Chapter Text
The day (evening, ass-end of night) that Robert revealed he was Mecha Man went… a little differently, than he expected.
“So, you should all get to know the real me,” he said, awkwardly. “I’m… uh, Mecha Man.”
It lacked a certain finesse, and had nothing resembling any kind of pizzazz. But Robert was currently trying to work out if the wobbly tooth he felt on his left jaw was real, or a figment of concussion-induced paranoia. He just figured it was easier, to combine the nausea that he always felt from being emotionally vulnerable, with the pre-existing wooziness of getting beat outside the head.
“No fucking way.”
“But, that’s like, a real superhero - oh, shit,” said Prism.
And then, she turned hastily towards Flambae.
Robert also looked beyond the team's scatter of amazed faces, over to the person he’d dreading telling the most. To be honest, he was surprised he hadn’t already taken a gout of flame - or at least a fist - to the face.
But as the crowd parted, Flambae stepped forward.
And he looked - well, he looked pissed. But, even though his posture was more rigid than a gym selfie, and his hands seemed to be shaking, with some kind of emotion (probably rage), there wasn't a single flame in sight.
Yet.
“It is you,” he murmured, almost as if to himself.
“Yeah… sorry,” said Robert, then winced, at the inadequacy of his own words. “Blazer… she kind of told me that the dispatch team are supposed to keep our former working lives a secret. And then, it was obviously… convenient for me, that that was the stated policy. With you, specifically. But… I’d rather be honest now, than have any of my lies blow up in our faces further down the line. I know I'm probably not your favourite person, but I hope this is something we can move past. I’m really proud of what we’ve all built together, and I’ve got a lot of trust in what we can achieve: I wouldn’t be risking myself like this, otherwise.”
Robert paused, warily. Flambae was certainly glaring at him, like he was suddenly having some elaborate fantasies about barbecue, but… he made no move to threaten him. Not even to step in closer.
“Is that… all you have to say to me?” he asked him, with a deadly, quiet edge to his voice.
“Errrr… I’m also really, super sorry about your hand?” Robert tried.
At Flambae’s incredulous expression, he tried to think of a better way to phrase it.
But, because of the possible concussion, what came out of his fucking mouth was:
“I mean, you see the way I treat villains in a fight now-” he thought about the knot of wires, nerve endings, and brain matter that he’d spattered out onto the floor of the Sardine when he’d made someone rawdog the uninstallation of their augments, “-so, I’m hoping you’ll believe me when I say I was… pulling my punches, back then?"
Flambae’s expression got angrier. Which, yeah, fair - a ‘at least I didn’t take your whole hand with me whilst I was incapacitating you’ was always destined to go down like a lead fucking balloon.
But still… no outright violence.
...Huh.
Robert’s pulse was jackrabbiting. His body's first instinct would always be some weird cocktail of adrenaline, and the anxiety-induced brace for the inevitable worst case outcome, but... this actually was going way better than he could’ve hoped for.
Should he feel… hopeful, then?
Mostly, he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
So was Flambae, it seemed.
“That… that’s it?” he asked him, again.
“Um… that’s all I’ve got, off the top of my head,” said Robert, weakly. “Which, admittedly, isn’t feeling all that great right now, so... If there’s anything else you need, we can… I dunno, workshop it? If you want erm… the cost of the medical bills, we can wait until I’m not in mountains of debt, and-”
Flambae snarled, at the mention of money - which was strange, because Robert knew that he wasn’t exactly immune, to the siren song of material wealth. Based on what Prism and Bae talked about on comms, the man had a very extravagant lifestyle to maintain.
But, ok, maybe that was still a little crass. Robert would've personally loved someone to reimburse him, for dropping out of the air in the mech and straight into a coma - but then, he'd burned through millions without ever once knowing luxury, and had been practically living on subsistence rations for years. Maybe Flambae was more comfortable, financially, and could therefore favour his pride in these kinds of situations.
Still, the snarl was loud, and the sight of Bae's hands curling into fists meant Robert backed up a step. The backs of his knees hit the wall he’d been previously laid out on, and he raised up his hands in genuine surrender.
“W-we can get you moved to a different team,” he offered, “if you feel like you can’t work with me. Or I can ask for a transfer, so as not to fuck any of your existing relationships. If there’s like, a vengeance play, can I, um, at least negotiate on what form that should take? I’m not above begging for my life, if that’s what -”
“I - that's - Fuck you, Robert Robertson,” said Bae, cutting him off. “Shut your fucking mouth.”
Robert did so, immediately. His jaw clacked, with the speed with which he stopped speaking. The two of them looked at each other for a long, hard moment of silence - the Z-Team watching on, spiritually snacking on popcorn - and then Robert, like an idiot, shrugged at Bae helplessly. He didn't know what else he could do or say in this moment, to make any of the harm he'd done go away.
“Seriously? Fucking jackass.”
Flambae sounded absolutely disgusted. He spat on the ground, in Robert's direction - it sizzled, smoking on the asphalt where it landed.
And then, in the next second, he shook his head, and took straight off into the sky, with a jet of flame that Robert really felt should’ve been intended for him.
The Z-Team all stood around in awkward silence, afterwards.
“Um… anyone else kind of amazed that I’m alive right now?” Robert said into the empty air.
“Oh, yeah, man,” said Sonar, “those odds were not in your favour.”
“Shame,” added Malevola, adding with a wink. “I love me some toasted white bread.”
"Did he get like... medicated, or something?" Visi asked, "dude nearly threatened to choke me out two months ago for using his fucking almond milk, and I didn't take his fingers. Therapy can't be that fucking good."
"Unlike some people, my boy has an understanding of workplace behaviour," Prism immediately retorted. "We on probation, bitch. He can't attack the man, who could literally get him fired, and thown ass-first back into prison."
"Ah," said Robert, "so... is this a 'getting jumped by a masked man in an alley in three-to-four business days' kind of a situation, maybe? I'll start double-checking my blindspots. Feels like it might be the right call."
The whole Z-Team took a moment of stunned silence, to stare at him like they all wanted to call a sponsor he didn't have.
“Ehh… I dunno lads,” Punch-Up said, rubbing his neck awkwardly. “I mean... it’s not like he could bring himself to face you up in Crypto Night, either.”
Robert frowned, “what does that mean? What are you talking about?”
“Well, if you really are Mecha Man, then I guess we… saw you,” Punch-Up explained. “All in your baggy long-johns, and what-not. At the bar, this one time. And I knew summit was up, because Flambae went all… tense, and quiet, like he did just now. Like he’d just seen the ghost who fucked his mum, or something. But he didn’t wanna talk to you then, either.”
He sighed, wistfully: “Coop even offered to take you out, out back. Wrap you up in rope, toss you in a trunk, and give you the waterboard special in a warehouse somewhere, maybe take us some fingers of our own, but… nah, he just didn’t seem up to it. Made us leave, and go get wasted in some other bar, instead.”
“I… didn’t know that,” Robert said carefully, wondering how Coupé’s feelings on waterboarding might have changed or perhaps… intensified, since getting cut from the squad. She probably wouldn’t be waiting for Flambae’s permission, next time. “Jesus. That’s so strange. I only went to Crypto the once - that’s where Blazer hired me. Scouted me, or whatever.”
“Really? Well, we’ve literally not gone back there since, because the little pussy was too fucking afraid of running into ye,” Punch-Up replied. “Isn’t that funny? Only reason we went to the Sardine in the first place - tonight, even - was to avoid you.”
“...Right,” said Robert.
So that meant Flambae really did hate him, then. Exactly as he suspected.
He just… wasn’t feeling confrontational about it.
Which was... odd, because Flambae was a very confrontational person. But… maybe that meant that what Robert had done to him actually hurt him way more, than the average, minor inconvenience that he always got so loudly and performatively het up about.
Well, there was Robert's guilt arriving on cue, at least - in lieu of any other consequences. If Flambae didn’t want to do anything about it, then Robert thought he'd be more than capable of punishing himself in his place.
✧⋄⋅⋄✧⋄⋅⋄✧
Flambae’s oddly non-committal reaction to his boss’ true identity as his once-sort-of-nemesis continued in much the same vein: all the way through the Red Ring’s invasion of Torrance, to the team's final confrontation with Shroud, and beyond. Robert was surprised when he didn't turn last second, didn't see Robert stood there in the mech and immediately choose to change teams. But Bae stayed true - to Robert, to SDN, and the Phoenix Programme - right up until the very end.
So… maybe that small ounce of doubt he held had been doing Flambae a disservice. He hadn't actually done anything to Robert, since the reveal.
Oh, don’t take it the wrong way: to Robert’s eyes, the man was obviously, violently pissed. He didn’t engage with Robert, in any of the needling ways that he used to: his voice was clipped, distant, and unnervingly cordial, on comms and in-person. If Robert entered a room, Flambae was likely to leave it. The first time he caught sight of the new mech, on the battlefield Coupé made of SDN's offices, his expression had shifted and shuttered, closed off. He'd looked away.
And the two times since that Robert had tried talking to him about it, he’d been totally shut down. The first time, after accidentally running into each other in the gym, Flambae had simply blinked down at him, unimpressed, and walked away the moment Robert broached the topic, leaving him midsentence, with heat shimmering in a warped haze off the back of his retreating figure. The second one - where Robert had tried the more formal, corporate approach, and attempted to place a 1-1 meeting in the calendar, stopping just short of titling it “So, are we still Arch-Enemies or not?” - had simply been declined. Outlook didn't want people to know that you could do that but... you could totally do that.
And yet, Flambae also didn’t apply for a transfer - not even with the boost his defense of SDN had given to his ranking. That could maybe be justified by his attachment to the Z-Team… but no request came through to HR for Robert to transfer, either.
And when Flambae showed up to Robert’s impromptu house-warming (or not-dead party, or whatever the fuck that night ended up being before it, you know, got worse) he’d been the only one to arrive, not holding a lamp. He’d bought Robert a coffee machine instead, which was something he actually… well… needed.
Although, Flambae’s face at that realisation - that he’d accidentally bought Robert an incredibly thoughtful gift - hadn’t exactly been friendly, either.
So… things were far from ok.
But between Chase, and then Shroud, and the week’s leave for SDN’s hasty initial building repairs, the resultant period of working in and amongst plastic sheeting and a rotating door of pissy contractual workers, and then… just… you know… the routine deal of worldsaving (or rather, worldsaving management, with some freelance worldsaving on the side), Robert had kind of just had to… let it go.
Or let it slip, maybe that was more accurate - right out of his top priorities. If it wasn’t getting him murdered, it was just a little further down his list right now.
(Which, given that Coupé was back in the Phoenix Programme, with a new, heftier set of probationary clauses in her contract, was really saying something. Robert might be checking behind doors, watching his back in empty corridors, monitoring his locker for tampering, along with every single thing he ate or drank. But that had very little to do with Flambae, at this point).
And before he knew it, three whole months had passed, since he admitted who he was to the team.
And the team was still… sort of working? There were some teething problems: like Visi’s leave of absence for that bullet wound proving how much he'd been relying on her for mobility missions (the answer: too much), or the fact that Coupé’s resting face seemed to permanently hint towards potential vengeance. But honestly, they were almost functional, and that was all Robert could ask for at this point. Particularly when-
“Got another one, Robert.”
Flambae’s voice came over the line - clipped, dry, and with a marked, complete, total absence of nicknames, as it was every single time he addressed his dispatcher when on a call. Technically, Bae was now actually more professional, than he'd been when Robert had first started here. Much easier to handle - much more effective, more efficient. But so obviously cold, compared to how the man addressed the others on the Z-Team, and how the rest of the Z-Team addressed Robert. One-to-one comms felt a bit like holding a séance, with the ghost of who Flambae once was.
…The thing was, though, you didn’t actually have to be friends with any of the people you worked with, in order to get a job done. That was just a standard the Z-Team had invented for themselves, to try and avoid doing their jobs all to-fucking-gether.
“Yeah, I was worried that might be the case,” Robert replied, clicking through to try and get a camera on in the apartment. “Shit, no internal surveillance. Describe for me what’s on the ground?”
“Same thing as before,” Flambae told him, “they’re just… lying there.”
“Can you get any kind of a response for me?”
There was a series of sounds, as Flambae moved up towards the presumed victim, and did the round of checks required to assess levels of consciousness. Robert heard the man sigh down the comms. “Pupils are moving, responding to light and shit. Pulse is there. Breathing is there. Can’t talk, though. Can’t get anything from shaking them. Same as that one three days ago.”
“Ok,” Robert tried to keep his voice calm, but he could tell he didn’t succeed. “Right. I’ll put in a call for emergency services. Stay right there with the victim until they arrive. Then, I'll need you to talk to the person who called in about the screaming. They said it was coming from above them, so they’ll be in the flat underneath. Take a statement. Try to get an exact time for when the noises stopped, or when they maybe heard the body drop.”
“...Understood.”
“It should be ok,” Robert said, wondering if he was trying to reassure himself, or the man on the other end of the call who was, for all intents and purposes, presumably stood next to an unresponsive body right now. “I know it might be a little… unsettling, but the person Malevola brought in last week could talk again, after 72 hours. They were discharged yesterday. Full motor skills and everything. As long as signs of life are there, it should all be fine.”
“I- it’s fine, Robert. I’m fine. If that’s all you need from me, then… that's just me standing around here for ten minutes. Easy way to earn some fucking money, I'll just check my socials and shit. Body’s not even dead. I’m not a little bi-”
It was then, that Flambae realised he’d nearly given Robert a full-sentence that was about himself, and not about work. He cut himself off with a heavy sigh, that echoed its way down the line. Robert nodded to himself silently, as well, as if he agreed with something that had gone unsaid. He'd tried not to notice the small amount of hope he’d had, but it became obvious, the moment it was squashed down and killed. His shoulders slumped a little. Bae's slip hadn’t gone unnoticed, at either end.
“As long as you’re all right,” he replied, as calmly as possible.
Flambae - who had once chatted to Prism and Waterboy for twenty minutes straight, non-stop, no-pauses-for-breath, about haircare, all the way to their shared mission and all the way back- barely gave him a non-commital noise, in response.
Robert cleared his throat: “Just so you know, I think this officially constitutes a pattern. I’m going to flag this case, alongside the other two, and escalate them to Blazer immediately. This won’t implicate you or your behaviour in any way, as I know you'll act as instructed, and do everything you can - but it might mean you get quizzed on it a few times. Hopefully the witness is cooperative, but push for details where possible. We need a full picture on this.”
“Sure thing, Robert.”
And then, Flambae closed the call without warning, and Robert sighed.
Not about his subordinate’s ice-cold shoulder, but the fact that he had some kind of serial… not killer… on the loose.
(You could see why Bae’s strange behaviour was rapidly sliding down the list of things he could realistically deal with, at any given moment).
What followed was a bureacratic process the Z-Team never saw, and probably wasn't even aware existed. Linked individual cases around similar or developing issues, like the Cult of Cha'ad, or Visi's run-ins with Lightningstruck, could be flagged in the SDN system as related, codified and assigned an Incident Web number. Here, even that didn't quite feel like enough. After marking them in the system, Robert pulled up all three incidents from the last ten days, and attached them in an email directly to Mandy.
All described calls that played out the same: either the caller or somebody nearby reported the sounds of intense, visceral pain (the first caller had come through begging, desperate for it all to stop, so incoherent that Robert had immediately dispatched Malevola, thinking they needed medical assistance). But in the time it took to dispatch someone and have them arrive, the pain seemingly just… ended. The victim dropped, and became immediately unresponsive. No signs of a struggle, beyond one that a single person thrashing or falling to the ground might cause. They were handed over to the emergency services, completely vegetative, placed under medical observation, and then seemed to come back to themselves within two-to-five days.
It was the fact that they called SDN, not an ambulance, and that no visible perpetrator had been sighted or reported in any of the incidents… that was what made Robert extremely fucking nervous.
A feeling that absolutely did not go away, when Mandy invited him into an urgent meeting roughly five minutes after he sent off his email. She asked Robert to come directly to his office: he did, passing comms over to Galen in the meantime.
“We think it’s a Soulmate Eater,” she explained to him the moment he sat down, without any preamble.
“I'm sorry… a what-the-fuck-now?”
“Yeah, that was me, about five days ago,” she sighed, rubbing her shoulder unconsciously, where Robert assumed her mark must be, underneath the purple sweater she was wearing. “But... they’re a thing, apparently! There’s been twelve of them, in recorded supervillain history, and I’m currently waiting on a response from a metahuman specialist in South Korea who seems to have done his master’s dissertation on them. They’re energy siphoners who, instead of using lifeforce to power themselves, cannibalise that connection instead. Or, it’s just a regular energy siphoner, who is killing or feeding off one half of the pairing, and their soulmate is the one who’s feeling it. We’re… unclear, at this stage. I never thought I’d reach the point where I was praying for some bodies to show up.”
“...Okay. So, in that case, what do we know? You're calling in specialists, that means-”
“This isn’t the third incident I’ve received along these lines, Robert: it’s the 28th, across the entire branch," Mandy admitted, face grim. “It started, a little over two weeks ago. Which, reading up on the literature of previous cases, makes us think we can reliably assume the person is actually in Torrance, at least. When it was a few random incidents, we couldn’t be sure. If a person under our jurisdiction falls into a kind of coma, but their soulmate is in say, China, then… it's not our problem. Nothing we can do on our end, except maybe look for their mark, and record it for potential cross reference.
“But... with this many cases becoming concentrated in a singular area, and taking into account the likelihood of how many people’s soulmates live within a radius where they could realistically, eventually meet, probability suggests that the enhanced individual is stationed here, and that any of cases cropping up outside our districts are the outliers - or results of incidents we’re not getting any evidence of, because the victim is out-of-jurisdiction.”
“...Jesus,” Robert said.
He wondered how many victims that made in total, then. Could 28 be an accurate statistic, if you were accounting for some random-ass person in Torrance whose soulmate was chilling out unsuspectingly, in Timbuktu?
Mandy nodded, glumly. It was about then that Robert finally noticed, that she looked about as tired, as he usually did. She'd been losing a lot of sleep. This must be a real daunting threat.
“How scared should we all be?” he asked her, gently.
“It’s impossible to say, honestly. It's not killing people,” she said, “but… from what I understand, loss of a soulmate connection is a debilitating condition - much like a phantom limb, only on a cosmic scale. The people we’re letting out of hospital might appear to be physically fine, but I can’t even guess at what the psychological impact is. And then, we’ve got the question of-”
“-If they’re siphoning all that power, what they’re storing it up, and/or using it for.”
“Exactly.” Mandy sighed. “For now, just do what you’re doing: report any cases you find to me directly, with their call number and any relevant follow-up details. All victims can now be taken directly by SDN to a designated trauma centre in the South Beach hospital, for observed recovery, in case any complications occur across our affected population. And once we know what we might be dealing with - or who - I’ll send an APB out to all teams, across all channels. I’m waiting to hear from this specialist, on who can engage with this kind of metahuman, and what methods have proven most effective. Once that information has been provided, I’ll start drawing up an action plan.”
“Can I inform my team? About the suspected villain, I mean - not just the new procedure for treating our victims.”
“Yes,” Mandy nodded, “I think that’s wise. Once the general public starts connecting things, I think we’ll have an uptick in paranoia calls and interview coverage, if nothing else, so best make sure they’re all up-to-date.”
She shuffled a set of papers at her desk, maybe just for something to do, then added: “We also need to start getting a list together, of people willing to do recon, or be on call for combat, should we eventually reach the stage when we can initiate any kind of a confrontation. Obviously, I’m dreading the risk to an agent who comes into contact with this entity by chance, but, in terms of what we can control... if we end up making some kind of strike team, I don’t want to put anyone in the field who isn’t comfortable with sustaining this kind of… metaphysical injury.”
“Got it,” Robert said, taking a note in his pad, before glancing up at her. “Sign me up for that, by the way. The strike team. I'll happily do my part.”
“...Are you sure?” Mandy looked worried, “I mean, Mecha Man did occur to me - hopefully the suit would offer adequate protection, if this a touch-induced power, but I’d want that to be confirmed, before I-”
“-Nah, it’s all good,” Robert interrupted her. “I don’t have one, so... I’ll be fine. An ideal candidate, even.”
Mandy paused.
“A soulmate, I mean,” Robert clarified, when her silence stretched out a little too long.
Mandy’s pause became stricken, as silences often did, when these kinds of things got said out loud.
Which is why Robert didn’t bother to say them, all that often.
Of all the worrying things in his life - the chronic pain in the aftermath of the coma, the continual lack of a bedframe in his apartment, the numbers of full meals he actually managed to eat each week, proportional to the amount of alcohol consumed - Robert actually thought that this was pretty low down his multitude of red flags, all things considered. If he ever managed to earn himself a neon sign emblazoned “DESTINED TO DIE ALONE”, he kind of hoped he got it through the heady combination of his daddy issues, low self esteem, and terrible self-care: this shit better be a meritocracy, as far as he was concerned.
But… trying telling society that. Amatonormativity was a hell of a drug, especially when an estimated 81% of the population happened to have a roadmap to its presumed destination hidden somewhere on their body. Whenever he revealed he didn't have a soulmark, the look people gave him was like they were suddenly in a zombie apocalypse, and he was the sadsack fuck who had just admitted to being bitten out loud.
Which was crazy, if you thought about it. A soulmark wasn’t the automatic ticket to personal, romantic, or interpersonal succcess. If Robert's dad had had one, his mark had never meant he found the person on the other end. In comparison, Shroud had literally tracked down and killed his soulmate, putting a bullet in their head the moment he met them - something about their existence impacting his own plan's probabilities of success. Chase never talked about having his own mark, but Robert had this awful feeling he'd stopped properly looking, once he'd decided his advanced aging 'disqualified' him from dating.
Having a mark didn't guarantee you anything - but Robert guessed it was his absence of hope, and a perfect solution, that hit people so hard.
“...Wow,” he joked now. “Am I your first?”
It was clear Blazer’s social skills weren’t going to be enough to fix this, so their poor, sorry asses had to rely on him.
“Um… No, actually,” Blazer said, as she carefully restarted. “Katon - Phenomaman, I mean - he doesn’t have one either. On account of the whole, y'know, ‘not from this galaxy’ thing.”
“Well, then that means I’ll be in good company,” Robert told her with a warm smile, hoping to ease their way through this moment and get them quickly to the other side. “I love it when I’m on a team with someone who’s totally invulnerable. Gives me a nice big body to cower behind.”
“With the number of heroes on our roster who lie outside the parameters of conventional human and metahuman biology, we should have a decent enough pool to draw on,” Mandy said to him, in her most corporate tone.
What went unspoken, of course, was that Robert was firmly not in this category. Making his lack of a mark probably deeply distressing - at least, to people who cared about that sort of thing.
“But I’ll… bear that in mind…” she said awkwardly, “about…”
“Thanks,” said Robert. “Appreciate it. Happy to help.”
“I- Thank you, Robert.”
Blazer said it, like he'd just told her Beef needed to be put to sleep. Robert simply nodded, glad their little awkward moment was over, and quietly let himself out of the door.
He got all the Z-Team together in a conference room the next day, to explain the situation at hand.
“‘Soulmate Eater’. Cool name for a band,” Visi noted, from her place at the back of the room, feet up on the table. “Probably the kind you could have sex to. Like… discount Sleep Token.”
“This news which you impart is deeply distressing to me, Robert Robertson,” said Phenomaman, cradling his cup of chamomile tea that he now always brought to meetings with him. “I may not be marked or predestined for someone, as others of your race... but there is no pain greater to me, than that of heartbreak. I fear for these victims, and their recovery.”
“Fucking… soulmate eater?” Prism said, “excuse me but… the fuck? Torrance is fucking weird enough already. Can't we just be sticking to Mole people, and shit?”
Coupé remained silent, but her golden gaze sliced directly across the table to Punch-Up, sat opposite. Her hand surreptitiously tightened, on the nearest dagger at her hip.
“Yeah, I’ll be honest, ‘the fuck’ is pretty much where upper management are too, right this second." Robert admitted, sighing, and shuffling his papers. “SDN is liaising with all other networks, including those abroad, to try and get a beat on what the fuck this means for any of us. For the foreseeable future, all it requires is for you to follow a new protocol, whenever we encounter a victim. That’s if you’ve been dispatched there, seen them in the wild, whatever. Even off-duty, I’m afraid you're going to need to call it in, though it will immediately come back to the office and you can get on with your night, morning, weekend run, et cetera. If we’re on shift, log them with me straight away, in case there’s any correlations in placement that can help us get a beat on the entity's current location. And we’re no longer waiting on Emergency Services: get them to South Beach yourselves, as I said.”
The team nodded, but they did so quietly. This was a thoughtful silence, that was very rare in relation the Z-Team. It hadn't happened, since Robert had refused to cut Visi. They were clearly freaked the fuck out.
“Finally: if you think you see anyone suspicious, do not engage, under any circumstances. Not until we actually have a crisis plan in place.”
“You want us to just… stay bystanders? Leave this fuck at large?” Visi asked him, incredulously.
“Listen, we are really out of our depth here,” Robert admitted. “But, given that no victim of this entity has died yet, I think Blazer’s suggestion is we drain some of the lake as a first step - clear up the confusion, around what precisely it is we’re dealing with. Rather than… y'know. Getting our data, through seeing how many people happen to drown.”
The Z-Team all looked a little sick.
“Well… damn,” said Golem. “I mean… not a problem for me. But. Damn.”
“I just want everyone to know, that I totally predicted this,” Sonar announced to the room. “I told people, like, a year ago. Forget crypto - the next biggest currency? Soulmates, for sure.”
“Dude,” said Malevola. “Now is not the time. Not unless you want to become their number one suspect.”
“Nah, I’m a bat. Not a vampire. Or a soul-vampire. Or whatever. But… I mean, just think about it,” Sonar continued. “Most people believe that wealth or power is the end goal of society, capitalism, et cetera. They think that’s what the people want. But... it’s literally not. All anyone actually wants, is love - or an answer to loneliness, for all my asexual bros, and not-hoes out there. Either way, if you could buy that shit straight and just… mainline it? Instant windfall, I'm telling you. I swear, if someone could just... disconnect a soulmate tether from a person, and then sell it on, they’d have the next multi-billion-dollar-”
“-Experimenting on babies is only one fucking step up from ‘eating humans’, asshole,” said Courtney. She was folding her arms, looking defensive. “Don’t fucking joke about that kind of shit. Or say it’s lucrative. Otherwise I’m killing you along with Vanderstank, come the revolution.”
“Oh, no no no no, I’m not saying take the marks when you’re young,” said Sonar, in a way that suggested he was, before it became clear he’d have to abruptly course correct. “Surely some people out there don’t want their marks, y’know? Imagine if you could sell on like, the world’s shittiest soulmate. And then you’d profit too!”
“Such connections are important,” said Coupé. "You cannot fight fate, no matter how ugly it may prove to be.”
“Or how beautiful,” Punch-Up immediately countered, with a winsome smile in her direction.
“I dunno,” said Malevola. “I always thought it was a bit too much... monogamous heteronormative bullshit, for my tastes. Like, I’m supposed to let a tattoo determine who it is I fuck for the rest of my life? Really? Like... are we serious?”
“Eh,” Punch-Up interjected, “it can be platonic.”
“Nahhhh, still too weird for me, dude,” Malevola paused for a second, “Plus, demons don’t actually have souls, so you know, it's like… racist? Ableist? Whatever it is, that means it doesn’t include me.”
“And on that note,” said Robert, who had become an expert in working out when to try and expend energy, getting a Z-Team conversation back on track. “That brings me to the only other thing I actually need you guys to action, at this point in time. By the end of the week, an anonymous survey - anonymous, as in, I and nobody in the team will ever see it - will go around, asking if anybody is willing to volunteer themselves for tackling this particular villain.
“Heroes without marks are encouraged to apply over those with, but given the current unknown risk factors, I’m not going to make anyone do anything that they don’t want to do. You can all choose what you want to prioritise, and what it is you might be comfortable staking on your survival. Obviously, we're the best team here, so I'm not worried, but no one will be volunteered, without their explicit consent. Soulmate marks are of course a protected characteristic, but HR will have to take some record of that data for now - I’m told it’ll all get deleted once this threat is over and dealt with. Just sign up via the form, if you want to pitch in: Blazer will take a note of you, and you’ll be in the pool for any potential strike teams or recon shifts. You will be paid overtime if you participate: all related hours time-and-a-half, given the level of risk involved.”
“...Sweet.” said Golem, who presumably could reap all of the benefits, with none of the potential harm. Newfound ‘pro’ of being an ensorcerelled mud construct, Robert supposed.
“Anyone can apply?” said Flambae, from where he was sat at the far end of the table, sunglasses on and low upon his face. His feet were also propped up on the plywood surface, and jostling Visi for dominance of the space. (Robert usually popped into the cleaning supplies cupboard for antibac wipes, ahead of time, and scrubbed the bootmarks off it, afterwards).
Robert paused, as he always did when Flambae spoke in meetings, which was not… often. He guessed other people noticed the hesitation, because he wasn’t very good at hiding it. He would admit, he was still always really fucking nervous around the guy. Visi had once called him out, on flinching like a motherfucker at the slightest noise. This was just an extension of that - Robert felt like he was constantly braced for some kind of collision, waiting for the axe to fall, the arson attempt to end his life, et cetera.
“Anyone can apply,” he replied. “I cannot confirm at this stage, if everyone will be picked.”
“Are you going to apply?” Flambae asked him.
“...Anyone can apply… anonymously,” Robert clarified, after another period of hesitation. “Obviously, the only people who will know in the end, are those who end up working on missions together. But if you want to disclose that kind of personal shit to the people here, that's your own choice.”
At the other end of the room, Flambae lowered his shades a fraction, and raised an eyebrow at him, as if in challenge.
Fucking weird energy, Robert thought.
“Which… I’ve made, in the ‘I don’t want to’ direction,” he added, “I’m explaining that, in case you all couldn’t tell, from my implicit silence.”
Flambae scoffed. Presumably, he was thinking that Robert was a total fucking hypocrite, holding his team up to a risk that he himself might not ever need to face. Robert could correct him... but admitting he was soulmark-less and dedicated by fate to a life of loner loser boredom (regardless of whether he believed that to be true or not) was the kind of ammunition he would literally never give to the Z-Team, not in a million years.
You didn't give personal details of any kind, to the Z-Team. They’d only just evolved past making fun, of his given name.
Whatever the source of Flambae’s beef, the meeting still ended. Robert could swear he felt the man's eyes still on him, as everyone started filing out of the room, and he pulled out the detol wipes.
Whatever. Robert filed it away, as another problem for later.
✧⋄⋅⋄✧⋄⋅⋄✧
“You’re gonna be on that team, right?”
Robert jumped out of his fucking skin, as Visi materialised next to him. And... just ten seconds after he’d just logged off - a new personal record for her. Beef startled out of sleep, and huffed with the same exasperation he did.
“Courtney.” he said, “I understand we’ve had… boundary issues, in the past. But a protected characteristic is a protected characteristic. If I’m on the team, then that’s none of your business.”
“But it must be true, because, like, you don’t have a mark. And you love to just put yourself in harm's way, so...”
Robert stilled, halfway through getting up out of his chair. He took a deep breath, straightened, then turned to her.
“Ok. So. We’re just making speculations out here on the public floor, now?”
Visi scoffed, sparing only a brief glance to the mostly empty dispatching floor, before choosing to challenge something else in the statement instead:
“Dude. I saw you naked, remember? First fucking day? And unless your destined partner is the ICU, and they keep desperately trying to get ahold of you, then-”
“Right.” said Robert, dry as sandpaper. “Well, if I remember correctly, you didn’t see all of me, so…”
“-So you’re not going to be on the team?” Courtney interjected, eagerly.
So eagerly, that Robert realised that this might have been what she was angling for, this whole time.
“I - Courtney, I am not having this conversation with you. With anyone on the Z-Team, in fact,” Robert said. “I know saying this is crazy, given our past history, but sometimes my business is just that: my business. Don’t start a bet, don’t start a pool, please don’t try to stalk me into the showers-”
(He always used the private handicap stall, for this very reason. Luckily, his body was fucked up enough for it to be totally justified, in most people’s eyes.)
“-The list could go on. But it’s not going to. Because this is not a talk, that we are having.”
“Jeez, you're so boring now. If I wanted to do my own investigation, there’d be much funner ways, to get you to strip.”
“Why do you even want to know? I thought we were… I don’t know… past this?”
Robert sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose. He'd known Visi had a small thing for him - he had a feeling that people living on the moon would’ve noticed Visi having a thing for him - but the situation between them had mellowed, or rather, become a lot less… charged, since they'd bought about the end of Shroud together. If Robert had had literally any right to therapise other people, he would've hazarded that Visi had felt a passing draught of attraction for him, that she'd then projected a fucktonne of guilt, and other high octane, messy emotions onto. Now that their personal drama was dead and buried (in a max security facility up-state, not in the ground), she’d cooled herself off a bit. Maybe taken a moment for self reflection - did he dare hope?
“Hey, don’t even worry about that,” she said, snorting. “I'm not trying to go full omegaverse 'fated mates' on you."
"I... am thankful to say, that I don't know half of those words mean."
"‘Fuck the stars’, remember? Weren't you the one, who said fate basicaly isn't real?”
That was a few too many dots connected, for Robert's liking.
“Courtney, that doesn't explain why you felt the need to even ask.”
“Honestly? Just feelin’ nosey.”
“... You can't be serious.”
“In that meeting? Vibe was fucking weird. You don't usually get so… defensive. Thought there was something there for me to unpack, in my capacity as new work bestie.”
“Your shift ended, like, half an hour ago. This conservation could've been a text - that ended in you getting blocked.”
“Eh.” she shrugged. “I was bored. Nothing to do tonight. Might as well bug you, right?”
“Courtney-”
“And I know you're not like… mine anyway, if that's what you're worried about. This really isn't about that. I didn't chase after you the way I did because of destiny, or anything - just thought your voice was hot, y'know? Plus, you were also a little fucked up so you felt... I don’t know… attainable.”
“...Wow.” said Robert, “Bestill my beating heart. Tell me: is this my cue to swoon?”
“Dude, I literally told you, this ain’t a romantic question. It's an entirely practical one. I didn't even think you had a mark. And mine sure as hell isn’t you, so there's nothing to be lost from you telling me whether or not you feel like putting your broken little body back in that mech, and fighting something we don't even have a profile for yet…”
This was quite a lot of words for Invisigal to say, all at once in quick succession. Her whole body was tense, folded up in tight little knots, with arms crossed, and shoulders almost as tense as Robert on a good day. And it was her usual mixture of painful oversharing and deflection, so…
It was about here, that Robert realised Invisigal was… worried.
...Because she'd already known about Robert's lack of mark, and his tendency to put himself in the firing line, regardless of the cost? Maybe.
“Courtney,” Robert said, voice softening now, “I'm not telling you if I'm going to volunteer or not. But, if I did… you know I'd be fine, right? Be back in her the next day, to ride all your asses, same as normal. You literally wouldn’t even know I've been gone.”
“...Ride?!” Visi said, in a suggestive tone, waggling her eyebrows like she was pretending that was all she'd heard of the sentence.
At Robert's unimpressed look, she sighed.
“Whatever, dad,” she muttered. “Just… don't do it if you don't have to, ok? Maybe just… don’t do it at all, actually. You took out Shroud, so someone else can boost their rankings with this one, you know? I know you don't really care that much, about self preservation, but maybe you could spare a thought for the poor fucker on the other end? Not only do they have you, as a future partner, they could end up in a fucking coma over it.”
And, because Robert couldn’t explain that he literally wouldn’t be endangering anyone but himself, and that maybe this money would be enough to finally get him a new bedframe, because that shit was expensive, he instead settled for:
“A three-day-coma isn’t so bad, in the grand scheme of things. You opted for three months as our meet-cute, and that all worked out, so-”
“-Asshole!” Courtney said, hitting his arm hard. “That's asshole behaviour, dude. Shut the fuck up. I’m never caring about you, ever again.”
Yet, she still idled with Robert, still obviously jittery with residue nerves, as he packed his stuff away, and looped a now-awake Beef under his arm to walk them all out.
“So… you know your mark isn’t about me, huh?” Robert asked her, as she shadowed him through the waiting room to the front entrance. “Does that mean you know who it is about?”
“Robert,” said Courtney. “That’s a protected characteristic. You’re being deeply inappropriate. And in the workplace.”
“Oh, I see: so the probing questions still only go one-way, huh?” Robert grinned at her, “wow. Seeing hard how you gunned for me when I was just a cheap piece of ass to you, I’m genuinely scared for whoever gets to privilege of you as a fated partner. Should I give them a head's up in advance, so they can hire themselves a bodyguard?”
“Fuck you,” she muttered, and then Robert heard something even closer to a mumble, that sounded like, “...I’m working on it.”
“Working on what?”
“Y’know. Being… subtle.”
“Huh. And how’s that going for you?”
Visi tried to stare him down, but all that happened was she just went redder and redder, mouth set in a sullen frown, with her small, sharp chin jutting out in frustration.
“Oh, so, you do know them?” he asked, half-jokingly, “oh my god, are you telling me they work her-”
He shoved with his good, less-painful shoulder, and the glass-fronted doors to SDN swung open. As he stepped out onto the sun, Robert stopped teasing immediately, choking on his next line about the ‘work bestie’ contract, as he stared out across the parking lot and saw…
Flambae.
Flambae was out there. He was dressed in civvies, idling in the parking lot, rested up against his recently repaired car. Out of his suit, he tended to opt still for tight, dark clothes, with the kind of tailoring that told Robert one item probably cost more than his whole entire wardrobe combined. It was a small wardrobe, admittedly, but those were good clothes. Bae's hair was down and loose across his shoulders; his long legs were crossed at the ankles; and he was examining his fingernails like they were the most interesting thing in the world. It was now nearly forty minutes from the end of the shift, so-
God. Today’s the day. Robert thought. He’s finally going to kill me.
…I’ll need to ask Courtney to hold Beef.
Then, both Robert’s brain and his mouth restarted, finishing his question about Courtney’s soulmate on a slightly rusty autopilot. His momentary pause (or brief internal struggle with fight-or-flight, who was to say?) passed, as a bunch more rational explanations flooded in and displaced the intense, prey-tinted paranoia that he’d admittedly never been able to shake around most social situations, but which definitely got worse, whenever he and Flambae were in close proximity.
Because… y’know, maybe the man had a thing after work to get to. Or he’d gone to the gym, had a long shower, and was just finishing up now. Or he was waiting for Prism, and giving her a lift somewhere.
There was a lot of stuff in Flambae’s life that had absolutely nothing to do with Robert, or Mecha Man.
Robert shook his head at himself, bewildered at his own self-absorption. He doubled down, on listening to Courtney gripe about how most people would ‘fucking love me to throw myself at them, not my fault your dick doesn't fucking work’, as the two of them passed by Bae on their way out of the parking lot. God, he really needed to get a grip. There was no way that-
“Hey. Bitch.”
Robert stalled in place. Ok, so… maybe there was some way.
He turned towards Bae with careful nonchalance. “Just so you know, I’m only stopping because you haven’t called me a bitch in months. Still not because I am one, or anything.”
Flambae pushed himself off his car door like he was a model paid to do it, then huffed, ignoring everything Robert had just said.
“D’you need a fucking ride home?”
“Uh, no?” Robert said. “I walk. Same way I have, for the last five months of this contract.”
“Cool. And I know your lame ass has no plans, so you just need dropping off at your shitty apartment. Right, then. Get the fuck in.”
“Ummmmm….” said Robert, feeling a vague sense of unreality, as Flambae started walking around to the passenger car door as if to open it.
“Dude,” said Visi, “nowhere in that was there a ‘yes’. Or even like, a question.”
“You don’t have a ride home,” said Bae, ticking these things off his fingers, “there’s a new superpowered weirdo on the loose, we don’t know what they do or what they look like, and you, your normie ass, and your fat dog are just going to walk home. Nuh-uh. Even if I think you could run from an attacker, the cow fucking can’t. Get in.”
Robert frowned. “What the fuck are you talking about? I’m pretty sure that if I was a villain, I wouldn’t be picking targets directly outside SDN’s main fucking building.”
“Well that’s funny, because we were both villains, like, for realsies,” said Flambae in a drawl, gesturing between Visi and himself, “and so we know that’s exactly what they’re going to be doing, if they have like, a single fucking functional braincell.”
Robert glanced back at Visi, who… looked like she didn’t entirely disagree. At least, she wasn’t saying anything.
Which… put together with her worry, and her staying behind solely to bother him for no real fucking reason, placed her into an entirely new light. Had she actually been planning to walk his ass home? Jesus. Robert's neighbourhood fucking sucked, but he had some of that cis white guy privilege - and the fighting style of a feral racoon on top of that, as an added bonus - to keep him feeling relatively chill about the whole situation. He’d also been stabbed and shot before, and whilst neither were ideal, both were eventually fine. He didn't think he wanted Visi to get hurt on his behalf ever again.
“Really?” he asked Visi, rather than Flambae. “They’d do that? Even when their main advantage is being totally under the radar right now?”
She shrugged, awkwardly. “I feel like if you got enough people in here incapacitated for 3-6 business days, you could do whatever the fuck you wanted, in that window.”
“...Huh.” Robert said.
SDN's function being impaired would constitute a real threat to the city. He and Blazer had been so focused on what all the power the Soulmate Eater was stealing might be for, that they hadn’t really considered the strategic advantages surrounding their process of accumulating it.
“Dunno what her skinny ass was planning to do about it, ‘cept maybe disappear so they can just target you specifically,” Flambae muttered. “But I have fire to make them keep their distance, super strength, that I might be inclined to use if you maybe look pathetic enough, and… I have a car. Get in it. Now, please. Got places to fucking be.”
But, for all that this logic kind of tracked, it still didn’t answer the main source of Robert’s confusion:
“...The fuck do you care?”
Flambae shot him a venomous glare, over the top of his sunglasses.
“No, seriously,” said Robert, “I mean, ok, maybe we should get some security measures in place. I’ll raise it tomorrow, with Blazer. And I get Courtney deciding I need a security detail, but… what do you care, if I get attacked or not? The people who are attacked… they don’t even die.”
Flambae’s glare became a look of pure fury. If Robert was to put a label on it... it was exactly the same expression, as that night outside the taco place.
But… by the time Robert blinked, it was gone, replaced with a look of such bored disinterest that he was half sure he’d imagined it.
It must just be that self-absorbed paranoia again.
“I don’t have to fucking explain myself to you,” Flambae said, “but... if I was going to, I’d say that you taking sick leave and leaving us with a shit-ass dispatcher for three days could majorly fuck my ranking. That good enough? That work for you? I’m the one doing you the favour here, bitch. Acting like I need to fucking beg, for the privilege of letting your fetid-ass dog ruin my fucking upholstery.”
The last bit was a mutter, mostly to himself.
Robert stared, as Bae opened the door to the firebird on his side. He was tempted to say no again, mostly just because he couldn’t imagine a more awkward social situation to willingly place himself in. But he also knew Flambae’s ego, and how badly such a rejection would be taken. Robert would spend literally weeks paying for it, on shift. The Z-Team already threatened to turn him prematurely grey on a daily basis, he didn’t need to go around deliberately pissing any of them off just to make his own life harder.
Plus… this was the most Flambae had talked to him, in months.
And Robert would admit, that was what got him taking his first step, towards Bae's stupid car. He might not feel like he really needed the protection - in fact, he literally didn't, with nothing there to be taken, and nothing there for him to lose. But... if this gave him an excuse to maybe try thawing out Flambae’s cold shoulder, find the cause underlying it, and finally get the team into perfect synergy... it might be worth it, for that reason alone.
Although…
“Courtney gets a ride too,” he said, as he stopped in place again, and carefully adjusted Beef under his arm.
“Ex-fucking-scuse me?”
“Oh, no no no, I’m like, so good, dude.”
The two of them started projecting their excuses over one another, but Robert raised his free hand and - through the grace of God, or some beneficent higher power - both of them fell silent.
“Courtney’s just as much a target, as I am,” he argued, “and her power set isn’t going to help her if she gets jumped-”
“-Hey man, fuck you-”
“-Plus, she just confirmed to me that she has a mark,” Robert said, calmly.
Then he realised what he’d said, and added, “whereas I’m Schrodinger’s fucking Soulmate, as far as you all are concerned.”
Flambae’s face did something again, in his periphery, Robert was so sure. But when he glanced that way, man was just scowling, all performatively bored again. Weird.
“So... I’ll go, if she goes,” he finished. “Now you’ve both explained it to me, I don’t feel comfortable just leaving her here alone.”
Flambae glared at them both for a solid breath, before turning to face Courtney, “the fuck you live, bitch?”
“I’m not fucking telling you where I fucking live-”
“-Yeah well I’m not going to be driving with my eyes fucking closed, am I? You gotta at least tell Google maps, and that bitch is a real talker, so-”
Glowering, Courtney eventually gave the name of a neighbourhood, roughly forty-five minutes in the opposite direction to Robert. Flambae did not absorb this information well: in fact, he looked like he was going to combust. Given that the Soulmate Eater's attack pattern was currently non-lethal, LA's traffic may actually pose more of a threat to a person's life, and to their sanity.
Then, Bae took a deep breath, levered Robert with a stare that could turn someone to stone, and said:
“We drop you first.” He raised his hand in an accusatory point, to both of them, “No one touches my sound set-up, no one questions my fucking song choices. No picking at the stitching on the seats. No leaving any fucking marks on the windows. Your ugly dog sits in your lap, and you do not let its ass so much as touch the leather. And I’m not talking about Invisibitch. So long as you're absolutely certain she’s housetrained, she can take the backseat.”
“God, go choke on a fire extinguisher and die.” Courtney muttered.
“Stop breathing, and get there faster.” Bae immediately shot back.
...And so began the most awkward carpooling situation of Robert’s life.