Chapter Text
Rain drummed on Jason’s helmet as he rode his bike through Crime Alley. The night had started well, but two hours ago clouds had suddenly gathered and unleashed a heavy storm.
He was now on his way back to the cave, alone on most streets as everyone who could had fled the water streaming down the roads. Killer Croc was probably the only one having the time of his life at the moment.
Bruce had called everyone back for a meeting now that patrols were nearly impossible and useless.
Jason raced through back alleys until he arrived at the backside of a small factory. Speeding up, he drove directly toward a wall. Seconds before he would have collided with it, the floor opened and his bike descended down a ramp into one of the many tunnels leading toward the Batcave.
He came to a stop with squeaking tires when he reached the central cave. Hopping down, he hung his helmet on his bike before knocking over the Wingle for good measure.
He strolled up to the main area. Bruce and Tim were already at the Batcomputer comparing old murder profiles. From the changing room, someone could be heard moving around.
Jason threw himself onto one of the sofas in the corner, fishing his phone out of his pocket and mindlessly scrolling. One of his lieutenants had applied for paternity leave. Jason groaned. Was a bonus as a gift too impersonal? Should he get him a handmade gift for the baby? Why was being a good crime lord so hard? Where were the days when the hardest decision was which gang he would attack first?
Slowly, he heard the rest trickle into the cave, either by elevator or by vehicle. Jason didn’t look up until Tim said something.
“Shouldn’t at least one of us be upstairs in case Percy wanders around the house and wonders where we are?” he asked.
Bruce coughed and murmured something inaudible. “…”
Under everyone’s stares, he turned red and said, barely louder, “He is at a midnight meditation for pregnant women.”
That made Jason sit up straight, his hands rubbing over his ears. He wasn’t sure he had heard that right. “Come again, old man. I could swear I heard something about pregnant women.”
Bruce groaned and pulled a hand down his face. “He had a dream last week about the class and insisted very vehemently that I drive him there.”
“Did you tell him that he is not pregnant?” Dick asked, clearly unsure how to process that.
“He didn’t care,” Bruce said sullenly. “He made it clear it was either me driving him there or he would sneak out. It seemed important to him…?”
Jason snorted. Bruce deserved a cousin with weird hobbies and rivaling stubbornness. At least Percy was happy with pregnancy courses and hadn’t decided to become a furry.
“Anyway,” Bruce said, deciding to distract from the news, “with Percy out of the house and us unable to patrol, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about what we found out about Percy and how his integration into the family is going.”
Tim perked up, eyes frantically moving. “Oh no, why didn’t you say something sooner? My PowerPoint isn’t ready yet.”
Shaking his head, Jason watched as Tim opened folders on the Batcomputer while trying to push Bruce out of the chair. Bruce, in turn, tried to stop the manic teen.
“Hn, anyway,” Bruce cleared his throat after getting pushed into one of the side chairs, “maybe we go around and everyone shares what—”
“Silence,” Tim’s voice snapped like a whip. “I will lead this discussion.”
Like a war general, he stood there, back straight and head high. In his hand was… was that a power pointer with an attached taser?
Bruce did the only logical thing and closed his mouth.
Tim clicked his monstrous pointer, and on the big screen a 3D model of Percy began to spin. If Jason hadn’t already been sure that Tim had issues, he was now.
“Perseus Jackson, our little cousin,” he began—wasn’t he the same age? “191 cm tall and 106 kg at the age of seventeen. Son of Sally Jackson and an, at least to us, unknown father. His shoe size is—”
“Tt, Drake, this is unnecessary,” Damian interrupted. “We already got this information in Father’s first briefing.”
Tim looked disgruntled before clicking through his half-finished presentation, which contained information even Jason found invasive. Was that a page about—? Jason glanced at Bruce, who pinched the bridge of his nose. It seemed like Tim would be getting an intervention again soon.
“Not that… mhm, maybe later. Ah, yes, that’s interesting,” Tim finally paused on a page with several graphics, though the numbers didn’t seem to make sense.
Jason tried to decipher them before focusing back on Tim’s speech.
“With the ability to deadlift at least 600 kg and move the object around, he has shown—”
“Wait a minute.” Jason sat up. “You sure there’s no typo? That ain’t natural.”
Tim shook his head. “No. Everything in here is factual or marked accordingly if not. I tested his strength quite extensively.”
“Tim,” came Bruce’s dark voice, “when and how did you test Percy?”
Tim squeaked under the Batman glare. “I may have asked him to help me rearrange the statues in the garden. The big granite ones. But Alfred knew about it,” he defended himself.
“Maybe he’s Atlantean?” Dick wondered, rubbing his chin. “I mean, he nearly outswam Kaldur, even if neither of them was using 100 percent.”
“No, he is not Atlantean and neither a meta. I tested his DNA. And before anyone throws a fit again, I took his blood from a tissue he used after walking face-first into a door two weeks ago,” Tim added quickly, anticipating another disappointed glare from Bruce.
He paused briefly, scratching his neck, visibly nervous. For the first time, he seemed unsure how to continue. The rest of the family leaned forward, sensing trouble.
“Okay, I don’t think you’re going to like the next part. I checked his DNA for the usual markers—the meta gene, typical indicators of Atlantean or alien heritage. Then I did a full mapping of his DNA out of curiosity, maybe to find allergies or genetic illnesses he’s unaware of. Then I found this…”
The next slide showed two helices with many labels. One was colored green with tiny specks of red all over it. The other showed alternating pure red or pure green sections.
“On the left is the chromosome he inherited from Sally, clearly shown in comparison with Bruce’s or Damian’s. It’s a pretty average one. The green parts correspond to a healthy human genome. The red parts are deviations—nothing drastic, mostly minor expected issues,” he reassured the slightly panicked family. “He might become a little farsighted with age, and he carries the recessive gene for lactose intolerance.”
His pointer moved to the other chromosome, which enlarged until it dominated the screen.
“This one is the one that really worries me. It’s the one he inherited from his father—but I’m not sure he even has a father. That’s a perfect chromosome.” He straightened under their confused looks. “The green parts are his genes, and they’re perfect. There is no error. That is statistically impossible—I ran the calculations. There should be at least something different.”
Taking a deep breath, Tim pulled an energy drink from his utility belt and downed it.
“And the red parts—I had to go through them manually because I didn’t trust the program. All this red area is the so-called noncoding DNA. It’s just there and has no clear purpose. Because of that, it’s more prone to mutation than the coding part. Large portions of it are so unique that they’re used in forensic procedures to identify suspects. And Percy’s… how do I say this? It’s the same. Every part of his noncoding DNA is identical. One side cytosine, the other guanine. No exceptions across all chromosomes.”
That made Jason slump back. Biology had never been his strongest subject, but even he knew what that meant.
“Oh my God. Percy is a super soldier,” Steph exclaimed.
Tim nodded gravely. “Either Percy’s father—or one half of Percy’s DNA—was artificially produced in a lab. It would explain the lack of information we have on him.”
“That explains so much and nothing at the same time,” Dick muttered, head in his hands.
“Exactly!” Tim shouted, making the rest of the family flinch. “Nothing makes sense. Why the hell is he allowed to walk around free? He should be held in confinement and only let out for missions. But he and Sally never showed any contact with that cult until Percy was eleven. And even then, he was allowed to return to school every year. And how was he allowed to live with us? It would have been the prime chance to make him vanish into their ranks.”
Everyone eyed Tim suspiciously. Jason suppressed a chuckle. It was such a Tim thing to get so deep into his theories that he started sounding like a villain.
“Chum, maybe dial it back a little,” Dick said gently. “We can try to unravel that, but as you said, there doesn’t seem to be an immediate danger.”
Tim huffed, breathing in what was clearly a meditation technique. After a few tense seconds—during which more than one person had secretly grabbed tranquilizer darts—he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he seemed back to normal.
“Yeah, so there’s that. To be honest, I don’t know what to do with that information. I ran the tests twice, and Babs ran them again, but we always got the same result. We also did a quick search through the databases of the usual suspects when it comes to genetic experiments. Luthor, Cadmus, and the League are all clear as far as we can tell. And no other theory explains it.”
“Hey, you did good,” Dick said, ever the golden boy. “It answered at least some of our questions. And we all knew we wouldn’t get everything at once. Have you found anything else? Something we should worry about?”
“Uh, yes. One thing.” Tim looked relieved as he clicked through the presentation until he reached images of protein structures. “You all know that hemoglobin in our red blood cells contains iron groups to bind oxygen. In Percy’s blood, approximately 60 percent of his red blood cells don’t have iron groups. Instead, they have a gold group. Don’t ask me if it has any advantages or how he survives with it, because it shouldn’t be efficient enough to sustain him. Hell, I even struggle to explain how or from where he consumes enough gold to reach these levels.”
Jason burst out laughing. “Damn, Bruce, your Waynes are so rich you skip blue blood and go straight to gold. That’s hilarious.”
“You’re also a Wayne, Jason.”
“Shut up, old man. I’m not.”
“Todd, you sound like a toddler. Drake, is this something I have to worry about regarding my cousin?”
“I’m not quite sure. It doesn’t seem to have harmed him yet… maybe we can ask Alfred to sprinkle some gold powder into his food? I’m not a doctor.”
Before anyone could respond, the Ghostbusters theme blasted through the cave at full volume. Everyone turned to Dick, glaring at him with varying degrees of disgust and annoyance.
Ignoring them, Dick fished one of his phones from his pocket and chirped into it, “Officer Grayson speaking.”
“…”
“Yeah, he belongs to me. Is everything okay?”
“…”
Dick paled drastically. “I understand. I’m on my way.”
He tucked his phone away and turned to the family, opening his mouth only to close it again. He repeated that a few times before finally speaking.
“That was the Gotham PD. Percy was involved in a kidnapping with Firefly.”
Shouts echoed through the cave. Bruce was already halfway to the medical station. “How badly is he burned? Does he need surgery, or are some balms enough?”
Dick just shook his head. “You don’t understand. He wasn’t kidnapped by Firefly.”
“…”
“He was the one kidnapping Firefly.”
“…”
“WHAT?”
Jason strolled behind a scowling Dick into the police station. Dick had forbidden everyone from following him after they’d all flipped out when he revealed the kidnapping, but Jason hadn’t cared much and had simply driven himself to the station. It wasn’t the first time he’d been here, even though he was normally the one who had to be picked up by Dick.
“Yo, Grayson, seems like your newest one follows the family tradition,” one of the officers greeted them.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dick pressed through a grimace, while Jason just beamed behind him. “What exactly happened? You were very short on the phone.”
“Yeah, don’t know where you picked this one up, but he and his friend are menaces. Firefly tried to attack the building they were both in. All three vanished, and nobody knows what happened in the next two hours. Then they showed up again on our street cameras, riding an illegally tuned car with Firefly bound to it.”
“Can you repeat that?” While Dick sounded completely done, Jason was delighted.
“Come with me. I’ll show you. To be honest, they caused the most interesting incident this month so far. Even beat the time when Scarecrow got scared by his own mirror image.” He led them to a computer further inside the station.
He opened a slightly grainy, gray surveillance photo. In it was a car—if you could even call it that. All the covers were missing so every part of the engine was visible. Or engines. Parts of multiple different cars were meshed together so it looked like some crazed Mad Max build and… were those scales on the side?
Through the windscreen, Percy and another teen were sitting in the seats, wrestling over the steering wheel.
On the front of the car, a pole had been bolted and duct-taped on. Clearly screaming in pure horror was Firefly.
“Oh no,” Jason breathed out. “They forgot to buckle up.”
Dick spun around and jabbed a finger into Jason’s chest. “That is not the problem here.” He turned back to the officer. “I would like to speak to my cousin now.”
“Sure. They’re back in one of our conference rooms,” the officer replied with the energy of someone who had seen so much he didn’t care anymore.
“Wait.” Jason looked affronted. “Why did he get the conference room and I’m always put in a holding cell?”
The officer just lifted an eyebrow and gestured for them to follow him. He led them down the, for Jason, familiar corridor with the cells.
“Oh.”
In front of them was not a security door where one should have been, but a rectangular hole. Jason lowered his gaze. There on the ground lay the door, with the lock and screws neatly stacked beside it. When he leaned into the cell, he saw multiple neat heaps of parts of the bed, the camera, and the sink.
Stepping back, he glanced at the other cells. None of them had doors anymore.
“Hn.” Dick gritted his teeth.
Jason had already decided to gift Percy some really good food. He would even color it blue if he had to.
When they finally opened the doors to the conference room, they stepped into a fever dream. Sitting at a large table, two teens had sprawled into chairs. In front of them was a complete gaming setup—a giant monitor with a connected PlayStation running.
“I didn’t know you had that here,” Dick commented.
“Neither did I,” replied the officer. “Okay now, Mr. Wayne, since one of your guardians is here, we can talk about what happened.”
“It’s Jackson, but sure.”
“Wait, shouldn’t we wait for the guardians for this one?” Jason knew their rights when it came to cops.
“Mr. Valdez is emancipated.”
That’s where Jason knew the face from—the Latino elf from Bruce’s files. He was the cult arsonist. The teen noticed Jason’s stare and threw him a mischievous smile.
“Can you tell us in your own words what happened tonight?” asked the officer.
“Sure. Leo and I were participating in a meditation course when Mr. Firefly decided to disturb us,” Percy said.
“He was such an ass,” Valdez added. “He tried to tell me something about the art of fire. Me! Can you believe it?”
“He was rude. Anyway, we took him aside and told him that it was unacceptable to act that way. Then he asked us to take him for a drive, and that’s how we landed here,” Percy finished with wide, innocent eyes.
“You want to tell me that Firefly asked for this?” the stunned officer said.
“Ask him,” Valdez replied, his grin pure smugness.
The officer slammed his forehead onto the table without dignity. “We can’t. He’s just raving about burning devils and water that hunts him.”
Percy and Valdez looked at each other and shrugged. Then Valdez pulled a pair of papers out of—was that a tool belt? How did those papers even fit in there?
“Luckily, Mr. Firefly has written down that he allowed everything we did out of his own free will.”
Jason looked over the contract and immediately choked on his spit. There was handwritten permission for everything the two of them had apparently done—and if Jason remembered correctly, that was Firefly’s handwriting and signature. He was impressed. How had they managed that?
“What? How?”
“Can we go now? We did nothing wrong, and if I’m not mistaken, it would be illegal to detain us any further.”
“Sure. Please go,” the officer pleaded.
“Oh, can I get my car back? I need it to get home.”
The officer perked up, a gleeful glint in his eyes. But before he could say anything, Valdez slammed another stack of papers onto the table.
Gotham Car Registration Permit was written in large letters at the top.
The officer visibly deflated.
The teens just laughed and walked out the door, leaving behind two exhausted and one gleeful adult.
“Where the fuck did the PlayStation vanish to?”