Application: Brenda Amparo (Blue Beetle III comic)

[ibrokeaplanet]

"Mrs. Reyes, are you sure I can't help -"

A thin girl with carrot-red hair and freckles turns around, school uniform skirt swirling around as she does. She's startled to find a stone wall behind her rather than the kitchen door she was expecting.

"Oh brother. C'mon, I didn't even pick up a weird alien artifact this time or anything!" She walks

Comments

[fiercefluffy]

"Do you think that Hera married for love?" Octavian genuinely wants to know.

He's not so sure he wants to know what a Mother Box is, but he'll probably be asking about that too.

[ibrokeaplanet]

Brenda blinked in surprise. It's not a question she's ever considered, and - wonder of wonders coming from a guy about her age - it's an interesting one.

"I think - just gut instinct, but I think marriage to the King of the Gods would probably be an arranged thing. Or a political thing, like if you're the most powerful god you keep the most powerful goddess in check by marrying her. Aphrodite married for love at least once, maybe twice, and that always sounded like the exception to the rule to me."

She shrugged. "In the legends it was always just The Way Things Were, you know? Zeus and Hera, married. But I'm sure she'd have hoped to be loved in her marriage, or at the very least respected by her husband. And I can't think of a single legend I've heard where they're working together as a couple, all the myths have Zeus cheating on her, or helping his children get the better of her. Can't blame her for being bitter."

[fiercefluffy]

"No one arranged it," said the widely-read (and sometimes pedantic) Octavian. "Zeus had loved her, some say as long as three hundred years, and she would not relent. Finally he turned himself into a cuckoo to trick her into embracing him. On what happened next there are differing opinions."

He used the Greek names rather than the Roman because these were stories he had read in Greek, and because Brenda had used Hera rather than Juno, so it was natural to follow suit

[ibrokeaplanet]

"I hadn't read that one," she admitted, which was a bit of a blow; usually she's the one who reads ahead of the class.

"All the stories I remember they were long since established as married. Probably the thing to keep in mind is that these are gods, not mortals, and they've to operate on a whole different scale. I mean, in mortal terms Zeus kind of sounds like someone who jumped into a marriage based on youthful infatuation and grew up to regret it. And Hera, I'm thinking as a god respect would come first for her. Love is what the gods have worshippers for if they wish it, right? If she refused Zeus for three hundred years, then I'd guess there was a matter of pride there."

[fiercefluffy]

"They are gods, not mortals," Octavian agreed, "but in these stories they behave in the ways that mortals behave, because their stories are mirrors for us to see our own conduct, right and wrong. What led you to speak of Hera, in answering the question, and not of another goddess, perhaps a happier one?"

[ibrokeaplanet]

Brenda laughed weakly. "I guess I'm guilty of doing exactly what they just said, looking at them through the mortal lens. My parents had a marriage that was - hurtful, in more ways than one, that's why I said the guy should pick the one he trusts not to. And recently I found out my aunt - my guardian, my only remaining family - she was keeping a big, big secret from me. It turns out her wealth and success comes from being a career criminal who's killed a lot of people, directly or indirectly."

She dashed a tear from the corner of her eye. Tia's other life still hurt to think about. "When I found out I felt - angry, and betrayed, and ashamed of loving her - plus it turned out my best friends have known this for a while and kept it from me, so I felt like I'd been made a fool of. Like Hera was played for a fool by Zeus so many times."

[fiercefluffy]

Octavian did not affect to ignore the telltale tear. "It can be severely painful to deal with one's family, at times," he said. There was not much sympathy in his voice -- because there was never much sympathy in his voice; the gravity of his bearing and speech took as its center a kind of stiff and unbending axis. It could have been easy to take his words for a sententious generality.

On the other hand, one might wonder how someone as young as he was came by such seriousness. His next question might support such a line of inquiry.

"What is a mother box and why would you name a tavern for it?"

[ibrokeaplanet]

Brenda laughed in relief at the change of subject.

"A mother box is - it's a device for traveling long distances, made by people on another world," she explained, groping for words for concepts she barely understood herself. "It's a cube about this big -" her hands described a shape about four inches square, "- and when it builds up enough power, it explodes and opens up a tunnel of light that sucks you into it, and a few minutes later you fall out the other end a long way from where you started

[fiercefluffy]

Octavian had expected a very different kind of answer (perhaps a casket in which to immure one's mother?) and as Brenda spoke, his expression changed, solemnity fading into a rapt affectless attention. A few minutes later you fall out the other end a long way from where you started ...

"Is it some kind of sorcery, or a philosophical contrivance?" By philosophical, he meant scientific.

[ibrokeaplanet]

"You mean, magic or technology?" They'd been through this debate once before, Jaime and Paco and Brenda, when Jaime first got the scarab. The Beetle armor turned out to be tech, but so alien it seemed all of a piece with magic.

"...I think the Mother Box is like a machine, because it uses power, and gets drained of power. But I'm not quite sure, because there was something about a Mother Box 'bonding' with its owner, like it's alive on some level - Paco said it wasn't supposed to work like it did with me," she mused.

"But that's way, way beyond what the kind of machines we can make back home can do, and even they aren't really my area of expertise. I do know the stuff we fixed in that control room was mechanical, not magical. Metal and bolts and wires and cables. Can the same society use both, do you think? Magic and machines? Where I'm from it seems like it's always one or the other."

[fiercefluffy]

How it was that Octavian could even speak the same language as these people, or understand them, he did not know. It must itself be a sorcery. But that sorcery could let him apprehend only the dimmest shapes of meaning when he had no referent concept for a word. He had to wring the signification from some words using his own learning. Tekne: skill, art. Logia: knowledge, discourse. It took him a moment to answer Brenda

[ibrokeaplanet]

"If it helps any, that's exactly how I felt when Metron and Lonar were trying to explain about the New Gods. They were speaking words in my language, but the words didn't seem to make any sense when they put them together in a sentence. I know when I did what they told me to do, it fixed the planet back, so I've gotta assume they knew what they were talking about."

She shrugged. "I wouldn't mind Ravenclaw, from what I've heard about it. Might be nice to be with people who take learning seriously for a change."

vote: Ravenclaw

[fiercefluffy]

"Bene. I will vote Ravenclaw." He turned and raised a hand slightly as he said it, as if he expected the Hat to tally this. Then he turned back to Brenda and said, in a quieter voice: "These New Gods of yours, they were people who called themselves gods?"

Re: vote: Ravenclaw

[ibrokeaplanet]

She dropped her voice to match his. "Yes. I don't know how much truth there is to the claim, though."

Re: vote: Ravenclaw

[fiercefluffy]

"In Rome, where I come from, behind the victor in every processional rides a slave. The slave's job is to whisper to the victor: Remember you are mortal. It is meant to be proof against the people's adulation. It does not always seem to work," Octavian noted grimly.

As emperor, he would not be declared a god until his death. During his life, he would order silver statues of himself to be melted down. These things had not happened yet (perhaps would never happen, in the timeline of this Octavian's life), but their seeds already existed within the young man, a kernel of self that would germinate into the austere and prudent emperor to come.

"You will have been very brave," he observed, "to fix a planet in the midst of such scheming by such men. I am almost minded to change my vote to Gryffindor." He was actually joking, the subtle rise of his brow hinted. In reality Octavian did not believe House Gryffindor had a monopoly on courage.