Chapter Text
The official reasons I gave were still valid. Things I still believe. It was hard to be near the surviving members of the Brave Brigade; there was the trauma and distrust that, at any moment, another could go rogue or have hidden allegiances. The pain and anger that none of them could help my father, prevented his death. The guilt of hating them and being angry when they were injured and grieving too.
But there was one reason, a simple one that underpinned all of it. The foundation that prevented Robert from having team-ups, Partners, Sidekicks, and dynamic duos in the past fifteen years.
Bobby Robertson was the only member of the Bridge Brigade who died. Their bombed-out headquarters, the mooks and goons, the other members escaped with bruises, broken bones, and plasma burns, the resilience inherent to those with powers keeping them strong enough to withstand the abuse of that awful night.
Robert’s father had none of that. And Robert didn’t have it either.
It may have been different back in his grandfather’s day. Where one in a hundred had some special power or ability, or came from another planet, dimension, or timeline. However, given time and the mixing of genes, power sources, and so on, it was more realistically down to one in ten or fifteen in the modern age. A villain’s freeze ray holds a city hostage, generating 20-something citizens whose DNA adapts and grants them varying levels of ice and temperature powers. A demon incursion on the east coast results in a mass outbreak of warlock pacts, Edlrich awakenings, and babies with horns.
Because their parents decided an evacuation bunker was the perfect time to get it on.
Gross. People will need that space for the next attack. Don’t go covering it with your fluids.
Regardless, powers are becoming the norm. Policy and law have yet to catch up fully, there’s no fun super high school or college to teach these randos with laser eyes and aliens how to control their powers and fit into normal society. Instead, there’s some good YouTube channels, a vlog series or two, and in the last five or so years, Super Companies offering control classes and other junk.
Because everyone’s going to use the last of their savings to take classes.
People are getting dangerous. Which, in some ways, is good; it means they're resilient, less likely to get injured when a wannabe super with a god complex decides he wants to be King of Gendale and uses his powers to collapse a building or two. Eventually, we should be a super society, where everyone’s gimmick keeps them from being pancaked.
But we’re not there yet.
So people like me? The average Joe whose granddad wasn’t exposed to experimental radiation or fell into a toxic river, or was born under the star or Orias or something? We’re the soap bubbles. The thin paper people who still get torn, punctured, burned, and broken when not handled with care.
It sucks. But that’s also true of life. So it's not a huge deal.
It just means you have to be smart. Be aware of what your body can handle and what it can’t. Know when to bail and get somewhere safe. My gramps… wasn’t. I mean, he was a genius, building the Mechaman suit in that day and age. But he didn’t have contingencies. The original suit had a god damn submarine dog door, the one with the big wheel that you need to spin to unlock. My Dad was better; he upgraded the design, added additional shock absorbers, compression foam, and additional reinforced plating. He even applied the mindset to the Bigrader’s base. The damn thing was as close as you could get to a fortress in Los Angeles. It would withstand any threat you could throw at it, at least long enough for the people inside to make use of the many escape routes and hidden exits.
He just never expected the threat to come from within.
So lesson learned, right? Have the tech security, and then have the social security, and don’t let anyone close enough to stab you in the back.
It was easier when I had the house. Secret basement to fully live that double life, socialize, and be just another paper man who's a bit introverted, preferring to stay inside and watch movies and check the news for the most recent villain attack instead of being down there. Convenient alibi, too. No, I wasn’t out there and saw Mechaman punch that fire guy across the block. I was home, rewatching the Spike Lee marathon.
Then that messy team-up thing happened with the space invasion. All heroes on deck, each with a massive chunk of the city to protect and defend. And I did my part. I just could have done without the damage. It cost an arm and a leg to replace the literal arms and legs that got torn off the mech during that fight.
And since you kinda need legs to fight, and really, if I’m out most nights anyway, why do I need a four-bedroom house?
So I sold it, I applied for a basic hero's permit to allow me to park the Mech in whatever parking space my new apartment would have, and I continued on.
And it's fine. Better even. The royalties from the merchandise deal cover the rent and takeout, and if nothing happens over the next year, I can begin to replenish the nest egg to cover future repair costs. I have Beef, and the remaining seven seasons of “Super Sherlock” to binge.
…Damn, my life sounds sad.
I stare at the video on my smartphone, a quiet ringing in my ears. Shroud at Large scrolling across the bottom as the camera zooms in on the broken wall, rubble blasted inwards.
I set the phone down and stared. Beef’s ears perking up, clocking my strange behavior.
Shroud. Fucking Shroud.
I turn to my board, without the funds to upgrade the Mecha-Puter, going old school like this worked better for me. At the very least it beat having to try and work off a shitty laptop. That’d just be too sad. And not secure enough.
I started to clear it. Taking down my notes of the recent shipments of drugs into the area, the handful of cold cases that I suspected were linked, and the list of potential Hideouts I had been working through to find where Hollywood Man’s goons were hiding out at. (Hollywood Man seemed to be this years “Big Bad” who enjoyed having his crime scenes resemble classic movings, creativly both breaking the law and offending anyone who’d watch those movies)
He was broken out, which means he either had a network or someone else wanted him out. The Prison’s are sadly used to regular breakouts with the growing rise of Powered people, but they’ve upgraded their security enough that it’d take at least three or four powered people and a number of others to sufficiently distract the Hero’s posted at each prison.
I’d need to grab the newspaper tomorrow to get a good photo of the prison and a copy of Shouds mug shot. With the library closed on the weekends, I wouldn’t be able to print my own until monday.
I stared at the blank board, already marking where I’d put the different notes and details to run him down.
“Your not getting away with this…” I muttered, spooling up the red string.
The red string was a classic.
Beep. Beep.
Everything. Hurt.
Beep. Beep.
I’d groan but it hurt too much to move and from the taste of it, there was a plastic pipe going down my throat.
Beep. Beep.
Oh that wasn’t good. Okay, need a nurse.
I tried to twitch my left hand, only for a jolt of pain to shoot up the arm. Okay, righty then. It was sore, weak, I must have been out for some time, but it still moed. I groped around blindly, trying to move by body as little as possible while my fingers sought out… There it is.
Pulse monitor! Grabbing the chord between two fingers, I jerked it off my left hand, and the quiet sounds in the background were swapped out for a constant alarm.
I sighed as I cracked an eye, letting in the blinding hospital light, as footsteps quickly entered the room.
There we go. Room service.
They say a lot of things. Lucky to be alive, a miracle that there’s no permanent damage. Apparently, some of the Brave Brigade, when they heard what happened, pulled some strings for a healer from Japan to come out to reform some of my bones that were powdered.
Through it all there’s a bit of a rebuke, the slight disapproval that its me in the hospital bed. With only 14% of the hero field those without powers, there’s been a controversy in the media about us. Do we help or hinder? Back in the day? It was inspiring. Three generations later, more heroes, more powers, and more infrastructure, some called it “reckless” and “not our place”. Couch side critics who believe its down to the perfect match up and at the end of the day “a power score of zero would fold against even the weakest telekenises every single time.”
I guess my doctor shares the same opinion, given the lecture.
“What about my suit?” I interrupt him, as he wraps around and begins talking about “self care” again.
Silence.
Oh that’s not good.
Hummingbird, one of the Brave Brigade, apparently had gone through the trouble the first few weeks, collecting as many pieces as she could, from the salvaged chunks that the city had to remove from rooftops, to the other smaller pieces that locals had taken and put up for sale online. Memorabilia, of the sickest kind.
There was no sign of the Astral Pulse.
3.5 Million for repairs and replacement.
Sixteen Months to rewire, retest, and rebuild.
Ten years for a new Astral Pulse.
Fuck.