Z-team, are you seeing the poorly maintained wings of their dispatcher? Please
Visi is the first from the Z-Team to see the state of Robert's wings. At first, she's too struck by the realization that it's Mecha Man, and that he's apparently the team's new dispatcher, but then she looks closer and sees how fucked up he looks.
He is, of course, scarred to shit, but his wings are what really makes her feel guilty. The feathers are dull and dirty, the appendages held tight to his back in a way that had to hurt. As he took his flight suit off, he struggled a little getting his wings out of the cutout of the back. They flapped a few times in frustration, then the man just pulled them through roughly, like he didn't care about ripping a few feathers out.
A bunch of scraggly feathers drifted to the floor from the rough treatment, and Mecha Man grimaced but continued undressing, ignoring the pain.
Visi didn't even know wings could look so rough, she'd never seen them get so bad! Even when she was a homeless kid, she still managed to keep her own looking semi-decent. It was. . . Sad to look at.
She ended up not telling the team, because as fun as it is to make fun of the new guy, his wings are in a state she can't even begin to describe.
Sonar notices next, but he didn't even know the guy was their new dispatcher at first, not until Visi spooked him and they got into a little spat.
Robert's wings were fluttering nervously the whole time, feathers fluffed and ruffled, then flared when their argument really picked up.
The display caught Sonar's attention, not from the aggressive feather fluffing, but more so the downright depressing state of his wings.
He didn't know a whole lot about feather care, since his own wings were featherless, but he's pretty sure- at least based on everyone around him- that they're not supposed to look like that.
They were all, gross and unkept, they were an obvious cry for help. Dude was probably going through a rough patch, because it can't be that hard to clean feathered wings.
He told Mal about their new dispatcher's badly kept wings, and she, in turn, told the rest of the team. They didn't really believe Sonar when he described how bad they looked, even with Visi confirming it.
The rest of the team don't really get a good look at his wings until cut day, when Robert calls for a meeting. Nobody paid much attention to him at first, but then he snapped his wings out to get their attention, and they all saw the depressing sight of his uncared for wings. That was what got them to quiet down, not the fucker's dumb inspirational speech, but his godawful wings.
They all shared looks, a silent question of “are you seeing this too?” Even Golem had better looking wings than this guy, and they were made of mud! And not usable, he only had them to fit in better. Robert meanwhile, has the worst case of wing neglect any of them had ever seen, and the fact that his flight feathers were clipped? They almost thought they were imagining it.
