Chapter Text
Fifteen years.
Depending on context, fifteen years could be an entire lifetime or it could seem as short as a second. It was long for a relationship but below average for a marriage. Too short to let a child grow into an adult but too long for a teenager to stay a child. Fifteen years was long enough to start a new life but not long enough to grieve a life lost.
A lot could happen in fifteen years. A lot could never change.
It had been fifteen years since Robert Robertson II had been killed, and it had been fifteen years since Robert Robertson III dropped out of high-school to pick up his father’s legacy. Fifteen years later, and Robert the third was pushing thirty with scars painting his body for every year he had spent in the Mecha Man suit.
The years slipped past like oobleck in Robert’s hands that were always too distracted to hold tightly. Half of his life, and he wasn’t certain what he had to show for it besides a suit that was more welds than metal and an apartment that was filled with three pieces of furniture and a bag of dog food.
Even today, fifteen years past the day he had to grow from a boy to man before his father was even buried, Robert was still working the same job that made fifteen years feel like a breath and an eternity at the same time.
For the rest of Torrance, CA, the day was the same as any other. It was the middle of September, and the weather was hot and just muggy enough to make everything sticky and put everyone in a bad mood. Robert responded to a jewelry store robbery as Mecha Man and found the store owner more upset about the broken front window letting out the AC than the fact that she had been held at gunpoint minutes prior.
Mecha Man was on his way back to his regular patrol route when one of his scanners caught what appeared to be a mugging in progress in an alley down below. Robert immediately descended in the suit and he landed with the solid sound of a thousand pounds of metal settling onto concrete. It was a sound that generally made idiots looking for trouble rethink their choices, and now was no exception.
Five teenagers wearing wannabe-gangster jackets and mulish expressions turned away from the grandpa they had been trying to shake down and about half of them looked like they pissed their pants on the spot. Grandpa snarled like he wasn’t eight-five and shook off the loosened grip of his distracted accosters.
Robert made no attempt to hide the boredom in his tone when he said, “Are you kids going to run off and rethink your choices, or do I need to let you rethink your choices in a prison cell?”
The delinquents shot each other a set of frantic glances before turning nearly in perfect sync and sprinting out the other end of the alley. Robert decided to let them go and hoped that coming face to face with MechaMan would scare them straight. Probably not, but he could hope.
“Are you alright, sir?”
The attempted-mugging victim paused brushing off the sleeves of his sleek red and blue jacket and somehow managed to meet Robert’s eyes even through the Mech’s visor. His brown eyes were overcast by bushy white eyebrows and his dark brown skin was deeply lined by years– but he was somehow familiar past the white hair and shoulders bowed with age.
“What the shit do you mean, “sir”? I ain’t that old yet, you fucker.”
Robert half-raised the hands of the mech in a pacifying gesture while the hind-part of his brain tried to place the voice that he vaguely recognized. “Sorry, man. Just wanted to make sure you were ok.”
The old man’s brows furrowed further and that same part of Robert’s brain that was itching with familiarity felt the urge to shrink back in chastisement. “That’s all? It’s been fifteen years you fucker. You can’t think of anything better to say after all this time?”
Something in Robert’s brain finally clicked into place despite the man’s apparent age and he gasped. “Wait. Chase?”
Chase (which still didn’t really make sense because Chase was barely forty to Robert’s thirty and definitely shouldn’t be white-haired and hunched) stopped muttering and looked back up at the sound of his name. His furrowed brows abruptly loosened into something a bit sadder but resigned. “You didn’t recognize me, did you?”
Robert searched the face of the man that used to be like his older brother and tried to read in between the lines the years had carved into his skin. “What happened to you?”
Chase sighed and a bit more weariness seeped into his frame. “Life. Do you have time to catch up?”
“I’ve never been able to keep up before,” Robert replied, falling into a shadow of their old banter almost unconsciously.
Chase’s smile was sad. “Well, neither of us are running now, are we?”
***
Chase and Robert sat on the roof of some office building with their feet hanging over the edge and the Mech standing guard behind them. Robert had kept his cowl on, and he wondered if it was the fabric and what it represented or simply the years that made the silence so thick between them.
Chase huffed out a chuckle and shook his head to himself. “The last time I saw you, I was still taller than you. Look at us now.”
Robert couldn’t clearly remember the last moment he had seen Chase in person. Was it at the funeral? Was it weeks after when the incessant knocking on the front door and the demands to talk had finally stopped? Was it before or after Robert finally donned his father’s suit and shouldered the family legacy?
“It’s not hard to be taller than me,” Robert said mournfully, ignoring the memories swirling in his vision. “I had to re-scale all the controls in the suit to reach everything properly.”
Chase smirked beneath his bristling mustache. “You got your mother’s build. I always said you took after her more than Robbie.”
Robert went quiet again at the comment, but he roused himself after a few seconds before the silence could grow stagnant again. “So, are you going to explain why you look like Black Einstein?”
“It was my powers.” Chase’s voice was weary. “Turns out when I use ‘em, everything goes fast. I tried to ignore it happening, but one day I looked in the mirror and couldn’t keep pretending. Now, the doctors say if I use my powers again I’ll pop my heart.”
“Shit, Chase,” Robert said sympathetically.
Chase shrugged. “Life finds a way to kick you in the balls.” He looked down at his shoes that were barely scuffed on the soles. “I miss it. I wonder how much I wasted my powers on dumb shit.” He cracked a faint smile. “At least I got the chance to do some good before my body gave out on me.”
“What are you doing now if you’re not Track Star?”
Chase huffed like the crotchety old man he appeared to be. “I got a job in an office with a bunch of assholes. It’s nothing worth talking about.” He gave Robert a sideways look. “What about you, kid? How have the past fifteen years treated ya?”
Robert stared out over the roofs of the city stretched in front of them. “Same every day. I don’t know where the time goes sometimes.”
“Fifteen years today,” Chase murmured.
Robert glanced back at Chase. “You remembered?”
Chase scowled. “Of course I did. It’s my body that’s old as shit, not my brain.” He deflated a bit and let out a breath. “I should have tried harder to keep in touch. I shouldn’t have left you to figure things out on your own. You were still a kid.”
Robert shrugged. “I was the one to push you away. I would have refused any help.”
“Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have kept trying anyway.” Chase lightly slugged Robert’s shoulder. “I missed you, kid.”
Robert smiled and knocked his shoulder back against Chase’s. “Yeah, missed you too, Unc.”
Chase cleared his throat and stood up abruptly like sitting still with emotions was uncomfortable. He walked in front of the dormant Mech suit and casually inspected it as Robert watched over his shoulder from where he still sat.
“What have you been doing in this thing, Robert?” Chase demanded. “It has more patches than metal.”
Robert winced slightly. “I can’t afford to replace parts constantly. I keep it repaired as much as I can.”
“You’re talking like a Spirit Airlines.” Chase scoffed. “Just how broke are you?”
Robert rubbed the bridge of his nose and thought about his empty bank account and emptier fridge. “Very. Being Mecha Man isn’t exactly a cheap business, and it’s kind of hard to keep a day job as a hero.”
Chase turned back to look at Robert with a contemplative look on his face. “You know… how would you like to be coworkers in my shitty office?”
Robert raised an eyebrow. “That something I can do while–” He gestured to the suit. “Doing that?”
Chase nodded slowly with a growing certainty. “I think we can work something out.”
Robert momentarily considered just how disappointed his dad would be at the idea of an office job, and then he quickly decided that dead people who had lived off an inheritance should not get to dictate how Robert fed himself.
“I’m listening.”
***
“Alright, team, I’m about to sign off for the night.”
A collective groan of complaint went up in Robert’s headphones.
“Why the hell don’t you have to stay overtime when we do?” Invisigal demanded petulantly. “If we have to work the night shift, you should too.”
Robert smiled slightly at his computer screen.
He had been working at SDN for nearly three months at this point. Chase had slightly over-exaggerated the shittiness of the job, but the Z-Team had taken a while to get used to. Robert still thought they were a bunch of assholes, but they were trying their best to improve, and he was genuinely proud of the progress the group had made as heroes.
Blonde Blazer had been more than happy to help support Robert continuing to work as Mecha Man in addition to dispatching, and every night Robert left work to go out as Mecha Man. Sometimes he “disappeared” during shifts to help with big emergencies, and he had the bad habit of patrolling too late and coming to SDN in the morning exhausted, but for the most part it worked well. SDN had offered to help with upkeep and repairs of the suit, and Royd in the workshop had breathed new life into the suit. Robert actually had some extra money these days.
It was almost too comfortable.
Robert’s work dispatching had started to feel like just a different branch of his hero work. He was helping people here, and he was helping shape a new generation of heroes.
It was also nice to have Chase just a cubicle away doting over Robert’s son (Beef). It had been a long time since Robert had community in this way– even if it was only during the work day.
“Why should I be stuck with you people just because some night-shift heroes are sick?” Robert shot back. “You’ll be fine with the night-shift dispatcher.”
“You can’t leave us with some random normie,” Sonar pleaded. “Last time we had a substitute I got sent to the sewers. My fur smelled for weeks.”
“Did it ever occur to you that I have plans?” Robert asked dryly.
“Stop kidding yourself. You don’t have a life after work.” Flambae scoffed. “What? You need to go hurry to microwave your dinner?”
“You do not have a date,” Malevola declared.
“Bitch couldn’t get laid if he was paying for it,” Prism added.
“Ok, hurtful.” Robert moved to remove his headset. “So, I’m leaving now, and you can think about what you said.”
He turned off his headset and the tinny sounds of a whole group of adults bitching fell blissfully silent. Robert finished turning off his computer and tidying his station for the night before he ducked into Chase’s cubicle to give Beef a scratch and headed down to the workshop.
Chase had custody of Beef for the night since Robert did in fact have plans for the evening. His plans mostly included breaking up a weapons trafficking ring that had popped up recently, but if anything that was more important than if he had dinner reservations or something like that. Robert didn’t need a ‘life’ outside of work. SDN was his life outside of his work as Mecha Man.
That was part of the reason Robert hadn’t told the Z-Team that he was Mecha Man. Aside from the fact that some members (Flambae) had a bad history with Robert’s hero persona, it was kind of nice to just be “Robert” somewhere. Chase, Blazer, Royd, and probably Galen all knew his identity, but for the most part Robert got to go to work and be someone free from the responsibility of constantly having to uphold a legacy.
When the Z-Team made fun of him for being a washed up former-hero, it was strangely freeing. They already expected Robert to be a normie loser, and they didn’t care. He couldn’t disappoint them by not living up to his father and grandfather’s legacy because they already thought he was a loser.
Robert knew the truth would have to come out eventually, but he didn’t want that to happen yet. Things were simpler this way.
The Mech suit was currently stashed in a back room of Royd’s lab, and it took less than ten minutes for Robert to travel from his desk to the lab and change into his Mecha Man uniform. A few taps of the computer gauntlet on his arm woke the suit up and the chest plate popped open for Robert to climb inside. This corner of the workshop had a garage door exit to the outside of the building, and Robert used that exit to slip out of the building in the suit.
No-one had made the connection between Mecha Man and SDN yet, but Robert knew he would have to address it eventually. He wasn’t looking forward to the “corporate sellout” accusations, but he hoped most people would recognize that he was still doing the same work as before just with slightly shifted hours.
Robert shook his head to dispel his distracted thoughts and headed for the warehouse he had staked out a few nights prior. He could deal with identity reveals and media storms if or when they happened. Tonight? All he had to do was take out a gang of roughly thirty people in a weapons smuggling operation.
Easy.
***
Mecha Man flew through the air and knocked into a stack of wooden crates– scattering some and crushing the rest in a spray of splinters and guns spilling out of their containers. In the cockpit of the suit, Robert was thrown against his harness in a way that he would definitely be feeling in his shoulders tomorrow, and his hands were flying across the suit’s controls to calm the blaring impact alarms and get the suit’s legs back under it.
Robert may have underestimated the amount of people that would be at the gang’s base. There must have been a meeting or something going on that night because he sure as fuck hadn’t seen sixty people when he was staking out the building originally. About fifteen of them had powers, but only about three of them had anything actually concerning, so, Robert wasn’t fucked yet. He was on his way to being fucked since he had basically stomped on the ant hill of armed smugglers, but he wasn’t there quite yet.
The mech suit balanced and Robert shot forward to ram into the roided out asshole who had knocked him back a moment prior. The guy was nearly as big as Golum and had some sort of strength and durability powers.
He was still smaller than the Mech, and a punch from a metal fist that crackled with electricity was enough to knock him down and keep him there.
A spray of bullets spat across the Mech’s armored plates and fell away in a scatter of sparks and the sound of metal striking metal. The suit’s shields flashed into view as a barrage of electric and laser weapons struck next from the small army that surrounded him on all sides. The shields could handle most energy weapons, and the suit’s armor was strong enough against bullets, but Robert knew he couldn’t trust his defences to last forever.
Robert unhooked a canister from the belt of the Mech and flung it into the center of the crowd of smugglers attacking him. The canister exploded in a thick fog of smoke on impact and the shooting stopped for a moment as the smugglers fell back– coughing and blind. Robert swapped the Mech’s sensors into infared and locked his sights on five different flailing bright spots. Five small disks shot out of the Mech’s forearm and latched onto the smugglers– awakening with a burst of electricity that dropped the assailants.
A flash of sparking blue appeared in the fog before one of the smugglers leapt at the Mech with lightning spitting from her fingers. Robert cursed and braced the Mech just as the sparky woman fell through his shields and landed on the shoulder of the Mech. Robert tried to shake her off, but she held on determinedly while more and more static gathered in the air and the suit’s screens flashed warnings of a power overload. There was a bright flash, and the Mech’s screens went dark at the same moment that the suit was flung into yet another stack of crates as a mini-explosion of energy overwhelmed the suit’s fuses.
The back of Robert’s head collided with his chair painfully on impact, but he was already reaching for the Astral Pulse before he could even blink the stars from his eyes. He twisted the Pulse out of its housing unit and quickly locked it back into place. A single screen came on running a diagnostics check, and Robert could already tell that the suit was rebooting far too slowly for comfort.
Visibility was limited without all of his regular screens and sensors, but Robert could see a group of the smugglers steadily approaching the downed mech. His shields wouldn’t be working right now, and his armor wouldn’t last long if he couldn’t defend himself.
Robert was fucked.
His eyes darted around the cockpit as if some magical way to speed up the suit’s reboot (now at five percent) would present itself. His gaze caught on an unobtrusive lanyard with a circular disk attached to it that was hanging from a hook in the ceiling like a rear-view-mirror charm.
Blonde Blazer had given Robert multiple lectures about calling for help when he needed it after the first time he had shown up to work with his arm in a sling. Robert had mostly tuned her out, but he had been forced to take the small device that was unmarked except for a button.
“It’s an emergency button,” Blazer explained. “It will only turn on if you press that button, so, don’t worry about it tracking you or anything.”
Robert huffed. “You do realize that I have been a hero for over a decade? I can handle myself just fine.”
“That’s not the point, Robert,” Blazer said, her voice a mix of stern and pleading. “You can do things alone, but you don’t have to. Let us be your back-up.”
Robert debated with himself for a moment longer, then he reached up and pressed the button.
The smugglers had surrounded him by this point and were on the verge of beginning to break into the mech, so he could only hope that whatever backup Blazer had promised would come soon.
A couple of Robert’s screens including his suit cameras finally rebooted and it was just in time to see one of the smugglers trip (the mad scramble to tackle Mecha Man cloaking his footing) over something that had spilled from the destroyed crate. The “thing” lit up in a way that was unfortunately recognizable, and Robert started mashing buttons with more urgency in the dead suit while the now-active bomb pulsed with expectant energy.
The new threat of an explosion seemed to be enough to distract the smugglers from their downed prey, and everyone was running within moments. The unconscious gang members from earlier were grabbed on the way out, and Robert had the brief thought that at least the gang was considerate enough to not leave anyone but him to die.
The bomb flashed in steadily quickening bursts and Robert’s fingers stilled their useless work to revive the suit in time. He curled his hands around the straps holding him to his seat and ducked his head as if that would save him.
He didn’t see the moment the bomb went off, but he felt it shake the world around him, and he heard the moment the other bombs in the crate were set off in a chain reaction.
Robert didn’t know anything at all after that.