Dispatch WIP (Post Game Crash Out)
Eventually, Z-Team starts chanting that he sucks in effort to get his attention. Robert is so exhausted and kind of drunk-fond of them all at once that despite his probable internal bleeding, he submits to their abusive physical affection. He gets thrown ten feet into the air, then dropped on the pavement for his troubles. It’s fine. Mal heals him while Punch Up comes directly at Flambae with his fist cocked back and the team pyro startles like a flaming cat and jumps airborne to avoid him.
“C’mere, lad. I don’t mean nothin’ by it.”
“No! You’re going to punch me in the dick!”
“Nah. Was playin’. Alls forgiven. I swear on me mother I intend no harm.”
Prism shouts, “Boy, you better run!”
It’s … chaos. Blissful, reassuring chaos. Like your own heartbeat in your ears after the blood rushes to your head. Robert lies on the pavement. He is now two beers buzzed on some blood lose and revels in the high relief that he no longer cares about the exact moment he knew Shroud was dead and he was just punching a corpse that gargled.
Robert does not care that—somewhere between strangling and wrestling with Elliot on that burning rooftop—he lost his mind and just kept hitting that smug, dead motherfucker until his knuckles were broken and he was finally and utterly convinced that no amount of caving the man’s skull in would make the inside of his own skull any quieter.
Robert settled then for the operational certainty that the threat was neutralized and staggered back to Invisigal where he promptly hung his sanity on whether or not she died of a fucking gunshot wound. (She did not die. Yay.)
“Robert?” Vizi, speak of the devil, is kneeling over him. “Are you okay?”
“You’re supposed to be in an ambulance,” he accuses, folding his arms. Gravel digs into his spine. He doesn’t care. “Go to the… hospital.”
“Maybe we should both go.”
Mal, from somewhere far away and hazy, says, “You have a lot more fucking injuries than I thought. I can't heal shit older than a few hours, babes. What the fuck?”
That’s the last Robert remembers as his entire adrenaline-juiced nervous system crashes like an overbalance Jenga tower and he promptly blacks out
