A Turning Point

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HUGE CONTENT WARNING!! PLEASE READ!!
((Mentions of bombs and explosives. Descriptions of fire, burning/collapsing buildings, people trapped under heavy objects, smoke; as well as blood, vomiting, injuries, burn wounds, and various other wounds (including broken bones and blood from the ear).
Possibly unsettling descriptions and depictions of people screaming, hurt, and unconscious.))

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The night after Tommy's third patrol- this time with Charon and Erebus -Tommy turns on the shower in his bathroom and takes a deep breath. It wasn't too late in the evening, thankfully- so turning on the shower hopefully wouldn't disrupt Tubbo or Ranboo's sleep. But Tommy wasn't getting in the shower. Instead, he opened up the laptop he bought and hesitantly plugged in the hard drive he'd stolen from Charon's office.


He expected to be met with a firewall or something. Some form of security system that he'd need to get past before he could access the contents. Or maybe at least a password?


But no.


To his surprise, it just started uploading a folder without any resistance. No security, no firewall, no password- nothing. Tommy grinned at his luck, and dialed Raptor's number on his burner phone as he waited for it to finish. His first call went unanswered, but that was expected. Raptor always let the first call go unanswered. Then his second call went unanswered. A little less expected, but not unheard of. Then thankfully, his mentor picked up on the third call.


"Vex," He started, sounding relieved over the tiny speaker on the flip phone. "There you are..I was starting to worry." Tommy felt a rush of heat rise to his cheeks at the thought of his mentor being worried. "We haven't heard from you in weeks. How's the mission going? Any updates?"


"Charon invited me to his office about a week ago." Tommy grinned. "I managed to smuggle a hard drive out- and I'm about to go through it."


"Well done!" Raptor says, and a rush of pride floods his system at the praise. "What's on it? Is there a firewall?"


"Nope; no firewall." Tommy says, tapping his fingers anxiously on the edge of his laptop as he watches the files finally finish downloading. When they finally appeared on his desktop, he double clicked on the folder. "I'm opening up the files now."


He glanced between the few folders that were stored in there, and his eyes caught on one labeled 'Academy'.


Jackpot .


He clicked on it eagerly, his wings puffing up in excited anticipation as it slowly loads. When it does finally load though; his excitement dies down into confusion when he sees the contents. You'd think there'd be documents in a folder labeled Academy, but there weren't any. Not a single word document or any encrypted file. Nothing.


It was just pictures.


Hundreds of them, sure. But they were still just pictures.


But- maybe they were blueprints? Maybe they were scanned documents instead of just the raw files? That would make sense.

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