-Edit: added doodle-

"Because," Roy hissed. "If your parents know, then their enemies will know, and your little sister will be at risk!" The woman laughed over the line. "Come on! Please don't tell them! Do you want your family enemies coming after a three year old? you don't have to like her moral code to want your baby sister to stay alive!" He listened to the phone and sighed.

"Is it Jady?" Artemis asked, stuck to his leg. "Can I talk? I wanna talk! Can I?"

"Shh! I'm talking."

"I wanna talk too!!"

Roy held up a finger to quiet her. "Please don't betray me here, Jade." He begged. "Your sister's life is at risk." He listened to her response. "Yeah, she'd right here." He passed his phone down to the little blonde girl.

"Hi Jady!" She bounced excitedly to hear her Big sister. They hadn't talked in months.

"Hi Artemis."

"What are you doing?"

"One second-" There was a scraping sound, like a struggle on a concrete floor, then it went quiet again. "I'm working tonight."

"Okay!" The girl was over the moon to hear from Jade. "We were just colouring. I did penguins."

There was another scuffle on the other side of the phone, and a crack. "Sorry, Arty,  can you repeat that?"

She did. "I coloured penguins. They were blue, but we had no blue, so they were green." She recounted, skipping in circles around the kitchen.

"Don't drop my phone!" Roy warned.

"I won't!"

"Won't what?" Jade asked

"Roy's being mean."

Roy's jaw dropped, eyes flitting wide. "SHH. Don't say that!"

She frowned, and returned to the phone. "He says not to say that."

Roy swore. "No!"

Artemis stopped jumping, and flopped down on the kitchen floor. "We made mud-slime too. Flash showed us. Is daddy there?"

Roy shook his head violently, mouthing something at her.

"Not today." Jade told her. "Do you want to talk to him?"

"No." The three year old replied. 

There was a soft jingle over the cave's PA. Roy waved her over. "Artemis, food is here, I need my phone back."

"No!" She told him, giggling a little.

"Artemis. We can't eat until I get my phone back! My card's in the case!"

"Artemis, can you please give him the phone. I want to talk to him."

"Okay." She relented. "Bye bye!" They exchanged kiss sounds over the phone, and passed Roy his cell back. 

"Finally. I'm hungry." Roy muttered.

"I'm hungry too!" The blonde added.

Roy held the phone up. "Look, I gotta pay for dinner- and I've left the others unsupervised for like ten minutes, so if you can-"

"I'm on my way over."

"whAT? NO! JADE-"

"I'll wash off first! None of them well recognize me out of costume! I think I might know something about this!"

"NO! Are you kidding? This is a JUSTICE LEAGUE base! That's a horrible idea!" He scoffed, exasperated. "I'm hanging up now. DO NOT interfere over here!"

He hung up, put on airplane mode so she couldn't call back, and sprinted to get their food.

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"OKAY EVERYONE!" Roy announced, walking M'gann back from the washroom. The kids looked up, faces stained with marinara sauce. "It's like seven, Black Canary was supposed to be back by now, but she's not." He announced, really not sure what to do. He was supposed to be home by now. "So... when are you supposed to go to bed?"

"Eight." Kaldur replied.

"No! Nine!" Wally interrupted. 

"Ten!" M'gann jumped in.

"Eleven!" 

"Thirteen!" The second redhead shouted.

Roy was inclined to believe the first child. "Alright, thirty minutes of TV, and then start getting ready for bed.

"No!" Artemis protested. "I want to stay up too!"

"No, I'm Eighteen. You're three." He replied. "You don't get to do EVERYTHING I do."

"Yes I do! It's not fair! I want to stay up!"

"No. You guys get thirty minutes, and then I'll strap you down if I have to."

"NO! An hour."

Roy thought for a second. "Let's compromise. Half an hour?"

She thought for a second. "Fine. Half an hour."

Satisfied with the kids lack of academics, Roy sat on the couch, sitting Dick on his leg. This was damn hard! Harder then he expected. He had to take the kids to the bathroom, help them change when they got something on their clothes (which happened a lot) and was routinely overrun with three-year-old care (They were needy af). 

Even though he'd ordered cheese pizza for them, he still had to prep formula for Dick. Luckily, the kids couldn't eat much, so there was a lot of pizza left over. 

"Let's go to a park!" Wally tugged on his leg.

"Nah, it's too late. We can't go out." Roy told him, bouncing the infant on his leg. The boy huffed and sat down, squirming from restlessness.

Artemis was lying on the carpet, playing with the Safari-themed Playmobil set Ollie got her over the weekend. She was playing as one of the adventurers, Kaldur was the other, and Conner was supposedly playing as the animals, but he was more playing with the animals. He liked animals, in an ideal world he'd be one. Most animals seemed like a good life.

Wally joined their game, but there weren't many characters left. Conner reluctantly let him have a couple animals: the chimpanzees and ONE of the Zebras. Wally, being a persuasive king, managed to haggle himself a Giraffe and the Meerkats.

"Alright! Half-an-hour!" Roy proclaimed after fifteen minutes. 

"No!" Conner replied. "Eight-hundred-and-fifty-eight seconds."

"Yeah... Half an hour." Roy bluffed, hoping this would work. Conner frowned, trying to work divide nine-hundred by sixty. "C'mon, let's get ready for bed."

"End of the story?" M'gann asked hopefully, prompting the other children to protest that this be put off until the episode ended.

"You guys aren't even watching, you're playing Playmobil." The ginger teen switched off the tv to great protests. "Come on, get ready for bed." The kids shouted protests. "Come on! Let's brush your teeth, or whatever do you have to do?"

"No!"

"I'm not done!"

"I'M NOT SLEEPY!"

"Okay. If you're not sleepy, then you have enough energy to clean up your toys?

"We're not done!"

"They're MY playmobils!"

So much for that attempt. Roy just wanted them in bed so he could lay down on the couch and either nap or at least shut off his brain off and listen to stupid reddit readings. "Okay. I'll get Dick ready then." He carried the boy out, planning his next plan of attack. 

He dressed the baby as directed by his handy dandy instructions page. Fuck, he spent too much time watching Blue's Clues today. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to brush a baby's teeth, but Dick had been shrunk down with all adult teeth (Which luckily also shunk to be Baby-sized, I mean, can you imagine- NEVERMIND

Unable to find details on the sheet, he assumed he wouldn't need to. They were just using the pack-n-play as a crib, so he went to clean it out and set it up.

"Five more minutes!" Wally begged as the teen reentered.

"Keep playing if you want. You get to do anything I can, but I'm getting ready for bed." Roy said nonchalantly, putting Dick in his makeshift bed and wandering off with his overnight bag. He walked VERY SLOWLY to the nearest communal washroom. He was just unhealthily obsessing over his pores, like your average eighteen-year-old boy, when he noticed a presence.

"I'm feeling tired. I'm gonna brush my teeth." M'gann floated onto the counter, she'd already grabbed her toothbrush from the bathroom across the hall.

Soon, Roy's last ditch effort proved successful, as within ten minutes, the children had filed in, one-by-one, to brush their teeth. He was a teenager, of course they wanted what he had.

"I'm going to get changed now."  He passed the kiddos on his way out. "Then I'm going to be watching Dick. Seeya."

He returned to the Livingroom, which still had playmobil on the floor, and checked if Dick was asleep. He wasn't. Actually, he was crying that he'd been abandoned for ten minutes. 

Roy swept the baby up and desperately bounced/shook him a little, trying to sooth Dick. 

"Daddy." He whimpered, wriggling in a way that made Roy almost drop him.

"Look, I can't call Bruce, he's on patrol." Roy told him, "He's busy right now. But he can come see you tomorrow?" If you could imagine, an infant with no concept of delayed gratification was NOT satisfied. "PLEASE Dickie, Stop crying!" He begged. "Please?" He hurried to the baby's bag, and began searching it for anything, Anything that could help. "Dickie! look!"

Dick paused as the small fluffy elephant was shoved in his face. "'eanut!" He screamed, grabbing the toy.

"Fuck yea, Peanuts!" The archer remarked, before he could stop himself. 

"'eanut." The child sniffed, hugging the toy.

"Now can you sleep?" Roy asked, trying to return Dick to his makeshift crib, only for him to scream again. "Okay, okay, I'll carry you! just don't cry!" He lay on the sofa, resting the baby on his chest.

"Can I play with the baby?" Roy almost had a heart attack from a little child's voice in his ear.

"Uh no." He slurred, being pulled from his doze. "Dick's trying to sleep."

"You too!" The martian giggled.

"No, I'm awake." He yawned, sitting up and resting Dick on his lap. "But if I'm gonna sleep, you guys need to aswell."

The redhaired child rubbed her eye, catching his yawn. "I'm tired."

"I'll set up beds for you." Roy said. "You get the others so I can fall asleep." She agreed and hastened off. Roy removed the cushions from the two other couches and lined them up on the floor to make two 'beds'. 
All he had to do now was get the children IN them.

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"Roy." A pause. "ROY!"

"What?" He shot up, blinking to adjust his eyes.

"What's going on? What are you doing?" Dinah snapped, looking like one of those moms who caught their kids sneaking out in old movies.

"What? I don't know!" The redhead felt his brain shaking against the sides of his skull. "Why are you here? it's..." Roy checked the time. "12:45!"

"There was an intruder alarm, we thought you let them get killed!"

"What?" He yawned for the thousandth time. "No, everything's fine here." He gestured at the beds of children.

"Why are they sleeping out here? Didn't you read the note I left you?" Dinah asked.

"Yeah, it was about taking care of Dick."

Dinah took the page off the carpet next to him. "Well did you read the other side?"

"Other side?" Roy flinched as the other side of the paper was shoved at him. He glanced at the first few articles.

-Their bedtime is at eight. The team has labeled bedrooms, make sure to check on them regularly

Well, he got that half-right...

-Conner prefers sleep standing. He has not slept lying since he's been deaged
- If M'gann gets something on her clothes, have her shape-shift them to something easier to clean
-If Kaldur is having trouble breathing, call the league IMIDIATELY and have Red Tornado take him down to the water

FUCK x3. Did they not tell him one of the kids could die??
He didn't bother reading the rest of the list. He'd already fucked up so far. He groaned and slumped against the armrest, slowly waking up.

"I take it that you didn't take out Dick's Pacifier before putting him to sleep."

"I was supposed to do that?" Roy asked.

The team's denmother stooped to one of the 'beds', containing Dick, Artemis, and Conner. She swept the baby up to inspect his condition. The boy woke up a little, soothed by being held. She shushed him back into a sort of a lull.

She turned to Roy. "I saw you called, but I was busy."

"Busy for almost six hours?"

"Oliver didn't have you or Artemis, he needed someone to save him." Dinah pushed her messy hair back. "Did anything happen?"

"Nothing too bad, I can't remember..." Roy sat up. "Artemis was a handful, but I eventually bribed her back in here... uh, a lot happened, but it all worked out."

"Well that's something." She replaced the boy on the side of the improvised mattress. She then went to check Kaldur's skin and temperature. Fortunately, he didn't seem too dehydrated, he'd probably just need a dip in the salt water in the morning.

"So are you taking over now?"

"I am, just help me get the kids into bed."

"Sure." He sighed. "Their bedrooms are marked, right?"

"Yes." Dinah picked a bed and pulled their blanket off. She sighed, exhausted. "Conner wet the bed. Can you start taking them to bed while I handle this?"

"Sure."

"Just, uh, Move Dick to the couch for now."

Roy did so, and picked up his pseudo sister, carrying her off. He wandered for a bit, and finally found the room with her name taped to it.

He opened the door and started. There was already someone in here, lying on the bed

"JADE."

She looked up at him. "Oh, It's you, I thought I was going to get to meet Black Canary."

"I told you not to come! You need to leave!" He said sharply, holding Artemis protectively.

"I told you, I think I know something about all this."

"All what?"

Jade rolled her eyes, standing, and walking over to him. "This." She tried to take her baby sister from him. Roy pulled the blonde girl back. "She's my sister. I'm not going to hurt her!"

"Maybe not, but you could take her!"

"Because the only way to improve my one-room apartment with no carpet is to have a toddler in it." She said sarcastically, wrestling the child away from him. "Anyways, why would I take her? You're feeding and housing her for free."

"What do you know about this then?" He shoved his hands in his pockets, watching her suspiciously.

"Just stuff I picked up from family friends. These things get around, you know." Jade remarked, uninterested. She sat on the side of the bed and rested Artemis on her lap, admiring her baby sister. "I've heard that someone wants their little sidekick team."

"Wants them dead?" Roy asked.

She shrugged. "Just wants them."

"...What does that even mean? They want to Collect them? Like Pop Heads?"

"I don't know. I just know that someone was putting out openings for contractors to help them 'get' the kiddie team."

"Is it like craigslist?" Roy asked. "How do you know this?"

"If I told you our ways of communicating, They wouldn't be useful anymore." She told the redhead, running her fingers through her sister's long hair, and bopping the sleeping toddler on the nose. "All I need to tell you is that somebody Wants them. The only other thing I can tell you is the number of the burner phone on the wanted ad." She tugged a scrap of paper from her pocket.

"Why are you so willing to help?" Roy asked doubtfully, inching forwards to take the paper. He watched the sleeping Artemis warily.

"You said it yourself: She's my sister. If anyone gets to kidnap her it's me." Jade kissed her sister's forehead. "...But not until I can afford rent." She said, carefully putting Artemis in her oversized bed. "I gotta go, Alice." She whispered, tucking the toddler in.

"Where are you going?"

"Well I know there's at least of member of the Justice League in here and I already set off the silent alarm once." She stood and stretched, passing him to the doorway.

"WAIT- you can't just..." Roy Left Artemis' Bedside, rushing after the woman. By the time he stepped into the lit hallway, it was empty. He raced down the hall, searching every room. He skidded around a corner and sprinted down the hall he knew lead to the exit onto the mountainside.

He took a corner too sharp and slammed into the wall.

"Roy, what the hell?" Dinah was right on the other side of the corner, holding a snoozing Kaldur on her back. "Is everyone okay?"

"I found our intruder." He scrambled to his feet, sprinting past her. Roy made it about ten metres away before there was a blaring over the PA. He smacked his hands over his ears, muffling the robotic voice.

How did Jade beat him back to the exit? He knew this place!

Dinah deactivated the alarm, trying to calm down the violently shaking the child gripping her shoulders. "Whoever it was, they're gone now." She said seriously. "We'll send the league on it, see if they took anything."

"It was Cheshire." He panted, catching his breath.

"Goddammit, Roy, no non-league guests."

"I didn't invite her!" He replied, insulted. "She came to see Artemis." He briefly recounted how he'd called her earlier. "And she just showed up and gave me this?" He pulled the scrap of paper from his pocket. "Says someone wants the team for some reason."

Kaldur seemed distraught by this, Dinah just pulled him around to hold in her front. "Shh, it's fine. Go back to sleep. We can handle this..."

"Yeah." Roy agreed, realizing he'd probably have to go put the others to sleep again. "Don't worry, nothing will happen to the team."