Meta Jazz, the Arkham Intern Therapist Pt1
Update 5/16/2024: Congrats guys, gals, and others! You have planted the seeds and they have grown. Today I wrote another 46 pages on this story (the first section was only 9 pages ya'll). I'm working on splitting it up into smaller sections so I can post it now because tumblr said no to doing it as one piece. I'll be using the tag #Meta Jazz Arkham Intern Therapist if you want to follow it.
Original Note: I'm going to go ahead and apologize for how OOC Bane is in this. It originally was Joker but I couldn't see Jazz tolerating his proximity for more than a single millisecond so Bane it is.
~*~*~
The hardest thing about being a Meta in Gotham was responding appropriately during a Rouge's attack, Jazz mused to herself. Or perhaps that was just the hardest part about being a Meta intern at Arkham while studying psychology at Gotham University. Or maybe it was just her, she considered watching the guards and Dr. Rylie whom she'd been shadowing for the past 2 weeks wide eyed, pale, and shaking as theybstared at Bane behind her. It must just be her, Jazz decided, newbie guard Kyle Jennings was definitely a Meta after all. She should probably give him some tips on hiding his enhanced strength considering how often he broke mugs, door handles, and other delicate items used in daily life.
"Weapons down or I'll snap her skinny little neck." Bane growled out, shaking her slightly for emphasis. She very much doubted that. Liminials were built different than the standard Meta, stronger, faster, better endurance, and senses even if they could mostly appear to be standard humans on the outside. As such, their bones and muscles were much were much denser than regular humans or even Meta humans. Technically, she could be considered "invulnerable" much like the Kryptonians are.
"Back up! Let him through!" Dr. Rylie shouted at the guards. "She's my student! Let him through!" His voice was higher pitched than she could recall hearing it before.
Ah. That was panic.
Jazz sighed involuntarily and glanced over her shoulder at Bane. Why the man had grabbed the only person close to his own height nearby was a mystery to her - no, nevermind, he clearly meant to use her as a shield - but it made looking him in the eye more difficult than necessary.
"Mr. Bane, remove your hands from my person, please." Jazz stated calmly, channeling what Danny called her inner mom as she spoke. "I will give you to one to comply."
Bane looked stunned for a moment then laughed.
"Five."
The laughing continued. Jazz could sense a stir of uncertainty through her colleagues as they looked on.
"Four."
"Did you really think that would work?" Bane snorted out, arms tensing more around her.
"Three." She continued, indifferent to his words from her experiences raising her brother. Once the count down starts you mustn't respond to anything the kids do or say until they comply or the count is done.
"What cab you even do if I don't?" Bane asked darkly breathing directly in her ear. She kept her face expressionless despite the urge to express disgust.
"Two."
"Jasmine..." Kyle whispered halfway across the hall from her looking on with a pained and horrified expression. Gun tilting towards the floor. Sloppy.
"One." She finished and Bane gave a derisive snort.
Then she was moving. Hauling the enormous man up and over her shoulder using the arm that had been wrapped around her neck. Bane hit the cold tile hard enough that the tiles, subfloor, structural supports, and part of the concrete foundation buckled beneath him. His shoulder popped out of joint, his wrist cracked - a hairline fracture by the sound of it - and his breath was punched out of him from the force of impact. She released his arm as soon as his was embedded in the tiles and moved forward. Kneeling over him, support most of her weight on her left foot resting on the broken ground, her right knees pressed firmly across his throat without supporting any of her weight. The position put more strain on her muscles than she would've liked but at least Bane couldn't risk fighting back without crushing his own neck in the process. He could hardly throw her while flat on his back with a mangled arm.
"Now," Jazz began, looking directly into the behemoth's pained eyes. "Do you know what you've done wrong?" She asked like she would have done with Danny as a child.
"Yes, Ma'am." Bane choked out. Jazz heard movement and murmuring behind her. She didn't turn to look.
"What did you do wrong?" She asked. It was important to make sure children correctly understood why they were in trouble after all. There was a long pause as Bane appeared to cast around for the exact right answer as if he feared getting it wrong. A bad habit Danny still uses as well, Jazz thought to herself.
"I tried to hold you hostage," He choked out in a rush, words tumbling over one another as he tried to get them all out. "I scared you coworkers and it was very disrespectful."
So he'd gone for the grab-bag response. It wasn't wrong per sey but it did indicate a past history of abuse. The type of answer given by someone who expected to be harmed or ignored if they gave the "wrong" answer. Danny tended to use that method also and their parents had always been negligent at best.
"And are you going to do it again?" She asked giving him a Look as she did. Bane's eyes widened and he tried to frantically shake his head as much as possible with the pressure on his neck.
"No, Ma'am." He promised fervently.
"Alright then," Jazz said giving him a warm smile. She gestured vaguely towards the guards without turning to look at them. "Kyle here is going to take you to see the nurse and then back to your room then. I'm sure you'll behave for him?"
"Yes, Ma'am. I'll behave." Bane said. Jazz stood slowly asking sure not to put any additional pressure on his neck as she did. Kyle came and stood next to her as the giant of a man slowly pulled himself to his feet then led him away with 5 other guards.
Jazz heaved a sigh. Well, time to find out whether or not she could play all that off as normal, non-Meta human behavior.
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Super Rich Kids
Close my eyes and feel the crash...
I wrote this one on post-its on a trans-continental flight after my phone (where i was re-reading the raven cycle) died. 0/10 plane experience would not recommend but I did manage to entertain myself! And now hopefully you as well!
When Ronan pulled into Monmouth Manufacturing he knew Gansey wouldn’t be there. Adam Parrish was, though, sitting on the steps in the golden afternoon light, bike dumped to the side in dying grass. He didn’t so much as flicker an eyelid when Ronan bootlegged the BMW into an approximation of parking on the far side of the lot, which was fine because that’s how he would have parked the car anyway, whether or not Adam was here.
Ronan was pretty sure that Gansey had arranged a shift system with the other boys, to prevent Ronan from being unaccompanied on the rare occasions of his own absence. The idea of a babysitter should have rankled Ronan, but Adam did not seem particularly invested in his role. Small favors.
As he got out of the car he gave Adam his customary once-over, as brief as it was habitual. You could notice a lot in a single glance, if you were Ronan, glancing at Adam.
Adam was wearing long sleeves (his father? Or just because it was October?) and his faded camo pants, the ones Ronan said made him look like a jingoistic meathead. They had recently acquired a tear in one knee. Not in the stylish, deliberate manner in which Ronan’s own jeans were shredded, but awkwardly, in an L-shape, where they had caught on some jagged edge and given way before even careful Adam had noticed and unhooked himself. The tear gaped open at times, like it was doing now, revealing Adam’s knobby left knee and, worse, a triangle of his brown thigh.
Ronan looked away.
Ronan never allowed himself, even in dreams, to trespass beyond the carefully demarcated boundaries of Adam’s clothes. And Adam was usually helpful in the maintenance of this boundary. Unlike Gansey, who could be found working on his model Henrietta in boxers at all hours of the night, or wandering to and from the shower in a towel, absent-mindedly forgetting his clothes in bathroom or bedroom. Unlike the boys Ronan played tennis with, who stripped down casually in the locker room after practice. Unlike even Ronan himself, who’d never met a shirt he couldn’t rip the sleeves off; Adam was always fully covered.
This summer, foolishly, Ronan had imagined that this might change. Now that the hideous secrets Adam protected with his long sleeves were no longer his alone. But by now he knew what kept those sleeves in place, something that Adam had already understood: that knowing and seeing are two very different things.
For example: this. Ronan knew that Adam, like most people who walked around on earth under their own power, possessed thighs. Two of them, attached in the normal way to other body parts, such as knees and hips. To know this was one thing.
Now that he’d seen it, he couldn’t stop seeing it. The way his knee bent, and the muscle above shifted as Adam made room on the steps for him. Ronan was looking away, out at the familiar, grounding, skid marks on the concrete of Monmouth’s lot, but he could picture in their place with deadly accuracy the hinge of Adam’s knee, the tanned skin of his thigh, scattered with golden-brown hair. He could dream about pressing his face against it.
He picked up a rock and hurled it. It glanced off the side of the soulless suburban and fell anticlimactically into the grass dying by the rear tire. It didn’t help.
Adam shifted next to him, subtly.
“What?” said Ronan. “Impressed?”
“Surprised, more like. I thought you were supposed to be the tennis star.”
“You think you can do better?” Ronan pried another hunk of gravel or concrete out of the dirt and tossed it in his left hand, tauntingly.
“I know I can.”
“But?”
“But,” said Adam, with some hint of exasperation coloring his voice, “I’m not going to sit here chunking rocks at Gansey’s car to prove it. My ego’s not that fragile.” His accent slipped out on chunkin’, not as if Ronan had pissed him off enough to forget to hide it, but as if it was a word he’d never used any other way.
Ronan threw his rock again. This was, if anything, a worse throw than before, and it skittered harmlessly across the suburban’s roof.
Adam made a small but contemptuous noise.
“Don’t give me that shit, man. You know he hates this fucking car.”
“That was for your shitty aim.”
“Come on then.” Ronan hefted another piece of gravel. “Ten points if you knock out his taillight.”
“It costs a hundred and five dollars to replace a taillight on that make and model. Plus tax.”
Ronan’s brief cheer was collapsing again. “I’ll pay you a hundred bucks to bust Dick’s lights.”
Adam blinked slowly, his dusty eyelashes obscuring the contempt in his eyes for a brief moment. “I’ll leave.” (He wouldn’t).
Ronan dropped the rock. Next to him Adam sighed. Abruptly, he put out his hand. “Telephone pole. Six feet from the top.”
Ronan swept back up the rock and dropped it into his hand. Their fingers did not touch. His heart thudded.
Adam tossed the rock once, testing its weight while his gaze, cool and assessing, remained on the telephone pole. It was a splintered, tilting thing, shamed by his attentions. In one smooth, economical movement, he rose to his feet and let the rock fly. His leg went forward, knee jutting out of his clothes, his back curved, and his arm swept around in an arc, fingers scraping at the blue October sky. Ronan didn’t need to turn his head to know if the rock hit—he could see it in the brief hard satisfaction on Adam’s face.
Adam turned back to him, one eyebrow cocked.
“You’re going to have to do better than that if you want to earn that hundred,”
Adam shrugged. The gesture was disinterested, but there was a quirk to his mouth that contradicted it. “I know nothing blew up, but…”
Ronan already had another rock in his hand. “West corner lightbulb. It breaks or it doesn’t count.” Adam rolled his eyes, but turned agreeably to watch Ronan miss.
“Would you like to get your tennis racket?”
“Eat me,” said Ronan. (Maybe).
They traded shots back and forth for a while, calling increasingly specific and complex plays.
“Bullshit. Bullshit.”
“Get the government to pay for some glasses, Parrish, and then come back and try to tell me that wasn’t a fucking bullseye—”
“It wasn’t even close! You—”
“You calling me a liar?” Ronan loomed, and Adam, as usual, was unimpressed.
“Just because you don’t lie doesn’t make you right all the time! Like when you said that quote on Tuesday was Seneca. It doesn’t stop being Martial just because you’ve got a child’s sense of morality—”
“See, right there.” Ronan pointed triumphantly at an invisible scuff mark on the doorsill, marking where his handful of gravel had made impact.
Adam gave it a skeptical glance. His face was faintly flushed from exertion in the cold air, but his eyes were as cool and considering as ever. “What we need,” he said, “is a knife.”
Ronan was not allowed knives.
~
“Are you trying to stab each other in the feet? Why are your shoes off! It’s October!”
“Equal playing field.” Ronan wiggled his toes against the cold asphalt. “Parrish’s shitty knife is no match for my boots.” Over Gansey’s head, Ronan tried to catch Adam’s eye, to share a ‘can you believe him’ sort of look. Adam’s embarrassment over being caught acting irresponsibly meant Ronan could expect the look to be rebuffed, but he couldn’t help himself from trying it anyway.
Adam was bent over, eyes hidden. He carefully dusted off his socked feet one at a time before sliding them back into his shoes, as though the socks or sneakers could look any worse. A little parking lot crud might improve their appearance, actually.
Next to him, Gansey was still fussing. Without the pressure release valve of eye contact with someone who knew Gansey was overreacting, Ronan snapped, “Come off it, man, I’m not going to slit my throat while Parrish watches. He can’t afford that caliber of snuff film.”
Gansey’s concern transformed into revulsion, but underneath it he looked hurt, which was far far worse.
Adam straightened up. “We were just using it to mark where we hit. Honestly, we could have done it tossing a sharpie, but neither of us had one.” He sounded conciliatory, which pissed Ronan off. But Gansey was letting it go, returning the knife to Adam with an apologetic smile. Sorry for the fuss. Sorry for Ronan. Ronan’s bare feet were cold against the asphalt.
“Well? Are you going to throw or not, Parrish?” he said belligerently.
Adam rolled his eyes, but obligingly stooped for gravel and let one fly at Ronan’s open bedroom window, a shot he made easily.
Gansey whistled. “You’ve got quite the arm on you. How come you’re not on the Algionby baseball team?”
Adam shifted his feet, awkwardly.
“Please,” scoffed Ronan, “he’s not a team player.”
Gansey did not let it go. “Bet you’d have a better fastball than both our pitchers.”
There was a pause, during which Adam’s face clearly showed all of the thoughts he was trying to corral into a polite response to Gansey’s unconsidered enthusiasm. Ronan got there first. “Yeah, Parrish, why not hitch your wagon to the star of organized sports, like every other rags to riches wannabe?”
“Ronan!” said Gansey, Ronan’s offensiveness registering where his own had not.
“Hitch my wagon to a star?” Adam was unruffled. “I thought quoting Transcendentalists could get you excommunicated.”
“Who said I know it’s Emerson. It’s a sourceless idiom to those of us who aren’t sad little nerds.”
Adam smirked. The smirk said, I never said Emerson. His words said, “Gansey’s damning me with faint praise. No one’s going pro out of an Algionby sport team. Even tennis.”
“Ouch,” said Ronan, cheerfully. “Hit me where it really hurts. My school pride.”
~
Now that Gansey had arrived, his plans for the day took precedence over noble pastimes such as flipping pocketknives at each other’s feet. His plans involved comparing readings from various instruments and then placing said various instruments in various new locations, all of which were equally arbitrary (to Ronan’s eyes) and inaccessible. Gansey’s plans involved him waiting by the car to monitor the readings while people hiked with antennae to the outermost reaches of the signal. People, in this instance, being Ronan and Adam, Noah having mysteriously and silently fucked off, as he so often did when a job required carrying anything.
Ronan put his head down and trudged. It was brambly here, and slightly damp, and he was beginning to work up the kind of counter-intuitive sweat that appears from working in the cold, the kind that makes you colder later.
As the person leading the hike, custom would dictate that he should catch and hold the long clinging arms of the brambles for the following hiker. This presented a dilemma. Ronan compromised, and set about stomping the multiflora into the ground as he walked. Scarlet hips burst under his feet, invasive and beautiful, spreading their millions of seeds across the damp earth. Noxious weeds.
“It’s too unreliable,” said Adam, into the silence. “Sports. It all depends on… your physical condition.”
“And your condition is shit.”
There was Adam’s ironic smile. “Yes. So.” He shrugged. There was the part they weren’t saying, which was that his physical condition could always get worse. Unexpectedly.
“My dad hates baseball.” Ronan heard himself make the slip—hates and not hated—and a spark of fury burned through him, brief and inconsequential.
“My dad loves it.”
They marched on in silence.
Adam swore as a bramble Ronan had beaten down sprang up again, catching him right across the tear, where his skin was exposed. He bent to unhook it from the camo with deft, deliberate hands. “What?” he said, like he could feel Ronan’s eyes.
Ronan looked away. “Why not the military?” He kicked purposelessly at the bramble and heard Adam sigh. “And don’t tell me you never thought about it. Test scores like yours out in hicksville high school, you must have had recruiters hopping all over you like fleas.”
“Would you believe I had a moral objection?” Adam’s smile was self-deprecating. Ronan studied it.
“No.”
Adam shrugged. It, too, was self-deprecating.
“I think you had a superiority objection. You think you’re too smart for that shit.”
Adam blinked at him. “Do you think I’m wrong?”
Ronan snorted. “Hell no. You can do better than getting blown up in a desert for the United States government.”
The smile, when it came, was small and stunning. “Damned by faint praise again.”
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thoughts on wash's fighting style and his position in pfl because I can (utc because it's really long lol):
wash is very unique among the freelancers for a variety of reasons, one is that he doesn't specialize in one specific area of anything, he's a jack of all trades who is able to fill in for other freelancers if necessary. for example in s9 when york was supposed to be unavailable for lock picking/infiltration duty, carolina immediately went to wash (and we are ignoring that york is not shown to be good at lock picking!) if she trusted wash to fill in for their specialist in one area, I feel it's not a stretch to imagine that he can do so in other areas as well.
need a snipper but north and wyoming aren't available? wash can cover. need someone to get into the enemies' computer systems in place of ct, south, or york? wash can cover. need someone for stealth or reconnaissance in place of florida? wash can cover. etc etc.
wash's combat style reflects that jack of all trades, master of none thing very well too, as the way that he fights is very grounded and pragmatic when compared to the rest of the freelancers. a lot of people like to portray wash as less skilled than the other freelancers, but in truth I believe that wash being able to keep up and compete with the other freelancers despite his lack of dramatic flare is a show of just how competent and skilled of a soldier he is. wash is so good at doing what he does that he doesn't need all that extra bullshit to get the job done. sure, he might not look as Cool and SexyTM as the others while doing it, but completing the mission and surviving to live another day takes precedence over all else.
another way of looking at it is that wash fights in the same way that the odst's do, that is to say that he fights like a human who cannot plow his way through the battlefield in the same way the spartans can. wash's style of fighting is one that employs careful planning and targeted hit and run tactics—this is most obvious in recovery one and s6 whenever he's fighting against the meta.
I also feel it's important to note that wash is not a cqc fighter, he can handle himself if he gets into a cqc situations but his primary weapon is the battle rifle—which is a mid/long range weapon. if I'm being honest wash's way of fighting makes waaaaaaaaay more sense if you look at him not as someone who is trained to primarily fight against other humans, but as someone who is trained to fight against 8ft 2 ton aliens with plasma weapons that can slice through the hulls of UNSC battle cruisers (ships designed to travel through space!!!) like a hot knife cuts through butter and have the technology to raze entire planets to the ground in a matter of minutes.
I also personally believe that wash has the most military experience out of all the freelancers right behind florida, wyoming, and maine (who I hc as a spartan iii). we know that wash did his basic training in the leonis minoris system (a canonical halo system) and that system had two of the three planets glassed by the covenant in 2537, and wash directly references these events in the washed hands interview in the fan guide and the way he says it implies that he likely completed his basic training that same year. now I have some grievances with the timeline given in the book when it comes to the events depicted in the freelancer saga because it's just kinda weird, but everything prior to that bit is actually fine (though I hate the way that they decide to number the timeline lmao).
now in halo canon the human/covenant war ended in 2552, and according to the timeline in the rvb fan guide that was 1 year after alpha was sent to blood gulch. project freelancer is first cleared for funding 7 years BBG (before blood gulch), and recruits the 50 freelancers 5 years BBG. doing some math we can determine that pfl was cleared for funding in the year 2544, and the freelancers are recruited for pfl in 2546. so assuming wash finished his basic training in 2537 that would mean that he was in the military for 9 years before he joined pfl, and while wash is addressed as a corporal (e-4) in the washed hands interview he was most likely demoted to that after he was court martialed, and he was possibly going to be dishonorably discharged from the military because of his disorderly conduct.
using the current standards used by the us marine corps when it comes to rank progression, wash was most likely a sergeant (e-5) who was very close to being promoted to a staff sergeant (e-6). wash as a sergeant would've essentially been the assistant manager/co-leader of the platoon he was in while his staff sergeant was the manager/leader, and that would explain why he was able to even get into an argument with his CO in the first place. I believe wash held a similar position in pfl, as it's kind of implied that he did some management stuff in pfl (talking with internals/upper brass, him feeling comfortable with openly questioning carolina about whether york should be allowed on the sarcophagus heist, and of course he shows the ability to direct and somewhat lead south in recovery one, and him leading church, caboose, and the reds in s6, and him taking charge of the meta in s8).
even if wash wasn't a sergeant as a corporal he would've been in a position to be the leader of a fire team, so basically wash isn't some rookie who had no clue wtf he was doing as many in the fandom like to characterize him; he is an experienced and battle hardened soldier by the time he joins pfl no matter how you look at it.
to put all of that into context, carolina is born 29 years BBG, which would be 2522. so during pfl she's in the 24-28 range and she wouldn't have joined the military until 2540. I actually personally head canon that wash is the same age as carolina, but that he illegally enlisted at 15 because of a crappy home life, but ignoring my head canon and assuming that he joined the military at 18 instead, he would've been born in 2519.
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