Jaime Reyes | Blue Beetle (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beetlebutt) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ya_assemble2015-02-22 12:58 am
beetlebutt) wrote in ya_assemble2015-02-22 12:58 am
Entry tags:
[AI] His Evil Twin's Good Twin's Evil Brother...
Jaime's family had become surprisingly okay with him having an almost-was-a-future-evil-overlord in the house, but that was probably because they had one for a son, too. That was what the scarab had been made for, after all, and they were all about giving people chances. That was why Jaime himself was about giving people chances. That was how they'd raised him, seeing the good in people.
And they believed what Jaime said, they knew people like Luthor and Osborn were snakes, the types that could fool even some of the smartest, most well-meaning people. It was better, they decided, to welcome him. Jaime cared about him and that was enough.
So the political chithcat about how Luthor was evil and Osborn was a madman was kept to a minimum when he was over and they tried to their best to be welcoming. Genuinely welcoming. Even Paco and Brenda joined in, because maybe they wouldn't have trusted him on their own, but they trusted Jaime's trust.
So Nate had become a welcome a figure in Jaime's very crowded house. It really was an arrangement borne of necessity for them to even have a friendship. It wasn't like he could hang out at Avengers Tower and it wasn't like Nate was welcome at Defenders Tower.
Towers were lame hangout places anyway, right?
(Except for Titans Tower. Titans Tower was okay, it had a really nice foosball table.)
"He's the evil twin, I'm calling it," said Paco from where he sat on the couch with Brenda.
"But which one? There are like," Jaime counted on his fingers, "three evil twins so far." The scarab chirped in his head. "Oh, good point. Evil triplets, though. It might be evil triplets."
The scarab chirped again.
"...Okay, okay, I'll give you credit. Scarab wants me to let you know that he predicted it and not me. Why do you even care? You hate this show." He shook his head. "Except Javier mentioned being a fan of the JSA growing up so what if it's two sets of triplets from A-side and one from B-side? Or, like, one set of triplets from A-side, and two twins from B-side who maybe don't have another twin. So two of the triplets are evil, but only one or two of the twins or triplets are evil from the other side."
"My brain is melting. How are your brains not melting?" asked Brenda.
Telenovelas had gotten really weird after the Cataclysm. And that was why one of Jaime's favorite things to do with Nate (and sometimes Paco and Brenda who joined in) was trying to make sense of them. And laughing at them when they inevitably didn't make any sense at all.
"Nate," Bianca called from the kitchen, "did you want to stay for dinner?"
And they believed what Jaime said, they knew people like Luthor and Osborn were snakes, the types that could fool even some of the smartest, most well-meaning people. It was better, they decided, to welcome him. Jaime cared about him and that was enough.
So the political chithcat about how Luthor was evil and Osborn was a madman was kept to a minimum when he was over and they tried to their best to be welcoming. Genuinely welcoming. Even Paco and Brenda joined in, because maybe they wouldn't have trusted him on their own, but they trusted Jaime's trust.
So Nate had become a welcome a figure in Jaime's very crowded house. It really was an arrangement borne of necessity for them to even have a friendship. It wasn't like he could hang out at Avengers Tower and it wasn't like Nate was welcome at Defenders Tower.
Towers were lame hangout places anyway, right?
(Except for Titans Tower. Titans Tower was okay, it had a really nice foosball table.)
"He's the evil twin, I'm calling it," said Paco from where he sat on the couch with Brenda.
"But which one? There are like," Jaime counted on his fingers, "three evil twins so far." The scarab chirped in his head. "Oh, good point. Evil triplets, though. It might be evil triplets."
The scarab chirped again.
"...Okay, okay, I'll give you credit. Scarab wants me to let you know that he predicted it and not me. Why do you even care? You hate this show." He shook his head. "Except Javier mentioned being a fan of the JSA growing up so what if it's two sets of triplets from A-side and one from B-side? Or, like, one set of triplets from A-side, and two twins from B-side who maybe don't have another twin. So two of the triplets are evil, but only one or two of the twins or triplets are evil from the other side."
"My brain is melting. How are your brains not melting?" asked Brenda.
Telenovelas had gotten really weird after the Cataclysm. And that was why one of Jaime's favorite things to do with Nate (and sometimes Paco and Brenda who joined in) was trying to make sense of them. And laughing at them when they inevitably didn't make any sense at all.
"Nate," Bianca called from the kitchen, "did you want to stay for dinner?"
no subject
"I have heard things about her, yes. Batman says she's an absolute terror but at least the kind of terror that'd go after Luthor or Osborn if they got up to supervillainy again. Especially if they were abusing the trust of the public to do it."
The only problem was the way some of these people thought meant even types like Waller were occasionally okay with mistreating metas 'for the sake of the greater good,' but Batman said she'd learned a few things over the years. Apparently, they had a weird respect for each other. She wasn't the best person in that kind of position but definitely wasn't the worst.
"Look, I know the Defenders are - it's...it's a work in progress. But they're pulling together better than they were before." He went on, "And the Avengers had a whole year and a half on the rest of us. You can't tell me you all gelled perfectly from the very start. Now that things are settling, some of us are trying to get some of the others to simmer down on personal feelings."
Even if Luthor and Osborn couldn't be trusted, being reactive wasn't the way to go about things, anyway.
"It won't keep being the way it is." He drew in a deep breath. "And I'm pretty close to moving up to the big boy superheroing. So, when I'm a full Defender, I am going to have...things to say. That means I'll be sitting in on the meetings, I'll have a right to speak at the table, and I get a vote on the things that have votes."
no subject
"Why don't you have a seat at the table already?" He asked, genuinely curious. It wasn't as if Jaime wasn't working his ass off, or only facing softball threats while the Defenders handled anything bigger than a breadbox. It didn't seem right to him that they were fine with letting Jaime fight their battles, but wasn't allowed an equal say in the situation.
Not that Nate was equal to Osborn, but he was equal to every last one of the Avengers.
"If anything, you're more powerful and more mature than several of the Defenders. What reason do they have keeping you out of the big decisions?"
no subject
"Dr. Light" was pretty much used as shorthand among many of the younger heroes from Jaime's side of things. There were villains and then there were villains and dropping his name was a good way to register you were talking about the extra sadistic, extra evil ones. Jaime hadn't been a hero then but after Light'd taken on most of the Titans and their allies all at once, he'd been etched in the collective consciousness of most of the younger heroes on Jaime's side as a massive (creepy) threat, and the lingo filtered around.
Some situations were dangerous but sometimes they knew they were going against the kinds of villains that killed heroes and left their mutilated bodies somewhere as a message.
"If they let me sit in and treat me like an adult then they can't really tell me I can't go out and face down that stuff anymore." A pause. "And they know I wouldn't hesitate to do it."
He raised his eyebrows.
"They still freak out whenever I'm on something that was more dangerous than they thought. Like they sent me on a thing where we were fighting some supervillains and they didn't know Major Force was involved? And they pretty much flipped as soon as they knew he was and tried to work me off the field. I didn't let them but they wanted me to bail and leave the others that were with me to handle it." A pause. "I don't know if you've heard of him, but word is he killed one of the Green Lanterns' girlfriends and stuffed her body parts in his refrigerator for him to find."
That kind of bad.
"So I think it's one of those things where it's less they don't respect some of us younger people and more they don't want us having to deal with the traumatic stuff yet until they're 100% sure we won't get sent home in several small boxes. Like one time I overheard Booster arguing with Green Lantern about it, that I could handle it. And Green Lantern agreed but was all 'why expose him to that if we don't have to?'" He snorted. "Basically they're a little gun-shy because I'm still younger and they like me too much, I guess." He held a hand to his chest and sighed dramatically. "It's my curse. Being that likable."