Blue Beetle / Ted Kord (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
better_ted_than_dead) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ya_assemble2015-07-28 12:13 pm
better_ted_than_dead) wrote in ya_assemble2015-07-28 12:13 pm
Entry tags:
Census and Sensibility
"Status, Unknown. Status, Unknown. Status, 'Believed deceased but who the hell can really tell, these days?' .. No, that won't fit in the field."
Blue Beetle leans back from the console, sliding his fingers under the mask to rub at his eyes. He glances at his coffee mug - empty now - and then looks back to the screen with a sigh.
"We'll stick with 'Presumed dead' and lose the sarcasm, I suppose."
The metahuman census project had been started as an informal, low-priority effort to figure out which heroes and villains were active and which were still missing, in an attempt to determine what resources were available for the good guys, and what threats they might run into. Unfortunately, a complete rearrangement of space and time is a difficult thing to sift through - Ted himself had shown back up in Europe, and according to most of the other people he'd talked to, he was supposed to have been dead.
Circumstances, then, did not bode well for the completion of the project, but it was something that kept drawing Ted back in, due to some sense of .. sympathy? Nostalgia? Foolish hope, beyond reason?
Well, that, and seeing how the other half lived before the big shake-up.
"Wait, they actually had a guy who was a living cartoon character?"
Blue Beetle leans back from the console, sliding his fingers under the mask to rub at his eyes. He glances at his coffee mug - empty now - and then looks back to the screen with a sigh.
"We'll stick with 'Presumed dead' and lose the sarcasm, I suppose."
The metahuman census project had been started as an informal, low-priority effort to figure out which heroes and villains were active and which were still missing, in an attempt to determine what resources were available for the good guys, and what threats they might run into. Unfortunately, a complete rearrangement of space and time is a difficult thing to sift through - Ted himself had shown back up in Europe, and according to most of the other people he'd talked to, he was supposed to have been dead.
Circumstances, then, did not bode well for the completion of the project, but it was something that kept drawing Ted back in, due to some sense of .. sympathy? Nostalgia? Foolish hope, beyond reason?
Well, that, and seeing how the other half lived before the big shake-up.
"Wait, they actually had a guy who was a living cartoon character?"
no subject
"Scratch any super-hero, and there's a better than even chance of finding a tragic incident and an overwhelming sense of guilt just beneath the surface. A sense of responsibility is crucial, of course, but you can't let it turn into a messiah complex."
He pushes aside a doodle pad on which the cryptic word 'KraKooeyKooeyKoa?' is written and recovers his smartphone.
"I think what we may need to do is make everyone's schedule a little more visible. That way, Canary, and Cap, and everyone can see just how many hours everyone is putting in. Steve's a reasonable guy, " he concludes, "and probably knows the dangers of battle fatigue better than any of us."
no subject
Another pause. "Or we could have Batman call his mom to tell her to tell him to go to sleep. Bet that'd work."
Devious, but effective. Superman was a very private person, so only a few other heroes knew what his secret identity was, but he was at least open enough about having a family for Jaime to know his mom had probably made him his cape. And that meant she had leverage. Mom leverage.
Jaime gave Spider-Man a very sober look, as he reflected on everything he'd said about Cap. It took his brain a moment to really digest it.
"That's terrible," he admitted, "Everything that happened to Cap's sidekick. But there's still a difference between preparing someone and being overprotective. It's not like I don't understand how serious this all is. I've already had my first free complimentary torture and extremely-close-calls (plural) and everything."
And he'd dealt with it pretty admirably, hence being able to be so flippant about it. Jaime would forever hate Max Lord for it, and if the man ever called him 'hombre' again he was putting his ass through a wall (again) but at the end of the day he'd still been angrier over what Max was doing - and had done - to other people than over what he'd done to him.
Like, for instance, what he'd done to the mentor that-could-have been and all the good people that'd cared about him when he died. Or what he'd done to Booster, who hid the hurt with those stupid grins but had looked like his heart was being ripped out a second time when he showed up just a second too late to save Jaime from being shot.
"Half of them just sort of toss me into things without really putting much thought to it, like, boom, random fight training with someone I probably won't train with again for two weeks. That's not so bad, even though nothing ever really sticks, but -"
Most of the ones that were like that were the Leaguers and people from his world who were often...lackadaisical about training their sidekicks, hence why teams like the Titans had even existed. Only a few heroes really drilled discipline and extreme skill into their young charges.
"With the other half it's all...rigid. You know, mostly the Avenger people, with them it's all maneuvers and danger room scenarios and having to write little tactical analysis essays on everything I did wrong, except my idea of 'wrong' always seems to be different from everyone trying to teach me." He leaned on his free hand. "I don't want to be some by-the-numbers superhero that was taught everything a certain way in classes and simulations or whatever. That's not even to say I don't think it's good to read books or study up or run scenarios or anything. Sometimes." He gestured to Ted with his pencil, grinning slightly. "Heck, I still have some of your strategy books that Guy gave me and I've read them like twenty times - and, speaking of that, I should prooobably give them back. But I need them more than you do, you've already got all that stuff in your big brain."
He opened up his notebook to get to work.
"It helps knowing all the villains and their weaknesses and everything but I feel like it's all being laid out in this way where I'm expected to be this one specific thing, like 'Jaime Reyes, member of the Justice Avenging League,' and hero-wise I want to be something else. The two people I ever learned the most from don't do things all rigid. There was Peacemaker, who taught me a bunch of skills ahead of time but mostly taught me to think on my toes and be creative about using them in the thick of things..."
He looked up at Ted gratefully, "And I learned from you. From your notes. I learned more practical stuff from your notes than I've learned during months of all this training stuff. I would've never taken down the Reach if I was all 'initiating Blue Beetle tactical maneuver twelve-zeta-zeta-alpha exactly the way I practiced one hundred times.' I had a plan and I had sub-plans but then I also winged it like crazy when most of those plans failed exactly like I thought they might."
He chewed the inside of his cheek.
"It's like I don't get a choice in what kind of superhero I want to be and I don't want to just be a Defender," he said and then he finally put all of that talking into just a few simple words. "I want to be a Blue Beetle."
Because as far as he could tell, both Ted and Dan Garrett's styles of superheroing ran along the lines of being daring and knowing all the rules but only so you knew exactly when to break them.
(Don't you just wanna pinch his lil' cheek, Ted?)
no subject
"Seriously, though, Jaime, I can't take credit for that all by myself. I come from a technical background, so I look at things technically. Diagrams, charts, statistics and probabilities. Batman does the same - though I can just imagine him grimly re-sorting an Excel spreadsheet. I think what distinguishes the patented Blue Beetle brand of superheroics from the generic store Bat-brand is mainly attitude."
"And on that score, I lean more towards the big red 'S'. I believe that most people are fundamentally good, and will do good if given the opportunity. Yes, there are bad guys, but the good guys will win in the end, because somewhere, some cosmic entity has its thumb on the scale."
There's a shrug, and a little smile.
"Optimism, plus preparation for when that optimism is off the mark. It's worked for me most of the time."
With the one obvious fatal exception, but that seems to have worked out too, hasn't it?
"But c'mon, you're going to make me blush if you keep that talk up. I'm proud to have been an influence on you, make no mistake, but if my head swells any more I'm going to have trouble fitting in my mask."
no subject
"I get away with it, sure, for a variety of reasons. But playing the long game has never been one of my strong points."
no subject
All the other sidekick/legacy types got to start with admiring their mentors/the heroes that came before them pretty much from the start. He had some lost time to make up for.
He turned to Spidey.
"But see, that's my point. Every hero's got their own style, you know? They do what works for them. I've seen you work. You improvise, but you're so smart about it that you come up with plans and change them constantly as you go. I can do that to a degree but for the really bad enemies, I usually have to go in with something, even if my plans have to change. You're smart enough to figure things out on the fly."
He went on, "Ain't nothing to feel guilty for. That's just being adaptable and the superhero version of an opportunist. And that's why everyone having their own style is a good thing. You get all the planners and the improvisers and the tough people that can just punch their way through things out of sheer tenacity all working together, and then the bad guys don't stand a chance."
That was what was bugging him.
"That's what's getting to me. They're teaching me in a way that makes it tough to figure out my own way and I think I'll be better hero and have more to offer if I come up with my own style."
no subject
"It's true, all the training in the world is no substitute for actual experience. Too many variables to reduce things to a one-size-fits-all course on superheroics. Though I will not confirm nor deny the existence of a series of 'So You Want to Be a Superhero?' videos starring Booster."