Anyone hungry for a blue beetle x witch hat atelier au? (Oh god, click for quality. TUMBLR WHY DID YOU CRUNCH IT SO MUCHAAAAAA)
Ok so we can all blame @maybe-its-kris for me making this au, since I watched the show with them, but also they were the person who informed me that Khaji could be an evil sentient hat in this au. Which is like,,,, the most interesting thing about this au, so thank you Kris! uwu
This au is truly barebones tbh but there’s already sm I wanna talk about. Like,,, designing the clothes was so cool cuz in WHA the entire point of having a witch’s clothes very long and flow-y is because they need to hide their hands when they’re drawing spells. So it was actually really fun trying to style the clothes for Jaime -which was especially surprising since designing clothes is normally something I really struggle with.
I also wanna talk about the fact that Coco and Jaime actually have many similar story points in their respective narratives. Like; being thrown into the middle of a conflict that previously they had no stakes in, while also getting access to powers that weren’t there before ✅. The bad guys are trying to convert The Character to join their side ✅. A major sense of imposter syndrome which frames a lot of the early story ✅. Both being a VERY kind and considerate character that fear what they’re capable of ✅.
Obviously BB and WHA stories are nothing alike when it comes to the actual contents, of course. But to no one’s surprise, I actually really liked Coco in the anime because she reminded me a lot of Jaime XD
Anyway! A bit of info for the actual au;
Ted is a magical engineer and inventor. His projects are mostly clockwork-like mechanisms (and he prides himself on the fact that he can create many great things without magic), but he uses magic to push the boundaries of what simple clockwork can do. He dabbled a bit in automation, as well as carpentry (creating things like magic clocks that can tell the time, temperature and weather, or things like a small cabinet that actually has a massive pantry inside of it), but truly his ‘work’ is whatever commission he gets next.
Unknown to the wider public, Ted was in possession of something he really shouldn’t have had -but he inherited it from his mentor! So surely he cannot be blamed for keeping it (this argument would not hold up in court if Ted ever had to explain himself lol). At it’s surface, the object was an unassuming pointed cap. Metallic and dark -but otherwise uninteresting. Even so through careful testing Ted could easily pick up on the concerning magic that would ebb off it. Still, he kept it locked in his basement behind two normal doors, and three magic ones (honestly this level of security was only to make sure no one could know he had this contraband).
He lives with (his boyfriend) Booster, who is a witch who could be described best as a showman. Michael doesn’t really put himself in a box with any labels, but one things for sure; he LOVES putting on a show to anyone who will watch. And sure, a lot of that comes for his want to have attention, but through time he learnt to savour the feeling he got when he saw how happy his magic would make ordinary people.
Neither Ted nor Michael had had an apprentice before Jaime, and they weren’t planning to take on an apprentice for atleast a decade. It was safe to say that the entire fiasco with the hat escaping then having to take this child in and (forcibly) make him an apprentice, caught them off guard.
Ok so I should talk about Jaime. Jaime lives with his family in the countryside, off the beaten path and in the forest. His mother was an apothecary who worked in the nearest town for most the day, and Jaime had spent a lot of time gathering herbs and medicine’s in the forest for his mother -even at a young age. Unfortunately, it was on one of those days where he was in the forest gathering when he’s caught by Khaji.
He’s like,,,,,,, idk 12 maybe in this au?? I know he’s young to fit into the universe setting better.
Obviously Jaime is a non-witch, meaning before Khaji bonded to him and Ted took him in, Jaime had absolutely no idea that magic could be drawn. That’s another reason Ted felt pressured to take Jaime, as he couldn’t just let the kid run about unsupervised while an evil hat talked in his ear trying to get Jaime to do (probably unethical) magic.
Funnily enough when Jaime learned about the fact that anyone could do magic, he genuinely couldn’t care less about it. He never wanted to do magic, and if people told him not to spill the secret -he promised he’d keep his mouth shut so long as he was allowed to go home. But of course the situation wasn’t that simple.
As for Khaji (forgive me, I have only seen the anime so I’m gonna be making a load of stuff up at this point which is more closely going to resemble DC than WHA, and it might contradict the manga. I have no idea), he’s an old artificial entity that was created by a brimmed cap from a time long passed. Khaji was originally meant to be only for infiltration, as he could control his host and mimic their personality perfectly -but even when he was created he was defective. The brimmed cap that created him tossed him aside, put him in a metaphorical/non physical prison while they used other sentient caps that weren’t defective. When Khaji’s creator was bested in battle, any sentient cap was destroyed along with them. Except the only cap that had been left behind to rot, that went completely unnoticed in it’s motionless form.
It is eons later when Ted’s mentor find Khaji, and immediately he can sense something off about the cap. Through testing on that prison holding Khaji back, it was gradually weakened just enough for him to reclaim some sense of movement and influence. Once Ted’s mentor realised he’d messed up big time, he constructed a cell of his own creation to keep Khaji at bay.
It was only through unfortunate luck that a long time later something eventually fell over and broke the seal, letting Khaji take the opportunity to run and escape.
Khaji doesn’t like his creator. Nor does he like the other brimmed caps. Or the pointed caps. Or humans in general. He simple is. And doesn’t like anything he isn’t.
Saying that, he really doesn’t like Ted. He dislikes Booster the same amount he dislikes everyone else, but he DESPISES Ted with a passion he wasn’t aware he was capable of.
He tries and tries to convince Jaime to hate Ted too, and as easy as that should be considering Jaime was taken by Ted -Jaime knows full well this only happened because of Khaji, and thus he prefers Ted over Khaji easily. Hell, Jaime would voluntarily go out of his way to interact with Ted just because it would annoy Khaji.
Another little tidbit about Khaji is that he has an affinity for the stars and space within his magic. He comes from a very different time in the magical world, and he was ‘coded’ to know every spell his creator knew. A lot of his go-to spells are to do with things like gravity, fusion, getting to and maintaining orbit, sustaining life outside of earth’s atmosphere etc. It’s actually pretty science-y compared to other magic spells, because it already relies on the laws of physics to do most of the heavy lifting.
On the bright side of this entire situation, Khaji finds out that Jaime has always been fascinated by the stars, even if he never knew what they really were. So in some quiet moments Jaime asks him about the stars, to which Khaji finds himself just rambling on about elements, physics and space.
It’s the only moments in both of their lives that just simply feel… peaceful.
ANYWAY! So that’s the au so far. I chucked the noodles that make up my mind on the table for you to eat and if it looks nonsensical I am sorry. I am tired. My brainworms do be worming. Worm worm worm worm worm wiggle wiggle wiggle worm yeeeee. If anyone has any ideas, I am all ears. I haven’t made any solid plot points after the origin and context -like I say this is a very simple au so far.
