Chapter Text
Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
“Are we sure that Mecha Bitch should be dispatched?” Flambae asked through the mics. “Like, no offense Robbo, but you seem much better behind the desk.”
Invisigal snorted. “You just want to hear his voice in your ear.”
“Weren’t you joking about that not one week after meeting me?” Robert’s voice rang through his microphone. Blazer was sure that, if he wasn’t still technically there through the comms, that she would go insane trying to dispatch this team. She could admit that she wasn’t good at dispatching, but the Z-Team just seemed to run on a completely different level of logic altogether.
Robert wasn’t even going to be back in office until halfway through second shift. Waterboy was out of office, and he already had at least four appearances as Mecha Man scheduled plus another that wasn’t even confirmed until an hour before. Some corporate bullshit about resource management.
And there were already three other calls on her screen that she couldn’t even begin to think about.
“Hey, Blazer–” Robert called out.
Blazer looked over at her screen. “Yes, Robert?”
“Sned Golem to the top mission near the county line. Coupé and Mal to the drug bust, and Prism to the Bone Zone podcast.” his voice rang through her ears.
Prism gasped. “Bitch, I do not wanna go back on there!”
“Does it help to say that you’re just that charismatic?” Robert asked her.
Prism grumbled. Blazer watched as her icon moved across the screen before she could even put her in the dispatch log. Malvola and Coupé seemed to be moving in the general area of the drug bust too, but she sent them and Golem their locations just in case. “Thank you Robert.”
“Are we just going to ignore the fact that Robbo just dispatched us from his patrol?” Sonar asked.
“Lad has a computer attached to one of his gloves,” Punch-up stated, both him and Robert walking side by side on the near East street. “Like a little tablet. Very cool.”
“Holographic tech that I upgraded,” Robert said casually. “Usually you’d need to connect something via cord for this, but I connected it to my laptop wirelessly.”
Blazer sighed. She did not sign up for this. “Robert, when did you do that?”
“The second day or so I think,” he said. There was a tapping sound over his mic before he spoke again. “Flambae, I’m sending you the location to a kid’s recital dance. The dad asked if you could show up since he couldn’t make it—ask the teachers for a Joy.”
“Joy?” Flambae asked.
“Apparently you’re her favorite superhero.”
Blazer cleared her throat. “Robert, how did you even connect your things to SDN?” she asked confusedly. “They’re, like, highly encrypted.”
Invisigal snorted. “Obviously not.”
“Don’t be mean!” Sonar said. Well, more like whined, but who was she to judge? “It’s very hard.”
“Why have you been trying to hack into SDN?” Golem asked confusedly.
“Robert told me to!” Sonar said back.
Blazer groaned. “Robert–”
“It’s just training him on computer tech! He should know this stuff already, he went to Harvard.” Robert said through his mic, dispatching Golem on another mission. “And what do you even mean how did I get into SDN’s tech? I’m Mecha Man.”
Malevola’s hum was what she heard next. “Does that actually equate over?”
“I literally hacked things for a living, Mal. We’ve been over this.”
“Oh yeah, wire fraud!” Sonar laughed. “Forgot about that man, fun times.”
“I am not admitting to that again, I’ve already corrupted one audio file.”
Blazer looked over at Chase for help. Literally any help. Any she could get, she would take. He only gave her a shrug—even though she could tell that he was listening to every word said.
Coupé hummed too. “I am also interested if it equates.”
“Well, my mech suit is just a bunch of tech. And I have to know a lot about that stuff to keep it running altogether, which is engineering focused.” Robert explained. “I guess I just learned pretty quickly that it’s hard to be stealthy when you have a rather massive mech suit standing right behind you as you do it—and being in a patrol suit can only do so much to help that.”
“Do you hack for fun then, Robert Robertson?” Phenomoman asked. “How does one get into hacking?”
Robert made a sound that was vaguely close to an ‘eh’. “Oh yeah, that’s a funny story.”
Prism groaned as she came back from her mission. “Not another sad ass story Robert, please.”
“It’s funny, I swear to you–” Robert said to them. Blazer had a feeling that it wouldn’t be very funny. “When I was just starting the whole Mecha Man thing, I didn’t realize what it meant that my dad was dead. More so thought that he was just gone rather than dead– you know, like how he usually was? And I was just kinda annoyed with Eli over it until I actually processed it. So I used to hack into Shroud’s shit and mess around with it. I sent through so many pictures of random dicks that he ended up making a note for me to hack his systems with anything but that.”
The comms were silent for the most part. Only Chase’s laugh, which was muffled by his distance from Blazer’s microphone and the divider that separated the two of them was what could really be heard.
“Bitch, you said it’d be funny!”
“How was that funny Robbo? How?”
“Robert what the fuck.”
Blazer couldn’t hear herself thinking with the chaos—which, at the very least, was only slightly calmed by the fact that Robert was silently dispatching the team from his holographic tablet glove. “Robert, can you please, for my sanity, tell me what it is you’ve done with the SDN tech?” she said before pausing. “Wait, is this why nobody can get into your files?”
“Uh, yeah?” Robert said. “That’s personal shit.”
“You are literally employed under SDN. And we had the system coded by Brainbook and Hak!”
Robert laughed. Actually laughed at that. “Potato, meet tomato. I’ve been hacking Brainbook’s systems since I was ten,” he said. “But seriously? I encrypted a lot of my files as soon as you told me that I was going to get hired– hacked through SDN from my phone when I got back to my apartment.”
“You mean your sad ass apartment with no bed?” Invisigal asked.
“I had the mech suit in the apartment back then,” he defended. “The seat cushion isn’t even that bad. Me and Beef have had many a sleepover inside of it.”
Sonar huffed. “I really don’t understand you Robert.”
“Well you better start learning because I’m sending you to the sewers.”
Blazer sighed again. How was this man even real?