Census and Sensibility

[better_ted_than_dead]

"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?"

Comments

[better_ted_than_dead]

"He says all that, so I won't sue for trademark infringement, " Ted deadpans.

"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."

[arach_nerd]

"See, now both of you are making me feel guilty for just winging it all the time. Any plans I make are usually while someone's trying to punch me in the face," Peter piped up.

"I get away with it, sure, for a variety of reasons. But playing the long game has never been one of my strong points."

[beetlebutt]

"You're going to have to just get used to the big head and maybe get refitted for a new mask because I have still have a backlog of kissing up to do," Jaime told Ted with a grin. 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."

[better_ted_than_dead]

Ted can't help but agree with that.

"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."