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Robert doesn’t think the guy’s out to hurt anyone.
Sure the burning building, completely gutted by fire and set against the backdrop of the nightsky, looks intimidating. Like a scene from a movie. It’s dramatic. It’s flashy. It’s showy. Like bright colours on little, tiny frogs, warning all the other big, bad animals in the jungle that they mean business. Sometimes, it’s a real threat and other times it’s just a bluff – a desperate ploy to avoid becoming lunch. Robert’s willing to bet it’s the latter here.
Because of all the locations the flaming asshole could have chosen for his super-powered meltdown he picked a deserted mall, in the dead of night, separated from all the other buildings so the fire has less chance to spread.
If the guy wanted to burn people, he’d have picked an apartment building, a hotel or a nightclub.
Flamedick may have caused a villainous amount of property damage, and created a hazard for the firefighters working to keep the blaze contained, but he’s not a killer. All this destructive power, all this anger, and no-one’s dead. Clearly he’s got some self-control or a sense of morality, keeping him from crossing that line.
So, yeah, Robert’s cautiously optimistic that this encounter is going to end positively. The guy’s going to jail, obviously – there’s not much Robert can do about that part – but maybe with some anger management, and a little perspective, the firestarter can find some other, more constructive, use for his powers.
#
That optimism continues to hold, even after he falls through to the basement, right up until a concentrated torrent of flame starts eating through his gauntlet shield and alerts start flooding his displays.
Warning: External Temperature Approaching Critical Levels
Internal Heat Levels Will Soon Exceed Pilot Safety Parameters
His back is drenched in sweat.
It feels like the summer of ‘11, when the cockpit AC system broke in the middle of a crime-wave and he ended up vomiting from heat exhaustion after every mission until he finally figured out how to fix the fucking thing.
Warning: Max Heat Tolerance Reached System Operations Impaired
Shutdown Is Likely To Occur If Heat Source Remains In Proximity
“No shit.”
He doesn’t have a choice.
He activates his plasma blade on the left side and swings. At this point, with his eyes narrowed against the stinging heat and the air growing thick around him, Robert doesn’t care what he hits. He can’t see anything anyway, just a roaring wall of flame and blinking red error messages. Whatever he slices off, hopefully it’s something Mr Firebug can live without. It’s disappointing, but Robert’s not going to lose sleep over it – he tried his best to get the guy to cool off. What happens next is on him.
Before the blade completes its arc something knocks it upwards, throwing it off course. Robert feels the kinetic feedback vibrating through the giant metal limb, rocking him in his seat. He tries to reposition it, ready to swing again, panting as sweat drips down his chin. He can feel the heat in the back of his throat; heavy, oppressive.
A sliver of animal panic rises up.
The excess temperature finally proves too much, and with a series of dull popping noises the Mecha-man suit gives out, plunging him into darkness.
The heat continues to rise.
#
Three-thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
That’s what the metals of the hull can withstand before they start to melt.
His dad stress-tested everything thoroughly.
Whatever the temperature of the firestorm bombarding him it has to be lower than three-thousand degrees, because he’s not already dead. Either the tantruming flamester can’t reach temperatures that high, or he’s still showing restraint.
Not that it matters. He doesn’t need to melt through Mecha-man’s hull to kill Robert. He’s part-way there already.
Robert can only guess at the temperature inside the cockpit. Two-hundred? Two-twenty?
Everything’s fried and useless, none of the emergency controls respond. He’s trapped in what is now, effectively, a giant oven.
And there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it.
He’s half-blind from sweat. Each breath pulls in air so hot it hurts, down his throat and into his lungs. The fabric of his jumpsuit seems to pull and contract around him, absorbing heat and radiating it deep into his flesh.
He manages to get his harness off, twisting in his seat. There’s no position that isn’t suffocating, no relief.
The corners of his eyes sting. It’s like they’ve been blocked up with sand. He thinks, maybe, he’d be crying if all the fluid wasn’t being roasted out of him.
His head is splitting.
Screaming does nothing – it just lets more choking, searing air force its way inside him, burning from within – but he can’t stop himself.
In desperation, he slams his fists against the sides of the cockpit. He can’t talk to the guy currently cooking him to death, can’t ask him to please, fucking please, reconsider his life choices and stop, now – before things become irreversible.
It’s already fucking irreversible.
There’s steam, coming off of him. Particles of him, hanging in the air. His skin’s going taut. Changing states.
For a brief, blessed instant he’s back at seven years old – watching a science program on TV. He doesn’t go to school. He can’t be trusted not to blurt out that his daddy’s a superhero, and the bad guys can’t be trusted not to try and kidnap him or worse. So, for safety, he has his workbooks, and his educational VHS tapes and a tutor who comes once or twice a week. Track Star quizzes him sometimes too – calls him a ‘mini Einstein’ when he gets all the questions right. This last week he’s been learning all about the different states of matter and the processes by which they change. Now some changes, like water turning into ice, are reversible, but others are what we call irreversible. Let me show you. A pot of boiling water. An egg. You can’t unboil an egg and pour it back inside its shell. The process is irreversible.
Irreversible.
Robert can smell it now.
His throat is swollen, but for now he’s still breathing – still able to see, hear and smell. It smells like barbecue. Like the day he almost blew his head off by picking a fight with his dad’s empty mech-suit.
It’s ended up being the death of him anyway.
The skin around his mouth and chin is blistering, lips cracking. Something clear and greasy drips from his face onto his legs. He can’t feel his tongue anymore, just a thick slab of meat lying inert in his mouth.
The material of his body armor is warping. The smell is sharp; nauseating, but anything’s better than the roast pork smell. Maybe if he inhales enough of the fumes he can finally pass out, just go to sleep and forget.
If the pilot eject system was working he’d pull it in a heartbeat – get himself incinerated instead. Serves him right for not installing a mechanical release. He thought he’d never need it – that if it ever reached the point where the suit just gave out that he’d be gone with it. Technically, he was correct. He is a goner. He’s a dead man still somehow thinking, somehow feeling, and all he wants is for it to stop.
Is this what it was like for Grandpa Bobby?
Was he alive, under that rubble, for a time? Did he panic and cry, or was he silent, stoic – content with his sacrifice? Did he think about his family at all? Lying there alone and in the dark, did he regret it?
Robert absolutely fucking regrets.
It’s not worth it.
That’s what the cop said to him outside.
In hindsight, yeah. It wasn’t worth it. Getting taken out by some shitty, small-time super-villain with anger issues who probably doesn’t even really want to kill him – very much not worth it, actually. As far as super-hero deaths go, it’s pretty fucking trash tier.
Embarrassing, even.
Pathetic.
Painful.
And so, so fucking slow.
He can’t even scream anymore. So many of his nerves are still firing, not quite cooked through. His skull feels like it’s cracking. Spots of light burst in his eyes, and when he shuts them his eyelids stick.
It’s torture. Just hell.
Skin tears across his back, bleeding a thin trickle of melted fat, as he curls inwards into the fetal position.
He’s never believed in much of an afterlife. Never believed his dad was watching over him. Never felt his presence. He wants it though. Wants what he is never going to get – would never have gotten anyway even if he hadn’t fucked-up this fight.
He wants his dad to hold him, to look Robert in the eye and tell him he’s proud, that he knows he did his best and this isn’t his fault. He wants to be told he’s brave and that the pain will go away soon.
His brain really must be good and boiled now, because his dad would never do or say any of that shit. He probably, if Robert's being really honest with himself, didn’t even think about Robert, after Shroud put all those bullets in him. If he even thought of anything.
An instantaneous death.
What fucking bliss.
Robert’s glad he doesn’t have a kid. That the tradition ends here.
Dying in the suit so hard that no one will ever die in it again.
What’s gonna happen to it…? Museum…collector?
Turn it to fucking scrap.
They’re never going to be able to get the stench of the last Robert Robertson out of the cockpit.