Chapter Text
Tommy Crafts considers himself to be pretty normal, but when you live with 3 of the most dangerous villains in the world, the bar is pretty low
Alright, Tommy might not be the most ordinary person in the world, but he doesn’t have anyone to see it anyways, because he can’t have friends, ‘staying hidden’ and all that jazz
It’s a fucking stupid rule. Actually, Tommy is sure that his family’s brains had stopped working 12 years ago when-
When his mother died.
No, no no! He is not having flashbacks, because he is in control of his mind!
Goddammit, no he isn’t.
“It’s not your fault,” She smiled,
She lied, everyone in the world blames him. It’s all his fault. It’s his fault his family hates him, his fault his brothers don’t care, his fault his father has to mourn the love of his life, his fault that his family is so cruel to the world.
It’s his fault his mother is dead.
Yep, he’s spiralling.
He squeezes his eyes shut, it doesn’t work.
Raining, his mum’s coat clutched tightly in his fists. Staying next to her on the cold granite until authorities arrived,tears and rain indistinguishable from one another —
A knock at the door startles him out of his memories
He silently hopes that its just someone telling him that dinner is early - it isn't, he knows, but one can only hope.
He walks over to the door, the fake wood floor cold under his feet, and opens it, he is greeted by Technoblade— possibly the most ruthless and bloodthirsty villain to ever walk this earth— leaning on his doorframe.
The villain is, unfortunately, also his brother, even if neither consider the other as one.
“Yes?” Tommy asks, like the stranger he is.
“We’re going on a mission, don't leave” He replies with his usual deadpan tone.
That's odd for two reasons; a) because, even though not being able to leave wasn't unheard of , he was usually allowed to go out, even when no one was home, (they have a lot of servants and security, all equally useless) and b) because they normally send one of the aforementioned servants to inform him of this.
“And why not?” he replies, no matter how scared of someone Tommy could be, he wouldn't ever show it, especially not to his ‘family’.
Technoblade sighs, clearly he didn't want to be interacting with Tommy at all “Why does it matter?”.
“Because I can't leave the house”.
“So?”.
“So, I want to know why I can't leave the fucking house”.
The older man looks even more irritated now, he pinches the bridge of his nose “Just don't leave the damn house, Tommy”.
Tommy narrows his eyes, “And what if I do?”.
If looks could kill, Tommy was sure he would drop dead this moment— but they didn't, so he stood with narrow eyes and a facade of nonchalance.
Technoblade takes a step closer “Do you really want to know that, Tommy?” his voice is dangerously low.
Now, Tommy considers himself pretty tall, being 6’3, but his ‘brother’ towers over him anyway, so Tommy falters.
The teen scowls and turns away, arms crossed, “Why are you even gracing me with your presence anyway?”, He mocks, trying to change the subject.
“It’s imperative that you do not leave, Tommy” The pink-haired man says, obviously not falling for it.
“Fine, I won't.” the blonde huffs
That was a lie, but Technoblade didn’t know that.
He huffs, “Good” and slams the door shut.
Tommy rolls his eyes, even though secretly his heart was beating faster than it should be - its not like it's thundering like how it is when Wilbur comes around - but its still noticeably faster.
No matter — he’s still going to patrol, they won’t notice anyway.
He goes back over to his bed and stares out the window like he was doing before, it’s barely 6 pm, he has time.
Even though his father, Phil (Or the ‘Azrael', if you prefer) and his brother, Hades, have more kills than Wilbur, Echo is the most feared villain, because he wouldn't fight so much as he would torture his victims mercilessly and leave them alive to tell the story, and suffer the memories.
Wilbur’s actual villain name is Puppetmaster, but only lackeys and some select heroes call him that. Even Wilbur himself likes the name Echo more, which he got called by civilians when he was still a lone wolf, when Tommy wasn’t even born.
Tommy puts on his vigilante gear after locking the door again. He has a mostly black hoodie with red painting the hood and going down to just under his shoulders, matching black and red pants with many hidden pockets, a black bandana mask that covers the bottom half of his face, and a red blindfold that covers his eyes, he can see through it thanks to some kind of witchery he didn’t want to question.
He glances at the wall clock, 6:10, he normally patrols later, 6:30 or 7:00 -ish, but it doesn’t reallly matter, he is a vigilante more out of spite than anything else, leaving 10 minutes after he got told not to leave would be a very ‘Him thing to do’ (as Endstone would say)
Endstone and Jupiter are vigilantes that Tommy sees almost every time he patrols, they are legally, and platonicly, married, because they commited marriage fraud, but honestly, fuck the government anyway.
He walks over to the floor-to-ceiling windows and opens one, he looks down. All the bedrooms in the house are upstairs. He doesn’t see any guards, useless fucks, they never guard this part of the house for too long.
He sits on the weirdly strong window frame, looking over his shoulder incase he forgot anything, he doesn’t see anything so looks back to the evening sky, the silhouettes of the buildings reaching out to touch the clouds, and the skyscrapers above them. He takes in a breath.
Tommy jumps.
***
Tommy soars through the rooftops with practiced ease, pushing his feet off ledges to jump from building to building. He always hated the cold, but Tommy loves the wind, the way he feels like he’s flying every time he encountered a big jump, the way people looked at him with admiration instead of disgust.
He takes care of the occasional mugger or two, and intercepts a drug deal. He stumbles upon two robbers preparing to rob a convenience store and makes quick work of them. Once he’s done hancuffing them with his zip-tyes, he hears someone running by, the sound comes from a little ahead where the alleyway crosses another one, he peeks out in the direction the person came from and spots a black-cloaked figure running, the figure makes a sharp turn into another alley.
Letting his curiosity get the better of him, he chases after the figure. The figure looks back, Tommy can make out tinted visors that cover only his eyes, what is this? Cyberpunk? And a black cloth not too different from Tommy's own used to cover his mouth. The figure runs faster, Tommy climbs a rooftop and chases from there.
After a while, the walmart Darth Vader thinks that he gave up, and stops to catch their breath. Tommy leaps down from where he was standing, and pins the cloaked figure to the ground. The aspiring Dark Lord yells out in surprise.
“Who are you and what did you do?” Tommy asks calmly, the voice changer that he totally didn't steal from one of the lackeys lowered his voice by an octave or two.
“Nothing! I’m innocent!” The Darth Vader wannabe shouted, Tommy (who originally had both hands on the man’s back) shifted one to press the man’s head further down.
“Then why did you run?”
The figure went silent, and Tommy could practically hear the argument he was having with himself
“If i tell you, will you let me go?”
“Yeah” Tommy lies, not expecting to be told the truth.
“I deal weapons, the police showed up to my latest deal, so I ran. Then you started following me, and I panicked. Now let me go.” Cloak-dude explained hurriedly
Tommy hums, pretending to think about it, “No, I don’t think i will”
“You said you would let me go!” The man pleaded
“Oh you sweet, summer child, i’m a vigilante that you just met! did you really think I was telling the truth?” Tommy explained, somewhat dissapointed that the man believed him. He reaches for a zip tye.
The pitiful Darth Vader uses what is surely the last of his energy to roll over and knock Tommy onto the pavement underneath. Tommy gets to his feet and dodges a punch, he kicks him in the chest and Cloak-dude catches himself by gripping the wall on his right, Tommy dodges another punch and calls on his powers. The man clutches his head as Tommy gingerly approaches.
Cloak-man’s hand reaches out to his bleeding nose —a result of Tommy’s powers, no doubt— and, in a raspy voice, cries out, “What did you do to me?”
“Headache powers, big man” Tommy replies as he Zip tye’s the man’s wrists to a pole.
Inducing Headaches, a funny power that was not so funny to be used on, or to have, for that matter. The headaches could last up to days as dull throbbing in your head, Tommy got them too, if he used his powers too much —or if he soothed someone else’s headache, but he didn’t do that much.
The man blacks out, one of the many defensive reactions the brain could have to his powers. Just as Tommy was about to leave, a glint of something caught his eye.
He walks forward and grasps it, a grappling hook, now there's something interesting!
Listen, Tommy’s no thief, but he didn't want to enable the escape of the dangerous weapon dealer, did he?
So he took it and left.
Tommy is on a rooftop when he decides to try to use the grappling hook, so he latches onto a building, and before he knows it, he’s zooming across the sky, as a reflex, he pulls the grappling line back before he can get to the other rooftop.
a Tommy soars.
Tommy was flying.
And then Tommy was crashing onto a rooftop.
Tommy didn’t crash hard and recovers fairly easily, he realizes decides that that was the stupidest and most dangerous thing he could've done with a grappling hook. He continues on his patrol like nothing happened, he’ll watch a YouTube tutorial on that later.
***
Tommy was a pretty well-known vigilante, so when people saw his iconic mask and blindfold, they knew they would be safe –unless they were criminals, then they’d be less safe. He didn’t name himself, but the public calls him Theseus, its a stupid fucking name, the public is stupid, how come the other vigilantes have cool names like Jupiter or Monarch and he has fucking Theseus. You fall off a roof one time and now your name is Theseus stupid goddamn greek heroes.
(Tommy will never admit that he only hates his name because it's what Technoblade would have called him..)
Tommy jumps up onto the rooftop of an abandoned apartment building, it has tiny ledges on the sides, someone could easily trip over that, but it’s his go-to resting spot, before he starts patrolling Sector 5 he sits on the ledge for a bit and enjoys the breeze. (there's always a breeze here, Tommy didn’t know how or why, but he appreciates it)
He sighs as he sits on the ledge, his feet dangling over what was probably a 6 or 7 storey building, it was relatively small, but if he fell from it, he would probably die. Tommy doesn’t know when he started mentally measuring that, but he guessed it was around the time he did fall down one.
He hears footseps.
Before Tommy can turn around, he hears it.
“Hello, Theseus”
A shiver crawls up his spine as he looks over his shoulder, please be wrong, please be wrong
He’s not.
It's Echo