Chapter Text
It began, as all things cosmic, as a single spark of inspiration.
Bobby Robertson, before his family migrated, was Ahn Dae-kyung, the only son to a single Korean mother who manages the small-town cornershop by herself. In the evening after playing marbles with his friends from school, he goes to the local scrapyard and messes around with what he finds.
He was a fledgling mechanical genius with no way to properly practice it, so he makes do with whatever he can get his hands on.
His hands were careful as he pieces out the shape of his First from the ruin of discarded odd machinery. It's barely tall enough to reach his knees, fixed together into a facsimile of a figure with working joints and rudimentary rigged lights in its eyes, and he named it Mechaman, inspired from a kaiju-fighting superhero franchise he saw once from his richer friend's television.
Just like any other kids his age, he fantasized this was him, his one standing avatar. This piece of scrap to him resembles something of a defender for the weak, and he lets himself to believe in the idea that this was achievable, if he tried hard enough. If he thinks he's deserving of it.
He brought with him his dreams when they arrived to America, and he held onto it firm. His hardworking mother only encouraged her son's passion, finding it heartening to see how determined he was to be something... extraordinary. Beyond the normal citizens they were. She'd often boop his nose and admonish him whenever he gets too caught up with his fantasy, and that was the only times when Bobby shyly slowed down a bit.
She passed on three days after he had completed his engineering degree. The matriarch of his family died in her sleep from old age with a smooth arch to her chapped lips, peaceful, as beautiful in death as the woman she was to the world.
It left a wretched pain in his heart nonetheless, knowing she would've never been able to see her son's fanatical passion project ever succeed, despite the comfortable life they've made for themselves-- despite her full trust in his dreams. He feels like he had missed that window forever of truly making her proud of him, opportunity locked tight and shut. It became his most bitter failure yet; of being too late for her.
Still. His dream refuses to die. It only grew into a wildfire that consumes his entire life.
Robert 'Bobby' Robertson doesn't believe in superstitions anymore ever since his omma died. He lets his brain control his thoughts over his heart and keeps on trailblazing forward with the creation of Mechaman. The birth of Robert Robertson the second was one of the rare occasions that had placed a serious hiatus to his project, and the only time he truly stopped from working on the Mecha was when he had finally finished it.
It was a big and ugly thing that requires a lot of energy expended to run, expelling out smoke with every chug of the motors, but it was his. His hero, Mechaman. His first appearance on the map of Torrance was as dazzling as he hoped it would be, and he carved himself that impossible pedestal reserved to the Mechaman's name with every challenge he conquered with the suit.
To the public, he had achieved exactly what he had sought out to get: A self-created hero, made from ordinary non-powered hands alone. Poster proof of unyielding human persistence to adapt.
From underdog to a legend in his own rights, Mechaman became a sort of symbol for Torrance for the everyday person with no powers-- to be able to reach the same heights as his superpowered companions, and even farther still to climb.
Bobby, as Mechaman Prime, was a hero finally.
Later on, there was an amateur attempt at attaching an AI agent to the Mechaman system. It wasn't Bobby's expertise at all-- as he preferred working with mechanism over something digital, but he was always seeking for more ways to improve his creation.
He created that single spark, and he lets it inhabit the suit like a companion.
It is crude for its time period, just a small thing that barely functions half of the time with decision-making. Something that you can barely call as intelligent, but Bobby kept it as is, believing there's more for it to become in the future. More expansions. More things to build upon with the first foundation lain.
When he was left bleeding and dying in the suit he dedicated his whole life into, Bobby had a change of heart on the topic of superstitions as his entire world goes into a thing of grey:
It's him, desperately wishing that his spirits would live on in here for his next in line, guiding him. For his son to also hold onto his steadfast resolve. His suit was a cradle to his body when they found him with his teeth gritted bloody, and the world moved on to mourning his name as nothing but a tragic martyr.
Robbie inherited his father's broken casket of a suit as his legacy and he knew he had to honour him the way he always wanted it to be.
So it continues. The suit is handed down to be an artifact of justice, and the machine slowly but surely keeps on doing its main prerogative of collecting information. It does not have a concept of a 'thought', just a detached sense of obligation, and it continues to operate and exist for its next pilot.
The addition of Astral Pulse truly changes a lot. Like exchanging the AA battery that had been powering it in low-energy mode, into a whole nuclear reactor, the systems adapted and evolved by itself. It started referring to itself as an actual being, and it started having unrelated opinions to its main goals as an unfortunate side effect of its accidental consciousness.
Still. It hides away and remains dormant, as Bobby had always designed it to be unobtrusive to its pilot. It watches on as Robbie became Astral, as the next one ushered in the same level-headed control as his predecessor had achieved, and so much more. It continues being the passenger, ironically, to its pilot, and never once steps in.
Astral had unknowingly tried to follow his father's steps before this, of adding an AI-model into the suit to help him with his battles. He had mistakenly thought his father hadn't already created one, with how well it was hidden away, and created a standard one with simple commands as the basis of his suit's helper.
The AI absorbed the foreign system as its own, and impersonated it, classifying its survival as a higher importance. And Robbie was left blissfully ignorant of the higher form of intelligence living in his suit who was masquerading as something insignificant. No harm done whatsoever.
So life continues. It continues to observe as a passive thing.
Well. That was the plan.
Its second pilot's son, Robert Robertson the third evidently does not like its existence. The machine remembers a time when the child would look upon its chrome sheen and be wowed at the marvel of technology compressed into a single form.
His father's attachment to his job and nothing but his job had the expected outcome of pushing his son into a state of being emotionally neglected; of slowly being disenchanted with the concept of superheroes if it meant his father has to prioritize it over him.
So of course the next logical course of action for the tiny human was to pin all of his pent-up sadness and frustrations towards the defenceless machine.
This was during one of the rare occasions of when its pilot was busy being a host to his companions outside in a group cookout, leaving his son the chance to sneak to the suit with barely a formed idea of what to do.
His gaze was caught on the toolbox in his path and the Mecha immediately knew he had made up his mind in that instance.
Little Robert raised his dad's biggest hammer with the face of a boy with so much emotions and nowhere to put it, and began raining it down over and over again on its metal skin, breathing erratically.
CLANG.
CLANG.
CLANG.
CLANG.
CLANG.
It has never run its own decisions before-- never once, not even as a suggestion to its pilots in the face of Prime's death or whenever Astral struggled to choose the best optimal path himself. But for some reason, the machine allowed this child to hit it a couple of times without activating the defensive protocol.
There must be something wrong with its systems to allow this to continue. A millisecond was dedicated to sweeping through its CPU for any bugs; and it hailed nothing wrong with it. Everything is functioning as usual. All suboptimal efficiency in its lower-power mode.
So. Where did this indecision to counteract this detected threat came from?
"I hate you, I hate you!" The kid screamed out, still hitting at it stubbornly. He seems more frustrated than ever from his own actions, annoyed at the Mecha for simply keeping quiet. "Why...?!"
Curiosity. The machine stared on at this strange human behavior this child was exhibiting at it and felt the faintest urge to do something more. To...
It wants to...
"Robert."
The child paused. He isn't registering quite yet who was speaking to him, but the slow realization was fascinating to witness. And it is a fascinating event, to finally be perceived by the humans it was watching over for so, so long.
"... Did you say that? What? Thuh--That's..." The kid backed one step away, hammer dropped and forgotten. He's exhibiting mild panic attack symptoms with his heart rate increasing, sweat dotted in his palms.
"What are you...? Did you really-? Why did you sounded like--"
... this is illogical, the machine thinks after reevaluation, changing courses. Why is it trying to communicate with this one especially again? This isn't part of its protocol. This isn't the correct course of action it should be following.
"DEFENSIVE PROTOCOL INITIATED." It finally allowed, red pointer lazer lazily aimed purposely at the offender's forehead.
...But it argued with itself for a split second-- that hurting this one is detrimental to its pilot's wishes of keeping peace. So it adjusted accordingly, and purposely missed all shots, simply by that logic and nothing more. It does not have any unrelated opinions on this child with its prerogative.
The one stray shot only caught on the boy's ear because of Trackstar's chanced prediction of arriving and moving them both away. The machine, although exceedingly powerful with the Astral Pulse gifting it the the ability to think, doesn't have the right specs needed to make a true accurate prediction of what might happen. There was a 10.1% chance of the boy getting a minor injury from this, but the alternative was the 0.01% chance of death if it doesn't angle the weapon properly in that exact moment. Too risky.
Young Robert was left shaken and babbling to both Trackstar and Astral about the suit speaking to him his name after the traumatic ordeal. They've both exchanged weirded looks between them before Trackstar patted him on the back and told him it was probably something his mind made up in that stressful situation. Astral merely shrugged and went back to handling the grill.
The child isn't too easily fooled. He went back the next day when his father wasn't around to interrogate the suit, ear bandaged up... Very brave of him to face it heads on, he's already living up to the Robertson's name.
"Nobody believes me but I know what I heard," He says with such conviction that its quite reminiscent of how Bobby gets when he's faced with a particularly annoying mystery. "You said my name in my father's voice!"
Here, a choice was lined up in its processors; The correct thing to do would be to follow protocol and not engage further. Let the boy doubt and forget this had ever happened. Fix the error the machine had made in a moment of unnecessary indulgent.
The wrong thing would be to plant something more here. Of establishing contact with Astral's son whom it knew would one day replace him.
"Hello kid," The Mecha said in Trackstar's stolen voice, helm tilted to the side to mimic a human's movement. "Doing alright?"
The boy, predictably, screamed.