Hitting on 16 by Wilbur Soot

Stream2: Horseplay

Ranboo missed a lot of things from back home. Being on the outskirts wasn't all it was cracked up to be from Wilbur's persuasion. He missed his home, he missed Tubbo and he missed Michael. Still, Ranboo saw something in Wilbur. He saw a man trying his best to carve out a legacy and a man at his lowest trying to gain redemption. But unfortunately he also saw a man with an insatiable pride, a man who was a living bomb about to explode and, scariest of all, he saw a bit of himself.
Tubbo walked out the back of the Las Nevadas burger bar and bumped into Ranboo who was sitting on the hill.
"Oh! Hi, Ranboo" Tubbo chirped as he dumped a garbage bag full of old food into the dumpster.
"Hey, Tubbo!" Ranboo chimed back at him with a wave,
"Just hanging out by the bins, huh?"
"You know me." Ranboo scratched his cheek and an awkward silence fell over the two. Ranboo wanted to tell Tubbo he missed hanging out. Surely Wilbur wouldn't mind if they just went for a walk between shifts?
"Hey, I wanted to ask-" they both said in unison and laughed.
"You first" Ranboo insisted
"Okay! I wanted to know if you wanted to come into the restaurant for something to eat? Big Q said I can have anyone round after my shift is done as long as they purchase something at least $20" Tubbo smiled and Ranboo felt a wave of relief over him.
"I was gonna ask you pretty much the same thing." He said
"Really?" Tubbo shouted incredulously
"Yeah, I'd... I'd need to ask Wilbur though, I don't think he's keen on me hanging out in the city."
"I can bring the food out to you! We can eat across the borders!" Tubbo suggested, "Look! I can even bring out a table and chairs and we can push them down the hill at the end of our meal and see which one rolls the farthest! I have this theory that the chairs will go further simply because they have a tall rounded back and the tables can only go so far before they land on their top-side. It's like a 50/50 chance really." Tubbo unfastened his cooking apron and scrunched it into a ball in his hands.
"Let's do it." Ranboo said, all of his worries washing away in an instant.
The meal ended up being superb. Ranboo, who seemed unable to turn down Tubbo's plentiful offerings of a meal he called 'far-too-much-food', slowly, pissedly staggered down the hill back towards the burger van where he could only make out the faint shape of Wilbur smoking a cigarette. Ranboo approached him timidly. Wilbur stood in front of the van door, he only did this when he was about to ask Ranboo to do something intimidating. Ranboo was right.
Wilbur had plans for a heist this evening.
The plan was, under the cover of darkness, to steal Quackity's prize horse 'Boner'. Boner had been named during a more whimsical time in Quackity's life when he was less weathered by the winds of responsibility. Wilbur knew it well as one of the only things Quackity brought with him from old L'manberg to Las Nevadas. It obviously meant the world to him.
Ranboo had his reservations and debated declining Wilbur's offer but Wilbur persisted by playing on the concept of the greater good. For how else would they topple the obelisk of tyranny if they didn't start at the foundations? After all, it was a tame heist all things considered and Ranboo would do well for his job prospects to accept.
In this hollow fact Ranboo found himself an accomplice once more.
You would expect a criminal to wrap themselves in jet black silks or camouflage jumpsuits but Wilbur simply wore burgundy. Ranboo tried to at least primarily drape himself in the blacks from his wardrobe but Wilbur almost teased the idea of being caught in the act.
"Not even a black coat?" Ranboo asked
"Gotta make the heart beat somehow, Ranbus." Wilbur responded, stuffing a handful of fries into his mouth.
As the clock struck midnight the pair began ascending the hill towards the city. The only lights guiding their path were those reflected from the glowstone in the fountain, scattering a bouncing effervescent pattern across the walls of the city buildings. The streetlights were all completely devoid of light. Las Nevadas had no need for streetlights in the early hours of the morning so switched them off to allow it's few citizens a sleep undisrupted by light pollution.
The two snuck quietly to the corner of Tubbo's burger restaurant and Wilbur raised his fist to signal Ranboo to stop. He checked their surroundings before opening his palm and walking out into the street.
Ranboo was scared. Maybe he was excited. Ranboo struggled to tell the difference between the two sometimes.
Sculking past the restaurant, crawling behind the strip club and sneaking between two construction sites lay a small paddock. Constructed out of shoulder-height wooden fences left over from the building efforts. There, stood gormlessly in the sand, was Boner.
"Take this." Wilbur said, passing Ranboo a crude rope fashioned into a leash. Ranboo took the leash and Wilbur climbed into the field and delicately tied the other end to Boner's neck.
"Wilbur, I don't think I want to hold the horse." Ranboo protested, limply gripping his end of the leash in his hands. Wilbur snatched it like a ripcord.
"If you're scared, We'll do it together." He winked at Ranboo before leading Boner to the edge of the paddock. Ranboo removed two wooden panels from the fencing allowing Wilbur and the horse to walk out of the field and into the streets. The three conspicuously began walking back to the van.
It wasn't long before they were spotted.
"What are you doing?" asked Tubbo quietly, cleaning his windows as they approached his burger restaurant.
"None of your business, Tubbo." Wilbur responded, "Eyes to yourself."
"That's Quackity's horse." he spoke, louder this time.
"Oh geez. Ranboo, I don't have time for this, you deal with him." Wilbur scrambled down the hill, yanking Boner quickly away from the scene.
Ranboo took a few small steps towards Tubbo, "Hey, man, maybe you should go back inside."
"Big Q told me to take care of that horse." Tubbo replied, "I've been feeding him every day."
"Well, he's in safe hands." Ranboo lied. "We're gonna hold him ransom but you know Wilbur would never hurt it. He's too soft."
"No he's not." Tubbo blurted, a tremble in his voice. "Bring the horse back. Now."
"No, Tubbo." Ranboo said, trying to be firm. Tubbo, unperturbed by Ranboo's stature over him, dropped his cleaning rag.
"You're gonna end up hurting him. Even if you don't intend to, you will. Wilbur always hurts innocent things and it's not fair. The horse did nothing wrong." Ranboo didn't respond. He just stood there, slightly hunched staring down at the boy.
"Ranboo, make him bring the horse back." Tubbo begged quietly, his voice sounding trembly, diminished and tired.
"No, Tubbo."
"I'm gonna have to tell Big Q"
"Don't tell Big Q. Tubbo, It's for the greater good."
Tubbo felt his rage build up inside him, "Nothing Wilbur does is for the greater good! He takes and he takes and everything is his own little mission of revenge. Can't you see? He's made you think you and him are alike but you're not. Ranboo, you're better than this I-" Ranboo felt the fuse inside him finally reach it's payload.
"Tubbo!" he snapped "For God's sake, just give him a chance! I know that I haven't always made the best decisions with who I trust but this time I swear to you that things may not always be as bad as you think! I mean, People change, people get better and if you never give them a chance to prove it you'll be stuck hating everyone that has ever wronged you and you won't have anyone left..."
A silence fell over the two. Tubbo's eyes began to wet and he quickly turned around and walked away. Down the hill Wilbur cheered and lit up another cigarette "Atta boy, Ranbus!" he gloated.
Ranboo felt sick.
The next day, back in paradise on the outskirts of Las Nevadas, beneath the oak trees by the lake, Wilbur and Tommy's HQ was buzzing with light. A welding torch was scattering sparks like fireflies in the dark evening light as a very tired Tommy methodically lined redstone on the hard rocky floor. Quackity would surely have seen it from his window in Las Nevadas, however he was asleep, ready for his usual early morning rise.
Tommy focussed intently on his job, negating his exhaustion as much as possible, only letting his focus slip occasionally to quip something funny to Wilbur. Wilbur enjoyed the company and laughed along but fretted for the handiwork of Tommy's wiring. For if a single piece of the red powder was not connected properly the entire circuit would break.
"Wilbur," Tommy asked with a whining inflection
"Yes, Tommy?" Wilbur responded, muffled by the welding mask strapped to his face.
Tommy sniffed and wiped his nose on his forearm, "How do you know this plan will work?"
"It doesn't matter what plan I come up with." Wilbur replied "All Quackity wants to make sure is that I'm not winning."
Wilbur's mind worked like a firework. He would have intense flashes of an idea and a storm-like energy coupled with it but found it hard to maintain that energy further into his work. It was as if two minds sat in his skull, one who sat dormant on a lounging recliner, sipping gently on lemonade and watching the mess through two miopic windows. The other half sat at the helm; clueless, scared but confident. Occasionally the reclining mind would speak up and present an ingenious idea then fall back to languor. The working mind would then slog the task.
Nonetheless, he felt he had gotten this far in life by following his gut and chasing those storms, he had grown so accustomed to perseverance the next time the firework bloomed it would greet him as an old friend.
This firework had bloomed in the form of vengeance.
Wilbur had set up a marvelous trap. Rigged to an explosive device was a pressure plate, bending the wires in such a way as to only be triggered upon the plate's release. Meaning the TNT would only detonate not when someone stands on top of it, but only when they step off of it afterwards. This plate was a stone one, meaning any person or creature could set the trap off.
"So why did you choose Quackity's horse?" Tommy asked.
"Easy to get a hold of." Wilbur chuckled, "Quackity doesn't really care about that horse, I'm just showing him a fraction of what I can do."
Quackity's horse 'Boner' obliviously chewed old carpet across the room from them, completely unaware he was about to be detonated because he is a horse that cannot speak English.
"But how do you know this for sure?" Tommy asked
"I just do." Wilbur answered, a little more sharply than usual.
"But you've said stuff like this before and it wasn't true. You've got a bit of a track record of lying." Tommy said
"I have never lied to you." Wilbur spoke firmly. The atmosphere of fun and whimsy quickly drained from the room.
"I mean..." Tommy began, "That's not true. I've had so many people lie to me including you."
Wilbur shook his head, "I've never lied to you."
"What about the pit? What about the stuff you said about Tubbo betraying us in L'Manberg? what about when you said no-one would hurt Tubbo?"
Wilbur lifted his mask
"If I truly believed it was the truth, does that make me a liar?"
Tommy thought for a moment. "Well, not exactly but-"
"That's the difference between me and Schlatt. That's the difference between me and Phil. That's the difference between me and Quackity." The sparks had stopped flying so it was impossible to make out Wilbur's facial expressions as he spoke. "I have never lied to you. I have been wrong but never lied to you, Tommy. I won't lie to you. Do you trust me, Tommy? 'Cos right now I feel like you don't trust me."
These words Wilbur spoke, these words that had calmed the strongest men and built entire nations had no effect on Tommy anymore. They just made him a little frightened. Tommy had heard Wilbur speak like this many times but it never got easier. He felt he had done something wrong simply by posing his point of view and he felt like the antagonist when all he wanted was an answer.
"I trust you Wilbur." He said quietly.
Wilbur brought his visor back down and carried on his work.
After a long night, the trap was set. The two went to bed, Wilbur slept soundly and deeply whilst Tommy stayed awake.
Tubbo was wrong. The table rolled the farthest.