Chapter Text
In his freshman year of high school, Robert had to read the Odyssey.
It… wasn’t bad, as far as classics go. He’d been more preoccupied with AP physics and pre-calc, with the connections he could draw between vague textbook hypotheticals and the sleek titanium realities of the mech suit crouched in the garage. On the odd evening his dad was home for dinner, Homer led to one-word answers; engineering led to conversations.
So, the Odyssey – it was just okay.
But in spite of his distracted attention, somewhere along the way an idea wriggled into his mangled ear that never really wriggled back out again. It was nestled in a long lesson about sensory language in the ancient Greek world, about the striking lack of the word “blue” in the entire epic poem and the implications for how humans across time and space perceive hues and tones. Robert couldn’t really recall the rest of the lecture after that, but the color thing, well… if not at the dinner table, then at least in the privacy of his own mind, he could admit it was kind of intriguing. He’d think about it every so often, after that – even made it into a bit of game, staring out the living room window down the vacant driveway at the yawning suburban-shadow-hue; quietly crook up his mouth at the crinkling in Chase’s pocket, the sound of twinkie-wrapper-hue; the more he looked over the years, the easier it was to play, like building his own dumb little catalogue of mental paint swatches.
He had just about forgotten whatever the original Homeric phrase was by the time he sat in the mech suit after his father’s funeral, shaking hands clasped around the astral pulse. He could feel the odd, biting thrum of it against his palms, light scattering fitfully through his fingers from the writhing helix inside. He sat and stared until his eyes hurt, until twisting azure snakes coiled behind his eyelids, open or closed.
Then he breathed slowly through his nose, slotted the pulse into the reactor chamber, and twisted, watching as electric blue bled through the light strips of the control panel. His skin prickled with the sub-audible hum of energy powering up the mech from the inside, bathing every surface in a cool glow. A faint scent of ozone permeated the cockpit.
Hero-hue, he thought, grim for all of two seconds; then he huffed at his own theatrics, flipped a series of motion protocols, and rocketed off into the night.
*****
“-chaman Blue. Mechaman Blue?”
Robert shook himself, beating down the wince he felt threatening to tighten his eyes against the glare of camera lights. A thrumming migraine pressed against his brain like a drag net on a thrashing animal, and he blearily scanned the dim outlines in the conference hall for the source of the voice.
“Over here. Charles Kingsley, South Bay Signal.”
A middle-aged man with tinted glasses raised his notepad, and Robert nodded in his direction.
“Why didn’t Shroud just kill you while you were laid up? Would’ve been easy pickings.”
Robert blinked, distantly amused at the blatantly inflammatory question. “Shroud wanted the astral pulse, and he wanted the mech suit out of commission. He got both. I’m not sure I mattered that much.”
It wasn’t hard for him to admit; not the second half, anyway. He was still desperately searching for the astral pulse in a wider and wider radius from where he crash-landed months ago, but nobody here needed to know that.
“Right. Mechaman Blue doesn’t matter that much. Which leads me to my next question…”
Wonder why he keeps using the epithet, Robert thought, warily registering the shit-eating smirk on the reporter’s face.
“Most heroes avenge their family. You did the opposite: you killed their legacy. Mechaman Prime, Mechaman Astral…”
Ah. Question answered.
“...How disappointed would they be if they were here right now? Your father, your grandfather, they must be rolling over in their graves.”
Robert briefly entertained the idea of stepping off the stage to give the man exactly what he was asking for – stupid games and stupid prizes, all that. After the whole exploding in the sky thing, his own body was admittedly not in ideal operating condition, but as long as he didn’t move his arms or torso too much, he could envision an efficient enough combination to down him. Headbutt, heel kick…
His head throbbed again, and Robert clenched his teeth.
Maybe no headbutting today.
“I think he’d be proud,” he answered instead, the lie easy enough on his tongue. He’d at least mean this next part. “Knowing I tried my best. Being Mechaman – protecting my community – was the greatest honor I’ll ever have. Now, I have to live knowing that. Thank you for coming.”
He strode off the stage, focusing on walking without a wobble and ignoring the twist in his gut at the dissatisfied murmurs behind him. He rounded the curtain and started toward the corridor to the exit, passing a timid-looking PA who pointed at her wrist.
“Just a reminder that you’ve, uh, you’ve got 15 minutes til we re-open the hall. Sorry,” she said softly, like she was afraid of upsetting him. It was standard practice at these things – keep the press locked in their pen long enough to give heroes the chance to change back into civilian attire and get a little ways away. Fifteen minutes was certainly on the shorter end of standard, but Robert didn’t really plan to change, anyway; pulling off his mask and pulling on his jacket was about all he could muster without his bad arm making everything an annoying tangle.
“Got it. Thank you.”
He tried for a reassuring smile. It seemed to work well enough, though there was a sympathetic look in her eye that Robert tried not to notice as she scuttled off, giving him some semblance of privacy. Robert awkwardly shrugged on his bomber over the sling, sighing as the cowl came off and relieved a sliver of pressure on his head. He stuffed it in his pocket as he stepped out into the cool night air, walking quickly in a direction that was less bright and populated than the community thoroughfare. He figured he could bum around a bit, take the long way back to his apartment just in case the fifteen minutes wasn’t quite enough to curb the more motivated gossip-chasers from sniffing after him. It was all probably useless precaution, anyway; he knew with a kind of blunt pragmatism that Mechaman had fallen (literally and figuratively) from public grace. If the very slim silver lining was less fuss about finding out his identity, then hey, he’d take it.
The tinkling of broken glass brought his thoughts and his steps up short. His head jerked in the direction of the sound against his will, mood souring further. Sure enough, there was a painfully conspicuous group of figures hauling flatscreens through a shattered storefront down the road. They weren’t even trying to be covert. Robert didn’t know balaclavas were sold in such eye-stinging colors.
He groaned under his breath, stiff fingers twisting in the fabric of his mask bunched into his pocket. His wrist throbbed in protest at the simple motion. He didn’t give a damn about flatscreens, really, did he?
But it was a hollow protest – it always was, with those kinds of justification games. The TVs, the goods, the stuff wasn’t the problem, not unless a business was really on its last legs. No, the problem was the old couple upstairs who came tottering down to check on the noise; the young family next door with the baby who startled awake, crying; the cat that spooked and ran out into the road. It was the fragile lives that always seemed to find themselves in the cross-fire, the neighborhood that got caught with its pants down and kicked in the crotch for it.
And even if this wasn’t his neighborhood – Robert Robertson’s neighborhood – it was still Mechaman’s neighborhood.
Robert scowled as he shucked off his jacket and dropped it on the curb, yanking his mask back onto his head. The burglars didn’t notice as he started marching down the road; they did, however, notice a rotund stray dog coming down the opposite corner, a rotund stray dog that began barking shrilly when one of the burglars swung a crowbar toward it.
“Dude, what the hell are you –”
“It’s not my fault, thing just ran up on me –”
“Will one of you just, take care of it, just shut it the fuck up –”
Robert sprinted on atrophied legs as the one with the crowbar swung again, clipping the dog in the ear this time. It yelped, stumbling back, and Robert’s chest twisted as he closed distance.
“Hey!”
The colored balaclavas – there were five that Robert could count now – stopped and turned toward him. The little dog skittered off into the darkness. Robert watched it go from the corner of his eye.
“Who the fuck is this asshole?”
He could imagine the picture he painted all too easily. He sighed, gesturing to himself with his good arm in exaggerated aplomb.
“Mechaman, if you can believe it. And I hate to ask, but could you just – not do this right now? Maybe just put the stuff back, and we can all call it a day?”
The guy with the crowbar and the orange balaclava sneered. Or Robert thought he was sneering, based on the vague topography of his mouth and cheeks under the obnoxious mask.
“You’re not Mechaman. That’s Mechaman,” he gestured toward one of the still plugged-in flatscreens in the broken storefront, conveniently playing a news reel of the mechsuit exploding. Robert grimaced at the image and the idiocy, both.
“I don’t wanna make you feel bad, but: that’s the suit. There’s a guy inside: that’s me. Kinda why they call me Mechaman, y’know, because I’m the man that pilots the – uh, okay,” he stopped as Green Balaclava lunged at him from another direction. He dodged the clumsy grab, but Orange Balaclava pushed forward next, waving the crowbar.
“I don’t care who you are, you’re already beat to shit,” he jeered, prodding at the strap on Robert’s sling, “and it’s obvious which side every punch would be coming from–”
Fuck, Robert thought emphatically as he darted his bad arm out of the sling, bracing for the consequences. It was as good as an explicit invitation, and he had to take any opening he could get with odds as bad as these. The punch connected – Robert had a millisecond of satisfaction as he watched the chump get laid out cold, not too bad for post-coma noodle arms – before pain ripped up his arm in a fiery wave. He felt the fracture in his left forearm crack wider in the same moment his shoulder popped from the socket. But he carried through the momentum, spinning on his heel so that his better arm could swing on Red Balaclava.
He landed a few more good hits before all four remaining came at him, exploiting the opening on his left side to double him over. He fought to stay on his feet – this would be over fast if they got him on the ground – but a kick to the chest sent him down harder than it should’ve, knocking the wind out of him in an awful, choking rattle. On instinct he raised his arms, partially blocking the rain of blows as his mind raced and his lungs spasmed.
Were some of his ribs still broken? Or was it his sternum? He couldn’t clearly remember all of the details on his discharge paperwork. He’d just wanted out of the hospital at that point. Just wanted to assess the damage on the suit. Just wanted to find the astral pulse. Just wanted to –
There was another crash of glass. Robert’s vision had gone spotty, but he managed to suck in a gasp of air, and some of the blackness receded. He could mostly see as the skittle squad got peeled off and tossed, one by one, by a darting shadow in the air. That shadow coalesced into a serene and stately figure that drifted to the ground in front of him.
“That last guy I threw – he landed on the roof, right?”
*****
Blonde Blazer was… she was… Well, she was a hero, through and through. That much was entirely evident.
Whatever else was going on was a lot less evident.
Robert swirled his ice, pretending that even lifting the glass didn’t make the connective tissue in his arm creak like moldy rope. If his head was foggy before, it was swimming now, and the ambient, scrambling pain signals zinging along every nerve ending didn’t help sharpen his thoughts. He could tell Blazer was a good person; he could also tell she was angling for something, though he was absolutely baffled on what. As much of an ego boost as it would be, he doubted it was just… him. In spite of the venue, the signals, the “propositional” phrasing, it wasn’t coalescing into that kind of a picture. And, while he would genuinely be having a nice (if confusing) time under any other circumstance, he was really hoping she’d get to the point sooner rather than later, before he collapsed in a gross crippled mess on the sticky bar floor. He was getting accustomed to reaching new lows, but even for him –
“Hey, Bitch!”
Robert frowned. Something was a little familiar about that voice; he tried to unthink that thought.
“I’m talking to you, bitch.”
The bartender squinted hard at Robert. Robert, who was delaying turning around for as long as possible. He sighed, squared his aching shoulders, and slowly twisted on the bar stool.
“Alright, just so you know, I only turned around because someone yelled, not because I’m a…”
Ah.
Ah.
He may have spoken too soon about new lows.
Three people slowly approached from across the bar, each alarmingly unique, but Robert’s eyes fixed on the man in the center. It was hard not to – he was, first of all, enormous, teetering on the edge of the human scale that Robert could sometimes forget in the grandiosity of heroes and villains. But he didn’t look supernatural, he just looked…big, tall, strong in that way that Robert had secretly always envied for the simple truth that there were many, many scraps it could’ve made a vital difference in. The bite of that practical envy was dulled a bit by the garish way it was flaunted: the man was in a suit that almost reminded Robert of something from Cirque du Soleil, all skin-tight, shimmering fabric with bursts of red and orange and a V-neck that showed a lot more than neck. The wrap-around sunglasses didn’t even look that ridiculous.
Infuriatingly, he managed to be beautiful, like a Monet in an Ikea frame is beautiful. He had changed very little in the years since Robert first encountered him, at least physically. Robert couldn’t say the same.
“Don’t you watch the news? This is a superhero bar.”
Well, it was pretty clear where this was going. Robert suppressed the desire to slam his own head into the countertop, though his addled brain snagged on the edge of that sentence.
He understood what the man was implying about Mechaman, but – this was a superhero bar.
So what was Flambae, of all people, doing here?
“Are you really gonna act like you don’t remember me?”
Robert realized too late that he hadn’t responded. Still, he hesitated on what to say next, trying in vain to connect his thoughts with any amount of clarity. As he puzzled over what to say, mind flooding with every errant detail of their brief but memorable encounter, his eyes darted down to Flambae’s hand without his volition. He hadn’t – actually been entirely sure, all those years ago, the fight ended abruptly and the arrest was fast. But he’d told EMS to try to administer first aid, that maybe they could be re-attached –
His empty stomach clenched at the two smooth stumps where Flambae’s right pinky and ring finger should be.
“Sorry.”
“I control the fire, and the flame, and my skin does not burn. I – what?”
Robert probably should’ve been more concerned about the way Flambae’s hands were fully engulfed in fire, now, and getting menacingly closer to his face. But he could still see the outline of Flambae’s marred hand through the flames. He felt his own mouth tense, and a strange, disproportionate bitterness washed through him. It wasn’t… only guilt about Flambae, he didn’t think, tying a lead knot in his chest. There was failure, too: imperfection, glaring and unignorable, a clumsy case wrap that led to clumsy consequences for the rest of someone’s life.
But that wasn’t right, either. It was too close to – too close to how disappointed would they be right now, too close to you’ve got fifteen minutes, sorry, too close to you’re already beat to shit. Robert barely knew Flambae, but he doubted the man wanted the indignity of pity – or anything remotely resembling it – which made it essentially impossible to apologize. He’d probably prefer a fight. A rematch. A momentous reclaiming of whatever pride he thought Mechaman stole.
But Mechaman was benched, and Robert was too tired to sort this out.
“I – uh, sorry. I never knew how that ended up. I’m not sorry for booking you, but – I’m sorry for that. For your hand, Flambae.”
Flambae’s hand-torches didn’t go out. If anything, they flared brighter, but Robert looked up at the man’s face, not flinching back from the furious, bewildered stare he found there. He resolutely held his gaze as Flambae’s glare roved over his still expression, darted between his eyes, swept over the muscles in his jaw and mouth, a wildfire hellbent on smoking out lies. Flambae’s lip curled around his clenched teeth, and he leaned forward into Robert’s face.
Robert felt his eyes go dry and gritty with the heat radiating in the small space. They were close enough that he could watch a curious shift in the shade of Flambae’s irises, flickering yellow-red-yellow like a guttering flame. Flambae’s snarl twisted down into the beginnings of a frown, and the gradation in his eyes shimmered as he flicked his eyes all around Robert’s face again, a crease growing in his brow. Robert felt something shift, and had the sudden impulse to lean away, to pull his cowl further down, to do something, because somehow something unplaceable was going sideways –
“You –”
“Oh boy, sorry about taking so long, I – Flambae?!”
Flambae reared up and away, narrowly missing swiping his still-flaming hand across Robert’s jaw. Blonde Blazer was there in an instant, holding Flambae’s wrist with a hard light in her eye.
“Flambae,” she repeated in a steely voice, and Robert didn’t have time to try to intuit how these two people were connected, because whatever the dynamic was, Blazer clearly had the wrong idea of what was happening. “After the last incident, you are this close to suspension. I shouldn’t have to remind you how generous the contract is with the conditions of your –”
“I didn’t fucking touch Mecha-dick –”
“HR will be hearing about this first thing tomorrow, and don’t think I don’t see you two slinking off, Coupé and Punch-Up, I –”
“Blazer, wait.”
Four superpowered people froze in their tracks to look back at Robert. He rubbed a hand across his eyes, resisting the urge to groan at his own superability to end up in progressively more absurd situations.
“He's telling the truth. He didn’t swing on me, we were just… catching up,” Robert trailed off lamely. Blazer arched a brow at Flambae; Flambae’s hands went out with a funny little wheeze. He shook off Blazer’s grip, and scoffed in Robert’s direction.
“You heard the bitch. We were catching up,” he pitched his voice up mockingly, though he didn’t quite make eye contact with Robert, turning on his heel to stalk toward his companions at the door. Blazer looked ready to go after them, but Robert lightly shook his head, grinning a little sheepishly when she planted her fists on her hips and raised both brows at him.
“Ya’ll are gonna have to leave,” the bartender piped up, giving Robert a stink-eye and shrugging apologetically at Blazer. She sighed.
“Well, I guess that was as good a segue as any to what I really wanted to ask you, tonight. Got any gas left for one more stop?”
No, Robert did not. “Yeah,” Robert said, and Blazer spirited him off to a billboard, gave him a surprise VR proficiency test, and offered him a deal to scrape together the ashes of his life, one last time.
*****
It was two a.m., he was dead on his feet, and Robert was wandering around the park near the burgled appliance store.
“C’mere,” he called out in a raspy voice that hurt to force from his throat, straining his ears for any sounds in response. “C’mere, boy. I won’t hurt ya.”
He stumbled a little, hissing when his shoulder checked against something unseen. A tree, probably. But a quiet scrabbling noise pulled his attention from the new onslaught of throbbing, and he focused his senses as hard as he could to pinpoint the source. Reaching blindly in the closest proximity he could guess, he was rewarded by his fingertips brushing against something soft.
Soft, warm, and slightly shaky as it wiggled under his hand. Robert tried to gentle the stroke of his own aching fingers, and the soft warmth drew steadily closer until it was pressed against his shins. With a strained grunt, Robert wrapped his protesting arms around the dense little dog, hoisting it as best as he could.
“You’re kinda beefy,” he muttered. A wet nose poked against his cheek.