Chapter Text
Batman sat in front of the batcomputer in the batcave.
Three of his boys Tim, Damian and Jason went missing eight days ago. Superboy, (Connor Kent), a Green Lantern (John Stewart) and Jimmy Olsen, a reporter, were also missing.
Superman was unable to hear any heartbeat. No bodies had been found.
Green Lantern had gone missing eight days ago. Tim (in his Alvin Draper alias) had been hanging out with Jimmy Olsen in the same location, getting photographing newspaper tips.
Tim reported seeing someone with a description and a photo, before he and Jimmy also went missing.
That person was tracked down quickly by Superboy, Red Hood and Robin. They reported that they had found him in a warehouse.
Outside cameras around the warehouse had only shown a lot of little flashes, then one major one that took a minute to clear. After that, no one was there.
Then nothing for seven days.
—-
A humming noise appeared behind him. He spun around on his chair and pulled his mask on. He left the chair moving to near the center of the cave.
A white ball of light was appearing, growing in size.
With a flash, a green bubble appeared with ten children in it, either sitting or standing. The bubble slowly lowered to the ground and vanished. The children fell down together in a group. As they sat up, Batman realized he recognized six of them.
Damian dressed as Robin was unchanged since Batman had last seen him.The rest had been de-aged.
Tim and Connor look like they were 7 years old. Jason and Jimmy Olsen looked 9 years old. John Stewart now looked 11 years old.
There were four other kids Batman didn't know.
Two around 7 years old, one red haired and one with white hair, there was a little flash of light and the white hair had turned black, his clothes had also changed.
One at 12 years, blonde dressed in jeans, jacket and had a gun belt (that was empty). Probably a de-aged goon.
One at 8 years, had curly brown hair, was dressed in blue pants, Red and blue top with white webs over it. Red boots and gloves.
Their outfits were all very loose, no one included Robin was wearing a mask.
Since it had been over a week, Batman was not surprised.
“It worked, we are back.” said Damian getting up, he guided all the children towards the containment cells, “this way, these rooms have beds, bathrooms, food and water.
The children dived onto the beds, and passed out.
“Jason, Alvin do you want your own rooms?” asked Damian, then noticed Tim and Jason were already asleep, “never mind.”
He left the doors open, and came back out to meet Batman.
“Robin report.” said Batman, thinking it was funny that Damian was the oldest in the group.
—---
Robin looked at Batman with a clear blank expression.
“First, I want to know how long we have been away? It was hard to tell. Ten days?”
“Seven days for you, eight days for Green Lantern, Tim and Jimmy.”
“Very well. Seven days ago, Red Hood, Superboy and I cornered Frank, a suspect in the disappearance of Green Lantern, Timothy Drake and Jimmy Olsen, in a warehouse.”
“Superboy had insisted on attending due to Timothy being his friend and colleague. Frank turned on his capture camera on Superboy, which caused him to de-age then vanished. He then turned it on us. It worked on Red Hood, but not me. Turns out it doesn't work if the person is 13 or under. A fail-safe build in, we believe, they probably don't want toddlers.”
“I responded to the attack, and broke Frank's capture camera. This resulted in a backlash power surge which de-aged Frank and sucked all three of us into a different dimension that had nothing there including light.” Damian took a breath and yawned.
“We named it the void. Green Lantern had been gathering everyone into a green bubble. Everyone except me had been de-aged. We did not need food or water, sleep was a problem, the longer someone slept, the harder it was to wake them. We timed anyone who needed sleep, and woke them up every two hours.”
“Frank became very chatty once he worked out he had the same problem of getting home as the rest of us. He admitted he was from another dimension, and was to collect heroes that were on a list. He also had a habit of just collecting anyone else who got in his way. He had jumped into two dimensions before ours.”
“He had collected Daniel Fenton and Wesley Weston from one dimension, Daniel has strong meta abilities. Wesley was an accident, not sure if he has any special abilities or not.” Damian pointed at the red head boy and black hair boy sleeping.
“Also captured Peter Parker who has spider abilities. He is a hero called Spiderman in his dimension.” Damian pointed at the brown curvy hair boy.
“Then Frank jumped into ours. Turns out the Green Lantern was on the list. Timothy and Jimmy were not.” Damian paused, looking tired.
“No-one was able to get any signal out for help. Timothy and Daniel had engineering skills, they worked on the broken machine, Green lantern made any tools they needed. Once it was able to open a portal back here. Green Lantern and Daniel, (who also had a power ability,) charged it up, and we got back here.”
Damian paused blinking. “I believe that is all, I need to sleep now.”
“Yes, go sleep.” advised Batman, “we will watch them before working out how to return them back to their correct age and dimension.”
“Thank you, father.” Damian headed up the stairs for his room.
“Good job Damian.” Batman called after him.