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It is the worst case Mecha Man has ever handled. Robert knows it before Blondie even finishes her sentence. The name hits him like a punch to the ribs. Everything else she says after that turns to static.
He sits there, blank, as she waves the folder in one hand, the loose pages fluttering like pale, restless birds. The edges catch the light from the ceiling panels, the faint gleam off the glossy cover reading something he wishes he hadn’t seen. His throat tightens. He should be listening. He knows he should. Blondie’s lips move fast, sharp, each word meant to land, but he’s frozen solid in his chair. His brain stopped the moment she said the name.
The thing is, these so-called “Heroes for Hire” the SDN sends out are not like him. They are government polished, rule-bound, wrapped up in red tape and shiny press briefings. They operate like glorified cops, all clean reports and legal backing. He, on the other hand, is an independent contractor in the loosest sense. An indie hero, they call it. Not bound to protocol. Not recognised either.
He works beside detectives, not for them. He goes into the places no one else wants to go, digs through the filth others won’t touch. He finds the evidence that won’t stand up in court but still tells the truth. And when it’s over, his name never makes it into the case file. The report just reads “uncredited assistance.”
It’s better that way. Safer, usually. Keeps him out of headlines, out of sight. But this case—this one is something else. He can already feel the weight of it pressing down on him, heavier than any suit of metal he’s ever built.
So. When Blondie first proposed that SDN branch out into detective work, Robert had his doubts. He remembers her pacing across the briefing room, sharp heels tapping against the floor, talking about broadening horizons and diversifying operations. She made it sound reasonable, even inspired. He wanted to argue, but she’s always been good at getting her way. She wins him over with that same irritating confidence every time.
The idea had been simple enough on paper. Z-Team would run through a few mock investigations to practise coordination, deduction, maybe even a bit of restraint for once. A harmless little exercise. That was the plan.
Except Blondie, in her infinite brilliance, does not do make-believe well. She has the imagination of a filing cabinet. Of course she’d grab a real case, dust it off, and slap “training scenario” on top. It’s just like her.
He sits there, numb, watching her shuffle through the pages. It makes sense she’d choose something that already exists. Less work for her. But of all the damn cases to pick.
His eyes trace the date on the cover. The crime scene photo. The name. A cold throb begins behind his eyes. He wonders, briefly, if she knows. If she looked deeper. Maybe she recognised a detail, a signature, something that tied back to him. But that is impossible.
He is only listed in the report as an “investigative consultant.” A ghost in the paperwork. No names, no credits. No trace of the man behind the mask.
Blondie clears her throat. The sound cuts clean through the static in his head, and Robert looks up to find every set of eyes in the room pointed squarely at him. Ah, shit.
“What?” he blurts, before he can stop himself. His voice cracks halfway through, and a few quiet snickers ripple through Z-Team. Invisigal hides a grin behind her hand. Flambae smirks like he’s been waiting for this moment all week. Robert feels like a kid being scolded by the teacher, caught daydreaming mid-lecture.
Blondie’s expression doesn’t change. That patient, practised smile stays pinned in place. She has perfected the art of looking calm while quietly judging the hell out of him.
“I said,” she repeats, tone deliberate, “you can’t do this for them. They can consult you on some things, but they have to solve the case themselves.”
Robert nods, jerky and mechanical, trying to look composed while heat creeps up his neck. “Right. Sure. Yeah.” He can manage that. Probably.
Maybe if he just tunes out, keeps his head down until they actually need him, he can get through this without drawing more attention to himself. He shifts in his seat, stares down at the file again. The words blur slightly. His stomach twists. He hopes no one notices the way his hands shake.
Malevola leans back in her chair, arms folded tightly across her chest. “I’ll be no good at this kind of stuff,” she says, voice flat, like she’s already resigned to it. Her dark lipstick catches the light when she talks, sharp against her face. “I’m not the investigative type. Leave that to the nerds.”
Blonde Blazer doesn’t miss a beat. She shrugs, calm and unbothered. “Plenty of people aren’t,” she replies. “I just want to see who has an interest. Who’s got the instincts for it. If we ever expand in that direction, I want to know who to train up.”
Her tone is light, encouraging even, but Robert can’t bring himself to look at her. He stares at the folder sitting on the table like it might bite him. The case name printed across the top stares back at him, black ink on white paper, too clean for what it represents. His pulse is a dull, heavy drum in his ears.
Eventually, Blondie gathers her things, gives a few more brisk instructions, and leaves the room. The door shuts behind her with a soft click, and the air seems to thicken. The others turn to him almost in unison.
Robert clears his throat, realising they’re waiting for him to take charge. His mouth is dry. “Well,” he manages, voice faint, “there it is.” He gestures weakly at the files on the table. “Go on, then.”
There’s a brief silence before Invisigal leans forward, cracking the folder open. The paper rustles. A photograph slides halfway free, catching on the edge of the stack.
Flambae grabs it before it falls. “Victim’s name?” he reads off, squinting.
“Don’t know yet,” Invisigal mutters, scanning the attached report. “Says unidentified. Found near—” she pauses, then grimaces, “—the docks. Jesus.”
“Missing persons,” Sonar reads from another sheet, tapping it with his finger. “Looks like three separate kids went missing in the same area over two months.”
Malevola frowns. “So what, they’re connected?”
“Probably,” Punch Up mutters from where he’s leaning against the wall. “If Blondie’s tossing this one at us, bet it’s a serial or a ring. Something bigger.”
Robert forces himself to nod, to look like he’s following along. The words sound distant. “You’re right,” he says quietly. “Patterns matter. Missing kids, same radius, same timeframe. Start with that.”
He hears his own voice like it belongs to someone else. The scrape of chairs, the soft flick of paper turning, the low hum of conversation—every sound feels too loud, too sharp. The fluorescent lights overhead buzz faintly. His vision keeps pulling towards the grainy photos spread across the table.
He can smell the paper. The faint tang of old ink and printer toner. The sterile scent of the office. For a second, his breath catches in his throat.
He remembers the smell of that warehouse.
He swallows hard, drags a hand over his mouth, and focuses on the present. Just the team, talking. Just a training scenario. That’s all. Nothing more.
He tells himself that again, and again, until the noise of the room starts to fade into something he can bear.
They move on to the next part of the case. Invisigal reads the next report aloud while Flambae leans over her shoulder, muttering unhelpful commentary. Punch Up stands on his chair so he can see the photos spread across the table. Malevola’s tail flicks idly against the back of her chair as she scrolls through the digital copies on the monitor.
Coupé sits silent, pen spinning between her fingers. She watches the group with that cool, measured stillness that always makes Robert feel like she sees more than she lets on. Sonar is reading one of the reports upside down, mumbling under his breath about inconsistencies in the dates.
Robert tries to keep up. He really does. But the words start to blur. His eyes track the movement of lips, the way Flambae gestures with an expressive hand, the way Invisigal’s foot taps against the floor. The sound of their voices seems to come from far away, rising and dipping in waves.
Golem shifts in the corner, the floor creaking faintly under his weight. The smell of earth and damp moss follows him everywhere. He says something quiet about the docks, about tyre marks maybe, and Robert nods without really processing it.
He’s back there again, walking through that warehouse.
He blinks, shakes himself. Focus.
Invisigal waves a hand in front of his face. “Hey, babysitter, you still with us?” she teases.
Robert clears his throat. “Yeah. Listening.” He isn’t.
Flambae snorts. “Sure you are.”
Malevola sighs, long-suffering. “Can we please stay on track? So far we’ve established nothing except that this is grim as hell.” She pushes her hair back with one crimson hand, the light catching her horns.
Coop looks at Robert. “Any insights?” she asks quietly.
His mind stutters. For a moment he’s not sure what she means. Then it clicks. The case. Right. He’s supposed to say something insightful.
“Check… supply routes,” he says, grasping at memories. “Sometimes… transport vans use the same docks for cover. Might be records.”
Sonar perks up. “Actually, yeah. If they’re using unregistered cargo or repurposed containers, that would fit the time gaps.” He starts typing notes on his tablet, already theorising patterns and logistics.
Robert nods, relieved to let someone else run with it. His thoughts feel slow, heavy. Every few seconds, an image tries to push its way to the front of his mind—the quiet stretch of concrete, the metallic tang of the air, the sound of flies.
He rubs his temple, pretending to read a document, trying not to see it.
Golem’s voice rumbles low from the corner. “You alright, boss?”
Robert forces a small smile. “Fine. Just thinking.”
He isn’t fine. The air feels thick again. The fluorescent lights hum overhead. Every now and then he catches his own reflection in the window, pale and hollow-eyed, and looks away before it can look back.
Flambae leans over the table, flicking through a stapled stack of papers with a lazy sort of disinterest that seems half genuine, half theatrical. His thumb smudges a streak of ash across the top sheet. He squints down at a paragraph near the bottom, the kind of look that says he’s reading words he doesn’t fully understand but doesn’t want to admit it. His eyebrows knit together, and he mutters the phrase under his breath once before lifting his gaze. “Investigative consultant?” he reads aloud, the words dragging from his mouth like they’re heavier than they should be.
Robert feels his stomach twist at the sound of it. He doesn’t look up right away, stares at a small coffee ring on the table instead. He hopes someone else will answer, maybe Sonar, whose degree seems to cover every topic under the sun. But nobody does. He realises they’re all waiting for him. He can feel their eyes like heat on the side of his face.
He clears his throat and forces himself to look up. “It’s… basically someone brought in from outside,” he says, each word measured like he’s afraid of stepping on something sharp. “They help out when the police don’t have the resources. Experts. Or… specialists. Sometimes people with abilities. It’s, uh, not exactly official, though.” He pauses, fiddling with a pen between his fingers. “It’s kind of a grey area.”
Flambae leans back in his chair, resting an arm behind his head, satisfied enough with that answer. “So a fancy way of saying hero,” he says with a grin.
Robert’s lips twitch into something like agreement, though it never quite settles into a smile. He nods once, curt. “Yeah. Can be.”
They move on after that. The moment slides away into the scrape of papers, the shuffle of feet, the murmur of voices. But Robert’s pulse hasn’t caught up yet. He feels it under his skin, that word echoing around his skull. Consultant. He remembers the smell before he remembers the scene itself. Cold metal and something heavier underneath it, sour and burnt. Then the noise, the echo of boots over concrete. Then the silence that came after.
He blinks and drags himself back to the room. Golem is leaning forward now, his huge hand dwarfing the file in front of him as he points out a timeline error. Sonar corrects him. Robert tries to focus on the rhythm of it, to anchor himself to the small things, the harmless ones. He’s been doing that for years.
He writes something down in the margin of his notes without looking at it, the ink pressing deep enough to mark the paper beneath.
The room grows quieter as the team reaches the last few pages. Even Flambae stops fidgeting. Golem lowers his huge clay hand from the report and sits still, his usual restless shifting gone. Someone breathes out through their nose, sharp and quick, the sound of disbelief trying not to become anger. The photos are all black and white but still too vivid. The grainy images of that place. The warehouse.
Robert stares at the folder, his chest tight. He can’t stop his eyes from finding the photograph in the corner of the page. The bare concrete floor, the outlines of little forms, one small shoe kicked against a wall. He remembers the smell again, that heavy sweetness that clung to his clothes for days. He had washed his hands until the skin came away in flakes. He knows the picture by heart. He should not still know it by heart.
Malevola swallows and sits back. “Bloody hell,” she murmurs, her tail curling in on itself.
Prism glances between the papers and the others. “They were all dead when the police got there?”
“Yeah,” Coupé says. “Every one of them. The report says the location was uncovered too late.”
Sonar shakes his head, tapping a pen against the page. “It says the tip-off came from an investigative consultant, but they didn’t act on it fast enough.”
Golem rumbles something low. “So it’s the police’s fault.”
“No,” Flambae says. “No, it’s both. Whoever this consultant was, they should have pushed harder. If they knew where it was, they should have made damn sure someone listened.”
Robert’s hand tightens around his pen. His throat feels dry.
“They might have done everything they could,” Malevola says. “Sometimes that’s not enough.”
Prism leans forward, always too bright, always too loud. “Still, if this guy—” she stops, glances around, corrects herself, “or girl—figured it out before the police did, then it’s not on them. It’s on whoever ignored them.”
Robert stares down at his notes, vision unfocused. “You don’t know that,” he says, quieter than he means to.
Flambae tilts his head, catching the tone. “What, you think it’s on them?”
He nods once, stiffly. “If the consultant had done better, if they’d checked again, or gone themselves, maybe…” His words slow as he speaks. “Maybe those kids wouldn’t have died.”
Sonar frowns. “That’s not fair. The report says they gave the right location.”
Robert shakes his head. “Maybe they didn’t make it clear enough. Maybe they hesitated. Maybe they didn’t push hard enough to make the cops listen.”
“They’re not the police,” Coupé says. “They can’t order anyone to do anything. You think they should have stormed in alone?”
Robert’s mouth opens, then closes. He can see it again in his head. The cold air of the warehouse. The rows of covered bodies. The sound of the camera clicking behind him. He remembers standing there with his hands shaking, still holding the torch. The light trembling across the floor, catching on something small, something red.
Malevola looks at him. “You seem to know a lot about what this consultant should or shouldn’t have done.”
“Yeah,” Prism adds, smiling faintly, trying to make light of it. “What, you got insider connections, Rob? You must know this dude.. Must really fuckin hate them, with how you’re talking.”
Golem rumbles low, something like amusement in his voice. “Who is it? Anyone famous?”
“Spill the tea,” Prism says. “You’ve got the face of a man who’s holding something back.”
Robert grips the edge of the desk until his knuckles ache. The laughter prickles under his skin, too loud, too light. He can smell dust, paper, coffee gone cold. The air feels wrong. He keeps his eyes on the folder, on the printed black text that has blurred from rereading.
“It’s not funny,” he says, but his voice cracks, quiet, too soft to stop them.
“Come on,” Flambae says. “If this guy messed up that bad, name him. People should know.”
The chair scrapes as Robert stands suddenly. His breath catches, sharp in his chest. “This isn’t a joke,” he says, louder this time. The words come out like they’ve been waiting years. “This never should have happened.”
The team falls silent again.
He can feel their eyes on him, wide, confused. His voice keeps going, shaking now, each word heavy, pulled from somewhere deep and raw. “I failed those kids,” he says. “I was the one–.”
The silence stretches until it hurts. Nobody breathes. The hum of the ceiling light sounds louder now, like a pressure against his skull. Then, Invisigal lets out an uneasy laugh that dies halfway through.
“This case is years old,” she says, voice pitching higher than usual. “You would’ve been, what, like—”
“Seventeen,” Robert cuts in.
He doesn’t mean for it to come out so fast. The word snaps like a wire pulled too tight. His hands curl into fists at his sides, nails digging against his palms to stop the shaking. It doesn’t help. He can feel every heartbeat in the raw skin.
Nobody moves.
Prism’s usual smirk falters. Malevola’s mouth opens, then shuts again. They all look so young suddenly, all noise and bravado stripped away.
Robert can’t stand it. The pity, the shock, the quiet horror. The idea that they’re seeing him differently now.
He shoves his chair back. The legs screech against the floor, loud enough to make a few of them flinch. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t look at any of them. Just turns and walks out, fast, before the weight in his throat can rise any higher.
The hallway outside feels too bright. The air feels thin. He keeps walking, trying not to hear the muffled voices that start up again behind the door. Trying not to think about the way their faces looked. Trying not to think at all. He can’t feel his feet properly as he pushes through the bathroom door, just the cold press of air and the echo of his own pulse pounding in his ears. Everything feels too close. The fluorescent light burns through the fog of his head.
He stumbles into a stall and slams it shut behind him, sinking down before his body can decide to fall on its own. The tiles are cold under his knees. He curls small, folding in on himself, forehead nearly touching the floor. He can’t breathe right. Every inhale sticks somewhere deep in his chest.
The kids. He can’t stop seeing them. The pale shapes on the concrete, the quiet. He knows all their names. He forced himself to. Except for the ones who were too young. Too new to the world. The ones who never even got names. That thought tears through him like a jagged edge.
He keens without meaning to. It’s a broken, animal sound that scrapes his throat raw. He leans over the toilet and vomits, his body heaving until there’s nothing left. The noise echoes off the walls, harsh and small.
He wipes at his face but can’t tell if he’s crying or just slick with sweat. His whole body shakes. He grips his hair hard enough that it hurts, pulling at the roots like pain might drive the memory out. But it doesn’t. The warehouse, the stink of it, the weight of the air. The burst of hope when he found it, thinking he was about to save someone. Then the silence. The cold.
He remembers their faces again—their stillness—and then the looks on the team’s faces. The way they stared at him like they’d never really seen him before.
He wheezes, a thin and pitiful sound. It echoes back at him from the tiled walls. He curls tighter, pressing his forehead to his arm, wishing it would all stop. Wishing he could just forget.
The first knock barely registers. He’s too far under, too lost in the slow churn of his own breathing and the taste of bile still in his mouth. Then another knock, sharper this time, and he flinches. He blinks down, sluggish, catching the glint of heels under the stall door. Blondie. Of course.
He drags in a thin breath, trying to steady it. His voice comes out hoarse, half a croak. “This is the men's room, pretty sure.” It’s supposed to sound dry, flippant, but it wobbles at the edges. She gives a small huff of a laugh anyway, soft and quick, like she’s pretending to play along.
“Let me in,” she says, not unkindly.
He stares at the lock for a long moment. His hands look wrong, pale and trembling, like they belong to someone else. When he finally reaches up, it feels like moving underwater. The latch clicks open.
The door creaks as she slips inside, careful, closing it behind her. The space feels impossibly small now. He keeps his head down, eyes fixed on the floor between them. The smell of bleach and puke and soap sits heavy in the air. He can’t bring himself to look at her. His throat feels thick, his face hot and raw from scrubbing at it with his sleeve.
She doesn’t say anything right away. Just stands there. He hears her shift slightly, maybe crouch. The sound of fabric brushing tile. He presses his knuckles to his mouth to keep them from shaking. He can feel her looking at him, and it’s unbearable. For a second he thinks she might say something sharp or managerial, something that’ll make him straighten up. Instead, her hand comes up, gentle against his cheek. He startles faintly at the touch, eyes flicking to hers, but she’s already tearing off some toilet paper from the roll and using it to wipe at his face.
It’s humiliating, probably, but he doesn’t have the strength to care. The tissue catches on the rough patches of dried tears and sick, her thumb following to wipe what it misses. The motion is steady, patient. She’s a good friend, he realises, maybe the only real one he has. That thought aches in his chest worse than the rest. He wonders how long that’ll last, once she knows. Once she really knows what happened.
She finishes cleaning him up, tosses the tissue aside, and her hand lingers. He blinks at her, dizzy, unsure of where to put his own hands. Then she tugs lightly at his arm, coaxing him forward until he slumps against her shoulder. His body goes without much argument, too tired to resist.
He makes a small noise, half a whine, half a sigh, muffled against the fabric of her suit. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t tell him to pull it together. Her hand stays firm on the back of his head, steady, like she’s anchoring him there.
"Z-team told me what happened," she says quietly, voice low enough that it barely carries above the hum of the bathroom lights.
Robert stiffens. The words hit like a slap, hot and sudden, and he tries to pull back, but she doesn’t let him. Her hand shifts from his shoulder to the back of his neck, holding him in place, gentle but unyielding.
"They seemed very worried," she adds, softer this time.
He snorts, the sound ugly and sharp. “Yeah, right. Bet they just wanted the gossip.” His voice cracks halfway through the sentence, and he hates it. He tries again, quieter, more biting. “Don’t waste your sympathy, boss. I’m fine.”
From where his head rests against her, he hears it — the small, deliberate sound of her swallowing, like she’s steadying herself before speaking again. Her fingers twitch against his hair, a subtle grounding gesture, and he can tell she’s thinking hard about what to say next.
“The reason I chose this case,” she says slowly, careful, like she’s testing the weight of every word before it leaves her mouth.
Robert stares at the grimy floor tiles. The smell of bleach still can’t cover the stench of vomit, and he wishes it could, because every breath makes him feel sick again. He’s trying not to see faces. Small, pale faces. Names written on toe tags. Coffins too small to make sense.
“I wanted to show that sometimes,” Blondie continues, “we, as heroes, or investigative consultants, or uncredited assistance, or whatever name they give us—sometimes we can do everything within our power, and things still go wrong.”
He lets out a weak sound that could be a laugh, could be something else. “Pretty dreary message for their first mock case,” he says hoarsely. “You sure know how to motivate a crowd.”
Blondie actually huffs a laugh, short but real. “Maybe,” she admits, her voice lighter for a second before it settles again. “But I chose this case because the investigative consultant did their job perfectly. They did everything right.”
Robert shakes his head faintly against her shoulder. His throat feels tight.
“As heroes,” she goes on, “we tend to blame ourselves when things go wrong. We look for what we missed, what we could have done differently. But the truth is…” she sighs, a slow breath against his hair, “sometimes shit just goes wrong.”
Her words hang in the quiet stall. Robert doesn’t answer. He can’t. He just sits there, chest aching, trying not to cry again.
Robert swallows, throat raw and tight. The words scrape out of him. “What are you saying?”
He feels her hand lift, fingers threading gently into his hair, working at the tangles there. The motion is slow, deliberate. Comfort disguised as something casual. He tells himself not to lean into it, not to let her see how much that helps, how much that touch pulls him back from the edge.
“I’m saying,” Blondie murmurs, voice low and trembling, “it was never your fault, Rob. Never ever.”
Her thumb strokes the side of his head, tracing a line behind his ear. He blinks hard, staring at the wall. The stall feels smaller now, quieter.
“And if I’d known,” she continues, “if I’d known that was one of your cases—” she stops, swallows, the sound thick. “I just thought, because you would’ve been so young… I didn’t think you were out doing detective work at seventeen.”
Robert shuts his eyes. He can still hear the echo of the warehouse doors slamming open. The smell of decay. The silence.
“I’m so sorry, Robert,” she says softly. “I hope you can forgive me.”
He sits there for a long time, unmoving, her hand still resting against his head. Forgive her? He doesn’t even know how to forgive himself.
Robert breathes in deep. The air feels too thick, like it’s sticking to the inside of his throat. He breathes again, slower this time, chest stuttering on the inhale. On the third breath, he chokes. The sound bursts out of him sharp and ugly, a half-gasp, half-sob that twists in his chest like a knife. His body jerks forward before he can stop it, before he can pretend he’s fine, and Blondie’s arm is there, wrapping around his middle, holding him firm. She pulls him close, tight enough that he can feel the rise and fall of her breathing against his back. Like she’s bracing him, like if she holds him steady enough he won’t come apart in her hands.
After the choke comes the sound he’s been fighting down for years. A sob. Small at first, thin and unsure, like it doesn’t know if it’s allowed to exist. The sound makes him flinch. He can’t remember the last time he cried in front of anyone, maybe not since he was a kid, and even then he’d done it behind closed doors. He bites down hard on his lip, tastes metal, anything to stop the shaking in his throat. His face burns with embarrassment. The pressure in his chest grows until he thinks he might burst.
Then Blondie flicks his ear. Just a little snap of her fingers against the skin, soft enough to be teasing. “You can cry, idiot,” she says, and her voice sounds almost fond.
He sniffs once. Tries to hold it in. Then it’s like something in him gives way all at once. The noise that comes out isn’t dignified, isn’t careful—it’s raw and broken and unstoppable. He’s crying properly now, shoulders jerking, nose running, breath hitching in uneven bursts that leave him dizzy. Blondie doesn’t flinch. She just holds him tighter, a steady presence in the middle of his collapse.
Tiny faces flash in his mind. Tiny coffins. The memories come in shards, sharp and glinting, cutting through every thought that tries to rise above them. He can see their eyes, can hear the silence that followed. How could it possibly be anything but his fault? How could he have missed something, overlooked some clue, done less than he should have?
Only—Blondie is still here. Sitting on the grimy bathroom floor with him, her arms wrapped around him, her chin resting lightly on the top of his head. Holding him all careful like he isn’t the monster he thinks he is.
It’s something. Something he can’t name or understand, not with the noise still clawing its way out of his chest. But in this moment, pressed close to her, he knows one thing with aching clarity—He’s not alone anymore.