"Oh man," Jason said, looking up (and up, and up a little more) at Bruce. "It's one thing to know we've been turned into kids. This? This is a whole other thing entirely."
Bruce tried to smile.
"Tried" was the important word. Instead of a smile, it looked more like a grimace, or maybe like he was about to sneeze, Jason thought with a small smirk.
"They've given me all the information they could," Bruce said, looking back and forth around the small group of kids standing around him. It was like he couldn't pick who to focus on, so he was focusing on all of them. He held up a small stack of papers, a very small stack of papers, maybe only five or six papers in all.
"That's it?" Jason asked.
"That's all?" Dick asked at the same time.
"It's what they have for me," Bruce said, emphasizing the word "me" just the slightest bit.
Right. This was Bruce now, not Batman, and Bruce Wayne probably wouldn't be given much information, even if some of the people who were affected were his own-
Even if some of the people who were affected were people he was in some way connected to, Jason corrected his inner monologue quickly.
"What do they say?" Dick asked, standing on tiptoe. He still didn't come anywhere tall enough to see the papers in Bruce's hand.
Bruce paused for a moment, staring down at Dick. Then Bruce squatted, coming close to the floor and fanning out the stack of papers in the middle of their little circle.
Jason came closer as everyone else did the same, peering at the papers. He found his own name quickly, with several notes next to it. He zeroed in on the most important of the notes. "So I'm ten?"
"As far as they can tell," Bruce agreed.
"I feel like I've been cut in half," Jason complained. "Ten? Really? Twenty all the way down to ten?"
"At least you're still in the double digits," Dick said, grabbing one of the papers and shaking it in Jason's face for emphasis.
Jason swatted the paper to the ground and scowled at Dick.
Dick just frowned back. "I'm six. I lost a whole two decades."
"I'm twelve," Cass says thoughtfully, picking up the paper Jason had swatted away and looking down at it. "Not too bad."
"I'd say. You're the oldest now," Duke said. "And I'm nine, so I think I lost the least, only six years, while you lost eight and Damian lost seven."
"So I am four!" Damian said triumphantly. "I said I was not a toddler! And I was right!"
"Yeah, so you're a preschooler," Tim said.
"Is that better?" Damian asked.
Tim shrugged. "I mean, better to be four than to be two, I'd say. And you're lucky, you only lost seven years. I lost ten. I'm seven years old again. Why do you think we all got turned to such different ages?"
"Imagine if Damian had lost ten years," Duke whispered to Jason as Tim began to theorize out loud about the effects of proximity to the machine and previous ages.
Jason pictured it: Damian, one year old, probably barely walking, definitely not really talking, frustrated out of his mind. "He'd be angry. And tiny."
"Tinier," Duke said, emphasizing the last syllable.
Jason smirked and looked over at Damian, who didn't even come up to the waistline of Bruce's pants. Yeah. He was already pretty tiny.
"I think those theories might be good to hold onto," Bruce said, interrupting Tim. "But we should get going."
Tim paused. "Oh. Yeah, that'd be good. Where are we going?"
"Where do you think we're going, Arkham?" Jason asked sarcastically.
"No way! I bet we're going to Wayne Manor," Dick said hopefully.
"Well, yeah, duh," Jason said.
Dick frowned at him again. "You don't have to be mean about it."
Jason frowned back at him. "I wasn't."
"Yeah, you were," Dick said.
"No, I wasn't," Jason said.
"Yeah, you were," Dick said.
"No, I wasn't," Jason said, suddenly finding it very important that Dick knew Jason was the right one about this.
"Yeah, you were," Dick said.
"No, I-" Jason began.
Bruce interrupted him this time. "You know, the sooner we get going, the sooner we can get to the car."
"And the sooner we can get out of this place," Jason realized, spinning on his heels toward the door. "Yeah, let's get going!"
"Hold on," Cass said, grabbing Jason's wrist just as he started to race past her.
Jason stared at her. "But we've gotta get going."
"You can't just take off, though," Bruce pointed out. "You're a child right now, and you could easily get lost."
Jason scowled at him and was about to say something rude, but Cass spoke up first.
"Stick together," Cass suggested.
Jason thought about that for a moment. For some reason, it was easier to listen to when Cass said it. "Yeah. Okay."
Looking a little confused but relieved, Bruce stood back up, stacking the papers he still held and taking the first one back from Cass. "All right. Let's stick together."
They started toward the room door that Bruce had come in through, Bruce leading the way, Cass and Jason and Dick right behind him, then Tim and Duke and Damian behind them.
After just a dozen or so steps, though, Duke announced loudly from the back, "Guys, we're losing Damian."
As Bruce paused and turned around in front of him, Jason looked back over his shoulder. Sure enough, Damian was already multiple paces behind Tim and Duke, barely any farther away from their spot than when they'd started walking.
"We're going fast," Dick observed, falling behind a little, now more in line with Duke and Tim than with Cass and Jason. "Really fast."
"No, you're just short," Jason said. "Really short."
"I'm not that-" Dick began, then he looked down at himself and cut himself off. "Yeah, pretty much, I guess. Hey, Bruce?"
"We'll go slower," Bruce said immediately.
"No need," Damian said, catching up with Tim and Duke and just starting to pass them. "I will do fine on my own."
"Damian, you're four," Dick said bluntly.
"And I am a very capable four-year-old," Damian said. "At this age the first time around, I was already-"
"I'm sure you're very capable," Bruce said quickly, cutting Damian off.
A good thing, too, because Jason wasn't sure what Damian would've done as a four-year-old in the League of Assassins and he also wasn't sure Damian was thinking too much about secret identities at the moment.
Bruce continued. "You're always capable. I believe it. But you aren't at the age and ability you're used to, so you might have some trouble if you try to do things the way you were doing them before, and that's okay. That's why we'll stick together."
Damian frowned, but after a moment, he nodded sulkily. "Understood."
Bruce took a few steps back toward Damian, then he paused, frowning a little thoughtfully. "Do you… Would you like some help?"
"Help walking?" Damian asked, sounding confused. "Like what? How can someone-"
"Oh, hey!" Dick said, sounding excited. "Bruce, are you offering a ride? I want a ride!"
Bruce hesitated.
Jason saw the issue. Of course Bruce could give Dick and Damian both a ride. He was more than strong enough as Batman to carry a four-year-old and a six-year-old. But as Bruce Wayne, he might not be that strong.
Cass saw the issue too. "I can carry you, Dick."
Dick whooped and ran over to Cass, who knelt while Dick clambered onto her back.
"Oh," Damian said as Cass stood up with Dick now riding piggyback. "Like that. If you believe it will allow us to go faster, I can accept it."
Bruce gave a small smile and leaned over, scooping Damian up.
"This is different from what they are doing," Damian said, pointing at Dick and Cass from his spot perched awkwardly in Bruce's arms.
"I think this might be easier for the two of us," Bruce said.
Damian sniffed. "Tt. I suppose it will work."
Jason and Duke exchanged amused looks. Damian really was tiny, and he looked even tinier in Bruce's giant arms.
When they got to the vehicle, Bruce paused. "Oh no."
"Oh no?" Dick asked, peering around Cass. "What's oh no?"
"I don't think I have any car seats," Bruce said a little sheepishly.
"Do we need them?" Cass asked, raising her eyebrows.
"You do indeed need them," a voice said.
Jason grinned. He knew that voice. "Alfie!"
"Hello, dear children," Alfred said, rolling down his window the rest of the way to smile at them all. "My, how you all haven't grown."
"Alfred, we don't have any car seats," Bruce said worriedly as Jason and the other kids laughed at Alfred's joke. "They need car seats, right? I think they do. Or, what's the other one? Booster seats? Do they need booster seats?"
"While you were otherwise engaged earlier, sir, I took the liberty of popping over to the nearest department store to procure a few based on the description from social services," Alfred said, coming out of the vehicle and walking toward its back. "There are six variously sized seats in the trunk, although I would now presume that at least Miss Cass and perhaps Master Jason would not require one."
"Alfred, have I ever told you you're the best?" Bruce sighed as he and the six children followed Alfred back.
"You could certainly state that more frequently," Alfred said. He opened the trunk and peered in, then looked back at the others. "Did you happen to ascertain your ages?"
"Damian is four, Duke is nine, Tim is seven, Jason is ten, Cass is twelve, and Dick is six," Bruce rattled off.
"Maybe six and a half," Dick said hopefully. "I bet they didn't try to figure out halves."
"I want to add a half," Damian said.
"Me too," Cass said.
"Then we should all add a half," Duke said. "Halves for everybody."
"Nobody's adding a half," Bruce said firmly, then, over assorted groans, he asked. "Alfred, what would a four-year-old use?"
"That would be one of these," Alfred said, pulling a weirdly-box-like thing out of the trunk and setting it on the ground.
"No," Damian said immediately. "I will not be sitting in that."
"You have to," Bruce said. "It's to keep you safe."
Damian huffed. "No. I will be safe without it."
"Until somebody crashes into us and you die 'cause you're too tiny for a seat belt and too stubborn for a car seat," Jason said.
"I would not die," Damian said firmly.
Jason raised his eyebrows. "Yeah? What would you do instead?"
Damian sputtered for a moment.
"Please use the car seat," Bruce said. "Damian, I really do need you to use it."
"How do you even use it?" Damian asked angrily, flinging one small hand out toward the car seat. "I have never-"
"Would you like me to show you?" Alfred asked. "I would, of course, be happy to do so."
After a moment, Damian nodded and stuck his hands out toward Alfred.
This time, Jason and Duke exchanged startled but still amused looks.
Alfred took Damian from Bruce easily, settling Damian on one hip with an arm wrapped around him. Alfred then picked up the car seat with his other hand and rounded the vehicle.
Jason stepped quickly to follow him, outpacing all of the other kids to get a good view. He was really curious, but mostly curious about how Damian would react to the car seat rather than curious about the car seat itself. Unlike Damian, Jason knew how car seats worked, or pretty much knew how they worked, at least.
Setting the car seat down on the ground for a moment, Alfred opened one of the back doors, then picked the car seat back up and put it in the back seat. He did something with the seat belt, hooking it around the car seat somehow, then he sat Damian in the car seat. With a few quick, smooth movements, Alfred adjusted a couple of straps around Damian, and a few clicking sounds later, Alfred stepped back. "And there you are, lad."
Damian frowned thoughtfully, wiggling around the car seat for the small amount it let him move. He tugged at the straps crossing his body, then he sighed. "I suppose this will work."
"Good," Bruce said, clearly relieved. "Okay. Who's next?"