Chapter Text
THWACK!
Flesh smacks wetly against concrete.
Chain link rattles in the grasp of a hundred hands.
Faulty wires buzz from warehouse lights far overhead.
CRACK!
Something hits him. Or he hits it. Hard to tell which anymore.
“FINISH IT!”
“EAT HIM!”
Noise is everywhere. Constant. So loud it circles back around to near silence. Earlier, before the cooling tar of his overtaxed senses slowed the fight to sparse snapshots, any sound louder than the crack of a knuckle would slam into him harder than the fist that followed. And the really loud noises? Those swept parts of his mind away. Parts he didn't know he could lose until they were gone and he was left thinking himself dumb as he could possibly be until the next oppressively loud noise somehow left him dumber. And the dumber he got, the more frightened.
He misses Mal.
“SONAR! SONAR! SONAR!”
These are some of the few sounds that still possess meaning, specifically meaning him. That's his… name? No, but it might as well be now.
Otherwise, the only sounds that make any sense to Sonar are the ones bouncing back from his own monstrous mouth. It’s how he perceives his surroundings.
Sight is a concept Sonar can’t parse. Not in this form, in this place. Light, he decides, can fuck right off. It hemorrhages in between his smeary peripherals like raiders through a kicked-down door. Shapes exist, maybe. Motion exists. Not color. Everything that isn't violent, all-swallowing white is just a shade or two darker. He's not sure if his eyes are even open and doubts it would help.
SKRRP!
Pain registers distantly, as if his nerves are driving through a tunnel when they receive the first text in a three-part breakup message from his flesh. He knows something is wrong with his wing. He knows something warm is leaking. Any urgency he might feel about it, however, is channeled into a retaliatory smack from that injured wing.
Something wails. Someone. They’re thrown across the cage, then gone.
Dull throbs in Sonar’s wing are all that accompanies him in this featureless hellscape. He fixes that with a supersonic screech.
Sound waves snap back in tight, clean lines. The world redraws itself in pulses. Swiveling his ears, Sonar “watches” fingers snatch back through the chain link to cover their own ears. The cage is in a pit surrounded by packed bleachers pushed right up to the fencing. Perforated metal catwalks above the cage are equally packed, causing the buzzing lights Sonar so despises to sway. Those catwalks crisscross between rusty, sludge-filled pipes that plip plip plip into giant industrial vats.
Something closer plip plips too.
Blood.
It ripples across the concrete after unsteady steps, hazier and hazier until Sonar loses track of its source again.
Chirps fix that this time. Although being on the receiving end of Sonar's supersonic scream isn’t deadly by any means, it is painful. He's reluctant to purposefully hurt someone who may no longer pose a threat. Even if that someone already hurt him. Odds are, they didn’t have a choice.
Not that Sonar does either. He knows how this will end.
Even so, pacifism is a hard habit to drop after spending his life – including the half he’s spent as a life-ruining conman – denying everyone’s expectations that he must be a bloodthirsty beast. The Yachties used to gossip that Sonar simply didn't like getting his suit dirty. Correct, but not the whole reason. Physical violence just isn’t Sonar’s style, three-inch claws and fangs be damned. The closest he comfortably got was eating corpses. Sonar doesn't want to think about that right now.
Soon he’ll be forced to.
Soon they’ll make him eat what’s left.
Sonar used to feel so casual about that. About eating people. Used to think of it as a fucked-up party trick, a quirk of turning into a tractor-sized bat. That changed the night Shroud gave him and Malevola to the sickos running this arena. Before then, Sonar had never eaten anyone he met before they died. Never known them as anything but meatsacks. Now memories of every meal's final pleas curdle Sonar’s stomach. It tries to reject those meals.
If only that were an option.
Unfortunately for Sonar and his opponent, his post-combat meals are part of the show those ghouls in the bleachers paid for. When Sonar disappoints them, bad things happen to him.
Or worse, to Malevola. Sonar won’t allow that.
Sonar's chirps reveal how his next meal nurses a dislocated shoulder in the cage's farthest corner. At their feet is a long strip of metal. A blade, maybe a machete, blunt and chipped enough that it has tufts of Sonar’s fur caught in its no-longer-sharp side. It clatters across the floor the next moment, kicked away by its wielder.
“I’m sorry! I surrender! I’m so sorry!”
They sound like a man. The image built by Sonar’s echolocation backs that theory up. Not a superhuman. Just a regular joe in heavy boots, a tactical belt, and a sturdy but shredded uniform. A cop. Maybe even a detective. One who seems to have asked the right questions in the wrong places.
“EAT THE PIG!”
“RIP HIS GUTS OUT!”
A sharp, eager pull in Sonar's chest urges him forward. It's an instinct he's only ever indulged with raccoons and coyotes out in California's deserts, or with rats when he’s in humanoid form. Before being caged here, Sonar hadn’t realized injured humans enticed this instinct just the same. He hates it for that. Hates himself for this ugly desire to quickly, cleanly finish anything the animal half of him considers prey.
As Sonar stalks within biting range, the cop wheezes, “Y-you don’t have to do this…!”
Sonar doesn’t correct him. Talking is another no-no the ringmaster would punish him for. So he just chirps again.
The world sharpens, revealing all the places Sonar can strike to end the cop’s suffering.
He hesitates. He always hesitates. Even though it takes him several moments to calculate exactly how many people he’s killed in this shitshow, the act hasn’t gotten any easier. He doubts it ever will, not even if he eventually loses count. He hopes he never does. Hopes he won’t have many more victims to count.
Just, not at any cost. Sonar isn't willing to die in this cop's place.
Spit flies from the low-life in the audience who bellows, “FUCKING DO IT, SONAR!”
And Sonar fucking does.
The cockpit hums now.
It was silent as starlight before Mecha Man marched into Shroud's trap and got his robot blown to bits. Bits that should've been too small to salvage with his maintenance fund so dried up. As such, Mecha Man can't afford to mind the humming. It rattles away his doubts along with any sensation in his spine, padding be damned. He’s lucky it's moving at all after spending so long piled up as scuffed hunks of scrap in the corner of his otherwise barren apartment.
It would still be there if not for Blonde Blazer. She's why Mecha Man waits on the roof of SDN's Torrance building now. He owes her, not that she'd ever point it out herself.
While out saving the city like she always does, the Superhero Dispatch Network's poster child managed to recover the Astral Pulse through, in her words, “pure dumb luck.” Mecha Man thought it had been destroyed in the blast. Instead it passed from goon to goon through the criminal underbelly of Torrance until Blonde Blazer happened to apprehend the right one at the right time. And that's not the only door Blonde Blazer opened for Mecha Man.
California's most famous mechanical hero dangles a half-ton leg over the sunny courtyard of the Torrance SDN. Anyone below might think he was admiring the lush pink tree at its center. He'd let them. Better for his image than the truth. He's actually using his sensor's heat-vision to spy through the leaves, concrete and cubicle walls on the silhouettes of his new…
What should he consider them? Coworkers?
Trainees may be more accurate. Or wards. He'll essentially be babysitting them.
Mecha Man's freelancing days ran out with his inheritance. He's never earned a dime from his hero work, nor has he sought to. No prior Mecha Men ever needed to; Mecha Man Prime was a genius inventor and a father of the superhero industry. His son, Mecha Man Astral, was a rocket scientist by trade. But his son and the current Mecha Man, Blue? His identity outside of the robot can be summed up in two words:
Beef's dad.
Otherwise, Robert Robertson the Third may as well be a ghost. A mask. The real him is Mecha Man.
So, because he cares about keeping his dog fed, carrying on his father's and grandfather's legacy and keeping Torrance safe, Mecha Man caved to Blonde Blazer's offer and joined her in the commercialized world of corporate heroism. Not giddily. He hides inner conflict beneath polite handshakes and false smiles. Blonde Blazer assured him he'll still be allowed and even encouraged to rescue anyone he spots in danger, subscriber or not. That helps, but it can't completely erase the disdain he feels imagining faceless bigwigs atop the SDN’s chain of command slobbering about all the subscription money they'll rake in from Mecha Man's generations of fans. It also helps remembering how outright predatory Mecha Man’s side of his contract is. Not only will SDN pay him like they would any of their other heroes, but they'll cover all of his robot's maintenance fees no matter how steep, as well as handle that maintenance without requiring Mecha Man to ever touch another wrench.
He will though. Already has.
Mecha Man Blue may not be a natural-born gearhead like his predecessors or Royd, the dedicated mechanic SDN assigned to upkeep and even improve his robot, but he enjoys it. It helps him think. Royd seems to respect that even though he's cleaning up after Mecha Man's mistakes every session. Speaking of, Mecha Man should probably tell Royd the robot's cockpit didn't always hum.
A thoughtful hum of Mecha Man's own rises in his throat as he watches a motley of amorphous heat signatures parade toward the ground floor's courtyard door. He counts seven including Blonde Blazer. There should be eight, but Mecha Man figures the sentient clay mound must be room temperature. He turns off the thermal filter to view them through the ceiling-high office windows. Skulking, sauntering and even sloughing along behind Blonde Blazer is the monumental mess known as the Z-Team.
His team. The first he'll ever join.
Blonde Blazer distractedly holds open the courtyard door for the failing phoenixes, allowing Mecha Man's microphones to pick up on their bickering. He wonders if they respect Blazer enough to pipe down if she asks. She doesn’t, too busy furrowing her brows at whatever she reads on a tablet one of the building's dispatchers rushed to show her. The longer she reads, the more her face matches the alarm on that dispatcher’s face.
It piques Mecha Man’s curiosity. He quashes it fast. No way the SDN will entrust the Z-Team with anything truly interesting.
Rightfully so, judging by how they quarrel.
“I'm not gravity's bitch like you are,” snarks a ponytailed man in a unitard with such a deep V-neck, he must risk indecent exposure every time he bends forward enough to pull his orange boots on. “So if you hadn’t insisted on stealing my mission, your slow ass wouldn't have made us late.”
“Who says we're late? We’re not late,” protests a mustachioed Irishman no taller than a truck tire but with arms somehow thicker than one.
A wannabe pop diva with a dual-dyed bob, gloves and thigh-high boots clicks her tongue disdainfully. “I says we're late.”
“Well I says we’re early-adjacent.”
A small brunette dressed like she's late to a grunge-rock concert in some seedy alley mutters, “Still not a thing.”
“Keep telling him that and he’ll take it as a challenge,” warns a winged woman with a fond roll of her amber eyes, the only speck of color on her. “Don't make him make it a thing.”
The Irishman grins. “Or do!”
Next through the door is a man whose file was entered into SDN’s hero database separately from the rest. Apparently the Phoenix Program expedited this man’s parole so he could be a last-minute replacement for two would-be heroes that no-showed Torrance’s SDN branch. He’s one of the more normal looking phoenixes and could pass as another attendee of the small brunette’s back-alley concert. Half his head is shaved, acting as the canvas for a lightning bolt. A shoulder-length curtain of beetle black hair grows from the other half of his head. His eyes are mismatched too. One is brown and the other is the same silver hue as the glowing patterns in his skin. The patterns are simple rings, one on each exposed deltoid, bicep, and the palms of his hands. Little branches of electricity flash out from those silver rings as he barks, “Can you assholes shut the fuck up already?”
His fellow grunge-rocker snaps back, “You first, Thundercuck.”
“It’s Lightningstru– OOF!”
He’s slammed to the cement floor moments before the tablet Blonde Blazer had been reading from. She nearly follows but manages to zip back upright with the grace of a dragonfly. Her wide, worried eyes fall on Lightningstruck.
Everyone else gawks at the heedless clay homunculus as he finishes taking that single disastrous step through the courtyard doorway. It takes him another couple seconds to process the damage he’s done, to which he says, “Damn. My bad...”
“Fff– Fuck you,” hisses Lightningstruck. He swats Blonde Blazer’s hand away when she tries to help him up, destroying any iota of sympathy Mecha Man might’ve felt for the guy.
“Hate to agree with battery bitch,” the ponytailed man says with a nod towards Lightningstruck, “But fucking hell Golem, you even got the boss this time! Ever heard of spatial awareness?”
Golem rumbles out, “Yup.”
“Okay, then uh, maybe work on that yeah?”
This, “Yup,” isn’t remotely reassuring.
Surprisingly genuine, the pop diva asks, “You okay, Miss Blazer?”
“I am,” confirms Blonde Blazer. She asks Lightningstruck, “How about you?”
Lightningstruck, now on his feet, peels a leaf from his bleeding elbow and answers with nothing but an overly long, frustrated sigh. It gets the message across.
Mecha Man sighs too.
Maybe the deal SDN cut him leans less in his favor than he thought. The catch for all the expensive robot maintenance his new employers so eagerly signed up for is that Mecha Man will have to be a shining example of heroism for this gaggle of reformed supervillains. Still reforming in most cases. Mecha Man read their files. He knows most will take issue with him being the only member of the team that isn't part of the Phoenix Program. The only one without a criminal record, much less such extensive ones as boasted by this colorful cabal. And, as perhaps his biggest hurdle, he's the only one without powers. Most superhero teams would happily or at least cordially work with a not-so-super hero that can carry their own weight if not more, but a supervillain team? Their powers were the deciding factor in their prison sentences being waived, too useful to waste on license plate manufacturing and whatever else villains are expected to toil away on.
But powers don’t make someone a hero. Or a villain.
Z-Team waits relatively quietly, only bickering under their breath now, as Blonde Blazer hands the broken tablet back to the apprehensive dispatcher and murmurs instructions to find someone named Chase.
The dispatcher scurries off.
Now alone with her lowest-ranking team of hero-hopefuls, Blonde Blazer says, “Okay Z-Team, let’s do this,” with fresh, but fleeting resolve. “...You know, before we start cutting into your lunch hour. Not that you’d have a shorter lunch hour though! Take the full hour, regardless of how long this takes.”
The blade-winged woman asks, “And ‘this’ is?”
“An introduction. You’re getting a new teammate.”
This must be Mecha Man’s cue. He stands, casting a shadow across the entire Z-Team. They all look up in surprise at the goliath suddenly blotting out the sweltering midsummer sun.
All at once, the diva blurts, “Nahhh, don’t play,” while the grunge-core brunette vwoops invisible and the Irishman barks, “Blazer, are ye’ having a laugh?!”
Blonde Blazer smiles. “Please welcome–”
“Mecha Man,” spits the ponytailed man. The rest of the Z-Team seems surprised by the sparks dancing off his hiked shoulders and balled fists.
Mecha Man isn’t. He'd be more surprised if Flambae wasn't angry to see him. From the moment he reached the pyrokineticist’s file in the Z-Team folder, Mecha Man knew his presence was bound to reopen Flambae's old wounds. What matters now is if Flambae is stupid enough – hurt enough – to retaliate in front of all these heroes.
Mecha Man's rocket boots activate with a FWOOOOSH and carry him down into the courtyard. He lands gently, so as not to crack the floor.
Blonde Blazer seems to be reexamining Flambae. His file didn't say which hero apprehended him and Mecha Man hadn't had a chance to inform her. She says, “Mecha Man, yes. Is that going to be a problem, Flambae?”
He's tense. Betrayal, hopelessness, even panic coil within his visor-shielded eyes while he considers his answer.
Mecha Man doesn't wait for it. His deep, inflectionless voice is further deepened and inflection-lessened by the robot's modulator when he says, “For the record, Flambae, you're the one I'm most looking forward to work with.”
“Wh– What the fuck? Why?”
“Just curious to see how you've grown now that you're a hero.”
It’s true. Mecha Man didn’t realize it until he said it. He’d actually done so to ease Flambae’s tension. Unfortunately, his words have the opposite effect.
Flambae’s face twists as panic wins. Fire spits from every centimeter of his skin and not a second later, he’s already flown from the courtyard. All that remains a second after that are small flames devouring a branch of the courtyard’s tree, ignited by his fiery trail.
Dammit. Not off to the best start here.
Blonde Blazer puts out the fire, then tackles the increasingly difficult task of explaining why Mecha Man is joining the Z-Team.
To their credit, they don’t put up nearly as much of a fight as she or Mecha Man expected them to. None act phased by Flambae’s exit except Prism, who spends more time checking her phone than she does listening. When Invisigal snipes at her about it, a visibly irritated and subtly worried Prism tells everyone she’s waiting for Flambae to text her back.
It feels like an age before Blonde Blazer releases the Z-Team for their lunch hour, which hasn’t been cut into after all. Apparently they’re all heading to a cheap fish’n’chips restaurant down the road.
They don’t invite Mecha Man.
He wasn’t expecting them to, but considering how badly he just screwed up with Flambae, he gets the vibe there’s a pointedness to his exclusion. Especially from Prism. He wonders what their history together is.
Blonde Blazer gives him just the opportunity to ask by inviting Mecha Man to lunch at a different restaurant. A nice one. It’s got expensive food with a private balcony; A necessary accommodation for celebrity-heroes like Blonde Blazer and Mecha Man, whose combined fame would silence the whole restaurant into eavesdropping mode.
Apparently Blonde Blazer comes here often with her boyfriend, Phenomaman. His mention visibly dampens her spirit and sets off alarms in Mecha Man’s head.
Is Phenomaman angry Mecha Man kissed Blonde Blazer? Has she even told Phenomaman? She’s had a whole week to do so. Or maybe the kiss was too inconsequential in her eyes; One drunken kiss spawned mostly out of Mecha Man's gratitude for the Astral Pulse’s return. An advance she quickly shot down. She and Mecha Man have since agreed to a professional relationship. And this is just a professional… lunch-date? Blonde Blazer doesn’t seem worried about it. She is just talking work after all.
Between endearingly big bites of her meal, Blazer happily relays what Chase – someone she seems to expect Mecha Man to know – has gleaned about the Z-team's various dynamics. Put simply: Flambae and Prism are friends, Inivisigal and Golem are friends, Coupé and Punch Up are friends as well as amicable exes, and Lightningstruck is the odd man out.
“I’ll have to ask them how that happened,” Mecha Man decides. “Can I ask something else in the meantime?”
“Shoot.”
“What did that dispatcher show you?”
Blonde Blazer sets down her fork and stares at her half-eaten plate as if she hadn’t been enjoying it moments prior.
Mecha Man puts his hands up in surrender with an, “I’ve overstepped. I’ll stick to what I’m being paid for–”
“You haven't! Overstepped, that is. You might be the only other hero in our branch welcome to take on any mission you’re interested in, actually. I’m just… It’s just a little…?”
“Troubling?”
Blonde Blazer looks sheepish. “I’m that easy to read?”
“You were when you were looking at that tablet.”
“Guess I’ll have to work on that. As for the tablet, you know how the Z-Team was supposed to have eight heroes?”
Mecha Man nods, hiding his surprise at the Z-Team’s relevance.
“Well, that dispatcher’s team found out where the two no-shows ended up.”