maskormenacelogs

WHO: Kaidan & Jaime
WHERE: Misc Training Area
WHEN: 3rd week of November
WHAT: Jaime has requested that the cool space marine help him with his self-defense in case the power nullifying collars rear their ugly heads again... but he feels too guilty about asking for help without telling Kaidan what it's for. This is why you can never keep your secret identity, Jaime...!
WARNINGS: PROBABLY NOTHING they're pretty wholesome.

When Jaime had asked Kaidan for self-defense lessons, he knew that he was asking Kaidan to take time out of his busy schedule to help him, and as such, in their first few lessons, he had remained attentive and focused, scarcely uttering a word of complaint no matter how tedious the task. He hadn't been nearly as good a student to Peacemaker, but that had been before he knew how easily his powers could be kept in check. He was no slouch when it came to sparring - he had been going through training back home, after all - but he had been woefully lacking in the basics.

He wasn't sure if Kaidan noticed that he knew an alarming amount of dirty street fighting or not, but it wasn't anything he cared to conceal. Peacemaker's methods of fighting were simple and straight to the point, focusing on facing down opponents that were bigger and stronger than you, but that shouldn't mean too much if you knew the right way to fight. Anyone who prized the art of the fair fight would be frankly shocked at the lessons that Jaime had already learned, but then, anyone who prized the art of the fair fight likely hadn't been in any real fights to begin with.

Regardless of what Kaidan was teaching him, Jaime did his level best to soak it up like a sponge. There was only one problem: he hadn't been truly honest about what he had wanted it for. His request had been an innocuous one, and there was no denying that his intentions were good, but the more he became aware of the fact that Kaidan probably had better things to do, the guiltier he felt for not telling the truth. Who knew if Kaidan would approve of what he was doing out there? If he knew, would he still even continue to teach him?

With these questions weighing on him, his demeanor during this little training session had shifted. He was distracted and fidgety, his feet dragging almost as much as his response time was. Eventually, he took a step back and shook his head, motioning for a time-out. He wished that he at least knew what Kaidan's perspective on the vigilante game was, but he knew that deceiving him for any longer just wasn't the right thing to do.

He had made up his mind.

"Um... Kaidan?"

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"So, wait -- there's more than one Spectre? There's a bunch of separate Spectres out there, and you all get to do your own thing?"

Intergalactic politics, Jaime was beginning to see, were rather beyond him. He wasn't sure how politics worked within a single state, let alone a country, let alone a world, and just the thought of trying to wrangle entire planets into something even resembling order was enough to give him a headache. It wasn't an enviable job, but he was certain that there were those out there chomping at the bit to take it.

Not him. How the heck did Green Lanterns do it?

"Well, yeah? How else would Shepard and I both be Spectres?" he asked, his tone asking why that wouldn't be obvious, before he reeled himself back, and waved a hand. "Sorry, I guess, I'm used to people just...knowing how things are."

It was easy to forget that some people didn't understand the state of the galaxy, or what a spectre was, or biotics, or any of the things that were normal to him, that might not be normal to other people. He sometimes forgot that, when he started to talk about things at home. People didn't know about Mass Effect drives, let alone the multitude of other things that they had to deal with.

"It's... we're not singular. There are agents everywhere, and most of them are from the other council races. We all do what we have to, but we've got...our own kind of code of how things get done."

"You could have been the guy who came after him," Jaime pointed out. "Nothing saying that he continued being a Spectre."

That was what he figured had happened, anyway. Shepard could move onto other titles, though he hadn't the faintest idea as to what came after 'Spectre' - or, perhaps, he was more comfortable moving on to being a regular old Commander. The thing about people in the military was that sometimes, they moved on.

"This is all just a little bigger than what I'm used to."

A little.

"We've got intergalactic peacekeepers too, but we don't have a whole lot to do with them on Earth."

"Really?" he was almost surprised. "I mean, they didn't do much on earth at any point, but they don't tend to deal so much with actual homeworlds." He didn't think he'd heard much of them on Thessia or Palavan either. Then again, Jaime had a point. What if Earth was just...weird? He didn't know, but it was something to think about, and think he did.

"What are they like, where you come from?"

He added, actually curious. He didn't think they had it, even though he was starting to figure out that Jaime's world was a bit...different compared to what other people from the past dealt with.

"Like I said, I don't really know all that much."

They attacked him, more often than not, and then they hung out with them, but somehow, he felt that Guy Gardner was not the Green Lantern Corps best representative. He doubted the whole lot were like Guy, or else not a lot would get done.

"They're called the Green Lantern Corps. Basically, they've got the universe separated into sectors, and someone from the planets in each sector gets chosen to become a Green Lantern. They all answer to some guys from... Oa, I think it's called? I dunno what their deal is." Jaime shrugged. "When they're on Earth, there's usually one hanging out on the League, but we usually only see the human GLs hanging around. The rest of the time, they're busy handling..." He waved one hand, expressively. "Space. Which I try to stay out of."

Space sucked.

"Huh," he mentioned, blinking slowly while he tried to make sense of the whole thing. Sometimes, he wondered if the way that different worlds operated was as alien to him as his was to theirs. Without the context, it was like he was speaking gibberish, and talking about things that Kaidan didn't understand in the slightest.

It was alright, of course, but that just meant that he was as in the dark as Jaime was for his world. GLs didn't make that much sense, but... he at least got the basics. He smiled, slightly, his head dipped slightly.

"So, like space cops?" He paused, even so.

"I didn't know you've actually been to space, actually. You didn't like it?" it was odd, actually. Remembering Jaime's dream, or the Jaime he'd seen in a dream, maybe he wouldn't be so surprised at floating in the abyss, for that reason alone.

"Yep. They're space cops. Just, like, mega-powerful space cops; they got the whole flight-strength-speed package going for them too."

If there was one thing that anyone would notice about Jaime's world - superheroes aside - it was that it was home to the obscenely powerful and their various enemies. It wasn't exactly usual to see someone hoisting a house above their head, but unlike so many worlds he had heard of, it wasn't enough to make anyone scoff in disbelief. In a world that housed the exceptional, the exceptional had to, by necessity, become commonplace.

Which, quite frankly, meant a lot of paperwork.

"I've only been a few times, when I had to go. I can breathe in space, so technically, it's not a problem." He grimaced. "I'm just not a huge fan."

"You can breathe in space?" his voice was surprised, a little flabbergasted. It wasn't the kind of thing he'd ever thought he'd hear, considering space was...a vacuum. "How does that work? There's no air so..."

It's almost rueful, the grimace on his face. "I have to admit, I know some people that could have used that at one point..."

That was probably a bit morbid, actually. Maybe he should've kept his mouth shut.

Actually, he really should have.

"Oh." Jaime winced, immediately feeling mildly guilty about being so sore about being stuck up there in space. At least he didn't suffocate to death out there, or -- oh, please let those cartoons about your head exploding not be true. "Sorry. If I knew the ins and outs of it, I'd tell you. It's just the suit."

Half the time, that was the explanation. The suit did it. Jaime was just a helpful conduit of more useful technology than anyone else feasibly had, and a marvelously naggy leash to the Scarab. That was half of why he needed the training; he wanted to make sure that he had some sort of inherent skill that had nothing to do with what was fused to his spine.

"I think it produces its own oxygen, or it just makes sure that I don't need it."

Was Khaji modifying his body to do something funky every time he took off into space? He wasn't sure. Then again, did he really want to know...?

"Huh," he said, again a little bewildered. Honestly, that sort of thing was enough to make him feel... pretty out of place -- again. He was starting to realize that maybe while biotics were great in his universe, they could use people like Jaime or his Green Lanterns to help out when things were tough.

Biotics didn't do much to reapers, but he suspected that things like that could have done a lot more. What if suffocating in space wasn't a concern, because your suit could produce air?

It was a lot to think about, for the Major. It wasn't like he was a scientist, so he couldn't actually... use the information here to solve problems from home -- but it was something to think about. Maybe wish for something better for home, so they could...actually stand a fighting chance.

"Anyway, you want to -- Why don't we call it a day here? We can pick things up next time."

"Yeah. That sounds good."

They'd do a proper training session again sometime soon, Jaime thought. For now, it felt like an enormous weight had just lifted from his shoulders. He should have known that Kaidan would have been all right with it, but the strain of not being truthful with him had begun to wear on him, little by little.

"Thanks for hearing me out, Kaidan. I'll see you later," he said, grabbing his bag and heading out the door.

That had gone well. When it came to the people he told his secret ID to, he had chosen good people. Unflappable people too, but that just kept him from being too insulted when people remarked on their surprise that he of all people took up the superhero fight.

CLOSED

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