The Scarab
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Real Identity: Not Applicable
Appearances: Happy New Year, Alienated, Salvage, Beneath, Darkest, Before The Dawn, Cornered, True Colors, The Fix, Runaways, War, Complications, The Hunt, Intervention, Summit, Endgame, Princes All, Away Mission, Illusion of Control, First Impressions, Elder Wisdom, Into the Breach, Nevermore, and Death and Rebirth
Appearances (Comics): Players Chapter One, Players Chapter Two, Players Chapter Three, Players Chapter Four, Players Chapter Five, Players Chapter Six, Foreign Affairs, Metallic Aftertaste, and Last Rights
Powers/Skills: Armor and Ability Bestowal
Voiced By: Eric Lopez
The Scarab is a scarab-shaped device equipped with an artificial intelligence by the Reach. Blue Scarabs are for advance scouts and Black Scarabs are for warriors. 4000 years ago, the Scarab was sent to Earth. It was put off-mode after it was exposed to a Bialyan magic ritual. In 1939, Dan Garrett discovered the Scarab and assumed it was a mystic artifact. The Scarab fused to Garrett and he used it to become the first Blue Beetle. After Garrett passed away, the Scarab was left to his protege Ted Kord. Kord realized the Scarab was alien technology and locked it away. Many of Kord's peers believed he built the Scarab but the mysterious technology was actually an advance operative of the Reach. During an explosion at Kord Industries in El Paso set off by a battle between Sportsmaster, Deathstroke and Blue Beetle, the Scarab was shot out into the headquarters parking lot. Kord suspected the Light wanted the Scarab in play and paid the ultimate price to stop them from stealing it.
A teenager named Jaime Reyes stumbled on it while taking a short cut through the lot. It immediately bonded with him and the third Blue Beetle was born. The Scarab generated a durable armor for Reyes and allowed for the creation of various tools and weapons such as a sonic cannon, glider wings, battering ram, staple gun, voice analyzer, and lock pick. The Scarab is also able to translate other alien languages, even Krolotean. The intelligence and Reyes often speak with each other, leaving his comrades confused since they don't know as much about the Scarab. The Scarab is rather pragmatic and has no aversions to more lethal strategies in order to achieve an objective.
The Scarab was able to generate a frequency capable of neutralizing the Collector of World's attack. However, in a mission against Intergang, the Scarab was unable to scan technology of Apokoliptian design and was scrambled by an Apokoliptian frequency. On March 23rd, Scarab took control of the Blue Beetle armor, and Reyes as result, and attacked Kaldur'ahm. However, Kaldur'ahm's mystic energy and Tigress' sedative was enough to take the Scarab off line. On March 30th, a Reach Scientist concluded the Scarab's memory files were corrupted and the only recoverable data was from the last eight months. The Scientist attempted to assess the cause of the Scarab's crash before performing a reboot and forcing it to operate on-mode. However, a reboot would have killed Jaime Reyes. Impulse freed Reyes and granted the Scarab full control again to combat the Black Beetle. On April 7th, the Atom and Bumblebee went into Reyes and attempted to remove the Scarab. However, the Scarab generated antibodies and forced them to abandon the procedure. The antibodies then healed the damage done by the duo.
Blue Beetle had Green Beetle to use his shape shifting powers to silence the Scarab and give Reyes full control despite the risk of death. It was secretly put back on-mode. On June 14th, Batgirl, Impulse, Rocket, and Zatanna ambushed Blue Beetle in El Paso and took him to an ancient Bialyan temple. The Scarab was unable to escape from a combination of a containment field generated by Alien Cooperative technology reinforced by Earth magic. Zatanna summoned the goddess Isis and cast a spell that placed the Scarab of both Blue Beetle and Green Beetle back off-mode. The Scarab admitted to Reyes it preferred the partnership with him over being a slave to the Reach. On June 20th, Green Beetle interfaced with Black Beetle to reset his Scarab but Black Beetle in turn destroyed Green Beetle's. Blue Beetle managed to destroy Black Beetle's Scarab in similar fashion.
On November 22nd Team Year Eight, Scarab suggested it could stop Count Vertigo by blowing his vehicle out of the sky. Reyes yelled at it not to do that because the goal was saving Queen Perdita Vladek without killing her. Scarab quibbled it would help when he specified such things. He retorted it was implied. Traci Thurston deduced Scarab wanted to blow up the helicopter and used her bad luck magic to force a landing. Scarab claimed it could have taken out the fuel line with a precision attack. Reyes called him the king of overkill and pointed out it never suggested precision. Inside the Taos Pueblo, Scarab stated Reyes did not make sense and questioned why he hovered one meter above the ground. Reyes thought he was a hundred feet up. Scarab informed him his visual input did not match with its site-mapping of the area. Beetle realized Vertigo was somehow using illusions on them. They encountered Joe Henchy but he was unaffected by Bart Allen's super speed punches. Scarab confirmed it detected one heat signature.
The culprits turned out to be Psimon and Devastation. They fought the rest of Onslaught back at the Harvest Festival at the Taos Meta-Human Youth Center. Beetle wanted to deal with the team's Father Box so no more Boom Tubes could be opened. Scarab prepare a precision attack to destroy it but Beetle objected on the grounds Father Boxes were living machines and good guys don't kill. Scarab mused there was no pleasing him. On December 7th, Scarab confirmed the ships in Brooklyn were Reach in origin. They managed to neutralize the Warbugs but the main ship arrived soon after. Scarab sensed it lock on their position so Beetle had the others take cover behind a Warbug since it would not target Reach technology when on autopilot. Scarab informed Beetle the ship could only shut down from the inside. On January 25th Team Year Nine, during the Outsiders's search of Goode World Studios Building 16, Scarab confirmed Kid Flash was incorrect about the device they found then stated it was Apokoliptian in origin and not compatible. Beetle had a feeling he would be hearing "not compatible" a lot that night. The team was boomed into a X-Pit. Scarab shouted it was not compatible and shut down, leaving Jaime Reyes exposed to the pit. After they were returned to the building, Scarab recovered and armored Reyes.
On November 11th Team Year Ten, Blue Beetle became frustrated with the seemingly endless swarm of Lex-Bots coming out of the Lexcorp Robotics factory in Madinat Altharwati. Scarab suggested they nuke the building but Beetle stated they were not doing that and not having that conversation.