The Atlantis Expedition

Chapter One: Some Nights

They had hardly been celebrating for ten minutes when Batman's phone went off. He answered it with a cursory "Batman," listened for a moment, then hung up with an "on it." He turned to his now ex-girlfriend and new friends. "So I can't say I'm surprised about it, but now that Lord Business has been stopped, the Joker's started right up on his antics again. I gotta go take care of it."

"So you're bailing on us," Lucy said sharply.

"A superhero's duty never ends." And just like that he was gone.

Lucy sighed, shaking her head. "Don't know why I expected any different," she muttered. Emmet stepped closer, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze.

"It's no big loss," he assured her.

"Aye lass, I be sure he would have found some other excuse to wriggle out of clean-up," Metalbeard grumbled his agreement. Benny was too distracted by the pair of figures approaching them to voice his own opinion on the matter. They were an elderly couple in matching police uniforms, both with the name "Callaghan" embroidered on their shirts.

"We were hoping to be able to talk to The Special," the woman spoke, kindly voice holding a nervous tone. Emmet immediately turned to give them his attention.

"What can I help you with?"

"It's our son," Mr. Callaghan started. "We're... we're worried about them."

"Them?"

"Wait," Emmet said, seeming to put two and two together. "Your accents, and... He kept calling himself 'we'... You're Bad Cop's parents?"

"Bad Cop has parents??" they could hear Unikitty not quite whispering to Metalbeard in the background.

"Yes," Mrs. Callaghan replied. "They're hiding something from us, and no matter how much we try to get an answer from them, they won't tell us. Please... We can see they're hurting, and it's something they can't talk about to their own mum and dad. Please look after them for us, be a friend to them? We can only guess it's something to do with the work President Business had them do."

"Well sure," Benny agreed easily, though his mind was reeling that someone like Bad Cop was raised by two such sweet people. He had a feeling he wasn't seeing the whole picture on this one, though- after all, it wasn't like any of them knew Bad Cop well. Emmet was the only one who ever had any sort of interaction with them outside of combat. "It won't be a problem," he assured them, and Emmet nodded in determined agreement. Bless his heart for always seeing the good in people.

"They've probably already left to start directing cleanup efforts," Mr. Callaghan suggested. "They always liked to bury themselves in work when they were upset about something."

"Well let's be off then," Metalbeard said. "There is a lot of cleaning up to do." They split up, Emmet setting off to find his construction crew, and Lucy tagging along with him. Metalbeard and Unikitty led the efforts to build shelters for those whose homes had been wrecked in the fighting, Business directed the collection of his destroyed robots and micromanagers, and Benny floated away to see if he could spot Bad Cop in the flurry of activity. It actually didn't take long before he heard a familiar deep, growly voice barking out orders, and he touched down just a few feet away. Benny supposed it was a good thing that Bad Cop was the chief of the Super Secret police, because none of the normal people of Bricksburg seemed to recognize or be afraid of him, following direction without hesitation.

"Hey," Benny greeted with a wave.

"Spaceman," Bad Cop acknowledged, giving him a curt nod in return. The astronaut grinned in response.