Chapter Text
Tommy sometimes wondered if he might do well to have a support system.
Sure, most days he was perfectly fine fighting Dream and his Team off - like right now, he thought, expertly dodging a volley of Sapnap’s solid air projectiles as he backflipped off the side of another building and landed neatly on the balls of his feet on the next roof, god he was so awesome - but the thing about the Dream Team was that they always managed to escape unidentified at the last minute, even when Tommy was moving and attacking and evading at his absolute peak performance to try and stave off the chaos the irritating trio seemed to crave at any cost.
He noticed Dream adjusting his mask, a telltale sign that the villain was about to pick up speed, and reacted accordingly by shifting mental gears to jumpstart his spider sense. Spiderman could have a whole team behind him, he imagined on a higher level of thought, as his base instincts sent chills down the relevant sides of his body moments before Dream rushed past them at top velocity, leading his limbs in sweeps and stops and trips that all shared the goal of hopefully stopping the speedster in his tracks and letting him land a proper hit, or ideally a full-on restraint. Yeah, if he had another hero beside him, with super-strength or something, they could bring down Dream while he held off the other two from the weird little villain gang his arch-nemesis had accrued some time after the first two weeks or so. He felt his arm grab at fabric - holy shit! - and wrench the offending article of clothing up to hopefully meet him mask to mask, but when he looked down all he saw was a taunting scrap of green, and he spun to see Dream on the roof behind him, waving mockingly with the pouch of his trademark neon hoodie torn away. Damn these sticky fingers. Some of the spider traits had turned out to be a curse as well as a blessing.
While he was still processing the consequences of leaving his senses to do all the dirty work, he heard an arrow sail by him and knew that 404 was on his tail. Then it was time to run again - his mental map of this side of town picked out the safest paths across ridges of shingles and flat sides, the tiny sensors in his toes keeping his balance steady on the more uneven patches of concrete and terracotta, the ever-so-slightly-slower way he perceived the world in spider vision helping him spot 404 as a shadowy figure on the roof across from him who was aiming again already, jesus, really? He couldn’t catch a break with these guys. The projectile grazed the top of his mask - he worried for his hair for a moment, before realising that no stab wound could make his newfound permanent case of Wilbur-level bedhead any worse, and it was all under the mask anyway. It might be nice to have a stylist. A costume designer. This red and blue thing wasn’t exactly the peak of colour theory, and it definitely didn’t help keep him camouflaged against the backdrop of a rapidly yellowing London sky. Another arrow. Keep running.
Or a guy in the chair? That was a thing they had in spy movies, mainly, but it would be awesome to fit this thing with a Bluetooth headset and have someone on GPS or watching the news or something. Tubbo would be awesome at that.
If he could ever tell Tubbo, that was.
Sapnap sent a massive wall of compressed air straight in his direction, and he jumped it, literally sticking the landing on the side wall below where he’d previously been standing. That could have properly taken him out if his spider senses weren’t so amazing and powerful. Yeah, on second thought, maybe his teammates wouldn’t be able to stand up to the Dream Team quite as well as he did on his own - and it wasn’t like he knew of anyone else on the planet quite like the four of them - and besides, he was a big enough man by himself, without any help. He’d been tanking these almost-daily fights like a boss and STILL managing to get through all the prep work for his rapidly approaching GCSEs just fine. One more week until study leave. He could only really hope the Dream Team were polite enough not to strike during any of his exams, or the local economy would be in a bit of trouble. But hey, he did have the inkling that they were about Techno’s age, so maybe like him they would all have final exams too.
“Spiderman.”
“Dream. D-Money. Big D.”
“Don’t patronise me, kid.” A rough hand grabbed him by the back of the suit - lucky this thing held on to every inch of his skin with the weird hooking quality all his body hair took on in spider mode, or his mask might have been pulled clean off. Dream rammed him outward, and Tommy countered the force by tucking his legs under to slam Dream in the shins with both feet, knocking them both flat on the roof. Now he was the one on top of things.
“Dream, I just made you my bitc-”
“What did he just say?” Sapnap’s ice-cold voice joined the conversation.
He stumbled over his words, searching for the next comeback. “You do have to admit that was pretty awesome, though, right?”
“I’ll knock the air outta your lungs if you keep talking, kid.” So he shut up.
Dream shoved him aside to stand up, pulling that intimidating black axe from his back and brandishing it in Tommy’s direction until there was a safe few feet of space between them. 404 seemed to appear out of the growing shadows, silent and deadly as ever, his own face obscured by huge black goggles. (That was where “Gogy” came from. He wished he had someone to make Gogy jokes to, other than the Team themselves, if he could actually tell them without being murdered instantly. He was so funny and the quips just had nowhere to land as it was.)
“You’re not going to stop us, you know that, right, Spiderman?” His tone on the last word was scornful, like Tommy’s moniker was something to hate. He hadn’t wanted that. He’d wanted it to sound a little bit stupid, actually, so he seemed more friendly to the general public. This felt a little bit wrong and a little bit bad. When did everyone start taking Spiderman so seriously?
When lives went on the line, he supposed.
“All I know is that as long as I’ve got the power to stand in your way, that’s what I’ll do. I can’t just let you wreak havoc on innocent lives like this.”
“It’s all only a bit of fun, Spiderman, don’t you understand? It’s a game. The thrill of the manhunt to keep your morals at bay is just another level for us to have fun.”
“Human lives shouldn’t be a game to you, Dream,” he spat, rising to his feet (he was REALLY happy about that growth spurt he’d had earlier in the year, otherwise he’d never have stood a chance at having equal footing with Dream, who only beat him out by about an inch), “what’s wrong with you?”
“Oh, Spiderman, there’s nothing wrong with me. You're the one who's wrong."
"Oh yeah?"
Dream swung the axe, and Tommy scrambled back another few steps. "You're wrong about society."
Another swing, another step. Spider sense told him the air was thinning around him; his eyes told him Sapnap was collecting it, forming something of a vibrating shield between them and Tommy. "You're wrong about your morals."
And then not a swing but a jab - this caught him off guard, and he propelled himself backwards just half a step too far. "And you're on the wrong foot."
Landing in a bush was really not as comfortable as you wanted it to be. Especially not when the leaves were secretly all pointy and shit.
By the time he'd scaled the building again, Dream and his cronies were gone.