A/N: Just a sort of expansion on Chapter 2, essentially its the team's reaction to Robin's happier attitude.
May be continued in Chapter 4, not too sure yet.
Chapter 3
Four days later and he starts to hate being cheery again. Not because he's upset with moving on or because he feels that he's not worthy of being a hero with Joker's brands on him, but that he honestly wants to strangle just about every member of his team and about half the League because they keep looking at him like he's some adorable little kitten or something.
His bounciness is apparently making him seem more childish, and as a result, he has become something to be protected instead of someone who does the protecting. His ego is severely wounded. It may never recover.
Everything started out easily, everyone being slightly disconcerted that their resident bird decided that walking was overrated, but they got over it quickly. By the end of the first day, seeing Robin upright was a rarity, and they'd come to tentatively accept it. Wally had it the easiest, having known the superhappy Boy Wonder of old and being well aware of Dick's circus upbringing, so he just assumed that something had reminded him of his parents, and thus he was channeling his former life. Kaldur and Artemis just figured it was some wierd Bat-ritual. M'gann figured it was an expression of inner peace, and Conner wondered if all humans were that weird. He decided that such strange behavior was relegated only to the Bat Clan after seeing Wally and Artemis fail at performing a simple handstand.
It was the first time he smiled at them after training on the second day that did it. They went out for a routine mission that night, simple stealth work and information gathering - a breaking and entering job that Robin could have probably done alone - and predictably, the plan got jettisoned from a proverbial window the moment they landed. (It seemed all of their plans were victim to metaphysical defenestration. Robin did not approve of this trend.) Kid Mouth landed wrong on his ankle when jumping from the bioship, yelped like some demented lap dog, and gave away their position to the armed guards who saw fit to ambush them immediately.
That would have worked to their advantage though, had anyone allowed Robin to slip from the fray and go after the information himself while the others continued on with the massive distraction. His plan was met with disbelief, anger, and a protectiveness Dick never thought he'd have to deal with when in costume since he'd stopped wearing a red vest over a green leotard, complete with bright yellow cape and pixie boots. Dick was wrong.
'No!' Conner
'What?Rob,youcan't. Whatifsomeone'swaitingforyouandwecan'tgettoyoutohelp-' KF
'We stay together as a team.' Kaldur
'Maybe I could go? I can blend-' M'gann. She was obviously going to say something about her camouflage being better than his stealth, but caught herself. It was a blatant lie.
'It'll be your funeral.' Artemis
It could have been over in minutes (4 minutes and 37 seconds by his calculations, with a ± 1.2 second margin of error), but instead it takes just over two hours to take down all the guards, secure them with zip strips, then go hunting for the information and leave an anonymous tip for the local police.
He's in a rather cruel mood when they return to base, so he goes into the training room and goes about setting up as many ropes, bars, and rings as he can in a sort of flyer's paradise. He doesn't want to burn through the anger, but keep it, hold onto it and turn it into logic and rationality with that cutting edge his mentor is so famous for, so he flies to push it from his mind temporarily.
Of course, his luck being what it is, Wally and Megan had found him in the training room about an hour later. They walked in right as he attempted one particularly daring swing from the high bar to a rope five feet away and four feet above him. He could easily make it, sure, but if he timed his release wrong, there was another bar just six feet below the rope he was attempting to swing to, a bar he could easily grab onto should he miss.
They don't give him the chance.
"ROB!"
Kid Flash sped so he was just under the acrobat, arms waiting to catch him, and Megan lifted him telekinetically, holding him in midair. He tries not to growl in a particularly batty fashion, and fails, miserably.
"You can put me down now, Miss M. I'm perfectly fine." He sounds bitchy, even to his own ears. He'd wince at that, but he's too damn angry to care. She lowers him slowly, softly, like she expects him to shatter on impact, and it does nothing to improve his mood.
"Thanks." He stalks out.
"-okay, so I get that we're a team, but they all suck at stealth. I know Canary's trying, but learning to walk silently around the base - which is all concrete and steel - is one thing. Being silent on rooftops, on creaky old floorboards in old mansions, on catwalks and rope bridges, in forests, that they can't handle, and they just can't be taught here. That's one of my main areas of study. I can disappear and appear at will, blend into the shadows, and walk without most people hearing a sound. The only ones who hear me coming are Bruce, Alfred, and the Supes. So I don't get why they just can't let me use my damn skills to get information quietly while they do what they can to keep the heat off my back. It'd be one thing if any of them could sneak in with me, but even Artemis isn't good enough for that. Sure, she was trained by the Shadows, but that doesn't mean she's got the right shoes for it. Her boots are way too clunky for a precision job. She's also better long range, so it's best not to bring her with me." He was so ranting right now.
"I assume they just don't like the idea of you going alone."
"It'd be for five minutes at most and I'm the only one who could do it. They're wasting a valuable resource."
"Is that really what's bothering you?"
"No. What bothers me is the fact that I've been doing this for longer than each of them combined and they still think I'm an inept child. Sure, I can act childishly, and I like to laugh and have fun sometimes, but damn it, that doesn't mean I need to be coddled. If anything, they're the ones who need the coddling. They can't handle the pressure most times. And that's fine, they don't live and work in Gotham, they haven't had the face-time with Joker, Two-Face, and Ivy that I have. That's fine. Better for them. But I'm not hopeless. I'm a capable fighter on my own and I'm the only one skilled at information extraction. If anything, I'd be better on those missions going alone then taking a team of inept goons with me who just get underfoot and can't even understand a simple concept like creating a distraction."
"I realize that you're angry, and you have a right to be, but have you thought about why they want to protect you?" They both ignore the fact that he's being shamelessly unfair to his team. They accept that its happening, know why, and ignore it. Analyzing his anger would be unproductive.
"Yes. Which is why I'm okay with the normal coddling. The fact that they keep trying to get me out of the line of immediate fire; that Superboy will take body shots for me when he thinks I'm not looking; that Kaldur tries to keep me to the sidelines with the girls, providing ranged assistance; that Wally does his best to be my clumsy shadow; that Artemis is always ready with an arrow to shoot over my shoulder if someone gets the drop on me; that M'gann keeps dragging the bad guys away from me at any chance she gets. That I'm okay with. But blatantly not letting me do something when it's the best option the team has for success - that I'm not okay with. Because that's not caring about your friends. That's them seeing me as a weakness, as a liability. I've never been a liability to this team since I told Kaldur to take the lead."
She nods at him, evaluating him with that look he's learned to recognize as pensive.
"Alright little bird. Go work off some steam, lecture the punching bags about how they ought to respect you more, and get this out of your system. Then talk to them. Tell them they're smothering you and it's negatively effecting the team. Go Batman on them if you have to. I know you can do it."
That brought back bad memories - the training simulation. She saw his shoulders tense and laid a hand on his right.
"Not like that. Just add some distance and far too much logic with some stern reprimands and constant reminders that emotions make them inefficient fighters. It might be a bit of bullshit, but if it works..."
"You really suck at this therapy thing, don't you?"
"Nah, I'm great at my job. I'm just a pragmatist."
"Aren't those kind of-"
"Mutually exclusive? Yeah. I like to do the impossible. Now, off with you Boy Wonder."
She calls after him when he reaches the door.
"And keep smiling. It's good to see you happy."
He stares at his masterpiece as he tapes it up in the common room. He might have gotten a bit devious while beating through those punching bags, but he hacked the BatComputer a week after learning what hacking was, he should be entitled to a few moments of deviousness. It's also rather creative and manipulative and he thinks Val would be proud. Maybe Bruce, too, if this works properly. He's learned a lot from his sessions with the therapist, learned a bit how to manipulate people into getting the reaction that you want, learned how to twist things just so. Its not reverse psychology, because that's bullshit. Its more of applied social psychology. So this is an experiment, of sorts. On order effects. It's brilliant, really.
Yeah, he thinks, Bruce would be proud.
It's a large poster, taped up in the common room where they'll all see it as they head in for breakfast tomorrow, just before their scheduled de-briefing (Killer Croc broke out of Arkham earlier that night and the Bat was needed in Gotham, so they scheduled their weekly session of ego destruction for 10 am. Luckily it was friday night and they were all sleeping at Mount Justice). Hopefully they'll all be asleep enough to just get the gist of what his poster titled 'The 99 BatRules of Crimefighting' is intended to symbolize. He feels a bit like Martin Luther nailing his list grievances with the Vatican on the door of a Catholic church as he hangs the poster. It's an artistic rendering of Dick's pocket journal of all the BatRules he has to live under. He picked the most important ones to add to the poster, and right at the bottom, number 96, is the most important one - Respect your teammates: no coddling, no babying, this is a war, not a daycare. Every soldier is required and expected to give his all in the line of duty. If you cannot respect your teammates enough to let them fight alone, you aren't a team.
It was more a corollary to number 87 - A team is a group composed of several self-sufficient individuals banding together under a common purpose. If you cannot carry your own weight, you are a liability. If you cannot let someone carry theirs, you have made them a liability.
Which went back to number 3 - Under no circumstances is a liability to be suffered.
All in all, he thinks he was rather successful getting his message across. And he didn't even have to open his mouth to shout them down from their idiocy.
His promise to Val made him flip into the common room later that morning. That was probably a mistake.
"Robin."
Looks like Kaldur isn't too happy about the poster.
"What? I just thought we could all use the reminders. I mean, I keep a copy of all the rules with me at all times, but I just thought the team could use some of them. And I mean, we are a team, so we share our knowledge and abilities right? So..."
"Dude, you have a book of BatRules?"
"Duh."
"I should be surprised, but I'm not."
"Good."
They just stare at him as he happily tears into a muffin.
"Uh, guys, you wanna finish eating? We've got to meet with Bats in ten."
They go back to eating, unamused. Dick's fine with that. He even bounces on their way to the debriefing room.
Batman is never exactly in a good mood, but he's clearly pissed this morning. Dick assumes it was a late night and damn it if Bruce didn't hate getting out of bed before ten thirty if he didn't have to.
"Robin, report."
If anyone's surprised by this, they don't show it. For his part, the acrobat just raises an eyebrow, knowing Bruce had already read his report.
"We got to the location as easily as expected, but on debarkation we hit a snag. Kid Flash landed on the side of his ankle and gave away our position. We were ambushed moments later. During the ensuing battle I requested permission to go ahead and get the information while the others provided a distraction. My request was denied and we took the guards out before going in as a team to retrieve the information."
"Why was your request denied?"
"From what I gather, the others did not think it prudent to let me go in alone. I believe they were concerned that someone would be waiting to ambush me in the building while I was breaking into the computer."
"And no one could go with you?" Bat-skepticism at its best.
"Due to the number of guards present, it would be inadvisable to reduce the team to such small a number, especially over a one-man job."
Batman nodded. "Robin, you are dismissed, for now."
Dick grinned, and proceeded to back-handspring into a backflip on his way out the door. Batman merely shook his head. Dick didn't hover at the door, he didn't need to. He simply hacked into the video feeds and watched the scene from his holo-computer.
"- I understand your concerns, but whatever you may believe about Robin's ability to handle himself you need to remember that he is a fully trained operative, a master of several forms of martial arts, an expert marksman, and the most experienced member of this team." Here he looked directly at Kaldur, then Wally, Megan, and Conner.
"Perhaps this will be an efficient reminder of just who it is you're treating like a fledgling just out of the nest."
With that, Batman tosses a file at their feet, and walks toward the transporter beams.
"Robin."
Because Bruce knew he'd hack the video feed. And he knew Bruce would know, but he wouldn't be a Bat if he didn't monitor everything that went on around him. Especially things involving his partner. Unrepentantly, he closed down the computer and flitted to the Dark Knight's side. "Batman."
They shared a look, and entered the zeta-beam.
They stepped out into the streets of Gotham, silently made their way to the inconspicuously parked Batmobile, and made their way home.
"You gave them my file."
"The abridged version. No names. Glosses over your history - mentions of familial tragedy - and focuses mostly on your recent history."
"Think it'll work?"
"If it doesn't, they're dumber than they look."
"Nice pun by the way, but you should leave those to the experts. Yours just fall flat."
"Dick."
"Was that an insult or just a parental warning?"
He was answered with a glare.
"Just checking."
They pulled into the cave and Dick had his guardian in a hug before the man had taken two steps out of the vehicle.
"Thanks Bruce. You're, well, you're kind of the best."
He neglects to mention that while he was hacking the video feeds, he decided to change the desktop background on the BatComputer. He thought the My Little Pony Batman and Robin fan art was hysterical and he just couldn't pass up that kind of an opportunity.
"Robin!"
Bruce, apparently, disagreed.
"Holy My Little Pony, Batman!"
"Not. Funny. At. All."
"You know, I should be worried that you learned to speak with periods between your words, but I'm not."
"You're waxing the Batmobile. For the next month."
At least it wasn't Penny shining duty. That really sucked.
A/N: For reference: Robin's mention of order effects refers to the pieces of information that we remember best when presented with a series of stimuli. Everything presented first and last is remembered with far more ease than anything in the middle. Thus, Robin's three key points are listed as 3, 87, and 96 out of 99 items, so they'll be remembered more easily by the team.
Also - the penny referenced at the end has to do with the giant penny trophy in the Bat Cave. I'm assuming Earth-16's Cave has said giant penny. The animatronic T-Rex may also make an appearance later on in this series.
Please, let me know what you thought of this chapter.
Thanks for reading!
- Kirrae