Bat Situation part 2
Oh hi y'all..I'm reposting this on a sideblog because I don't want to spam my followers.
For some reason, the second part I posted didn't get nearly as much response as the first one.
While that could be because people didn't like it, I think maybe it didn't show up in the tags due to a Lonk.
Thank you so much for your enthusiastic support of my first part. (:
Anyway.
Have some bat shenanigans.
Have an obligatory bat pic, as a reminder of what Danny looks like right now.
Bruce Wayne, billionaire and vigilante, was having an excellent morning, as far as mornings went.
His patrols last night had been uneventful -everyone was staying locked up in Arkham, and he only had to scare off a few muggers.
Alfred prepared a large breakfast spread (one he'd actually indulge in instead of a smoothie), and miracle of all miracles, most of his children were present and, most importantly, NOT arguing about the latest topic.
He could almost pinch himself.
Of course, as soon as he thought about how pleasant his day was starting, Damian burst in, Bartok cradled gently in his hands, and declared, without a single thought to how much chaos he would cause,
"Father, I believe Bartok is a meta."
Bartok, once calm, screeched and chittered in panic, launching himself off of Damian's hands.
The way bats fly is very interesting. You see, instead of taking off from the ground like birds, bats have to drop from a certain height to gain the amount of lift necessary to fly.
This drop is generally around two to three feet, which, incidentally, is just beyond the vertical distance from Damian's hands to Bruce's pancakes.
Instead of swooping dramatically to freedom, Bartok landed face first in the aforementioned pancakes.
One thing that many people didn't know was that Bruce Wayne, billionaire and vigilante by the name of Batman, was scared of bats.
He pushed back from the table and jumped to his feet with a strangled shout, heart racing from the sudden scare.
Tim choked on his coffee, Duke patting him on the back to dislodge any liquid in his lungs.
Jason- who hadn't even planned on coming, as he told everyone - was curled over,one hand braced on Dick's shoulder, laughing so hard his face turned red.
Dick wasn't fairing much better, head down on the table, shoulders shaking.
He was thankful neither Stephanie nor Cassandra were present, but he was sure the Batchat™️ would catch them up to his embarrassing moment faster than he could beg for mercy.
He sighed and rubbed his temples, looking at Damian.
Damian was staring in something approaching horror at the bat, who was chomping on the spread of pancakes, bacons and eggs ravenously.
Alfred cleared his throat.
"..Perhaps we should return to the Batcave."
Damian nodded, scooped up Bartok- only wincing slightly at the sticky syrup covering his fur-, and led the charge, the rest of the family following after.
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In his defense, mealworms were kinda gross.
They probably weren't gross to the bat, who'd been eating bugs all his life, but to Danny, Ghost King and College Student, they ranked only slightly above the ecto contaminated hotdogs in his family's fridge.
His only meal for a week was mealworms, and while they were the highest quality Damian could find, the highest quality mealworm was still a mealworm.
While he hadn't intended on landing on the pancakes, as a starving college student with a ghost king enhanced appetite, who was he to turn down such a fortuitous turn of events?
It was totally worth it, he thought dreamily, licking little bits of bacon from tiny, sharp teeth.
He barely protested as hands gently scooped him up from the pancake pile. His enhanced metabolism would protect Bartok from the impromptu pancake feast, and truth be told, he hadn't felt so full in ages.
With a content yawn, he drifted off into sleep.
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Damian was not panicking.
Panicking was below him.
No, he was simply… walking with greater efficiency than usual towards the Batcave.
Sure, Bartok seemed fine- and was probably a meta- but even meta bats are insectivorous! Probably. This was an unknown situation with way too many variables.
He took a deep breath and walked towards the sink.
After he placed the sleeping (not dead, he checked) bat on a small towel, he ran some water, got a soft microfiber cloth, and began gently scrubbing Bartok as his family discussed the bat in the background.
"The rule is no metahumans in Gotham, he's a bat. It doesn't count." Drake started, a laugh still audible in his voice.
"I don't have a problem with metahumans, I just-" Father returned, exasperated, when Todd interrupted with a snarky,
"Yeah, Bruce is a control freak, not a bigot, get it right."
Damian's shoulders tensed, and he ached to jump to his father's defense, but he had a bat to clean. He gently stretched his wing and rubbed it with a wet cotton swab as the conversation continued.
"- can't just let him free, how will we guarantee his safety? We can't relocate him either, this is his colony. " One wing done. He patted it dry and stretched the other out.
"I vote we keep him. He's obviously got some form of advanced intelligence."
Bartok was nice and clean now. He still smelled faintly of maple syrup, but all stickiness had been washed away. Now he was drying in a freshly warmed towel.
"That's another thing. What if he's a human turned into a bat?"
Damian paused. Father had a good point.
"You think someone turned either themselves or someone else into a bat, ostensibly to infiltrate the Batcave, just to throw it all away in the face of pancakes?" Thomas's rejoinder made quite a lot of sense, and he relaxed. There's no way this bat was secretly a human.
"In his defense, Alfred does make the best pancakes." Drake joked.
Damian turned around, bat safely tucked away inside a soft carrier, and walked to his father's side.
"We need to evaluate his power set if he's going to remain with us. " Father said, placing one hand on Damian's shoulder.
"So far we have possible human intelligence, advanced healing… have you noticed anything else, Damian?"
Damian thought for a minute. " I have not. He has mostly been in a carrier, healing. "
"We'll have to test him, then."
"We have to figure out a method of communication first. He may be sentient, we can't just test him without consent." Interjected Thomas.
Damian nodded in agreement. "Perhaps when he wakes up we can assess him."
-----
Enough was enough.
Danny woke up gradually, and decided today was the day to leave. The family had been nice, but he quite frankly didn't want to be someone's pet.
Break would be over soon, after all, and he needed to let someone know that he hadn't been kidnapped.
He tried to unpossess the bat.
It didn't work. That wasn't too surprising, considering how hard overshadowing was. He was still getting the hang of it, especially with his recent boost in power.
He tried again. He could feel something shifting, but he snapped right back into the bat's body.
It's ok. Third time's the charm. He tried again- thought intensely about how he was, in fact, not actually a bat, how his ectoplasm was normally shaped, how having opposable thumbs felt, the college dorm he lived in-
But…nothing happened.
He was beginning to panic a little bit.
He tried again, and again, and again- sometimes going intangible, sometimes invisible, once accidentally cloning his bat form, even shooting the tiniest blast of ectoplasm out of his mouth.
No matter what he did, he was stuck in the bat.
It no longer felt like a vacation. The walls of the carrier seemed to close in on him and he panicked, turning intangible and falling straight through the table, landing on the concrete below with a soft thump. He screeched in frustration, hopping along the floor until warm hands scooped him up, lifting him to eye level.
Instinctively, he bit, and whoever was holding him cursed, dropping him.
He spread his wings and flew away, dodging hands and capes trying to catch him with an instinctive fluidity.
He had to find Jazz, his parents, somebody-anybody- that could help him.
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