Me: Okay, I'm bad.
Wally: I told you you should've updated last week.
Me: I knoooow, okay, I know! I have a valid excuse!
Wally: Being on vacation is not a valid excuse. You don't get to relax until I'm me again.
Me: Okay, now you're just making this up as you go along.
Wally: Am not!
Me: -eyeroll- Whatever you say, Baywatch. Anywho, enjoy!

"Awwww!" Megan immediately squealed, diving on the tiny version of Wally and scooping him up into her arms. He was way too skinny and way too small for Robin's liking—it was just weird to look at him.

Barry whirled on Batman immediately, who was busy studying the paper cup that Wally'd dropped after he drank the altered Red Bull inside. "What the he—"

"Barry!" Iris scolded, and Megan clapped her hands over Wally's tiny ears and glared at the mentor.

A flush spread across his cheeks, "I was gonna say heck," he muttered. "Batman, what did you do?"

"It seemed to have an adverse effect," Batman said, frowning.

"You think?" Artemis shrieked. "Wally's tinier than before!"

Wally curled into Megan's chest and ducked his head under his chin, peering up and out at the rest of the crowd from beneath his long eyelashes shyly. Megan's lower lip began to quiver and her eyes grew wide as she hugged the boy tighter.

"Wally, honey," Iris said, holding out her arms. "Come here, let's get a look at you."

Wally immediately shrunk away from her, squeezing his eyes shut and shook his head ever so slightly. Iris recoiled, a little hurt, but she turned to Batman and Flash and the rest of the kids and said, "He doesn't recognize me, so he has to be six or younger. My guess is four or five—he was always small for his age until he got his powers."

"He seems to like Megan," Artemis said softly as the Martian girl floated up and down in the air, much to Wally's delight.

"It must've been too high of a dose," Batman decided. He turned to go, paused to look at Barry, and arched an eyebrow.

"You want another blood sample," Barry grumbled, "I know. Kids, Iris, look after him please?"

"No problem, honey," Iris said, giving her masked husband a quick peck on the lips. "Go figure out how to turn him back."

"This is so bizarre," Robin said thoughtfully to Wally's mentor as he walked past. "Heavy on the biz. It's like the more attuned to his speed he is, the younger he gets. I always thought that Wally would run and just be faster than everybody else."

Barry shook his head. "Wally can consciously speed up his molecules. It pretty much slows everybody else down and that's how he zips around as fast as he does. I tell him not to go too fast because if he does he could tear up the ground and cause a nuclear explosion, all that jazz. We only go as fast as we need to."

"Flash," Batman growled, and Barry rolled his eyes and, after giving his nephew a long, worried look, raced after the Dark Knight.

"So," Robin said, drawing the word out as the five children and Iris stared at Wally. "What exactly do we do now?"

Wally's eyes filled with fresh tears and he started bawling again. Megan, shocked, floated back to the ground and set him down as he cried. She shot a helpless look towards his aunt, who looked just as baffled as she was.

"Wally, it's alright," she said, kneeling down next to him. "What's wrong, sweetheart? Tell me, use words."

"I want my mama," he said through quivering lips, and then the tears started up again. "I want my mama now!"

Iris tried to gather the little boy up in her arms but he crab-walked away from her until he'd backed himself into the corner of the training room, still sobbing. Iris looked desperately at the other kids for help, and Artemis found herself moving quickly towards her young teammate.

"Shhh, Wally," she said soothingly, "it's alright. Hey, now, don't cry. Big boys don't cry, right?"

Wally immediately bit his lip and looked at her warily, but he nodded slowly. Artemis smiled and held out her arms, waiting for him to come to her. To her surprise, he got up cautiously and waddled over to her, allowing her to envelope him in a comforting hug. Artemis sat back on her haunches and rocked him back and forth, running a hand through his hair and whispering comforting words in his ear. In minutes, he was asleep.

The other stared at her as she got up without any difficulty and turned around to face them. "We should get him to his bed," she suggested softly, and pushed past them all into the hallway and to Wally's room, where she set him down in his messy bed and covered him with covers. On impulse, she pressed her lips to his forehead in a gentle kiss, and then slowly backed away and closed the door.

Artemis turned around to find her teammates and Iris staring at her, Wally's aunt with a mischievous, knowing smile on her face. A blush crept up her cheeks. "What? What are you staring at?"

"How did you do that?" Megan said, awe-struck. "He wouldn't even let me touch him, and you know how Wally acts when he's fifteen around you!"

Artemis shrugged and walked past her to go into the kitchen, the others following her like lost dogs. "I had a little sister once. She was four when… anyways, I figured if I just did what I did with Millie, he'd calm down. And he did. It's no big deal."

"Yeah it is," Superboy said bluntly.

Kaldur stepped forward, giving the clone a sidelong glance. "I believe what Superboy is trying to say is, thank you."

Artemis turned around before they could see her blushing again. If Wally retained his memories when he was turned back to normal again, she'd never live this down.

…

Barry was still fuming. Batman was one of the smartest people in the league—actually, no, he was the smartest person in the league—and he not only failed to resolve Wally's problem, but he actually turned him younger than he already was. Barry could do the math in his head. Another screw-up and Wally could be in diapers—or worse, he might not even come back at all.

He sat still, although he was positively vibrating with impatience to get back to his kid. His kid. Whose life was in Batman's hands. Usually he'd be comforted by this fact, but now…

"I knew it wasn't going to kill him."

Barry raised his eyes to meet the Bat's arched brows through his cowl. "Pardon?"

"You heard me."

A growl escaped Barry's lips before he could stop it. "Yeah, I know. Give me a warning next time though? I'd like to know when you're testing my nephew to find out the patterns of his de-aging problems, okay?"

Flash couldn't be sure, but he suspected Bruce was rolling his eyes from behind his eyepieces while he busied himself with the samples. "Alright. This time it's for real. Happy now?"

"Ecstatic."

"Wally's rubbing off on you," Batman remarked. "Your sarcasm's getting stronger."

"Yeah, well." Barry shrugged. "That kid's affected a lot of me."

Batman paused in his tests and looked at Barry, and for a second he could've sworn that a ghost of a smile flickered onto the Dark Knight's face. "What?" Barry said self-consciously.

His teammate didn't answer, and Barry had a sinking suspicion that he'd just missed an inside joke. "Done," Batman said, and held up the tube of blood from Barry. The speedster looked away—blood didn't exactly sit well with him, despite him being both a police scientist and a superhero, both of which requires him to be around it.

"Awesome," Barry said, jumping down from the table. "Can I go now? I need to tend to my kid."

"In a moment," Batman said. "The concoction shouldn't take long. It'll cut time. The more Kid Flash uses his powers, the more likely it is that this won't work, and we need to get this to him as soon as possible. We just need to hope that the five-year-old in him doesn't discover how to turn on his speed."

"Awesome," Barry said again, this time sarcastically. "Okay, fine. But hurry up, you're so slow."

Batman gave him another look, one that practically reprimanded him without the man needing to say a word. "Another second." Something dinged, and Batman pulled out the tube from whatever machine he'd put it in—Barry didn't recognize it, which was unusual for him, being a scientist and all—and poured it into a cup, adding only a couple of drops of the Redbull can that was still sitting on the table.

He turned and set the cup in Barry's hand with a "happy now?" look on his face. "There. Report back to me if it works or not."

"If it works?"

Batman's jaw twitched, and Barry held up his hands in surrender. "Alright, fine, but if it doesn't, I'm telling the league you made my kid turn back into a sea monkey!"

"I believe the term is fetus," Batman corrected, but Barry was already out the door. He raced along the halls, trying to find his boy, but he didn't go far when screams—childish, young screams, but definitely Wally's—assaulted his ears.

"Wally," Barry breathed, and he changed directions immediately, heading for the sounds of pure and utter terror, a sound that should never come from a five-year-old.