Tomorrow Robin

Not a Jedi

Batman was hovering, or helicopter parenting as some called it. It was driving Robin up the wall. Batman believed in research, testing and certainty. Batman wanted every aspect of teleportation understood before Robin experimented with other talents. The release of a new Star Wars movie had resulted in the lecture to end all lectures.

They'd been at a private screening. There was no one else in the blinking room at all except Bruce, Dick, Wally and Barry. The boys were horsing around. Dick floated a container of popcorn over to himself. (It had taken him half the movie to figure it out.)

"RICHARD JOHN GRAYSON!" bellowed Bruce.

Dick jumped half a foot in the air. Popcorn scattered in a semi-explosive puff half way across the theater.

"Jeepers!" shrieked Wally ducking the rain of popcorn.

Trying to defuse the tension Dick answered, "This is not the Richard you're looking for," with a silly little wave of his hand.

Bruce glared.

The lecture itself waited until after the movie and after Dick, with Wally's help, on hands and knees picked up every single piece of spilled popcorn.

"Dude, why's he so angry?" whispered Wally as they were cleaning up.

"This thing that's happened to me has had a lot of close calls. He just wants to be careful. It, I guess it was kind of thoughtless of me Wally."

"It was just popcorn. What's the worst that could happen?" Wally asked.

Dick shrugged. "I don't know but I suppose it would be better to know first."

Batman had a lot of very graphic and terrifying theories as to what could happen, all of which were explained to Robin at volume level 9 while Robin was waiting to head to the cave for a second attempt at a manditory first training session in telekinesis. Batman had set this up with: M'gann, Zatara, Zatana and Superman. J'onn was not invited.

Superboy came when he heard Superman was going to be there. Batman was rather infuriated to learn that the Superman had no idea how he flew, resisted bullets or lifted heavy things, all of which was telekinetically based. M'gann tried not to giggle. Superboy snorted in frustration. Superman ended up leaving.

J'onn joined the party telepathically, with M'gann repeating his words. Batman quickly figured out what was going on and just insisted the blasted Martian join them.

"Remember Robin, each race manifests telekinesis differently. Your skill set will likely be very different from M'gann's, Conner's or Zatana's," Martian Manhunter warned.

"In theory shouldn't Zatana exhibit similar telekinetics?" asked Robin.

"Do you run like Kid Flash?" asked Zatara.

Robin was less then whelmed to learn that he couldn't fly like Superman or even float a little. He couldn't jump like Superboy. He had no ability to stop fast moving objects or make himself even a little more invulnerable. He could lift something about as heavy as a bowling ball, (the five pin size not even 12 pin) at a moderately unimpressive speed, when completely undistracted. Robin glared a little at Batman who'd been terrifying him with what ifs and was currently broodily glowering.

Kid Flash walked in on the little pow wow and noticed Rob's disappointed face. "How about spoon bending?" he teased.  He offerred Rob his ice cream spoon after giving it a good licking clean. "Hey, it's a good party trick at least!"

Robin could make the spoon float around the room but he couldn't bend it, not even when he went crosseyed with effort.

Superboy after getting almost poked in the eye by Robin's awkward angry flying spoon, bent the thing into a pretzel and flung it back to Robin's lap which made Kid Flash chortle annoyingly.