Flambert Time Loop AU Part 1
Robert is stuck in a time loop; at the end of the Shroud fight he didn't have the proto pulse, and giving Shroud the real pulse would have devastating consequences. So he breaks the astral pulse, throws it on the ground and grinds it under his heel. The ensuing explosion should have killed Robert, but instead the enormous energy that makes up the astral pulse throws Robert back in time, all the way to the first time waking up from his coma. He thinks he had one of those realistic coma dreams, except life plays out the exact same and he ends up dispatching for the Z-Team again. This time things go better, but Robert still dies during the Shroud fight.
And then he wakes up from his coma again. This keeps happening, something going wrong and Robert dying during the Shroud fight and looping back -he doesn't even need to die in an astral pulse explosion to trigger a loop- until one loop: he confesses to being Mecha Man after the bar fight, but for some reason Golem is not standing next to him. One of those minor differences that happen every loop, but this one has devastating consequences. Flambae's flames hit him head on, Robert's arms doing nothing to protect his face, scorching his lungs as he breathes in the flames and their heat. He chokes on nothing, lungs burned from the inside out, unable to take in oxygen. Malevola's healing doesn't work on normies, it's too heavy-handed for them, and Robert dies in the taco place parking lot.
Cue Flambae waking up in his bed at home, his phone going crazy where it's sitting on his night stand. He barely has time to bend over the edge of the bed before he pukes his guts out, the scent of burned flesh still stuck in his nose. He has a major anxiety attack, because holy shit he just killed Mecha Man he killed Robert and despite his track record of setting shit on fire, he has never killed anyone before. He doesn't know how he ended up at home, but it won't be long before heroes will break down his door and arrest him. He grabs his phone, needs to at least say goodbye to his sibling and his niece before he ends up back in prison, only to be taken aback when he sees all the notifications his phone has. The internet and all the news stations are going crazy, there's even a message from Prism, because did he see the news?! Mecha Man Blue just blew up and fell out of the sky!
Flambae checks the date and... yeah, he's in the past. HOW?! He spends the entire rest of the night googling. First, he googles Mecha Man, but there's nothing of substance: no press conference video, nothing post the explosion that all news outlets are saying just happened. Then he looks up Robert Robertson, but that leaves him similarly empty-handed. Lastly, he searches for other news topics: celebrity controversies, a singers new music album that broke the internet, the new season of that one show he and Prism were watching, new memes made in the past few months. They're not there. They don't exist. Come morning Flambae does the single smartest thing he has done all year; he books an emergency session with his court-mandated, SDN approved therapist.
After long talk, they conclude he just had a really vivid dream. One in which he fulfilled his wish of taking revenge on Mecha Man. (It kinda grates on him that he dreamt up this extremely detailed future, but his mind couldn't make up a name better than Robert fucking Robertson.) But going by his reaction afterwards, Flambae didn't actually want to kill Mecha Man, did he? They spent the next few weeks unpacking this and he makes great progress. In the end Flambae concludes he doesn't actually blame Mecha Man for ruining his life; it was just easier to blame him for putting Flambae in jail, even though Flambae was the one doing villain shit and Mecha Man was just doing his job by stopping Flambae. He totally blames him for taking his fingers though, Mecha Man didn't have to do that. If he was panicking about being cooked in the suit, he could've just left. But Flambae realizes that he doesn't want to kill Mecha Man, doesn't even really want revenge. If Mecha Man apologized for taking his fingers, Flambae might even be able to forgive him. That won't stop him from calling Mecha Man a bitch though.
So Flambae keeps living his life, sometimes having a deja vu moment with a particularly memorable mission, or a particularly stupid dispatcher that doesn't last more than half a day, but it's going well. He watches Mecha Man's press conference, noting how in his dream Mecha Man just left, but now he beats up that shit-head reporter. It relaxes something inside Flambae. See? His dream and reality are totally different. Yeah there is a press conference, but that was expected if Mecha Man survived the explosion anyway. But then he sees Mecha Man at Crypto Night with Blonde Blazer. He freaks out a bit, but in his dream Mecha Man spit alcohol at Blazer and he doesn't now. Sure, he spills a glass in her lap, but it's different. Totally different, Flambae has nothing to worry about. He still leaves the bar without talking to Mecha Man.
It's fine. It's all fine.
"Hello team, I'm your dispatcher Robert Robertson-"
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