I know I'm not evil. [He's guilty, he's responsible, but not evil in the way supervillains are.] And I know it wasn't entirely my fault.
But it still partly was and nothing can ever change that. It doesn't matter what anyone says.
[A flash of his time as a teacher at the Avengers Academy. Media day. Introducing the Academy kids to the press and the world, trying to control the narrative around them to protect them. A reporter speaks into a camera. Robbie realizes it's about him and starts to edge away.]
["- leading to the shocking revelation that the hero known as Penance - who helped save our capital from alien invaders - was actually Speedball. Coupled with new information about the Stamford explosion, including that the criminal, Nitro, who Speedball fought there, had artificially augmented his powers, this has led to the former 'most hated man in American' being forgiven by 70% of the public. Speedball, do you feel you've been vindicated?"]
[The reporter holds out his microphone, but Robbie shakes his head. "No. Because people still died because I didn't do my job right."]
["If you'd sit for an interview -"]
[Robbie gives him a dismissive wave of his hand, turning away. "Sorry. But if there's one thing working for Norman Osborn taught me, it's that words mean nothing. I'll let my actions speak for me."]
[In the present, Robbie hugs his arms to himself.]
I can't just wave my hands and pretend I didn't do something wrong.
I still screwed up.
[He doesn't want it to go there. He fights it, tries to keep it from going there. But he can't fight it, can't prevent the memory-space from finally dragging it to there to where it all happened. To Stamford.]
[He and his friends, his team, are doing a reality show. Robbie thinks it's fun and is glad that after the team breaking up many times, they're all back together again. His friends aren't as gung ho but it's bringing money back in for Dwayne to get his corporation going again, to bankroll the team. It also lets them find people around the country that need help and can't get a team like the Avengers or the Fantastic Four to come out in a timely fashion.]
[After a life of struggling to get it from his now-divorced parents, Robbie loves the attention, the fame. It's for ostensibly a positive thing. He doesn't become spoiled or a fame monster but he does keep egging for it, starts to care about getting more.]
[The show takes them to Stamford, Connecticut, a stone's throw from where Robbie grew up. There's been a prison break. The New Warriors are cleaning up the mess, looking on a house where several meta convicts have holed up.]
[Robbie looks young, too young to be "the most hated man in America." How is he even a man? He's 17 but even with his powers adding on some height and mass, he's a relatively skinny kid to begin with, mostly wiry muscle.]
["These guys are totally out our league, man," frets Microbe.]
["But think about the ratings, Microbe. This could be the best episode of the entire second season. Six month we've been driving around looking for goofballs to fight, and the best we've managed so far was a bum with a spray can and a wooden leg. This could be the episode that really puts the New Warriors on the map, dude. We beat these guys and people stop bitching about Nova leaving the show to go back to space."]
["So what's the plan?" asks his blue teammate Namorita.]
["The plan is you spend five more minutes in makeup, Namorita. You think people want to see that great big ugly zit on your chin?"]
[It's the last thing he says to her before the accident and the fact another version of her got pulled from the timestream later will never change that those were his last words to that version of her.]
["We've been marked," calls out Night Thrasher, looking at one of the criminals take out the trash with binoculars. They've been spotted.]
["GO!" Speedball calls out.]
[They go crashing in through the windows. They quip and say things that are dramatic for the camera.]
[And yet they fight well. They're an experienced team and while they're missing a few members, it's a team where three members of the four have fought side by side for years. They've faced cosmic threats, reality-altering ones.]
[When the mic doesn't pick up a line of banter, Robbie doesn't try to recreate the shot, he just says the line again on another blow.]
[They have every other villain besides Nitro down in mere minutes.]
[Namorita slams him into a school bus, right near a school. Nobody is worried. The bus is empty and the kids on the nearby playground are far enough away they should be safe. They know the size of his explosions. They can get him down fast enough.]
[It's far enough Robbie can't hear what's said. But Namorita doesn't drop him right away. Robbie looks up from where he's zip tying the villain he was fighting and then -]
[Things temporarily move in slow motion. Nitro's eyes glow, then his body does too. There's a brief, alarming, high pitched whine. The grin on Robbie's face starts to drop. The explosion happens so fast that Robbie can't even get his hands all the way up in time to condense more of his kinetic energy into a shield. He's been hit by trains before, throwing himself in front of them for the starting momentum to travel places and that feels like nothing compared to this. The explosion overloads his kinetic field, concussing him with the energy that causes his powers to overclock and overload. It burns out synapses in his brain, starts a process of mutation that will make his powers change later in defense of him.]
[He's bounces off like a ricocheted bullet, suddenly overhead the explosion in the blink of an eye. It is massive, engulfing chunks of neighborhood, swallowing up most of the elementary school. It's the last thing he sees before losing consciousness.]
[There are a few flashing memories, impressions. Waking up in SHIELD custody and getting arrested, jail and all the beatings in prison and during transport, by guards and inmates alike. That time another inmate bit a chunk out of his arm. Viciously fighting for his own survival. His mother visiting and saying she's never coming back.]
[Until that day at the Capitol, surrounded by a mob of hate. He shouts out about his rights not being respected, points out he committed no crime, killed no one. She-Hulk gets nervous about the lack of security cordon, the route getting changed.]
[He doesn't even see the gunman, a man whose daughter was killed at Stamford.]
[The pain is the worst he's ever felt up to that point and his ears ring from the loudness of the gunfire, from the way his head hits the Capitol steps. He wishes his mom is there. She-Hulk takes his head in her lap, is crying over him because throughout it all she hasn't forgotten. She hasn't forgotten the bright bouncy kid he was and how the New York superhero community watched him grow up.]
[To this day, the way she treated him during this time, comforted him as he was dying, took his case when no one else would, fought for his safety and a chance to speak on his own behalf, is one of the most profound kindnesses he's ever experienced.]
[He's in agony as the EMTs put on a pressure bandage, get him onto the ambulance. She-Hulk sits with him in the ambulance, places a hand on his forehead, like she'd be petting his hair if it hadn't been shaved off.]
[He keeps thinking she's his mother.]
["I don't want to die here... in front of everyone. Not here, mom. Not here."]
[His life's regrets wash over his soul. He couldn't admit guilt, couldn't admit fault, because then he'd have to acknowledge that his friends are dead. And it wasn't the New Warriors anyway. It was him. Everyone died. Because of him.]
[His powers come back, react to his pain. They're changing, the pain fuels them. The explosion causes the ambulance to crash, shoots himself and Jen out through the roof of the ambulance. He lands in the grass a distance away, still in agony as he bleeds out on the ground, as the blood from the gaping stomach wound and bullet fragments in his spine, pools in the grass around him. It pours out of his nose, burbles up each time he coughs.]
["My fault..." he rasps out, staring up at the sky. He can barely hear his own voice because of the blood in his ears. "My fault... My fault..."]
[He can't fight it, can't put up a barrier to the hate anymore, so he takes it all inside himself, the way he'd had no control over taking in the bullet. His psyche, his sense of self, collapses like a house of cards. He is a screw up, a monster, a murderer. His name is dirt.]
[SHIELD agents that were part of the security detail come in. One gets out a camera. Another says, "Shouldn't we help him first?"]
["Director Hill thinks it was an escape attempt, she wants it documented."]
[They leave him bleeding in the grass as they take their shots first. Cameras flash not far off after the press catches up to the accident, SHIELD creating a crime scene cordon around the accident.]
[It's very Hollywood. The TV star teen heart-throb, ruined, as cameras flash away. He'd wanted attention, after all. Well, he got it, all the the attention in the world.]
[Present-day Robbie is miraculously still standing afterward, arms wrapped around himself, his face wet, because even though it's a space in their brains, he's still imagining his body.]
[His voice is brittle when he speaks again, and sounds like it's being put through a meat grinder. The shame over someone seeing what he did in detail is pure, refined.]
It's not as bad as it was. A lot of people in Stamford forgave me for what I did. They let me volunteer in town and no one's tried to lynch me again.
[That's progress, right?]
And they don't run the polls as often anymore, the ones about how many people forgive me.
no subject
I know I'm not evil. [He's guilty, he's responsible, but not evil in the way supervillains are.] And I know it wasn't entirely my fault.
But it still partly was and nothing can ever change that. It doesn't matter what anyone says.
[A flash of his time as a teacher at the Avengers Academy. Media day. Introducing the Academy kids to the press and the world, trying to control the narrative around them to protect them. A reporter speaks into a camera. Robbie realizes it's about him and starts to edge away.]
["- leading to the shocking revelation that the hero known as Penance - who helped save our capital from alien invaders - was actually Speedball. Coupled with new information about the Stamford explosion, including that the criminal, Nitro, who Speedball fought there, had artificially augmented his powers, this has led to the former 'most hated man in American' being forgiven by 70% of the public. Speedball, do you feel you've been vindicated?"]
[The reporter holds out his microphone, but Robbie shakes his head. "No. Because people still died because I didn't do my job right."]
["If you'd sit for an interview -"]
[Robbie gives him a dismissive wave of his hand, turning away. "Sorry. But if there's one thing working for Norman Osborn taught me, it's that words mean nothing. I'll let my actions speak for me."]
[In the present, Robbie hugs his arms to himself.]
I can't just wave my hands and pretend I didn't do something wrong.
I still screwed up.
[He doesn't want it to go there. He fights it, tries to keep it from going there. But he can't fight it, can't prevent the memory-space from finally dragging it to there to where it all happened. To Stamford.]
[He and his friends, his team, are doing a reality show. Robbie thinks it's fun and is glad that after the team breaking up many times, they're all back together again. His friends aren't as gung ho but it's bringing money back in for Dwayne to get his corporation going again, to bankroll the team. It also lets them find people around the country that need help and can't get a team like the Avengers or the Fantastic Four to come out in a timely fashion.]
[After a life of struggling to get it from his now-divorced parents, Robbie loves the attention, the fame. It's for ostensibly a positive thing. He doesn't become spoiled or a fame monster but he does keep egging for it, starts to care about getting more.]
[The show takes them to Stamford, Connecticut, a stone's throw from where Robbie grew up. There's been a prison break. The New Warriors are cleaning up the mess, looking on a house where several meta convicts have holed up.]
[Robbie looks young, too young to be "the most hated man in America." How is he even a man? He's 17 but even with his powers adding on some height and mass, he's a relatively skinny kid to begin with, mostly wiry muscle.]
["These guys are totally out our league, man," frets Microbe.]
["But think about the ratings, Microbe. This could be the best episode of the entire second season. Six month we've been driving around looking for goofballs to fight, and the best we've managed so far was a bum with a spray can and a wooden leg. This could be the episode that really puts the New Warriors on the map, dude. We beat these guys and people stop bitching about Nova leaving the show to go back to space."]
["So what's the plan?" asks his blue teammate Namorita.]
["The plan is you spend five more minutes in makeup, Namorita. You think people want to see that great big ugly zit on your chin?"]
[It's the last thing he says to her before the accident and the fact another version of her got pulled from the timestream later will never change that those were his last words to that version of her.]
["We've been marked," calls out Night Thrasher, looking at one of the criminals take out the trash with binoculars. They've been spotted.]
["GO!" Speedball calls out.]
[They go crashing in through the windows. They quip and say things that are dramatic for the camera.]
[And yet they fight well. They're an experienced team and while they're missing a few members, it's a team where three members of the four have fought side by side for years. They've faced cosmic threats, reality-altering ones.]
[When the mic doesn't pick up a line of banter, Robbie doesn't try to recreate the shot, he just says the line again on another blow.]
[They have every other villain besides Nitro down in mere minutes.]
[Namorita slams him into a school bus, right near a school. Nobody is worried. The bus is empty and the kids on the nearby playground are far enough away they should be safe. They know the size of his explosions. They can get him down fast enough.]
[It's far enough Robbie can't hear what's said. But Namorita doesn't drop him right away. Robbie looks up from where he's zip tying the villain he was fighting and then -]
[Things temporarily move in slow motion. Nitro's eyes glow, then his body does too. There's a brief, alarming, high pitched whine. The grin on Robbie's face starts to drop. The explosion happens so fast that Robbie can't even get his hands all the way up in time to condense more of his kinetic energy into a shield. He's been hit by trains before, throwing himself in front of them for the starting momentum to travel places and that feels like nothing compared to this. The explosion overloads his kinetic field, concussing him with the energy that causes his powers to overclock and overload. It burns out synapses in his brain, starts a process of mutation that will make his powers change later in defense of him.]
[He's bounces off like a ricocheted bullet, suddenly overhead the explosion in the blink of an eye. It is massive, engulfing chunks of neighborhood, swallowing up most of the elementary school. It's the last thing he sees before losing consciousness.]
[There are a few flashing memories, impressions. Waking up in SHIELD custody and getting arrested, jail and all the beatings in prison and during transport, by guards and inmates alike. That time another inmate bit a chunk out of his arm. Viciously fighting for his own survival. His mother visiting and saying she's never coming back.]
[Until that day at the Capitol, surrounded by a mob of hate. He shouts out about his rights not being respected, points out he committed no crime, killed no one. She-Hulk gets nervous about the lack of security cordon, the route getting changed.]
[He doesn't even see the gunman, a man whose daughter was killed at Stamford.]
[The pain is the worst he's ever felt up to that point and his ears ring from the loudness of the gunfire, from the way his head hits the Capitol steps. He wishes his mom is there. She-Hulk takes his head in her lap, is crying over him because throughout it all she hasn't forgotten. She hasn't forgotten the bright bouncy kid he was and how the New York superhero community watched him grow up.]
[To this day, the way she treated him during this time, comforted him as he was dying, took his case when no one else would, fought for his safety and a chance to speak on his own behalf, is one of the most profound kindnesses he's ever experienced.]
[He's in agony as the EMTs put on a pressure bandage, get him onto the ambulance. She-Hulk sits with him in the ambulance, places a hand on his forehead, like she'd be petting his hair if it hadn't been shaved off.]
[He keeps thinking she's his mother.]
["I don't want to die here... in front of everyone. Not here, mom. Not here."]
[His life's regrets wash over his soul. He couldn't admit guilt, couldn't admit fault, because then he'd have to acknowledge that his friends are dead. And it wasn't the New Warriors anyway. It was him. Everyone died. Because of him.]
[His powers come back, react to his pain. They're changing, the pain fuels them. The explosion causes the ambulance to crash, shoots himself and Jen out through the roof of the ambulance. He lands in the grass a distance away, still in agony as he bleeds out on the ground, as the blood from the gaping stomach wound and bullet fragments in his spine, pools in the grass around him. It pours out of his nose, burbles up each time he coughs.]
["My fault..." he rasps out, staring up at the sky. He can barely hear his own voice because of the blood in his ears. "My fault... My fault..."]
[He can't fight it, can't put up a barrier to the hate anymore, so he takes it all inside himself, the way he'd had no control over taking in the bullet. His psyche, his sense of self, collapses like a house of cards. He is a screw up, a monster, a murderer. His name is dirt.]
[SHIELD agents that were part of the security detail come in. One gets out a camera. Another says, "Shouldn't we help him first?"]
["Director Hill thinks it was an escape attempt, she wants it documented."]
[They leave him bleeding in the grass as they take their shots first. Cameras flash not far off after the press catches up to the accident, SHIELD creating a crime scene cordon around the accident.]
[It's very Hollywood. The TV star teen heart-throb, ruined, as cameras flash away. He'd wanted attention, after all. Well, he got it, all the the attention in the world.]
[Present-day Robbie is miraculously still standing afterward, arms wrapped around himself, his face wet, because even though it's a space in their brains, he's still imagining his body.]
[His voice is brittle when he speaks again, and sounds like it's being put through a meat grinder. The shame over someone seeing what he did in detail is pure, refined.]
It's not as bad as it was. A lot of people in Stamford forgave me for what I did. They let me volunteer in town and no one's tried to lynch me again.
[That's progress, right?]
And they don't run the polls as often anymore, the ones about how many people forgive me.