3: JOURS DE FORMATION
Le monde à l'extérieur était sombre tandis que Chester errait de nouveau dans son ancienne chambre superposée, la fenêtre commençant à briller avec le lever du soleil. Chester regarda sa couchette insouciante, se couvrit encore soigneusement aux coins, et soupira. Difficile de dormir ces jours-ci. Trop souvent, il rêvait de sa mère. Il n'a pas rêvé du ranch.
Il a été arraché de sa stuporité par le craquage de l'interphone de sa chambre étincelle à la vie. Chester se demandait si c'était censé le réveiller, ou si son mentor savait qu'il était déjà réveillé. L'un ou l'autre semblait être un personnage pour Bruce.
"Chester. Gymnasium. Une cantine. Salle d'entraînement. Cet ordre."
Gymnasium. Chester venait de là - s'il ne pouvait pas dormir, il a théorisé, il pourrait se fatiguer jusqu'à ce qu'il le puisse. Encore une fois, il se demandait si Bruce savait. Encore une fois, ni l'une ni l'autre option ne semblait hors de caractère. Il soupira, et changea son t-shirt avant de se retourner pour quitter la pièce - mais pas avant d'attraper son Stetson, l'enraciner fermement sur sa tête. Il se regarda dans le miroir, hurla une fois, et s'en alla.
- Oui.
Quelques heures plus tard, après le "chauffage" de Chester et le combo petit-déjeuner/brunch/lunch (il s'était trouvé particulièrement affamé après son propre entraînement de nuit et le régime de Bruce matinal), il s'est retrouvé dans la salle d'entraînement - ou dans une salle d'entraînement, du moins, il était sûr que la Justice League en avait plus d'un, compte tenu de leur niveau de retard - et de rencontrer, pour la toute première fois, l'un de ses pairs apparents. Le Rookie, apparemment. Humble, sinon rien d'autre.
Évidemment, cet homme souffrait sous la doctrine de Batman autant que Chester l'était, mais il était évident que les deux d'entre eux ne recevaient pas exactement le même traitement. Chester a étudié son visage, n'est-ce pas le type qui a frappé Metallo? Il regarda vers le bas sa poitrine; muscles fermes, pour être sûr, et protégé sous la couche mince mais forte de sous-amour qui comprenait Chester 'Recruit-Suit', mais un cri loin de l'acier pur de l'adversaire précédent de son camarade.
Batman était hors de la pièce en quelques secondes - comme c'était souvent le cas lorsque Chester a participé à l'entraînement - mais Chester pouvait encore sentir les yeux de Bruce sur son dos, et le « commandant » d'aujourd'hui semblait tout aussi féroce. Sauvage. L'homme avait une sacrée réputation derrière lui, et il a montré dans chaque muscle saillant qui a façonné son corps. Si le passage du temps avait fatigué le justicier vieillissant, il a refusé de le laisser montrer. Il était grand et fier, saluant chaque recrue avant de se tenir en arrière pour les tailler tous. Wildcat regarda Rookie, puis Chester.
-- Très bien, tous les deux, voyons avec quoi je travaille ici, pourquoi ne pas vous deux faire un tour ou deux et ensuite je vais intervenir.
Attends, quoi?Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?
Chester...gulpé, mentalement. Il n'a rien laissé montrer dans son comportement alors qu'il a enlevé son Stetson, soigneusement placé sur un banc voisin, avant de suivre Rookie au centre de la pièce. Il a pensé à son armure, à la poitrine de Metallo, puis à sa propre poitrine, puis il a regardé les bras de Rookie, les mains en curling et sans courbure pendant qu'il échauffait les poings et prenait position, prêt à s'engager. Chester a réagi avec une position de garde - il pensait essayer de minimiser les dommages à lui-même, plutôt que d'attaquer un homme qui pourrait prendre du titane vivant. Apparemment, Rookie pensait beaucoup dans le même sens.
"Hé, euh... ne prenez pas ça de la mauvaise façon, mais... à quel point êtes-vous dur, exactement?" Il lui a demandé d'ouvrir les mains et de frapper, bien qu'étant toujours en position "Parce qu'il y a peut-être quelques... règles de base... nous voulons mettre en place avant de faire cela."
Chester a hurlé soigneusement. "Les règles générales semblent... Sensibles." Il a dit lentement, en pensant à la meilleure façon d'expliquer la situation. "Je ne suis ni méta, ni extraterrestre, ni paranormal, alors ne me peignez pas à travers le mur arrière. À part ça, n'endommagez pas le chapeau, et, euh... faites de votre mieux." Il sourit légèrement avant de tomber en position - et puis, tout comme Rookie est retombé dans sa position, Chester s'élança vers l'avant. Sparring, il a souvent trouvé, était amusant; sparring avec un méta?
C'était comme si la Justice League l'accueillait vraiment.
W H I P L A S HCHESTER ARGYLE // JULY, 1997 (20) // GADGETEERCOLLECTED // FRIENDLY // LEVEL // RESERVED // GOOD-HEARTED
▼ B I O G R A P H Y:Born and raised in Texas, his mother left his father for reasons Chester never came to understand, and his father provided for them both with a small cattle business. Chester spent his childhood and adolescent years as his father's ranch-hand, learning how to rear cattle, ride horses, crack whips, and sling lassos. His time with the herds taught him to be aware of what surrounded him, lest he caught in a sudden stampede under panicked bovine; his time breaking in young horses taught him sharp reflexes, lest he misjudge a particularly irkful stallion and find himself on the wrong end of a back-hoof. His father taught him how to fight those that would steal from their land, but also how to reason with the desperate and thirsty. Chester grew up strong and noble, with compassion for man and animal alike - but he always missed his mother.
When Chester turned 18, his father revealed to him an ongoing correspondence with his absent mother; several states away, in the city of Gotham. Chester was on a plane a week later.
He found his mother, and she was just as surprised to see him as he was to see her; she was run-down, under-the-thumb, a country-gal who'd come to the big city with stars in her eyes and been quickly taken advantage of. She suffered addiction, depression, panic disorder, trapped in a spiral of self-abuse and emotional turmoil. A week after she had met with Chester, learning of the son and father she had left behind, her mind broke under the weight of everything she had thrown away in youthful, arrogant naivety, and she took her own life, her body discovered by the son that could have been her redemption. Chester drowned in his sorrow and rage, turning to the streets to find those that had mulched a young, hopeful girl into more gray meat for their corruption.
They found him first, and had it not been for Gotham's own dark saviour, Chester would have reunited with his mother the same night she had left him. Batman rescued Chester, and saw in him a familiar anger. With nowhere or no one else to go to, Chester was put under the training of Batman - and the rest, as they say, is history.
▼ A T T R I B U T E S://ABILITIES & SKILLS
◼ TEXTAKINESIS | Due to his background and the skills taught to him in his young life, Chester has been supplied with large pieces and strips of an advanced, current-rigged fabric by Bruce Wayne, AKA The Batman, that are wired up to transmitters and receivers along extended gauntlets. These gauntlets respond to Chester's muscle movements and twitches, activating electrical signals along the fabric that allows him to use them as extended whips, snares, and semi-prehensile limbs.
◼ PHYSICAL TRAINING | Due to his childhood and adolescence on his father's ranch, rolling straight into intensive training with Batman and the Justice League, Chester has a respectable set of physical capabilities - nothing enhanced or super-human, but certainly above the average 19 year old when it comes to stamina, strength, and agility.
//WEAKNESSES
◼ HOMO SAPIEN | While Chester is trained well - with and without his equipment - without his gauntlets he has no abilities, and instead has to rely on fight or flight. Given most of the Justice League's foes, flight is usually the only realistic option. 
◼ LIMITED DEFENSE | Chester's gauntlets also don't offer him in the way of defensive capabilities, as fabric - supplied by Batman or not - is not often bulletproof, and the League's enemies are usually hitting harder than bullets. Instead, Chester must rely on his well-trained reflexes and spatial awareness to evade and debilitate his enemies before they have the chance to put him down for good.
▼ E V O L U T I O N:Chester comes to the League under the tutelage and sponsorship of Batman, a man who has seen in him a well-intentioned desire to do good despite lacking the extraordinary qualities of many of his teammates. As a result, Chester can be intimidated by the relative power-skew of the Justice League, and how, on the lower-end of the scale, his contributions and membership may not be as important or necessary as others. He's also very new to the League, and as a naturally reserved person anyway, finds himself rather taken aback among a large team of supernaturals and meta-humans. As he trains with the League, I'd like Chester to form some real bonds with other team members and open himself up, and learn more about what he and his gauntlets are capable of, as well as developing supporting secondary abilities, training, or tech, that will widen his move-set and what he's capable of out in the field.
▼ C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:◼ HORSE-RIDING | Chester enjoys open-plain horse-riding as his ultimate method of centering himself, however difficult such an activity may be in the thriving hub of Metropolis.
◼ KEEPSAKE | Owns and often wears an authentic Stetson passed down to him by his father, which keeps him reminded of his roots. It fits him well, but does make him stick out as a Ranch-boy in the big-city somewhat.
▼ S A M P L E P O S T:
Floorboards groaned underfoot as the stairwell took Chester's weight one step at a time. Four stories of cramped, cheap apartments marketed as 'charactered and cozy' when they really meant 'falling apart and too small for comfort'. These were the faux-slums, the pseudo-ghetto; bulk-bought nearly-rooms not much better than hovels, rented on at 300% profit to those whose income was 'taxed' by the same people they used it to pay rent to. Such was Gotham; double-traps and snared funnels. Chester thought of this kind of housing as the urban equivalent of the bogs that lay on the outskirts of the city, a sickening, muddy sinkhole that pulled you in faster the more you tried to claw out. His mother was one of those lost travellers, drowned in the stench of the quagmire. Such was Gotham City, and the viscous tar that clung to its underbelly.
He reached the top of the stairs and paused, weight poised on one leg as he rolled his wrists, warming up the electrical receptors in his gauntlets and the great lengths of fabric wrapped around his arms, like he got caught short halfway through a modern-day embalming. There was no noise save the sound of the house settling back into itself and the muffled hum of an engine passing by in the street outside; headlights flashed through a window at the end of the communal hallway and Chester ducked low, lest his shadow be cast where it needn't. He creeped forward, pushing himself against the wall as he kept his ears pricked - and then, as he approached the third apartment along, he heard what he had been waiting to hear: low, hushed whispers, and the fumbling of large objects. Something was set down, and to Chester it sounded like a lid was cracked open - and then there was the distinct metallic clinking of guns being assembled and racked. Okay, thought Chester, we're skipping introductions, obviously.
The door gave out an almighty wrenching sound as the old, brittle hinges and wood panels splintered and gave way beneath Chester's boot, slamming inwards and shocking the men inside into panicked shouts as they sprung up from their various, but all seated, positions. Rookie error, was the only thought that rushed into Chester's mind, though it came in Bruce's gruff, unimpressed monotone rather than his own internal dialogue; Chester could only amusedly imagine what thoughts came into his opponents mind as he lashed his arms ferociously, the fabric unraveling perfectly as a length of each arm whipped through the air to snare the wrists on the gun-hands of two of the three men - a sharp pull and they both tumbled, weapons clattering uselessly to the ground as Chester loosed their arms and lashed again to whip the cheek of the third man, who shouted in pain and dropped his weapon to clutch his now-split face in pain. Chester rushed forward and brought up his leg into the nose of the closest man, hearing and feeling the crunch of the shattered cartilage and cracked forehead through his kneecap, and then swivelling and snaring the leg of the other who had begun to scramble for his fallen gun; a yank and he tipped forward, landing badly on his shoulder, which only made Chester's foot hurt all the more when he brought it down on the same shoulder, another sickening crack filling the room.
There was a snap and the smell of gunpowder and hot metal, and Chester felt his torso explode in electrical spasms as the third man, still clutching his bleeding cheek in one hand, had found his pistol and unloaded in the direction of their assailant; four bullets fired, three missed, but one had met its mark and Chester hit the ground hard, winded by the fall and his back in agony as lightning bursts ran up and down, his arms spasming out of control as the room and the men within it froze and slowly blinked away, pixel-by-pixel. Chester groaned, part frustration, part disappointment, mostly pain, and rolled himself over as the electrical pain simulator in his outfit ceased its punishment. He lay on his back, panting and aching, and prepared himself for his own lashing as he heard heavy boots walk across the now-empty room, an imposing shadow being cast over his prone form as his back still tingled.
"Rookie error," came Batman's gruff, harsh voice as he leveled his most common point of criticism against Chester once again. "Three opponents. Three points of initiation. Three marks to take down. Forget one, and that's the one that kills you."
Chester sat up, his arms shaky. "I thought he was out of commission long enough to take care of the other tw-" he was cut off without even a gesture from Bruce. Bruce didn't need to tell you when you needed to shut up; you just knew. The man had a presence that way.
"You were wrong, and that got you killed. Run it again. Scenario 8-C." Batman marched away, and Chester pulled himself to his feet. He had to do better.