"Belle, you should move your hip more with the kick," a tall muscular man said jokingly, moving to hold his daughter's leg in the right form.
Corbin slowed a little on the balance bar, which he had been flipping around in double somersaults, to watch the girl interact with her father. The eight-year-old would never admit it, but he liked her best when her kinky hair was in a sweaty pony tail and she was kicking the crap out of a punching bag.
"'Kay, Dad, I got it, I got it!" she said, brushing him off with a hand and adjusting her hip on the roundhouse.
"Oh, rejected!" Changeling called from under the bar bells.
"Please, at least I can lift more than fifty!" Cyborg retorted, and Changeling slowed a bit. It had been a while since they had just been alone…even best friends don't have time for each other with kids and spouses and…
Life had, eventually, caught up with them.
The half robot no longer resembled a robot. After a huge upgrade just before Abelle was born, he had placed most of the microchips under his skin. His appearance was now that of an average human, while more muscular than most, except for a sleek chrome hand the transformed into his trust sonic cannon. Victor's formerly red eye was replaced by one dark lense on his dark, shaved head and charismatic features.
The formerly childish face of Garfield had become an attractive, though still youthful, green countenance. He no longer wore the outfit of the doom patrol, but a simple black unitard with dark green shorts and shirt on top of it.
"Corbin," Raven said flatly, "you need to keep doing the aerial somersaults…even if you can't transform into a monkey yet you still need the motions."
The pale boy sighed, mopping the sweat off the back of his neck. In the bedtime stories that his parents told to him, it had seemed to easy to change. "Beast Boy" could change into a bird while he was falling, change into five different animals in five separate seconds.
Dad didn't blame him, of course. After all, he had only received half of the mutation. Still, Corbin sometimes was annoyed that Llin could already turn into small animals on occasion while he was stuck with either human or a gray dog.
"You heard your mom," Garfield grunted as he lifted the weight, "get on with it."
"Monkey? He still smells like one," Abelle said, "Dad, where are my wings?"
"Huh?" Cyborg grunted from under the weight bench next to Changeling's.
"My wings!" she said exasperatedly, slowly the rocking punching bag with her hands.
"Uh…"
"They're in the cabinet, sweetie," a small, dark skinned woman in a striped tank top said, flitting in through the door, "what would you people do without me to keep the place in order?"
"The consequences would be too dire to contemplate," Raven said sarcastically, and flashed a smile across the room at Bee. Oddly enough, when Bumblebee had moved to the Tower after her engagement, the two had become close friends, even more so now that their children were inseperable.
Bumblebee's daughter followed her mother to the cabinet, pulling out a shiny pair of wings resembling her mothers, except laced with chips and tiny glowing wires visible through the translucent surface. Abelle expertly placed the wings into tiny slots in her deeply tanned skin that seemed to emerge through slits in her orange tank. The genetics of her mom's mutation hadn't transferred fully to 'Belle, but her back accomadated the cybernetic wings as if she had been wearing them all her life.
Despite himself, Corbin glanced over from his position on the gymnastics bar.
She was flitting around now easily, landing kicks to the bag from the top and quick punches to its sides.
The green Titan lowered his last weight slowly, and wiped a few beads of sweat from his brow.
"I think this is my cue to exit," he announced to the room and, finding no protest, he started to open the door.
"Check on Llin, will you? I think she's still with Dick and Star, but you should make sure," Raven said softly as she helped Corbin clamber down off the bar.
"Yes, honey," Changeling called over his shoulder just as the door slid shut.
"Want the Mini Wheats peas," Llin said politely, reaching a tiny green hand towards the box Joy was stuffing her face with.
"Huh?" she said, looking up, her mouth filled like a chipmunk's with the cereal.
"Want Mini Wheats peas," the green toddler said again, impatiently, and held her hand out as if something should happen.
"But I'm not finished eating," Joy said while crunching the frosted wheat in her mouth.
No sooner were the words out of the red head's mouth when the box when enveloped in a dark black energy and levitated straight to Llin's high chair.
The toddler giggled and clapped her hands, but Joy was not as amused.
"Llin, that was my breakfast!" Joy said poutily, folding her arms.
"You still have toast," her father called sarcastically from the kitchen, "those Mini Wheats were Llin's honey."
"No! I don't want toast! I wanted Mini Wheats!"
"Joy, you are not having Mini Wheats. You can eat your toast and let Llin have them, or you can simply not eat breakfast," Nightwing said, standing menacingly over his daughter.
The girl deliberated between Llin, who was eating each biscuit of the cereal methodically, and the cold toast on her plate.
"Fine," the little girl pouted, and slumped over in her seat. She bit off an edge of the toast as if it might have been poison, but resigned herself to the crunching of the bread eventually.
"What's fine?" a humorous voice asked from the entryway, causing Joy to turn a full 180 in her chair.
"Daddy!" Llin called happily, "I got box to fly like Mommy!"
Her father looked slightly taken aback for a moment, then quickly replaced the anxiousness with a grin.
"Did she really…" Changeling mouthed to Nightwing when he rounded the corner into the kitchen.
"You know, she wasn't my idea," the leader said jokingly, and Garfield chuckled nervously.
"She is her mother's daughter…"