Chapter Text
Third person:
Watchtower:
Everyone was keeping to themselves mostly. Tim was with Kon and Bart, they were trying to figure out who got the most aliens. Once they had it all counted up, they found out that Kon won. Tim says he doesn’t care, and so does Bart, but they defiantly do. They aren’t going to admit it though.
Damian was passing by and decided that he wanted in on the competition, he could if he wanted. That’s what Tim said, but he had to show his body cam footage because, to Tim, there’s no way he kept track of how many he took down.
“No I’m not showing my body cam footage,” Damian declared. “I don’t want your crusty fingers on my suit.”
“Says the one covered in alien goo.” Tim retorted. If he wouldn’t give the footage, he wouldn’t count.
“You’re just saying that because you can’t accept I got more than you.”
“Oh yeah, you think you’re so much better than me, square up then.” Tim challenge him to a fist fight, getting up to get started.
“Well I used my sword so the experiment wouldn’t be that same, you used a bow staff.”
“Yeah because I’m that much better than you, I probably got more and with my bow staff.”
“Shut the hell up, both of y’all probably didn’t even get that much combined, I probably got more,” Jason decided to join in on the argument trying to keep them both quiet. “And anyway, we just had an all hands on deck alien invasion and you guys care about who did better? That’s petty.”
“What the hell else would we care about, Hood, also you joined in so don’t try and act all high and mighty!” Tim retorted loudly, starting to gain the attention of the people around them, which is when Dick decided to join in to try and de-escalate the situation. Before it had been calm enough, Damian and Tim wouldn’t actually have fought, they might now though, with Jason too. B would be pissed if he had to break them up.
“Guys we just had a really big invasion, can’t you do this at Gotham,” he hope that will calm them down.
“Nah, if either of these pipsqueaks wanna fight, then we fight,” the hero’s around looked at Hood with tried expressions. If Hood fought one the other would join in and that ment that the outlaws and the young justice would have to fight for their team. Neither of them had the energy to. Maybe the supes, everyone else was injured or tried though, but they would have to, that’s their team, they basically don’t have a choice.
When everyone thought the worst had past because maybe, just maybe, the awkward silence would mean that they are calming themselves down, Nightwing decided to switch up from mediation, to fighting too because Hood made one too many rude remarks towards him and he needs to let off steam. “You know what Hood, shut up with your stupid anger issues, aren’t you still a drug-crime lord! What are you doing around a bunch of heroes!”
“Oh, are you talking about yourself because I’m pretty sure that you’ve definitely killed a couple people! With all that training with Slade, I should think that you’ve killed more than me!”
“I don’t think you should be talking mister ‘duffel bag full of head’!” Tim comments on his hypocrisy.
“Neither should you! You blew up a bunch of league bases, with assassins still in them!” Damian retorts.
“That was after your grandfather stole my spleen! Because you too are an assassin!”
Everyone around was shocked with the information being revealed about the children and got even more shocked when even more Gotham based vigilantes got involved and exposed, Spoiler got exposed for trying to kill her evil father, Orphan for also being a child assassin, Signal for breaking into places and doing reckless acts, and every person in the fight had underage drunken, done drugs, gone to parties, clubs, and bars. There were multiple people from the teams trying to calm down the fighters and multiple punches caught. People were being called immature for fighting people with age gaps up to 10 years.
Through all the arguing everyone knew that, in the end, most of them would be fighting each other and the Justice League would have to break it up.
What nobody knew was how the world’s most private people, otherwise known as Gothams vigilantes + Nightwing, knew so much about each other. Their sins and faults, but also, what embarrassed them, what buttons to push to get each other mad, and most importantly, what triggered them to square up.
How do they know that they know that?
Red Robin just called Signal out for being arrested and jumping out of the car, saying something about not being ‘the goody two shoes’ anymore and that had him pull out his fist and get ready to punch before any one knew it they were brawling on the floor, trying to get on top of the other, pull hair, throwing punches and kicks and Young Justice was pulling them apart because Red Robin ripped his stitches and Signal got a broken nose. Kon and Bart were more shoving Signal because Red Robin was still their leader, they couldn’t let him get hurt.
During all this, Batman was nowhere to be seen. About 20 minutes after the teams all came in, which was a hour before the argument started to get loud, he told Superman he needed to get some work, for the debriefing, done and that he would be back after 1-1 and 1/2 hours — after everyone got patched up — so they could start. It had been half an hour since the argument started so he should be back any minute now.
“Batman A-01,” the announcement rang out, most of the people fighting didn’t notice though. It was too loud to in the center of the fight. But the people breaking it apart did. Kon, Bart and Cassie tried even harder to get Red Robin to stop throwing insults. Kori and Roy were pushing Nightwing and Red Hood apart. Jon was holding Robin’s hands behind his back to get him to not hit Spoiler.
“What is going on here!” Batman’s gravely voice silencing the whole room. You could literally hear a pin drop. There was a beat. Then-
“He started-”
“She called me-”
“He hit-”
“They were-”
“He told everyone about-”
Every single kid involved was talking all at once. No one could understand anything. Batman looked pissed. At least to the rest of the hero community. To his kids and co, he looked exasperated. And boy was he.
“I leave for 1 and 1/2 hours,” Batman states, “and you all start arguing.”
“Not just arguing,” Cass chimes in, “Red Robin and Signal started brawling.”
“Holy snitch,” Tim complained, “so did Nightwing and Red Hood.”
“Yeah but we didn’t rip stitches or break noses,” Jason says hoping it would calm Bruce down, “plus, we’re being held back half the time.”
“So you had to be restrained or you would have fought?” Bruce says glaring at his second kid. No one dared to comment anymore hoping that they would not get lectured but of course, they did. Without fail, Bruce embarrasses every one of those kids with a 20 minute lecture on how to behave in public because clearly they couldn’t. Then after that he follows it up with a 2 hour lecture with the recording pausing to criticize their insults and point out stuff they had ‘forgot to mention’ to him earlier, like how Tim lost his spleen, and how they should have filed it under incident reports (or in Tim’s case, medical needs) he reveled that as his father he should have know that Ra’s Al Ghul keeps one of his organs in a jar on his bedside table. He also criticized Duke and Tim’s fighting form saying it was sloppy from both sides.
By the time the lecture was over, Bruce had completely detonated any chance his children could be seen in public again. He also detonated his children’s chance at not being know as his kid/kinda in law kid/emotional child/he doesn’t even know anymore/family friend?
Through the whole lecture though, not a single hero left the room. Every one of them were enamored by the information they were getting about their favorite bat/bird themed vigilantes. The more stuff that got revealed, the more people started to piece together that getting involved with the fight was a mistake and calling Batman in the first place would have saved them 3 and 1/2 hours of drama. Interesting drama, but still unnecessary.
Finally, Batman finished scolding his children and for the next hour all the superhero’s listened to a mission debrief, waiting until they could ask their co-workers, or friends, what the hell just happened. Everyone thought the most interesting thing that day was going to be the alien invasion but it most definitely was not.