Player —

Player Name: Emmy
Pronouns: She/her
Are you over 18? Yes
Contact: gravenrose
Current Characters: Drift
Who Invited You?: Tifa

Character —

Character Name: Jaime Reyes aka Blue Beetle
Character Canon: DC Universe (New Earth)
Character Age: 18ish
Canon Point: post-Blue Beetle vol 7 #36 and post-Blackest Night (comic timelines are weird)
Link to History: Link
Inventory: A backpack containing unfinished math homework and some school textbooks, his wallet with ID and some cash, a cellphone circa 2009, and of course Khaji Da.

Powers —

Skills: Jaime himself has no special skills other than a keen mind, good physical conditioning and decent training in the martial arts from the Peacemaker.

Superpowers: All of Jaime's superpowers come courtesy of Khaji Da, a technological marvel created by the alien empire known as the Reach. Khaji Da is the name chosen by the Scarab after it achieved true sentience as a result of magical interference stopping it from connecting with the Reach and as a result of Jaime's influence. Khajia is is fused to Jaime's spine and is a friend/compatriot/confidant as well as giving Jaime a big power boost. Khaji Da has the following powers, some of which can be used independently and some of which are granted to Jaime as a result of their bond.

• Symbiotic Synaptic Interface: The Scarab's nervous system is bonded to Jaime's, letting the two share their thoughts and emotions. The Scarab communicates with Jaime as a voice in his mind. No-one else can hear it.



• Scarab Mindlink: The Scarab can mentally communicate with Scarabs that have not integrated with a host. It can also interface with Scarabs which have created full infiltrators, although this requires Jaime to breach the infiltrator's armor.



• Tracking Systems: The Scarab can track anything which produces energy, be it biological, technological or mystical. It can track anyone Jaime met since it bonded with him within seventy miles distance.



• Scarab Sight: The Scarab can scan the people Jaime encounters, informing him of any major physical conditions (such as pregnancy). It can identify and scan metahumans. It can identify people related to those it's already encountered via genetic analysis. The Scarab is able to identify thought-patterns, enabling it to see if something is sentient. It can identify matching energy signatures, letting it see if the energy patterns were developed from the same basis. It can also see extra-dimensional objects. It is continually aware of the electricity in the surrounding environment. It can perceive magic, see how a magical effect can be dispelled, and see through magical concealment. The Scarab's scans can cover at least a five mile square. It communicates the information it gleans to Jaime in a manner he can understand.



• Network Connection: The Scarab can establish a connection to communication systems, enabling Jaime to speak to the person on the other end.


• Clothing Manifestation: The Scarab can create clothes for Jaime, apparently from recycled waste and skin, which melt when he takes them off.


• Concealment: The Scarab is capable of concealing itself from 21st century technology (though 25th century technology, was able to find it). It can shut off cameras and microphones in its vicinity.


• Healing: The Scarab is capable of amplifying and accelerating Jaime's healing abilities, even allowing him to survive and recover from serious injuries, including a re-entry of Earth's atmosphere and other usually fatal ijuries


• Host Reconfiguration: The Scarab can modify Jaime's body to a certain extent and has offered to grow Jaime extra fingers in the past (Jaime refused).


• Blue Beetle Armor: The Scarab can create a distinctive suit of armor in response to Jaime's thoughts, or when it deems use of the armor necessary. Once the Scarab dispels the armor, it retracts back into Jaime's body. Jaime is capable of manifesting all or part of his armor as the situation requires. The armor itself endows Jaime with:


• Superhuman strength


• Superhuman agility


• Superhuman durability


• Environmental protection: The suit allows Jaime to survive in environments that normally completely inimical to human life, including outer space, Earth orbit, and the Bleed, a space between dimensions. It is also capable of surviving atmospheric re-entry without apparent harm, despite the heat and impact of landing leaving the sand around the landing area turned to glass.


• Armor Reconfiguration: The armor can reconfigure itself to create a wide array of tools and weapons, including an energy cannon, a sword and shield, a grappling hook, an energy blaster, claws, wings, and a set of large powered blades attached to the hands, over a foot in length, that can shear through tree trunks.


• Wing Shields: The armor can create a pair of wings, enabling Jaime to fly and hover. They can also double as shields, should the need arise.


• Jet propulsion: The suit is able to propel itself in flight at high speeds akin to a jet engine, though at the cost of maneuverability.


• Energy Manipulation: The Scarab can shape and manipulate the energy it stores for a variety of effects, including energy blasts, energy cocoons, small-scale solid constructs (shields, chains, etc.), and 3-D holograms. According to both Jaime and Khaji Da, it is capable of using it's energy manipulation/energy blasts and other weaponry to devastate entire planets, but Jaime has always refused to use lethal force. The Scarab's energy shields can block a Sinestro Corps ring's blasts.


• Created Weaponry: This energy manipulation along with the way the armor can reconfigure itself means that Jaime has access to a wide variety of weapons, ranging from swords, claws, blades, and shields made from the suit itself. This also includes various energy cannons, particle beams, flamethrowers and sonic weaponry.


• Antagonist Adaptation: The armor can tailor its blasts for use against specific opponents (e.g., Kryptonite radiation against a Kryptonian, suppression blast against a mob). The blasts can penetrate a Green Lantern ring's shield. The armor can call up anti-magic effects against magical opponents.


• Energy Bubble: The armor is able to create a temporary energy bubble around Jaime and/or people nearby. The bubble shields those inside from outside attacks, but prevents them from leaving. Someone with Super-speed who tries to vibrate through it will find themselves blasted by the bubble.


• Vibrational Frequency Manipulation: The Scarab can negate the vibrational frequencies of extra-dimensional objects, pulling them into this reality. The area of effect of this latter is unknown; it has been seen to affect objects at least the size of Brother Eye. The Scarab can also shift Jaime out of phase with the universe, making him invisible and intangible to anything apart from Reach-tech.


• Bleed Diving: Jaime can shift into the Bleed, the space that connects the various universes. He can utilize the Bleed's unique properties for various effects, such as instantaneous teleportation, or shifting back in time a few minutes to appear in more than one place simultaneously. At best, he has only enough energy to dive into the Bleed three times in quick succession.


• Translation: The armor can translate Mother Box communication into a form comprehensible to Jaime. Presumably, it is capable of doing so with other languages it encounters.


• Waste Disposal: While wearing the armor, Jaime finds that he doesn't need to go to the toilet, though he does still need rest.

Limitations:

• Magic: While the Scarab is aware of magic, it doesn't understand it. It's able to perceive, absorb, and disrupt magical energies, but little else. As a result, creatures of magic are often a significant challenge. The Scarab can't analyse certain mystical creatures, and so is unable to develop countermeasures for them. When faced with certain other mystical entities, such as the Spectre, the Scarab panics, offering Jaime ever more powerful weapons to take them on.


• Truce With Nature: The Scarab will not hurt nature, or the magical creatures thereof (beings who draw their power from the Green, for example), of its own volition. A villain like Poison Ivy might be able to keep Jaime at bay simply because he has to spend too much time talking the Scarab into fighting her.


• Magnetic Shielding: Strong magnetic fields block the Scarab's ability to track DNA and presumably other tracking abilities as well.


• Technological Peers: the technology of the Reach and other sufficiently advanced alien technology is capable of creating weapons which can breach the Scarab's defenses. Other meta-humans and their powers are also able to injure Jaime and the Scarab through sheer physical force, magical attacks, or technological ability


• Just a Human: If Khajia Da is shut down, deactivated, dormant, or removed from him, Jaime is just another human kid. He can think on his feet, knows some martial arts and so forth, but is otherwise back to being squishy, vulnerable, and killable


• Compassionate: Jaime is a deeply moral and compassionate person, who genuinely does his best to help people. He struggles with the morality of killing and in fact refuses to kill others, despite Khaji Da's penchant for lethal weaponry and lethal solutions. He breaks down crying the first time he fails to save lives during a natural disaster. Someone could easily use the lives of innocents or the lives of his friends as a way to manipulate his actions.

Personality —

When it's down to the basics, Jaime is a good kid. He's honest, earnest, hard-working, fairly intelligent, respects his elders, and tries to do the right thing. He just happens to have a world-destroying piece of alien technology attached to his spine. Jaime has matured since he became the Blue Beetle (though not entirely). He has had to learn to accept and deal with his power, and despite his initial reluctance, fully embraces his super-heroing as part of himself now. He didn't even initially want the power. He doesn't want to rule the world or be powerful. He just wants to help people, and he does because now it's his job. As his little sister, Milagro says "You're a good guy." He takes his duties very seriously and hates to let innocents die. When he couldn't save everybody during a storm caused by the weather manipulating villain Typhoon in the employ of the Reach, he returned home disconsolate. His father, Alberto Reyes, finds him crying gives him a sort of pep talk, reminding him that sometimes you lose people, but that you must think about the ones you save. He also tells Jaime that he is a good man and that Alberto will always tell Jaime this when the boy returns to his home.

Jaime has principles and sticks to them. No innocent people die. Bad guys go down. He doesn't hesitate to stand up for what he thinks is right, though he's very good at not being obnoxious about it. While he's firm, he's not overbearing. He's intelligent and can digest science (which he has an interest in) and strategy fairly quickly. He also has a fairly wry wit that tends towards the corny at times, though he's not the best at battlefield banter.

If you make a friend of Jaime, you have undoubtedly made one of the most loyal and caring friends you'll ever has. He doesn't hesitate to throw himself into danger for friends and family. He has great respect for his parents, who have both worked hard to support him and his sister. He even tries to avoid using foul language. The kid is so wholesome sometimes it hurts. His parents raised a good kid who's really in the whole super-heroing business only because of circumstance. If he hadn't, he'd no doubt be more worried about keeping his grades up (which he manages to do, despite missing a year of school and routinely having to battle super villains), getting into a good school and becoming a dentist (Which is, in fact, his deepest desire-slash-power fantasy, so that he can make good money and help his family).

Jaime also looks to Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle, as an inspiration and an example to be followed. He has been studying and working to become proficient in strategy, improvisation, and other skills that made Ted Kord a viable super hero, even though he lacked powers. He utilizes Blue Beetle II's legacy to the best extent during his battle with the Reach, tricking them into revealing themselves and allowing him expose their true motives to Earth.

Jaime is occasionally stricken by self-doubt, though such occurrences have become rarer as he's grown used to being the Blue Beetle. At one point he wonders if Ted Kord didn't activate the Scarab because he was good, and in Jaime's words "Maybe something inside of me... something not good... activates the armor." Jaime is, after all, just a teenager with all of a teenagers worries, doubts and fears on top of his super hero career.

Ultimately, Jaime is a superhero not because of the trauma he's endured or because of an obligation he feels towards the legacy of Ted Kord, but because that is the kind of person he was raised to be. Late in his canon, he and his family are attacked by the aliens known as the Reach. Despite having Khaji Da blocked from him in that time, Jaime rises to the occasion, fighting even as a normal human while his family defends their home. He is brave, selfless, and kind because of his family and the people who have influenced him. That he has superpowers which allow him to help and defend so many others is really only a happy accident.

Gameplay —

Areas of Interest / Brainstorming: Jaime is going to be a bit flat-footed to start with. He's going to struggle to find himself--and immediately try to use his ability to dive into the space dimensions to get back home. When that doesn't work, he'll proably be setting up as a hero in this world if only so he can make some contacts with people who can help him get back. Also he just likes helping others.

He'll also be jazzed about being able to continue going to school because you need good grades to get into dental school.

Samples: TDM thread #1

TDM Thread #2