pummelgranite | [MoM][IC Contact]

Uh huh.

[ and now HE has totally forgotten about it again. This Is Fine, Persephone tells herself. This is perfectly normal Teenagers With Cool Powers But Nothing Will Ever Be OK coping.

Honestly? Hell yeah. She can get behind that kind of repression. ]

One! Two! Three! Four!

[ Kllk! go her fingers. There's a longer pause than normal before anything happens. A gentle, distant rumble at first, then louder, and then the ground splits and out pours glassy tentacles. ]

Cool.

[ Usually, this is where Jaime goes for strategy. Go high, take in the situation, figure out how to take them out as quickly and efficiently as possible while ensuring that as few bystanders as possible will be affected and that minimal property damage comes of this.

The idea of just charging in headfirst is a little electric, and he can feel something buzz straight up his spine, a gleeful little sussuration. When Khaji urges him to go, he does, the tips of his fingers lengthening into claws before he's entirely aware they are, and he flings himself at one of the tentacles, fingers digging into it as he twists his body, seeking to rip it straight out of the ground to fling it away from him as far as he possibly can. ]

Whoa-

[ It does still catch her by surprise a little- the switch between the bubbling kindness and inhuman ferocity. She hadn't even grown everything she meant to by the time he attacked. The plant her grabbed on to is rent from the ground- and once severed it cracks and shatters, and then sparkles satisfyingly into nothing.

A few other snake behind him, trying to ram him in the spine. ]

[ It's satisfying - slightly less satisfying than watching it shatter, but it does its job of reassuring him that he can go all-out against these, and it means nothing. Less than nothing, unless you count whatever energy it takes out of Persephone, but he trusts her to say the word when it's time to stop.

Normally, he'd dodge the blow, but here? It's fine if he gets tossed around a little. He's in no actual danger, so he takes the blow head on, bracing himself against it as he's tossed further into the air, only to spin around and blast them with a loud crackle of blue energy, a small circle of glass appearing in the smoking pit below. ]

[ Another snap and she raises a platform for herself to get a better view of the battlefield. He's fast. Faster than she'd realized. It's hard to keep up with him, even with her magic arsenal.

She'll need to get around him, grapple, aim his blasters away from her greenery. She shouts out her count of four again- four vines heading for four limbs. ]

[ As Jaime moves, he shifts, changes. It's a far cry from that hulking, dull-witted beast that Persephone had met in their shared dreamscape, nor is it the nigh blank slate of Khaji wandering around in a body that's not his own, but it's not your Friendly Neighbourhood Blue Beetle either - the suit is becoming jagged and sharp at the edges, at the curve of his elbow and the plating on his shoulder, at his knobby knees and flanking his ankles. Jaime isn't wholly aware of it happening. It's just one of those things that happens when he isn't keeping a tight rein on himself, and he rarely cares to ruminate on what that could mean. There's something vaguely animalistic about it, if you're being generous about it, but you could just as easily just call him a very violent pufferfish.

When the vines head towards all four of his limbs, he lets them and hangs suspended in motion in mid-air for a moment, the stretch at his muscles mildly unpleasant until he yanks, curling them into himself and wrapping them further around his wrists before sending a jolt of electric blue energy rippling down them and into the ground below, the air around him crackling with it. ]

[ Man dang. One: that looks totally sick. But two: oh my god dang!? Fine, if restraining him won't work either, then she'll try to overwhelm him with the sheer number of vines heading at him. ]

[ Jaime, predictably, lets himself be crushed underneath the weight of the vines headed his way and falls to the sand with a heavy sounding whump. There's something to it, letting himself become overwhelmed by an opponent, and letting himself feel that in whole before doing anything even remotely close to thinking - and he's not thinking throughout all of this, not really. He's just reacting based on instinct alone, and it just feels right. He can see how people break bad with superpowers like these, drunk on power, because this just wasn't the sort of thing normal people like him are supposed to have.

He allows the vines to smother him long enough for him to grow truly claustrophobic before allowing energy to grow deep within his chest. Even through the vines, Persephone will be able to see a faint blue glow before it bursts well out of him, tearing apart the vines in its wake.

Jaime doesn't get back up again this time. He just lies there, panting heavily, still looking distinctly inhuman, but not at all unhappy. If anything, he looks calmer than he ever does when he's just putting it on, even if he is actively steaming. ]

[ SICK!!! He just looks rad. But hopefully he's had enough. That kind of display is draining, especially without an audience. She's still catching her own breath when she leans over the side for her platform.]

You dead down there?

[ Jaime doesn't speak for a moment, just thrusts one hand up into the air and gives her a thumbs-up. Once he catches his breath again, he reluctantly rises to his feet and hops up onto the platform she created, brushing himself off a little as the spikes on his body flex and settle, flattening back into his suit as if they were never there to begin with, turning back to the toothless, friendly figure most of the public knows him as.

He sags against her side, because if you can't indulge in a little contact with someone who'll let you get your rage on in the middle of the desert, there's nobody you can indulge with. ]

Thanks for that. Seriously. I needed that. [ He stretches his arms out in front of him, muscles satisfyingly sore. ] You've got some moves.

I've got moves? Shite.

[ Yes that is fine, it's time to do a FRIENDSHIP LEAN. ]

Can't believe how literally you take "blowing off steam."

[ Jaime laughs, a little hoarsely. ] I don't usually start steaming unless someone gives me a work-out.

[ In this moment, a part of Jaime thinks that Persephone may know him the best out of anyone here. There are people that he loves and adores, but Persephone's the one who gets what it's like to go through some majorly life-changing stuff, the one who accompanied him through that nightmare, and the only one he'd thought to call to blow off steam, a task he doesn't tend to want anyone to see. He doesn't like it when people look at him like he's a monster, but there hadn't been any danger of this here. Which means... ]

Hey, you know what's stupid? You still don't even know what my real name is.

[ What's he afraid of, exactly? This is dumb. ]

[ She glances back at him when he says it. She's never really gotten the whole Secret Identity thing. Laura Wilson was a secret that wasn't kept for any real need. She'd just wanted to be Persephone more.

Intellectually, of course she knew there was someone inside the suit. But to her, the blue chitin was as real a face as any, and Blue Beetle was plenty of name. There was no desire at all to push, even if Bruce hadn't taken the time to impress upon her the importance of secrecy for costumed heroes.

But it's not like she wasn't curious. ]

Dunno, isn't that safer? I'm pretty nefarious.

You got a point there. You might tattle on me to all the scary supervillains out there.

[ She won't. She'll keep his secret. Which is why, feeling oddly comfortable with the whole thing, he allows the armour on his face to melt back into his skin (which makes him start to faintly steam again, but the whole process is honestly pretty janky), shakes his hair out, then offers her a hapless grin. ]

So... hi, I'm Jaime? [ His voice is a little different when it's not filtered through his suit, though it's certainly nothing Persephone probably didn't already expect. It's a little hoarser and quieter, impossible to mistake for anything other than gentle without the force of technology behind it. ] This is pretty anticlimactic when people got no clue who you are. At least I don't think we've ever spoken when I wasn't suited up. Kinda lost track.

[ He's no Bruce Wayne. There's no big reputation following him around, no notoriety in any of their communities - or at least he doesn't think so. He's just some kid. A little dull, a little sweet, but mostly just there. He's okay with it, but that usually makes unmasking a bit of a tricky affair. That's okay. He doesn't need Persephone to know who Jaime is. It'd just be nice to be able to hang out without him having to go around punching people first. ]

Hi Jaime. I think I talked shit about your art once?

[ Wow, she'd kind of expected him to be hotter under there? Though this does seem about right. He's got a kind looking face, and a voice much more suited to his earnest demeanor.

There's a bit of a pause, and she tips her head back towards him. ]

I'm Laura.

That sounds like you. Hi, Laura.

[ The moment only lasts so long before he drops his chin to his chest, shaking his head and snickering. ]

Man, you know things are weird when sharing our actual names feels stranger than - all of that, [ he says, gesturing towards where there are small circles of heat-fused glass, the wreckage of a fight with no victor and no loser. ]

Speak for yourself. I mean, it's not like the Pantheon's human names are a huge secret, mostly. I was just, you know . . .

[ She trails off vaguely, as if there's any possibility Jaime would have any fucking idea what she's trying to say. ]

[ Jaime remembers his last conversation with Persephone about this - about how her former self was dead, and how she was just Persephone now. Her introducing herself as Laura properly is... well, it's different.

In a nice kind of way. Jaime may adore Persephone, but he thinks he could become awfully fond of Laura too. ]

Just what?

[ She remembers it too, and feels a little foolish backtracking so soon but- ]

When I got here, I wanted to be anything but Laura.

Yeah. I remember you saying that once.

[ He hadn't been in a place to argue, but it sure as heck didn't seem healthy. ]

What changed?

I . . . dunno.

[ There's a lot of different reasons she picks through in her mind- the way it felt like "Laura" had been taken from her by tabloids, wanting to prove that Ananke's "Destroyer" was more than what she'd said: a desperate bid to reclaim her own story no matter what the cost. She was so hurt and angry when she arrived, even being a huge destructive asshole kind of had its appeal: deny her humanity and her vulnerability all at once.

But both Ananke and Rupert Murdoch were a world away, and over the past year and a half those wounds have slowly but surely begin to close. Despite all the bullshit this world comes up with, some of the edge has come off her pain. And that's all still hard to voice, but at least she can answer Jaime honestly. ]

Time, I guess. And people.

People help.

[ Jaime and Persephone can understand each other on a lot of levels, but this isn't one of them. He doesn't know what it's like to feel that urge to push away not only everyone else, but his entire concept of self. He'd thought it sounded lonely the first time she mentioned it, and he still feels that way. There's a lot caught up in a name and an identity - friends and family, even gone, even far away, a whole life beyond what they're wrapped up in now.

Her returning to some of what she left behind could only mean good things, right? Healing? He'd like to think so. ]

For the record? I'm glad. I like Persephone all right, but I like Laura too. [ He likes to think she'll understand what he means, because that, he can understand: Blue Beetle and Jaime are two halves of the same whole, and while she may have only gotten to meet one in name, she'd wound up knowing Jaime a whole lot more than the Blue Beetle. ]

[ She just huffs and pulls her knees up to her chest, but her expression stays soft. ]

Well, that makes one of us.

[ It's said a little lighter than most of her self-depreciation, but there it is. ]

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WE CAN PROBABLY END THE FIGHTY PORTION HERE either right here or handwaved

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I FOR ONE LOVFE DROPPING IMPORTANT THREADS FOR WEEKS AT A TIME