Bruce is horribly immune to most pranks… but Steph has a plan to mess with him.
Steph blames Dick for Bruce’s nonchalance. Mr. “Climbs a chandelier and breaks it” ended up breaking a lot of Bruce’s sanity as well.
Bruce barely reacts when she puts salt in the coffee instead of sugar. She gave him ghost peppers at the last Gala, and he gave his Brucie Wayne performance around the sensation of his mouth on fire. She dyed all his shirts purple, he convinced business investors it was a new fashion trend.
She needs to prank Bruce, absolutely befuddle him in a way that makes him question reality. She’s even prepared to use the other family members to do this.
She manages to get the other bats (and even Alfred!) to agree on this prank.
Steph has a plan. She has a new friend from school, Danny, who Bruce doesn’t know about yet.
She’s going to Gaslight Bruce Wayne into believing he has an extra child.
This is a good plan.
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Danny’s Wayne adoption bait. The guy that owns the bodega knows it. Everyone and their mothers knows it. Danny, on the other hand, had no clue. To be fair, he had just crash landed in this dimension a week ago and his back was still sore from the weird design the car had.
(It’s only three weeks of homelessness later does Danny realize that he crash landed on the Batmobile. Whoops. Oh well. He’ll blame it on Clockwork if the vigilante asks after repair costs.)
(Bruce, on the other hand, is scouring the streets for this kid the car cams caught- oddly static filled footage- because his mind jumped to the worst case scenarios: a suicidal meta or a meta being threatened or a meta in a trafficking scheme or even worse all three at once and Bruce just can’t because there is a child in danger, he doesn’t have time to sleep.)
Danny rubbed at his back, eyes going watery at the memory. Sure, his wounds have healed over by now but the- heh- phantom pain is no joke. He shuddered, huddling closer to his threadbare hoodie. His only saving grace from getting jumped while walking the streets of Gotham at night is his invisibility and intangibility. Also, he’s floating, so “walking” doesn’t apply to him.
He’s gotta check on the kid he saved yesterday from a mugging, so Danny hurried along to the depilated apartment complex the kid was squatting in. Turning visible and tangible as he turns the corner, Danny glanced around for Amy.
“Danny!”
“Hey, kiddo. Doing alright?”
“Yeah! Come meet my gang!”
Danny felt his eyebrows rise to form Jazz’s exasperated look. Ouch. Waving the pain of losing Jazz away, Danny smiled at the excited girl.
“A gang? I wasn’t aware I was being brought to your almighty group.”
“Yeah! Uh, you actually helped a bunch of us so…”
Danny thought back to all those times he punted crooks away from robbing kids and shrugged. Yeah, what Amy said was likely.
“Kay, kiddo.”
She scowled, and Danny didn’t have the heart to tell her it looked more like a pout.
“You’re just a teenager.”
“Well, you’re a just a kid.”
Danny cackled as she chased him down the street, trying to kick his shins.
Life is good, even if he’s homeless and hungry.
——
“Jason.”
“Old man.” Jason mocks back, pausing his tasks. He waits as Bruce struggles to put his thoughts and feelings into words.
“There’s… a meta.”
“In Gotham?” Jason tilts back, hands halfway to his guns as a silent offer. Bruce shakes his head.
“A child. In Crime Alley.”
“In my turf?” Jason’s disquieting demeanor quickly swapped to a protective one.
“Trafficking, I think. Male, black hair…”
“Shit. Get Dickwing back here, he’s good with traumatized kids. I’ll go look for him.” Jason’s already moving, mind filtering through the kids he knows might have information to offer.
Bruce nods, shoulders relaxing. Jason smacks down the lump in his throat at the subtle sing of trust. “I’ll get Oracle and Red Robin on it.”
Jason morphs from Jay to Red Hood in one smooth step, helmet firmly placed on his head. He grunts in agreement, slinging his legs over his motorcycle. He roars off, mind half filled with tearing apart whatever traffickers dared to shit near his territory and the other half filled with worry for this possible kid.
——
Danny, as the Bats become aware of his existence, hands Amy and her kiddie gang a bag of fancy beef jerky.
“Try these with peanut butter, it’s kind of good.”
Amy stares at him, the judgement of an eight year old more piercing than anything he’s ever experienced.
“You’re fucking weird-”
“Language!” He squawks.
“-but sure, whatever you say, boss.”
“Boss?!”
The kids ignores his alarmed face.
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Thinking about the 141 attending a formal military event—some high ranking officer getting a medal or retiring or some such; Johnny isn’t paying much attention—but their attendance is required (normally when shit like this happens, the 141 either is already out of the country on assignment or can quickly arrange to be).
Unfortunately, formal attendance means that regulations suddenly matter a bit more: dress uniforms, hair cuts, the whole nine yards. For Gaz, none of it is an issue; his default state is well within regs. For Ghost it just means taking his mask off, which he submits to with little fuss or fanfare. He doesn’t even really need to shave or cut his hair because he keeps both pretty short under his mask anyway. Price refuses to cut his sideburns or moustache and somehow gets away with it because… he’s Price and even the higher-ups who care about that kind of thing are willing to make an exception for Price.
Soap, though… Soap has to shave. He might be the youngest candidate to pass SAS selection, but that’s not enough to make the brass turn a blind eye to his carefully curated hairstyle and stubble, both horrendously out of regulation. His mohawk gets cut short, not short enough to stop being a mohawk altogether, but short enough to pass it off as a less conspicuous styling. His face, though, gets shaved completely clean. He complains about it the entire time, even though he’s alone in his bathroom, ranting to his own reflection in the mirror, and the moment he steps out, Ghost and Gaz absolutely lose it laughing, having to hold on to each other for support.
They petition Price to change Johnny’s callsign to “Babyface” and maintain for months that Price was this close to agreeing (the only reason he refused is because he knew that it would get shortened to “Baby” and he didn’t want to give Ghost an official way to flirt with his boyfriend over comms)
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