𝙸𝚜𝚗'𝚝 𝙸𝚝 𝙼𝚊𝚛𝚟𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚘𝚞𝚜, 𝚁𝚞𝚒𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝙴𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐?

|𝟝| 𝔼𝕧𝕚𝕕𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖

Trigger warnings: Fear (people being afraid of severe punishment) and one swear

    Philip sighed, fixing his sleeve with a gloved hand before crossing his arms in front of his chest. Sapnap, his (in Philip's opinion) quite annoying companion, just chuckled before fist bumping the flushed George who was still adrenaline-high from breaking out of jail. They were teasing each other like brothers would, Sapnap relishing the fact he had been to jail while George punched him in the shoulder. All of it was good-natured so Philip let it happen, quietly cleaning up the mess they made when coming into their main base. So much dust, he absolutely hated it, it was dirty and got everywhere.

    "Yo, Boss." MXMtoon, or Maia as she was known to the police, strolled forward, nodding curtly at the two boys before promptly stopping in front of him. He shot her a questioning glance, curious to why she was here instead of working undercover like they had planned, but she ignored it. "I need to talk to you. About PIP."

     Philip gritted his teeth, dropping his angel form with a flick of his hand. She lead him to the room secluded in the corner behind dark blue drapes. Tubbo, their resident hacker and healer, was already there, clicking away at his computer doing heavens knows what. He turned to them, nervousness evident in his young face, and fiddled with his mouse. "Ah— Good. I have bad news-good news." Philip dipped his head, motioning for him to go on. He wasn't taken aback, frankly, he was rather pleased to hear Tubbo say that, as good news was as scarce as a double rainbow around here.

     "I was, um, doing what you said, trying to figure out the password on their security cameras, when I stumbled on this." He pointed at a file labelled Training Course: Day Seven, Month Two, Year Zero-Nine. When he clicked on it, a seven minute video popped up. A recording of that day.

    The camera quality was better than average, obviously the camera was expensive, and the sound rang clear through the computer. It was shot in what appeared to be a track room— large oval lines on the floor, some equipment, no windows, big air conditioning vents. Not much else. Figures were running on the set course, dodging and weaving through each other, each seemingly desperate to finish first. One tripped, causing a domino-effect of six other people to fall. It wasn't a clean tumble either— some had bloody noses, nasty bruises and rashes from the floor, but they got straight back up anyways and continued to sprint.

    "What are they..?" Philip started, not taking his eyes off of the video. Tubbo moved the cursor to later, around five minutes in, and clicked play. There was ten people in the room— at first glance the eight were frozen, but when you looked closer they were terrified. Scared mindless of the two people in front of them.

     They didn't look all that special, white shirts and grey pants, average height and build, nothing really to catch your attention in terms of looks.

    Something's wrong.

    He gasped inaudibly. Two of the eight standing scared shitless were heroes— their younger faces harder to place, but that was, for sure, Wilbur Soot and Jschlatt. Philip was, to say the least, shocked. They had been in PIP for longer than he could remember, two of the original five, and were considered some of the strongest heroes yet. They had been working for six years now, after five years of the 'power teaching and training' school the government sent anyone wanting to be a hero. Necro-Sin had had suspicions something went on there for a while. Wilbur started with a bang, working with his music power to save an entire school from a falling building, Schlatt teaming with 'the lunch club'.

     But here they were, eleven years ago, training— if you could even count it as that. This was basically torture by the looks of it. No one should be that terrified by punishment.

     "Wilbur. Schlatt. Niki." The static voice of the 'teacher' crackled through the room as they continued to name of each person. They all stood straighter, tense. "You know the drill."

     "Get in the office." Whatever the office was, it only worsened the eight's nerves. One fainted.

     And the video ended.

⋆˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

    "And that's... Real?" Philip could just barely keep the excitement out of his voice. They had evidence of the corrupt government! Real, hard evidence! Tubbo nodded again, typing quickly into a program to save the video.

    "Yup. And I can get more, hopefully, now that I broke in. Bad news is, if you want to be able to pull of plan N-H," He looked pointedly at Maia, "I'll need more of a set up. A lot more. Like, if you could somehow get the new tech line from that one expensive store downtown, I might be able to get ahead schedule by two weeks."

    "But that store's heavily guarded, and to sneak-steal like that, we'd need someone inside to make a small distraction without doing anything illegal. None of us can go publicly like that. Especially not since they've got television channels recording in their store this week... We would need a clean face. A new member." Philip smirked.

    "I know someone who can help."

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•Zak :D

Heyyyy sorry it took me so long to reply, Work :|

•Darryl

No problem! How was your day?

[Read 2:57]

    Darryl sighed, glancing back at his phone for the umpteenth time that night. He had finally worked up the nerve to text, and it had taken two hours for him to first reply, then leave him on read for another. It would be a lie to say he wasn't slightly annoyed.

    He's just busy. He is a hero, after all.

    He turned back to his computer, finishing up an email to his boss excusing himself from work for another week in order to fully recover. In truth, Darryl was mostly fine, he just wanted to delay having to wake up early again. A ring— ring— ring— from his phone startled him, beeping angrily from his bedside table.

    Philip was calling. How odd. He answered, slightly nervous to what his brother wanted.

   "Philip?"

   "Hey. I have a favour to ask."