The Childrens Rebellion

Stars and Shit

Tommy was shoving things into his suitcase when Wilbur waltzed in, the Phantom adjusting his beanie before speaking up.

"Packing?"

"No," he said. "I'm doing drugs." Tommy sat down on his heels and turned to see Wilbur rolling his eyes. "If you keep doing that, your eyes are going to get stuck."

"That's a myth," Wilbur told him shortly.

"Aunt Puffy would never lie to me." Well, you know, besides telling me that she and Dad would be along shortly.

"She probably also told you Santa and the Easter Bunny were real."

"Who is Santa?" Tommy asked Wilbur, who gasped, clearly exaggerating.

"You don't know who Santa is?" the Phantom said in a near-shriek. "The guy from the North pole who goes down your chimney?!"

"...I was born on a spaceship, Wil," Tommy said warily, tossing a red and white shirt into the suitcase he was packing for Elytra. "There isn't a North pole, and nor are there chimneys."

Wilbur paused. "Fair point," he said eventually, sitting down on Tommy's bed. "Did I ever thank you for rescuing me seven years ago, Tommy?"

He paused, sitting back on his heels as he thought about it. "I don't remember," he said honestly, thinking of the whirlwind of the last few weeks. "It wasn't much of a rescue, though. Seeing as—well, you know, I was stuck in the Wasteland too."

"You were ten."

"So?" he said, raising an eyebrow.

"You were ten," Wilbur repeated, eyebrows furrowing. "You'd just lost your family—" Tommy winced slightly. "—and I never even caught your name before you hacked into the system." He threw up his hands. "Why didn't you escape with me? You could have met us all far sooner." He sounded a tad bitter.

Tommy pursed his lips. "Well, I was young," he said. "I didn't think I had anywhere to go. And after the Red Planet—well, I just wanted a stable food source."

"Even though they experimented on you?" the Phantom asked quietly.

"I suppose so," he said slowly. "It's...well, it wasn't torture, Wil." He cracked a small smile. Wilbur didn't look that amused. Or like he believed Tommy at all. "Not really. Sure, I can't sleep except in space and in high places—but the Vice-Admiral was very accommodating. I got a high dorm!" He snorted. "Not like I sleep there anymore anyway."

"They still experimented on a child."

"I wasn't a child after Pogtopia," he said quietly. "I don't think any of us were."

"You may have been through a lot, but you were, and still are, a minor, according to galactic laws," Wilbur corrected. "You're damn well lucky that nobody was recording that Golden Gate Bridge at that time. Otherwise, the media would hound after you like they do Ranboo and Purpled—thankfully, they're also minors, so they have some privacy." Tommy bit his lip until it drew blood, and Wilbur bent over and flicked his nose until he stopped. "I don't understand why you didn't escape."

"I told you," he said. "I had a stable food source there." He shrugged. "Pogtopia—the Red Planet—it was...it was a whole other can of beans, as my aunt used to say. It made me—it gave me things that I wish I didn't have; techniques I now use—I don't hoard food, though I know Purpled did. I didn't really have the opportunity to hoard food in the Wasteland."

"It was really sad," Wilbur said quietly. "That—Ponk and Punz saw the distress signal and freaked because they had sent their little brother to a genocide, and when we got there it was so much worse, Tommy, so much worse than we had imagined—"