Chapter Text
Chase was in the process of watching his 7th call to Robert ring out dismally when the increasingly irritating jingle gave way to a new and exciting beeping noise. Unknown Number flashed at the top of the screen and he stubbornly mashed his finger on the green symbol below it, slamming the phone up to his cheek.
“What the hell you want?” He hissed down the line. From across the office, Blazer was waving at him unsubtly, eyebrows furrowed in the most explicit gesture of anger he’d ever seen on her usually mild face. He wafted her away, silently explaining another failed attempt.
Robert was an hour and a half late to work. This was beyond abnormal; even if he was dragging his heels and still snoring, Robert was always on time. If anything, he was early. He’d gotten deep into the habit of arriving an hour or two before he was due in specifically so he could take advantage of the unusually empty gym. Seeing neither hide nor hair of him was seriously fucking concerning.
“Uh, is this Chase Wright?”
“Yes. Damnit.” Blazer looked increasingly annoyed, and she seemed to be making a threat, though he couldn’t quite discern what it was. “What do you want?”
“This is Officer Foreman. I have a… Robert Robertson here with me? He’s asked you to come and pick him up from the station.”
Chase froze. “What?” He tried to express to Blazer that he had a lead, but she just squinted at him, confused. “What the hell is he doing there?”
“I don’t know, sir. The kid won’t tell us anything. He’s a little roughed up but he’s not hurt.”
“Ain’t much of a kid.” Chase grumbled, already digging around the clutter on his desk in search of his car keys. The pressure to finally get a car had kicked in with his arthritis diagnosis; he could no longer just run any distance he pleased. “He’s meant to be at work.”
“Uh, Mr Wright? That’s… not legal.”
Chase paused again. Blazer was marching over now, winding through busy dispatchers and office staff with her mouth already open like she was about to chew him out. He waved her off hastily, trying to warn her not to interrupt.
“What’s not legal? Employing a man? Ask him why he can’t drive his own damn self back from the station!”
“Well, he’s ten, sir. Ten year olds aren’t allowed to work.” There was a long pause, then an unsubtle cough. “Or drive.”
Hands on her hips, Blazer slammed to a halt, face expectant. Chase silently counted down from ten in his head, then took a long, calming breath.
“Let me get this straight. Robert Robertson is at your police station, and he is visibly ten years old?”
Blazer startled, anger evaporating in a blink.
“Um, that’s right. So, when can you come and get him?”
“I can come and get him right now.” Chase ground out, leaving no room for Blazer to argue. She still looked a little stunned, her eyebrows nearly peaking over the top of her mask.
With a sharp goodbye, Chase hung up, shoving his phone deep in his pocket and draping his coat over one arm. To her credit, Blazer didn’t actually try to stop him, but Chase paused before he left nonetheless.
“I’m gonna bring this little shit in. In the meanwhile, take a look at that Tempo motherfucker.”
Without even complaining about the blatant lack of respecting the chain of command, Blazer nodded and turned back towards her office.
Tempo was a recent up-and-comer, as well as a perpetual pain in SDN’s ass. Her power was strong enough to put her in the big leagues, far bigger than Robert and the Z-Team had to worry themselves with, but Chase had a special and unique hatred for her.
The sound of her voice—allegedly angelic, though Chase was sceptical—could literally sap years of a person's life from them. Despite being roughly sixty in any official documentation, Tempo could retain eternal youth by stealing time away from her victims.
So, Chase’s distaste was personal. First of all, he did not want to give up more years than he already had; secondly, he would literally chop off an arm for the chance of reclaiming a good few years of his youth. Every time he went to work, the first name he checked for in the databases was hers. He had dreams of seeing a big red ‘CAPTURED’ stamped next to her name.
There was a reason Chase had thought of her first though, far beyond whatever personal issues he had with her. As far as anyone knew, there were no other troublemakers in Torrance who had the ability to fuck with time. And, logically, if she could take years away, couldn’t she also, potentially, give them away?
Why she would, Chase didn’t know. Why she chose Robert, why she chose to make him a child, all of it was a mystery, but it had Tempo’s name written all over it no matter what.
Chase stewed on this mystery all the way to the station, where he promptly put on a grumpy-yet-fragile old man performance so that a nice young officer would personally escort him through the raging crowd. He shook the fellow off the moment he spotted a horribly familiar head of auburn hair.
It was attached to a little head, connected to a little body, perched atop a desk. Little Robert Robertson swung his legs, head bowed as he waited for someone to pick him up.
It was definitely him. At certain points of Chase’s life, he’d seen that dork’s face more often than he’d seen his own, and he knew it like the back of his hand. A small part of him had been distantly hoping that it was all some elaborate joke the Z-Team had set up to try and get him in trouble at work, but this image swiftly dashed those dreams to smithereens. With a sigh, Chase straightened up a bit and beelined for the desk.
The officer who was sitting at it, presumably the aforementioned Officer Foreman, poked his head up at Chase’s approach. He muttered something indistinguishable to Robert, who spun around in a snap-
And promptly looked right past Chase, searching for a familiar face which had aged right out of existence. Chase sighed, shaking his head, and stepped up to cuff Robert’s shoulder.
“Kid, you know just how to hurt a guy's feelings.”
Chase watched the flow of emotions on little Robert’s face as he put the pieces together. Confusion, shock, recognition, back to confusion; he hurled himself into Chase’s arms, nearly knocking him right off his feet, then peeled back just to glare up into Chase’s face. “Are you really Chase?”
“As if there’s some other motherfucker stupid enough to drive out here just to pick your dumbass up!” Chase grumbled, bapping the side of Robert’s head. The kid ducked just a moment too slow to dodge it, his reflexes not quite honed just yet.
His reaction suggested that his mind, too, was that of his ten year old self. The possibility that this was regular grown-up Robert shrunken down would have been favourable. He still would have been able to go to work. This, though, made the situation far more difficult.
“Then why are you old?” Robert prodded without the first bit of shame, extending his bony little fingers to prod at Chase’s cheek. “You’re super old!”
“Goddamn brat.” Chase hissed, yanking the little shit away by the back of his collar like he was scruffing a kitten. Robert made the perfect yowling noise for the metaphor—the cop, at least, seemed satisfied that the two did, in fact, know each other.
Robert continued to pepper him with questions as the cop got Chase to sign a bunch of forms that he wouldn’t let the little shit run wild again, and he didn’t stop talking all the way out until he was getting shoved into the car.
God, Chase had forgotten how fucking chatty he was. At the very least, Chase finally got an explanation for what had happened. Or, at least, he got half of the story.
Apparently, the first thing Robert could remember was hearing a woman shouting. Chase dropped an imaginary coin in his mental ‘reasons it’s Tempo’ jar. The woman had been croaking, her voice weak and scratchy, when Robert had struggled to his feet and seen no more than a shadow flitting away.
He’d found his way out of an old apartment building that he didn’t recognise and walked all the way back to his old place. He had no key to get in, and his father wasn’t answering. Chase had swallowed thickly when Robert had said that, but the kid had sped past those details fast enough in his recounting that Chase hadn’t been pressured to give him an explanation.
After that, he’d gone to the cops so they could call Chase for him.
“So where are we going?”
“Where I work.”
“Where do you work?”
“SDN.”
Robert made a noise. “I thought you liked freelance.”
“Kid. Look at me. You think I’m still a hero?”
Robert did look at him. In the corner of Chase’s eye, he saw that gentle, earnest expression as it explored Chase’s near-unrecognisable face, probably searching for a hint of the young man he once knew.
“You mean… you retired or something? How did you get so old?”
Chase still wasn’t totally sure how to explain all of it to such a little kid.
Well, he wasn’t really a little kid. He was edging into his teenage years, not far off puberty, where he’d shoot up like a reed until he was looking down on Chase instead of up. But Robert had always been on the small side, probably owed to so much time fending for himself.
He’d lived off microwave TV dinners and god knew Chase had never made him anything decent. He got Twinkies and off-brand soda, perhaps the occasional burger if he was lucky. Looking back, with the wisdom of a good few decades at hand, Chase could feel a bit guilty about it. Back then, babysitting had just been another irritating chore.
Chase hadn’t known what it was like to have a parent who didn’t give a fuck about you. He’d always had both of his parents in his life. They took good care of him, making sure he was well fed and well loved.
Astral never wasted his time on Robert. Chase recalled a few scarce memories of genuine expressions of care from Astral, but that was it. The rest was just Robert, puttering along on his own, chasing after Chase’s heels because he was the only one who ever really stuck around, even though he’d complained about it so much.
He stole a quick glance at Robert again. Yeah. Too small.
“Ask me again when we get to the office. I ain’t having this conversation without a coffee.”
Robert huffed, slumping in his seat, but went obediently quiet as he watched the city pass by his window. He stayed quiet as they shuffled out of the car and into the building, but Chase saw the light blooming in his eyes as they walked nonetheless.
He’d always had this fascination with superheroes. Chase had found it weird in the past, sure that Robert ought to have gotten used to the allure of hero life, what with how much time he spent surrounded by them. Once they were demystified by familiarity, the awe and wonder died a sudden, bloody death, transformed into a general feeling of unspecific disappointment.
But not for Robert. He’d adored his dad, in that distant, celebrity-worship sort of way. He’d wanted to be a superhero with all of his might. He’d succeeded.
That overwhelming excitement caught up with Robert now, and he practically bounced through the building, running laps around Chase as he tried to take in every little detail, to wave at every passing hero.
Chase pinned him in place with a hand on his shoulder as he was shuffled into the elevator, and kept a hand on him once they stepped out, trying to hurry him along to Blazer’s office.
He’d only considered it a bit too late, but he really didn’t want little Robert meeting the Z-Team if he could help it. They were terrible role models in a way that Robert would internalise instantly. If he was going to attach himself to any superhero in the building, Chase wanted it to be Blazer.
Unfortunately, he had no such luck. He was trying to smuggle him past the breakroom when he nearly collided with Invisigal, who was grinning at Flambae behind her in a way that made Chase think they’d collaborated on a particularly evil prank, the sort that meant it was probably lucky that Robert wouldn’t be able to stumble into it.
They both greeted Chase quite casually, then promptly did twin double takes.
Chase sighed, utterly giving up. He shouldn’t even have thought about it; he’d definitely jinxed it by thinking about it. There were stars in Robert’s eyes already.
“Holy shit, please tell me that’s his secret kid.” Flambae exhaled, raw glee in his voice. Chase wasn’t interested in gracing that with a response, but fortunately, Robert hadn’t been listening at all.
“You’re superheroes.” He gasped, grinning so wide it exposed his missing canine tooth. “Awesome. I’m Robert.”
He held out a hand, and neither of them took it. Instead, Invisigal squatted down to match his level, studying his face with open curiosity. Robert looked a little put out by the snub, and he dropped his hand to his side in disappointment.
“Fuck off. He’s Robert?” She posed the question to Chase, but he didn’t get the chance to answer.
“That’s what I said.” Robert grumbled, crossing his arms. “And who are you?”
“She’s a crazy bitch. Keep your distance. You two better go and dismantle whatever the fuck you’ve set up in there.”
“Not until you explain why Bobert is so small!” Flambae argued, poking Robert in the forehead—the kid rocked back on his heels, then smacked the offending hand away.
“I’m not small- and that’s not my name! Chase, what-?”
“Alright, that fucker Tempo probably did this to him. So you better be ready to go catch her, alright?”
Chase had plenty of opinions on the Z-Team members, but he had to confess—very reluctantly—that they were beginning to improve. While he didn’t trust them to show a young and impressionable Robert what it meant to be a hero, he was certain that, at the very least, they could successfully capture Tempo.
Mostly, this was because they didn’t have the same limits that other hero teams did. The Z-Team were more than happy to get their hands dirty and were better than ever at working together, supporting someone else's weakness with their own strength. Plus, they’d been learning from Robert how best to apply their skills to different situations and could even act on their own every once in a while, which was particularly important at present, since Robert was effectively out of commission.
Invisigal and Flambae looked briefly serious, clearly recognising that Chase's words were a sign that a measure of trust was being placed in them; that temporary understanding was promptly interrupted by Prism’s loud complaining.
“-turn up at a stupid hour, and he’s not even here! Hey, Chase!”
Sonar, whose ear she’d just been yelling into, tilted his head away from her as they approached. “Damn, can you lower your-”
“Where the hell is Robert, huh? We haven’t been sent on a single mission all morning! The fuck are we doing here?”
Chase was already tired of doing this explanation thing. He jabbed a finger down at the top of Robert’s head and watched the shock of the revelation spreading over the faces of the two newcomers.
“Someone took a good nineteen years of life from him so we’re stuck with this little shit until Blazer can track down Tempo. I’d tell you to consider this a day off but we’ll need the lot of you here once we find her. And stop fuckin’ yelling!”
“What the fuck are you?” Robert exhaled, awe-stricken, at the sight of Sonar. “A bat. Can you fly? Do you sleep upside down?”
“That’s Robert?” Prism asked, voice squeaky.
Invisigal laughed, patting the top of Robert’s head. “What, you don’t recognise him? Is it the lack of bruises or the light in his eyes?”
“Wait.” Robert interrupted, smacking Invisigal’s hand away as he turned back to stare up at Chase. “I’m supposed to be grown up? Like, I time travelled?”
“Uh, sure.”
Chase did not want to waste any more time on explaining than he already had. Robert, at least, seemed mollified by this. His eyes grew progressively wider until they looked about ready to pop out of his head, and he tangled a fist tightly into Chase’s shirt. “And… I work here? So I really do become a superhero?”
He looked far too damn excited about it for Chase to crush his spirit with the nasty details, so he just swallowed and nodded. With a whoop, Robert bounced nearly a foot in the air, shaking Chase so hard that he felt something pop in his hip.
“Alright, kid, you-”
“That’s so cool! So cool!”
“Oh. Wow.”
Blazer was peaking over Chase’s shoulder, staring down at Robert, who had frozen with awe for what seemed like the millionth time that morning. Chase ruffled his hair, unable to contain his fondness. “Yeah, yeah, he’s adorable, so I’ve heard. You get anywhere with Tempo?”
“Possibly. I wanted to discuss it with you. Maybe the Z-Team can watch Robert for a bit?”
“I don’t need to be watched over.” Robert whined, crossing his arms over his chest. His frown was clearly an imitation of his father, but its potency was offset by his pout. Chase snorted.
“So you don’t wanna hang out with a bunch’a superheroes?”
He watched Robert do the calculations, posture softening as he thought. Then, with a haughty upturn of his chin, he shrugged. “Well, I guess I’m just a kid.”
Too easy, Chase thought, sending a brief prayer to any deity that might be listening for Robert not to idolise the Z-Team too much. Chase wasn’t sure how much of this, if anything, he’d remember in the long term, but it seemed like a bad idea nonetheless. He mollified himself with the hope that it wouldn’t take long for Blazer to lay out what she had, and he’d be done with plenty of time to mediate.
So, he waved Robert off towards the increasingly-curious Z-Team and tailed Blazer back to her office.