thethirdbluebeetle-blog1

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

Honestly, Jaime felt a little hurt. This was the third person in Gotham that he had saved and they’d gotten angry with him for doing it. At least in Texas they had the decency to say thank you. 

Not to mention that Khaji-da was screaming for her head. Did he ever shut up with the death threats and risk assessments.

“Hey, I’m not a weirdo!” he exclaimed, hurt by the comment. “I mean, I’m sure you’d have been just fine but I couldn’t tell that from the air and I was just trying to h....” he trailed off and sighed. “Sorry.”

Words were now coming out of this person’s mouth, but none of them were making sense to Nora. Individually, she knew what those words were, what they meant. Strung together, though? She didn’t know what a beetle was going to do, no she didn’t… have one — a pet bug? an Egyptian amulet? was it code for something? — whatever that meant. And sonic cannons were definitely a new one. She had spent most of her time studying the Batman affiliated superheroes and only them, so powers or unearthly tech were still very new to her. So that was a no to both. 

She had been so busy trying to work everything out in her mind that she completely forgot to speak, instead standing in the alley slack-jawed, still back up against the wall. 

“Uhm, no? Weirdo. I just meant that I could have handled the situation myself. In my own way. Without… whatever you just said.” With another annoyed huff, she adjusted both her domino mask and the faux fur draped around her shoulders. 

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

Chewing on his lip underneath the armor, he watched the people that were all around him, biting his tongue a little bit he sighed gently and watched the people in front of him. “You had better have hermano,” he said with a gentle sigh, before rocketing up into the air and away from the sirens. He couldn’t believe what had happened and he didn’t know what he was going to do. There was no way that he could deal with all of the crime in the city, but that was what he wanted to do. He wanted to fix things and he didn’t know why he couldn’t.

Bruce Wayne. Bart still felt pretty cool for his knowledge about the Bat’s secret ID, and he was pretty positive if he ever, ever let it out Batman would either lock him in the Batcave forever (which he wouldn’t mind) or put his head on a stick (which he would mind a little bit.) Kid Flash, ever the determined one and all too reminded of his past by the way these people were looking, sped off into action. He dusted ash off of people, bandaged wounds, and ended kneeling in front of a little girl who was crying over the loss of a beloved doll. “It’s not the same I know, but - ” Bart didn’t really know what else to say, so he handed over a doll that he’d gotten at a toy shop a couple blocks down. The girl hugged him tight and he returned the favour before he stood and went back to Blue. “I swear I paid for it. No scavenger rights.” The crowd was cleaner, hopefully more comfortable, and that little girl had a doll, but what else could he do? Dejected, he tried to smile at his teammate. “Sirens are close. We’d better go.” 

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

Biting his lip Jaime thought for a moment, looking at the people who were swarming towards them. God he didn’t know what he was meant to do to help these poor people. “I don’t know ese, I barely have enough to house myself, I can’t rehome several hundred people, I’m not Bruce Wayne.” He bit his lip and looked at them nervously. What were they going to do?

Kid Flash smiled back at his friend and, with his breath back in his lungs and his heart at a normal fast rate, he spun around the the wreckage. There were people crying behind him, covering in ash and soot and everything that came along with a building falling down. Bart didn’t want to think about how these people were homeless now, but it seemed pretty prevalent in his mind. “W-What now? These people don’t have a home any more. What do we do, Blue?”

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

Grunting gently, Jaime shook his head and dusted himself off. Reporters and cops were swarming towards them but Khaji-Da told him that they had thirty seconds until they arrived. “Good, couldn’t let you get hurt,” he said patting Bart on the back and smiling gently, “but I don’t know about saving your life, you’d have worked a way out of that. But regardless, you’re welcome.”

Bart’s heart was beating faster than normal. There were some times when he was slowed down so much, or rather he was sped up and the world was slowed down, that he wasn’t sure if he was breathing anymore. Right now, he wasn’t using his speed to do anything but supercharge his nervous heart and he’d never ever felt it beat this fast. A large part of the roof with an AC unit on it fell on top of him, and in his free fall he had no way to dodge it. Kid Flash had never been so happy to have a Jaime there. His hands rested on his knees and he tried to catch his breath, blinking and making sure this was real. “Y-Yeah,” he said, a hand absently covering the harsh burn on his arm. It’d heal. He looked up and smiled at Blue. “Thank you. You saved my life, hermano.” 

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

The scarab had told him that it was a living computer that was capable of doing his algebra work for him once, it hadn’t lied. But apparently it was a living computer that was capable of doing so much more than that. But Bart wasn’t coming out and Jaime knew that something was wrong. Allowing Khaji-da to take over he plotted in a course to save his friend and then watched as the scarab flew it perfectly. He knew that he could never be that good, but still. It was cool. A second later (a literal second) and he had plucked Bart out of mid air and was placing him down on the side walk. “You ok?”

The scarab was annoyingly accurate. Bart thanked his lucky stars that thing wasn’t attached to his back. And brain. For a lot of reasons he was really glad about that. 17.9567 seconds… That could be rounded to 18 seconds, right? No muss, no fuss, easy math. All good things. Bart did take the advice of putting on his speedy boots though, running around the top floor as fast as he possibly could. Well, not really. He didn’t want to cause a sonic boom or world jump or anything like that. He heard the boom outside and for a moment slowed. That wasn’t him, was it? “Ah!” The fire, taking advantage of his distraction, grew and burned his arm. Bart winced and ran faster, trying to deprive it of oxygen. He was almost done, almost, when the floor beneath him collapsed. “Notcrashnotcrashnotcrashnotcrashnotcrashnotcrash - !! ” he said to himself, his mouth working a mile a minute. There was still fire. And he was falling. The roof on top of him was doing the same thing, and even with the world slowed around him Bart knew. He should not have rounded up. 

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

As Blue carried the last victim of the fire from a higher up floor, he heard what Bart was saying and nodded. “I hear you Hermano, but you’d better be quick, the scarab says that you’ve got exactly 17.9567 seconds until this place collapses, so get your speed boots on!” he exclaimed before shooting into the air and firing a loud sonic cannon burst that was harmless, it still let off a really big bang though. Loud enough to get the attention of the onlookers and bystanders. “This place is coming down, so I need everyone to move back now.” Nobody moved. Another sonic cannon blast and they seemed to get the attention. Turning to the building he chewed his lip. Where the hell was Bart?

Getting the people out who hadn’t evacuated already was tiring, but the energy bar Bart had in his wrist helped. He stuffed it into his mouth without much grace, speed eating them for the energy. “Thanks, Blue!” he said with a mouthful before speeding to the bottom floor. The fire was big enough that he had to take the fire floor by floor, and he ran circles around the floor until the oxygen was sucked out of it like a vacuum. The fires on the first floor were out, and the second floor fire was withering when he got there. There was a lot of damage, and with each floor he went up he could feel the structure under his feet getting weaker. The top floor, which still had fire on it, was the place that made Bart sure this place was going down. He desperately put a hand to his ear. “This thing’s coming down! Get everyone back, I need to douse the fire on the top floor so it doesn’t spread to other buildings when it falls.” Bart had already started running, and it felt like one of those video games he’d played where the floor you stepped on would crumble a moment after. “Quickly.” 

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

Jaime wasn’t sensitive. Ok! Maybe a little. But he was very aware that he was meant to be a hero, he was meant to be helping people and sometimes he wondered if he was actually doing that.

Growing up in El Paso, running with Paco and the Posse for a little bit. It had taught him that things couldn’t always be untrue. So he was perhaps skeptical about her throwaway comment, but it left him with enough belief to not disregard it completely. 

“Well I hope that your next boyfriend doesn’t carry a sword either...” that was awkward. Why had he thought that was a good thing to say? It was literally almost like he needed a second scarab that would stop him from saying stupid things like that.

Though he had to admit that normally he didn’t walk his rescuees home. “Uh... I guess I should?” Tonight wasn’t a busy night and there wasn’t anything coming through the police channel that Khaji-Da had hacked. “Sure....what should I call you?”

Some random chick with a crossbow that according to Khaji-Da was capable of firing multiple projectiles every minute. But Jaime for some reason didn’t think that he was going to be the target of her attack. “Uh ….” he trailed off and shrugged. “It is whatever, doesn’t matter.” Khaji-Da seemed to think it was better if less people knew who they were anyway.

Jaime was fooled. But Khaji-Da was screaming in his ear that this woman was a threat that they should eliminate, but at the same time he did that about that nice Mr Kent who lived below him. He wasn’t a threat either, yet Khaji-Da was convinced he could shoot lasers out of his eyes. He swore the scarab was defective.

“Oh sure, fair enough,” even Jaime was a little skeptical. “Your boyfriends normally have swords then?” he asked, almost sarcastically before wincing, “sorry, that … that wasn’t fair…”

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

Honestly, Jaime would like to say that he had a better plan than flying into a burning building and grabbing people and getting out. But he didn’t. He was actually surprised by how much of this hero stuff was made up as he went along. Surely Batman and Superman couldn’t do it like this too! Bart took the bottom and Jaime took the top. The top floor was clear and as he burst through a window and into the second floor he only had to grab a toddler who had been abandoned, handing her to a fireman on the ground he shot back off into the air. “Uh ... weight training?” he said with a frown, “I guess, if you want?”

A fire alarm was no guarantee of a fire, hell it could just be burnt supper, but this one was a fire. A big fire. Bart almost lost his nerve when he saw the smoke billowing into the sky. He slowed for a moment, stuttered into the comms for a second. Then he took a deep breath and ran faster. “You kidding me? I’ve got this! Deprive it of oxygen! Okay, we might need to focus on getting people out before I take away oxygen. Both on getting people out first,” he said as he spoke into the comms. He ran into the building when he got there, the heat searing. He could only get the kids and bring them out, the heavier things he’d have to leave to blue. “Hey, will you do weight training with me? I’m actually really weak.” He groaned as he picked up a older child. “Help me.”

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

Whirling around in mid air, Jaime allowed Khaji-Da to perform a complicated loop-the-loop and found himself rocketing towards 10-70 on fifth. He could see the smoke from 20 blocks away and by the time he got close he could feel the heat. “This is a lot of fire for you to take care of,” he grunted, “but sure.”

Bart, the cheeky shit that he was, waved goodbye to the cops before he flew out of the room. Not literally flew, he was cool but he couldn’t do that. Blue was cool enough to do that. With his feet moving faster than any car in Gotham including the Batmobile, Bart took out the police radio. “Hold on…” He tinkered the with the wiring, messing with the frequencies and when he hit the money he laugh. “Yahtzee!” Now, with the team comms in one ear and the police radio, the real one, and a toggle to adjust those settings Kid Flash was ready for Gotham. This was just a preliminary version, but it’d work for now. “10-70 on fifth. Fire alarm.” His feet skidded to a stop and he zoomed off in the other direction. “Get your superhero cape on, there could be civilians in there. You want to take rescue I’ll get rid of the flames?” 

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

Some random chick with a crossbow that according to Khaji-Da was capable of firing multiple projectiles every minute. But Jaime for some reason didn’t think that he was going to be the target of her attack. “Uh ....” he trailed off and shrugged. “It is whatever, doesn’t matter.” Khaji-Da seemed to think it was better if less people knew who they were anyway.

Jaime was fooled. But Khaji-Da was screaming in his ear that this woman was a threat that they should eliminate, but at the same time he did that about that nice Mr Kent who lived below him. He wasn’t a threat either, yet Khaji-Da was convinced he could shoot lasers out of his eyes. He swore the scarab was defective.

“Oh sure, fair enough,” even Jaime was a little skeptical. “Your boyfriends normally have swords then?” he asked, almost sarcastically before wincing, “sorry, that ... that wasn’t fair...”

“It doesn’t matter, right?” Artemis said tilting her head slightly when she realized the guy was clearly a little hurt she didn’t know who he was. Bad liars could spot other bad liars. “Because now I do know who you are. Blue Beetle. And you… uh– you totally saved me.” That was laying it on a bit thick, but he didn’t have to know that. As far as he knew she was just some regular chick walking home in the middle of the night in a dangerous neighborhood who had some guy following her.

She gave a small nod when he said she could look through the guy’s pockets, and started looking through his stuff. There wasn’t much, so at least that was one thing she didn’t have to worry about…

Artemis started to withdraw her hand from the guy, and froze briefly when Blue Beetle pointed out how well she was dealing with this. “Oh. Uhm…” Turning to look at him, she reached up and rubbed the back of her head. “Well, I mean… I’ve lived in Gotham my whole life and not the nice parts. I’ve also dated a few assholes in my day so… like – Not that I get followed home a lot or anything. But… y'know...”

                 Yep… keep it up Artemis…

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

“Uh ...” Blue trailed off and frowned gently. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t know who he was. “You know what, it is fine, don’t worry about it, I don’t mind, not everyone knows who I am.” He was lying. It bothered him but whatever, it wasn’t her fault. 

“Well I just landed here, thinking that you needed saving.” He shrugged gently and smiled once. He had to admit that he was suspicious as to why she was checking through his pockets ... but as long as she didn’t steal anything then it was fine right?

“Yeah, just don’t steal anything...” he frowned. “Are you ok, you’re taking this remarkably well.”

Artemis raised her eyebrows, and couldn’t help the amused look that crossed her features. Well, it was good to know that superheroes could be just as awkward as regular people…

“Sorry,” Artemis said and and even managed to sound apologetic and not laugh at him, “I don’t really keep up with all that stuff. There are a lot of people in costumes running around.” That wasn’t totally true, but it had been a few months since she was drilled on things like that. Maybe she had heard of a Blue Beetle before… But with a name like that why would he have stood out to her?

His attitude (or lack of one) set her at ease at least. Talk about one of the least threatening people who could turn their arms into cannons that she had ever met… "But, no, I’ve never seen this guy in my entire life.“ She used it as an excuse to get closer to the man, glad he was knocked out and pinned against the wall. "I guess you’re not really supposed to see these types of people coming though. Hey, you wouldn’t mind if I checked through his pockets or anything before calling the cops, would you? I mean like… I’ve uh– I don’t want him to have my address or something. If he was following me…" 

That wasn’t suspicious, right? No… she felt like she was managing to be super casual. Keep it up, Artemis.

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

The Scarab was more than fast enough to track Bart’s movements, it claimed that it could predict them too but somehow Jaime found that hard to believe. “If you are ese!” he exclaimed, sprinting towards the front door as a number of officers suddenly became aware of their escape. As they burst through the doors of the GCPD this actually felt a lot more like a crime than hero work, but whatever. Jaime leapt into the air and took off, spiralling upwards and away from the cops as Bart streaked through the streets below. Over comms he smirked. “What’s the plan hermano?”

Bart rolled his eyes. “We’re not here to take ‘em out. Make sure you relay that to your friend, by the way. Though he doesn’t seem to listen based on how much you yell at him. I swear, it’s like you’re an oldmarriedcouple. But not the nice ones.” His foster parents - great grandparents? - Ugh, his caretakers got along like two peas in a pod. Occasional shoving matches but no death threats. It seemed like a good death. Bart smiled at the view of the sonic canons snapping the handcuffs. “Don’t have to tell me twice!” he said excitedly as he phased through his handcuffs. As Bart sped up the world around him slowed down, the GCPD for a moment unaware of what was happening. Some of them had great becoming aware expressions, and as Bart went to snatch a radio he made sure to keep the pickpocket’s rule in check. Make other physical contact so they don’t feel the wallet, radio, watch, what have you being snatched. The police officer he chose was a higher up, he could tell by where his desk was, but his hair was a level of messy that rivalled Bart’s and he had a food stain on his shirt. Good detective, but sloppy enough to loose a radio. Bart snatched it and poked the guy in the ribs, giving other officers other harmless jabs just to make it look like nothing really happened to this guy in particular. He zoomed to the door and looked out to Jaime with a smile. “Ricardo! You ready?”

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

To be honest, Jaime thought that he was weird too. He was constantly snapping in and out of conversations because that damned scarab on his back was talking to him. That was why he had screamed no and that was why she probably thought he was here to kill her, or something. But he wasn’t. No. Not at all. 

As she tried to slip the crossbow behind her back, the scarab tracked it, leaving an orange outline of where it would be on her body. He tried to blink it away but it stuck anyway. But still. He was a superhero. This was his job. Though he worried as to why she carried around a crossbow, but he thought that it was probably better not to out right ask her. That could be ... awkward. “Uh ... what?” surprisingly people didn’t usually say thanks. “I mean, uh, you’re welcome! Of course you’re welcome. Just doing my job!” he sounded lame. 

“This guy, which guy, oh that guy ...” turning around he frowned and shook his head. “I thought that he was for you to be honest...” he said looking at the guy. “Do you think I should call the cops?” that was great, really great. Ask the civilian for help. 

“I’m Blue Beetle, have you not heard of me?” he asked, pouting slightly. He knew that he wasn’t Superman, but come on!

This was weird. This guy, whoever he was, was weird… Artemis wanted to say she totally decided this before he shouted ‘no’ at nothing in particular, but that was probably a lie. Granted she was the regular civilian here carrying around a crossbow so she tried not to judge him too harshly.

She realized she still actually had her crossbow out and shoved it behind her back in a move that was totally not awkward, or drew attention to anything. “Thanks,” Artemis said with a grimace and glanced over at the man now pinned to the wall tilting her head slightly. He was clearly not just some random thug from the streets around here. Since that was the case she didn’t need this blue guy searching him and finding anything tying her to him, or any other assassins that might be lurking around the city.

“So… Is this guy here for you?” She asked moving around the blue guy, and closer to the wall the man was pinned again tossing a look over her shoulder. “What’s your name, anyway?”

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

He really really really really needed to get better at sticking his landings. If he let Khaji-Da take over they were perfect, like a hummingbird landing on a tree in the middle of the night, you’d never notice he was there. But when Jaime was behind the controls he found himself careering all over the place, he always came in too hot and looking down at his feet he could see cracks beneath the blue boots on his feet.

Great. 

He’d broken the sidewalk.

Turning around he bother looking at his former opponent, Khaji-Da informed him that he had been knocked out and incapacitated. But now the person he was saving was shouting at him and suddenly he didn’t feel very welcome. 

“... you can grow sonic cannons from your forearms too?” he asked confused, looking down at his now normal hands, though previously they had been sonic cannons, “do you have a scarab too?!”

Nora was nearly knocked off her feet by the force of the impact. She had absolutely no idea who this blue creep thought he was, but she was doing just fine before he showed up, and now she had a sore butt from knocking backwards into the wall behind her. And maybe a concussion. What were concussions supposed to feel like again?

“Hey!” Face scrunched up in frustration, she tugged on the arm of her apparent rescuer, wanting to get a good look at him. Well, what little of him she could make out. And she only thought it was a him, really. Dumb hero costumes. Here this guy had a whole suit of armor, and she had a leotard and a domino mask.

“I could have done that myself, you know,” she spat out, sounding more like a petulant child than the hero she thought she was.

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

The bad guy, he didn’t know if they actually were a bad guy, but he was just assuming that they were, anyway, the bad guy had been knocked down and Blue could see the .... sword that he was carrying clatter to the floor .... why the hell did he have a sword? Also was there a reason he was dressed like a ninja?

Either way, he sprung back up after a second and Blue’s right armed morphed from a sonic cannon into one of those giant staple cannon things. Firing three in a row he watched as the ninja was knocked backwards into a wall and pinned by the stapes. One around his leg, one around his neck and a large one around midrift.

Turning around Khaji-Da noticed the crossbow and began screaming in Jaime’s head. “Jaime Reyes, we must address the threat and eliminate our foe,” it screamed in his brain. Shaking his head he snapped, “NO!” before looking at the blonde and smiling uneasily ... “I mean .... well?”

It was late, she smelled like french fries, and all she wanted to do was go home and take a shower– but that wasn’t going to happen. And Artemis didn’t know who she had to thank for the man who was following her. He was possibly a little gift from her father, in which case the man was likely an assassin she was supposed to kill. On the other hand it could just one of the many thugs wandering the streets of Gotham waiting for some poor unsuspecting person to come along their path…

                      Sad for them.

Artemis grabbed the collapsible crossbow from her bag, spinning around to see the guy get taken down by some other guy in a blue costume that fell from the sky, knocking her back a bit. She lowered her crossbow, looking on in surprise when his hands turned into cannons and he blew the guy away. Well, it wasn’t often powered types found their way into these parts of the city. Not that she’d seen anyway.

She straightened up, and dusted herself off. “Well then…”

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

My Drugs! || Blue Beetle and Kid Flash

Jaime and Bart try to fight the crime wave that is Gotham.

It was honestly one of his first trips out into the city as Blue Beetle. The suit had surrounded his body in the magical armour and Jaime was looking down over the city with ease. The scanners that covered his eyes lit the dark city up and immediately identified several different life signs. It  wasn’t something that he was used to, in fact in El Paso there hadn’t been half as many people. Yet Gotham was now his home and he had to get used to it, or at least try to. Khaji-Da hissed something in his ear. “This is a waste of the suit’s potential, we are not law enforcement,” Jaime winced and snapped back, “this is my choice not yours.” Then he spotted it. A simple mugging. They could break that up easily. And without a second thought he dropped off of the roof and flew away, heading towards the mugging.

Gotham City felt a lot more like the place Bart had come from than Central City. As much as he loved the sunny skies, overcast was a bit more familiar. He’d only been in Gotham for a little while and even so he didn’t sleep there. Still bunking with Jay and Joan in Central City. His nights here were spent fighting crime, and god was there a lot of it. Too much. It really was not safe. Who knows where Batman got it in his head that he and his family of crime fighters could handle all of this. Bart wasn’t sure if anyone could handle all of this minus the joyus influx that had happened over the past weeks. Kid Flash raced out his door, the well wishes of his… What were they? Foster parents? Well, whoever they were they were important and sweet, and their well wishes were lost in the wind. Gotham was a trip, and when he breached the city he nearly sped right out of it at the rate he was going. But something made him slow down. A blue light in the sky. “HA!” he said for no one to hear before he spun on the spot and went to his friend’s location. It’d been a while. His eagerness made him outrun it by a block. “Blue!” he shouted, this time at someone in particular. The person he was running under “Finding anything interesting in Gotham?”

Khaji-Da’s sensors picked up the word “Blue” and played them through a speaker in his ears for Jaime to hear, there was a mugging going on but his new found friend in Bart didn’t know that. “A mugging ese!” he shouted down to his friend as he looped once and landed at the end of an alleyway. “Now just be quiet for a second so that I can handle this situation,” he was in this instance talking to the scarab on his back and the speedster on his ear. Khaji-Da was trying to convince him that if he used a plasma cannon he could take out both the mugger and the muggee, but the scarab didn’t seem to understand that that was not really what Jaime was going for. Instead he choose a sonic cannon, selected a low frequency and knocked the perp out before calling the police. Turning back to Impulse he gave him a smile that he could not see through the suit. “So hermano, where to?”

“Ooh,” Bart said, leaving his mouth in that ‘o’ shape and slowing down. He turned on his comms, an easier effort in the Kid Flash than it had been in the Impulse one. That one’s stealth mode was hard to access too. It was hard to have this suit on some levels, but it was better on almost every level. “Right. Completely quiet. Silence starting now.” Speaking of stealth mode, Bart hit it. The yellow might not stick out as much in Central, but nothing was that bright in Gotham. The black suit suited the environment much better. He zoomed to Blue’s side, letting him take down the mugger and causally wondering if that had been the scarab’s idea. It was a good take down, and the thing was smart. It’s only downfalls were the murder thing and that it still scared Bart to no end. Bart smiled when Blue turned to him and he held out his arms, even spinning a bit in a grand gesture when he said, “this is Gotham! There’s crime everywhere! We’ve just got to find it.” He said it like just turned twenty-one kid reaching New York looking for girls and booze. Nothing, not even dark Gotham, could down Bart’s spirits for too long. If anything he seemed even happier than usual.

As they made their way out of the alley, Jaime turned and as an afterthought fired one of those giant staples that Khaji-Da was so good at using to pinning crooks to things. That would stop the felon from getting up and getting away before the police could haul him away in irons. At least that was what Jaime was hoping would happen, though he knew that it was much more likely that a corrupt and dirty cop would just let him off in return for a bribe. But that wasn’t up to Blue Beetle. One day that might be a job for Jaime, if his pursuit of law went well, but for now he had to stick to being Blue Beetle. “You shouldn’t sound so excited at the crimes in this city Kid,” he said with a frown, “after all there are plenty of people who wouldn’t see it as a good thing.” Walking out of the alley he brought his orange tinted vision around and scanned the block. “Nothing on this block,” he announced, proud that they had done some good for once, “lets get going and see if we can find something else.”

Bart tilted his head to the side and made a click of his tongue against his teach. “Point. It just feels exciting, you know? Lots to do with not a lot of time,” he smiled, “my specialty. Right? Plus, I don’t know the place seems homey. Speaking of, did you get a place here? A lot of heroes did. The ones that didn’t already and are all busy here with the… Everything. I think Batman should open his doors personally, but hey that’s just me.” Okay, he wanted to play with the toys. And meet the Bat family in their prime. Was this their prime? It was hard to tell. They went through so many phases. Bart smiled and tapped his ears. “Take to the skies, I’ll be on comms.” With that he ran off in a blur of lightning. Back in this time narcotics were a big problem, and sometimes when the speed force running in his veins gave him that happy feeling like he was finally free he wondered if that was what people were chasing with alcohol and drugs and all that. As Bart ran down and up the pavement, he could kind of understand that. He reached up and switched his goggle settings until he found something interesting. “Heads up! Drug deal. Big one. Oh, okay I get why the crimes aren’t always so crash. Bart stopped around the corner, the sheer body count and weapon number making him pause. “I’m gonna wait for your backup.”

“Why does it matter whether or not I have somewhere to stay Bart?” Jaime asked, raising an eyebrow beneath his armour. The motor mouth on Bart Allen was something that Jaime or Khaji-Da weren’t going to ever get used to, the only difference was that Khaji-Da wanted to kill him for it and Jaime wasn’t going to let that happen. “We’re not killing him,” he hissed as Bart sped off and away from him. His suit of armour didn’t wait for his command and a minute later he had his wings extended and the jet pack on the back of his suit engaged, taking flight without a moment to lose he zoomed off into the air. Twirling once he hovered over the city and surveyed the landscape, it wasn’t long before he to spotted the drug deal that Bart had mentioned. Speaking into the mic system that they had established between them. “I see them Bart, but it is going to be messy if we just mess this one about, we need to be serious hermano.” Pausing he looked down on the situation, “got any ideas eses?”

“I’m just curious,” Bart said, which was his excuse for a lot of things. When you think a mile a minute, maybe more like a mile a second, some curiosities just passed on the tongue without much thought. “I sped home at the end of the day but that’s a bit more of a trek for you, Blue.” Taking a quick peek at the men in arms, Kid Flash let out a breath. Messy was right. Probably an understatement, actually. The first thing to do was disarm them, but after they were disarmed they might scatter and they’d lose more crooks than they caught. Bart wasn’t of the physical peak, though he had been working on it, to lug all these guys into a nice little neat stack of handcuffed criminals. “Disarming them is first priority. I can handle that, but they’ll statter pretty quick. Maybe… You can keep them caged in and I’ll try to take them out. O-Or something.” Okay, Bart didn’t have many ideas. “Once I disarm them this is going to go really fast, Blue.” He watched through his goggles to analyze their movements. Once guy kept looking over his shoulder. Another kept looking at the sky. They were looking out for the Bat of Gotham. “They’ll get spooked easy, but they’re getting ready for Batman, not us.”

“I’m in a little apartment in probably the roughest neighbourhood in town, but it was all I could afford, besides it isn’t like Blue Beetle is really under threat of a break in.” The scanners that lensed over his eyes once Jaime put on the suit were really something. That was an understatement actually. They were probably one of the most useful things the scarab could do for him. Khaji-Da was jabbering away in his ear about how the most effective method would be to “disintegrate them with several quick bursts of plasma from the plasma cannons that he could equip with a moments notice. But Jaime didn’t kill. Why didn’t the damn scarab remember that?! Grunting to himself as he hovered above the scene, Jaime nodded. “I’m ready when you are hermano, take their weapons out and I’ll do my best to stop them from scattering.” Swooping down he prepared his staple cannon. He really needed a cooler name for that.

Bart was pretty sure most parts of Gotham were in the ‘roughest neighbourhood,’ but he wasn’t going to say anything. Some of the younger heroes staying here he worried about a little bit, wondering if they could see a break in and an attack coming, but not Jaime. Khaji-Da would have his back. Even if the thing still wanted to kill (Bart was probably on his hit list) he did trust it to have Blue’s back. Quite literally, too. Bart got into a position to start running and blew out a breath. “Woo, okay.” With that, Kid Flash sped into the lion’s den. He disarmed the men and took the effort to put the weapons on the top of a building where he was pretty sure these guys wouldn’t get them before he sped back. Fighting time. Problem was, a lot of these guys were big. Really big. Bart took out the more squirrelly ones first, the ones who missed their last fix and it was showing, in an effort to keep his hand nice and not broken. By this time, the crew knew they were being taken down and punches were being thrown. Unfortunately, Bart didn’t think to check the van for more weapons. The tough guys were already going for them, and some already had them on hand. How did he know this? Well, he was being shot at. Kid Flash cursed and zoomed back to the now weaponed big guys and started taking those weapons. A bullet grazed him and he cried out in pain through his teeth, being sure to give that guy a swift kick when he took his automatic weapon. These guns didn’t go as far, Bart didn’t have the time for that, and he ran back to the belly of the beast quickly. Some of them were throwing aimless puncheS, some were scattering, Blue was right. Messy.

The only apartment that he had really been able to afford was a crumbling studio apartment in the center of downtown Gotham. It was basically a ghetto and Jaime often missed home. But he had pinned up posters, brought as much as he could from his old home to make his new home better and frequent skype calls home to his friends Brenda and Paco, not to mention his parents and the little brat that they insisted was his sister. That kept him from hating it too much. But right now at this very moment he was much too busy dealing with … well everything. Khaji-Da had gone into over drive and though he had initially screamed for the deaths of the Gothamite thugs, he had eventually given up after Jaime had refused. It didn’t help that he could literally feel Khaji-Da tracking Bart’s every move. “Stop that,” he grunted at the Scarab as he pulled himself into a tight dive bomb, firing a sonic cannon in both hands that knocked three thugs down but he knew that it would only be a second before they were back on their feet. At the very last possible moment the scarab kicked in and pulled him out of the dive that he had been in and as he flew a foot above the ground, dodging men and debris, he continued firing off bursts of sonics and the occasional giant staple. Then he heard the gun fire and blasted off again, his right arm morphing into a shield that he threw in front of him and Bart. He heard the bullets ping off of the shield and he only had time to grunt, “where do they get all these guns from?!” before he had to whirl around and fire a blast of sonics at a big ugly block of a man that was getting too close for comfort with a baseball bat. “Well, we made a mess.” He grunted through gritted teeth as the scarab targeted several men and knocked them over. It didn’t however spare him the lecture of how ineffective his tactics were.

Bart Allen wasn’t exactly a natural leader. Naturally he worked alone, actually. He loved being on a team and wouldn’t trade it in for the natural order of things any time soon, but growing up he’d been a loner. Sometimes he worked on a team, a team of meat lugging things, but that was the closest he got. His only frame of reference for leadership had been in this time which was limited resources to pull from. Blue Beetle and the Reach had sort of distracted him from learning how to lead. That said, he was totally leaning on Blue in this one. That wasn’t too fair on the guy, considering he was having to filter barked orders from the Scarab. Bart imagined that’d make leading a tad more difficult. This was a mess, and their little group of two (three counting the silent Chatty Cathy) wasn’t really getting through it well. Bart let his super healing take on the bullet graze and he ran around the place punching and kicking, just trying to knock everyone out. One hulking guy stood in front of the guns and Bart ran away far enough to give him a running hit, and the extra power behind it took him out. Kid Flash's eyes bulged at the sight of the drugs. “Blue, there is a lot of stuff here. I, uh,” he picked up a packet and eyed it. It was a green and black pill, a few in each pack, and way too many to count. Bart couldn’t remember the name, but he knew this stuff was not good. Really not good. The other question was where was the money the other party had brought? Was that part of this? Or was the supplied just trying to get an initial hook out there? “This is not something we can risk anyone else getting. Should I call GCPD?”

Leaping backwards from an explosion that Khaji-Da had just caused, Jaime heard the scarab berate him for not allowing him to be fully effective. But being fully effective to the scarab meant that he would kill and that was not something that Jaime would ever allow unless there was literally no other choice, and right now there was plenty of other choices. The one thing that he would give these thugs is that they were persistent. If it had been Jaime and he had been attacked by a yellow and red blur, and a blue dude in power armour that morphed into weapons, well he would’ve probably had a very embarrassing accident and then have fled the scene to lock himself in his apartment, hide under his bed and never come out. But as a hail of bullets pinged off of  the shield that he had thrown over himself, he suddenly forgot the admiration that he had for the thugs. They were criminals after all. Suddenly Bart was saying something and he had to leap behind a crate to avoid getting hit by a volley of bullets. “Uh…” Jaime wasn’t ready to be making these sort of calls. On one hand the GCPD were notoriously corrupt, apart from Jim Gordon who was a public icon of justice,but there was a good chance they’d get a dirty cop who would confiscate this all for himself. But on the other hand this was far too much for Jaime and Bart to handle. “Do it,” he said after a moment of indecision, “we’ve not really got any other choice,” he snapped. This time not to Bart but to Khaji-Da who was suggesting that they take the drugs themselves and use it as bait to eviscerate their enemies. Stupid scarab.

It wasn’t exactly an unusual occurrence for Blue to snap when he was calm the moment before. Well, ‘unusual’ connotes that it’s normal which it’s decidedly not and still freaks Bart out a little bit, but it happens a lot. The scarab, Khaji-Da, spoke a lot. It was unnerving that he could talk, and sometimes it made Bart keep an extra eye on the Beetle. You know, just to make sure he didn’t go on mode in any way shape or form. It was less of a danger with the Reach on the outs, but it was still a constant poking nerve in the back of Bart’s head. “Got it,” he said after Jaime snapped. Probably not at him, but he wasn’t about to not use super speed to dial the GCPD. “Yeah, hi. Lots and lots of drugs. Knocked out bad guys. How does Batman usual call this stuff in?-” Bart sped to another location and hit a guy out. “-Address? Oh, oh, right. Um,” he sped to a street sign. “Just down the street from the Monarch Theatre. Yeah, yeah thatEastEndthing. Gunswouldbe a goodthingyep.” Bart was puppy guarding the drugs, his movements fast and a little weak. He really should invest in some strength training. Fighting and running training was great and all, but he needed protein drinks and weights. Big weights. Something so he was a little stronger. His Nokia flip phone made a little Snap! when he shut it and pocketed it, calling out to Blue, “they’re on their way!”

There weren’t this many gangsters originally, Khaji-Da had decided that with some deep mathematical analysis (he counted the number of them in their intial attack) and had now confirmed that they had identified double the number of targets. Jaime was capable of dealing with a certain number, but after that he and Bart would be desperately outnumbered. Spinning into the air he equipped two sonic cannons and fired blasts that had knocked the bastarads off their feets for as long as he possibly could. Firing giant staples towards as many of them as he possibly could. Trying to keep them from getting back up, but he knew that they wouldn’t be down permanently. “How long are we talking ese?” he asked his companion. “Because I think there are more of these things coming up to our location and without back up there are really only so many of these things that I can take care of.”

“They said about ten minutes!” Bart shouted, the extra volume in his voice due to his current physical exertion of kicking these guys in the face. He looked at all the drugs in a panic, his speed slowing everything down. The money the guys had come with was probably gone, but whatever this stuff was it couldn’t get out on the streets. Bart wouldn’t let it. He had a little bit of a weakness when it came to the idea of getting the public ‘hooked’ on some chemical and was probably not looking at this objectively, but his mind was thinking one thought over and over. Well, one thought besides ow. They needed to get this crap out of here. Bart would take it himself, but it was too much for him to carry and he couldn’t leave Blue alone and once the mobsters saw that the drugs were being hauled out they’d either leave as quickly as they possible could or they’d double their efforts in getting the stuff. Either way, he couldn’t leave Blue with that. So there was only one option. His hand went to his ear and he spoke quietly in the comms, hoping none of the mobsters could hear. “Blue, ask your friend if you can carry all this stuff out of here. It can’t get on the streets and I don’t have the strength to haul it. Bring it to GCPD. I’ll handle these guys.” Okay, he couldn’t handle these guys. He knew that. Blue knew that, or at least the scarab did, but who cared. This was their best option.

Khaji-Da was calculating, working out the odds of Jaime being able to do a non lethal run here and presenting them as a long string of symbols that was whatever language the reach spoke. As such Jaime shouldn’t have been able to read them, but as they cycled through his heads up display he knew exactly what they meant. That was one of the perks of having the Scarab, he could speak any language that the Scarab did. “Mierda,” he swore as he heard Bart report back, his mother would’ve pinned him down and washed his mouth out with soap for using that sort of language around her, but in this situation he thought that it was justified, “that is too long,” he said as he took off once more and let Khaji-Da run a strafing run in around the perimeter of the drug stash that they had located. That would buy them, ten seconds, maybe twenty at most, and as Jaime landed once more, Khaji-Da hissed in his ear that the current tactic was weak and ineffective. “I don’t want to  - no I won’t leave you,” he said as his hands morphed from plasma to sonic cannons and he knocked over three opponents. They slammed into a wall with a crunch and he winced. That hurt and he felt bad for them. Clearly their compatriots did too because Jaime had to dive out of the way as a spray of bullets clattered past where he had been a second ago. “Fine!” he exclaimed, stress and Khaji-Da’s urgings finally winning over. Running to the crates he leapt into the air and fired off a few shots before Khaji-Da grew a rig that collected up the crates and he slowly shot off into the air, spiralling to avoid getting hit by any stray bullets. “Come on Bart! I’m not leaving you with these guys alone!”

The thing about missions is about wants and dos have to be completely different. There’s the odd occasion that wants lineup with necessity and you’re home free, but it was rare. There were levels of self sacrifice that went against the primal instinct of self preservation. “You got any better options? It’s either mine or the scarabs and he probably wants you to kill everyone here including me! Mine’s better,” he said exasperatedly as he continued to punch out opponents as best he could. He tried to think about what Barry would do right now. What tactics he’d use. The Flash was more powerful than Bart was just because Bart was a kid and The Flash had a better handle on his abilities, but if Bart pushed himself he was pretty sure he could get some of his tactics down. In his mind, he was already fighting alone. He was getting ready for when Jaime inevitably saw that Bart’s option was the best and the only one left fighting was going to be him. Maybe when the drugs were gone he could throw a lightning bolt at the truck, successfully blowing it up and making himself look way more powerful than he was! That'd surely make the thugs easier to fight, right? No, you're going to get your ass kicked. Still with that knowledge Bart was happy when Jaime agreed to the plan, a wide smile on his face despite the blood coated next to his mouth. “There we go!” Kid Flash started running and perimeter around the site the moment Jaime got in the air, punching and kicking anyone that got in the way and tried to get out. He'd throw a lightning bolt when he got enough speed and Jaime was clear. “No can do Blue! Someone's gotta keep the troops entertained! Just go!” Bart had a bad habit of shouting into the comms when he was running, and this time was no exception. Besides, he had a plan. Sort of.

Grimacing at the static that came from the shouting down the comms, Jaime winced gently and forced more power into the jet pack. As he soared away he looked for the closest GCPD station that he could set the drugs down on so that he could go back to help his buddy out. He had accepted the tactical decision as best he possibly could but it also meant that if anything, and he was talking anything at all, happened to his best friend then there was no way on Earth that he would ever be able to forgive himself or the thugs that had done this to his friend. Maybe at that point an emotional Jaime would let Khaji-Da take over and do something stupid but until then he wasn’t going to take the risk. He had to take these things one step at a time and until he was ready to deal with the crooks he had to focus on getting the drugs out of there. But a better plan struck him as he moved about a block outside of the radius of the fight. Guns were still going off and if he looked closely he could see a red and yellow streak that was Bart. His scarab informed him that it would take all of 7 minutes to drop the cargo off at the nearest station, including waiting for it to be secured and then returning. He doubted that Bart had that long and so instead he chose to improvise. There was a rooftop to the left that would work perfectly for what he had planned and soaring over to it he deposited the cargo and then shot back to Bart’s side. “I found an early drop off point,” he said into the mic as he flew back towards the fight scene, “tell me that you’re still in this so we can really make a difference,” he said. Swooping down low he equipped two sonic cannons and fired them at the first cluster of thugs he found. That would show them.

Oh, Bart Allen loved his taste in best friends. He wasn't about to just let anyone get off that easy for the havoc they caused in the future, and it took a damn amazing person for Bart to get past that and be best friends with the guy. After coming back in time he'd gained wisdom. The dream that used to be a nightmare of the Blue Beetle vanquishing him now ended completely differently. It ended with Jaime’s dorky grin and the two best friends fighting alongside each other. The best ending and so much better than getting stapled. Even when Blue flew off and Kid Flash increased his speed to get ready to throw a bolt, part of him knew that Jaime wasn't going to completely listen. His friend's voice in the comms made a huge grin come across his face and he sped up, doing the limbo under a crooks punch. The added backup gave him the courage and stamina he needed, and a moment later he threw his first lightning bolt dead on target. The car exploded and the men around it fell back, severely stunned but not dead or mortally wounded. Bart hollered in victory and punched an angry thug. “I am so still in this Blue!” He was smiling incredibly wide for someone in a bad fight, but the odds just went in his favour. Sue him for being happy about it.

The truck exploding was something that Jaime felt from a block away. His sensors told him that there had been a spike in the temperature and for a moment his stomach dropped, concerned that his friend had been hurt by the explosion. That wasn’t something that he would ever be able to stomach. So when he heard Kid Flash’s voice over the comms, he had to admit that he was thrilled. “Thank god you’re alive ese, I thought that you’d hurt yourself or someone had you know … got you, but I’ll be down with you in a sec,” he said as once more the scarab calculated the best course for him to pull into a dive and as the robot that was implanted to his spine pulled him into  a dive. There was a pneumatic hiss as his wings were sucked into his suit for a second and his jet pack accelerated him forward. Khaji-Da took over and equipped the staple cannons, firing them indiscriminately and catching thugs one by one. They were pinned to the ground, to debris and to the walls of the warehouses that surrounded the area. Shooting towards the ground the scarab engaged his wings and thrusters at the last possible moment. Landing him on his feet just next to Bart. “Lets hold these guys until the GCPD turns up.”

Now that risk was severely minimized, Bart felt a larger freedom to run about to put the thugs in positions that would either put them in Blue’s staple range or would just keep them down using various ties and things he'd found in the alley they were fighting in. It was a funny thing how the sounds of Beetle wings and staples and guns had gone from the peak of horror and worry and anger and loss to almost a comfort. The futures Blue Beetle was bigger than Jaime and bigger than life, a lot like the Black Beetle they'd encountered. Bart would argue that Blue had been more terrifying. He'd only interacted with him face to face a few times, any more and he wouldn't have been able to come back like he did, but still through Reach Broadcasts and word of mouth he was associated with the worst events of the Reach Apocalypse. Now he was associated with help, familiarity, and safety. Much better. Bart punched a guys lights out and smiled over at his friend.“I think we handled this remarkably well. Good job, Blue.”

As Jaime and Bart set to work cleaning up the last of them, he was very aware of the fact that Khaji-Da was screaming in his ear to kill the weakling speedster before he betrayed him and their secret, but Jaime trusted Bart. He was the only person who knew Blue’s secret identity and he could have outed Jaime to the Justice League or even to one of the Flashes at anytime. Bart was the only person that he could really trust not to betray him and though Jaime was wary of revealing his secret, he didn’t for a moment regret revealing it to Bart. As a sonic cannon blast knocked out the last person, and the sounds of sirens blared in the distance, he knew that they would have to leave soon if they didn’t want to deal with a run in with the GCPD. “We did great, you were great, someone should tell the GCPD where the drugs are by the way. They’re on the roof of the big glass and steel building a mile east of here,” he smirked and looked at their handiwork. Not bad.

Despite not particularly understanding secret identities, and actually seeing them as a future liability as the heroes without faces went through much more suffering and turmoil at the time they were beaten, he truly did appreciate it when Blue told him who he was. It was an important part of Bart being able to see the Blue Beetle as a hero and as a friend. It meant the world, and he was never going to betray that. Whatever it took. “Oh! Got it!” Kid Flash, who had been standing as still as he could and surveying their work to make sure it was complete, zoomed the a corner and a second later he was shaking a spray paint can and writing on the pavement. ‘They’re on the roof of the big glass and steel building a mile east of here.’ He stood up and grinned. “Alright, all done.” He glanced at the lights flying towards them, and his feet already started moving. “Let's get out of here.”

[thethirdbluebeetle-blog1]

Pausing for a moment, Jaime dropped down in front of ... well he’d like to say who it was, but to be perfectly honest he hadn’t taken the time to see who it was that he was protecting. Honestly, in this city, he often found that it was shoot first and ask questions later. He just hoped that it wasn’t someone who could take care of themselves, like you know ... Batman. God that would be embarrassing, dropping down in front of Batman and saving him. Not that he needed saving but ... anyway. 

Flipping his two arms into a brace of sonic cannons so that he made a non lethal take down. Firing them at the thug that he watched as the blue vibrations shot through the air and knocked his opponent straight off of his feet.

“Stay down,” he grunted.