Chapter Text
Grey upon grey, it was hard to determine where the worn-down stone of the courthouse ended, and the overcast sky began.
Whatever light was to be found from the sun was obscured by the dense coverage. The storm above had been brewing and lingering over Quesadilla Island for a week now, the humid atmosphere trapping it there as it stubbornly refused to move on. Layers of high and low clouds carpeted the sky, and the faint echoes of thunder sounded out around them as a low symphony of muffled rumbles.
On the steps of the courthouse, President Tubbo was standing behind a podium about halfway down. His secretary, Phil, had insisted he make his announcements there as a symbolic promise of justice to the people of Quesadilla Island, that he would not place himself above the law and adhere to his position accordingly compared to other figures in power like that dreaded CEO of ‘The Federation’ corporation.
Playing with fire since before he even officially began campaigning for presidency, almost every single one of Tubbo’s goals involved an action that went against some “alleged” crime that The Federation had committed. From the mistreatment of workers to illegal experiments, to extortion and the production and selling of “happy pills”, you could bet that The Federation had a hand in it somehow.
Allegedly.
Tubbo’s sweating hands shook slightly, gulping down the buildup of saliva that was forming in his mouth. The notes he prepared were written with precision and clarity, but thoughts of using it were thrown out the window the second he went before the barrage of reporters in front of him.
He would have been anxious to the point of throwing up, however the comfort of Phil on his right and his bodyguard, Fit, to his left, settled some of the nerves as he faced the media.
Fit stood to President Tubbo with his hands behind his back, scanning the frenzied crowd at the bottom of the steps. Though he was calm, the heat from his palm was making it so that his hold on his metallic arm was beginning to slip a bit. Giving it a wipe on the back of his pressed black suit, he repeated the action every other minute or so to maintain his polished composure.
Fit scanned and he observed and he watched on, eyes sharply processing every bit of information he could in a meticulous pattern that was second nature to him. At times, Fit could not tell whether it was a blessing or a curse, not even thinking about the process as he remained vigilant by the president’s side.
It was just how he was. And whilst he might not have always been that way, Fit could not recall the times from before, when he was ordinary. When he was not a soldier, or a mercenary, or even a bodyguard for that matter.
Fit could not remember what it felt like to just be a man.
To Fit’s left, was the president’s personal driver that he hand-picked himself last year at the start of his campaign. Though Pac was supposed to provide Tubbo with his services, he had since been delegated to driving the president’s daughter, Sunny, around wherever she pleased. But Pac did not mind it. If anything, he was more than happy to see her around the large city of Quesadilla Island, enjoying her company and bouts of merry shopping sprees due to their shared love of fashion.
Even the suit Pac was wearing now had been made with Sunny’s input, the blue fabric a shade that she picked out for him on one of their many adventures into the city mall months ago. Not to brag, but Pac thought he looked extremely good and proper, save for the slight shagginess of his hair that was starting to get a little too long. He should have put some wax in or hairspray or tied it up, but he had been running late that morning to pick Sunny and Tubbo up from their house in the hills.
That was his bad though. He shouldn’t have spent so much time last night binging endless episodes of Desperate Housewives, but he simply couldn’t help it. Every episode was a hoot of meaningless drama and all that frivolous gossip that he loved hearing.
What could Pac say? He loved a bit of drama.
In between Fit and Pac, Sunny stood proudly with her glasses hanging low on her nose bridge, phone in hand and idly scrolling through the online catalogue of a shoe store. Fit and Pac were sheltering Sunny from the brunt of the flashing cameras and rabble of incoherent questions by standing a bit in front of her, the journalists and reporters and their cameras and microphones incredibly overstimulating for someone so young.
Strangely, Sunny seemed to welcome the attention, smiling brightly at them and posing for them to take photos.
While Pac gave her a fond smile from the corner of his lips, Fit stayed staring out at the crowd, the hardened glare of his eyes keeping focus the entire time Tubbo sorted himself out before he was to speak.
Thunder rumbled a little more, and at its sounding, tension rose in Fit’s steadily clasped hands behind his back as his jaw clenched unconsciously.
“Psst. Hey, Fit,” Pac muttered out while leaning over towards Fit.
“Sup, Pac,” Fit replied, still staring out at the people and never breaking his gaze.
“I have some gossip for you today,” Pac said with a subtle grin.
Fit subdued the smile that wanted to form on his lips and quietened the buzz of excitement that perked his ears up at Pac’s words. “Oh yeah? Do tell, I’ve been dying for something new.”
“I heard that like- one of the previous candidates for the presidency was cheating on his partner.”
“Really? Who?” Fit said a bit too eagerly, doing his best to stay on task while still watching the crowd.
“You know that guy, Foolish? People are saying that he had an affair with a socialite at someone’s wedding!” Pac revealed with an exaggerated gasp.
“Oh my god. Again?” Fit sighed with a tiny smile of mischief, so very entertained by the news. “Wouldn’t be the first time something like that has come out about him. You’d think that he’d quit it by now but I guess not.”
“He’s all over the internet right now. Look,” Sunny piped up from behind them with a judging expression, pulling up the article on her phone and showing it to Fit and Pac with a sassy look. She pushed her glasses up a little, the three of them giggling quietly to each other. “My pa says he’s something called a ‘slag’, but I don’t know what that means.”
Fit tried not to laugh, bringing a hand up to his mouth to hide his smirk as Pac also snickered to himself.
“Oh- that’s not— Maybe don’t use that word out in public, Sunny,” Fit said, trying to be a good adult and set a good example.
“Why not? He’s a cheater. If he’s a cheater then he’s probably not a good person?” Sunny questioned, having no subtlety like usual.
“Maybe, but this is politics. Sometimes you have to keep those thoughts inside. Sometimes you gotta tone down the attitude. You have to choose your words wisely now,” Fit explained.
Sunny accepted what Fit was saying but went back to her phone with a grumble. She said what she meant more often than not and was always one for saying things just as they were. Unfortunately, now that her dad was president of the island, her brutal honesty needed to be put in check at times, much to her dismay.
“I can’t believe it though,” Pac furthered with an amused sigh. “I heard the person he cheated with is married! That’s so crazy, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty crazy…” Fit drawled out dazedly.
Fit’s voice was somewhat uninterested, but that was only because he was trying hard to just do his job and do it well. There was no room for distraction today, and he could not afford to make mistakes now. Not during the president’s first official address to the public about his policies.
Nevertheless, the premise of another gossip session with Pac was just as tantalising to him as watching one of those late-night dramas he could not help but consume vapidly. And Fit loved a good bit of gossip.
As the cameras kept flashing and the reporters ravenously pushed to the front of the lines, all then went quiet as President Tubbo tapped his mic and prepared to speak. A single clap of thunder roared out, and Tubbo almost jumped at the startling noise, clearing his throat and adjusting his tie with anxious hands.
“People of Quesadilla Island, the time for change is now,” Tubbo began, his voice shaky at first before gaining some confidence into his presentation. “When you elected me as president, I vowed to put the interests of the islanders first. As promised, I have already started on investing a generous part of our budget into providing funds for the unions, and will now be investing in our factories to produce manmade sustainable resources to lessen the strain that certain industrial endeavours have taken on our natural ones.”
When he finished, the raucous babble from the media grew even louder, a few claps and cheers being heard all around as the questions came flooding out of their mouths like the endless chirps of cawing birds.
However professional they may have looked with their suits and cameras, Phil had prepared Tubbo to deal with them by helping him see them for what they really were. Vultures just waiting to pick away at any sign of fault.
Tubbo continued to talk, but Fit’s vision remained cast over the sight before him, the president’s words being drowned out by Fit’s hyper-focus.
President Tubbo’s address was simple, but it carried much weight for the people of the island. Indirectly, he was doing something that the previous presidents had been far too intimidated to do. Call out the Feds and swear to do everything in his power to take them and their shady corporation down.
For such a young man who was the youngest president in the history of the island, President Tubbo was a person of action and radical ideas. And it was this that not only made him a controversial public figure in general, but one who had currently garnered the biggest target on his back since the notorious “Cellbit v. Federation” lawsuit case.
And given how that case ended, it was only a matter of time before Tubbo would find himself in hot water with The Federation too.
One drop of water hit Fit’s head, then another, and then another. Soon, speckles of rain started to patter on the concrete ground, rolling down the steps and quickly darkening the clothes of everyone present with water.
Pac popped open an umbrella and held it over himself and Sunny, Fit electing to simply stand in the rain and let himself get wet as the light tap of water on his prosthetic arm became like a pleasant white noise to his ears.
However, he felt like something was stirring... Like something was off.
Fit did not know why, but the warm wind of the storm did nothing to stop a chill from climbing up his neck, his hairs standing up and his eyes narrowing as he focused hard on something he thought he saw far away past the crowd and atop the buildings in the background. Stray droplets of water flew into his eyes, and as Fit blinked them away, the chatter of President Tubbo’s voice and the pitter-patter of the rain on his metal arm became deafened entirely as he spotted it.
A glint in the distance.
The momentary shine of a scope.
Eyes widening, heartbeat rising, blood pumping, Fit turned and was horrified to see in between the downpour of rain and splatters of water, a red dot sighted at the centre of Tubbo’s body.
Leaping into action and pushing himself to the young man, Fit all but jumped at Tubbo. “Get down Mister President!”
Fit made contact with Tubbo and knocked him with force, the silent shot of the sniper rifle firing and just grazing past Fit’s shoulder as he tackled the president to the ground behind the podium.
Everyone cowered in fear, scattering and taking cover from the next two subsequent shots that were messily being taken at the president from whoever was firing at them.
Fit shielded Tubbo with his own body, using his metal arm to deflect any oncoming bullets, protecting him with his life fearlessly and without second thought to the consequences.
If Fit had to be shot for Tubbo remain unhurt, then Fit would take however many blows necessary to keep him safe. If Fit had to endure trial after trial to defend Tubbo’s name, then he would put himself on the chopping block to maintain his honour. And if Fit had to sacrifice himself so that Tubbo could live, then he would do it like any good bodyguard would do.
The commotion of mad screams and scurrying people were a chaos unlike any other the president had ever seen, and as he heaved out shocked breaths to try and knock some sense into him, his stomach dropped at the thought of one of the stray bullets potentially hitting his daughter.
“Pac, get Sunny out of here!” Fit shouted from behind the podium.
Turning his head towards them, Fit did not get a response due to Pac already sprinting down the steps with Sunny in his arms. The flexibility and strength of his own expertly crafted prosthetic leg made it so that he could practically fly down the stairs at will.
His engineering days were mostly behind him since he was recruited to be the president’s driver when he was still a freshly elected politician, but with Tubbo’s help and funding, Pac was able to use some of his and Mike’s old nanotechnology designs to make himself a strikingly proficient leg that advanced their work to new heights.
Pac made it to their armoured car with all haste, placing Sunny inside first and closing the door before getting into the driver’s seat and starting the engine.
Within seconds, Fit was ushering President Tubbo down the stairs too, blocking sight of him from the sniper and throwing the car door open when they reached the bottom. As he thrust Tubbo into the back of the car, another silent shot would have hit the president, but instead snagged Fit on the right shoulder when he turned to get in the passenger seat next to Pac in the front.
Just his luck. It hit the one shoulder he had that was still flesh, muscle and bone. It just had to be that arm.
With a groan, Fit pushed through the pain and tossed himself into the car, slamming the door shut behind him. Another shot hit the car on the side where Sunny was with force, rebounding off the armoured vehicle with a booming ‘pang’ sound.
The sheer closeness of the harrowing danger had Sunny freeze up, her face blanching like all the life had left her in that moment. Her thoughts raced and her heart thumped away so hard that she felt like she might pass out from the way she held her breath in her chest, a blankness now falling over her eyes as she felt as though she were watching her own body from afar.
“Holy shit, Fit! Are you okay?!” President Tubbo said in a panic, voice raised and pupils dilated in terror.
“Pac, drive!” Fit ordered.
Instantly, Pac floored it and drove off way past the legal limit, zipping around corners and skidding on the roads like a madman. Drifting in and about the streets, he soon took them to a backroad that would lead them away from the inner city and towards the hills.
Tubbo’s breaths were still uneven and his hands would not stop trembling. “Oh my god! What the fuck—Fit you just got shot!”
From the side of his vision, Fit held his right shoulder and looked back to check on them. He could feel Sunny shrinking down into herself, her face locked into place with a pale complexion as she held herself in comfort while staring off at nothing.
“Tubbo,” Fit said assertively, urging him to calm down. “I’m okay. I’m okay,” he repeated, eyes flicking from Tubbo to Sunny, then back to Tubbo in a coaxing gesture.
The president glanced to his daughter, heart cracking at seeing her float away in shock and dissociation. With an exhale, Tubbo recomposed himself before shuffling closer to her. He then carefully carded his fingers slowly through the ends of her densely coiled and brown hair, getting rid of a few wet tangles along the way as he made his way up towards her scalp in a comforting gesture.
“Sunny? Sunny, are you okay, poppet?” he asked softly, eyes glossy with woeful sympathy for his darling daughter.
Sunny finally pulled her mind back into her body, blinking away the haze that was enveloping her and turning ever so slowly to look her dad in the eye. “That was scary, pa…” Sunny said in a quiet voice, salty tears now streaking down the dark skin of her face. “I’m scared.”
With his lip quivering, Tubbo wrapped his arms around Sunny and cradled her gently, hushing her soothingly and just making sure she was not alone. Sunny leant her head onto his chest without saying another word. She was too shaken. Too affected by the prior events to even describe the full extent of what was going through her head.
Tubbo’s heart broke a little more. His daughter, who always spoke her mind with utmost honesty, could simply not voice her feelings further to him.
The treasure of his life, his little poppet…his Sunny.
Tubbo had to do something about this. He would rather die than have something like this happen again. He could not risk Sunny’s safety. He would not.
Upon Tubbo’s instruction, Pac drove them to his presidential manor past the hills where they sought refuge in his underground bunker of metal and thick bricks to recuperate and recover after the horrid turn of events at the courthouse.
In the bunker, the president paced back and forth in front of his tinkering table that was littered with the scraggly pages of various blueprints of his many factories.
Sitting at the table with a couple of bandages, Fit was patching up his wound with the help of a med-kit and a bottle of whiskey to ease the pain.
It was a little frustrating at times he could not lie, the dexterity of his metallic fingers good enough to get the job done, but still missing that complex seamlessness of when he used his other non-amputated arm. Still, he could not complain. The fact that he had such an incredibly crafted prosthetic was already more than he probably deserved, and he was just grateful that Tubbo had gifted it to him after he got hired those couple of years ago.
Biting down the sting of the disinfectant after wiping the blood from his badly scraped shoulder, Fit took a swig of the cheap spirit and groaned from the sharp taste burning his throat, before wrapping his arm with the bandages and clipping it up so it would stay there at least for the night.
Fit was used to the pains of flesh wounds like this, the alcohol being more for the pains of his mind instead of his body as brief flashes of lifeless corpses and the memories of death and blood wriggled its way to the back of his mind as resurging torments of his past. However, this whiskey was a particularly awful brand. Not one that Fit would ever buy at all, but Tubbo had mentioned that it was mostly for something he called “late-night sesh vibes”. Whatever that meant.
Standing next to Fit by the table with his arms folded over, Pac examined President Tubbo with compassionate eyes, but did not say anything to distract him from the thoughts that were swirling in his head.
With Tubbo flipping the whiteboard behind him around, Fit and Pac were only somewhat surprised to see that it was messily decorated with pictures of Federation facilities, workers, and seemingly isolated incidents that just so happened to benefit the Feds in some way or another, red strings connecting them all together in a way that only Tubbo could probably understand.
“There’s no way that the fucking Feds didn’t put out a hit on me. There’s just no shot it wasn’t them,” Tubbo kept yelling as he threw his arms about in anger.
Fit sighed through his nose inaudibly, leaning back in his chair a little. “Tubbo, you don’t have any evidence to prove that.”
Tubbo stopped and looked at Fit, a displeased crease in his forehead. “Oh, I will. Fucking watch me. Do you really believe that they aren’t behind this?”
“You’re the president now, Tubbo. And someone just tried to kill you. You have to be careful.”
“They shot at Sunny, Fit!” Tubbo spat out with a sneer as he slammed his hands down on the table, fatherly fury coursing through his heated veins. Even though Pac slightly jumped from the abrupt noise, Fit was unphased as Tubbo continued raging on. “They can shoot at me all they fucking want, but Sunny? That’s personal. I won’t fucking stand for that.” Huffing out breaths between gritted teeth, Tubbo went back to pacing. “It’s on sight. That fucking CEO better hope I don’t see him in the street because if I do, then I’m most definitely going to jail for assault.”
Feeling tension in the bunker, Pac stood up straight and went over to the president with a calm aura. “Tubbo, calm down. If you go to jail then you’d be leaving Sunny,” Pac said, placing a hand on his shoulder and offering some perspective. “You’re all she has. Don’t take that away from her.”
Pac’s words sunk in, and for a second, he was quite surprised that he had actually done something to help the young president out. But that was only for a second, because as the wheels turned in Tubbo’s brain, his glare darkened as it focused on the picture of The Federation’s CEO on his whiteboard of crazy.
“You’re right… I’m not gonna kill anyone,” Tubbo remarked in a low and gravelly voice.
I don’t like the sound of that, Fit thought, feeling like either a sinister intention or stupid one was now forming.
Tubbo took one step towards his whiteboard, menacingly. “I’m gonna find out how The Federation works. I’m gonna know their operation top to bottom, and I’m going to break it all apart piece by piece.” He took another step forward. “I’m going to ruin them past the point of destruction so much so that it’ll be like it’s burning slowly from the inside. Until it’s all ashes and dust. That’s what I’m going to do.”
Fit was no stranger to the capabilities of mankind at its worst, but something about Tubbo’s demeanour here unsettled him. Not out of fear or intimidation, but rather a lamenting kind of pity that The Federation had managed to bring this good man down to their level by way of schemes and plots and sneaky backstabbing.
Fit was not disappointed in Tubbo. He was just sorry that he had been met with such insane anguish at such a young age. It reminded Fit of when he himself was younger, when he first got a taste of what it felt like to have the last of his innocence callously ripped away after he joined the fight in the War of the Wastelands across the sea.
It reminded him of the moment he stopped being a boy, and was forced to become a man.
“That’s a big task, Tubbo. I don’t know how you plan on doing that, but I hope you know that I’ll be with you every step of the way,” Fit said earnestly, pledging his allegiance to Tubbo time and time again like he always did.
“Yeah, Tubbo. We’ve got your back, Mister President,” Pac added with a smile.
Tubbo glanced to them briefly before closing his eyes and looking away back to the whiteboard. “No. You can’t be here with me. Not this time."
“What?” Pac questioned with furrowed brows. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I need you two to do something else for me,” Tubbo said, turning back to face them.
“Anything,” Pac declared with a nod.
“What do you need?” Fit joined in.
Only addressing Fit, Tubbo went to the table and leant on it with his hands as he deeply inhaled. “Fit, I trust you with my life. There’s no one I’ve trusted more to protect me than you…and nobody I would trust more to protect my daughter.” The pierce of Tubbo’s worried gaze told Fit everything he needed to know about what he was asking. “Can you do this?” Tubbo said intensely.
“Yes,” Fit replied with a single nod of his head. “I understand.”
Confused, Pac trailed his eyes between the two of them. “I don’t get it. What are you talking about, Tubbo?”
“I need you to take Sunny away from here. Tonight,” Tubbo explained, pulling out a map and spreading it across the table. Pointing to it, Fit and Pac leant over to watch as he kept talking. “I have a secret estate in the countryside that’s got cameras, a lockdown function and state of the art alarm system that Mike made for me.” Feeling heavy, Tubbo let out a weighted breath. “I can’t have Sunny here so close to the Feds if they’re trying to get me.”
“But what about Sunny?” Pac asked considerately, thinking of the poor girl and what it would be like for her to be so far away from her dad.
Pac could only think of Sunny and Tubbo’s emotional state, especially after seeing how badly today had taken a toll on both of them.
Even if Tubbo did not show it, he was feeling more rattled than he was letting on, Pac sure that he would have set something on fire if they were not there to mediate. And even if Sunny could not express how she was feeling, Pac was certain that this would be something that would impact her for the rest of her life.
They were just so young… Too young. Too young for any of this.
Silently recalling moments from his own life, Pac knew all too well what it was like to be too young once.
“She’ll understand,” Tubbo mumbled out airily and with little conviction, as if he were trying to convince himself more than Pac. “As her father, I have to keep her safe…but she’s not safe with me. Not while the Feds are still out there. The farther she is from me, the better off she’ll be. At least until I take them down once and for all.”
“Tubbo, you know I’ll protect her with my life,” Fit said, standing up from his chair.
“I know you will. Which is why I’m asking you two specifically to do this.” Tubbo gave them a small upturn of his lips, appearing to them not as their employer or as their president, but as someone who was more like a good friend. “I picked you guys for a reason. You have skills, sure, but you have something even greater than that. You’ve been loyal to me to a fault. I know it’s your job, but you care about me and Sunny too. It’s not every day that someone like me finds something like that,” he trailed off sentimentally.
Pac’s smile widened, his presence making everything seem just that little bit brighter in spite of the brooding darkness that the day had brought them. “Well, we didn’t spend all those early mornings together getting you to your office and back for nothing. If this is what you need us to do, then consider it done, Mister President.”
Though there was a lightness to Pac and his words, a deep and sincere consideration was hidden just underneath the veil of his typically cheery character, Fit noticing the glimpse of an edginess to Pac from the corner of his peripherals.
Interesting…
Tubbo smiled back at Pac happily. “Thanks, Pac. Now, I’ll need you to grab everything you need before you go tonight,” he said with a clap of his hands. “You’ll be taking one of my armoured minivans. I designed it myself and it’s got a lot of torque so don’t accelerate if you don’t want to go shooting off into space.” Tubbo began to gather a few miscellaneous papers from the table and shove them in a spare bag while he continued talking. “It’s a nine-hour drive straight there, but the route you’re taking is gonna extend that time by at least two hours. And knowing Sunny, she’ll wanna take breaks for photos or if she sees something she likes, so be prepared for that.”
Pac gave a light-hearted chuckle as he folded his arms again. “Do you even need to remind us?”
“No,” Tubbo said with a shrug, a smirk playing at his lips. “I’m just covering my ass so you can’t complain about it later.”
Pac gasped and feigned offense, holding his hand over his heart. “I would never complain about Miss Sunny.”
Tubbo eyed Pac with an amused expression as he smirked harder. “See, this is why I like you, Pac.” A ding came from his pocket, Tubbo reaching in and pulling out his phone as he grabbed more things he was going to need. “Nobody outside this room but Phil will know about this,” he added distractedly. “Your location will be a total secret, and I’ll be informing anyone who asks that I’m just homeschooling her here or something. I’ll figure out the rest later, but for now, I just need you to take her and go.”
“What are you going to tell her?” Pac then asked further, still thinking of what Sunny might think of the situation.
“The truth,” Tubbo breathed out with a defeated shake of his head. “I can’t ensure her safety here, so I need Sunny to be somewhere where the Feds can’t reach her. I’ll say my goodbyes tonight and keep in contact with you guys from my private channel, but I have to limit how often I call you guys just in case.”
“You can count on us, Tubbo,” Fit assured him with another single nod.
“Thank you, Fit. I have to meet with Phil soon, but you two should get prepare yourselves. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take to take down The Federation, but whatever happens, just stick to the mission. Sunny’s all that matters to me,” he stated, a dire strain in his eyes that made them seem so much more worn out than they should be at his age.
Pac unfolded his arms and spoke with vehement determination. “I’m gonna do everything I can to make sure she’s safe, Tubbo,” he said, vowing in his heart that he would sacrifice all of himself for the sake of their mission. “I promise.”
“Nothing will happen to Sunny on our watch,” Fit followed up, vowing in his heart now that he would sacrifice the world for the sake of the mission. “You have my word.”
“Good,” Tubbo said, already heading towards the door but stopping momentarily like something just came to mind. “Oh and before I go, if you press in the outlet on that wall, it’ll open up my munitions storeroom. Take what you want from there, I don’t really know how to use those so have at it,” he informed them briskly with a wave of his hand. “I’ll see you boys at nine.”
With that, Tubbo hurriedly left and made his way assumingly to wherever he was set to meet up with Phil.
Left to the quiet of the bunker, Pac scoffed in humour at the president’s last comment. “Did he just call us ‘boys’? Isn’t he like still in his twenties or something like that?”
Fit shrugged with a silly look on his face. “That’s our president, I guess.”
Curious and unable to keep away from mention of a secret wall, Pac wandered over to the outlet. “I wonder what he’s got behind this wall,” he said, a grin slowly starting to turn his mouth upward.
“Well, it would be a shame to not take up his offer and find out,” Fit replied with mischief in his voice, a grin of his own forming.
They stood in front of the sparsely decorated wall of random posters of some band from the seventies that he liked a lot, pipes of metal going up and down the wall in a strange order that seemed to line the bricks.
They glanced to each other with sly expression, then back to the wall. With a jittery finger, Pac reached out and pressed it into the outlet, the outlet sinking into the wall as their eyes went wide. A collection of muffled whirring noises and clanks of metal twanged out, the wall starting to retract into the ceiling like a window sliding up in order to be opened.
As they entered the munitions room, Pac’s eyes lit up in glee as Fit’s mouth hung open in awe. Lights flicked on one by one as they went further into the large room, and the sight before him had Fit almost speechless.
Fit was impressed. Very impressed. How Tubbo managed to get all this crazy shit, he had no idea, but he assumed it probably had something to do with all those blueprints and plans he had sometimes mentioned in casual conversation. The ones that he was apparently working on with Mike in those factories of theirs.
Although he could not really relate to Tubbo, Pac and Mike’s obsession with their machines, Fit made a conscious effort to at least keep himself in the loop so he had a point of reference to understand what his son was doing for his trade skills. And it could not hurt to know a bit so he had something to write about in their letters too.
Spotting a particularly large and brutish assault rifle hung up on the wall, Fit was drawn to it like a moth to a flame, eyes glazing over as he picked it up. It had a good heft to it, Fit checking the scope and seeing how it felt in both his hands, flesh and metal.
“Oh baby! Now that’s more like it,” Fit exclaimed, pleased beyond satisfaction that he could just simply take it because he wanted it.
“Hey Fit. What do you think?” Pac called out from behind him.
Turning, Fit was surprised even further by the sight of Pac holding a pair of black pistols.
Pac slipped a clip into the smaller guns and then popped them out with ease, flicking them around his fingers and doing tricks with them like it was nothing.
Fit could not help but stare with slightly narrowed eyes of interest. He had never seen Pac even hold a weapon before that was not a knife or fork from when they used to have breakfast together with Tubbo at his office breakroom. He did not even know Pac was tuned for use of such things, but the whispers of the man’s dubious past had Fit remember that he had gone to jail for a reason after all.
Whatever it was, however, Fit never bothered to ask about it. It was none of his business, and it wasn’t like he and Pac were much more than employees of the president. Coworkers, if you will. Pac never asked Fit about himself and Fit never asked Pac about him. That was just how their relationship was.
Never straying further than the greetings of “do you have any gossip for me today?”, and the remarks of “did you hear about…?” that they had become so accustomed to in the many mornings they shared with Tubbo and Sunny.
The confident smirk on Pac’s face was as it always was, but this time intertwined with something else that Fit could not place.
He was always bright, but with those pistols expertly gripped in his hands now, Pac felt…strong in a way that may have been usually overshadowed by how he typically was with all his charming smiles and the flashy colours of his clothes. It was something Fit had never been privy to before, but he was intrigued by it all the same.
Bright and strong. Charming and flashy.
Fit could not put his finger on what that reminded him of exactly, Pac remaining mostly a mystery to him save for the few details he had heard about the man through the grape vine.
“Looking good, Pac,” Fit complimented him genuinely, being taken by this newly observed way Pac carried himself with his weapons. Bringing his vision back to the rifle in his hands, Fit hummed out in thought. “I’m more of an explosive guy myself, but you’re rocking those nicely.”
“Oh, thank you, Fit. That’s so nice of you,” Pac beamed at him, spinning the pistols around until his gaze fell upon the back wall of the room. He then leant back on the benches of ammunition as his smirk widened. “You know, if you’re looking for something that blows up, you should check that out.”
Looking up and seeing Pac gesture with his head to the back wall, Fit turned his head and was met with an even better view than the big gun in his hands.
Appearing to him as art being displayed in a museum, Fit sauntered over to the back wall that had on it things that reminded him of his time in the war; grenade launchers, mines, C4. The whole works.
It was like Christmas for him.
“God…I fucking love this country,” Fit said breathily, kissing up to the heavens and putting his hands together like he was in prayer.
Fit knew it was bad to think this way, but it was as if Tubbo had placed a mountain of toys on his lap and told him to run wild.
He gave his word to Tubbo that nothing would happen to Sunny, and with these at his disposal, he would be more than equipped to keep that promise.
~~~~~
Much later in the evening when things had quietened down and the night took hold, Fit stood with Pac outside the president's large garage, waiting by the armoured minivan as Tubbo bid his daughter farewell.
Yes, the sky was dark from the parting of the sun from the horizon, yet it still seemed to flourish with hints of an obscuring grey hue due to the rain clouds that loitered above. Ever the same as it was this morning, yesterday, and this past week, the rain would come and go, but the storm as a whole remained.
As the distant claps of thunder rang out across the atmosphere, Pac gazed up to see where it was coming from, following his ears and turning his head upward so he might stand here placidly and just listen to it.
In a similar action, Fit's attention went to the sky in the opposite direction of Pac's gaze when he spotted a brief flicker of light from the clouds over him. Staring up, he thought he might be able to catch a glimpse of it again, but it never came.
This was hard. It was possibly the hardest thing that Tubbo ever had to do in his life so far. He had been new to fatherhood and was utterly terrified of doing a bad job, but finding Sunny had saved him in a way that he did not know he needed to be saved.
She grounded him, kept him sane and prevented him from losing himself in his work completely. She made him human, and that was something so irreplaceable that it was greater than any treasure to be found in the earth or the sea, likening her to the constant light of the sun and stars itself.
To Tubbo, Sunny was cosmic.
As difficult as it was to let Sunny go, Tubbo knew this was the best thing for her.
Already buckled into the back seat of the car, Sunny’s lips were turned down into a gentle frown as she fiddled with her fingers in her lap. She did not take the news well when Tubbo had told her she needed to be packed and ready to leave her life in the city by dusk, but she accepted it as something she needed to do regardless. Not without a reluctant grumble and whine first though.
If Tubbo asked something important of her, she would do it. She just had to complain a little first.
Leaning on the open door of the car, Tubbo tried to muster up the courage to let his daughter go as he spoke. “I know it’s not ideal, but I promise that I will see you soon, Sunny.”
“Soon? That’s not a proper time,” Sunny mumbled bleakly, not looking at her dad as she sulked some more.
“I can’t say how long this may go on for, but I can say that I will finish what I’ve started, and things will go back to normal when it’s over. I promise.”
“You promised you’d never leave me…” Sunny said, turning her head to gaze up at him.
Tubbo bent over so he could talk to her on her level. “I’m not leaving you, Sunny. I’ll never leave you,” he said, extending his hands out and holding her little ones in his own. “This is just a—temporary situation. Think of it like your own personal holiday with Fit and Pac,” he offered hopefully, Sunny perking up a little at his words. “There’s a nearby town from the house, so you can still go shopping and exploring. I’ve given Fit your debit card and you get your allowance every two weeks for spending. You just have to take both Pac and Fit with you and do what they say.”
Her frown turning into a consolidated grin, Sunny hummed out exaggeratedly like she was debating what he said. “I guess that’s not so bad… Do I get to keep the card?” she furthered cheekily.
“Technically, yes. But I want you to tell Fit if you’re thinking of buying something,” Tubbo sternly reminded her. “You’ll be able to afford it, I just want him to keep track of your expenditures for the record. Remember, financial honesty is important in this household,” he stated playfully.
A big smile took over Sunny’s face, Tubbo’s heart melting at the sweet sight of her bold warmth and little snaggle tooth. “Okay, pa,” she relented with a smug tone, pleased with herself that she had secured such a good deal. In a moment of small vulnerability, Sunny’s demeanour shifted from that of her princess-like poise to that of a child who was just that. A child. “I’m gonna miss you…” she whispered out with a slight hoarseness in her throat.
“I’ll miss you more, poppet.” With one last gesture of his unconditional love, Tubbo leaned forward and wrapped her in a big hug. “Pa loves you to the moon and Saturn,” he whispered into the top of her head that was now buried in his chest, fighting back the urge to cry so he could appear strong for her.
“I love you to the moon and Saturn too, pa,” Sunny sniffled out, reciprocating and hugging back tightly so as to not let him go just yet.
When she finally pulled away after a couple of minutes, Tubbo wiped away the prickles of tears at the corners of her eyes before giving Pac the okay to close the backseat door.
Heaving out a burdened breath, Tubbo turned to address Fit and Pac as he pulled something out of his coat pocket.
“Get there safely. Contact me on this device when you arrive to let me know you’re alright,” he instructed, handing over a high-tech communications device that looked like it was fresh out of Mike’s workshop. “There’s an AI system in place that oversees the house’s defences. I’ve already integrated your voices into its program, so it’ll let you in and answer your questions and whatnot.” Giving them a half-smile, Tubbo glanced between them with both care and concern alike. “Stay safe.”
“You got it, Tubbo,” Pac said with a smile of his own, saluting the president jokingly before entering the car and turning it on, waiting for Fit to get in so they could go.
Hands in his pockets, Fit brought one out and held it out for Tubbo to shake. “I’ll see ya when I see ya, kid. Don’t go getting into too much trouble without me.”
Tubbo reached for Fit’s hand and shook it spiritedly before retracting. “Oh, you know I can’t help it. That’s my permanent state of being.”
“Yeah, but I figure maybe being president might knock some sense into you,” Fit jested, nudging Tubbo in the forearm light-heartedly.
“When that happens, you’ll be the first to know,” Tubbo joked back. Before he could make more excuses to linger here longer, Tubbo motioned for Fit to go. “See you later, Fit.”
Fit nodded one last time to Tubbo. “See you later, Mister President.”
Getting in the car, the engine roared away buzzingly as it began to slowly drive off, warm rain now drizzling down on him harder and harder with every second he spent just standing by the entrance of his garage like a big moron.
Waving the entire time, Tubbo watched mournfully as Sunny got further and further away, seeing her also waving back at him from the back window with the same mournful expression as him on her face. Soon after, she disappeared into the shadows from his view, and almost instantly Tubbo felt her loss like a deep cut in his chest, hoping and wishing on every star that he could see that he had not said goodbye to her for the last time.
Sunny’s fate was no longer in his hands, but knowing that Fit and Pac were right by her side was a comfort to him that would at the very least make it easier to sleep at night. She was going to be okay if she was with them.
If anything, it was Tubbo now who was in the most danger, and it was only going to get more precarious as he went on. Dismantling The Federation was no simple task, but Tubbo was nothing if not beyond ambitious and determined to the point of madness when he put his mind to something.
He had so much to do now.
The real work had only just begun.