Annihilate

He leaves Oscorp for the city’s rooftops, exchanging his clothes for his suit.

Settling on a random skyscraper in Brooklyn, he takes his obligatory pictures of the skyline and spends a couple of hours sorting his thoughts out while he watches the sun go down. He can mail the pictures to the Daily Bugle from a library computer, or maybe from school. He’s not sure yet.

He’s unsure of what to do, just in general. He doesn’t think he’s really known what to do since he got bitten by the spider, and it’s sort of getting to him now. He keeps stumbling through one bad run after the other, and he doesn’t know who to trust or where to go. It’s obstacle after obstacle and he has no idea where the finish line is anymore.

Schlatt doesn’t perceive him as a threat. Schlatt is dying. That theoretically means Tommy could go home – time is going to kill the bastard and that’ll be it. He could go home, except the guilt of the mask he’s wearing is weighing him down. Would his family forgive him for running away if he returned?

Tommy doesn’t have good experiences with returning to foster homes after running away. He wants to tell himself that this one is different – they are different – but the irrational fear in his brain is telling him he can’t come back from this. He’ll be met with disappointment and anger and then he’ll be stuffed back into a foster home. Like every time before this.

Sue him, but he’d actually literally rather die than go back to a foster home.

He couldn’t explain this to his family anyway. There’s something of a blockade in his brain that just tells him they will hate him. They can’t forgive him. How can they forgive him? He just left, like he leaves every single time when things get too hard to endure. And he never should’ve been part of their family in the first place.

Tommy has been on autopilot like that for the last hours. It’s been feeling familiar, brushing his teeth in public bathrooms, sleeping with his backpack as his pillow, digging dinner out of supermarket trashcans. It’s not his first time being homeless. It’s the first time he’s ever felt like he really has nowhere to go.

He pushed his friends away, he ran away from home. Deo, the only person he ever told about the spider bite, died just hours after he told him about it. Tommy lets his legs dangle from the skyscraper and admits to himself that he’s completely lost.

Because what’s his goal now? Tubbo and Ranboo are vigilantes that protect the city where law enforcement meets its limits. Schlatt is going to die. What point is there in revealing his crimes to the world when time will kill him anyway? What is he doing now? Isn’t he just meandering?

Tommy stews in his thoughts and doubts and fears for hours upon hours on the skyscraper, wind in his hair and a can of coke at his side. He runs his thumbs over the expressive eyes of his mask. He’s not a hero. He’s not even a makeshift vigilante like his friends, not really. He’s just some kid that got caught up in a freak accident and then became way too much of an idiot about it.

But he isn’t the only one, he reminds himself. He’s by far not the only science experiment gone wrong in this city.

Night falls. Darkness descends upon New York fast. He sighs and stands up, downing the last of his coke. At this point, he doesn’t even bother putting on his mask before he drops off the building, flinging a web without even thinking about it. He swings through the city, nightsky dark above him and lights gleaming around him. He’s living such a strange life, really; and now, he doesn’t even know if it’s worth the trouble.

Is this really what he wants? To be a fucking hero? He’s just a kid at the end of the day. He’s just some nobody.

But it’s been that way before. He’s been nobody before, had no family, no friends, no home to return to. He’s always managed to get back on his feet – and, as always, he still has a goal to reach.

Tommy lands on a building and makes his decision. Schlatt will die anyway, so he will live knowing the truth. And once he’s righted a very particular wrong of his, he will have evened his score. He doesn’t know what he will do after, if he’ll ditch the mask and try to stay normal like he’s never been able to, but until then, he will prevail with this.

It starts to snow, thick white flocks raining down on him. He knew that it’d snow, so he’s not surprised – that thing brewing in his veins told him. He holds his hand out and watches them melt on his palm. For a moment, he gets his conviction back. He can worry about the after once he’s turned the lizard back into a human.

He’ll burn that bridge when he gets to it, he decides.

Then he sees a familiar shadow out of the corner of his eyes.

Tommy perks up.

The Vulture’s shadow descends from the sky, a silhouette followed closely by the familiar metallic whirring of his wings. Tommy knows now that their masterful construction came from none other than Ranboo. He wonders, not for the first time today, if his friend started with this gig alone – Ran’s always been the most political out of the three of them, actively throwing up their views where everyone could see them loud and clear.

It would make perfect sense for them to become a Robin Hood-type vigilante. Maybe Tubbo found out by accident, or just with deduction skills Tommy clearly doesn’t have. Did he join the cause simply to be more free? Or did he become the Shocker because he wanted to find out the truth about Oscorp?

In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Tommy is so homesick suddenly, watching his friend fly overhead, that he makes an impulsive decision. He pulls his mask over his face again and pushes himself off the building he’s sticking to, following Ranboo with some reasonable distance as he tries to formulate something of an apology in his head.

He does not know how to do that. Sorry for pushing you away. I sort of got radioactive spider-fish powers and didn’t know you guys were pretty much just as dangerous as me. Also, Tubbo, your dad killed my parents. Little fun fact on the side.

Like… what is he even supposed to say?

Tommy can be sneaky when he wants to. As he tries and hilariously fails to think of something halfway decent to say, he sticks to the shadows, becoming one of them in an effort to follow Ranboo. He goes far beyond the edge of NYC, out to an area that he actually vaguely recognizes from one of Deo’s city plans. In his effort to think up a good way to tell Tubbo about the fucking mess that is his father and his doing, he completely misses the fact that Ranboo is quite obviously in a hurry, going much faster than he usually does.

They’re going into a forest area, which lets Tommy stay swinging in the trees while Ranboo flies overhead. The thing that he grapples most with, in his head at least, is the spider bite. Tubbo and Ranboo are using machinery to do what they do. Tommy has freaky superpowers. Does he tell them about the bite? The thing that started all of this? Does he tell them about the lizard? About his parents? About Deo? Is it worth to load all of that on their shoulders?

Ranboo suddenly dives, and Tommy is snapped back into reality when his spider-sense screams at him.

A green figure is hurtling towards Ranboo at breakneck speed, and Tommy sticks to the tree he’s on and stares in slight confusion. What the fuck is that? It looks like a person standing on a skateboard, except the thing’s flying. And, again, green. And then it throws something round and small at Ranboo, who’s maneuvering around the trees, and Tommy reflexively closes his eyes.

The explosion is loud and bright even against his closed eyelids, and he instantly rips his eyes open again. The grenade hit a tree, and Ranboo’s went above the tree line again, allowing the green guy to throw more grenades at him. He dodges, but they still fall onto the trees below. The snow still falling might just save the forest from a fire.

There are flames that start eating away at the trees, though, and they illuminate the guy attacking Ranboo for a second before the snow puts them out. He’s wearing a mask that makes him look like a goblin, and a sort of padded, armor-looking suit, gleaming metallic green in the light. He’s standing on something like a glider, both feet firmly planted on the board.

Tommy pushes off the tree and shoots a web directly at the goblin.

He pulls the guy down for a moment before he hits the side of his hoverboard and seemingly powers it up more. Ranboo uses the distraction instantly and attacks him, closing the distance that let the goblin throw his grenades at them. Tommy swings up, using his momentum to propel himself over the pair, the goblin’s eyes tracing his movement while Ranboo swings at him.

The goblin’s head snaps back with the force of their punch, and Tommy lets himself fall back down before shooting another web at the engine of his hoverboard and pulling, hard. His spider-sense screams when the goblin throws something else at him, tumbling through the air with him, Ranboo close on their heels.

Pain explodes across Tommy’s side and shoulder, and he lets himself fall again, pulling on the goblin’s board with his entire weight and all the strength he has to offer. When the guy throws more – are those throwing stars –  at him, he lets go of the web and twists around them mid air, bracing himself for a hard fall.

He lands in a tree, cleanly breaks his already fucked ribs, and manages to stick to the trunk of the tree without sustaining more injuries than that. The goblin tumbles through the air for a couple more moments, then throws the same stars at Ranboo and hits his friend’s metal wings. Ranboo lets out a scream, distorted through their voice changer, and Tommy almost screams as well as they fall and the goblin throws another fuckin’ grenade at them.

That thing that’s been boiling in his blood since he got bitten by the spider comes back to life again, and Tommy does what he does best; he does something stupid.

He leaps into the air, shooting a web and using it to hurtle himself towards Ranboo’s falling form. Crashing into his friend, be wraps his arms tightly around them, tucking them below the metal of his wings and the apparatus on his back that powers them. His spider-sense gives him focus that he desperately needs. He twists, world dipping into slowmotion, and shoots another web at the grenade, jerking his arm to the side as they turn again.

The explosion isn’t far from their sides, but at least it doesn’t kill them.

They fall, curled into a ball of limbs and metal, and Tommy manages to find orientation mid-air, the moon above them and snow below them. He shoots a web and it almost pulls his arm straight out of its socket for a moment, but thank fuck, his webs are elastic and allow him and Ranboo to dangle just above the forest ground where the fall surely would’ve killed them.

Ranboo is clinging to him just as much as Tommy is clinging to them. They let go of him now, and Tommy lets them land on the ground and stumble back, metal stars stuck in their wings and effectively rendering them useless.

Tommy waves at them. “Hi,” he says.

“Watch out!” they yell.

Tommy’s reflexes barely save him from getting blown up, again. He uses another web to hurl himself up onto another tree, and the goblin flies towards him, sort of menacing and way too fast. He doesn’t have it in him to have a second reaction in time. The goblin basically grabs him off the tree, hand closing around Tommy’s throat (fucking hell, not again, the lizard was already back enough and that fucker had claws), and whisks him into the starry night.

“And who are you supposed to be?” he asks. Fuck them voice changers. Tommy barely understands him. The thing crawling beneath his skin wants out.

“Spider-Man,” he chokes out anyway. “Definitely not at your service.”

He punches the goblin in his kidneys, ignoring the padded armor, and thankfully, his unnatural strength manages to make the blow surprising. The goblin drops him, and Tommy catches himself on his board with his left hand, the electricity inside the engine suddenly palpable.

Doesn’t he have the ability to… shock things?

For once, Tommy allows himself to follow his instincts and reaches for the engine. As soon as his bare fingertips touch the metal, the electricity that’s been brewing up in his veins for weeks unloads, all at once, and his world goes white.

His ears are ringing.

He’s falling.

Then he hits something.

Dull pain echoes in his side and shoulder.

His ears are ringing.

He doesn’t know where he is.

The moon is far above him.

It’s kind of cold.

His ears are ringing.

Then, two familiar faces pop up in his line of sight. Everything gets a little clearer as Tommy comes back to himself just a bit. The moon is far above him, above trees and clouds and the two people leaning over him. He’s lying on the cold ground and snow is falling down on him. His head hurts like hell and the ringing in his ears finally subsides, leaving behind just a faint annoying sound.

“–don’t know what the fuck happened to him,” his best friend says, voice frightened. “I don’t know why he did that.”

“We can focus on that later.” Ranboo, now unmasked, shakes his head. They seem more calm than Tubbo. “We gotta figure out what to do with him now.”

“Owww,” Tommy says, which makes both of them jump. He twitches, but everything hurts and he’d actually rather not move right now. “What the fuck, man… jus’ wanted a nice little conversation and that’s wha’ I get. Typical.”

The two are staring at him. Then, Tubbo says, more surprised than frightened now, “You’re not dead.”

He blinks at them. “No?”

“That’s… good,” Tubbo flatly says.

He snorts. “Thanks for the celebration, Tubs.”

Both of them freeze now, but he’s too preoccupied with sitting up to realize that they do not fucking know who he is. He stems himself up on his elbows, and makes a faces when he realizes that he has throwing stars stuck in his side and his left shoulder. The one in his shoulder hurts more. He supposes it probably cut into bone. Ouchie.

Tommy grumbles a little as he pulls the one in his shoulder out, and it makes his vision black out a little again, but hey, he lives. He throws the star into the woods and repeats the process with the star stuck in his side, which comes out like it’s stuck in butter and not… his organs, probably. He has never been more glad that he heals fast.

His mask feels constricting, which makes Tommy realize that he’s still wearing it. He reaches up and fingers around at the hem of it for a moment before he manages to pull it off, taking a deep breath of fresh, cold air. His lungs burn. He feels very alive.

Tubbo and Ranboo stare at him, wide-eyed.

“Hi, you lot,” Tommy says. “Been a while.”

And he promptly passes the fuck out.