Chapter 15 gold Bats and Letters

Chapter 15

I appeared by my house as I tumbled out of my rift, head over heels. As I laid on the ground, Fluffy wiggled out of my grip and ran over to the side of my head. I looked over at him, and he put his paw on my face.

"You know you are supposed to land on your legs; you know these things."

he says tapping his paw on my face multiple times to emphasize his point. I try to grab him, but he is too quick and jumps away. That cheeky fox is just messing with me, and it's working. I quickly use my strength to launch myself up in the air and land on my feet as I run after him and start an impromptu tag match with him. After doing that for a while, I tapped out to start on the mining and maybe fix the house more before it became too late in the day.

Fluffy walked beside me as I made my way to a spot further away from the house that would become my staircase to the mines. After getting to a good spot, I built a bunker-like building around the entrance just in case, and then I started to dig. Fluffy laid down by the doors, watching me get to work. Normally, I would make the staircase 4-5 blocks high to make sure I had enough room for my character and didn't hit the ceiling. But in my new life, my height is slightly above one meter, and a block is exactly one meter in height, so it was dig down, jump down, dig down, jump down. The repetitive action was boring, but I really wanted to go and dig a diggy, diggy hole.

It took a while, but I slowly made my way down. I made several landings where, if for some reason I fell, I would land there and not fall down all the way. I would have to come back later and make it look maybe a bit more fancy, but that's not today. After getting down really far, I walked all the way up to Fluffy, put down a crafting table, created staircases, and started to put them down as I walked down again. This time, I counted my steps, and after getting down all 169 steps, I made another landing for no particular reason…

Now you might ask me, but Leo, have you met no caves or monsters? Well, yes, I did, but I went slow and sealed it up as I went. I did not like the creepy atmosphere, but Fluffy was talking to me and kept me company in my own head. I soon got down to deep slate and kept going down, but ran out of pickaxes and made my way up the staircase to the surface to take a break and work on the house because my nerves were shot. I have never really been good with scary movies, games, etc., and this was real and terrifying.

I picked up Fluffy and went back to the house, and I started to flatten out the ground. Fluffy helped by walking far away from the house and starting to break the ground and collect the dirt blocks. I might have spent way too long doing this, but now I had a massive area flattened out and I had something to use all of these cobblestone blocks for. I made a 3-block-high, 2-wide wall around the entire base with doors in all four directions. This took me a good chunk of my day, but it was now as safe of a space I could make without having any actual defense structures.

I made my way over to the house and laid down on the bed with Fluffy; it was actually comfortable, and after taking a nap, I set out to the staircase again, this time with a ton more stone pickaxes. Now normally, your pick speed becomes slower when you hit any of the deep slate, but with super strength, I would just need to hit harder, and the block would break in just one hit.

Getting back to work, I went on for what felt like hours, but soon I finally hit a block that looked very different from the game. It must be bedrock. I tried hitting it for a while, but nothing happened, so I guessed I hit a limit for now, or this is bedrock, even if it looks a bit differently. Normally, bedrock is easily identified in the Minecraft game, but for some reason, in this world, it's not black and gray but some form of very dark gray and looks very imposing.

For now, this is not my goal, so I walked up to the closest landing and made a mining corridor that I would be using to mine gold, diamonds, and iron. I started out by making a bigger room with a few smelters, a workbench, and some doors just in case something came. I also made sure to light up the place just in case enemies could spawn in dark rooms or if that was just the Minecraft world. But before I started, I had called down Fluffy, and by the time I was done making my makeshift mining room, Fluffy was outside the doors to the room. I opened the doors for him, and we made our way to start mining.

So far, using our superpowers has worked wonders, and it did not take us long to start finding ore. I would break the blocks while Fluffy collected the blocks. Any time we accidentally opened a cave, we closed it. I was not keen to try fighting skeletons with arrows, as I did not want to test if I was arrowproof or not until I had some type of healing power. As we were working, I was anxious about the air quality, but the longer we worked, there didn't seem to be any difference down here than on the surface. I asked Fluffy, and he had no adverse effects, so I shrugged it up to the world working on other laws, then the world I came from, and left it at that.

I soon took a break and went to the furnaces, filling them with wood and ore. There was no game window, but the bottom I filled with the shrunk wooden planks, and they got sucked in at the bottom of the furnace, and the same happened with the ore. And if Fluffy tells anyone that I jumped back in fear when it happened the first time, I will deny it, and he can't prove it. As the furnaces worked on turning the ores into bars, I went over to the bed and laid down, petting Fluffy on my stomach while watching the furnaces just in case. The furnaces worked for a while before they all went out. I really miss having a phone, or I could have timed this, but Bruce respected my mom's wishes to not give me a phone until I was older. I really should not have told him that, but I really did not think it would bite me in the future.

After the last furnace had turned off, I made my way over and peered inside the first furnace and saw a bunch of tiny bars. I started to pull them out by the fist and throw them into my inventory. After emptying all of them I walked over to the crafting table and made my first gold block and placed it on the ground. It was so BIG I jumped up on it and gave it a hug because I WAS RICH!!! The gold was not the main focus for me, but the doors it would unlock. I could now buy my own stuff that I could use to furnish my Minecraft base with stuff.

I put a block a bit away and angled my camera to take a delayed picture and pose on top of the gold block to remember the occasion. I would leave this gold block here as a reminder of the first gold block I ever made. I had enough gold to make more gold blocks, but this was my first out of many. But what would I do with all of the gold? I mean, I can always buy stuff, but what to do after that? Hmm… Oh, I could make my own Scrooge McDuck vault with gold coins and swim in the money I would need to make a power for it, but it would be so much fun. The more I thought about it, the more excited I became before Fluffy burst my bubble.

"You know you need to turn them into gold coins first; how are you going to do that?" 

"I… don't know."

"Maybe there is some other world you can go to and do that?"

"Hmm, I really can't think of any world that would turn gold blocks into gold coins; most just turn gold into bars or items, but I can't think of a world that would do it."

"Why don't you ask our dad? He is a billionaire and could carve up the gold into gold coins for you."

"Oh, I keep forgetting dad is that rich…"

"Well, I guess we can make a few... hundred more blocks before we go."

I did not mentally drool at all those gold coins so I could play out my own dragon fantasy! My name is Leo. Have you come to take my horde? BEGONE THIEF!!!! I snickered to myself at my mental picture of it. Fluffy sent me a mental picture of him on top of the gold, but five times the size of his big form, and in the center, I sat on a golden throne in a massive underground cavern in majestic white clothing with a fox emblem on my right breast, like some royal symbol. That mental image was just too cool, and now I wanted to make it a reality, but it would probably take a very long time. I would need to upgrade Fluffy's power, get earth manipulation, get some magic torches, and get the most expensive of all, a solid golden throne.

"FLUFFY, stop giving me such expensive dreams; you know I would want to make that a reality now!!!"

"Hahaha"

"You are mean."

I sighed, pulled out a notebook, and wrote down the mental image on my bucket list before going back to mine for more gold and other ores. It was several hours later when I came back, and the mining area looked like a minefield. I might have gone all out with diamond pickaxes, as I did not really need them, and I might have had too much fun breaking everything in sight.

I took another nap after the mining and filled up every furnace with gold ore. I woke up and finished turning all of the gold into gold cubes and exited the mine with Fluffy in my arms when he reminded me to pick up the camera that I had forgotten when I started to daydream of my horde of gold and a titan of a fluffy. I quickly ran over and picked up the photo and the camera. I took a quick look before putting them in my inventory before exiting and making my way to the surface.

I was watching the exit getting closer and closer when I noticed it was nighttime. Ooops, I might have been here for too long. I really did not want to deal with minecraft mobs until I felt safer surviving an explosion and had the power to heal from it. I peered out of the door, and it was pitched black. Oh yeah, I had not placed torches all over my base, so I decided that I would leave this world and go to my dad and see if he could turn the gold into gold coins. Fluffy agreed with my plan after talking it over with him, and we were off to see dad.

I can never get sick of flying through my rift. It is just so colorful, but the abrupt exit is jarring at times because I get distracted… Is this why I keep tumbling out of my rifts? Nope can't be right... The first rule of the internet is to blame everything except yourself.

"You know that is not the actual first rule of the internet; the internet is for por-" 

Fluffy tells me as I tumble out of the rift in the lobby of dad's house and get almost immediately grabbed by a pair of strong arms. After the world stops spinning, I see a man in black spandex with a blue falcon on his chest, and I know I am not in the correct universe.

I pull Fluffy closer to me in reaction to getting startled by being grabbed so abruptly by Nightwing, also known as Dick Grayson, my kinda big brother… I never really got officially adopted by dad, but it-

"Focus," Fluffy said mentally.

"Are you ok, kid?" Dick asked me while looking me over for any wounds, scrapes, etc. while looking concerned and a bit suspicious… Was he checking to see if I was armed or something?

"I'm ok, Dick," I answered back… and that might have been the wrong move. He went from concerned to alert in an instant, and his grip got just that bit tighter. I expect that if I were a normal child, I would be unable to escape his grasp.

"Who are you, kid, and how do you know that name?" He said it forcefully, but there was still a hint of concern.

"My name is Leo an-"

"Is that you, master Leo?"

I heard coming from the doorway to the kitchen, where Alfred stood with two girls, one of whom had black hair and the other was blonde.

"Ehh, hi Alfred." I gave him a wave and tilted my head.

"Have we met?"

"Was it not you who appeared through a rift a while ago? You hugged my leg and told me your name before you left because you were tired, but last time you did not have your furry little friend."

"OH!!! I remember I had a misfire. I was still learning about it back then."

"So? He knows about???" Nightwing asked, hinting at their nightly workout.

"I do not know why; don't you just ask him yourself?"

Alfred said, and all their eyes turned towards me. Sure, just put me on the spot like that, Alfred, I thought, squirming a bit under their combined gaze.

"You mean like Batman and stuff???" I pretended to be confused.

This seems to have opened the floodgates, and the two girls behind Alfred jumps around Alfred, and the blond girl greets me.

"Hi, I'm Stephanie, and this is Cassandra. Do you know about us too?" She sounded a bit excited.

"Ehh, no, there is only Alfred, me, Dick, dad Oh, and Fluffy," I say, holding him up now that Dick has let me go.

"What I only get a OH you are so mean." Fluffy said, giving the most dramatic pose, like he was about to faint.

"HE CAN TALK!" Dick, Stephanie, and Cassandra overreact, while Alfred's eyes open a bit to show he was also a bit surprised.

This started the floodgate, and people started to appear in the lobby from all over vents, stairs, secret passages. I don't know, but the room was full of people in just a short while, and there stood dad… I mean, this is not my dad, but I have a really hard time calling him Bruce… It just sounds wrong in my own head. It got very loud as everyone was talking over one another, and I did not know who all of these people were. I really only recognized the robins, Dick, Jayson, Tim, and Daimian, but I was surrounded and quickly backed closer to Dick, as I know he is supposed to be the most gentle of the Robins.

"Quiet down, everyone. You are all scaring Master Leo." Alfred raised his voice and quieted the room quickly. Fluffy piped up from below me.

"Wow, Alfred got them all whipped," and I just wanted to sink into the ground. Fluffy, keep your stupid mouth shut, please. I only got a mental foxy grin back.

This started the second round of loud talking and shouting over one another, and I think I heard something about skinning the fox alive and turning Fluffy's fur pink in revenge. However, this was short-lived, as Alfred once again quieted everyone down with the help of Dad.

Now it was just dead quiet in a room full of people all looking in my direction, or more likely Fluffy, and this made me nervous. I have never been the biggest social butterfly. I prefer smaller friend groups if I get to pick then some random people at a party. 

Alfred made his way forward, got down on a knee, and formally greeted me.

"Hello again, Master Leo. Let me introduce everyone here for you." and he pointed at each one.

"This is Master Dick that you seem to already know, and the two lovely girls beside me are Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain, and over here we have Jason Todd and Timothy Jackson, and the smallest member of our family, Damian Wayne; there is also our newest member, Duke Thomas."

Dick gave me a wave as he was pointed out Stephanie was the girl with blond hair and Cassandra was the girl with black hair. I don't really have any meta-knowledge about them. I only really knew about the main Bat family and some super heroes, so they were new to me.

Jayson Todd was the second robin and had some white hair in front of his hair. Maybe this came from dying by joker and later being revived, or something later in his life, I don't actually know. He is one of the bats who uses guns and has been known to kill.

Tim Drake, the third robin I remember him being smart and using a staff to fight, but I did not really know much more about him.

Damian Wayne was the fourth robin and the one I have a bit more knowledge about being raised by the League of Assassins and then later adopted into the Bat family. He started out with a rather prickly personality, as in, stab first. This Damian seems to be around the age of 8–10 years old. I wonder if he will try to stab Fluffy or me if I stay for too long? When he was pointed out, he was not happy to be noted as the youngest.

Duke Thomas I did not really know anything about him, but I do remember seeing him the last time I was here.

"Now that everyone is introduced, can you introduce yourself?" Alfred asked me gently. I hesitantly walked forward out of Dick's grasp and gave a little wave.

"Hello everyone, my name is Leo, and this lovely troublemaker is Fluffy. I am physically 5 years old, officially 6 years old, but mentally 7 years old. I come from a world where 80% of everyone has superpowers, and I have several powers, one of which is to travel to other worlds. The first time I traveled, I got stuck in this world and lived with Dad, Alfred, and Dick for a year."

When I was done introducing myself, everyone was taken a bit by surprise. I don't think Alfred and Duke told anyone, and Dad seems to have kept it a secret from the rest of the Bat family.

"Wow, that was so cool, the blond girl Stephanie piped up." That was when the flood of questions started, but Alfred swiftly got them settled and pointed one out at a time to ask a question.

"How do you have three different ages?" asked Tim after being pointed at by Alfred.

"When my power activated at the age of five, I... became immortal in the sense that I don't age, so I will never age like a normal kid. That's why my physical age is five. I was gone in this world for a year and turned 6 years old, but my parents decided to keep me back for one year as I am still five on paper and my mental age is 7, because that's how old I am."

"Are the people of your world powerful compared to the Justice League?" asked Duke when pointed at

"Hmm, not really, most have weak powers, and I can only really think of only one person that has the potential to become as strong or stronger than the Justice League, and that's a villain called All for One who can steal other people's powers. He actually once tried to steal my powers. He failed" I said the last part with a foxy smile.

"What's your powers?" Damian asked me when pointed at.

"Biological Immortality, Power to open up rifts to other worlds, an Inventory" At the inventory part, I actually pulled out one of my gold blocks because I really wanted to show off.

"This is a pure gold block. It might look small now, but it's actually shrunk if I drop it… It becomes a block of 1 square meter of gold. I actually only got this earlier today. I have even more of these in my inventory," I told them smugly. And I could see some greed, but I plowed on after putting away the gold cube.

"Then we have Fluffy here; he is also part of my power; he can turn into a really big fox and has all of my power, but they are twice as strong." I put Fluffy down on the floor, and he grew to become his medium size and stood beside me as I gave him some scratches.

"Hello, my name is in fact NOT Fluffy, but this twirp won't use my real name, and until he does, I can't say it." Even if he sounded a bit annoyed, his tail gave him away as he was wagging up a storm.

"And my last powers are super strength, speed, durability, agility, and senses, oh, and a power to make me immune to getting my powers stolen. And that is all the powers I have."

"Before you said dad, did you mean Bruce?" Cassandra asked me after being pointed at.

"Ya, I started to call him dad after the new year. We sat outside the manor watching fireworks with Alfred and Dick." I never got to do something like that Dick piped up.

"Wait, so it was only you, Dick, Alfred, and Bruce?" Stephanie asked

"Ya?"

"How old am I?" Dick asked me

"16… I think."

"So you can like time travel also? Are you from a different timeline than us?" Stephanie asked quickly.

"Oh, yeah, I can travel in time, dimensions, universes, and so on, I guess, so it might be a branching world and not another timeline."

"Then we can all give him information and stuff, right? To help the younger versions of ourselves."Tim asked everyone in the room

This kicked off a debate between all of them, and after asking if I was okay to take some letters and stuff, they all scattered to their own corner of the manor to find letters to write, and soon it was just me, Fluffy, Alfred, and Dad.

"Why don't we retire to the living room? You seem to have set the kids spirits on fire, young master Leo.

We went to the living room, and this was so much more homely. The TV had been upgraded, and it now sported a bunch of gaming consoles and other high-tech gadgets all over the room. We sat down on the couch and we all talked for maybe an hour or two, and as time went on, more and more of the Bat family came to the living room with handwritten notes, letters, USB sticks, and some photos of the entire Bat family. When Damian came down, he held his own dog to show he was so much better than Fluffy. This set off Fluffy, and we had some entertainment from Fluffing showing up the mutt as he said it.

We all talked for a while after that, and I was asked to stay for dinner, which I accepted. As always, the food was to die for.

Everyone was very lively, and I could not wait to meet the younger versions of these people in my own version of the DC universe. They might not be exactly the same as I knew them here, but well, I can always hope. Before I left to go home to my own version of DC, I asked for a group photo with everyone, and so we did. Alfred was the one to take the photo and get it just right. This has been a very fun day, and I have bookmarked this world to maybe come back to and visit once in a while.

Before I left, I was taken down to the batcave with everyone and left one of the gold cubes down in the basement. After being asked to leave one for them, I had so much more that I accepted and left one. Everyone ran over after I placed it and inspected the gold block like a bunch of kids who got a new golden block toy, and I think I heard a few of them trying to call dibs on the gold.

I could finally leave, and I did so with everyone waving me and Fluffy a goodbye.

On the way through the rift home, I thought back to the time I stayed with the Bat family and wanted to have a family like that of my own some time, but maybe with a bit fewer kids. Dad really adopted a lot of them, and I felt crowded. Together, we were like 11 people all together and with the energy the rest of them had, it felt like twice as many.

I soon tumbled out of the rift into the lobby and looked around for Alfred or dad, as Dick was most likely with the teen Titans. I was about to call out for Alfred when he walked down the stairs.

"Welcome back, Master Leo, How are you doing?"

"I'm doing great; where is dad?"

"Where he always is when not working officially" He sighed, pointing downward.

"Would you be so willing to go and see if you can get him to take a break, maybe?"

"Yes sir" Me and Fluffy saluted, then giggled at how, in sync, we did it.

I rushed over to my dad's office, and while standing in the doorway, I called for Alfred to open the secret passage. I could do it myself, but I was told to stop standing on his office chair by Alfred so he could come and open it.

After the passage was open, I ran down the stairs two steps at a time until I came into the batcave and shouted SPEEDRUN! While Fluffy said it was a subpar run at best, I just stuck my tongue out and huffed at him.

It was then that I heard voices asking who that was, and to the side, I could see dad talking with the Justice League on the bat computer. He was in his full Batman suit, looking over at me as I gave him an over-the-top handwave, and he sighed and ignored their inquiries. Dad had already drilled me on not walking in view of the screen without a mask, so I sat down on the chair and table beside the computer he made for me for when I had to wait for a meeting or just wanted to spend time with him while he was working.

The meeting went on for another half an hour talking about boring Justice League stuff like logistics and stuff no debriefing. Those can be fun to listen to, at least.

As soon as the meeting was over, I ran over and hugged Dad.

"Welcome back, Leo. Has anything fun happened since we last met?"

"Hmm, let's see, me and fluffy went to a square world where everything is square, then we went here and got my strength tested. Then, on the way home, my rift misfired, and I appeared in a villain attack in a different dimension, and we helped the teachers. Fluffy fought the villains, and I teleported to the school and told the teacher about the villains, and now we are superheroes like you, dad."

I said it with my smuggest tone while puffing out my chest. I knew this was childish, but damn it, I needed someone to brag to, and who better than dad… Ya, I should have seen it coming, and it was partly the reason I was here. I did not have any training, and it was an accident. After explaining that my rift power sometimes misfires and that I learned to manage it, he just asked me to be cautious and to give me training to not hurt myself if… when it happens again. Dad is very pragmatic and knows that stuff happens and you can't always control it.

After the lecture and looking me and Fluffy over for injuries and setting his own worries to rest, he asked why I had come.

"Oh, that reminds me; look at this!" I ran over to an open area to the left of the staircase and placed one of the gold cubes on the floor. And jumped on top of the gold cube and posed.

"TADA!!!" I said giving jazz hands.

"Is… that pure gold?" Dad asked as he pulled off his cowl and got closer to start examining the gold cube with some of his tools on his belt.

"I don't know, but I used gold bars to craft it, so I guess?" I had not sliced one in half, but I just presumed it was pure gold; otherwise, it would be crafted with some other material. And that's what I told dad while sitting down on the gold cube, watching dad examine the gold cube.

"Is this the only one you have?"

"Nope, I have a ton more."

"Oh, that reminds me, dad. Before I came here, my rift miss fired again, and I appeared in a parallel universe to this one, but it was in the future. I met Dick, but he was bigger than you."

This made Dad pause, examining the gold cube as he looked at me.

"You went to the future? In a parallel universe?" He asked me to make sure he heard correctly.

"Yupp, I meet you, Alfred, Duke, Damian, Tim, Cassandra, Jason, Stephanie, and Dick." I said, counting them on my finger as I went along.

"Oh, they also gave us stuff to give you."

I said, excitedly pulling out the letters, USB sticks, pictures, and notes before handing them all over to dad. He started by looking over the photos, and I put the picture I had taken on top, and I saw how he smiled looking at the pictures one after another. He walked over and gave me a big hug.

"This is the best present I have ever gotten. Thank you, Leo."

"Ehh, no problem?" It's not often that dad becomes emotional, and I was taken aback.

Dad picked me up and carried us over, and we sat down by the bat computer, and he started to read the letters while I sat in his lap with my eyes closed. I did not know if they wanted me to see the letters or not, and if it was something important, Dad would tell me. And that's how we spent the rest of the day together. Dad was looking over the letters and everything while I fell asleep to his heartbeat.