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Hal was convinced Batman wasn’t human.
Now, Hal knew that was a silly theory, but there was plenty of proof to back his claims.
When you hit a human, you weren’t supposed to feel like you’d just punched a well-made building.
When humans ran, it wasn’t supposed to be so fast that you wondered whether you actually saw them or not.
When humans fought Superman, it wasn’t supposed to be even matched.
And most importantly, humans had no unjust hate for small talk.
Hal had tried to ask the bat how his family was doing once. Batman just stared at him with a ‘I really wish I could kill you right now but I don’t have the energy to do clean up and trust me there would be a lot of clean up’ kind of expression, which was on brand, nothing new there.
But Hal’s mother had taught him how to not be rude, and based on his mother’s wise words, that was a very rude thing to do.
So out of spite, Hal decided that his New Year’s resolution that year was to figure out how Batman’s family was doing, and by extension, Batman’s super secret identity. And there was nothing wrong with starting New Year’s resolutions in May.
Step one of find out how the Bat-family’s doing by Hal Jordon: Ask Daina.
She said no.
Step two of find out how the Bat-family’s doing by Hal Jordon: Ask Clark.
This had a much higher chance at working. Clark was an open book if you caught him at the right time, and even if he didn’t tell him anything, he was still less scary than Diana.
And that’s how Hal found himself in the kitchen, making a sandwich. Because cheese was a good manipulation tactic. Everyone loved cheese.
Clark was also conveniently in the kitchen, but he was not making a sandwich.
He was sitting on the floor, million yard stare plastered on his face, looking like the saddest boyscout to ever scout the kitchen grounds. Hal speculated it was probably wife related.
Hal walked up to him. “Clark, your my-wife-guy energy’s tainted the food supplies.” He handed him the sandwich.
Superman absentmindedly took the sandwich, and Hal wondered if he even consciously knew he’d taken it. Clark put the whole sandwich in his mouth and then mumbled what could have been a thank you through the mouthful.
“Soooooo…” Hal drawled, hoping he could lead up to the ‘what’s up with the bat’ question subtly.
Superman finally looked at Hal like he was in the room. He swallowed the sandwich with minimal choking, then looked at Hal suspiciously.
“What do you want, Hal?” He asked.
Hal paused for a second, slightly impressed with himself for being caught so immediately, and decided that playing dumb was the best course of action.
Hal snapped his hand up to his chest and gasped dramatically, “Superman! Can a man not ask his very best friend in the whole wide world what’s tearing him up inside?! Can I not offer you the sandwich of condolences for you are clearly troubled my dear bestie for life.”
Hal was not a good actor.
Superman stared at him even more dubiously than before, then raised an eyebrow.
Fair enough, Hal thought.
“Okay. I lied. I don’t care about your wife problems. I wanted to ask you how Batman’s family’s doing,” he said.
Superman’s other eyebrow raised to join his other one.
“Shouldn’t you be asking Batman that?” Superman looked at him like he was talking to a very stupid worm.
“But you know Batman’s identity, and in a very roundabout way, that’s what I’m asking about,” he said.
Clark sighed and rubbed his temples like he was dealing with a misbehaving child, and Hal wondered if that’s how Superman actually thought of him. It wasn’t all that unrealistic.
“Tell you what, Hal,” Clark looked up to meet his eyes. “If you wanna know about Batman, you should ask Nightwing.”
Nightwing? The first leader of the Teen Titans Nightwing? Lone vigilante of Bloodhaven Nightwing? All smiles and happiness and joy Nightwing? Hal couldn’t see the connection.
“Whyyyy?” Hal asked.
Clark just smiled at him like he wanted him to disappear as soon as possible but was too polite to say it, so Hal, like the considerate little superhero he was, put his hands up in surrender, and walked out of the kitchen.
Besides, he had a vigilante to find.
Step three of find out how the Bat-family’s doing by Hal Jordon: Find Nightwing.
Hal had overestimated himself.
After much trial and error (two minutes), Hal discovered he had absolutely no clue how to find people.
This was usually Batman’s job, seeing as apparently all he needed to pinpoint their exact location was to know their full name. Hal was usually more of a go-out-and-trap-the-people-in-a-glowing-green-box kind of guy.
Nightwing’s location said he was in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, which Hal strongly doubted, so Hal tried calling instead.
The voice said it had gone straight to voice mail, but the screen said the call had been answered, and he could hear a child making impressions of him, a gruff sounding man making bad impressions Nightwing, and a man and woman laughing on the other end.
And then it hung up. At least now Hal knew how Nightwing’s family was doing.
After another 5 minutes of staring at the screen wondering how finding people worked and whether he was being mocked, Hal had to go back and ask Superman.
It was extremely embarrassing and Clark looked like he was ready to punch him, but at least now he had clear instructions.
According to Clark, all he had to do was go to Bloodhaven, and wait.
It sounded deceivingly easy, but Hal trusted Clark more than he trusted himself, so Hal went to Bloodhaven, and he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
For three hours. This Nightwing guy wasn’t very punctual.
Hal sat there on the edge of a rooftop and looked down a the broken, crime riddled city. He’d heard seven bank robberies in the last ten minutes.
The unfamiliarity of it made his skin crawl, stomach turning with uneasiness. Hal knew Gothamites always got mad when people said their city was awful, but Hal couldn’t help but think it. Nevermind that this wasn’t even Gotham, Hal had to say the cities felt the same to him.
Both awful.
He heard a shuffle behind him and snapped his head around to look at whoever was sneaking up on him, but there was nobody there.
He got up and looked around, sure he’d heard something.
Or maybe this city was making him anxious. It could’ve been a pigeon afterall. Hal wasn’t sure pigeons could even survive with the air quality here.
He let his guard down and turned to go back to where he was sitting, and immediately regretted turning around so fast because there was a man standing right there in his face and Hal did not yelp and fall on his ass, no sir-ry.
The man—Nightwing, he realised—laughed at him, then, without warning, threw himself backwards off the side of the building.
Hal scrambled to look over the edge and looked down to see Nightwing standing at the bottom. And then he was running and Hal was running too, dodging trashcans, thugs, and cats as he went.
He nearly lost Nightwing several times, before stopping at an odd parking lot with a neon sign to the left that said ‘buy fresh skin’ then ‘and balloons’ right under it.
Hal was about to give up and go home when Nightwing appeared right next to him, so close he could hear his soft breathing, and whispered, “You’re supposed to tag me.”
To Hal’s credit, he didn’t fall on his ass this time, and neither did he faint like some dying Victorian lady.
And he didn’t even scream that loud.
Nightwing laughed. He looked at him like he was prey who’d been lured into the perfect trap, and for a moment, Hal wondered whether he was about to die.
But that was ridiculous and Nightwing clearly wanted him to feel that way so he steeled his nerves and puffed out his chest like a big, brave boy.
“I need to ask you some questions,” Hal said, doing his best impersonation of a not scared half to death person.
Nightwing stopped laughing, and finally looked him head on.
“Why, I’d love to tell you about the bats sitting in my livingroom. They’re basically my own kids anyways,” Nightwing said.
Hal wondered if this was a weird joke he and superman were playing. That was the only way to explain the irony that was the sentence.
“Nooo,” Hal said hesitantly.
Nightwing shrugged. “Your loss, man. They’re adorable.”
Hal would be lying if he said he didn’t want to hear about the bats, but he had important things to do.
“Superman kinda told me you could tell me—well—in retrospect this is a really weird thing to ask, but how’s Batman’s family doing?” Hal belatedly realised that the chances of Nightwing actually knowing what the heck he was talking about were pretty close to zero, but before he could explain himself Nightwing had interrupted him.
“Of course! But to do that I’d have to tell you about Batman himself, wouldn’t I?” He pressed a button on his earpiece.
“In ye olden of Scotland, there was a band of spirit pirates.” Hal opened his mouth to ask what Batman had to do with Scotland, but Nightwing pressed his hand to his mouth and told him that only losers interrupt.
“These pirates pillaged the US borders, caused the Boston tea party, believe it or not, and they only ever wore kilts. They were also—” he paused for dramatic effect, “—half bat.”
Hal gasped. He realised the story didn’t make much sense, but he already fully believed it.
“Then why is Batman here now? And why isn’t he pillaging?” Hal asked.
Nightwing shrugged. “He felt bad I guess. Trying to make up for it.”
“Wait so, he doesn’t have a family then?”
“Legally? Six kids. Otherwise it’s probably closer to twenty-four.” Hal swore he heard a snicker through the earpiece.
Now that Hal couldn’t believe. Batman didn’t make any sense. Being a Scottish pirate was weird, but believable. But Batman raising six to twenty-four well raised adults was just impossible.
“Yeah, ok, now that I can’t believe,” he said.
Nightwing shrugged again and when Hal blinked he was gone.
Non-meta heroes were all crazy.
But Hal wasn’t an idiot. He knew he couldn’t just believe anything anyone told him. Which was why he needed proof.
Step four of find out how the Bat-family’s doing by Hal Jordon: Pay attention.
Shockingly, Hal also didn’t know how to get proof.
So he relegated himself to just looking at Batman until something Scottish happened.
And even more shockingly, it did.
Hal didn’t know how none of them had ever noticed before, but Batman kept switching into a Scottish accent. A really bad Scottish accent.
But what did Hal know about accents.
He also mentioned something about his ‘pirate days’. At this point, it felt like Batman was pranking him, but that was literally impossible. Batman didn’t even smile, let alone play pranks on people.
But then it became very apparent to Hal that Batman was trying very hard not to laugh. Batman, trying not to laugh. Batman, laugh. Those two words didn’t belong in the same sentence.
At this point, everything Hal had ever known was in question. If Batman could laugh, then pigs could fly and Hal was a professional mathematician.
Hal couldn’t even pay attention to the meeting anymore. He just spent the whole time looking at Batman like he had grown an extra pair of ears and they were both covered in pink glitter.
When all the JL members had left, Hal realised it was his turn on monitor duty. He groaned, got up, cracked his back and decided this would be a fine opportunity to sit alone and try and figure out his thoughts.
Besides, he was a professional mathematician now. Mathematicians probably did a lot of thinking.
Hal was making his way down the hallway to the monitor room, when the lights flickered and then everything was dark.
“That’s weird…,” he mumbled to himself, then turned to go check the Circuit box.
Hal leaned over the box, looking for whatever was wrong, and found that the electricity for half the watchtower had been shut off.
He leaned in closer to fix it, when he heard the distinct sound of children laughing. He twisted around and looked around the room, but there was nobody there.
He chalked it up to nerves. Then he got back to work.
Hal managed to get the lights working again, when the hairs on his neck stood on end. Someone was behind him, so close he could feel their breath on his neck and he twisted around expecting a fight, but no one was there.
Hal closed the box as fast as he could and ran to the monitor room.
When he got there he checked the security footage for all the rooms, all the halls, he looked in every single crevice, but there was nothing wrong.
Either Hal had lost his mind, or someone was really good at hiding.
Hal hoped it was the first one.
He stood stiffly, still watching the monitor, for about fifteen minutes, when a green figure appeared in one of the hallways.
Hal knew that green glow.
He checked his hand, he checked his pockets, he even checked the monitor room, but for the life of him, he couldn’t find his ring.
He looked back at the monitor, and the figure wasn’t in the hall anymore. It was in the meeting room, standing on the table. Getting closer to the monitor room.
Hal panicked and looked for anything that could work as a weapon. He found Batman’s emergency bazooka.
Hal had no idea how to use a bazooka.
When Hal looked back at the monitor, the figure wasn’t there. Hal let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and slowly made towards the door. The figure was outside.
The figure was outside.
The figure was outside.
Hal slammed the door shut.
Outside, the figure laughed, high and manic and very very creepy. Hal pressed his back to the door and held his breath like the figure would simply forget he was there if he was quiet enough.
“Green’s my favourite colour, you know,” it giggled. It sounded like it was pressing it’s body to the door. Like it was right behind him.
“I like it on you especially~” Hal tried not to the think about how much it sounded like it wanted to wear his skin.
Slowly, the door creaked open. Hal pushed back trying to close it, but the force on the other side of the door was stronger. Long green fingers slipped through the door crack and manic giggles assaulted his ears.
Hal left the door and jumped for the bazooka, but when he spun around the door was open and nobody was there.
Hal ran.
The lights were blaring with a billion different colours, the floor felt wet and slimy and smelled like honey, something liquid kept being thrown at him from every direction, creepy laughter of both children and the green figure rang in the background.
He tried to make it to the zeta tubes but he had no idea where he was anymore and then the chaos stopped as suddenly as it started and Hal found himself standing in the monitor room.
He stood there for a minute, panting, wondering if he actually had gone insane before looking down and realising that that had all been real, because he was covered in paint.
The monitor made a noise and Hal twisted his head to look at it.
Someone was calling. Hal walked slowly to the monitor and hesitantly answered the call.
A static-y voice answered. “Hello, this is RedRobin, your order of three large pepperoni pizzas will be there in three, two, one–“
A doorbell rang. There wasn’t even a doorbell.
Hal opened the monitor room’s door and came face to face with a young woman, blond hair and a purple mask. He barely had time to register her before she opened the box of pizza and slammed it into his face.
The pizza slowly slid down onto his chest, and when he could see again, she was gone.
Hal looked back at the monitor. The Watch-tower was a mess.
The floor was covered in honey (like he’d suspected), there was paint everywhere, half the walls had smiley faces spray painted onto them, there was toilet paper everywhere, rubber snakes hung from every solid space, and there was whipped cream in every crevice.
“Green Lantern.”
Hal spun around and came face to face with none other than Batman himself. He was almost relieved until he realised he looked extremely angry. At him.
“We left you alone for thirty minutes and you do this?” he hissed, but something was off. His was a little too short, a little too lean and his voice wasn’t coming from his body.
“I know your type, always playing pranks, but this is a space for work. You can’t just do whatever the hell you want. This is a mess.” His voice was low and deadly and for a minute Hal was terrified, but then he realised he could talk and explain that he in fact had nothing to do with this.
Which he did. And Batman didn’t believe him. So Hal had to clean it up.
Step five of find out how the Bat-family’s doing by Hal Jordon: Give up.
Hal was smart enough to figure out that someone didn’t want him poking around their business. And poking around Batman’s business was a surefire way to get pranked, apparently.
Hal wasn’t even sure if it was because of the poking around thing, but he wasn’t willing to risk it.
So he stopped. It helped that he just didn’t have the energy for it anymore.
So the next day he attended the meeting and paid no attention to the grumpy bat. In fact, he paid no attention to the meeting at all. He just slumped in his chair and stared into the distance wondering why bad things happened to good people.
Batman was explaining something about keeping track of villain activity after capture, when the girl in purple that would forever appear in his nightmares walked in and sat in his chair.
Batman made no reaction, but everybody else did. She just sat there eating her popcorn.
“What is the meaning of this?” Aquaman stood from his chair and gestured at her to Diana, who apparently had no problem with this.
“What, who me?” she threw more popcorn in her mouth. “I’m here for the PowerPoint presentation.”
They all paused.
“…what PowerPoint presentation?” Barry asked.
Redhood dropped from the ceiling.
The JL members all rushed for their weapons, when Batman jumped in front of him with his hands up then sighed.
“Wait. He’ll explain in a second.” He sounded very very tired.
Batman went back to his seat and awkwardly stood behind it, because it was apparently taken.
“Idiots and Wonder woman, welcome to my very important presentation,” Redhood started, his voice booming like he was putting on some kind of show.
To his surprise, the computer responded by turning on an actual presentation. It’s title was ‘We know you’re both curious and stupid, so here are the answers!’
The first slide came on. It said ‘Hal, you’re a bad detective.' Everyone looked at him.
“I feel like this one’s pretty self explanatory,” Redhood said.
“I’d be offended, but it’s true,” Oliver said.
Hal twisted to look at him. “It’s not even about you!”
Oliver shrugged. “Still true though.”
The next slide came on. It was a bad screenshot of an article about Bruce Wayne being the joker’s lover. Batman sighed.
The Redhood snickered. “This one’s up to creative interpretation.”
The next slide was a terrible screenshot of an article about how Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne’s oldest, ate children so he could be so attractive.
“This one isn’t true, because he’s not even as hot as his little brother who has way nicer thighs,” The Redhood said like he was talking about himself, which Hal was almost certain he wasn’t.
Next to him, Oliver stood up.
“Is this some kind of sick prank?” He spat.
“Nah I just think he’s cooler,” Redhood said.
“He’s dead!” Hal was almost certain he would have started a fist fight right there and then if Nightwing hadn’t walked into the room and squeezed himself next to the girl in purple. They started bickering over the popcorn.
“Yeah, well that’s just my opinion.” The Redhood flicked to the next slide and Barry pulled Oliver back into his seat.
It was an article about Jason Todd’s funeral.
Oliver stood back up.
Redhood laughed. “Okay Okay I’m done. We’ll just skim over the rest of the presentation.”
The next slide was about Bruce Wayne’s only daughter being a professional ballet dancer, the one after was about Tim Drake being a secret professional ballet dancer, then about Duke Thomas, the newest addition to the Wayne family, being a reincarnate of Bruce Wayne’s dead father, then one about Damian Wayne having a cat tail with apparent photo evidence, then about Stephanie Brown using the Wayne name despite not being a Wayne for attention.
Everytime an article was shown, a new hero walked into the room.
At the last one the girl in purple stood up and clarified that it was actually for the money.
Hal was starting to put things together.
Then Batman stood in front of the room and took his mask off.
Hal realised that Batman did actually have six legal children and promptly turned to leave the room, walked to the door and then turned again because he realised he actually did want to see where they were going with this.
Oliver was crying in the corner.
Clark and Diana were laughing their asses off.
Barry had fainted.
Every single bat-child was now standing next to their bat-father, barely keeping their laughter contained, as Batman awkwardly watched the faces of the Justice League switch from horror to confusion to why is Oliver crying to horror.
“Well, now that that’s out of the way, let us introduce ourselves,” Nightwing said.
“I’m Nightwing, the oldest.” He pealed off his mask. “And I’m Dick Grayson, the one who doesn’t eat children because Jason is hotter than me.”
Redhood snickered. “I'm Redhood, the one with the thighs,” Redhood said while doing some complicated maneuvers with his mask to get it off. “And I’m Jason Todd, the one with the thighs.”
They all introduced themselves. Blackbat and Cassandra Cain, the favourite, RedRobin and Tim Drake, the best ballet dancer to ever grace the Earth, Signal and Duke Thomas, the sane on the outside, chaos on the inside connoisseur, Robin and Damian Wayne, the one who will kill you, and Spoiler and ‘Steph’, the one here for the money.
Apparently, the Bat-family was doing just fine and he was wrong for asking because they were all demons.
Hal, however, was doing much worse after meeting them.