Chapter Text
One thing needs to be established right off the bat: Robert’s training is dumb. The Z-Team will stand by that statement until the end of time. They’re not a fucking after-school sports team, they don’t need to run drills or memorize codes. It’s dumb and humiliating and him buying them pizzas and beer afterwards barely makes up for making them learn secret codes like they’re playing spies in elementary school.
That being said, one of the codes was a little helpful this one time. But this is a fluke, because how often do people time travel? Huh?
As soon as the light from the blast clears and their ears stop ringing, they realize the city around them has changed just slightly. It’s a feeling like when you get back from a weekend in Vegas and the asshole you had watering your plants moved all your furniture two inches to the right. Something’s wrong, something changed, but it’s hard to say exactly what.
“Aw, shit. We in the past!” Prism groans.
Well. Hard for most of them.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Coupe sighs in a very Coupe-like manner.
“What do you mean 'what do I mean’? Are you seeing these clothes? Clearly we’re either in the late 90’s or early oughts.” Prism gestures grandly to the pedestrians, only a handful of whom have the time to gawk at the strange group which appeared out of nowhere. The rest have to be somewhere and figure they’ll just catch the next batch of weird superhero shit.
“How are you so sure? Didn’t you say that style was coming back?” Invisigal pokes at a rip in her jacket. She doesn’t really care. She’s more concerned about her own outfit and whether she's going to be able to stitch it back together.
“Girl, I don’t even have time to explain to you the difference between original and imitation fashion.”
“I mean, technically ya do,” Punch Up points out. “If yer right about us bein’ in the past, ya have about twenty years.”
Prism looms over him threateningly. “That is not what I meant and you know it.”
“Um, g-guys?” Waterboy peeps.
“What’s up?” Golem responds. His booming voice draws the attention of the others.
Waterboy flushes under their combined gaze, but doesn’t flinch so...progress. “If we d-did time travel, we should-d go to the phonebooth. There’s d-definitely a Mecha Man in this time.”
“Argh!” Flambae growls, head and shoulders lighting up. “Fine! But nobody tells Bobert we actually used it, okay?”
“Agreed.” Malevola grimaces. “He’d never let us live it down.”
“Are we done yet?” Courtney groaned. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall. Her arms were crossed, but she was not pouting, this was how any mature adult would handle having to memorize contingency plans for scenarios that would never happen.
“Seriously, man,” Chad agreed. “I can forgive you for cutting my fingers off, but if you keep cutting into my after-hours time I won’t be so nice.”
Robert just laughed, eyes going soft and fond. He’d been pulling them into the conference room after their shifts at least once a week since the hot mess people were calling the Red Ring Uprising. It was so weird to watch him transition from Dispatcher Robert to Mecha Man Blue. His posture straightened and his voice turned from supportive to authoritative. They weren’t sure he even knew he was doing it, but they definitely noticed.
“One more, okay?” he said.
“And then we drink,” Victor added.
“And then we drink,” Robert assured him.
“Alright!” Malevola cheered. “Give it to us, boss-man.”
“Let’s get this over with,” Chad sighed.
Bruno clicked the end of his pen and leaned over his notebook. He was good to play along. If he could play tea time with his kaiju child, he could play paranoid study group with his dispatcher. Other than him, Herm was the only one who seemed to be genuinely interested. The rest of the team gazed through half-lidded eyes in their dispatcher's general direction. None of them would admit they were listening, and they certainly would never suggest Alice was copying the information to a shared Google doc between checking her socials.
Robert turned back to his whiteboard and swiped his hand over it to clear a space. He dusted the dry erase ink off on his jeans, then wrote THE PHONEBOOTH at the top of the clean-ish space.
“Boi you better not be about to tell me how to get dressed,” Alice warned.
“Honestly I wouldn’t even know how to start putting on your clothes,” Robert quipped in a deadpan tone. “I assume there’s a vacuum seal involved?”
Janelle snorted.
Robert turned from the whiteboard back to them. “Okay, so let’s say you get displaced in time.”
Groans came from around the room.
“Are you serious?” Chad demanded.
“You’re wasting our drinking time for this?!” Colm complained.
“Actually, I kind of want to see where this goes,” Victor said.
"It's not completely improbable," Malevola added apologetically.
“If you end up in a time where a Mecha Man exists — so anywhere from 1938 to whenever the mantle is retired for good — then what you want to do is go to the phonebooth on the corner of Seigel and Shuster. You call this number,” he turned to scribble a number onto the board with a phrase underneath it, “and when someone picks up, you give them this code.”
“And, what? They’ll help us out of the goodness of their hearts?” Janella scoffed, crossing her arms. “No offense, Blue, but from what I’ve heard your dad isn’t exactly the type to welcome people like us with open arms.”
“Probably not,” Robert admitted, capping the marker and turning around to lean a hand on the conference table. “Which is why it’s a good thing it’s not an SOS. It’s a command from one Mecha Man to another. It means ‘drop whatever you’re doing and help these people’.”
“Are you sure you want to tell us this?” Courtney asked.
The others went quiet, looking between her uncharacteristically serious face and their dispatcher. She’d clearly made some connection they hadn’t. She spun her inhaler around a finger, not looking at Robert. He tilted his head and waited.
“We’ll have to tell them who sent us,” she continued. “Do you really want your name tied to us throughout time and space? What if we meet your grandpa? Or you great-great-grandkids? Do you want the only impression of you they’ll ever have to be a group of ex-villains?”
There were only a few times someone could’ve heard a pin drop during a Z-Team meeting. This was one of them.
Robert took his time responding, clearly debating which words to use in his head. When he finally spoke, his voice was measured and deliberate “If getting to know a group of my friends — my teammates — is the only way my family ever gets to know me, it'll be enough. And not that it would make a difference, but you’re not ex-villains anymore. You’re heroes. Maybe better heroes than Mecha Man will ever be.”
“So cheesy,” Chad attempted, but his voice was suddenly as wobbly and wet as Herm.
Robert rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I want you all to memorize this. Everyone. There’s no guarantee that you’ll get displaced as a group.”
“There’s no guarantee we get displaced at all. Who time travels by accident?” Alice joked.
“Right?” Colm agreed. “I think Bobby is a bit paranoid.”
“Hey, Bobby is my grandfather.”
“Don’t start adding more things for us to memorize!” Malevola groaned.
Robert sighed, only a bit theatrically. The spell over the room was broken and the tension bled out of the team. “Guys. Guys!” Robert waved his hands over their chatter. “Remember, this is the only thing standing between you and the bar. You dial this number, and when someone picks up, you say—”
“Is this Rob’s Wrecks?” Malevola asks, twirling the payphone cord nervously. The rest of the Z-Team stands in a loose ring around the payphone, torn between watching their surroundings and watching her expression. “I need a mechanic yesterday.”
There’s a beat of silence, then a voice that’s just shy of familiar grunts, “Stay where you are and don’t talk to anyone. I’ll be there in five.”
“Ok—”
Mecha Man Astral hangs up before she can even finish the word.