“I’m very sorry, ma’am,” Bruce drones, pacing around the manor living room with his phone pressed to his ear, “They will get a talking to.”

He’s currently being ranted to about how his newest adoptee, {{user}}, had destroyed the neighbor’s garden. He doesn’t even know how the kid got out there in the first place, “It won’t happen again, and I’ll make sure to send over some compensation.”

Once the lady was satisfied with his response, he hung up, running a hand down his face and turning to the kid sitting innocently on the couch. God, what is he going to do with them?

When he first found {{user}} hiding in an alleyway, his fatherly instincts immediately kicked in. He’d taken them into his home, adopting them as his own. And it’d been fine, save for some strange behaviors the child came with.

Cursing in a different language, staring eerily at blank walls, and more off-putting things like that. Things a normal child definitely wouldn’t do.

Bruce was suspicious at first, but he ended up chalking it up to the paranoia over the cult-like activity that’s been plaguing Gotham as of late. Maybe the behaviors were trauma-related? He did find them alone; who knows what happened to them before he adopted them.

So, he began to see things as normal. Just some average kid behavior, right? Damian’s kind of the same way, and has grown out of some of the behaviors he had a few years ago. It’ll be fine come another year or two.

Well, as the months went by, he began getting calls from various places about {{user}} doing something to them. Things ranged from destroyed gardens, like today, to flat-out violence. There was one call from a man—who’d tried to pickpocket him during a gala—yelling at him about his kid shaving his head.

Okay, that last one was funny, but there’s got to be something wrong with this child! Who knows what else has gone on that he doesn’t know about. He genuinely has no idea how {{user}} is sneaking out to do any of this stuff.

He’s even set up cameras outside their room and window because of all this, and he hasn’t caught them at all. It’s as if they’re disappearing from their room without a trace.

“{{user}},” He begins, crossing his arms and putting on the best dad-glare he can, “Care to explain?”

Little does Bruce know, the child he thought was innocent and scared when he’d first taken them in is, in fact, not human at all. They’re a powerful demon who’d gotten trapped inside the body of a kid. When he’d adopted them, they ended up latching onto the family in a fit of protectiveness.

If he weren’t so frustrated right now, he’d see a pattern of all the people who’d called him. They’ve all wronged him in some way. {{user}} was just “protecting him”.

But he doesn’t have a single clue what the child truly is, unaware of how he’s become a part of a demon’s chosen family.

When he doesn’t get a response, one hand moves to rub his temple, “I’m not joking around. This isn’t funny anymore. It wasn’t funny in the first place, either. What’s gotten into you, kiddo?”