Archive of Our Own ^beta

Movie night in Wayne Manor is a very sacred thing. It’s one of the few times that the family, normally so rife with disagreements and fights, can put aside their differences and come together for long enough to watch a single movie every Friday evening. Alfred, long ago, had declared that no weapons were allowed in the manor’s theater room and that anyone caught instigating a serious fight would face his wrath. Needless to say, Alfred Pennyworth is a god amongst legends and no one dares to challenge his laws.

So movie night always has, and always will be, one of the most important nights in the Waynes’ lives. Bruce always tries to round up as many of his wayward children as possible and herd them into the manor, where they all argue over what movie to choose. Damian inevitably ends up loudly complaining about the presence of his interloper siblings and how they don’t deserve to be graced by his presence until he eventually falls asleep on one of them. Scuffles will break out over the last of Alfred’s baked goodies, until Cass sweeps in and steals it out from under everyone’s nose like the goddess she is. And the remote is always thrown across the massive room at least twice before Bruce has to step in and commandeer it. All in all, Wayne movie night is good fun.

The attendees of Wayne movie night vary from week to week depending on who’s in the area, not prepared enough to ward off Bruce’s insistent invitations, and doesn’t have a good enough excuse to lay at Alfred’s feet and use to beg for forgiveness for their absence (a standard patrol is not considered an acceptable excuse). Movie night’s most common attendees are Bruce and Damian, because they live in the manor, Cass who takes every opportunity to annoy her siblings, and Dick who just loves getting to hang out with everyone. The rest of the family shows up as often as they can. Or, more accurately, as often as they’re forced to.

Except for Ras. The memory of what happened the one time Damian’s grandfather had decided it would be funny if he showed up to movie night has been purposefully buried, expunged, or otherwise eliminated from everyone’s minds. Everyone present during the incident still has nightmares about that horrific evening.

On the fateful night that begins what will come to be known as “the natural consequence of raising a bunch of highly skilled vigilante children with loose morals and turning them loose on an unsuspecting world,” the attendees of movie night are as follows: Barbara, Dick, Cass, Jason, Steph, Tim, Duke, and Damian. Bruce’s excuse of an emergency Justice League meeting after the attempted rewriting of Earth’s history by a villain was accepted by Alfred, Kate, Harley, and Ivy are wrapped up in an unavoidable Birds of Prey mission, and everyone else is just plain busy.

Really, it’s probably a good thing that more people didn’t come. If more people were there, the ensuing chaos would have, despite all rational belief saying it shouldn’t be possible, been even worse. And that Bruce was pulled away by the Justice League. He would have tried his hardest (and ultimately failed) to prevent what was coming.

The movie they watch that night is none other than National Treasure, selected by Steph after she discovered that both Cass and Damian have never seen it. “It’s a crucial part of pop culture!” she had cried as she wrestled the remote away from Jason who wanted to watch the most recent zombie movie and make fun of the “inaccurate” zombies. “You have to watch it! This is just unacceptable! A crime against humanity!”

Because of this, many people would later say that Stephanie was the one responsible for what had happened. She would vehemently argue that statement and rightfully point out that the others were plenty involved in the initial argument and challenge, the planning, and of course, the execution.

The worst nightmare of world governments and the Justice League begins as the credits start to roll on National Treasure. “So, we all agree they could have stolen the Declaration of Independence easier than that, right?” Tim asks from his position on the couch with Jason and Cass.

Steph cranes her neck around Duke’s leg, which she had been leaning against, to glare daggers at Tim. “Nicholas Cage does not deserve to have the reputation of his best movie attacked like this!” Barbara, sitting on the other couch next to Duke, raises her eyebrow in interest. Dick, sprawled out on one of the room’s many bean bags with Damian unwillingly trapped in his arms, sighs heavily. He can already feel the chaos starting to brew.

“I’m not attacking the movie,” Tim starts with a raised hand. “No, wait, I am. There were easier ways for them to steal the Declaration of Independence than that. It wouldn’t be nearly as hard as they’re making it out to be!”

“Like how?” Steph demands as she pushes herself to her feet and stalks over to stand in front of Tim. She points one finger at him, her eyes blown wide. “Name one of these ways, Mr. Boy Wonder! And none of them can involve meta abilities or other powers since National Treasure happens in a world without metahumans.”

Tim raises one of his eyebrows. “Well, my young padawan–”

“Oh fuck you!”

Tim narrowly avoids the sharp finger jabbed at his chest by throwing himself on top of Cassandra, grinning. “They could have just memorized the guard’s nighttime patrol routes, looped the security footage, snuck in by pickpocketing one of the guard’s passes, and used chill infused gloves to bypass the heat sensors around the document after they cut the case open. Easy,” he answers her calmly. Is he purposefully riling up Steph? Yes. Is he enjoying it? Also yes.

Steph narrows her eyes at him. “That’s bullshit and we both know it. Where would they have gotten gloves that could deflect heat sensing technologies? Those didn’t exist in their era. Just look at the camera and computer that Riley was using!”

“Calm down Brown,” Damian butts in. He sounds perfectly calm and composed, but with Dick’s arms wrapped tightly around him and Alfred the cat curled up on his chest, Damian doesn’t look nearly as haughty as usual. “The only reason that Drake is saying this is because he doesn’t have to follow through with his words. If he had to prove that he was right and there were easier methods of stealing the document, he would back down and prove both his cowardice and incompetence.”

As anyone with even a pebble sized brain could have predicted, the room swiftly devolves into chaos after that. Tim leaps up from his seat and begins yelling at both Damian and Steph. Dick can be heard chastising Damian for his words even as Damian steadfastly ignores him in favor of continuing his argument with Tim and Steph. Cass has looped one arm over Tim’s shoulder and is standing on her tiptoes to mutter in his ear, pointing out that Steph is ignoring the way the movie’s heist resulted in security being alerted to the theft. Duke squats down next to Damian and Dick, ignoring Dick’s still continuing lecture on being nice to siblings, and mentions that Tim hasn’t said anything about the concrete vault. Babs raises a hand to her ear and uses their ever-present comms to quietly inform Steph that hardwired motion detectors wouldn’t be able to be hacked and Tim had failed to account for those.

In the end, it’s Jason who stops the chaos. Temporarily. By ultimately making it worse in the end. Because what else could he possibly do? “So prove it!” he interrupts, his loud voice sounding out over the fervor and instantly causing it to die. In fact, the room goes so silent that as every pair of eyes in the room turns to look at Jason, a pin drop could be heard. Even Alfred the cat opens one lazy eye from his position atop Damian and glances at Jason uninterestedly.

Jason has maintained his original seat on the couch, but has shifted forward to lean his elbows on his knees and rest his chin on his interlaced hands. A wide smirk adorns his gleeful face. “Timbo says the heist could have been pulled off easier. Steph and the demon brat say he’s wrong. I wanna see them prove their words.”

For a long moment, there is blessed silence. “You do mean with like, a presentation, right?” Dick finally asks slowly. “By making a solid plan and presenting it to the others for criticism and adjustment, right?”

“Y’know, that is exactly what I was thinking,” Jason starts with a glint in his eyes. Dick releases the breath he had been holding. “But then you said it, which means I’m now legally obligated to say the opposite based on that contract I signed when I came back to life. So nah.” He turns to face Dick with a sharp smile and ignores Dick’s splutters of indignance. “I think they should actually steal the Declaration of Independence.”

Dick closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before letting it out. He does that again. And again. Finally, he opens his eyes and finds the entire room staring at him. Babs and Cass have considering looks on their faces, Steph’s eyes are wide with glee, and Duke’s lips are pursed in thought. Jason is staring at him with a shit-eating grin and Damian’s face, thankfully for Dick’s already seizing heart, isn’t visible from his unwilling position in Dick’s lap.

But, it’s Tim’s reaction to Jason’s words that scares Dick the most. There’s a glint in his eyes, one that Dick remembers only seeing a handful of times, usually right before something went horribly wrong. The last time Dick saw that look, there had been five explosions, two captured rogues, one magical portal, and the simultaneous collapse of three different organizations. Dick does not like that look on Tim’s face. He needs to stop this. Now.

“No Jason, we’re not stealing one of the most important documents in our country’s history!” Dick finally manages to force himself to say. In any other situation, Dick would love to say the opposite. He enjoys the chaos that came along with his family and reveled in the insanity of their antics. But this was taking it a bit too far.

“Yeah, Dick’s right. We can’t steal the Declaration of Independence,” Duke begins. Dick turns to his newest brother with a smile already on his face, ready to thank him just for existing and being one of the best people on the planet. “That’d be way easier than the missions we regularly have. It’d be boring for us. We’d need more of a challenge than that!” Nevermind. Dick takes back every nice thing he has ever thought about Duke. He’s incredibly manipulative and knows exactly how to maneuver situations into making sure he gets in the least trouble while causing the most chaos. Dick is never going to trust Duke again.

Cass is the next one to speak, and Dick’s heart shatters even more at the additional betrayal of Cassandra, his precious little baby sister, the girl he would do anything for. Apparently including being tossed to the side like roadkill for her amusement. “Steal more,” she says quietly, but those soft words could have very well been a gunshot with the sheer amount of energy and chaos they send through the room.

“Let’s take the crown jewels!” Steph starts the insanity, diving into it headfirst like always.

“The Mona Lisa!” Tim adds on, apparently reverting back to his art thief roots.

“The Hope Diamond,” from Barbara, who smiles at the insanity.

“The Vatican Archives!” Duke suggests. “I want to finally know what they’re keeping down there.”

“If we’re going to steal the Declaration of Independence, then we should go for the Magna Carta too. We’re going to need a matching set,” Jason joins in.

This is the final straw for Dick, who lets his head flop down to the beanbag with a resigned sigh. He can’t take this anymore. Why did he ever ask Bruce for siblings all those years ago? He should have stayed an only child. It would be so much simpler than this. “But we’re not going to actually steal them, right?” he finally asks, breaking. Dick knows when to admit defeat, and this is clearly one of those times. He has no hope of winning against this tidal wave of insanity.

“No, of course not! We’re heroes!” Tim protests. “We’ll just break into some of the most secure places in the world, gain access to their most expensive and highly guarded items, and deface them by using post-it notes to prove that we succeeded in our plans. Think of it as,” he hesitates, “testing their security and letting them know where the loopholes are.”

Tim steadfastly ignores the contradiction of the multiple laws he just said they would be breaking in their quest. They’re vigilantes after all. Their very existence breaks the law! This is nothing compared to their other actions. Everyone’s done a bit of legal bending, right? Tim himself has planted evidence, hacked federal servers, maybe blown up a few military bases, committed a bit of light treason, invaded foreign countries–

Okay. He should really stop listing things off now. Otherwise he’ll be here for a while

“Yeah, exactly!” Steph agrees, her argument with Tim temporarily forgotten in the face of bigger and better exploits. “We could even make it into a competition; see who can get into the most places first. Consider it stealth and, um, reconnaissance training?” Her voice trails off near the end, uncertain.

Dick pauses. He suddenly feels very different about this whole idea. Making a competition out of proving that they can break into such secure locations does sound pretty fun, especially if they’re not actually going to steal the items.

Screw it, he’s in.

“B can never find out about this,” he points out as he smiles widely at the others. Their own smiles, full of chaos, insanity, and glee, are reflected back at him. “Let’s do it.”

It takes five hours of planning, arguments, and negotiations, but eventually the entire group is calmly gathered around a large whiteboard. The board is covered in scribbles, locations, lines, and features enough different marker colors to resemble fairy vomit. Actually, that might be because of the glitter that Steph somehow added to her dry erase marker. On the board, between the miniature maps, doodles, and colorful, both literally and figuratively, insults, is a list of 50 targets scattered across 37 different locations around the world. The 51st target, the Declaration of Independence, is circled in bright red and starred.

“Alright, does everyone remember the rules?” Dick asks the group calmly. The mess of his hair, doodles dotted across his skin in multiple colors, and slow twitching of his eye does not match his tone of voice. The entire group nods in unison. “Alright. Then in that case, memorize the list of targets. And,” he pauses, taking the time to look each member of his family dead in the eyes, “let the games begin.”

Within ten minutes, the theater is perfectly clean, the whiteboard has vanished into thin air, and the only souls in the manor are Alfred in his room and Damian’s veritable zoo of pets. The only indication of the chaos that is about to descend upon the world is the rapid departure of eight teenagers and young adults from Gotham City. None of them are leaving the same way, and they are scattering across the globe.

Far away, in orbit above the Earth, Batman frowns. It’s not in reaction to Hal’s words during the mandatory league debrief, although if Batman were to actually listen to his words then he would probably hear Hal saying something incredibly stupid as always. There’s a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Why does it feel like something just happened?

Like every other event that has ever gone to shit in their lives, it starts fairly simple. Well, simple for them of course. Not by anyone else’s definition of the word.

Look, when your life regularly involves fighting homicidal psychopaths that have a personal grudge against you every other night, repelling alien invasions alongside the Justice League once a week, and even challenging gods a few times, your perception of the word normal gets a little bit screwed up. And that’s not even mentioning the regular chaos that comes along with being friends with everything from assassins to demigods and time travelers. Or the fact that their civilian identities are some of the most well known people in the world and the entire separate host of issues that brings.

So yes, sneaking into the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Japan in order to get points in a fucked up breaking and entering race game that they invented because of a semi-sarcastic comment one of them made is fairly normal and straightforward. For them at least.

What’s not normal but is still simple, although certainly not welcome, is running face first into another person in the vents of the Japanese Imperial Palace.

Dick blinks at Cass.

Cass blinks at Dick.

It’s a bit difficult for the two of them to make each other out in the darkness, but they manage. Working alongside Batman in the darkness of Gotham for years had to have had some sort of effect on the ways their eyes processed light. Actually, that’s a good point. Did Bruce ever get around to studying their eyes and seeing if they had mutated, like he mentioned considering a few years back? Hm. He should look into that later. For now, he needs to focus.

Dick thinks carefully. There isn’t exactly much that he can do here. The fastest route to the Emperor’s office is through the third tunnel of this vent junction, but if he moves to head down it then that will leave his side wide open for Cass to attack. And vice versa. However, if he were to back away, he would effectively be giving this point to Cass and that’s just unacceptable.

What is the best thing for him to do? What will give him the best chance to reach the office before Cass?

The vents that they’re in are small, small enough that Dick had only barely been able to fit inside. Cass has more maneuverability in this situation than him, because of her smaller stature. However, she probably doesn't have enough breathing room to effectively attack him without going for points that would really hurt him, potentially permanently, which is something she wouldn’t risk.

What can he do to get out of this conundrum without revealing his location to the guards, giving Cass the upper edge, or somehow getting himself stuck in a vent in the Imperial Palace and possibly causing an international incident? He couldn’t let any of those, especially the last one, happen. He would never live it down.

Apparently, Cass chooses her plan of action first. Dick had, stupidly, not noticed the small motion of her hands. He had assumed that they were just trapped underneath her stomach. He also had not noticed the grating below her.

Rookie mistakes. Maybe he should put himself through his own remedial Titans training…

The vent cover drops out from underneath Cassandra and she falls into the hallway, landing in a perfect tuck and roll. The metal cover collides with the floor with a loud clatter that would surely have every guard in a 30 meter radius sprinting towards them. Dick would take the time to be proud of her landing, if he weren’t mentally cursing her out in every language that he knew.

Cass cranes her neck up to look at him and winks quickly. Her mouth isn’t visible underneath the black mask she had pulled on, but Dick can easily picture the smirk on her lips.

No.

She raises her hands to her mouth and, in a very good imitation of Dick’s voice, swears very loudly in Japanese. The footsteps that Dick can hear in the distance pick up in speed. He faintly picks out the sound of someone barking orders.

Goddamnit Cass.

With a small thumbs up, Cass takes one step backwards and disappears into the shadows. Dick knows that he won’t see her again.

That’s fine. He has bigger problems to deal with. Namely, figuring out how to escape from this mess she got him into.

It’s fine. Everything’s fine. Dick didn’t really want to get this point anyway! He can cope with essentially being used as a distraction by Cass, who is probably already halfway to the Emperor’s office through some other path she had found.

Dick drops down from the vents as well, abandoning them in favor of the hallways below. He had read in the schematics that they were designed to be sealed off in sectors in the case of an intruder, allowing the guards to trap someone inside. He’ll turn into a sitting duck if he doesn’t get out of here now.

There’s a window visible down one hallway and three doors that should lead into various offices based on the blueprint he had memorized two hours ago. None of the offices have an additional exit aside from the vents, which he can’t go back into.

Okay. Window it is. He has really grip strength after all. All he needs to do is make it to the roof or the ground, and then he’ll be home free.

Four hallways away, Cass smiles softly as she slips out of the shadows. The guards had run right past her without noticing the slight difference in the darkness. Amatures.

She pulls a small lockpick out of her belt and kneels down in front of the door to the emperor’s office. In less than a minute, the door is open and she’s slipping inside, locking it behind her. She wastes no time in taking a small stack of post-it notes and black pen out of yet another pouch on her belt.

Very Easy she writes with a flourish, before peeling the note off and sticking it to the top of the desk in clear view. It might not look super out of place at first glance, but she knows that with the word spreading of the beginning of her sibling’s antics, it will be noticed. Interpol didn’t take too kindly to Jason’s note on Starry Night’s frame yesterday.

For good measure though, she also takes out the small black feather assigned to her and places it next to the note. Now there’s no chance of her message being mistaken.

There’s a soft tap on glass and she whirls around, searching the entire room in an instant. Her mouth twitches up into a smile as she takes in the sight of Dick clinging to the windowsill with wide, pleading eyes.

Cass is a very good sister. She takes pity on him and lets him into the room.

“Damnit Cass, I guess you get this point,” he grumbles, brushing bits of rock dust off his stealth suit. The standard Nightwing blue is nowhere to be seen, just like how her usual gold adornments are currently missing. It would be a stupid idea for them to break into multiple secure locations around the world and garner the attention of international authorities while wearing their very identifiable hero costumes. Absolutely no one would ever be that stupid. Well, none of them at least.

She chuckles softly. “I win.”

“I guess you do.” Dick reaches out and ruffles her hair slightly, before turning away. “Well, I guess if you already got this point, then we better get out here. After all, I’ve already decided on my next target!”

Cass nods as Dick begins to climb out of the window. Before she follows him though, she pulls out her phone and sends off a simple text to the group-chat titled Selina’s Proudest Moment. She puts the phone away and slips out the window after Dick, carefully arranging the latch so it will lock behind her. Dick has already vanished into the darkness and Cass follows his lead.

After all, she needs to get to work planning her next heist.

Selina’s Proudest Moment

DadsFavorite: Imperial Palace done

ActualGoddess: And that’s another point for Cass!

GodKickedMeOut: literally how the fuck

TheBest: Stop being jealous jason, it doesnt look good on you

TheBest: Nice job cass!!!!!

GodKickedMeOut: fuck off

On the other side of the globe, in a suspiciously quiet manor, Bruce Wayne frowns. “Alfred,” he asks as he walks into the kitchen, “Where did you say the kids are again?” He didn’t actually forget what Alfred had told him, but he needs to hear it again. Something feels very off and he doesn’t like it.

“They decided to go on some international excursions sir,” Alfred repeats the same excuse he had given Bruce two days ago when he returned to an empty manor. He doesn’t even bother looking up from the mixing bowl in his hand. Bruce feels rather ignored.

“Without telling me beforehand?” Bruce narrows his eyes. Normally at least one of them will bother to tell him where they’re going when they disappear. Which one of them it is varies based on how annoyed they are with him at any given time.

Alfred turns around and raises one steady eyebrow at him. “I believe it was a very spontaneous decision, Master Bruce. Now, shouldn’t you be getting ready for that gala you are supposed to be at in two hours? I daresay that Madame Derile will be very put out if you don’t make an appearance.” His tone of voice practically dares Bruce to challenge his subtle orders. And Bruce isn’t a fool.

He sighs and turns away, appropriately chastised. He’ll just have to wait until after the gala to start trying to hunt his children down with the Batcomputer. They can’t have gone too far right? Or be doing anything too worrying?

…

Maybe if he gets ready fast enough he can at least pull up their flight records before Alfred forces him to leave.

Look, Duke hasn’t exactly been with the family for very long. He’s definitely the most recent addition to the veritable cauldron of bats running around Gotham City, having only popped up about a year ago. This relative newness and obscurity has led to a few, well, interesting perceptions that members of the superhero community tend to have of him. Duke is well aware that many members of the Justice League and his siblings’ teams tend to think that he’s not as weird as the rest of the bats. They like to think that he’s nicer, calmer, and less prone to getting into absolutely buckshot wild situations.

The thought almost makes Duke snort. But he holds the amusement in, because any wayward sounds might give him away. And he can’t risk that right now.

The only reason that people believe Duke is different from the rest of the bats is because he hasn’t been around for quite as long as the others. Building up the type of rogues gallery full of legendary names that Nightwing has, or the insane stories like Tim’s from his Young Justice days, or tales of great battles like Cass, requires time. And Duke simply hasn’t had the time to get to that stage.

Not that he isn’t well on his way to it of course. After all, Duke had led a youth rebellion against restrictive and authoritarian governmental regulations and made a personal enemy of both the GCPD and the Court of Owls themselves. And that was before he even became a member of the family and took on the role of Gotham City’s only daytime vigilante, a position that requires a lot of determination and at least a little bit of insanity. Seriously! Duke is out there, battling Gotham villains in broad daylight, with no immediate backup on hand. Not even Batman himself does that outside of an emergency!

Duke smiles softly at the thought of his dayshift, and slips around the shadowy corner. He could use his meta abilities to make this whole job easier and simply turn invisible, but Steph had had a point when she challenged Tim. Using powers would just make the whole thing too easy.

In addition to Duke being the only member of the dayshift and thus painting a massive target on his back with no easily available and ready backup, he’s also the only meta allowed to operate in Gotham with Batman’s express blessing. Duke even wears the bat emblazoned across his chest while using those meta powers. Neither of those are any easy feat, if he does say so himself.

The point is that many of his associates outside the family would be completely stunned if they were to see where he is now. Duke just takes it in stride as yet another weekend with the veritable herd of wild beasts that he now calls his siblings.

He has two targets here: Mona Lisa, and The Winged Victory of Samothrace. Mona Lisa is the most well known painting in the world which, funnily enough, hadn’t even been very popular until its theft and later return brought media attention onto it. Winged Victory is a greek sculpture depicting the goddess Nike atop a ship’s bow. Luckily for Duke, both targets were on the same floor and only a few rooms apart.

Mona Lisa is first on the list since it will take more time to claim the point for, because of its high security casing. If anything goes wrong while he’s cracking open Mona Lisa, at least he’ll still be able to quickly grab Winged Victory’s point on the way out. Thankfully though, that’s not very likely. The detailed blueprints Duke pulled off the Louvre servers had told Duke exactly how to get into the case.

He rushes up the stairs from the entrance floor of the Louvre, habitually ensuring his footsteps don’t cause any sound and sliding between the cameras’ blindspots. Yes, Duke had already hacked the cameras and put them on a loop, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

As Duke steps onto the landing of the first floor, he pauses and lets himself fall into the shadows so he can take the time to examine the area before him.

“Alright, now hurry it up!” a soft whisper enters his ears. Duke frowns. The security guard’s patrol pattern should put them on the opposite side of the museum right now, and no one else is supposed to be in the building. Well, other than Duke of course. Not that he’s really supposed to be here either. But that’s a technicality.

He moves a little closer to the stairwell exit and frowns at the sight in front of him. Room 700, based on the maps he memorized earlier. A collection of paintings from France, centered around one of the most famous portraits in French history: Liberty Leading the People. Which is, apparently, the portrait actively being stolen by a group of thieves.

Duke smirks at the utter irony. He really can’t escape crime fighting huh? Even when he’s in a different country, participating in a competition that has him committing crimes and would probably give Bruce an aneurysm if he found out about it, he still manages to stumble across stuff like this. What was that he was thinking earlier about just needing more time to have the sort of insane experiences the rest of the family does?

There’s seven of them, five men and two women, each clad in tight dark clothing and wearing a pistol on their hip. One of the men also has what looks like a rifle slung across his back, and one of the women has a pair of long daggers strapped to her thighs.

Alright. That’s not bad. Duke can deal with that. The main problem will be their guns, but he’s willing to bet that they won’t risk firing them. Not when it would alert security to their exact location.

He creeps forward, slow and soft, sticking to the shadows until he’s right behind the largest of the men.

“Hurry it up Rupert, we need to move,” the man orders again, the words tinged with a faint Spanish accent.

The man fiddling with the edge of the painting’s frame, Rupert, if the big guy actually knows his coworkers’ names, and Duke honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t, grumbles. “I’m going as fast as I can, boss. Gettin’ a painting this big out of the frame without damagin’ it ain’t very easy ya’know?”

There is no answer or rebuttal from the boss. His body lies at Duke’s feet, unconscious from a well placed hit to one of his nerves. Really, it was almost too easy. The rest of the group slowly turns to face Duke as they realize his presence, but it’s far too late for them. A Gotham thug would have already been fighting back. Apparently these guys are amateurs compared to his usual targets. Duke, meanwhile, is already moving.

Another thief goes down before the rest wisen up and begin to fight back. Duke shifts into the fighting stance he knows well and begins to block their counterattacks, steadily making his way closer and closer to Rupert.

They’re good, very good. Clearly well trained and experienced.

But they’re not nearly good enough to pose even a slight challenge to Batman’s training regime.

Duke raises his fist and sends it hurtling into one of their jaws as he sweeps the leg out from underneath another. He whirls around, bringing up his knee to connect with the stomach of a third, but only meets air.

“Sorry to crash your party,” a voice echoes around the room, followed by the dull thwack of a bo-staff connecting with muscle. “I just couldn’t resist.” Duke looks up at the faint and familiar blob clinging to the ceiling and smiles at him, his eyes wide and sparling with glee.

Tim grins sharply underneath his mask and moves in unison with Duke, relishing the rare chance to fight alongside his newest brother. Between the two of them, the thieves are out cold in less than three minutes. Two minutes after that, all of them have been gathered together in a lumpy heap. Nice and easy. Almost a good warmup, but not quite.

“They were trying to steal Liberty Leads the People,” Duke mutters quietly as he ties off the last knot binding the thieves together. “I came out of the stairwell and ran across them in the act.” He stands back up, brushing off his hands and turning to face Tim. “What about you?”

“I heard the sound of fighting as I was cleaning up my work and came to investigate. Also, it looks like they’re part of Soliloquy, a new international crime ring based around the arts.” Tim looks away from Duke and pushes up the sleeve of one of the women. He points to the small, gold music note tattooed on the inside of her wrist. “They’ve been cropping up recently and I’ve been keeping my eye on the criminal reports. Interpol will want to get their hands on them.”

Duke hums. “Well, we better leave them for the guards then.”

“Yeah. They’ll be able to properly hand them over to the authorities,” Tim agrees as he scribbles a quick explanation on the post-it note he pulled out of the belt of his stealth suit. He finishes off the taunt at museum security with a small doodle of a feather and sticks it to the forehead of the biggest guy. The small, matching red feather is slipped between the layers of Duke’s ropes.

He stands up and turns around, only to be met with thin air. Just as he expected. Duke had taken the opportunity to slip away and head for the targets, but Tim can’t really blame him. It’s exactly what he would have done.

By the time he makes it to Winged Victory, there’s already a post-it with yellow lettering carefully stuck to the pedestal holding up the statue. A bright yellow feather rests on top of the ship’s bow.

Duke has claimed yet another point in their little game. Tim sighs in resignation as he opens his phone to alert Barbara of the updated point talleys.

At least he had gotten the point for Mona Lisa. His hard work breaking into the case wasn’t for nothing.

Selina’s Proudest Moment

TheWorseRed: Duke you bastard

TheWorseRed: you abandoned me to deal with typing up an international crime ring alone!

CrimeAgainstFashion: what.

HumanGlowstick: early robin gets the point

HumanGlowstick: also they were already unconscious and tied up. dont make me sound bad!

CrimeAgainstFashion: the international what.

TheBest: cmon dick you should know better than this by now! don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to!

CrimeAgainstFashion: i think i do want the answer???

ActualGoddess: No, you probably don’t.

Julia Chase finds her frown deepening as she listens to the agent’s briefing. Their powerpoint consisted of 17 slides and the dossier of information was 12 pages long. Every single slide and page ended in a glorified question mark. It was, essentially, a large gathering of papers that summed up to “fuck if I know.” Julia did not like that.

“So, in summary,” the agent continues as they reach their final slide, “this group has hit 14 locations in three days and left behind no trace except for their post-its and feathers. Until last night, when they apprehended members of the growing crime syndicate Soliloquy at the Louvre in Paris. There are likely eight members based on the colors on the notes and the feathers left behind. Two of them use green but different shades, while another two use the same shade of red and sign off with a doodle of a claw or feather.”

The agent takes a deep breath and turns to look Julia in the eye. “Frankly ma’am, we have no idea who they are or what they want. Their hits have ranged from political buildings and homes to museums and private collections. The only unifying thread is that every location is heavily guarded with top of the line security. They also never take anything with them.”

She narrows her eyes and purses her lips. The agent shifts uncomfortably. Something feels off about this, and she doesn’t like it. Just the fact that she’s hearing about this group so soon, despite being incredibly busy as one of the directors of Interpol, means that her subordinates truly have no idea what to do. They don’t even know what division to classify this group under. They technically haven’t committed any crimes further than breaking and entering, which doesn’t typically fall under Interpol jurisdiction. However, they clearly have the ability to drastically upscale their actions and therefore should, logically, be investigated.

Could they be a group of metas trying to prove themselves to a wider criminal organization? Or testing out the security in each of their targets. Or, and Julia frowns at this idea, they could even be some form of diversion. But from what? And why would a diversion be so simple and low-key? Could it be a form of a wild-goose chase? Something to make her agents waste their time?

Regardless of whatever their motivation is, Julia only truly has one option in this situation. “Alright. Inform our agents to work with local departments to increase security on places of interest. I want eyes watching every supposedly secure location at all times. They might not have done anything yet, but they are clearly flaunting their skill and showing us that they can easily break in,” she orders as she begins to sort the dossier into its file folder. She has another meeting in five minutes that she can’t be late for. “And put a blue and purple notice on them.”

Julia stands up and heads for the door, pausing for just a moment before she leaves. “Send me any updates you receive. I have a bad feeling that we’re dealing with something unusual here, and I don’t like that.”

The door slams shut behind her. The agent lets out a small sigh of relief.

Ah, Washington DC. The capital of the United States, home to countless crooked politicians (no, she will never let the whole No Man’s Land thing go), and, most importantly right now, the location of Capital Mall and the Smithsonian. Specifically, the National Museum of Natural History.

Stephanie is not a fan of crime, as one might be able to guess from the fact that she regularly dresses up in a purple costume and moonlights as a dubiously legal vigilante to prevent it. But this, she thinks as she carefully slips through a window and into the darkened museum, is a type of crime she could get behind. It’s not like she’s really doing anything bad anyway. Well, anything too bad. She’s done far worse than a bit of breaking and entering before. Like a bit of doctoring evidence, or illegal recording, and even that one particularly memorable bit of arson. Oh, and the time she literally started a city-wide gang war. Although all those instances had been to help prevent worse crimes, while she’s just doing this for the fun of it…

Eh semantics.

The only thing that matters is that Steph is inside the museum, the alarms are still disabled, and the cameras are looping thanks to a little virus she slipped into the system earlier that evening. The nighttime guards should be busy with their standard patrol routes, which she could easily avoid.

Really, it’s almost like they’re purposefully making this easy for her!

She smirks, locking the window behind her and sliding into the shadows with a practiced ease that only comes from years of experience. Well, years of experience fighting crime and staying hidden. Not years of experience with breaking and entering. Although they are actually pretty similar, if she thinks about it. The museum is quiet and still as she makes her way through the exhibits and towards her target, following the path she had plotted out only hours ago.

Her target is on the second floor, two floors above her entrance point from Constitution Avenue. The route she must take to avoid the guards’ patrols sends her winding through the exhibits, ducking and hiding behind some of the larger ones when necessary. Evidently, the years of peace at the museum have made the guards a bit lax.

Or maybe it’s the fact that the Wonder Woman watches over DC. What guards could really feel as if they’re in danger when the most awesome and insanely powerful woman in the world is just a shout away. Actually, doesn’t she work at the Smithsonian during her day job?

Steph swallows carefully and glances over her shoulder.

Nah, Wonder Woman isn’t going to come out of nowhere and pummel her into the ground just for playing a game with her siblings. She couldn’t possibly even know that Steph is here!

Right?

Ah man, if Steph manages to get into a fight with Wonder Woman because she’s breaking into the Smithsonian, Jason will never let it go. Not that Steph would let it go either. She’d have the perfect thing to brag about. How many people get to say they fought the Wonder Woman?

Unless Wonder Woman decided she hated her after that and vowed to never again speak to Stephanie. In which case Steph would have to fake her death, change her name, move to a different country, and pretend as if she never existed (for the second time). Because what else could you do when you made the absolute coolest person in the world hate you?

Steph stops for a moment, looking up at the bones exhibit. They did admittedly look a little creepy in the shadows of the after hours. The bones are shrouded in darkness, making them look twisted and unsettling. Most people would probably be weirded out if not outright scared.

She’s seen far worse.

Far, far worse.

Steph shrugs and moves on.

It doesn’t take much longer for her to reach the Hope Diamond after that. The room it's in is large and circular, with the bulletproof glass housing surrounding the precious gem in the center of it. Or, where it should be. The center of the supposedly impenetrable vault is empty, a fact that would concern Steph if she hadn’t already dug up the blueprints of the case and gone over them with a fine toothed comb. Every night, the diamond is automatically lowered into a vault underneath the pedestal for safe keeping. A good idea in theory, but not when Spoiler herself is on a mission.

Stephanie raises an eyebrow at the case as she approaches it. Really? She’s worked with Batman for years now, and even gotten a bit of training from the infamous Catwoman. This is practically child’s play for her. As Steph crouches down, she pulls out a set of tools from her utility belt. Time to get to work.

The main flaw of this case, as with any other display case, is that it has to be open. Curators, researchers, restorers, whoever it is, has to somehow be able to access the diamond without breaking the case. And that is precisely the weakness that gives Stephanie an entry point.

Nothing made to be opened can be considered impenetrable.

In five minutes, Steph has the pedestal of the case open.

Man, the museum really is lucky that she’s one of the good guys. Because right now, staring down at one of the largest gems in the world, it would be so easy for Steph to just take it. She had practically waltzed in. Getting out would be even easier.

Is this how Selina usually feels? This rush of potential, the knowledge that it would be so easy to get away with something so beautiful?

But luckily for the sanity of the museum curators, her relationship with Wonder Woman, and probably the world, Stephanie is not evil.

She chuckles softly, shaking her head and pulling out her stack of post-it notes. In less than three minutes, the pedestal has been locked back up and the room is empty. The only trace that anything has happened rests inside the “impenetrable” vault, where it will not be seen until the morning pre-open sweeps: a post-it note with a small comment about how easy cracking the safe was and a glittery purple heart, and the bright purple feather that accompanies it.

Getting out of the museum is just as easy as getting into it. In fact, it’s honestly even easier.

The only complication, which isn’t actually even a complication, comes when Steph climbs onto the roof of the museum. From here, it’s a quick grapple across the street and some easy parkour back to the hotel room she’s residing in.

Or, it would be, if she didn’t notice the two people awkwardly passing in front of the museum. They’re walking slowly, as if they don’t want to catch anyone’s attention but aren’t experienced enough to know how to actually not do that. Steph, never one to let something go (because really, how absolutely lame would that be?), silently drops into the bushes behind them.

“I just don’t get it man,” the first figure says as the duo approaches her bush. Their voice is jagged and grated, the kind of voice that only comes with a constantly sore throat. Steph does not envy this guy. “We can’t really stake out every important place in the world. That’s not possible.”

“I know it isn’t,” the other one responds. “But that’s not what we’re doing. Don’t you ever pay attention in briefings?” They pinch the bridge of their nose and sigh. “We’re just checking out the security, seeing if we can spot anything from the outside. Maybe some sign of a possible entry point.”

The first one grumbles. “Sounds a hell of a lot like staking the place out, but whatever. Not that any of this really makes sense anyway. Whoever they are, they haven’t really done anything yet.”

The second one leans over and slaps the first on the backside of their head as they pass in front of Steph’s bushes. “Don’t be an idiot!” they scold the other. “Use your brain for once in your life. If these people can get into such secure places and leave notes without being detected, then what’s to stop them from breaking into somewhere like the Pentagon? Or the White House?”

“Fine, I guess you got a point. You don’t have to be an ass about it though,” the first one mutters as they rub the back of their head. “I still think these Interpol bastards could back off a bit though. They’re too high ‘n mighty for not really doing much.”

The second one hums in agreement as they walk away, before switching the topic of conversation. Steph doesn’t bother keeping more than half an ear on their conversation. Instead, she pulls out her phone and opens it.

Selina’s Proudest Moment

TheBest: Hope Diamond is mine suckers! Take that Dick!!!

TheBest: And I didnt even have to fight wonder woman

CrimeAgainstFashion: :(

GodKickedMeOut: Thats not something to brag about

TheBest: Also fyi interpols on our asses. Theyve got something on us and are making police keep a closer eye on security at important places

LiteralGoddess: How do you know this?

TheBest: Overheard a couple loud cops gossiping about it while they checked the perimeter of the museum. Walked right past the bushes i was hiding in without noticing

GodKickedMeOut: Cops really are just shit everywhere

HumanGlowstick: i think we had already confirmed that mr crime lord

LiteralGoddess: Good to know. Be careful everyone.

LiteralGoddess: Also, Cass is currently winning. We gotta get our shit together.

DadsFavorite: skill diff

Soft humming echoes through the large, empty manor. Dust bunnies fall in droves as Alfred Pennyworth methodically works his way through each room, steadfastly accomplishing a task that, in all sane worlds, he shouldn’t be able to do. Wayne Manor is five stories tall, not even including the droves of secret passageways and hidden rooms, or the massive cave system underneath it. There is no physical, logical way for Alfred to be able to keep the entire manor clean while simultaneously making sure meals are ready, all inhabitants’ wounds are treated, and everyone gets where they need to go.

It should not be possible. That undertaking would require a sizable team of staff, from cleaners and chefs to emergency medics and drivers.

And yet, Alfred Pennyworth has never let a single room within the manor grow even a little bit dusty.

He smiles slightly as he picks up an antique statue, gently wiping the almost nonexistent dust off it and the shelf underneath, and places it back down.

Alfred Pennyworth is, for all intents and purposes, a god amongst mortals. He simply does not make sense. He is a walking contradiction of time management.

But the specifics behind Alfred’s incredible feats are unimportant right now. The only thing that matters is ensuring that the manor will be clean when the young masters and mistresses return from their little game.

He gives it another few days before Master Bruce manages to put an end to their friendly competition.

Ah children. Alfred could remember being that young, a very long time ago.

At least they weren’t getting into even close to half the problems he used to. Alfred would not appreciate dealing with that many international incidents and close calls.

Their little thievery competition is really quite quaint.

In the shadowy corner of a meeting room, there is a young woman. She crouches close to the ground, letting the darkness settle around her shoulders and pull her into its familiar hug. It blankets her, concealing her perfectly. A brief flash of lightning passes by, the air around the girl rustling as she remains still.

The speedster brushes past the small meeting room without hesitation.

Cassandra smiles. Speedsters typically have a tendency to move faster than their minds can properly process when they aren’t focusing, and subsequently miss small things. They normally run almost entirely on instinct. It’s Bruce’s favorite trait to throw in Barry’s face, and one that Dick and Tim also enjoy making fun of their respective speedsters with.

She waits another few beats before sliding out of the meeting room and continuing down the hallway. Every step is perfectly silent and her limbs don’t make a single sound. Even her breath, slowly going in and out of her nose, would be almost inaudible to even those with super hearing.

Much like how the speedsters don’t have to think to run as fast as they do, Cass doesn’t properly process her silence. It's an entirely subconscious habit, a trait that her biological father, David Cain, had initially trained into her. Forcefully. Then her real father, Bruce Wayne, had encouraged her subconscious habit to remain as quiet as possible. It’s good for sneaking up on criminals and taking them down without a serious fight. You could also pull some very effective pranks on your siblings, he had told her, a far cry from David’s motivations for teaching her to be quiet. She much prefers Bruce’s viewpoint.

The silence continues as Cass slips from shadow to shadow, avoiding the gazes of the cameras, and makes her way to the museum hall. A right, a left, down two more hallways, and… ah.

Cass steps out into a large, circular room. Seven massive statues line the wall regal poses. Their heads are turned towards the domed ceiling, where a huge globe hangs suspended by thick cables. Every statue depicts a person very familiar to her: people that she considers her aunts and uncles. Well, she thinks as her eyes lock onto the carving of the man she trusts more than she even trusts herself, they aren’t all her aunts and uncles. Batman falls into a bit of a different category.

She tears her eyes away from the stone visage of her dad and refocuses on the task before her. It’s a simple matter for her to make her way through the veritable maze of trophies and plaques describing the greatest feats of the Justice League to the center of the room. There’s powerful gadgets once wielded by defeated villains, gifts from grateful citizens, and holograms with plaques immortalizing moments from some of their most famous battles.

One of them, depicting the events of the Justice League’s fateful battle against Darkseid, catches her eye. Cass turns away from it quickly. That is not a period of her life that she remembers fondly.

In the middle of the room, in a large cylindrical glass case, rests the most important item in the Justice League’s public museum. Cass had researched it thoroughly as she planned her break-in, pulling up the statue’s records on the League’s database after hacking into it. She technically didn’t need to hack into it since Batman had provided them all with access to it, but it was the principle of the matter. If she’s going to break into the Hall of Justice’s central museum, then she might as well fully commit and also hack into their database.

The three foot tall and one foot wide statue inside the bulletproof display case had been specially commissioned in the wake of the Justice League’s first battle a decade and a half ago. It features the seven original members of the Justice League, capturing them in iconic poses as they fight off the alien monsters. UN Secretary-General Marquez presented it to the Justice League during their first meeting with the UN, where they were officially recognized and approved as an operational body dedicated to cooperation between powerful individuals and the protection of Earth.

Cass steps closer to the case, her eyes locked on the statue. It’s a symbol of the league’s status and responsibilities to Earth and its people, one they cherish deeply. All public tours of the Hall of Justice eventually end up in this position, staring down at the statue that represents the start of a new age of heroism. Even Bruce, despite how much he tries to pretend he doesn’t care about the league, has a replica of the statue on display in the Batcave.

The statue is, undeniably, the most sentimental object in the league’s possession.

In other words, it’s the perfect target.

A faint sound echoes through the large hall and Cass drops into a fighting stance without thinking. Five major entrances and exits, but the schematics had shown seven separate concealed passageways that could access the museum. The assailant, whoever they are, could come from numerous directions. Cass’s only hope is to detect their approach before they can catch her off guard and— the sound appears again, Cass’s body relaxing.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Barbara speaks softly as she wheels out from behind one of the other display cases nearby. She lets go of a button on her wheelchair’s arm and retracts the small piece of rubber sticking out from one of her wheels and pressing tightly against the tiled floor. The faint squeaking noise cuts off.

“Babs,” Cass replies. She takes the opportunity to glance over the form of her mentor. Barbara is clad in a sleek black stealth suit just like the rest of them. Despite the years since her last foray in a suit, she looks perfectly comfortable in it. Her hair has been pulled back into a ponytail and there’s a small tablet on her lap. There’s something else visible though, something more than just Barbara’s usual calmness. Cass scans her again, before frowning and tilting her head. “You’re smug. Why?”

Barbara smirks sharply. “Walk around to the other side of the case and take a look.”

It’s an interesting request, but Cass would never ignore something her mentor tells her to do. Well, not something like this at least. So she carefully slides around to the opposite side of the case and stops in her tracks. Cass lets out a heavy sigh.

On the statue, stuck to the front of Batman’s face, is a small post-it note. Nice try is written in light green pen ink on the front of it. A small feather, the exact same shade of green as the letters, has been slipped in between Batman’s arms, raised in position to throw a batarang.

“You win,” Cass murmurs softly. Another point for Oracle then.

“Awh, goddamnit,” another familiar voice curses before Barbara can respond to Cass. Both women whirl around and raise their eyebrows at the latecomer. “You fuckers just had to beat me to the punch. And I was looking forward to getting to personally piss off the Justice League! More than usual at least.”

Jason stalks up to them, crossing his arms in front of him and raising an eyebrow. It’s almost strange to see him geared up and ready for a fight without even a drop of his signature red. A pair of pistols hang from his belt, and a shotgun is slung over his back. Cass doesn’t doubt that he has more weapons stashed somewhere on him, especially with his visibly slightly offset gait. She herself is still practically a walking armory even without her usual uniform.

“You’re just slow,” she taunts him. Barbara wheels herself closer to them, allowing the three to slide into a loose triangle.

“Nah, you guys are just freaky fast.”

Barbara snorts softly. “Well, welcome to the party Jason. I won this race.”

“Yeah Barbie, I can tell,” Jason grumbles. Cass giggles slightly. “And Steph grabbed the diamond earlier tonight so it looks like I came to this city for no reason. Pretty fucki–” he cuts off sharply. Cass tilts her head to the side as Barbara snaps her tablet up.

Faint footsteps sound in the distance, closely followed by the sound of talking. Barbara swipes open her tablet and pulls up the hall’s security cameras, wincing at the sight. The next scheduled sweep isn’t for another 30 minutes, but the great annoyance of carefully planned missions has apparently reared its head once again: free will. She starts carefully pushing herself over to one of the far walls in the room. “It’s Wonder Woman and Flash,” she calls over her shoulder as Jason and Cass spin around. They narrow their eyes as she continues to back away.

“Where are you goin’ Barbie? The exits are the other way, towards the two members of the Justice League that are about to be real pissed we’re here,” Jason drawls slowly. Cass shifts her weight.

Barbara smiles as the back of her wheelchair presses up against the wall. “Well Jason, I’m assuming you didn’t find the hidden blueprint adjustments then, hm?” She slips one hand behind her and presses it against a tiny deformity in the wall, barely bigger than the stack of post-it notes in her pockets. She begins to press a code into the disguised keypad. “Those are the only exits you know of. I actually did my homework. Now, do me a favor and keep those leaguers distracted for me.”

As soon as she enters the final digit of the code, the wall spins around rapidly. The image of Cass lunging forward and Jason opening his mouth, presumably to loudly curse, is almost immediately replaced by the dim light of one of the Hall of Justice’s many secret passageways.

She smiles sharply and begins to make her way down the corridor. With the other two keeping Wonder Woman and Flash busy, she’s already practically home free.

On the other side of the wall, as Barbara suspected, Jason lets out a loud string of curses and reaches up to double check the black beanie pulled down low over his hair. Those curses are exemplified when Wonder Woman and Flash step through one of the entrances to the display room a second later. Both superheroes pause. Batman would probably gut them alive for that, but can you really blame them? It’s the Hall of Justice. Who would ever be stupid enough to actually break into the Justice League’s headquarters on Earth?

For a long moment, everyone is still. No one moves.

Jason’s head is solely filled with a long string of expletives that would probably get him banned from every single building in the world. Even the illegal ones.

Suddenly, the tense calm shatters in a thousand pieces.

“Whoever you are, surrender and we won’t hurt you!” Wonder Woman calls out as she unwinds the lasso of truth from her belt. Jason subtly slides a revolver into each hand and cracks his neck against his shoulders. Next to him, Cass slips a handful of marbles out of her belt.

Alright. They could do this. This is perfectly fine. Just him and Cass, against Wonder Woman and Flash. They might be an Amazonian demi-goddess and one of the fastest men alive, but both of them have Bruce and Tim’s contingency plans memorized. Along with their 23 backup plans. And their 13 backups to the backups. This should be doable. Hopefully. Maybe.

It is the Wonder Woman. Fuck.

“No can do princess,” Jason calls across the large room, fingering the trigger of his gun. Wonder Woman will easily block his bullets with her armbands, but he thinks he has ways to get around that.

Ah hell, who is he kidding. They can’t seriously hurt the two of them, not for a little competition they’re having. Jason wouldn’t mind injuring them, well, Barry specifically. He actually would prefer not to fight the absolute coolest person on the planet. But genuinely fighting and injuring the league would just make the game less fun.

It’s also explicitly against the rules.

Jason groans and mentally counts the amount of rubber bullets he has on him. Cass has already ducked off, presumably to deal with Flash, which leaves Wonder Woman to him. Their options are a bit more limited if they can’t deal serious damage to the duo.

This is gonna be one hell of a fight.

Selina’s Proudest Moment

GodKickedMeOut: Wonder Woman is a goddess among us lowly human beings and deserves to be worshiped

TheBest: preach

HumanGlowstick: youre not wrong but what brought this on

DadsFavorite: she almost kicked his ass

DadsFavorite: I saved him

TheWorseRed: that tracks

GodKickedMeOut: i could have handled myself!

DadsFavorite: No.

GodKickedMeOut: anyway

GodKickedMeOut: babs you backstabbing traitor

DadsFavorite: >:(

FeralBrat: Don’t speak to Gordon that way!

LiteralGoddess: I just saved my own hide. You two are the ones who didn’t bother to memorize the entrances to all the secret passages before infiltrating the Hall of Justice.

LiteralGoddess: It was only fair that the ones who failed to prepare had to fight the league. I was actually ready.

CrimeAgainstFashion: yeah get em babs!

LiteralGoddess: You’re no better, Mr. I can definitely sneak into Versailles without really looking at the floor plan or thinking about the catacombs. You could have easily used the old passages there.

CrimeAgainstFashion: :’(

Most of the general public, when thinking about the superheroes that protect them, don’t consider the worst part of the job. No, it’s not the gore that haunts their nightmares, the incredibly traumatizing situations, or the devastating deaths that the average citizen forgets to acknowledge. The worst part of being a hero is, unequivocally, the bureaucracy of it all.

Hal Jordan hates it. There’s just so many hoops he has to jump through, both on Earth and with the corps. The paperwork, the meetings, the debriefings, the long discussions about ethics, double-checking the law to make sure they have the necessary authority, all of that incredibly boring shit. He gets why it’s important, he does, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it.

At least the emergency Justice League meetings tend to be a bit more active. They’re usually followed by some massive attack, or super important mission guaranteed to get Hal’s blood pumping. Hal can get behind those. That’s actually something he’s okay with.

This emergency meeting however, is way too boring for his tastes.

“Interpol believes there are at least eight members of this new group,” Diana continues from her seat around the large table. A thin file-folder rests in her hands, but she doesn’t bother glancing at it as she continues her briefing. Of course she managed to memorize it all. Typical.

When Hal had first received the summons for an emergency meeting of the Justice League founders, he had assumed the worst. Had someone been brainwashed into being a spy? Did the world governments suddenly turn on them and issue an order for them to be hunted down? Was the universe about to end in a huge explosion that would rewrite reality and make Hal into some sort of catgirl?

No. Instead he gets to sit here, idly flipping through a digital copy of the file provided by Diana, and listen to a briefing on a new minor crime ring that hadn’t even committed any actual crimes beyond breaking and entering. What a fantastic use of his time. Hal could be out having fun right now!

“Last night, two of them broke into the Hall of Justice and left behind this.” Diana clicks a button and a familiar hologram appears just above the middle of their table, spinning slowly. He would recognize the league’s first trophy anywhere. A small sticky-note has been stuck to Batman’s face, and a feather slipped between his arms.

Okay, Hal takes back some of his words. A briefing is certainly justified if the criminals somehow managed to break into the Hall of Justice. But still, does a briefing like this really need all of them here? Someone broke into the Hall and was probably quickly captured by that night’s guards.

Hal lets out a soft sigh and leans forward to rest his chin on his fist.

“I was on guard duty and made the usual rounds on schedule, but didn’t find any sign of them,” Barry pipes in. “Diana came to visit midway through the night and we took an unscheduled walk around the hall so we could stretch our legs and talk. That’s when we stumbled across them in the museum, in front of the statue. We engaged them in battle, but they managed to hold us off long enough to somehow make an escape. I’m still not sure how they got away.” Barry glances away from the table, frowning.

…Alright then. This is now a very interesting meeting. Just what criminal is both skilled and stupid enough to break into the Hall of Justice, practically vandalize their oldest memento, and then somehow escape from Wonder Woman and the Flash? Of all people?

“What did the security footage show?” Clark asks. He tilts his head as he quickly flips through his own digital file, eyes narrowed. Hal recognizes that look. Hal has always made it a point to never piss off the big guy when he looks like that. Doing so doesn’t typically end well.

Next to Hal, Barry winces. It doesn’t make Hal feel optimistic. “They somehow managed to hack in and loop the security feeds,” Diana answers Clark. She dismisses the holographic model of the statue and replaces it with a large globe. “That appears to be one of their usual MOs. They’ve hit over 19 locations around the world in the last five days. They somehow enter and leave the building with no sign of their presence, other than a post-it note and fake colored feather placed on a very secure and supposedly impossible to access object.”

As she speaks, little dots appear on the globe. One in Japan, two in China, one in South Africa, a few in South America, one in Australia, a couple in North America, and a handful scattered across Europe. Most interesting though, are the two that he can see in Washington DC.

“Interpol has identified seven colors: dark blue, red, yellow, purple, black, light green, and dark green. However, the post-its associated with the red feathers all sign off with one of two doodles: a small claw or a feather. That’s led them to believe there are eight different people.”

“What about handwriting?” Barry asks. Hal can see his eyes scanning over the renders of the post-its, likely looking for every detail he can spot with his forensic experience.

Diana shakes her head. “All of the handwriting samples match perfectly, but it’s impossible for this to have all been done by one person unless they’re practically teleporting from place to place. So whoever they are, they’re trained to conceal their handwriting.”

Hal sighs deeply and reaches up to rub at once of his temples. “That probably means whoever they are, they’re dangerous. That’s not something you can just pick up. It’s specialty training.” He, himself, hadn’t learned the skill until one of his mentors in the corps forced him to. Handwriting isn’t exactly something that most people tend to consider altering.

“Might they have some form of abilities?” J’onn suggests. “If they’re able to get around quickly, then it could be one person pretending to be multiple to distract the authorities.”

“That would be possible, if we ignored the fact that we saw two at the Hall of Justice,” Diana agrees. “But that could mean there’s just two people, especially with how little evidence there is of them. Most locations had their camera footage looped, but even locations that didn’t picked up no trace. Whoever they are, they’re able to avoid being caught on cameras. That takes either an incredible amount of skill, or some kind of ability. But this behavior doesn’t fit the MO of any known people with that skill or an appropriate power.”

She dismisses the notes and feathers, replacing them with an image of a group of criminals, tied up and abandoned on the floor. “The only traces of them are the left behind the notes and feathers, with two notable exceptions. One is the battle Barry and I had with two of them, and the other is a group of art thieves that they apparently apprehended attempting to steal Liberty Leads the People in the Louvre. Guards then discovered notes from Feather Red and Yellow on Mona Lisa and Winged Victory respectively. I also personally investigated the Hope Diamond, which was struck last night as well, after the tampering was discovered this morning. There were no traces there either.”

Arthur groans softly and rakes a hand through his hair. Hal can’t help but sympathize with his obvious frustration. “This makes no sense,” the king mutters. “A band of criminals that does nothing but breaking and entering without stealing anything, purposefully leaves notes behind to alert us of their presence, and we can’t find any traces of them?”

“That’s not normal criminal activity at all,” Hall adds. “And I don’t like abnormal criminal activity. It’s suspicious.”

“Agreed.” Diana nods her head sharply. “Which is why we’ll be working with Interpol to try and find them. It’s not a high priority case, but we will be following up on any leads Interpol gets. Everyone agree?” There’s a chorus of agreements from the original seven. Well, six agreements. One voice is conspicuously absent from the chorus. “What is your opinion Bat–” she cuts off as they all turn to look at Batman’s empty seat.

“When did Spooky leave?”

Far away, in a cave below the biggest home in Gotham, a very tired man bangs his head against his computer keyboard.

It makes sense. It all makes perfect sense. He would recognize the assigned colors and the skills anywhere. Every one of them could easily loop security feeds, avoid cameras, and access these targets in their sleep. But the damning piece of evidence that buried the nail in the coffin Bruce would have to bury his sanity in, was the matching handwriting.

He knows that handwriting font by heart. He can even perfectly replicate it himself! It was the first fake style he taught each of his children, the one they were all the best at. It’s also, apparently, the one they had elected to use in some worldwide crime spree centered around breaking and entering.

Just what kind of insanity are they up to this time?

Tim cannot say that he looks back on the year where Bruce was lost in time with much fondness. It was frankly one of, if not the worst, years of his life. Kon and Bart were dead, he wasn’t really speaking to Cassie or his family, and Bruce was actually alive and falling through time but no one believed him. Now, Tim can admit that he sounded a bit insane ranting about Bruce and time travel, but it hadn’t felt very good back then. And then he had gotten involved with the Council of Spiders and League of Assassins, ended up as Ra’s al Ghul’s new pet project (ugh), and nearly died multiple times.

He had also lost his spleen somewhere in there.

Point being, he doesn’t particularly like thinking about that year. His non-existent therapist would probably say him ignoring it is a form of repressing his emotions and unhealthy. That’s exactly why Tim doesn’t have a therapist. Because they’d say annoying stuff like that.

Everything is fine, and Tim isn’t teetering upon a precipice. Definitely. Totally okay.

The evidence of this fact that would make his non-existent therapist very happy, is that he’s even here right now, in a remote part of Mongolia, deep inside one of the newest and most secure league bases. It had taken Tim longer than he would have liked to get his hands on the exact location of the base. Doing so had required exploding two more league bases, drugging seven assassins and failing to get information from them, and eventually breaking through a layer of encryption on the league servers that Tim was pretty sure was actually a trap. No league tech should have taken him less than a few months to hack. Even Ra’s al Ghul has better security than that. The pentagon is easy compared to him.

It’s fine though. If Ra’s al Ghul wants Tim to come confront him, then so be it. Tim’s fine with that. He can handle a tense duel of minds and probably bodies with one of the oldest and most powerful men in the world. He’s done it multiple times before and always come out on top! Well, come out alive at least.

Besides, with any luck, Tim will be able to blow this place sky high and finally bury Ra’s under the rubble. If he gives Ra’s just a few minutes of warning before detonating the charges and the man is unable to clear the blast radius in time, does that still count as breaking Bruce’s no killing rule?

Nah, it probably doesn’t. After the Council of Spiders attacked, there must have been some league assassins who weren’t able to escape their bases in time. Bruce didn’t hate him for that and this wouldn’t be very different?

Wait, did Bruce know about Tim blowing up those bases? Now that he thinks about it, Tim hadn’t technically written a report about it. He had been a bit busy with the whole “Ra’s is going to come to Gotham and destroy Wayne Enterprises” thing.

…

That’s a problem for later. Right now, Tim needs to focus on making it to the center room of this base alive.

He pokes the edge of his staff around the next corner, using the built in mirror to carefully check the hall for enemies. Two common assassins standing in front of a large, heavily decorated door slightly inset into the stone brick walls of the base. They’re apparently low-level based on the lack of adornments on their armor. Easy.

Tim pulls out a pair of birdarangs and holds them steadily between his fingers. He steps out from around the corner and, in a single smooth motion, sends both of them buried into the assassin’s shoulders. As they startle from the shock and reach for their own weapons, he sprints down the hall. His bo staff comes up around his body and knocks against the first one’s head hard. The second one starts to raise their knife to defend themselves, but Tim sweeps out their legs and sends them to the ground before they can.

Well then. Tim huffs softly and squats down next to the assassins, delivering a sharp jab to their temples to ensure they would stay down. For good measure, he also slips a pair of zip-ties out of his belt and secures their limbs. It wouldn’t hold any decent assassin for long, but it’s better than nothing.

Okay. Two more assassins down. That makes 27 that Tim has encountered and taken out in his assault on Ra’s al Ghul’s base. Which is probably too few. Tim has a bad feeling about this. But whatever gets the job done.

He pushes himself to his feet and slides a small charge out of his belt, then pauses and thinks for a moment. Based on the structure of the base and the likelihood of which walls and beams are load-bearing, Tim should place the charge… he smiles and approaches a curved cutout in the right wall. Tim brushes aside the long tapestry depicting yet another resurrection of Ra’s, and secures the small disc to the wall.

That’s the last of his charges. Probably a good thing since right beyond this door should be…

Tim steps into a large, circular room. The ceiling is taller than the ballroom in the manor and golden decals adorn the walls. Wait, are those faint bloodstains on the floor? And, actually, Tim thinks he sees a few splatters across the walls as well. He really doesn’t want to know how those droplets got so high. It’s probably not a very pretty answer. On a raised platform at the back of the room, seated atop a large chair that Tim would arguably call a throne, is one of his worst enemies.

Ra’s al Ghul himself, in the ought-to-be-rotted flesh.

“Detective,” the sort-of-immortal drawls. “Good of you to finally arrive. I’d almost grown bored of waiting.” He raises his chin and looks down his nose at Tim. It makes his blood boil.

“Ra’s al Ghul,” Tim greets as he steps forward. Aside from the two guards at the bottom of Ra’s pedestal and Talia, standing slightly behind Ra’s left side, there are no other assassins in the room. He evidently believes Tim isn’t much of a threat. “I assume you know why I’m here?” What a mistake.

Ra’s lets one side of his mouth curl up in an almost indiscernible smirk. Okay. He’s smug for some reason. Tim can work with this. “Are you not here to finally accept my offer and join us, Detective?” Tim doesn’t dignify him with a response. “A pity. You’ll see eventually,” Ra’s continues after a moment of silence. He slowly stands up and carefully steps down from his pedestal. “You’ll join us eventually. I will have your mind, one way or another.”

As Ra’s approaches Tim, drawing to a stop only five feet away from him, Tim tilts his head and forcefully swallows back the urge to grab one of his birdarangs. This wasn’t unexpected. It doesn’t mean that Tim enjoys the feeling of being hunted though.

That’s fine. Ra’s may think he’s in charge right now, but Tim is the one with explosives placed all over his base.

Tim opens his mouth to respond to the blatant manipulation, but cuts off at the soft rattle from above. He snaps his neck upwards and his eyes lock on the sight of a very small vent in the room’s ceiling. Figures, even assassins need to have some form of air circulation. The opening is small enough that most people couldn’t get through it, save for perhaps a child.

Wait. No.

The vent cover falls away and clatters to the ground, immediately followed by a young boy. He hits the ground rolling and comes up right next to Tim, hood down and sword drawn in a protective stance.

“Grandfather, Mother,” Damian greets before focusing his attention on Tim. “What are you doing here, Drake?”

“What does it look like brat?” Tim shoots back as he subtly slips a birdarang into his palm. He doesn’t anticipate Damian fighting him, but he’d rather be safe than sorry. After all, there is a very important point on the line. “I’m getting the point.”

Damian tuts softly. “I believe you’ll find Drake,” he tightens his grip on his sword, “that as the heir to the League of Assassins–”

“Former heir,” Ra’s al Ghul interrupts.

“Shut up,” Tim and Damian spit out in unison.

Ra’s al Ghul reels back as if he’s been slapped. Talia breaks her perfect composure and snorts. The entire sequence of events definitely does not make Damian’s eye gleam and put a tiny smile on Tim’s face.

“I think you’ll find that the sword is my point Drake. It’s my inheritance,” Damian continues on. He takes one step closer to Tim.

Tim raises an eyebrow and crosses his arm. Really? Damian wants to go there? Even after he’s gladly renounced his ties to the league and turned his back on them? Just to get a point in this game? Well, two can play at that game. “Actually Damian, since I’m the one Ra’s al Ghul is actively trying to recruit, shouldn’t that make this my point? I’m the one he’s trying to convince to take up the sword.”

Two years ago, Damian knows he would have reeled back in shock at that statement. Or, more likely, lunged forward in an attempt to kill the interloper. It’s probably a testament to how far he’s come that his only reaction to those words, which Drake had previously informed him of, is to feel pity. Timothy is not in a good position with his grandfather’s attention focused on him. Damian knows that better than anyone.

It still doesn’t stop him from practically snarling. He has to keep up his reputation after all. No one must ever think he’s going soft. “Don’t be ridiculous Drake. It just means that Grandfather has stooped lower than I thought possible to find a substitute for me.” Not a replacement or pretender. He can practically hear Grayson’s voice in his head, whispering to not call Timothy by that word.

“Or maybe I’m just better,” Drake shoots back.

“Exactly Detective–” Grandfather begins to say.

Drake whirls around to face him, a sneer already painted across his lips. “Oh shut up. You’re practically a crusty, old, walking corpse that should have rotted centuries ago. You have not been the most powerful person in the world for ages. In fact, with Vandal Savage roaming the Earth since practically the dawn of time, you probably weren’t ever the most powerful person. You are nothing more than a man with people who practically worship you because you don’t die, even though your actual method of cheating death is shit. Far better people than you have tried to get me to join them, even without the frankly mildly predatory methods you utilize, and none of them have succeeded because I don’t give a fuck. Your League of Assassins means nothing to me and never will, especially with the way you’ve treated Damian. So shut. up.”

Actually, Damian would probably burn down a country for Drake right now. Those are the best words he’s ever heard. A small smile tugs at his lips, and Damian tilts his head down slightly to hide it. Mother apparently feels the same, as she has begun cackling on the podium. She lifts one hand to her eyes, wiping away a stray tear. It’s one of the best things Damian has ever seen.

Maybe Drake isn’t that bad after all.

“Well, it’s been fun boys, but I have work to do,” she says as her cackles die down. By this point, even Grandfather and his assassins have turned to stare at her. “It is good to see you Ya Rouhi,” she adds, catching Damian’s eyes. “I’ll come visit you soon.”

With that, his mother whirls around and disappears into a doorway concealed on the dias. Damian smiles softly. His mother will come to Gotham soon for a visit. He’ll have to inform Pennyworth to begin ensuring everything is perfect for his mother. Perhaps he’ll be able to show her some of his newest art pieces, or introduce her to Bat-cow. Thankfully, she’s given him enough notice that he can start planning ahead of time.

For now though, there are more pressing things. Damian catches Drake’s eye and raises one eyebrow. Drake tilts his head. Damian shifts his grip on his sword slightly. Drake nods his head sharply, and Damian echoes the movement.

A temporary truce. Deal with Grandfather first, then determine who gets the sword. That works well enough.

Three hours later, the league base is in flames, Ra’s al Ghul has once again vanished into the sunset but this time with multiple grievous wounds, and there are probably multiple assassins trapped under the rubble. But as long as there’s no official count, Bruce can’t truly say they broke the no killing rule.

He would have to find a body first. And they are very good at hiding those.

Selina’s Proudest Moment

TheWorseRed: Ra’s al Ghul’s sword is mine. I get the point

[Image Attached]

CrimeAgainstFashion: Goddamn Timmy what did you do? Why is it covered in blood? Is that rubble dust on the hilt?

CrimeAgainstFashion: Wait how did you even get it? The sword wasnt a serious target suggestion!!! DID YOU TAKE ON THE LEAGUE OF ASSASSINS ALONE???

TheWorseRed: :)

TheWorseRed: i reserve the right to remain silent

CrimeAgainstFashion: I revoke your right to remain silent!!

GodKickedMeOut: Calm your tits Dickhead clearly hes fine or he wouldnt be texting us

TheBest: If anyone should be attacking someone elses tits, its yours. Someone could probably drown in your pecs

HumanGlowstick: Thats so not the point right now steph. Tim how many people did you kill? Are we going to have to hide you from Bruces wrath?

FeralBrat: Don’t be ridiculous Thomas. There won’t be an official body count. Grandfather would have to dig through the rubble for that and that would be a waste of resources. The destruction was too extensive. He’ll likely just cover it up for simplicity.

CrimeAgainstFashion: Dami. How do you know that.

FeralBrat: How do you think Grayson?

CrimeAgainstFashion: yknow what, I’ll overlook the attacking the league of assassins because you two decided to work together on it

CrimeAgainstFashion: THATS SO ADORABLE YOURE GETTING ALONG AWWWW

FeralBrat: Cease this idiotic behavior. Drake was there when I arrived and it was strategically advantageous to cooperate to eliminate my grandfather before dueling for the sword.

DadsFavorite: Didn’t kill him?

FeralBrat: He was fine. He escaped before Drake set off his explosive charges.

FeralBrat: Additionally, Drake may get a point for obtaining Grandfather’s sword, but I now have Drake’s spleen in a jar. It wasn’t on the list but I believe I should still get a point for it.

TheWorseRed: WAIT EHWA T

TheWorseRed: YOU GOITN MY SPLWNE

TheWorseRed: HOW

TheWorseRed: WE BLEW UPT EH BASE EHEN DID TOU GET IYT

ActualGoddess: You know what, I’m not going to ask. You both get a point. I will not save you from Bruce’s wrath if he finds out exactly what happened.

TheWorseRed: do you think i could get it put back in

TheWorseRed: are there any doctors that would do that

TheWorseRed: the lazarus pit water ahs probably kept it biologically active

TheWorseRed: actually wait do you think i could use it to clone myself

TheWorseRed: i could finally finish my cloning research from when i tried to clone kon after he died!! i could finally figure it out!!

ActualGoddess: Your what research? From when?

GodKickedMeOut: Can we go back to the demon brat somehow having the replacements spleen? When did that happen?? what???

HumanGlowstick: dude how out of the loop are you

TheBest: you gotta come home more often. smh

Is it possible to return a child after adopting them? And, more importantly, is it possible to return eight? Even if two of them aren’t your children, one of them is still legally dead, and another is your biological child and thus can’t be returned to the government that was never responsible for him? Especially since said government didn’t know the child existed until he was ten years old and had all of his records forged and backdated after he appeared on his father’s doorstep?

Bruce wishes, so badly, that it was possible right now. He really wishes that he could just give all of his children back to whoever was responsible for them before he came along. That way, he wouldn’t have to deal with this utter insanity.

(No he doesn’t. He would never return the majority of his kids to the situations they were in before he welcomed them into his homes. He wouldn't even be able to let go of the few who had good lives.)

Regardless, his children are going to make him go completely gray soon.

He sighs heavily, rubbing his face with his hands before looking back at the report pulled up on the batcomputer. It’s no less terrifying, impressive, and headache inducing than the last time he looked at it. And that very report is, in what will inevitably be a source of frustration and mountains of paperwork, in the hands of both the Justice League and Interpol.

The report details everything known about the strange group of criminals that had just appeared around the world. It’s the very same report Bruce just had to listen to Diana give an hour long briefing on. Well, he didn’t listen to the entire hour. He had left as soon as he noticed the familiar handwriting on the scans of the post-it notes.

Alright. This is fine. Everything is fine. It’s nothing big, just eight of his children starting some sort of crime ring activity that involves breaking into some of the world’s most secure places to show off and purposefully leaving behind taunts for Interpol and the Justice League. Both of whom they have garnered the express attention of.

Yeah. Sure. Bruce definitely isn’t on the verge of completely strangling his kids.

This is a perfectly healthy and normal reaction to be having in a situation that any parent experiences at least once in their lifetime. This is an average experience. This is not at all abnormal and unexpected.

Bruce’s eye twitches.

Alright. Now that he has established the PERFECTLY OKAY reality of where his children have been for the last five days, he can focus on the next step in this half-formed plan in his mind that first developed when he opened that goddamned file in the Watchtower meeting room.

Step Two: Figure out the cause of this insanity.

Never let it be said that Dick Grayson is a normal man. He was raised and trained by some of the best acrobats in the world before watching them fall to their deaths brutally. He had then vowed to get revenge on their killer before being adopted and trained by a practically mythical vigilante that many people still don’t believe really exists. In the time since that, Dick has fought alongside aliens and gods, led entire teams of absolutely terrifying superhumans, been trained by some of the deadliest people in the world, formed a family of absolutely batshit (ha) insane crime fighters, traveled through time, space, and other dimensions, and done it all while being one of the most famous and sought after people in the world in his civilian life.

And now he is breaking into the headquarters of the United Nations.

He keeps his breathing slow and steady as he slides the end of one of his escrima sticks around another corner and checks for guards. Nothing. Again. Dick quickly darts across the intersection and continues onwards.

It’s a bit strange. He had expected to run into a bit more opposition when infiltrating what is essentially the headquarters of the world. Sure, the Kremlin had been easy, but that was a bit of a smaller scale than the UN Headquarters. Come on! The secretary general had personally received multiple extraterrestrial ambassadors here! It was supposed to be a bit harder than this. Dick had practically waltzed right in, even for him.

This is almost suspiciously easy. He unfortunately hadn’t been able to go through the vents, with them being specifically designed to be too small for intruders. But it had been far too simple for him to hack the cameras, disable the alarm on one of the windows, and sneak right in. There hasn’t even been a single guard.

Where are all of the late night workers? The diplomats trying to get paperwork filed, or the cleaning crews preparing for the morning, or even the security guards that are supposed to be there?

Dick frowns and shakes his head as he continues down the hallway. It might be weird (it’s definitely weird), but it’s ultimately not his problem. He will gladly welcome whatever makes his job easier.

As he passes by a set of large wooden doors, Dick pauses. A faint light streams underneath the door, and the distant sound of voices echoes from the other side. Dick mentally orients himself with the blueprints he had memorized and frowns.

The General Assembly Hall.

He had personally checked the evening’s schedule for any potential complications. Dick had specifically chosen to infiltrate the building tonight because there weren’t supposed to be any large events or meetings. There especially wasn’t supposed to be anyone inside the biggest hall in the building, in the middle of what sounds like a probably important conversation.

Dick has a specific target and a limited amount of time to reach it.

He is also an extremely curious vigilante that was trained by the Batman to always collect as much dirt information as possible.

Dick slowly opens the large oak door and steps onto the second floor of the hall’s audience seats. He ducks behind a row of seats and pokes his head over the top, making sure that nothing more than his hair and eyes is visible.

Apparently, the general assembly hall is larger in person than it usually looks on television. Despite being one of the world's oldest heroes and having joined Bruce on the streets before even the Justice League existed, Dick has never actually been to the United Nations. Other heroes have gone plenty of times of course, but there’s a bit more secrecy involved when you’re practically an urban legend. The only time Bruce had personally come here was to officially recognize the Justice League, and even then he had stayed away from the cameras as much as possible.

And despite Richard Grayson-Wayne receiving multiple invitations to visit the United Nations, that sort of environment isn’t exactly his style. Maybe if they had been invitations to ragers with drunk diplomats on the hall’s floor he would have accepted them, but they, very unfortunately, weren’t. That probably would have been fun.

It’s honestly a bit strange for him to see the rows of desks in person. Dick had never imagined himself as a hero that would get attention or recognition like Superman did whenever he visited the general assembly. Then again, the trend of non-recognition is kinda continuing. It’s not like he’s here on official business, unless stealing the UN’s official charter counts as official business. Is it official if he’s targeting an official document? Official by association?

What’s stranger though, is the gathering of people at the front of the large hall, just in front of the secretary general’s raised desk. There’s 5 of them, all clad in long green robes and standing in a loose semi-circle. In the air above them is a series of 28 small, circular, wait, are those faintly smoking holes in space and probably time? In each of the very ominous looking holes, a small group of people in similar green robes are visible.

Some of the people look almost exactly the same, and if he had to wager a guess, at least one more duplicate would be in the group standing on the hall’s floor. Unfortunately, he can’t see their faces from his current vantage point. At least three groups appear to be standing aboard a spaceship, while two others look like they’re in candlelit rooms. Another four of the groups are actually made of aliens. One person has wings.

Dick opens his mouth, pauses, closes it, opens it again, and repeats the process at least seven times. He slowly reaches up to his domino mask and taps the side of it, starting a recording.

There’s no fucking way. There’s absolutely no fucking way.

Dick scans over the entire scene again.

Apparently there is a fucking way.

Tim’s absolutely going to lose his shit.

Above the group of seven in one of the holes, which Dick can now clearly recognize as interdimensional portals from his few unfortunate encounters with them, is a clearly visible triangle with an eye. A green triangle. The same shade as the robes worn by everyone he can see.

Okay.

Dick has apparently just stumbled into a meeting of the Interdimensional Illuminati Sent to Rule us All and Subjugate us to their Interdimensional Wills, or whatever they call themselves.

He makes another very good impression of a suffocating fish.

The meeting is too far away for Dick to be able to pick any individual words out of the faint hum of voices, but he doesn’t need to hear them. This is not something he wants to get involved in right now.

Dick does not need to get wrapped up in some multiversal conspiracy theory that definitely encompasses far more than he can properly deal with or counter on his own right now. Again. He also doesn’t need to get caught investigating said group that could probably send him to another universe if he were discovered. Also again.

This is definitely a problem for later, with multiple other detectives and heroes, and a lot of evidence. Also for after he wins this competition. Because that’s the most important thing right now.

Dick slowly backs away, carefully taking a mental note of the date and time. Barbara will want to comb the security footage later to see which diplomats had entered and exited the building around this time. That will be the first step in this investigation he wasn’t expecting to have to start tonight. The second step will be informing Bruce that he stumbled across a version of the supposedly fake illuminati spread across the multiverse while competing in a game of theft with his siblings. Bruce won’t like to hear about that last part, but hopefully the whole, yknow, interdimensional secret society will distract him enough for Dick to get away with it.

For now though, he really needs to get his hands on that charter.

Selina’s Proudest Moment

CrimeAgainstFashion: Interdimensional Illuminati is real.

TheWorseRed: what.

CrimeAgainstFashion: you heard me

TheBest: explain?????

CrimeAgainstFashion: What about that needs explanation

CrimeAgainstFashion: interdimensional illuminati is real

TheWorseRed: ?????? the illuminati???? interdimensional??? everything????

CrimeAgainstFashion: nope. not until i win this thing!

TheWorseRed: dick no get back here and explain this

TheWorseRed: what do you mean the illuminatis real

TheWorseRed: does that mean everything else is real too

TheWorseRed: is bigfoot real also

TheWorseRed: are the lizard people

TheWorseRed: was roswell? i already hacked into the dod to look for those files but they might just be on paper to purposefully subvert any investigators

TheWorseRed: what the fuck dick you need to give me more answers than that

TheWorseRed: dick?

TheWorseRed: dick get back here and give me answers

TheWorseRed: I’m going to change every ringtone and alarm you ever create to the worst recording of Jason mocking your voice that I can get my hands on spliced with Bruce yelling ‘Nightwing!’ at the top of his lungs. It will be guaranteed to give you a heart attack. I have run multiple simulations to confirm that fact.

TheWorseRed: Then I’m going to ensure you can never touch another piece of technology without it committing suicide in your hands.

TheWorseRed: Finally, I’ll release your entire internet search and bank history, dating back to when you arrived at the manor, to the entirety of the Titans, Justice League, and internet.

TheWorseRed: I know what you were doing on April 16th, 2014, at 3:07 in the morning.

GodKickedMeOut: good god shut up

CrimeAgainstFashion: holy shit timmy calm down. well deal with the interdimensional illuminati after the games over, deal?

TheWorseRed: as long as i get to tell everyone i was right. fuck you all.

Ambassador Carmichle looks over his shoulder, peering at the back of the large assembly hall. He had thought that he felt eyes on him. But now, as he slowly scans the seats, there’s nothing there.

Hm. Interesting.

His intuition is rarely wrong, but he and his fellow initiates had done everything possible to ensure that the building would be empty for the evening. All of the other diplomats were subtly distracted by other work, their interns had been persuaded to spend the night out having fun, and the cleaning crew wouldn’t be arriving for a few more hours. Even a small glamor charm had been cast on the security guards to ensure they would remain unaware.

There is no possible way for someone else to be in the room.

He frowns and shakes his head softly, before focusing his attention back on the interdimensional debate before him. He will just have to trust in their efforts to ensure their secrecy. Right now, he needs to focus on convincing the others that their version of Zesti is the best of the multiversal shell companies. The addictive well water really does give it a bit of extra flavor.

Jason Todd’s life has taken a very different turn from what he once expected. As a child, he had believed he would grow up trapped in the worst parts of Gotham City, before finally escaping to a hopefully better life as an adult. Then, while on the streets, he hadn’t fully believed he would even make it to adulthood. But then Bruce came along, and suddenly there was Bruce, Alfred, Dick, Barbie, and most importantly, Robin. Jason had believed himself to be virtually untouchable. He had planned to go to college and get a degree while fighting alongside his family. He had planned to stay with them forever.

And then he died. And everything went to shit.

Even after he came back to life, even after taking a bath in the cursed bubbly green pit of hell, even after all of the shit that happened with the league and becoming a feared crime lord, even after going universe hopping with Donna and Kyle and seeing some wild shit, even after forming his own team of sorta-superheroes, Jason had never actually expected this.

Not once did Jason ever seriously think he would be breaking into the British Museum to find the Rosetta Stone and basically vandalize it in order to get a point in a stupid little crime competition with his siblings.

But alas, here he is, humming softly as he peacefully strolls through the museum exhibits and pausing to look at the most interesting ones. The guards’ drinks have been spiked, the cameras are looping, and all remotely operable and automatic security measures have been disabled. The only thing that Jason still has to do is get through the Rosetta Stone’s personal security system.

In other words, Jason is basically taking a walk in a sunny, grassy park. He can practically hear the birdsong. If only every job was this easy. Man, why can’t supervillains make their bases and organizations as easy to infiltrate as the British Museum? Life would be so much simpler.

No, it’s not very concerning that one of the biggest museums in the world is so easy for him to break into. Jason is just uniquely talented. He honestly doesn't think many other people could have pulled this off so quickly. Maybe all those years with Bruce had been good for something after all.

…Ugh. Hopefully Jason never has that train of thought again.

His humming slows to a halt as Jason pauses in front of the iconic Parthenon sculptures. Hm. He had heard Diana, Donna, and Cassie’s own individual rants about the stolen statues multiple times. As such, he can’t help but frown a little as he gazes at the carefully carved marble. But he also can’t ignore the sheer beauty of them. Jason can practically see them coming to life and moving around him. Dick, the bastard, would say it’s the theater kid and poet in him that makes his heart stutter in wonder. Dick would be wrong. No one could possibly look at the marble behemoths and be the same afterwards.

Jason pulls out his phone and snaps a quick selfie of himself with the statues. There’s not much of a point in trying to keep his photos clean of incriminating evidence. Anyone who manages to get their hands on it would be far too interested in the many photos of Gotham’s elusive bats, the Earth from the watchtower, and Jason’s own deeds as Red Hood to care that he broke into the British Museum.

He slides the phone back into his jacket pocket and continues onward. Is this the most efficient way to the Rosetta Stone? No. Does he care? Also no. The cameras will keep looping for another hour and a half, and the guards will be out cold for another hour after that. Jason has plenty of time to look at the museum’s collection.

Although, Jason thinks as he rounds another corner and freezes in his tracks ten minutes later, maybe he should amend that statement about having plenty of time. Maybe he should also finally learn to stop challenging the universe. It never seems to go well for him.

In the middle of the hallway, staring back at him, is a trio dressed in blood red robes. Actually, scratch that, the robes are not blood red fabric. Jason can pick out the distinctive scent of actual blood. Their hoods are pulled up high enough to cover their faces in shadow, concealing their identities. But Jason honestly doesn’t care much about that right now.

What he cares about is the mass of black tentacles and eyes floating just behind the trio. A mass that looks way too similar to some sort of eldritch monster. There are far too many tentacles and mouths on that thing for Jason to feel even remotely comfortable in this situation.

Well. That’s just fan-fucking-tastic.

Screw Dick and his interdimensional Illuminati. Jason thinks that he wins the unofficial competition for weirdest encounter in this game. And possibly in the last month. But Tim’s recent run-in with the literal incarnation of evil in a chess match with the personification of Earth has to take the cake for the year.

Jason moves without thinking. In less than a second, he has a gun in each hand, raised and pointed at the strange group. One is trained on the person in the middle of the trio, while the other is pointing at one of the eyes on the weird cthulhu thing. Whatever it is.

He would like to amend his statement from earlier. Jason can honestly say that he never expected to be in the British Museum, pointing a gun at what appears to be some kind of cult and its pet demon, after breaking in to steal the Rosetta Stone in order to basically vandalize it to get a point in a competition with his siblings.

Is this the kind of shit that always makes other heroes look at the bats in confusion and concern whenever they start talking about their regular missions? He might actually understand it a bit now. This is a little weird, even for Jason.

“Alright, who the fuck are you guys?” he calls out loudly. The red-robed trio doesn’t respond. Jason tightens his grip on his pistols “You fuckers better answer my question. I’m not afraid to shoot you!”

The one in the middle lets out a small snort. They turn their head up just enough to let the light illuminate the cruel smirk on their lips. Jason narrows his eyes and flicks off the safety on his guns. “Deal with the interference,” they whisper, quiet enough that Jason barely picks it out.

Apparently the monster thing has very good hearing, because just a split second later, it’s surging through the air towards Jason. He rolls out of the way before yanking both guns up and firing them directly at the thing’s multitude of eyes. Unfortunately for him, the thing only shifts its body and somehow absorbs the bullets without a single complaint.

Alright. This is looking a bit more complicated than Jason anticipated. That’s fine. He has a lot of guns on him right now, and it has to be able to die eventually, right? Right? He sure hopes so at least?

Jason unloads the entirety of both pistols’ clips into the monster. Not a single one makes actual contact with the beast. A series of bullet holes embed themselves into the wall behind the beast. Instead, it just rushes towards him again, forcing Jason to throw himself behind a bench to avoid it.

Okay. This is definitely a bit worse than he thought. His guns aren’t doing shit to the beast, whatever the thing is, and he’s willing to bet that his many knives won’t do anything either.

Fine. That’s totally fine.

Jason is fighting some sort of eldritch monster and doesn’t have any weapons that can properly harm it. Sure. Yeah. Whatever. This is definitely what he expected to be doing today.

Actually, Jason thinks as he rolls out of the way of a swinging shadow tentacle, scratch that. He has one more trick up his sleeve.

As soon as he comes back up on his feet, Jason whips around and holds his hands in front of them. A soft orange glow emanates from them before solidifying into two long, flaming swords. Jason takes a step forward, and the monster slides backwards. He takes another step and the monster, once again, retreats. Every single one of its eyes are trained on the blades in Jason’s hands.

Okay. Jason smirks sharply. He can work with this.

Selina’s Proudest Moment

GodKickedMeOut: fyi, theres apparently a murderous cult dedicated to breaking into museums and summoning cthulhu monsters so they can hunt down and destroy ancient artifacts that provide magical connections to actual deities

GodKickedMeOut: that way, after destroying all methods of communicating with actual deities, they can take over the world and reshape it to match their post apocalyptic bullshit vision of a perfect world that will worship them and their pet monsters

GodKickedMeOut: but the monsters can pretty easily be killed with the all blades. and three of the cult members are tied up with a note to be turned over to the jl and batman so we can look more into it later

HumanGlowstick: what th efuck

TheBest: echoed.

TheWorseRed: huh

CrimeAgainstFashion: Little Wing. Explain more.

FeralBrat: How exactly do you know that the All-Blades are capable of injuring these creatures, Todd?

CrimeAgainstFashion: And what are these all blades???

DadsFavorite: You okay?

ActualGoddess: Did you at least get the Rosetta Stone?

GodKickedMeOut: yes.

TheBest: explain??????

GodKickedMeOut: no.

Marcus has been a security guard for nearly four decades now. He’s worked at many places, from acting as a bouncer at dingy bars and clubs, to serving as a private guard on rich estates. Each place comes with its own challenges of course, but some are objectively easier than others. The British Museum was supposed to be his final stop, a nice, cushy job to carry him over into retirement.

Marcus is also currently drafting a mental resignation letter from said job.

It was bad enough that he had startled awake and glanced at the clock, only to realize he somehow lost over three hours. He had never once fallen asleep on the job before, which combined with Rico’s own spontaneous nap, indicates that they had somehow been drugged. Even that should have been impossible. No guard wants to be drugged. Drugs mean that someone needs them out of the picture, the exact opposite of what employers want.

But that isn’t why Marcus is revising all the plans he had for the next couple of decades. Drugs, he could have dealt with. It would have been annoying to explain to the museum directors, but he and Rico probably could have gotten a tox screen of some sort. This though, it’s, well– no. Just no.

The black goo has a strange scent that he can’t quite place, but whatever it is, it will probably drive the cleaning and restoration crews insane considering it’s currently covering every surface in one of the eastern wings. It’s also covering the three people tied up in a heap on the floor. Marcus frowns, ignoring the way that one of the trio thrashes and demands their freedom, mixed in with violently spat curses and insults. Resting in the middle of the floor, on one of the only clean patches left, is a single red feather and a small post-it note.

These guys are apparently part of a cult dedicated to getting rid of all potential connections to the gods so they can take over the world with their weird eldritch monster bastards. Had to fight one of those fuckers myself. Give them to the Justice League. They’re annoying brats, but they’ll deal with these assholes.

Marcus really should have taken that offer at the Globe Theater.

In Barbara’s defense, the Tower of London’s security had actually been a mild challenge to get through. The CCTV cameras were easy for her to hack into and loop of course. She’s the legendary Oracle, controller of Gotham’s camera network, mistress of the internet’s darkest corners, creator of the Justice League systems, and renowned hacker. They never stood a chance of keeping her out.

The guards are what were a bit tricky. Barbara’s research had turned up 22 members of the Tower Guard, dedicated to securing the safety of the Crown Jewels. Then there were also the 38 Yeoman Warders, who not only provided extra security, but also lived in the tower itself. With the two groups combined, the tower is constantly under heavy watch and patrol. Anyone would find getting through such tight security concentrated on a single object to be a bit tricky.

But Barbara did not build both Batgirl and Oracle from the ground up for nothing. It had taken a bit of cleverness, some slight diversions, and careful utilization of the natural blindspots provided by the building’s architecture and display cases, but she managed to get through.

And now here she is, sitting in front of the United Kingdom’s Crown Jewels inside the vault. The last barrier in her way to one of the most important items in the world, St. Edward’s Crown, is a case of thick, bulletproof glass. Now, this would be a problem for most people. The glass has over a hundred individual sensors connected directly to the alarms system on it, positioned so that any jostling of the glass will bring every guard in the tower down on her head.

However, Barbara knows that the Crown Jeweller personally cleans and maintains the collection every January. The jewels also have to be able to be removed whenever deemed necessary by the state. Both instances mean that there must be some way to disable the alarms without setting them off. And, just as she taught Steph and Cass, the greatest weakness in any case is its ability to be opened. There’s probably some kind of keyhole or thumbpad hidden on the display, or the alarms might be controlled through an operation panel.

Barbara could do the difficult thing and potentially spend hours searching for the proper method of disabling the alarms, then hack through it. Or, she could take the much easier route and be done a lot quicker. So instead of making the stupid choice, Barbara pulls a small ball out of one of her pockets and presses the tiny button on top of it.

A localized EMP pulse emanates from the sphere, knocking out all technology within a few foot radius. Bruce had designed it years ago with the purpose of knocking out complicated trap mechanisms, and Tim had upgraded it since then. There was virtually no chance of the alarms still being active. With a confidence that very few other people would be able to muster in this situation, Barbara reaches out and carefully pulls the glass case off of the pedestal before placing it on the floor. Not a single alarm. Of course her EMP worked perfectly.

“I guess I’m too late then,” a soft voice speaks from the doorway.

“Hello Duke,” Barbara responds. She had clocked his presence a few moments prior to removing the case. “Don’t feel too bad. I guess the early bat gets the jewels in this case.”

Duke chuckles as he moves to stand next to her. Barbara looks up at him with a sly grin. “Besides, I think the jewels are a much better fit for me, don’t you?”

“Hmm,” he hums softly. “I think I could pull them off. But you’re right,” he turns to look at Barbara, “they would look much better on you.”

Barbara pauses. If Bruce were to ever find out exactly what image is starting to take place in her mind, she would get the worst lecture in the history of the world. But then again, Barbara isn’t one of Bruce’s children. He has no authority over her or her actions. And he certainly can’t threaten to bench her like he would any of the others.

Besides, doesn’t Barbara deserve a bit of a reward for making it through all of those security guards and disabling the alarms? Well, actually, that was technically a crime. Okay, amended statement. Doesn’t Barbara deserve a reward for putting up with all of the shit the bats put her through?

This would certainly be one hell of a reward…

Duke smiles slightly as he continues to watch Barbara’s face. The emotions that flit over her are amusing to see, especially with what he knows is coming. There’s a healthy dose of apprehension and consideration that shifts into spite and excitement, before finally settling on pure mischief.

“Well Duke,” Barbara finally says with a faint glint in her eyes, “shouldn’t we prove that statement?”

Duke’s answering grin can’t be described as anything other than scarily gleeful. He doesn’t hesitate to reach forwards and grab ahold of the massive crown, gloves already secured over his hands. Barbara holds up one finger before pulling out a small plastic sheet and fitting it inside the crown.

“Can’t give them any hair follicles to test,” she murmurs softly. “That would be stupid of us.”

He nods at her words before shifting his stance slightly and adjusting his grip on the large crown. It’s honestly a bit lighter than he thought it would be, with all of the gold and jewels on it. “Barbara Gordon,” he begins, his voice somehow ringing out with purpose despite the low volume, “With the power vested in me by my own choices, and the authority that I decided I possess two minutes ago, I hereby declare you, Barbara Gordon, the original Batgirl and now Oracle, Queen of England!”

Duke lowers the crown onto Barbara’s head, careful to keep the plastic inside it. After a moment of subtle adjustments, he steps back to admire his work. Barbara smiles up at him from underneath the large crown, her bright red hair popping out against the deep purples of the crown. It’s nearly the size of her head, and frankly almost looks ridiculous with her wearing the black stealth suit, but Duke doesn’t care. Barbara looks just like the queen he knows she is.

He pulls out his phone and quickly takes multiple photos, before sliding it away. “Well, Queen Barbara, what is your first royal decree?”

“Let’s ban Bruce from the country. We’re going to need somewhere to hide from him after this,” Barbara answers almost immediately. Duke dissolves into laughter.

Selinas Proudest Moment

HumanGlowstick: Everyone bow down to the new Queen of England!

[Image Attached]

TheBest: Long live the queen!

CrimeAgainstFashion: Long live the queen!

GodKickedMeOut: damn barbie, nice job. youre going to be the best queen ever

DadsFavorite: Beautiful

TheWorseRed: nice to see barbaras status as a queen is finally official

FeralBrat: What will your first acts as Queen be, Gordon?

ActualGoddess: I’m going to bring about some serious reforms, but first and foremost is banning both Bruce Wayne and Batman from the country. We’ll have an entire nation to take refuge from him in.

GodKickedMeOut: even more evidence to why barbie is the best of all of us

TheBest: so true

Deep in the messy storage halls of one of the Church of England’s many storage facilities, a small crystal orb, covered by a faded cloth and shoved between two rotting books, shifts in color. It fades from a blue-purple to a light green. The orb will remain undiscovered for a long time, but that does not matter.

The only thing that matters is that it has recognized a new mistress, one of non-royal descent who resides on the other side of the sea. She does not know the true power that has been bestowed upon her, and likely never will.

But should she ever call, should the Queen of England ever raise her voice and cry for the forgotten armies of England’s past, then they will answer. They will flock to their mistress and obey her every command.

For now, the orb lies in wait. It’s time will come eventually.

Look, Stephanie didn’t exactly mean for it to get this far. But she also can’t exactly say that she hates this surprising turn of events. Is she committing a crime far worse than the casual breaking and entering she had been doing for the last week? Yes. But is it absolutely worth it? Also yes. 100%.

She maintains her perfectly still crouch as she raises one hand, pressing a careful finger to the comms in her ears. Alright, signal sent. Damian will do his job perfectly. She just needs to ensure the Secret Service won’t give him any problems. And, as much as Steph hates to say it, that will be a bit difficult for her.

It had initially been a joke. She really hadn’t meant for Damian to take it seriously. In fact, she hadn’t even been planning to even see him until later tonight. The final heist, the commencement of their global crime spree, isn’t supposed to begin for another hour. But she had, literally, run into Damian at a cafe in downtown DC that morning, and like any good big pseudo-sister, utterly refused to leave him alone. Even when he started calling her names and insulting her thievery abilities.

Stephanie creeps out of the shadows on the side of the large building and carefully begins to scale the white wall. Finding proper handholds would be challenging, if she hadn’t personally climbed up the slick side of Wayne Tower with no ropes multiple times. The more difficult part is definitely figuring out how to disable the window’s alarm from the outside, but Bruce had taught her how to shut down every commercially available alarm system, and then some classified ones. Easy peasy.

When Bruce finds out about this, because this is a bit too big for even them to sweep under the rug and there’s no turning back now, Steph can at least pin most of the blame on Damian. After all, he had been the one to start the conversation.

“Are you ready to commit treason, Brown?” Damian had asked in a low voice as he stirred the cup of tea in front of him. The ambient noise of the small coffee shop covered up their conversation, but Steph still leaned slightly forward to give them a bit of extra privacy. It wouldn’t do to have someone overhear them planning to steal one of the country’s most important artifacts and report them to the FBI. That would make things a bit complicated.

“It’s not the worst thing we could be doing,” she had responded as she picked at her chocolate croissant. “There are a bunch more serious types of treason.”

Damian hummed softly. “That is true. Stealing a document is far preferable to something such as attacking a building or sharing matters of national security with foreign parties.” He lifted up his teacup and took a small sip of the drink. He looked adorable.

“Yeah. We could be, I don’t know, kidnapping the president or something like that,” she muttered. Stephanie paused and tilted her head. “Actually, would we even be committing treason then? Would kidnapping the president and stealing the Declaration cancel each other out?”

A careful silence fell over their table. Up at the counter, one of the servers called out an order for a Mr. Parkins. Damian blinked. “I don’t believe that is how crimes work, Brown. Shouldn’t you be aware of this by now? We wouldn’t have a job if that were the case. Don’t be idiotic.”

Okay, Steph had been joking before, but now she had a point to prove. “But think about it Dami.” The boy’s eye twitched and she smirked. “If the president officially gave us permission to steal the declaration, then we wouldn’t technically be committing treason. We’d have federal approval.”

“That’s not–”

“Besides,” Steph continues, cutting him off, “it’s Lex Luthor. He always deserves to be kidnapped. He’s an asshole.”

Damian paused and tilted his head. After a long moment of consideration with an expression that, which Stephanie would only admit under extreme torture, made him actually look his age, he nodded once. “Luthor made some callous comments regarding Jonathan two weeks ago,” he stated rather simply.

Stephanie blinked. Was this what she thought it was? Did she just accidentally get Damian to agree to abducting the President of the United States? She hadn’t been serious. She had been joking. Stephanie hadn’t honestly been suggesting that they kidnap Lex Luthor.

But she was also never one to back down from a challenge, especially when it involved fucking over someone she didn’t like.

“He also still hasn’t started paying his child support for Kon…” she drawled, carefully meeting Damian’s eyes. Stephanie saw nothing but steely determination in them. She smiled. “You wanna create a temporary alliance Baby Bat?”

Damian smiled back at her, perfectly echoing her own sharp grin. “That would be acceptable Brown.”

And now here she is, dropping into one of the halls of the White House, with the express purpose of creating a distraction so that Damian, Robin, the Boy Wonder himself, can kidnap one of the most powerful and important people in the world just so they can terrorize him and get revenge for their friends. Also so they can technically avoid treason. Not that they really care about that part. What’s a little treason really mean anyway?

This is definitely not how little Steph imagined her life would one day go.

On the other side of the large building, in a certain ovular room, a young boy steps out of the shadows. A deadly looking sword is gripped tightly in his hands, and his face is covered by a black half-mask. The boy could very easily approach the bald man at the desk without making a sound, but that would defeat the purpose of this activity.

“Lex Luthor,” he says, breaking the calm silence in the room. The man in question jerks his head up and locks eyes with the young boy.

“Robin,” Luthor mutters. “It is you, isn’t it?”

The young boy only tilts his head and stares at the man. This is the same man who has, multiple times, almost killed some of the few people he actually cares about. This is the same man who practically curses the existence of his closest friend. This is the same man who hurt his uncle and abandoned his brother’s best friend. This is the same man who regularly wages war against his father, attempting to ruin him.

Damian couldn't care less if Luthor realizes he’s Robin. He also couldn’t care less if Luthor realizes that he and his siblings are responsible for the global break-in spree. It’s not as if anyone would ever believe him. After all, he’s Damian al Ghul-Wayne, the youngest and most innocent son of renowned billionaire Brucie Wayne, the man with no brain. He’s the child who cares so much about animals that he cries whenever a Gotham socialite refuses his requests to donate to conservation. He couldn’t possibly be the deadly Robin, right? Damian doesn’t exactly enjoy his family’s disguise of simpering fools, but it is a very effective one. Especially right now.

“Your guards will not be coming, Luthor,” he says softly, stepping closer to the man and raising his sword. “Don’t bother attempting to call for help. You will be coming with me.” Damian points the tip of his blade directly at Luthor’s chest, letting it slightly tear the fabric of his very expensive suit. “One way or another.”

Selina’s Proudest Moment

TheBest: we have a present for you all

FeralBrat: Don’t describe it as a present Brown. This is more akin to revenge. Or intimidation.

CrimeAgainstFashion: Whats the present? Or revenge i guess??

TheBest: wait and see!!! :))))))

GodKickedMeOut: thats not ominous as fuck

LiteralGoddess: Cameras are down. It’s go time everyone

HumanGlowstick: fuck yeah lets do this

Thirty minutes later, the eyes of the world are trained on Washington DC. News Stations crowd the entrance to the White House, where the Vice President is hosting a press conference regarding President Luthor’s apparent abduction from the Oval Office. Inside the building, Martian Manhunter carefully examines the scene of the crime. With the Batman and his brood not responding to any attempts to contact them, he had been called in as the league’s second best detective. Although, he thinks as he carefully picks up a pair of feathers, one dark green and one purple, perhaps he doesn’t need to work hard to determine the culprit of the abduction.

A few miles away, two Interpol agents stand in front of a squadron of MPD, carefully outlining the case for them. There are only five officers under their command, far less than they had initially been promised, but they can’t really fault the MPD with President Luthor’s sudden abduction. “It’s a miracle we were even able to get five officers,” one of them leans over to whisper to the other.

In the Hall of Justice, Wonder Woman flips through a series of documents, bringing the heroes around her up to speed. Her blood boils at the actions committed by these criminals, the sheer audacity displayed by them. Not only have they gallivanted around the world and broken into multiple secure buildings, but they had also probably endangered multiple artifacts. As a historian herself, the sheer audacity makes her blood boil.

And finally, in a building in the center of the city, less than a mile from the White House itself, nine individuals stealthily make their way into one of the city’s most revered museums. They have a job to do, one that they’ve been building up to for the last week and a half.

None of them can possibly predict what’s about to come their way.

Very few people realize the sheer insanity of what Batman goes through on a regular basis. No, not the weirdness of the Gotham criminals with their individual gimmicks and penchant towards mass murder, or the fact that he, a painfully mortal human man, routinely fights alongside and even orders around literal aliens and gods. What drives him to the brink of madness at least once a week, what gets him to seriously consider hanging up the cowl even for just a second, is his children.

His colleagues don’t understand it, simply because they aren’t responsible for his children. Yes, the majority of the new generation of heroes is a bit, well, wild. Yes, Diana, Clark, and Barry had nearly had multiple aneurysms when they found out what Young Justice regularly got up to. Yes, Wally does regularly jump between universes for fun. Yes, Hal does have to try and curb Kyle’s sheer recklessness, born from his year of guarding the entire universe alone. Yes, the other members of the league with proteges all have their own headaches to deal with.

But Bruce would be, frankly, shocked if any of them could hold a candle to the insanity of Gotham and its defenders. Or the way that his children seem to have an innate desire to get into the worst possible situations, for fun. At least most superheroes don’t have an armada of siblings that simultaneously want to laugh at them as they dig themselves deeper and deeper into hell, while also jumping into the pit with them to help them escape.

Such as when one of them decides to make fun of National Treasure and multiple others start an argument over the movie’s validity, leading to an international crime spree and being hunted down by Interpol and The Justice League, before inevitably ending up in a confrontation with both groups in Washington DC’s National Archives only an hour after the President of the United State’s abduction from the Oval Office and the subsequent lockdown of the city. Which they totally, definitely, absolutely have nothing to do with. No connection whatsoever there.

Yeah, right.

“Surrender now, and we won’t hurt you!” Wonder Woman yells as she rounds the corner, her shoes clicking against the tiled floor, and steps into the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom. The first Green Lantern, already faintly glowing green, flanks her left while Black Canary sticks to her right. The rest of the team she had initially put together were, unfortunately, pulled away with the abduction of President Luthor and an earthquake in Japan.

In the middle of the large, circular gallery, under the domed ceiling and between the two massive curved portraits on the walls, stands a loosely gathered group of individuals clad in black combat gear and beanies. Some of them, like the one with the escrima sticks and the one with the bo staff, hold weapons in their hands. Others, like the girl standing in a loose, but dangerous stance, clearly don’t need anything to fight with. One of them, the girl in the wheelchair, carefully begins to swipe through a device that Diana can’t quite make out.

On the other side of the room, standing next to his older brother and slightly in front of most of his younger siblings, Jason Tood blinks. This wasn’t exactly what he had meant when he said that Tim should back up his claims that the Declaration of Independence is easy to steal. He had intended for there to be a presentation of some sort.

However, that doesn’t mean that he’s upset by this turn of events.

This is, absolutely, the greatest thing that has ever happened to him. Roy will never believe him.

Just behind Jason, Tim narrows his eyes as he takes in the three league members. He is certain they hadn’t tripped any alarms or been caught on any cameras. He and Barbara had personally made sure of that. There also hadn’t been any stakeouts on the building, something that Cass and Jason verified before they even approached the building.

They hadn’t stolen the Declaration of Independence itself yet. They hadn’t even started their no-holds-barred race to the basement yet. In fact, not all of them are even here.

So how the hell did the Justice League, and apparently Interpol, Tim adds as a group of five police officers and two agents stream in behind the heroes, know to find them here?

Tim shifts his grip on his bo staff. Next to him, Cass tilts her head and Duke adjusts his stance, as in front of them, Jason drops his hands to rest over his belt. The soft tapping of Barbara’s hands on her screen continues.

“You are under arrest for multiple accounts of breaking and entering, assault, and burglary,” one of the police officers calls out as they step up next to Black Canary. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

“C’mon, we didn’t actually steal anything,” Tim mutters softly. “If anything, we committed reverse burglary. We broke in and left notes to make sure people updated their security!”

Duke jams his elbow sharply into Tim’s side, even as he snorts.

Jason’s eye twitches. They don’t need Tim’s usual smartass comments right now, not with seven guns pointed at them and three members of the Justice League ready to bear down on their asses. Yes, they can get out of this situation. Jason already has multiple ideas for how to do just that in his head. But that still doesn’t mean this is a good situation. He takes a small step backwards, closing ranks with his siblings.

“Okay every–” Dick begins, presumably in an attempt to calm down the multiple angry officers standing barely 20 feet away from them. He promptly snaps it shut as a trio of people steps through the small marble entrance to the hallway opposite the Justice League and officers. They pause in their tracks, stopping short a little in front and to the right of the group of vigilantes apparently moonlighting burglars.

No.

No fucking way.

“Um,” Stephanie starts, turning her head to fully take in the scene before her: six teenagers and young adults, in the middle of one of the most secure buildings in DC, standing off against three members of the Justice League, five police officers, and two Interpol agents. Okay. Sure. This might as well be happening. “Is this a bad time? We can come back later!”

“No, do not come back later!” Lex Luthor, the goddamned President of the United States of America, orders loudly from his position between her and Damian. The baby bat frowns, and his sword point digs slightly into Luthor’s side.

For a very long moment, no one speaks. They can’t exactly comprehend what’s happening.

Why is there a group of sorta-thieves in the National Archives? Why are they breaking into places and leaving behind notes? Why is the Justice League and Interpol here? And, most importantly, why is President Luthor now apparently wrapped up in this whole thing?

“Mr. President?” Wonder Woman finally breaks the silence, her voice pitched upwards in incredulous confusion. “Are you unharmed?”

“Did you kidnap the fucking president?” Dick low, quiet voice cuts in before Luthor can respond to Wonder Woman. He takes one step forward, raising a finger and pointing it at the duo. “Is this the fucking present you mentioned? The goddamned President?”

“He wasn’t on the list,” Barbara adds. “Did you break into the White House and abduct him just for fun?”

Stephanie grins brightly. It sends a shiver of fear down the collective spines of everyone in the room. “Is it really kidnapping if he’s secretly a supervillain that has tried to take over the world multiple times and attempted to kill many superheroes before? And if his entire reason for being in the Oval Office is to make more plans and schemes to further his own villainous agenda?” She turns to look at the rest of the room and raises an eyebrow at their stunned faces. “C’mon guys, we all know this!”

“No,” one particularly brave officer says in a strangled voice, “no we don’t. What the fuck?”

“Yes! It’s still kidnapping!” Dick shoots back incredulously, before pausing and frowning. “Although, I can’t exactly fault you for it. He does kinda deserve to be abducted.”

“He has made some rather,” Damian takes a breath, searching for the word in his mind, “inane comments lately.”

Black Canary frowns and narrows her eyes. “You shouldn’t know that though,” she states rather simply. And she is right. If they weren’t, well, secretly the Batman’s children, then they shouldn’t know that renowned businessman and president Lex Luthor, is secretly one of Superman’s worst enemies.

“Wait, they’re telling the truth?” another police officer cries loudly. The poor officer goes entirely ignored. They’re just not important right now.

“The brat and I were talking earlier today,” Steph continues, easily dodging Damian’s half-hearted attempt at stabbing her for calling him a brat, “and we realized that if we’re going to steal the Declaration of Independence–”

“You’re what?” Green Lantern interrupts, his persistent glow actually flickering as he processes those words.

“It would technically be considered treason. And stop interrupting me!” Steph shoots at Hal, who rears slightly backwards. Diana reaches to the side and slaps her hand over his mouth. “Anyway, we then realized that if we were to get presidential approval, it wouldn’t technically be treason anymore!”

“I don’t think that’s how it works…” one of the Interpol agents mutters quietly.

“Good enough for me!” Tim shrugs one shoulder.

“So we decided to break into the White House and abduct him so that we could force him to give us presidential approval to take the Declaration! Not through torture,” Steph adds on quickly as the Justice League members step forward in indignation. “We were just going to annoy him until he cracked and gave us approval just so we would let him go.”

Stephanie’s eyes narrow slightly, and Damian’s mouth twitches upwards in a tiny, sharp smirk. Alright. Not the whole truth then, Cass thinks. That’s fine. Lex Luthor does deserve a bit of inconvenience.

“And so now we’re here. I, personally, think we both deserve five extra points for this heist,” Steph wraps up neatly. She waves one hand outward as she speaks, gesturing to the room before them.

Barbara lets out a soft sigh, but doesn’t bother looking up from her tablet. She has more important things to do. “Fine, you can each get five extra points.”

“Hey!” Jason whirls around to glare at Barbara. “They get extra points just for abducting the president, but I don’t get any for fighting some lovecraftian horror monster?”

“Where’s our points for stopping an international crime ring?” Duke adds, resting his elbow on Tim’s shoulder with a frown.

In the middle of the Justice League group, Hal finally pulls Diana’s hand off of his mouth, much to the eternal shame of the universe. “Wait, points? Breaking and Entering? The Declaration of Independence?” he mutters, his eyes growing wider with each word, before he jerks his head up and turns to look at the currently empty display for the Declaration. The document itself is currently residing inside its sunken vault, but Hal doesn’t need to know that right now. “Are you playing some sort of game based on National Treasure?”

Jason smirks. Bruce may hate Hal, but it seems that the man does actually have a bit of a brain. Even if that small brain seems to be solely wired to make jokes. “I don’t know nightlight,” he responds as Dick turns his head and mutters a soft command to Barbara, “Are we?”

The room plunges into pitch black darkness.

By the time Hal manages to properly illuminate the room with his ring, bathing everything in shades of green, the group of thieves has vanished. President Luthor stands awkwardly in the other doorway, left behind. The darkness may have only lasted a few seconds, but it was apparently enough time for the criminals.

“Mr. President!” one of the officers yells, rushing forward to catch the man as he stumbles. “Are you alright? Did they hurt you anywhere?”

“They’ve vanished,” Wonder Woman mutters as she approaches where the majority of them had been standing. She kneels down, examining the ground briefly before pushing herself back up and turning around to face the rest of the officers and heroes. Fury burns in her eyes. “Fan out and find them!”

Hal raises one of his hands and holds up a finger. “I’d bet anything they’re in the records room,” he calls out before the group can split apart. “They mentioned the Declaration of Independence, and didn’t deny the National Treasure thing. They’re going to steal the Declaration of Independence.” He snorts softly. Sometimes, Hal really does love being a hero. It’s what lets him see insane shit like this.

Diana frowns and tilts her head, before nodding sharply. “Very well. Green Lantern, come with me and we’ll investigate, since you apparently know the reference. Black Canary, work with the officers to search the rest of the building. We can’t risk them using our distraction with the Declaration to escape. You,” she points at one of the officers, “remain here and guard President Luthor.”

A couple of stories below the group of heroes, eight teenagers and young adults race through the bowels of the National Archives. If everything had gone according to their original plan, only one of them would have been there. Only one of them would get the honor of actually stealing one of the nation’s founding documents.

Nothing had gone according to plan.

“Turn right here!” Tim calls out as they reach an intersection. Everyone listens to his words without hesitation. Their current truce is completely binding. There’s no point in questioning him, not when there’s no chance of him lying. “Second door on the right!”

Dick, the first to reach the door, skids to a stop and begins rapidly typing in the password Barbara had pulled off the servers as they distracted the Justice League into the small keyboard next to the door. Just a few seconds later, the group steps through the open door, into the large vault directly underneath the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom.

“Well damn,” Jason mutters as they approach a large case, suspended in midair by tracks that connect to a small hatch in the ceiling. Inside the case, visible in the dim light, is none other than the Declaration of Independence itself.

“We really did it,” Duke adds as he leans forward to examine the glass barrier between them and the document. “We could actually steal the Declaration right now.”

“No, you couldn’t,” a low voice sounds from the corner. Duke startles violently, nearly pulling a muscle with the speed at which he whips around to glare at the shadows. Jason groans loudly and squeezes his eyes shut. Cass chuckles softly, having noticed the man as soon as they stepped in.

Batman, in all of his shadowy, caped emoness, steps out of the shadows of the small vault. “I didn’t expect the Justice League to be able to stop you, but I am disappointed in how quickly they failed. I’ll add some extra training to their schedules.”

“B!” Dick cries. “Where the hell did you come from?”

“Fifty locations around the world were hit in just under two weeks, with only a few traces of the culprits left behind. The main traces were a color-coded feather, and a post-it note with a short message on it. There are very few people who could have done such a thing,” he begins as he strides further into the room.

“But there’s still enough people that–”

“None of the others have made any recent movements,” Batman continues, stepping between the kids and the table that the Declaration of Independence rests on. “And none of them are able to perfectly match the handwriting style I made each of you memorize.”

A soft, familiar silence settles in the room, until Jason breaks it with a grumble. “Fine, you caught us old man. Doesn’t explain why the fuck you’re here though.”

Batman’s mouth twitches up in a small smile. “I checked the recently watched movies. Now,” he continues, ignoring the chorus of protests, “Diana and Jordan will be arriving in a few moments. If you would like to avoid them, then I suggest you leave while you still can.”

There’s a moment of hesitation, before Dick finally turns around. His movement spurs the rest of the children into action and they begin to file towards the door. But before they all vanish and break away from him, Batman opens his mouth one final time. “All of you, go straight back to the cave. You’re grounded and all heist movies are banned.”

He ignores the grumbling complaints and protests that echo as the last of his children file out of the small vault. Bruce doesn’t let himself chuckle until after they have all disappeared.

Really, did they ever think they would be able to successfully hide this from him?

He schools himself, easily dropping back into his signature Batman frown, just as Diana Prince and Hal Jordan burst through the doors of the vault.

“Batman!” Diana says as she stops in her tracks. “What are you doing here?”

“They’re gone,” he responds, obviously ignoring her question.

“Spooky, what the fu–”

“You won’t find them,” he cuts off Hal. As he deserves. “I have work to do in Gotham.”

Batman strides out of the room, his cape flowing behind him, and practically vanishes into the dark corridors of the museum’s underbelly. Behind him, Diana glances at Hal, who only stares back at her. Eventually, they shrug.

Who ever knows what that guy’s up to?

“So, how are the kittens now then?” Selina Kyle asks as she lifts her teacup to her mouth. “I imagine they’re not very happy with you.”

“You’re right about that,” Bruce agrees. He reaches down and scratches behind the ears of one of Selina’s many black cats, Isis if he remembers correctly. Isis purrs softly and leans into his hand. “Jason keeps saying that I can’t ground him because, in his words, ‘I’m a grown ass man B, you can’t tell me shit!’ Cassandra has decided to reside with Barbara for a bit, and Damian with Dick. Duke is still at the manor but he’s been spending most of his free time out with his friends from his Robin Gang days. Stephanie and Tim have refused to come to dinners at the manor.”

Selina chuckles softly and continues to slowly pet the big gray cat sprawled across her lap. “And their frustrations are so troubling that you’ve been forced to come here and rant, hm?” she drawls as she waves one arm around to gesture at the beautiful apartment. “It’s not that I mind having you over Brucie, but it’s a bit unexpected.”

Bruce sighs heavily. “Yes, their anger is annoying. I think I’ll lift their benching tomorrow. It’s already been five days, that’s enough.” He pauses to take a bite of one of the cookies spread out across the glass coffee table. Bruce is careful to not get any crumbs on the expensive, cat shaped couch. “But I will be banning all heist movies for the foreseeable future, under punishment of six months of being benched.”

“Well, that’s a bit harsh,” Selina comments. She shrugs one shoulder. “Besides, I doubt they’re really mad about you benching them. They probably expected it when they began this little game of theirs.” She leans forward and locks eyes with Bruce. “They’re just angry that you anonymously tipped off the Justice League with their location.”

“You’re right Selina, and I’m aware,” Bruce agrees before taking a drink of his own tea. “But I didn’t have another choice. I had to ensure that they wouldn’t reach the Declaration’s vault before me.”

Selina smiles sharply. “Of course Bruce, of course. It makes perfect sense, even if they don’t get it. After all, you couldn’t let them get close to the document. If they did, well…” she trails off, turning her head to look at the large picture frame on her wall, gently illuminated by the light of the setting sun. Inside the frame, behind a layer of glass and sealed inside a climate controlled space, hangs an old, faded document. Fifty-six signatures rest at the bottom of the page. Selina knows the document well, and so do Bruce’s own children. They’ve even given her compliments on the accuracy of the “replica” before. She turns back and meets Bruce’s twinkling eyes, his own mouth turned up in a devious smile that matches her own. That smile used to make far more appearances during their early years.

“They’d find out that they’re not the only ones to challenge heist movies.”