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Bruce knew this was going to be a migraine day. He woke up from way too little sleep; because he was up all night going over the papers for the Lex Luthor deal, after he got done fighting in a four hour long alien invasion battle. Now today he had to go undercover for one of his long-term aliases. No rest for the weary.
He rolled out of bed, did some stretches trying to get some range of motion back into his arm. whatever that alien used to hit him with yesterday was brutal. Then he took a shower, put on makeup trying to hide all the bruises on his face and neck, when Peter walked in ready to whisk him off for a full day as a Criminal Informant for the FBI. Great no time for coffee, this was going to be a fabulous day.
After a few hours of mind numbing paperwork Bruce and the rest of Peter’s trusted crew were called into a conference room. Bruce was instantly on alert, things were off. For some reason they were taken to one of the conference rooms without the glass walls which was abnormal for the team. Secondly, they were met by Director Hughes, who was almost never involved in their briefings unless it was something highly classified or important or both. Bruce was just beginning to wonder what was going on when Hughes decided to let them in on the secret.
“Today, we are going to be working with a member of the Justice League, your team is working on the same case and they want to collaborate instead of take over. We have been instructed to give our full and enthusiastic cooperation.”
“Since when does the JLA collaborate with the Agency?” Jones asked. “When I was in the Navy they just took over things completely, we had to turn everything over to Aquaman and Aqualad when we ran across something that escalated to JLA status.”
“The President himself said we are to give our full cooperation on this, no one knows why they have decided to keep us in the loop this time but we are hoping that this will open the doors to further collaboration with them if we do this right.” Hughes took a breath as if debating what he was going to say next.
Stealing himself he obviously decided to go ahead with the warning. He turned to face Bruce directly.
“Neal, I haven’t always agreed with Peter’s idea to bring you in on his team. But you have proven yourself over the last few months, that being said I will throw you back in prison myself if you screw this up. The Justice League is not something you want to mess with Caffrey and I hope for your own sake you can keep your silly games out of the office until this is resolved.”
“Yes sir, Director Hughes Sir.” Bruce snapped off a mocking salute and gave his most charming devil may care smile to irritate the man. Being Neal Caffrey was exhausting at least being around Dick and Jason gave him plenty of material to mimic.
He was trying to think if anyone had mentioned working another case that would have overlapped with the FBI, much less the White Collar division of the FBI. There weren’t too many of the leaguers that actually investigated things. Not to disparage his colleagues but they weren’t really known for their detective skills: Wonder Woman just used her lasso, Superman tended to use Clark for any information or his super eyes and ears, the less said about how the Lanterns 'detected’ things the better, and Cyborg was always more for a distant hacking job than an in person kind of sleuthing. So the last thing he expected was to be confronted by the sudden appearance of ‘The Bat of Gotham.’
“Holy shit, the door didn’t even open.” Diana let out a muffled oath startled by the seemingly impossible presence of Batman in the room.
“Agents Berrigan, Jones, Burke, Director Hughes, Mr. Caffrey.” Batman intoned in a harsh gravelly voice nodding at each of them in turn.
This was not Batman, aside from the fact that Bruce was sitting right there. His figure was a little too trim and a bit shorter, the dark colors on the suit were a bit different, the black had a touch of blue undertone that the real suit didn't, the Kevlar looked more flexible than the type that Bruce himself favored. All in all it painted a clear picture that this was an imposter, albeit one with a good budget and a pretty good idea of what the suit really looked like it was still not Batman.
The False Batman stood imposingly in front of the Team. The picture of perfect intimidation and power at least until he opened his mouth again.
“I need any information that you have on The Red Hood and his Hoodlums.”
Bruce could hear the slight smirk in his eldest’s voice even through the slight modulator built into the suit. His irritation increased with every pulse of pain he got as his migraine increased.
“We don’t have anything recent on the Hood, he has stayed out of New York for the last few years.” Agent Burke attempted to figure out how the Hood would be connected to any of their recent cases. Jones started to scramble with his laptop pulling up files and getting ready to copy them to a flash drive for the vigilante.
“Hmm, If you can’t help me with Red Hood,” Batman’s growl grew harsher, “Maybe, you can give me any information you have on Renegade.”
Again the modulator barely hid the laughter that Dick was hardly suppressing. His eldest was a menace and a troll and also made his blood pressure skyrocket all the time especially now with whatever he was trying to pull now.
“I didn’t think that Renegade had been active in years.” Diana mumbled as she started sorting out more files on her laptop.
Dick prowled around the table seemingly menacing the hapless White Collar unit who were trying to find the files he was requesting.
“I’m also going to need everything you have on the assassins known as ‘the one who sees all’ and ‘Ibn al Xu'ffasch or ابن الخفّاش’” the vigilante said sending Peter and Hughes into a flurry of motion to see if they had any files whatsoever on the two mentioned assassins.
Dick’s chortle of laughter came out as a terrifying growl which made the pain in Bruce’s temples pound even more. Bruce had not had enough sleep for this.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Bruce sighed, pinching his nose.
All of the white collar unit froze, they couldn’t believe their CI had just talked like that to BATMAN.
“NEAL.” Hughes hissed a warning at the tired father.
“Even if you are too lazy to hack the FBI databases you could have gotten O or Red Robin to do it for you. Why are you wasting everybody's time trying to get useless information you don’t need and can get in less than ten minutes back in the cave?”
Dick threw his arms up in triumph and grinned, Timmy and Jason were going to owe him- less than fifteen minutes and he got Bruce to break character by his sheer annoyance factor.
“Thirteen and a half minutes, ha, I knew I could do it.”
The FBI agents paled. Something was very wrong. All the accounts of Batman said scary, grim, and taciturn; none of the rumors and sightings lent any credence to this show of glee coming from the Batman before them.
He was too tired to deal with his son’s antics today.
“Dick, what are you doing here?” he tried again.
“Agent A said your mission is done and that you got hurt pretty bad last night so I just came to check on you B.” Dick hopped up and sat on the table next to him.
“So instead of waiting for me to cut my anklet and run at the end of the week and preserve the ‘Neal Caffrey’ cover you decided to come harass me at the FBI instead.”
Dick kicked his feet a little just like he always did when he wanted to look especially cute and innocent, it somehow still worked on the twenty-six year old almost as well as it had when he was twelve.
“Weeeell, RH said that there was no way I could get you to break cover in less than half an hour and RR said it would take twenty mins, Spoils bet twenty five, Batgirl and Robin didn’t want to place any official bets, but the little brat was all like ‘I have faith that your ability to annoy father will prevail’ and Agent A’s only requirement was that I didn’t claim anyone was injured or dead.” Dick talked so fast it was like he was channeling his speedster boyfriend. “So, of course I had to prove them wrong.”
“Are you alright?” he said slowly, looking over at Bruce in concern.
“Tired, I didn’t get any sleep after handling the Irraxians yesterday, and I have a migraine and a sprained shoulder but I will be fine.”
“Come home B, please. I’m not good at being in charge of all the bats.” Dick got really quiet and still the way he only got when he was really stressed. “I need the real Batman back.”
“Alright chum, I can come home.” Bruce's voice softened as he took in how tired and stressed his eldest was.
“Oh thank god,” Dick said.
“Wait, Wait just a minute. Are you not Batman?” Hughes pointed at Dick.
“Hell no, BATMAN is my dad.”
“Come on Chum, let's get out of here.” Bruce stood up and threw his uninjured arm around his eldest in a half hug.
The strangled noise of a dying cow came from Peter as he came to the unwelcome realization that Neal Caffrey was Batman.