I like to think that Mari is like Dick in the sense that she finds trouble because why not? Jake is a bit more wary of that, like Starfire. He has Dick's penchant for remembering things really well, and is really smart and an expert hacker. Mari is more adventurous and has her mom's warrior spirit. She also has her dad's ability to prank people exceptionally well and is a bad influence on her brother.
Dick: hah.
Damian: you aren't concerned?
At all?
Dick: are you kidding?! I couldn't be more proud!
Jason, Tim, Damian: ...
Well... ok, then.
Once upon a time, there was a child and his mother. Their names were Megan and Garfield.
"Megan?" Damian asked. Dick nodded.
"Yeah, Miss. Martian," he said. Barbara raised an eyebrow.
"I thought her name was M'gann?" she asked. Dick shrugged.
"I mean, close enough," he said.
They were living life pretty good. They had two cows that made milk, and from that milk came cheese and butter. Wait… why did they need butter? It's not like they had any bread…
Um, anyway, they also had potatoes in the ground.
"That's probably why they had the butter," Jason said. "Y'know, for baked potatoes."
Dick made a face.
"Butter on baked potatoes? Who does that?" he asked. Cass tilted her head to the side in confusion.
"But didn't you eat baked potatoes with butter the other day?" she asked. Dick froze and his eyes widened. Alfred chuckled.
"Master Dick, they are just messing with you," he said. "There was no butter. I know you do not like that."
Dick breathed a sigh of relief. Steph and Damian shared a confused look. Without asking anything, they decided not to ask because they probably wouldn't get an answer anyway.
One year, their cows died, the ground refused to make potatoes, and they started getting hungry.
Steph sighed and buried her head in her hands for a moment. She came back up and gestured for Dick to continue.
One day, Gar wandered towards the water to go fishing. When he got there, he saw two little dip-
Alfred cleared his throat nonchalantly. Dick chuckled nervously.
-sticks chucking rocks at a seal's head. Gar threw a rock at one of the kids, getting their attention.
"Hey! Leave that seal alone!" he shouted.
"Make us!" one of the kids shouted. Gar picked up another rock and chucked it the other kid's head, hitting it. They both screamed and ran away.
Garfield ran up to the seal to make sure it was alright. He saw a little bit of blood on its head. He thought its eyes shone a little bit, but it disappeared into the water before he could be sure.
"Hold up…" Jason said, holding his hand up. He studied the floor for a moment before looking back up at Dick with shining eyes.
"I know this story!" he exclaimed. An evil glint entered his eyes. "And I know who the seal should be."
Dick glared at him.
"No."
"Remember 'The Frog Prince'?" Jason asked. "How in that story, Barbara said she had a brother?"
Dick frowned to himself before biting his lip and letting out a long-suffering sigh.
"Unfortunately for myself, that makes sense," he said. Everyone else was confused while Jason victoriously pumped his fist in the air.
Mari crept down the stairs to the Batcave, looking around to make sure there was no one there. Seeing that the coast was all clear, she turned and smiled to Jake, nodding her head. She floated into the cave, Jake tip-toeing quietly after her.
"Mari, we really shouldn't be down here without dad or the others," he whispered. Mari rolled her eyes.
"It's fine," she said. "Trust me, dad will be more proud than anything."
Jake raised an eyebrow in disbelief.
"Proud?" he asked. Mari nodded and turned around in mid-air to smile at him.
"Yeah," she said. "Because we managed to sneak down here without anyone realizing it!"
She floated over to the batcomputer and pressed a bunch of random buttons, hoping to turn it on. How difficult could it be?
That night, there was knock at the door. Garfield opened it up and saw… well, me, I guess. I was dressed in rags and dirty clothing and stuff.
"Ooh," Steph awed. "More first person."
She leaned forward in interest. Dick just smiled at her, more out of confusion than anything.
I asked him if I could come inside for the night because I was freezing cold. Let's be honest, in a land where the ground refuses to grow potatoes anymore, it's gotta be cold.
Jason giggled into his hand. Damian gave him a shocked look.
Garfield let me inside, and I stayed the night. He vaguely thought I looked familiar, but he shrugged it off.
"We can't claim that he's a frog ready to stalk him," Cass said. Damian nodded in agreement.
"Maybe he's the seal?" Tim asked. Dick shrugged.
"Not like it was such plot twist in the original," he admitted.
The next day, I told them how to get unlimited cheese. Every full moon, the people who lived in the sea would bring their water cows to the surface to graze. All they had to do was sneak up on them, throw some dirt on a few of the cows, and the cows would be theirs forever. The rest would run to the ocean.
Now, in the original, the seal mentioned that they were fairy cows. But since we already have magic cheese and oatmeal pots, honestly, can they JUST be sea-cows? Isn't that fantastical enough?
He got a lot of nods, much to his relief. Steph frowned.
"Wait… magic cheese?" she asked. No one answered her.
I had Garfield walk with me to the water, turned back into a seal, and swam away.
"And that gets rid of the first person," Dick interrupted himself. Steph shrugged to herself.
"Fun while it lasted," she said.
Garfield went to do what I had told him to do. He threw some dirt on seven cows, the rest ran off, and he took his cows home. He always hid them when the full moon came around so the sea folk couldn't steal them back, because he wasn't a total idiot.
"The End," Dick concluded. Everyone applauded him dramatically while he thought about what Mari and Jake could possibly be up to. He managed to convince himself that there was nothing that could possibly go wrong. Right?
"The next story is Hansel and Gretel," he said. He already knew who he was going to use for this story. And he already had everything perfectly planned out.
Mari finished typing in her search. She was a bit concerned, but mostly fascinated by her brother's hacking abilities. He hacked into the Titan's database like he was opening up his own files on a home computer. She was definitely impressed.
"Alright, Jake, how do I find aunt Mandy?" Mari asked. Jake shrugged.
"I'm not sure," he said. "She never told me her whole name, especially not in Tamaranean."
Mari bit her lip and looked at the keyboard for a second. Jake snapped his fingers. She turned to his excited face.
"Yesterday, when she and mom dropped us off, aunt Mandy complained about the nickname dad had come up with for her. She asked 'couldn't you have come up with something better?' or something like that. Before that, dad told her that he couldn't run around calling her 'Komand'r' all the time."
"Alright?" Mari asked, clearly confused. Jake rolled his eyes.
"'Komand'r' means 'Blackfire' in English," he said. Mari nodded her head.
"You could have just said that," she told him. She typed in the name and scrolled through the information, finding out exactly why her dad and aunt Mandy didn't get along. Even Jake seemed interested.
"Well… that makes sense," he said. Mari noticed a cord that could be plugged into the computer. She remembered her dad typing on a holographic screen that had popped up on his glove when he was in uniform.
And she remembered where their suits were. She also vaguely remembered where her dad had stored the Batman costume. She turned around and smirked at her brother.
"Mari, no," he said.
"We could access so many files about our parents and what they got into when they were younger," she said in a sing-song voice. "Tell me you don't wanna know."
Jake bit his lip and groaned, bringing a palm to his forehead.
"You are a bad influence on me," he said. He dragged his hand down his face with a sigh. "Fine. Let's get into even more trouble."
Mari patted him on the shoulder and made her way in the direction of the Batman suit.
"That's my boy," she said.
I redeemed Blackfire, but not completely. She's just been kept in line because Jake grew on her.
