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Dispatch

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This is a Moments subpage. All spoilers are unmarked, as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Scary Moments (Nightmare Fuel) in Dispatch

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    Episode 1: Pivot 
  • Shroud. A former hero who betrayed and coldly murdered his former teammate, he's only on screen for five minutes in the prologue, but he lives up to his reputation as a brilliant chessmaster who has Robert wrapped around his finger before he even appears. He correctly predicts the number of seconds Mecha Man's armor has left before it deactivates down to the literal second, observes his men beating on the armor with casual indifference, and to top it off, has one of his men strap a bomb on Mecha Man's back without noticing, which destroys the armor and sends it plummeting into the streets below, so that Shroud can come and steal the Astral Pulse without any resistance — all without saying a word or doing anything beyond observing the situation.
    • Speaking of Robbie's murder, according to Toxic, Shroud made sure to shoot him fatally through the chest, making sure that the former Mecha Man had to die in absolute agony and humiliation.

    Episode 3: Turnover 
  • Breaking the bad news to either Sonar or Coupé has them threaten Robert, the former by going "Mega Bat" on the spot and the latter by stabbing the table and then smashing the conference room window. A careful reminder that these people used to be supervillains and that Robert has no actual way to defend himself.
    Coupé: But I cheered. For Invisigal. ... I only did that because I thought she was getting cut.
    Sonar: This isn't over. Watch your back, Robert.

    Episode 5: Team Building 
  • The start of the bar fight. Armstrong tosses Robert aside, grabs Invisigal and hoists her in the air while Red Ring henchmen surround them. Flambae's background singing suddenly stopped and even the lighting in the bar seemed to dim as another Red Ring mook approached behind Robert and appeared to knock him out with a pool cue. Turns into Nightmare Retardent when the flashback cuts show the actual fight, which was far from being as hopeless a situation as it seemed.
    • The scream one of the villains makes as Robert rips... something out of her head. This being a Bad Guy Bar and a pretty clear case of self-defense on the part of the Z-team, it's hard to feel that bad, but it's still pretty brutal.
  • Choosing to reveal Robert's identity as Mecha Man in front of the Z-Team leads Flambae — a man with a Hair-Trigger Temper who has a particularly ugly grudge towards Mecha Man for severing his fingers — to immediately try to immolate Robert on the spot. It's only thanks to Golem quickly jumping in the way that Robert isn't incinerated, but to see Flambae be so willing to throw his life as a superhero away to get petty vengeance against Robert can be quite off putting.
  • In the flashback, we get to see Flambae as a villain. Unlike his talkative and Karmic Butt-Monkey present self, Flambae did not say a single word as he battled Mecha Man. He was a man of destruction who won't hesitate to unleash lethal flames in his path. Despite Robert's attempts to apprehend him unharmed, he was forced to resort to more lethal means to defeat him, which included cutting off two of Flambae's fingers.

    Episode 6: Moving Parts 
  • Shroud's ambush at the end of the episode is already scary as is, until you realise the fact that his glowing eyes and mask didn’t show up on the camera until AFTER Invisigal went past him AND Robert changed to the camera right next to him. Why is that especially terrifying? He had no reason to turn them on for Invisigal, since he was going to leave her for dead anyway, meaning the only reason he did it was to reveal himself to Robert, and judging by the timing and execution, he knew EXACTLY which camera Robert was going to be watching through. You can even see Shroud vaguely hunched up on the corner of the stairwell when Robert's looking through a wider-camera angle, head lowered to hide the glowing eyes of his mask, invisible to Invisigal in the lowered lighting, but just barely able to be made out with the aid of the camera's optics if one's attentive enough...which he knew Robert wasn't going to be. Without saying a word, Shroud manages to taunt and torment Robert that his inadequacies lead to a member of his team slowly dying, all whilst the former hero is Forced to Watch, helpless to save anybody.
    • Speaking of said method of death, it's particularly cruel method for something improvised on the spot. Shroud tosses a gas canister next to the asthmatic Invisigal as she's still reeling from getting pitched over the stairwell, triggering a bad asthma attack in her as he calmly maintains his Ominous Walk all the way to the case containing the Astral Pulse, whilst Invisigal can only crawl weakly towards her dropped inhaler. The entire scene makes it clear that Shroud could kill her at any moment, but just doesn't feel the need to, like Invisigal isn't worth the effort. And just when Invisigal gets within arm's reach of the inhaler, as Shroud's picked up the case and primed to leave...he deliberately kicks it back the other way, staying and watching her being forced to crawl even further for salvation, not breaking his gaze from her struggles until Invisigal goes limp. Given the trick with the cameras before, it's made clear that Shroud knows Robert is watching, and is forcing him to see someone else he cares about suffer a slow and agonising Undignified Death at his hands, like Toxic asserts he did to Robert's father.
    • On that note, Shroud using gas to trigger Invisigal's asthma shows that he knows about her and her medical condition, enough to exploit it for a cruel and agonising demise. If Robert fails the hacking mini game on the safe, it'll still be opened so Invisigal can bring it outside to the waiting Shroud, showing that Shroud had hacked into Robert's communications with her long before he made his appearance, all without Robert noticing. The implication is clear: despite Shroud seemingly having left Robert alone after the Astral Pulse was lost, he's secretly been keeping tabs on the retired superhero and his work with SDN, enough to have an intimate understanding of Robert's new team and their exploitable weaknesses to maximise his advantages. The fact he's doing this, but still doesn't kill Robert despite his vulnerability outside the mecha man suit, implies she has something special planned for his would-be "nemesis"...
  • Whilst not much attention is brought to it, despite the chaotic situation outside in the warehouse with Invisigal trying to get past a small army of villains, when Shroud makes his presence known, besides the two bodies lying in front of the captain's quarters, none of them make any further appearances, despite the frantic race that was occurring to get to the pulse first, and Invisigal stunning or knocking them unconscious instead of killing them. The implication is clear: Shroud stealthily moved around the chaotic battlefield and silently eliminated his competition one by one as they fell behind or out of focus, miming the risk of any further interferences once he'd subdued Invisigal and was free to "take his time" with her. Worse still, we never see how he does all this, the two fire-using villains collapsed in front of the door without any signs of injury or sounds of a struggle occurring (and evidently whilst he was monitoring Robert's communications the whole time) and Shroud not demonstrating any advanced gear or fighting styles when he takes Invisigal down, just sheer ruthless pragmatism that subdues her without a fair fight. Based on what Toxic said about him using a gun to kill Mecha man Astral in his civilian disguise, it's heavily implied that Shroud is either a Badass Normal like Robert or doesn't have a superpower that equates to direct combat, and yet he still cleared out a warehouse full of powered and enhanced villains all by himself whilst making it look effortless.

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