Every moment of the ride home had felt like a hundred years of torture, and once Bruce was in position to do something he had no interest in moving slowly. As he hustled down into the cave, he asked Clark a pointed question. "I assume you're going to the Watchtower?"

"Yes. We've already dispatched a few teams to the bigger population centers, and we'll continue beefing them up as more people report in. We're going to need all the help we can get in the affected areas."

"What about the signals?" Striding to a control panel as he spoke, the billionaire pressed a series of buttons, entered a code, and flipped a switch. Distant thrumming sounded from a back chamber as the Batplane's engines started. Leaving them to warm up, he turned to the computers.

"We don't know yet," Clark answered, following him across the room. "I would prefer to think that this was a natural event, but...well, I'm no seismologist, but everything I've heard so far suggests that an earthquake of that size shouldn't even be possible there. Along the coast, yes, but...not there. That leads me to think there's something else going on."

"Mm..." He typed as he hummed, activating the tracking chips he had had Alfred insert into the linings of the boys' backpacks before they left. In an effort not to add extra weight to their loads he had used the smallest devices in existence, but their minuscule proportions meant that their batteries would only last a few days at the very most. As such he had left them off until now. They should have appeared on the screen as soon as they were activated, however, which was why he found himself glaring at his monitor when nothing happened. "What the hell? Alfred!" he bellowed.

"I'm right here, sir," the butler replied from behind him. "I installed the chips exactly as you instructed me to. There's no reason why they shouldn't be working."

Bruce gave another hopeless look at the map that two precious flashing icons should have been superimposed on. Without those beacons to guide him, he would have to search the entirety of the twenty-five-mile trail. Even if he focused on the area they were likely to have reached by the middle of the third day, there would still be a great deal of tangled terrain to cover.

"If the trackers aren't showing," he fretted aloud, "then their emergency locators should be." Unless they haven't switched them on, of course, he kept to himself. Unless they...they can't switch them on. Oh, god...no. No, don't think that way. They're fine. Maybe they just...just lost their packs... That wouldn't be a good thing by any stretch of the imagination, but it was better than imagining them dead under a tree or at the base of a cliff.

"If I may, Master Wayne," Alfred's voice pierced his mounting despair, "the same signal that Miss Prince reported interfering with satellite and radio transmissions may be affecting the tracking devices."

He latched onto that explanation with the desperation of a drowning man grabbing a lifeline. "...That makes sense. That must be it." Shoving away the scenes of death and destruction that had been playing behind his eyes, he stepped towards the changing area. "We can figure that out for sure later. I'm not wasting any more time here. Alfred, you'll call me if anything pops up on that screen."

"Yes, sir."

"Bruce?"

He stopped, sighed, and turned around. "What, Clark?"

The Kryptonian wore a troubled expression shot through with pity as he spoke two words. "...Good luck."

"You could help, you know," he accused.

Clark flinched. "I love them too, Bruce, but...there are a lot of other people who need my help right now, and almost none of them are as well-equipped to handle an emergency as Dick and Tim are. If they're alive – and I hope to god they are, believe me, I do – I think they'd want at least one of us to focus on the civilians."

The other man was right, but it didn't help his upset any. "Fine. I'll join you after I've gotten them home safely."

"Okay. Good luck," he repeated.

"...Thanks," Bruce grimaced, and stomped away. Damn Boy Scout...two fully-fledged JLA members, two of your own, are in trouble, and you go running to the civilians. Drawing a deep breath, he tried to reel in his rage. In terms of practicality and statistics, he understood Clark's decision. It made more sense for him to go and save many dozens, perhaps even hundreds or thousands, of innocents in a concentrated area than for him to focus all of his superhuman efforts on locating two people lost in the middle of a vast, shredded wilderness. Finding Dick and Tim wouldn't even convey the advantage of swelling the ranks available to help find trapped civilians. While Bruce absolutely held out hope that his boys were alive, he wasn't foolish enough to think that they were uninjured. It was logical when he stopped and thought about it; in fact, it was exactly what he would have done in Clark's place.

In his heart, though, it hurt to know that the Kryptonian would place the lives of strangers over those of the young men he regularly referred to as his nephews.

He had little opportunity to dwell on his newest pain, however. As he entered the locker room, he drew to a halt and arched an eyebrow. "What are you doing?" he rumbled.

Damian looked around, his fingers pressing the corners of his mask to his face as he waited for the spirit gum to cure. "I'm coming with you. I would have thought that was obvious."

Part of the billionaire appreciated that his youngest wanted to help find his brothers. He knew that it was much more for Dick's sake than for Tim's that the child was volunteering, but that was forgivable. Who would have thought you'd prove more loyal in some ways than Clark? he mused. ...No, don't think that. It's not disloyalty, it's... It was something he would have to think about later, because Damian had turned to face him head on and was mirroring his stubborn, aggravated posture. "...You're staying here, with Alfred," he ruled.

"Like hell I am!"

"Damian..." There was no way the youth would understand his refusal, but he had to try. "I need you to stay here." I need at least one of you to be safe. Please, just one of you. Let me have that iota of relief.

"Do you have a task for me to perform in your absence?"

He scrambled for an answer. "You can monitor the tracking maps with Alfred."

"That's pointless. Pennyworth is more than capable of doing that by himself. I will be of greater use in the field, with you."

He hesitated, then shook his head. While it wouldn't hurt to have a second pair of eyes along, he didn't want to expose the boy to what he knew was a potential outcome of his search. If he found them too late, how would Damian take it and Bruce's own inevitable breakdown? No, it was best that he go alone. He could handle anything that came up, he would be alone were the worst case scenario to become reality, and most importantly at least one of his Robins would be at home with Alfred. "You're staying here, and that's final. Put your civilian clothes back on." With that he turned away and began to change.

"...If this is about my safety, you're being foolish."

"I said no, Damian," he snapped. It wasn't surprising that the youth was pulling this stunt now. He had been being a pill ever since Dick and Tim had departed, and Bruce supposed that his current attitude was at least partially a reaction to what was going on with his siblings. While he could understand the need to lash out at something, if only so as to feel useful for a moment, his insistence was still extremely annoying. He had neither the time nor the patience for it, so he brushed him off.

"The next one could be right here, you know."

That got him to stop. Half-clad in the Batsuit, he glared over his shoulder. "I have no reason to believe that will be the case." Despite his certainty, a fresh blade of panic slipped between his ribs.

"I was listening in the car. I'm not an idiot. An intraplate quake that was almost a nine? You know as well as Kent that it shouldn't have happened." Damian crossed his arms. "Something's going on, and it's bigger than mere plate tectonics."

"We don't know that." Stop it. I have to get your brothers back before I worry about what – or who – caused this disaster. Dis-aster... His mind wandered off track and into a minefield. Word play. Always with the word play. The claws that had sunk into his heart in the car suddenly twisted, nearly drawing a whine from his throat. Dick...

"No? Have you ever heard of earthquakes interfering with satellite transmissions before a few months ago, father? Because I haven't."

Bruce yanked his attention back to the conversation. "Damn it, Damian..."

"You haven't, have you?" The boy was suddenly at his elbow. "Have you?"

"...No," he confessed. "Not like this, at least." Pulling on the next piece of his armor, his gaze hardened. "But that's not what I'm focused on right now."

"It should be, if your concern for my safety and that of Pennyworth is half of what it is for them."

"Damn it, Damian!" he echoed himself in a near-shout. It was aggravating as hell, but the child had a point; if someone had somehow triggered a scale-breaking quake in the middle of nowhere, why wouldn't they target a major population center next? Gotham, Metropolis, Bludhaven...they had all had small temblors within living memory, but they certainly weren't built to absorb such events like the cities of the West Coast and Japan were. Any villain worth their salt who had the ability to zero in on an unprepared intraplate city could do far worse than to choose Gotham as the next ground zero.

"...Well?" Damian pressed.

"You can come with me," he gave in. "But you're going to listen when we get on the ground. I'm not fooling around, Damian. If you disobey an order, or do something that might end in you getting hurt or killed, I will restrain you and put you in the plane until we're home. After that, you'll be grounded until you're eighteen or until Dick talks me into leniency. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

It was the most agreeable response the child had given to any inquiry in days. While he wasn't unhappy to hear it, it made him sad that it had taken an event of such seriousness to draw it out. "There's one other thing."

"...What we might find?"

His fingers twitched as he winced. "Yes."

"No."

"What?"

"Kent is wrong," a childish foot stomp punctuated his certainty. "You are right," a second thunk sounded. "They are alive. And we will find them."

Bruce's mouth dropped open for a moment. Closing it, he cleared his throat of the ball of emotion that had lodged in it. "...Thank you, Robin," he breathed. "Now go wait in the plane."

"Hurry," the boy urged as he swiveled on his heel to do as he'd been told. "If Pennyworth has ever been correct about something, it is that time is of the essence today."

Shoving his hands into his gauntlets, the billionaire let a shaky smile tilt the corners of his mouth up. I don't know what made you decide that it was time to grow up a bit, son, he marveled, but I'm damned glad that you decided to do it today. If his missing boys were half as stubborn about giving up as he and Damian were, then surely they could hold on long enough to be rescued. Surely...