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Often times, Alfred was quite unimpressed with the hobby’s that his charges got up to. Messy, self destructive, and their communication could certainly use some work so they stopped tripping upon each other even with all of their training.
Other times, the sheer amount of chaos and high stakes, combined with their skill and their propensity to refuse to talk about even the most basic of things led to situations like this.
A day of beautiful, peaceful quiet in which the entire family was gathered. All of them had been gathered together in the main sitting room for at least three hours now, with no swearing, no shouting, no ‘sparring’. True, there had been hissed conversations going on but… Alfred would take what he could get.
He supposed for their own health they would soon need to be released from the stalemate however.
Truth be told none of them were near in the danger that they thought that they were. True, each and every one of his charges was quite skilled in their construction of the assorted pranks that went with the day. They oh so often forgot to account for the fact that Bruce had taught them all however, and he dared say they never remembered who had taught Bruce.
They did to a one remember who it was that kept the manor running however, and had all independently given in to his demand that there would be no pranks pulled within the manor grounds that were not limited to the sitting room.
Unfortunately they failed to communicate even a touch with each other, and had all set up pranks for the day within the sitting room. It had been quite the impressive assortment too, stink bombs and glitter, confetti and a whole elaborate machine to trip any unwary into quite the photo opportunity. Tim’s camera setup had been left alone, Alfred after all did love to get the photos of them all together. The rest had long since been disarmed, even if he felt no inclination to inform his charges that the wires, pressure plates, and assorted other triggers would do little to nothing.
It was most certainly worth it, even if it did mean that Master Dick was left standing on a plate for that amount of time while the others were mostly seated. He supposed that poor Stephanie got what was truly the shortest end of the stick however, in that she was half sprawled across a couch over two of the others, Tim and Cass with her hand on the remote with its twin tripwire threads shining brightly in the lights.
He had been somewhat worried about poor Jason, but examinations from each hidden angle and sorting through the assorted charges files had all turned up that he was not trapped where he was. Not so far as Alfred was aware and he always knew what happened within the manor. He was doing quite well at playing it up though, scoffing and partially hiding tension so that his siblings truly believed that he must also be sitting on a trigger of some nature even if he spent at least an hour ignoring them and reading instead.
Bruce wasn’t sitting on a trigger exactly, instead he had fallen into the trap long before Alfred could get it disabled. He couldn’t say he would have disabled that particular one however, given that it did keep Bruce in the room and basking in the presence of his children, even if it was because he was currently wired to his own favorite chair by at least four layers of bat grade restraints.
“Okay… okay, I’m gonna do it.”
“Don’t you fucking dare .”
“Absolutely not!”
“Come ooooonnnnn, I need to pee!”
Alfred had come in once before at the call for assistance, had made it very clear he was regarding the room, and had left. Now, he stepped in and a hush fell over the room, even as he very purposefully stepped on a certain location and camera flashes went off. “Lunch is served in the dining room.”
“Alfred… Alfred, please, you know we’re stuck.”
He raised an eyebrow at them all. “Then you had best become unstuck.” Then turned away. He heard the muffled cries of outrage, his charges doing a truly admirable job of remaining below the sound threshold of one of the devices that had at some point rolled to the center of the room. They were of course not directed at him but rather at Master Jason, who had stood, stretched, grinned at all of the rest and walked out.
In the end, it was Stepahnie who moved first. There was a tense moment where those who knew what was supposed to happen and those who knew their siblings well enough braced. When nothing happened however, Dick was the one to give out a truly anguished cry and flew across the room to see what had happened to his ‘masterpiece’. His movement also brought about no reaction, and the sound in the room grew until the threshold of the device in the center of the room was triggered and… nothing.
Jason leaned in the doorway, his back to Alfred for the moment as he grinned down the hall. “That’s a pretty good one to pull on everyone, Alfie.”
“Indeed, it was most amusing, Master Jason.”