Hello everybody! It's been a while since I've updated this story, hasn't it?

Dick: yes, it has. Where have you been?

I was... uh...

Jason: wait! Before you finish that thought...

?

Dick, Jason, and Tim: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Guys, it's not my birthday.

Dick: Well, it was a couple weeks ago, wasn't it?

Yeah, a COUPLE WEEKS AGO.

Jason: just accept it.

Tim: yep. No backsies.

Ugh, fine. Thanks guys.

Dick: now, where were you?

I was busy... eatingashoe...

Tim: what?

I was eating a shoe, alright? I got a chocolate shoe for my birthday and was eating it... it was a big shoe, too.

Jason: were there strawberries?

Yes! They were SO GOOD! And they were IN THE SHOE-

Dick: alright guys, enjoy the chapter.

Dick took a deep breath through the nose and let it out slowly. Lunch wasn't as catastrophic as it usually was, which was saying something, considering his family. They all managed to sit still long enough to actually finish the food that Alfred had so very kindly set out for them.

But now, it was time to dive once again into the insanity of storytelling. Dick was the last one inside the main room after being the only one with enough decency to stay and help Alfred clean up. When he arrived in the room, the story chair was lying on its side and the boys were engaged in a wrestling match on the floor with Tim shouting "he's a bona fide midget," Jason shouting "waffles will rain from the sky," and Damian shouting "chickens will rule the world."

It was a beautiful sight to behold.

Dick stepped around his brothers and picked up the Story Chair, setting it up and silently betting on Jason as the winner.

"Ow! Tim, you fu-"

Ok, nevermind. Tim wins. Who knew that biting could be so effective?

"Alright, guys," Dick said. He sat down in the chair and watched everyone for a moment longer. "You ready?"

"What story is this again?" Barbara asked. Dick smirked.

"The Sorcerer's Apprentice," he said. Barbara nodded, fearing the look on his face, and sat down on the couch. She, Cass, and Steph decided it would be best if the boys just fought it out. Even Dick seemed a little scared to ask.

"Alrighty then."

Once upon a time, in a place we call Camelot, there lived an old wizard and his student… Jason.

This made the boys on the floor stop wrestling. They stared at Dick with wide eyes and got up, stumbling over each other to sit properly. When they were finished, Dick cleared his throat. He was uncomfortable, but hey, this was his family. Stranger things have happened other than his brothers sitting silently, giving him their undivided attention.

Nah, screw it, this was the weirdest thing on the planet.

The wizard wasn't important enough to have a name since this story is about his apprentice. One day, the wizard needed to head out and run some errands. Jason wasn't the most trustworthy person, but he couldn't bring him along for some strange reason, so he decided to leave the most untrustworthy person in the whole village alone in one of the most dangerous places in the world.

"Ah, so he's a worshipper of the Farmer Bruce cult as well," Jason said. Everyone burst into immediate laughter at his comment. Even Dick found himself laughing this time.

"It's officially a cult now?" Damian asked him. Alfred, who was passing through the room to get to the stairs, sighed and facepalmed.

"How does Master Bruce put up with all of you?" he asked himself. Without another word, he headed up the stairs and left the kids to their laughter.

"I guess this means the sorcerer has a name now?" Tim asked rhetorically. Dick sighed as well.

"Whatever."

"Jason, I'm making the decision to trust you alone in here," Sorcerer Bruce told Jason. Jason rolled his eyes.

"You're gonna go out and teach bears how to speak German again, aren't you?" he asked. Bruce spluttered indignantly.

"What? No! Don't be ridiculous... it's gonna be Russian this time," he said.

"When is it?" Barbara asked him. Dick chuckled evilly.

"That is for me to know, and for you to be tortured by," he told her.

Jason groaned.

"When are you going to teach ME some magic?" he whined. Bruce sighed.

"When you're more responsible," he said. Jason pouted.

"Come on, pops. Teach me some magic! You have no idea how re... how respensible... reprehensible... I'll be!" he said.

"It's responsible, and no. You can't even say the word!" Bruce said. Jason frowned before shrugging nonchalantly.

"Well, don't be too long," Jason told him half-heartedly. "I don't wanna sit here, bored, for too long."

Bruce practically ran out the door at this. He had a bad feeling about what Jason would do, but, being a Bruce, he ignored it.

When Sorcerer Bruce was gone, Jason rubbed his hands together and eyed everything in the tower.

"Ok, since he ran out of here screaming like a monkey on helium, I'm going to have to find a way to segue into doing the menial chores from the original story," Jason said.

This little bit of fourth wall dialogue made the bats chuckle a little bit.

Jason ran over to Bruce's spell book- "God, that feels so weird to say," -and saw the spell that had been conveniently bookmarked. Jason shrugged and decided to gather everything that Bruce would probably need to cast the spell.

"Alright, but there is absolutely no way I'm running up all those stairs a hundred times with a tiny bucket of water," Jason muttered to himself.

"Is he sane?" Tim asked. Dick raised an eyebrow at him.

"Why do you ask that?"

"Because he keeps talking and whispering to himself," he said. Real-life Jason put a hand on his shoulder.

"Tim, we're all insane," he told him. "Maybe we shouldn't question other people's sanity around here."

"Besides," Damian cut in, "Grayson is the most insane of us all." Dick nodded agreeably at this.

Jason flipped through the spellbook and found a spell that could bring inanimate objects to life. Smiling to himself, he turned to a broomstick and cast the spell. The broomstick immediately flew up to him.

"Go get water and fill up the cauldron," Jason told it. The broom raced off with the empty bucket, coming back upstairs with water in the bucket and pouring all of it in the cauldron. Soon, the cauldron was full.

"Ok. Bye," Jason told it, but the broom crossed its arms.

"Wait... what?" Steph asked. Dick blinked at her in confusion.

"What's wrong?" he asked her.

"Since when did the broomstick have arms?" Damian asked for her. Dick smiled sheepishly at them.

"I forgot to mention that... didn't I?"

"Yes," everyone chorused. Dick sighed.

Well, the broomstick had hands. It grew the hands as soon as Jason told it to get the water. Now, back to our regularly scheduled mayhem.

The broomstick crossed its arms and grabbed the bucket. It flew off again, leaving Jason confused and staring after it. The broomstick returned shortly afterwards, carrying the bucket and dumping more water into the already full cauldron. Water spilled onto the floor.

"Hey! I told you to stop!" Jason told it. He grabbed the broomstick handle, but it just swatted his hands away. It flew off again and got another bucket full of water. Jason glared at the broomstick.

"Fine. Be that way," he told it, sticking his tongue out.

"How mature," Damian said sarcastically, rolling his eyes. Jason just snickered.

"Might be because he was being rude to the broom," he said. Everyone stared at him. "What? You should always be polite to inanimate objects. You never know..."

"Ok, then..." Dick said.

Jason grabbed an axe that was conveniently sitting in the corner and chopped the broomstick into pieces. He grabbed a towel, prepared to clean the floor, when 50 MORE BROOMSTICKS started flying around him, filling up the cauldron 50 times as fast!

Soon, the whole tower was flooded! Jason was sitting in the cauldron, axe in hand, swinging at the mini broomsticks flying around!

"Stupid broomsticks! Fight me like a man!" Jason shouted.

Real-life Jason nodded, agreeing with his story self.

Unknown to Jason, Sorcerer Bruce was outside the tower, about to open the door. He heard Jason shouting at the broomsticks and sighed, angry at himself for leaving Jason there all by himself.

He opened the door and all the water rushed out at once. He stepped inside and was a little shocked to see Jason wrestling a broomstick. The other broomsticks saw Bruce (well, as much as they could see, being eyeless broomsticks and all that) and flew away, scared. Bruce just stared at Jason, who was now shouting profanities at the accursed broomstick and was claiming to be strangling it.

Dick and Jason shared a look here. This part of the story sounded and felt a little too familiar. Jason cleared his throat awkwardly and averted his gaze, getting everyone else curious.

"We agreed to never discuss this again, remember?" he asked snarkily. Dick, with a victorious smirk, decided to finish the story.

Bruce cleared his throat, getting Jason's attention. The kid froze, staring back at Bruce.

"Um..."

"I'm not even going to ask," Bruce said. "I guess it's time I ACTUALLY teach you some magic, huh?"

Jason smiled victoriously at him.

"I knew you'd come around," he said.

"The End," Dick finished. There was slow clapping from the door and all heads turned to see Black Canary leaning against the doorframe.

"Nice job, Dickie," she said. Dick glared at the nickname. Canary ignored it, walking over and rubbing the top of Dick's head.

"What are you doing here, Dinah?" Dick asked her. He fixed his hair, which had been messed up when Canary rubbed his head.

"Whatever happened to Aunt Dinah?" she asked him teasingly. Dick turned a little red when his brothers started giggling.

"Aunt? Dickie? What's going on here?" Damian asked, cheeky smile on his face. Dick smiled, too, when Dinah turned her attention to Jason and Tim.

"Hey there Jaybird, little Timmy," she said. This time, the two mentioned boys turned red while Damian proceeded to laugh harder and Dick joined him. "The Bat asked me to stop by and make sure you weren't killing each other. He said something about Jason almost being arrested or something..."

"Go with 'or something'. You don't wanna know," Dick told her. She smiled warmly at him.

"So, you guys have just been sitting here telling stories?" she asked. Barbara scoffed.

"More like Dick has been driving us insane," she corrected. Canary nodded.

"Yes, he tends to do that," she said. Dick gasped dramatically as a thought struck him.

"Dinah, do you want to tell the next story?" Dick asked her. She blinked in shock.

"Uh..."

"Great!" Dick interrupted her. "Next up is Goldilocks and the Three Bears, brought to you by: Black Canary!"

Sorry it's a rather short chapter... but at least it exists, right?

Dick: yeah... let's just agree with that...

Jason (snickers): Dickie.

Dick: I'm going to kill you.

Tim: I'll take care of this. Stay safe everyone!