Problem Child 9

Chapter Nine

Dad dropped the tray of juice when he saw who Aiko had let into the house. Robin darted forward to catch it on his palm. Aiko clapped politely as he spun it, let out a little hmmph, and proffered it back to her father. 

“Thanks, buddy,” Dad said weakly. His eyebrows tugged down. “Sweetheart, are you super hero friends with Robin now?” He put the drinks down on the kitchen table. “Where, uh, where did you meet?”

Robin crossed his arms and scowled at the floor. 

Superhero friends? Ugh, gag.

“Daddy, that’s demeaning to us both,” Aiko said sternly. “We are going to do training.”

Daddy put his hands up. “My mistake.” He huffed a laugh and scratched at the back of his head. “Well, kids, call me if you need snacks or anything. Don’t start any fires, break any glass or bones, dig holes that we can’t blame on a dog, accept any assassination contracts, send mail to-” 

“Dad, Robin already knows the rules!” Aiko whined. He was so embarrassing. “Let’s go to the backyard.” She tugged on Robin’s arm. “I bet I can run on my hands as fast as you can.”

Robin paused for a moment. She was worried he would ask Daddy for the rest of the rules. She was very relieved when he gave a short nod and a grunt. 

“No one break your neck,” Daddy called after them. “I’m scared of Batman, kids.” 

‘I can’t believe he’s embarrassing me like this in front of Robin. I’m going to tell Mom on him.’

Aiko rolled her eyes as she trudged outside onto the damp grass. Dad thought he was subtle about it, but Aiko and Robin both heard when he slid open a second floor window to keep an eye on them.

“You normally train in your backyard?” 

She eyed Robin sideways for that unimpressed question. “Why wouldn’t I?” Aiko rolled into a cartwheel just for the sake of it. “I’m six. I don’t have a secret facility. And the neighbors would just think I’m playing pretend, if they ever looked over the fence.” She dodged an invisible opponent and hit them super fast in the back with a closed fist, one-two! Then she rolled and popped back up over her shoulder, holding an imaginary sword. She raised her eyebrows at him.

“….you favor a short blade,” Robin said, taking an appropriate posture to match her. Aiko beamed at him. He leveled his imaginary sword at her with quite good form. She swung, met his block, and they proceeded to fight a mock spar. 

Daddy got bored before they finished, so they sheathed their fake blades and bowed the end of the spar. Then Aiko grabbed Robin’s arm. He let her, cocking his head sideways like a real bird to peer at what she was doing. Ugh. So creepy and cool.

“I need physical contact to try to diagnose you,” Aiko explained. She frowned a little bit as she reached for his chakra system as cautiously as she could with her sledgehammer control. She knew what her extra optical nerves felt like, and how her water nature felt in her body. Odds seemed good that if she could run a diagnostic, she could save them time and heartbreak by figuring out what capacity for jutsu he might actually have. She had never trained as a medic nin, so it felt fair to say: “I’m not an expert or trained in this at all. I probably won’t blind, burn, or otherwise injure you.”

Robin took back his arm. 

Aiko rolled her eyes. “It was non-invasive,” she complained. “But fine.” She put her hands on her hips and huffed out a put-out sigh.

He scoffed at her. “I do not consent to inexpert medical assessments.”

“..Fair enough.” Aiko flopped down on the grass to have a think about how best to approach this. How did you get someone to make first contact with chakra coils that were so finely integrated that it seemed like no one in this world even knew how to use them?

It was sort of reasonable. Her chakra control was absolutely terrible right now, compared to her adult abilities, and even as an adult she had struggled to interact benignly with other living things. She was a lot better at ruining people’s chakra systems by boiling them alive with genjutsu than she was at, like, anything else. She still pouted a bit. 

Oh. Hey. Aiko snuck a glance at him and bit her tongue in concentration. She could definitely pull off a blanket genjutsu. If Robin couldn’t see it, that would be a bad sign for his ability to process chakra at all. But…

“I do not wish to waste time,” Robin said, right as she snapped into place a blunt, ugly illusion of darkness across the yard. It had none of the sophisticated, subtle creep of a mist illusion that she had been able to do as a teenager. It was more a suggestion of not being able to see.

Robin went stiff and dropped his posture into readiness. 

“You see that?” Aiko asked, excited. She accidentally let the illusion snap. 

He gave her a derisive look. “What did you do?” Robin demanded. 

“Proved that you can interact with chakra.” Aiko flipped up to her feet and bounced on her heels. “That’s great! I’m going to do that again. Really look around, categorize what you can sense. The goal of this is for you to make conscious contact with your chakra system.”

She ended up spending the rest of their time together holding increasingly sophisticated illusions for Robin to scowl at and prowl around. It was good practice for her on technique, at least, but it was boring after a while. 

The good news was that he could recognize it as artificial, which was an essential step for interacting with it as anything other than a victim. Robin could see the boundaries between her illusion and the unaffected grass. He dissolved it once and they both got very excited, but he didn’t manage to replicate that success again. 

“I wish to try again.”

Robin reacted well to failure and struggle. He didn’t snap or growl, blame her or whine. He asked insightful questions and persisted with grim dedication. He had the sort of personal discipline that Aiko would have loved to see in any genin student.

But he was someone else’s disciple. She needed to remember that. His first loyalty would never be to her, so she needed to make sure she got what she needed from his end of their association.

Aiko shook her head to his request. “I need a break,” she lied, and stretched her hands as if they were stiff. “We don’t have much time left. How are our friends in Gotham?”

Robin glowered at her, as he did every time she blatantly lied to him. “Fine,” he spat. “They have not yet misstepped. Beautia has taken responsibility for her brother, but the other girl is being kept separate.” 

“And Batman doesn’t know I was involved?” Aiko checked, more curious than anything. “I guess I don’t care if he knows, except I don’t want Marvel to feel embarrassed that I went behind his back.”

That was another lie, even if she made it more believable than her others. The Justice League might make problems for her if they knew she was killing off Marvel’s enemies. They were concerned about her going down the path of supervillainy or whatever just because she had a grudge against Superman. Aiko sort of thought that they could come and fuckin’ fight her if they had issues with how she worked, but it would be better to be armed with more information than not.

He gave her a long, impassive look that somehow communicated she was the most foolish person he had ever known. “Batman is not involved,” Robin said. “Do not trouble yourself with Gotham affairs.”

Aiko put her hands up. “Alright,” she conceded easily. Jeeze, territorial much? She wasted a moment wondering who he was coordinating with, but it was a pointless use of her time. She didn’t even know them all, much less who Robin might coordinate with outside of Batman’s purview. “Do you want me to take you back to the zeta tube?” She could hiraishin him to the right area and save him travel time.

Robin shook his head no. “I will be fine,” he said curtly.

Maybe he was envisioning her walking him there, or trying to put him on her replacement bicycle. Aiko hid any laugh or smile that wanted to bubble out. “Alright. I’ll message you about our next meeting.”

He nodded and turned on his heel. Aiko didn’t bother to watch him go. She made her way back inside the couch and shed her shoes in the entryway. 

Tomorrow was going to be a test of her acting ability, Aiko was sure. Marvel was not the most observant guy out there. But he would eventually notice that his enemies had dropped off of the map. Aiko rolled her shoulders, smiling grimly to herself.

It was good to be back in covert business. She just didn’t feel like herself without some strings to pull. She probably should have waited until she was a full-grown monster to reveal herself to the world as a major player, but that ship had already sailed and she was feeling much better now that she had more than elementary school to stimulate her intellectually.

A part of her did twinge with guilt about going behind Marvel’s back to use lethal force that he never would approve of. He would be hurt or upset if he realized what she had done for him.

‘But that’s why I’m hiding it. It’ll be fine. He won’t figure it out, and he will eventually realize that they aren’t a threat to him anymore. In the meantime, he’s safe. Maybe he can teach me how to fly.’