn’t eat or rest enough? Since when does he look like he’s seen more than a kid his age should?

Shut the fuck up, he thinks again, towards no one in particular. This isn’t the time for a breakdown. He’s here to warn Tubbo. Of what, he has genuinely no idea. Your father is a fucking nutcase and needs to be hospitalized for more than just one reason. Sounds a little rude, doesn’t it? He has the USB drive with him. He’s just not sure how to talk to who a week ago was his best friend in the entire world.

Tubbo ran away from home once, when he was twelve. That’s when Tommy met him. He’d had a backpack similar to the one he’s carrying right now, and he’d found Tubbo crying alone in a subway station. His friend always returned home, no matter what happened in it.

He guesses that’s their fundamental difference. Running away is easy. It’s always been. He’s good on his own, and Tubbo… maybe Tubbo was the first in a list of people he let too close. Maybe he was the first to see Tommy hurting and not just look away. He stuck with him even when Tommy practically burned through foster families and Tubbo had a, from the outside perspective at least, stable home life.

One time, he asked Tommy how he did it. How could he say goodbye so easily? The truth is that he never actually says it. He just lets go. But even when he bounced between homes like the most unwanted tennis ball in existence and only didn’t hate himself when he was with Deo, Tubbo never let go of him in turn.

Tubbo and I, we’re not… I did a lot of things wrong with him. With both of ’em, but more with him. He was younger than Dream… needed me more.

And how did he thank him? He’s planning to basically ruin his family company. He doesn’t even know how Tubbo feels about Oscorp. It’s a touchy subject, like most of his family stuff is. Schlatt basically declared Dream his heir and never gave a shit about what Tubbo might have to offer – clearly not realizing his younger son’s genius to this day. Which is why Tubbo doesn’t talk much about his family’s company. Which is why Tommy needs to talk to him now.

His spider-sense ticks off out of nowhere and Tommy whips around, catching Ranboo’s hand mid-air.

A moment of startled silence ensues. Ranboo blinks at him, in the middle of lowering his hand onto his shoulder in a decidedly non-threateningly way.

“Tommy?”

Tommy realizes that he must look like he’s in the middle of losing his mind. Because he kinda is, but whatever. His hand is shaking, and he lets Ranboo go instantly, stepping back. He hits the sink. This is a little awkward.

“Oh, it’s just you,” he croaks out, wiping at his eyes. “Sorry. You scared me.”

Ranboo also takes a small step back. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to. I… uh, I need to talk to you. Or, actually, we need to talk to you. Me and Tubbo.”

Tommy’s spider-sense protests turning his back on Ranboo, but he just ignores it and does it anyway, turning the water back on. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. I gotta talk to you too.”

“Yeah, uh,” Ranboo is tapping his foot. It’s barely audible and pisses him off for no reason. “It’s… what we want to say, it’s important. Really important. We talked about it for a long time, uh, Tubbo and me. And we just… we want to tell you.”

Tommy rolls his eyes. It sounds like he wants to announce their marriage. With the way Ranboo used to moon over Tubbo, back when they first met, it certainly wouldn’t surprise him.

Something makes a weird blubbering noise. Then, there’s a scratching sound. Tommy halts in the middle of reaching for the paper towel dispenser. As Ranboo keeps rambling, he zones out, focusing on the source of the strange noises.

“…we’ve been keeping this from you for a reason. You have to understand that. We didn’t want to exclude you, or make you feel like–”

“Shut up,” Tommy says, trying to listen.

“No, I mean that. We never–”

“Ran, be quiet. Can you hear that?”

Ranboo listens to silence with him for a moment. Then the scratching noise returns, and Tommy’s spider-sense flares back to life abruptly as they both slowly turn towards the stall behind them.

The door is open. The toilet is making weird noises.

“What the…” Ranboo mumbles.

Tommy grabs their arm and pulls them out of the way seconds before the stall literally explodes.

There’s a flash of green and the sound of claws scraping against tiles, and every single one of Tommy’s alarm bells starts to ring. He pulls Ranboo with him as his friend freezes at the sight of the lizard in all its scaly glory, emerging from the toilet – did it squeeze itself through the sewers? It roars at them and rips off the stall door before hurling it right at them. Tommy barely reacts in time.

He tackles Ranboo to the ground, feels the door sail above their heads and miss them by a literal whisker. It crashes into the door to the hallway and throws it wide open, a few surprised screams sounding out. Tommy is already scrambling to his feet, mind moving a thousand miles per hour, and his spider sense screams at him to move.

Twisting to the right, he barely dodges when the lizard jumps at him. Its claws slice through his arm, sharp pain stinging in the wounds suddenly. He doesn’t let it throw him off his game, keeping his mind on what matters. Students screaming outside, Ranboo pulling himself upright, and the lizard dropping into a prowl, staring at him as it crouches and prepares for attack again.

He looks back at it. Doesn’t it recognize him? Or was it too pumped up on tranquilizers to register what he looked like down in that lab? It’s clearly picked him as a target and not an ally, but at the same time, he couldn’t be more glad that it’s fixating on him and thereby completely ignoring Ranboo.

The lizard bares its teeth at him. Tommy does the sensible thing – he turns on his heel and runs.

He knows he’s not fast enough to outrun this thing, but he is smaller, and he’s bursting into a hallway bustling with people. He pulls the fire alarm in passing, and people freeze for a moment before chaos erupts. In the general panic, the lizard bursts out of the restroom and is met with screaming and terror at its sight. Good, Tommy thinks. The more people see it, the less Oscorp can cover this break-out up.

Ditching the hallway for the next best empty classroom, Tommy dips and shuts the door behind him. He pulls his costume out of his backpack and does the quickest quick change of his entire life, not even bothering with the suit. Just hoodie-webshooters-mask. He halts for a moment, mind running wild around a simple question – shoes on or off?

The lizard crashes through the door, and Tommy instinctively jumps. He lands on the ceiling, crouching into horizontal as the lizard swipes at him, and dropping back to the floor as soon as it hits the ground again. He stares at his shoes. Oh. So the sticky thing also works with shoes on? How does that work? He thought he was utilizing Van der Waals.

Eh, who cares. He’s got bigger things to worry about. Very literally, because in the next heartbeat, the lizard jumps at him again.

Tommy flips off the ceiling (not in the rude gesture-way, in the jumping down from it-way) and lands in a crouch, grinning when the lizard crashes into a desk. “Look at you, all grown up,” he cheerily says, “we’ve come a long way since the subway tunnels. I’m so proud.”

The lizard is fast. He almost bites his tongue when it whirls and uses its tail to swipe at his legs. He barely manages to jump over it, but then gets hit by it in the face full-force. Tommy goes flying, shoots a web mid-fall and hits the lizard in the face. Oh, finally. A fight that distracts him from the fucking mess his life has become.

It feints to the left and strikes to the right abruptly, only Tommy’s instincts saving him from getting his guts shredded. Instead, it just rips open his chest. He stumbles and yelps, blood darkening his already black hoodie, and then two clawed hands wrap around his arms and lift him off his feet. He kicks out with his legs uselessly.

Then the lizard starts talking. Which is a new high on his list of all the weird things that have happened to him in the past two weeks.

“Proud,” it hisses. “Are you proud of what you made me into?”

Tommy’s breath is coming in heaves, and not only because the thing should really use mouthwash. “I didn’t make you, you scaly fuck,” he gasps, struggling to get a breath down. “Oscorp did.”

Its slit eyes narrow. “They gave me a voice,” it says, glaring at him. “They were my friends. You just made me an abomination. And now I may destroy you.”

Tommy yelps when it lets go of one of his arms to properly shred him into pieces. “Sorry,” he says. “Declined.”

He webs its claws, then pulls as hard as he can while twisting himself forward with unknown strength. The lizard stumbles and falls, letting go of him, and he jumps over it quickly, wildly looking around and trying to find a solution.

They’re in Mr Nook’s classroom, where he built the first webshooter prototypes. The projector still hasn’t been fixed. He rips a fire extinguisher off the wall and swings it at the lizard’s head, but it ducks – in retaliation, he activates it and sprays the scaly asshole full of foam. It hisses when it gets into its eyes and wipes at them furiously, which is hard with its taloned fingers.

Solution. Quick. Fast. Now.

Tommy’s eyes wander over the locked closet with chemicals, land on Mr Nook’s little chamber of secrets, also known as where he keeps the good stuff. He has an idea suddenly.

He’s at the door in two large strides and punches the lock off, busting into the chamber and looking around. There!

The lizard growls somewhere behind him. “Slippery spider,” it says. It already sounds too close as Tommy heaves the tank of nitrogen Mr Nook keeps sealed in the chamber off the ground. “You can’t run from your creation forever.”

Tommy turns and hurls the tank straight ar it. As expected, the lizard catches it, and its claws dig into the metal and rip through it like it’s butter, allowing the nitrogen to burst out of the tank. The lizard roars in pain when it gets hit by the freezing chemical, cowering away from the spraying tank. Tommy barely moves out of the way from a blast himself. He doesn’t think he’d be very resistent to the cold, either.

The lizard attacks him, but he has an edge now. It’s wounded and slower, ice blooming on its scales where the nitrogen hit them. Oof, that’s gonna hurt like a bitch. Tommy almost feels sorry.

Then he doesn’t when the lizard ferociously swings at him, swiping its talons through his shoulder. Tommy yelps as he struggles to breathe in, stumbling over his own feet. The lizard manages to grab his wrist and crushes the bones in it, along with his webshooter. Tommy screams this time, pain ripping through his wrist. He gets cut off when it wraps its other hand around his throat and lifts him off his feet again.

It raises its hand, ready to bury its claws in his chest and kill him, but then it misses and just claws through his side. It’s struggling to get a breath down too, and Tommy suddenly realizes why – the nitrogen is still getting into the air and making it harder to inhale. He gasps, realizing his chance, but then it grabs him harder and throws him out the window.

Tommy goes flying – the world turns rapidly around him – he breaks through the window, glass shattering, and suddenly he can breathe freely again, and his spider-sense tells him to shoot a web. Déjà-vu is hitting him hard as he falls a story to the ground, the world slowing down around him as he asks himself, Haven’t I been here before?

His right wrist is effectively useless, he can’t move it, so he goes with his left and blindly shoots a web, clinging to it.

It stretches and he barely sees the face of a surprised police officer – oh. Hi, Phil. Upside-down Philza.

He tries to imitate a New Yorker accent as best as he fucking can before he says, “Sup, Captain?” and bounces back up.

He hits the window of Mr Nook’s classroom and sticks to it, but the lizard is gone. He huffs. Probably went back to the sewers.

Fuck.

“Raise your hands above your head and identify yourself!” someone shouts from below.

Tommy’s spider-sense tickles. Jeez. He’s almost willing to bet that a good ten guns are pointed at him right now. He raises one functioning hand and turns, assuming a sort of diagonal stance to the school’s window. And he was right. There’s a lot of cops and a huge crowd of students and a lot of guns being pointed at him.

“I’m your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man,” he says, doing a little cheeky curtsy for good measure. “Good day!”

With that, he pushes off the window and shoots a web. Gunshots go off, but he’s moving a tick too fast for them to hit him. Adrenaline is coursing through his veins, and he swings in broad daylight for the first time since he made his webshooters, cradling his one useless arm to his chest.

Wow. This is shaping up to be one hell of a day. Tommy can’t help the laugh that escapes him when he lands on some skyscraper in Manhattan, his blood pumping too fast, sirens echoing somewhere in the distance. The sun is shining and the day seems golden.

He still has that damn Oscorp interview.

Tommy giggles to himself and promptly passes out.