Chapter Text
23 Years Ago
Etho
“So that is the Feather Foots, the Collectors, the Skylights, the various Depths organizations…and even a promise not to get involved from the Ghast clans and Wardens,” Doc said as he checked items off the list within his archival eye, making a little ticking motion with his hand as he did so.
Etho was perched on the metal table of their cave bunker, watching him, head tilting curiously.
It had been a few weeks since the fight with ‘Net, and in that time, they’d been in a mad scramble to keep everything together.
“You got all of those agreements?” Etho asked, and Doc nodded.
“And Wels.”
“Wels, huh? Working hard, there, buddy?” The fox hybrid looked behind him, where Wels was sitting in one of the chairs, legs kicked up on the table, arms folded.
He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t get used to it.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Oh, you know, it’s nothing crazy! just…establishing a new order in the only place we’ve ever lived and trying to overhaul from the foundations the entire way things are done while overthrowing the pseudo-government in the process.” Cleo remarked flatly from where she stood to the other side of the table.
It was quiet for a long moment.
Bdubs spun his top on the little concave arena Wels had blown into the floor for him. It whirred along for a bit, then tittered to a stop. He looked up.
“Huh? S’it a bad thing?”
Wels let out a rather exasperated sigh and rolled his head back to stare at the ceiling.
“Bad? Nah. A massive problem? Well, probably. But that’s neither here nor there.”
“Actually, it’s here. It’s very much here.” Etho muttered as he pulled one knee up to his chest, single functional eye dragging around the room at their ragtag band of misfits.
Who somehow took over the Depths.
So far, people were yielding to him. It was still a dance every day to make sure no one stabbed him in the back, but so far, everyone seemed to be willing to play ball.
For now.
Etho swallowed and reached up to hook one paw-like finger into the edge of his black gaiter mask, tugging at it awkwardly.
“Sooo…next is what?”
“Go time,” Doc replied flatly.
Etho stiffened, his tail flaring out straight back. “W-What!? Already!? But it’s barely been a few weeks since we got control of the Depths, and there’s still so many people we need to talk to, and…!”
“If we wait much longer, the Labs will get involved,” Doc said gravely.
Silence fell again.
This time, it was broken by the grinding of the slab sealing off the cave rising up.
Sabbie ducked underneath it, straightening up as it slammed down again. Her one set of tiny head wings fluttered, and she raked her fingers back through blonde streaked fly-aways from her messy knot of hair.
Her larger wings upon her back, grayish and dirty, folded in behind her. “Hey.” She greeted.
“Welcome back. How’s things with the Feather Foots?”
“Eh…mostly fine? We purged out a lot of the folks who were the biggest problem with the Skylights cask of cloud-dust…the ones who are felt are either cowards or those who had to keep their heads down.”
She folded her arms over her blue ribbed tightly fit top. “Not ideal…but everything seems to be settling well enough.”
“That’s good to hear.” Etho mumbled as he hopped down from his perch on the metal table and approached the avian.
“Thanks for headed that up.”
“I mean, they’re still my people. I just hope this time we can get the colony right.” Sabbie replied with a shrug, her eyes dodging left.
“Anyway.” Doc cut in again as he walked up to Etho from behind, his long stride eating up the expanse of stone floor between them.
“…I wish it were not the case. I wish we could have more time. But…I was able to pick up some of the dispatches the Near-Surface tried to send down here before they realized they’d lost control…if we hesitate much longer we lose our advantage. From what I’ve picked up, the former head of the wardship program is running things now.”
Cleo shuddered. “Ugh...that guy?”
Doc nodded. “Yes. I only ever heard the Director refer to him as ‘Assistant.’ So I could not tell you his name. But he is…a problem.”
“I’ll say.” The zombie mutant mumbled, shaking their head.
“S’that the guy who gave you the no-stars leg?” Bdubs called from where he played, and Cleo snorted.
She walked around the table and over to him, her augmented leg, now long since repaired by Doc to function properly, thunked on the stone louder than her natural one.
They ruffled the little glare mutant's hair with a wry smile. “That’s right, the no-good mess of a leg that Doc had to fix. He was the one who helped give it to me. He helped with a lot of right nasty stuff.”
“Ahhh!” Bdubs stood up and latched his arms around Cleo’s waist rather fiercely.
“T-That’s bad, that’s…real bad! I don’t like that! You shouldn’t go up there!”
“Not like I’d even be much use on the front lines, Bdubs…” Cleo hummed, though Etho saw in their eyes a flicker of warmth, at how touched they were by the instant protective reaction.
“…do we even have a plan? How are we getting up there? How are we getting in there? What do we do if we get in there?” Wels pulled his boots down from where he’d had them propped up on the table and leaned his elbows forward onto the edge instead.
“Not if! When!” Etho whined lamely, planting one hand to his hip as he glared weakly over his shoulder at Wels.
Even if he knew Wels was, unfortunately, the most realistic one.
It’s a big if. Honestly…maybe we should stop here. We can secure the Depths. Hold it. Make it better. Sure, maybe we won’t be able to access the surface, but the Depths and Mid-Levels Labs Depots all had a lot of supplies and farms to maintain those stocks…it won’t be lavish…but it’d be better than we ever had…
“Etho is right. When.”
Doc’s voice cut across the doubt that was flooding his boyfriend's brain. The towering creeper mutant's shoulders drew back tall as he loosely curled his hands into fists.
“We have to do this. It is the only way up.”
Up.
Etho gazed up at Doc with a harsh edge developing sharply within his chest.
Up to the high road.
Where else would that road be than up there?
With a route that would lead, in a winding bloody agonizing path…to blue skies and sunshine.
Etho swallowed hard. “Yeah.” He said softly, before he cleared his throat once and nodded harder. “Yeah, yeah! You’re right as always, sweetheart.”
Doc sputtered. “W-Well, that is not…I was not fishing for compliments with that!”
“But you did catch one.”
“Enough flirting, you’ll make me vomit,” Cleo muttered.
Sabbie stepped further into the cave. “As far as getting us up there…I have a few ideas.” Her eyes were hardened with resolve.
That same look was slowly coming across all of them as they knew.
They knew.
This is the only way.
“Great. As for getting in…I also have a plan. With a contact I made in the mid-levels, from the Burrowby clan.”
Etho furrowed his brow. “And when the hell did you do that?”
“I did not. Wels did.”
Etho let out a dry bark of laughter and turned toward the warden mutant whose pale skin, fractured with matte black lines like broken pottery, turned pink as he snapped his nose up.
“W-Well, I was already up there!”
The fox hybrid's tail bobbed with amusement as his friend's embarrassment before he turned his gaze up again.
Back onto Doc’s face.
“And once we’re in?”
Doc sighed. “That…will be the most complicated part.”
“Oh?”
“The central computer of the entire under-city is in the Near-Surface main labs. If I can connect with my archival eye to that computer…even if we must retreat after that…I will control the entire city. They will not be able to flush me from the system because…”
He raised his metal arm to tap at the temple of his glowing red metal eye, wired directly into his brain and easily one of the greatest achievements of bio-tech any of them had ever seen.
“…I was built of the system.”
Etho made a small concerned noise. “Sweetheart, you make it sound an awful lot like you’re planning to go running into a hostile Labs branch ten times worse than the dinky one we have down here in the Depths.”
“Correct. That is exactly what I intend to do. And after you decided to go pick a fight with a crazy cloud-dust addicted mobster, I do not think you are allowed to scold me.” Doc replied, hinging at his hips a bit to lean over Etho with a raised eyebrow.
Etho’s ears flattened from the recrimination. “…hnn…but you’re not a fighter.”
“I do not need to be. This is why all other aspects of the plan are so crucial. If we time this all right, I will not have to fight.”
“Doc, wherever it is you’re going, I’m going with you.”
“You are our leader.”
Etho took a stutter step back at the intensity of Doc’s tone. The gallows humor way in which they often discussed what they were doing fell away as he watched that jawline he’d run his fingers down, his lips upon, set hard.
“…you have to be at the front. Everyone will scatter unless you are.”
“Who’s everyone!?” Etho demanded, and Doc shrugged.
“Whoever puts out their hand.”
“Oh, great plan, let’s count on the people of the Depths and Mid-Levels being selfless and charitable,” Cleo commented with a roll of her eyes, and Doc shook his head.
“No, they are all selfish. Very selfish. So let me ask you…are we not all selfish, too?”
“We’re all fighting for ourselves,” Sabbie said from where she stood just within the now-sealed slab of the entrance.
“I’m selfish. I got you all involved because I’m selfish. Because I’m desperate.”
“Were desperate.” Wels hummed.
Sabbie’s eyes flashed defensively. “Am desperate. If you think I was just trying to kill my brother for control of the Feather Foots, you clearly weren’t paying attention.” She snapped. Wels put his hands up in surrender.
Doc pressed his lips into a thin line, his weight shifting anxiously…small tells Etho knew, because he’d known this man so deeply, even if they were barely able to call themselves ‘men’.
Maybe Etho wasn’t even able, yet.
Seventeen.
Nineteen.
And what the hell are we?
Lovers on the edge of a world that was trying to crumple, while they fought to smooth it all out. Find a new way to lay out the lines, a way that would hurt less, save more.
“If they are as selfish as us, they will want as we do,” Doc said quietly.
The room felt heavy. The air felt thick.
“…I trust you,” Etho said, even as he dropped his gaze to the toes of his worn-out boots.
“We will try. And maybe we will not make it. But that…”
Doc dropped his hands to slap against his upper legs, his shoulders sagging as if to release the weight of responsibility heaped upon them by circumstances they hadn’t chosen, and yet…
Well…
…didn’t they chose to fight it, after all?
“...that…is about as much as we can do.”
23 Years Later
Tango
“STREEECH, JIM!” Grian cheered from where Jimmy was beating his wings rather pitifully, pressing up against the bars of the gutter line that was clear.
Clear through to the blue sky, shards of modern glass, a tilted view of the city above.
“I’m trying!” Jimmy whined back, kicking his legs. He had his phone in one hand and was trying to reach through the gutter line, which wasn’t aligned with street level but with a gap in the rock several feet below a larger drainage area.
It wasn’t that far.
It wasn’t that far.
“N-No!” Jimmy pulled his arm back and dropped to the cave floor, staggering back a step to catch his balance.
He checked his phone. “Nope…nothing came through.”
“Uggh, we’re still too far down!” Grian whined, stomping his foot a few times.
Tango watched the entire debacle from behind. Zed was eagerly working on the bedrock breaker, adjusting the piston timing to ensure it struck at the same moment as the glamor charge.
Pearl shook her head. “What if…what if we put it on a stick?”
“Yeah! A reeeeeal long stick!”
“And poke my phone above ground!? What if someone sees it!? We don’t want anyone to realize we’ve broken back above, guys!” Jimmy wailed as the twins began comparing arm lengths to try and decide how long a stick would need to be.
“Any luck, little ones?”
The petite blaze born looked over his shoulder just in time to see Doc clamber over into the chamber.
“How did you get up here?”
“Got a lift from one of the lab techs.”
“Pix!” Tango exclaimed as the phantom mutant also shuffled his way into the cave over the rise in the floor. He adjusted his glasses as he looked at the chaos zone of machinery and wiring, chipped stone, and bickering.
“Ah…so this is the big secret, is it?” He asked as he walked into the cave.
Lifted his chin to see the sky through the gutter line, and let out a long suffering sigh.
“So close yet so far.” He said, rather in a matter-of-fact tone, as he slid his hands into the pockets of his labs blazer.
“Why did you bring me up here?” He asked, turning to Doc.
The creeper mutant made a low hum in his throat. “You are the expert on the rail cart system…which means you know more than anyone about where the lines run. I wanted you to see the machine in person so you could advise on the best former rift locations to begin construction on new ones.”
“We’re gonna bust out through a bigger rift? Yes!” Grian pumped his fist.
“And with the machine's adjustments, we’ll be able to pull it off!” Pearl lent, hope glowing bright in her eyes, two sets of tiny raven black wings fluttering from either side of her head.
Pix was silent for a moment, bringing a hand to his chin to stroke at his brown facial hair. Then he looked up at the device and made a concerned noise in the back of his throat.
“Have you thought about what happens if any of the former rift locations are compromised?”
The excitement in the room suddenly felt frozen.
Tango’s trio of blaze-rods stuttered as he took a step forward. “W-Well, so what if they are? I-I mean…”
Pix’s eyes flashed. “If they are, that means we show our hand. We bust up in a spot where the humans have set up anything new, or maybe even just in the view of some passerby, and we destroy everything.”
“I…had not considered that,” Doc said, shifting his weight onto his heels and folding his arms.
“Hmm…this is an issue. Before, we were constantly monitoring and protecting the rifts in use with glamor sealed doorways, guard shifts at the big stations, and routine check-ins…while it is unlikely the humans made it through any of those glamor locks…it is not…impossible.”
“And when we’re as vulnerable as we already are? We can’t take that risk. Not without info from topside.” Pix concluded.
The avian trio, who had previously been so pumped up, all deflated. Tango saw Grian’s dark eyes momentarily squeeze shut as he pressed thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. Pearl’s raven black wings sagged on his back as her shoulders slumped, and Jimmy’s eyes brightened with tears before he rapidly scrubbed them away.
Tango looked over his shoulder at Zed, who had paused in his work on the machine. His pale blonde hair was in a messy ponytail, his amethyst eyes flooded with concern. He straightened back a bit, toes of his sneakers making a scritch-scritch on the stone.
Tango’s flares sputtered, his blaze-rods stuttered.
“W-Well, there has to be a way we can make a connection to topside!”
“We will need to work on signal extenders, but the issue is that we would need the ability to reconnect to the over-city networks. Those were all hardwired through to modems in the Near-Surface to work on our tech.” Doc said, his expression also hardening as he realized that, despite this breakthrough, despite the patch of sunlight warming the stone floors before them, freedom was still so far.
Tango’s hands fisted so hard he felt his claws pressing in.
I have him back.
Zed. His beloved. His sun in a world where he’d never known what it was like to bathe in the golden rays. The person who saw him, teeth and claws and flares…and loved him.
Loved all the parts of him. Adored them in a way Tango felt so deeply it was like a gash within his soul when they were torn apart.
And maybe he’d caused it. Maybe he’d chosen it, out of some twisted act of cowardice masquerading as self-sacrifice.
Zed had come to him. Broken the unbreakable for him.
But what else can we do?
Pearl deserved to write her articles and run her streets beneath the brilliant blue sky, in all the many ways she’d described it to him.
Jimmy deserved the chance to apologize to Scott. To see him again, whatever that reunion might bring.
Grian deserved to fly again.
They all deserve to fly.
“Zed’s phone connected to the under-city networks when he fell through! Surely if we can get a phone up above the rock face, we’ll get a signal!” Tango pressed, but Doc shook his head.
“Without manually reconnecting the device to the over-city network, it will not work in reverse. We had this issue when Jimmy got a new phone last year.” Doc said, and Jimmy huffed.
“You haven’t forgotten that?”
“You did come to us mid-relationship crisis. Hard to forget.”
“…fair point…”
Tango’s eyes flickered with frustration, his flares mirroring the feeling running rampant in his chest.
Zed put down his tools from the machine and moved toward him, putting a hand out.
“Hey…let’s take it easy, Tangs.”
His voice was so soothing.
His voice is here.
His fingers brushed against the bright red fitted sleeve of Tango’s shirt.
Here. His touch is here. I can feel him, hold him, fall asleep with him each night.
Tango’s ruby-red eyes darted around frantically, his mind whirring fast through options, possibilities.
He looked to the avian trio, to Doc, to Zed’s face that was growing with concern at his desperation. His boyfriends fingers closed around his arm and squeezed in an attempt at comfort.
“Tangs, you gotta breathe for me.”
“We gotta figure this out!” He cried, voice high and pitchy.
Just shy of being lost.
I won’t let them stay lost.
Click.
“PIX!” Tango basically shrieked. The phantom mutant jumped hard, his upper two wings and one bottom one flaring. The one in its sling remained mostly inert, tho it did visibly shudder a little.
“Y-Yes?”
“What you’re saying is we need to establish contact to topside in order to make sure we know what rifts are safe for us to break through? Yeah?” He asked, the words tumbling fast off his lips, and Pix nodded hesitantly.
“Well, yes, but…we have no way of establishing contact effectively. Surely we can design some kind of booster to manage to regain a digital connection but…”
“…but that’d take forever! And we can’t take this much longer!” Tango cut him off, then his eyes moved to Doc.
“You kept track of people returning to the under-city during the escape before the bedrock sealed, didn’t you? Were there any warden mutants?”
Doc’s expression turned incredulous. “Returning warden mutants? Absolutely not, I would have noticed if a warden mutant was returning, there is only one on record who has ever gone to the over-city.”
“And he still lives there, Doc! I know him!”
For a moment, no one spoke, then Doc replied weakly. “You do? How?”
“He works in the Hot Cave! I ran into him when I went up there to apologize to Zed! He pressed the emergency button to bring Zed over there for me!”
“He’s a what!?” Zed shouted, rounding on Tango.
Doc, meanwhile, had his archival eye blaze bright red as he planted his feet and folded his arms hard over his chest.
“YOU DID WHAT!?”
Tango let out a high squeaky toy sort of noise as he stumbled backward a step, only to get yanked forward again by Zed’s grip on his arm.
“Cub’s from the under-city!? And he’s a…a what mutant?”
“You went to the over-city!?” Doc demanded, stalking forward with a fury.
Tango shrank under the berating demands, his blaze-rods whirling tight to his head from anxiety as he sputtered.
“I-I-I…look, look! I…! I can explain it all! I promise! I can! I just…it wasn’t my brightest moment, I know! But let me finish! Please!”
Doc groaned deeply, planting his hands, one of metal and one of flesh, to his face and slowly dragging the fingers down.
“…we will be having an extensive discussion about this at some point, Tango.”
No Little Spark? I’m screwed.
Tango did his best to withhold a gulp as he straightened up again. His eyes moved up to Zed.
“I didn’t tell you because I swore to him I wouldn’t. But I…I hope at least…he’d forgive me for outing him in a situation like this.”
Zed looked utterly bewildered, mouth half-agape, before he blew out a breath that puffed his cheeks.
“Alright…just…what’s your point? So Cub’s a mutant? Great, but he’s still up there. I was with him for the first few weeks; he’s working himself into the grave in the Hot Cave trying to figure this out, too. At least…I think that’s what he was doing.”
Tango pointed toward the gutter line again. “We send someone up to go to Cub directly. We know we can trust him with our secret, we know where to find him, and because he’s a mutant too, whoever goes up doesn’t have to out themselves to a human.”
“Small problem.” Jimmy huffed, his eyes a bit red-rimmed as he threw both arms toward the gutter line.
“A very small problem! No one can fit through there! I was barely able to get my arm between the bars! And even a ton of pummeling from the bedrock breaker didn’t seem to scratch them, just broke the solid stone grown in around them!”
Tango’s ruby-red eyes moved from Jimmy to Pix.
“Maybe we can’t get past them. But there are some people who could get through.”
Pix stared at Tango for a long second before his face went white.
“No.” He said, the word falling from his lips hard and strong, an utter denial.
“Pix, it’s our best shot!”
“Absolutely not!”
“B-But you see it, right!? It’ll…!”
“There has to be someone else!”
“The only other one with labs clearance is X and he can’t do it!”
As they went back and forth, Doc and the avian trio seemed to realize what Tango was suggesting. Pearl’s hands flew up to cover her mouth. Grian started tugging repeatedly at the sleeve of her red zip hoodie, and Jimmy opened and closed his mouth a couple of times as if he were about to cut in but couldn’t manage.
Meanwhile.
“Can somebody please fill me in!?” Zed cut them off, and Tango whirled to face him.
“There’s a subspecies called voidwalkers, they’re endermen mutants! They can teleport through solid surfaces, and they can do it totally safely if they’re able to see where they’re trying to land!”
Tango pointed again at the gutter line, at the clear view up and out to the sky and the side of the glass buildings.
“And Pix’s son is one of them!”
“And my son is not going to be doing that! He is a music teacher, he is not a proper labs officer, he is not doing that! No!”
“He is technically a labs officer! He works with the acclimation program! Pix!”
“No way!”
Tango’s flares heated further, crackling hot on top of his head.
Pix’s resolve seemed to falter, but his wings and the fans behind his ears flared up and forward, defensive of his son who had no idea he was suddenly the center of their new chance.
Doc stepped between them at long last to break the tension. “Pix. I understand your fear.”
“I know you do! So I will not be letting Oli do something so…so…dangerous as to ‘port through a gutter line and go reveal himself to a stranger!”
“What if it did not have to be a stranger?”
Pix paused mid-inhale. “…what?”
“Another member of the acclimation program stayed topside,” Doc said.
“JOEY!” Grian shouted, clapping his hands together once.
He seemed to be reeling from the rapid-fire reveals of information, but he now stepped forward.
“Joey is still up there, at Lost Empire! Oli can go to him! They know each other!”
Pix seemed to be grinding his teeth. “I-It’s still dangerous, I…!”
“Let him decide, then,” Doc said. He tilted his head toward Grian.
“At the end of the day, I let this one make his choices when it came to being Cute Guy and fighting for us.”
“It sounds so weird when you say it,” Grian mumbled as he fiddled with the hem of his sweater.
“So let Oli decide. He is a grown man. There is no pressure. If he does not wish to do it…we will try and recruit someone else.”
Pix made a discomforted sound that rang in his throat. Glamor sparked along the fans behind his ears as they flapped and folded from his inner conflict. Finally, he gripped his elbows tight.
“…fine.”
“Thank you, Pix. We will iron out all the details and ensure he is as safe as possible if he chooses to do it.”
“You better.” The phantom mutant said before he turned and stalked toward the exit of the cave.
“I’m going to glide down and talk to him. I want to talk to him alone first. I won’t try to dissuade him, but I want to make sure he understands what we’re asking of him.”
As Pix clambered back over the swell in the rock and disappeared, Doc then rounded his full attention onto Tango.
“Now anyway…! What is this I heard about you going to the over-city!?”
“And what is that I heard about Cub being from the under-city!?”
“I knew it.” Grian commented under his breath before running for cover back toward his sister and cousin as both Zed and Doc turned furious expressions onto Tango.
The little blaze-born squeaked and bright his hands together in front of his chest, fiddling them together as he stammered and stuttered and searched for an excuse.
And in the back of his mind he realized vaguely.
Wait, since Joey’s up there, I never even had to admit to any of this! I threw myself under the bus for no reason!
Well…stars.