Blue Beetle: Prototype

Blue Beetle: Prototype

• We begin with a flashback to horrible unrest in a South American country with a terrifying regime. There is chaos in the streets. We see a family of four with a young boy and girl flee into their house for safety. A trio of armed militants follow inside and are about to kill them all. Just then, one of them whispers something to another militia solider and they laugh. They throw a gun to the small boy and order him to kill his family or they will kill his family, starting with him first. The terrified boy then mows down his family in a barrage of machine gun fire. The boy is then taken by the militia and indoctrinated as a child soldier. Years later, we see he is an exceptional hired militant. He also does not speak. This boy, turned living weapon, is known as Carapax. In the present day, he is bought through a black market exchange and purchased for use by Victoria Kord.

• Ted Kord is in his lab working while rapping along to a song like a dork. He is seen doing experiments on the Blue Beetle’s scarab from World War One. Ted runs a test trying to tap into the scarab and it doesn’t go well, causing an electrical impulse that fries the lab. His sister, Victoria, rushes into the room to scold him. You see, Ted and Victoria Kord were gifted ownership over their father’s company when he passed away. Ted is the tech genius that invents amazing gadgets and Victoria is the cutthroat businesswoman. Victoria is berating Ted about the need for them to get the scarab working so that they can secure the newly open military weapons contract after Hector Hammond went crazy from being possessed by Paralax. Ted says he has tried everything and still can’t get it to work like it did decades prior. Victoria then orders him to go talk to the original Blue Beetle, Dan Garrett, once more.

• Ted leaves and the coast is clear for Victoria to have her secret shady people wheel in the large cybernetic exosuit that she had been working on in secret. She filled it with her brother’s inventions but cranked them up to be lethal. The design is Kord tech trying to emulate the scarab’s advanced mechanics. Victoria’s goal is to attempt to download the software from the scarab into this suit since they can’t get the scarab’s hardware to work. Victoria then reveals that Carapax will be the first soldier to wear what she is hoping will be the future of armed warfare. 

• In Dan Garrett’s quaint apartment, we see him and Ted talking. Dan assures Ted that he has already been told everything about the scarab that he knows. Dan was an archeologist who discovered the device in ancient Egypt. It attached itself to Dan’s body and gave him amazing abilities like making nearly any weapon or piece of technology Dan could imagine. During a mission with the Freedom Fighters, Dan got injured and the scarab was extremely damaged. It detached itself from Dan’s body and never worked for him again. Dan says that he is lucky that it stopped working because it gave him an excuse to get out of the hero business. Ted agrees that the hero business is not what he is looking for either, but still thinks the scarab can do his country some good. As a joke, Dan says that his great-grandchildren always tell him to turn his computer off and back on again whenever it is being fussy. Ted then takes a moment and says that is a brilliant idea. He rushed off to his lab to attempt to reboot the scarab.

• While Ted was meeting with Dan, Victoria then has her people attempt to download the scarab’s software into Carapax’s exosuit. The download begins and you hear Carapax crying in agony as it happens. After the download, Carapax steps out of the chamber and he robotically says, “mission objective: weaken human defenses.” Carapax forms a blade out of the suit and stabs Victoria to death. He then continues to go on a brutal rampage through Kord Industries. He then seeks out his new objective, exterminate human leaders in positions of power.

• Ted gets back to his lab and discovers the unimaginable carnage that unfolded. He then finds his dead sister and can’t believe his eyes. He is heartbroken. Ted sees that the scarab is still there but a cord is connected to it. He checks the security camera footage and sees what happened. Ted also realizes this monster is still out there! Ted knows that law enforcement won’t be capable enough to destroy this enemy and he has no time or ability to call for a costumed superhero to help. With no other options, he reluctantly puts together the best gadgets he has made for the company, as well as an updated Blue Beetle suit he made as an homage to honor Dan. He never planned on using this gear himself, but there he stands, the new Blue Beetle. Ted gets into the novelty beetle ship and tracks the energy signature of the scarab to find carapax.

• Ted finds Carapax outside of the home of a senator of Florida. Carapax is on a path to break in and kill the senator with his family home too. Blue Beetle lands in front of Carapax and hits him with a barrage of Kord tech devices. Unfortunately, Carapax has countermeasures for everything that Ted throws at him. The suit is based on Ted’s designs after all. Carapax throws Ted behind him and breaks through the door, uncovering the trembling family. Ted manages to fire one perfectly aimed high-amplified emp right at the base of the suit’s brain stem. This action destroys the neural link Carapax has with his machine and gives Carapax back full control. Carapax then realizes what is going on and kills himself to atone for the actions he brought to the innocents. Ted makes sure that the man and his family are safe. The senator and his family thank Blue Beetle and tell them that they can’t believe they were blessed with a superhero like him. 

• Ted now has no family and returns back to his lab after Victoria’s funeral. Ted now owns the totality of Kord Industries but doesn’t want to. He is on the phone with business mogul, Maxwell Lord about selling him Victoria’s shares of the company. Looking deeper into the binary code of the scarab, Ted is able to decode what the software was truly designed to do. The scarab’s primary directive is apparently to weaken Earth’s defenses for the invasion. Ted isn’t sure what to make of this but swears to keep it from falling into the hands of anyone besides himself. He locks it away for good and will delete all research associated with it.