All Bobs Must Die:

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.

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?"