A City of Secrets and Masks

-Eighteen- Not Enough Time

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.

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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.