Tony had moaned, and complained, and then finally just said, "Yes Boss, right away Boss," when he'd drawn the short straw to call the kid's- the man's- Timothy's designated contact.

One Richard Grayson, his brother.

Tony normally didn't have any problem interacting with people, but this case had him seriously weirded out. They had a kid, who the system said was an adult, found in the warehouse of some low-level drug dealers, who was the adopted son of one of the wealthiest men on the east coast. He had been missing, but there was no evidence of a ransom demand. Worse, they still couldn't find the petty officers they had been looking for when they had busted that warehouse.

Gibbs was starting to snarl at them all. He got particularly nasty whenever there were kids involved, even weird man-kids who should not be kids at all, apparently. McGee was obviously still in denial about the whole thing; trying to find evidence of tampering with the records, and who knew what Ziva thought. Even Tony couldn't come up with a movie to reference here. The whole situation just didn't make sense.

He glared around the bull pen as the phone rang. As much as he hated cases dealing with strange things, he also hated dealing with the level of society that the Wayne's inhabited. He had grown out on the outsides of that before his father had sent him away to boarding school and he had made the decision to become a cop. Occasionally he still ran across people he had known from then and it was rarely a pleasant experience. He never regretted his decision, this life he had chosen, but occasionally he had cause to wonder what he would have been like if he had continued in his father's shadow. It was never truly a pleasant thought, no mater the image he may project.

"Speak," a voice growled on phone. Tony jumped. That did not sound like the voice of a spoiled billionaire's son, even an adopted one.

"Ahh," Tony stuttered, caught off guard momentarily. He might not keep up with the celebrity news, but everything he had ever read had painted Richard Grayson as a rather cheerful person. He hadn't exactly been ready to be snarled at like he had Gibbs on the line.

"Speak or get off this line," The voice snarled.

"This is Special Agent Anthony Dinozzo, NCIS," Tony rallied. It was stupid, to be thrown off because this man didn't sound like Tony expected him to; he knew better than to stereo-type rich men's sons; after all, look at him. Gibbs would have his head; NCIS agents didn't assume, they checked and re-checked.

Of course, that was when he was caught off guard again.

"Tony?" The voice on the phone sounded completely different this time; familiar, but how? "Hey man, great to hear from you, I was starting to think you lost my number. You with the Feds now? Is that why you never took me up on that offer to show you Bludhaven?"

"Wait - Dickie?" Tony sputtered, recognising the voice with a start. The team stared at him. Oh he was so not winning points on this case. But seriously, he was going to have to wait until later to fully assimilate Dickie Grayson, Bludhaven rookie cop, with Richard Grayson, billionaire's son.

"Yeah man." Dickie said. There was a pause. "You didn't know it was me." That was not a question. There was a tense silence on the other end of the line that Tony didn't dare to break.

"My brother is missing. For almost a week. You were calling-" The normally irrepressibly cheerful man's voice broke. "Tell me he's not dead, Tony. Tell me Tim's alright." Dickie's voice was wavering like he knew there was no way anything but the worst could be true, but he was going to ask anyway.

"No, no," Tony scrambled to reassure him the best he could. "He's alive, at least, we think? We found him, or at least someone the system thinks is him, but man, Dickie, I'm, this is just too weird, but, he's, well, he's like, 6."

There was a shaky exhale on the other side of the line.

"He *is* six, or he thinks he's six?" Dick asked, voice once again calm and composed. Tony stared at his phone for a second. He's never seen anyone but Gibbs control their emotions that fast.

"What?"
A faint hint of the earlier snarl re-entered Dick's voice . "He is physically six, or he is six mentally inside an adult body?"

And what even was up with Gotham that these were the first questions Dickie asked? Where was the protestation, the insistence that they had made a mistake? Tony had seen the test results himself, seen the child and his resemblance to the photos of a young Tim Drake Abby had dug up, and he still had a hard time believing. It just didn't make sense. He knew Gotham was weird, but really; there were limits! Still, he would try to answer Dickie the best he could. Maybe the other man had an explanation for what was going on here.

"Umm, physically?" Tony said. "He's been unconscious for the last two days while we verified his identity with fingerprints and DNA. The doctors say he's not really injured, just a few bruises, but he's just not waking up."

"Which hospital?" Dick demanded. There were a series of noises in the background that sounded like drawers being opened, the pull of a zipper.

"Bethesda Naval Hospital." Tony was quick to respond to the authority in the voice; authority that he had never seen when interacting with the man before.

"I'll be there in an hour."

Tony could not even protest before he heard Dick shouting for someone to prep the jet, they found Tim! Then the phone in his hands began to emit a dial tone.

He looked up at the team, who are all staring at him, Gibbs silently demanding an explanation.

Tony grinned sheepishly.
"He'll be here in an hour?" He offered.

When they arrived at the hospital 20 minutes later and the little kid Abby's third round of tests still insisted was Timothy Drake-Wayne was gone, and the agent on the door had no idea how he left?

Yeah. Tony just wanted to go sit in a dark room for a little while.

He HATED Gotham cases.