“Damian, what are you drinking?”
Damian holds a glowing green cup. “A smoothie.” He takes a long, slow sip.
Damian continues to drink, making constant eye contact with his father.
Bruce’s eye twitches. He makes a move to slap the toxic beverage out of his son’s hand.
Damian hisses, and climbs up Dash’s tall frame like a feral cat. “If Dash can have ecto-smoothies, so can I,” Damian shouts. He punctuates this by slurping his smoothie loudly.
Bruce tries to grab Damian. His son evades him, switching to Dash’s other shoulder. Damian continues drinking, using his free hand to flip off his father.
Dash gives a good natured smile. “If your dad is hungry-“
Damian scoffs. “It’ll probably kill him. We grew up in separate households.” Dash nods in understanding.
Bruce does not nod in understanding. He does not understand. He is very confused, actually.
“Cool to meet you Mr.Wayne. I’ll bring Damian back in a few hours. We’re going to meet up with Jon at the arcade.” Dash confidently walks away. Damian is still perched on Dash’s shoulder, smirking spitefully at his father. He attempts to slurp from his smoothie cup, but it’s empty.
Damian and Dash move in perfect sync, connecting against eachother in a non-brand-specific-dance-based-rhythm-game (or NBSDBRG for short)
Jon looks on in awe. Damian always made fun of his lack of skill at NBSDBRGs. To be fair, Jon is distracted by the cool lights and sounds. This time, watching the two dance is absolutely mesmerizing. Damian and Dash have laser focus on the game.
Jon pulls an eraser out of his pocket and flings it at Damian. Damian dodges without looking away from the screen.
Jon plans for how he can best prank Damian without ensuring the wrath of his best friend. He sneaks behind Damian, and blows just a bit of his freeze breath down his friends neck.
Damian jumps, ruining his streak. “Jon! You sabatoeur, how dare you.” Jon cackles. Dash hoots in victory.
“I would have won had Jon not intervened.”
“Sneak attacks happen all the time. Not my fault you’re not prepared.” Dash argues, grabbing the pool of tickets pouring out the NBSDBRG.
Damian scoffs. “The whole point of a sneak attack is to catch people unprepared.”
“I’m always prepared. I’m prepared in my sleep.” Dash playfully shoves Damian away from his pool of tickets.
“How is that even possible?” Jon asks.
“Bear traps. Not just good for bears, you know.” Damian nods sagely at Dash’s wisdom. Jon just blinks in response.
“Still, your performance would have been far worse if you were fighting off a combatant while playing.” Damian points out.
“Yeah right. I’m great at multitasking” Dash says.
“Wanna bet?” Damian asks with a dangerous gleam in his eyes. “You against Jon, while I attack you with this.” Damian brandishes a marker. “Three strikes from me, and I win. I have until the end of the match to defeat you. Meanwhile, you have to beat Jon. You win if you evade me during the match and beat Jon’s abysmal score. Winner gets all of today’s tickets.”
“Oh it’s on.” Dash cracks his knuckles unnecessarily.
Dash pours the last bucket of tickets into the collector. A combination of Damian’s spending money, Jon’s enthusiam, and Dash’s mad gamer skills led to a very large winning haul.
Damian had overestimated Jon’s competence at the dancing game. Dash examined the prize counter.
He laid eyes on the vigilante merch. It wasn’t great: the Robin plushies had brown hair for some reason, and the Batman’s ears were longer than his entire torso. There were some plush versions of different heroes: Wonder Woman, Flash, Superman, Hawkman.
But there wasn’t any Phantom merch.
“They’re missing the best hero.” Dash complained.
“Which one? Superboy?” Jon asked.
“Phantom! Danny Phantom, the ghost hero. He’s way better than all these underpants wearing clowns.”
“I’ve never heard of Phantom.” Jon said.
“He’s the local hero to Amity Park, where Dash grew up.” Damian explained.
“Hometown loyalty, I get it.” Jon nodded. He’d be loyal to Kansas heroes, if there were any.
“It’s more than that.” Dash argued. “Phantom is like, the strongest hero ever. He could beat any of these Justice League guys, no contest. He could probably take them all out at once, if he really wanted to.”
“No way.” Jon argued. “Superman has so many different powers. Some small town hero I’ve never even heard of could never defeat Superman.”
“You’re crazy.” Dash said, selecting a Batman plushie that had nipples for no discernible reason. He chose that one, along with a very large dog plushie, and a chew toy for dogs, and paid with their haul of tickets. The dog was nearly the size of Damian. Dash carried it with expertise.
“No way. Phantom probably couldn’t even beat Superboy. I would know about any heroes that powerful.”
“I would agree with Jon.” Damian said. “Superman is a lot more powerful in person. Your hometown bias is likely swaying your viewpoint.”
“Bet. You get Superboy down here, I’ll get phantom, the two fight. Whoever wins gets nipples Batman.”
Jon didn’t want the Batman with Batnipples. But pride was on the line here. “You’re on.” Jon said.