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The weight of the guns and knives strapped across Phil's body were the only things stopping him from being swept away by the wind howling at his back and ripping at his hair. He had always loved to look down from above, untouched by the world below him and able to assess his surroundings. To his left, Techno smirked knowingly at him.
"Good vantage point, right?"
Phil grinned. "Oh yeah, this is perfect."
Techno kept climbing ahead of him until they were at a rock surrounded by trees, jutting out from the cliffside, the highest point most climbers go to. They sat down and started doing a last minute equipment check while Techno quickly muttered, "Alright, here's the plan."
Phil already knew the plan- he had seen it in Techno's files last week and he doubted it had changed much since then- so he paid more attention to the equipment check, since he was pretty sure Techno was only doing it to give himself something to do with his hands and wasn't actually focusing very hard on it. Phil was also the one facing the edge of the cliff so he could keep an eye out for any tourists who decided they want to stick around after sunset to watch two climbers descend a wall. At least he could multitask.
"We'll start climbing down at 21:54. The rope should give you enough room to get down to the trail, but not farther than that. When I get down to the bottom and unclip myself from the line, I'm going to lose my balance and start falling down another tier of this weird cliff. It's shielded enough from the trail that we should be able to just climb down most of the way normally. Once I go down, you come after me. We'll get to our next vantage point at 22:04, the train should go by at 22:07."
While Techno had been talking, someone with a camera had come up behind them, and Phil made their agreed-upon sign for "behind you"- he tapped his knee four times. Techno hadn't slowed down, just quieted down a bit until he was talking under his breath, which Phil guessed was good enough. The guy had definitely gotten a photo where you could see the outline of some military-grade weapons along his right thigh - although that wasn't a problem unless you knew what you were looking for. That was a problem for when they got home.
"Once we get inside, there'll be three guards stationed by the door. They won't be expecting us, so we should be able to tranq them and keep moving. You'll keep the kids behind you and I'll get the lock, that'll alert their backup. We have about a 30 second window where there'll be flat-ish land before the train enters the tunnel. I'll jump first, then get let kids to go out, then follow me. Make sure the backup goes down if you can, just in case things go wrong. You'll go back to the trail to get the authorities if they've been called."
"And when do we get the climbing gear back?"
Techno sighed. "We can try tomorrow. Not today. It might be lost to the sands of time."
Phil nodded. "Got it."
"21:54." Techno braced himself at the ledge, bending his knees so he could push himself away from the wall. "Start repelling."
The trip back down the cliffside was physically painless and mostly for show. Phil still savored every second of it.
They had gathered a small audience at the bottom of the cliff, here to watch two crazy grown men come back down from the hardest climb you could do in this area. It wasn't hard for Techno to pretend to struggle to find footing on the path, grinning as he touched the far side of the rock. As soon as they had touched down, Phil got to watch as though in slow motion as Techno undid the clip that connected him to the line, seemingly lost his balance on the slippery rock he had landed on, and fell back into the trees behind him.
Phil didn't need to fake the shaking of his hands or pretend to rush. His friend had a plan and he needed to follow him. That part was true, because that part was always true.
Techno had paved a pretty clear and winding path through the trees that jutted out between the rocks. It was easy enough to follow by swinging down the tree trucks and stepping off of roots.
He only paused once, as soon as he was out of eyesight from the trail, to listen as one of the eye witnesses called the local authorities and take of his harness. She was pretty quick, listing out the relevant information, "...about two minutes from the road… probably broke his arm… I can't see him from here," so Phil felt pretty safe that the ambulance would make good time. The harness was left to look like one of the brambles had pulled and snapped it off - it would make too much noise from here on out.
Techno had stopped along an open stretch of rock, just as the last of the trees faded away. His feet were shoved into a crack and his left hand was hanging on a ledge, probably holding most of his weight.
Phil watched as Techno's right arm snapped back into place as the bone healed and he held it up to signal 'stop'. Phil found his balance with his hands resting on a branch and his feet crouched on a small ledge near some brambles. With Techno almost exactly 90 degrees off the rock and Phil crouched close to his shoulder, he couldn't help but imagine Techno as a sailor or pirate, swinging off the mast, and Phil perched on his shoulder and his parrot and companion, watching his six.
The sound of the waves was only in his head. Phil couldn't even hear his own heartbeat, just the wind in the trees and, faintly, voices from the trail. He couldn't see much in the dark, allowing himself to be pulled into the shadows. They couldn't be detected until they were on the train.
They only had to wait about 90 seconds before Phil heard the faint sounds of the train approaching. The lights were a cutting a harsh fluorescent yellow against the darkness of the forest. Beside him, he could feel more than sense Techno counting cars… 3... looking for the one their trafficking group had rented under the table… 8... lighter but with more valuable cargo… 13... and preparing to jump though the covered skylight… 18... waiting for it… 23.
They jumped.
///
Techno woke up slowly.
Phil would always shoot out of bed and immediately start talking, but it took Techno a few seconds to roll out of bed and heal from the bruises of hitting the floor before getting up to start his day.
The house was small, surrounded by abandoned cottages in the French countryside. Techno had wanted to make a more permanent base during the French Revolution, and they hadn't bothered to take it down since. It was small, only one floor, with two bedrooms and a bathroom in between. The front of the house had a living room and a dining room they had changed into a research room, decked out with pins and red string and everything. They had running water and an on-site electricity generator and honestly, that was all they really needed.
Phil was drinking coffee out of a cup they'd had since the 1840s and eating a bagel on a Japanese plate from the 1980s. Techno drank his water in a glass Coke bottle Phil got in Mexico City six years ago. If someone raided their house, Techno didn't know what they'd think.
Techno hesitated before grabbing an apple and sitting across the breakfast bar from Phil. The counter in front of them was a lighter granite compared to the 1912 copper counters of the rest of the kitchen. It made the stains stand out more.
"I'm thinking of running to the store this afternoon," Phil said in between bites of bagel. "We're running low on ketchup and yeast and butter and a bunch of other stuff."
Techno scrunched up his nose. "We need new counters."
"I'd need to go to the store whether we were low on ketchup or not," Phil pointed out. "Also I organized the evidence you got on that trafficking ring into something the police might be able to digest a little easier."
"My organizations skills are perfectly fine," Techno said in between bites of apple.
"Your organization skills haven't been understandable by anyone else in almost a century. Including me." Phil took another bite of bagel. "While we're talking about organization, actually, have you seen my diary from the 1100s? When we were hanging out with those Vikings?"
"No, I've just assumed it's in a box under your bed with the rest of your notes."
Phil sighed. "Well, I know we don't keep much of a library here, but I can't find it and I don't know where else it would be, so let me know if you see it."
Techno nodded and threw away his apple core. "I'll go look at that evidence, I guess, and I'll keep an eye out for your diary."
Phil stood up behind him and moved to get their keys from the bowl on the side table. “Thanks, Tech.”
///
The skylight cracked as Phil hit the glass feet-first. He dove through cracked glass and tattered fabric as he got his first real look at what they were dealing with. He rolled once he hit the floor, listening as Techno used the skylight and fabric to slow his fall before landing with his knees bent.
They straightened up, preparing to take down the guards, but they were second too late - Phil took a bullet to the shoulder and Techno took a bullet to the hand before Phil could use his opposite hand to grab his gun and tranquilize them.
They had to work fast. Techno brushed passed the kids- mostly girls, probably 7-13 but he was bad at these things, to be used as cheap factory labor- and muttered quickly, "You'll be okay. We have a plan that will get you guys a better life, but you have to cooperate with us here."
One of the girls looked at him- the less physically intimidating person in the room, probably- and Phil smiled, trying to communicate that it was okay. Then thinking of something he should probably say now instead of having to deal with it later, he quickly added, "My friend is going to take out a gun to break the lock on the door. We don't know the combination, so this is the only way to get you out. It won't ever be pointed in your direction, but uh, you can close your eyes and ears if you have to."
Techno nodded once at him before taking out the gun from its back holster. A few of the kids covered their ears, but Phil noticed that none of the kids took their eyes off of him. Definitely something to investigate in case a legal case ever gets opened.
Suddenly, Phil heard footsteps in the other traincar. The side the backup would be coming from. He turned around and motioned to the kids. "Get behind me."
Techno hesitated for half a second before turning back to the door and blowing the lock off just as the backup entered the train car. The backup hadn't heard they were armed - they didn't even get the luxury of the guards coming in cautiously. Phil took one shot to his foot and two to his already-healing arm before he managed to get hits on all of them, but at the very least none of the kids were injured. It hurt like a bitch but it wasn't anything they couldn't come back from.
Another few seconds of waiting - all he had to go on was the sound of Techno's boots shifting as he got into position. Almost all of the kids were visibly nervous, but they'd be in the clear soon.
Techno pushed off the side of the car and jumped around 20 meters down and ran uphill to where the slope met the train. Phil herded the kids out the door, letting them jump the few feet so they were on safe ground. Techno caught most of them before they could twist their ankles or break any bones.
Their window of about half a kilometer was closing fast. Phil was encouraging more and more kids to just jump for it- roll when they hit the ground or land on all fours. By the time the tunnel came up to meet them, there was only one girl left, maybe 10 or 11. She looked nervous, but Phil was happy to hand her off to Techno in the last moments he could.
It was for this reason that Techno had no hands to reach out and grab onto him as the walls of the tunnel came up. There were footsteps coming from the front of the train and carved-out rock coming to meet him, and over all that, Phil could hear Techno's voice calling out his name. He wasn't shaking or rushing. He was as confident and sure that Phil was that running after him would be unsafe. Saving him would compromise something they had worked up to for weeks. Phil would come back, but this moment, this opportunity, never would.
The footsteps from the front of the train were getting closer. He wasn't supposed to be here, and the more witnesses there were, the worse off they'd be. The end of the tunnel would get to him before they would.
Phil couldn't jump - the muscles and ligaments in one of his feet were still, uh, scuffed from having been shot, plus it hurt like a bitch. And it wasn't even much of a fall - he could time it so the mountainside would be there to meet him. He didn't turn to look at the guards or do a dramatic leap - that was more Techno's style than his. He just used his good foot and his one fully-functional arm to push himself and twist to meet the slope.
He bounced.
The impact shook him, and while his concussions didn't last, he could still get them. He watched as the world became unfocused. He could feel himself losing consciousness, even though he was on the other side of the mountain from Techno and they needed to regroup.
The dirt also made a very good spot to pass out.
Phil's last conscious thought was 'Oh man, a corpse with military-grade weapons nowhere near active military presence. What'll we have to do to keep this quiet.'
Then everything went dark.
///
It had been two days since Phil went undercover and the ketchup bottle was almost empty. Techno was dreading having to go to the grocery store on his own. How was he supposed to live in these conditions?
He couldn't bother Phil, he couldn't clean the counters, he didn't have any work to do - and he likely wouldn't, not until Phil got back - so he spent his time doing his favorite time-wasting activity: reading misinformed articles about history. There was something so freeing about strangers discussing calamities they were multiple generations away from ever having experienced.
Techno had already cycled through the documentaries about World War 1 and the blatantly incorrect Buzzfeed articles about the bubonic plague and the scholarly articles about the fall of Rome when he came across something new. 12th Century Europe Through the Eyes of the Vikings: What Pagan Cultures Tell Us About Christianity Today. Written by an author from Utah. Techno already knew he was in for a journey.
The article had been published in a journal about medieval history and seemed to center around an analysis of a source the author had been given "limited access" to. It took Techno about 2 and a half paragraphs to realize what this source was.
Apparently Phil had some choice opinions about 12th century monks that Techno only vaguely remembered. He spent more time in that diary detailing the strategies the Vikings used to steal from churches, since they were relatively easy targets and they allowed Techno to get inventive with his methods. However, the author of this particular article had chosen to focus on Phil's religious views (and lack thereof) which were not representative of most of the Norse.
A brief look through the author's publication history revealed that he was pretty new to the scene- an opinionated and dedicated 26 year old just trying to make a name for himself. A more general search told him that Wilbur Soot had applied to college in pre-law, quit after two years, moved somewhere closer to home, and started going to a different college, this time with a degree in history.
Techno could, maybe somewhere deep down, respect what he was doing. But he was also very, very wrong, and it would bother Techno for years if he didn't do something about it. It was simple, unavoidable fact that this guy was misinformed about the source he was dealing with.
But it was a lot worse than that, because so many of this author's conclusions were uncorroborated, so, to be completely honest, he had no idea what he was doing. His views of Gods as inherently good ideals, the way he interacted with the few remaining sources from this time period, the whole thing made him want to tear his hair out.
And so, before you could say 'How was he supposed to know any better! There are barely any surviving records and everyone from that period is super dead!', Techno had his email open.
///
Phil woke up in the back of a van across from a man he had met recently and a stranger he didn't know. He must have hit the ground harder than he thought because it took him a moment to recognize the first man as the tourist from before, the one who took the compromising photo. It took him yet another moment to realize he must have been undercover, collecting information. Based on the uniforms and the smell of the van, they were part of the CIA.
"He's awake. I thought you said you drugged him," the fake tourist said.
Phil rolled his neck, trying to gauge how injured he was. It seemed like he was almost healed. "I'm immune."
The two men didn't look like they believed him. The second one looked over at him. "We've gotten rid of your weapons" most of them "and taken your phone" he barely uses it "and we're taking you to a secure location where your friend won't be able to find you. It's in your best interest to talk."
Phil laughed. "You don't know my friend very well, do you?"
"Oh, look at this guy," the first dude said. "Thinks he's all intimidating."
Guy two snorted before slowly tensing up and leaning forward. "This is how this is going to go. We're going to a secure location. We can wait for your friend to show up, I don't care. Bottom line is, he's not going to. And you're going to have to talk eventually."
"I'm going to say this again," Phil said, enunciating each word carefully. "You don't know my friend. Do you?"
"What, is your friend a major arms dealer? Gang leader?" Guy one said, clearly trying to get him to talk. That was fine, Phil could say that much.
"Nah, I prefer my weapons stolen. The sort of shit people throw away or leave lying around for too long, I take them and I upgrade them." No point saying Techno did that just as much as he did. "My friend isn't a crime lord or a mafia boss or whatever you're thinking. But he will be here."
"But you are suspicious," Guy two said, before amending, "We have reason to suspect you've committed fraud."
Phil shrugged. "I guess I have, I dunno. Depends on the country."
Guy two was still intense and unwavering, but guy one was starting to seem visibly annoyed. Both of them seemed to decide he was being intentionally uncooperative and left him in silence.
Phil ran through what he knew already. They were taking him in for fraud. That sounded like someone higher up had suspicions about who they were, but didn't want to say them outright. At least one of the two people guarding him (wildly exessive for a normal fraud case, man were these guys oblivious) didn't know what they were taking him in for.
He could use their cover in his favor. If he made them think he was trying to do some really sneaky shit under the table, he could redirect the investigation, which would work in his favor if he was currently aware of any actual terrorists he could lead them to. Or they could decide he was part of the mafia, which he might be able to pull off.
The metal of the van was warming up - it was morning. And they were still on paved road. Phil had a few guesses as to where they were going. They would have left tracks, most notably footprints. Techno would be able to tell he had been taken in by the CIA by their boots and start investigating probable hiding spots. Phil was reasonably confident he would be found by dinner. This whole thing was a sham.
If he were anyone else, they would probably be investigating his house right now, but Phil knew he hadn't had papers since… ever, actually. There was no way to guess where his house was, nowhere to even start. He was the only lead they had for this non-existent investigation. They probably wouldn't be willing to let him go in exchange for information.
Seeming to make up his mind about what to say, guy one leaned forward. "Listen, whatever you're involved with, while you're with us, they can't hurt you." Definitely thought he was a normal mortal guy, then. It was kind of sad. "And no matter how deep in this stuff you are, we can help you get out. We're not in this to hurt you. And if you think what you're doing is hurting other people, we can help them too."
'Wow,' Phil thought, 'That's a lot of false promises.' The government was okay at some things, some of the time, if you handed them the evidence on a silver platter and watched them to make sure they actually went through with it. It was why Techno had spent their night yesterday handing the kids off to the police with an extensive file of evidence. They would go into witness protection and good foster homes, because Techno didn't half-ass things. But it would be thanks to a lot more work on their end, and the police, well. The police were notorious for half-assing things.
"I appreciate the sentiment," Phil eventually settled on.
Guy two sighed. "This would go faster if you cooperated."
But Phil was tired of being condescended to. "Motherfucker, you can accuse me of a lot of shit, but not cooperating with the government is not one of those things. Illegal immigration, sure, you guys must have realized by now that I've done a lot of fraud. You guys could honestly just arrest me for that, if you wanted this to go faster."
"Listen, dude-" guy one started, but the walkie-talkies on both their hips had come to life.
"This is Base 4, there's been a breach on floor two, I repeat, there's been a breach."
Phil grinned as the two other men in the van sprung to life, talking about who to contact and scrambling to find a way to knock him out. He let it happen, he didn't care. Techno was close.
///
When Phil got back from his undercover investigation, Techno was waiting for him in the dining room. Or at least he appeared like he was waiting. In reality he had been sitting at the table on and off for the past 24 hours because he had nowhere else to be. The newspaper was online now, but Techno still preferred to skim the paper version. It made it easier to pull out individual articles and hold onto them for years until Phil made him throw them out.
As soon as the door was shut, Techno flipped the paper and looked over it at Phil. Not bothering with a greeting, he jumped straight into saying, "Do you want the good news or the bad news?"
Phil looked up from where he was taking his shoes off. "Uh, good first, I guess."
"I know where your diary is."
"Aw, no, what's the bad news?" Phil grimaced. "Where is it?"
Techno grinned at him over the paper.
"Noo, c'mon, don't tell me it's been it's been picked up by the FBI."
"Uh, it's not quite that bad. The government doesn't have their grubby little hands on it yet. I think it got taken from that boat we rented by this guy, Johnathan Schlatt, goes by his last name. And, uh, he's an aspiring politician. Current law student.
"The annoying thing about him is that he's got his claws in everywhere. He doesn't have many friends but he trades a lot of favors. The book went to his former roommate as a favor, they had some sort of big falling out and this is Schlatt's way of getting back in his good graces. Anyways, long story short, Schlatt didn't make a digital copy and his ex-roommate doesn't have it anymore."
Phil sighed. "So?"
"So the FBI doesn't have it, I checked with our contacts there already. But some other government organization probably does."
"Fuuuuck," Phil groaned. "It's probably with the CIA, isn't it. Damn. I can't believe I'm saying this but I wish it was the FBI."
"The FBI wouldn't know what to do with it," Techno snorted. "But we don't have time to deal with this right now."
"Yeah, you're right." Phil came and sat across from him at the table. "I took a shit ton of notes whenever I could and cut down a lot of what I recorded." He threw down a notebook and USB drive on the table between them. "But the important thing is I've found a couple a places where we can intercept them. Car convoys, boats, a train. I miss breaking into trains."
Techno skimmed through the notebook, similar to how he had the newspaper. "So the worst of it'll be over in a week and a half?"
"15 days. That's when the train moves."
Techno looked his friend in the eye. "There's no place we can intercept this group before the train?"
Phil grinned. "Nope."
"Alright, fine, I'll make a plan." Techno stood up and stretched. "You can make the contingencies, you're good at that."
"Pleasure doing business with you, mate."
///
The next time Phil woke up, it was to bright fluorescent lights and restraints keeping him tied to a padded chair. The room was entirely white and he had to give his eyes a second to adjust before he was able to focus on the short man in front of him and his even shorter assistant.
"He's awake."
The taller man snorted. "I can see that, Tubbo."
Tubbo, under a very detailed mask of professionalism, gave himself about 2 seconds of embarrassment before bouncing back.
The other man was politely ignoring Tubbo and instead stepped into Phil's personal space. Phil crowded back as far as he could without breaking out of the chair. "Hello. My name is Quackity. I have some questions for you. You will be answering them. And thanks to a certain diary a certain friend got for me, I will know if you lie.
"So, let's start." Quackity smiled. Phil could smell his breath. He wasn't even that close, he just reeked of cigarettes. "How old are you?"
Phil blinked. "I am biologically 32 years of age." Quackity kicked him in the shin.
"Let's try that again. How old are you?"
"I dunno, mate. You tell me."
Quackity gripped him by the shoulders hard enough to bruise. "Give me your best guess."
"Uhh, more than two millennia." He'd made better guesses, but what Quackity didn't know wouldn't hurt him.
Quackity grinned. "And would you say you could remember where you were for most of those centuries?"
"Probably, yeah." Phil could lie about it, too.
"Fine, then. Let's start with the easy stuff. Where were you born?"
Phil blanked for a second. Where was he at the turn of the millennium? He'd been in Persia for a while, but left a few decades after it was conquered. He didn't want to see the political fallout. Still, what Quackity didn't know wouldn't hurt him. "Small town in the Seleucid Empire."
Phil barely had time to react before Quackity pulled back and punched him in the shoulder. He could feel his collarbone shatter under the fist. Shit. Quackity knew his history.
"More specific, dumbass."
There were maybe 8 to 12 different modern-day countries within the borders he had just laid out. He could pick any one of them. Iran, if he wanted to keep his land broad. However, he could feel Quackity's eyes on him, and he didn't like the look he was currently giving his shoulder.
Phil scoffed, trying to hide his growing panic. "You never seen a broken bone before?" Did you know I could heal this fast?
"Not one like yours." No, and I'm very willing to use this information for interrogation.
Phil watched in horror and Quackity reached a hand towards him. He would've been able to tell that the break had hurt, and - yeah, no, Phil did not want to be here right now.
Working quickly, Phil was able to get out of the restraints by dislocating his own thumbs and wrists against the arms of the chair (he still hated that he had to learn that skill 6 years ago) and get through the restraints on his legs. They had taken most of his weapons, but helpfully left him a knife in his sock, so he could cut through the restraints fairly quickly once his joints had set.
Quackity seemed surprised that he was able to break free so fast and took a step back, giving Phil an opening to knock him off his feet. Before he was even on the ground, Tubbo had jumped forward, desperately trying to block Phil from getting to the door.
Phil could look Tubbo in the eyes from the stance he had taken. He seemed sullen, determined. Phil didn't have a doubt in his mind that he was a good kid, just wanting to do what was right. He was scared, in over his head, but handling it well. In some other universe where they both weren't quite so jaded, Phil might have reached out and asked if Tubbo would spare him. Let him go, even if he didn't help them directly. Have a truce, even if they weren't allies.
But right here, right now, Phil just elbowed him in the side of the head and started running.
The annoying thing about buildings in the last few centuries is that they can be organized different ways. Courtyards are a choice now, because someone thought it was a fun idea to invent central heating. The place was small, but it was specifically designed to avoid someone like him leaving.
The only saving grace was what he found in Quackity's desk. By that point he was just checking doors at random, and going through your captor's shit was always worthwhile. All he found was a set of reports detailing what he already knew - the people who had taken him here hadn't been given inconclusive evidence. They only had to worry about Quackity and his whims.
And then, in the bottom drawer, the thing that had gotten them into this. His diary, including enteries from 1183 to 1189. Home at last.
He didn't bother saving his victory for too long - he still had to get out. He shoved the diary in his pocket and left the office.
It ended up taking Phil around 15 minutes to figure out where the door would be by process of elimination, and that was considering the fact that there was no one around. All the guards seemed to have just left, leaving him free to run through the building.
By the time he heard footsteps, he was only two corners and around 200 meters from his exit. He hesitated for a second, preparing himself for a fight, before he realized who the footsteps belonged to. Techno.
Phil opened the door and rounded the corner, finding Techno tired but otherwise unhurt. Not that that meant much.
"Wow." Techno smiled. "Seems like your contingency plan was unneeded."
Phil snorted, knowing that wasn't entirely accurate. "Where is everyone?"
Techno turned and pointed behind him, gesturing to the clusters of restrained CIA agents behind him. "I didn't want you to get frustrated going through them on the way out." They both knew what happened when he got frustrated.
"Hey." Phil pulled the diary out of his pocket. "Guess what I found."
"Do you have any idea how many people know about it?"
"Just Quackity and his assistant, we shouldn't have to do anything else here."
Techno wrinkled his nose. "That still leaves Schlatt and whoever-" but Phil's attention was grabbed by something over his shoulder.
Tubbo, still and quiet and a fucking ghost, was coming up from the other end of the hallway, poised to attack. Phil casually drummed his fingers as close to his knee as he could. One-two-three-four. Behind you.
Even though Phil knew he had seen, Techno continued to talk until Tubbo was close enough to be heard. The second he knew where he was, Techno turned around and kicked him in the stomach, struggling for a second before tying his arms and feet in the same restraints he had used on his coworkers.
Phil watched as Techno came back down from the fight before saying, "That's Quackity's assistant, you know. He could be useful."
Techno looked down at the kid again. "Quackity's assistant you say? Well, I mean, there's not much we can do now except keep an eye on him. But if he slips up, if he starts spreading information around, well. We've killed before."
Phil snorted. "Let's go, you dramatic fucker. He knows what's good for him."
"Aw, c'mon, you don't even want to beat him up a little bit? He's part of a corrupt government organization!"
"I'm sure there'll be a chance for you to beat him up later."
"Fine," Techno grumbled.
Tubbo just scowled at them in silence.
Phil and Techno picked their way through the various agents and staff who lay on the ground. There was something triumphant about a fully completed mission, but right now Phil just wanted to leave. He'd had enough of gray walls and fluorescent lighting and one-way mirrors for a lifetime.
Techno opened the door ahead of him, and as he tasted his first breath of clean air in hours, he realized that this was the first time in a while they didn't have any emergencies or missions to deal with. There weren't any lose ends or pressing concerns, and it felt weird, like he was missing a limb.
Phil joined Techno outside in the parking lot. He could see the car Techno had hijacked to get here- small, light blue, unassuming. They'd probably have to give it back at some point, and then what? Where did they go from here.
He looked up to Techno, assuming he already had step 1 of some great plan in mind, but Techno just turned to him and said, "Home?"
Phil smiled. "Yeah, mate. Let's go home."