Morning had barely settled over Wayne Manor, the sun stretching lazy fingers across polished floors and velvet drapes. In the sitting room, Alfred’s cat—an elegant, overfed silver tabby named Muffins—was crouched on the back of the couch, eyes narrowed in suspicious feline judgment.

Across the room, danger approached.

A blur of tiny feet, a towel-cape flapping behind him, and a paper bag over his head with crude bat ears taped on top. Damian Wayne, age four (and three-quarters, thank you very much), let out a battle cry only a child pretending to be Batman could make.

“You’ll never get away this time, Catwoman!” he shouted, chasing after poor Muffins with a neon green jump rope lasso clenched in his fist.

Muffins leapt down with the grace of a true aristocat and darted through the hall.

Damian followed.

The cape swirled, the paper bag bobbed wildly, and the sound of socked feet slapping against hardwood echoed like thunder in a child’s crusade.

From the study, Bruce paused his morning coffee, watching with a faint smile as his son zoomed by in a blur of justice and imagination. Alfred, adjusting the sleeve of his blazer, didn’t even blink. “Three laps so far,” he murmured.

And then—

It happened.

As Damian rounded the corner, his foot caught on the jump rope trailing behind him. His little body launched forward with the drama of a Broadway exit. The paper mask shifted sideways, the towel cape twisted around him like a parachute—

And thud! He landed with a soft “oof!” on the carpet.

Silence. Then a sniff.

Bruce was beside him in a second. “Hey, hey—it’s okay, kiddo.” He gently turned him over, brushing hair from his forehead. “You alright?”

Damian blinked up at him, lip trembling, then opened his mouth to speak—and Bruce froze.

A tiny gap now sat where one of Damian’s bottom front teeth used to be.

Bruce blinked. “…Huh.”

Alfred walked over calmly, hands behind his back. “A rite of passage, Master Damian.”