Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s Percy’s first day at Gotham U, and he’s nervous. He doesn’t have the best track record with schools, and after his last college experience, he isn’t exactly too hopeful.

He and Annabeth had left New Rome because they couldn’t stand the staring, the hero worship, the expectations, the ever encroaching quest requests. They deserve a few years off, and so they unceremoniously dropped out and left in the dead of night, telling only their friends where they were going.

Annabeth found Gotham for them, because there was so much strange mortal shit that it actually had very, very few monsters. According to Chiron, there had even been Greek demigods decades ago who moved there, although of course he ominously lost contact with them soon after.

Whatever, Percy has survived two wars, actual hell, multiple quests, Smelly Gabe, and managed to graduate high school. Gotham can try its best.

He hadn’t expected he’d be this nervous though. He concentrates on what Annabeth had said to him this morning, before she kissed him on the cheek and rushed out.

“You need mortal friends.” She had said, utterly blunt in that way he loves. “No, Rachel doesn’t count, she’s a rich eccentric redhead who can literally see the future. We left New Rome for a reason. Try to make one regular, mortal friend, Seaweed Brain. I’ll try too.”

She’s right, of course (as usual), and Percy is determined to make new friends here, experience some of the normalcy he’s really never had, especially not in recent years.

Gotham, so far, does comfortably have the major metropolitan energy that feels like home to him- down to the streets smelling faintly of piss and new things to see on every corner. The overcast sky does seem to be constant, though— even at the end of August. And, this whole place fucks with his danger sense— a lot of people here don’t feel like civilians in the same way most mortals do.

See: the dark haired boy in the back row of his first lecture. He looks perfectly normal— wearing a Gotham Knights crewneck sweatshirt that’s tight across his shoulders and very loose around his waist, a messenger bag with a fraying strap next to him. Smooth brown skin only a shade or two darker than Percy’s, looks like he’s Percy’s age or perhaps a few years older. But there’s something about the way he moves, watches the room around him that makes Percy’s hackles raise- more in recognition of potential power rather than malevolent intent. 

But the row the guy is sitting in is the only one where he could see the entire room— more notably all of the exits, and his back would be to the wall, which is kinda a must for Percy these days, if he doesn’t want to be tense and uncomfortable all class. Percy summons his courage and decides to go for it.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” Percy asks, and the guy turns. Okay, normal looking but also handsome. The guy smiles, and Percy has to blink for a moment, because it has similar energy to one of the Apollo kids or the god himself beaming.

“Please do!” The guy says, and moves his messenger bag.

Percy dumps his stuff and sits.

“I’m uh- Percy.” He’s nailing this social interaction stuff. No, he did not forget how to introduce himself to people after months in New Rome. 

“Dick Grayson.” Wow, that’s a rough one. And he thought Perseus was a mouthful.

Dick holds out a hand, and Percy gives him a low five, realizing at the last second that he misread the situation, and Dick was going for a handshake like they’re old and rich and at a business meeting.

“Nice to meet you.” Dick looks a little surprised that Percy doesn’t say anything about his name, but listen, Percy’s seen way worse names. At least it’s not unintelligible Ancient Greek syllables slung together.

“So are you studying to be an EMT?” Dick cocks his head, a little like a bird. Percy’s confused at the question for a second and then remembers this is a first aid class meant for people studying for their emergency medicine certification.

“Nah, I’m doing marine biology, but it’s never a bad thing to know first aid.” Percy tries to keep his tone light, but he sees Dick’s eyes narrow just a bit in recognition. “But Gotham U has a weirdly good program for how polluted the harbor is.”

“Oh you should have seen what it was like when I was a kid! Much worse!” Percy shudders at that. “Two words: radioactive sharks.”

“Poor sharks.” Percy says. “What about you?”

“Well, the first time I tried to go to college I dropped out after a semester.”

“Me too!” Percy says. “Semester and a half, and then I just took the rest of the time off.”

“I worked for a while, and now I’m back.” Dick says, leaning back in his chair and pretzeling his legs into a position Percy would have thought to be impossible. “Most of this is review for me, but requirements for certifications are important.”

“Do you want to be an EMT?”

“I have a particular skill set that helps, and there’s always a shortage of emergency medicine in Gotham.” Dick says, which isn’t really an answer. “Plus, like you said. Always good to know first aid.” Before Percy can respond, Dick leans forward, studying Percy through shrewd bright blue eyes. “So you’re not from around here, are you?”

“What tipped you off?”

“Ah, just a few things,” Dick says nebulously. “So what brings you to the Gotham-Blüdhaven metropolitan area? Can’t say it’s exactly a hot pick for outsiders.”

“Well, my girlfriend really liked the architecture program,” Percy can’t tell him the real reason, can’t tell him about the aftermath of war and the siren’s call of a place with few monsters.  Percy and Annabeth had already been here for weeks and haven’t been attacked even once. (At least, not by their kind of monsters. A guy tried to mug Annabeth in the alley outside their apartment a few days ago. Key word: tried.) “I liked the marine bio program, and we both got full rides. Also, holy shit is rent cheap here.”

“Yeah,” Dick nods. “One, it’s Gotham and people aren’t exactly moving here in droves, so supply is high. Two, there’s a lot of Wayne Foundation subsidized housing. We have way lower rates of homelessness than most major cities and the rate falls every year- Bruce is aiming for zero. Also, abandoned warehouses are like, prime real estate for nefarious deeds so they’re trying not to let stuff sit for too long.”

“Bruce?” Percy asks, not touching on the nefarious deeds thing.

“Bruce Wayne.” Dick says, like Percy’s supposed to know who that is.

“Oh, is that like the Wayne Foundation? I think they gave us the scholarship.”

“You don’t know who Bruce Wayne is?”

“Is he some kind of local businessman?” Percy asks, a little alarmed by the pure glee growing in Dick’s eyes. “Does he like, own a mattress store or something? Or a car dealership?”

“Hold on, that’s the best thing I’ve heard all day. I’m texting my siblings that.” Dick whips out an expensive cell phone that looks like it’s been dropped several times from great heights and types at a furious rate. He slips it back into his pocket and turns back to Percy. “Anyway, did you do no research on Gotham? Actually scratch that- have you been living under a rock?”

Dick doesn’t say the words in an insulting way— Percy actually gets the sense that he’s strangely pleased— but Percy still can’t help but blush a little. “I’m an in-the-moment type guy! I had uh… stuff in high school, so I wasn’t exactly paying attention to the news, and my girlfriend really likes research and explaining said research to me so,” he shrugs helplessly. He’s been trying not to die for the past seven years, and before that he was usually at schools that didn’t allow any sort of device or contact with the outside world. Their first quest, Annabeth hadn’t even known who was the current president or what an IPhone was. Being a demigod makes most mortal shit seem superfluous. “Maybe you could give me the rundown on the area?”

“I think it’s my moral duty to do so, because I’m a little worried you’re going to get yourself killed.” Dick says, a concerning amount of sincerity in his tone. He then hums thoughtfully, as if contemplating what to say. “When I first started living in Gotham, my— dad, I guess you could call him,” Percy, familiar with both parental woes and daddy issues, does not comment on this. “really sucked at describing the area to me. He’s a huge history buff, so I, as a non native English speaker, was given far too much information about the historic marble and waterway construction.”

Percy leans forward— he’s actually far more interested in all of this personal lore Dick keeps hinting about. Annabeth, however, would love to talk about the architectural details. She’s loved Gotham’s buildings so far— it’s actually extremely cute, to see her eyes get wide staring at complicated friezes with the fugly-est gargoyles Percy has ever seen.

“But you don’t need to know all of that.” Dick waves a hand dismissively. “Let’s start with this— what do you know?”

“Um. You guys have a lot of crime, and a lot of weird crime.” Percy says, while Dick nods encouragingly. He’d know a lot more, if Annabeth had time to present her extremely large binder of Gotham city research she’d made, but they’d been too focused on moving in.

“Bit of an understatement, but yeah.”

“Bloodhaven is the sister city.” Percy offers.

“Love that you remember that, bonus points, also it’s pronounced Blüdhaven.”

“Bludhaven?”

“No, no, Blüdhaven, Blewwwddd.” Dick says, exaggerating the syllables. “Not your fault, everyone outside the greater Gotham area gets it wrong.”

The door suddenly swings open, and Percy’s (and Dick’s, curiously) head snaps to track the movement. He relaxes a little when it’s just another student arriving, and takes a moment to glance around the room. In the corner, there’s a framed picture of the silhouette of a man in a bat-like cape. Somehow, it had the same energy as that Catholic school Percy went to having pictures of the pope in every classroom.

That’s what he wanted to ask! “The bat guy, is that actually real?”

Dick stares at him a moment, so Percy points up his index fingers by the sides of his head in an imitation of some of murals he’s seen around town. “Y’know, this guy?”

“Yes, Batman is real.” Dick says slowly. Percy doesn’t have to worry that he’s offended him, because Dick is again grinning.

“Really? Man, I thought it was like Mothman. Yknow, fun local cryptid people pretend is real for tourism. Has a weird statue with detailed pecs, for some reason. Not that Gotham has many tourists but still. Local myth.” Percy says, still a little incredulous. “I have so many questions—is it like a mascot, are there multiple Batmen? Do you think it’s like a sex thing for him? How do you know he’s real— you ever seen him?”

Percy has many more questions, but Dick, wheezing, cuts him off, counting off answers on his fingers. “No, seems like the same guy. NO, no never say that again. And yes, I have seen him before.”

“Wild. We do not have a guy in an animal costume fighting crime in New York. Y’know, it’s weird, for the amount of superheroes we’re supposed to have, I only saw like, two my entire time living there. I saw Nightwing, doing an absolutely sick flip off a building, that guy seems awesome.” He was also, Annabeth and Percy both agreed as they watched, very handsome, but Percy isn’t going to say that. Dick blushes, which seems like a strange reaction. Wait, Nightwing moved back to Gotham or Blüdhaven, didn’t he?  Maybe Dick is just a big Nightwing fan. “Another time, some guy in orange and black I assume was some kind of hero because no one else wears something that stupid, although he did have a fuck ton of guns.”

“He’s definitely not a hero.” Dick is oddly insistent, his tone dark. Percy isn’t sure how Dick is able to tell that from his extremely vague description, but vigilante identification is probably a pretty important skill here.

“Uh well, Batman’s real, I know you guys also have super villains, like the Joker,” Percy continues, and as soon as the words leave his mouth, Dick looses some of his grin and two people below glance up at them.

“Ahh, not so loud.” Dick says in an undertone. “I personally think the best principle is to make fun of the Rogues, because it takes away their power, but there’s a lot of people in Gotham who have lost loved ones or been injured by their attacks. It’s best to be careful with the big names like Scarecrow or Joker. Riddler these days, Kite Man, Condiment King are all fair game. But people are… very sensitive about Joker, and clowns, and anything that draws association to him.”

“Clowns?” 

“I actually like clowns.” Dick says in a low voice after glancing around, like he’s confessing to murder. “And listen- Joker? Not a real clown. Never even went to clown college. Bet he doesn’t even have an EGG! He’s just appropriating the aesthetic.”
Dick is somehow more insistent about this than he was about being aware of people’s trauma, which Percy can respect.

“But yeah, no clowns here. You’ll get shot. You have to get a special license to own white face paint, and it’s harder to get than a gun license here. Oh, and the playing card decks sold in Gotham don’t have Joker cards, they have little Robin ones instead!” He grins. “Super cute.”

“Who the hell is Condiment King?” Percy blurts. There’s so much to unpack but he’s stuck on that.

“Minor criminal. His thing is condiments as weapons.” Dick shrugs.

“Wild. Starting to think this place might be a little crazy.”

Dick tips back his head and lets out a loud laugh. “It took this long?”

The door opens with a slam, and who Percy can only assume is the professor bursts in, panting with exertion, quickly making his way to his desk.

“Sorry I’m late, there was a Riddler attack on the highway and it took me forever to solve the riddle.” The professor slams downs his briefcase. 

The whole class hummed appreciatively, as if this was a regular occurrence.

“Open your textbooks, we’ll start with theory and then move into the practical…”

Dick pokes Percy with his pencil. “Psst. I didn’t get to explain, like anything to you. I can show you some pretty good places to eat in Gotham. Your girlfriend can come too!”

“Thanks, man.” Percy finds himself grinning back. “I’d really like that.”

This ‘make a normal mortal friend thing’ isn’t as hard as he thought it would be.

Chapter Text

Dick is starting to think that his new civilian friend may not be that civilian at all.

He, Jason and Roy, had been working on a case together (read: an excuse to drink at Roy’s place and get trounced by Jason in the video game of the week), and he’d been hideously out of touch with something, and Jason had laughed and asked him if he ever spent any time with anyone outside of The Life.

To which he realized that damn, pretty much all of his friends were metas, former/current assassins, or vigilantes.

“Well, you don’t have any friends outside of Gotham.” He’d sniped back after reshuffling that little realization into his mind.

Unfortunately, Jason is Jason, and seemed to take that as a point of pride, “I’m for the streets, Dick. You’re the people person. Find someone to talk to that doesn’t dress up in silly costumes or have a boatload of baggage.”

Roy ended the conversation by pegging them both between the eyes with a Cheeto puff. The marksmanship remains for more than just archery, to Dick’s dismay. But even as Dick relaxed into a lazy spar with him, he’d vowed to find a civilian, preferably someone from outside of Gotham, because Gothamites were built different, and none of them counted as normal.

He had thought he’d found that in Percy, but really, day one he was just settling for ‘not trained by the assassin cult’, and relying on not looking too hard at his new buddy’s behavior.

Dick had enjoyed Percy not recognizing him at all or making remarks about his name or past, been astonished by Percy not knowing who Bruce Wayne is (Literally the only people Dick has ever met who did not know who Bruce was were aliens, and even then, most of the aliens knew). He also greatly enjoyed the Batman thing (minus the sex question, because seeing Brucie antics as a preteen was more than enough of that).

Dick likes Percy anyway though. He’s flighty, well trained, muscular in a way that speaks to exercise outside of a gym, purposefully kind, haunted by one trauma or another (who isn’t), deeply interested in marine biology and head over heels for this mysterious girlfriend Dick has yet to meet, funny and laidback, likely unfamiliar with guns— there he goes analyzing for threats again. Dick doesn’t want to turn into Bruce, and in this one situation he wants to trust someone new without looking into their entire background or psychoanalyzing them.

Dick has chosen to not look up anything to do with Percy or his nice girlfriend, and is purposefully not analyzing his friend. He’s going to be so normal about this, and prove Jason wrong.

He also, the minute after he shared Percy’s “who’s Bruce Wayne” comment to the family group chat (a real hit), has forbidden the rest of the bats from doing any of the same either. Tim sent several grumpy emojis, but Dick refused to lift the moratorium on any bat-spying techniques.

Not even after all of the slightly perhaps not normal behaviors Percy has exhibited (but are they all that weird? Dick knows tons of people who can lift extremely heavy things and have lightning fast reflexes and— well, most of them are metas so) does Dick want to back down.

Even on a day like today, where Percy seems determined to act out of the ordinary.

They’re walking back from the second week of class, along the side of the harbor about to grab a bite to eat from a great Mediterranean place Dick knows and Percy is quietly dubious about but too polite to say anything (Dick can still tell). Suddenly, Percy’s head swivels to the dark water of the bay.

“Hold up,” Percy says, and then before Dick can do anything, jumps into the water beside him.

Dick’s man enough to admit he just stares at the surface of the water for a few moments in complete shock, long enough for Percy’s head to pop up from the surface.

“Sorry, I just saw her struggling.” Percy says, voice completely unaffected, even though it’s probably frigid in the water. Dick would know— he can still remember the icy shock the first time he fell in one patrol. 

His head goes under again, and Dick watches as he swims (incredibly quickly) to a rocky outcropping nearby. Percy gracefully rises from the water, carrying a little gray seal under his arm like a football. The image is admittedly funny, but Dick is more worried about Percy’s health. 

“You can’t just dive into the bay,” Dick finally screeches when Percy’s sitting half in, half out of the water. “Oh my god, you’re going to get Shark Cancer! Do you know how rare cancer is in sharks?”

“Very!” Percy cheerfully calls, examining the seal, which is worryingly docile in his arms.

“Yeah, well all of the sharks in Gotham harbor have cancer!! Like, every single one!” Dick yells, and it’s not even an exaggeration. Dick’s honestly just shocked that they still have any marine wildlife at all in the harbor.
Forget shark repellant, Bruce is going to have to come up with shark chemotherapy.

Percy doesn’t appear to be listening, which is rude, Dick is very concerned for his safety. He shifts uncomfortably, half expecting his new friend to spontaneously catch on fire or turn green or something.

Rule number somewhere in the top ten— the only way you swim in Gotham harbor is if you’re dead and Penguin dumps your body there.

“What is this thing,”  Percy groans, rotating the seal 180 degrees to peer at the rope that’s wrapped around its throat. The rope is orange and purple, and Dick frowns as he remembers the feeling of one just like it lashed against his skin.

“I think it’s a left over from one of Two Face’s schemes a few years ago.” Dick muses. Luckily, Percy doesn’t ask how he knows that. “I can toss you a knife to cut it—“

“Nah, I’m good,” Percy says, but before Dick can respond there’s footsteps in a nearby alley. Dick’s head swivels— it’s only the teenage falafel employee taking out the trash. By the time he looks back, however, the rope has been cut, with no knife anywhere to be seen. Percy’s hand brushes against his right pocket. That must be where it is, but it must be small because Dick can’t see the outline— no. He’s not overanalyzing this. He’s being normal and chill. 

Percy touches his forehead to the seal’s, like they’re goddamn brothers in arms right before a dangerous battle in a fantasy movie. He says something to it, and then lowers it into the waves. The seal speeds off, before halting, and— Dick may need to check himself for some new variety of mind-altering substance, because he can swear the seal waves back at them.

Percy hauls himself up to the retaining wall, and Dick clasps his arm to pull him up the rest of the way. Percy shakes out his hair like a dog, making a disgusted face. “Gods, that water is nasty.”

“I have a place near here, where you can shower off,” Dick rambles. Normally, he would never show a civilian a safe house, even a nondescript bare-bones one, but again, he’s really worried about the harbor water.

“I’m almost dry,” Percy smiles at him, and he is remarkably drier than one might expect. The water in the harbor just gets weirder. “It was just making me think about how much help the bay needs.”

“Oh?” Dick feels himself tilting his head in interest.

“Beach cleanups and not using straws only goes so far. There needs to be massive intervention, from like the government or a big corporation or something.”

“Any ideas?”

Percy thinks for a moment. “Bioremediation would help. There’s a project right now one of my professor’s is trying to get funded, but it’s a long shot.” He sighs. “Sometimes I wonder if humans will ever— never mind.”

There’s something there- something about the way Percy says human, like he’s not one. Dick is probably reading into things too much again.
Bioremediation though, he’ll have to talk to Bruce about that. 

Chapter Text

Percy’s rushing, yanking on his beanie he’s been wearing perpetually in Gotham. It’s like there’s a constant cloud hovering over the city.

He grabs the keys from the desk Annabeth’s working at, where she’s reading a copy of the newspaper. He gives her a kiss on the forehead and peers over her shoulder at it.

“Huh. Wayne Industries announces a new harbor revitalisation project.“ He reads aloud. “That’s amazing. I was just talking to Dick about that. What a weird coincidence.”

Annabeth snorts.

“His name is not that funny.”

“That’s not why I’m laughing.” She says with a grin, and then purses her lips, unusually hesitant. “Hey Percy, If I knew something about someone, would you want me to tell you or would you want to —“

“I trust your judgement.” He shrugs. “I’d probably want them to tell me themselves.”

Annabeth breathes a sigh of relief. “That’s what I thought but I figured I should ask.”

“You sure you don’t want to come too? We were going to meet up with some of his brothers, and Dick keeps asking about you.”

“It’s cheating if I meet any of them before I’m finished.” Annabeth mutters, her fingers playing with a little bit of red string on the desk next to her. Maybe she’s picked up weaving again. Percy isn’t sure what that means, but alright, he’s not going to question it. He gives her another kiss on the forehead.

He’s going to be late to meet Dick if he doesn’t get out of here.

One light jog through a few blocks and he arrives to where Dick waves at him from the side of a wall he’s leaning against, which has a mural of one of the Gotham vigilantes— Robin. Dick appears attached to Robin more than any of the other vigilantes from the stories he’s given Percy. It seems like Gothamites take personal pride in their Bats.

“You’re just in time. My little brother is running late.” Dick says. “There’s traffic, because there was a minor Arkham breakout.”

“Do we need to worry about that?” Percy asks, more out of curiosity than genuine apprehension.

“Nah, it isn’t any of the worst rogues and this part of Gotham isn’t as densely populated as they’d like. We’ll be fine, they never come here.”

“Okay!” Percy changes the subject, deciding not to think about the densely populated thing. “Which little brother is it again?”

“Tim. Damian’s in school, Jason’s got uhhh, work.”

“Oh, cool, what does he do?” Percy asks.

Dick shifts, like he’s uncomfortable about the answer and unsure of how to respond. What could Jason’s job be, for that response? Percy’s going to guess stripper, or perhaps one of those fraudulent mall Santas that steal money. It is September, but Jason could just be a super fraudulent mall Santa.

“He works in pharmaceuticals.” Dick finally responds. “And security too, I guess.”

They walk a little closer to the Mexican place Dick swears by (Percy vetoed pizza, because that would be Sacrilege, for a New Yorker to get pizza in Jersey), and Percy does what Dick has told him on numerous occasions not to do— he relaxes.

There’s a clattering sound from deep in the alleyway nearby, and a hulking figure appears out of the shadows. Great. Why couldn’t this have waited until after he had a full stomach?

Percy isn’t sure what he’s looking at, at first. He hears scales scraping together (he’s fought enough snakes to know that sound instinctively),  sees a bulging mouth with rows and rows of needle sharp teeth. The creature is at least six foot eight, and one ugly motherfucker. But, Percy doesn’t feel that little tug in his gut when he sees a monster- no, this is something mortal. Something Gotham.

“Get behind me,” Percy and Dick say in unison, and then look at each other with bemusement.

The thing promptly reminds them both of its presence by roaring loud enough to shake the windows nearby.

“So are we fighting that?” Percy asks, cracking his neck in preparation as it slinks forward.

“Hell no, not barehanded. We’re running.” Dick says. “But only if you think you can—“

“I do my best running when my life’s in danger,” Percy yells, already halfway into the street.

The thing roars and smashes its claws into the brick, punching a giant hole into the side of the building. Man, Percy does not want that to happen to his rib cage. Annabeth would be pissed.

Dick deftly dodges out of the way of another strike and catches up with Percy, and Percy follows him down into Gotham. He notes that Dick seems to be purposefully leading the monster away from populated areas, which is good, because again, giant murder death lizard, and the people they’re running past don’t even look surprised. He’s starting to get why people don’t move to Gotham.

“So what is that thing?” He yells at Dick as they turn a sharp corner.

“Killer Croc.”

“Wow, inventive.” Percy can’t help but comment. “What’s his deal? Does he have riddles or something? Or silly accessories?”

“No, he’s just regular murderous.“

“I WILL FEAST ON YOUR CORPSES,” Killer Croc screams behind them.

“Oh, yeah, and a cannibal.” Dick says, matter of fact. “I always forget to mention that part.”

“MEAT!” Kroc helpfully screeches as Dick elegantly parkours up over a retaining wall. Percy gets up there too, but there’s a lot more cursing and less grace involved. As Percy struggles, Kroc lunges for him and almost grabs his leg. “I’LL EAT YOU FIRST!” He screams as Percy kicks him in the eye and keeps running.

“Y’know, when he yells that at most people,” Dick says once they’re both over the wall. “They freak out.”

Percy gives him a quick confused look, and Dick clarifies. “At the cannibalism.”

It’s probably the lightheadedness from the running and adrenaline, but Percy sorta forgets the whole ‘normal guy’ thing and scoffs. “Please, if I got upset every time a large scaly monster wanted to eat me, I’d never get anything done. That thing,” He accepts Dick’s boost over another wall, and hoists him up as well. “Wasn’t even creative about it. He should have listed potential sauces.”

Honestly, this kind of is making him a little nostalgic; it reminds him of home and his childhood. Hmm, maybe he should analyze that. Croc throws a boulder at him, so not right now!

Dick still seems to be stuck on what Percy just said, but he pulls himself together as they take a sharp corner to dodge the shrapnel of Croc’s rock attack. “You know, technically, he’s actually just a regular guy.”

Percy takes a moment out of their frantic sprinting to give Dick an unimpressed look. Dick continues. “He has a weird skin condition.”

“He has a TAIL!”

“It’s a really weird skin condition.”

“Gotham,” Percy swears under his breath, and Dick laughs. Behind them, Killer Croc roars again.

“Yep. Best city in the world.” Dick sounds completely serious and therefore, batshit insane.

“Nuh uh, that’s New York.” Percy insists. He pulls Dick ahead of where the cement has cracked from Kroc’s latest boulder throw (where the hell is he even getting these perfectly size projectiles). “Can’t even tell you all the reasons cause we’d die before I finished. So let’s stick with: no Crocs”

“You have crime there too! And aliens!” Dick squawks. Internally, Percy can’t help but laugh at how much danger is really there that Dick doesn’t know about. 

“Yeah, well, at least in New York I could have a fuckin’ decent slice of pizza to eat after I’ve run from a death lizard.” Percy grumbles. 

 Dick opens his mouth, likely to defend Gotham’s subpar pizza, and then cuts himself off and frowns. “Heads up, we’re about to reach a dead end.”

Percy curses in Ancient Greek. He’s been prepared to use his powers this whole time- could even feel river water sloughing off of Croc, and Gotham rains so much that it’s so easy to pull moisture from the air here. But he keeps remembering what Leo, the only one of them who pays any attention to the internet at all, told him before he left for Gotham. Don’t show anyone your powers. They don’t like metas in Gotham. Annabeth repeated something similar, at least until she ‘knew more’, so Percy has been keeping it as a last resort. It seems like he may have to risk revealing himself to Dick. And the seven foot crocodile man. He’ll have to hope Dick can get cool with a whole lot of weird shit really fast, and that Mr. Mean teeth is good at keeping secrets. 

Sure enough, they’re about twenty feet from a dead end of an alley. Dick and Percy whirl around to face Killer Croc, who has begun to move slower, probably savoring the hunt. It’s stalling time!, Percy thinks.

“Hey man. I get the dry skin thing,” Dick gives him the are-you-fucking-crazy look he’s received from every friend he’s ever had and some of his enemies too, but Percy soldiers on. “Have you tried lotion? Aveeno? Lucerin? CeraVe? Cetaphil?”

Killer Croc is just staring at him.

“I’m going to keep naming lotion brands until you give me a response, buddy. I can go all day.” He absolutely cannot. He’s out of practice with his monster distracting bantering ability, apparently. The other demigods would be appalled at this piss poor attempt. In his mind’s eye, a panel of Thalia, Clarisse, Leo, and Apollo (for flavor) all hold up 0s as they judge this distraction performance. 

“I will,” Killer Croc has moved on from enraged screaming into murderous hissing. It remains to be seen whether this is a good thing or not. Going by Percy’s past experiences, it absolutely is not. “rip you apart, sea spawn.”

Uh oh, not sure how this guy knows THAT. Maybe he can smell something?

“Two thoughts.” Percy starts counting on his hands. “One, again, I’ve been relentless about aforementioned lotion use. I would taste terrible.”

“It’s true,” Dick chimes in. “Like a vat of old people grease.”

Croc’s head swivels over to Dick. Percy scoots over to better block him. Dick might be absolutely incredible at parkour and seemingly pretty gifted in self defence, but there’s no way his friend could fight a creature like this.

“Do I know you?” Croc says, confused.

“I just have one of those faces,” Dick grins, showing more teeth than Croc. “Oh wait, no, I think you were there for a few of my kidnappings as a child. Dick Grayson? Circus orphan.”

“Yes.” Croc says slowly, obviously deep in thought. “You were extremely annoying. Not worth the ransom, and your small puny bones would have gotten stuck in my teeth.”

“You flatterer.” Dick fakes a blush and waves his hand, which seems to aggrivate Croc even more. If they get out of this alive, Percy is definitely going to ask Dick about these kidnappings (maybe they can swap stories, but Percy’s now a little miffed that none of his kidnappings involved a ransom).

Killer Croc’s reminder of the previous Dick encounter(s) seems to snap him back on track. “Too much talking. I will eat you now.” He decides.

“You didn’t let me finish my thoughts!” Percy yelps. “I seriously think our bones would be bad for your dental health—“

Killer Croc’s massive arm comes swinging directly towards them, and Percy gets ready to summon water when—

Croc suddenly slumps over and falls to the ground.

“Whuph.” Dick says, his body losing tension, panting with his hands on his knees. “I thought he’d never shut up. Those darts take too long to work. Jeez, do I hate running without stretching first.”

Out of the shadows, a modulated voice calls, and Dick squints up at a caped figure on the nearest fire escape.

“Thank you, civilians,” Mysterious Stranger says: Civilians is stressed in an odd manner, like it’s a joke.

“For what?” Percy calls back, gently kicking Croc’s— gods, incredibly hard— arm to make sure he was still out. He sees what Dick is talking about— there’s a large feathered dart sticking out between Croc’s shoulder blades. Percy isn’t sure how Dick knew Killer Croc had been hit, though.

“The distraction was exactly what we needed to use the sedation dart. Even this one isn’t quite enough to instantly drop him.” Mystery Shadow Figure says.

“ You guys ,” Dick says, with special emphasis. “Need to work on that. It was like, four extra blocks.”

“Noted.” A Robin steps forward, and all of the murals look pretty much exactly the same, but Percy registers that this one has bangs. Percy can’t help but grin.

“Oh shit, Robin really is real!”

The Robin tilts his head at Percy in the same way Dick does. “You could be imagining me right now.” He says, a little mischievous. Percy responds by throwing the nearest small rock, and feels a brief burst of satisfaction when it plinks! off of Robin’s little outfit.

Dick starts to laugh, and Robin looks a bit sulky now, “And my name is Red Robin.”

“Like the restaurant?” Percy says. Dick giggles as the kid hisses at him.

“It’s a good vigilante name.” Red Robin (?) insists, like he’s had this conversation many times before. “You wouldn’t understand the significance and—“

“But aren’t Robins normally red?” Percy can’t help but interject. “Feels a little repetitive.”

Robin opens his mouth to argue, but Dick makes a shrill whistle, like a bird call, and both Percy and Tim instantly fall silent. “As much as I love this conversation, I think I saw Croc twitch, so these two very traumatized thankful civilians need to get on our way,” Dick says, slinging an arm over Percy’s shoulder.

Crimson Robin (Percy feels like even that would be better), puffs up again and hurriedly says “Yes, you need to move along now. We still need to wrap up Croc for transport.”

“Nice work, RR.” Dick says. “Be safe!”

The Robin’s wearing a full domino mask, but Percy swears he rolls his eyes behind it.

Dick drags him out of there, and they catch their breath a block away against a different slightly sketch alley. Gotham seems to be the world’s leading supplier of sketchy alleys. 

“I texted Tim to meet us here.” Dick says. “He should be here super shortly. He works around here.”

“I thought you said he was in high school?”

“Part time job.” Dick says, staring up at the roofline and smirking.

“Hey,” Percy says after a moment of silence. “So we should really probably talk about that. But can it wait until we’ve eaten?”

“Brilliant idea.” Dick sighs in relief. “The last thing I want right now—“

“What are we talking about?” Says a voice from the mouth of the alley. Man, Percy is getting TIRED of people mysteriously appearing out of nowhere. He’s going to put bells on everyone in this city, or at least try to talk them out of the massive need for drama. Nico at his most angsty behavior. 

“That was really quick.” Dick says, blinking in surprise. “Damn, Tim.”

So this is Dick’s brother. Tim is a few inches shorter than Dick, much paler, and has the same jet black hair, albeit cleaner and shorter than Dick’s almost-mullet. He’s wearing eyebags that could rival Nico’s, and fancy rich boy clothes, but they’re at least sensible rich boy clothes. 

“B’s handling the rest.” Tim dismissively waves a hand. “Besides, this was much more interesting.”

Tim narrows his eyes, looking him over, and Percy feels a little like he’s being mentally dissected. It’s okay though, because he’s spent a bunch of time around Annabeth’s siblings, and they have similar vibes.

“Dick, have you inherited Bruce’s adoption habits?” Tim suddenly says. “I don’t think it really works if it’s an adult a few years younger than you.”

Dick splutters.

“Well, you better keep this one away from B.” Tim continues, ignoring Dick’s outraged look. “Athletically active, brave in the face of danger, black hair and light eyes? I bet he has spare papers in his desk for a case like this.”

“Percy isn’t even an orphan!” Dick squawks. Percy is starting to get a little concerned.

“That didn’t save me either,” Tim says ominously. “Also, that implies that you checked, which means you know I’m right.” He turns to Percy, and squints at him again. “Are you sure you’re not an orphan?”

“I have parents!” Percy finally speaks up. He’s extremely lost here but he knows that much. “Like, four of them, technically!”

“Are they suitable? Any of them in a coma?” Tim questions. 

“My mom is the best woman in the world,” Percy will never miss an opportunity to spread the word of Sally Jackson, “My dad is great, and so is my step-dad. And, I don’t even think my stepmom wants me dead anymore.” Oops, probably too much information. “Why specifically a coma?”

Tim ignores the question. “Then do you have some other form of trauma?”

“Tim, you can’t just ask someone if they have trauma!”

Percy just laughs. “Yeah, you could say that. But I’m not answering anything on an empty stomach. I just ran from a killer alligator.”

“Croc.” Tim corrects.

“Wait.” Percy turns to Dick. “Is it spelled with a C or a K?”

“C,” Dick replies, shaking his head with the same disappointment Percy feels. “I know, wasted opportunity for alliteration. Man has no respect for theming.”

“Tsk.” Percy suddenly feels a disdain for improper villain branding— Gotham might be infecting him.

“You two are way too alike.” Tim says, staring at both of them with morbid curiosity. “Jason’s going to love this.”

“Jason’s coming?” Dick perks up.

“Check the group chat. He saw a picture of you and Percy running from Croc on the Gotham snap story and now he’s even more excited to meet him.”

Dick whips out his phone and appears to quickly scroll through a barrage of texts.

“Where are we going to eat?” Percy asks. He can’t help being food motivated. 

Tim gets a mischievous grin. “How do you feel about burgers?”

“Hell yes,” Percy smiles back. Dick’s little brother seems like a sweet kid. “They’re my favorite.”

“Tim,” Dick says, in a warning tone Percy doesn’t understand.

“It’ll be fine.” Tim smirks at Dick. “We’re taking him to Batburger.”

“Playing with fire there,” Dick murmurs. “But okay! I’ll tell Jason to meet us there.”

“Uh, just checking, they still have like, regular cheeseburgers there right,” Percy asks, and the two brothers don’t immediately respond. “Right?!”

Chapter Text

From what Percy can tell from the outside, Batburger does in fact sell normal cheese burgers. Well, kind of. To be honest, Percy was concerned that the meat was made out of bats somehow, so he’s just grateful that’s not true, even if the theming is dubious before one even enters.

That same symbol he saw at the college is everywhere, complete with other neon colors and depictions of people he think might be Gotham vigilantes and villains, which is a wild thing to do.

They’re on the curb outside, waiting for the person Dick has enthusiastically described on multiple occasions as “my little brother, Jason.”

“Oh, there he is!” Dick says, pointing at a man in a leather jacket stomping their way.

Dick’s “little brother” is built like a mach truck brick shit house. Dude’s even musclier than some of the Ares kids. Percy’s also about 90% sure the guy is strapped, but Dick doesn’t look nervous so he’ll go with it. Pharmaceuticals and Securities, his ass. Well, Gotham is pretty dangerous. The other night Percy watched a little old lady pull a handgun out of her purse to threaten some mob goon, so maybe that’s normal too- Jason could have a normal job. At this point though, he’s leaning more towards heavily militant stripper than mall Santa.

“Nice to meet you.” Percy offers.

“Is this the guy who didn’t know if Batman was real and thinks Bruce—“

“Is a mattress salesman or something?” Percy finishes. “Listen, until I see evidence otherwise, I’m just going to keep assuming it.”

“You’re my personal hero.” Jason says, utterly serious, shaking his hand. “You’ve already beaten Dick on my list of favorites.”

“Hey!” Dick says, faux outraged for a moment, and then appears to soften and coos, “Wait, awww, Little Wing, you admitted I’m on your list of favorites.”

Jason grunts in displeasure and Percy watches as they start to roughhouse, starting out with brotherly shoving that very quickly escalates.

Tim turns to Percy. Behind him, Dick executes a tight backhand spring away from Jason’s roundhouse kick. Y’know, normal friendly sparring everyone does.

“We should go in and order. No one comes to these when there’s a breakout, so it won’t be crowded.” Tim says, before nonchalantly sticking a leg out to trip both Dick and Jason, who are still tussling. They both groan, but Percy suspects it has more to do with having to stop fighting rather than ending up on the pavement in a heap. Dick gracefully rolls to his feet, and hauls Jason up without another word.

Percy follows Tim inside, almost getting distracted by the strange decorations inside the almost empty restaurant. The short girl manning the cashier has that numb despondency that only a few hours in customer service can bring, but it’s heightened by the absolutely insane costume she’s wearing with a bat mask.

Tim steps aside for Percy to order first. Percy has the distinct wish to kick him in the shin for leaving him hanging. The cashier just gives him the dead eyed fish stare.

“Uh, I’ll get a bat burger and—“ he stammers, and Crap, Percy doesn’t know any other vigilantes really. “Oh, do you have like a Red Robin Quesadilla or something?”

“We can’t say Red Robin™ because that’s the trademarked name of a restaurant.” It sounds practiced, like the cashier has had to explain this to several people. “So we only have Robin. Two different action figures though.”

“Ha!” Percy laughs. “Man if I ever meet that guy again I’m going to tell him. I knew it was a dumb name.”

Tim must have had too much caffeine, because he’s twitching besides Percy.

“Okay, so just a Batburger™, regular fries, and a… Mr Freezie™.” Percy says. “Wait, what is that?”

“Mr Freeze is a sorta mad scientist who cryogenically froze his chronically ill wife and is obsessed with curing her, which for some reason involves icing portions of the city.” Dick helpfully adds.

“It’s a slushie.” The cashier deadpans, which answers Percy’s question. 

“Yeah, that, in whatever flavor is blue. Thanks, man.” Percy steps aside for Jason or Tim to go.

“I’ll get two double batburgers.” Jason says, grimacing slightly. “And a side of fries.”

“Would you like to jokerize your fries?” The cashier asks.

“Fuck no,” Jason snarls, and the cashier again does not seem surprised by this, like it’s a regular thing she encounters. Jason looks like he’s about to go off on a rant, but stops when Dick pats him on the shoulder and stomps off to the table.

Tim gets Night-Wings™ and a Joker shake™, which is apparently a secret menu item, while Dick orders Robin Nuggets™, which seems almost as morbid as the biochemical terrorist themed snacks. Percy offers to pay, and for a second he thinks he may have spoken in Ancient Greek on accident because everyone just stares at him uncomprehendingly.

“Why would you pay?” Tim asks, like it’s confusing that that’s an option anyone could want.

“Uh, cause you’re a kid? I’m not going to expect you have the money to—“ Tim just hands the cashier the fanciest, thickest credit card Percy has ever seen (is it made of metal?). Well, that answers that. The rest of the ordering process goes smoothly until Percy happens to look down at the cutlery selection.

“There’s no knives?”

“We don’t provide plastic knives. Not after the Incident.” The cashier says, vaguely ominous.

“The incident?!”

Dick shudders. “Better not to ask, Perce.” he says, and drags Percy over to the table Jason stomped off to.

Jason looks a little silly, crammed into the booth. Percy had thought Dick was muscular, but Jason was on a whole other level. He’s complaining to Tim who is quickly typing into his smartphone. 

“I still think that they should have Red Hood themed food.” Jason grumbles.

“They had the action figure for a while.” Tim says, without looking up from the screen, taking a swig from an energy drink he was hiding beneath the table for some reason. “I think Damian got it once when he was looking for the Nightwing one. The helmet was weird, though. Kinda looked like a red dildo.” 

“They had it, until that stupid PTA mom bitched. If I ever meet Shelly Ann in the wild it’s on SIGHT.”

“You don’t want to cross her, man. Her kid goes to Gotham Academy, and that lady makes amazing brownies- she could bribe her way out prison with those alone.” Dick says. “Tim, don’t think I don’t see that energy drink. You’ve already hit your maximum today, mister.”

Tim scowls, and the energy drink creeps back under the table.

A little bell rings, and Dick goes up to get their stuff, which is somehow already ready. Then again, there really is no one else in here. Percy would help Dick with it, but he’s noticed that Dick definitely has ADHD, and the guy seems to be happiest when he can frequently get up and move around. Dick pops back, dropping the shakes and fries on the table.

Tim grabs his Joker shake and pours the rest of his Monster Energy in it as soon as Dick turns back to get the rest, and then chucks the empty can across the entire restaurant straight into the trash can. Jason whistles approvingly.

Dick comes back, and he and Jason are talking about some sports team from the area, so mid burger, Percy turns to Tim.

“Hey Tim.” Tim looks up from his smart phone, where he’s looking up the stock trading price of Red Robin restaurants? Weird. “Didn’t the Joker like, kill people? Why did they make him a shake?”

“Yeah.” Tim shrugs. “Dick told you about the clown thing? He always gets mad that they’re anti clown yet weirdly are okay with this one reference. I guess the shake is just that good. It’s like the Grimace shake, but if Grimace was a real world violent psychotic international terrorist who kills children and creates biochemical weapons, instead of a vaguely menacing purple mascot.”

“So, not really like the Grimace shake at all then.” Percy says.

“Thankkkkk you!” Jason, who has evidentially heard some of their conversation. “That’s what I’ve been trying to say. Let’s stop talking about him though, or I’ll barf up my batburger. Anyway, this is yet another reason why I’m keeping Percy, because this guy fits every metric for our family’s adoption complex.”

“That’s what I said. And you can’t call dibs, Dick found him first.” Tim says, while still typing rapidly on his smartphone. Percy, maybe because he doesn’t have any sense, is choosing to feel honored by these continual adoption threats rather than a bit scared, like he probably should be. Jason and Tim start bickering, and it reminds Percy of some of the sibling squabbles he’s seen in the other cabins. It’s nice to be in the middle of it, he thinks.

Tim gets a phone call. “Hold on, it’s Lucius, I’m going to take this.”

Tim gets up and walks a few feet away, where everyone who’s at the table can still hear him.

“Who’s Lucius?” Percy whispers. That’s kinda an evil villian name (albeit a stylish one) if he’s ever heard one, no offence to Lucius.

“He’s the CFO at the company.” Dick whispers back, stealing two of Tim’s wings.

Wow, and Tim just has his personal number. What kind of part time job does that kid have?

“-are you calling?” Tim says. “It’s pretty simple. Stock prices are down. It’s a good time to do it.”

He pauses as the other person speaks.

“This isn’t coming out of nowhere! No— Lucius you have to put the order through. We need to buy Red Robin. Yes, the restaurant chain.”

Someone talks on the other line again.

“What’s my plan?” Tim starts to hiss. “I don’t know, total annihilation? Wipe them off of the face of the earth. Change their name before I vanquish them so that their gravestone bears a different epithet?”

“Jason you have to stop watching period dramas with Tim, or he gets like this.” Dick groans.

“Not my fault kid has taste.” Jason smirks as he shoves a truly obscene amount of fries into his mouth.

”At least he’s not as bad as you when you first came back. You had costumes. Drama queen.” Jason looks incredibly offended, mouth still full, as Dick snickers. 

“This is not a spur of the moment thing!” Tim says. Wild that he’s talking to his boss like they’re close enough to be a little rude to each other. “How did you know I’m at Batburger! Fine, fine I’ll sleep on it.”

Tim says his goodbyes and grumpily flops down in his seat.

“Wait, did you just ask your boss to buy an entire company?” Percy asks. He knows like, nothing about business or corporate America, but he’s pretty sure that’s crazy.

Tim blinks, looks taken aback by his incredulity. “Lucius isn’t my boss.”

Before Percy can ask, Jason interrupts.

“Percy.” Jason says through a mouthful of fries as Tim glares at him with disgust.

Percy makes eye contact with Jason and is a little struck by their similarities. They both have eyes that are just a little too vibrant, and Jason has a strip of white in his hair, much brighter than the grey streak hidden under Percy’s beanie. “So can you fight?”

“Jason, I said you weren’t allowed to interrogate him.”

“Dick,” Jason parroted back in the same tone “Dude just faced Croc, didn’t start screaming, and managed to keep up with you running from something. I think we’re past normal now.”

“Yeah. I can fight.” Percy can’t help but grin a little, hoping that wolf-stare persona isn’t leaking out. They all turn to look at him, and Percy feels a little shiver down his spine, these three strange mortals with hyper-intelligent eyes. He lowers his voice a little “But lemme ask you guys a personal question.”

“Is this about our identities?” Tim says.

Weird way to phrase that question. “Yes— I mean, kind of?” Percy says and they all lean forward in anticipation.

“Are you guys rich?” Percy asks.

He hopes it’s not rude, because they’re all just staring at him in blank shock. 

“Yeah, of course we’re rich?” Tim says, as if  he’s never had to explain this before “We’re—“

Percy’s the first one to hear it, and he’s half out of his seat in an instant, the instincts always present even when he’s been slacking on training recently.

A monster. And close.

***

Dick’s been having a great time. Sure, his head has been swimming from that nightmare Croc chase. He was worried about Percy. Jason’s right, they’re going to need to look into who Percy is, because his reflexes were not natural.

Also, when Percy finally takes off his hoodie, Dick sees not only a tattoo, but a years-old brand on his arm. When Dick, horrified, asked about it, Percy just shrugged and said he got it when he “joined the Legion” and then changed the subject. 
Nothing sounds more culty than that sequence of words, but Dick is going to give Percy the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it’s frat bro shit. He remembers Wally telling him about how one of the frats at his university branded their members. Legion sounded kinda like Greek Life? Dick was really grasping at straws here. 

He’s glad to see Percy getting along so well with his brothers, and he relaxes, because at least he did know that Percy was a friendly.

And then Percy jumps out of his seat, and there’s a thing just outside the front window of the restaurant. It’s a little blurry at first, before solidifying to — what the hell— a creature with a lion head, furry body, and a snake tail. He’s not telling B about this, because it’s going to be yet another MRI and lecture about why he should be donning an ugly cowl or helmet for the head protection, never mind the fact that it limits his visibility and upsets his balance, Bruce.

It bursts through the window, glass shattering around the restaurant. The one other family in here and the two employees immediately book it to the Batburger-Bunker™ and back exit, because they’re good Gothamites. The creature seems to have no interest in them, but they don’t seem to even see it, because they’re yelling about gun shots.

“What the hell is that thing?” Jason says. “It’s blurry, but it looks like— a big dog? Or a lion?”

“It’s not a dog.” Tim furrows his brow. “I can see that it’s an illusion, but I can’t see what that illusion is covering up. Yet.”

“What do you mean? It’s right there!! A lion-goat-snake thing!” Dick yells. He told Jason that reading in the dark and Tim spending too much time on the Batcomputer would ruin their eyesight, and now he’s going to have to get them glasses, because it’s incredibly obvious what that thing is!

“Like a chimera?” Jason squawks. “Oh shit, I can kinda see that now!”

“You’re clear sighted?!” Percy yells at them. Whoops. Dick had kinda forgotten that he was here admist the shattered glass and the creature pawing towards them. Then he shakes his head and looks determined. “None of you should— Never mind. We don’t have time for this. Stay back.”

“Sorry, Percy, but we can’t let a civilian handle this.” Dick pulls out the escrima stick Tim had given him as soon as he showed up (Dick had been kicking himself during the Croc fight for not having one) and twirls it once, throwing it forward and hitting the chimera straight between the eyes— Or at least he would have, if the dangerous metal rod didn’t bounce off harmlessly, the creature utterly unmoved.

Jason swears, and pulls out his gun, aiming it and pulling the trigger before Dick can protest. One, two, three, four bullets go straight through the lion.

“None of you will be able to fight it.” Percy says, suddenly uncharacteristically grim. “You’d need celestial bronze. I’ll kill it.”

Suddenly, a bronze sword appears from nowhere in Percy’s hand, and he strides forward.

Dick has stood side by side with some of the most powerful beings in the world— aliens and metas and more, and that same feeling he gets when he suddenly realizes just how powerful they are races up and down his arms. Percy seems to swell with potential, face suddenly years older and his eyes far sharper. For a moment, Dick swears like the entire restaurant smells like the ocean, and the hair on the back of his neck raises. Who is Percy really— or what is Percy?

“What did you say it was?” He whispers to Jason and Tim as they watch Percy get closer. “Percy seemed to know.”

“It’s a chimera. Greek monster.” Jason says.

“What do we know about it?”

“See this is why I tried to get you to read the classics. Could save your life one day.” Jason is obnoxiously smug.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Dick bitches, “but Mr. Darcy and Don Quixote aren’t going to walk out of a book to claw me to death at Batburger anytime soon.”

“Can we please focus!!” Tim hisses, his eyes flickering back and forth between Percy and the creature.

“It’s venomous, I’m pretty sure.” Jason says.

“I wasn’t going to try to get bit anyway, but that’s good to know.”

“And the myths say it can breathe fire, but I’m not sure—“ before Jason can finish, Percy ducks and rolls out of the way as the lion head breathes red-hot fire out at him.

Percy gets up to attack almost immediately, bringing that strange bronze sword to push it back about ten feet with the speed of his slashes. Dick tries to analyse his fighting style. It’s certainly not his own flips and showmanship— it’s a style definitely initially won more in life-or-death battle experience than formal training. It isn’t League of Assassins, or any of the oodles of martial artists Bruce has worked with. The closest thing he could compare it to was the way Diana fought, but even then it was still different.

“Watch out!” Percy yells, and all of the batboys dive behind a life size cut out of Harley Quinn, which saves them from the bulk of the creature’s attack.

Unfortunately, the ceiling isn’t so lucky and half the roof is on fire. Great. Bruce is going to be so mad, because this is the third Batburger they’ve accidentally set on fire or exploded in recent months.

There must be asbestos in the ceiling or something, because Dick swears he hears Percy yell “This is for framing me for terrorism, you stupid chihuahua!”
As he stabs the chimera in the ribs. It shudders, lets out a death rattle, and disappears into golden dust. Percy doesn’t seemed perturbed by this, just wrinkles his nose as he looks down at his newly dusty clothing and walks over to them— and the sword is gone again.

“Did you kill it?” Tim asks.

“I wish. She’ll come back, probably take a few years though.” He rotates his shoulders. “Man am I out of practice, that was embarrassing.”

Dick suddenly very much wants to know what Percy means by in practice, if what they just saw was out of practice.

“Percy, what the hell was that?” Dick can’t help but say, and Percy winces, then opens his mouth to respond.

Dick blames the utter confusion of the afternoon for what happens next. There’s a noise from up above them, groaning in the roof structure.

Dick looks up, is about to dodge the giant flaming beam headed directly towards them, but at the last second, Percy tackles him out of the way, taking a hit on the head.

“Fuck!” Jason yells, and yes, that. Dick has a moment of mind numbing panic, but he immediately pulls Percy out from under the beam. It must have landed differently than he first expected, because Percy, while unconscious, actually looks alright, and as Tim pours a little water over the medium sized cut on his scalp to get a better view of the injury, Percy’s breathing evens out.

“He pushed me out of the way. I was going to dodge, but he didn’t know I could.” Dick mutters.

“What are we going to do now?”

“Let’s take him back to the manor.” Dick decides.

“Well, he’s beaten me for most dramatic individual adoption,” Jason ‘Stole the tires off the Batmobile’ Todd hefts Percy over one shoulder, and they walk out of the Batburger.

This is going to be an interesting conversation. 

Chapter Text

Batman walks through the manor, wearing his bathrobe, in his typical early-afternoon fugue state. His shoulder is aching, and after Red Robin ditched patrol early to go meet one of Dick’s friends or something, wrangling Croc was painful.

He sits down at the nearest couch and flicks open his newspaper. There’s a burst of laugher and he looks up, to see all of his sons together. What a pleasant surprise, and a rare occurrence to have the five— wait five?! Batman blinks, and recounts. Yes, a fifth child with light eyes and dark hair.

Had he— had he adopted another child? He wouldn’t have forgotten about that, would he? Not even a traumatic brain injury could— Or what if, it was like last year and he’d accidentally ended up in an alternate timeline— Or he was the only one that remembered the truth and there was a traitor in their midst—

He needs to examine the situation more closely.

The boy Batman doesn’t recognise says. “Oh, uh, who is that?”

Batman dimly realizes that he can’t remember a time where he was undisguised and the other person did not recognise him. How novel.

“Bruce Wayne. Our Dad.” Dick says, and Batman uses the ancient tear duct suppressing technique he was trained in by monks in the Himalayas to avoid expressing emotion.

Anytime any of his children say the ‘d’ word, he suddenly experiences ridiculous symptoms like intense joy. He makes a note to catalogue the weakness. Perhaps it would be best if Dick said it more, so that he could better immunise himself against it, and for no other reasons.

The boy again doesn’t show much of a reaction, even when given his name. “Nice to meet you, Mr Wayne. I’m Percy. Dick told me to tell you that I’m currently very happy with my number of guardians. Boy, you must have had to sell a lot of mattresses to afford this place, huh?”

The kids laugh, Jason particularly loud. Batman believes this is one of the new ‘memes’ Tim is always going on about. Batman knows over a dozen languages, is a programming and engineering genius, but for the life of him he can’t understand the things Tim tries to show him on his phone.

“Um.” Batman says. He’s tired and unsure if this kid is expecting the Brucie persona. His children keep laughing.

***

Percy wakes up on the most comfortable mattress he’s ever laid on. Like a cloud, or being cradled, or—

It immediately puts him on high alert, and he shoots up. He’s alone in a godsdamn fancy ass room, in all of the clothes he was wearing before, minus his beat up chucks, with a blanket thrown over him and a glass of water on the nightstand. Very thoughtful of whoever did this. Percy chugs the water immediately, his body already feeling more energised, and the last of the headache from where the beam hit him fading— the beam hit him!

In a blink it comes back to him- Croc, Batburger, Tim’s questionable business choices, the chimera showing up for round two, years later. First, he needs to make sure that the others are safe.

He bursts out of the room, frantically looking around and finding the three of them- plus one tiny kid Percy figures must be the Damian he’s heard about, lounging around an enormous sitting room on couch that look like they’d be worth more than his apartment.

“Percy!” Dick cries, shooting to his feet, and vaults over the back of extremely-expensive looking sofa, reaching him with a speed a mortal shouldn’t have. “Holy shit, man, I’m glad you’re up.”

Percy opens his mouth to respond, and Dick cuts him off. “Nope. Conversation can come after concussion check. We learned that, like, second class, man.”

Dick flashes a penlight from nowhere. “What’s today’s date.” Percy tells him. “What’s your name.”

“I’m fine, Dick, seriously. More importantly, why are we in a palace?” Percy waves his arms around at one of the nicest rooms he’s ever been in, and he’s been in the domains of Gods. “Are the people who live here going to be mad—“

“It is not a palace, you imbecile.” The short frowny one says, stomping his foot in a way Percy can’t help but find kind of adorable. “It is the manor, and I reside in it. Only a plebeian would mistake—”

“Percy, this is Damian.”

“Hi Damian.” Percy leans down a little to get a closer look at Dick’s littlest brother, and if he didn’t have experience with bladed weapons, he wouldn’t have seen it- but is Damian holding a knife behind his back? Deciding to just move on, he straightens up again and looks around.

Percy wants to ask several clarifying questions, but he sees a man out in the gloomy hallway, a man with dark circles under his eyes, a bruise on one cheekbone, ghosting through in an enormous bathrobe. Did that guy… break in? He looks so scrungly at a distance, like he’d recently picked a fight in a sewer, but he’s also just as muscly as Jason.

“Oh, Who is that?” Percy nonchalantly says to grab Dick’s attention as the man loiters in the doorframe, staring right at them. No need to freak Damian out with the weird stranger.

“Bruce Wayne. Our dad.” Dick says, after a beat, like he hasn’t had to introduce his father before.

Wayne’s face looks slightly constipated, and Percy’s now worried that he fucked something up. Without thinking, he babbles something about having parents and  mattress sales, and Wayne stares at him in total lack of recognition as the brothers all laugh around him.

“Wait, have any of you texted my girlfriend?” Percy blurts, apprehension building.

Dick winces. “Sorry, we couldn’t find your phone, and I couldn’t find any social media accounts for her. If you know her number you can use mine?”

Oh gods, Annabeth was going to be so pissed. He’d missed their midday check in, and if she followed the tracker she’d just find the crispy shell of the Batburger, and he’d never even told her Dick’s last name, let alone many of the other details about him.

“Ahem. Young masters,” a posh British voice crackles over some kind of intercom system. Percy jumps about a foot in the air. This is just like in those Avengers movies Piper made them watch. These people are really wealthy enough to have British AI Jarvises. “There seems to be a young woman that just knocked on the front door.”

Everyone seems surprised by this. Percy just thinks it’s probably Mormons, or another multi level marketing scheme.

“But the gate is closed. And the security system is active.” Tim says.

“Indeed.” The AI says. Percy starts to grin. He has a feeling he knows who this is, and it’s certainly not the Mormons. “She says her name is Annabeth Chase.”

The Waynes start to whisper amongst themselves.

“She would like for me to inform you that her announcing herself at the door is a formality she will discard if she is not let in within the next minute.” The AI says, sounding a little put out. Yes, that’s definitely Annabeth.

“Go on and let her in Alfred.” Wayne speaks after a brief pause. A good call on his part.

Percy can hear her stomping up the hallway within moments.

“I don’t know why you’ve kidnapped him, but you better return him to me in one piece or I’m leaking all of your identities!” Annabeth’s voice echos around the room as she enters. Percy may selectively pay attention, but he does notice every single person besides him stiffen at that.

“Annabeth!!” He yells, and waves at her.

“Percy. Are you alright.” She says, scanning him up and down after several cutting glances at the people around him, but does visibly relax.

“Yeah, I’m fine. All healed up.”

“I would have loved a check in after the croc saga.” She says, incredibly pointedly. 

Percy winced. Yep, probably should have shot a quick text before eating instead of waiting for after. You never know when sudden unconsciousness is about to befell you. He doesn’t even ask how she found out of about it, because it’s Annabeth— she always knows.

“Sorry! We ran into someone after that and—“ he says, “wait, what do you mean their identites? Oh, was that what you were talking about before? That they’re like, super rich?”

“Percy,” Annabeth says, pinching her nose in that exasperated way that Percy finds so cute he’ll say stupid things on purpose to watch her do it. “Literally everyone knows about the rich people thing. Bruce Wayne is the most famous person in the city and one of the most famous people in the world. I’m talking about the superhero thing.”

A moment of silence that’s very brief, and yet just barely too long. OH. Ohhh, that makes sense. Superheroes. That certainly explains all of Dick’s nonsense, and—

“You mean how Bruce funds the justice league? Cause this guy sure ain’t swinging around.” Dick says, with a casual punch to Wayne’s shoulder. The motion seems rehearsed, and Damian still looks murderous.

Annabeth points at Dick. “Robin one, Nightwing.”

She points at Jason. “Robin Two, the  Red Hood,”

“Robin Three and,” she says as she turns to Tim, and then wrinkles her nose a little, “Red Robin.”

Waves a hand at Damian, who is now openly flaunting the knife. “Current Robin.”

Finally, she stares Wayne (who should not be that intimidating in a bathrobe and slippers, gods dammit) directly in the eyes. “Batman.”

Oh, holy shit that explains so much. Oh my god. He called Batman a mattress salesman. He asked his son if it was a sex thing. Percy’s going to go jump into the harbor and live with the carcinogenic sharks for the rest of time, or at least until the next apocalypse. 

“Hahaha, what noooo,” Jason says, utterly unconvincing, after a few long moments of silence. “That would be crazy.”

“How long have you known?” Wayne’s whole body language shifts, staring directly at Annabeth. The others look at him in shock.

“Clark Kent, I figured out over a year ago. The rest dominoed from there.“ Wayne raises an eyebrow, like he’s saying ‘go on’. The other bats are still looking at Annabeth shocked, and Percy feels the pride flicker in his stomach, that she’s able to knock these seasoned vigilantes off of their game. “A few of his vocal patterns are too similar as Superman to his civilian ID., at least in his early interviews. It lessens significantly after you joined the Justice League- I assumed you trained it out of him.” Batman says nothing, which is confirmation. “That, paired with his job and his facial structure— made it an easy match.”

“Easy match, she says, like it isn’t one of the best kept secrets in the world.” Dick murmurs.

“You’re the obvious choice for Batman. You have access to some of the most high tech facilities in the world outside of Star Labs,”

“Most of our facilities are just as advanced.” Tim grouses. “We just don’t have a particle collider, because keeping one in Gotham is like asking to be nuked. But really our tech is just as good.”

He shuts up when one of his siblings elbows him. “Tech, and the funding to finance the operation. Your ‘world tour’” Annabeth does highly sarcastic air quotes. “Is about the minimum someone would need to acquire the kind of training you have. And you have motive. The red herring leak that you help fund the Justice League as a civilian was a good call, and your Brucie portrayal is flawless, and so were the few times I’m assuming you got a shapeshifter to help you. I had a gut feeling you were the bat though, so I moved on to your kids.”

“Number one, Dick Grayson.” Dick gives her a little wave, even though all of the bats are extremely on edge. Percy doesn’t blame them. Annabeth is very intimidating even when she’s not threatening to upend someone’s entire life. “Robin only came on the scene after he was brought in as a ward, the colors are obviously very similar to the ones the Graysons wore—“

“Wait, seriously?” Jason said.

“You didn’t know they were his parents’ colors?!” Tim hisses.

“We can’t all be creepy little fanboy stalkers, Tim!”

Tim looks offended, but noticeably does not disagree.

“And when Robin was in Jump City, Dick Grayson was noticeably absent from Gotham. I wanted to compare the body language, but I noticed you’ve taken down most of the footage of Robin one flipping. A lot of dead links in the archives.”

Dick blinks, like he hadn’t known it.

“I found pretty much everything online and deleted it, because if I could figure it out as a nine year old, someone else probably could too.” Tim pats Dick on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, I saved everything to the Batcomputer.”

Jason coughs into his fist as he says “Stalker.”

“Drake was merely being diligent, Todd.” Damian  sniffed. “You, however, would not—“

“Ooookay, let’s get back into being threatened guys.” Dick claps his hands together.

“Moving on to Robin two.” Annabeth’s face is still deadpan, but Percy can see her lips twitching up just a bit. “If Dick Grayson is Robin one, the next Wayne kid is Robin two. Again, the dates match up. It’s too early in the day to talk about death, so I’ll skip all that.” Annabeth gets a grateful nod from Jason about that. “Then a new vigilante that works with the bats, operates out of Jason Todd’s former neighborhood pops up— he’s probably Red Hood too, and the conversations I had with kids in Park Row and your reaction confirmed it. Once I knew those two, the others were obvious. Of course I also compiled evidence for every one of you and your identities, with timeline explanations and visual prof as well.”

Jason shifts, and Percy notices his hand reach inside his jacket. That’s almost definently a gun in his pocket, because Jason doesn’t look too happy to see them.

Percy, on the other hand, is silently celebrating the fact that he got to insult Tim’s hero name to his face. And look, Percy’s seen him move, he seems like an excellent vigilante— kid deserves a better name!!

“And if you know the Robins, Bruce Wayne must be Batman.” Annabeth finishes.

The bats stare at her, and the tension is thick in the air. They obviously have not had this happen often, based on their reactions.

“Okay before you guys freak, we’re not exactly normal people. I don’t think anyone other than Annabeth could put this together.“ Percy holds his hands out in front of him defensively. And then gives Annabeth a meaningful look “and we’re not going to leak the information because they are very nice and helped me after I got hit on the head. They didn’t kidnap me, I don’t think, and I’m pretty sure they mean no harm.”

Percy gives Dick a different meaningful look, and Dick blinks and quickly says, “Of course! As long as you aren’t y’know, trying to hurt people.”

“My project wasn’t just your identities.” She drops her bag and pulls out a massive binder that’s overflowing with pages, and thunks it on the polished mahogany wood table. Oh, this is what she was working on when she wasn’t using  that massive red string murder board she kept in the other room, that Percy avoided like the plague because it gave him a headache to even think about. “In case you were friendly, I wanted to work up a couple quick plans to improve your op sec.”

In the corner of his eye, Jason and Tim are starting to grin.

“I am,” Wayne says, like it takes great effort. “interested to hear your ideas.”

Dick gapes at him, and then gives him a congratulatory pat on the back.

Annabeth nods. “Here’s a list of photos I’d advise wiping from the internet, you should all pick hairstyles that cover the tops of your ears more often, here’s an equation I wrote to vary your patrol schedules more,” she keeps flipping through the different tabs for each thing as Bruce watches wide-eyed. “here’s the specific microfiche newspaper you’ll want to pull from the public library— and if you’re wondering how I got past whatever sensor or inside man you have here in Gotham, I got these in Metropolis.”

Wayne just nods, his eyes quickly scanning the documents, looking more and more interested as he goes. Percy is happy that Annabeth is finding people who truly appreciate her insane contingency plans. Most Greek demigods were fly by the seat of their pants people, and Percy still finds it hard to plan more than a week in advance after never knowing whether he’d live through the summer. The Bats seem to be really into this, and Percy knows Annabeth is preening under her hard exterior. 

“Bruce. We simply have to keep them both.” Jason, who has radically switched from apprehension to glee.

“They’re both adults, Jason.”

“I bet they have so much trauma,” Jason says, like this is a major selling point. Bruce doesn’t budge, and Jason gives him big begging eyes. “And you never let me have a dog while I was in the manor, and I never brought home strays. You let Tim keep Steph!! It’s my turn to adopt.”

“She did color code this contingency plan, B.” Tim says from where he’s leafing through the binder appreciatively.

“No! There are enough fools in this family already!” Damian stomps his little foot with great fervour, as if Annabeth and Percy’s adoption is a very real and imminent likelihood.

Annabeth, for the first time, appears very confused. Percy comes to stand closer.

“It’s better if you just think of it as a compliment.” He audibly whispers. Honestly, the possible legal kidnapping is not the craziest thing they’ve encountered today, but in Percy’s mind, neither is the superhero thing. Most of his friends were child soldiers, and Dick always has been incredibly skilled. It feels like it would be more irresponsible in this hellscape of a city to not give your child vigilante training. No, the wild thing is just how fucking rich the Waynes are. Like seriously.

“Hmm.” She says, and then turns her glare onto him. “And what happened! Leo sent me a video of you running from Killer Croc, but I didn’t see what happened after that. Are you okay?”

“We fought, uhhh, do you remember the St. Louis arch elevator? The chihuahua?”

Before Annabeth can respond, Batman’s gravely voice speaks again. “That’s where I recognize you from. The Saint Louis arch. Percy Jackson. You were kidnapped.”

All of the— batkids? Birdboys?— All of them perk up at the hint of more information— it’s an expression he’s seen both Leo and Annabeth wear. Percy groans. “Annabeth, I thought you said Leo wiped most of that from the internet.”

“Doesn’t do anything against people’s memories, Seaweed Brain. Next time don’t be involved in the desecration of a national monument. I would say national park, but I’ve given up on that one at this point.”

“When have I desecrated a national park!” Percy yelps.

“I don’t have enough fingers to count Percy. Mount St Helens, Alaska,” Annabeth drawls.

“Not my fault there were so many ghosts!”

Ghosts ? Dick mouths.

“As much as I want to see this play out,” Jason says, looking between them like it’s a particularly intriguing tennis match. “are you going to tell us why we got attacked by a mythical monster?”

Annabeth purses her lips and turns to Percy. He can read the hesitation in her face. Telling them would mean outing themselves, it would mean giving powerful vigilantes information that the bats could use against them.

“They deserve to hear.” Percy says after their silent conversation. “They could have died. And Tim didn’t get to finish his shake.”

“Oh no, I went back for it.” Tim, who suddenly has said shake in hand and is noisily slurping at it.

“Into the burning building?!” Percy feels almost as alarmed as Batman suddenly looks.

“It was a good shake,” Tim shrugs. “Also, we forgot to tell you B, but we torched another Batburger. Zero civilian casualties though!”

Bruce sighs and rubs his face with his hands.

“You were saying?” Jason says impatiently.

“Where was I, oh-“ Percy takes a deep breath. “Fine. Look, I didn’t want to be a halfblood.”

Chapter Text

Dick wishes he got more sleep last night. This day is insane and he’s not even talking about the Croc scramble.

“Percy. You can’t keep starting with that every time someone wants us to tell a story.” Annabeth says, pinching the bridge of her nose again. “That’ll take way too long.”

Percy sighs theatrically. “When I say halfblood, it’s another way of saying greek demigods.“

“Oh, demigods, like Won-“ Tim continues, even as Percy makes frantic stop-stop-stop hand motions behind Annabeth’s back. Percy seems to be more worried about this than the murderous reptile or the chimera, so Dick is extremely curious. “-der Woman.”

“No.” Annabeth sneers, icy. “Not like Wonder Woman.”

“Well, kinda like Wonder Woman.” Percy amends. “It’s complicated. Lots of politics. Point is, one of our parents is a god, the other is a mortal.”

“You said Greek. Are there other types of demigods?” Bruce asks. Dick knows he’s wondering why these two are so different from Diana and Cassie.

“Oh yeah. Roman demigods are basically the same thing. I’ve met some Egyptian demigods, Annabeth’s dead cousin is a Norse demigod.”

“Her dead cousin is a demigod?” Evidentially Jason caught that too. He then looks very excited at the prospect of another revenant. “How did he come back to life?”

“Oh no, he’s still super dead.” Percy says, flippant about dying in a way that Dick had only associated with certain superheroes and Constantine. “Great kid though. We’re going to see him in a few weekends. I only have like, one friend who totally came back from the dead. No, two.”

Percy frowns and counts on his fingers. “Oh, Does-“

“I don’t think it counts.” Annabeth shakes her head. “Let’s just call it two for now.”

“How—“ Tim starts.

“The monster.” Bruce cuts in, evidentially impatient with the proceedings. “Is it a threat.”

“Not to any of you.” Annabeth says.

Jason leans forward. “What was that thing?”

“Well, the gods are real and so are all their fugly relatives.” Percy says with a yawn.

“Cutting it close there Jackson.” Anna Beth says, meaningfully glancing at the ceiling. Is she implying that the gods are present, listening, and easily offended? Because Dick has some choice words for them too.

“Yeah, yeah.” He grumbles.

“Monsters can’t be seen by the vast majority of mortals, and they usually don’t go after mortals either. But demigods, well, monsters can smell them, and they’ll hunt us down relentlessly. Over a certain level of power, and you’re constantly getting attacked.” Annabeth explains. That situation didn’t seem hypothetical- it seems like it’s happened to her. “Point is, I hadn’t met any demigods who knew they were demigods and still survived to adulthood until a few years ago.”

Okay, extremely concerning. Dick’s getting that mother hen instinct to immediately cover these two in Kevlar- oh god(s?), he’s turning into Bruce.

There’s a moment of silence. “Alright that about wraps up our panel, any questions!” Percy says with cheer.

“Yes, several!” Tim squawks.

Dick beats the rest of his outraged brothers to the question.

“I’m surprised you weren’t more weirded out or upset by the hero thing,” he says, staring at Percy.

“Hey, I get it. Shit happens. Sometimes your math teacher tries to kill you,” Percy leans against the batcave raining, effortlessly comfortable. “Or you fall off a cliff, or you vanquish an immortal lion by hyucking astronaut ice cream at it,”

“What species of lion?” Damian interrupts.

“Uhhh Nemean? There’s only like one of them.”

“So you killed an endangered lion?” Oh brother. Damian’s rage is skyrocketing. Jason, bless him, quickly holds Damian back. “Unhand me, Todd, I must vanquish this cur!”

“Where did you get this kid?” Percy shakes his head. “I love him, he’s awesome. Tell you what buddy, we can sword fight later.”

Annabeth elbows him.

Percy blinks and corrects himself “Uhhh, if your parents say it’s okay?”

“Close enough.” Annabeth sighs. “Normally I’d say stop offering to sword fight preteens if they’re mortal, but needs must.”

“Why did you assume he’d want to sword fight?” Dick asks. Damian absolutely would but Percy doesn’t know that.

“The knife he’s carrying behind his back? And the one I assume is in his shoe?” Percy says, puzzled like it’s an obvious answer. Hmm. Percy’s more observant than Dick thought, if he was able to see Damian’s weaponry that easily.

“And, I mean, kids love bladed weapons.”

In Dick’s experience, Percy’s mostly right. Although he and Tim do love big-stick-to-bonk-people with.

“Go to hell.” Damian hisses. Woo, that kid is lucky that Alfred isn’t listening right now, or he would be so grounded. Dick gives him his best ‘be polite or else’ look and Damian does settle down a little.

“Been there, done that.” Percy isn’t perturbed. “Forgot to buy the postcard.”

“Still have the elevator trauma.” Annabeth deadpans, and both of them giggle. Some kind of inside joke? Percy tucks some of his hair behind his ear, which brings his grey streak out. Standing side by side, Dick notices that Annabeth has a similar one. Interesting.

“You have a streak in your hair like Todd’s.” Damian says, which is a statement, not a question, but he’s being significantly more polite. “Did you bathe in the Lazarus pit?”

“He’s asking you if you came back to life like I did.” Jason says when Percy looks confused. Dick can see that Jason’s eager to hear the answer too.

Percy whistles. “Damn son, how did you manage that? It takes like, so many chew toys to sneak past Cerberus. And you’re definitely not a Hades kid. We would have heard, and you’re way too vibrant and youthful.” 

Absolutely nonsensical.

“It was from stress.” Annabeth says.

“Stress.” Tim says flatly.

“It felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders- no the weight of the sky.” Percy sighs, placing the back of his hand on his forehead like he’s about to swoon onto a fainting couch. Annabeth playfully swats him on the arm. “So how’d you come back from the dead, dude?”

“Green soup death pit.” Jason says.

“Aw man, you had to swim in toxic green water too?” Percy wrinkles his nose. “I’m actually getting concerned by the amount of not-regular-water liquids I’ve been submerged in over the years. The styx, all of the other nasty rivers, poison.” Percy rambles.

Bruce looks more upset. Well, to everyone else he probably just looks even more Stoic™ but Dick knows him better than anyone, so he can sense the itchy agitation rolling off him.

“Wanna see the bat cave?” Dick says on a whim. Both Percy and Annabeth look incredibly interested. Bruce has upgraded from Stoic to Peeved. This isn’t protocol at all, but Dick trusts these two; though he has a sense they’re still holding back information, and showing them some secrets may make them loosen up.

“Dick—“ Bruce growls.

“Overruled!” Dick says breezily. “Plus, we get to try the new secret entrance Tim and I installed when you were on that last mission.”

Tim grins, and presses a button on his smartphone. Dick pulls Jason back as a panel opens in the center of the room right where he had been standing. A fireman pole spirals out of the darkness.

“I’ll go first,” Tim says, and elegantly slides down the pole.

“Coming, Wise Girl?” Percy grins at Annabeth.

“Someone has to show you how it’s done,” She snarks back, and before Dick can intervene, she grabs the pole and spins into position, disappearing nearly as quickly as Tim.

It takes a little bit, and Bruce categorically refuses and sulkily stomps off to take the now-boring clock entrance (he should be glad Dick didn’t reveal the secret entrance! Well, other secret entrances).

“Usually there’s more screaming involved down here.” Jason says, eyeing their two new guests at the bottom.

“You been in one giant underground cavern, you’ve kinda been in them all.” Percy says, sticking his hands in his pockets. Dick does see him looking excitedly at the costume cases though, and he seems to be interested in the lake of dark water Dick is convinced Bruce keeps only for the aesthetics.

“Mmm. Excellent work using the natural features of the cave.” Annabeth’s eyes were eagerly taking in every detail. Someone showing proper appreciation, thank you very much. “There are a few places you could adjust the structure support, but for the most part, this is perfect.”

“You just want to put in Hellenistic columns everywhere.” Percy says.

“They’re a classic for a reason.” Annabeth sniffs,  suppressing her grin.

Tim gives them the abbreviated audio tour, as they all get situated near the Zeta tube and the bat computer.

Percy and Annabeth both excitedly watch Tim demonstrate a new taser-type weapon he invented on Jason, who is apparently on his best manners as he subsequently doesn’t try to punt Tim across the room.

By the time Dick’s about to intervene (Jason’s started to twitch with too-high voltage as well as rage) the whole event is interrupted by the Zeta suddenly swirling to life.

Recognized 06: Aquaman

“Batman,” Arthur Curry booms as he steps out of the zeta. “I know you are not fond of visitors in your… fine city,“

Dick can see Bruce tensing up. Not fond is a fun understatement. That’s like saying Chernobyl was a bit of a whoopsie.

“But I simply had to congratulate you on the state of the bay. It was already looking much cleaner and  this new revitalization project should work wonders—“

Arthur cuts himself off when he sees Annabeth and Percy. An expression crystallizes on his face, the same expression Dick believes he may have, if he saw a giraffe on a frozen tundra, or something else significant in a place it absolutely should not be.

“Prince—“ Arthur says, straightening his posture. Percy immediately violently grimaces.

“Please, Mr. Curry.” Arthur raises his eyebrows, and Percy amends, “Arthur. It’s just Percy.”

“Percy, then. What in the currents are you doing here?”

“Scholarship program?” Percy says, like he’s slightly unsure of the reason himself.

“For Robin?” Aquaman looks alarmed, and glances at Bruce. “Your father will not be happy to hear you have been adopted. Did Batman need a hero of the harbor as well? I thought—“

“No, why does everyone think he’s adopting me?” Percy throws his hands up in exasperation. “We only just learned that they’re superheroes. It’s a scholarship program for college. Annabeth and I both got full rides. And there’s like, no monsters here.”

“Ah, that makes sense. I assume the latest cleanup was your doing? The capsized fishing trawler?”

“Ah, yeah.” Percy says bashfully and rubs the back of his neck. “All the sharks with cancer were really upsetting me. Dick helped me with this seal too.”

Arthur nods in approval. “Excellent work.”

“I’m sorry, Aquaman.” Bruce says slowly. Welcome to the party, Batman. “You know him?”

Arthur gives Bruce a look that Batman almost never receives: the are-you-fucking-dense look.

“That’s Percy Jackson.” He says slowly. “Lord Poseidon’s favorite son.”

Percy goes red again. “Nooo, I wouldn’t say thattt, I mean, Dad is of course like, 99% more present than any other Olympian, but I wouldn’t say favorite.“

“Uh-huh.” Arthur says, and Annabeth hides her smile with her hand. Percy shuts up.

“Poseidon is real?” Bruce narrows his eyes at Aquaman. “I was under the impression you ruled the seas. We went to all of the settlements under the water—“

“You thought that palace was the entirety of undersea life?” Percy scoffs. “No offense Arthur.”

“None taken.” Arthur says, obviously agreeing with Percy.

“There’s multiple Atlantises under the sea! Like how there’s a Paris Texas, and Georgia’s both a state and a country!” Percy explains, waves his hands for emphasis. Dick is still stuck on the fact that Aquaman was about to call the kid from his first aid class 'Prince'.

“So if you’re Poseidon…” Tim says slowly, looking at Annabeth.

“I’m a daughter of Athena.” She says, her head held high and proud.

“That definitely tracks.” Jason says. Annabeth smiles at him in approval. Dick thinks she might be able to kill a large number of them very quickly. She seems cool; he likes her.

The computer beeps— the DNA test result notification. Dick’s head immediately whips around to Bruce.

“Bruce… did you steal something of our new friends to test their DNA without asking?” He says, feeling a bit like he does when he scolds Titus. Bruce just blinks twice, which is as good as a signed confession.

The results flare to life, and it’s Dick’s turn to blink twice, as half of the DNA is literally missing . Not once has he seen anything like that pattern, and he’s very familiar with the DNA process after years of crime fighting and Bruce obsessively testing Dick for the meta gene every few months. 

Bruce clears his throat. “First I needed it as a security measure. Now I needed to compare it with Diana’s. There are inconsistencies in between hers and theirs.” This he directs at Percy and Annabeth, who are both looking back guilessly, although Annabeth keeps sending interested glances at the DNA readings.

“Bruce, there are differences between Diana’s Amazons—“ Aquaman begins. “I should just let her explain.”

“I will ask her to come.” Bruce enunciates, glancing at Annabeth and Percy as if he expects them to argue. 

“Oh yes.” Annabeth says, her eyes gleaming fervently. “Do bring Wonder Woman here.” 

Chapter Text

Bruce comms Diana, and tells her that there’s a semi-urgent matter that needs her in Gotham. Wonder Woman arrives incredibly quickly, probably because Bruce never asks Leaguers for help in Gotham, so she might be worried he’s currently dying and/or possessed. As Diana enters via the zeta tube,  Dick again gets to watch someone’s face do the thing when they see Percy and Annabeth in the bat cave.

“Demigods— in Gotham?” Diana says, the closest to flabbergasted he’s ever seen her.

“Oh, that’s nice, you recognize us.” The pop of Annabeth cracking her knuckles echoes off of the cave walls. The light burning in her grey eyes is definitely closer to murderous rage than hero worship.

“Perseus Jackson and Annabeth Chase.” Diana says.

“Where did you learn our full names? Was it the third missive I sent you for help? Or the fourth?"

Annabeth takes out her little hoop earrings and places them in Percy’s outstretched hand without looking back at him. Dick knows from working near bars in Blud— the hoops coming out is never a good sign for the peace. Is she going to try to fight Wonder Woman? Dick gets ready to jump in to save Annabeth from getting slammed into the cave wall.

“No.” Diana looks uncomfortable. Annabeth takes another step forward.

“Annabeth,” Percy says.

“Not now, Percy.” She says, and Percy just sighs.

“I” Diana tries, taken aback by Annabeth’s reaction. Dick can understand. Normally people, if they aren’t villains, are ecstatic to meet Wonder Woman. “don’t understand your hostility.”

Oof. That’s a misstep. Percy, whose face has been rather blank, frowns slightly. Annabeth looks to be on the verge of hissing.

“This is me being civil, princess.” She stalks forward, whipping out a sword out of absolutely nowhere, and where the hell did she hide that, and was it made of bone? She strikes before Dick can blink, continuing to speak and almost catching Diana in the side. “I have a hundred reasons to be hostile, and the two biggest ones are the fucking wars not one of your Amazons fought in.”

She put an odd emphasis on ‘your’, like she was hinting at a separate faction of Amazons that weren’t under Hippolyta’s control, which was impossible, because Dick’s sure Donna would have mentioned it if it were true.

Diana sighs, “We could not join you in battle. We are not allowed to intervene; I am not allowed to unless it profoundly impacts the world of men.”

Diana has to leap to dodge Annabeth’s next flurry of blows at that remark. Allowed to Intervene? Dick thinks. He wonders what force can make an Amazonian do anything.

“Yeah, well, in case you didn’t notice, I think a second Titanomachy and a Giant war has an effect on the world of men.” Percy says, crossing his arms. “Gods know Typhon certainly did.”

Diana bites her lip, not directly responding to that one. “We entreated the gods to come to your aid.”

“That’s almost worse than nothing.” Annabeth says.

“Perhaps we could try more prayer—“

“Oh, you better start praying. ” Annabeth half-growls. As she attacks Diana again, Jason looks conflicted between defending one of the only Leaguers he’s fond of, and admitting that that line kinda went hard.

Dick can only watch in awe as Annabeth purposefully misses Diana, in order to target one of the structural supports and bring scaffolding tumbling down onto her. He realizes that all of Annabeth’s previous attacks were to maneuver the Amazon into a place where the scaffolds would fall. To do that, she would have needed to so quickly scan the cave, identify everything in her surroundings she could use, make a plan of attack in the few seconds after Diana stepped of off the zeta, and calculated exactly how much force she’d need to take down the structural support but none of the others around it. Bat behavior. Dick kinda wants Blonde Robin 2.0, and he bets Stephanie might agree. 

Instead of attempting to stab Diana while she’s down, Annabeth steps back and waits for the Amazon to pull herself out from under the boards. Diana isn’t offended, just brushes off some of the dust with a light smile, and continues the conversation like nothing happened. “You are warriors. We believed in your strength.”

“We were kids.” Annabeth says, staring Diana down.

“You are not normal children.” Diana shakes her head, pained. Annabeth hisses and pulls another knife out of her belt, which really doesn’t help her ‘regular kids’ argument. “And we could not interfere with the prophecies.”

“You—“ Annabeth throws the knife at Diana, and it clips some of her hair as it flies through the air.

“Besides, you evidently had it handled.” Diana gestures in their still-alive direction, in an attempt at lightness.

“I’ll show you handled, you—!” Annabeth raises the sword again, and in lieu of finishing her threat, just starts attacking.

She yells at Diana in a language Dick can’t speak. He would guess Greek, but an incredibly ancient form of it. Dick doesn’t need a translator to understand that what Annabeth is saying is not complimentary. Diana’s eyes keep getting wider and wider, and even Percy looks a little taken aback.
Dick does catch one phrase that Donna taught him when they were teenagers. βάλλ' εις κόρακας Roughly translated, To the crows! i.e. I hope your body gets devoured by carrion birds and you go to hell. At least, he thinks that’s what Annabeth said.

Diana isn’t going one hundred percent on the offense, still appearing hesitant about this. However, the Amazon is having to put far more effort into dodging, and even has been hit a few times. Holy shit, Annabeth is a good fighter. Dick bets that if she had time to plan, and the right setting and appropriate people to direct, she could absolutely pose a real threat to Wonder Woman.

Finally, one of Diana’s swings hits Annabeth, and knocks her back fifteen feet. But instead of immediately screaming of cracked ribs or passing out, Annabeth just elegantly tucks and rolls off the ground.

She’s still yelling in Greek, about to charge forward again, when Percy waves a hand and suddenly there’s a massive wall of water in between Annabeth and Diana.

Hydrokinesis. The water isn’t from any sort of receptacle Percy carries with him, like most of the Atlantean mages Dick knows, it’s from the pool a few meters below the catwalk. Very good range then. The water in the bat cave is fresh water, or however close to freshwater you can get in Gotham, which means Percy isn’t limited to the sea as a domain. He’s extremely powerful, Dick can already tell. He makes eye contact with Tim, who looks like he’s mentally jotting everything down.

Annabeth turns and bares her teeth at her boyfriend, who raises his palms in surrender.

“Give us a sec,” Percy calls through the water, as Annabeth stomps closer to him.

“Babe you can’t fight Wonder Woman.” He says, in a low voice Percy probably thinks everyone else doesn’t hear. (Spoiler alert: batcave has weird acoustics, and from where they’re standing, they can hear every word) Dick isn’t going to let Percy know that though, because he’s fascinated by this situation.

“Watch me.” Annabeth says. Dick 100% believes her.

“It’d be like, rude though.” Percy tries, fidgeting a little, like this is the last thing he wants to say.

Annabeth grunts.

“You can’t make me be the impulse control!! That’s like putting a dog in charge of brain surgery! I am not qualified!” Percy throws his arms up in emphasis, and then appears to switch techniques. “Okay, well, still don’t fight her. What about Thalia?”

“What, you think that just because they’re kind of sisters Thalia’s not pissed off? I think she’s more pissed off!”

“That’s exactly my point, Annabeth. She’d get so mad if you did it without her! She’s still pissed about that thing in Omaha, when we forgot to invite her on that manticore hunt. I don’t want to get charbroiled next time we run into the Hunters.” 

Annabeth appears to hem and haw. “Fine. Stay of execution.”

Percy, looking relieved, waves his hand again and the water elegantly slides back into the pool below.

“Temporary truce.” She says to Diana. “You’re on thin fucking ice, though.”

“Wonder Woman,” Bruce says. “May I speak with you?”

Diana nods, looking extremely relieved to escape the conversation with Annabeth, and joins Aquaman and Bruce, in their little cluster by the railing. She wipes blood from her cheek.

Bruce raises an eyebrow at the assorted younger kids. Dick shoos them away so they can speak privately.

“Go play with knives,” Dick waves dismissively. “The adults are talking.”

Percy shrugs and appears happy to suddenly start asking Damian questions about swordplay. Annabeth narrows her eyes, but joins him after a moment.

Jason and Tim are not as easily distracted, but they get involved as well with whatever mischief Percy and Damien are getting up to. Dick tunes back into the conversation.

“Can you confirm their story?” Bruce is asking.

“Yes. They are demigods.” Diana is good humored about the fight, but Dick can see there’s still a little lingering guilt. He desperately wants to ask what the hell they meant by war, and why two nineteen year olds have fought in two, with what sounds like very little adult supervision, but he keeps his mouth shut and bides his time.

“Our sect of the Amazons severed many our ties to the ancient world, and we received greater power and the ability to better aid the world of man.” Diana explains, her hand resting over the pommel of her sword.

“That’s why your genetic structure is different from theirs.” Bruce, the light of the Batcomputer reflected in his eyes.

“Correct, we gave up our divinity, which meant parts of our genetic code are more similar to a meta human, rather than godly.” She says. “It’s why some Amazons have powers beyond that of a typical demigod, and yet there are still strengths they have that we do not.”

Across the cave, Percy has somehow already managed to disarm Damian (Dick can’t wait to see him fight), and Annabeth has confiscated Damian’s blade. She’s playing keep-away, holding the sword high above Damian’s head as he tries to jump and grab it, still pouting.

“How powerful are these demigods?” Dick can see Bruce composing contingency plan #8459 in the back of his mind.

Diana sighs and looks thoughtful. “It varies. Most demigods don’t understand how powerful they are. They can be killed like any other human, with a scalpel that digs deep enough, but they also regularly take on ten foot tall monsters when they are in their early adolescence, and win. They all have, while not as strong as my own, enhanced strength, healing, and durability. They often don’t realize it because they fight beings so much stronger than themselves.
“Plus, their divinity gives them certain resistances my Amazons do not have any more. As their parental Gods are tied to the earth, most alien offensive weaponry will not work in part or at all on them, depending on the divinity level of the specific demigod. They’re also far more resistant to magic.”

Behind her, Jason has pulled candy out of nowhere, and they’re all parcelling out snacks to each other. Percy is balancing a gummy worm on the tip of his nose.

“How powerful is he?” Bruce jerks his head in Percy’s direction.

Diana, completely serious, says “Perseus Jackson is the most powerful demigod we’ve seen in centuries.”

Percy tries to flip the worm into his mouth, fails, almost chokes. He fumbles it, and then stares mournfully over the railing where it disappeared into the gloom, while Jason and Annabeth both snicker at his expense. 
Most of the most powerful people Dick knows are exactly like that though, so he can totally believe what Diana is saying. 

A chirping fills the cave as three league comm units go off. Bruce frowns and immediately opens his, and the frown doesn’t dissipate as he reads it.

“There’s atmospheric pressure… our scientists are predicting in a few hours there’ll be a large scale extraterrestrial invasion in Manhattan.” Aquaman murmurs. Ugh. That’s the third alien invasion in the last four weeks. Dick is tired of having to fight ooze monsters what feels like every weekend. Slime gets everywhere, and he’s had to throw out so many towels.

“In New York?” Percy demands, immediately up at arms.

“Yes.” Bruce turns to Dick. “Suit up. I’m calling in the league. We’ll take the zeta.”

“We’re coming too.” Percy says, resolute, immediate.

“No, you’re not.” Bruce says, with the weariness of a man who has had this exact argument far too many times.

“Yes, we are.” Percy says. Annabeth nods and grips the handle of her bone sword.

“Besides,” Percy shrugs, “this won’t even be the first time I’ve stopped a large scale invasion of Manhattan.”

What?!

Bruce just stares at him a minute more, grunts, and moves deeper into the cave to prepare.

“Uh.” Percy asks, looking at Dick for help.

“That was an affirmative grunt.” Dick translates. “You can come, he’s just not happy about it and you’ll have to follow our rules.”

“I can do that.” Percy grins. “Anything else?”

“You’re not allowed to almost die this time” Annabeth says, teasing.

“Well, don’t be jumping in front of any knives for me, Wise Girl.”

“Then don’t leave yourself open, Seaweed brain.”

Percy grins. “Maybe I should stop by the Styx again on my way there.”

“I am not giving you my blessing.” Annabeth puts one hand on her hip and wags a finger in Percy’s amused face. “And neither would your mom.”

“You guys are no fun.” Percy pouts.

“If you show up in the underworld again, Hades is definitely going to send the kindly ones after you.” Annabeth says. Dick has given up on trying to understanding this conversation. “You practically have a full punch card at this point.”

“Do you think I’ll get a free fro-yo, when I hit ten trips? I’ve been meaning to kill my middle school math teacher again.” Percy muses, tapping his chin as if he’s thinking of what creative method he’s going to use to do it.

“Okay stop with… whatever the hell that was.” Jason screws up his face in disgust. “God, that was almost worse than when Babs and Dick used to flirt over comms while they took down drug rings.”

“Jason!” Dick yelps. He can’t remember the incident in particular Jason is talking about, which might actually be worse.

“Dick!” Jason says back.

“Tim!” Tim says. They all turn to him. “What, it got your attention. We gotta go, guys. Alien invasion?”

They all nod, and there’s a scramble to gather gear. When Dick has exactly one leg into his least oozy suit, Percy’s head pops up.

“Hey, aren’t most of our friends currently in Manhattan?” He asks Annabeth.

“Yes,” she says, starting to grin. “And Leo can fly over on Festus if I tell him now.”

“He’d kill us if he found out we were using Wayne tech without him.” Percy mutters and then louder, to the rest of the cave.
“We’re going to bring some of our own reinforcements.”

Chapter Text

Bruce somehow manages to change into the batman suit in the time that Annabeth and Percy send the seven+nico+thalia groupchat the invite.

(Also, why the hell does seeing Batman’s dark form in the shadow of the cave inspire a prickle of visceral fear in Percy? He’s gone to actual hell, a billionaire with an adoption problem dressing up as an anthropomorphic bat should not be scary at all, but there’s definitely an Aura there.)

He’s gone in a flash of light at the other end of the cave, taking Wonder Woman and Aquaman with him, who both say something about a different battle in Croatia as they leave. He’s relieved about the latter two leaving, as he hates having to hold Annabeth back, and Aquaman makes him a little uncomfortable. If Percy’s ever given a title again, it’ll be too soon.

Annabeth, ever prepared, brought their armor and stashed it in the hydrangeas outside the manor, so they exit through an elevator Dick shows them, quickly jog outside, grab it, and return to the cave already suited up. He was worried they’d hold up the bats, but Jason isn’t even finished picking out what guns he wants yet.

Looking at him, Percy is distinctly reminded of once watching Silena turn the entire Aphrodite cabin into a pile of clothes while preparing for a date with Beckendorf. Big teenage girl over thinking her outfit energy, only it’s a 250 pound vigilante and his handguns.

“Jason just pick five and let’s gooo.” Dick says, exasperated. He’s already managed to get himself into his skin tight suit, and is tapping his foot impatiently on the catwalk of the bat cave. “Kori and Roy will make fun of me if I’m late to yet another alien invasion.”

He turns to Percy and takes in his armor. “Cool armor.” Dick raises an eyebrow at the helmet under Percy’s arm. “No helmet?”

“Same to you.” Percy says. As he gets closer, he can see it’s not the Lycra he’d imagined from afar, but some sort of Kevlar weave. Yeah, Leo was going to go crazy with the bat tech. “And no, I’m not a helmet guy. I can’t pull them off like other people,” he gestures towards Annabeth, who is somehow looks like an elegant but intimidating marble statue in her helmet, “and they interfere too much with my peripheral vision.”

“Thank you!!” Dick says excitedly, as Jason groans. “Another person on team NoHelmet.”

“We wouldn’t be so insistent on it if you didn’t keep getting head injuries, dumbass,” Jason says as he shoves his head in a full-face red helmet.

“You get shot in the head once, and no one ever lets you forget it.” Dick sighs, leaning onto the rail like this is the biggest personal inconvenience of the day.

“Maybe we would be more forgiving, Richard, if you did not forget everything for a period afterwards.” Damian sniffs. “Also Drake keeps a spreadsheet of all the times you have been hit in the head, and it is unsatisfactorily long.”

“Ah man, amnesia is the worst.” Percy says, deciding not to touch the TBI spreadsheet. They should probably start one for Jason Grace at this point. Percy would not mind if Gotham Jason passed on his love of helmets to his Jason.

“You too?” Dick says. Percy nods.

“To be fair, a goddess stole my memories, so even Jason’s getup, cool as it is, wouldn’t have helped that.”

“Do you want a suit?” Tim suddenly joins the conversation, his head popping up from over a screen he was changing behind. “I can design you a suit!”

“Nah, I don’t think I have the legs for that.” Percy laughs. Annabeth makes a dissenting noise, for some reason. “I wouldn’t mind seeing Annabeth in one, though.”

Annabeth punches him in the shoulder. “In your dreams, seaweed brain.” She gives him a little kiss on the cheek, to hide the slight smile on her face.

Jason finally finishes, and Red Hood, Nightwing, Red Robin, Robin, Percy, and Annabeth make it to the Zeta.

“What’s that dent from?” Jason asks, as they wait for Tim to finish fiddling with the display near an ominous hole in the wall.

Percy looks down. “Oh this one? I think it was from a Canadian.”

“I thought you said you only fought monsters.” Jason says.

“He means a Laistrygonian Giant. We just call them Canadians, because names have power in our world.” Annabeth explains. “Also, we’re all dyslexic, and Laistrygonian is a lot to yell in an emergency.”

“No this is the one time where I do mean an actual Canadian.” Percy says. “Frank and I were… well, there was a rhino involved.”

Annabeth sighs. “I’m so glad you don’t have the Curse of Achilles anymore, because I know you would get into even more stupid shit.”

Before Jason can ask any more questions, Tim activates the Zeta, and a strange kaleidoscope of brightly colored beams of light emanate from the portal.

“So you have one of these that just drops us down in the middle of Manhattan?” Percy says, dubiously staring at the zeta tube.

“Of course we do.” Tim snorts. “New York City has statistically more alien invasions than almost anywhere on earth.”

Percy wonders how no one noticed the massive sleep spell and subsequent fight in Manhattan, if the Justice League has outposts there. It’s starting to look more and more like not only did Wonder Woman willfully ignore the conflict, she covered up its very existence from the league.

“Let’s hope this tube isn’t the domain of some god I’ve never heard of and I don’t get smited.” Percy mutters.

“It’s smote.” Red Hood and Annabeth say at the same time. Percy makes a rude gesture at them both, and Jason does one right back that is extremely detailed and causes Tim to cover Damian’s eyes.

“It doesn’t feel like godly magic,” Annabeth says after a moment, but she’s a bit hesitant.

“Works for me,” Percy shrugs, and immediately jumps into the swirling light.

It’s actually not as unpleasant as he was expecting; horribly jarring, of course, but nothing compared to shadow travel or jettisoned miles by an exploding volcano or any of the other illadvised methods of travel he’s experienced over the years.

Percy tumbles out the other side almost falling to the smooth floor beneath him, closely followed by Nightwing, who picks him up by the back of his armor like he’s a misbehaving cat and sets him on his feet. And holy shit, how strong is Dick, to easily lift him like that?

“Next time maybe wait until one of us shows you how to go through?” Tim is the next to arrive with Annabeth and Damian in tow. Percy sheepishly grins at him.

While Red Hood arrives, Percy turns to get a feel for his surroundings. The Justice League outpost is straight out of a science fiction movie, screaming Future and Expensive with every inch of its metal paneling and opaque floor-to-celing glass walls. Out of the window, he can see slightly-blurry Manhattan far below.

Discretely, Annabeth snaps a picture to send to Nico, and then scans the room. There are a few brightly costumed heroes milling around on the other side, but very few Percy can recognize at a distance.

“Well, most of the League is finishing up a fight in Croatia, B’s crunching numbers, so we’re holding down the fort until they get here. We’re pretty sure a breach won’t open for another two hours at least, so we have time.” Dick says, after checking the screen on his wrist, starting to usher them a little closer to the group of heroes.

“Normally, the Lantern corps would handle this, but they’re having their annual workplace harassment conference in sector three, so they’re out of touch.”

“Lord knows some of them need it,” Tim mutters. 

A beautiful, tall woman with a mane of firey red hair floats(!) over to them. “Hello. Are you new friends?” 

“Hey Starfire.” Dick grins at her, and she smiles back. Based on the way they’re looking at each other, Percy’s going to guess exes-that-may-get-back-together-one-day. “Yeah, this is Percy and Annabeth.”

Percy and Annabeth both wave. A guy with flaming (in a different way) red hair and the back muscles of an archer shoulder checks Jason, while the rest of the group of heroes stay back a ways. There’s—a fucking GREEN PTERODACTYL?! Percy’s a little too flabbergasted to say anything, but he hopes he’s not obviously gaping. He’s seen dinosaur esque creatures before, but none with such an interesting hue. Honestly, everyone in the room is traffic-light-bright, and he kinda digs it, even if it makes him worry for their stealth capabilities. 

Dick claps his hands together. “I need to introduce you all to the rest of the team.” He turns to Percy and Annabeth. “Do you know when your friends will be nearby? We’ll send someone down to get them.”

“Ah, I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” Annabeth says. And with timing that Percy could kiss Nico for, the ground ten feet to their right turns into black shadow and a group of half-armored demigods spill out, much to the sudden dismay of the heros. Piper, Frank, Nico, Jason, Thalia (Thank the gods Wonder Woman isn’t in the building), and Hazel.

The bats are first to react, instantly drawing weapons, and Percy jumps in front of Frank and waves his hands. “Hold your fire! They’re friendly!!”

Piper is utterly unperturbed by the contingent of brightly colored pointy people. “Ooo, cool building.”

“You’re lucky it was such a short trip.” Nico hisses, rubbing his temple where Frank’s elbow hit it. “I am never shadow traveling with this many people again.”

“What the fuck,” Red Hood-Jason says. “I thought Zatanna put anti magic wards on this place.”

“She did,” Dick says, sounding both impressed and mildly amused.

“Where’s Leo?” Percy asks, halfway through giving Jason Grace a much needed bro-hug.

“He took alternate transportation,” Jason says, rolling his eyes.

“Like the subway?” Tim looks up from his tablet to ask.

“Sure.” Nico says with no explanation.

“Nightwing, who are these people?” The blonde girl with a lasso says.

“More like who are you people?” Thalia says, already sparking a bit under the gaze of strangers. Percy wants to shiver a bit, with how intensely the tattooed, dark haired guy in the fishscale onesie is staring at him.

“Well,” Dick begins, answering Thalia first in an attempt to mitigate tension. He points at Starfire first “This is Starfire. She’s an alien princess.”

Starfire beams at Thalia. Dick keeps talking. “Let’s see, there are a couple other Titans.” Percy’s first reaction when hearing that is to put a hand on his sword and think WHERE. He blinks, and Dick gives him an odd look but moves on.

“Flash, who’s on time for once” Nightwing points to flaming redhead number 2 or three (the ratio of redheads in this room is wild, and he thought the level of black hair-blue eyed people was crazy) who is tapping his foot at a rate too fast to see. Interesting.

“That’s because you told me to show up at the apocalypse at 3:00 instead of 3:30.” Flash crosses his arms.

“Can you blame me, if it worked?” Nightwing says with a grin, and Flash opens and closes his mouth but ultimately says nothing. 

“Arsenal.” The guy with the back muscles of an archer gives a little two fingered salute.

Green dinosaur promptly turns into a tiger, and then into a boy-shaped form (Percy doesn’t trust like that enough to instantly believe the former Pterodactyl is a human). “Sup new people, I’m Beast Boy!”

Regardless of whether this guy is primarily a boy or a dinosaur, Percy bets he and Frank could get up to some mischief together. Frank’s eyes are wide and interested. 

“Tempest.” Dick says.

“I had a horse made out of air named tempest once” Jason murmurs, and only gets a few odd looks.

“I am Garth, of Atlantis.” Tempest, who was the tattooed guy staring at Percy, interjects. (Very friendly of him to immediately graduate to civilian identities). Percy looks at him in interest. Dark hair and vibrant blue or green eyes seem to be remarkably common amongst Atlanteans, at least the ones Percy has met. 

“Oh uh, my dad works there.” Percy blurts, because he’s not sure how to navigate this conversation.

Garth grins a little. “Not sure if ‘works there’ is the way I would describe it, if you’re really Perseus Jackson.”  Percy doesn’t get the foreboding feeling he normally does when strangers full name him, so he just blushes and hopes everyone moves on.

“Raven,” Dick says. Percy waves, and Dick seems confused, like he was expecting the demigods to be more surprised by her witchy shit. What, like they’ve  never seen a mysterious floating woman with a magical cloak before?

“And Wonder Girl.” all of the demigods snap to attention, staring at Wonder Woman’s protege, who stiffens but admirably doesn’t cower before their stares. “She’s—“

Nightwing is cut off by a loud screech of metal, as an alarm starts to blare through the room.

Chapter Text

The alarm has only managed to screech twice before Dick backhand-springs to a control board and yanks a large lever. Metal paneling slides over the windows within a moment, and Percy starts to feel a little claustrophobic in the sudden artificial lighting.

He’s treated to a front row seat to how things must usually go around here— the bats, although human, taking charge. Nightwing calls out defensive positioning and joins Red Robin by the computer screen. Tim, who has non-stop been working on some sort of complex mainframe Percy thinks he might break from looking at too hard, is cool and collected even with the ear shrieking alarm sound. Red Hood brings up the rear, cutting an imposing figure even among enhanced meta humans. Damian, years younger than everyone else and still so skilled that no one has questioned his presence the entire time.

None of the other heroes have approached the windows or the computers at all— they’re alert, but standing back, waiting for some kind of order. People respect the bats here, follow their lead. Percy knows that the bats have earned that respect. He’s in a room with aliens and a seven foot tall flaming lady, and yet the Gothamites are demanding appreciation and attention with their very presence.

“Uh—“ Percy says, feeling very Greek and very unorganized as he looks at their formations. “What’s that?”

“Proximity alarm.” Nightwing says, looking at a projected screen over Tim’s shoulder, utterly focused. “Something approaching the tower. Red Robin, what are we looking at?”

“Airborne entity.” Red Robin says.

“Human? Amazon?” Red Hood asks, his arms crossed over his chest. “Or is it the alien—“

“It’s still too early.” Dick says. “There’s no way they’ve broken through yet.”

Tim’s hands are moving at a lightning fast speed as he pulls up a holographic display. “Nightwing is right. The readings don’t match the alien frequencies. But they don’t match anything else we have on file either.”

That makes Nightwing narrow his eyes further, and it takes a single handwave from him to send the other heroes into defensive positions.

Red Hood, on the other hand, leans forward the second Tim is otherwise occupied and presses a conspicuous button on the control panel. There’s a whistling noise, and then a loud explosion rattles the windows.

“Red Hood!” Tim splutters. “We’ve talked about this!”

“What?” Red Hood says, sounding put out even through the helmet. “Unknown flying thing, blow it up, no more unknown flying thing.”

Batman and Superman (!!!) suddenly rush in, drawn by the loud alarm, the explosion, or the bickering. Batman appears to untense slightly when he sees the rest of his brood handling the situation. Jason is staring at Superman as Piper, taking over in Leo’s absence, nudges him. They never did let the Superman or Aquaman joke go, and Percy has another reason to thank the gods that Arthur Curry isn’t here.

“We can’t shoot first, ask questions later!” Red Hood is arguing. 

“I make it work all the time.” Red Hood shrugs. 

“That didn’t fix the problem, Hood.” Nightwing says. “Whatever it is, is still out there.”

Nightwing is too distracted moodily staring at the incomprehensible shapes and lines on the projected screen like they hold the secrets of the goddamn universe from stopping Red Hood from pressing the missile button (man. Percy wants a missile button) not once, not twice, but four more times. Superman winces a little as corresponding explosions ring out.

“Hood,” Tim screeches. “Those are expensive and people freak out when there are explosions over major metropolitan areas!”

“One, the JL’s sponsor’s got the cash.” Jason counts off on his fingers. Batman grunts in annoyance. “Two, New York citizens need to woman up and deal with it. If the night is too quiet in Gotham I play war movie sounds to fall asleep. It’s not like the blast is even that close to them.”

Percy decides to keep quiet and not bring up any major events that involve explosions near buildings in New York. That way madness lies.

“The sensor can’t decide if whatever it is is still there or not.” Nightwing frowns unhappily. “I’m pulling the shield. We’ll deal with whatever it is.”

He pulls the lever, and the metal sheeting slides away, revealing— oh gods damn it. In front of them, looking at first confused and then very excited at the retracting panels, is Leo Valdez, sitting on top of a only slightly singed Festus, his hair crazy in the wind.

“Oh, hey Leo!” Percy waves, forgetting for a moment that there’s no way he can hear him.

“You know this miscreant?” Robin demands.

The other heroes are all gawping. Percy wonders how many of them can see Festus, or how many just see a 5’6 Latino kid floating hundreds of feet in the air.

“Can you uh, roll down a window so we can talk?” Percy turns to Red Robin and Nightwing.

“We won’t be able to hear them over the wind.” Dick says.

“Don’t worry, Jason can handle that.” Percy smirks.

“How, by shooting it?” Robin snarks under his breath, before appearing to remember that there are in fact, two Jasons.

Jason Grace gives a put upon sigh but twists his fingers until the force of the wind dulls to a manageable amount. Nightwing looks skeptical, but pushes a button to lower the window anyway.

“¡Dios Mio!” Leo yells. He really doesn’t need to, but Percy guesses he’s been half-deafened by the wind and explosion. “Why don’t y’all have dragon parking? Or at least validate? I can’t valet this baby! It’s too damn hard to park in New York City.”

“Real New Yorkers don’t drive, Leo!” Percy yells back, mostly just to piss Leo off. Leo’s infected by Texas car culture, he swears.

“Uh, what?” Red Robin stares for a moment, but the bats all shake off their stupefaction quicker than the other heroes, and he snaps to attention.

“How about this?” Tim says, and a retractable helipad appears just below the window.

Leo whoops, and Festus curls up on the helipad like a very spiky dog, and Leo stumbles through the open window.

“Blech.” Leo grimaces. “I think I got a bug in my teeth. Next time, please no missiles. Festus had way too much fun dodging those.”

“Bad dramatic entrance, man.” Percy says, shaking his head. He’s mostly just giving Leo a hard time, but he’s always thought they should give a class on that at Camp Half Blood. Gods know it’s saved him before. “Nico beat you and his was a) way better, b) way less arguing about parking.”

“Jackson,” Leo scoffs, “you wouldn’t know style if it slapped you in the face and—“

“Am I crazy.” Superman says, and hooooly shit Percy had somehow forgotten he and Batman were there. It’s incredibly odd to see Superman look confused. “Or did those kids just appear out of nowhere?”

“Not kids,” Thalia says with the petulance that only a sixteen year old emo body can muster.

“Oh shit, do we have to manipulate the Mist?” Percy wonders out loud. He unsheathes his sword and waves it in the air. “Who saw a baseball bat? Or something like that.”

The Robins, Arsenal, Beast Boy, Superman (ever so politely), Flash, Starfire: all raise their hands.

“Were we supposed to see something different?” Arsenal asks.

“It flickered a lot though.” Flash scratches the back of his head. “Didn’t look real.” Several of the heroes hum in agreement.

“Who saw a sword?” Dick, Raven, Wonder Girl (although she’s squinting), Tempest raise their hands this time.

Red Hood doesn’t raise his hand for either, because he’s like that. Batman grunts for the second option. Percy thinks. He’s hard to read.

“Shit man, we fooled Superman.” Percy says to Jason, who elbows him back in the ribs.

“Hazel Levesque, will you lower the Mist?” Raven intones from where she’s spookily hovering a few feet above the floor. Which, uh oh, no one told her Hazel’s name, very concerning.

Hazel starts, but looks over and nods. She closes her eyes, makes a hand motion, and suddenly all of the heroes around them are blinking as if seeing them for the first time. None of them were ever as affected as your typical mortal would be by the Mist, but it’s clear now that it’s been completely removed from their eyes.

“Dragon!” Flash says, zipping over to press his face against the now-closed window to peer at Festus. Leo preens a little.

“Who the hell are you people?” Arsenal says. “And why are you here?”

“We’re demigods.” Frank says. “Children of the greek and roman gods.”

“Oh, like—“


“No, not like Diana Prince.” Thalia spits out, and everyone appears taken aback by the hostility.

“We came to help with your alien problem.” Percy cuts in. “I’m retired but, I was getting kinda bored.”

“This will be incredibly dangerous.” Starfire says, her eyes big and round in concern. “It is no place for civilians.”

Half the demigods snort at the word “civilians”. 

“All due respect, we’ve been in way more dangerous situations at way younger ages.” Annabeth says.

“We even have help from real adults this time.” Leo says, grinning vaguely manically.

“What do you mean more dangerous situations?” Wonder Girl asks.

“Why don’t you ask your mentor?” Thalia says. Wonder Girl blinks in confusion.

“She means monsters. Avoiding getting murdered, essentially. Since we were kids.” Jason says.

“Since you were kids?” Superman sounds very concerned.

“Roman demigods join the Twelfth Legion, usually as kids or teenagers, and serve for a few years.” Frank explains.

“The fuck is the legion?” Red Hood asks. “Like named after the Roman army?”

“Sounds like a cult.” Tim mutters “Cultiest cult name.”

“Yes, it’s the last fragment of the Roman army remaining.” Frank decides to reply to Red Hood. He holds up the inside of his forearm to show them the SPQR tattoo. “It’s not a cult, we’re just dedicated to the safety of New Rome.” 

“I’m sorry, they tattoo you?” 

“It’s actually more like a brand.” Percy says, showing his off. “They burn it into your arm. Suuuper painful.”

“Who is allowing this? Who is running this army?” Batman is bringing full interrogation mode energy.

“Myself and Frank are praetor, at the moment.” Hazel says. The superheroes stare at her in confusion. Frank, 6’5 now and jacked as hell, is somewhat believable as a leader of an army. Hazel, a petite sixteen year old, is not. Jokes on them. Hazel is not only one of their most powerful demigods, she’s also a dangerously competent praetor.

“The army is comprised of and led by teenagers.” Batman says. He does not sound happy about this.

“What about the Greek demigods?” Beast Boy asks.

“We go to summer camp!” Leo says.

“I guess that’s better.” Flash says, a little cheered. “What do you do at the camp?”

“I mean, we also go to war.” Annabeth says. Flash immediately looks even more upset. “But the camp activities include your typical summer camp stuff: friendship bracelets, kayaking, lava wall, shroud decoration,”

“Shroud decoration?!”

“Y’know, for the campers that die.” Percy says. He’s actually really enjoying seeing the progressively more horrified faces of the superheroes. He’s never gotten to tell people this without the downer moment of and congrats, preteen, this is your life now too! “People decorate their shrouds for when their body is burned.”

“No I do not know.” Superman sounds aghast.

“Maybe we should start doing that.” Jason Todd mumbles under his breath, and Nightwing punches him in the arm in response. “Ow! Okay, message received.”

“I’m going to draw penises on yours,” Damian hisses with delight at Tim. “And insults against your inferior bloodline!”

“Bring it on, demon. Yours is going to be covered in advertisements for factory farming.” This earns Tim Robin ineffectually attempting to scratch his eyes out. 

“No shrouds!” Nightwing snaps at both of them, and they calm down. 

“It’s not all bad.” Percy offers. “We have a big fun campfire where we roast marshmallows when we burn the unneeded shrouds at the end of summer.”

“Last time Leo’s had rhinestones and they exploded and hit me in the eye.” Piper grumbled.

“Not my fault it was in need of some razzle dazzle.” Leo sniffs.

“Very sensible.” Starfire says.

“Where were the adults?” Arsenal asks. Batman is shifting like he wants to say the same thing. “Who was uh, supervising?”

“Well, Chiron’s a horse.” Percy taps his chin. Arsenal doesn’t seem to know how to react to that. “He kinda has that older, hands off parenting method. More, stick your twelve year old on a cross country bus with three hundred bucks and a sword and tell them good luck getting to LA.”

“Did you arrive safely on this bus?” Superman asks. It’s kinda precious how concerned he is for Percy’s twelve year old self.

“Oh no, the bus blew up like thirty minutes later. Wishful thinking attempting it in the first place. No one died in the end on that quest, although we did get stuck in a casino. And almost the afterlife.” Percy adds as an afterthought. “We have Mr D too, but he’s too much of an alcoholic to be great around children. Also I think he was secretly excited whenever one of us wouldn’t come back from a quest.”

“Is Mr. D who I think you’re talking about?” Garth mutters. “Ballsy calling him an alcoholic.”

“You didn’t have anyone else helping out?” Wonder Girl asks, wide eyed and innocent. Oof. Percy’s going to have to keep Thalia from jumping her.

“Demigods tend to die before we’re old enough to mentor anyone.” Annabeth says bluntly.

“Hey, we have surviving adult demigods in the double digits now! How’s that for improvement!” Percy attempts jazz hands. It doesn’t seem to be effective in reducing the heroes’ agitation.

“You guys are so concerning to talk to.” Flash says.

“We should stop grilling them, guys.” Garth says. “From what I’ve heard, this is typical demigod life.”

See, Percy likes this guy. Maybe he can finally find a surfing buddy in Garth.

“Tempest is right— we can pick their brains later. We should do introductions.” Nightwing takes charge again.

“I’m Percy.” He says. “Okay, next person.”

“Should you not share titles and feats, as is customary?” Garth says, with a little smirk. Percy takes it back, they are absolutely not going surfing together, he’s going to kill this guy.

Everyone turns to Percy first. “Hey! The only title that’s important to me is Annabeth’s boyfriend!”

Annabeth blushes and shoves him in the shoulder.

“I thought you meant Perseus Jackson, son of the sea god, vanquisher of the Titan Lord,” Leo begins, in the most dramatic voice he can muster. Percy can feel his face twisting up in revulsion.

“Defeater of the god Ares, member of the seven, Former Praetor of the legion, veteran of the second Gigantomachy.“ Piper continues when Leo runs out of breath, adding in some interpretive dance.

“Holder of the sky, Volcano-eruptor.” Nico says dryly.

“Killer of hydra, nemean lion, giants, cyclopses, witches, like a bajillion other things.” Leo waves his hand flippantly.

Annabeth steps forward and opens her mouth. Oh good, she’ll stop this, save him from this indignity.

“You forgot “Crasher of his own funeral” Annabeth says, the traitor. Dick looks incredibly concerned at that.

“Okay stop stop stop stop,” Percy says, covering his ears with his hands.

“But Perseus, we haven’t even done half of them yet,” Nico says with evil glee.

“I have so many questions about everything you just said.” Flash says, and the rest of the heroes all make agreeing noises. 

“Why don’t we just fight instead!” Percy yelps desperately. “That’ll be a better way to introduce ourselves, with violence!”

“It would be smart to get an idea of your capabilities…” Dick bounces on his heels a little, and nods with a grin. “Alright.”

“New camper rules.” Percy says to the demigods. “No maiming, no blood.”

Thalia looks disappointed at this.

“Count me out.” Nico grumbles. “I’m still tired from lugging all of you assholes around and I’m studiously ignoring all of the death fugitives in the room.”

Instantly, many of the heroes look on edge.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Red Hood snarls.

“Oh god, please don’t get him talking about his death, he’ll never shut up about it.” Red Robin groans into his palms.

“I’m the son of Hades. I can sense death. Summon the dead. I’ve never been in a room with so many people who have been resurrected and my own sister came back to life.”

“Dude you can’t just out people as previously dead! Problematic as hell!” Percy hisses. “They gotta be comfortable enough to tell you that!”

“Fine, fine.” Nico raises his hands in surrender. “I just forget it’s not obvious. Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell my father anything.”

The heroes seem a little more relaxed, which woof, first crisis avoided. Percy is about ready to ask Dick who should go first, when he’s cut off.

“Jackson, I challenge you to a sword duel.” A little voice comes from his elbow, and he looks over to see Robin glaring up at him.

Chapter Text

Well, Percy sure did bring backup. Dick had still been reeling from the assorted demigods spilling out of the warded floor, when the kid on the mechanical dragon had flown in. It was actually insane too, how many league members couldn’t see the magical aspects of the demigods until they pulled the “mist” down. He adds it to the incredibly long list of things he needs to ask Percy about. He's hoping that the answers don't involve shrouds, because he's about five seconds away from calling divine CPS. The demigods should not have to fight their way out of their teenage years. 

Speaking of which, Damian has just challenged Percy to a sword duel. This will certainly be interesting.

“Sounds good, kid.” Percy says, and immediately draws his bronze blade. He and Damian walk a little forward, until they’re out of the range of the clustered heroes. 

“Normally people are at least a little hesitant about fighting a thirteen year old.” Roy says, an inquisitive brow arched up at he stares at them. 

Percy shrugs. “He’s a year older than I was when I went on my first quest.” 

“You get how that doesn’t make anything better right.” Wally says. Dick has to agree with him. Listening to Percy speak, Dick is starting to understand a little of why his friends would stare at him in despair whenever he would talk about life in Gotham. 

“Old enough to get nationally framed for terrorism, old enough to hold a blade.” Percy jokes back. 

As soon as he turns back around, Robin attacks. Percy focuses instantly, losing some of that carefree persona and honing his attention to Damian’s movements. It seems to take him a moment to understand Damian’s style— obviously he hasn’t fought League-trained assassins, but he catches on frighteningly quick. Anyone else facing Damian with a blade would be fighting for their life— but Percy isn’t even breaking a sweat. He blocks two of Damian's blows, and seems to have a preternatural awareness of each swing. 

“More weight on your back foot.” Percy calls out. “You’re unbalanced.” 

Dick sees Tim in the corner of his eye absolutely gleeful at the concept of Damian being corrected. Dick knows Robin, however, will likely be incensed. Percy must be some kind of trainer or teacher, because the correction is accurate and perfectly stated. Damian grunts, baring his teeth at Percy, and luges forward, slashing outward. Percy has to give up an inch in order to block it, and he grins back at Robin.

“Good! Like that!” He says. This praise seems to make Damian even more annoyed, and the kid just growls in response. 

Percy is letting the fight drag out— though Damian hasn’t made mistakes a swordsman less skilled than Percy could exploit, there’s lots of places where Percy could end it. Dick is entranced watching them fight, and he gets the sense that Percy is majorly holding back. However, when it’s been another two minutes or so and Damian has yet to make a single hit on Percy, the kid’s face screws up further in rage. Robin charges forward, slightly sloppier than his other attempts, and it’s enough for Percy to seize the opening and disarm him. 

“You got over confident.” Percy says, not yet winded. He walks over, already in counselor mode, moving a suddenly pliant Damian’s arm a little higher. Dick can read shock in Robin’s face. Man, Damian is going to be so upset. “Don’t leave yourself open when you go for the attack. Use the length of your blade—“

“Holy shit!” Wonder Girl says. 

Percy looks over for the first time, and, while his friends are unconcerned enough to be passing around cans of soda the emo kid apparently brought with him, the superheroes are gaping at him in shock.

“I’ve never seen anyone but an assassin related to him beat the gremlin.” Tim says, very excited by this.

“He has multiple assassins related to him? That's awesome."  

Percy turns back to Damian, who looks like he wants to strangle Tim with his bare hands.

“We will go again, Jackson.” Robin says imperiously, leveling the blade at Percy’s chest. 

Yeah, really time for him to step in. In the grand scheme of things, they're not that far from Damian's killing people era. 

“OOookay.” Dick has to bear hug Damian in order to physically extract him from the area. “That’s enough of that. Maybe after the alien invasion.” 

“You must not fall in battle, Jackson, or I will be incredibly cross.” Damian says, completely serious. “It would be cowardly of you to miss our fight. As you are enhanced, I will bury my blade in your flesh next time.” 

“Awwwww” Percy says, sounding like he can’t help but say it. “You’re so cute, like a little mini Clarisse.” 

Percy’s friends all snort. “Don’t tell her I said that!” 

“Also, I don’t know if I’m ‘enhanced’” Percy makes air quotes around the word. “But sure.” 

“A beam from a burning building hit you on the head and you were fine.” Tim's adding a few notes to his tablet. “You’re at least a little enhanced.” 

“Nightwing, mind if I go next?” Garth says next, looking at him for permission. Dick has rarely seen him so excited about someone. Dick gives him a thumbs up as he restrains a still struggling Damian. “I just wanted to ask him a few questions about his other powers.” 

“Uh, okay, I can grab some water?” Percy makes a little hand gesture. It takes a moment for Dick to realize he’s talking about ripping the water out of the wall via his powers. Which, while cool could be a massive issue.  

“Percy, if you break the pipes again, at least warn me first.” The girl with a feather in her hair calls out. 

“You can control water separated from you by metal?” Garth raised his eyebrows. “I’m one of Atlantis’s most adept mages, and I have far less control, especially with freshwater.” 

“But you can do magic! That’s so cool!” 

Garth shrugs, performs a simple spell, sending lights dancing over his head. “You likely could learn to use it. I know Lord Triton can.”

“Really?” 

Garth says something in Atlantean. Dick’s never, for the life of him, been able to grasp that language. Too many dolphin clicks. 

Percy says something else in the same language. and Annabeth looks surprised. Evidently she's never heard him use it. “I’d probably have to know how to speak Atlantean first.” Percy continues in English. 

“I just spoke Atlantean. So did you.” Garth tilts his head at Percy, who blinks at him. “Pretty sure you know the language. And yeah, I can teach you some spells. If you have that strong control over water, the other stuff is just a few lessons away.” 

“That would be so awesome, dude.” Percy grins, his enthusiasm contagious. “Can you speak to fish too? I can also, uh, tell you exactly how fast a boat is going in knots, but I’ve used that maybe twice.” 

“You’re really burying the lede here, bro.” The blond guy crosses his arms. “You blew up a volcano and fought gods.” 

“But look at my little spinning water trick!” Percy says. He concentrates, and appears to pull the moisture out of the air (holy shit), until a small ball coaleses in front of him. This is apparently not the trick, as he turns back to them with his palms held together as the water twists itself into miniature whirlpools between them, and a goofy smile on his face. All of his friends look incredibly unimpressed, and Dick has to admit that he’s seen Percy do much cooler things even within the last 24 hours. 

Tempest at least, seems mildly intrigued by the little shapes of water, but continues on. “Can’t do the boat thing. I can speak to fish, but they’re always assholes.” 

“Really?” Percy says, completely taken aback. “But fish are always so nice to me!” 

Garth raises his eyebrow at Percy. “Uh, yeah. Your dad is the god of the ocean. I think they’re basically contractually obligated to be nice to you.” 

Percy looks like the rug has been pulled out from underneath him. “You mean… they didn’t actually like me?” 

“Uh…” Garth says, shifting uncomfortably in the face of Percy’s genuine upset. 

“None of the fish were being genuine…” Percy’s lip wobbles just the tiniest fraction. “What about the dolphins!” 

“Oh man, dolphins are the worst.” Garth shakes his head. “Sorry Percy…”

“Nepo baby of the sea!!” The punk-looking teenager crows out. 

“Thalia, you’re literally a child of Zeus and a movie star,” The dragon boy says. Cassie picks her head up in interest. “Who got promoted within like a year at a job given to you by a family member. You’re princess nepo baby. Patron saint of nepotism.” 

“I’ll show you nepotism, Valdez,” She growls, as literal lightning begins to arch off of her leather jacket. 

"What does that threat even mean!" Dragon kid squeaks as he cringes back from her. 

“Okay, okay, let’s move on!” Dick says hurriedly. They haven’t gotten to see even a fraction of Percy’s power, but he gets a sense that Percy can take whatever these aliens throw at him. It’s the other demigods they need to learn about. “Thank you Percy.” 

“Yeah, whatever.” Percy still looks sad about the fake fish friends thing, but Annabeth holds his hand, so hopefully he’ll perk up. 

Everyone looks at Annabeth next for a demonstration. 

“I don’t need to see Annabeth do anything.” Dick says bluntly. He means it. 

“Agreed.” Red Hood and Red Robin say in unison. 

“Who is next for the skill assessment?” Damian, recovered from his battle, looks up from a clipboard he stole from Tim’s desk. 

“Wait wait wait,” Wally says incredulously. 

“Are you kidding me?” Roy adds. 

“You make all of us prove our strength constantly.” Raven says. 

“I brought over a guy I was dating and you made him do pushups til he threw up!”  Cassie says. 

“He didn’t meet our standard.” Tim huffs, obviously remembering the unfortunate guy in question. 

“No one meets your standard!” Beast Boy cries, pulling at his hair with his hands. 

Batman coughs. Everyone stops clamoring for attention. “She’s good.” He says after a moment of silence. 

“Batman, are you feeling alright?” Now, even Clark looks surprised by this endorsement. “Are you sure you don’t even want to use any of the tests? No assessments at all? Have you eaten enough today?”

"No need to check for mind control, Superman, Annabeth is the real deal." Dick says. 

“I’ve been fighting with a knife since I was seven.” Annabeth draws her blade before anyone else can express disbelief. 

“Finally! Someone else understands the importance of beginning training young.” Damian says. Dick can feel a tension headache starting in his temples. He's really been trying to introduce Damian to more people with less violent adolescent periods, and unfortunately it's looking like Percy & Co are somewhere in the League of Assassins tier of mayhem. 

“All of us are skilled fighters with multiple years of combat experience. Some of us just have additional powers on top of that.” The small girl with curly hair speaks up. 

“I’ll put it this way.” Punk girl— Thalia says. “When they brought together a group of the strongest demigods, Annabeth was chosen to lead them.” 

“What powers do you have?” Starfire floats a little closer, peering down at Annabeth, who unflinchingly meets her gaze. 

Annabeth smirks. “None.” 

“Bat. Energy.” Cassie whispers.

Chapter Text

“I can go next.” The tall 6’5 Asian guy with the slight baby face steps forward. He’s definitely a leader, but used to working with people he knows; he seems a little nervous in a room full of strangers. “Frank. Frank Zhang. I’m a son of Mars, and I can uh,”

He turns into an iguana and back. Wow, not what Dick was expecting at all. He can’t remember Ares or Mars having anything to do with iguanas. He’ll have to ask Jason, who had too many opinions on the greek pantheon even before they learned the gods were apparently real.

“AHHHHHH!” Gar shrieks in joy, turning into an identical, albeit entirely green iguana. “Man, this is going to be rad!”

Frank shyly smiles back at him.

“I was excited when I saw you shift. I’ve never met anyone with a similar ability to mine.” Frank shyly smiles at him. “Although I’m jealous you can still talk as an animal.”

“OO, ooo, how big can you go?” Beast Boy asks. Dick hasn’t seen Gar this excited since vegetarian buffet night at the Watchtower.

Frank jogs a little ways away and then screws up his face in concentration, before turning into a giant dragon.

“Oh now they have two dragons? No fair!” Wally pouts.

Beast Boy shifts into a capuchin monkey, and climbs the spines of Dragon-Frank’s back to sit on his head. Frank goes cross eyed, blowing smoke out of his nose as he looks up at the monkey. “Mythical animals are soooo hard dude.”

Frank turns back into a human, but catches Beast Boy and lets the green monkey scuttle up to his human head. Luckily, human Frank is almost as large as a dragon so there’s plenty of room for Beast Boy up there. “Sorry, trying to save energy for the fight later.”

Beast Boy just makes chittering sounds and smooths down Frank’s hair, so Dick figures Frank is forgiven.

“Nice bow, bro.” Roy says, nodding at Frank.

“Yours is super cool too!” Frank says, effusively genuine.

“Want to have a shoot off?”

“Sure, but you better ask Thalia. She’s better than me.”

Arsenal raises an eyebrow. “The more the merrier. I’m just excited to meet more archers I’m not legally related to.”

Tim presses a button, and half a dozen targets rise from the floor panels, with another few descending from the ceilings.

“Guests first.” Arsenal does a little mock bow, and gestures in the direction of the impromptu range.

Frank draws his bow, takes a deep breath in concentration, and then shoots three times into the floor dummies. Dick is unable to see how exact on the bullseye they hit, because there’s so much power behind his shot that the center of the target is pulverized. He’s completely unfazed by the green monkey still sitting on his head.

“I’m Thalia, a Hunter of Artemis and daughter of Zeus.” Cassie’s eyes widen at Thalia’s mention of her parentage. A silvery, otherworldly looking bow that again appears from nowhere, and Thalia notches an arrow. She hits two of the ceiling targets within instant, blue lightning energy surging off of them. Dick surmises this is connected to the electricity affinity she showed hint of earlier. Just to show off, doesn’t look for her last shot and yet still manages to hit the bullseye of a floor dummy.

Roy laughs with delight, and rapid fire takes out the targets the other two hadn’t. Annabeth whistles with appreciation at his immaculate technique.

“You guys are fantastic.” Roy says.

“I could say the same to you!” Frank clasps a friendly bear paw on Roy’s shoulder. “You’re better than most people I know, and they’re literally blessed by gods.”

“You’re good, for a human man.” Thalia crosses her arms over her chests and nods.

Roy considers her statement for a moment. “You know, that’s oddly refreshing. I’m too used to the violently capable women in my life being reduced to ‘for a girl’.”

“Coming from her that’s like, huge praise.” Frank says.

“Okay, extraordinary archery ability, lightning, iguanas,” Damian studiously writes down everything Dick is saying, which isn’t really nessiscary but it keeps him from stabbing any of their guests, so Dick figures it’s a positive. Dick turns to the pretty girl with brown hair. “What about you?”

“Piper.” She, like Thalia, doesn’t give a last name either. Piper stands tall and proud. Dick notices for the first time that there’s a knife on her belt. “I’m a daughter of Aphrodite, and my main ability is charmspeak.”

“And what is charmspeak?” Jason leans forward, suspicious.

Piper gives a little lopsided grin. “I can get people to do what I ask them to.”

All of the bats instantly take a little step back. Nope, nope, nope. Sounds like the latest flavor of mind control. And obviously their tech isn’t resistant to demigod magic if the emo boy was able to “shadow travel” into the building. Dick knows the rest of his siblings would rather go up against terrifying lightning powers than ‘charmspeak’.

“Sorry,” Dick apologizes, when Piper notices their hesitancy. “We just have a really bad history with brainwashing, coercion, etc.”

“I get it.” Piper says. “That’s one of the reasons I’m not planning to use it in this fight. I have my cornucopia instead.”

“What is this corn of copious?” Kori asks.

“It throws out pretty much whatever type of food you want.” Piper pulls out what looks to be an actual severed horn. Okay? Dick isn’t sure how this will be helpful, but he’d never say no to some in-fight catering. He wonders if Piper does parties.

“A food dispersal device will likely not be relevant in this case.” Bruce is still a little frosty after the mention of charmspeak, likely doing the contingency plan thing in his head. “Maybe you should—“

Piper narrows her eyes, and points her horn at Bruce. A spiral cut honey ham whizzes out with great force and strikes Batman in the Kevlar chest with a satisfying PLAP.

“Oof.” Batman says. This is the greatest moment in Dick’s life. He absolutely cannot wait to retrieve the security camera footage, the cowl footage, and maybe ask Wally to travel back in time to film it. He needs capture this wonderful occurrence from multiple angles.

“Anybody else want a demonstration?” Piper turns back to the other heroes.

“Oh please, my father and likely the aliens too, are far stronger than some stupid horn—“ Damian starts, and is cut off as he’s knocked completely over by a flood of bananas.

There’s a moment of silence, and heroes start to giggle.

“Any other questions?” Piper asks, placing one hand on her hip. Damian’s head pops out of the banana pile and shakes his head.

“Hey wait a minute, aren’t you that one actor’s—“ Tim starts to say.

“Keep at it and it’s another ham to the face.”

Tim, wisely, shuts up.

“Can I have some chips?” Beast Boy says. A bag of Cheetos beans him in the forehead, from where he’s still perched on Franks head. He rips into them before Dick can again give him the “don’t accept food from mystery sources” lecture again. Dick is privileged to the sight of a green monkey absolutely going to town on a family-size amount of Flaming Hot Cheetos™.

“Wait, where’s Leo?” Piper narrows her eyes in suspicion. “Usually he’d also be demanding snacks.”

“Uh.” Wonder girl says, staring a corner of the room, where the dragon kid is kneeling, elbow deep in a power panel.

“Leo!” Annabeth sounds exasperated but not surprised by this development.

Leo pops his head out of the power panel. He somehow has engine grease on his nose, even though none of the components in the wall use grease. But also, he shouldn’t have been able to access the circuitry, so there’s a lot of unbelievable things about this picture. “Hi! I’m one of the only demigods technology doesn’t combust around!”

Tim’s tablet beeps, and he mutters as he stares at it. “Huh. He fixed the microphasing issue I was going to get to this week.”

Batman raises an eyebrow.

“For the last time, stop disassembling things in other people’s houses!” Annabeth says.

Leo dramatically sighs and, after percussive maintenancing the paneling back in place (read: hitting it hard with his shoulder), makes his way back over to the group of demigods. Dick would be ready to let it go, but Annabeth evidentially is not.

“Ahem.” She says, holding her hand out. Leo sighs again and drops an impressive amount of components from the wall into it, before attempting to slink away again. She raises her eye and taps her foot. “Leo.”

“That’s all of jt!”

“No, it’s not.” She says, and sure enough, Leo places one last chip into her palm. “Thank you.”

“Whatever. Bet they wouldn’t even noticed it was missing, you shoulda seen their dampeners.” Leo said moodily, toeing a seam in the floor. “Hi, assorted heroes. I’m the tech guy. Oh, and I guess I can do this.”

And with no warning, because apparently these demigods fucking love messing with Dick’s blood pressure, Leo spontaneously combusts.

“I’m fine! I’m chill, see?” Leo says as soon as the alarm crosses the heroes’ faces, waving his unsinged arms.

“You know,” Tim says. “Uh, after the fight, if you wanted to, you could come work with some of our tech.”

“Really!” Leo suddenly looks hyper with excitement again.

Dick looks expectantly over at scary emo boy, the “shadow travel” guy.

“I’m Nico, son of Hades.” Scary emo boy gives a casual wave.

“That guy gives me the heebie jeebies.” Jason mutters to Dick.

“You guys have any dead relatives you want me to try to summon?” Nico plays with the pommel of his wicked looking black sword.  “Deceased loved ones?”

Dick feels a shiver go up his spine when he looks at the sword, or maybe from Nico’s offer.

“Nico, again, you can’t ask these guys that.” Percy puts his hands on his hips like an exasperated swim coach. “People get very sensitive about zombifying grandma, or their fridged high school girlfriend. They’re heroes. They all have tragically lost people. It’s like a requirement.”

“Can you do dead enemies we want to annoy?” Raven asks, sounding genuinely curious.

“Depends, is there a McDonald’s nearby?” Nico plays with one of his skull rings. Well, as a Bat and former performer, Dick does have to appreciate a commitment to aesthetic.

“Batburger is better.” Jason says on reflex. “Wait, what the fuck does McDonalds have to do with it?”

“Not better for ghost summoning.” Nico shakes his head.

“Yeah. I think Robin nuggets and a joker shake might very well summon the AntiChrist.” Percy agrees. “Too powerful to fuck around with.”

All of the heroes look even more like they want to ask a million questions.

“Guys if we try to pick apart every insane thing they say we’ll be here forever.” Dick pinches his nose. He feels like he’s going crazy. He suddenly has a new appreciation for what people must feel when he tells them about Gotham. “Let’s move on. Hazel.”

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea for me to fight in here.” Hazel says. “I probably won’t be using magic against the aliens. I have some of the same death abilities as Nico, just not as strong. I’m more attuned to gems and metals.” She touches the ground, and a ruby big enough to be insane to even Bruce Wayne melts out of the floor.

“Who are these people?!” Roy exclaims again. “Stop having world-breaking powers!”

“Holy devaluation of currency, Batman,” Dick whispers under his breath.

“And she’s strong, magically speaking.” Raven floats a little closer to add. “Her illusions don’t have the substance mine do, but they’re very detailed.”

“Raven, you knew about demigods before this?” Dick says. “How?”

“Yes. It was never relevant.” She says, utterly dry. Dick would really like to argue with that. “Hazel is favored by the goddess Hecate, so I knew of her existence.”

Hazel blushes under the heroes’ stares. She’s obviously not comfortable with the attention, but moves ahead anyway. “Um, I also sword fight, but I’m more of a calvary fighter.”

“You have a horse?” Cassie asks, clutching her lasso in excitement.

“Oh god, please don’t bring him up here Hazel.” Percy jumps in, groaning. “He’s so rude every time he has to take the stairs.”

“It’s rough on his hooves.” Hazel sniffs. “It’s perfectly reasonable for him to be a little upset.”

“Hazel you don’t have to hear the things he says. I feel like I have to go to confessional afterwards.” Percy pleads. “That horse is so profane it makes me want to switch religions.”

“You can speak with horses?” Damian asks, before he’s reminded of Dick’s no off topic questions rule by an elbow to his side from Jason.

“That works Hazel, we’ll factor that into the plans.” Red Robin says, eye twitching like he has a million and one ideas for Hazel’s powers.

Dick looks to the last demigod. Blond, with a small scar on his lip. No visible weaponry, but Dick’s at the point where he’s assuming that demigods could produce a machete out of a mini purse. He was the one that silenced the wind earlier, a power Dick suspects has far more applications than noise cancelling.

“I’m Jason Grace. Former praetor and the son of Jupiter.” Grace says. Dick remembers enough from his Jason’s mythology rants that Jupiter is the Roman form of Zeus.

Grace pulls out a golden coin, flips it into the air. In the blink of an eye, it transforms into a golden spear.

Dick wished he had magic pocket dimension eskrima. Would really have made kidnappings numbers 12-57  much easier.

“Can you fly?” Cassie asks, hovering about four feet above the ground.

“Yes, but not like that.” Grace smiles a little. “Probably shouldn’t do this indoors, but—“

Dick’s ears pop as the air pressure suddenly changes. Wind starts to whip around the room, everyone’s capes blown to the side. There’s static electricity raising the hair on Dick’s arms, and he feels a little short of breath. The currents of wind curl around Grace and lift him into the air.

By most metrics, Cassie’s easy, instantaneous flight is more powerful than Jason Grace’s ability. But standing in front of the demigod, it sure as hell doesn’t feel like that. Dick gets that swooping sensation in his stomach he’s only gotten from seeing Percy in action.

Grace makes a movement, and the miniature tornado dissipates, depositing him gently on the ground with only a few metal sheets as casualties.

“You were trained by Diana?” Jason Grace asks, giving Wonder Girl an evaluative look.

“Yes! She said I’m a demigod too.” Cassie’s enthusiasm is not matched by several of the demigods. Thalia looks annoyed, and Piper squeezes her arm, perhaps in an effort to keep her from glaring. “I got my powers after praying to Zeus.”

“He never yknow, showed up or anything, but I did get my powers after that. Super strength,” She picks up one of the displaced metal sheets and bends it to illustrate. “Durability, enhanced speed.”

“Some of us do seem to have slightly above human capacity in terms of strength and durability. We certainly have better than human reflexes.” Nico squints at Cassie. “But we can’t just bend metal bars with our hands alone.”

“Yeah that’s not really how things work. Diana’s powers come from the fact that she’s an Amazon. I don’t know what your deal is.” Annabeth says.

“I don’t know my heritage, but Diana thinks I might be a child of Zeus.” Cassie glances shyly at both Thalia and Jason.

“There’s no way you’re a child of Zeus.” Percy speaks this time, utterly resolute.

“And how would you know that?” Cassie frowns.

“Because I’d be dead.” Percy shrugs. “He would have smited me like he wanted to if he had another Greek kid waiting in the wings.”

“It’s smote, darling, we already went over this.” Annabeth says, fixing some of his fringe, entirely unconcerned by the threat of her boyfriend’s death.

What?

“What?” Cassie’s eyes are wide.

“I guess the past tense of smite is smote.” Percy says. When Cassie still looks shocked, he changes gears. “Oh, yeah. There was a prophecy.  Half blood of the eldest gods, yada yada. Point is, after World War Two, He swore an oath with Poseidon and Hades not to have any more kids, and we sure as hell heard about it when he did.”

Swore an oath, but there’s four others in the room alone who are children of those Gods, or their roman versions. Dick clings to every hint of information, but nothing these demigods say makes any sense.

“I don’t understand.”

“He would have killed me before I turned sixteen so I couldn’t be the child of the prophecy if he knew he had another Greek kid.” Percy says, utterly blunt like he has no opinion on the issue. “I’m alive, ergo, you can’t be a child of Zeus.”

Dick can feel Bruce’s discontent with Percy’s laise faire approach to his mortality and apparent possible murder by a deity from several feet away. Clark is openly frowning.

“But then… who is my dad? Where did I—“ Cassie looks lost, a little diminished, and Thalia looks slightly guilty.

“Cheer up.” Nico says. “Most demigods didn’t know who their parents were until a few years ago, when Percy forced them into metaphysical child support.”

Dick wonders how Percy got the Gods to do something like that. Actually, he wonders how any of these kids bat-shit (ha!) stories happened. 

“Kinda concerned that a god is going to kill you now, man.” Red Hood says.

Percy laughs. “So many have tried. I’m still kickin’. And they need me to fight their next battle for them.”

“Percy,” Roy says, like he’s been holding it in a while. “Are you from Gotham?”

“You think I’m from fuckin’ New Jersey?” Percy looks incredibly offended. Dick is a little offended by how much spite he manages to pack into two words, but he gets that his home state is an acquired taste. “Hell no man, New York born and raised.”

“No no, they don’t have Gotham energy.” Raven says. “Like Wonder Girl said, they have Bat energy.”

Agreeing noises from the gathered heroes. Dick opens his mouth to argue, and then closes it again.

“Hell, maybe the Bats are demigods. Would make a lot of stuff make sense.” Wally taps his chin.

“I don’t think they’re first generation. They woulda been shish kebabed by a monster by now. I actually don’t think they’re legacies either, but that is a possibility. I mean, Dick was somehow completely clearsighted from the start, and it seems like the other bats were making their way there.”

“Have you seen other monsters before?” Raven asks, staring directly at Dick.

Now that he thinks about it… “I mean I guess there’s been a couple of times where I thought I saw something. But I thought it was just because I’ve been drinking Gotham tap water since I was eight and we have contaminates the CDC hasn’t even heard of.”

“See!” Beast Boy says. “That’s fighting-gods crazy shit right there!”

“If I had to diagnose them with a legacy.” Percy gets that same energy people do when they talk about hororscopes. “I’d say Red Hood is Ares or Nemesis, Red Robin is Athena.” Annabeth nods in agreement and Tim looks pleased.

“Nightwing would be…” He hums in consideration. “Apollo.”

“More like Aphrodite.” Annabeth mutters. Piper makes a considering sound.

“Hey!” Percy feigns offense for a second, for some reason, and then laughs, nodding in agreement. “Okay, true though.”

“Apollo? Isn’t he the god of archery?” Roy gleefully comments. “But Nightwing sucks at archery.”

Dick groans, placing his head in his hands. “Don’t remind me.”

“Last time I made him shoot my bow, He could only hit the bullseye, like half of the time!”

“Keep talking and I will bring up that 2017 Boat Incident, Arsenal.” Dick growls at Roy, who promptly mimes zipping his lips.

“That’s still… really good for most people.” Nico says. “My boyfriend is a child of Apollo, and he’s not a great archer. Apollo’s primarily the god of the sun, but he also covers arts, athletics, light, knowledge.”

“What about Nike?” Frank suggests. “Goddess of victory?”

The spiky haired girl gives him a stare that literally makes the hairs on his arms stand up, but he’s pretty sure that’s from the constant static electricity she’s outputting.

“Nightwing’s taken too many L’s for that,” Jason snickers. “No one with the Discowing suit can be called a winner.”

“He has not!” Tim and Damian both say at once, and then look annoyed that they agreed with each other.

“Let’s focus, people!” Dick interjects, because they have an invasion coming up, and totally not to avoid people insulting Discowing for the ten thousandth time.