Annihilate

Schlatt flies off.

Tommy freezes right where he stands as the grenade he threw explodes into green gas and engulfs a good square ten meters of people. He instinctively holds his breath, but as soon as the gas makes contact with his skin, it starts to prickle. Suddenly, he feels as if the world around him slows down.

All around him, East Broadway breaks into chaos – people start screaming at the top of their lungs, and before he knows it, the smoke clears and he’s the only one left standing still in a mass panic. But he barely reacts to it.

People run to all sides as Schlatt keeps throwing gas at the crowds. Tommy feels as if he’s underwater – everything is still moving really slowly, and he can only distantly hear the screaming. He blinks, dazed, and looks at the people around him.

They’re on the ground, writhing as if in pain. The realization of what is actually happening comes to him too slow. Schlatt threw whatever he used to make the lizard at them, or at least a buffered version of it. Their skin turns a grayish green before his eyes, and their screams for help turn into wordless roaring.

Tommy blinks. He looks down at his own arms and sees the same grayish tint to his skin, and strange scale-ish forms moving underneath it – as if the gas is trying to rework his DNA but his body is rejecting it.

For the first time in a while, he thanks fuck for that spider bite.

His spider-sense breaks through his daze. Just in time, his ears unclog to hear Ranboo’s warning shout, and he looks up seconds before Schlatt grabs his arm and rips him off the ground.

The world turns upside-down, and Tommy inhales fresh air that clears his mind. He kicks out with his legs and manages to get leverage on the side of Schlatt’s glider, trying to tear his arm out of his grip.

“You bastard,” Schlatt hisses at him, voice distorted but recognizable still, “thought you’d get away with breaking into my company and lying to my face, huh?”

“Shoulda listened to your own advice,” Tommy yelps, “don’t trust anyone except yourself!”

He kicks off of the glider with all the strength he has and tears himself out of Schlatt’s iron grip. In free fall, he almost sheds a tear of happiness – or maybe that’s just the wind in his eyes. He shoots a web blindly and lets himself fall, looking towards the ground to see dozens of lizard-looking people chasing after the normal people crowds.

Tommy’s heart hammers in his chest. He reaches for his ear, where a fancy earpiece Ranboo and Tubbo gave to him resides, and switches it on. “Tubbo!” he yells as he dodges the second gen lizards. “TUBBO!”

“Yes! I’m here!” Tubbo yells back through his earpiece, almost deafening him. “What the hell is that?”

Tommy turns mid-air and finds Schlatt on his heels, with throwing stars in both hands. He lets himself plummet and decides to zig-zag it out. “It’s some sorta gas, I’m guessing a watered-down version of what he used on Sapnap! Tubbo, I need you to go to Oscorp.”

“What? Why?”

“I have an antidote,” Tommy says, narrowly avoiding a throwing star. “Bring it over there, make a gas out of it and get it to law enforcement!”

“The– why do I have to do that? I want to stay here!”

“The gas didn’t do jack shit to me, I’m immune. Ranboo’s in the air. You’re neither of those things.”

“Fuck you, Tommy,” Tubbo suddenly bites out. “You have no idea what this fight means to me.”

“I kinda do, though,” Tommy says, “I know you want to kill your dad. He deserves it, too. He’s an abusive drunk at best and a psychopathic murderer at worst, and he did you wrong in a million ways. I know that, Tubs. But I need you to do what I say right now and save the city from involuntary reptilianism while Ranboo and I distract him. You know the company, you know the tech. You’re the only one I trust with this. Okay?”

A moment of silence, then Tubbo mutters, “Okay. Yeah.”

“Good?”

“Good.”

“Perfect,” he says, swinging over the reptiles. “Meet me at Canal Street Station–”

Sharp pain explodes across Tommy’s calf and he lets out a shout of surprise, letting go of his web mid-air. He scrambles to get ahold of it again, but for once, the laws of physics refuse to bend to his will, and he basically face-plants into a building’s window and crashes through the glass.

He smashes into furniture, topples over a desk – is this an office building? Really? – and skids across the floor with his momentum, landing in glass shards. When he fights himself to his feet, the throwing star in his calf smarting, he finds himself facing a whole new problem.

The antidote is a puddle of blue liquid on the ground, and he pulls off his lanyard and curses at the broken glass that held it.

“Tommy? Tommy!”

Tubbo’s static-y voice comes out of the now on the floor earpiece, panicked. He picks it up and sticks it back in his ear.

“Okay,” he presses out, “new plan. You got your phone with you?”

“Yeah? Are you–”

“I’m gonna dictate the formula to you. Go to Canal Street Station and take the subway to Oscorp.”

“Tommy,” Tubbo says, warning in his voice. “If you get this wrong…”

“I know,” he cuts him off. “I’m not gonna get it wrong.”

A moment of silence, then Tubbo says, “Fine. Tell me.”

At the same time, Ranboo swipes down from the heavens and punches Schlatt in the face. Tubbo lent them one of his gauntlets, and the shockwave is enough to send Schlatt flying backwards a couple of yards. Ranboo steers back.

They need to keep Schlatt in front of them. Their wings are slow in comparison to his glider.

“Stay right where you are,” they say, a clear warning in their voice.

“I thought you were on my side of the law, not gonna lie,” Schlatt muses. “But I guess you’re more worried about helping your friend. Right, Ranboo?”

“Why does it not surprise me that you know who I am,” they sigh. They circle each other, but Ranboo keeps their hand balled into a fist firmly. They got caught off-guard last time they fought Schlatt. That won’t happen again.

“You three are always huddled together. The height also kind of gave it away. You’re a pest, you know that?”

“And you’re out of your goddamn mind,” Ranboo says, “you need to come the hell down. I don’t know what your endgame here is, but turning civilians into lizards and trying to kill Tommy isn’t going to get you points with… anyone, really.”

“I’ve got nothing to lose, kid.” He pulls a grenade out of his belt and Ranboo tenses. “My endgame is you three dead – so that when I inevitably die, I take my useless son, that genetically altered freak posing as a human and you with me.”

“Okay,” they say through gritted teeth. “I originally wanted to try reasoning with you, but you lost me when you started insulting my friends.”

Faster than they can react, Schlatt throws a grenade at them. Ranboo manages to barely dodge, swinging at Schlatt when he comes for them. Their punch connects with Schlatt’s glider and the gauntlet’s shockwave hurls him away from them, blessedly.

The grenade explodes just a few feet away from them, and the blast sends them reeling as their sight blacks out for a second and the explosion makes their ears ring. Ranboo falls for a moment, uselessly flapping their wings as they struggle to regain their balance.

Out of literal nowhere, Tommy collides with them, and they know that because they feel a strong arm wrap around their waist and then go zoomin’, Tommy’s web pulling them away from Schlatt.

At the highest point of their swinging curve, he lets go. Ranboo only doesn’t stumble when they land on the building in front of them because Tommy holds them upright. “You okay?” they very faintly hear him ask through the ringing in their ears.

They nod even though they definitely aren’t, holding onto his arm. “Where’s Tubbo?”

“I sent him on a mission to Oscorp. He’s getting the antidote to the lizard gas,” Tommy says. Ranboo is more reading his lips than actually hearing him, but it’s fine, they think. “Ran, we need to work together. I’m fast, you got the gauntlet. Do you think you can do this?”

Ranboo doesn’t, but they nod anyway. “I got you,” they say, “let’s punch his lights out. The motherfucker certainly deserves it.”

Tommy grins at them. Ranboo startles when they see that his pupils are slits, like a reptile’s. It kind of enhances the electric blue of his eyes further and makes it look even more unnatural. Schlatt’s voice echoes in their ears – that genetically altered freak posing as a human.

What a terrible descriptor for the absolute scientific marvel that is his best friend. Everything that Schlatt might find freakish about Tommy is absolutely beautiful in Ranboo’s books.

They grab him by the arm. “You got hit by the gas?”

“Yeah, I was in the crowd,” Tommy says. “I think I’m sorta immune, though. It just kind of messes with my skin and shit. Come on now. We gotta move.”

His nonchalance is admirable, Ranboo thinks. Everything about him is admirable. The way he held out under this pressure so long and did it mostly on his own too is so goddamn crazy admirable.

They have to smile. “Tommy,” they say, “I’m so glad you’re talking to us again.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tommy waves his hand around dismissively, but his soft smile betrays him. “I know. I’d miss me too if I were you.”

Then, his eyes widen, and he tackles Ranboo. 

They remember the field trip to Oscorp suddenly, and the way Dream explained the special abilities of spiders they were researching. Some displayed an ability to detect danger that bordered on precognition. Spider-sense, huh?

The roof the two of them were just standing on explodes, and they scream as they suddenly go into free fall while Tommy lets out a sound that’s distinctly more akin to laughter. The by now familiar thwip of his webs getting shot kind of buffers their fear though, and lo and behold, Tommy wraps an arm around them and they swing, narrowly missing the ground.

Ranboo has no idea how their best friend can sustain this swinging bullshit, because they know for sure it’s giving them a fucking heart attack every time Tommy pulls them into doing it.

They zoom towards Schlatt, and Tommy lets go of them at the highest point of their curve again. Ranboo is ready this time and spreads their wings, using their span to launch themselves right at Schlatt.

This is where it ends.

This is teamwork, innit?

Tommy shoots a web and yanks himself around Schlatt, hurtling through the air at breakneck speed. His focus tunnels in on the glider – he carefully rubs his fingertips together, testing the electricity he’s been conjuring up. Ranboo rams their gauntlet into Schlatt’s padded goblin armor as hard as they can, sending him flying back. Tommy comes from the opposite direction and attaches himself to his glider with spider-stickiness.

His last fight with Schlatt taught him well, didn’t it? Take out the damn glider and he doesn’t have the air and speed advantage anymore. He concentrates and thinks of electricity building on the tips of his fingers.

Sparks fly as the glider overloads, and Tommy allows himself a grin before he pushes himself off the thing and curls himself into a ball mid-fall. Ranboo breaks away from Schlatt as well, wings splaying wide.

As he falls, Tommy reaches out to shoot two webs and promptly connect them. He holds onto the string he created and uses his legs to twist himself in a circle and shoot out more webs, effectively creating a net. Seconds after he lets go of it and lets himself fall the rest of the way down, Schlatt lands in the net and bounces back up, the glider blowing up a couple feet away. Ranboo has him in a tight grip instantly, holding his arms behind his back in an armlock.

Tommy’s earpiece crackles. “Ey,” Tubbo says into his ear, “me and Dream developed the antidote.”

“Dream and me,” he corrects breathlessly, looking around. The street is pretty much deserted.

“Fuck off. We’re gonna get it to the cops and shit. Sapnap’s here, by the way.”

“He is?” Tommy is surprised at that. “Is he okay?”

“He asked me the same question about you.”

Tommy’s breath catches in his throat for a moment. He heard what Schlatt said to Ranboo up in the air. That genetically altered freak posing as a human. And Sapnap, after everything, is asking if he’s okay?

“I’m fine,” he says automatically. “I’m–”

He steps on a grenade.

The world explodes in green, and Tommy full-on inhales it this time. Pain stings in his abdomen and chest, his heart aching like he’s drunk fifty Red Bull, and he doubles over and collapses. Curling into himself, he retches, but the pain and nausea that overcomes him doesn’t stop.

He looks at his hands, but his skin doesn’t get any more gray than it did before. He’s just in pain, as it seems. Pain that gets stronger with every second, stabbing into his chest and stomach. Really fucking peachy. Just what he needed.

At least he has Tubbo and Ranboo to give him the antidote now. But will it cure his spider-powers too? If he curls up here and gets the antidote, will he wake up a normal kid again?

That’s the point where Tommy, for the first time since he was bitten, thinks, But I want to keep this. I want to stay this way. I choose to be a scientific mishaps and an abnormal freak and an abomination. I don’t want a normal life anyway.

Painfully, he croaks, “Help,” and passes the fuck out.

The fight between the the Vulture, Spider-Man and the Green Goblin results in dozens of casualties. Civilians that get hit by parts of buildings that Schlatt blows up, that are trampled to death in the mass panic, that get killed by the lizard mutants. Schlatt Osborn is arrested and is currently awaiting trial.

Dream Osborn takes over the family company. He and his younger brother, as well as a good number of their employees, issue multiple statements where they lay down a clean slate and do away with the crimes of their father. Three USB drives help evidence their claims – one from an older brother who lies in a cold grave, and two from a younger brother that avenged him. The names of Spider-Man and the Vulture are cleared as Dream clearly states that the two vigilantes were essential in finding the cure for the lizard mutants and saving the city from the Green Goblin, containing the damage he left to a minimum.

Ranboo hands over Schlatt to the police and fishes an unconscious Tommy out of the last bit of gas that the man dropped on him. They get him to Oscorp, where Tommy is gassed a second time – with the antidote – and wakes up with bleary but normal eyes again. Later, Ranboo ends up making themselves new, sleeker wings that let them turn faster.

Tubbo is acclaimed as a hero by the press, as he was the one that developed the antidote fully. No one will ever call him useless or unwanted again, Dream will make sure of that. And even though he was hellbent on killing his father, he thinks this might even be better. Making him watch as Tubbo rises beyond his stupid expectations and paves his own way. Simultaneously, the Shocker kind of disappears. Some news outlets theorize that he was one of the civilian casualties in the fight, but Schlatt and only Schlatt knows that the reason why Tubbo turned to vigilantism is gone and, therefore, so is his vigilante persona.

Wilbur and Techno sit huddled together on their couch as the explosions go off and the screaming sounds through the streets. They watch Tommy swing on the live news and anxiously wait for his return. When Tommy knocks on the door to their apartment way after midnight, he falls into their arms without a single word. He’s much too tired to talk, but his brothers sit and hold him until Tommy mutters that it feels good to be home again.

Phil does end up signing Tommy up for therapy, and boxing so he can get his restless energy out. He starts looking for a new job and eventually ends up working in a variety theatre three times a week. He proposes to Tommy that he stops his Spider-Man gig.

Charlie quits his job at Oscorp and starts working for a certain Quackity Nevadas.

Sam Nook finds that someone made a mess of his classroom again and gets a slight suspicion.

Tommy keeps the gig, even though it makes his dad worry about him. They fight over patrol time until Ranboo cuts in and promises to make sure they’re always with him when he goes out. Tommy makes himself a new suit and goes out without Ranboo anyway, because he thinks he’s irreversibly fallen in love with free fall. And more than that – he’s fallen in love with protecting the city, and fighting crime becomes his favorite pastime.

He has his issues, and he’s probably always going to have them. He’s probably always going to wake up screaming from horrible nightmares of turning into a lizard and being experimented on and seeing his loved ones die, over and over. He’s probably never going to have any semblance of normalcy in his life, ever again. (He still needs to tell Tubbo why Schlatt injected himself with that serum, but he keeps telling himself that it can wait.)

But honestly, who wants normal anyway?

Tommy is Spider-Man. Normal is the last word he’d use to describe himself, and finally, he’s grown to accept that.