Both sides knew- time was of the essence.
Minx knew the Assembly would bleed Tommy dry within two days if they had the chance. Eret would try to slow them down, but once Fundy and Punz and the others got a taste of the blood (not literally), Minx was pretty sure they would overthrow him to just mass produce Mute.
The heroes knew it in a much more literal sense- The first 72 hours of any missing persons case are the most vital, and they'd already missed about 12 of those.
Bad spent a lot of the time with George- he couldn't do anything for Sap's lungs, but he carefully sped up the healing of George's crushed legs. By lunch, George could walk again.
Sap was alright, once he got a few hours with the oxygen mask. He woke up a bit after George, who woke up just a few minutes after Tubbo.
Everyone was ready to leave again as soon as they got out of bed. Bad and the other healers who were still there had to convince them to stay in bed for just a bit longer. Wilbur called the people who were (already) planning to stage the rescue of Tommy. Most of the active duty heroes had already claimed a spot on the mission. Bad and Skeppy had slipped in, also.
There was only one issue- they had no idea where to find their damsel (Techno pondered the male version of damsel. The English major in him was showing) in distress.
----------
Minx was trying to think of a way to fix that. Unfortunately, most of those landed her in jail.
She went into Tommy's room an hour before Scott and Karl went to go draw his blood.
Tommy startled as Minx walked in. He was taping up the next piece of his watercolor galaxy- he'd started as soon as she left the last time.
"Minx! You nearly made me tape it up wrong!" He huffed. Minx almost laughed as he whipped around and put up the panting correctly.
"Tommy, so you know I want to help you get out of here, right?" Tommy nodded. "Alright. I'm going to give the heroes a clue on where you are- something that they can't tie back to me. Then I'll stay as a part of this and help funnel info to you."
Tommy nodded again. He paused, and Minx waited. He hesitated a second before speaking up. "Minx, do you think you could help me train my power a bit? Just enough to summon it- I don't want to do much more than that without..." he stopped there, Phil's name on his tongue. He wanted his first official training session to be with Phil and Techno, and he wanted to be trained as hard as Tubbo was in the beginning.
"I understand. But yeah, I can help!" Minx said. She checked and made sure the door was locked. "Alright, try it."
Tommy showed her what he had so far- a small spark.
And thus started almost a full hour of training. Both of them started out trying to be friendly, but soon enough it was just them cussing at each other.
Tommy made a fair amount of progress- he figured out how to summon his power to his hands and how to temporaitly mute Minx's powers.
At the end of the hour, Minx started to get more careful. Any creak in the hall had her teleporting back to her room.
At the end of an hour, a clock's chimes rang out throughout the house. Minx checked her watch and looked up quickly. "Shit!"
Tommy had his power impacting her, but he dropped it quickly. She whipped around. "They're coming!" She hissed before dissapearing.
Tommy quickly sat down on his bed and tried to steady his breathing and wipe the sweat off of his forehead. Using his power was more physically intensive than he thought it would be.
Soon enough, a blue haired man he'd never met and Karl were in his room. Karl looked a bit forlorn. The blue haired man was smiling, but he seemed like he was sizing Tommy up. Karl wheeled in a small cart with a machine on it- something meant to take his blood, he assumed
"Do this the easy way, please. It shouldn't take too long. We just need a bit of blood." The blue haired man said.
"Who are you?" Tommy said, just a bit spitefully.
"Oh, sorry, I forgot to introduce myself! I'm Scott." Scott gave a thumbs up and a wider smile. He walked up a bit closer. "Please hold out your arm now!" Tommy did, looking away.
"Thank you." Tommy winced just a bit as he felt Scott insert a needle.
He hated it here, but only half the time. The time with Minx was good.
----------
Minx had come up with an idea based off of some of what Tommy told her- mainly that Tubbo was the one who was least likely to arrest her on sight. And that he took lunch on the roof when he needed time to think.
The mission was simple- she found the coordinates of their hideout and jotted them down. Then she teleported to the roof. It was around noon, she thought.
She was right. Tubbo was standing on the roof, sulking. There were bees around him, but they were focused on trying to cheer him up.
She cleared her throat. "Don't attack!" She said.
Tubbo jumped around, ready to attack. But he didn't.
"Tubbo, right?" she asked. Tubbo gave a careful nod. "Alright, alright. I'm Minx- the one who took Tommy. But it was a mistake, this was all a mistake."
Tubbo's guard dropped a bit. "What do you want with me?"
Minx dropped her note. "It's got cooridantes on it. Get the heroes to launch a rescue, I'll..." She took a breath. These people, Eret, Fundy, Niki, they were her friends.
"I'll betray them and deliver him to you. Safely."
"I-" Tubbo started, but Minx was already gone. He picked up the note. Something about the way Minx was speaking... She was telling the truth.
He threw open the door and rushed down the stairs to tell the others.
---------
Mute was finished within the hour. Niki was to try the new version on someone again.
Her smile was plastered on as Fundy said that she should do it on Wilbur again. She didn't want to. He seemed nice. And if what she felt brewing was about to happen, she wanted to be able to go onto the other side without fighting or convincing anyone of her loyalty.
But if it didn't spill over... if tensions softened soon...
She went to Eret for guidance.
"Eret." He looked up, his eyes glowing softly from under his glasses. " He had been reading something. "Eret, are we going to do this?"
He looked around, a bit worried. "Do what, Niki?" A hidden message was under those words- something about the other hearing.
She ignored it. "Are we going to leave the group? Minx is already planning on it. We're about to go so far past our line of ethics- Fundy will, I know it. He's too determined." She looked him dead in the eye. "He'll kill Tommy just for a chance to be normal. If he takes Mute and Copy..."
Copy had been their first project- a pill that let you have the powers of whoever the blood was from. They had a collection of different versions of Copy. Fundy could just take any of them and be somewhat unstopable.
Especially if they went through with the first part of the plan. They'd become the most powerful group.
By muting the powers of the whole city. They had a method- Quackity had easy access to the water supply of Illosia. They'd be forced to drink the Muting water. It's not like the city could get water from the surrounding oceans, either.
Eret seemed to connect the dots seconds later. "Oh god. We've set this up. We've set up this power grasp. And Fundy is determined enough to follow it through."
"Are we going to split off?"
Eret paused, stuck. He was the only wall stopping Fundy from taking control of the program and, eventually, the city. The heroes wouldn't stand a chance if they were Muted. He could tell them. He could stop this. He could fix it.
But would the heroes trust him? Could he make up for what he'd done?
"Niki. We need... We need more time."
"Eret," Niki leaned close to him and pushed down his glasses. Her eyes bored into his. He leaned back. No one looked this close into his eyes, usually.
"Eret, we don't have any more time."
The clock chimed.
A/N
ahahaha we are so close to the reunion i really want to write it.
I'm gonna be moving soon so imma be slow on updates,, sorry!!
also I'm going to in-person school, so that'll make it harder too...
anyways! hope you enjoyed this! it's a lot of villain stuff
uhhh yea! 10k reads is so close. imma do another QNA for it!!
that's all!!!
-Ace :)