A City of Secrets and Masks

-Twenty One- Together Again

Tubbo laughed. "Think what you want, 'Gogy'!" George winced a bit at the nickname. "I trust them- they helped us get Tommy back."

Dream coughed. "Minx, if you would translate the letter for us?" He handed it over.

Minx took it and read over it. Confusion dawned in her eyes. She began to read it aloud. "Traitors, all three of them. We don't want them anymore. We have plans beyond them now. Be ready." She looked over the letter again. "Signed, Fundy."

"Plans beyond us? He couldn't possibly mean..." Eret started, before pausing and looking up at the rest. "When we started this group, Fundy had mentioned something about taking control of the whole city by stripping everyone of their powers..."

"I remember this!" Niki blurted out. "We didn't have a proper formula of Mute yet- we were still taking samples of blood for Copy. Now that they have the black sludge form of Mute, they could do a lot of things with it! Poison the water, who knows what else!"

"Worst case would be if they mixed it with Geo's smoke..." Minx said. "Oh damn, they're probably planning to mix it into his fucking haze somehow! Eret-"

Dream's head turned from person to person as the villains talked. He finally broke in after Minx. "Hold on, what's Copy?"

"Oh! We need to catch you up on some things, huh?" Niki said. 

"Alright- Let me start at the beginning," Eret said.

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Eret had started the organization soon after Dream left. He'd remembered Dream's tales of his power. Mostly, how restricting it was. The original group was Minx, Fundy, Niki, and Eret. 

All of them, excluding Eret, had had issues with their powers in the past. When Minx first got her power, she teleported anytime she felt any extreme emotion. That was often. Her peers would pick on her to illicit a teleportation based response. Needless to say, she was all in on the project. She wanted to make Mute an option for everyone, so people with powers they disliked could get rid of them.

Niki had much of the same reasoning. Her charmspeak was a curse when she first got it. She essentially stopped talking the first year she had her powers.  Anything she said would be taken as a command by anyone. Her power was especially taxing to use, too. The few years it took her to grow into her power had been a silent hell for her. Mute could have fixed her problem- she was all for making it.

Fundy's reasoning was pretty obvious. He was a fox and didn't want to be. Eret had been a bit wary of Fundy, honestly. Fundy's clawed hands grasped towards power more than what was right most of the time.

It seemed they grasped that way now. Eret, Minx, and Niki pieced together the basic blueprint of what they thought the Assembly's plan would be from here on out. 

Fundy would most likely take Mute and then be powerless. But, he'd have all the powers they'd managed to manufacture into Copy at his disposal. He wouldn't truly be powerless. He'd be multipowered.

Then the villains would probably find a way to distribute Mute. The best way would be to find a way to evaporate the sludge and incorporate it into the haze Spifey could create.

That would be easy enough to mass produce and spread throughout the city. If it all worked as planned, the Assembly would be the only ones with powers left in the City of Superheros.

No one would be able to stop them from taking over Illosia by force. They would be the rulers.

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"Cunning plan." Dream said.

"Fundy sure does make a great fox." Wilbur piped up from his hospital bed.

"How long do you think we have before they have enough materials to pull this off?" Skeppy asked. He seemed nervous.

"Based on how long it took them to make the final version of Mute after they got Tommy... Three weeks, about." Eret said, doing quick math on his fingers.

"Not even a month... We should get started preparing right away." Techno said.

"Hold on, hold on, what should we be preparing?" Bad asked. "Materials?"

"Anything that would give us an edge." The Blade began pacing the less crowded side of the room, near Tommy's hospital bed. "We need to get back into fighting shape."

"I'm hearing that we need more training time," Phil said. Tommy and Tubbo looked at each other, partially in fear.

"Not just you two!" Dream said. "I think nearly all of us could afford to brush up on combat."

"Especially those who haven't taken lessons," Techno glanced over the room, his eyes stopping on George, Bad, Skeppy, and Sapnap. "Or those who have had a change in power." He finished. This time, he was looking at Wilbur

Wilbur glared at him from across the room. "Too soon, Mr. Blade! Too soon!" Techno chuckled.

"I could have been talking about Tommy, for all you know!" Techno's monotone voice was just barely lilted with laughter.

Tommy stuck his tongue out at Wilbur. Then he gasped. "Wait, wait, wait. I could give a lesson on combat! I know more about using a baseball bat than most people in this room!"

"I want to be in Tommy's class!" Tubbo exclaimed. There was a pause before most of the room burst out with laughter.

That died down soon enough. Everyone stood still for a second.

"Well! We have no time to waste, get to preparing! I expect to see all of your training harder than you ever had before!" Dream called out.

With that, they all dispersed. 

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A/N

Hello all! How are you?

I'm back with another chapter on this fine... wednesday? I think it's Wednesday, at least!

Sorry for the delay between chapters! School, yknow?

we are so close to a finale,,,,

I've got a good end and a bad end planned, as well as epilogues for both

i plan to give you all of the content, in time!!

that's all for today! i hope you enjoyed! see you next time!!

-ace :)