The Justice League's primary meeting room, usually reserved for universe-threatening crises and intergalactic diplomacy, currently held a very different kind of tension. On one side of the gleaming, oval table sat Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Green Lantern. Their expressions, though varied, all conveyed a certain… gravity. On the other side sat the Teen Titans: Nightwing, his usual confident demeanor slightly tempered by curiosity; Starfire, radiating her usual alien optimism; Cyborg, brimming with tech-savvy enthusiasm; and Beast Boy, already bouncing in his seat, barely containing his boundless energy.
"Titans," Superman began, his voice taking on an unusually formal tone, "we have a highly sensitive, top-priority mission for you."
Nightwing straightened, a flicker of excitement in his eyes. "We're ready, Superman! Is it Apokolips again? Or a new alien invasion? We've been training hard!"
"Ooh! Is it a team-up with the Justice League?!" Beast Boy chirped, transforming his hand into a miniature, excited chihuahua. "Can I turn into a T-Rex and smash something?"
Starfire's eyes glowed with eagerness. "We are most eager to prove our capabilities! What is this mission of great import?"
Batman leaned forward, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. "This mission… it requires extreme discretion. Unwavering patience. And a unique blend of empathy and adaptability."
Oh, they're going to hate this, I thought, a mischievous grin spreading across my non-existent face. Oliver Omni was going to be the ultimate test for the Titans' youthful exuberance.
"Sounds like a stealth mission!" Cyborg boomed, his mechanical arm whirring. "I can hack into anything! What's the target?"
Before the League could elaborate, The Flash zipped into the room, coming to an abrupt halt beside Green Lantern, a wide, slightly manic grin on his face. He took a deep, theatrical breath.
"Alright, alright, settle down, eager beavers!" The Flash said, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow. "This 'top-priority mission'… it's a babysitting gig!"
Silence. A stunned, absolute silence descended upon the room. The Teen Titans' excited expressions slowly morphed into confusion, then disbelief, then a growing horror.
"B-babysitting?" Beast Boy stammered, his chihuahua hand drooping. "You mean… like, with a baby? You're telling us the great Justice League has a 'top-priority mission' that involves… changing diapers?"
Nightwing's confident posture slumped. "Flash, is this some kind of joke? A hazing ritual? We're the Teen Titans, not… the Super Nanny League."
Starfire's eyes, which had been glowing with anticipation, now dimmed slightly. "I confess, my understanding of 'babysitting' is limited. Does it involve a great struggle against a formidable foe of minuscule proportions?"
"No, Starfire," Green Lantern sighed, rubbing his temples. "It involves making sure a kid doesn't, you know, accidentally turn the moon into a giant rubber ducky."
Cyborg snorted. "Turn the moon into a rubber ducky? What kind of kid are we talking about here? A five-dimensional imp with a sugar rush?"
You have no idea, dude, I thought, barely suppressing a mental snicker.
"Actually, yes, precisely that, in a manner of speaking," Batman confirmed, his voice as flat as ever, though I detected a faint flicker of something akin to grim amusement in his eyes. "He is… an anomaly. A being of unprecedented power, currently residing in the form of a seven-year-old child. His control over reality is… instinctive. Unconscious. We need you to keep him entertained and, more importantly, contain him for the next 48 hours while our top minds attempt to understand his nature."
The Titans stared. They stared at the Justice League, then at each other. The idea was so utterly absurd, so far removed from their usual heroic endeavors, that it almost seemed like a prank.
"So, you want us to babysit a super-powered kindergartner who can apparently turn celestial bodies into bath toys?" Nightwing asked, pinching the bridge of his nose. "This is the 'special mission'?"
"It is," Superman stated, his voice unwavering. "And it is arguably one of the most important missions you will undertake. The stability of our reality… depends on it."
Beast Boy groaned, transforming into a deflated balloon. "This is going to be the worst! I had plans! I was going to beat Cyborg's high score on Galactic Conquerors!"
"And I was going to calibrate my sonic cannons!" Cyborg complained, his sonic arm drooping. "Babysitting? What's the worst that could happen? He throws a cosmic tantrum and turns us all into garden gnomes?"
Don't give him ideas, I mentally warned.
"Precisely," Batman said, confirming Cyborg's fears with chilling gravitas. "And worse."
Just then, a burst of energy, both innocent and immensely powerful, reverberated through the meeting room. A giggling, energetic ball of pure cosmic chaos, with bright white hair and glowing silver eyes, suddenly appeared in the doorway, energetically riding on Superman's back, piggyback style. Superman, looking oddly comfortable with the arrangement, chuckled softly.
It was Oliver Omni.
"Whee! Faster, Superman, faster!" Oliver Omni chirped, tugging lightly on Superman's cape. "You're the best horsey ever! Are we going to play with the Teen Titans now? Are they super fun?!"
The Teen Titans, who had been grumbling about their fate moments before, now froze. Their mouths hung open. They stared at the small, adorable child, who was currently using the Man of Steel as a living plaything.
Superman, with a warm, reassuring smile, gently lowered Oliver Omni to the floor. "Titans, this is Oliver Omni. Oliver, these are the Teen Titans. They're going to be your… companions for the next couple of days."
Oliver Omni's silver eyes immediately lit up. He bounced on the balls of his feet. "Wow! You're the Teen Titans! You're just like on TV! Can we play superhero tag? And can Beast Boy turn into a kitten? I love kittens!"
Beast Boy, still in his deflated balloon form, slowly reinflated, his eyes wide with disbelief. "He… he wants me to turn into a kitten?"
"He does indeed," Wonder Woman said, her voice filled with a gentle, knowing amusement. "And he is quite… insistent."
Nightwing clapped his hands together, forcing a cheerful smile. "Alright, Titans! Looks like we have our mission! Oliver Omni, it's a pleasure to meet you! What do you say we go to the recreational room? We have lots of games!"
"Ooh! Games! Are they like… cosmic games? Where you can make the rules?" Oliver Omni asked, his eyes sparkling mischievously.
Cyborg gulped. "Uh… sure, kid. All the rules are… optional."
The Justice League members exchanged knowing glances. This was going to be interesting.
The next few hours were a whirlwind of controlled chaos. The Teen Titans quickly discovered that babysitting Oliver Omni was less like babysitting a normal child and more like wrangling a walking, talking, perpetually enthusiastic force of nature.
Their first attempt at 'games' involved a simple game of hide-and-seek. Nightwing, thinking he was clever, used his stealth skills to vanish into the shadows of the Watchtower. Oliver Omni, however, simply thought Nightwing was in the ventilation shaft, and suddenly, Nightwing was, in fact, in the ventilation shaft, tangled in a series of unused cables, covered in dust bunnies.
"Found you, Nightwing!" Oliver Omni cheered, his silver eyes twinkling. "You're super dusty!"
Nightwing, extracting himself with a groan, stared at Oliver Omni. "How… how did you do that? I was in the next sector!"
"I just knew you were in there!" Oliver Omni shrugged, as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe.
He's not 'knowing', he's creating, you idiot, I mentally supplied. His perception is our reality.
Next, they tried video games. Cyborg, confident in his gaming prowess, challenged Oliver Omni to a round of Galactic Conquerors. Oliver Omni, after losing the first round by a landslide, simply decided the rules of the game were unfair. With a gleeful shout, he declared, "My spaceship is super strong! And it shoots rainbows!"
Suddenly, Cyborg's meticulously programmed digital enemies on the screen transformed into adorable, fluffy kittens, and his spaceship began firing streams of glittering rainbows that insta-defeated everything in their path. Oliver Omni won in a single, chaotic, rainbow-filled blaze of glory.
Cyborg stared at the screen, then at his controller, then at Oliver Omni. "He… he just cheated reality."
"It wasn't cheating!" Oliver Omni insisted. "I just made the game better! Now it's super pretty!"
Beast Boy tried to entertain him by turning into various animals. Oliver Omni loved it. He squealed with delight when Beast Boy transformed into a golden retriever, then a fluffy bunny. But then, Oliver Omni got an idea.
"Beast Boy! Can you turn into a dragon? A super-duper real one, with fire and everything?!"
Beast Boy, still in bunny form, looked terrified. "Uh, kid, I can only turn into real animals! And dragons… well, they're not really real. Just in stories."
"But I want a real one!" Oliver Omni pouted, his lower lip trembling. The air in the recreational room seemed to shimmer slightly.
"Whoa, whoa, easy there, little guy!" Beast Boy quickly transformed into a slightly larger, more impressive, but still very much non-fire-breathing, gorilla. "Look! Gorilla! Rawr!"
The shimmering stopped. Oliver Omni clapped his hands. "Okay! Gorilla is cool too! But next time, dragon!"
Starfire, with her boundless affection, attempted to engage Oliver Omni in a game of pretend. She gracefully flew around the room, mimicking a majestic bird, inviting Oliver Omni to join her.
"Can you fly with me, little one?" Starfire asked, her voice melodic.
"Yep!" Oliver Omni replied, and without any visible effort, he simply floated into the air beside her, hovering effortlessly. He then began to do aerial flips and corkscrews that would make Superman dizzy, all while giggling uncontrollably.
Starfire's eyes widened. Her flight, which required conscious effort and mastery of her alien physiology, was being replicated, even surpassed, by a child who was simply… willing himself into the air.
"He is… most agile," Starfire observed, a note of genuine awe in her voice.
As the day wore on, the Titans found themselves increasingly exhausted. Oliver Omni's energy seemed inexhaustible, and his innocent whims consistently broke the laws of physics and the boundaries of common sense. He asked Starfire to make a living star, which she almost tried before Nightwing intervened. He tried to convince Cyborg that his internal circuits would look better as glitter. He attempted to make Beast Boy turn into an alien creature he'd only seen in a comic book, nearly causing a minor temporal distortion.
At one point, Oliver Omni declared he was bored with the Watchtower and wanted to go to a giant candy factory. Nightwing quickly intervened, distracting him with a stack of comic books. "Look, Oliver! These are real superheroes! Want to read about them?"
Oliver Omni's eyes lit up. "Ooh! Are they as cool as Superman? And Batman?"
Nightwing, sweating profusely, ushered him towards a beanbag chair. "Even cooler, kid! Now, how about we just read for a bit? No reality-bending. Just… reading."
As evening approached, the Titans collapsed onto a sofa in the recreational room, utterly spent. Oliver Omni, meanwhile, was still happily coloring a picture of Superman fighting a rainbow-spitting kitten, oblivious to their exhaustion.
"I'm telling you, this is harder than fighting Trigon," Beast Boy mumbled, transformed into a tiny, exhausted mouse.
Cyborg's systems were whirring faintly, as if his internal processors were overheating from the sheer illogicality of the day. "My circuits are fried. My logical programming is telling me this kid shouldn't exist. Yet… here he is."
Nightwing, rubbing his temples, sighed deeply. "He's… a challenge. A very, very powerful challenge."
Starfire, ever the optimistic one, tried to find a silver lining. "He is… delightful in his innocence. And his power saved Superman. Perhaps he simply needs… guidance."
"Guidance? Starfire, he just made a drawing of a talking banana peel come to life in the cafeteria," Nightwing deadpanned, gesturing to a lingering, faint banana peel-shaped aura near the door. "We're not guiding him; we're just trying to keep him from accidentally turning the entire Watchtower into a ball pit."
Beast Boy, still a mouse, squeaked plaintively. "The worst part… we still have two days left…"