Kaldur was a surprisingly fussy child. Superboy stopped and examined this thought for a minute. Well, maybe that wasn't exactly accurate. He looked over at the other side of the couch where the tiny version of his friend was currently curled up, holding onto Raquel's hand as she sat on the arm of the couch. To be fair to the current version of Kaldur, without the context the rest of them had, it did fully appear that a bunch of surfacers had kidnapped him and were even now holding him away from his beloved parents.

He had been terrified when he had caught Kaldur mid-plummet on their mission and the Atlantean had begun to shrink in his arms. He clenched his fists slightly as he thought about what could have happened if one of the younger members of the team had been hit by that stupid spell. Kaldur was around 4 now, if Robin or himself had been hit, they might have ceased to exist altogether possibly; the team was still unsure about what kind of spell that kid with the devil haircut had used and what effect it might have had on someone who was physically and chronologically two different ages.

Raquel was perched on the arm of the chair trying to find something 'guppy' appropriate, flipping through the channels with a wry eye. They were all lucky she had experience baby-sitting for the ladies in her neighborhood. Beside her she could hear Kaldur sniffing slightly. He was obviously still upset from the meltdown he had had earlier when they had explained that they couldn't contact his mother yet. God, the kid had a pair of lungs on him.

She hoped Robin would be back soon. It had surprised everyone on the team when he had been the one to calm the screaming kid down, making sure everybody kept their distance and speaking calmly to the boy when his sobs had finally petered out due to exhaustion. She wondered idly to herself how he had gotten so good at handling kids. Well, it wasn't like she knew much about him (or most of the others on the team for that matter), for all she knew Bat junior spent all his free time training toddlers in acrobatics.

She still remembered when everyone had found out about Robin. He had been so small and yet so… well her thought at the time had been 'flippy' but the word she would use now was 'graceful'. He had been such a contrast to the big bad Batman, swinging gleefully after him in the news videos. And once, she remembered suddenly, perching on his shoulders as he answered some news reporter's questions like one of those little birds on the head of a big grey rhino. God, it had been years since the first of side-kicks debuted, since they helped open her eyes to the possibilities of the world.

Aqaulad had made his first appearance not long after that if she remembered correctly. They hadn't been a lot of reports about Aquaman or his apprentice on the Dakota news cycle but she was pretty sure that he had still had that stiff, formal quality to him in all the videos she'd seen. She glanced at the little boy on the couch, her hand gripped tightly in one small hand, the other curled near the gills on his neck. She wondered about that, maybe it was a common action in Atlantean children, but he seemed kind of tense. Was he was waiting for one of them to hurt him; maybe he was shielding them from the surface air?

At that moment, Artemis and Zatanna came into the room from the kitchen where they had retreated during Kaldur's earlier panic. They had taken the time to google food that was appropriate for Atlantean toddlers, feeling slightly guilty about leaving the others to deal with a panicking super strong four-year-old. Kaldur was still kind of watery around the edges as the approached, Artemis noticed that as he moved to sit up he also curled slightly into himself, making it easier to complete his roll into a ball if any of them made a move, she was sure. That, that was slightly worrying, Kaldur never talked much about his home life or his family and she had never asked but now she was beginning to wish she had. She had always assumed that Kaldur's formality was a common trait in Atlantis but now she was starting to wonder.

She put that thought out of her mind for now. Thankfully at four years old Atlantean children could eat the food from the packs that Kaldur sometimes brought to the Cave for when he felt particularly homesick. Hopefully the kid had as much of a taste for seal as his older counterpart.

She hung back as Zatanna stepped forward. She had never been particularly good with kids.

'Hey little guy, do you want something to eat? We've got some nice, fresh seal for you.'

Zatanna kept her voice calm and soothing as she stepped forward and kneeled carefully beside the couch, hoping that the sight of the tray in her lap would coax the young boy to settle down and stop sniffling. It worked, to a certain extent, Kaldur had sat up and even let go of Raquel's hand but he stared at her a bit uncomprehendingly. She wasn't sure how much English he understood. Robin had told her that his father, Calvin, was human (and American) before he headed off but she had no idea how much English they had spoken at home while he was a toddler.

'Do you understand? Seal?" she tried enunciating slowly, feeling like one of those people in the movies who acted like slowing down and talking loud were a sufficient way to bridge a language barrier.

'Can't you just use a spell or something? Make yourself speak Atlantean?" That was Superboy, his eyes still glued to the TV from his position on the floor. He had been doing his best not to tower over Kaldur since he noticed how skittish the kid was, and had placed himself below or at the kid's eye level whenever possible. She wondered if it was something he did instinctively or if the Genomes at Cadmus had thought it would be a good idea for their Superman clone to know how to deal with children.

'That's a really good idea Supes.' She took a deep breath and, placing the tray on the seat beside Kaldur, slowly stood up and raised her hands. 'Tel lla fo su kaeps dna dnatsrednu Naetnalta'

'Kaldur, can you understand me now?'

The effect of the spell was very odd. She felt as though she was still speaking in English, and the words made familiar shapes in her mouth , but then she heard her own voice speaking in Atlantean.

'I want my Mommy.'

Kaldur's voice was very soft. The Team glanced at each other, all a bit uncomfortable about their weepy charge. They also felt really guilty about lying to a small, scared child.

'Our friend from before went to get your Mommy, we promise,' or at least that was what Zatanna assumed Robin was going to do based on what he had been muttering into his communicator before he had taken off on his bike. He had been a bit better recently about talking through his plans before he carried them out but she guessed the surprise of seeing one of his oldest friends turned back into a toddler was a good enough excuse for a slight lapse.

'Here we have some seal for you to eat in the meantime, then we can take you to a nice cool pool of water.'

He stared at her for a minute his gray eyes huge on his tiny face, concentrating very hard on trying to read her. It was one of the cutest things she had ever seen. Thankfully, he seemed to believe her. Turning to the food in the container on his lap, he slowly began peeling open the clear sealant and taking small bites out of the large piece of seal meat contained within.

She caught the others tilting their heads slightly to watch. Kaldur had always found some reason to avoid eating these packs in front of them. She had assumed that it was because most of them were at least slightly weirded out by him casually eating seal of all things, but, watching his younger self tear into the seal with teeth that she had forgotten somehow were very pointy and sharp-looking, she got the impression that he might have had other concerns. It was both very cute and very disturbing, and eventually all of them had turned their attention somewhere else in the room and let him finish eating.

Luckily for the lot of them, everything that happened that day started to catch up to Kid Guppy after he had finished eating. Raquel had to use her powers to pick up the kid, who was really heavy, and she made a note to research the differences between Atlantean and Surface Human physiologies the next time she was using her mom's laptop for a homework assignment. Taking extra care with the hand like construct she used to hold the kid up, she paused at the end of the hallway.

'Hey guys?' she called back to the others. 'Where do I put him? In his room, in the pool?'

'You said you'd take me to the pool,' Guppy's eyes were nearly closed now but he was obviously still awake enough to listen to them, so she turned towards the salt water pool at the back of the Cave.

He seemed oddly at ease with the energy constructs currently supporting him. She thought, for a minute, about filing away the question to pursue with the older Kaldur later and then decided that she might as well see if this version was any more forthcoming than the usual one.

'Hey kid,' she made sure to keep her voice soft, she didn't want to wake him up if he was already more than half the way to sleep, 'You still up?'

'Hmm,' Kaldur hummed in that really annoyed way that little Rita from the apartment upstairs did when Raquel was trying to get her to get back up to brush her teeth, after she had already settled herself in her bed.

'I was just wondering why you weren't freaked out about these?' she emphasized her point by having the hands shift slightly so that some of the fingers tapped lightly across his back.

'S'like Teacher Reny,' he said sleepily his words starting to slur together. 'r Queen Mira.'

They were at the edge of the pool now and so she bent slightly to slip him into the pool. It was kind of anxiety inducing to watch him sink to the bottom of the pool. But as she watched carefully, he settled at the bottom of the pool and then turned over on his side so that he was once again curled up into a ball.

She watched him for another minute before heading back into the main room to talk to the others.