AN: My sincerest apologies for how late this is. A lot is happening in my life right now that takes precedence over this. I unfortunately will be returning to the rock I've been hiding under these past few weeks to finish everything else. Please know I am not giving up on any of my stories and should return to regular updates before January. I felt you all deserved to know this and am sorry I didn't tell you earlier. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Please enjoy and review.


Dick stood in the downstairs pub playing darts alone desperately trying to clear his mind. Dick had woken from a dreamless sleep in the middle of the night only to be hit with an overwhelming wave of homesickness. He had peeked at the files on his hosts' computer, courtesy of the bug he had planted earlier, but that had only made things worse. It was uncanny how alike Leverage Inc. was to his team. Sophie was loving and caring like M'gann, Parker was skilled and snarky like Artemis. Hardison was witty and a hopeless idiot genius like Wally. Nate was a calm calculating leader like Kaldur, and Eliot was strong, stubborn and strangely knowledgeable like Connor.

The obvious similarities to his friends made his heart ache, and now, in the darkness, alone, and in the calmness of the night, Dick's emotions finally caught up with him. Every time he turned around, he expected to rough rocky walls of the Bat-cave. He wanted nothing more than to fall asleep in Bruce's cape like he used to when he was nine. He wanted to smell Alfred's cooking again, swing from the ballroom's large chandelier in Wane Manor, relentlessly annoy Artemis at Gotham Academy, talk science with Wally, visit his parents' graves. With every thought, Dick sent a dart straight into the bull's-eye of the target.

"Don't think I've ever seen anyone throw darts like that." The sudden voice caused Dick to flinch slightly. Despite being startled, his last dart hit it's mark. "You have great aim too."

Dick retrieved his darts, ignoring the presence of the hit-man and mentally scolding himself for being caught off guard. Elliot went to the dart board beside Dick's and began throwing darts with perfect accuracy and precision next to him.

"You look like you're skipping stones the way you throw your arm out to the side like that." Eliot copied Dick's movement missing the board completely. "I think I'll stick to my way."

Dick continued to throw his darts in silence.

"I'll be the first to tell you that I think your unwilling dimensional tourist story is complete and utter bull." Eliot's dart hit the bull's-eye. "But, there's been a lot of crazy stuff happening lately, so I'm open to suggestions."

Dick just huffed in response.

"Tell me about your world. Do you have any friends." Thwack- A dart hit the board.

"Yes."

"Do they do all this crazy stuff too?"

"Some of them."

Eliot seemed to realize Dick's reluctance to converse and returned to playing in silence.

After a few moments Eliot spoke again. "What about your family, your parents? How are they?" Two darts were launched at the target. One hit the floor.

"Dead." The man next to him stopped taken back by the young acrobat's response.

"My parents were murdered." The words were out off Dick's mouth before he even knew he was talking. He stopped himself, he shouldn't have said that. Everything Batman had ever taught him about maintaining his secret identity shoved itself into the forefront of his thoughts. Batman would have been ashamed...but, screw Batman. "They were my only family. They refused to pay protection money to this mob boss and he killed them in retribution. I was lucky. A man sympathized with me, took me in, cared for me, trained me. That's how I got into this business."

"And what business is that?" Eliot asked tentatively.

"Your business."

"Thieving?"

"No. The hero business." Dick turned to face the adult. "I hacked into your files. I know about what you do. You and your team may hide behind cons and thefts, but what you do, why you do it; that makes you a hero."

"I'm no hero kid." Eliot laughed.

"You're just in denial. Be thankful you don't wear tights."

"You're a weird boy, Robin. I don't think I've ever met anyone like you." Eliot's tone became very serious. "We'll will get you home Robin, no matter how far away home is."

"But first let's take down Brandwein." Robin replied equally serious.

"Agreed."

Robin put away the darts and followed Eliot back up the stairs, feeling much better. It was time to get some sleep.


Nate was not happy to be woken up by the loud pounding outside his door. Nor was he particularly pleased to hear Hardison screaming at him in a frantic voice to get up.

"Nate!" The pounding was bordering on obnoxious now. "Nate get up now! This is bad. This is really, really bad."

"What's bad Hardison?" Sophie's voice resonated from outside the room

"Sophie, get everyone else. Nate are you in there in there?" Hardison shouted through the door.

"I'm here Hardison." Nate replied groggily, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Well, get out here fast! This is bad!"

As Hardison's footsteps quickly faded, Nate slowly pushed himself off the bed, and forced himself into some clothes. What were Sophie and Hardison doing here anyways, Nate thought annoyed before remembering that after the long and tiring day, the entire team had ended up crashing in his apartment above the pub.

Forsaking the mirror, Nate rushed down to the loft, where the rest of the team sat in their usual meeting place, each looking just as exhausted as Nate. Parker in particular looked as if she were planning Hardison's murder for the early wake-up call.

"Where's the kid." Nate yawned as he approached the group.

"Still sleeping in the back, I didn't have the heart to wake him." Sophie replied.

"That's nice and all but, but we have a problem." The fear and urgency in Hardison's voice greatly worried Nate. "I mean a 'we may have to pack up and leave' problem. In fact we need to get on that right now. Right now, lets go! Just grab what you can and meet back in Lucille. Leverage Inc. is finished. Gonzo. Done!"

"Hardison!" Eliot stopped the hacker's nervous ranting. "Slow down. Tell us what happened."

"We've been hacked!"

Hardison's revelation caused Nate to sit straight up on his stool. Nobody hacked Hardison...except for Chaos, but there was no reason for Chaos to do this. "What did they get?" He asked icily. This was very bad.

"Everything, Nate. Everything. They got our personal files, our aliases, our accounts, every job we've ever pulled. Everything, and they didn't just get access, they copied all our files. I couldn't trace them either. I have no idea who did this." Silence fell on the group as the severity of the situation became clear.

"It was me." A small voice rang out behind them.

Nate spun around so fast he felt a little dizzy. Standing behind them, shifting from foot to foot, was their young guest. Robin looked extremely uncomfortable under everyone's sharp and bewildered gazes. He was still wearing his torn clothing with his gloves, belt and sunglasses, but his hair was clearly disheveled like he had just woken up. Robin reminded Nate of how Sam had looked when he had been caught with his hand literally in the cookie jar on his sixth birthday.

"I bugged your van on the ride over here yesterday, and used it to gain access to your systems." The kid quickly explained. Although his stance conveyed nervousness and guilt, his voice was calm and level. "At the time I didn't know if I could trust you guys, but I read your files last night. I know what you do, how you help people. I think its great. I was going to tell you guys, but Hardison beat me to it."

"You hacked me?" Hardison was in shock.

"Yah, I only copied the files out of habit, sorry. How'd you detect me? I normally don't get caught." This kid continuously surprised Nate, he would have thought Robin was lying if it weren't for the complete honestly in his voice. Either this thirteen year old boy really did hack Hardison's system, or he was a better grifter than Sophie. Both notions scared him.

"I have a program that alerts me when the last time my server was accessed immediately upon logging in. It's only set to do this if you log in correctly, and not if someone hacks in through a back door." Hardison was staring at the boy with a mixture of fear, and, strangely, admiration.

"Wow!" Nate had to suppress a chuckle when Robin returned Hardison's admiration. "You have to teach me how to do that! It'd be an asterous addition to my security software."

"Asterous? ...Well, It's really not all that hard." Hardison beamed at Robin's excitement. "Wait, HOW did you hack me?" Hardison asked as if suddenly remembering why he had called this meeting.

Nate flinched involuntarily as Robin's grin doubled in size, before the boy sauntered over to Hardison's computer.

"I hacked you with this." Robin demonstrated by quickly pulling a thin cord from the base of his glove. Nate watched as Hardison's eyes grew in amazement when Robin then proceeded to plug the cord into the computer's USB port and a small holographic screen appeared above his glove. "The bug I planted in the van contained some code designed to create its own backdoor in the system. My computer here contains code that activates the backdoor when I'm directly connected to the server. Its basically like a lock and key."

Nate was once again impressed. Hardison certainly was. "Where did you learn that?" Hardison asked poking his finger through the floating screen much to Robin's annoyance.

"My mentor, and some independent study. But that's not really important now." A few brief taps on the smaller computer seemingly gave Robin control of the larger monitor behind him. Nate was amused by the miniature "Robins" that danced on both screens before granting the kid access. A few more commands and a display of Future Industries files, similar to one Hardison would present, filled the large screen. "Future Industries is our priority right now."

"No, our priority is getting you home." Nate sternly interjected. There was no way he was allowing a kid, incredible or not, in on his con. He couldn't live with the guilt if Robin got hurt.

"Exactly." Robin countered. "My home isn't exactly a car ride away. And I don't have the resources to go back myself, but with the help of future Industries I can find a way back. Here's my plan: We trick Brandwein into building a more practical version of Mr. Brown's teleporter. He'll take it public where we expose him as a 'fake' maybe even as a murderer if we can get him to confess. It'll be as if none of this ever happened."

"No." Was Nate's simple response. "This entire plan hinges on the assumption that you really are from an alternate universe or whatever. No offence, but you can't really expect me to believe that story. We have to get you back to your home, which is most likely here in this world."

"Come on Nate. It's a good plan, overly simplified maybe, but good." Hardison remarked. "With a few modifications it doesn't matter what 'world he's from,' and it's the only plan we've got."

"Its Impractical. The 'teleporter' would have to be functional. Where would we even find working blueprints for that."

Robin only smiled.