Chapter Text
“So, in the future, all of the Teen Titans are evil?”
This is probably the third time Paco asked that after Jaime finished up summarizing his first mission with the team – but not as a team member, Robin made that pretty clear. He can't say anything that he hasn't already said, so he says, “I think it was an alternate future. Like, not our future. They all started disappearing or phasing out of existence or something.”
“I hope so,” Brenda says. “I think we have enough to worry about with evil stuff. We don't need to add more superheroes to the mix.”
Paco grins widely, and Jaime knows him well enough to know he's going to say something that will get him punched. “If Jaime's still friends with them, he can get you connected ,” he says to Brenda. “You'll be their defense attorney, making the big bucks – ”
Brenda snorts and shoves him slightly.
Jaime doesn't tell them that future him was dead, because he doesn't want to worry them. On the off chance it's not some alternate future and it actually is inevitable –
Which is kind of bullshit. Jaime didn't really think anything was inevitable. One malfunctioning scarab that was supposed to help the Reach take over the world proved that.
But either way, them hearing alternate-future-him was dead would still be awkward, so he doesn't tell them.
“So are you gonna keep hanging out with them?” Paco asks.
Jaime nods.
“Get me any phone numbers? – Ow!”
Paco rubs his arm, because Brenda just punched it. “Oh, sorry,” Paco says, then adds, “Get Brenda any phone numbers too?”
“Oh my God Paco, shut up!” Brenda says. She's blushing and covering her face with both her hands.
Jaime has no clue how to react to this, because he thought Paco was just teasing her like he teases pretty much everyone.
Jaime talks quickly, trying to clear up the situation: “I think Wonder Girl's hung up on Robin or maybe Superboy and I'm not sure Ravager's with anyone and it was really unclear what's going on with Supergirl –“
At the same time, Paco says to Brenda, “Oh come on , you were totally checking out those girls with me!”
“I wasn't, you're a pervert, you've been watching too many dirty videos!”
Jaime leans back on his bed and tries to ignore them, because this conversation is just getting awkward.
He can't tell what he's supposed to do here, if he's supposed to just play around or tell Paco to knock it off or tell Brenda no one's judging her if she does like girls.
“Dude, you look tired,” Paco says.
At least he's stopped teasing Brenda.
“I am tired,” Jaime says. “I mean, we just got done saving the world from evil future titans, the Reach are still gonna take over the Earth, Peacemaker just got out of the hospital, and we have an English test tomorrow I haven't even started studying for!”
Brenda turns around to grab her backpack. “Oh, I'll help you study – ”
“Dude, you'll still get a C without studying, just take the C,” Paco says.
“Jaime doesn't want a C in English – ” Brenda starts.
“Jaime's got bigger problems than getting a C in English – ”
“Jaime's right here,” Jaime says.
Jaime Reyes' friend Paco is correct , the scarab chimes in. The Reach are a bigger problem . Inefficient human schooling can wait .
Normally the scarab is bored to death when Jaime's talking to his family and friends and doesn't bother saying anything. Jaime's pretty sure that's when it's in maintenance mode or running low energy programs to stay ready for later, when they have to fight.
“Great,” Jaime says, “Scarab's chiming in too.”
“But who's it agree with?” Paco asks.
“Paco, stop trying to get Jaime's scarab to referee!”
“It wants you both to be quiet,” Jaime lies, because that's what he wants and shouldn't someone ask him his opinion in all this?
Brenda finishes fishing her English book out of her backpack and sets it on Jaime's chest.
“ Dude !” Paco says.
“What? Jaime was gonna ask for his English book anyway!”
Jaime groans, because she's right. Paco's right, too, he'd probably get a C even without studying. But he knows his parents wouldn't be super
mad
if he got a C because they understand all the stress and the Blue Beetle thing and the Reach, but they'd be a little disappointed, and if he wanted to do more superhero stuff outside of the whole saving-the-world-from-aliens thing, they might have reservations about it. So he holds his book up, flips to the right page, and starts studying.
.
.
.
“You're so lucky, I wish I got to go to high school!”
Jaime made the mistake of telling the Teen Titans he was studying (it's been a week, it's another test, pre-calc now). M'gann seems really enamored with the idea.
They just finished sparring, Robin got Jaime a list of things he should work on (which the scarab objected to every single one), but he did that for everyone but Cassie. Rose just backfisted him, not hard enough to make contact, just enough to prove she could , and then listed all of the ways he should've blocked it.
Right now they're in the main room – living room, Jaime guesses, except it's in a giant tower – and Jaime's got his math book out, M'gann is watching over his shoulder, Wonder Girl went out to train with Troia, Robin's doing push-ups to finish his workout, and Eddie is glowering daggers at Jaime for reasons Jaime can't possibly understand.
“School's for suckers,” Rose says. “I mean you already got what? Some super bug computer and sonic cannons. I bet the bug computer could do calculus for you, anyway.”
“ Pre-calc , not calculus,” Jaime says.
“Even more worthless then.”
Jaime ignores her, because he doesn't know what to say to respond, and says, “It's logarithms . They're really hard.”
“Logarithms aren't hard,” Robin says. Great, another thing he can act like he's better at than Jaime. “Just plug them in the formulas.”
“... Yeah, I'm already doing that,” Jaime says, because well... obviously he is. “But what if you get a word problem and you have to figure out which number goes where? Like, you have to actually understand what you're doing.”
Robin does a few more push-ups, then finally says, “Rose is right, you don't need to sweat school this much.”
“What do you do at school, do you have friends?” M'gann asks.
“Um... yeah, I have friends,” Jaime says. “They know I'm Blue Beetle.”
“You're not very protective of your secret identity,” Robin says.
“Well, I'm not gonna make up something every time I have to go do superhero stuff,” Jaime says. “I'm not lying to my friends.”
“... Yeah, that'd be kind of lame,” Robin says kind of awkwardly.
“Does your girlfriend know you're Blue Beetle?” Eddie asks.
… Jaime didn't even remember talking about Traci with them. “Uh, yeah, she does. She's a superhero, too.”
“She's fictional,” Rose says.
Jaime can't believe he's getting accused of making up a girlfriend.
“She's real!”
“Yeah, we don't know her, I bet she lives in Canada and goes on another superhero team.”
Jaime sighs. He's not really sure there's a point in arguing with her. Any amount of denial is just going to make him seem, well, in denial.
The scarab stops its stewing to send Jaime an alert. He can see it, on the scanners that are kind of always there in front of his eyes, a huge flash of energy.
He pops his wings out. The Titans react immediately – Rose draws her sword, Eddie and Robin each step back a bit, M'gann doesn't react at all except to say, “Neat!”
M'gann's immediately next to him (which the scarab perceives as a threat, of course) and touches his wing. It's weird because he can't really feel it with nerves, but he can tell it's happening through some feedback system the scarab has set up.
“Uh... please stop that,” Jaime says.
M'gann steps back and smiles. “It looks almost organic!”
“There's an emergency going on,” Jaime says, because well – there is. “The scarab just detected a huge flux of energy!”
“Let's move out!” Robin says.
... Which is what Jaime was doing already, but okay.
Jaime's stuck carrying Eddie to the scene, since his skin can run hot enough to give normal people third-degree burns unless he's controlling it. Which is kind of awkward because Jaime can tell that Eddie hates his guts. The guy just has him grab him by the armpits and crosses his arms the whole time Jaime is flying. M'gann flies behind them, carrying Robin and Rose.
Jaime tries to make conversation as he's flying, because he can't really carry someone (especially someone who is un-aerodynamically just in a standing-up-position) at top speed.
“So... is it always like this?”
Eddie grunts in response.
… Right.
The scarab at least is filling in Jaime as they're flying. The energy event was 25 miles away, on the shore. There's some “light radioactivity” - nothing harmful to him in his armor, but possibly to his teammates.
“Are you vulnerable to radioactivity?” Jaime asks.
Eddie seems surprised enough to forget to be mad. “No clue, but today's a great day to find out!”
Oh boy.
It's not long before they land on the beach. Not too far away there's –
Well, it's big. That's for sure. A person. The scarab tells him they've got human DNA that's been altered and well – they're kind of bleeding energy everywhere. Including towards the crowd of –
It looks like there was a volleyball tournament going on?
That's going to make it more complicated.
Jaime lands awkwardly and lets Eddie fall on the beach, and M'gann is right behind him. Rose and Robin each land and roll and get ready to charge the guy –
They don't know he's radioactive yet.
Jaime sticks his arms out to block their paths. Robin stops and glares at him. Rose just spins to the side and keeps going.
“Whoever-that-is is radioactive!” Jaime calls out after her.
Eddie is already going after Rose, too, despite him having 0 clue about his radioactivity immunity.
It's... hopefully a common super power?
“Your concern is appreciated,” Robin says gruffly. “Ravager, Kid Devil, help me clear the area of civilians. Miss Martian, Blue Beetle, go after – that guy!”
Great, even Robin doesn't recognize them.
Eddie and Rose are not following orders, of course. Rose is jumping around, dodging out of the way of beams that are coming out of the person's hands, and –
Impact imminent –
A warning flashes over his eyes in just enough time for him to not do anything as he gets hit by an energy beam. It throws him back.
It doesn't hurt, but it still feels weird. Jaime gets up. The sand around him is smoking.
The scarab's already working on assembling a big gun. Eddie gets blasted towards the crowd and M'gann catches him to stop him from hitting people, then says, “Ow! You're hot when you're fighting!”
“I know.”
“She means temperature-wise, moron!” Rose shouts.
Rose stops bouncing around long enough for Jaime to get off a shot. His cannon pushes the person back, but doesn't do any damage. In fact, the guy seems to glow even brighter now.
“Way to power him up, asshole!” Eddie shouts.
… Jaime kind of feels like he's back in sixth grade.
And Jaime can't get a better strategy, because he has to fly quickly in front of Eddie and erect an energy shield as the guy they're fighting spews a beam at Eddie, who's in front of the crowd – even if he dodged, there's no guarantee that civilians would.
“Aren't you supposed to be the actual Teen Titan?” Jaime asks. “Follow your leaders orders and – ”
Eddie and M'gann effectively scatter, but Jaime can't. He just gets hit by another beam of radiation.
The shield holds. Barely.
Rose jumps on the guy while they're distracted trying to fry Jaime and stabs him in the back – non-fatally, but still painfully.
Teen Titan Ravager is in danger, the scarab informs him. Like Jaime can't tell that. He thinks the ends Rose's hair are already burning, and she's grunting in pain –
“Rose!” Eddie shouts.
M'gann flies up and grabs Rose and pulls her off the guy, and Rose curses the whole time. “I had him,” she says.
It does not look like she had him. The guy is pulling the sword out of his shoulder, and when he concentrates it melts.
The scarab is protesting maintaining the energy field Jaime put up to protect the crowd, but at least it looks like Robin's mostly cleared the area. Some of the crowd are helping each other, getting out of the way or helping those who can't move super well, and of course one douchebag is filming the whole thing on his phone.
“Ow, ow, ow!” M'gann says, from where she dropped her and Rose.
Teen Titan Miss Martian has sustained injuries, the scarab tells him.
Eddie unleashes his firebreath on the person they're fighting and of course they glow even hotter and –
“We're going about this all wrong!” Jaime says. Because they are. “We can't just add energy to them, we've got to siphon it off somehow!”
“Great!” Eddie shouts in frustration. “How do we do that?”
“Well, scarab?” Jaime asks.
The scarab starts dedicating processing power to figuring out how to make the appropriate weapon, which means it's not dedicating processing power to strengthening the energy shield that's been taking a beating –
which of course means it's not going to stand up next time the guy shoots a beam at them. Jaime can see him lining up –
He has to block the thing with his body to protect the last few civilians who haven't moved. Fortunately, he already knows it won't hurt –
OW.
It does hurt. The power the guy's using has increased and Jaime can feel the heat even through his chestplate. Jaime gets thrown back into the nearly-evacuated dune and hits it hard. “Damn, ow, f –” Jaime grimaces and cuts himself off as quick as he can, because he's pretty sure he saw kids around here.
That's a great thing to worry about. Worry one: civilians dying from collateral damage. Worry two: Rose and M'gann are clearly hurt. Worry three: Mom sees me swearing in front of kids on youtube.
M'gann is staring at Jaime's hand as the scarab finally has the schematics and is creating a weapon. She asks a question in his head: What's the gun do?
Jaime hopes the scarab is smart enough to not immediately try to get her out, like it did for Probe, and tries thinking in response It's going to drain whoever that is of power and eject it harmlessly into the sky. But it's going to take a little. You guys need to keep him from moving.
On it, M'gann thinks, and she immediately rushes in back in –
Damn it, that's not what Jaime was intending on happening.
But Eddie follows her lead and rushes in, too. M'gann blasts the guy with her mind, fortunately not touching him, and Eddie starts trying to punch and grab him –
“Hold him steady!” Jaime says.
“Who said you're giving orders?” Eddie asks.
“Oh for fuck's sake, Kid, just hold him steady!” Rose snaps.
Eddie grabs the guy buy his arm. Rose charges in and stabs a sword through his foot into the sand and then feints back, staying out of reach. Jaime follows –
right. One hand on the guy's chest. The other to the sky. He can feel the energy coursing through him, but fortunately scarab made a harmless circuit for it to travel along. And he lets it all out.
Things seem quiet almost immediately afterwards. Rose, Eddie, and M'gann are all breathing hard. The giant guy has fallen unconscious and transformed into a regular guy who happens to be just wearing tattery shorts. Jaime still has no clue who they fought or why that person was attacking.
“Anyone know who that is?” Jaime asks.
“Not a clue,” Rose says.
“Good – good job,” Robin says, as he lands next to them after grappling and pants. But he doesn't look like he thinks so. He's just glowering at nearly everyone. Well, not Jaime for a change.
“Let's wait for the authorities,” Robin says, “And then get medical care.”
Jaime doesn't think he'll need it. The scarab's already repairing the burn on his chest. By time he gets home, he should be fine and Mom and Dad won't have to freak out. Unless, of course, someone put the fight on youtube.