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

[nicknamegirl]

Lola saw the name in the Sorting Room and instantly got curious. Jaime had mentioned Brenda's name from time to time, so Lola was fully prepared to welcome the new girl with all the enthusiasm she deserved. So she grinned widely at Brenda.

"You seem plenty useful to me." She extended a hand, smiling, for the other to shake. "Hi, I'm Lola Sanchez. I'd hoped some of Jaime's friends would show up here... It's really nice to meet you!"

Really, she had hoped that. Being the only one from a certain place, surrounded by strangers, that wasn't really fun. That had been the case with Mel here for a while, before Brice showed up.

[ibrokeaplanet]

Oh. Brenda hesitated. She remembered Jaime mentioning a girl at magic school, but Jaime's always meeting girls. She hadn't expected it to be a West Jessicabielburg girl, and got the usual twinge of jealousy those girls always gave her.

But only for a second. Honest. Because Happy Jaime is a Good Thing in Brenda's books.

She shook Lola's hand and smiled. "Thanks. Nice to meet you too. Jaime told me about you - I think - it got a little confused after 'I just went to magic school'."

[nicknamegirl]

"It's a pretty confusing way to explain something," sighed Lola and rolled her eyes a little. "Then again, this whole place is really confusing. I've been here for..." She blinked as she realised. "...Wow, almost a year, and I still haven't figured everything out. The basics are, 'Wave a stick, say some words in not-really-Latin, and stuff happens.'" There. All you needed to know to get through Hogwarts.

"Guess you're used to weird, though, if you help the Blue Beetle," she added after a moment, lowering her voice a little. Hey, Lola respected the need for a secret identity. She was... kind of a superhero, after all.

[ibrokeaplanet]

Oh, again. Had Jaime told Lola his secret identity? This must be some girl, then.

"Yeah, El Paso hasn't been the same since he hit town. You never totally get used to it, but it's worth it. He's done a lot of good work back home. He says he needs a lot of help 'cause he's so new at the hero game, but I think he's been doing just fine."

She grinned. "Not-quite-Latin is my specialty. Much to the dismay of a teacher I had in ninth grade who kept trying to get me to stop mangling it. This might just be fun at that. What kind of spells do they teach here?"

[totallyluminous]

Mel looks wistfully at the cover of The Angel Handbook before shoving it back in her bag. No. Too weird to have someone human look over it, even if they know about aliens and superheroes.

'Hey,' she smiles, running her fingers through her hair. Sooo, this would be...Lola's boyfriend's friend, right? 'I'm Mel. Not your first encounter with freakily weird stuff, right?'

[ibrokeaplanet]

"Hi, Mel." Brenda smiled; this girl seemed almost too down-to-earth for magic school. "I'm Brenda. Yeah, there's been the occasional monster attack and random space alien encounter since I started hanging out with Blue Beetle. What I found out is, you gotta watch out for the cute cuddly looking aliens. They're the ones who'll get the idea you're dinner."

[totallyluminous]

Oh, so true. The worst enemy Mel has is her freakin' double. Mel nods, understanding.

'I haven't ever seen an alien,' she says, almost wistfully. Travelling through space every time she goes on a mission, but never seeing an alien. 'I guess it's useful, though, because here--' yes, she means Hogwarts--'the bad guys tend to look and act like exactly what they are. It clears up a bit of confusion.'

[ibrokeaplanet]

That made Brenda think of Tia Amparo. La Dama. "Must be a relief, being up front about what they are. Not having to fake nice. Probably simples things up for the good guys, too."

[not_robin]

And Batman is studying her, one hand on his chin. "So, you're one of the Beetles little sidekicks then?"

[ibrokeaplanet]

She couldn't quite help bristling. "Yeah. Got a problem with that?"

So this was why the super-groupies on superhumanresources.com didn't seem to have love for the Batman like they did for Superman...

[not_robin]

Batman simply watches her. With the cowl on, it's impossible to see his eyes, but there is iron in his voice. "Powerless sidekicks to powered heros never come to a good end." He should know. He ended a lot of them.

[ibrokeaplanet]

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you have no superpowers, per se?"

Yes, that's the voice she plans to use in court, if she ever becomes a lawyer.

((Is it OK if Brenda eventually finds this Bats vaguely familiar, having met his other 'version' in BB #18?))

[hellminxmel]

Maia lolls about by door, examining the fact that, hey, Jaime and Lola and bloody Mel all seem to like this girl, which makes her an automatic name on the hit-list. Scowling, Maia walks purposefully towards her.

'Oh, you help a superhero? Well, that's a brilliant thing to stick on your UCAS.'

(UCAS = University and Colleges Admissions Service = Admissions Essay (I think.))

[ibrokeaplanet]

"Whoa. Twinsville," Brenda muttered.

Carrottop's got a mean little smile, but the scowl and a mean little something around this girl's eyes remind her of her dad, when he was working up to a good game of knock-Brenda-around. Unconsciously her posture arranged itself into a preliminary aikido stance.

"It's not bad," she replied evenly. "The trick is to disguise it as, like, community service. Say, 'volunteer work with Escarabajo Azul des El Paso,' and it looks all noble, instead of like something I'd be doing anyway. Like Paco calls me angry, and I say 'intense,' for application purposes."

[hellminxmel]

Maia sneers. 'No, we're not alike at all except in appearance. Don't act like you can give me a quick one-two, girlie. You can't.' She'll just turn herself invisible or something equally as unsporting.

'Yeah, do take my sarcasm seriously,' she adds, flicking her hair back impatiently. 'I just love that. God, we didn't need any more pseudo-heroes here.'

[ibrokeaplanet]

"Geez. Touchy much?" She forced herself to relax her stance and looked around. "I could be wrong, but this looks like a pret-ty big castle, am I right? Room for everybody."

[c_macaulay]

(( just noticed the edit wrt her surname. Noted, and let us know if her surname is revealed as something different in future canon; we'll make the necessary administrative changes. Though your comment on past, present, and future Brendas made me long for someone to app Brenda Walsh from 90210... >> ))

After her little Twilight Zone moment with maybe-sort-of-Batman, Camilla gets around to the application. It is, after all, the raison d'etre of the Sorting Room, rather than the afterthought she sometimes treats it as being.

"Aikido training? How lovely." Camilla chooses to think of the martial arts as an art form. Something graceful and aesthetically pleasing. "Do you use it often?"

The stuff about terraforming planets and launching rockets Camilla elides. She's heard enough preposterous stuff about aliens from Henry after his trip to America that she doesn't think she knows quite what she'd do with any more of it.

[ibrokeaplanet]

"Mostly I just do studio work and formal matches. In the real world, not so much, but it's good to know I've got it if I need it. Kind of a confidence-builder," Brenda said. Not that this lady looks like she's ever needed to work on her confidence levels.

[c_macaulay]

"It must be beautiful to watch," Camilla said, as though aikido were a ballet, and indeed she envisioned something like it: people in flowing white costumes, gliding and cutting through the air. "Goodness, if you're from Texas you must have had a long journey. Are you thirsty at all? Hungry? I'm sure I don't know much about jalapeno cheese but maybe the house elves will have an idea if we ask them. You know, I'm very curious about Texas. My brother used to live there. What's it like? Besides hot. With armadillos."

[ibrokeaplanet]

"It can be beautiful, when you're watching really expert martial artists spar. The rest of us, who're still feeling our way along? Not necessarily." She smiled, remembering some competitions she'd been in.

"I'm fine, thanks. I'd just eaten before I got disappeared to here. El Paso...is kind of split in two, in a lot of ways. Anglos and Latinos. Rich and poor. Powerful and helpless. Corrupt people and decent people. And the lines don't always go the way you'd expect them to go, but cross them and it's like you're in a whole 'nother world. That's how it seems to me, anyways."