A/N: Sorry for the long wait for this chapter. I just didn't think anyone really wanted to see more until someone gave me a second review saying they would like to see another update soon. So I went right away to this one once again. Sorry again for taking forever to update this one. Please R&R. Thanks!

Disclaimer: I only own the Serial Killer and the kids. The rest of the characters belong to someone else.

Chapter 8 Surprise Battle

"What a day," Richard muttered to himself while walking down the long driveway to the front of Wayne Manor. He had dozed off in some classes and didn't even know he had a test that day. He knew for sure that he had failed it. Bruce wasn't going to be too happy with him when seeing that grade.

The young teen passed the open gate and walked into the big front yard of his house. He slowly walked up the steps to the front door and came in after a long sigh. Right away he knew something was wrong or different. One huge hint that warned him of this was that the house completely silent. Nowadays it was always stirring with some noise, but right now it was quiet.

Panic gripped the boy's heart as he dropped his backpack at the door and ran deeper into the house with his mind wild. He sprinted into the kitchen first and stopped when seeing Alfred there washing dishes. The old butler gave a small gasp while suddenly seeing Richard run into the room so quickly.

"Where are the others?" Dick asked Alfred almost snappishly.

"In the back yard with your father," Alfred answered calmly while returning his attention back to his chore.

"Oh," Richard said with a weak, embarrassed smile. Alfred looked at him oddly, but let the young boy be. Dick let out relieved sigh while walking out to where Bruce and the kids were. He opened the door to the backyard and right away didn't like the situation. Another surprise from his father.

"What's all this about?" Dick asked him, confused.

"Let's see how well you've taught these kids," Bruce said with a wink.

Richard chuckled partly from the randomness and partly from disbelief. "I just got back from school," Dick told him while turning around and heading back to the house. "Stop kidding around, Bruce. And you say I'm still acting like a kid!"

"So when you become leader of your own team you're going to tell the bad guy that you can't come kick his butt because you just got back from school?" Bruce asked him. "This isn't an option, Richard."

Richard frowned while stopping. He ran a hand through his hair with a sigh. He then yelled to his team, "Line up!"

The four kids raced to where Richard stood and lined up shoulder to shoulder in front of him. Bruce stood in the middle of the yard with his arms crossed in front of him and his eyes watching every move of his teen.

"If we lose today you guys won't fail," Dick told his team. "But I want to see your very best right now. Being able to lose doesn't give you any excuse if you do. And to tell you guys the truth, I don't think you have enough experience to beat Bruce right now. We still have a lot to learn."

"When you say we, you really mean us, right?" Lilly asked him like he was some stupid person.

"I teach you, you teach me," Richard said. "I've been learning a lot from you guys."

"Like what?" Amelia asked him, confused.

Richard smacked his forehead before muttering, "Right now is not the right time to ask personal questions." He then composed himself once again. "We don't have much time to talk right now, so listen up. Since I can't fight with you guys or move from my spot, I'm going to have to yell my orders to you. That means…?"

No one answered for him. He felt like a teacher that no one listens to. He decided to answer it by himself and see if they heard him later when it counted and it would be them getting punished for it rather than him.

"It means he will hear every move you are about to perform," Dick said with a sigh. "He'll know what will be coming and will be able to try to counter attack it. I thought we would have enough time till our first battle, so I was going to make up codenames for everything. For today just remember the few I give out, okay?"

They all shrugged as if they didn't care. Richard knew better than that, though. From their body language and expressions on their faces, he knew they were nervous and excited. There was still that wall between him and them, so that was why they weren't expressing anything to him at the moment. He so wished to break that barrier sometime soon. He hated being so detached from his team.

"Lilly and Alex work best with each other," Dick stated quickly. "When you guys team up to do that giant fire blast you've been working on, I'll yell Shadow Demon." Lilly smiled a little when he winked at her. He hadn't forgotten that was the nickname she wanted from the moment she stepped off that train into Gotham City.

"Amelia, you work fine alone," he told the little cheerleader in front of him. He gave her a wry smile before adding, "Feel free to use the garden hose when you need to." She nodded with a smile.

He then turned to Josh and said, "I want you to be invisible pretty much this whole fight. You're only job is to stay close to Bruce and give him a few good kicks whenever he talks or if I say his name. Did you get all that?"

"Yes," he answered with a nod. "What do I do if I get tiered and need a break?"

"Come to me if you feel that way," Richard answered quickly while seeing his father give him a hard look to hurry it up. "Don't let him see you at any time because if that happens, he's going to try to get ride of you once and for all."

Dick then turned to the rest of his team and let out a deep breath with a nervous smile crossing his lips. "Most of the time in this battle I'll be telling you what to do every second. Listen, learn, and obey. Don't get too badly hurt on your first battle. Now let's get out there and show him what we've learned!"

The group broke up and started to walk out to where Bruce was standing, perfectly relaxed. The battle started once Josh turned invisible. "Alex!" Dick shouted to the kid quickly, "Give him fireballs!"

Alex didn't waste anytime or hesitate as he suddenly started to throw small fireballs at Bruce. The man quickly ducked and jumped out of the way of some with a smug smile on his face. In the mean time, Robin told Amelia to attack with some water from the hose he had just turned on for her.

The girl had some trouble focusing on the liquid as she stuck her hands out at it. She slowly curled the water into a floating ball. She bit her lower lip in concentration while making another one and keeping the other suspended there. She made about six of them and then turned to Bruce with her full attention on her water. Robin hoped in a few months of full training, she would be able to do that in only a few seconds in stead of a few minutes.

"Let him have it, Amelia!" Richard yelled to her. "Lilly, you attack every time Bruce gets hit." The teen watched nervously as Amelia threw her water balls at the man as best as she could. Dick bit his lower lip while seeing that plan fail miserably. Amelia couldn't concentrate on too many balls at the same time and most of them fell to the ground before they even got to Bruce.

But Josh had listened to every word Richard had said and heard him say Bruce's name. His invisible self shrugged his shoulders while thinking he had really nothing to lose in this fight. He started to repeatedly kick Bruce in the shin as hard as he could.

"Hey!" Bruce cried in surprise while looking down to see nothing. "Ouch!" Josh only kicked him harder because now he was talking. He smiled when hearing Dick laugh at his father from far away. Josh then ran away right when Bruce made a blind swipe for him. Josh came to Richard's side and became visible again with a small giggle at his victory.

"Shadow Demon!" Dick yelled to both Lilly and Alex. The two kids glanced to him before getting in position for their move. In the mean time, Richard had Amelia fight Batman in hand to hand combat. Alex focused for a few seconds then threw his small ball of flame. Lilly, beside him, stuck her hand out at the ball and smiled wickedly while seeing it grow in size and fly towards Bruce.

Bruce noticed the fireball at the last possible second. He stopped messing with Amelia and did a complicated move that totally blew her away and made her fly into the air. She screamed while soaring airborne and let out a loud grunt when impacting the ground. She rolled a few times in the grass with a wince then just laid there to recoup from her painful defeat.

The Dark Knight quickly flung himself away from the giant ball of hot flames. The thing set the lawn on fire. With a quick wave of Alex's hand, the flames seemed to magically disappear. Bruce picked himself up and glanced to Richard with a smile on his lips. But he saw that his son was ignoring him completely and was tapping his chin with an index finger. It was his sign of deep thought.

"What do we do next?" Lilly yelled over to Dick, impatiently.

"We're done, here, kids," Bruce announced to them. "For now on you will have a battle with me every week. Now go do your homework." The kids all moaned while slowly walking back to the house sluggishly and complaining here and there.

Richard silently passed his father and walked up to Amelia, who was still laying in the grass in a daze. Bruce watched his son approach her then say a few things. Amelia responded with something that made both of them chuckle. He then held out a hand to help her up. She was then on her feet and they were walking back to the house together.

The boy was getting too attached to his team. Didn't he understand that this team wasn't going to be his after he was done? Bruce chuckled at himself when realizing that question was pretty stupid. Richard wasn't going to beat him, and if he did, Bruce would just say it was only a small joke and that he really couldn't have a team of his own after all. The good question was didn't the kid know his father was just pulling his leg.

Unknown to all the superheroes, someone was watching all of them closely with a smug smile on her lips as she got all the information she wanted for the day. Soon. It would be soon.

- A Few Days Later -

"Hey, Alfred, could you do something for me while I'm on patrol tonight?" Richard called out while coming down the stairs and into the living room. No one responded to his question. The kid jumped down the lat five steps and did a small flip in the air before landing perfectly on the wooden floor. There was an hour till patrol and he was a bit hyper that night. Maybe it was because of the ton of ice cream he had eaten with his team after supper. He had wanted to talk to them, and ice cream seemed like the only way to keep them in the same place for a full ten minutes.

"Al?" he called out while noticing the butler wasn't anywhere to be seen. He shrugged in confusion and then went out onto a search for the English man while calling out his name every so often. He was going to ask him to feed Fluffy, who lived in the font yard for the time being, while he was gone on patrol.

The teen wondered into the library with some frustration knitting into his eyebrows. Suddenly the door closed behind him loudly and he jumped in surprise. He spun around in a fighting stance only to see the man he had been searching the house for.

"Alfred, please don't scare me like that," Richard muttered while running a hand through his hair. He then noticed the frown on the butler's face and asked, "What's the matter?"

"This, Master Dick," Alfred said while holding up the paper in his hands. Richard knew exactly what is was and suddenly bolted for the door to block it from the butler so he couldn't get out. Alfred's frown deepened as he watched the boy latch himself to the door in a desperate attempt to keep the man inside the room. "So you do know your grade for this marking period?" he asked him sternly.

"Oh, please, Alfred," Dick pleaded. "Don't tell Bruce! You can't!"

"You got two A's, two B's, a C, and two D's, Master Dick," Alfred said to the boy. "This is inexcusable! And get away from the door. You look like a leech, the way you're latched onto it for some reason. I closed it in the first place because I thought, please forgive me, I thought you would steal the report card and take off with it."

Richard stared up at Alfred for a few seconds as his mind raced. He then stepped away from the door while muttering, "Sorry, Alfred." He gave the butler a wry smile while saying, "Nice idea, though." He made a small swipe for the paper jokingly, but Alfred had already predicted the kid to do it and pulled it back just in time.

"This isn't a joking mater, Master Dick," Alfred said sternly once again to the boy. "I didn't want to pick sides in this ridiculous fight between you and your father, but when seeing this I had no choice but to keep it from Master Bruce. I don't want you to lose your so called 'team' because of some grade."

"Then what do you want me to do?" Richard asked him. "If you show it to Bruce, I'm dead!"

"I want to see you get better grades than this," Alfred answered him while shoving the report card in his face. "I know you can do better than this, Master Dick. You're a brilliant boy! Why do you think you're getting such bad grades? You used to be a straight A student."

"You know the answer, Alfred," Dick said with his voice rising. "You know it's because I can't juggle a team, patrol, and school at the same time. I used to be able to have so much time to study for tests, but now I don't care about what two plus two is! I…I don't care what the goddess of the earth is! I finally have something I want and long to work at, but everything else in my life gets screwed up because of this and my mistakes and flaws are thrown into my face. Sometimes I don't even know what I want anymore!"

"Then give up the team, Master Dick!" Alfred said to him, flabbergasted at the teen's actions and thoughts. "All this confusion will end once you stop being so stupidly stubborn! I don't see why you keep hanging on."

"But I want this, Alfred!" Richard said up to him. Alfred was surprised to see so much passion and emotion on his face. "I really want this! I can do it, I know I can! I want a team of my own. I think I would be so much more productive as a superhero if I went with this. Please, Alfred. Don't show it to Bruce."

Alfred saw it in the boy's eyes and in his voice that he was telling the truth and spilling out some of his heart to him. He was so much older than before. It almost blew the butler away to see how much the boy had grown.

"Fine, Master Dick," he said with a small smile. "I won't tell."

It was worth it to tell him this because it sent a giant smile to Richards face as he whispered in triumph, "Yes!" That smile never left him as thanked the butler a million times over. "And I'll try to improve my grades," he added before walking out the door. "Oh, and do you need me to do the dishes tonight or any kind of chore of the sort? I could do it for you."

Alfred smiled a little at the boy's actions while saying slyly, "Tomorrow night I'm making a big supper, you could clean the kitchen then when there are a lot of pots and pans." He was beginning to like taking Richard's side. It would maybe make his life easier.

The butler could tell that the boy knew he had gone too far with what he had said and knew he couldn't take it back. "Sure, Alfred," Dick said as kindly as he could. "And I'm guessing you would like me to feed Fluffy before I leave, right?"

"I might as well go all the way," Dick thought to himself with a sigh.

"Precisely, Master Dick," Alfred answered with another smile.

"Great," Dick thought while walking out of the room. "Now I'm going to have to be a part time maid for my butler! That can now be added to my list of things to juggle. Can this get any worse? I really shouldn't have thought that."

A/N: I know, short chapter. But my next one will be longer. And I'm going to have to start wrapping this fic up! The final chapters are coming up and those are really good ones! Once again, sorry for the long delay! Please give a review. Thanks!