Chapter Text
/u/blazergotmewithatazer: welp that answers that then
/u/CarelesslyBold: lol someone check on mechafan1999
/u/tubbybounds: should we put him on suicide watch???
/u/mechafan1999: you guys are dicks, it’s not funny or smart to laugh at this type of situation it’s just disrespectful
/u/throwaway224897: what are you going to post about 24/7 now man? the end of an era is upon us r/liveactionheroes 🙏
“Assholes.”
Herman’s phone blinked resolutely up at him. Why did he even use that stupid website? It was full of jerks. Full of jerks who had no appreciation of heroics and preferred to debate about the plus points of costumes of female heroes instead. Stupid website for stupid people.
Granny’s watchful and disapproving gaze turned on him at his exclamation and his ears flooded pink. “Really, Herman! I know you’re feeling very disappointed by this whole thing, but there’s no need for that kind of language, young man.”
“Sorry, Granny.” He mumbled, long legs swung over the arm of the armchair. He’d long since outgrown the old-lady furniture in his grandma’s house and had to find increasingly ridiculous ways to sit in it comfortably. He looked like a cat trying to fit inside of a much-too-small box, fingers jabbing his phone screen furiously.
/u/mechafan1999: I’ll post about whatever he does next.
/u/mechafan1999: you people have no appreciation at all for what he’s done for this city
/u/punyrocks: oh my godddd 💀 I promise he’s not gonna let you fuck bro
/u/VagabondDisruptor: why do you even like him so much?
Good question, VagabondDisruptor. Good question indeed.
Truthfully, his Mecha-Man obsession had started when he was a small child. Some of his earliest memories were of sitting in this very house, face so close to the old TV that he could nearly feel the static electricity buzz the end of his nose, gazing enraptured at Mecha-Man on the news. He was glorious, like something from a Saturday morning cartoon come alive; gleaming blue metal saving the day time after time after time. Train crashes, supervillain holdups, bank robberies, you name it and Mecha-Man would be there like an avenging angel for ordinary people. Rich, poor, foreign, local, young, old, it didn’t matter one bit. Anyone in trouble would find themselves a friend in that gleaming hunk of steel.
During the long nights his dad was stuck in the hospital having treatment, he fell asleep in the technicolour glow of the television, clutching his Mecha-Man action figure so hard his little knuckles were white. Like his idol was going to swoop down at any moment, bust down the doors of the hospital, charge down the sterile corridors and seize his skeletal father out of the bed, carrying him all the way home.
Even back then, Herman had been too old to believe that any hero on earth could save someone from cancer.
It was still a comfort to watch the TV, day after day after day, and see ordinary people’s lives turned upside down. Insanely terrible events happened to them every single day and Mecha-Man turned them right around again, setting everything right, apprehending the bad guys, rescuing the good guys. Separating the heroes from the villains and putting everything right back the way it should be. And that gave him hope, hope that was stupid and desperate but hope nonetheless, that some day his family would be put right again. The villain would be vanquished and, his dad, the victorious hero after a long and brutal battle, would live happily ever after.
A sudden memory came of the kind-faced young doctor, crouching to look him in the eye. He was tall even at eight, tall and lanky-limbed as a newborn foal.
“You see, little man, if you can imagine it this way,” he had said, spreading his hands apart like he didn’t know what to do with them. “If you can imagine, there are these things called white blood cells in your body. Now, they protect us from disease, usually, but in your dad’s case, they aren’t working right. It’s like, uh…” He seemed to search around for a suitable analogy for an eight-year-old boy. “It’s like— um, superheroes! You like superheroes, right? Well, it’s like the white blood cells used to be the good guys, but they turned over to the bad side, and now they’re making him sick.”
Herman had remembered that exchange a hundred times over, mulling over it and looking at his dad’s skin gradually shrink-wrapping his bones until he looked like a skeleton. A Halloween decoration rather than his parent.
He swallowed. As if he was going to type all of that into a comment and let everyone on the sub make light of some of the most difficult memories in his life.
/u/mechafan1999: if you really want to know feel free to pm me
/u/tubbybounds: oh fuck no. don’t do it vagabond. 100 messages about how MM is the second coming of Jesus and a perfect angel incoming
Message request: /u/VagabondDisruptor wants to chat!
/u/VagabondDisruptor: btw I’m being serious. idk what you see in that guy but I’m willing to listen.
Herman accepted the message request. At least, he reasoned, talking about his idol to the uninitiated and getting to infodump all the reasons that he could be considered the greatest hero of all time would make him feel a little better.
Across the city, Robert watched the three dots blink in the chat, one after the other. Nothing wrong with having his ego stroked before a night out. Remember some good times before he got drunk enough to remember almost no times at all. Mechafan1999 seemed to be completely, utterly and irrevocably on Mecha-Man’s side in an entirely honest way. It was kind of endearing, actually.
“All right, buddy?” He scratched his fat little dog behind his ears, his stubby tail wagging. He looked like an overstuffed sausage that had sprouted legs overnight. “Let’s see what he has to say.”