[This unit has no frame of reference for your hormone based reproductive cycles, Jaime Reyes.]
Jaime shuddered as the scarab spoke, feeling rather peeved at the creature's rather clinical assessment of relationships.
Could you not be creepy when I'm around a girl for once, ese?
[Negative. You're funny when you're grossed out.]
Jaime rolled his eyes, awkwardly grinning at Cassie. The girl was leaning against the counter, an eyebrow quirked as she apparently waited for his response to her statement. Jaime gulped a little and stopped talking to his pants
"So, yeah, Cassie, I'd love to catch a movie with you. What about Friday? I mean, I can do Friday. Friday is a good day, chica. Friday is the best day."
He blushed slightly, his hand scratching the back of his head.
"So, you wanna see Captain America or...what?"
Cassie smiled, brushing a tiny bit of hair behind her ear.
"It's a date. Anyway I..."
Cassie was interrupted by a loud roar of wind blowing into the room and a flash of red and white light. The scarab reacted instantly, covering Jaime in his armour and generating a large, hook pointed blade in his hand. Cassie interposed herself with alarm
"Jaime, Scarab, whatever, it's just a speedster. Not sure which one though."
Cassie yelled, hoping that something horrible wasn't going to happen. The armour slowly retracted, with the blade being the last thing to vanish. Jaime facepalmed quite hard, looking incredibly embarrassed
"I'm really sorry. There aren't any sane speedsters in El Paso, so the Scarab gets kinda tetchy around them."
He avoided eye contact with Cassie, hoping to hell that she didn't decide: Hey, this guy is a crazy mofo, better steer clear of that. Fortunately for the slightly paranoid teen, Cassie didn't appear to have developed any form of revulsion concerning his abilities or personality. Or dress sense. Again, as he was about to speak to Cassie, the speaker in the kitchen blared out:
"All new metahumans, report to the operations room for team assignment!"
Cassie grinned, taking hold of Jamie's arm and tugging him along
"Come on! You gotta get to the ops room! Who your teammates are is literally the most important thing that can happen to you here!''
The two pretty much bolted to the ops room, Jaime following Cassie as best he could. Which was pretty fast, since he armoured up. Again. Seriously, he needed to talk to the Scarab about the hair trigger on the armour.
I swear, ever since you could armour up, you've been like a kid with a new toy
[You're just jealous that your meatbag body doesn't have an exoskeleton]
Yeees, because EVERYONE wants to look like a bug crossed with a luchador
[I LIKE luchadores.]
As the two bickered mentally, they arrived at the operations room, which was filled with about twenty teenagers in various costumes. Jaime recognised Tye and went over to stand next to him, since Cassie had gone over to her team, which was pretty much all girls for some reason. Jaime recognised Batgirl and Supergirl from the news and the Justice League fansite he ran (long story), the fourth girl was not familiar to him. She wore a blue suit of scalemail? He thought it was scalemail. And for some reason she had an eyepatch. Go figure. Anyway, Jaime stood next to Tye, trading fistbumps
"So, the mighty Apache is gonna team up with the spectacular Scarab?"
Tye rolled his eyes, grinning despite himself.
"Sure thing, ese. As long as we don't do something incredibly stupid in the interim."
Jaime laughed.
"Won't be stupider than junior prom, Tye."
Tye laughed but immediately shut up when Batman entered the ops room. Yeah. THE BATMAN. If you listened carefully, you probably would have heard Jamie squeeing to the Scarab. The Bat cleared his throat slightly and spoke in his guttural voice
"You all know why you're here. You're young metahumans or vigilantes with some training who want to save the world some day. Welcome to Mount Justice. Here, you will stop being amateurs and become heroes."
After the inspiring speech (it really was quite inspiring. Even the Scarab got pumped), Batman started assigning metahumans to their teams. Apparently, this was a permanent assignment, which kinda bummed Jamie out (what if his teammates were jackasses or worse: Cubs fans?), but as the names were read out, he was pretty damn satisfied with his teammates: Lagoon Boy, an Atlantean with a literal fish face, Tye Longshadow, his personal heterosexual life partner, Red Robin, a bat brat and Raven, who was literally the most terrifying person Jamie had ever met.
The teams assembled, and Batman dismissed them. The various groups wandered off to chat and what-not, while the older members of the Team joked around.
A/N SORRY FOR TAKING FOREVER TO UPDATE AND SORRY FOR THE RUSHED ENDING! IRL stuff sucks. Anyway, I'm back. Back again. And (hopefully) we're gonna do weekly updates from now on. Fingers crossed.