ya_assemble | [AI] One Step Closer

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[AI] One Step Closer

Jaime's return to Defenders tower for the day consisted of him powering down the suit, walking into the loungey area where Paco was hanging out off-duty, and repeatedly kicking the couch about ten times while making abortive angry hand gestures, then diving face first onto it near Paco and screaming into the cushion.

Some days were good - great even.

Some days were okay.

This was a fairly standard bad day, probably a 4.5 on the Jaime's Temper Richter Scale. The only thing particularly notable about it was that he'd really had one too many of these lately. Definitely way more of them after the Merge than before.

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Paco patted his best friend consolingly on the back of the head.

"Good, purge the rage from your system. You would be a terrible Sith Lord and we all know it," he said. Then, because he prided himself on his ability to fulfill the duties of best friend, yes, best friend you dorks, he added, "you want to talk about it or do you want me to raid the kitchen for something you can cram into your face?"

Jaime stopped to think about that for a minute, as if considering which he wanted.

Then he just yelled into the cushion again.

He was still working his way up towards coherent thoughts that weren't 'aaaaaaagh.' Snack consideration could only come after aaaaaaugh. All the aaaaaaagh.

Paco patted the back of Jaime's head again. Time to try a new tactic then.

"Strangle the couch cushion with your left hand for food and with your right hand for me staying right here."

Being the eldest of five and years of friendship with Brenda had taught him the value of communication with the furiously-screaming subset of the population. It really sucked that Jaime was taking so many trips to that part of town these days.

Edited 2015-03-06 05:19 (UTC)

Right hand. Strangling.

The yelling stopped at least.

For what it was worth. Because when the yelling stopped, there came the silence. Then after the silence came the ranting. So much ranting. He was still clearly working himself up into it.

Paco resumed patting the back of Jaime's head, waiting for him to reach the point where he was able to articulate his fury or melt the couch out from underneath them. At least one of them was going to happen, though Paco would put odds on Jaime rageticulating first -- he'd probably feel guilty if he melted a perfectly functional couch.

It began. He tilted his head to the side so his voice wasn't muffled.

"Do you know what I did this morning? Do you know what I did?"

He didn't wait for Paco to answer because it was not an actual question.

"Three hours of training, two hours of Defenders drills, two hours of superhero homework. And in between each of those, I was out on calls. Constant. Calls."

Paco knew because he dispatched some of them. Fires. Villains. Natural disasters. More villains.

He went on, "And that's fine! That is seriously fine. I'm a superhero, that's what we do, we do all the training and the superheroing - and getting snotted on by a giant mutant is all in a day's work. Really, it is."

He sucked in a deep breath.

"You know what shouldn't be part of a day's work? Paparazzi. Shouldn't be part of a days work. Especially when I'm fighting one of Professor Ivo's giant robots and they keep putting themselves in danger to get pictures of the fight so that I keep having to save them - risking all the civilians there I'm trying to protect."

"No they should not be," Paco agreed. Wow, B-siders, really? Control your paparazzi, heroes got heroic stuff to do besides saving your butts from stepping in your own messes.

Jaime's rant would be completely different if anyone had actually gotten hurt though, so at least Paco knew he wasn't going to drown himself in guilt over something that was someone else's fault.

"Seriously, who throws themselves into the middle of a super hero fight? Do they think the bad guys won't take 'em hostage because the only people who'd miss 'em are other paparazzi?"

Jaime threw his hands up, a major feat considering he was mostly face down on the couch.

"I don't know! I mean being a normal news photographer is one thing but those guys, you can tell they're trying to be careful. They edge in real careful-like, even if they get into trouble sometimes. You can tell they're trying to follow their instincts and get in as close as they can without getting too risky. These people? Right in the middle of it. They would've wound up giant robot toe jam if I hadn't gotten them out of the way."

He went on, his voice rising in pitch. "And then! And then they have the nerve to keep at it while I'm helping one of the victims calm down. She got picked up by the robot and dropped and I caught her but she was pretty much having a panic attack from the scare and they were getting up in our faces taking their stupid pictures while I was trying to talk her down after the fight was over. Who even does that?"

"#$%&sticks, that's who," Paco agreed vehemently. Getting themselves nearly smashed was one thing, but actively interfering in the saving of someone else? Moved things beyond 'uncool' and over into 'straight up bad guy behavior' in Paco's book.

"So I got up in his face and he got up in my face and I yelled at him, and I can't remember what I said, but I think something about his mom would be ashamed of him that he was interfering in me helping a person, and then I may have possibly pulled a Kanye West and completely lost it."

He bounced his head against the cushion few times.

"I took the camera out of his hands and crushed it. So I was just down with the PR department and legal because apparently he can sue for that and our liability stuff as a team will cover it but if he does it, it'll be a mess and it might end up on youtube or something and the lawyers totally reamed me out - and - " He broke off into a string of absolutely filthy swearing in Spanish.

"Hey, Jaime, c'mere."

Paco hauled Jaime into a partially-upright position so he could give him a hug. He recognized the roughness in Jaime's voice, and he really hated how much he'd been hearing that too.

"Dude's an asshole and was trying to piss you off. That's what they do. He's probably not gonna sue, just threaten to so that maybe he can wrangle closer shots of the Tower. Going to court would take too much time out of his busy day, and he's got a lot of being a waste of space and oxygen scheduled. And the lawyers were just yelling because suddenly they got to deal with this instead of the guy who's trying to save people's lives. Breathe."

Paco had been giving a lot of hugs lately. In the past, they hadn't been too shy about the hugs at the times hugs were very appropriate, but over the last year or so - years, really - that Jaime had been superheroing, they pretty much had tossed any reservations they had about regular hugging to the wind.

Jaime had needed it.

He'd needed it right now without realizing it. Paco had already figured out what was about to happen before he did, and sure enough, his eyes started prickling. He sucked in deep breath after breath. It didn't stop the stress crying from starting but it at least meant he wasn't sobbing or anything.

While growing up, Jaime had never had any issues where he devolved to stress crying but it had become a thing in the year since he'd returned. Now that he was piling even more onto himself it had only gotten more frequent as time had gone on. It didn't help that so much of what he saw was extra ugly - like that human trafficking thing he and Spidey had broken up.

As awful as the situation was, it was also why Paco didn't feel remotely threatened by either of the other two guys competing with each other for "Jaime's best (male) friend": he knew what Jaime needed. He knew what Brenda needed too, though in her case it tended to be less hugs and more excuses to kick someone's butt.

Jaime was going to save the world. Brenda was going to change it for the better. It was his job to make sure they both got there in one piece. Sometimes that involved hitting things with sticks, and sometimes it involved hugging the crap out of them.

"You got this, dude. It's gonna be fine."

He knocked his head against Paco's shoulder.

"I been doing this years now but lately it's like how I was when I crashed back from the first Crisis without any idea what was going on, walking through the desert - naked, scared out of my mind because some kinda beetle rock was stuck in my spine."

Confused and stressed and scared.

He'd cried quite a few times that night. When Guy had attacked, when the man at the gas station had been nice to him, when he'd gotten home and realized how much time had passed.

He'd been in over his head and that meant all of it had gotten him going, every scare or act of kindness.

He felt like that a lot lately.

"Lately it's like I'm always over my head. Always. All the time. And the world's so much more wrong."

Like this thing with the paparazzi not caring about that girl and the people they endangered. Like those North Korean trafficking victims and how they'd gotten caught up in trafficking to escape worse horrors back home - horrors that had somehow grown worse than they were before the Merge. Like the B-siders that hated mutants for no reason when they were no different than metas, who tried to commit acts of violence against them right there in his own town.

As if he'd ever stand for that.

He'd talked to the press about that one. About how he wasn't a mutant but he wasn't going to tolerate it and how he'd treat it like any other crime. So folks didn't think he'd turn a blind eye. So folks understood it wouldn't be how it was back in World B where the mutants looked after their own and the other metas stuck to their own affairs. Oh no, he was actively going to fight that kind of persecution.

"And it seems like it's never gonna stop."

Edited 2015-03-06 16:39 (UTC)

"Dude, you are always in over your head," Paco pointed out. "You once almost single-handedly took out an alien invasion that could phase their mind control drugs halfway out of reality so they could put it in our water, remember? You are doing ridiculous bull@#%& all the time, of course it feels like you're drowning! But you've got people who've got your back, okay? We're not gonna let you sink."

Edited 2015-03-08 06:02 (UTC)

"And if you can't believe the alien technology that crawled into bed with you in the middle of the night to give your spine a special hug, who can you believe, right?"

Paco clapped Jaime on the back. "We are the best flotation device. Most flotation devices definitely don't offer to bring you snacks."

Beat.

"Also, I think we should all take a moment to appreciate how many boob jokes I'm not making right now, because the temptation is there, my friends. The temptation is there."

EST|/|\/-\TING 43567 P()SS|BLE B()()B J()KES.

Jaime chuckled again.

"That many boob jokes don't even exist."

Between the two of them joking around, he was feeling a lot better. He wiped at his face.

"Thanks, guys. I keep...getting all overwhelmed. But it helps being reminded I'm not doing it all on my own." A pause. "Also the jokes help. Mostly the jokes."

Edited 2015-03-08 06:17 (UTC)

"There are totally that many boob jokes."

Paco didn't know what number Khaji had pulled out of his buggy little butt, but he was sure that the number of boob jokes in two realities slammed together could absolutely exist.

"Don't worry about it man, that's what we're here for. Also to be taken hostage by hot chicks and/or robots, and to help you save the world." Paco smiled. "Try not to look at the whole picture, all right? Just deal with what's in front of you. I know you're a big picture kind of guy, but you can't worry about the big stuff until you get on top of the small stuff, yeah? Even if the small stuff is people you really shouldn't have to waste your energy on rescuing because wow, who the hell does that?"

"Okay. Okay. One thing at a time. So. How about snacks? Brenda's due to be off monitor duty soon. When she's done maybe we can watch a movie while I do my superhero homework."

One thing at a time, right? Just dealing with what was on front of him. He'd worry about the paparazzi thing when and if it became a bigger problem.

"That's a good plan, right?"

WE SH()ULD W/-\TCH M/-\N()S H/-\NDS ()F F/-\TE.

"Scarab thinks we should watch Manos Hands of Fate since we haven't seen it in a while."

"J/-\|/|\E, |'M SC/-\RED." L()L.

That was always what made the scarab most amused, the woman in the movie constantly saying 'Mike, I'm scared.'

Edited 2015-03-08 17:37 (UTC)

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[AI] One Step Closer

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